Hearts And Minds

Looking good. Other than the fact that he let 480 Taliban escape through a thousand-foot tunnel built over a few months, under his nose, within sight of the towers, he's a model guard.

A man who claimed he helped organize those inside the prison told The Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from "friends." He did not say who those friends were, but his comments suggested possible collusion by prison guards.

"Possible collusion." Ya think?

"This is a blow," presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. "A prison break of this magnitude of course points to a vulnerability."

Vulnerability. Yes.

When I think of war, I think of sides. Two of them, for simplicity's sake. In Afghanistan, there are no sides. It's just a soup of tribes and local allegiances, with self-preservation above nation. (Hmm.... Sounds a little like teabaggers...)

I suppose a few hundred prisoners one way or the other doesn't tip the battle one way or the other; but it sure as hell tells a story. "Winning," over there, is just a word.

And as long as we're talking truth, the latest leaks, while not really surprising, just reinforce the shame of Gitmo. Doubly shameful, because it was, as usual, the stupidity and demagoguery of members of Congress, especially, but not limited to, the Rs, who whipped up the ridiculous notion that housing prisoners on US soil was somehow dangerous, effectively keeping Obama from closing the place. Idiots. Cynical, dishonest, useless idiots. Whatever else might be true, ain't no way they'd be tunneled out of a supermax.

Going Nowhere

Here is a pretty compelling article on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which begins thus:

General David Petraeus will soon be back in Washington D.C. to report on progress in a war many consider lost, this time in Afghanistan. The narrative that Petraeus and his surge in troops along with the new way of war he is credited in perfecting led to "success" in Iraq is hard to challenge these days. It informs our view of Afghanistan as well, with many placing their faith in the hopes that Petraeus will save us in Afghanistan just as he did in Iraq. The truth is much more complex. Iraq's fortunes changed for many reasons, not only the changes introduced by Gen. Petraeus. And the terrible costs to Iraqis should give pause to those who want to replicate the experience in Afghanistan.

If we hope to avoid learning the wrong lessons for Afghanistan, we have to better understand what really happened in Iraq...

After a concise but comprehensive review of the course of the insurgency in Iraq, the article addresses Afghanistan:

All we have succeeded in doing is pushing all of Afghanistan's problems into Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons, a huge population and a persistent conflict with India. So now the Taliban and al Qaeda and drug networks are in Pakistan and our drone strikes are pushing them deeper into Pakistan, even into Karachi. How is that an improvement? ...

... In Iraq the American surge led to a strategic reassessment on the part of Iraqi militias. But successive surges in Afghanistan have only led to surges in violence in that country. The Taliban are not changing their calculus. At best when the Americans surge in a village, as they did in Helmand's Marjah, the Taliban may simply move on to another village, knowing the Americans can never achieve enough troop number so make a strategic difference and that the Americans will eventually leave anyway while the Afghan "government in a box" is not coming to replace them.

It's worth taking the time to read the whole thing. The author has spent a great deal of time in the region.

In my attempts to make sense of our continued involvement there, the only thing up with which I can come is that it somehow relates to keeping Pakistan's nukes out of terrorist hands. The article mentions that not at all. Near the end, though, it says this:

The conflict in Afghanistan is a political one and it requires a political settlement. But Petraeus seems to have given up on the hearts and minds approach and is undermining or preventing negotiations, focusing on killing or capturing Taliban commanders. These are easily replaced by younger and more radical Taliban commanders with less ties to the community and less respect for Mullah Omar's authority, which means it will be even harder to negotiate with them. Meanwhile al Qaeda has moved on to Pakistan and it has evolved into something else. It will never again have training camps that could easily be targeted -- it is now an idea and not a base.

That doesn't sound like a strategy that's building a wall around the nukes.

[Added 12/22: From a Canadian correspondent

.... there were leaks about a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the combined findings of all 16 US intelligence agencies. This key intelligence report is explosive and may not be fully revealed.

The NIE reportedly asserts that the $13 billion a month Afghan War is at best stalemated; at worse, Western occupation forces are on the defensive and their vulnerable supply lines increasingly threatened. Taliban is expanding its control, particularly in northern Afghanistan.

Claims by US generals that “progress” is being made in the war are false.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who was installed by CIA, put it bluntly last year, saying the US-led war was “ineffective apart from causing civilian casualties.”

The new NIE may also restate a 2007 report that found Iran had no nuclear weapons program. The pro-war party in Washington is desperately trying to prevent its release.

Frustrated American generals and politicians, facing a failing war and ruined careers, are blaming Pakistan for the war they cannot win.