I'm struggling to come up with what's in the US' national security interest in setting up camp in Afghanistan.
Let USAID and the State Department get involved in whatever nation-building and aid (using the military to perform nonfighting functions is like using a hammer to paint your home), along with military training for the Afghan troops, a strike force and many, many Predator drones and Special Forces for military intel.
In the final analysis, 9/11 was about our vastly over-indulged intelligence services not connecting the dots or bothering to talk to each other, and a national command who thought erecting Star Wars in Poland was more important than reading that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the US. Because they wanted to prove how mavericky they were compared to those damn Clinton hippies whose policies ranked OBL as a top priority.
Afghanistan & Iraq were only secondary factors (and factors largely created by the Conservatives, who never met a despot they weren't eager to hop into bed with then shower with gifts).
Work smart, not just hard.
@Trai_Dep: There really is no sane reason to continue the Afghan war, let alone increasing troop levels.
All the Pentagon ever says is "well, we need to stabilize the country so that we can hand over control to Afghan forces" but they never seem to consider that just maybe the presence of U.S. troops is making the situation there less stable.
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: According to the NYT, the Pentagon is in the process of recalibrating "Afghan forces" to mean "anti-Taliban militias". Euphamism or euthanasia? If the US is capitulating to warlordism, Afghanistan's slim chance of centralizing power just got slimmer. Speaking to one of Trai-Dep's points, the last militia we supported in Afghanistan was the Taliban. And on the other hand, I worry that this is the US's smiling way of saying, "We're going to leave you to die now." [www.nytimes.com]
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: The Northern Alliance! They had a great franchise in 2001.
So, how did we get from there to here? It's like the history of the NFL. The games started garnering national television coverage and attention (although in this case it's rather negative). So they merged the leagues, set up conferences and divisions, and added some expansion teams. I just hope they start printing warlord trading cards to go with my collector's edition al Qaeda card deck.
@Unsolicited Advice:
The public option would probably have a long-term net effect of reducing the budget deficit. This is not my opinion, that's the opinion of the CBO, which is obviously a radical maoist splinter organization.
And I'm not sure what gold prices have to do with this, so....... yeah.
The CBO actually has a history of being a longtime pollyanna on economic activity related to revenue portions of bills - see Obama's first budget, cap and trade, or Iraq. That's why it was such an indictment when they crapped all over the spending included in the first healthcare bill to "reduce" costs. My money (literally, I invested this way!) is on them grossly underestimating costs based on my government-fearing ideology and the fact that I don't believe in touching hot stoves like Congressmen wielding economic projections more than once.
(Rapid gold appreciation is a no-confidence vote in the US Dollar. Dollar depreciation of this magnitude in concert with dollar appreciation typically indicate a lack of faith in fiscal/monetary policy. Fiat currencies are essentially dependant upon tax revenues and the fiscal prudence of nations. We're running the largest postwar budget deficit and the Fed (read: us) is laden with toxic assets marked at ridiculous valuations. See you in the bartering line.)
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: Plus, all plans include mandatory insurance in one form or another. So either way, it'll be more expensive than now. Reaching this goal using a nonprofit Public Option versus a 10x more expensive, for-profit middleman who exists solely to shovel dollars to Wall Street and themselves isn't much of a contest, really.
The guys whining about how expensive it is (which is itself a canard, as you point out) always conveniently leave out the fact that their plan will be even MORE deficit-fueling.
They must hate our children so, to want to burden them with so much unnecessary national debt.
@Unsolicited Advice:The point is, we have people who cry and cry about spending, but do it for unending foreign wars without batting an eyelash, then get upset when we try to do something domestically as "wasteful", when the ultimate aim is to reduce cost and help people (which if it will add to the debt is debatable).
Yes, gold appreciation is a no confidence vote in US Dollar, as is the crazy buying of guns is a sign of people thinking Obama is going to take them. They're both silly and paranoid, IMO. As the post said, "gut feelings".
