Afghanistan–

–Least peaceful nation according to Global Peace
–Largest illegal opium producer, 95% of world’s market ($64 billion), with 2.9 million opium farmers
–World’s largest producer of cannabis, up to 3,500 tonnes of hashish in annual production
–World’s largest producer of heroin
–Most corrupt country according to Transparency International (tied with Somalia and North Korea)
–World’s largest source of refugees, continuously since 1980
–Lowest electricity consumption per capita, 7.6 kWh per person per year
–Lowest annual energy consumption per capita, 90 kgoe per person per year
–Highest infant mortality rate, 119.41 deaths per 1000 live births
–Largest recipient of foreign aid, $6,710,900,000 per year
–Worst place to grow old

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_international_rankings_by_country#List

Hey Jim, Happy New Year to you.

I’m always surprised that the wealth in Afghanistan is rarely mentioned. What impact is this having. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

As well as the rare metals I have recollection of an article that outlined how beneficial the Afghan opium could be if redirected towards medical pain control (codeine, morphine, heroine, etc). The article mentioned a shortage of medical use opium and outlined how Afghan production could alleviate this.

Jim, have you seen any discussion on either of these vast revenue generating opportunities as part of the whole Afghan War picture?

President Karzai wasn’t consulted, but why should he be? He’s only a US ally, president of a host nation for US troops.

RFE

Afghanistan has rejected a U.S. intelligence forecast that predicts the military gains of the past three years will be significantly rolled back by 2017.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman was quoted by Reuters on December 30 as calling the report “baseless.”

Aimal Faizi said previous U.S. intelligence reports for Afghanistan had proved “inaccurate,” but did not provide details.

A new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate predicts Afghanistan would suffer military setbacks by 2017 even if some U.S. troops remained and that Afghanistan will fall into chaos if Washington and Kabul do not sign a pact to keep an international military contingent there beyond 2014.

U.S. officials say that unless a deal is signed to keep perhaps 8,000 U.S. troops, the Taliban might stage a major comeback and Al-Qaeda could regain safe havens.

Happy New Year Jim. You rank with the best.
You knew Petraeus’s rotten origins — that impressed me.
How shall we cope w/o Caldwell and Petreaus?
Lucky for us they had no monopoly on stupidity and chicanery.
Blog on.

The “gains” must be these (note the date)!

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-forces-kill-taliban-fighters-who-downed-helicopter/2011/08/10/gIQAxB1A7I_story.html?wprss=rss_politics on August 2011, Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, had this to say of the Taliban:

“All across Afghanistan, the insurgents are losing. They’re losing territory, they’re losing leadership, they’re losing weapons and supplies, they’re losing public support,” he said. “More and more, the insurgents are losing resolve and the will to fight.”

Hau’oli Makahiki Hou, Jim…! Hopefully this year will be the last year that our troops are in the Graveyard of Empires…!

Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan. Yet another all-expenses-borrowed crusader cruise aboard …

The Good Ship Memory Hole

One dark and stormy night this tepid tale
Began, and waking from a dream, it ended.
Unmoored, the uncrewed Fantasy set sail
On twilight seas where day and nighttime blended.
The empty sky complained to no avail
About the disbelief it had suspended.

The tide went out and with it went the boat
Adrift and rudderless, no one commanding.
The fog rolled in and swallowed in its throat
The strangled cry of something dim demanding
To know the reason why the fishes gloat
To see a thing beneath their understanding.

The wind, that vagrant quantity, died down,
And then arose to drive the ship before it.
No Ahab paced the deck to rage and frown.
No fickle fate consented to abhor it:
That nightmare stream in which the dreamers drown;
The mind awaiting waking to restore it.

The whales and dolphins swam along beside.
The albatrosses soared, the gulls they glided.
The barnacles hung on to bum a ride.
The turtles temporized, their time they bided,
Until the seals would cease them to deride;
Till someone, somewhere, sane, this scene decided.

The ocean rudely rolled, the eyes they crossed,
As stomachs down below grew sour and trembled.
The passengers turned pale; their lunch they lost;
And wondered why they ever had assembled
To voyage to the void at such a cost —
And who the ticket-selling fraud resembled.

No Ishmael survived the trip who knows
Why thought reflected off the waves and scattered,
Absorbed into the swirling ebbs and flows
That left the crazy craft careened and battered
Upon Amnesia reef where nothing grows
Except forgetfulness of things that mattered.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2009

January 1, 2014 here in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Forty-two years ago today, I returned to South Vietnam after a one-week R&R in Taipei that changed my life. Back again in Taiwan now for good, I wish everyone a Happy New Year, even though the prospects for the U.S. government learning anything from past military debacles do not look promising. “Gains,” indeed.

I believe we’re at a turning point in Afghanistan.

