The battle of Marja, in Afghanistan’s southern poppy belt has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Some 11,000 U.S. and Afghan troops fighting to defeat a few hundred Taliban fighters won’t really change much in Afghanistan. The greater significance of the battle appears to be in how it is perceived in the rest of Afghanistan and in America.

The operation’s true goals are to convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year-long war and also to show Afghans that U.S. forces and the Afghan government can protect them from the Taliban.

Marja is indeed a Taliban stronghold and despite the fact that the Talib fighters are seriously outnumbered and even more seriously outgunned, at least nine coalition soldiers have died so far and dozens have been wounded. It is a serious, hard, no holds barred battle on the most basic level.

It is being hoped that a swift victory over the Taliban in Marja, followed by a robust development effort, could sway some Afghan fence sitters.

The important thing to realize is that Marja is not a place of any meaningful strategic, or even tactical importance, that even the quickest of victories there – although that doesn’t appear to be possible any longer – will not really influence the outcome of the war, except that the symbolism of a victory might somewhat help the coalition politically.

What might be more meaningful is actually straightening out the situation in Kandahar, with its tangled political rivalries. Among the local power brokers is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Karzai has been accused of being a drug kingpin and, also, a paid CIA asset. He has of course denied both allegations.

So, it seems to us, that the battle of Marja is really just an excuse not to tangle with a much more difficult situation in Kandahar as yet. Too bad, that its cost in dead and wounded is as high as it is.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, battle of Marja, corruption, Kandahar, Karzai, politics, Taliban

A day before President Obama’s State of the Union address, we pretty much already know that the Massachusetts Senate election results seemed to have greatly influenced what the president is going to actually address.

Under mounting pressure to curb government spending, the president is to propose in his State of the Union address a three-year freeze on federal funding that is not related to national security. That being clearly a concession to public concern about government spending and which could dramatically curtail Obama’s legislative ambitions.

The freeze would take effect in October and limit the overall budget for agencies other than the military, veterans affairs, homeland security and certain international programs to $447 billion a year for the remainder of Obama’s first term.

On the surface it sounds like a step ahead, doesn’t it? But do your math. $447 billion per year, as compared to the ever-rising national debt – as of today already surpassing $13 trillion…

At the same time, when “overseas contingency operations” expenses are added to the U.S. defense budget, it comes up to $663.8 billion for 2010 alone. As a matter of fact, the real figure is even higher, reaching between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.

All in all the 2009 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined and is variously calculated as being some nine times larger than the military budget of China. The United States and its close allies are responsible for about two-thirds of the world’s military spending – of which, the U.S. is responsible for the majority of the expenditures.

Understandably, this is a huge and seemingly never-ending source of income for our overbuilt defense industry. Seemingly the very appropriate warning of President Dwight Eisenhower went unheeded. Eisenhower three days before the end of his second term has warned among other things about the military/industrial complex, saying: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

If Eisenhower only knew how much the influence of the military/industrial complex has grown since his day…

At least it could seem to be a step in the right direction for President Obama to propose some saving measures in the State of the Union address. Unfortunately, the spending freeze will only address about 1/8 of our total budget and might actually cut into programs and operational budget of needed and necessary agencies, in many case to the detriment of us all.

Meanwhile, we still have well over 100,000 troops in Iraq, along with an even larger number of mercenaries, are beefing up our forces and spending for the most likely unwinnable war in Afghanistan and are maintaining the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the FBI, recently made famous by the discovery that it has been collaborating with telecom companies to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or simply asking for them.

Let’s not forget the case of the Spanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares, who learned that the FBI used an online photograph of him to create an image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today.

The image using Llamazares’ photo appeared on a wanted poster updating the U.S. government’s 1998 photo of the al Qaeda leader.

FBI spokesman Ken Hoffman acknowledged that the agency used a picture of Llamazares taken from Google Images.

Let’s hope that we are not rewarding incompetence, with ever-larger budgets.

Meanwhile, we don’t really know where more than $3 trillion in bailout money has disappeared to and whether it has done anybody – besides the people and the corporations, who have caused the crisis – any measurable good.

As the popular saying goes: “easy come, easy go”.

Technorati Tags: bailout, defense budget, military/industrial complex, money, President Obama, spending freeze, State of the Union address

We finally have the first, concrete step in the direction of closing the now infamous Guantanamo Bay prison.

The news reports say, “President Barack Obama has ordered the federal government to acquire an underused state prison”, the Thomson Correctional Center in rural Illinois.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections’ website, Thomson is not so much “underused”, as empty.

According to a letter to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair Thomson will be upgraded and transformed into a facility that exceeds “supermax standards.”

The real question is whether the Guantanamo inmates will actually be charged with crimes and whether they will be properly tried, according to our law, or will Thomson simply become an extension of Gitmo, this time on U.S. territory?

U.S. officials said military tribunals for potential detainees would be held at Thomson. They also said that the facility could house detainees whom the president determines must be held indefinitely but can’t be tried.

Thomson will not solve all the administration’s Guantanamo-related problems. There still will be dozens of detainees not relocated to Thomson, myriad legal issues and potential resistance from Congress.

