War on Afghanistan

Gee, it’s not like we were warned

UK politics, War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq, War on Terror
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Reviewing two new books on the UK involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, Robert Fox draws some conclusions as why these campaigns became the mess they were:

The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan were planned to be short and sharp. In the end they were neither. British troops became an occupation force, fighting a difficult guerrilla war while attempting reconstruction and nation building, tasks which none expected and for which none was trained. The human terrain was tricky, impacted, tribal and clan communities where the most profitable line of business was criminality.

[…]

In both Iraq and Afghanistan the UK forces tried to do too much with too little – and the conspiracy of events and politics in Whitehall, Westminster, and at the Joint HQ at Northwood kept it that way. Given the resources available in the British defence machine, running the two campaigns at the same time should never have been attempted. Yet the Chief of the Defence Staff of the day, General Sir Michael Walker, assured the prime minister that his forces were well up to the twin tasks.

I hate to say I told you so, but: we told you so. All those unrealistic antiwar protestors, accused of defeatism and appeasement and everything else up to treason, who didn’t see the clear task the UK had in Afghanistan and Iraq? We were right. Nothing good has come of British involvement there (or any other country’s for that matter) and it has only led to a decade and a half of worsening conditions in the Middle East as a whole.

Be honest: isn’t there anybody who’d not like to trade the Middle East as it is now for how it was on September 12, 2001?

Why war on Iran is inevitable

Anti-war, US Foreign Policy, US politics, War on Afghanistan, War on Iran, War on Iraq
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Eleven years of non-stop war later and the US political establishment is as moronic as ever:

Instead of doing penance every single day for the rest of their natural lives for the deaths of 4,422 Americans and, according to a survey from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the deaths of at least 650,000 Iraqis, the architects and principal advocates of the Iraq war angrily brayed for more: more aggression, bigger military, more wars. And the non-neo conservatives, the ones who’ve been proven definitively right by history, seemed to just meekly nod along. The DNC didn’t even issue a press release all day. And so all the lessons that could have been learned are unlearned.

Osama Bin Laden is killed: nothing changes

US politics, War on Afghanistan, War on Terror
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President Obama has announced that US forces have killed Osama Bin Laden:

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan,” Obama said. “A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

If this is true –and it’s hard to imagine Obama announcing this without being absolutely sure about it — it will change little. Osama never was some sort of Blofeld and Al-Quida never was SPECTRE, useless without its leader. At Most Osama was an example, an inspiration for those who shared his ideology and with every nutter with a boxcutter able to call themselves Al-Quida, his death won’t be the end of it. That much is obvious.

So it’s good to see America celebrating this news with its usual good manners — groups of people inf ront of the White House with American flags chanting USA! USA! — because the war on Afghanistanwon’t end because of this. That long ago ceased to be about Al-Quida or Osama.

Meanwhile the most interesting thing about the news is that the American forces killed, rather than arrested Bin Laden. The president said this happened after a firefight, not during it, so it looks more like a gangland execution than a death in battle. Was this planned? It would’ve been interesting to see Osama Bin Laden in court but probably not very convenient for the US government…

QotD: The fringe was right on Afghanistan

War on Afghanistan
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On the second to last day of the Dutch “mission” in Afghanistan, there is no more appropriate quote than this gem by Nick Mamatas:

Now, six, seven, eight years later, all one can do is take this as an admission that indeed, the far left was right in categorically opposing the invasion of Afghanistan, was right in categorically opposing the invasion of Iraq, was right about WMDs, “catching Osama”, the possibility of creating a stable Middle East or Central Asia powerbase, was right about virtually everything we claimed was going to happen in the wake of 9/11, and that all the Democrats who voted for war were wrong, all the people who voted for Kerry under his “you break it, you bought it” conception of imperial politics were wrong, and everyone who voted for Obama because he was against the “bad war” (Iraq) and in favor of the “good war” (Afghanistan) were wrong. Those kooky fringe people who waved the wrong kind of signs and booed Howard Dean and didn’t even argue “sanctions, not war” (i.e., slow starvation, not fast bombs) were absolutely right.

In Holland those “kooky fringe people”, even in 2001 numbered in the tens of thousands during the first demonstrations against the war as millions more people, ordinary people saw through the lies and excuses from the start. In the end, it did not matter much how we thought about it, or how much we opposed this war and the war on Iraq: our leaders had decided that those wars should be fought and our permission was not needed nor much wanted.

MPAA: objectively pro-terrorist

Media, War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq
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The MPAA fights the hardest battle of all against torrenting soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan:

One of the questions posed by the MPAA is whether they have banned U.S. troops from going to stores that sell pirated DVDs. The Central Command answered this question negatively, as it would hurt the business of Iraqi salesmen.

“No….banning our troops from visiting these shops would have the unwelcome secondary effect of harming Iraqi entrepreneurs selling legitimate goods.” They add that there is nothing they can do about DVDs that are being sold on Iraqi property because these stores fall under Iraqi law.

[…]

Pirated DVDs are not the only worry for the MPAA as more recently military personnel have also been using BitTorrent to access U.S. entertainment on foreign bases. A military insider told TorrentFreak that they see no other option than to ‘pirate’, as the entertainment industry gives them little opportunity to enjoy digital media legally.

“We have sent letters to the RIAA and the MPAA repeatedly letting them know that our downloads are a direct representation of their failure to allow us to be good consumers as others in the US can be,” our military insider explained.

Instead of holding out a helping hand to deployed soldiers, the entertainment industries continue to treat them as criminals. On a daily basis, the MPAA and RIAA send copyright notices to military personnel via their base ISPs. In turn, the personnel are threatened with account suspension and in serious cases, disconnection.

Not to get too sanctimoniously outraged on behalve of US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, as they shouldn’t be there anyway, but it’s typical of the respect these soldiers are hold in by the companies that made billions of these wars… If you’re a soldier, you’re a sucker.