I was home for Thanksgiving briefly. I went out to Thanksgiving "breakfast" with my mom. For years, my mother has always seemed to be very self sufficient and capable of taking care of herself (and she is). But the years are steadily going by and its now becoming very apparent to me that momma is growing old and her infirmities are beginning to multiply. She's got a bad knee that she had surgery on, and I was actually shocked to see that she now walks with a cane when I was home. The cane really signaled her advancing age to me. Momma is always just "momma", or she was. Now, I worry about her.
Besides the cane and bad knee, which is impacting her mobility, her eyesight is fading as well. She's basically told me that the doctors said that she's going blind. She declares this to me in the same matter of fact way you might say "this is a jar of peanut butter" or "he has very bad teeth". Likes its a factual but not particularly important datum. She mentions things floating in her vision, which prompted me to scope the net for information about what might be happening with her eyes. One site that popped up was Eye Floaters. They talked about things like "spiderwebs" and floaties in the eye. I was gratified to find something that talked in more concrete, medical terms about these Eye Floaters, particularly since a topic as serious as your eyesight seem to deserve a more intimidating term than floatie. Those things my mother complained about in her vision indeed had more technical terms like Vitreous Floaters.Okay, perhaps only slightly more technical that.
It was good to see Momma at Thanksgiving, but I came away with an acute sense of unease about what her physical condition will be like in a year or two. Not sure what to do about that.
By George Friedman ~ Honorary Political Season Contributor
With U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of his strategy in Afghanistan, the U.S.-jihadist war has entered a new phase. With its allies, the United States has decided to increase its focus on the Afghan war while continuing to withdraw from Iraq. Along with focusing on Afghanistan, it follows that there will be increased Western attention on Pakistan. Meanwhile, the question of what to do with Iran remains open, and is in turn linked to U.S.-Israeli relations. The region from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush remains in a war or near-war status. In a fundamental sense, U.S. strategy has not shifted under Obama: The United States remains in a spoiling-attack state.
As we have discussed, the primary U.S. interest in this region is twofold. The first aspect is to prevent the organization of further major terrorist attacks on the United States. The second is to prevent al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups from taking control of any significant countries.
U.S. operations in this region mainly consist of spoiling attacks aimed at frustrating the jihadists’ plans rather than at imposing Washington’s will in the region. The United States lacks the resources to impose its will, and ultimately doesn’t need to. Rather, it needs to wreck its adversaries’ plans. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the primary American approach consists of this tack. That is the nature of spoiling attacks. Obama has thus continued the Bush administration’s approach to the war, though he has shifted some details.
The Jihadist Viewpoint
It is therefore time to consider the war from the jihadist point of view. This is a difficult task given that the jihadists do not constitute a single, organized force with a command structure and staff that could express that view. It is compounded by the fact that al Qaeda prime, our term for the original al Qaeda that ordered and organized the attacks on 9/11 and in Madrid and London, is now largely shattered.
While bearing this in mind, it must be remembered that this fragmentation is both a strategic necessity and a weapon of war for jihadists. The United States can strike the center of gravity of any jihadist force. It naturally cannot strike what doesn’t exist, so the jihadist movement has been organized to deny the United States that center of gravity, or command structure which, if destroyed, would leave the movement wrecked. Thus, even were Osama bin Laden killed or captured, the jihadist movement is set up to continue.
So although we cannot speak of a jihadist viewpoint in the sense that we can speak of an American viewpoint, we can ask this question: If we were a jihadist fighter at the end of 2009, what would the world look like to us, what would we want to achieve and what might we do to try to achieve that?
We must bear in mind that al Qaeda began the war with a core strategic intent, namely, to spark revolutions in the Sunni Muslim world by overthrowing existing regimes and replacing them with jihadist regimes. This was part of the jihadist group’s long-term strategy to recreate a multinational Islamist empire united under al Qaeda’s interpretation of Shariah.
The means toward this end involved demonstrating to the Muslim masses that their regimes were complicit with the leading Christian power, i.e., the United States, and that only American backing kept these Sunni regimes in power. By striking the United States on Sept. 11, al Qaeda wanted to demonstrate that the United States was far more vulnerable than believed, by extension demonstrating that U.S. client regimes were not as powerful as they appeared. This was meant to give the Islamic masses a sense that uprisings against Muslim regimes not dedicated to Shariah could succeed. In their view, any American military response — an inevitability after 9/11 — would further incite the Muslim masses rather than intimidate them.
The last eight years of war have ultimately been disappointing to the jihadists, however. Rather than a massive uprising in the Muslim world, not a single regime has been replaced with a jihadist regime. The primary reason has been that Muslim regimes allied with the United States decided they had more to fear from the jihadists than from the Americans, and chose to use their intelligence and political power to attack and suppress the jihadists. In other words, rather than trigger an uprising, the jihadists generated a strengthened anti-jihadist response from existing Muslim states. The spoiling attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in other countries in the Horn of Africa and North Africa, generated some support for the jihadists, but that support has since diminished and the spoiling attacks have disrupted these countries sufficiently to make them unsuitable as bases of operation for anything more than local attacks. In other words, the attacks tied the jihadists up in local conflicts, diverting them from operations against the United States and Europe.
Under this intense pressure, the jihadist movement has fragmented, though it continues to exist. Incapable of decisive action at the moment, it has goals beyond surviving as a fragmented entity, albeit with some fairly substantial fragments. And it is caught on the horns of a strategic dilemma.
Operationally, jihadists continue to be engaged against the United States. In Afghanistan, the jihadist movement is relying on the Taliban to tie down and weaken American forces. In Iraq, the remnants of the jihadist movement are doing what they can to shatter the U.S.-sponsored coalition government in Baghdad and further tie down American forces by attacking Shiites and key members of the Sunni community. Outside these two theaters, the jihadists are working to attack existing Muslim governments collaborating with the United States — particularly Pakistan — but with periodic attacks striking other Muslim states.
These attacks represent the fragmentation of the jihadists. Their ability to project power is limited. By default, they have accordingly adopted a strategy of localism, in which their primary intent is to strike existing governments while simultaneously tying down American forces in a hopeless attempt to stabilize the situation.
The strategic dilemma is this: The United States is engaged in a spoiling action with the primary aim of creating conditions in which jihadists are bottled up fighting indigenous forces rather than being free to plan attacks on the United States or systematically try to pull down existing regimes. And the current jihadist strategy plays directly into American hands. First, the attacks recruit Muslim regimes into deploying their intelligence and security forces against the jihadists, which is precisely what the United States wants. Secondly, it shifts jihadist strength away from transnational actions to local actions, which is also what the United States wants. These local attacks, which kill mostly Muslims, also serve to alienate many Muslims from the jihadists.
