The Real Question

Caption: Screenshot from Live Leak video of U.S. Marines about to urinate on dead Taliban.

Image credit: Screenshot of this video taken and reduced by Cujo359

The video is making the rounds, if you want to see it, it's here, among other places. You can see screenshots here. Personally, I've seen all I want.

There are people, like the sad excuse for a human being CNN hired as its Tea Party viewpoint who think that things like this are just dandy, and what's everyone's problem? Needless to say I disagree with this point of view.

On the other hand, I am neither shocked nor appalled by it. This sort of thing is going to happen in a war. Behavior like this, as disgusting as it is to us, isn't unknown in warfare. I've never been in combat, so I can't speak to what that's like. But I know my own personality well enough to know that if a group of people scared the hell out of me, making me fear for my life or the life of someone I cared about, and then I had a loaded weapon placed in my hands and the chance to deal with the problem, the results would not be pretty, nor would the aftermath.

How Many More Generals Must Go?

Caption: Major General Peter Fuller in happier days, designing new helmets for the Army.

Image credit: U.S. Army

I missed this development Friday, and as James Ala notes, that is probably by design:

US removes Afghanistan commander Peter Fuller for criticising Karzai | World news | guardian.co.uk:

Major General Peter Fuller, a top US commander in Afghanistan, has been relieved of his duties after criticising the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

Not only is Afghanistan the graveyard of Empires; it is fast becoming the graveyard of loose-lipped generals. First General McChrystal, now Major General Fuller have died from foot-in-mouth disease. There is something very wrong with this mission to make two flag officers go off the deep end.
...
Sidebar: This was a very nasty dirty deed done dirt cheep; real graveyard stuff. It popped up on the google machine around 21:30 Pacific Daylight Time on a Friday[.]

US removes Afghanistan commander Peter Fuller for criticising Karzai | World news | guardian.co.uk

The military, even ours, is anything but a democratic institution. There are good reasons for that. As we learned in the McChrystal fiasco, any officer who publicly criticizes a policy he's in the act of implementing is likely to have his career come to a resounding halt. Major General Fuller must have known this when he said what he did to Politico.

Our Afghanistan policy has been wrongheaded for a long time. It has only gotten worse since President Obama took over. There is no point in applying more force to the situation. The Afghan people are going to have to sort this out on their own. They probably never trusted us, and after ten years of bloodshed, they certainly don't now.

In the interest of not letting this one go quietly in the night, I pass it along...

Afterword: While I worked in the defense industry for a long time, I never worked with or for Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier, MGEN Fuller's previous post, nor have I met him.

UPDATE: Corrected the link for James Ala's article. It had originally pointed to the Guardian article that James was quoting.

Say Goodbye, Part 7

Image credit: Excerpted from The Pain

Apparently, someone else is mourning the passing of the Space Shuttle:

I was talking about this depressing turn of events last Friday at a somewhat misnamed happy hour with my friend Ellen, who just about slumped forward to the point where her forehead was touching the icy rim of her martini glass, so demoralized was she over the prospect of the end of America’s space program, with all it symbolized—the ebbing of American optimism and enterprise, our supremacy in science and technology, the inexorable decline of the country. “And all because we couldn’t get our shit together to tax rich people and quit fighting expensive wars,” she said. Which gave me the idea for this cartoon.

We Could've Had the Moon

As I've mentioned before, we could have had a lot of things, instead of two failed wars and more on the way. Count the Moon, Mars, and any real chance of doing anything in space until the Chinese get there among them.

Anyway, go read the article. It's at both the image credit link and the quote link.

(h/t Pharyngula)

Memorial Day, 2011

It's another Memorial Day in America. For the first time, we are involved in three separate wars. Here's an aerial view of the section of Arlington Cemetery that is set aside for casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Image credit: Screenshot of TangoGPS display of Google satellite imagery by Cujo359

Click on the picture and look carefully, you can see the headstones. There are lots of them.

It's called Section 60, which some call the saddest acre in America. Ignore the great war of my formative years, Vietnam, and that would certainly be an accurate label. It might be even if one doesn't ignore our tragic misadventure in Indochina. At least back then the country cared that a war was going on. It sometimes seems we don't even remember these wars, and the victims of them who are buried here.

On this Memorial Day, like just about all the Memorial Days of the last decade, I find myself wishing we had real political leaders who kept us out of these useless tragedies, or were really willing to risk their careers to end them. Unfortunately, about all we're left with are the opportunists, crooks, and nonentities who run things now.

America's saddest acre won't be closing anytime soon.

UPDATE: Speaking of Vietnam, Dana Hunter wrote about some of her father's memories of Vietnam today:

My dad used to tell me stories.

He'd been in Vietnam. Infantry, United States Army. He'd gotten drafted while switching colleges (never let it be said grades aren't important: they can keep you from getting shot, for instance). And it was a hard year. That year changed his life. He went to war. He lost half his hearing when someone shot a .45 near his ear in a tunnel; he'd had his jaw broken by a bullet; he still has bits of shrapnel working their way out of his chest from a grenade wound he took to the ankle. He still won't sit with his back to a door. And for years, he could only allow bits and pieces of that year to surface. He'd talk about it, but only in fragments. Some of it he barely talked about at all.

Memorials

Each of the dead has stories to tell, and each of them is missed by someone. That's the universal tragedy of war.

Speaking of stories, somehow this one by Army LTC Robert Bateman made the rounds back in 2007 and I missed it:

"10:36 hours: The clapping starts at the E-Ring. That is the outermost of the five rings of the Pentagon and it is closest to the entrance to the building. This clapping is low, sustained, hearty. It is applause with a deep emotion behind it as it moves forward in a wave down the length of the hallway.

"A steady rolling wave of sound it is, moving at the pace of the soldier in the wheelchair who marks the forward edge with his presence. He is the first. He is missing the greater part of one leg, and some of his wounds are still suppurating. By his age I expect that he is a private, or perhaps a private first class.

"Captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels meet his gaze and nod as they applaud, soldier to soldier. Three years ago when I described one of these events, those lining the hallways were somewhat different. The applause a little wilder, perhaps in private guilt for not having shared in the burden ... yet.

Fridays at the Pentagon

I spent most of my adult life working with and around people like this. They are good people - maybe a little conservative for my tastes, but good people. Their sense of duty shows in this story, the duty of superiors to their people as much as the reverse. So does their sense of honor. You might think, based on things I've written before that this is an odd thing for me to write, but articles like that are more about the rare opportunists who excel in the civilian world.

So, if you wonder why, instead of extolling the exploits of Seal Team 6, I focus on the cost of the wars we wage, it's because I've seen that cost for far too long. I've seen it in broken minds, broken bodies, and amusing stories of comrades long gone. As I wrote in my first Memorial Day post:

To be a young soldier in a war is to learn the meaning of "choiceless". They are usually told what to do, where to go, and what not to do or where not to go. The consequences for not following those directions can be drastic. They are often even told when they can sleep and eat, in contradiction to what seems like the most basic human instincts. When they are sent to a war their only choices are to serve or face jail, or worse. That's their duty.

