Exhibit A in "the emperor really is naked"" http://linkis.com/yaleglobal.yale.edu/PfQD
Marc Grossman was Afpak special rep. And apparently he is totally serious here. Read and weep.
Exhibit A in "the emperor really is naked"" http://linkis.com/yaleglobal.yale.edu/PfQD
Marc Grossman was Afpak special rep. And apparently he is totally serious here. Read and weep.
and this is exhibit 2. One of the best (if not THE best) book review in the nation is suckered by Akbar S Ahmed. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...gination=false
I have lost all hope.
Good catch
Very good catch. Lots of gems and wisdom in the review.Originally Posted by omarali50
davidbfpo
The ROE for Strategic Raids - and Other Actions
From the WP, Heeding new counterterror guidelines, U.S. forces backed off in Somalia raid (by Karen DeYoung, October 7, 2013).
First, as to the ROEs:
If accurate (the actual ROEs haven't been published), the Centcom ROE ("reasonable certainty", given variant meanings) has morphed to "near certainty" - at least in this incarnation. "Near certainty" begins to sound very much like "beyond a reasonable doubt".When Navy SEALs were met with gunfire as they attempted a raid on a seaside militant compound in southern Somalia early Saturday, the commander of the operation had the authority to call in a U.S. airstrike. Instead, he opted to retreat.
The site had been under surveillance, and the operation against an al-Qaeda-affiliated group had been in the planning stages, for months, current and former Obama administration officials said Monday. A drone strike against the al-Shabab compound had been rejected, officials said, because there were too many women and children inside, the same reason that the commander opted against an airstrike once the operation was underway.
Destroying the compound probably would also have defeated a primary purpose of the mission: to capture, not kill, a Kenyan-born al-Shabab commander named Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, also known as Ikrima. He has long been on a U.S. “capture or kill” list, along with al-Shabab leader Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, known as Godane, and was considered the group’s primary planner of attacks outside Somalia.
As they provided more details of the aborted operation in the town of Barawe, current and former administration officials said it was designed within restrictive counterterrorism guidelines that President Obama signed in the spring. Under the 2001 congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the guidelines say that lethal force can be used only when there is a “near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed.”
If civilians had not been present at the compound, a senior administration official said, “we might just as well have done a standoff strike,” hitting the site with missiles launched from piloted or unmanned aircraft. The desire to avoid hitting non-combatants, the official said, “accounts for the fact that ultimately [U.S. forces] disengaged” when they “met resistance.”
That ties in with the second point (both the Somalian and Libyan ops were capture ops):
No attempt has been made by the administration to justify either operation on other than Laws of War principles. I've no objection to that as such; but, it's interesting that the administration, in effect, recognizes that a state of war exists in the "new" Libya.The guidelines also codify a long-stated but rarely implemented administration preference for capturing rather than killing terrorism targets.
Officials cited the Somalia operation, as well as the capture of an al-Qaeda figure in Tripoli, Libya, on the same day, as proof that the administration is not overly enamored with the relatively risk-free use of drones at the expense of detaining militants to glean intelligence.
“To people who had said we don’t undertake capture operations, here are two,” the senior official said.
Regards
Mike
You're right Omar. This thing is incredible. Statements about setting condtions that weren't preconitions but end conditions or Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) to viewing the release of Baradar as an effort by Pakistan (!?) to catalyze the peace process (boy do I hate the phrase 'peace process') to Taliban & Company's continuing to kill people as having "called into question the Taliban’s commitment to creating a peace process, " made me alternately laugh out loud and crash my face into the table in frustrated incredulity.
The most telling part of the whole piece though, and the most amazing, was this "...the war in Afghanistan is going to end politically... If there is ever to be peace in Afghanistan, Afghans will need to talk to other Afghans about the future of Afghanistan." That is true but people like Mr. Grossman don't seem to realize that this kind of exchange-"Surrender now or we'll kill you! Ef off!" BANG.-is a political ending that involves talking just as surely as a nicely refined series of talks held in a 5 star hotel.
We are led by people who can't perceive the real world. This is not good.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
my comment about Akbar S. Ahmed may not have been immediately clear, so here is a little clarification I wrote to someone elsewhere:
Akbar S Ahmed is an ex-civil servant who has made a career in anthropology and academia selling his "first hand experience" of tribal mores. This book is more or less on that theme. The idea that the Jihadis are basically aggrieved tribal people, upholding their mysterious, exotic tribal code against the modern world. Which, I think, is nonsense. The traditional tribal structures have completely collapsed in the face of modern jihadism and have little or nothing to do with this phenomenon, which was imported into tribal areas by the CIA and ISI and is hardly a tribal innovation. Undeveloped administration and tribal loyalties and notions of honor are indeed part of the reason why they have thrived there, but only a part..and the ungoverned part has more to do with it than the tribal part. Akbar is basically selling the line that all would be well if the West leaves the tribals alone to carry on with their tribal ways. Which is not true. I thought that for a major publication (OK, a left-liberal one, but still) to publish such a laudatory review indicates that Westerners are eager to buy this notion and Akbar is there to sell it to them. He knows what he is doing, being well attuned to what his audience wants to hear. But after you push past the fluff, there is no substance there.
Dr Taqi has a very forgiving review here that may be helpful http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...4-3-2013_pg3_5
Irfan Husain has some background on Akbar S Ahmed http://dawn.com/news/1023105/the-unflattering-truth
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