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When a policy rollout begins with a series of misrepresentations, you just know that policy is totally superawesome and its architects have total confidence in its wisdom and success. To boot, the Sons of Afghanistan tribal-militia pilot program in Wardak Province got brought up at Geoff Morrell’s Christmas-eve-day Pentagon press conference. Here’s how the Pentagon’s in-house news service (shudder) described it:
Afghanistan’s government is preparing a pilot program in community policing that’s expected to debut in the near future, a senior Defense Department official said here today.
“Community policing”? If this were a police action, do you know who would be taking care of it? That’s right! The police. But I suppose “a pilot program in recruiting and arming tribal militias” might raise some objections, so out come the euphemisms.
But it gets worse. Morrell apparently denied that the war is going badly.
Whitman also addressed a reporter’s question about the tone of some recent media reports that the reporter said seem to imply that the Pentagon is telling incoming officials of President-elect Barack Obama’s administration that the campaign against terrorists in Afghanistan is not going well.
“That’s not the case at all,” Whitman emphasized. “And, that’s unfortunate. I think that any number of our commanders have said we’re not going to fail, and we’re not failing in Afghanistan.”…
[A]nyone who’d describe the situation in Afghanistan as being “in some kind of dire straits,” Whitman said, would be engaged in “a mischaracterization.”
Is Christmas Eve actually Iraq-In-2006 Nostalgia Day at the Pentagon? I’ll reserve judgment until I see the actual transcript, but this is dangerously close to denying the basic, on-display reality that Afghanistan has gotten way worse over the past two years. I thought we were done with this sort of crap in the Gates era.
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MSM
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12…..py.html?em
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/…..ml?ref=rss
The more things change the more they stay the same.
http://www.peacefultomorrows.o…..php?id=914
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…..on%27s_War
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12…..?ref=world
Put these together and you get a different view of the problem.
AS they said in Vietnam:
“It’s the only war we’ve got”
Careers are built on this. There is another word to describe their behaviour: “Corrupt”.
and profitable,
Happy Holidays
I thought the Generals used this snow job on Bush already? Its time for some new material.
Afghanistan is not a state, but a region of tribes. They will be fighting and trying to live in the middle ages with medieval political thinking.
Trying to bomb them into the 21st century will not work. The USSR found out. We thought when they got their asses kicked we could walk in and call it a victory for capitalism. hahaha.
What is of concern is the “foreign policy” of these tribes – selling poppy – to buy things like guns and butter. They sell, we buy!
We will lose and lose and lose.
Tribalism, as is the case for religion, is a means of banding together for self-defense in a war-torn country. From what I’ve read, Pashtuns have always been fairly tribal, but it has grown more & more pronounced over the past 30 years of war. In other words, it is a consequence of war, not a cause thereof.
Conclusion is the same: the more troops the U.S. sends, the more it arms the locals, the worse the situation gets.
I don’t understand the problem. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Community policing??
As a retired NYPD cop I’m wondering what sort of community these guys have. Will they be riding bikes like in Manhattan? Wearing shorts and cute little helmets?
Maybe we can get that fucking crook Bernie Kerik to go there and steal some more money for himself and Rudy like he did when he went to Iraq (for what reason aside from picking up shopping bags full of cash, I have no idea).
I think we’ve already tried the Kerik thing.
Poppy cops
Nice!
Christy post up at the mothership
The Gift Of Traffic: Some Awfully Good Nibbles From Around The Blogs
I agree, Spencer, that Morrell’s packaging of this initiative is bogus, dreadful, actively misleading, and so forth.
However, Spencer, when you complain: ““Community policing”? If this were a police action, do you know who would be taking care of it? That’s right! The police.” you’re ignoring a chunk of the buried story that you already have the background to tease out.
The Afghan police is totally corrupt, dysfunctional, etc. It needs to be disbanded and completely reconstituted, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. But they can’t just keep expanding the Afghan Nat’l Army, which is more professional, and deploy them everywhere there’s a need for local security, which is just about everywhere. So it sounds like they’re going to try to use the “tribal-militia” concept to do what the Afghan police can’t/won’t do. They’ll encourage/bribe locals to take care of their local security needs. Of course, it’s impossible to draw clean lines between policing and trying to push Taleban out of areas, which is where the concept is likely to break down badly. But maybe it can work in areas where the Taleban haven’t effectively taken over governmental functions.
Disingenuous to call it “community policing”? Yeah, because it has totally different connotations to an American ear. But I expect it really is, at least in concept, as much or more of a police-substitute as an Afghan Nat’l Army/COIN substitute.
@10 – Eureka Springs — Better not be poppy cops or the whole thing is a guaranteed epic fail. Though anybody trying to provide local security is going to have to deal with drug-trade related violence. One bright spot, however, is that most of the US military folks in Afghanistan have assiduously avoided the War on Drugs, so here’s hoping they can keep the DEA-types out of the “community policing” training and supervision.