Afghanistan airstrikes fall for sixth month

By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jan 6, 2009 20:35:13 EST

For the sixth month in row, the number of bombs released over Afghanistan declined, figures from U.S. Air Forces Central showed.

During December, Air Force, Navy and coalition jets released 84 bombs, AFCent said. That’s down from 120 releases in November and the year high of 646 bombs in June.

Over Iraq during December, one bomb was dropped, the lowest tally since March 2005, when no bombs were released, according to AFCent.

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Over at Heritage, though, where skulls are diamond encrusted, the Ball Gunner has yet to make headway.

Reforming and Revitalizing NATO: A Memo to President-elect Obama

I’ll leave it to anyone interested to read through the above chest beating. It’s the standard Heritage / American Enterprise tooth-baring and woof-woofery.

Sally McNamara, the writer of said chest-thumping, is a member of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. You would think a center named after one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers would be in Britain. Actually, the center is located in Washington, D.C. Such a shame, for if McNamara were to be spending a winter in jolly old England she would be in danger of freezing her royal bottom off. It would seem Russia has decided a bit of cold may dampen the frothing NATO expansion.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

LIKE THE Lebanon war of 2006, Israel’s battle with Hamas in Gaza is producing a schism among Muslim states. Iran and its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have joined Hamas’s Damascus-based leadership in calling for a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel — and also against the governments of Egypt and Jordan, which are accused of silently supporting Israel’s air attacks. Those governments, along with the West Bank Palestinian administration of President Mahmoud Abbas, have issued rote condemnations of Israel. But they have also accused Hamas of triggering the conflict by ending a ceasefire — and they have responded harshly to the Iranian camp, which has “practically declared war on Egypt,” as Cairo’s foreign minister angrily put it yesterday. Far from encouraging an uprising, Mr. Abbas’s police broke up demonstrations by West Bank Palestinians on Sunday. Egyptian security forces have forcibly prevented Palestinians from crossing the border from Gaza.

Israeli and U.S. officials see this divide as encouraging. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has frequently spoken of an emerging coalition of “mainstream” or “moderate” Arab states opposing Iran and its “extremist” allies. One problem with this analysis is that the split is more sectarian than ideological. Among those counted in the moderate camp is Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, which shares Hamas’s fundamentalist creed. And among those joining in the unmitigated denunciations of Israel yesterday were the Shiite rulers of Iraq, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

It will be noted that it is correct, in part, because the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, virile Ball Gunner said most of it, yesterday.

What we’re witness now is the phenomenon Randy Newman referred to as “♫ BIIIIG HAAAAT NO CATTLE ♫” The various mid-East countries pumping their fists at each other. Iran could not prosecute a successful border war against the T-ball league military of Iraq, much less declare war on Egypt. Jordan has made a decades-long policy of tactical disentanglement with the region. Syria hasn’t enough wild hairs to look cross eyed as Israel and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has found a balance between stoking ignorant hatred with the Muslim brotherhood and making good dough with the Jewish brotherhood across the way.

Saudi Arabia, which is to moderate camp like the Detroit Lions are to the Super Bowl is not in the habit of making overt actions not blessed by the Powers That Be in D.C.

The Wa Po concludes with this assessment:

Yet, as in Lebanon, no decisive military victory is likely: Israel will not be able to topple Hamas unless it fully reoccupies Gaza, and it will probably not be able even to stop the rocket attacks on its cities without some kind of political settlement.

I’m going to conclude that this national-paper scouping Ball Gunner needs a raise.

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Good news from the NY Times in a world dreadfully short of it: The Marines are leaving a peaceful Fallujah:

FALLUJA, Iraq — In Falluja, a town that rises abruptly out of the vast Syrian Desert an hour west of Baghdad, nearly every building left standing has some sort of hole in it.

Mosques are without their minarets. Apartment walls have been peeled away by artillery shells. A family’s kitchen is full of tiny holes made by a fragmentary grenade.

Of all the places fighting has raged since the American invasion nearly six years ago, Falluja — the site of two major battles and the town where American security contractors were killed and their bodies hung from a local bridge — stands out as one of the bloodiest and most intractable.

This month, as the last American marines prepare to leave Camp Falluja, the sprawling base a few miles outside of town where many of the American troops who fought the two battles were stationed, Falluja has come to represent something unexpected: the hope that an Iraqi town once at the heart of the insurgency can become a model for peace without the United States military.

