TBD on Ning
Obama's Afghanistan plan sets wrong goals
Reactions to President Barack Obama's speech on deploying 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan:
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist: I can't agree with President Barack Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I'd prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.
At a lunch on Tuesday for opinion writers, the president lucidly argued that opting for a surge now to help Afghans rebuild their army and state into something decent -- to win the allegiance of the Afghan people -- offered the only hope of creating an "inflection point," a game changer, to bring long-term stability to that region. What makes me wary about this plan is how many moving parts there are -- Afghans, Pakistanis and NATO allies all have to behave forever differently for this to work.
What are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?
By PAUL FITZGERALD and ELIZABETH GOULD
It was the opportunity for the president of the United States to deliver his most important address yet. America was entering a new era after failing to defeat an implacable foe in a far off and forbidding land. His speech was filled with Sturm und Drang, delivered to the finest young men and women the country had to offer and the highest defense and intelligence officials in the land at the world’s most prestigious military academy. It should have been a sacred moment in American history.
For months the world had waited with great anticipation for the president to weigh in on America’s involvement in Afghanistan amidst a bitter debate over the respective consequences of investing more troops and further billions, and the very likely possibility that the United States could lose the war and be subjected to more merciless attacks by Al Qaeda. A varied mix of solutions were offered up, which included negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban, and, ultimately, withdrawing current troops.
Had the president leveled with the American people and talked about ethnic cleansing of Pashtun and Baluch tribal areas by Predator Drones, of Blackwater crimes and targeted assassinations, some might have breathed a sigh of relief. Instead the president weighed in with a well worn mantra by offering as his primary justification for sending more troops that “We did not ask for this fight.”
We did not ask for this fight?
For 60 years the United States played both Pakistan and Afghanistan against each other in a Manichean, dualist game of superpower politics with little regard for the consequences. But like the Soviet Union before it, the cold war assumptions of military power that the United States carried with it into Afghanistan have been rendered useless by the ethnic, political and military complexities of the Afghan/Pakistan region.
Before the United States can hope to win anything in Afghanistan it has to decide what it is fighting for. Is it oil, geostrategic positioning, against terror or just to save face. In the last few years U.S. strategy has broken down to a confused mix, dominated by those wishing to withdraw troops and limit the American commitment to containing Al Qaeda and those favoring a robust counterinsurgency campaign requiring a permanent political and military commitment that would last for decades.
General Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s new commander in Afghanistan, is well aware that nothing can be accomplished without a change in the psychology of the American approach, stating in his August 30 report, “Many describe the conflict in Afghanistan as a war of ideas,.. However, this is a ‘deeds-based’ information environment where perceptions derive from actions, such as how we interact with the population and how quickly things move. The key to changing perceptions lies in changing the underlying truths.”
McChrystal realizes that “changing the underlying truths” requires a change in the operational culture to “interact more closely with the population, and focus on operations that bring stability, while shielding them from insurgent violence, corruption, and coercion.”
But whether the very nature of America’s military/industrial/media/academic complex can be moved off its primary directive in order to accommodate McChrystal’s request, remains highly doubtful. The decentralized nature of the opposition in Afghanistan and Pakistan defies the very culture of the Pentagon’s thinking. Like Vietnam, a decentralized enemy is anathema to the rigid, high technology and high-cost Command, Control and Communications approach developed throughout the cold war to decapitate the centralized Soviet bureaucracy. But the Pentagon continues to insist on applying its expensive tools, regardless of its persistent failure to eliminate, let alone define its enemy.
General McChrystal will get 30,000 troops and 18 months to prove his counterinsurgency plan can work. The cost to the United States will be immense, especially to an economy already bled dry by 60 years of cold war and its attendant thinking. If it can establish security for both the Afghan and Pakistani people, somehow spare innocent civilians and roll back extremist terror, it might work. If it doesn’t, no troop escalation or elaborate counterinsurgency doctrine can save Washington’s political class from the fight it went out of its way to ask for.
