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:

1. 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.

Ninja II

Us and them
And after all we're only ordinary men
Me and you
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do
"Forward" he cried from the rear and the front rank died
And the General sat, and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side
--Us and Them, Pink Floyd

______________

To recap the first failure of Ninja (Operation Red Wings), the action for which Patrick Murphy earned the Medal of Honor: the recon team had been discovered by local goatherds, and instead of immediate radio request for exfiltration, the 4-man team maneuvered position and were ambushed the next morning by possibly 200 Taliban.

The next major failure is shattering, and even Miniter cannot draw a halo on it.

Twenty minutes after the helicopters were dispatched, "the pilot had bad news":

"The two Black Hawks, including Healy's were too heavy to vault over the peaks of Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province. . . . the choppers diverted to Jalalabad, where 16 men were ordered off the Black Hawks. With more than 10 minutes lost, the two helicopters decided to outrun their slower, armored escorts. Contact with the trapped SEAL team had been lost."

How can this be? This is the supposed 80-man team at-the-ready. These are Night Stalkers -- an elite SOF asset -- and we are to understand they do not know the load limits of their birds, nor the elevation of the terrain involved? This is a tragicomedy, a Chinese fire drill.

When the Black Hawks enter the landing zone, Taliban fire an RPG round, which explodes inside the first helicopter.

"The SEALS onboard the second Black Hawk were horrified to see the lead chopper explode, tilt its nose upward and spill men to the ground. The remaining air crew, belted in, were trapped inside a flaming comet, plunging down into a boulder-choked ravine. Healy, McGreevy and a dozen others were gone."

Why would any leader attempt an insertion under enemy fire without the suppressive fire of gunships? This is plain foolhardy and cannot be justified even as a desperation measure. If the recon team just got destroyed, it is a safe assumption that there will be heavy anti-aircraft fire to include automatic weapons and RPG's.

Miniter assures us the SEALs inside the 2nd copter "desperately wanted to land and make the enemy pay. But the radio gave different orders: leave now." Fortunately someone was now making decisions on a rational rather than emotional basis.

One cannot make the enemy pay. You can kill them, but that won't return the 19 friendly KIA's to life. This is not a computer game, it is real-life brutal combat.

When Miniter, writing about the rescue of the bodies, says, "the cavalry had come," it's time to tune out. The question remains: Where was the 80-man assault element previously mentioned as a component of this operation?

If the plan called for an 80-man reaction force, then artillery or aerial rocket artillery should have been pre-planned to support the assault and recon teams' efforts. In addition, aviation assets should have been on-station and ready to launch. Yeah, sure, the cavalry had come, but they were riding dead horses.

The Taliban were controlling the pace of battle. We gave up the principle of initiative when the first shot was fired. It is safe to assume that anti-coalition forces were pushing the SEALs down into a pre-planned kill zone.

The Taliban displayed a level of proficiency one would expect of U.S. SOF ground assets. They fought good, solid, well-planned small unit Infantry action. Murphy's team was totally reactive and defensive, therefore, they were the designated losers.

This entire operation seems based on a hope and a prayer, and not a chaplain anywhere in sight. The author calls it a "rescue", but it was a salvage operation and a body recovery mission. Nobody were rescued except Marcus Luttrell, who survived with a broken back by the good graces of goatherd who took him into his stone hut.

This failure of colossal proportions, like the Pat Tillman incident, proves the Army maxim: when a big screw up occurs, promote, or award medals. The Army's answer to an eraser.

Addendum: Author Richard Miniter is the best-selling author of two books which Borders does not stock. Each explains how Bill Clinton is to blame for Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. You can guess the audience which drove these books into best-seller status. That's right -- your fellow Americans.

Miniter's non-credentials as a "terrorism expert" include a terminal degree of a B.A. in philosophy from a liberal arts college. He has never worked in the military or government. He would make a fine writer of YA adventure stories.

Achtung, Baby!

Though it isn't really war,
We're sending fifty thousand more,
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese
--Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation,
Tom Paxton

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don't make them have to take it away
--Give Ireland Back to the Irish,
Paul McCartney
__________

Should NATO share the burden in Afghanistan? Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, "We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not." This would "effectively destroy the alliance" (NATO's Afghan Stumbles.)