I’ve expressed doubt before about whether the Iraq military mission will be successful, and I think the utopian vision of Iraq as a western democracy is a castle with foundation firmly rooted in the clouds, but an Iraq that is stable and at least benign is vitally important for global security.

With the credit crunch likely spurning a period of retrenchment, a failure in Iraq would place the U.S. entering the new era already in retreat. Hope springs eternal that the U.S. will be able to pull off a successful withdrawal and let the nation continue its evolution; whatever happens after we leave is no longer on our hands. Rumblings from the President-Elect seem to be backpedaling on promises of a rapid withdrawal. This is, in my opinion, the worst possible decision. A time will soon be presented for us to leave Iraq gracefully, if we do not seize it then we will leave Iraq, regardless. There is gratitude in Iraq for our work, certainly, but Iraq is not Germany, they will not be content to house troops of a Christian nation on their soil indefinitely.

Let us see what the New Year brings. Onward, yon Ball Gunnerettes.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

2) Hints of god news:
U.S. to raise irregular war capabilities (via the Wa Po)

By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2008; Page A04

The Pentagon this week approved a major policy directive that elevates the military’s mission of “irregular warfare” — the increasingly prevalent campaigns to battle insurgents and terrorists, often with foreign partners and sometimes clandestinely — to an equal footing with traditional combat.

The directive, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on Monday, requires the Pentagon to step up its capabilities across the board to fight unconventionally, such as by working with foreign security forces, surrogates and indigenous resistance movements to shore up fragile states, extend the reach of U.S. forces into denied areas or battle hostile regimes.

The policy, a result of more than a year of debate in the defense establishment, is part of a broader overhaul of the U.S. military’s role as the threat of large-scale combat against other nations’ armies has waned and new dangers have arisen from shadowy non-state actors, such as terrorists that target civilian populations.

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“The U.S. has considerable overmatch in traditional capabilities . . . and more and more adversaries have realized it’s better to take us on in an asymmetric fashion,” said Michael G. Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, and a chief architect of the policy.

This, if it bears fruit, and that is a big IF, is good news.

Directing the Pentagon to do something and the Pentagon doing it are, quite obviously, very different things. And as any defense contractor lobbyist will tell you, there simply is not much money to be made in counter-insurgency (I can’t remember now, but I read somewhere that the U.S. is not engaged in true counter-insurgency, but in counter-counter-occupation.)

Ultimately, a thorough effort in counter-insurgency means putting your fabulous military toys: jets and tanks and fancy weapons, long-range missiles, aircraft carriers, attack helicopters and the like — on the shelf to gather dust and mildew. Undoubtedly Lockheed Martin could develop a fabulous new system for distributing rice while Northrup Grumman devoted effort to a more efficient way to build roads and lay power lines. Boeing could then partner with Wal Mart to make consumer commodities affordable and accessible. The downside (for them) being that rice distribution, road graters, trenchers and retail are not multi-million if not billion dollar items. When war becomes highly profitable (which it always does for those not fighting it) those seeking high profits will want war. I have high hopes for Gordon England’s plan, and high skepticism that it will supplant the footing for traditional warfare so unshakably embedded in the Pentagon.

3) Now that the pathetic and corrupt Pakistani army is being split to botch the Indian border mission in addition to the Afghan border mission, supply lines have become a source of concern. Unless you’re this guy:

BRUSSELS, Belgium — NATO operations in Afghanistan will not be affected by escalating attacks on the alliance’s supply lines through Pakistan, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Tuesday.

The militants “should not be under any illusion that they can disrupt the lines of communication, since we have alternatives,” de Hoop Scheffer said.

Alternatives being, of course, air power. Like any trendy war writer, I remain highly-skeptical about the ability of air-power to project anywhere but the air. Al Qaeda’s air force is certainly no threat, but everything from fuel shortages (which must be supplied conventionally) to bad weather can turn a world-class airlift into a ground force within minutes.

Air forces routinely overestimate what they are capable of, as is best illustrated by one of the world’s most notorious air force commander. I doubt there are many men left from the horror days of the Kessel, but I’d like to speak with some of them about their opinion of air power.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

From the LA Times:

By Julian E. Barnes, Paul Richter and Christi Parsons
November 26, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has agreed to serve in President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet, advisors said Tuesday, setting up the unusual situation in which a wartime Pentagon chief remains to work under a president who has condemned the previous administration’s policies.

