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

From the Washington Times:

“Undoubtedly, the withdrawal [of the Black Sea Fleet] from the Crimea will affect Russia’s security in the south. New bases in the Mediterranean Sea could make up for the departure,” Rear Adm. Andrei Baranov stated Monday according to a report carried by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Ukraine’s pro-American President Viktor Yushchenko has been putting pressure on Russia’s leasing of the Sevastopol base in the month since Russian forces occupied one-third of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus in a five day operation Aug. 8-12.

Mr. Yushchenko’s policy has infuriated the Russians, who have dominated the Black Sea for almost a quarter of a millennium. Sevastopol is also a fabled fortress and hero city in Russian history that was only conquered after long, heroic sieges in the Crimean War of 1854-55, and against the British and the French, and in 1942 against the Nazis.

Yushchenko squeaked out a victory (and a life) in the 2004 presidential elections riding a thin wave of pro-Western sentiment over the Russian oriented Viktor Yanukovych. The west shifting into full speed jibberish immediately dubbed this the “Orange Revolution” and proclaimed it a glorious victory for democracy despite the well known interventions of foreign government into Ukranian politics. When questioning the west’s love for democracy we need only recall the words of the great dope Henry Kissinger:
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Ukraine like Georgia is all geared up and hopeful that the big boys out NATO way are going to invite them to sit at the cool kids table. Russia is, of course, telling Ukraine to stuff it up their treaty hole, and with a little over 17% ethnic Russians and enough eastern Ukrainians that might as well be Russians the chances of Ukraine running away with a wide pro-West coalition rank right up there with Bob Barr winning the presidency.

Militarily, it’s not entirely clear what would be accomplished by moving the Russian fleet out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean. Everybody that gets into the Black goes through Turkey, and Turkey would find itself in an unenviable position of choosing between NATO’s marching orders or staying cozy with Russia and the trading relation worth an estimated $25 billion. By hook or by crook, Russia could still find itself as the big hoss of the Black Sea.

For the U.S., having a large part of the Russian fleet stationed in Tartarus, Syria (map) would hardly be an improvement over having them squirreled away in the Black Sea. Particularly in regards to Israel, having a fleet with air capabilities would mean a threat that Israel has never taken seriously, those fast, zippy things in the air. A problem that would hinder strikes on Iran and potentially get downright ugly if it came to blows with Lebanon for the zillionth time.

But to understand the grooviest possible scenario you first need to see the map of the 2004 elections in Ukraine… TA-DA!

When someone points out that 1/3 of Ukraine, the part with the most Russians incidentally, wants a more Moscow-oriented posture the real daisy of a scenario comes into play - a vast swatch of Ukraine breaking off and attempting to rejoin Russia, and that little red dot at the bottom that voted for the pro-Russian guy to the tune of 88.83%, that just happens to be Sevastapol - the port in question.

If push comes to shove, and both of the very special boys running for the big seat in D.C. give every indication that it is, we could be looking at a reshuffling of some really old borders. All Russia would even need are the two eastern oblasts and the southern one containing the Navy base. With 97%, 93% and 81% that goal could be entirely within reach. To give you an idea, in 2004 George Bush won Texas by a piddly 62% and we called THAT a landslide.

So Viktor Yuschenko, for whatever else he might be, is not an idiot. He’s lived through a Ukranian election (barely) and he knows the political landscape. It’s not likely he’s looking for a good excuse to stir up pro-Russian sentiment and lose big chunks off his country, likely never to be seen again. So the idea of booting the Russians out of the Black Sea might sound tempting to the vicious lipsticked pitbulls in Washington, but living as a Russian neighbor brings with it certain realities. Surely we are promising to “support” Ukraine. But our dear Georgian president might be phoning ole pineapple face to inform him just how much traction that support had when the Russian army was merily dancing jigs on the rubble of his country.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Behold:

The number of Hellfire missile attacks by Predators in Pakistan has more than tripled, with 11 strikes reported by Pakistani officials this year, compared with three in 2007. The attacks are part of a renewed effort to cripple al-Qaeda’s central command that began early last year and has picked up speed as President Bush’s term in office winds down, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials involved in the operations. 

That would be the Washington Post article, “In hunt for Bin Ladin, a new approach.”

