4. September 2010 by admin.
How the US army protects its trucks – by paying the Taliban
Insurance, security or extortion? The US is spending millions of dollars in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through – and it’s the Taliban who profit
The lawyers for Hamed Wardak and NCL Holdings, Mishcon de Reya say: NCL and Mr Wardak learned of the contracting opportunities for the provision of trucking services in Afghanistan from the “fedbizopps” website, which is hosted by the US Government, and open to all, with all of the stringencies required in such an exercise. NCL competed for the contract according to the advertised criteria and were awarded it on the merits of its tender in a fair and open exercise. Neither NCL nor Mr Wardak were the recipients of the contract because of Mr Wardak’s connections in Afghanistan. The contracts were not awarded unfairly. Although each tendering party has been awarded transit contracts with a value of up to US$360 million for a period of two years, NCL have so far, nearly half way through the first year, performed contacts to the value of US$18.5 million. Mr Wardak and his family have dedicated their political lives to the welfare of Afghanistan, in vocal opposition to the Taliban. He does not directly or indirectly provide funds to the Taliban. There is no evidence that any money from NCL was received by the Taliban.
On 29 October 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.
But Popal was more than just a former mujahideen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1998.
Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin, President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn in a separate case.
The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan [its senior personnel are ex-British army, many of them from Special Services]. One of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.
Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.
In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.
“It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials admits. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10% of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts – hundreds of millions of dollars – consists of payments to insurgents.
Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the complex web of connections that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and a good place to pick up this thread is a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings.
Like the Popals’ Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan. What NCL Holdings is most notable for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghan’s current defence minister, General Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahideen against the Soviets.
Earlier this year, the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named as one of the six companies that would handle all the US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.
Striking contracting gold
At first the contract, for “host nation trucking”, was large but not gargantuan. But over the summer, citing the coming “surge” and a new doctrine, “Money as a weapons system”, the US military expanded the contract 600% for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: “Service members will not get the food, water, equipment and ammunition they require.”
Each of the military’s six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360m, or a total of nearly $2.2bn. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10% of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defence minister’s well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.
Host nation trucking does, indeed, keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. “We supply everything the army needs to survive here,” one American trucking executive told me. “We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles.”
The epicentre is Bagram air base, just an hour north of Kabul, from where virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the army calls “the battlespace” – that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.
The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: “The army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.”
That is something everyone seems to agree on. Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the host nation trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: “You are paying the people in the local areas – some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force – to move your trucks through.”
Hanna explained that the prices charged are different depending on the route. “We’re basically being extorted. Where you don’t pay, you’re going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to.”
Sometimes, he says, the fee is high, and sometimes it is low. “Moving 10 trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It’s based on a number of trucks and what you’re carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they’re not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying Mraps [mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles] or Humvees, they are going to charge you more.”
Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. “If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially.”
The private security industry in Afghanistan has developed quite differently from the private military model seen in Iraq, where firms such as Blackwater were arms of the US government. The industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. “Every warlord has his security company,” is the way one executive explained it to me.
The heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don’t really protect convoys of US military goods here because they simply can’t; they need the Taliban’s co-operation.
One of the big problems for the companies that ship US military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. Insurgents are “shooting the drivers from 3,000ft away” with Kalashnikovs, a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. “They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that’s just a joke. I carry an AK – and that’s just to shoot myself if I have to!”
The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna points out, “An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade – you are going to lose.”
That said, at least one of the host nation trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International (FHI). Instead of payments, it tried to fight off attackers. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but insiders in the security industry say that FHI’s convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.
Watan’s secret weapon
For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, “What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat.”
He is an army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he is not happy about what is being done. He says that, at a minimum, American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off. “Most escorting is done by the Taliban,” an Afghan private security official told me. He is a Pashto and former mujahideen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. “Now the government is so weak,” he added, “everyone is paying the Taliban.”
To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. “Two Taliban is enough,” she told me. “One in the front and one in the back.” She shrugged. “You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible.”
Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by the Popals, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war – to the south and to the west. If the army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.
Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan has a deal with the local warlord who controls the road.
Watan’s secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.
According to witnesses, Ruhullah works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4×4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Ruhullah is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah “charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300km.”
Security, extortion or insurance?
It is hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly – security, extortion or a form of “insurance”. Then there is the question, does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That is impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route says, “He works both sides . . . whatever is most profitable. He’s the main commander. He’s got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows.”
Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, is reputed to pay. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan and Commander Ruhullah’s convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 a month for Watan’s services. To underline the point, NCL, operating on a $360m contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister’s son, is apparently paying millions a year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai’s cousins, for protection.
Cleaning up what looks like cronyism may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline from Department of Defense contracts to potential insurgents. Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS is a well-run service, trusted by the international forces. The NDS delivered what I’m told are “very detailed” reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies. The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the US was to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.
The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. I asked Colonel David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents?
“The American soldier in me is repulsed by it,” he said in an interview in his office at forward operating base Shank in Logar province. “But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”
As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, “We understand that across the board, 10-20% goes to the insurgents. My intel [intelligence] guy would say it is closer to 10%. Generally, it is happening in logistics.”
In a statement about host nation trucking, the US army’s chief public affairs officer in Afghanistan, Colonel Wayne Shanks, says international forces are “aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring”. He adds that, in spite of oversight, “the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent”.
In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that – as with so much in Afghanistan – the United States doesn’t seem to know how to fix it.
This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current edition of the Nation magazine
Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs
Posted in War on Terror, Taliban, Afganistan, United State of America | Print | No Comments »
4. September 2010 by admin.
Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »
2. September 2010 by admin.
Pakistan’s human cockroaches
The writer is a columnist, and TV and radio anchor fasi.zaka@tribune.com.pk
Source Link: http://tribune.com.pk/story/42158/pakistan/
Pakistan, you are a failed state. Not because of Zardari. Not because of America. But because you are a failed people, all of us undeserving of sympathy. We are diseased, rotten to every brain stem, world please make an impenetrable fence around us, keep us all in so we don’t spread it to other people, other countries.