The jihadists are currently playing directly into U.S. hands because, rhetoric aside, the United States cannot regard instability in the Islamic world as a problem. Let’s be more precise on this: An ideal outcome for the United States would be the creation of stable, pro-American regimes in the region eager and able to attack and destroy jihadist networks. There are some regimes in the region like this, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The probability of creating such stable, eager and capable regimes in places like Iraq or Afghanistan is unlikely in the extreme. The second-best outcome for the United States involves a conflict in which the primary forces battling — and neutralizing — each other are Muslim, with the American forces in a secondary role. This has been achieved to some extent in Iraq. Obama’s goal is to create a situation in Afghanistan in which Afghan government forces engage Taliban forces with little or no U.S. involvement. Meanwhile, in Pakistan the Americans would like to see an effective effort by Islamabad to suppress jihadists throughout Pakistan. If they cannot get suppression, the United States will settle for a long internal conflict that would tie down the jihadists.
A Self-Defeating Strategy
The jihadists are engaged in a self-defeating strategy when they spread out and act locally. The one goal they must have, and the one outcome the United States fears, is the creation of stable jihadist regimes. The strategy of locally focused terrorism has proved ineffective. It not only fails to mobilize the Islamic masses, it creates substantial coalitions seeking to suppress the jihadists.
The jihadist attack on the United States has failed. The presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has reshaped the behavior of regional governments. Fear of instability generated by the war has generated counteractions by regional governments. Contrary to what the jihadists expected or hoped for, there was no mass uprising and therefore no counter to anti-jihadist actions by regimes seeking to placate the United States. The original fear, that the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan would generate massive hostility, was not wrong. But the hostility did not strengthen the jihadists, and instead generated anti-jihadist actions by governments.
From the jihadist point of view, it would seem essential to get the U.S. military out of the region and to relax anti-jihadist actions by regional security forces. Continued sporadic and ineffective action by jihadists achieves nothing and generates forces with which they can’t cope. If the United States withdrew, and existing tensions within countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan were allowed to mature undisturbed, new opportunities might present themselves.
Most significantly, the withdrawal of U.S. troops would strengthen Iran. The jihadists are no friends of Shiite Iran, and neither are Iran’s neighbors. In looking for a tool for political mobilization in the Gulf region or in Afghanistan absent a U.S. presence, the Iranian threat would best serve the jihadists. The Iranian threat combined with the weakness of regional Muslim powers would allow the jihadists to join a religious and nationalist opposition to Tehran. The ability to join religion and nationalism would turn the local focus from something that takes the jihadists away from regime change to something that might take them toward it.
The single most powerful motivator for an American withdrawal would be a period of open quiescence. An openly stated consensus for standing down, in particular because of a diminished terrorist threat, would facilitate something the Obama administration wants most of all: a U.S. withdrawal from the region. Providing the Americans with a justification for leaving would open the door for new possibilities. The jihadists played a hand on 9/11 that they hoped would prove a full house. It turned into a bust. When that happens, you fold your hand and play a new one. And there is always a hand being dealt so long as you have some chips left.
The challenge here is that the jihadists have created a situation in which they have defined their own credibility in terms of their ability to carry out terrorist attacks, however poorly executed or counterproductive they have become. Al Qaeda prime’s endless calls for action have become the strategic foundation for the jihadists: Action has become an end in itself. The manner in which the jihadists have survived as a series of barely connected pods of individuals scattered across continents has denied the United States a center of gravity to strike. It has also turned the jihadists from a semi-organized force into one incapable of defining strategic shifts.
The jihadists’ strategic dilemma is that they have lost the 2001-2008 phase of the war but are not defeated. To begin to recoup, they must shift their strategy. But they lack the means for doing so because of what they have had to do to survive. At the same time, there are other processes in play. The Taliban, which has even more reason to want the United States out of Afghanistan, might shift to an anti-jihadist strategy: It could liquidate al Qaeda, return to power in Afghanistan and then reconsider its strategy later. So, too, in other areas.
From the U.S. point of view, an open retreat by the jihadists would provide short-term relief but long-term problems. The moment when the enemy sues for peace is the moment when the pressure should be increased rather than decreased. But direct U.S. interests in the region are so minimal that a more distant terrorist threat will be handled in a more distant future. As the jihadists are too fragmented to take strategic positions, U.S. pressure will continue in any event.
Oddly enough, as much as the United States is uncomfortable in the position it is in, the jihadists are in a much worse position.
"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"
I recently stumbled over a site called Qype, a portal to information on places all over the world and I started browsing through the info on London. Back when I was in law school, I spent time studying abroad, living in London. I can remember often wishing I had some definitive resource or guidebook to the real London, like Qype. It was a really huge moment in life for me, because I had not done any study abroad during my undergraduate days, and I was pretty convinced that if I didn't take the opportunity while I was in law school, the chance to spend extended time outside the country would not come again for a while.
So in the spring of 1992, my grandfather (Charles DeCembly, now deceased) took me to the train station in Toledo, Oh, along with my mom, and put me on a train to New York. I traveled to New York City. After debarking at the station in NY, I took transit out to the airport and caught my flight bound for Heathrow.
I was fortunate enough to have a friend stateside who was well traveled (Sambia) internationally, and she had hooked me up with a friend of hers who lived in London (Nejimilah). But even though Nejimilah lived in London, she didn't have the skinny on all the places I wanted to get into in London. I was interested in different places to eat, you know, a variety of restaurants, and London as it turns out has a lot of them representing seemingly every part of the globe. Qype seems to have a great listing of those. Restaurants London could be anything from Indian to Chinese, though I can't recall ever seeing a Mexican food place the whole time I was there. More than the restaurants though, I wanted to get into London's nightlife. For the last half of my time in London, I lived in Brixton in what the Brits call a council estate (what we would call the projects, but I didn't really figure that out until I got back stateside). I was just sort of getting the idea of Pubs London which I thought was the Brits weird version of bars, weird because they closed at 11:00 pm. It would have been awesome to have a guide to the pubs, especially the ones where London's various flavors of blacks hung out. Alas, 1992 was post internet, but pre-web (it freaks me out sometimes that I can remember the world before the web). But in 1992, it was still all about Unix command line interface, as far as I knew. Qype would have been quite the guide to have back then.
Obama's Plan and the Key Battleground
Comments Published by Aaron + Alaine on December 2, 2009 at 9:39 AM By George Friedman ~ Honorary Political Season Contributor
U.S. President Barack Obama announced the broad structure of his Afghanistan strategy in a speech at West Point on Tuesday evening. The strategy had three core elements. First, he intends to maintain pressure on al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani border and in other regions of the world. Second, he intends to blunt the Taliban offensive by sending an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, along with an unspecified number of NATO troops he hopes will join them. Third, he will use the space created by the counteroffensive against the Taliban and the resulting security in some regions of Afghanistan to train and build Afghan military forces and civilian structures to assume responsibility after the United States withdraws. Obama added that the U.S. withdrawal will begin in July 2011, but provided neither information on the magnitude of the withdrawal nor the date when the withdrawal would conclude. He made it clear that these will depend on the situation on the ground, adding that the U.S. commitment is finite.
In understanding this strategy, we must begin with an obvious but unstated point: The extra forces that will be deployed to Afghanistan are not expected to defeat the Taliban. Instead, their mission is to reverse the momentum of previous years and to create the circumstances under which an Afghan force can take over the mission. The U.S. presence is therefore a stopgap measure, not the ultimate solution.
The ultimate solution is training an Afghan force to engage the Taliban over the long haul, undermining support for the Taliban, and dealing with al Qaeda forces along the Pakistani border and in the rest of Afghanistan. If the United States withdraws all of its forces as Obama intends, the Afghan military would have to assume all of these missions. Therefore, we must consider the condition of the Afghan military to evaluate the strategy’s viability.
Afghanistan vs. Vietnam
Obama went to great pains to distinguish Afghanistan from Vietnam, and there are indeed many differences. The core strategy adopted by Richard Nixon (not Lyndon Johnson) in Vietnam, called “Vietnamization,” saw U.S. forces working to blunt and disrupt the main North Vietnamese forces while the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would be trained, motivated and deployed to replace U.S. forces to be systematically withdrawn from Vietnam. The equivalent of the Afghan surge was the U.S. attack on North Vietnamese Army (NVA) bases in Cambodia and offensives in northern South Vietnam designed to disrupt NVA command and control and logistics and forestall a major offensive by the NVA. Troops were in fact removed in parallel with the Cambodian offensives.
Nixon faced two points Obama now faces. First, the United States could not provide security for South Vietnam indefinitely. Second, the South Vietnamese would have to provide security for themselves. The role of the United States was to create the conditions under which the ARVN would become an effective fighting force; the impending U.S. withdrawal was intended to increase the pressure on the Vietnamese government to reform and on the ARVN to fight.
Many have argued that the core weakness of the strategy was that the ARVN was not motivated to fight. This was certainly true in some cases, but the idea that the South Vietnamese were generally sympathetic to the Communists is untrue. Some were, but many weren’t, as shown by the minimal refugee movement into NVA-held territory or into North Vietnam itself contrasted with the substantial refugee movement into U.S./ARVN-held territory and away from NVA forces. The patterns of refugee movement are, we think, highly indicative of true sentiment.
Certainly, there were mixed sentiments, but the failure of the ARVN was not primarily due to hostility or even lack of motivation. Instead, it was due to a problem that must be addressed and overcome if the Afghanistation war is to succeed. That problem is understanding the role that Communist sympathizers and agents played in the formation of the ARVN.
By the time the ARVN expanded — and for that matter from its very foundation — the North Vietnamese intelligence services had created a systematic program for inserting operatives and recruiting sympathizers at every level of the ARVN, from senior staff and command positions down to the squad level. The exploitation of these assets was not random nor merely intended to undermine moral. Instead, it provided the NVA with strategic, operational and tactical intelligence on ARVN operations, and when ARVN and U.S. forces operated together, on U.S. efforts as well.
In any insurgency, the key for insurgent victory is avoiding battles on the enemy’s terms and initiating combat only on the insurgents’ terms. The NVA was a light infantry force. The ARVN — and the U.S. Army on which it was modeled — was a much heavier, combined-arms force. In any encounter between the NVA and its enemies the NVA would lose unless the encounter was at the time and place of the NVA’s choosing. ARVN and U.S. forces had a tremendous advantage in firepower and sheer weight. But they had a significant weakness: The weight they bought to bear meant they were less agile. The NVA had a tremendous weakness. Caught by surprise, it would be defeated. And it had a great advantage: Its intelligence network inside the ARVN generally kept it from being surprised. It also revealed weakness in its enemies’ deployment, allowing it to initiate successful offensives.
All war is about intelligence, but nowhere is this truer than in counterinsurgency and guerrilla war, where invisibility to the enemy and maintaining the initiative in all engagements is key. Only clear intelligence on the enemy’s capability gives this initiative to an insurgent, and only denying intelligence to the enemy — or knowing what the enemy knows and intends — preserves the insurgent force.
The construction of an Afghan military is an obvious opportunity for Taliban operatives and sympathizers to be inserted into the force. As in Vietnam, such operatives and sympathizers are not readily distinguishable from loyal soldiers; ideology is not something easy to discern. With these operatives in place, the Taliban will know of and avoid Afghan army forces and will identify Afghan army weaknesses. Knowing that the Americans are withdrawing as the NVA did in Vietnam means the rational strategy of the Taliban is to reduce operational tempo, allow the withdrawal to proceed, and then take advantage of superior intelligence and the ability to disrupt the Afghan forces internally to launch the Taliban offensives.
The Western solution is not to prevent Taliban sympathizers from penetrating the Afghan army. Rather, the solution is penetrating the Taliban. In Vietnam, the United States used signals intelligence extensively. The NVA came to understand this and minimized radio communications, accepting inefficient central command and control in return for operational security. The solution to this problem lay in placing South Vietnamese into the NVA. There were many cases in which this worked, but on balance, the NVA had a huge advantage in the length of time it had spent penetrating the ARVN versus U.S. and ARVN counteractions. The intelligence war on the whole went to the North Vietnamese. The United States won almost all engagements, but the NVA made certain that it avoided most engagements until it was ready.
In the case of Afghanistan, the United States has far more sophisticated intelligence-gathering tools than it did in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the basic principle remains: An intelligence tool can be understood, taken into account and evaded. By contrast, deep penetration on multiple levels by human intelligence cannot be avoided.
Pakistan’s Role
Obama mentioned Pakistan’s critical role. Clearly, he understands the lessons of Vietnam regarding sanctuary, and so he made it clear that he expects Pakistan to engage and destroy Taliban forces on its territory and to deny Afghan Taliban supplies, replacements and refuge. He cited the Swat and South Waziristan offensives as examples of the Pakistanis’ growing effectiveness. While this is a significant piece of his strategy, the Pakistanis must play another role with regard to intelligence.
The heart of Obama’s strategy lies not in the surge, but rather in turning the war over to the Afghans. As in Vietnam, any simplistic model of loyalties doesn’t work. There are Afghans sufficiently motivated to form the core of an effective army. As in Vietnam, the problem is that this army will contain large numbers of Taliban sympathizers; there is no way to prevent this. The Taliban is not stupid: It has and will continue to move its people into as many key positions as possible.
The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can’t carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence to bear, but that does not compensate for human intelligence. The only entity that could conceivably penetrate the Taliban and remain secure is the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This would give the Americans and Afghans knowledge of Taliban plans and deployments. This would diminish the ability of the Taliban to evade attacks, and although penetrated as well, the Afghan army would enjoy a chance ARVN never had.
But only the ISI could do this, and thinking of the ISI as secure is hard to do from a historical point of view. The ISI worked closely with the Taliban during the Afghan civil war that brought it to power and afterwards, and the ISI had many Taliban sympathizers. The ISI underwent significant purging and restructuring to eliminate these elements over recent years, but no one knows how successful these efforts were.
The ISI remains the center of gravity of the entire problem. If the war is about creating an Afghan army, and if we accept that the Taliban will penetrate this army heavily no matter what, then the only counter is to penetrate the Taliban equally. Without that, Obama’s entire strategy fails as Nixon’s did.
In his talk, Obama quite properly avoided discussing the intelligence aspect of the war. He clearly cannot ignore the problem we have laid out, but neither can he simply count on the ISI. He does not need the entire ISI for this mission, however. He needs a carved out portion — compartmentalized and invisible to the greatest possible extent — to recruit and insert operatives into the Taliban and to create and manage communication networks so as to render the Taliban transparent. Given Taliban successes of late, it isn’t clear whether he has this intelligence capability. Either way, we would have to assume that some Pakistani solution to the Taliban intelligence issue has been discussed (and such a solution must be Pakistani for ethnic and linguistic reasons).
Every war has its center of gravity, and Obama has made clear that the center of gravity of this war will be the Afghan military’s ability to replace the Americans in a very few years. If that is the center of gravity, and if maintaining security against Taliban penetration is impossible, then the single most important enabler to Obama’s strategy would seem to be the ability to make the Taliban transparent.
Therefore, Pakistan is important not only as the Cambodia of this war, the place where insurgents go to regroup and resupply, but also as a key element of the solution to the intelligence war. It is all about Pakistan. And that makes Obama’s plan difficult to execute. It is far easier to write these words than to execute a plan based on them. But to the extent Obama is serious about the Afghan army taking over, he and his team have had to think about how to do this.
"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"Flashback: The Mo'Kelly Report/Political Season Debate of the 2008 Campaign
Comments Published by Aaron + Alaine on at 12:19 AMThis was just a lot of fun arguing about. Remember back during the campaign when Cornel West got cheesed off at Obama for not going to the King celebrations in Memphis? Well, Mo'Kelly posted on the subject, as did I and I stopped through his blog to comment on it, as that whole incident really frosted my cake. Someone visited the blog from a permalink at that post recently and I reread the debate I had with Mo'Kelly. It was a lot of fun. Read the exchange and at the end, leave your vote in the comments on who you think wins the argument. Flashback.
Political Season
West and Tavis both work my nerves with this kind of "blackness" testing. Obama is busy running a campaign for the nation's highest office. While it certainly would have been nice if Obama could have attended, that he did not go does not change or affect a damn thing of consequence in the lives of black people.
Tavis and West's reaction is no different than the people jumping on Obama for Wright's comments. Its the same logic. So what would they have us believe? That Obama don't care about black folks because he passed on the King events? Is that what we are going to be doing to the brother from here out, jumping in his grill every time he doesn't show up for some purely symbolic stuff and claim he is distancing himself from black folk for political reasons? Because he doesn't come and genuflect at some civil rights icon as the West and Tavis think he should? Its bull.
Obama has got to take care of business. King is dead and he gon stay dead whether Obama came to lay a wreath or not. Stop hating on the brother over BS that is less important than the herculean task he is trying to accomplish.
If Obama becomes president, I'll appreciate it if he shows up for every negro dinner, event and awards show, that will be real nice. But if he never goes to a one, but spends his time being a damn good president and taking care of business in a way that means I as a citizen can take care of business, I will be perfectly fine with that.
As Dyson said at the SOBU, stop hatin on Negroes!
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Here's a thought...and I'm not trying to "start anything"...but what if Dyson was one of the leaders that Tavis alluded to in his commentary who privately chastised Obama but publicly gave him a free pass (Dyson was in Memphis)...would that change your thought?
Again, this is hypothetical. I wasn't in any of these conversations and in no way am I suggesting that Dr. Michael Eric Dyson had anything negative to say about Senator Obama. I just thought given your end quote and thus your willingness to take "some" comments of Black leaders to heart on these issues...what would you say if Dyson (and/or others) echoed Dr. West's sentiment? Is Dyson, West and Smiley ONLY good enough to listen to when he/they echo your opinions?
Remember, this sentiment was first uttered by Dr. West, a HUGE Obama supporter...someone who still campaigns for him. Tavis' commentary asks the question of whether Obama will get a blank check free pass from Black folks on all such issues. Tavis didn't raise this issue...Dr. West did.
Many people feel Tavis is hypercritical of Senator Obama. But this really isn't emanating from Tavis...it's from Dr. West, a campaign surrogate. Should it be then be dismissed as easily?
Something to consider... - Political Season said
As I read it, they are complaining that Obama is trying to put distance between himself and race issues, coming off the J.Wright controversy. Lets assume they are correct. SO WHAT!? Obama is trying to win an election, one in which he has to overcome the political impediment of being black. If he were running to be president of black america, then I would say it mattered, but he's not. He's running for POTUS. He's got to juggle and manage the impact of racial dynamics on his campaign, like it or not.
This idiotic idea that he must put his blackness front and center every damn day as apparently West and Tavis want to advance is just plain stupid. First off, the brother can't escape the race perceptions of his actions and never will. That goes for white people and black people. Second, just because he is currently the most prominent black man in America and poised to make history does not mean that he has to sign on for every symbolic black event or thing in order to demonstrate his negro bona fides again and again.
He's got to get the damn job. Tavis and West bitching because he didn't come to the cultural equivalent of a really big Negro chicken dinner is just frikkin stupid. These are the same guys who sat around at the SOBU talking up and down about accountability. Is this the kind of BS they want to hold him accountable for, that he didn't come to the big Negro chicken dinner? When they talked about accountability, I thought we was talking about polices and practices, the rule of law, educational investments, stuff like that. But it seems like what they want to hold him accountable for is proving his blackness by genuflecting before the sacred cows of the civil rights establishment. Thats the kind of BS thinking that produces a moribund NAACP that doesn't get why representing racists at Dunbar Village is wrong, or an Urban League that puts out a compact with America thats little more than a wishlist of government programs that says squat about what black people will do to solve their problems.
This brother is playing for the history books and their big accountability, finger wagging, stern voice of disapproval is because he didn't come to the big chicken dinner? Thats house negro thinking and they should both get their heads out of their ass.
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OK, Aaron...let's go one step further. I'm clear on what you feel is essentially "unimportant" (paraphrasing you) in the grand scheme of things.
My next question would be this...where is the line. At what point (if any) does Obama manage to offend your sensibilities in terms of his allegiance to African-Americans (who support him 80%)?
If 80% of the unions supported Obama, you can bet Obama would have to answer to them and those most prominent in the unions. If 80% of the Latinos...etc. etc.
At what point is it reasonable to expect, ask or require Obama to come to the table SPECIFICALLY for African-Americans since we support him at a rate FAR surpassing any other ethnicity or specific interest group.
We've made it clear we have an "invested" interest in him. What is so wrong about Tavis (or Dr. West) or others saying in effect...we've invested in you...but let's be sure you're invested in us?
In other words, "at what cost" are you willing to get Obama into the White House? And be mindful, the more you are willing to sacrifice, the more you prove Tavis' point.
Also, how confident are you that Obama (if elected) will THEN do the things that so many of us as Black folks would "like" him to do? We hear the argument "he has to play the game to win." OK, but what about after he wins? Some say, he's not gonna be any MORE in our corner after he wins...if he hasn't had to ALONG THE WAY to winning.
Remember, I'm an Obama supporter. We can't be so blinded with wanting this man to become president that we forsake our core values and core issues in the process. Because if we do now...they won't be addressed later, and it will be too late. - Political Season said...
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Mo, you ask some good questions and here are what I think are some good answers....
At what point (if any) does Obama manage to offend your sensibilities in terms of his allegiance to African-Americans.
I blog around the topic of black accountability, its an issue I care about. Obama is going to offend my sensibilities when he knowingly does something harmful to the african american community and when that happens, I'll be among the first to call him on it.
"at what cost" are you willing to get Obama into the White House?