Why should NATO share the burden in Afghanistan? Did the U.S. consult with NATO or line up support before invading that particular rock pile? Does NATO have any reason to get involved in Afghanistan? What makes the U.S. mess a concern for the NATO alliance?

NATO is not a strike arm of U.S. policy. It is a defensive alliance that was not envisioned as a power projecting entity. Imagine Bundeswehr Panzer grenadiers fighting in Afghanistan -- clearly a Hitlerian wet dream. Does the U.S. or any world leader really want Germans involved in foreign militaristic ventures for any conceivable purpose? It is yet another Sam Kinison moment: People, wake up, here.

The WaPo and others contend that NATO has an important role, but it is time to question this piece of conventional wisdom. Why should there be a military alliance of democracies in Europe? To what purpose? Against whom are they allied?

What is the threat? Who is the wolf at the door?

"Americans are accustomed to thinking of the Afghan war as a Taliban uprising supported from havens in Pakistan. In reality, we are seeing a broad, borderless, regional revolt in the Pashtun tribal belt, two-thirds of which lies in Pakistan. In southern Afghanistan, the Taliban is pressing to retake Kandahar and other areas. In eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban are more internationalized -- influenced by Pakistan and al-Qaeda -- and seek both to maintain the havens and take terrorist shots at Western Europe and America. In the semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan, large madrassa facilities feed a radicalism with global ambitions of murder -- and radical tribal leaders put increasing pressure on settled areas."

What is the war in Afghanistan? We must cut the hyperbole to arrive at the reality. Assuming that all these words are true, why is the reaction always the same? Military, military, military. That mantra is a failure.

Militarism caused WWI, WWII, Korea and RVN, and is doing the same job in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless one is completely deluded, or has eyes like Mr. Magoo, that option is as ineffective now as it has always been. Military reactions are usually the problem, not the solution.

Are the Taliban really providing a regional revolt? If they are, what are they revolting against? Could it be the U.S. freely bombing and killing within their borders? It is their country, and isn't that what democracy is all about? Let the Afghans choose what they want.

If NATO and the U.S. haven't alleviated the problem to date, then that should tell us something beyond the meaningless rhetoric that supports this Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©).

If every Taliban and al-Qaeda member were killed tonight, the conflict would not end. If killing were the answer, let us repudiate the Nuremberg trials, re-institute the SS and turn the Germans loose.

Destry Rides Again

Tom Destry: Well, you will fool 'em, Wash. We'll fool
'em together.

Washington Dimsdale: The only way to do that is fill
'em full of lead.

Tom Destry: No, no, no, what for? You shoot it out with
'em and for some reason or other, I don't know why,
they get to look like heroes. But you put 'em behind bars
and they look little and cheap, the way they oughta look.

--Destry Rides Again (1939)
___________

Ranger's not all that interested in the recently released CIA inspector general's report. That we knew Osama was a threat back in Clinton's term is old news, as is the fact former CIA chief George Tenet is another yipping sycophant.

But I was interested in one passage from the NYT's Op-Ed coverage of the release:

"Mr. Tenet later helped hype the “slam dunk” intelligence that Mr. Bush used to justify diverting the military from the war of necessity against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to the war of choice in Iraq (The C.I.A. Report.)"

Why does everyone take it on faith that Afghanistan was a "war of necessity"? Surely, or perhaps not so surely, the Taliban offered safe haven to al Qaida, and al Qaida is the international criminal/terror organization that attacks U.S. interests worldwide. But al Qaida is a stateless group of terrorists.

Like O.J. Simpson's friend Cato Kaelin, they may hole up here and there, but the decision to attack their hosts in this case -- the Taliban -- was not strategically sound. The Taliban was not the threat (save for allowing safe haven.) Attacking Afghanistan and destroying the Taliban did not neutralize the threat posed by al Qaida.

Ranger is truly sick of hearing from a large cohort of his fellows in North Florida: They want to destroy our way of life. Who are they, and how many are there?

Why not invade Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as they left a bigger fingerprint on 9-11. (As Jon Stewart recently quipped on his program, a full 20% of the 9-11 attackers were not from Saudi Arabia.)

International cooperation, embargoes, incentives and negotiations are always the path to follow before entering into a war.

Mr. Reagan's questions knocks again: Are you any better off (safer) today after two voluntary wars, than you were before?