Afghanistan and other leftover wars (see end for blog comments)

Posted by Rudy_Wittshirk

Posted: July 13, 2009 - 2:21 pm

Comments (0) |

The latest U.S. offensive in Afghanistan is named ”Operation Strike of the Sword.“ The stated objective is to “clear, hold and build.”

The Taliban have been “cleared” from some areas. Maybe…

From an Anchorage Daily News article on 7-8-09:

“Afghans say Taliban have left Helmand.”

“Some wonder if the U.S. has enough troops on hand.”

“Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines’ big offensive in Afghanistan’s Helmand province…prompting fears that the U.S. effort has just moved the Taliban problem elsewhere, Afghan defense officials have told McClatchy.”

The article says: If the Taliban have been “cleared” they are now the problem of German and Italian NATO troops in other areas. If they have not been “cleared” the Taliban are just hiding out nearby because it’s the height of the “fighting season.”

Guerrilla (insurgent) warfare is when the less powerful combatants avoid open fighting and strike with surprise when the stronger, more heavily-armed, technologically superior enemy is weak or exposed. This means ambushing patrols, hitting supply lines, attacking small (and not so small) outposts, setting roadside bombs, then melting into the mountains or into civilian populations.

The key to a successful insurgency is retaining the support of indigenous populations---not that hard to do when the occupier bombs on Monday and tries to make friends on Tuesday.

Afghanistan is classic terrain for guerrilla warfare. Mountains have long been refuges for insurgents fighting more powerful armies. The Afghans are tough, experienced guerrilla fighters who have never been totally dominated. The area is littered with the spears, swords, armor, helmets, aircraft, tanks and other rusted, burnt-out military hardware of would-be conquerors through the ages.

The guerrillas almost always win these things in the end because it is their country, they are familiar with the terrain and no one likes foreigners telling them how to run their internal affairs.

Fighting guerrillas (“counter-insurgency”) is expensive and tedious. The guerrilla tactic is to wear down the stronger side by forcing them to expend their will, money and resources. Time is on the side of the insurgents.

Despite modern U.S. transport systems, once American troops get their boots on the ground they are slow-moving compared with lightly-equipped insurgents. It isn’t difficult to outrun a Marine loaded down with over 100 pounds of gear---especially in oven-like heat. So, why, really, is the U.S. still militarily-engaged in the Middle East?

The actual U.S. economic-military-political objective in Afghanistan is the same as it was during the Bush Administration---to get Caspian region and Middle Eastern energy flowing away from Russia through Afghanistan. Helmand province is on the route of the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Afghanistan is also thought to be loaded with various mineral and energy resources of it‘s own. The U.S. wants sufficient “stability” to create an energy transportation corridor. Freeing Afghan women, capturing Osama Bin Laden and even wiping out Al Quaida are secondary objectives---mainly window dressing for the American public.

Prior to 9-11 the Bush Administration was negotiating with the Taliban for a pipeline route---while simultaneously making plans for invading. To the Bush Administration, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was just a prelude to gaining control of Iraq’s “sweet” crude oil deposits. Also, they believed that simply taking over Afghanistan by force would get them a better deal than bargaining with the Taliban. The 9-11 terror attack provided the cover to put this decades-old “neo-conservative” doctrine into practice. The U.S. would attack Afghanistan---then Iraq, Iran and Syria---and just be done with it. Things haven’t quite worked out as planned.

The Bush Administration overthrew the Afghan Taliban quickly and on the cheap by making terrible deals with the Northern Alliance---warlords in the opium and human-trafficking trade that the Taliban had overthrown back in 1996.

Now the warlords are back, the opium trade has been revived and Afghanistan is more corrupt and dangerous than ever. The Afghan people are caught between a resurgent Taliban, the warlords, Al Quaida, a heavy-handed US military and a corrupt Afghan puppet government with little military capability of it‘s own.

The U.S. is intentionally keeping the Afghan government militarily weak because the objective has always been to control that country---just as we are now doing in Iraq. And, just as the Iraqi people were generally better off under Saddam Hussein, the Afghan people enjoyed more and better basic services such as security, water, food, electricity and employment under Taliban rule. The American invasions and occupations have made things worse for the people we were supposedly liberating. Literally millions have died in this region because of U.S. policies---beginning with Clinton-era “sanctions” against Iraq.

