The Victorious Opposition

Tell us, Mr. General, what could possibly go wrong burning the Koran on September 11th.

(CNN)—The U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Monday criticized a Florida church’s plan to burn copies of the Quran on September 11, warning the demonstration “could cause significant problems” for American troops overseas.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan,” Gen. David Petraeus said in a statement issued Monday.
The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, plans to mark the anniversary of al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by burning copies of the Muslim holy book. The church insists the event is “neither an act of love nor of hate,” but a warning against what it calls the threats posed by Islam.
The event has drawn criticism from Muslims in the United States and overseas, with thousands of Indonesians gathering outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Sunday to protest the planned Quran burning.
“The burning is not only an insult to the holy Quran, but an insult to Islam and Muslims around the world,” said Muhammad Ismail, a spokesman for the hard-line Indonesian Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
With about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies in the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement, Petraeus warned that burning Qurans “is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems—not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”

I’d have to agree with him, that this would be a strategic nightmare for the US troops in the region and a bird in the hand for the Taliban. Its not that they don’t have the right to do it, it’s what the impact will be around the world in areas that we occupy that I would be fearful of.

I’m also very wary of what it represents as a protest of the 9/11 bombings. “What is the point of such a display as this?” one might ask. The most I could get out of it is a protest over the 9/11 bombings and the fact that they were Muslims. One violent display of hatred deserves another? I can’t really get it, and if the message isn’t clear to me I can only imagine the amount of distortion and spin it might represent to anyone trying to demonize the US and our interests overseas.

One can only fathom that this is an misguided depiction of “religious tolerance” aimed at American Muslims in a display of hatred. This church seems to agree with that message and has said so on their website:

In a statement on its website, the Dove World Outreach Center said it plans to burn Qurans “to warn about the teaching and ideology of Islam, which we do hate as it is hateful.” Its pastor, Terry Jones, has written a book entitled “Islam is of the Devil,” and the church sells coffee mugs and shirts featuring the phrase. But the church says its animus is not aimed at individual Muslims.
“We love, as God loves, all the people in the world and we want them to come to a knowledge of the truth,” it states.
Jones canceled a planned appearance on CNN’s “Rick’s List” to discuss the controversy Monday afternoon. Plemon el-Amin, the imam of an Atlanta, Georgia, mosque, said that Jones’ criticism of Islam is “really quite uninformed.”
“But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant,” el-Amin said. “The only problem is in the world, many people don’t understand that particular freedom. So what he is doing is like shouting fire in a theater, in a world theater, and people are upset.”

el-Amin aptly points out that this country has the freedom to be stupid, and the Dove Outreach Center is flapping its wings hard exercising this right. It’s not going to be condemned and I certainly don’t think it should be censored, but it’s monumental stupid in the face of our strategic goals in the Muslim world. It’s just a reality now that this church can upload this video to Youtube and some rice farmer in Afghanistan can see it immediately and be upset by it. That much the general has pointed out himself. Those people that live over there aren’t living under the auspices of free speech for all, Liberty and Justice for all, or anything like it.

They live and die by the Koran, and anything that compromises that belief is viewed with hostility. As they are domesticated further, their central government is bolstered and security isn’t the guys with the most AKs, they may revisit the idea of moderate Islam. As they were in the fifties cuddling up to ideas of socialism. But that reality isn’t here yet, and insulting their prophet from over here while simultaneously occupying their country will only bring on some bad juju.

I’ve been enduring a massive attack of allergies in the past week.  It’s left me either too miserable to think clearly or too stoned on antihistamines to write so I’ve missed out on blogging about a few stories in as timely a manner as I would have liked.  Let’s just put them all together.

First, I noticed last week that House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner demanded that Obama fire his economic team for the obvious reason that it sucks.  Boehner obviously feels that Geithner & Co. has not demonstrated any leadership in a time of crisis and has supported spending billions of dollars to little effect.  Of course, I have many of the same complaints about Boehner and am already dreading the fact that the House GOP will still be led by him next year and that they will be the majority.

Murkowski was defeated by a Tea Party candidate in Alaska partly thanks to her support of TARP and Boehner had voted against a majority of his own party to support it as well.  I like to see these Tea Party candidates winning nominations against RINO’s but if we’re going to have the same borrow-and-spend Republican leadership in charge at the end of the day, it’s not going to matter.

