Afghan intelligence sources have told Al Jazeera that four senior members of the Taliban movement have been captured in Pakistan. The men were arrested in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province near to the border with Afghanistan, the sources said on Sunday.
The men are believed to include two senior aides to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, his chief of staff and the group's head of communications. Pakistan's security services have refused to confirm the reports.
Mullah Omar has not been seen since 2001 when he fled after US-led forces pushed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan. In January, Afghan authorities released a videotape of a captured alleged Taliban spokesman in which he said that Mullah Omar was living in Quetta under the protection of the Pakistani security services. Islamabad has denied hiding the Taliban leader and repeatedly says it is working to stop the group from operating in southwestern Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees live in the province making it easy for Taliban members to hide among them.
Via Al Jazeera.
Comment:
The Chief of Staff and the head of communications, excellent. I can't speculate about the "senior aides" without more information, but the capture of these two people will cause serious headaches for the Taliban—and possibly al-Qaeda. One of the Dadullahs, I forget which one, said that Osama bin Laden regularly sends communiqués to the Taliban. There is reason to be skeptical of this claim, but if it is true, Mullah Omar's head of communications may well know who the courier(s) is (are). That person, in turn, would likely know where bin Laden is, or at least might know somebody else who knows where he is. Even if the Dadullah was lying, though, the loss of his Chief of Staff and head of communications will throw the Taliban's executive office into turmoil for a while, possibly even temporarily severing it from the rest of the organization. Regrettably, it is Dadullah Mansour, not Mullah Omar, who is the Taliban's Commander in Chief, so the army is unlikely to be overly affected, but still, every bit of chaos in the enemy's camp is a good thing.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them
By General William E. Odom
Comment:
I realize that this is not the type of article I usually post. However, the issue it addresses—that of troop fatigue and resultant atrocities—is becoming ever more central to the conflict in Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia,¹ there are currently some 25,000 American troops deployed in Afghanistan. In order to function at peak psychological capacity, according to General Odom, that number would have to be increased by 25-50,000. The only place way we could get that many troops is by withdrawing from Iraq.
The Wiki reports that the United States has a quarter of a million troops in Iraq.² This number does not include those troops currently in between deployments (or preparing to deploy), but it is enough. With that many troops, you could assemble a force 83,000 to 125,000 strong, with adequate troop rotation. If transfered to NATO's command and sent to Afghanistan, this would at least triple, and possibly more than quadruple, the number of active duty soldiers at ISAF's disposal.³ I have long been in favor of quadrupling our forces in Afghanistan. It's high time this war once again became a one-sided exercise in American military might. It's been over a half a decade already, let's just get it over with so that we can all go home.
I understand that withdrawing from Iraq would have grave consequences, but short of mobilizing the country and instituting the draft (which is about as likely as Representative Ron Paul defecting to the Socialist Party) or a whole bunch of other nations suddenly offering us the use of their armed forces (which is about as likely as the Socialist Party endorsing Ron Paul), I don't see how we can succeed in Iraq. I had not thought it was possible for the United States of America to lose a war, but Rumsfeld and Bush have proven me wrong. Let's not lose Afghanistan, too.
Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to "support the troops."
Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what "supporting the troops" means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.
No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.
In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don't seem to occur during the first half of a unit's deployment in Iraq.
After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.
And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.
There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent "surge" tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)
The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.
The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.
If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.
The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.
Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that "de-authorizes the war in Iraq." That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.
The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.
To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.
The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.
Via Nieman Watchdog.
Comment:
I realize that this is not the type of article I usually post. However, the issue it addresses—that of troop fatigue and resultant atrocities—is becoming ever more central to the conflict in Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia,¹ there are currently some 25,000 American troops deployed in Afghanistan. In order to function at peak psychological capacity, according to General Odom, that number would have to be increased by 25-50,000. The only place way we could get that many troops is by withdrawing from Iraq.
The Wiki reports that the United States has a quarter of a million troops in Iraq.² This number does not include those troops currently in between deployments (or preparing to deploy), but it is enough. With that many troops, you could assemble a force 83,000 to 125,000 strong, with adequate troop rotation. If transfered to NATO's command and sent to Afghanistan, this would at least triple, and possibly more than quadruple, the number of active duty soldiers at ISAF's disposal.³ I have long been in favor of quadrupling our forces in Afghanistan. It's high time this war once again became a one-sided exercise in American military might. It's been over a half a decade already, let's just get it over with so that we can all go home.
