A Blitzkrieg Surge In Helmand To Crush Taliban

Photo: David Guttenfelder / AP

The Americans are in their fourth day of an offensive surge in Helmand province, former British stronghold for the ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and the enemy is melting away as they approach. A lightning force of 4,000 marines has been sent to clear out the insurgency there, as Barack Obama begins his most important foreign policy decision in office. The operation is called “Khanjar”, or “Strike of the Sword”, and has been made possible by the 17,000-strong increase in troops from the U.S. and former Iraq veterans.

The operation, with coordination of Afghan and Pakistani troops, has seen thousands of marines storm Helmand river valley, and the success of the operation could be a pivotal one in the current stalemate. It is riskiest move since George W. Bush and General David Petraeus implemented a surge in Iraq to contain the insurgency during the worst days of the Iraq war. The goal of the blitzkrieg, a German world war two strategy used to overwhelm the enemy before they have time to respond, is to rout the Taliban as they inevitably attempt to flee the province to safer ground. The hope is that the move will win hearts and minds, as villagers see how committed the U.S. is to winning. As well, the new directive to U.S. troops, to not fire when civilians could be hurt or killed, seems to have worked. No civilians have been reported killed in the offensive so far.

All reports are that the Taliban has fled from the onslaught of U.S. troops, with sporadic gunfire and RPG attacks being repelled by helicopters and infantry. The pincer attack has been aimed at sending the Taliban at the Pakistani border, where the military there awaits to stop any attempts to sneak across. As a last resort, however, the militants could refuge in the mountains, where it would be difficult to track them. Victory in Helmand would be seen as a great change in the war against the extremists, as NATO tries to create as much security as possible before the August presidential elections.

There have been reprisal attacks, but those have been easily repelled, with the Taliban taking heavy casualties for their efforts [as usual]. The new offensive is meant to assure residents of a long-term American presence in the area, so as not to lose out to cynical fears whereby in the past the Taliban had returned to liberated areas when NATO troops moved on. As a local in Lashkar Gah says:

“But I am not optimistic. [These] operations are like the cat-and-mouse cartoon where the mouse escapes when the cat attacks, but when the cat is gone the mouse comes back and starts again.”

The long-term strategy is to stay in Helmand until the end of the Afghan elections, after which they will assist in getting Afghan security forces settled in a patrol circuit to repel Taliban approaches. Ultimately the Americans admit that they are a stop-gap measure. True success remains in setting up an accountable government that is responsive to it’s own security needs, and the stable economy and governmental services that go with it. While I remain hopeful of this current offensive to maintain the first set of goals, I feel skeptical that the Karzai government will be the one to provide the kind of long-term stability that this mission needs to really succeed.

The Sarah Palin Enigma

If there’s one thing that can be said about Sarah Palin, it’s that nobody really knows why she suddenly announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska with a full 18 months left in her first term except for her. Some have said it’s based on her intent to focus on running for the 2012 presidential election, although that seems a little premature. Mitt Romney, for instance, stepped down as governor of Massachusetts in February of 2007 in preparation for his shot at the Presidency. Mike Huckabee stepped down as Governor of Arkansas around the same time. By contrast, the proper time for Sarah Palin to focus on her run for the Presidency would be early 2011, long after her term would have ended in Alaska.

There have been many attributions to the media as being Sarah Palin’s reason for resignation. Conservative faithful say that she was hounded by them, harassed long after she stepped from the presidential spotlight, and made the brunt of constant jokes about her family from liberals. That part is true enough. Even as she announced her withdrawal from Alaskan politics to begin some new, ambiguous journey, her detractors derided her with time-tested jokes about her family.

But people are still clearly confused about why she chose to leave office, except that we know she said she has been motivated by a “higher calling”. In her resignation speech, she said that she didn’t want to spend the last 18 months of her term as a “lame duck” governor, saying that some politicians have a tendency to “milk it”, and that she didn’t want to cost the taxpayers of Alaska unnecessary money and expenses. Not to overstate the obvious, but it doesn’t make any sense to say with nearly half of her term left in office, that she would be merely coasting along as an ineffective leader. Indeed, many conservatives in America widely regarded her position as being one that still gave her the kind of credibility and authority needed to speak to issues of an important nature. Indeed, after watching the press conference, one is left wondering whether this is a Sarah Palin moving on to bigger and better, or preparing to fade to black.

If it is the latter hope, then former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove is perplexed by the move. Calling it “risky”, he said that stepping down from office takes away a platform for controlling the agenda and message.

“The media, if she wants to run for president, is going to be following her for the next 3½ years,” said Rove, who called the move unclear and therefore a potentially harmful strategy for a politician. “Effective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp. … It’s not clear what she’s doing and why.”

