Ignoring the realities

Michael Evans and Philip Webster are reporting that the meeting of NATO defence ministers is likely to produce exactly nothing in terms of troops being demanded to boost the combat force in Afghanistan.

Nato defence ministers meeting today are not expected to offer any more troops for Afghanistan, despite a plea from military commanders for another 7,500 soldiers, alliance sources said yesterday.

The gloomy prediction on the eve of an informal session of the defence ministers in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, pre-empted appeals yesterday from Gordon Brown and Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, for other Nato countries to share more of the burden in Afghanistan.

Dr Rice, who met the Prime Minister and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “I do think the alliance is facing a real test here. Our populations need to understand this is not a peacekeeping mission.”

What an obdurate fool.

What is astounding is that Rice actually still speaks as though she possesses influence anywhere in the world.

"Our populations" clearly aren't the semi-informed dullards Rice holds them out to be. In fact, most of Europe and a majority of Canadians have quite accurately pegged the NATO Afghanistan mission as an attempt by the Bush administration to extricate itself from an incredible mess of its own making.

Germany's offer of 200 more troops is accompanied with a caveat that they not be redeployed to the south.

Here's the reality: 85 percent of Germans are opposed to any redeployment of German troops to southern Afghanistan. If German political leaders made any other offer they would be committing political suicide. It is ludicrous to presume that any one of them would be willing to sacrifice their political fortunes on the altar of the Canadian-contrived Manley Report.

The sense of crisis was made worse by news from Ottawa where the Canadian parliament is split over whether Canada's 2,500 troops in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan should be recalled next year. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, was reported to be threatening to go to the polls if parliament voted against extending Canada's troop commitment.

And the German response to that is: Shall we send bratwurst? The Europeans don't give two shits whether Harper goes to the polls.

Angela Merkel is facing an election in Germany next year and a full 85 percent of Germans are flatly against the redeployment of German troops to the south of Afghanistan. Any move on her part, or that of her defence minister, to redefine the German contribution would result in her being labelled "pro-war" amongst German voters. That would find her out of a job by next year and she knows it.

>"Merkel is very afraid of a rerun of the 2002 election," said Jan Techau, Europe director at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. In 2002, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, a Social Democrat, was reelected after mounting an antiwar and anti-US campaign as Washington prepared to invade Iraq.
"Merkel is scared that that kind of campaign could be pulled off again," Techau said. "This is why the Christian Democrats do not want to hand the Social Democrats the peace issue. As each party tries to prove which is the most pacifist, foreign policy is becoming paralyzed," he added.

Scared indeed. And then there is the fact that most Germans view the US Bush administration as a danger to the world. When Rice and Gates come rolling in demanding more German boots on the ground, a shift into the free-fire zone and a guarantee of combat casualties, the resistance only stiffens.

Rice, Gates, Harper, Mackay and various others making demands on other countries aren't factoring in the political reality that the war in Afghanistan, an open-ended US manufactured fiasco with no strategic goal, is not being swallowed easily by most populations contributing forces to NATO. Political leaders defy the general feeling of their voters at their own peril - hardly something an ambitious politician is likely to do.

There is another poll starting to emerge. Britain and Canada provide troops to Afghanistan from a completely volunteer armed forces. When the British deploy 16 Air Assault Brigade to Afghanistan in April, the two parachute battalions which form the bulk of that brigade will be understrength by about 100 men each. It is being made up by pulling about 60 troops from 4 Para battalion - a part of the Territorial Army - part-time reservists.

In short, the British are now having difficulty recruiting and retaining troops for the regular army after years of corrosive deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Canada has been employing army reservists (militia) from the beginning of its Afghanistan expedition to fill out the ranks of regular force battalions. What Canadians generally don't see is that, despite an intense recruiting effort, those regular force battalions are no better manned now than they were three years ago. In fact some are worse off. There are major support units which, on returning to Canada from an Afghanistan rotation, simply disintegrated as the bulk of members opted to be released from the Canadian Forces.

Today's meeting in Lithuania will result in Rice and Gates uttering more demands. The reality neither of them seem to want to face is that when they issue such demands, the universal response is a desire to do the opposite.

