Bezinning

in Amerika zijn ze zich ervan bewust dat ze voor de hele wereld de kastanjes
uit het vuur halen terwijl andere landen zich terughoudend opstellen :
---------------------------
07 Oct 2009 08:35 pm
andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/
Fighting On Behalf Of Russia, China, And India

Bob Kaplan's view of the war in Afghanistan:

-Everyone keeps saying that America is not an empire, but our military finds
-itself in the sort of situation that was mighty familiar to empires like that of
-ancient Rome and 19th-century Britain: struggling in a far-off corner of the
-world to exact revenge, to put down the fires of rebellion, and to restore
-civilized order. Meanwhile, other rising and resurgent powers wait patiently
-in the wings, free-riding on the public good we offer. This is exactly how an
-empire declines, by allowing others to take advantage of its own exertions.

Kipling understood. At some point, the American people will ask why their
kids and their money are being leveraged to help China win the race for the 21st
century.

Ik denk dat dit een interne kwestie is van Amerika zelf.
Hun eigen democratisch gekozen regeringen, zijn steeds degenen, die de vuurtjes aanwakkeren en denken te moeten doven op hun manier.
Naar de rest van de wereld wordt niet geluisterd.

Zo komen nu met het verhaal dat het een taak van de NAVO zou moeten zijn.
Maar vinden dat "zij" de Navo zijn.
De rest moet meehobbelen.
Ook de VN lappen ze zelf aan hun laars.

Er dringt zich al maar meer een woord bij me op, zeker nu ik steeds Obama hoor roepen:
Wij kunnen het niet alleen.

En dat is: arrogantie.

Niet direct on topic, maar wel hieraan inherent:

En dat niet alleen bij hun gedachten de redders van de wereld te moeten zijn (alleen op hun manier), maar nu ook weer in de strijd tegen de klimaatverandering.

Ze zijn 40 jaar hun eigen gang gegaan en hebben steeds geweigerd verdragen te tekenen, en samen met de rest van de wereld en dan vooral Europa, alles te doen om de CO2 uitstoot te verminderen, of zelfs maar op een beetje te innoveren voor mogelijkheden om energie zuiniger om te gaan met al onze energiereserves.
Binnen Europa zijn wij al vanaf halverwege de jaren 70, direct na de oliecrisis, hiermee bezig.

Nu denken "zij" de wereld te moeten overtuigen.

de situatie in het midden-Oosten is de erfenis van 8 jaar Bush, die dacht dat hij het
zonder hulp wel zou klaren en ook aan de Verenigde Naties geen boodschap had.
Maar het besef begint door te dringen dat Amerika in Afganistan zijn krachten aan
het verspillen is en dat grote concurrenten: Rusland, China en India hun tijd afwachten.

de generaals willen 40000 manschappen erbij in Afganistan en het is nog maar de
vraag of daarmee de oorlog tot een "goed einde" gebracht wordt.

de uitbreiding van de troepenmacht in Afganistan met 34000 man (er zijn er nu 65000)

By Ann Scott Tyson - Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized -- and the Pentagon is deploying --
at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials.

Is arrogantie een ontwikkelingstoornis ?????

marmot.

Caspar schreef:but our military finds
-itself in the sort of situation that was mighty familiar to empires like that of
-ancient Rome

Alsof er iets nieuws onder de zon is. Als je leeft in de waan van de dag lijkt dat zo.

als je de politieke beschouwingen leest van de laatste tijd dan blijkt dat
de Amerikanen er een hard hoofd in hebben dat de oorlog in Afganistan tot
een goed einde gebracht wordt. de publieke opinie in Amerika wil dat er snel
een eind aan komt. als je de stemming peilt in de commentaren zou je van
defaitisme kunnen spreken.
misschien dat het besluit om meer troepen te sturen daar verandering in brengt.

Misschien is het beter de nadrukkelijker te spreken over realiteitszin.

marmot

marmot schreef:Is arrogantie een ontwikkelingstoornis ?????

marmot.

Misschien is het beter de nadrukkelijker te spreken over realiteitszin.

marmot

Misschien is het wat duidelijker wat je bedoelt als je je berichtjes wat uitbreidt met wat verdere uitleg.
Ik snap helemaal niets van deze one-liners.

Neem me het woordje "misschien" niet kwalijk.
Ik heb zelf al vaak dit woordje in mijn berichten; het werkt echt besmettelijk, maar het geeft absoluut geen duidelijkheid.
aals het dat is wat bedoeld wordt is dat natuurlijk prima.
"Misschien" moet dat woordje gebruikt worden in combinatie met andere alternatieven, die ook "misschien" wel relevant zouden kunnen zijn.
Dan is er toch wel meer kans op een discussie.

