Hank Green Answers The Question: "Is Lady Gaga A Man?"

Is Lady Gaga A Man? Do you really care? I heard all the rumors that were circulating when a video showing what appeared to be Lady Gaga's "accessories" surfaced on Youtube a while back and there were all sorts of questions if maybe Lady Gaga was actually male or a transvestite or whatever. I quickly became bored with the question because I (gasp) don't give a hoot about Lady Gaga. But here comes Hank Green from the Vlogbrothers testing out Google's intuitive system by typing just the word "is" and finds one of the collective conumdrums facing the world is Lady Gaga's sexuality.



Like I said, I don't care about Lady Gaga and mostly pass on her music and disregard her "shocking behaviour" because I see it as simply a promotional gimmick.

What I thought was funny was Hank doing what we all do, and seeing what's being said and asked about people we know and Hank finds that people are interested in his brother John and that there are lots of questions about "Is John Green married?" or "Is John Green gay?" but poor old Hank cannot catch a break. When he types in his own name - nothing. Maybe it's because there are so many questions about the vlogbrother known as Hank that no one or two common questions have purcolated up into Google's algorithm.

Pakistan opens its door to US ops

NOTE---

I had met ex Major General Akbar Khan at his house in DHA Karachi and he had re-confirmed what he stated in his book ? His second wife was in the process of selling the house in DHA when i visited her in 1999 and the general had died some years before that . The idea was to get some of the archival material with the general but unfortunately it was not possible due to the shifting .

It may be noted that Zardari and all civilians have no say in Pakistans security affairs and things like Afghanistan , Balochistan , Kashmir and India policy are just out of bounds for these civilians .

Here Saleem Shahzad is wrong in stating that civilians have any say .Pakistan if it has been sold or hired out , has been done so by the military ! The politicians have had no control on Pakistans security policy !


MIR JAFAR AZ BANGAL , MIR SADIQ AZ DAKKAN , MIR MUSHARRAF AZ PAKISTAN !

 

 

Agha Amin

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ASIA TIMES Online By Syed Saleem Shahzad ISLAMABAD - The Pakistani Embassy in Washington has lifted all scrutiny mechanisms for granting visas to defense-related American officials. Under the new procedures, implemented two weeks ago, officials will be granted visas in 24 hours. Previously, under pressure from the armed forces, all applications for visas by United States defense officials were passed on to Pakistan's Ministry of Defense, which in turn sent them to the directorate of Military Intelligence. After several months of scrutiny, visas were either granted or denied. The new procedures were laid down on the direct intervention of the office of President Asif Ali Zardari to facilitate the Americans in their quest to directly hunt down militant networks in Pakistani cities, where Washington believes major attacks in Europe are being planned and also from where the insurgency in Afghanistan is being directed. Compared with 2009, US drones have doubled their air-to-ground attacks during 2010, to more than 100 on militant sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas. The development on visas occurred slightly before this weekend's Lisbon summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where it emerged there was no clear end-game strategy for the mission in Afghanistan. NATO leaders pledged to begin the process of withdrawal and handing over of authority for security to Afghan security forces from 2011, and to transfer complete control by the end of 2014, though they clarified that the date given for shifting authority to the Afghan government was not a deadline. Between the lines, the declaration implies the continuation of the American-led war against al-Qaeda and Taliban with a new dimension from next year. Over the past year in Afghanistan, NATO has to a large extent been fighting shadows, with the enemy hardly showing up other than to cause havoc with improvised explosive devices. The Americans now appear to want to turn the broader battlefield into a focused anti-insurgency campaign through targeted special operations. One major development in this regard is the expansion of the American embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, announced recently that a US$511 million contract had been awarded to Caddell Construction to build the world's largest embassy in Kabul and that a contract worth $734 million had been awarded to B L Harbert for a new US Embassy compound in Pakistan, which would virtually be an American base in Islamabad complete with an air strip - all at a cost of more than $1 billion. "A three-pronged American strategy is visible for Pakistan that clearly concerns Pakistan's security establishment," a senior security official told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity. "The Americans increasingly want to have direct intervention and control in counter-terrorism operations and want to expand their operations from the tribal regions into the cities," the official said. He added that the US also aimed to broaden its influence through local private security contractors as well as by investing in think-tanks to motivate the Pakistani intelligentsia in favor of a regional anti-insurgency campaign. "In this new campaign, the Americans aim to reduce the role of the Pakistani security forces and they want to directly deal with the insurgents," the official said. This would be a third phase of the counter-insurgency operations the Americans have adopted in Pakistan since Islamabad sided with the US in the "war on terror" after September 11, 2001. During former president General Pervez Musharraf's regime (June 2001-August 2008), broader counter-insurgency operations were essentially devised and controlled by Pakistani security agencies. The US Central Intelligence Agency did not have any input, and if it did receive a tip-off on any high-profile target, coordination with the Inter-Services Intelligence was a must. Immediately after Musharraf stepped down as army chief and then as president in August 2008, the Americans adopted a policy of direct intervention and control through drone strikes. The Zardari government was completely on board with this and the weak military establishment in the post-Musharraf era did not have much space to oppose the drone operations. American defense contractors were deployed to enhance the level of operations, but in the meantime the military gained strength and started to put its foot down over the largely unchecked American operations in Pakistan and tighter visa procedures were put in place. Nonetheless, the Americans were desperate to jack up the level of their counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan. Initially, they worked some backchannels with the help of the Pakistani government to by-pass the scrutiny of military intelligence of defense-related personnel. Asia Times Online broke the story that this year 50 foreign nationals, including officials of a private American defense contracting firm, had arrived in Pakistan even though they did not have security clearance from Pakistan's intelligence agencies.   These people had earlier been denied  visas by the Pakistani embassies they first approached, including in the US, Britain and India. However, they were apparently subsequently given visas by the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. This was done without the prerequisite clearance from the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, the Defense Ministry and the security agencies. "These included over a dozen US nationals who had already been denied visas by our embassy in Washington on suspicion of them having links to Blackwater [Xe Services]," a source told Asia Times Online, adding that the visas had been issued for periods of six months to two years, although usually visas are only given for 90 days. The report was later confirmed officially by the Pakistani government; Pakistani security officials investigated the matter and new checks were put in place - and are now lifted. However, Washington is convinced that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won unless its sphere is broadened into Pakistan. Pakistan's economic compulsions - it receives extensive US aid and support - were sufficient grounds to exploit and when America recently applied pressure on Islamabad to lift the visa procedures, Pakistan quietly removed them. "This is a litmus test for the Pakistani military establishment, which does not want to give the Americans a free walk inside Pakistan." a source close to Pakistan's military quarters told Asia Times Online. "At the same time, Pakistan does not want to lose its allies in Afghanistan, which are obviously the Islamist groups. However, the battle has reached a level where the Americans can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's soft handling of those Islamist groups. Also, the economic quagmire in the country is deepening, and antagonizing the Americans, who are aid masters, is no option either," the source said. However, a clash of interests between the Pakistani military establishment and Washington now appears likely. Washington understands that during winter, fighting in Afghanistan slows down and a major chunk of insurgents goes to Pakistan's cities to see their families, especially in places like Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The Americans want to take action during this period, but the Pakistani military establishment cannot allow this to happen. Whether Pakistan is ready to pay the cost if it tries to impede American operations is another matter as the US is already upset with Islamabad's refusal to launch operations against the powerful Haqqani network in the North Waziristan tribal area. That is, is the loss of military and economic aid an affordable option? Pakistan has already expanded its arms procurement base, notably with China, with which it is negotiating a submarine purchase deal, beside several air-defense system deals. These military ties are expected to deepen as an alternative to American military support. Likewise, despite American opposition, Pakistan has signed on to an Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project to help meet its energy needs. "Iran offered Pakistan all sorts of assistance, but Pakistan could not fully exploit that. It included offers of soft loans as well as support for building the infrastructure in Pakistan that would facilitate trade routes between Iran, Pakistan and Turkey," M B Abbasi, who was recently Pakistan's ambassador to Iran, told Asia Times Online. "It is so sad. Iran allocated 1,100 megawatts of electricity for Pakistan and assured Pakistan that it had 5,000 MW in surplus energy that it could further allocate for Pakistan, but Pakistan did not take any interest to exploit that opportunity," Abbasi said. Asia Times Online has learned that Pakistan refused this offer of Iranian support on American pressure, but Abbasi would not comment on this. However, the Iranian card is still available to Pakistan if the Americans push through with operations inside Pakistan, something that now looks likely with Washington having managed to by-pass the military and use the government to facilitate a free flow of security operatives into the country. ___________________ Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of upcoming book Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban 9/11 and Beyond published by Pluto Press, UK. --

