Winning the (Afghan) Future

How you going win this one? The WaPo reports:

To grasp the severity of Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero’s $40-fertilizer-bomb problem, it helps to consider some much bigger numbers.

Barbero heads a U.S. military command, with an annual budget of about $2.8 billion, that was created to stem U.S. casualties from insurgent bombs. In just the past few months, he has shelled out $24 million for a new hand-held ground-penetrating radar, $33 million for mini-surveillance robots and $19 million for bomb-resistant underwear.

The insurgent’s weapon of choice in Afghanistan is at the other end of the price spectrum: a plastic jug filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. So far this year, these cheap, hard-to-detect bombs have wounded about 3,200 U.S. soldiers and Marines, up 22 percent from 2010, according to the Pentagon. . .

Note the focus on underwear, as genital injuries are common now.

With Osama bin Laden dead and few al-Qaeda reported left in Afghanistan, for whom and what are the U. S. fighting in Afghanistan?

The Answer is None

The Christian Science Monitor is out with a brief review of the Obama "surge" in Afghanistan, titled "As troop drawdown nears, is NATO surge working in Afghanistan?"

Here is the article's conclusion, which refers to an interview with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen:

For now, the Pentagon will be working closely with the White House in the months to come to determine how best to bring an end to the surge that marked the moment Obama made the war in Afghanistan his own.

For now, America's top military adviser acknowledges that there are no clear answers to precisely how many US troops should remain on the ground.

"We don't know what the answer is," he says. "I can honestly say that no one knows what the answer is yet."

Yours truly has never been to Asia, but given the lack of success the surge has produced and the apparent fact that there are almost no al Qaeda left in Afghanistan, the answer appears obvious.

None. Support the troops. Bring them home.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2011

The Administration Is a Lost Wolf

Pre-P. S.: Note please that as stated last year, I have been blogging at The Daily Capitalist. As that is a WordPress site and this site uses Blogger, there are interoperability problems with dual posting. I will continue posting here on various topics and in the future will place links here to those posts.

Now to today's effort. Barack Obama looks to me like a warlike Jimmy Carter, floundering at home and aborad.

Gone are the days when his critics called him 'Bambi'. Now he sends his Defense Secretary to posture, his strategy in Afghanistan having failed so far. Here is Robert Gates' latest:

KABUL, Afghanistan – In a last farewell to US and international forces in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says they are on track to deliver a decisive blow against the Taliban.

Sorry, it was over a year ago that we heard that the victory in the non-city of Marjah was a prelude to a major, successful takeover of Kandahar city. What Gates and his boss should have done is what corporations learned to do years ago: underpromise and overdeliver. First rout them, then everyone will see the victory and you can be modest. Assuming the reporting is correct, Gates was engaging in puffery. Unattractive.

Not that I favor this effort at all. My sense is that 'Bambi' is in league with the neocons. I prefer the Reagan years. The only foreign military aggression I remember US troops performing was the minor thing in Grenada. Peace through strength. The last decade of all war, all the time with the latest, Libya, being an obvious war of choice.

Anyway . . . as with the ongoing military effort in Afghanistan, so with the economy. It's not yet falling off a cliff, and let's hope it does not, but as with Afghanistan, the administration has overpromised and underdelivered. And as the economic course was set in 2009 and 2010 with no Republican support, it was the Dems who were the lone wolf party and their president whose electoral fate is likely going to be decided next year based on the choices they unilaterally made one and two years ago.

It's time to let freedom (economic) ring. That's the solution. As we saw in 2009, the administration had no creative ideas for the economy, and so they ran up a multi-trillion dollar debt for little if any lasting benefit. At least FDR had the CCC and built some structures that are still in use today.

When the latest round of "Keynesianism" fails, which people will start to notice by this fall at the latest, there will be that many more adherents to the historical American position that that government is best that governs least.

BTW I put 'Keynesianism' in quotes because we are in a post gold-standard world with deficits so profound that it is impossible to know what John Maynard himself would be advocating were he around today. We have moved to an economic Extremistan that is sui generis in American history.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2011

Fortress America

Fortress America might be a sensible approach now.

There is no expanding Japanese empire as in the 1930s. There is no Germany seeking "lebensraum". There is simply a local dictator in Libya, and there is opposition. Both the ins and the outs want control of their share of the oil revenue. Are the outs "better" than the "ins"? Who is to say? The U. S. has no dog in this fight.

It would be enough to say to both sides that if either one commits atrocities, then the U. S. and its allies will put boots on the ground and find and prosecute the perps.

It may not have occurred to the Peace Prize President that such a threat might have forestalled the violence that he claimed required the use of American force.

Remember that Reagan ingloriously pulled out of Lebanon when all those Marines were blown up in their barracks. His reputation easily survived that embarrassment. As for Reagan, so for Obama. War is bad for children and other living things. Stopping NATO's aggression in Libya would be the right thing. If atrocities incite the American people to support an invading force, then Congress can so authorize, and a Blackhawk down-type setback will not in that case force a retreat.

