Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Milt Bearden: HIST 9 April 2009 Obama’s War

08 Wild Cards
Milt Bearden
Milt Bearden

使用谷歌翻译在下一列的顶部。

गूगल अगले स्तंभ के शीर्ष पर अनुवाद का प्रयोग करें.

Google sonraki sütunun üstünde Çevir kullanın.

Используйте Google Translate на вершине соседней колонке.

گوگل اگلے کالم میں سب سے اوپر ترجمہ کا استعمال کریں.

Foreign Affairs, April 9, 2009

POSTSCRIPT

Obama's War
Redefining Victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Milton Bearden

MILTON BEARDEN served as CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, where he was responsible for that agency's covert action program in support of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet-supported government.

Since the United States first dispatched troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, the war in Afghanistan has been an orphan of U.S. policy. But with the release last week of a revamped U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, the conflict has, by default, become Barack Obama's war.

In a Foreign Affairs essay [1] from November/December 2001, I chronicled the disasters that have befallen all foreign invaders of Afghanistan, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union. Now, more than seven years into the U.S. intervention, the Obama administration must confront many of the same problems faced by all previous
occupiers of this rugged land. How the United States manages its presence there over the next year will determine if it can break the pattern.

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Milt Bearden: HIST March/April 2009 Curse of the Khyber Pass

08 Wild Cards
Milt Bearden
Milt Bearden

使用谷歌翻译在下一列的顶部。

गूगल अगले स्तंभ के शीर्ष पर अनुवाद का प्रयोग करें.

Google sonraki sütunun üstünde Çevir kullanın.

Используйте Google Translate на вершине соседней колонке.

گوگل اگلے کالم میں سب سے اوپر ترجمہ کا استعمال کریں.

National Interest, March/April 2009

Curse of the Khyber Pass

Milt Bearden

Milton Bearden is a retired CIA officer who managed the cia’s covert assistance to the Afghans from Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He also served in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Nigeria, Sudan and Germany.

As the United States settles into its . eighth year of military operations in . Afghanistan, and as plans for ramping up U.S. troop strength are under way, we might reflect on an observation made by the Chinese military sage, Sun Tzu, about twenty-five hundred years ago:

In military campaigns I have heard of awkward speed but have never seen any skill in lengthy campaigns. No country has ever profited from protracted warfare.

These words tell the tale of the string of superpowers that have found themselves drawn into a fight in the inhospitable terrain we now call Afghanistan. Their stories of easy conquest followed by unyielding rebellion are hauntingly similar, from the earliest accounts of Alexander’s Afghan campaign, when, in 329 bc, the great warrior found the struggle longer, more brutal and more costly than his battle in Persia. And through six centuries the Mughals never managed to bring the Afghans to heel, and most certainly not the Pashtuns. Of course, there were also the disastrous expeditions of Britain and the Soviet Union. Now it is up to the Obama administration to try to change the long odds in what will become America’s longest war.

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Milt Bearden: HIST Nov/Dec 2001 Afghanistan Graveyard of Empires

08 Wild Cards
Milt Bearden
Milt Bearden

使用谷歌翻译在下一列的顶部。

गूगल अगले स्तंभ के शीर्ष पर अनुवाद का प्रयोग करें.

Google sonraki sütunun üstünde Çevir kullanın.

Используйте Google Translate на вершине соседней колонке.

گوگل اگلے کالم میں سب سے اوپر ترجمہ کا استعمال کریں.

Foreign Affairs, November/December 2001

Afghanistan Graveyard of Empires

Milton Bearden

MILTON BEARDEN served as CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, where he was responsible for that agency's covert action program in support of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet-supported government.

