103 Comments

1. rab:

Whenever I see or hear ABC reports or NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS I put it on snooze control.

Sep 24, 2008 - 5:57 pm 2. Ex-fetus:

I’m not sure invasion is the right word. If invasion means less then 100 CIA and special forces units, then the USA has invaded about half the nations on this planet. There is what is as close to a democratically elected government in Afghanistan as you will get in that part of the world. The NATO troops are there at the request of the duly ‘elected’ government.
IS that an ‘invasion’? Was that an invasion?
It looks like ABC is being hyperbolic again.

“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”
George Orwell, Polemic, May 1946, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham”
English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 – 1950)

Sep 24, 2008 - 7:17 pm 3. NahnCee:

I wonder if this speaks to the “secret” report on the massacre of the French soldiers that Yon was blogging about, and which both NATO and France are objecting to.

Surely part of the “grim” news about Afghanistan is that none of the NATO countries (including France and Germany) are carrying their own weight either by providing enough soliders, having enough materiel, or going outside the wire to fight. Plus we have the Brits still trying to sign secret deals if the bad guys just won’t shoot at them.

I wonder why it’s being leaked now because I don’t think the liberals particularly want America to declare defeat and pull out. Maybe to try to force McCain into an untenable position of supporting NATO’s efforts which have been abysmal.

I suppose it *could* just be more BDS, and the media are on autopilot when it comes to leaking national secrets that they think will hurt Dubya.

Sep 24, 2008 - 7:42 pm 4. whiskey:

Well yes. Preparation for Obama to simply surrender in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And dismantle the military.

Everything hugs and puppies.

Meanwhile Pakistan adds to it’s nukes and Iran probably already has them.

What then when NYC vanishes?

Then it’s simply kill them all or be killed. There won’t be any time for anything else. Obama is betting on the return to normal if he just gives up and behaves like Clinton. After all, it’s what Frank Marshall Davis or Bill Ayers would advise. He just doesn’t get it because he’s never been beaten into a pulp. For him, America is always strong and invulnerable and the enemy. No cost to anything.

Sep 24, 2008 - 7:43 pm 5. 3Case:

ABC – wholly-owned subsidiary of the Marxist wing of the Democrat party.

“What then when NYC vanishes?

Slaughter now or slaughter later.
Slaughter later = slaughter more.

Sep 24, 2008 - 8:30 pm 6. Dgree3:

Another incisive, accurate report from the same intelligence services who failed the US so miserably in the run-up to 9/11. Touted as ‘grim’ by one of the Lame-Stream Media who are totally invested in the America Bashing Course, this report will be flogged for every possible ounce of anti-Bush sentiment that could possibly be twisted out of this rag of mis-information. Once again, the haters of all things free will be on the wrong side of history and won’t even make the footnotes. Shouldn’t there be a greater penalty for consistently backing the wrong side? Darwinism works to slowly in the Info Age. We need some more immediate penalties for the modern Promethians whose torches smolder but never burn.

Sep 24, 2008 - 8:51 pm 7. j-damn:

Hmm. I wonder if all the Democrats who have been howling for years that we haven’t paid “enough attention” to Afghanistan will now be all for a balls-out ramp up of forces there, inevitably wading into Pakistan and starting a shooting war with that unstable sh*thole? Hmm? Yes, I do wonder.

Sep 24, 2008 - 9:20 pm 8. sigintel:

The US needs to deploy hundreds if not thousands of Predator aircraft over the sky’s of Afghanistan and along the Paki and Iranian borders… armed and ready to fire. The Afgan war needs to be fought from the sky and not in the mud. The Brits and French are fighting the Vietnam war and losing.

Sep 24, 2008 - 9:30 pm 9. peterike:

Apropos of nothing, Palin was terrible — terrible — with that sniveling little wretch Katie Couric. It goes without saying it was a load of “gotcha” questions, but she did not handle them well. Expect a firestorm around this.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin pegs much of the mortgage crisis to illegal aliens. Indeed, that remains the scourge that must not be spoken.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/24/illegal-immigration-and-the-mortgage-mess/

Absent something huge, I think Obama’s got it won. The 24/7 all-O-all-the-time media is going to win it for him (plus massive vote fraud in key states). I’m verging on despair.

Sep 24, 2008 - 9:33 pm 10. Dave:

Seven years ago, Afghanistan was a privileged sanctuary from which any and all bad things could be staged.

It no longer is. Only real problem? Keeping Afghanistan either on our side or
incapable of helping the other side is a
sitzkrieg. Americans much prefer a blitzkrieg.

Sep 24, 2008 - 10:11 pm 11. Charles:

if the following is true, then it will push the ISI towards the USA.

Karachi, 24 Sept. (AKI) – By Syed Saleem Shahzad – The alleged mastermind of last Saturday’s deadly truck bombing of the Marriott hotel in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, has emerged.

The suspect, Qari Zafar (photo), has become part of Al-Qaeda’s hardline Takfiri inner circle. He enjoys the protection of Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud and is believed to be hiding out in the lawless South Waziristan tribal area of North West Frontier Province.

Zafar is not only the suspected mastermind of the Marriot bomb blast, but has created a network which will shortly target strategic installations belonging to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, military headquarters in Karachi and police stations across the country, according to security officials.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.2509917874
……………

Sep 24, 2008 - 10:57 pm 12. trangbang68:

Peterike,

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Sep 24, 2008 - 11:00 pm 13. Doug:

McCain = Bush 2
Grim Afghanistan is one more reason not to vote for Bush 2.
We need change, not more of the same, then we will have hope.
Leaks will be part of the package, to include Troopergate report shortly before the election.
Situation Normal.

Sep 25, 2008 - 12:16 am 14. outa my league:

Tasergate – the unconsionable, cowardly crime of using state-issued property instead of one’s own personal cattle prod to electrocute the wife’s miserable lowly 10-year son.

Or, the unconsionable, cowardly crime of using state-issued property to electrocute, rather than brandishing in more manly fashion, one’s own personal studded leather belt to beat the snot out of same lowly stepson.

Sep 25, 2008 - 12:43 am 15. whiskey:

Democrats were never serious about Afghanistan. It would require ceding power from Community Organizers to adept, and adaptive Generals, Colonels, Majors, Captains, Lieutenants, Sergeants, Corporals, and Privates. Not to mention machinists, engineers, contractors, of all sorts in the private sector supporting the military.

And we can’t have that now can we?

Sep 25, 2008 - 1:28 am 16. bobal:

If we have change, then things will not be the same. Then our hope will have been vindicated. We will no longer despair. Without despair, we will be happy. When we are happy, we will no longer want change. Then, we’ll be dead.

Sep 25, 2008 - 2:37 am 17. ridgerunner:

whiskey – “Obama is betting on the return to normal if he just gives up and behaves like Clinton. After all, it’s what Frank Marshall Davis or Bill Ayers would advise. He just doesn’t get it because he’s never been beaten into a pulp.’

When I was 14, I had a paper route that included some apartments where an aquaintance lived. One night he went around with me while I collected subscription payments. Having finished, we were sitting on the porch of his building when he noticed four older teenagers clad in black leather jackets approaching. He jumped up, ran into his apartment and slammed the door. The thugs trapped me in the foyer up against the locked apartment door of my ex-friend. The smallest thug was given the pleasure of rearranging portions of my face. That experience demonstrated to me what possibilities I needed to prepare for. The next day I bought a 5-inch knife. Unless a person has experienced something similar, I question their qualification for the Presidency. This prerequisite would exclude more women than men. Palin’s wilting when confronted by Couric may be an example of that sex difference.

Sep 25, 2008 - 4:08 am 18. slade:

It seems to me that Couric’s less than sterling performance at CBS turned her into a pit bull. One day she’s poised to revolutionize the broadcast news business (reminds me of the Obama Missionary zeal to light and heat the planet). A year later, Katie and CBS were still planning the coup. She comes off as pissed in her recent interviews. Like she had her face rearranged – in public venue. My bet is that Palin will learn.

The Hard Way, like all of us.

Sep 25, 2008 - 5:28 am 19. Warsong:

In case anyone is interested, Michael Yon just posted the third Dispatch from Para2 FOB on the Afghani/Waziristan Border: “Death in the Corn, Part I of III” http://www.michaelyon-online.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2045:death-in-the-corn-part-i-of-iii&catid=34:dispatches&Itemid=55

Michaels assessment is worth a hundred of those who’ve never been there.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:08 am 20. bob:

If it’s a real war, the Democrats will want to run. So goes the excuse that they support the war in Afghanistan but not Iraq.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:40 am 21. steveaz:

Why leak an adjective, “grim,” out of a confidential NIE report?

The leak could be useful to us because Afghanistan is a pivot-point for several national and international contests.

The Russians lose face with every goal that NATO achieves there. The Islamo’s in Pakistan itch and writhe with every month that we stay there. Pacifists in America’s (sorta) allies in the Afghani operation fuss and agitate to their receptive governments over the risk to their (sorta) soldiers. And America’s Democrats squirm atop their mound of contradictory prescriptions for the region.

So, publicizing the “grimness” of our efforts there pokes all of these players with a sharp pin, prompting them to writhe, agitate, and squirm even more, all the while calling attention and accountability to themselves.

For the Dem’s in America, I think this has the effect of saying to them, “It’s put up or shut up time.” Coming in an election year, this leak should spark a rigorous debate within The Party about its devotion to winning in Afghanistan. The result being that the Jackson-ian, pro-American wing of the party will realize it lacks common cause with the Internationalist, Araby wing, and this will cause a cleavage in The Party.