Well, if his non-attendance at the King commemoration or the SOBU earlier this year are examples of "costs" to get him elected, I'll pay those costs all day, every day. That stuff is completely irrelevant to solving real problems faced by real people. Black intellectuals opining or genuflecting at the tomb of fallen heroes does not reduce poverty, crime in our streets, create jobs, safeguard the country or anything else relevant to the day to life of black people. In my view, such things are not costs at all, and its that kind of focus on symbolism over substance among black thought and opinion leaders that explains the moribund, ineffective dithering of the organizations which make up the civil rights industrial complex. For crying out loud, he is trying to become LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD and they are bitching because he didn't come lay a wreath and lament King's passing in Memphis? WTF! Lord save me from such nattering nabobs missing the forest for the grass. He spoke to the King legacy that day in PA, IN or wherever he was. In case somebody missed it, Barack don't have a problem getting an audience. Tavis and Cornel both of late have worked my nerves with an attitude that says that your "black" commitment is suspect unless you demonstrate it at the times and places they deem important. Don't come to the SOBU? Get your black card pulled...don't come to the King event, get your black card pulled and your integrity, blackness and motives questioned. Its bullshit.
What is so wrong about Tavis (or Dr. West) or others saying in effect...we've invested in you...but let's be sure you're invested in us?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with them or others saying that. But for cats that are intellectuals, thought and opinion leaders, if you are going to call the brother on the carpet and question his black commitment, I expect it to be over a substantive issue, not he didn't show up to a symbolic Negro dinner event when he is clearly busy with other serious stuff and the world ain't gon come to an end cause he couldn't make it. Dunbar Village is just as F'ed up today as it was on King day and the day before. Didn't nothing change because they went to Memphis. Ain't nothing magical about Obama going or not going. He's da man, its nice if he can come, but I understand if he don't, cause he is a little busy TRYING TO MAKE SOME BLACK HISTORY, while these guys are in Memphis reliving it. His blackness is an implicit and explicit fact of his being that cannot be evaded or hidden. He is who he is. I don't need him to reassure me of that by attendance at symbolic Negro dinners.
how confident are you that Obama (if elected) will THEN do the things that so many of us as Black folks would "like" him to do?
I don't need him to be the black president. I need him to be The President and do the job. And lets be for real right now. Barack is going to do or not do stuff that is going to be ticking off black people and in particular folk like West and Tavis who can be as race focused as a Jesse or Sharpton. I'm a conservative. Government is not the answer to our problems, and I already got a Savior, Obama need not apply. I don't need him to become President and try to solve every black problem with government solutions. We black folk should want the man to just be a damn good president. How he does that will be informed by his blackness and he is already sensitized to our issues, which does not guarantee he will do what various black folk will want, but should mean we always get a hearing.
At the SOBU, Dyson talked about accountability and to me that means we expect him to do the job and lead the country in the right direction. Not a black direction, the right direction. I support him, but politically, I'm very far apart from the guy. We don't agree on social issues and I think he is a tax and spend, big government liberal. His views are quite left wing. But I plan to hold him accountable. That means, he want to raise taxes on me, I'm gonna oppose that. That means he want to start a stupid big government program or something thats a bad idea, I'm gonna oppose that. It also means when he wants to do something that makes sense, I'm gonna support that.
It doesn't mean, and I pledge right now, that I'm gonna bitch when he don't show for a Negro dinner or don't do some other symbolic, feel good BS. I already know he is black. I don't need that. We don't need that. We need somebody to run the damn country right and that’s the only thing I require of the man. If he handle his business, I can handle the Negro dinners myself. -
No, I wasn't directly comparing Obama to Bush in terms of lack of empathy for Black people, but I was making the point that seemingly "minor" actions matter.
I agree, Black folks are catching hell on a variety of levels, and that isn't something I think anyone who cares about Black people would debate.
But we as a people are ones who can walk and chew gum at the same time...meaning, the minor issues don't necessarily have to be pushed aside because major ones exist.
It's a contradiction I would say. On one hand you argue that the whole "King thing" is minor, but at the same time, don't concede that if it is truly "minor" then all the more reason for him to acknowledge it in the way that most of America chose to acknowledge it. Not just Black people...most of America.
The point Dr. West was in part trying to make was that King superseded any particular race of people and what he embodied was so much more important than any race for any office.
That was over and above and separate from the superficial connections of race or color. This is not a "lapel pin" discussion. We aren't talking about an empty expression of "patriotism" to Black America. Dr. West was saying, it was the least you could do..."should" do even, given at one moment you're "conscious" and spend 30 minutes on CNN talking about race only.
I think it's disingenuous to pigeon hole or trivialize the concerns of Tavis and Dr. West as only "Black" concerns. There are some core issues which disproportionately affect African-Americans, and many times they are wrongly termed as "Black issues."
As the presidential season moves forward, the discussion for many in the Black community is (or should be) making sure that Barack is in concert with the concerns of the community on issues such as education, healthcare, the future of Affirmative Action (two major ballot initiatives in November) and urban renewal/crime.
It's not to be oversimplified as "this Black man needs to talk about 'The Man' more and do more for Black folks"...not that at all.
This is where I disagree with your "Negro Chicken Dinners" analogy.
It's about making sure that in a consciousness sense, Barack (or any other candidate for that matter) understands the direct connection between policy and Black people's predicament.
The philosophical component to this debate is that in theory, if Obama doesn't hold the things dear to his heart that an overwhelming (not all, but a majority) portion of African-Americans already do...it calls into question whether the policy-related decisions in the future will also be incongruous.
The same argument is made about McCain in terms of his one-time reluctance previously to sign the King holiday into law and his views on continuing the war in Iraq presently. McCain has not been and is not in step with the core issues of African-Americans and does not care about the same types of things that the majority of Black folks do. And no, I'm not comparing Obama to McCain...but I am saying this is my estimation of the thought process behind West and Smiley and their critique of Obama's actions. West and Smiley ask the question in effect...is Obama in step with our core issues? Or at the minimum, acknowledge those moments when he isn't.
It's a reasonable, practical and intelligent approach. To respond with any argument about how close Obama is to the White House only proves their point.
That's West's point when he talks about the tension between truth and power. I get this feeling that we're SO caught up in getting this man elected, that we won't be honest enough with ourselves and each other to engage in a legitimate political debate. Not minutia, but legitimate political debate. King I would submit (dead or not) is not political minutia. - I posed some questions but here are MY answers. I do believe that Obama is in step with African-American core issues. And I do believe Obama "should" have been in Memphis. And I do think Dr. West and Tavis were right in expressing either their disappointment in his absence.
To shoot them down because they were disappointed in Barack is counterintuitive to this process. We shouldn't just "shut up" because Barack is running for the White House. It's all the reason to speak up even more. Or as they say, speak now or forever hold your peace. It's not the job of West or Smiley to cheerlead for any candidate or remain silent in the process.
I want Barack Obama to become President of the United States, but not at the cost of disregarding the core issues which affect African-Americans. That's my litmus test and he passes it. But it's more than fair to remind folks we all need to have one, one other than wanting a first Black President.
