Tag Archive for Defeat

How to Defeat ISIL: Civil-Military Strategy 101

November 21, 2015 Department of Defense, Department of State, Domestic Terrorism, Exclusive Story, Global War, Iran, ISIL, ISIL/ISIS/IS, ISIS, Israel, Leftist Communists, Military, New Cold War, News and Intelligence, Obama, Putin, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Terrorism Comments Off on How to Defeat ISIL: Civil-Military Strategy 101

It comes as no surprise to my readers that not only is ISIL still alive and well as a terrorist state, but arguably has grown in power since the United States began military operations “against” it.  I have routinely published on the fact that the US has no strategy and its leaders are an amateurish joke.  Further, I have been documenting for years that ISIL was born and bred by the CIA as a proxy to serve elitist interests and therefore won’t be “destroyed” anytime soon.  Since then, not only have senior US leaders such as the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Flynn confirmed this fact, but Russia has called our bluff and has shown in just a matter of weeks how quickly ISIL could be smashed if the US actually had a policy to defeat the terrorist nation.  Now that the truth that the US created ISIL is out in the open source and ISIL has predictably grown out of control, should the US actually decide that wiping out the terrorist army they created would be wise, today I discuss what that strategy would entail.  Ironically, even a very general strategy is far more detailed than anything the US has so far put together.  To illustrate just how incompetent our senior leadership is in this regard, Hillary Clinton recently announced that her strategy to defeat ISIL was to “defeat ISIL.”  Really?  It is a wonder ISIL doesn’t control more territory with such moronic imbeciles at the helm.  In order to help these moronic policy makers and senior military officers, let me lay out a basic strategic plan against ISIL.

To begin, let me dispense with your failed Irregular Warfare (IW) approaches, which policy makers love because they think they can win a war on the cheap.  The historical record is quite clear; IW does not decisively win wars, it creates them.  This distinction in military manuals and training unfortunately is all but absent.  Only through determined deliberate action can a war be decisively won.  Other than in a few niche applications, arming, training, and equipping proxy armies has never been successful.  Cyber-attacks, psychological warfare, economic development, and public relations campaigns are equally ineffective against a violent enemy willing to kill to achieve its goals.  “Winning the hearts and minds” is complete bullshit and always has been.  This fiction only existed in political circles too scared to acknowledge reality and the brutality that must accompany warfare.  Anything short of brutality and violence is not warfare and should never be conflated with war.  In fact, if lesser means are suitable, then they should be exhausted.  Understanding this would be far healthier for any nation and would lead to a far less liberal use of pseudo-warfare, which is every bit as violent, but just dressed up for political spin.  Now that we have dispensed this modern “pseudo-warfare” and IW, which are completely fictitious shams respective of actual military strategies, let’s discuss what a real war against ISIL looks like.  I warn you…anything short of the below will only delay a far more brutal and bloody war that ultimately will be fought indiscriminately anyhow or lead to a decisive defeat for the Christian West.

Defeating ISIL like any other enemy requires a full spectrum approach.  On the political front, Saudi Arabia and Qatar must be prevented from providing any type of material support to ISIL.  In particular, until firm compliance was established, all military sales and forms of foreign aid to the said countries must be immediately ceased.  Turkey must also be immediately reigned in and all economic support via the purchase of black market oil must be halted.  If Turkey continued to purchase ISIL produced black market oil, pressure should be ratcheted up against Erdogan’s administration to include exclusion from NATO and the EU as well as economic sanction.  Turkey must also be forced to accept Kurdish military action against ISIL in Syria by reaffirming their right to defend Turkish sovereign territory against Kurdish terrorist factions such as the PKK.  Israel also needs to stay out of it and stop bombing Syrian positions, which by default help ISIL.  Respective of Russia, the US needs to work jointly with Russia to share intelligence and coordinate their military offensives to achieve the maximum impact against ISIL.  Option B would be for the US to completely stay out of the fight with ISIL, completely cease support to any parties involved, let the primary actors in the Middle East fight it out, and then step back in once the smoke clears.  I can entertain either option, which honestly are both viable, but for today’s discussion, I am going to focus on US intervention. Read more

The US defeat in Afghanistan and its inevitable consequences

March 1, 2015 Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Global War, Taliban Comments Off on The US defeat in Afghanistan and its inevitable consequences

