The Taliban's Brutal Tactics are Working

This week's murder of three international aid workers by the Taliban outside Kabul may make some wonder why the insurgents would resort to such grisly tactics? Surely killing innocents will alienate the Afghan public, right? This should all be a fatal error in the guerrilla's struggle for the "hearts and minds" of Afghanis.

Would that were so but it's not. These murderous attacks actually accomplish a lot for the insurgents. They make the locals fearful - and hence, respectful even complaint - of the Taliban. But that's not the real objective. The main prize is to break down public confidence and respect for the government side, the side that's pledged to protect the people.

In the Toronto Star, a Canadian advisor to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, retired Colonel Mike Capstick, says the Taliban tactics are succeeding:

The switch by Taliban insurgents to spectacular attacks, including the daylight murders of international aid workers that left two Canadians among the dead, has shattered Afghans' confidence in the international community and the Afghan government's ability to provide basic security, says a top Canadian adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

"It's a pretty bad year – not only for aid workers – it's a bad year for Afghan national police, international military forces, Afghan national army and tragically, Afghan civilians," said Capstick.

Capstick, who led the first Canadian strategic advisory team to Karzai's government in 2005-06, said "strategically, in the rest of the country" the picture is troubling as insurgents move "towards a tactic of doing the spectacular attacks."

Citing an attempted assassination of Karzai in April at a military parade, the Kandahar prison break in June, the July bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed more than 50 people, and a rash of "attacks on internationals like this," Capstick said the Taliban tactics are "working."

Assaults on unarmed humanitarian workers, on food aid convoys, and bombings that slaughter Afghan civilians have not triggered a backlash against the insurgents as might be expected.

Instead, he said, "it's causing people to become more fearful and for them to lose confidence."
"The Afghan people have lost any confidence that they had in the international community's and the Afghan government's ability to provide basic security."

Almas Bawar Zakhilwal, director in Canada for the Senlis Council think-tank, also sees conditions worsening. "The insurgency was confined to the south before, now we see it in the east and all around Kabul ... It looks like they're closing their circle on Kabul."

The only thing surprising in any of this is that anyone should find this even slightly surprising. This is Guerrilla Warfare 101. These are tactics that have been proven over centuries from Africa to Asia, Central and South America to Europe.

The only way to win the hearts and minds of the public is to give them 24/7 security from the insurgents and that takes huge numbers of troops. Time is not on our side. Time is entirely on the side of the bad guys. We've already had seven years of wasted, screwing around, and we've been steadily losing ground year by year.

America's General Petraeus himself has said the cardinal rule of counter-insurgency is "Go big or go home." Well we certainly haven't gone big, have we? In fact, we're wallowing so far behind the power curve that the other side is steadily nearing a critical mass where they'll become unstoppable. Can't believe that can happen? Suit yourself.

Hey Condi - Shut the Hell Up!

No amount of hypocrisy will stop Bush's main White House shill, Condoleeza Rice from throwing out one ridiculous statement after another.

This is the woman who, after all, gave us the "mushroom cloud" gimmick about Iraq and, like the rest of these mutts, she's shown herself a compulsive liar time and again. Yes, that's right, Condoleeza Rice is an inveterate liar, a wilful prevaricator, unrepentant fabricator, shady dissembler, an unscrupulous tale bearer, rapacious charlatan, cheap hustler, low swindler, devious rapscallion and tawdry, sideshow mountebank. What she says is so unreliable, so wilfully and hopelessly tainted, as to be meaningless, farcical even.

Today Condysleaza laid into Russia for the Georgia fiasco. With a straight face, 'Sleaza warned that the time is past when one nation can invade another, occupy it and overthrow a government. Apparently the deadline for that neat trick lapsed in Baghdad in 2003.

Hey Condi, shut the hell up!

We Don't Need Clowns Like Saakashvili in NATO

From the Balkans to the Caucusus there are many scores just waiting to be settled. We saw that when Yugoslavia fell apart leading to massacres in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Then Georgia beset Abkhazia and South Ossetia which eventually led to Saakashvili's pathetic assault on South Ossetia which inevitably backfired, sending the Georgians reeling for cover.

We don't need governments led by the likes of Saakashvili in NATO. They're much too unpredictable and unreliable to be trusted with NATO membership. Saakashvili revealed as much in his remarks today. They show a guy who is out of touch with reality and who thought he could bring the weight of the West into his showdown with Moscow. From the New York Times:

"President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, who has appeared repeatedly on Western television during the days of conflict with Russia, made frantic and apparently overstated warnings on Wednesday that Russian troops were poised to enter the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

In an interview on CNN, the Georgian president said the Russians “are closing on the capital, circling,” with the intention of establishing their own government.

...he also blamed the West for not intervening more forcefully, nearly a week after hostilities broke out between Georgia and its much larger neighbor.

“Frankly, my people feel let down by the West,” he said.