We would never be this hyper-critical of criticism against in-house criticism of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton or even John McCain...so why get bent out of shape when we hold Barack to the same standard?
If he's truly presidential material, the scrutiny should be both welcome and reasonably dealt with. We need to stop "protecting" him unnecessarily. My confidence in him is such that we don't need to mother him.
I want him to win the presidency the right way...not because of 80% blind support by African-Americans wanting a Black president.
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*Sigh* We see it differently.
it's about making sure that in a consciousness sense, Barack (or any other candidate for that matter) understands the direct connection between policy and Black people's predicament.
The philosophical component to this debate is that in theory, if Obama doesn't hold the things dear to his heart that an overwhelming (not all, but a majority) portion of African-Americans already do...it calls into question whether the policy-related decisions in the future will also be incongruous.
Given the totality of the circumstances, his absence is no basis to challenge his black consciousness in any way shape or form based on the record before us. The man just gave the seminal speech on race in America, but his consciousness is in question because he chose not to attend but to focus on his campaign?
I didn't go to Memphis, most of us didn't, and we ain't made no seminal speech on race lately either, or stand on the cusp of making some black history. Nobody is pulling our black card.
I want him to win the presidency the right way...not because of 80% blind support by African-Americans wanting a Black president.
The 80% or more of black folk supporting Barack are not doing it because he is black. He ain't the first to run. Sharpton has run, we didn't all vote for him. Barack is being supported by us because he is qualified, credible and bonus, he's black.
Winning the right way should not mean that Barack is held to artificial standards of black "consciousness" based on the personal preferences of Tavis and West or whether he makes the proper slavish devotion to civil rights sacred cows.
If we are going to pull his black card, then pull it for something serious. Not because he passed on an event that has nothing but symbolic value. Symbols are fine, but we spend way too much time focused on symbolism and appearance, rather than substance and quality of result. My beef with Tavis and West is that they seem to think that these symbolic things have more importance than they really do. The SOBU is a nice event, but didn't nothing change in the hood after it was over and they been doing it for 10 years. We can commemorate King every single year, but I don't want to just do that in word, I want to do it in deed as well. And to question Barack's commitment to his people because he chose to focus on the election rather than go to Memphis is an unfair, unbalanced, immature way to measure his commitment to his community or anybody else's. Now if thats going to be the standard, then Tavis and West and all other prominent Negroes better have they ass in Memphis every year, or I'm calling them out as lacking in commitment.
Jeremiah Wright has had his entire life of service in ministry and to his country as a Marine boiled down to 60 seconds of video, and his patriotism, his heart and his character are all being questioned based on that 60 seconds of harsh criticism of America. What Tavis and West are doing in this instance to Obama is every bit as unfair and wrong. I think its beneath them and it lowers my opinion of their acumen and their judgment regarding the issues of the day.
So we see it differently Mo. And thats okay.
I'm an attorney by training, so its all about winning the argument with me. So leave your vote in the comments. Who won this debate?
Folks are complaining about the President giving a timetable. Get a grip. What the President is really saying is that he plans to finish the job of kicking the Taliban's ass in 18 months. I'm okay with that.
I have not posted anything in a fair bit and I'm sure some of my readers have been wondering "where the heck is Political Season these past weeks". Fear not, I am well, if a bit heavy burdened by the travails of everyday life. Unlike many of my blogging betters, my volume tends to recede when life is strongly demanding my attention. I'll be back to opining, perhaps sooner than I think.
GOP's NY-23 Defeat Points the Way to Win Blacks & Latino's to the Conservative Cause
Comments Published by Aaron + Alaine on November 4, 2009 at 7:00 AMDave G's NY-23 post mortem nails the broad political lesson:
What this shows is that neither running as Democrats-lite nor as talk-radio-style anarcho-conservatives will win the future for the GOP. What will yield a Republican comeback in 2010 and beyond is the McDonnell/Christie model, where Republican candidates ideologically appropriate for their states and districts run as pragmatic conservatives who are solutions-oriented and who are running to apply their conservatism to public problems. This is the type of Republicanism that can win, and it did win in purple Virginia and blue New Jersey. It did so by contrasting a GOP that was optimistic and problem-solving yet distinctly conservative with a corrupt, interest-group-friendly, tax-and-spend leftist establishment. This is the model that Republicans should emulate, not the Rockefeller-esque model of Dede nor the Palin/Beck model of Hoffman.
The above is completely on point and totally tracks with my attitude about the purpose of being a conservative in the first instance (superior problem solving to address the needs of our respective communities and country). It also tracks almost perfectly with what is required of the GOP to win blacks and latinos to its banner and the conservative cause, namely, ideologically and operationally superior solution sets and optimistic problem solving conservatism applied to the public problems of black and latino political constituencies.
The U.S. Challenge in Afghanistan
Comments Published by Aaron + Alaine on October 21, 2009 at 6:38 AMBy George Friedman and Reva Bhalla
The decision over whether to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan may wait until the contested Afghan election is resolved, U.S. officials said Oct. 18. The announcement comes as
U.S. President Barack Obama is approaching a decision on the war in Afghanistan. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Obama argued that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time, but Afghanistan was a necessary war. His reasoning went that the threat to the United States came from al Qaeda, Afghanistan had been al Qaeda's sanctuary, and if the United States were to abandon Afghanistan, al Qaeda would re-establish itself and once again threaten the U.S. homeland. Withdrawal from Afghanistan would hence be dangerous, and prosecution of the war was therefore necessary.
After Obama took office, it became necessary to define a war-fighting strategy in Afghanistan. The most likely model was based on the one used in Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command, whose area of responsibility covers both Afghanistan and Iraq. Paradoxically, the tactical and strategic framework for fighting the so-called "right war" derived from U.S. military successes in executing the so-called "wrong war." But grand strategy, or selecting the right wars to fight, and war strategy, or how to fight the right wars, are not necessarily linked.
Afghanistan, Iraq and the McChrystal Plan
Making sense of the arguments over Afghanistan requires an understanding of how the Iraq war is read by the strategists fighting it, since a great deal of proposed Afghan strategy involves transferring lessons learned from Iraq. Those strategists see the Iraq war as having had three phases. The first was the short conventional war that saw the defeat of Saddam Hussein's military. The second was the period from 2003-2006 during which the United States faced a Sunni insurgency and resistance from the Shiite population, as well as a civil war between those two communities. During this phase, the United States sought to destroy the insurgency primarily by military means while simultaneously working to scrape a national unity government together and hold elections. The third phase, which began in late 2006, was primarily a political phase. It consisted of enticing Iraqi Sunni leaders to desert the foreign jihadists in Iraq, splitting the Shiite community among its various factions, and reaching political -- and financial -- accommodations among the various factions. Military operations focused on supporting political processes, such as pressuring recalcitrant factions and protecting those who aligned with the United States. The troop increase -- aka the surge -- was designed to facilitate this strategy. Even more, it was meant to convince Iraqi factions (not to mention Iran) that the United States was not going to pull out of Iraq, and that therefore a continuing American presence would back up guarantees made to Iraqis.
