Crescent Magazine

Washington DC, Crescent-online
June 24, 2010 - 2:30 pm EST

America's gung-ho commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal has been given the boot, ostensibly for his crude remarks about his superiors but the reality is different and the problem much deeper.

McChrsytal's departure signals the formal defeat of US troops in Afghanistan despite US President Barack Obama claiming that the strategy McChrystal crafted will continue. As if to paper over the cracks, Obama appointed General David Petraeus, McChrystal's boss, as replacement.

For Petraeus, this is a step down. He was head of US Central Command that took in its sweep not only Afghanistan but also Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the entire Central Asian region. His appointment indicates total disarray in America's war strategy in Afghanistan.  

McChrystal was called to the White House in what was billed as his participation in the monthly Afghan review strategy to explain his crude remarks. Instead, he had a 20-minute session with Obama after which he left without attending the strategy session.

In announcing McChrsytal's departure, Obama, accompanied by General Petraeus, Vice President Joe Biden and Defence Secretary Robert Gates in the White House Rose Garden tried to underline continuity and solidity of his Afghan policy, by claiming he had accepted General McChrystal’s resignation “with considerable regret.”

Obama insisted it had not been done out of personal insult, although McChrystal had spread plenty around in his interview with Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone magazine. He said the magazine article featuring contemptuous quotes from the general and his staff about senior administration officials had not met standards of behavior for a commanding general, and threatened to erode trust among administration and military officials and undermine civilian control of the military.

“War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or president,” Obama said. “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for national security.” He should have added that the Afghan war is tougher than what he had been led to believe. The US and its allies are losing; not even Petraeus with his dubious success claims in Iraq can reverse this trend.

It may be that McChrystal deliberately made his crude remarks so that Obama would be left with no choice but to fire him. He knows better than anyone else that no matter what additional troops he gets in Afghanistan, his strategy will not work. The Taliban are too tough a nut to crack. Instead, the insurgency under his watch has spread to many other fronts. Marja was a complete failure and the Qandahar operation has been postponed until September, before turning into a disaster.

If American or Nato troops were winning, why would they postpone military operations in such a crucial area? McChrystal has made a smart move by getting himself fired. Who would want to be the last commander to preside over the total defeat of US forces in Afghanistan?

His alleged toughness--he sleeps only five hours a day, eats one meal and runs eight miles daily, we are told--has not been much help. His successor, General Petraeus is also a long-distance runner. This would be most helpful when Americans make the run toward the Pakistan border as the Taliban chase them out of Afghanistan. Americans do think of everything.

Obama could save himself and the American people much grief by getting out of Afghanistan n ow while there is still time to save face. A year or so later, this option may be gone.

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Washington-Crescent-online
June 22, 2010; 12:00 noon EST

General Stanley McChrystal, the much-touted top American commander in Afghanistan, has been summoned to Washington for some ear-twisting over his crude remarks about several Obama aides. In an interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine that will hit newsstands on June 25, McChrystal mocks US Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Jim Jones (a retired general) and US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, another retired general.

McChrystal will appear at the monthly review meeting about Afghanistan in the White House on June 23. Normally, he is linked up via video-conferencing but given his remarks that have rankled many, he has been called to explain himself.   

In the Rolling Stone article, an anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted as calling national security adviser James L. Jones a "clown," who remains "stuck in 1985." Richard C. Holbrooke, Obama's senior envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, referred to by some as a "bulldozer" because of his brash style, is also subjected to snide remarks. A McChrystal aide is quoted as saying: "The Boss says he's like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."

Many foreign officials, including the Afghans and the Pakistanis, simply hear Holbrooke out but ignore what he says. It seems, the bulldozer has run into an equally ascerbic McChrystal who is beginning to feel the heat over his failed Afghan strategy. Everyone is trying to cover their own backsides.

The infighting and viper-type biting are indicative of things going horribly wrong in Afghanistan. The Qandahar operation has been postponed by several months and is no longer even referred to as an "operation". McChrystal has admitted that the US "cannot shoot its way out of Afghanistan" and that there must be negotiations with the Taliban. Many US officials in Washington, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have said much the same thing, although she added for domestic consumption, that they must renounce violence and agree to work with the Karzai government.

As events unfold in Afghanistan, it is the Americans and their Nato allies, not the Taliban, that will have to lay down arms. US/Nato troops will have to beg the Taliban for safe passage out of Afghanistan to reach the Khyber Pass. They would need the protection of the Pakistan army there from the chasing Taliban.

