Target Centermass

Author: Gunner

  • Pakistan Peace Deal: Back to Square One!

    Our efforts in against the Taliban and al Queda in the Afghan-Pakistani region just took a tremendous step backwards.

    History repeats itself but in Pakistan’s case, it perhaps repeats itself rather too often. And so the government and militants in the volatile North Waziristan tribal region have signed a peace agreement and quite understandably, Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, the chief architect of the accord, has hailed it as an unprecedented event.

    Unprecedented it is. Like a pendulum, the government policy has swung from one extreme to another, from the use of brute military force to what appears to be total capitulation to militants. Never did the government try to intelligently combine the use of force with pursuit of dialogue.

    Jirga parleys were conducted in extreme secrecy with Governor Aurakzai emerging as the focal person and President Musharraf’s pointsman on the government’s policy on Fata.

    This was good in that instead of operating multiple channels to negotiate with militants which often complicated matters, the government was speaking with one voice.

    So, if there is one man who can claim credit for the agreement, it should be Governor Aurakzai who single-mindedly cobbled the deal together; of course with the help of JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

    It was Mr Aurakzai, who as the Peshawar Corps Commander had led the Pakistan Army into the tribal region in 2001. And being a native of the tribal region that straddle the Pakistan-Afghan border, the onus was again on him to pull the army out of what has proven to be a quagmire.

    Just to recap. Before signing the agreement, the government virtually agreed to meet all the demands of the militants. Captured militants were freed, their weapons were returned, all privileges were restored, 12 checkposts were abandoned and troops stationed there have been relocated to forts.

    Unlike the past agreements however, there are some new elements in the peace deal signed in Miramshah on Tuesday.

    The government has also undertaken not to launch any ground and air operation and to resolve the issue in accordance with local riwaj or customs.

    Foreign militants could either leave the tribal region or live there peacefully and abide by the law of the land. This is a major concession, considering the fact that the government had been insisting all along that all foreign militants must get themselves registered.

    Significantly however, barely an hour after the peace agreement had been signed, a spokesman for the militants insisted that there were no foreign militants in North Waziristan and that despite what the government had been saying it had not been able to produce any evidence of their presence in the tribal region.

    He also denied that militants were crossing over into Afghanistan to carry out attacks on Afghan and coalition forces.

    The denial is reminiscent of refusal by militants in the neighbouring South Waziristan Agency to admit to the presence of foreign militants there — an issue that led to the collapse of the famous Shakai agreement in 2004.

    On the face of it, the agreement does look good but as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What is important is not the three-page document itself but whether the two sides would be able to implement it.

    Will the foreigners leave? Unlikely. But why would they be here?

    They have nowhere to go. Their countries do not accept them and worse, they will be prosecuted there. Will foreign and local militants stop their ‘Jihad’? Not likely.

    Not likely indeed. In fact, with the recent bleeding of Taliban elements by NATO forces in Afghanistan, I would actually expect an influx of radical elements into Waziristan after another brutal failure of a Taliban spring offensive is greeted with the news of a safer-than-expected haven just across the line on the map.

    Although this is potentially a move that will extend instability in the Afghan theater, I understand the need of the Pakistani government, living on a volatile razor’s edge, to make occasional moves to mollify a fairly radical and militant populace while maintaining a degree of friendship with the U.S. and the West. I have long held, dating back to much contemplation following 9/11, that the stability of Pakistan’s government held the key in avoiding a global hot war, as its downfall replaced by radicals would almost certainly draw in India and create a domino effect of bloodshed.

    Even with that understanding and that need for Pakistani stability, I think this is the wrong move at the wrong time and will almost certainly cost American and NATO lives in the long term.

  • Danish Antiterror Police Seize 9 Men, Mostly Young Muslims

    Although it seems progress that the New York Times even included a mention of the suspects’ religion — you know, that peaceful one — in its headline, one must admit puzzlement at their “mostly” qualifier. Are they using it to draw a line on young or on Muslim? After all, the story that follows quickly points out the age range and religion of all the arrested men [emphasis added].

    The Danish security police arrested nine suspects on Tuesday on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack after surveillance showed that several of the men had collected bomb-making material, Justice Minister Lene Espersen said.

    An antiterror squad carried out a raid in Vollsmose, a poor immigrant district in Odense, at 2 a.m. The suspects appeared at a closed hearing on Tuesday, where two were released and the others were charged with plotting acts of terrorism.

    No details of a plot were released. Investigators said it was too early to know how far the suspects’ plans had progressed. “With the general terror situation, the Danish Security Intelligence Service didn’t want to run any unnecessary risk,” said Lars Findsen, the service’s director general.

