With regards to Afghanistan Holbrooke, a Democrat and possible Clinton SecState, writes:
This affair also highlights the conundrum Afghanistan presents the United States and NATO. There will be more successes like Khost as additional NATO troops, including 3,000 U.S. Marines, arrive later this year. But with each tactical achievement, Afghanistan will become more dependent on international support, which will always be better, faster and more honest than anything the government will be able to supply. … The effort in Afghanistan is vital to America’s national security interests, and we must succeed — as the team in Khost has. But even as the United States and its NATO allies move deeper into the cauldron, questions must be asked: When, and how, will the international community hand responsibility for Afghanistan back to its government? Will short-term success create a long-term trap for the United States and its allies, as the war becomes the longest in American history?
Before getting to the gist of that OpEd let me debunk some issues:
The "better, faster and more honest" solutions are only such in a "western" view. Afghanis are likely to view these (solutions by indiscriminate bombing) very different. Holbrooke presents no base for his statement other than U.S. puppet Karzai government voices.
Afghanistan has nothing to do with "America’s national security interests". The guys who did 9/11 where mostly Saudis. The pilots of those planes were not trained to fly in Afghanistan but, guess what, in U.S. flight schools. That the guy who is alleged to have come up with the general 9/11 idea was at some time a paying guest of some Afghan government hostel doesn’t make Afghanistan a "vital national security interest." That guy could have lived anywhere else working on the same plans.
If U.S. national security interests are in the economic sphere, like access to resources, please Mr Holbrooke, explain to my why China got the contract for that huge copper mine in Afghanistan and the U.S. didn’t even bid on it.
That said, Holbrooke has a point in asking the right question.
What is the "western" endgame in Afghanistan?
With each month more "western" forces are injected there, with each month the casualties increase on all sides, with each month the situation there gets worse for the Afghan people.
So what IS the plan for Afghanistan? Is there anyone at all?
The only one I can determine from press reports is to demonstrate NATO’s "viability" – the NORTH ATLANTIC(!) treaty organisation. My globe doesn’t show the North Atlantic or NATO threatened by Afghanistan …
So why does NATO have to show up there at all?
The “Terrorist” as Peacebroker
To sum it up:
Maliki is the U.S. supported puppet in Iraq
Maliki starts a war on Sadr
Sadr stops the offense against him and successfully attacks Maliki’s forces and his backers in the Green Zone
Maliki sends folks to Iran to have an Iranian "terrorist supporter" mediate a peace deal with Sadr
Sadr sets the terms under which he agrees to stop fighting
Maliki agrees (somewhat) to Sadr’s terms and the truce
The U.S. taxpayer pay $12 billion a month to watch this show
Hillary Clinton promises to prolong the primaries, which she has essentially lost, All The Way to Denver
Sen. Clinton gave a pretty astonishing interview to the Washington Post in which she appears to say she will stay in the race till the convention in August, where she will take her fight to the credentials committee to have the delegates from the non-sanctioned Michigan and Florida primaries seated.
That may rip the Democratic party apart. In my view, that alone wouldn’t be a big loss. But it seriously increases the chances for McCain to win the bigger race and the chances for more wars in the Middle East.
In a letter to speaker Pelosi major donors support Clinton’s strategy and put pressure on the Democratic Party to not force an earlier decision.
In four years McCain is too old to run again and Clinton could then have another chance to run and win, while a 2012 attempt against a sitting president Barak Obama is likely a guaranteed defeat.
So one can certainly understand Hillary’s personal motives to take the fight to the bitter end.
But one wonders what the real aims of these party donors are. Why do they support a strategy that may lead to a devastating loss for their party? Why do they essentially support McCain and his bellicose threats against Iran?
Twelve of the 20 Clinton backers who warned Nancy Pelosi to keep out of the Democratic presidential primaries are Jewish.
The 20 signatories to the letter sent recently to Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, are major donors to the Democratic Party and strong supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Hmm … time for some ‘conspiracy theories’?