In recent weeks, news from Afghanistan has been pretty grim. June has been a particularly bad month for US/Nato casualties, marking one of the highest casualty totals since the war was launched in October 2001. In May, there were 122 suicides among US troops and another 22 among the "brave" Marines.

When American soldiers prefer to take their own lives rather than face the enemy, it is a sure sign that the end is nigh for the mighty US and its gun-toting soldiers in a distant land who fight briliantly on Hollywood screen but real life battles are a different ballgame.

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Peshawar, Crescent-online
June 22, 2010 - 10:00 am EST

There are bad warlords and then there are good warlords in Afghanistan. How do you tell the difference? Easy. Those that work for the Americans are the good warlords, in the now infamous words of an aide to a former US President, "Mr. President, they are our SOBs," when explaining why America was financing death squads in South America in the early 1950s. 

That the US finances warlords in Afghanistan is not an allegation made by anti-American extremists. This information emerged from a year-long study by the US House of Representatives Subcommittee for National Security that released its report on June 21. Led by Representative John F. Tierney, the subcommittee found evidence that US money was also funding the Taliban, even if indirectly but certainly with the knowledge of top US commanders.

Several trucking company supervisors told investigators that they believed the gunmen they hired to escort their convoys bribed the Taliban not to attack them.

Money paid to warlords comes from a $2.1 billion contract called Host Nation Trucking. The fund is allocated to pay for the movement of food and supplies to nearly 200 American bases throughout the country. Given unpaved roads in often mountainous terrain with hostile population, not to mention the incessant danger of Taliban attacks who can suddenly emerge and as quickly disappear, some American commanders feel the money is well spent.

This, however, is undermining the very government and its institutions, especially the army and police, that Americans say are being trained to take over once American and Nato troops leave the country.

The 79-page report, titled “Warlord Inc.,” paints a picture of total anarchy in Afghanistan. The country’s major highways are controlled by gunmen working for warlords who answer to no one — and are paid by the US. There are hundreds of foreign unregistered private security companies, mercenaries to be precise, employing as many as 100,000 local gunmen. 

“The principal private security subcontractors,” the report said, “are warlords, strongmen, commanders and militia leaders who compete with the Afghan central government for power and authority. “The warlords thrive in a vacuum of government authority," the report says.

At the heart of the problem, the investigation found, is that the American military pays trucking companies to move its supplies across Afghanistan — and leaves it up to the trucking companies to protect themselves. The trucking companies in turn pay warlords and commanders to provide security.

The report found that the US had created a vast network of warlords across Afghanistan paying them millions of dollars for escort protection to US and Nato military convoys. The congressional report said that money given to these Afghan warlords often amounted to little more than mafia-style protection payments. NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords came under attack, often by these very warlords.

Welcome to the US-created utopia in Afghanistan!

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MD, Toronto, Crescent-online
June 21, 2010 - 7:00 pm EST

Islamic Iran's intellectual challenge to the West's “soft war” has sent shivers through the neo-con circles. The announcements made by Iranian officials concerning integrating a “soft war ”concept into its standoff with the global hegemons was the subject of Jamestown Foundation’s (JTF) so called “terrorism monitoring” publication.
 
Based on the statements of Iranian officials, JTF concludes that “Tehran no longer views arts, culture and education as a source of threat but rather as an opportunity to enhance its influence in the idiom of ideas, (mis)information and cultural processes on domestic and regional scales. Promotion of Iran’s enhanced self-image could, if successful, be a potential problem for regional security.” At the same time the allocation of $75 million by the US State Department for “Democracy Promotion” in Iran whose avowed aim is to topple the elected government of another state is not considered a regional security threat.

The Western powers assume that by injecting hedonistic thoughts into the Muslim society of Iran the Islamic government will disintegrate. This assumption clearly shows lack of insight into the history of the Islamic Revolution which triumphed through an intellectual victory over Western and Marxist thoughts within Iranian society.

It seems that the misuse by the US government of journalism and internet based social networking sites such as Twitter to instigate riots in Iran last June opened a new front in the US-Iran standoff. Since the Western world is experiencing an economic meltdown and growing conversion of many western citizens to Islam, it is not hard to predict who will have the upper hand in this new “war” theater.

The fact that it was JTF’s “terrorism monitoring” publication that covered Iran’s intellectual reply to the West's “soft war” against Tehran, the world might soon witness an intellectual response to Hollywood designed ideas to be labeled as “terrorism.” This Stalinist type approach will affect the Western public first. Citizens of North America and the EU must, therefore, exercise great vigilance over their governments' educational and media related polices otherwise their own freedoms are at risk.  

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