In like a Lion out like a Lamb

Ending with a Whimper not a Bang

Well, as of yesterday the War in Afghanistan became officially over. There will be no parades, no victory arches built although I presume, eventually, there will be a monument.  Not even everyone is coming home, plans are to leave some 10,800 troops there to prop up the failing, perhaps soon to be falling Afghan government.

So what do you think? Have we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory? Is our national resolve the equal to our national attention span (Hey how's that Ebola crisis going?)?  We are a people that are more and more demanding of instant gratification (shock and awe) and less and less in it for the long haul (Gettysburg and Chickamauga), we are the ADD generation... we want it and we want it now and if we don't get it we grow bored and move onto the next big thing (ooh...Shiny!!!). 

This Veterans Day

Thank a vet by donating to The Wounded Warrior Project or another worthy cause that serves those who have served.

Better yet, the next time a politician wants to get his war on, using bellicose language and beating war drums, stand up and tell him to STFU.

Beware those beating war drums who have never been to war.

Wars don't just kill people.  They cause much more damage as well, most of it permanent.  Divorce, mental trauma, physical disability.  The cost is high, and it needs to be paid when America is in grave and imminent peril, but the bar must be set high.  Higher than congress set it for George W. Bush.

And if we must go to war, then we go General Sherman on their asses or go home.  Our fighting men and women deserve no less.

The final way you can honor our veterans is to ask your congressman and senators why we are still in Afghanistan, propping up Ali Baba Karzai and his 40,000 Taliban thieves, and training and arming pigs and cockroaches who kill our troops.

Whistling through the Graveyard

China and Russia are Cosying up to Afghanistan and Pakistan...

With the prospect of a decline in US influence in the region in sight, Russia and China are reaching out to Pakistan and Afghanistan in a bid to improve economic ties and to secure their southern borders against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. (Foreign Policy)

They can succeed in AfPak where we have failed...

China and Russia can exploit with impunity the Afghan people and denude the environment as they strip the country of it’s mineral wealth. We cannot.  Our most sincere efforts are dogged the whole way by CNN, BBC and a polyglot crowd of nattering nannies from multifarious international organizations. We care about those things and adjust our policies until they are completely ineffectual, and then we are assailed for not doing enough and abandoning people.

Russia and China suffer under no such scruples. China is not content with slavery within its own borders.  It now runs slave camps all over Africa, complete with armed Chinese soldiers and mandarin bureaucrats. Do you think Russia will care about Karzai or the Pakistani’s hurt feelings? If they try the crap on Putin that they do on us, he will simply cut off the money and twist their tits until they cry uncle, all the while never changing his stony expression. Yes, the Russians and the Chinese know how to play the great game, we do not. We should admit it and quit the region. It’s a ruthless place and we just don’t know how to roll like that.

An Alignment of Strategic Objectives

We don’t want Afghanistan to revert to a terrorist haven. China and Russia share that goal, and it’s their backyard…

Both China and Russia will be happy to see US troops leave Afghanistan, but they are equally worried about the Taliban and other extremist groups penetrating Xinjiang province in southern China and the Central Asian republics, whose national security is very much in the hands of Russia.China is deeply concerned by the long-running crisis in Pakistan, fearing that it may lead to a strengthening of Islamic fundamentalism. (Foreign Policy)

A perfect opportunity to get them to pay the freight

We’re worried about who will fund the Afghan government, police and military? If Russia and China want to enrich themselves exploiting Afghanistan’s natural resources while checking terrorism, they will have no choice but to pony up the money to secure the place. Us getting out of there and leaving them to foot the bill would be a major feat of strategery.

China Gets Approval for Afghanistan Oil Exploration Bid

Afghanistan: Apocalypse Now

The anti-war left will have a hey day with the latest unauthorized killings that happened in Kandahar, and rightly so.  We send them over there to kill people, but only in government-approved ways.

It's a fraught issue ripe for a deep and reasoned philosophical debate. Unfortunately, we no longer know how to have those, so instead, the left's taliban-West outrage squad will squeeze every emotional drop out of it as the armchair generals beat the war drums louder, further inflaming our emotions and clouding our intellect.

I uncategorically agree with Mark Steyn's latest column, America's Longest War will Leave no Trace.

The Rumsfeld strategy that toppled the Taliban over a decade ago was brilliant and innovative: special forces on horseback using GPS to call in unmanned drones. They will analyze it in staff colleges around the world for decades. But what we ought to be analyzing instead is the sad, aimless, bloated, arthritic, transnationalized folly of what followed.

It seems certain that, waging World War II today, the RAF would not carpet-bomb Dresden, and the U.S. would not nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, lacking the will to inflict massive, total defeat, would we also lack the will to inflict that top-to-toe "cleaning process"?

To modify Bismarck, the Hindu Kush is not worth the bones of a single Pennsylvanian grenadier, or "training officer."

