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General McChrystal, the Conscientious Objector
A soldier has the right to disagree with the higher civil and military command, but there is a method in doing so, and the way General McChrystal expressed his dissent, was no doubt, ‘unbecoming of an officer’. Perhaps, he lost his sense of discretion, under influences, beyond his control, as one of his close associates remarked: “he worked in a very right inner circle, doing every thing together including getting drunk.” However, there are some important aspects, connected with this incident, which need to be analyzed.
President Obama, as we all know had promised, while campaigning for the presidential elections that he will pull out troops from Afghanistan, engaged in a purposeless war and also made a firm commitment to address the Kashmir issue, but on assuming the office of the president, he reneged on both the issues. He caved-into pressure by ‘the military high command and the defense industries lobby’ for a military solution and a troop surge, although it was easy for him to say: “President Bush has accomplished the mission in Afghanistan, and therefore, I have decided to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.” The Americans and the NATO allies would have hailed this decision. On Kashmir, the Indian lobby forced him to restrict Holbrook’s responsibility to Afghanistan and Pakistan only. Now, Obama is in a stronger position, to carve-out a realistic exit-strategy.
McChrystal, no doubt, was frustrated at his failure to achieve military success, whereas, General Petreaus was able to achieve a degree of success in Iraq. General Petreaus exploited the ethnic divide in Iraq and mounted a successful strategy to divide the Shia-Sunni population, through a process of ethnic cleansing, ethnic riots and target killings, using Black water security agency. On the contrary there is no such ethnic divide in Afghanistan. The Pakhtuns are fighting the invaders, while the Northern Alliance, consisting of the minorities mainly supported the invaders and rode the American tanks to occupy Afghanistan in 2001. Together with the occupation forces, they also stand defeated.
The Afghans have won, and therefore peace conditions are to be established, on this ground reality. David Miliband rightly suggests: “The legitimate tribal and ethnic groups must be given real stake in the political process, a peace settlement in which we include the vanquished, as well as the victors.” Obama, therefore has to initiate the political process, for the peaceful settlement of the eight year long, purposeless and brutal war, and the step that, he has to take, must be well-considered and appropriate. As the first step he must engage and enter into dialogue with the Taliban, under Mullah Umar and remove the trust deficit and reach agreement on the basic issues, such as: Time frame of withdrawal of the occupation forces; declare ceasefire; remove the ban on Taliban freedom movement; release all Taliban prisoners, and negotiate a political settlement, with full realization that, trying to establish a democratic authority on a country with a tradition of decentralized governance, would prove counter productive.
The Karzai government at best can act as the facilitator, for the negotiations with the Taliban who may be willing to call a Loe Jirga to decide the formation of a national government, and the new constitution of the future political setup. Other important issues such as these must also be considered and consensus arrived at:
- The status of US-Afghan relations, in the post independence period.
- Guarantees for no-use of Afghan territory for militants activities against other countries.
- Firm commitments from the UNO, USA. NATO and Russia to pay for the war damages and a Marshal Plan to rebuild Afghanistan.
- Complete independence and freedom for the future Afghan government, to establish diplomatic, economic and socio-cultural relations with all countries of the world.
Pakistan has had the best of relations with Afghanistan, during the 80’s, but distrust, doubts and apprehensions were created in Afghans’ mind, when Pakistan’s ISI, which had supported and conducted the war against Soviet occupation, was pulled-out of Afghanistan during the 1990 under the American pressure. In the second phase, ISI was purged of all such operators, who had good contact with the Mujahideen, but the greatest damage to Pakistan’s security was caused in 2003, when Musharraf, pulled-out the ISI and other intelligence agencies from our own tribal areas of Swat, FATA and Balochistan, and the space so created was handed over to CIA, to be joined by the Indian spy network established in Afghanistan, with the result that, our entire border region was infested with foreign spies, agents and saboteurs, who fomented trouble in our tribal belt, threatening Islamabad and Peshawar and an out right rebellion in Balochistan, thus creating a very serious security lapse for Pakistan. The new government formed in 2008, therefore, decided to restore the writ of the government, in these areas and ordered steam-roller military actions in Swat, Dir, Bajaur and South Waziristan.
