Things Getting Rough:
Pakghanistan & China
When I worried (in the penultimate sentence of an essay about zombies) about things soon “getting rough” for the new President, I was thinking foreign affairs.
And was thinking of President Kennedy, who was blasted by the Bay of Pigs raid on his 76th day in office. Things were never the same. The White House’s struggle thereafter to gain control of American foreign policy and change course might best be imagined as one long scraggling slide off a cliff.
But to return to current affairs:
1. Iraq.
Mass murderous bombs are going off again. Very bad for the Pentagon song that both McCain and Obama began to sing last spring, a coro castrati. For if the Surge there was not simply a Success — if the relative calm of 2008 was tactical and keyed in good part to the American audience/elections — if the basic animosities (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) and political questions (who shall control the state?) have not been soothed by General Petraeus’s community policing, what then?
And with what effect on the marketing of the Iraqi Surge’s young cousin on Iran’s eastern borders?
2. Pakghanistan.
Benazir Bhutto’s murder. The rocky greeting given her widow-successor, Zardari, after his first address to parliament. (During the reception unhappy campers blew up the nearby Marriott, home to yankee journalists and diplomats.) The attack on the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay by a Paki assault team.
And, meanwhile: the mass-murderous missile attacks by the Americans in northwest Pakistan, which began circa Labor Day and which yesterday killed 21 people identified — in first reports — as “militants aligned with a Pakistani Taliban leader,” and wounded fifteen others.
Note that three weeks ago, a similar first report by American authorities, claiming that 15 of 16 killed were “militants,” was revised to acknowledge that 13 were random walkers — indeed, “civilians.” The Army general in charge issued not an apology but “deepest condolences” and a week later the New York Times observed in an editorial:
Almost no one wants to say it out loud. But between the threats from extremists, an unraveling economy, battling civilian leaders and tensions with its nuclear rival India, Pakistan is edging ever closer to the abyss.
Such were the trends inherited by Obama and, for his part, left on Cruise Control.
In the past ten days they have coalesced into a major political crisis — based on widespread anti-Americanism — that might leave Islamabad looking more like the Federally Administered Tribal Areas than the capital of a large industrialized state armed with nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile across the border ….
Today the Times relays White House views (elaborating upon Obama’s comments in a pub’d interview last weekend) sketching the new US plan for Afghanistan:Â Lots of carrots and a stick or two, to tease out from among the Evil feuding warlords those We Can Work With, and to encourage those to enforce a sort of peace (stability, equilibrium) that at least does lip service to the quasi-installed, quasi-foreign government in Kabul.
Or maybe President Karzai and Kabul will be abandoned in public, in favor of something even more Realistic with the so-called Northern Alliance warlords (non Afghan and non Pashtun) who Bush-Cheney found, however briefly, to be Men We Can Work With.
This range of possibilities seems to be the Petraeus Plan at the moment. Maybe it’s the best Obama can do with a long-neglected and seemingly pointless situation. Maybe it’s the best way Home. (Then again, whatever happened to that Unocal pipeline?) One might hope.
But the Times piece also talks about transferring US attention and resources to Pakistan. And so perhaps (as surmised here since erstwhile CIA director Hayden’s belligerent speech of December) the new Afghan policy will be best understood (largely in retrospect) as what the Pentagon thought best to quickly stabilize Afghanistan to allow it to function as the staging of a boots-on-the-ground war in the FATA across the border.
And what further necessities might that incursion give birth to? Where will the Petraeus Plan really lead? This is the relevance of the Bay of Pigs precedent. (See the “blasted” link above.)
3. China.
It’s hard to imagine serious trouble breaking out between China and the US right now, since they both have so much at stake in the effort to stabilize the global economy.
And gee, surely the Obama honeymoon (internationally — like Gorbachev’s) has more legs than this?
But for the files if nothing else (you realize you have fallen into my filing cabinet?), one must note:
– the seemingly silly quasi-naval confrontation off the Chinese coast. The Times says the American vessel is a submarine hunter. But gee, the South China Sea is exceedingly shallow. Perhaps “spy vessel” is best? Recall the Mayaguez, during Ford. In any case, now we’re sending in ships with guns and missiles mounted in plain sight.
