Obama on Af/Pak

Yes, Joe, I hope it works, too. Thanks for a great summary.

Good recap, thanks.
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Re/ the the tariffs on Pakistani-made textiles in point two. I read that the US Chamber of Commerce supports it which makes me wonder about the negative effect easing the tariffs would have on US textile workers.
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http://www.pakistanviews.com/top-us-lobby-for-cut-in-tariffs-on-pakistani-textiles/

Thanks Joe, your post was very thoughtful and insightful. I wonder what you think about Scherer's much less competent post on the same subject though? One has to wonder.

[...] From here. [...]

I know it's hardly news, but the ISI's behavior just seems ...schizophrenic (for lack of a better word). Essentially you have an agency of the government funding and supporting an external group that seeks to overthrow that government (yes, I understand the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are different organizations, but neither is going to do much for Pakistan's stability). Would it be an exaggeration to say that Pakistan essentially has two governments?

Thanks for the informative post, Joe.

PNNTO - As far as U.S. textile workers go, they are a dying breed. Most of the actual manufacturing of yarns and fabrics moved offshore back in the 70s and 80s, along with the apparel industries. The textile and garment unions reorganized again and again, are now part of UNITE HERE, formed when UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) merged in 2004.
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I spent some time on their website, and could not find any evidence that foreign competition is a major issue for them at this point. I do recall attending a panel discussion on the "threat" of imports about 30 years ago, and hearing a textile union representative (at the time, Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union (ACTWU)) saying that they had given up trying to save jobs for their children, and were focusing on being able to work to retirement age. According to UNITE HEAR, there about about 200,000 members of their union on the apparel-textile side in the U.S. and Canada, and that includes folks working in retail as well as manufacturing.

Wow, and I just realized that two of my old unions are now one -- from my textile factory days (burning fabric samples for quality control) and my waitressing career. Talk about strange bedfellows.

I imagine, eons from now, a far more intelligent life form sifting through our refuse and trying to understand why a relatively intelligent species would go to war w/ a plant.

Holy Cow, we have a coherent President who is not interested in creating nations in our own image. ...............

http://thefiresidepost.com/2009/03/27/creating-countries-in-our-own-image/

Interesting post.
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In 1737 The Jesuits, today a teaching order of the Catholic Church, came to the Hudson Bay area with the intention of bringing Christianity to the pagan natives. At the time the Jesuits thought being a Christian meant working six days in your village and resting after Mass on Sunday. The nomadic tribes of the Hudson Bay had other ideas. This great adventure in civilizing others is now know as The Sillery Experiment. The Sillery Experiment is used by historians as an excellent example of the difficulty in changing other cultures. Bush and Cheney did not read their history books.
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I imagine they also never read The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, a science fiction work on the same theme. Probably too busy watching endless loops of "Friday Night Lights" and "Saving Private Ryan".

OK.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
But how far is that end?
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Still, when do we declare victory? When do we get out of that sparsely-populated Afghanistan - when we have killed 30% of the population? 80%? Never - as in the invasion and clearing American Indians from America?

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First there was Afghanistan. Then there was Iraq. Then there was Pakistan. Then ....
[Or may be it starts earlier: In the beginning, there was Vietnam. And it was not good. But the corporate world craved war and the prosperity it brings. So, after a long while, there was puny Grenada. That was easy. We got braver. Then there was weak Panama. That felt better. Then there was Haiti. We got our grove back. Then there was Kuwaiti. ....]

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" ... We'll offer wheat, then burn the crop if the farmers don't accept it. ..."

Oh, my! The genuine imperial reign of terror.
We have the power and the will to use it, right? They have no say, right?

Why not go after the people who demand it - the users - and the routes that supply it to the end users? We are going all out after "terrorism". Why not deal with all aspects of the problem - or are we afraid that Europeans and our Americans will be inconvenienced?

Can't we use the same heavy-handed tactics everywhere - such as in the USA's war on marijuana? I heard someone talk of legalizing it ...

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" ... This proved very efficacious in Iraq, especially in urban areas. .."

Bad example: Why are we in Iraq, Mr Klein? Aggression.

Words matter. Journalists know that.

We may study Hitler's military tactics and the terror tactics of the Mafia. Presumably, one would hardly use the term "efficacious" in those cases - any more than one would use the term "terror" or "terrorism" while referring to the west and its war of aggression in Iraq. Not even with regard to the spectre that is Abu Ghraib_Guantanamo_Baghram.

I just looked at KT's article on the media and motivating factors. JK, is your motivation political? Commercial? Supremacist?

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" .. madrasa, which sends terrorists ... to kill .."

Then there are those extreme racist madrasa in Israel. Do something about them.

And those hate-filled madrasa - especially of the religious right - in USA today that are vicious proponents of racist hate, war and genocide.

Still waiting for BHO to declare war on the terrorist KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood groups in USA. Those groups are responsible for terror and more murders in the USA than occurred on 9/11. Why the double-standards?

Thanks for the excellent info joyomama. I worked for Hancock Fabrics 15-18 years ago and the work environment and pay back then were very, to put it delicately, old school.
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Tough way to scrape by for even the lifers and when I saw the USCoC was all for it I got curious.

As much as I hate for US to meddle in the affairs of another country, US should give this plan a try especially if it looks like (at least according to Joe Klein) we have the support of the Afghani population.

At the same time Afghans are fiercely practical people, they have to be like that. If the US Plan does not produce tangible results in a reasonable amount of time, Afghans will change sides and support taliban or anyone else who provides stability.

The mill I worked for in the 70s closed for "vacation" (unpaid) from Christmas to New Year's Day, but we each got a free turkey! And don't ask about quality control; we applied various finishes to fabrics used in tents. The way I was told to "sample" was to keep burning samples until 100 passed. Sometimes that took a week!

Funny stories joyomama. But there has been progress- "vaction" is now "furlough", sort of like "dead end" is now "cul de sac".

Yeah, I got 3 furlough days from the university so far this year. No turkey, though.

"The economic aid package to Pakistan is unprecedented, and important, but we have to be extra-careful about how that money is disbursed by the Pakistani government. Another action that might be considered is lifting the tariffs on Pakistani-made textiles, which would be an enormous boon to building a stable middle class there."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, the triumph of hope over experience.

The poppy solution is very notable. We'll offer wheat, then burn the crop if the farmers don't accept it. Then offer wheat again. These sorts of crop replacement programs don't have a fantastic track record, but the size of the poppy crop in Afghanistan has lowered prices, and also caused a real food shortage. For those reasons, the British troops in Helmand told me last December that they had some hope that a wheat replacement campaign might work.

How are they gonna get the wheat to market?

[...] TIME’s Joe Klein also weighs in. [...]

Some pundits are already calling Afghanistan 'Obama's War.' This is premature. ...............

http://thefiresidepost.com/2009/03/28/obamas-war-afghanistan/

Will the one guy, besides Joe Klein [we all know about him], who believes one word of this blah blah blah, please rise and let us have a look at your face. I am given to understand that there is actually such a person, or did I get the wrong information and it is factually only Joe?

Brandenburg was his Waterloo in Germany; Afghanistan will be where they bury him.

I wonder if Obama thinks being a bit of a tough guy in Afghanistan masks his wussy effete self with respect to Iran.

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http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/335fasmg.asp

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/031748.html

[...] takes on President Obama’s Afghanistan/Pakistan plan (here are Brooks, Sullivan and Klein, for [...]