Enlisting Anthopologists for Counterinsurgency Campaigns

The Press and Human Terrain Systems: Counterinsurgency's Free Ride by David Price, Counterpunch, April 7, 2009

Like a mad scientist’s slime monster that will not die in a 1950s B Movie, the Human Terrain System’s counterinsurgency teams not only somehow remains alive in the face of extensive devastating criticism, but the program’s existence remains firmly publicly boosted by a seemingly endless series of uncritical mainstream news and features stories that frame the program as America’s last best hope to win the hearts and minds of the occupied peoples of Iraq and increasingly Afghanistan...

The Human Terrain program embeds social scientists, such as anthropologists, with troops operating in battle theatre settings as members of Human Terrain Teams. These teams are part of counterinsurgency operations designed provide military personnel with cultural information that will help inform troop activities in areas of occupation.

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Noam Chomsky on Afghanistan Escalation

Noam Chomsky on US Expansion of Afghan Occupation, the Uses of NATO, and What Obama Should Do in Israel-Palestine

We speak to Noam Chomsky, prolific author and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As NATO leaders gather for a sixtieth anniversary summit in France, Chomsky says, “The obvious question is, why bother celebrating NATO at all? In fact, why does it exist?” Chomsky also analyzes the Obama administration’s escalation of the Afghanistan occupation and reacts to the new Netanyahu government in Israel. [includes rush transcript]

Cross-posted from: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/3/noam

Afghan War Rationale Questioned by Some Key Strategists: Analysis

Afghan War Rationale Questioned by Some Key Strategists:

"A few influential strategists here have been arguing, however, that this official rationale misstates the al Qaeda problem and ignores the serious risk that an escalating U.S. war poses to Pakistan.
Those strategists doubt that al Qaeda would seek to move into Afghanistan as long as they are ensconced in Pakistan and argue that escalating U.S. drone airstrikes or Special Operations raids on Taliban targets in Pakistan will actually strengthen radical jihadi groups in the country and weaken the Pakistani government’s ability to resist them..."

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Progressive Think Tank Tells Obama to Escalate

Tom Hayden: Progressive Think Tank Tells Obama to Escalate
Huffington Post

The Center for American Progress has positioned itself as a "progressive" Washington think tank, especially suited to channel new thinking and expertise into the Obama administration. It therefore is deeply disappointing that CAP has issued a call for a ten-year war in Afghanistan, including an immediate military escalation, just as President Obama prepares to unveil his Afghanistan/Pakistan policies to the American public and NATO this week.

It is likely that Obama will follow most of CAP's strategic advice, assuming the think tank to be the progressive wing of what's possible within the Beltway. That means a long counter-insurgency war ahead, with everything from massive incarcerations and detention to Predator strikes that amass increasing civilian casualties...

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U.S. forces kill 13 Afghan civilians in air strike | Reuters

Reuters 2/21/09: U.S. forces kill 13 Afghan civilians in air strike:

"U.S. forces in Afghanistan killed 13 civilians, as well as three militants, in an air strike in western Afghanistan this week, the U.S. military said on Saturday after an investigation into the incident.

"The mistaken killing of civilians by foreign forces is a major source of tension between the Afghan government and its Western backers and has also caused a steady drop in public support for the presence of some 70,000 international troops"

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Jonathan Steele: Nato is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever was | Comment is free | The Guardian

Jonathan Steele: Nato is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever was Comment is free The Guardian:

"Nato is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever wasTwo decades after the Soviet withdrawal, ever more resources are being poured into a war with scant chance of success"

"...Nato is in a cleft stick and the idea that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is the "right war" is a self-deluding trap. A military "surge", the favoured Obama policy, may produce short-term local advances but no sustainable improvement, and as yesterday's Guardian reported, it will cost the US and Britain enormous sums. Pouring in aid will take too long to win hearts and minds, and if normal practice is followed, the money will mainly go to foreign consultants and corrupt officials. Talking to the Taliban makes sense under Najibullah-style national reconciliation. But the Taliban themselves are disunited, with a host of local leaders and generational divisions between "new" and "old" Taliban. Worse still, since the war spilt into Pakistan's frontier regions, there are now Pakistani Taliban...."

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Afghanistan: Obama’s Vietnam?

Gwynne Dyer: Afghanistan: Obama’s Vietnam?:
Thursday, 05 February 2009 16:30

YOU aren’t really the US president until you’ve ordered an air-strike on somebody, so Barack Obama is certainly president now: two in his first week in office.

But now that he has been blooded, can we talk a little about this expanded war he’s planning to fight in Afghanistan?

Does that sound harsh? Well, so is killing people, and all the more so because Obama must know that these remote-controlled Predator strikes usually kill not just the “bad guy”, whoever he is, but also the entire family he has taken shelter with. It also annoys Pakistan, whose territory the US violated in order to carry out the killings.

It’s not a question of whether the intelligence on which the attacks were based was accurate (although sometimes it isn’t.) The question is: do these killings actually serve any useful purpose? And the same question applies to the entire US war in Afghanistan...

The two questions [Obama] needs to ask himself are first: did Osama bin Laden want the US to invade Afghanistan in response to 9/11? The answer to that one is: Yes, of course he did. And second: of all the tens of thousands of people whom the US has killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, would a single one have turned up in the US to do harm if not killed? Answer: probably not...."