The US Empire throws in the towel

This is a great American tradition: declare victory and leave.  And that is what Obama did yesterday when he announced that 10'000+23'000 troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan.  The French immediately announced that they are withdrawing another 4'000 of their own.  Yes, I know, 68'000+ troops will remain.  Make no mistake, that is a fig leaf, also a security and a way to pretend that this is not what is really is: a total retreat following a strategic defeat.  Obama clearly indicated that:

Our mission will change from combat to support.  By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security. 

This is a howling joke, of course.  Translated into English it means "all future defeats will henceforth blamed on the Afghans, not on us - we have won".  Sure looks like the White House has finally read the writing on the wall.

As for the the alleged execution of Bin Laden, it provided Obama with the "patriotic" and "presidential" credentials needed to conceal the true magnitude of this strategic US defeat in Afghanistan.

While I do blame the USA for its infinite arrogance and imperial hubris in invading Afghanistan in the first place, and while Obama's idiotic "surge" was nothing but a useless PR effort, I cannot blame the US armed forces for having been defeated.

From the deserts of Dasht-i-Margo (Land of Death), Registan (Land of Sands) and Karakum (Black Sand), to the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Waziristan, or the Safīd range, to the "panhandle" of the Wakhan Corridor - most of Afghanistan is a hell-hole which always ended up defeating its occupiers, including the British and the Russians - far more capable (and ruthless) opponents than the US military, nevermind the NATO alliance's hodgepodge force.

All this was pre-ordained from Day 1 of the "invasion".  I put that word in quotation marks because the USA did never really invade Afghanistan.  The Northern Alliance attacked the Taliban with the support of the USAF and some special ops on the ground and rapidly seized Kabul.  As for the Taliban, they had no intention of openly fighting the USA; they waited for a better time (which soon came).

In reality, the US military simply entered the country with only minimal resistance.  In fact, and unlike the Soviets, the US never won a single battle during this entire war.  Bloody and ugly as this war was, it was primarily a gigantic multi-billion exercise in PR.  It is no wonder then that it ended in yet another, last, PR exercise.  When the Soviets left Afghanistan, they had least had the courage to do that openly and proudly; the US even lacks the courage to do that.

Now all this really begs the question of what will happen in Pakistan.  The relationship between the USA and Pakistan are now at an all-time low and the CIA's fancy drone-war combined with the infinite arrogance of its personnel on the ground, is creating a powerful blowback against the USA, and I would venture to say that the US Empire was also defeated in Pakistan.

The important thing to keep in mind though is that being militarily defeated does not entail loosing all influence, quite to the contrary, in fact.  If the USA cannot control "AfPak" it still can make darn sure that nobody else does, including the Taliban and their Pashtun brethren across the border.  Preventing the creation of a united "Pashtunistan" is an objective which the US shares with all other actors in the region, including India, Iran, Russia and the so-called "legitimate government of Afghanistan" aka The Northern Alliance.  Even the local drug lords and their foreign patrons will support this.  To be totally honest, I cannot disagree with this either: nuclear armed Wahabis is just about the worst of all imaginable options for all of mankind.

The fact is that no matter how much the US Empire is hated, nobody wants to replace the current regimes in Kabul and Islamabad with an alliance Wahabi crazies armed with nuclear weapons.  The easiest option to prevent this is to trigger and sustain a process of "Somalization" of the region.  And that is a skill which the US Empire and, in particular, the CIA, truly excels at.  That will also be the real mission of the US forces remaining in the region: maintain chaos and preventing the creation of a "Pashtunistan".

Next to the 68'000+ "chaos" forces we will also probably see "for profit" occupation forces (think Blackwater & Co. here) which will provide "security" for the various multi-national companies trying to exploit the country's natural resources (including opium).  Bottom line: the US "withdrawal" from Afghanistan does not mean that the US Empire is "letting go", only that it is redefining its strategy in a manner more commensurate to its actual capabilities.

The Saker

Media Banned from Covering Taliban Attacks in Afghanistan

Democracy Now reports:

Afghanistan has banned the news media from covering Taliban attacks. The announcement came on a day when NATO-led forces reported six of its service members had been killed in various attacks. Under the new rules, journalists will be allowed to film only the aftermath of attacks, when given permission by Afghanistan’s spy agency. Journalists who film while attacks are underway will be held and their gear seized. The new rule has been denounced by Afghan journalism and rights groups.

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'

By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush 's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins , a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

It was published by the university's National Institute for Strategic Studies , a Defense Department research center.

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion .

"No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq ) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East ," the report continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country's descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.

"Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt," said the report. "Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army."

"For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a 'must win,' but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a 'can't win.'"

The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld . It says that in November 2001 , before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld "to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq ."

Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney , bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became "the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders."

" . . . the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld," it continues, "cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation." Later, he shut down the military's computerized deployment system, "questioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk."

In part because "long, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld," the report says, the U.S. was unprepared to fight what Collins calls "War B," the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003, shortly after "War A," the fight against Saddam Hussein's forces, ended.

Compounding the problem was a series of faulty assumptions made by Bush's top aides, among them an expectation fed by Iraqi exiles that Iraqis would be grateful to America for liberating them from Saddam's dictatorship. The administration also expected that " Iraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction."

The report also singles out the Bush administration's national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley , saying that "senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect."

Collins ends his report by quoting Winston Churchill , who said: "Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. . . . Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance."

To read the report:

www.ndu.edu/inss/Occasional_Papers/OP5.pdf