As with Libya, so with Pak-ghanistan. Peace is the default, best answer. When in doubt, don't bomb. It's hard to kill innocent people from the air when you're peacefully putting your full energies to improving the US of A at home, where we live and need better times.

It's time to build, and rebuild, more shining cities on more hills at home rather than killing Muslims abroad.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2011

President Obama, Return That Peace Prize

From iCasualties.org re "allied" deaths in Afghanistan. Sorry this does not format well; please click through for a better view. None dare call this victory . . . US, UK and "other" = NATO deaths have all risen, more or less, each year.

Coalition Military Fatalities By Year

Year US UK Other Total

2001 12 0 0 12
2002 49 3 18 70
2003 48 0 10 58
2004 52 1 7 60
2005 99 1 31 131
2006 98 39 54 191
2007 117 42 73 232
2008 155 51 89 295
2009 317 108 96 521
2010 401 96 101 598
Total 1348 341 479 2168

Since most mainstream U. S. media seemed interesting in war reporting only when the U. S. was getting its butt kicked in Iraq a while ago, let's go to a mainstream Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, for a current article about the Afghan War titled Canada's next battle:

The main Canadian battle group of about 1,000 troops, which once fought across Kandahar province, is now concentrated in one tough rural district, Panjwaii, fighting alongside more U.S. and Afghan soldiers in a push to clear out a few hundred hard-core insurgents in a hide-and-seek war. But locals who braced for coalition offensives earlier this month have seen Canadians clear insurgents out of Panjwaii villages such as Zangabad and Talokan several times in recent years, only to see the Taliban return after their exit.

“Many Taliban and many ordinary people were killed, many gardens and orchards destroyed, and many soldiers killed,” Door Mohammad, a 49-year-old taxi driver from Talokan said three weeks ago, before the latest offensive. “At the end, the post was empty, and the Canadians gone, we don’t know where. And now Talokan area is an important place for the Taliban ... there is sort of Taliban-like government like the last time.”

Few would bet there will be a ticker-tape parade through the streets of Kandahar city when Canadian combat troops leave next July. . .

Canada’s military will leave Afghanistan with a bitter taste in its mouth about the scope and scale of what it can accomplish . . .

How much have you heard lately about the brilliant U. S. "victory" months ago in the "city" of Marja?

Now these marvelous "successes" are apparently going to be replicated in Pakistan by what by statute is a non-combatant force, the CIA, as follows.

The Nation (Pakistani online newspaper) reports:

The United States is pressuring Pakistan to allow more CIA officers into the country to expand US secret operations aimed at eliminating militant havens near the Afghan border, a prominent American newspaper (that's the WSJ) reported Saturday. . .

US-led foreign forces have carried out a record number of airstrikes and drone attacks in Pakistan this year in violation of international law. (Emphasis added; that's the newspaper's opinion.)

One has to wonder indeed what the international legality as well as the strategic benefit of an expanding military effort in Pakistan really are. There's little doubt that almost everyone there dislikes the U. S. Sure, we may be useful to settle local scores or to spread money around, but winning hearts and minds? A dubious premise.

I thought that Americans and especially the Democrats agreed after the Viet Nam fiasco that the United States could not and should not be the world's policeman. What was that song title, Oops!... I Did It Again? Of which the last line is: I'm not that innocent.

We're doing it again and not innocently either.

Here's a lengthy excerpt from a speech given by Secretary of State J. Q. Adams to the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821:

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? . . .

She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Unfortunately for the almost non-existent peace movement in the U. S., the likely changes in the Congress in next week's election will lead to greater rather than less support for more military action in Pak-ghanistan. This will not help the economic recovery.

The hard-working troops "over there" are needed in America to help build and rebuild this country rather than spreading death and destruction and generating more and more haters of America. Back in the day, the chant was: The whole world's watching, the whole world's watching.

What happens in Pak-ghanistan does not stay in Pak-ghanistan.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

U. S. Down So Long In Afghanistan But It Doesn't Seem Like Up

Is David Petraeus turning the tide in Afghanistan? Consider the following from The AfPak Channel today:

NATO airstrikes yesterday reportedly killed over two dozen Afghan civilians in two separate incidents in the eastern province of Nangarhar, after a helicopter struck a car carrying a flood victim and his family, and an airstrike hit a compound from which NATO forces were reportedly taking fire (LAT, AFP, BBC, AP, AJE, NYT, VOA). Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into the deaths, which occurred less than a day after ISAF Commander Gen. David Petraeus issued rules restricting the use of airstrikes against structures (Reuters). And in Nangarhar's capital Jalalabad, many music stores are shutting down after a stepped-up Taliban intimidation campaign (Guardian).