To this day, the much-touted “elected” Iraqi government has no air force, no heavy weapons and no authority even in such mundane matters as public utilities---everything is run by the Americans and American contractors. This guarantees a perpetual U.S. occupation.

The current U.S. “pullout” from Iraq is an illusion---a hefty presence remains. No way we are giving up our gigantic “Crusader-Castle-city-state” military bases and the biggest U.S. “embassy” in the world. A kinder, gentler occupation scenario is being sold here in America---but the U.S. is still, in every operational sense, a colonial occupier of Iraq.

This is why Iraq is still smoldering in the background. This is why Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Ricks, a military correspondent, predicts that we are only halfway through the Iraq War. This is why a former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq says that the history we will remember about Iraq is yet to come.

U.S. policies have ethnically-partitioned and militarily weakened Iraq (to the delight of Iran) and destabilized Afghanistan and Pakistan. A gleeful Al Quaida is watching as the Americans create chaos which they stand ready to exploit. The Helmand Province border regions where the US is currently conducting military operations is populated by poorly educated Pashtun tribesman who are easily swayed by Al Quaida arguments that America’s true objective is to invade and occupy Muslim countries.

Let us forget for a moment the moral horrors we have brought to the hapless civilian populations of the region (if we haven’t forgotten already). From a purely military standpoint the U.S. took too many shortcuts in the 20001 Afghan invasion in order rush into the invasion of Iraq. Now we no longer have enough troops to go back and fix the Afghan mistake because we used them up in Iraq and if we redeployed them Iraq would blow up in our faces sooner instead of later.

The U.S. can’t effectively use heavy air bombardment and massed armored columns in mountainous Afghanistan as we did in the more tank-friendly deserts of Iraq. Afghanistan is a larger, more rugged country with more people than Iraq. Given that we have far fewer troops in Afghanistan a total U.S. military victory there seems unlikely.

Barack Obama realizes this. I presume he is willing to settle for some lesser military objective than complete victory---with hopes of parlaying limited success into contrived negotiations, a pipeline deal and a military pull-out similar to Iraq with enough US troops remaining to guard the pipeline and run the country just as we are doing in Iraq.

The U.S. government fully intends to occupy both countries as long as it takes to get the resources flowing our way (or we go totally bankrupt). The overall objective is the same as it was back in 2001. Only the pretense has shifted in tone.

- Rudy Wittshirk

Blog comments:

To “curious and disappointed:”

A friend just alerted me to the apparently momentous absence of a fellow “voice.”

I don’t obsess over these blogs and Joanne Grimes is not exactly my “colleague”---but I’ll comment on the Tsunami of semi-spontaneous comments left on her blog and those just posted on mine and at least the one other blog I checked at random.

These additional comments want us voices bloggers to acknowledge the power of their previous blog-storm of comments on a column by the departed Joanne Grimes. It’s semi-orchestrated and getting old fast but it’s the most exciting thing to happen in the comments section to date. The next time it won’t be nearly as exhilarating.

Regarding the sudden disappearance of Ms. Grimes: She pissed off the followers of a popular blogger and got bombarded with mass comments and, perhaps she is a quitter like her heroine, Palin, so she quit. That’s just a guess.

The 125 (last time I saw) comments-blizzard left on the hapless Joanne Grimes’ column had the mark of the left wing written all over them---mostly thoughtful, intelligent, specific and apparently composed by the people who wrote them---but I only read a few because they were starting to say the same thing over and over.

I wish I could get some intelligent criticism like that. Some real and specific corrections of my basic facts and premises---from the right, the left, the bottom, the top or those hiding their heads in the middle.

I envy Joanne Grimes. All I get for comments-criticism is “are you kidding me…” or “are you really that clueless…” Endless repetition of “left wing” this or that. “..a joke.”

And using “Pravda” to describe Anchorage Daily News was old thirty years ago and still doesn‘t make sense because Anchorage Daily News is not state-run and prints all kinds of opinions---even mindless repetitions of the “Pravda” denunciation.

Not exactly scintillating, intelligent commentary. But the Joanne Grimes retreat-under-fire incident shows there are intelligent, scintillating commentators out there. Even if they do overestimate their own power---I doubt very much the Joanne Grimes blog was “pulled” by The Anchorage Daily News. The sponsors of these blogs were probably just as glad to see signs of intelligent life in the comments section as I was.

R.W.