As for how he planned to halt the formidable Russian forces if they indeed headed toward Tbilisi, he said, “This will not be only Georgian troops” but an “all-out defense.”

Asked if the White House was doing enough, he said: “I just spoke to President Bush. Frankly, some of the first statements were seen as a green light for Russia. They were kind of soft.”

He said the United State should be doing more. “We should realize what is at stake for America; America is losing the whole region,” he said.

He dismissed allegations that Georgia started the fighting. “How can we attack Russia?” he asked. “That’s the ludicrous thing.”'

No, the ludicrous thing is that NATO entertained admitting a country headed by this screwball into the Alliance. It's becoming plain that he thought he'd pick a fight that the West would have to come in and finish for him. Imagine having to send our soldiers to fight the Russians for this joker. No thanks.

Despite all the outrage spewing from our leaders, we'd do well to keep a clear head as to just what really happened in the Caucusus. Check out this opinion piece from Seumas Milne published in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/14/russia.georgia

McCain's Spin Cycle

The crisis over South Ossetia is no laughing matter. It's believed that thousands have died in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia at the hands of the Georgian and Russian armies.

There is some wry humour, however, in the way the right-wing pundits have been flailing about, spinning furiously, before landing in a spent heap. They're incensed at Vlad Putin and damn well want something done about it but, when it comes to that certain "something," they keep coming up empty.

I'm sure the White House wishes it had some leverage over Moscow but it doesn't. American influence is at an all-time low. It's skint. It's worse even than the aftermath of Vietnam.

That may just be the real Bush legacy, the idea that global power is a weapon that works best when it's unused and that, above all else, even a mighty nation needs to pick its fights carefully.

WWJMD? Yes, indeed, What Would John McCain Do in this situation? Judging by his addled rhetoric of recent months, Johnny boy would probably find some means of unilateral action, some way to give Putin one upside along the head. Oh he'd sure as hell demand that Russia be kicked out of the G8 and he might even get his way. He'd certainly keep Russia out of the WTO. He might even try to reinstate the Cold War.

In other words, John McCain might damage America more than he could ever damage Russia. Why? McCain's gunslinger views aren't shared outside America (of course there's always Harper). The Euros aren't interested in playing McCain's game. They need Russian energy and, almost as importantly, access to Russian markets. So, if McCain can't swing Europe, maybe he could get the Asians to bite? Sorry, no. NATO? Not a chance (see Europe ante). Maybe a "coalition of the broke and needy" might rope in a few eastern European states but, no, they're all too familiar with the Bear on their doorstep.

Put simply, John McCain might just be the guy to isolate his own country in a weird sort of rebound containment. And an isolated America might find it a lot tougher dealing with its international creditors, particularly China.

George w. Bush has done a pretty effective job of hammering America on the anvil of his delusions. Maybe McCain will finish the job.

Shell Game

Well, at least they tried.

Shell Oil (that's Royal Dutch Shell PLC to you) tried to put a heavy coat of lipstick on its Tar Sands pig in UK advertisements, heralding the Athabasca project as "sustainable energy." That prompted the World Wildlife Federation to lodge a complaint with Britain's Advertising Standards Authority. From the Associated Press:

The advertisement focused on two of Shell's projects. One involves exploration in Canada's oil sands where bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum, can be extracted and upgraded to synthetic crude oil. The ad also mentioned Shell's plan to build one of the United States' largest oil refineries in Texas.

“The challenge of the 21st century is to meet the growing need for energy in ways that are not only profitable but sustainable,” said Shell's full-page ad in the Financial Times.

The watchdog ruled that Shell breached regulations relating to substantiation, truthfulness and that the advertisement “was defined primarily in environmental terms.”

Citing a 2006 report by Canada's National Energy Board, the watchdog said the report claimed that the environmental impact of the country's oil sands projects were of major concern. Producing crude from bitumen can involve strip mining and generate more emissions than conventional crude.

“The ASA's decision to uphold WWF's complaint sends a strong signal to business and industry that greenwash is unacceptable,” said David Norman, the World Wildlife Federation's director of U.K. campaigns.

Is It Time to Rethink NATO?

The essence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was mutual-defence. We were all pledged to come to the aid of each other in the event any of us was attacked - by the Soviet Union.

NATO never would have come into being if any of the signatories believed another might use the alliance to provoke a Soviet attack. It wouldn't have been tolerated.

Does that still hold true? Maybe not but the founding member states would be well served to read the Riot Act to our new, eastern European members.

A report from McClatchey Newspapers Washington bureau sheds some disturbing light on events behind Georgia's ill-fated attack on South Ossetia:

"Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia’s sudden move last Thursday to send thousands of Georgian troops into South Ossetia to capture that province's capital, Tskhinvali.

Not only did the U.S. troops working alongside their Georgian counterparts not see any signs of an impending invasion, Georgian officials did not notify the U.S. military before the incursion, a senior U.S. defense official told McClatchy.