A suicide bomber struck a joint Afghan police-NATO convoy in Kunduz, reportedly killing at least 11 Afghans (NYT, AP). And Germany announced that it would pay 100 Afghan families $5,000 each as compensation for the deaths of civilians killed in a German-ordered airstrike on a fuel tanker in Kunduz (Canadian Press).

Moral: Win when you surge. The above does not look like a win in progress. It looks like the Keystone Kops at their klutziest.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

A Bull Market for the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Secular Financial Bear Market in America

The Afghanistan Non-Governmental Safety Office (ANSO)has issued its Q2 report. The findings are horrifying from an American perspective. You can forget the idea that NATO is on the verge of victory, in my opinion, from the chart on page 7. This is a bull market chart--in Taliban attacks. The Taliban initiated 160 attacks in June 2006, as I read the chart. This was up to 1319 in June of this year. (This is a PDF and thus I cannot copy the picture.) It is an open question who has had a better 4 years: Apple Inc. or the Afghan Taliban. Here is a quote from the Strategic Assessment (page 1):

The counterinsurgency approach shows few signs of weakening the opposition. . . It also shows few signs of protecting the population with a 23% rise in civilian casualties (p.9) and widespread assassination of civilian Government workers. We do not support the COIN perspective that this constitutes "things getting worse before they get better" but rather see it as being consistent with the five year trend of things just getting worse (p.7).

The 'key terrain' operation in Marjah has yet to deliver security for the people, provide safe return for the displaced or establish credibility for its boxed Government, as a result Helmand is now the most violent province in the country (p.8). The delayed operation in Kandahar (p.2)promises dire consequences for the civilian population with little to no impact on AOG (Armed Opposition Group) capacity. There, as elsewhere, the application of unsupported COIN theories has only succeeded in dragging civilian development agencies in to the firing line (p.3).

Reminiscent of the 1963 South Vietnamese 'Self Defence Corps', Local Defense Initiatives are falling prey to all the same vices with active ones being murdered; smart ones partnering with AOG to exploit the population and Government supplies (Kunduz/Takhar); bold ones just being the AOG (Parwan) and timid ones keeping the staus quo (Wardak). . . The "Village Stability Program" . . . is perhaps the most disturbing development of the year not least because it is so opaque with no single institution having an overview, let alone control, of all activities under this rubric.

This blog has consistently compared the Afghan "surge" to the Johnson 1965 post-election escalation in Vietnam. Now the NGOs are drawing the same parallel.

Meanwhile, the war is a steady drain in resources that are desperately needed at home in America. These resources include human, financial and even emotional/spiritual. We are in a 1984-type scenario. We've always been at war with Eastasia. Or so it seems.

The depth of the public's disappointment with the Obama administration is evident in its willingness to reconsider supporting a Republican Party it turned its back on in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and which has done little to reform itself.

For cyclical and demographic reasons, the Johnson-Nixon-Carter period of rising inflation, rising interest rates, American loss of international prestige coincided with high and rising interest rates. As a result, both stocks and bonds ended up severely undervalued through most of the 1970s and the first part of the 1980s.

The opposite situation has supervened. This is an "ice" scenario unlike the "fire" of Vietnam and that followed the riotous and assassination-prone '60s. That Afghanistan is not on the nightly news (there being no draft and no embedded reporters) is consistent with this perspective. Ultra-low interest rates and too much "money" looking for a home is also of a piece with this sort of mirror image to that last secular bear market.

Perhaps, just as the withdrawal of Americans in humiliation and total defeat from Saigon just ahead of the advancing North Vietnamese forces allowed the country to heal, some finality in Pak-ghanistan will do the same.

For the nonce, the basic and almost primitive nature of gold as money reminds me of the primitive conditions in Afghanistan. Both gold and the Afghans are immutable; they just are what they are, and appear immune to the blandishments that the modern world offers. Both the Afghan resistance and gold have had a good decade. In contrast, except for the rare exception (AAPL), the fancy-Dan stuff out of Big Finance has laid a great big egg over the past decade.

The burden is on the U. S./NATO hawks in Afghanistan and the bulls on Wall Street to prove themselves. As they say on the Street and in the villages in Kandahar, the trend is your friend (until it is not).

Right now, these bodies in motion are staying in motion, and the directions of each are not good for the United States.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

The following could be from 2-3 years ago:

(July 14) -- Warning that the military could run out of money as early as next month, the Pentagon is putting pressure on Congress to pass the wartime budget before lawmakers leave for the August break.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was "disappointed that the Congress did not pass the defense supplemental before the July Fourth break," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said at a press briefing today.

The Pentagon is seeking another $33 billion to cover ongoing wartime operations . . .

Of course this is from today, not when a prior administration was surging in Iraq.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, it would seem.

Except there's less and less credit money available for elective wars now. One thinks of LBJ posing as the peace candidate in 1964 and immediately escalating in Viet Nam in 1965, or Richard Nixon with his "plan" for peace in Viet Nam and nobody caring once he was in charge that he bore no responsibility for the U. S. involvement there. Similarly, it's Barack Obama's surge in Afghanistan, and he therefore owns that surging war more than he owns the (allegedly free market) economy. And his party controls Congress. The country is turning against this surge, because it appears to be failing. And because there's no money to pay for it.