March 29, 2008
Z-Big on Iraq
No, I don’t like him. He’s an imperialist. But he is a realist-imperialist which is something I prefer over a neocon-zionist imperialist any day.
The decision to militarily disengage will also have to be accompanied by political and regional initiatives designed to guard against potential risks. …
The longer [U.S. occupation] lasts, the more difficult it will be for a viable Iraqi state ever to reemerge.
…
It is also important to recognize that most of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq has not been inspired by al-Qaeda. Locally based jihadist groups have gained strength only insofar as they have been able to identify themselves with the fight against a hated foreign occupier.
…
Bringing the U.S. military effort to a close would also smooth the way for a broad U.S. initiative addressed to all of Iraq’s neighbors. Some will remain reluctant to engage in any discussion as long as Washington appears determined to maintain its occupation of Iraq indefinitely. Therefore, at some stage next year, after the decision to disengage has been announced, a regional conference should be convened to promote regional stability, border control and other security arrangements, as well as regional economic development — all of which would help mitigate the unavoidable risks connected with U.S. disengagement.
[W]e should consider a regional rehabilitation program designed to help Iraq recover and to relieve the burdens that Jordan and Syria, in particular, have shouldered by hosting more than 2 million Iraqi refugees.
…
The "unipolar moment" that the Bush administration’s zealots touted after the collapse of the Soviet Union has been squandered to generate a policy based on the unilateral use of force, military threats and occupation masquerading as democratization — all of which has pointlessly heated up tensions, fueled anti-colonial resentments and bred religious fanaticism.
…
We started this war rashly, but we must end our involvement responsibly. And end it we must. The alternative is a fear-driven policy paralysis that perpetuates the war — to America’s historic detriment.
In the piece I excerpted above Z-Big speaks a lot about the "costs" of the war. While he talks about U.S. money, dead and wounded, he doesn’t mention any Iraqi "costs". He only "considers" some vague reparations …
He still wants a "residual force in Iraq" to prevent against outer "threats", which to him are al-Qaeda and Iran and not the much more likely Saudi-Sunni threat to overthrow any majority Shia government in Iraq.
Z-Big thinks that Iraq somewhat distracts from Afghanistan which is stupid. Afghanistan is a U.S. occupation for a flimsy reason just as much as Iraq is. It has to and will end the same way.
Still, Z-Big is an important voice in U.S. policy and he has international reach. Most of the right European parties are more near to Z-Big than to the Neocons. The piece above will have quite an effect there. In the Middle East he has some credentials to be more "middle ground" than most U.S. politicians.
So while this is far less than I would like, it is also by far the best U.S. position paper I have seen put forward by someone with a "voice" in a major U.S. media for quite some time.
Sadr’s Personnal Management Lesson
To successfully lead people one has to know what incentives will motivate them and which will not. Here is Sadr giving a lesson to Maliki.
Sadr ordered calm and asked his followers to distribute Korans and olive branches to Iraqi police checkpoints. Iraqi forces launch major offensive, March 26
—
After a Friday deadline for gunmen to surrender their weapons and renounce violence expired with few complying, al-Maliki’s office announced a new deal, offering Basra residents unspecified monetary compensation if they turn over "heavy and medium-size weapons" by April 8. US warplanes widen airstrikes in Iraq, March 29
—
AP Television News footage showed a group of about a dozen uniformed police, their faces covered with masks to shield their identity, being met by Sheik Salman al-Feraiji, al-Sadr’s chief representative in Sadr City.
Al-Feraiji greeted each policeman and gave them a copy of the Quran and an olive branch as they handed over their guns and ammunition. US warplanes widen airstrikes in Iraq, March 29
Some incentives to help and some don’t. Not only in the specific case above, but what Sadr is offering and delivering to the people is in general much more welcome than what Maliki offers and delivers.
So it is a good lesson, but it is unlikely that Maliki will learn from it.
