The Marines and Civilian Safety in Helmand Battle

The last few days have seen unusual advance publicity for the impending Marine attack on the important village of Marja in Helmand, as well as a lot of focus on the Petraeus/McChrystal counter-insurgency doctrine of protecting the civilian population against the Taliban (who, however, often are the civilian population; bit of a dilemma there) and exercising restraint in calling in air strikes.  This is, of course, good to see, even if saving some civilian lives may mean more Marines put at risk, at least in the short run.  (On the other hand, the calculus here must be, in part, that operational restraint will win hearts and minds; which will turn the locals against the Taliban; which will hasten "success" in Afghanistan (however that's to be measured) and therefore save Marine lives over the long haul.

Today's LA Times reports, however, that the Marines are also warning civilians to flee the area - which again points to what good guys we are and how evil the "enemy" is.  But as the LAT notes, "Many Afghans . . . are reluctant to leave homes and farms unattended. For cultural reasons, Pashtun tribesmen are also often unwilling to let women and children take shelter elsewhere without a male family member."  So, in other words, ideally our warnings to the locals may make us out to be humanitarians solicitous of their welfare, but the fact of the matter is that a large percentage of them simply can't leave, and are therefore going to be in harm's way.  Again, the LAT notes:

The Marja assault will be the largest joint effort by U.S., coalition and Afghan troops since the Taliban was chased from power in 2001, and the first major offensive since President Obama's decision to authorize sending 30,000 additional troops to the country.

It is also a test of whether a large-scale ground battle can be conducted in a densely populated setting without large numbers of civilian deaths and injuries. About 85,000 people live in Marja itself, and an estimated 45,000 more in outlying parts of the district.

At least one source warns of another Fallujah in the making.  For those of you who don't remember, that was the Iraqi city on the Euphrates that US Marines pulverized in 2004, at the cost of thousands of Iraqi lives and the demolition of much of the city, in an attempt to squelch the then burgeoning Sunni insurgency.  All it did was enrage the people of Iraq, who still look back on it as one of the more egregious atrocities perpetrated against them by the US.  (Today, of course, given the 24/7 news cycle and the short memories of most Americans, I'd wager that most of our fellow citizens wouldn't be able to distinguish Fallujah from Flagstaff.)

But thinking back to the early days of the invasion of Afghanistan, I remember participating in an open forum here on campus, in which I spoke about the devastation US forces were wreaking there.  One member of the audience, however, criticized my comments by noting that, after all, we had warned the population to clear out before we came in, so what's the problem.  I just about lost it completely, sitting up on that stage.  You'd have thought, from this young man's comments, that it was simply a matter of gassing up the SUV, piling the kiddies and grandma and grandpa into those comfortable seats, maybe even hitting the MacDonalds drive-thru window for some Happy Meals on the way out of town, and then taking off for a few pleasant days in the countryside until the danger had passed.

Let's face it: most of us are clueless as to the misery of most Afghans' lives even before we force them onto the roads (such as they are) to flee for their lives.  And when they come back (if they're still alive), they're likely to find their homes and villages destroyed, their pitiful fields and crops trashed, and their livelihoods ruined.

Our media and military, however, will be celebrating "success", and the "liberation" of the locals.

One step closer to a new war?

Mr. Ahmadinejad has announced that Iran will now begin to produce more highly enriched uranium - not the 90% needed for a weapon, but up to 20%, needed for Iran's medical reactor.  As the NYT's report notes, it may be gamesmanship to get a better enrichment deal from the West, but it's another "in your face" to the US and its European allies.  Sec Def Gates has used the announcement to issue yet another call for more sanctions.  And of course, the announcement will surely set off more alarm bells within the Netanyahu government.  But the Iranian government also says "Iran's stance on the nuclear fuel swap has not changed. Iran is still ready to do such an exchange and if the other side is ready we can negotiate over the details of such a deal."

Games of "chicken" are seldom fun for the onlookers, and tend to end badly.

