A lot of Republicans trotted out the idea (hopefully, I suspect) that in electing Barack Obama America was getting Jimmy Carter's second term. I'm beginning to think that LBJ might be a more apt comparison (granted that JFK had been assassinated and Dubya only assassinated the legitimacy of his own presidency). LBJ wanted the Great Society to be his legacy to the United States; instead, he is forever linked to quagmire and failure in Vietnam. President Obama is today concentrating massive efforts on domestic politics as well (stimulus, cap and trade, health care); but he is also running a very real risk of being linked to a similar quagmire and failure in the Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. Simon Jenkins of The Guardian : If good intentions ever paved a road to hell, they are doing so in Afghanistan. History rarely declares when folly turns to disaster, but it does so now. Barack Obama and his amanuensis, Gordon Brown, are uncannily repeating the route taken by American lead...

20 June 2009 : LAHORE: US President Barack Obama has told a private Pakistani TV channel in an interview that his administration does not intend to send American troops into Pakistan, the Indian media reported on Saturday. Obama said any American military aid to Pakistan needed to be used against extremism. “We have in the past supported Pakistan militarily. I think it is important to make sure that military support is directed at extremists and our common enemies,” the US president said. Obama underlined the need to help Pakistan strengthen its resources to facilitate development, and stressed the importance of turning the bilateral ties beyond just military-to-military cooperation into “something richer”. He said he was confident Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were safe and secure. 21 June 2009 : 10 months ago, the Pakistani government touted the death of top al-Qaeda figure Mustafa Abu al-Yazid in the Bajaur Agency. Today, he gave a notably live interview with al-Jazeera in which he mad...

Last week the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff discovered that our air raids were killing large numbers of civilians in Afghanistan to the point where those deaths could compromise our ability to win the war, but he couldn't think of anything better to do... This week, the venerable Admiral has twigged onto the fact that our operations in Afghanistan are de-stabilizing Pakistan, and once again--predictably--he can't think of anything better to do: Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen insisted that the United States has “a clear national security interest” in taking on the Taliban in Afghanistan and that the 21,000 additional troops coming in the surge is “about right.” At the same time, Adm. Mullen cautioned that the attempt to reverse the Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan could have dire consequences for neighboring Pakistan. “We can’t deny that our success in that regard may only push them deeper i...

Last week Afghan President Karzai, responding to mounting civilian casualties from American bombing, called for it to stop: Ending his visit to the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has demanded that the United States end its air strikes in his country, saying that the rising death toll was infuriating the public. “We believe strongly that airstrikes are not an effective way of fighting terrorism, that airstrikes rather cause civilian casualties,” Karzai declared. Today he has his answer: National Security Adviser James Jones says that despite the rather pointed demands from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the United States will not stop launching air strikes inside of Afghanistan. Such a move, the official insisted, would be “imprudent.” Yet Jones did not seem at all concerned when asked what Karzai’s reaction to the continued attacks would be, saying “I think he understands that we have to have the full complement of our offensive military power when we need it.” Which is n...

... as our war in Iraq, supposedly won by the Surge, grinds into its death throes as we prepare to depart. Iraniana helicopters are not conducting cross-border raids into Kurdish territory. The militias that General Petraeus paid off are starting to defect, now that (surprise, surprise) the money has stopped flowing. As the British prepare to pull out of Basra, the security situation is now worse than when they got there (and when they got there it was unrestrained anarchy between warring factions). American casualties, strangely unreported in the MSM these days, continue to rise. Our own puppet government in Iraq declares our operations in raids to be criminal violations of the withdrawal agreement, but discovers (again: surprise, surprise) that the US does not intend to allow them to deal with those violations in their own court system. We have many friends, especially those who style themselves as Libertarian Republicans , who have not yet come to grips with this salient fact: our...

Ironically, this story from USAToday could have been written about virtually any presidential administration in the past three decades, including Dubya's: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is opposing attempts by House Democrats to attach strings to billions of dollars in new aid to Pakistan, even as some lawmakers question why American taxpayers should turn over large sums to a government that has shown reluctance to take on Islamist extremists. As part of the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan he unveiled last month, President Obama requested that Congress approve billions in additional military and civilian assistance for the volatile U.S. ally. The House's Pakistan aid bill would condition the military money on the president certifying that Pakistan's intelligence agencies are not supporting terrorist groups and have closed terrorist camps in tribal areas. That bill, which would allow the president to waive the requirement in the interest of national security, i...