Conclusion: Fuck Obama’s economic team.  Fuck John Boehner too.

The next story I missed out on while in a Sudafed haze was that the CIA has begun identifying Yemen and Somalia as the big al-Qaeda threats.  Well, I’ve mentioned before that I consider the Somali threat to be overrated.  Yemen, on the other hand, is a bona fide haven for AQ and the CIA is right to focus on it.

Allow me to take this opportunity to point out that we’re still pouring blood and treasure into Afghanistan for no apparent reason, despite knowing full well that AQ is in Pakistan and Yemen.  Realistically, the Taliban is no more and no less a threat to us than al Shabaab in Somalia.  In the countries where AQ is, we either scale back our military forces (Iraq) or we use targeted drone strikes (Yemen, Pakistan).  In those countries where AQ isn’t we send a hundred thousand troops to promote women’s suffrage and forbid them from shooting at anyone.

Conclusion: Fuck Afghanistan.

Finally, The State Department released its report on Human Rights Violations in the United States to the UN.  You know, that awesome organization for good that places countries like Libya on Human Rights committees, accepts kickbacks from Saddam’s regime in the Oil-for-Food scandal, and sends peacekeeping troops to rape hell out of every impoverished female they can get their hands on.

The Obama Administration partly based its findings on the existence of the Arizona immigration law that is extremely popular with Americans.  Notably, the DOJ did NOT sue Arizona on account of human rights violations but on a constitutional technicality.  If that state is a human rights violator, then I suppose that we should be nation-building in Arizona with a multi-national force.  Damn it, we will bomb them into modernity!

This is the kind of thing that isn’t just going to doom Obama in 2012.  It has the potential to permanently shut Democrats out of the Presidency for the remainder of our lifetimes.  Look at America right now: have we ever been this afraid for the future of our country?  I don’t mean like in the Civil War or Great Depression; I mean in your lifetimes?  Right now, our national self-esteem sucks and the last thing we need is our jackass president wriggling on a bunch of dictator’s jocks while giggling about how the US is filled to the brim with a bunch of lowlife bigots.  It’s not true.  Further, we are morally superior (not just equivalent or inferior as Obama believes) to the vast majority of nations within the UN and certainly more so than the completely hopeless UN organization itself.

After this stunt, it’s impossible to imagine that anyone will make the mistake of comparing Obama with Reagan or Lincoln ever again.  It was always bullshit, of course.  That Obama does things like this and then wonders aloud why more and more Americans think he’s different and that he has other interests in mind above those of the wellbeing of the US is probably the most amazing aspect of all.

Conclusion: Fuck Obama.  Fuck the State Department.  Fuck the UN.

Pretty ugly, if true:

The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009.

In March, the activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation comprised of Turkey experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, as SPIEGEL reported at the end of July. Now Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died “due to the use of chemical substances.”

Did the Turkish army in fact use chemical weapons and, by doing so, violate the Chemical Weapons Convention it had ratified?

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The Turkish Foreign Ministry has rejected the accusations, according to the Berlin daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung, which reported on the case Thursday. Turkey is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its armed forces do not possess any biological or chemical weapons, the ministry reportedly said.

This is being pushed by a lot of left-wing activists and Kurdish sympathizers, so you can take it as you will.  The international media can certainly be fooled by the claims of militant groups and have been plenty of times before.  Hell, the US Military is routinely hit with false accusations.  So did the Turks use chemical weapons against the Kurds a la Saddam Hussein?

Hard to say.  It’s true that the Turks have made border incursions into Iraq to get at the PKK in the past few years and will probably do so even more after we have left that country.  Clearly, they’re not shy about little niceties such as international borders when it comes to fighting their own terrorist problem.  There were also accusations back in 1988 that they used chemical weapons on the Kurds. 

On the other hand, there’s zero evidence that Turkey currently stores any chemical weapons at all.  Who to believe?  If a NATO ally actually did use chemical weapons against the Kurds, I’d say it’s high time we reconsidered that relationship.  The Turkish stunt with the “peace flotilla” was quite bad enough.  It may be getting to the point that the US and Turkey no longer have enough common interests to justify staying friends.