Right, but Pareene's tactic is to say "these budget hawks are just discredited liars who actually want to spend money!" Which, considering the Bush regime and Reagan's national debt expansions, is true!
But the base ideology - cutting spending and reducing the size of the government - is necessary. We may vote every four years, but the market votes every day; either we stop spending or it's over.
@Unsolicited Advice: The market doesn't vote. People invest. If you think there will be massive inflation, you would invest your money in stocks, not "vote for" gold. Gold is for people who don't really understand the market. It is a bubble in the making, because dumb people like you are "voting" for it.
Mr. Rohde's situation in this video is a lot like the one he faced when held captive. The picture he painted of that experience was a dark and undecipherable as you can imagine. His insight that our view of the Taliban as some static organization is wholly inaccurate was chilling. It seems to be an ever-changing mass, coming together almost transactionally, and then spinning itself into its next iteration. This kind of inherent confusion was buttressed by the realization that the man who kidnapped Rohde was the man he was supposed to interview, a fact he didn't come into possession of until well into his captivity.
I don't know what a shit storm looks like, but the more I read about Afghanistan/Pakistan and the marauding hordes that rule its nether regions, I am definitely getting an image.
@TheSometimesWhy: It frustrates me when Rohde gives the impression that everyone thinks of the Taliban as a strict hierarchy. I know that when I was in Afghanistan, none of the people I worked with thought of it that way, and we all worked to get a better understanding of the various networks and the differing operational methods between each. For Rohde to come back and say how foolish we all are, and please, let him tell us how it really is, is incredibly irritating. #davidrohde
@Adah: I appreciate your frustration, but what if what he is reporting is accurate in the sense that our perceptions are inherently flawed because the thing we are trying to perceive defies static perception? That it is morphing every day into something that defies categorization, let alone a coherent policy for engaging militarily.
I, for one, wouldn't want Mr. Rohde's job, not so much for the obvious danger posed but because the act of communicating what he is learning as the result of being embedded as he is has to be beyond comprehension to most people. #davidrohde
@TheSometimesWhy: Well, of course the insurgency is constantly changing. But from reading Mr. Rohde's five part series from a few weeks ago, I'm not sure his understanding of it is as great as he thinks it is. He was kept in various rooms for seven months, and his main source of information appears to come from the low level men guarding him. The appearances of high level leaders in Rohde's narrative were remarkable because, by his own admission, they were fairly rare. Now, who knows, maybe when his book inevitably comes out, I'll be proven wrong and Rohde will reveal some remarkable details from these conversations with high level leaders. But he certainly didn't have anything terribly revealing in his Times piece that hasn't been said better and with a greater understanding in many other books. #davidrohde
@Adah: I don't see how you can take issue with Mr. Rohde for the lack of high-level leaders being conspicuously absent from his narrative. I dare say he was playing the cards he was dealt, so to speak. I think you're losing sight of the fact that his core mission was to interview the man who ultimately kidnapped him as part of an on-going series of reports. A reporter in the field functioning as Mr. Rohde did is per force sending back a mosaic of what he sees. Over-arching analysis isn't the immediate by-product of the kind of reportage he was responsible for. He is essentially a scout, hopefully a very insightful, well-informed one, but given the environmental obstacles to performing that task, i.e., staying alive, I think he did yeoman's work. What his pieces as they appeared in the NYTs revealed was the insanity of our presence there as currently constituted.
I would hope that people like yourself would wait for Mr. Rohde to have the luxury of some time to distill the sheer viscerality of that experience, and then see what analysis he puts forth. Given what he has been through, it not only seems fair but necessary if we are going to learn anything beyond what he has already imparted. #davidrohde
@TheSometimesWhy: I think it's unlikely that he got the larger picture of how the insurgency functions from talking to some guards. I understand he goes in for a mosaic piece, but you seem to think this will contribute to ground-breaking changes in how we view the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. I disagree. Rohde went in with an outdated and inaccurate impression of Afghan culture and local Taliban politics. That's what got him kidnapped - that and his threat assessment appeared to be limited to asking the advice of one French reporter who'd interviewed the same Taliban leader a few years ago. Rohde failed to update his own understanding of how the Taliban works. I'm not sure that reflects on the U.S. government's or even better informed citizens and reporters' impression of the Taliban.
