Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.
When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.
The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq.
Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.
Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.
They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now.'
The first soldier starts in again. 'My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He's home now and has serious issues adapting. But I'm not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I'd have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.'
A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. 'We're plodding through this,' he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. 'I don't know how much more plodding we've got left in us.'
When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'
It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired.
But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them.
'I counted it the other day,' says a major whose partner is also a soldier. 'We have been married for five years. We added up the days. Because of Iraq and Afghanistan we have been together for just seven months. Seven months ... We are in a bad place. I don't know whether this marriage can survive it.'
The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen. Is this true?
And it is not only the soldiers that are worn out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212bn (£105bn).
But it is in the soldiers themselves - and in the ordinary stories they tell - that the exhaustion of the US military is most obvious, coming amid warnings that soldiers serving multiple Iraq deployments, now amounting to several years, are 50 per cent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress.
The army's exhaustion is reflected in problems such as the rate of desertion and unauthorised absences - a problem, it was revealed earlier this year, that had increased threefold on the period before the war in Afghanistan and had resulted in thousands of negative discharges.
'They are scraping to get people to go back and people are worn out,' said Thomas Grieger, a senior US navy psychiatrist, told the International Herald Tribune in April.
'Modern war is exhausting,' says Major Stacie Caswell, an occupational therapist with a combat stress unit attached to the military hospital in Mosul. Her unit runs long group sessions to help soldiers with emerging mental health and discipline problems: often they have seen friends killed and injured, or are having problems stemming from issues at home - responsible for 50 to 60 per cent of their cases. One of the most common problems in Iraq is sleep disorders.
'This is a different kind of war,' says Caswell. 'In World War II it was clear who the good guys and the bad guys were. You knew what you would go through on the battlefield.' Now she says the threat is all around. And soldiering has changed. 'Now we have so many things to do...'
'And the soldier in Vietnam,' interjects Sergeant John Valentine from the same unit, 'did not get to see the coverage from home that these soldiers do. We see what is going on at home on the political scene. They think the war is going to end. Then we have the frustration and confusion. That is fatiguing. Mentally tiring.'
'Not only that,' says Caswell, 'but because of the nature of what we do now, the number of tasks in comparison with previous generations - even as you are finishing your 15 months here you are immediately planning and training for your next tour.' Valentine adds: 'There is no decompression.'
The consequence is a deep-seated problem of retention and recruitment that in turn, says Caswell, has led the US army to reduce its standards for joining the military, particularly over the issue of no longer looking too hard at any previous history of mental illness. 'It is a question of honesty, and we are not investigating too deeply or we are issuing waivers. The consequence is that we are seeing people who do not have the same coping skills when they get here, and this can be difficult.
'We are also seeing older soldiers coming in - up to 41 years old - and that is causing its own problems. They have difficulty dealing with the physical impact of the war and also interacting with the younger men.'
Valentine says: 'We are not only watering down the quality of the soldiers but the leadership too. The good leaders get out. I've seen it. And right now we are on the down slope.'
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 15:06 Comments ||
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#2
"Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready."
Well DUH! Why would the Army have more 'combat-ready' units than they need for, well, COMBAT. This is USA standard. 1/3 deployed, 1/3 just back from deploying and 1/3 readying to deploy.
#4
And even with the fatigued soldiers and worn-out equipment, we are push Al-Q out of any safe havens they have in Iraq.
What amazes me is that the Media finds it news that soldiers are tired after combat missions. Well, duh!!! Combat is extremely stressful and tiring; hell, just patrolling in all that gear in the summer temperature of Iraq is exhausting.
And as for the wear and tear on the equipment, that is why you buy it - to use it. Of course, the fact that the US is also replacing entire series of equipment with new and different equipment {HUMMERs with MRAPs} while at the same time destroying the enemy is carefully glossed over.
I also notice that none of the supposed bitching soldiers in the one paragraph are named : how do we know if they actually said what Al-Grauniad purports or if they even exist? There is NO way to fact check the article when the writer carefully avoids using names - guess the TNR debacle is having an impact.
#5
The solution is Tea Time at 11 and 4 each and every day, no matter what.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2007 16:31 Comments ||
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#6
Tired soldiers, wanting the damn war to end. I for one am stunned by this.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 16:35 Comments ||
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#7
Great disinformation. Thanks to Kerry and al-G for letting al-Q know they are getting whipped by the least educated most under equipped Americans avaialble. But I am sure this will all turn around on a dime upon the coronation of Her Royal Thighness, Hilary!
#8
A really big question, and one not as obvious as it might seem, is "What are the troops *doing* in Iraq?"
Everybody assumes that *all* military personnel are fighting; then, when they think about it, they realize that the vast majority involved in combat operations are actually *supporting* those relative few who are doing the actual fighting. A lot of those support jobs are not high stress.
However, we need to realize that their are a LOT of military personnel in Iraq who are not directly involved in doing either fighting *or* direct support for the fighters.
They are doing other things. And the big question is "What other things?"
For example, the US military is deeply involved in construction projects of all kinds in Iraq, several thousand of them in progress right now.
They are also very engaged in "external security". For example, manning Patriot anti-missile batteries against Iran.
Then you have IA and police trainers. Administrative liaisons all over the place, to coordinate with the Iraqi government and US State Department and other non-military organizations.
But the numbers of such personnel really start to add up. And it doesn't even count those who are not in Iraq proper, but in the region and the Navy.
In truth, this doesn't diminish the fatigue or stress of combat and many combat support personnel. But it does show that the numbers of those affected may be far less than the military as a whole.
#9
Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen.
Unless things have changed drastically in the last dozen or so years, most new lieutenant get their commission from other than West Point. Most officers use to come from the ROTC programs.
As for the 3,000 shortfall. Let's remember that Congress only got around to authorizing an [temporary] additional 20,000 troops from a pre-war standing of around 480,000. That means you're going to be short on officers for time being till the system can catch up, not only for the direct fills but for the factors of normal turnover.
#10
As of 2000, Academy grads made up 17% of new officers and officers and 55% came from ROTC. Overall, 16.7% of all active duty army officers are USMA grads and 59.7 of were commissioned via ROTC.
Don't know what the proportions are for the reserves and guard.
#11
WRT to the officer shortage, it is real. But not for the reasons that the useful idiots are implying.
Having just graduated OCS myself, it is because making it into the officer ranks is hard. According to my classmates who have at least one deployment prior to OCS, OCS was more stressful than being shot at. I found this to be true also. The washout rate in my class was 43%.
Of course, I went thru the accelerated program. Would you beleive I am a 60 day wonder. They cut out non-essentials like weekends off, sleeping and eating.
Posted by: N Guard ||
08/19/2007 22:06 Comments ||
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Congratulations, N Guard! With officers like you, we'll do just fine. My mother did three years of high school in six months like that; she said the promise of a diploma and sleep at the end kept her going.
#13
N Guard -- it's voices like yours that I kept waiting for in reply to this article. Thank you --- 60 day wonder in my mind, WOW -- congrats, you deserve these congrats for your achievement, cause it is surely your achievement. Job well done... and thank you.
At least once a day, kinda nod your head sideways and down, and feel a little presence on your left shoulder. (I like hiding on that left shoulder.) Kinda smile and know, that presence you feel, is not only me, I'll be there everyday, rooting you on, but all your unknown friends at Rantburg and other Americans, wishing you well. Staying close to you, so you stay close with us.
#14
Somewhat OT...
Went through a quick-cooker program in another field, back in the old country. There was a lack of contract programmers (1980, a first sign that paracapitalistics tendencies started to appear in the economy afer the 1968 experiment was squashed by Rusin invasion), so the company tha neded them invited about 300 people that were working already in puters--operators and such. After giving us IBM aptitude tests, 300 shrunk to 60. A 3-months program that contained 4 years of Tech U followed. Just puters and programming, no poli-sci, marxism-wankism. 7:00 to 20:00, with 15 minute break for a lunch. Sunday off. 15 people finished (the rest dropped out) and after final exams (design 4 different programs in 4 lingos and perform a viva voce defense, with a proof), 6 new programmers were hatched, me one of them. Not that I was somehow a rather bright lad, I was just focused, and the job promised degree of flexibility unheard off at the time behind Iron Curtain. But the main reason I wanted to go through the program was that I already had my escape form behind th Iron Curtain on a drawing board n thought tht new kill set may prove to be rather handy at my final destination. I had several contingencies... the fun part was that one of the programs for my final exam, written in Fortran, calculated the size and shape (including stripes) of a hot air baloon, for a load of 240kg, elevation of 700m and distance of 60 km. The examiners got curious where I got the idea, I mumbled something about just usual type of curiosity that was my trait and that I saw something on TV wich gave me the inspiration. ;-)
Not sure I would be keen to repeat that kind of load and experience, but I was still a kid (late 20's) thus not as rusty as I am now.
