http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23630?ut…

Volume 57, Number 3 · February 25, 2010 , The New York Review of Books

A Deal With the Taliban?
Ahmed Rashid
The war in Afghanistan now faces a pivotal moment: at stake is whether the US and its allies are willing to talk to the Taliban. General Stanley McChrystal has a special fund of $1.5 billion to provide incentives to Taliban fighters who put down their arms. Senior Pakistani officials now say they have offered to help broker talks between Taliban leaders, the Americans, and Karzai. For their part, the Taliban have shown the first hint of flexibility, following secret talks in Saudi Arabia last year. But talking to the Taliban requires more than just secret cooperation among intelligence agencies or the CIA handing out bribes. What can be done?
A Deal with the Taliban?
By Ahmed Rashid

My Life with the Taliban.
by Abdul Salam Zaeef,

translated from the Pashto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn
Columbia University Press, 331 pp., $29.95
1.

For thirty years Afghanistan has cast a long, dark shadow over world events, but it has also been marked by pivotal moments that could have brought peace and changed world history.

One such moment occurred in February 1989, just as the last Soviet troops were leaving Afghanistan. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had flown into Islamabad—the first visit to Pakistan by a senior Soviet official. He came on a last-ditch mission to try to persuade Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the army, and the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) to agree to a temporary sharing of power between the Afghan Communist regime in Kabul and the Afghan Mujahideen. He hoped to prevent a civil war and lay the groundwork for a peaceful, final transfer of power to the Mujahideen.

By then the Soviets were in a state of panic. They ironically shared the CIA’s analysis that Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah would last only a few weeks after the Soviet troops had departed. The CIA got it wrong—Najibullah was to last three more years, until the eruption of civil war forced him to take refuge in the UN compound in April 1992. The ISI refused to oblige Shevardnadze. It wanted to get Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the seven disparate Mujahideen leaders and its principal protégé, into power in Kabul. The CIA had also urged the ISI to stand firm against the Soviets. It wanted to avenge the US humiliation in Vietnam and celebrate a total Communist debacle in Kabul—no matter how many Afghan lives it would cost. A political compromise was not in the plans of the ISI and the CIA.

I was summoned to meet Shevardnadze late at night and remember a frustrated but visibly angry man, outraged by the shortsightedness of Pakistan and the US and the clear desire of both governments to humiliate Moscow. He went on to evoke an apocalyptic vision of the future of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region. His predictions of the violence to come turned out to be dead right.

At that pivotal moment, if Shevardnadze’s compromise had been accepted, the world might well have avoided the decade-long Afghan civil war, the destruction of Kabul, the rise of the Taliban, and the sanctuary they provided al-Qaeda. Perhaps we could have avoided September 11 itself—and much that has followed since, including the latest attempt by a Nigerian extremist to blow up a transatlantic airliner, the killing of seven CIA officers at an Afghan base, and the continuing heavy casualties among NATO troops and Afghan civilians in Afghanistan.

With Obama’s controversial and risk-laden plan to first build up and then, in eighteen months, start drawing down US troops in Afghanistan, every nation and political leader in the region now faces another pivotal moment. At stake is whether the US and its allies are willing to talk to the Afghan Taliban, because there is no military victory in sight and no other way to end a war that has been going on for thirty years.

When that moment comes—as it must—will the US and NATO be ready to talk with the Taliban or will they be internally divided, as they are now? Will President Hamid Karzai have the credibility to take part in such talks and deliver on an agreement that might be reached? Will the ISI demand that their own Taliban protégés return to power? Will the Taliban hard-liners, now scenting victory, even agree to talks and, as a consequence, be prepared to dump al-Qaeda? Or will they sit out the next eighteen months waiting for the Americans to begin to leave?

2.

The Afghan Taliban are now a country-wide movement. During the last year they expanded to the previously quiet west and north of Afghanistan. Their leadership has safe havens in Pakistan. Casualties on all sides have risen dramatically. According to the UN, in 2009 there were an average of 1,200 attacks a month by Taliban or other insurgent groups—a 65 percent increase from the previous year. Over the twelve-month period, 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed, an increase of 14 percent; of those, two thirds were killed by the Taliban, a 40 percent increase. In addition, US and NATO combat deaths rose 76 percent, from 295 in 2008 to 520 in 2009.

Adding to the challenges facing the Afghan government, over the years it has been difficult to recruit Pashtuns for the Afghan army and police from the southern Pashtun provinces that are largely controlled by the Taliban, although recently Pashtun recruitment has increased following a pay rise for security forces. Even so, the Taliban have infiltrated parts of the Afghan army and police—the key components of the US plan to start the handover of power to local forces by July 2011. In large parts of Afghanistan, development programs have come to a halt and nearly half of the UN staff assigned to Afghanistan have been relocated to Dubai and Central Asia because of security concerns.

According to Major General Michael Flynn, the NATO military chief of intelligence in Afghanistan, the Taliban now have shadow governors in thirty-three out of thirty-four provinces—they serve to organize the movement at a provincial level and disrupt government initiatives in their area—and the movement “can sustain itself indefinitely.” Flynn has described US intelligence in Afghanistan as “clueless” and “ignorant.”*

Taliban commanders have stepped up their vicious campaign to intimidate or kill any Afghan civilians working for the Karzai government, aid agencies, women’s groups, and even the UN. On January 18, militants launched a double suicide attack just yards from the presidential palace in central Kabul, provoking a gun battle in which three soldiers and two civilians were killed and more than seventy wounded. “We are now at a critical juncture…. The situation cannot continue as is if we are to succeed in Afghanistan,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the UN Security Council earlier in the month. “There is a risk that the deteriorating overall situation will become irreversible,” he added.

The prevailing view in Washington is that many Taliban fighters in the field can eventually be won over, but that the present US troop surge has to roll them back first, reversing Taliban successes and gaining control over the population centers and major roads. According to the current American strategy, the US military has to weaken the Taliban before negotiating with them. The commander of US and NATO forces, General Stanley McChrystal, has both a special fund of $1.5 billion to provide incentives and other forms of support to Taliban who put down their arms, and a group of British and American officers who are drawing up plans to win over Taliban commanders and fighters as the troop surge tilts the battlefield back in favor of the US. General McChrystal told me in Islamabad in early January that he is confident that many Taliban will be won over in the field. This US reconciliation effort would be led by Karzai, who for several years has called for talks with Taliban leaders.

There is another way of looking at the present crisis. Despite their successes, the Taliban are probably now near the height of their power. They do not control major population centers—nor can they, given NATO’s military strength and air power. There are no countrywide, populist insurrections against NATO forces as there were against the coalition forces in Iraq. The vast majority of Afghans do not want the return of a Taliban regime despite their anger at the Karzai government and the general international failure to deliver economic progress. Many Afghans believe that as long as Western troops remain, there is still the hope that security can return and their lives change for the better.

Thus the next few months could offer a critical opportunity to persuade the Taliban that this is the best time to negotiate a settlement, because they are at their strongest.

3.

Both Generals McChrystal and David Petraeus, the head of the US military’s Central Command, have said that they cannot shoot their way to victory. Obama is clear about defeating al-Qaeda, but he is more inclined toward negotiations with the Taliban. In his West Point speech in December, Obama said he supported Kabul’s efforts to “open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens.”

The present US military strategy aims to peel away Taliban commanders and fighters and resettle them without making any major political concessions or changes to the Afghan constitution. But Washington remains deeply divided about talking to the Taliban leaders. The State and Defense Departments, the White House, and the CIA all have different views about it, and there are also divisions between the US and its allies.

General McChrystal told me that many mid-level Taliban commanders and their men are waiting for Karzai to announce a reconciliation strategy before offering to change sides. “The reintegration of former Taliban into society offers a good chance to reduce the insurgency in Afghanistan…while al-Qaeda needs to be hunted and destroyed.” Whether the US and its allies should hold talks with the Taliban leadership, he said, is a political decision to be made by Washington. In December Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me that in his estimation some 70 percent of the Taliban fight for local reasons or money rather than because of ideological commitment to the movement, and they can be won over.

Meanwhile the Taliban have shown the first hint of flexibility, as suggested in a ten-page statement issued in November 2009 for the religious festival of Eid. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar, while urging his fighters to continue the jihad against “the arrogant [US] enemy,” also pledged that a future Taliban regime would bring peace and noninterference from outside forces, and would pose no threat to neighboring countries—implying that al-Qaeda would not be returning to Afghanistan along with the Taliban. Sounding more like a diplomat than an extremist, Omar said, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants to take constructive measures together with all countries for mutual cooperation, economic development and good future on the basis of mutual respect.”

A week later, the Taliban’s response to Obama’s West Point speech again suggested a changed attitude. There was not a single mention of jihad or imposing Islamic law. Instead the Taliban spoke of a nationalist and patriotic struggle for Afghanistan’s independence and said they were “ready to give legal guarantee if the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan.” In a New Year’s message the Taliban, while condemning the US surge, even seemed to empathize with Obama, observing that the American president faces “a great many problems and opposition” at home.

The Taliban’s new tone can be traced to secret talks in the spring of 2009. Sponsored by Saudi Arabia at Karzai’s request, the talks included former (or now retired) Taliban, former Arab members of al-Qaeda, and Karzai’s representatives. No breakthrough took place, but the talks led to a series of visits to Saudi Arabia by important Taliban leaders during the rest of 2009. The US, British, and Saudi officials who were indirectly in contact with the Taliban there quickly encouraged them to renounce al-Qaeda and lay out their negotiating demands. In turn, the Taliban said that distancing themselves from al-Qaeda would require the other side to meet a principal demand of their own: that all foreign forces must announce a timetable to leave Afghanistan.

Istakhbarat, the Saudi intelligence service, is not set up to produce political results, but it has given the Taliban a safe venue to meet and it has acted as an interlocutor with Afghan government and Western officials. Significantly the ISI, which has demanded a key part in the negotiations from its erstwhile Saudi allies, has so far been left out at the request of both the Taliban and the Afghan government—neither of whom trust it. That now may be about to change. The key to more formal negotiations with Taliban leaders lies with Pakistan and the ISI.

4.

Tensions between the US and Pakistan have escalated in recent months as Washington demands that the Pakistani military “capture or kill” Afghan Taliban leaders as well as top militants in Pakistan. These include the Afghan Taliban leadership living in Quetta and Karachi, as well as their allies such as Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who live in North Waziristan in the tribal areas abutting Afghanistan. Pakistan says it is too busy dealing with its own acute problems with the Pakistani Taliban and a growing number of terrorist attacks by various insurgent groups. Its forces are overstretched, it has little money, and it will oblige the Americans only when it is ready to do so. In fact Pakistan would never launch a military offensive against the Afghan Taliban leaders since it has viewed them as potential allies in a post-American Afghanistan, when the US will probably ditch Pakistan as well.

Pakistan’s military is deeply fearful of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan; the result could be civil war and mayhem in its backyard once again. “We want the American surge to succeed in Afghanistan, because if they don’t we will pay the price,” a senior Pakistani military officer told me. The army is also convinced that the US will eventually align itself with India and that it has allowed India to strengthen its influence in Kabul at Pakistan’s expense. Despite all the sacrifices it has made for the Afghans over thirty years, supporting them against the Soviets, Pakistanis are now friendless in Afghanistan—except for the Afghan Taliban, who are more wary than friendly toward the ISI.

