Category Archives: Terrorism

Updated: ‘Does It Really, Really Take 100,000 U.S. Troops To Find Osama bin Laden?’

Constitution, Democrats, Federalism, Foreign Policy, Race, Republicans, Terrorism

Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House,” has warned consistently about Obama’s executive-branch power grab. And he did the same during the Bush era.

The frail senator took to the floor of the United States Senate on October the 14th, “to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and voice his concerns over the possibility of a major increase in U.S. forces into Afghanistan”:

“General McChrystal, our current military commander in Afghanistan, has requested 30,000-40,000 additional American troops to bolster the more than 65,000 American troops already there. I am not clear as to his reasons and I have many, many questions. What does General McChrystal actually aim to achieve?”

“So I am compelled to ask: does it really, really take 100,000 U.S. troops to find Osama bin Laden? If al Qaeda has moved to Pakistan what will these troops in Afghanistan add to the effort to “defeat” al Qaeda? What is really meant by the term “defeat” in the parlance of conventional military aims when facing a shadowy global terrorist network? And, what of this number 100,000? Does the number of 100,000 troops include support personnel? Does it include government civilians? Does it include defense and security contractors? How many contractors are already there in Afghanistan? How much more will all this cost? How much in dollars; how much in terms of American blood? Will the international community step up to the plate and bear a greater share of the burden?”

“Some in Congress talk about limiting the number of additional troops until we “surge to train” more Afghan defense forces. That sounds a lot like fence straddling to me. I suggest that we might better refocus our efforts on al Qaeda and reduce U.S. participation in nation building in Afghanistan. Given the lack of popularity and integrity of the current Afghan government, what guarantee is there that additional Afghan troops and equipment will not produce an even larger and better-armed hostile force? There ain’t no guarantee. The lengthy presence of foreign troops in a sovereign country almost always creates resentment and resistance among the native population.”

“I am relieved to hear President Obama acknowledge “mission creep” and I am pleased to hear the President express skepticism about sending more troops into Afghanistan unless needed to achieve our primary goal of disrupting al Qaeda. I remain concerned that Congress may yet succumb to military and international agendas. General Petraeus and General McChrystal both seem to have bought into the nation-building mission. By supporting a nationwide counterinsurgency and nation-building strategy, I believe they have certainly lost sight of America’s primary strategic objective – – namely to disrupt and de-fang al Qaeda and protect the American people from future attack.”

“President Obama and the Congress must reassess and refocus on our original and most important objective — namely emasculating a terrorist network that has proved its ability to inflict harm on the United States. If more troops are required to support an international mission in Afghanistan, then the international community should step up and provide the additional forces and funding. The United States is already supplying a disproportionate number of combat assets for that purpose.”

[SNIP]

Republicans are forever maligning this old Southern gentleman for his past peccadilloes (although when Senator Trent Lott was lanced for so-called racial indiscretions, Republicans, “principled” folks that they are, defended him).

Perhaps if Republicans adopted Byrd’s skepticism of war for the sake of war, and rediscovered authentic Taft Republicanism—they might even deserve to win the next election.

Update (Oct. 19): I notice that a reader, hereunder, insists, that attacking Byrd’s present policy positions for distant past indiscretions (in the 40s or 50s?) is intellectually honest. Moreover, conveniently—but predictably—left unaddressed is the Lott episode and other violations by Republicans against the racial police.

Even Peres Thinks Goldstone's Bonkers

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, South-Africa, Terrorism, UN

Shimon Peres of the Labor Party is Israel’s president (Bibi is Prime Minister). Now even the leftist Peres has disavowed Richard Goldstone’s report for the U.N., the culmination of the South African justice’s “investigation” into the Israeli offensive in “Gaza from December 27 to January 18.” “The supremely smug Richard Goldstone” accused Israel of committing “actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity.”

To which Peres responded:

“Out of the 26 suggestions that the [Goldstone] Commission made, none deal with how to fight terrorism.” … “The Goldstone Commission Report says that the Palestinians have the right ‘to forceful resistance based on the right of self-determination.’ What is ‘the right to forceful resistance?’ To fire on civilians?”