Some experts, however, wondered whether the administration might have inadvertently sent Saakashvili mixed messages that would have led him to believe he could count on U.S. support if he got into trouble.

"The Russians have clearly overreacted but President Saakashvili . . . for some reason seems to think he has a hall pass from this administration," said former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

A "parade" of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visited Tbilisi to urge Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin to act, a State Department officials said.

At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

Did America really get sandbagged by Saakashvili? That's hard to imagine but, if they did, it speaks volumes of America's hellbent rush to expand NATO eastwards. On the other hand, it could just be that the White House and the Pentagon - already facing enough problems with their military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan - want to distance themselves from failure in the Caucasus.

One thing is clear. It's time to rethink NATO and come out with some clear guidelines to ensure that no eastern European member can start a war we would all regret.

The Old Cold Warrior Sees Red

If John McCain becomes the next US president, he promises to show Russia some tough love.

McCain has long championed booting Russia out of the G8 and he might even get his way before the G8's relevance turns really wobbly. Now he wants NATO to get Georgia into the alliance ASAP.

Georgia? Some key NATO members have their doubts on that one. After all, had they allowed themselves to be steamrollered by Washington's earlier demands on Georgia, they might be facing an Article 5 call to take up arms against Russia right now triggered by some guy named Saakashvili. How long do you think the alliance would last in that situation? A week? Two?

Some critics say John McCain wants to refight the Vietnam War to redeem America's honour. It seems he might want to revisit the Cold War also, maybe even turn it from cold to hot.

John McCain is delusional.

He overstates his own nation's powers and underestimates his opponent's. He sees America and Russia in a simplistic, two-dimensional way. Old John doesn't seem to understand that, among the nations of the world who wish harm on the USA, Russia is well down the list.

America's chief rival in the coming decades will be China. What possible good can come to the United States by goading Russia into embracing China even more closely? This is not the time for empty American sabre-rattling. It doesn't work with a guy like Putin and it can even scare off your friends.

By the way, if a McCain White House did decide to reinstate the Cold War, who would fund that enormously expensive venture? Given that American can only do these things on borrowed money, would that come from the Chinese or the Europeans?

Fresh Out of Statesmen, Awash In Ideologues

Who will negotiate with Russian strongman Vlad Putin? It won't be Georgia's Saakashvili. He's finished. It will probably take some sort of intermediary, a stand-in for Georgia, and that would be?

The Russia-Georgia conflict cries out for statesmen but, sadly, all we've got right now are ideologues and it shows. Ideologues are at their very worst in situations like this. They have little credibility and less persuasiveness. They're often one-trick ponies. When they run up against a nation that's not vulnerable to their coercion, we usually find that ideologues revert to angry denunciation and hollow gestures - tantrums, foot-stamping.

Unfortunately for our side, Vlad Putin is a hard case. When it comes to negotiators that pretty much rules out the Bushies or the Brownies. The Guardian suggests our intermediary might be Sarkozy.

What's unclear is just what is to be negotiated. Here we may run into considerable asymmetry. What Russia is after may be a far more expansive than what Georgia wants or what Europe wants.

From Moscow's perspective, Georgia may be a metaphor for its greater struggle against a steadily encroaching NATO. If the Russians can't roll back recent NATO expansion into the Balkan and Caucasus regions, it may still serve Russian interests to sow doubts about the alliance and the security it truly offers among NATO's new, eastern members.

Would NATO truly defend Romania against Russia? What do you think? Of course what I think and what you think doesn't matter. What's important to Putin is the impression left in the minds of those in places like Sofia and Bucharest, Kiev and Riga.

Georgia's Saakashvili was playing a bluff when he attacked South Ossetia. He's not stupid. He must have expected a different outcome than what he's facing just a week later. What's not clear is why. It will be fascinating when, months from now, Saakashvili spills the beans about why he pulled the trigger without noticing the gun was pointed at his own head.

A disastrous military adventure leading to the permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will surely spell the end of Saakashvili's political future. It will also at least somewhat destabilize eastern Europe. America, after all, is in no position to reinstate Cold War-style militarization through this region.

What we probably won't see anytime soon are the ripples now being felt by the NATO alliance. Whether Washington or Brussels wish to acknowledge it, NATO has suffered strains and at least hairline fractures over Afghanistan. There were some members who were uncomfortable with Bush's stampede to expand the alliance into eastern Europe. The Georgia debacle will do nothing to ease those concerns and doubts.

Russia now says it will halt its blitz into Georgia short of Tbilisi. It's also said it won't recognize Saakashvili. Probably everybody agrees on that one. Imagine Saakashvili sitting at the table and signing off on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He'd be hanging from a light post within weeks.

So an outsider will do the negotiating for Georgia and, by implication, for the rest of Europe and (to some extent) NATO itself. Sarkozy? Perhaps but he too is an ideologue, not a statesman. The risk to that is that ideologues will probably see this as a simple question of Georgia and a couple of autonomous regions to be stripped from the loser. That's an approach that would thrill Putin if only because it leaves all of the greater issues and his future options unmentioned and wide open.

