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Re: Afghanization
Afghans do NOT want peace.
Afghans have been at war for centuries. Everyone else left long ago.
Afghans are easily the greatest military on earth for the last 2 centuries.
Afghans beat the British empire, the U.S.S.R, and the American Empire.
Americans have lost all thier wars since WWII. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, oh and Somalia and...absolute losers.
Afghans make money at "war" by playing both sides.
Taliban are NOT Afghans.
When America leaves, Afghans will go right back to growing Opium and hosting militant groups for whatever empire pays them....within a year.Comment
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Re: Afghanization
What makes you think they aren't doing that right now?Originally posted by MulaMan View PostComment
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Re: Afghanization
Another slice of the Afghan pie....
Meet Our Afghan Ally
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Just when President Barack Obama looked as if he might be railroaded into sending tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan the American envoy to Kabul has warned him not to do so. In a leaked cable to Washington sent last week, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Gen Karl W. Eikenberry, argues that it would be a mistake to send reinforcements until the government of President Hamid Karzai demonstrates that it will act against corruption and mismanagement. General Eikenberry knows what he is talking about because he has long experience of Afghanistan. A recently retired three star general, he was responsible for training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003 and was top US commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.
There is a dangerous misunderstanding outside Afghanistan about what ‘corruption and mismanagement’ mean in an Afghan context and a potentially lethal underestimation of how these impact on American and British forces. For example, the shadow British Defense Secretary Liam Fox argued that though ‘corruption and establishing good governance’ are not unimportant, ‘we need to recognize that Afghan governance is likely to look very different from governance as we knows it in the West.’
Leaving aside the patronizing tone of the statement, this shows that Mr Fox fundamentally misunderstands what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan. Corruption and mismanagement do not just mean that the police are on the take or that no contract is awarded without a bribe. It is much worse than that. For instance, one reason Afghan villagers prefer to deal with the Taliban rather than the government security forces is that the latter have a habit of seizing their sons at checkpoints and sodomizing them. None of our business, Mr Fox, who may be British Defense Secretary by this time next year, would presumably say. We are not in Afghanistan for the good government of Afghans: ‘Our troops are not fighting and dying in Afghanistan for Karzai’s government nor should they ever be.’ But the fact that male rape is common practice in the Afghan armed forces has, unfortunately, a great deal to do with the fate of British soldiers. There was a horrified reaction across Britain last week when a 25-year old policeman called Gulbuddin working in a police station in the Nad Ali district of Helmand killed five British soldiers when he opened fire with a machine gun on them. But the reason he did so, according to Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times, citing two Afghans who knew Gulbuddin, was that he had been brutally beaten, sodomised and sexually molested by a senior Afghan officer whom he regarded as being protected by the British.
The slaughter at Nad Ali is a microcosm of what is happening across Afghanistan. It is why Mr Fox is wrong and General Eikenberry is right about the dangers of committing more American or British troops regardless of the way Afghanistan is ruled. Nor are the events which led to the deaths of the young Britoish soldiers out of the ordinary. Western military officials eager to show success in training the Afghan army and police have reportedly suppressed for years accounts from Canadian troops that the newly trained security forces are raping young boys.
Mr Fox’s approach only makes sense if we assume that it does not matter what ordinary Afghans think. This is what the Americans and, to a lesser degree the British, thought in Iraq in 2003. They soon learned different. I remember visiting the town of al-Majar al-Kabir in June 2003, soon after six British military policemen had been shot dead in the local police station. The British army had unwisely sent patrols with dogs through one of the most heavily armed towns in the country, famous for its resistance to Saddam Hussein, as if the British were an all-conquering occupation army.
The Americans and British eventually learned the unnecessarily costly lesson in Iraq that what Iraqis thought and did would wholly determine if foreign forces were going to be shot at or not. Mr Fox claims the US and Briton will not be in Afghanistan in defense of the Afghan government, but if we are not doing that, then we become an occupation force. A growing belief that this is already the case is enabling Taliban fighters, who used to be unpopular even among the Pashtun, to present themselves as battling for Afghan independence.
General Eikenberry expresses frustration over the lack of US money being allocated for spending on development and reconstruction after Afghanistan’s infrastructure has been wrecked by 30 years of war. The ambassador has not even been able to obtain $2.5 billion for non-military spending, this though the cost of the extra 40,000 US troops requested by General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, is put by army planners at $33 billion and by White House officials at about $50 billion over a year.
This is one of the absurdities of the Afghan war. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Some 12 million out of 27 million Afghans live below the poverty line on 45 cents a day, according to the UN.
“Afghanistan is facing a food crisis which will turn into a human catastrophe if donors do not act promptly,” said Karim Khalili, the second vice president, often denounced as a warlord, earlier this summer. Yet the lower estimate for each extra 1,000 US troops is $1 billion a year.
An Afghan policeman earns around $120 a month. In return for this he is forced to do a more dangerous job than Afghan soldiers, some 1,500 policemen being killed between 2007 and 2009, three times the number of deaths suffered by the Afghan army. Compare this money and these dangers with that of a US paid consultant earning $250,000 a year -- and with the cost of his guards, accommodation and translator totalling the same amount again – lurking in his villa in Kabul. General Eikenberry is rightly sceptical about the dispatch of reinforcements to prop up a regime which is more of a racket than an administration. The troops may kill more Taliban, but they will also be their recruiting sergeants. As for the Afghan government, its ill-paid forces will not be eager to fight harder if they can get the Americans and the British to do their fighting for them.