The Times suggests that this might be the case: AMERICA made clear last week that it would attack Taliban forces in their Swat valley stronghold unless the Pakistan government stopped the militants’ advance towards Islamabad. A senior Pakistani official said the Obama administration intervened after Taliban forces expanded from Swat into the adjacent district of Buner, 60 miles from the capital. The Pakistani Taliban’s inroads raised international concern, particularly in Washington, where officials feared that the nuclear-armed country, which is pivotal to the US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda, was rapidly succumbing to Islamist extremists. “The implicit threat - if you don’t do it, we may have to - was always there,” said the Pakistani official. He said that under American pressure, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency told the Taliban to withdraw from Buner on Friday. However, reports yesterday indicated that the Taliban withdrawal was le...

I think he's still pissed that he didn't get to be Secretary of State: Having just wrapped up his high-profile visit to Pakistan, Senator John Kerry (D - MA) pointed to growing turmoil in the South Asian nation, and slammed the Obama Administration for not having “an adequate policy or plan to deal with it.” According to Sen. Kerry, the “comprehensive new strategy” the administration presented last month “is not a real strategy.” Sen. Kerry also cautioned the administration against talking about an “Af-Pak” policy. Though aimed at presenting the administration’s view that the two conflicts are inexorably linked through a unified US strategy, the senator says “it does a disservice to both countries and to the policy” and that the respective governments “don’t see the linkage.” But, as much as I generally think he's a pompous ass, this time Kerry's right on the money.

General Petraeus reports Pakistan as being on the verge of collapse : Less than a week ago, the Obama Administration unveiled a “new, comprehensive strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which included massive increases in spending as well as adding yet more troops to the ongoing surge in Afghanistan. Now, days later, top defense officials have informed Congress that the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is growing worse by the day , and that the brand new strategy is no longer enough. SOCOM head Admiral Eric Olson described the situation as “increasingly dire.” At the same time, foreign military figures in Afghanistan have said they expect the surge to be a “game changer” and to cause a significant spike in militant attacks in that nation. Beyond that, while acknowledging that Pakistan had “betrayed America’s trust in the past,” General David Petraeus warned that Pakistan’s militants “could literally take down their state” if the US didn’t intervene. Undersecretary of Defense Mi...

Make no mistake: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and whatever comes after are now President Barack Obama's war. He campaigned on it, primarily because by making such a big issue of his non-support for the decision to go to war in Iraq, and his opposition to the Surge, he needed something that would make him appear strong enough to defend the national interest. He got Afghanistan, I've come to think, either directly or indirectly from Joe Biden, who has always thought we should be there in force, going mano e mano through the caves of Tora Bora looking under rocks for bin Laden. It made great sound bites: We took our eye off the ball and The real frontline on the war on terror is in Afghanistan or ever I will order drone strikes across the Pakistani border . Today, President Obama officially made this his war, following up the 17,000 additional combat troops he's already started in motion there with 4,000 trainers from the 82nd Airborne, a new legion of civilian advisors and tec...

Before the CIA realized anybody was looking at the Shamsi air base (notice the three drones on the airstrip): After Senator Diane Feinstein slipped up (notice the strip today is suddenly sanitized): Thank The Times for this one. Information is power, which is why the State--however constituted--generally seeks to restrict it.

Thanks to Senator Diane Feinstein's slip about CIA Predator drones flying out of Pakistani bases to hit both Al Qaeda targets and civilians in Pakistan's FATA region, word is now coming out that the operation is being staged out of the Shamsi airbase in southern Pakistan. The Times has the story, and my favorite government denial of the week: A source at NCS, which is based in Denmark, confirmed that the company had been awarded the contract and had supplied the fuel to Shamsi, but declined to give further details. A spokesman for the US embassy in Pakistan told The Times: “Shamsi is not the final destination.” However, he declined to elaborate and denied that the US was using it as a base. “No. No. No. No. No. We unequivocally and emphatically can tell you that there is no basing of US troops in Pakistan,” he said. “There is no basing of US Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army, none, on the record and emphatically. I want that to be very clear. And that is the answer any way you w...

