You've already heard about the U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who went postal on a village. Not much I can say there. There's an easy way to make sure it never happens again: Leave. 'Nuff said.
I finished the red beans and rice. Four meals straight of red beans and rice? Just call me Toots McPenguin ;).
This bloody daylight savings time has walloped me good. So I'm going to wrap it up and head to bed.
-- Badtux the Tired Penguin
The war in Afghanistan is lost.
Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has hereby ended his military career by making that clear and public statement, in a much more thorough way but that's the thumbnail in a nutshell. But what are they going to him that's worse than serving in Afghanistan?
-- Badtux the War Penguin
The four Marines urinating on corpses have been identified and now Hillary Clinton is calling for War Crime charges.
So let's get this straight: Pissing on dead people -- who don't give a shit whether you're pissing on them or not 'cause they're, like, dead -- is a war crime. But making hundreds of thousands of people dead in the first place by sending U.S. troops into some place they have no business being based on lies? Why, NOT a war crime. So Darth Cheney and his puppet minion GWB aren't war criminals, 'cause the buck stops... well, down there with the grunts, yo!
I can't condone this sort of conduct, but I can understand why it's happening -- and that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the outcome. We've already lost in Afghanistan. Everybody understands that except the politicians who sent the troops into Afghanistan. Crap, we lost the moment we sent more than a few platoons of Special Forces into Afghanistan, that's a landscape that has chewed up pretty much every invader that's ever dared it. This is the sort of shit that happens when a defeated military is bitterly nursing its wounds after being put into a no-win situation. It's a pisser that something like this happens (literally in this case) and the troops involved should be disciplined (too bad we contracted out the mess halls, these are some grunts who need to peel a *lot* of potatoes), but WAR CRIME? Oh puh-leeze, the real war crime is sending our troops into a no-win situation in a first place. Duh.
-- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin
Intelligence report says Taliban still want to rule Afghanistan.
And water is wet. Duh.
-- Badtux the Duh Penguin
Pakistan cuts off NATO supply route to Afghanistan.
US/NATO forces are 100% reliant on fuel driven in from Pakistan. There is no way to airlift enough fuel to keep US forces operational. There's enough fuel in-country for everybody to get to Bagram to be airlifted out, but that's about it.
The supply situation just became as tenuous as Dien Bien Phu's supply situation became once Ho Chi Mihn got artillery onto the slopes overlooking its airstrip. Pakistan has always been problematic as an ally against the Taliban because, uhm, they *created* the Taliban. So now the question is, what is the U.S. going to do? Bribe Pakistan to re-open the supply route? Escort U.S. supplies with U.S. troops and dare Pakistan to do something about it, which, given the fact that the average Paki is about as hyper as a ferret on meth about his "manhood" is almost 100% guaranteed to start a shooting war?
This penguin now returns to his vacation for at least another two days. What a thing to wake up to with my morning coffee though :(.
-- Badtux the History Penguin
Words fail. Nothing's left of Tarok Kolache in Afghanistan but bounced rubble.
Ah yes, the smell of napalm (and burned and/or rotting corpses) in the morning... it smells like VICTORY! Worked so well in Vietnam, didn't it?
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
... knowing that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in a huge increase in the nation's influence in West Asia. If the nation you're talking about is Iran, that is. Which not only has a President in Iraq who spent 20 years as an honored guest of Iran, but now has a President in Afghanistan who accepts bags stuffed full of money from Iran in exchange for being a "good neighbor".
Yes indeed, the War on Terra has been good for the nation... the nation of Iran, that is. Now, granted, Iran is no threat to the United States -- they've never committed acts of terrorism against the U.S., and we have common enemies in the Sunni extremists who want to kick Shia butt as much as they want to kick American butt -- but they're definitely no friend either. The streets of Tehran are still hung with "Death to America" banners, that ought to be a clue, yo.
