Don’t forget the neocons. And in some ways those guys are worse than the liberals. Neocons are quite willing to start major wars to advance their agenda.
Posted on 08/13/2021 5:20:48 PM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
American soldiers would often show up at villages in rural areas of Afghanistan to win the 'hearts and minds' of the locals only to learn that they not only don't understand what America is, but aren't even aware that they're living in a country called Afghanistan.
And don't especially care.
Afghanistan is an imaginary country. Much like Iraq and Syria. These places have history, but the idea of a country is an external concept embraced by local elites who want centralized authority, but resisted by locals in rural areas.
(Excerpt) Read more at danielgreenfield.org ...
Not even remotely true.
Leave them alone.
Same thing my Bosnian neighbor says about the former Yugoslavia.
The country was a political construct created after WWI
and it eventually fell apart into
the Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and other ethnic groups,
who never really felt like they belonged to the same country.
It’s also inherently narcisstic and believes that it is the one true objective view of the world. Everyone is a liberal, they just aren’t educated enough to realize it. It cannot seriously deal with the fact that people might fully understand it and reject it outright.
I don’t even know what an Afghanistan looks like
Accurate for Afghanistan.
Not accurate with Iraq.
Tribal affiliation matters less in Iraq, and much of the population is urban, with some having even traveled to Russia, Western Europe or the US pre 1991.
Iraq had a >60% literacy rate when we invaded in 2003, while Afghanistan after 20 years of our best effort is at 43%. Iraq is more secular and in fact the ba’ath party was a secular socialist one. Iraq had some national identity, a working government buerocracy, something to support an economy (oil), and decent infrastructure.
Iraq and Afghanistan are not comparable.
Iraq failed because we quit. It was politically expedient and driven by national election politics. Afghanistan failed because it was a bridge too far from day one.
After the Kingdom of Sardinia unified Italy and Prussia unified Germany, some Serbs thought that they could play a similar role in unifying the Southern Slavs, more of whom were under Austro-Hungarian rule. The South Slav provinces of Austria-Hungary were pretty impoverished but on the whole more advanced than Serbia was then so the inhabitants did not necessarily hanker for being under Serb rule (unless perhaps they were ethnic Serbs).
During WWI the Yugoslav Committee (a bunch of intellectuals and activists) tried to lay the groundwork for a unified South Slavic state. The Serbian government played along but had a different notion of what the resulting states should look like. Part of the problem was the fear that Italy would seize a lot of those territories as a reward for being one of the victorious allies (Italy did manage to grab some ethnically Slav or ethnically German areas after the war).
As Austria-Hungary collapsed at the end of the war, the upper classes in the South Slavic areas were afraid of anarchy and were willing to throw in their lot with Serbia but differences quickly emerged about what kind of state it should be, how centralized. The Serbs won out and created a centralized state under the ruling Serbian dynasty, but the other ethnic groups were unhappy from the start.
Stjepan Radic, the leading Croatian politician of the period (later assassinated) said that the Croats rushed into the new state like drunk geese in a fog.
Iraq isn’t as tribal, but the Sunni-Shiite-Kurd split is a big deal.
And the peasant answers "What's a king?"
And Iraq as we know it today is a purely arbitrary construct, arising out of the deconstruction of the Ottoman Empire after WW1. Never should have existed at all.
Don’t forget the neocons. And in some ways those guys are worse than the liberals. Neocons are quite willing to start major wars to advance their agenda.
Ah yes such bliss. Just leave them alone.
Their goal is to take over Afghanistan.
Their next goal is to take over Pakistan.
When they do, the Taliban have the bomb. The only question is
how violent a faction of the Taliban will take over?
The Taliban aren’t going to leave anyone alone.
They could very easily become China’s proxy against India.
MAD served us well for decades, but for those who wish to
die for Allah, not so much.
Good luck when the Taliban come to the conclusion that
Allah wants India destroyed.
Our (the West’s) deterrent to China in the region will be
gone.
Iran will gain from all this. China will. The West takes
a big hit.
Yup. Purely arbitrary construct.
From my home page
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Here’s what I wrote on the subject of Iran, Iraq & Afghanistan a while back.