Mossad assassination of Hamas official in Dubai

The Mossad's  hugely illegal act of assassinating a Hamas official in Dubai has been commented on all over the internet.  (And combined with the recent anti-Syria rhetoric from Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, as well as talk about a new IDF incursion into Gaza, and a new Palestinian intifada . . . .well, tensions overall have been ramped up.) 

At some point, sooner or later, there likely will be a reprisal from Hamas.  Such reprisals, of course, have often provided Israel with a pretext for over-reaction that suits Israel's ultimate goal of keeping its Arab neighbors cowed into submission.

Sounding the alarm on an impending war with Iran

Seumas Milne in The Guardian makes the case, and with reason.  The US's actions in ramping up naval forces in the Persian Gulf, providing weapons and missile defense systems to the Gulf Sheikhdoms, issuing warnings to Iran (and to China for failing to support the US and the Euros in applying sanctions to Iran) all suggest a hardening of attitudes, a line being drawn in the sand, that bodes ill.

And we're heading into an election season . . . what Obama once termed the "silly season" . . . when Obama and his party will have to pander to the Israel lobby and all the congressmen in its thrall.   Obama's once outreached hand will be withdrawn into his pocket,  and he and his will instead be baring their teeth to Mr. Ahmadinejad and the "mad mullahs."  Of course, Obama understands that a military strike against Iran would not save his presidency (as Daniel Pipes asserts), but destroy it, and probably trash the global economy.  Obama understands that . .  . 

. . . doesn't he?

Bushama's Never-Ending Wars

It truly wears on a person to be always spotting gloom and doom lying down the road, but the impending release of the Pentagon's quadrennial review indicates that the US is poised to be fighting lots of wars, in a variety of theaters, in the years ahead - and that the Pentagon is going to be asking for proportionally larger budget allocations to fund them.  (And, of course, in looking ahead to a variety of wars and theaters, the Pentagon makes room to spread the appropriations wealth to ever more weapons manufacturers, which brings jobs to favored states and votes to legislators.)

According to Pentagon officials, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be asking for $708 billion, including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $44 billion more the 2010 budget of $664 billion.

The review also focuses on - among other things - more helicopters and drones for Afghanistan, cyber-attack prevention, and the looming threat from China - who, by the way, is feeling its muscles and asserting itself ever more strongly on the international stage.

All the while, the US is likely moving toward a negotiated settlement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, even while it undercuts the Karzai government by recruiting local tribal militias against them and funneling aid directly to them in order to keep Karzai's corrupt officials out of that loop.  None of this suggests that the US will be able to leave Afghanistan in the foreseeable future.

At the same time, we're ramping up Special Ops efforts in Yemen, selling missile defense systems to the Persian Gulf countries (to thwart Iran, as well as induce Israel to hold off on any military strike), permanently stationing naval forces in the Persian Gulf - and Congress is about to present Mr. Obama with a bill to authorize sanctions against Iran.

Of course, Mr. Obama has insisted that the US will indeed depart Iraq on his watch.  And truly, we keep hearing that it's all over there (or so says Max Boot and his ilk).  Except that it's not.  Tensions between the Shii-dominated Baghdad government of Nuri al-Maliki and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil are extremely high (and getting higher), over both territorial issues (like Kirkuk) and oil revenues.  General Odierno is having to re-insert US combat forces between the two to keep the peace.  Maliki's government has also banned from the upcoming elections more than 500 candidates, most of them Sunni or otherwise secular nationalists whom Maliki's Iranian allies don't want to see in any future Iraqi government.  One of Iraq's most influentials Sunni tribal leaders is threatening to call for a Sunni boycott.

And, to make things worse, today a suicide bomber killed perhaps as many as 50 Shii pilgrims making their way from Baghdad to Karbala to commemorate Arbain.  No, Iraq's not over.  Thomas Ricks may have been right to opine that it may be only beginning there.  What Obama will do if the lid blows off remains to be seen, but he has long been feeling pressure to delay the US withdrawal.

