No Country for Young Men
This is the saddest story I have ever heard
--The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
_______
Recently Lisa has been saying that Ranger's essays lack facts and seem to ramble, to which a guilty plea is entered. The fact is, the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is lacking in facts and rambles.
Sound bytes and faulty logic predominate and guide U.S. policy, so why not with Ranger. This proves that he is still a good study.
Two more generalizations:
- The war in Afghanistan is the "Good War."
- Obama says he will escalate the War in Afghanistan
Ranger watched President-elect, Minister of Cool Obama say recently on t.v. the war in Afghanistan must be ramped up to improve the security situation in that nation. He also indicated that Osama bin Laden must be captured or killed since he is still the operational head of al-Qaeda.
"I think it is a top priority for us to stamp out al Qaeda once and for all. And I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al Qaeda. He is not just a symbol, he's also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against US targets (60 Minutes.)"
Ranger would like for Obama to reveal the intelligence source of his assertion that OBL is still the operational head of al-Qaeda. If this is true, then the entire PWOT has been a national joke perpetrated upon the suckers collectively called the American taxpayers.
OBL is a person isolated in the mountains of Waziristan, and we are being told that he is still relevant. Please show this Ranger some factual information that goes beyond the normal government bullshit. BS is not an intel estimate, nor should U.S. policy be based upon it.
Ranger analysis:
- There is no nation called Afghanistan. There is a phony government calling themselves a nation Real nations do not have widespread popular insurgencies. However, such uprisings will always be successful dislodging foreign occupation, especially in an environment of utter poverty.
- The Taliban -- however distasteful to Western standards, is reflective of Afghan culture and philosophy. The Taliban is not al-Qaeda. U.S. soldiers can not simply kill Taliban because they are distasteful. If this were the formula, then they would have to kill Rush Limbaugh, too.
- Killing or capturing OBL will not end the al-Qaeda threat. Killing OBL is simply revenge, with no further useful purpose. Wars are not fought for venegrance (unless your wife's name is Helen.)
- The source of al-Waeda hatred and funding is Saudi Arabia. This social and educational environment (Wahhabism) poses a greater threat via terrorism support than the Taliban.
- There are no good wars.
The U.S. has and is continuing to stake its national prestige and integrity upon illusions that are naught but smoke and mirrors. The larger issues of Afghanistan and Iraq are not relevant to the PWOT.
If both countries were to become wildly democratic tomorrow, this will not remove the al-Qaeda threat from the world scene.
Labels: afghanistan "good war" taliban, al-qaeda, criminal culpability in pwot, george bush or osama bin laden, phony war on terror, terrorism origin in Saudi Arabia
posted by rangeragainstwar at 4:44 PM
14 Comments:
"Killing or capturing OBL will not end the al-Qaeda threat."
How could it if he's already dead?
Better check out The Existentialist Cowbow's Post entitled "BBC Censored Benazir Bhutto's Reports that Bin Laden Had Been Murdered" wherein he has links to both the censored and uncensored versions.
Or just dive into some of the 28,000 or so "hits" from searching bbc censored bhutto bin laden dead.
Afghanistan has been the grave of empires since Alexander's time.
Sensible imperialists bribe a local to sit the throne and murder their enemies and get the hell out.
Obviously we missed that part of the briefing.
WASF
Peter,
If OBL were murdered or rendered dead by any means then wouldn't the killer bring in his head?It's worth 25mil$--you can buy more than 72 virgins in this life with money like that. jim
Chief,
How do you spell-KARZAI? jim
chief, while it is true that alexander came to the same grief in the afghanistan region as nearly every other invader, he wasn't the first.
both darius and cyrus the great made incursions there trying to forge a viable silk route. both of them came to varying degrees of success at great cost in blood and treasure.
alexander in his invasion was trying to secure a supply line for his army, which was merely passing through afghanistan on his way to invade india.
he took an army which had never been defeated in the field, fighting most often at odds of 5-1 or more, and in the three years of his afghan adventure, never fought a single, pitched, decisive battle.
that would have taken more organization and national cohesion than the afghans possessed.
