CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA by Prof. Koenraad Elst

Discussion:

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and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-27 01:44:00 UTC

[ Subject: 'CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA' by Koenraad Elst
[ From: Dr. Jai Maharaj
[ Date: March 23, 1999

Forwarded article from "indian lady" <***@erols.com>

CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA BY PROF KOENRAAD ELST

http://www.eu.spiritweb.org/HinduismToday/94-09-Caste.html

Sub Verdict from Belgium

Last month, two ardent Hindus battled out the controversial pros
and cons of caste. This month's assessment, from Europe, focuses on
history and how jati and varna have, for the most part, helped
rather than hurt Hinduism.

By Prof. Koenraad Elst

In an inter-faith debate, most Hindus can easily be put on the
defensive with a single word-caste. Any anti-Hindu polemist can be
counted on to allege that "the typically Hindu caste system is the
most cruel apartheid, imposed by the barbaric white Aryan invaders
on the gentle dark-skinned natives." Here's a more balanced and
historical account of this controversial institution.

Merits of the Caste System The caste system is often portrayed as
the ultimate horror. Inborn inequality is indeed unacceptable to us
moderns, but this does not preclude that the system has also had
its merits.

Caste is perceived as an "exclusion-from," but first of all it is a
form of "belonging-to," a natural structure of solidarity. For this
reason, Christian and Muslim missionaries found it very difficult
to lure Hindus away from their communities. Sometimes castes were
collectively converted to Islam, and Pope Gregory XV (1621-23)
decreed that the missionaries could tolerate caste distinction
among Christian converts; but by and large, caste remained an
effective hurdle to the destruction of Hinduism through conversion.
That is why the missionaries started attacking the institution of
caste and in particular the brahmin caste. This propaganda has
bloomed into a full-fledged anti-brahminism, the Indian equivalent
of anti-Semitism. Every caste had a large measure of autonomy, with
its own judiciary, duties and privileges, and often its own
temples. Inter-caste affairs were settled at the village council by
consensus; even the lowest caste had veto power. This autonomy of
intermediate levels of society is the antithesis of the
totalitarian society in which the individual stands helpless before
the all-powerful state. This decentralized structure of civil
society and of the Hindu religious commonwealth has been crucial to
the survival of Hinduism under Muslim rule. Whereas Buddhism was
swept away as soon as its monasteries were destroyed, Hinduism
retreated into its caste structure and weathered the storm.

Caste also provided a framework for integrating immigrant
communities: Jews, Zoroastrians and Syrian Christians. They were
not only tolerated, but assisted in efforts to preserve their
distinctive traditions.

Typically Hindu? It is routinely claimed that caste is a uniquely
Hindu institution. Yet, counter examples are not hard to come by.
In Europe and elsewhere, there was (or still is) a hierarchical
distinction between noblemen and commoners, with nobility only
marrying nobility. Many tribal societies punished the breach of
endogamy rules with death.

Coming to the Indian tribes, we find Christian missionaries
claiming that "tribals are not Hindus because they do not observe
caste." In reality, missionary literature itself is rife with
testimonies of caste practices among tribals. A spectacular example
is what the missions call "the Mistake:" the attempt, in 1891, to
make tribal converts in Chhotanagpur inter-dine with converts from
other tribes. It was a disaster for the mission. Most tribals
renounced Christianity because they chose to preserve the taboo on
inter-dining. As strongly as the haughtiest brahmin, they refused
to mix what God hath separated.

Endogamy and exogamy are observed by tribal societies the world
over. The question is therefore not why Hindu society invented this
system, but how it could preserve these tribal identities even
after outgrowing the tribal stage of civilization. The answer lies
largely in the expanding Vedic culture's intrinsically respectful
and conservative spirit, which ensured that each tribe could
preserve its customs and traditions, including its defining custom
of tribal endogamy.

Description and History The Portuguese colonizers applied the term
caste, "lineage, breed," to two different Hindu institutions: jati
and varna. The effective unit of the caste system is the jati,
birth-unit, an endogamous group into which you are born, and within
which you marry. In principle, you can only dine with fellow
members, but the pressures of modern life have eroded this rule.
The several thousands of jatis are subdivided in exogamous clans,
gotra. This double division dates back to tribal society.

By contrast, varna is the typical functional division of an
advanced society-the Indus/Saraswati civilization, 3rd millennium,
bce. The youngest part of the Rg-Veda describes four classes:
learned brahmins born from Brahma's mouth, martial kshatriya-born
from his arms; vaishya entrepreneurs born from His hips and shudra
workers born from His feet. Everyone is a shudra by birth. Boys
become dwija, twice-born, or member of one of the three upper
varnas upon receiving the sacred thread in the upanayana ceremony.

The varna system expanded from the Saraswati-Yamuna area and got
firmly established in the whole of Aryavarta (Kashmir to Vidarbha,
Sindh to Bihar). It counted as a sign of superior culture setting
the arya, civilized, heartland apart from the surrounding mleccha,
barbaric, lands. In Bengal and the South, the system was reduced to
a distinction between brahmins and shudras. Varna is a ritual
category and does not fully correspond to effective social or
economic status. Thus, half of the princely rulers in British India
were shudras and a few were brahmins, though it is the kshatriya
function par excellence. Many shudras are rich, many brahmins
impoverished.

The Mahabharata defines the varna qualities thus: "He in whom you
find truthfulness, generosity, absence of hatred, modesty, goodness
and self-restraint, is a brahmana. He who fulfills the duties of a
knight, studies the scriptures, concentrates on acquisition and
distribution of riches, is a kshatriya. He who loves cattle-
breeding, agriculture and money, is honest and well-versed in
scripture, is a vaishya. He who eats anything, practises any
profession, ignores purity rules, and takes no interest in
scriptures and rules of life, is a shudra." The higher the varna,
the more rules of self-discipline are to be observed. Hence, a jati
could collectively improve its status by adopting more demanding
rules of conduct, e.g. vegetarianism. A person's second name
usually indicates his jati or gotra. Further, one can use the
following varna titles: Sharma (shelter, or joy) indicates the
brahmin, Varma (armour) the kshatriya, Gupta (protected) the
vaishya and Das (servant) the shudra. In a single family, one
person may call himself Gupta (varna), another Agrawal (jati), yet
another Garg (gotra). A monk, upon renouncing the world, sheds his
name along with his caste identity.

Untouchability Below the caste hierarchy are the untouchables, or
harijan (literally "God's people"), dalits ("oppressed"), paraiah
(one such caste in South India), or scheduled castes. They make up
about 16% of the Indian population, as many as the upper castes
combined.

Untouchability originates in the belief that evil spirits surround
dead and dying substances. People who work with corpses, body
excretions or animal skins had an aura of danger and impurity, so
they were kept away from mainstream society and from sacred
learning and ritual. This often took grotesque forms: thus, an
untouchable had to announce his polluting proximity with a rattle,
like a leper.

Untouchability is unknown in the Vedas, and therefore repudiated by
neo-Vedic reformers like Dayanand Saraswati, Narayan Guru, Gandhiji
and Savarkar. In 1967, Dr. Ambedkar, a dalit by birth and fierce
critic of social injustice in Hinduism and Islam, led a mass
conversion to Buddhism, partly on the (unhistorical) assumption
that Buddhism had been an anti-caste movement. The 1950
constitution outlawed untouchability and sanctioned positive
discrimination programs for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
Lately, the Vishva Hindu Parishad has managed to get even the most
traditionalist religious leaders on the anti-untouchability
platform, so that they invite harijans to Vedic schools and train
them as priests. In the villages, however, pestering of dalits is
still a regular phenomenon, occasioned less by ritual purity issues
than by land and labor disputes. However, the dalits' increasing
political clout is accelerating the elimination of untouchability.