I understand that withdrawing from Iraq would have grave consequences, but short of mobilizing the country and instituting the draft (which is about as likely as Representative Ron Paul defecting to the Socialist Party) or a whole bunch of other nations suddenly offering us the use of their armed forces (which is about as likely as the Socialist Party endorsing Ron Paul), I don't see how we can succeed in Iraq. I had not thought it was possible for the United States of America to lose a war, but Rumsfeld and Bush have proven me wrong. Let's not lose Afghanistan, too.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Roots of Apostasy
There are two major theories regarding the spiritual cancer currently afflicting Islam. They might be referred to as the Wahhabi and Salafist Theories. The Apostates trace their ideology back to Muḥammad ibn 'Abdu'l-Wahháb, but the evidence points towards Salafism. While the prevalence of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia certainly facilitated the Apostasy's spread into that kingdom, the Apostasy originated outside Saudi Arabia, among the Salafists. In any case, the two terms have since become nearly synonymous.
When Salafism got its start way back in the 19th Century, it was actually not a bad thing. The original source of the idea can be traced to one Siyyid Jamálu'd-Dín-i-Afghání. He was, surprisingly, a Shiite, and in many ways what we would refer to as a liberal. He lived in the twilight of the Caliphate, and lamented the passing of supremacy from the lands of Islam to the European powers. He believed that the reason for this was the splintering and ossification of Islam. He asked, "What would the early Muslims do now?", although his ideological descendants would warp this into "What did the early Muslims do then?", and somehow even get that wrong.
Afghani eventually died, as historical figures are wont to do, and his teachings were further developed by Muḥammad Abduh, who had studied under him at the grand and glorious Azhar University in Cairo, which would end up being the incubator for all this. Abduh's ideas were inherited by a student of his, Rashid Rida, and this seems to be where darkness begins to creep into the picture. The previous Salafists, who are also referred to as Islamic Modernists in order to distinguish them from their mutant spawn, had criticized both westernization and stodgy old conservatives within Islam. Rida put most of the blame on westernization.
One of Rida's most fervent admirers was Hassan al-Banna. He went even further than Rida had, and it is with him that we begin to see the "Islamism" we all know and love. In 1928, Banna founded what has come to be known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's rise was meteoric, it rapidly became a major force in Egyptian politics. Enter Sayyid Qutb.
It was with Sayyid Qutb that Salafism's descent into Apostasy was completed. He was a high ranking member of the Brotherhood, and it was he who first raised the call for jihad. His Apostasy infected large parts of the Brotherhood, many of which split off to become full fledged terrorist organizations. Understandably alarmed, the Egyptian government took action against the Brotherhood, executing Qutb in 1966. Unfortunately, much of the faculty of al-Azhar University were by that time Apostates; they, in turn, churned out little Apostates, one of whom was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam.
Azzam went on to teach at a prestigious school in Saudi Arabia. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he issued the fatwa declaring jihad and formed the group Maktab al-Khadamat to train and equip jihadis. When he learned that a like-minded (and rich) former student of his, Osama bin Laden, had just moved into the area, he asked him for help. Osama said sure, and they became co-leaders of the group. Then, one day, Azzam was assassinated. The culprit was never firmly identified, but it had bin Laden's style. Osama then took sole command of the group.
Thus was al-Qaeda born.
Note: It's one in the morning as I write this, so I'm not going to proofread it yet. I will tomorrow.
When Salafism got its start way back in the 19th Century, it was actually not a bad thing. The original source of the idea can be traced to one Siyyid Jamálu'd-Dín-i-Afghání. He was, surprisingly, a Shiite, and in many ways what we would refer to as a liberal. He lived in the twilight of the Caliphate, and lamented the passing of supremacy from the lands of Islam to the European powers. He believed that the reason for this was the splintering and ossification of Islam. He asked, "What would the early Muslims do now?", although his ideological descendants would warp this into "What did the early Muslims do then?", and somehow even get that wrong.
Afghani eventually died, as historical figures are wont to do, and his teachings were further developed by Muḥammad Abduh, who had studied under him at the grand and glorious Azhar University in Cairo, which would end up being the incubator for all this. Abduh's ideas were inherited by a student of his, Rashid Rida, and this seems to be where darkness begins to creep into the picture. The previous Salafists, who are also referred to as Islamic Modernists in order to distinguish them from their mutant spawn, had criticized both westernization and stodgy old conservatives within Islam. Rida put most of the blame on westernization.
