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Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | новости рупии | 卢比新闻 | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ルピーニュース | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | پاکستاني کھاتا | Moin Ansari | معین آنصآرّی |  اخبار روپیہ |  April 20th, 2008 |

Python swallows Alligator–explodes

By Moin Ansari 

The ethereal example of Penopolesian perpetual and mimetic warfare between Athens and Sparta led to the emaciation and denouement of the Athenian republic. The sane tocsin from our founding fathers about these “foreign entanglements” was perennial and is still valid. We ignore the advice at our own peril. Sure enough these entanglements are deleterious to our freedoms, and are rusting our very foundations for which our progeny may have to pay a ponderous priceHow could the $80 Billion American think-tank industry get it all wrong in Iraq, and Afghanistan? How could both political parties get caught up in endless political “cul de sacs” and be clueless?

Thomas Kuhn explains it as being incarcerated in the wrong paradigm. Kuhn describes it as “believing in the wrong framework” which is setup by vested interests. Military experts and Business leaders caught up in a tsunami of the same “esoteric intellectual straight-jacket” mimic each other’s inscribed opinions to such an extent that they simply become burlesque parodies of each others.

When the intellectual capital of the comedian Jon Stewart begins to dwarf the combined consonance of our febrile intellectual elite, our president, our congress and our cerebral leaders should know that, something is very wrong. Our nation facing mass vertigao has muddled through the obfuscation and confusion and now have a clearer vision of the truth than our branches of government. How can we deconstruct and decompose the popular but wrong concepts? Does anyone remember Iraq before the surge.

From Hit and Run back to the Green Zone To Cut and Run to the safety of our homeland:

According to a report released this week – Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat… The GAO was asked to assess firstly the progress in meeting these national security goals for Pakistan’s FATA, and secondly the status of US efforts to develop a comprehensive plan for the FATA. To address these objectives, GAO compared national security goals against assessments conducted by US agencies and reviewed available plans.

According to its findings, the United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats.

According to the Department of State, GAO noted, Pakistan deployed 120,000 military and paramilitary forces in the FATA and helped kill and capture hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda operatives; these efforts cost the lives of about 1,400 members of Pakistan’s security forces. However, GAO found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate, State, and embassy documents, as well as Defence officials in Pakistan, that Al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the US and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA. No comprehensive plan for meeting US national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism in 2003, which called for by an independent commission, mandated by congressional legislation in 2007.

In 2006, the US embassy, in conjunction with Defence, State, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and in cooperation with the government of Pakistan, began an effort to focus more attention on other key elements of national power, such as development assistance and public diplomacy, to address US goals in the FATA. However, this does not yet constitute a comprehensive plan or a single coordinated strategy “that includes all elements of national power – diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support.”

The GAO could have saved a lot of money and a lot of trees and compiled that report in one word “defeat.” The other few hundred pages are excuses in support of the blame game–blame Pakistan, blame NATO, blame corruption, blame the terrain, blame the CIA. 

The prevailing verdict on the Petraeus-Crocker show is that it accomplished little beyond certifying President Bush’s intention to kick the can to January 2009 so that the helicopters will vacate the Green Zone on the next president’s watch. That’s true, but by week’s end, I became more convinced than ever that in January we’ll have a new policy that includes serious withdrawals and serious conversations with Mr. Maliki’s pals in Iran, even if John McCain becomes president.

General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker define victory as “sustainable security” in Iraq. But both Colin Powell and Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said last week that current troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan are unsustainable and are damaging America’s readiness to meet other security threats. And that’s not all that’s unsustainable. An ailing economy can’t keep floating the war’s $3-billion-a-week cost. A Republican president intent on staying the Bush course will find his vetoes unsustainable after the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in November. No war can be fought indefinitely if the public has irrevocably turned against it.

Mr. McCain says Americans want “victory,” whatever that means today, and yes, they would if it could be won on the terms promised by Mr. Bush five years ago – fast, and with minimal sacrifice. It’s way too late to ask for years of stepped-up sacrifice now in the cause of a highly debatable definition of “national interests.” Frank Rich is a regular New York Times columnist.

It is like General Motors, with its J Cars, K cars and the other failures. It is like rearranging the chairs on the Titinic. Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a bi-partisan panel that produced a report. It was called the Hamilton Baker Report. It is still valid and needs to be implemented. The Hamilton Baker Report belatedly illuminated the follies of the current administration, however it failed to put forward a recipe for a successful withdrawal from a quagmire. Congress has failed miserably to provide oversight on the actions of the administration.