We'd do well not to let the ramifications of this fiasco escape us. This isn't an isolated matter. To Putin and the Kremlin it's a couple of moves that may have a telling effect later in this chess game.

Okay, Hit Him With Your Purse

Western nations are keen to find some tangible role in unwinding the conflict between Russia and Georgia. One right-winger writing in The Times advocated giving Georgia quick admission into NATO. Another pundit, writing in The Guardian, suggests threatening to pull Russia's seat at the G8 - a tactic already endorsed by John McCain.

What to do, what to do? Here's a suggestion (and you knew I'd have one). How about we start by realizing that we've overplayed our hand? We (that is to say our Leader of the Free World, George w. Bush) decided to ram NATO's borders right up to Russia's doorstep. The logic behind that was always pretty fuzzy as was the actual committment behind it. Putting anti-missile missiles and radar systems on Russia's doorstep while pretending they were intended to defend against rogue missiles from Iran was another silly, red-meat provocation.

You have to work extremely hard to ignore the history of warfare over the past two centuries enough not to realize that certain actions tend to have quite predictable and proven results. One of these actions is to encircle and contain a major power. By turns, this sort of thing has sparked wars in Europe and elsewhere. A major player, seeing itself being hemmed in, turns paranoid and lashes out. Call it human nature if you like.

And that's exactly what Bush has been attempting - the encirclement of both Russia and China. Driving the world's paramount military alliance headed by the world's sole superpower right up to Red Square is an act of provocation and nothing but. Enlisting India to flank and contain China and threaten her oil routes to the Middle East is another blatant act of provocation. Maybe if the United States was looking at another half-century as the dominant industrial economy on the planet these options might be somewhat more viable. But America is in decline while the BRIC nations are in ascendancy.

Then there's the rationale for NATO. Did we really need Slovakia or Romania in NATO? What on earth for? Are they rushing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Afghanistan? Of course not. They get let into NATO, NATO issues an urgent plea for help from its member states, and they say "forget it." Huh?

My guess is that the eastern European states will be as reliable as NATO members as they were as members of the Warsaw Pact. Worse yet, this Georgian stunt demonstrates that they can do some rash, even dangerously stupid things that could have serious repercussions for a mutual-defence alliance like NATO.

We've overplayed our hand and the Russians have seen our bet and called.

Sometimes there are no miracle solutions. This is one of those times.

Washington accuses Russia of trying to force regime change on Georgia. Memo to Washington - that's not such a bad idea. The increasingly authoritarian Saakashvili blew it. It's not just the Russians who can never trust him again. On the trust issue, we're in the same boat. We need to send a clear message to the Georgians and to the leaders of the newly-minted NATO membership that there's no room within the alliance for adventurism (except, of course, the American type).

As for Moscow, well there's not a lot we can do. Sending forces into Georgia is so stupid even Cheney won't go there. Forget about the Security Council. Sanctions? It turns out the West needs Russia more than they need us. The last thing we need to do is to drive Russia away from the West and more closely into economic, political and military co-operation with the Chinese.

No, the outcome of the Georgian-Russian conflict won't be of our making. Nor will it resolve our provocations of Moscow or Russia's suspicion of Western intentions. Worse yet, America still has the Frat Boy while Russia sends Putin to the chess table.

If there are any lessons to be learned from this debacle, any gain to be had, maybe it's to understand the urgent need to defuse tensions between Russia and the West, even if that means backing down a notch.

Just What We Need - Another Conflict in Afghanistan

When it comes to foreign policy, the Bush/Cheney regime has been an unmitigated disaster, the perfect storm of indifference, over-confidence and inconsistent goals.

Toppling Saddam was supposed to spark the spread of democracy through the Middle East. Instead it resulted in the ascendancy of fundamentalist Shiite influence from Iraq to Iran, Syria to Lebanon.

In its War (without end) on Terror, the United States has fractured Trans-Atlantic solidarity and undermined NATO unity. Bush has done a lot to try to mend fences over the past two years but it'll take a new American administration and an awful lot of diplomacy to restore those relationships.

Already faced with being eclipsed economically by an emerging China, the US has driven China and Russia into each other's arms through clumsy attempts at containment. This is not to say the Shanghai Cooperation Organization wouldn't have emerged otherwise but US efforts certainly gave it unhelpful impetus.

Then there's Afghanistan. We're busy trying to hold the Taliban and al-Qaeda at bay while the country literally rots beneath our feet. Fundamentalist Islamist warlords rule most of the country, barely tolerating a notional central government in Kabul that is both feeble and terminally corrupt. We're struggling to save the irredeemable.

We keep saying the key to stopping the Taliban is the neighbouring state of Pakistan. Then Washington gives Islamabad ample cause not to cooperate by encouraging rival India to expand its presence in Afghanistan. Bloody minded idiocy!

