Category Archives: Victory

The other enemy

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Impossible standards for victory promote failure
BY RALPH PETERS

Can we win in Afghanistan?

It’s an odd question, considering that we’ve already won, by historical standards.

Yet unrealistic metrics of success continue to pile up, fabricated in ignorance — often willful and even spiteful — of Afghan reality.

Political partisans intent on scoring points and media figures desperate for headlines demand the impossible (and not only in Afghanistan.)

Increasingly, the greatest obstacle to success in trouble spots where our troops are engaged is our own unwillingness to accept that wars never yield perfect results and rarely yield permanent change.

Unaware of historical precedent and dismissing practical limitations, we increasingly insist on ideal transformations of broken states and regions where reasonable progress is the only fair measure of success.

Staying with the Afghan example, a sensible assessment of the possible begins with the recognition that no such country exists or ever has in the sense of statehood familiar to us.

The vast clots of miserable territory we label “Afghanistan” (maps, like nature, abhor a vacuum) really consist of the city-state of Kabul, tributary cities along timeless caravan routes and tribal areas that Alexander, the Mongols or any other conqueror, shah or king never fully controlled.

Read more here.

Victory Declared in Liberia

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Victory Declared in Liberia
January 1, 2008: The UN has declared its peacekeeping mission in Liberia at an end.

The peacekeepers went in five years ago, after eleven years of civil war ended. A year ago, the peacekeeping force was reduced to 350 personnel, down from a peak of 15,000 in 2004. Next September, all peacekeepers will be gone.

Over 12,000 fighters were disarmed, and thousands of bandits were killed or forced to disarm.

The country is still a mess, but the economy is coming back to life, and several rounds of elections have been held.

Fifty peacekeepers died, from disease and hostile action, during the past five years.

Most of the heavy lifting was out of the way by early 2005. At that point, most of the known rebel and army troops had been disarmed, and the UN declared 13 of the 15 counties safe enough to receive returning refugees.

There were then some 850,000 refugees to deal with, 350,000 of them outside the country.

After years of living off food aid, in refugee camps, most of these have since returned to their farms and other property.

The fighting between rebels and soldiers, plus the looting by these forces, and bandits, have left most of these farms looted and burned.

Homes and businesses were also destroyed. Burned out ruins are still a common sight throughout the country.

Foreign aid provided tools, seed and building materials so that the refugees could become self-sustaining. Schools and clinics are still being rebuilt as well.

h/t: Strategy Page

Could Happen

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You might not want to throw away that copy of the “Petraeus – Betray Us” ad that MoveOn.org ran in the New York Times.

It could become a collector’s item.

The day after the 2008 Elections, at least by today’s rules, could mark the beginning of the 2012 race.

Depending upon all the imponderables, one name that could appear on some lists is General David Petraeus.

If MoveOn.org is still functional, that ad could play an interesting role in the campaign.

At this writing, MoveOn.org is still giving away PDF versions of the ad.

Even if Petraeus isn’t interested, the ad could be an issue.

Something to think about.

What About Al Qaeda in Iraq?

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Al Qaeda In Iraq is part of the global al Qaeda movement. AQI, as the U.S. military calls it, is around 90 percent Iraqi.

Foreign fighters, however, predominate in the leadership and among the suicide bombers, of whom they comprise up to 90 percent, U.S. commanders say.

The leader of AQI is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian. His predecessor, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was a Jordanian.

Because the members of AQI are overwhelmingly Iraqis–often thugs and misfits recruited or dragooned into the organization (along with some clerics and more educated leaders)–it is argued that AQI is not really part of the global al Qaeda movement.

Therefore, it is said, the war in Iraq is not part of the global war on terror: The “real” al Qaeda–Osama bin Laden’s band, off in its safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas of Waziristan and Baluchistan–is the group to fight.

Furthermore, argue critics of this persuasion, we should be doing this fighting through precise, intelligence-driven airstrikes or Special Forces attacks on key leaders, not the deployment of large conventional forces, which only stirs resentment in Muslim countries and creates more terrorists.

Over the past four years, the war in Iraq has provided abundant evidence to dispute these assertions.

So begins a thoughtful piece by Frederick W. Kagan:
Al Qaeda In Iraq
How to understand it. How to defeat it.

It’s worth reading, whatever your perspective. Start -> here.

Ahmadinejad: Israel’s destruction close

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Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that the world would witness the destruction of Israel soon, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Ahmadinejad said last summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon showed “for the first time hegemony of the occupier regime (Israel) collapsed and that pushed the button counting the days until the destruction of Zionist regime,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

“God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech to foreign guests who attended ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is known as the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has lost public support after Israel failed to achieve its goals during last summer’s 34-day war with Hizbullah in Lebanon – freeing two captured soldiers and crushing the group.

The war was sparked after two IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbullah gunmen in a cross-border raid. The fighting ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire that called for deployment of UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.

Ahmadinejad has made anti-Israel comments in the past. In October 2005, he caused outrage in the West when he said in a speech that Israel’s “Zionist regime should be wiped off the map.”

His supporters have argued Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated and should have been better translated as “vanish from the pages of time” – implying Israel would vanish on its own rather than be destroyed.

Churchill and War

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“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

“You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

From Winston Churchill’s First Speech as Prime Minister, May 13, 1940, to House of Commons

Listen to the whole speech: