There is much talk of “Safe Havens” in Pakistan and how the USA must eliminate them. Toto we are not in Kansas anymore, but Alice we may be in La La land. Does Secretary of Defense really believe that the world is as naive as that. His statements are as silly as the proof presented by General Colin Powell to the UN–recording of Arabs chatting about WMDs.
Talibanistan: 2009 Afghan map showing Taliban control
Does the “Big Brother” of 1984 believe what he is saying? How long can Goebbels keep on repeating the big lie? How long will this farce go on?
No credible reporter in the US has the guts to ask a simple question “What about the safe havens inside Afghanistan–right under the noses of ISAF, NATO, US and British forces?” No one has given a credible answer to the fact that 80% of Afghanistan is under Taliban control–why would the insurgents need safe havens in another country. Semantics are important to many. Pakistan points out the fact that there may be “hideouts” in FATA but they are not “sanctuaries”. These type of excuses were used during the Vietnam era to bomb Cambodia and Laos. It was a total catastrophe and a failure.
— this war has become something of a sideshow in South Asia… In his initial statements, Obama has seemed more sophisticated about Afghanistan than Bush. In an interview with me in late October, Obama said Afghanistan should be seen as part of a regional problem … The Aimless War: Why Are We in Afghanistan? By JOE KLEIN Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008
Soviet pull out, on February 15: “I believe that the war was a huge and in many respects irreparable political mistake of the leadership of the Soviet Union at the time.” Nowadays, Gromov stresses “the Moscow region regularly sends humanitarian aid to Afghanistan”. If Obamaplaced a call to Gromov he would hear a few sobering words: persist in your “strategy” and you and NATO will be defeated at the “graveyard of empires“.
The same farce was perpetuated in Vietnam–Laos and Cambodia were bombed. This destroyed the society in Cambodia giving rise to the Khemer Rouge. The same is happening in Pakistan!
The lessons of Vietnam and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan are lost. “Groupthink” does not allow the Think Tanks to “think” outside the box. No consultant wants to be caught off guard outside the envelope. Therefore, all of them say pretty much the same thing. Blame Pakistan for all evil, send more troops, ask NATO to send more boys to the slaughterhouse, and try to appease the Warlords with gobs of money–$143 Billion in aid has been wasted in Afghanistan.
Mr. Holbrooke said the crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan reminded him more of his days in Vietnam than of those in the Balkans. Both the Vietcong and the Taliban were rural-based insurgencies, and in both cases, he said, the United States was supporting weak and troubled civilian governments. New York Times. Civilians Reassert Themselves in U.S. Foreign Policy By DEXTER FILKINS April 11, 2009
Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | RUPEE NEWS | March2nd, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? |
The freedom fighters return
…The problem is Washington has no leverage, no credibility and no inside intelligence to conduct a wide-ranging purge of the ISI and the Pakistani army.
And then there’s the problem of endemic Afghan corruption. If you supply 93% of the world’s opium, you are definitely a narco-state. The Taliban may not control the complex web of poppy cultivation – but they profit from its transportation and smuggling.
To the detriment of romanticized politics, 9/11 was never organized in a cave in Afghanistan; it was plotted in cells in Germany and Spain by Saudis … with not a single Afghan among them. All subsequent attacks were planned basically in Western Europe, not in Afghanistan.
For its part, “historic” al-Qaeda today has nothing to do with a terror-oriented Citigroup; it is composed by no more than a few dozen shadowy figures – including Ayman al-Zawahiri – most probably hiding in the Waziristans and the enormous empty spaces of Balochistan. Backstage at the theater of ‘terror’ By Pepe Escobar. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009)
Getting out of Valhalla or new goals for war in AfPak: Can Obama’s “Neocon Lite” advisors sell old wine in new bottle
Revising Finance 101 for the Chinese Century: Political impact of Center of Gravity shift from New York to Beijing
Obama’s “Surgers” vs. “Exiters”: Exit strategy now or scrambled hasty retreat later
China sets conditions for bailing out US and buying US T-Bills
Swat and FATA for dummies: Who are the terrorists?
Zaid Hamid video on Swat
US goes begging to Beijing: India feels the pain
Why the US gave up India as a strategic partner
India’s worst nightmares come true: Long term strategic malaise
Fixing AfPak expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan and Afghanistan
Betrayels and Balckmail: Cloaking failure as success, Hiding the defeat, declaring Victory, Withdrawing from Afghanistan within 12 months
Kabul: The Final assault begins. How long can NATO hang on? 
