Thus we have seen several increases in troop numbers in Afghanistan. Each time such a surge happened under Bush, under Obama and now under Trump, the result was an increase in Taliban activity and success.
We have seen the use of local militia forces fail under Obama when these were called Afghan Local Police. The 20,000 men strong ALP was supposedly "trained" to hold land against the Taliban. But the local police groups turned out to be local gangs who, thanks to their "official" status, could rob, rape and kill people without fear of retaliation. The suppressed population then turned to the Taliban for relief.
The idea to create such a local force was so bad that it is time to repeat it:
The American military has turned to the [idea of a local militia] force as a potential model for how to maintain the Afghan government's waning control - without too high a cost - in difficult parts of Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban are resurgent.We can predict with confidence that a year from now those very same districts of Nangarhar province will again staunchly support the Taliban.
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The size of the new force is yet to be finalized, but it could number more than 20,000, according to a senior Afghan official.
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While the senior Afghan official insisted that only the conceptual framework of the force has been agreed to, and that details were still being sorted out, several Western officials said that preparations were already underway to pilot the new force in southern districts of Nangarhar Province.
In 2001 the CIA and U.S. special forces kicked out the Taliban with the support of northern alliance war-criminals. Arial bombing based on partisan information continued for years. After their defeat the Taliban had given up on ruling the country. They offered to dissolve in exchange for amnesty and an end to the war. But the bombing, often on direction of some local wannabe strongman, continued. Many people not involved with the Taliban or any resistance were killed and maimed. Their communities called out for help. The Taliban revived and came back to fight the invaders.
For a while the indiscriminate, unaccountable bombing seemed to calm down. But the insurgency, once revived, continued. Time then to repeat and expand the scheme - if only under a different logo and in more countries:
The C.I.A. is pushing for expanded powers to carry out covert drone strikes in Afghanistan and other active war zones, a proposal that the White House appears to favor despite the misgivings of some at the Pentagon, according to current and former intelligence and military officials.More indiscriminate bombing will obviously lead to more resistance and more war.
An argument can be made that the U.S. military and intelligence complex is willfully and systematically creating new enemies in Afghanistan and elsewhere to justify the continuation of its campaigns.
But that argument presumes that there is sufficient intellectual capacity in the Pentagon and CIA to develop and follow such a design. Arrogance, bureaucratic inertia and lack of curiosity are the simpler and maybe more likely explanations.
I wonder if this N Korean situation would have occurred if the greed had stopped and Russian gas purchased from an equal trading partner? Well, too late now. We are going to be backing Japan---weapons, patrols, ship facilitation, training, technology, etc.---in its spat with N Korea. Do you think this will disrupt S Korean trade? And Japan's? No container ships crossing the Pacific under US drone and destroyer protection. How long do you think a 50% drop in container cargo shipping can exist before it collapses Japan's economy? Or the KIAs coming from S Korea. And all because we had to have an oil line from Iraq. After all, we killed millions to make that happen.
I notice that a call for returning to democratic ideals has now hit the newspapers. Funny after an extended military campaign costing $! trillion to reduce the Middle East to the stone age we suddenly get religion. The master plan calls for health care for all---this was supposed to have been paid for by the war successes.---and the reinvigorating of economies so they can pay the carbon tax---too bad the climate change fiasco was revealed to be a solar/cosmic alignment event---and the Pacific Rim Trade Agreement now so much waste of paper as the new Silk Road will ship for a fraction of the costs direct to EU without the US middleman. Immigration reform consisting of cutting off countries not useful to us in UN voting and rounding up not the hardworking Mexicans but the 20 years guest visa for education for the children of the countries we invaded. How convenient we planned ahead and sweetened the pot for the Columbian military to welcome FARC with open arms. Favors owed there! And Argentina will be brought low ala Libya. Rohingas the newest dispossessed as their traditional site inside Ang Su Kai's country was an ever-so-tempting coastline and the US military has never met a foreign coastline it did not like!! Ask Eritrea!