All this was predictable -- and predicted -- of course. Crap, Poppy Bush predicted it in 1993, which is why he didn't march on Baghdad ("we don't want Iran West in Iraq", he proclaimed). Deal being that sooner or later the U.S. is going home -- democracies aren't very good at that whole empire thing, their attention span is too short, administrations change too often as do the goals and objectives of the nation -- while Iran... well, they're still going to be there. So any idiot could predict that weak governments adjoining Iran (and any government installed by U.S. troops is by definition weak) would end up sucking up to Iran and being heavily influenced by Iran. Any idiot could predict that. Except, apparently, the idiots who run our country today. We are so, soooo fucked....
-- Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin
Only America-haters like Osama bin Laden want American troops to leave Afghanistan. Which leaves only one question: Why do 54% of Americans hate America?
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
U.S. Customs appears to think so.
Jacob Appelbaum, an American working with the Tor Project and a sometime-volunteer for Wikileaks, was stopped at the border by U.S. Customs while entering the United States from Canada, and detained for a couple of hours while being interrogated by Customs and by FBI agents. He did not answer their questions, but, rather, repeatedly requested access to his attorney.
The Wikileaks documents are all over a year old. There is no damage to national security from such out-of-date documents -- only a damage to the job security of the apologists for the Afghan war. And we can't have that, can we?
- Badtux the Security Penguin
I suppose I need to comment on this, since everybody else has.
In short: Unless we turn the U.S. into an empire led by a vicious warlord like Tamerlane, there's no point being in Afghanistan. The place can't be conquered short of doing it the Tamerlane way. Temporarily occupied, yes. Conquered, no.
'Nuff said on that, we already knew all the above, just felt like ranting...
- Badtux the History Penguin
And... hell freezing over here folks... agree with Ann Coulter.
The subject? Afghanistan as "Obama's war", which we're losing. The fact of the matter is that Obama ran on a platform of expanding U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and has in fact done so. Steel is right -- Obama now owns Afghanistan, even if the Chimperor got us there. And we're losing, for the simple reason that we have no achievable objective in Afghanistan and thus nothing to win.
The fact of the matter is that invading Afghanistan makes sense only if your intent is to make it part of your own empire, with your own people in charge. The last man to successfully conquer Afghanistan was Tamerlane, who succeeded in 1370 via the simple expedient of genocide of any areas that resisted and then putting his own governor in place to rule it as part of his own Timur Empire. Tamerlane had two advantages: 1) He didn't give a shit about the locals and had no problems slaughtering them to the last man, and 2) He didn't have supply lines. None. His army fed itself by seizing the food from the conquered folks, after all they didn't need it anymore (since they were dead, mostly). Every attempt to invade Afghanistan since has been to put a more pliant local leader into power, and every one of them has been a disaster, up to and including the current one.
In other words, unless we want to make Afghanistan the 51st state, there's nothing to "win" there, and thus by definition we're losing. Michael Steele was right. And Ann Coulter is right when in today's World Nut Daily she points out that Michael Steele was right. Hope is not a plan, and change is not a strategy, but those are pretty much the only two things Obama has deployed in Afghanistan that the Soviets and British didn't deploy before him. Will they make a difference? Not bloody well likely...
-- Badtux the Tongue-biting Penguin
Ranger notes that the U.S. has apparently killed 12 different #3 people in al-Qaeda during the course of the Afghan war.
Given that the last people to successfully conquer Afghanistan were the Mongols, who had the advantages of being able to live off the land (thus no supply train issues) as well as significantly greater combatant manpower than the U.S. or Soviet or British efforts (every Mongol was a warrior -- even the women and children -- so there were no non-combatants to defend), it seems likely that the only tactics that could succeed in Afghanistan would be low-tech tactics based upon flooding the countryside with horse-riding men armed with swords and spears and bows and arrows. Or somethin' like that. Whatevah. It's certainly clear that current tactics just aren't working...