To: NormsRevenge
We SHOULD withdraw from Iraq — via Tehran.
Here’s how I think we should ‘pull out of Iraq. Add one more front to the scenario below, which would be a classic amphibious beach landing from the south in Iran, and it becomes a ‘strategic withdrawal from Iraq. And I think the guy who would pull it off is Duncan Hunter.
How to Stand Up to Iran
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1...osts?page=36#36
Posted by Kevmo to TomasUSMC
On News/Activism 03/28/2007 7:11:08 PM PDT 36 of 36
Split Iraq up and get out
***The bold military move would be to mobilize FROM Iraq into Iran through Kurdistan and then sweep downward, meeting up with the forces that we pull FROM Afghanistan in a 2-pronged offensive. We would be destroying nuke facilities and building concrete fences along geo-political lines, separating warring tribes physically. At the end, we take our boys into Kurdistan, set up a couple of big military bases and stay awhile. We could invite the French, Swiss, Italians, Mozambiqans, Argentinians, Koreans, whoever is willing to be the police forces for the regions that we move through, and if the area gets too hot for these peacekeeper weenies we send in military units. Basically, it would be learning the lesson of Iraq and applying it.
15 rules for understanding the Middle East
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774248/posts
Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas — like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.
Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.
Let’s say my scenario above is what happens. Would that military mobilization qualify as a ‘withdrawal from Iraq as well as Afghanistan? Then, when we’re all done and we set up bases in Kurdistan, it wouldn’t really be Iraq, would it? It would be Kurdistan.
.
.
I have posted in the past that I think the key to the strategy in the middle east is to start with an independent Kurdistan. If we engaged Iran in such a manner we might earn back the support of these windvane politicians and wussie voters who don’t mind seeing a quick & victorious fight but hate seeing endless police action battles that don’t secure a country.
I thought it would be cool for us to set up security for the Kurds on their southern border with Iraq, rewarding them for their bravery in defying Saddam Hussein. We put in some military bases there for, say, 20 years as part of the occupation of Iraq in their transition to democracy. We guarantee the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan as long as they don’t engage with Turkey. But that doesn’t say anything about engaging with Iranian Kurdistan. Within those 20 years the Kurds could have a secure and independent nation with expanding borders into Iran. After we close down the US bases, Kurdistan is on her own. But at least Kurdistan would be an independent nation with about half its territory carved out of Persia. If Turkey doesn’t relinquish her claim on Turkish Kurdistan after that, it isn’t our problem, it’s 2 of our allies fighting each other, one for independence and the other for regional primacy. I support democratic independence over a bullying arrogant minority.
The kurds are the closest thing we have to friends in that area. They fought against Saddam (got nerve-gassed), they’re fighting against Iran, they squabble with our so-called ally Turkey (who didn’t allow Americans to operate in the north of Iraq this time around).
It’s time for them to have their own country. They deserve it. They carve Kurdistan out of northern Iraq, northern Iran, and try to achieve some kind of autonomy in eastern Turkey. If Turkey gets angry, we let them know that there are consequences to turning your back on your ‘friend when they need you. If the Turks want trouble, they can invade the Iraqi or Persian state of Kurdistan and kill americans to make their point. It wouldn’t be a wise move for them, they’d get their backsides handed to them and have eastern Turkey carved out of their country as a result.
If such an act of betrayal to an ally means they get a thorn in their side, I would be happy with it. It’s time for people who call themselves our allies to put up or shut up. The Kurds have been putting up and deserve to be rewarded with an autonomous and sovereign Kurdistan, borne out of the blood of their own patriots.
Should Turkey decide to make trouble with their Kurdish population, we would stay out of it, other than to guarantee sovereignty in the formerly Iranian and Iraqi portions of Kurdistan. When one of our allies wants to fight another of our allies, it’s a messy situation. If Turkey goes ‘into the war on Iran’s side then they ain’t really our allies and that’s the end of that.