Our duty is to make sure that they aren't sent into a war for frivolous reasons, which as I've mentioned before, we have not done. The other part of our responsibility is to help the soldiers who are hurt in those wars as well as we are able. In that way we've also failed to do our duty.

I think the best way we can thank all these people for what they have done for us is to live up to our end of the bargain.

A Way To Say Thank You

We've done a really lousy job of that lately.

What Can We Afford?

Updated 11:30 AM, Dec. 3

Caption: Soldiers from Company A, 3-187th Infantry watch from an observation post as bombs are dropped on insurgent positions during Operation Iron Blade II in Ghazni Province Nov. 28. Blowing stuff up, then maybe we'll rebuild it later. As they used to say in the Army "Same shit, different day."

Image credit: Lt. Col. David Fivecoat/U.S. Army

Those of you who thought you'd never see the day I wrote this, swallow whatever you're drinking before you read the next paragraph.

Ready? Ed Rendell is right:

"I question the value of us being there at all," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview. "I have a great deal of faith in President Obama and in (Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton and I want to believe that their strategy is the right one for the country. But I'm not sure 10 years from now and with all that money invested, things are going to be measurably better."

He argues war funding would be better used to build schools, roads and bridges at home.

Obama's Isolation Grows On The Afghanistan War

Image credit: Part of this graphic from USA Today.

Readers may remember that I haven't been kind to Gov. Rendell in the past. But this time he's right, and this accompanying graphic shows his opinion reflects that of quite a few Americans:

This is a legitimate worry, particularly if you take deficit spending seriously. We aren't spending money to employ Americans building what's needed here in America. We're paying, for the most part, foreigners to destroy (and then rebuild) Afghanistan.

Over at Salon, Justin Elliot points out the reason that Rendell is focusing on this issue:

Improving infrastructure has been a signature issue for Rendell, whose tenure as governor is ending in January. (He has said that he plans to continue co-chairing Building America's Future, a pro-infrastructure group he co-founded with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Bloomberg.) That partly explains his comment -- the war in Afghanistan is expected to cost some $100 billion this year.

Big-name Dem breaks with Obama on Afghanistan

Still, as Elliot points out, this sort of criticism is unusual among Democrats, whatever their motivations. It shouldn't be. The war will keep going on until Congress makes it stop. I doubt we're going to see a President any time soon who is inclined to end the war. There's too much pride and perceived honor at stake there.

Caption: Private security contractors by nationality in Afghanistan. The green portion of the graph are Afghan nationals. [Click on graph to enlarge.]

Image credit: Congressional Research Service

Of course, we're doing a lot of the destroying using our own soldiers, plus those of our allies, but there is another group of people we employ on that side of the ledger- armed private security contractors (APSCs). As this graphic shows, they are mostly foreigners, at least, "foreigners" in the sense that they're not Americans. Most are actually from Afghanistan.

On the building side of things, the numbers don't look any better. Here's a table from a 2009 CRS report (PDF) on war contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Table 4. DOD Contractor Personnel in Afghanistan (as of September 2009)

	Total Contractors	U.S. Citizens	Third-Country Nationals	Local Nationals
Number	104,101	9,322	16,349	78,430
Percent of Total	100%	9%	16%	75%
Source: CENTCOM 4th Quarter Contractor Census Report.

That's right, fewer than 10 percent of the people we're paying to support the war effort and rebuild the country are U.S. citizens. Since the service members and civilian DoD employees are mostly going to keep their jobs even if there is no war, it looks like the net for American employment is about 10,000 jobs for $100 billion spent. That's about $10 million for every American citizen employed. As some may recall, a good rule of thumb for how much money is needed to create one job for one year is about $100,000. It's not going to always be an accurate number, but it's a good round number to use for estimating. It's certainly not true for Afghanistan. Each job for an American citizen in Afghanistan costs about 100 times that much.

In short, we could be employing roughly 100 times as many Americans by spending that money on infrastructure, or other necessary things in the United States.

That's a million jobs, by the way - a million jobs that aren't being produced in this country, because we're spending them on a fruitless war in a place that has little strategic value to us.

This quick analysis doesn't even take into account that we won't receive much direct benefit from any of the spending that's going on in Afghanistan. What we will get out of it, if things go well, is a more secure world. Given how things are going over there, though, my guess is that if anything, we'll end up with a less secure world. Nor am I taking into account the fact that the defense budget has been increasing at least partly due to the necessity of replacing worn out or destroyed equipment. Meanwhile, we're giving up lots of things that would make America a better place to pay for this: infrastructure, space exploration, education, health care, and green energy. That's the sort of thing we could be buying, if our priorities weren't so out of whack.

For all our sakes, a lot more Democrats than Ed Rendell better start speaking up soon, or we may never see the end of this waste.

We can't afford it anymore.

UPDATE (Dec. 3): A logical question to ask after reading that the government is using money that could have created a million jobs here is "Is that what's actually happening?" That's not an easy question to answer, but I think the answer, given how our politicians behave these days, is yes.

If we were to speculate that we were in a useless war but, incredibly, our government was otherwise competent and willing to do what was necessary, then it could be said that this isn't a good number. In that case, the government would be spending on many of the priorities I mentioned anyway, at least that have a positive effect on the economy. It would certainly spend on improvements like infrastructure and education, and borrow the money where necessary. Since this government is competent and has done what is necessary to take care of the economy, we could also surmise that the economy would eventually create many of those jobs anyway. In this world, that million jobs is just an opportunity cost that probably doesn't mean all that much.

Of course, that's not the world we live in. In our world, this crazy-ass America where politicians won't raise taxes no matter what, every dollar for defense or bailing out banks has to come from somewhere. In this world, the government has chosen, in effect, not to create a million jobs, but instead spend that money on a foreign war. Here, in this world, the economy can't create jobs, because there's not anywhere near enough consumer demand.

So yes, in this America of 2009-2011, that means we gave up a million jobs to destroy someone else's country, and maybe build part of it back up again.

UPDATE 2: Just a quick note about something obvious: Yes, I'm neglecting what are no doubt tens of thousands of jobs created or maintained in the U.S. to manage that $100 billion expenditure and deal with the logistical and ordinance production issues stateside. Why? When you can answer the question "What's the difference between tens of thousands and a million?" with something like "At least one order of magnitude, and possibly two", you'll be on your way to understanding.

The "million jobs" number is a very rough one. It might be 500,000 when all is said and done, or it might be 1.5 million. It's a lot relative to the number of jobs created in the economy the second half of this year.

