The Helmand Imperative

From what I understand, the Iraq situation has moved from a fight with religious sectarian and Al-Qaeda forces to one of rival warlord factions. The overthrow of Saddam left a power vacuum that can't be filled by democratically elected officials overnight; nobody is brutal enough to pummel these groups into submission. At a certain point, America would just been involving itself in the politics of Iraq more than it already is so, I'm glad we've stepped out for the most part.

But still a lot of work to be done in Afghanistan. The Corp is really tearing ass across southern Afghanistan today. A strong infantry and light armor assault plus a Pakistani border watch might actually push this conflict to resolution. The Taliban can only blame their own short-sighted Pakistan land grab for this latest development. Fanatics are so good at destroying themselves.

When the president was finally convinced that military power alone would never get Iraq into shape, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered some career Foreign Service officers to Iraq, but these parasites publicly.

. . . ???

Very poorly proofed and edited. I have come to expect better from this author. Is Jack Jacobs really publishing this column or is it some producer? Sorry, but would prefer a more professional presentation by MSNBC contributors.

Colonel Jack:

When the president was finally convinced that military power alone would never get Iraq into shape, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered some career Foreign Service officers to Iraq, but these parasites publicly refused.

Good for them. I bet they wouldn't do that now--and not for partisan reasons, either. Bush screwed over the Foreign Service seven ways from Sunday throughout his term. Then he tries to set them up for failure and blame at the end and he thinks they'll go for it? "Thank you, sir, may I have another"?

Military operations are almost always phased, and this is only the first step in proving that the Petraeus-McChrystal strategy will work in Afghanistan, a place as different from Iraq as nearly any other in the world

Couple of points - first is that although the two places are very different, there are unifying themes that run through both, and very often both strategy and tactics that are proven in one theatre can be re-used in another. The very Marines who are in Afghanistan now found that when they when redeployed from Afganistan 1 (immediately following 9/11) to Iraq. They had a major headstart over their doggy colleagues in many ways because of the experience they gained in A-Stan.

Second point is that a major component that MUST be remembered is the nation-building piece. No counter-insurgency approach, no matter how flexible and adaptive, will ever work without giving the local populations a concrete reason to appreciate (and thus support) the friendlies more than they fear (and thus knuckle under to) the Taliban whackos. This is why among the few bright spots in the efforts in Afghanistan to date have been the efforts of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). That point leads to a cautionary note, as well. Depriving poor villagers of even a meagre income by wiping out their poppy crops is a loser's game, unless you're willing to help them find some other way to feed their families. Many, many so-called 'Taliban' are just locals who have taken a bounty from the Talibs in order to make a buck after earlier eradication campaigns have wiped out their livelihood.

It would be a huge mistake to embark on a massive and ill-informed eradication campaign now, just because of an American 'War on Drugs' distaste for poppy farming. For once, let's at least try to understand the dynamics of the situation before charging in to 'fix' it, hmmm?

I would remind everyone that the USSR had a 10 year war with Afghanistan and lost. Do we want to learn from the past or repeat it. Fighting a conventional war with these people is impossible. They will melt into the hills and caves and wait us out. Look at all the success we have had in finding Osama. We need to find new ways to fight this type of war. If we are going to fight a war, lets fight it to win. War is hell, people die in wars, innocent people die in wars, we need to expect that. We can't be too hung up on the fact the people die in wars. We can try our best not to kill innocent civilians, but that is what war is all about. Killing people until they stop trying to kill us.

I had the experience of being one of the Americans still on the ground in Vietnam in late 1972. America at that point had already made up its mind to lose the war after putting an immense amount of treasure and young lives into trying to win it. Once you decide to lose, the actual losing strategy is immaterial. The enemy on the other hand can try any tactics they want and they will look brilliant because whatever they do is sure to work.

Actually, phases of the war in Afghanistan have looked an awful lot like "conventional war."

When the Northern Alliance was fighting the Taliban without any outside help the war actually came to resemble World War One, with each side hunkered down in trenches and only a few tanks controlling the ebb and flow of battles. This is why the high-tech American intervention was so quickly decisive in throwing the Taliban out.

The enemy now wages war by using suicide bombers and a lot of money to buy strategically placed traitors. Not bad tactics, if you can afford it.

I couldn't care less if Iraq fragments. Iran is no threat, despite what the paranoia.

I don't think there's much possibility that anything the U.S. does will be successful in turning Afghanistan into something resembling a modern nation state, much less a functional democracy. Invaders and would-be conquerors throughout history have learned that lesson, sometimes at great cost. In truth it's a land of primitive tribes and clans to whom the concept of loyalty to some distant government in Kabul is totally foreign. We may succeed in fighting for and holding some tribal areas, and the combination of McCrystal and Petraeus may make that possible. But once troops are withdrawn from an area, the situation will revert to what it was before they arrived.

If we had invaded, deposed the Taliban, captured Osama bin Laden, and then gone home the enterprise would have been an unqualified success. Of course, the Taliban would have re-emerged, and over the long term nothing much would have changed. That's the same thing that's going to happen when the U.S. and NATO leave Afghanistan, or when troops and aggressive operations are significantly reduced. We could have saved ourselves a lot of blood and money by leaving some years ago, and we would save future losses if we left now.

The Obamacrats seem to be willing to fight in Afghanistan and only time will tell how North Korea, Iran, and Iraq work out.

More interesting to me is the fact that at one time democracy seemed to have swept South America and free market capitalism despite many troubles and setbacks was gradually improving life most places. Today however, South America and Central America both seem to be turning into playgrounds for socialist-minded leaders who want to be presidents for life. The Obamocrats seems to be offering very little resistance, perhaps even tacit encouragement to this deplorable trend.

All of which leads us to the conclustion that that the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress really don't have much commitment to either democracy or free enterprise capitalism in the long run. Maybe not in the short run either.

Well, Obama and most Democrats will probably say they are all for free elections and for free enterprise. But when you actually hold the elections they favor election rules that (as one judge pronounced here in Washington after the 2004 disputed race for governor) really put all voters on the honor system. As a practical matter it is impossible to track down and verify that everyone who asked for a ballot and turned one in was legally entitled to do so.

In Mexican elections voters have to present a photo ID and be fingerprinted after physically showing up at the polls. As the U.S. increasingly goes to absentee ballots that were mailed in from people who received a ballot after showing no more verification of their identity than an envelope from a utility company associating a name they claim with an address they claim, we are to be ruled by "voters" whose identities or even existence is impossible to verify and will never be verified. With the rise of e-billing by utilities even that level of verification becomes harder to check.

Democrats say they favor free enterprise but they want government bureaucrats in every board room to check that companies are behaving themselves. If a board votes for a risky course of action to try and save a faltering company, the government will have to approve first, which rules out doing anything in a timely manner, especially reacting to market changes. Having boards or CEO's becomes a joke as government really calls every shot, despite the protestations by Obama that he doesn't want to run all these corporations.

But getting back to national defense, I am willing to grant that the Obama administration may hang in and fight the good fight in Afghanistan against those who hate women getting educated and love to stone to death a woman accused of adultery after a "trial" in a religious court. I may even agree that the F-22 is a wonderful airplane but its mission in the future can be done better by cheaper systems.

I don't agree that the USA should further decrease its nuclear stockpile, or cut back on missile defense in any way. I am beginning to think that the Army's Future Weapons System (which is heavily reliant on GPS satellites) had better have a fall-back mode if all GPS and communications satellites are taken out by enemy actions. Near-Earth orbits in particular may made un-usuable by dense debris fields.

I am beginning to think that there are a lot more potent forms of cyber warfare out there than what the North Koreans are fooling with at present. Worse yet, we don't even seem to be able to get at the source computers of the North Korean provocations.