An official close to the Obama transition team said it was likely that Gates would be named Defense secretary when the president-elect begins to unveil his national security team in announcements expected next week.

A former government official who has advised the Obama transition said it was “99% certain” that Gates would remain as Defense secretary for about a year in the Obama administration.

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“Nothing is definitive,” said the former official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing transition plans. “But Gates did agree to stay on.”

Gates continuation is the likely final nail in the F-22 Raptor’s procurement coffin. Gates, who famously said, “We’re fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater,” is not going to give the Air Force the funding it wants for the program, nor is he likely to bow down to a Congress hoping to score political points by requiring their purchase. The chances for a procurement boom, already slim under a democratic presidency, are all but evaporated.

Part 2:

The Ball Gunner is pleased to hear that Al Qaeda has abandoned an area it never had:

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — Pakistan has replaced Iraq as al Qaeda’s main focus, and the terror group has stepped up its efforts to destabilize the nuclear-armed South Asian nation, according to a senior U.S. military commander.

“Iraq is now a rear-guard action on the part of al Qaeda,” said Gen. James Conway, the head of the Marine Corps and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview. “They’ve changed their strategic focus not to Afghanistan but to Pakistan, because Pakistan is the closest place where you have the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons.”

Gen. Conway also offered a stark assessment of the Afghan situation, saying the Taliban has built a rudimentary command-and-control network that enables the group’s leadership to direct attacks across the country.

“They move troops around. They resupply. They provide money,” he said. “It’s effective and it’s real. It’s not just happenstance that these guys know where to go and what to do.”

It’s an uphill battle to beat these fires out. But as has been noted time and again, Al Qaeda in Iraq is hardly the enemy we so desperately want it to be.

The monger sect likes to claim these arguments are mere semantics, which demonstrates only that they wield a keen judo grip on ignorance. Iraq’s long history of secular government has made the majority of Iraqis particularly poorly suited for the Salafist Islam espoused by the Osama Bin Ladin (may demons eat his flesh) and the structure of Al Qaeda (may demons eat their flesh, too). We need to get this through our head; if we can’t identify who we are fighting we surely won’t be able to beat them.

Finally:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Post from: The Ball Gunner

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s two most powerful Shiite clerics on Friday challenged the government’s planned security pact with the United States, undercutting efforts to reach a deal before the U.N. mandate for American troops in Iraq expires Dec. 31.

Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr renewed threats to unleash his militia fighters to attack U.S. forces unless they leave Iraq immediately, and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani vowed to intervene if he concludes the proposed agreement governing the presence of U.S. forces infringes on national sovereignty.

Iraqi officials have said they will seek a renewal of the U.N. Security Council’s mandate if the pact, which would allow American troops to stay in Iraq through 2011, is not passed by parliament by year’s end.

Not only has the ever-growing pain in our rear bit Muqtada Al Sadr come out against the arrangement, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has shouted his opposition, too. This coalescing of the moderate and radical Shia in Iraq under one opinion is nothing good for the coalition forces. The balance of power that consisted of Al Sadr’s radical forces vs al-Sistani’s moderates kept things moving forward in a slow, but steady, direction. If the Shia as a whole wrinkle their collective noses at the SOFA then we’re in for a spin.

The other side of this, is that the paralysis of the Shia has meant the Sunni have expanded their power. The Sons (and daughters) of Iraq were intended to be folded back into the country at large. As it turns out, the government has found it easier to keep buying them off.

For “Sons of Iraq,” being paid in U.S. dollars is becoming a thing of the past. Members of the armed civilian groups, credited with helping to curb violence in Iraq, received their pay from the Iraqi government for the first time this week.

The Iraqi government took over the “Sons of Iraq” program from the U.S. on Oct. 1. But only now are the Iraq security forces taking over from U.S. troops the task of paying the members, in Iraqi dinars.

Maybe its just my Ball Gunnie sense tingling, but does anyone else think elevating a sectarian militia to legitimate status is a cockamamie idea? As the Sunni militias grow in political power, it seems they will inevitably begin to demand more from the Shia government. If the Shia government denies their demands then the militias have the power and ability to destabilize sizable portions of the nation. Militias and governments do not play well together. Just ask the Pakistanis how it’s working in the tribal areas.