With warlords, drug barons, insurgents and a corrupt government and security service, what we all need now in Afghanistan is another source of conflict, especially a proxy battle between Pakistan and India. Yet that's exactly what's happening.

India has a history of meddling in Afghanistan to bring pressure on Pakistan's western front. As Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, reported in Asia Times Online, Indian-Pakistani rivalries are very much in play in Afghanistan:

"All through the painful twists and turns, Indian policy towards Afghanistan was steeped in pragmatism and remained largely Pakistan-centric. But things seem to be changing. The horizons appear to have vastly expanded. According to Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid, Kabul is "replacing Kashmir as the main area of antagonism" between India and Pakistan. The Pakistani security establishment has convinced itself that Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies are engaged in undermining Pakistan's security. American analysts say Afghanistan has explicitly become a theater of Pakistan-India adversarial relations. But there is a much larger dimension.

The Pakistani establishment is also sizing up the new geopolitical reality - the unprecedented pro-India tilt in the US's regional policy. It is having a hard time coping with the trilateral consensus between Kabul, Delhi and Washington, which pillories Islamabad as the "primary and near-exclusive trouble maker" in the region. The Pakistani establishment cannot accept that while Islamabad remains a key partner for Washington in the "war on terror", it is Delhi that is on the way to becoming a stakeholder in US global strategies.

...the Pakistani perspective sees the emerging regional equations as a dangerous slide toward Indian military superiority and regional "hegemony". How does the Pakistani military, weaned on adversarial feelings towards India, countenance such a challenge?

First, Pakistan will assert its legitimate interests in Afghanistan, no matter what it takes. Make no mistake about it. The Pakistani generals know what transpired when American and British top brass met in Britain last month to exchange notes on Afghanistan. The conclave assessed there were huge problems with the Karzai regime's performance and the war might last for another 30 years, which is a hopeless scenario, as "war fatigue" is setting in among North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and the tide of public opinion is turning against the war. But that isn't all.

...though Indian rhetoric on Afghanistan is carefully couched in terms of countering terrorism, Pakistan doesn't see it that way. Instead, it views it in much larger terms as an Indian thrust, supported by the US, as the pre-eminent regional power in South Asia. In recent weeks, Pakistani military raised the ante along the Line of Control bordering the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The resurgence of tensions seems a calibrated move. Islamabad is sending some signals.

Nasim Zehra, a relatively moderate, sensible voice in the Pakistani strategic community, wrote recently, "It is time for Pakistan to categorically state: enough of Pakistan bashing, enough of vacuous Kantian moralizing in a Hobbesian world, enough of the do-more mantra and enough of partisan analysis, enough of selective perceptions, enough of double standards ... Pakistan will play 'as clean as the world around it'. Take it or leave it. There is no 'going it alone' for any of Pakistan's neighbors."

...The message is simple: If Pakistan goes down, it will take India down with it. There is no such thing as absolute security."

Indian meddling advances the interests of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan very little and, while Karzai may treasure India's engagement as a foil to Pakistan, it is Pakistan's help we need in Afghanistan.

Coming Soon - an Ice Free North Pole

We're getting accustomed to brief intervals where the Arctic Ocean is open for navigation, but the North Pole itself? Until recently those pesky, alarmist scientists were warning that the North Pole could be ice free in as little as 60-years. Now they're predicting that may be just five years off.

From The Guardian:

What really unsettles scientists, however, is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. 'When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic's summer ice cover would last until around 2070,' said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. 'It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic's summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.'

The most important of these computer studies of ice cover was carried out a few months ago by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Using US navy supercomputers, his team produced a forecast which indicated that by 2013 there will be no ice in the Arctic - other than a few outcrops on islands near Greenland and Canada - between mid-July and mid-September.

'It does not really matter whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for Arctic ice,' Maslowski said. 'The crucial point is that ice is clearly not building up enough over winter to restore cover and that when you combine current estimates of ice thickness with the extent of the ice cap, you get a very clear indication that the Arctic is going to be ice-free in summer in five years. And when that happens, there will be consequences.'

This point was backed by Mark Serreze [of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado]. 'The trouble is that sea ice is now disappearing from the Arctic faster than our ability to develop new computer models and to understand what is happening there. We always knew it would be the first region on Earth to feel the impact of climate change, but not at anything like this speed. What is happening now indicates that global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected."

First Ossetia, Next Abkhazia? Georgia Reels.

Poor Mikheil Saakashvili. The Georgian president truly opened a can of worms when he launched a military attack on South Ossetia earlier this week.

What was he thinking? By firing an artillery and rocket barrage on the Ossetian capital, he brought Georgian forces into direct conflict with Russian forces monitoring a ceasefire between the Ossetians and Georgians.

It was a pretty blatant provocation of the Russians and was bound to inflame separatist fury among the Ossetians. It was also pretty obvious that Georgia's armed forces had no chance of holding their own against the Russian army.