Caste Conversion In the Mahabharata, Yuddhishthira affirms that
varna is defined by the qualities of head and heart, not by one's
birth. Krishna teaches that varna is defined by one's activity
(karma) and quality (guna). Till today, it is an unfinished debate
to what extent one's "quality" is determined by heredity or by
environmental influence. And so, while the hereditary view has been
predominant for long, the non-hereditary conception of varna has
always been around as well, as is clear from the practice of varna
conversion. The most famous example is the 17th-century freedom
fighter Shivaji, a shudra who was accorded kshatriya status to
match his military achievements. The geographical spread of Vedic
tradition was achieved through large-scale initiation of local
elites into the varna order. From 1875 onwards, the Arya Samaj has
systematically administered the "purification ritual" (shuddhi) to
Muslim and Christian converts and to low-caste Hindus, making the
dwija. Conversely, the present policy of positive discrimination
has made upper-caste people seek acceptance into the favored
Scheduled Castes.

Veer Savarkar, the ideologue of Hindu nationalism, advocated
intermarriage to unify the Hindu nation even at the biological
level. Most contemporary Hindus, though now generally opposed to
caste inequality, continue to marry within their respective jati
because they see no reason for their dissolution.

Racial Theory of Caste Nineteenth-century Westerners projected the
colonial situation and the newest race theories on the caste
system: the upper castes were white invaders lording it over the
black natives. This outdated view is still repeated ad-nauseam by
anti-Hindu authors: now that "idolatry" has lost its force as a
term of abuse, "racism" is a welcome innovation to demonize
Hinduism. In reality, India is the region where all skin color
types met and mingled, and you will find many brahmins as black as
Nelson Mandela. Ancient "Aryan" heroes like Rama, Krishna,
Draupadi, Ravana (a brahmin) and a number of Vedic seers were
explicitly described as being dark-skinned.

But doesn't varna mean "skin color?" The effective meaning of varna
is "splendor, color," and hence "distinctive quality" or "one
segment in a spectrum." The four functional classes constitute the
"colors" in the spectrum of society. Symbolic colors are allotted
to the varna on the basis of the cosmological scheme of "three
qualities" (triguna): white is sattva (truthful), the quality
typifying the brahmin; red is rajas (energetic), for the kshatriya;
black is tamas (inert, solid), for the shudra; yellow is allotted
to the vaishya, who is defined by a mixture of qualities. Finally,
caste society has been the most stable society in history. Indian
communists used to sneer that "India has never even had a
revolution." Actually, that is no mean achievement.

Address: Professor Koenraad Elst, PO box 103, 2000 Leuven 3,
Belgium. Dr. Elst is a Belgian scholar who has extensively studied
the current socio-political situation in India. Keenly interested
in Asian philosophies and traditions from his early years, he has
studied yoga, aikido and other oriental disciplines. Between 1988
and 1993 he spent much of his time in India doing research at the
prestigious Banaras Hindu University.

End of forwarded article

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
"A king, though endowed with little prowess,
starting on an expedition at the proper time, in
view of the good positions of the planets, achieves
greatness that is eulogised in the scriptures."
- Brhat Samhita, 104.60
Om Shanti

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cogitoergosum

2010-09-27 08:15:14 UTC

Permalink

WW III
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/27/ww-iii/

WW III Weapon

Stuxnet worm mystery: What’s the cyber weapon after?

Stuxnet worm attack has been centered on Iran, studies show. Experts
offer dueling theories as to the cyber weapon’s target: Iran’s Bushehr
nuclear power plant or the nuclear fuel centrifuge facility at Natanz?

In this 2008 file photo released by the Iranian President’s Office,
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, visits the Natanz
Uranium Enrichment Facility some 200 miles south of Tehran. Some cyber
security experts say the Natanz plant could be the target of the
Stuxnet worm.
Iranian President’s Office/AP/File

By Mark Clayton, Staff writer / September 24, 2010

Top industrial control systems experts have now gleaned enough about
the Stuxnet worm to classify it as a cyber superweapon. But the
mystery of what its target is – or was – remains unsolved, though
guesswork about its mission is intensifying among those who have
studied Stuxnet’s complicated code.

Educated guesses about what Stuxnet, described as the world’s first
cyber guided missile, is programmed to destroy include the reactor for
Iran’s new Bushehr nuclear power plant, as well as Iran’s nuclear fuel
centrifuge plant in Natanz. Both facilities are part of Tehran’s
nuclear program, which Iranian officials say is for peaceful purposes
but that many other countries, including the United States, suspect
are part of an atom-bombmaking apparatus.

The Bushehr power plant was supposed to be humming by now, but is not
– a possible sign that Stuxnet impaired one of its vital systems, says
one computer security expert. But another analyst who has also been
assisting on the Stuxnet case says the worm’s internal order makes
that scenario unlikely. The nuclear fuel centrifuge plant in the
Iranian town of Natanz is a better fit and a larger nuclear threat, he
says.

There is no independent confirmation that Bushehr or Natanz or
anyplace else has been attacked by a directed cyberweapon. But
competing theories are emerging about Stuxnet’s target. Here are two
from a cybersecurity duo from Germany who have worked, separately, on
deconstructing Stuxnet – and why they think what they do.

Ralph Langner is no Middle East policy wonk or former diplomat privy
to insider information. He is a German software security engineer with
a particular expertise in industrial control system software created
by industrial giant Siemens for use in factories, refineries, and
power plants worldwide.

This week, Mr. Langner became the first person to detail Stuxnet’s
peculiar attack features. He explained, for example, how Stuxnet
“fingerprints” each industrial network it infiltrates to determine if
it has identified the right system to destroy. Stuxnet was developed
to attack just one target in the world, Langner says and other experts
confirm. His best guess as to the target?

During an interview with the Monitor about Stuxnet’s technical
capabilities, Langner pointed at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. He
cites shards of information he has gleaned from open sources,
including news accounts, as well as his technical understanding of the
attack software. Here are his main arguments for his case.

Iran is the epicenter of the Stuxnet infection. Geographic studies by
Microsoft, Symantec, and others show the majority of infections to be
in Iran, making it a likely location for Stuxnet’s presumed target.

• Bushehr is a high-value target. Damaging the nuclear power plant
would deal a blow to Iran – a blow that would be worth the
considerable time and money a government would expend to develop such
as sophisticated cyberweapon.

• Concern about Bushehr is high among nations with cyberwar
capability. The imminent completion of the nuclear plant has roiled
the international community. Dismayed parties include the US and
Israel, in particular. But China, Russia, and France also are presumed
to have sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities.

• Bushehr uses Siemens software and equipment. Stuxnet appears to
target Siemens SCADA systems. Bushehr was built largely with equipment
from Siemens, the German industrial giant that began the reactors in
the 1970s but later pulled out of the project. The plant still uses
industrial control software created by Siemens, but it has been
installed by Russian contractors.

• Stuxnet spreads via USB memory sticks. A steady flow of Russian
contractors to the Bushehr construction site ensured outside access to
the plant’s computer system. USB memory sticks are an invaluable tool
for engineers during construction of sophisticated computer-intensive
projects. Contractors building the plant would likely have made wide
use of them – giving Stuxnet a way to move into the plant without
having to rely on the Internet.

• Bushehr’s cyberdefenses are dubious. A journalist’s photo from
inside the Bushehr plant in early 2009, which Langner found on a
public news website, shows a computer-screen schematic diagram of a
process control system – but also a small dialog box on the screen
with a red warning symbol. Langner says the image on the computer
screen is of a Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) industrial software control system called Simatic WinCC – and
the little warning box reveals that the software was not installed or
configured correctly, and was not licensed. That photo was a red flag
that the nuclear plant was vulnerable to a cyberattack, he says.

“Bushehr has all kinds of missiles around it to protect it from an
airstrike,” Langner says. “But this little screen showed anyone that
understood what that picture meant … that these guys were just simply
begging to be [cyber]attacked.”

The picture was reportedly taken on Feb. 25, 2009, by which time the
reactor should have had its cybersystems up and running and
bulletproof, Langner says. The photo strongly suggests that they were
not, he says. That increases the likelihood that Russian contractors
unwittingly spread Stuxnet via their USB drives to Bushehr, he says.

“The attackers realized they could not get to the target simply
through the Internet – a nuclear plant is not reachable that way,” he
says. “But the engineers who commission such plants work very much
with USBs like those Stuxnet exploited to spread itself. They’re using
notebook computers and using the USBs to connect to one machine, then
maybe going 20 yards away to another machine.”

