Month: September 2011

Same as it ever was: Afghanistan edition

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Sept. 20, 2011:

The Taliban have claimed credit for today’s suicide attack in Kabul that killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chief of the Afghan High Peace Council and former president of Afghanistan. The suicide bomber killed Rabbani in his home and seriously wounded Masoom Stanekzai, the peace council’s secretary, after detonating an explosive device that was hidden in his turban.

– Long War Journal

The ’80s:

The CIA’s leadership continued to regard Pakistani intelligence as the jihad’s main implementing agency, even as more and more American trainers arrived in Pakistan to teach new weapons and techniques. All this ensured that ISI’s Muslim Brotherhood-inspired clients – mainly Hekmatyar but also Sayyaf, Rabbani, and radical commanders who operated along the Pakistan border, such as Jallaladin Haqqanni – won the greatest share of support.
 
 
The rebels fashioned booby trapped bombs from gooey black contact explosives, supplied to Pakistani intelligence by the CIA, that could be molded into ordinary shapes or poured into innocent utensils. Russian soldiers began to find bombs made from pens, watches, cigarette lighters, and tape recorders.

– Steve Coll, Ghost Wars

Given our long and complicated history in that region, it is unclear to me why the American foreign policy establishment continues to believe that it can play “footsie” with favored groups and emerge entirely unscathed. It’s one thing to work with others toward immediate goals (where we have no good choice – such as the United States and the Pakistan Army working together on groups such as TTP) but quite another to fundamentally alter reality via just the correct mix of carrot and stick:

STEP 7 – RESOLVE either to remain engaged with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India for a lengthy and challenging diplomatic-military process (including some level of non-trivial economic and military aid to both Afghanistan and Pakistan for some time); or, SUCCUMB to the personal frustrations of it all and quit the field, making room for the next nouveau American to start the process at STEP 1.

– Tom Lynch is a research fellow for South Asia & Near East at NDU. A retired Army Colonel, he was a special assistant focused on South Asian security for the CENTCOM Commander and later the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during 2004-2010. (guest blogging at Tom Rick’s Best Defense).

But maybe I misunderstood the point being made. The post at Best Defense is a good one and I encourage you to read it.

Constitution Day

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Our government department always celebrates Constitution Day and today (a bit late) they brought back one of their favorites, H. W. Brands. His talk was aimed at our students; he walked a quite straight line describing constitutional interpretations. I felt that noting the founders knew nothing of airplanes might be interesting, but is a straw man. Still, he kept his poise on that tightrope. He could aim a little higher, it seems to me, but no one can fault his passion and enthusiasm.

And I’m grateful, finding pleasure in “Capitalism, Democracy, and the Constitution” which noted that 1776 was the date of both “manifestos” – the Declaration of Independence and The Wealth of Nations. Each semester I yoke these (with religion and speech and the press) as part of the “open marketplace” with its confidence in the eventual and incremental wisdom of our nation. (Perhaps someone who puts on his biography that he spent some time traveling in the West selling cutlery is likely to see this juxtaposition in a way few others nominated for Pulitzers do.)

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Busted at the Post Office

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Waiting in line a few months ago to pick up a package, I snapped a couple of photos. A postal employee noticed me doing this and said (I am paraphrasing from imperfect memory the exchange that follows), “You took a picture”. I said yes. She said, You can’t take pictures in the post office. I shrugged. She called over another lady whom she identified as a supervisor.

The supervisor said, You can’t take pictures in the post office. I said I wasn’t aware of such a rule and it’s a public place. She said photography is against the law in federal buildings. I knew this couldn’t be true but there wasn’t much to gain by arguing. The ladies were very stern and I thought their reaction excessive. My assumption in such situations is that something else is probably going on. Maybe they don’t want a picture going up on the Internet that shows postal employees talking on the phone or whatever. Someone could get into trouble. But I don’t know. Anyway, I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything wrong and I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. I didn’t feel like hanging around but I was still waiting for my package. At this point the supervisor called her supervisor.

The second supervisor said, You can’t take pictures in the post office. I said something like, I’m not trying to give you a hard time but are you aware of a specific rule against taking photos? He said he wasn’t aware of a specific rule but he was sure it was in the postal regulations.

Somewhere around this time the first supervisor retrieved my package and said I could have it but only if I deleted the photos I had taken. I said, I can’t do that. The postal employees conferred among themselves. After a minute they brought me my package. Before I signed for it the top supervisor made a point of copying my name and address from the package label and said he was going to forward my info to the postal inspectors. I said, You can do that, and signed for the package.

As I turned to leave I noticed that a line of customers had formed behind me during the surreal interaction that had occupied me and three postal employees for something like ten minutes.

Post office customers in Miami, Florida. (Jonathan Gewirtz)

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Cross posted at Jonathan’s Photoblog.

Northfield – Tales of a Citizen Militia

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It would seem from the history books that most veterans of the Civil War settled down to something resembling a normal 19th century civilian life without too much trouble. One can only suppose that those who survived the experience without suffering incapacitating physical or emotional trauma were enormously grateful to have done so. Union veterans additionally must have been also glad to have won the war, close-run thing that it appeared to have been at times. Confederate veterans had to be content with merely surviving. Not only did they have to cope with the burden of defeat, but also with the physical wreckage of much of the South… as well as the wounds afflicted upon experiencing the severe damage to that  whole Southern chivalry-gracious plantation life, fire -eating whip ten Yankees with one arm tied behind my back-anti-abolitionist mindset. But most Confederate soldiers laid down their arms and picked up the plow,  so to speak fairly readily… if with understandable resentment.  In any case, the still-unsettled frontier west of the Mississippi-Missouri basin offered enough of an outlet for the restless, the excitement-seekers and those who wanted to start fresh.

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