A take on why we will lose in Afghanistan.

Another take on Afghanistan. One you won't get on Fox or even the minstream media. It seems particularly relevant now that we see more and more of a nuclear armed Pakistan hating us as we keep bombing them and fomenting a civil war. the Paskistani government may not be able to control the hatred of the majority toward us and they will keep cutting our main land supply route as we see now with the burning of our fuel trucks heading toward Afghanistan.

Nice going Bush and Obama.
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Pakistani Gen. Gul on Why the US Cannot Win in Afghanistan

Tod Fletcher, October 01, 2010
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This interview with Pakistani General (ret.) Hamid Gul, by Bonnie Faulkner, took place on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 on the radio show “Guns and Butter,” KPFA-FM. To read the full transcript and hear the clip, scroll down for more info.

In this important interview, Gen. Hamid Gul explains that the US war in Afghanistan was doomed from the start. As a military professional with a distinguished career, he identifies the key factors that determine success or failure in war, and shows that the US is failing in almost every area.

Gen. Gul outlines the precariousness of the lines of communication depended upon by US forces (logistics), due to their length from Karachi to Afghanistan and susceptibility to frequent attack by a hostile population in Pakistan. He then surveys the intelligence failure, recently exposed in the WikiLeaks Afghan war materials, due to the almost total lack of reliable human intelligence and the uselessness of signals intelligence in a country like Afghanistan. He is especially critical of the increasing mixture of military and intelligence personnel, with their different training and skills, in the intelligence-collection effort, and the desperate resort to private contractors for intelligence.

Gen. Gul criticizes the failure on the part of US war planners to assess the nature of the enemy in Afghanistan, a people who never give up. He concludes that the resolve and resilience of the Taliban was seriously underestimated by the Pentagon. Further, the US has supported and tried to utilize corrupt elements of Afghan society to pursue its war aims, but that these people are completely unreliable. His principal example is the US employment of a local warlord, Hazrat Ali, which resulted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora.

Gul shows that the objectives of the US military have changed. The first objective, the capture of Osama bin Laden, failed. So a new objective was declared, to defeat the Taliban. Gul argues that all military thinkers from Sun Tzu to MacArthur have insisted on the selection and maintenance of a single objective, and that to change the goalposts is to guarantee defeat.

He then shows that the US cannot use its superior firepower because it cannot locate targets to attack; that it has a great disadvantage in manpower, as fighters are flocking to the resistance forces because they “smell victory”; that the Taliban control the countryside, with the US forces squeezed into garrison towns from which “they dare not venture”; and that time is on the side of the resistance, as the US cannot stay there forever. He makes a strong case that the Taliban are fully supported by the population throughout the country, and therefore the US cannot defeat them without defeating the entire Afghan people.

He goes on to compare the US occupation to that of the Soviet Union, and shows the considerable advantages the Soviet Union had over the current NATO forces. Yet, the Soviet Union was trounced. Gul says that if instead of 40,000 additional troops, the US were to send 400,000, it would still lose the war.

He concludes with a description of the corruption of the Afghan puppet government and the US reconstruction efforts, and the astonishing resurgence of opium production in the country, surmising that the opium is flown out of the country on US transport planes to Europe and the United States with the full knowledge of the highest US government officials.

To read the full transcript, go to gunsandbutter.org. To listen to the audio of the show, go to http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/63837.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/10...in-afghanistan/

 

It is interesting how the goal keeps changing. Anything I guess to keep perpeutal war going.

 

Well, we almost beat Oklahoma.

 

Another article of perhaps our coming war with Pakistan. So reminiscient of our expansion of the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia, where our destabilization led to the "Killing Fields" (btw a good movie) and a couple of million dead Cambodians along with the couple of million dead Vietnamese that our prolongation of the Vietnam War for the corrupt Saigon regime led to.

As we see from the new Woodward book Obama so far lacks the stones or perhaps just experience to say "no" to the generals, but it is possible that he is learning and can yet lead us out of the "quagmire" to use a favorite word of Madmax.