In the end, the evidence pointing most strongly toward Bushehr is
Bushehr itself, Langner says. “What would be the one prime target that
would be worth the whole scenario – all the money, the teams of
experts needed to develop Stuxnet? Bushehr is the one target that
might be worth the cost.”

Not so fast, says Frank Rieger, a German researcher with GSMK, a
Berlin encryption firm that has been helping governments on the
Stuxnet case, who is familiar with the internal architecture of
Stuxnet. His theory is that Stuxnet’s target is a different facility
in Iran: Natanz.

The Natanz nuclear centrifuge facility is widely condemned as a
nuclear weapons threat. It currently produces low-enriched uranium for
power plants, but nonproliferation experts it could be converted to
produce highly enriched uranium fuel for use in nuclear weapons.

Two things in particular may make Natanz a more likely Stuxnet target,
Mr. Rieger says.

• Stuxnet had a halt date. Internal time signatures in Stuxnet appear
to prevent it from spreading across computer systems after July 2009.
That probably means the attack had to be conducted by then – though
such time signatures are not certain.

• Stuxnet appears designed to take over centrifuges’ programmable
logic controllers. Natanz has thousands of identical centrifuges and
identical programmable logic controllers (PLCs), tiny computers for
each centrifuge that oversee the centrifuge’s temperature, control
valves, operating speed, and flow of cooling water. Stuxnet’s internal
design would allow the malware to take over PLCs one after another, in
a cookie-cutter fashion.

“It seems like the parts of Stuxnet dealing with PLCs have been
designed to work on multiple nodes at once – which makes it fit well
with a centrifuge plant like Natanz,” Rieger says. By contrast,
Bushehr is a big central facility with many disparate PLCs performing
many different functions. Stuxnet seems focused on replicating its
intrusion across a lot of identical units in a single plant, he says.

Natanz also may have been hit by Stuxnet in mid-2009, Rieger says. He
notes that “a serious, recent, nuclear accident” was reported at that
time on WikiLeaks, the same organization that recently revealed US
Afghanistan-war documents. About the same time, the BBC reported that
the head of Iran’s nuclear agency had resigned.

Lending some credence to the notion that Stuxnet attacked more than a
year ago, he says, is the International Atomic Energy Agency’s finding
of a sudden 15 percent drop in the number of working centrifuges at
the Natanz site. Rieger posted that data on his blog.

“Bushehr didn’t present the immediate threat that Natanz and the other
centrifuge plants did at that time and still do,” Rieger says. “What
is clear is that there was an enormous amount of effort spent to do
Stuxnet in this way, and it all points [to a target with] a high level
of priority assigned to it by the people who did it.”

Virus hits Iran nuclear programme
By Daniel Dombey in Washington and agencies

Published: September 27 2010 01:56 | Last updated: September 27 2010
01:56

Iran confirmed on Sunday that its nuclear programme had been affected
by a mysterious computer virus, but sought to play down the impact.

Mahmoud Jafari, head of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, said the
Stuxnet worm had only affected staff computers rather than the system
running the reactor itself.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Iranian president sours nuclear talks hopes – Sep-23.Sunni-led Arab
states on alert over Shia Iran – Sep-23.UN powers ready for new talks
with Iran – Sep-23.Russia axes missile deal with Iran – Sep-22.Gulf
states in $123bn US arms spree – Sep-20.Iran fear triggers arms surge
– Sep-20..“A team is inspecting several computers to remove the
malware … Major systems of the plant have not been damaged,” he told
the official IRNA news agency.

But Iran’s state-run Mehr news agency reported that the IP addresses
of 30,000 computer systems infected by the worm had also been
detected.

Stuxnet, the first program designed to cause serious damage in the
physical world, has hit an unknown number of power plants, pipelines
and factories over the past year.

Since Iran has suffered most of the infections, questions have been
raised about whether the virus is connected to western governments’
top secret sabotage campaign against Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Ashgear Zarean, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, insisted
that precautions had prevented the worm from hitting Bushehr.

“It is expected that the vigilance and skills of Iranian experts would
once again thwart the cyber-warfare of the enemies,” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our
article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute
by email or post to the web.

…and I am Sid Harth

Conflict, Hot Off The Presses, News, Views and Reviews, Terrorism

27/09/2010

« Wanted Urgently: Snake Charmers

and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-27 08:18:46 UTC

Permalink

navanavonmilita

2010-09-27 13:17:22 UTC

Permalink

My dear uncle Osama,
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/27/my-dear-uncle-osama/

U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials
are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet,
arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects
is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of
by telephone.

Read All Comments (18)

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that
enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like
BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software
that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be
technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The
mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted
messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers
next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs
with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security
services around the world face the same problem, it could set an
example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge
implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet
revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that
take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the
Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and
make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used
to function.”

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is
reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative
powers.

“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,” said Valerie E.
Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving
our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the
public safety and national security.”

Investigators have been concerned for years that changing
communications technology could damage their ability to conduct
surveillance. In recent months, officials from the F.B.I., the Justice
Department, the National Security Agency, the White House and other
agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word
statutory language defining who counts as a communications service
provider, according to several officials familiar with the
deliberations.

But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate
from servers abroad, like Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of
BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into
conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability
to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.

In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already
required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called
the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. It aimed to
ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact
during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital
networks and cellphones.

Often, investigators can intercept communications at a switch operated
by the network company. But sometimes — like when the target uses a
service that encrypts messages between his computer and its servers —
they must instead serve the order on a service provider to get
unscrambled versions.

Like phone companies, communication service providers are subject to
wiretap orders. But the 1994 law does not apply to them. While some
maintain interception capacities, others wait until they are served
with orders to try to develop them.

The F.B.I.’s operational technologies division spent $9.75 million
last year helping communication companies — including some subject to
the 1994 law that had difficulties — do so. And its 2010 budget
included $9 million for a “Going Dark Program” to bolster its
electronic surveillance capabilities.

Beyond such costs, Ms. Caproni said, F.B.I. efforts to help retrofit
services have a major shortcoming: the process can delay their ability
to wiretap a suspect for months.

Moreover, some services encrypt messages between users, so that even
the provider cannot unscramble them.

There is no public data about how often court-approved surveillance is
frustrated because of a service’s technical design.

But as an example, one official said, an investigation into a drug
cartel earlier this year was stymied because smugglers used peer-to-
peer software, which is difficult to intercept because it is not
routed through a central hub. Agents eventually installed surveillance
equipment in a suspect’s office, but that tactic was “risky,” the
official said, and the delay “prevented the interception of pertinent
communications.”

Moreover, according to several other officials, after the failed Times
Square bombing in May, investigators discovered that the suspect,
Faisal Shahzad, had been communicating with a service that lacked
prebuilt interception capacity. If he had aroused suspicion
beforehand, there would have been a delay before he could have been
wiretapped.

To counter such problems, officials are coalescing around several of
the proposal’s likely requirements:

¶ Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to
unscramble them.

¶ Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States
must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.

¶ Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must
redesign their service to allow interception.

Providers that failed to comply would face fines or some other
penalty. But the proposal is likely to direct companies to come up
with their own way to meet the mandates. Writing any statute in
“technologically neutral” terms would also help prevent it from
becoming obsolete, officials said.

Even with such a law, some gaps could remain. It is not clear how it
could compel compliance by overseas services that do no domestic
business, or from a “freeware” application developed by volunteers.

In their battle with Research in Motion, countries like Dubai have
sought leverage by threatening to block BlackBerry data from their
networks. But Ms. Caproni said the F.B.I. did not support filtering
the Internet in the United States.

Still, even a proposal that consists only of a legal mandate is likely
to be controversial, said Michael A. Sussmann, a former Justice
Department lawyer who advises communications providers.

“It would be an enormous change for newly covered companies,” he said.
“Implementation would be a huge technology and security headache, and
the investigative burden and costs will shift to providers.”

Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring
interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be
exploited by hackers.

Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor,
pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that
hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to
spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.

“I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start
building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

Susan Landau, a Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study fellow and
former Sun Microsystems engineer, argued that the proposal would raise
costly impediments to innovation by small startups.

“Every engineer who is developing the wiretap system is an engineer
who is not building in greater security, more features, or getting the
product out faster,” she said.

Moreover, providers of services featuring user-to-user encryption are
likely to object to watering it down. Similarly, in the late 1990s,
encryption makers fought off a proposal to require them to include a
back door enabling wiretapping, arguing it would cripple their
products in the global market.

But law enforcement officials rejected such arguments. They said
including an interception capability from the start was less likely to
inadvertently create security holes than retrofitting it after
receiving a wiretap order.

They also noted that critics predicted that the 1994 law would impede
cellphone innovation, but that technology continued to improve. And
their envisioned decryption mandate is modest, they contended, because
service providers — not the government — would hold the key.

“No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their
nose at a U.S. court order,” Ms. Caproni said. “They can promise
strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide
us plain text.”

23 Readers’ Comments

.1.George P. Hickey Seattle, WA September 27th, 2010 8:02 am

The Obama administration is taking the civil rights abuses of the Bush
Administration to new heights. We Americans live in a surveillance
state governed by a President who, just like the previous one, claims
the right to imprison and assassinate American citizens without a
trial.

Consider also, that all three branches of our government are
controlled by powerful insatiable profit seeking corporations, and the
description of this country as a Democratic nation of laws rings quite
hollow.
Recommended by 23 Readers

.2.Jon Seattle September 27th, 2010 8:02 am

Big Brother Obama is watching. Dick Cheney would be proud.

If anyone doesn’t think we are already a corporate controlled police
state, then they are in serious denial.

Some people might refer to that type of state as fascism.
Recommended by 20 Readers

.3.Linda Joy Adams Colbert, OK September 27th, 2010 8:04 am

I thought they were already monitoring all Internet commenication
check ing for code words. or is it not yet legal to use the info in
court? I have facebook friends all over the world. most of them have
pastor or evangelist in front of their name so if the govt
‘eavesdroppers’ want to join our prayer chat lines please feel free to
sign up and join in. This world can use all the prayer help
possible.Linda Joy Adams
Recommended by 1 Reader

.4.Darryl Williamstown, MA September 27th, 2010 8:04 am

I am sick and tired of the legislature yielding to the desire of the
administration in power by gutting the 4th Amendment. Why is it that
all administrations, both liberal and conservative, want to have the
power to infringe upon our privacy rights under the guise of
“security” or “safety”?
Recommended by 21 Readers

.5.HIGHLIGHT (what’s this?) Jeffrey Atwood 90069 September 27th,
20108:04 am

Will this result in another end-run around the FISA (Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act)? Will we return to the J. Edgar Hoover
era of illegal wiretaps? It seems like the government manages to cry
“state secrets” every time their methods are questioned. The Bush
Administration made a mockery of due process by ignoring the FISA
court, pushing through the oxymoronic Patriot Act, and tapping into
the Internet (that AT&T switching center tap revealed by Max Klein).
Recommended by 16 Readers

6.Chuck Swanson Green Valley, AZ September 27th, 2010 8:07 am

THE POLICE STATE GETS MORE AND MORE SOPHISTICATED EVERY DAY.

I am very glad I am 70 and won’t have to put up with this, but I am
very sorry for my six grandchildren.

./
Recommended by 11 Readers

.7.Jester James Pennsylvania September 27th, 2010 8:07 am

yea… you mean Big Brother isn’t already reading my email? or does Big
Brother just want to make it legal and easier?
Recommended by 8 Readers

.8.jane c.arkansas September 27th, 2010 8:07 am

Obama and the Democrats are trying to turn this country into a police
state. They must be stopped
Recommended by 8 Readers

.9.paul anthony australia September 27th, 2010 8:11 am

excellent… it needs to be done yesterday. post haste…! there will be a
mammoth dark hole in tracking abillity if this is not put in place. i
can encrypt straight from my phone,beleive me , you need this to be
put in place.if i were to use what is available at my fingertips right
now this minute,within 30minutes i would be able to make fresh contact
with many groups and persons of intrest”if you get my drift”and it
would only take a few seconds after that to encrypt a message and
start trouble. i in no way mean to cause panic,im not saying there is
an impending attack,but when you deal with terrorism and the likes of
modern cyber crime, you need to be on top of your game…! your privacy
is still intact. i do not wish to enter into a debate with anyone on
this topic, “there is nothing wrong with debate,but my veiws on this
topic are unchanging,its vital” paul anthony
Recommended by 2 Readers

.10.Arbuckle Doc Arbuckle Mountains September 27th, 2010 8:12 am

They’ve said, for a long time, that if you build a better lock, you
will meet a better grade of lockpicker; is the government having a
problem, recruiting the best of the lockpickers, or what??? ~ Perhaps,
someone should explain, to them, that this is a new century!!! ~ Why
should the government expect everyone to use 19th century technology,
in the 21st century, simply because, that is the extent of THEIR
technical abilty??? ~ Perhaps, they might consider, hireing s few pre-
teenagers, who really understand “Modern” communications!!!!
Recommended by 3 Readers

.11.Me underground Secret hiding place September 27th, 2010 8:12 am

I’d like to comment but uh……..
Recommended by 6 Readers

.12.Concept P Boro September 27th, 2010 8:12 am

Big Brother is watching you
Recommended by 1 Reader

.13.Raffi LA September 27th, 2010 8:12 am

America, the land of the free…
Recommended by 1 Reader

.14.Dave Europe September 27th, 2010 8:19 am

You’ve got to keep in mind that the people who will administer
internet wire-tapping (e.g., CIA, Mossad) are the very same ones who
came up with the Stuxnet worm — and that’s not very inspiring . . .
Recommended by 2 Readers

.15.tom frantz ashland oregon September 27th, 2010 8:20 am

Like we really need this after the Patriot Act. Orwellian Nightmare!!!

.16.M Seattle, WA September 27th, 2010 8:20 am

I’ll take crippled law enforcement over the outlawing of true
encryption.

.17.ekeizer4 Oregon September 27th, 2010 8:21 am

Isn’t part of the Internet’s appeal that no single country “owns” it?
Even China can only filter the Internet; it can’t regulate what
appears online beyond its own cyber-walls. How could the U.S. enforce
a law that it wants to apply not only to large companies but anonymous
hackers in basements halfway across the world? A corporation that
wishes to do business in the U.S. might follow the law, but what
authority would American law enforcement have over random people using
peer-to-peer services? If the U.S. thinks it can act as the world’s
Internet police, it is sadly mistaken.

.18.RJB Canada September 27th, 2010 8:21 am

When is the tyranny of increased police powers and endless invasions
of privacy going to end? “officials” should really read “The Gestapo
are preparing to seek….” It is clearly time to wake up to the fact
that the threats to national security are exaggerated and spurious and
too often concocted for ulterior motives. If they can’t do the job
with the powers they now have their competence is questionable.

.19.Janet Lafayette September 27th, 2010 8:24 am

There’s no limit to the American government’s willingness to limit
freedom in its quest to protect freedom. ~~Anon.

.20.Vigdor Schreibman Washington, DC September 27th, 2010 8:24 am

The problem with this proposal, and the article, intself, is the
presumption that US federal and state police agency presently abide by
the law. This is not true. These police agencies have the power, if
not the legal authority in my experience, to simply disregard the law
whenever they feel they should, as Bush era policies have shown, to
best achieve their police goals.

.21.WKH Vermont September 27th, 2010 8:25 am

AS long as court judges with national security and privacy rights
experience must be persuaded of the need, then this unfortunately is
probably the price the average citizen must pay to maintain the last
vestages of value we once called freedom. The perpetrators of the
September 11th national tragedy have surely won. AS a society, do we
value the mirage of safety(national security) over the social
responsbilties of freedom ? This reader believes the gamblers of Wall
Street who bets are hedged by the national treasury are the greater
security risk than a handful of misguided religious zealots.

.22.HJ Boitel New York September 27th, 2010 8:25 am

This article is disappointing since it makes not effort to inform the
reader as to the standards that the proposed net-tapping laws would
impose for the issuance of net-tap order.

–Would they be the Fourth Amendment standards that are applicable to
searches and seizures and to telephone taps?

–Would the net-tapers be required to minimize their interceptions so
as to avoid interceptions of a suspect’s communications that are not
covered by the court order?

–How about minimization that avoids interception of communications by
innocent third parties that use the same computer or account or
storage device as the suspect?

