The Coming Shitstorm in Afghanistan

"There is no magic formula in Afghanistan. There is no Dayton agreement in Afghanistan. It's going to be a long difficult struggle."   ~Richard Holbrooke, special envoy for Afghanistan/Pakistan

Yes, the road forward in Afghanistan looks to be long and bumpy, with several articles of bad news in the past ten days. First off,

POPPIES!

The Wall Street Journal speculates that the Obama Administration will battle poppy production in Afghanistan, likely bringing in Iran, which has one of the highest rates of opium addiction in the world. That's good news but a tough task: The Taliban fund themselves through drugs, but agents of the Karzai government also skim a little off the top. The governors of "the two prime poppy provinces" are close to Karzai: Kandahar's head is Hamid's brother Ahmed. Helmand's was caught with nine tons of opium and has not yet been punished.

Meanwhile, the fledgling democracy faces its first

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS!

Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has decided to postpone the presidential election till August 20 in order to register more candidates, set up voting equipment, and instill order. The problem? Afghanistan's Constitution mandates that Karzai's term end on May 22, and that elections should be held 30 to 60 days beforehand. Opponents in Parliament have threatened to stop recognizing Karzai's legitimacy after May 22.

But the most serious problem is:

LOGISTICS!

The Taliban destroy a bridge along a crucial NATO supply route and torch ten supply trucks. The Kyrgyz president says American troops can no longer use the Manas supply base inside his country. Juan Cole puts it all together and says Obama might put the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan on hold.

Personally, I'm skeptical. Obama may be postponing the Afghanistan surge, but the reasons are probably more strategic than logistic. NATO does not seem to be too flustered by the disruption, having a 60-day supply of essentials in Afghan bases. Cole goes through various supply route options and considers routes by air. Why can't we fly supplies in via Pakistan? Cole gives no answer. Better question: If the land routes are so treacherous, why weren't we flying them in before?

Also worrying is that the Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, announced the Manas decision in Moscow, after Russia promised $2 billion in credit and aid to Kyrgyzstan. Coincidence? Or does Russia feel threatened by the United States' involvement in Central Asia (and Eastern Europe)? Just like with Iran, the U.S. must work with Russia for their help in Afghanistan.

Today's meeting between the United States' and Russia's seconds-in-command (necks of state?), VP Joe Biden and Deputy PM Sergei Ivanov, was a positive step. The U.S. seems to be backpedaling on expanding NATO, which is good: Would the U.S. really want to go to war to defend Georgia? But America's insistence on a missile defense shield in Central Europe is mindboggling. I understand the possible threat from Iranian ICBMs, but shouldn't we wait until the technology has been proven and the threat is more imminent before we ruffle the Kremlin's feathers?

Head of State Update

Meet the new president of Pakistan: Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, was sworn in earlier today. Zardari had been elected on Saturday, receiving 481 of 702 votes cast by an amalgamation of the national Parliament and four regional assemblies. Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui, a former judge who had the backing of Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, and Mushahid Hussain Sayed of ex-President Pervez Musharraf's PML-Q also ran.

Afghan-Pakistani relations were at the forefront of the ceremonies today, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in attendance. Zardari and Karzai held a joint press conference with Zardari pledging to continue Pakistan's cooperation with the United States' "war on terror." Although this will be difficult as Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, has been accused of assisting with attacks in Afghanistan, and the war is unpopular among Pakistanis, who see it as fanning extremism.

Also, Sharif recently pulled out of the coalition in Parliament that was united in opposition to Musharraf before he resigned. And Pakistan is facing an economic slump worsened by inflation.

Thailand Update: The Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that PM Samak Sundaravej violated the Thai Constitution by accepting payments to appear on the cooking show "Tasting and Complaining." Samak has been forced from office, yet his party is putting forth his name when Parliament selects a new PM Friday, making it possible for "Samak to succeed himself." Such is Thailand.

Musharraf Resigns

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf resigned earlier today, saying that he would put the nation ahead of "personal bravado." Muhammad Mian Soomro, the president of the Senate, became the acting president. The move is mostly good news for Pakistan. In the long term, home-grown reform and true democracy will probably lead to a more stable Middle East. In the short term, Parliament can now focus on a poor economy and insurgents in the tribal, border areas, instead of their conflict with Musharraf.