Of course, the learning never stopped, but it goes on at much slower and relaxed pace.
To make the cold, hard facts of victory more palatable to defeatists, Bush craftily proposes to drape his winning plan in surrender clothing. NYT:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 The White House plans to use a report next month assessing progress in Iraq to outline a plan for gradual troop reductions beginning next year that would fall far short of the drawdown demanded by Congressional opponents of the war, according to administration and military officials.
One administration official made it clear that the goal of the planned announcement was to counter public pressure for a more rapid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on a sustainable footing at least through the end of the Bush presidency.
The officials said the White House would portray its approach as a new strategy for Iraq, a message aimed primarily at the growing numbers of Congressional Republicans who have criticized President Bushs handling of the war.
Ha ha, NYT humor! What message is Bush going to aim at the growing numbers of Congressional Democrats who now say he's doing something right in Iraq? Well, I think we've just seen it. It's a figleaf to cover the nakedness of their admissions that winning may trump surrender. Memo to NYT, etal. You may want to go count heads on that growing number of Congressional Republicans who have criticized President Bush's handling of the war. I suspect the sponginess factor of spineless resolve may be up. . . .
Here's a good kicker:
Most Congressional Democrats have already called for the withdrawal of all American combat forces from Iraq beginning early next year. After nearly five years, a half-trillion dollars and over 3,700 American lives, it is long past time for a change of direction in Iraq, the Senates Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said in a written statement this week.
Ha ha ha! More NYT humor? The subtle irony of mocking Reid with his own tired broken-record pronouncements. Get it? "After eight months and countless go-nowhere surrender votes, it is long past time for a change of direction in Congress."
But surely NYT didn't intend that to be funny. The good scribblers of NYT buried Reid way at the end. Once upon a time, you'd be reading that near the top. I sense NYT surrender enthusiasts, like the ones in Congress, are groping around for a way to get on the right side of this war thing before dread September comes barrelling in. This article shines a klieg light down the path: Embrace victory, call it defeat!
Posted by: Mike ||
08/19/2007 07:32 ||
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Just when the historic India-US civil nuclear agreement of July 18, 2005, appeared poised for successful completion, with the consensus on the much contested text of the 123 Agreement having been arrived at in July, the situation looks very bleak in mid-August 2007.
The deal has become the proverbial red rag for the principal opposition parties and it now appears that the very survival of the United Progressive Alliance coalition led by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh [Images] in its current form is at stake.
While there was an inherent inevitability about the breakdown between the Left parties and their UPA allies even at its very formation in 2004 when the National Democratic Alliance government was defeated, three determinants merit preliminary analysis at this stage.
What will be the implications of the current political impasse for India's long term politico-diplomatic, strategic-security and trade-technology interests? The short answer is "adverse."
By distorting and deliberately altering the contours of the debate, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties are acting in a manner detrimental to India's interests in the early part of the 21st century.
In preventing Dr Singh from realising what still is a very prudent agreement, which will enable India in a holistic manner, the opposition stance will ensure a Pyrrhic victory that will keep India in fetters and in the long run -- subaltern to China in the Asian geo-political context.
The manner in which the current political debate is being contested indicates that the techno-strategic detail of the 123 Agreement is really a red herring. What is being bitterly contested is the nature of India's external orientation with the evolving strategic architecture of the 21st century -- and the relationship with the US in particular. The agreement has the potential to liberate India from the technology denial regimes and the politico-diplomatic ostracism that has been its cross to bear since May 1974 -- and in many ways admit India into the global 'panchayat' as a credible member.
This admittance was being facilitated by US President George Bush [Images] and from inflexible 'estrangement' over the nuclear nettle, the India-US bilateral relationship exuded signs of moving towards mutually beneficial engagement.
Clearly this policy shift is at complete variance with the ideological position of the Left parties for whom anti-Americanism is an article of faith. In the case of the BJP, the picture is more complex.