–Will the mere use of encryption software be permitted to shift mere
suspicion to probable cause?

–Will individuals who use now commonly available strong encryption
tools that reside on their own computers, without third party
processing, be required to desist from such use or be required to
reveal the decryption alogrythm?

–For some time an emphasis has been placed upon protection of
identity. Will the legislation prohibit the use of internet facilities
that permit anonymous internet communication? In this regard, it
should be noted that it would be relatively easy for an anonymous
posting to a blog, such as this, to also act as a means by which
messages can be communicated between people ho wish those
communications to be secret?

–Would probably clause be limited to circumstances where it is claimed
that laws of the United States are violated or would it be sufficient
to allege that the law of any foreign government or treaty
organization is being violated?

–For how long would service providers be required to keep data that
might, at some time in the future, be sought by a net-tap order?

–Supposing a targeted person uses an internet facility to store his
own data for his own use and not with the intent of making any
communication of it to another alleged partner in crime, would such
personal storage also be subject to seizure and would the seizure
rules be the same?

–Who will bear the cost of regulations that impose upon communications
providers the ability to comply with such net-tap orders?

HJBoitel

.23.T O’Neill Dallas September 27th, 2010 8:27 am

“Moreover, providers of services featuring user-to-user encryption are
likely to object to watering it down. Similarly, in the late 1990s,
encryption makers fought off a proposal to require them to include a
back door enabling wiretapping, arguing it would cripple their
products in the global market.”

This sounds a little like the infamous clipper chip debacle, but with
the facts garbled. If this paragraph is not refering to the clipper
chip, what is it refering to??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

When even Google can’t protect their data from being hacked by
outsiders, having vast numbers of in-use decryption keys being stored
in one place just sounds like a colossally bad idea.

Thank you for your submission. Comments are moderated and generally
will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive. An email will be
sent to you at ***@msn.com (Change e-mail)
Your Submitted Comment

Display Name
navanavonmilita

Location
USA

My dear uncle Osama,

Received your pigion-mail dated August 26, 2010. It takes the joy out
of me because of the slow delivery. I am sure you must have received
my 39 Skype peer-to-peer messages promptly. I also sent you 42
encrypted messages thru Blackbery. Thanks to the Research in motion of
Toronto, Canada. You shall find a wealth of information on uncle Sam’s
health, wealth and fast fading wisdom.

Poor uncle Sam. What can I say? He is going bonkers. The word out
there in the belway is that uncle Sam is losing his bowels, oops,
bowed legs, oops, well, I cannot say no more as it is stamped as top
secret.

By the way, how is aunt #9, aunt #13, aunt #49? I hope their pregnancy
would go smoothly. Let me wish cousins #28, #7, #83 happy birthdays.

Uncle Osama, please consider my communications thru several and sundry
internet blogs, babies of blogs, cousin blogs, social media pages on
facebook, mylifeandtimes, myspace, yahoowhosehoo, osamamamma urgently
as I have passed you top secret Pentagon papers, diaries of ex-
Pentagon nabobs, homework assignments of CIA boys from Virginia Farm.

This may be the last time I may communicate with you and your rather
large family members as uncle Sam is going to put his foot down and
close all avenues of internet communications. Our pigeon-mail system
is not affected. I am sending a new message today. You shall receive
it on December 25, 2010, hopefully, if the pigeon is not intercepted
and killed by uncle Sam’s laser weapons.

May Allah be Praised.

PS: Uncle Sam sends you his love so does aunt Sammy-Mammie and
goodwishes for all our cousins. May your tribe increase. Uncle Sam’s
tribe, oops, tribals are increasing twice by the day and thrice by the
night. Saturdays, Sundays excluded, oops, fourth of July included,
oops, Presidents’ Day included, oops, uncle Osama’s birthday
doubletime double included.

http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/

…and I am Sid Harth

Conflict, Hot Off The Presses, News, Views and Reviews, Religious
fundamentalism, Terrorism

27/09/2010

« Happy 10th Birthday Google, Oops, G0000000000gle

and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-27 20:15:56 UTC

Permalink

navanavonmilita

2010-09-27 21:26:14 UTC

Permalink

Obama’s Internal Wars
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/27/obamas-internal-wars/

Obama's Internal Wars

Watch Your Step

This Week at War: Obama vs. Team Surge

The president is going to regret putting off an inevitable showdown
with Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus over Afghanistan.
BY ROBERT HADDICK | SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

A collision between Obama and the Afghan surge faction is inevitable

Of the many revelations in early previews of Bob Woodward’s new book
Obama’s Wars, the most corrosive is the obstinacy President Barack
Obama faced from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman
Adm. Mike Mullen, and then Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus.
According to the Washington Post’s reporting of the book, Obama
repeatedly pressed his military advisors for an exit plan from
Afghanistan. “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not
spending a trillion dollars,” Obama said. Yet according to the Post,
Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus — whom I will term the Afghan surge
faction — essentially barred from consideration any plan that did not
involve a counterinsurgency strategy requiring at least 30,000 more
U.S. troops. In spite of their resistance to his wishes, Obama chose
not to confront the surge faction, opting instead to accommodate their
policy inside a muddled compromise. But the compromise will only delay
an inevitable clash.

COMMENTS (19)

Woodward’s book strongly reinforces the impression that Obama’s
paramount goal in Afghanistan is to find the exit. Gates, Petraeus,
and others have attempted to dilute the harmful effect of Obama’s July
2011 deadline by explaining that any U.S. withdrawal will be very
gradual and “conditions-based.” Woodward’s exposition of Obama’s
restless eagerness to get out wipes away those efforts.

If one purpose of the surge was to achieve negotiating leverage over
the Taliban, Woodward’s book will instead reinforce their
determination to hang on and fight. Indeed, according to the Wall
Street Journal, it is U.S. commanders who are downgrading their
expectations for military progress. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is
now likely to redouble his efforts to make a separate peace with
Pakistan and the Taliban, a chilling prospect for many of
Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic groups.

Thus, by next summer the United States is likely to face hardened
Taliban resolve, a more belligerent Karzai, and an Afghanistan that
might be splintering along ethnic lines, trends reinforced by Obama’s
yearning for the door. If by next summer the counterinsurgency
strategy’s hoped-for improvements have not arrived, Obama’s long-
delayed confrontation with the surge faction will very likely occur.
Obama is likely to look for a new team to implement the policy he
wanted all along. The White House has already probably been preparing
for Gates’s retirement and the end of Mullen’s tour as Joint Chiefs
chairman. The termination of Petraeus’s command in Kabul would be much
more dramatic.

For the United States, there is a strict inverse relationship between
the size of a troop commitment to a shooting war and the amount of
time the public will allow for clear results. For example, in contrast
to the political time pressure Obama feels regarding Afghanistan, the
small but successful foreign internal defense missions the United
States conducts in Colombia and the Philippines are under no time
pressure as they gradually accumulate progress.

When policymakers choose a military strategy that comes with a short
fuse, periodic decision-point crises get built into the strategy.
According to Woodward, Obama perceived that the American public would
give him just two years to do something in Afghanistan. True, but only
because of the options forced on him by the Afghan surge faction. One
of the crises built into Obama’s Afghan strategy was a clash with the
promoters of that strategy. Obama might regret not having that clash
in 2009, before he committed so much prestige and so many lives to a
strategy he never had the resolve to properly see through.

Does the terrorism threat in Yemen warrant a billion-dollar response?

Officials at U.S. Central Command are pushing a six-year $1.2 billion
security force assistance program for Yemen. If approved, the program
would provide Yemen’s military and police with automatic weapons,
patrol boats, helicopters, transport aircraft, spare parts, other
support equipment, and training. This long-term $200 million per year
commitment is a huge change in policy; in 2006, U.S. security
assistance to Yemen totaled just $5 million. Centcom’s plan does not
please everyone. The State Department is resisting, claiming that the
program is too big for Yemen and that a six-year commitment forfeits
U.S. leverage over Yemen’s subsequent behavior. Others are concerned
that Yemen’s autocratic ruler, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, will use
this enhanced military power to battle his domestic opponents rather
than al Qaeda. And some wonder whether the pricey attention Yemen is
now receiving from U.S. national security officials is simply an
overreaction to the al Qaeda presence there.