Puppet Games that the Pakistani Military Plays

Khaki Puppetry   Babar Sattar   Disclosure of information is a good thing not because it is an end in itself but because free flow of information results in greater transparency, debate and accountability. Frequently disclosure of information only confirms what people already know. But it is significant because once backed by facts, conjecture becomes reality. And while no one ought to be held to account on the basis of speculation alone, can an entire nation look the other way when stark facts stare it in the eye? In this regard our response to Wikileaks has been extremely instructive. The ruling elite - civil and military - has conveniently responded to the former US envoy's cables simply with denial. What they are denying is unclear. Are they saying that the reported conversations never took place, or that they do not reflect the context and thus the whole truth? Or do they believe that Shaggy's "wasn't me" is a perfectly legitimate response even in statecraft whenever confronted with incriminating facts? Would our civil and military leaders have us believe that the former US ambassador was a fabler deliberately misleading her bosses in Washington for the fun of it or that the Wikileaks saga is a mischievous US conspiracy to make our rulers look bad in order to lower them further in public esteem? Equally disturbing has been our collective apathy to digging deeper and confronting the truth. Are we not vying for complete disclosure and accountability because we are now accustomed to leaders being caught with their pants down and getting away Scott-free, or do they manage to get away because of our exhibition of expediency, tolerance or even timidity in face of such unsavory conduct? The overall media response to Wikileaks has also been wanting in a fundamental way: the reporting has been partial in that it has beat down on politicians for nauseating sycophancy and shameful self-interest, without proportionately highlighting and scrutinising the role of the military and especially the army chief that might have waded into the domain of illegality. The one unmistakable takeaway from Wikileaks is that the already hazardous civil-military imbalance in Pakistan has been further aggravated over the last couple of years. Let us address matters pertaining to propriety, policy and legality in that order. For propriety alone, we don't even need the help of Julian Assange. The army chief might be the most powerful man in the country, but the protocol list doesn't reflect that. But we are now past pretensions. Recently, the military guard detailed for the army chief's security forced two federal ministers to wait for the cavalcade of the army chief to pass through (along with other civilians used to the inconvenience) and interestingly it was the PPP parliamentarians loath to discuss the issue when raised by the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly. It is obvious that neither the ruling party nor the army high command feels the need to prop-up the fiction of civilian control of the military. The issue of policy linked to propriety is more significant. We know as a matter of public record - also confirmed by Wikileaks - that our army chief independently meets with foreign diplomats and important civilian policymakers from other countries. Observers of civil-military relations in Pakistan have long posited that the military not only believes that the country's security policy falls within its exclusive domain, but also all other aspects of nation policymaking that impinge on internal and external security, including foreign policy. First of all, why does our army chief independently meet with civilian policymakers of foreign countries? Is that not the job of our foreign office? Secondly, are the prescribed procedures for interaction with foreign governments of no relevance when it comes to the military? The Rules of Business explicitly state that unless an exemption is specifically granted all correspondence with the government of a foreign country shall be conducted through the Foreign Affairs Division. We know from newspapers that our army chief wrote a fourteen-page letter to President Obama highlighting issues he would wish the US to consider in relation to its policy in Afghanistan. Did he seek special permission to correspond directly with the US president? Should the army chief not send such communiqué to the Defense Division, which can then forward it to the prime minister through the Foreign Affairs Division for review and communication to the foreign country if desirable? Or is the preponderant role of the military in all aspects of nation policymaking so firmly entrenched now that ordinary rules and procedures meant to regulate the affairs of the government are not meant to apply to khakis? And then most disconcerting are disclosures regarding the army chief's conversations with the US ambassador that squarely fall beyond the zone of legality and are inimical to the cause of constitutionalism, rule of law and democracy in Pakistan. At least two such conversations merit comment. One, the reported discussion that at the peak of the lawyers' movement the army chief insinuated that he might be forced to 'persuade' Asif Zardari to step down as president in the event that the lawyers' long march gets out of control, and pontificated about appropriate replacements. And two, the reported conversations that our army chief was perturbed by the delay being caused by the PPP government in formalising an immunity deal for General Musharraf and wished the Americans to prod the civilian government to confirm such deal on the promise of which the army chief had sought General Musharraf's resignation on behalf of the army. What means, one wonders, would the army chief have to persuade Asif Zardari to resign as president of Pakistan, other than the barrel of a gun and his monopoly over the use of force in the country by virtue of being the army chief? Would such persuasion not be unconstitutional? Further, what does it mean for the army chief to be the guarantor of a deal (with the US Government being a counterparty) that General Musharraf, the former president and army chief, will be offered absolute immunity?   