All that said, I don’t think that the Turks did use chemical weapons against the Kurds this time, based on the lack of proof that they had any gas to use.  Still, the Turkey vs PKK issue is not going to go away and not going to get any nicer.  It bears watching.

Wasn’t it Roberto Duran who uttered the famous words ,“No Mosque”?,anyway, to answer the age old question of ,“If an imam in the forest finally sees the light, does he palm/forehead slap like everyone else?”, it seems that sensitivity just might be an Islamic trait afterall:

Insiders say Muslim spiritual leaders behind the controversial initiative are considering giving up on the former World Trade Center location, in a gesture of appeasement.

After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero - the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York - it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site.

Yes,nothing formal as been announced yet, and as we all know, you can’t believe everything you read, but it does appear that sanity might win out after all.

Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days.

We shall see, but if they do decide to back down, show some restraint and sensitivity for others, and go with a different location, what do we make of this? Did decency really rule the day or are there more nefarious (monetary) implications? Given the bad press and blow torch of anger that has been generated and aimed their way, did they finally decide that winning the battle but losing the war was good strategy?

The dispute over the mosque is just the most prominent in a series of debates around the country where Muslim groups have sought to build mosques. In the community of Temecula, Calif., where a proposed mosque has sparked an intense dispute, Mr. Obama’s comments spurred a surge of letters to local newspapers decrying his statements. Pastor William Rench of Calvary Baptist Church, next door to the proposed mosque site, said he now expected opposition to the mosque plan to harden.

Thanks Mr. President, no doubt that imam is thinking, “gee, with friends like these….........”.

The map depicted shows 6 sites around the country where mosques are being considered, and these imam’s are probably all wondering if their projects can withstand the reverberations of discontent caused by the 911 mosque.

I know little about the Islamic hierarchy (does the head guy get to wear a pointy hat, tool around town in a popemobile, and have Swiss guards with cool looking spears flank him where ever he goes?) but I’m wondering if word came down from the big kahuna to lay low on this one, or the heavy hitters all getting together an some Super Crackers and have the 911 imam take won for the team.

In an interview Sunday, Mr. Berntsen, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in Afghanistan, said a mosque near Ground Zero would become a national security risk.

“He missed the point that people found this offensive because it’s very, very close to Ground Zero,” he said. “That mosque will become a magnet for militants. They will be drawn there in large numbers, and they will seek to impose themselves on that mosque, regardless of who the leaders are.”

I hope this is not a weak assed proclamation that it’s very location will spawn more militancy, I don’t think terrorism is fostered by close proximity to pizza or cheese cake (and NY does both with aplomb).

I hope this story is true, and so does Obama, although I think he would prefer to talk about anything other than this economy.

This may make my top three list of Most Convoluted Lunatic Theories ever:

State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, was on CNN last night talking about a plot involving pregnant women from other countries traveling to America as tourists to give birth, and then raising the babies as terrorists.

First of all, I think that any theoretical terror tots would be pretty well indoctrinated by our public schools and Sesame Street in P.C. garbage long before they became operational.

Next, it’s safe to say that there’s no reason for terrorist women to go to all the trouble of raising little warrior children like so many Muslim Sarah Connors when adult terrorists don’t seem to have that much trouble coming in on visas (Abulmullatab, 9/11 hijackers), becoming citizens (Shazhad), and even joining the US military (Hasan).  Clearly, birthright citizenship may not be the most pressing concern if terrorism is being cited as a justification for reforming immigration law.  In fact, why don’t we first just focus on, I don’t know, not allowing the jihad mommies in?

This story broke this week:

This was a “network,” a “deadly pipeline,” said Attorney General Eric Holder as he unsealed four terrorism indictments against 14 people, most of them of Somali descent, including several American citizens, charging them with funneling funds and fighters to the Somali terrorist group, Al Shabab.