And all this in an election year. Thank you ABC! It’s possible you’ve done some good here.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:42 am 22. Bob Murphy:

@Peterike
Why did they put Palin on with Couric for Chrissakes.
I alternated between PR and journalism for 30 years and we would not put candidates on shows where the default position was enemy. No point.
Anywhere Obama goes on the media he will be among friends or sycophants.
Surely Palin and McCain ought to be going on with journalists with neutral or friendly track records.

Sep 25, 2008 - 7:29 am 23. Joe Buzz:

“Grim” …thats just the word of the month or more. NIE reports, what type of credence do they carry after the previous estimate about the Iranians not working on nuke weapon systems?

Sep 25, 2008 - 7:29 am 24. Roderick Reilly:

I don’t think an Obama administtration will run from a widening war in Afghanistan (which seems increasingly likely). What it will do is fight it badly, preferring to imitate the limp way our NATO allies “fight” in Afghanistan now, and the way Clinton “fought” in Kosovo.

Obama will eventually cave to demands for a coalition government with the Taliban, which is tantamount to surrender, and then the Norwegian eunuchs will give him a Nobel Peace Prize. Karzai (if he hadn’t been killed by then) will be forced back into exile.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:19 am 25. Roderick Reilly:

Oh, and I forgot to add that, as a result of a brokered “peace” with the Taliban, Waziristan will also become a part of an enlarged Afghanistan.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:20 am 26. Michael Hoskins:

bobal;
Once, when trying to make a small change in a large organization, the team wag likened the process to a Jello ™ mold. You hit it, it squirms and shakes and jitters and, at the end of the day it is still the same old ring of Jello. The only way out is to eat it all.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:22 am 27. exhelodrvr:

sigintel,
“The Afgan war needs to be fought from the sky and not in the mud.”

No – Iraq should have shown you the error in that approach. You’re not going to get the support of the populace if the primary focus is bombing.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:58 am 28. peterike:

Since the MSM can’t have their “grim milestones” about deaths in Iraq anymore, they needed to find another outlet for their honking.

Perhaps one should begin tracking the “grim milestones” of the NY Times earnings reports, and the network news shows declines in viewers.

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:17 am 29. cedarford:

Afghanistan is a collection of primitive tribal peoples that hate outsiders and like to fight and kill one another when no invader exists to get money from by daylight then becomes a target, otherwise.
The ignorant Bush-Sharansky “dream” of a modern secular democratic state where America bleeds wealth to make “noble freedom-loving” Afghanis happier, women shed their Burquas – was always dumb fantasy.

It’s down to one Potemkin village now, Kabul…with most “rebuilding projects” the infidel invaders have done on hold. Where scattered unenthusiastic foreign fighters from NATO hoping they can temporarily control small patches of land they move on – and not get shot at before their time in the shithole is up and they are safe again in Mantobia, Illinois, or Marseilles. Some NATO troops even leave messages with the villagers to give to the tribal warlords or Taliban who retake the ground and the people when the last helo departs that they may be back, but “don’t mess with us, and we won’t come looking for you.”

The endpoint appears to be once the US and NATO tires of pissing away lives and money on nation-building, Afghanistan reverts back to what it always was.
The Russians also held cities and firebases and had mastery of the air for most of their time there…as they sought to fan out and bring modernization and nation-building benefits to the countryside to help make Afghanistan a friendly ally of the Soviets.

It didn’t work.

sigintel:
The US needs to deploy hundreds if not thousands of Predator aircraft over the sky’s of Afghanistan and along the Paki and Iranian borders… armed and ready to fire. The Afgan war needs to be fought from the sky and not in the mud. The Brits and French are fighting the Vietnam war and losing.

And we are refighting the Soviet experiment to uplift the savage Muslims, and also losing. And the Russians had a hell of a lot more experience and success in the ‘Stans that were added to the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.

As for winning the war by “eye-in-the sky” drones, that is also a losing proposition. Not unless you design high tech wonder-toys that can somehow divine what is in the hearts and minds of the Afghanis and Pashtun Paks 10,000 feet below.

Long-term? A financially exhausted USA may have to withdraw, and seek containment. And an agreement – we won’t mess with you – you don’t mess with us – or we come back. 8 years of response after a minor (as wars go) attack on the USA is long enough to prove our will and determination.

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:36 am 30. NahnCee:

Hot Air / Morrissey opines that Palin was a B- and Couric was a B+, and specifically says Couric did *not* ask “gotcha” questions. He says Palin was more uptight than in her last interview.

Compare that to the doom and gloom reviews here, which do (to this reader) have more than a hint of “there there” patting on the head of the poor little females trying to make it in a man’s world.

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:47 am 31. Tcobb:

As I’ve said before, I think the only real strategy which will work at this time is to identify the leaders, find them, and execute them by fair means or foul. And I would not make much of an effort to avoid collateral damage, and I would give no thought whatsoever to taking prisoners. Once the tribal leaders figure out that harboring such people brings down an awful wrath not just on the jihadis but on them as well they WILL stop harboring such people. The people in Waziristan and Afghanistan understand violence rather well, and have the deepest respect for people who are willing to employ it against folks who have pissed them off. Compassionate combat, taking care not to offend the sensibilities of the people who support and give comfort to our enemies, is not seen as a sign of moral goodness, its seen as weakness in the form of something akin to mental illness.

If a few of the villages in Waziristan that are hotbeds of the Taliban were to vanish due to a daisy-cutter being dropped in the middle of said villages, I think the war in Afghanistan would soon be over.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:07 am 32. Cannoneer No. 4:

The key to victory in Afghanistan is figuring out what victory looks like. Only when we know in what condition we can acceptly leave Afghanistan when we declare “Peace With Honor” and bug out can we intelligently start down the path towards that acceptable end state.

An acceptable end state to me would be an expanse of real estate stretching from the Iranian border to the Indus river from which attacks on America can not be staged, planned or trained for. That is what brought us there. All the nation-building, roads, clinics, girl’s schools, money, etc. is wasted unless it reduces to an acceptable level the risk of Afghanistan or the F.A.T.A or the NWFP being used as a base for attacks against us.

If I was running the Af-Pak War, Hamid Gul would meet with an unfortunate accident my first month on the job. Mr. Tenpercent would be bribed/blackmailed/threatened in to purging the ISI of Taliban sympathizers. Gen. Kiyani would be made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Anti-Taliban tribal lashkars would get money and weapons and bounties for Taliban heads. Private Military Companies would be hired to run and escort truck convoys from Karachi to Kandahar and Bagram.

And there would be a great culling of the fobbits.

We need to Afghanize this war. Fewer American, Canadian and European trigger-pullers. More trainers/mentors. More training/mentoring contractors. More local/district/provincial/tribal/regional/popular forces.

And decide once and for all whether we care enough about all that opium to do anything about it.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:07 am 33. Cannoneer No. 4:

sigintel, not enough band width or operators to put that many Predators up.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:11 am 34. Habu:

Dgree3:
Another incisive, accurate report from the same intelligence services who failed the US so miserably in the run-up to 9/11
Dgree3:
Not the same. You must have missed the Patriot Act and all it encompassed. You might want to review it before the “run up” to your next post. One cannot step into the same stream twice.

However, we will never “win” in Afghanistan. No one ever has.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:32 am 35. 3Case:

“…not enough band width…to put that many Predators up.

I’m not sure about that. I know people who have been working on that for the last 10 years…with success from what I can glean. Operators is another question.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:37 am 36. Michael Hoskins:

Re: Predators.
Not enough Predators. Nor enough operable intel. Predators cannot operate as a sole asset. Many of the pics of moving targets are a result of the target having been flushed. You need some good hunting dogs down there…with boots, radios and rifles.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:45 am 37. Konyok:

It is perilous to make definite statements about Afghanistan.

That said, one thing that numerous commentators on this forum don’t understand, or take seriously, is that Afghanistan is a profoundly multi ethnic country.

Easily 90% of the current Taliban resurgence is taking place in the Pushtun areas. We don’t hear of troubles in the Panjshir valley for the simple reason that the Tajik people there, redoubtable mujahidin, are not on the war path. The same holds true for the Uzbeks, Hazaras and other groups. There is a whole swath of northern Afghanistan that worries about Taliban terrorists coming in and attacking civilians, but is not engaged in war. Being Afghanistan, conditions there are awful, but slowly improving.

Should the Taliban, who Afghans universally view as Pushtun, succeed in Helmand they will then face another civil war with other ethnic groups, who are now much better situated than they were when the Soviets withdrew.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:51 am 38. Tcobb:

However, we will never “win” in Afghanistan. No one ever has.

Not quite true, Habu. Alexander the Great did. And really, despite what is said, the Soviets had essentially won too after they had invaded Afghanistan in the 1980’s. It was only when the US government began to supply the Afghan rebels, who had, for the most part, been pushed out of Afghanistan by then, with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, that the tide turned.

Victory, and defeat, is all in the eyes of the beholder. It is not that the US military cannot win, the difficulties arise from the strait-jackets we choose to place upon them.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:53 am 39. Cannoneer No. 4:

Tribal Tribulations

Sep 25, 2008 - 11:26 am 40. Habu:

Tcobb .367 lifetime avg..great

In 330 BC Alexander the Great fought in Afghanistan for four years and moved on, or rather his soldiers refused to fight there any longer so he just continued east. Is that a “conquest or a capitulation?”

So as I see it neither Alexander the G, nor the Sovs were able to “conquer” Afghanistan….getting close to conquering , or fighting a four year inconclusive series of running engagements doesn’t count.

