Posted on 12/01/2012 10:40:09 PM PST by nickcarraway
A couple of days ago, speaking in the House of Lords, former British Labour Defence Minister Baron John Gilbert suggested that UK should drop a neutron bomb on the Pak-Afghan border for creating impassable sanitary cordons between the two countries. "Your Lordships may say that this is impractical, but nobody lives up in the mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan except for a few goats and a handful of people herding them," Baron Gilbert is quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India. "If you told them that some ERRB (Enhanced Radiation/Reduced Blast) warheads were going to be dropped there and that it would be a very unpleasant place to go, they would not go there."
The statement might be disregarded as idle talk of an 85-yer-old former functionary, but several factors prompt to attach a little more importance to it than may come to mind at first glance.
For one, Baron Gilbert, despite being retired from active service, still remains an influential member of the defence and intelligence community in the UK.
But what is more important, the statement reflects the present state of affairs surrounding Afghanistan in view of the expected withdrawal of NATO troops form the country. Britain at the moment has around 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, while the US keeps a much larger contingent which at the moment numbers around 66,000. The numbers are going to be reduced, but at the moment no one can tell for sure to what extent.
Recently, the US and British media reported that while no final decision has been made, the US top military brass is mulling the idea of keeping around 10,000 troops (the options range from 6,000 to 15,000) after the announced withdrawal. To understand the exact figure, one must ask what the troops are going to do there.
Their mission is definitely not going to be "security and assistance" as it has been over the 11 years of their presence in the occupied country. These goals could not be achieved with the 100 plus thousand, and while the number of foreign troops is reducing and the number of "insider attacks" by Afghan troops against the coalition is increasing, the chances of achieving these goals are coming close to zero. And the Taliban are only too eager to wait till the number of foreign troops gets down to the critical point to launch a decisive offensive.
If that is the most probable prospect, then why should the US (and, probably, its allies) want to leave behind any number of soldiers risking their lives like it happened as far back as 1842 when the whole British contingent in Kabul was slaughtered by Afghans?
The answer is simple. Afghanistan plays a specific role in the US strategic plans of imposing its geopolitical pressure on the whole area embracing the Middle East, Central and South Asia. Therefore, it is crucial for the US to maintain at least four or five military bases on its territory for an unlimited and unspecified period of time. Ten to fifteen thousand troops is just the exact number needed for the bases' maintenance.
But this needs at least relative stability. The present Afghan leadership (or whatever leaders are imposed on Afghanistan after the 2014 troops withdrawal and "general elections") are obviously incapable of guaranteeing it.
This leaves only two options. One is trying to establish some dialogue with the Taliban. But neither side seems eager to do this. And recently one of the most vocal instruments of the US "humanitarian" global policy, the Human Rights Watch, unequivocally stated that it is opposed to such dialogue, urging the US administration not to provide immunity to the Taliban fighters in return for peace talks.
But if the negotiation process looks out of question and the West-sponsored leaders lack the capacity to ensure stability in the country, that leaves open only one option – the tactics of the scorched earth.
And in this context, Lord Gilbert's suggestion comes in more than handily.
We should have left after the punitive expedition phase and before the meals on wheels phase. So we should have been gone 10 years ago.
>>The Malakand Field Force.
>>Winston S. Churchill.
>>First published 1898.
Also available for free from Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9404
I’m currently about 3/4ths through it, reading it on an iPad Mini.
This book should have been required reading for every NSC member of the Bush Administration and the entire State Department. All that has changed is the weaponry. The mindset of the inhabitants is the same.
To close, some Kipling:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
From here:
http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1799.html
The Young British Soldier
By Rudyard Kipling
So if that can be achieved, do you think the best course would then be to withdraw our people, or is a continuing presence necessary? I would be concerned if the latter were the case because if it were to happen that a long, drawn-out postlude were to be necessary the public would have little enthusiasm for it, especially if it entailed significant casualties. And of course there would be a poltical price to pay for that, which would make it unattractive as a focus of a campaign. I’m old enough to have lived through the Vietnam era. It drove Johnson from office and was a factor in Humphrey’s loss.
It was KGB Active Measures and their agents of influence in American media, academe, and Washington social life that drove LBJ from office. He opposed their Hanoi allies, so they hammered him with media propaganda and "drove up his negatives" until he quit. Remember, George McGovern was a candidate that year, as well as Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy.
McGovern was their man -- all the Red, pro-Communist elements of the Democratic Party came together to disrupt the Party in 1968 and then seize it in 1971, or whenever it was that they held those stacked "reform caucuses" that put the "McGovern wing" of the Democratic Party (who were really Communists in drag as "Progressives") and McGovern in the limelight as the 1972 nominee.