Does Obama have the courage to implement the real solutions to Obama’s Vietnam (AfPak)
2009: Obama’s South Asian policy: A Marshall Plan for AfPak
Selective Amnesia of Americans: Pakistan is the most mistreated friend in the world
Fixing AfPak expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan and Afghanistan
The Algeriafication of Pakistan, the Egyptianization of Bangladesh may will yield Iranian type of revolutions 
Pepe Escobar correctly identifies the problem in Washington–it is the remnants of the Bush Administration who like dinosaurs are still caught up on the Cold War era tactics. A lot of water has flown down the Indus since Robert Gates was a CIA operative running the war against the USSR. He is still incarcerated in the old paradigm of yesteryear which has no relevance to today’s tactics and strategy.
Obama’s problems are compounded by the fact that he is surrounded by people, such as Pentagon supremo Robert Gates, that remain locked in “war on terror”/Long War mode. Vice President Joe Biden and special envoy to the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater Richard Holbrooke – not to mention General David “I’m positioning myself for 2012″ Petraeus – are certified hawks. They will do everything in their power to steer the conclusions of the Afghanistan strategic policy review Obama is waiting for towards the Long War concept .
For Andrew Bacevich, professor of International Relations and History at Boston University, the last hope for sanity is represented by Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.
It’s never enough to stress the Bush “war on terror” framework remains in full effect. Leon Panetta, the Obama nominee as CIA director, said that the CIAwill basically continue with extraordinary renditions. Elena Kagan, the Obama nominee for solicitor general, said that indefinite detention without trial still rules- wherever the detainee was captured. And acting AssistantAttorney General Michael Hertz said that detainees in Bagram air base in Afghanistan remain without legal rights. If Obama is serious about closing Guantanamo, he must be serious about closing Bagram.
The two-fold, “Western alliance” strategy at the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, as it stands, consists of the US and NATO occupying the parts of Afghanistan not occupied by the Taliban while Washington bribes Islamabad to let it attack Pashtun peasants inside Pakistan’s Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA).
No wonder that after de facto losing a war in Iraq to a bunch of “irregulars” with Kalashnikovs, the Pentagon is now terrified that NATO is about to lose the war in Afghanistan for good, thus proving to the whole world its absolute irrelevancy – and shattering once and for all the shaky pillar of US hegemony over Europe. NATO is incompetent even at lying. A NATO report in January claimed that “only” 973 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2008, and “only 97″ of these by NATO. This month a UN report confirmed that NATO was lying. According to the UN, at least 2,118 Afghan civilians were killed in 2008 – 828 of them by the US or NATO. Everyone’s talking about US fighter jets and CIA Predator drones raising hell out of three secret Pakistani air bases – with Islamabad’s complicit silence. But nobody talks about the “humint”, or human intelligence, component of the US’s covert war in Afghanistan, conducted by what the New York Times defines, with spectacular hypocrisy, as “military units operating outside the normal chain of command”.
US special forces are part of this deadly mix. A recent UN report identifies these US commandos as the key culprits as far as the killing of Afghan civilians is concerned. Washington happens to identify similar outfits – if they operate under a different banner, or religion – as “terrorists”.
In the case of this new American breed, it’s fair to expect the Pentagon and the Washington establishment to sooner or later start calling them – in a sinister echo of recent Afghan past – “freedom fighters”. Backstage at the theater of ‘terror’ By Pepe Escobar. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009)
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
“Charge of the Light Brigade” in Afghanistan AGAIN: 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 LineSolution: Fixing “AfPak” expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan & Afghanistan
The Northern Alliance, hegemonic in the Kabul power game, is directly involved, as much as the Pashtun family of President Hamid Karzai. An extra measure of Washington’s puzzlement in Afghanistan is that a new “solution” being floated involves getting rid of Karzai and installing a new asset/puppet dictator.
Obama – even without being familiar with the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater – has got to be clever enough to see the surge per se as a suicidal gambit. The problem is he still seems to believe the war is “winnable”. His latest definition of “winning”, during his short visit to Canada, is “to defeat al-Qaeda” and to make sure the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre is not a “launching pad for attacks against North America”. So, if that is the mission he must acknowledge, the key node is Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
