This 4th of July weekend, war weary Americans are being force-fed more foreboding Afghan geography, just as they were force-fed Iraqi geography. "Marja," "Helmund," and now "Kandahar."
These names of the Taliban's birthplace and heartland mean little to most Americans, but everything to the thousands of U.S. soldiers deployed in southern Afghanistan, and their families back in the U.S. who know that the pending battle for Kandahar is shaping up to be the pivotal engagement in the war against....against....whom exactly? The Taliban? Al Qaeda? The Taliban that matter?
Many empires have fought over the centuries to control Kandahar -- a city of 450,000 and Afghanistan's second largest -- due to its strategic location. It has also once served as the capital of the Afghan empire, and more recently, as the capital of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan until the Taliban were routed from it after 9/11. But when America turned its back yet again on Afghanistan to invade Iraq, a good part of it was recaptured by the Taliban; and a small part was recaptured by Hamid Karzai's corrupt warlord half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.
So why should Americans and their fellow NATO soldiers die for Kandahar? I frankly don't know...since the dots just don't seem, at least on paper or via media reports, to connect.
The cornerstone of General Petreaus' military strategy comes down to this...to weaken the Taliban into a more defensive, negotiating posture, Americans will have to fight door-to-door in Kandahar to rid 4 of its 10 parishes of entrenched Taliban and in so doing win the hearts and minds of its inhabitants and turn them away from the Taliban -- classic counter-insurgency surge doctrine...but not classic counter counter-terrorism doctrine. Then turn the city over to Hamid Karzai (who will inevitably turn it over to his corrupt half brother) to administer.
Gen. Petreaus testified this week before Congress that capturing Kandahar is pivotal to NATO's strategy in Afghanistan. Sen. Carl Levin, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee echoed that by stating that America's support for the war in Afghanistan "...will depend on this Fall (i.e., NATO offensive) in Kandahar."
I am not a general, and have no pretentions of becoming an arm-chair general. But the decision to pin a Petreaus -- directed revised counter-insurgency strategy on the conquest of Kandahar -- let alone the real-life cost of American lives and treasure - waves a red flag right in my face.
One need not wear a uniform to read a map....the Taliban's real sanctuary lies not in Kandahar, but across the border in Pakistan, in the city of Quetta. How can NATO sufficiently weaken the Taliban if it can evaporate across the border once we invade Kandahar? And, we have been telegraphing to them for months of our intentions to invade.
General Petreaus is a visionary military strategist and a remarkably accomplished leader. I greatly admire him. In an increasingly grim situation in Afghanistan deferring to his military judgment is understandable. But even he is not superhuman and even he cannot change what lurks in the dark vestiges of Hamid Karzai's heart.
Is it fair, therefore, to him and to our brave men and women to pin so much hope on a goal that even he has difficulty reducing to a believable elevator speech.
The Kandahar offensive is way behind schedule because the ingredients Petreaus needs to replicate his brilliantly executed Iraqi "take and hold" surge strategy are MIA , and it seems unlikely the ingredients will miraculously arrive by the Fall - like a cavalry relief column - to sustain any U.S.-led Kandahar battleground gains.
And what are some of those missing ingredients?
If Gen. Petreaus is to convert a battlefield surge into a sustainable victory against the Taliban, it is increasingly unlikely that, under present conditions, Kandahar will yield even a modest return on investment.
The potentially insurmountable challenges NATO forces face before the gates of Kandahar are breached are shaping up to be a clarion call for compelling a major rethink whether Kandahar -- as General Petreaus most important Afghan experiment for applying "counter-insurgency in-a-box" is the right target. Mr. President, General Petreaus, it is not too late if it means saving even one American life.
Besides the MIC's oil pipeline and mineral resources grab, the military is the best supplier of their cheap labor:
http://rationalrevolution.net/war/major_general_smedley_butler_usm.htm
As long as the artists in question, Taliban, Al Qaeda, or other, don’t elect to draw-in any interconnecting information, they can allude to the representation as being anything they choose. In effect, their followers will willingly complete the work for them. Imagining an image of what they themselves might prefer to perceive in that picture. But if compelled to sketch in all the wilfully withheld data, all can see that rendition for what it truly is. And if that now unambiguous image doesn’t chime with every unique conceptualisation currently held, an uproar of realisation may well result.
