ALL HAIL THE LIAR/DECIDER-IN-CHIEF...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/
http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=11945


All hail the LIAR/decider-in-chief...

by Pepe Escobar

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it … For the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.

- Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels

On the same day that United States President Barack Obama arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia, turning on the charm quotient to reconnect with his (doomed?) quest of "building bridges" with Muslim countries, former president George W Bush - who smashed those bridges in the first place - hit a Borders bookstore about a kilometer from his home in Dallas, Texas, on the first stop in the long march of flogging his 481-page memoir, Decision Points....I.E. utter fabricated LIES.....of CIA.

For countless sentient beings around the world, the alignment of the words "Bush" and "book" in the same sentence requires a suspension of disbelief. Regardless of the merits of his ghost written saga, this "boy emperor" (copyright Gore Vidal) is sure to ride welcoming waves of media adulation. Even before the book was published, the whole world had already been informed - in disbelief - that the counterfeit cowboy has an iPad, surfs the web, and is an avid reader of God - via the Bible - and the god of media - Rupert Murdoch. The Bible and the Wall Street Journal; it's a long way for a man who, in college, admitted to having read only two books in his life.

First thing I do, call my lawyer

Any doubts on how swiftly the Great Decider acted on the inside Job of 9/11? These lines will placate any metaphysical quest: "The first plane could have been an accident. The second was definitely an attack. The third was a declaration of war ... My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass ..."

And kick ass he did, not only as a bomber but as waterboarder-in-chief. Bush told his ghost writer that he ordered "[Central Intelligence Agency] CIA experts" to compile a list of interrogation techniques. "At my direction, Department of Justice and CIA lawyers conducted a careful legal review. The enhanced interrogation program complied with the constitution and all applicable laws, including those that ban torture."

OUR MURDERERS IN THE SKY

BARACK'S LATEST SURGE &  CONDUCT OF THE WAR IN AFPAK

by Scott Ritter

12. December, 2009
TruthDig.com

War is hell, as the saying goes. Murder, on the other hand, is a crime. In this age of the “long war” pitting the United States against the forces of global terror, it is critical that the American people be able to distinguish between the two. The legitimate application of military power to a problem that manifests itself, directly or indirectly, as a threat to the legitimate national security interests of the United States, while horrible in terms of its consequences, is not only defensible but mandatory.

The true test of a society and its leaders is the extent to which every effort is made to both properly define a problem as one worthy of military intervention and then exhaust every option other than the use of force. It is true that President Barack Obama inherited the war in Afghanistan from his predecessor and therefore cannot be held accountable for that which transpired beyond his ability to influence. But the president’s recent decision to “surge” 30,000 additional U.S. military troops into Afghanistan transfers ownership of the Afghan conflict to him and him alone. It is in this light that his decision must be ultimately judged.

In many ways, Obama’s presentation before the Long Gray Line at West Point, in which he explained his decision to conduct the Afghanistan surge, represented an insult to the collective intelligence of the American people. The most egregious contradiction in his speech was the notion that the people of Afghanistan, who, throughout their history, have resisted central authority whether emanating from Kabul or imposed by outside invaders, would somehow be compelled to embrace this new American plan.

At its heart, the strategy requires a fiercely independent people to swear fealty to a man, Hamid Karzai, whose tenure as Afghanistan’s president has been marred by inefficiencies and corruption (even Obama was forced to acknowledge the fraudulent nature of the recent election which secured Karzai’s second term in office). Trying to reverse centuries of adherence to local authority and tribal loyalty with the promise of effective central government would represent a monumental challenge for the most efficient and honest of Afghan leaders. That we are attempting to do so behind the person of Karzai represents the height of folly.

For any military-based solution to have a chance of succeeding, we would need to deploy into Afghanistan an army of social scientists capable of navigating the complex reality of intertribal and interethnic relationships. They would require not only astute diplomatic skills that would enable them to bring together Hazara Shiite and Pashtun Sunni, or Uzbek and Tadjik, or any other combination of the myriad of peoples who make up the populace of Afghanistan, but also an understanding of multiple native languages and dialects. But the reality is we are instead dispatching 20-year-old boys from Poughkeepsie whose skill set, perfected during several months of predeployment training, is more conducive to firing three rounds center mass into a human body.

The nation-building or “civilian strategy” (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/
12/01/afghanistan.key.points/index.html) envisioned by President Obama, impossibly ambitious even under the most ideal conditions, simply cannot be achieved with the resources at hand, whether in 18 months or 18 years. That he has chosen to place at risk the lives of even more American troops, and by extension the citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the pursuit of such unattainable ambition is inexcusable.

The American military is unmatched in its ability to wage war. If the problem of Afghanistan was able to be defined in military terms alone, then perhaps Obama’s surge would provide the basis of a solution. But the Afghan problem has never been a military problem. The United States has, from the very beginning of its Afghanistan misadventure, sought to define the mission within the overall context of a “war on terror.” But the real mission revolves more around bringing to justice the perpetrators of mass murder and building international consensus to help prevent another such crime than it does any variation of closing with and destroying an enemy through firepower, maneuver and shock effect, which is the traditional core of any military operation.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, created problems best dealt with through diplomacy, law enforcement and intelligence. That the United States chose to define it instead as an act of war means that we have never assembled the tool set necessary to solve the Afghan problem, which explains a recent admission by U.S. military officers that, after eight years of war, America was at “square one” in Afghanistan.