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick11132009.html
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Re: Afghanization
November 14, 2009
News Analysis
Russian Deal on Afghan Supply Route Not Done Yet
By PETER BAKER WASHINGTON — When he met President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia in April, President Obama sought to open an important new supply corridor for Afghanistan by flying American troops and weapons through Russian airspace. Visiting Moscow in July, he sealed a deal for as many as 4,500 flights a year, in what he called a “substantial contribution” to the war and a sign of improving relations with Russia.
Seven months after the idea was raised and four months after the agreement was signed, the number of American flights that have actually traversed Russian airspace?
One. And that was for show.
The failure so far to translate words into reality amid bureaucratic delays, including one involving a Russian agency insisting on charging air navigation fees that the Kremlin had said would be waived, underscores the challenges of Mr. Obama’s effort to transform ties between Washington and Moscow. For all of the lofty sentiments expressed at high-profile summit meetings, actual change has never been easy to deliver.
The need to break through the logjam will soon take on fresh urgency if Mr. Obama decides to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. For eight years, the American military has struggled to find and maintain reliable supply routes into Afghanistan, but Mr. Obama may send more troops in a single order than at any point in the war, straining the system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/wo...14flights.html
November 15, 2009
High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War
By CHRISTOPHER DREW While President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan is primarily a military one, it also has substantial budget implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior administration officials say.
The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.
Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier a year, appears almost constant.
So even if Mr. Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan’s new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us...ef=todayspaperComment
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Re: Afghanization
Originally posted by GRG55 View Post
Fiscal pressures are finally coming to bear...
Afghan strategy debate exposes split over price
Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:48am EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's review of war strategy in Afghanistan not only has exposed differences between his political and military advisers over how many troops to send, but also what it will cost.
War spending in Afghanistan has more than doubled over the last year, reaching $6.7 billion in June alone, and sticker shock could fuel congressional opposition to another buildup.
The Pentagon has said it likely will need emergency funding for the war but that too many questions remain unanswered to estimate how much.
Rough estimates cited by lawmakers and budget analysts top $40 billion, but competing cost estimates for more troops have stoked confusion on an issue that could have implications for Obama in the run-up to next year's congressional elections.
The White House budget office estimates that it will cost about $1 million for each additional soldier sent to Afghanistan. That means a 30,000-40,000 troop surge, the number favored by several of Obama's top national security and military advisers, would amount to $30 billion to $40 billion a year.
But the Pentagon's comptroller estimates the operating cost of deploying and sustaining one additional troop for a full year in Afghanistan would be half that, at $500,000...[is there anybody out there that still believes a Pentagon cost estimate?
]
..."It reflects the political climate. The leadership is confused, we're broke and most Americans don't know why we're there," Fair said...
...Budget experts say putting a precise price tag on a proposed troop increase at this stage in the review process is virtually impossible...
...Growing public concerns about adding to the record $1.4 trillion U.S. budget deficit could make another emergency war supplemental a political liability for Obama...
...Obama pledged to put an end to the practice but asked Congress in April for an extra $83.4 billion to fund the wars, citing threats from al Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban. Obama said at the time that the supplemental was "the last planned."...
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Re: Afghanization
Can you spell proxy war...;)Originally posted by GRG55 View Post
U.S. raises pressure on Pakistan over Taliban, al Qaeda
Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:37am EST
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The United States has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to expand its fight against Taliban and al Qaeda militants, the New York Times reported on Monday, as a suicide bomber killed four people in the latest militant attack...
...The United States has warned Pakistan the success of the strategy depends on Pakistan broadening its fight beyond the militants attacking it to groups using Pakistani havens for attacking against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Times said.
Obama sent a letter to President Asif Ali Zardari saying he expected the Pakistani leader to rally political and national security institutions in a united campaign against extremists, the Times reported...
...In the letter, Obama offered a range of incentives to the Pakistanis for their cooperation, including enhanced intelligence sharing and military cooperation, the Times said...
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Re: Afghanization
Enough is enough. Even the US Government has its limits...Originally posted by GRG55 View PostObama vows Afghan exit; battered Karzai to take oath
Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:05pm EST
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama aims to bring the Afghan war to an end before he leaves office, he said on Wednesday...
...In an interview with CNN, Obama said he would soon announce the results of a long-awaited review, which would include an exit strategy to avoid "a multi-year occupation that won't serve the interests of the United States"...
...In eight years of war the Taliban insurgency is now at its deadliest, the Western force protecting Karzai is at its largest, and the Afghan leader's own reputation is at its lowest, wrecked by election fraud, corruption and weak government...
...A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Tuesday found that 52 percent of Americans now believe the war is not worth fighting, although 55 percent believe Obama will choose a strategy that will work.
Obama has already presided over a massive escalation of the war. There are now nearly 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including 68,000 Americans, more than half arriving this year...
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Re: Afghanization
The part in the original article that mentions the training of Afghans reminds me of a story a customer told me a few months ago. His 20 year old son joined the National Guard during college and is now training Afghan police. He told his Father, " Dad I'm training this guy, and I can't tell if he is 20 or 50 years old". They are a little weather beaten I suppose.
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Re: Afghanization
Originally posted by GRG55Would that be before or after the previously promised Iraq withdrawal?
Or the numerous other promises made?Comment
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Re: Afghanization
Split the list into domestic promises and foreign policy related promises. Then start ticking them off as they finally start to occur. I think you'll see quite a contrast between the two lists...;)Originally posted by c1ue View PostComment
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