My fellow conservative Americans who may still be in the thrall of those talking heads who insist we must stay in Afghanistan:  Go read Lt Col Dan Davis' report of his experiences in Afghanistan, Truth, Lies and Afghanistan.

They haven't changed for thousands of years.  We sure as hell won't change them.

"Apologies are Not Cooling the Anger"

"To the noble torch-bearing Afghans...  We understand your justifiable hatred and shouty murderousness!  We bow down to your righteous rampaging."  

Our bowing and scraping is not cooling the feral, instinctual anger sparked by us burning some books that the holy jihadis had desecrated first by scribbling in them.  Instead, the flames climb higher at each western apology.

When has apologizing to ignorant, intolerant, bigoted haters ever worked? When? When in the entire history of Islam has an apology to it or its practitioners ever quelled the bonfires of fury and murder?

First we apologized, some of our troops were killed, we apologized again, Afghans "on our side" killed two more of our military officers working at an Afghan ministry. Now our government has announce that within the next 10 days, every one of our soldiers in Afghanistan will be "intensively trained" in "the proper handling of religious materials." Sure.  Those 100,000+ troops have nothing better to do over there...

I'm waiting for leadership to completely collapse and announce that all 130,000 troops will be forcibly converted to Islam and be ordered to receive religious instruction from the Taliban.

Grievance Hustlers

This is being stoked by a small number of misanthropic manipulators that do not represent all Afghanis or all Muslims.  Sadly, the vast majority are far worse than that.  They are ignorant and manipulable; a willing crowd dancing to the macabre tune when Explody the Fire-Breathing Clown and his Rampaging Circus comes to town.

Aussie Brendan O'Neill sees striking similarities between the east and west's professional victims who manipulate their enemies with perpetual outrage and offense-taking:

Ironically, these pretty craven apologies from NATO and the Obama administration for an innocent mistake made by two NATO personnel are likely only to have inflamed the protests.

Because, as is the case over here, in our ever more touchy and sensitive societies, when you tiptoe around a certain group of people, when you buy into the idea that offending cultural sensibilities is the greatest sin of our age, you actually give people a licence to feel offended.

When you apologise for causing offence and promise never, ever to do it again, you give succour to the idea that offensiveness is a unique and terrible evil, and you flatter the ostentatious offence-taking of groups who wish to be protected by a moral force-field from public debate or ridicule.

[...] NATO has made itself a hostage to fortune, giving Afghan radicals a licence to go mental at the next whiff of any slight, whether intentional or accidental, against Islam. (Buying into the Myth)

Canuck Lorne Gunter says we need to get out now, and I agree...

The deadly riots over the burning of Korans at the NATO airbase at Bagram prove that Western forces have accomplished about as much as they can to civilize the place (which isn't as much as many of us had hoped) and now it’s time to go.

No apologies for the burnt holy books. No charges against the soldiers involved, as demanded by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Just pull up stakes and leave and let those screaming and shouting their hatred for America and the West fend for themselves under the next Taliban government. (Time to Quit Afghanistan)

We need to get the hell out now. No negotiations, no deals, just get the hell out. Turn it over to the Taliban, the Iranians, the Uzbeks, anyone, who cares... Turn it over the the Pakistanis, tell the Chinese who are in there mining millions in precious metals that they've got to provide their own protection, but just get the hell out.

They can tear Karzai limb from limb on CNN and burn down every last female clinic and girls's schoolhouse.  I don't care.  We are messing with crazy people who don't want democracy, they don't want their nation built, and they sure as hell don't want us messing around in their business.

We need to respect that and get the hell out.

BBC News - Rabid Protests

CNN - How many more Americans have to die helping these feral pigs before we learn a lesson and cut sling?

Operation Enduring Quagmire

I don't have a lot of commentary to offer on Afghanistan.  I was there, I served, and I came home.  Mine is the typical Air Force Fobbit story:  I worked on stuff, had a few harrowing convoy experiences, and found myself in the random rocket attack, one of which hit the sewer dump and also blew up two British Harriers at Kandahar.  I even managed to sleep through a few...

People who have spent a substantial amount of time in the field are calling BS on the official government story.  Afghanistan is a hopeless cause.  The latest damning report from the field comes from Lt Col Daniel Davis, who just got back from a one-year deployment.

"That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers."

There's more...

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”

According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

No, it's not a Hollywood farce, put on for our entertainment. Karzai and the Taliban are playing us for fools as they rob us blind. Time to leave them to their own devices.

I am not a warrior, but I served with quite a few. I can tell you that leaving that God-forsaken place to whatever fate awaits it would not be a betrayal to anyone who died or was wounded there. We kicked the Taliban’s ass and then we gave the benighted inhabitants a chance to improve their lot. They failed. Our fighting forces, especially the Army and the Marines, fought like the heroic lions they are. Nothing to be ashamed of. We win, they lose. Our forces return to the greatest country in the world, and they remain stuck in the toilet we tried to pull them out of. 

