The Long Crisis

Posts Tagged ‘Obama’s war’

Wikileaks proves beyond a doubt that the truth about the war in Afghanistan is totally unwelcome by Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, every general in the war theater and throughout the military, as well as President Obama.

Actually, Wikileaks has revealed very little if any new information about conditions in Afghanistan. Most of the approximately 77,000 documents released thus far are low-level accounts of incidents and tactical situations that have been previously reported or are minor events. The only information that may be classified as new is that the Taliban have on occasion used heat seeking missiles as offensive weapons against US and NATO aircraft. Even that information should not come as a surprise as it was the US that introduced the Stinger missiles into Afghanistan that were used by the Afghans against the Soviets with effective results.

The information that seem to be so disturbing to the American war leadership was that Pakistan has been double dealing in the fight against the Taliban. However, this information is not new. It has been surmised since 2004 that the Taliban has received and is still receiving assistance from the Pakistani ISI, their version of the US CIA. The Taliban was created by the ISI, with assistance from the United States CIA, during the Soviet-Afghanistan war which ended in 1989.

Rather than be bent out of shape that this old information is once again in the news the US should acknowledge that politics in Pakistan are extremely complicated and that the power of the central government is limited. The military has long had an important position of power within Pakistan and military objectives, especially in the Interservice Intelligence unit (ISI), often are not the same as the publicly announced objectives of the Pakistani government. Pakistan does not want a government in Afghanistan that is in any way friendly with their old foe India. The United States faces extreme challenges in working through a sensible relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.

The statement by Sec. of Defense Robert Gates that “blood is on the hands of Wikileaks” seems to me to be one of extreme hypocrisy. It would seem to me that blood is on the hands of Robert Gates, and President George Bush and President Obama administration’s for pursuing a ridiculous war that has killed thousands of Afghan civilians as well as over 1100 US servicemen during what is now a nine year effort in futility. The Taliban will still be in Afghanistan long after the US and Nato forces have pulled out. After all they are residents there.

Wikileaks has been and undoubtably will continue to be attacked by the present administration as well as by the military as the messenger that brings further confirmation as to how badly the war in Afghanistan has been managed by US and NATO forces. It seems that the truth is the last thing that the Obama administration wishes to reveal to the American public. This fact is a huge disappointment to those who believed that President Obama was serious about his desire to bring transparency to government as promised during his presidential campaign.

I strongly believe that this disappointment will make itself known during the November midterm elections although the war will likely be a minor political factor compared to the sorry state of the US economy.

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In the summer of 2009, reporter and brave man Ben Anderson traveled to the Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan to document the first military campaign ordered by President Obama. Anderson provides an inside view of what life is like for Echo Company’s U.S. Marines – including getting ambushed by the Taliban and hit by a roadside bomb.

As you will quickly see from the video the new Obama plan of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghanistan people have about as much of a chance for success as the hearts and minds campaign of presidents Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam War.

In their effort to defeat the Taliban the Marines are shown kicking down doors, engaged in endless patrols through the dreary Afghanistan villages, living in harsh conditions, and discussing among themselves and to the video crew how Americans care so little about their efforts in the Afghanistan war zone.

The argument that president Obama gives for the enormously expensive US effort in Afghanistan is in my opinion, pure bullshit. As you will see in the video present Obama states that the mission of the US in Afghanistan is to deny Al Qaeda and the Taliban access to training camps and safe haven areas where they could plot future terrorist activities against the United States homeland. This really makes no sense at all as our own intelligence services estimates that there are no more than 100 Al Qaeda operatives within Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has much more of a presence in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and even the Philippines, then they have in Afghanistan. As for the Taliban they have wisely changed tactics and are now using suicide bombers, IED’s, and low intensity pop shots at the coalition forces rather than meeting those forces head on. In Afghanistan we are fighting a resourceful and clever enemy on their own turf. The Taliban will not give up. They will fight a low intensity assymmetrical form of warfare for as long as it takes to exhaust our patience and resources.

As one Taliban commander said several years ago “you have the watch but we have the time”. The Taliban know full well that even at the new troop levels that president Obama has committed to Afghanistan,100,000 troops are not nearly enough man power to control a country as large as Afghanistan, especially when you are fighting skillful determined warriors who have a long history of being involved in conflict.

So the question is, why are we really in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, the honest answer would seem to be the same as the reason that we stayed in Vietnam for so many difficult years. And we all know how well that worked out. And that answer is, in simple terms, to save face.

