This officer's letter is both extraordinary and common–it is extraordinary in its demonstration of integrity and common sense, and common in that we all feel this way less a few craven individuals so enamoured of power they have forgotten where they left their integrity.
AFGHANISTAN isn't com pletely hopeless, just use less. It's a strategic joke with a bloody punch line. Even if everything went perfectly in Afghanistan — which it won't — the results would be virtually meaningless: Our mortal enemies (above all, al Qaeda) have dug in elsewhere, from Pakistan to Somalia. … From line doggies up to bird colonels (and even a few junior generals), there's a powerful sense that we're throwing away soldiers' lives for theories that just don't work. We enforce rules of engagement that kill our own troops to avoid alienating villagers who actively support the Taliban and celebrate our deaths. …
Iraq made sense to me. The stakes there were (and are) enormous. But Afghanistan's a strategic vacuum that sucks in resources and lives to no sensible purpose. By propping up President Karzai's government of thieves and attempting to force our vision on Afghanistan we've rescued a defeated Taliban from oblivion. So much for COIN theory.
Killing our nation's enemies always makes sense. Sacrificing our troops for the Pentagon's equivalent of Beanie Babies is despicable. Won't a single four-star general stand up and be counted?
Mr. Gerhard Wagner, MA Informatics, works for the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and is leading the EMM Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Suite as part of the research agenda.
His briefing, which should be posted soon at the Danish Counterterrorism Conference website, is excellent, and the capability being briefed equally impressive. His biography is at the website.
This is unquestionably a great book but it is so narrow, and so oblivious to the larger context within which the U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki GOT IT RIGHT and knew exactly what was needed, and the impeachable offenses of Chenez, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith, that I have to respectfully limit it to three stars in order to make the points that no one seems to want to acknowledge:
1) General Powell let us all down when he failed to resign on principle and challenge Cheney who committed 23+ documented impeachable offenses, including letting 9-11 happen and taking us to war against Iraq for the oil, on a platform of 935 documented lies. ALL of our generals, but Colin Powell especially, should be shamed for not protecting America against domestic enemies bent on bankrupting the country morally and financially
2) General Shinseki, and General Schoomaker, and General Garner all got it right, but did not go the distance in challenging a corrupt civilian leadership. I have often fantacized about what would have happened if Shinseki had thrown his stars on the table, resigned, and thrown Wolfowitz down the steps of Capitol Hill as he so richly deserved.
The publisher has failed to use the tools that Amazon provides, so “Look Inside the Book” and especially the Table of Contents, are not available. Shame on the publisher. I would normally take away one star for this lack of due diligence.
Although the author certainly has a formula, I do not consider these formula books or light in any sense of the word. The author's introduction is a proper overview of all that follows, and the conclusion connects the dots.
I am not going to list the 44 alphabetical topics here, from Alasakan Oil to Zip Codes–the publisher really needs to do their duty to the reader and the author and get Inside the Book details posted.
I am hugely impressed by the details in this book, and its over all coherence. If the public ever wanted a czar for both structural and financial reform of the federal government which is, as Ron Paul, the author, and I and manz others agree, totally broken, this author is the man for the job.