Like many bad managers he assumes that the greed that motivates him is also the driving force within other people.
That’s stupid.
— UPDATE:
AFP differes in the tale from todays AP story above.
A top Sadr aide in eastern Baghdad, Salman al-Afraiji, told AFP several Iraqi soldiers had come to the cleric’s Sadr City office and offered to lay down their own weapons.
There are many kinds of music that have influenced me in my youth. Naturally a lotofweirdkrautrock and, from the other side of the ocean, Springsteen’s Born to Run album with Jungleland and Meeting across the river which somewhat caught my real live experience at that time. Rush’s 2112 also deeply touched me.
When those albums were published, next to attending (or not) school, I was smuggling dope from Amsterdam to my home town in north Germany to sell it to GIs who were bored while pretending to guard a bunch of cold-war nukes. The Twilight zone coincided with a short h experience.
But in parallel to these ‘growing pains’ as my father thought of my tastes, there was a different strain of music I also fell to – Bach, Handel, Wagner and others. That ‘schizophrenic’ split, which I believe wasn’t and isn’t one, is still there.
When today I says "I’ll go to a Neumeier concert tonight" my friends wonder: Mani Neumeier at the Fabrik or John Neumeier at the Hamburg Opera?
Why not both?
Here is Alfred Deller singing Purcell: ‘Music for a while shall all your cares beguile …’
.
Did Maliki Trap the U.S.?
Everyone seems to be musing on why Maliki started this silly war against Sadr and why it was started now.
There is a theory that Cheney gave the order for this skirmish and another theory that this is all an Iranian plot. (See also Marc Lynch’s take from a Saudi paper and on other theories.) A third informed opinion argues that this is Maliki’s private dirty war to prevent elections in south Iraq.
The assumed motive in the first theory is that the anti-occupation stand of Sadr and his cooperation with nationalist Sunni forces are endangering the permanence of the U.S. occupation in Iraq. In the Iraqi parliament Sadr and Sunni nationalists could vote down any treaty that Cheney and Maliki would like to sign to achieve permanent U.S. backup for his or another puppets rule. Sadr has to be defeated before the end of the year when the UN mandate for U.S. troops runs out. Patrick Cockburn is going into that direction when he asserts that "the Americans must have agreed to the attack."
The Iranian plot theory comes with two different assumed Iranian motives. The first is that Iran ordered Maliki to attack because it wants to keep the U.S. in trouble and thereby prevent an attack on Iran. As Bill Lind layed out in Operation Cassandra a U.S. attack on Iran might well lead to a decisive defeat of the U.S. army in Iraq. With the U.S. army bogged down in Iraq, Iran has less to worry about. A second thought is that Iran would like to have a united southern Iraqi Shia state under Persian influence that over time could be assimilated into Iran. Sadr’s nationalist stance and his relative distance to Teheran would hinder that goal.
Billmon, in comments to a recent Lind piece, combines these two theories and muses:
the walls, the ghettoisation, the collective punishment, the
disproprtionate force – these are all lessons straight out of the nazi
occupation of the east or rotterdam for example – petraeus is their
stroop r’giap
Random Morning Thoughts …
I think it is an unbroken historical legacy, a continuous process of
the industrialisation of warfare and extermination, a confluence of the
ideas of "hygienic" chemistry and nationalist / militarist / masculinist
obsessions. That continuity is obfuscated by our nationalist
educational systems, which "take sides" and portray e.g. the Nazis as
an ahistorical blip, a weird moment of pure Evil, rather than as
participants in an historical continuum of refinement and "improvement"
of the tools of occupation and control.
The Nazis studied the Boers and British methods in Africa; W
Churchill recommended the use of the then-novel "poison gas" on African
indigenes; the Nazis practised modern warfare on the Spanish
revolutionaries (and the US and UK governments also backed the Franco
regime); Guernica was a trial run for the Blitzkrieg theory and modern
aerial bombardment, but bright minds on all sides were already thinking
about the possibilities as soon as the first dirigibles flew.
Who is carrying the risk for the Fed’s new policy?
By looking at the normal balance sheet mechanism it is quite simple to determine that the taxpayers are the once who will have to bleed when the Fed’s policy runs into problems.
The Federal Reserve is a private company owned by large commercial banks and has a total capital of some $30 billion. The government has given the Fed certain exclusive rights and obligations in exchange for certain services and a chunk of its profits. The profits for the Fed owners are limited by law to 6% of the paid-in capital. The rest goes to the government and gets spend like any taxdollar.
As one major Republican operative told me yesterday:
Someone like Condi Rice doesn’t go to Grover Norquist’s den to talk about the Annapolis Middle East peace process. She’s going to secure her future in Republican politics and to position herself as a ‘potential’ VP candidate on the McCain ticket.
[Rice] responded by saying that she was not interested in more government service at this point … … Others still argue that one does not talk serious foreign policy matters with the Wednesday Group Meeting without wanting to also telegraph that one might be interested in political futures. In other words, though saying she is not interested in the Vice Presidential slot on a McCain ticket, Condoleezza Rice might be convinced at some point to give up her near California dreams if "necessity" required it.
If Obama wins the Democrats race it makes a lot of sense for McCain to use Rice as VP. Right melanin level – right conviction.
Mr. ‘Know-nothing’ together with Miss ‘Can’t-get-anything-done’ – a perfect match.
Will the people fall for it? Maybe, or likely – the media will – inevitably.
A Failed U.S. Mission to Pakistan
In what looks like an emergency mission, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher yesterday descended on Pakistan. Reviewing Pakistani news sources, the mission seems to have failed. It started off with undiplomatic pressure.
According to sources, this particular visit was not planned. Instead, the US side contacted Islamabad expressing a desire for the visit.
"The reaction from Pakistan was that a new government was not yet in place and even the new prime minister had not been sworn in. It was advised that some later date could be arrived at with mutual consultation. However, both the officials insisted on coming," confided one source.
In seperate sessions Negroponte and Boucher met with Musharraf, the leadership of the PML-N party of Nawaz Sharif and the PPP leadership around Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
The Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi had blocked the law that would allow for provincial elections this fall. A week ago, under alleged pressure from and negotiations with Cheney, the veto was lifted.
Mehdi is member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) which had won the provincial elections in south Iraq in 2005, when its competitor, the Sadr movement, boycotted the election. New elections would likely be won by Sadr. But allowing the law to pass, does not mean that SIIC, the Iraqi government and the U.S. occupier will allow the Sadr movement to win.
If Sadr would win the southern provinces he, together with the Sunni tribal groups he is negotiating with, could set up a nationalist coalition against the government and the occupier.
Instead of holding up the election, the SIIC’s new plan seems to be to eliminate its competition by brute force. Dispite Sadr’s prolonging of his unilateral truce, there were recently several clashes between government troops and his people in Kut. In Baghdad U.S. troops started house to house searches in Sadr city and accidentally(?) killed a man and his three children in their car. Functionaries from his movement were arrested and allegedly killed by U.S. forces.
Sadr’s answer was a call for civil disobedience, "sit-ins" and peaceful protest against the government. But he also threatened a "civil revolt" if the raids continue.
Yesterday the government opened a new front against Sadr by attacking his movement in its stronghold Basra. With U.S. and British air support three brigades of the Iraqi army (certainly under control of U.S. ‘advisors’) are trying to ‘get control’ over Basra.
With such an allout onslaught against them, Sadr will not be able to hold his people back much longer. But if he now calls for, or allows, open warfare against the government and occupation troops, his movement might get outlawed and disqualified from taking part in the provincial elections.
If Sadr is smart, he will for now lay low and restrict his groups to deniable commando attacks and guerrilla fighting while continuing to assert social control over the people in the south. But if the provocations against him become unbearable, the Iraqi summer will again be very bloody.
