jackpine savage, October 29 at 4:23 pm #

I’ve been saying it for a while, but i’m just some schmuck posting in comments under a screen name.

I think we need more efforts from “schmucks” like you. Great link by the by.

Re: illiteracy, “42%, it’s not like we study those countries, etc. etc.” Fact is, public schools have sunk much below where they were when I was a kid, and I’ve watched it happen for decades. Impact of pictorial media has been destructive of what might be termed “deeper” learning.  Surface acquaintance serves most people, probably due to deliberate intentions of a government that enjoys dealing with a “dumbed down” population, all the while still calling itself a “democracy.”
  Since early days rural people have feared and resented city people, and vice versa. Nothing has been done to close the gap between them, city schools having been better than country schools for decades.  This too works as an arm of “divide and conquer,” keeping people in opposition to each other. 
  The destructiveness becomes clear as crystal with the election of a boob like Bush over a more intellectual opponent and the crass exploitation of mainline TV.  Add to that the fact that feeling “inferior” causes people to over-compensate by insisting that the bit of knowledge they do have is absolute and must be defended to the death.  When such people become the majority, constructive change is almost impossible because anything off the simple beaten path is threatening, dangerous.  Better keep the status quo because at least I know a little bit about that.  Because I never learned to learn, I don’t want to learn now, etc.
It’s called “anti-intellectualism” and my father would weap if he knew that my grandchildren know a good deal less than he did even though technology makes far more information easily available to them. I see this every day—and mourn.

I’ve been saying it for a while, but i’m just some schmuck posting in comments under a screen name.

Wanna know what the problem is in Afghanistan? Gareth Porter will lay out the information you need to know. (And, btw, if you don’t follow Gareth’s writing you’re doing yourself a great disservice.)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49056

We cannot stabilize with one hand and destabilize with the other. Ahmed Karzai isn’t the only one on the pay roll, and your government-media complex is not giving you the whole story.

...and another thing, as they say in all discussions:
I read today’s NYTimes Kristof column about how many new schools in Afghanistan have NOT been bombed by the Taliban.  He is pleading for 40,000 schools, not more troops.  I want to point out is that we have needed positive information like this all along—(encouraging, or at least half-way positive information) and why is 99% of the news always about how awful and impossible the Taliban is and how scary and vicious. No doubt they are violent,  doctrinaire and cruel, but according to a courageous Afghan woman now speaking out in the U.S. our intervention has made things far worse than before.  If accurate information such as the above had been widely circulated all along, the mandate to get U.S. out would have been stronger.  People need information, not propaganda and Pentagon spin. We need to be able to act out of courage, not out of fear and loathing.

...and another thing, as they say in all discussions:
I read today’s NYTimes Kristof column about how many new schools in Afghanistan have NOT been bombed.  He is pleading for 40,000 schools, not more troops.  I want to know where positive information like this—(encouraging, or at least half-way positive information) has been all these years, and why is 99% of the news about how awful and impossible the Taliban is and how scary and vicious. No doubt they are violent and doctrinaire, but according to a courageous Afghan woman now speaking out in the U.S. our intervention has made things far worse than before.  If accurate information such as the above had been widely circulated all along, the mandate to get U.S. out would have been unquestioned.  People need information, not propaganda and Pentagon spin. We need to be able to act out of courage, not out of fear and loathing.

In the end, the people living in the middle approve of Bush because they know that being Republican at least means keeping most of the money they earn rather than go Democrat where their tax money will be invested in the big cities and the east and west coast.

Of course this Bushista fails the test of rationality by ignoring the fact that, in eight years, Bush took a thriving and healthy economy, including a balanced budget and turned it to shit, for the coasts and the center of this nation too.

We don’t know who the poll consists of or where this poll is coming from. But assuming they’re right, perhaps many people answered the question thinking that the people of Aghanistan and Iraq and the people of Japan and China look alike and come from the same culture. It’s not like we study these countries intimately in school.

Did you know there are many foreigners who don’t know that Hawaii and Alaska are US states even after being there? And many also think of America as a big NYC and know nothing about states like Iowa, North Dakota or Oklahoma. So who are we to judge.