To regain influence in Afghanistan and drive the Indians out once the Americans leave, the Pakistan military could, as an alternative, back the Taliban in a plan to retake Kabul and set up a government that would do Pakistan’s bidding. However, that possibility is now too risky; the international community would never tolerate it, and such a regime would also provide a base from which the Pakistani Taliban could launch further attacks in Pakistan.

In a major policy shift, senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials say they have offered to help broker talks between Taliban leaders, the Americans, and Karzai. “We want the talks to start now, not in eighteen months when they are leaving; but the Americans have to trust and depend on us,” a senior military officer told me. There is a deep lack of trust between the CIA and the ISI, and other countries may also balk at Pakistan’s insistence that all negotiations should be channeled through the ISI. Pakistani officials suggest that if the ISI helps arrange talks, then independent contacts between Taliban leaders and the CIA, British intelligence (MI6), and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) would have to stop. In return, Pakistani officials say only that they want to be sure “that Pakistan’s national interests in Afghanistan are looked after”—interests that have yet to be clearly spelled out to the Americans and Afghans.

This is an important change in the official position of Pakistan. For the past nine years—despite the well-known connections between the ISI and the Afghan Taliban—Pakistan has denied that it has influence over the Taliban leaders, and openly playing host to them was considered out of the question. Pakistan will have to make serious efforts to gain the confidence of the US and the Afghans if it is to sponsor negotiations with the Taliban; but their differences could be worked out through arrangements made between the various intelligence agencies and governments involved. Senior US officials say that Pakistan is showing itself to be “more flexible” on Afghan policy than before.

How will the Taliban leaders respond? Many of them are fed up with years of ISI manipulation and strategizing on their behalf and would prefer to keep the ISI out of such talks. Some members of the Taliban have built up a rapport with Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, the domestic intelligence agency of the Kabul government. The NDS and the ISI loathe and mistrust each other, and the NDS would be extremely reluctant to allow the ISI a central part in negotiations. Moreover, the crucial acceptance of reconciliation with the Taliban has to come from the non-Pashtun population in the north who are extremely hostile to the Taliban and the ISI. If the northern ethnic groups who make up just over 50 percent of the population do not accept the reconciliation plan, there could be a renewed civil war as in the 1990s.

But the ISI has power and influence over the Taliban. Not only are the Taliban able to resupply their fighters from Pakistan, and seek medical treatment and other facilities, but the families of most Taliban leaders live in Pakistan where they own homes and run businesses and shops. Taliban leaders travel to Saudi Arabia on Pakistani passports. All this makes them vulnerable to ISI pressure. Even before the US military can consider coopting mid-level Taliban commanders, both sides would have to ascertain how this would play with the ISI.

The Pakistani army’s desperate desire to have some control over future events in Afghanistan is partly due to its strategic aim of avoiding encirclement by India; but it is also a result of the setbacks it has received since 2001. The military is still smarting from former President Bush’s decisions to allow the anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance to take Kabul in 2001, to ignore Islamabad’s later requests for consultations on US strategy in Afghanistan, and to treat all Afghan Pashtuns as potential Taliban. This helped radicalize Pakistan’s own Pashtun population, which is more than twice the size of Afghanistan’s. (There are 12 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan and 27 million in Pakistan.)

5.

Talking to the Taliban requires more than just secret cooperation among intelligence agencies or the CIA handing out bribes to Taliban commanders to change sides—as it did with the Northern Alliance in 2001. There is an urgent need for a publicly promoted strategy involving concrete efforts to build political institutions and provide humanitarian aid in ways that do not require intrusive Western control—a strategy that could attract many members of the Taliban, reduce violence, and placate Afghans who are opposed to all such compromises. Obama officials have talked up the need for such a public strategy but accomplished little during his first year in office. Yet such goals are of paramount importance.

Here are some suggestions of steps that should be taken in advance of talking to the Taliban. Almost all these points have theoretically been accepted by the US and NATO but none have been acted upon:

Convince Afghanistan’s neighbors and other countries in the region to sign on to a reconciliation strategy with the Taliban, to be led by the Afghan government. Creating a regional strategy and consensus on Afghanistan was one of the primary aims of the Obama administration; but little has been achieved. From Iran to India, regional tensions are worse now than a year ago.
Allow Afghanistan to submit to the UN Security Council a request that the names of Taliban leaders be removed from a list of terrorists drawn up in 2001—so long as those leaders renounce violence and ties to al-Qaeda. Russia has so far refused to entertain such a request; but Obama has not tried hard enough to extract this concession from Russian leaders.
Pass a UN Security Council resolution giving the Afghan government a formal mandate to negotiate with the Taliban, and allow the US, NATO, and the UN to encourage that process. This would mean persuading reluctant countries like Russia and India to support such a resolution. (On January 27, a UN Security Council committee announced, with Russian agreement, that it has lifted sanctions against five former Taliban officials who are said to support the Karzai government.)
Have NATO and Afghan forces take responsibility for the security of Taliban and their families who return to Afghanistan, enlisting the help of international agencies such as the UN High Commission for Refugees or the International Committee of the Red Cross to work with the Afghan government to assist these returning Taliban members, arranging for compensation, housing, job training, and other needs they may have in facing resettlement.
Provide adequate funds, training, and staff for a reconciliation body, led by the Afghan government, that will work with Western forces and humanitarian agencies to provide a comprehensive and clearly spelled-out program for the security of the returning Taliban and for facilities to receive them.
Encourage the Pakistani military to assist NATO and Afghan forces in providing security to returning Taliban and their families and allow necessary cross-border support from international humanitarian agencies. Encourage Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help the Taliban set up a legal political party, as other Afghan militants—such as former members of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami party—have done. This would be a tremendous blow to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban and it would give concrete form to Obama’s repeated pledge that he is ready to reach out to foes in the Muslim world.
The Taliban leadership should be provided with a neutral venue such as Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, where it can hold talks with the Afghan government and NATO. The US should release the remaining Afghan prisoners held at Guantánamo and allow them to go to either Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia.
Unless such publicly announced policies are carried out, the Taliban may well conclude that it is better and safer to sit out the next eighteen months, wait for the Americans to start leaving, and then, when they judge Afghanistan to be vulnerable, go for the kill in Kabul—although that would only lead to a renewed civil war.

6.

Just as Afghanistan faces a crucial choice, we have a book that for the first time places readers at the heart of the Taliban’s way of thinking—My Life with the Taliban, by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban minister and ambassador to Pakistan, who spent over four years in Guantánamo prison. Originally published in Pashto, the language of the Pashtuns, the book has been beautifully translated and extensively edited for easier understanding by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, two researchers who live in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.

Zaeef was born in 1968 and grew up in a small dusty village in Kandahar province. Like many Taliban, he came from a family of mullahs and grew up an orphan, having lost his parents at an early age. Economic development never penetrated such Afghan villages as his and daily life was centered on learning at the madrasa, farming, and sustaining the Pashtun tribal code of honor and revenge. His extended clan fled to Pakistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion, but at the age of fifteen he secretly returned home to fight the Soviets. In the 1980s he served under several commanders, including Mullah Omar.

Zaeef dramatically brings to life the extremely harsh conditions under which the Afghans fought—without food, medical aid, or enough ammunition, and under constant Soviet bombardment:

When I first joined the jihad I was fifteen years old. I did not know how to fire a Kalashnikov or how to lead men. I knew nothing of war. But the Russian front lines were a tough proving ground and…I eventually commanded several mujahedeen groups.
After the Soviets left Afghanistan, Zaeef became a mullah in a small village near Kandahar. He describes how the situation deteriorated in the south as warlords and criminals extracted tolls from trucks on the road, kidnapped and raped women, and held young boys captive to become their forced lovers. Zaeef was one of the original Taliban; in the winter of 1994 he joined with like-minded young men to work out a strategy for dealing with the warlords.

He was and remains intensely loyal to Mullah Omar, who would, he writes,

listen to everybody with focus and respect for as long as they needed to talk, and would never seek to cut them off. After he had listened, he then would answer with ordered, coherent thoughts.
When Zaeef attended the founding meeting of the Taliban, each man took an oath of loyalty to Omar. That oath is still in effect, which is why no senior Taliban commander has ever betrayed the whereabouts of Omar. As the Taliban started to conquer Afghanistan, Zaeef was promoted from one job to the next.

fter the Taliban capture of Kabul in 1996, Zaeef was moved to the defense ministry where, he writes, the weekly budget for the various Taliban militias fighting the Northern Alliance was $300,000 a week, or just $14 million a year. By 1999, when the Taliban controlled 80 percent of the country, their entire annual budget was just $80 million—from the Islamic taxes the Taliban imposed as well as donations from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and, after 1996, Osama bin Laden (although Zaeef does not mention his contribution). He describes a chaotic and uncoordinated government:

The budget didn’t even come close to what was needed in order to start any serious development; it was like a drop of water that falls on a hot stone, evaporating without leaving any trace.
Early in his book Zaeef describes his intense hatred for the ISI, which deepened in 2000 when he was appointed Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. He claims he resisted being recruited by the ISI. “In my dealings with them I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out.” He describes how “the ISI extended its roots deep into Afghanistan like a cancer puts down roots in the human body,” and how “every ruler of Afghanistan complained about it, but none could get rid of it.” Zaeef set up his own clandestine network of Pakistani officials who provided him information about what the ISI was planning regarding the Taliban.

What Zaeef omits or fudges is significant. He makes no mention of the ISI’s financial and material support to the Taliban, and says hardly anything about al-Qaeda or how his hero Mullah Omar became so close to Osama bin Laden. He has nothing to say about the Taliban’s repressive attitudes toward women, including the ban on their education, and he makes no mention of the Taliban’s harsh punishments, including public stonings.

By 2001, after UN sanctions restricted the Taliban’s international contacts, Zaeef became the only Taliban leader who could meet with US and Western envoys. His relationship with the US embassy in Islamabad was dominated by American demands to hand over Osama bin Laden. In the days after September 11, he frantically tried to stave off the impending US attack on his country by appealing to Western embassies, writing letters to the UN, and trying to enlist support from Islamic countries. He met with Mullah Omar, who was convinced that the Americans would not dare attack. In Omar’s mind, Zaeef writes, “there was less than a 10 percent chance that America would resort to anything beyond threats and so an attack was unlikely.”

In January 2002 he was turned over to the Americans by the ISI—sold, according to him—and ended up in Guantánamo. He now lives in Kabul under government protection and his final plea is for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. He says he does not believe in al-Qaeda, but speaks as an Afghan patriot with strong Islamist leanings toward the Taliban. Afghanistan, he writes, is “a family home in which we all have the right to live…without discrimination and while keeping our values. No one has the right to take this away from us.” Can Afghanistan ever be a peaceful home for all Afghans? They certainly deserve it.

—January 27, 2010

Notes
*See Noah Shachtman, “‘Afghan Insurgency Can Sustain Itself Indefinitely’: Top U.S. Intel Officer,” Wired.com, January 8, 2010. General Flynn’s briefing, called ” State of the Insurgency: Trends, Intentions and Objectives,” was presented on December 23, 2009. Also see “NATO Official: US Spy Work Lacking in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, January 5, 2010.

Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010

U.S. Afpak path comes full circle

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
NEW DELHI, for the Japan Times online  — What U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has been pursuing in Afghanistan for the past one year has now received international imprimatur, thanks to the well-scripted London conference. Four words sum up that strategy: Surge, bribe and run.

Obama has designed his twin troop surges not to militarily rout the Afghan Taliban but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. Without a deal with Taliban commanders, the United States cannot execute the “run” part.

Obama, paradoxically, is seeking to apply to Afghanistan the Iraq model of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who used a military surge largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni tribal leaders and other local chieftains. But Afghanistan isn’t Iraq, and it is a moot question whether the same strategy can work, especially when Obama has not hidden his intent to end the U.S. war before he comes up for re-election in 2012.

In a land with a long tradition of humbling foreign armies, payoffs are unlikely to buy peace. All that the Pakistan-backed Taliban has to do is to simply wait out the Americans. After all, popular support for the Afghan war has markedly ebbed in the U.S., even as the other countries with troops in Afghanistan exhibit war fatigue.

If a resurgent Taliban is now on the offensive, with 2008 and 2009 proving to be the deadliest years for U.S. forces since the 2001 American intervention, it is primarily because of two reasons: the sustenance the Taliban still draws from Pakistan; and a growing Pashtun backlash against foreign intervention.

Yet President Bill Clinton’s administration acquiesced in the Taliban’s ascension to power in Kabul in 1996 and turned a blind eye as the thuggish militia, in league with the ISI, fostered narco-terrorism and swelled the ranks of the Afghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With 9/11, however, the chickens came home to roost. The U.S. came full circle when it declared war on the Taliban in October 2001. Now, desperate to save a faltering military campaign, U.S. policy is coming another full circle as Washington advertises its readiness to strike deals with “moderate” Taliban (as if there can be moderates in an Islamist militia that enforces medieval practices).

In the past year, the U.S. military and intelligence have carried out a series of air and drone strikes and ground commando attacks from Afghanistan in Pakistan’s tribal Waziristan region against the Pakistani Taliban, the nemesis of the Pakistani military. The CIA alone has admitted carrying out a dozen drone strikes in Waziristan to avenge the bombing of its base in Khost, Afghanistan, by a Jordanian double agent, who in a prerecorded video said he was going to take revenge for the U.S. attack — carried out at Pakistan’s instance — that killed the Pakistani Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud.

Yet, the U.S. military and intelligence have not carried out a single air, drone or ground attack against the Afghan Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, south of Waziristan. The CIA and the ISI are again working together, including in shielding the Afghan Taliban shura members so as to facilitate a possible deal.

Obama’s Afghan strategy should be viewed as shortsighted and apt to repeat the very mistakes of American policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past three decades that have come to haunt U.S. security and that of the rest of the free world.

Washington is showing it has not learned any lessons from its past policies that gave rise to monsters like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and to “the state within the Pakistani state,” the ISI, which was made powerful during Ronald Reagan’s presidency as a conduit of covert U.S. aid for Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet occupiers.

Regrettably, the Obama administration is falling prey to a long- standing U.S. policy weakness: The pursuit of narrow objectives without much regard for the interests of friends.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a regular contributor to The Japan Times.

from: http://twitter.com/AfghanNews?utm_source…

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Militarism in Afghanistan is not enough: The U.S. Afghanistan policy needs a revision, given realities on the ground.
PUBLISHED: 01/31/2010 - http://bit.ly/99iGQm
BY UTTAM DAS

President Barack Obama’s announcement in December 2009 of the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan has received mixed reactions at home and abroad.

Military compulsion on the ground and political expediency at home are apparently in collision; frustration and anger are growing. Allies in the Afghan war such as France, Germany and Australia have reportedly opposed Obama’s announcement. However, the United Kingdom, Poland and Italy promised to send a small number of additional troops.

By June 2010, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is expected to be 98,000. There were 29,950 U.S. troops in the International Security Assistance Force under NATO command, which has 64,500 troops, most supplied by the NATO member countries.

Though Obama had promised “change you can believe in” following his landslide victory in the 2008 presidential election, in the meantime he’s faced criticism for his decision to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan. The president announced that he will begin to withdraw troops in Afghanistan by July 2011 to bring an end to the decade-long war; however, the timeline has not convinced the American people, especially those on the left of the president’s own Democratic Party, who are increasingly demonstrating in front of the White House against the war.

Analysts and media in the region of South Asia are also critical of Obama’s new plan. The influential Indian daily The Hindu observes that sending additional troops to Afghanistan may provide “tactical relief to American commanders on the ground;” however, there is no guarantee that this new deployment would bring any “victory against terrorism and extremism.” For this, innovative strategies must be devised.

In a Dec. 3, 2009 editorial, The Hindu identified four deficits in America’s war against the Taliban and al-Qaida: the political consideration or attention, military doctrine, Afghan capability and a commitment from Pakistan where both the Taliban and al-Qaida allegedly have bases. Flurries of questions will continue to surround the comprehensiveness of U.S. policy and military actions in Afghanistan in the Asian media.

Given the reality on the ground, Pakistan is now in a crisis of sectarian conflict and a rising religious militancy. There is also reported presence of al-Qaida members in its territory; thus, Pakistan’s stability, politics, economy and military power are under great threat, as observes the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Ittefaq.

Analysts comment that it is likely impossible for the United States to win the war in Afghanistan by merely raising the number of troops. On the contrary, it may prolong the war with serious casualties on both sides.

Analysts recommend improving the conditions of the Afghan people by investing in poverty reduction, education and health. But the country has been further devastated by a war that has brought insufferable civilian casualties. Any investment in social sectors would facilitate to decrease the anger of the Afghan people toward the United States. Without this infrastructure, the poverty- and illiteracy-ridden country will not be able to get on its feet.

The U.S. policy should also engage resources to other countries in the region where al-Qaida is reportedly trying to spread its “ideology.” The presence of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, natural challenges and displacements all contribute to the people’s vulnerability, which catalyses the spread of ideological organizations like al-Qaida. Reportedly, a swath of religious schools in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh — allegedly beyond the reach of government monitors — are working as bases for the spread of the militaristic, ideological challenge to the West, especially the United States. To offset this trend, governments need to engage civic institutions, but this deserves investment.

In the latest development, a London conference on Afghanistan has drafted a recommendation to initiate dialogues between the Afghan government and the Taliban, with an aim to dislodge al-Qaida from the country. The Taliban extremist Islamic group is essentially ideologically distinct from the terrorist al-Qaida and seized power in Afghanistan in 1996.

However, the international community must monitor such dialogues to ensure they are strategic and to guard against the Taliban using it as a legitimization and recruitment tool.

These dimensions in the Afghanistan conflict make a challenging situation all the more difficult, but for now, the deployment of more troops to the region seems only to increase our dependence on military strategy. What is needed most desperately in the region, however, is stability, investment and infrastructure.

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Robert NaimanPolicy Director of Just Foreign Policy
Posted: February 2, 2010 - http://bit.ly/apDj4q

Eat Your Spinach: Time for Peace Talks in Afghanistan – What’s Your Reaction:

In the last week the New York Times and Inter Press Service have reported that the Obama Administration is having an internal debate on whether to supports talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, including Mullah Muhammad Omar, as a means of ending the war in Afghanistan. Senior officials like Vice President Biden are said to be more open to reaching out because they believe it will help shorten the war.

Wouldn’t it be remarkable if this remained merely an “internal debate” within the Obama Administration? Wouldn’t you expect that the part of public opinion that wants the war to end would try to intervene in this debate on behalf of talks in order to end the war?

As an administration official told the New York Times,

“Today, people agree that part of the solution for Afghanistan is going to include an accommodation with the Taliban, even above low- and middle-level fighters.”
And in fact, US and British officials have been saying for months that the “endgame” in Afghanistan includes a negotiated political settlement with the Afghan Taliban.

Now, suppose you tell Mom that you want to have ice cream. And Mom says, you can have ice cream when you’ve eaten your spinach. Wouldn’t you eat your spinach? If you don’t eat your spinach now, you didn’t want ice cream very badly.

So if U.S. and British officials say the endgame includes a negotiated political settlement with the Afghan Taliban, and you figure, extrapolating from the last five thousand years of human history, that a negotiated political settlement typically does not just drop down from the sky, but in fact is generally preceded by political negotiations, and you want to end the war as soon as possible, wouldn’t you be clamoring for political negotiations to start as soon as possible? Because the longer political negotiations are delayed, the longer the war will last. If you don’t support political negotiations now, you don’t want to end the war very badly.

If you consider peace negotiations with the Afghan Taliban “distasteful,” consider this: every month that the war continues, every month that U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, is another month in which U.S. soldiers will die horrible deaths, be horribly maimed, and be horribly scarred psychologically, perhaps for life. It’s also another month in which the U.S. military is likely to “accidentally” kill Afghan government soldiers (such episodes “are not uncommon,” the New York Times notes) and kill Afghan civilians, as they have done at least twice in the last week, according to the reporting in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

I put the word “accidentally” in quotation marks, not of course because I believe that the U.S. military is killing Afghan soldiers and Afghan civilians “on purpose,” but because when you repeatedly take an action (continuing the war) that leads to a predictable result (killing Afghan government soldiers and civilians) you lose the exoneration otherwise conferred by the word “accidentally.”

Is this not also “distasteful”? Is killing innocent people not more “distasteful” than peace talks?

Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, reports that an official of the Western military coalition says there has been a debate among U.S. officials about “the terms on which the Taliban will become part of the political fabric.” The debate is not on whether the Taliban movement will be participating in the Afghan political system, Porter reports, but on whether or not the administration could accept the participation of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar in the political future of Afghanistan.

The Afghan Taliban has insisted in published statements that it will not participate in peace talks that would not result in the withdrawal of foreign troops, Porter notes. That raises the question of whether the administration would be willing to discuss the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan as part of a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

The Obama Administration has stated publicly that it has no long-term interest in maintaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Therefore, should not the U.S. be willing to agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops as part of a negotiated settlement? We’re leaving anyway, according to U.S. officials – what’s holding us back from agreeing, as part of a negotiation, to do what we plan to do anyway?

U.S. officials have said that the war is all about the relationship between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda. When the Afghan Taliban breaks with al Qaeda the war is over, say these officials. Some say that Mullah Omar is ready to break with al Qaeda, including the Pakistani intelligence officer who trained him; while Osama bin Laden’s son Omar says Al Qaeda and the Taliban are only “allies of convenience.” Why wouldn’t we put these propositions to the test through negotiations?

If you think, for the sake of peace, the United States should be willing to agree to do on a timetable that which it claims it intends to do anyway, tell President Obama.

Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com

—————–

Lesson from Somalia echoes in Afghanistan
By Adam Folken – Contributing Columnist - http://bit.ly/dv6IT3

|Published: Thursday, February 4, 2010

Last Thursday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hosted a conference in London regarding NATO’s plans in Afghanistan.  In attendance were U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO operations in Afghanistan, and Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special emissary to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  According to CTV News, both officials expressed plans to advocate peace and negotiations with Taliban forces.  Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s plan of “reconciliation and reintegration” of potential Taliban defectors complements McChrystal and Holbrooke’s strategies.  These plans represent a growing trend in emphasizing political action over the use of force to suppress the militant insurgency plaguing Afghanistan.  This switch comes nearly nine years after the beginning of the United States’ Operation Enduring Freedom, though it is  better late than never.

The Taliban was the power in Afghanistan prior to 2001, and their ranks draw from various Pashtun clans.  The Pashtun people represent the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and have dominated Afghan politics for centuries.  It is therefore the appropriate move to include Taliban members in negotiations and going the step further in allowing their involvement in the new Afghan government. This was one of many lessons taken from U.S. involvement in the United Nations’ intervention in Somalia.

The fall of Said Barre’s regime in 1991 created a power vacuum in Somalia that resulted in vicious inter-clan fighting.  The collateral damage was devastating to the Somali people, who suffered the conflict and widespread famine.

For the U.N., what began as an international effort to deliver humanitarian aid evolved into a struggle to stabilize and democratize Somalia.  General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, with the support of members of his clan – the Habr Gidr – and other militant factions, repeatedly assaulted U.S. and U.N. forces to drive them out of Somalia.  Many U.S. and U.N. officials wanted Aidid and his supporters marginalized in the new government.  Rather than work with the local power, the U.S. wished to create a more ‘ideal’ system that had little focus on clannism.  The attempts to remove Aidid’s influence served to unite Somalis against the U.S., culminating in a humiliating retreat from Somalia.

The parallels with the situation in Afghanistan are clear.  Local power structures, such as clannism in Somalia and Afghanistan, must be considered when creating a functional government.  If powerful players are not given incentive to play the game, they won’t have to.

Further Recommended Articles:

Canada and Germany’s mission in Afghanistan (The Concordian)
Fein: ‘Graveyard of empires’ challenge for Obama (The Daily Northwestern)

DIRECT QUOTES: BASHAR ASSAD
FEBRUARY 3, 2010, Posted by Seymour M. Hersh who wrote this for the New Yorker
I spoke to Bashar Assad, the president of Syria, this winter in Damascus. Assad assumed the presidency after his father’s death, in 2000, when he was thirty-four years old, and he expressed some empathy for President Barack Obama, who, like Assad, was confronted with a steep learning curve.

One note: a transcript of our talk, provided by Assad’s office, was generally accurate but it did not include an exchange we had about intelligence. A senior Syrian official had told me that, last year, Syria, which is on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, had renewed its sharing of intelligence on terrorism with the C.I.A. and with Britain’s MI6, after a request from Obama that was relayed by George Mitchell, the President’s envoy for the Middle East. (The White House declined to comment.) Assad said that he had agreed to do so, and then added that he also has warned Mitchell “that if nothing happens from the other side”—in terms of political progress—“we will stop it.”

Quotes from our conversation follow.

President Barack Obama:

Bush gave Obama this big ball of fire, and it is burning, domestically and internationally. Obama, he does not know how to catch it.

The approach has changed; no more dictations but more listening and more recognition of America’s problems around the world, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. But at the same time there are no concrete results…. What we have is only the first step…. Maybe I am optimistic about Obama, but that does not mean that I am optimistic about other institutions that play negative or paralyzing role[s] to Obama.

If you talk about four years, you have one year to learn and the last year to work for the next elections. So, you only have two years. The problem, with these complicated problems around the world, where the United States should play a role to find a solution, is that two years is a very short time…. Is it enough for somebody like Obama?

Hillary Clinton:

Some say that even Hilary Clinton does not support Obama. Some say she still has ambition to be President some day—that is what they say.

The press conference of Hillary with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu [in which she appeared to walk away from the Administration’s call for a freeze on settlements] was very bad, even for the image of the United States.

Israel and the United States:

To be biased and side with the Israelis, this is traditional for the United States; we do not expect them to be in the middle soon. So we can deal with this issue, and we can find a way if you want to talk about the peace process. But the vision does not seem to be clear on the U.S. side as to what they really want to happen in the Middle East.

Negotiations with Israel:

I have half a million Palestinians and they have been living here for three generations now. So, if you do not find a solution for them, then what peace you are talking about?

What, I said, is the difference between peace and a peace treaty? Peace treaty is what you sign, but peace is when you have normal relations. So, you start with a peace treaty in order to achieve peace…. If they say you can have the entire Golan back, we will have a peace treaty. But they cannot expect me to give them the peace they expect…. You start with the land; you do not start with peace.

The Israelis:

You need a special dictionary for their terms…. They do not have any of the old generation who used to know what politics means, like Rabin and the others. That is why I said they are like children fighting each other, messing with the country; they do not know what to do.

[The Israelis] wanted to destroy Hamas in the war [in December, 2008] and make Abu Mazen strong in the West Bank. Actually it is a police state, and they weakened Abu Mazen and made Hamas stronger. Now they wanted to destroy Hamas. But what is the substitute for Hamas? It is Al Qaeda, and they do not have a leader to talk to, to talk about anything. They are not ready to make dialogue. They [Al Qaeda] only want to die in the field.

Europe and the Iranian nuclear negotiation:

This is not European but Bush’s initiative adopted by the Europeans. The Europeans are like the postman; they pretend that they are not like this but they are like a postman; they are completely passive and I told them that. I told the French when I visited France.

Iran:

Imposing sanctions [on Iran] is a problem because they will not stop the program and they will accelerate it if you are suspicious. They can make problems to the Americans more than the other way around.

If I am Ahmadinejad, I will not give all the uranium because I do not have a guarantee [in response to American and European insistence that most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium be sent abroad for further enrichment to make it usable for a research reactor, but not for a bomb]…. So, the only solution is that they can send you part and you send it back enriched, and then they send another part…. The only advice I can give to Obama: accept this Iranian proposal because this is very good and very realistic. [Note: the Iranian position appeared to be shifting this week.]

Lebanon:

The civil war in Lebanon could start in days; it does not take weeks or months; it could start just like this. One cannot feel assured about anything in Lebanon unless they change the whole system.

Cooperating with the United States in Iraq:

They [American officials] only talk about the borders; this is a very narrow-minded way. But we said yes. We said yes—and, you know, during Bush we used to say no, but when Mitchell came [as Obama’s envoy] I said O.K.… I told Mitchell by saying this is the first step and when find something positive from the American side we move to the next level…. We sent our delegation to the borders and [the Iraqis] did not come. Of course, the reason is that [Nouri] al-Maliki [the Prime Minister of Iraq] is against it. So far there is nothing, there is no cooperation about anything and even no real dialogue.

George Mitchell:

I told him, you were successful in Ireland, but this is different…. [Mitchell] is very keen to succeed. And he wants to do something good, but I compare with the situation in the United States: the Congress has not changed…. But the whole atmosphere is not positive towards the President in general. And that is why I think his envoys cannot succeed.

Criticisms of some Israeli policies at the J-Street founding conference:

Ahh … that is new!… But we should educate them that if they are worried about Israel, then the only thing that can protect Israel is peace, nothing else. No amount of airplanes or weapons could protect Israel, so they have to forget about that.

Pakistan’s government:

They supported [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and realized he cannot deliver. I do not know why they supported him and why—nobody knows why.

American power:

Now the problem is that the United States is weaker, and the whole influential world is weak as well…. You always need power to do politics. Now nobody is doing politics…. So what you need is strong United States with good politics, not weaker United States. If you have weaker United States, it is not good for the balance of the world.

With President Karzai going to Saudi Arabia to plead for an intervention with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces that endanger his regime in Afghanistan, in Washington DC a report was released to the press that A U.S. military investigation into a battle last October in eastern Afghanistan, that cost eight American soldiers their lives, has concluded that the small outpost was worthless, the troops there didn’t understand their mission, and intelligence and air support were tied up elsewhere in the province.

According to an unclassified executive summary of the report that was released to McClatchy and other news organizations Friday, “There were inadequate measures taken by the chain of command, resulting in an attractive target for enemy fighters.”

A statement accompanying the summary said that the report, called an AR 15-6, suggests sanctions on higher-ranking officers and “also recommended administrative actions for some members of the chain of command to improve command oversight.”

But really – is this serious? The whole mess came into existence when the US told the Saudis to finance and organize the rebellion of the Afghan warlords against Soviet occupation of their land. It was the Al-Qaeda forces backed by Saudi money that backed the Taliban fight the Soviets – all of it the brain-product of US CIA in its Washington headquarters where non-Afghan speakers manned the desk that promoted Islamic unity against the Soviet infidel, and inherited now the fight of the same people against the US infidel. Karzai showed now for the first time in his reign that he understands the situation by going to the source of direct backing of his opponents and by-passed the bungling Americans with whom he developed a mutual mistrust.

Yes. lots of people in Washington should be demoted – that is retoactively – for having cost American lives in battles that were started by American lack of understanding of consequences while digging for oil at the outskirsts of an incendiary Middle East.

——–

From BASHAR ASSAD, President of Syria, being interviewed by Seymour M. Hersh, of the New Yorker.

On Pakistan’s government:

They supported [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and realized he cannot deliver. I do not know why they supported him and why—nobody knows why.

On American power:

Now the problem is that the United States is weaker, and the whole influential world is weak as well…. You always need power to do politics. Now nobody is doing politics…. So what you need is strong United States with good politics, not weaker United States. If you have weaker United States, it is not good for the balance of the world.

BAN KI-MOON
U.N. Looks for Diplomatic Breakthroughs: U.N. looks for diplomatic breakthroughs in 2010.
Posted By Colum Lynch   Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Ban Ki-moon and his diplomatic envoys have been scouring the globe this week in search of a promising peace settlement for 2010, pursuing talks with Kim Jong Il’s government in North Korea, Afghanistan’s Taliban, and Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders.

These latest diplomatic initiatives follow a year that brought few breakthroughs on the mediation front as the U.N. strained to advance democracy in Burma, head off mass rights abuses in Sri Lanka, and manage a crisis that threatens to trigger a resumption of civil war in Sudan.

U.N. officials say the proliferation of new initiatives is largely coincidental, the product of months, if not years, of preparation, but that it provides the U.N. with an opportunity to show that it can achieve some diplomatic wins. “There’s no grand strategy here,” said one official. Here’s a survey of key U.N. diplomatic initiatives for 2010 and their prospects for success {cynics at the UN say that this is propelled by the wish to secure a reappointment for a seconf term at the UN - www.SustainabiliTank.info editor}:

1. Cyprus. Ban traveled to Cyprus this weekend to nudge Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, the parties representing the ethnic Greek and Turkish sides of the island, into a breakthrough in a conflict that has lasted more than 35 years despite repeated efforts at mediation. Ban said that he is confident that a political settlement “is within reach.” But the two Cypriot leaders appeared more downbeat about the prospects for a deal. Cyprus has been split since 1974. Talks between the two sides during the past 17 months have produced some results, including an agreement to open a pedestrian crossing in Nicosia, the divided capital. But there is concern that April elections in the Turkish section may bring a hard-liner to power. “Time is not on the side of settlement,” the two leaders acknowledged in a joint statement Monday.

2. North Korea. Ban, a former South Korean diplomat, has been seeking a role in the North Korea crisis since he first took office in January 2007. A confidential U.N. policy paper, produced on April 25, 2007, called for “intensifying and expanding engagement” with Pyongyang, and possibly for the appointment a special North Korea coordinator. But initial attempts to start talks faltered after North Korea launched its missile test and detonated its second nuclear explosive last April and May. On Sunday, Ban announced that he would send his top political advisor, B. Lynn Pascoe, a former U.S. diplomat, to Pyongyang to restart high level U.N. talks later this month. He will be joined by Ban’s top Korean aide, Kim Won-soo. Can Ban be far behind?

3. Afghanistan. The U.N.’s outgoing special representative, Kai Eide, held secret talks with members of the Taliban sometime last year. Eide has been pursuing such contacts with the Taliban since he first started his job. U.N. sources described those talks as highly preliminary, and said that they do not have the approval of the Taliban leadership, which claims that its movement is not negotiating with the U.N. But an official close to the talks confirmed that they had in fact taken place and that Eide’s successor, Staffan di Mistura, would likely continue pursuing those contacts. While these discussions offer little hope of providing a breakthrough, they could provide a useful back channel over the long haul.

4. Sudan. The U.N. faces perhaps its greatest diplomatic challenge in Sudan, which is preparing for presidential elections this year and a referendum in 2011 that will determine whether the country remains unified or whether Sudan’s southerners decide to vote for independence. Ban has said Sudan will be one of his top priorities in 2010, and he has just assigned his two top Africa specialists, Ibrahim Gambari and Haile Menkerios, to manage U.N. operations on the ground. Success in Sudan will largely be measured by the U.N.’s ability to stop the referendum from triggering a renewed civil war. “Partitioning the country without violence: that will be a miracle,” said one Security Council diplomat. “I don’t know how they are going to do it.”

5. Burma. U.N. diplomatic efforts in Burma have pretty much run aground. Ban has reassigned his top Burma envoy, Gambari, to Sudan, and made his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar of India, his temporary point man on Burma. The Burmese military junta recently rebuffed a U.N. request to invite Gambari back to the country for a final visit. U.N. diplomats say that Burma has little interest in meeting with the U.N.’s diplomatic placeholders, particularly now that the Americans are looking to engage the regime directly.

From the latest news coming from Washington – “Under the new airport
rules, all citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen must receive a pat
down and an extra check of their carry-on bags before boarding a plane
bound for the United States, officials said. Citizens of Cuba, Iran,
Sudan and Syria — nations considered ’state sponsors of terrorism’ —
face the same requirement.”

That means Cuba and thirteen Muslim states: Afghanistan, Algeria,
Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

These news caused a lot of comments, but we think the wrong comments.

We assume obviously that Washington is ready finally to address the
terrorism issue. Airplane terrorism, as we learned on 9/11, is not
about transport of weapons but about terrorists – to be specific since
9/11 – we speak here about Islamic terrorists. If you want to catch
terrorists you must look for terrorists. Looking for baby formula is
not the answer – but looking for those passengers whose profiles are
suspicious might be a better bet. Sure, obviously, not all Muslims are
terrorists, and profiling is terrible – even illegal, but if you want
to catch terrorists you start with the profile that most fits Islamic
terrorists, and you bet – they are Muslims of any color. Even though
they may be traveling with documents issued by non-Islamic States,
i.e. the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Switzerland, or even the
US.

So, it is not easy to define exactly what papers are carried by the
terrorists, but you can have some guidelines to increase your chance
of catching them. looking for a profile of an Asian or African Muslim.
Then, learn from the Israelis how to talk to them – you may even find
out that they are so convinced that their cause is the right one, that
they will lower their guard and just plainly disclose that what you
see is all they got.

There may be a Jamaican convert to Islam who preached terrorism in the UK
and resides now in Kenya – a case in point. Kenya does want him either and
he will be sent back to Jamaica a second time. yes, this is a problem if you
are American and Jamaica does not cooperate – but he is a Muslim and no
Anti-Defamation league is enrtitled to tell you Mr. President that he should
not be stripped and searched if he wants to travel via the US to Jamaica.
This is simple.

But what about Cuba? Fidel Castro is more atheist then Catholic, surely
no Muslim. Whatever went on in the past is history to me and I do not believe
prologue to Mr. Castro. So why mix him and his country up with 13 Islamic
States involved in Islamic Terrorism? That is unless someone in the US longs
to see him give cover to such terrorists in the future so they get new reasons
to be after him? If the Jamaica case has anything to teach us – it is that the
US is better off reinsuring its rear parts from anger caused by mistreatment
and friendship is not achieved by mulling over past grief. Specially, as several
hundred former sugar baron families living in Florida should not be allowed to
hold hostage the US when it comes to real US interests.

Mr. President, I watched Bolivia and Venezuela leaders speak in Copenhagen,
they fumed and brimmed with words – no stones or missiles. Their ALBA is,
I think, the natural ally of a US that manages to disengage from the Islamic
world of oil. So, it is the US self interest that calls for you, Mr. President, to
invite Fidel Castro to Washington for a tete-a-tete and start on a way that
eventually will give the US the wall of safety it needs when addressing the 21st
Century centers of terror – the Islamists’ terror cancer that will continue to ooze
as long as we use oil.

Please start by taking him of that list!

The thirteen on that list include the obvious Iran – Syria – Lebanon
trio of the Shii’a Islam, it includes the Afghanistan/Pakistan US
theater of operations and Iraq, as well as the other US theater Saudi
Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan that misses Egypt and the Gaza strip. A
fourth historic region includes Libya and Algeria, then with Nigeria,
these are newer sources of oil for the US, and as such clear potential
sources of unhappy Islamists who complain about the changes in their
countries as fueled by oil money. In very few countries terrorism
against the US was actually started by rulers decree. Libya, Iran,
Syria, Sudan, Somalia may be the exceptions, but Saudi Arabia and
Yemen may have seen rulers who deflected anger against themselves into
anger against foreigners. In the majority of cases the terrorist is a
person of convictions and the situation could have been avoided had
the US and the rest of the Western World, tried to be less squanderous
with the oil we got addicted to.

Having said the above – let us get now to the point – MR PRESIDENT -
PLEASE – TAKE CUBA OFF THAT LIST BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BELONG ON THAT
LIST IN 2010.

* * * *

Please look – I am posting here four reference – links to news
articles of today’s New York Times.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05t…

New Air Security Checks From 14 Nations to U.S. Draw Criticism
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/…

In Yemen, U.S. Faces Leader Who Puts Family First
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/…

Behind Afghan Bombing, an Agent With Many Loyalties
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/…

Kenya Seeks to Deport Muslim Cleric to Jamaica

————————

THE UPDATE:

We have received a comment on this post and it presents a very valid point supposedly made at the UN General Assembly by the Foreign Minister of Cuba: “I mean if they were going to include us, then they should have at least thrown in North Korea.”

Even if the e-mail we received from ajay -   akazif at gmail.com  as presented by www. eggplantpost.com in http://eggplantpost.com/2010/01/05/cuba-… were a made up story, the argument holds water nevertheless. DID THE US INCLUDE CUBA ON THAT LIST BECAUSE IT WANTED TO AVOID BEING SEEN AS GOING AFTER A RAG-TAG OF ISLANIC COUNTRIES? Now, we believe that US security should be spoken here – not again US appeasement-for-oil please!

Michael Klare, The Blowback Effect, 2020
Posted by Michael Klare, January 5, 2010, on TomDispatch.com
 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175186/t…

You can already see a new style of writing about China emerging in our American world.  The New York Times set it off recently by publishing a front-page piece on a $3.4 billion Chinese investment in one of the planet’s last great copper reserves — in Afghanistan.  In passing, reporter Michael Wines also pointed out that Chinese energy companies had gained a stronger foothold in the future exploitation of Iraq’s massive oil reserves than had U.S. multinationals.  The ironies were legion and painfully visible.

Our two wars have been sucking us dry in two countries where state-owned Chinese companies have just scored significant economic victories.  “While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan],” wrote Wines, “China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.”

Already, the follow-up pieces are starting to come out and heady cocktails they are:  one part awe and one part bitterness mixed with one part despair.  In Esquire online, Thomas P.M. Barnett put it this way:  “Worse still: Will the rest of the world end up profiting from our blood and money?… The reason why Obama neglects to mention any regional interests like Pakistan’s? Admitting the larger logic of regionalization would make too painfully obvious the nature of our current strategic bankruptcy. Because it would suggest that the only ‘victory’ to be found would be ‘won’ by those neighboring powers who did nothing to stabilize the situation. In other words, their ‘treasure’ and our ‘blood.’”  At Foreign Policy online, Stephen M. Walt chimed in:  “While we’ve been running around playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban and ‘investing’ billions each year in the corrupt Karzai government, China has been investing in things that might actually be of some value, like a big copper mine.”

Under George W. Bush, the U.S. set out, in part, to turn the Greater Middle East into an American “lake” of energy reserves via two invasions, and you know how that worked out.  The Chinese, on the other hand, only last year sent their warships abroad — to hunt pirates as part of an international flotilla in the Gulf of Aden — for the first time since the eunuch Zheng He commanded a Ming dynasty armada that reached Africa six centuries ago.  Unfortunately, as Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, makes clear below, China’s leaders are as unlikely to learn from our deepest mistakes as they were 30-odd years ago when China’s post-Cultural Revolution leadership looked our way and made a logical but calamitous decision: that the auto industry — all those millions of individual cars burning fossil fuels — would be a crucial pillar of their future industrial development.

Right now, they may still seem to be acting out a key lesson of this American moment:  Stay off the hard stuff.  You know, all that advanced weaponry (and the military-industrial complex that goes with it), all those aircraft carrier battle groups, all those “expeditionary forces” ready to be sent thousands of miles from home to fight “little wars.”  Once again, however, as Klare suggests, our present symbols of “power” are likely to be their paragon and the future will be a mess.  It’s not enough, it seems, to make money, not war.  Once you have the money, it has to be spent on something and our imaginations remain so limited.

Too bad.  Here’s where you could only wish the future might be a little less predictable.  No such luck, Klare tells us, when it comes to military power as the measure of greatness on planet Earth in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  Tom

The Second Decade
The World in 2020
By Michael T. Klare

As the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, we find ourselves at one of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become visible to all.  If the first decade of the century witnessed profound changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world of 1999 in certain fundamental respects:  the United States remained the world’s paramount military power, the dollar remained the world’s dominant currency, and NATO remained its foremost military alliance, to name just three.

By the end of the second decade of this century, however, our world is likely to have a genuinely different look to it.  Momentous shifts in global power relations and a changing of the imperial guard, just now becoming apparent, will be far more pronounced by 2020 as new actors, new trends, new concerns, and new institutions dominate the global space.  Nonetheless, all of this is the norm of history, no matter how dramatic it may seem to us.

Less normal — and so the wild card of the second decade (and beyond) — is intervention by the planet itself.  Blowback, which we think of as a political phenomenon, will by 2020 have gained a natural component.  Nature is poised to strike back in unpredictable ways whose effects could be unnerving and possibly devastating.

What, then, will be the dominant characteristics of the second decade of the twenty-first century?  Prediction of this sort is, of course, inherently risky, but extrapolating from current trends, four key aspects of second-decade life can be discerned: the rise of China; the (relative) decline of the United States; the expanding role of the global South; and finally, possibly most dramatically, the increasing impact of a roiling environment and growing resource scarcity.

Let’s start with human history and then make our way into the unknown future history of the planet itself.

The Ascendant Dragon

That China has become a leading world power is no longer a matter of dispute.  That country’s new-found strength was on full display at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December where it became clear that no meaningful progress was possible on the issue of global warming without Beijing’s assent.  Its growing prominence was also evident in the way it responded to the Great Recession, as it poured multi-billions of dollars into domestic recovery projects, thereby averting a significant slowdown in its economy.  It spent many tens of billions more on raw materials and fresh investments in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, helping to ignite recovery in those regions, too.

If China is an economic giant today, it will be a powerhouse in 2020.  According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), that country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will jump from an estimated $3.3 trillion in 2010 to $7.1 trillion in 2020 (in constant 2005 dollars), at which time its economy will exceed all others save that of the United States.  In fact, its GDP then should exceed those of all the nations in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East combined.  As the decade proceeds, China is expected to move steadily up the ladder of technological enhancement, producing ever more sophisticated products, including advanced green energy and transportation systems that will prove essential to future post-carbon economies.  These gains, in turn, will give it increasing clout in international affairs.

China will undoubtedly also use its growing wealth and technological prowess to enhance its military power.  According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China is already the world’s second largest military spender, although the $85 billion it invested in its armed forces in 2008 was a pale shadow of the $607 billion allocated by the United States.  In addition, its forces remain technologically unsophisticated and its weapons are no match for the most modern U.S., Japanese, and European equipment.  However, this gap will narrow significantly in the century’s second decade as China devotes more resources to military modernization.

The critical question is:  How will China use its added power to achieve its objectives?

Until now, China’s leaders have wielded its growing strength cautiously, avoiding behavior that would arouse fear or suspicion on the part of neighbors and economic partners.  It has instead employed the power of the purse and “soft power” — vigorous diplomacy, development aid, and cultural ties — to cultivate friends and allies.  But will China continue to follow this “harmonious,” non-threatening approach as the risks of forcefully pursuing its national interests diminish?  This appears unlikely.

A more assertive China that showed what the Washington Post called “swagger” was already evident in the final months of 2009 at the summit meetings between presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao in Beijing and Copenhagen.  In neither case did the Chinese side seek a “harmonious” outcome:  In Beijing, it restricted Obama’s access to the media and refused to give any ground on Tibet or tougher sanctions on key energy-trading partner Iran; at a crucial moment in Copenhagen, it actually sent low-ranking officials to negotiate with Obama — an unmistakable slight — and forced a compromise that absolved China of binding restraints on carbon emissions.

If these summits are any indication, Chinese leaders are prepared to play global hard-ball, insisting on compliance with their core demands and giving up little even on matters of secondary importance.  China will find itself ever more capable of acting this way because the economic fortunes of so many countries are now tied to its consumption and investment patterns — a pivotal global role once played by the United States — and because its size and location gives it a commanding position in the planet’s most dynamic region.  In addition, in the first decade of the twenty-first century Chinese leaders proved especially adept at nurturing ties with the leaders of large and small countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that will play an ever more important role in energy and other world affairs.

To what ends will China wield its growing power?  For the top leadership in Beijing, three goals will undoubtedly be paramount: to ensure the continued political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to sustain the fast-paced economic growth which justifies its dominance, and to restore the country’s historic greatness.  All three are, in fact, related:  The CCP will remain in power, senior leaders believe, only so long as it orchestrates continuing economic expansion and satisfies the nationalist aspirations of the public as well as the high command of the People’s Liberation Army.  Everything Beijing does, domestically and internationally, is geared to these objectives.  As the country grows stronger, it will use its enhanced powers to shape the global environment to its advantage just as the United States has done for so long.  In China’s case, this will mean a world wide-open to imports of Chinese goods and to investments that allow Chinese firms to devour global resources, while placing ever less reliance on the U.S. dollar as the medium of international exchange.

The question that remains unanswered:  Will China begin flexing its growing military muscle?  Certainly, Beijing will do so in at least an indirect manner.  By supplying arms and military advisers to its growing network of allies abroad, it will establish a military presence in ever more areas.  My suspicion is that China will continue to avoid the use of force in any situation that might lead to a confrontation with major Western powers, but may not hesitate to bring its military to bear in any clash of national wills involving neighboring countries.  Such a situation could arise, for example, in a maritime dispute over control of the energy-rich South China Sea or in Central Asia, if one of the former Soviet republics became a haven for Uighur militants seeking to undermine Chinese control over Xinjiang Province.

The Eagle Comes in for a Landing

Just as the rise of China is now taken for granted, so, too, is the decline of the United States.  Much has been written about America’s inevitable loss of primacy as this country suffers the consequences of economic mismanagement and imperial overstretch.  This perspective was present in Global Trends 2025, a strategic assessment of the coming decades prepared for the incoming Obama administration by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an affiliate of the Central Intelligence Agency.  “Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor [in 2025],” the NIC predicted, “the United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained.”

Some unforeseen catastrophe aside, however, the U.S. is not likely to be poorer in 2020 or more backward technologically.  In fact, according to the most recent Department of Energy projections, America’s GDP in 2020 will be approximately $17.5 trillion (in 2005 dollars), nearly one-third greater than today.  Moreover, some of the initiatives already launched by President Obama to stimulate the development of advanced energy systems are likely to begin bearing fruit, possibly giving the United States an edge in certain green technologies.  And don’t forget, the U.S. will remain the globe’s preeminent military power, with China lagging well behind, and no other potential rival able to mobilize even Chinese-level resources to challenge U.S. military advantages.

What will change is America’s position relative to China and other nations — and so, of course, its ability to dominate the global economy and the world political agenda.  Again using DoE projections, we find that in 2005, America’s GDP of $12.4 trillion exceeded that of all the nations of Asia and South America combined, including Brazil, China, India, and Japan.  By 2020, the combined GDP of Asia and South America will be about 40% greater than that of the U.S., and growing at a much faster rate.   By then, the United States will be deeply indebted to more solvent foreign nations, especially China, for the funds needed to pay for continuing budget deficits occasioned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget, the federal stimulus package, and the absorption of “toxic assets” from troubled banks and corporations.

Count on this, though:  in an increasingly competitive world economy in which U.S. firms enjoy ever diminishing advantages, the prospects for ordinary Americans will be distinctly dimmer.  Some sectors of the economy, and some parts of the country, will certainly continue to thrive, but others will surely suffer Detroit’s fate, becoming economically hollowed out and experiencing wholesale impoverishment.  For many — perhaps most — Americans, the world of 2020 may still provide a standard of living far superior to that enjoyed by a majority of the world; but the perks and advantages that most middle class folks once took for granted — college education, relatively accessible (and affordable) medical care, meals out, foreign travel — will prove significantly harder to come by.

Even America’s military advantage will be much eroded.  The colossal costs of the disastrous Iraq and Afghan wars will set limits on the nation’s ability to undertake significant military missions abroad.  Keep in mind that, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, a significant proportion of the basic combat equipment of the Army and Marine Corps has been damaged or destroyed in these wars, while the fighting units themselves have been badly battered by multiple tours of duty.  Repairing this damage would require at least a decade of relative quiescence, which is nowhere in sight.

The growing constraints on American power were recently acknowledged by President Obama in an unusual setting:  his West Point address announcing a troop surge in Afghanistan.  Far from constituting a triumphalist expression of American power and preeminence, like President Bush’s speeches on the Iraq War, his was an implicit admission of decline.  Alluding to the hubris of his predecessor, Obama noted, “We’ve failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.  In the wake of the economic crisis, too many of our neighbors and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills…. Meanwhile, competition in the global economy has grown more fierce.  So we simply can’t afford to ignore the price of these wars.”

Many have chosen to interpret Obama’s Afghan surge decision as a typical twentieth-century-style expression of America’s readiness to intervene anywhere on the planet at a moment’s notice.  I view it as a transitional move meant to prevent the utter collapse of an ill-conceived military venture at a time when the United States is increasingly being forced to rely on non-military means of persuasion and the cooperation, however tempered, of allies.  President Obama said as much:   “We’ll have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power…. And we can’t count on military might alone.”  Increasingly, this will be the mantra of strategic planning that will govern the American eagle in decline.

The Rising South

The second decade of the century will also witness the growing importance of the global South:  the formerly-colonized, still-developing areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  Once playing a relatively marginal role in world affairs, they were considered open territory, there to be invaded, plundered, and dominated by the major powers of Europe, North America, and (for a time) Japan.  To some degree, the global South, a.k.a. the “Third World,” still plays a marginal role, but that is changing.

Once a member in good standing of the global South, China is now an economic superpower and India is well on its way to earning this status.  Second-tier states of the South, including Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey, are on the rise economically, and even the smallest and least well-off nations of the South have begun to attract international attention as providers of crucial raw materials or as sites of intractable problems including endemic terrorism and crime syndicates.

To some degree, this is a product of numbers — growing populations and growing wealth.  In 2000, the population of the global South stood at an estimated 4.9 billion people; by 2020, that number is expected to hit 6.4 billion.  Many of these new inhabitants of planet Earth will be poor and disenfranchised, but most will be workers (in either the formal or informal economy), many will participate in the political process in some way, and some will be entrepreneurs, labor leaders, teachers, criminals, or militants.  Whatever the case, they will make their presence felt.

The nations of the South will also play a growing economic role as sources of raw materials in an era of increasing scarcity and founts of entrepreneurial vitality.  By one estimate, the combined GDP of the global South (excluding China) will jump from $7.8 trillion in 2005 to $15.8 trillion in 2020, an increase of more than 100%.  In particular, many of the prime deposits of oil, natural gas, and the key minerals needed in the global North to keep the industrial system going are facing wholesale depletion after decades of hyper-intensive extraction, leaving only the deposits in the South to be exploited.

Take oil:  In 1990, 43% of world daily oil output was supplied by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (the major Persian Gulf producers plus Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela), other African and Latin American producers, and the Caspian Sea countries; by 2020, their share will rise to 58%.  A similar shift in the center of gravity of world mineral production will take place, with unexpected countries like Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Niger (a major uranium supplier), and the Democratic Republic of Congo taking on potentially crucial roles.

Inevitably, the global South will also play a conspicuous role in a series of potentially devastating developments.  Combine persistent deep poverty, economic desperation, population growth, and intensifying climate degradation and you have a recipe for political unrest, insurgency, religious extremism, increased criminality, mass migrations, and the spread of disease.  The global North will seek to immunize itself from these disorders by building fences of every sort, but through sheer numbers alone, the inhabitants of the South will make their presence felt, one way or another.

The Planet Strikes Back

All of this might represent nothing more than the normal changing of the imperial guard on planet Earth, if that planet itself weren’t undergoing far more profound changes than any individual power or set of powers, no matter how strong.  The ever more intrusive realities of global warming, resource scarcity, and food insufficiency will, by the end of this century’s second decade, be undeniable and, if not by 2020, then in the decades to come, have the capacity to put normal military and economic power, no matter how impressive, in the shade.

“There is little doubt about the main trends,” Professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in awarding the Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore in December 2007:  “More and more scientists have reached ever closer agreement concerning the increasingly dramatic consequences that will follow from global warming.”  Likewise, a growing body of energy experts has concluded that the global production of conventional oil will soon reach a peak (if it hasn’t already) and decline, producing a worldwide energy shortage.  Meanwhile, fears of future food emergencies, prompted in part by global warming and high energy prices, are becoming more widespread.

All of this was apparent when world leaders met in Copenhagen and failed to establish an effective international regime for reducing the emission of climate-altering greenhouse gases (GHGs).  Even though they did agree to keep talking and comply with a non-binding, aspirational scheme to cut back on GHGs, observers believe that such efforts are unlikely to lead to meaningful progress in controlling global warming in the near future.  What few doubt is that the pace of climate change will accelerate destructively in the second decade of this century, that conventional (liquid) petroleum and other key resources will become scarcer and more difficult to extract, and that food supplies will diminish in many poor, environmentally vulnerable areas.

Scientists do not agree on the precise nature, timing, and geographical impact of climate-change effects, but they do generally agree that, as we move deeper into the century, we will be seeing an exponential increase in the density of the heat-trapping greenhouse-gas layer in the atmosphere as the consumption of fossil fuels grows and past smokestack emissions migrate to the outer atmosphere.  DoE data indicates, for example, that between 1990 and 2005, world carbon dioxide emissions grew by 32%, from 21.5 to 31.0 billion metric tons.  It can take as much as 50 years for GHGs to reach the greenhouse layer, which means that their effect will increase even if — as appears unlikely — the nations of the world soon begin to reduce their future emissions.

In other words, the early manifestations of global warming in the first decade of this century — intensifying hurricanes and typhoons, torrential rains followed by severe flooding in some areas and prolonged, even record-breaking droughts in others, melting ice-caps and glaciers, and rising sea levels — will all become more pronounced in the second.  As suggested by the IPCC in its 2007 report, uninhabitable dust bowls are likely to emerge in large areas of Central and Northeast Asia, Mexico and the American Southwest, and the Mediterranean basin.  Significant parts of Africa are likely to be devastated by rising temperatures and diminished rainfall.  More cities are likely to undergo the sort of flooding and destruction experienced by New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.   And blistering summers, as well as infrequent or negligible rainfall, will limit crop production in key food-producing regions.

Progress will be evident in the development of renewable energy systems, such as wind, solar, and biofuels.  Despite the vast sums now being devoted to their development, however, they will still provide only a relatively small share of world energy in 2020.  According to DoE projections, renewables will take care of only 10.5% of world energy needs in 2020, while oil and other petroleum liquids will still make up 32.6% of global supplies; coal, 27.1%; and natural gas, 23.8%.  In other words, greenhouse gas production will rage on — and, ironically, should it not, thanks to expected shortfalls in the supply of oil, that in itself will likely prove another kind of disaster, pushing up the prices of all energy sources and endangering economic stability.  Most industry experts, including those at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, believe that it will be nearly impossible to continue increasing the output of conventional and unconventional petroleum (including tough to harvest Arctic oil, Canadian tar sands, and shale oil) without increasingly implausible fresh investments of trillions of dollars, much of which would have to go into war-torn, unstable areas like Iraq or corrupt, unreliable states like Russia.

In the latest hit movie Avatar, the lush, mineral-rich moon Pandora is under assault by human intruders seeking to extract a fabulously valuable mineral called “unobtainium.”  Opposing them are not only a humanoid race called the Na’vi, loosely modeled on Native Americans and Amazonian jungle dwellers, but also the semi-sentient flora and fauna of Pandora itself.   While our own planet may not possess such extraordinary capabilities, it is clear that the environmental damage caused by humans since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is producing a natural blowback effect which will become increasingly visible in the coming decade.

These, then, are the four trends most likely to dominate the second decade of this century.  Perhaps others will eventually prove more significant, or some set of catastrophic events will further alter the global landscape, but for now expect the dragon ascendant, the eagle descending, the South rising, and the planet possibly trumping all of these.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Owl Books). A documentary film version of his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation at Bloodandoilmovie.com.

Copyright 2010 Michael T. Klare

They believe Obama is trying to do the right thing, so about Hillary Clinton at State.

Troubling Portrait of Suspect Emerges.
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE ,  AP

WASHINGTON (Nov. 5) - His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances, are troubling.
For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
“He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,” Grieger said. “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths.”
But, more recently, federal agents grew suspicious.
At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.
They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the officials said late Thursday that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of Hasan’s computer.
Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending deployment.
Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,” Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
“I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,” Khan said, “He was not born in Palestine.”
Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.
“We hardly ever got to discussing politics,” Khan said. “Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist.”
Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1997.
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes, Pam Hess, Lolita C. Baldor and Brett Zongker in Washington and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

—————-
Press Release from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee:
ADC Appalled by Attack on Fort Hood, Community Urged to Take Safety Precautions.

Washington, DC | November 5, 2009 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is appalled by the attack that took place earlier today against soldiers and others at Fort Hood, Texas. Preliminary news reports have indicated that a rogue Army Major Malik Hasan and two others shot and killed at least 12 people and injured numerous others.

ADC President Mary Rose Oakar said, “This attack is absolutely deplorable. ADC has been consistent and on record in condemning any attacks aimed at innocents, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators may be.  Such violence is morally reprehensible and has nothing to do with any religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin.  ADC urges the FBI and law enforcement agencies to make every effort to see that justice is served.” Oakar continued, “ADC also calls upon law enforcement agencies to provide immediate protection for all Mosques, community centers, schools, and any locations that may be identified or misidentified with being Arab, Muslim, South Asian or Sikh as a clear backlash has already started.  The actions of a few should not invite a backlash on innocent members of any community and we urge law enforcement and others to keep that in mind.

Additionally, due to these tragic developments, ADC is releasing the following advisory statement to members of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities. ADC feels it prudent to issue this advisory statement due to the potential of a backlash against these communities and given the historically documented acts of hate-motivated violence including vandalism against these communities.

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community. ADC urges everyone to exercise common sense and rely on their own best judgment, but offers the following as suggestions should the need arise:

1) IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS PLACED IN PHYSICAL DANGER BECAUSE OF YOUR ETHNICITY, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN:

Call the police (dial 911 in most communities)

Contact the local FBI office, It is the FBI’s job to investigate hate-motivated crimes and specific threats of violence. A list of FBI field offices is included on our website, please see: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

If the threat is imminent, go to a safe location such as a police station or church.

If you feel threatened in your home or community, move to a friend’s house, or a hotel for as long as necessary.

Contact ADC to file a complaint by emailing the ADC Legal Department at<  legal at adc.org > or by calling (202) 244-2990.

2) IF YOUR PLACE OF WORK, PLACE OF WORSHIP, OR SCHOOL IS IDENTIFIED OR CAN BE MISIDENTIFIED WITH ARABS AND/OR MUSLIMS:

Make sure the location has an open line of communication with law enforcement.

Make sure you know all the exits to your building.

Make sure the location has a current emergency plan that is defined and can be implemented should the need arise.

3) IF YOUR CHILD CAN BE IDENTIFIED AS ARAB OR MUSLIM, OR MAY BE CONFUSED FOR BEING OF MIDDLE-EASTERN ORIGIN:

Make sure you discuss the events with your children and that they feel comfortable speaking with an adult if they face harassment by others.

Make sure your children know what steps to take to avoid confrontation with other students.

Work with your children’s school to implement an anti-discriminatory policy.

Click on the following link for a list of the FBI Field Offices across the country: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community.
NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

Six years of fighting an oil war of choice in Iraq, and ignoring what originally was called a war against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, now the remaining spokespeople for Bush Republicanism push President Obama to his self destruction by wishing him deeper into the Afghanistan quagmire.

This Sunday, TV programs showed how more intense becomes the opposition of thinking people to further backing of the Karzai government that seemingly has cheated on the reelection results, and thus is not a legitimate democratically elected government or partner of the US in what was supposed to be a war in which the US pursues security interests. We said before, Senator McCaine is just not the right person to give advise on such matters of importance to the US. White House staff Axelrod & Emanuel said clearly that no decision was yet taken by the President, and that he is personally deeply involved now in the decision-making process.

Also, on the CNN – GPS program led by Fareed Zakaria, Indian Minister Sashi Tharoor pointed at the Pakistani problem that must also be taken into account when looking at the Afghan battle ground. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
will be a State guest of the White House November 24, 2009. Perhaps finally the US will come up with a new Indian Sub-Continent policy that will involve the AfPak region also.

Obamas’ First ‘State’ Dinner
to Honor Indian Leader Nov. 24

Contributing Editor

U.S. Starting from “Scratch” in Afghanistan, Emanuel Says

POSTED: 10/18/09
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel today shifted the burden for the current situation in Afghanistan back to the Bush administration, saying that the U.S. was now “beginning at scratch” after eight years of war because of key strategic questions that “never got asked.
“

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Emanuel never mentioned the Bush administration by name as he discussed the choices now facing President Obama, including a decision about whether to send as many as 40,000 more troops as has been requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in the country.

That request has put Obama politically on the spot, with Republicans calling on him to back his commander while opposition among Democrats has been rising.

But Emanuel said, “What I find interesting and just intriguing from this debate in Washington is there’s a lot of people who, all of a sudden, just say this is now the epicenter of the war on terror, you must do this now, immediately approve what the general said, where before, it (Afghanistan) never even got on the radar screen for them. Everything was always about Iraq.”

“When you go through all the analysis, its clear that basically we had a war for eight years that’s been going on, that’s adrift, that we’re beginning at scratch and just from the starting point,” Emanuel said. “There’s not a security force, an army and the type of services that are important for the Afghans to become a true partner.”

Emanuel said it would be “reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop level if in fact you haven’t done a thorough analysis about whether in fact there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country.”

Speaking of the review of Afghanistan policy and the decision on troops now going on at the White House, Emanuel said, “The president has been asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side. What is the impact on the region? What can the Afghan government do or not do?”

“Those questions never got asked,” he added.

The White House has already held five meetings on Afghan policy since McChrystal’s request and Emanuel said there would be another set of meetings over the next two weeks.

Also on CNN, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, who is on a fact-finding mission in Afghanistan, said the U.S. should not commit more troops to the country until questions about the legitimacy of the recent presidential elections there are resolved.

“It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country, when we don’t even have an election finished and know who the president is and what kind of government we’re working in, with,” Kerry said.

Uncertified results showed that President Hamid Karzai had won with 54 percent of the vote, thus avoiding a runoff, but an election commission has been looking into charges of widespread fraud at the polls.

“When our own … commanding general tells us that a critical component of achieving our mission here is, in fact, good governance, and we’re living with a government that we know has to change and provide it, how could the president responsibly say, oh, they asked for more, sure, here they are?,” Kerry said.

This Sunday, Columbus week-end, the TV programs were dominated by discussions over the US military proposal to enhance US military presence in Afghanistan. There was no time to talk about the Norwegians having honored President Obama with the Nobel Peace Award indeed in hope he will bring about peace in the world’s most serious conflict areas – this, knowingly, that at present the US President chairs two active military conflict councils – the withdrawal from the Iraq war for oil, and a possible too late enhancement of war in the AFPAK region that might please the Bush elements that withdrew early from Afghanistan in order to fight the Iraq war, but are happy now if successful in miring Obama in a Vietnam-kind war in Afghanistan.

Richard Hass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the Farid Zakaria CNN program “GPS – Global Public Square” said clearly that the Afghan real-estate is of no importance to US security at this time, and that chasing the Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, while it has a home in Pakistan, will do nothing else then move it to other troubled spots in the world – and really there are quite a few such available spots in the Muslim world at this time.

