Pentagon issues downbeat assessment on Afghanistan

[laststeamtrain]

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Pentagon issues downbeat assessment on Afghanistan
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers 2 hrs 14 mins ago

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon Wednesday issued a downbeat assessment of the situation in Afghanistan , saying that only one in four Afghans in strategically important areas currently back President Hamid Karzai's government even as the Taliban expand their insurgency and install shadow local governments.

The report to Congress outlined some areas of progress, including a leveling off of violence during the last three months, improved counter-insurgency cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistani and the finding that 84 percent of Afghans feel that security is good or fair.

Yet the overall level of violence rose 87 percent between February 2009 and March 2010 , driven in part by a major U.S.-led offensive earlier this year to push the Taliban out of strongholds around Marjah in the southern opium-producing province of Helmand, according to the report.

<snip>

The Pentagon assessment was issued two weeks before Karzai visits Washington for talks with Obama amid strained relations over Afghan government corruption, the deaths of Afghan civilians in U.S.-led military operations and other issues.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100428/wl_mcclatchy/3490686

[xchrom]

1. Quelle Shock! Nt

[ShortnFiery]

4. Yes, for those of us who may remember Vietnam of the late 60s, doesn't this look familiar?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100428/wl_mcclatchy/3490686

"The insurgents' tactic of re-infiltrating the cleared areas to perform executions has played a role in dissuading locals from siding with the Afghan government, which has complicated efforts to introduce effective governance," it said.

The Taliban -led insurgency's "operational capabilities and operational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding," said the report, adding that the "strength and ability of (insurgent-run) shadow governance to discredit the authority and legitimacy of the Afghan government is increasing."

-------------
Now let's go back in time?

The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC): "Charlie"

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-enemy/vietnam.htm
The Viet Cong (called VC) were an irregular force of peasants, farmers and the like who blended into the surroundings because they lived there. They were hard (impossible?) to pick unless they were actually engaged in warlike activity at the time.

They were a tough ruthless enemy who were not afraid to use any means at all, including their women and children, to further their aims.

[amandabeech]

5. Meanwhile, the Pentagon reported earlier this year that there were no more than 100 Al Quaeda in

Afghanistan.

Weren't they the folks we were after?

It looks like we got them or chased them out.

So why do we care about the Taleban?

They hate women, but so do lots of folks all around the world.

Oh, I forgot the gas and oil pipeline from Khazakstan.

The oil companies should just bribe the locals themselves to stay away from that thing.

After all, don't they bribe various groups of Iraqis, like the Kurds and the Turkmen, to only blow up the Kirkuk to Ceyhand pipeline once in a while?

The U.S. government shouldn't be doing the oil companyies' bidding.

Oh wait . . .

I'm just pissed as hell tonight about just about everything.

It's almost like the Reagan or Bush II years.

[ShortnFiery]

7. You're not alone. Former CIA field Operative, Robert Baer calls it *Mission Creep:*

We must cease with this madness. Not unlike Vietnam, we are creating more enemies than we are killing.


http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/2009/08/how-much-security-did-1-trillion-buy/

[amandabeech]

8. I'm marking this for the weekend.

I actually have to sleep during the week and I know that this will prevent it.

Joe Biden was so right on this. Keep Al Quaeda under control and otherwise get the hell out of there. It's not our country and has never belonged to anyone but the Afghans.

Sometimes I think that the power that be like Obama because he seems ahistorical--like he never picked up the book in high school. Surely he had to take it to graduate from Punahou. Did he just smoke weed through the whole thing? It's like he doesn't remember anything more than Bush. It's like he knows nothing about the country he's supposed to be leading. Sometimes I can understand why people can think that he's from Kenya.

I don't know about you, but I'm old enough to have watched Vietnam on TV and read about it in the print media. I know guys a few years older than me who came back, and not always in good shape.

What the hell is the matter with Obama?

[ShortnFiery]

17. I've have come to the depressing conclusion that ...

President Obama, albeit super-intelligent, is yet another figurehead. I don't have hard facts, but given my knowledge of USA History, I fear that we've had "figurehead" presidents most markedly beginning with Ronald Reagan.

The true owners of this country are in the shadows and are from Wall Street and the corporations comprising the MIC.

Consider the few of us who may be open to the above theory "blessed" because we can now pass through The Grieving Process and prepare to cope.

The only thing you and I can do is encourage others to vote corporate incumbents out of office. That's all we've got left and if the votes are rigged, "It ain't much."

But at least we know that the Country is screwed and can prepare ourselves and our families: financially tighten our belts in preparation for our Nation's continued "death by a thousand corporate cuts to the working classes." :(

Hang in there my friend. We owe this to future generations whose lives will sadly be "less blessed" than ours. We must help our youth cope with the hard struggle ahead to restore our civil rights.

http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-bill_of_rights.jpg

http://www.counterpunch.org/kuzminski08182004.html

It has always been madness to try to remold the world in one's image, as we see most recently in the war in Iraq, but it is a vastly greater madness in a nuclear age. The lesson of 9/11 was that resentments born of decades if not centuries of perceived wrongs will find their target if those wrongs are not addressed. The ultimate equalizer, in our time, is the nuclear bomb and this the terrorists will sooner or later obtain and use if they continue to be provoked. This will be the final, bitter fruit of the loss of our political freedom, and it will be made the ultimate justification for the tyranny now established upon us.

In a dark age, it is the responsibility of those who care about things like political freedom and democracy to struggle to ensure that those values somehow survive and are transmitted to future generations, even if they can no longer play an effective public role, much as the monks of the middle ages preserved the learning of antiquity for a better day. That day will come, but likely not in our time.

[bemildred]

2. So we right all along? nt

[ShortnFiery]

3. It's time for the USA Military to "make like a sheep herder ...

and get the flock out of Afghanistan. :shrug:

[skepticscott]

6. So Afghanistan is a

cluster fuck? Gee...who knew? Well, the British...the Russians...every sensible person who knew anything about the country (IOW, no one that the Bush administration listened to).

[scentopine]

9. we've killed so many, stacks of dead, utter destruction, destroyed lives...

for what? It's the worst of neo-con and neo-lib aggression.

There are some sick mother fuckers in this world - from Wall Street to Arizona to Tea Baggers to Iraq to Afghanistan and back.

We'll spread democracy and drill for oil off of our beaches. In both cases we'll be treated like liberators of King Oil with flowers at our feet!

Or an exploding dog carcass and a massive oil slick.

We really are becoming a degenerate nation. Is a Chevy Suburban really worth this price?

[Kolesar]

10. Their population is illiterate and that means low intellect and easily led

Or misled. It is our misfortune that Osama found the place so accomodating for him. If buscheney wasn't such a f-up we might have been finished and left that damn country already.

[Robb]

11. Anyone else read the report?

I did. And I would write quite a different article.

A significant majority (80%+) of Afghans feel their security situation and outlook are improved. More than half blame the Taliban for the country's problems. Violence in the last three months has, as we say, "failed to get worse." ME funding sources for the Taliban are drying up. And Taliban infighting is leading to internal strife and bloodshed.

I found it largely encouraging, and "downbeat," relatively speaking, only if your last name is Karzai. Or if you believe the ultimate goal is to leave Karzai in charge.

Fortunately, as we've observed, it is not.

[Flaneur]

12. Of course you found it encouraging. We would expect no less.

[laststeamtrain]

13. "the ultimate goal" is spending the lives & treasure of the many for the benefit of the few.

Sustaining the war economy is the ultimate goal of our presence in SW Asia.

[Robb]

14. So, you didn't read it?

[laststeamtrain]

16. I read it. My favorite phrase was: “cautiously optimistic”. It made my leg tingle. n/t.

[Robb]

18. Yes, on page 6.

...Why did this make your leg tingle? Any comment on the rest of the report? Or did you really only read the article?

NATO Allies and partners have noted that they are cautiously optimistic about the success of the
ISAF mission. Many national leaders, however, express concerns over popular support within
their countries, which has resulted in continued capability gaps in the Combined Joint Statement
of Requirements (CJSOR) from unresourced requirements not filled by international partners.
The most notable gap is the requirement for trainers and mentors to support development of the
ANSF. U.S. Forces are taking on this mission, filling the requirements for training and
partnering through a combination of embedded partnering of operational units, Embedded
Training Teams (ETTs), and re-missioning of combat forces to conduct training.

[laststeamtrain]

20. I knew it! I knew it! I knew "cautiously optimistic" had to be in there somewhere.

"cautiously optimistic" is the official-ese stand-in phrase for hopeless.

We can't argue. We don't agree about enough stuff.

Your premises begin with 'We have to be there' mine with 'No we don't'. Empire or No Empire.

The military doesn't defend my freedoms it protects the parasitic investing class & their overseas looting.

I don't argue on DU. I present 'the truth from a particular point-of-view' (i.e. propagandize). And I make jokes. That's about it.


:hi:

[bemildred]

15. Afghan Taliban getting stronger, Pentagon says

A Pentagon report presented a sobering new assessment Wednesday of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that its abilities are expanding and its operations are increasing in sophistication, despite recent major offensives by U.S. forces in the militants' heartland.

The report, requested by Congress, portrays an insurgency with deep roots and broad reach, able to withstand repeated U.S. onslaughts and to reestablish its influence, while discrediting and undermining the country's Western-backed government.

But the Pentagon said it remained optimistic that its counter-insurgency strategy, formed after an Obama administration review last year, and its effort to peel foot soldiers away from the Taliban will show success in months to come.


The assessment follows a U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province and the capture of several senior Taliban leaders, developments portrayed by the Pentagon as a boost to the momentum behind allied troops in the nearly 9-year-old war. Those successes backed the view that President Obama's decision to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. forces had begun to show positive results.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-0429-us-afghan-20100429,0,2848935.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

[Solly Mack]

19. k/r

snort