UPDATE 3: Over at FireDogLake, David Swanson explores alternatives to using defense as a jobs program. Worth a read, I think.

Recommended Reading

Caption: U.S. Army paratroopers prepare to load into a CH-47 Chinook helicopter during an air assault mission to detain a known militant in the Bermel district of Paktika province, Afghanistan, Oct. 13, 2009. The paratroopers are assigned to the 25th Infantry Division's Company B, 3rd
Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team.

Image credit: U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Andrya Hill


Tom Englehardt of Tom's Dispatch left a diary at FireDogLake today that's well worth reading. It's a report of a visit to Afghanistan by Ann Jones, to U.S. Army forces in the area. Here's a snippet:

Having been critical of American policies from the get-go, I saw nothing on the various Army bases I visited to change my mind. One day at that FOB, preparing to go on a mission, the sergeant in charge wrote the soldiers’ names on the board, followed by “Terp” to designate the Afghan-American interpreter who would accompany us, and “In Bed,” which meant me. He made a joke about reporters who are more gung-ho than soldiers. Not me. And I wasn’t alone. I had already met a lot of older guys on other bases, mostly reservists who had jobs at home they felt passionately about — teachers, coaches, musicians — and wives and children they loved, who just wanted to go home. One said to me, “Maybe if I were ten years younger I could get into it, but I’m not a boy anymore.”

The Army had sent me a list of ground rules for reporters — mostly commonsense stuff like don’t print troop strength or battle plans. I also got a checklist of things to bring along. It was the sort of list moms get when sending their kids off to camp: water bottle, flashlight, towel, soap, toilet paper (for those excursions away from base), sleeping bag, etc. But there was other stuff too: ballistic eyewear, fireproof gloves, big knife, body armor, and Kevlar helmet. Considering how much of my tax dollar goes to the Pentagon, I thought the Army might have a few spare flak jackets to lend to visiting reporters, but no, you have to bring your own.

Here Be Dragons
MRAPs, Sprained Ankles, Air Conditioning, Farting Contests, and Other Snapshots from the American War in Afghanistan

Jones, whose father was a World War I veteran. Anyone who is at all familiar with the working conditions of that war will understand why she had a few things to say about the conditions in Afghanistan:

Caption: A new mine-resistant, ambush-protected all-terrain vehicle, built specifically for the mountainous Afghan terrain, parks next to a larger MRAP, MaxxPro Dash. The first M-ATVs designated for Southern Afghanistan arrived at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, by air transport, Oct. 22, 2009.

Image credit: U.S. Army


A Public Affairs officer warned me that driving was “very dangerous,” but the only problem we met was a U.S. military convoy headed in the opposite direction, holding up traffic. For more than an hour we sat by the highway with dozens of Afghan motorists watching a parade of enormous flatbed trucks hauling other big vehicles: bulldozers and armored personnel carriers of various vintages from Humvees to MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles). My friend said, “We don’t understand. They have all these big machines. They put them on trucks and haul them up and down the road. Why?”

I couldn’t get an answer, but I got a clue when I took an Army chopper from Bagram to a smaller base and met a private contractor partly responsible for Army vehicle maintenance. He gave me a CD to pass on to his foreman at the FOB I was headed for. Rather than music, it held an instruction manual for repairing the latest model M-ATV, a hulking personnel carrier with a V-shaped hull designed to repel the blast of roadside bombs. These are currently replacing the older MRAPs and deadly low-slung Humvees. The Humvees are, in turn, being passed off to the Afghan National Army, whose soldiers are more expendable than ours. (You see what I mean about entitlement.) Standing in a lot full of new M-ATVs already in need of fixing, the foreman seemed pleased indeed to get that CD.

It’s a measure of our sense of entitlement, I think, that while the Taliban and their allies still walk to war wearing traditional baggy cotton pants and shirts, we Americans incessantly invent things to make ourselves more “secure.” Since no one can ever be secure, least of all in war, every new development is bound to prove insufficient and almost guaranteed to create new problems.

Here Be Dragons
MRAPs, Sprained Ankles, Air Conditioning, Farting Contests, and Other Snapshots from the American War in Afghanistan

[I added the photo of the vehicles and the caption.]

It's a well written description of what it's like for soldiers in the Afghanistan theatre. As someone who was around the military for a long time, it reads true. It's well worth a read.

The Afghanistan Org Chart

I'm not very good at organization charts. As I explained some time ago, they don't always reflect the real relationships in an organization:

I've never been good at organization charts. Usually, the only things I'm really interested in when I'm part of an organization is whom I'm working for, who, if anyone, is working for me, and who's running the show. Beyond that, it's all pretty academic to me. That's what bosses have to know.

The USA Eight: Odds and Ends: Organization Charts

In my experience, it's actually just more useful to observe whose ideas and policies are implemented and whose aren't. Organization charts never show the networks of trust that exist within an organization - who trusts whose opinion, who has the dirt on whom, etc. They also don't usually reflect the real division of responsibilities that result from a particular person being in a place to affect the entire organization's success or failure. Sometimes, someone whose name is in the middle of that org chart in an inconsequential looking box can be the one who makes or breaks an operation.

That latter consideration is something to keep in mind when discussing the seeming demotion of General David Petraeus from CENTCOM commander to commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. In truth, Patraeus is now in a position to affect events more than he was at CENTCOM, and he will be doing the thing that just about any general wants to do - running a war effort. As the Marine Corps Times observed by publishing this Associated Press article:

The Afghanistan job is technically a demotion from Petraeus’ current post, where he oversees U.S. military involvement across the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan and several Central Asian nations.

Yet no one who has worked with him thinks that’s how he’ll see it. “He’s getting another opportunity to step into a war at a critical inflection point,” said [president of the Center for the New American Security John] Nagl, a retired Army officer who worked for Petraeus in drafting the Army’s counterinsurgency manual. “So this is by no means a step down.”

Petraeus readies for new Afghanistan duties

Command of NATO forces has been a position for a four-star general, which is what both Patraeus and McChrystal are. There is no loss of status here, and Patraeus is doing something that every general officer wants to do: run a war.

Thinking of this as a demotion is wrong-headed. I've seen at least a few statements to that effect, both in comments at progressive blogs and articles on some conservative ones, but it's just not so. Rather than assume it was, Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz called an expert for an opinion:

In returning to a battlefield command -- similar to the one he held in Iraq before being promoted to CENTCOM chief-- Petraeus may be the only combatant commander to have made such a move, and certainly the only one in the post-Cold War period when combatant commanders achieved their singular influence, says [Derek] Reveron, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College.

But replacing Stanley McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan probably should not be seen as a demotion of Petraeus, Reverson told me in a phone interview this morning. Rather the move underscores the signature importance of Afghanistan to U.S. policymakers and its operational significance to the military. "The job that Petraeus has is the most important job that any general or admiral could have," Reveron says.