I would recommend Seth Jones's book In the Graveyard of Empires for a much better understanding of our situation in Afghanistan right now, and how our actions along with local Pashtun culture and history have contributed to the rise of the insurgency in the last few years.
@Adah: Bollocks. Most Afghanis aren't kosher with the Taliban's world view. The Taliban are a foreign influence on Afghanistan from the tribal regions. In the 1970s Afghanistan was a place where hippies used to go to listen to live music and smoke hash. Afghans don't burn down girls schools, the influence of outside Islamist forces (and first-world foreign occupiers) have led to that.
@gawkimo: In the cities, sure. But the country has always been more traditional and rural, even predating the Soviet invasion. The Afghan monarchy basically controlled the large cities and left huge areas of the population for the local tribes to control. When the Soviets invaded, and during the war that followed, those middle and creative classes left the country en masse, most never to return. Those cities are all a lot less hippie-ish today. About one million fled to Iran, about three million to Pakistan. The Taliban emerged out of those Pakistani refugee camps along the border, from Peshawer down to Balochistan. In that instance, I suppose you're right, but the Taliban was always a Pashtun power, and in some ways that's more important than what side of the border it originated on. Most Pashtuns consider the Pashtun area of Pakistan to practically be part of Afghanistan anyway. In addition, many of these insurgents were already radicalized in the 1970s. It's not al Al Qaeda coming in and changing the poor defenseless Pashtun people. See Gulbuddin Hekmatyr in the 1970s and 1980s.
I didn't mean to imply that all Afghans are Taliban sympathizers. In this you are correct. But they're a lot more scared of the Taliban than they are of us. If the Taliban (and I'm using Taliban as shorthand for the various insurgent networks active in Afghanistan) tells them to never breathe a word when Americans are around or they'll kill their family, you can bet they're not going to be overly helpful. On top of this, the rural areas are still much more conservative and more likely to be sympathetic to the Taliban than they are to us. Our COIN strategy, if we choose to keep following it, has us supposedly withdrawing from these areas as they are so hard to control. These are the areas where you get your battles of Wanat or battle at COP Keating. #davidrohde
@Adah: Even in the traditional, rural countryside: they don't like the Taliban any more than the foreign occupiers. These are tribal folks who will side with anyone (Muslim or otherwise) who a.) Leave them alone and b.) pay them more. These folks don't sympathize with the Taliban for being "more conservative" -- they sympathize with anyone who adheres to a.) and b.). #davidrohde
@Adah: I would also point out that the Mughal Empire basically began in Afghanistan (well, Samarkand, but mostly in what we call Afghanistan today) and those Muslims drank alcohol and depicted Muhammad in paintings. Afghanistan is not the Whahabbist Kingdom we portray it to be. They are moderates when it come to religion -- they are radicals when it come to foreign intervention -- we can thank the Russians for that. #davidrohde
Sometime during that conflict meant to retain the south like a burst appendix within the union for some reason, there was a convening of the brigade commanders of that breakaway contingent within the tent of one General Lee. There was much discussed and agreed upon by stately men in sober mien, whereupon they all broke up and headed for their units.
War stories are very exciting, aren't they?
Anyway, Lee received a blizzard of dispatches from one of his generals long before that worthy could have reached his outfit demanding instant reinforcements in great numbers or else all would be lost.