Obama’s characterization of the threat faced by the United States and its allies in the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) theater of operations is as misleading as it is inaccurate. There is no singular, homogeneous enemy to be confronted by a surging U.S. military. The notion that the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida fighters operating in both countries are part of an overarching Islamic fundamentalist movement seeking to export violence to the shores of America is fundamentally wrong. While the president may in fact have seen intelligence information (of undetermined veracity) that shows that some individuals or groups operating in the Af-Pak area of operations have in fact plotted such attacks, to characterize these players and their actions as representing a majority (or even significant minority) opinion among the thousands of fighters opposing the United States and its allies is just plain wrong. Yet, having accepted the definition of the Af-Pak problem in military terms, Obama had no choice but to accede to the solutions put forward by such charismatic military leaders as Gen. David Petraeus (the commander of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM) and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

It is not just that generals such as Petraeus and McChrystal dominate the public face of military leadership in America today. The real problem is that the organization they represent, CENTCOM, dominates the entire U.S. military—and, by extension, the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex—as no other unified command has done in U.S. history. Even at the height of the Vietnam War, the demands of the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV) on the U.S. military establishment had competition from U.S. European Command, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Pacific Command, because of the Cold War. Today, the only show in town is CENTCOM, given that its theater of operations encompasses the principal zones of operation in the “war on terror.”

The requirements of CENTCOM drive nearly every aspect of the U.S. military today, including training, procurement and operations. Even strategic nuclear forces have had their work impacted by the need of CENTCOM to strike deep underground targets associated with Iran’s nuclear program. Given the inherently militarized nature of the “war on terror,” CENTCOM has supplanted the Department of State as the “face” of America in terms of official interaction between the United States and the nations of an area of operations ranging from Africa to Pakistan.

CENTCOM therefore dominates issues such as economic assistance and other nation-to-nation interaction not normally associated with military operations. The combined military-diplomatic-economic activity associated with the work of CENTCOM provides it with unmatched leverage at home and abroad. While not intended as a direct result of the “war on terror,” CENTCOM has morphed into a virtual nation-state, operating largely independent of traditional checks and balances associated with the functioning of unified military commands.

Despite the command’s unprecedented power and influence, it would not have been all that difficult for Obama to stand up to the pressures brought to bear by CENTCOM in regard to Afghanistan. He is, after all, the commander in chief. The fact is, Obama opted out of any serious opposition to the plan for the most base of reasons—politics. Any serious effort on the part of Obama to meaningfully contest the CENTCOM-backed surge in Afghanistan would have triggered a contentious political struggle with both the military and Congress at a time when the president is pushing for passage of health care reform, the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda. The reality is that, yet again, American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are being sacrificed for the political advantage of an American politician. This was a charge that was all-too-popular during the administration of George W. Bush. That such an accusation can so readily be applied to Barack Obama, after only a year in office, underscores the magnitude of the failure of leadership and imagination he has exhibited when it comes to the Af-Pak surge.

This lack of imagination was most evident in how the president sought to justify the Af-Pak surge. “This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida,” he said in his West Point speech. In addition to his gross oversimplification of the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and its relationship with al-Qaida, Obama felt compelled to press the same fear-induced 9/11 buttons that were the trademark of his predecessor. “It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”

The continued focus on hunting down Osama bin Laden further underscores the lack of sophistication of his strategy. It is likely that bin Laden was not the central force behind the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, contrary to popular opinion. That honor goes to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s Egyptian associate whose radical Islamic fundamentalist credentials trump even those of his better-known Saudi Arabian partner, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaida operations chief currently in U.S. custody awaiting trial in New York.

That bin Laden was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, and should be held to account for his crimes, is not a question. But the notion that by somehow “getting” bin Laden the United States would break the back of al-Qaida today is absurd. People should start thinking about the day after bin Laden dies. Al-Qaida cells will continue to function as they did the day before bin Laden died. The biggest measurable change will be the level of popular support for al-Qaida worldwide—it will skyrocket as bin Laden’s myth and demise inspire many thousands to join in a global jihad against the West and encourage fundamentalist Muslims from state and nonstate players alike to contribute countless more millions of dollars to underwriting this effort. There can be no greater boost to bin Laden’s cause than America’s continued singular focus on bringing him in, “dead or alive.” The exclusive militarization of the ongoing “hunt” for bin Laden plays directly into the Saudi terrorist’s game plan.

Revenge is not a defensible motive for a nation like the United States. Justice is. De-linking our hunt for bin Laden from the failed (and flawed) vehicle of the “war on terror” would be a wise move, but one that sadly is not going to happen in the foreseeable future if the rhetoric of Obama at West Point serves as a guide. And, in a nation that continues to be gripped (and manipulated) by the horrors of 9/11, it remains to be seen whether the concept of justice, as defined by American law, ideals and values, can ever be applied to the perpetrators of that crime. The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will serve as a litmus test in this regard. Given America’s track record to date in handling the alleged 9/11 mastermind (the water-boarding of Mohammed 183 times continues to boggle the mind), it is hard to anticipate his exposure to the American legal system as anything but a kangaroo court.

The “war on terror” has shredded the concept of the rule of law, at least as applied by the United States within the context of this struggle. While Obama has made moves to fix some of the symptoms of the flawed policies of his predecessor, the underlying foundation of American arrogance and exceptionalism from which such policies emerged remains unchanged. There is no more telling example of this than the current program of targeted assassination taking place under the guise of armed unmanned aerial drones (also known as remotely piloted vehicles, or RPVs) operating in the Af-Pak theater of operations.

All pretense of either Afghan or Pakistani sovereignty disappears when these drones take to the air. Ostensibly used for intelligence gathering and lethal direct-action operations against so-called high-value targets (i.e., senior al-Qaida or Taliban leadership), RPV missions have become increasingly popular within the U.S. military and intelligence communities as a risk-free means of bringing maximum harm, in highly discriminatory fashion, to the enemy. Expansion of the United States’ RPV effort in Af-Pak has become a central part of the surge ordered by Obama, complementing the 30,000 combat troops he has ordered deployed to the region. But exactly who is targeted by these RPV operations? While the U.S. military and intelligence community maintains that every effort is made to positively identify a target as hostile before the decision to fire a missile or drop a bomb is made, the criteria for making this call are often left in the hands of personnel ill-equipped to make it.

In the ideal world, one would see the fusion of real-time imagery, real-time communications intercept and human sources on the ground before making such a call. But in reality this “perfect storm” of intelligence intersection rarely occurs. In its stead, one is left with fragmentary pieces of data that are cobbled together by personnel far removed from the point of actual conflict whose motivations are geared more toward action than discretion. Often, the most critical piece of intelligence comes from a human source who is using the U.S. military as a means of settling a local score more than furthering the struggle against terror. The end result is dead people on the ground whose demise has little, if any, impact on the “war on terror,” other than motivating even more people to rise up and struggle against the American occupiers and their Afghan or Pakistani cohorts.

Supporters of the RPV program claim that these strikes have killed over 800 “bad guys,” with a loss of only about 20 or so civilians whose proximity to the targets made them suspect in any case. Detractors flip these figures around, noting that only a score or more kills of “high-value targets” can be confirmed, and that the vast majority of those who have died or have been wounded in these attacks were civilians. In a conflict that is being waged in villages and towns in regions traditionally prone to intense independence and religious fundamentalism, distinguishing good from bad can be a daunting task. Given the U.S. track record, under which tribal gatherings and family functions such as weddings have been frequently misidentified as “hostile” gatherings and thus attacked with tragic results, one is inclined to doubt the official casualty figures associated with the RPV strikes.

Rather than furthering the U.S. cause in the “war on terror,” the RPV program, which President Obama seeks to expand in the Af-Pak theater, in reality represents a force-enhancement tool for the Taliban. Its indiscriminate application of death and destruction serves as a recruitment vehicle, with scores of new jihadists rising up to replace each individual who might have been killed by a missile attack. Like the surge that it is designed to complement, the expanded RPV program plays into the hands of those whom America is ostensibly targeting. While the U.S. military, aided by a fawning press, may seek to disguise the reality of the RPV program through catchy slogans such as “warheads through foreheads,” in reality it is murder by another name. And when murder represents the centerpiece of any national effort, yet alone one that aspires to win the “hearts and minds” of the targeted population, it is doomed to fail.

Scott Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of “Target Iran” (Nation Books, 2007).

Source: TruthDig.com Cross posted at: Therearenosunglasses weblog
Image:  palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_arc..


Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

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AMERICA LOOKING FOR EXCUSES - TO ATTACK PAKISTAN

Allegory about Afghan Shura and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan


by Brig Asif Haroon Raja




Like the myth of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda headquartered in FATA, which I discussed in a previous write up, another absurd claim has now come up from America that Mullah Omar along with his Shura is based in Quetta.

This story woven by spin doctors has caught the imagination of policy makers in Washington who are playing it impishly. Pakistani leaders already harassed by never ending allegations are at a loss how to respond to this latest assault since denials make no impression on accusers.

After repeating their story several times, US officials laid bare their actual motive by mentioning their flaming desire to employ the horrible drones in Balochistan including its capital.

Let us carryout a dispassionate appraisal of this claim. It is now a well known fact that Afghan Taliban hold control of nearly 80% Afghan Territory and hold complete sway over southern, eastern and to some extent western Afghanistan. These regions provide a safe and secured base to them; to operate into western, central and northern Afghanistan and return. Had their hold over southern and eastern Afghanistan been weak, it would have been quite logical to assume that they have made FATA or Pashtun belt of Balochistan adjacent to Helmand Province as their bases of operation.

Now that over 30000 troops of Pakistan Army have taken full control of South Waziristan and a division plus force is in North Waziristan, part of which is in Makeen area, any possibility of Afghan Taliban operating from these regions is ruled out. Same is applicable to Al-Qaeda. The only possible space which still requires further scanning is the countryside west of Ladha and Makeen towards Afghanistan border. Using boots on ground strategy, our troops are gradually clearing these areas as well.

Within Afghanistan, morale of US-NATO forces has considerably sunk and bunker mentality has crept in. Karzai regime has no control over state affairs and his credibility after last August (fraudulent) elections has eroded further. He is now seen more as an American stooge, who  is at the mercy of non-Pashtun Northern Alliance. Afghan National Army and Police too are in bad shape and operationally unfit to confront the Taliban. Afghan Pashtuns who are a predominant ethnic entity in Afghanistan, hate Americans because of their discriminatory attitude and are supportive of Taliban. Gulbadin Hikmatyar led Hizb-e-Islami and Jalaluddin Haqqani are also anti-American and anti-Karzai.

Given the favourable operational environment in Afghanistan for Taliban, it should be utterly foolish on part of Mullah Omar and his Shura to abandon the fully secured bases in Afghanistan and opt for an insecure base like Quetta where CIA, FBI, US marines, Blackwater, MI-6, RAW, BLA, BRA, BLF command strong influence. Target killings by BLA in Quetta have become a norm. Jacobabad and Pasni air bases are still under operational control of US troops as revealed by Lt Gen ® Shahid Aziz and confirmed by Defence Minister.

