Journal: How NOT to Decide on Afghanistan

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats

The Real Reason for More Troops in Afghanistan

Michael Gaddy LouRockwell.com October 20, 2009Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of our quest for empire over the past six decades realizes that Obama’s contemplation of whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan is simply those who control him providing Obama with the opportunity to look “presidential.” The decision to send additional troops was reached prior to the situational comedy of General McChrystal’s leaked “confidential report” to the Washington Post and Obama’s National Security Advisor’s public admonishment of McChrystal’s failure to follow the chain of command. All of this is nothing but a well-rehearsed, though poorly camouflaged hoax. Additional troops will be sent to Afghanistan within a very short period of time and Obama really has no say in the matter. The question is: why?

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2009/10/18

Journal: $400 per gallon gas in Afghanistan

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military

Full Story Online

$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in Afghanistan

By Roxana Tiron

The Hill

10/15/09

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan. The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

. . . . . .

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. “When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it.”

The Pentagon comptroller’s office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

2009/10/18

Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Military, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

22 October 2009

Afghanistan is the largest and the most difficult crisis Obama confronts away from home. And here the trap was fashioned largely by himself. He said, all through the presidential campaign, that Iraq was the wrong war but Afghanistan was the right one. It was ‘a war of necessity’, he said this summer. And he has implied that he would accept his generals’ definition of the proper scale of such a war. Now it appears that Afghanistan is being lost, indeed that it cannot be controlled with fewer than half a million troops on the ground for a decade or more. The generals are for adding troops, as in Vietnam, in increments of tens of thousands. Their current request was leaked to Bob Woodward, who published it in the Washington Post on 21 September, after Obama asked that it be kept from the public for a longer interval while he deliberated. The leak was an act of military politics if not insubordination; its aim was to show the president the cost of resisting the generals.

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2009/10/162009/10/16

Journal: Israel, USS Liberty, & Palestine

06 Genocide, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice

Golda vs. Goldstone: A Cultural Evolution of Getting Away With Murder

The date when the United States became Israel's unquestioning benefactor can the fixed with precision: June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the six-day 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

It was on this day that Israel's air and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 US Navy sailors, in what is still the worst loss of naval personnel due to hostile fire since the end of WWII. It was on this day that the Johnson Administration aborted a rescue mission in the process of being mounted by aircraft of the US Navy's 6th Fleet. With the cooperation of the US Congress, the Johnson Administration put into motion a series of responses and non-responses that cumulatively resulted a complete whitewash any serious investigation into the question of whether not Israel deliberately chose to attack a neutral US naval vessel sailing in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. To date, the Liberty incident is the only major naval disaster that has not precipitated an in-depth investigation by the US Congress.

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2009/10/162009/10/16

Journal: Afghanistan, Warning, Peak Oil, & Strategy

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military

Full Story Online

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. ignored warnings before deadly Afghan attack…Three intelligence reports dismissed days before eight U.S. soldiers killed

Bill Gertz, October 16, 2009

Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Mountain Warrior, told The Times that the three reports did not stand out among hundreds of others and that the intelligence was deemed to be not specific and uncorroborated.

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The Economist October 17, 2009 Cover Story

Obama's War: Why the Afghanistan war deserves more resources, commitment and political will

The coalition, however, lacks three essential components of a successful strategy. It needs a credible, legitimate government to work with, the resources to do the job and the belief that America’s president is behind this war.

Many Afghans find it bizarre that the West should devote so much money to Mr Karzai, yet be unable to hold him to account over something so basic as stuffing ballot boxes on an industrial scale. For most, however, the local and provincial leaders matter more than the distant central government.

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2009/10/042009/10/04

Journal: China Maps Afghan Solution, India Comments

02 China, 03 India, 08 Wild Cards

China Speaks: Afghan peace needs a map

The United States should first put an end to the war. The anti-terror war, which the former US administration of George W Bush launched in 2001, has turned out to be the source of ceaseless turbulence and violence in the past years.

To promote much-needed reconciliation among the parties concerned, the US should end its military action. The war has neither brought the Islamic nation peace and security as the Bush administration originally promised, nor brought any tangible benefits to the US itself. On the contrary, the legitimacy of the US military action has been under increasing doubt.

India Comments: China maps an end to the Afghan war

The China Daily makes several important points. First, it bluntly calls on Washington to forthwith bring the US military operations in Afghanistan to an end. There are no caveats here while making this demand, no alibis. Simply put, the war has only resulted in aggravating the political and social turmoil Afghanistan causing great turbulence and violence and it has brought neither peace and stability as the administration promised nor any “tangible benefits” to the US itself. “On the contrary, the legitimacy of the US militaryaction has been under increasing doubt.”

Clearly, therefore, the urgent necessity arises to promote reconciliation among the warring Afghan groups and this effort needs to commence with the US forthwith ending its military operations.

Phi Beta Iota: The USA would appear to be in a quagmire of its own making, one very likely to terminate the Obama Administration's aspirations for a second term.

2009/09/262009/09/26

Journal: Integrity, Afghanistan, & The White House

02 Diplomacy, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military, Peace Intelligence

SMALL WARS JOURNAL

This Week at War: America's Last Counterinsurgent?

McChrystal report unwittingly slays counterinsurgency doctrine

September 25, 2009

Robert Haddock

This summer the U.S. government has faced a deteriorating crisis in Afghanistan. Such crises tend to force policymakers to face up to the facile assumptions they have previously made. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report to his civilian masters on the faltering counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has caused President Barack Obama and his advisers to face up to their basic assumptions about U.S. objectives and strategies for perhaps the first time. Obama and his team seem very likely to conclude from this long overdue examination of first principles that it will be impractical for the U.S. to successfully implement a counterinsurgency campaign plan in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s assessment has unwittingly tossed the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency field manual into the shredder. McChrystal’s report is brutally honest about the troubles in Afghanistan.

Click on title above for complete article, below for Phi Beta Iota comment and links to three “fix” pieces.

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Full Op-Ed Online Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

Full Story Online

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. ignored warnings before deadly Afghan attack…Three intelligence reports dismissed days before eight U.S. soldiers killed

Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion