From BBC News by Kim Ghattas in Washington, Oct. 21, 2010
First, an important stat from the BBC ...
"Since 2005, Pakistan has received more than $1bn (£636.4m) of military aid a year from the US - and received close to $2bn for the last fiscal year."
Next, an excerpt ...
A White House report sent to congress earlier this month laments the Pakistani army's inability to hold territory it has seized from insurgents, a failure that means gains are likely to be short-lived.
"The Pakistan military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda's forces in North Waziristan," the report said, referring to the region in north-western Pakistan seen as a Taliban and al-Qaeda haven.
"This is as much a political choice as it is a reflection of an under-resourced military prioritizing its targets."
Full story
The end of the BBC piece references an Oct. 19 New York Times editorial written by By Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Its suggestions are clear and outline a possible future of the US in Central Asia that not only continues along the current self-appointed world police trajectory, but reveals how intricately the pursuit of US enemies fits together with conquest and empire. It's a slight variation on colonialism, but with a much more tempestuous wind at its back. Which brings us back to spending tax money on military equipment and missions.
An excerpt ...
The United States should demand that Pakistan shut down all sanctuaries and military support programs for insurgents or else we will carry out operations against those insurgent havens, with or without Pakistani consent. Arguments that such pressure would cause Pakistan to disintegrate are overstated. Pakistan’s institutions, particularly the country’s security organs, are sufficiently strong to preclude such an outcome.
Nonetheless, this aggressive approach would require the United States to think through a series of likely Pakistani responses. To deal with an interruption of our supply lines to Afghanistan, for example, we must stockpile supplies and start bringing in more materiél through the northern supply routes and via air.
At the same time, we should present clear, significant incentives. In exchange for demonstrable Pakistani cooperation, the United States should offer to mediate disputes between Pakistan and Afghanistan; help establish a trade corridor from Pakistan into Central Asia; and ensure that Pakistan’s adversaries do not use Afghanistan’s territory to support insurgents in Pakistani Baluchistan.
More fundamentally, the United States needs to demonstrate that, even after our troops depart Afghanistan, we are resolved to stay engaged in the region. To that end, the United States should provide long-term assistance to Pakistan focused on developing not only its security apparatus, but also its civil society, economy and democratic institutions.
Showing posts with label U.S. military policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. military policy. Show all posts
Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
New America Foundation raises unaddressed issues in U.S.-Pakistan military ops
Video from the New America Foundation, one of the groups taking action to inject debate into the largely closed and classified U.S. military pursuits within the borders of Pakistan presents a legal approach not previously offered on U.S.-Pakistan relations and campaigns.
This legal framework is directly related to the relegated priorities of arresting the occurrences of civilian victims and casualties, the unpopularity among the resident population of the attacks and their value in neutralizing terrorists, Pakistan's sovereign duty to its citizenry, frailty of legal arguments supporting the CIA's drone program and the prosecution of a classified and therefore supposedly covert war inside an overt one. Relegated, that is, beneath the priority of executing leadership in international terrorist cells or organizations (extrajudicial killing being a related issue of separate special importance) and implementing a technology that allows targets (and collateral victims) to be eliminated while soldiers prosecuting the attack operate from safety half the world away.
Featured Speaker
Christopher Rogers
Pakistan Field Fellow, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
BACKUP LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9yQMj289Hg
In the event the embedded video won't work, please use the YouTube link above.
This legal framework is directly related to the relegated priorities of arresting the occurrences of civilian victims and casualties, the unpopularity among the resident population of the attacks and their value in neutralizing terrorists, Pakistan's sovereign duty to its citizenry, frailty of legal arguments supporting the CIA's drone program and the prosecution of a classified and therefore supposedly covert war inside an overt one. Relegated, that is, beneath the priority of executing leadership in international terrorist cells or organizations (extrajudicial killing being a related issue of separate special importance) and implementing a technology that allows targets (and collateral victims) to be eliminated while soldiers prosecuting the attack operate from safety half the world away.
Featured Speaker
Christopher Rogers
Pakistan Field Fellow, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
BACKUP LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9yQMj289Hg
In the event the embedded video won't work, please use the YouTube link above.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Pakistan erupts in the news; U.S. rift threatens West's policy in Central Asia
From a possible revision of ally status for Pakistan with the U.S. to the average Pakistani being sick to death of the CIA using robots to kill their children, Pakistani spies insisting the Taliban kill for purposes of intimidation to no chance for suggesting in U.S. media that drone attacks are not the best strategy, Pakistan is in the news and coming undone in America's unending quest to simplify the lines drawn by 9/11 into Us and Them, cowboys and radical religious guys who won't sleep or stop praying to play with their children until every last cowboy is dead.
Should the U.S. Give Up on Pakistan? The Atlantic Monthly online
By Max Fisher | October 07, 2010 4:25pm
Does Anyone Object to U.S. Drone Wars in Pakistan? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
10/04/2010 by Peter Hart
Blasts kill 8 at Sufi shrine in Pakistan; Los Angeles Times
No one claims responsibility for the attacks in Karachi, which injured 65. Militants have targeted shrines and mosques serving adherents of non-orthodox Muslim doctrines.
By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2010
Hamburg mosque which links 9/11 to the badlands of Pakistan; London Guardian
Ian Traynor reports from Germany on an abandoned prayer hall in the spotlight again after US terror alerts
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 19.41 BST
Pakistan criticizes drone strikes
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 7, 2010 -- Updated 1709 GMT (0109 HKT)
Should the U.S. Give Up on Pakistan? The Atlantic Monthly online
By Max Fisher | October 07, 2010 4:25pm
Does Anyone Object to U.S. Drone Wars in Pakistan? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
10/04/2010 by Peter Hart
Blasts kill 8 at Sufi shrine in Pakistan; Los Angeles Times
No one claims responsibility for the attacks in Karachi, which injured 65. Militants have targeted shrines and mosques serving adherents of non-orthodox Muslim doctrines.
By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2010
Hamburg mosque which links 9/11 to the badlands of Pakistan; London Guardian
Ian Traynor reports from Germany on an abandoned prayer hall in the spotlight again after US terror alerts
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 19.41 BST
Pakistan criticizes drone strikes
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 7, 2010 -- Updated 1709 GMT (0109 HKT)
Thursday, September 23, 2010
To be clear, US forces still in Iraq to the tune of 50,000
From Aletho News
The End of Combat My Eye
aletho | September 23, 2010 at 10:33 am | Categories: "Hope and Change", Deception | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-3Zt
Soothing Falsities
By JOHN LaFORGE | Counterpunch | September 23, 2010
The press made a big deal of it. The president even starred in an Oval Office TV show about the “end to U.S. combat” in Iraq, which was announced on August 31. Mr. Obama said he’d fulfilled a promise to end the war.
Obama’s bit of theater cost less than George Bush’s May 1, 2003 shameless declaration of “mission accomplished,” his circus-act-in-military-flight-suit-to-the-flight-deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet the president’s speech was just as dishonest.
Just listen to Army Brig. Gen. Jeffery Buchanan, who told National Public Radio for Sept. 19, “Our rules of engagement have not changed.” Indeed, since the “end of combat,” U.S. soldiers have been in at least two fierce shoot outs involving the use of U.S. warplanes. A Sept. 15 battle included “at least” four U.S. helicopter gunships. Another, in Diyala province, saw U.S. planes dropping two 500-pound bombs.
Gen. Buchanan told NPR he “… understands why most people would call this combat.” Most people, general?
Two days after the President’s “combat’s over” routine, Col. Malcolm Frost, the commander of the “advisory” brigade in Diyala, wrote in a note to soldiers’ families, “We will move around Iraq fully protected in armored Strykers and other armored vehicles, wearing full body armor, and fully loaded with ammunition to deal with the enemy …” the New York Times reported.
