Osama is Dead

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From BTA's Link:

Damn. What will Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmman do now?

 

"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know whether they are genuine" - Abraham Lincoln.

 

...And Jon Stewart was on fire last night about the release of the photos. "A disappearing body, leaving behind a shiny gold coin?" Sounds familiar.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-4-2011/face-off

 

I watched Obama's interview on "60 Minutes".

I was not aware (probably because I was on vacation and I didn't hear a lot of news) that it is now thought that OBL was living on the compound for 5-6 years before the raid by Navy SEALS. I did hear on vacation that his compound was right near a major Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad. So he was essentially hiding in plain sight.

But this brings up another question. How could the Pakistani's not have known he was there? You would think that a fortified compound with no sight lines inside nearby a major military academy would attract some attention. It defies belief that this compound, built about six years ago, would have gone unnoticed, and not aroused suspicion.

To go a bit further, it certainly suggests that not only were the Pakistanis not helpful in finding OBL, they may actually have been complicit in keeping him hidden. Funny how the first raid conducted without the help (or approval for that matter) by the Pakistanis gets their target. With allies like this, who needs enemies?

The troop downgrade in Afghanistan is set to begin this summer. After that, I'd be fine not having any further dealings with the Pakistanis. They still serve a small purpose until that time, as a lot of the supplies for the troops in Afghanistan come through Pakistan. After that, I'd wash my hands of them.

 

The US put themselves into a position of dependency towards Pakistan by sending a large number of troops into Afghanistan, whose logistics are vulnerable, because they need to go from Karachi through Pakistan and then through the Khyber pass. Fighting it out with the Pakistanis isn't going to work, so save the testosterone for workouts. They live there. They're a numerous people, and they have a large, largely competent army with at least sufficient capability to button up the supply lines effectively. As of now, the US need the port of Karachi because it is their lifeline to Afghanistan. Airlift, as formidable as the US capability is, won't do. Supply lines through Russia don't have the throughput needed, and carry within the price tag of dependency on Russia's goodwill.

Reducing the vulnerability by reducing the logistics requirement by reducing troops is sensible.

Counterinsurgency is "counter-guerrilla ops + political action + economic development". Apparently, you do counterinsurgency successfully only in countries you want to stay in, because then, and only then, you're willing to pay the price. It doesn't work in Afghanistan since the US, and nobody else for that matter, is willing to pay the price required to make it work. Also, the Afghans themselves are apparently not willing to make it work. The Pakistanis are wily and strong willed people who have their own ideas about what Afghanistan ought to look like, which very much run counter to US ideas about that. It is an utter folly to expect them to ignore that and be a pliable client to the US, only because they get US money. Apparently, the money was simply what has prevented them from being outright hostile and in such it was probably a worthwhile investment. If that dismays or surprises anyone, he probably had serious illusions about the place and then people to begin with.

The US are well advised to adopt a small footprint counter terrorism approach in "AfPak".

 

Oh, I certainly wasn't suggesting they do that. It was more this first part of your approach - by reducing the troop numbers in Afghanistan, you are much less reliant on the Pakistanis allowing you to use Karachi as a staging area.

 

Definitely. As I said, the US would be well advised to do that.

And I wasn't addressing you specifically; it was more of an undirected rant

 

Pair of suicide bombing in Pakistan

And so the revenge killing comes. The Pakistani Taliban (which I assume have links with al Qaida) have claimed responsibility.

Link.

 

Sad, but unsurprising. Killing Bin Laden was still the right thing to do.

Worth pointing out: AQ or the Taleban doing mass casualty attacks against fellow Muslims will not win them any friends in the neighbourhood. That whoever is against their vision of Islam is an apostate, a takfir, and can thus be killed, is not a view that is widely held. That underlines the radicalism of their Salafi-Takfiri agenda. They may well, and hopefully will, end up like Algeria's GIA, creating with their brutality widespread disgust even among their supposed base. It is quite reassuring to see that they apparently didn't play any role in the Arab spring.

Mind that Pakistan was created as a haven for Muslims who didn't want to live under Indian rule. That creates a certain structural predisposition, if you so will, for religious extremism.