What would General Musharraf be immune from? Would he be protected against the ordinary application of the laws of Pakistan? All of us know that General Musharraf broke the law and molested the Constitution for a second time on November 3, 2007, and the Supreme Court has also declared as much. Does the immunity deal mean that no court or civilian government will be allowed to prosecute General Musharaf for adulterating the Constitution? Does it mean that no one can investigate General Musharraf's role in Benazir Bhutto murder case? Does it also mean that General Musharaf can never be tried for his alleged role in the Bugti murder case? In his capacity as an officer of the armed forces and army chief, General Kayani swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of Pakistan, which promises equality before law to all citizens of the country. Could it have occurred to General Kayani that his efforts to shield his predecessor from the application of the laws of Pakistan (inspired by his sense of camaraderie and allegiance to the army's institutional interests) might be in conflict with the letter and spirit of the Constitution of Pakistan? Has our history of repeated military intervention in politics resulted in the evolution of a concept of military professionalism that does not envision undermining loft conceptions of rule of law, civilian authority and constitutionalism as a vice? How do we go about strengthening rule of law in this country if khaki response to disclosures of legal and procedural impropriety is not regret and introspection, but self-righteousness laced with stubborn denials? http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=22487&Cat=9 _____________________________________ The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad. Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu

Hillary, clean up your backyard

Hillary, clean up your backyard.   Yvonne Ridley I wonder if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton really believes in the pompous invective that shoots from her lips with the rapidity of machine gunfire.   We had a classic example of it just the other day when she let rip in her grating, robotic monotones over a Moscow court's decision to jail an oil tycoon. To be fair to Ms Clinton, she was not alone. There was a whole gaggle of disapproving Foreign Ministers', who poured forth their ridiculous brand of Western arrogance, which has poisoned the international atmosphere for far too long. The US Secretary of State said that Mikhail Khodorkovsky's conviction raised "serious questions about selective prosecution and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations."   Although Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, were found guilty of theft and money laundering by a Moscow court, critics like Clinton say the trial constitutes revenge for the tycoon's questioning of a state monopoly on oil pipelines and propping up political parties that oppose the Kremlin. Clinton's censure was echoed by politicians in Britain and Germany, and Catherine Ashton, the EU Foreign Policy Chief, urged Moscow to "respect its international commitments in the field of human rights and the rule of law."   Now, while it may appear to be quite touching to see all these western leaders express their outrage over a trial involving the one-time richest and most powerful man in Russia's oil and gas industry, you have to ask where these moral guardians were when other unjust legal decisions were being made in the US courts. So, why have the Americans and Europeans rushed to make very public and official statements so quickly on a matter of oil and gas, in another country? Okay, so it is a rhetorical question!   But shouldn't Clinton put a sock in it? The USA is still squatting in Cuba overseeing the continuing festering mess caused by one of the biggest boil's on the face of human rights - yes, Guantanamo is approaching a decade of incarcerating men without charge or trial. At least, Khodorkovsky had his day in an open court and can appeal.   Instead of sticking her nose in to other country's courts, perhaps, the US Secretary of State would care to look into her own backyard and tell us why one of her soldiers was given a mere nine month sentence earlier this month after shooting unarmed civilians in Afghanistan?   And after he's served his sentence, the US army medic, Robert Stevens, can still remain in the army, ruled the military hearing. His defence was that he and other soldiers were purely acting on orders from a Squad Leader during a patrol in March in Kandahar. Five of the 12 soldiers named in the case are accused of premeditated murder in the most serious prosecution of atrocities by the US military personnel, since the war began in late 2001. Some even collected severed fingers and other human remains from the Afghan dead, as war trophies before taking photos with the corpses.   By comparison, just a few months earlier, Dr Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist, was given 86 years for attempting to shoot US soldiers…the alleged incident happened while she was in US custody, in Afghanistan. She did not shoot anyone although she was shot at point blank range by the soldiers. The critically injured Pakistani citizen was then renditioned for a trial in New York. The hearing was judged to be illegal and out of US jurisdiction by many international lawyers.   Did Clinton have anything to say about that? Did any of the Foreign Ministers' in the West raise these issues on any public platform anywhere in the world? Again, it's a rhetorical question! Of course, a few poorly trained US army grunts, scores of innocent Afghans, nearly 200 Arab men in Cuba and one female academic from Pakistan are pretty small fry compared to an oil-rich tycoon who does not like Vladamir Putin.   But being poor is not a crime.   Exactly how would the Obama administration have reacted, if Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticised the lack of even-handedness in the US judicial system and demanded Dr Aafia Siddiqui be repatriated? What would be the response, if Medvedev called an international press conference and demanded to know why 174 men are still being held in Guantanamo Bay without charge or trial?   Just for the record the US judicial system imposes life sentences for serious tax avoidance and laundering of criminally-received income - crimes for which the Russian tycoon has been found guilty. Sentencing will not take place until Moscow trial judge, Viktor Danilkin, finishes reading his 250-page verdict, which could take several days.   In her comments, Clinton said that the case had a "negative impact on Russia's reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate." How on earth can anyone treat the US Secretary of State seriously when she comes out with this sort of pot, kettle, and black rhetoric? This from a nation, which is morally and financially bankrupt, a country which introduced words like rendition and water-boarding into common day usage.   My advice to Clinton is, don't lecture anyone about human rights and legal issues until you clean up your own backyard. In fact, the next time she decides to open her mouth, perhaps, one of her aides can do us all a favour and ram in a slice of humble pie. ___________________ The writer is a British journalist, the European president of the International Muslim Women's Union, as well as being a patron of cage prisoners. http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/31-Dec-2010/Hillary-clean-up-your-own-backyard/