THE GREAT GAME

MICHNI POINT, Pakistan's last outpost at the western end of the barren, winding Khyber Pass, stands sentinel over Torkham Gate, the deceptively orderly border crossing into Afghanistan. Frontier Scouts in gray shalwar kameezes (traditional tunics and loose pants) and black berets patrol the lonely station commanded by a major of the legendary Khyber Rifles, the militia force that has been guarding the border with Afghanistan since the nineteenth century, first for British India and then for Pakistan. This spot, perhaps more than any other, has witnessed the traverse of the world's great armies on campaigns of conquest to and from South and Central Asia. All eventually ran into trouble in their encounters with the unruly Afghan tribals.

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Eagle: New March on Washington for Civil Rights + Black Liberation RECAP

Ethics
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

New March on Washington focuses on modern civil rights

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands gathered today on the nation's “front yard,” the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial, yearning for a bit of the transcendent sense of racial unity heralded on this spot by Martin Luther King 50 years ago in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

From steps where King spoke, orators highlighted what they said was the unfinished business of achieving a broader sense of equality in America, while also offering hope that much has and will change.

“We cannot give up. We cannot give out. And we cannot give in,” Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the only surviving speaker from the 1963 March, said to cheering throngs. While he acknowledged that the brutal days of civil right struggles are now gone, the push for a more perfect America remains. “We must get out there and push and pull.”

Read full article and watch vbideo.

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David Swanson: Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying

Peace Intelligence
David Swanson
David Swanson

Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying

“U.S. prepares for possible retaliatory strike against Syria,” announces a Los Angeles Times headline, even though Syria has not attacked the United States or any of its occupied territories or imperial forces and has no intention to do so.

Quoth the article:

“the president made no decisions, but the high-level talks came as the Pentagon acknowledged it was moving U.S. forces into position in the region.”

Forgive me, but who the SNAFU made that decision?  Does the commander in chief have any say in this?  Does he get to make speeches explaining how wrong it would be to attack Syria, meet with top military officials who leave the meeting to prepare for attacks on Syria, and go down in history as having been uninvolved in, if not opposed to, his own policies?

Threatening to attack Syria, and moving ships into position to do it, are significant, and illegal, and immoral actions.  The president can claim not to have decided to push the button, but he can't pretend that all the preparations to do so just happen like the weather.  Or he couldn't if newspapers reported news.

(Yes, illegal.  Read the U.N. Charter:

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Marcus Aurelius: Conflicted About Ethics, Secrecy, & the Public Interest

10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, IO Secrets, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

COMMENTS:

1.  This is one of more internally contradictory pieces I can remember reading;
2.  Mark Bowden certainly knows a thing or three about perpetuating compromise of classified information since he's done bunch of it;
3.  Bowden harkens back to old saying, “.. there are good secrets, there are bad secrets, and there are non-secrets …”, but people at working level don't have luxury of playing that game.  If something is classified, it's classified and there are only two lawful options:  get it declassified through established process or protect it;
4.  Impact of Bradley Manning is broad and deep.  Manning impacts me throughout every working day.  Despite clearances, less information is available to me.  Like every Federal employee, I now  have fewer tools to work with.  Formerly routine procedures are now either totally proscribed or so laden with requirements for pre-approval, two-person control, and so forth that cost vastly exceeds benefit.  I am under automated surveillance as I perform my official duties.  And we have not yet seen impacts of Snowden, which will surely come;
5.  Thus, I strongly DISAGREE with Bowden that Bradley's 35-year sentence was excessive but forced to strongly AGREE that it will likely be reduced.

TheAtlantic.com, August 23, 2013

What Snowden And Manning Don't Understand About Secrecy

Government often finds bad reasons to keep information hidden, but the recent indiscriminate leaks are foolish.

By Mark Bowden

As an old reporter who has from time to time outed classified information, I have watched the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with professional interest.

What troubles me about them is not that they broke the oaths they swore when they took their classified government jobs, the thing that makes them liable to prosecution. Government finds all kinds of dubious reasons to keep secrets, sometimes nefarious reasons, and conscience can force one to break a promise. My problem is with the indiscriminate nature of their leaks.

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