Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mongrel]

Nah, if you want to go for the "Blame an individual" route, it's more fun to blame Charlie Wilson, or perhaps more properly Mike Vickers.

(No I haven't seen that movie).

[Transportation]

Alexander the Great, The Mongol Khans, Timur the Lame

Since we're nitpicking, didn't these guys succeed? From what I can tell Afghanistan was conquered by one of them and then passed to their descendants (Alexander->Seleucids->Mauryans) or reconquered and generally treated like a trading card. The creation of a real, independent Afghan state seems to be a mere ~300 years ago.

At any rate.

The ruskies also had to worry about Paki and local fighters, but US interests and expertise doing the pushing, both through knowledge and money.

I'd be careful with that diminutive.

Anyway, I found your analysis a bit odd in the lack of mentioning Pakistan. I was under the impression that dealing with the totally-not-failed state and making sure it doesn't collapse (i.e. having them do some of "our" counterinsurgency to give their government legitimacy) was a big problem. In short, I was under the impression they were basically the same theater of operations, if an extremely delicate part.

[Mongrel]

Alexander the Great, The Mongol Khans, Timur the Lame

Since we're nitpicking, didn't these guys succeed? From what I can tell Afghanistan was conquered by one of them and then passed to their descendants (Alexander->Seleucids->Mauryans) or reconquered and generally treated like a trading card. The creation of a real, independent Afghan state seems to be a mere ~300 years ago.

At any rate.

The ruskies also had to worry about Paki and local fighters, but US interests and expertise doing the pushing, both through knowledge and money.

I'd be careful with that diminutive.

Anyway, I found your analysis a bit odd in the lack of mentioning Pakistan. I was under the impression that dealing with the totally-not-failed state and making sure it doesn't collapse (i.e. having them do some of "our" counterinsurgency to give their government legitimacy) was a big problem. In short, I was under the impression they were basically the same theater of operations, if an extremely delicate part.

Well, those conquerors of the past had little to no real presence in the territory, they just kind of rolled through, fought once or twice, ran up the flag and left. You're right about the tradingcard things, it was something typically thrown around on paper, with no noticable impact on the inhabitants. Though the Afghans did actually throw out a Greek army/administration after a number of years had passed (disclosure: It's been a long time since I read that particular history, so I hope I'm not misremembering).

So it's more of me being glib about how traditionally ornery the residents of the Afghan Plateau are and how for most of its history, tkaing it has barely even been worth the effort of getting there, never mind staying.

***

Side comment: It's interesting that for most of the world's history, the difficulty for most folks was in not being isolated. During all those centuries, Afghanistan had little that anyone could possibly want, which, combined with a climate and people charitably described as 'inhospitable', kept them free.

Now that the long arm of the modern state can reach almost anywhere, Afghanistan has found itself the target of massive, globe-spanning forces. Why? because the Afghans now possesses something of almost priceless rarity: isolation.

[SCD]

Transportation:  No argument there.  Pakistan, and their lack of cooperation from the get go, except in lip service under Mushy was annoying. 

I believe I didn't mention that in my rant as I thought on a subconscious level that the Durand line being an issue for security from natural Pashtun movement was akin to "we have to breathe oxygen to survive". 

According to the Washington Post, things are not much better. 



Thanks for catching me on that one.  Man, can someone ever write a couple thesis on that campaign. 

Also IM:  Counterpoint to Isolation:  Bhutan.

We want Afghanistan to be self-governing in a representative fashion to keep out internationally-perilous thugs.  They want it because it was their training ground against the ruskies.  The ruskies wanted it to (I assume, Tpt correct me if I'm wrong here) make  headway towards Pakistan and India.  Before that, white people could care less about the joint, and the brits just didn't want to be reminded...

[SCD]

Editorial in today's Ottawa Citizen

Will also add that in LGen (Ret'd) Dallaire's Memoir on the 1994 Genocide, he also notes the incompetence and piss poor management of the civilian head envoy to his area and his cronyism with the RGF (the side that turned out to have a major role in the hackings)

Would you americans be so kind as to start a new UN based on nations that actually try to follow the UN charter?  Not even NATO's cool for that anymore...

[Mongrel]

The UN has always been too far away from any citizen-based participation to have anything to do with real democracy. It just wears that as a cloak.

It's okay, it serves (has served?) it's real purposes just fine: It's a forum for the world's major powers to bicker, moan, or conspire without anyone really paying attention or caring, and once upon a time, it was a useful excuse for them to not lob missiles of various kinds at one another (note that I'm not saying the UN actually prevented that, it just gave everyone a couple of extra excuses they could use to avoid that).

Basically it was never the neutral body it was sold as, but as long as the goals were moderate and all the players involved had a stake in maintaining that pretense of operating under an umbrella of neutrality, then it was doing some good. 

The real problem is that they started believing their own press releases. It all went to hell after that (International Court Of Justice?! LOL!~).

[SCD]

Again, points are well made.

US Executive branch will put off choice until the Afghan government can prove that it is a partner in  the Counterinsurgency

While this indecision is going to cause shit on the ground in the short-term, it does put the onus of the decision on the Host Nation government.  Whoever made the choice is either, or a student of Petraeus at the time he made his manual. 

[Mongrel]

I'm sure most of you guys have seen this at some point, but just in case: Unmarried army major shoots up Fort Hood in Texas.

And he's a Muslim of middle eastern descent. Oh dear.

[SCD]

Forget Muslim, he's a psychiatrist!  Just what was the us army thinking letting his sort even touch a weapon?

On a darker note,  I don't think he'll have to worry about paying any debt to society for much longer.  The court martial should be an interesting, albiet short affair stacked with generals from the "shoot him" school of thought. 