So I remain comfortable in stating that no one has ever conquered Afghanistan, actually taken over that terra firma and controlled it.

Sep 25, 2008 - 11:46 am 41. Habu:

Tcobb

“It is not that the US military cannot win, the difficulties arise from the strait-jackets we choose to place upon them.”

I fully agree with this but I believe it would take nuclear weapons to get it done. . Make the land ( particularly the tribal areas near Pak)so “Hot” no one could live there. But short of using NBC there. We’re not going to win in Afghanistan.

The price will not be supported by our citizenry.

Sep 25, 2008 - 11:53 am 42. Cyber Johnny:

Cannoneer No. 4:

Not enough Predators/Reapers either.

Sep 25, 2008 - 12:08 pm 43. sigintel:

The Afgan Army has to do the ground work in this war, not NATO. As pointed out, it’s a multi-ethnic tribal nation and way different then a much more “modern” Iraq. We can train and support the Afghans, but let them do the grunt work and nation building. The current battle plan (as described by Yon)of fighting from remote outposts reminds me of Khe Shan(sp) and how the Brits fought in the 19th century. My point on UAV’s (there are gigbits of Ku-band and now Ka-band satcom bandwidth available from commercial satellite resources, and ground operators can be trained)is that this country is so vast and the terrain so difficult that no modern army has been able to sustain any meaningful control of “liberated” areas. It will take a different approach and Afganization combined with US air power seems a better solution than more US boots on the ground and the potential for an endless quagmire.

Sep 25, 2008 - 12:17 pm 44. Cannoneer No. 4:

Timur and Ahmad Shah Durrani controlled Afghanistan about as well as any place in Central Asia was controlled centuries ago.

Sep 25, 2008 - 12:18 pm 45. Cannoneer No. 4:

More aerial delivery of ordnance = more opportunities for the Taliban to convince Karzai and the Western Media that the cowardly Americans bombed “innocent women and children.”

ISR is wonderful, let’s have as much as we can support, but the killing needs to be done by ANA and ANP. It’s their country. We need to bring them to a level of competence and strength that they can not only secure what they should be responsible for but can help us east of the Durand Line.

The Durand Line needs to go away. The border needs to be defined based on topographic realities, with as much buy-in as we can get from the tribes. Then The Afghans landslide and drop-block every foot and donkey trail border crossing and put guard shacks, gates and overwatching machineguns at the official border crossings. Make the Taliban work to get across. Make the mountains too tough for ‘em. Force them to cross the Registan Desert. Have some pseudo-gangs that can pass as Kuchis wandering around to keep tabs on ‘em and call in the MLRS.

Sep 25, 2008 - 12:44 pm 46. bobal:

An analysis along the lines of the greatest good for the greatest number over time might suggest the best thing to do in Afghanistan, the most compassionate, would be to kill all the inhabitants and repopulate the place with Swiss, or Swedes.

Habu is right, I believe, we’ll never ‘win’ there, certainly not with anything near the current level of effort.

Sep 25, 2008 - 1:31 pm 47. bobal:

One could set up a numerical rating scale–some negative number to genital mutilation, forced marriage, rape, sodomy, stoning to death, no free speech or thought, insane religion, drug addiction, endemic violence, illiteracy, etc. for the average individual, contrasted with positive values for life itself, even in the worst of circumstances, calculate these values, over against the values obtained by a Swiss or Swedish society, then see in what time span an overall positive number would be created by killing all the current inhabitants.

Sep 25, 2008 - 1:44 pm 48. Habu:

What national interest does it serve the USA to continue to fight in Afghanistan?

Please exclude poppie production and junkies as a raison d’etre.

What strategic value does Afgha have for us? I am aware the bad guys propagate there but they’ll just go somewhere else and we’ll always have bad guys anyway. Additionally it does not appear reasonable to think we can forever keep the AQ and other bad guys from getting the bomb.

So why continue? Don’t get me wrong. I would drop nukes on them for a week but the world would stop us. I’m not anywhere close to a peace advocate but I also think you need to be selective in choosing your wars, and I just don’t see the border areas as that strategic, or for that matter the entire country.

Sep 25, 2008 - 2:08 pm 49. Cannoneer No. 4:

Unilaterally declaring defeat and running away is not in the national interest.

Forcing Osama bin Laden to live in caves and not come out fo ryears at a time is in the national interest.

Making Zawahiri nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs is in the national interest if worrying about his personal survival keeps him from planning attacks on us.

Al Qaeda has moved its money, and most of its leaders and technicians, to this part of the world, after being defeated in Iraq. Al Qaeda has declared Afghanistan and Pakistan their new main battleground. On a more pragmatic level, this is al Qaeda’s last stand. There’s nowhere else in the world, outside of the tribal areas of Pakistan, along the Afghan border, where al Qaeda could find refuge.

Sep 25, 2008 - 2:23 pm 50. OldSalt:

In neither the Iraq nor Afghanistan campaigns of this war, were the enemy indigenous and self-supporting. While irregular fighters with some local support can do a great deal with just a little, they cannot do much with just dirt. Without Syria, Iran, the American Democrats, and Saudi money, the Iraq campaign would have been over in 18 months regardless of our strategy. Without Pakistan and Iran, the campaign in Afghanistan would be 10 percent of what it is now.

While “daisy cutters” make for some amazing theater, and I personally would rather have a village of enemy-combatant supporting civilians dead than a half dozen American Marines or Soldiers, air power without boots on the ground and good intel, is just fireworks. One of the kids in those villages is going to survive, and he won’t care much about politics and may not care if Allah provides him 72 virgins at death, but he sure as hell will be willing to carry a suitcase of NBC material into the US proper to revenge his family. You can’t kill enough to rid the world of all our enemies.

Effective deterrence doesn’t require extermination of populations. It does require (a) an superior, not adequate military in both quality and quantity, (b) national will, encouraged by an attitude of gratitude and reverence for the hero’s who’ve fought in a societies’ behalf, and (c) CONSISTENCY, in both principles and execution. You can’t have political opportunists be “for the war” immediately after 9/11, and later trying to impeach the President who executed the policy they originally agreed on, just in time for the next election cycle. Deterrence requires a consistent unity of national will.

We also, I should add, need the national financial strength that only capitalism and free markets have provided. The near-meltdown America is now dealing with is entirely a political creation. Stupid laws were passed in the mid-90’s to encourage people who had demonstrated neither the self-discipline nor wherewithal for owning property, to get near-free government supported money to buy their property. Well, low and behold, as money is a commodity, that government supported bonanza flowed to EVERY INVESTOR who figured out what a hot ticket the new rules were, and the system nearly went bust with bad debt. This wasn’t about hard working Americans living large, it was about incompetent and corrupt pols spending public funds to enhance their own political power. And of course, let’s all blame this, Iraq, 9/11, the “stolen” election and everything else on GWB. That’ll fix it!

Although American is a rich nations, we lack the means to win under the status quo. I respect Petraeus and his achievements, but I have a hard time agreeing on his counter-insurgency strategy while in the midst of a larger war, and with Russian (even if token) warplanes and ships off our South-Eastern coast. We fight to win, we fight the source, even if it means taking on 165 million Paks. We don’t put bandaids on wounds in 1990 that kids born that same year will have to fix in 2008. It’s immoral. It’s a dereliction of responsibility by one generation to their kids.

Sep 25, 2008 - 2:48 pm 51. Habu:

Well, you still haven’t come close to answering the question. What is our strategic interest in fighting in A-stan?

Lee would not redeploy his men at Gettysburg and get on the flank of the Union Army, so to your response that:

“Unilaterally declaring defeat and running away is not in the national interest”, I ask why not? As I’ve pointed out they’ll always be bad guys AND we don’t even know if OBL is still alive. We are simply wasting money and lives at this point.

The simple fact is it’s a real ball buster trying to continue to rationalize this war.
Iraq OK, A-stan humbug.

Lets say we have then all zeroed in (which we’ve not managed to do in what six years) and all of a sudden Hugo Chavez invites the entire AQ for a house visit of undetermined length? or Cuba does the same?

“Forcing Osama bin Laden to live in caves and not come out for years at a time is in the national interest”
Huh..we’re paying way too high a price for his rent on that cave, if he’s there.

Come on give me our strategic interest not a sonnett on people being nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Thats not a strategic interest, not even close.

Kids who were in grammar school when this started are now being eated up for the reasons you cite..no sale…Strategic interest?

Sep 25, 2008 - 2:52 pm 52. exhelodrvr:

Habu,
“What is our strategic interest in fighting in A-stan?”

1) Denying it to the enemy as a staging ground

2) Realizing that leaving now would be a huge morale boost to all our enemies, including Al Queda, Iran, North Korea, Syria, China, and Venezuela. Leaving Vietnam, Somalia, and Lebanon due to a lack of willpower created many more problems because it encouraged the Saddams, bin Ladens, etc.

Sep 25, 2008 - 2:58 pm 53. Cannoneer No. 4:

Habu, was it in the strategic interest of the United States to withold support from the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975?

Maintenance of credible deterrence is a vital strategic interest, as is avoiding six years of demoralization and malais. Cutting and running and proving to be the weak horse will get more Americans killed than staying.

We’re getting more than just the rent on Osama’s cave for our trouble. His organization has been defeated in Mesopotamia. Allowing it to survive, regroup and rebuild sentences our younger brothers and sons to the same kind of rematch our Desert Storm forebears and brethren bequeathed to us. Finish it this time.

Sep 25, 2008 - 3:27 pm 54. whiskey:

Afghanistan is a signal to Pakistani lower-level people in charge of nukes that bad things could happen to them and their tribes if NYC went boom.

