The West is fooling itself when it comes to Islam in the Middle East
“All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil.” ~George W. Bush
“We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam,” ~Barack Obama
Surely we are not at war with Islam. If we were, we’d kill everyone who professed the Muslim faith. The problem with Obama’s and Bush’s statements is that they lead many to underestimate the level to which Muslims in the Middle East and Asia support the jihadists. Throwing out statistics that show only a small percentage of Muslims are responsible for the destruction wrought is a bit like saying that because less than 1% of Americans serve in the US Army, only 1% of Americans support the US military. People fail to realize the power of both the “our team” mentality and religion, especially in parts of the world where the people have little hope in this world and nation states have been shamed in war by America and Israel.
Many people throughout the Muslim world gain satisfaction when the US suffers a setback at the hands of extreme Islam. Otherwise, the extremists could not exist to the extant that they do. Polls throughout the Muslim world show that Muslims in the Middle East support the actions of the jihadists. Most Muslims, even those living is Western countries, support Sharia Law, which is fundamentally at odds with Western values. In a poll of 9 countries, Turkey was the only nation in which a majority of the people said that Sharia should not comprise the law in entirety, or be a “source of legislation.” Pakistanis, despite the billions of military and domestic aid poured into their country by the US, continue to despise Americans. Most Pakistanis also wish that bin Laden was not dead.
People shocked at the recent Egyptian election results should study some history. I’ve long said that Egypt was the spiritual center of jihadism, not Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia made good fodder for the Left because of oil. Egypt, in the poll cited above, had the highest percentage of people that believed Sharia should be the sole root of law.
The Muslim countries that have in recent years received the most American aid are Pakistan and Egypt. Approximately 25% of the money used to fund the Pakistani army comes from American aid. The top recipients of US foreign aid in 2011 are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt in that order. Egypt has routinely ranked among the top nations in the world in the number of dollars given to it by the American government.
There appears to be an inverse correlation between the positive views in a country when measured against the amount of US aid provided to it. The argument of course is that America is trying to show these countries that the US is not the enemy. This method of appeasement is failing. In a poll published by the Washington Post shortly after Mubarak stepped down, 79 percent of Egyptians viewed the US negatively, with 20% saying they have a positive view of the US. This is a sharp decline from the Bush years when 30 percent of Egyptians viewed the US positively.
The problems in giving countries like Pakistan and Egypt lots of money are macrocosmic of what I saw happening in local projects in Afghanistan. The money will always find its way into the hands of America’s enemies because they are the most ruthless, devious and aggressive portions of those societies. They also in many cases have a monopoly on violence, something the state usually lays claim to–if it is not a failed state. In Afghanistan the people were not “all in” for the Americans. They really didn’t care that much, at least in areas far from Kabul, if the insurgents blew up a few American Imperialists. They’d take five bucks to plants a bombs and be on their way. In one fell swoop they’d made a month’s wage, killed some infidels, impressed the locals with their “bravery”, and maintained a semblance of national pride.
Egypt’s Mubarak held the forces of Islamic jihad at bay with the only weapon that works against it: Decisive brutality. As with Saudi Arabia, Egypt was a police state, as much because of the extremists as Mubarak. Only with extreme vigilance could the Egyptian government survive. Frankly, Mubarak may have been the West’s only hope in Egypt, but starry-eyed Westerners with a Democracy fetish ran him off, unleashing a hoard of militants, radicals and young men electrified with a rage whose dynamo was built in 1967 and 1973 during the humiliating defeats of the Egyptian Army at the hands of the Israelis. The effect of these defeats upon the Arab psyche cannot be overstated.
The Arab Spring has generated nothing resembling Western democracy and displays brilliantly the weakness of Democracy itself: People can vote for any horrific idea they choose. Hitler was democratically elected. Muslims have voted and acted exactly how we should have expected them to. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists now hold power. The Salafists in Egypt hold the same views as al-Qaeda and Hamas. Christians are trying to leave the country, fearing for their safety.
The revolutions in Egypt and Libya were hardly induced by only few extremists. In fact,it seems the revolutions enjoyed the backing of millions upon millions of extremists. It is the same sort of thing we saw in Nazi Germany. Many Germans were not Nazis or did not take part in the actual fighting. But most of them wanted to see the Nazis win. And so it is with Muslims in Libya, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. The Muslims there overwhelmingly want to thrash Israel and the United States in any manner they can. If the terror proxies can trounced by the hyperpower or the Jewish state, we can of course expect the “innocent” population of “moderate” muslims to melt back into the woodwork.
Islam unifies people against Israel and the West. As Mark Steyn writes in his book, America Alone, the draw of Western “McWorld” to the average Arab male is vastly overstated. Secularism is about as un-motivational as a Rosie O’donnell workout video. It is meaninglessness and provides no promise of power or life after death, no cloak of righteousness; something that means far more to a poor 23 year old man in Cairo than does the promise of flipping burgers.
Now Israel has a monstrous number of problems on its hand, all coming to bear at once. Iran wants the bomb and is not far off from getting it. Egyptians are muttering that they want the Camp David Peace Accord “adjusted.” 20,000 surface-to-air missiles are missing from Qaddafi’s stockpiles. The current American president’s negative comments about Netanyahu were caught on an open mic.
The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East are not jihadists or terrorists. But most of them support the actions of extremist Islam when those actions are directed against Westerners or Israelis. Our money and McDonald’s cannot possibly fill the same void that is filled by Islam. And Democracy, as with any form of government, is only as good as the people that comprise it.
So what is the answer? Does America have to kill every last Muslim? Not any more than it had to kill every last German or Japanese. America has only to decisively defeat the front-line troops of Jihad. But decisive victory may no longer be something the West is capable of, despite its overwhelming superiority in almost every facet of military and economic might.
The Arab Spring has not created Arab states that are more stable or less violent. It has provided kindling for another 100 years of Jihadist immolation. Our children’s children will see The Long War continue.
Can the jihadists win?
The stock argument used by those arguing against the War on Terror is that the terrorists cannot possibly win. These people believe that even if America did not take military actions against Islamic jihadists, the jihadists could not defeat the US. This is false. The Clausewitzian cliche’ here is that war is an extension of politics. In this case terrorism is an extension of politics. Al-Qaeda need not destroy all of America’s military forces, or its infrastructure, or imprison large swaths of its population in prison camps. It only needs to change the way people think and vote. It has already done this.
In 2004 an Islamic terrorist cell inspired by al-Qaeda detonated 10 bombs in a Madrid train terminal, killing nearly 200 people and wounding over 2000. Three days later the Spanish Socialist Party was elected to office, ousting the incumbent conservative prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, from office. The Socialist Party leadership then implemented legislation to remove the 1500 Spanish troops from Iraq, as it was determined that the prime motivation for the bombings was Spanish contribution to the Iraq War.
Through the ballot box, terrorists rendered Spain’s military combat ineffective in Iraq. That’s something that a modern-well equipped army would have had a much tougher time accomplishing were it to adhere to the old rules of locating enemy military assets and destroying them until the opposing government capitulated. Instead, the opposing government was rendered ineffective through the democratic process.
Personal security is the number one concern of the animal. Hobbes knew it and Abraham Maslow came close to knowing it. Maslow placed the need for food, sleep, and sex above (or below at the base of his pyramid) the need for personal security. However, I disagree. People will give up food, sleep and sex if they are immediately threatened with physical harm. I’m quibbling. Obviously the imminence of the problem comes in to play. Either way, physical security is very important. Societies do not progress without it; all the people’s minds stay focused on war and fighting for security.
The terrorist must sow the idea of imminent attack. The victim population must come to believe that the terrorists can move freely about, that any lull in violence is the choice of the terrorists and not because security forces are limiting the terrorists abilities to move, plan, build bombs and attack. The media plays a huge roll in modern terrorism. Not only in changing the minds of ordinary civilians, but in motivating and recruiting other terrorists. The internet is rife with jihadist propaganda. Another argument against the War on Terror is that the dangers of being killed in a terror attack are so small, any great fears of terrorism are based on illusions. To some extent this is true. However, were America’s military and police not constantly on watch, I believe that 9-11 or the Madrid train bombings would be a monthly occurance, at the very least.
Through the ballot box, the jihadists can win. And they can do it with far less damage and effort than it takes to win a conventional war. In many places in Europe, it’s now illegal to make any derogatory comments about Islam. Many in the West view their tolerance of other cultures as proof of moral superiority. Any talk of why another culture’s practices are evil or not acceptable are viewed as proof of hate mongering. These cultural relativists have little idea of what true hate mongering is, but they’ll get a glimpse of it as their culture is changed slowly through the democratic process to a place more comfortable to extreme Islam.
Or maybe they won’t even realize it when it happens.
The truly frightening thing about the power of culture is that a person ensconced within the living tomb of a dying society can be experiencing hell but barely realize it. There is no experience of not living in Hell. Hell becomes the default for life. It goes a long way in making the Buddhist argument that man should reduce his expectations and desires, not increase them. Europe is dying a slow death. It’s birthrates are catastrophically low. The Muslim birthrates are about 4 to 5 times higher than white Europeans. The low European birthrate will have multiple negative effects. First, the current European economic model cannot be sustained. If one thinks that America has looming economic problems because of its social security system, it’s nothing to what Europe faces. Not only do Europeans have much more generous retirement and unemployment benefits, they barely have any military to speak of. As fewer young people are injected into the work cycle, fewer people are paying into the government handout system. This is exactly what happened in Greece. By 2040 or so, the Greek retirement system will absorb 25% of the Greek GDP. The rest of Europe will follow in domino fashion. At some point we may wake up to find ourselves in a political system more akin to that desired by totalitarian theocrats than to Western democracy. We may not even know the difference.
Secondly, a rising Muslim population in relation to white European population will spell more votes for Muslims. If you don’t think that will have real, negative impact on the continent, take a look at the pew report that shows 75% of Muslims polled don’t believe that Arabs took part in the 9-11 attacks. Not enough? 40 percent of British Muslims want Sharia in their country. Sharia courts are used in Britain to settle Muslim civil cases. Terrorism has worked and it’s not because we fought back. It’s because many continue to believe that by changing laws in Muslims’ favor, it will somehow change the way many Muslims feel and believe. However it’s not working out that way. By changing the laws and customs of our culture, we’re merely changing ourselves. Sometimes changing ourselves is good. It’s just difficult to believe, when we look at the state of every predominately Muslim country around the world, that that’s what we want to change into.
Yes, the jihadists can win. The oddity of democracies is that they can be changed in different way than oligarchies. They can be changed merely because the people feel like changing laws. When the West stops fighting for what made it great, when we think that by passing laws to appease the more brutal and aggressive people among us, militant Islam will be well on its way to winning. The people will lose faith in their state’s ability to protect them from aggression, and so will live only for today, which means a cycle of appeasement that brings transient comfort to those who cast the momentary vote, but condemns future generations to the slippery slope greased with the hanging chads of weakness and cowardice.
My encounter with a Pakistani military officer
While redeploying from Afghanistan back to Germany, I passed through Kabul International Airport. Inside the recreation center, several Pakistani military officers played table tennis. They were part of the military partnership between America and Pakistan.
As I sat watching the game, a Pak officer approached and sat down next to me. He inquired about my 101st Airborne combat patch. He told me that the 101st recently left Afghanistan, so he wondered why I was still there. I told him that I’d deployed as an individually attached soldier. In other words, though I was in a combat zone with the 101st, I was on loan from another unit and my deployment cycle didn’t quite sync with the 101st.
The officer was extremely charismatic and smooth. He combined the attributes of Pakistan’s old English military masters with Eastern guile. I’ve read of some other accounts similar to mine. People who meet Pakistani military officers are somewhat beguiled. I was immediately put on the defensive by this officer, but I believe that if it wasn’t for my current job and my experience as a cop, I would have come away thinking: “Maybe we’re just misunderstanding Pakistan.”
We know what Pakistan is up to politically and militarily. Yet Pakistan’s ability to say one thing and do another is unparalleled. I believe Americans, who’ve grown up in a country where trust is common, despite media cynicism, are easily led by such well-honed deceptive skills. This is why our policy regarding Pakistan remains unchanged despite evidence that we should probably take a harder stance.
Admiral Mullen’s recent comments on Pak duplicity ring true to me. But I believe the snake charmers in Pakistan will continue to lead many astray.
Paul Krugman: Repugnant
Paul Krugman penned a spectacularly awful article in the New York Times regarding 9-11. He has outdone himself as a left-wing zealot whose hatred of America bleeds into his vitriolic episodes.
I myself do not like sloganism in regards to 9-11 or much else. It violates a law of good writing: avoid the cliche’. But Krugman’s articles border on the insane to me. His ideas on economics are ludicrous. Interestingly, Krugman disabled all comments on the article.
Donald Rumsfeld tweeted that he was cancelling his subscription to the New York Times over Krugman’s article. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
To those who died in the Towers, on Flight 93 and the Pentagon 10 years ago: I salute, honor and remember you. And to those who have and will die fighting the global insurgency called al-Qaeda, you could give no more.
The Long War gets longer
Moammar Gaddafi has been wrenched from power by a group of rebels whose composition remains ambiguous and possibly quite dangerous.
In the end, it seems like the West is worse off than it was a year ago; the entire Sinai Peninsula is essentially under the control of the combined forces of al-Qaeda in Iraq, The Muslim Brotherhood, and a rag-tag group of insurgents whose loyalties will likely go to the highest bidder. We now have to worry about Gaddafi’s massive stocks of surface-to-air missiles and his alleged loads of chemical weapons. What? WMD you say? The rebels descending on Tripoli have already raided some of the Libyan military’s weapons stores. We must assume that al-Qaeda has operatives stalking the land trying to get their hands on weapons not otherwise easily obtained. After all, the highest numbers of foreign fighters that entered Iraq to join the insurgency were from Libya and one of the Libyan rebel leaders admits to fighting and recruiting for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Without NATO forces on the ground, expect chaos to reign and civil war-lite to be the order of the day in Libya.
Meanwhile, the media largely ignored events in Egypt prior to the recent death of Egyptian security officers in clashes between Palestinians and the IDF. Egyptian prisons were opened up after Mubarak resigned, releasing hundreds if not thousands of hard core jihadists. Many Egyptian police stations are subject to attack and some have been abandoned. The gas pipeline between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai has been attacked 5 times. Yet nary a peep from the media, whom loves a good revolution. A look at history shows bad things happen in Egypt when the jihadists are released from jail, even in an act of goodwill. Sadat paid the price for such folly.
Perhaps most troubling is that Egypt and Libya border one another. While it may not be the Caliphate, it seems the same forces are active in both countries, and their proximity will make whatever plans al-Qaeda has in the region all the more tenable.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and its the elements that are most willing to employ force in the Muslim world that always fill the voids. Fundamentalist Islam has doomed the Muslim world to these options: Either a heavy handed if anti-extremist ruler controls the country with harsh laws and uses of his security forces to crush extremists; religious extremists maintain power in many of the same ways while funding proxy terror orgs, as Iran does; or fundamentalist militants rain chaos and destruction, such as in Somalia and Yemen.
None of this bodes well for Israel, and ultimately the West. The Long War just got longer.
Sherman rolls in his grave.
We never learn because the elites in Washington don’t feel the pain of the battlefield.
My time walking through the Old Testament
I’ll be writing several entries on my blog about my experiences in Afghanistan. Look for it soon. It’ll include photos and several vignettes. Not everyone will like what they read; we screwed the pooch on this one.
Target: Bin Laden
Knowing the rules
I read an article written by David Killcullen, one of the world’s top counter-insurgency men. He stated that the populace in a counter-insurgency want to know the rules that have been set in place for them. They want to know their boundaries, what will bring punishment and what will bring reward.
I believe that one of the biggest failures of the last 8 years in the war in Afghanistan is the lack of effort in reporting the real reasons and intentions for America being in the country in the first place. Since General Petraeus took over, there’s been a concerted effort to rectify this, but there’s a long way to go.
As Washington Post writer, David Ignatius points out, according to recent polls, Afghan haven’t a clue as to why Americans are in their backyard.
Nature abhors a vacuum. And so it is with information and propaganda. Whenever Coalition Forces fail to fill information gaps, we can be sure the enemy will oblige. Add to this the propensity of people in the region to believe the wildest of mythology–a neck-tie is a secret symbol of Christianity, Osama Bin Laden is a CIA operative–and you have a formula for unending war. Many Afghans, since they may not have even heard of 9-11, can only assume that America is in-country to do what every other invader has tried to do: Become a colonial power. And since America is primarily a Christian power, we must want to destroy Islam, too. No Afghan tribe that believes these things will ever fully support our efforts. And we need full support if the people are to be the eyes that find insurgents, not just a level of support that takes our money and goes about enabling the Taliban. The Taliban aggressively speads its message and rules through Shabnamah or Night Letters as well as face to face contact. The message and rules? Cooperate with the Coalition and you die. The Taliban has won the information war in to this point in Afghanistan. After researching the subject for an intelligence paper I wrote, I believe it is the number one reason that this war has lasted so long.
In a land rife with illiteracy, getting the word out is a huge task. But it is doable. When I visited a refugee camp in Afghanistan, I saw 25,000 inhabitants whom were ripe for Taliban picking. I made sure when I spoke with the camps leader to ask him why he thought America was in Afghanistan. I also told him that he needs to tell all of his people that America is here to fight al-Qaeda and trans-national terrorists, that American soldiers don’t want to spend years in his country; they want to go back to their family and friends. But we needed his help.
Every leader that interfaces with various tribes in Afghanistan should have a list of things that they tell the people. On that list should be an explanation for American presence and the rules that the people are expected to follow: Do this and we help you. Do this and we kill you or arrest you. The messaging should also include a laundry list of all the horrible things that the Taliban does, and a negation of the myth (propagated as much by Western media as the Taliban) that Americans kill more civilians than the insurgents do. All of this should be SOP with every engagement.
It’s not about rights, it’s about adaption
I remember when I was in college and driving on the University of Maine campus back in the early 90s. Young college students being the unenlightened ideologues they were and are, would often step into the road to cross without looking both ways for oncoming vehicles. I’m sure many of them simply regarded it as their right to cross the road, regardless of the dangers. It was the job of the car drivers to stop for them.
As a cop, I would tell people that ”rights” were not force fields set against the laws of physics. Even if a person does have the right of way to cross, it’s still a good idea to look both ways before one steps into the street. Just because the state has given you the right to cross and mandates that a vehicle stop and wait (this is not always the case by the way), doesn’t mean that a .5 ton car will bounce off you in reverence of state law. As such, I consider a pat down the same as looking both ways. A little more time, but it’s worth it, with no material harm done. If the government took cash out of my pocket every time I stepped through security, then I’d have a problem. It seems the right to be un-offended is the only right being violated. And as a cop, I offended many sensibilities, to the point where I didn’t want to tell people what my job was, lest they give me a laundry list of how their rights had been violated by cops in the past.
And I think that this idea applies to pat downs and other security measures taken to minimize the threats of terrorism. Some want to stubbornly stand their ground claiming their right to be free of too much government intervention. But what about all of the people getting on the plane that want to know that no body else is carrying a bomb? Legal rights will not protect them from an explosion.
But as far as I can see, no one’s rights are being violated. People of course can sue the government claiming that search and seizure laws are being violated. If they are, I feel confident that the courts will figure it out. I also suspect they’ll come to the same conclusions as before.
This also leads me to the second part of this posting, which is that some people want to call this a war, and yet do not want to feel the least inconvenienced by it. In this America and in this war, it is a very small percentage of the people doing the actual fighting and suffering. There’s been no draft, no co-opting of industry by the government, no forced imprisonment of Muslims simply for being Muslim. In fact the the majority of the discomfort experienced by Americans is the ceaseless drum beat of news coverage about the war. Would most people really know there’s a war on if the news didn’t tell them so?
All of these facts stand in stark reality to what Americans of past generations faced in war. Conscription, racially based imprisonment, huge death rates. None of which we face today. And yet a pat down has some saying that the terrorists are winning because we’ve been forced to change something in our day-to-day lives. Well excuse me for thinking that that’s to be expected in a war.
“We’re only fighting yesterday’s threat”, some say. Yes. But if you didn’t fight yesterday’s threat, it would continue to be today’s threat. If I’m in a gunfight, and I keep shooting enemy soldiers in the chest because they have no body armor, guess where I’ll be aiming in the next fight? The chest–it’s the biggest target with plenty of blood in it. Put body armor on the enemy and suddenly I have to aim for something less lethal or at least smaller, like the head –a notoriously bad gamble in a gun fight. And so it goes with terrorists. Yes we have to constantly adapt. Sometimes that means inconvenience (in the most convenient age in history). When we find our rules too constricting, we, as now, will be forced to consider what we value more: Our rights and convenience or security.
I’m just not that offended
My liberal friends are pissed at me. My conservative friends are pissed at me. Sorry everyone, but I’m just not that offended by the TSA pat down process. Maybe I’ve lost my edge, but I don’t think so because I’m still for killing terrorists. Janet Napolitano is not qualified for her job, but that’s not the particular issue here. Even my favorite author Ralph Peters is against the pat down.
I see a lot of chain-reaction outrage. People see the news reporting all the outrage going on, and suddenly, “How outrageous”! I keep seeing it on Drudge Report, which I look at daily–all the outrage. Sure, much of what the TSA does is stupid, but not outrageous. Much what of our government does as a whole is short-sighted and stupid. The new health care for instance. Add 32,000,000 patients but tell us it’ll be cheaper? Hmm. Didn’t quite work out.
I keep trying to feel offended. I really do. I keep imagining over and over being screened and becoming so enraged that I renounce my citizenship for free-er lands, such as Venezuela, but I just can’t summon the angst over the pat down.
Maybe it’s because I’m in the Army and so used to having my “rights” trampled on that a simple pat down seems more like a free rub down to me. I mean, I’m subject to supplying the Army with urine during random drug tests in which a fellow NCO glares at my junk while I give a sample. And not through an x-ray machine’s screen, either. Further more, when I was living in the barracks, the Army could at will come in to my room on a “Health and welfare” check and take a gander through all my stuff.
Did the Army become un-American by doing so?
I thought I was the only “right winger” who wasn’t outraged and the only liberal who didn’t feel a twinge more self-serving, self-hate. But no. I looked on my friend and author’s Facebook page, John Ringo, and he thought it was rather amusing, the whole thing. He too was in the Army and has had so many run-ins with foreign security services that he found a recent situation where TSA searched US soldiers returning from war, for two hours, just stupid, not outrageous. They all had weapons, too. He just pointed out that it was dumb of TSA to even bother with military chartered flights, given that all soldiers come back with weapons.
Seems that TSA has become the punching bag of both the right and the left, whom hate them for different reasons; the left because they are the brood of the War on Terror, and the right because TSA is viewed as an intrusive government organ. But TSA in its current capacity could never be as intrusive as the IRS because if people became so offended at the security measures being taken, they’d just stop flying and collapse the industry. At which point the government would just renege on all the offensive security measures. People would have to stop working to avoid the IRS, which is an impossibility so the IRS is far more powerful than TSA. Then I just think about what George washington and Nathanael Greene did to American troops who misbehaved: They beat them with sticks and whips. But we’re on the verge of Orwellian interlude for a pat down.
The terrorists haven’t won, they won’t win, they can’t win. But neither can murderers, rapists, or thieves win. Yet justice demands we address those issues. And so, I’m for the pat down because I believe it closes an obvious window of opportunity for people who’ve been given every opportunity to kill us. We give them civilian trials, and lose, we refuse to profile, even though 95% of terrorists are Muslim, and we release men from Gitmo to gain political power, only to have them return to fight and kill Americans again.
So I’ll keep my rage for dead Americans. I’ll keep my rage for the fight at hand and I’ll remember Thomas Jefferson’s words, when he issued the orders on how to handle the Barbary Pirates: “Destroy them for their impudence.”
And we will.
What I think of the war in Afghanistan now
After having spent four months in Afghanistan and seeing much of the war from the inside, some may wonder if my opinions of the efficacy of fighting there have changed. In short, they haven’t changed much.
While I do see the benefit of having some foot print in the country, I also see that the country’s leaders and outside influencers in Pakistan are playing both sides in hopes that when the US leaves, the Taliban won’t have any grudges. Their actions form a self-fulfilling prophecy and enable the Taliban to continue maintaining some legitimacy.
I want to dismiss the myth that Afghan fighters are incredible guerrilla warriors, able to defeat our troops because of their years’ experience in this kind of fighting. In fact, the Taliban and Haqqani fighters get severely smashed every time they confront US troops. Obliterated. I’m talking 40 bad guys dead, and 0 US dead on several occasions since I’ve been in the country. The way they kill our troops is by paying some dupe with no job to plant a bomb on a road and then detonating it as we ride by.
So why can’t we win? I have several opinions on this. First, we must define what winning is. I think in some ways, we have won. Al-Qaeda is almost non-existent in Afghanistan. The Taliban in many areas is reduced to a loose crime syndicate. And America is still a great place to live. If we read the memo that directed then-General Stanley McChrystal on the objectives of this war, the goal was to “degrade” the Taliban. We’ve done that.
But the one conclusion that I’ve come to that means the most to me is this: Democracy is a reward. Democracy is not a cause, it is the result of doing the right things. The people of Afghanistan have not earned Democracy because they refuse to change the way they do business. And they must suffer the consequences. The people of Iraq have earned the right to reap the benefits of Democracy (much to the chagrin of the Left) , as they demonstrated in the Anbar Awakening. To ask that Democracy be the cause that brings success to Afghanistan is like buying a teenager a new BMW in hopes it brings him a sense of responsibility.
I must point out that General Patraeus has made it clear we only need to make Afghanistan “good enough”. We don’t need to make it Switzerland, as he quipped. He is absolutely correct, and I do think that a good enough Afghanistan is in reach. But until the problems in Pakistan are dealt with, good enough is not possible. Our military leaders know this.
This is not a military failure. The military has defeated the Taliban on every battle front, though I don’t think we’ve been nearly aggressive enough. There’s also the problem of defining the enemy himself. Any guy can pick up a Kalashnikov and call himself Taliban, just as any person could now call himself a Nazi. So when do we know the Taliban has been defeated? The problem at this point, does not have a military solution. It is a Rule of Law problem and the result of cultural failure. The military part of the problem had been solved. The puzzle that remains is the endemic collapse of stabilizing social structures within Afghanistan. Chaos begets chaos. Corruption fathers corruption.
The War on Terror has not been a failure. Al-Qaeda suffered a massive strategic defeat. It’s plans are consistently disrupted, its fighters arrested or eliminated, many of it’s leaders killed or facing trial. The Taliban barely has a corporeal existence in Afghanistan, but its ghost remains in the form of criminal gangs and warlords. There are very real and positive results that’ve been gained from ignoring the defeatists. And we should continue to fight Islamic extremist. It is a fight that will continue in some form for the rest of our lives. That does not mean it’s not worth fighting. And the whining of the Left over this fight will also continue. We should throw them a couple of bones, like allowing gays in the military or legalizing pot. And then we should ignore them.
Our lesson should be that nation building while under fire is a bad idea. You don’t fix social structures while the enemy shoots at you. You smash the enemy, grab as much power as you can, than build. In most places you have to let everything burn out before you move in, and that can take generations.
The fact is, we’ve reduced the threat to America by fighting in Afghanistan. We just shouldn’t be giving the teenager a new car.
Quick Post: Jalalabad
My team and I flew off to Jalalabad. our job is to evaluate Surkh Rod District, which is just outside of Jalalabad. Jalalabad is a model city. ISAF commanders want to use the “Ink Blot” method to slowly build off from successful municipalities. So our job is to find out what’s right with Surkh Rod District, and what can be replicated in other districts.
I can tell you right now that the difference between Surkh Rod and Sayed Abad, a place I travelled to about 6 weeks ago, is astounding. In Sayed Abad, we took mortar and rocket fire every night, and Taliban fighters engaged one of our Route Clearance Teams right outside a FOB gate. Sayed Abad is an insurgent stronghold, and I’ve assessed that the overall state of the insurgency can be measured by what is occurring in the district.
Surkh Rod is host to some of Afghanistan’s cultural elite, whom bring money and business to the area. From what I’ve seen, all the talk about greed and corruption that come with the business world is simply a way to ignore the true power of business: It keeps people busy, let’s them hope for a better future without using a rifle to get it, and it feeds people. Where people don’t work, read or have roads to travel on, they kill to pass the time. Where they do have those things they fight only to keep them.
Signing off for now.
Afghanistan deepens my patriotism
Some like to claim that America is built on greed and corruption. That all’s that’s needed to make lots of money is an overriding love for money.
After seeing Afghanistan and getting a picture for what’s happening here, I can honestly say that most people in the US don’t understand real systemic and cultural corruption. The only side that many people are on here is the side that can pay them the most money, NATO or Taliban. Or the side that threatens them the most.
Almost daily, in my week of flying around Logar and Sayed Abad Districts, the areas I was in were attacked by rockets, and RPGs. One time, a US route clearance team was attacked by a group of insurgents right outside the gate of the FOB I was staying at. For almost an hour, I could hear small arms fire before the insurgents were finally driven off.
There is virtually no one that can be trusted in this country.
The distrust of Americans is largely born from Taliban and HIG terror. Fear works. Guns work. Propaganda works. Nothing will happen here until security is established. We hand out money, build roads, schools, waterworks, electrical grids, but still the Taliban move in at night and threaten the people. Cooperation with NATO and ISAF means death. The fear is more powerful than our gifts. And even when we can get the tribes to cooperate for more than a day, their military simply does not have the tradition of discipline that ours does. We were blessed by the Prussians. Afghanistan is cursed a warrior spirit combined with no regard for order.
If we win, it will be by an inexorable crawl to victory. Nothing will be quick. And we still need more troops. 100,000 more probably. That won’t happen. So we’ll do everything right here, but have no promise of victory. We need to be in more places at once.
But now I know just how much is right with America.
Afghanistan
I arrived in Afghanistan almost two weeks ago, flying into Bagram Airfield, then moving to Kabul and finally back to Bagram.
I was transported by semi-covert convoy from Camp Julian to ISAF HQ. I’ll leave the description of the vehicle that I travelled in out of this writing for security purposes. Armed men, contractors working in one of the world’s most unstable countries packed in around me, each carrying Serbian M-92s, 7.62mm, shelled in body armor, sleek Oakleys covering their eyes. We moved through streets packed bumper to bumper with cars and shoulder to shoulder with people. Garbage floated everywhere, piles of random junk stacked high on the sides of the road, craters from IED blasts gaping at us.
I gained a sense of hyper-alertness. Only a few months prior, insurgents killed several officers with a Vehicle-born IED just down the road from where we were driving. Though our vehicles were non-descript, the people somehow knew who we were. I could tell by their looks. I know that look from my days as a cop. The simmering distrust, the envy, the sniggering smile. They knew we were ISAF.
Every few hundred meters we would get sought in a knot of traffic, the bearded driver would swear. “Why’s he taking this fucking route?” Referring to the vehicle in front of us. Every time we stop, I watch for bulging robes, wires sprouting from sleeves, and stumbling gate and blissfully high face of an insurgent, high on heroin, ready to visit paradise. My doors combat locked, the heavy, hidden armor of our vehicles..can it resist a suicide bomber up close? No way. I know better. I imagine a holy warrior, perhaps only a few days prior a dirt farmer, striding up to my door, my last vision: his thumb depressing a plunger. I’d be blown out the other side of the vehicle, my insides liquified if my body held together at all.
We stopped. We raced. We clenched our weapons. But Kabul only winked at us. At anytime she could kill us. But not today. It would be too easy, no fun. Better to play with the mouse before it dies. As we drew closer to ISAF headquarters, it was as if the chaos and dirt melted away. I saw the Afghan police officers suddenly appear pressed uniforms, where only a couple of kilometers before , they appeared dishevelled, unshowered. A sense of calm and order arose as we approached the NATO base. It was an oasis from the anarchy that grips Afghanistan.
Since then, I’ve flown Blackhawk to several districts. What’s the war like? Well, let’s just say that American power and ingenuity are plainly evident on our bases, but Afghanistan’s tribalism, warlordism and primitive state rule the hinterlands. Behind our walls, we are invincible. The foolish man who hopes heroism will come in the form of an arching mortar round into an American base is quickly annihilated in a shower of 30mm cannon, belched from the nose of Apache gunships. Sometimes, they manage to get in, but their losses are catastrophic and for the most part, the insurgents have given up attacking our bases.
But the roads are a different story. Kidnappings, murder, theft. These are the tools of the Talib highway man. And don’t think of this as Taliban against NATO. It’s NATO against Chaos. Just because a man is Taliban or HIG does not mean he kidnaps foreigners for ideological reasons. He may just want money. He may be doing the bidding of his boss who wants regional control.
They are a giant mob, and we’re the cops. The mob is feeding on its moment of freedom, on its rage, rolling itself into a juggernaut-snowball. Only order–any order–can stop this. I don’t know if we can “win”. but I sense that if we leave, hundreds of thousands of civilians will die in the struggle to fill our vacuum. And we won’t be left with anything that amounts to a peaceful, liberated Afghanistan.
Travels
As some know, I’ve been deployed to Afghanistan. I’m preparing a travel blog, but I’ve been extremely busy and expect to be for a while longer.
I’ll be sure to send you dispatches soon.
WikiLeaks
The recent classified info dump on WikiLeaks is a violation of the nation’s trust, but it is not a catastrophic indictment of the war effort.
Americans should be concerned that there are people who have high-level security clearances that disseminate information they are sworn to protect. Some have an axe to grind with the military, like this traitor, the very smart but traitorous Army Intelligence Analyst, Bradley Manning, who gave WikiLeaks a Top Secret video of US helicopters attacking and killing a group of people, two of which were Reuters journalists.
Whomever released these files to WikiLeaks is either in desperate need of attention or has an anti-war agenda. Quite probably, the person needs to have a spotlight on himself and justifies his actions with an anti-war meme.
That the recent leaks, from what is now known, are in any way “chilling” or devastating” is beyond laughable. Very little of what is not already widely known was released. People are more offended by the details than by the actual content. It’s like the hamburgers and sausages we eat: We love the taste, just don’t show us film of the process for making them.
Most valuable information is called ”Actionable Intelligence”. That is, intelligence which can be acted on immediately. For instance, let’s say that a credible source tells a Special Forces team on the ground in southern Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden in living in a hole two miles from their location, that they saw him not more than an hour ago and he’s supposed to be there for another day. That kind of information would bring immediate results should a SF A Team move and capture bin Laden. General intelligence, such as “IEDs are the primary weapon used by insurgents” does not give the US information that immediately impacts the war. A compromise in Actionable Intelligence is far more dangerous than compromised general intel. This compromise of an Israeli operation is an example of compromised Actionable Intel.
Information in the released files will be spun in every direction. Many people will be “horrified” by information that is rather banal. But, whatever some may say, it is an undisputed fact that the the files were leaked by people sworn to protect them from release. Those people operate under a cloak of anonymity. What they are doing is not brave, nor does it serve a greater good; most of the information leaked tells little. These people so entrusted, when and if they are found, should be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. Not only can’t they be trusted, but their hubris enabled them to believe they were more important than all the other people fighting this war.
It’s time to negotiate with the Taliban
Some intelligence reports are showing cracks in Taliban resolve. Captured Taliban fighters say they are concerned for their safety should the Taliban stop fighting. Others wonder what the Taliban place in the political theater will be. There are even some hints that the Taliban founder and leader Mullah Omar wants peace in Afghanistan.
Corner a rat, and suddenly it becomes a lion. Most people acknowledge that the Taliban is evil by any Western measurement. But it is not possible to exterminate every last Taliban fighter. What is possible is to apply enough pressure so that the Taliban accepts Kabul authority. Always give your opponent a way to escape honorably, not for his sake, but for your own.
I believe the Taliban is looking for an end to the fighting. There are several reasons we should come to the table with them. First, in this kind of war, even victory seems hollow. We can declare victory, but how do we measure that? There will be more bombings, more assassnations. In a formal diplomatic setting, we could actually get Taliban leadership to sign papers declaring to all the world: We Lost.
Secondly, it’s common knowledge that people will fight harder if they think they face extermination.
And lastly, it shows good faith on our part. Only by bringing together all aspects of government power can we win and maintain credibility. We must maintain military pressure while opening the diplomatic pressure valve. The message of diplomacy should be clear: Kabul rules. If the Taliban fails to submit to rule of law, they will face death. If they choose the action they choose the consequence.
It may be the case that we will have to police the Kabul government as much as anyone else. Still, at least we know where to find Hamid Karzai.
General McChrystal never had a chance
Let us consider the following:
Stanley McChrystal is brought in to save a collapsing Afghan war effort. General McKiernan, the former man in charge and a man with 30 years of service to his country, is unceremoniously dumped.
McChrystal was supposed to represent the new administration’s fresh start.
But wait.
McChrystal wants how many troops? We absolutely love Counter Insurgency, with its false promises (they’re false because they’re misinterpreted; watch how many Taliban get smoked under Patraeus–lots and lots) of winning the war by merely ordering our troops to smile while on patrol. Yes, yes, CI. But how many soldiers on the ground? 80,000 seems so…warlike.
No, General, you’ll get less than half what you say you need, and you’ll like it. We really only put you in place to show our fresh perspective to Americans. Out with the old, in with the new. And, just to keep you honest, we’re setting a timeline. 18 months.
In other words, General, we want you to do the impossible. And if you begin to falter, you’re such an easy political target. You’re a military guy afterall, and the Dems are in power. We know what that means, don’t we? We’ll make it look as if you stole those 4 stars you’re wearing. Sure we’ll throw you a couple of bones, talk about your brave service and sacrifice, then we’ll showboat for the media, tell them who’s in charge. Us. Well, us and the media.
Never mind that ambassador Karl Eickenberry was undermining McChrystal from the beginning. Eickenberry’s a civilian. He does what he wants. And he works for the State Department, the favorite department of the Dems.
Hey, we don’t care that the civilians weren’t working as a team with the military. It’s up to the military to work as a team with the civilians. We let McChrystal come up with a strategy and then threw in some civilians who wanted to do everything differently, sure. That’s not the point.
This is how things should be right here. Watch this video. This guy in the black suit knew who the boss was. He was a REAL soldier.
OK, I’m back. It’s no longer the thin-skinned, confused Democrat talking. It’s me, Magus. See, I agree with almost everything Karl Eikenberry had to say. But just who is it that’s not promoting team work? How should McChrystal feel if Eikenberry is sending classified letters to the White House explaining why McChrystal’s tactics are wrong? It’s been a patchwork war. We want Counter Insurgency, then we take away the tools needed for CI: time and lots of soldiers. CI wouldn’t be my choice, because Afghanistan is not important enough for the investment. But if I was a 4-Star, and the President said make it happen, I’d say Ok, now give me a decade and 100,000 troops.
We set McChrystal up for failure. The media is predictably piling on, like they do every time someone’s down, trying to make McChrystal look like an idiot. He was misused. He should have been directing Spec Ops to kill our enemies. Instead, we made a killer into a constable. Then we gave him half the cops he asked for.
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