Now, a couple of months ago, I had the good fortune to attend a seminar dealing with Islamic terrorism from a historical perspective of political violence.  It was presented by the US Attorney’s Office and the speakers included a West Point Academy Instructor who detailed the development of Islamic extremism, the sheriff’s deputy who stumbled onto the Hezbollah operation that was financing terrorism through the sales of contraband cigarettes, a Pakistani professor who shared an extensive knowledge of the real situation in Afghanistan, and notably, a former US diplomat who was one of our foremost experts on Somalia.  Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten back my program guide back from a friend who wanted to review some of the educational material in it so I can’t remember what his name was.

We’ll get back to that.  First, see that Holder made this point:

And they also show the importance, as Eric Holder also noted today, of cooperation from Muslim-Americans who are outraged and frightened by the wave of radicalization that has overtaken so many young people of their faith.

Holder thanked in particular, the Muslim community of Minnesota, without whom the conspiracy might not have been discovered.

Rush Limbaugh took Holder to task for this on his show yesterday:

So here’s a press conference to announce that they’ve charged 14 American citizens with providing aid and support to a Somali terror group called al-Shabaab and Holder thinks his major thrust, major point here is to praise “the American Muslim community [who] have been strong partners in fighting this emerging threat.”

I rarely disagree with Rush and I despise Eric Holder, but Rush is completely wrong on this.  What I learned from that seminar is that the Somalis absolutely hate the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabaab.  Frequently, they wind up sending money to them to ransom family members who are kidnapped, brainwashed, and set loose as suicide bombers.  In 2009, they convinced a group of radicalized American Somalis to come out and join them, some of whom have since carried out suicide bombings.   It was the Somali Muslim community that came forward and begged the FBI to help, giving them the information to begin the search and warning them that the missing men might be preparing to commit violent acts.  The support of Muslim communities in investigating terrorism is essential and Holder is right to praise and encourage it.

An interesting aspect to the Somalis is that they move into areas as a group, network among each other extensively, and send wealth home to support their families, clans, and tribes or bring them into the US.  What’s left of Somalia’s economy absolutely depends on this money and the Somalis are committed to not seeing it disrupted.  One fear is that al-Shabaab might decide to target the US on American soil but it is probable that the Somalis living here will recognize the economic damage this will do in their home country and inform the FBI to prevent it. 

It’s not political correctness, Rush.  It’s simply good community policing.  You can’t treat the community as the enemy and expect them to help you expose and capture the criminals hidden within it.  Many of the problems that police departments have in dealing with the black community suffer from this lack of trust and everyone is worse off for it.

The real fear I have of this “Victory Mosque” thing is that it’s going to boost suspicion against Muslims, leave them feeling alienated, and make them less willing to cooperate with authorities.  Some would like to run wiretaps all the way through that thing.  Personally, I’d rather give the imam the opportunity to prove his good intentions by letting me know when one of the members of his congregation starts showing dangerous signs of radicalism or up and travels to Pakistan on short notice, wouldn’t you?

A coworker and I were discussing the planned “Ground Zero Mosque” or “Victory Mosque” up there in New York where the World Trade Center used to be this morning.  He asked me what my thoughts on it are.  Truthfully, I think that the opposition to it is a lot of anti-Muslim hysteria and probably unhelpful.

Let’s face it: New York isn’t doing a very good job getting anything else built on that site and if the imam is willing to build at a location that is certain to get attacked again, more power to him.  Hell, maybe the presence of the mosque will be a deterrent to future terrorist attacks if they ever build a new World Trade Center (though I doubt it).  The point is that they have every right to build that mosque there.

I don’t completely give the imam a pass, however.  Muslims are an extremely tiny, completely misunderstood minority in the US and choosing to build this mosque at this location with plans to open it ten years after the Islam-inspired massacre that made the real estate available was shockingly insensitive and confirms the worst of how many Americans feel about Muslims.  Nevertheless, anyone who would want to protest this site is wasting time.

Let them build their grand Ground Zero mosque.  PR fails such as this will guarantee that it stands empty even as Ground Zero eventually finds new life.

Could General Petreaus turn the tide yet again?  This is a positive development:

As a result of findings during a review commissioned by Gen. David Petraeus, it has been made clear that troops are allowed to request airstrikes and artillery strikes against insurgents hiding in dilapidated buildings or other abandoned structures. Commanders conducting the review said they found some junior commanders had misinterpreted the rules to mean they weren’t allowed to fire on such places.

