Jasper Journal

Since the boy king clearly has no idea how to fix the nations ailing economy as witnessed by another disastrous day on Wall St, it seems he is now moving to other areas he knows nothing about: foreign policy. This was not big in the Illinois legislature or the community that he organized, but what the heck, he’s president. 

  How about if we stab our allies in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the back and tell the Russians we really didn’t mean it when we said we were going to put up a missile defense shield for those countries. That should make them feel good about us … right?  Especially since they went out on a limb for us. But, no matter,  he has other ideas.   We also have Mrs Clinton promising  $900 million to the Palestinians with about $300 million going to Gaza. Hey isn’t that  the fiefdom the Israeli’s just leveled?  Call me old fashioned, but is it our place to clean up every one’s mess?

I sit in utter amazement and think things cant get any worse, and then they do.   Do we have any strategy for Afghanistan?  We are sending an additional 17,000 troops there and I do not know what constitutes success, mission accomplished or dare I use the V word, victory. But then  for liberals, victory is a pejorative term. It is offensive to the losers and we shouldn’t use it. It is like winning in scholastic sports. They want that gone too because it can injure children’s ego when they lose. Hey get ready for life. 

 I am tired of us apologizing. compromising, and wasting American lives for anything other than victory.  And while we’re at it , how about we not betray the countries that have stood by us so strongly in the past. At this rate, we will need all the friends we can get. And I don’t mean Venezuela.

   A very thought provoking essay on a war that needs to be examined  closely, especially in light of the President’s growing emphasis . Ralph Peters is not afraid to call it like it is.

His analysis and comparisons are right on target. I  especially liked the comment  ” good marksmanship trumps good will.” Lets hope some in the administration are reading this as well. 

New York Post

January 27, 2009

Afghan-’Nam Blues

Do We Have A Realistic Goal?

By Ralph Peters

A NEW president with a strong domestic agenda and a career-long lack of interest in foreign policy inherits a distant war and feels he has to demonstrate his toughness: That was LBJ and Vietnam.

Will Afghanistan be President Obama’s Vietnam, with Pakistan as Cambodia on steroids?

Such comparisons have already been made, but miss the mark. The core reason we failed in Vietnam was our largesse: We poured in so much wealth that we corrupted the Vietnamese leadership, from presidents down to battlefield commanders, beyond all utility. We became North Vietnam’s best allies, destroying South Vietnam from within.

Our troops fought bravely, but infusions of well-intentioned aid undercut every success. All of the other reasons for our failure, from then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s arrogance through a long misreading of the war’s nature, were secondary. Instead of inspiring self-sacrifice in our counterparts, we generated a kleptocracy.

Like the Taliban (and al Qaeda), the North Vietnamese had the advantage of poverty. The strategic goal of the leadership cadres in Hanoi never wavered.

Now we’re “Vietnamizing” Afghanistan: dumping so much wealth on a poor country that we’re turning pickpockets into world-class thieves.

President Hamid Karzai is despised where he isn’t hated. The people view his government as corrupt and untrustworthy – and it is. A weak man, Karzai’s unwilling to stand up to warlords and narcos. Anxious to retain his illusory power, he takes our support for granted.

Karzai’s constant harping on American military “excesses” every time the Taliban claims the corpses holding Kalashnikovs were just discussing Oprah’s latest book-club pick is meant to please the locals – at our expense.

But we can’t see an alternative to Karzai. Our bad, not his.

The bitter truth (as in Vietnam) is that we still haven’t decided what we really want to achieve. We babble about nation-building where there’s no nation to build, just a premedieval mosaic of tribes that hate each other. And the Taliban are homeboys.

We want Afghans to be like us. They never will be. (Good morning,

Vietnam!)

If we want to alter the strategic environment amid a foreign population, we must be clear on three things: what we want to achieve, what the target population wants – and how much of what we want that population’s willing to accept.

Washington is vague and naive on all three points.

Another 30,000 US troops? Fine. As long as they have clear, achievable missions. More nonmilitary aid? OK. Tell us specifically what it will accomplish. And mark the bills.

We can’t bear any more of the Bush-Clinton-Bush approach of sending troops and mountains of aid in the nebulous hope that something good will happen.

Can anyone in the Obama administration articulate what we intend to achieve in Afghanistan? The Bush folks couldn’t. I doubt this bunch can either.

If our goal is to turn Afghanistan into a rule-of-law democracy, forget it. Iraq has an outside shot – it’s a semi-modern society – although success is far from guaranteed. But a modernized Afghan state whose authority extends into every remote valley is an impossibility.

If, however, our goal is only to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a massive terrorist mother-ship, we can do that – and at a lower cost.

But we’d have to have the guts to choose sides among factions and stop pretending that we’re honest brokers.

The impending troop surge faces the danger of LBJ-era accounting: the recurring conclusion that just one more rise in troop levels will tip the scales. You wind up with half a million troops deployed and a local population that wants you gone yesterday.

Inherently, this one’s a special-operations war. A sounder long-term approach would be fewer troops on the ground – and far less reliance on vulnerable supply routes through Pakistan. Regular combat units have a role to play, but as punitive strike forces, not a vast neighborhood watch (this is not Iraq).

Ditch the claptrap that we can’t kill our way out of this: Well-focused killing, for decades, is our only chance – and Afghanistan’s. And dump the feel-good platitudes. In the real world off-campus, good marksmanship trumps good will.

Every conflict is different. A comparatively easy affair (which we made hard), Iraq was ripe for its surge. But in Afghanistan – as in Vietnam – a surge will bring us tactical wins, but not decisive progress (and toward what?).

Success in Afghanistan – or anywhere – demands a clear vision of an attainable end-state; a realistic approach to achieving it, and time.

If they don’t want it, we can’t get it. We can’t buy Afghan patriotism – at least not for more than five minutes.

Let’s not turn Kabul into a second-rate Saigon because we convinced ourselves that spending more money and sending more troops is a substitute for a strategy.