I agree that it’s hard on troops and their families. We won the war 4 years ago. This aftermath is the nation builders and peacekeeper weenies realizing that they need to understand things like the ‘15 rules for understanding the Middle East
This was the strategic error that GWB committed. It was another brilliant military campaign but the followup should have been 4X as big. All those countries that don’t agree with sending troups to fight a war should have been willing to send in policemen and nurses to set up infrastructure and repair the country.
What do you think we should do with Iraq?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1752311/posts
Posted by Kevmo to Blue Scourge
On News/Activism 12/12/2006 9:17:33 AM PST 23 of 105
My original contention was that we should have approached the reluctant ‘allies like the French to send in Police forces for the occupation after battle, since they were so unwilling to engage in the fighting. It was easy to see that we’d need as many folks in police and nurse’s uniforms as we would in US Army unitorms in order to establish a democracy in the middle east. But, since we didn’t follow that line of approach, we now have a civil war on our hands. If we were to set our sights again on the police/nurse approach, we might still be able to pull this one off. I think we won the war in Iraq; we just haven’t won the peace.
I also think we should simply divide the country. The Kurds deserve their own country, they’ve proven to be good allies. We could work with them to carve out a section of Iraq, set their sights on carving some territory out of Iran, and then when they’re done with that, we can help ‘negotiate with our other ‘allies, the Turks, to secure Kurdish autonomy in what presently eastern Turkey.
That leaves the Sunnis and Shiites to divide up what’s left. We would occupy the areas between the two warring factions. Also, the UN/US should occupy the oil-producing regions and parcel out the revenue according to whatever plan they come up with. That gives all the sides something to argue about rather than shooting at us.
38 posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 3:55:19 PM by Kevmo (We need to get away from the Kennedy Wing of the Republican Party ~Duncan Hunter)
I have been advocating for several years a policy I call ‘embaseees’. Embassy + AirBase —> EmBASEeees. We go into a terrorist country, clear out their taliban equivalent, then withdraw to very large Embassies, perhaps 3 of them. Have them big enough to encompass a military airbase where we can use it for decades on end to conduct anti-terrorism operations. As long as the ‘host’ country aint killing Americans then we let them have self-sovereignty. Kind of like how we operated in the Phillipines for decades. We could even have an intermediate zone that we patrol but it would be autonomous. Let them have their taste of freedom. A referendum every 10 years to see how large the boundaries of the intermediate autonomous zone should be.
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This is a great piece. As Rush Limbaugh used to say, use the military to kill people and break things. After that’s done, leave.
Its a loose conglomeration of tribes that meet once per year to decide big issues like who gets what cut of the poppy crop and hold dancing boy contests.
Yes,
But... in the Iraq case, had we played our cards right, we could have taken advantage of this, just like Saddam did.
The Kurds (20%) were basically on our side, dependable, trustworthy, with cooperation and ties going back to 1991. The Sunni were fighting us, dreaming of their former ba’ath regime where they were in charge, but in reality with Iran’s influence and 60% of the population being Shia, that was only a dream. Once we pop smoke, the Shia will take over, as they did, and the Sunni will need to learn to play along but as an underdog. The Shia were not all against us. Some did not want the Iranian influence, some were pragmatic and while they wanted us gone, they saw the need for our presence in order to create stability, security, create governmental operating systems that would keep things running... Some of the more senior Shia leaders in Iraq were no fools and knew that it was in their own benefit that we stick around for a while.
In Iraq, unlike WWII, we did not have a comprehensive well thought out post war recovery/rebuilding plan. We had some basic ideas, but a lot of it was vague, not a lot of resources were put into it, and many of the assumptions that the plan was based on proved to be false (but no one ever looked into whether these assumptions are accurate).
Many of the senior leaders in the DoD are not of the same caliber that we had in WWII! The strategic thinkers (like a George C. Marshal) in WWII have been replaced by knuckle draggers like Odierno, or the PC demographic poster child like Ricardo Sanchez, or a political bureaucrat like a Shinseki. There were some highly competent ones as well, such as a Dempsey, but todays DoD has a lot of “leaders” that lack the intellectual capacity and the strategic thought of a MacArthur. The leadership problem in the DoD is an issue of its own but what is apparent is that GITMO became a failure for the same reason as Abu Gahrib, or the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps... These were all leadership failures if we really want to get down to it.
