I almost choked on my Cornflakes (which …
I almost choked on my Cornflakes (which I know will please some of you) when I read the phrase “eleven-dimensional chess” in this post by Chris Floyd.
I almost choked on my Cornflakes (which I know will please some of you) when I read the phrase “eleven-dimensional chess” in this post by Chris Floyd.
Arwi, 
thabet, 
Matt, and 4 others are discussing.
midwinterspring 2:48 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
May I always remain a deeply un-serious person and entirely averse to eleven-dimensional chess, insha’Allah.
shams 3:29 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
wallah….it is certainly a good thing you are averse, brother james……because i dont think you have the substrate.
Hitch 5:25 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
String theorists also need some entertainment. But yeah, chess becomes really hard to play if everything is bosonic.
shams 6:21 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
not relly…..superposition and quantum teleportation could be extreme game changers.
BK 5:42 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
This crap is lowbrow even for thabet’s anti-american hobby-horse….The issue is serious. The approach is just nonsense.
I would have thought it below his standards.
You have standards, do the whites let you have standards in the UK?
shams 6:19 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
im not sure brother thabet is anti-american…. i suspect he might be anti-intellectual elite aka liberal-american-with-too-much-college.
which might explain his antipathy to meh.
thabet 5:04 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
I’m not anti-American. Look at my music collection.
Nor am I anti-intellectual. Look at my book collection.
But yes, I am sceptical of elitism.
shams 5:44 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
gotcha!
the problem is……..what is the alternative to elitism? government of, for, and by the cudlips brought us the tyranny of the stupid, as exemplified by Bush and Palin.
commonsense != intelligence.
Britain doesnt have our problems….it is the anti-intellectualism ofthe American protestant heritage in part.
thabet 9:36 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
Then I wish you all the best!
shams 10:12 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
like i said below, brother thabet.
we are living in jesusland until the demographic timer goes off.
whats your excuse?
Arwi 11:17 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
I’m not anti-American. Look at my music collection.,
I have no comment on whether or not you are anti-American but the idea that one’s record collection can be called as a character witness is too silly for words.
Hitch 7:47 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
“Anti-American” is such an over-, and mis-used meme it’s virtually useless. To me it reflects more on the attitude of the persons uttering it than the person that is attempted to be labeled by it.
Certainly criticizing a government is not the same as being against the abstract notion of a nation or its citizen.
But yes I’m burned. Basically when I hear the word “Anti-American” I see the face of Joe McCarthy in front of my metal eye. Why anybody would want to use the phrase without at least some amount of reflection how it has historically been used, and what political function it has now, is not comprehensible to me.
thabet 2:21 am on October 23, 2010 Permalink
It wasn’t a serious comment, but in any case not it isn’t. If someone is “anti-” something, then clearly they must oppose or dislike everything connected to that ‘thing’.
For example I am anti-Sp*rs, and would happily disown any member of my family who started to wear that stupid cockerel/turkey logo on their chest.
shams 6:25 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
BK, flagdown, personal foul. 20 yards.
Matt 9:01 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
Hey, BK, why is it low-brow? Are not American forces carrying out a prolific assassination-by-air campaign in northern Pakistan, and are not innocents often killed? And is this one program, the most “cost-efficient” (and cowardly) in the US military arsenal, the one which luke-warm warmongers like Obama have chosen to boost over more costly, complicated options?
If assassination could win the “war on terror” and bring “peace and democracy” to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US would already be victorious. The US military is absolutely brilliant at it. From commando hit-squads to the joy-stick brigades and their drones, all of the US military’s assassination programs are highly successful. US intelligence is actually very good at gathering information on people they want to snuff out. Too bad for the US, they suck at almost everything else.
BK 11:37 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink
My opinion, and I could provide examples if you wish, is that the article was written in a sensationalist manner which undermines the seriousness of drone program problems, extra-judicial executions, etc.