*May 3, 2013: Kerry: This is a pivotal moment for both Afghanistan and Pakistan
*Mar 8, 2013: Hagel: I believe that we are at a very important moment in this campaign
*Mar 8, 2013: NYPost: [Hagel’s] unannounced visit comes at a turning point in the conflict.
*Dec 12, 2012: Panetta: We’re at a turning point. You know, we’ve been in war for 10 1/2 years, almost 11 years, since 9/11. It’s the longest period of warfare in the history — continuous period of warfare in the history of this country. And we’re now seeing a turning point: brought the war in Iraq to an end. In Afghanistan, where I’ll go next, get a chance to look at the campaign plan that General Allen put in place to ultimately draw down in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
*Dec 14, 2012: Panetta: In many ways, look, we’re at a turning point.
*Nov 20, 2012: Panetta: We are at a turning point after 10 years of war — over 10 years of war.
*Sep 27, 2012: Panetta: We did turn a very important corner.
*Sep 17, 2012: Panetta: Let me just say a few things. As I’ve said before, I think we’re at a turning point, certainly after 10 years of war,
*June 7, 2012: Panetta: We are, as I said, at a turning point after 10 years of war.
*May 3, 2012: Panetta: 2011 was really a turning point. In 2011 the Taliban was weakened significantly. They couldn’t organize the kind of attacks to regain territory that they had lost, which is something they have done in the past. So they’ve been weakened.
* April 18, 2012: Panetta: As I’ve said, 2011 was a real turning point. It was the first time in five years that we saw a drop in the number of enemy attacks.
* April 17, 2012: Panetta: NATO at ‘Pivotal Point’ in Afghan Mission
* December 14, 2011: Panetta was less than 34 miles from the Pakistan border when he told U.S. troops they have reached a turning point in the war.
* April 21, 2011: Gates: ” I think it’s possible that by the end of this year we will have turned a corner just because of the Taliban being driven out, and, more importantly, kept out.”
* March 15, 2011: “FOB DELHI: International troops in Afghanistan face the prospect of a spring offensive by the Taliban every year – but this time the US-led alliance believes it could mark a real turning point in its favour.”
* February 20, 2010: “Western officials believe that a turning point has been reached in the war against the Taliban, with a series of breakthroughs suggesting that the insurgents are on the back foot for the first time since their resurgence four years ago.”
* Sep 9, 2009: Exum: A Grim Turning Point in Afghanistan?
* August 31, 2009: “Monday marks the end of August, a month with both good and bad news out of Afghanistan — and the approach of a key turning point.“
* February 6, 2008: “But the ties that bind NATO are fraying badly – and publicly – over just how much each member state wants to commit to turning Afghanistan around. ‘It’s starting to get to a turning point about what is this alliance about,’ says Michael Williams, director of the transatlantic program at the Royal United Services Institute in London.”
* July 23, 2007: “Taken together these may reflect a turning point in how the war in Afghanistan is to be waged.”
* September 12, 2006: “The Afghan front is at a critical turning point that imperils many of the hard-fought successes of the early phase of the conflict and the prospects for snaring bin Laden.”
* September 22, 2005: “Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, called the recent parliamentary elections ‘a major turning point‘ on his country’s path to democracy.”
* January 27, 2004: “A statement from U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called the enactment of the constitution a ‘turning point for the Afghan nation.’”

@Don Bacon:

Speaking of time-worn euphemisms and discredited metaphors that the U.S. military never tires of repeating as the years of abject failure add up to decades of defeat:

The Tipping Point Turns the Corner

Around the next corner the tipping point turns
As the good ship capsizes and sinks
While the mad metaphors and flawed figures of speech
Guarantee that no one really thinks

So the dots get connected with crayon lines drawn
By the journalists flogging clichés
Like astrologers linking the stars into shapes
Telling fortunes as long as it pays

At the end of the tunnel the dominoes fall
As the oil spots to flypaper stick
With his boots on, George Custer fights to the last man
Making even the strong stomach sick

As they stood up, we stood down — just not right away
With our shoulders to shoulders we marched
When the morning came corpses piled up in the morgues
Like some laundry loads unwashed and starched

Like the city that shines on the top of a hill
With a thousand or more points of light
Now the current flows only an hour a day
So in sweltering blackness they fight

They’ve a government, now, freely chosen at last
By the parties that somehow had won
Our ambassador, though, had to choose their PM
When we didn’t like what they had done

Sure, they can’t leave the Green Zone without getting killed
Our officials, too, travel by plane
Sneaking into and out of the country unseen
By the people who think us insane

But he won’t cut and run says the man who ain’t there
From his purpose he swears he won’t swerve
“Bring ’em on!” taunts the juvenile joker in jeans
Clearing brush on his Texas preserve

As the world watched in horror, he drove off a cliff
Then he stumbled around in a daze
Now he says – after three years of chaos and death –
That he might have misused a trite phrase

“It’s as easy as shootin’ a bird in a cage,”
Says the Texas stud hamster of quail
When the rodents ride roughshod the feathered will flee
From the drunken dudes gone off the trail

And we’ve got us some mantras from Vietnam days
Like “we’re there ’cause we’re there ’cause we’re there”
So when once we go somewhere, that means we can’t leave
Like that German boot-planting affair

And the logic swirls faster in circles that swim
Like our friends won’t respect a retreat
See, they’d rather we kept acting stupid and blind
Till we wind up a pile of dead meat

And our foes will not fear us if we should act smart
Which assumes that they fear us when dumb
An American innocence, surely, that comes
From a depth that you simply can’t plumb

The octopus fascist sings swan songs sedate
Reinventing the same words and tune
So the president babbles of going to Mars
When we can’t even get to the Moon

Like the light of an oncoming train in the dark
We see hopefulness ever draw near
We’re on track, can’t you see, to a glorious dawn
So we’ll stay the curse, never you fear

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2006

Seven years and counting later, the mind-numbing mantras and meaningless mumbo-jumbo continue unabated. I call “bullshit” on the brain-dead babble. It seems way past time to add one more Party slogan to Orwell’s infamous three, namely:

Ignorance is Strength
Freedom is Slavery
War is Peace
Defeat is Victory