In Treasury auctions, they call the inability to sell all the debt it is desired to sell a FAIL. Afghanistan is turning into a financial FAIL as well as a military-political FAIL.

As an American I would much prefer a WIN.

But every day, in every way, the U. S./NATO effort in Afghanistan seems to be getting worse.

Is the genius of General Petraeus and perhaps some good fortune going to turn the tide and at least let us call Afghanistan a draw? We can only hope . . .

Meanwhile even the financing of this war reflects incompetence within the governing party.

Americans of all political persuasions deserve better.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

More Ungood News from Eastasia

From the AFPAK Channel today, the first three paragraphs describe three separate but related news bits that show the difficulty of "winning" in Afghanistan.

Insurgents carried out a suicide car bomb-led attack against the headquarters of the elite Afghan National Civil Order Police in Kandahar this morning, killing three U.S. soldiers, an Afghan officer and five civilians (NYT, BBC, AP). The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, which is similar to two recent attacks at Bagram and Jalalabad where suicide car bombers detonated their explosives, allowing follow-up gunfire from militants. And armed residents of a Ghazni village repelled a Taliban attack yesterday (CNN).

More details emerged about Tuesday's attack by an Afghan non-commissioned officer that killed three British soldiers, including the company commander in charge of the base and two members of the Royal Gurkha Rifles who died when a rocket propelled grenade struck their command center (Tel, AJE, AFP, Independent).The Afghan soldier, believed to be named Talib Hussein, reportedly fled to a Taliban-controlled area after the attack, and a Taliban statement claimed Hussein had joined the group. The attack is leading some in the United Kingdom and the United States to question the exit strategy for Afghanistan, which is predicated in part on the build-up of Afghan security forces (Guardian).

On Monday, Haji Zahir, the lead local official in Helmand's Marjah who a senior U.S. military official called "Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Right," was replaced by the Afghan government without explanation(Wash Post).

Then there is yet another problem that ties into Pakistan, from the same post:

Gen. David Petraeus is reportedly working to designate top leaders of the Haqqani network as terrorists, a move that would complicate not only the United States' relationship with Pakistan but also the Afghan government, currently discussing negotiations with insurgent groups (NYT, Dawn). In a press conference yesterday Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) called for both the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura, another of the three main Taliban factions, to be blacklisted (Wash Post).

The alert reader may notice that two words are missing from the above: "al" and "Qaeda".

The reader who was paying attention in 2007 also will remember that the Iraq surge actually started working from the get-go, unlike the current Afghanistan surge.

Doesn't the U. S. have enough problems at home? Can't the hard-working men and women of the military and the extensive support system for them strengthen the U. S. from within? Aren't drones and local hired hands enough?

We have always been at war with Eastasia . . .

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

De-Oxygenating in Afghanistan?

AFPAK Channel reports:

Over the weekend, at least 14 Afghan policemen and a district governor were killed in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, some of whom were possibly poisoned beforehand, and in Badakhshan province (AP, AFP, NYT, The News). Several coalition service members and Afghan civilians were killed in roadside bombings over the weekend in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and a NATO spokesman told reporters, "We are taking the oxygen out of the insurgency" (AP, AJE, Reuters). . .

At next week's international conference in Kabul, Hamid Karzai reportedly plans to ask for at least 50 percent of the nearly $13 billion pledged to Afghanistan over the next five years to be channeled through the Afghan government, in spite of rampant corruption (Reuters). . .

Afghanistan's security forces remain riddled with corruption, drug addiction, and Taliban infiltration, in addition to a flawed system for measuring their progress (Independent).

What appears to be happening is chaos. It is hard to see a sympathetic figure or group anywhere in Afghanistan. The NATO spokesman who was told to say that NATO is taking the oxygen away from the insurgency was exaggerating. Only time will tell what is to be, but President Obama has promised to withdraw fighting forces within about one year, and before you know it, there will be reports that the bitter winter is approaching and fighting will cease.

Are the Taliban going to be strangled for lack of oxygen within months?

Do you really want Hamid Karzai's government to get "at least" half the money going into Afghanistan for years? If so, perhaps you own shares in banks in Dubai or Switzerland.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

ABC News Adds to the Case for U. S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan

ABC News has an informative report on Marja, Afghanistan titled In Afghanistan, No Direct Route to Success. There is important background information new to most Americans.

It was always unclear why this particular region was the site of attack. Except for being one of many sites of poppy cultivation, why did we care about Marja? ABC provides a potential answer:

Marja, by Afghan standards, is just an infant. When it was developed in the 1950s and '60s it was dubbed "Little America" because it was engineered and built by the US Agency for International Development. The system of canals and farm jobs it created were one way the U.S. sought to keep strategically-positioned Afghanistan in the U.S. column during the cold war. Today, the ownership of 50 percent of the land here is contested; a result of tribal infighting, landowners fleeing years of war, a lack of legal documentation, and poor management from successive governments.