The Petraeus 'Demotion'

In short, it's more like being transferred laterally to your dream job. At least, I can't imagine a flag officer thinking otherwise. It would be like a software engineer saying "No, I don't want to run that new DBMS design project. I'd rather repair this website." My guess is that President Obama had to do no more persuading than to ask Petraeus "Do you want the job?"

Afterword: Just for the record, I called for President Obama to fire General McChrystal. I have no feelings about the general one way or another, but as many folks have pointed out, we were in dangerous constitutional territory if his remarks and behavior were allowed to stand. McChrystal may have been right in his criticisms of various Obama Administration officials and their policy, but he was clearly wrong to express them publicly. Part of serving in the military is to give up the right to make such criticisms while staying on the job.

Had an infantry captain under McChrystal's command said such things about a superior in a public forum, he would have been lucky to be allowed to resign quietly.

Juan Cole On The McChrystal Fiasco

Caption: U.S. Army Spc. Marcelino Villarreal, from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 162nd Field Artillery Regiment, Puerto Rico National Guard, provides security while Soldiers from Charlie Company, 26th Field Artillery Regiment recover a humvee stuck on a muddy road in the Khost Province, Afghanistan, March 25, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Isaac A. Graham)

A suitable metaphor for our current condition in Afghanistan, I think.

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Isaac A. Graham, U.S. Army/Wikimedia

Juan Cole has an interesting analysis of the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the now former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. It concludes:

[Afghanistan President Hamid] Karzai appears to be attempting to strike a deal with the very Taliban and insurgents that Obama says he is pledged to uproot and destroy.

How can that make sense?

No wonder McChrystal was so frustrated that he went around his line of command to the press. The real reason for this contretemps is that Obama does not have a realistic, sharply defined set of goals in Afghanistan, and he has not been good about cracking the whip and getting everyone in his administration on the same page on AfPak.

McChrystal Drama is Sideshow;
Can Obama define a realistic Goal?

All of which, I think, is basically true. There was clearly a great deal of dissension between McChrystal and his superiors about what to do in Afghanistan, and a lot of hostility between the major players. Hostility can work, provided there is reason to think the campaign is successful. In fact, hostility is most noticeable in situations where things aren't working out, because those differing opinions lead to different notions about what and who is to blame for the failure. There's little reason to think that hostility is working to our benefit here, and a whole lot of reason to suspect the opposite.

A Prediction That Didn't Work Out

I love it when I'm wrong. That may sound perverse, but in reality it means that, for once, someone didn't screw up on behalf of the country. From a FireDogLake live blog:

MSNBC’s Jim Miklaszewski is reporting that Pentagon sources confirm that President Barack Obama has relieved Gen. Stanley McChrystal from his command of forces in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama has decided to relieve Gen. Stanley McChrystal of his command over all U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, sources tell NBC News.

Obama is scheduled to make an official 1:30 p.m. EDT announcement about the general.

MSNBC is also reporting (now confirmed by a CNN national seurity source) that Obama has tapped Gen. David Petraeus, current head of US Central COmmand, as McChrystal’s replacement.

McChrystal Relieved of Command; Obama Names Petraeus as Replacement in Afghanistan

As the title says, Gen. Petraeus will replace McChrystal. I'm not sure that the Surgin' General is the best choice as a replacement, but at least as CENTCOM commander he's familiar with the situation.

Just yesterday, I predicted that Obama wouldn't do this. I'm glad to see that at least he won't overlook the obvious when it's about to kick him in the gonads. I'm also glad because losing control of the military would be a very bad thing for America. Plenty of countries have learned what that means, and very few remain democracies today.

Beware The Rubicon

Caption: U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, left, talks with a Czech soldier, right, during his visit to Forward Operating Base Shank, Afghanistan, Aug. 21, 2009. McChrystal is the commander of International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. (DoD photo by Spc. Matthew Thompson, U.S. Army/Released)

Image credit: Spc. Matthew Thompson, U.S. Army

It's well past quitting time in Washington, DC, and it appears that General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. Army commander in Afghanistan, still has his job. This cannot be a good thing, even for Stanley McChrystal.

For those who aren't up on this story, Rolling Stone magazine published an article on McChrystal that included a number of quotes from McChrystal and anonymous aides, that in one way or another disparage President Obama's handling of the war in Afghanistan. In his response to the article, Gen. McChrystal did not indicate that he had been misquoted.

Reportedly, Gen. McChrystal has offered to resign, and President Obama is considering whether to accept.

This is a serious thing. It is what President Harry Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur as commander of U.N. forces in Korea during the Korean War. Publicly criticizing one's commander is insubordination, which is a court martial offense in the military. As former Army Colonel Patrick Lang explained today:

Our tradition is designed to prevent the emergence of "Caesarism" as a method of picking leaders or determining basic national policy. To maintain that principle Macarthur was fired on the advice of George Marshall. What McChrystal has done is to challenge President Obama. Everyone in the armed forces knows that. The notion has emerged in the COIN community that Obama is weak and can be bullied into removing the time restriction that he has placed on the Afghanistan COIN campaign plan that he adopted at their urging last year. Macarthur implicitly threatened both Roosevelt and Truman with the possibility that he would mobilize Republican politicos against them. The COIN crowd think that the same method can be used against this president. They have been willing to bet that he is no Truman and that Gates and Clinton do not have Marshall's strength. The effrontery of the deed in feeding this reporter all this material without placing it off the record is clearly a challenge to civilian control of policy.

See the McChrystal post on 30 May, 2010

I added that link on "Ceasarism", since it's possible that not everyone understands the implication of that term. "COIN", incidentally, is a shortening of "counterinsurgency", the sort of military campaign we're waging in Afghanistan. McChrystal is supposed to be an expert at it. The article that post's title refers to provides an example of McChrystal attempting to influence policy through the press, a dubious practice, also. Iraq War veteran and Vote Vets blogger Jon Soltz wrote:

The open disdain and personal ridicule of the President and his advisors by General Stanley McChrystal and his subordinates in the new issue of Rolling Stone leaves only two acceptable options: Either General McChrystal resigns or is fired.

If he has any honor, he'll step down.

I know something about this. In 2006, I worked with two Generals, appearing in national television ads critical of President Bush and his strategy in Iraq. Or, should I say, retired Generals. Major Generals Paul D. Eaton and John Batiste each made the painful decision to leave the military they loved, so they could speak out. To that point, they had held their tongues.

Why?

Because the order and efficacy of our Armed Forces falls apart without respect for the chain of command. Whether it's a grunt respecting his company commander, or a General respecting the Commander in Chief, every single thing is predicated on the integrity of the chain of command. As soon as someone - especially someone as high up as General McChrystal - violates that respect, every single person under him begins to not only question the orders they've been given from above, but is given the signal that it's OK to openly disagree or mock his or her superior.

