Time to Leave Afghanistan

By Alan Caruba

The Greek philosopher Plato said, “Only the dead know the end of war.” I doubt that in the five thousand years of what we call civilization there has ever been a day when war has not been taking place somewhere on the planet. All wars, in one fashion or another, however, have to come to an end.

The war in Afghanistan has degraded into a distraction from the nation’s desperately deteriorating financial situation. Even worse, it is part of that problem. On January 30, 2009, Bill Bonnor, best known for his newsletter, Dead Reckoning, wrote the following:

“’Bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy’, was what he (Osama bin laden) was up to, he said in a videotape. He even did the math. ‘Every dollar spent by al-Qaeda in attacking the United States has cost Washington $1 million in economic fallout and military spending’, said the report.

“’We, alongside the mujahideen, bled Russian for ten years, [in Afghanistan] until it went bankrupt…So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’”

Can anyone deny that bin Laden was right? Can anyone deny that the U.S. under Presidents Bush and Obama has now expended billions in the name of bringing democracy to people who should be responsible for overthrowing their own despots? There was, after all, a time when the U.S. was an ally of bin Laden and even of Saddam Hussein!

On May 9, Rasmussen Reports noted that 56% of those surveyed favored bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan within a year. What do the people know that all the genius strategists in the State Department and Pentagon do not? They know these wars, Iraq included, are a distraction from our real problems.

I do not know how many times over the years since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq I have written that we should withdraw our troops. I have noted how extended military occupations and expeditions have historically always drained and destroyed empires from the Roman to the British and now the present day Pax Americana.

America is now over $14 trillion in debt and yet we keep sending billions to nations like Pakistan and to the United Nations, most of whom must think us stupid beyond belief.

The exception to this was the long Cold War that America fought against the former Soviet Union from the end of World War Two until the collapse of the Berlin Wall and eventual collapse of that Communist nation in 1991. That collapse, however, was facilitated by the decision of the former Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan!

Over the course of the forty-six years the Cold War ground on, the U.S. fought hot wars in Korea and Vietnam. We spent what we had to for a powerful military deterrent. From Truman to Bush41 Presidents remained firm in their determination to resist the Soviet Union.

The war with Islam is different. The asymmetrical war waged against America, Israel, and the West began in earnest after Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 and continued through a succession of al Qaeda attacks on U.S. Marines in Beirut, U.S. embassies, the USS Cole, and ultimately 9/11. Israel has had to wage a war of self defense since its first day 63 years ago. Most recently, it resisted Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Islam has been around since the seventh century A.D. Its initial success saw it sweep across vast regions of the Middle East, Africa, India, up into Spain and to the gates of Europe. The inherent failure of Islam has been its resistance to all Western values that confirm the dignity of the individual, representative government, and the advances of science, literature, and the arts.

Our global opponents, Russia and China among others, are pleased that America must drain its treasury and expend the blood of its children to hold the line against Islam, but it is a short-sighted strategic error because they will find themselves on the frontlines of the war that we have been waging with massive troop deployments. Consider how much more effective drones and special operations have been.

Europe has reluctantly discovered the enemy in their midst. The flood of Muslims it invited as workers because of its failure to ensure a sufficient native population is causing Europeans to grasp at measures to either placate the Muslim population or outlaw some of its practices. The fear is palpable and is why some now refer to it as Eurabia.

NATO nations, rarely credited, have been by our side throughout the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. They are now charged with determining the outcome of the insurgency in Libya, but Britain is making plans for an early withdrawal from Afghanistan for the same reasons outlined above.

It is a very old war. In 732 A.D., Muslims were defeated at Poitiers, France, halting their expansion. In 1492, Christians recaptured Grenada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe. In 1683 A.D. Muslims were defeated near Vienna. Europe was safe, but that was then and this is now.

It is reason enough for America and European nations to put their financial houses to avoid a collapse that will leave us vulnerable to the most terrible scourge of mankind.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Armed Forces Day

By Alan Caruba

Saturday, May 21, is Armed Forces Day. Unless you are on active duty, a military family member, or a veteran, I suspect this is one national holiday that slips under the radar of most Americans.

I am a veteran, U.S. Army, Second Infantry Division, Second Engineer Battalion, formerly based in Fort Benning, Georgia. If you have ever served in the military, it is highly unlikely you will ever forget the unit in which you spent the most time. Military life indelibly imprints itself on all who have served.

Like my generation and earlier ones, I was conscripted for service by what was called the “Draft”. It ended in 1973, but young men between 18 and 25 must still register for Selective Service in the event a really big war breaks out. I am sure the voluntary military is sufficient, but it worries me that we are taking a great toll on the young men and women in combat zones serving repeated tours of duty.

To my good fortune, I never saw combat, but I look back on the experience fondly because it taught any number of useful lessons. For many it was their first experience with the need to practice a measure of self-discipline. Orders are issued. You obey them. It is the nature of the military that it takes in boys and teaches them to be men.

You have no doubt noticed I have written that it “teaches them to be men.” I do not much care for the creeping feminization of our military. I don’t much like the inclusion of women in the military except in an ancillary capacity exclusive of battle. I understand times have changed, but that doesn’t mean that human nature has.

I don’t believe the military is a place for homosexuals. Bill Clinton tried to integrate homosexuals in the military and was met with such resistance from “the brass” that he saddled it with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, an invitation to hypocrisy. Recently there was a report that Navy chaplains had been told to get ready to perform same-sex marriages, but that idiotic idea was swiftly quashed, presumably in the name of morality and common sense.

