Rumsfeld & the Right Are Wrong: Factcheck.org Fact Checks Revisionist History by Former Sec.Defense Rumsfeld,

Rummy continues his efforts to diminish the effectiveness and improvements of the Obama administration, while apparently trying to re-write the history of the Bush administration to improve a deplorable presidential legacy, of which he was a part.  Seems kind of self-serving to me, and typical of the Right's refusal to give Obama credit in world affairs where credit is due.  This provides an interesting context to evaluating Obama's handling of the upheavals in the middle east, and conservatives efforts to try to sabotage a second Obmama term.

Rumsfeld on the World’s View of America

February 21, 2011
Donald Rumsfeld wrongly denied that the U.S. is viewed more favorably under President Barack Obama than it was under President George W. Bush. In fact, residents of several nations including Britain, Germany, France and China view the U.S. more favorably, according to a survey released last year by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project.

Rumsfeld, who served as Defense Secretary under Bush, told CNN’s Candy Crowley that he didn’t think there was any evidence to support claims that residents of other nations have a more favorable opinion of America than they used to:

Crowley, Feb. 20: The president’s supporters say that in two years he has been able to return this country to a status of being liked across the world in a way that America was not liked during the Bush administration, that he has once again made America a beacon. Do you agree with that? Do you think that the U.S. is now looked at much differently than it was, and much more positively than it was during your tenure?

Rumsfeld: No, and I don’t think there’s data that supports that. I think he has made a practice of trying to apologize for America. I personally am proud of America.

Crowley: Well, he seems to be quite popular overseas in a way that President Bush was not. The streets aren’t full of people burning him in effigy. There does seem to be a new — a chance to look at America in a different way than it did during the Bush administration. You don’t think that’s true.

Rumsfeld: I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think that there’s data that would support that.

But there is support for such claims. Pew reported in June 2010 that President Obama was pretty popular around the world. "In turn, opinions of the U.S., which improved markedly in 2009 in response to Obama’s new presidency, also have remained far more positive than they were for much of George W. Bush’s tenure," the report said.

In fact, in 16 out of 19 nations (not including the United States), those surveyed had a more favorable view of America in 2010 than they did in the last year of Bush’s presidency. Here is the Pew Research Center’s chart:

A New Kind of Mousetrap

A week ago the members of the Israeli armed forces stormed aboard a Turkish flagged ship attempting to bring ashore supplies to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade. This blockade has been in place since 2008 when Israel sent troops and tanks into Gaza in search of military armaments and those who would use them on Israel.

This blockade, though, in addition to seeking to prevent military equipment or the rudiments to make military equipment from reaching the Hamas-lead 'government' in Gaza or any rebels in Gaza, also has sought to prevent basic humanitarian supplies, such as building supplies needed to repair homes destroyed by the Israeli invasion, or food necessary to feed the populace. The idea has been that such things as dates or drywall could in fact be traded on the black market for armaments. In this, they (the Israelis) may not be wrong.

However, in Turkey, Israel has had its strongest Muslim ally for many years. In Turkey, with US support, Israel has avoided taking on a Muslim nation fully capable of meeting Israel on more than equal military terms. Frankly, from a 10,000 foot view, their air forces seem to be near peers, while the Turkish army and navy are far more than a match for Israel's counterpart. While Turkey would have to go through Syria (and Lebanon) to get to Israel by land, it is not too remote a possibility Syria might allow it. Lebanon has no ability to resist or object.

In the past, Turkey has been a broker of compromise between Syria and Israel. In the past, Turkey has been much more secular as well. However, during the Bush years, Turkey was routinely snubbed by the US after they declined to be more supportive of Bush's invasion of Iraq. As well, that invasion helped to launch a pro-Islamic fundamentalist government which took power in 2008. On Sunday, Turkey issued the first of what are likely to be many changes to this relationship when they rescinded their offer to provide military protection for Israel.

In truth, I don't believe the Turkish government was looking for this outcome. Creating an unstable middle-east situation is not beneficial to Turkey's desire to become part of the European Union. They are seen as a key player in keeping that tenuous situation from devolving further. However, I do believe that they felt the oft-inhumane nature of the Israeli blockade needed to be illustrated for the world and I do believe they wanted to provide a challenge to it, albeit almost certainly with a more peaceful outcome than was seen.

What this points to is the law of unintended consequences on all sides when we start being intractable, rather than responsible, namely:

George Bush, as colossal a screw-up on the world stage as we've seen in a very VERY long time, was so interested in invading Iraq, that he trampled on relationships which had other, very meaningful uses and the destruction of which had other, very serious (and negative) consequences.

