Hamid Karzai
Another Uncle Sam satrap.
Karzai's Wikipedia Page
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Will Afghanistan be Iraq redux?
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| “What’s the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan?” asked John Noonan, a top House Armed Services Committee Republican aide, on Twitter last week. “A: About 5 years.” No one in Washington is laughing. Instead, worry is quietly building that the ongoing crisis in Iraq — the struggles of a government partly seen as illegitimate, the collapse of its American-trained military and the ascendance of Islamic extremists — is just Part 1 of a grim coda to George W. Bush’s foreign policy. Part 2 could be a repeat of this scenario in Afghanistan as, or after, the last American combat troops come home over the next two years. (PHOTOS: Scenes of turmoil in Iraq) Members of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on Wednesday whether Afghanistan would go the way of Iraq. No, they answered. “It is my judgment that the two bear very little comparison,” Hagel said. But that level of confidence is not universal. “There are some similarities, similarities between the final result we see now in Iraq that could be similar to how events play out in Afghanistan, and we should take some lessons,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. “Nobody wants that to happen,” he said. “It does not give me any pleasure to have this conversation with you. We want to leave in such a way we’re not seeing these same kinds of issues. It would be better to learn now than to wait.” (Also on POLITICO: Return of the GOP hawks) Republican hawks have long argued that President Barack Obama bungled the American withdrawal from Iraq. The U.S. should have left behind a small but enduring force to continue to help the Iraqi military and backstop it in a crisis, they argued. Last month, Obama announced the U.S. will draw down its remaining force in Afghanistan to only a small foreign-country presence by the time he leaves office — but Iraq, they argue, shows that strategy is a mistake. “The president had hoped that as America stepped back from the world, other responsible actors would step forward to provide stability,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.). “That hasn’t worked. It isn’t going to work. Our vacillation and inaction in Syria, abandonment of Iraq, politically driven withdrawal from Afghanistan and senseless cuts to national security resources has allowed the resurrection of a transnational terrorist threat.” Stephen Long, a professor of international studies at the University of Richmond, said there are many reasons to worry about the outlook for Afghanistan, but this week’s Iraq crisis is not a blueprint. (Also on POLITICO: Steny Hoyer: Iraq airstrikes should be considered) “The comparison is not at all perfect,” he said. “They’re very different places with very different histories and ethno-sectarian lines. There are some very competent factions within Afghanistan that have been opposed to the Taliban ever since they held power many years ago — the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and a lot of moderate Pashtuns.” The Obama administration rejects outright the narrative that Iraq today is Afghanistan tomorrow. “The decisions in Afghanistan are not built on an Iraq model,” said Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby. “There is no ‘Iraq model.’ This is a completely different situation.” The Afghan National Security Forces are also getting better every day, Kirby said. “I think we can stand pretty well on the record of our performance over the last two to three years in terms of helping develop the competency and capability of Afghan forces, which are in the lead right now, and doing quite well,” he said. But so were the Iraqi troops who, with great American fanfare, took over their own security from the U.S. Army before its withdrawal. American military convoys were pulling over, as U.S. officials liked to point out, to make way for the Iraqi forces that had taken “the lead.” Last week, however, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops apparently broke ranks and fled before the attacking Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a performance so poor it shocked many of their former American mentors in Washington. There’s no way to predict whether the Afghan forces would fold in a similar situation, although it has its own warning signals. Kabul can’t afford the Afghan forces as they’re currently constituted, for one, meaning that it will continue to depend on American and international support. Afghanistan did OK after the Soviet invasion, observers point out — until Moscow cut off its cash flow. “I’m concerned … that they need a great deal more funding and support than we’ve currently allocated for them in the near future just to be able to continue to run the operations they’re running now,” Long said. “I think if we saw