These were words I posted on a social networking website. I have an unusually negative mindset these days. It happened after I saw the video of the two teenage brothers brutally clubbed to death by a crowd frenzied with blood thirst in Sialkot. The police watched gleefully. The video has blurs at certain parts, but even this sensible sensitivity does not prevent one from seeing mists of blood flaying from the heads of these teens as they are hit relentlessly, and remorselessly, again and again.
The murderous crowd was truly representative of the richness of Pakistan. Some wear jeans, others shalwar kameez, some were bearded, others clean shaven. The Pakistanis had gotten together to have some fun.
Do not be shocked. This wasn’t isolated, it’s just that the crowd wanted to make sure their orgasmic moment could be captured for later viewing, at one’s pleasure. We blame our ill-educated brethren for the barbarity we witness, but that’s a self-serving lie.
The middle and upper classes are immune to education it seems. They hold opinions of everyday violence even if they have never raised their hand at anyone. If you believe Jews are the scum of the earth, all Ahmadis deserve to die or that Hindus are inferior, well why not two teenage boys?
I want Pakistanis to feel shame, in fact a substantial loss of self-esteem would be great. This is the only way for us to begin to doubt ourselves and the incessant excuses we make. Yes, the world is right to add restrictions on our visas, to see us as dangerous. If for even a while we felt we were the cockroaches of the human race, maybe we would get to the point we stopped the lies we tell ourselves and let this continue.
The fact is, if we had real democracy, there would be no internet in Pakistan, women would not be allowed out of their homes, education would come to a standstill and we would begin a programme of killing off every minority. Thank you corrupt generals and politicians, you keep this at bay with some sense of being answerable to a world that still has some humanity in it, even if you don’t.
And please, no excuses, no excuses. Don’t give us that, “If only there was true Islam they would be better”. I think a thousand years is enough, we can’t wait longer. And there was no America in existence for most of that, or even western colonialism.
You want to know just how sociopathic we are? In response to these killings some are happy to say we deserve earthquakes and floods. Typical. Don’t change yourself, but give credit to the indiscriminate and inhumane forces of nature. The floods are a tragedy, an atrocity and should never be used to bolster an argument that really only demands self-reflection.
And please, in your self-reflection don’t call us animals, most of them are benign vegetarians. Also don’t blame Sialkot; they were just unlucky because they are subject to scrutiny. There is so much more out there.
There is such a sense of sickening moral superiority in Pakistanis, it needs to be addressed. All we care about is foreign policy, eager to point out the hypocrisies of the world, silent on our domestic, or even local life. Why should the world take what you say seriously, why should you be a regional power, or a leader in the comity of Islamic nations?
Truth is, there is only one way to get change, and it’s not hanging the people who killed these boys. It is raising your voice to contradict people who advocate death for others, no matter who they are speaking of. To internalise that murder of any kind, for anyone is wrong. Sounds easy? Well just try it.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 24th, 2010.
Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs
Posted in Pakistan | Print | No Comments »
2. September 2010 by admin.
US Losing The War Against Taliban in Afghanistan?
Almost 150,000 U.S. and allied troops are now in Afghanistan, some 30,000 more than the number of Soviet troops at the height of their occupation in the 1980s. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is now at the pinnacle of its strength, which is expected to start declining, one way or another, by the latter half of 2011, a trend that will have little prospect of reversing itself. Though history will undoubtedly speak of missed or squandered opportunities in the early years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, this is now the decisive moment in the campaign.
It is worth noting that nearly a year ago, then-commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the ISAF Gen. Stanley McChrystal submitted his initial assessment of the status of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan to the White House. In his analysis, McChrystal made two key assertions:There was no ambiguity. The serving commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan told his commander in chief that without both a change in strategy and additional troops to implement the new strategy, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan would fail. Nowhere in the report, however, did McChrystal claim that with the new strategy and more troops the United States would win the war in Afghanistan.
Today, with the additional troops committed and a new strategy governing their employment, the ISAF is making its last big push to reshape Afghanistan. But domestic politics in ISAF troop-contributing nations are severely constraining the sustainability of these deployments at their current scale. Meanwhile, the Taliban continue to retain the upper hand, and the incompatibilities of the political climates in troop-contributing nations with the military imperatives of an effective counterinsurgency are becoming ever more apparent. This leads to the question: What is the United States ultimately trying to achieve in Afghanistan and can it succeed?The surges of U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007 and into Afghanistan in 2010 represent very different military campaigns, and a look at the contrasts between the two campaigns can be instructive. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Washington had originally intended to install a stable, pro-American government in Baghdad in order to fundamentally reshape the region. Instead, after the U.S. invasion destroyed the existing Iraqi-Iranian balance of power, Washington found itself on the defensive, struggling to prevent the opposite outcome — a pro-Iranian regime. An Iran unchecked by Iraq (a key factor in Iran’s rise and assertiveness over the last seven years) and able to use Mesopotamia as a stepping-stone for expanding its influence across the Middle East would reshape the region every bit as much as a pro-American regime.
