waronterror - Robert Maguire on Diigo

25 Nov 09

24 Nov 09

The GOP's Ten Commandments - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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Released yesterday:
(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9)
Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care
rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;
and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership
1) Are they saying that the archetypal spending bill they oppose would be a stimulus package in the worst recession since the 1930s? C'mon. Surely, a bill like Medicare D, unfunded and passed during a boom, would be a more apposite example. So on the first count, we have partisanship, not principle winning out.
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- 2. "Government-run healthcare" is a talking point, not an analysis. Do they mean the public option? Or any attempt to help the working poor get private health insurance through government subsidies? And on this count, Mitt Romney is disqualified from being a Republican after his health insurance reform in Massachusetts.
- 3. They do not mention climate change, which is the entire fricking reason for cap and trade. And what are "market-based energy reforms"? Isn't cap-and-trade specifically designed to operate with markets, not against them?
- 4. Fine.
- 5. Utopian.
- 6. They want a surge in Iraq now? I thought we had one. And military-recommended troop surges? Are they saying that strategy in war should not be driven by the president, but by generals? And McChrystal offered various options for a "surge". Which one is the "military-recommended one"? And how can one reconcile 1. with 6. since the expense of these two endless occupations and exercises in nation-building is one of the biggest new expenditures the country has?
- 7. Containment of Iran? Well that's an interesting development. Except that it also means "effective action" to "eliminate" their nuclear weapons or weapons technology. Does that mean a military attack? Or sanctions? Or is this as vacuous as it sounds?
- 8. More with the gays.
- 9. They oppose denial of healthcare by the government but not denial of healthcare by the private sector?
- 10. Guns!
- I'm not sure how anyone could agree or disagree with this crapulous mishmash of rhetorical degeneracy. But as a sign of intellectual health, it is depressing.

Matthew Yglesias » Larson, Rangel, Murtha, Frank Join Obey’s War Tax Bloc

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I wondered yesterday how serious David Obey was about the idea of paying for the Afghanistan war with higher taxes.
Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel and Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank joining Obey, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, and also picking up Conference Chair John Larson and Jack Murtha who chairs the Defense Appropriations subcommittee.
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- Dubbed the “Share the Sacrifice Act,” the six-page bill exempts anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan since the 2001 terrorist attacks as well as families who have lost an immediate relative in the fighting. But middle-class households earning between $30,000 and $150,000 would be asked to pay 1% on top of their tax liability today — a more sweeping approach than many Democrats have been willing to embrace.

Palin: Then And Now - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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Just a reminder. December 2006:
I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really
focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new
deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances
that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe.
My italics. Today:

“I want our president and this administration to listen to the advisers
who they hired. McChrystal, for one, back in March, telling
the president, 'Here's what we're going to need there' and then ramping
up that advice lately, saying, 'Mr. President, here's what we need in
Afghanistan to win, to make sure that those terror cells don't grow, so
that those terrorists don't come back over to the homeland in America,
on our soil, and kill innocent Americans.'”

Polling Wars: Hawks vs. Doves - Pew Research Center

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Daily brief: Obama expected to announce Afghanistan decision December 1 | The AfPak Channel

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"middle-ground option that
would deploy an eventual 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces" to the Afghan
theater (AP, NPR, Reuters, AP, AFP)
The
top U.S. and NATO commander in the country, Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
and the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Amb. Karl Eikenberry, have both
reportedly been told to prepare to testify before Congress "as early as
next week," so they can offer support for the president's decision (Washington Post, NPR).
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen are also expected to
brief Congress on the subject (Los Angeles Times).
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- "war tax on the wealthy" to pay for
  additional troops mentioned by some in the Senate, and three House
  Democrats -- all committee chairmen -- have proposed an increase in
  taxes for families to begin in 2011, the amount of which would be based
  on how much they earn (Politico, AP, Reuters, New York Times).
- the Afghan
  attorney general's office yesterday announced that up to 15 current and
  former government officials are being investigated on allegations
  including embezzlement and fraud (Washington Post, BBC, Guardian, McClatchy, Telegraph, ABC).
- U.S. officials announced yesterday that the
  U.S. plans to give nearly $40 billion to 27 of Afghanistan's 34
  provinces that either reduced by 10 percent or eliminated entirely the
  cultivation of poppies, the raw ingredient for heroin and a source of
  corruption and funding for the Taliban (AP).
  And clerics in Helmand province, the source of more than half of the
  country's opium, said yesterday to a large gathering in the capital of
  Lashkar Gah that poppies are prohibited and asked farmers not to grow
  them (Pajhwok).