There is nothing new here, the grasp of warfare in this post is as old as Napoleon and cold as his bones. Note the theme - that we can concentrate on the base in Pakistan and beat back the central command - presumably to Berlin or possibly Krakow. The article goes on to state that we are now looking for Bin Ladin by flying around in Predators and shooting the occasional missile with predictable results.

Apparently the Post writer and whoever ladeled out this story consider that the Pakistan-Afghan border is some tiny, irrelavant place and that with enough Predators and enough missiles we are bound to find him, you know, eventually. The premise of the article and of the strategy simply do not wash with reason or logic. It is what my grandfather referred to as “bottle-assing around” - ineffectually moving around in an attempt to look busy.

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Onward and upward.

The mighty darlings at the Heritage Foundation (oh how I love them) have served up yet another steaming platter of preposterous. You can find it in the ominously titled “The Return of History:  Confronting the Russian Bear after the Georgian War.” I think the better title would be, “Europe and Russia: lets you and him fight.”

It’s the same old tired story: that we need to like, TOTALLY invite the Ukraine and Georgia to NATO, and Russia is like so totally mean, and I just can’t believe what Vladimir Putin was wearing the other day. OMG LOL!

You can always tell when the apes are getting serious because they throw in the serious word du jure - geopolitical. Like so -  The Russian-Georgian war rocked the geopolitical landscape.
Well dear lord, we know they’re super serious now. The geopolitical landscape, you say. This calls for serious cat!

Heritage, as always, is chock full of good ideas: the Europeans should goad Russia into war, the Europeans should not have fuel to heat their home of cook their food this winter, the Europeans should make demands that Russia will never accept, the Europeans should militarize and then beef up their NATO presence which will be led by… take a guess who Heritage thinks NATO will be led by.  Come on, I dare you.

Jaded though I am, I will excuse Heritage as simply being utterly clueless. But it’s truly discouraging when supposedly educated people lend credence to this unadulterated nonsense.

In the month since the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Bush administration has crafted a policy that should please some liberal critics and upset conservative hard-liners — a low-key approach that tries to help the Georgians recover without backing Russia further into a corner. 

From my view in the cheap seats it hardly looks like Russis into any corner anywhere. Flush with money, flush with resources, increasing their influence and re-exerting themselves in the so called near-abroad - if they are in a corner it is one of the more spacious and luxuriant corners I have ever seen.

The world has changed dramatically in a few short years and America is refusing to point itself in the new direction. I know its pointless to get upset about things I can’t change, but we are talking about fundamentally failing to understand the big challenges of the modern world. Oh well.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

The latest from Reuters:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.

Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the “foreign minister” of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia.

“We literally have to avert war,” Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels.

Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: “Very close, because we know Russians very well.”

To start with, Georgia does not go to war against Russia in the same sense that Junior’s pee-wee team does not play football against the New York Giants. Whatever its failings, during the 90s, Vladimir Putin’s reign as president (which ends today) saw the resurgence of the Russian military. The Russians have a military tradition a bit beyond extraordinary, they lost 3 million people in the first World War, then fought a long, bloody civil war, to the tune of 9 million, then lost 20 million people in the second World War and still weren’t giving an inch when the U.S. forces in Europe thought they’d be a push over. When you put 32 million people into the meat grinder in half a century while standing firm on the mat you get your hardcore military culture bona fides. Then to spike the ball, you release a picture of a guy doing this:

and the Ballgunner is really willing to concede that his manhood is measured in fractions, possibly even fractions with decimals.

When you take this and put it against the Georgians, whose military consists of, uh……… Well you get the point. The Georgian military is defensive oriented, but defensive against other military power houses like Azerbaijan, Armenia or possibly the dreaded Ossetians. Georgia vs Russia would not look even remotely like a fight. The Russians tried the touchy feely stuff in Chechnya, and got embarrassed. Then, someone on the command staff realized they had been reading from the American book, they took a big swig of vodka, proclaimed Мы Русский! and put the hammer down. Do you hear of any problems from Chechnya?

When you consider that every country in the former Soviet sphere is chock full of Russian intelligence agents throughout the government and the military, there arises the even more delightful scenario that Georgia might try to assemble the military only to find half of them already lined up on the other side.