Pakistan Army actions could succeed only with full intelligence support, which meant, re-claiming, the territories, lost, to CIA, RAW and Mossad under Musharraf regime. Now our intelligence is well established in these areas and therefore, the tirade against it, for having established contact with the militants. This was an essential operational demand for the success of the military operations. But I am not sure, how far such contacts have helped, narrow-down the trust deficit between Afghan Taliban, Pak Army and our intelligence agencies. Taliban are one, under Mullah Umar, who is sympathetic to Pakistan, despite betrayals, but the young Taliban under him do not trust the Pakistan government, the Army and the ISI. What leverage does Pakistan therefore has to bring the Americans and Taliban, on the negotiations table? Minimal!! The much needed trust therefore must be re-established, to play a positive role in determining the peace parameters in Afghanistan, as the exit process of occupation forces begins. Unfortunately, scope and options are limited for Pakistan.
Thank you General McChrystal, for having facilitated the exit and the hurtling down of the “rolling stones” down the rocky mountains of Afghanistan. If I am not wrong, perhaps, it were you, who remarked a few years back: “every thing is so hard about the Afghans – their mountains, the people and their will to resist.” You have proved right!!
General Mirza Aslam Beg is former Chief of Army Staff who was heavily involved in Afghan Operation during USSR’s 
occupation and thereafter. Now he has established his Think Tank FRINDS in Rawalpindi. He is a regular contributor to www.opinion-maker.org
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=38246
Posted by General Mirza Aslam Beg on Jul 1 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under AfPak, WarZone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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outstanding analysis — obama & mcchrystal are both fantasists — obama wanted to leave afghanistan by winning — mcchrystal sold obama on a fantasy of easy victory — mcchrystal was fated to be the first to bark his shins on reality — obama’s next
I must say a well written opinion and some excellent points. For sure the prescence of wisdom and common sense. Although for discussion, I don’t agree with this statment “Guarantees for no-use of Afghan territory for militants activities against other countries.”
Now don’t get me wrong, we should of course get approval of the country we are planning and executing military action against…I just feel this would not be in the US’s best interest. We will still have other obstacles to clear before we can just step away.
We certainly have a lot on our plate lately, what with world war III and an extinction level event in the gulf. I have had an amazing amount of posts disappear on the VT lately.
When The Forces Of Raunch & Decay Are On The March The
London Corporation Can Soon Be Found Not Far Behind
http://dublinmick.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/when-the-forces-of-raunch-decay-or-on-the-march-the-london-corporation-can-soon-be-found-not-far-behind/
In 1743 Mayer Amschel Bauer, born Frankfurt, Germany, the son of Moses Aschel Bauer, a money lender and the proprietor of a counting house. Over the entrance door he places a red sign. This sign is a red hexagram (which geometrically and numerically translates into the number 666) which under Rothschild instruction will end up on the Israeli flag some two centuries later.
Business flourished and Mayer went on to become the keeper of Napoleon’s fortune and after being told by President Andrew Jackson the central bank charter would not be renewed stated “Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war.”
Jackson responded by saying “You are a den of thieves vipers, and I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out.” There was later an attempt on Jackson’s life but both pistols failed to go off. Jackson had it engraved on his grave stone, “I killed the bank.”
Of course there were others throughout history who opposed central banking. William McKinley, Abraham Lincoln, Czar Nicholas, John Kennedy and Jesse James come to mind. They were all killed. Jesse James whose mother’s farm was burned down by the Pinkerton contractors was shot in the back. Anyone ever see the movie Ned Beatty?
At the time of Jesse James the Harrimans, Goulds and the Rockefellers were the dominant financial and railroad enterprises in America. The Rockefellers are Rothschild descendants through a female bloodline that stretches all the way to William Clinton.
The Rothschild controlled IBM business machines were supplied to the Nazis and were recently contracted to the U.S. government to handle the census.
Maria Anna Schickelgruber became pregnant while working in the Rothschild mansion. She is better known as Adolph Hitler’s grandmother.
While being funded by Prescott Bush Nazi soldiers were busy killing American soldiers during world war II. His company was seized under the trading with the enemy act.
It was Rothschild’s couriers who got through first with news the British had defeated Napoleon and he instructed his all his workers on the floor of the exchange to begin selling consuls as to make it appear a certain British defeat. Most saw this and followed his lead. When they hit rock bottom Rothschild bought them all up again at a 20 to 1 profit. He was now in complete financial control of the British empire.
100 years ago Englishman William Knox D’Arcy struck a deal with Iran to pay them 16% of all oil found there and he became the sole owner of all Iranian oil. Soon afterwards the British government bought the company and it became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The British empire, the land on which the sun never sets, was financed to a large extent on Iranian oil.
After the war however the Iranian Mohammad Mossadegh decided Iran was not getting a fair shake and oil profits would be better used to develope Iran than to fuel Britain. After withdrawal of funds and U.N. resolutions failed to disrupt this avenue, the British turned to Washington to overthrow this madman.