As for the 42% of illiteracy, this is sad if it’s true. Perhaps Americans from big cities like NYC, LA, etc should realize we have other citizens we don’t think about, the poor white population out in the midwest that we dismiss as just white trash or hicks.

Too often government issues address things that only affect the east and west coast, while all the middle gets ignored and probably doesn’t get a fair share of the tax contribution. In the end, the people living in the middle approve of Bush because they know that being Republican at least means keeping most of the money they earn rather than go Democrat where their tax money will be invested in the big cities and the east and west coast.

Resveratrol

The stupidity of getting involved with an endless war against lawless forces in a complicated country whose culture we have absolutely no understanding of and whose ways we decide we can change by force into something more like us—that stupidigy is absolutely jaw-dropping.  And then to go on and on with it in spite of experiences every single day that prove how wrong we are—well that’s insane. So now it’s little more than a matter of silly national pride, and people have to continue dying for that? We are surely piling up a lot of hatred.

Folktruther,

I think that some of the Russia-China-Inda alliance is preparation for the US/Nato turning tail. Some of it is probably about resource control. There may be some strategic posturing involved, surely.

It may be a backhanded stab at both the US and Pakistan (the ISI can’t be happy about it), designed as much to push Pakistan closer to the US and keep the US involved as much as anything else. After all, every billion we spend is one that they don’t and it focuses extremist energy on the US.

I guess it could also be a genuine worry about US behavior and regional stability. There has been a lot of Afghan chatter in the Chinese press, which is rare since China has a pretty public “hands-off” policy.

No doubt though, it’s a wrinkle.

Virtually all the jihadi attacks against Western countries were planned in those
Western countries themselves and required extremely limited equipment or
training. Afghanistan is the U.S. policy version of an honor killing. It is more about
revenge for 9/11 than it is about keeping us safe from terrorists. So thanks to
Bush /Cheney and the corporate media for creating the phony war on terror.

Jackpine, the announemnet on Afghanistan by Russia, China and India was indeed very odd.  Thank you for winkleing it out.  they have very different intersts in Afghanistan; I wonder what they are united about. It may throw a new hat into the ring.

Psmith, you are right that Peter Dale scott is a fanatical researcher, and honest and courageous.  But 500 billion dollars a year PROFIT from drugs? if so, then indeed, it forms a huge incentive.  It is not only the CIA involved; the opium was orginally ferried into Turkey heroin labs by MILITARY airplanes according to an Egyptian journalist.

President Obama will soon decide whether to send as many as 60,000 additional U.S. soldiers to the Afghanistan War.

Let’s urge Obama to live up to his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Tell him to withdraw troops from Afghanistan—not send more.

http://bit.ly/noafghansurge

Change? What change? I voted for Obama and even contributed money(against my better judgement)! So what have we gotten for all of our “audacity of hope”? A Trojan Horse, I tell Ya! The plutocrats & oligarchs figured that they better defuse the rabble before a real leader comes around and really upsets the applecart. So they put up a poster boy for all of the unrequited yearns of the progressives on the one hand matching him against a “war hero”(?) & Bumpkin Bimbo on the other and there you have it: a guy thats bound to fail in any struggles with the Reactionary party and their faithful bigoted,intolerant and greedy supporters and, come ‘08, an easy target for one of the up & coming Ken-clones that’ll get pushed out to spew the ol’ gospel of free markets, deregulation, trickle-down economics, etc….for the renewed glorification of the U.S. of A. This Afghan thing might end eventually, but WAR for this nation will be endless. After outsourcing all need for labor to the lowest bidder ya’ gotta find something for all that excess population so favored by the right-to-lifers to do otherwise they’ll all be sittin’ out in the Hee Haw cornfield or Da ‘Hood thinkin’-up some devilment to get into here at home.

dr wu,

It goes deeper than pipeline protection. “Surprisingly” it hasn’t hasn’t gotten much media attention, but the USGS completed a resource survey of Afghanistan.

Lot’s of mineral wealth, gems and what not. The Chinese are already operating a large copper mine. And as one might expect by what we know of Afghanistan’s neighbors, there appears to be not insignificant deposits of oil and natural gas in the northern portion of the country.

I’d guess that much of the strategy deliberation is how to keep all this (and the pipeline possibility) out of the hands of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization…which ties significantly to what i wrote below about the Russia-China-India plan.

The casualties mount; the brothers Karzai corrupt CIA assets—but we stay. Why?

Why are gas and oil never mentioned in the discussions over what to do in Afghanistan?

Outside of us being in Afghanistan as an energy pipeline protection force,  I do not see the purpose of our being there. 8 years ago it was to find Osama bin laden, still no luck, and he is probably in Pakistan and the guys who rammed the planes into the WTC trained in Dresden ,Germany as well as the USA.

Then there is the argument that we got to get them there or else they’ll come here and create havoc. But people can prepare to attack the US from anywhere in the world—Af/Pak, Dresden, New York or ???

What was needed in Afghanistan was police/spy work; not invasion. Our military overthrew the Taliban—the mainly Pushtun group, and Afghanistan’s largest minority (43%), and put the smaller minority Tajiks in power. Guess what? The uproar continues.

Solution-get out now as our being there only causes more friction and let the Pushtuns and the Tajiks work it out.
Unless, of course, we’re there as a energy pipeline protection force. Even so, this is a bad neighborhood for us to be in. China and Russia want their energy routes in this part of the world and we want ours. India and Pakistan are killer enemies and we are foolish to step in the middle of it. So, if oil and gas is your game, then fight it out in this tough arena and the hell with the toll in deaths and revenue—if not, get the hell out.
For further info:
Short, to the point, Chomsky Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqX4Jg3DrzY

Escobar article: Pipelineistan’s Ultimate Opera
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175121/pepe_escobar_pipelineistan

No, djnoll, Biden is wrong. His plan will make the US one more militia on the landscape of an Afghan Civil War.

It’s politically comfortable because it protects the administration’s “national security” flank from the right and would allow it to tell the left “see we toned down the war”. But it will only perpetuate the situation as it stands, and it would necessarily force the US to grow closer to warlords like Dostum.

Beware easy answers to complex problems.

The President has an all or nothing choice, according to Mr. Robinson?  Call me stupid if you will, but why is this so black and white?  Our own history shows us that there is a third choice, one that will accomplish the mission of getting Bin Laden while stabilizing a non-drug industry related nation.  This is a religious, guerilla war, and until we stop fighting it like it is a standard military frontal assault we will not win, only lose more and more men and women.

I am a student of history and of public policy.  I find myself wondering if the US military academies have stopped teaching strategy or military history, and are only teaching how to lose and how to be good little corporate/political tools.  Eisenhower warned against the rise of the military/industrial complex because like Washington before him he realized that a standing army, with lots of military equipment to pay for, can only wage war, not peace.  It is time for our generals to step down and allow those who understand military history and strategy that leads to the end of war to take over.

We do not need more troops in Afghanistan - VP Biden is right - we need new strategy.  Not carpet bombing, but tactical strikes that minimize civilian casualties.  We do not need more troops on the ground, we need special forces on the ground who are trained in infiltration and extraction techniques to take out Al Quaida and get Bin Laden.  Beyond that we need a new strategy for securing the freedom of the Afghanis from druglords and the religious extremism of the Taliban.  I recently read a report from a woman who is familiar with the area, and it was a good assessment of what needs to be done, but surprise, surprise, despite many attempts to get this to people in the Bush Administration, she has failed because it gives a reasoned, experienced, knowledgeable assessment of what can be done.  I am attempting to get this to the Obama Administration, but my inability due to illness to reach DC has slowed this up a bit.

Mr. President, it is time to stop this massive war of futility, and start being strategically smart.  Listen to your VP, not your generals, and for Heaven’s sake, fire McChrystal and Petraeus, and put in their place generals who understand military history, strategy, and ethics.  This has been sorely lacking in our military for many years now because it did not fit the Cheney/Bush agenda.  It is time to reverse that, get Bin Laden, stabilize Afghanistan, and bring our people home NOW from both Iraq and Afghanistan.  The American people need justice for 9/11, and they need closure on Iraq.  Only you, Mr. President, can accomplish both, but not if you continue to follow the advice of the generals and Sec. of Defense from the Bush Administration.  You selected Biden for a reason, now listen to him.  He cares about Americans, and he understands what needs to be done.  Listen to him, and save your presidency from a Vietnam decision that will destroy us all.

http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com
Watch the video from Boise, ID.