Another interesting article.
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The US Edges Closer to Invading Pakistan

by Eric Margolis

This writer has been warning for years that US and NATO efforts to defeat resistance to Western occupation by Afghanistan’s fierce Pashtun tribes would eventually lead to spreading the conflict into neighboring Pakistan, a nation of 175 million.

We’ve seen it all before in Vietnam. It was then called, "mission creep."
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This week’s fevered warnings from Washington of supposedly imminent terrorist attacks in Europe may be aimed at justifying intensifying US military operations against Pakistan. If attacks do come in Europe, they will most likely be linked to anti-French militant groups in North Africa and the Sahara – nothing at all to do with Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Last week, Pakistan temporarily closed the main US/NATO supply route from Karachi to the Afghan border at Torkham after the killing of three Pakistani soldiers by US helicopter gunships. Three US/NATO fuel supply convoys were burned by anti-American militants.

Eighty percent of the supplies of the US-led forces in Afghanistan come up this long, difficult route. Along the way, the US pays large bribes to Pakistani officials, local warlords, and to Taliban. The cost of a gallon of gas delivered to US units in Afghanistan has risen to $800.

US helicopter gunships have staged at least four attacks on Pakistan this past week alone, in addition to the mounting number of strikes by CIA drones that are inflicting heavy casualties on civilians and tribal militants alike. US Special Forces and CIA-run Afghan mercenaries are also increasingly active along Pakistan’s northwest frontier.


Pakistan’s feeble, discredited government has long closed its eyes to CIA’s drone attacks. Washington does not even seek permission for the raids or give advance warning to Islamabad. Pakistan’s media claims over 90% of the casualties in US air raids are civilians...

The failing government in Islamabad is caught between two fires. Pakistanis are furious and humiliated by the American attacks. Each new assault further undermines the inept, US-installed Zardari government. Even Interior Minister Rehman Malik, the government’s strongman, protested last week’s US attacks.

But Pakistan is on the edge of economic collapse after its devastating floods. Islamabad is now totally reliant on $2 billion anual US aid, plus tens of millions more "black" payments from CIA. Washington has given Islamabad $10 billion since 2001, most of which goes to renting 140,000 Pakistani troops to support the US-led Afghan war. CIA also has 3,000 mercenaries operating inside Pakistan.

...

An influential former Pakistani chief of staff, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, just demanded Pakistan’s air force shoot down US drones and helicopters violating his nation’s sovereignty. His sentiments are widely shared in Pakistan’s increasingly angry military.

Pakistan’s senior generals are being blasted as "American stooges" by some of the media and are losing respect among Pakistanis. A video this week of the execution of six civilians by army troops has further damaged the army’s good name.

However, Washington’s view is very different. Pakistan is increasingly branded insubordinate, ungrateful for billions in aid, and a potential enemy of US regional interests. Many Americans consider Pakistan more of a foe than ally. The limited US financial response to Pakistan’s flood was a sign of that nation’s poor repute in North America.

...

Pakistan’s President, Asif Ali Zardari, is seen in Washington as hopeless and incompetent. Full US attention is now on Pakistan’s military, the de facto government, and its respected but embattled commander, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, whose tenure was just extended under US pressure. Kayani is still regarded as an "asset" by Washington. But like Zardari, he is caught between American demands and outraged Pakistanis – plus concerns about the threat from India and Delhi’s machinations in Afghanistan. The recent upsurge of violence in Indian-ruled Kashmir has intensified these dangerous tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

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There is also talk in Washington of dividing Afghanistan into Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek mini-states, as the US has done in Iraq. Could Pakistan be next for this divide and conquer treatment? Little states are easier to rule or intimidate than big ones. Many Pakistanis believe the United States is bent on dismembering their nation. Some polls show Pakistanis now regard the United States as a greater enemy than India.

If the Republicans win there will be more and deeper US air and land attacks into Pakistan. The Pentagon is convinced it can still defeat resistance by Taliban and its allies "if only we can go after their sanctuaries in Pakistan," as one general told me.
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But our imperial generals seem determined to blunder into a nation of 175 million hostile people without any clear strategy. Unable to subdue the Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan, they are now attacking the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan. America does not need more enemies.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis208.html