Oh yeah, I forgot the current release from the Ministry of Truth. It appears that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan on January 20, 2009, rather than in October 2001 like I'd originally thought. The chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams this month. Please ignore the fact that the chocolate ration was 30 grams last month, that reality is no longer operative and all papers to that effect should be immediately disappeared down the Memory Hole...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Our new military governor of Afghanistan, General Julius Petraeus Maximus, says a brazen daylight attack on a NATO base means the Taliban are getting desperate. For some definition of "desperate" that includes controlling parts of the country that hold more than half of Afghanistan's population, I suppose. Just another day in the chronicles of desperation...
But never fear, General Julius Petraeus Maximus's legions will pacify Germanica any day, any day now, I say! And once they turn their eyes back homeward after their 20 year tour of duty is up, I'm sure they'll fit back into civil society just fine, yo...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Kyrgyzstan burns. I mentioned at one point in time that people who wished for an armed revolution were crazy, because the aftermath was always tragedy. This is the case here too. The folks who ran the last government out of town at gunpoint and installed an interim government, are now ignoring the government they installed and engaging in a bit of ethnic cleansing of ethnic Uzbeks. Just consider it a prelude to what would happen to Mexican-Americans if the teabaggers seized power at gunpoint...
Yeah yeah, I hear you saying. Yet another one of those trashcanistans doing what transcanistans are always doing (lots of waving of guns and killing people), that's not news. Well, except the U.S. has $1 trillion reasons to care, given that Kyrgyzstan is the main transshipment point for U.S. airborne supplies to Afghanistan.
So, SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up). Which brings up the question of, "why is the U.S. mucking around in that part of the world anyhow?" And that's a question I have no answer to, since Osama bin Laden, not the Taliban, attacked the U.S. on 9/11/2001... and as far as I know, Osama is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
-- Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin
The Taliban mount their biggest raid on the U.S. headquarters base, ever. Bagram is the Cam Ranh Air Base of the Afghanistan clusterfuck, the central hub through which U.S. troops enter the country and through which U.S. logistics flow. Bagram is the airbase through which U.S. troops would be withdrawn if things went all Gandamak. If Bagram goes, the situation is pure Dien Bien Phu -- cut-off troops with no resupply other than what can be lofted in via parachute from high altitudes, eventually to be largely exterminated.
So to say this is an alarming development is an understatement. While this current attack had no chance of success, if it is the start of a new campaign against the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban have certainly found the Achilles heel of the U.S. forces there... if Bagram goes, the situation becomes utterly untenable.
-- Badtux the War Penguin
Nearly-undetectable wooden IED's, that is. They can't be detected by metal detectors because, duh, they have no metal.
Chank one up for the Theory of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution hypothesizes that natural selection -- the survival of the fittest -- will naturally improve the adaptation of a species for its environment. In Afghanistan, stupid people die, the smartest and fittest and most vicious people live. So we're breeding super-Taliban, just as we bred super-bugs with antibiotics earlier in this decade. They're getting smarter and smarter because the dumbest ones end up dead, leaving only smarter and smarter ones to come up with ways to bedevil the occupying force.
We declared victory in Iraq and (largely) went home. Time to do the same in Afghanistan, methinks...
-- Badtux the Evolutionary Penguin
There is a population of roughly 30 million Afghans, those are large families, so let's say there will be about 6 million households. Give each head of household 500 USD a month. Thats $36 billion a year. Way less that what we are spending now and three times the country’s GDP. Give Mullah Omar a McDonald’s franchise and we are all set.
If that is what it takes, the only reason for not doing it is because the industrial-military complex want to keep all the money for themselves.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
(Above proposal is not mine, but that of a guy named "Henry").
Why does the Taliban have no problem finding soldiers to fight for them in Afghanistan, while the Afghan Army is desperate for new recruits? Simple: The Taliban pays better. And this is unlikely to change, due to the rampant corruption that means that any money the Afghan government gets for things like increasing soldier pay is just as likely to disappear into the pockets of corrupt paymasters as it is to actually reach soldiers' pockets.