40,000 more ain’t gonna cut it for a serious counter-insurgency operation. That prospect will require 100’s of thousands of troops and a commensurate amount of treasure over a very long time line.

What’s more likely is that the difference will be split and we’ll see Kilcullin’s “enclave strategy” put into play. But that is just a way to rename defeat “victory.” All indications are that the insurgents are returning to the mujaheddin strategy of the Soviet War, which is basically the enclave strategy played from the other side of the board.

But note that a strange alliance of Russia, China and India appear to be preparing for our failure:
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/10/china-russia-india-send-signal-to-us-on-afghanistan.html#comments

And keep your eye on all the various ways that the Obama administration is cutting Karzai off at the knees. Maybe that’s the right thing to do; on the other hand, they’ll need a replacement that they don’t have. Furthermore, the anti-Karzai actions will only (without a replacement) feed the insurgency in-so-much as it will reinforce the US as an occupier.

He’s painted himself into a corner:
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/10/27/afghanistan-obama-at-the-crossroads/

In the NYTimes today, an article unobtrusively states that Obama has decided to escalate the war in a ‘don’t lose, don’t win’ strategy.  Obama IS splitting the difference, defending the cities and the opium growing regions and simply bombing and droning the population in the rural areas, which it is abandoning to the insurgents.

The purpose of this pointless and bloody military strategy is political, allowing Obama not to lose until the next election in three years.  At an enormous cost in blood and money.  Meanwhile it can try to build a government out of drug dealers, led by Karzai and his brother, and the CIA can maintain its drug connection as it did in southeast Asia and in Latin Amereica.

I don’t think this strategy will be politically successful even in the US, where the population is so Patriotic, deluded, fearful and braindead.  The Gops will attack Obama for not killing enough people and the Dems will be split between the peacers and warrers.  This strategy will seal Obama’s presidency as a complete disaster, on the order of that of Bush.

It should be noted that the neozionist and war mongering NYTimes is backing away from it.  Yesterday it printed a long article detailing the CIA involvement in Afghan opium, and today the disgusting Friedman stated in a column that the US should de-escelate.  So this strategy may split the neozionists and zionist lemmings as well.

Obama talks too much and says too little. And then he does even less. On the war(s), the economy, Wall St., jobs and health care reform, he is failing. I have turned in my Team Obama jersey.

ardee, I hope you’re right, that leaving Afghanistan won’t automatically empower the Taliban. My husband also thinks that leaving would probably have that effect (and I hope HE’s wrong), but he also suggested that before pulling out we invite Mullah Omar back and make a deal with him that the Taliban not embrace nor enable Al Quaeda, or anyone else seeking to attack Americans, and cease growing opium to finance their activities—because such a deal would satisfy the alleged reason we attacked Afghanistan in the first place, its status as terrorist haven.

Husband also disagreed with my idea of letting any Afgani citizens who have problems with the Taliban way of life come to the U.S. His argument with that is that by encouraging the dissident non-fundamentalists to leave, we would be leaving the theocrats or fascists with nothing to fear, no dissent to take into account, and thereby strengthen the enemies of the very people we want to help—those who prefer more education for their children and a less extreme version of Islam than the Taliban offers. (I reminded him that European Jews and anti-Castro Cubans tried to flee in large numbers because if they hadn’t they’d have been killed, which happened to the Jews anyway but which gave the Cuban dissidents a safe place to oppose the regime, though he rejoined that Cuba might have become less of a dictatorship if dissidents remained.)

But, as I intially said, I truly hope that you’re right about the Taliban, and hope even more that my fears will not be realized.

The people in Waziristan weren’t uniformly pleased having the Al Quaeda and Taliban in their midst, as many of those who fled the fighting told journalists they also were fleeing the religious regime imposed on them.