    Ms. Espersen said that nearly all nine were Danish citizens, and that Denmark was their likely target.

    “This is what is most alarming: these are Danish citizens living in Denmark that have been plotting a terror attack in Denmark,” she said. Danish intelligence officials said the men were between 18 and 35 and were Muslims who appeared to have been recently radicalized. Nearly all lived in Vollsmose, which has 10,000 residents representing more than a dozen nationalities, and has grappled with youth violence, high unemployment and difficulties integrating its large Muslim community.

    Politiken, a leading Danish newspaper, reported that of the nine arrested, five are of Palestinian origin, one is of Kurdish origin, one is a Danish convert to Islam and two are natives of Iraq.

    Many young Muslims here were alienated by the publication in a Danish newspaper of caricatures lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. In response, Danish embassies were set ablaze in Muslim countries and Danish goods were boycotted.

    Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown, as well, with the rise of the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party, which holds 13 percent of the seats in Parliament. Its members have compared Muslims to “cancer cells.”

    Imam Abu Bashar, a Muslim cleric in Odense, told The Associated Press that he feared Denmark might become a terrorist target because Osama bin Laden said he would punish the countries that have troops in Iraq.

    “Denmark is on the list,” Imam Bashar said. “I am afraid of the message of Osama bin Laden, that he will do something against Denmark.”

    Of course Denmark is on the target list for the radical Islamist. As a tip to the reader, the list reads as follows: the Earth.

    As to the misleading headline, it may be a matter of a story evolving faster than a headline, or a case of sloppy headline writing that will soon be corrected. In any case, I elected to go ahead and grab a screen cap for kicks (click for larger version).

    Mostly(?) Young Muslims

  • Crocodile Hunter Died ‘Doing What He Loved’

    Crikey!

    Tributes from around the world are flowing in for Steve Irwin, the enthusiastic Australian “Crocodile Hunter” who enthralled audiences around the world with his wildlife adventures.

    Irwin died Monday morning after being attacked by a stingray while shooting a TV program off Australia’s north coast.

    Irwin’s manager and friend John Stainton said Irwin died doing what he loved — filming life in the wild.

    […]

    Irwin was snorkeling at Batt Reef, a part of the Great Barrier Reef offshore from the town of Port Douglas, when the incident happened.

    “He came over the top of a stingray that was buried in the sand, and the barb came up and hit him in the chest,” Stainton said.

    […]

    Irwin was in the area to film pieces for a show called “The Ocean’s Deadliest” with Philippe Cousteau, grandson of Jacques, according to Stainton.

    But weather had prevented the crew from doing work for that program, Stainton said, so Irwin decided to do some softer features for a new children’s TV show he was doing with his daughter, Bindi.

    Wildlife documentary maker Ben Cropp, citing a colleague who saw footage of the attack, told Time.com that Irwin had accidentally boxed the stingray in. “It stopped and twisted and threw up its tail with the spike, and it caught him in the chest,” said Cropp. “It’s a defensive thing. It’s like being stabbed with a dirty dagger.”

    Irwin was pulled from the water by a cameraman and boat crewman. He died as he was being rushed to a nearby island for emergency treatment. Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

    […]

    “The world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist and one of the proudest dads on the planet,” Stainton told reporters in Cairns, according to The Associated Press. “He died doing what he loved best and left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. He would have said, ‘Crocs Rule!’ “

    What a freakish way for such a legendary figure to die.

    The Animal Planet network has issued a statement and set up a forum for condolences to the Irwin family. Currently, the forum is unreachable because of high traffic.

    UPDATE: Mr. Irwin had two blessings in his life — doing what he was absolutely passionate about and touching the lives of others. His body of work, of which I’m sure we’ll see plenty in the upcoming days, stands as witness for the former; for the latter, I’d like to submit this very personal remembrance from Jack M., blogging in Ace‘s digs.

  • DMN to Rumsfeld: Do As We Say

    … not as we do.

    The lead editorial in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News was a scathing admonition to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld which accused him of playing politics with the war in Iraq.

    Trying to put wind into the flagging sails of their Iraq policy, President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld played good cop-bad cop in speeches to the American Legion convention this week. Yesterday Mr. Bush said of war critics, “Many of these folks are sincere and they’re patriotic, but they could not be more wrong.” But two days before, Mr. Rumsfeld portrayed journalists as fifth columnists and compared the administration’s opponents to appeasers of Adolf Hitler.

    Given how badly the war is going and how even some leading conservatives are publicly questioning our mission in Iraq, the president has no choice but to go on the rhetorical offensive. But the defense secretary’s crude speech was, to put it with extreme delicacy, not helpful to the cause.