Er is toch niets mis met het stellen van vragen mariakat? met oneliners evenmin trouwens. Het stemt tot nadenken en onderzoek over dat wat de waarheid zou kunnen zijn. Ikzelf ben vaak heel onzeker over antwoorden.

marmot

Mariakat schreef:Zo komen nu met het verhaal dat het een taak van de NAVO zou moeten zijn.
Maar vinden dat "zij" de Navo zijn. De rest moet meehobbelen.

nog een reactie op bericht 2 :
amerikanen hebben inderdaad twijfels over de bereidheid van de NAVO om nog langer mee te doen
in Afganistan. onderstaand bericht is wel duidelijk.

The slowly vanishing NATO
By Anne Applebaum...Tuesday, October 20, 2009

"This is a solemn moment for this House and our country," Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, said while addressing the House of Commons last week. A hush fell over the room and, according to a parliamentary sketch writer, the members "ceased to fidget, a truly rare thing in the Commons." Brown then began to read a list of names: the 37 British soldiers who died in Afghanistan over the summer.
This Story :The slowly vanishing NATO
................Europe's angst over Afghanistan
................Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan
Just a week before, a parallel scene had unfolded across the Channel: In Paris, a soldier wounded in Afghanistan this summer died at a hospital. French Prime Minister François Fillon paid homage to the sergeant, speaking of "the courage of our soldiers, their devotion and their professionalism," which he said merited the recognition of "the nation." In the United States, meanwhile, CNN featured the story of an American mother who flew home with the body of her son, another soldier killed in Afghanistan this summer. He died in what was described as "the deadliest battle for U.S. troops since July 2008."

When Polish, Dutch or German soldiers die, the stories are often much the same. Politicians, and frequently the national media as well, salute their heroism and express the thanks of the nation. Patriotic songs are played at the funerals, which are sometimes featured on the news. Usually a number is mentioned: the 221 British troops who have died in Afghanistan since 2001, the roughly 850 Americans, 131 Canadians, 36 French soldiers, 34 Germans, 21 Dutch, 22 Italians, 26 Spaniards, 15 Poles and others.

Sometimes, a political outburst follows, too. In recent days Prime Minister Brown has been attacked by an opponent on the grounds that British soldiers are "fighting and dying for an Afghan government that is deeply corrupt." French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just been forced to declare that while French soldiers will for the moment stay in Afghanistan, "not one single more" will be sent in the future. Rising summer casualties have led to an intensifying debate in the Netherlands. And of course the American argument rages on.

Only very rarely do the casualties of one country make it into the media, the political debates or the prime ministerial speeches of another country. There has been an international coalition operating in Afghanistan since 2001. NATO has been in charge of that coalition since 2003. Yet to read the British press, one would think the British are there almost alone, fighting a war in which they have no national interest. The same is true in France and in the Netherlands. American media outlets hardly note the participation of other countries, even though some -- Britain and Canada -- have endured casualties at a higher rate than that of the U.S. military, relative to the size of their contingents.

There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces: Most of the war's European critics want to know why their boys are fighting "for the Americans," not for NATO. Most of the American critics dismiss the European contribution as useless or ignore it altogether. As Jackson Diehl pointed out Monday, the central debate about future Afghanistan policy is taking place in Washington without any obvious contributions from anybody else. I'm not going to blame the U.S. administration alone for this: It's not as if Europe has put forward a different plan -- and there was certainly a moment, back at the beginning of this administration, when that would have been very welcome.

The fact is that the idea of "the West" has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless "whither-the-Alliance" seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another. On its home continent, NATO does precious little military contingency planning, preferring to hold summits. Above all, there is no recognizable alliance leader who is willing or able to engage in the national debates of the various member countries, to argue in favor of the Afghan mission or any other. President Obama could in theory do this, but I'm guessing the idea doesn't fill him with inspiration.
None of this might matter much in Afghanistan, since the outcome of current deliberations may well be some version of the status quo. But the next time NATO is needed, I doubt whether it will be there at all.

marmot schreef: Het stemt tot nadenken en onderzoek over dat wat de waarheid zou kunnen zijn. Ikzelf ben vaak heel onzeker over antwoorden.
marmot

De onderwerpen die het moeilijkste zijn, zijn vaak ook het boeiendste.
In deze gevallen is er niets mis met onzeker zijn.
Zelfs de plank een keer misslaan is geen schande.
We leren van elkaar, als we meedoen en onze vragen omschrijven, evenals de antwoorden, voor zover en hoe wij het zien.
Samen gefundeerd ideeen spuien, maar ook gefundeerd weer loslaten als blijkt dat we weer niewe gegevens krijgen die we nog niet kenden, kan groei betekenen op den duur.

