Afghanistan

The name alone sounds exotic, mysterious and vaguely sinister. Afghanistan is a country that has been difficult in many ways for many empires.

The name means “Land of the Afghans.”  “Istan” means “land of.” Afghans is the Persian name for Pushtuns, a dominate tribe in Afghanistan for centuries. Persians, of course, are now know as Iranians. The name dates from well before 1333, the first recorded use of the name, Afghans.

The Afghans have been frequently conquered by many an empires and subsequently have won their freedom from same. Most recently, they freed themselves from a ten year rule by the Soviets, only to be controlled by the Taliban.

Now, the Afghans are our problem.

It almost goes without saying that “winning” in Afghanistan is impossible. The Soviets killed a million Afghans and yet were chased out of the country by the Mujahideen. The US backed the Mujahideen, but failed to support them after the failure of the Soviets.

Now, the Afghans are our problem.

Our failure to support the Mujahideen led to the reemergence of tribal warlords in Afghanistan. Basically, Afghans swear allegiance to their tribal leaders and not to a centralized government.

Now, the United States is attempting to establish a centralized government without alienating the tribal communities.

The United States “War on Afghanistan” has been a disaster from virtually the beginning. The Taliban was routed within a few weeks, then we took our eye off the target and focused on Iraq.

The people of Afghanistan are used to this pattern – they are patient and resilient. It is a foregone conclusion that they will ultimately reclaim their lands from all foreign invaders.

Now, the Afghans are our problem.

War is different now. We are not trying to defeat an enemy as we did during World War II. We are attempting to control an ideology that is 1,400 years old. There will be no drive into Berlin or subjugation of Tokyo. There is no 38th parallel.

President Obama has made the right decision to begin withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan in mid-2011. We cannot, nor can anyone, win in that country.

The decision is simple – knock out those that sheltered al Qaeda and get out.

Thoughts?

William Stephenson Clark

Female Marines

Forty female Marines have arrived in Afghanistan with a mission impossible for their male counterparts: connecting with the war-torn country’s women. In groups of twos and threes, they’ve been sent throughout the country, into homes, where over cups of tea they dispense medical help and encourage women to become involved with Afghan society. “We know we can make a difference,” Capt. Emily Naslund told The New York Times. The female marines are not just running into the country’s cultural barriers but also those of the military as male commanders prove reluctant to send the women on some dangerous patrols. However, the men know the impact having women soldiers in their midst can have on the Afghan population. Without them, one said, “It’s just a bunch of guys with rockets and machine guns trying to hand out a bear to a kid, and he starts to cry.”

Bin Laden in Our Sights, But We Failed to Nab Him?

Do you suppose it is really true that if the first pictured Mullah had been on his toes, the second one might not have escaped from Afghanistan in 2001?  And further, Senator Levin contends, we might not now be fighting the war in Afghanistan if bin Laden had been captured in 2001.

Predicting the future is always a risky business, but will the number of books on the failed presidency of POTUS #43 be more than fifty by the year 2012?  Seems possible to me…  What do your divining rods say out there in the internets (you know, those bunch of tubes)?

Jon Krakauer’s Latest: Men, Testosterone, Machismo and Tragedy

I have to be in a certain mood to want to read a Jon Krakauer book.  Usually, that mood is not a good one.  I greatly admire his work which include:  Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; and Under the Banner of Heaven.  Krakauer’s latest:  Where Men Win Glory:  The Odyssey of Pat Tillman was definitely worthy of this author’s attention and talents.  As I see it, the beat that Krakauer works is the intersection of Men, machismo, and testosterone and the likely result  of the collision of these  forces is – Tragedy.  There could be no better places to mine these ores than in the NFL and the disaster currently called Afghanistan.

In his own machismo struggle, Krakauer took the photo that graces the cover of this latest.

The story follows the divergent timelines of unrelated events.  For examples:  1) when Tillman was in highschool, Ramzi Yousef was doing this; 2) when Tillman was in college, Osama bin Laden was doing this. 

The forces eventually meet.  And predictably not to a good end.

This book troubled me almost as much as the Under the Banner of Heaven did. The intentional deceit perpetrated by our government about Tillman’s death in its unique way made the tragedy worse than in the earlier book. 

And… the criminals in this latest book have not been held accountable.

iggydonnelly

Going Out on a Limb Here: It is Past Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

While President Obama claimed that “Afghanistan is no Viet Nam”, I personally believe the similarities and the attendent boondoggles are close enough to make any differences moot.  I have borrowed the ideas for this thread from Hightower’s Hightower Lowdown, Vol. 11, No. 10, Oct. 2009.

First off, should our country be  going about our possible escalation of forces based on the judgement of a few generals?  Our president recently claimed that the mission in Afghanistan is “to disrupt, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.”  Hightower asks “what this mean? Is this what America should be doing?  Is it worth doing?” – All are questions that should be publicly debated.

Secondly, we’re in Afghanistan to whip Al Qaeda!  Uh… Mr. President, U.S. Defense Dept.,  Al Qaeda left Afghanistan a long time ago.  Al Qaeda’s main base is in Pakison.  Does fighting the war in the wrong country remind anyone else of a former president?

Reason number three: We’ll save the people from the Taliban.  The Taliban is not monlithic unified group.  They include illiterate farmers, former anti-Soviet warriors, roving bandits, opportunistic drug trraffickers.  They are a nasty outfit when it comes to their treatment of girls and women.  The Taliban, however, is not a surrogate for Al Qaeda.

