Category Archives: Pakistan

OK, Let’s Just Pay the Caped SOB

I am someone who would like to get out of Afghanistan yesterday, in terms of attempting to bring democracy or even stability to that medieval hellhole.

But today’s front-page story in the NYT* convinces me that we need to leave some troops.  Without them, we can’t have our drone bases, which means we can’t reach Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s frontier region and we’ll have a much bigger challenge if (when?) there’s a nuclear weapons crisis in Pakistan.

OK, you’ve scared me enough.  Afghan President Hamid Karzai has so far refused to sign the agreement for us to leave troops beyond the end of this year.  Just wire the money he wants into his Swiss bank account and let’s be done with it.

“Afghan Exit Is Seen As Peril To Drone Mission,” David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt

U. S. Makes American Drone Deaths Official

In a letter to Congress today, Attorney General Eric Holder officially acknowledged for the first time that the U. S. killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen (Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan) and Pakistan (Jude Mohammed).

Of the four, only Anwar al-Awlaki was specifically targeted.

The acknowledgment comes a day before President Obama’s major address on national security related topics like drones and Gitmo.

Why Do We Always Over-Correct?

Ok, so Dick Cheney was wrong about a lot on foreign and defense policy.

But that doesn’t make Rand Paul right.  He’s as misguided as Cheney, just in the opposite direction.

Too little engagement is as bad — worse? — than too much.

I want to get out of Afghanistan yesterday, but I want to continue our drone program, including against Americans if they choose to join the terrorists, and I want to make sure that Iran doesn’t get nuclear weapons.  We should have stopped Pakistan and North Korea, but too late now.  Let’s not add Iran to that list of mistakes, which, aside from the threat to Israel, would set off disastrous nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East.

Both the White House and the GOP have handled Rand Paul clumsily.  I hope they’ve each learned a lesson.

 

Why Obama Won’t Release Drone Memos

Interesting story up at the National Journal* explaining why the President doesn’t want to show the House and Senate Intelligence Committees all of the Justice Department drone memos.  The article says it’s because they “contain secret protocols with foreign governments, including Pakistan and Yemen, as well as ‘case-specific’ details of strikes.”

The Administration believes that even if released just to certain members of Congress, the sensitive information would become public and embarrass the governments we have protocols with, which may include additional countries like Mali and Algeria.

This would explain why the Administration is supposedly trying to get John Brennan’s nomination for CIA out of the Senate Intelligence Committee by giving up some Dem votes over the drone memos and going for GOP votes by giving them more info on Benghazi.

National security issues can create some strange bedfellows!

* “What’s in the Secret Drone Memos,” Michael Hirsh and Kristin Roberts

Quote of the Day

“Drone strikes are an innovation in anticipatory self-defense, requiring careful oversight and a high threshold for action. They are also a technology that allows the most discriminate application of force in the history of warfare. That the use of drones protects U.S. troops from risk is a virtue. And the targeting of American citizens who are fighting for the enemy is neither new nor forbidden by the laws of war. At least eight American volunteers for the Waffen SS were killed during World War II. Should their U.S. citizenship have earned them membership in a special, protected category of combatant?

“This, of course, is the essence of the matter. If America is in an ongoing war against al-Qaeda and associated groups, then the rules of war apply, Yemen and the Afghanistan/Pakistan border are battlefields, and al-Qaeda operatives are lawful targets. This is the position taken by both the Bush and Obama administrations, consistent with America’s inherent right of self-defense and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

“Labeling Obama as ‘judge, jury and executioner’ is his critics’ prerogative. But defending the country is not their responsibility. It is easy for those without executive authority to dismiss risks that are prospective. After a terrorist attack on America, the critics would likely be silent, hoping that no one recalled their complacency.” Emphasis added.

Michael Gerson, “Obama’s drone policy, rooted in self-defense,” WaPo

 

Realist Hagel and His Neo-Con Haters

Those who oppose Chuck Hagel for DoD, and either whisper or shout that he is anti-Israel/anti-Semitic are really saying that to be pro-Israel, you have to support absolutely everything that Benjamin Netanyahu wants and stands for.

It’s like saying that you’re anti-American unless you support the GOP or anti-British unless you support the Tories.

Suddenly support for Israel is limited to support for its far right.

By this bizarre standard there are a whole lot of folks in Israel and politicians in its Knesset who are anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and newbie Ted Cruz are afraid of Hagel.  They want to stay in Afghanistan forever, and they know that Hagel will argue to get out sooner than the end of 2014, which is what this war-weary country wants.

