Preisident Obama’s message on the Afghan war was pretty docile and non-threatening.
He made the following points:
- A temporary surge of 30,000 soldiers who will begin to return home in July 2011.
- The support and development of Afghan assets so that they can take over the security of the country.
- Elimination of safe havens in the “border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
- Long term support for Pakistan.
The New York Times columnists David Sanger and Eric Schmitt however read more into the Obama message. They see a laundry list of Obama intentions–invading Pakistan, bombing Quetta, sending spies into the country and perhaps taking control of Pakistan’s Nuclear weapons. It prominently displays and discusses the letter ostensibly sent by President Obama to President Zardari in which the US commander in Chief has threatened the Pakistani leader and also offered more aid and military supplies.
Did Obama say all the things that are being reported in the New York Times–and soon by newspapers across the country. It never fails to amaze me. The speed at which the story from different authors in different stories begin to appear–only the headline changes–the content remains the same. The content is of course simple Anti-Pakistan Islamphobia.
WASHINGTON — President Obama focused his speech on Afghanistan. He left much unsaid about Pakistan, where the main terrorists he is targeting are located, but where he can send no troops.
Mr. Obama could not be very specific about his Pakistan strategy, his advisers conceded on Monday evening. American operations there are classified, most run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Any overt American presence would only fuel anti-Americanism in a country that reacts sharply to every missile strike against extremists that kills civilians as well, and that fears the United States is plotting to run its government and seize its nuclear weapons.
Yet quietly, Mr. Obama has authorized an expansion of the war in Pakistan as well — if only he can get a weak, divided, suspicious Pakistani government to agree to the terms.
In recent months, in addition to providing White House officials with classified assessments about Afghanistan, the C.I.A. delivered a plan for widening the campaign of strikes against militants by drone aircraft in Pakistan, sending additional spies there and securing a White House commitment to bulk up the C.I.A.’s budget for operations inside the country.
The expanded operations could include drone strikes in the southern province of Baluchistan, where senior Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, officials said. It is from there that they direct many of the attacks on American troops, attacks that are likely to increase as more Americans pour into Afghanistan.
The question that needs to be asked from President Obama and The New York Times is. If 80% of Afghanistan is under insurgent control. Taliban sanctuaries around Kabul thumb their noses at ISAF, NATO & US forces. Why would Taliban need safe havens far away in Pakistan?
Here is another version of reality–this one from the President of Pakistan, who knew what was going on.
The political instability and ethnic imbalance in Afghanistan after 9/11 marginalized the majority Pashtuns and pushed them into the Taliban fold, even though they were not ideological supporters of the Taliban. The blunder of inducting 80,000 troops of Tajiks into the Afghan national army further alienated the Pashtuns.
Meanwhile, Pakistan forcefully tackled the influx of al Qaeda into our tribal areas, capturing over 600 al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders, some of them of very high value. We established 1,000 border checkposts and even offered to mine or fence off the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but this never came to pass. The Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, had no writ outside of Kabul, and the insufficient ground troops of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) allowed the Taliban to regroup. The 2004 invasion of Iraq shifted the focus and also contributed to the Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda terrorists who fled from Afghanistan came to Pakistan and settled initially in South Waziristan. Through successful intelligence and law-enforcement operations, we eliminated al Qaeda from our cities and destroyed their command, communication and propaganda centers. They fled to the adjoining North Waziristan, Bajur and Swat regions. President Pervez Musharraf–Wall Street Journal
“The president endorsed an intensification of the campaign against Al Qaeda and its violent allies, including even more operations targeting terrorism safe havens,” said one American official. “More people, more places, more operations.”
That was the message delivered in recent weeks to Pakistani officials by Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser. But the Pakistanis, suspicious of Mr. Obama’s intentions and his staying power, have not yet agreed.
General Jones was one of a series of American officials who arrived in Pakistan in recent weeks with the same message: no matter how many troops the president commits to Afghanistan, the strategy will founder unless the safe haven inside Pakistan is dealt with. Between the Lines, an Expansion in Pakistan. By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT, Published: December 1, 2009, Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
Is this wishful thinking on the part of the newspapers Jewsih writers, or is it simply a CIA story planted in the paper–which threatens the Pakistanis with plausibly deniability.
What will the Pakistani response be? Rise in Anti-Americanism.
A similar story about Pakistani nukes published in The New Yorker–forced Mr. Zardari to give up his control of the the Pakistani Nuclear weapons
However, the United States does not have much leverage and is counting on a new attitude and a huge acceleration of efforts from a weak government. Making matters worse, the president, Asif Ali Zardari, is often at odds with the nation’s powerful military and intelligence establishment.
The question about Mr. Obama’s Pakistan strategy is whether the new commitment of troops and resources can ultimately make America safer at a time of an evolving terrorist threat. Mr. Obama insisted that was his central focus.