If I sound like some cranky old man nostalgic for “the old days”, I would remind you that, for me, the old days were the Cold War that included some hot wars fought in Korea and Vietnam. From the days of General MacArthur onward, American presidents and Congress had been told not to fight a war in the Far East.

Likewise, every empire that proposed to fight a war in Afghanistan, from Alexander the Great to the former Soviet Union, got their butts kicked, but in 2001, instead of a short demonstration of why attacking the American homeland is a very bad idea, we turned that operation in a decade of wasted money, material, and personnel.

“Regime change” anywhere should be short and brutal. Leave it to the survivors to form a new government. Iraq turned into a quagmire because we invaded with too few troops to police the nation and because L. Paul Bremer, the presidential envoy, disbanded the Iraqi army, instantly rendering thousands of men unemployed and very unhappy about it. Billions of dollars and thousands of American lives later, we are still in Iraq. Expecting Arabs to behave in a rational fashion is a fool's errand.

Ask anyone in the military, particularly in the officer class, and you will discover that no one likes war less than those who must fight it for the politicians and too many ungrateful civilians at home.

We no longer fight huge land wars like those of World War Two. The conflict in Korea ended in a stalemate and a truce that exists to this day. At the time, no one wanted to go to war with Red China and that was probably the right judgment. Vietnam was essentially a lost war by the French, a colonial power, followed by a civil war between north and south. Inserting ourselves into any civil war is unwise. Vietnam became a meat grinder for more than 53,000 young men who came home in coffins.

On a recent edition of “Sixty Minutes”, outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates described his job as “leading a department that is organized to plan for war but not to fight a war. And so everything that I’ve wanted to do to try and help the men and women in the field I’ve had to do outside the normal Pentagon bureaucracy.”

That department oversees a military that is deployed in 150 countries around the world with more than 369,000 of its1,580,255 active-duty in foreign nations. We still have 53,951 in Germany as a holdover from the Cold War. Some 28,500 are still in Korea and 32,803 in Japan. Simply put, there are real threats still in these locations that must be defended.

We are the world’s policeman. If we do not maintain this role, it will go to hell even faster than its current pace.

All of which brings me full circle to the worthy reason for Armed Forces Day. I have my arguments with some of the policies affecting today’s military, but hopefully they are transitory.

I have no argument with the courage, the patriotism, and the power our armed forces—yes, our men and women—project around the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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White House Official Spokesman

By Alan Caruba

I really miss Tony Snow who served as George W. Bush’s White House press secretary until cancer took him from us too soon. Snow was a journalist with an impressive resume, but beyond that, he had a charm that made him the master of that ugly little pit of hell where White House correspondents gather to report on its events.

I was no fan of Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s first press secretary. I used to call him Glib Gibbs and often wondered if some of the correspondents had secret voodoo dolls with his image. It wouldn’t have surprised me. For all that, he was good at his job which was to protect Obama from the growing perception that he was an idiot who hated America.

I was not surprised when Gibbs decided to move on. Being press secretary is a killer job and he had served in that capacity all through Obama’s campaign and into the White House for most of the first two years there.

Why anyone thought Jay Carney, a former Time Magazine Washington bureau chief, could ever take over is beyond me. I am confident in saying he was probably never picked to play on anyone’s team during his school days. He looks like he has a permanent weggie,. He is beyond being a nerd. He is a caricature of one. Nervous, twitchy, and in way over his head.

In a very real way, Carney reflects the incompetence that can no longer be hidden from the American public (and all others). It’s a national embarrassment to watch Attorney General Eric Holder’s glassy-eyed ignorance, real or feigned, of any question members of a congressional committee might ask.

Then there’s Homeland Security's Janet Napolitano who apparently has no idea where Mexico is located. As for any useful anti-terrorism action, it was airline passengers who subdued the last two terrorists who tried to blow up a plane and passengers who fought the terrorists in one of the 9/11 planes.

The Obama administration has alienated States that have gone to the courts to put an end to Obamacare, that have sought the right to enforce immigration laws the federal government will not, and are demanding that drilling moratoriums and other restrictions be lifted.

The skyrocketing national debt will be an issue that the administration cannot paper over with calls for higher taxes and measures that sound increasingly bizarre to ordinary Americans—the latest being to tax people based on how many miles they drive their cars anywhere, such as to work, if they have a job in this economy.

And it’s not just the press secretary who looks and sounds foolish much of the time. Following the triumphant announcement that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed, the next few days were a cornucopia of conflicting statements leaking from the White House and other government spokespersons regarding the specifics of the event.

The decision to not release the photo of a dead bin Laden only managed to ignite the febrile imagination of every conspiracy enthusiast from Cleveland to Karachi.

Anybody remember who was tapped to replace Tony Snow? It was Dana Perino, a blond with movie star good looks, a sweet demeanor, smart as they come, and solid as a rock behind the podium. She is now one of Fox News Channel’s great assets.

My guess is that Carney’s replacement is already being interviewed as this is being written.

If it was my job to pick a new press secretary I would want someone with journalism credentials, but I would want him to be a snappy dresser with a dazzling smile and nerves of steel. If he had also been a professional magician, that would clinch it for me because the next press secretary will spend 95% of his time distracting the press corps by pulling rabbits out of hat.

This is an administration that is imploding.

