News Dump Sunday: Trump's Afghan Mini-Surge Edition
Submitted by gjohnsit on Sun, 08/20/2017 - 1:05pm
Is this a bold, new strategy? (unconfirmed)
The United States (US) has decided to dispatch another 4,000 soldiers to Afghanistan amid increasing rebel attacks in the war-torn country, media reports said on Sunday.
US President Donald Trump finalized and signed his months-long strategy on Afghanistan in his Friday meeting with national security team held at Camp David.
Russian and Iranian news agencies reported that Trump had decided not to pull out of Afghanistan and instead pour another 4,000 US troops to the war-ravaged country to break the stalemate.
One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Trump's top national security aides are backing adding between 3,000 and 5,000 troops and allowing them to embed with Afghan forces closer to combat.
...According to U.S. estimates, government forces control less than 60 percent of Afghanistan, with almost half the country either contested or under the control of the insurgents.
Bombing the Syrian army again(unconfirmed)
The U.S. Coalition has bombed the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) positions in the southern countryside of the Al-Raqqa Governorate tonight, a local journalist reported minutes ago.
...The area bombed the U.S. Coalition has no Kurdish presence; therefore, the attack occurred in a region of Syria that is monitored by the Russian military.
Iraqi forces have launched a ground offensive to retake a key ISIL-held area in the northern part of the country, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.
"You either surrender, or die", Abadi said in a televised speech announcing the operation early on Sunday.
He was addressing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters, who have been in control of the city since 2014.
Tal Afar and the surrounding area are among the last pockets of ISIL-held territory in Iraq, after victory was declared in Mosul, the country's second-largest city.
Iraqi officials believe there are between 1,400 and 1,600 ISIL fighters in the Tal Afar area, including many foreign fighters, according to Iraqi Brigadier Generai Yahia Rasool who spoke through an interpreter on Saturday.
We blow up Iraq; China rebuilds Iraq
China has been playing an active role in Iraq's post-war reconstruction and has made a "huge" contribution in helping rebuild the country, according to Ahmed Tahseen Berwari, the Iraqi ambassador to China.
The internationally recognized government based in the southern city of Aden has yet to impose its writ over a kaleidoscope of armed factions there, one of which camped out with its weapons in a protest at a main square on Sunday.
Angry about the mysterious assassination of a local commander, the militia traded gunfire with security forces.
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and most of the government remain in exile due to security threats in Aden while the central bank complained last week that it has no access to cash badly needed to shore up the economy.
Ruling from the capital Sanaa in the north, the government's foes in the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, also known as Ansar Allah, are faring little better and appeared to fall out with a major ally over the worsening economic crisis.
Comments
The timing is interesting
An Afghan Surge just days after Bannon, who opposed these useless wars, was ousted.
Flashback to 2012
On the frontlines
It would be hard to conceive
of anything less bold, or less new, the Trump team's most recent strategy for Afghanistan.
Interesting that China is moving in to rebuild Iraq, while the USA has specialized more in the demolition business. What will those wily orientals think of next?
native
China plans to lift America into the 21st century.
The high-speed train from Beijing to Chicago is already in proof of concept. At first the project called for an underwater channel at the Bering Straight. But the Chinese have since invented a train that can swim. So clever. Trip will take two days. We should make them an ally; they are geo-geneticallly more intelligent than we are. Plus, they are better educated.
More power to them.
The current version of "American exceptionalism" (aka further expansion of empire) is not doing anyone any good anywhere... least of all, for Americans themselves. US foreign policy is being driven by an interlocking consortium of careerists and power-mad ideologues of high degree, with barely a shred of common sense among them. USA is surely 'cruisin for a bruisin', it looks like to me. I just hope our karma won't be too hard on us.
native
The American people are the losers in US foreign policy.
They have to pick up all costs for the US to execute Israel's foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond — and all they get out of it is austerity and blowback.
I was reminded to think of the American population as a "resource" if I wanted to see the big picture.
Our leaders do not view the US population as "people," they are viewed as a natural resource, one that continuously grows. Population growth coupled with global dollar hegemony guarantees an ever expanding economy. Taxation policies that divert all income gains to the top is what makes Empire such a temptation.