Unilateral Sanctions Against Iran
How can I buy something when I am not allowed to pay, even though I have plenty of money? How can I sell something when I am not allowed to cash in the receivable?
Those are the questions Iran’s economy is asking itself now. As the Financial Times reported a few days ago:
Washington has called on international financial institutions to steer clear of doing business with Iran’s central bank, in the US’s most wide-ranging attempt yet to isolate Tehran financially.
The Treasury department has issued a warning of the risks of doing business with 51 state-owned and seven privately held Iranian banks – in effect the whole of Iran’s banking sector.
The Treasury makes sure such ‘warnings’ are followed through by threating foreign international banks dealing with Iran to be sanctioned themselves and to be cut off from the U.S. financial system.
These new ‘sanctions’ go far beyond what the UN Security Council has agreed upon. This is a unilateral step by the U.S. but will likely be effective if foreign governments allow banks under their jurisdiction to follow such U.S. ‘advice’.
The EU has declared such U.S. attempts of extraterriorial jurisdiction illegal (pdf, no. 47), but it is doubtful that it will really push against these. It should do so, if only for principle reasons.
For Iran to be cut off from the international financial system is an economic catastrophy.
Iran [..] will become another Gaza or Iraq under the economic sanctions of the 1990s, with devastating impact on economy and society. That Iran’s complete financial and economic destruction is the goal of US policy was spelled out by the State Department the day before the FinCEN announcement.
During a daily press meeting with reporters on March 19, the State Department’s spokesperson was asked about a deal recently signed between Switzerland and Iran to supply Iranian natural gas to Europe. After condemning the deal, the spokesperson explained that the US is opposed to any “investing in Iran, not only in its petroleum or natural gas area but in any sector of its economy” and questioned rhetorically the wisdom of doing business with Iranian “financial institutions that are under UN sanctions or could become under sanctions if it’s found that they are assisting or aiding or abetting Iran’s nuclear program in any way.” A clearer expression of US desires is hardly possible.
The U.S. desire is unchanged since the Iranian revolution – regime change by whatever means.
March 24, 2008
Clinton on Housing and Sex Offenders
WHITE PLAINS, New York (RBN) – Hillary Clinton, a presidential candidate and senator from New York, said the Federal Housing Administration should "stand ready" to buy, restructure and resell failed mortgages to strengthen the ailing U.S. economy.
She said a bipartisan group should determine whether that approach was sufficient or whether the U.S. government should step in as a temporary purchaser.
The working group could be led by bipartisan economic heavyweights such as Republican Greenspan, Democratic former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.
Clinton also introduced a new initiative to increase mandatory penalties for paedophile sex offenders. Under her proposal repeat offenders would be required to do at least a year of community work, preferable in orphanages and kindergartens. "That’s where the need is the greatest," her spokesperson said.
Cloned Poster rightly says that this current news is ‘big’:
Up to 65 people were injured when Islamic militants in a Pakistani border town blew up dozens of tankers supplying fuel for US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, officials said today.
The rebels late yesterday destroyed 36 tankers which were parked in Landikotal, the main town of the troubled Khyber tribal district where Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked insurgents have carried out a series of attacks.
… It was one of the worst attacks of its kind since June last year, when militants blew up at least 13 oil tankers supplying fuel to US bases in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Such attacks on fuel supply usually do not make it into the ‘western’ news. They have happened since the U.S. invasion started but currently seem to be more frequent. This could be a concerted Taliban operation to strangle the occupation.
At least 15 Afghan security guards working for a US firm have been killed in an ambush by Taleban militants in western Afghanistan, police say. They say that nine other guards – responsible for protecting a convoy of fuel tankers driving through the area – were injured in the attack.
Suspected Taliban insurgents set alight two oil tankers supplying fuel to US-led coalition forces in the restive eastern province of Kunar, a police chief said on Friday.