Iraq has proved staggeringly expensive and hugely painful. The mistakes we made should humble anyone about nation-building in Afghanistan.
Iraq was about "the war on terrorism." The Afghanistan invasion, for me, was about the "war on terrorists." To me, it was about getting Osama bin Laden and depriving al-Qaida of a sanctuary. I never thought we could make Afghanistan into Norway -- and even if we did, it would not resonate beyond its borders the way Iraq might.
To now make Afghanistan part of the "war on terrorism" -- i.e., another nation-building project -- is just too expensive, when balanced against our needs for nation-building in America, so that we will have the strength to play our broader global role.
Pakistan taken on board over Afghan strategy: Patterson
* US doesn’t see spillover effect of Afghan troop surge
* Decision on reconciliation with surrendering Taliban for Afghan govt to make
* Money spent on relocation of USAID staff could have been used for scholarships to Pakistani
students
By Rana Qaisar
ISLAMABAD: The US believes that its decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan would not create any problem for Pakistan and its armed forces fighting terrorists in the Tribal Areas, as Washington does not anticipate that Taliban may flee from Afghanistan and enter into Pakistan, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson has said.
“We don’t see any spillover effect of sending more troops to Afghanistan,” Patterson told a small group of editors over breakfast on Wednesday after President Barack Obama announced his Afghan policy.
Pakistan on board: “We [also] took Pakistan on board much before President Obama’s speech ... our secretary of state, CIA director and national security advisor (NSA) have visited Pakistan and met the president, the prime minister and the army chief besides other senior officials, to explain to them the contours of the US policy for Afghanistan and the withdrawal strategy,” said Patterson, adding that consultations had taken place “at all important levels”.
The ambassador explained that the US troops would not withdraw from Afghanistan within 18 months, and said the process to leave Afghanistan would start after 18 months. She hoped that in these 18 months, the situation in Afghanistan would change and the war-ravaged country would have the capacity to independently take care of its security needs, as a “political” government was already in place there.
Surrendering Taliban: However, she said it was for the Afghan government to make a decision on reconciliation with the Taliban in case they agreed lay down their arms and give up violence.
But she said the US would encourage reintegration of lower-level “fighters”, who were with the Taliban for money. “If the governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan initiate the jirga process, we will support it ... but it is for them to decide at domestic levels.”
The ambassador emphatically said that the US had intelligence reports suggesting that the Al Qaeda leadership was in Pakistan. “And we also have intelligence reports that some Al Qaeda groups want their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear assets, but we (the US administration) believe and we are also convinced that they are safe.”
She diplomatically parried but tacitly answered a question on the possibility of an agreement between Washington and Islamabad to carry out drone attacks inside Pakistan. “There are many agreements and memoranda of understanding ... ask your government,” she said.
The ambassador did not comment on India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, but denied that Pakistan had shared any evidence of Indian involvement in the Tribal Areas or Balochistan with the US. “If Pakistan shares any evidence with us, we will look into it,” she said, and reiterated her country’s commitment to support the peace process between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors.
Scholarships: She branded “nonsense” reports on the presence Blackwater in Pakistan. “There are security contractors, but not the Blackwater,” she said. “We had to relocate the staff of USAID after a photograph of its office was published in a newspaper ... it cost us $100,000 ... and this money could have gone for scholarships to Pakistani students.”
Anne Patterson's Blackwater-gate
Friday, December 04, 2009
By Fasi Zaka
When people would obsess over the supposed clandestine take-over of Pakistan by the security firm formerly known as Blackwater (now Xe), I often wished that they be that animated over the problem of drinking water in our country.
I now feel that my dismissiveness was entirely wrong. It looked like a conspiracy theorist's dream to me initially, a private army outside the remit of the law doing the bidding of the Americans in Pakistan.