Lee considered it. Simply as a loss of nerve. All generals in panic mode demand ever more resources and troops. Never has it been enough, not at Antietam, not at Dien Ben Phu, and it won't be at News Corpse. #peggynoonan
This is the city: Washington, D.C. It's a capital city, the capital of the greatest country in the world. Sometimes countries not as great try to knock us down. That's where I come in. I have the nuclear football. It was Friday, November 13. It was rainy in Washington. We were working the day watch out of the White House. The boss is the American people. My partner is Joe Biden. My name's Obama. 8:04 AM. We were in the situation room when a call came in from General David McChrystal, the chief of our forces in Afghanistan. He was asking about the status of his request for additional forces to counter the Taliban. It looked like we would be heading for a meeting. #peggynoonan
@TheBusinessGuy: You want to know something sad? I fell over laughing at this, not because I've watched Dragnet, but because I watched PBS' children's show SquareOne spoof called "Mathnet." Nerd! #peggynoonan
A very suspicious non-denial. If they paid a third party security consultant, who's to say some of their fee didn't go to a ransom. I mean, I saw that Meg Ryan movie too. #davidrohde
Paying the ransom and then lying about it was the right thing to do. It's the morality of any further pursuit of the story about it that's up for debate.
The problem with the Times article is that it focuses too much on the CIA connection and not enough on all of the dirty pies that Ahmed has his dirty little fingers in. Pretty sure that its CIA policy to have at least one paramilitary group per country and the guys that run them generally have some skeletons in their closet (or back yard, neighborhood sewage plant, etc.). The real story would be to prove the drug connection beyond the Quack Standard. Get Hamid’s brother on tape doing his Ahmed Escobar shtick and you win yourself a Prize. #afghanistan
FYI Mr. Writer of this post: 'Afghani' is the currency of Afghanistan. 'Afghan' refers to the people. Oh, sh**, I'm just noticing that another commenter noticed the error, too.
11/23/09
Let USAID and the State Department get involved in whatever nation-building and aid (using the military to perform nonfighting functions is like using a hammer to paint your home), along with military training for the Afghan troops, a strike force and many, many Predator drones and Special Forces for military intel.
In the final analysis, 9/11 was about our vastly over-indulged intelligence services not connecting the dots or bothering to talk to each other, and a national command who thought erecting Star Wars in Poland was more important than reading that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the US. Because they wanted to prove how mavericky they were compared to those damn Clinton hippies whose policies ranked OBL as a top priority.
Afghanistan & Iraq were only secondary factors (and factors largely created by the Conservatives, who never met a despot they weren't eager to hop into bed with then shower with gifts).
Work smart, not just hard.
11/23/09
All the Pentagon ever says is "well, we need to stabilize the country so that we can hand over control to Afghan forces" but they never seem to consider that just maybe the presence of U.S. troops is making the situation there less stable.
11/23/09
[www.nytimes.com]
11/23/09
Plus that would be an awesome band name.
11/23/09
So, how did we get from there to here? It's like the history of the NFL. The games started garnering national television coverage and attention (although in this case it's rather negative). So they merged the leagues, set up conferences and divisions, and added some expansion teams. I just hope they start printing warlord trading cards to go with my collector's edition al Qaeda card deck.
11/23/09
The rest of the lying liar centrists and I are going to go buy some more gold now, thanks. The poor will surely be awash in dollars ere long.
[www.cnbc.com]
Zero sum, motherfucker.
11/23/09
The public option would probably have a long-term net effect of reducing the budget deficit. This is not my opinion, that's the opinion of the CBO, which is obviously a radical maoist splinter organization.
And I'm not sure what gold prices have to do with this, so....... yeah.
11/23/09
The CBO actually has a history of being a longtime pollyanna on economic activity related to revenue portions of bills - see Obama's first budget, cap and trade, or Iraq. That's why it was such an indictment when they crapped all over the spending included in the first healthcare bill to "reduce" costs. My money (literally, I invested this way!) is on them grossly underestimating costs based on my government-fearing ideology and the fact that I don't believe in touching hot stoves like Congressmen wielding economic projections more than once.