What the coalition, in specific the U.S., is likely finding is that ideological leaders, al-Sadr and al-Sistani, are a lot more difficult to manipulate than politicians. What it means in the long-term is yet to be figured out. There’s no telling what deals might be cut to keep operations in the clear before the deadline expires. I doubt if the deadline passed that anyone from CENTCOM on up would tell the boys to call it a mission and sleep it off in the FOBs until it’s time to come home. But it could greatly change the nature of the game.

Primarily, it gives the signal that the Shia, the majority of Iraq, are ready for us to go, and to go now. The idea of using Iraq as a base of operations in the Middle East, long unrealistic, has now become a chimera. The U.S. excursion into Syria, launched from Iraq, was widely denounced. Iraq is simply unwilling to be the top rope for the U.S.’ pro-wrestling style atomic elbows, for obvious reasons.

Second, if the Kurds get a wild hair during the power vacuum and make a break for full autonomy the whole region could get sucked into hell.

Admittedly, some of the Iraq demands for the SOFA were simply unworkable from the start. Man will walk on Pluto before the U.S. would allow an American troop to be tried in an Iraqi court, everyone in the Iraqi government knows that. This leads me to believe that these negotiations might have been loaded from the onset.

The U.S. better be preparing to do something else to enact its Middle East peace policy. The current administration’s efforts might unravel before the new guy even plops himself down in the office. As I’ve been saying for some time, if the situation deteriorates there is no political will for a second “Surge.” Any attempts to build support for it could torpedo the shaky support for ongoing operations in Afghanistan. If the U.S. objectives in both nations are left unfulfilled our nation’s credibility will likely never recover. Unfortunately, their failure or success may already be determined and out of our hands.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

As for Georgia, we’re clearly in lunatic territory now. Russia or no Russia, the Caucasus nations’ borders have always been more or less a form of interpretive dance. As in, I’m going to dance over here with some guns and then the border goes this way. John McCain, George Bush and Barack Obama all support wrapping Georgia up in the NATO blanket. This despite the fact that Mikheil Saakashvili is a close contender for best tin-pot thug of 2007, after he called in the police to dispatch anti-government protests and shut down opposition TV station IMEDI. So even if you get past the point of allowing an unstable nation into NATO, you still have the rather prickly problem that:

• Saakashvili started a war
• Russia countered
• If Georgia was a NATO nation then the U.S. and western Europe would have been REQUIRED to assist them

That’s kind of the point people seem to miss, once you’re a NATO nation the gist of the matter is that you don’t have to do this stuff alone any more. If Georgia had been a NATO member back in August then the U.S. would be fighting a third war, and a much worse war, and very likely a world war, this very moment. It’s true that the Russian military at this point isn’t all it pretends to be, but there are long lines of bones from Moscow to Paris and then Volgagrad (was Stalingrad) to Berlin. Being that neither George Bush, nor Barack Obama, nor John McCain would be doing the freezing amid General Winter and General Mud I suppose these things are of little consequence to them.

Opening up NATO to these two, not entirely stable, nations is asking for nothing but trouble. Of course, its total exposure as a poor idea undoubtedly means it will be pursued with gusto. Like William Lind, I occasionally wish we had only one monarch for several decades, there would be a greater chance of talking sense into them.

On a humerous note that will fly over the heads of most, Russia apparently thinks the U.S. really should stay in Iraq a bit longer.

From other fronts:

The looming disaster in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region rapidly is decending into a comedy of errors. The lack of a unified strategy means a hodge-podge of actions that only push forward in one area by pushing back in another. But the combined might of Generals Larry, Curly and Moe have decided that arming the tribal militias in Pakistan (free registration required) is the solution du jure. While this is billed as a Pakistani solution, the reality is that this is likely a U.S. solution handed to the Pakistanis.