The US (under Bush), in an attempt to help deal with Hamas and Hezbollah, invaded Iraq, in part to help protect Israel. The effect of that invasion has had the exact OPPOSITE effect. Iran is more powerful, and Hamas at least is certainly more politically protected as a result of the ill-advised invasion of Lebanon Israel undertook in 2006.

Turkey, in an attempt by the fundamentalists to expose the plight of Palestinians, kicked a tiger (Israel) - so profoundly ready to engage in military action that military action is mostly all they know, and probably Turkey was surprised by the virulent nature of the Israeli reply.

Israel, due to xenophobic, extremist (totalitarian) right-wing governments (one after another), reacted exactly wrongly to the challenge. Rather than waiting until any relief vessels were in Israeli waters, and rather than simply impounding the boats and releasing any supplies they could while justifying those they couldn't, decided, as they have for 30 years, that massive retaliation was justified. There was a French village exterminated in WWII when a German general was killed by the French resistance. That act was deemed a war crime, and those who perpetrated it were prosecuted after the end of the war. When Israel takes this kind of action today, such as invading Gaza and knocking down buildings because rockets which did minimal damage fell on Israel, the interpretation by the rest of the world is that Israel is using hammers to kill ants. We find such conduct to be unethical when it is done by governments we don't like, why would we, for that matter given Israel's origin, why would Israel, want to be seen as the brutal, dictatorial state?

The winner in all this truly is Hamas and organizations like them - meaning pro-Islamic fundamentalist movements. They are looking to mouse-trap Israel, and in part Turkey, into a confrontation. They maneuvered Turkey into confronting Israel, and have a government which will support them now after Israel's stupidity. We may be in a position where Turkey will confront Israel militarily. Such a confrontation would be disastrous for Israel certainly. It would also be disastrous for the United States, we would be made to look the fools for backing a nation which cannot/will not conduct itself in a humane way - an utter irony given the treatment many of their oldest generation suffered.

If we are to be Israel's closest friend, its best ally, we must give them some hard and straight advice. A good friend doesn't tell a friend they don't have warts ever, they tell them about their warts and help them to manage them. We do no favors for Israel when we fail to remind them that in 50 years they have to face the problems they create today. We do them no favors by not telling them that military solutions to political problems are virtually guaranteed to fail. Israel must start planning today for a world in which their neighbors have nuclear weapons, more military might, and more economic might than they have. If they continue down the path of thinking only about next week, then they will have been mouse-trapped by clever, determined foes (like Hamas) into slitting their own throat. Hamas will simply have given them the knife. They won't even need to wield it.

Twice as Many

On ABC News last night I heard that twice as many soldiers died in Afghanistan (57) as died in February 2009. I thought, "Wow, let's hype the deaths, shall we?" I felt this way because it is not at all surprising there have been more casualties in Afghanistan given we've begun a long, and long overdue campaign to try to re-establish stability and the rule of the Afghan government throughout the balance of Afghanistan.

Yet, I saw this same headline on CBS News. I thought, perhaps it's not just a pretty openly pro-conservative news organization like ABC News - perhaps it's just what we get when our news stories are so frequently wire copy. Perhaps the complaints of bias in fact, swing both ways.

Afghanistan is a dangerous place. It is a place with more division, and a greater population than Iraq. In Iraq we had at least the Kurds on our side, 20% of the population (roughly). In Afghanistan we have a country fully engulfed in corruption, with few consistent allies. We ignored the problem for 7 years after we initially toppled the Taliban. We kept too few places safe, we allowed the government to become exactly what it had been prior to the Taliban. In short, we allowed it to become EXACTLY what the native Afghans hated MORE than they hated the Taliban.

President Obama vowed to make a difference, he promised to provide more truth in direct opposition to the desires of the anti(any) war/pacifist element of the Democratic party. He promised to try to retake areas which have been under Taliban control for more than four years, he promised to retake the 80% of the country we gave up on under Bush. Consequently, he sent more troops and engaged in trying to win "Bush's (forgotten) War."

I served for 12 years in the Army Reserves, I knew and know many people who've served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I would be beyond heartbroken if one of them were killed, yet, it IS what we know is the risk. We agree to be agents of policy, and benign and agnostic to politics in uniform. We knew Afghanistan was going south, and IF, big IF, we are going to do anything to retrench Afghanistan, then it would take sweat, hard work, and unfortunately, heartbreakingly, it will take blood.

I have to ask the press, were they asleep? Were they unaware that Obama is trying to take the fight to the enemy, and with it, greater risk exists? I have no idea (nor will I go look to find out), if the right-wing press is trumpeting up the deaths, which I would find utterly hypocritical considering the months where our deaths in Iraq routinely topped 100 yet they said nothing.