Mee eens mariakat.

Maar nog even over groeien en wat dat kan inhouden.

Je kan veel weten en toch tegen dat beterwetenin handelen en voelen.

We kennen toch genoeg goede mensen die zich niet zoveel vragen stellen, leven en laten leven, hun ding doen en het gelukkig zijn van niemand ( bewust ) in de weg ( proberen ) staan.

marmot

het was de bedoeling om in Afganistan een andere regering en een ander beleid te krijgen.een poging
om Karzai het veld te laten ruimen door de verkiezingen ongeldig te laten verklaren is mislukt. een
tweede verkiezing gaat niet door omdat de (enige) andere presidentskandidaat zich heeft teruggetrokken.

de Amerikanen hadden gehoopt met een andere regering meer grip op het beleid te krijgen.
hier een schets van het probleem :

The Karzai calculus
Reform may be a matter of survival. davidignatius@washpost.com

By David IgnatiusWednesday, November 4, 2009

With the "reelection" of President Hamid Karzai, if that's the right word for a process that featured fraudulent balloting and a canceled runoff, the United States now confronts the hardest puzzle of all about Afghanistan: How to improve governance -- which most experts agree is essential to defeating the Taliban -- without taking even more control from Afghan officials?

President Obama took the first step on this tightrope Monday with a congratulatory phone call to Karzai that was at the same time a backhanded slap. He urged the Afghan president to launch "a much more serious effort to eradicate corruption." Karzai responded Tuesday by promising that, in unspecified ways, he would "eradicate this stain."

It's a classic American dilemma: How does a superpower fix problems in a faraway country without dictating policies in a way that ultimately enfeebles the very people we are trying to help? Over the years we've gotten this wrong in Vietnam, the Middle East and Latin America.
The governance issue comes up in nearly every conversation with U.S. officials in Afghanistan. The problem is partly the corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government, and partly the primitive state of Afghanistan's legal and political institutions. It's the weakness the Americans most want to fix, but where they are least certain about the solution.

Many favor a dramatic U.S. intervention that forces Karzai to make the necessary reforms. But some U.S. policymakers fear that such an attempt to impose policies will only make matters worse -- by offending Afghans and undermining the country's frail efforts at self-government.
"The idea that you can just order Karzai around is wrong," insists one senior U.S. official. "He has to feel that it's his idea."
Various proposals are circulating for how to tackle the governance mess. One suggestion is a "council of elders," including prominent Afghans and international figures, to assist Karzai. Another idea is a top consultative position, a national security and economic adviser. A third proposal would gather a new constitutional convention to widen the political circle and write new rules for governance.

But is Karzai capable of reform? Some American experts argue that Karzai's government is, in effect, a criminal enterprise with billions of dollars at stake in the status quo. Customs fees collected privately at the Torkham Gate crossing into Pakistan total an estimated $13 million a month. Then there's skimming from the billions in military and economic aid. And finally, there's the narcotics trade, from which sophisticated cartels rake in several billion dollars a year.
The corruption helps fuel the Taliban insurgency -- not just through illicit revenue but by discrediting American talk about the rule of law. The Taliban's appeal at the grass-roots level, experts warn, comes from the fact that it offers an austere contrast to the Mafia-like network in Kabul and its American backers.

In visits last week to a half-dozen U.S. bases, I heard plans for improving local governance at every stop. U.S. soldiers and aid workers are meeting in weekly "shuras" with local, district and provincial councils to hear what people want. But one American aid coordinator cautions that right now, the linkages between these local efforts and the national government are "nonexistent."
Creating "good governance" projects is a growth industry in Afghanistan. Every briefer has a pitch about how his unit is building trust and enabling local decision-makers. But frankly, there's an air of unreality to some of these presentations. There's a plan to train 10,000 competent Afghan civil servants annually, and another to recruit 3,500 honest policemen every month, and a third to nearly double the monthly recruits into the Afghan army. Plans call for mobilizing 32 percent of the available military-age males.

But setting such targets in a PowerPoint slide and achieving them are two different things.
When the United States goes to war on the scale it has done in Afghanistan, it creates a kind of alternate reality. America is so big and powerful (and often, arrogant) that most people go with the flow and let Uncle Sam do it. A defiant few protest the foreign occupation with roadside bombs and suicide vests. That's the syndrome of dependency and rage that the United States now faces in Afghanistan -- and must break.
The best message for Karzai is the truth: Unless he improves governance, the massive American effort won't last more than another year. We can't do it for him. For the Karzai regime, the political calculus is brutally simple: It's reform or die.
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Dit heeft alles te maken met de koppige houding van de regering van de VS zelf.
Zoals nu ook weer bij het gebruik maken van drones in Pakistan.

