All Quiet on the Eastern Blog (genghis)

(overnight thread coming in a couple of hours)

As part of our ongoing public service as a Very smart military blog, here’s a couple of articles regarding that little scrap we’re currently involved with in Afghanistan.

First up is an article/interview at the well-respected military journal Jane’s Defence Weekly MSNBC concerning the following question: Is Afghanistan a War of Choice, not Neccessity? Oddly, it’s actually an interview of the President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Richard Haass by another member of CFR, Bernard Gwertzman, a consulting editor at their web site.

As we all know from listening to Art Bell and his sidekicks, CFR is a shadowy organization which manipulates the global economic, political and military sytems from, well, the shadows. Also they have a really cool fleet of black helicopters.

A brief tangent: I was going to post this last night and when I went to the Wikipedia entry for CFR and looked under "Mission" I found the following:

"The Council's mission is to spread fear in the world by working closely with state owned news agencies such as Fox News Network and the BBC. To understand fully the information presented on the CFR website one has to adopt a black means white and white means black way of thinking."

It's all fixed now. Probably just their crosstown rivals the Bilderbergers pulling a prank on them. Anyway, the article/interview goes on at length to discuss assertions made in Mr. Haass’ (no that’s not a typo…he really has that many dual letters in his last name) latest tome entitled ”War of Neccessity, War of Choice.” Haass served in both Bush administrations (NSC in Bush ’41 and State Dept. in Bush ’43.) His launching point on the subject is that Gulf War I was “necessary” and the War in Iraq/Gulf War II was not , and presumably resigned over the issue. As for Afghanistan, he considers the initial phases necessary actions but is now worried that Pres. Obama is expanding the engagement there into the “war of choice category.”

Lot’s more hot girl-on-girl action below the fold.

Did I say girl-on-girl? Sorry about that. I meant astute geopolitical and military analysis and commentary. I’ll make it up to you with some ‘splodey things below.

It’s a little difficult to tell exactly what Haass’ issues with expanding the war in Afghanistan are, but it seems like he’s saying (as are numerous others lately) that we should just forget about the Taliban and focus solely on al-Qaida, which would be nice if only you could pick them apart. Apparently we should also be doing something in Pakistan. Which we are, as he should well know, but kinda’ keeping it all hush-hush and whatnot. I do have to agree with his point on Iraq that some kind of semi-stabilized system may actually survive there after we pull out, but the historical rifts will probably fuck all that up. Iraq as a country is just an idea (like ours, but sandier, and at least we choose to be here), but it was just a fake construct drawn up by British surveyors and diplomats after WWI who really liked drawing straight lines on maps and wanted to get on with afternoon tea. It’s Yugoslavia without the country charm. So right now it’s 3 different cultures forced to live together in a box not of their own making. Shoulda’ been partitioned after The Big One.

Anyway, long article. Lotsa’ stuff to poke at. Including all the b.s. I just wrote above. Draw swords and whack away.

On the other hand, I’m almost certain the following has been posted before (though can’t remember when or by whom.), but Popular Mechanics has a War Journal they’re running from Afghanistan. I can’t tell if this is just a one-off article or an ongoing series. Hopefully the latter. Today’s episode is titled: “One Day at Forward Operating Base Saleno.” If I can find any more installments I'll post them. Likewise, if any of you find more entries, please pass them along.

Ok, now some stock images of 'splodey things. How 'bout some hot A-10 on Taliban stronghold action?

Or maybe an AC-130 giving some of that sweet, sweet love to an AQ-in-Iraq position? (In Mosul, 2004)

And maybe some more A-10, just going about its daily business and destroying random tanks and armored vehicles.:

posted by xgenghisx at 08:22 PM

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