Cheney owns Pakistan's problem

At about this point it's worth looking at an aspect of the situation in Pakistan and how a lot of the problem emanates from the halls of the Bush administration. It would be easy to pull out one of the news or opinion columns from after Musharraf's imposition of emergency powers, but this one goes back to June 2007.

It is also worth keeping in mind that George W. Bush himself is well over his head when it comes to anything akin to foreign policy, planning, geopolitics and the like. In fact, he's over his head when he gets out of bed. It's also worth remembering that Bush has no background in anything resembling foreign relations and that when asked, back before the 2000 US federal election, Bush was unable to answer a question as to the name of the president of Pakistan. He didn't know much then and he doesn't know much now.

It's also worth noting that in every instance where there has been a problem in South Asia, Dick Cheney has been deeply involved. There have also been indications that the US State Department has allowed all the expertise they once had on Pakistan to atrophy. This was the warning provided by Ahmed Rashid, June 17, 2007:

Pakistan is on the brink of disaster, and the Bush administration is continuing to back the man who dragged it there. As President Pervez Musharraf fights off the most serious challenge to his eight-year dictatorship, the United States is supporting him to the hilt. The message to the Pakistani public is clear: To the Bush White House, the war on terrorism tops everything, and that includes democracy.

That warning was issued after the March 9th dismissal by Musharraf of the chief justice of Pakistan's supreme court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry resulted in Pakistanis starting an uprising against the rule of Prevez Musharraf.

Thousands of lawyers nationwide, looking like penguins in their courtroom black suits and white shirts, braved police batons and the heat to lead marches. They were joined by women's groups, journalists and the opposition. For the first time in two decades, Pakistan's civil society has taken to the streets.

And it all goes back to the deal that was made by the United States with Pakistan suggesting they were an ally in the bumper-sticker called the "Global War on Terror".

The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban's main patron: ignoring Musharraf's despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaeda and cut the Taliban loose. Today, despite $10 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain is in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda's senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan's chaotic border regions.

Then we get to the rub, because in June we knew that the US was completely deficit in working knowledge of the region. The Bush administration had allowed its South Asia knowledge base to wither.

The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in U.S. expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in U.S. history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State's policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney's office. Anne W. Patterson, the new U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, is an expert on Latin American "drugs and thugs"; Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, is a former department spokesman who served three tours in Hong Kong and China but never was posted in South Asia. "They know nothing of Pakistan," a former senior U.S. diplomat said.

And now, the kicker.

Pakistan policy is essentially being run from Cheney's office. The vice president, they say, is close to Musharraf and refuses to brook any U.S. criticism of him. This all fits; in recent months, I'm told, Pakistani opposition politicians visiting Washington have been ushered in to meet Cheney's aides, rather than taken to the State Department.

No one in Foggy Bottom seems willing to question Cheney's decisions. Boucher, for one, has largely limited his remarks on the crisis to expressions of support for Musharraf. Current and retired U.S. diplomats tell me that throughout the previous year, Boucher refused to let the State Department even consider alternative policies if Musharraf were threatened with being ousted, even though 2007 is an election year in Pakistan. Last winter, Boucher reportedly limited the scope of a U.S. government seminar on Pakistan for fear that it might send a signal that U.S. support for Musharraf was declining. Likewise, I'm told, he has refused to meet with leading opposition figures such as former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf has exiled.

[...]

With Cheney in charge and Rice in eclipse, rumblings of alarm can be heard at the Defense Department and the CIA. While neither agency is usually directly concerned with decision-making on Pakistan, both boast officers with far greater expertise than the White House and State Department crew. These officers, many of whom have served in Islamabad or Kabul, understand the double game that Musharraf has played -- helping the United States go after al-Qaeda while letting his intelligence services help the Taliban claw their way back in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the CIA have been privately expressing concern about the lack of an alternative to blind support for Musharraf. Ironically, both departments have historically supported military rulers in Pakistan. They seem to have learned their lesson.

Once again, the hand of Dick Cheney is found stuck in the middle of a fiasco pie. Instead of promoting scholarship and sound planning at the State Department, Cheney runs the show based on his personal knowledge. He has clearly rejected the expertise of the CIA - again.