James Traub concludes US Can Live with an Afghan Loss

And it's true. Despite the heroic efforts of our warriors, Afghanistan will continue to be a 6th century Hobbesean world ruled by ignorance and the sword. No better and no worse than before. China, Pakistan and Russia will feel the negative consequences, as will the Taliban, who has been feasting off of our largess all the past years.

We, on the other hand, will be materially better off. Richer because we no longer dump billions down that South Asia toilet, strategically smarter, and militarily stronger for the experience.

Having said what I said earlier, I have to admit that Afghanistan has haunted me, less and less as time goes by, but I was shocked to see how many posts I had written about the graveyard of empires where I used to live...

Many a crisp mountain morning I would view the snow capped Hindu Kush and sadly ponder how this would be a great tourist location if it weren't for the people trying to kill you...

Afghanistan: Moving towards a distant endgame
http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

Dude, Where's My Drone?

Our babe in the woods president is really playing hardball with the Iranians, who managed to get their grimy mitts on one of our high tech drones.  His statement:

"Let me be clear.  Bla bla bla..."

The Iranian response demonstrates that The Wages of Appeasement is humiliation...

On Tuesday, with Putin-like contempt, Iran demanded that Obama apologize instead. “Obama begs Iran to give him back his toy plane,” reveled the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

How did Iran get our drone?

I don't believe an America-hating mole in the CIA did this, as some of the more conspiratorial-minded have suggested.  It is possible that Iran Hijacked Our Drone, as a chest-thumping Iranian is now claiming.  They are not backwards people and they have help from China and Russia.

Add in our complacency (remember learning that Al Qaeda in Iraq had tapped into our unencrypted Predator drone feeds?), and it is a real possibility.  We are just about stupid enough to fly such advanced technology naked, believing no one is smart enough to take our toys away from us.  I don't know anything about our drone programs, but what the Iranian in the CS Monitor said sounds feasible if the aircraft's networks were not encrypted or if we failed to equip it with safeguards against GPS meaconing.

When will we start punishing complacency and incompetence?

Will anyone in our government or congress investigate this?  Does anyone get fired anymore?  General McChrystal is the only person I can recall getting fired for anything, and that was because he was stupid enough to invite a Rolling Stone reporter in on his staff's bull sessions where they trash talked the president (who the general voted for).

Another Plausible Scenario...

There could be a simpler, low tech answer.  A perfidious Pastun in the Afghan Army or some other group who is ostensibly "on our side" more than likely recovered the craft inside Afghanistan and trucked it over to Iran.

The CIA’s RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone captured by the Iranians last week may have gone down in Afghanistan and then transported to Iran by friendly forces on the ground, a former officer in the elite Quds Force branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards told The Daily Caller. [...]

However, photographs and video footage released by the Iranians on Dec. 8, several days after they announced the drone’s capture, clearly show that both wings had been neatly severed and then reattached.

“This suggests that the drone landed safely and that its wings were cut off so it could be transported by truck,” the former Quds Force officer said. “I believe it was captured by the Taliban inside Afghanistan and transferred to the Iranians, who then reattached the wings,” he added. (Daily Caller)

I don't know what happened, but that seems the most likely scenario. We have no friends over there. The Afghan soldiers we train end up shooting at our soldiers, and the billions in cash we lavish on that hopeless land is split between Karzai's gang of bandits and the Taliban...

Truth be known, neither the Karzai regime, nor the Taliban warlords, want the Americans out of Afghanistan. The treasure we pour into that country sustains the ruling cabal and the Taliban alike. We are the straight man at the bazaar, the stranger fleeced by the locals. (Fouad Ajami)

We are suckers.  We're being played for fools.  We are throwing our technological pearls before swine, and we are shedding American blood for people who hate us. Obama needs to wrap up Afghanistan in the same manner he did Iraq.  We'll take our drones away and let them get back to shooting down kites.

 
What do you think?

UPDATE:  Here's a story from Aviation Week with lots of technical details:  Iran UAV Will Not Expose Latest Technology

Why are We Still in Afghanistan?

Professor Fouad Ajami

Dr. Fouad Ajami is a brilliant scholar and life-long student of the Islamic world, fluent in its languages and its cultures. He is a patriotic American born in Lebanon to Shia parents. He has traveled extensively all over the Middle East for decades, consulting with his deep rolodex of friends and contacts, which includes commoners as well as royalty.

There is no more trenchant observer of that world than Dr. Ajami, so I pay attention when he speaks. In his latest article, he wonders why we are still propping up the corrupt Hamid Karzai crime family. Besides knowing what he's talking about, he also writes beautifully:

American and NATO forces bleed in that hopeless land, Al Qaeda fighters who pulled our soldiers into the Hindu Kush are mostly gone by now. [...]