[Mongrel]

Forget Muslim, he's a psychiatrist!  Just what was the us army thinking letting his sort even touch a weapon?

On a darker note,  I don't think he'll have to worry about paying any debt to society for much longer.  The court martial should be an interesting, albiet short affair stacked with generals from the "shoot him" school of thought. 

At first glance he fits the classic profile. Loner, unable to find a woman, turns to religion out which gradually becomes warped by a possible underlying mental illness (psychiatrist with undiagnosed mental illness goes on a rampage... the blackest of ironies there, folks).

What just makes this brutal is that if the reports of him being vehemently against serving in a combat zone even though he has a non-combat role are true, that his response would be to kill folks who were a hairsbreadth away from being placed directly in the line of fire anyway. God help those poor bastards*. I understand that mental illness can lead to incredibly convoluted and bizarre trains of thought that only pass as logic to their creator - God only knows what went through this fellow's head - but I can't entirely blame any of the generals involved for having a gut reaction like that than I can blame him for doing what he did.

That said, if they were to follow through with such thoughts, that would be very ugly. There's a damn important distinction between having a bloody-minded reaction and following through on it. That statement they released about how he's not dead... that had an edge to it. There was a rather terrifying relish in the way they said he 'wasn't going anywhere'.

I don't know what'll happen. This guy's got counts of Murder, Treason In Wartime, and possibly even Armed Insurrection against him. Barring a full mental evaluation that labels him out-and-out insane, he's about as deep in the shitter as you can get.

*_{As if getting shot wasn't enough, they won't even be recognised as having been in combat unless a fair-minded general chooses to make an exception. That means the even though they were about to sent to hell, no combat pay if wounded, and no combat pensions for widows or orphans. Christ.}

  version: It's an ugly, horrible, awful situation for everyone involved. About as bad as these kind of shootings can get. I only pray that nobody forgets the infantrymen and women in the process.

[SCD]

Can't see insurrection, but there never has been a clearer cut example of treason in a world where it is only a tool misused by dictators to silence political opposition. 

[Cthulhu-chan]

Any one of those is enough to get executed, and I don't recall if insanity is an out for soldiers or non-coms.

[SCD]

The man is an officer of the US army, and a senior officer to boot. 

He should be hanged at dawn given the tonic if found guilty by treason.  *

If it was a non-com, I would say something along the lines of life and dishonorable discharge, but officer caste is a different culture within society where loyalty to the constitution, service and soldiers must be followed with nothing less than zeal in any professional military. 

The example must be carried on.

*Correction, all military executions are now by injection, source

[Mongrel]

I can't actually tell how facetious you're being there (a little? a whole lot?).

I too admit that like C-Chan I was wondering how the legal situation stacks up in this case and to what degree insanity defenses and the like exist in the US military legal code. I've often been surprised at both how similar and how different the US military's legal code can be from civvy legislation.

Can any of our US vets answer that one? I mean I know most of you were navy or air force, but at least one was regular army IIRC and I... think the code is the same for all three branches of service? Or is that wrong?

I mean, hell, I couldn't even tell you how this would be treated in the Canadian system (SCD that's your cue).

In other news, reports are trickling in that the guy may have actually yelled "Allahu Akbar!" just before he started.

[TA]

Can't see insurrection, but there never has been a clearer cut example of treason in a world where it is only a tool misused by dictators to silence political opposition. 

Care to explain how this was a "clear cut" case of levying war against the US, or providing aid and comfort to its enemies?  Seems like a pretty basic "crazy guy goes crazy".

[Brentai]

It honestly sounds like they'd rather reopen Gitmo just to put him in it than kill them.

I'm putting the ultimate responsibility of those soldiers getting their due on the media.  The main thing keeping the brass honest here would be fear of a media shitstorm, and denying pensions to the victims' families should definitely cause one of those.  If they think they can cut that corner, the press is clearly not doing its fucking job.

Also their responsibility on how the whole Muslim thing comes out, since you can either view the whole thing as "lol, you guys are all suicide bombers" or as "well he was catching a mountain of bullshit for being Muslim already, and now they wanted to send him somewhere where the resentment runs fresh and deep and a lot of things happen that never get talked about.  So, you know, he went crazy."  I suppose that the first explanation is much shorter is the reason it will inevitably get used.

[SCD]

We don't do death in Canada, as is the law.  I believe it is section 46 of the criminal code that has a universal definition of "treason" and "high treason" for all people in Canada, including military.

High treason is life, 25 years and is defined by either taking a pot shot at the queen in peacetime, or regular old treason, just in wartime.  

Treason gets you a punishment not exceeding 14 years.  

I wouldn't be surprised if the power of punishment for high treason changed during an actual wartime, which you would notice if we were at.  


TA:  You're right.  Thanks, I was looking at the wrong definition.  Probably from a really welfare dictionary.

[Mongrel]

Oh yeah! I forgot that Canada is one of the only countries in the world (if not the only one) that actually still has separate and valid distinctions between Treason and High Treason (the distinction being one's peacetime, the other's in wartime).

What about the mental illness? How do Canadian military tribunals account for that? I seem to recall a couple of bad cases in the past couple of years where that came up, but those were things only involving 1-2 victims and wasn't on the same pattern as a mass shooting. 

[Mongrel]

Further interestingness: Heroic civilian cop took town Maj. Hasan in spite of being wounded herself.

Well, there's your TV movie-of-the-week right there.

[Cthulhu-chan]

I'm ex-army, but I just don't remember if insanity pleas worked for capital crimes.  The UCMJ is pretty similar to civilian law in a lot of cases, but at the same time can be very old fashioned and harsh.