Not that everything has to take the tone of a academic journal. I just think the article reads ‘polemic’ rather than serious concern. It is designed to vent rather than inform.
That was the serious answer.
For you, who says, “Too bad for the US, they suck at almost everything else….” I would say,
just because it might piss you off.
BK 10:19 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
And is this one program, the most “cost-efficient” (and cowardly) in the US military arsenal
I am not sure, Matt, that the dueling guns at dawn, crossing swords era honor applies with machine guns, mortar shells and flame throwers. “Cowardly” just means you have abstracted human life to numbers on a board with calculated risks and rewards for taking out targets. This may actually be more honorable or towards more honorable and civilized than seeing the whites of your enemies eyes.
Let’s not confuse ourselves.
A crime was committed. Doesn’t matter whether the US provoked Al-Qaeda or not. They declared war on the US and attacked. The appropriate response is whatever minimizes ‘collatoral damage” while eliminating al-qaeda.
People bitch about the drones and the legality of extrajudicial executions is an important moral question.
But look at the alternative. If you are nostaligic for the old days of war, how about if the USA just gases up its old B52 fleet and carpet bombs the shit out of the entire waziristan region.
Now, how do you feel about drones?
Surgical by comparison, eh?
BK 10:29 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
The drone program is immoral.
In comparison to Hiroshima?
It’s a godsend.
thabet 5:12 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
I remember that, in perhaps better times, we once discussed whether there was a way to measure the success of this tactic. I readily conceded it may well prove to be successful.
A few years later, there seems little evidence it is. Killing one terrorist seems to generate a dozen more.
BK 11:22 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
See above if you are addressing me.
The question is not whether drones make more terrorists. The first few civilian deaths drew some. and the next, less and the next less.
Are civilian casualties an abomination in the Muslim world? In Pakistan? Compared to what? Shrine or Mosque bombings.
Drone related casualties probably encourage militants because they are perceived as unnecessarily light-handed compared to car-bombing a mosque.
Matt 12:03 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
I’m not trying to argue that drone attacks are inherently immoral. But they are a cop-out, and they’re not going to work. What would work? Establishing authority, either directly or through a reliable proxy. This is what we’ve shown ourselves to be utterly incompetent at, and this is why people in countries we invade hate us. They cannot depend on us for anything.
It is one thing to be destructive and mean– people might resent you, but they could still respect you. It is another thing to be weak, stupid, unreliable, destructive and mean. In this case you will be both resented and held in utter contempt.
As long as American strategic planners are counting beans on a terrorist network diagram, we’ll have more of the same results everywhere we go (hopefully nowhere soon).
BK 12:41 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
I agree with you on this point then: we should make our goal clear and we did not do that in Iraq or Afghanistan. Such lack of vision made Bush talk of “winning” a complete joke.
No one is ever going to give the USA kudos for invading and occupying their country. So popularity contests are just as useless to me as contemplation of cowardice.
My take on Afghanistan is: kill Al-Qaeda mercilessly and without restraint. Minimize civilian casualities and GTFO.
All the nation building and school building and road building and farm subsidizing tends to be military contract padding.
We can let US AID support Afghanistan after the soldiers leave. Nobody joined the Army or Marines to work in the Peace Corp. Wrong assignment.
BK 12:58 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
If you agree with the goals, then show me a better tool to deal with troglodyte AQ and with waging aymmetric warfare
cuz I’m all ears.
shams 1:43 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
we arent doing that.
we are killing Taliban.….or trying to.
here is a rhyme for you brother buzz….that i learned when i was 12, in sailing school.
BK 1:53 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
unfortunately, “supporting our troops,” seems to mean putting them in harms way so KBR can feed them soft serve ice cream with 20 toppings in the field and charge the tax payer $40 per scoop.
And the soldiers know it.
BK 1:58 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
This KBR story is a pisser
Shams al-Nahar 2:10 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
yup. Bush was stooooooopid, but Cheney and Rove were exploitive and opportunistic– Cheney got his dream of a wartime economy, and Rove his dream of a wartime electorate.