Technorati Tags: congress, guantanamo, military tribunals, obama, Prison, Thompson

As we get deeper and deeper into the Afghan quagmire, ostensibly to defeat al-Qaida, along with its ever-mysterious Osama bin Laden and to defeat the Taliban, in order to prop up the Karzai government, it appears that the Taliban is always a step, or two ahead.

At this point, nearly every Afghan province has two governors – one belonging to the Karzai regime and the other to the Taliban one.

At the same time, it appears that many Afghans prefer a decisive rule to the disarray of the Karzai government.

The Taliban has established an elaborate shadow government of governors, police chiefs, district administrators and judges that in many cases already has more bearing on the lives of Afghans than the real government.

U.S. military officials say that getting rid of the Taliban’s shadow government and establishing the authority of the Karzai administration over the next 18 months will be critical to the success of President Obama’s surge strategy. But this has been complicated by the fact that in many areas, Afghans prefer the severe but decisive authority of the Taliban to the corruption and inefficiency of Karzai’s appointees.

For many Afghans, there is little, or no choice. Across broad areas of the country, especially Afghanistan’s vast rural areas, the government has little to no presence, leaving the Taliban as the only authority.

After been forced underground or into exile in 2001, the Taliban has returned not just to wage war but also to demonstrate that it is capable of delivering a different model of governance from the one offered by Karzai and his allies. Afghans who live under Taliban control say the group’s weaknesses remain the same as during the movement’s previous five-year rule. The Taliban provides virtually no social services, leaving Afghans on their own when it comes to health care, education and development.

Most Afghans celebrated Taliban’s ouster on 2001, but after eight years of Karzai’s government, many say they would happily welcome the Taliban’s return.

It appears then that whatever is defined as a “victory” in Afghanistan will not be a military one, but rather a very strong push to improve the efficiency of the central government, while cleaning out the ever-present corruption. In addition, the Afghan government forces will have to actually establish a strong, viable presence even in areas presently considered to be Taliban strongholds.

Whether the U.S. and NATO will be able to achieve that within the next 18 to 24 months remains to be seen, but the prospects do not look promising at all at this point.

Maybe if we finally gave up the search for the mythical Osama bin Laden, more resources could be channeled into actually fighting for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and to offer them a viable future, which for so many decades has seemed to slip almost out of reach?

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, government, politics, shadow, Taliban

It’s been many years since the 9/11 attacks and America’s favorite boogieman Osama bin Laden is apparently still out there…Or is he? Nobody seems to know for sure, it seems.

U.S. National Security Adviser, James Jones, says bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be periodically slipping back into Afghanistan as well. At the same time, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, says the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time – “I think it has been years” – and did not confirm that he’d slipped into Afghanistan.

The failed hunt for bin Laden has been one of the signature elements of the global “war on terror” that George W. Bush launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. The principal explanations given by both the Bush and Obama administrations for not getting bin Laden is that they simply don’t know where he is.
“If we did, we’d go get him,” Gates said.

Jones, a retired Marine general, stressed the urgency of targeting bin Laden, and spoke of a renewed campaign to capture or kill him. Bin Laden had been allowed to operate in Afghanistan by his Taliban allies while allegedly plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. When U.S. forces ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001, bin Laden reportedly fled into Pakistan from what was generally described as a complex of caves in the Tora Bora area.

Asked whether the administration has reliable intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, James Jones replied, “The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.” He did not elaborate on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he cite a time period or describe more specifically bin Laden’s apparent border crossings.

Robert Gates in turn, said: that “we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is,” although he agreed that his likely hideout is in North Waziristan.

The U.S. has targeted North Waziristan and other areas on the Pakistani side of the border with drone-launched missile strikes, killing a number of militants as well as Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani army has undertaken an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan but it has not expanded it into North Waziristan.

Obama administration officials have often asserted, as did the Bush administration, that they believe bin Laden is being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the border, along with other senior al-Qaida leaders. But Jones’s assertion that al-Qaida chief may have slipped back into Afghanistan puts a new twist on the issue.

Senator John McCain said: “that knowledgeable people have told him that bin Laden ‘moves back and forth.’”
McCain did not elaborate, except to say that although bin Laden is not currently able to establish bases for training and equipping terrorists who would attack the United States, “I think it’s important to get him.”

Gates said he does not blame a lack of Pakistani cooperation for the absence of intelligence on bin Laden. “No, I think it’s because if, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time,” he said.

During a visit to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused a stir by chiding Pakistani officials for failing to press the hunt for al-Qaida inside their borders. She said she found it “hard to believe” that no one in Islamabad knows where the al-Qaida leaders are hiding and couldn’t get them “if they really wanted to.”

A recent Senate report said bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora only three months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when American military leaders made the crucial decision not to pursue him with massive force.

Some Pakistanis believe that Osama bin Laden is actually a CIA agent.

Take a look at this video:

So, it appears that we are as much in the dark about bin Laden’s whereabouts, as we seem to be about what really and truly transpired on September 11, 2001. Lets just hope that our intelligence regarding both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban is more accurate, since nobody in his right mind wants the Afghan war to drag on forever.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, al-qaida, bin laden, cia, clinton, gates, jones, Pakistan, Terrorism, US