Worse than the uncertainty of the reasons for her decision, it gives her opponents the opportunity to call her a “quitter”. Mike Huckabee also said that her resignation won’t end the media hounding. If the perception is that she was “chased” out of office, it will hurt her credibility for being able to hold on to a higher office. Meanwhile Republican strategist Ed Rollins also agrees that resigning does not automatically mean she’s headed for a 2012 run for office. Citing other governors who have aims at the White House, he said that the “lame duck” excuse doesn’t fly in conservative circles, and will damage her career. “She didn’t finish the job.”

“The new (Alaska) governor, the legislature will move right beyond her,” Rollins asserted, “and I think, to a certain extent, she certainly will have a voice among conservatives, as a viable, political person who’s gonna help the Republican party, (but) I don’t think she can do it as effectively if you’re not a governor.”

[...]

“Every step from here on out has to be one that has a strategy to it,” Rollins said. “This is tactical. She got up (Friday), went out, surprised the political world – which you shouldn’t do – surprised the media world – which you shouldn’t do – and at the end of the day, no one knows why. She’s gotta go answer all the questions and not run away from them: ‘Here’s why I did it, it was for my family, it was for this, and for that reason.’ But the idea, it’s speculation, ‘I’m gonna run for president, I can do it more effectively from outside,’ is not true.”

The fact is that when John McCain picked her for a running mate for 2008, she skyrocketed into the conservative spotlight, but has yet to earn the kind of accolades she’s received from her supporters. That she’s suffered undue scorn and hatred from her opponents, including attacks against her family, is certainly something that must have been difficult on her. The challenge then, is to be able to prove herself as someone able to rise above it all, and come out on top as a champion. Because the fact is that nobody respects a quitter.

Related

Fox News Liz Trotta with some strong words for Palin.

Canada A Compartmentalized Nation

The Toronto Sun has an article today lamenting the flaws in multiculturalism as being one that creates “ethnic ghettos”, instead of the benefits that would come from the mixing of cultures in true “diversity”. “If ever all these ethnic groups mingle into a single entity”, the writer opines, then Canada would have created a “miracle race”. Unfortunately, the scenario in Canada’s big cities appear to show more of a compartmentalized nation, and the rapid ghettoization is clear in large cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It isn’t real diversity, except perhaps in glowing governmental brochures and high school essays. No, what we are witnessing is the emergence of vast self-contained communities which survive independent from Canadian culture at all. Communities so large that their isolation is self-sustaining because of the relative autonomy they have, represented by their politically elected ethnic leaders, sustained by their ethnic economy servicing others like them, and isolated by a need to keep together in these pockets throughout Canada.

Was this piece written by a white Canadian of European ancestry lamenting the gradual shift to a mosaic of cultures too different from his own to understand? An intolerant bigot, to be written off as nobody more than another standing in the way of the inevitable changes of our demography?

It would be too easy if it were so. But unfortunately for those kind of critics, the article was written by Gurmukh Singh, a person belonging to one of the ethnic groups he speaks about in his article. The problem, he says, is the lack of interaction between cultures, not just between immigrant clusters and Canadians, but between each cluster:

The Chinese of Markham have little interaction with the Indians of Brampton or the Pakistanis of Mississauga or the Sri Lankans of Scarborough or the Somalis of Islington.

Forget about the mainstream white society. These ethnic groups have little to do with them.

As mentioned earlier, there are no compulsions for people in these ethnic enclaves to leave their comfort zones. In addition, the Canadian government has given them enough incentives to stay in their ghettos with a beautiful thing called multiculturalism.

This well-meaning policy may have been aimed at helping newcomers preserve their language, religious traditions and culture, but it seems to have served the opposite purpose.

Basically this policy says: Be the way you are, and stay in your ghetto. Bluntly speaking, it breeds isolation.

Gurmukh Singh goes on to lament that this isolation is propped up by politicians who understand that they can target an entire voting bloc by pandering to isolationist policies. These liberal-style ethnic donations aren’t just reserved for the Chretien-Martin years, but have infiltrated the Conservative stratagem. And the main argument for immigrant communities, that their children will eventually integrate and the problem will be solved, is a fallacy in the face of the fact that Canada’s record immigration numbers, accomplished under a Conservative banner, replenish the numbers of immigrants leaving the ghettos with new ones. Meaning that there is a permanent state of ghettos in Canada that are completely isolated from everybody else.

Not only does isolation create a problem within Canadian cohesiveness, but as Mr.Singh explains in his article, Toronto winds up becoming the battlegrounds for battles best left on the shores of the countries they abandoned. The Tamil Tiger demonstrations in Ottawa and Toronto this spring are a perfect example of it.

This realization of the failings of Canada’s multiculturalism and immigration comes at a time when a Canadian think-tank has said that immigration is not the answer to our future problems. In short, Canadians need to start having children, not outsourcing our population growth to new immigrants who will merely fill ethnic communities. A study by the C.D. Howe Institute found that even vast increases of immigrants has little effect on the age dilemma facing Canadians from the baby boomer generation retirement as our demographics shift to an aged nation. What this ultimately means is that the more we outsource our population growth, the less sustainable our social security will be in the future. A change in our thinking about immigration could be necessary in a very short time.