23 Nov 09

A Talking Point Built Of Straw - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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To see how false this claim is, all anyone ever had to was look at the Classified Information Procedures Act, a short and crystal clear 1980 law that not only permits, but requires, federal courts to undertake extreme measures to ensure the concealment of classified information, even including concealment from the defendant himself.

Schneier on Security: Al Qaeda Secret Code Broken

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Between them, the code-breakers speak all the dialects that form the basis for the code. Several of them have high-value skills in computer technology. The team worked closely with the U.S. National Security Agency and its station at Menwith Hill in the north of England. The identity of the code-breakers is so secret that not even their gender can be revealed.

21 Nov 09

The Jihadists Who Have Recanted I - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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A wave
of young British Islamists who trained to fight – who cheered as their
friends bombed this country – have recanted. Now they are using everything
they learned on the inside, to stop the jihad.

Seventeen former radical Islamists have "come out" in the past 12
months and have begun to fight back. Would they be able to tell me the
reasons that pulled them into jihadism, and out again? Could they be the key
to understanding – and defusing – Western jihadism? I have spent three
months exploring their world and befriending their leading figures. Their
story sprawls from forgotten English seaside towns to the jails of Egypt's
dictatorship and the icy mountains of Afghanistan – and back again.
As he watched the news of the Luxor massacre in Egypt or Hamas
suicide-bombings of pizzerias in Tel Aviv, "It just became more and
more difficult to justify that." He found himself thinking about the
Jewish friends he had made at school. "They were just like me – human
beings. And we had a lot in common. The dietary laws, and the identity
issues, and the fear of racism." As he heard the growing Islamist
chants at demonstrations – "The Jews are the enemy of God,"
they yelled – something, he says, began to sag inside him.
1 more annotations...
- It would be foolish to take too much solace from this development.

Hamid Karzai's biographer, Nick B. Mills, looks at why he is unlikely to tackle corruption and cronyism. | Foreign Policy

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But when I arrived at the palace for
our first meeting, the chief of staff took me aside and said, "He has changed
his mind. He doesn't think he should do the book." I was panicky. I had come
all this way, and taken months off without pay, for nothing? I was shown into
his office still wondering what the hell I would say to turn him around. Two of
his advisors were with him.
"They don't think I should do this
book," Karzai said. "Why should I?"
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- "All right," said Karzai. "Let's do
  it."
  
  But he would change his mind at
  least twice more during our sessions, and I would go into my song-and-dance and
  change it back again.
- In the course of our meetings, which were often interrupted
  by unscheduled visits from aides and cabinet ministers and by many phone calls,
  I developed a picture of Karzai the president, trying to reconcile it with my
  memory of the genial spokesman I had met in Peshawar. It became clear that
  President Karzai still had a lot in common with that young man -- an eagerness
  to please, a dislike of conflict, a willingness to compromise, a need to find
  consensus. In this spirit he allowed mujahideen
  warlords who had committed serious war crimes to join the government, while
  most rank-and-file Afghans would have preferred to see them locked away in
  Pol-i-charki prison. And while no one has yet accused him of being personally
  corrupt, he has tolerated corruption all around him, and he tacitly allowed his
  supporters to commit massive vote fraud in the August election.
  
  Months after I left Kabul, and the book was ready for printing, Karzai waffled again and refused to allow publication. So I adapted the material I had gathered for a new book about
  the Afghan leader and his troubled country.
  
  At the start of his second term, Karzai is under immense
  pressure from the new governments in Washington and London to grasp the nettle
  and clean house. But since the day in December 2001 when he was named head
  of the new post-Taliban government and had the support of the vast majority of
  the Afghan people, he has shied away from the hard decisions that might have
  set Afghanistan on a more promising course. I'm not sure if he has it in him to
  do it now.

Karzai's Cronies | Foreign Policy

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Ahmed Wali Karzai
Muhammad Qasim Fahim
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- vice president
- an example of the lengths the Afghan leader has gone to patch
  up old feuds: Fahim once arrested and beat Karzai in the 1990s, on suspicions
  that he was a spy for Pakistan.
- According to a 2003 Human Rights Watch
  report, Fahim was able to do this by threatening the members of several nascent
  political parties following the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Der Spiegel also reported that Fahim "head[s] up the
  country's lucrative kidnapping industry." Above Fahim (R) walks with Karzai (C) and former
  Afghan King Muhammad Zahir Shah (L) on Nov. 3, 2003 in Kabul.
- General Abdul Rashid
  Dostum
- Afghanistan's Uzbek minority
- But the
  general returned just before the election to deliver the Uzbek vote to Karzai,
  winning back his post in the process.
- Thousands of
  Taliban militants, who surrendered to his forces, part of the American allied
  Northern Forces in 2001, were packed
  into closed metal shipping containers, where many -- a State Department
  report mentions 1,500 -- suffocated while being transported to prison. Despite
  rumors of a mass grave, U.S. officials discouraged an investigation of the
  case.
- governor of Kandahar province
- Asadullah Khalid
- During his
  tenure, Canada's government learned that he was "personally involved in torture
  and abuse of detainees," according to an article in the Globe and Mail. Khalid was accused of running a network of secret
  prisons which he visited himself to
  torture prisoners. In April 2008, Canadian foreign minister Maxime Bernier
  caused a stir in both Canada and Afghanistan by publicly suggested that Khalid
  should be removed from his post.
- minister of mines
- Mohammad Ibrahim Adel
- Karzai's brother Mahmoud was awarded the factory, after allegedly arriving in
  Adel's office with a cardboard box carrying a $25 million cash guarantee. The Washington
  Post reported that, according to a U.S. official, Adel also accepted a $30
  million bribe to award a massive copper extraction project to the Chinese
  state-run Metallurgical Group Corp. Now Adel gets to pick a company to extract
  iron ore from another big deposit. Guess who's a front-runner for that deal...
- minister of planning in the transition government
- Haji Mohammad Muhaqiq
- According to Human
  Rights Watch, troops under Muhaqiq's command were guilty of crimes
  including rape and widespread looting and violence in provinces under their
  control in 2001-2002, specifically against Pashtun villagers. In one village,
  his troops killed 37 residents, the largest intentional killing of civilians in
  post-Taliban Afghanistan.
- Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
- He is also a staunch Islamist with past ties
  to some of the world's most notorious terrorists. According to the 9/11 Commission Report,
  Sayyaf gave future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his first introduction
  to the Afghan jihad in 1987. Sayyaf would become his mentor, and provide
  him with military training and connections to other jihadists until the late
  1990s. Sayyaf also maintained a close relationship with Osama bin Laden, who
  funneled him money to continue the insurgency against the Soviets.
- Karim Khalili
- In
  2003, Human Rights Watch quoted witnesses who reported that soldiers under
  Khalili's command continued to rape, kidnap, and forcibly recruit.

Worst Place for the World's Children: Afghanistan | FP Passport

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Where is the worst place for children to be born in 2009, especially girls? Surprise! Afghanistan. Today, UNICEF published a special report titled State of the World's Children; Daniel Toole, UNICEF regional director for South Asia, told a
news briefing in Geneva earlier today:
Afghanistan today is without a doubt the most dangerous place to be
born.
After eight years since the U.S. invasion, this is just one more incentive to encouarge the Obama administration to make a decision on its role in the region.
More optimistically, the reports highlights signatory countries of the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child who have shown marked improvement, including India, Serbia and Sierra Leone.

The greed of the generals (II): two questions | The Best Defense

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Also,
another friend points out that one of the dangers of this whole
"mentoring" this is that if you are not careful, you wind up bringing
in people who simply reinforce existing prejudices, instead of
challenging them. For example, just how well mentored was Gen. Tommy R.
Franks in his mishandling of Afghanistan in 2001-02 and then in his
bungled invasion of Iraq in 2003? (And while we're on the subject of
money, who remembers that Franks charged a group $100,000 to help them raise money for wounded vets-and that it later turned out that the group only delivered 25 percent of its funds to its supposed beneficiaries?) WWGMD?

Yglesias Award Nominee - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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"[T]here is no question about the legitimacy of U.S. federal courts to incapacitate terrorists. Many of Holder’s critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again,"
Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith, deputy attorney general and assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, respectively.

18 Nov 09

Lacking Evidence, Hoekstra Blames Obama Admin. For Fort Hood | TPMMuckraker

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At a press conference today, where he was joined by several GOP colleagues, Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence committee, called for an immediate congressional investigation into the shootings, to determine whether the intelligence community needs enhanced tools to combat terror. Hoekstra and his colleagues also suggested, without citing evidence, that the administration had restricted the use of crucial terror-fighting tools that could have been used to stop the attacks.

Daily brief: Clinton in Kabul for Karzai's inauguration | The AfPak Channel

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US politics waronterror pakistan statistics taliban afghanistan schools approvalrating obana karzai corruption

Whether
Karzai will appoint reformers or stack his cabinet with political
friends remains an open question that worries Afghan and international
observers alike (AFP, Independent).
U.S. officials have reportedly given Karzai a list of 40 people it
considers "clean enough" to participate in his new cabinet.

Presumably
not included on the "clean enough" list is the president's half-brother
Ahmed Wali Karzai, who has become a "symbol of cronyism and a lightning
rod for criticism of all that is wrong with Karzai's administration" (AP). Alexandra Zavis has a must-read on the plague of corruption in Afghanistan (Los Angeles Times).
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- Two
  new polls on Afghanistan were released earlier today, the first from
  Washington Post/ABC finding that while Americans are nearly evenly
  split on whether Obama should order a smaller or larger number of U.S.
  troops to Afghanistan, almost half believe Obama's policies are not
  making much difference in making the U.S. safer from terrorism (Washington Post).
  The second poll from CBS found that 69 percent of Americans think the
  war in Afghanistan is going badly, and only 38 percent of those
  surveyed approve of Obama's performance in handling Afghanistan, down
  from 58 percent in April (CBS). The full results of the polls can be found here (Washington Post, CBS).
- Another
  new report released today comes from the British aid agency Oxfam,
  finding that seven of ten Afghans surveyed believe poverty and
  unemployment are to blame for the country's ongoing conflict (BBC, AFP).
  The full report, which assesses that after the past three decades of
  war the "social fabric of the country is fractured," is available from
  Oxfam (Oxfam).
- After
  the Pakistani Army took journalists on a second guided tour of South
  Waziristan yesterday, veteran correspondents Pam Constable and Sabrina
  Tavernise have essential reads on the site of the one-month-old
  Pakistani military offensive in the militant-infested tribal agency on
  the border with Afghanistan (Washington Post, New York Times).
  Zahid Hussain reports that commanders believe most of the region's some
  10,000 militants have melted into the imposing mountains or fled to
  neighboring agencies, foreshadowing a long struggle (Wall Street Journal, Times of London).
  There has been no reporting about civilian casualties caused by the
  operations, though more than 300,000 Pakistanis have fled the conflict
  zone.
- The Pakistani Army took the cadre of reporters to a school
  in Ladha, a town in South Waziristan that Taliban militants used as a
  base, and showed a school that officials claimed was used as a training
  camp for suicide bombers (AP, Al Jazeera).
  In Sararogha, a nearby village that is also a militant stronghold,
  Chris Brummitt reports seeing a school with a room used by the Taliban
  as a pseudo-courthouse complete with documents detailing a property
  dispute. The U.S. is reportedly putting pressure on Pakistan to expand
  its anti-militant offensive into North Waziristan and the Baluchi city
  of Quetta, believed to be home to the leadership of the Afghan Taliban (Telegraph).

Matthew Yglesias » Kristol: Generals Eikenberry and Jones are “Political Hacks”

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But we continue to urge that he side with the experienced military leaders he’s been fortunate to inherit against the second-guessing of political hacks (and of failed retired generals turned political hacks).

That’d be retired Generals Karl Eikenberry and James Jones, I assume.

Informed Comment: Pakistani Military Takes Taliban Strongholds; Maulana Fazlullah Surfaces in Afghanistan

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US politics taliban schools pakistan afghanistan waronterror

On Tuesday, for instance, Pakistani troops took the militant stronghold of Laddah, South Waziristan,, reporting that they found a large cache of jihadi literature, mainly in Arabic. The town, formerly of 10,000, appears to have been a training camp for guerrillas, including "Arabs and Uzbeks." The Pakistani arm's assault on the place left it in ruins, and all 10,000 civilian inhabitants had already fled, albeit the remaining militants put up a hard fight.
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- Last week, the military similarly took Sararogha, of which there likewise doesn't seem to be much left. Islamabad says its troops killed 180 Taliban in the course of the campaign. The town is alleged to have been a center for the training of suicide bombers. The Taliban Movement of Pakistan had already done a lot of damage to its buildings in 2008 when they took it. The Pakistani military warned inhabitants to leave before they went in, and locals are eager to return, though it is doubtful much is left of their homes.
  
  The 30,000 crack Pakistani troops fighting in South Waziristan are now focusing on the important city of Makin. They began the campaign in October and have rapidly swept the Taliban before them.
- In a blow to Pakistan's hopes of finishing off the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban, it was announced Tuesday that Maulana Fazlullah, a leader of the Swat Taliban was not killed when the Pakistani army retook the valley, but rather has fled to Afghanistan.
  
  On the other hand, the widespread rejoicing of the people of Swat over the defeat of the Taliban in their area, and the appearance of anti-Taliban banners there, augurs ill for Maulana Fazlullah's political future.
- In the Khyber tribal area, Taliban blew up a village girls' school on Tuesday. The Taliban's ideology differs from mainstream Islam in disapproving of women knowing how to read and write; the male Taliban are often poor, rural males with a smattering of seminary study, and apparently they need someone to feel superior to, so women are it.

Matthew Yglesias » Spending Trends in Afghanistan

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The U.S. needs to end drug trade and corruption to win in Afghanistan - By Tom Ricks | The Best Defense

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US politics reference waronterror afghanistan david kilcullen opium drugs warondrugs

David Kilcullen
Corruption
Leads to
Rapacious behavior of government officials
Leads to
Rage and alienation of the people
Leads to
Operating space for the Taliban
Leads to
Growing Taliban strength
Leads to
Taliban encouragement of poppy cultivation
Leads to
Poppies producing funds that corrupt government officials
Leads to
More corruption
And so on
2 more annotations...
- a chilling phrase to
  anyone who knows the major role that that U.S. military acronym refers to money
  that American commanders used to win friends and influence people.
- "Poppy is the Taliban CERP,"

Robert Maguire's Library tagged waronterror → View Popular

Fox News - No Terrorist Attack During Bush's Presidency • videosift.com

The GOP's Ten Commandments - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Matthew Yglesias » Larson, Rangel, Murtha, Frank Join Obey’s War Tax Bloc

Palin: Then And Now - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Polling Wars: Hawks vs. Doves - Pew Research Center

Daily brief: Obama expected to announce Afghanistan decision December 1 | The AfPak Channel

A Talking Point Built Of Straw - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Schneier on Security: Al Qaeda Secret Code Broken

The Jihadists Who Have Recanted I - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Hamid Karzai's biographer, Nick B. Mills, looks at why he is unlikely to tackle corruption and cronyism. | Foreign Policy

Karzai's Cronies | Foreign Policy

Worst Place for the World's Children: Afghanistan | FP Passport

The greed of the generals (II): two questions | The Best Defense

Yglesias Award Nominee - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Lacking Evidence, Hoekstra Blames Obama Admin. For Fort Hood | TPMMuckraker

Daily brief: Clinton in Kabul for Karzai's inauguration | The AfPak Channel

Matthew Yglesias » Kristol: Generals Eikenberry and Jones are “Political Hacks”

Informed Comment: Pakistani Military Takes Taliban Strongholds; Maulana Fazlullah Surfaces in Afghanistan

Matthew Yglesias » Spending Trends in Afghanistan

The U.S. needs to end drug trade and corruption to win in Afghanistan - By Tom Ricks | The Best Defense

Corruption

Rapacious behavior of government officials

Rage and alienation of the people

Operating space for the Taliban

Growing Taliban strength

Taliban encouragement of poppy cultivation

Poppies producing funds that corrupt government officials

More corruption

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