Afghanistan is the front-line in the war on terror, which is synonymous with the war against Islamic extremism, right? So let's do a headline round-up to see how well we're doing. Pakistan has punted and allowed their own locally-grown Taliban supporters to replace the government's existing laws with sharia law in the country' northwest province. Maybe this is a sop to the militants after another US drone strike kills 31 people there. What the hell, those people are all militants--they deserve it. Meanwhile, the Taliban, which does not seem to understand that they are only allowed to fight in Afghanistan, is kidnapping people off the streets of New York. So US envoy Richard Holbrooke is telling India this is all a really dangerous development... Meanwhile, purely in the interest of regional peace, Israel has bumped Russia out of the number one slot as the major weapons supplier for India, adding significantly to the $9 Billion it has already sold there.... But that...

After being told relentlessly during the presidential election campaign by Barack Obama that Afghanistan and Pakistan represent the front-line of the war on terror, it's strange to find out that the CIA disagrees. The frontline on the war on terror resides in Great Britain. Here's the Telegraph : American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain. They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil. Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service. A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four ...

... is something that fauxLibertarian Republican is all about these days. Based on two MSM news reports [one ABC, one NPR], Eric Dondero has declared the so-called war on terror to be essentially won in Iraq and Afghanistan, while chiding the left-wing libertarian media for ignoring the story. The problem, as usual, is that Eric has his facts ... wrong. If the war in Iraq had been essentially won , then it would behoove somebody to explain why Generals Petraeus and Odierno think that we cannot safely get out of the country : Petraeus, Gates, and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorizing large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.... The opening argument by the Petraeus-O...

It works like this: value lives in Afghanistan the same way the US military has been authorized to do by our government. Here's what happens when we kill civilians: On the back of an Afghan army truck, U.S. officials paid $40,000 in Afghan currency to representatives of the 15 people killed — $2,500 for each death plus $500 for two wounded men and $1,500 for village repairs. Lt. Col. Steven Weir, a military lawyer who helped oversee the payments, said the payments were not an admission by the U.S. that innocents were killed. "It's a condolence payment," he said. "The villagers said none of them were in the Taliban, just peaceful individuals from the village. So by this payment they will understand it's not our goal to kill innocent people. This may help them understand we're here to build a safer and more secure Afghanistan." When asked if the U.S. was paying money to relatives of people that the U.S. had wanted to kill or capture, Weir said: ...

This is the flag-waving post currently running at Delawareliberal : I think it took Bush 18 months to do somethin [sic] about terrorism... First Post-Obama Attack in Pakistan Kills 4 Al Qaeda PESHAWAR– At least ten people were killed in a suspected American missile attack in North Waziristan agency of Pakistan on Friday. It was the first attack that took place after President Barack Obama’s entry in the office. Pakistani officials had expressed their hope that as president, Obama would stop the drone attacks. It’s weird to have a president do so much in his first few days in office. As I recall, Bush was on vacation already, no? Let's first put this attack in context before we go attributing this to the direct intervention of President Obama. From December 22, 2008 : A US drone launched a series of missile strikes today in Pakistan’s South Waziristan Agency, killing eight and injuring an unknown number of others. The attacks hit two vehicles in separate villages in the area early i...

Earlier today I posted that PM Karzai of Afghanistan seeking closer ties with India to the detriment of Pakistan appears to be one of the reasons for the US beginning attempts to oust him. Here's some more meat to that Reuters story, and be sure to note the Iranian connection: KABUL, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai and India's foreign minister opened a new road on Thursday that will help link Afghanistan with a port in Iran and challenge Pakistani dominance of trade routes into the landlocked country. The 220-km (135-mile) road in the southwest Afghan province of Nimroz is the centrepiece of a $1.1 billion Indian reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. It has drawn sniping from Pakistan, worried about its rival's growing influence there. India, denied access through Pakistan, hopes to be able to deliver goods to Afghanistan through the Iranian port of Chahbahar, and this has triggered fears in Pakistan it is being encircled. "This project symbolises Ind...

... and who's most ready to use them. That would be Pakistan , of course, with an estimated 60-120 nukes of up to 35 KT throw weight, and India , with an estimated 45-100 warheads deliverable by ballistic missles, cruise missiles, and/or nuclear submarine-launched missiles. Latest reports have Pakistan moving troops away from the Afghani border toward India, and the Indian Air Force probing for gaps in the Paki radar net. In case anybody has missed this, here's the abstract of a 2007 study published in New Scientist regarding a limited nuclear exchange between the two countries: A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause one billion people to starve to death around the world, and hundreds of millions more to die from disease and conflicts over food.... Earlier studies have suggested that such a conflict would throw five million tonnes of black soot into the atmosphere, triggering a reduction of 1.25°C in the average temperature at the earth's surface for several...