First, if the problem in the area is a LACK OF ACCESS to weapons then I’ve apparently been reading the wrong news.
Second, the reason this resoundingly fails the smell test is the desperate attempt to brand this as “Surge: Part Deux - Surge Harder” or whatever. Even the military has proclaimed the obvious, that attempting a surge type strategy in Afghanistan would be well beyond worthless. Iraqis, despite their religious divide and total willingness to kill the ever loving crap out of each other, DO have a common identity as Iraqis, with a shared language, common ethnicity, common lineage and the like. Afghans, on the other hand, don’t really havy any of that stuff. What they’ve got instead is a mash of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and half dozen smaller groups each trying to chisel out a small corner of the mountains and valleys to kick back with their wives and enjoy all the benefits the 18th century has to offer. Handing out weapons to the Pashtun in Pakistan is essentially the same as handing out weapons to the Pashtun in Afghanistan, and when the Pashtun in Afghanistan are not fighting foreigners they are quite content to spend their time fighting the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Just maybe the Uzbeks and Tajiks will resent being shot at by weapons provided by the U.S. / Pakistan. At least, I would.

But we’ve still got nothing but noise coming from the sound box in Washington. (from the Wa-Po article)

“There is a significant, but not a comprehensive, bump up in the security element,” one official said. While there are more soldiers on the ground, he said, the military strategy is not sustainable because Pakistan “is still doing virtually nothing about extending the government’s political authority into the tribal areas, and virtually nothing about economic development” in the region.

Of course they are “doing virtually nothing about extending government’s political authority into the tribal areas” you bleeding wanker! There has never been “political authority” in the tribal areas outside the tribes - get it, Gus? NEVER-NEVER-NEVER-NEVER-NEVER!!!!!!

Meanwhile, As Hamid Karzai and the Afghan state slide ever closer to the chasm of illegitimacy and irrelevance, NATO has stumbled upon the perfect solution - just pick some other poor schmoe to lead Afghanistan. Of course, the Afghans have plans of their own when it comes to governance. After being ingloriously runoff by the Northern Alliance, the Taliban are resurfacing as the de facto government in many regions.

As William Lind has noted, cutting a deal with the Taliban that returns them to power with the promise of keeping out Al Qaeda might be the best hope for Afghanistan.

Here’s hoping that the new silverback in the Oval Office is paying attention.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Ah, George Bernard Shaw who gave us the immortal line: ”We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

If this mission falls apart, which it gives every indication of doing, history will be no kinder to us than it was

to the Soviets. Who, as the article points out, potentially lost their nation as a result of their failed Afghan conflict. The buck will be passed endlessly around the table. But at the end of the day, we have neglected to learn from two indisputable master of guerilla warfare in rural countries, Vo Nguyen Giap and Mao Tse Tung, who took their cues from the venerable Sun Tzu and his masterful Art of War. (Full text of article at link, however if you don’t own a full copy consider it your job of the day to remedy that at the local bookstore.)

“He who wishes to fight must first count the cost.
When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened.
If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity.
Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue…
In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.”

Giap and Mao are both well entrenched theorists of the last century, and Sun Tzu is well dust by now. Given the speed of institutional change at the Pentagon I expect them to discover Sun Tzu any day now.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

My dad (ostensibly the human one) likes to tell the story of taking me to Mandeville, Louisiana where his parents lived. Anyone that has been to Mandeville can tell you that bustling metropolis it aint, but it puts on good airs of being a real city with real city things in it.

At one point I asked if I could go outside to play. My dad said that was fine but to stay on the sidewalk. At that moment I looked up at him with my little five or six year old rube eyes and asked in all earnesty, “What’s a sidewalk?” The Ball Gunner has since, of course, learned what a sidewalk is (not that they build any in Panama City) in addition to mastering the further acoutrements of civil society: computers, automobiles, literacy, pants, all those fanciful things so mysterious to the little hick of yore.

What yon youthful woodsbilly Ball Gunner has to do with now is that the Pentagon, the war architects, the civilian planners, the money spenders, the wonks, snonks and bonks hurling us endlessly into the chasm of Central Asia do not know and make no pretense of learning that the various ethnic groups that compromise the ill-fitting region known as Afghanistan are just as oblivious to 21st century political boundaries as Wee Billy Ball Gunner was about pedestrian ones.

You’d have to be inordinately slack witted to think the Global War on Terrorism is going anything but resoundingly poorly at the moment. This weekend’s blast at a Marriott in Pakistan are solid evidence that whatever we might have done to the terrorist networks of Al Qaida, we haven’t taken away their ability to plan and carry out an operation that kills 53 people including two American troops.