Truth be known, neither the Karzai regime, nor the Taliban warlords, want the Americans out of Afghanistan. The treasure we pour into that country sustains the ruling cabal and the Taliban alike. We are the straight man at the bazaar, the stranger fleeced by the locals. The protection money we pay for our convoys wends its way into the pockets of the Taliban.

Here's the crux of it:

Long ago, Afghan society had lost the ability to provide for its own people: There is no economic life to speak of, the pillars are the drug trade and the foreign handouts. It is in the interest of the Afghans that their country be seen as a dangerous land. Were we to head for the exits, the Afghans are certain to block our way with reminders that Al Qaeda is there, or could make a quick return. This is an odd kind of nationalism, one that wants to keep a foreign military presence—and deride it at the same time.

Professor Ajami can at times can be too optimistic, but his insights into the Islamic culture are invaluable and brilliant, and again, he states them so beautifully:

I still harbor doubts about whether the radical Islamists knocking at the gates of Europe, or assaulting it from within, are the bearers of a whole civilization. They flee the burning grounds of Islam, but carry the fire with them. They are “nowhere men,” children of the frontier between Islam and the West, belonging to neither. If anything, they are a testament to the failure of modern Islam to provide for its own and to hold the fidelities of the young.

If you long for non-political, non-agenda driven commentary on Islam and the Middle East, Professor Ajami is your man.  He writes with a sympathy for the culture that produced him, but he can also be critical of it in a way that others could not.  Most importantly, he writes of the Islamic world's affairs from the perspective of an American and explains how they affect America, dispensing solid advice along the way.

Ajami WSJ Google Search
Fouad Ajami - Pakistan and America
Fouad Ajami - Dream Palace of the Arabs
Western Hero - Fouad Ajami: American

Afghanistan is not Colombia

Neocons will happily watch others pay any price and bear any burden...

This article caught my eye…

Plan Afghanistan
Why the Colombia model -- even if it means drug war and armed rebellion -- is the best chance for U.S. success in Central Asia.

Strange though it may sound, success in Afghanistan would look a lot more like the success that has been achieved in Colombia over the last 10 years, rather than the success that we are hoping for in Iraq.  (FP – Plan Afghanistan)

The "Experts" are Wrong

Every now and then I stumble across “experts” discussing issues that I have unique insight into. This is one of them. I’ve deployed to Afghanistan and I’ve deployed to Colombia, so I know what I’m talking about here. To put it bluntly, Paul Wolfowitz and Michael O'Hanlon are full of shit and nobody in their right mind should listen to them.

Afghanistan is not Colombia, and what worked in Colombia will not work in Afghanistan, for a host of reasons.

The Colombian conflict, sparked by “El Bogotazo” back in 1948, eventually spawned the armed communist rebel organization known as FARC. Through all of the violence, Colombia has continued to be an intact country, and has a rich history of democratic republicanism going back to the early 1800’s.   Afghanistan has never been more than a loose confederation of heterogeneous peoples with little loyalty outside family and tribe.

Afghanistan’s many factions suffer from a paucity of shared institutions and values

Tribal rule and Sharia reign over this variegated patchwork of peoples. It is a Hobbesian nightmare of chaos and misery where life is nasty, brutish and short. In stark contrast, Colombia enjoys a tradition of western civilization, European jurisprudence and republican democracy that binds the country’s fairly homogenous population. The fact that Colombia has remained intact, and even thrived, as the FARC continues to melt deeper into the jungle, a whimpering shadow of its former self, makes these factors I mention self-evident.

Colombia has a serious government supported by patriotic citizens who are determined to defeat their common enemy

Indeed, with Colombia, we are aiding a central government fighting a rebel band that had lost the sympathy of the poor people they were supposedly fighting for. Even leftist sympathizers in other Latin American countries no longer give this ragtag band of kidnappers and drug dealers solidarity shout outs.

Unlike kleptocratic Afghanistan and its multifarious mistrustful factions, Colombia has enough honest politicians, judges, military and police willing to lay it on the line for the love of their nation, and the success they’ve enjoyed over the past 30 years in breaking the cartels and attriting FARC gives testament to that. Afghanistan is a sinkhole of corruption, with no one willing to give it up for a Greater Afghan Nation. Colombians do their own fighting; Afghan soldiers and policemen let us do their fighting for them, and shoot at us every chance they get.

Bogota is a peaceful city; Kabul is not… 

I could go on and on, but you must see my point by now. The Colombian people have a unity of purpose and a shared love of country and respect for her institutions that is non-existent in Afghanistan.  Colombians have tired of the violence; Afghans worship death and would happily let the blood orgy continue without end.

Add to this that our troops were able to partner with Colombian troops in a way that has been impossible to do with the Afghans. Colombian and American cultures are not really that far apart, especially when the Americans are Hispanic or understand Hispanic culture. At a remote outpost in rural Colombia, I saw a Colombian Army platoon and their Puerto Rican National Guard partners bid one another a tearful goodbye after having worked together for over four months on a radar project.