So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees. The commissioner’s office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

The fawning US media has displayed a bankruptcy of ideas in presenting fresh and unsullied points of view. “Staying the course” Baker style (even though the Baker band calls it a “new way in Iraq”) will exponentially escalate another wave of anti-Americanism, unleash catastrophic consequences for America and may devolve the entire region into chaos. 

Unfortunately, the Iraq Study Group report does too little to change the flawed mind-set that led to the misguided war in Iraq. Maybe there are still people in Washington who need a study group to tell them that the policy in Iraq isn’t working, but the American people are way ahead of this report“” 

he Baker report was a sugar coated “low profile war” providing a fig-leaf for the 2008 elections. More of the same for more than 24 months provides no new ideas.

A while back Senator Fiengold said:

 “Unfortunately, the Iraq Study Group report does too little to change the flawed mind-set that led to the misguided war in Iraq. Maybe there are still people in Washington who need a study group to tell them that the policy in Iraq isn’t working, but the American people are way ahead of this report”"

Why did the giants “lay an egg” and why is the report so diluted? United States Senator Russ Fiengold in criticizing the ISG aptly said that the ISG did not interview any anti-war politicians or generals.

“who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism,” 

How could the ISG come up with a reasonable report when it did not take into account the opinion of 70% of the American population. Additionally Muslim leaders from the USA or around the world were also not consulted. The ISG report is a whitewash offering some cover for an about turn to the president who is cherry-picking only the weakest points submitted. The Pied Piper of the White House leads the imbedded press corps which subserviently reports the White House point of view interviewing other reporters or while incarcerated in the “Green Zone” in Baghdad—unable or unwilling to venture out and show America the truth in Iraq Palestine or Afghanistan.

“are playing Russian roulette with America’s future with their bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric. Muslims may constitute as much as a third of humankind by 2050, forming a vast market and a crucial labor pool. They will be sitting on the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources. The United States will increasingly have to compete with emerging rivals such as China and India for access to those Muslim resources and markets, and if its elites go on denigrating Muslims, America will be at a profound disadvantage during the next century.” Juan Cole

The obsequious media dismissed the consequences of the war when Collin Powell said “if you broke it you bought it“. The sycophantic media scoffed when the dictator Saddam’ Husein’s defined this battle as “the mother of all battles” or when his sidekick Baghdad Bob made his final prophetic utterance on April 7, 2003 “this invasion will end in failure”. The media was unable to handle the truth from one of the best reporters out there Peter Arnett and does not publish Robert Fisk who succinctly translated the Baker-Hamilton report as ”The Roman Empire is falling“.

Fisk also write that  ”…Just as Crassus lost his legions’ banners in the deserts of Syria-Iraq, so has George W Bush. There is no Mark Antony to retrieve the honour of the empire. The policy “is not working“. “Collapse” and “catastrophe” – words heard in the Roman senate many a time – were embedded in the text of the Baker report.” Mr. David Michael Green in a recent article titled “Baker Cooks Up Another Foul Dish” published on commondreams vividly describes the new rendition of the story of Biblical proportions unfolding in Mesopotamia, described by Saddam Husein as “the mother of all battles”. 

The statue of the dictator Saddam Husein fell, and he was taunted and hanged on Eid day but the Emperor who declared “Mission Accomplished“ has no clothes. The clichés, the butt of late night jokes will live long after the dust settles in Mosul and Falujah. Perhaps future generations will inscribe the words on other statues. The sound and fury of a few good men and women (Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Senator. Russ Feingold and Rep. John Murtha) is drowned in the cacophony of those pre-Copernicus dinosaurs (Friedman and company) who believe that “the world is flat.”

The sound advice to “columnists” to commit journalistic “hari kari” will be ignored by the Neocon scoundrels, because admitting a mistake would this would suggest the existence of an iota of integrity. It is these same scoundrels that sounded the bugles of war the prepared an susceptible American public to the most affective campaign of disinformation in the history of mankind.

The Neocon propaganda eclipses the machinations of Joseph Goebells. The unrelenting Neocon propaganda was unleashed to achieve an agenda, and was surely not based on any reality or truth. Unfortunately, the Neocons vampires are still thirsty for Muslim blood and will continue to come up with justification to continue the Crusades against Syria, Iran, Sudan, Somalia and possibly Pakistan. Unfortunately many in the Middle East and South America see them as the face of our great nation. 

