Tag Archive for Pakistan

Christians Massacred with Weapons Supplied by US across Africa and Middle East

August 27, 2013 News and Intelligence Comments Off on Christians Massacred with Weapons Supplied by US across Africa and Middle East

July 29, 2013 Kano, Nigera:  Multiple explosions have hit a predominantly Christian area in Nigeria’s northern Kano city, with security forces transporting scores of wounded to area hospitals, witnesses say.  “We have had some explosions in Sabon Gari [neighbourhood] this evening,” Kano state Police Commissioner Musa Daura confirmed on Monday night.  Christians are continually targeted and killed by the thousands in Nigeria by Islamic Extremists.  The US remains neutral and continues to focus its interests in Nigeria on oil and resource exploitation, which has been at the expense of the Christians.

August 20, 2013 Cairo, Egypt:  Coptic Christian churches are looted and destroyed by Islamic extremists linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Nuns were forced to undergo public humiliation and were marched down streets as they were taunted and attacked by Islamists.  In Egypt, the situation for Christians is dire and many have already been killed, wounded, and or forced to flee the country.  The White House remains mute and appears to be maintaining support for the Muslim Brotherhood through its inaction.  President Obama refuses to recognize the broadly supported government that replaced President Morsi, which is now in charge of Egypt.  Further, the White House has condemned the new government’s actions to dismantle the radical Islamic elements unified under the banner of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Syria:  Some of the most holy sites in Christendom have been attacked and destroyed by Islamic extremists.  Christians have been forced to flee or have been executed by elements within the Free Syrian Army (FSA).  President Obama has paid no attention to the suffering of Christians at the hands of radical Islamists.  In fact, Obama has authorized the training and arming of these Al Qaeda terrorists, which have brutally massacred entire Christian communities.

Pakistan:  Christians are broadly discriminated against, assaulted, and even murdered for adhering to their faith.  In response, the US continues to provide Pakistan with military support and billions of dollars in aid.

All over the world, US Foreign Policy is directly and or indirectly leading to the deaths of thousands of Christians.  In some countries, the Christian communities have been nearly completely wiped out.  Instead of expressing outrage and supporting what would be some of America’s most natural allies in these countries, the Obama Administration has repeatedly ignored their plight and left them for dead.  On a humanitarian front, the US indifference is simply inexcusable.  However, there has been one world leader that has spoken out for the rights of Christians when other leaders of Christian nations have turned their backs.

“The rights of religious minorities, including Christians, are being infringed all over the planet and humanity must take measures to stop such instances,” Vladimir Putin said at the meeting with Orthodox Christian leaders in Moscow.  “In many of the World’s regions, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa inter-confessional tensions are mounting and the rights of religious minorities are infringed, including Christians and Orthodox Christians,” the Russian President noted, adding that such conflicts could lead to the most serious consequences. Putin called for immediate measures to prevent such situations.

It is truly a sad day when the US turns its back on its religious foundation.  Instead, it is Russia that has become the light of freedom and security for Christians around the world.  This situation just over two decades ago would have been unthinkable and shows how far from grace the US has fallen.  As America turns its back on its Christian heritage, it will lose the very foundations of what formed the very essence of Western Civilization.  Christianity formed our country and our culture.  Without it, our civilization will not survive and devolve into savagery unguided by the critical morals and ethics imbued in a culture guided by a religious ethos.  A free republic devoid of a collective moral consciousness unified by a common religious ideology is simply incompatible with law and order.  The loss of faith in a higher power and the US government’s war on Christianity marks a dark day in our country’s history.  Contrary to trendy pundits, it does not mark a progression in American culture, but rather, a decided turn toward cultural regression.  Please ask your elected representatives to stand with Christians around the world and oppose US policies that lead to their murder and discrimination.

 

By Guiles Hendrik

August 23, 2013

All rights reserved.

For more information:

http://rt.com/politics/putin-christians-repressions-resistance-584/

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/07/2013729221645359465.html

 

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

Assessing the Success of the War on Terror Part I: Pakistan and the Failure of the Drone Strategy

February 17, 2013 Al Qaeda, Department of Defense, News and Intelligence, Politics, Terrorism Comments Off on Assessing the Success of the War on Terror Part I: Pakistan and the Failure of the Drone Strategy

As the never ending War on Terror drags on into the fourth consecutive presidential term without any decisive gains, one must question not only the effectiveness and strategy, but also our very leadership.  Nowhere is the ground truth more palpable than in western Pakistan.  Since President Obama took office and significantly increased drone strikes against alleged terrorist targets, America’s ability to safely operate and influence events in the country in a manner favorable to the United States has inversely deteriorated.  This is a direct result of America’s flawed drone strategy, which has strategically weakened the U.S. in Pakistan.

According to Gallup’s poll just released, more than nine in 10 Pakistanis (92%) disapprove of U.S. leadership and only 4% approve. Remarkably, this is the lowest approval rating Pakistanis have ever given the U.S. and its leadership.  This is noteworthy as President Obama’s ratings in Pakistan have sunk far below even those of the much criticized President George W. Bush.  Further, and more ominous, 57% of Pakistanis aged 15 to 29 and 53% of those 30 or older, deem interaction with the West as a threat.

Numerous explanations for this near total disdain for the U.S. have been suggested.  What is clear is that prior to the U.S. prosecuting the War on Terror via drones inside Pakistan, Americans enjoyed relative safety and warm relations.  As such, only a fool would be unable to make the connection between drone strikes, the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, and growing hatred of the U.S.  Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S.  Sherry Rehman makes this much explicit in her comments to reporters two days before President Obama’s nominee to be the next head of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan’s, Congressional Testimony.  Ambassador Rehman expressed Islamabad’s view that America’s continued deployment of drones was a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and was strategically counter-productive.  Specifically, she stated “We need to drain this swamp and instead it [the drone campaign] is radicalizing people.”  Rehman went on to say “It creates more potential terrorists on the ground and militants on the ground instead of taking them out.  If it’s taking out, say, a high-value or a medium-value target, it’s also creating probably an entire community of future recruits.”  Her statements are corroborated by a Pew research poll conducted last year that showed 74% of Pakistanis termed the U.S. as an “enemy.”

Our senior policy makers have failed to grasp strategy at the strategic level.  At best, they are fighting a tactical war.  Our leaders have proven themselves amateurs that are unable to mitigate and defeat even the lowest echelon of threats facing the U.S.  Further, they have no appreciation of the historical precedent respective of the use of limited cross-border strikes against insurgent type threats.  Had they done their homework and studied cross-border insurgencies, they would know that these limited surgical strikes are counter-productive just as Ambassador Rehman states.  In fact, no matter how great the tactical gains achieved are, they never result in decisive strategic gains and in fact, result in a sum net strategic loss.  Thus, war strategies reliant on limited cross-border strikes, such as our drone strikes in Pakistan, have a near perfect correlation with the counterinsurgent’s failure or better stated, the insurgent’s victory.  No further proof of this need be generated than a simple review of the contemporary hostile sentiment towards America in Pakistan.

In our Part II of this series, we will look in more detail at the results of America’s flawed strategy that has caused the spread of radical Islam across the globe, made Al Qaeda franchise, and perpetuated a fear culture to fuel unending war.

 

Sources:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160439/2012-pakistani-disapproval-leadership-soars.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines%20-%20USA

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21389200