Sunday, September 18, 2011

In case you haven't been keeping track…

…Steve Benen looked it up...
* American job creation is better now than when Bush left office.
* American economic growth is better now than when Bush left office.
* Al Qaeda is dramatically weaker now than when Bush left office.
* The American automotive industry is vastly stronger now than when Bush left office.
* The struggle for equality of the LGBT community is vastly better now than when Bush left office.
* The U.S. health care system is better and more accessible than when Bush left office.
* The federal budget deficit is better now than when Bush left office.
* The major Wall Street indexes and corporate profits are better now than when Bush left office.
* International respect for the United States is better now than when Bush left office.
Feel better now?

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Sunday, August 28, 2011

The world's deadliest gig?

With all due respect to my buddies on the Northwestern, it ain't crab fishing. Being Al Qaeda's #2 wins hands down.


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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Good question…

…from dday.
"If Al Qaeda is so desperate to find a safe haven, why haven't they returned to Afghanistan now, when the Taliban controls large swaths of the country?"
Some good points, too…
...the Taliban was ejected from the country the last time they gave Al Qaeda safe harbor and wouldn't appear likely to do so again, and that this Taliban is a home-grown movement with little influence from foreign fighters, and that the whole idea of "safe havens" in a world where terror attacks have been planned from inside Spain, Germany, Britain and even the United States is a false one.
Al Qaeda will never be what it was in Afghanistan. That's a battle we've won, and yet another reason that the right way in Afghanistan is out.

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Hope.

The NYT...
WASHINGTON — President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.
The Biden plan sounds like a decent first step on the road out. Go with Joe, Barry.

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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

OK, be clear…

…but you'll have to try again, because clarity seems to have eluded you this time. Adam Bink writes at Open Left…
Let me be clear: I'm for having the necessary amount of troops on the ground to win the war, within reason. My problem is with the Administration's refusal to lay out what is victory and how we will achieve it.
Of course, it's not really fair to pick on Mr. Bink. It wouldn't take long to come up with a list of similar expressions, but his is both timely and exemplary. It's based, I think, on the longstanding progressive critique of the Bush/Rumsfeld administration's abandonment of the "good" war in Afghanistan in favor if the Iraqi adventure. It's a critique that President Obama himself advanced during his campaign, and has been the base of his policy in office. As the conditions on the ground have changed over a period of eight years, though, it's led too many to the kind of self-contradiction expressed above.

How, I wonder, can you be in favor of having any force, necessary and/or reasonable, if you don't first know what victory is and how we will achieve it. Isn't the size of the force, it's need and rationality, dependent on the goal, the definition of victory?

They say the memory is the second thing to go, and I'm getting on, but as I remember we entered Afghanistan with three identifiable and arguably defensible goals. The first was to destroy it's capacity as a training and operational base for Al Qaeda. We accomplished that swiftly and handily. The second was to punish the Taliban government that had given them safe harbor by deposing them. That, too, was the matter of a brief and decisive battle. Finally, in the wake of an unconscionable attack on American sovereign territory and the death and destruction attendant to those attacks, we set out to kill or capture as much of the Al Qaeda high command as possible, and in particular their spokesman, strategist and financier, Osama Bin Laden.

The second goal, though apparently swiftly achieved, continues to be a stumbling block for adherents of the disgraced former Secretary of State Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn rule." The rule fails in Afghanistan, though, because we didn't break it. It's been broken for centuries, and centuries of outside interference have caused the debris to spread far beyond Afghani borders. Some of it spilled into ours, and we swept it out of our path. If Afghanistan were to organize itself in such a way that it could accept and distribute humanitarian aid, it would certainly be a candidate with other countries that receive American largesse, whether publicly or privately provided. The level of American military force that would be required in order to effect and enforce such an organization of Afghanistan, though, in time, treasure and blood, would defy any possible conception of "within reason." Its impossibility, by the same token, renders its need moot. We didn't break it. We needn't buy it. And we're only making it worse.