Yes, I know that president Obama, Defense Secretary Gates, the various generals in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps all say that we must win the war in Afghanistan in order to provide security to the United States. Their argument is much the same as during the Vietnam era when all sorts of predictions that losing the war would bring disaster to the United States all proved to be wrong. The true disaster was for the United States to involve itself in a land war in Asia to begin with. President Eisenhower was absolutely correct in warning against our involvement in a land war in Asia.

Now president Obama has chosen to escalate a war in one of the poorest nations on earth that is even more remote from the United States and with more rugged geography than Vietnam. Keeping our troops supplied in that country is difficult and extremely expensive. There are no seaports in landlocked Afghanistan. Our military has to be supplied by airlift and by truck convoys from neighboring Pakistan through dangerous and treacherous mountain passes.

I really cannot buy the position that the very security of the United States is dependent upon our success in Afghanistan. To escalate the war there is to give Al Qaeda and the Taliban the gift that just keeps on giving. Osama bin Laden’s stated plan from well before the 9/11 attack was to bankrupt the United States. Whether bin Laden is dead or alive really makes no difference. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already costing the United States in excess of $1 trillion, at a time when economic conditions are already poor and deteriorating, the escalation of the war is to fulfill bin Laden’s wildest dream.

Just watch the US Marines in action in the video. Note the profound cultural differences between the Marines and the Afghanistan people. Who can believe that the US will stay and defend the Afghans, whom they consider rag heads and a primitive people, as public opinion within the US becomes even more negative and the US economy continues to flounder. Team Obama is truly crazy if they think that by escalating the war and causing even more civilian deaths we are ever going to win the hearts and minds of these tribal people.

As the reporter Ben Anderson states near the end of the video the only reason that we are still in Afghanistan is to save face. No American president wants to be known as a president who lost a war. American hubris and arrogance lives within the psyche of president Obama. President Obama is likely betting his second term in office upon the results of his war escalation. Unless there is an amazing improvement in the Afghanistan war and the US economy well before the 2012 elections, president Obama will be a one term president.

In the meantime, pity the United States Marines who will bear the brunt of the escalation in fighting. While the Marines are a superb offensive military force they are not well suited for the type of low intensity asymmetrical IED and suicide bomber warfare that they will experience in Afghanistan. All of our military will pay a high price for the face-saving effort and do-gooder notions that president Obama and his team of so-called experts are determined to carry out with flawed strategy and tactics in Afghanistan.

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The Afghanistan War is not going well. After nearly nine years of conflict the Taliban are growing stronger and now control as much as 70% of the countryside. The following video, “Obama’s War”, is an on the ground presentation of some of the harsh conditions faced by US Marines in combat operations as well as interviews of Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis, both military and civilians, looked to for advice by President Obama.

The following is from the excellent PBS coverage of the war and explains some of the difficult and outrageously expensive issues and options that are now on Obama’s plate.
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In Obama’s War, veteran correspondent Martin Smith travels across Afghanistan and Pakistan to see first-hand how the president’s new strategy is taking shape, delivering vivid, on-the-ground reporting from this eight-year-old war’s many fronts. Through interviews with top generals, diplomats and government officials, Smith also reports the internal debates over President Obama’s grand attempt to combat terrorism at its roots.

“What we found on the ground was a huge exercise in nation building,” says Smith. “The concept’s become a bit of a dirty word, but that’s what this is. We started with the goal of eliminating Al Qaeda, and now we’ve wound up with the immense task of re-engineering two nations.”
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I warn you. After watching the video it is hard to see for the United States any good way out of a highly complicated conflict involving Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, NATO, and US interests in the region. Whatever action decided upon by President Obama is sure to unleash a round of protest and criticism that will endanger Obama’s opportunity for a second term in office.

Nation building under the best of circumstances is a difficult task. If even a lite version of nation building in Afghanistan, one of the poorest, most backward, and tribal nations on earth, is one of the US’s objectives in “winning” the war the task will be almost impossible to complete in any of our lifetimes, if ever.

Then there is the unpleasant fact that even if we do somehow prevail by defeating the Taliban and denying access to al-Qaeda of operating bases in Afghanistan there is even a greater problem with al-Qaeda and an extreme Islamic fundamentalist movement in Pakistan. With anti American sentiment already running high in Pakistan, a nation of about 180,000,000 citizens, any American boots on the ground campaign in Pakistan would be complete madness and could escalate out of control with dire consequences.

For the United States and President Obama I fear that there really is no good way out of a complicated conflict. Watch the video and then see how you feel.

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