his first reponse was to divide his forces into hammer/anvil types of units. they would have the larger force in place and try to drive the afghans into it. the afghans figured that one out pretty quickly and would not play. his next response was to try a policy that was quite close to john paul vann's secure hamlets program. problem was the secure hamlets quickly became political and military forces of their own and proved impossible to control.
when he finally married into the bactrian tribe, the dominant warlord, he also married thousands of his own macedonian and greek veterans into the countryside. having decided that he couldn't fight them into submission he thought he might fuck them into family. unfortunately, that also proved to be unworkable, while his army was india the places along his supply line revolted, or, they would revert to the petty clan, tribe, geographical quarrels and feuds which have been the lifeblood of afghani culture during their entire existence.
the problems encountered by alexander were the same problems that faced darius, cyrus, kublai khan, the british four times, the russians almost as many.
when studying history, it is always important to see things that speak so loudly and so clearly for what they are.
countless invaders, over a span of over two millenia, have had the exact same problems, with the exact same motherfuckers. it does not matter what the goals of the invaders are, it does not matter what tactics they use, what they have as an overall strategy, or their level of technology or ruthlessness.
invaders lose in afghanistan for a very simple reason. they are who they are, and the afghans are who they are. it is a region, not a nation. historically, the taliban has come closer than anyone else in forging something that somewhat resembled a nation state which would be recognisable by a western mind.
the only thing that an afghan tribesman hate more than the people of the next valley, the next village, the nearest other tribe, is
everybody else in the world.
the only way to produce any kind of unity among the various afghan clans and tribes is to invade. then they will unite long enough to drive you out so that they can get back to their important business of vendetta and blood feud.
it might well be that by removing the taliban from office, which they held by a legitimate vote (or, as legitimate a vote as you can manage from the afghans), we have squandered any chance of a special ops mission to capture al qaeda leaders and bring down their network.
most of the time in counter terrorism one would focus on attacking the foundations of finance and supply that they use.
that, for us, would involve the saudis. we will never do that while we need their oil so completely.
my best advice to the president elect would be, "don't fuck with the afghanis. if the ones who are there right now don't ruin every plan you have, they are perfectly happy to wait for their children to do so, or their grandchildren, or their great-grandchildren. if anything, they will thank you for providing them, and their desendants such a lovely conflict for the gaining of renown and personal honor."
you can't bomb the afghans back to the stone age. they never really left it.
"The Taliban -- however distasteful to Western standards, is reflective of Afghan culture and philosophy. The Taliban is not al-Qaeda."
Perhaps this is true, but one standard that all people groups, regardless of self-identity are aware of is that one must "watch your friends carefully, and beware of your allys."
The Taliban "group" made a choice of siding with Bin-Laden's Al Qaeda, and rather than distance themselves, or cough up the perps of 9/11, the Taliban circled the wagons round their "friends/allys" and so therefore get a share of the same fate. Granted, seven years later it seems that the whole thing was a colossal waste, but at the time...yeah...
"U.S. soldiers can not simply kill Taliban because they are distasteful."
I think we need to broaden the focus here because, by definition, if I'm a US soldier in a land I choose not to be in, but was ordered too. And some Talibani is trying to kill me...yes, I would find that prospect distasteful and return fire.
So, I think it is correct to say that the decisions of our government should not be to waste our soldiers lives, and our efforts hopping around the mountains of Afghanistan playing whack-a-mole with no clear objective...which I will admit...hunting down a group of guys for the past seven years...geez...hell, I got nothing.
We waved goodbye to opportunity far too many times to warrant our current strategy.
"If this were the formula, then they would have to kill Rush Limbaugh, too."
Hmmmmmmmmm...and this is bad idea...why?
No, what am I thinking?
No, I just took a position with Lisa about this, and I shan't go there for fear of her slapping my silly butt back to reality.
Dam, Ranger, you do tempt me.
Jim: I'm argue that if you're going to back a warlord, back a fucking WARlord. Our boy Maliki in Iraq (or perhaps I should say Tehran's boy Maliki) has proved to be a hell of a lot more effective at Middle Eastern reigning than I'd thought. He's got the main idea: power flows from force, money flows from power, and from money and power and force flow soverignty. One he has his thugocracy well in hand he can show us the door and go on about the business of bribing those he can bribe and killing those he can't, like any good Ottoman potentate.