Georgia has long had problems with two minority regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, problems that have seen periodic armed clashes. Now, with South Ossetia in open revolt and Georgian forces driven out by the Russians, Abkhazia is also ratcheting up its separatist demands. With Russian fighters and bombers in support, Abkhazia is moving to drive Georgian forces out of their territory and it appears to be succeeding.

When Milosovich sent Serbian forces against Kosovo, NATO responded with a bombing campaign against the Serbs. When Saakashvili sent his forces to seize Ossetia, Russia responded with a bombing campaign against Georgian targets.

Did Saakashvili gamble that his attack on Ossetia would bring NATO or American military backing? If so he showed himself to be naive and dangerously naive at that. It was a reckless stunt with far-reaching consequences.

To several European nations, Saakashvili's rash actions will be seen as clear justification of their objections to Georgia's admission into NATO. They've already had their fill of "shoot'em up" cowboys in the White House and have no appetite for a mini-Bush in Tbilisi who could trigger a NATO/Russia showdown. Bush's warm embrace of Saakashvili won't cut much ice with the Europeans.

Will America send the cavalry to Georgia's rescue? It's hard to imagine Washington doing that. With its forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan the last thing the Pentagon needs is any military action that could ratchet up tensions with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran, maybe. Russia and China? Over Ossetia or even Abkhazia? Forget it.

I expect the best Washington can do at this point is to extract Georgia from this silliness as intact as possible. That may mean yielding sovereignty to South Ossetia and perhaps even to Abkhazia.
As for Saakashvili, it may be over for him, both at home and abroad. He precipitated an armed conflict with a resurgent, regional superpower that no one wanted and, worse, he lost, crying "uncle" within two days. He acted without the knowledge or support of his Western backers. He has severely undermined Georgia's prospects with NATO. If he loses even South Ossetia, Georgian opposition politicians will serve him up for dinner.

This Won't Sit Well With Washington

The 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, says Russia's days as peacekeeper in South Ossetia are over. OSCE chairman, Finnish foreign minister Alexander Stubb is quoted by Reuters as saying, ""It is clear that there is no return to the status quo, to what was."

"Russian troops poured into South Ossetia on Friday, hours after Georgia launched a large-scale offensive aimed at restoring control over the region which broke away after a war in the early 1990s. A peacekeeping force with 500 members each from Russia, Georgia and North Ossetia monitored a truce in the region which broke down this week.

"...Stubb also said there was no question the current conflict was a war. "This is a war, no doubt about it. There is no reason to call it anything else."

He said Georgia's territorial integrity and the right to self-determination of South Ossetia were basic principles which would guide the OSCE throughout the conflict."

It's those last few words, the recognition of "the right to self-determination of South Ossetia" that will ruffle feathers in Washington as well as Tbilisi. The Georgians want to subjugate the Ossetians into assimilation. The South Ossetians want nothing to do with Georgia which is why they've turned to Russia for protection even before the reign of Catherine the Great. Self-determination would mean a Kosovo-style sovereignty for Ossetia and an outright repudiation of Georgia's dodgy claims to the territory.

The litmus test of South Ossetian loyalties has been apparent in the streams of refugees foreign reporters have observed streaming, not into Georgia, but straight into Russia.

Meanwhile Condoleeza Rice has called South Ossetia is "Georgian soil." Good luck with that, Condi.

Why We All Have a Huge Stake in America's Election

Look at George Bush and South Ossetia. See any connection? Too bad because it's there.

One of the lasting scars we'll all have to deal with after the death of the BuCheney regime will be the enormous damage it's caused to global security. Answer a few questions.

Who drove the revival and spread of Islamist fundamentalism?

Who has destabilized the once Sunni-dominated Middle East and precipitated the ascendancy of Shiite power in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories?

Who relentlessly pressed for the expansion of NATO right to the borders of Russia?

Who has undermined the strength and economic stability of the very nation the world has accepted for so long as the leader of the Free World, the United States itself?

Who has sparked and then fueled arms races around the world?

These are just some of the dregs of BuCheney that'll be left behind for others to deal with. The Frat Boy and his puppeteer have done their work. They don't see their administration as a failure if only because they managed to enact the social agenda they wanted, albeit with some setbacks such as the Social Security debacle.

George w. Bush meant it when, during his first term, he addressed a black-tie dinner and described the guests as "his base" calling them "the haves and the have-mores." To these people, this top sliver of American society, the Bush years have been grand indeed.

So, what's the connection between George w. Bush, Dick Cheney and South Ossetia? The White House has relentlessly pressured NATO to expand to the very borders of Russia. It was France and Germany that balked at admitting Georgia into the Alliance. America has encouraged Georgian adventurism and defiance of Russia, even backing a thug like Saakashvili (shown with Bush above) while he violently suppressed dissent in his country.