Some days back I reminded readers of Godstone’s proud pedigree: “He began his career by helping to demote a lesser evil (the National Party) and promote the quintessential evil (Mandela’s African National Congress).

Updated: The Gormless Judge Goldstone

Crime, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Justice, South-Africa, Terrorism

The supremely smug Richard Goldstone began his career by helping to demote a lesser evil (the National Party) and promote the quintessential evil (Mandela’s African National Congress). “We now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa,” boasted the venerated singularly charmless gentleman to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

The South African justice, who presided over “the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996,” continues his celebrity career with a report about Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza. “The report,” writes Ha’aretz, “which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, was formally presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.”

I suggest Goldstone might want to look in his own plate before he goes passing judgment on (an admittedly imperfect) Israel. Since he helped usher in this “wonderful democracy,” upward of 300,000 innocents have been murdered. The New savage South Africa is now the most violent country in the world.

Here is the CNN interview the singularity boring Zakaria conducted with the singularly smug justice:

ZAKARIA: South African Justice Richard Goldstone made his name with legal cases of world importance but also of great delicacy and sensitivity. First in his home country of South Africa, pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid, then on to the international stage as Chief Prosecutor of the UN Tribunals for War Crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

But his latest job is more controversial. In April, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Goldstone to head a mission to investigate allegations of human rights violations in the 22-day conflict between Israel and Gaza that began last December. From the start, some on both sides questioned whether a fair inquiry could be made, and in the end Israel, which took much of the blame in the final, almost 600-page report, though not exclusive blame, has reacted angrily.

Listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the UN General Assembly last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals.

What a perfect version of truth. What a perversion of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Netanyahu said that the report threatens to derail the peace process. Now listen to my conversation with the man at the center of this storm, Justice Goldstone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE, HEAD OF UN GAZA INVESTIGATION: It’s a pleasure.

ZAKARIA: The Prime Minister of Israel, as you know, denounced your report effectively on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, and his basic argument is that the report is morally obtuse because it does not just distinguish between a democratic state that is being threatened by this hail of rockets and a terrorist organization, in his words, that is trying to inflict disproportionate and random violence on civilians.

GOLDSTONE: I think – I think, with respect, Prime Minister Netanyahu, misunderstands the basis on which we investigated. We – we didn’t question the right of Israel to defend itself or to defend its citizens. It clearly has that right. What we looked was the methods used in doing that. So we didn’t – we didn’t question Israel’s right of self-defense. We, in effect, in a way, took it as a given. It was, as I say, the – the – whether it was a proportionate response or a disproportionate response that we looked at.

And the other way, too, we – we didn’t look at whether Hamas is entitled to use military force to – to gain independence for the Palestinian people. We – we looked at what – what methods Hamas used, and we found those to be unlawful.

ZAKARIA: The Israelis claim that Hamas put themselves in hospitals, forced the Israelis to attack – to strike there, and that would produce an international public outrage. What did you find?

GOLDSTONE: Well, we didn’t exclude all of those allegations. We couldn’t. We – we had a short-time line (ph), we had a very, very scarce resources. We investigated specific incidents and we didn’t find, in respect of those incidents, that the Israeli claims had – had been – been justified. But certainly we can’t exclude it across the board.

ZAKARIA: You spoke of the Israeli behavior during Gaza as being part of a pattern that you described as, the Israeli term, ‘dahia’ (ph). What does that mean?

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the – the attitude of Israel and the policy of Israel, especially since the Hamas victory a few years ago, has been really to turn the screws on – on Gaza. We felt that one of the purposes was to make life so difficult for the people of Gaza that they would turn their back on Hamas and it would lose support. In fact, if anything, it was my personal impression that it’s had the opposite effect.

ZAKARIA: What was the infrastructure damage like? Describe so that people can get a sense of what – what you regard as excessive.

