Banking heavily on Tuesday’s primary/caucuses in Texas, Hillary Clinton told Texans she’s their chance to make up for giving America George w. Bush. That sounds pretty far out there, especially given that the people of Texas didn’t decide either election and that Bush wasn’t even born there. But, oh well, maybe it struck a chord.
In any event, Clinton appears to have pulled even to Obama in Texas in the latest polls. It’s believed she still holds a small lead in Ohio. Whether she’ll be positioned to get the big wins she needs, however, is far from certain.
Still, blaming Texans for Bush is a funny touch.
Leo Docherty is a former officer in Prince Harry’s Household Division. A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, his service in Helmand led him to leave the army. In an opinion piece in The Independent, Docherty says the publicity over Harry shows that we have the wrong idea about the war in Afghanistan:
“In September 2006, British forces attacked and occupied what was until that point a thriving agricultural town. This means that the local farmers, who are poor cash-croppers exploited by opium barons, grow a great deal of poppy. But the British arrival, as in other towns across Helmand, brought nothing but military might – no means of development, no improvement in local living standards and no alternative to the poppy.
The most basic tenets of counter-insurgency were abandoned in the Army’s haste to see action. Violence ensued as poppy farmers and opium traffickers teamed up with the Taliban to oppose the foreign occupiers. As the first British bombs fell, killing Afghan civilians, the battle for hearts and minds was lost.
The fighting rages still and opium production has soared to new heights. Overwhelming firepower (the kind that Harry co-ordinates) cannot resolve the fact that the British campaign in Helmand is illogical; we are trying to fight our way to winning hearts and minds and losing the trust of the population in doing so. Scores of civilians have been killed by British ordnance in Helmand. In 2007, at least 6,000 people died in the conflict across Afghanistan, of which approximately 1,400 were civilians. At least 500 of these deaths were directly attributable to Nato forces, mostly in air strikes; 89 British troops have been killed and 329 injured.
In 2003 my fellow officers and I knew the WMD issue was a blatant ruse, but we cared little. Scenting action we ignored the fact that we’d been told a pack of lies, and satisfied ourselves with the vague notion that it was all for the good. We simply craved active service.
Given the monumental human tragedy that has unfolded in Iraq over the past five years, you’d think that further military adventures hatched on the backs of MoD fag packets would have been guarded against, but along came Helmand province.
Tragically, the fact that many soldiers are killed in these operations serves only to strengthen the myths of heroism and sacrifice that the Army relies on to pursue these adventures in the first place. These ideals allow the admirable personal qualities of soldiers killed on operations to be readily confused with the nature of the conflict. Partly a psychological defence mechanism, it allows soldiers to come to terms with the deaths of their colleagues without calling into question the fundamental reason for such deaths.
This graveside reasoning goes roughly like this: “He loved his job and the Army; he was an honourable man; therefore his death can only be honourable and worthwhile.” Following this line of reasoning after the deaths of friends and colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan, I eventually found the answers wanting, became disillusioned and left. But if a few disillusioned officers leave, it makes no difference to the Army; there are always more fresh faces arriving from Sandhurst.
Rather than highlighting the appalling truths about the war in Helmand, the media, dazzled by the heroic ideal that Prince Harry so perfectly embodies, perpetuate the myth that this is a just war fit for heroes. The frenzy of coverage in Friday’s papers (with the conspicuous exception of this newspaper) was facile; “Watch Prince Harry fighting in Helmand,” proffered one broadsheet website.
This is war reduced to entertainment, willingly ignorant of the truth that young men like Harry, both British and Afghan, are dying violent pointless deaths in Helmand province. Outrage is the only response to this, not entertainment.”
There’s a curious piece in the Canadian Press, “
MacKay says he has no knowledge of alleged financial offer to Cadman.” My first reaction was “okay, so what?”
“I don’t know anything about how this has come about. Certainly it was something that I was not involved with,” said MacKay, who was in St. John’s, N.L., to make a funding announcement.
“I think it’s sad, quite frankly, that this seems to have come up. It’s very unfortunate.”
All MacKay seems to be saying is that he’s lily-clean in this “unfortunate” business. No denial that Cadman was bribed. No indignant vouching for the integrity of his boss, Harpo. No accusation that the Libs are exploiting the issue to smear the prime minister. Just that “it’s sad” and “frankly …unfortunate.”
I wonder if Peter sees the writing on the wall for Stevie? Just curious.
The Grumpy Voter has posted a warning to the Libs not to get too haughty over the Cadman affair lest they be forced to again wear the shame of the Grewal scandal. Oh, that was a
Liberal scandal, Grump?
What’s Grewal up to these days, Grump? You might remember that he resigned in disgrace. And, as for his “smoking gun” tape, do you recall what happened with that? Recall how Grewal’s tape was found to have been fiercely edited? Recall how Grewal “chose” not to produce the original? And, for the record, Dosanj was investigated – and cleared.
So, don’t lecture the Liberals on the Grewal Scandal, Grump. Point your finger in the other direction. Yes, and we’re talking about the same bunch that lurks behind the Cadman story.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051129/gurmant_grewal_051129?s_name=&no_ads=
See also the delightful blog, “Buckets of Grewal”
http://bucketsofgrewal.blogspot.com/
The Tories must be in a psychotic fit of desperation to drag Grewal to their defence.
“We have a long- term commitment vis-a-vis Afghanistan. . . . All 26 NATO allies are there, and we are there for the long haul.” NATO forces are in Afghanistan “to support President [Hamid] Karzai and the Afghan people,” he said. “But we are also there because we are fighting terrorism and we cannot afford to lose. We will not lose. We are not losing. We are prevailing.”
Those inspiring remarks came out of the mouth of the increasingly incredulous NATO secretary-general, Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, following a 45-minute chinwag with George w. Bush yesterday.
So just how well are we “prevailing?” Paul Koring explains in the Globe & Mail that “the mission” is a bust:
“Most aid organizations quietly withdrew their international staff from Kandahar in recent weeks, the latest sign that the situation here is getting worse. It’s now almost impossible to spot a foreigner on the city streets, except for the occasional glimpse of a pale face in a troop carrier or a United Nations armoured vehicle.
“At least the foreigners can escape. For many ordinary people the ramshackle city now feels like a prison, with the highways out of town regularly blocked by Taliban or bandits. Residents have even started avoiding their own city streets after dark, as formerly bustling shops switch off their colourful neon lights and pull down the shutters. There is rarely any electricity for the lights anyway, partly because the roads are too dangerous for contractors to risk bringing in a new turbine for a nearby hydroelectric generator.
“Corrupt police prowl the intersections, enforcing a curfew for anybody without that night’s password, or bribe money. The officers seem especially nervous these days, because the Taliban hit them almost every night with ambushes, rocket-propelled grenades or just a deceptively friendly man who walks up to a police checkpoint with an automatic rifle hidden under a shawl.
“Insurgent attacks have climbed sharply in Kandahar and across the country. But some analysts believe the numbers don’t capture the full horror of what’s happening in Afghanistan’s south and east.
The United Nations’s count of security incidents in Afghanistan last year climbed to 13 times the number recorded in 2003, and the UN forecasts even worse this year. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization says insurgent attacks increased 64 per cent from 2006 to 2007. In the first two months of this year, some analysts have noticed a 15- to 20-per-cent rise in insurgent activity compared with the same period last year, raising alarm about whether the traditional spring fighting season has started early.
“Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,” concluded the Atlantic Council of the United States, a prestigious American think tank that deals with international affairs.
Hillier’s Hubris
“It was widely believed that a few thousand troops could stabilize a province such as Kandahar.
“In retrospect, it was naive,” said a Western security official in Kabul. “It was a mistake.”
In a blunt assessment this week, Vice-Admiral Michael McConnell, the U.S. intelligence czar, admitted that the Karzai government controls less than one-third of the country. The Taliban hold 10 per cent on a more-or-less permanent basis while the rest is run by local warlords, he said, describing the situation as deteriorating.
Even that gloomy picture may represent an airbrushed version of events, some analysts say, because increasing collusion between Taliban and local powerbrokers — criminal groups, warlords, drug barons, ordinary farmers and even government authorities — allows the insurgents to operate freely in districts without exerting visible control.
Even if villagers aren’t afraid of the Taliban, many join up because they find the new government unpalatable. No regime has ever been overthrown at the ballot box in Afghanistan, so political opposition often becomes part of the insurgency.
They watch government officials profit from the drug trade, and grow angry when eradicators destroy their small field of poppies. And in the battle-scarred landscape where Canadians operate, many people nurse deep grudges against the foreign troops after having their relatives detained or killed in the years of fighting.
On most days, fewer than 600 Canadian soldiers are “outside the wire” of NATO’s sprawling base at Kandahar Airport, a number that everyone concedes is far too few to conduct a classic counterinsurgency campaign.
For rough comparison, NATO sent 40,000 troops into Kosovo — a place roughly one-quarter the size of Kandahar and with no active insurgency in 1999. More than one-third of them are still there eight years later. In fact, NATO has five times as many troops deployed in Kosovo as Canada has in Kandahar.
Nearly everyone agrees, however, that Afghanistan will likely see rising violence in 2008. Two Western security analysts predicted that the year will bring increased sophistication in the Taliban’s technology; they’re likely to use so-called explosively formed penetrators„© for the first time, adopting a technique often used in Iraq to puncture even the most heavily armoured vehicle with a specially shaped explosive.
Afghanistan’s economic growth is also expected to continue slowing. Private investment was cut in half in 2007 compared with a year earlier, to about $500-million, and trade within the country will be hampered by Taliban and criminal roadblocks on the main highways.”
This is the face of failure, plain and simple. Our soldiers are doing the very best they can, far more than we have any right to expect of them. Even if this was just a simple, straight forward, counterinsurgency war, we are fielding only a very small fraction of the force that would be needed for the job. The tactics we’re using don’t work. They’ve been tried before, over and again, and they don’t work. But this isn’t just a simple counterinsurgency campaign. It’s complicated by a failed, central government in Kabul – thoroughly corrupt and compromised; a flourishing narco-economy; cancerous warlordism and religious fundamentalism; and, of course and as always, Pakistan.
The inane comments of Jaap De Hoop Scheffer should be a clarion call warning of how horribly NATO is being led. It’s thinking like his and like Hillier’s and like Bush’s that explains why “the mission” has suffered steady and increasing setbacks in Afghanistan.
As I’ve said so many times before, if we’re not in this to win, we have no business being in it at all. End the mission, bring our soldiers home.
First you drive up grain prices, then you cut aid to those you’ve hurt most. Neat trick, eh?
Grain prices are up, everybody knows that. Wheat alone has shot up around 80% in the past year and corn, well it’s way up too, in part due to diversion of stocks for ethanol production. It’s a great time for agribusiness but, in fairness, it might not be quite so good if you’re starving.
As the Washington Post reports, soaring grain prices are being met in the U.S., not with a commensurate increase in funding, but with a commensurate decrease in the amount of food that’ll go to those who need it most:
“The U.S. government’s humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world’s poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.
USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year’s end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.”
Relax, it’s not like the poor have SUVs anyway. They don’t even need ethanol.
The Mound of Sound 