The American adversaries in Iraq were Sunni insurgents (including a steadily declining pool of Baathist nationalists), al Qaeda fighters and a smattering of other foreign jihadists and Iranian-backed Shiite militias. The Sunnis provided support and shelter for the jihadists while fighting a pair of losing battles they viewed as existential struggles — simultaneously taking on the U.S. military and the security forces of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, with a Shiite Iran meddling all the while in Iraqi Shiite politics. But the foreign jihadists ultimately overplayed their hand with Iraq’s Sunnis, a decisive factor in their demise. Their attempts to impose a harsh and draconian form of Islamism and the slaying of traditional Sunni tribal leaders cut against the grain of Iraqi cultural and societal norms. In response, beginning well-before the surge of 2007, Sunni Awakening Councils and militias under the Sons of Iraq program were formed to defend against and drive out the foreign jihadists. At the heart of this shift was Sunni self-interest. Not only were the foreign jihadists imposing a severe and unwelcome form of Islamism, but it was also becoming clear to the Sunnis that the battles they were waging held little promise of actually protecting them from Shiite subjugation. Indeed, with foreign jihadist attacks on the traditional tribal power structure, it was increasingly clear that the foreign jihadists themselves were, in their own way, attempting to subjugate Iraqi Sunnis for their own purposes. As the Sunnis began to warm to the United States, they found themselves with very few options. Faced with subjugation from many directions and having realized that the way they held the upper hand in Iraq before 2003 was simply not recoverable, the Sunnis came to see siding with the United States as the best alternative. When the United States surged troops into Iraq in 2007, one of the main U.S. adversaries in Iraq (the Sunnis) turned against another (al Qaeda and the jihadists). While the surge was instrumental in breaking the cycle of violence in Baghdad and shifting perceptions both within Iraq and around the wider region, there were nowhere near enough troops to impose a military reality on the country by force. Instead, the strategy relied heavily on capitalizing on a shift already taking place: the realignment of the Sunnis, who not only fed the U.S. actionable intelligence on the foreign jihadists but also became actively engaged in the campaign against them. While success appeared anything but certain in 2007, almost an entire segment of Iraqi society had effectively changed sides to ally with the United States. This alliance allowed the United States to hunt down jihadist leaders and systematically disrupt jihadist networks while arming the Sunnis to the point that only a unified Shiite segment with consolidated command of the security forces could destroy them — and even then, only with considerable effort and bloodshed. But despite the marked shift in Iraq since the surge, the security gains remain fragile, the political situation tenuous and the prospects of an Iraq not dominated by Iran limited. In other words, for all the achievements of the surge, and despite the significant reduction in American forces in the country, the situation in Iraq — and the balance of power in the region — is still unresolved.With this understanding of the 2007 surge in Iraq in mind, let us examine the current surge of troops into Afghanistan. In Iraq, the United States was forced to shift its objective from installing a pro-American regime in Baghdad to preventing the wholesale domination of the country by Iran (a work still in progress). In Afghanistan, the problem is the opposite. The initial American objective in Afghanistan was to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda, and while certain key individuals remain at large, the apex leadership of what was once al Qaeda has been eviscerated and no longer presents a strategic threat. This physical threat now comes more from al Qaeda “franchises” like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula andal Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
In other words, while the original objective was never achieved in Iraq and the United States has been scrambling to re-establish a semblance of the old balance of power, the original American objective has effectively been achieved in Afghanistan (though the effort is ongoing). Most of what remains of the original al Qaeda prime that the United States set out to destroy in 2001 now resides in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Despite — or perhaps because of — the remarkably heterogeneous demography of Afghanistan, there is no sectarian card to play. Nor is there a regional rival, as there is in Iraq with Iran, that U.S. grand strategy dictates must be prevented from dominating the country. Indeed, an Afghanistan dominated by Pakistan is both largely inevitable and perfectly acceptable to Washington under the right conditions. The long-term American geopolitical interest in Afghanistan has always been and remains limited: to prevent the country from ever again serving as a safe haven for transnational terrorists. While counterterrorism efforts on both sides of the border are ongoing, the primary strategic objective for the United States in Afghanistan is the establishment of a government that does not espouse transnational jihadism and provide sanctuary for its adherents and one that allows limited counterterrorism efforts to continue indefinitely. Al Qaeda itself has little to do with this objective in Afghanistan anymore. The challenge now is crafting circumstances in the country that are sufficient to safeguard American interests. Given this objective, the enemy in Afghanistan is no longer al Qaeda. It is the Taliban, which controlled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and provided sanctuary for al Qaeda until the United States and the Northern Alliance ousted them from power. (It is important to note that the Taliban were not defeated in 2001. Faced with a superior force, they declined combat and refused to fight on American terms, only to resurge after American attention shifted to Iraq.) But it is not the Afghan Taliban per se that the United States is opposed to, it is their support for transnational Islamist jihadists — something to which the movement does not necessarily have a deep-seated, non-negotiable commitment. As a grassroots insurgency, the Taliban enjoy a broad following across the country, particularly among the Pashtun, the single-largest demographic segment in the country (roughly 40 percent of the population). The movement has proved capable of maintaining internal discipline (recent efforts to hive off “reconcilable” elements have shown little tangible progress) while remaining a diffuse and multifaceted entity with considerable local appeal across a variety of communities. For many in Afghanistan, the Taliban represent a local Afghan agenda and its brand of more severe Islamism — while hardly universal — appeals to a significant swath of Afghan society. The Taliban’s militias were once Afghanistan’s government-sponsored military force. And as a light-infantry force both appropriate for and intimately familiar with the rugged Afghan countryside, the Taliban enjoy superior knowledge of the terrain and people as well as superior intelligence (including intelligence from compromised elements of the Afghan security forces). The Taliban are particularly well-suited for waging a protracted insurgency and they perceive themselves as winning this one — which they are.The Taliban are winning in Afghanistan because they are not losing. The United States is losing because it is not winning. This is the reality of waging a counterinsurgency. The ultimate objective of the insurgent is a negative one: to deny victory — to survive, to evade decisive combat and to prevent the counterinsurgent from achieving victory. Conversely, the counterinsurgent has the much more daunting and affirmative task of forcing decisive combat in order to end hostilities. It is, after all, far easier to disrupt governance and provoke instability than it is to govern and provide stability.