A diplomat who knows nothing about diplomacy

Our budding Kissinger   Zafar Hilaly   To support the travel expenses of a Mr Nasir Ali Khan, an optician turned foreign affairs expert, now Ambassador at Large, probably takes a hundred fold as much money as it does to support the life of a common man. And the funny thing is that it takes that much even if the common man works all year around while the Ambassador at Large does no work at all. Statistics to this effect were revealed in the National Assembly yesterday, in response to a question by a member of the opposition. Apparently in the space of 24 months Mr Nasir Ali Khan had visited 25 countries, some more than once, spending a total of 156 days outside the country at a cost of 15 million rupees to the national exchequer. On one trip to the US he stayed abroad on 'assignment' for as long as 18 days. That, apparently, is a record which is unequalled by any president, prime minister or foreign minister and one that will in all probability remain unchallenged. It would have been interesting if MNA Nighat Saleem, who asked the question in parliament, would have followed up the government's response by asking precisely what was the purpose of the Ambassador at Large's mission to Trinidad and Tobago. I must confess that after a sleepless night I am still unable to think of one unless he was representing the Islamic Republic at a Reggae fest. On reading the government's response I rang up some serving and retired contacts to ask them who exactly this budding Kissinger was and why was he being shielded from public eye almost as much as our nuclear assets. Guffaws of laughter greeted my questions. "Don't you know? He's a bum-chum of Shah Mehmood Qureshi since their school days," said one and all. Not believing that our foreign minister had assigned this particular gentleman a spanking new office at the prestigious third floor of the Foreign Office, and insisted on being accompanied by him on his visits abroad only because they had played marbles at school, I decided to snoop around. But snoop as much as I did, I discovered nothing to suggest otherwise. It then occurred to me that I must be looking in the wrong place and asked one of the most prominent and widely respected Pakistani journalists in Islamabad, who is also a columnist for several major international newspapers, whether he had met our 'Kissinger' or heard him dilate on foreign affairs and what he thought of him. Except relating he confirmed that he had met Mr Nasir Ali Khan the rest of what he said is unprintable. Never having met the Ambassador at Large personally, or heard him speak, on or off the record, or having read a word that he had written, I can't swear that it he is as clueless about his new job as is being alleged but, alas, one feels that he may be. In this regime, as we have discovered to our cost time and time again, there is simply no criterion to fill a post. Anyone can be slotted for any job. Appointments are made on the basis of blood relations, friendship, larceny and what have you. The disdain for qualifications, experience, aptitude, performance, merit, abounds with the candidate's lust for office, backed by lucre, often proving decisive. Of the ambassadors at large appointed by this regime, one used to be a computer operator at the World Bank; another was a restaurant owner in Dubai; a third had no fixed vocation and alarmingly no fixed address. Apparently there are more of whom one does not hear perhaps because they violated their bail bonds. Of course, the professions identified are perfectly respectable ones except that they are as far removed from the craft of diplomacy as this government's concern is for merit. About the only ambassador at large today, who has any experience of diplomacy, is Ambassador Zia Ispahani but unfortunately his experience was only judged sufficient for a solitary mission in the past two years, in stark contrast to the 30 assigned to Mr Nasir Ali Khan, the optician. Considering that on most of his 'missions' the foreign minister was also with him, one wonders what Mr Nasir's actual tasks were apart from being a factotum. And again, on this score too there is much lurid speculation in Islamabad. For a government to be perceived as having the right man for the job adds to its stature and, of course, its performance; and the opposite is true when fools seem to be in an overwhelming majority. In her second term, some of BB's advisers realising the politician's proclivity to get carried away by considerations other than qualifications, experience, aptitude, performance and merit, suggested that she confine her selection to top posts in the bureaucracy from a shortlist of three provided by a select group of advisers headed by a very experienced former civil servant. BB would have none of it. Politicians as a rule don't like their freedom to appoint, and sometimes anoint who they wish circumscribed by rules or even common sense. They love to flaunt their power. After suffering as much as they do, in the form of beatings, jail and torture when out of office, they hate being told that some or other rule prevents them from savoring their victory and appointing whoever they wish to a job. Just because the public has, for the moment, preferred their wisdom to that of their opponents they think they know best, and even though one of them paid for it with his life and BB's choices on occasions turned out to be wrong it's a habit that dies hard, as the Zardari-Gilani duo have amply demonstrated in their choice of candidates to fill important posts. Of course the performance of their opponents has been no better. Pakistan is one of those rare semi-functional democracies where legally the president/prime minister can go off walking on the hills around his mansion in Islamabad and return with an ambassador designate in tow. All he has to do before taking his shower is to sign a note purporting to 'be pleased to appoint' him as one. And that, by the looks of it, is how the current duo functions, except on the occasion when they spotted our peripatetic Ambassador at Large they were accompanied on their walk by the foreign minister who seems to have prevailed upon them to let his school chum join his diplomatic forays. http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=21654&Cat=9 The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com

NATO PLANS TO DOMINATE SOUTH ASIA

NATO weaves South Asian web By M K Bhadrakumar The (recent) Lisbon summit, in essence, confirmed that the NATO military presence in Afghanistan will continue even beyond 2014, which has been the timeline suggested by Afghan President Hamid Karzai for Kabul to be completely in charge of the security of the country. President Obama summed up: "Our goal is that the Afghans have taken the lead in 2014 and in the same way that we have transitioned in Iraq, we will have successfully transitioned so that we are still providing a training and support function." NATO may undertake combat operations beyond 2014 if and when a need arises. As Obama put it, all that is happening by 2014 is that the "NATO footprint in Afghanistan will have been significantly reduced. But beyond that, it's hard to anticipate exactly what is going to be necessary… I'll make that determination when I get there." Clearly, the billions of dollars that have been pumped into the upgrading of Soviet-era military bases in Afghanistan in the recent period and the construction of new military bases, especially in Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat regions bordering Central Asia and Iran, fall into perspective. Reaching out to India As the biggest South Asian power, India seems to have been quietly preparing for this moment, backtracking gradually from its traditional stance of seeking a "neutral" Afghanistan free of foreign military presence. Of course, the bottom line for the Indian government is that the foreign policy should be optimally harmonized with US regional strategies. Therefore, all signs are that India as a "responsible regional power" will not fundamentally regard the NATO military presence in zero-sum terms. Several considerations will influence the Indian approach in the coming period. One, India is an direct beneficiary of the US's "Greater Central Asia" strategy, which aims at drawing that region closer to South Asia by creating new linkages, especially economic. Second, India has no strong views regarding NATO's partnership programs in Central Asia - unlike Russia or China, which harbor disquiet over it. At a minimum, there is no conflict of interest between India and NATO on this score. On the outer side, India would see advantages if NATO indeed works on a strategy to "encircle" China in Central Asia. The US military base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, the induction of a fleet of AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft into Afghanistan, and so forth give the alliance certain capability already to monitor the Xinjiang and Tibet regions where China has located its missiles targeted at India. It is within the realms of possibility that NATO would at a future date deploy components of the US missile defense system in Afghanistan. Ostensibly directed against the nearby "rogue states", the missile defense system will challenge the Chinese strategic capability. Meanwhile, India is also developing its missile defense capabilities and future cooperation with the US in the sphere is on the cards. The stated Indian position so far has been that it will not identify with any military alliance or bloc. Having said that, it is also important to note that India enjoys observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] and is seeking full membership in it. There has been a dichotomy insofar as incrementally, India's contacts with NATO have been gathering steam. Contacts with NATO at the level of the Indian military establishment have been unobtrusive but have also become a regular affair. NATO delegations have been regularly interacting with Indian think tanks and the defense and foreign policy establishment in Delhi. Unsurprisingly, much of this interaction remains sequestered from public view even as the Indian establishment continues to mouth for public consumption its traditional aversion toward military alliances and blocs. Top Indian officials have crafted a new idiom calling for an "inclusive" security architecture for South Asia, a firm wedge leaving the door open for the inclusion of the extra-regional entities such as the US and/or NATO at some point. India probably perceives such "inclusiveness" as useful and necessary to balance China's rapidly growing profile in the South Asian region. Most certainly, India harbors the hope that a NATO presence in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future may not be a bad thing to happen, after all. Delhi regards NATO's continued participation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflicts to be a bulwark against the possibility of a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. Also, it is useful for India that the Western alliance continues to be seized of the paradigm (from the Indian perspective) that the core issue of regional security in South Asia is the Pakistani military's policy of using the Taliban militants to gain "strategic depth" and of conceiving terrorism as an instrument of state policy. India is acutely conscious that the US sensitivities regarding its interests are at odds with NATO forces' pressing need to elicit a full and genuine political and military support from Pakistan to work out an Afghan settlement that can withstand the threat of a Taliban takeover in Kabul. Again, given India's rivalry with China, Delhi watches with unease the US efforts to engage China in a geopolitical dialogue over Pakistan's long-term security, although logically, it ought to feel a stake in avoiding a regional upheaval in Pakistan and ought to welcome a constructive role by China in helping to stabilize the situation in Pakistan. In the year ahead, the thing to watch will be any paradigm shift in the direction of a cooperative NATO outreach toward the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO]. Russia has been assiduously cultivating a strand of thinking within the alliance that joint security undertakings with CSTO could foster and even render optimal NATO's effectiveness on a trans-regional basis. So far, the US has remained adamant about not conceding Russia's implicit claim of a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space. The CSTO summit meeting on December 10 points toward Moscow going ahead with the build up of its alliance also as a global security organization. Moscow seems to have concluded that any NATO enlistment of CSTO cooperation in the explosive area of the Afghan problem will be a protracted process, if at all - leave alone formal, direct links. With India, on the other hand, the US has been promoting interoperability, discussing the potentials of cooperation in meeting mutually threatening contingencies and developing genuine strategic cooperation. The massive induction of US-made weapons systems into the Indian armed forces that can be expected in the coming period will accelerate these processes, and it is entirely conceivable that at some point India may overcome its lingering suspicions regarding Western domination and establish formal links with NATO with a modest first step of forming a joint council. This train of thinking in Delhi will be significantly influenced by any pronounced eastward shift in NATO's center of gravity toward the Asia-Pacific region involving the East Asian powers, especially China. Reassuring Pakistan The conviction in New Delhi is that NATO interests in Afghanistan and Pakistani (military) objectives are ultimately irreconcilable and sooner rather than later the US will have to address the contradiction. India could be underestimating the criticality of Pakistan's role in the US regional strategy. The fact remains that geography dictates that Pakistan will always play a major role in ensuring the stability of Afghanistan. Arguably, India can be kept out of conflict resolution in Afghanistan, but Pakistan cannot be. Even countries that are friendly toward India - Russia, Turkey, Iran, Tajikistan - find it expedient to work with Pakistan. And towards that end, they are willing to acquiesce with Islamabad's "precondition" of keeping India at arm's length. In fact, India doesn't figure in a single regional format involved in the search for a political settlement in Afghanistan. Its involvement almost entirely devolves upon its cogitations with the US. There are any