However, the ruling coalition in Parliament may splinter without the glue of opposition to Musharraf holding it together. An amalgamation of Parliament and the four regional assemblies must decide within the next 30 days who should replace Musharraf. Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Benazir Bhutto's widower, seems to want the post, but he is opposed by the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, Nawaz Sharif. Sharif may agree to Zardari's appointment if the president is stripped of the powers to dissolve Parliament and choose the army chief.

Sharif and Zardari also disagree on judicial appointees. Sharif wants 57 supreme and high court justices removed by Musharraf to be reinstalled to their posts. Zardari wants those appointed in the interim to maintain their posts.

Musharraf's resignation has received mixed reactions internationally. The US offered faint praise, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying, "President Bush appreciates President Musharraf's efforts in the democratic transition of Pakistan as well as his commitment to fighting al-Qaeda and extremist groups." The Afghans believe the move will allow Pakistan to crack down harder on militants and improve democracy in both countries.

India is more wary. New Delhi has learned how to deal with Musharraf and is worried about an apparent power vacuum. Indian officials are unsure who is running the show in Islamabad: "Is it Prime Minister Geelani, Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari or General Kayani? We don't know."

Headlines: 8 August 2008

• Former bin Laden driver gets light sentence: After five years at Gitmo and a Supreme Court case, Salim Hamdan will be eligible for release in five months.
• A Glossary of Iraq Euphemisms: George Orwell is rolling over in his grave.
• Musharraf Won't Resign, Allies Say: The Pakistani Parliament is moving to impeach.
• Tibetan exiles in India protest Beijing Olympics naturally.
• Arrests as Burma marks uprising: Twenty years ago today, the Burmese started a six-week uprising against the junta.
• Mbeki set for new Zimbabwe talks: Mugabe and Tsvangirai are approaching a power-sharing deal.
• Detroit mayor charged with two felony assault counts: Michigan AG Mike Cox filed those two charges stemming from an incident involving Kilpatrick and an officer trying to deliver a subpoena on a Kilpatrick ally.
• A Whole New McCain: No more Mr. Nice Guy.
• Large Hadron Collider operations scheduled: Zwoom!

Headlines: 26-29 June 2008

• 6/26: Afghans See Pakistani Role in Karzai Plot: Members of Pakistan's intelligence service seem to have played a role in the attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
• 6/27: Feds raid Blackwater's armory in firearms probe: Everybody's least favorite military contractor gets a visit from ATF.
• 6/28: Oil Hits New High as Dow Flirts with Bear Territory: Amid high oil prices and mortgage worries, the Dow entered then retreated from bear territory (defined as less than 80% of the value of its all-time peak) on Friday.
• 6/29: Hersh: U.S. escalating covert ops against Iran: Operations originally intended to investigate Iran's nuclear development and destabilize hard-line elements of the regime "have now been significantly expanded."

Anti-Obamaism: From the Almost Legitimate to the Scurrilous

Look what arrived in my inbox this morning: an email forwarded by my Italian grandfather, Nonno to us grandkids, mostly containing this article by Ken Blackwell. I love Nonno dearly, but the email angered me so much that I had to respond to it. What follows is excerpts of Blackwell's article (in italics for clarity) and a slightly edited and reformatted version of my reply.

Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.

It's true that the National Journal ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007, but I challenge this on two counts: (1) Liberalism is not a bad thing, in my opinion. I understand if somebody disagrees with that, which brings me to my second point: (2) The ranking is nonsense. Two votes that the National Journal considered "liberal," he voted against Sen. Clinton and with such conservatives as Sens. John McCain and Chuck Hagel.

Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong Il, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists — something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.

What Obama actually said about Pakistan:

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

I fail to understand the neoconservatives: We shouldn't go into Pakistan (where al-Qaeda is), but we should go into Iraq (where al-Qaeda isn't).

As for diplomacy without preconditions, when the Bush Administration refuses to talk with people with whom they have disagreements, nothing constructive is accomplished. In fact, refusing to talk with people in Iran or in Palestine bolsters the hardliners in those areas. They can take our actions and say that we're out to get them, that we're on a crusade against Islam, etc. In fact, the major success of the Iraq War--getting al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) out of al-Anbar province--was achieved by working with former Sunni insurgents. And even the Bush administration has met with Kim Jong Il.