It is important to understand this last bit and its effect on Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the idea that the United States will not abandon local allies by withdrawing until Afghan security forces could guarantee the allies' security lies at the heart of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, e.g., before local allies' security could be guaranteed, would undermine U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. To a great extent, the process of U.S. security guarantees in Afghanistan depends on the credibility of those guarantees: Withdrawal from Iraq followed by retribution against U.S. allies in Iraq would undermine the core of the Afghan strategy.
U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategy in Afghanistan ultimately is built around the principle that the United States and its NATO allies are capable of protecting Afghans prepared to cooperate with Western forces. This explains why the heart of McChrystal's strategy involves putting U.S. troops as close to the Afghan people as possible. Doing so will entail closing many smaller bases in remote valleys -- like the isolated outpost recently attacked in Nuristan province -- and opening bases in more densely populated areas.
McChrystal's strategy therefore has three basic phases. In phase one, his forces would fight their way into regions where a large portion of the population lives and where the Taliban currently operates, namely Kabul, Khost, Helmand and Kandahar provinces. The United States would assume a strategic defensive posture in these populated areas. Because these areas are essential to the Taliban, phase two would see a Taliban counterattack in a bid to drive McChrystal's forces out, or at least to demonstrate that the U.S. forces cannot provide security for the local population. Paralleling the first two phases, phase three would see McChrystal using his military successes to forge alliances with indigenous leaders and their followers.
It should be noted that while McChrystal's traditional counterinsurgency strategy would be employed in populated areas, U.S. forces would also rely on traditional counterterrorism tactics in more remote areas where the Taliban have a heavy presence and can be pursued through drone strikes. The hope is that down the road, the strategy would allow the United States to use its military successes to fracture the Taliban, thereby encouraging defections and facilitating political reconciliation with Taliban elements driven more by political power than ideology.
There is a fundamental difference between Iraq and Afghanistan, however. In Iraq, resistance forces rarely operated in sufficient concentrations to block access to the population. By contrast, the Taliban on several occasions have struck with concentrations of forces numbering in the hundreds, essentially at company-size strength. If Iraq was a level one conflict, with irregular forces generally refusing conventional engagement with coalition forces, Afghanistan is beginning to bridge the gap from a level one to a level two conflict, with the Taliban holding territory with forces both able to provide conventional resistance and to mount some offensives at the company level (and perhaps at the battalion level in the future). This means that occupying, securing and defending areas such that the inhabitants see the coalition forces as defenders rather than as magnets for conflict is the key challenge.
Adding to the challenge, elements of McChrystal's strategy are in tension. First, local inhabitants will experience multilevel conflict as coalition forces move into a given region. Second, McChrystal is hoping that the Taliban goes on the offensive in response. And this means that the first and second steps will collide with the third, which is demonstrating to locals that the presence of coalition forces makes them more secure as conflict increases (which McChrystal acknowledges will happen). To convince locals that Western forces enhance their security, the coalition will thus have to be stunningly successful both at defeating Taliban defenders when they first move in and in repulsing subsequent Taliban attacks.
In its conflict with the Taliban, the coalition's main advantage is firepower, both in terms of artillery and airpower. The Taliban must concentrate its forces to attack the coalition; to counter such attacks, the weapons of choice are airstrikes and artillery. The problem with both of these weapons is first, a certain degree of inaccuracy is built into their use, and second, the attackers will be moving through population centers (the area held by both sides is important precisely because it has population). This means that air- and ground-fire missions, both important in a defensive strategy, run counter to the doctrine of protecting population.
McChrystal is fully aware of this dilemma, and he has therefore changed the rules of engagement to sharply curtail airstrikes in areas of concentrated population, even in areas where U.S. troops are in danger of being overrun. As McChrystal said in a recent interview, these rules of engagement will hold "Even if it means we are going to step away from a firefight and fight them another day."
This strategy poses two main challenges. First, it shifts the burden of the fighting onto U.S. infantry forces. Second, by declining combat in populated areas, the strategy runs the risk of making the populated areas where political arrangements might already be in place more vulnerable. In avoiding air and missile strikes, McChrystal avoids alienating the population through civilian casualties. But by declining combat, McChrystal risks alienating populations subject to Taliban offensives. Simply put, while airstrikes can devastate a civilian population, avoiding airstrikes could also devastate Western efforts, as local populations could see declining combat as a betrayal. McChrystal is thus stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place on this one.
One of his efforts at a solution has been to ask for more troops. The point of these troops is not to occupy Afghanistan and impose a new reality through military force, which is impossible (especially given the limited number of troops the United States is willing to dedicate to the problem). Instead, it is to provide infantry forces not only to hold larger areas, but to serve as reinforcements during Taliban attacks so the use of airpower can be avoided. Putting the onus of this counterinsurgency on the infantry, and having the infantry operate without airpower, is a radical departure from U.S. fighting doctrine since World War II.
Seismic Shift in War Doctrine
Geopolitically, the United States fights at the end of a long supply line. Moreover, U.S. forces operate at a demographic disadvantage. Once in Eurasia, U.S. forces are always outnumbered. Infantry-on-infantry warfare is attritional, and the United States runs out of troops before the other side does. Infantry warfare does not provide the United States any advantage, and in fact, it places the United States at a disadvantage. Opponents of the United States thus have larger numbers of fighters; greater familiarity and acclimation to the terrain; and typically, better intelligence from countrymen behind U.S. lines. The U.S. counter always has been force multipliers -- normally artillery and airpower -- capable of destroying enemy concentrations before they close with U.S. troops. McChrystal's strategy, if applied rigorously, shifts doctrine toward infantry-on-infantry combat. His plan assumes that superior U.S. training will be the force multiplier in Afghanistan (as it may). But that assumes that the Taliban, a light infantry force with numerous battle-hardened formations optimized for fighting in Afghanistan, is an inferior infantry force. And it assumes that U.S. infantry fighting larger concentrations of Taliban forces will consistently defeat them.
Obviously, if McChrystal drives the Taliban out of secured areas and into uninhabited areas, the United States will have a tremendous opportunity to engage in strategic bombardment both against Taliban militants themselves and against supply lines no longer plugged into populated areas. But this assumes that the Taliban would not reduce its operations from company-level and higher assaults down to guerrilla-level operations in response to being driven out of population centers. If the Taliban did make such a reduction, it would become indistinguishable from the population. This would allow it to engage in attritional warfare against coalition forces and against the protected population to demonstrate that coalition forces can't protect them. The Taliban already has demonstrated the ability to thrive in both populated and rural areas of Afghanistan, where the terrain favors the insurgent far more than the counterinsurgent.
The strategy of training Afghan soldiers and police to take up the battle and persuading insurgents to change sides faces several realities. The Taliban has an excellent intelligence service built up during the period of its rule and afterward, allowing it to populate the new security forces with its agents and loyalists. And while persuading insurgents to change sides certainly can happen, whether it can happen to the extent of leaving the Taliban materially weakened remains in doubt. In Iraq, this happened not because of individual changes, but because regional ethnic leadership -- with their own excellent intelligence capabilities -- changed sides and drove out opposing factions. Individual defections were frequently liquidated.