Once again, a monumental failure in foreign affairs falls squarely in the laps of Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice. This time, however, they are playing footsie from their offices with a nuclear power. An unstable nuclear power.

Laura Bush has a pinched nerve. George goes on a date.

George W Bush is in Australia causing all kinds of grief for Sydneysiders because of a security clampdown. But, George isn't letting that get in the way of his fun.

Condoleezza Rice has been President Bush's foreign policy tutor, sports buddy, national security adviser and his secretary of state.

Bush came up with a new designation Wednesday at a dinner in his honor.

``She can be my date,'' the president said, reaching out his left hand to touch Rice's arm as they stood before the cameras at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister John Howard and his wife Janette at their residence, Kirribilli House .

Why, that's just so touching. One would think George would have taken his, you know, wife to dinner with the Howards.

First lady Laura Bush had stayed back in Washington, saying a pinched nerve prevented her from taking long flights.

She couldn't make a flight on the largest, best equipped private jet in the world?

Air Force One has a large presidential suite, more lounges than some hotels, a large galley and a medical room. To go with that all the staff that Bush and his entourage needs is provided. Why, even Laura's physician would be there.

It's starting to sound like Laura Bush has a pinched nerve named "George".

(Click on image to enlarge)

H/T Tengrain

Are you smarter than a fifth grader Condi?

On Sunday Condoleeza Rice opened her cakehole and said this.

"…It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

An astounding revision of the facts to suit the Bush administration's needs. Did these people ever go to something so basic as school?

Keith Olbermann addressed Rice's lack of historical knowledge directly... and tore her a a new orifice. Crooks & Liars has the video and the transcript.

Saturday morning random rumours

This morning is all about grain. Well, sort of. Wheat, rye, grain, whiskey.

The Whiskey Bar is open again (it's actually been open for a few days and I've been hoarding a stool) and Billmon gives us a take on this quote from Condoleeza Rice:

This is a country that is worth the investment because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor, you'll have a very different kind of Middle East. And I know that from the point of view of not just monetary costs, but the sacrifice of American lives, a lot has been sacrificed for Iraq, a lot has been invested in Iraq.

As Billmon says:

Maybe Condi is just a cold, heartless bitch -- as morally numb and sociopathic as her office husband. But these kinds of comments could also simply reflect the incredibly sheltered life Madame Supertanker appears to have led, especially since she entered the pampered, intersecting worlds of the academic, national security and corporate elites.

Be prepared, now that Condi has said it, to expect her drooling, slathering Canadian puppy to repeat something similar with respect to Canadian losses in Afghanistan.

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Creekside slices through the Canadian Wheat Board fight, now in progress, and the machinations of agriculture minister Chuck Strahl (who used to be a road builder and truck logger - not a farmer). Alison raises the spectre of Canadian farmers becoming little more than share croppers if Strahl's efforts to get rid of the CWB succeed:

Some farmers will privately get a better price from another grain buyer, say - because they live close to the US border and so their transport costs would be lower than that of more northern farmers.

More farmers will switch to this new buyer.

CWB loses power and folds.

Individual farmers are pitted against each other and the price of wheat falls.

NAFTA says no new CWB can be launched.

Farmers have to sell out to whoever is big enough to survive the price drop, ie agribiz.

Farmers become sharecroppers on what was formerly their own land.

Personally, I think she's being overly optimistic. I see a complete loss of food production. The southern prairie farmers would likely survive while farming in the northern prairies would collapse - very quickly. With it, of course, disappears an $800 million advantage in the Canadian balance of trade.

I have two questions for Strahl:

1. Australia is presently led by a conservative government, (and has been for some time now), yet they are strengthening their single-desk wheat marketing board. You might want to explain why your conservative government is unable to comprehend the level of global strength achieved by offering a global commodity through a single broker. Or is it because you've been hearing from this company, or this one, or this one, or this one?

2. How come your website frontpage and website news does nothing but repeat the Conservative Party talking points and doesn't mention anything about what's going on with the Canadian Wheat Board. Nothing!! Explain that. On second thought, don't. We all know why.