It is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen and
the spiritual motivator to at least three recent homegrown terrorist
plots, who has caused Yemen to rise to the top of the U.S.
government’s worry chart. The president has already authorized a
Hellfire missile for Awlaki’s forehead, should someone be able to find
him. While that manhunt goes on, U.S. counterterrorism officials now
speculate that more small-scale terrorist attacks inside the United
States, like those instigated by Awlaki, are likely.

Given a choice between doing less and doing more in Yemen, the
political risk calculus for the Obama administration is to overrule
the State Department and approve Centcom’s big security force
assistance program. The virtual absence of terrorist attacks inside
the United States since 2001 has burdened the government with
maintaining this nearly perfect record indefinitely. A single carbomb
or a one-person Mumbai-style shootout will be viewed by many as a
dramatic homeland security failure. Homeland security officials seem
resigned to the near-impossibility of thwarting all such small-ball
attacks in advance. But after such an attack occurs, the public will
want to know what the government was doing to suppress the source of
the problem in places like Yemen. Thus, from the perspective of
political risk management, the administration has a strong incentive
to show that it was executing a vigorous counterterrorism program,
like that proposed for Yemen.

The U.S. government has another reason to try out Centcom’s plan for
Yemen. Win or lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government will
not be attempting any more large-scale, manpower-intensive
counterinsurgency and stabilization campaigns anytime soon. Another
approach is needed. The new model will be security force assistance
and foreign internal defense programs like Centcom’s plan. Advocates
of this approach will want to demonstrate that in the post-
counterinsurgency era, this model can work for a tough case like
Yemen.

Some will still object that the plan for Yemen, though a better
approach than what’s currently in place, is too large, too expensive,
and too wasteful. Perhaps, but it is more important now to show that
the model can work. After that happens, policymakers can worry about
economizing.

Comments (19)

RAY GIBBS
11:12 PM ET
September 24, 2010

Whatever the cost
Get al-Awlaki.

RAY GIBBS
11:16 PM ET
September 24, 2010

Whatever the cost
Get ben Laden.

RAY GIBBS
11:28 PM ET
September 24, 2010

Whatever the cost
Former Sen. Chuck Hagel to replace Sec. Gates when the Sec. steps
down. That will bring order to disorder–some perceive.

PUBLICUS
10:37 AM ET
September 25, 2010

Yes, a new model is needed
Agreed, but still, the US government can pump 200m a year into Yemin
or any other place or places and still see the perfect record of no
terror attacks against the homeland shattered. Then of course the
criticism would be more severe if the US were successfully attacked
while putting so much money into such a (model) program as proposed
for Yemin. Lose-lose.

But if a successful model along these lines could be developed, it
would be a significant and big win. Since Korea but Vietnam especially
the US has been searching and hunting for a model counter insurgency
strategy. The Centcom proposal seems worth the money, effort and time.
If developed successfully, it could save the lives of many American
military personnel and help to preclude the kind of foreign
expeditionary force deployments we’ve seen end in failure over the
past 50 years up to the present.

LOVEFORE
11:12 AM ET
September 25, 2010

But apart from this
But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and
political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are
wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world
is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be
maxsiki? quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually
the slaves of some defunct economist.
very good :w

DON BACON
5:17 PM ET
September 25, 2010

pentagonal thinking
Anybody who knows anything, and I include General Petraeus, has said
that this thing will end not through a military victory but through
negotiations. Yet the only people in the strategy meetings, just as in
the photo above, were in the military chain of command. No wonder
Gatesy is slapping his head. “I wish I’d bugged out sooner,” he’s
thinking.

Obama said in March 2009 that the US would form a “contact group”
composed of involved nations to work a diplomatic track. It was never
done.

. . .together with the United Nations, we will forge a new Contact
Group for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should
have a stake in the security of the region — our NATO allies and other
partners, but also the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and
Iran; Russia, India and China.

There are many factions involved in this war, and they aren’t all in
the Pentagon & White House. They include Karzai vs. Taliban, Pashtuns
vs. other Afghans, India vs. Pakistan (that’s a major one), as well as
China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the neighboring -stans.

The main reason for the Iraq surge was to provide sufficient security
for reconciliation, but it never happened. Now here we have a
president, Karzai, who is actually working on reconciliation,
including the jirga he called in June, and he’s getting a little
support from Petraeus but not a peep from Washington.

Well, of course not. The Pentagon doesn’t do diplomacy. That’s why we
have a State Department, he said, jovially.

General McChrystal assessed a year ago that Pakistan sees its arch-
enemy India gaining influence in Afghanistan.

Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan,
including significant development efforts and financial investment. In
addition, the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad to
be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan
people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to
exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures
in Afghanistan or India. — p.2-11

He also assessed that Pakistan is supporting the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior
leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan,
are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are
reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan’s ISI.

In December Obama announced that the US would partner with Pakistan,
which is supporting the Taliban, which is killing US troops. Helloooo!
That’s pretty stupid, if not criminal.

Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in
Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.

Okay, guys, fight your war for another ten years, waste a lot of lives
and money, but military action alone won’t get you anything but
conditions-based grief.

KELLY
5:52 PM ET
September 25, 2010

Deja vu
“…the program would provide Yemen’s military and police with automatic
weapons, patrol boats, helicopters, transport aircraft, spare parts,
other support equipment, and training.”

” Win or lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government will not be
attempting any more large-scale, manpower-intensive counterinsurgency
and stabilization campaigns anytime soon. Another approach is needed.”

Sure. And if the equipment and training don’t produce the desired
results, throw in a few thousand troops. Just to get things going. And
then a few thousand more.

How many times have we heard this before?

DR. KUCHBHI
6:08 PM ET
September 25, 2010

It takes a President …
to snatch defeat from the possibilities of victory.

Obama did so single handedly when he announced an exit date for
Afghanistan. It is arguably the single most stupid thing a wartime US
president has done (with the possible exception of going into Iraq).

Put yourself in the shoes of our NATO allies
- Could they be more Tibetan than the Dalai Lama? Better to announce
earlier pullout dates, don’t you think – even though they were happy
to help against an erstwhile regime that could be a potential threat
to them too?

Put yourself in the shoes of Hamid Karzai
- Could he afford to make enemies with the Taliban who had the backing
of a neighboring country’s army and intelligence agencies with his
limited infrastructure? Better to cut a deal with them while he still
had some shred of authority even though he hated the guts of the
neighboring terrorist supporting country and the Taliban’s agenda.

Put yourself in the shoes of the average Joe Blow Afghan
- Could he/she afford to piss off the Taliban? What would happen to
them after the American withdrawal? Better to support them against the
Americans even though you had nothing in common with their philosophy
and hated them – if only to save your family.

Put yourself in the shoes of our Pakistani “friends”?????
- Could they afford to piss off the Taliban – who despite their ugly
terrorist face had been less resentful of Pakistani meddling in
Afghanistan in the past, allowing them to set up terrorist camps
providing the ISI with plausible deniability. Better to cozy up to
them again and insist on being interlocutors on their behalf.

Put yourself in the shoes of our Indian friends?
- Could they afford to piss off the Taliban or Iran for that matter
any more, now that the US support was going to be wavering based on
the day of the week? Better to look for alternatives to the US
support…

For want of a resolute speech, the East was lost, all for the want of
a sensible speech…

NICHOLAS WIBBERLEY
7:52 PM ET
September 25, 2010

Nor defeat, no victory.
By 2009 there were no possibilities for victory. If you decide to
leave, you abandon fantasy objectives. Obama was in large part elected
on the expectation that he would exit Afghanistan and, if he holds
firm, he will. It seems perfectly reasonable to set a schedule. Of
course there will be regional consequences but the announcement at
least gives the parties the opportunity to position themselves for the
time the stuff hits the fan. Do you think it would be better to leave
one dark night without any warning?

If you find yourself taken to a casino and you are not a gambling man,
you don’t have to win or lose, you can just leave.

DR. KUCHBHI
10:57 PM ET
September 26, 2010

Differences in recollection
I recollect Obama being elected (to some arguable degree) on the
platform of ending the Iraq war and providing right resourcing the
“right” war – not on the platform of ending Afghanistan. The thought
was that providing the right resources to the war in Afghanistan could
still pull off victory. Hence the two surges (one less advertised than
the other) after he took charge.