This makes the timetables dictated by political realities in ISAF troop-contributing nations extremely problematic. Counterinsurgency efforts are not won or lost on a timetable compatible with the current political climate at home. Admittedly, the attempt is not to win the counterinsurgency in the next year or the next three years (the U.S. timetable calls for troop withdrawals to begin in July 2011). Rather, the strategy is now one of “Vietnamization”, in which indigenous forces are assembled and trained to assume responsibility for waging the counterinsurgency with sufficient skill and malleability to serve American interests. But the effort to which the bulk of ISAF troops are being dedicated and the effort in which the ISAF hopes to demonstrate progress for domestic consumption is the counterinsurgency mission, not the counterterrorism one. This effort, specifically, is taking place in key population centers and particularly in the Taliban’s core turf in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the country’s restive south. The efforts in Helmand and Kandahar were never going to be easy — they were chosen specifically because they are Taliban strongholds. But even with the extra influx of troops and the prioritization of operations there, progress has proved elusive and slower than expected. The fact is, the counterinsurgency effort is plagued with a series of critical shortcomings that have traditionally proved pivotal to success in such efforts.The heart of the problem is twofold. First, the core strengths of the Taliban as a guerrilla force are undisputed, and the United States and its allies are unwilling to dedicate the resources and effort necessary to fully defeat it. To be clear, this would not be a matter of a few more years or a few more thousand troops, but a decade or more of forces and resources being sustained in Afghanistan at not only immense immediate cost but also immense opportunity cost to American interests elsewhere in the world. In reality (if not officially), the end objective now appears to be political accommodation with the Afghan Taliban and their integration into the regime in Kabul.
The idea originally was to take advantage of the diffuse and multifaceted nature of the Taliban and hive off so-called “reconcilable elements,” separating the run-of-the-mill Taliban from the hard-liners. The objective would be to integrate the former while making the situation more desperate for the latter. But from the beginning, both Kabul and Islamabad saw this sort of localized, grassroots solution as neither sufficient nor in keeping with their longer-term interests. While some localized changing of sides has certainly taken place (in both directions, with some Afghan government figures going over to the Taliban), the Afghan Taliban movement has proved to have considerable internal discipline that is no doubt bolstered by the widespread belief that it is only a matter of time before the foreigners leave. This makes the long-term incentive to remain loyal to the Taliban — or, at the very least, not to so starkly break from them that only brutal reprisal awaits when the foreign forces leave — very difficult to resist. So the negotiation effort has shifted more into the hands of Kabul and Islamabad, both of which favor a comprehensive agreement with the Afghan Taliban’s senior leadership.And this is where the second aspect of the problem comes into play. While special operations forces have been successful in capturing or killing some Taliban leaders, the Pakistanis have so far continued to provide only grudging and limited assistance, and there is no Afghan analogy to the Sunni Awakening in Iraq. In addition to building up indigenous government forces, the focus of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is on securing the country’s key population centers, thereby denying the Taliban key bases of support. The idea is that, as the Taliban continue to decline decisive combat and resort to harassing attacks, local loyalties will have shifted by the time ISAF forces leave and strengthened Afghan security forces will be able to manage a weakened Taliban movement.
However, this entails much more than just temporarily clearing Taliban fighters out of key population centers. The ISAF has made a concerted effort to secure and protect such areas (including Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan) from surreptitious intimidation as well as overt violence and to guarantee not just stability but also jobs and adequate governance. But the strategy requires that such transformations become entrenched and durable on an extremely short timetable in a national population that is anything but homogenous. Indeed, all three aspects of the ISAF’s concept of operations — shifting local loyalties, weakening the Taliban and putting capable Afghan security forces in place — are proving problematic. The underlying point here is that the United States does not intend to defeat the Taliban; it seeks merely to draw them into serious negotiations. While deception and feints are an inherent part of waging war, the history of warfare shows that seeking to convince the enemy to negotiate without being dedicated to his physical and psychological destruction can be perilous territory. The failed attempt by the United States to drive North Vietnam to the negotiating table through the Linebacker air campaigns is an infamous case in point. Like those bombing campaigns, current U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan appear to lack the credibility to be compelling — much less forceful enough to bring the Taliban to the table. The application of military power, as Clausewitz taught, must be both commensurate with the nation’s political objectives and targeted at the enemy’s will to resist. The Taliban’s will to resist is unlikely to be altered by an abstract threat to key bases of support, especially one that may or may not materialize years from now — and, in particular, when the Taliban genuinely doubt both the efficacy of the concept of operations and the national resolve. In any event, this is ultimately a political calculation. The application of military force to that calculation must be tailored in such a way as to bring the enemy to its knees — to force the enemy off balance, strike at his center of power and exploit critical vulnerabilities. To be effective, this must be done relentlessly, at a tempo to which the enemy cannot adapt. This is done to force the enemy not to negotiate but to seriously contemplate defeat — and thereby seek negotiation out of fear of that defeat. Although Pakistan has intensified its counterinsurgency efforts on its side of the border, an international border and the Taliban’s ability to take refuge on the far side of it further restricts, as it did in Vietnam, the American ability to target and pressure its adversary. So far, nothing that has been achieved appears to have resonated with the Taliban as a threat too dangerous and pressing to wait out.Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »
1. September 2010 by admin.
Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »
29. August 2010 by admin.
Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »
28. August 2010 by admin.
GEOPOLITICS OF USA - ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP
In geopolitics, we are frequently confornted with what appears to be a great deal of movement. Sometimes it is current geopolitical reality breaking apart and a new one emerging.
Sometimes it is simply meaningless motion in a fixed geographical reality - nothing more than illusion of maneuver generated for political reasons as players maneuver within a fixed framework for minor advantage or internal political reasons. In other words, we need to distinguish between geopolitics and politics.
