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Afghanistan: A Failed Strategy On All Fronts

This piece from Time criticizes the overall strategy in Afghanistan as misplaced and unworkable, and lays some blame on U.S. sloppiness in delegating civilian authority on the ground (aka, general incompetence). It talks about former U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s departure from his post in response to leaked cables in which he was exposed as saying “President [Hamid] Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner,” and added that he “continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development.” Incidentally, Eikenberry himself was guilty of precisely the same kinds of things, as the piece explains. But some suggest it wasn’t the man, but the system that was incompetent:

Other observers contend Eikenberry did the best he could given the “mixed signals from D.C.” and “the fact that U.S. strategy in Afghanistan seems to be nothing more than a basket full of tactics and misguided public interventions of guys like [Vice President Joe] Biden,” says Mike Capstick, a retired colonel in the Canadian army and an analyst with experience in Afghanistan.

The repeated censures aside, an even larger problem is a structural one within the U.S. civilian agencies and between them and the U.S. military — a situation where it remains unclear who is officially in charge of the U.S. presence here. Though the relationship has been dominated by the military, there are no clear guidelines. The embassy’s position has been further weakened by turf battles within the Kabul embassy over which agency controls what. “The entire civilian side of the international effort remains incoherent and uncoordinated” …says Capstick.

More importantly though, the underlying strategy was way off, says the Time piece.

Overshadowed and overpowered by the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, hobbled by a reduced ability to influence Karzai and a divided embassy, lacking a coherent policy on a number of issues and the civilian surge, and receiving mixed signals from the White House, Eikenberry’s difficult time as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan is unlikely to be viewed as a success. Now, Ambassador Crocker is in a race against the clock to repair the damage both inside his embassy and with the U.S. military, and with the Karzai government ahead of the scheduled 2014 withdrawal.

Couple all of this with the fact that, as Paul Pillar just wrote, “coalition military operations [serve] as a stimulant to Taliban recruitment.” And as McClatchy recently reported, strategic choices like night raids – which have increased “to an average of 340 per month” and which regularly kill civilians – have “fueled popular support for the Taliban.” “The Americans are committing barbaric acts in the area,” a local Afghan doctor reportedly said, “and this is the reason that the Taliban have influence.”

What do you get when you mix expansionist imperial foreign policy, utterly incompetent civilian authorities, a horrendous, failed military strategy, and an America that is insulated from all of it?

NeoCons Push for Iraq-Like Sanctions in Iran

Eli Clifton at Think Progress on the neoconservative push for tighter sanctions on Iran:

The announcement that 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Obama urging him to sanction Iran’s central bank has been described by some American officials, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, as the “nuclear option” or, in the eyes of some Iranian officials, an act of war. But that hasn’t stopped some of Washington’s most outspoken Iran hawks from applauding potential legislation aimed at freezing Iran out of the global financial system.

The letter, cosponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), calls for blacklisting Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, and observes that, “If our allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.”

Clifton cites people like “the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Mark Dubowitz” as front and center in this push for “Iraq-like sanctions” on Iran. That is, they are openly advocating sanctions of the kind that directly led to the deaths of hundreds thousands of Iraqi children and up to a million Iraqis total.

What’s crazy is that they’re arguing for this mere days after admitting, as Clifton documents, that aggressive and harsh sanctions are unlikely to deter the Iranian leadership from their unsubstantiated quest for the bomb.

Despite the obvious support the prospect of attacking Iran has among many hawks in the halls of power, I honestly think most of the national security community considers it too costly and risky at the present time. I suspect these neocons recognize that resistance to some extent, and figure the next best thing is to simply strangle the Iranian economy so that the population suffers another colossal humanitarian disaster. What madness…

Crocker: Iraqi PM Maliki’s Turn Towards Dictatorship Is “In U.S. Interest”

Another new Wikileaks cable on Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki provides some insight into U.S. intentions in one of its newest client states. The diplomat writing the cables is Ryan Crocker, just recently appointed Ambassador to Afghanistan. He talks about Maliki’s turn towards authoritarianism and how his tactics and behavior have served to benefit U.S. interests there on the whole.

A key question posed by Maliki's evolving hold on
levers of political and security power is whether the PM is
becoming a non-democratic dictator bent on subordinating all
authority to his hand or whether Maliki is attempting to
rebalance political and security authority back to the center
after five-plus years of intended and unintended dispersal to
(and in some cases seizure by) actors and power structures
outside Baghdad.

[...] First seen as weak, ineffective, and ill-informed
about the political and security structures put in place
since Saddam's fall (Maliki was not a participant in the
governing bodies set up during the CPA), Prime Minister
Maliki was by the fall of 2008 being widely criticized - by
leaders of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) and other Sunni
politicians, by the Kurdish political leadership, and by
fellow Shi'a from outside Maliki's Da'wa Party -- as
autocratic and excessively ambitious, with the long-term aim
of becoming a new strong man dictator.  The "political reform
resolution," passed by parliament in conjunction with its
approval of the U.S.-Iraq Security Agreement and Strategic
Framework Agreement on November 27, 2008 (reftel), amounted
to a manifesto of grievances against the Prime Minister that
had been growing among his coalition partners, and the
opposition, throughout the year. 