It was a great victory for the Taliban when they tricked us into giving up our airstrike ability on the grounds that we were blowing up so many supposed “wedding parties” that had the uncanny misfortune of firing at our aircraft.  It took hundreds of Stinger missiles for the mujahideen to neutralize Soviet airpower while we are stopped by nothing more than bad PR and misinformation.  Small wonder that bin Laden believed us to be the weaker of the two superpowers.

I am glad for this change.  Of course, the political leaders and wrongheaded military commanders who established this policy will moan about how these restrictive ROE have saved Afghan lives but ignore how deadly they’ve been for our troops.  Indeed, we’ve taken more casualties in Afghanistan in the first year and a half of the Obama Administration than we did in all the years combined for both of Bush’s terms.  I’m disgusted that “junior commanders” were blamed for the misinterpretation and I don’t believe it.  General McChrystal approved of these rules and knew what was going on.  The senior military and political leadership are being given cover, as often happens with high-level studies.  They don’t deserve it.  Those stupid ROE killed too many of our troops and endangered the entire mission for too long.

Maybe we’ll win after all.

This is my favorite part:

It was expected that the economic down turn experienced in 2008 and 2009 would have affected how companies budget their overall insurance programs, and that terrorism insurance would likely be cut back in an effort to generate cost savings. Surprisingly, this did not happen at the magnitude some had predicted. Despite a changing and uncertain marketplace, terrorism insurance take-up rates continued to climb during 2009 as companies of all sizes and in all industries across the United States continued to purchase the coverage.

Wow.  I wonder what happened between 2008 and 2009 that made employers more insecure and fatalistic about international terrorism yet more willing to add insurance expenses during a recession?  Yeah, you know what I’m thinking.  Don’t worry: we should be okay as long as the terrorists don’t attack us with thousands of barrels of seaborne oil.

Anyway, it’s reassuring to know that when AQ inevitably strikes us again, the private sector will be covered—until, of course, the federal government has to bail out the terrorism insurance industry.  Given the way they think, I wish Obama had gone after them more instead of the health insurers:

The continued stability of the insurance industry will have a direct impact on the availability of insurance for fire, workers’ compensation, and liability coverage. Without a backstop like TRIPRA, which is scheduled to expire December, 31, 2014, market dislocation may occur due to the obligatory nature of terrorism coverage for certain lines of insurance. Without a federal guarantee like TRIA, is it likely that insurers that provide workers’ compensation to U.S. clients - and in locations where the peril of terrorism cannot be excluded would not be able to also support property coverage including terrorism at the same level. Regardless of government participation, it will likely take the insurance industry a number of years to develop the surplus necessary to deal with catastrophic terrorism losses of the magnitude of September 11, 2001. Therefore, some combination of public - and private - sector involvement is still required long-term to appropriately address terrorism exposure in the United States.

There is a real potential for an economic downturn should terrorism insurance not be readily available.

Interestingly, the Obama Administration wants to reduce federal funding for terrorism insurance (TRIPRA).  I’m in favor of it but the clearly implied message in this report is that we can either pay the insurance companies that offer these policies with our tax dollars now or wait until after a catastrophic terrorist attack.  Either way, we pay.

I’m a big fan of Petreaus and supported the Iraq Surge from the beginning, because I saw what his plan was and understood it.  Similarly, I’ve been against the Afghan Surge since before it began and grew to oppose the war there when I started learning more about it, particularly with regard to the rules of engagement (ROE) put in place by McChrystal.

I’ve never thought that simply adding more troops were the answer in Afghanistan or even in Iraq.  The types of troops, the manner in which they’re deployed, and the tactics they use are what counts combined with political efforts on the civilian side.  In Iraq, everything came together when the Sunnis realized that al-Qaeda in Iraq was worse than the Americans, who might stack them up into naked pyramids but not drill holes into their kneecaps, ban cigarettes, and force their daughters to marry their fighters.  It was that we affirmed our committment to the Sunnis and other Iraqis that we were not going to leave and were going to stay as long as it took that convinced them to throw in their lot on our side.  In Iraq, we had well-defined political objectives in the form of Congress’ benchmarks and the only concern was to kill or capture as many AQI’s as humanly possible, not to avoid combat.