   From the beginning, we considered Afghanistan the more difficult war…it will be so even after we retreat.  The longest war in American history is coming to a close as an indecisive strategic defeat for the US and NATO just as I predicted over a decade ago.  The war was fought against an enemy with an extremely low level of capability, but our generals refused to recognize the critical importance of stopping the enemy’s movement to and from its cross-border sanctuary even when presented with overwhelming analyses.  Specifically, the failure of border security to be made a priority in the overall counterinsurgency strategy all but guaranteed the inevitable exhaustion and defeat of the occupation force.  Embarrassingly, the hard truth is the “most powerful” and certainly the most expensive military in history failed to decisively defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  The US/NATO defeat was not for lack of manpower or firepower, it was a defeat born of intellectual incompetence and utter dereliction by our senior leadership.  Importantly, the critical failure responsible for the US/NATO defeat remains at the senior echelons within the US military and White House, is systemic, and remains uncorrected.  Now, just like in Iraq, we are told by President Obama and his appointees that Afghans will take over operations and complete the mission.  The chances of the Afghans defeating the Taliban are zero and we must be prepared for the inevitable consequences.

   First, I want to support my certainty that most of Afghanistan will be overrun by the Taliban.  To do this we need only to look at the current status of the war.  To date, the combined power of the US and NATO has after 14 years proved unable to defeat the Taliban.  However, we are told to believe by Obama and his generals that the Afghans, with a relative few Americans in support, will be capable of cleaning up the mess and decisively defeating the Taliban.  The result of this is another easily predictable, preordained defeat.  Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, simply will not be able to hold on to Kabul, much less the whole of Afghanistan, and will likely meet the same fate as his earlier predecessor Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai at the hands of the Taliban.  Further, it is appearing more likely that this will not just be a Taliban victory, but may be completed under the unified banner of ISIL. Read more

Damning Letter on State of Afghanistan War to Secretaries of Defense and State Leaked: Office of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Confirms US will lose control of most of Afghanistan by 2014 and US has no oversight of nearly $100 million in Afghan infrastructure development projects.

October 29, 2013 Department of Defense, Department of State, News and Intelligence, Terrorism Comments Off on Damning Letter on State of Afghanistan War to Secretaries of Defense and State Leaked: Office of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Confirms US will lose control of most of Afghanistan by 2014 and US has no oversight of nearly $100 million in Afghan infrastructure development projects.

October 10, 2013: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John F. Sopko, wrote to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel about serious concerns about the impact of the drawdown on security and the related implications for ensuring adequate oversight of the U.S.-funded reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.  In brief, SIGAR is projecting that even in a “best case” scenario the US will have access to barely 21 percent of Afghanistan in 2014.  This represents almost a 50 percent loss of access from current estimates.  Making matters worse, SIGAR estimated that nearly $72 million in infrastructure projects were now inaccessible.  This means that nearly $100 million is “currently” being spent on projects in Afghanistan with NO oversight.

Specifically, earlier this year SIGAR was unable to visit infrastructure projects in northern Afghanistan valued at $72 million because they are located in areas that could not be reached by U.S. civilian employees.   SIGAR is referring to these inaccessible reconstruction sites as areas outside of the “oversight bubbles.”  The areas covered by these “oversight bubbles” are defined by the ability of the U.S. government to provide both adequate security and rapid emergency medical support to civilian employees traveling to the area.  In effect, these “oversight bubbles” represent areas controlled by Taliban forces and are growing daily.  As such, this document gives a rare glimpse behind the curtain of just how badly the US/NATO forces are being routed in Afghanistan.  Further, one can only assume that in a country that is ranked third from last in the world for corruption (only North Korea and Somalia ranked worse http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/05/map-the-most-and-least-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/) that hard earned US tax dollars are being squandered.  Not only are the tax dollars being wasted, but they are being spent in areas controlled by the Taliban and being paid out often directly to our enemies, which takes reckless spending to the ridiculously absurd.  Only in the minds of politicians and inept generals could one ever think the US could win a war by funding its enemies and building up their infrastructure!

The situation on the ground in Afghanistan has gotten so bad, “significant portions of Afghanistan are already inaccessible to SIGAR, other inspectors general, the Government Accountability Office, and other U.S. civilians conducting oversight, such as contracting officers.”  SIGAR believes this constraint on oversight will only “worsen” as more U.S. and coalition bases close.  The map illustrates just how little access the US is projected to have next year in Afghanistan as the US military completes its retreat.