A “Plan Colombia” for Afghanistan will never work. It is naïve and foolish to think otherwise.  We should run, not walk, from this rancid and failed project known as Afghanistan.

Foreign Policy – Plan Afghanistan
AP – 13 Americans Killed in Taliban Bombing

4th of July Weekend - Afghanistan

Please forgive the self-indulgence of this post, but since that one 4th of July weekend back in 2005 at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Independence Day will always hold special meaning for me.

I was up there to work on an ASOC air to ground system that had been giving us lots of problems.

The frenetic search for Navy SEAL "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell was on-going.  I was not involved in the effort, but I talked with those who were when I had to go into the Joint Operations Center to troubleshoot and test the operator console end of the communications system I was working on.  It added extra urgency to what we were doing.

I also stood on the flightline that evening, with everyone else, tears in our eyes and saluting, as they loaded the flag draped caskets containing the bodies of the SEALS who had died trying to rescue Petty Officer Luttrell.  The Taliban had a golden BB moment, shooting a rocket into the open door of the helicopter before the rescuers could unload.  It was the greatest single-day loss of Special Forces troops in the history of the United States.

Navy SEAL Petty Officer Danny Dietz

Two 4th of July's later, I stood with my wife and kids in Littleton, Colorado.  The city dedicated a park, along with a bronze statue, to fallen hero and Navy Seal Petty Officer Danny Dietz, one of Luttrell's SEAL team members who died in Operation Redwing.  His remains were recovered by Combat Search and Rescue on the 4th of July, 2005

I was just a support troop, but I was there.  Regardless of what the critics say, our efforts there were noble.  Like every war, the politicians screwed it up.  Our fighting forces were tactically brilliant but our government was strategically stupid.   Getting the hell out does no disrespect to those who have fought and died there.  They were selfless heroes who fought to give Afghans a shot at a better life.  We did our part and it's not our fault if the people failed to grasp the opportunity we presented them.

Mark Steyn sums up my feelings.  We should leave...

...the mullahs, warlords, poppy barons, and pederasts to have at each other without the distraction of extravagant NATO reconstruction projects littering their beautiful land of charmingly unspoilt rubble.

After the C-17 took off with the caskets, I wandered by the pax terminal and took this picture of the back wall.  I don't know who painted it, but it sums things up beautifully

Caption:
This is a tribute to all who have fallen during Operation Enduring Freedom
Live a life worthy of their sacrifice.

Amen

Operation Enduring Quagmire

It disturbs me to hear people speaking about 21st century conflicts using 20th or even 19th century terminology.  It is especially jarring when the person is foreign policy godfather Henry Kissinger.

I think his plan for getting out of Afghanistan is perfect...  For ending the trench warfare stalemate of World War I...

For negotiation to turn into a viable exit strategy, four conditions must be met: a cease-fire; withdrawal of all or most American and allied forces; the creation of a coalition government or division of territories among the contending parties (or both); and an enforcement mechanism. (Kissinger – WaPo)

A cease fire? Among who? This isn’t the Franco-Prussian war, with identifiable states and armies. Afghanistan is a motley clash of Taliban, Al Qaeda and drug gangs, with the Pakistani ISI and Iranian operatives thrown in for good measure.  Add to that a supporting cast of unemployed locals who can’t even be classified as terrorists or belligerents. They just live there and don’t like strangers in their neighborhood, so they play jihadi rock and roll for the highest bidder with guns and bombs.

Withdrawal. OK. I get that. An exit strategy is pretty much dead if you don’t exit.

Creation of a Coalition Government? Didn't we do that already?  Klepto king Karzai has stolen billions, and his policemen we've trained have developed a nasty twitch which results in them killing their US and NATO "allies."  Does Henry Kissinger read the newspaper?

Division of Territories? That’s problematic, as Kissenger later admits. Leading us to…

Enforcement. Kissenger says this requires “a residual American force, some international guarantee or presence, or — best — a combination of both.”

Let’s see… We couldn’t impose order with a big presence, so we’re going to leave only a small residual presence in order to enforce an agreement among anarchic, violent drug and terrorist gangs who hate outsiders. Yeah, that'll work.

Kissenger rightly predicts chaos upon withdrawal, but his solution of international conferences and agreements with people who won’t honor them is no solution at all.

“Such an outcome would threaten the security of Afghanistan’s neighbors more than America’s.”

He identifies the immediate neighbors, Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan as the ones most negatively affected by this all tipping over after we leave.  He's right, so they will end up dealing with it.  No sense in us getting involved.  China having to resort to communist butchery in order to continue extracting Afghanistan's mineral wealth troubles me not at all.  Our only residual role should be to offer noncombatant assistance to India when the inevitable chaos breaks out in Kashmir.