So, there’s that.

We could go away from Afghanistan, but it would cost us NYC and possibly more. Unless we were prepared to nuke our way out by taking out Pakistan’s nukes and leaving it a wreck unable to make new ones. Which would require by my reckoning killing about one third or more of 173 million people.

In the world where Pakistan has in each nuke more destructive power than the entire US military in WWII, there is no economy in fighting our enemies. We either deter them or not. If we don’t, we lose our most important cities and suffer up to 10 million dead in multiple strikes.

This is reality. Afghanistan itself was never important — only what it signaled to Pakistanis who hold the nukes.

Sep 25, 2008 - 3:32 pm 55. Gene Felder:

I think current problems in Afghanistan are related to our success in Iraq. Many jihadists have gotten out of Dodge and are now in Afghanistan.

General David Petraeus is shortly to become Commander, U.S. Central Command overseeing Afghanistan. Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis jointly oversaw the publication of Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, and Petraeus implemented those tactics successfully in Iraq. He may employ similar methods in Afghanistan. I assume he will have some changes in store for the Taliban.

The long term problem for us is our NATO allies do not spend enough on their military, certainly not enough on weapon systems and training.

See NATO’s web site at http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan On October 13, 2003, the United Nations, via Security Council Resolution 1510, put NATO in charge of providing security outside of Kabul. NATO’s participation there is not particularly controversial.

These allies of the United States have relied upon us for their defense, and do not have sufficient fighting forces or weapons available. The European countries spend about half the amount on defense, as a percentage of GDP, and spend a disproportionate amount of those funds on military salaries and benefits. Lacking training and weapons, they are not much help.

The Europeans rely upon the U.S., not even being able to handle Bosnia and Kosovo by themselves.

Sep 25, 2008 - 3:47 pm 56. cedarford:

OldSalt:
In neither the Iraq nor Afghanistan campaigns of this war, were the enemy indigenous and self-supporting.

Horseshit Neocon propaganda on “Old Salt” …

90% of our casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan are done by “trigger-pullers” and bomb detonators that are entirely indigenous.

That is the hidden stink of Neocons, Bushies, and Zionists claiming only a small outside cadre of “Evildoers” and anti-Israel “Islamofascists” are wacking Americans.

They know better, but still seek to sway dumb Goyim minds.

Sep 25, 2008 - 4:33 pm 57. Habu:

exhelodrvr:
They will find a staging ground somewhere, they always have. Why didn’t we for the past forty years assault the Baaka Valley. And where are they staging to go, that they can’t get to now from going to another staging ground? Terrorists are not going to evaporate and civilization throughout history has never been without them….Huge morale boost

.. I didn’t think it was possible to shove the needle past the hate peg and those you mentioned…well they’re already pegged. Which of the countries you mentioned are getting ready for a “We love America love fest?”

Cannon….It wasn’t for the Cambodians or the South Vietnamese.

“Maintenance of credible deterrence is a vital strategic interest, as is avoiding six years of demoralization and malaise. Cutting and running and proving to be the weak horse will get more Americans killed than staying.”

Maintenence of a credible deterrence. Just how would leaving A-stan upset that?

I’m not sure where you went with the avoiding six years of “demoralization and malais(sic)” We left Vietnam and after 33 years (since the NVA took Saigon) we are still a tremendously divided nation over that war.

Lack of will power? We’re a nation divided just about 50-50 between those who are anti- US on everything and those who want us to endlessly commit to wars where the indigenous population won’t even fight for themselves, nor can we get NATO to do more than hand out pizza to our fighting men and woman. We have lack of resolve, lack of unanimity or anything close to it, and we don’t have endless resources to save every piss ant nation on Earth. And it now is totally risible to believe we’re a capitalist country….we’re a Swedish model socialist country where our population in recent polls believes the government should do MORE, not less.

Finally Cannon there are so many permutations of AQ and other terrorist groups that regrouping isn’t a problem for them. Simply look at the State Dept or CIA list of terrorist organizations……it runs in the hundreds.

Whiskey,
Are you aware that Pakistani nukes are under US control? http://tinyurl.com/yur6×5

So you might want to search for another reason.

So we need to stay engaged because people who already hate us will hate us more, because 33-35 years ago our population forced us out of Vietnam even though we were kicking VC ass all over the place and because an old terrorist, OBL, who we’re not sure is alive or dead is living in a cave while we pay the rent in blood and treasure.

In the meantime China is building a blue water navy complete with aircraft carriers, Russia has almost completed it’s reversion to the Soviet Union, Hugo Chavez is roiling Latin America and we feel it’s most important to engage in the tribal areas of A-stan where some 300-400,000 tribesmen just this week went even more anti-American, and the Pakistanis are shooting at our aircraft.

Look, we either nuke ‘em and get the hell out or just get the hell out. Death by a thousand cuts is still not the way to go. I can remember during Vietnam mothers saying that the young soldier who had just been killed, her son , was in kindergarten when we got involved in Vietnam and she didn’t think she had raised a child to simply go 8000 miles away and get blown up by a land mine. If we’re not careful that same question will be asked again in the not to distant future and the reasons I’ve read so far for A-stan don’t pass muster.

Sep 25, 2008 - 4:42 pm 58. Cannoneer No. 4:

Getting the hell out because you have given up is defeat. You can own that. I won’t.

Sep 25, 2008 - 4:57 pm 59. We're Screwed in '08:

I’ve never been that big a fan of McCain, not since McCain-Feingold and that “xenophobic” crack about securing our borders. But he was my candidate by default, and I have to say, after some consideration: he screwed up big time with Palin. She looked promising at the start, in some respects, but turned out to be a sugar high. I mean really:

“COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say, I like ever American I’m speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout.

But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. A

And trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. ALl those things under the umbrella of job creation.

This bailout is a part of that. ”

This is incoherent. Now, excuse the interruption so we can get back to pondering whether Afghanistan is worth fighting for under an Obama administration.

Sep 25, 2008 - 4:57 pm 60. slade:

that “xenophobic” crack about securing our borders

The fact that drugs and violence cross an unsecured border fails to trespass into the realm of “xenophobic.” It is a matter of controlling criminal trespass.

Sep 25, 2008 - 5:50 pm 61. Habu:

Cannoneer,

“Getting the hell out because you have given up is defeat. You can own that. I won’t”

So you would have advised General Grant to continue to assault again and again at Cold Harbor?

Indignantly falling on your sword doesn’t change the fact that if we left A-stan tomorrow not a helluva lot would change. At some point we’re going to have to face the Sovs and the Chinese and we can’t piss away our forces and war impliments on A-stan.

I would be more encouraged if it could be cited that someone, anyone, had ever succeeded in A-stan, but the sad fact is no one has ever done so.

I would be overjoyed if we nuked them , but we won’t. So given those two positions I can’t see asking good men and women to continue to die for a shit ass country with no value to the USA except to satisfy some peoples false sense of what constitutes courage. It is not courageous to pursue a losing position for no substantial reason. A-stan does not represent a national threat to the USA. Your advocacy of continuing to feed the enemy fresh bodies is not courage, any fool can give that order. You can own that 18th century strategy. The new NIE will be out after the election and the early word on A-stan is that it is an untenable position for us to remain there.

Even Douglas MacArthur pointed out that a protracted land war in Asia was always a loser for the USA.

Sep 25, 2008 - 5:56 pm 62. OldSalt:

“In neither the Iraq nor Afghanistan campaigns of this war, were the enemy indigenous and self-supporting. – OldSalt”

“Horseshit Neocon propaganda on “Old Salt” – cedarford”

Well, then, we are of different minds on the matter. I have a very pratical, military mind. I know the kind of logistical “tail” required for those trigger-pullers. The money, major munitions, and the critical infrastructure necessary to sustain the level of battle by the Al Qaeda in Iraq did not originate in the cities and fields of Iraq. No informed military man would think so.

You, on the other hand, have a political mind, and a fairly racist mind as well. The only folks who use the word “Zionists” (and code word “neocon”) are antisemitics. Your hate (and/or that of your fellow travelers) and racism is sufficient to fuel the fantasy that Al Qaeda was never in Iraq, that this war was George Bush’s excellent hairbrained adventure, and that some super-neocon plot brought down the twin towers on 9/11.

I don’t deal with fantasy, and I have little patience for political idiots.

re: claiming only a small outside cadre of “Evildoers” and anti-Israel “Islamofascists” are wacking Americans – cedarford”

I never indicated any such thing. This “Islamic holy war” is populist movement intellectionally consistent with Islam. It has multinational support from a large majority of Muslims in official and ex-officio roles. The reason Americans are getting “whacked” is quite simple: Deterrence failed. We had a feckless Administration in the 1990s and a useless bag of airbags in Congress from the 1970’s to date, who gave our enemies the idea that American could be rolled. Our boys are now paying for that 60’s generation party with their lives.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:21 pm 63. 3Case:

“…helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries?”

Geez, Katie…last I checked the financial system has a big large part in the delivery of housing, gas and groceries to everybody, middle class, poor or rich. But then, maybe in your newsreader wisdom and experience you’ve learned some way of delivering housing, gas and groceries without a financial system. With such wisdom, maybe you could run your own hedge fund once you’ve finished cratering the CBS Evening News….

Republicans have to learn Dems/Libs/Marxists are no different than the bin Hidin and the dwarf Egyptian genocidal M.D., any kindness or courtesy will be repaid with a fist in the face. The McCain/Palin campaign staff blew this exchange and needs to step up it’s game. They might start by s—canning anyone who had any connection to GHWB’s ‘92 campaign. The Republicans need to stop showing up at gun fights with a knife.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:37 pm 64. Patriot Front:

Thanks OldSalt for putting cedarford in his place. (Which is not here, by the way, but perhaps there’s a seat left for him at kiddie table with the Kos Kids!)