Een echte aanrader is de documentaire: 'Why We Fight'.
Deze documentaire gaat over het militair-industriële complex als factor in het Amerikaanse buitenlands beleid in de laatste halve eeuw en bevat interviews met John McCain, Richard Perle, William Kristol en vele anderen.



Meer informatie op: Archive.org.

Amerikanen zijn door de cowboy-mentaliteit van Bush danig in de problemen gekomen. maar dat is
niet iets wat alleen Europeanen zien, dat weten ze in Amerika ook. dat is hun ook door critici zoals
o.a. Michael Moore met Fahrenheit 9/11 wel ingepeperd.

maar er moet een oplossing komen, dwz dat Obama voor een moeilijke taak staat.
uit het artikel van vandaag in de Washington Post:

It's a classic American dilemma: How does a superpower fix problems in a faraway country without
dictating policies in a way that ultimately enfeebles the very people we are trying to help? Over the
years we've gotten this wrong in Vietnam, the Middle East and Latin America.

't is duidelijk: ze kennen het probleem, maar als je eenmaal je hand in een wespennest gestoken hebt ????????

de gebeurtenissen in Fort Hood maken duidelijk dat bij de militairen de rek eruit is.
het aantal zelfmoorden stijgt onrustbarend :

Fort Hood has felt the strain of repeated deployments
Base leads Army posts in number of suicides since Iraq invasion
'Horrific outburst of violence'
An Army psychiatrist opened fire at a processing center at Fort Hood near Killeen, Tex.,
killing at least 11 soldiers and wounding dozens more.

By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 6, 2009

Fort Hood, the Texas military base that was the scene of a mass shooting Thursday, has been hard hit by the growing strain on the Army from multiple combat deployments -- with its personnel suffering the highest number of suicides among Army installations since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to official data.
After many years of lengthy war zone rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army personnel are experiencing record rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, as well as worsening alcohol and drug abuse.
The psychological toll on the all-volunteer force today is unprecedented, Army officials say, acknowledging that they do not know how much the Army can sustain before it breaks -- making the health of the force a major consideration in President Obama's current deliberations over sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
It's unclear what motivated the Army psychiatrist who is thought to have opened fire on fellow soldiers Thursday, although it's clear he had worked in settings where the effects of combat stress were pervasive.
A small but increasing number of soldiers undergoing the mental strain of repeated combat deployments are taking lives -- often their own.
This year, 117 active-duty Army soldiers were reported to have committed suicide, with 81 of those cases confirmed -- up from 103 suicides during the same period last year. Ten suicides have been reported at Fort Hood this year; more than 75 of its personnel have committed suicide since 2003. Fort Hood's high number of suicides is also linked to the fact that it is the Army's largest base, with more than 53,000 soldiers.
An estimated 30 percent of those returning from combat suffer mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Such problems grow worse with repeated deployments and the constant exposure to danger and the sights, smells and emotions of seeing others killed or wounded, according to Army mental health surveys.
Those who treat the mentally wounded, including doctors such as Hasan, are not immune from the symptoms. It is not uncommon for therapists who treat patients for post-traumatic stress disorder to experience some symptoms vicariously after hearing account after account of the horrors of the battlefield.
Hasan was a psychiatry intern at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from June 2003 to July 2009, Army officials said. In that position, he probably treated soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Violent outbursts such as shootings by soldiers at Army bases have occurred in recent years, including at Fort Hood, where several killings were reported over the past two years.
Historically, one of the worst shooting incidents involving soldiers took place Oct. 27, 1995, at Towle Stadium at Fort Bragg, N.C., when a soldier opened fire on paratroopers in a formation, killing one Army officer and wounding 18 others.

de recrutering voor het leger in de USA heeft een voordeel bij de hoge werkloosheid maar heeft
ook zijn beperkingen.
de gegadigden worden gelokt met bijv. een bonus:

Military officials say their recent success is due to increased spending on recruiting and bonuses, which in the Army went from an average of less than $8,000 in 2000 to more than $18,000 in 2008.

maar de beperkingen zijn er ook:
About 75 percent of the country's 17- to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service, largely because they are poorly educated, overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces

en onder andere:
about a third of all potential recruits can't join is because they're too fat and out of shape.

de fysieke fitnesstest waaraan voldaan moet worden:
To pass an Army physical fitness test, an 18-year-old male must be able to do 42 push-ups in two minutes, 53 sit-ups in two minutes and run two miles in 15 minutes and 54 seconds.

met een werkloosheidspercentage van tien procent (ca. 15 miljoen mensen) is The Army voor sommigen een reddingsboei.