Afghanistan : Fast increasing British soldiers' deaths and their crappy US reject military equipment

A further 15 British soldiers have lost their lives in just the last ten days in southern Afghanistan, whilst continuing Operation Panther's Claw, a major assault against the Taliban. At least, 15 is still the number as we sit safely here at home on this sunny Sunday afternoon, and type.

As if this isn't absolutely awful enough in itself, today we are told the astonishing truth by the 'Mail on Sunday' regarding Gordon's Brown's government's continuing fatal, effing fowl-ups.

We wonder what the hell Gordon Brown and his fat-cat & fraudster "honourable friends" want? To beat (once, Great), Britain's 'Bloody Hands' record still held by the traitorous turd Tony Blair?!

Read the revolting rest about our British Army's downright betrayal by it's own boss of bosses.

Read it and weep : and rage.

Then write.

Write to the Queen. Write to Prince Charles. Write to the Prime Minister. Write to your member of parliament. Write to the national newspapers. Write to your local papers. Write on blogs. And write on web sites and forums.

In fact, write where ever you damned well can write.

And when you write, write the same simple things.

Enough is enough. Bring our brave boys (and girls), back home. And, bring them home now. Before many more of them end up being bourne back in bloody, flag draped boxes.

After all, surely we Brits are, at the very least, just as sodding sensible as the Russians?




*(Cross posted across at 'appletree')

NATO allies wavering in Afghanistan

From Reuters:

NATO members are wavering in their political commitment to Afghanistan, one of the alliance's top commanders said on Monday, describing the nearly seven-year-old campaign against the Taliban as disjointed. Pointing to more than 70 "caveats" that gave individual countries a veto over certain operations, and the fact that troop commitments remained unfulfilled, General John Craddock said he was fearful the operation was being short-changed.

"We are demonstrating a political will that is in my judgment sometimes wavering," Craddock, a U.S. general and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said in a speech to policymakers and defense analysts in London. "It's this wavering political will that impedes operational progress and brings into question the relevance of the alliance here in the 21st century."

Craddock told Sky Afghan reconstruction and development was moving ahead slowly and needed to be more coherent.

"I do not think we are losing, we are not winning fast enough," Sky's website quoted him as saying. "Security is at a stalemate. Governance is stuck top dead center."

In his earlier speech, Craddock defended the view expressed by Britain's outgoing commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, that the Taliban could not be defeated and insurgents needed to be drawn into dialogue.

The American are joined by Iran in their resistance to talks with the Taliban:

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned the West on Sunday not to push for talks with the Taliban militia which had stormy relations with Tehran when it ruled Afghanistan up to 2001.

"Today, the whole world knows about the strategic failure of foreign forces in Afghanistan and we advise them not to try a new failure," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference. "We advise them to think about the consequences of the talks (with the Taliban) which are taking place in the region and in Europe and avoid being bitten in the same spot twice," Mottaki said, citing a Persian proverb.

The Afghan government denied the report but President Hamid Karzai has long called for talks with the Taliban on condition that they accept his government's constitution and are not involved with Al-Qaeda. The hardline Sunni Taliban had hostile relations with Shiite Iran, which was a major backer of the Afghan opposition to the militia's rule.

Iran was a major backer of Afghan opposition to the Taliban? It was only last year that the US said it had "irrefutable proof" that Iran was arming the Taliban. I guess that turned out to be an obvious lie, though you'd never guess it to read news account from that time.

To sum up: the Afghan government and America's NATO allies want to negotiate a truce with the Taliban, but Iran and the United States stand opposed to any compromise. NATO's military effort has stalled, and the US has dishonest about the source of the Taliban's weapons. In reality, the Taliban were being armed by elements within the Pakistani security forces, which in turn were being supplied by the United States. So is it any wonder that many NATO nations are considering withdrawal from Afghanistan?

If a military alliance can't hold together in a war, then what is the purpose of the alliance? The Bush administration wants to expand NATO to include Georgia and other former Soviet states, but how could our new allies rely on the alliance in a confrontation with Russia when the alliance fails against a relatively weak foe like the Taliban?

The bottom line is that the Bush administration's intransigence on the issue of peace talks and its unwillingness to commit enough force to win in Afghanistan is undermining America's strategy to contain Russian, and threatening its most important military alliance.

Meanwhile, the war continues to take its bloody toll:

Police and government officials in Kandahar are accusing the Taliban of slaughtering nearly 30 civilians - some of whom were decapitated - in a brazen bus attack staged outside the city. However, a spokesman for the Taliban, which yesterday took responsibility for the gruesome killings, said the attacks were made because passengers were members of the Afghan National Army.

The attacks took place last Thursday, but officials learned of the attacks only yesterday.

