I have read this and I do not understand what the expectations are from Americans…
So you were providing the cash funding to the afghans - which of course can not be subject to american bureaucracy type controls, this is not incompetence it is a risk taking it seems to me…
And so the Afghans by ricochet used some of this cash - cash is fungible - along with others to pay a ransom… for a senior official…
An action that basically only the Americans and the British maybe find so strange or wrong, but even other Western powers engage in regularly…
When I read this article I can only see a reminder of why american efforts do not seem to be very successful outside of the western world. It seems to me americans, even though you have a great reputation for pragmatism are extremely puritan in the application of their mores and expect it to apply everywhere they go. This is a contrast to the French who are not so pragmatic in their ordinary business, but are not the puritans in these situations.
This would only seem to be incompetence to me if the CIA was surprised in private and in the reality that some cash has leaked. I doubt this is true, it is Afghanistan…
It is in the interest of the US not to fund the enemy. If our allies are funding the enemy, that’s a problem.
Personally, I wouldn’t call it a scandal, though I suspect most of the media would characterize it that way. Just a breakdown of controls. You are correct though that only 1/5th of the ransom came from the US, and that was coming out of US cash squirreled away by the Afghans. More generally, it shows one of the problems with slush funds, though admittedly buying of warlords can serve US and Afghan interests.
I am guessing that you must be unhappy about the french and the germans, and the many other eu countries that have paid ransoms…
Many interests exist, maybe it is more in your interest to have the afghan allies than to impose american moralism?
What controls does americans pretend to have over the afghan presidential palace? Maybe it is just understanding that purism does not solve all things.
Et voila, one interest against another interest.
Your lens of understanding the world always enterains me. Actual real terror activity in a nato ally you think is less important than some pretend marxism?
I don’t see it as moralism actually. I see it as something akin to good government. Furthermore, I believe (with some middling evidence) that clean government and rule of law advance economic growth.
And yes, paying ransoms only encourages further hostage taking. For the US government to do such a thing would be ill-advised. Cite. That’s not quite what we did here though.
You are correct about tradeoffs though. I will maintain that the relationship we had with our Afghan proxies wasn’t the greatest, though our Pakistani relations during the 2000s were more ludicrous.
Excellent, who can disagree. but you are not the government of the Afghanistan, you are fighting a war. One does not have good government in the war zones or the economic growth. This is naive moralism misplaced.
I think this is why these wars again and again go badly for you americans. You can not let go of your puritanism. That may be good for the economic growth. it is not so successful for a place like the Iraq or the Afghanistan which does not forgive.
The shtick about economic growth was a tangent. Showing a link between good governance and economic growth was a contrast to moralism, which implies something like prohibition and the like.
So we’re not tough enough, is that it? We should just nuke 'em until they glow? It sounds like you’re basically giving a carte blanche for human rights abuses - but maybe I’m over-generalizing. This incident certainly doesn’t fall in that category.
ETA: In case it’s not clear, I’m backpeddling on the CIA/Bin Laden story, not that my outrage was exactly 11 in my original presentation. I’ll stick with my anti-ransom position though: France gets its citizens kidnapped more than the US does for a reason.
NPR had a segment on Tikrit. The Iraqi Army contribution has been token, about 3000 troops. Militias backed by Iran run the show - this is an untrained and irregular set of 3-4 forces amounting to 20,000 troops.
This bodes ill for Mosul. That city of 1 million has a number of Saddam’s generals, who may not accept an attack dominated by Shiite militias. Getting Sunnis to stand down is a big part of the challenge. The Tikrit attack revealed that the Iraqi Army isn’t much.
Of course, Saddam’s former generals wouldn’t like being defeated by any Shi’ites, whether from the army or from the militias. But you can’t always get want you want.
Series of interesting pictures here, including one of Saddam Hussein’s razed tomb, a Shia militiaman with the word “Daesh” (i.e. ISIS) written on his boots, and a batshit crazy-looking Mad Max-style armoured vehicle in picture #2 (serious what the hell is that thing?).
In other news, the Wall Street Journal (behind paywall) reports that, much like Sistani, the Iranians, too, want the Shia militias to go easy on the conquered Sunnis. On his blog, Prof. Juan Cole summarises the WSJ article like so:
And a little hunting around leads me to think that it’s a Panhard VCRunderneath the landship exterior. Note the linked photo is of an Iraqi army vehicle as well.
In the realm of “wait what really?”, Iraqi, Iranian and Kurdish media are all reporting that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s self-declared caliph, has had a dream in which he met the Prophet Muhammed… Who ordered him to get the fuck out of Mosul.
I’m… I’m going to wait for confirmation on that one.
We basically let the Iranians take the lead and the offensive stalled, so we came in to help (and also take the initiative in the propaganda wars between the US and Iran in the thoughts of the folks in the region). Pretty much a good move on the part of the Administration, IMHO.
As to the last, well, you guys wanted to know how things could be worse than when the US was actively fighting with ground troops in the region in some of these same cities, so here it is. The death toll from this fight with ISIS using Shiite militia ground troops in Sunni areas coordinated by Iran are going to be horrific, and the shock waves from this are going to be felt for years with even more animosity between Iraq Shiite and Sunni tribesmen along with foreign fighters from ISIS. I can’t imagine how this could be uglier.
What a limited imagination! It gets uglier if the Iranians commit ground troops – and then, after ISIS is taken care of, they come up with some excuse to refuse to leave.
Well I think that is an interesting development! One of the biggest letdowns of our overthrow of Saddam &etc is that it resulted in gaining influence for Iran in the region. Here we are using our air power to fight our shared enemy with Iran, on the condition that Iran backs off instead of committing the atrocities that so many dreaded.
Daesh gets defeated here, and the territory falls into Iraqi hands. Isn’t that the kind of outcome we’d want?
