Central Asian Rocket Science

Of all the things that frustrate me about our current adventure in Afghanistan, perhaps the most frustrating is listening to the various D.C. talking heads bloviate about Pakistan.The latest was ADM Mullen, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who laid stick on the Pakistani ISI for supposedly assisting in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. But this has been a constant theme for years. Chris Hitchens gives us a taste of the 180-proof version of this rhetoric, the pure, undiluted, GOP-stillhuse hootch in his latest Slate column, and, yes, I know it's fucking Slate.

Still.

Why does this bug me?

Because I'm a relatively unlettered hairy-knuckled sergeant, a spearcarrying nobody from the Northwest. My entire first-hand geopolitical and global political experience consists of having watched Egyptian border cops and Israeli reservists make fist-pumping gestures at each other across the wire at Taba.

And I fucking know that the Pakistanis care more about their military position with India than any-fucking-thing else in Southwest Asia.Including "terrorism" and the damn Taliban.

The whole POINT behind their coziness with many of the people we're shooting in the hustings of central Asia is that the Taliban regime was anti-Indian, and their remnants are, too. The Karzaites we've installed in Kabul are not, and so the Pakis REAL problem, their single most crucial concern is ensuring that they have a lever to pressure Kabul into having their back if they get into another scrap with India.

So the rule of thumb is; don't bet on Pakistan Facebook-friending your Afghan proxy if that proxy shows signs of "friending" India.

For conventional wisdom that one ranks right up there with "never get involved in a land war in Asia."

Oh.

Anyway, the frustrating thing is that the rhetoric coming out of D.C. hits the same note; why, why, WHY are you so naughty, Pakistan? What can we do/what must we do to make you stop hugging these nasty terrorists? Why don't you give us more geopolitical love?

Well, duh.The Durand Rule is If You Let Your Afghan Proxy Get Close To India Don't Expect Much Cooperation From Pakistan.

I can figure this out.

Why can't all these highly paid people in D.C.?

I don't know, but every time I run across it it's really frustrating.

You Can't Get There From Here

We'v been spending a good bit of time discussing the current events in Egypt. Jim addresses the specifics of the apparent dissonance between our domestic and foreign policies over the protests there in the preceding post; Jason over at "Armchair Generalist" goes even further, describing our Middle East policy as "broken".But I can't honestly see how the U.S. could have taken a different route than backing the strongmen who have ruled in Egypt since Nasser.

We're caught on the cleft stick of our own making because we want two things that, like matter and anti-matter, don't and can't exist together. We want to:

1) back Israel without serious question; we've been fairly supine on every question of Israeli internal defense. The Israelis make their decisions based on their own analyses, but we have been pretty muted when these analyses end up producing the punitive acts that Israel has used to defend itself from its Palestinian enemies. The cumulative effect is to make us look like Israel's complascent sugar daddy. While Israel is a nice little democracy this is really a luxury on our part, since Israel is strategically worthless, but Great Powers are allowed to have their luxuries and Israel is one of ours.

But we also want (and need):

2) at least some sort of passive neutrality from the Arab states, because they control the REAL geopolitical/strategic assets we need from the region; passage through Suez, petroleum, cooperation against the jihadis.

Genuinely "democratic" Arab states would be unlikely to help with #2 if we insisted that they come with us on #1. You can argue this until the end of forever - I personally think that the Arab states would be well off to get Egypt to absorb Gaza, Jordan the West Bank, accept a whopping cash payoff from the U.S./Israel and get the fuck on with life - but the reality is that to get an Egypt to Camp David you NEEDED a Mubarak (or a Sadat, whatever - a leader who had to be responsive to Abdul and Maryam Lunchpail would have risked his life doing it. Sadat did, and did, remember?).

So I don't see how the U.S. has any real options here. To get an "un-broke" policy you'd need to have different goals. So I think the thing here is that walloping the current U.S. leadership about Egypt is hammering on a symptom. The "disease" - the underlying malfunction that produces things like the current U.S. paralysis on Egypt - is that you can't really design a Middle East policy that gets to have both #1 and #2. And discussing the pros and cons - especially the cons - of #1 are completely and utterly off limits in Washington D.C.