Nowhere it is more important than in the Middle East, which has come to be defined in terms of Arab-Israeli equations for reasons I fully don’t understand. Leaving that aside, in recent months we have seen a lot of endless happenings and rumours of happenings. The current impasse between US and Israel, Flotilla Crisis, Iran’s outbursts against Israel, Turkey is no longer a trusted ally, etc. Israel has always been invoked as an ally of US against “War on Terror” (though this term is no longer used) - or even the very reason why US is in the war in first place. Some will say that Israel maneuvered the US into Iraq to serve its own purpose. Some will say it orchestrated 9/11 for its own ends. Others will say that , had US supported Israel more resolutely, there would have been no 9/11.
There is probably no relationship on which people have more diverging views than on that between US and Israel. This seems to be an opportune time to consider the geopolitics of US-Israeli relationship.
Let us begin with some obvious political points. There is relatively small Jewish community in the United States, though its political influence is magnified by its strategic location in critical states like New York and the fact that it is more actively involved in politics than some other ethnic groups.
The Jewish community, as tends to be the case with groups, is deeply divided on many issues. It tends to be united on one issue - Israel - but not with the same intensity as in the past, nor with even semblance of agreement on the specifics. The American Jewish community is as divided as the Israeli Jewish community, with a large segment of people who don’t care much. At the same time, this community donates a huge amount of money to American and Israeli organizations, including groups that lobby on behalf of Israeli issues in Washington. These lobbying entities lean toward the right wing of Israel’s political spectrum, in large part because the Israeli right has tended to govern in the past generation and these groups tend to follow the dominant Israeli strand. It is also because American Jews who contribute to Israel lobby organizations lean right in both Israeli and American politics.
The Israel lobby, which has a great deal of money and experience, is extremely influential in Washington. For decades now, it has done a good job of ensuring that Israeli interests are attended to in Washington, and certainly on some issues it has skewed US policy on the Middle East.
There are however two important questions. The first is whether this is in any way unique. Is a strong Israel lobby an unprecedented intrusion into foreign policy? The key question though, is whether Israeli interests diverge from US interests to the extent that the Israel lobby is taking US foreign policy in directions it wouldn’t go otherwise, in directions that counter the US national interest.
Begin with the first question. Prior to both world wars there was extensive debate on whether the US should intervene in the war. In both cases, the British government lobbied extensively for US intervention on behalf of UK. The British made two arguments. The first was that US shared a heritage with England - code for the idea that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants should stand with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The second was that there was a fundamental political affinity between British and US democracy from German authoritarianism.
Many Americans, including President Franklin Roosevelt, believed both the arguments. The British lobby was quite powerful. There was German lobby as well, but it lacked the numbers, the money and the traditions to draw on.
But from geopolitical viewpoint, both the arguments were very weak. The US and UK not only were separate countries, they had fought some bitter wars over the question. As for political institutions, geopolitics as a method, is fairly insensitive to the moral claims of regimes. It works on the basis of interest. On that basis, an intervention on behalf of UK in both wars made sense because it provided a relatively low cost way of preventing Germany from dominating Europe and challenging American sea power. In the end, it wasn’t the lobbying interest, massive though it was, but geopolitical necessity that drove US intervention.
The second question, then is: Has the Israel lobby caused the US to act in ways that contravene US interests? For example, by getting the US to support Israel, did it turn Arab world against the Americans? Did it support Israel against Palestinians, thereby generate an Islamist radicalism that led to 9/11? Did it manipulate US policy on Iraq so that US invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel? These allegations have all been made. If true, they are very serious charges.
It is important to remember that US-Israeli ties were not extraordinarily close prior to 1967. President Harry Truman recognized Israel, but the US had not provided major military aid and support. Israel, always in need of an outside supply of weapons, first depended on the Soviet Union, which shipped via Czechoslovakia. When the Soviets realized that Israeli socialists were anti-Soviet as well, they dropped Israel.
Israel’s next patron was France. France was fighting to hold on to Algeria and maintain its influence in Lebanon and Syria, both former French protectorates. The French saw Israel as a natural ally. It was France that really created the Israeli air force and provided the first technology for Israeli nuclear weapons.
The US was actively hostile to Israel during this period. In 1956, following Gamal Abdul Nasser’s seizure of power in Egypt, Cairo nationalized the Suez Canal. Without the canal, the British Empire was finished, and ultimately the French were as well. UK and France worked secretly with Israel, and Israel invaded the Sinai. Then, in order to protect the Suez Canal from and Israeli-Egyptian war, a Franco-British force parachuted in to seize the canal. President Dwight Eisenhower forced the British and French to withdraw - as well as the Israelis. US Israeli relations remained chilly for quite some time.
The break point with France came in 1967. The Israelis, under pressure from Egypt, decided to invade Egypt, Jordan and Syria - ignoring French President Charles de Gaulle’s demand that they do not do so. As a result, France broke its alignment with Israel.
This was a critical moment in US-Israeli relationship. Israel needed a source of weaponry as its national security needs vastly outstripped its industrial base. It was at this point that the Israeli lobby in the United States became critical. Israel wanted a relationship with the US and Israeli lobby brought tremendous pressure to bear, picturing Israel as a heroic, embattled democracy, surrounded by bloodthirsty neighbours, badly needing US help. President Lyndon B. Johnson, bogged down in Vietnam and wanting to shore up his base, saw a popular cause in Israel and tilted toward it.
But there were critical strategic issues as well. Syria and Iraq had both shifted into pro-Soviet group, as had Egypt. Some have argued that, had US not supported Israel, this would not have happened. This, however, runs in face of history. It was US that forced the Israeli out of Sinai in 1956, but the Egyptians moved into the Soviet camp anyway. The argument that it was uncritical support for Israel that caused anti-Americanism in the Arab world doesn’t hold ground either. The Egyptians became anti-American in spite of an essentially anti-Israeli position in 1956. By 1957 Egypt was a Soviet ally.
