This is the moment….when Senator John Kerry, who served in Vietnam and currently chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that he opposes sending more troops unless conditions on the ground improve in Afghanistan. I’d say that’s the basic gist of it. I think James Dobbins states it very well:
James Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration and is now at the Rand Corp., said that Kerry had made many “sensible” points in the speech but that he found the conclusion unsatisfactory.
“The argument seems to be that we’re not going to send more troops until we start winning — which seems to me to be an inversion of the usual sequence,” he said.
“I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way. I won’t risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary,” Obama said to loud applause. “And if it is necessary, we will back you up to the hilt.”
The problem I have with this, is that we already have troops in theater in “harm’s way”, in what he claimed as a “war of necessity”; and his top general whom he had chosen is requesting reinforcements. And the dithering Democrat appears to want to vote “present”.
The Lahore Press Club has received two letters from the Taliban warning of an attack any time after Oct. 10. The letter explained that the attacks would be carried out if the journalists continue to portray the Taliban as terrorists instead of highlighting them as “mujahedeen.” The letter warned the journalists to “stop becoming a mouthpiece of America and prepare the people for jihad against American infidels.”
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 17 — Pakistan’s army launched a ground offensive Saturday morning aimed at rooting out Islamist insurgents in the lawless tribal region of South Waziristan, an intelligence official in the area said.
The military had been planning the operation for months, amassing nearly 30,000 troops in the area and attempting to soften targets with aerial strikes. Military officials and security experts estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 “hardcore” Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents are based in the area, which the United States views as a terrorism hub and has targeted with unmanned drone strikes.
The offensive comes after two weeks of bloody militant attacks killed more than 100 people in Pakistan, assaults that officials say are nearly all planned in South Waziristan.
A military offensive in Waziristan will pit Pakistani troops against the best fighters the Taliban have to offer. The military has been defeated four times in South Waziristan since 2004, and has signed a series humiliating peace agreements in an effort to keep the Taliban at bay. Instead, the Taliban insurgency has metastasized throughout the tribal areas and into the Northwest Frontier Province.
A member of the Pakistani Taliban offers prayer as his his gun lies in front him at a mosque in the Buner district, northwest of Islamabad, April 23, 2009.
REUTERS/Stringer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants dressed in police uniforms simultaneously attacked three law enforcement agencies in Lahore on Thursday morning, the fifth major attack in Pakistan in the last 10 days.
A U.S Marine from Delta Company of 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion patrols near the town of Khan Neshin in Rig district of Helmand province, southern Afghanistan September 8, 2009.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic (AFGHANISTAN CONFLICT MILITARY IMAGES OF THE DAY)
Remember when President Bush was slammed for not listening to his generals (or more accurately, the ones political opponents could agree with)? Remember when Senator Obama parroted the same (Hat tip: Mike’s America):
Obama said that while President Bush has said that he follows the advice of his generals regarding Iraq, when they give the president advice he doesn’t like — cautioning against the War in Iraq, for example — Bush doesn’t listen to them.
“There were generals at the beginning of the conflict that said this is going to require many more troops, will cost us much more … those generals were pushed aside,” Obama said.
Although I do believe that listening to military officials should not automatically lead civilian leaders to carry out their suggestions, I worry whether or not President Obama has the right instincts, the right mindset, the right advisers to make the best possible strategic decision: Read the rest of this entry »
Reporting from Brussels — Determined to die as martyrs, the French and Belgian militants bought hiking boots and thermal underwear and journeyed to the wilds of Waziristan.
After getting ripped off in Turkey and staggering through waist-deep snow in Iran, the little band arrived in Al Qaeda’s lair in Pakistan last year, ready for a triumphant reception.
“We were expecting at least a welcome for ‘our brothers from Europe’ and a warm atmosphere of hospitality,” Walid Othmani, a 25-year-old Frenchman from Lyon, recalled during an overnight interrogation in January.
Instead, the Europeans — and at least one American — learned that life in the shadow of the Predator is nasty, brutish and short. Read the rest of this entry »
This is what happens when you allow a fanatical Islamic organization to fester and grow:
Taliban militants have burnt down more than 200 schools in Pakistan’s restive Swat valley in the last two years and made all out efforts to prevent girls from receiving education, a media report here said on Sunday. The militants told the residents in the valley that if they were good Muslims they would stop sending their daughters to schools, ‘The Sunday Times’ said in a report from Mingora, the capital of Swat.
“Every evening (Taliban commander) Maulana Fazullah, nicknamed ‘Radio Mullah’, broadcast the names on the radio of girls who had stopped going to school – it would be, ‘Congratulations to Miss Kulsoon or Miss Shahnaz, who has quit school.’ Then he warned others if they continued with their education they would go to hell,” the paper said. The Taliban have torched over 200 of Swat’s 1,500 schools in the last two years, it said.
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…The newspaper also gave a graphic account of the havoc created by Taliban in Swat. A 22-year-old medical student from the valley had secretly catalogued the horrors of life in Swat under the Taliban. Read the rest of this entry »
Couple days ago I blogged on what the India PM said regarding Pakistan’s nukes:
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s restive frontier province are “already partly” in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington’s confidence in the security of the troubled nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rahman Malik has claimed that at least 1,000 Taliban have been killed during the ongoing military operation against the militants in Swat and its neighboring districts, according to a report in an Urdu daily.
The Pakistani Army launched the operation against the Taliban militants on May 5 in Swat and neighboring districts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Describing the Taliban as ‘‘enemies of Pakistan,’’ Rahman Malik added: ‘‘The Taliban is eyeing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. However, if we can make nuclear weapons, we also know how to secure them.’’
Great to hear their confidence, don’t know if I believe him tho. At this point it appears they have allowed the Taliban and other fanatical Islamic organizations to fester for far too long in their country, that’s a scary thought with the country holding nuclear weapons.
A car bomb destroyed an Internet cafe and tore through a bus carrying handicapped children in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 11 people and wounding at least 30, police said.
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The car bomb devastated a street in the main northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday afternoon as it was busy with shoppers and traffic.
Television images showed several vehicles burning fiercely, and a stricken white-and-green bus that had been dropping handicapped children at their homes around the city.
India believes the Taliban and other Islamic extremists already have some control on nuclear sites in the frontier province:
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s restive frontier province are “already partly” in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington’s confidence in the security of the troubled nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Claims about the high-level exchange between New Delhi and Washington were made in the Debka, a journal said to have close ties with Israeli intelligence, under the headline “Singh warns Obama: Pakistan is lost.” The brief story said the Indian prime minister had named Pakistani nuclear sites in the areas which were Taliban-Qaida strongholds and said the sites are already partly in the hands of “Muslim extremists.” A sub-head to the story said “India gets ready for a Taliban-ruled nuclear neighbor.”
Amid all that some experts in the US are pissed off that Obama and his lackeys are shrugging their shoulders at Pakistan and the Taliban: Read the rest of this entry »
As one Flopping Aces commenter put it, this is “Real leadership”
Up to 100 civilians, including women and children, are reported to have been killed in Afghanistan in potentially the single deadliest US airstrike since 2001. The news overshadowed a crucial first summit between the Afghan President and Barack Obama in Washington yesterday.
The one-hour bombardment of two villages in western Afghanistan near Iran, aimed at Taleban militants fighting Afghan troops, left “dozens” of bodies scattered amid the rubble, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, sitting next to President Karzai during a joint press conference in Washington, expressed “deep regret” for the bombings and announced a joint US-Afghan investigation.
See, by saying “deep regret” things will go a lot easier at the summit. Right?
I’m not complaining. I just…I can’t help but think I HAVE heard someone else complain about this kinda thing, AND I think they promised to do something different….
Yesterday I clicked on a news link about the ever ongoing Taliban encroachment in Pakistan. Leaving aside any commentary about that at the moment, I’m going to instead address Reuters and their politically correct reporting… or perhaps fear to tell the truth.
About halfway in was a subtitle labled “Civilian Shield”, and the opening two paragraphs following:
“CIVILIAN SHIELD”
The military said in a statement security forces had beaten back an attack on the camp but a senior military official in the region said an operation might be launched to rescue 46 paramilitary soldiers besieged there.
“We’re acting with restraint because they’re using civilians as a shield but we’ll go after them if the situation gets worse,” said the military official, who declined to be identified.
Pakistani stocks ended up but off the day’s highs as investors remained cautious amid mounting expectation the military would step up its operations against the militants.
…. snip….
Since Yahoo and Google news sites have a tendency to result in broken links in a short period of time, I went for an alternative site that was apt to keep it longer.
The danger for President Obama is that his presidency is, after a few short months, entering its LBJ phase. Faced with a mounting economic crisis at home, there is a real possibility that the Talibanization of Pakistan will force him to deploy U.S. forces amid a population that, to put it mildly, wouldn’t greet their arrival with flowers and chocolates. Obama’s commitment to his domestic reform agenda would be sorely tested by a shooting war in Pakistan, not least because the antiwar left would—very understandably—be in open revolt.