LANDI KOTAL: Militants blew up an oil tanker with dynamite on Sunday, but the political administration said the tanker was safe. The tanker, which was to carry fuel to Afghanistan, was parked near the Michini checkpost.
Pakistan’s state news agency says a roadside bomb has struck an oil tanker carrying fuel for U.S.-led coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan. No one was hurt.
The U.S. and other forces in Afghanistan need some 600,000-700,000 gallons of fuel per day. They have storage capacity for about 8 million gallons, reserves for at least ten days (pdf). 80% of the fuel needed is carried by hundreds of road tankers from three Pakistan refineries.
The Taliban step up the campaign has two effects. Attacks on fuel tankers do hurt the occupation forces in Afghanistan. But they also put another serious burdon on Pakistan which lacks refining capacity.
March 23, 2008
Fate Of An Unregulated System
The fate of this Danish wind turbine with its broken regulator is somewhat related to the current state of financial markets.
I’ll be on the road for the next two days to celebrate the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring with some relatives. These are the days to worship the Germanic goddess Eostre, or whatever may fit you, and to her honor we’ll light up some big fires.
So I’ll be likely unable to post in the next 36 hours. (Still missing a MoA laptop – if you haven’t yet, you may want to contribute for one.)
Please use this as an open thread for your news, views and opinions.
Taiwan Election and Tibet Protests
The current Tibet rebellion was launched by young monks in Lhasa in coordination with five groups of exiles in India. These groups are sponsored by the U.S. government via the National Endowment for Democracy and other ‘western’ institutions.
Even though it were the Tibetan who hunted Han-Chinese people through the streets, killed some and burned their shops, the ‘western’ media is doing all it can to blame the Chinese for this.
This weekend there are elections in Taiwan. Until a few days ago the China friendly Nationalist Party seemed to be able to get a majority. That may have changed due to the current propaganda onslaught.
Meanwhile the U.S. Pacific fleet has put everything it has to sea and ordered two Carrier Strike groups next to Taiwan.
Are we to believe that all of this is uncoordinated?
March 21, 2008
A Color Test
An fairly old test, but it was new to me until recently:
Task: "Speak out loud each word’s font-color, one after the other, as fast as you can."
Not as easy as one would think. It’s the Stroop Effect.
But what does this really tell us about perception or cognition?
How does this effect how we read ‘news’?
US House Speaker slams Saudi ‘oppression’ in Dammam
QOM, Iran (RBN) –
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed Saudi "oppression" in the Saudi Eastern Province on Thursday as thousands of Shia-Saudi exiles cheered her arrival in this Iranian town to meet Ayatollah Nimr al Nimr.
In a trip that has angered Saudi officials, she flew into
Qom, seat of the Shia-Saudi government-in-exile, to pay the first
high-level call on the spiritual icon after anti-Sunni riots erupted in Dammam, the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, nearly two weeks ago.
"Speaking for myself, I would say if freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against Saudi Arabia’s
oppression in the Eastern Province, we have lost our moral authority to speak on
behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," said Pelosi, draped in a
golden scarf given to her by Ayatollah Nimr al Nimr.
"The situation in the Eastern Province is a challenge to the conscience of the world.
What is happening, the world needs to know," she told the Ayatollah,
exiled Shia-Saudi leaders and thousands of refugees who roared with
approval.
"We are with you to meet that challenge. We are with you in this
challenge," she said to deafening applause from the crowd waving
Shia-Saudi and US flags.
The northern mountain town was jammed with crowds of refugees, some
with children hoisted on their shoulders, and black-turbaned imans. The
streets were festooned with banners welcoming US support, proclaiming
"American-Shia-Saudi Friendship" and "Free the Eastern Province."
Pelosi’s comments drew a sharp response from Saudi-Arabia’s ambassador to Iran Osama bin Ahmad Al-Sonosi, who said "no country, organisation or person" should "take any irresponsible act or say irresponsible words."