McChrystal Must Resign - or Be Fired

Being part of the United States military means that certain freedoms that most of us have, like speaking out or quitting when our bosses do something unethical or just plain stupid, is not always an option. There are acceptable ways of disagreeing with a decision, and it's usually OK for generals to resign if they're not in the middle of a battle or some other emergency. What is not OK is loudly and repeatedly criticizing one's commander in public.

I think it's unlikely you'll find many former U.S. military officers who agree with letting McChrystal stay on.

This could also be a problem for Gen. McChrystal, should he be kept on. He will not have the trust of his bosses, and has openly disparaged some of them. Will the President and his advisers trust McChrystal's advice or warnings in the future? That is something you don't need to be in the military to see how it could work out. That McChrystal is in the military, it seems to me, just makes the working relationship that much harder to maintain.

If President Obama lets this stand, which it appears to me he will, he will have set yet another dreadful precedent for official lawlessness. In addition, his position with the military will be weakened - they will be less likely to respect him than they do now. That cannot be a good thing. And Lang's warning about Ceasarism was not an idle one - what keeps the military under civilian authority is tradition and respect for the chain of command. If Obama ignores that, there is a real danger that this will be the first of many insubordinate acts by general officers. As Ceasar and many later generals since have demonstrated, that cannot be a good thing.

(h/t Taylor Marsh for a couple of those links.)

Afterword: Due to my past employment in the defense industry, I'm often reluctant to discuss issues related to the military. This is one of those times. There is a real danger here, though, both to the military and our form of government.

I have never met Gen. McChrystal, nor do I recall any discussions about him with former colleagues, so I have only the public record of his actions as a guide.

I should probably also explicitly point out that I've never been in the military, so I cannot be considered an expert on things like military law or discipline. That's one of the reasons I looked for those quotes. Thanks to my background, I just know what to look for.

Quote Of The Day

Glenn Greenwald, referring to a report that says that terrorist activity directed at America has increased in 2010:

Maybe, one day, we might want to ask: "why"? Is it because they Hate Us For Our Freedoms more than ever before? Are we Extra Free now, thus increasing their Hatred to brand new levels? Or are they still angry about George Bush's cowboy swagger even though he's been gone for a-year-and-a-half? Or is it that those Crazy Primitive Hateful Muslim Fanatics are being pumped full of more unfair anti-American conspiracy theories than before? Or does something else explain this? Is there perhaps anything we're doing to cause it? Asking all that may not be as fun or as profitable as picking out all the new rights we're going to restrict and renounce and the shiny new powers we're going to vest in our leaders each time there is another attempted Terrorist attack, but it's probably still a good idea to do it anyway.

The Unasked Question

For the life of me, I cannot understand why, when he was elected as much as anything to end them, President Obama has continued the same failed policies of the Bush Administration toward the Muslim world and terrorism. Yet here we are, trying to avoid losing any more rights and knowing full well that we'll be stuck in both Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of his term of office.

Dear Whoever Reads This

Image credit: Logo for kmail

As readers may have noticed, there hasn't been much new material here recently. Reality has been getting too depressing lately, I needed an escape. Sadly, I still read my e-mails, and I received this a little while ago from someone who claims to be the Vice President:

From: Vice President Joe Biden
To: My Real Self
Subject: Afghanistan
Date: Dec 2, 2009 7:09 PM

Real Self --

Last night, President Obama laid out his plan to defend our national interest by refocusing our efforts on three clear goals: defeating al Qaeda, stabilizing Pakistan, and breaking the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan.

To achieve these goals, the President has authorized the rapid deployment of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, with a firm commitment to begin bringing our troops home in 2011.

It's a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration, and a new, focused strategy that can succeed.

Please take a moment to watch the President's address to the nation and read more about his plan:

http://my.democrats.org/AfghanistanAddress

Our new strategy ends the era of blank checks for Afghanistan's leaders, facilitates a responsible transition to Afghan security forces, and begins bringing our troops home in 2011.

Please take a moment to listen to President Obama outline his plan -- and pass this along to anyone you know who wants to learn more:

http://my.democrats.org/AfghanistanAddress

Thank you,

Vice President Joe Biden

I saved myself half an hour by reading the speech instead. Turns out, I got all that fence-straddling silliness over with in about five minutes. Here's where it gets particularly good:

Let me be clear: none of this will be easy. The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will be an enduring test of our free society, and our leadership in the world. And unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the 20th Century, our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.

Obama's Afghan speech: Full text

Of course, this "enduring test" will start ending in eighteen months. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, there was a little something for everybody: the generals get more troops and resources, the Afghan government gets a new lease on life, the critics of that government's corruption get a wave, and the peaceniks get a schedule. It's all very Obamaesque.

I couldn't help myself. I wrote back:

I read the speech, and I didn't see a plan there. What I saw looked like a declaration of principles - goals if you will. The plan still looks a bit sketchy. We've been killing people in Afghanistan for eight years now. It doesn't seem to have gotten us any closer to a solution than we were in 2003. If anything, things are worse now. Every time we bomb a mosque, a home, or a wedding party we create new potential enemies, and new groups of people who want us to just get the hell out of their country. How do you get around that? How are we going to find the Taliban (or Al Qaeda) in a country where few of us speak the language and we have even fewer friends than we did when we started? Afghans are mountain people. They're naturally distrustful of strangers to begin with. When those strangers come and kill some of them for seemingly no reason, it's not going to make them more kindly disposed to us. We've been doing that for eight years.

How are we going to make Afghanistan's government less corrupt? Will we, or the United Nations, be taking it over?

Afghanistan isn't so much a country as group of individual territories loosely tied together by a central government. If it ever had a national identity, it's been savaged by the last three decades of conflict and theocracy. Are we really prepared to sign up to change all that? Counterinsurgency operations take time. Think in terms of decades. Do we have that long? When are you guys going to fix the economy, instead of producing ever more expensive band-aids? We could use those tens of billions of dollars fixing our own country, instead of breaking someone else's.

It's great that NATO is supporting this effort. That's important. But I just can't get over the idea that this is all way too late and will be way more costly than it's worth to anyone. I hope that I'm wrong, because it's clear we're in it for the long haul regardless.

The Vice President probably won't read it, but maybe someone will.

Mine has been a gradual change from reluctant support for what seemed like a necessary war in Afghanistan, to a gradual realization that we've made such a mess of it that there may be no way to recover the situation, even if we can adequately define what "recover the situation" means. Do we stop at finding Osama Bin Laden (Remember him? Big terrorist type; had something to do with 9/11?), or do we try to leave a stable national government in a place that hasn't really had one for decades?

I think I'll go back to ignoring reality for a while longer. It's clearly a popular avocation.

UPDATE (Dec. 3): As usual, Jon Stewart's take on this is instructive:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
30,000
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The short version - forget Vietnam, this sounds a lot like Iraq.

