War on Terror – Prog Gold

Gee, it’s not like we were warned

Published on March 16, 2015Leave a comment

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?

Serious People are bipartisan

Published on March 13, 2013Leave a comment

Why you shouldn’t take Rand Paul’s anti-drone filibuster seriously:

In short, a lot of commentators appear to have fallen for the old “Serious People are bipartisan” appeal again. Paul’s schtick was about bunker-dwellers’ fears that the government plans to hunt them down, kill them, and steal their stash of freeze-dried shelter foods / impressive collection of Anime porn. If a president wanted to do that â€“ and again, god only knows why they would â€“ the ability to use a drone would be irrelevant.

So Rand Paul is basically just being the typical Paultard, inveighing against the government’s plans to kill us all and round us up into camps and whatever else Alex Jones sees when he closes his eyes at night. No, we should not cheer him on for that.

What a difference a skin colour makes

Published on August 14, 2012Leave a comment

Juan Cole on the difference between white and all other terrorists:

10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control wonâ€™t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

Ironicaly the javelin is an anti-tank weapon

Published on April 29, 2012Leave a comment

The British Army is going to put anti-aircraft missiles on the top of towerflats in London, to protect the Olympics:

Leaving aside the lack of consultation about this and the failure to ask the residents, we get to the question of what good these missiles could actually do. Presumably these missiles are to guard against aircraft piloted or hijacked by terrorists which might be flown into Olympic venues 9/11 style. In the event that such an aircraft was identified, unless it was shot down over open ground the wreckage will fall directly onto London streets and buildings. These hardly look like long range missiles; they look like the target must be in visual range. (Correct me if I am wrong here.) We knew from previous announcements that there would be missiles on board ships in the Thames, but I certainly didnâ€™t realise that there would be more dotted around London. I expected the missiles that had been mentioned to be of the sort that could be fired at a plane a bit further away where plummeting debris might not have such an awful effect. Use of these missiles to bring down a hijacked jet would simply move the devastation from the intended target to somewhere else in London.

And yet despite this there are still people who’d think it a good idea to get the Olympic Games to the Netherlands.

Osama Bin Laden is killed: nothing changes

Published on May 2, 2011

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…