Georgia was no place for clumsy meddling. The Ossetia issue has been around since at least 1922 when the South Ossetia Autonomous region came into being. In fact the Russians have been backing Ossetian autonomy since the reign of Catherine the Great. Since 1925 there has been a movement to unite South and North Ossetia. Georgia moved on South Ossetia in 1989 declaring it no longer autonomous and trying to force assimilation by measures such as declaring Georgian the official language. Fighting between the Ossetians and Georgians has been an on and off reality since 1991.

When America, despite the wishes of the Europeans, moved to consolidate its influence with Georgia, it emboldened Saakashvili to the point where he thought he could execute a coup de main while everyone was distracted with the Beijing Olympics.

America's puerile foreign policy has played a direct role in the current fighting and has been reflected in Condoleeza Rice calling for Russia but not Georgia to withdraw entirely from Ossetia. Her rank stupidity and complete disregard for the historical realities at play in Ossetia has been nothing short of breathtaking.

We can only hope that we'll see a new face of America after the November elections.

Georgia Calls for American Intervention in Ossetia

Georgian strongman president Mikhail Saakashvili is pleading for American intervention against the Russian incursion into South Ossetia.

Saakashvili gambled that he could roll up the Ossetian separatists and drive Russian peacekeepers out of the breakaway province but opened up a hornets' nest instead. The Georgian president escalated tensions by bombarding the Ossetian capital with rockets, artillery, tank fire and aerial bombardment.

Moscow, instead of retreating has retaliated with its own airstrikes and has sent tank columns pouring into Ossetia in support of the separatists. Cossacks from North Ossetia are likewise heading south to help oppose the Georgian forces.

The situation somewhat resembles the Kosovo problem. Ossetians are ethnically different than Georgians and, like the Kosovor Albanians, have been attacked by the larger, parent state. Where NATO intervened on behalf of the Kosovors against the Slavik Serbs while Russia had to sit by and watch, this time it's the Slavik Russians coming to the aid of the Ossetians while the West, taken by surprise, has been sidelined, at least for now.

The idea of a direct Russian-American military showdown over Ossetia seems improbable but, then again, there's always the Cheney wild card.

Only In B.C.

America Out of Iraq by 2011?

This one sounds hard to believe. McClatchy news service reports that the Iraqi and American governments are nearing completion of a status of forces agreement that provides for the withdrawal of all US combat troops by 2011:

"The tactical team is finished and it's a closed deal, but remember that we've been through this before and every time we close a deal it's reopened," said a senior [Iraqi] official who's been participating in the talks.
The official said that the deal, once completed, would be perhaps the most restrictive agreement the United States had with a country where it had troops.

"We've seen all the status of forces agreements with other countries," the official said. "This is the best that the Americans have conceded."

The official asked not to be identified because the deal is still being negotiated.

Another official, Ali al Adeeb, a senior member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party, said he'd been briefed on the negotiations and he confirmed the details.

The latest deal is said to also provide for the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraqi cities by next July. It sounds remarkably similar to the British withdrawal of its forces from Basra last year in preparation of their departure from Iraq.

What remains to be seen is whether the United States actually abandons its plans to nearly double the number of American military bases in Iraq from the existing 32 to a total of 60. The Pentagon has long identified a strategic need for a major, permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf region from which it can dominate the Middle East oil fields. Leaving Iraq would also relieve Iran of the pressures of strong American forces in Iraq on one border and Afghanistan on the other side. If the US proceeds with the expansion of its Iraqi bases it will be pretty obvious that it has no real intention of leaving anytime soon and certainly not by 2011.

To encourage al Maliki to cement a withdrawal deal, Muqtada al Sadr is now offering to disband his Mahdi Army militia once a fixed withdrawal date is set. There could also be an enormous amount of intrigue lurking behind that promise.

Russia Invades Georgia

The Guardian reports that Russian forces have invaded Georgia in support of the breakaway Ossetia rebels. The situation is confused but Georgia has admitted attacking two military convoys that had come from Russia and were heading toward the capital:

Whatever the precise battle details, it was clear that a serious conflict had broken out only hours after President Saakashvili promised a unilateral Georgian ceasefire and offered South Ossetia the chance of broad autonomy within Georgia. The number of casualties was unclear but likely to be high.

All eyes were on Russia and its peacekeeping contingent in the area, which Georgia accuses of supporting the separatists. The Russian peacekeepers said the Georgians were targeting their positions and they had lost some men. In Moscow, Russia's security council was due to meet in an emergency session today.

Georgian forces appear to have the upper hand and the element of surprise at the moment but they could soon find themselves fighting on two fronts, as another separatist region, the Black Sea enclave of Abkhazia, announced its troops were moving towards the Georgian border. Cossaks from Russia said they were also ready to go to the aid of the South Ossetians, many of whom have Russian citizenship.

In Tskhinvali, Kokoity was meeting Teymuraz Mamsurov, the leader of North Ossetia, which is just over the border in Russia. The North Ossetians have also promised help to their South Ossetian brethren.

Mamsurov said a convoy of lorries carrying humanitarian aid from his region was attacked by Georgian war planes during the night.