There’s an old saying about if you sit a monkey at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time he (or she) will eventually reproduce a given text through sheer chance. We can only assume the current strategy in Central Asia was one of the unsuccessful monkey forays into grand literature. Really no part of it makes sense. The U.S., for instance, wants to woo the Pashtun in Afghanistan while waging war on them in Pakistan. Ball Gunners everywhere are scratching their heads at this one. The United States has put a man on the moon, but is apparently incapable of understanding that the Pashtun care less about the imaginary line separating Pakistan from Afghanistan than Ball Gunner Jr. knew about sidewalks.

I’d imagine if old Osama hisself designed the U.S. policy in Pakistan he could not come up with a better way for us to utterly flub the war on terror. The primary threat in Pakistan is not Al Qaeda, the Taliban or any other be-bearded horrors lurking in the corner, dangerous though they may be. The threat in Pakistan is legitimacy, and the U.S. is undermining the legitimacy of the Pakistani government faster that any terrorist organization ever could.

From the NY Times:

Pakistan’s President Calls for End to Terrorism and Criticizes Intervention by U.S.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Asif Ali Zardari addressed a joint session of Parliament on Saturday, his first speech there since his election two weeks ago, and offered a program of peace and reform while vowing to root out terrorism and extremism.

Mr. Zardari, who is seen as pro-American but is confronted by public hostility to American policy toward militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, said his government was determined to meet the challenge posed by terrorist and extremist elements in those areas.

His government would offer peace to anyone willing to renounce violence, and would invest in development and political reform of the border areas, but would use force as a last resort to those who challenged the authority of the government.

He declared that his government should be firm in its resolve not to allow terrorists to use Pakistani soil to carry out terrorist activities against any foreign country, and said he wanted to improve relations with two of Pakistan’s neighbors, Afghanistan and India.

But he also warned that Pakistan would not abide further American military incursions into the border areas. “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism,” he said in a comment that was broadly greeted by legislators, who loudly thumped on their desks to show their support.

The recent collapse of the Pakistani coalition that brought Zardari to power is the last warning we are likely to get. No one seems to aware that the days of Musharraf shucking and jiving to Washington’s strings are now relegated to the good ole days. If we make any more efforts to sour this punch we may well find ourselves with not only a recalcitrant Pakistan but a hostile one. What that could ultimately mean is pretty murky. That the Pakistani military and intelligence services are compromised is so apparent that no one even tries to tart up the ugly truth. But when there are open reports of “Pakistani troops and tribesmen” firing on U.S. helicopters it’s pretty obvious that the wheels are coming loose from their screws.

We have no way of knowing where the tipping point will be and how far we can push before the entire Pakistani government comes crashing down like a Jenga game. But if we lose Pakistan we will certainly lose Afghanistan, a fate that may already be sealed, regardless.

On that note, the Intel Dump at the Wa Po has an interesting analysis about the raging drought in Afghanistan and what that means for the coming winter. Carter, of the Intel Dump, argues that the U.S. should begin preparations to provide food for the remote villages during the coming winter. What he neglects to note that if we do not the Taliban will make every effort to exert themselves in our absence. He does mention that these would be efforts on a similar scale to the heroic Berlin Airlift, and if you ask me, the chances of mustering that much political will in this nation are roughly zilcho.

I don’t know what flavor of sky pie they serve at CENTCOM that makes people believe blowing the Pashtun to bits in Pakistan and giving them Islam friendly meatpies in Afghanistan constitutes a winning strategy. But unless some strategic mana from heaven falls to the ground the U.S. is either going to be forced to create something resembling a unified strategy in the region or keep stoking the fire until the roof blows right off the contraption. A shooting war with Pakistan or a governmentless Pakistan would be a collassal failure. Alienating the Pashtun will mean defeat. The Pentagon’s refusal to move beyond World War 2 style military planning in the “kill things and break stuff” vein potentially will be viewed in history as the thing that wrecked American global power. As General Petaeus takes the reigns at CENTCOM it will be interesting to see if he takes counterinsurgency seriously or if all his bluster blows out. Afghanistan is not Iraq. Central Asia is not Arabia.

There have been two great failings of leadership in the Global War on Terror since Sept. 11 inaugurated the 21st century:

1) An expansion of the War on Terror to anything resembling hardline Islam regardless of its connections to terrorism. The Taliban never had wide-spread support among any groups, let alone Pashtun peasants. But adamantly connecting the Taliban with the Pashtun has birthed us slews of new enemies.
2) The often repeated belief that victory is inevitable causing us to continually underestimate our opponents.