That being said, hope for A-stan is fading fast. It is looking impossible to settle without handling Pakistan. The coming NIE will not be good. But it is invaluable to be inside the enemy’s decision cycle. It costs blood and money, but what will it cost in the coming years after we come out?

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:42 pm 65. exhelodrvr:

Habu,
“exhelodrvr:
They will find a staging ground somewhere, they always have. Why didn’t we for the past forty years assault the Baaka Valley.

.. I didn’t think it was possible to shove the needle past the hate peg and those you mentioned…well they’re already pegged. Which of the countries you mentioned are getting ready for a “We love America love fest?”

Maintenence of a credible deterrence. Just how would leaving A-stan upset that?”

Being loved is not the issue. Being respected is. Unfortunately, it is painfully (as in American lives being lost) obvious that when America commits to a foreign policy plan, and then backs out when things get tough, it encourages aggression from our enemies. When they sense weakness, they will strike. The weakness/strength being measured is the level of willingness to use force, not the theoretical amount of force that is available to use. Power is not a deterrent if it is not going to be used.

That has always been the case. You can look at the USSR in Eastern Europe starting prior to the end of WWII, Kruschev and Cuba following the Bay of Pigs, the Islamists after seeing what happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan when combined with U.S. withdrawals from Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia.

LEaving Afghanistan now would be the worst possible thing to do, now that there has been a commitment made. Leaving immediately after the Taliban were defeated would not have been seen as a U.S. defeat. Leaving now would be.

“Why didn’t we for the past forty years assault the Baaka Valley”

We should have taken stronger actions against Syria. That would likely have resulted in a much more stable western Mid-East.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:50 pm 66. Cannoneer No. 4:

Habu, if I could jump in Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine with you and Sherman and go back to see General Grant the only advice I would presume to give him would be to quit smoking.

Abandoning Afghanistan would be a catastrophe that would void any advantages of success in Iraq. If you can’t grasp that concept we have no futher basis for civil discussion.

Own your defeatism, Habu. Your morale is shot. Soviet/Chicom/Nork/North Vietnamese/Transnational Progressivist/Islamic/Socialist/Democrat PSYOP has worked on you, precisely as planned. Keep your broken will to yourself, lest your panic spread.

Or do you want everybody’s morale to be as bad as yours?

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:52 pm 67. NahnCee:

I think Habu is just itching to see the fireworks involved in a couple of really big nuclear explosions. He’s not declaring defeat … he’s just bored with the inch-by-inch effort on the ground when it could be a done deal and ever so much more exciting and compehensive if we did it another way.

I’m not sure I want to nuke Afghanistan, but I wouldn’t raise a pinky finger to protect Pakistan.

Sep 25, 2008 - 6:58 pm 68. Cannoneer No. 4:

The Foes of Our Own Household

Sep 25, 2008 - 7:02 pm 69. Cannoneer No. 4:

The Foes of Our Own Household

Sep 25, 2008 - 7:08 pm 70. Cannoneer No. 4:

You can’t bomb cavemen back into the Stone Age.

Sep 25, 2008 - 7:12 pm 71. Tony:

The only reason any world power would focus on Afghanistan/Pakistan wild lands is because an enemy is there?

Hmmm, in the Middle East, there is an irreplace-able commodity (don’t tell anybody, it has to do with hyrdrocarbons). And in the forever uncivilized mountain passage regions of the Hindu Kush and Kashmir only get attention because anti-civilization forces gather there. They have no strategic value other than the potential human “most wanted” myths.

We can not expect civil society based on freedom to suddenly sprout in Waziristan. But we can not allow a new Ho Chi Minh trail to serve as a strategic – out in the open – weakness over the imaginary border in the tribal mountains while our troops are in Afghanistan.

We tire of these wars. We have to win fast, or not at all.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:04 pm 72. Old Blue:

There is a lot to read above; everything from calls for darkening the skies with missile-laden Predators to Cedarford losing his freaking mind and making grand pronouncements about the invincibility of the Afghans.

I was there, and all of that is bullshit, plain and simple. Look, two and three years ago nobody was even talking about Afghanistan, and that’s when the problems were starting. You are seeing now what was well under way then; but you weren’t looking. This is nothing new, and it’s really not all that mind-boggling or baffling. It seems to me that most people are over-analyzing it; and when you do that, you actually lose the simplest of pictures.

It’s not rocket science. It’s really not; unless you are trying to figure out how to continue to do this on the cheap. I was on one of those under-resourced little teams out in the middle of it all. As a matter of fact, I was only a few klicks from where the French had their really bad day. I’ve been through Surobi quite a few times and I knew that it was not a friendly place.

And I absolutely disagree with the idea that any of us deserve to read their AAR on a public site.

It is absolutely up to the Afghans. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to do it. Doing it for them is not going to solve the problem; it will only keep the wolf from the door for a little while. There are nearly 300 districts in Afghanistan and each and every one of them needs a Police Mentor Team. When the guys in the village with the AK are ANP, and life with them as the authority figures and first line of contact with the government is better than life under Mullah Houmeva and Qari Sumbadi, then our national interests will be served and so will theirs. Period.

Getting there is not all that hard, either. You do it the way that Petraeus did it, too. First, you have to make the civilians feel secure. You have to provide them with security. Living under the threat that some computer-riveted geek in an electronics-crammed trailer on a megafob miles away might just lob a Hellfire into your hacienda is not security. Yes, that requires boots on the ground. Some of them American, but more and more Afghan boots.

The ANA is a success story, folks. We need to do the same thing with the ANP. It’s going to take time. We also need for the “senior mentors” in Kabul to do as much ass-kicking as we did downrange. Sometimes you just have to let them know that certain things are unacceptable; like graft and not doing your job. It’s surprising how well they respond to it.

THAT’s what victory looks like. THAT’s what an acceptable end-state looks like. It’s not perfect, and it’s not rocket science; but it does take national commitment and smart, committed people and lots of them. It would take 1800 – 2400 people and 600 – 900 vehicles just to man the PMT’s to that level of effectiveness.

Oh, and Cedarford: EVERYONE has conquered Afghanistan. Alex did it, the Persians did it a lot, the Indians did it, the Mongols did it, everyone did it. When someone else is in charge of a country, that’s called conquered. Resistance be damned; when you control the cities and the roads, you have conquered. Afghans are very resilient people. You can kick their ass a million times, and there will always be survivors. They are like cockroaches because you just can’t kill them all. Not even with nukes. That’s just a question of terrain.

Your continued insistence that Kabul is the only place where there is government authority is asinine, ill-informed, and alarmist/defeatist. In short, it’s bullshit. I sat in Provincial council meetings in more than one province, and I’ve worked with the Police in three, including the Tag Ab Valley and in Nuristan. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Period.

Here’s the secret that all of you are ignoring; nobody ever conquered Afghanistan for Afghanistan. They were always messing with someone else. Nobody ever tried to do any real nation-building in Afghanistan. They just wanted to pacify it long enough to mess with their real target and when it got old messing with whomever they were messing with, they just packed up and left.

They left Afghanistan a mess. No wonder they tend towards xenophobia. They’ve seen a lot of that.

That’s why bailing after however many years is not a demonstration of national will and power. It’s pretty much what everyone else has done. What makes us so special?

Enough talk of conquering. We’re not there to conquer, anyway. We’re there to help get to that end state I described above… Afghanistan ruled by Afghans in a viable way. All the conquering talk is mindless babble from would-be Imperialists. We are not building an empire; we are serving our own interests by helping a formerly ungoverned land become a land ruled by law.

When Michael Yon made his pronouncement (which I tend to disagree with) that we are losing in Afghanistan, it was based on his experiences with civilians who are not being secured by the government. He knows that when the civilians don’t trust the government with that basic task, then we are in real trouble. I believe that we are not winning in parts of Afghanistan, but we are winning in others. Unfortunately, we are not winning in the provinces that border Pakistan. We simply have got to find ways to encourage and assist the Pakistanis in securing their own country. The Taliban encroachment into their political scene may be enough for them to get the message that ignoring and even aiding and abetting the lawlessness in the FATA is only going to harm them in the long run.

I’m reminded of the story of the talking viper who convinced a man to carry him across a river. Short story: the man was bitten and died. Quote: “You knew I was a viper when you picked me up.”

All the yammering about who did what twenty years ago doesn’t solve the problems and only makes the Afghan insurgent seem somehow invincible to many. He’s not. He’s a thug. He’s a smart thug, often dealing with poor counterinsurgents, but he’s not a great thug. He’s crafty but he’s generally backwards. All he has to do is operate when the government isn’t there to see. It’s not hard in many places in Afghanistan. That’s the problem that we need to solve. It’s not some incredibly complex secret hierarchy of masterminds.

Protect the people, and keep beating into the Police, the local governments, and the Government of Afghanistan; “Don’t steal, don’t abuse people, and don’t let family loyalty make all of your decisions for you. Be responsible, and do your job.”

