WHY SHOULD THERE BE AN AFGHANISTAN?
Last week, we learned that Afghanistan is The Doormat of Empires. Yet the ignorant myth of the mighty invincible Afghan keeps getting repeated - even by conservative writers who really ought to know better. Washington Times columnist Jeff Kuhner is an example, who has proclaimed (6/24) that Petraeus is "doomed to fail," that "the jihadist iceberg is about to sink the American juggernaut," because:
Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is the graveyard of empires - a nation whose rugged terrain and collection of disparate warlords and tribes is ideally suited for guerrilla warfare. The vaunted Soviet Red Army was crushed in the 1980s. Imperial Britain was defeated - not once, but twice - during the 19th century. The reason: They got dragged into protracted wars of attrition. Eventually, the fierce, primitive mountains, caves and fighters of Afghanistan wore down much superior forces, slowly bleeding them to death.This is ridiculously not true. Kuhner has obviously neither been to Afghanistan nor studied its actual history but is simply repeating memorized slogans. Thus he asks, "Who lost Afghanistan?" as if this is preordained. Let's ask a different question instead: "Why should there be an Afghanistan at all?" Afghanistan is a problem, not a real country. It is a pain in the world's ass. The solution to the problem is not a futile effort of "nation-building" - that effort is doomed to fail - it is nation-building's opposite: get rid of the problem by getting rid of the country. It's a salvage operation - carve the wreck up and parcel it out to its neighbors. Here's how to do it.
WHICH SIDE WAS MCCHRYSTAL ON IN AFGHANISTAN?
We're losing in Afghanistan. There are four reasons why. Two are self-inflicted wounds which easily can be corrected. But the two more important reasons are much harder to fix. Yet three out of the four can be laid to considerable extent at the feet of our now former commanding general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal. When you add them up, you have to wonder which side was he on. So let's add them up.
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/25/10
Good grief, what a weird week. Which headline is more bizarre - the one in Cincinnati, "Naked Man Arrested With Stolen Cheese At Library," or the one in Portland, "Al Gore Accused Of Being A Crazed Sex Poodle"? We all know, of course, that Algore's former boss is a serial rapist. But Mr. Save-The-Planet? Goodnight, Al, and take your warmism with you. At least now, folks will think that Global Warmism means Rape-The-Planet with lunatic Marxist Fascism. *** Meanwhile, Zero's unconstitutional fascism gets more grotesque by the day. Reports that he intends to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by executive fiat have prompted a number of Senators (all R's) to sign a letter to the president (dated 6/21) requesting he deny the reports. Like you, I have this little devil who resides on my left shoulder whispering off-the-wall provocations in my ear. Right now, he's saying he hopes Zero goes through with this.
THE COMING NIGHTMARE OF CRACK NICOTINE
On Monday, June 21, the demented state legislature in Albany passed a bill increasing cigarette taxes. A pack of smokes will average $9.60 across the state, and will be $11 a pack - $11 for a single pack of cigarettes - in New York City. This is not only pro-smuggling, it is pro-terrorist. Who do you think runs the most lucrative cigarette smuggling operations from Virginia and the South into New York? Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. The higher taxes will mean higher profits for them, which they will use to kill Israelis and Americans in Afghanistan. The state legislators who voted for the taxes should be tried for aiding and abetting terrorism for this alone. But the consequences could be vastly worse. New York's new tobacco tax law is an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences run amok. It's the coming nightmare of Crack Nicotine.
THE DOORMAT OF EMPIRES
I couldn't agree with Jack Kelly more in his approval of Zero's firing General McChrystal. Stanley McChrystal is an insufferably arrogant putz whose criminally stupid Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan deserve more than being relieved of his command. They deserve a court-martial and prison. His "courageous restraint" ROE's are directly responsible for getting our soldiers killed. He thinks the lives of Afghans are more important to save than Americans. As of last week, one of those Americans fighting and risking their lives to bring freedom to Afghanistan - and one of those lives McChrystal's political correctness is jeopardizing - is my son. Afghanistan is personal - for me, and because of 9/11, it should be for all Americans. Here we'll dispense with the idiotically ignorant myth that Afghanistan is the "Graveyard of Empires." Afghanistan has been steamrollered by conquerors for millennia. Then, next week, we'll discuss how easy it would be for us to do so and why it's important that we do. In 327 BC, Alexander the Great married a beautiful princess named Roxanne in Balkh, capital of Bactria. She was the daughter of the King of Bactria, Oxyartes, and Alexander had just conquered his kingdom. Bactria is now northern Afghanistan - Alexander's wife was Afghan. At this moment, US and NATO forces are preparing to secure Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar. The city was founded by Alexander in 330 BC and is in fact named after him, from the original Iskandaria (Alexandria - Iskander being the Persian pronunciation of Alexander's name).
