Fafnir reminds us why we must remain vigilant against threats to our threatback complex.

It really has gotten to that point of absurdity, too. In Iraq, the promise was to draw down troops to a minor peacekeeping force by next June. There are no weapons of mass destruction there (the original premise for invading 6.5 years ago). Saddam and his sons are dead. The corrupted status quo has been preserved. Their army and police forces have been built up to be able to hold the fort against remaining rebels.

Those are the claims. So why are our troops still there in such overwhelming numbers?

In Afghanistan, there’s a different scenario. The masterminds of the 9-11 attacks are isolated in the wilds of adjoining Pakistan with minimal capacity to direct that organization to conduct the large scale terror operations that provoked so much fear eight years ago.

As I’ve noted on numerous occasions, they have no capacity to manufacture jets, trucks, autos or any other transportation vehicle that could be fitted with explosives. They cannot manufacture a nuclear weapon nor assemble a lab capable of putting out bio-weapons. They can build explosive devices and crude chemical weapons capable of killing hundreds at a time, if the right venue and conditions are available. Nothing EVER will be able to eliminate that possibility. It will always be important to develop better and better intelligence and keep pressure on any and all terror groups that pose a certain risk to a tiny percentage of our population.

Adding 40,000 troops to an effort to stabilize Afghanistan, however, goes well beyond such an effort to isolate and destroy the terror leadership. The last time an occupying force attempted to subdue the country two decades ago, they were bogged down in an unwinnable war and their subsequent economic collapse was, in part, a result of that.

Fortunately, our country has no similar economic woes to contend with now… hey, wait a second!

So let’s consider a range of options:

1) We escalate the conflict against a country whose principal trade is a blackmarket item (opium) that comes with a significant presence of well-heeled lawless overlords. The members of that vast network, from overlords to subsistence farmers, are more concerned with their personal economics than they are with ideology or democracy. And Al Qaida’s sympathizers, the Taliban, have aligned themselves with the drug traders.

2) We pull out and cede the country to the extremists and terrorists. Our troops come home to no jobs.

3) We provide enough troops to act as a community policing force in the principal southern region of the country (Kabul to Qandahar) where most of the population resides. In the mountainous Northeast border region with Pakistan, our troops keep the heat on to limit the cross-border terrorist movements that preceded our arrival there. In this way, the Pashtun population gains protection while it develops its own forces to eventually assume the community policing duties. (Yes, even this sounds pie-in-the-sky when weighed against the realities there.)

By no means am I suggesting that these are the only options or that I have an easy answer. I only know that options #1 and #2 come with serious drawbacks. Some middle option will have to be employed, but it must have a clearly stated goal, a real chance of achieving that goal - beyond wishful thinking - and a termination date.

As for Iraq, if the withdrawal deadline set by Obama gets broken by more than a few weeks, then he’s not deserving of re-election. Iraq’s leaders have had all the wake-up calls needed and if they can’t provide a successful government by now, they simply have to ceded responsibility to other leaders who can.

Otherwise, Fafnir’s analysis will best describe the situation.

A third war won’t kill us, right?:

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon’s top military officer says he’s comfortable that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons remain secure, but is gravely concerned about Taliban advances there and in Afghanistan.

He says the United States has worked with the Pakistanis to improve the security of their nuclear arsenal and he believes that country’s military is focused on keeping them secure.

He also said Monday the worst-case scenario is that Pakistan’s weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists. But he said he doesn’t think that’s going to happen.

Mullen spoke at a Pentagon news conference on his recent trip to the region.

Right. We’re relying on the Pakistani military to protect the nuclear weapons? This military?:

Pakistan’s army: as inept as it is corrupt

The answer to why Pakistan’s mighty army seems impotent against Taliban insurgents is that it is more mafia than military

I have a bad feeling about this….

Update: We should have been dealing with this problem years ago, but instead the Bush administration just threw money at it.

Pakistan’s peace pact with the Taliban is close to collapse, a Taliban spokesman has warned, accusing the government and the army of being stooges for the US.

The warning came as Pakistani troops continued their offensive against Taliban fighters in Buner in the country’s northwest on Monday, killing seven fighters.

The fighting has strained the government’s deal with the Taliban that allows for the enforcement of sharia, or Islamic law, across Malakand division in exchange for peace.

“They [the army and government] have no respect for any pact,” Muslim Khan, the Pakistani Taliban’s spokesman in neighbouring Swat, said.

“They keep violating every agreement and if this goes on, definitely there will be no deal, no ceasefire.

“This is not our army, this is not our government. They’re worse enemies of Muslims than the Americans. They’re US stooges and now it’s clear that either we’ll be martyred or we’ll march forward.”