It really is that simple. It can be done. It IS in our national interests, critical even.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:06 pm 73. Habu:

Cannon,
We fight, in part, so we can have civil discourse, don’t abandon that.
“Soviet/Chicom/Nork/North Vietnamese/Transnational Progressivist/Islamic/Socialist/Democrat PSYOP”

Cannoneer, I worked my way through the Cold War and the hot one. I’ve had for whatever it was ever worth the Geneva Convention at my back while I was in the Marine Corps and I was without it for the 70’s and half of the 80’s with the CIA. I was covert the entire time. I grew up in the Marine Corps. I don’t cut and run but I also learned that you don’t simply trash your men and women in a cause that has the half life of Uranium 235. Did they stay and fight in Korea when the ChiComs came to fight or was there a withdrawal to the Pusan perimeter, a regrouping and the Inchon landing?. That war lasted a fifth the time Vietnam did yet we had 54,229 KIAs (vs Vietnam 58,217 KIA) and we basically capitulated, going into “peace” talks that go on to this day and at the same parallel where the war started We were afraid of using the BOMB but the slaughter was too much

Cannon,I mentioned not a word of leaving Iraq. Know why? Because it is of strategic value, not to mention they owe us a huge dept which we will collect, even if we have to subvert their government, which I would approve in a heart beat if they get wobbly. Killing their current leadership and blaming AQ is so easy as to be almost fun. They know this too for someone has or will whisper in their ear “play ball” or you’ll be pig offal by morning.

The NIE will finish off A-stan for us. Then we can refit our forces and get ready for round two which will be the Ukraine (unless the Sovs move on it while we have the upcoming presidential election outcome riots, which I am convince will occur. But that’s a different topic.)

Protracted wars are not this republics strong suit and it’s got nothing to do with the courage of our forces and everything to do with the lessons we’ve learned that you can continue to get people killed for what ends up being nothing. Today we trade with Vietnam, old soldiers go back to visit places of horror. And did Pol Pot ‘s mass murder really affect the US when we pulled out. No it didn’t. Today we are still in a pissing contest with NK which is ramping up the bomb.

Cannoneer, don’t worry, there’s always another war right around the corner.

Oh one last thing. You can bomb cavemen so they glow in the dark or end up buried under a mountain of rubble. It’s just a matter of how high we want the rubble to bounce.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:10 pm 74. Old Blue:

Habu: “Habusaki?”

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:18 pm 75. Habu:

Old Blue

Read your entire post. What they need, what we’re trying to do, etc. Then the ending.
“It IS in our national interests, critical even.”

In your entire post you didn’t give one reason why it is.

You mentioned we weren’t nation building but rather just trying to get ump ti ump warlords and 300+ districts to do something they’ve never done before;and before we arrived showed no interest in doing.

Each of these little suzerain’s has operated this way how long, 500, 1000 years?

Can you explain why, “”It IS in our national interests, critical even.” Or point me to the section of your post where that part is explained? You even said it was CRITICAL. Why?

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:42 pm 76. Dave:

Afghanistan will be a sitzkrieg, not a blitzkrieg.

Michael Yon is correct in assessing that Uncle Sam is blundering around—-again. He has always done invasions pretty good, then proceeded to dance the tarantella on his male member when it came to the ensuing occupation.

The NIE is probably a bit overdone. I do not see anybody on the scene who can force us out if we do not want to be forced.

What has always bailed us out is that American soldiers inspire a cultural transformation wherever they go. Already happening in certain portions of Afghanistan.
Even the Pushtuns will come around in due order——porvided we get us a commander who will go about matters like General Petraeus went about it in Iraq.

Afghanistan is grim all right, but only in the sense that astute patience is lacking.

I find it particularly assinine that so many people think that using nukes will reduce enemy capabilities to the point of harmlessness. That is true only if those nukes destroy industrial output upon which the enemy depends. A single atomic bomb knocking out a Ploesti refinery would have been useful. Multiple a-bombs on downtown Berlin would have been useless. Same principle applies to Afghanistan.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:45 pm 77. Tony:

Following Habu,

I wonder where we draw the line between Soft Power a la Ms. Weakness SecState Condi Rice, and something more like Rolling Thunder or Linebacker I and II.

Why are we letting Iran send weapons into Iraq and Pakistan-based enemies infiltrate into Afghanistan?

How many walk-able passes can there be? Why aren’t we running Arclight up the top 95 passes available to our enemies?

I’m just asking, I sincerely appreciate the work of our troops who actually do the stuff I only read about.

Sep 25, 2008 - 8:54 pm 78. Habu:

State Department FTO’s

Here’s the current Dept of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations

Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)
Abu Sayyaf Group
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
Ansar al-Islam
Armed Islamic Group (GIA)
Asbat al-Ansar
Aum Shinrikyo
Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA)
Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army (CPP/NPA)
Continuity Irish Republican Army
Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group)
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)
Hizballah (Party of God)
Islamic Jihad Group
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) (Army of Mohammed)
Jemaah Islamiya organization (JI)
al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad)
Kahane Chai (Kach)
Kongra-Gel (KGK, formerly Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, KADEK)
Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous)
Lashkar i Jhangvi
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM)
Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)
National Liberation Army (ELN)
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLF)
PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC)
Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (QJBR) (al-Qaida in Iraq) (formerly Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad, JTJ, al-Zarqawi Network)
al-Qa’ida
al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (formerly GSPC)
Real IRA
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
Revolutionary Nuclei (formerly ELA)
Revolutionary Organization 17 November
Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C)
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, SL)
Each one is critical to defeat, critical. Any one of these groups could be smuggling NBC into the USA right now. My experience tells me some of these are easier to get at than those guys hiding in the rocks in A-stan, and as the Old Salt pointed out our very vital logistics tail wouldn’t stretch 10,000 miles away. I say we declare one of the FTO closer to our borders as THE MOST CRITICAL of all the CRITICALS…..after all some CRITICALS are more CRITICAL than others.

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:00 pm 79. Habu:

Old Blue

Habu = SR-71 back in the day sometimes out of Peshawar

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:04 pm 80. Habu:

Dave,

No such thing as a wasted H-bomb. And it’s the not just the initial damage. It’s the years and years of afterglow, not to mention the psychological effects.

Tell ya what ..lets drop one on a warlords world and come back in a month and ask the folks if it was scary. oops no folks, but I bet they would have said it was scary.

Byproducts of fission such as Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, can poison living creatures and contaminate air, water and soil for hundreds of years. Now, how about we just drop one on those pesky tribal areas. leaving them uninhabitable for hundreds of years. Hell, A-stan doesn’t have any tourist business to speak of anyway and poof….problem solved. We would also be doing a good job on the poppy crop. A real bonus.

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:21 pm 81. Habu:

Been fun, nite all

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:21 pm 82. Old Blue:

Habu, it’s pretty obvious why it’s in our national interests. Firstly, if we cut and run, then it’s Viet Nam Hangover all over again. That means a world that doesn’t take us seriously when we speak our mind about other things that matter to us… the late 70’s all over again. We never did recover from that until the Gulf War victory.

That’s just part of it, though. It depends on if you really believe in a global Islamic insurgency. If you don’t, well, there’s really no need to talk about where they may seek a sanctuary for basing their activities from training and planning to recruitment. Here’s what we do know: Afghanistan was that place. If we leave it a mess, it WILL be again.

In the days before 9/11, no one knew that huge human-guided fuel-air explosive cruise missiles would be directed against two of the world’s tallest buildings in New York. We did know that those two spires held some fascination for the likes of Bin Ladin, but it was a never-before type event.

So will the next one be. We are in a war, Habu. It’s not a conventional conflict… it’s not even as limited as Viet Nam. Its implications have touched many other countries on their own soil. It’s not even all Al Qaeda.

Doubt that not at your own risk, but at the risk of millions of others.

It takes a different viewpoint from the old Viet Nam or Cold War viewpoint. It’s not about nation-states hammering away at each other. In the Cold War, the threat to the U.S. homeland was nuclear, but even that was a far stretch. I trained to fight a conventional, AirLand Battle doctrine war in Europe, not opposing an invasion of our own soil. Even Pearl Harbor pales when compared to the relatively minor military casualties we suffered on 9/11.

Most were civilians. American civilians working at their desks in New York City. Now they are violently dead.

No, 9/11 will not be repeated. Next time it will be something else that has never been done. Dirty bomb? Chemicals? Organized shooters staging a squad-sized attack on a mall? Mortars at a football game? How about a nice ANFO or ANAL bomb? There are many possibilities. How about combinations of the above? How many are there? Do you think that a squad or even a team of halfway decently trained gunmen could chase a crowd of people into a kill zone for a massive explosion?

How about forcing Americans to have to live like residents in countries that are less free… being stopped at checkpoints and asked for their papers every few miles so that we can catch the terrorists?

Afghanistan has been ignored for years and has repeatedly popped up as a source of trouble. Iraq may be strategic for its oil and central location in the Middle East, but Afghanistan, in the heart of Asia and astride the old Silk Route, is strategic, too… it just takes a little more vision to see it. Now we see that there is such a thing as what is now called, “Human Terrain.”

And yes, professional ANP are the answer, because warlords are criminals.

It’s always a choice. We can bail on Afghanistan, but then our name is mud. Our choice.

Don’t misunderstand me; I did not say that we are not nation-building. We are. But you do that at the local level, not just ushering in an elected government, declaring a job well done, and going home.

If you can’t see that, you are not part of the solution; you are part of the problem. If there are enough people like you who are part of the problem, then we should heed our “national will” and leave. But I will tell you now that you will not like the results a few years from now. And when that inevitable bloody punch in the nose comes, then we should just sit down and bleed on ourselves for awhile and further develop our victim syndrome.

It is critical to our national interests that we show that we can finish a doable job. We are the big fat kid on the block. Heavy hands, short on wind. We are who we choose to be. For the average American, the extent of their suffering from this war has been watching it on TV and having their hearts tugged on, and paying more at the pump. Americans can take a little bad TV, but when it costs them ten more bucks to fill their car, it’s time to leave.