“This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda,” he said to the cadets at West Point, speaking of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the murky border area between the two that offers refuge to extremists of many stripes. The region was the birthplace of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he said, and “it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.” Many times in the speech he returned to that threat, saying it was what made this war different from Vietnam.
And he referenced another threat, one that focuses the attention of Mr. Obama’s national security team daily, but which it speaks about rarely.
For years we have shed light on the pull and push theory. Can the $80 Billion Think Tank industry not comprehend the simple truths described by Peter Senge in his seminal book “The 5th Discipline“. They theory goes as follows. When the Police cracks down on drug dealers on 42nd street, the drug dealing does not disappear, it simply moved to 52nd street or gets dispersed over a bigger area out of reach of the police raids. Similarly when the US bombs the insurgents in East Afghanistan, it is but obvious that they will find shelter and hideouts on the Duran Line and beyond. As the US drones bomb FATA, areas in Pakistan are affected destabilizing parts of the NWFP.
“The stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that Al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s decision to raise the nuclear specter was notable because a succession of American officials have publicly stated recently that the Pakistani arsenal is secure. In private, however, they have commissioned new intelligence studies on how vulnerable Pakistani warheads and laboratories would be if insurgents made greater inroads, with one official saying recently, “It is the scenario we spend the most time thinking about.”
Even if Mr. Obama is successful in lessening the terrorist threat in the region, many analysts say that Al Qaeda has changed into a transnational movement beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“There is no direct impact on stopping terrorists around the world because we are or are not in Afghanistan,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the former C.I.A. officer who was sent into Pakistan after 9/11 to determine if Osama bin Laden had access to the country’s nuclear technology. The nature of modern terrorism, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard, argued, is that a safe haven can be moved to many different states, and the bigger threat exists in cells, including in Europe and the United States.
The pathological indecisiveness of the successive US Administration’s Afghan policy is depicted by a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there. It is pedagogical to note that after a dozen reviews by every imaginable intelligence and non-intelligence agency in the world, the CIA, the NSA, the NIE and dozens of so-called think tanks, all they could come up with is perpetuation of Bush’s policy. The Bush Administration went into Kabul ostensibly to capture and collect Osama Bin Laden. That name is totally absent from the American political vernacular. What’s the goal now? No one knows. …and we are supposed to believe the CIA now?
Even Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, acknowledged in an interview this evening that the steps announced by the president would not address Al Qaeda cells in Africa or the Middle East, or even homegrown extremists. But she argued that he had to begin somewhere.
“Can you totally eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda types in Yemen or Somalia? No,” she said. “But what you have done is taken a major action to limit their ability out of this major theater, from which their leaders and major actions emanate.”
Mr. Bruce Riedel in his book clearly said that he wanted to convince the Pakistanis into fighting the Taliban. A few dozen explosions disguised as “suicide bombings”, a few videos, and an incessant campaign of paranoid hysteria of “Barbarians-at-the-gate”, and purchase of the 5th column media goaded Mr. Zardari into doing the dirty work of the Americans. There is a larger dimension to this. End of US Exceptionalism & Crisis of Profilgacy: An exit strategy defines the limits of US power in the Hindukush.
The Pakistani perspective: Peace deals only way to precipitate face saving for US & Obama’s smooth Exit strategy from Afghanistan
Making the Pakistan plan even more complex was Mr. Obama’s effort to reconcile two seemingly contradictory messages on Tuesday evening. He had to convince the Pakistanis that he was not planning to leave the region — as the United States did 20 years ago, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan — while reassuring American citizens that after an 18-month buildup, he would begin to head for the exits.
The United States, he said, simply could not afford an open-ended war. Unlike President Bush, he suggested, he would not set “goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests.” Between the Lines, an Expansion in Pakistan. By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT, Published: December 1, 2009, Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
Carrying the White Man’s Burden mush be hard for President Obama. Rudyard Kipling must be turning in his grave. Many White men have tried and failed. Its not an easy burden to carry. The byline to the bluster is the frustration of a country bankrupted by the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the mighty USA cannot afford to spend $3 Trillion (not $1 Trillion as claimed by Mr. Obama) on wars. Lord Curzon of the mighty British Empire gave up on it after the defeat at the battle of Maiwand. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown presiding over the worst defeat of US and NATO forces since Vietnam. Defeat is a hard burden to carry. Countdown to 2011 is a difficult countdown. Tick Tock Tick Tock: Obama’s shrinking Afghan timeline-2011.
Reversing Anti-Americanism in South Asia: Building bridges with Pakistan. The American people are sick and tired of wars. They want peace. Listing the reasons for the perpetual mimetic war would force us to delve into an arcane expression from the cold war–”The Military Industrial Complex” run by Haliburton, Bechtel and others. The ordinary American has seen through the fog of fear mongering and bigotry. It will not put up with torture and lies.
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