Tag: Afghanistan (page 2)

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a new report on Afghanistan.

The report states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the U.S. had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops at least. It says that a review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora."

The blame for blowing the chance to get bin Laden -- and for the current state of the war in Afghanistan -- is placed squarely on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander Tommy Franks.

The full report is here (pdf). [More...]

It's wonderful to have a loud-mouth liberal like Alan Grayson in Washington, along with all the loud-mouth neo-cons and mush-mouth Democrats, but whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow, and Alan Grayson's grim analysis of Afghanistan is even grimmer than he thinks.

It's not a country; it's not even a place. It's just an empty place on the map.  It's terra incognita.  People who live there are a welter of different tribes, different language groups, different religious beliefs.  

All over the country you find different people who have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that we call them Afghans, and they don't even call themselves Afghans.  They're Tajiks or they're Pashtuns, or they're Hazzaras or someone else.  The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.  

With all due respect, which is actually a lot, I have to say that Rep. Grayson has been addled by world-tourism, and when you spend just a few days or weeks or even a few months in very foreign countries like Afghanistan, it's easy to avoid understanding that you don't understand anything at all, and only if you're very, very lucky will you ever experience even one or two epiphanies of the obvious like a sudden realization that...

Afghanistan is the Taliban is Afghanistan is the Taliban.

A declassified version of a report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on the war in Afghanistan predicts the U.S. will lose the war there if more troops aren't provided. McChrystal is the top U.S. and Nato Commander in Afghanistan.

"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

The Washington Post has published the report here. President Obama is studying the report. [More...]

Although the simple-minded mainstream media have christened some recent legislation on the far frontier of our colonial empire as "the Afghanistan rape law," it's worth noting that the same law that legalizes marital rape (specifically among the Shia) also forbids women to leave the house without permission from a male relative.

Ask Uncle Abdul before you walk out the door!

Meanwhile in the United States, popular revulsion against legalization of marital rape may undermine support for President Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan, since it isn't exactly easy to sell the idea of sacrificing American lives and money to make the world safe for rape.

This problem has produced an expectable wave of crazy excuses from Obama's koolaid-huffing partisans in the blogosphere, and one of the most bizarre is the egregious Jon Taplin's column on Talking Points Memo, "Holier Than Thou."

"We should remember that until 1993 marital rape was legal in North Carolina."

So let's not act "holier than thou" by protesting the legalization of marital rape in Afghanistan, because only 15 years ago, in the former Confederate state of North Carolina... and so on.

But if it were worth asking Mr. Taplin a question (and it isn't), someone might ask...

When is the last time US law forbade women to leave the house without permission from a male relative? Is it supposed to be insignificant that the so-called "rape law" also turns every home into a prison for women?

House-arrest for life!

What a beautiful empire!

So Mr. Obama wants more war in Afghanistan, and 30,000 more American soldiers to fight it, after seven long years of fighting to create a narco-state where 50% of the gross domestic product is produced by heroin, and millions of women will be prisoners in their own homes forever.

A federal judge has ruled the detainees at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan can challenge their confinement in U.S. court. The opinion is here (pdf.)

[Judge]Bates noted that the detainees are similar to those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those detainees won the right to challenge their confinements in federal court under a landmark Supreme Court ruling last year.

....Bates ruled that while the sites were "not identical," the "objective degree of [U.S.] control" was not "appreciably different." Obstacles to resolving the detainees' rights "are not as great as respondents claim," Bates said of the U.S. position. "And importantly," he wrote, the obstacles "are largely of the Executive's choosing," because the men "were all apprehended elsewhere and then brought (i.e. rendered) to Bagram for detention now exceeding six years."

The Obama Administration had sided with Bush on the case.

First Mexico, now Afghanistan. The Wall St. Journal has as breaking news at the top of its site right now:

The Obama administration will unveil a new Afghanistan strategy Friday that calls for devoting significant new resources to counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan and economic development in Pakistan.

Today, Obama's choice of Ambassador to Afghanistan, Lt Gen Karl Eikenberry, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at his confirmation hearing: [More...]

The Obama Administration has advised a federal judge that it agrees with former President Bush's position that detainees at the U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan have no right to challenge their confinement in U.S. Courts.