Henry Kissinger is a brilliant man, so I realize I’m just a little kid trying to kick him in the shins.  His insight is valuable and never to be ignored, but we need to remember he is working for China now, and that will obviously bias his opinions.

My plan for getting out?
Get out!  Turn everything over to Rashid Dostum and our nominal allies in the north so they can cover us as we kiss that hellhole goodbye.  Leave north through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and tell Pakistan to kiss our ass, we're taking that $3 billion per year in aid with us.

No to "Wider War" -- Yes to Infinite Gitmo

Wired Magazine reports, Osama’s Dead but Congress Wants a Wider War

While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes “an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces,” as “those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens.”

We don’t need a wider war.  We need a narrower and quieter one, a war where we take out terrorists and no one even knows.  A war where a bearded bomber suddenly turns around and wonders, "Hey, where's Achmed?  He never spends this this much time with the goats..."

We need to narrow our scope to military assistance for those nations who want our help and are willing to shed their own blood, not ours.  Our military is uniquely suited to such light footprints, military assistance, and silent operations.

The proposal is a big expansion of executive authority, giving the president the ability to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against those terrorist groups he decides are U.S. enemies. (Wired)

Executive authority? He already has it. Like any authority, if a president abuses it and brings negative attention on us, congress could take that authority away. That is how our system of checks and balances works. It is far superior to a new and expanded open-ended war on terror, which legal expert Karen Greenberg rightly calls “terrorism creep.”

Gitmo: A Model Prison

Here is where I part company with the article:

“But the administration’s stated antipathy to the new authorization makes sense when considering a major chunk of the proposal would keep Guantanamo Bay open practically forever.”

We should keep Guantanamo open forever. We should turn it into a model prison to house international criminals, invite in the EU, citizens of the world, the UN and the International Red Cross.  We could even invite in the International Criminal Court with their powdered wigs for the entertainment value.  But seriously, we need a venue outside US and European territory where we can prosecute dangerous international terrorists and other criminals who prey upon humanity.

In this brave new world of supranational criminal gangs and terror networks, we need a standing Nuremburg Trial, transparent and open to the world.  Establish an international legal framework and we could have a serious way to deal with the illiberal forces that threaten civilization. We should accommodate European sensibilities and strive to legitimize Gitmo as a kind of Spandau Prison for the new millennium.  I don't care if the Euros oppose the death penalty.  I'll settle for life in prison for convicted global murderers.  This will only work within an internationally-agreed upon framework.

Cut theAfPak Gordian Knot

There are two reasons we haven't kicked double-dealing Pakistan to the curb.  They have nukes, and we need their help to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. They grant us overfly rights needed to get from our gulf bases to landlocked Afghanistan, and we also do a lot of overland resupply from Pakistan.

Leave Afghanistan to sink back into it's corruption and violence, and we no longer need Pakistan. Let China have a go.

What do you think?

Further Reading:
Reason – Steve Chapman
Leslie Gelb – Mission Accomplished
Max Boot - Bin Laden's Death Changes Little

Do What You Can, Stick to What You Know

Now that our SEALs have put down the diseased dog and dumped him in the ocean, talk of getting out of Afghanistan has increased.  Regardless of where you stand on that issue, this is a time for us to reassess our strategic posture and shape our military accordingly.

Americans are good at war and not very good at remaking other countries in our image. It's an invaluable revelation that has yet to be incorporated into our approach to foreign policy and national security. (Steve Chapman - Bin Laden's Big Mistake)

Remaking a society that does not want to be remade is a fool’s errand and we should officially take the pledge and swear off any future nation building.

We should retool our defense establishment with recent lessons in mind. We can continue defense cooperation with willing partners, dispatching special forces teams, intelligence gathering, and terrorist bug swatting as needed. Big footprints and occupations should be regarded as relics of the past, to be dusted off only in case of an immediate and existential threat to the United States of America.

Bogging ourselves down in stone age toilets diminishes us, wasting valuable national resources and killing good soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Technology is a double-edged sword.  We exploit it well when we swoop down out of the shadows, lean, light and lethal.  It works against us when we deploy big static masses of troops, 70% of which are support tail, sitting vulnerable to the bad guys' employment of cheap, available technology.  A big fat presence no longer plays to our strengths.

Keep our superstitious enemies paranoid

A big foreign presence also removes the mystique of US power.  The 21st century US military needs to be about speed, stealth, mobility, and surprise.

I want the bad guys and the superstitious hordes who cheer and shelter them to think our soldiers are hiding underground right now spying on them, ready to come up through the soil and strangle them at any moment. I want these 7th century obscurantists to believe we can read their thoughts, see through the walls of their grimy cinderblock huts, and swoop down and grab them at any time with trained invisible eagles. I want them jumpy at the thought that every crawling bug and slithering reptile is a trained US spy.