Shamsi base near Kharan had been in use for launching drones. Quetta being the capital city of Balochistan is too open and conspicuous for Mullah Omar to hide particularly when a heavy head money is the prize and the success or failure of Taliban resistance movement depends upon his survivability.

Pashtun areas in Balochistan have not only kept themselves dissociated from RAW backed Baloch insurgency (now turned into a separatist movement) but also kept both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban at bay. Under such insalubrious environments, it is preposterous for the US to keep insisting that Afghan Shura is in Quetta. Latest fabrication is that Afghan Taliban Shura has shifted to Karachi under the supervision of ISI where Omar has established a Madrassah.  

If for discussion sake we accept the wacky claims of presence of Afghan Shura in Quetta and that of Osama led Al-Qaeda in FATA theoretically; it implies that as far as US is concerned, the battle for Afghanistan is almost over. The news should have logically transported Gen McChrystal and his team to celebrate that the entire Taliban leadership and Al-Qaeda have fled to Pakistan and it is now much easier for them to get hold of few thousand rag tag Taliban fighters and not more than 100 Al-Qaeda fighters abandoned by their leaders or to win them over? The only precautionary measure required to be taken was to prevent re-entry of Afghan Shura and Al-Qaeda leadership by enhancing border check posts and surveillance means along the entire Afghan-Pakistan border (as frequently requested by Pakistan). In addition, he needed to fence and mine the entire length of border as repeatedly proposed by Pakistan but refused by Karzai and USA for reasons best known to them. No such thing has happened since Chrystal is depressed because of Osama phobia. Within Pakistan, once US intelligence agencies acquired credible intelligence, shouldn’t they have carried out joint raids on suspected locations without wasting a single minute? CIA, FBI and US diplomats would not have encountered an obstruction as they move about in Pakistan unchecked and enjoy full cooperation of all law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Otherwise too, was it wise on part of US leadership to broadcast the locations of Omar and Osama prematurely thereby giving them full chance to runaway??

Well knowing that Pakistan Army is deeply committed in fighting sponsored terrorists in various parts of NWFP and FATA and achieving fruitful results, the US instead of feeling mighty pleased and encouraging it to further stabilize these vital regions, has once again begun to chant their nauseating mantra of ‘do more’ and that too in new areas. Areas in Waziristan which are presently quiet and neutral are being provoked through drone attacks to make them restive. Orakzai Agency is being developed into another bastion. The US is pressing Pakistan to shift more troops from its eastern border and to start operations in Wazir inhabited South Waziristan and in North Waziristan, where it alleges most runaways have fled. It is trying to create conditions wherein Pakistan Army would be compelled to fight the combined force of Maulvi Nazir, Hakimullah Mehsud and Gul Bahadur. United front would ease up pressure on Hakimullah led TTP, which is in disarray. The US also want the Army and the FC in Balochistan to shift its focus from Baloch held areas where RAW-CIA-MI-6 backed separatist movement is raging and to concentrate towards peaceful Pashtun areas including Quetta, where it suspects Afghan Shura is hiding. The US-NATO forces, after their failed operation in Helmand are expected to launch another operation there once additional US troops arrive so as to force the militants to flee to neighbouring Pashtun belt of Balochistan and turn it volatile.

Having fully committed the army in fighting a futile US war on terror, RAW sponsored terrorists duly aided by Blackwater elements are playing havoc into major cities of Pakistan - through almost daily bomb blasts and suicide attacks. Focus is on such targets which hurts the military the most. Attack on a mosque during Friday prayers in Rawalpindi on 27 November, frequented mostly by army senior officers and their sons, was most gruesome. ISI set ups have been repeatedly struck since they frustrate the designs of enemies of Pakistan. Focus is now towards destabilizing the Punjab, after which emphasis will shift to Sindh to upturn main economic base of Pakistan. While CIA and FBI along with its shady outfits are fully involved in this destabilization game, the US leaders are hypocritically harping on the same old tunes that Pakistan is a key ally and the US seeks its stability and prosperity. Our leaders having been provided with clinching evidence of involvement of RAW in terrorism have still not picked up courage to expose India and to forcefully ask USA to bridle its strategic ally.          

Fact of the matter is that Omar, Osama and nuclear cards are being played with devious intentions. The real purpose behind it, is to cast aspersion on Pakistan that Pakistan Army and the ISI are aligned with Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda and sheltering them. It implies that there is a nexus between Pakistan-Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda and Pakistan is fully supporting Taliban and Al-Qaeda in their war against US-NATO forces in Afghanistan. With leadership of the two deadly organizations based inside Pakistan, it becomes a fit case for the US to mount an offensive against Pakistan (to root out safe sanctuaries and turn the corner). Cambodia model is on the cards. Indian forces have begun to mark time in concentration area. Desire for hot pursuit operations inside Pakistan and to extend the radius of action of drones too has again been expressed.

The US civil and military leadership instead of wasting time in superfluous blame game and monkey tricks is ought to concentrate on its work in Afghanistan and put things in order so that Pakistan gets back to peace again. After Pakistan Army having done their job admirably, it is now the turn of Gen McChrystal led US-NATO forces to perform at their end, by doing more - creating suitable conditions for safe and honorable exit from the quagmire called Afghanistan.     

Brig Asif Haroon is a Member Board of Advisors, Opinion Maker and writes on defense and security issues. He is based in Rawalpindi,  Pakistan.