But Taliban leaders have not shown any inclination for changing sides. They do not believe the United States is in Afghanistan to stay. Getting individual Taliban militants to change sides creates an intelligence-security battle. But McChrystal is betting that his forces will form bonds with the local population so deep that the locals will provide intelligence against Taliban forces operating in the region. The coalition must thus demonstrate that the risks of defection are dwarfed by the advantages. To do this, the coalition security and counterintelligence must consistently and effectively block the Taliban's ability to identify, locate and liquidate defectors. If McChrystal cannot do that, large-scale defection will be impossible, because well before such defection becomes large scale, the first defectors will be dead, as will anyone seen by the Taliban as a collaborator.
Ultimately, the entire strategy depends on how you read Iraq. In Iraq, a political decision was made by an intact Sunni leadership able to enforce its will among its followers. Squeezed between the foreign jihadists who wanted to usurp their position and the Shia, provided with political and financial incentives, and possessing their own forces able to provide a degree of security themselves, the Sunni leadership came to the see the Americans as the lesser evil. They controlled a critical mass, and they shifted. McChrystal has made it clear that the defections he expects are not a Taliban faction whose leadership decides to shift, but Taliban soldiers as individuals or small groups. That isn't ultimately what turned the Iraq war but something very different -- and quite elusive in counterinsurgency. He is looking for retail defections to turn into a strategic event.
Moreover, it seems much too early to speak of the successful strategy in Iraq. First, there is increasing intracommunal violence in anticipation of coming elections early next year. Second, some 120,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq to guarantee the political and security agreements of 2007-2008, and it is far from clear what would happen if those troops left. Finally, where in Afghanistan there is the Pakistan question, in Iraq there remains the Iran question. Instability thus becomes a cross-border issue beyond the scope of existing forces.
The Pakistan situation is particularly problematic. If the strategic objective of the war in Afghanistan is to cut the legs out from under al Qaeda and deny these foreign jihadists sanctuary, then what of the sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal belt where high-value al Qaeda targets are believed to be located? Pakistan is fighting its share of jihadists according to its own rules; the United States cannot realistically expect Islamabad to fulfill its end of the bargain in containing al Qaeda. The primary U.S. targets in this war are on the wrong side of the border, and in areas where U.S. forces are not free to operate. The American interest in Afghanistan is to defeat al Qaeda and prevent the emergence of follow-on jihadist forces. The problem is that regardless of how secure Afghanistan is, jihadist forces can (to varying degrees) train and plan in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia -- or even Cleveland for that matter. Securing Afghanistan is thus not necessarily a precondition for defeating al Qaeda.
Iraq is used as the argument in favor of the new strategy in Afghanistan. What happened in Iraq was that a situation that was completely out of hand became substantially less unstable because of a set of political accommodations initially rejected by the Americans and the Sunnis from 2003-2006. Once accepted, a disastrous situation became an unstable situation with many unknowns still in place.
If the goal of Afghanistan is to forge the kind of tenuous political accords that govern Iraq, the factional conflicts that tore Iraq apart are needed. Afghanistan certainly has factional conflicts, but the Taliban, the main adversary, does not seem to be torn by them. It is possible that under sufficient pressure such splits might occur, but the Taliban has been a cohesive force for a generation. When it has experienced divisions, it hasn't split decisively.
On the other hand, it is not clear that Western forces in Afghanistan can sustain long-term infantry conflict in which the offensive is deliberately ceded to a capable enemy and where airpower's use is severely circumscribed to avoid civilian casualties, overturning half a century of military doctrine of combined arms operations.
The Bigger Picture
The best argument for fighting in Afghanistan is powerful and similar to the one for fighting in Iraq: credibility. The abandonment of either country will create a powerful tool in the Islamic world for jihadists to argue that the United States is a weak power. Withdrawal from either place without a degree of political success could destabilize other regimes that cooperate with the United States. Given that, staying in either country has little to do with strategy and everything to do with the perception of simply being there.
The best argument against fighting in either country is equally persuasive. The jihadists are right: The United States has neither the interest nor forces for long-term engagements in these countries. American interests go far beyond the Islamic world, and there are many present (to say nothing of future) threats from outside the region that require forces. Overcommitment in any one area of interest at the expense of others could be even more disastrous than the consequences of withdrawal.
In our view, Obama's decision depends not on choosing between McChrystal's strategy and others, but on a careful consideration of how to manage the consequences of withdrawal. An excellent case can be made that now is not the time to leave Afghanistan, and we expect Obama to be influenced by that thinking far more than by the details of McChrystal's strategy. As McChrystal himself points out, there are many unknowns and many risks in his own strategy;
he is guaranteeing nothing.
Reducing American national strategy to the Islamic world, or worse, Afghanistan, is the greater threat. Nations find their balance, and the heavy pressures on Obama in this decision basically represent those impersonal forces battering him. The question he must ask himself is simple: In what way is the future of Afghanistan of importance to the United States? The answer that securing it will hobble al Qaeda is simply wrong. U.S. Afghan policy will not stop a global terrorist organization; terrorists will just go elsewhere. The answer that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is important in shaping the Islamic world's sense of American power is better, but even that must be taken in context of other global interests.
Obama does not want this to be his war. He does not want to be remembered for Afghanistan the way George W. Bush is remembered for Iraq or Lyndon Johnson is for Vietnam. Right now, we suspect Obama plans to demonstrate commitment, and to disengage at a more politically opportune time. Johnson and Bush showed that disengagement after commitment is nice in theory. For our part, we do not think there is an effective strategy for winning in Afghanistan, but that McChrystal has proposed a good one for "hold until relieved." We suspect that Obama will hold to show that he gave the strategy a chance, but that the decision to leave won't be too far off.
I've been using mobile devices and phones for the better part of a decade now. With each leap in the technology and power of the devices has also come an increase in the number and variety of accessories you could get for them. Nowadays, I'm rocking a Palm Pre, while the hot little number sports an Iphone.
Consequently, I find myself looking at a lot more mobile sites now, particularly ones that have really big accessory selections. The one I've come across most recently is Mobilefun.co.uk. While it does have the drawback of being an overseas site with money denominated in pounds sterling, it has a great selection. I found myself just browsing around and finding accessories I had never seen before. The Iphone accessories selection is pretty large, a fact the wifey cottoned to immediately. I had barely begun to check the site out and she bogarded me away from the screen to check out an Iphone case on offer, of which there were many. They even had an Iphone car charger I had not seen before, and I thought I had seen all things Iphone frankly.
The site has a directory of mobile goodies organized by manufacturer, which I found pretty handy and a nice timesaver when you have a clear idea of what you want. But they slice and dice the choices by accessory type and brand as well. After my computer was released by the wife, I checked out the Palm accessories page and they had a good selection of stuff; holsters, screen protectors and a neat little USB bluetooth dongle for data exchange with your phone that I had never seen before. They offer warranties, money back guaranties, nice confidence builders all.
I did a few conversions of the prices from pounds to dollars and was pleasantly surprised to find that in some cases, the exchange rate didn't necessarily mean I would get hammered on the price. Mobilefun.co.uk. has same day shipping if your order is in by 6 pm. Living across the pond from the UK as I do, this doesn't help me a lot, but I imagine the Brits and those living on the continent like it just fine.
A generally cool site with some nice gear for the mobilephile in your life. Get your phone on.