And I don't understand how you could use a nuclear missile against an organization. I can understand how it can be used to annihilate a city, to end a conventional war against a state, but how can it be used against a group of individuals?

Furthermore, Obama is not out of the mainstream on foreign policy.

Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" — hijacked — Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction.

To some extent, haven't Christian leaders hijacked Christianity? Haven't some far-right Christian leaders made outrageous statements in the name of Christianity? I don't think most Christians would identify with these statements:

• Pat Robertson: "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
• "[John] Hagee has argued that Hurricane Katrina 'was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans' for hosting a gay-pride parade."

I could go on, I'm sure.

Just because Obama agrees with Margaret Sanger on one issue doesn't mean that he agrees with that person on all issues. This is another scurrilous attack that has defined the Republican/conservative machine since at least 2000, when the Bush campaign implied that the girl John McCain adopted from Bangladesh was his illegitimate, black daughter.

And why shouldn't gay people receive equal treatment with straight people? Surely, allowing gay people to marry would be less of a threat to the sanctity of marriage than two-day, celebrity marriages.

Ken Blackwell's moral outrage is particularly hypocritical, considering that during the Ohio gubernatorial race, he implied that his opponent was having a homosexual affair with a man convicted of public exposure. The Courier, an Ohio newspaper, thought his actions so egregious that they took the unusual step of un-endorsing him.

What's worse than Blackwell's actual editorial is the statements that succeed it, statements so vile that I think even Blackwell would be appalled by it:

According to The Book of Revelation the anti-christ...will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??

First, the Book of Revelation does not say this, nor could it have, because Islam wasn't even founded until centuries after Revelations was written. Second, Obama is not a Muslim. Finally, just as Blackwell rightly says that eloquence and race should not be criteria by which we elect a president, neither should his religion. Even if he were a Muslim, why should that matter?

Were You Aware?

Radical Islam Awareness Week was last week. Apparently it comes earlier every year. In an opinion piece in the Michigan Daily, the "Young Americans for Freedom" write:

National Islam Awareness Week is a way to educate students about the genocidal agendas of the global jihadists and the fact that these radical ideas are far more mainstream in the Muslim world today than most Americans are willing to believe. It is also to remind students not to forget about Sept. 11, to remember what our troops are fighting for: Our freedom, the same freedom that allows you to learn at this university without the fear of attack because of who you are.

Our group, the Young Americans for Freedom, is expecting and has had protests against our views. However, we are familiar with the way the Left wages its political wars on conservative students. If someone happens to disagree with its position on racial issues - if one believes, for example, that government-enforced racial preferences are misguided or immoral - the Left will denounce that person as a "racist." The Left's only logic is emotional, and the character of that emotion is hatred - hatred for those who want to raise awareness of the threats we face from radical Islam. This hatred has only one purpose: to silence those who oppose the jihad.

We see members of our generation ready to put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms. We know that this war is being waged at home as well, and we will not let our brothers and sisters in uniform shoulder the burden alone.

First of all, nobody has forgotten September 11 and nobody ever will. People will remember where they were when they first found out about the attacks, much like the MLK or JFK assassinations or Pearl Harbor. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: What people did forget was the shock and the fear that was so easily taken advantage of in order to begin an unnecessary war and expand the reach of the Executive Branch. But apparently trying to ignore any feelings of terror to ponder reasonable solutions to the problem is "emotional logic," and opposing Bush's decisions to invade Iraq and to erode our civil liberties is supporting jihad.

And I'm sorry if the remarks David Horowitz made while visiting Michigan struck me as racist. His insistence that "the Muslim Students' Association is not an ethnic group. It is not a religious group. It is not a cultural group. It is a political organization created by the Muslim brotherhood," and use of the word 'Islamofascism' paints all Muslims as, if not bona fide terrorists, part of a community that unanimously and passionately hates the United States and all things Western. Don't believe that 'Islamofascism' is offensive to Muslims? What if I call Hitler, Mussolini and Franco 'Christo-fascists'? "But they weren't real Christians," you might say. The same argument can be made for Muslims, who, despite what Horowitz thinks, do not universally hate the U.S. This line of thought is particularly damning because victory over the terrorists ultimately depends on supporting moderate Muslims, to which the Sunni Awakening Councils' practical removal of al-Qaeda in Iraq can attest.