Last year, the US Supreme Court gave suspects held at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention.
Following that ruling, petitions were filed at a Washington district court on behalf of four detainees at Bagram.

The judge then gave the new administration an opportunity to refine the rules on appeals. In a two-sentence filing, justice department lawyers said the new administration had decided not to change the government's position.

[More...]

What will the CIA do to win friends among the Afghans? The Washington Post reports almost anything -- including handing out little blue pills to help the warlords with "sagging libidos."

Officials say these inducements are necessary in Afghanistan, a country where warlords and tribal leaders expect to be paid for their cooperation, and where, for some, switching sides can be as easy as changing tunics. If the Americans don't offer incentives, there are others who will, including Taliban commanders, drug dealers and even Iranian agents in the region.

The usual bribes of choice -- cash and weapons -- aren't always the best options, Afghanistan veterans say. Guns too often fall into the wrong hands, they say, and showy gifts such as money, jewelry and cars tend to draw unwanted attention.

What's next? Stress relievers, anti-depressants, "pep pills", Ambien?

Reza Azlan, writing at The Daily Beast, posits that legalizing opium could save Afghanistan:

America's drug war in Afghanistan has been a miserable failure. So why not legalize opium production and let Afghanistan become the Saudi Arabia of morphine?

He makes some good points. Among them:

It is time to admit that the struggle to end poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is a losing battle. The fact is that opium has long been Afghanistan’s sole successful export. Poppy seeds cost little to buy, can grow pretty much anywhere, and offer a huge return on a farmer’s investment. Only the Taliban has ever managed to significantly reduce opium production in the country (as it did during its late-1990s rule)—a feat managed by executing anyone caught growing poppies. It is no exaggeration to say that we have a better chance of defeating the Taliban than putting a dent in Afghanistan’s opium trade. So then, as the saying goes: if you can’t beat them, join them.

It won't happen, of course. Instead, Congress will redouble its efforts to pass "narco-terror" laws which will end up being used here at home against people who wouldn't know a terrorist if they found one in their soup. (Another example of a failed bill that could make a comeback here.)

So you think the new President will end our involvement in foreign wars? I never did, I just thought he'd trade one war for another, Iraq for Afghanistan.

It seems like this will be the case. The AP reports our Marines will be moving from Iraq to Afghanistan:

The top U.S. Marine general says there is a growing consensus among defense leaders to send a substantial contingent of Marines to Afghanistan, probably beginning next spring, while dramatically reducing their deployments to western Iraq.

Get ready for the narco-terror war. When they don't capture terrorists in Afghanistan, they'll bust the drug wholesalers and transporters and say they got terrorists.

No change here, other than one of geography. Whatever happened to "Bring the Troops Home?" Guess that went out of fashion after Vietnam.

After years of negotiating with human rights groups and the Red Cross, the U.S. this week allowed five detainees at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan to receive a family visit. There are 600 detainees in Bagram, some of whom have been held for years.

The decision to allow the visits followed years of discussions between American officers and the Red Cross, which says face-to-face visits between prisoners and relatives are a guaranteed right under international humanitarian law.

...The U.S. military in Iraq already allows visits to detainees by family members. Two detention centers, one in Baghdad and one on the Kuwait border, receive an average of 13,000 visitors a month, said Maj. Neal V. Fisher II, a U.S. spokesman in Iraq. Video conference visits are also available, he said.

More...

Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress today we are not winning in Afghanistan.

Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appeared before the House Armed Services Committee a day after President Bush announced that the U.S. would increase its presence in Afghanistan by 1,500 troops. Gates, who focused on Iraq, told the committee he thought that the U.S. strategy in Iraq has "entered that end game."

Their testimony was a public airing of a discussion that's going on within the Pentagon about how quickly the military can shift its focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. While violence has dropped precipitously in Iraq, it's climbed in Afghanistan. U.S. troop deaths there are higher than Iraq now, despite a far smaller presence. In addition, insurgent groups increasingly are taking control of villages.

Mullen thinks we can win in Afghanistan with more troops and a different strategy. We are not going to save Afghanistan no matter how many troops we put there. [More...]