It's not so far-fetched. The primitive Muslim throngs blamed the shark attacks off an Egyptian coastal resort on Mossad-trained predators. If the gullible dingbats actually believe Israel made a pact with King Poseidon to produce a trained flotilla of sharks just to wreck Egypt's tourist industry, they'll believe anything.

The Stage is Set for Smart Defense Cuts

Defense cannot be exempted from budget cuts. Vietnam veteran Col. Douglas MacGregor (US Army, ret.) lays out some smart ideas on how to do it. Reducing overseas presence, eliminating whole headquarters while downsizing others, as well as collapsing the creepily named Department of Homeland Security and returning some functions to where they came from while abolishing others. He also recommends consolidating intelligence functions and reducing redundancy.

I worked at a combatant headquarters in the Middle East. We were lean and mean with no bureaucratic overhead. Paperwork was minimal. We actually did real stuff like engineer combat communications solutions, and then we deployed into the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq to build and fix commo used by the warfighters.

I’ve also seen non-combatant headquarters, and they are the complete opposite. They are stilted, sclerotic bureaucratic sinks that are increasingly reliant on contractor support, even as they grow their military and DoD civilian rosters.

There is plenty of fat there to cut as we put our military on a leaner, deployment-focused footing. Especially if we swear off global community organizing.

Afghanistan: Tactical Brilliance, Strategic Failure

Meddling in the Muslim world has poisoned us

The embers have gone cold from the latest holy roller Koran burning, but Muslim outrage still flares red hot.  We've bowed, we scraped, but all to no avail...

Our Middle East policymakers can no longer distinguish between evil and stupidity. They go out of their way to genuflect to the scriptures that catalyze our enemies while willfully ignoring bible burning, church burning and infidel burning, which are everyday events in Islamic countries. (Andrew McCarthy – No More Dhimmitude)

Our government is too weak to stand up for our values and too stupid to prevail in propaganda battles with 7th century obscurantists

I have been thinking for quite awhile now that Afghanistan is a failed project and we need to leave.  It pains me to say it; I served over there.

I like to check myself against Blackfive.net when I really get to thinking this way, and here’s what I found

Time To Leave Afghanistan?
Below the title was a link to a post at another blog.

There was some back and forth in the comments section of Blackfive, with no one really defending staying, but rather arguing over how to get out and how to deal with future problems emanating from that region. Here are a few typical comments:

"Agree. And if the Taliban miss-behaves or AQ comes back - that's why we buy bombers and drones and train Rangers and SF types. Just knock 'em down again, don't try to make Afghanistan into New Hampshire."

"Yeah, I am also coming around to the opinion that we need to cut sling on these idiots. There was never any nation to rebuild in the first place. (At least with Iraq, we had something to work with) I agree we need to have a plan for the aftermath but I think that almost anything would be better than this waste of our finest men and women and our treasure."

These are not college kids, bankers or angry leftists. They are patriotic warriors who’ve “been there, done that.”

I am not a warrior, but I served with quite a few. I can tell you that leaving that God-forsaken place to whatever fate awaits it would not be a betrayal to anyone who died or was wounded there. We kicked the Taliban’s ass and then we gave the benighted inhabitants a chance to improve their country.  They failed.  Our fighting forces, especially the Army and the Marines, fought like the heroic lions they are. Nothing to be ashamed of.  We win, they lose.  Our forces return to the greatest country in the world, and they remain stuck in the toilet we tried to pull them out of.

Here are excerpts from the original article, written by a libertarian/conservative, socially moderate Army Vet:

It’s time to leave Afghanistan. In fact it’s time to leave most of the Middle-East. We tried folks. We tried to help them. We tried to free them. But the plain facts are they aren’t ready for freedom. They aren’t worth our lives and money. We won the war in 2002 when we removed the Taliban and killed most of Al-Qaida.

Further Reading:
Mark Steyn – Re: Lindsay Graham and the First Amendment
Andrew McCarthy - More on Koran Burning

We Have Met the Dhimmis, and They are Us

It's time to leave the people of Southwest Asia to stew in their own fetid toilet

Close interactions with the umma have poisoned our culture and goaded the Muslim world to even higher levels of purple-faced rage.

Despite our bowing and scraping, and our  military leadership slapping hijabs on our female soldiers, the Muslim hate meter is still pegged. I am tired of our government's spasmodic self-flagellation at every Islam-fueled temper tantrum, and the serial apologies are making me sick.

Our government has fallen all over itself paying obeisance to Islam over a koran burning, but has said not one damned word about an Afghan policeman killing two of our soldiers.

Mark Steyn Says it Best

I don’t like the wholesale reprinting of articles posted elsewhere, but Mark Steyn says it so much better than I can in his brilliant and succinct post at The Corner, Winning Hearts, Minds and Trigger Fingers…

here’s a headline from today’s New York Times:

Afghan Police Officer Turns Gun on American Soldiers, Killing 2
 
These are the Afghans who know us best — the ones selected, trained, and funded by us for a decade.