Aha! The truth outs . . . but of course that story was omitted from the reporting of the brilliant military operation seizing central Marja. And how are we doing in reviving matters? Could be a lot better:

The canals, ignored for years, are now heavily silted and don't flow with enough water for fields that have multiplied over the years. In a sign of how broken Marja is some 60 miles of canals have been identified for dredging and cleaning but the specialized equipment isn't readily available and the price of such a project is exorbitant because of security concerns.

What has this non-victory cost us in human terms? A lot:

Marines of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines are finally departing Marja after a difficult seven-month tour. They fought their way into Marja under harsh conditions, clearing the area of hundreds of Taliban fighters. During the tour 10 Marines from the 1/6 were killed in action and another 214 wounded.

I am friendly with a gentlemen who served in a non-combatant position with the Soviets during their own Afghan War in the 1980s. He says that all the Afghans want is to be left alone. They don't want progress. They don't want money. They don't mind primitive living conditions. They just don't like foreigners. This is what he says. What does ABC report?

Sgt. Dawson considers success in Afghan terms. "Personally I think the locals aren't really that concerned with who wins. They just want to live their lives. If the Taliban wins they'll live by the Taliban rules. If we win they'll live by our rules."

Methinks Sgt. Dawson doesn't fully understand or doesn't want to understand. The people are, more or less, the Taliban. The Taliban are not the Arab al-Qaeda, who brought the calamity of the NATO invasion to a country that had just eliminated the Soviet presence and just wanted to go back to its traditional ways (which I am not praising!). But I believe in the Star Trek principle of non-interference with peoples who are not attacking us. The Taliban are, in Afghan eyes, the freedom fighters the U. S. is celebrating this holiday weekend, with support from their relatives across the imperialist-imposed "border" in the adjoining lands such as (principally) Pakistan.

More or less, al-Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan. And we can withdraw from Afghanistan and say that if they let al-Qaeda back, we will come back for real and control the country for real, on our own, not needing international approval, not fighting a limited war, etc. Perhaps they will listen; I would if I were they.

The Karzai gang is not worth an American life or dollar. Candidate Obama got things backward regarding the Iraq surge (he hated it and was more than OK with MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad re Genl. Petraeus) and his Afghan surge (a costly embarrassment to date, and now he loves Petraeus who really wants to be back in Tampa on his way to retirement rather than being demoted and exiled to Afghanistan).

The Obama surge in Afghanistan is and was a mistake. We need the troops to clean up the Gulf and help improve America at home in many ways. We need to spend our resources more wisely and humanely. The costs of printing and borrowing money to pay for this war far exceed the benefits (if any) from its prosecution. The world at large should see us only fighting wars of necessity, not wars of choice.

Out now.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

More Mistruths Over Afghanistan

The Obama administration is trying to pretend that no one foresaw that its series of "surges" in Afghanistan was based on overly optimistic assumptions. Per Jake Tapper of ABC News:

In an EXCLUSIVE interview on “This Week,” CIA Director Leon Panetta said that making progress in Afghanistan is both “harder” and going more slowly than anticipated.

“There are some serious problems” in Afghanistan, Panetta said. “We’re dealing with tribal societies. We’re dealing with a country that has problems with governance, problems with corruption, problems with narcotics trafficking, problems with a Taliban insurgency,” he said.

But, the CIA director said, the U.S. is making progress in Afghanistan. “It’s harder, it’s slower than I think anyone anticipated. But at the same time, we are seeing increasing violence,” he told host Jake Tapper.

Wrong. Your humble blogger, sitting at home in the United States and referring to nothing other than public information on the Web, was one of a number of voices pointing out all the factors that Mr. Panetta references above. And of course he was being discreet when he talks about "governance" issues. Of course he means "corruption". But what we call corruption is the way politics is done there. All of which means that the U. S./NATO is/are fighting for one group of what we consider crooks over the Taliban.

Is it worth borrowing money (and taking deaths and injuries, of course) for a long slow slog for the Karzai gang?

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

Obama to Kick McC's Ass? But Problems Are Deeper and Broader

Is Rolling Stone happy that even before the official publication of its scoop about General Stanly McChrystal and his team of trash talkers, said General has resigned or is close to so doing? Talk about an impactful story . . .

In any case, the U. S. and NATO body counts are rising rapidly in Afghanistan, the Marja invasion has been a fiasco, the planned takeover of Kandahar is now in good measure a sweet-talking tea-sipping make-nice operation, and at best a growth slowdown in the economy appears baked in the cake. You know things are difficult at home when Walgreen's misses earnings estimates by a mile.