Instead, to them (and their unread blogs) and to the press, I suggest you all consider that we either must TRY to take Afghanistan back, or leave. Doing the middle ground thing, in short, being present but taking little action, does nothing but spend our money, and our blood, more slowly, but surely longer. So whether this month is twice as many, will the overall cost be twice as much as acting with conviction? I pray and hope it is not. What I mean is, it may be twice as much in the short run, but I hope and pray and believe that it will therefore be less than half as much in the long run.

Obama is not a strong leader

Recently, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan was killed by a US rocket launched from a drone. This was a major achievement, and is expected to result in a serious weakening of the Pakistani Taliban. With it, the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan will also be meaningfully weaker.

Yet, there was little if any fanfare from the Administration. Had this happened under Bush, we'd have had a full-court press from Bush about how meaningful and important and decisive this was, how it reflected just how well Bush was handling the war (think not, go back and look at the grand-standing done when we killed the leader of "Al Qaeda in Iraq", a rather second-rate figure leading a group which didn't have that name prior to our entry into Iraq and which was pretty well a second-rate group in the struggle in Iraq). By comparison, the death of Hakimullah Mehsud is far more significant. He was the replacement of Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed by US forces in August 2009, and his death is meaningful because it shows that Al Qaeda and the Taliban, after seven years of moribund action by the Pakistani and US forces, are under continuing and real threat.

Further, Pakistan has joined the fight in it's northern "frontier" provinces in earnest. This is a major shift of the actions and intent of Pakistan in the past year. It is due in no small part to the threats and pressure placed upon the Pakistani government by Obama, partly in response to needing to distance itself from the ISI-funded terror group which attacked Mumbai, and partly in response to Clinton's visit where the US promised to be more careful and discrete in its use of drones and aeriel bombing. This latter point had been a major sticking point during the Bush years.

Finally, this week, as part of 'the surge' in Afghanistan, the Marines and the Afghani Army have launched a major offensive - this offensive is likely to take several major Talibani strongholds in southern Afghanistan. The question remains open whether they will be held long-term of course, but this is a massive shift of strategic approach from only a year ago where the Afghani government was openly mocked for ruling essentially ONLY Kabul (the Capital).

Each of these three events are significant. They show a combined US, Pakistani and Afghani force taking direct action against the Taliban/Wahabi extremists in an area of the world and in nations in which it is FAR TOUGHER to deal with Al Qaeda and jihadists than Iraq EVER was, on its worst day. Iraq was a secular nation which generally abhored jihadism and fundamentalist Muslims. Hussein rather frequently purged/attacked Sunni and Shia extremists, and he was hated by the likes of Bin Laden for allowing the teaching women in schools, for the embrace of technology, and of course for not seeking to establish a Sunni-lead Caliphate in the way that Bin Laden seeks to do. Iraq was only a hotbed of Sunni extremism because of the colossal ineptitude of the Bush-lead war/occupation there which tortured innocent civilians, and generally considered any concern for civilian casualties or the treatment of prisoners to be 'molly-coddling' in their own words. As Rush Limbaugh famously said, "apparently what the Democrat Party wants to do is offer terrorists therapy" (Ok, that's a paraphrase- but it's damned close to the actual quote) - which he said, and then members of the Republican party repeated, when complaints surfaced about the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison (and elsewhere).

Contrastingly, Pakistan was and is the home of hundreds of Madrasas, religious schools normally founded and run by pro-Wahabi fundamentalist extremists from which suicide bombers are recruited and willing martyrs are sought. These Madrasas were funded by the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia, including Bin Laden's reputed $300 Million. It is a nation with 180 Million people, many of whom are barely literate, and a great number live in barely governed frontier provinces, like those in the Punjab and Kashmir regions. These regions have been the source of outside defeat for centuries (most recently the British were defeated in their attempt to conquer the region in the late 1800 and early 1900's. The Pakistani government signed peace treaties with the Taliban in 2008 to allow them to control sections of important roads and areas - a peace treaty which has subsequently been torn up as the Taliban proved to be untrustworthy (I suspect so did the Pakistani government). Afghanistan, if anything, is even MORE difficult to control, as the Soviets found out. Yet, when we invaded in 2001, we found ourselves welcomed by a people tired of being brutalized, brutalized by the Soviets, then the warlords, then the Taliban. All we had to do, according to Afghanis, was establish something which was moderately effective and importantly, not blatantly corrupt. Instead, whether due to negligence or overt hostility, the Bush government allowed EXACTLY the same type of government which preceded the Taliban, i.e. one lead by warlords - which the Afghani people had already rejected in place of the Taliban - to return. Consequently, the country slipped inexorably back into the hands of the Taliban. Afghanistan became probably the most corrupt nation on earth under Bush's leadership and our occupation. Estimates put corruption at 20% for any action, meaning, in addition to taxes, you had to pay 20% of your salary to just get ANYTHING done. The people were furious.