Under The Rug No Longer

Caption: From left, President Barack Obama, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel V. Wright and Army Brig. Gen. Michael S. Repass salute as a team of soldiers carry the remains of Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin during a dignified transfer ceremony on Dover Air Force Base, Del., Oct. 29, 2009. U.S. Air Force photo by Jason Minto

Image credit: Jason Minto/U.S. Army

One thing that I would never have thought of criticizing Barack Obama for is this:

President Obama before dawn this morning paid tribute to the 18 U.S. military personnel killed in Afghanistan Monday, making a surprise trip to Dover Air Force Base as their bodies returned home to the United States.

The solemn visit - Obama's first such experience since taking office and lifting the ban on photographing the war dead - comes as he's wrestling with a decision to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama Makes Surprise Overnight Visit To Dover To Honor Troops Killed In Afghanistan

For eight years now, we've been hiding this part of the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush Administration tried to hide the rows of caskets from us, as though they were some sort of distraction. They never asked Americans to give up anything to pursue those wars, other than the lives of the ones who died or lost their loved ones.

As you might imagine, bringing these losses to light doesn't sit too well with the people who started those wars, and then failed to win them:

Cheney, on Fox News Radio's John Gibson Show yesterday [Oct. 29]:

I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around...It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this.

It's not clear exactly what Cheney is referring to when she says, "Bush used to do it without the cameras."
...
[A]s CBS's Mark Knoller reported yesterday, Obama was the first president to visit arriving dead at Dover during the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq -- meaning that when it came to taking trips to Dover like Obama did yesterday morning, Bush never used to "do it" at all.

Liz Cheney Suggests Obama Honored Fallen Soldiers For The Publicity

Like her father, Liz Cheney isn't shy about using weasel words like "I think that". She didn't check whether what she said was actually true before she said it, which might be excusable if she hadn't anticipated the question. I suspect that she's not going to retract this assertion, however. Let's see if I'm wrong on that one.

Even if I were in favor of these wars (at one time I was in favor of the war in Afghanistan) I would still think that hiding the bodies of returning military personnel in this way does more to dishonor them than publishing a few pictures. Among Americans, the human cost of these wars is paid almost exclusively by the military and their families. Sweeping the losses they experience in wars under the rug does nothing to honor their sacrifice. We should openly acknowledge and appreciate those sacrifices. As Blue Texan reminds us, past conservative Presidents weren't shy about visiting the returning dead.

That some conservatives seem to think otherwise, and that there are folks in the press corps in DC who take such assertions seriously, shows how starkly isolated these folks are from the rest of us.

UPDATE: Added the links in the second to last paragraph, which discuss many of the human costs of these wars we're fighting.

Late Change In Afghanistan Strategy

Caption: Construction Representative Robert L. Williams (far right) shows the Cadets a gate at the Ministry of Defense that has some foundation problems and asks them how they would design the foundation to resolve the issue. (Photo by Leslie J. Wright, Capacity Development Program Manager)

Image credit: Leslie J. Wright/U.S. Army

Spencer Ackerman discussed General Stanley McChrystal's operational philosophy for Afghanistan today at The Washington Independent:

That approach is familiar to anyone who read McChrystal’s counterinsurgency guidance or the “metrics” he set out with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Protect the population. Give the population material reasons to support the Afghan government and NATO. “Prioritize responsive and accountable governance,” which appears like a pipe dream now that Hamid Karzai looks to have stolen an election. Reorganize the NATO command to better fit these missions. Reverse the Taliban’s momentum in the next year — or, he doesn’t say explicitly, mitigate failure. It’s also, as Josh Foust has observed, more of a quantitative change from McChrystal’s predecessor than a qualitative one.

It’s Not Just Resources: McChrystal’s Message to Obama, and to the Military

This strikes me as the proper strategy. In fact, it strikes me as the only strategy that ever plausibly could have worked in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, I just can't get over the feeling that it's about four years too late.

We passed on the "material reasons" idea by invading Iraq for no good reason. That diverted money and resources that could have been used, not only to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and the other Al Qaeda leaders, but to improve the country. As The Globalist's Stephen Richter observed last month:

[I]nstead of focusing its mission on Afghanistan and taking the opportunity to deal with neighboring Pakistan — and, in turn, improving its own tumultuous relations with India — the Bush Administration suffered from outright mission creep and utter delusion when instead it changed its focus to Iraq.

To this day, George Bush's successor, Barack Obama, still struggles with accepting the lesson that an opportunity missed can sadly mean an opportunity lost.

To succeed in the critical and extremely worthy Afghanistan-turnaround mission would have required relentless focus. By turning Afghanistan into a sideshow to the war in Iraq, the execution of that vital mission could not succeed.

Why Afghanistan Is Lost

I can't claim to know what the average citizen of Afghanistan is thinking, but I think if I were one I'd be wondering why the Americans and NATO are still there. I'd probably also be wondering why they don't seem to do anything but blow the place to smithereens.

That's because there's lots more water under the bridge than just a stolen election. The air strikes that Gen. McChrystal has rightly limited have killed wedding parties, our allies' soldiers, and a whole lot of other people. The lack of accountability has honked off Afghanistan's leaders:

A US spokesman said that if "innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologise and express our condolences". But the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, called on the US and its president-elect, Barack Obama, to stop civilian killings.

"Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes. This is my first demand of the new president of the United States."

US warplanes 'bomb Afghan wedding party'

Short of repeatedly bombing mosques while services are in session, I can't think of a better way to make new enemies than bombing wedding parties. But that isn't the first such incident, nor is it likely to be the last. It hasn't helped us with our allies, either.

It's astonishing that an army that went through a long, failed counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign has not learned this lesson yet, but this isn't like fighting the Wehrmacht. Civilian casualties will come back to haunt you here, and there are already a lot of ghosts in Afghanistan.

So, good strategy though it might be, it's a day late and a dollar short.

UPDATE: Added a (somewhat) expository link for "a lot of ghosts". More than one empire has reached its limits there. Maybe the real reason it's a "burial ground for empires" is that only an empire that had fallen so far that idiots or maniacs run it would try to conquer the place.

As If We Don't Have Enough Challenges In Afghanistan

Speaking of religious stupidity, what is up with this?

A report by Al Jazeera English shows soldiers in Afghanistan passing around Bibles in Pashto and Dari, the languages of Afghanistan, presumably to be distributed. The chaplain leading the discussion acknowledges that “proselytizing” is against military rules, but one soldier says, “you can give gifts“[.]

Al Jazeera report: U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan have Pashto Bibles, told to ‘hunt people for Jesus.’

Let's forget about the the establishment clause for a while, and let's forget about those nit-picky little military regulations and just consider what happened to the last guy in Afghanistan who tried to convert from Islam:

The sensitivity of the issue [of apostasy laws] is highlighted by the case of an Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity -- creating an outcry in the United States and other countries, which pressured Afghanistan for his release.