None of this is true in Afghanistan.  The Karzai government is corrupt and hated by the people and even stole the last election.  We look stupid and evil because we let them do it.  There isn’t going to be an “Awakening” unless its that the overwhelming majority of the people wakes up and decides to pick up rifles and drive us and our asshole puppet government out.  Our solution has been to send in more troops and tell them not to fight.  We’re not protecting the Afghan people and we’re not killing our enemies.  Worse, we have told the Afghan people and our enemies when we’re going to start leaving.  Does anyone here doubt that they’ll just wait us out?

Worse, we don’t have any political objectives in Afghanistan worth mentioning and its not clear what we consider to be progress.  The Obama Administration embraced this surge just because they were afraid that they’d look weak on terrorism if they didn’t.  This is surprising, because the drone attacks in Pakistan are an extremely bold, even ballsy move. 

Instead of fighting a cheaper, more effective war that is focused on killing our enemies, we see our troops sent out in huge numbers to be IED and ambush magnets who are ordered not to hunt them.  We don’t know what they’re supposed to accomplish by doing this, won’t know when they’re done, and even if it succeeds it will all fall apart after next year.

I hope General Petreaus is successful, but I’m afraid that he is going to try to do what worked in Iraq again in a place where it simply will not.  He has to get firm political objectives from the President and Congress, have the cooperation of US diplomats, get rid of the arbitrary withdrawal deadline, and get rid of those asinine ROE (that have probably killed more American troops in Afghanistan in the past year than AQ has in Iraq).

Petreaus is the best possible man for this job but if he is going to keep doing it the way it has been done under McChrystal, it’s not going to be good enough.  Obama needs to either fight this thing like it matters or get out immediately.

UPDATE: Ah, fuck.

Now, I’m not going to get too much into the things General McChrystal and his aides have been saying.  You know, the sheer amount of shit they’ve been talking on the civilian leadership.  You can read about that anywhere. 

No, I’m interested in what got buried near the back of the article.  It’s what the troops think about McChrystal’s strategy (previously criticized here) and how they think it’s going:

“One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any fucking sense?” asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

What indeed.

During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal.

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Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing,” McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.”

“I’m not saying go out and kill everybody, sir,” the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.”

There’s a lot more of that in the article.  As I see it, McChrystal is a failing general and has now handed Obama the sword with which to chop off his own head.  For the sake of the troops over there, I hope Obama swings.  With McChrystal personally discredited, maybe we can trash his grand strategy too and fight a war with the right goals and methods that can actually be won.

I’ve made it pretty clear from my comments in a couple of the most recent threads that I’m opposed to the Afghanistan War.

Now, I haven’t bought into any Michael Moore-style arguments about it being a war for corporate interests nor am I weeping for the Afghan children.  I’ll leave all that to the stinking hippies.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the current occupant of the White House either.  I haven’t considered Afghanistan to be the important theatre since we invaded Iraq so I wasn’t too concerned about what we were doing there.  In 2008, while Bush was still president, I started to have doubts about the Afghan mission as it became clear that we finally won in Iraq.

I’m also not being so stupid as to claim that the enemy can beat us militarily; not like how people in 2006 gravely announced the US Military absolutely could not overcome that insidious superweapon: the roadside bomb.

No, the problem is that we accomplished everything we set out to do in Afghanistan once every living, active member of al-Qaeda’s leadership headed for Pakistan in 2002 and pretty much stayed there while the Taliban ran for the hills.  We pulled it off with massive airpower and a few thousand ground troops.  Fast forward to today and look at some of the political objectives we have, according to the State Department:

Reconstruction and Development

Improving Governance

Rule of Law

Advancing the Rights of Afghan Women

These are not strategic reasons to commit any nation to war.  Especially ours. What does any of that shit really have to do with why we’re in Afghanistan?  Does anyone really believe that we can improve governance and establish the rule of law in a country that applies the death penalty for converting from Islam to another religion?  And then there’s the bullshit about the rights of women.  Do we need to also start invading and occupying other countries if they don’t have domestic violence laws as strong as ours?  Is this a war on terror or a war on misogyny?  Are we going to drop a bunker buster on some Third World shithole just because the head of the secret police forgot to put the toilet seat down?