The document urged the Maliki Government to adhere to
the Constitution, to commit to a democratic federal system,
to share power with the legislature, to professionalize and
depoliticize the security forces, to guarantee a free
judiciary, disband "unconstitutional structures" within the
government, and release prisoners eligible for amnesty or
held without due process, among other demands.

Details are given about Maliki’s incessant corruption, nepotism, and over-reliance on security forces to get his way. And what does the U.S. think of this turn to centralized authority and strong-arm security tactics? It’s in the U.S. interest.

The critical progress on security and stability made
over the past year, while underpinned by the U.S. military
surge, owes much to Maliki's leadership and restoration of
central government authority.  It is in the interests of the
U.S. to see that process of strengthened central authority
continue...

There is a caveat thrown in there about doing this in a more “sustainable” way that reflects strong “institutions rather than personalities” and a “consensus national vision” among Iraq’s main groups. That is, so long as the main groups don’t interfere with our interests in Iraq. For example, to act as a check on Iran, to give primacy to American business, not interfering with U.S. military occupation and operations, and ignoring any part of Iraqi public opinion that contradicts U.S. imperial dictates.

U.S., Saudi Oil Influence in Yemen: Dictating Who Gets to Be Dictator

The Cato Institute’s Malou Innocent, writing at the National Interest‘s Skeptics blog, directs us to a Wikileaks-released diplomatic cable detailing Saudi Arabia’s plan “to build, own, and operate a pipeline that bypasses the straits of Hormuz—and hence, the Islamic Republic of Iran” with the only remaining obstacle being “Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.”

The cable reads, in part:

A British diplomat based in Yemen told PolOff that
Saudi Arabia had an interest to build a pipeline, wholly
owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through
Hadramaut to a port on the Gulf of Aden, thereby bypassing
the Arabian Gulf/Persian Gulf and the straits of Hormuz.
Saleh has always opposed this. The diplomat contended that
Saudi Arabia, through supporting Yemeni military leadership,
paying for the loyalty of shaykhs and other means, was
positioning itself to ensure it would, for the right price,
obtain the rights for this pipeline from Saleh's successor.

This makes it clear that there is probably a lot more going on under the surface in Saudi Arabia’s (and in conjunction, U.S.’s) holding of Saleh in Saudi Arabia, despite being released from the hospital (the reason for his presence there). Saleh, it seems, has been prevented from returning to Yemen to continue his rule. Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been helping to prop up Saleh’s regime for years, but the U.S. has called for his resignation since widespread anti-government protests in Yemen nearly killed him. And apparently, the two regional superpowers want him out, and to control who succeeds him, for very different reasons than have been reported. The aim is to make Yemen a more obedient vassal state, not to earnestly respond to country-wide protests against Saleh’s rule.

Bypassing the Straits of Hormuz would be a strategic win for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, further isolating Iran and ensuring more direct control of the flow of oil.

CNN Allows Fantasy Novelist to Seriously Blame Iran for Afghanistan Chopper Shootdown

Imperial cheerleaders have a habit of blaming Iran for everything bad that happens to a US occupation, so I have come to accept they will pull that boogeyman out any chance they get. And yet I was still surprised when CNN contributor and Bush regime mouthpiece Frances Townshend and Brad Thor, a political thriller novel author, started saying Iran was probably responsible for this weekend’s shootdown of a US chopper that killed 30 American military personnel, including members of the SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden.

Townshend is a former Homeland Security Adviser to President Bush and is still an adviser for DHS and the CIA, whatever her merits. But who is this Brad Thor character? He was never in the military, and claims with no official verification to have “shadowed” a Black ops team in Afghanistan to research a novel. He was a regular contributor on the show of retired Fox News nutbag bawler Glenn Beck, and is for some reason a member of the Heritage Foundation. He also claims — again with no official verification — to have been invited by Homeland Security to come up with imaginary terrorist scenarios.

Townshend expressed alarm that the Taliban were able to act so close to the capital of their own country, where “our troops” are supposed to be shoring up the corrupt Karzai regime — something she sees as a good thing. She used the shootdown to illustrate how “fragile” American “gains” are in the country and that we shouldn’t pull out our troops “too quickly.” So far, pretty typical.

CNN host John King then asked Thor if the Afghan government was ready to take on security after the foreigners leave. No, he said, “the Afghan government is completely corrupt — and it’s riddled with Iranian spies! There’s a lot about the killing, the terrible tragedy of these SEALs being killed that is very, very disturbing, John.”

That’s when I stared at the screen in disbelief. Really, he just dragged Iran into this? Hey, why not? Everyone hates Iran.

And then Townshend backed Thor up. “We have seen an increasing amount of Iranian involvement and support in Afghanistan… and oh, by the way, they’ve been spoilers, inserting themselves into Afghanistan and undermining US efforts. The Iranians don’t always come in the front door,” she continued, saying they use proxies. Those dastardly Muslims are always doing that.