I don’t think it would be better to leave one dark night without any
warning?

I do think that until you decide to start pulling your troops out, it
behooves you to provide your allies, your army, those who your army
depends on to provide them intelligence and local Afghans with hope, a
sense of purpose and a vision of victory.
It also is good sense to provide your enemies with the fear of god if
they do not capitulate.

Anything short of that is shooting yourself in the foot. Obama put in
more troops and announced a withdrawal date. Make of that what you
will..

JAYDEE001
11:49 AM ET
September 27, 2010

The ‘possibilities of victory’?
This is a pipe-dream if ever there was one. The chance for victory in
Afghanistan was lost in 2002. More than eight years of ‘under-
resourcing’ cost the US and its allies any chance of ‘victory’ in
Afghanistan. If there was no deadline, it is a guarantee that the
generals would just continue to ask for more troops. Republics do not
fare well in protracted military conflicts against committed
insurgencies. We need to understand that. We keep forgetting.

Obama’s biggest mistake was in making that war the ‘right war’ during
the campaign. By the time the 2008 election was concluded, the war
there had been ignored for too long, because of the preoccupation with
the mess we created in Iraq. If there ever was a chance for a military
victory in Afghanistan, it disappeared well before Obama took office.
When it was clear that the military would not settle for the status
quo or a complete withdrawal, when it was clear the right wing would
not let Obama back away from his promises to commit the necessary
resources to that conflict, he split the difference: give them over
30,000 more troops, give the Pakistanis some additional military aid,
but set a deadline for US involvement – or at least he tried.

Obama is in the same fix that LBJ (and later Nixon) was in Vietnam.
He’s faced with an inevitable loss to a committed foe (the Taliban),
backed by a backstage actor he can’t touch (Pakistan’s ISI abetted by
its senior military leaders and probably its president), and an
increasingly expensive war that will sap the US economy at a time when
domestic affairs warrant more time and attention. On top of that, he’s
still got one foot trapped in Iraq, the war he wanted to end, and now
we are increasingly involved in smaller military adventures in Yemen.
And if he tries to simplify his problems by backing away from any of
these military ventures, his political opponents will carp that he is
‘soft on terrorism’. We now lack the ability to deal with problems in
either North Korea and Iran, or with future problems in Iraq, when
that nation’s political institutions collapse – as they most certainly
will.

Obama needs to pull a Nixon – declare that the Afghan government is in
charge and walk away. If he had simply pulled out of both Iraq and
Afghanistan at the outset, his life now would be infinitely less
complicated. And the US would be no less safe for the result than we
are with troops dying in a winless war that just makes us look less
loke a superpower than we like to think we are. The only winners in
this war are the military leaders and the corporations who supply the
arms. But then, that is the whole point.

RFISHER19
6:49 PM ET
September 25, 2010

The President vs the Pentagon
Sooner or later it had to come to this: choose peace, world peace,
disarmament, support United Nations and international peace efforts,
reduce war expenditures, cut back on financing death and war &
weapons. Can he “bell the cat”? Of course the major opponents of world
peace, United Nations, disarmament, reducing military expenditures,
will be the Defense Dept & Pentagon & arms industries. Where is a US
Department of Peace? or Disarmament? or Reduction in Weapons? De-
militarization? When will the US begin spending similar resources on
promoting and establishing peace?

The danger signs are present: the challenge has been made. Of course
the entire war industry (political & business) will not take this
lightly, because it threatens their very way of life (the war
oligarchs & plutogarchs, all of whom are bottom-line capitalists
making profit from war and death).

RFISHER19
7:07 PM ET
September 25, 2010

The President vs the Pentagon
Sooner or later it had to come to this: choose peace, world peace,
disarmament, support United Nations and international peace efforts,
reduce war expenditures, cut back on financing death and war &
weapons. Can he “bell the cat”? Of course the major opponents of world
peace, United Nations, disarmament, reducing military expenditures,
will be the Defense Dept & Pentagon & arms industries. Where is a US
Department of Peace? or Disarmament? or Reduction in Weapons? De-
militarization? When will the US begin spending similar resources on
promoting and establishing peace?

The danger signs are present: the challenge has been made. Of course
the entire war industry (political & business) will not take this
lightly, because it threatens their very way of life (the war
oligarchs & plutogarchs, all of whom are bottom-line capitalists
making profit from war and death).

MARTY MARTEL
11:09 PM ET
September 25, 2010

US destined to loose in Afghanistan
The loss of US Afghan mission was predicated in November, 2001 when
during the siege of Kunduz the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to
spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban
operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz.
Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar
in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan from where Mullah
Omar’s QST has been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Furthermore in order to chase Saddam’s imaginary WMDs, Bush
administration allocated huge military resources to Iraq, thereby
denying Afghanistan sufficient troops to provide security against
Taliban.

In addition, Bush recruited Musharraf’s Pakistan to fight the very
terrorist threat that Pakistan itself created. So Musharraf played
duplicitous game of running with the hare while hunting with the
hounds. While capturing and killing some Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders
based on US intelligence, Musharraf continued to shelter, protect and
support Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban in Quetta,
provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network in North
Waziristan.

According to Bob Woodward’s book titled ‘Obama‘s war‘, Mike McConnell,
Bush’s director of National Intelligence tells Obama soon after his
victory in the November 2008 presidential elections that Pakistan is a
dishonest and untrustworthy partner, unwilling or unable to stop
elements of its intelligence service from giving clandestine aid,
weapons and money to the Taliban. Bush has to know what Mike McConnell
knew but Bush never confronted Musharraf about his duplicity according
to published reports.

According to the book, President Barack Obama is quoted as saying at
an Oval Office meeting on November 25, 2009 that “We need to make
clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan”. President believes
that the war on terror in Afghanistan could not be won without
attacking and eliminating the Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in the
Pakistani tribal belt according to the book.

While clearly understanding the real culprit of Taliban resurgence in
Afghanistan, President Obama nonetheless continued Bush policy of
mollycoddling Pakistan and so will pay the price for the failure of US
Afghan mission.

While multiplying US drone attacks on Haqqani’s network in North
Waziristan, top trio who drives Obama’s Afghan policy i.e. Gates,
Mullen and Petraeus continue to offer alibis for Pakistani
government’s support to Mullah Omar’s QST, Haqqani’s HQN, Hekmatyar’s
HiG and Al Qaeda by refusing to order drone attacks on Mullah Omar’s
QST.

With an ally like Pakistan, US indeed does NOT need an enemy to loose
in Afghanistan.

DISIGNY
9:09 AM ET
September 26, 2010

“The Model”
Seriously, grown-up people want to know if the military model of
foreign policy will “work”?! It is the same model we have been using
for 100 years, and no, it doesn’t work. It is what has resulted in the
US becoming a modern version of the British Empire, and now on the
verge of collapse. If that is “working”, what would failure look like?
Oh yes, I know: the Commies would come over and steal your SUV..

VIDYUTK
3:10 PM ET
September 27, 2010

End this three ring circus
I have no clue what this war has achieved other than massive arms
sales, legitimizing of Pakistan’s local damage, radicalizing Pakistan
further, bringing Afganistan to a standstill, providing resources for
cross border terrorism in India, deaths of American soldiers, NATO
soldiers, Pakistani soldiers, innocents in two countries….
destabilizing Pakistan by forcing the establishment to act against
national inclination….. vast, vast damage…. oh and yes, about 3% of
the bad guys got killed while their numbers swelled by 300%

But perhaps the worst damage is what no one realizes. The US losing a
large part of its ‘threat factor’. Sometimes the threat of a war is
far more potent than an actual war. Check out how the world dances to
some crazy Pakistani tunes – nuclear nation, unpredictable….. placate
them quick. That is the power of the threat of war. In an actual war,
whichever side would win, would win, but with the threat gone, there
would be no reason to hold back.

The concern is that as the world sees a bunch of ragtag militias run
circles around the US, the next time the US would like to power
something done, they might actually need to use war, because the
threat of war wouldn’t work. Oh, of course, the country to do that
would be leveled totally, but the point is that it would be far more
messy and couldn’t be used for many kinds of pressure.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the third world war start
between Pakistan and US if the strikes get worse. Pakistan has nukes
and nothing to lose with the country’s credibility in tatters and its
precious sovereignty flaunted (psychologically). US has power, but not
quick access to supplies and China would like its two cents of course.

This thing really needs to stop unless someone has an idea not tried
before. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different
results is folly.

VIDYUTK
3:36 PM ET
September 27, 2010

US needs to get out
And the US knows that they need to get out with an excuse that lets
them save face. A limited India-Pak war would suit them, I guess. So
would the collapse of Pakistan. All they need is for someone else to
be responsible for making it impossible to continue.

And the machinery is in place behind the scenes. Check out the
‘unacceptable’ about Pakistan coming out of the woodwork. Most of it
is known, but in new packaging, revealed as a big time secret. Two
kinds of Pakistani treacheries ‘coming to light’ – double crossing US/
NATO and ‘proofs’ of damage to India. Interesting ‘fears’ of an India-
Pakistan war in case of another attack in the US.

Various ways – wikileaks, books being written, classified documents
mysteriously becoming known… the idea is that Pakistan is a worthless
piece of shit and its been asking for something bad to happen to it.
As if all that wasn’t known from the word go.

If India still doesn’t take the bait (very likely) and if there is no
terror attack on India soon (also likely – the ISI is not stupid, it
is going to wait the US out), I imagine Pakistan will do something
utterly ‘unacceptable’ that requires the US to attack it or the US
will do something that will leave Pakistan with no choice but to
retaliate, leading to the end of the war, because there will be no
more ally and thus, supply lines. Russia will be left holding the mop
up crown, which is something it wants anyway, because of Afganistan.
Accordingly, relations are improving between Russia and Pakistan (to
the discomfort of India).

Of course, I don’t understand international relations very well, so I
may be misunderstanding things.

KUNINO
3:51 PM ET
September 27, 2010

How come nobody bashes the generals?
The Woodward book does nothing but add a little color and detail to a
picture long obvious to many: the president is faced with a mutiny by
senior military figures. The people who made that clear were the
generals — plus an admiral.

They have also made clear that they still don’t know how to “win” in
Afghanistan, and several of them, most recently Generals Petraeus and
McChrystal, have made it clear that victory in any usual sense of the
word is not really on the table, anyway.

That was a telling moment in the new book when Fainting David
Petraeus, sipping on what i hope was his first glass of red wine, made
clear that presidential attempts to exercise appropriate civilian
control of the military, was really only fucking with David Petraeus.
It’s interesting that he said this in front of a witness; it’s
interesting the witness, one way or another, helped to get it into
print. This ain’t war. it’s warring personalities.

In this comment string, DR KUCHBI makes the extravagant and baseless
claim that the current president is the reason defeat in Afghanistan
is certain. This is a classic piece of Obama-bashing, and it displays
the more or less obligatory complete lack of substance. The generals
were offering no promises of victory before Mr Obama called for next
year’s start to withdrawal, and nobody other than the more hyperbolic
military flacks were claiming to see real signs of it.

If any president is responsible for the current state of affairs, that
man was George Bush, who actually did what Obama wants to happen again
starting next July. Mr Bush started a similar withdrawal in 2002
because he wanted to use his military to attack Iraq, for what we now
recognize as no good reason. How could he have betrayed the US force
in Afghanistan that way? How come nobody today recognizes that this
foolishness contributed to the current unfortunate position? (Probable
answer: America doesn’t care about what’s happening there.)

And how come nobody seems interested in what exactly generals have
achieved in Afghanistan since 2001?This is a story of fast-changing
command on principles seemingly designed to help general officers fill
out their career achievements and applied on the old Vietnam principle
that the man on the top should be relieved before able to understand
the local situation fully.

Who has a list of all those revolving-door commanders? What specific
achievements can be put to the names of each?

What, in our realpolitik world, could President Obama do to change
this dreadful command before the midterm elections?

Bob Woodward: Enter the spinmeister of the White House revolving door

Posted By David Rothkopf Wednesday, September 22, 2010 – 5:22 PM
Share

It is a tradition in Washington, as much a part of the fabric of this
elegant old Southern whore of a town as inaugural balls, losing
baseball teams, and the annual drag race across Dupont Circle. It is
the release of Bob Woodward’s latest book and the resulting howls of
pain from those whose sensitive parts got bound in between the pages
of his unfolding expose.

This latest opus is called Obama’s Wars and refers to at least two of
the three wars tearing dominating the attention of Obama and his
advisors — the one in Iraq, the one in Afghanistan and the one between
the advsiors themselves. (The Washington Post, for example, logically
concludes from the fact that book devotes no attention to Iraq that
the title does not actually refer to that particular war.) It, like
Woodward’s past works, is full of headline grabbing observations.
Among the grabbiest of them:

Hamid Karzai is a manic depressive. Frankly, that’s the best thing
that’s been said about him in Washington for months. Furthermore,
being slightly deranged is hardly a disqualification to be a world
leader. If it were, the United States would have considerably fewer
allies than it does now. Particularly, in Europe. (Sapete chi siete.
Or to put it another way, if only I could say “off his meds” in
Italian…)
Secretary of Defense Bob Gates asserts Tom Donilon would be a
“disaster” as National Security Advisor. This may be news to the
legions in the press corps and policy community that love the smart
and capable Donilon, but former Deputy National Security Advisor,
former CIA Director Gates is one of the most thoughtful students of
the U.S. national security apparatus ever to also serve in several of
its top positions. He is loved and respected by even more members of
the press, policy and political communities. Therefore, even though he
is known to be departing, his comment on Donilon won’t be helpful to
Donilon’s chances to succeed Jim Jones (see below).
Richard Holbrooke asserts the President’s Afghanistan strategy “can’t
work.” That would be correct.
Vice President Joe Biden calls Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard
I have ever met.” First reaction: he must not have been paying much
attention during all those years in the Senate. Second reaction: after
Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke is still almost certainly the best
all around talent that the Dems have on foreign policy. And if being
egotistical were a disqualification for service in this
administration, those Afghan policy discussions could have taken place
in a phone booth.
Petraeus assails Axelrod as “a complete spin doctor.” To which Axelrod
probably responded, “thank you very much.”
Jim Jones privately refered to Obama’s political inner circle as “the
water bugs” or “the Politburo.” And in private they refer to him as
“the soon-to-be former National Security Advisor Jim Jones.”
You may call all this low gossip, but it is significantly closer to
addressing important issues than, say, the games playing in the Senate
yesterday over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” That said, Woodward’s book,
according to reports goes much further and reveals that the discord
and conflicts in the administration reflect real differences and
frustrations regarding the formation of AfPak policy and a president
who seems to be as divided on the policy as his team.

The surfacing of the unflattering history does beg one question,
though. If this is what happens every time Bob Woodward talks to
senior administration officials, why do senior administration
officials continue to talk to him? In the answer lies a clue into the
real nature of Washington today: even top officials are much more
motivated by their narrow self-interests and thus their desire to
ingratiate themselves to the guys who write the stories that become
history than they are to their president and, in some cases, to the
best interests of their country. Flattery, promises of protecting
identities and a chance to even scores and elevate themselves always
seem to do the trick and the result are terrific books, living history
and political problems for one White House after another.

Of course, the Woodward book is just the tip of the iceberg. With the
Obama White House revolving door about to start spinning faster than
the rotor of the helicopter idling on the South Lawn, the book
contracts will soon be doled out, the reporters will soon be taken
into departing officials’ confidences and more secrets will slip out
of the shadows of the Obamaverse. (It’s already happening…)

Perhaps it was inevitable. But of course, as in many other areas, this
administration was once thought to be different from those that came
before and thus more examples of its dispiriting sameness are the last
thing it needs. The famous discipline was a sham. Actually, the tough
rules on speaking to the press were never going to work as long as the
administration’s leadership failed to understand the only way to truly
create discipline would be to earn genuine loyalty.

…and I am Sid Harth

Conflict, Hot Off The Presses, News, Views and Reviews, Terrorism

27/09/2010

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