Turning Afghanistan into whatever-the-hell we’re trying to turn it into isn’t our business.  The only reason we should be there is to kill terrorists.  That’s what we’re doing in Pakistan and last time I checked, we’re using a few CIA Predator drones to handle it.  We don’t need 80,000 troops for that and such a large number of troops is counterproductive anyway. 

In most conservative circles, being anti-war on Afghanistan is heretical.  I don’t mind catching hell for it since it’s generally considered to be the War That Pretty Much Everybody Agrees On (Out Of Habit).  It’s not that I’m being defeatist—I’m not that.  It’s that our political objectives are fucking ridiculous at this point and any gains we make are going to be temporary since Obama already put an expiration date on this surge before it began.  If we reorient our strategy to focus more on the killing of the jihadis and less on the improvement of the rights of the ladies and the plowing of the opium, I’ll come back on board.

This is hard for the Democrats in charge right now.  I think they would really like to break free of this war but don’t feel like they can handle the political fallout from the Republicans.  That’s too bad.  They’re letting themselves get pushed into disaster by investing more money, men, and effort into a struggle without realistic objectives or even worthwhile goals.  The courageous thing to do would be to reduce our troops to the minimum we need to control some bases for executing rapid attacks wherever we find al-Qaeda and its affiliates.  Instead, Obama talks tough and sends more troops in for a cause he clearly doesn’t believe in.

Every time a serviceman dies for the sake of propping up a corrupt ingrate like Karzai and trying to turn that medieval backwards hellhole into a virtual Switzerland, it further affirms my conviction that we’ve turned the right war—a just war of necessity—into the wrong one.  A wasteful joke.

I’m starting to think that Putin doesn’t really care about Obama’s feelings or something:

The delivery of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Iran will not be affected by new UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

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The United States and Israel have called on Russia not to deliver the missiles to Iran. The West is also concerned by Russia’s role in helping Iran to build its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the resolution left wide scope for economic cooperation with Iran, and said that Russia was particularly interested in the construction of light water nuclear reactors in the Islamic Republic.

As I’ve said again and again, nuclear proliferation is the single most important foreign policy issue of our time.  Far bigger than terrorism, though directly related to it.  This is why I supported the Iraq War and have come to oppose the War in Afghanistan.  We need to face the fact that Russia is not our friend, it is going to continue supporting nuclear proliferation wherever it can make a buck, Iran is going to develop nuclear weapons and destabilize the region beyond any degree we’ve ever seen before, and more nuclear weapons existing in more countries will gradually push the odds of a mushroom cloud blooming over one of our cities to 1:1 in the next few years.

Nothing the Obama Administration has done on the international scene has worked.  Russia doesn’t give a damn about “reset buttons.”  Ahmadinejad keeps his fist firmly clenched and even seems to get sadistic pleasure out of making us look stupid and powerless.  Obama releases the exact number of nuclear warheads that the US possesses as some sort of weird goodwill gesture and the rest of the world said, “Huh, that’s neat.”  The Muslim World Apology Tour has brought only more attempted attacks on our own soil.  None of Obama’s “please love me” style diplomacy has amounted to anything and sanctions won’t either. 

I understand that these surface-to-air missiles are a defensive weapon and not necessarily covered by the sanctions.  However, Iran having them is going to make enforcing the sanctions that much more difficult.  How are we going to carry out airstrikes against key sites if we absolutely have to?  It’s frustrating that we are at such an important crossroads in our foreign affairs and this Administration repeatedly insists on making the wrong choices blindly based on the stupidest high-minded notions.

This was just released; I added it to my Amazon wishlist. Given the number of discussions we have on this topic, I figured this might interest folks here too.

The full title of the book is “Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It”; given Cato’s somewhat minimalist view of what our defense posture should be, this is likely to be an interesting read that challenges both the doves and the hawks. You can order it from the Cato website or from Amazon. From the blurb on Cato’s website:

Terrorizing Ourselves dismantles much of the flawed thinking that dominates U.S. counterterrorism policy today and lays out alternative approaches informed by experience, deliberation, and the well-established norms of a free society.