What did these soldiers die for? That their commander might offer even more abject prostrations of apology over “any disrespect to the Holy Qur’an”? Would it help if General Petraeus stuck a couple more apostrophes in the approved spelling and began his press releases with, “In the name of Allah the most merciful . . .”?

We have internalized our enemies’ psychoses — that we are the unclean ones.

Related:
Andrew McCarthy – No More Dhimmitude
Michael Graham - Fired Up Over Nothing

Taming Bedlam is a Fool's Errand

The Christian nutball from Florida and his fervid band of Koran-torching zealots did not cause the rioting, death and destruction in Afghanistan – Murder-loving mullahs and their wild-eyed Islamist nutball followers did.


The fiery hordes who beheaded innocent UN workers in Mazar-e-Sharif knew nothing of last month’s Koran burning until Afghan Mafia Don Hamid Karzai trumpeted the news for political gain.

Senator Lindsay Graham (Republicrat – Dingdongistan)

Senator Graham echoes the Left’s shrieking that Terry Jones has blood on his hands. He proposes to make federal law Sharia-compliant by punishing American citizens who burn the Koran, and he does so with a classic phrase that has launched a thousand tyrannies…

“Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war.”

Fresh from the koran burning, Terry Jones now says his church will put Mohammad on trial. What’s Graham’s response to that? A ban on mock court proceedings?

Ignorant petty statists like Graham would give murderous religious bigots who live in third world toilets veto power over the God-given rights of Americans. His comments reveal a despicable mindset that has no place in the United States of America. The better answer is for the Unites States to stop messing with crazy people. Shit-canning our endless war doctrine would put a stop to such “we’re at war” Wilsonian jackbooting.

I can excuse General Petraeus’ comments; he has a war to fight and a political message to convey to the Afghanis. I understand the “putting the troops in danger” argument, since I was one of those troops in Afghanistan years ago, but I can’t help but think the real danger to our troops is to put them in a hostile environment with both hands tied behind their backs.

Thanks to the international left, CNN and pacifists here at home, we cannot fight a war the way it needs to be fought.  Our political establishment is too weak-kneed to stand up for our values, and too stupid to beat our ideological foes in the propaganda game, so we should just stay home.  We cannot crush the bad guys. Every bomb hits an innocent civilian or the ubiquitous wedding party, so every engagement is treated with kid gloves.  This spares legions of jihadis to fight another day, more emboldened than when they woke up that morning because they "beat" the United States by not being killed.

Breaking America's Addiction to Stability

An overemphasis on stability — and, perhaps, an erroneous definition of what “stability” even is — has begun harming, rather than helping, American interests in several current crisis spots. (Thanassis Cambanis – Learning to Love Change )

Precisely. We should have turned Afghanistan over to the Northern Alliance after toppling the Taliban and left it at that. Sure, it would have led to further turmoil, but who cares?  The place was never a Garden of Eden, and American dollars and blood will never make it so.

Why We Should Leave Afghanistan

We are blowing billions in Afghanistan, while Mafia Don Hamid Karzai and his gang of bandits enrich themselves at the expense of the people.  Do we even know what the objective is anymore?  Did we ever have one?

Different local factions tell us what we want to hear in exchange for money, which they use for corrupt enterprises. Worse, tribal factions use our firepower to settle old scores and punish one another. This could be counted as just a cost of war if we were actually getting somewhere and we were bringing the societies, military, police and political establish along with us, but we are not. Karzai is corrupt and so is everyone else beneath him.

A Conservative, Patriotic Veteran Says it's Time to Leave
Bing West is no milquetoast NY Times thumb sucking pacifist. He is a USMC combat veteran and Reagan cabinet member. Just as it took anti-communist Nixon to “go to China,” it will take a brave warrior to lead the charge in abandoning Afghanistan and leaving the people to their own devices.

Tactical Excellence, Strategic Stupidity

I like this characterization:

Bing West argues that hazy objectives, bad political assumptions and a long strategic muddle have burned away whatever structure of success American grunts have built on the battlefield. In this telling, tactical excellence and the considerable courage of frontline troops are forever being rendered nugatory by failed leadership. WaPo – The Wrong War

West gets to the heart of the matter:

Endlessly engaged in euphemism and rhetorical triangulation, American generals and politicians insist on a story in which war isn't war, and doesn't center on killing. Official doctrine instead declares that professional warriors are engaged in a nation-building strategy "to serve and secure the population," a focus that West argues has "transformed the military into a giant Peace Corps."

Kathryn Jean Lopez published her interview with West, and it was a doozy. The 70 year old spent time embedded at the squad level in Afghanistan and speaks candidly about what he saw.  Here's my favorite quote:

"I’m not impressed with Admiral Mullen, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, repeatedly claiming that the war won’t be won by killing or capturing the enemy. Really? Then why send 100,000 soldiers with rifles into Afghanistan?"  (NRO-Kathryn Jean Lopez)