On the eve of President Obama’s announcement on the next steps for the US in Afghanistan — expect a public escalation of 30,000 more troops and a lot of rhetoric about non-military programmes and the necessity for the Afghan Government to be free from corruption and to take responsibility for security — The Security Crank offers a loud, troubling polemic against so-called “expertise” in Washington.
It’s settled: the discussion about Afghanistan is no longer about Afghanistan. It is, instead, now a contest of who can write the most ridiculous article demonstrating their ignorance of the country. This isn’t a small deal: most of the people we’ll highlight below hold positions of great influence, including on General McChrystal’s review team this past summer. But they are all, pro- and anti-war, morons.
It’s important to note that these opinion-mongers are not operating in a vacuum—they have willing accomplices in the media, most of which is utterly subservient to the U.S. military. In a lot of cases, this change is recent: Dexter Filkins, for example, used to write hard-hitting, critical pieces about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, he writes this: Read the rest of this entry »
This week Josh Mull (“UJ”), both in his guest blog and in his comments, has offered valuable insight into the complexity of local groups and insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’ve now discovered an analysis by Steve Hynd (“Cernig”), which I think is an excellent introduction to the political, economic, and social dimensions beyond the label “Taliban”. It’s reprinted below this report from Al Jazeera:
Taliban: What’s in a Name?
Two years into the Iraq war, moderately well read Westerners already knew that the insurgency there wasn’t monolithic. Honest reporting repeatedly made clear that Al Qaeda, Sunni militant groups of various varieties and Sadrists didn’t see eye to eye and often worked at cross purposes even while all were hostile to America and its allies. Read the rest of this entry »
Four days after the provincial elections in Iraq, the political complexities are beginning to emerge. While many are still caught up in the two-dimensional narrative of “victory for the secularists, defeat for Iran”, this is at best a diversion which does not appreciate the complexities of politics and society after Saddam.
Although Nuri al-Maliki’s Da’wa Party got over a third of the votes in Baghdad and Basra, they clearly did not achieve a commanding position, and its share in the more rural Shiite provinces was signifcantly less..
The big story here is that the Shiite religious parties (and yes, the Da’wa or Islamic Mission Party is among them) again swept the Shiite south. However, those Shiite parties that won out this time want a strong central government, not a Shiite mini-state.
On the eve of President Obama’s announcement on the next steps for the US in Afghanistan — expect a public escalation of 30,000 more troops and a lot of rhetoric about non-military programmes and the necessity for the Afghan Government to be free from corruption and to take responsibility for security — The Security Crank offers a loud, troubling polemic against so-called “expertise” in Washington.
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