In a lot of ways this is really fun to watch. Russia was warning the west to leave Serbia alone in the Kosovo matter. But in a monument to hardheadedness, NATO got involved in the Orthodox/Catholic/Muslim debacle that predates every standing government in the world and will still be raging when NATO is listed next to League of Nations and Chechnya in the book of “Ooops!” But the U.S. signed off on Kosovo by playing the ethnicity card, oblivious to the fact that the “area” of Kosovo is about as Serbian as Bunker Hill is American. Now, the Russians are saying, “Look! The poor Abkhazians are ethnically distinct from the Georgians, they should have their own country too! It’s even better that they want their country to join our country!” I’m sure it has nothing to do with those lovely Black Sea shipping lanes that are up for grabs (not that Russia doesn’t already have some, but you can never have too many ports.)

Now, the west really looks silly. They can try the, “No, no. That’s not fair,” routine and wind up looking like hypocrites. Or they can throw Georgia under the bus, at which point an alliance with NATO will be shown as worth less than a big pile of doody. Meanwhile, Russia gets to sit back, enjoy the show and ponder their next move. What about those large Russian populations in the Baltic nations? What about the divided population in Ukraine? There are opportunities aplenty for Russia to thank NATO, the E.U. and the U.S. for stomping on its toes for the last few years.

We’re reminded of one of those people from long ago, when folks seemed to know what they were talking about. That someone was Otto von Bismark, who left us this: “The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”

Post from: The Ball Gunner

Pakistan’s recent elections have all the appearance of near total annihilation of Musharraf’s Muslim-League Q- party. The general displeasure of Pakistanis toward the ruling party, seen largely as an American puppet, is hardly a shock, and the American refusal to denounce November’s crackdowns and the bloody siege of the Red Mosque worked overtime to undermine the pillars of Washington support in the country. But the magnitude of the loss must be reverberating through the halls of U.S. foreign policy makers.

Via the New York Times 

  From unofficial results the private news channel, Aaj Television, forecast that the Pakistan Peoples Party would win 110 seats in the 272-seat National Assembly, with Mr. Sharif’s party taking 100 seats.

Mr. Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, was crushed, holding on to just 20 to 30 seats. Early results released by the state news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan, also showed the Pakistan Peoples Party to be leading in the number of seats won.

Already rumors are circulating about Musharraf’s resignation, meaning the U.S. might be about to lose one of it’s allies in the region. The U.S. still has substantial influence given the amount of aid that flows into Pakistan. But the incoming parties will not have the same enthusiasm in dealing with the U.S. as the State department is accustomed  to. The new Pakistani government will be in the position to make some demands of their own, especially given the importance of Pakistan’s tribal regions.

Put bluntly, the U.S. cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s help in the border region. Nor can the U.S. act unilaterally within Pakistan without risking regional destabilization. The new Pakistani parliament will be more than willing to play hardball, complete with the knowledge that a good number of the people who elected them would like to see the U.S. fail in Afghanistan.

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Things have also been complicated by recent announcement of independence from Kosovo. The following days and weeks will be ones of rather loud discomfiture between NATO, which largely supports independence, and Russia, that has sided with Serbia in rejecting the declaration.

There are plenty of other European nations who are worried that a European Union recognition of Kosovo would rekindle other internal nationalist movements. Any member of the European Union can kill an official recognition, since such an act requires consensus. Given Spain, Greece, Romania and Slovakia are all facing similar issues, the odds of consensus seem slim.

Similarly, Russia will kill any United Nations measures toward recognition. This will put Kosovo in an odd sort of limbo, recognized by individual states but not by the international bodies.

Already, there are reports of violence breaking out in the region. While NATO and UN forces are present, it is not clear to what extent they are willing to serve as peace keepers or peace makers. More importantly, this comes at a time of increased tensions between Russia and NATO.

Russia has voiced opposition to this plan from the start and now appears to have egg on its face. A new Russian president will be elected on March 2, and baring some intergalactic anomaly, that president will be Dimitry Medvedev. His presidency will begin with humiliation if Russia doesn’t respond.  If the EU cannot come to a consensus as to Kosovo, the U.S. will be left alone in a staring match against the resurging Russians. The field is complicated by the addition of China,  ever aware of it’s own nationalist-separatist movements, who is siding with Serbia and Russia.

The developments in Pakistan are going to affect how the military does business in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and developments in Kosovo are going to shape NATO and European Union relations for years. The U.S. has had the privilege of unopposed decision making for several years, due to the weakness of other powers and the strength of its alliances. How Washington and the Pentagon handle a return to parity will be interesting to watch.

Post from: The Ball Gunner