The letter to the editor from Aaron Bailey, an Afghanistan veteran and B-school student, which appeared in Monday's Daily, is so good that I have to share it with you in its entirety:

I read Wednesday's viewpoint by the University's chapter of Young Americans for Freedom with both surprise and disgust (The war at home, 04/09/2008). The one clear idea that resonated throughout the viewpoint was YAF's gung-ho, pro-war, chicken-hawk agenda and its contempt for the soldiers who are actually fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While YAF used the typical neo-conservative tactics of mentioning the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (which our own government has determined had no links to Iraq), discussing the suppression of minority rights (although the Bush administration continues to support the Saudi Royal Family's despotic regime) and continually using words like "freedom" to describe its agenda, this group did not speak for me as a veteran.

War, unfortunately, is a complex and occasionally necessary way to confront the greed, corruption and evil in our world. But chastising an entire region by calling mainstream Middle Easterners "jihadists," many of whom I served with, only serves to unnecessarily enflame the disaffected population I worked to assist. If YAF really wants to help our country, I encourage its members to visit www.goarmy.com and join the "brothers and sisters" the group claims to support. In lieu of that, perhaps YAF will advocate deploying troops with proper equipment, a clear mission and veteran's benefits when they return from war, something the group's fellow neo-cons forgot.

Make no mistake, the people who attacked us were, and still are, in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But for reasons unclear to me, my commander-in-chief has decided to ignore these threats. YAF's members continue to cover for our incompetent leaders, who place America's military at risk to further their own self-interests, all the while advocating others to fight and die in their places.

Also: Were you aware that "[i]f the President were the longest recorded flight by chicken, he would be thirteen seconds?" (Stewart 36)

Another Obama Speech

I'm so glad J-Mad covered Barack Obama's speech on race in America because the one he delivered today about Iraq in Fayetteville, North Carolina, caught my eye. Some excerpts:

If you believe we are fighting the right war, then the problems we face are purely tactical in nature. That is what Senator McCain wants to discuss – tactics. What he and the Administration have failed to present is an overarching strategy: how the war in Iraq enhances our long-term security, or will in the future. That's why this Administration cannot answer the simple question posed by Senator John Warner in hearings last year: Are we safer because of this war? And that is why Senator McCain can argue – as he did last year – that we couldn't leave Iraq because violence was up, and then argue this year that we can't leave Iraq because violence is down.

When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make the American people safer...

The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was. What more could America's enemies ask for than an endless war where they recruit new followers and try out new tactics on a battlefield so far from their base of operations? That is why my presidency will shift our focus. Rather than fight a war that does not need to be fought, we need to start fighting the battles that need to be won on the central front of the war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan's border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan...It is precisely this kind of political point-scoring that has opened up the security gap in this country. We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but refuse to follow him where he actually goes. What we need in our next Commander in Chief is not a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality or empty rhetoric about 3AM phone calls. What we need is a pragmatic strategy that focuses on fighting our real enemies, rebuilding alliances, and renewing our engagement with the world's people.

Amen.

TIME's Joe Klein reminds us, among other things, that, while presiding over the division and reconstruction of the post-World War I Ottoman Empire, Winston Churchill wrote to Prime Minister David Lloyd George, "We are paying 8 millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano."

The transcript of Obama's speech can be found here.

John McCain Says the Darnedest Things

In his victory speech last night, John McCain came out swinging against Barack Obama, calling his appeal for change "eloquent, but empty." (For which, McCain received a full thirty seconds of applause.) He also attacked the Democratic Party and liberalism in general, calling it "a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than the people." Interesting words from a man who co-sponsored a law regulating campaign finance and wants to triple the U.S. troop presence in Iraq.

But perhaps the most unusual quote of the night is this:

Or will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan, and suggested sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?

McCain was referencing this quote made by Barack Obama:

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

This doesn't sound that unreasonable to me. Furthermore, al-Qaeda leader Abu Laith al-Libi was killed by an American bomb in Pakistan. Taken together, McCain seems to be saying that he wouldn't go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan and that President Bush is "confused" and "inexperienced," altogether odd for a man who typically disagrees with Bush's war policy for not being drastic enough and once joked that we should "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."

Time magazine's Joe Klein on the subject

Clips from McCain's speech: