By Anthony H. Cordesman
No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States.
Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act.Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience — or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.
Now, Anthony Cordesman isn’t THE favorite military advisor for Democratic Party leaders (there is no ONE favorite), but he is one of those most often pointed towards by the left whenever they want to feed the anti-Bush/anti-war monster that they created. For years (really, since the sandstorm during the invasion), he’s been quoted and half-quoted and misquoted and been used and misused as a target for people like Sen Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and every Democratic Presidential candidate. Now, Mr. Cordesman has gone to the war zone on yet another fact-finding mission, and the news is good for America/bad for the Democrats who advocate retreat from Iraq.
Author of “Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War
Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War: Malensek, Scott: 9798864028674: Amazon.com: Books
Someone should ask the Messiah what he thinks about this. Of course in this election facts don’t matter as both he and Hill deny them every day. So far the Dems’ lies or wrong predictions haven’t cost them anything politically. As Iraq is becoming more and more stable, instead of becoming a constant reminder about how wrong the Dems are it simply fades from the list of important issues.
Obama’s efforts to connect to the Republican Party, specifically Bush, and Dick Chaney, of the Halliburton Company, dates back to the Presidents Grandfather, Prescott Bush, and indeed Chaney was once an executive officer of Halliburton.
The American military pounds Iraq with Artillary, bombs, and the like, destroying large sections of cities, and infra-structures, then Halliburton comes in to rebuild. Halliburton and Halliburton associated companies have raked in ten’s of billions.
Obama is just like the BIG HALIBURTAN. Haliburton has contracted to build detention centers in the U.S. similiar to the one in Quantanammo Bay, Cuba. Halliburton does nothing to earn the Two Dollars for each meal an American Serviceman in Iraq eats.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
Halliburton was scheduled to take control of the Dubai Ports in The United Arab Emiirate. The deal was canceled when Bush was unable to affect the transfer of the American Ports.
Now we see what some might suspect as similiar financial escapading from the Democrats.
Two years ago, Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company – Companion- owned by now-indicted businessman (TONY REZKO) Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley, to train Iraqi power-plant guards in the United States. An Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo. Now the company, Companion Security, is working to revive its contract.
Involved along with Antoin “Tony” Rezco, long time friend and neighbor of Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and former cop Daniel T. Frawley, is Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.
LIKE FATHER LIKE SON —
Obama should be vetted and disclose his connection to the criminal money generating underworld. Besides, his connections to the REZCO MAFIA types, his up-coming tax fraud charges — Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM “PATWANG-FWEEE” and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake Xerox – X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke “GLORK” Xerox – X box to meet the Buffalo “GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA” Police Department Buffalo Creek. He is MAD!!! —
OBAM YOUR NO JFK —
“GLORK” Obama looks like Alfred E. Newman: “Tales Calculated To Drive You.” He is a MUSLIM “Glork” He’s MAD!!! Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot of Mad. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff, later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM “PATWANG-FWEEE” and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake “GLORK” Xerox – X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox – X box to meet the Buffalo “GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA” Police Department Buffalo Creek.
Sorry… but I don’t get it Janet. Not sure what you are trying to say at all.
I nominate Janet Reno to clean up corruption in the future Obama administration. You go girl!
Janet…
Please loosen the tinfoil or detox. Um, and you might want to check out who Bill Clinton was working for during the Dubai Ports thing. I doubt your web reference gives that though.
Prediction:
Bush commits a brigade of troops to Waziristan to hunt Bin Laden directly.
Obama then has a dilemma. Offend his antiwar base, or look tough and give Bush support in the deployment. He’s on vacation right now talking about the consensus of a year ago, but by the time he gets back home his home will have been bulldozed by Reality.
Dan, GREAT COMMENT! I am curious though, are there any examples in military history where sending a Brigade into the mts of Waziristan has succeeded in accomplishing anything? I ask because I remember that a Young Winston Churchill was stationed there and accomplished little if anything. Similarly, I know that some of Alexander the Great’s generals failed to conquer the region and instead settled there-their decendents remain in closed off, isolated societies protected by valleys that are only accessible for a few months a year (strange when you see traditional Bulgarian dress and customs!). Anyway, like I said…when has sending in a brigade to this area ever been effective? As far as I can tell, one might have as much success sending in battleships.
Dan, global politics is a bit more complex than say the game Risk is.
The results of the next election will not be determined by either the hard left anti war group nor the hard right militarists. It will be determined by the center of American politics, as it always is.
“Dan, global politics is a bit more complex than say the game Risk is.
The results of the next election will not be determined by either the hard left anti war group nor the hard right militarists. It will be determined by the center of American politics, as it always is.”
The center left party always split over war. The SPD in Germany 1914 was antiwar. But once the Bethmann and Ludendorf got the fight started the SPD predictably split.
Gladstone was an anti-imperialist and the Liberals did not want to annex Sudan, but once Gens. Wolseley and Gordon snookered him he sent an army into Sudan.
The Dems really didn’t support the invasion of Iraq, but once Bush made clear his plans they split.
The “Liberal Party” in any national coalition is not inclined toward war by temperament, but will always split in half when presented by the dilemma of a war. The Democrats fell apart after LBJ commited to Vietnam and you saw the Bobby Kennedy/Humphrey/McCarthy split. This isn’t Risk it’s simple political science and historical.
Hunting Osama would also be completely justifiable. Very few people would complain outside the groups who protested the initial invasion of Afghanistan. It would present Obama will an impossible situation though. Nader would look like the real liberal.
The British held bits and bobs of Waziristan with Irregulars backed by a few British Regiments. No reason why a full kitted out American Brigade should suffer any worse than they already have in Afghanistan.
How about sending Obama to Waziristan? Osama may be in Iran, but with a little hope and change Obama may still find him wherever he choses to look. And just imagine the headlines if he really does find him! If “Obama finds Osama” doesn’t sell some newspapers, nothing else will.
That’s the headline that OBama would like.
Obama captures Osama!
It would be quite brilliant if Osama were actually apprehended.
Or, perhaps, Osama captures Obama. Either way, it works.
Mr Cordesman reckons, in his article, “Iraq, Afghanistan” involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as Al Qaida in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories ans in successful governance and development. ”
(say I, ) :
<Central Asia’s 5 “provinces”, “states” “republics” depending on how you want to politicize it, are all a study in ‘dual-personalities’, with exponentially more repitition. than in many other of this planet’s regions. Here, we are considering before the first Russian Czar or the first Soviet President, or the first British monarch, or first French President, or first Communist China ruler-ever set out to occupy or otherwise exploit this vast region, of desert, steppes, mountains, seas.
Momentarily leaving out “the Middle East”, in which we also “engage the Arabian mind”.
This Central Asia is a serious study within itself, before you ever start trying to examine, “the psychology-profile” of the Arabian’s head. We are speaking, in terms of “ongoing cultures”, habitations, nomadic wanderings, tribal realities that make the “American West’s Indian tribes” pale in a minority. Languages are seriously-numerous, as many as we count : even a one tribe, we count a language.
There is MORE, in Central Asia, even in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan than, just Pashtun language, to which Cordesman defers. Lingual complications are highly operating as issues in themselves.
The land is thousands of years in Bedouin nomadic wanderings, fiercely caught up in savage fighting forces, Genghis Kahn and “the Golden Horde” are just one. The Mongols, another. They brutalized innocents. Leading to millions of refugee-movement, destitution, starvation, and creating a strong craving for SOME “haven with which to get succor for souls , devoid of much else”, and eventually thus came Islam. As their rock and hope.
THIS all existed before Russia and the USSR, or even Russia with the Czars. With the USSR, came political-craftiness by appointing of corrupt, political ‘hacks’ created out of Moscow, one to a region. The branching downward from that-to, corrupt police authorities , corrupt military people, all with a plan : the exploitation-by “imprisoning each innocent ‘soul” into an economy, where all largesse flowed to the top, but pitiful pittances of economic circumstances, residing with the many at the bottom. Thus, another word would be “slavery”. “Capital punishment” to he/she/child who would “not stay in line”.
With this, enter Islam and enter hundreds of years of Islamic thought and ideals, WHICH of course had to be done, in secrecy in many cases.
My question is : if “a people” have to live hundreds of years within this mental,spiritual, physical framework, THEN HOW can Western-world thinking, be approximating by such assuming of a change -out from under all these thousands of years, being accomplished by any Western power ‘crafting’ a nation-building?
In Kyrgyzstan, or in Tajikistan, or even Afghanistan a “mentality” is embedded into a highly popular national sport known as “buzkashi”. A National sport, with death-consequences, played astride horses, and it is a rarity upon completion of one of these “games” to NOT have the deaths of quite a few of the participants, or maybe just the “gouging-out- of both eyes” of a player..
All of this centers around the object: An animal, most usually a goat is slaughtered before the match, then decapitated, then the animal is fought for, on horseback, with great numbers of horseback players. The object is to win, by being THAT player who can finally wrest the goat in his grasp and drag it by horseback through the “finish point”. Its not unusual for horses to kill players by stampeding over a fallen player. You can get a kind of idea from this-this “game” was played even in the era of Genghis Kahn” long, long many years ago. Death is not much of a consequence to these folk-of-Arabian descent, and it is a huge world different. – from Western (American/British) thought, mores, customs, outlooks.
My question to Cordesman is, IF one goes to battle against this mindset, or psychological anomaly, just exactly “HOW” or “WHEN” (how long until), will you know “WHO won” ? Or, did ANYbody win? Or is it even good sense for the Westerner to even care about going to win?
(Joe Moriarty, North Carolina)
Is your message to just let them live the way they have always lived because they are just to backwards to change?
If so I completely disagree. Lets just let them do what they want OVER THERE, without even trying to change their mindset, because in no way, shape, or form will it come back to bite us in the ass will it?
This type of thinking is as backwards as the people you try to label backwards in the middle east.
Great post Joe
Curt writes,
I have no “message” here, or there, to my original post. NOW as your response would beckon, I message that : as my country, the USA directs me-by NO particular lean toward evangelism, but I have grandchildren who will be having children, who ultimately be paying to make up the trillions of dollars this adventurism is running up, let alone the trillions dollars we already are way behind, in our infrastructure(s) big time all over this country. And we haven’t even gotten into the seriousness of our ideological dallying with global economics, that is pulling down seriously on our middle class.
So I guess my response to what you responded, is : Let God sort it out. in terms of, as you write “letting them live as they always have lived, as they are too backwards to change”. They have a religion, Islam, whose tenets (rigid adherence to the tenets in the Koran) guide them in all ways. For example if “being backwards” (remember, that was your words not mine), means that they WILL have to refrain from “things Mammon”, which is Koran-commanded, or in other words imbibing themselves with worldly things, which to their religion, would be contrary to the command in the Koran, which is to have JUST ONE GOD, not any other(s). I.E. money-worship is a god; the pursuit of wordly things (wine-women-songs), is a god. Ask a Taliban. This is sort of building a wonder up in my mind about an anomaly-waiting-to be recognized, as to the psyche, the polar extreme in this Arabian, to which I’m not having enough intelligence to place the anomaly in. So, I , who love God (MY Allah), just have to say let God sort it all out. Joe.
Scott writes,
“Great post Joe ”
Thanks, Scott
Cool, God sure sorted it out when those towers fell.
Curt writes, “Cool, God sure sorted it out when those towers fell”…
Well also : “somebody” sure sorted it out, when many years ago, Stalin slaughtered hundreds of thousands , many among them, fellow Slavs, plus many folk of arabian descent, in that part of the world. But I doubt God blessed the slaughter of them, in the name of ethnic cleansing. No, Stalin directed it because he didn’t want people subject to communism-to be “halfway lite-with their communism”. He wanted purely pure comrades. At the mercy of the gun barrel. I doubt if Western “civilization” would pull a trick like that. (until you get to the American West Indian(s) that is ). Now, back in Old Testament, it is “said” that God was behind the slaying of every first child, and directed his angels to pass through a city-gone bad, with sinning ways, unacceptable to God. BUT HE decreed to spare the Jewish families’ children, and next move was to let them escape those Egyptians and then wander 40 years in the arabian deserts, to atone for their sinning also. So, on that awful death-night, the angels “passed over” those jewish families. Hence-The Passover feast today.
So, Stalin erred badly. Several “Stalins-later”, the whole USSR collapsed, and this is really when the very worst things came to the Islamic people. BUT they’ve been putting “up with it” since the early 1990’s, so somehow one might figure, that “they too”, were complacent to ‘just let God sort things out’. But a funny thing happened on the way to their redemption : a venomous, band of extreme way-right Islamists broke the “mold” (and the towers). They’re known as Al Qaida. I think it fair to wonder, “could God snuff them out”? Good topic. Let me know if you get it figured and I promise to “listen”. Joe