“win the hearts and minds”
What are the chances of wining the heart of the animal? If the mind in the head with the teeth, hasn’t been attended to first?
What can one say?
Sorry, but I can't agree. ..."such an intelligent president..." surely would turn to his intelligence for guidance in his decisions. Where is the intelligence in the continuing transfer of control of our government to the rich and powerful?
No,
It's hardly amazing how such a greedy narcissistic president can be pursuing such an incredibly self serving program securing his own place among the rich and powerful.
For, by, and of, the People. In this example, for, by, and of the Afghan people. Translation: At some point, for anything over there to be legitimate, it has to be of the people's own doing, and not imposed on them by outsiders. Our country threw out the British . Why? We got tired of being a colony, told em to hit the road and take their tea and their taxes with them.
A lot of countries, now including ours, have tried to impose external rule on Afghanistan. I wonder if the folks there will ever see peace or resolve their differences until or unless basically everyone NOT an Afghani ships out and leaves em to it. Maybe, if we did things in our own country, and helped the Europeans also, by producing our own opium, that would put the opium exporters in Afghanistan out of business and they'd have to find a different, better livelihood. If they can grow opium, can they grow cocoa or coffee beans instead? Fresh from the sun-drenched hills of Afghanistan...how many hundreds of millions of people in this world drink coffee? Don't they already have arabica beans, so, some good foundation is right there in the general neighborhood, legit business for legit people with no guns and no more mad money from this country. Sometimes, help doesn't. People have to support themselves.
"One, two, three, what are we fightin' for...?"
The bigger questions I have are: Is this the role of the United States? Can we afford it? Do the American people support it? Will it make us more secure or less? Where does it end? Should we do the same in places like Myannmar or Somalia? How does this contain Pakistan and squelch radical Islam?
Why are we really in Afghanistan?
The resulting rate of progress was staggering. By the late 1980s half of all university students in Afghanistan were women, and women made up 40 percent of the country's doctors, 70 percent of its teachers, and 30 percent of its civil servants. In John Pilger's 'New Rulers Of The World' (Verso, 2002), he relates the memory of the period through the eyes of an Afghan woman, Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who escaped the Taliban in 2001. She said: "Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian movies. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. It was sad to think that these were the people the West had supported."
Under the pretext that the Afghan government was a Soviet puppet, which was false, the then Carter Administration authorised the covert funding of opposition tribal groups,
Opium production EXPLODED after the US invasion.
Ever wonder why?
CIA Heroin has a premium over generic in the world market. Good profits too!
Posted by: Ydotheyhateus on Jul 16, 2008 8:28 AM
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There was a point in Afghanistan's tortured history when the future looked bright, when a determined effort to lift the country and its people out of backward agrarian feudalism almost succeeded.
It began with the formation of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) back in the sixties, which opposed the autocratic rule of King Zahir Shar. The growth in popularity of the PDPA eventually led to them taking control of the country in 1978, after a coup removed the former Kings' cousin, Mohammed Daud, from power.
The coup enjoyed popular support in the towns and cities, evidenced in reports carried in US newspapers. The Wall Street Journal, no friend of revolutionary movements, reported at the time that '150,000 persons marched to honour the new flagthe participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.' The Washington Post reported that 'Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.
Upon taking power, the new government introduced a program of reforms designed to abolish feudal power in the countryside, guarantee freedom of religion, along with equal rights for women and ethnic minorities.
Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed a hidden Fact that on July 3, 1979, unknown to the public and American Congress that President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and "de-stabilize" the Soviet Union...
The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and in the following years poured $4 billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan (Taliban means "student").
These people were sent to the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al-Qaeda were taught "sabotage skills" - terrorism.
Others were recruited at an Islamic school in Brooklyn, New York, In Pakistan; they were directed by British MI6 officers and trained by the SAS.
Militariliy: totally incorrect.