If you are in a terrorist prevention and apprehension business, the last thing you want to do is to make things more chaotic than before -- that's exactly what war does, which is OK with Washington, since it isn't in that business seriously.
>[lbo-talk] The Unocal War (bringin' it home) (was Unocal, China and
>the Middle East)
>Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com
>Wed Jun 29 09:39:07 PDT 2005
<snip>
>On Wednesday, June 29, 2005 9:21 AM [PDT],
>Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
>>Considering all this, I'd say, block the Unocal deal. Beijing
>>might get motivated to dump the dollar.
>
>That would make things.... unh, hectic... quickly. =8'>
Well, things can get hectic even without Beijing getting mad at Washington. Let's see what's gonna happen to the trillion-dollar bet: "American homeowners have made trillion-dollar bet that mortgage rates will remain near record lows for at least few more years; economists worry that bet could turn bad with some interest rates already rising; Deutsche Bank analysis shows only about $80 billion, or 1 percent of mortgage debt this year will switch to adjustable rate based largely on prevailing interest rates; some $300 billion of mortgage debt will be similarly adjusted in 2006; portion will soar in 2007, with $1 trillion of nation's mortgage debt -- or about 12 percent of it -- switching to adjustable payments" (David Leonhardt and Motoko Rich, "The Trillion-Dollar Bet: Homeowners Take Risks in a Bid for Lower Mortgage Payments," <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E13FE3C5F0C758DDDAF0894DD404482&incamp=archive:search>, 16 Jun. 2005, p. C1).
>[lbo-talk] The Afghan War as a "Loss Leader"
>Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
>Wed Jun 29 09:58:52 PDT 2005
<snip>
>--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>>The finest training ground for all warriors -- soldiers,
>>guerrillas, and terrorists -- is war itself. The real thing beats
>>a simulacrum of it. Terrorists now get better training in
>>Afghanistan than under the Taliban, as US and other troops provide
>>live targets for practice.
>
>Give me one instance of a terrorist attack being planned in
>Afghanistan in the last four years.
Planning and training are not the same thing. Planners can plan anywhere, and they don't even need to be in one location at the same time. I'm sure terrorists are capable of using modern telecommunication, conventional or unconventional. It makes even less sense to invade a country if the point is to disrupt planning.
>Any mass suicide bombing campaign going on there?
I'd say Afghans are probably learning more useful skills than suicide bombings -- they just shot down a helicopter:
<blockquote>Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is rising and expected to worsen, and more troops will be sent there ahead of the nation's parliamentary elections in September, the No. 2 U.S. military official said today.
The U.S. has 18,000 troops in Afghanistan and may add about 1,100, the same number it added before the nation's presidential election in October 2004, Marine Corps General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs, told reporters during a break in a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing.
The U.S. will send "whatever number we need to ensure the security," and NATO also "will send in extra troops," Pace said. NATO has about 8,300 troops in Afghanistan. There are about 42,000 trained Afghan police and 24,0000 national army soldiers, Pace said in a written response to the panel's questions.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Attacks Increase
The Taliban has stepped up attacks as U.S. and Afghan forces carry out more intensive patrols near the border with Pakistan, and as warmer weather has made mountainous regions more accessible to Islamist fighters.
A U.S. helicopter carrying 17 American troops was shot down yesterday as it returned from a commando mission, Pace told the armed services panel. The soldiers' fate is unknown, according to the military. Taliban rebels said they carried out they attack, Qatar-based al-Jazeera television reported. Pace said the aircraft was shot down.
Forty suspected rebels were killed and five U.S. soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded in fighting June 22 in southeastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said. Four U.S. soldiers were wounded June 13 in a suicide car bombing attack near the southeastern Afghan city of Kandahar, the stronghold of the former ruling Taliban militia.
Other Attacks
Earlier this month, two soldiers were slain in an attack on a U.S. base in Shkin near the Pakistan border, two were killed by a homemade bomb, also near the border in southeastern Afghanistan, and one soldier died in an ambush in eastern Paktika province.