Perhaps we need another national humiliation and the aftermath of it in the eyes of the world. Perhaps Viet Nam wasn’t enough. Perhaps emboldened regimes and insurgents the world over is exactly what we deserve. After all, we really deserved 9/11, didn’t we?

Give AQ their victory, Habu. They’ve earned it, and we need our drawers around our ankles again.

You’re right. It’s not critical.

Sep 25, 2008 - 9:31 pm 83. Habu:

In many ways I use to have the brainwashed military mindset too. That’s why the old saying is that old men start the wars that the young men end up fighting. I guess too much observation and study of world events forced me to recalibrate the lenses’ I was observing the world through.

Earlier in the thread we covered the post Vietnam thing. It still divides this country. I went there to win and found out we weren’t gonna be allowed to. Pissed me off. Still does but it also taught me something that you haven’t lived long enough to develop fully; perspective. How old were you when we bugged out of Vietnam? Were you even alive?

The perspective is the one leaders like Robert E Lee, Douglas MacArthur, Grant, and a host of other great generals gave testimony to in their older years. Not all wars should be fought. Not all wars should continue to the bitter end, and some wars are simply a waste.

You cite other attacks to come. When in history have they not? It’s amusing for you to tell me, “We are in a war,Habu” What arrogance. I probably killed my first man before you were born. You speak of unconventional warfare. I guess Angola, Rhodesia, Chile and even overthrowing the government of Gough Whitlam (go ahead, take a minute to look him up) doesn’t qualify. How arrogant.
Part of the problem? I had bullets whizzing by my body while you at best were whizzing ON yourself.

At the end of his life Gen R.E.Lee when marching at an event purposefully marched out of step with the military. It was a protest of war. Would you say of Lee that he was part of the problem because wisdom now guided his feet?

I do believe one day you will see how easily you were used by old men who weren’t in any danger but did have an agenda. Iraq was a legit target as was A-stan. One day you will see but for now you’re still too close to the trees to see anything and you lack perspective and wisdom. Fear not. If you are bright enough one day you will see exactly what I am talking about.
BTW, I’m sure we’ll be attacked again some day. The 9-11 guys all huddled up in Germany though, not A-stan. They’re now reconstituting themselves in London, not A-stan.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:48 pm 84. Habu:

One more thing. You say, OK, give AQ their victory. There is where your lack of perspective gives you away.

It will not be me, or you who give them a victory should they gain one. It will be those old men I spoke of earlier who are out of harms way and yet they control the entire show. Look to them for our defeat. My wish in war is to kill then enemy with everything at my disposal, every club in the bag but we never do that, never. It is they who use up our young until they decide to quit. And when they decide to quit and you’ve given all and lost friends by the score, then you will see how impuissant you are in the scheme of things.

Sep 25, 2008 - 10:58 pm 85. Habu:

Maybe the last thing.

I may be an older guy but when I was raised a Marine brat and then joined the Marines they did one thing when they went to war. They had one focus. KILL as many of the enemy as possible. If the civilians got killed too bad.

This hearts and minds and rebuilding crap is crap. That’s why were not feared. If we sent in our armed forces and just killed and killed and killed believe me any population would fear our coming and respect us as KILLERS.

Let some other agency come in and clean up the dead and hand out candy and rebuild mud huts..I say f*ck all that. If you kill enough of them they will fear you and fear is what I want them to have.

We don’t work that way anymore; it’s too atavistic having your armed forces running around just killing people. Now they have to wet nurse them. Screw that. Kill them by the hundreds of thousands if need be.

Somewhere along the line the perfumed princes forgot their job was to KILL and the other stuff is to be done by softer people. I don’t give a rat’s ass if the village chief likes us or not. If he gives you any crap kill him and every male in the village.

We didn’t kill Sadr because we wanted him to like us. What a absolutely f*cked way to run a war. In fact it’s not war it’s the county fair with occasional casualties. Now make sure to give every child a Teddy Bear. Makes me wanna puke.

Sep 25, 2008 - 11:33 pm 86. OldSalt:

Enough talk of conquering. We’re not there to conquer, anyway. We’re there to help get to that end state I described above… Afghanistan ruled by Afghans in a viable way. All the conquering talk is mindless babble from would-be Imperialists. We are not building an empire; we are serving our own interests by helping a formerly ungoverned land become a land ruled by law. – Old Blue

Spot on, but I’m still not sold on nation building at the cost of American treasure and blood. I know that our kids are good-to-go (I see the Marines here every day), but the cost is still high.

Second, the war is larger than Afghanistan. Do we invest heavily on bringing law and order to Afghanistan, and ignore Iran, Beka Valley, Georgia, Venezuela, etc.? Nation building comes AFTER the war is won. If it’s in our interest, sure we build civilian infrastructure (including security teams) during the war. However, Americans have only have so many “emotional bullets” in the bandoleer. We spent a bunch of them on Iraq, and strategically, I thought it was the place we had to be. You made an excellent point about the strategic location of Afghanistan. But I’d honestly rather beat down the Paks and Afghans by force and turn to fight Iran and maybe even support Georgia, plus kick Hugo down South, than use up our guys and American civilian support in Afghanistan. It might different if half the Afghan campaign effort were supported by NATO, and I saw Yon’s coverage on the Brits, great guys, but a long term counterinsurgency/nation-buildling effort in Afghanistan will sacrifice too much and leave other US vital interests compromised. I’m not sold.

By the way, thanks for your service.

Sep 25, 2008 - 11:49 pm 87. OldSalt:

re: Somewhere along the line the perfumed princes forgot their job was to KILL and the other stuff is to be done by softer people. I don’t give a rat’s ass if the village chief likes us or not. If he gives you any crap kill him and every male in the village. – Habu

That’s a US military caricature that never was, not even in the bad ol’ “kick ass” days of WWII. It was the Sov’s and maybe Germans earlier that did the retaliatory killing. It might make you feel good to talk about it, but it’s not us and never will be.

That said, as I said in my last post, I do have the concern about putting the cart before the horse. Win the war, then reconstruct, and mobilize nationally, if necessary to win the war. It would stop the cheap-shot, cowardly, back-bench carping from the political left dead in it’s tracks, for one thing.

Sep 25, 2008 - 11:55 pm 88. Dave:

Hey there Habu: How many Ruff-Puffs did those jarheaded CAP teams knock off?

And how come all those homicide-minded Marines let individual Victor Charlies drift in for visits with their families?

Going back a ways: How come more “gugus” died at the hands of the doomed C Company, 9th Infantry (Army) than at the hands of Waller’s
Samar Battalion (Marines) which won that portion of the archipelago for the US?

When the 4th Cavalry defeated the Commanche
for good, why were so few injuns killed?

When my ancestors went out and lost big time to “Uncle Billy”, most of them got home in one piece. More of them died when they were winning against Rosecrans.

In short, the reduction of enemy capabilities happens to involve killing. Killing is NOT the goal.

Oh yeah. Did anybody ever tell you that an H-Bomb or fusion explosion produces no radiation. Hmmmmmmm?

Sep 26, 2008 - 12:34 am 89. Fletcher Christian:

Dave; Fusion produces little radiation, true. However, the fission initiator does – and so does the U238 blanket placed around the larger weapons to increase the yield.

Afghanistan, however loathsome, is still a sideshow. The 1300-year war will not be over until there are quarter-mile-deep glass-lined craters, that glow in the dark, where Mecca, Medina and Qom used to be. It might need Tehran and Riyadh to be similarly replaced, too.

Sep 26, 2008 - 2:06 am 90. Cannoneer No. 4:

Cannoneer, I worked my way through the Cold War and the hot one. I’ve had for whatever it was ever worth the Geneva Convention at my back while I was in the Marine Corps and I was without it for the 70’s and half of the 80’s with the CIA. I was covert the entire time. I grew up in the Marine Corps.

I probably killed my first man before you were born. You speak of unconventional warfare. I guess Angola, Rhodesia, Chile and even overthrowing the government of Gough Whitlam (go ahead, take a minute to look him up) doesn’t qualify.

Habu, were you drunk last night?

Did you fly SR-71’s out of Peshawar, really?

Did you fight in Angola? Rhodesia?

Did you help overthrow Allende?

Did you help get Whitlam sacked?

So now you are looking back on your life and doing a Smedley Butler on us?

Have you been to Afghanistan, Habu? Tell us, Uncle Habu, about how you and Milt Bearden took that mule-train load of Stingers to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Sep 26, 2008 - 6:11 am 91. Wadeusaf:

Eastern Afghanistan and NW Pakistan have much in common, terrain, inaccessibility and a lack of economic incentives. Bringing peace means bringing contact with the outside world bringing stability means allowing them to achieve what they themselves cannot. Beating the bullys has a lot to do with that.

Sep 26, 2008 - 6:54 am 92. Old Blue:

So tell me, Habu, just how was it that you manipulated Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss the entire Australian government in one fell swoop. You are truly a very powerful man, and I am awed by your prescience.

You, for all of your wisdom, make a lot of assumptions that are well wide of the mark, old man. In military terms, I’m very old. I have a sibling who served in Viet Nam, and being just a few years behind him, I served more than a few years in the Cold War Army.

Yeah, I remember Viet Nam, and I remember the national hangover and international disregard we experienced in the aftermath. The fact of the matter is that Viet Nam was a loss; plain and simple. In my youth, I made excuses… “It wasn’t the military that lost Viet Nam, it was McNamara and the civilians.”