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At this juncture it is worthwhile to quote an entire excerpt that illustrates exactly how bad the situation is even through the politicized lens of a high level letter written between senior agency leadership.  SIGAR writes in his letter:

“Although it is difficult to predict the future of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, it is likely that no more than 21 percent of Afghanistan will be accessible to U.S. civilian oversight personnel by the end of the transition, a 47 percent decrease since 2009. We have also been told by State Department officials that this projection may be optimistic, especially if the security situation does not improve.  The 21 percent figure may be too high. The oversight access shown on the attached maps presents a best-case scenario where weather, terrain, and security conditions pose no serious threat to helicopter medical evacuation missions.”

The implications of Mr. Sopko’s letter are profound.  Even an unlikely “best case” scenario projects the US to maintain only a very small foothold in some of Afghanistan’s major cities.  However, the security situation is currently very bad and projected to get worse.  Just as our analysts have predicted, since the failure in Tora Bora when the US lost the initiative during the early stages of the war, the true extent of US failure in Afghanistan is finally being revealed.  In fact, we project a rapid decrease in access to around 10% as Helmand and Kandahar Provinces rapidly fall back under complete Taliban control.  By 2015 we are predicting a near total loss of access and a likely collapse of the regime in Kabul.

See the actual letter at: http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/alerts/SIGAR_14-4-SP.pdf

By Guiles Hendrik

October 28, 2013

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The Forgotten War: Afghanistan 12 Years Later

October 18, 2013 Military, News and Intelligence, Terrorism Comments Off on The Forgotten War: Afghanistan 12 Years Later

America’s war against Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan began over 12 years ago last week.  This grim milestone came and went with no media coverage even as some of America’s best men and women were killed there in combat this week.  Now, in the lead up to a complete US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, it is blatantly clear our pessimistic analytical forecast for Afghanistan has proved accurate.  Today we will recap the state of affairs of the War in Afghanistan and what to expect in the coming months.

The Obama Administration is quick to broadcast anything it can spin as good news.  The opposite is true of bad news so it is telling that it has maintained a near total media blackout on Afghanistan.  Making President Obama’s whitewash of the dire state of the war even feasible has been a complicit media and their absolute dereliction of a social responsibility to be the watchdog of the government.  This is the same biased media that broadcast images from the Iraq War around the clock during the Bush Administration, but now suddenly has nothing to report respective of the on-going Afghanistan War.  The truth the Obama Administration and his media henchmen are hiding is that the war has gone horribly wrong and the US is rapidly retreating in defeat.

I for one hate the notion of defeat and am incredibly ashamed of even the notion that the US could allow itself to be defeated in a war.  One would think that our nation’s leaders learned something from the Vietnam catastrophe, but then again, most of our leaders on both sides of the aisle were draft dodgers, cowards, potheads, and never served a day in the military.   Considering this, one should not be surprised to find out the Taliban are alive and well.  Not only have the Taliban weathered the full onslaught of a combined US, NATO, and Afghan military force for over a decade, but they are now more numerous, control more territory, and are better armed, trained, and equipped than they were when the US entered the war in 2001.  The Taliban still have the will and capability to fight and still take to the battlefield.  By any measure of warfare, if an invading army is forced from the battlefield and ultimately from the land which it invaded while the opposing army still holds that ground, the army that retreated was defeated.  If the media and the Obama Administration were honest and upfront with the American people, they would report that they never so much as fully secured a single province in Afghanistan.  As quickly as the US has handed over these still contested provinces to the “Afghans,” they have been taken over by the “Afghan Taliban.”  The latest sign of this came on September 13, 2013 when Taliban insurgents nearly overran the US Consulate in Herat, Afghanistan.  Not only was this attack just 48 hours after the anniversary of the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, but it was in a far western area of Afghanistan that previously was thought to be immune from Taliban influence.  Soon there will be no more US military forces in Afghanistan to come to the aid of these diplomatic enclaves.  When that day comes in just a few months, the US will be forced to quickly withdraw its last remaining diplomats in defeat.