Former Republican Presidential candidate John McCain was all over the TV declaring that not strengthening the US involvement in Afghanistan will have “historic” consequences. McCain has not gotten it yet that the American people did not elect him President because they did not trust him – not the least because his choice for Vice President – his proposing Sarah Paley for that job formerly held by Cheney – both darlings of the US extreme right wing. Then, what did McCain achieve in his life beyond having been a prisoner in the Vietnam Hanoi Hilton thanks to the fact that his father was US head commander of the Pacific during the Vietnam war? Was being held in Hanoi Hilton not just one step worse than being non-present member of the National Guard in Texas of a G.W. Bush whose father was once US President? Are these military credentials?

Now, again a Norwegian, decides to battle it out with an American at the UN for the honor to declare that the Afghan re-election of President Karzai was fraudulent. It was fraudulent – and both are right – and both point now at the UN as a place were truth has a very hard time of breaking through – but it does come out eventually. So why go to war in order to support a fraudulent head of State who does not even support the US effort but rather chairs over the enrichment of his cronies and nothing more? The UN? This is a body that will back the heads of State that show up at Ban Ki-moon’s doorsteps – and he will roll out the red carpet for them. So it started with the Karzai re-election fiasco that was used by some Americans as justification for continuing to help him – just because they are not ready to point the finger at a much more serious culprit – Pakistan.

On TV, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, yesterday, looked totally unbelievable. While the US thinks Al-Qaeda, Pakistan continues to think India. If the US is not careful it will find itself as godfather of renewed India-Pakistan warfare that was avoided to-date because of the Indian decision that it is not worth for them to waste effort on the Pakistani nuisance. But some more attacks like last week’s bombing by Pakistani elements of the Indian embassy in Karzai’s Kabul, may force them to do what the US has not done yet – lash out against Pakistan. And don’t forget this year’s attacks in Mumbai (Bombay) with its anti-Semitic, anti-American elements, that originated in Pakistan and that was not yet acted upon by the Pakistan government. Washington was called to shame for the inaction of the Pakistani friends. This is no reason to increase involvement in Afghanistan – just because you do not have the will to act on Pakistan!

If above is not clear – pleas read the attached AP report:

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UN: ‘Widespread Fraud’ in Afghan Vote

By HEIDI VOGT , AP

KABUL (Oct. 11) — The top U.N. official in Afghanistan on Sunday acknowledged “widespread fraud” in the disputed presidential election and rejected allegations from a former deputy that he covered up cheating to smooth the path to victory for President Hamid Karzai.

The remarks by Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide appeared designed to win back respect for both the troubled U.N. mission and the entire election process ahead of a ruling by investigators on whether fraud was extensive enough in the Aug. 20 balloting to require a runoff.

Eide’s reputation was tarnished when his deputy Peter Galbraith alleged that the U.N. mission chief downplayed allegations of widespread ballot-stuffing by Karzai’s supporters. Galbraith, the top-ranking American in the U.N. mission, was fired Sept. 30 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after the widely publicized dispute.

A U.N.-backed fraud panel is expected to decide this week whether to throw out enough votes to require a runoff between Karzai and his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. Doubts about the U.N.’s neutrality could throw the panel’s rulings into question.

The Obama administration and its international partners had hoped the vote — the first presidential election run by Afghans — would restore legitimacy to a government plagued by weakness and corruption. Instead, widespread allegations of ballot-box stuffing have sullied Karzai’s reputation and Galbraith’s accusations threaten to undermine the credibility of the U.N. which helped organize the election.

Photos From Afghanistan

APU.S. Marines with 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion 5th Marines take cover during a firefight with Taliban militants in Nawa district, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan on Friday.

Photo From Afghanistan

In a separate news conference, Karzai told reporters that “confusion” over election results had been “created by Western elements in our country.” He did not elaborate.

During a press conference, Eide said Galbraith’s allegations were untrue in some cases and taken out of context in others. Eide was flanked by ambassadors from the United States, Britain and France in a show of international support for the U.N. mission and its embattled leader. Eide said he could “only say that there was widespread fraud” and that “any specific figure at this time would be pure speculation” until the recount is complete. Eide said Galbraith’s allegations against him have “affected the entire election process.”

Final results have been delayed by more than a month as a U.N.-backed panel set up as a check on the Afghan-appointed election commission examines complaints and suspicious votes. Though preliminary tallies show Karzai winning with about 54 percent, enough Karzai ballots are suspect that the voiding of fraudulent votes could drop him below the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

Eide said he remains “committed to the process” and pointed to the ongoing fraud investigations as proof that systems set up to catch cheating are working.

Last week, Galbraith said he was sticking by his allegations. He accused the United Nations of failing to exercise its responsibility to oversee the Afghan elections, adding that “the fraud that took place in Afghanistan was preventable.”

Four U.N. staffers who worked under Galbraith have resigned over the dispute, U.N. spokesman Aleem Siddique said.

Among other things, Galbraith complained that polling stations were allowed to open in areas that were insecure, raising the likelihood of fraud. Eide said military operations were launched in a bid to secure to open as many stations as possible.

Eide said that closing such stations would have denied a large number of people the opportunity to vote and created “an important element of potential instability in the country.”

Many polling stations believed affected by fraud were in areas of the Taliban-controlled south where turnout was low.

Eide denied that he had told U.N. staffers not to pass on credible information about ballot-stuffing or low-to-nonexistent turnout. However, he said reports from second- or third-hand sources were not reported because they did not appear credible.

“Some of these allegations are based on private conversations whilst he was a guest in my home for two months,” Eide said. “My view is that private discussions around the dinner table remain just that: private.”

Eide said both he and the U.N. mission have suffered from the accusations, and that the charges have also “heightened the temperature” of discussions about elections, making it harder to convince people that the process will be fair.

Once the election results become clear, President Barack Obama is expected to complete a review of Afghan strategy and decide whether to accept a recommendation by his top commander here, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for up to 40,000 more troops.

Among the options under review is a plan to maintain U.S. troop numbers at their current levels and shift the focus to missile strikes and special operations against al-Qaida leaders, including those sheltering in neighboring Pakistan.

In the latest fighting, U.S. and Afghan forces stormed a mountainside compound in eastern Afghanistan before dawn Sunday and killed more than a dozen militants in a compound used by an al-Qaida figure, according to the U.S. military.

Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

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And from October 12, 2009 official UN News no word that the UN punished Mr. Peter Galbraith for his whistle-blowing the truth:

UN ENVOY ADMITS AFGHAN ELECTIONS MARRED BY FRAUD BUT DENIES COVER-UP .

The top United Nations envoy to Afghanistan has acknowledged that “widespread” fraud took place during the August elections, but stressed that there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the result reflects the will of the people. 

“And I do believe, therefore, firmly, that when the result is being certified it will be a result being made on a solid basis and that should be acceptable to the Afghan people.” 

The Nobel Prize Committee that dishes out the Nobel Peace Prizes, included Barak Obama in the list of candidates just only two weeks into the Obama Presidency of the United States – let us face it – JUST BECAUSE HE WAS NOT G.W. BUSH – this in full recognition that the whole world had just felt extreme relief by having celebrated “good riddance”  of that US Presidency.

Now, less then nine full months of the Obama Presidency, with the papers full with news that the US will attain a 1,4 trillion deficit this year, with Obama deep in the mud in his effort to extricate the US from the Iraq oil war, and being pulled deeper into the Vietnam-alike Afghanistan war that was set on the back burner by the Bush people in their attempt to take over the oil of Iraq, thus creating the present AfPak disaster, those Republicans that can see nothing wrong with imposing on the US and the world the dependence on oil interests, just foam and furry about the world’s celebrating Obama.

Norway is a complicated State. It is an oil country, but it has a clear strata of pure humanists. They do not back a strong Europe as what they see as their national interest, but they love to see a strong US as they got their lesson in WWII that you must have a strong outside ally. A strong US is not the US of Abu Ghuraib or Guantanamo. They would rather see for the 21-st century a US of good education, racial calm, and national health care system. A US of high technology and science and that has vision and power to lead the world at a time that it becomes clear that global leadership is moving anyway away from the cross-Atlatic to the cross-Pacific. They hate the revival of monkey-trials and back sliding to middle ages that the US never had, but Europe knew so well. Rush Limbaugh found his European ally in Vaclav Klaus, and the Norwegians have no use for either – so they decided to give the prize to progressive America and hope that this will strengthen Obama in his efforts to change the America as it was left behind by the Cheney-Bush Washington DC forces.

The Republican leadership is left to chose between honest US patriotism, or back-stabbing mindless infighting.

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Columnist
From Silence to Outrage, Republicans React to Nobel News
POSTED: 10/9/09
FILED UNDER:THE CAPITOLIST
1052 Comments   Even before President Obama stood in front of the Rose Garden microphones to react to the news of his Nobel Peace Prize, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele sent out a statement asking, “What has President Obama actually accomplished?”

Steele went on to rap both Obama and the Nobel committee, saying, “It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has out-shined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

Steele’s harsh words fell at one end of the spectrum of Republican reaction Friday as party leaders and pundits navigated the tricky terrain of discussing an international honor for an American president. And, even some Democrats were left scratching their heads.

Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves Friday to slam Obama’s “incompetence” and the Nobel committee’s bias.”I think the people who used to run the election board for Saddam Hussein’s government were hired by the Nobel committee here to tally the votes,” he said.

Fred Thompson, the former Republican presidential candidate and current radio host, wrote on his Twitter feed, “I awoke 2 THE ONION headline Obama had won Nobel Peace prize by appeasing all dictators of world.”

Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said, “I don’t mean to compare Barack Obama to Gorbachev, who was, whatever his faults, a truly historic and courageous figure. But let’s hope the parallel extends this far: that a year from now the Democrats suffer a major electoral repudiation.”

Beyond media types and media seekers, elected Republican officials and potential candidates took a more muted, even positive, approach to the Nobel news.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, said in a radio interview, “Regardless of the circumstances, anytime somebody wins a Nobel Prize I think an appropriate response is to say, ‘Congratulations’.”

Mike Huckabee, another possible 2012 contender, counseled Republicans on his Web site, “There will be an outcry from those on the right who will say that Obama’s nomination, made two weeks into his presidency, is impossible to justify, but I think such an outcry will sound like right-wing whining. The better response is simply to allow those on the left to explain what he did in his first two weeks as president that merited such recognition.”

Lou Zickar, editor of the moderate Republican Ripon Forum, said Republicans would have done themselves a favor by doing what the rest of America did: “scratch their heads and accept the award for what it is — an honor.” Zickar said Obama’s muted reaction showed his ability to find the right tone and “the complete inability of Republicans to do the same thing.”

Of course, Republicans weren’t the only ones guilty of post-prize hyperbole. In response to Steele’s missive, the Democratic National Committee fired off a statement saying the GOP had “no boundaries, no shame,” and had “thrown its lot in with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

In the meantime, the truly powerful Republicans in Washington took a different approach entirely. By the end of the day Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner had said nothing at all.

 PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR A VERY GOOD VIEW OF THE SUBJECT, – and please remember also that our further opinion is that the Pakistan establishment is no help in Afghanistan either.

If Obama does not change the horses that were deeded to him – the Afghanistan & Pakistan conundrum may become his Vietnam.

 
 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009…

from: Afghanistan: the wrong target.