After an Afghan court dropped the charges against Abdul Rahman, 41, Muslim clerics threatened to incite people to kill him and hundreds demonstrated against the court decision.

'Apostasy' Laws Widespread In Muslim World

It's not enough for the Bible-thumpers that they have endangered our soldiers lives with "faith-based" suicide counseling. Now they're actively encouraging Afghan civilians to endanger themselves, so they can exchange one set of superstitions for another.

It's one thing to talk about one's own beliefs with people who are interested, or even to facilitate someone's conversion if he freely expresses a desire. It's quite another to tale steps to spread a belief, particularly when we're already mistrusted by many in the Muslim world.

What's wrong with these people?

UPDATE (May 5): Apparently, the Army has noticed this and done something about it:

The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.

Reuters News says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty -- including those based in places like Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.

U.S. Military Destroys Soldier's Bibles

According to the story, a spokeswoman for the military said that none of the Bibles had been distributed. (h/t PZ Myers)

Army Suicide Rate Increasing

Image credit: U.S. Army

The caption reads: 1st Lt. Erik Wiesehan, of Canby, Ore., maintains security during Brig. Gen. Robin Swanís visit to a Husseniyah marketplace Jan. 22. Wiesehan is the essential services coordinator for 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment "Wolfhounds," 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team "Warrior," 25th Infantry Division, currently attached to 3rd BCT, 4th Inf. Div., Multi-National Division - Baghdad. Swan is the deputy commanding general for the 4th Infantry Division and MND-B.


The Los Angeles Times reports:

The suicide rate among Army soldiers reached its highest level in three decades in 2008, military officials said Thursday in a report that pointed to the inadequacy of anti-suicide efforts undertaken in recent years.

At least 128 Army soldiers took their own lives last year -- an estimated suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000, a sharp increase from the 2007 rate of 16.8.

Army Sees Sharp Rise In Suicide Rate

American military involvement in Vietnam largely ended in 1973. The article indicates later that the Army didn't start tracking suicide rates until 1978, so how this compares to the Vietnam era is likely a subject of conjecture. The military, the Army in particular, had a difficult time after the war, with high rates of drug abuse and other disciplinary issues. There seems little doubt what the cause is this time:

"Why do the numbers keep going up? We cannot tell you," Army Secretary Pete Geren said.

Army officials believe that contributing factors include emotional and psychological stress caused by repeated combat deployments, along with the toll that the tours have taken on marriages.

About a third of suicides occur during deployments abroad, a third after deployments and a third among soldiers who never deploy.

"We all come to the table believing stress is a factor," said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff.

Army Sees Sharp Rise In Suicide Rate

Caution diagnosing such a phenomenon is wise, since it really is the result of a great many individuals making the decision to end their lives. Every decision has its own reasoning. Still, the high rates of deployments overseas to a combat zone probably have something to do with it, and the Army admits as much.

Beyond that, though, all I really can do is ask questions. What can be done to keep this situation from getting worse, besides ending the need for the deployments? I have to wonder if the recent appearance of dimwitted faith-based suicide prevention strategies have anything to do with this:

Here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), we get countless complaints about religiously based mental health and counseling programs, which, over the past few years, have been systematically replacing proven psychological and medical approaches to a multitude of issues faced by military personnel.
...
In March 2008, this presentation, titled "A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," was shown at a commander's call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath's Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase "Purpose-Driven" in its title implies, also incorporated into this presentation is the wisdom of presidential candidate inquisitor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, a book that, second only to the Bible itself, is the most heavily promoted religious book in the military.

Creationism: The Latest In Military Suicide Prevention

While the particular example that author Chris Rodda cited was an Air Force program, it's hard to imagine the Army is untouched by this movement. Army Secretary Geren, who was quoted in that report, has been associated in the past with a Christian evangelical organization called "Christian Embassy".

Another question would be, is there any difference in how suicides are being reported now? Back in April, I wrote about Sen. Patty Murray's (D-WA) efforts to get the Veterans Administration to come clean about the suicides they'd been noticing among their clients:

Senator Patty Murray, D-WA, said yesterday that she thinks the Veterans Administration is vastly understating the numbers of soldier suicides:

The Veterans Administration has lied about the number of veterans who have attempted suicide, Sen. Patty Murray said Wednesday, citing internal e-mails that put the number at 12,000 a year while the department was publicly saying it was fewer than 800.

VA Lying About Number Of Veteran Suicides, Senator Charges

VA Caught Witholding Information

It's at least possible that fallout from that scandal has caused the Defense Department to be more ready to count a deaths as suicides than it was before. If the Army had to adjust the way it counts suicides, then that might affect the number, as well. Based on this quote from the New York Times, though, that seems unlikely:

At a news briefing, the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, said the Army wanted to bolster its efforts to prevent suicide and was prepared to allocate the resources, “human and financial,” to do so. The Army had stepped up its efforts in the last two years as the numbers had begun to climb.

But, Mr. Geren cautioned, there are no easy answers. “Is there a silver bullet out there?” he said. “I’m confident there isn’t.”

The Army said that in the last year it had hired more general practitioners, often the first health care providers to come into contact with soldiers in distress. It also hired 250 more providers of mental health care, and wants to hire an additional 50.

Suicides of Soldiers Reach High of Nearly 3 Decades

That would indicate a problem of long standing, not a statistical glitch.

Hopefully, with a new Presidential Administration that's friendlier to science, proper psychological procedures will replace religious nonsense, and the added mental health professionals may help deal with the added stress.

Murder In Mumbai

Image credit: CIA World Factbook.

[Updated on Nov. 30]

Like many people, I'm fascinated and appalled at the events that have just recently ended in Mumbai, India. The attacks seem to have been carried out by a dozen or so people, who apparently arrived by sea. Foreigners, particularly Americans, Britons, and Israelis were singled out as targets or hostages. Two Canadians were killed as well. The raiders were well-armed and clearly had some training. Beyond that, I don't think much can be said until events are reconstructed later.

Outside The Beltway writer Dave Schuler observes:

This wasn’t the same as a suicide bomber blowing him- or herself up in a crowded marketplace. That could have been achieved at a fraction of the cost of this particular set of attacks. These attacks had planning and coordination; the young men who forced their way into some of Mumbai’s fanciest hotels and restaurants had received a level of training and preparation. That incurs a cost; such resources are too valuable just to throw away.

I have no more explanation than anybody else and can only offer a handful of guesses. It may have been a probing attack. If that’s the case Mumbai can expect more such attacks and soon, indeed, I would have already expected a followup.