The CIA managed in 1953 to overthrow their first government thereby installing the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Operation Ajax had long repercussions however. Democracy was finished and repression was the order of the day ending in the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran has been ruled by the Ayatollahs ever since. It is doubtful that Iranians are at all surprised to see relations between British Petroleum and the American people taking a turn for the worst!
That brings us to the ongoing oil disaster now ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico where BP has apparently drilled into an methane/tar/oil volcano.
“We now know, through witness testimony, that there were cracks reported in the drill casing two weeks prior to the disaster. Goldman Sachs sold 44% of their total holdings, 4,680,822 shares of BP stock in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman Sachs earned about $ 266 million on the sale.
Apparently, Halliburton also had some psychic insight on what was soon to come. Eleven days before the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton purchased an oil spill prevention firm. Halliburton was the lead company in charge of cementing the Deepwater rigs as well.”
We must also look into what organizations the major players belong too. It now appears that there are too many interlocking connections for this to be a coincidence. British Petroleum has ties to the Queen of England. The C.E.O. of BP Pacific, Peter Sutherland is a Trilateral Commission member, a Bilderberg member and a financial adviser to the Vatican. Tony Hayward has also attended numerous meetings of the world elite and was caught selling his stock in BP justweeks before the disaster.
Next one must look at the CIA, Evergreen Air, and their connection to chemtrail spraying and the Gulf oil spill. The following is an excerpt of an article we did that linked Evergreen Air to the spraying of Corexit, the deadly chemical being sprayed over the spill by the cover of night. This was documented in the article ” BP Crop Dusting U.S. Population Under Cover of Night“.
Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund and Vanguard 500 Index Fund handles the funds of Barack Obama. They unloaded 1.5 million shares of stock miraculously just before the blowout saving their investors millions of dollars.
Their largest stockholder is Exxon Mobil and BP has hired Goldman Sachs to advise them on their “next course of action.” The 3 accounts with Vanguard should earn Barack Obama $100 million over the next ten years in the event lady luck smiles on him and Exxon buys BP and as another stroke of good luck BP has just hired Goldman Sachs to “advise” them on the next course of action.
An added bonus in all this is the social security and welfare recipients along the gulf coast are going to fall over dead in the next several years most likely. The U.S. will move forward with the cap and trade. If the pressure is equalized down the road the well should stop and prime land eventually will sell for rock bottom prices along the gulf coast. That is unless something goes horribly wrong with this attempt to play God such as a triggering of the New Madrid fault which sits just north of the gulf of Mexico and extends as far as Illinois. Should this giant rift be activated it could knock out the two mile sandstone barrier separating Great Lakes from the Chicago River which feeds into the Mississippi. Should they empty into the gulf we could see a giant house cleaning for this body of water. Unfortunately it could destroy most of the east coast and break the continent in half.
So here we are in the 13th section of the Mayan calendar which began 5123 years ago. A final step in the rise of consciousness where ethics are said to overcome power constructs. How are we doing? You can judge how we are doing by broaching the above treatise to a fellow denizen of the west. Most anywhere in the west, who is the victim of a controlled media and dumbed down educational process which has left them with the mind of a child even as they enter adulthood.
Of course this process has been aided by the addition of almost every contaminant known in the diet such as fluoride, aspartame, MSG, vaccinations which there is no study by the way to prove a vaccination of pig DNA, timersol, mercury and aluminum every protected anyone against anything. Fluoride especially attacks and calcifies the pineal gland which is instrumental in the area of intuitive thought.
No most likely you will get wrong link dude, you sound like a liberal/conservative or you must be on drugs. These are the standard stock in trade references we will see mostly on the internet used by the paid employee/enforcers of the new world order and of course the average citizen who is too dumbed down to think of anything original himself. It is obvious they are not very good at hiring talent.
Asphalt Volcano & BP
Intel Hub, Gulf Spill Well Organized Plan
There Is Gold In Those Sachs, Raw Story
The Gulf Of Mexico Sea Floor Will Collapse FAU
Geologist Believes Origin Of Last Madrid Quake Lies Under Gulf
House Of Rothschild
What Time Is It?
Asia Times
I don’t blame McCrystal. The criminals in this case is the unethical rolling stones reporter who printed off the record comments. No civilian reporter should be allowed to be around officer’s of his rank outside the official interview.
Denny, Please explain “unethical”. Do you mean we need to go back to the Bush/Rove era of news manipulation?