It's worth noting that the fall of a U.S. backed dictator doesn't HAVE to be traumatic or disastrous for U.S. foreign policy. Sure, the post-Marcos Philippines closed Subic (Clark was unusable after Pinatubo, anyway) but in the long run the successor governments have been quite cooperative on many issues; the threat of domestic islamic rebels as well as the loom of the dragon to the west surely has a lot to do with that. Post-Pinochet Chile hasn't really been hostile, and post-Somoza-post-Ortega Nicaragua is relatively quiescent. The real notable outlier is the post-Shah Iran, but Egypt doesn't have anyone like the Ayatollah Khomeni to push it towards a violently islamic state.

So overall I suspect that post-Mubarak Egypt, though possibly not as passive on matters involving Israel, has as good a chance of being willing to cooperate with the U.S. to some extent as it does of becoming a rival. But it IS unlikely to cooperate on Israeli issues, and if the U.S. forces those issues and the Egyptian leaders - whoever they turn out to be - are forced to choose, a democratic Egypt would seem to be much less likely to follow the U.S. policy.

And it seems to me that there's no way to really do much about that.

(crossposted from MilPub)

The Man Who Wasn't There; a Cautionary Tale

As I was walking up the stairI met a man who wasn't therehe wasn't there again todayI wish, I wish he'd stay away“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
the late deceased,And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

Just tell them that Steiner will show up any day now.

“You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

GEN Petraeus, in Robert Woodward's "Obama's Wars"


What the...the fu'...WHAT??

THIS is the best the theatre commander can do? This from the Warrior-Sage of Mosul, the savior of the Long War? That's IT? A multigenerational, unwinnable clusterfucking landwar in Asia? That's the advice you're giving the Leader?

Christ, I used to get military advice that good from SP4 Denny after a half rack of Natty Lite and a basket of salty chicken wings on any Friday night down at the Yadkin Road Hooters. It came a lot cheaper. And Georgie would even do the "Barbie Girl Dance" after he'd had some Jim Beam, too.

Fuck me runnin'. Does anybody here know how to play this game?

Sunday Morning 11:30am

We've had a lovely Labor Day weekend. Yesterday's morning cleanup yielded a deucluttered house, the trip to Oaks Park was fun, and the planked salmon made a delicious dinner.

This morning we had an "Avatar" sort of morning, enjoyed good coffee and bacon, looked at wedding pictures (again) to sate Little Miss' desire to see Mommy in her pretty dress. And we're getting ready for the Nickel Arcade.

So I had just a moment to stop and read the news. Which is, as always, filled with the most ridiculous crap - it is an ever-verdant source of wonder to me how much bandwidth the three (what, five?) conglomerates that own the news media can cram with worthless celebrity gossip and badly-informed "reportage".

So I pretty much skimmed over most of the "news". But this BBC article caught my eye. It's not really "news" to anyone who a) has been paying attention and b) isn't viewing the world through their "war on terror" goggles. This phrase caught my attention;

"Yet many Iraqis fear that with the Americans no longer here in force, and the Iraqi army and police still lacking sufficient training, the violent extremists on both the Sunni and the Shia sides could start fighting again."

And I paused, for a languid Sunday morning moment and wondered just exactly how many times we will have to hear that phrase again.

The U.S. Army and the various mercenary organizations associated with our mess-o-potamia have been "training" the IA and IP since, when, about 2004? At least since 2007 or 2008. So the senior IA units have at least 2-3 years and possibly as many as 6 years of guerrilla combat time?

And this isn't exactly crossing the Rhine or meeting the GSFG in the Fulda Gap, here. It's your basic light-infantry fight; IMTs, squad-to-company tactics...shoot, move, communicate. Basic trainees get it in 13 weeks. I went from civilian to combat unit in less than a year, expected to perform under fire. Entire armies like the Kitchener battalions of WW1 learn to do it in months, certainly in under a year.

How t'fuck much "training" do these mooks need..?




Just a idle thought for a holiday Sunday morning.

(Crossposted to MilPub)