Tag Archive for NATO

Global Updates: May 21, 2015

May 21, 2015 Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Big Government, China, Congress, Conspiracy Theories, Constitution, Department of Defense, Department of State, Domestic Terrorism, Global War, ISIL, ISIS, Justice Department, Liberty and Freedom, Military, News and Intelligence, Obama, Police State, Politics, Resistance to Tyranny, Russia, Syria, Taliban, Terrorism Comments Off on Global Updates: May 21, 2015

ISIL holds Ramadi: The White House, Defense Department, and Secretary of State have all down played the fall of Ramadi as a small “target of opportunity” and mild “setback.”  However, in reality, the fall of Ramadi was very foreseeable and a massive military disaster for the Iraqi government.  As I forecasted, Mosul would not be retaken anytime soon and the Obama strategy…or lack thereof, would be a total disaster.  See http://www.lastminutesurvival.com/2014/10/01/islamic-extremism-and-what-lies-ahead-part-ii-the-war-on-isis-and-syria/#more-699 Rather than being beat back, it is now highly likely that ISIL will continue to press its attack while the Iraqi Army is trying to regroup and capture large parts if not all of Fallujah.  If Fallujah falls, Baghdad will finally be seriously threatened by ISIL.

Sirte falls, ISIL takes 3rd major city in 48 hours:  In what is proving to be another example of Obama’s Foreign Policy disaster initiated under Secretary Clinton and amplified under Secretary Kerry, another major city has fallen to ISIL.  However, it is not in Syria or Iraq.  The city is in Libya.  Yes, the country Obama, Rice, Clinton, and Power “liberated” has now had the western city of Sirte overrun by radical Islamists loyal to ISIL.  According to my count that makes the score in just the last 48 hours 3 ISIL: 0 USA.  Ramadi, Palmyra, and now Sirte all have been overrun.  Even if ISIL can’t hold the ground, the fact they took down three major cities in just days is telling of how “successful” the US strategy to combat ISIL has been.  In fact, Obama’s “strategy” has been such a disaster, one would conclude that he couldn’t possibly have been that stupid and the only way this could be occurring was if it was his intent all along.  It is either amateur hour and Obama desperately needs to read some alternative news and hire new NSC advisors or the man is a traitor.

Russia no longer allowing NATO supplies to move across its borders to Afghanistan:  In another foreign policy disaster that has completely escaped the government media complex, Russia has now halted NATO supplies crossing its borders to Afghanistan.  I verbatim warned of this on March 23, 2014 saying the Russians could play this card in retaliation for NATO escalation in the Ukraine and make it extremely painful to maintain our troops in Afghanistan. http://www.lastminutesurvival.com/?s=russia+will+cut+supply+lines Now the US has only one supply route for its forces.  The unreliable and costly southern supply route begins in the Port of Karachi and runs north through Pakistan and into Afghanistan through extremely dangerous Taliban controlled provinces.  Each convoy that is allowed to pass through these areas pays a heavy toll, which in turn is then used to fund Taliban operations.  Further, Pakistan now has gained significant political leverage over Washington to extort any amount of money it wishes to allow passage of critical NATO supplies.  http://rt.com/news/259809-russia-stops-nato-afghanistan-cargo/

FBI making house calls to people concerned about Jade Helm 15:  In what could be viewed as a major escalation bolstering concerns amongst the public over the upcoming Jade Helm 15 exercise, FBI special agents have apparently begun making house calls to concerned citizens that have raised questions publicly.  http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/video-fbi-now-going-door-to-door-interrogating-americans-about-jade-helm-military-exercises-we-follow-pp-with-anything-like-that_05212015 Although, the special agents appear very polite and almost embarrassed to be performing the house calls, the fact they are knocking on doors is chilling.  Ironically, if the intent was to quell fears and concerns as the agents suggest, they are clearly having the exact opposite effect.  I doubt the special agents are so dumb that can’t figure this out, but why they are not speaking out about how ridiculous and counterproductive these visits are is disturbing.  Common sense tells you their real intent is to gauge the subject’s political views and whether or not to deem him a threat.  As agents, they should be well aware that people are allowed to have distrust of the government, dissent, and openly question authority especially, when it is launching an exercise designed to target American citizens in the US.  Whether the intent is to intimidate or not, it is clear field offices have been spun up to believe citizens that simply want the rule of law respected are now the threat.  This has been so hyped by DHS and the DOJ, it is coming at the expense of legitimate threats like MS13 and New Black Panther Party members publicly calling for the execution of police and making good on those threats.  The Justice Department will certainly spin this to say it is just doing its “due diligence” to make sure things are peaceful and safe, but anyone with half a brain sees the biased political motivations forcing agents out to conduct house calls on people that pose zero threat to anyone following the law and respecting the US Constitution.

China and US escalate tensions:  Recent moves by China to exclude airspace to US military aircraft has led to an increase in tensions.  However, this really has nothing to do with some small dots of islands, territorial integrity, or military development.  The deeper issue arising is that China has risen to a peer competitor level status with the US threatening the post-Bretton Woods financial establishment.  Historically, when the bankers were threatened it led directly to war and I doubt this will end differently.  Specifically, China has established a counter balance to the IMF that Washington desperately tried to stop and utterly failed to prevent.  This single act has broken the IMF/World Bank monopoly and the major banking families intend to make China pay for its actions.  Further, China has also been concluding multi-billion dollar oil/gas deals with Russia, which has undermined any ability Washington thought it had to isolate and strong-arm Russia.  In short, China is now seen as a real threat, but not to America, but rather, to the elites of the Western financial monopoly.  As such, you can bet you will see a strong shift toward painting China as a bigger and bigger existential military threat that very well could lead to the outbreak of war.

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

Truth Trickles Out: Afghanistan troop cuts will likely lead to Taliban surge, study warns (Surprise…exactly as we predicted)

March 3, 2014 Al Qaeda, Terrorism Comments Off on Truth Trickles Out: Afghanistan troop cuts will likely lead to Taliban surge, study warns (Surprise…exactly as we predicted)

March 3, 2014: Our track record continues its pristine record of accurately cutting through the lies and deception and correctly forecasting the impact of United States’ policy.  In one of the most recent reveals, it took a gold star panel of overpaid, retired bureaucrats and generals (forgive me if I am redundant) to “discover” that NATO’s optimistic predictions for Afghanistan’s future, contrived at its 2012 Chicago summit, were ridiculously flawed.  The study conducted by the “nonpartisan” think tank CNA concluded that stability in Afghanistan will require tens of thousands more troops costing billions more dollars than NATO envisioned at its 2012 summit.  The review,conducted at the behest of the Pentagon’s policy directorate, found that the Taliban insurgency is likely to swell in the years following the upcoming US and NATO military withdrawal, which contradicts the expectations set at NATO’s May 2012 summit. The review also saw widespread deficiencies in NATO’s planning for Afghanistan manpower, logistics, air support and ministerial strength.

As we reported previously, it was readily apparent to anyone willing to take an unbiased look at the situation in Afghanistan that our counterinsurgency strategy “coined” (pun intended) by strategic snake oil salesmen like disgraced General David Petraeus, Australian “fiction author” David Kilcullen, and RAND Associate Director/Mental Incompetent Seth Jones was an abject failure.  In particular, sealing the border connecting Afghanistan to Pakistan, the single most critical element required to win in Afghanistan, was not even attempted and discounted by the brain trust listed above.  Further, the brain trust relied nearly exclusively on financial aid (bribes which ultimately funded the Taliban) and training of the Afghan police and military (soon to just be a well trained and equipped Taliban army), which has again proven to have no historical precedent for success in warfare.  The damning Government Accountability Office (GAO) study (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1166.pdf) sums up this situation succinctly stating: “The Afghan government and international community have set an objective of having the Afghan army and police lead and conduct security operations in all Afghan provinces by the end of 2014. As of September 2010, no ANA unit was assessed as capable of conducting its mission independent of coalition assistance.”  After a decade and almost a trillion dollars of direct and indirect spending the US had effectively trained a whopping 0% of the Afghan Army to operate on its own!  Anyone that thought just a few hundred billion more dollars and a couple more years would change this was stupid or lying…perhaps both.  I am honestly sick of listening to these idiots create policy after policy on how to “win” in Afghanistan when none of them have a lick of sense, have been in an actual firefight firsthand, or can show that a single policy they recommended led to a decisive US victory.  Of course many excuses were put forth, but the reality was something much deeper as those with functional brains recognized.  The fact was that victory was impossible without the will to actually fight a war to decisive ends, which required the US to have a coherent strategy, competent leadership, the ability to unilaterally run the Afghan government, and the “US” military (not the Afghan enemy) to prosecute a war of attrition across the border into Pakistan and wipe out millions of Pashtuns.  None of these necessary conditions were in place, which created an insurmountable situation in Afghanistan in respect to achieving a decisive victory.

Not so ironically, the review comes as the US policy makers realize they must retreat out of Afghanistan in defeat and will need an alibi to cloak their failure.  Dusting off the Iraq playbook, it should come as no surprise the US, after “exhausting all options with an intractable President Karzai,” will have to pull its troops out of Afghanistan because he won’t sign a status of forces agreement (SOFA).  The spin will be used to justify Bush and now Obama’s military defeats, but don’t expect anyone to question Jay Carney about why after invading, occupying, killing over a hundred thousand people, and placing our puppet in charge that we somehow are now unable to stay because of minor bureaucratic red tape.  The weakness of the public mind knows no bottom.

The CNA review panel at least is correct in recognizing the persistent Taliban insurgency will mount an increased threat to the Afghan government for years after the envisaged NATO withdrawal. The CNA team’s prediction of an increased Taliban threat to Afghanistan through 2018, supported by a recent US intelligence assessment, “stands in direct contradiction to the assumption of a reduced insurgent threat made at the Chicago Summit,” the report states. This is about as much credit as I can give the CNA team.  Beyond this, their analysis becomes pure garbage and it is nauseating to think how many tax dollars were spent on this trash.

The problem with the study is the CNA panel falls short on accurately getting the present facts right and thus, utterly blows their long term forecasted endstate, which predicts a stalemate.  “We conclude that this force is not likely to defeat the Taliban militarily, but that if it can hold against the Taliban insurgency through 2018, the likelihood of a negotiated settlement to the war will increase,” the CNA review found.  The reality is that every province that has been turned over to the Afghan military has effectively been turned over to Taliban control.  The Taliban have outlasted the US, NATO, and the Afghan military for over a decade.  The Taliban will make short work of the Afghan military one on one.  To think they will be looking for a “negotiated settlement” is utter insanity.  The Taliban will defeat and absorb the Afghan army rapidly.  As the last US forces pull out of Afghanistan the Taliban will mount a full scale assault on Kabul to retake the country.  This will leave the situation on the ground almost the same as the US found it in 2001 with the difference being the Taliban are far more numerous, better trained, better armed, better organized, and with an earned hatred of the US.  In a laughable twist to counter this, the CNA team advises (remember, the team is made of “senior” policy makers and generals) the Pentagon to keep international military advisers in the Afghanistan ministries of defense and interior through “at least” 2018 to mitigate long-term problems, including corruption and incompetence.  After reading this, I was left with zero doubt why the Taliban have outlasted the US military.  Our leaders are idiots.  It is a joke to propose that a few advisors will save the day.  Equally blind is the notion that corruption and incompetence, not a viable enemy at the gates will be the big problem for the encircled Karzai regime.  Even with a large number of troops and advisors in country right now, the US has failed to accomplish defeating the military or rooting out corruption.  After thousands of Americans have been killed in this useless war, there still is not even the slightest spark of logic or integrity within the senior echelon and the apathetic public remains in a mute, trance like state when it comes to calling out President Obama and his mob of derelict morons driving the US off a policy cliff.

To conclude, make no mistake of these facts and further predictions.  One, the US suffered a strategic defeat in Afghanistan.  Two, the US will use the failure, albeit an intentional failure, to sign a SOFA (agreement) as a means to save face as it retreats.  Three, the Taliban will retake the country and will be more powerful than they ever could have been if the US did not invade back in 2001.  Four, the Karzai puppet regime will not last to 2018 and Karzai will most likely be killed or flee back to Europe where he hid billions of US aid in complicit Swiss and Dubai banks.  Fifth, in absence of a war in Afghanistan and a failing domestic economy, the US will start wars elsewhere to feed the coffers of the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex and distract the unemployed masses back in the US.

By Guiles Hendrik

March 3, 2014

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Failure in Afghanistan Slowly Creeps into National Dialogue

March 26, 2013 Uncategorized Comments Off on Failure in Afghanistan Slowly Creeps into National Dialogue

With little fanfare, media hype, or public outcry the inevitable conclusion that the War in Afghanistan is a failure has begun to take root in the public as well as political psyche.  Slowly but surely the media has quietly, but definitely begun to write the closing chapters on one of the greatest American foreign policy disasters since Vietnam.  Perhaps this quiet acquiescence is the result of media bias and its gross protectionist agenda for President Obama or perhaps this is simply the last whimpers of a nation overcome and war weary.

On March 19th, Afghanistan’s presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi adequately described the state of the NATO-led military operation in the country as “aimless and unwise.”  He specifically said, “The people of Afghanistan ask NATO to define the purpose and aim of the so-called war on terror… (They) consider this war as aimless and unwise to continue.”  Both the American war fighters and the Afghans have known this fact for years.  It now appears that only our senior policy makers are left believing their own propaganda as they tenaciously try to divert criticism from their own failed strategies and policies just long enough to retire or blame someone else.  It is worth noting that pundits will still correlate the daily “defeat” of the Taliban on the battlefield with victory in Afghanistan.  These grossly false conclusions should serve to fully discredit whoever was dumb enough to make the statement.  Just as in Vietnam for the U.S. and in Afghanistan for the Soviets, simple defeat of the insurgent on the battlefield is not enough to win the war.  Over the years we have written profusely about this reality to include directly indicting the failure of then General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy.  Specifically, we identified the failure of the strategy to remove sanctuary and or secure the border, which even a basic knowledge of insurgent warfare shows is the absolute key essential to winning a cross-border, state supported insurgency such as we are fighting in Afghanistan.

Only in hindsight will the true magnitude of the United States’ defeat in Afghanistan be realized.  What can be assured is that by the oldest historical metric of victory in warfare, the force that holds the ground at the end of the day has won, the U.S. has lost.  There is no doubt that the Taliban is in firm control of not just some, but more of Afghanistan than before the U.S. invasion.  In fact, the Taliban have even extended control throughout regions that the “Northern Alliance” formerly controlled and the pseudo-experts like David Kilcullen deemed “immune.”  This includes expanding across the border into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.  Further, Pakistan has continued to allow sanctuary and provide covert support to the Taliban unabated by drone strikes and bolstered by U.S. foreign aid, which all but assures the imminent overthrow of Karzai’s puppet regime in Kabul.

As NATO shutters its operations and begins its long overdue pullout the costs are immense and are only now beginning to be counted.  Thousands of dead and wounded, incalculable numbers of broken families, trillions of dollars in un-repayable debt, economic devastation, obliteration of national prestige, and the massive growth and spread of radical Islamism are just the highlights.  Our performance in Afghanistan has been so dismal, one could make a legitimate argument that if the U.S. had done absolutely nothing after 9/11 as compared to over a decade of warfare, the U.S. would be in a better strategic position today.  The trillions of dollars dedicated to our high tech military supremacy simply was not enough to overcome even the lowest level of military threats and is due almost exclusively to the intellectual dereliction of our policy makers and poor leadership.

If this has taught us nothing else, it should serve as a stark warning against future intervention in places like Mali, Somalia, Libya, and Syria and most certainly, a full blown war with Iran or North Korea.  Further, it serves as a reminder of how futile spending money on equipment and weapons is if there isn’t the leadership capable of designing and implementing effective strategic policy.  If the U.S. fails to heed these warnings, the U.S. will find itself embroiled in another strategic disaster before the end of 2013.  Eerily similar to the lead-up to the Soviet defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. finds itself bankrupt and dangerously strategically overextended on the eve of its retreat from Afghanistan in 2014.  If the U.S. falls victim in its weakened state to another war and policy disaster, it could spell at minimum, the economic collapse of the U.S.

See the below articles for further references to the U.S. failure in Afghanistan:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/what_went_wrong?page=0,3

http://www.france24.com/en/20130319-afghan-spokesman-labels-nato-war-aimless-unwise

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b22_1363444518&comments=1

http://www.saveamericafoundation.com/2013/03/19/america-has-won-her-last-war-a-lack-of-courage-a-loss-of-will-by-j-d-longstreet/

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/03/08/iraq-afghanistan-and-the-end-of-winning-wars

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2219845279001/afghan-president-accuses-us-of-collusion-with-taliban/

 

By Guiles Hendrik