A good blog-post re. the US disaster in Afghanistan

[..]

IMO another excellent blog post from Michael Scheuer (ex-CIA) re. the US disaster in Afghanistan ...

http://non-intervention.com/560/in-t...e-sure-losers/

[Clerkenwell]

It's a NATO operation with 40+ countries involved. Even the cheese eating surrender monkeys joined in. See the ISAF website http://www.isaf.nato.int/en/troop-co...ions/index.php

So if it's such a mistake, lots of other countries have made it too.

[..]

Originally Posted by Clerkenwell

It's a NATO operation with 40+ countries involved.

Correct; but the NATO partners are slowly but surely pulling out. The Netherlands already did (about the same time as Wikileaks released the War Logs)

[Camille]

Doesn't anyone else find it annoying when someone says (or writes), "I told you so"...without following up with they think could have been solutions on the same blog? And no, that doesn't mean I am/was pro-Iraq...it's a statement that applies in general.

C

[gnadfly]

Originally Posted by Clerkenwell

It's a NATO operation with 40+ countries involved. Even the cheese eating surrender monkeys joined in. See the ISAF website http://www.isaf.nato.int/en/troop-co...ions/index.php

So if it's such a mistake, lots of other countries have made it too.

Are the French known as cheese eating surrender monkeys in England too? I thought that was an American thing...Do they call themselves that?

[Sa_artman]

And the the writers point? I agree Camille, I too hate articles that come off as some authoritative bitch session but provide little or no 'solutions'. '.." if you think that was an great article, your credibility just went down the toilet.

[..]

Originally Posted by Sa_artman

And the the writers point? I agree Camille, I too hate articles that come off as some authoritative bitch session but provide little or no 'solutions'. '.." if you think that was an great article, your credibility just went down the toilet.

Michael Scheuer is a former colleague of Robert Baer. Both were strictly against the war in Afghanistan and both advocated killing Bin Laden already before the 9/11 attacks.

So Scheuer's solution was killing Bin Laden while it still was possible and doable.

Wikipedia says: "Scheuer has been critical of the Bush and Clinton administrations for not killing bin Laden, for costly and disastrous policy missteps, and for not taking decisive measures to defend the country. He states that Clinton had over half a dozen opportunities to kill bin Laden prior to September 11, and Bush had one opportunity thereafter. Richard A. Clarke and the Clinton administration, according to Scheuer, thwarted the CIA's ambitions to kidnap or kill bin Laden when they had the chance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer

[TexTushHog]

A very well written and perceptive article. I only quibble with the fifth point. You can loose a war. But a military force can't loose a political struggle. It's just a side casualty. At some point, someone should notice that political problems, which is at best what you had in Iraq and what we have now in Afghanistan, can't be solved by military means. I would rephrase it as the "millitary mission will fail," as the military is the wrong tool for the job. But otherwise, he's spot on with all his observations.

[Clerkenwell]

Originally Posted by gnadfly

Are the French known as cheese eating surrender monkeys in England too? I thought that was an American thing...Do they call themselves that?

Apparently one of their elite special forces groups adopted the motto 'les singes de capitulation'.

Some of those guys in Afghanistan were responsible for a couple of American friendly fire fatalities, and the cry 'want some extra fries with your fromage, you fat Yank' were heard as they attacked.

They go into action in specially tailored Hermes combat gear with Louis Vuitton backpacks. Frightening? My God, they're overwhelming.

[Camille]

With regards point 3..Saddam Hussein was going anyway..twin towers or not. That was made very clear when I was going through the RAF selection process around the time the Tory government switched to Labour. There was not a chance you were getting into the UK military if you didn't at least believe he needed to go.

Granted, Blair and Bush invading Iraq was a clusterfuck of all proportions and Blair was put under the spotlight about that ("for the purposes of transparency") last year..or whenever it was that he stepped down and Brown stepped up. I remember watching those shenanigans playing out on a live broadcast. Very uncomfortable.

C

[Sa_artman]

Originally Posted by ..

Michael Scheuer is a former colleague of Robert Baer. Both were strictly against the war in Afghanistan and both advocated killing Bin Laden already before the 9/11 attacks.

So Scheuer's solution was killing Bin Laden while it still was possible and doable.

Wikipedia says: "Scheuer has been critical of the Bush and Clinton administrations for not killing bin Laden, for costly and disastrous policy missteps, and for not taking decisive measures to defend the country. He states that Clinton had over half a dozen opportunities to kill bin Laden prior to September 11, and Bush had one opportunity thereafter. Richard A. Clarke and the Clinton administration, according to Scheuer, thwarted the CIA's ambitions to kidnap or kill bin Laden when they had the chance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer

It's widely known among psc's and others that Bin Laden has been dead for awhile. He is really a non-issue at this point in Afghanistan. If you read through Scheuer's rants, you realize Schuer is an right wing extremist nut case. I would think any sensible Republican would distance themselves from kooks like him.

[..]

Originally Posted by Sa_artman

It's widely known among psc's and others that Bin Laden has been dead for awhile. He is really a non-issue at this point in Afghanistan. If you read through Scheuer's rants, you realize Schuer is an right wing extremist nut case. I would think any sensible Republican would distance themselves from kooks like him.

I don't know the meaning of the acronym "psc" but according to my sources (who know Central Asia very well) Bin Laden is very likely still around and kicking ass.

So you may disagree with Scheuer, but thinking Bin Laden is dead is very naive.

Also Bin Laden unlike Dubya is an extremely smart persons with a very cunning mind and lives an extremely ascetic life. (He is certainly an extremists but underestimating him or even thinking he's dead is very naive. There are even a few Americans who have personally known Bin Laden, talk to them, they all more or less agree with Scheuer.)

[macksback]

I fail to reach the conclusion that anyone is naive for believing Bin Laden is dead.I think he is dead as do many people.

[charlestudor2005]

It really doesn't matter whether bin Laden is dead or not. The Myth lives on in the hearts and minds of his followers. Nature abhors a vacuum and someone will get sucked into the leadership if he is dead. If he isn't, he's still a force to reckon with.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

It really doesn't matter whether bin Laden is dead or not. The Myth lives on in the hearts and minds of his followers. Nature abhors a vacuum and someone will get sucked into the leadership if he is dead. If he isn't, he's still a force to reckon with.

Discover Magazine. Science, Technology and The Future

If Terrorism Is Cultivated By Modern Media, How Do We Fight It?
by Douglas Rushkoff December 2006 issue; published online December 4, 2006

As we watch our grandmothers drop toothpaste tubes into Transportation Security Administration trash bins before boarding planes this holiday season, we might reflect on whether something is wrong with our current model of national security. It doesn't take a military expert to see that a strategy of spot-checking for dangerous fluids or scanning international phone calls is a losing battle against a foe that can pop up literally anywhere. Could it be that the approach to intelligence we adopted for past wars is no longer appropriate for combating the newer threat of terrorism? For terrorism isn't so much an act of war as it is a virus—a very contagious set of destructive commands. It depends on our highly networked for its transmission and exploits our society's immune deficiencies in order to find candidates to carry out its orders. This is a new phenomenon and one we must understand if we are to mount an effective resistance. Before terrorism, war was conducted mostly through the principle of “command and control.” Generals issued orders for troop movements just as artillery sergeants specified target coordinates to gunners. Military intelligence meant intercepting the enemy chain of command. That's why so much energy was expended in World War II on breaking the Germans' secret codes. The allies needed to know where the Nazis intended to strike.

Norbert Wiener, a mathematician who worked for the U.S. Army in WWII, realized that war—and society itself—was growing too complex to be analyzed purely under these rules. Back in 1948, he invented the term “cybernetics” to describe a much more complex range of communication. Biologists had already observed this interaction in living systems—a coral reef whose millions of tightly networked members could communicate data about weather over hundreds of miles and a slime mold whose millions of member cells, spread out over acres, could coalesce and take organized action for survival at a moment's notice. What makes these systems so different from the relationship between a general and his troops is the existence of feedback. Instead of just taking commands, each member of a networked organism can report back to the whole collective. Wiener believed that the proliferation of media and technology could make human society as cybernetic as any networked organism. Enabled by the media—from phones to blogs to podcasts—we have gained the capacity to generate feedback, and as a result our ideas are exchanged more organically, rapidly, unpredictably, and—most important—uncontrollably than ever before.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec...errorism-virus