Georgian forces shelled the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, in an act seen by experts as a deliberate provocation intended to humiliate Russia and timed to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics when world attention was distracted. The Georgians seem to be gambling that they can quickly overrun the 1,000-strong Russian force in the breakawa region but Moscow now seems determined to push back with reinforcements.

The Globe and Mail reports that the Georgian shelling hit a barracks being used by Russian peacekeepers, killing 10 and wounding 30. Georgia also claims at least one of the Russian convoys it is attacking is made up of tanks, not trucks.

Afghanistan War - Version 7.5

Seven years into the faltering war in Afghanistan, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has a new idea - more of the same.

Seven years.

Washington, apparently flummoxed by how poorly that miserable conflict has been going, has decided the solution might be to double the size of the Afghan National Army and a quiet absorption of NATO forces under direct American command.

What's that you say, NATO being transformed into America's Foreign Legion? Bingo!

For the past gloriously successful seven years, we Infidels have been arrayed in two groups - the strictly American, Operation Enduring Freedom (or something jingoistic like that), and the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, under the auspices of NATO, or whatever members Brussels can scrape up to send troops to Afghanistan. ISAF has operated under NATO command with the top jobs rotating among the participating nations - i.e. Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, etc.

Gates wants to put an end to that with a unified command. In terms of military science, unifying the command makes sense, in fact it's long overdue. Five years overdue at least. Back when the White House decided to pull a big hunk of its forces out of Afghanistan so it could play in the sandbox of Iraq, the OEF/ISAF forces should have been restructured. A bit late now.

There are serious problems with Gates' latest proposal. The first is that he's not proposing to put the OEF American forces under NATO command. He wants the NATO/ISAF force to enlist with the American force. What's wrong with that is that Britain, Canada and the Dutch have a much different point of view on how the Afghan conflict should be fought. We're not on the same page with the bomb'em, shell'em, obliterate'em Americans. That, of course, would be resolved once we started marching to the Pentagon's tune.

Another problem is that this would damage the already weakened and wobbly NATO alliance. It would be superseded by a de facto "coalition of the willing" a lot like the one that really didn't work out very well in Iraq. The potential ramifications of that could reach far beyond Afghanistan. On the other hand, it would give some of the NATO members now reluctantly in Afghanistan a perfect excuse to leave. They only signed on to serve under NATO command, not the Pentagon's. Oh dear.

Gates is clearly on to that little sticking point. It came through in the astonishingly contradictory explanation proffered by the Pentagon spokesman as reported in The New York Times:

“General McKiernan is in the best possible position to most efficiently and effectively deploy all of the resources to the benefit of the overall mission,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “This creates one commander in country and in charge of all forces, and establishes a structure to deploy them as best suits the mission and to improve synchronization among all military assets.”

In the months ahead, NATO and the United States will nevertheless continue to pursue somewhat different missions in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said, and the new command structure will not result in a merger of the two missions [yeah, right].

Pentagon policy makers said one goal of the command restructuring would be to allow the movement of American and allied troops — including the British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers who participate in a full range of combat missions — to support one another in a more seamless fashion. It remains unclear if the change will persuade the militaries operating under restrictions to take on additional battlefield responsibilities.

The command reorganization implies that an American officer will be in charge of the NATO and American missions for the foreseeable future.

Now expanding the Afghan National Army probably makes sense but only if it's done in conjunction with a top-down housecleaning of the Kabul and provincial governments. Not much point in building a bigger army to serve the feckless and corrupt Karzai government. If the ANA is to have any hope of surviving as a national institution after we're gone (and I presume we'll all be gone at some point, right?) then the country has to purge its troublesome warlords. Until they're gone, stripped of their powers, the Kabul administration can never truly govern as a national government. And, until Kabul stands as a viable, national government, the size of the Afghan National Army is essentially irrelevant. Without a strong, central government the Afghan National Army will remain at risk of dissolving into the traditional, ethnic militias once we take our leave. Take a look at what happened to the previous Afghan National Army when the Soviets pulled out.

The ultimate flaw in Gates' proposal is that it's a purely military response to a situation that has no military solution. It's so fraught with gaps and pitfalls that, in the long run, it could do vastly more damage than good - to the United States, to NATO and to Afghanistan.

A Lot of My Favourite People are Dead

It's true. An awful lot of the good ones, the best ones are gone. In fairness so are a lot of the bad ones although there always seem to be plenty of newcomers to take their places.

One of the good ones now gone was once known as George Carlin. As that great Canadian blog MetaBall reminds us, Carlin had a good eye for what was coming:

"...There is another take on this whole save the planet thing, from an excerpt from "The Planet is Fine" by George Carlin, God bless his lovely soul. (Warning profanity) "We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?

"The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminium cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

"We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away."

I guess George just jumped the line and got there ahead of us.

http://metaball.ca/2008/ball_Jul-08/0708_04.html