Friday, May 01, 2009

Buffalo Springfield Question

Lyrics from a Buffalo Springfield song, years ago (emphasis mine):

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid

You step out of line, the man come and take you away

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down.

Something strange is happening with what is becoming “Obama’s War.” He kept referring to it as the “good war” but the longer he talks about it the less sense it makes. How did the local warlords of Afganistan and the Taliban become part of the global war on terror? How did drug eradication become part of that misguided global war? How did the war expand into Pakistan without congressional action?

In a bigger sense, how did the President who promised to take this nation in a new direction become another “war president” so fast? Every press conference involves rhetoric about needing to expend our treasure and the blood of our patriots overseas in the pursuit of keeping us safe from some vague global “existential threat” which is armed with nothing bigger than man-carried rocket grenades.

Here is a President and State Department who speaks of open hands and diplomacy, of restoring sanity to our approach in positioning ourselves in the community of nations, except with Pakistan. That unhappy nation we still regard as a client state of some sort; one which we can insult, bully, give orders to and even drop bombs on.

From guest posting by Brian Cloughley at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment on April 30, and I urge you to read the whole thing,

Hillary Clinton “expressed bewilderment that one of the world's largest armies appeared unable to confront dozens of militants.”

First of all there are not “dozens” of militants : there are many thousands, most if not all encouraged into insurrection as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001-2002. Senior officers in Pakistan are extremely angry concerning the accusation that the army is “not doing enough” and it is a fact that since 2002 the army and the para-military Frontier Corps have suffered over 1800 killed and three times that number wounded in battles with insurgents, which is hardly an indication that there has not been action against them.

There is an understandable lack of sympathy for the US throughout Pakistan, stemming in part from the belief that the US does not care about Pakistan army or civilian casualties.

He ends with a word of caution to our politicians,

All the noisy and insulting public pronouncements by Clinton and others might make good headlines in western newspapers, but they are entirely counter-productive as regards the citizens of Pakistan, who see America as a preaching bully rather than a helper in this time of deep crisis.

In that post and in others, knowledgeable people point out that, in insisting that the Pakistani Army take action against the insurgents in the northwest areas, we are asking them to fight their own people. This nation went through a civil war; we should know just what we are asking them to do, and we should recognize that any action needs to be taken with care and consideration. It seems to me we are speaking, at best, with a seriously callous disregard for the nature their problem.

Additionally, we are not talking to Pakistan about the need for them to go kill Osama bin Laden, we are insisting that they defeat the Taliban. One more time on that question; how did the Taliban become the issue? I have never heard anywhere that that group or, more correctly, any one of the groups which we lump under than name, has expressed ambitions of global hegemony or aims at harming America. They just want us the hell out of their territory.

The Obama Administration is declaiming, with all of the fervor that its predecessor did over WMD’s in Iraq, that the Taliban poses an “existential threat” to Pakistan. In so doing it poses an “existential threat” to the world if it seizes control of the nuclear weapons which Pakistan possesses. The American media has leaped upon that “existential threat” much as it did the Iraqi WMD threat in 2002-2003.

The world media is much less concerned about the possibility that a few thousand Taliban armed with nothing larger than RPG’s will invade all of Pakistan and defeat a 550,000-man army armed with tanks, artillery and airplanes. Juan Cole of Informed Comment supports that position as, I should add, do I.

The Pakistani Taliban amount to a few thousand fighters who lack tanks, armored vehicles, and an air force.

The Pakistani military is the world's sixth largest, with 550,000 active duty troops and is well equipped and well-trained. It in the past has acquitted itself well against India, a country ten times Pakistan's size population-wise. It is the backbone of the country, and has excellent command and control, never having suffered an internal mutiny of any significance.

So what is being alleged? That some rural Pushtun tribesmen turned Taliban are about to sweep into Islamabad and overthrow the government of Pakistan? Frankly ridiculous.

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, for many months we have been hearing how the troops were stretched very thin and were sort of hanging on by their fingernails and in need of immediate reinforcement. News of 20,000 new troops being sent made sense in view of that, but now we hear that the war is being expanded into new areas to eradicate poppy fields to cut off the money source for the Taliban. Interestingly, 20,000 troops are being used in that new effort.

Oh Lord, the Taliban again, who have never done anything to us other than fight back when we’ve invaded their lands. Anyway, I’ve never been to the War College, but how does that make any sense? You have forces that are overextended, your supply line is uncertain, and when you get new troops you do not reinforce the overextended troops, you do not secure your supply line, you use those troops to expand the war into new areas.

Obama promised to restore our standing with the Islamic world; he made an address on an Islamic television network pursuant to than end, and a speech before the Turkish Parliament. I believe that his promise was sincere and that he wants to carry it out, but the world will ultimately judge this nation by our actions, not by his words. Fine words create a good first impression, but they unwind quickly when they are not backed up by actions that are compatible.

I am not alone in not being able to see where this is going, and when the people of the world see a war being fought by a nation which cannot explain why it is fighting it…

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