Everything that can go wrong in the year and a half remaining until Obama is replaced will go wrong. It will be the Gulf oil spill in spades. It will be the million-person crowd that turned out to oppose Obamacare before it was passed. It will be a growling, menacing Tea Party 2.0.

It could also be a series of terror attacks in retaliation for killing bin Laden and, with a 100,000 troops already in the Middle East just who would we attack—other than Iran—that we haven’t already?

There is weakness, vacillation, at the core of the Obama administration and our enemies know it. They will not likely wait around for a new president before striking.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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The Pakistani Pit of Deception

By Alan Caruba

Even Pakistanis do not believe that their political and military leaders did not know bin Laden was living, as one columnist put it, “wrapped in the bosom of the Pakistani security establishment.”

Cyril Almeida, writing in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, a few days after the killing of bin Laden noted that, when the question is asked privately, “No one will say anything but, yes, they knew he was there.”

For 34 of its 64 years, Pakistan has been run by generals whose military intelligence presumably works in league with its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), though both have their own agendas. It is unlikely that much civilian control over either exists.

Almeida wrote, “If we didn’t know, we are a failed state; if we did know, we are a rogue state. But does anyone believe they didn’t know?”

If it were an individual, Pakistan would be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, subject to raging fears that India intends to invade on a moment’s notice and antagonistic to Afghanistan as it harbors those who attack it.

In his recently published book, “Pakistan: A Hard Country”, Anatol Lieven provides insight to a nation that, until lately, was home to the most wanted man on the face of the Earth, Osama bin Laden. He was dispatched in a compound that was within a short distance of Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point or England’s Sandhurst. If we are to believe Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership, neither had any idea he was there.

“Trying to understand Pakistan’s internal structures and dynamics is complicated,” writes Lieven. “If there is one phrase which defines many aspects of Pakistan…it is ‘Janus-faced’: in other words, many of the same features of Pakistan’s state and government which are responsible for holding Islamist extremism in check are at one and the same time responsible for holding back Pakistan’s social, economic, and political development.”

“Pakistan,” writes Lieven, “is divided, disorganized, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism.”

Pakistan came into being in 1947 when leaders of India’s Muslim population like Mohammed Ali Jinnah, its founder, made it clear they did not want to be part of the newly independent India after Great Britain relinquished its colonial rule. Later, when East Pakistan broke loose to establish its independence in 1971, it became Bangladesh.

The thing Westerners find difficult to understand is the tribal nature of nations like Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it is not difficult to understand “Muslim nationalism and the bitter hostility to the U.S. role in the Muslim world in general and Pakistan’s region in particular.” However, in order to pursue the present combat role against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its European allies rely on neighboring Pakistan in order to provision supplies to their troops.

Since the Taliban are a creation of Pakistan’s ISI and because Pakistan has long been where al Qaeda has found refuge, those in charge have played a Janus or two-faced role for a very long time; at times providing intelligence of great value and at others aiding or at the very least, protecting the terrorist organizations. In return, the Taliban have proven an internal problem for the military and the government, occasionally requiring that they be driven out of areas they have seized.

In many ways, Pakistan is barely a nation. In its tribal northwest regions, such as the now fabled Waziristan, the state has little influence or control. As to its tribes, the two dominant ones are Punjab and Pathan. Both pursue their own interests.

As Lieven describes it, “A fundamental political fact about Pakistan is that the state, whoever claims to lead it, is weak, and (the) society in its various forms is immensely strong.” It is a nation of many separate fiefdoms who “plunder the state for patronage and favors” and this is graphically demonstrated by the fact that “barely one percent of the population pays income tax, and the wealthiest landowners in the country pay no direct taxes at all.”

Thus, the billions that the U.S. has pumped into its economy take on a very critical role, particularly for the military. This is a very different world from that of the West. The majority of Pakistan’s political parties are dynastic, led by a few powerful families. The entire society operates on kinship loyalty.

Pakistan is a perfect example of why the U.S. and the West are stymied by the illogic, the irrationality, and the duplicity of nations in which Islam is the predominant factor in their politics and society.

When you add in the geography of Pakistan, lodged between India and Afghanistan, bordered by China and Iran, you have a nation that can neither be ignored nor abandoned because of its strategic location.

Finally, there is the fact that Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal that must never be allowed to fall into the hands of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or anyone else crazed enough to use it for the greater glory of Allah.

Pakistan is a pit of deception and it is notable that our current relations with it consist of the special operations raid that killed bin Laden and the drones that continue to kill al Qaeda and Taliban who make themselves available targets.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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The Middle East Mess

By Alan Caruba

Anyone such as myself who lived through the long years of the Vietnam quagmire knows that the United States is repeating the same errors in the Middle East that we did with that nation. We seem incapable of recognizing a civil war when we see one and incapable of not inserting ourselves in the midst of it.

I speak specifically of Libya and the inchoate decisions and measures taken by the Obama administration. To suggest that the present White House and State Department have a Middle East “policy” is to vastly overstate and misunderstand their ignorance of that region of the world and the forces at work within it.

The United States has been militarily involved in Afghanistan since 2001, shortly after 9/11. What should have been a short sortie to inflict punishment on the al Qaeda and the Taliban has turned into a classic “quagmire”. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 reflects this as well.

Like many, I thought that the application of U.S. military intervention would somehow drag the Middle East into the 21st century, but clearly the region remains subject to the seventh century religion of Islam and its schism between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. Islam, plus a tribalism that reaches back millennia, renders the Middle East intractable to the West’s efforts.

