When does Afghanistan officially qualify as a “quagmire”?

We've now been in Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam, with a similar amount of progress. American casualties are again on the rise, along with the power of the Taliban. The new general in charge, General Petraeus, assures us that he will continue to try to minimize civilian casualties, so long as that doesn't interfere too much with his plans to bomb the hell out of the country. Our rules to protect civilians were a bit too "bureaucratic" for his liking--not that they actually worked, in any case. The now-infamous Rolling Stone profile of General McChrystal has this to say:

In the first four months of this year, NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent[!] from the same period in 2009 – a record that has created tremendous resentment among the very population that COIN theory is intent on winning over. In February, a Special Forces night raid ended in the deaths of two pregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up, and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after U.S. forces accidentally shot up a bus, killing five Afghans. "We've shot an amazing number of people," McChrystal recently conceded.
The Rolling Stone piece mysteriously left out the next part of McChrystal's statement. Here's the full quotation (emphasis mine):
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

Continue ReadingWhen does Afghanistan officially qualify as a “quagmire”?

Be an American Revolutionary – Make the Declaration of Independence Live Again

It was summer; a hot, muggy summer in Philadelphia where Virginian Thomas Jefferson presented to the Continental Congress a document which would be a shot heard ‘round the world, a Declaration of Independence. The brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 put their lives, liberty and sacred honor at stake for the good of what they believed should be a new nation, one conceived in liberty and where all men were created equal. How do we Americans in 2010 view the Declaration of Independence? Too often, we view the Declaration of Independence only as a part of our past, an historic document that is not relevant to us today. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is time that we declared our independence from those which would have us be satisfied with less than the complete American dream. It is time to reclaim the American Revolution for the good of our country and the good of the world. In the Declaration of Independence, the first principle to recognize in reclaiming the American Revolution is to re-affirm that America is a shared dream, a dream meant for all to share not just a few wealthy individuals or corporations. Our nation faces a fiscal crisis. We spend far more than we take in revenues. A fundamental decision must be made as to how it is we will spread the burden of supporting the American dream, if we wish the dream to endure. A frequently cited statistic by those which would advocate drastic reductions in federal spending is the percentage of debt as a percentage of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Frequently, advocates of our nation adopting more “fiscal responsibility” forget that until FY 2011, since 1980, each Republican administration has only increased the percentage of our national debt as a percentage of GDP. Since 1980, each Democratic administration had reduced the percentage of national debt as a percentage of GDP. Of far more importance in preserving the American dream is to examine the percentages of wages as a percentage of GDP. In 2006, Bill Moyers reported that the share of GDP going to wages was at its lowest point since 1947, when the government started measuring such numbers. [More . . . ]

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The state of the Afghanistan occupation

Frank Rich sums it up at the New York Times, provoked by Michael Hastings excellent journalism at Rolling Stone:

The war, supported by a steadily declining minority of Americans, has no chance of regaining public favor unless President Obama can explain why American blood and treasure should be at the mercy of this napping Afghan president. Karzai stole an election, can’t provide a government in or out of a box, and has in recent months threatened to defect to the Taliban and accused American forces of staging rocket attacks on his national peace conference. Until last week, Obama’s only real ally in making his case was public apathy. Next to unemployment and the oil spill, Karzai and Afghanistan were but ticks on our body politic, even as the casualty toll passed 1,000. As a senior McChrystal adviser presciently told Hastings, “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.”
Why are we in Afghanistan? I haven't yet heard anything other than vague metaphors. According to the White House,
So make no mistake: We have a clear goal. We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum. We are going to build Afghan capacity. We are going to relentlessly apply pressure on al Qaeda and its leadership, strengthening the ability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to do the same.
Apply pressure on al Qaeda? Give me a break. According to the CIA, there are fewer than 50 al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As far as "breaking the momentum" of the Taliban, consider this retort by Jon Stewart, beginning at minute 4:
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In more recent news, say goodbye to $3 billion of our tax dollars, freely walking out of Afghanistan. Not that you'll ever prosecute corruption under Hamid Karzai:
Top officials in President Hamid Karzai's government have repeatedly derailed corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans, according to U.S. officials who have provided Afghanistan's authorities with wiretapping technology and other assistance in efforts to crack down on endemic graft.

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Fool me once…

The events since the BP well exploded and began spewing oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico have forced President Obama's hand. No politician wants to be the one to catch the Peak Oil hot potato, but it looks like it's landed right in Obama's lap. In his Oval Office speech the other night, he came the closest any president has yet to frankly discussing the challenges we face (emphasis mine):

So one of the lessons we’ve learned from this spill is that we need better regulations, better safety standards, and better enforcement when it comes to offshore drilling. But a larger lesson is that no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked -- not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor. The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight.

Continue ReadingFool me once…