number of reasons why Pakistan's centrality in any search for conflict resolution in Afghanistan needs to be acknowledged. Afghanistan's subsistence economy cannot even survive today without trade and transit provided by Pakistan. The Afghan political elites, especially the Pashtun elites, view Pakistan as their single most important interlocutor. They may seek out India as a "balancer" when the Pakistani intrusiveness or belligerence becomes too much for them, but ultimately, they have to have dealings with Pakistan. Again, the Afghan insurgency is Pashtun-driven and the tribal kinships across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border are historical. Close to three million Afghan (Pashtun) refugees live in Pakistan. Pakistan wields decisive influence over a range of Afghan insurgent groups - Quetta Shura, Haqqani network, Hezb-i-Islami - and maintain extensive contacts with even groups that previously belonged to the Northern Alliance and spearheaded the anti-Taliban resistance, in particular, the "Mujahideen" leaders who fought the Soviet occupation such as Sibghatullah Mojaddidi, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Rasul Sayyaf, and others. Needless to say, the terrorist nexus operating in the region includes Pakistani groups, and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence continues to patronize some of them - and increasingly Pakistan is prepared to admit openly that they are its "strategic assets" inside Afghanistan to safeguard its long-term interests. Pakistan has invested heavily in men and material during the past two decades to gain "strategic depth" in Afghanistan and appears today to be every bit determined to influence any Afghan settlement. Over and above, NATO and the US heavily depends on the two routes through Pakistan - via North-West Frontier province and Baluchistan - to supply the troops in Afghanistan. The WikiLeaks disclosures have shown that the relationship between Pakistan and the US has been extremely complex. On the one hand, the US wields enormous influence on the Pakistani elites and the US diplomats blatantly interfere in Pakistan's domestic affairs - and the Pakistani politicians unabashedly seek American support for their shenanigans. But on the other hand, everything points to the limit of American power in Islamabad. Pakistan surely has an uncanny knack to hunker down and even defy the US when it comes to safeguarding its core concerns and vital interests. Having said that, while Pakistan may behave in a exasperating way - full of doublespeak and double dealings - and at times shows signs of "strategic defiance", Pakistan also is extremely pragmatic and is finely tuned into the US's critical needs at the operational level, as the policy on the US drone attacks in the tribal areas testify. WikiLeaks singles out two instances at least during the past year when the Pakistani military actually allowed the US forces to conduct operations inside Pakistan, completely disregarding the vehement "anti-Americanism" sweeping the country and quite contrary to its vehement public stance against any such erosion of Pakistani sovereignty and territorial integrity. The heart of the matter is that both Pakistan and the US are under strong compulsion to reconcile their divergent approaches and work toward an Afghan settlement. The main sticking point at the moment devolves upon the strategy currently pursued by US commander David Petraeus who hopes to degrade the insurgents so that the Americans can eventually talk with the Taliban leadership from a position of strength. Pakistan has the upper hand here since time is in its favor. Therefore, the likelihood of the US-Pakistani discords reaching a flashpoint in any given situation simply doesn't arise. A finished product of Afghan war This geopolitical reality is very much linked to NATO's future role in Afghanistan. US strategy toward an Afghan settlement visualizes the future role for NATO as the provider of security to the Silk Road that transports the multi-trillion dollar mineral wealth in Central Asia to the world market via the Pakistani port of Gwadar. In short, Pakistan is a key partner for NATO in this Silk Road project. The Afghan-Pakistan trade and transit agreement concluded in October was a historic milestone and was possible only because of Washington's sense of urgency. It stands out as the late Richard Holbrooke's fine legacy. Actually, Holbrooke, the US diplomacy point man in the region, sought and obtained India's tacit cooperation in these negotiations leading to the Afghan-Pakistan agreement, which shows the extent to which Delhi is also counting on Washington to smoothen the edges of the Afghan-Pakistan-India triangular equations regarding trade and transit issues. Without doubt, Pakistan is assured of a key role in the US regional strategy, which will keep foreign money flowing into Pakistan's economy. The Pakistani military will willingly accelerate the existing partnership programs with NATO and even upgrade them. The resuscitation of the Silk Road project to construct an oil and gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (the TAPI pipeline) will need to be seen as much more than a template of regional cooperation. The pipeline signifies a breakthrough in the longstanding Western efforts to access the fabulous mineral wealth of the Caspian and Central Asian region. Washington has been the patron saint of the TAPI concept since the early-1990s when the Taliban was conceived as its Afghan charioteer. The concept became moribund when the Taliban regime was driven out of power from Kabul. Now the wheel has come full circle with the project's incremental resuscitation since 2005, running parallel with the Taliban's fantastic return to the Afghan chessboard. TAPI's proposed commissioning coincides with the 2014 timeline for ending the NATO "combat mission" in Afghanistan. The US "surge" is concentrating on Helmand and Kandahar provinces through which the TAPI pipeline will eventually run. What an amazing string of coincidences! The NATO Strategic Concept adopted in the Washington summit in April 1999 has outlined that disruption of vital resources could impact on the alliance's security interests. Since then, NATO has been deliberating on its role in energy security, clarifying its role in the light of shifting global political and strategic realities. The Bucharest summit of the alliance in April 2008 deliberated on a report titled "NATO's Role in Energy Security", which identified the guiding principles as well as options and recommendations for further activities. The report specifically identified five areas where NATO can play a role. These included: information and intelligence fusion and sharing; projecting stability; advancing international and regional cooperation; supporting consequence management; and supporting the protection of critical infrastructure. The alliance already conducts projects focusing on the Southern Caucasus and Turkey - the Baku-Ceyhan crude oil pipeline and the Baku-Erzurum natural gas pipeline. In August this year, a new division was created within NATO's International Staff to exclusively handle "non-traditional risks and challenges", including energy security, terrorism, and such. On the map, the TAPI pipeline deceptively shows India as its final destination. What is overlooked, however, is that the route can be easily extended to the Pakistani port of Gwadar and connected with European markets, which is the ultimate objective. The onus is on each of the transit countries to secure the pipeline. Part of the Afghan stretch will be buried underground as a safeguard against attacks and local communities will be paid to guard it. But then, it goes without saying that Kabul will expect NATO to provide security cover, which, in turn, necessitates long-term Western military presence in Afghanistan. In sum, TAPI is the finished product of the US invasion of Afghanistan. It consolidates NATO's political and military presence in the strategic high plateau that overlooks Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan and China. TAPI provides a perfect setting for the alliance's future projection of military power for "crisis management" in Central Asia. Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Obamas Faux Pas