Karzai, OTOH, seems to be content to be Mayor of Kabul. We can't use that. We need a good, bloodthirsty Pashtun on the qadi there, to run things as they have always been run in the Hindu Kush: by patronage, coercion, force and fear and intrigue.
We suck at that and always have.
MB: Nice summation, and you're right, I was using Alexander as a shorthand for all the outsiders who have found that the tribal motto of every Afghan tribe is "My brother before my cousin, my cousin before my neighbor, my neighbor before my tribesman, my tribesman before the outsider, the outsider before the foreigner."
For some reason we seem to do tribal politics and intrigue abysmally. I think because most of us think of "other peoples" as sort of like Americans in funny clothes speaking furrin. The notion that a bunch of raggedy-ass tribesman could teach us at the doctoral level about treachery, double-dealing, intrigue and war never seems to occur to us.
Unfortunately. Until too late.
MB,
As always, an excellent aerial view.
"the only way to produce any kind of unity among the various afghan clans and tribes is to invade. then they will unite long enough to drive you out so that they can get back to their important business of vendetta and blood feud."
How hubristic our posture, that once the Afghanis see they, too, could have Netflix, they will hunker down into a USA-style state of lethargic acquisition.
The arrogance is laughable, if it weren't also so tragic.
FDChief,
Karzai is happy to be mayor because he and his are making money at a prodigous rate.While our soldiers are dying for bullshit ideas of democracy.
We need a good, bloodthirsty Pashtun on the qadi there, to run things as they have always been run in the Hindu Kush: by patronage, coercion, force and fear and intrigue.
We need a good, bloodthirsty Pashtun on the qadi there, to run things as they have always been run in the Hindu Kush: by patronage, coercion, force and fear and intrigue.
To this your statement i hardily disagee- we the US don't need jack shit in or from AFGH. -all we need is to hat up. We have no legitimate reason to stay nor is the cost returning anything to us.
jim
sheerahkhan,
How can you possibly say with a straight face that the US actually has a strategy in either theater? jim
"We have no legitimate reason to stay nor is the cost returning anything to us."
Amen to that, brother.
I've been to Afghanistan twice, the Missus has been once as a medic dragooned to work Civil Affairs.
The enlightened populace engages in fun past times such as lighting each other on fire as a practicle joke. My wife treated many burn victims who stated such Tom-Foolery was why they had the burns.
The national ring road project has made considerable progress since my first tour of duty. Now the opium can get to the refineries without delay and European junkies will get their heroin delivered most ricky-tic. 35% of Afghanistan's GDP is opium, I read in the latest edition of "Army Times" that we are going to "go after opium production." This might slightly enrage the Afghans when this policy goes into effect.
I do admit skepticism about a Jefforsonian democracy emerging from the "nation" of Afghanistan anytime soon. Can't help but believe my lying eyes over the brainless State Department.
Jimbo,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us.
The US policy will never go after the big drug people b/c they are running the country.Either legally or thru graft.US policy will as usual only mess with the weak and poor farmers.Thats my analysis.
I personally don't give a rats as if Afghanistan is a democracy or not- it's none of my concern.Let's worry about democracy here in the Vaterland. jim
I'd add that it says something damning about our little Afghan project that the supposed "National Army" and police are still piss-weak against the Talibs more than six years after we supposedly turned over running the country to them. In a land where the sport, business and recreation of nearly every adult male is viciously savage mayhem, "our" Afghans couldn't whip their weight in weasels, while "their" Afghans are tearing the ass off the hills all the way to the outskirts of Kabul and beyond.
Could it be that "our" Afghans are a bunch of spiritless mooks not-fighting for cash, while the real hardcase Afghan sonsofbitches are all out fighting for the other side?
Ya think?
Forty years later, billions of dollars and countless "studies" and "lessons learned" and we've managed to recreate Marvin the ARVN as Ali the ANA.
Whutthefuck..?
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