Well, the definitive truth is now out; it is present in Pakistan. It may not be doing some of the more ridiculous assertions attributed to its operations in the country by an opportunistic Taliban, like carrying out suicide bombings, but Blackwater is here. It shouldn't be.
The January edition of Vanity Fair 2010 (they operate with a crazy dating system) has a feature of Blackwater founder Erik Prince by Adam Ciralsky (who accompanied him on trips to overseas Blackwater operations). Erik Prince has been a media shy-figure; not much was known about him for sure until this interview, which he did presumably because Blackwater has suffered from terrible PR in the US and around the world as war profiteers and mercenaries.
In the piece by Ciralsky, Erik Prince confirms his relationship with the CIA in a foreign assassination programme, working in Pakistan to load Hellfire missiles onto drones and in Afghanistan (where they are present close to the border). The US ambassador in Afghanistan is protected by Blackwater.
That's a slap in the face admission against the statement of the US Ambassador Anne Patterson that the firm was not operating in the country just this November. With the recent exhortations for Pakistan to do more against the Taliban, this is rich coming from a nation that is outsourcing some of its war effort.
The US needs to realise that they have not occupied Pakistan, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan who were not able, therefore, to articulate their positions to their new masters. Pakistan is still relatively free, and Pakistanis have a legitimate concern given the trigger-happy, allegedly bribing and illegal weapons smuggling prone company that Blackwater is.
If the international community wants to see Pakistan as a country that can overcome its problems with the murderous hordes of the Taliban, then there is only one long-term solution which is affecting the rule of law. That cannot be done seriously if the US has no interest in it.
There are now monthly reports of US officials or their contractors who are let free after being found with illegal weapons. Smacking us in the face with such impunity does not engender rule of law.
When Hillary Clinton came to Pakistan, she said she wanted a new beginning of trust. How she achieves that with an ambassador who brazenly misleads Pakistani media is anyone's guess.
If there are Blackwater personnel doing more than Erik Prince's admission that they operate loading missiles for drones, what happens if they use lethal force when they mistakenly sense danger and kill innocent Pakistanis? Once again, rule of law will be undermined severely because we know from the experience in Iraq that they will not be tried locally.
The article mentions Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan as one of the people who was considered an assassination target by the CIA, presumably through Blackwater. While the source for that nugget is not given in the story (Erik Prince does not verify this in the article; it is an aside by the author), again, Pakistan has demonstrated that it can use its own legal recourse to apprehend someone who is accused of wrong-doing. While what Pakistan may have done in the case of Dr Qadeer is obviously an imperfect compromise if evidence against him holds up, but at least it has prevented further proliferation.
There is no denying that the Americans need their own security in Pakistan. Unfortunately, some Taliban success against military targets has bolstered their case. But they need to come clean what their security is and under what remit it will operate in the country to prevent the further accumulation of the anti-US sentiment, and also to protect Pakistani lives. Any incident will not stop at just the lives lost in it, but conflagrate into mob violence soon after when the demagogues take to the streets.
I wonder if Anne Patterson is using the Bill Clinton defense, when he tried to wiggle out of confessing to an extra-marital affair by claiming that oral acts do not cover that definition. Is she denying Blackwater (which technically doesn't exist anymore), by evading responses on Xe? If that is the case, it is disingenuous and untrustworthy.
Blackwater changed its name to Xe (which is short for Xenon, an inert element) to appear harmless in the wake of bad press around the world. Maybe they should have changed their name to Hydro, which would not refer to a neutral, water-like substance but hydrogen, the most inflammable of elements.
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist: I can't agree with President Barack Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I'd prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.
At a lunch on Tuesday for opinion writers, the president lucidly argued that opting for a surge now to help Afghans rebuild their army and state into something decent -- to win the allegiance of the Afghan people -- offered the only hope of creating an "inflection point," a game changer, to bring long-term stability to that region. What makes me wary about this plan is how many moving parts there are -- Afghans, Pakistanis and NATO allies all have to behave forever differently for this to work.
What are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?