McGovern had been a delegate to Stalin's "rump Democratic" convention in 1948, the one that nominated Henry Wallace, Stalin's man. The prototypes for McGovern were the "mild-mannered reformer and center-left leader, Man of the People" whom the Communists later cast aside and stride into the open when their cadres are in position to seize power: Mossadegh in Iran, Sukarno in Indonesia, Nasser in Egypt, Allende in Chile, and Mandela and Oliver Tambo in South Africa, and the current ANC leadership there.
The Communist wing of the Democratic Party owns it now, and they nominated, in the years after 1971, McGovern, Carter, Manchurian candidate Bill Clinton, then Gore, then old VVAW Communist collaborator John Kerry, and now Obama.
None of these guys was a centrist, except maybe Carter (but his people were the old McGovern people, and therefore Progs), and Gore before he went to the Rio Conference and picked up his Green/Red Old Communist Environmental Agenda kitbag. Clinton played at being a centrist, but he turned hard-left the instant he entered office, as befitted an old SDS member -- the old Fabian "wolf in sheep's clothing" motif (it's on their coat of arms) -- and we got the Hillarycare try and the gun-ban/midnight basketball shambles.
Remember, to get the gun ban, remember, Clinton burned dozens of pro-gun Democratic congressmen who went against their constituents, like Jack Brooks of Texas, and were promptly incinerated by their enraged constituents. In Brooks's case, a 30-year incumbent was beaten like a rug by a political nobody, it was that bad. It was just like Nancy Pelosi's burning dozens of the "centrist"/"blue dog" Democrats that she and Rahm Emmanuel had recruited in 2006 and 2008, to get Obamacare -- sometimes the institutional goal is so important ("Healthcare is the keystone of the arch of Soviet power" -- V.I. Lenin), that it's worth throwing a lot of fellow-travelers over the side, and risking one's Speakership, to get it.
I think that in The Suck, Obama is deliberately trying to create a Dien Bien Phu scenario similar to the siege of Khe Sanh, in which General Vo Nguyen Giap tried to recreate his setpiece victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Obama is trying to create a victory for the Caliphate with American bodies being mutilated and dragged just like in Somalia, only this time thousands of them.
I think it would be better to do it Alexander's way, who left a garrison but as a rally-point at which he could suddenly appear with his main force and start scragging the backstabbers (Afghans have always been championship weasels and backstabbers).
Don't leave a huge force to be an irritant, but the one that remains has to be able to defend itself until the cavalry gets there; and they should be taken out, too, when the USG is satisfied that the Afghan government of the day is not going to ally with the Wahhabist Pathans again and invite Al Q'aeda back in. Denial of Al Q'aeda is the key.
That is an interesting alternative to complete withdrawal, which, sooner or later, would be preferable. Having some measure of security for the remaining forces might entail a significant continuing commitment, and I am not sure how that would play out politically unless the national government were friendly and stable. We still maintain considerable presence in places like South Korea, but as long as there are no continuing hostilities to generate casualties and thus domestic discontent, the public seems to accept it.
“No, what 0bama plans is not a socialist Europe, but a monstrous country modeled after the unfortunate country that was formerly known as Rhodesia..”
Indulge less, GrassSmoker.
Rhodesia was a majority black nation. America is a largley white nation, which means that any race based violence will be won by the majority side.
Note: That means Bammy and the Obamoids lose, Rhodesia style.
This book should have been required reading for every NSC member of the Bush Administration and the entire State Department. All that is changed is the weaponry. The mindset of the inhabitants is the same.
I am reminded by your observation of something I read once. It was to the effect that: if one does not study the lessons of past history, one is doomed to make the same mistakes.
On your enabling others to read this book on-line, I would opine that it is as if a young Churchill is staring down at Western Civilization.
Those Afghan women! No wonder men risked their lives to rescue their wounded in that war. Churchill records this.
But they never met Alvin York, and they by-God never met Alvin York armed with a Barrett.
I had to go to Google to find out about Ronnie Barrett and his arms manufacturing concerns. Quite new to me, still, all power to anyone who can provide a quick entry to whatever paradise the fanatics aspire to.
My only experience was with the British Lee-Enfield on garrison duty only. That sure dates me. (laugh)
Hmmm, well, the Lee-Enfield had such a long service life, esp. among Empire/Commonwealth countries, that it sorta doesn't. You could have been walking post with a 1915 SMLE in the 20's, or pulling the duty with an arsenal-reserve post-WW II Australian example in Papua New Guinea or India or South Africa in the 60's.
When I was 12 or so, I wanted one of the Mark V "jungle carbines" I saw on the Woolworth's war-surplus table for $25 or so, so badly I could taste it. My dad said no, however; he thought I wasn't ready yet for a high-powered rifle (and it was). A .22 was more my speed, back then.
I have been out and about...
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