One of Rida's most fervent admirers was Hassan al-Banna. He went even further than Rida had, and it is with him that we begin to see the "Islamism" we all know and love. In 1928, Banna founded what has come to be known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's rise was meteoric, it rapidly became a major force in Egyptian politics. Enter Sayyid Qutb.
It was with Sayyid Qutb that Salafism's descent into Apostasy was completed. He was a high ranking member of the Brotherhood, and it was he who first raised the call for jihad. His Apostasy infected large parts of the Brotherhood, many of which split off to become full fledged terrorist organizations. Understandably alarmed, the Egyptian government took action against the Brotherhood, executing Qutb in 1966. Unfortunately, much of the faculty of al-Azhar University were by that time Apostates; they, in turn, churned out little Apostates, one of whom was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam.
Azzam went on to teach at a prestigious school in Saudi Arabia. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he issued the fatwa declaring jihad and formed the group Maktab al-Khadamat to train and equip jihadis. When he learned that a like-minded (and rich) former student of his, Osama bin Laden, had just moved into the area, he asked him for help. Osama said sure, and they became co-leaders of the group. Then, one day, Azzam was assassinated. The culprit was never firmly identified, but it had bin Laden's style. Osama then took sole command of the group.
Thus was al-Qaeda born.
Note: It's one in the morning as I write this, so I'm not going to proofread it yet. I will tomorrow.
Afghan air strike kills dozens
An air assault by Nato-led forces has killed at least 25 Afghan civilians, police officials said. Twelve members of one family were believed to have been killed in the joint Afghan-foreign forces strike in Helmand province on Thursday night. Up to 20 Taliban fighters were also among the dead.
Nato forces called in air strikes after being attacked by Taliban fighters based in a compound north of Lashkar Gah. Nato's International Security Assistance Force issued a statement saying it was "investigating reports that a small number of civilians may also have been in the compound".
Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Smith, a Nato spokesman, said he was concerned about reports of civilian loss of life. "However, it must be noted that it was insurgents who initiated this attack, and in choosing to conduct such attacks in this location and at the time, the risk to civilians was probably deliberate." The Taliban confirmed its fighters from the group had ambushed troops in the area but said its fighters "left the area before the air strike", Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman, said.
[More]
Comment:
I actually believe the Taliban this time, though not exactly in the way that they would hope. I suspect that what they have done is select a nice, densely populated area, launch an attack from it, and skedaddle as fast as their legs can carry them. If the Coalition strikes back, it will kill plenty of innocent civilians, thus further upsetting the general populace; if it doesn't strike back, the Taliban will have carried out a raid without suffering a single casualty. Either way, they win, except for the part where their souls burn for all eternity. The teachings of Islam, however, have never played all that important a part in the Taliban's strategy.
This seems like as good a time as any to introduce my idea for a non-lethal chemical weapon, which might be used in situations like this. The active ingredient would be ethanethiol (C2H5SH). Ethanethiol is a readily available substance that is tied with butyl seleno-mercaptan (skunk spray) as most foul smelling molecule known to man. Anyone whose pet has ever been sprayed — or, God forbid, has been sprayed themselves — will understand how useful this could be. My principle concern is that ethanethiol is known to be flammable at sufficient concentrations, so a certain amount of fine tuning would be in order.
Nato forces called in air strikes after being attacked by Taliban fighters based in a compound north of Lashkar Gah. Nato's International Security Assistance Force issued a statement saying it was "investigating reports that a small number of civilians may also have been in the compound".
Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Smith, a Nato spokesman, said he was concerned about reports of civilian loss of life. "However, it must be noted that it was insurgents who initiated this attack, and in choosing to conduct such attacks in this location and at the time, the risk to civilians was probably deliberate." The Taliban confirmed its fighters from the group had ambushed troops in the area but said its fighters "left the area before the air strike", Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman, said.
[More]
Comment:
I actually believe the Taliban this time, though not exactly in the way that they would hope. I suspect that what they have done is select a nice, densely populated area, launch an attack from it, and skedaddle as fast as their legs can carry them. If the Coalition strikes back, it will kill plenty of innocent civilians, thus further upsetting the general populace; if it doesn't strike back, the Taliban will have carried out a raid without suffering a single casualty. Either way, they win, except for the part where their souls burn for all eternity. The teachings of Islam, however, have never played all that important a part in the Taliban's strategy.