By PAUL FITZGERALD and ELIZABETH GOULD
It was the opportunity for the president of the United States to deliver his most important address yet. America was entering a new era after failing to defeat an implacable foe in a far off and forbidding land. His speech was filled with Sturm und Drang, delivered to the finest young men and women the country had to offer and the highest defense and intelligence officials in the land at the world’s most prestigious military academy. It should have been a sacred moment in American history.
For months the world had waited with great anticipation for the president to weigh in on America’s involvement in Afghanistan amidst a bitter debate over the respective consequences of investing more troops and further billions, and the very likely possibility that the United States could lose the war and be subjected to more merciless attacks by Al Qaeda. A varied mix of solutions were offered up, which included negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban, and, ultimately, withdrawing current troops.
Had the president leveled with the American people and talked about ethnic cleansing of Pashtun and Baluch tribal areas by Predator Drones, of Blackwater crimes and targeted assassinations, some might have breathed a sigh of relief. Instead the president weighed in with a well worn mantra by offering as his primary justification for sending more troops that “We did not ask for this fight.”
We did not ask for this fight?
For 60 years the United States played both Pakistan and Afghanistan against each other in a Manichean, dualist game of superpower politics with little regard for the consequences. But like the Soviet Union before it, the cold war assumptions of military power that the United States carried with it into Afghanistan have been rendered useless by the ethnic, political and military complexities of the Afghan/Pakistan region.
Before the United States can hope to win anything in Afghanistan it has to decide what it is fighting for. Is it oil, geostrategic positioning, against terror or just to save face. In the last few years U.S. strategy has broken down to a confused mix, dominated by those wishing to withdraw troops and limit the American commitment to containing Al Qaeda and those favoring a robust counterinsurgency campaign requiring a permanent political and military commitment that would last for decades.
General Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s new commander in Afghanistan, is well aware that nothing can be accomplished without a change in the psychology of the American approach, stating in his August 30 report, “Many describe the conflict in Afghanistan as a war of ideas,.. However, this is a ‘deeds-based’ information environment where perceptions derive from actions, such as how we interact with the population and how quickly things move. The key to changing perceptions lies in changing the underlying truths.”
McChrystal realizes that “changing the underlying truths” requires a change in the operational culture to “interact more closely with the population, and focus on operations that bring stability, while shielding them from insurgent violence, corruption, and coercion.”
But whether the very nature of America’s military/industrial/media/academic complex can be moved off its primary directive in order to accommodate McChrystal’s request, remains highly doubtful. The decentralized nature of the opposition in Afghanistan and Pakistan defies the very culture of the Pentagon’s thinking. Like Vietnam, a decentralized enemy is anathema to the rigid, high technology and high-cost Command, Control and Communications approach developed throughout the cold war to decapitate the centralized Soviet bureaucracy. But the Pentagon continues to insist on applying its expensive tools, regardless of its persistent failure to eliminate, let alone define its enemy.
General McChrystal will get 30,000 troops and 18 months to prove his counterinsurgency plan can work. The cost to the United States will be immense, especially to an economy already bled dry by 60 years of cold war and its attendant thinking. If it can establish security for both the Afghan and Pakistani people, somehow spare innocent civilians and roll back extremist terror, it might work. If it doesn’t, no troop escalation or elaborate counterinsurgency doctrine can save Washington’s political class from the fight it went out of its way to ask for.
Iraq has proved staggeringly expensive and hugely painful. The mistakes we made should humble anyone about nation-building in Afghanistan.
Iraq was about "the war on terrorism." The Afghanistan invasion, for me, was about the "war on terrorists." To me, it was about getting Osama bin Laden and depriving al-Qaida of a sanctuary. I never thought we could make Afghanistan into Norway -- and even if we did, it would not resonate beyond its borders the way Iraq might.
To now make Afghanistan part of the "war on terrorism" -- i.e., another nation-building project -- is just too expensive, when balanced against our needs for nation-building in America, so that we will have the strength to play our broader global role.