Afghanistan has been an unsustainable war from the very beginning due to the lack of genius in our senior military officers, our unwillingness to pursue the actual enemy into Pakistan, self-defeating strategies, and the ultimate failure to recognize the strategic importance of sealing the Afghan-Pakistan border.  Our failure to neutralize and or destroy the Taliban safe haven across the border in Pakistan, has allowed the Taliban to wait out the US just as they did the Soviets.  Inside Pakistan’s safe haven, the Taliban fighters receive arms, training, funding, and sanctuary from the Pakistani government…the same government we give over $5 billion in annual aid to (read self-defeating strategy).  While the Taliban organize, train, and equip in Pakistan, the US has spent over a trillion dollars vainly setting up forward operating bases all over the desolate wasteland where the sole mission has become clearing roadways of improvised explosive devices so that the troops can get supplies to their remote bases so they can clear the roads so they can get in supplies, etc. etc. etc.  At no point in this ridiculous slow bleed strategy did our troops ever come close to strategic and decisive gains against the Taliban.  Instead, we spent and bled our nation to defeat without the Taliban having to do more than push an occasional button on an explosive device produced in Pakistan or shoot one of our soldiers in the back while dining together.  This absolute disaster of a war is a testament to the massive amount of money the US taxpayer has been forced to waste on a military bureaucracy so large and unwieldy that defies description.  Until the Department of Defense (DOD) can show that it can actually win a war the budget should be slashed, slashed some more, and then cut in half again.  If the politics won’t allow for a war to be fought, then we shouldn’t fight wars and waste money on our massive and dysfunctional military.  We don’t need smart bombs, we need leaders with the will to fight and win.  That said, without any doubt, for probably under what the DOD spent in a week on the Afghanistan War, a small contingent of country boys sporting nothing but scoped deer rifles, good leadership, and freedom of action could have decisively defeated the Taliban and ended the war in Afghanistan in just a few months.

Not only is the war unsustainable for the US, but also the Afghan government.  Over a hundred Afghan soldiers a week are killed, many times more are wounded, and even more defect to the Taliban.  The situation is so bad that the Department of Defense made it official policy to no longer report the number of Afghan casualties out of fear of losing all moral in the Afghan National Army.  Remember too that the mauling the Afghan military is incurring is with the help of NATO/US forces in Afghanistan to include air support.  Once the US and NATO pull out, the Afghan National Army will face total defeat as it dissolves into a more formalized Taliban Army.

Collapse is now imminent in Afghanistan.  Perhaps six months to a year separate the current state of affairs from a Taliban takeover of most of the country.  As the US accelerates its withdrawal, the Taliban will begin to operate more overtly in Afghanistan seizing at first greater footholds in the regional villages and towns and then overwhelming major cities.  Kandahar may again be one of the first cities to fall to the Taliban as soon as the spring of 2014.  Once Kandahar and surrounding provinces fall fully back into the Taliban’s (Pakistan’s) hands, it will only be a matter of months before Kabul falls under heavy attack and is overrun.  President Karzai will most likely do what he did before and flee his country to save his own skin.  This time though Karzai will flee with over a billion dollars (compliments of the US taxpayer by way of the CIA) hidden away, rather overtly, in Swiss and Dubai bank accounts to live out his days in Europe as his countrymen suffer the aftermath of his corrupt regime.  One can only hope he is forced to stay and weather whatever consequences the war may bring as the captain should either save the ship or sink with it.  In the interim, Afghanistan will exist as the world’s premier narco-state with President Karzai the undisputed cartel leader.

Make no mistake that any notion the US will be able to maintain a footprint in Afghanistan once the pull out begins is an illusion.  I can’t say for sure whether our leadership in the US is just that dumb to believe we will be able to stay (they are building a billion dollar embassy in Kabul) or is simply lying to provide top cover while we retreat.  Nonetheless, the result will be the same.  Think Saigon circa 1975.  To say the least, we will be lucky to have an exit as orderly as the Soviets.  If we are so lucky, it is only because the Taliban correctly assessed that it was in their best interests to simply let us leave as soon as possible while saving up their strength for a full offensive.  Once NATO has gotten out of the way, the Taliban will move to finish the civil war they started before the US invasion.

As the last troops retreat out of Afghanistan in defeat the military-industrial-complex will be faced with a dire situation.  The situation will be one of reduced budgets and no pressing war to sell their wares.  This means the titans of defense will lose billions of dollars and tens of thousands of Americans will be put out of work.  As such, we predict the military-industrial-complex will work closely behind the scenes with Congress to engineer a new war before the complete end to operations in Afghanistan.  The most likely candidate for this will be a war with Iran via Syria.  This war, as we have repeatedly warned, will be a complete disaster on a scale unprecedented in American history.  In fact the consequences could be so dire that historians may very well point to the folly as the end of the Republic.

Please remember our troops on the ground fighting in Afghanistan…they are the real victims of bad leadership, yet bravely stand their posts.

By Guiles Hendrik

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