In Cheneyland we pay mercs to kill afghans while building schools for their daughters with american taxpayer money.
a closed system.
Matt 6:59 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
The thing is, BK, I don’t even think this is about Al-Qaeda anymore. Like Shams said, its about the Taliban, and the Taliban are fighting us because they want us to leave them the heck alone. And this is not necessarily because they hate the west and “democracy” per se– many of the less-fanatic Taliban have made the simple judgement that we are incapable of providing them with any kind of stability and that therefore our presence on their lands assassinating their sons and blowing up their families is completely without excuse.
If our true aim was revenge, or rather to MAKE A POINT, we surely should have been able to make that point in less than 9 years. So what the heck are we still doing there? Poor strategic vision.
If we really want to deter terrorist attacks, showing Al-Qaeda that one spectacular attack is all it takes to draw us into an empire-toppling tar pit of no return…. is probably not much of a deterrent, actually.
bk 7:50 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
Nope, the drone prgram is exactly what you want. Assymetric whack-a-mole. Minimum troop deplyment. Minimum kaffir footprint on Muslim lands (which is what the Taliban object to).
24x7x365 drone surveillance and attack.
Until a treaty is signed.
Shams al-Nahar 7:56 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
but every kill creates a MINIMUM of two more hostiles, because of social network theory. we aren’t running in place, we are running backwards.
a treaty with who?
Shams al-Nahar 7:57 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
what is the mission, buzz?
i forget.
bk 8:37 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
bs. Think about the logic of that.
And the proof:
For Every Drone Kill A = 2A New Terrorists Created.
What? Is there some kind of Willy Wonka Terrorist Factory churning out orders.
Everyone we could piss off is pissed off. There is definitely diminishment on recruitment.
I am not saying that you close the door to negotiation, you negotiate. You look for an agreement.
Meanwhile, apply the pressure.
bk 8:40 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
Mission: Completely disable AQ terrorist network in Pak/Afghan. Never allow them to topple Afghanistan. Never allow them to topple Pakistan and obtain nukes.
Disrupt all operations. Kill them in the field.
Shams al-Nahar 8:56 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
technically COIN is founded on SNT. membah? trusted networks and the Anbar Awakening and al-Q in Iraq?
for every kill in Af-Pak, influence propagates along two connections– social and consanguineous.
because the Taliban are local.
again….who are you negotiating with?
oh, yeah…..Mission Impossible.
bk 9:01 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
It is not impossible at all and if we are to get any of our money out of stuffing Israel with weapons, we should understand how they handle hamas.
There is no end of the road. It is constant but it really does not require thousands of boots on the ground. That is old school , graveyard of empires thiuking.
AQ just made high tech assymetric warfare a cost of doing business in the 21 century. Constant surveillance. Constant readiness to react or attack.
shams 9:14 pm on October 21, 2010 Permalink
are you quite mad?
Israel hasn’t handled Hamas….Hamas is playing those assclowns just like Hizb’ played them in the Summer War.
Matt 12:06 am on October 22, 2010 Permalink
BK, we can’t stave off the creation of viable local authority in central asia and not offer any reasonable alternative and keep on doing this indefinitely. The longer we try, the more pressure is going to build.
Your drone theory might work if we were truly fighting Al Qaeda. We are fighting the Taliban. The Taliban wants to topple the Afghan and Pakistani governments, because they see them as weak, corrupt, ineffective regimes which do not defend the interests of their people and are almost completely beholden to Western powers. And they are right.
If we don’t offer a viable alternative, we can’t hold things back from taking their natural course indefinitely.
Anywhere we fight local Muslims, Arab Jihadis are going to show up and join in. That’s what happened in Iraq. If we actually try and leave people alone that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re going to start coming over here.