Leading experts in the field contributed to this important new book, which shows that politicians use fear for political purposes and spend vast sums of money on dubious security measures. These experts explore the nature of modern terrorism, explain and decry our panicked responses to it, and offer sober alternatives.

Beyond specific proposals for disrupting terror cells and improving homeland security efforts, Terrorizing Ourselves documents the many ways in which a climate of fear-mongering exacerbates the threat of terrorism.

Terrorists, the authors note, get their name for a reason. Fear is their chief tactic. Political forces push U.S. policymakers to hype this fear, encouraging Americans to believe that terrorists are global super villains who can wreck American society unless we submit to their demands. This book shows that policies based on this fantasy are self-defeating and bring needless war, wasted wealth, and less freedom. The authors explore strategies to undermine support for these policies. They also sketch an alternative counterterrorism and homeland security strategy—one that makes us safer and plays to Americans’ confidence rather than our fears.

There’s a PDF excerpt on the Cato page which includes the book’s introduction.

I originally posted this as a comment in Thrill’s post about the Times Square bomber, but it deserves a top post. Just like with the crotch bomber last December, many members of the GOP and various other right-wing pundits are all over the Obama administration for Mirandizing the suspect. While it might be debatable that crotch bomber didn’t warrant Miranda (a position I disagree with), Times Square Guy is a US citizen. We have Rep. Peter King spouting nonsense like this:

“Did they Mirandize him? I know he’s an American citizen but still,” King said.

As I noted in the other thread - Morionis Ipsa Loquitur, which is Latin for “the moron speaks for itself”.

Never one to be left behind, Sen. John McCain jumped on the “no Miranda for terrorists” bandwagon, along with his pal Sen. Joe Lieberman. This isn’t surprising; Lieberman is co-sponsor on McCain’s egregious bill to change detention policies, which includes applying the “enemy combatant” label, and treatment, to US citizens captured on US soil - this goes so far that Sen. Lindsey Graham, co-author with McCain (and retired Senator John Warner) of the Military Commissions Act, is having nothing to do with it.

You know things are topsy-turvy when it’s Glenn Beck who gets it right. My complete lack of respect for Glenn Beck is well documented, but I will state unequivocally that he is on the right side of this one,  and I give him props for it.

Lieberman, though, doesn’t think even this goes far enough. He wants to ratchet it up to a whole new level:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is planning to introduce a bill that would allow the government to take away citizenship from Americans who join foreign terrorist organizations.

The proposal would amend current law that bars American citizens from fighting for foreign armies at the price of losing their citizenship.

“I think it’s time for us to look at whether we want to amend that law to apply it to American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, whether they should not also be deprived automatically of their citizenship and therefore be deprived of rights that come with that citizenship when they are apprehended and charged with a terrorist act,” Lieberman, who helms the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on Fox News.

Now, I do think that those who take up arms against our country do so at the risk of their citizenship. The problem with Lieberman’s proposal is the Constitution already takes care of this:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

The Framers created this section explicitly because it was so easy (relatively speaking) to strip an Englishman of his citizenship. They wanted to make it hard.

We have a system, Joe. It’s called “trial by jury for treason as defined in the Constitution”. Try them in absentia if necessary. And stripping them of their citizenship for a conviction is absolutely appropriate.

But shove this “guilty until proven innocent - oh, wait, you don’t get a chance to prove your innocence” nonsense where the sun doesn’t shine. Stop trying to look tough. It’s not working. You just look foolish.

UPDATE: Here is the text of the bill as submitted today: Terrorist Expatriation Act (PDF file). “TEA”. Hmm. Coincidence? I’d be surprised. Way to rile up the troops. This bill adds new paragraphs to 8 U.S.C. 1481. There are two major problems with this bill as presented.

First, all of the items already listed in that section of the US code are quite explicit (e.g. explicit renunciation) or required to be proven before a competent tribunal, while the new “aiding & abetting terrorists” language is quite soft, and not required to be proven before a competent tribunal. In fact, the draft bill is silent on how any of these supposed activities is to be proven.

Second, as I noted above, the Constitution already covers this, and that section of the US code already covers this:

(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

That language already covers the stuff in this “new” legislation - but it actually requires it to be proven, while the new language doesn’t.

This is headline-making nonsense. Dangerous, stupid, headline-making nonsense.