(Rapid gold appreciation is a no-confidence vote in the US Dollar. Dollar depreciation of this magnitude in concert with dollar appreciation typically indicate a lack of faith in fiscal/monetary policy. Fiat currencies are essentially dependant upon tax revenues and the fiscal prudence of nations. We're running the largest postwar budget deficit and the Fed (read: us) is laden with toxic assets marked at ridiculous valuations. See you in the bartering line.)
11/23/09
The guys whining about how expensive it is (which is itself a canard, as you point out) always conveniently leave out the fact that their plan will be even MORE deficit-fueling.
They must hate our children so, to want to burden them with so much unnecessary national debt.
11/23/09
@Unsolicited Advice:The point is, we have people who cry and cry about spending, but do it for unending foreign wars without batting an eyelash, then get upset when we try to do something domestically as "wasteful", when the ultimate aim is to reduce cost and help people (which if it will add to the debt is debatable).
Yes, gold appreciation is a no confidence vote in US Dollar, as is the crazy buying of guns is a sign of people thinking Obama is going to take them. They're both silly and paranoid, IMO. As the post said, "gut feelings".
11/23/09
11/23/09
Right, but Pareene's tactic is to say "these budget hawks are just discredited liars who actually want to spend money!" Which, considering the Bush regime and Reagan's national debt expansions, is true!
But the base ideology - cutting spending and reducing the size of the government - is necessary. We may vote every four years, but the market votes every day; either we stop spending or it's over.
11/23/09
11/23/09
Like I said at the outset: there are two sides to every trade.
11/13/09
I don't know what a shit storm looks like, but the more I read about Afghanistan/Pakistan and the marauding hordes that rule its nether regions, I am definitely getting an image.
And it is not pretty. #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
I, for one, wouldn't want Mr. Rohde's job, not so much for the obvious danger posed but because the act of communicating what he is learning as the result of being embedded as he is has to be beyond comprehension to most people. #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
I would hope that people like yourself would wait for Mr. Rohde to have the luxury of some time to distill the sheer viscerality of that experience, and then see what analysis he puts forth. Given what he has been through, it not only seems fair but necessary if we are going to learn anything beyond what he has already imparted. #davidrohde
11/13/09
I would recommend Seth Jones's book In the Graveyard of Empires for a much better understanding of our situation in Afghanistan right now, and how our actions along with local Pashtun culture and history have contributed to the rise of the insurgency in the last few years.
[www.amazon.com] #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
I didn't mean to imply that all Afghans are Taliban sympathizers. In this you are correct. But they're a lot more scared of the Taliban than they are of us. If the Taliban (and I'm using Taliban as shorthand for the various insurgent networks active in Afghanistan) tells them to never breathe a word when Americans are around or they'll kill their family, you can bet they're not going to be overly helpful. On top of this, the rural areas are still much more conservative and more likely to be sympathetic to the Taliban than they are to us. Our COIN strategy, if we choose to keep following it, has us supposedly withdrawing from these areas as they are so hard to control. These are the areas where you get your battles of Wanat or battle at COP Keating. #davidrohde
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
War stories are very exciting, aren't they?
Anyway, Lee received a blizzard of dispatches from one of his generals long before that worthy could have reached his outfit demanding instant reinforcements in great numbers or else all would be lost.
Lee considered it. Simply as a loss of nerve. All generals in panic mode demand ever more resources and troops. Never has it been enough, not at Antietam, not at Dien Ben Phu, and it won't be at News Corpse. #peggynoonan
11/13/09
Considering that these yahoos haven't been right about anything since Kurt Cobain's dental experiment, this is in fact a Good Thing. #peggynoonan
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
Nice one 'Procrastination_Stat!' #afghanistan
10/28/09
Regardless, yes, a sketchball. #afghanistan
10/22/09
10/22/09
10/22/09