The 90 and 180 day year on year average growth rates as measured by Consumer Metrics Institute (http://www.consumerindexes.com/) are in the single digit of all percentile year on year growth rates per BEA data going back over 60 years. The new government in Britain has announced austerity, complaining that 1 of every 4 pounds of gov't expenditure are borrowed. In Congress, however, where at least 1 of 3 dollars spent by the Feds are borrowed (printed), the powers that be are planning no budget at all for the upcoming fiscal year beginning in the fall. The excuse that they are waiting for the deficit commission (which needs more money than anticipated to complete its work!) to report in December is beyond lame. Said commission will either be ignored or say things that could be said by any poli-sci or econ college major. Spend less/tax more.
Duh . . .

Speaking of spending less, the President needs to reconsider his one-year surge in Afghanistan. It's one thing to print money to keep Medicaid clinics alive. It's another to kill Afghans. And while he's in a kick-ass mode, let him consider kicking the derriere of a certain senior economic adviser who used to be president of Harvard and whose pro-deficit, pro-Wall Street policies are failing the country even more than Stanley McChrystal, whose frustrations may have been uber-legitimate but were shared too openly.

The stock market responded well to the austerity package proposed by Team Cameron in the U. K.

If Barack Obama were to kick some Keynesian ass, the same would happen here. Maybe Paul Krugman would dump all his stocks, but the market would survive that blow.

It's time for more major mid-course changes we can believe in. But don't hold your breath.

Three assets continue to act well, two of which have good fundamentals: Gold, Apple Inc. stock, and Treasuries. Guess which of them lacks fundamental support (hint: supply is rising rapidly)?

Thus guess which one EBR views as a trading vehicle rather than (for now) a buy-and-hold asset?

Further hint: it's the asset the downside of ownership involves the U. S. going Grecian rather than Japanese.

Japanecian (or Grecianese) is the flavor of the day.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

Britain Reports on Its Afghan Failures; When Will U. S. Do the Same?

The London Times is out with Officers’ mess: military chiefs blamed for blundering into Helmand with ‘eyes shut and fingers crossed’ , which begins:

Military chiefs and civil servants ignored warnings that Britain was ill prepared to send troops to Helmand and signed off a deeply flawed plan, a succession of senior figures have told The Times.

Even those in charge of the deployment admit that the decision to go to southern Afghanistan in 2006, which has cost the lives of nearly 300 servicemen and women, was a gamble and that mistakes were made because of poor intelligence. They insist, however, that the operation was justified to revitalise the Nato mission, combat the Taleban and reassert Britain’s military prowess after setbacks in Iraq.

But a two-month investigation by The Times, which includes interviews with 32 senior military, political and Civil Service figures, reveals that there was deep disquiet over the handling of the mission from the start.

Top ranks within the Ministry of Defence and other Whitehall departments are accused of:

* grossly underestimating the threat from the Taleban;

* ignoring warnings that planned troop numbers were inadequate;

* offering only the military advice they thought ministers wanted to hear;

* signing off on a confused command- and-control structure.

When will the American press take the gloves off and demand the same sort of accountability from the administration on the U. S. failures in Afghanistan (both under the Bush and Obama presidencies)?

When will the death counts begin, as with the Iraq War?

Now that the healthcare bill is law, it is increasingly difficult to see much difference between the Bush and Obama administrations. The ability to print money is allowing the administration to kick the war can down the road and avoid the hard choices. Are Americans getting their money's worth from fighting Taliban (not al-Qaeda) on their home turf?

This questions leads one to reconsider the advantages of a metal-based currency. If the choice were an immediate tax hike, reduction in other Federal spending, or immediate rise in the price of goods and services (another version of a tax hike), what would the public favor?

I suspect it would favor a low-cost drone war on al-Qaeda in Pak-ghanistan but not almost 200,000 boots on the ground (and rising) in Afghanistan.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

Afghan News Courtesy of Pakistani Newspaper

From The Nation, likely the leading English-language Pakistani on-line news journal, a piece running now, titled US drone or spy plane shot down in Marjah:

Mujahideen shot down a US invaders' unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or pilotless spy plane which fell onto the ground in Marjah , the wreckage of which is still lying scattered across the area. In another news form Helmand, Mujahideen, in two separate encounters with the combined invaders and their minions in Marjah, killed five NATO invaders with two of their local puppets and wounded 7 more NATO invaders in the late afternoon hours of the Sunday. (Taliban website)
More news:
9 NATO invaders killed in Kandahar
Qari Yousuf Ahmadi
A planted mine tore through a group of NATO troops Monday noon , killing or wounding more than 9 cowardly invaders, who were on attack mission against Mujahiddin in Arghandab district of Helmand. (Taliban website)
Mujahideen kill three NATO invaders in Badgish
Mujahideen killed three NATO soldiers with wounding another in an encounter in Atash Sang district of Badghis on Sunday. (Taliban website)
3 US invaders killed, 5 injured in Wardag
About 3 American invaders got killed with 5 more seriously hurt on Sunday as two of their tanks were hit by Mujahideen through RPGs in Sayedabad district of Wardag. (Taliban website)
Four US troops killed in Baghlan
Zabihullah Mujahid
At least four American invading troops were killed on Sunday as their military tank got hit by destroyed in Mujahideen's mortar rounds in Central Baghlan district, Baghlan province. (Taliban website)
Mujahideen kill four American terrorists in Ningarhar
Zabihullah Mujahid
During countrywide operation al-Fath, Mujahideen killed four American cowardly invaders with their tank destroyed in a face-to-face fighting in Khgianu district of Ningarhar on Sunday. (Taliban website)
Two tanks of NATO invaders eliminated in Helmand
Qari Yousuf Ahmadi
Two of tanks of the NATO cowardly forces got hit and destroyed in Mujahideen planted mine blast yesterday afternoon (June 06) killing almost all the invaders in the tanks. (Taliban website)