She went on to say the Iranians act as “spoilers” all over the world just to mess with America. “And it made sense in Iraq, a neighbor… but we see it as well in Afghanistan.” She didn’t say who “we” are, exactly, but who needs citations on a mere news program?

This is all still very typical, vaguely blaming the enemy of the day. But it got out of hand when the fiction novelist, speaking with the authority of an official in the know, started saying “we” have word that the type of weapon used to down the chopper is the same as seen used by “Shi’ite extremists” in Iraq, which “had Iranian fingerprints all over them.” These “fingerprints” are merely the fact that the materials that make up these weapons are possibly manufactured in Iran. The US government has unsuccessfully proved that the Iranian government itself ever had anything to do with the supply of militia weapons in Iraq over the last several years. In fact, as Jason Ditz recently pointed out, Iran has a good relationship with the Iraqi government and would not likely seek to undermine it.

“We don’t have confirmation” for what exactly took down the Chinook, Thor said, but if we simply refer back… here, right! to the thing he said earlier about Iranians in the Afghan government, it would seem to almost… prove? sure! that Iran gave weapons to the Taliban to do a terrible, awful, evil, oriental thing like attack an invading military force. Because really, Thor persisted, we’re supposed to believe monkeys like the Taliban could point a thing and shoot it at another thing!? I mean come on, amirite?

We’re back to believing Iran, fighting its own extremely violent US-backed Sunni terrorist attacks on its own turf, would support another Sunni extremist movement in a neighboring country? Not to mention Karzai himself has admitted to receiving “large sacks of cash” from the Iranian government!

Why was this Thor person on CNN, or any other news shows? Because he writes some Tom Clancyesque novels? And because of this he’s allowed to spread random, baseless anti-Iran propaganda with a “yeah!” from another so-called “expert”? Seriously?

CNN shouldn’t have fantasy novelists like Brad Thor on their news programs anymore unless they want their own reporting to continue to read a lot more like fiction.

“A Warrior for Christ, a Warrior for Our Country”

The reporting on the U.S. army casualties in the recent downing of a Chinook helicopter by Taliban insurgents is, to put it kindly, inappropriate. Thirty soldiers were killed in the largest single incident of U.S. casualties to date. It is a tragedy, but it deserves a certain reflection not included in the “hoo-rah” chest-beating media attention it is getting. This CNN segment, wherein a widow of one of the Navy SEALs slain in the attack is interviewed, is a perfect example.

It is important to understand this widow’s heartbreak. The soldier’s children will grow up without him. His life was important to many people, and his loss will be difficult. But just as important is the obligation to question the circumstances of these casualties and the unnecessary war this man was asked to take part in. The widow’s final words in the segment are that her husband was “a warrior for Christ” and “a warrior for our country.” Placing these casualties in that context is not only inaccurate, but it does nothing to contribute to an understanding of what’s going on in Afghanistan. It merely clouds the reality of the war with very human emotions about national greatness.

Perhaps more importantly, I know of no CNN segment in the last decade of this war which took the time to interview the family members of civilians slaughtered in Afghanistan. As The Independent recently reported:

Human rights groups warned that civilians are paying an increasingly high price for “reckless” coalition attacks, particularly aerial ones. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that five Afghan children were injured in an air strike carried out by a British Apache attack helicopter.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) has found that the rate of civilian casualties has reached a record high, with 1,462 killed in January to June this year. But, while the number of civilian victims of “pro-government action” fell, those who died as a result of coalition air attacks were 14 per cent higher than in the same period in 2010 – despite the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) issuing “tactical directives” designed to minimise risk to civilians.

The helicopter incident left dead 30 individuals engaged in combat. But various incidents, particularly U.S. airstrikes, killed unknown numbers of civilians – that is, men, women and children not engaged in combat. The American media had over 1,400 opportunities in the past six months to explore the human costs to the innocent people of Afghanistan and missed every single one of them. That’s thousands upon thousands of anecdotes of immense human suffering gone totally unreported, while this rare event that resulted in 30 combat casualties meets every newspaper headline and television set in the country. Just as an example, one of these fine opportunities was in 2008 when an Afghan wedding was bombed in Nangarhar province, massacring civilians, mostly women and children. But this was a nasty little truth regarded as unwelcome in the halls of power. Therefore, treat it as if Afghans won’t feel anything similar to what the families of the 30 SEALs killed this weekend are now feeling.

This headline from Stars and Stripes reads “U.S. troops in Afghanistan sad, angry over deaths in downing of chopper.” How often has the sadness and anger of Afghans been a headlining story? Do they not feel anger towards U.S. troops? Is that anger not at least as justified as the anger felt by the U.S. troops right now?

This sort of bias exemplifies two flawed assumptions on the part of the media as well as the conscience of ordinary Americans. First, Americans are more important, and more human, than Afghans. And two, any mission U.S. soldiers engage in is inherently good, brave, for the good of the country. On both counts, of course, nothing could be farther from the truth.

A more appropriate media response to this incident would be to question how important really were these casualties to the safety and security of Americans? How just is our war and occupation in Afghanistan?

Update: I should have linked Medea Benjamin’s piece today on how needless and counterproductive this war – and these deaths – are.