MICHAEL Wash Times Dec 30 2010 Mr. Obama's war

Why don't anti-war Democrats support military's soldiers both straight and not?

By Terry Michael

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The Washington Times

5:39 p.m., Thursday, December 30, 2010

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/afghan-report-2010/

Illustration: Afghanistan by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

Bottom of Form

Liberal Democrats in Congress fought hard for open service by homosexual soldiers, persuading some Republican politicians that it was politically smart to catch up with a fast-moving culture. So now, when will the theoretically anti-war party in Congress use its constitutionally mandated war powers to legislate against President Obama's elective atrocity in Afghanistan? When will they speak out for bringing home from that corrupt hellhole all the troops, straight and homosexual, young men and women, lingering in harm's way for no discernible national purpose after routing the Taliban a decade ago?

Mr. Obama was nominated by Democrats and elected by partisans and independents precisely because he presented himself as the noninterventionist in a field dominated by "liberal internationalist" warriors like Joseph R. Biden and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Inscrutably to those who thought they were electing an anti-war president, he then proceeded to form a government with a vice president and a secretary of state from the "neo-con lite" wing of the Democratic Party, the foreign-policy "experts" who are part of a self-proclaimed Beltway consensus perpetuating the liberty-threatening permanent state of war James Madison counseled against two centuries ago.

That consensus has another name, the military-industrial complex, which general and Republican President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address 50 years ago this coming Jan. 17, in the year Mr. Obama was born. Eisenhower is said to have called it the military-industrial-congressional complex in an early draft but to have decided not to gratuitously offend the branch of government at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Liberal congressional Democrats came to power in 2006 - just as Mr. Obama did in 2008 - in an electoral wave that rejected George W. Bush's war of choice in Iraq. They next averted their eyes as Mr. Obama caved to the military, industrial and congressional money machine, with a December 2009 West Point speech as stomach-churning for anti-war liberals and libertarians as was Mr. Bush's "Mission accomplished" stunt on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier six years earlier.

With substantial majorities in both the House and Senate, liberal congressional Democrats in 2009 abdicated their responsibility to reject Mr. Obama's war, just as in 2003 unprincipled conservative congressional Republicans colluded to pass the biggest social-welfare legislation since the Great Society, Mr. Bush's budget-busting prescription-drug pander to the elderly. Like the oxymoronic "big-government conservatism" that rendered many Republicans non-voters in 2006, Mr. Obama's interventionism left millions of Democrats demoralized in 2010.

Democratic apologists will claim Mr. Obama just did in Afghanistan what he said he would do in the campaign. Such courtesans conveniently forget that he also declared he would not insist that every American be required to buy health insurance. In each case, he was engaging in heat-of-the-moment tactics of a presidential nominating campaign, not usually known for producing thoughtful public policy when it comes time to govern. Just months after taking office, Mr. Obama reversed himself on a key element of his signature domestic-policy initiative, the insurance mandate at the center of lawsuits against the implementation of health care "reform." So, what hindered him - after months of public and private hand-wringing over Afghanistan - from concluding that America had no further business in "the graveyard of empires" with a government as corrupt as can be imagined?

The year 2011 brings another anniversary in addition to the 50th of Eisenhower's echoing of the Founders' disdain for standing armies, arms profiteering and the liberty infringement that results from fear-mongering employed to scare up popular support for spending blood and treasure. Twenty years before Ike's address, in the Feb. 17, 1941, issue of his immodestly named Life magazine, publisher Henry R. Luce christened the last 100 years of the second millennium "The American Century."

