Interesting article, thanks submitter.

I would be funny if Bush did fire him and he said no.

Not just overseas.

So in other words, He'll be another scapegoat, and Bush gets to pass the blame once again. I really wonder what Bush is going to do after he steps down from office.

The History books and historians will be VERY VERY Cruel to President Bush if there is any justice in this world.

Captain Obvious is now our Defense Secretary?

Oh, wait, I forgot that what is obvious to the rational world does not match the standard ideology of the Bush Administration, so this bit of truth telling is news worthy. Sad.

Bush won't fire him. One of the reasons that the Surge has been as effective as it has been is because Bush has been forced to keep the politics out of the practice.

Things were SO bad in Iraq, and they were so desperate to find a fix for their legacy, that they finally agreed to get experts in the field. People without an agenda other than trying to turn back the tide against our soldier. No flowery words about the situation, or changing the operational focus of the army. No fighting based on political wishes and best-case scenario planning.

Getting Bush the hell out of the planning and ACTUALLY listening to the generals turned this around. I don't think he'd risk farking that up again because Gates is (still) a little off message.

'against our soldiers'... I should really spell check first.

I'm old enough to remember a time long, long ago - let's call it the 1990s - when the vast majority of people around the world looked up to the US and American values. Certainly most Europeans. Even the French, though their politicians would never admit it in public.

My manifesto for the US to start to recover its moral authority abroad:

(a) Shut Guantanamo. [If some of the inmates turn out to be dangerous and subsequently come at US troops on the battlefield, shoot them then. Problem solved in accordance with international law.]

(b) Stop mumbling rubbish about torture being okay and/or waterboarding not being torture. [Maybe the CIA have got useful info this way, maybe not. Doesn't matter.]

(c) Just come out and tell the world that 'nation building' is part of the US military game-plan, whatever it's doing in future. [Rumsfeld didn't want to do it. But it's what needed done in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and is being done anyway, either more or less effectively. The Marshall plan won enough goodwill to keep Europe firmly on-side through the whole Cold War. Nation building works if you do it right.]

And any of the likely presidential candidates could credibly do it without obvious hypocrisy, once in office.

frangelico_y_flamingo: Just come out and tell the world that 'nation building' is part of the US military game-plan, whatever it's doing in future. [Rumsfeld didn't want to do it. But it's what needed done in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and is being done anyway, either more or less effectively.

I strongly disagree that the nation building effort by Cheney in Afghanistan is effective. Afghanistan is a nation in name only. The terrain, lack of transportation system and tribal loyalties all combine to make it into a confederation of states. If you conquer and control Kabul, you only control... Kabul. The CIA recognized this and had just about run the taliban out of Afghanistan by making deals with each individual province. The American special forces continued this, but when the Iraq war started, they were pulled out and replaced with regular army types, who proceeded with the Rumfeldian tactics of holing up in forts. Now the USA controls Kabul, and is trying to unite Afghanistan as a single nation. IT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE, AND IF THEY ACCOMPLISH THIS IT WILL BE A HISTORICAL FIRST.

And just why are they attempting to nation build in Afghanistan?
There is an old saying in politics-if you want to understand what's going on, follow the money. Why is Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservative controlled American government so enthralled with nation building in Afghanistan? Just follow the money.

"American oil companies have acquired rights to as much as 75 percent of the output from the rich oil fields of the Caspian and Central Asian region. The major problem in exploiting the energy riches of Central Asia is how to get the oil and gas from the landlocked region to the world market. US officials have opposed using either the Russian pipeline system or the easiest available land route, across Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, over the past decade, US oil companies and government officials have explored a series of alternative pipeline routes-west through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean; east through Kazakhstan and China to the Pacific; and, most relevant to the current crisis, south from Turkmenistan across western Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean."

And who would build this pipeline through a unified Afghanistan? Why that would be none other than Halliburton, the company that has made Cheney a rich man, and vice versa.

The USA's NATO allies are not stupid. They will not waste their money and send their troops to die for American corporations in Afghanistan, any more than they would in Iraq. They also know that
Cheney, who is currently running ALL of the USA's middle eastern policy out of his office, will be gone in less than a year waiting for whomever the new president will be, hoping that they will deal with someone who will work with them in a setting of reality, instead of a neocon PNAC unicorns and rainbows utopia.

Last week the USA released the Afghan Study Group report Link, which among other things urged the USA to separate the Afghani & Iraq wars instead of lumping them together in "the war on terror".
This report was scarcely even noted by the USA mainstream press.

This is what Gates is attempting to do here, as noted in TFA.
He is in effect throwing a diplomatic bone to the USA's NATO allies, saying just wait, we are not all crazy idiots working for the oil cartels, there is still a USA under all of the insanity.

This is very important, for what we are doing in Afghanistan is routing out terrorists that would do harm to us and our western allies. What we need to do is maintain a good effort there remembering that the tribal leaders respect people that keep their promises. There is no true government backing the Taliban and the other bad guys that we are fighting there. The Afghani's will never accept a puppet government run out of Kabul, this is a historical fact. Our efforts there are to engender trust and develop a series of allies that control the terrorists within their borders with little or no help from us and NATO/EU.

This was set into motion by the CIA and stopped by Cheney with his
"nation building" horsecrap. The NATO allies still believe in the mission, what they don't believe is Cheney, a man who lies like a rug and has consistently put the interest of his current and future business partners ahead of the interests of the USA. He had other interests during the Vietnam war as well, as I recall.

varmitydog

I strongly disagree that the nation building effort by Cheney in Afghanistan is effective.

I strongly disagree that whatever is being done by Cheney's orders in Afghanistan is remotely associated with "nation building." It looks a lot more like what we did in Central and South America in the fifties and sixties, propping up a rancid, corrupt and ineffective regime because, by gosh, they're our kind of people.

I was watching Afghanistan back in the days when the OJ trial bumped it to a page forty-eight paragraph once a week, and I actually applauded when we went in there and kicked the Taliban out. What has been done there since hasn't made me smile.

in a surprising press conference, the defense secretary also discussed how water was indeed wet, and how grass, he had found through analyzing data from the field, was often green.

this is ric romero, signing off.

oldebayer:It looks a lot more like what we did in Central and South America in the fifties and sixties, propping up a rancid, corrupt and ineffective regime because, by gosh, they're our kind of people.

Spot on analysis, but remember that all those South & Central American nations did not have a history of attacking and defeating all invaders, did not have a history of inter-tribal warfare and almost all had a centralized government structure already in place.

The USA has set up a puppet ruler, Karzai, whose brother is a major drug lord. They have set up a version of a Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan, and those in power in Kabul are using
this as a basis for settling long time tribal feuds and expanding their own drug empires by eliminating competition from the provinces. This parliment and Karzai are protected by American body guards and are paid with American funds. This is nation building. Just because the current administration has the septic touch and has fouled up the situation beyond belief does not mean that the overlying premise is false.

at least failing the republicans doesn't leave you dead in a small park

"I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused," Gates said

Not as confused as Americans, of course, but still pretty farked up.

Wot embarrassingly high percentage of Americans still believes that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11, anybody?

Gates made his tiny concession to reality in an attempt to drum up additional NATO support for the Unocal inspired mission in Afghanistan. Canada wants out after 2009 the end of our stated commitment. Even Bush-lite aka PM Stephen Harper sez that w/o further NATO involvement Canada will opt out of the war by that time. Karzai is basically the Mayor of Kabul trying to avoid pissing off his loose coalition of War Lords and Drug Lords while enriching himself from the chaos.

Nation building in that part of the world is a pipe(line)dream.

Democracy isn't something that can be injected into a country like a vaccine. It's not a top down thing. It's a grass roots up thing. The Flintstone wannabes of the ME in Afghanistan and Iraq don't want it and aren't ready for it.

quatchi: Democracy isn't something that can be injected into a country like a vaccine. It's not a top down thing. It's a grass roots up thing. The Flintstone wannabes of the ME in Afghanistan and Iraq don't want it and aren't ready for it.

Flintstone wannabes? They're not cave dwellers, banging rocks together to make fire. In Iraq at least, they live in home that look just like ours, only there the power outages are a fact of life rather than an occasional annoyance.

Deneb81: Getting Bush the hell out of the planning and ACTUALLY listening to the generals turned this around. I don't think he'd risk farking that up again because Gates is (still) a little off message.

Rubbish!

We got desperate and decided to buy off the people who were attacking
us. As it turns out, it was far cheaper in terms of lives and ammunition.

This was also a political move, the "surge" had to be seen as working or
the Republicans were about to be shot out of Washington.

Too little, too late, it appears.

Even Petreus admits that the results everyone keeps crowing about AREN'T the result of coalition military action.

The whole problem in both of these wars is that the administration just dumped the whole thing on the Pentagon. They just don't seem to get that there are civilian political dimensions and responsibilities in war, even more so in the aftermath. They just thought they could send in the army, defeat the other side, and everything would fall into place by magic. Fools.

Alphax: quatchi: Democracy isn't something that can be injected into a country like a vaccine. It's not a top down thing. It's a grass roots up thing. The Flintstone wannabes of the ME in Afghanistan and Iraq don't want it and aren't ready for it.

Flintstone wannabes? They're not cave dwellers, banging rocks together to make fire. In Iraq at least, they live in home that look just like ours, only there the power outages are a fact of life rather than an occasional annoyance.

They are a tribal culture who really desire a theocracy and closer ties to Iran. Those forces were held in check for a time by the iron fist of Saddam and secular society, both no longer exist. I'm not talking about about their technological level of sophistication. I'm talking about the sophistication of their culture and their ideals. Democracy is not a deeply desired ideal shared by the average Iraqi or Afghan. America doesn't want a real democracy in either place, btw. America wants a compliant client state a'la Brazil. Not gonna happen.

Goodwill and 25 cents will buy subby a cup of coffee.

frangelico_y_flamingo 2008-02-09 11:53:59 AM
I'm old enough to remember a time long, long ago - let's call it the 1990s - when the vast majority of people around the world looked up to the US and American values. Certainly most Europeans. Even the French, though their politicians would never admit it in public.


The 1990's? Isn't that when bill clinton was bombing Serbia into the ground?

zefal: frangelico_y_flamingo 2008-02-09 11:53:59 AM
I'm old enough to remember a time long, long ago - let's call it the 1990s - when the vast majority of people around the world looked up to the US and American values. Certainly most Europeans. Even the French, though their politicians would never admit it in public.


The 1990's? Isn't that when bill clinton was bombing Serbia into the ground?

Europe was cool with that. Also; the US worked with the UN doing that.