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the infrastructure damage, first of all, that had no military justification at all, was the bulldozing of agricultural fields. Huge tracks of land were just bulldozed by – by tank bulldozers. The only operating flour factory in Gaza. Obviously, flour is terribly important to feed – for making bread, a staple part of their diet. The only flour factory was – was effectively destroyed. They destroyed most of the egg production. They – they killed tens of thousands of chickens. You know, and this has got nothing to do with firing of rockets and mortars. It was the destruction of infrastructure — of part of the infrastructure of Gaza.

ZAKARIA: How will you describe Hamas’ responsibility here? You dealt with that in the report as well. Would you describe Hamas as guilty of war crimes?

GOLDSTONE: Oh yes, absolutely, of serious war crimes, which do amount crimes against humanity, and that’s the firing of thousands of rockets that have no precision at all into civilian areas. That’s a very serious crime.

But we also criticized its use of civilians and not protecting civilians sufficiently in its launching of rockets. And they put civilians in harm’s way.

ZAKARIA: And you found that both Israel and Hamas in a sense did not take enough precaution about the potential for civilian casualties?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, you’re Jewish.

GOLDSTONE: Right.

ZAKARIA: How do you react when you hear Israelis accusing you of anti-Israeli bias, anti-Zionism, some have used the phrase “self- hating Jew”?

GOLDSTONE: First, there’s obviously no truth in it. I’ve got a great love for Israel. It’s a country that, as I said, I’ve been to many times, and I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so. So it’s factually incorrect.

But what saddens me is the fact that Jews, whether in Israel or outside Israel, feel that because I’m Jewish I shouldn’t investigate Israel.

If anything, I think I have a greater obligation to do that. If I’ve investigated war crimes in other countries, why should Israel be different? And it seems to me that that should be welcomed and recognized.

ZAKARIA: When you look at these crimes against humanity, these war crimes, how do they compare? You have a long career. You’ve seen many of these kinds of things, investigated some. Where does this stand? How should we think of it?

GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, I don’t like making comparisons because each situation is so different. But certainly one can compare what has happened here to situations that I’ve investigated in the former Yugoslavian genocide. One doesn’t here in respect of Gaza get anywhere in my view anywhere near that sort of situation.

It’s very different. Many people are comparing what’s happening in the occupied territories to apartheid South Africa. I don’t like that comparison. There’s some similarities, but there are more differences.

ZAKARIA: Do you see this as the end of the report and your role?

GOLDSTONE: Absolutely. It’s now in the political arena. I hope that we have provided a road map for both sides to investigate themselves and to come to their own conclusions, their own investigations, and where relevant their own prosecutions.

ZAKARIA: Spending time dealing with this, do you have any thoughts or insights into the Israeli-Palestinian divide? Do you think there will be peace? How do you look at this?

GOLDSTONE: No South African can be pessimistic about the prospects of for peace. We had an impossible situation and a certainty that we were going to have bloodbath, and because we had good leadership it was averted, and we now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa. We’ve got problems but we’re moving in a good direction.

ZAKARIA: You will be back in Israel anytime soon?

GOLDSTONE: No plans at the moment, but I certainly expect to. I don’t have close family, but I have many, many friends there. I’d love to see them.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

GOLDSTONE: Thank you very much.

Update (Oct. 7): My father, who was steeped in the anti-apartheid movement and ostracized for his convictions, informs me that Goldstone had no such history of protest. The judge attached himself to this fashionable cause once it became safe and politically prudent. Goldstone’s bio corroborates my father’s assessment, noting only that he joined the cause du jour in “the latter years of Apartheid in South Africa,” when,

Goldstone served as chairperson of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, later known as the Goldstone Commission.[1] The Commission played a critical role in uncovering and publicizing allegations of grave wrongdoing by the Apartheid-era South African security forces and bringing home to “White” South Africans the extensive violence that was being done in their name. The Commission concluded that most of the violence of those years was being orchestrated by shadowy figures within the Apartheid regime, often through the use of a so-called “third force.” The Commission thus provided a first road map for the investigations into security force wrongdoing that, after democratization, were taken up by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Update II: Taleban Storm Nato Outpost