Reason four: We must support the Afghan President.  President Karzai’s influence stops at the city limits of the capital city, Kabul.  Afghanistan, politically and structurally, is a tribal area where different smaller tribal leaders are the sole government that has any real meaning to the citizens.  There is no national government to protect.  Also, Karzai’s blatant corruption and electoral fraud, doesn’t speak well to the locals about U.S. support.

Reason 5: We’re Training the Afghan Army.  Given the sorry shape of the national military force, it could take up untold years and treasure to bring the Army up to minimally effective readiness.  There is an absolute derth of reliable military commanders for the Afghan Army and resolving this problem will take years.

Is it time to reconsider the Afghan mission?  Alternate opinions appreciated.

iggydonnelly

Smaller “more pure” Republican Party

The economy, Afghanistan, the charges of radical leftist/communist/Marxist/Maoist agenda, all the controversy around reforming health care and the inexplicable opposition to anything Obama should indicate success for Republicans in the 2010 mid term elections.  All those factors should also point toward this president likely being a one-term president.  If you listen to the people who seem to be Republican spokespersons, that’s what they will tell you will happen.  But if you study the numbers, that’s not what’s going on.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story that contends Tea Party activists are energizing the Republican Party, but all that enthusiasm comes with a price: They may be scaring away the moderates that would help the GOP retake the House in 2010.  With closed primaries, the smaller “more pure” Republican party will nominate only the most far right-wing movement conservatives they can find, further alienating moderates.

Yes, the loudest of the Republicans are predicting a big comeback and just may be the reason the party stays out of power until they get their heads on straight.

fnord

Mohammed Jawad: A Huge Injustice

Mohammed Jawad was taken into U.S. custody during our war in Afghanistan. He confessed to throwing a hand grenade that injured U.S. soldiers. It was later revealed that this confession was obtained with torture. He is from a poor Afghan family where exact dates of birth are not known. It is probable that he was born in 1991 based upon his mother’s recollection of significant events – this in turn means that in 2003 when Jawad was captured that he was 12 years old. The official U.S. documents contend that he was age 18 when he was transferred to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay – this is unlikely.

The U.S. Army officer assigned to conduct Jawad’s military tribunal removed himself from the case due to his inability to “in good conscience” complete this assignment.

Read the accounts here and here of this shameful case. It is way past time to free Jawad.

The photo above was taken three months before Jawad was captured.

The Male Advantage is in Violence; Democracy is Female’s Best Chance

Cheney’s attempts to justify the unjustifiable plus the Republicans screams of “get Nancy,” kept this news hidden or covered only in the middle pages with mere mentions.  Women were elected to Kuwait parliament.

The victory marked the first time women have won parliamentary seats since given the right to vote and run for office in 2005. For the past 50 years Kuwait’s parliament has been the sole preserve of men.

Another article states “Democracy is the best chance for women.”  Men have a natural advantage when it comes to a physical battle and the jackboot of a dictatorship leaves women conceding that there really might be an intractable difference between the genders after all.

Author, Clive James, says, “Men will always monopolise the means of violence if they can. Women can learn to shoot guns, but there are no all-female armies, and even the Amazons were probably a myth. Women, on the whole, would naturally like to do something else, whereas an army, for too many men, is a home away from home, and often their only home.”

And he argues the battles America is fighting to bring democracy are worth it.  He says,

“Despair can coarsen one’s judgment. I knew enough about what Saddam Hussein and his talented son Uday were doing to women to want that regime toppled. The price of doing so might have seemed too high, but at least now, six years later, it is no longer official policy to rape a woman in front of her family. There may be unofficial forces still on the loose in Iraq who would like to do that, but the government no longer does it.

Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan still seems worth it when you have read about what the Taliban want to do with any woman who seeks an education, but it’s easy to despair when you think of how hard it is to stop them.

Sometimes despair overwhelms us when we read of just a single so-called honour crime in which the men of a family have ruined the life of a daughter for what seems no reason at all, and the men walk free because that’s the culture, and the culture runs the government.”

fnord

Fighting the Taliban

CNN) — A Taliban spokesman issued threats and ultimatums against Pakistani officials this week, as the country’s military continued its offensive against the militant group in the Swat Valley.

Speaking with CNN on Wednesday, Muslim Khan announced that all national and provincial parliament members from the Malakand Division, the northwestern region where the Swat Valley is located, must resign within three days. “Otherwise, we will arrest all their families,” Khan threatened, “and we will destroy all their buildings.”

As the Pakistani offensive continued against the Taliban, Fareed Zakaria interviewed the nation’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, for his show Sunday. Musharraf is a former chief of the Pakistan Army who took power in a 1999 coup and stepped down as the nation’s president under pressure last summer.

With Pakistan being a nuclear country, and the Taliban still controlling some of the outer provinces, is Obama correct in sending UCAVs into Pakistan and bombing known Taliban positions? It seems to me this is a more dangerous situation than Iran. If the Taliban take over the government, they will have access to nuclear weapons, and that spells nothing but hell for the entire region.

When Obama got the leaders of both Pakistan and Afghanistan together, suddenly Pakistan tore up the treaties it signed with the Taliban, and started attacking in force, with the end goal of wiping them out of the country. My thinking is this is something that should be used front page to bolster Obama’s standing concerning making this country safe, something the Republicans are trying to quash by using Notre Dame and Polosi as spin to deflect it. Any thoughts?

jammer5