Source: There are no sunglasses 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

YOUR COMMENT IS IMPORTANT

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR COMMENT

OBAMA'S STATE OF SURGE, AFGHANISTAN

Obama Surge Afghanistan---and---Pakistan

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: This small website has, I think, had some of the better analysis and reporting on the Afghan War this year.  It had Anand Gopal’s on-the-ground pieces on the Taliban, Ann Jones’s first-hand account of the farcical U.S. training program for the Afghan army and police, Pratap Chatterjee’s carefully reported tale of corruption at the highest levels, and Nick Turse’s report on just how the Pentagon has been digging in throughout that country, among other pieces.  As early as May, I was already writing about the various often little-noticed ways in which the Af/Pak War was escalating.  I return to that theme today.  It’s important for us all to take in as full a picture as possible of the true dimensions of the Afghan “surge.”

Tom]

The Nine Surges of Obama’s War

How to Escalate in Afghanistan

by Tom Engelhardt

In his Afghan “surge” speech at West Point last week, President Obama offered Americans some specifics to back up his new “way forward in Afghanistan.”  He spoke of the “additional 30,000 U.S. troops” he was sending into that country over the next six months.  He brought up the “roughly $30 billion” it would cost us to get them there and support them for a year.  And finally, he spoke of beginning to bring them home by July 2011.  Those were striking enough numbers, even if larger and, in terms of time, longer than many in the Democratic Party would have cared for.  Nonetheless, they don’t faintly cover just how fully the president has committed us to an expanding war and just how wide it is likely to become.

Despite the seeming specificity of the speech, it gave little sense of just how big and how expensive this surge will be.  In fact, what is being portrayed in the media as the surge of November 2009 is but a modest part of an ongoing expansion of the U.S. war effort in many areas.  Looked at another way, the media's focus on the president’s speech as the crucial moment of decision, and on those 30,000 new troops as the crucial piece of information, has distorted what’s actually underway.

In reality, the U.S. military, along with its civilian and intelligence counterparts, has been in an almost constant state of surge since the last days of the Bush administration.  Unfortunately, while information on this is available, and often well reported, it’s scattered in innumerable news stories on specific aspects of the war.  You have to be a media jockey to catch it all, no less put it together.

What follows, then, is my own attempt to make sense of the nine fronts on which the U.S. has been surging, and continues to do so, as 2009 ends.  Think of this as an effort to widen our view of Obama’s widening war.    

Obama’s Nine Surges

1.  The Troop Surge:  Let’s start with those “30,000” new troops the president announced.  First of all, they represent Obama’s surge, phase 2.  As the president pointed out in his speech, there were “just over 32,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan” when he took office in January 2009.  In March, Obama announced that he was ordering in 21,000 additional troops.  Last week, when he spoke, there were already approximately 68,000 to 70,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  If you add the 32,000 already there in January and the 21,700 actually dispatched after the March announcement, however, you only get 53,700, leaving another 15,000 or so to be accounted for.  According to Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post, 11,000 of those were “authorized in the waning days of the Bush administration and deployed this year,” bringing the figure to between 64,000 and 65,000.  In other words, the earliest stage of the present Afghan “surge” was already underway when Obama arrived.

It also looks like at least a few thousand more troops managed to slip through the door in recent months without notice or comment.  Similarly, with the 30,000 figure announced a week ago, DeYoung reports that the president quietly granted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates the right to “increase the number by 10 percent, or 3,000 troops, without additional White House approval or announcement.”  That already potentially brings the most recent surge numbers to 33,000, and an unnamed “senior military official” told De Young “that the final number could go as high as 35,000 to allow for additional support personnel such as engineers, med-evac units and route-clearance teams, which comb roads for bombs.”

Now, add in the 7,500 troops and trainers that administration officials reportedly strong-armed various European countries into offering.  More than 1,500 of these are already in Afghanistan and simply not being withdrawn as previously announced.  The cost of sending some of the others, like the 900-plus troops Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has promised, will undoubtedly be absorbed by Washington.  Nonetheless, add most of them in and, miraculously, you’ve surged up to, or beyond, Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal’s basic request for at least 40,000 troops to pursue a counterinsurgency war in that country.

2.  The Contractor Surge:  Given our heavily corporatized and privatized military, it makes no sense simply to talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan as if they were increasing in a void.  You also need to know about the private contractors who have taken over so many former military duties, from KP and driving supply convoys to providing security on large bases.  There’s no way of even knowing who is responsible for the surge of (largely Pentagon-funded) private contractors in Afghanistan.  Did their numbers play any part in the president’s three months of deliberations?  Does he have any control over how many contractors are put on the U.S. government payroll there?  We don’t know.

Private contractors certainly went unmentioned in his speech and, amid the flurry of headlines about troops going to Afghanistan, they remain almost unmentioned in the mainstream media.  In major pieces on the president’s tortuous “deliberations” with his key military and civilian advisors at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, all produced from copious officially inspired leaks, there wasn't a single mention of private contractors, and yet their numbers have been surging for months.

A modest-sized article by August Cole in the Wall Street Journal the day after the president’s speech gave us the basics, but you had to be looking.  Headlined “U.S. Adding Contractors at Fast Pace,” the piece barely peeked above the fold on page 7 of the paper.  According to Cole:  “The Defense Department's latest census shows that the number of contractors increased about 40% between the end of June and the end of September, for a total of 104,101. That compares with 113,731 in Iraq, down 5% in the same period... Most of the contractors in Afghanistan are locals, accounting for 78,430 of the total...”  In other words, there are already more private contractors on the payroll in Afghanistan than there will be U.S. troops when the latest surge is complete.