PUTIN IS SCREWING OBAMA IN CENTRAL ASIA
Last Friday (6/19), Kyrgyzstan's interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, flew to the site of this month's ethnic violence -- and raised the estimate of the dead to 2,000. Some 400,000 ethnic Uzbeks have become refugees, with 100,000 safely across the border in Uzbekistan and 300,000 trapped in Kyrgyzstan. Their homes have been burned, their relatives beaten, raped or slaughtered. The Kyrgyz military and police stood by and let it happen -- or pitched in. The interim government couldn't control them, once the ethnic cleansing began. And it matters to us. Remote Kyrgyzstan has permitted our forces to use Manas air base to shuttle troops and supplies into Afghanistan. The base is vital, but our continued presence was already iffy. Now the Yankees may be told to go home. This latest bout of butchery also matters because it fits in with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's strategy of re-establishing Russian hegemony over Central Asia. That's why he denied a Kyrgyz request for Russian peacekeepers. That's why he's screwing Obama in Central Asia.
STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL AND THE PETER PRINCIPLE
Because it is better for a president to be thought of as petty and vindictive than to be thought of as vacillating and weak, Barack Hussein Obama had to fire his commander in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal wasn't actually insubordinate. But the reporting of the Rolling Stone article that sparked this controversy gave the impression he was. It had to hurt a man with an ego as large as Mr. Obama's to read this description of their first one-on-one meeting: "‘It was a ten minute photo op,' said an adviser to McChrystal. ‘Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his (expletive) war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.'" The thoughts expressed are not rare in the U.S. military, but they are not supposed to be expressed publicly. It was appallingly poor judgment for Gen. McChrystal's aides to be so frank with a Rolling Stone reporter, and for Gen. McChrystal to have granted him such access. "If an officer cannot figure out Rolling Stone, how can he understand the Taliban?" wondered military historian Victor Davis Hanson. Or as Maureen Dowd of the New York Times put it: "So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine."
THE BATTLE OF EUROPE – REALITY VS. ITS DENIAL
Brussels, Belgium. For the past 200 years, much of the fate of Europe has been determined near this lovely city. That is equally true at the moment, as the leaders of Europe meet in what slowly is becoming the capital city of Europe to make decisions that well may determine whether the euro and even the European Union will continue to exist. As every schoolchild knows, Napoleon was finally defeated two centuries ago at the battle of Waterloo - close enough to Brussels to be considered a suburb. Great battles of World War I were fought largely within a drive of an hour or so from Brussels, such at Ypres to the west.. Dunkirk, where the British army escaped from continental Europe in 1940 to fight again is a relatively short drive to the northwest of Brussels. Finally, the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 - the last great battle of World War II on the Western front - was fought in an area not all that far south of Brussels. The current battle being fought in Europe is between the economic realists and the reality deniers. Who will win?
ELENA KAGAN AND MOSLEM LAW
Hats off to Senator Jeff Sessions! The top Republican on the Senate's Judiciary Committee has opened up an important new front in the debate over Solicitor General Elena Kagan's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court: Her attitude towards the repressive legal code authoritative Islam calls Shariah and her enabling of efforts to insinuate it into this country. By so doing, the Alabama legislator has given his colleagues and the country an opportunity not only to flesh out and evaluate the thin public record of President Obama's second nominee to a lifetime appointment on the nation's highest court. The Senator has also afforded us all what Mr. Obama might call a "teachable moment." Specifically, this Supreme Court nomination offers a prism for examining the concerted and ominous campaign underway to bring Shariah to America, thanks to the troubling role Ms. Kagan played during her tenure as dean of Harvard's Law School.
OBAMA IS GETTING OUR SOLDIERS KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN FOR WHAT?
The United Nations confirmed yesterday (6/21) it is moving staff out of Afghanistan because of rising violence there. So far this month 59 international soldiers, 36 of them Americans, have been killed, and a governor in a key district has been assassinated. It remains to be seen whether this June will be the bloodiest month ever for U.S. and NATO troops. But it's clear things have gotten worse since President Barack Hussein Obama decided last December to send 30,000 more troops there. Three obvious reasons why this is so are the deadline the president set for next year to begin withdrawal of U.S. troops; ridiculous rules of engagement, and the poisonous relationship Mr. Obama has established with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. So what exactly is it that our soldiers are dying for in Afghanistan?