Billions have been squandered in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the real enemy, Iran, has been allowed to go unscathed in its pursuit of regional hegemony and its pursuit of nuclear parity with its “neighbors”, Pakistan, India, and Russia.

As this is written, Saudi Arabia has concluded that the United States will take no action to stop the Iranian nuclear program and is seeking to pull together a Gulf State coalition to end the expansionist ambitions of the Iranian ayatollahs. The Saudis have also consulted with Israel.

Forty years seems to be the limit that Middle Eastern populations will tolerate the various despots that have controlled Islamic nations. In Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria those in charge have found themselves under siege and, in some cases, removed.

In two cases, Libya and Egypt, the Obama administration has openly sided with the rebels. At the same time, it has incomprehensibly offered a weak defense of Syria’s dictator, Bashar el-Assad, Iran’s strongest ally in the region. Sensing a shift in power, even Egypt’s new ruling body has reached out to Iran to thaw decades of antipathy.

The only consistent Middle Eastern policy of the Obama administration has been its hostility to Israel, the region’s only democracy and America’s traditional ally since its founding just over sixty years ago. For all the caterwauling about the Palestinians, they have long since been abandoned by the Arab nations and are now well within the Iranian orbit of influence and support.

The Palestinians could have had a separate state decades ago but have always pursued an all-or-nothing policy aimed at the destruction of Israel. It is widely believed that they will initiate a new war as Iran’s proxies, from Lebanon in the north and Gaza in the south.

The Palestinians, in fact, have a sovereign nation. It is called Jordan which lost the West Bank, part of ancient Israel, to modern Israel after attacking it in 1947-48 and 1967.

Iraq has made it clear to the United States that it wants to see American troops withdrawn as agreed by the end of the year. Its Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki recently ordered an attack on Camp Ashraf, home to 3,500 Iranian dissidents for the past twenty-six years. That should tell even the casual observer that Iraq is now in the Iranian orbit. This is true as well of Lebanon, first occupied by Syria for decades and now in the grip of the Palestinian Hezbollah.

As to the Iranian people, the Obama administration made it clear they have been abandoned after protests against Mamoud Ahmadinejad’s stolen election last year received no support whatever by a U.S.

America has severely weakened itself since 9/11 with ill-advised military excursions that, like the Vietnam debacle, have proven costly in treasure and lives sacrificed in an area that is resentful of our unwanted incursions, coupled with our addled “nation building” schemes.

There is a massive realignment occurring as the result of the popular uprisings against despots across the North African Maghreb and the heart of Middle Eastern nations, several of which were the artificial creations of Western interests. Resentments against the tyrannies of former despots will likely give way to new despots, not democratic reform.

There is no end to the resentment against America and the West.

Lacking any kind of cohesive policy toward Arab nations except for the oil they provide, the only sensible policy America should pursue would be to drill for our own extensive oil reserves to prevent a severe shock to our economy and security. So long as Obama is President, this will not happen.

There is no perceivable policy in place to stand against Iran and has not been since the Carter administration abandoned the Pahlavi regime in 1979. The fall of Tunisia’s Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Mubarack, Syria’s Assad, and the resistance to Gadhafi, along with unrest in Yemen and Bahrain will be seen, in retrospect, as inevitable.

What remains is a Maghreb and Middle East in a volatile struggle to determine whether it returns to an Islamism reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire or an enlightened embrace of Western values.

There is little reason to hope for a good outcome.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Obama, The Great Prevaricator

By Alan Caruba

“President Obama told congressional leaders there are no plans to use the U.S. military to assassinate Libyan strongman Muammar Gadhafi — despite the administration’s policy of seeking regime change in the North African country — according to sources familiar with a Friday White House Situation Room briefing.”
-- March 25, 2011, Politico.com

Translation: Obama has already given orders to have Gadhafi assassinated.

It’s taken two years, the first in which he was everywhere all the time on television, but it took Americans who weren’t besotted by his dazzling smile, his haute couture, and “no drama, Obama” style, very little time to figure out that whatever Barack Hussein Obama says, you can count on his meaning the opposite and doing the opposite.

No previous administration has been so devoted to twisting the language like a pretzel to avoid saying what he means or does. It’s not a “war” in Libya; it’s a “kinetic military action.” There are no Islamic terrorists and there aren’t dozens, if not hundreds of illegal aliens crossing the Mexico border every day. And, after announcing that his administration was lifting the ban on offshore drilling, it has issued a grand total of one and that was to restart an existing platform.

After identifying Afghanistan as the “real” war in the Middle East and decrying the Iraq war all through his campaign, Obama took weeks to decide what to do there and finally did what Bush had done in Iraq. He increased the number of troops.

I am not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or any other professional judge of what makes anyone tick, but I know a liar when I hear and see one day after day, week after week, and year after year.

This is a President who devoted virtually the entire first year of his term to forcing a Democrat controlled Congress to pass The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, a massive assault on the nation’s health industry. It was accomplished even after a million people journeyed to Washington, D.C. to protest it.

When it was passed, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what was in it.” What was in it was more than two thousand pages of regulations creating countless new government entities, driving up the cost of health insurance, and a hideous piece of legislation that generated a deluge of requests for waivers from its draconian destruction of this essential element of the economy.

Twenty-eight States have refused to recognize Obamacare as law. A judge in Florida has deemed it unconstitutional. And it was a lie from start to finish.