Succumbing to that temptation is what fuels the private and public "Defense" industry. They both consume our Federal revenues and undercut our social programs and personal security. But only shareholders receive dividends for their investments. The American people get nothing for theirs. When you add in the constant tax cuts for the wealthy and the soaring increases in defense spending over the past 50 years, it's easy to see how this generation, and the generations that follow, are born into debt service and lives of sacrifice. The US Defense Cartel is responsible for at least 60 to 75 percent of our total National Debt, 20 trillion dollars to date. It is an amount that cannot be repaid, it can only be serviced by the enslaved. After you subtract taxes and fees and assessments from long-stagnant salaries, their basic expenses are higher than the majority of Americans earn. Thus, they must carry personal debt, as well. Higher education and health care are luxuries, not rights. Hunger lurks between pay checks.
So far, Americans have surrendered to financial insecurity that would be unthinkable in the other developed nations. Every year, it gets a little worse.
An actual anti-war protest
by military families
This protest has to go viral
imagine how much support these military families would get by the many people who are also tired of the wars and the number of injured or killed military troops.
This could be as important as the Vietnam protests.
I'd like to see people calling out against the huge numbers of civilians who have been killed or displaced from their homes and countries.
I especially calling out the 20 million people in Yemen who are on the brink of starvation and dying from cholera.
This might be too hard to get started because of the people who actually think that our troops are fighting to defend our freedoms and keeping us safe.
Again I saw many comments that stated the troops have died for our first amendment right. The fact that they don't question how terrorists can take them away never crosses their minds.
The government propaganda surely got its money worth after spending decades lying to us.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
The USG is still getting its money's worth
by lying to us. They've got a whole fucking industry devoted to the task. Filthy work if you can get it, but the competition is fierce.
native
A surge in Afghanistan. Now, that's a blast from the past.
Let's see, 4,000 soldiers equals about 16,000 private contractors.
What a bunch of losers.
I bet I know what tipped the scales at Camp David. Same old, same old.
Playing Whack-a-mole again...
Does anyone remember attempts to 'pacify' the Vietnamese countryside?
I sure do.
I want a Pony!
I remember it too.
While the US Armed Forces were busy trying to pacify South Vietnam, and bombing the shit out of North Vietnam, I was busy trying to obtain Canadian immigrant status from inside Canada. Not as easy as one might imagine, but doable. Meanwhile the FBI was making a (somewhat lackadaisical it seemed to me) attempt to find out where I was. Interviewing my parents and asking my aunt and uncle if they'd heard from me, that was about it. But for several years I was officially a fugitive from American justice, in spite of the fact that I hadn't actually done anything notably bad, or even disruptive -- except for the horrible & dastardly crime of Evading the Draft. Punishable in those days, by all kinds of very nasty stuff.
Surprisingly, the Feebies finally did track me down (I'd never made any serious attempt to hide) but by then it was too late. I'd already been granted the coveted Landed Immigrant status. In Canada this legal status is like, Gold. Two uniformed RCMP Officers finally did show up at my door in Montreal one day, demanding to see "votre documents monsieur, sil vous plais" -- these I proudly produced and showed to them, and then they just... went away. I seem to recall the one with the moustache saying "Bonjour monsieur", on his way out the door.
And that was that. There was nothing at all heroic about my voluntary expatriation. I simply could not countenance the absurd idea of being sent thousands of miles away, to engage in deadly combat against a strange people with whom I had no quarrel or grievance whatsoever. For what? Some abstract ideal, so fuzzy that no one could clearly explain what it was? The very idea of doing such a thing seemed utterly preposterous to me then, and it still does. Nonsensical at best, and criminal at worst. So I just didn't do it. No big deal. I still marvel that it did not seem equally preposterous to most other young American men of that time. But it didn't, and so they did what they were all expected to do, or were told to do, or felt they needed to do, whatever the fuck it was... while all I did was just skedaddle.
Oh, but whenever I tell my "draft dodger" story, I feel it incumbent upon myself to offer praise and heartfelt gratitude to my one-time savior and all-time political hero, the Honorable Monsieur Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Clearly, they don't make em like that any more.
native
@native one thing about the
one thing about the draft. It was one of the few cases where 'doing nothing' is/was a crime. And yes...young men must still register to this day or face'justice'.
I want a Pony!
So much for the mercs idea.
3-4000 isn't a surge though.
More likely the minimum the Pentagon figured would be necessary to prevent a complete governmental collapse.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
4,000 troops on top of 16 years of slaughter
…will not hold back the Taliban. That's not what this is about.