So to the extent that we stir things up in the Muslim world, we are always going to find Arab Jihadis, so I suppose in this way we are KIND OF fighting Al Qaeda. This does not change to fact that we are mostly fighting local insurgents who just want to be left the heck alone.
bk 8:29 am on October 22, 2010 Permalink
The Taliban do NOT want to take over Af-Pak. They are tribals with almost no ability or ambition to rule beyong the township level of their native holy lands. They “ruled” Afghanistan for a short time with the help and encouragement of OBL. Look at the result.
Never the less, if they want to enter politics and try to get elected next term, they are free to challenge Karzai. If they want to run a proxy terrorist state for AQ, we are gonna hellfire their ass.
Matt 10:34 am on October 22, 2010 Permalink
BK, did you just imply that Afghani elections were somehow viable and legitimate? If so, please explain.
bk 10:40 am on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Matt-
somewhere between the flag-waving hawk who malevolently brings peace and democracy to the savages of the world
and the remorseful, hand-wringing ,bleeding heart liberal who thinks everthing the American government does is corrupt and futile….
between these horrible cliches is a real world with real people and real actions.
Check it out sometime.
Shams al-Nahar 11:29 am on October 22, 2010 Permalink
No Buzzkill. America is not evil….just stupid.
IT CANT BE DONE.
we need to stop pouring blood and treasure into a bottomless pit.
bk 11:59 am on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Pull out shams!
Your either/or dilemma is not where we’re at.
Blood and expense?
Exactly what the drone program is for.
Minimizing exposure, expense, casualties.
No cutting and running in this case dear Shams.
No turning our backs.
Iraq is a different matter and we should never have stepped in there. Afghanistan is as good as conquered territory and it is ours to do with as we see fit.
Best option, low-level monitoring.
It can be done with very little military presence (less than 10,000 soldiers) but the drone program and its evolutionary descendents is here to stay.
bk 12:07 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
meanwhile, contrary to your cut ‘n’run policy, the US should find a way to help the Afghanistan government achieve their goals while minimizing our cost and exposure.
So you can just forget about leaving. Ain’t gonna happen.
shams 1:18 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
wallah…what do you think the Surge and the mini-surge are?
just a way to save face while cutting and running.
current drone swarming is just an attempt to get a better negotiating position.
after the Iraq docs drop discretionary warfighting is going to get mad unpopular.
where is the Garani massacre video?
its part of wikileaks insurance package.
when it drops……Blackhawk Down redux.
then we will really cut and run.
Matt 2:20 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
BK, I asked you a serious question. If you are feeling exasperated, perhaps this is because you do not feel comfortable focusing on the specific points that comprise the sustance of this discussion. These include:
1 – Why are we facing resistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is it mostly because Pashtuns want to destroy America, or because they believe that they will never have peace or security as long as America is occupying their lands?
2 – Are the people we are targetting for assassination guilty of plotting (a) to attack Americans in America, or (b) to attack foreign troops on their own land, who they regard as invaders and usurpers?
3 – If we are so anxious to prevent the return of the Taliban, have we really provided the Afghan people with a viable alternative form of governance? Is the Karzai regime legitimate? Has the system of elections that we instituted proven itself to be a reliable means of securing good governance for the people?
4 – Given the answers to the previous 4 questions, can it be said that anything we are doing in Afghanistan is really in the US’s long-term strategic interest?
Just waving your hands and talking about some “middle ground” does not count as a well-reasoned response to these questions.
You keep returning to the idea of cost-effectiveness. Personally, I am more concerned with plain old effectiveness. Without effectiveness, cost does not matter.
bk 2:41 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
#1. Why are we facing resistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
You are projecting. That is how YOU would feel. This is a region of the world that doesn’t do “peace and security.” It is a war culture and if they don’t fight us, they fight each other.
What do they really want? They want us off their lands. I said so. You don’t acknowledg answers that you don’t like, apparently.
NOBODY likes to be occupied. Muslims, Talibans in particular, consider the American presence there a desecration.
Now you know.