Col. Frost currently has the same combat soldiers as a combat brigade -- but supplied with 51 “advisers.” Since his unit arrived in Iraq in July, in an “advisory” capacity, two of his soldiers have been killed and 13 wounded. Tell the families of the dead that the war is over.
Another soldier was killed Sept. 16 while detonating seized explosives. If these aren’t combat fatalities, I’m the Queen of Moravia.
Today—among the 50,000 U.S. soldiers still occupying Iraq—there are 4,500 “Special Forces” commandos. These Green Berets, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and “unconventional” or secret assassination (known for PR purposes as “targeted killing”) squads still storm Iraqi houses and villages at night trying to kill “insurgents” and “suspected members of other armed groups,” according to Baghdad reporters for the Times.
As the GoArmy website says, “missions are … sometimes classified.” You might say that the war in Iraq is now entirely classified, since fighting has been declared over by the Commander-in-Chief himself.
Bombings, firefights, nighttime raids and covert operations might be viewed by most people as combat. But with the feel-good peacewash of presidential speech writers, our military occupation of Iraq can be transformed for the deluded into foreign aid.
Mark Twain described our situation well: “Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those concise, soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter.
The End of Combat My Eye
aletho | September 23, 2010 at 10:33 am | Categories: "Hope and Change", Deception | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-3Zt
Soothing Falsities
By JOHN LaFORGE | Counterpunch | September 23, 2010
The press made a big deal of it. The president even starred in an Oval Office TV show about the “end to U.S. combat” in Iraq, which was announced on August 31. Mr. Obama said he’d fulfilled a promise to end the war.
Obama’s bit of theater cost less than George Bush’s May 1, 2003 shameless declaration of “mission accomplished,” his circus-act-in-military-flight-suit-to-the-flight-deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet the president’s speech was just as dishonest.
Just listen to Army Brig. Gen. Jeffery Buchanan, who told National Public Radio for Sept. 19, “Our rules of engagement have not changed.” Indeed, since the “end of combat,” U.S. soldiers have been in at least two fierce shoot outs involving the use of U.S. warplanes. A Sept. 15 battle included “at least” four U.S. helicopter gunships. Another, in Diyala province, saw U.S. planes dropping two 500-pound bombs.
Gen. Buchanan told NPR he “… understands why most people would call this combat.” Most people, general?
Two days after the President’s “combat’s over” routine, Col. Malcolm Frost, the commander of the “advisory” brigade in Diyala, wrote in a note to soldiers’ families, “We will move around Iraq fully protected in armored Strykers and other armored vehicles, wearing full body armor, and fully loaded with ammunition to deal with the enemy …” the New York Times reported.
Col. Frost currently has the same combat soldiers as a combat brigade -- but supplied with 51 “advisers.” Since his unit arrived in Iraq in July, in an “advisory” capacity, two of his soldiers have been killed and 13 wounded. Tell the families of the dead that the war is over.
Another soldier was killed Sept. 16 while detonating seized explosives. If these aren’t combat fatalities, I’m the Queen of Moravia.
Today—among the 50,000 U.S. soldiers still occupying Iraq—there are 4,500 “Special Forces” commandos. These Green Berets, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and “unconventional” or secret assassination (known for PR purposes as “targeted killing”) squads still storm Iraqi houses and villages at night trying to kill “insurgents” and “suspected members of other armed groups,” according to Baghdad reporters for the Times.
As the GoArmy website says, “missions are … sometimes classified.” You might say that the war in Iraq is now entirely classified, since fighting has been declared over by the Commander-in-Chief himself.
Bombings, firefights, nighttime raids and covert operations might be viewed by most people as combat. But with the feel-good peacewash of presidential speech writers, our military occupation of Iraq can be transformed for the deluded into foreign aid.
Mark Twain described our situation well: “Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those concise, soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Still Killing Without Regard to Target
Article posted to Counterpunch September 9, 2010
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.
A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones
By KATHY KELLY
"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."
"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."
"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."
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