Though many of these contractors are local Afghans hired by outfits like DynCorp International and Fluor Corp., TPM Muckracker managed to get a further breakdown of these figures from the Pentagon and found that there were 16,400 “third country nationals” among the contractors, and 9,300 Americans.  This is a formidable crew, and its numbers are evidently still surging, as are the Pentagon contracts doled out to private outfits that go with them.  Cole, for instance, writes of the contract that Dyncorp and Fluor share to support U.S. forces in Afghanistan “which could be worth as much as $7.5 billion to each company in the coming years.”

3.  The Militia Surge:  U.S. Special Forces are now carrying out pilot programs for a mini-surge in support of local Afghan militias that are, at least theoretically, anti-Taliban.  The idea is evidently to create a movement along the lines of Iraq's Sunni Awakening Movement that, many believe, ensured the "success" of George W. Bush's 2007 surge in that country.  For now, as far as we know, U.S. support takes the form of offers of ammunition, food, and possibly some Kalashnikov rifles, but in the future we'll be ponying up more arms and, undoubtedly, significant amounts of money.

This is, after all, to be a national program, the Community Defense initiative, which, according to Jim Michaels of USA Today, will “funnel millions of dollars in foreign aid to villages that organize ‘neighborhood watch’-like programs to help with security.”  Think of this as a “bribe” surge.  Such programs are bound to turn out to be essentially money-based and designed to buy “friendship.”

4.  The Civilian Surge:  Yes, Virginia, there is a “civilian surge” underway in Afghanistan, involving increases in the number of “diplomats and experts in agriculture, education, health and rule of law sent to Kabul and to provincial reconstruction teams across the country.”  The State Department now claims to be “on track” to triple the U.S. civilian component in Afghanistan from 320 officials in January 2009 to 974 by “the early weeks of next year.”  (Of course, that, in turn, means another mini-surge in private contractors:  more security guards to protect civilian employees of the U.S. government.)  A similar civilian surge is evidently underway in neighboring Pakistan, just the thing to go with a surge of civilian aid and a plan for a humongous new, nearly billion-dollar embassy compound to be built in Islamabad.

5. The CIA and Special Forces Surge:  And speaking of Pakistan, Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room blog had it right recently when, considering the CIA’s “covert” (but openly discussed) drone war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, he wrote:  “The most important escalation of the war might be the one the President didn’t mention at West Point.”  In fact, the CIA’s drone attacks there have been escalating in numbers since the Obama administration came into office.  Now, it seems, paralleling the civilian surge in the Af/Pak theater of operations, there is to be a CIA one as well.  While little information on this is available, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times report that in recent months the CIA has delivered a plan to the White House “for widening the campaign of strikes against militants by drone aircraft in Pakistan, sending additional spies there and securing a White House commitment to bulk up the C.I.A.’s budget for operations inside the country.”

In addition, Scott Shane of the Times reports:

“The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said..., to parallel the president’s decision… to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time -- a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas -- because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.”

The Pakistani southern border province of Baluchistan is a hornet’s nest with its own sets of separatists and religious extremists, as well as a (possibly U.S.-funded) rebel movement aimed at the Baluchi minority areas of Iran.  The Pakistani government is powerfully opposed to drone strikes in the area of the heavily populated provincial capital of Quetta where, Washington insists, the Afghan Taliban leadership largely resides.  If such strikes do begin, they could prove the most destabilizing aspect of the widening of the war that the present surge represents.

In addition, thanks to the Nation magazine’s Jeremy Scahill, we now know that, from a secret base in Karachi, Pakistan, the U.S. Army’s Joint Special Operations Command, in conjunction with the private security contractor Xe (formerly Blackwater), operates “a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”  Since so many U.S. activities in Pakistan involve secretive, undoubtedly black-budget operations, we may only have the faintest outlines of what the “surge” there means.

6.  The Base-Building Surge:  Like the surge in contractors and in drone attacks, the surge in base-building in Afghanistan significantly preceded Obama's latest troop-surge announcement.  A recent NBC Nightly News report on the ever-expanding U.S. base at Kandahar Airfield, which it aptly termed a “boom town,” shows just how ongoing this part of the overall surge is, and at what a staggering level.  As in Iraq from 2003 on, billions of dollars are being sunk into bases, the largest of which -- especially the old Soviet site, Bagram Air Base, with more than $200 million in construction projects and upgrades underway at the moment -- are beginning to look like ever more permanent fixtures on the landscape.

In addition, as Nick Turse of TomDispatch.com has reported, forward observation bases and smaller combat outposts have been sprouting all over southern Afghanistan.  “Forget for a moment the ‘debates’ in Washington over Afghan War policy,” he wrote in early November, “and, if you just focus on the construction activity and the flow of money into Afghanistan, what you see is a war that, from the point of view of the Pentagon, isn't going to end any time soon. In fact, the U.S. military's building boom in that country suggests that, in the ninth year of the Afghan War, the Pentagon has plans for a far longer-term, if not near-permanent, garrisoning of the country, no matter what course Washington may decide upon.” 

7.  The Training Surge:   In some ways, the greatest prospective surge may prove to be in the training of the Afghan national army and police.  Despite years of American and NATO “mentoring,” both are in notoriously poor shape.  The Afghan army is riddled with desertions -- 25% of those trained in the last year are now gone -- and the Afghan police are reportedly a hapless, ill-paid, corrupt, drug-addicted lot.  Nonetheless, Washington (with the help of NATO reinforcements) is planning to bring an army whose numbers officially stand at approximately 94,000 (but may actually be as low as 40-odd thousand) to 134,000 reasonably well-trained troops by next fall and 240,000 a year later.  Similarly, the Obama administration hopes to take the police numbers from an official 93,000 to 160,000.

