Obama on Afghanistan: hello, I must be going
Here’s a preview of Obama’s long-awaited speech on sending troops to Afghanistan. Apparently, he plans to emphasize the exit strategy.
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, it’s pretty difficult to convey resolve with one foot out the door.
May I be the first to say, Hurrah for Captain Spaulding.
Another disaster is unfolding.
I talked with my stepmother today and she’s a diehard Obama fan. However, she really hates the idea of going into Afghanistan. She believes Obama made a mistake and hopes he will see the light.
I imagine she’s a fairly typical Democrat. Obama is in big trouble with his base, and anyone depending on Obama to be resolute in Afghanistan is in even more trouble.
Hux,
Pity the poor Afghanis. Obama insists they shape up soonest and run with the ball.
It’s gonna be ‘Nam all over again. But it’s nuclear Paki this time, not Cambodia and Laos.
God, I hate the American Left. Screw his base.
Is it just me or does Nancy Pelosi remind anyone else of Margaret Dumont?
The last man nearly ruined this place
He didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad off now
Just wait ’til I get through with it
The country’s taxes must be fixed
And I know what to do with it
If you think you’re paying too much now
Just wait ’til I get through with it…
B.O
of course we are not paying attention to some serious stuff…
Kremlin’s top banker killed in Nevsky Express bombing
http://www.interfax.com/3/533033/news.aspx
word has it that its related to the demise of the dollar that is progressing quite well (for them).
they are building up lots of troops… ahve been reorganizing their military to remove dross. and have been only using old equipment so that we believe they have no capability, while running fake sorties at each western countries air commands security (so much so that england is worried about collisions between the backfire bombers and commercial airlines flights). move to first strike with nuclear weapons has also been added.
“Another task on Russia’s agenda was to move all combat units to a state of “permanent readiness”.”
also.. china has been upgrading.. (as well as both of them building, supplying and funding south american war coming soon).
“Several aspects of China’s military development have surprised US analysts, including the pace and scope of its strategic forces modernization,” an executive summary of the report said.
“China’s military expansion is already such as to alter regional military balances,” it added.
“Long-term trends in China’s strategic nuclear forces modernization, land- and sea-based access denial capabilities, and emerging precision-strike weapons have the potential to pose credible threats to modern militaries operating in the region,” the report said.
that was 2006… 4 years ago.
meanwhile, our troops are not home
we have little manufavturing infrastrcutuyre
and even more so, we have no ability to borrow as our suppliers would be our enemies and all our freinds are tapped out.
they continue to shift our economy to be dependent on them (cfls shift clean to mercury to china the largest supplier. same with magnets materials for motors… same with amorphous silicon for solar… ALL chinese dominated!)
It estimated China’s true military spending at 70 to 105 billion dollars a year — two to three times the 35 billion-dollar defense budget announced by China.
and this one is a pip…
[if you understand why… now you know why stalin shipped out about a third of the population of all these states… knowing that they would never kick out a third of their population he would have a permanent reason to copy prior actions and save russians living elswhere]
Some point out that it would not be complicated to deliberately fabricate an excuse for Russian forces to rush over the border. (Several units of elite and Special Forces have their home bases just east of the Estonian border. Needless to say, the substantial numbers serving in just these units and their supplied killing power far outstrip anything that Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania has with which to resist and repel an attack.) The scenario could play out a simple situation: provoke Russians in Narva or Kohtla-Jé¤rve or Sillamé¤e to take to the streets to protest anything, incite a physical conflict with authorities, guarantee a few Russian casualties and Moscow would find ample justification to enter Estonia and “intervene.”
Some “market” reforms included corrupt privatizations that in effect handed massive economic and financial assets to Communist apparatchiks. They quickly became capitalist oligarchs. Shadowy networks between them, their former intelligence services, and the Russian FSB meant that they retained a sometimes unaccountable power and position under the new democracies. That in turn fostered cynicism among the populace. There is a widespread sense of a moral vacuum at the heart of a democracy sundered from justice – coupled with anger that no one has been made to pay for the horrendous crimes of Communism.
This failure to de-Communize has come back to haunt Europeans in international affairs as well as in domestic ones. When Yeltsin tried to hold a constitutional trial of the Communist party – something that might have exorcised the Communist demons – he was discouraged from conducting such a “witch hunt” by the West. One result is the qualified attempt in Russia today to rehabilitate Stalin. Another result is in Western Europe, where the Left still resists the attempt of the Baltic states to obtain a reckoning for one of the largest mass murders in history. But the most ominous result lies in foreign policy.
Because Soviet crimes were never established beyond doubt in a court of law, as Nazi crimes were condemned at Nuremberg, many Russians have the sense that their nation is an innocent victim of Western deceit and bullying. They sympathize with Vladimir Putin’s description of the fall of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” They have accordingly embraced a grievance mentality in foreign affairs. And today Russians are easily tempted to support a foreign policy that, in the words of the Eastern European intellectuals who wrote an open letter to President Obama earlier this year, “challenges our claims to our own historical experiences . . . asserts a privileged position in determining our security choices . . . uses overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from energy blockades and politically motivated investments to bribery and media manipulation in order to advance its interests and to challenge the transatlantic orientation of Central and Eastern Europe.”
Previously secret KGB materials on the Soviet war in Afghanistan reveal the determined efforts of a great power trying desperately to keep on top of events in a client state– and failing miserably to do so. The materials were released today by Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the leading clearinghouse and research project on the former Communist world archives.