The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Luce represented the zealous strain of American exceptionalism, advocating the spread of liberal democracy with military intervention. It contrasted with the more modest view of America as an exemplar nation, encouraging adoption of our political and economic systems by imitation through indigenous movements for liberal democracy and free markets.

A debate over those two visions of the shining city on the hill is worth having today. Some countries may take exception to the "indispensable nation" status for America proclaimed by Bill Clinton in the last democratic administration, a grandiose vision now touted by his wife, the current secretary of state. Other citizens of the world may disagree and ask us to kindly mind our own damned business. But it takes at least two parties to engage in such serious discourse. Some of us therefore must ask: Where the hell are the anti-war Democrats?

Terry Michael is a former press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, who teaches college journalists about politics and writes "Thoughts from a Libertarian Democrat" at terrymichael.net.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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Sonny says:

14 minutes ago

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The American equation is simple; the more inept our leaders are; the slower our economy becomes. If the intervention of the government into the free market system has been such a good idea; then why are we experiencing this recessions? Why are we being told that we are in decline; it reminds me of the Jimmy Carter presidency where Carter blamed the countries woes on the malaise of the American people; not the bad policies coming out of Washington DC. We must unite under a common banner to change our political destiny or we will be led to the slaughter like sheep. We have no choice but bad choices at election time and any attempt to put common people into office gets criticized by the elitist who think they are the princes in Washington and in the media. The president has become a King of sorts and we the people are looked upon are surfs. The Tyranny must end or we shall have no future; for we shall surely be subjugated and demoralized so we will not see the passing of our freedoms. "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death' Let the revolution begin with me.

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6 hours, 22 minutes ago

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I think that health care reform is a great idea. I have type 1 diabetes and for me to get insurance, it was a nightmare until I found "Wise Health Insurance" search for them online and you can get affordable health insurance instantly.

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Deluding USA and Fooling the US Tax payer

MACGREGOR Wash Times Dec 30 2010 Afghan report 2010

Deluding ourselves from one failure to another

By Col. Douglas Macgregor

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The Washington Times

5:39 p.m., Thursday, December 30, 2010

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/afghan-report-2010-19193457/

Illustration: Afghanistan by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

 

 

American forces invaded Afghanistan more than nine years ago, and we still don't know whom we're fighting. It's hard to know who did the better job of playing us for fools a few weeks ago - the Afghan who passed himself off as the "moderate" Taliban leader, who was rewarded with American cash for his performance, or Hamid Karzai. All we can know at this point is that 150,000 U.S. and allied troops along with an equal number of civilian contractors are propping up a narco state in Kabul flush with cash from the opium trade and U.S. taxpayers.

Naturally, the four-stars in the Pentagon are in no hurry to deliver the bad news; the expensive and open-ended program of nation-building through counterinsurgency is irrelevant to the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating what little remains of al Qaeda living in the splendid isolation of northwestern Pakistan. Instead, it's easier to tell American troops they are breaking the Taliban, a breathtakingly irrelevant statement, fully the equal of "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten edifice will collapse" or "Mission accomplished."

No one in Washington is worried. Americans have short memories. The roads to Kabul and Baghdad were always paved with good intentions. Portrayed uncritically in the media as the means to win the hearts and minds of Muslim Arabs and Afghans through "good works," the false promise of nation-building through counterinsurgency made it hard for American politicians of both parties to defund the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Timelines for the emergence of a new, utopian republic on Iraqi soil were constructed with similar precision, only for us to watch as a succession of four-star Army generals replaced Iraq's secular, power-hungry Sunni Muslim Arab rulers with Iranian-allied Shiite Arab Islamists. Far from establishing a U.S.-friendly Iraqi government in Baghdad, as revealed in several of the confidential State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, counterinsurgency in Iraq turned out to be an expensive "Trojan horse" for nation-building, one that installed Iran's allies in power.

With the lion's share of Iraq's southern oil fields in Chinese hands and the Kurdish nationalists determined to control the country's largest oil reserves, more fighting in Iraq is inevitable. This sort of thing would almost be funny, in an insane sort of way, if such military leadership did not result in the pointless loss of American lives, undermine American strategic interests and erode the security and prosperity of the American people - the things the nation's four-stars are sworn to defend.

Fortunately, conditions are changing. When it comes down to a choice of spending trillions of American tax dollars to economically transform and police hostile Muslim societies with dysfunctional cultures or funding Medicare and Medicaid, entitlements will win, and the interventions will end.

When the budget ax falls, many inconvenient facts will come to light, unmasking the great deception that America confronted a serious military threat in the aftermath of Sept. 11, a deception promoted and fostered by politicians and ambitious generals who sought to gain from it. It will horrify and discourage Americans to learn we've bankrupted ourselves in a fight that always was analogous to clubbing baby seals. From 2001 onward, we never confronted armies, air forces or capable air defenses. Bottom line: There was no existential military threat to the United States or its NATO allies emanating from Afghanistan or the Middle East. There is none today.

It's too soon to tell, but reductions in defense spending may demonstrate that it's far less expensive to protect the United States from Islamist terrorism as well as the criminality flooding in from Mexico and Latin America by controlling our borders and immigration. We must, however, stop wasting American blood and treasure on misguided military interventions designed to drag Muslim Arabs and Afghans through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in the space of a few years, at gunpoint. They will have to do these things themselves.

For the time being, no one will say these things. It's easier to go, in Winston Churchill's words, "from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" and nurture the money flow to Washington.

Retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, is executive vice president of Burke-Macgregor Group. His newest book, "Warrior's Rage," was published by Naval Institute Press.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.