Neocons that ignore the writings of President Carter will not be swayed by the writings of  a motley crew put together to justify defeat and carnage.. No progress in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine seems likely. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s favorite General the Lord Guthrie called Britain’s policy in Afghanistan as “cuckoo“. Tom Koenigs, the diplomat heading the UN mission in Afghanistan said that NATO cannot defeat the Talibaan by brute force alone. Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai, governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, said in an interview with Reuters news agency late last month that U.S. and British military actions in Afghanistan were merely feeding a “snowballing” insurgency.The public at home is increasingly fed a media diet of gibbirish.The vitriol of the media can be described as bilious diatribe and the craven spectacle which profanes pure virgin intelligence gets lost in the prolixity of its soporific banality reaching a new nadir in shallowness and credulousness.

The pugnacious media’s selective amnesia malevolently fails to consider the fact that Pakistan has deployed 100,000 troops in our tribal areas alone – and in Afghanistan, the area which is 20 times larger than the tribal area, there are 40,000 NATO troops. The NATO troops are impotent in a sea of hashish and IEDs.  Pakistanis are right when they say “we are doing much more than any body.” More than 1000 Pakistanis have died fighting the so called “war on terror”, and Pakistan has been a US ally since 1947.

Pakistanis wanted “Friends not Masters“. Now they are saying “we don’t want your favors or your hate“. This reminds them of other predations, the Gulf of Tonkin, the WMDs in Iraq. Are we resurrecting the desiccated and mummified plans of yesteryear’s morass, the plans that bombed Vietnam’s neighbors, Laos and Cambodia. A cabal of polemicists, some public officials and their claque in the licensed media seek to ensnare our country in a series of proxy wars that are not in America’s interests.Last year I read an article in a newspaper about a story in Florida. “Python swallows alligator and then explodes“.

Mr. Khamenei of Iran said something similar “The occupation of Iraq is not a morsel that the US can swallow,” The worst is yet to come in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The last allied or NATO troop will be reminded to “turn the lights off”. Images of the last American helicopter leaving Saigon is etched into the collective memory of political scientists around the world.  The lessons of the USSRs defeat in Afghanistan has been lost.

The lessons of the Peloponnesian war when Athens lost its democratic roots and it’s independence, because of her prolonged war with Sparta are very appropriate in our current times.

The lessons of the British defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan should have been included in the report. Fortunately the American people scared, and fearful for a few years have been able to see through the fog, and seen the reality. The wrath of the angry American on those who lied to them and misled them will be remembered by generations. President Carter’s new book on Palestine is a breath-of-fresh-air and living testimonial that the American conscience is alive. The American people have spoken and have told the President to withdraw. The American people will not tolerate anything else. 

Concerted Police Action, without a failed war, can solve Afghan terror

US AfPak policy review results mimic Chinese demads given to Hillary Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. ~Abraham Lincoln In 1821 The Taliban was a construct of the CIA and was armed by the CIA:–Congressman Dana Rohrabacher Obama’s Vietnam & Cambodiazation of the Afghan war Solutions to “Obama’s Vietnam” Kabul: The Final Spring Offensive? End of NATO? Afghanistan: The writing is on the wall. Can Obama read it? UK Brig. Smith: “We’re not going to win this [Afghan] war”
Failure and Defeat in Afghanistan: Inevitable Frustration & misdirected Payback for ally Pakistan US Charge of the Light Brigade into Pakistan is a US failure and has to stop

Pakistan’s do more list for the USA Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan & Swat run by Taliban Huge Migraine for India

Facing the Khyber poltergeist & Ganges hobgoblin NATO war: UK 1880 defeats in Afghanistan

The folly of the UKs “Charge of the Light Brigade” in Afghanistan AGAIN reminds us of Britian’s previous defeat in Afghainstan. Unfortunately the lessons of the unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838–42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students.

Bin Laden used Reagan’s USSR strategy to Destroy US Capitalism? Cambodiazation of the Afghan war Rescueing the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan

Unite! Erase the Durand Line Solution: Fixing “AfPak” expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan & Afghanistan The emerging “Leave Pakistan to Afghanistan” strategy goes mainstream–Extricating the US from the Lost in the Khyber