Just goes to show you when you had a stooge who became preznit, the entire government reflected his leadership….

crossposted at Rants from the Rookery

Some might call this treason:

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama’s decision [to abide by the promises he made to the people who elected him and require] the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan [to withdraw from Iraq].

Just a reminder to the jingoistic war bloggers who think St. Petraeus is infallible, the people of this great land are sovereign, and they have spoken.   Their elected representative is General Petreaus’s Commander, and he has spoken.  This stuff is a damn sight closer to actually betraying our nation than anything the New York Times ever dreamed of doing.

What a horrible state of affairs that President Obama’s first major military challenge would come from within the ranks of our own troops.  You really should read the whole article and see how political influences have infiltrated the command structure of the General Staff, already geared to undermine the President.

Keane, the Army Vice-Chief of Staff from 1999 to 2003, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star Army generals, and since Obama’s Jan. 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political “stability” that they expect to follow U.S. withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network’s plans.

The source says the network, which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama’s withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy. [my bold ~Mark]

The fact that they are conspiring openly enough that the press can track their mutinous mission and name the names speaks volumes about the arrogant disrespect they have for the will of the people they are charged to protect, the Constitution they swore to defend, and the command structure of civilian leadership over uniformed personnel.

Of course, in a more authoritarian regime, like Soviet Russia, North Korea, or the Bush Administration, Keane would be thrown in Gitmo as an enemy agitator and Petreaus and Odierno would be sacked.  But not here, not anymore, and the conspirators are taking full advantage of a maleable press that would never question their counsel lest they risk the wrath of a modern day Ceasar returning victoriously from Gaul, which is exactly what the Petreaus wing of the GOP wants to do.

Keane had operated on the assumption that a Democratic president would probably not take the political risk of rejecting Petraeus’s recommendation on the pace of troop withdrawal from Iraq. Woodward quotes Keane as telling Gates, “Let’s assume we have a Democratic administration and they want to pull this thing out quickly, and now they have to deal with General Petraeus and General Odierno. There will be a price to be paid to override them.” [again, my bold ~Mark]

MacArthur acted much the same way the generals are threatening today, commanded much the same deference from the press, and completely undermined his President.  Truman’s conflict with MacArthur destroyed Harry’s popular appeal, for a while, but it also ended Mac’s political ambitions.  I hope that both Obama and Petreaus will avoid a similarly costly show-down.  Somehow I’ll bet that military folks will push the envelop, however, and Petreaus will kill his chances of being Sarah Palin’s running mate.

America won’t tolerate losers, especially sore ones — not two of them.

I also trust that Obama is as good or better politician than Petreaus is a general, and I’ve no doubt that Petreaus cannot match Obama in the political arena where he has no legions to command and Obama can unleash the many-million-mouthed dog. The old-timers at the Pentagon may sneer at Obama’s lack of military experience, but they really are in misunderestimating territory if they really believe they can outflank him politically by insisting on prolonging this deeply unpopular war.

I wonder if they even recognize Obama’s pronouncement that a “substantial number” of our troops would be home for the next Superbowl as the shot across their bow that it was.  While the General was on the field in Tampa, flipping a coin, the President was speaking to tens of millions of Americans directly about living up to his promise.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, “Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama.”

I guess Petreaus got his own version of “I won.”

There can be no clearer signal that Obama will not sidestep the tough calls. Creating a one-year timetable so no security issues will remain unexamined, Obama’s first orders took aim at the seedy underside of the Bush Doctrine’s core. And gutted it.

His first step could have gone after the popular, an economic uplift plan, but instead, he went after the programs that Bush aimed at the least popular group of people in the view of most Americans: terrorists and suspected terrorists. Of course, that will draw fire from neocons and neoconnabes. They’ll be predicting more terror attacks, that Obama’s now demonstrably weakening us.

Such minds are overloaded with fear. And with the conviction that brutality is justified and necessary.

But the key thing for a pragmatic is that the neocons never have proven that the illegal detentions and torture ever accomplished anything at all. Asserting that such methods have is simply insufficient. If there ever was a hole card, it remains unplayed. For good reason: there’s no ‘there’ there.

The torture has revealed no actionable intelligence. It has only put our troops at greater risk, it has strengthened the claims of legitimacy for many brutal governments, and is illegal and immoral. That Obama fast-tracked the demise of the programs demonstrates confidence and strength and a return to moral boundaries. Shutting down the American gulag is equally essential and positive. Such stains on our history will remain, but only as a bad memory.

It was a perfect first move, along with efforts to close down Bush’s War on Iraq.

It’s nice to have a real president in charge again.