Foreign Policy, Terrorism, The Military, War

One of the most ruthless generals of the French Wars of Religion was Blaise de Monluc. Unlike our military’s modern-day cheerleaders, he had no illusions about the saintliness of his warriors and their commanders. “Acknowledging the atrocities of soldiers, he declared that princes carried a heavier load of sin, for ‘there is no evil in war of which they are not the cause.'” (TLS, September 25, 2009)

Yet dare to even entertain the idea that the American military is not always a force for good, and that the princely Stanley McChrystal, commander of the 100,000-strong US and Nato force in Afghanistan, is not omniscient and should never be made omnipotent with respect to the Afghanistan war—and you are unpatriotic.

Left and Right: this is the prevailing wisdom.

By now you’ve heard that, by Times’ telling, “300 insurgents swarmed out of a village and mosque and attacked a pair of isolated American outposts in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan with machineguns, rockets and grenades.

They first stormed the Afghan police post at the foot of the hill in the province of Nuristan, a Taleban and al-Qaeda stronghold on the lawless Pakistan border. They then swept up to the Nato post. The battle lasted all day. American and Afghan soldiers finally repelled them, with the help of US helicopters and warplanes — but at heavy cost.”

What does the fact that “Eight American soldiers and two Afghan policemen were killed,” and that the Taleban “captured 35 policemen whose fate would be decided by the movement’s provincial council” tell you?

Americans are fighting to the death for a futile fantasy; while the Pashtun police men wink and nod at their Taleban brethren, not quite able to decide whether the latter are friends or foes.

To wit: One battalion “lost two soldiers, with three wounded, late on Friday when an Afghan policeman opened fire on his American colleagues during a joint operation to clear the Taleban from villages around the Nerkh valley.

US and Afghan investigators are trying to determine whether the policeman was a covert member of the Taleban or made a mistake. Either way, the attack fuelled the distrust that many Nato soldiers feel towards the Afghan security forces they are training as part of the coalition’s eventual exit strategy.

‘You don’t trust anybody, especially after an incident like this,’ said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose close friend died in the attack.”

Save your breath; Most Afghans have more affinity for the Taliban than for the democracy wielding Wilsonians.

Update I (Oct. 5): The Neocons-cum-Republicans, who have no principles other than to line up behind their man and against Obama, are cheering Gen McChrystal’s London sojourn to lobby for more troops. What’s next on the army commander’s media blitz? An appearance alongside McKenzie Philips on Larry King? Is there any aspect of American life that is not conducted in public or on camera?

It’s got to be obvious that the general knows nothing about the chain of command. He lacks discipline or a code of conduct. McChrystal’s a lobbyist in fatigues, guarding his fiefdom.

More importantly, Gen. David Petraeus conducted himself similarly. Although he didn’t lobby abroad for his cause, he assumed a decidedly political role. However, at the time, Republicans and their boy, Bush, were on board with Petraeus’ push for more war.

Update II: Diana West excerpts extensively from “From New Deal to New Frontier in Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State.” This is worth a read, as are most of Diana’s posts.

With respect to the Helmand-Valley project in Afghanistan, Diana has mined Prof. Cullather for the Money quote:

Nation-building did not fail in Afghanistan for want of money, time, or imagination. In the Helmand Valley, the engines and dreams of modernization had run their full course, spooling out across the desert until they hit limits of physics, culture, and history.

More good material via Myron, written by Jim Sauer, “a retired Marine Corps Sergeant Major and combat veteran with over thirty years of service. Since retiring he has worked in support of U.S. Government efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel”:

The hard fact is that the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan “people” are not for sale! The descendants of “The Great Khan” and their tribal cousins have no interest in being Westernized in any way. And, the human sewers that serve as their political leadership can only be rented. Americans are interlopers in a land where interlopers generally have their heads lopped off.