The Americans ultimately tilted toward Israel because of this reason, not the other way round. Egypt was not only providing the Soviets with naval and air bases, it also was running covert operations in the Arabian Peninsula to bring down the conservative sheikdoms there, including Saudi’s. The Soviets were seen as using Egypt as base of operations against US. Syria was seen as another dangerous radical power, along with Iraq. The defense of the Arabian Peninsula from radical, pro-Soviet Arab movements, as well as the defense of Jordan, became a central interest of US.
Israel was seen as contribution by threatening the security of both Egypt and Syria. The Saudi fear of PLO was palpable. Riyadh saw the Soviet inspired liberation movements as threatening to Saudi’s survival. Israel was engaged in a covert war against PLO and related groups, and that was exactly what the Saudis wanted from late 1960s until early 1980s. Israel’s covert capability against PLO, coupled with its overt military power against Egypt and Syria, was very much in the American interest and that of its Arab allies. It was a low cost solution to some very difficult strategic problems at a time when US was either in Vietnam or recovering from the war.
The occupation of the Sinai, the West Bank and Golan Heights in 1967 was not in US interest. The US wanted Israel to carry out its mission against Soviet backed paramitlitaries and tie down Egypt and Syria, but the occupation was not seen as part of the mission. The Israelis intially expected to convert their occupation of the territories into peace treaty, but that only happend much later, with Egypt. At Khartoum summit in 1967, the Arabs delivered the famous 3 NOes: NO NEGOTIATIONS, NO RECOGNITION & NO PEACE. Israel became an occupying power.
The claim has been made that if US had forced Israelis out of Gaza and West Bank, then it would receive credit and peace would follow. There are 3 problems with that theory:
It must be remembered that Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel and does not seem to care about the Palestinians. The Saudis have never risked a thing for the Palestinians, nor have Iranians. The Syrians have, but they are far more interested in investing in Beirut hotels than in invading Israel. No Arab state is interested in the Palestinians, except for those that are actively hostile. There is Arab and Islamic public opinion and non state organizations, but none would be satisfied with an Israeli withdrawal. They want Israel destroyed. Even if US withdrew all support for Israel, however, Israel would not be destroyed. The radical Arabs do not want withdrawal; they want destruction. And the moderate Arabs don’t care about the Palestinians beyond rhetoric.
Noe getting to the heart of the matter. If US broke all ties with Israel, would the US geopolitical situation be improved? In other words, if it broke with Israel, would Iran or al Qaeda come to view US in a different way? Critics of the Israel lobby argue that,except for the Israeli lobby’s influence, the US would be much secure.
Al Qaeda does not perceive Israel by itself as its central problem. Its goal is the resurrection of the caliphate - and it sees US support for muslim regimes as the central problem. If US abandoned Israel, al Qaeda would still confront US support for countries such as Egypt, Saudi and Pakistan. For al Qaeda, Israel is an important issue, but for US to soothe al Qaeda, it would have to abandon not only Israel but also its allies in Middle East. As for Iran, the Iranian rhetoric has never matched its action. During Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian military purchased weapons and parts from the Israelis. It was more delighted than anyone when Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Iran’s problem with US is its presence in Iraq, its naval presence in Persian Gulf and its support for the Kurds. If Israel disappeared from the world map, Iran’s problems would still remain the same.
It has been said that Israelis inspired the US invasion of Iraq. There is no doubt that Israel was pleased when, after 9/11, US saw itself as an anti-Islamist power. Let me clarify that, benefitting from something does not mean you caused it. However, it has never been clear that Israelis were all that enthusiastic about invading Iraq. Neoconservative Jews like Paul Wolfowitz were enthusiastic, as were non Jews like Dick Cheney. But the Israeli view of a US invasion of Iraq was at the most mixed, and to some extent dubious. The Israelis liked the Iran-Iraq balance of power and were close allies of Turkey, which certainly opposed the invasion. The claim that Israel supported the invasion comes from those who mistake neoconservatives, many of whom are Jews who support Israel, with Israeli foreign policy, which was much more nuanced that the neoconservatives. The Israelis were not at all clear about what the Americans were doing in Iraq, but they were in no position to complain.
Israeli-US relations have gone through three phases. From 1948 to 1967, the US supported the Israel’s right to exist but was not its patron. In the 1967-1991 period, the Israelis were a key American asset in the Cold War. From 1991- the present, the relationship has remained close and little bumpy lately but it is not pivotal to either country. Whether it will remain in the 3rd phase or the relationship will enter into a new phase, only time can say. The fact is US cannot help Israel with Hezbollah or Hamas. The Israelis cannot help US in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the relationship were severed, it would have remarkably little impact on either country - though keeping the relationship is more valuable than severing it.
To sum up:
There is a powerful Jewish, pro Israel lobby in Washington, though it was not very successful in first 20 years or so of Israel’s history. When US policy toward Israel swung in 1967 it has far more to do with geopolitical interests than with lobbying. The US needed help with Egypt and Syria and Israel could provide it. Lobbying appeared to be the key, but it wasn’t; geopolitical necessity was. Egypt was anti-American even when US was anti-Israeli. Al Qaeda would be anti-American even if the US were anti-Israel. Rhetoric aside, Iran has never taken direct action against Israel and nor does it seem to be a real possibility.(existential threat notwithstanding- I will cover that part in my next note).
Portraying the Israeli lobby as super powerful behooves 2 groups: Critics of US Middle Eastern policy and the Israel lobby itself. Critics get to say the US relationship with Israel is the result of manipulation and corruption. Thus, they get to avoid discussing the actual history of Israel, US and Middle East.
The lobby benefits by projecting robust power because one of its jobs is to raise funds - and the image of a killer lobby opens a lot more pockets than does the idea that both Israel and US are simply pursuing their geopolitical interests and that things would go on pretty much the same even without slick lobbying.