Still there's concern. AT Vet Voice, Richard Smith expresses some of the resulting frustration, writing that…
...the status quo is unacceptable, and allowing a Taliban faction which would again allow al-Qaeda free operation is as as well.
Smith's hardly the only one concerned that the Taliban are the most, or the only, likely candidate to fill the vacuum of an allied withdrawal. Less often mentioned, it seems, is what that says about the prospects for any "victory" that would produce a Taliban-free Afghanistan. Why anyone, especially the Taliban themselves, who have been the direct targets of the shock and awe of American brute force, would imagine that they would, or could, "again allow al-Qaeda free operation" particularly puzzles me. Any Afghani government should by now be very aware that.

Finally, there's Osama. The missed and missing target. The guy Bush let go when he went after Saddam. While killing or capturing Bin Laden and his leadership cadre wouldn't address any of the actual causes of international fundamentalist terror, it would produce the promised pony that so many Americans have shoveled so much manure in search of. The problem with the search for Osama et al is that it's no longer an Afghani problem, but a Pakistani problem, and his presence in Pakistan, ostensibly an American ally, presents a different, and in some ways more difficult, set of problems. None of those problems can be solved by sending more Americans to kill more Afghanis who will in turn kill more Americans.

The "necessary" number of troops approximates zero. Victory seems to looks just like withdrawal.

The right way in Afghanistan is out.

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Monday, March 30, 2009

My country committed war crimes and all I got…

…heck, I didn't get anything...
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida—chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates—was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.
Hat tip to John Cole.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

He didn't ask me

…but, well, since he asked. Steve Soto...
Is toppling Saddam so important that it warranted a trillion dollars of crippling debt, a busted military, thousands of dead innocents, a new haven for Al Qaeda, and the destruction of an occupied country?
Since you asked, no.

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Maybe.

Probably even. Senator Obama...
"Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and Al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no Al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades."
In fact, I'm pretty sure.

The reason McCain keeps getting it wrong is because he simply doesn't know, and he doesn't care to know.

And like his friend in the White House, he doesn't care about you, either.

Hat tip to AMERICAblog.

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

"You can put a shoe in the oven…

...but that doesn't make it a biscuit."

Malcolm X

"I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It’s called ‘al-Qaida in Iraq.’”

John McCain
As Professor Cole explains (my emphasis)...
The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.

So there isn't any "al-Qaeda" in Iraq in the technical sense. There are "Excommunicating Holy Warriors" (Takfiri Jihadis), i.e. devotees of political Islam who are violent and willing to deploy terror for political purposes. They declare other Muslims who disagree with them "not Muslims,"-- thus the "excommunicating" bit. But there are only a few hundred foreign fighters. A small minority of Iraqis has associated with them. They don't call themselves 'al-Qaeda in Iraq.' The major such group is "The Islamic State of Iraq." And to say that they have "bases" in Iraq is pretty grandiose. They have some safe houses and try to take and hold neighborhoods, so far with indifferent success.

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Thursday, January 31, 2008

From the "If you can't beat it, swipe it" file.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog…
CNN says al-Qaeda's #3 is dead.

The dead man is not to be confused with the six al-Qaeda #3s who had been killed or captured as of May 14, 2005, or the al-Qaeda #3 who died in late 2005.

And the newest al-Qaeda #3 is not the al-Qaeda #3 who was said to be in Iran last summer, according to The New York Sun, and was also said to be in Iran in 2003, according to The New York Times.

Nor is he Adam Gadahn, the American al-Qaeda member who's also called al-Qaeda's #3.

Just wanted to clear all that up.
Thanks!

(See Steve for enlightening links.)

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Synonyms.

Republican, criminal, traitor
WASHINGTON -- A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.
So, they're side's gonna keep us safe, huh?

Only if it pays more...

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Truth.

From the NYT...
After years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and targeted killings in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, the major threat to the United States has the same name and the same basic look as in 2001: Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, plotting attacks from mountain hide-outs near the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Heckuva job, Bushie.

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