The NDA government deserves credit for its May 1998 initiative and the manner in which it restored relations with the Washington Beltway culminating in Bill Clinton [Images];'s visit to Delhi in March 2000. Who could have accused the Indian Parliament of being anti-American when President Clinton received what must rank as the longest and most enthusiastic standing ovation when he addressed a joint session of Parliament at the time?
However, the BJP and the Left have now found common cause in stoking anti-Americanism in the Indian polity and while this is being interpreted as cynical pre-election posturing that is part of Indian politics, it is moot as to how much of this will translate into tangible electoral gains at the next general election -- even if it is held well before mid-2009.
Thus what we are now witnessing is a degree of manipulative racism and prickly nationalism in the domestic Indian political discourse. Hence engaging with the USA is deemed suspect and denounced as being inimical to India's sovereignty -- even if the assertion is counter-factual. The sub-text of this articulation is that India is better off as part of an elusive Asian solidarity leading to global multi-polarity (to balance the USA) wherein China and perhaps Russia [Images] will play the lead role with India in a complementary role.
This is doubly ironic considering that over the last 50 years, China and the US have often acted in a manner that thwarted India's security and strategic interests to advance their own agendas. It merits recall that Beijing [Images] had little hesitation during the latter phase of the Cold War to tango with Washington against Moscow [Images].
But that is the stuff of realpolitik and this abiding tenet of international relations appears to have been lost sight of in the current emotive Indian debate. The current global strategic grid has three major nodes of relevance -- the US, Russia and China. (The EU and Japan [Images] are already part of the US framework.) India has the potential to be part of this grid and it was this deeper intent that impelled the July 18 agreement -- with tacit support from Moscow.
An enabled India, free of technology denial fetters and strategic outcaste status will be a swing-state of considerable relevance in the 21st century and this would have made for some degree of credible multi-polarity to emerge at the global level.
And this profile would have allowed India to deal more effectively with all the other principal players on the global stage without being subaltern to anyone -- be it Washington or Beijing.
To that extent the highly visible nuclear strand of the July 18 agreement was both symbolic and substantive -- the former to herald India's strategic 'liberalisation', and the latter to ensure tangible gains such as the import of nuclear fuel etc.
If the opposition parties have their way and the deal is either delayed or scuttled, then the world at large will come to an irrefutable conclusion. India's political spectrum prefers to remain insular and a country of one billion people with multiple aspirations will not be part of the global management grid in a formal sense.
The Indian State will remain obsessed with more petty persuasions such as caste, reservations and communal issues. The world will move on and the major players will set the agenda -- be it on politico-strategic issues or the regulation of trade and technology and pressing energy and environmental challenges.
Paradoxically, what the world is seeking from India -- access to its middle-class market and the new technology-savvy human resource -- will flourish.
The Indian public that can afford it will not be denied the latest mobile phone and education cum employment opportunities abroad. Thus with the obstruction to the nuclear deal, the net result will be a stunted Indian State fending off technology denial regimes and placed below the global management hierarchy as a permanent 'outsider', while the Indian public will be increasingly drawn into the vortex of globalisation -- alas on unfavorable terms.
Some facts about India are inexorable -- as for instance its economic and technology potential.
The country is already a one trillion dollar economy and there is a sense that we do not need the nuclear deal.
This is misleading. India's energy needs have not been met either by hydro-electric potential or coal for 50 years. Unless there is unfettered access to technology, investment, markets and higher education, much of India's proven potential will be exploited at sub-optimal levels. The time-line for realising the various inter-locking procedures such as the IAEA protocol and NSG concurrence is very tight.
And above all, the concatenation of circumstances in the US is most favourable now. This may not be the case in early 2009 if there is a change of party in the White House.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, one truism about Indian politics is self-evident. The manner in which Dr Singh is being pilloried over the India-US deal proves the adage that honesty, personal integrity, merit and the larger national interest will always be trumped by narrow self-interest in the Indian political arena.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 14:38 ||
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#1
Great article, john frum.
What will be the implications of the current political impasse for India's long term politico-diplomatic, strategic-security and trade-technology interests? The short answer is "adverse."
By distorting and deliberately altering the contours of the debate, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties are acting in a manner detrimental to India's interests in the early part of the 21st century.
Wherever leftist and communist doctrine has shaped a country's formative years the result is always the same. Stunted, backwards, elitist tyrannies. Soviet Russia, China, Cuba all of them are stifled by archaic, outmoded methodologies and hidebound political caste systems.
The manner in which Dr Singh is being pilloried over the India-US deal proves the adage that honesty, personal integrity, merit and the larger national interest will always be trumped by narrow self-interest in the Indian political arena.
In Philippine-American politics this is known as The Crab Dance. It serves as an explanation of why there is such poor representation for such a substantial and well-established minority. In a barrel full of crabs there are usually one or two really energetic individuals who will attempt to escape their staved prison. Often, just as they begin to edge over the barrel's top, other crabs will see their imminent escape and attempt to ride their coattails by latching onto them for a free lift out of confinement. What happens is that the one or two potential escapees are inexorably dragged back down into the barrel to rejoin their docileand soon to be steamedcompanions. In the long run, The Crab Dance serves as a metaphor for how fragmented groups simply refuse to allow one portion of their number to succeed andby thwarting such ambitious individualsend up deleting all chances of group success. India excels at this in spades.
#2
It seems the nuclear deal is now gaining support from the Indian public... arcane nuclear technical details may be hard for the average Indian to understand, but if the communists are against it, many feel it must be good for India....
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:30 Comments ||
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#3
The Japanese PM Abe will pay a visit to India soon and he will travel with investments.. Japan wants to build a massive freight corridor from Delhi to Mumbai that will have manufacturing hubs along its length.
This will really kick start Indian export manufacturing and reduce Japanese reliance on China for low cost labor.
Expect to see the communists do all they can to derail this. When a Japanese minister visited India about 2 years ago, accompanied by business executives, he advocated increased Japanese investments in India.
That did not sit too well with China. The Indian communists and union leaders were summoned to Beijing. When they returned to India, a wave of wildcat strikes affected the plants of Japanese companies in India.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:37 Comments ||
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#4
This will really kick start Indian export manufacturing and reduce Japanese reliance on China for low cost labor.
I'm hoping that with such a boost in exports there will be a reciprocal loosening of India's draconian import laws. Unlike China, India's lack of a wholely anti-capitalist communist government might explain the overwhelming absence of institutionalized intellectual property theft, copyright violation and product counterfeiting.
India's average per capita income of US$3,100 versus China's US$5,600 (2004-2005 numbers), makes Asia's largest English speaking democracy a major player in the expanding off-shore manufacturing market.
Expect to see the communists do all they can to derail this.
A particularly appropos choice of words. Fortunately, Britain's historic legacy of colonial rail infrastructure leaves little doubt that India can readily recognize the worth of such a transport corridor. All that remains is the establishment of a free-enterprise zone astride the track-bed and solid incentives for foreign investment.
It would be a genuine pleasure to see newly arrived India sit down and eat China's lunch at the global table. The cast iron rice bowl of Beijing's currency manipulation and monopolistic practices needs to be shattered at the earliest opportunity.
The current opposition of the leftist parties -- particularly, the Communist Party of India-Marxist -- to the agreement (the so-called 123 agreement) with the US on civil nuclear co-operation and to India's developing strategic relations with the US takes one's mind back to the days before the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to India in November last year.
A Chinese company had won a contract for the construction of a gas pipeline from the Godavari area in Andhra Pradesh. It wanted to bring about 1,000 Chinese engineers to work in the project. The ministry of home affairs and the Intelligence Bureau of the Government of India were not clearing the issue of visas to the Chinese engineers. They asked a number of inconvenient questions as to why it was necessary for the Chinese company to bring in so many of their engineers when unemployed Indian engineers were available.
There was also a paper prepared by the National Security Council Secretariat of the Prime Minister's Office suggesting that proposals for foreign investments in sensitive sectors such as telecommunications from China, Pakistan and Bangladesh should be subjected to a special security vetting.
Sitaram Yechury of the CPI-M, allegedly at the instance of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, raised a big hue and cry about it and literally forced the Government of India to order the issue of visas to the Chinese engineers and to drop the proposal for a special security vetting for Chinese investment proposals in sensitive sectors.
After Hu's visit was over, Times Now television news channel had invited me to participate in a discussion on the visit. Arnab Goswami of the channel anchored the discussions. D Raja, CPI's member of the Rajya Sabha, participated in the discussions from Delhi. I told Raja: "It is surprising that you pressurised the government to issue visas to 1000 Chinese engineers. You were not bothered about Indian engineers not getting these jobs. If a US company had wanted to bring 1000 American engineers, would you have urged the government to issue visas to them?"
Raja told me: "Mr Raman, you are an eminent person. You should not mislead people by raising such scenarios."
For the last two months, the Chinese authorities have been expressing their concern over reports that India has joined hands with the US, Japan [Images] and Australia to counter the growing Chinese naval power in the region and that the forthcoming naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal involving the navies of these countries plus Singapore is the beginning of this project to counter Chinese naval power and presence in the Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean region.
It is not without significance that the vigorous campaign of the leftist parties -- particularly of the CPI-M -- against the recently concluded Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation and against the growing strategic interactions between India and the US in particular has coincided with the beginning of the Chinese campaign against the so-called quadrilateral strategic interaction involving India, Japan, the US and Australia and the naval exercise with the additional involvement of the Singapore navy.
The leftists' campaign against India's relations with the US reflects more China's concerns and interests than those of India. I have never been excited over the Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation. Nor do I share Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's [Images] enthusiasm for US President George Bush [Images] and the Indo-US agreement. I am inclined to feel that what we are seeing now is a one-night stand between Dr Singh and Mr Bush. Like most one-night stands, the happy thoughts thereafter will become an embarrassment in course of time.
I also feel -- as I have stated on many occasions in the past -- that we should go slow on the development of our strategic relations with the US, keeping in view the fact that we live right in the midst of the Islamic world, and that about 45 per cent of the world's Muslim population lives in the South Asian region. Ours is still a fragile society and we should not create misgivings in the Muslim community by overlooking their sensitivities on this subject.
Having said that, I also feel that we should not let the leftists dictate our foreign policy and push it in a direction favourable to China. I find it difficult to discount the suspicion that the leftists have mounted their present campaign to promote Chinese and not Indian interests.
After joining the IB in 1967, I went on a visit to Kolkata. Those were the days of China's Cultural Revolution. The Marxists were not yet in power in West Bengal, but were very active. As I was travelling in a taxi from the Dum Dum airport to downtown, I saw the following slogan painted by the Marxists on the walls everywhere: 'China's chairman is our chairman'.
The present day Indian Marxists don't say this, but they do believe that 'China's interest is our Interest'. It is this belief which is behind their present campaign against the Government of India. Their hidden motive should be exposed.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 13:44 ||
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#1
China's interest is nobody else's interest except except Beijing's own. Anyone foolish enough to think that they can bed down with the Chinese and wake up unpenetrated is beyond foolish. The Chinese have always served their own interests and served them so exclusively that it has often come back to haunt them. Even frequent self-defeats do not give them pause to reconsider their monomania over being the Master Race.
#2
Pakistanis were led to believe that China would come to their rescue in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971.
Surrounded Pak troops cheered and emerged from their bunkers when the sky filled with parachutes. The Chinese PLA had come to fight the Indians they though...not quite... the Sikh paratroopers made short work of them...
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:28 Comments ||
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#3
Lest we fergit, many pro-Beijing/PRC Netters view both Pakistan and India as future Chicom territories, which is backed up by Chicom Govt white papers. *Various other Netters, however, do argue that INDIA is set to one day overtake China as Asian-Pacific competitor vv the USA.
As Pakistan completes its first sixty years, it is natural to ask whether the next sixty would look any different. Given the difficulties of even forecasting the future six months out, how can we define the nations long-term future?
Paradoxically, it is often easier to talk about the long-term than about the near-term. When Winston Churchill quipped, The future, though imminent, is obscure, he was referring to the near term. Over the long haul, he knew the curtain had fallen on the British Raj.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Ahh, jovial I AM.
"Internally, several questions will need to be answered. Will Pakistan finally make a transition out of feudalism, something India did decades ago? Will literacy and primary enrolment rates rise to the levels seen today in the Asia-Pacific countries? Will rates of domestic savings and investment rise to the point that growth ceases to depend on foreign aid? Will the character of economic growth change sufficiently to make a dent in the poverty rate? Or will growth be swallowed up by rising population, which, if current trends continue, will make it the fourth largest state in the world? Depending on how these issues are resolved, Pakistan will either become an economic powerhouse be sent to an economic purgatory."
I would like to see everyone doing better - excellent debate questions. Wish I could get that here in the US rather than snowmen and white/black and covetous crap.
#2
Territorial Disintegration: Inter-provincial rivalries and events across the borders cause the Frontier to merge with Afghanistan, Balochistan with Iran and interior Sindh with India. Karachi becomes as a city-state. Punjab is all that survives of Pakistan. To paraphrase Toynbee, the nation dies from suicide, not murder.
The most likely option...
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 9:06 Comments ||
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#3
December 8th; 2012 > a great global-felt quake, China versus USA geopolitics in the Pacific, large comet slamming into the earth knocking earth off its normal orbit; 2018, 2022, etal.; moon explosions 2030, ....................etc. *Radical Islamism gets a foothold on Guam + other PACOAS, eventually to challenge, by armed force iff need be, the authority of both local Catholicism-Christianity, Culture, as well as Public Governance. BETTER TO WARN/ADVISE MY PEOPLE + USA NOW BECUZ I MAY NOT BE AROUND, at least not as "Joseph Mendiola". SECULARISTS > "GOD/RELIGION IS FAKE" > ergo Mankind must prove he can control = stop the wraths of God/Apocalypse, etc.
#5
C2CAM Pert/SCIENCE NEWS > INDONESIA, PERU, SOLOMONS QUAKES ARE SOLAR-CAUSED??? Sun abnormally emitting more Rays, Gravity. *RENSE > NASA's Sun-watching satellites detecting strange Solar XRay burps. Said same strange XRay burps = emissions possible time-jumps/skips - may prove useful in saving Earth from Solar/Radiation-induced Annihilation? come or after 2012???
By David Eshel
When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his surprise visit to Damascus, last month, rumors spread over Tehran's real intentions: whether it was as innocent as to wish the Syrian president godspeed on his second inauguration occasion. Or was a secret meeting shoring up a common strategy against Israel?
New intelligence assessments, currently circulating among Mid East experts now suspect, that the real reason behind Ahmadinejad's visit, was to warn his Syrian friend against taking any evasive action on the mutual strategic alliance, which lately seems to be undergoing growing uncertainties.
#2
Assad is in easy range for Israeli airstraikes, and he knows it.
Ahmadi-nejad is the typical arrogant Persian,, thinking he can lord it over the Arabs and use them as cannon fodder for his schemes, while he sits safe in Tehran.
And there is your "diplomatic" line of attack to fracture that "alliance".
But thats only if we had a CinC that had brains and guts enough to push it (Bush isnt the guy, he wimpishly already refused to discpline CIA and State), and if we don;t have anyone in State with the balls to work with CIA to do it (nor do we have inyone left in the top of the CIA with the guts to do this against the Eastern Elties old-boy club).
#3
Opinion: Baby Assad considers himself a major player and Master of High Cunning. Eventually, his scheming will get him in hot water either with the Israelis or his 'allies'. It was probably a mistake for his daddy to buy him the boardgame Risk when he was a kid.
#4
General Assef Shawkat ( left), the president's brother-in-law, who by sheer chance is also prime suspect in the Hariri affair.
Nothing but a complete and total coincidence, to be sure. Baby Assad is in way over his head. He has neither the assets nor the strategic savvy to profitably entertain Iran's meddlesome and dubious interests. Islamic Unitybe it Sunni or Shiitestill remains, as ever, a splendid oxymoron and little else.
#5
Syria has economic problems. The eastern half of the country is loaded with refugees. They're trying to regain hold of their client state, but Lebanon isn't following the master plan and is playing hard-to get. The Iranians are supposedly working with Syria, but the Persians aren't to be trusted(it isn't just Greeks bearing gifts that one should beware). Lastly, the UN may just initiate legal proceedings on the assassination.
So, the Baathists are getting antsy. They figure there's this big target being painted on their collective foreheads. Assad doesn't have the control over the Baathists like his father did. Maybe he's getting tired of sleeping with one eye open...
John Robb's take on what we face. Intro to the long article:
For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the worlds population is living in urban environments. Citiesefficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capitalare thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence.
Over the last few years, small groups ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivitytheir capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold.
Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning.
#1
It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states.
No. Thanks to United States military preeminence. Europe was widely considered to be too economically interdependent in 1913 to ever go to war; what it lacked was regional hegemon to guarantee the peace.
At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die."
"They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, New Jersey, lined up against a schoolyard wall, forced to kneel and then shot in the head.
Miss Ali poses an interesting question. No one can say why they "had" to die, but it ought to be possible to advance theories as to what factors make violent death in Newark a more-likely proposition than it should be. That's usually what happens when lurid cases make national headlines: When Matthew Shepard was beaten and hung on a fence in Wyoming, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times that it was merely the latest stage in a "war" against homosexuals loosed by the forces of intolerance. Mr. Shepard's murder was dramatized in plays and movies and innumerable songs by Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc. The fact that this vile crucifixion was a grisly one-off and that American gays have never been less at risk from getting bashed did not deter pundits and politicians and lobby groups galore from arguing that this freak case demonstrated the need for special legislation.
By contrast, there's been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a New York Times report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru have been arrested."
So, this Peruvian guy was here on a green card? Or did he apply for a temporary construction-work visa from the U.S. Embassy in Lima?
Not exactly. Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he's alleged to have committed, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child, for which Mr. Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have now been revoked.) No, Mr. Carranza's criminal career in the United States began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.
Jose Carranza isn't exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.
America has a high murder rate: Murdering people is definitely one of the jobs Americans can do. But that's what ties young Malvo to Jose Carranza: He's just another killer let loose in this country to kill Americans by the bureaucracy's boundless sensitivity toward the "undocumented." Will the Newark murders change anything? Will there be an Ioefemi Hightower Act of Congress like the Matthew Shepard Act passed by the House of Representatives? No. Three thousand people died Sept. 11, 2001, in an act of murder facilitated by the illegal-immigration support structures in this country, and, if that didn't rouse Americans to action, another trio of victims seems unlikely to tip the scales. As Michelle Malkin documented in her book "Invasion," four of the killers boarded the plane with photo ID obtained through the "undocumented worker" network at the 7-Eleven in Falls Church, Va. That's to say, officialdom's tolerance of the illegal immigration shadow-state enabled 9/11. And what did we do? Not only did we not shut it down, we enshrined the shadow-state's charade as part of the new tough post-slaughter security procedures.
Go take a flight from Newark Airport. The TSA guy will ask for your driver's license, glance at the name and picture, and hand it back to you. Feel safer? The terrorists could pass that test, and the morning of 9/11 they did: 19 foreign "visitors" had, between them, 63 valid U.S. driver's licenses. Did government agencies then make it harder to obtain lawful photo ID? No. Since 9/11, the likes of Maryland and New Mexico have joined those states that issue legal driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Newark is the logical end point of these policies. It is a failed city: 60 percent of its children are being raised in households without fathers. Into that vacuum pour all kinds of alternative authority structures: Mr. Carranza is alleged to have committed his crime with various teenage members of MS-13, a gang with origins in El Salvador's civil war of the 1980s that now operates in some 30 U.S. states. In its toughest redoubts, immigrants don't assimilate with America, America assimilates to the immigrants, and a Fairfax, Va., teenager finds himself getting hacked at by machete wielders.
One could, I suppose, regard this as one of those unforeseen incremental consequences that happens in the darkest shadows of society. But that doesn't extend to Newark's official status as an illegal-immigrant "sanctuary city." Like Los Angeles, New York and untold others, Newark has formally erased the distinction between U.S. citizens and the armies of the undocumented. This is the active collusion by multiple cities and states in the subversion of U.S. sovereignty. In Newark, N.J., it means an illegal-immigrant child rapist is free to murder on a Saturday night. In Somerville, Mass., it means two deaf girls are raped by MS-13 members. And in Falls Church, Va., it means Saudi Wahhabists figuring out that, if the "sanctuary nation" (in Michelle Malkin's phrases) offers such rich pickings to imported killers and imported gangs, why not to jihadists?
"Tell Me Why They Had To Die"? Hard to answer. But tell me why, no matter how many Jose Carranzas it spawns, the nationwide undocumented-immigration protection program erected by this country's political class remains untouchable and ever-expanding.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007 09:29 ||
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#1
as usual, Steyn rules. The illegal immigrant population isn't all hard-working pickers and meat packers. It'll take a 9/11 attack done by illegal southern border crossers to push that current 79% opposing amnesty for illegals to a level even Washington and the asshole Congress cannot ignore. Workplace enforcement shouldn't be PR events for Chertoff and his ilk, they should be a daily fact of life. MS13 and other gangs need to be ruthlessly crushed
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 12:01 Comments ||
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#2
to push that current 79% opposing amnesty for illegals to a level even Washington and the asshole Congress cannot ignore
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