Now sometimes being war-weary doesn’t mean you’re right, sometimes you have to suck it up and stick it out, but in this case, the mood of the country matches the strategic reality that we have nothing to gain by staying longer in Afghanistan.

The Hagel haters also fear that he will be an effective spokesman for making DoD more efficient.  They can see him on the Sunday talk shows convincingly arguing that some weapons systems can be eliminated, that the defense budget can be cut without making us less safe.  They can see him authoring cogent op-eds that will sway opinion leaders.

I am excited about the combo of Hagel at DoD and Brennan at CIA.  Brennan is our Drone Guy, and he and Hagel will continue to fight the War on Terror the way it needs to be fought, with more drones and special forces, not tens of thousands of troops stuck manning mountain outposts while Al Qaeda finds other homes.

As Al Qaeda and its affiliates move and spread, we have to be as flexible as they are.  We had as many drone strikes in Yemen in 2012 as we did in Pakistan because we are taking the fight to the enemy.  There is talk of drone strikes in Mali (and maybe they are happening as I write this) because that’s where Al Qaeda is.

Obama, Hagel, and Brennan get it.  They see the big picture of how everything fits together. They see the importance of our relationship with Pakistan, frustrating and infuriating as it is.  They see how the war in Iraq destabilized the region and upset the balance of power by taking away Iran’s biggest rival and constraint.    Now Iran and Iraq are friends, and Iran is freer to pursue its dreams of hegemony in the region.  Hagel is a realist like Bush 41, who recognized that we should kick Iraq out of Kuwait, but not continue to Baghdad because we were better off with Saddam Hussein in power.

 

It’s Hagel for DoD

Despite all the preemptive strikes against him from the neo-cons, including nasty smears unfairly accusing him of being anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic, it looks as if President Obama will nominate former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) to be Secretary of Defense.

Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, had an excellent column in the WSJ a couple of days ago (“Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense”) praising Hagel.  Some excerpts:

“Mr. Hagel understands far better than most the evils of Hamas and Hezbollah, both backed by Iran.  He also appreciates the importance of looking in and among those groups for fissures that might lead to internal debate, dissension or division — or even to areas of agreement with the U. S.

“I still remember his frank but nuanced conversation with Pakistan’s then-president, Pervez Musharraf, and the message he carried back to Washington:  The U. S. has to implement a multidimensional policy of pressure and support, adjusted to fit prevailing circumstances.  Above all, America needs to demonstrate strategic patience,– a sense that it is in this relationship for the long run and won’t abandon the region as in the early 1990s, a decision that inadvertently paved the road to 9/11.”

“Mr. Hagel would run the Defense Department; it would not run him.”

Afghanistan — Enough Is Enough

The Pentagon has just submitted its semi-annual report to Congress on Afghanistan, “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” covering the period from  April through September, and it’s same-old, same-old.

Only one of the 23 Afghan Army brigades can function independently, there is more violence now than when we began the surge two years ago, the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt, the Taliban is still strong, and Pakistan is still providing safe havens for them.

It’s never going to get better, and we just need to get the hell out of there ASAP.  We can’t keep pouring American dollars and blood down this rat hole.  Drones and special forces, people, not 68,000 U. S. troops defending nothing in the middle of nowhere.

It’s About the Big Bang, Not Big Bird

The GOP tells us that this is a watershed election.  I agree, but not for the reasons they say.  This isn’t about whether or not we’re going to switch to vouchers for Medicare or what the Medicaid budget is going to be.  This is about whether we’re going to continue down the Republican path to the Dark Ages.

To their shame, the GOP has let extremists take over their party at the state and national level.   The question on November 6 is whether we’re going to let the crazies take over our country.

I grew up believing that some things were settled in our society — that evolution was established science, that Keynesianism was established economics.  But now the GOP presents laughable, long-discredited science and economics as the truth.

With 435 congressional districts, we’re going to get people like Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin.  But fringe people like him should not be elevated to the Senate.  And they definitely shouldn’t become Vice President, but Paul Ryan and Todd Akin are Tweedledee and Tweedledum on social issues.  Ryan is a little more careful about what he says in public, but their views and votes are the same.

We are outraged about the Taliban shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan because she defended the right of girls to go to school.  We rightly think the Taliban are sick barbarians.  But if Ryan and Akin had their way, we’d have 14-year-old rape and incest victims dying from illegal abortions.  That is every bit as sick and barbaric.

I voted for Bush 43 in 2004 and McCain in 2008 because I was afraid of the radical Muslims.   I’m still a registered Republican, but I’m voting for Obama because I’m afraid of the radical Christians.  I want to defeat the Christian Taliban here at home.