So, Bushama, you ask?  Well, why not.  These wars, these quagmires, these crises in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen now, and the ongoing crisis with Iran, were largely brought to you courtesy of George W. Bush.  And except for Iraq (which is by no means a done deal as far as the US is concerned), they've been continued, even ramped up, by his silver-tongued successor.  Fifty years from now, unless Mr. Obama acts soon to turn things around, historians will see them, and their policies, as cut from the same cloth, though embroidered with different rhetoric.

The Approaching Battle over Afghanistan?

Tony Karon's latest Time piece argues pretty persuasively that the US no longer has (if it indeed ever had) any real hope of "victory" in Afghanistan - the Taliban are too embedded and widespread to be defeated, and Pakistan is in no mood or condition to go after the Afghan Taliban who are inside their borders.  Rather, we're on our way to, at best, some kind of negotiated settlement that will leave much of the Taliban in place, with a major role in the Afghan government.

The key tension now seems to be the one between reconciliation and reintegration.  The US is all for the latter: providing jobs and economic assistance, as well as political reintegration, to lower-level Taliban whose principal reason for joining up may have been the wages; but excluding from the deal the upper management, as it were, and especially those who might have any links to al-Qaeda.

But in his recent speech at the London conference on the situation, Afghan president Hamid Karzai stunned the attendees by offering the possibility of actual reconciliation, which entails a much closer embrace of the Taliban within the Afghan body-politic.  And at this point, as this LA Times report shows, it's not at all clear that the US is ready to buy into that unless the Taliban agree to certain conditions - "renouncing violence, following the Afghan Constitution and, perhaps most important, agreeing to not help the Al Qaeda extremists whose presence in Afghanistan started the long war."  And there's also justifiable concern that women will suffer if the Taliban are allowed back into the government.

The battle I see approaching is one in the halls of Congress, and US public opinion.  I'll be very surprised if the McCain-Graham-Lieberman clique of "no victory, no honor" will accept any possibility of reconciliation with the Taliban unless it's done from a position of US military superiority that allows the US to impose terms, rather than negotiate them with the Taliban.  Then the question becomes: Can the US+NATO achieve that level of superiority?  Seems to me that could be possible only (1) at tremendous cost of treasure and lives (both US and Afghan) and (2) if the US can win the hearts and minds battle.

And on that score, the Taliban leadership may see themselves as currently having the upper hand.  No, the Taliban are not universally loved in Afghanistan, but neither is Karzai's corrupt government.  And after going on 9 years, many Afghans are fed up with the US presence - and our guys keep giving them reason to get even angrier.  The latest incident has angered a lot of Afghans:

A gunner in a U.S. military convoy shot and killed a local imam as he was driving his car here Thursday morning, prompting outrage among residents and an apology from coalition forces. . . .
Residents expressed outrage over the shooting of a man they described as a respected religious leader who had spent the past three months in Kabul teaching at an Islamic school and preaching at the Marqazi Jumad mosque.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Anand Gopal's recent piece uncovers an ongoing story that has received very little coverage here, but that many Afghans are enraged and humiliated by: the detention and abuse of "suspects" rounded up by US forces, often Special Ops guys who raid villages at night, bust down doors, and haul away men on the tiniest suspicion of evil-doing. ( And when you add to that humiliation the insult that those same night-raiders may be equipped with weapons sporting those "Jesus gunsights" . . . .).

Bottom line: The US will never be able to come home from Afghanistan "victorious" - unless, of course, our government and media truth-spinners find a way to re-define "victory"  to include a negotiated settlement with a still-powerful Taliban. 

Again, it brings to mind Gen. Petraeus' question about Iraq: "Tell me how this ends."  It also, for me, raises a version of the question the then Navy officer John Kerry asked about the Vietnam War: "Who wants to be the last man killed in an unwinnable war?"