#2. Are the people we are targetting for assassination guilty of (this or that):
Does it matter? The indigenous pop colluded with the terrorists, harbored them and plotted to attack the USA. ANd did. Full accountability.
What matters is bystanders. However, there should be an international body that oversees these remote assassinations and approves them. The tech is not even that complicated.
#3. …have we really provided the Afghan people with a viable alternative form of governance?
You don’t “provide” people with an alternative form of gov., you allow them to construct their own. I remember the pride with which Bush and Netanyahoo announced the first free elections in Gaza…..(whoops! we meant first INVALID elections…we must have the PA take over Gaza until the people can vote for a legit candidate and not these hamas “terrorists.”) Pants down, neocon style.
#4. Since I think you are confused on 1-3, 4 is inconsequential.
Afghanistan really only produces 2 things currently: steers and queers. (I kid) uh…herione and terrorists. Until the Karzai style government stabilizes and can manage itself, it is in the USA’s long term interest to stay (and keep a watch on Iran).
Matt 9:08 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
#1: A war culture? All people, in all places, are always trying to find some form of peace and security, though the political systems they use to do this often take different forms. Afghanistan is past the phase where a regime of independent tribes can be a reliable system for maintaining order– some kind of overarching political unity is inevitable.
The Taliban brought peace and security, Afghan-style, for a brief period before we invaded. To say as you do, that OBL was really in charge of everything, is simply not correct. OBL may have provided some funding (Pakistani intelligence provided much, much more), but the Jihadis were always distinct from the Taliban, and were merely guests.
Did the Taliban bear some culpability for hosting OBL? Sure, and we smashed them for it. If our real goal was revenge, we should have been long done with it after 9 years. I am not sure where you are getting this concept of perpetual retribution against people who never dreamed of attacking America before we showed up on their doorstep, but it sounds like a great excuse for perpetuating a bloated “special” ops budget and keeping the gravy train rolling for profiteers on the take.
Maybe it could be said that drone attacks are useful narrowly as a rear-guard action, the US tries to figure out some way to back out gracefully. Is this what you are saying? Or do you really just think the Pakis have it coming, yesterday, today, and forever into the future?
bk 9:44 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
As due diligence, I looked up, read and posted the latest analysis on the situation in Afghanistan. The “Taliban” is a wide spectrum of tribes, some moderate, some backwards douchebags.
As I stated earler, Stephen Walt thinks what makes most sense is to build a coalition govt which includes taliban friendlies.
We don’t have any particular right to demand democracy and freedom for women in Afghanistan if we turn the country over to local leadership, but that is what I hope will happen.
bk 9:48 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Pakis have it coming?
Matt, I think you got your slurs crossed.
Pakis-tanis are Indian in origin
Taliban are mostly Pashtun.
Matt 2:04 am on October 23, 2010 Permalink
Sorry, I meant Paki as an abbreviation not a slur, I realized after I clicked that it has the other connotation. My point is that most of the drone strikes are in Pakistan. Pashtun would be more precise but the lines are all blurred anyway.
At any rate, its good just to know that there are people out there who are giving the situation serious thought. Lets hope for the best.
Matt 12:11 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
Well sure, if you mean the tone of the article, there are plenty of word choices in there which I would object to. And by the way, I’m an American, I’m just honest about our strengths and weaknesses. In the broad spectrum, we’ve got plenty of strengths. In terms of “nation-building” or whatever the heck we’re supposed to be doing over in central asia, the only thing we’ve really excelled at is identifying “key leaders” and bumping them off.
shams 5:48 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink
and like thabet points out.the mathematics of SNT force the creation of at least two hostiles for every kill, because of influence propagation along both consanguineous and social network connections.
it is anti-scientific.
Arwi 11:55 am on October 23, 2010 Permalink
in any case not it isn’t. If someone is “anti-” something, then clearly they must oppose or dislike everything connected to that ‘thing’.
Silly. Anyway, Spike Lee already answered you in Do the Right Thing.