A couple of the smarty pantses at Foreign Policy are wicked pissed that the military has actually managed the information war in a positive way. So they set out to fix that and manage to write one of the dumbest things I have ever read in my life, and remember that includes a very painful interlude w/ Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance". They reveal their bad attitude immediately with the title "Down the AfPak rabbit hole" and a bunch of Alice in Wonderland references. Nothing like a little fantasy to show your seriousness fellas. The release of Tim Burton's new blockbuster movie, Alice in Wonderland, is days away. The timing could not be more appropriate. Lewis Carroll's ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan. Wow Alice surpasses Vietnam as the proper paradigm to understand A-Stan. That is just brilliant, but you failed to throw quagmire in there or graveyard of empires or any of the other tired cliches people invested in slagging our efforts like to use. Oh wait it looks like they may get around to that. The possibility that wasting massive amounts of U.S. and British blood, treasure, and time just to establish an Afghan Potemkin village with a "government in a box" might be exactly what the Taliban wants the coalition to do has apparently not occurred to either the press or to the generals who designed this operation. Potemkin village, check. Pointing out that the cunning Talibs actually wanted us to do this, check. In reality, this battle -- the largest in Afghanistan since 2001 -- is essentially a giant public affairs exercise, designed to shore up dwindling domestic support for the war by creating an illusion of progress. In reporting it, the media has gulped down the whole bottle of "drink me" and shrunk to journalistic insignificance. Or perhaps as the opening salvo in a counter-offensive that rightly includes strategic communications we have re-framed the narrative and shown that we and the Afghans now have the initiative. By announcing this well in advance we forced the Talibs to react. they dug in and then got booted out. All of this rightly gives us the ability to say "See, we told you we could do it" and then we can move out from this pacified area and the people will have an example of how it can work. The Taliban may be an effective insurgency, but they are hardly popular. We had to be able to show a viable alternative and voila, now we can. Next they pull the "We are the only ones who understand this, why won't you idiots listen to us" card. Unfortunately, in this AfPak Wonderland, there does not appear to be any magic mushroom to get back to normal. Instead, Afghanistan and Pakistan policy is trapped in an endless loop in a mad policy world operating under its own consistent internal illogic. Unlike Alice, the handful of Afghan analysts in the United States who actually understand what is happening cannot wake up or break through the corporate media noise. The entire piece is littered with stupid Alice references that do nothing to advance the tiny shred of a point they fail miserably to make. Even if we grant that Op Mushtarak was mostly a PR exercise, it was a spectacularly effective one and that seems to be what has chafed our two brainiacs in residence. We managed to win a victory both militarily and amazingly to have it reported favorably. Well I say Bravo and let's use that to build some momentum. I guess these cranks didn't get the memo about winning hearts and minds being the most important goal. If the Afghan people are hearing the same things that have got these fellas knickers all twisted, they might just buy into this crazy idea that they can live better lives. Holy sheep *** Batman, we cant have that. We just might win if that happens, and obviously that is a pipe dream. I don't know these clowns, and having read their pitiful screed would be hesitant to be in the same room for fear of passing out due to their wholesale theft of oxygen. Apparently they represent some of our military academia, which is kind of a sorry state of affairs. Thomas H. Johnson is a research professor in the Department of National Security Affairs and director of the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. M. Chris Mason is a retired Foreign Service officer who served in 2005 as a political officer in Paktika, Afghanistan, and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, D.C. I don't know who pissed in their cornflakes but they are hardly alone being stuck on stupid at Foreign Policy. Here is another stunningly dense piece. How to Cut Collateral Damage in Afghanistan Rein in the Special Forces cowboys, and let Gen. McChrystal call the shots. I am not going to waste a lot of time on this as the professional douche who wrote it seems to have migrated from the military to Human Rights Watch...'nuff said. So I will limit it to this. McChrystal came from the Special Ops world you dip ***. He is well aware of what all the "cowboys" are doing and doesn't need your advice.Why don't you go whine about Gitmo detainees or something.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/xGW5V8Q4jVc/down-the-foreign-policy-garbage-chute.html
Posted
Mar 04 2010, 12:42 AM
by
BLACKFIVE