Prior to yesterday's helicopter crash, 195 U.S. personnel had been killed in Afghanistan since Operation Enduring Freedom began there in October 2001, including 81 in combat and 114 in non- hostile incidents, according to the Pentagon.
The rising drug trade in Afghanistan is also a concern, said Republican John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Senate panel.
"The quantity if drugs emanating from Afghanistan is increasing exponentially over the past 18 months and this can't be permitted because it's undermining some of the good work," Warner said. (Jeff St.Onge, "Afghanistan Violence Rising, More Troops to Be Sent (Update1)," <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aSfsH3z7MpJI&refer=top_world_news>29 Jun. 2005)</blockquote>
>Really, this Americocentrism gets infuriating.
Well, what can be more Americacentric than an American war? What we are talking about is the ongoing US-led campaign in Afghanistan, not the Soviet Union's Afghan campaign in the 20th century or the British Empire's Afghan campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries.
>[lbo-talk] The Afghan War as a "Loss Leader" (Unocal, China and the
>Middle East)
>Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
>Wed Jun 29 09:48:44 PDT 2005
<snip>
>India in anti-Taliban military plan
>India and Iran will "facilitate" the planned US-Russia hostilities
>against the Taliban.
>
>By Our Correspondent
>
>26 June 2001: India and Iran will "facilitate" US and Russian plans
>for "limited military action" against the Taliban if the
>contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's
>fundamentalist regime.
<snip>
>Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of
>"facilitator" while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from
>the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan
>and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50
>km away from Mazar-e-Sharief city in northern Afghanistan.
<snip>
>Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will lead the ground attack with a strong
>military back up of the US and Russia. Vital Taliban installations
>and military assets will be targeted. India and Iran will provide
>logistic support.
<snip>
>http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatures/nat2.asp?recno=10∓ctg=policy
It would have been interesting indeed if there had been a joint-US-Russian campaign in Afghanistan, backed by India and Iran -- that would have been a Brand New World Order in the history of the US empire that justified a book or two.
Here's a significant development:
<blockquote>A test of the extent of Bush's commitment to this hands-on approach could come in the next two weeks when Mohammed Salih, chairman of the Democratic Erk Party of Uzbekistan, a leading opponent of the Central Asian government, visits Washington. The Bush administration has been torn over how forcefully to respond to the recent massacre of hundreds of protesters in the Uzbek city of Andijan, with the State Department pushing for a firm repudiation and the Pentagon resisting for fear of jeopardizing its base there.
Salih, who received a U.S. visa on Monday and will be in the United States from June 27 to June 30, hopes to meet with senior Bush administration officials and to describe the situation in Uzbekistan, where President Islam Karimov has banned genuine opposition parties and independent media and imprisoned thousands of government critics.
"We have calls out to everybody, and, right now, we don't have a yes or no from anybody," said Frank Howard, a media liaison for Erk. A high-level meeting, he added, "has not only symbolic importance, it has potential real importance."
Karimov's government has curtailed U.S. military flights at the Uzbek base in response to the Bush administration criticism, but Rice promised rights groups yesterday not to ease up on calls for an international investigation of the Andijan massacre.
"I told her that the State Department approach was absolutely right, but they're being completely undercut by the Pentagon, and the Uzbeks are playing them," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director for Human Rights Watch. "She looked me in the eye and said, 'We will not let Karimov play us.'" (Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler, "Bush Meets Dissidents In Campaign For Rights," <em>Washington Post</em>, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/14/AR2005061401715_pf.html>, 15 Jun. 2005, A1)</blockquote>
Tashkent joined GUAM in 1999, but, in 2002, it announced the intention to withdraw from GUUAM in 2002 (<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2002/2002-June/015270.html>). "On May 5, 2005, Uzbekistan finally gave an official notice of withdrawal from the organization to the Moldovan presidency" (at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUUAM>). Then, "[c]oincidence or not, the Andijan riots ensued just a week after Karimov's decision to quit GUUAM" (Sergei Blagov, "An Iron Fist, Without the Glove," <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GE17Ag02.html">17 May 2004</a>). And now a meeting between Bush and Mohammed Salih (Salai Madaminov]. . . . -- Yoshie
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