resurgence of Taliban activity after the U.S. withdrawal, that could definitely be a major threat.” American investigations also have found that local Afghan commanders tend to hoard spares and materiel, rather than share with their colleagues elsewhere in the country, suggesting that commanders could be trying to preserve their own advantage as a hedge in case of another conflict. America’s intelligence community has been bearish on the future of Afghanistan for a long time; its most recent National Intelligence Estimate is said to have predicted Afghanistan would lose many of its gains after American troops leave. But defense officials tend to take a more optimistic view. One important difference is the quality of the enemies. American commanders say the Taliban has lost a lot of momentum in its campaign against the Afghan government, pointing to the relative success of Afghanistan’s presidential elections. Baghdad’s enemy in ISIL, however, presents a much graver threat. Dubik said he thought the U.S. should offer the Iraqi military help, including intelligence sharing, potential airstrikes and assistance for Iraqi campaign planners. The U.S. could help the Iraqis stop the ISIL offensive, give Baghdad’s troops a boost and help set them up for the counteroffensive that must follow any American intervention, he said. But Afghanistan and Iraq ultimately are problems for Afghans and Iraqis, Dubik argued — not something Washington can solve with drones, combat aircraft or cruise missiles. “It’s a mess,” he said of this week’s Iraq crisis. “No option can solve the problem. All we’re going to be able to do is mitigate it somehow and make it less of a mess. But it’s still going to be mess.” | |
© 2014 POLITICO LLC
Alan: If George Bush and Dick Cheney had not waged their Whimsy War on Iraq, thus undermining a stable country that was a staunch ally of Ronald Reagan -- a country with no WMD and no involvement in 9/11 -- the current ISIS crisis would not exist.
ISIS' seizure of Mosul and Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's hometown) would have been inconceivable --- like The Tea Party winning the Oval Office, both houses of Congress and packing the Supreme Court with nine judges all named Antonin Scalia.
The prospect of a 9/11-type terror strike launched on the United States from Iraq or Syrian soil would have been unthinkable except in the delusional minds of paranoid xenophobes whose constituency (spearheaded by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton) was solely responsible for kicking every hornet's nest in the Islamic world, then wondering why blowback was biting them in the ass.
If tables were turned, Americans would have already launched terror attacks across the Middle East. For that matter, the entire Iraq War -- from inception onward -- has been an unrelenting exercise in state-sponsored terrorism perpetrated by Uncle Sam.
During the run-up to The Iraq War, everyone with an internet connection and a folded cortex was aware that the invasion was monstrously stupid -- and grotesquely unjust. (Pope Benedict XVI declared the war unjust. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/pope-benedict-xvi-questions-if-modern.html)
Remember "Shock and Awe?" Remember "The Power of Pride?"
Who's shocked now?
And what about the pride - which, predictably, came before the fall - and wasted all those lives?
The dead, the maimed.
The Americans, the Iraqis?
Since the Vietnam War, two lessons scream at us.
"You don't get involved in somebody else's Civil War."
"And you don't start them."
When we forget either lesson, American soldiers come home in caskets having accomplished nothing.
We owe our troops trustworthy guidance, not swashbuckle, bluster and simian chest-thumping.
Fear-driven Christians, cheerleading the Apocaplypse, are the most reprehensible actors in this whole sordid scenario. They are America's Taliban. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-newsroom-tea-party-is-americas.html
"Pope Benedict Questions Whether War Will Ever Again Be Just"
Alan: Three star Air Force general friend, AWC, age 95, recently confided: "It seems we haven't fought a "good war" since World War II."
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"Terrorism And The Other Religions"
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An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the US consulate compound in Benghazi late on Sept. 11, 2012. The alleged ringleader in the attack has been captured by involving Special Operations forces. (AFP/Getty Images)
Whichever "pistol" this young buck is shooting, it's all about: "Bang!" There is no better categorization of the hormonally-driven, cultural illiterates who fight wars than "young, dumb fucks." I know. I was a young, dumb fuck. (And smarter than most...)
American conservatives
- particularly Christian conservatives -
are determined to stay stupid.
Jindal video:
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