Bullshit. It was the military. It was a military that couldn’t get its arms wrapped around counterinsurgency. You make claims of wisdom, O Great Wizard, but you show with statments like this that it is you who have no concept:

“This hearts and minds and rebuilding crap is crap. That’s why were not feared. If we sent in our armed forces and just killed and killed and killed believe me any population would fear our coming and respect us as KILLERS.”

Lost ball in tall grass alert here.

In one voice you tell me that I lack the perspective to see that I was used, telling me how Robert E. Lee marched out of step as a protest of war, and in the other you lament the lack of death at our hands. Either you are not in your right mind or you are trying to be manipulative. If it is the former, then I wish you luck in your waning years. If it is the latter, you are demonstrating the very arrogance that you so freely accused me of more than once.

“Part of the problem? I had bullets whizzing by my body while you at best were whizzing ON yourself.”

Uh-huh. Listen, old man; there are a lot of parts of your stories that don’t add up. Marine grunts don’t wind up flying jets out of Peshawar AND toppling Australian governments AND operating covertly on the ground in a myriad of African countries. And, sir, if you did, you screwed it up pretty badly.

BTW, there were U-2’s operated out of Peshawar, but not SR-71’s.

I’m starting to think that you are a crackpot.

I find this forum to be interesting, with an exchange of views that is often refreshing. I am not getting that here. You appear to me to be one of those crackpots who claims to have done a lot of really impressive things… so many, and so disjointedly in fact that I am convinced that you are like one of those barroom Rangers who tries to impress everyone with imaginary achievements. The internet equivalent of a PX hero.

What you do not sound like is a man who, by virtue of his vast and varied experiences, has learned much of any real value. If you had been on the ground in Peshawar, I suppose that you might have learned that Central Asians are, in fact, quite human. If all of this Lee-like wisdom had grown in you, you would have realized that we are indeed feared, and that some of what I had to overcome in dealing with locals was exactly that.

They also fear the Talibs… and rightly so.

No, Habu old boy, I’m not buying it. I think that you’re a bit of a nut, blustering about in a semi-darkened room; a legend in your own mind. If, perhaps, you were indeed a Marine at one point, and a combat vet, then perhaps it’s time to go to the VA and talk to someone.

What does your family say about all of this? Has anyone ever suggested that you are perhaps a bit delusional? Do you drink a lot or take any pills?

There is help available. I’m not being condescending, either. It appears that you think things that aren’t true, and that you need some help to find the truth.

Sep 26, 2008 - 7:19 am 93. Old Blue:

Wadeusaf: “Eastern Afghanistan and NW Pakistan have much in common, terrain, inaccessibility and a lack of economic incentives. Bringing peace means bringing contact with the outside world bringing stability means allowing them to achieve what they themselves cannot. Beating the bullys has a lot to do with that.”

Excellent. The only thing that I would amend is that Eastern Afghanistan and NW Pakistan are exactly the same. The only reason that the two areas have different names is the Durand Line.

Yesterday, C-ford blustered about the Afghans being forever savage and that area being forever wilderness, but there were times when I looked at a good size village and I could just see 50 years down the road when there will be a Super HajiMart at a well-used intersection, the parking lot half full of cars while people shop for their families.

They’ve alread got some Zippy-Mart style gas station / convenience stores even in some smaller villages.

It’s going to happen if we are successful. If we are not, those poor little bastards are always going to wind up being the “hosts” of whoever needs a backwards place to hide.

Sep 26, 2008 - 7:30 am 94. Dave:

Old Blue: Some of us got fair to middling good at VN counterinsurgency. Those CAP teams were the premier example. Some Sneaky Petes were not too bad either.

When I left there for the last time (Dec 1970), the NLF had virtually ceased to exist. Yeah, the commies themselves managed to blow a good thing, but doggone it, I am gonna to claim an assist in their demise.

Ultimately, it was a highly conventional force that finally overran the RVN. In discussing the admitted shortcomings of the US military during that time, please take pains to see to it that you do not inadvertently promote the leftist myth of
a guerilla victory stemming from superior ideology.

BTW: I figure that those who fantasize about winning by turning portions of the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland actually harbor desires to see their own place destroyed. Just like Herr Schickelgruber.

Sep 26, 2008 - 8:45 am 95. Mad Fiddler:

Keep in mind that the Vietnamese people sustained their efforts to cast off foreign domination for a number of generations. China had been a repeated foe over centuries; France held “French Indo-China” in the early 20th Century, temporarily replaced by Japan for the duration of WWII, then back to France until Dien Bien Phu, then the USA until the pullout of 1974.

Part of America’s challenge is maintaining an attention span longer than the running time of an Obama campaign commercial.

Sep 26, 2008 - 8:55 am 96. Cannoneer No. 4:

A letter from Afghanistan, from a hero

Sep 26, 2008 - 9:02 am 97. Habu:

Blue,

First you’ve made some factual errors. I never claimed I flew out of anywhere. I was a ground pounder in the Marines and worked for the Directorate of Science and Technology and the Operations Directorates during my CIA years. So that covers that territory.

Secondly since I happen to work for the Office of Special Projects OD&E, DDs&T at CIA I actually saw the SR-71’s launch from Packistan. You wouldn’t know this. How old , in years are you?

In the matter of overthrowing the government of Gaugh Whitlam how absurd for you to believe one person does that,much less someone down the totem pole. But there are all levels of involvement in a team effort and I was involved in that team effort in Australia. So now you’re down two scores and I haven’t even opened up.

I’ve been on these blogs long enough to have the same claims you’re making made dozens of times. I just figure it’s a jealousy thing since even most of the military types never got close to any of the stuff I did and it just eats them up to think they aren’t the top shit they believe they are. I wasn’t top anything either but mid level at CIA is ok in my book. And it was fun. made beaucoup dollars off the records, tax free. Thank you parents for me since you weren’t paying taxes back then.

When you make comments like, “Marine grunts don’t wind up flying jets out of Peshawar AND toppling Australian governments AND operating covertly on the ground in a myriad of African countries. And, sir, if you did, you screwed it up pretty badly.”. Well it shows ignorance and jealousy. Are you saying a person just couldn’t do all that? Hmm.
I’ve addressed the two of the above. The third, Africa. Let me ask you, were you ,in your career ever tasked for more than one operation? If not you weren’t worth much.
You have no idea of the taskings one gets at CIA, Why? Because you weren’t inside and as a consequence don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
Finally I’m not selling anything and don’t really care how f*cked your inside the box brain is. The basic fact of my post was that you lack perspective. Now we find out you also lack knowledge. Bet ‘ya had to look up Gaugh Whitlam didn’t ya? Next try looking up Pine Gap.

BTW , You remember Vietnam but you sidestepped your age. An eight year old can make the claim you made, “I remember Vietnam”

You’re a funny dude.

Sep 26, 2008 - 9:09 am 98. Habu:

Cannon,
Didn’t mean to ignore your questions:

Did you fly SR-71’s out of Peshawar, really?

Did you fight in Angola? Rhodesia?

Did you help overthrow Allende?

Did you help get Whitlam sacked?

Now before I disclose how I managed to be in all these places and do these things I want the collective intelligence of the blog to think about what tasks would allow one to do this…when I give you the answer, you’ll do the palm to forehead head slap and go geez….here are some hints. In some of the tasks total stealth was necessary. In others that was not possible so you had to be prepared to fire a weapon (which I did not carry due to my cover, which I can not disclose, but it’s not vital for the anwser anyway)so you simply got a weapon from friendlies.

Ok , there it is. Covert,multi-tasked,global in scope. What did I do for part of my CIA service?

Sep 26, 2008 - 10:03 am 99. Wadeusaf:

Habu,

I for one don’t care for the way you state your opinion. Too bad too, you actually have one or two items that might even be worth the debate.

Perhaps you ought to try blogging at one of those fine military sites where your opinion and style are appreciated for the bluster. You see, Old Blue and Old Salt are right on, you are displaying an unfounded arrogance which leads me to believe it is unearned (duh) as well as being unbecoming a formerly professional spook such as yourself.

You shoulda stayed gone bu. Life goes on.

Sep 26, 2008 - 10:17 am 100. Habu:

Oh yeah, whoever mentioned Smedley Butler. Well, I reckon he had some perspective. Usually two time Medal of Honor winners are at least credited with bravery.

That he wrote “War is a racket” has more than a ring of truth to it.

Dave..I guess Flecther Christian helped you out on your incorrect misstatement..thanks Flecther.

Cannoneer ….I don’t drink or smoke or chew. I enjoy weightlifting, horseback riding on my Montana property in Townsend, just east of Helena and shooting right out my back door. I would like to learn to fly a tail dragger before I die. Thanks for asking.
It’s great fly fishing country but I’ve never been much for fishing..enjoy skeet shooting though
And finally I’ll stick by my armies are for killing people position. Historically it’s really very accurate and historically it’s been very effective. The candy cane hearts and minds approach hasn’t been around long enough to judge it’s historical effectiveness.

Sep 26, 2008 - 10:24 am 101. Habu:

Wade-o ..

“I for one don’t care for the way you state your opinion.”

Well gee, if you’ll just tell me what to write and how to write it then I can make you happy…but that guy over there behind that tree, well he doesn’t like your style. What should I do?

Sep 26, 2008 - 10:29 am 102. Habu:

Kindly point out some of my “bluster” I’ll attempt to keep in mind that too much bluster isn’t the PC thing in today’s world.

Sep 26, 2008 - 10:46 am 103. Sons of Dir Awakening « Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group:

[...] Sep 25, 2008 – 10:07 am [...]

Sep 27, 2008 - 2:23 pm

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.