Obama insisted on a major change in the Karzai government, and has insisted on the placement of officials not for nepotism or favors, but based on seeking to employ those who aren't corrupt. It's not changed things much YET, but it IS a start, and vastly superior to the apathy and neglect heaped upon the nation by Bush. Afghanistan is the FAR HARDER war to win, but as can be seen by these three events, progress is FINALLY being made. Will it result in some sort of stable, non-extremist government, I don't know, and I can't say. I advocated leaving because I thought we'd gone too far, lost too much, to have a chance. We may not win, but I was wrong, and we have a chance.

The shame of it all is, despite these MASSIVELY more meaningful events than anything Bush ever accomplished in Iraq, Obama is seen as weak. He is anything but in terms of placement of military leaders, of insistence on listening to military and intelligence experts, in terms of gaining the cooperation of reluctant allies, but he IS in terms of holding his political opponent's feet to the fire. In short, Obama may win all the battles, but lose the war (of popular opinion) because rather than engage in the same kind of mean, but effective politics Bush so ably engaged in, Obama desires to be "Presidential" and tactful. If he continues to be unwilling to call a spade a spade, he will see his majority in the House shrink to a very small number, and possibly lose his majority in the Senate - and with it, he will become an impotent President - and with THAT, he likely will not win reelection in 2012, and we will put back in place the same kinds of mendacious people as we ousted in 2008 from the White House. We'll have President Palin or President Huckabee or some other Limbaugh boot-licker who will again neglect Afghanistan and Pakistan and we will see a resurgent extremist movement. If Obama doesn't get that his job is to protect the country first before his legacy as a statesman with a virulently uncooperative Republican party which has shown time and again it puts party and political victory FAR ahead of country - then he is a weak leader and the country will follow him and his legacy down the rat-hole.

Leaving Afghanistan

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome a new contributing author to Penigma, one that you may recognize from his regular comments - "ttucker".
Here is the first of what I hope will be many posts to come. Ttucker - welcome!

"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."
- General George Patton Jr

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
- George Santayana

When the US sent our military into Afghanistan most of the country supported it wholeheartedly. The Taliban ran the country and had helped and motivated the people who attacked us on Sept 11, 2001. They gave them sanctuary and a place to train and celebrated with them when the twin towers fell in New York. We went over there with a clear mission, remove the Taliban from power, kill as many members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda as possible, destroy their training camps, and deny them a safe haven in Afghanistan.

For the most part we accomplished a large part of this within a couple of years and were busy hunting down small groups of them and capturing or killing them. After 4-5 yrs of focusing on Iraq and sustaining little to no casualties in Afghanistan the mission creep started. Now we needed to rebuild their government, train their troops, and win over the hearts and minds of the people. The last war we tried to win over the "hearts and minds" of the people was Vietnam and we all know how that turned out. I am now fairly certain that this war will turn out no better. I have not ever been in the military but I read a lot of military history and have friends and family who have served or are currently serving. Reading some of the military blogs and seeing news of Afghanistan it seems to me that we are no longer fighting to win.

When we pulled our ground troops out of Vietnam the South Vietnamese were still winning battles with the help of US air and naval support, as soon as the funding for that was cut the entire South fell in less than a month. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan in the 80's they were winning until we supplied the Taliban with stinger missiles to take away the Russian air support. The key to beating a guerrilla force that knows the area is air and artillery. We have now almost neutralized our own air and artillery support in Afghanistan. The new rules of engagement have caused us to be so cautious of civilians that our troops are required to retreat if it is possible that engaging the enemy could endanger civilians. Some have said the rules are not that strict and are being misinterpreted but either way the rules of engagement are putting US soldiers in more danger than they were in before.

Another problem occurs when the US conducts joint operations with the Afghan forces. There are a higher percentage of ambushes in joint operations than there is when US forces go on missions with only US forces. Maybe the Afghan troops are just not as alert about spotting an ambush, maybe someone in the Afghan HQ is still loyal to the Taliban, who knows, but US soldiers are dying because of it.

One of the military blogs I read spoke of a discussion with a former marine who was commandant of “The Corps” when LBJ took office. LBJ called him in and asked what to do about Vietnam. The commandant told him that Vietnam was like a snake in the grass and your first and best option was to leave it the hell alone. If you just cannot live with a snake in the grass then you get the biggest stick you can find and you beat it to a bloody pulp. The one thing you do not want to do is go in the grass with a small stick and play with the snake. Of course LBJ chose the last option and it looks like we have again in Afghanistan. It is time to get out of the grass and leave the snake alone.