This is a President whose first State of the Union speech draw derisive laughter from the assembled Congress when he referred to climate change, the code words for global warming.

This is a President who is pushing for high-speed rail in a nation whose citizens either fly where they want to go or drive where they want to go. The federally run Amtrak has never had a profitable year in its entire history.

This is a President who is pushing for electric cars when there is a perfectly functioning system for cars that use gasoline and the first ones off the assembly line cost so much and go so few miles as to be an instant joke.

By the end of his first term, “It’s Bush’s fault” became another joke and by the end of his second year, Obama had adopted most of his predecessor’s earlier decisions including Guantanamo and military trials despite his stated goal to shut it down.

The original bailout, TARP, came at the end of Bush’s term in response to the financial crisis that occurred just before the 2008 election. Obama has followed that with still more deficit spending to the point where everyone in America has an $80,000 piece of the debt he created.

There is no need to list the endless lies any more. All except his mainstream media shills and the hardcore liberal fools know he lies and does so all the time.

This should it come as a surprise for a man whose entire life is a construction of lies including the birth certificate he refuses to produce.

All hail Obama! The Great Prevaricator!

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Libya, a Jolly Short War

By Alan Caruba

There’s nothing like a war to either make or break a President. There’s a reason the writers of the Constitution also made the President the Commander-in-Chief because war needs a centralized authority to direct the military. A goodly number of the nation’s presidents were former leaders in war, starting with General George Washington, progressing forward to General Ike Eisenhower.

Few nations have the record of its people being extraordinarily resistant to engaging in combat unless provoked than America. Woodrow Wilson was elected with the slogan “He kept us out of the war” and then, after the Germans had the bad judgment to sink the ocean liner Lusitania, America sent “Black Jack” Pershing to put a finish to World War One.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, having made a thorough botch of the Great Depression, was propelled into war by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Until then, Americans wanted nothing to do with another “European war” or the one being waged in Asia. FDR had the good luck to be guided by Gen. George C. Marshall.

Time and time again, U.S. Presidents have had to engage in war and almost always under circumstances that involved a large part of the population being opposed to it. There is something about “modern” wars that means we end up staying on far too long after we’ve dropped the bombs, let lose the artillery, and sent in the Marines and infantry.

Like the Romans of old, Americans do not like protracted wars and, worse, they tend to weaken a nation or an empire. The irony for the Romans is that, as often as not, they were invited by the host nation to keep the peace. Indeed, that’s how the term “Pax Romana” came about. And just as often the locals got tired of the Romans and revolted against them.

It is common knowledge that it’s easy to get into a war, but hard to end one. We are in Afghanistan, not because we started a war with Osama bin Laden, but because he had declared war against the U.S. in 1996, tried to blow up the Twin Towers in 1993, and then waited until 2001 to do it again. George Bush’s response was to bomb the hell out of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and, initially, to drive the Taliban out of there.

Then, on the theory that democracy could be exported to Iraq and because Saddam Hussein was going to make trouble so long as he drew breath, Bush junior decided to invade, perhaps having drawn the lesson from Bush senior’s decision to leave Saddam in power after the first Gulf War, one he later regretted.

In Afghanistan, “mission creep” set in and Bush stayed on. Now President Obama has stayed on. The United States of America has been an occupying force in Afghanistan longer than the former Soviet Union. That does not suggest a good outcome to me because one of the taunts of the Pashtun tribal members is “You have the watches, but we have the time.”

So let it be said, Obama has probably made the one and only really good decision of his presidency. He has made it clear that no American troops will be among the “boots on the ground” when it comes to ridding Libya of Gaddafi. At a time when the U.S. military is in Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit with timetables to leave, we can quite literally ill afford a third war in the Middle East.

If we have to defend the Saudi oil fields—which we may have to do—the Saudis can afford to pick up the bill and had better be handed one. Meanwhile, their military are busy helping put down protests in nearby Bahrain. The prospect that there will be all manner of protests throughout the Arab region of the world is now guaranteed.

The one in Egypt ended remarkably well with a bare minimum of dead Egyptians. The Tunisian overthrow of its dictator went swiftly and smoothly. Dare I remind the reader that both nations were led by men who were U.S. allies? Things are a tad shaky for another longtime ally, King Abdullah of Jordan, who has the evil Syrians as neighbors and a huge Palestinian population.

Flying well under the radar of U.S. media, on March 15, Israeli commandos intercepted a ship from the Turkish port of Mercin that was headed to Egypt’s Alexandria, loaded with weapons for Hamas in the Gaza. The ship had initially departed from Syria en route to a stop at a Turkish port. Turkey used to be an ally of Israel. (See YouTube IDF video) Formerly Egypt would never have allowed Hamas to get weapons. Also under-reported were the estimated fifty rockets fired into Israel from Gaza on March 19. The Israelis responded with a quick, lethal air strike.

You don’t have to be a CIA analyst to conclude the weapons were all made in Iran or at least transferred from there initially. Or that Israel will face another war at some point. If they nuke targets in Iran, it should be over fairly quickly, but they will still be facing Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

Like the Romans, the U.S. needs to extricate itself as much as possible from the Middle East unless its vital interests are threatened there. By which I mean, unless we have to defend Iraq’s, Saudi Arabia’s, Bahrain’s, Kuwait’s, and the United Arab Emirates’ oil fields. Defending the region’s only Western democracy, Israel, is also a good idea.

For the same reason that President Obama elected to let the British and French take the lead in Libya, we have ample firepower from the skies and from offshore naval forces to do much of the damage that may be required in what is likely to be a jolly good, but limited military operation in Libya and likely future conflicts.

There isn’t a single military figure among any of the potential candidates in the next election. What we need in the years immediately ahead may well be a President Petraeus.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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The Mysterious Middle East

By Alan Caruba

I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East and that includes the people who live there as well as those who have ruled them despotically for decades, if not centuries.

The bad news about the Middle East is that all this rioting, insurrection, et cetera, has very little to do with “freedom” and everything to do with its peoples wanting Sharia law and mullah control. In that area of the world that is what Islam preaches and what Muslims want. When you have to pray five times a day, there's not a lot of time left over for an objective understanding of the world.

Muammar al-Gadhafi is doing what one would expect him to do. He’s trying to stay alive and to keep his hold on the oil riches of Libya. To accomplish this, he will kill as many Libyans as necessary. We tend to forget that despots in Syria and Iraq, the late masseurs Hafez al Assad and Saddam Hussein, slaughtered thousands of their own people to gain and retain power. One can only guess at the death toll in Iran.

Egypt gave the impression of being a not too horrible place to live, so long as you lived in America or somewhere else. The military essentially owned Egypt and everyone else there resents it. What do we want in Egypt? Stability. Therefore we want the military to stay in power since most of its officers were trained by U.S. military and we give them over a billion a year not to attack Israel. Again. And get whipped. Again.

Only at this point there is no stability in Egypt and typically everyone at the bargaining table wants a piece of whatever wealth there is to be had. The Muslim Brotherhood wants a return to the seventh century as soon as possible.

The real action will be in Saudi Arabia where the wealth really exists and has been carefully tended by the “royal” family of Saud. They have worked closely with America because, oddly enough, we are the only major power they trust. We need their oil. If it takes every carrier, destroyer and cruiser we have in that part of the world, plus a lot of Marines, Army, and Air Force, you can bet we will ensure they stay in power and in the oil business.

The other Gulf States are strategic U.S. assets. We park our Navy in Bahrain. We do a lot of business in Abu Dubai. We want the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to keep pumping oil and sending it to us. They want to avoid being taken over by Iran.

Nobody, but nobody knows how Iran will end up. A lot depends on whether a whole generation of young Iranians can stage a successful revolution, drag the ayatollahs into the streets, and hang them from telephone poles. So long as the nut jobs remain in power they will get nuclear weapons and force everyone to bomb the crap out of them.

Not mentioned at this point is Pakistan, a failed state beset by the Taliban with whom it has tried to maintain good relations despite the threat they present. Pakistan remains insanely afraid India will sneak in one night and reclaim their territory. It has nuclear weapons that the U.S. and all other nations want to ensure do not become the property of either al Qaeda or Iran. Islam is killing Pakistan.

There are three wild cards at this point, Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen. The first two have large Palestinian populations. Lebanon is now controlled by Iran and Syria via Hezbollah. Jordan’s fallback position is the Bedouin tribes that support its king, but there is increased clamoring in the streets because that’s what Palestinians do.Yemen like other Arab states is in turmoil and only military analysts pay it much attention. Then there is Somalia, pretty much "Apache country" because no one who goes there comes back alive.

Lastly, there’s Afghanistan, a nation that has been unsuccessfully invaded by great powers who never learn one of the first lessons of history, never invade Afghanistan.

If you harbor the illusion that the White House, Department of State or the Pentagon has the slightest idea what is happening in the Middle East or what will happen in the Middle East, you are mistaken. And they are currently led by the most pro-Islam President in the history of the nation.

No one knows. Everyone wishes they did.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → The Mysterious Middle East

Football (and War) is about Winning

By Alan Caruba

The film, “Patton”, opens with George C. Scott giving an abbreviated version of General George Patton’s actual speech to the men of the Third Army on the eve of D-Day.

Today’s wars apparently require a different kind of general; one who gets combat ribbons for testifying before Congress and giving press conferences. They could win wars if the pukes in Washington would let them annihilate the enemy.

Patton’s actual speech was laced with profanity of the kind any man who has spent time in the Army or other branches of the service understood. Patton began by saying “Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.”

“When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards.”

The late comedian George Carlin had a routine in which he compared baseball to football. In baseball, he said, you play “in a park.” In football, you play in a stadium “on a grid.” Carlin knew that football is as much about war as it is about winning. The very image of a football player is a large, intimidating man clad in body armor.

The Superbowl is a clash of titans, men who have fought for every inch and every point until the whistle blows and the game is ended. We don’t go to the games or tune in on television to watch women play football.

We don’t want women analyzing the game afterward. We don’t even like seeing them interview the players on the sidelines. We do like the cheerleaders in their skimpy outfits. That’s the only place for a woman anywhere near the field.

Vietnam War veterans will tell you they were winning in the field and they were. The problem was that we had been in Vietnam for seven years by the time the politicians, yielding to a weary public, pulled the plug.

Fifty thousand-plus lives were lost, mostly due to a lack of resolve. Out of Vietnam came the doctrine enunciated by Colin Powell who had fought there and rose to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He said America must only go to war with overwhelming numbers and force.

That was applied in the first Iraqi war (1990-91) called Desert Storm and it worked. George H.W. Bush, probably because of pressure from Middle Eastern allies, stopped well short of going into Baghdad. It was left to George W. Bush to do, aided by our British and Canadian allies.