The materials, provided to CWIHP by defected KGB archivist Vasiliy Mitrokhin, present the first behind-the-scene account at the three communist coups in Afghanistan in April 1978 and in September and December 1979. They also provide the first-ever inside account of the 1979 kidnapping and murder of the last US ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs; chilling reports on the violent guerrilla deception campaigns, assassinations, sabotage and bribery carried out by the KGB in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1983; as well as new information on clandestine US-Soviet political contacts on Afghanistan in the 1980 presidential election campaign. The document also reveals KGB and Afghan intelligence cooperation with Murtaza Bhutto, the brother of later Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto; as well as links with Murtaza Bhutto, a leftist terrorist involved in organizing and supervising the hijacking of a Pakistani civilian airliner in 1981.
The 178-page paper proves that the KGB was deeply involved in Afghanistan even before the Communist take-over in 1978 and the Soviet invasion in 1979. The number of active agents in the country ran into the hundreds and served a role not only in Afghanistan but also in neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran. The government of Prince Muhammad Daud (1973-1978) worked closely with the Soviets, and several of Daud’s ministers had contacts with the KGB. Mitrokhin also shows that the Soviet Union was not involved with the Afghan Communists’ overthrow of Daud’s government in April 1978, although the KGB had received advance warning of the plot against Daud. The KGB spent enormous sums to rapidly build up indigenous Afghan communist intelligence services, of which the main one, the KHAD, became feared and hated for its use of torture and assassination. KGB-trained agents, the records make clear, substantially penetrated CIA-backed mujaheddin groups, their training camps, and their headquarters.
the archives are an interesting read, and if you never read them. then you will NOT understand afghanistan, AQ, etc.
who do you think is protecting AQ now? i mean, think of it, golytsin, and others confirmed that the soviets ran the terrorism business…. and mitroken archives give even further detaisl of it. and it is a perfect cat and mouse game back and forth..
The KGB ran scores of secret “false flag” military operations inside Afghanistan during the 1980s. In these, Soviet-trained Afghan guerrilla units posed as CIA-supported, anti-Soviet mujaheddin rebels to create confusion and flush out genuine rebels for counterattacking. By January 1983, there were, according to Mitrokhin, 86 armed, KGB-trained “false bands,” as they were called, operating throughout Afghanistan. These disclosures also throw new light on the chronic mujaheddin infighting during the 1980s. A perhaps significant number of the clashes among mujaheddin groups during the 1980s, which set the stage for the catastrophic civil war in the 1990s, apparently were carried out deliberately by paid KGB agents.
it was thorugh these that a certain man was teamed up and taken up and now runs things..
of course we cant catch him as he is not in afghanistan… but has complete safety over the border as was the tactic in prior conflicts.
its VERY interesting to read the before and after histories! you learn who lies the way we are learnign that socialsits lied in science.
mitrokhens archive and information on afghanistan would help to inform the public of whats actually going on over the past 50 plus years.
The security organs zealously absorbed KGB training. They were restructured in 1980 along the same lines. Departments of the State Information Service (Khad) functioned in all 29 provinces, administrative units, and kholosts. The staff was increased from 700 in January 1980 to 16,650 in 1982. 56% were members of the PDPA and 28% members of the Democratic Youth Organization. They belonged to 63 party cells. They underwent operational training in the USSR and in the Kabul training center. The State Information Service, consisted of 11 operational sections, a political directorate, a personnel directorate and 11 support services.
In August 1981 Babrak expressed his great approval of the KGB’s work in the DRA. He said that he had the highest regard for Chairman Andropov. Under his leadership the KGB had made an invaluable contribution in the establishment of the PDPA and played an invaluable role in defending the revolutionary gains of the April Revolution. The KGB had made it possible to establish an effective security service that for the first time in Afghan history, was active throughout the country and in all layers of society. “It had started at lower than zero.” At a meeting of senior officers and operational staff in May 1982, he asserted that “Khad has become a real fighting force against the enemies of the Revolution.”
The bulk of the work of the security organs had been the armed struggle against the insurgents. Now it was mostly engaged in agent operational measures. There were 9,500 informers in the agent network. There were regular preemptive purges in Kabul. 269 operational groups were set up. 8,240 members of the military, 1,392 members of Sarandoy, 540 members of Khad and over 1,700 party activists were involved in the operations. From 2 February to 8 February 1981 they searched 9,600 homes. 4,577 young men who were avoiding conscription were rounded up and sent to the conscription posts. 71 people were arrested including five members of the pro- Chinese organization ‘Freedom- loving Patriots’ and five members of the Shiite organization Nasr. Membership papers for 5,000 members of the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar Islamic Party127 were found. Later 500 members of the Kabul section of Gulbuddin’s party were found and put under guard. They included 127 army personnel. They obtained the archives of the Maoist organization Peikar and arrested its members. The leader of the underground “Islamic Society of Afghanistan” was detained. During his interrogation he gave the names of 825 people. 12 leaders of the organization were recruited and infiltrated into the underground.128
of course this was during their weakest years with closed borders, unlike today with open borders…
But, as it is usually the case with intelligence organizations in both East and West, little detail of the KGB’s Afghan operations has been available — until now.
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=va2.document&identifier=CDE50D78-CB01-8B7A-D4E5A68856CA3CD9&sort=Coverage&item=Iran
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Another disaster is unfolding.
yup
Howard Dean Declares Debate Between Capitalism and Socialism to Be Over
http://www.breitbart.tv/howard-dean-declares-debate-between-capitalism-and-socialism-to-be-over/
Fascism WINS!!!
[well they are the ones pushing the third way]
I wish Peggy Noonan would quit lurking here and just confess she steals from you.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704007804574574311658007036.html
After the president announced his plan he seemed to slip in, “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” Then came the reference to July 2011 as the date departure begins. It was startling to hear a compelling case for our presence followed so quickly by an abrupt announcement of our leaving. It sounded like a strategy based on the song Groucho Marx used to sing, “Hello, I must be going.”