(cross posted at appletree)

McCain refers to Taliban as 'freedom fighters'

Something that didn't register with me when I watched the debate on Friday: John McCain referred to bin Laden and the Taliban as " freedom fighters":

From the transcript of Friday night’s debate, here’s John McCain:

"First of all, I won’t repeat the mistake that I regret enormously, and that is, after we were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, we basically washed our hands of the region. And the result over time was the Taliban, Al Qaida, and a lot of the difficulties we are facing today. So we can’t ignore those lessons of history."

Those “freedom fighters” were of course the mujaheddin in Afghanistan waging jihad against the Soviets, including one Osama bin Laden and one Zayman Al Zawahiri. We backed and funded them–sort of. We didn’t “create bin Laden,” as some have alleged. But we certainly supported the factions fighting alongside him, factions every bit as militantly Islamic as bin Laden–as even the State Department concedes.

The reason it didn't register is that I've grown so used to Republicans referring to terrorists like the Nicaragua's Contras and Angola's UNITA as "freedom fighters". Apparently, all the reporters in the mainstream media also became inured to the Republicans' doublespeak, because I haven't seen anything about this in mainstream outlets. But you can bet that we would have heard about it if Obama had called bin Laden a "freedom fighter", however indirectly.

(cross posted at appletree)

Pakistani fire turns back American helicopters

Recent events have led to a rise in anti-American sentiment in Pakistan

You have to wonder how much military conflict there can be between two allies before they become enemies. Just yesterday, Pakistani units fired at American helicopters when they crossed the border from Afghanistan:

Pakistani security officials said on Monday that troops had fired on U.S. military helicopters and forced them to turn back to Afghanistan. According to the security officials, the incident took place near Angor Adda, a village in the tribal region of South Waziristan where officials have said U.S. commandos in helicopters raided a suspected al Qaeda and Taliban camp earlier this month.

"The U.S. choppers came into Pakistan by just 100 to 150 meters at Angor Adda. Even then our troops did not spare them, opened fire on them and they turned away," said one security official.

While Angor Adda villagers and officials supported that account, the U.S. and Pakistani military denied the report.

Pakistani and American officials have to deny that incidents like this take place, because neither side wants to go to war. But it's unlikely that villagers and Pakistani security forces would conspire to fabricate an incident like this, and hard to see how war can be avoided if Pakistani and American soldiers begin killing one another. Tensions between the two countries have become inflamed recently, thanks to Bush's new policy of allowing Special Forces units to conduct raids against suspected Taliban strongholds inside Pakistan, without the permission of the Pakistani government.

It's possible that the Pakistani government would confine their opposition to raids inside their country if they had been effective. But recent raids have killed dozens of Pakistani civilians and failed to kill any al Qaeda or Taliban leaders. Under these circumstances, there's no way that Pakistan's new government would be able to maintain power while allowing American raids.

This comes at a time when Bush is telling his commanders in Afghanistan that he can only fulfill half of their recent request for more troops, so you might think that Bush would do everything possible to avoid starting yet another war with either Iran or Pakistan. But instead, he seems to be doing everything he can to antagonize those countries. General Jeffrey Schloesser, the commander of American forces on the Afghan/Pakistani frontier, threatened to start "a new kind of war" if Pakistan continues to allow militants to cross to and from Afghanistan. And he's been taking steps toward a blockade of Iran, in what some analysts say is an attempt to lock his successor into an aggressive anti-Iranian policy.

So to recap, Bush is telling his commanders that we don't have enough troops to fulfill their requests. But at the same time, he's engaging in increasingly hostile and provocative actions directed at Iran and Pakistan. That doesn't seem very smart, when you consider the fact that Iran is as large, in terms of both area and population, as Iraq and Afghanistan put together. And Pakistan is the world's 6th most populous country, with 172 million inhabitants. And Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

So this is foreign policy during the Bush era. And John McCain is promising more of the same.

(cross posted at appletree)

Argh!! Today's Afghanistan Attack Against Karzai In Kabul ...

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Shit!

It's quite possible that one of our younger brothers could have been caught up in this. He's over there - among 'foreign dignitaries'. Really.

Karzai unhurt after parade attack

At least two people have been killed and 11 were hurt in an attack on a military parade in Kabul attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Security forces whisked Mr Karzai and other dignitaries away and hundreds fled as shots rang out. Two MPs were reported to be among the wounded.

The parade was a celebration to mark 16 years since the overthrow of the country's Soviet-backed rule.

A spokesman for the Taleban said the movement had carried out the attack.

Read the rest and watch the film footage.

Then please cross your fingers for 'our kid' - and for us - that 'our kid' stays safe.

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