How much overlap between the different reports there is, and how much truth there is, of course I can't begin to comment. It is clear, however, that there is a certain-- how may we say it-- unpopularity of the U. S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan in the editors of this English-language journal.

Here is a recent AP review of some of the above events.

All this so that the Karzai gang can control the narcotics trade?

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

NATO Losing in Afghanistan

Dawn.com reports that Taliban capture Afghan district on Pakistan border: official:

Taliban militants captured the administrative headquarters of a remote Afghan district Saturday, officials said, while a suicide bomber blew himself up near a Nato base in Kabul.

Insurgents had surrounded Bargi Matal district in Nuristan province, which borders Pakistan, on Friday and engaged police in a fierce gun battle, Nuristan governor Jamaludin Badr told AFP.

The fate of police officers guarding the administrative compound -- which houses government, police and judicial offices -- was unclear.

“Since the district headquarters is inside the village in a crowded location we had to make a tactical retreat to avoid casualties to civilians” living in nearby houses, he said.

Afghan authorities often use the term “tactical retreat” when Taliban have overrun police forces and captured districts.

An army border police commander in the area, Mohammad Gul Himat, said police responsible for protecting the district had been missing since Friday and it was not clear if they had deserted or been killed or captured. . .

Bargi Matal is the second district in the province to be captured by the Taliban after Kamdesh -- which also shares a border with Pakistan -- fell several months ago following the withdrawal of international forces.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan has equalled a first milestone noted several years ago in Iraq, as reported in US reaches 1,000 death marker in Afghan war.

The Afpak Journal has a timely and readable pair of articles about the downgraded NATO/US expectations for the previously touted NATO takeover of Kandahar city, in Kandahar Through the Taliban's Eyes and Showtime in Kandahar. Here are two quotes from the latter:

If Kandahar is show time, then Marjah has been the dress rehearsal. It is not going well. The Marjah operation has not been successful in rooting out Taliban elements, which continue to terrorize the population and undermine the Afghan government that was supposed to take root in the ineptly named "government in a box" experiment. . .

With the limited timetable of the troop surge coming up quickly, Gen. McChrystal cannot afford another Marjah experience in Kandahar, a more complex and significant stretch of land. Already there appears to be handwringing over the operations; McClatchy reports that "key military operations have been delayed until the fall, efforts to improve local government are having little impact and a Taliban assassination campaign has brought a sense of dread to Kandahar's dusty streets."


We call it the Afpak region; I call it Pak-ghanistan. Increasingly they look to be separate campaigns. In Pakistan, for now the government is bringing overwhelming force into previously autonomous regions with a modicum of local support, touching off mass murders in various cities as well as targeted attacks on officials, schools for girls, etc.; the government reports (without press verification) an unending string of militant deaths. Who knows what's really happening there? But it appears as though there is an internal Pakistani fight or set of fights with the U. S. working hand and glove via drones (at least).

In Afghanistan, there appears to be a continuation of the push against foreigners that has gone on endlessly there, most recently with the successful battle against the USSR that contributed to its demise.

The cost to the U. S. in treasure and people of chasing locals around their own country on behalf of a corrupt Kabul government is difficult to defend. Barack Obama criticized the Bush surge in Iraq even as it met its goals and turned a disaster-in-the-making into, perhaps, a draw. Now his own surge in Afghanistan is a joke, beginning with the Big Lie in Marja and with the attack on Kandahar already reported to be downgraded to a "process".

The president may have noticed that there are big problems at home. Afghanistan, amongst the poorest countries in the entire globe, no longer hosts Messrs. bin Laden and Zawahiri, we are told. It needn't host us, either.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

The Taliban and Gold

From the Afpak Journal:

Three months after the coalition's last major offensive, in Marjah, a district in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, farmers have fled a resurgent Taliban, whose campaign of violence is halting the delivery of economic aid and reconstruction (NYT, WSJ). Carlotta Gall reports on a number of instances of Taliban intimidation in Marjah, where militants forced an old man to eat his aid registration papers in a "Mafia-style warning" to others not to accept government help (NYT). U.S. officials say the situation in Marjah is "mixed" and caution that "it takes a bit of time" (WSJ).