    Invoking Hitler is designed not to invite understanding but to obscure it for the sake of manipulation. If it really is 1938 all over again, then there’s only one thing we can do: Go to war with all we’ve got. The Hitler analogy is not necessarily wrong, but it is so freighted with historical memory that it compels the war conclusion. It puts those who invoke it in the Churchill position, and portrays those who disagree as jelly-spined Chamberlains.

    Mr. Rumsfeld also deployed a phalanx of straw men and allegations in an effort to discredit critics. Aside from the Cindy Sheehan crowd, who in this country is advocating that we should appease terrorists? What serious person is arguing that “America, not the enemy … is the source of the world’s troubles”?

    The secretary also accused the news media of being more interested in dividing America than in uniting it, accusing journalists of having a “Blame America First” attitude. Singling out the messenger is an old and often successful strategy, but the dismal facts on the ground are really responsible for a majority of Americans losing faith in the Iraq war.

    Mr. Bush is certainly correct that success in Iraq is vital to U.S. national security. Given the seriousness of the stakes, it is deeply dismaying to see the defense secretary playing partisan politics with a cause so critical.

    America really does need unity of purpose to do right by Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld’s simple-minded rhetoric surely will stoke the shrinking pro-war base, but it will do nothing to help win this war.

    Never mind that the DMN editorial staff appears to be working from the Associated Press’ version of Rumsfeld’s speech.

    Never mind that the editorial does not bother to support its claim about how “badly the war in Iraq is going,” assuming that the reader must agree because the DMN’s coverage would give no reason to believe otherwise. After all, the paper did not tell its readers about progress in Iraq involving local assumption of responsibility for the Iraqi NCO academy, the large extent to which Iraqi forces now lead the security situations, or the recent and dramatic reduction in civilian deaths.

    No, never mind all of that. Let’s just take a look at the editorial’s headline:

    Keep Politics Out of Iraq

    What a great idea. It’s too bad that hypocrites at the DMN cannot keep up this standard. In fact, in the print edition, they couldn’t keep it up for one freakin’ inch as not even that far away from the headline was the following political cartoon by Tom Toles of the Washington Post.

    Toles' Attack on Rummy

    That is most assuredly a political attack on Rumsfeld based on the perception of Iraq that the media has created. And it most assuredly less than an inch from the headline telling Rumsfeld to leave politics out of Iraq.

    Less than an inch — that’s about how far the Dallas Morning News editorial board can be trusted to avoid hypocrisy.

  • Disproportionate Response

    Steven den Beste, one of first bloggers that I began regularly reading, has surfaced again with a look at the evolution of warfare and how this applies to the recent engagement between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

    Pre-industrial warfare, as typified by Napoleon, pretty much came to an end during the 19th century, to be replaced by what I refer to as industrial warfare. The American Civil War was the first major industrial war, and what set it apart from previous wars was the overwhelming dominance of logistics in deciding the conflict. The South has the majority of the best generals, but the North still won because of its overwhelming logistical superiority. (Of course, it required Lincoln to understand that he had to fight a long war, and it took a general ruthless enough to sacrifice enough of his own men in order to win.)

    By the early 20th century industrial warfare dominated war all over the world. It was only in the last part of the 20th century that a new form appeared: information-age war. But right now the US is the only real practictioner of this way of war, and in the rest of the world industrial war remains the norm.

    Industrial war can be summed up this way: God fights on the side which has the biggest pile of ammunition and the fastest rate of replacement of expended ammunition. Like any general principle it’s not absolutely unconditionally true, but that’s the norm.

    In response, two new strategic doctrines of war were developed to make it possible for small logistically-poor forces to contend against large logistically-rich forces without getting instantly crushed: guerrilla warfare and terrorist warfare. Both of them seek to nullify the logistical advantage of their richer opponents by maintaining initiative, so as to control the tempo of the war at a level low enough to not exhaust the logistics of the poorer side. For the rest of this discussion I’ll be concentrating on guerrillas.

    Go read it all. Hat tip to Chap.

  • September 1 Anniversaries

    Not moments in history to be celebrated but certainly to be remembered.

    67 years ago today, Germany invaded Poland and triggered the Second World War. I provided a little more thought and information in my post last year. More reading on the invasion can be found here and here. Also, don’t miss Case White Directive No. 1, Hitler’s orders for the invasion.

    Today also marks to two-year anniversary of the day when Chechen terrorists stormed a school in Beslan, taking more than 1200 hostages on a day Ralph Peters described as when the killers came for the kids. The Jawa Report marks the date and remembers the ensuing massacre that cost the lives of 344 civilians, including 186 children, here and graphically here.

