Archive for Afghanistan

No Excuses for Iran: Responding to Joshua Foust (Part I)

Posted by: Ion | September 29th, 2007 · 2:21 PM

(photo: Department of Defense)

I noticed two days ago that Joshua Foust wasn’t very pleased with my criticism of his apologia for Iranian actions in Afghanistan. Good. The bad sort of apologist would have considered my remarks highly complimentary, those of merely mislaid judgment would have been gravely offended, as he is.

Unfortunately, despite a justified offense, he doesn’t appear to have relinquished his views and thus our work is not yet done. To recap, Joshua has argued that Iran serves no strategic purposes in aiding the Taliban and that evidence to the contrary found in Afghanistan (Iranian military explosives, etc) is manufactured, or misattributed by NATO to Iran to stimulate “war fever.” This is utterly false and foolhardy as I shall demonstrate herein.

But before I begin dealing with this, I should apologize to Joshua for just now getting round to responding. After reading his lengthy defense on Wednesday, it was clear it would require an equally lengthy response by me and as you can see, it did. That of course had “deal with it over the weekend” written all over it. So here we are. It’ll be a long post, but hopefully a fun one. If nothing else, Joshua’s attempted defense of himself is certainly entertaining.

Now, it begins:

Lee at postpolitical is under the impression that I am Iranian, or that I carry water for that regime, or in some way defend them. I don’t really understand why he would think that, but I also don’t like him spreading patent falsehoods about my beliefs and intentions, so let’s set the record straight, shall we?
(The Conjecturer)

As stated, I’m under impression that Joshua excused Iranian actions. Or I should say Iranian inactions, as he would have it. Not only did he submit that the Iranians were not aiding the Taliban despite evidence to the contrary, he argued that they could not aid them. To accomplish this, he volunteered for them in their absence, a little rationale which serves to completely exculpate them from not just blame, but any possible blame. Said he:

I mean, the Iranians have NO reason to try to destabilize a friendly government in Kabul to benefit a terrorist group they almost went to war with.
(A Secondhand Conjecture)

This is enormously worse than merely saying the evidence is insufficient to draw conclusions and we should err on the side of trusting Iranian intentions (a passive defense), or that failing that, the Iranians had plenty of good reasons for having those weapons in Afghanistan (an active defense). As you can see, Joshua goes far beyond either of these two tacks and counterfactually argues that evidence not only doesn’t exist, but cannot exist, as there is “NO reason,” no motive, for it ever existing to begin with.

I should say that I’m not of the mind that this comprehensive of an apology was his intention, as I shall make clear below. But let’s face it, if you wanted to sit down and deliberately devise a rationale which would totally absolve Iran of any current or future culpability in Afghanistan, no matter what evidence has been or will be uncovered, you would soon end up with something approximating Joshua’s argument.

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Reuters Has a Witness: Reuters

Posted by: Ion | September 28th, 2007 · 7:39 AM

(photo: USMC)

Despite his evident zeal to report on a story where American troops allegedly opened fire on a crowd of civilians in Afghanistan, Reuters corespondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai couldn’t seem to find a witness to substantiate it. This must have been quite frustrating. Thus, he apparently was reduced to interviewing himself in third person for the story. He filed this truly bizarre report, citing himself in the headline as the witness:

U.S. fire scatters crowd after Afghan bomb: witness
By Noor Mohammad SherzaiBATI KOT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. troops opened fire on civilians near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Thursday after a failed suicide car bomb attack on their convoy, a Reuters witness said.

[…]
“I saw everything,” said Reuters correspondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai. “I saw the suicide bomb attack …

“I saw the fire brigade vehicle rushing to the area at top speed. Somehow its brakes failed and hit one police vehicle and coalition vehicles, then the Americans started firing,” said Reuters correspondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai.
(Reuters via The American Pundit)

There was a time many years ago, when even given the strangeness of this approach to reporting and the unlikelihood of the events described, that you might have considered the report incontestable. A Reuters reporter saw this-and-that somewhere? Well, it must have happened that way. Such was the enviable reputation of this organization.

But given Reuters seriously diminished reputation for accuracy in such things and their habit for outsourcing reporter credentials to some highly questionable sorts, we’ve come to require more credible witnesses in such situations. Hence I’d throw out the entire report awaiting better information. The ugly lesson of this is that a Reuters correspondent is no longer an automatically convincing witness.

Indeed, while the military has a history minimizing unintentional attacks on civilians for obvious reasons, it doesn’t approach the Reuters habit for exaggerating them. The NATO statement on the event seems both more likely and far less hysterical:

A spokesman for U.S.-led coalition forces said only one soldier had opened fire. “A U.S. servicemen fired two shots and those shots were away from the crowd and not directed toward the crowd,” said Major Joe Klopple.
(Reuters via The American Pundit)

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The Miscalculations of the Myopic

Posted by: Ion | September 22nd, 2007 · 9:31 PM

(photo: USMC)

Since we’re plinking the Iranian apologists today, the latest from Joshua Foust at ASHC:

NATO keeps insisting it’s finding Iranian arms and saying it’s government policy, I keep wondering why they don’t think it’s the drug lords along the open border. I mean, the Iranians have NO reason to try to destabilize a friendly government in Kabul to benefit a terrorist group they almost went to war with. Right? Would they miscalculate that badly—like Americans?
(A Secondhand Conjecture)

Even a blind Persian pacificst might be persuaded to agree that the army of their worst enemy, sitting atop the primary northeastern invasion routes to the Persian plateau, is unwelcome. There are certain obvious incentives for preoccupying and eventually evicting that presence.