As opposed to what is happening in Pakistan, what is going on in Afghanistan by the "coalition" appears to be more farce than reality. The whole assault on the "city" of Marja was a fraud and at most was nothing more than a bald-faced attempt to seize control of the local poppy trade. There is no military value in Marja. It was a publicity stunt for the Obama surge from the now-president who as candidate Obama could not recognize a successful surge in Iraq when it was staring him in the face.

It is a sad commentary on our times that it is the currency of this stumbling American "superpower" to which the world is turning due to perceived greater weaknesses elsewhere. But this is temporary. The portents for the near-term suggest to me that in the facedown between the golden gnomes of Zurich and the poobahs at the New York Fed and the U. S. Treasury, it will for a while be the gnomes by acclamation. Not rooting for it, just going with the currents.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

Tax Increases for Americans to Pay Taliban in Marja

In Hurting U. S. Efforts to Win Minds, Taliban Disrupt Pay, the NYT reports a world gone mad:

MARJA, Afghanistan — Since their offensive here in February, the Marines have flooded Marja with hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. The tactic aims to win over wary residents by paying them compensation for property damage or putting to work men who would otherwise look to the Taliban for support.

The approach helped turn the tide of insurgency in Iraq. But in Marja, where the Taliban seem to know everything — and most of the time it is impossible to even tell who they are — they have already found ways to thwart the strategy in many places, including killing or beating some who take the Marines’ money, or pocketing it themselves.

Just a few weeks since the start of the operation here, the Taliban have “reseized control and the momentum in a lot of ways” in northern Marja, Maj. James Coffman, civil affairs leader for the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, said in an interview in late March. “We have to change tactics to get the locals back on our side.”

Back on our side? Is this man sentient?

Col. Ghulam Sakhi, an Afghan National Police commander here, says his informants have told him that at least 30 Taliban have come to one Marine outpost here to take money from the Marines as compensation for property damage or family members killed during the operation in February.

“You shake hands with them, but you don’t know they are Taliban,” Colonel Sakhi said. “They have the same clothes, and the same style. And they are using the money against the Marines. They are buying I.E.D.’s and buying ammunition, everything.”

One tribal elder from northern Marja, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being killed, said in an interview on Saturday that the killing and intimidation continued to worsen. “Every day we are hearing that they kill people, and we are finding their dead bodies,” he said. “The Taliban are everywhere.”

Translation: Marja was a failure. Will apparent success in tribal regions of Afghanistan be a material aid to the early and subsequent efforts in Kandahar?

What's going on in Marja is a disgrace, worse because the operation was initially widely reported to be in the city/village of Marja, as if it were Falluja or the like. This was a military-induced media lie. Marja is just an opium hub. It's of no other importance. And NATO/U. S. hasn't a clue as to what's really going on there.

Here it is: Everybody hates us in Afghanistan. Those who don't are on our payroll. They may simply despise us.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010

Insurgent In-Fighting in Afghanistan

Some positive war news for America out of Afghanistan.

The Nation (Pakistan) says Dozens reported killed in Afghan militant infighting: police. The report begins:

Up to 60 militants and 19 civilians may have been killed in bloody clashes between rival Islamist militant groups in northern Afghanistan, a police official said Sunday. The fighting between Taliban rebels and militants loyal to the Hezb-i-Islami insurgent group erupted early Saturday in Baghlan province where both factions are active, said provincial police chief Mohammad Kabir Andarabi.

Not that I am cheering any violent deaths even against people unfriendly to us, but evidence of major schisms between different groups whose goals are not pro-America is good news from a war standpoint.

The more the Islamic fundamentalists are at each other's throats, the less they will be at ours. Given that the U. S. has committed to a form of nation-building in one of the poorest societies on Earth, perhaps there will be a bit of breathing room. Military victories in little Marja or in larger Kandahar are guaranteed, though the fight in Kandahar may be costly in dollars as well as lives. All those are transitory, however, as the U. S. found out in Viet Nam.

Maybe, just maybe, the Karzai government will be seen by the Afghans as at the least no worse than the alternatives.

Copyright (C) Long Lake 2o10

The Afghan War from a Canadian Perspective

In The Last Surge, Macleans, a Canadian periodical, has a balanced, Canadian-centric look at the road ahead in Afghanistan.

Regardless of Pakistan's apparent very strong progress against its own Taliban, even holding out the hope for capture of Messrs. bin Laden and Zawahiri, Afghanistan is the opposite of the nuclear power that Pakistan is.

Of course we can "win" the war in Afghanistan on strictly military terms. This comes at a significant financial cost to this country and is an inflationary thing, as wars always are.

As EBR has consistently said, however, we know (sort of) who we are fighting against in Afghanistan. Who are we fighting for?

This article is a concise review of the situation in Afghanistan. It is worth a read.

Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010