Even if there was no war in Afghanistan, and all the countries sent in armies of technicians who specialize in areas such as agriculture, health, micro lending, education and the like, to enrich the country, the radicalized organizations, who have funding sources will scare the populace into submission. This is the common denominator of all governance in our world today and the sad state of our current political devolution. Whether rogue or so-called legitimate governments, the idea that a smaller wealthy class of power brokers(always lacking in morality) arise and create laws that subject the workers to slavery and so subvert a good remedy.

The only war worth fighting is the war against the de facto military dictatorship we have in the USA and those who support it!
  How much fat is in the military budget? A huge amount. Military spending seems like a non-issue. But in reality it is the most significant issues with its roots affecting all ohter aspect of life in America.
  If our citizens saw a who’s who list of those invested in private companies who have military contracts, a great number of Congress people would be on the list. 
  The simple truth is that if Americans don’t vote out the Democrats and Republicans who won’t reform military spending and all the illegal relationships it has with contractors, then we won’t have these kind of wars that drag on. Americans are powerless because they won’t act.

I would question Sepharad’s assertion that abandoning a military solution in Afghanistan is automatically ceding that nation’s governance to the Taliban. I do not believe it to be written in stone.

My guess is, outside of the Pashtun tribe, there are a great many Afghan’s who do not welcome a strict and radically fundamentalist Islamic govt. The installation of the Karsai regime was seen as a good thing because of his ability to reach out to the various factions. When he actually did reach out America got nervous about some of those at the table. I note this only to illustrate that Afghanistan’s choices are not limited to the Taliban apres occupation.

It is quite possible that ,once foreign troops are off their soil, the people of that nation will choose to turn their backs on fundamentalism. It seems attractive now only because the other choice is American military.

I understand that the Taliban is doing quite nicely in the tribal area of Pakistan, and with the complicity of the Pakistani military. Waziristan may very well be the new home for that group, but who knows?

I do know that war is not a solution, causing more problems than it ever can resolve.

Robinson’s article makes the issues clear, and glider’s solution is obviously the only rational one.

To glider’s RX, I’d only add one thing: If we are going to abandon Afghanistan to the extreme Islamic regime of the Taliban, we should at the very least offer sanctuary and a path to citizenship for those Afghan citizens who have abetted our efforts as well as those who wish to see their daughters educated and do not wish to live under a strict theocratic regime.

Of course to do this would only add to our country’s economic distress—but it would be much less costly than pursuing this war as well as nation-building on hostile ground, and these factors might improve Obama’s chances of winning a second term. He would be seen as the man who turned his back on Bush and Cheney’s ruinous policies AND as the man who rewarded brave Moslems who want more for their children than strait-jacketed minds and restricted lives that extreme theocracies offer. This would leave a better image of the U.S. in both the Moslem world and in our allies’ eyes. Further, it would provide us with a pool of culturally and linguistically adept translators, analysts and even agents who could help us assess the risks we face in that part of the world, allowing for more rational response.

The future is dangerous no matter which course we follow, but we would be much better equipped to respond to real threats, and the Islamist extremists would be less likely to appear heroic in the eyes of Middle-Eastern and near-Asian Islamic peoples.

IMO, we should have left shortly after screwing up in Tora Bora and simply given the Taliban notice to not allow Al Qaeda to get out of control again, or we will be back with more punitive raids.  We should not be doing nation building in Afghanistan.  Our resources should be focused on police intelligence and border control, and our nation building done at home where it is sorely lacking.  The concept of having to occupy a country in order to not allow it to become a terrorist sanctuary is preposterous.  They simple move to where you are not, and you end up wasting your resources.  Precisely what we have done for 8 years now.  Bin Laden even told us this was his strategy earlier on post 911.  That they would cause us to waste huge resources and do great economic damage to ourselves.  He has been more successful than anyone would have imagined.

Actually not a bad analysis, especially by a truth hack like Robinson.  The choice is to lose the war later, after spending more blood and money, or lose it now.

Unfortunately for a political leader in Obama’s position this no choice at all.  If he loses the war he probably loses the next presidental election.  so his choice is preordinated given hispast continuation of Bush policies.

The obvious Obama solution is to announce that the US is withdrawing from the Afpak war and then escalate it.  The political theater currently staging his agoniing decision making is intended to set the stage for Change You Can Believe In.  Mor war, more anti-Terrorism and more delusion and irrationality to justify it.