The great irony is that the critics of US policy and the Israeli lobby both want to believe in the same myth - that great powers can be manipulated to harm themselves by crafty politicians.
The British did not get US into the World Wars, it was not anti-Nazism that led US to war, similarly the Israelis aren’t maneuvering the Americans into being pro-Israel. Beyond its ability to exert itself on small things, Israeli lobby is powerful in influencing Washington to do what it is going to do anyway.
What happens next in Afghanistan or Iraq is not up to the Israeli lobby - though Israeli lobby and Saudi Embassy have a different story for it.
Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »
26. August 2010 by admin.
Why Christian Concept of Secularism is meaningless in India?
The very idea of a secular form of government- with priestly authority separated from the affairs of the state- is relatively a recent development in Europe. But it is a practice of extremely long standing in India- going back to Vedic times.
Brahmins in India have long been classified as Vaidika and Laukika. Vaidika Brahmins are those that are engaged in priestly duties, while Laukika Brahmins are those that are active in the secular professions like medicine, engineering, law, teaching and others.
More importantly, the texts used as guides for religious and secular activities have always been different. This is not the case in Islam in which the Quran is not only the prayer book, but also the law book. It is claimed to be the basis for Shariat - or Islamic Law.
We can see this distinction more clearly when we look at Hindu religious texts. Many devout hindus use the Vishnusahasranama or some other prayer book in the religious functions. But it has never been Dharmashastra and others authored by sages like Brihaspati, Manu, Gautama. Kautilya’s Arthshastra was a standard manual on adminsitration. None of these is considered a religious text, or ever used in religious ceremonies. We find a clear separation the religious and the secular.
This was even true in vedic times. The vedas and the Brahmanas are religious texts, but they were never used as law books. The guidelines for legal and adminsitrative duties were laid down in sutra works like Dharmasutras, Nyayasutras and others. Even among sutra works, there was separation into Grihya (household) and srauta (sacred).
This was so even in practice as we learn from from ancient literature. The famous vedic sage Vishwamitra was born into a royal family but wanted to be known as a vedic seer. He has to give up his kingdom and perform a long penancebefore he could gain recognition as one. The reverse was also true. In the case of emperor Bharata (son of Dusyant and Shakuntala) it was the opposite. Finding his owns sons unfit to rule, he adopted a son of vedi priestly family of Bharadvaja as his heir. It was this Bharadvaja’s son Vitatha who succeeded Bharat as King. But he was no longer recognized as a sage or priest.
This remained true even in historical times. The famous Madhava seer Jayatirtha (1440-88) was born into royal Deshpande family. But he had to give up his claim to royalty before being accepted as the head of the Madhava sect. The message is simple: one could not be both ruler and priest. Theocracy was out of the question - both in theory and in practice. It is well know that Gautama Buddha was born into a hindu royal family, but gave up his claims when he founded his religion. Same is the case with Vardhman Mahavir, who was also born into a hindu royal family but gave up his kingdom and later founded Jainism.
Madhavachaerya, better known as Vidyaranya inspired the founding of the Vijayanagar Empire when Hinduism was facing its greatest crisis. Similarly, Ramdas inspired Shivaji. But neither Vidyaranya nor Ramdas sought any political power.
Contrast this with the record of Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran.
This record of Hinduism should be compared to the history of Christianity (of medieval Europe) and Islam, and the ideology that underlies them. Both these religions are also theocracies. In Islam, Quran is not only the prayer book, it is also the law book. For the same reason, there is no clear separation between priestly and secular duties as there has been in Hinduism since time immemorial. The Islamic code of law - the so called Shariat- is based on the Quran which is also the prayerbook of Islam. Muslim clergy claim the right to interfere in the affairs of the stae in the name of religious duty.
The same was true of Medieval Christianity. Government as the secular arm of the church and therefore subject to priestly authority was a claim that was fully broken only by the disestablishment of religion in Europe following the French Revolution. In the United States, the First Amedment to the Constitution removed all influence of religion upon the government.
Seven hundred years ago Pope Boniface VIII has assereted his secular authority in the following words:
”Both swords, the spiritual and the material (or secular), are in the power of the Church. The Spiritual is wielded by the Church; the material for the Chruch. The one by the hand of the priest; the other by the hands of kings and knights at the will and sufferance of the priest.”
This is a clear statement of how the Church regarded the state as the “secular arm” of the Church. West broke the power of Church through secularization of the state. In Islamic countries this has still not happened. For this to happen these countries have to completely remove the influence of clergy - the mullahs- from the affairs of the state. Even in India, muslims have not let that happen, organizations like Muslim Personal Law Board are insisting on separate laws - laws that would be administered by the clergy. The same phenomenon is raising its head in Britain. Even in United States, there has been one at least one case of forced marriages of under-age Muslim girls against the law of the land. Blasphemy law has also been exercised by assassinating an Egyptian scholar living in Texas for expressing his dissenting views. In India, in the name of “Secularism” and “religious rights”, muslim religious leaders are demanding the right to function as a theocratic State with a State administered according to Islamic Law.
The reality is: as with Medieval Christianity, Islam even today regards secular authority as far more important than the spiritual content. More often than not the Muslim clergy have no spiritual vision to offer, being simply politicians in religious garb. God is simply the pretext used to extend and strengthen its power and influence in the temporal world. This is the characteristic of a theocracy rather than a true spiritual tradition.
The question is what is the source of this theocratic ideology?
The simple answer is Monotheism/Exclusivism is the foundation of Theocracy.
Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »
18. August 2010 by admin.
Obama: Muslim missionary? Part 1
Posted: August 16, 2010
By Chuck Norris
Unlike any other time in U.S. history, our First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion are in jeopardy. As if recently passed “hate-crime” laws and a politically correct culture weren’t bad enough, now our president is using internationalpressure and possibly law to establish a prohibition against insulting Islam or Muslims.