Terrorist Rampage Ended in Mumbai

I don't know why there'd be an immediate followup. They might need to find a different way to get into Mumbai in the future, or not. In any event, there are very few entities that can just whistle up a ride for a dozen armed men into a possibly foreign city any time it wants. We know who most of them are already, as the New York Times reports:

Officials in Washington said Friday that there was no evidence that the Pakistani government had any role in the attacks. But if evidence were to emerge that the operation had been planned and directed from within Pakistan, that would certainly further escalate tensions between India and Pakistan, bitter, nuclear-armed rivals. It could also provoke an Indian military response, even strikes against militants’ training camps.

U.S. Intelligence Focuses on Pakistani Group

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) is certainly a suspect. Pakistan's longstanding conflict with India over the Kashmir region has been the genesis for much of the terrorism in that region. The Federation of American Scientists observe:

Critics of the ISI say that it has become a state within a state, answerable neither to the leadership of the army, nor to the President or the Prime Minister. The result is there has been no real supervision of the ISI, and corruption, narcotics, and big money have all come into play, further complicating the political scenario. Drug money was used by ISI to finance not only the Afghanistan war, but also the ongoing proxy war against India in Kashmir and Northeast India.

...

The oldest and most widely known militant organization, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), spearheaded the movement for an independent Kashmir. This group declared a cease-fire in 1994. The most powerful of the pro-Pakistani groups is the Hezb-ul-Mujahedin. The other major groups are Harakat-ul Ansar, a group which reportedly has a large number of non-Kashmiris in it, Al Umar, Al Barq, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Lashkar-e Toiba, which is also made up largely of fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of these militants were trained in Afghanistan, where several ISI agents were killed during U.S. air strikes in 1998 against terrorist training camps. Since the defeat of the Taliban, militant training camps have moved to Pakistani Kashmir.

Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI]

[bold emphasis mine].
In short, these guys have been really busy fomenting terrorism in that part of the world. Lashkar-e Taiba is considered the most likely organization to have carried out this raid. Taylor Marsh's observation:

With Lashkar's stunning coordination (assuming the reports to date are correct), the scope and targeting of these bombings elevated India's quiet terrorism challenge to the front pages everywhere. It's one reason why the 9/11 comparison is so apt. Like the once sleeping U.S., India's financial mecca was hit to such devastating proportions as to change the perception of the country, awakening the world to the scope of her enemies, as well as the wider horror revealed. That this trio country region [Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India], so to speak, with all its dangers, including Kashmir, can no longer be ignored as simply tribal areas, border disputes and separate missions. They are one.

India: Anatomy of a Calculated Hit

rings true with me, as it seems to with Patrick Lang and Juan Cole as well. This region has been volatile for a long time. It is only now that we are starting to pay attention. India is the world's second largest country, and its twelfth-ranked economy (as of 2007). Its future is in many respects intertwined with our own, particularly since it is the world's largest democracy. Since India's future is intertwined with its two troubled neighbors, this makes it axiomatic that they, too, are going to require more of our, and the rest of the world's, attention in the future.

UPDATE (Nov. 30): The Guardian's William Dalrymple provides a fascinating look at the tie between the conflict over Kashmir and this week's attacks in Mumbai:

If Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is the most emotive issue for Muslims in the Middle East, then India's treatment of the people of Kashmir plays a similar role among South-Asian Muslims. At the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the state should logically have gone to Pakistan. However, the pro-Indian sympathies of the state's Hindu Maharajah, as well as the Kashmiri origins of the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, led to the state passing instead to India - on the condition that the Kashmiris retained a degree of autonomy.

Successive Indian governments, however, refused to honour their constitutional commitments to the state. The referendum, promised by Nehru at the UN, on whether the state would remain part of India, was never held. Following the shameless rigging of the 1987 local elections, Kashmiri leaders went underground. Soon after, bombings and assassination began, assisted by Pakistan's ISI which ramped up the conflict by sending over the border thousands of heavily armed jihadis.

Mumbai atrocities highlight need for solution in Kashmir

It's well worth a read, I think. (h/t: Lotus)

Juan Cole On Al Qaeda

Image credit: Screenshot of this YouTube taken by Cujo359

Juan Cole, one of the more astute observers of the Middle East, had this to say today about Al Qaeda:

The original al-Qaeda is defeated.

It is a dangerous thing for an analyst to say, because obviously radical Muslim extremists may at some point set off some more bombs and then everyone will point fingers and say how wrong I was.

So let me be very clear that I do not mean that radical Muslim extremism has ceased to exist or that there will never be another bombing at their hands.

I mean the original al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda as a historical, concrete movement centered on Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, with the mujahideen who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s at their core. Al-Qaeda, the 55th Brigade of the Army of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the Taliban. That al-Qaeda. The 5,000 fighters and operatives or whatever number they amounted to.

That original al-Qaeda has been defeated.

On the Seventh Anniversary of September 11: Time to Declare the original al-Qaeda Defeated

Of this, at least, I think there is little doubt. Al Qaeda have not mounted a major terrorist act in the world outside their own countries in several years. The bombings in Britain seem to be related to Al Qaeda only loosely. As others have observed, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri are still on the loose, but as Cole points out, they are both diminished in influence and effectiveness.

Prof. Cole goes on to make an interesting point about Afghanistan:

The Bush administration over-reacted to September 11, misunderstanding it as the action of a traditional state rather than of a small asymmetrical terrorist group. Its occupation of Iraq lengthened al-Qaeda's shelf life. But poor strategy by the Sunni radicals themselvesf brought the full wrath of Iran, the Iraqi Shiites, Jordanian intelligence, and the United States military down on their heads.

"Al-Qaeda in Iraq" is not a reason for the US to extend its occupation of that country, but is rather an epiphenomenon created by the occupation and the political mistakes it made.

On the Seventh Anniversary of September 11: Time to Declare the original al-Qaeda Defeated

I've learned that I disagree with Juan Cole at the risk of being wrong, but I think the original invasion did serve a purpose. At least, it could have if its message, which is that if a government supports terrorism it will lose, had not been diminished by our actions in Iraq and in regard to Pakistan. Whether the initial invasion was an overreaction is at best a nebulous point - the invasion changed a great deal, including the fact that Al Qaeda no longer had its training ground and a strong alliance with a nation's government. What it has in Pakistan is a safe haven, but it is far from the reach of the country's real government, and that government, despite its support of terrorism in India's Kashmir province, doesn't want any more to do with Al Qaeda than Saddam Hussein did.

Our invasion of Iraq, and the growing hatred in our own country for people different from ourselves are both fallout from this war on terrorism. Iraq never should have been invaded - that much is clear to all but the most deluded. The hatred of Muslims and others who don't share the majority view of things in this country is something we need to get over before it destroys us. The fear that countenances the destruction of our freedoms has to end, too.

So it's time to declare the "War On Terror" over, not that it was ever legitimately a war. The enemy, such as they were, are gone. It's time to move on.

In short, it's time for September to end. We have lots to do right here.