On March 20, 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced. U.S. forces arrived in Baghdad with too few troops to control the crowds and with no plan beyond finding Saddam Hussein. What followed was yet another long, meandering war without an end date though combat has ended.

This has been repeated in Afghanistan. How long have we been there? Can anyone remember? Have we “won”? Is it, by any definition winnable?

Throughout the 2008 campaign, Obama, carped about Iraq and called Afghanistan the real war. As president he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and it is still a stalemate.

We have troops in Korea, in Japan, in Germany. Even when we “win” we never leave. When not killing the enemy, we build schools and clinics. For this we get little thanks and no respect.

“Americans play to win all of the time,” said Patton. Well, we used to. Our victories since the end of World War Two have ended in stalemates. It’s not that we lack the capacity to win decisively and impose our will on our enemies; it’s that we lack the will to do so.

Unlike the Superbowl where millions tuned in to watch, I doubt you have seen any coverage of the war in Afghanistan in a long time. After a year, the Iraqis have managed to cobble together something they call a government.

We have two carrier groups parked off the coast of Iran and the Iranians have recently announced they are going to put some warships through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel.

“Sure we want to go home,” Patton told his men. “We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards that started it.”

Good advice then. Good advice now.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Football (and War) is about Winning

Exiting Afghanistan

By Alan Caruba

Like others of my generation who lived through the Vietnam War, it was at the time the longest war that America ever fought. Now the longest war is the one in Afghanistan that began on October 7, 2001.

The Vietnam War began for the U.S. in 1963 when 2,000 military “advisors” were sent to aid the South Vietnamese government that had been established when the North and South was divided. In 1956, with U.S. support the South refused to hold reunification elections and a civil war ensued with the Communist North, beginning in 1958.

Suffice to say the South Vietnamese government was corrupt. It was a civil war and Lyndon B. Johnson’s intervention vastly expanded it in 1965. Along with the war, he launched his “War on Poverty” that would cost billions and achieve little except to expand the welfare state..

The public outcry against the war increased along with the casualties. It forced LBJ to forego running for a second term. From 1968 to 1973, efforts were made to end the war through diplomacy until in January 1973, during the Nixon administration, an agreement was reached. In April 1975, South Vietnam surrendered, thus uniting the North and South.

For ten years it seemed as if the war would never end. It tore the nation apart. Along with a lot of Americans I opposed the war. From the standpoint of the White House the war was seen as part of the larger Cold War but internally they were loath to admit that the U.S. military was not winning the war. These days the U.S. enjoys a robust diplomatic and economic relationship with Vietnam.

Following 9/11, the U.S. sent troops to Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. We are still there and the war, as noted, has become the longest in our nation’s history. After driving out the Taliban, we should have left, but we stayed on, supporting a corrupt government that Afghans do not trust. Presently, there are about 100,000 U.S. troops there, a significant military commitment.

The war in Afghanistan, according to Richard N. Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Affairs, is costing U.S. taxpayers between $100 billion and $125 billion a year. In 2010, the New York Times reports that U.S. troops experienced the highest combat casualties yet in the war; more than 430 service members died. Nearly 5,500 were wounded in action, more than double the total of 2,415 in 2009.

It is long past due for the U.S. to leave. It is a lesson the Russians learned after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. It took ten years before they withdrew in defeat. The Afghans didn’t want them there and they do not want the U.S. there. We will leave and the only question is when.

The problem for America and the rest of the world is a Middle East in the grip of Islam, a religion that opposes Western values and modernization. It will remain in turmoil for the foreseeable future and it will have to be resolved by the people of its nations.

Isolating Islam from the governance of those nations and the maintenance of democratically elected governments must ultimately be secured by those in Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and the most tribal of these nations, Afghanistan.

In Pakistan today there is a significant debate over whether a Western-style government can prevail in the face of the barbarism of the Taliban and the threat of al Qaeda whose way of governance is through murder and terror. The Pakistani middle class knows what is at stake.

The presence of American and allied troops in Afghanistan and Iraq only exacerbates the prospect of progress toward a stable Middle East, a process that may well take decades or longer. Meanwhile, we are draining the treasury of the United States and spilling the blood of our troops.

Leaving Afghanistan will change little in a nation that has successfully resisted invaders for centuries. Meanwhile, the U.S. is in the process of drawing down troops in Iraq where we have set in motion the first steps toward a modern nation freed of its demonic dictator, Saddam Hussein.

There is much to be done to save America from its present financial crisis. Not spending billions in far-off lands is a good step toward achieving that.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Exiting Afghanistan

Iranian Hegemony, American Timidity

By Alan Caruba

Remember George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”? Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Bush identified these three during a January 29, 2002 State of the Union speech. On March 20, 2003, the U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” We were assured that weapons of mass destruction would be found and, for the most part, few were.

The U.S. had been in Afghanistan since shortly after 9/11 in 2001, but Iraq became the focus and Afghanistan a backwater combat area where, as best as one can determine, nothing much has changed except that, reportedly, the U.S. is providing cover for meetings between the Taliban and President Karzai. The levels of corruption between these two are impossible to parse and, as usual, the only topic on the agenda is who gets to control the heroin industry that passes for Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product. Also reported is that Iran has been bribing top Afghan officials.

When I served in the U.S. Army, it was in a minor intelligence function as part of the Second Infantry Division. Its primary duty for a very long time has been the defense of South Korea where approximately 30,000 troops are stationed. They have been there since a truce was signed in 1953! The U.S. tends to stay on forever once we’ve invaded a country with the exception, of course, of Vietnam.

I mentioned my Army service only because the most recent intelligence “dump” by WikiLeaks evokes a visceral response to ever letting our enemies know anything about our conduct of the Iraq war and, in this case, the enemy is still Iran. It has been Iran since they took our diplomats hostage in 1979.

To my mind, WikiLeaks is engaged in an act of war against the United States, but I am sure that a legion of international lawyers would say they are not.

The worst part of all this is an analysis reported by an Israeli news agency, Debka File, over the past weekend. As often as not, one will find reports there that never seem to make it into the mainstream media here in the U.S.A.

For example, I suspect most Americans have no idea that we again have a second carrier group in the area of the Persian Gulf. That’s a lot of fire power and one or two such groups have been parked there for a very long time for a very good reason. Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia just conducted “secret” war maneuvers together and it isn’t because either expects to be invaded by Bahrain.

The initial Debka File analysis of the U.S. classified documents “bared a catalogue of extreme abuse by Iraqi forces against fellow Iraqis and Iran’s deep involvement in terrorist operations against Americans and Iraqis alike—to both of which the U.S. turned a blind eye.”

Several very troubling facts emerge from the documents. U.S. troops “were instructed not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as abuses of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition.” That kind of directive comes down the chain of command from the very top.

Iraq became a sovereign nation on June 30, 2004 and the fighting among its elected leaders has not ceased for a day as to how the oil riches will be divvied up between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

The last elections were held on March 9, 2010 and Iraq still does not have a functioning government. In the days when Saddam Hussein ran everything, elections involved a 99% vote for the psychopath, but this year’s election involved 325 seats in the parliament and a coalition government has not been decided upon for the last eight months.

Granting that Saddam was evil incarnate, he was nonetheless a bulwark against Iranian ambitions. He had invaded Iran in the 1980s and spent eight years trying to win a war against it. Failing that, he turned around and invaded Kuwait, drawing the U.S. into the first invasion, but one in which he was allowed to remain in power after Iraqi troops were pushed out of Kuwait.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has had the backing of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In the past he has had ties to Iran because both are Shiites and, according to Debka File he “headed Iran-backed Shiite terror networks responsible for political assassinations on his orders.”

The new intelligence data reveals even more about the extensive involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Al Qods Brigades in attacks on American forces in Iraq. Over the course of the conflict there since 2003, American troops suffered 4,287 dead and 30,000 wounded in combat.

Out of all this expenditure of American treasure and lives, Iran has emerged with a strong network of puppet militias in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It has forged strong ties with Syria. It has a network of allies inside Iraq. And it has pursued its quest for nuclear weapons and the development of the missiles to deliver them as far away as parts of Europe.

All of this suggests that America’s expressed policy of establishing a democratic Iraq and the total lack of confrontation with Iran adds up to failure at this point. The problem with that assertion, however, is that Saddam was an unpredictable, disruptive figure who had to be neutralized.

It looks like George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil is still very much intact and an understandably war-weary United States is leaving a battlefield whose nations were created in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles way back when Woodrow Wilson was the president.

As the French say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → Iranian Hegemony, American Timidity

How Crazy Is It?

By Alan Caruba

How crazy is it to keep telling people the economy is recovering when everyone knows the “stimulus” was a complete flop and unemployment is up?

How crazy is it to keep wanting to spend more billions on “stimulus”?

How crazy is it to let the Bush tax cuts expire when every economist in America is telling you to extend or make them permanent?

How crazy is it for the federal government to sue Arizona for passing a law that directly mirrors a federal one intended to enforce the prohibition against illegal aliens?

How crazy is it to help fund a deepwater oil drilling operation off the coast of Brazil while refusing to allow it anywhere off the East and West coasts of America?

How crazy is it to refuse to open a tiny portion of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil at a time when we are importing sixty percent of oil from foreign producers?

How crazy is it to “reform” Medicare by adding thousands more to its rolls while telling everyone you were cutting its costs?

How crazy is it to pass Obamacare without telling people that many would lose their insurance while others would see their premiums increase?

How crazy is it to require utilities to purchase electricity from wind and solar farms when neither could exist without taxpayer subsidies, nor produces a steady supply?

How crazy is it to try to stop the building of coal-fired plants to generate electricity when the United States is the “Saudi Arabia of coal”, having hundreds of years’ supply?

How crazy is it to continue the moratorium on U.S. oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, throwing more people out of work, denying the oil to the marketplace, and yet give money to Mexico so it can drill in the same Gulf?

How crazy is it to try to close Guantanamo when no U.S. state prison system and no foreign nation want to take the detainees? When one third or more of those previously released returned to the battlefield?

How crazy is it to continue blaming G.W. Bush for everything when you’ve spent more time on the golf course in a year and a half than he did during eight years in office?

How crazy is it to give a speech on the war in Afghanistan at West Point and announce when the U.S. will be leaving?

How crazy is it for the federal government to ban the incandescent light bulb?

I could ask this generic question many times regarding the Obama administration and some previous congressional actions, but they add up to something less than “crazy” and more like a plan to harm the nation and all Americans when it comes to energy, healthcare, and national security.

Some may say this notion is just plain crazy, but it may be closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

More about → How Crazy Is It?