8.  The Cost Surge:  This is a difficult subject to pin down in part because the Pentagon is, in cost-accounting terms, one of the least transparent organizations around.  What can be said for certain is that Obama’s $30 billion figure won’t faintly hold when it comes to the real surge.  There is no way that figure will cover anything like all the troops, bases, contractors, and the rest.  Just take the plan to train an Afghan security force of approximately 400,000 in the coming years.  We’ve already spent more than $15 billion on the training of the Afghan Army and more than $10 billion has gone into police training -- staggering figures for a far smaller combined force with poor results.  Imagine, then, what a massive bulking up of the country's security forces will actually cost.  In congressional testimony, Centcom commander General David Petraeus suggested a possible price tag of $10 billion a year.  And if such a program works (which seems unlikely), try to imagine how one of the poorest countries on the planet will support a 400,000-man force.  Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just suggested that it will take at least 15-20 years before the country can actually pay for such a force itself.  In translation, what we have here is undoubtedly a version of Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule (“You break it, you own it”); in this case, you build it, you own it.  If we create such security forces, they will be, financially speaking, ours into the foreseeable future.  (And this is even without adding in those local militias we’re planning to invest “millions” in.)

9. The Anti-Withdrawal Surge:  Think of this as a surge in time.  By all accounts, the president tried to put some kind of limit on his most recent Afghan surge, not wanting “an open-ended commitment.”  With that in mind, he evidently insisted on a plan, emphasized in his speech, in which some of the surge troops would start to come home in July 2011, about 18 months from now.  This was presented in the media as a case of giving something to everyone (the Republican opposition, his field commanders, and his own antiwar Democratic Party base).  In fact, he gave his commanders and the Republican opposition a very real surge in numbers.  In this regard, a Washington Post headline says it all:  “McChrystal’s Afghanistan Plan Stays Mainly Intact.”  On the other hand, what he gave his base was only the vaguest of promises (“…and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011”).  Moreover, within hours of the speech, even that commitment was being watered down by the first top officials to speak on the subject.  Soon enough, as the right-wing began to blaze away on the mistake of announcing a withdrawal date “to the enemy,” there was little short of a stampede of high officials eager to make that promise ever less meaningful.

In what Mark Mazzetti of the Times called a “flurry of coordinated television interviews,” the top civilian and military officials of the administration marched onto the Sunday morning talk shows “in lockstep” to reassure the right (and they were reassured) by playing “down the significance of the July 2011 target date.”  The United States was, Secretary of Defense Gates and others indicated, going to be in the region in strength for years to come.  (“...July 2011 was just the beginning, not the end, of a lengthy process. That date, [National Security Advisor] General [James] Jones said, is a ‘ramp’ rather than a ‘cliff.’”)

How Wide the Widening War?

When it came to the spreading Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the president in his speech spoke of his surge goal this way:  “We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government.”  This seems a modest enough target, even if the means of reaching it are proving immodest indeed.  After all, we’re talking about a minority Pashtun insurgency -- Pashtuns make up only about 42% of Afghanistan’s population -- and the insurgents are a relatively lightly armed, rag-tag force.  Against them and a miniscule number of al-Qaeda operatives, the Pentagon has launched a remarkable, unbelievably costly build-up of forces over vast distances, along fragile, extended supply lines, and in a country poorer than almost any other on the planet. The State Department has, to the best of its abilities, followed suit, as has the CIA across the border in Pakistan.

All of this has been underway for close to a year, with at least another six months to go.  This is the reality that the president and his top officials didn’t bother to explain to the American people in that speech last week, or on those Sunday talk shows, or in congressional testimony, and yet it’s a reality we should grasp as we consider our future and the Afghan War we, after all, are paying for.    

And yet, confoundingly, as the U.S. has bulked up in Afghanistan, the war has only grown fiercer both within the country and in parts of Pakistan.  Sometimes bulking-up can mean not reversing but increasing the other side’s momentum.  We face what looks to be a widening war in the region.  Already, the Obama administration has been issuing ever stronger warnings to the Pakistani government and military to shape up in the fight against the Taliban, otherwise threatening not only drone strikes in Baluchistan, but cross-border raids by Special Operations types, and even possibly “hot pursuit” by U.S. forces into Pakistan.  This is a dangerous game indeed.

As Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power, wrote recently, “Sending U.S. troops to fight interminable wars in distant countries does more to inflame than to extinguish the resentments giving rise to violent anti-Western jihadism.”  Whatever the Obama administration does in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, the American ability to mount a sustained operation of this size in one of the most difficult places on the planet, when it can’t even mount a reasonable jobs program at home, remains a strange wonder of the world.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.

Copyright 2009 Tom Engelhardt

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SURGING INTO DISASTER

by Eric Margolis

President Barack Obama has missed two sterling opportunities to wind down the ugly Afghan morass he inherited from George W. Bush.

First, Obama could have hit the pause button on the war when he first took office. A thorough evaluation should have been done at that time. 

Second, during all the heavy duty strategy meetings over Afghanistan this November,  the new president could have announced a cease-fire in the war or sharp reduction of military operations, then called for genuine peace talks under Saudi aegis with Taliban and its nationalist allies.

Instead of a sensible pause, Obama’s made the tragic decision last week to enlarge and prolong the eight-year war in Afghanistan.      

The ugly, messy conflict Obama inherited from George W. Bush now fully belongs to the “peace president” and his unhappy party. 

President Obama faced a choice between guns – $1 trillion for the next decade of warfare in Afghanistan – or butter – his $1 trillion national health plan. 

The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate chose guns. 

What Obama should really have been concerned with was Osama bin Laden’s vow to first bleed the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, then break America’s domination of the Muslim world by luring it into a final battle in Pakistan, a nation of 175 million, 90% of whom see the United States as their country’s primary enemy. 