  • US Open: Agassi Farewell Tour Reaches 3rd Round

    It’s the last hurrah for my second-favorite tennis player ever (behind only the amazingly entertaining Jimmy Connors), as Andre Agassi competes in what he has deemed his final U.S. Open and last appearance on the tour.

    Tonight — okay, actually last night time-wise — he pulled an upset against an eighth-seed who couldn’t even read when Andre turned pro, advancing to the third round in dramatic five-set fashion.

    How about that? Andre Agassi, 36 years old and burdened by a bad back, held up better than the kid across the net in a thriller that will be talked about for years.

    Buoyed by a cortisone injection, along with a raucous, sellout crowd that boosted his spirits when things suddenly looked bleak as could be, Agassi extended his career for at least one more match by beating eighth-seeded Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 5-7, 7-5 at the U.S. Open.

    They traded stinging strokes for nearly four hours as Thursday night became Friday, and it was the 21-year-old Baghdatis who broke down physically, his body contorted by cramps in both thighs during an eight-deuce, four-break-point game that Agassi eventually held to lead 5-4 in the fifth. Later, Baghdatis used the chair umpire’s stand to stretch his aching legs.

    And there was Agassi, still hustling to reach seemingly unreachable shots, responding with winners, and skipping out to the baseline to start games at his record 21st consecutive Open — one for each year of Baghdatis’ life.

    “Tonight has been another example of moments you’re not guaranteed,” Agassi said.

    When it was over, they shook hands at the net, then embraced. And Agassi was quick to thank the 23,700 or so of his closest friends who sure are enjoying quite a ride right along with him at Flushing Meadows.

    Another match, another chance on the stage ensured. The farewell bows will come, but I’d rather they wait just a bit.

  • Public Perceptions and Reality

    These days, the American public is pelted by story after story from “our” media about lack of progress, quagmire, pending doom and outright tragedy. Unsurprisingly, polls show that American attitudes have been negatively affected in several areas, but do these effects match reality or merely the impression that the media is spoonfeeding?

    Here are four postings I’d invite the reader to examine:

    All are good reads that present evidence that the predominant feelings of the American public are not grounded in reality or, in the global warming case, not based on solid scientific procedures.

    How can I explain any discrepancy between perception and reality? Well, that’s quite simple: the mainstream media, our information gatekeepers, are generally failing to bring us all the news thats fit to print, opting instead for all the news that fits their agenda or their mindset.

    Without alternative means to get information, I have to wonder how many times in the past that the will and attitude of the American people were shaped by shoddy reporting, misinformation, selective coverage and outright bias. Tet, of course, springs to mind — a huge victory that was painted as defeat and eventually was the trigger of our ultimate demise in Viet Nam.

  • Trekkies, Intriguing News for Ya

    The Original Series is coming back … sort of.

    Star Trek purists, take a deep breath! On Sept. 16, the iconic ‘60s series will return to syndication for the first time since 1990, but with a startling difference: All 79 episodes are being digitally remastered with computer-generated effects not possible when Gene Roddenberry created the show 40 years ago. The news could cause Roddenberry loyalists to have a collective cow, but the longtime Trek staffers in charge of the makeover say they’re honoring the late maestro’s vision, not changing it.

    “We’re taking great pains to respect the integrity and style of the original,” says Michael Okuda, who spent 18 years as a scenic-art supervisor on Star Trek films and spin-offs. “Our goal is to always ask ourselves: What would Roddenberry have done with today’s technology?”

    […]

    The upgraded episodes — to be shown out of order and one per week — will kick off with “Balance of Terror,” a big fan favorite “that gives us a chance to really show off the ‘new’ Enterprise,” says Okuda. “The exterior of the ship now has depth and detail, and it will fly more dynamically.” Painted backdrops will also be brought to life: Once-empty star bases will have CGI people milling about, while static alien landscapes have been given slow-moving clouds and shimmering water.

    Okay, I’m in, as long as it doesn’t conflict with BSG.

    Hat tip to Cranky over at the Buffet, who adds the following after noting that the intro theme will also be redone:

    No word yet whether the da-ta-da-da-da-da-DA-dot-tot-DA-da hand to hand combat music will be affected.

    I believe that he is referring to this:

  • College Football Is Back

    Sweeeeet.

    The 2006 season officially launched today, and I’ve already grabbed a bit of couch-tater time this evening watching South Carolina down Mississippi State 15-love.

    Full-scale madness starts Saturday, although I’m not hoping for much of a game for my Aggies in their opener against Citadel.

    Ah, but I do love this time of year.