Again, we were able to have Nurnberg trials shortly after WWII because you had leaders that had already though this through even before the war ended (starting in earnest in 1943), where as after 9-11 the DoD was hopelessly overwhelmed, indecisive, frozen, even though they had precedent, and eventually the media and politics took over and decided things which could have, and should have, been managed by the DoD.
Probably the single biggest error made early on in Iraq specifically, which exacerbated the problem in both magnitude and duration, was the disbanding of the Iraqi military and intel service (Thank you Paul Bremmer). That was a disaster which not only took away a HUGE resource which we could have tapped into, but even created more enemies which we ended up struggling against for many years.
But even with some of the poor decisions we made, Iraq could have still made it.
***Iraq had the right ingredients for success***
But that is all history now-
Very nice post. Pretty interesting how we are still dealing with the fallout from lines drawn on a map over 100 years ago. And may still be 100 years hence.
Ethnic tensions and animosities are like smoldering coals that can be easily stirred up into a big conflagration especially by cynical opportunists. Example : USA 2021.
Rumsfeld was good.
I think he originally came from the planet Vulcan. LOL
Seriously, he gets a bad rap because he was stern, he had a tongue that could pierce a human like a knife... Even the brass didn’t like him because he was a former SECDEF, COL in the Navy reserve, and really smart (no bullshitting him). If you didn’t have your ducks in a row, he was going to sink you and he wouldn’t be worried about your feelings when he did it.
But the dude was smart! Some of the folks around him were full of shit (Wolfowitz), and they didn’t give him the best advice.
Rumsfeld was handed a very bad hand!
The DoD was the smallest since WWII and we had no ramp up time as in WWII where we knew we would eventually get involved. The DoD had been starved by 8 years of Clinton and a “Peace dividend” that already began in the last year of Bush H. It had an antiquated structure and doctrine all geared for the Soviet/Warsaw Pact cold war era threat. The DoD was equipped for this big force on force Soviet/Warsaw pact threat.
And now comes 9-11 and we want to go war, but then fight insurgents/guerrillas, do nation building...
Years ago I read an article about a meeting Rumsfeld held with some top Pentagon generals. It was right before the invasion of Iraq. An Air Force general who was present said that an insurgency might occur after Saddam was defeated. Perhaps the US should have plan in place to counter that.
Rumsfeld exploded, and said that he would fire the next man who mentioned the word “insurgency”. And of course an insurgency did occur. I never forgot that article, and it forever soured me on Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld was advised by “experts” (whom he put his confidence in early on) that while having incredible pedigrees and being able to write extremely well, gave advice on matters that exceeded the scope of their actual expertise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz
I think there is probably a reason why Wolfowitz was “promoted” to be the president of the World Bank in early 2005. Supposedly, Wolfowitz thought that we would be seen as liberators and any idea of an insurgency was labeled as nonsense. I’d imagine the wheels were set in motion for that “promotion” already in 2004.
I do not pretend to know Rumsfeld first hand. I merely heard him speak in person on two separate occasions, I saw some of the decisions he made, like bringing in a retired general but the “perfect man for the job:” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schoomaker (picked by Rumsfeld)... The reorganization of the Army which was in line with the sort of missions we were doing and frankly had been doing since the early/mid 90s.
From where I stood and what I saw, Rumsfeld was a lot like a computer. Data goes in, some sort of logical algorithm computes courses or action, risk, cost and benefit, and an answer comes out. The guy was smart, a bureaucrat in a positive way (all about effectiveness first and efficiency second but not PC at all)...
IMHO,
1.) Much of the dislike for Rumsfeld stems from association with the administration of the time.
2.) Then there was his short, pointed and at times -painful sting- of the tongue with which he whipped folks in the media, politicians, our NATO partners, even his own generals (no one was spared). He had a way to get a point across that stabbed people in the heart.
3.) Finally, as you correctly point out, there were some bad estimates early on that ultimately as the guy in charge, he is responsible for even though that advice came from experts advising him. Then again, when you’re dealing with multiple conflicts, large scale, and where action needs taken immediately, can you really give me a case where we get everything exactly right?
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