We’re operating under the belief that the Central Asians are like us, that their experience and development and understanding of the world is like ours and that, deep down, they want to be like us. But connections in ancient peoples are deep. This was their land before we got there and will be likely long after we’re gone. There aren’t a whole lot of people throughout history that have gone to war for the arid high country. We can sit them down, tell them to play by our rules, make nice, solidify their political boundaries, and join hands for the love chain. And once we tell them that, our only likely response will be a very old language responding in a different variation that classic phrase summarizing unfamiliarity with what is expected:

“What’s a sidewalk?”

Post from: The Ball Gunner

From the Army Times -
(Side note: Don’t let the name fool you, the Army Times Publishing Co. is owned by Gannett newspapers and has no official affiliation with the military.)

Army to buy thousands more Mk19s, M2s

By Kris Osborn - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Sep 16, 2008 6:46:22 EDT

The Army is buying 4,600 Mk19 grenade launchers and 29,900 .50-caliber crew-served M2 machine guns, whose heavy-caliber rounds and high rate of fire have proven valuable in infantry counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, service officials said. (Service officials? Was it Colonels Larry, Curly and Moe?)

Such weapons help target small groups of insurgents on the run or blended in with the local populations.

“Normally with a 7.62mm, you have a lot more difficulty when you have an enemy going behind a cinder block wall,” said Richard Audette, Army deputy project manager for soldier weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. “With a .50-caliber, you can take the wall out.”

I pretty much expect most journalists to not have a grasp of these things. But, really? We’ve obviously broached a new level of absurdity.

“Blended in with local populations?” The MK-19 shoots 40 milimeter grenades in either high explosive  and high-explosive dual purpose (when you want to either blow up or shred everything)  and the venerable M-2 (ma deuce for those who love her) was designed as a primarily anti-armor weapon. So as Gen. Petraeus departs our new counterinsurgency tactics will involve launching vollies of grenades into crowds or firing indiscriminately with a weapon created to take out light vehicles.

You see that hoss on the far left - that’s our darling. The one second from the right is 5.56 NATO, the bang-bang that comes out the end of the M-16s and M-4s. The round third from the left is 7.62 NATO used in the M-60, M-240 and the old timey M-14. Short of that cute little .22 (far right) and the bulldogish 7.62×39 of AK-47 fame (third from the right) none of these round would have any difficulty with a “cinderblock wall. ” If you need any further proof here’s some Bubba on YouTube popping a cinderblock with a dinky little 9mm highpower.

So what we’ve got here is some prime, grade A horse manure. Using a .50 machine gun or a 40mm automatic grenade launcher for counterinsurgency is not only stupid it’s sheer lunacy. Hosing down the joint when someone goes “behind a cinder block wall” is a good recipe for losing a counterinsurgency, because either of those weapon systems will surely “take the wall out” in addition to taking out the wall behind that one, and the one behind that and the one behind that. If it’s a 40mm grenade it will probably go through a few walls and then blow up. If this sounds like a good way to win hearts in minds in a crowded urban area then… well you probably belong in Army logistics.

Surely no one in the Army actually believes this. But they will merily feed it to the clueless wonks in the media who will regurgitate it for the rubes and most notably the rubes in Congress. Likely these systems are in dire need of replacement. The M-2 entered service in 1921 — no, that is not a typo — and during my days in green I was assigned a few that I would be willing to swear came from the original factory order. The MK-19 is an atrocious beast to clean and maintain under the best of conditions. Having lugged a weapon through the middle East sand let me assure you that is about as far removed from the best of conditions you are likely to find.

What the order comes down to is simply stuff wearing out and breaking and the request is being couched as needed for “counterinsurgency.” From one end, it is an innocuous justification for things they need. From the other end, and this is the slippery part, it is the manifestation of a trend to label anything and everything as counterinsurgency as a way to AVOID justification. The F-22? Need it for counterinsurgency! Future Combat Systems? Gotta have that for counterinsurgency! The USS Ronald Reagan? We’ve got all those insurgent carrier groups out there. You don’t want them winning, do you?

The entire selling point of the new counterinsurgency strategy was that it existed outside of the bureaucratic brontosaurus of the Pentagon. If it has been munched up already then the future is exceedingly doubtful.

Post from: The Ball Gunner