As to whether Iranian supply of Taliban insurgents represents a miscalculation, I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be funny, given that he’s alluding quite obviously to Iraq. In that country, Iran has been supplying the Taliban’s southern equivalents for years now and has suffered no meaningful consequences for their effort from anyone (and quite a few successes). Is Afghanistan so suddenly sacrosanct? Of course not. They’re shipping weapons to the place as we speak and Joshua & Co. are already on hand to excuse and dismiss them, as they did previously in Iraq.

Worse, it’s a shell game without a hidden coin. If the quality and quantity of captured materials ever manages to meet Josh’s threshold for blame of Iran (his criteria for blaming US forces is significantly less stringent we should note in passing), does he expect us to believe he’d become an advocate of retaliatory action, when he’s precluded that previously over the Iranian supply of the Iraqi insurgency, for identical purposes?

As for that last part about past Iranian hostility to the Taliban, evidently Joshua wants an inflexible world. The Taliban’s primary ally in that period was the Pakistani state, now the overtly sworn enemy of it. Perhaps not for Joshua, but you’ll notice things do change with strategic circumstances. The catalyst for the Pakistani change of heart, is the same motor animating Iranian sympathy in reverse: The American army on their borders.

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Getting Away with Murder, Iranian Style

Posted by: Ion | · 5:26 PM

(photo: Headquarters Marine Corps)

It was once said that regional stability in the Middle East was impossible as long as Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq. For me, given events, this was manifestly true. Faced with the situation we acted and acted decisively. Yet as nettlesome as Iraq under the Baath was, since its fall, Iran has proven to be a far more adept culprit in this area than Saddam ever dreamed of.

Fostering and fomenting serious shooting wars in at least three countries (Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen), flooding the region’s guerrillas with arms and materiel and using its geography to threaten and distort regional security in something that resembles a permanent prelude to war, Iran quite plainly makes our argument against Iraq look petty. Saddam’s prodigious efforts to infiltrate, manipulate and destabilize his neighbors were not in the Iranians league.

Yet for some reason –presumably out of fear of our domestic political situation– we’ve decided to meet their aggression against and subversion of regional security with equanimity, tolerance and at most, vague threats coupled to mild expressions of displeasure. The moment anyone in our military or government voices a thin hint of a will to arrest Iran’s efforts, attach meaningful consequences to their actions and confront the possibility of changing the political situation within that country, these men are immediately silenced, their strong words mitigated, their advice ignored.

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Truther Phantoms in Afghanistan

Posted by: Ion | September 18th, 2007 · 5:12 PM

(photo: Patrick)

No one has ever accused 911 deniers of wisdom (excluding themselves of course). Here’s a fine case in point for why:

“Foreign policy? Nothing you’re going to find in a newspaper or anything like that but between 1989 and 1992, we decided to give Osama Bin Laden $20 billion to fight the Russians in Afghanistan….”
(ScrewLooseChange)

I don’t need to say it and you needn’t hear it, but I do say it only because there’s some Truther reading the above and thinking “right on!” The Soviet Union announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan on July 20, 1987 and the last troops departed on February 15, 1989. In 1992 the Soviet Union didn’t even exist, much less was it to be fought in Afghanistan.

Perhaps the only motive for 911 deniers’ habit for inventing history, is that they’ve never bothered to read any. Me say pick betta hobby.

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Dutch Gunships Over Afghanistan

Posted by: Ion | August 29th, 2007 · 5:32 PM

Fairly interesting little clip of our friends from the Netherlands in action:

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Operation Soccer Chopper

Posted by: Ion | August 7th, 2007 · 3:22 AM

US troops dropping soccer balls to Iraqi Afghan kids from their Blackhawk. One small demonstration that the moral differences between the combatants in this war, are as distinct as night and day.

Edit to correct location via JJC’s link.

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Afghan Commandos

Posted by: Ion | July 19th, 2007 · 3:28 PM

The Afghan National Army is starting to look pretty tough.

(PazerWaffen43)

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Safe Passage

Posted by: Ion | · 3:24 PM

(PazerWaffen43)

“U.S. Army Cpl. Aaron Wait, from San Antonio and a rifleman with Company A, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, escorts a young girl across the street during a dismounted foot patrol in Salman Pak, Iraq, June 20, 2007. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ben Hutto.”

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Alien Afghanistan

Posted by: Ion | July 13th, 2007 · 1:43 PM

An captivating image of a mosque somewhere in Afghanistan. The noisy filtered image and false sky, has the look of an outpost on a 1960s science fiction planet.

(image: Student of Earth)