This seems like as good a time as any to introduce my idea for a non-lethal chemical weapon, which might be used in situations like this. The active ingredient would be ethanethiol (C2H5SH). Ethanethiol is a readily available substance that is tied with butyl seleno-mercaptan (skunk spray) as most foul smelling molecule known to man. Anyone whose pet has ever been sprayed — or, God forbid, has been sprayed themselves — will understand how useful this could be. My principle concern is that ethanethiol is known to be flammable at sufficient concentrations, so a certain amount of fine tuning would be in order.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The Heartbeat of War
In creating and maintaining this site, I have come to a better understanding of why news organizations cover the war so little. The daily bombings, suicide attacks, ambushes and mortar fire are the heartbeat of the war. They occur with such regularity that you expect them to occur. It's like they're one long event, rather than innumerable single ones. When you hear of one, you don't think to yourself, "Aha, something has just happened," you think, "Aha, something is continuing to happen." Since they seem like one event that is merely continuing, it's difficult to think of them as "news," since news is, by its very definition, new. No journalist wants to write the same story over and over again.
Unfortunately, this mindset, which I have found myself to be falling into, is deeply flawed. Each new attack is happening for the first time. Each person who dies had been alive before; each shattered world had been intact. This is not some endlessly repeating cycle. When a bomb goes off, something new is happening, and as it is new, it is also news. We must never forget that.
It is with this in mind that I have added a news feed. Even if an attack is not mentioned here in the main blog, it will still be in the sidebar, reminding us of fresh lives lost.
In other news, three more NATO soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb yesterday, and the Apostasy again demonstrated its pure and unsullied love of Islam by bursting into a mosque and shooting seven people even as they prayed to God, as they had been commanded to do in the Glorious Qur'án. Three people were thusly martyred, and the other four will for the rest of their lives bear the scars inflicted on them by those who war against God. With each such martyrdom, each civilian cut down for no reason other than pure malice, the true nature of the Apostasy is made even more evident to the rest of the world.
Speaking of which, this is a story that must be told.
Unfortunately, this mindset, which I have found myself to be falling into, is deeply flawed. Each new attack is happening for the first time. Each person who dies had been alive before; each shattered world had been intact. This is not some endlessly repeating cycle. When a bomb goes off, something new is happening, and as it is new, it is also news. We must never forget that.
It is with this in mind that I have added a news feed. Even if an attack is not mentioned here in the main blog, it will still be in the sidebar, reminding us of fresh lives lost.
In other news, three more NATO soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb yesterday, and the Apostasy again demonstrated its pure and unsullied love of Islam by bursting into a mosque and shooting seven people even as they prayed to God, as they had been commanded to do in the Glorious Qur'án. Three people were thusly martyred, and the other four will for the rest of their lives bear the scars inflicted on them by those who war against God. With each such martyrdom, each civilian cut down for no reason other than pure malice, the true nature of the Apostasy is made even more evident to the rest of the world.
Speaking of which, this is a story that must be told.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Those who have joined partners with God
"An Iraqi al-Qaeda-led group meanwhile said it had killed 14 Iraqi army and police personnel and posted an internet video showing a masked man shooting the kneeling men in the head. 'After the deadline given by the Islamic State in Iraq expired the sharia court decided to implement God's ruling against those apostates,' the group said on the video."
—Excerpted from an article by Al Jazeera
I must say, this is a new low for the Apostacy. "God's ruling"? Unless God was a part of that court I don't see how the ruling could have come from Him. The ruling, of course, came from the court itself, and it knows it. Apparently, they now believe that their judgment is God's judgment, as though they sit on the same throne. The Qur'án, in chapter 4, verse 48, says,
"Lo! God forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto Him. He forgiveth (all) save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners to God, he hath indeed invented a tremendous sin." This refers to the worship of multiple deities. Now, though, the Apostates have done the Qur'án one better by actually setting up themselves as God's partners. This is the second deepest into apostacy you can sink, the lowest being the Faustian belief that you are superior to God. It chills me to think that someday they may even descend to that level.
May God have mercy on their souls.
I must say, this is a new low for the Apostacy. "God's ruling"? Unless God was a part of that court I don't see how the ruling could have come from Him. The ruling, of course, came from the court itself, and it knows it. Apparently, they now believe that their judgment is God's judgment, as though they sit on the same throne. The Qur'án, in chapter 4, verse 48, says,
"Lo! God forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto Him. He forgiveth (all) save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners to God, he hath indeed invented a tremendous sin." This refers to the worship of multiple deities. Now, though, the Apostates have done the Qur'án one better by actually setting up themselves as God's partners. This is the second deepest into apostacy you can sink, the lowest being the Faustian belief that you are superior to God. It chills me to think that someday they may even descend to that level.
May God have mercy on their souls.
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