Thursday, September 04, 2008
The Best News of the Week
I have no idea how determined the new leaders, whoever they are, in Pakistan are about eliminating the armed crazies in their country or what such a move will mean to the overall direction of Pakistan politics, but for now, this is wonderful news. Simply stunning. I had thought the rest of the Pakistanis were holding back 'eager to hunt down the Taliban' Musharraf. Who knew it was just the opposite. Go Pakistanis!
UPDATE:
We're crossing the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan to harry and kill the Taliban, and not, apparently, in hot pursuit. Witness, if you can stomach the spin, this AP article. I wonder if we have a secret green light while the Pakistan government strongly condemns and protests the incursion?
Labels: Jihadi War; Afghanistan Front, Pakistan
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Good News From Afghanistan
Money quotes:
Such highly publicized attacks on NATO troops [like the attack on French paratroopers] are part of the enemy’s strategy to undermine public support for the war in Europe.[...]
But the truth is that despite the media-savvy Taliban’s endeavors to impress the world with reports of successful operations, it is losing ground. For all intents and purposes, the Afghan war is what experts term a “low-intensity conflict.”[...]
A military news site further reports that “gun battles with the Taliban are down fifty per cent this year.” Another hopeful sign is that fewer civilians, and more Taliban and al-Qaeda, are being killed.[...]
Sounds right to me.Credit for this achievement goes to Afghanistan’s steadily improving 70,000-man army – it was an Afghan unit that surrounded and killed some of the suicide bombers at Camp Salerno – as well as to the nearly 60,000 American-led NATO troops. Facing well-trained, professional soldiers, backed by smart bombs and air superiority, the Taliban has had difficulty finding new recruits despite offering generous pay. Ignoring Taliban propaganda, many Afghans seem to realize that guerrilla tactics are not going to win this war.
As a result, the Taliban has been forced to rely more on suicide bombers and roadside bombs. However, these brutal tactics have caused the deaths of countless civilians, and in the end could turn the population against the Taliban, much as al-Qaeda’s massacres in Iraq ultimately inspired a nationwide backlash against the terrorist organization. To take one example among many, last February a suicide bomber aiming for Canadian troops in a crowded market place in the southern city of Kandahar wounded four soldiers but killed forty Afghan civilians. It may be just a matter of time before Afghans rise up against the Taliban’s indiscriminate carnage.
Labels: Jihadi War; Afghanistan Front
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Voting With Their Feet
I can see the thought process: Too hot in Iraq? Move to the cool high mountains of Afghanistan. Meet the eager Marines. (Die in droves).
Money quote:
General Petraeus was not quite as sanguine:
We have heard reports recently that many of the foreign fighters that were in Iraq have left, either back to their homeland or going to fight in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is now seeming to be more suitable for al-Qaida fighters," said Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie.
I am nearly giddy with the news. Yes, things could go south under Democratic leadership, but for now, al Qaeda has been nearly defeated in Iraq, what its leaders called the central front, and now some of them are going to die in vain in the strategic cul-de-sac which is Afghanistan. So much for re-establishing the Caliphate.
They're not going to abandon Iraq. They're not going to write it off. None of that," Petraeus said. "But what they certainly may do is start to provide some of those resources that would have come to Iraq to Pakistan, possibly Afghanistan.
I never thought we were losing, though for a time I could not say we were winning. Now I know we're winning.
Labels: Iraq Successes, Jihadi War; Afghanistan Front
Very Good News Regarding Afghanistan
The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.)
But let's take the Democrats at their word and turn our attention from our extraordinary successes in Iraq to the supposedly neglected backwater of Afghanistan. How's it going there?
Pretty well, it seems. More of our soldiers are dying there, more's the pity, but just dead and wounded soldiers makes for a tricky metric--our greatest losses in the Pacific front of WWII came in the last year of the war when victory was pretty much certain. What you always need to do to win a war is to destroy either the willingness or the ability of the enemy (and preferably both) to continue to wage war against you. So, with this in mind, how's it going, really?
Well! We're killing their leaders, capturing their leaders, and causing them to resort to IEDs (generally the tactic of the loser) and car bombs, which kill fellow Afghans, further alienating the populace, which is death to an insurgency movement (just look at Iraq as a recent example).
The British spokesman Lt. Col. Robin Matthews said:
The Taliban's senior leadership structure has suffered a shattering blow. They remain a dangerous enemy, but they increasingly lack strategic direction and their proposition to the Afghan people is proving ultimately negative and self-defeating.
Will our forces take casualties as they cause them in the other side? Of course, but look at the proper metrics and you'll see that we're winning in both Afghanistan and Iraq. All we need to do is to continue doing what we're doing, and the Taliban's and al Qaeda's ability to launch war winning attacks will subside and end, and they will be properly consigned to the ash heap of history where they belong. Only a Democrat as commander and chief can turn such nearly sure victory into defeat.
Labels: Jihadi War; Afghanistan Front
Monday, June 02, 2008
Good News From Afghanistan
Here is another view, and I think, having followed some of the campaign there, the much, much more accurate one. Money quote:
Here is a telling paragraph:
The new "precise, surgical" tactics have killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to prosecute the campaign, according to Brig Mark Carleton-Smith.
In the past two years an estimated 7,000 Taliban have been killed, the majority in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But it is the "very effective targeted decapitation operations" that have removed "several echelons of commanders".
This in turn has left the insurgents on the brink of defeat, the head of Task Force Helmand said.
However, with the shortage of helicopters still a problem, most movement is by road and Brig Carleton-Smith warned that British forces must prepare for an increasingly Iraq-style insurgency as the Taliban modified its tactics from pitched battles to ambushes and roadside bombs.
As the Taliban loses stand up fight after stand up fight, it will indeed resort to the IED ambush tactic which has been the preferred tactic in Iraq for years. Thus, as the Taliban's tactics change, there will be more IED casualties, but that won't mean that the Taliban is really fighting or actually, uh, winning.
Labels: Jihadi War; Afghanistan Front