Pakistan taken on board over Afghan strategy: Patterson
* US doesn’t see spillover effect of Afghan troop surge
* Decision on reconciliation with surrendering Taliban for Afghan govt to make
* Money spent on relocation of USAID staff could have been used for scholarships to Pakistani
students
By Rana Qaisar
ISLAMABAD: The US believes that its decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan would not create any problem for Pakistan and its armed forces fighting terrorists in the Tribal Areas, as Washington does not anticipate that Taliban may flee from Afghanistan and enter into Pakistan, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson has said.
“We don’t see any spillover effect of sending more troops to Afghanistan,” Patterson told a small group of editors over breakfast on Wednesday after President Barack Obama announced his Afghan policy.
Pakistan on board: “We [also] took Pakistan on board much before President Obama’s speech ... our secretary of state, CIA director and national security advisor (NSA) have visited Pakistan and met the president, the prime minister and the army chief besides other senior officials, to explain to them the contours of the US policy for Afghanistan and the withdrawal strategy,” said Patterson, adding that consultations had taken place “at all important levels”.
The ambassador explained that the US troops would not withdraw from Afghanistan within 18 months, and said the process to leave Afghanistan would start after 18 months. She hoped that in these 18 months, the situation in Afghanistan would change and the war-ravaged country would have the capacity to independently take care of its security needs, as a “political” government was already in place there.
Surrendering Taliban: However, she said it was for the Afghan government to make a decision on reconciliation with the Taliban in case they agreed lay down their arms and give up violence.
But she said the US would encourage reintegration of lower-level “fighters”, who were with the Taliban for money. “If the governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan initiate the jirga process, we will support it ... but it is for them to decide at domestic levels.”
The ambassador emphatically said that the US had intelligence reports suggesting that the Al Qaeda leadership was in Pakistan. “And we also have intelligence reports that some Al Qaeda groups want their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear assets, but we (the US administration) believe and we are also convinced that they are safe.”
She diplomatically parried but tacitly answered a question on the possibility of an agreement between Washington and Islamabad to carry out drone attacks inside Pakistan. “There are many agreements and memoranda of understanding ... ask your government,” she said.
The ambassador did not comment on India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, but denied that Pakistan had shared any evidence of Indian involvement in the Tribal Areas or Balochistan with the US. “If Pakistan shares any evidence with us, we will look into it,” she said, and reiterated her country’s commitment to support the peace process between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors.
Scholarships: She branded “nonsense” reports on the presence Blackwater in Pakistan. “There are security contractors, but not the Blackwater,” she said. “We had to relocate the staff of USAID after a photograph of its office was published in a newspaper ... it cost us $100,000 ... and this money could have gone for scholarships to Pakistani students.”
Anne Patterson's Blackwater-gate
Friday, December 04, 2009
By Fasi Zaka
When people would obsess over the supposed clandestine take-over of Pakistan by the security firm formerly known as Blackwater (now Xe), I often wished that they be that animated over the problem of drinking water in our country.
I now feel that my dismissiveness was entirely wrong. It looked like a conspiracy theorist's dream to me initially, a private army outside the remit of the law doing the bidding of the Americans in Pakistan.
Well, the definitive truth is now out; it is present in Pakistan. It may not be doing some of the more ridiculous assertions attributed to its operations in the country by an opportunistic Taliban, like carrying out suicide bombings, but Blackwater is here. It shouldn't be.
The January edition of Vanity Fair 2010 (they operate with a crazy dating system) has a feature of Blackwater founder Erik Prince by Adam Ciralsky (who accompanied him on trips to overseas Blackwater operations). Erik Prince has been a media shy-figure; not much was known about him for sure until this interview, which he did presumably because Blackwater has suffered from terrible PR in the US and around the world as war profiteers and mercenaries.
In the piece by Ciralsky, Erik Prince confirms his relationship with the CIA in a foreign assassination programme, working in Pakistan to load Hellfire missiles onto drones and in Afghanistan (where they are present close to the border). The US ambassador in Afghanistan is protected by Blackwater.
That's a slap in the face admission against the statement of the US Ambassador Anne Patterson that the firm was not operating in the country just this November. With the recent exhortations for Pakistan to do more against the Taliban, this is rich coming from a nation that is outsourcing some of its war effort.
The US needs to realise that they have not occupied Pakistan, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan who were not able, therefore, to articulate their positions to their new masters. Pakistan is still relatively free, and Pakistanis have a legitimate concern given the trigger-happy, allegedly bribing and illegal weapons smuggling prone company that Blackwater is.
If the international community wants to see Pakistan as a country that can overcome its problems with the murderous hordes of the Taliban, then there is only one long-term solution which is affecting the rule of law. That cannot be done seriously if the US has no interest in it.
There are now monthly reports of US officials or their contractors who are let free after being found with illegal weapons. Smacking us in the face with such impunity does not engender rule of law.
When Hillary Clinton came to Pakistan, she said she wanted a new beginning of trust. How she achieves that with an ambassador who brazenly misleads Pakistani media is anyone's guess.
If there are Blackwater personnel doing more than Erik Prince's admission that they operate loading missiles for drones, what happens if they use lethal force when they mistakenly sense danger and kill innocent Pakistanis? Once again, rule of law will be undermined severely because we know from the experience in Iraq that they will not be tried locally.
The article mentions Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan as one of the people who was considered an assassination target by the CIA, presumably through Blackwater. While the source for that nugget is not given in the story (Erik Prince does not verify this in the article; it is an aside by the author), again, Pakistan has demonstrated that it can use its own legal recourse to apprehend someone who is accused of wrong-doing. While what Pakistan may have done in the case of Dr Qadeer is obviously an imperfect compromise if evidence against him holds up, but at least it has prevented further proliferation.
There is no denying that the Americans need their own security in Pakistan. Unfortunately, some Taliban success against military targets has bolstered their case. But they need to come clean what their security is and under what remit it will operate in the country to prevent the further accumulation of the anti-US sentiment, and also to protect Pakistani lives. Any incident will not stop at just the lives lost in it, but conflagrate into mob violence soon after when the demagogues take to the streets.
I wonder if Anne Patterson is using the Bill Clinton defense, when he tried to wiggle out of confessing to an extra-marital affair by claiming that oral acts do not cover that definition. Is she denying Blackwater (which technically doesn't exist anymore), by evading responses on Xe? If that is the case, it is disingenuous and untrustworthy.
Blackwater changed its name to Xe (which is short for Xenon, an inert element) to appear harmless in the wake of bad press around the world. Maybe they should have changed their name to Hydro, which would not refer to a neutral, water-like substance but hydrogen, the most inflammable of elements.
Tags: Afghanastan, Blackwater
Views: 5
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Blattenbauer on
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Mark, as a veteran of the VietNam Era I see more similarities in this situation than differences. We are in a war with unclear objectives and no real end game even though Obama says we may "start" to withdraw troops in 2010. Fact is, to make matters worse, the government in Afghanistan is even more corrupt than our own! I believe we should pull our troops out as soon as safely possible before we need to build another wall in DC to represent a lesson we failed to learn by our last huge mistake.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Mentzer on
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That's the point that Thomas Friedman was making.
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Permalink Reply by P.A. on
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No it is not too much to ask but accomplishing it could be extremely difficult. I do however think we need to take one more shot at getting it right.
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Permalink Reply by cynthia Hunter on
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All of us are great couch quarterbacks. We don't have all the info that the government has. That being said I worry about this turning into another Nam with polticians on both sides playing war with our young men and women. If we are to fight this war give our troops everything that is needed including help for buliding a strong governmet on all sides. Bulid school help the people help themselfs. If we can not do that bring our people home!
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