4 US Troops Killed in Afghanistan'
Insurgency called too Far Gone for US Surge to Work
A Taliban roadside bomb attack killed 4 US soldiers in the south of the country, it was announced Friday.
Gareth Porter reports on an alternative to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's proposal for an additional 40,000 US troops in Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Daniel L Davis, who has experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and canvassed other officers with Afghanistan experience, believes that the insurgency in some Pashtun provinces has gathered too much momentum for the US now to hope to quash it. He urges what sound like surgical strikes rather than lots of new boots on the ground.
Meanwhile, Aljazeera English reports on an alleged instance of a NATO strike in Ghazni that killed civilians rather than Taliban:
Also on Aljazeera English, Riz Khan explores Pakistan's internal divisions:
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/17/2009 12:57:00 AM
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6 Comments:
Dear Professor Cole, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the US/NATO strategy in Obama's Vietnam is, as one critic opined many moons ago, the best recruiting agency the Resistance could hope for.
Considering the relatively light casualties being sustained by The Coalition in comparison to the heavy toll on Afghans, it is rather obvious that the Coalition can tolerate this level of losses for quite some time; and the militarists in charge of the conflict have said as much.
Given the above, it should now be clear that Afghanistan is merely a diversion from the main game - a not so subtle attempt to gain control over, and neutralise, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by the unnecessarily bloody-minded tactic of destabilising the entire nation.
The Afghan war is lost and the extraordinarily dishonest attack on Pakistan, on Israel's behalf, will more likely than not end in the shedding of many tears and much wailing and gnashing of teeth in both America and Israel.
A foreign military presence will mobilize opposition in any country. Afghanisan, Iraq, Palestine, and Pakistan are no execptions. The larger the foreign military presense,the LARGER THE OPPOSITION !!
THIS IS WHY AN ESCALATION OF US TROOPS AND TANKS WILL NEVER WORK !
ref : “Lt. Col. Daniel L Davis, who has experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and canvassed other officers with Afghanistan experience, believes that the insurgency...” Whenever I see or hear this phrase, "the Afghan insurgency," most often used (just like this) in this passive tense ~ almost casually cast-off and accepted unquestioningly as something real; perhaps even a movement of sorts, or even an implicit conspiracy; born spontaneously and existing singularly, weirdly, as if it were in some kind of vacuum; perhaps even seen in some delusional light as this perfectly natural thing: an historical (I daresay, biblical) conceit: “the Afghan insurgency” is "this struggle between good = US -vs- evil = THEM" ~ I want to substitute the phrase: “the counter-occupation guerrilla war in Afghanistan.”
The question is: “How many NATO-American occupation forces should we deploy to fight ‘the insurgency’ in Afghanistan?” not. rather, The General asks the American President: “How many NATO-American occupation forces should The West deploy to fight ‘the counter-occupation guerrilla war’ in Afghanistan?”
I don't pretend to know what the answers for Afghanistan are, but when I evaluate the arguments of the step-up crowd compared to the arguments of the step-down crowd, the step-up crowd wins. Their arguments are simply more logical. I don't see the reasoning behind the argument that a limited war against Al Qaeda will be effective; isn't that what we've been doing, and it hasn't worked. In the long run, do we really want extremists running Afghanistan and Pakistan? Isn't that a recipe for disaster? And how can we abandon the Afghan people--again? What message will that send, to our enemies and our friends? Also, if you had to choose between Stanley McChrystal and Hillary Clinton as advisers on the one hand, and Joe Biden on the other, wouldn't you go with who seems smartest? And there is no comparison, is there. McChrystal and Clinton vastly exceed Biden in IQ.
At least 18% of all babies born in Fallujah hospital born with deformities
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/10/at-least-19-of-all-babies-born-in.html
It's always an insurgency. When the Americans went and conquered the Philippines in 1899, murdering several hundred thousand people, some in massacres like that at Babi Yar, the resistance of the Philippine Republic to this invasion was an insurgency, you see. Because the lawful authority was the imperial invasion force, not the government of the invaded country.
So it's entirely fitting that the resistance of the Afghan people to the same imperial invaders today is an insurgency against the lawful authority of the occupiers and of their hand-picked puppet, plucked from his Unocal job for his present position.
But if some foreign invader occupied American lands i the same way, acting here as the imperial army acts there, would we call American resistance to these invaders "insurgency?"
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