The president also heard alarms from his field commanders and CIA that Taliban and its allies were taking control of much of Afghanistan and threatening the big cities. As US Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned, the mighty US even faced defeat at the hands of lightly armed mountain tribesmen – the same humiliating fate that befell the Soviet Union and led to the collapse of its empire.

So, as expected, Obama will rush 30,000 new troops into the Afghan quagmire, and arm-twist reluctant NATO allies to contribute 10,000 more mostly token forces.       

Obama, with his eye on the Afghan War’s growing unpopularity among Americans, confusingly promised some of the 105,000 US garrison there will begin withdrawing in 2011.  But Obama’s aides almost immediately began backtracking on this pledge, which made no military sense at all. 

Senator John McCain and fellow Republican hawks had a field day shredding Obama’s foolish proposal.

Many Afghans, however, listened and concluded that the US, like the Soviets, would one day decamp. Those Afghans working for the US will quickly begin hedging their bets by making discreet side deals with Taliban, as I saw them do with the mujahidin during the Soviet era.         

The president insisted his objective remains destroying al-Qaida. But al-Qaida hardly exists in Afghanistan. Only a handful remain in Pakistan, likely no more than a dozen men.

President Obama’s insincerity on this issue is very disturbing, undermining his reputation for veracity and clear thinking.

There is also concern that when Obama targets al-Qaida, his real target may be Pakistan. Pakistanis sourly joke that the US long ago killed Osama bin Laden and is keeping his spectral image alive to justify occupying Afghanistan.

Obama’s new military plan mirrors the Bush administration’s Iraq `surge’ that candidate Obama sharply criticized. US Marines may even go and crush rebellious Kandahar the way Iraq’s Fallujah was laid waste.    

The Soviets also tried the same surge tactic in the mid 1980’s during their Afghan occupation.  When that failed, Moscow decided to pull back its over-extended 160,000 troops to defend Afghanistan’s major cities and main roads from Afghan “terrorists.” 

That strategy also failed miserably, as did a similar effort by the French in the Red River Delta during the first Indochina War. Now the US is trying the same thing.  

Anyone who understands Afghanistan’s deep complexities knows that Obama’s surge won’t win the eight year war. Afghanistan’s 15-million strong Pashtun tribal majority will continue to resist western occupation. Waging colonial wars of pacification against resident populations has proven futile time after time.

  

At best, it will be an exercise in managing a failed policy.   

Americans are turning against the war.  Congress is fretting over its mounting costs: US $300 billion for 2009 in a $1.4 trillion deficit year. This war is being waged on money borrowed from China. 

Some Democrats are rightly calling for a special war tax on all Americans rather than continuing to conceal the war’s huge expenses on the national credit card. 

It costs US $1 million to keep each American soldier in Afghanistan. Renting Pakistan’s assistance will cost $3 billion per year (overt and black payments combined). Thousands of US troops will remain stuck in Iraq where the underground Ba’ath Party is showing signs of life. 

President Obama vowed at West Point to fight al-Qaida (read: anti-American groups) in Africa and Asia.   No wonder many angry, betrayed Democrats are calling him “George Bush’s third term.”

The most positive interpretation of President Obama’s

“surge” is that it is a face-saving exercise to cover America’s retreat from the Afghan morass.  

The key to US strategy is cobbling together a large Afghan army and police led by the US military – the modern version of the British Raj’s native troops under white officers. The Soviets also tried to build a 260,000-man Afghan Communist army, but failed. The US will be no more successful because its Afghan forces are mostly minority Tajik and Uzbek who are hated by the majority Pashtun. This was also the case during the Soviet occupation.

Efforts will be made to sanitize the corrupt Karzai government and its mafia-like warlords. This, too, will fail. But Obama’s hope is that he can declare victory by 2011. This would allow substantial US troop reductions before the next mid-term and presidential elections – if all goes well.

But things are not going well in Pakistan, without whose cooperation, bases, and supply routes the US cannot wage war in Afghanistan. The US-backed Pakistani government of Asif Ali Zardari is awash with corruption charges, condemned by the public as a puppet regime, and may soon be ousted by Pakistan’s military. 

Most Pakistanis support Taliban, see US occupation of Afghanistan as driven by lust for oil and gas, and increasingly fear the US intends to tear their unstable nation apart in order to seize its nuclear arsenal.   

CIA-funded assassination teams have joined Predator drones in killing Pakistanis judged hostile to US interests. Increasing numbers of Pakistanis believe their nation is actually under US occupation.

Obama’s advisors have convinced him an early US withdrawal from Afghanistan will provoke chaos in Pakistan. They don’t understand that it is the US-led war in Afghanistan that is destabilizing Pakistan and creating ever more anti-western extremism. Forcing Pakistan to adopt policies inimical to its national interests that are detested by its public risk producing an Iranian-style revolution or coup by nationalist officers.

The longer US forces wage war in Afghanistan, the more the conflict will spread into Pakistan, where 15% of its people, and 20% or more of its military and intelligence service  are Pashtuns who sympathize with their beleaguered fellow Taliban Pashtuns in Afghanistan. 

A grimmer view is that Obama has fallen under the influence of conservative military-financial interests, and Washington’s rabid neocons who seek permanent war against the Muslim world.  

This week, Gen. James Jones, the president’s national security advisor, asserted, "We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times." In short, the American Raj will continue to dominate Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama’s “surge” may only expand, intensify, and prolong the Afghan conflict. It may also ruin the presidency of a man so many Americans looked to as a savior and inspiration.

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009