Of course, pay isn't the only thing soldiers fight for. They fight for king and country too. Unfortunately, that assumes that king and country exist. Karzai is widely considered to be a corrupt puppet of the United States and nobody fights for Karzai, he has no charisma, no following, nothing. And the majority of Afghans view themselves as members of an ethnic group or tribe, not as an Afghan fighting for Afghanistan. If there were outside invaders in Afghanistan they could view themselves as fighting for Afghanistan collectively against outside invaders, but the Taliban are a native-grown Afghan institution, not outside invaders. The only outside invaders are... err... us.
This all reminds me of some prior history. We had the same problem in South Vietnam. We gave the South Vietnamese government enough money to pay the troops, but the paymasters tended to embezzle the money into their Swiss bank accounts rather than paying the troops with it. There's many a restaurant here in the USA that was started with money that was intended to be paid to ARVN soldiers.
Anyhow, the eventual result in South Vietnam was that the troops basically said, "no pay, no play" and, lacking any allegiance to any nation (since there was no real South Vietnamese national identity, no leader had built a cult of nationhood there just as Afghans don't view themselves as Afghans but, rather, as members of an ethnic group or clan) saw no reason to fight hard. During the final offensive after their leadership mostly fled the country they by and large threw down their weapons and stripped off their uniforms and went home. Both NVA veterans and civilians who later escaped report that the streets of Saigon were littered with thrown-down weapons and uniforms as the NVA entered virtually unopposed. The NVA probably would have won even if those soldiers hadn't deserted, but it would have been a hollow victory with a severely-reduced force, rather than the triumphal procession that it turned into.
What that history says about our chances in Afghanistan... you connect the dots yourself, okay?
-- Badtux the History Penguin
What the fuck is there for us in Afghanistan except goats and the men who love them?
Indeed. Indeed.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Note: This is a guest blog by The Ghost of Milton Friedman
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. First, let me answer the question most on your mind: What is it like to be dead? The answer may surprise you: It is quite satisfying, actually. I can speak now in ways that I could never speak while alive. It makes a free market economist lick his lips with glee, I tell you. I miss food and drink, but I was always more interested in the intellectual rewards of life anyhow.
So, back to economics. Today I was asked to talk about corruption in the Afghan government. My response to that is, what is this "corruption" that everybody is talking about? What I see is simple free market economics in action. Governance is a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, like any other commodity. We should not demonize those who purchase special consideration from government by bribing specific officials who regulate their sector, rather, we should applaud them for their understanding of and embracing of the free market principles that made America great! Similarly, those government officials who accept special consideration in order to rule in favor of a particular party should not be prosecuted for "corruption". No, they are simple entrepreneurs, and to be embraced as the exemplars of American values that they are.
In short, I view the Obama administration's attacks upon "corruption" in Afghanistan as just another branch of President Hussein Obama's socialist agenda. This wanton attack upon the very foundation of capitalism is typical of what we can expect from a President who wishes to embark upon a profound re-invention of America as a Cuba North, a socialist paradise where private property is outlawed and free speech lands one in the gulag or simply earns you a bullet between the eyes. We should be applauding the entrepreneurial spirit that has led Afghanistan to producing 90% of a valuable commodity on the world market, rather than attempting to interfere with Afghanistan's embrace of capitalism. Certainly Afghanistan's implementation of capitalism has been somewhat crude and blatant compared to the U.S. variant, but the solution is not to attack capitalism in Afghanistan, but, rather, help the Afghans learn how to properly implement legislative capitalism. The Afghans have proven quick studies, now is the time to help them refine capitalism to the smooth and transparent transfer of wealth that it is here in the USA. Let us not kneecap Afghan capitalism with misguided socialist programs!
-- Dr. Milton Friedman, Ghost
