Afghanistan... Still?... Again?...

In the above piece, the sources are all links on the website. Here's how to get to them:

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df11252003.html

Tartarin
How long can we afford to keep "Winning"

Ain't nothin' easier in this world than declaring victory.

Except when the truth comes back and bites a big chunk out of yr butt, Frank!!

Talk of the Nation is focussing on Afghanistan today with some really hot conversation about what the admin hasn't done to improve security. Link to audio, available later: http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=current

If they move that around, just go to npr.org/totn and follow the audio links.

I think people tend to forget that just because victory has been declared, that all fighting immediately ceases.

In the aftermath of World War 2, for several months after the Unconditional Surrender of all German forces, there were still numerous acts of what were then called sabotage. Today we would call these acts 'terrorism' or 'attacks by irregular forces' just as in Afghanistan or Iraq.

These acts went on for quite a while until the forces of the Allied armies rooted the saboteurs and fanatics out and took them prisoner. I think people have to remember that these kinds of acts will be going on for a long time until we have enough Afghani soldiers and police to root them out.

Could you please some sources for the last?

Thanks in advance.

I am working on it Walter, I am trying to get scans of the records of my grandfathers Regimental action reports for the period of Jan '46 to Dec '46. The records show their unit (A military Police unit) responding and investigating 18 separate incidents. and that was just in one unit.
Once I get the scans I will upload them and shoot you a link.

Thanks.

Fedral
I would like to see them as well. Specifically to see if they are in any way similar to what is being experienced in Iraq or Afghanistan.

There was also an incident in which the Americans committed an atrocity in a German village. I know this from one of the (unwilling) participants/witnesses.

A bunch of young American soldiers were sent in a vehicle at the end of the war to make sure populations in remote villages in a particular area (forgotten which one) of Germany knew that the war was officially over. They were armed, of course, and scared shitless and very young. In one village one of the soldiers mistook something for a gun and started firing which touched off firing by the rest of the group and it didn't end until everyone in sight was dead.

I can't document this because it was told to me way back in the '60's by a then middle-aged director of an American film being made in Spain (where I lived). He was working on a war film, ironically.

And the problem, of course, is war, not just "the other side."

Hearsay. I was always impressed at the restraint of the American soldiers after viewing the concentration camps.

Two wars.
Maybe these dolts should have finished one before starting another? Ya think?

Oh, I forgot God told GW to attack Saddam. We can't dismiss the instructions of God now can we?

Some are restrained, others are not, of course. It's not an either/or matter.

Well, fedral is speaking of 1946 - a time, when there was a German administration nearly fully working, the Nuremberg trial had already sentenced a dozen German war criminals to death, German courts were re-established and working ...

I'm especially interested in this, since nothing of it seems to be published yet.

Fundamentally, I think this resurgence can be traced back to our misconceptions about the original situation in Afghanistan. Most Americans tend to see Afghanistan as a nation that was liberated from an oppressive and unpopular government. However, the truth is that the Taliban would never have attained the level of power and control they did if they were not supported by a large percenatage of the population. That percentage is rearing its head again. That is why there will never been a stable Western style democracy in that country.

The Taliban was able to fill a power vaccuum. No one has been able to do so this time, despite the US' support of Karzai. the next leader, if not the Taliban, will likely be a "strongman" type.

anyone wanting to learn about afghanistan and the political situation in the middle east would benefit greatly from reading karl e. meyer's "dust of the empire" - see : www.dustofempire.com . i asked our local library to order it and reading the book has certainly improved my understanding of the middle east. ... as far as the german resistance after the surrender of germany in 1945 is concerned, i think it can best be desribed as a bad joke ... or worse(but i don't want to use the appropriate word here). i have assembled some websources, reread some of my books and also searched my own memory - i was 15 years old when the war ended and lived in germany - so i think i have a pretty fair recollection of what the situation was like in germany. as i said : more about it later. hbg. ... here is a review of karl meyer's book : Aug. 7, 2003, 11:22PM

Perception gap divides United States, Central Asia
By ROBERT NASH

THE DUST OF EMPIRE:
The Race for Mastery
in the Asian Heartland.
By Karl E. Meyer.
Public Affairs, $26; 252 pp.

IS America an imperialist nation?



Most Americans would say no. Problem is, for each of us who answers "no," roughly 15 people on planet Earth would say "yes."

We may not see ourselves as an imperial people, but we are so perceived across the globe. It is against this backdrop of polar-opposite perceptions that Dr. Karl Meyer takes a cool-eyed look at today's enormous and enigmatic topic du jour: Eurasia, stretching from the Caucasus in the west to the borders of China in the east.

Scholar and journalist Meyer knows Asian kingdoms, tribes and religions as well as many men know their backyard grills. His Tournament of Shadows (1999), written with his wife, Shareen Blair Brysac, explains the historic struggle for mastery of central Asia -- the Great Game -- in vivid detail. His new work presents a policy-oriented study for the educated layman, with chapters on political developments in, among other places, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Caucasus.

The central Asian world of barren steppes and daunting mountains stretches across seven time zones. This broad swath of territory is a landlocked and time-locked area linked by caravan routes and antique rail lines, peopled by flinty adamant tribes whose folkways seem confined to the mists of centuries past.

It is a part of the world that inevitably will be of concern to America. What we need to do, advises Meyer, is to look more realistically at the richly complex nature of Eurasia, a very large and mysterious chunk of the earth's surface -- and a place where more than one high-flying global empire has come to grief.

Central Asia lives in the past. America lives in the present or the immediate future. American society mistakenly assumes that those who do not get ecstatic about flashy gadgets, big-buck toys and the unrelenting pursuit of pleasure have not got it right.

Most Eurasians regard foreigners -- especially those carrying guns -- as imperialists. The United States has plenty of satellite pictures of the terrain but little street knowledge.

In 1921 President Woodrow Wilson was seized by a surge of woolly headed do-goodism and foisted the principle of self-determination on a respectfully attentive world. The term became a politically correct method of analysis. In 1945 the United Nations had 51 members; in 2000 the number had grown to 189, and the world was far more factionalized.

The new buzzword is globalization, which is about as useful a word as self-determination. It means all things to all men; thus it really means nothing.

Today's urgent need is for a handbook on Eurasia: not political abstractions but real facts for real people living in the real world. The Dust of Empire is a good beginning.

Meyer's final quote, which might be taken as the theme of his book, is an excerpt from a speech by John F. Kennedy in 1961:

"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient -- that we are only six percent of the world's population -- that we can not impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind -- that we can not right every wrong or reverse every adversary -- and that therefore there can not be an American solution to every world problem."

Well said, Mr. President. And well done, Dr. Meyer.



Robert Nash is a Midland writer.

i neglected to give credit to the houston chronicle for the book review. you can find here : www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/ae/books/reviews/2036678