Does the $1 Trillion Key to Winning the Afghan War Lie Under the Sand?

by Sam Sedaei

The Obama Administration has lately been hungry for some good news from Afghanistan. President Obama's base who strongly supported his stated plan during the campaign to renew U.S. efforts in Afghanistan has abandoned him, significantly shortening the amount of time he has to succeed. Meanwhile, the Taliban seem to continue to be fighting aggressively in many areas, especially the South East, despite the fact that they have lost half of their entire top leadership since the beginning of the current U.S. Administration. President Obama not only may have gotten a break, but he may have found the biggest single solution to permanently transforming Afghanistan's economy and winning the struggle against Taliban.

A small group of Pentagon and USAID officials and American geologists have discovered vast deposits of untapped mineral substances in Afghanistan, consisting of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and industrial metals such as lithium. The value of these previously unknown deposits is estimated at $1 trillion dollars.  Continued...

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What is Patriotism?

by Janet Ritz

Calls for patriotism were used during the Bush Administration with the implication that those who did not support them in wartime were unpatriotic. But what about the summer of 2009 with its town hall meetings turned into shouting matches and signs that incited hate?

Webster's Dictionary defines patriotism as: "love and loyal or zealous support of one's country."

Does President Barack Obama love his country? He's put his life on the line to serve it, so, evidence points to a resounding yes. That is not hyperbole. The threats against this president are up 400 percent over his predecessor.

Are there reasons for citizens to be angry? The economy, for Wall Street, has begun to turn around. The problem is that it's not happening for Main Street. We're justifiably frightened by and frustrated with the oligarchy that has intertwined itself like the tentacles of a Jules Verne octopus into congressional reelection coffers. We get it. They are, for the most part, not there for us.

Can the same be said of President Obama? He didn't have to take on the third rail of health care reform. He could have been like all the presidents before him since Truman; talked about reform but never have gotten anything past the special interests that have exposed themselves as more interested in their specialness than in what the country needs as a whole (see definition: patriotism). Continued...

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President Obama in Cophenhagen: The meeting his critics missed

by Janet Ritz

President Obama's trip to Copenhagen to support the Chicago Olympic bid has been pilloried by his critics who cite more pressing matters, such as the economy and war. What these critics have missed was that President Obama was in Copenhagen for exactly those two reasons: the economy and war. The economy because Chicago could have used the jobs and war because of the meeting between President Obama and the General Stanley McChrystal, the officer in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

President Obama squeezed a 25-minute council of war into his Copenhagen visit yesterday, meeting General Stanley McChrystal aboard Air Force One before returning to Washington.The general was summoned to the airborne White House on the day it was announced that four more British and American servicemen had died in Afghanistan. He was on his way back to Kabul from London, where he made a powerful public pitch for more troops to be sent to the battlefields.

Until yesterday, General McChrystal had been in direct contact with Mr Obama only twice since taking up his post as Nato commander in Kabul six months ago - once via video link to the Oval Office and then as a participant in a major Afghan strategy meeting on Wednesday, again via videolink.

If you haven't heard about that meeting, it might have been because it didn't play into the howls from the president's critics over the Olympics. But with a hot war raging in Afghanistan against those who attacked us on 9/11, it could have been one of his most important meetings. Continued...

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Connecting the Dots on the Mumbai Attacks

by Janet Ritz

There has been a great deal of reporting, speculation, finger pointing and denials on the Mumbai attacks, much of which has focused on trees (dots) instead of forests.

After reading with empathy and horror of the death and destruction, the question remained, who was behind this and why? The Indian government has stated the surviving terrorist they've captured was Pakistani from the Muslim Punjab region who was trained as part of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani based Kashmir separatist group with purported ties to both al Qaeda and the Pakastani ISI.

Which leads to the following (dots) about the attacks:

• =>The style of attack was military - a special forces/commando type raid - in nature.


• =>The military training of the attackers purportedly by ex-Pakistani military officers.


• =>The repudiated claim by Hamid Gul, the ex-head of the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI), reported to be involved in the formation of the Taliban, that al Qaeda was not behind either the Mubai attacks or 9/11, blaming instead (on this Sunday's edition of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS) an "Israeli Zionist Neocon Conspiracy" which matches his ongoing denial that Bin Laden is a terrorist (George Stephanopoulos asked Condolezza Rice on THIS WEEK Sunday about reports that the U.S. has asked for Gul to be turned over for indictment. Rice declined to comment).
  