From Pakistan's perspective it faces the two threats. First, naturally, is their arch enemy India, which remains Pakistan’s main concern. Their second threat is the threat of the Shia controlled Iran on its western flank. Afghanistan is a strategic buffer and Pakistan has every incentive to ensure that the Government in Afghanistan is friendly. With Kharzai the US installed a guy as President of Afghanistan who is quite willing to buddy up with Iran and cozies up to India. It's easy to see why Pakistan does not trust the US with respect to Afghanistan.

The Taleban are Pakistan's cheap proxy to pursue their interests both in Afghanistan and vis a vis India in Kashmir. The Pakistanis are unlikely to stop using them that way unless (a) convincingly reassured (not going to happen) or (b) when that approach creates for them more trouble than benefits (hmm, what can be done about that?).

Probably, for the Pakistani Intelligence and Military the question is largely whether and when they may prove to be more trouble than they are worth. If they come to that conclusion they will be destroyed. So far they are too useful to be abandoned.

That was perhaps also Bin Laden's fate. Apparently they had him locked down, neutralised, but he was too useful to discard. They didn't cooperate with him. The Pakis just didn't deliver him to the US because they thought him more useful where they had him. Think of him as a fleet in being. But then, there is the issue of his couriers (which contradicts that assessment) ... I haven't made up my mind about that yet.

 

I seem to remember the Taliban claiming that they were not willing allies of Bin Laden & Company.

 

So i've been thinking about this lately, and i'm starting to wonder if killing Bin Laden was the right thing to do atall. Not morally, but logistically.

It isn't going to impede or discourage extremists, quite the opposite. Given this fact, was hunting him down a good idea atall? Would him still being alive be better? Don't get me wrong, I totally understand WHY they did it, but i'm just not so certain they should have.

Also, i'm not defending him in any way atall.

 

Whether we should or should not have committed to this course of action is largely irrelevant at this point. What is relevant is the fact that the United States is full of frothing idiots that feel the need to fight or kill anyone who has the temerity to look at them funny.

And I say this as a citizen of the US.

 

Yes - and if you dare question it, you're seen as being unpatriotic and insulting the brave fighting men who are defending the world from evil.

 

I agree, its not bravery

would a boxer beating up a small boy be considered brave? granted the boy could pull a knife and stab him, but odds are in the boxer's favour.

Our forces are better armed, equipped and trained then the enemy they fight and are supported from the air and sea, have armoured vehicles and have advanced topographical media of the landcape and enemy positions - thats not bravery, thats a job.

 

While the US does react with excessive force at times, I think OBL did a little more than "look at them funny". He was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks afterall. The best idea when they killed him was the burial at sea. The last thing they needed was for some site to become a shrine for him.

 

Riiiiight. And the enemies have adapted, and use against them mines, IED, booby traps, snipers, suicide bombers and plain old bullets, oh yes, and the really mean ones among them, may decapitate troops when captured. That environment is also part of that job, and in such circumstances that job may well involve bravery.

If a soldier at the job displayed your cocksure arrogance that might just get him killed.

 

There was a rumor that Bin Laden was taken, questioned and then they shot him in cold blood, rather than keep him prisoner. Then I heard a description of the bullet wound from someone who has seen the actual pictures, that he was shot just above the eye, but the bullet came out his ear. I'm no expert and I'm certainly not a CSI type, but that sounds almost as if the bullet came at an angle from above. They may have buried him at sea because they did not want any forensic evidence of how he was actually shot. Not that I care either way, since he would have been killed in any event.

 

That wound is also likely in someone ducking for cover or lying prone and looking at the shooter.

 

risk assesment is part of the job, the best tool a soldier has is his brain, you dont think that every enemy anyone has ever fought hasnt adapted to common methods of killing them? our death toll is minute compared with theirs, which means we are comfortably killing them, in all reality we are winning comfortably, the only problem with this 'war' is that it doesnt have a concievable end, not until every single person on one side is dead.

arrogance is different from honesty, in this country you could be considered to be displaying a degree of bravery every time you walk to the shop.
Britain has lost 365 soldiers in 10 years of the afghanistan 'war' thats 36 in a year, 3 in a month, 0.76 every week, when you have 10,000 soldiers thats a pretty good mortality rate. as opposed to the 60 taliban killed in a single day in an attack on a firebase in the helmand province.