Let me remind us how we got here.
Speaking for most founders in his day, John Jay, America’s first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by George Washington himself, said, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
Two hundred years later, President Obama has already denied America’s rich Judeo-Christian heritage before the eyes and ears of other countries, as he publicly declared in Turkey on April 6, 2009, for the whole world to hear: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”
Then there was Cairo in June 2009, when President Obama vowed to establish “a new beginning between the United Statesand Muslims around the world … I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. … I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. … And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. … So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.”
He goes on to say, “That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
That last line is really one of the most unique U.S. presidential religious passions and missions stated to date: “And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
Another big question is: What did the president mean when he said, “That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t”? It makes no sense at all to refer to a partnership between a country and religion – America and Islam. Why not say partnership between America and Muslim nations or a partnership between Americans and Muslims or even a partnership between Christianity and Islam? That comment is very strange to me and has a much deeper meaning.
Roughly six months later, in February 2010, Obama appointed Rashad Hussain to serve as his special envoy to theOrganization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, an inter-governmental body of 56 Muslim countries that also forms an official body represented in the United Nations. (Where is the same treatment from this White House for countries that uphold Judeo-Christian values to unite and have the same treatment that allows them to form an official body represented in the U.N.? Or any religion, for that matter? There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark!)
Obama rejoiced, “I’m proud to announce today that I am appointing my special envoy to the OIC – Rashad Hussain. As an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff, Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo. And as a hafiz of the Quran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work.”
In 2007, then President George W. Bush explained the initial purpose for a OIC representative: “Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states, and will share with them America’s views and values. This is an opportunity for Americans to demonstrate to Muslim communities our interest in respectful dialogue and continued friendship.”
But Obama has considerably upped the OIC ante. Today, the White House purports from its website that special envoy, Muslim and hafiz of the Quran, Rashad Hussain, “will deepen and expand the partnerships that the United States has pursued with Muslims around the world since President Obama’s speech in Cairo last June.”
Again, notice the differences between the Bush and Obama plans with the special OIC envoy: from Bush’s mission to “listen and learn from representatives” to Obama’s mission to “deepen and expand the partnerships.”
The OIC members (including U.S. Special Envoy Rashad Hussain) pledge to its charter mission to rid the world of “the defamation of religion.” But the “defamation of religion” translates to mean “defamation of Islam.” An article on the OIC website explains, “Western foreign policy is considered to be the single most significant factor determining the attitudes of many Muslims toward the West. … Unfortunately, Islam often conjures in the Western minds images of authoritarian government, subjugation of women, cruel punishments of Shariah law and violence in the popular Western mind.”
“Unfortunately”?!
The world also just learned recently from the assistant secretary for public affairs in the State Department, P.J. Crowley, that theWhite House has repeatedly sent out as an American ambassador of peace the Islamic fundamentalist and executive director of the Ground Zero mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is being sponsored by the U.S. State Department for repeated trips to the Middle East, where he is teaching on Muslim life in America and promoting religious tolerance.
But doesn’t one who called the U.S. an “accessory” to Sept. 11 just a few weeks after the tragic event and one who still refuses to call Hamas a foreign terrorist organization seem a strange choice for a U.S. ambassador of peace who promotes religious tolerance?
It is absolutely no surprise, therefore, though gravely unfortunate and disappointing for our commander in chief to blurt out last Friday night, while celebrating the holy month of Ramadan at a White House dinner, that he is in favor of building the mosque near Ground Zero!
The president explained the next day, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”
White House spokesman Bill Burton reiterated the next day about Obama’s stance on constructing the mosque: “Just to be clear, the president is not backing off in any way from the comments he made last night. It is not his role as president to pass judgment on every local project. But it is his responsibility to stand up for the constitutional principle of religious freedom and equal treatment for all Americans. What he said last night, and reaffirmed today, is that if a church, a synagogue or a Hindu temple can be built on a site, you simply cannot deny that right to those who want to build a mosque.”
But I could not agree more with Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11: “As an Obama supporter, I really feel that he’s lost sight of the germane issue, which is not about freedom of religion. It’s about a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and to the people who were lost.”
And Debra Burlingame, a spokeswoman for some Sept. 11 families and the sister of one of the pilots killed in the attacks, summed it up perfectly: “Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see.”
Obama is not just rebooting America’s image in the Muslim world. He’s deepening and expanding Islamic belief, practice, culture around the world, like a Muslim missionary.
(Next week in Part 2, I will discuss how the Obama administration has changed course in just this past year regarding passing anti-First Amendment defamation of religion resolutions, as well as demonstrate how Obama has been prejudice in his treatment of Islam versus Christianity).
Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs
Posted in Obama, United State of America | Print | No Comments »
18. August 2010 by admin.
In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:
(N.B. This version of the document contains even more tax hikes than the original version did)
First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011: Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below: - The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6% Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut. The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013. Second Wave: Obamacare There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include: The Tanning Tax. This went into effect on July 1st of this year. It imposes a new, 10% excise tax on getting a tan at a tanning salon. There is no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000 per year. The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin). The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent. Brand Name Drug Tax. Starting next year, there will be a multi-billion dollar tax assessment imposed on name-brand drug manufacturers. This tax, like all excise taxes, will raise the price of medicine, hurting everyone. Economic Substance Doctrine. The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks “economic substance.” This is obviously an arbitrary empowerment of IRS agents. Employer Reporting of Health Insurance Costs on a W-2. This will start for W-2s in the 2011 tax year. While not a tax increase in itself, it makes it very easy for Congress to tax employer-provided healthcare benefits later. Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. These major items include: The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers. Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.” Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs. Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families. Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there. Read more: http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171##ixzz0wuEeV0XS
Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs
Posted in Economy, United State of America | Print | No Comments »