• =>The capture of a fishing trawler out of a Pakistani port.


• =>Initial targets that were designed to draw first responders away from two targets of note: the Taj Hotel and the Jewish Center.


• =>The Taj is owned by the leading industrialists of India, the Tata Group (Tata Steel, Tata Auto...), descendants of Zoroastrian priests known for their tolerance of others. The Taj was built in 1903 by Jamsetji Tata, India's pioneering industrialist, after he was denied access to a "whites only" luxury hotel, as a comparable (or better) facility that would accept everyone.


• =>The Nariman House Chabad Jewish Center established as a welcoming center to both Jewish travelers and the Mumbai Jewish community.


• =>The recent attacks in Pakistan that destroyed vehicles necessary for transporting supplies over the Khyber Pass to NATO forces in Afghanistan.


• =>The expectation of an Afghan Taliban offensive in the spring.

This raises the question, if the attacks originated in Pakistan, who is in charge there? The democratically elected government or the elements of the army and intelligence services that are seemingly aligned with (and/or in charge of) the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, al Qaeda and other similar groups? The prevailing wisdom is to do as much as possible to support the democratically elected government.

That seems to be the approach thus far with India's thankfully measured response. It also may be because India was not the only target when all the dots are connected. In the larger chess-board that is South Asia, the focus shifts to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and the traditional spring offensive that can be expected from the Taliban. Continued...

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Credit where it is due: The author the "surge" strategy

by Janet Ritz

John McCain speaks of his ability to "win wars" by using the "surge" as his example. This is surprising, as this was the strategy that was first implemented in 2005 by U.S. Army Colonel, H.R. McMaster, in what he called "Clear, Hold and Build," a strategy that may have reduced the insurgency had it been supported at the time.

What also make the authorship of this strategy so important, aside from the fact that Colonel McMaster deserves credit where it is due, is the dust-up that resulted after the strategy was proposed to the Pentagon and then the White House in 2005 as a way to bring about conditions for a political solution in Iraq prior to the worst of the insurgency taking hold:

The successful strategy created by a Col. H.R. McMaster (Clear, Hold and Build), where his troops went into a city, lived among the population in small units, built trust and protected the population while they fought the insurgents.

Requests to implement his strategy that went up the ranks were stopped at the highest levels. The reasons given: it would take more troops and put them in more danger. Thomas Rick's reaction: you can't fight a war as a tourist." It was not implemented by the Pentagon.

The State Department representative in Iraq heard about "Clear, Hold and Build" and flew back to tell Condoleeza Rice. Rice then went before Congress and, in what turned out to be a direct challenge to Rumsfeld, formally recommended the Clear, Hold and Build strategy during a hearing that was broadcast live.

Rumsfeld quickly held a press conference where he said (paraphrase): we didn't have the troops to implement it and it wasn't our responsibility to protect the Iraqis.

The insurgency exploded.

There were generals who did not give up on the idea of "Clear, Hold and Build." They pointed to Col. McMasters' success as the only feasible strategy. When General Jack Keane went to see President George Bush about it in 2006, he came away thinking he had finally convinced him. Shortly thereafter, according to Thomas Ricks on the FRONTLINE episode, ENDGAME, Dick Cheney then talked George W. Bush out of supplying the necessary troops for success.

It was only after the new Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, and General David Petraeus came aboard that the "Clear, Hold and Build" strategy was given serious consideration and it was Petraeus, a long-time proponent of the strategy, who implemented it beginning July 4, 2007.

What is missing from the above account is any support for John McCain's implication of authorship, as presented by his constant self-identification with the "surge." While he did, early on and during the early part of the Republican primary season, support the "surge" strategy, it should be noted that it was two years after Colonel McMaster had proven its effectiveness in Tal Afar, Iraq, before it was put through, long after the time when the wider implementation of McMaster's strategy could have reduced the level of insurgency and bettered the political outcome in Iraq. Which would have, in turn, freed troops for the neglected war in Afghanistan that has now "surged" to the forefront.