–Â the Chinese premier expressing worries about getting stuck holding the bag on a trillion in US Treasury bonds. Various voices over there have been expressing concern for some time, and more than a year ago Peking began to swap dollars for gold, but this is the most salient signal to date.
Surely Uncle Sam and China must be friends. Surely.
Yet it’s a signal of how big a worry the current problems could become that Obama had an unscheduled sit with the Chinese Foreign Minister at the White House yesterday.
Did a Bruce Lee boxed set change hands?
HOWEVER THE CURRENT contretemps may work out, things are indeed getting rough. The Prez is going to have much less time on his hands to muse about where precisely to suggest his arm’s-length adjuncts apply their Band-Aids to the buboed bodies of the big banks and the health care system.
One must temper expectations, of course. Things since November 1963 (of which I have no memory — I was five) have indeed never been the same. A hundred years hence, Chinese grade-school textbooks will use Julius Caeser’s crossing of the Rubicon River and the murder of JFK to illustrate how republics by and for people morph into empires run by and for the state’s military-money complex.
Nevertheless, Obama has a few miles of blue water left as the pounding of the lee shore drifts to his ears. As an aid to navigation, Robert Dallek points out this morning that LBJ walked away with neither Guns nor Butter from the White House, after one elected term.
A cautionary tale about Imperial Overreach. It’s worth noting in addition that not one president, but three, back then, were handed their heads by the brassy entrepreneurs of the Vietnam war.
ed says:
Having cited and linked to Robert Dallek’s piece, I should say that he or the Times editor responsible for the headline is wrong to speak of Vietnam as “Another President’s War” when speaking of LBJ.
We were in Cochin China (later known as Vietnam) during World War II, arming the natives in their battle against the Japanese. Afterward, without interruption, we enhanced our supply of arms to these people soon labelled insurgents in the western press since they were now fighting the French, not the Nips. (Prouty provides firsthand reportage on all this.)
When the French said adieu post Dien Bien Phu, we officially opened a CIA shop in Saigon. Sole Proprietor: OSS veteran Edwin Lansdale 1954.
Seven years later, Lansdale’s application to become Ambassador of South Vietnam was rejected by President Kennedy during his first weeks in office.
Less than three years later, Lansdale’s pal and quasi-puppet in Vietnam, President Diem, was murdered in a local coup more or less condoned by the Americans.
(That is:Â The White House went back and forth on the notion of replacing Diem for months. Several false starts started, encouraging then discouraging more than one local pretender. The White House seems to have condoned the specific operation that resulted in Diem’s death but (this much is clear) that operation included a jet provided by the CIA to remove Diem and his extended family to Paris.
Prouty reports that the Diem and his brother (a top advisor) actually boarded the jet, then disembarked in an unexplained panic and drove back to the president’s palace, where they found coupsters already arranging furniture. A chase ensued and the brothers were shot.
JFK was in the company of a half dozen others when the news of Diem’s death was delivered. Those several witnesses concur that he blew his top in a most extraordinary way.
It may be that the US ambassador in Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge, encouraged the local rivals to kill Diem. Lodge and the White House were at odds on Vietnam, aka the War on Communism, thru out the period. Their disagreements explain much of the administration’s confused stance on the whole question since the spring.)
The day Diem died, about 16,000 US troops were in Vietnam — under CIA auspices and direction. Weeks before, JFK had signed an order bringing 10,00 out by New Year’s and anticipating full withdrawal by year-end 1965.
Twenty days after Diem was dispatched, Kennedy himself was murdered. Less than a week later, President Johnson signed an order rescinding Kennedy’s withdrawal plan.
Then, after Johnson’s 1964 election victory and subsequent State of the Union address, he gave the Pentagon the green-light it had been seeking in Southeast Asia since Eisenhower’s second term, during which a failed CIA invasion of Indonesia (1958 — ten times larger than Bay of Pigs) and then failures against Peking in Laos, had raised Cowboy Commie-fighting land-grabbing fevers to a pitch.
See Dr Strangelove and (or better yet read) Seven Days in May. The rest being history as television and textbooks more or less tell it.
Thus, contrary to Dallek’s headline, our Vietnam War did not begin until 1965. It was the child of Johnson and the Pentagon.
What transpired between 1943 and 1964 was different: a mix of diplomacy, arms supply, covert operations and advising of the nascent South Vietnamese army. Was run by the OSS and then the CIA. Was minor (re expense of US lives and treasure) compared to what followed, as troop levels escalated to over half a million. And was in the process of being shut down on the morning of November 22, 1963.
Dallek of course is a biographer of both Johnson and Kennedy and has feelings among sources past and present to protect. (The way he sketches the history in his piece suggests tightrope walking.)
And of course there have been a number of LBJ associates across the years who have told the public that Johnson was in some way involved in JFK’s murder. I have not looked into it well enough to have an opinion; if compelled to bet money Yes or No would bet no. Because the murder was such a widespread and professional operation.
(The homespun LBJ theory has his old Texas hatchet man Max Wallace doing the shooting. But who called off the Secret Service and the Army Intelligence security unit and (re Roger Craig’s testimony) the Dallas Sheriff’s office and who flew a brigade from Germany to Washington (over the city when the shooting occurred) and kept it circling in the air for hours then flew it back to Germany?  And who prepared the extensive press package on Oswald that was already distributed and founding public reportage before Oswald had been accused by Dallas PD of the Kennedy murder? And what about the testimony and statements of Morita Lorenz and Howard Hunt …)
It was a large scale professional hit. Impossible for me to imagine it was Johnson’s initiative. Equally hard to think he was a manager. Possible to believe however (as a Dallas girlfriend repeatedly said) that he was told/warned shortly before it happened and did nothing to stop it. But … No opinion.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
ed says:
Here is an excellent assessment of what the US under Obama seems to be about in Pakghanistan.
The demonstrations in Pakistan are getting bigger and bolder.
To continue tracking events in Pakhanistan thru time, click here.
March 15th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Ilidas says:
Reading through this and your extended and exhaustive comments and links appended to your earlier article on Afghanistan, there is much that leaves us intrigued. The comparison between Obama and JFK, and, accordingly, of the foreign policy challenges facing both admins, is trenchant indeed. Specifically, the lessons you’ve drawn from analysis of the Bay of Pigs — and applied to the current situation in Pakghanistan — have begun to “tear us a new one” in terms of how we view this looming war.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
ed says:
Glad you find it interesting.
I should note that the notion that the BoP raid was a conscious provocation (by its planners in CIA and Pentagon) of the callow new president is NOT my invention. It’s a rather common view among people who have studied the disclosed history.
The famous internal CIA report by the CIA Inspector General (which became public only in the early 90s if memory serves) supports the notion, by concluding that the raid had absolutely zero chance of any kind of success on the ground in Cuba. The numbers were just ridiculously small given the well organized and populous Cuban militias.
The IG specifically destroyed the old Right Wing canard that if the White House had merely okayed air cover (using the B-26s out of … Guatemala if memory serves) the invasion would/might have succeeded. The IG said no way.
There was (according to John Ehrlichman) only one copy of this report, kept in a no-access vault at the CIA, for the eyes of the President and DCI only.
But the tenor of the IG’s investigation had become clear as he conducted his interviews with the planners and managers of the raid — and thus this report haunted the Apparat (knowing nothing but expecting the worst) for years.
The early dispute among Nixon and Helms (DCI) over files — Nixon wanted the CIA’s BoP files — were related. Helms was trying to keep what the IG knew from becoming White House scuttlebutt …
Back to the main point.
Aside from the IG, there are many voices from the time that support the notion that the plan was to set something in motion that the PResident would be compelled by circumstances — ie, by the Briefers from the Pentagon and CIA — to “rescue” to avoid “embarrassment” and avoid “losing to the Commies.
And rescue meant giving the green light to a few transports already on the water loaded with Marines and what not.
Kennedy instead pivoted and said no — and took all the heat thereafter that the planners had in effect blackmailed him with.
This digging in of heels — again, only 76 days on the job — is what’s most remarkable about Kennedy’s performance.
It seems to me he knew enough about the Apparat, from:
– service as a lowly lieutenant in a long shooting war
– 12 years in Congress and
– a lifetime in a family that traded at the very highest political levels …
He knew enough, given that, to smell a rat.
Knew (as few Americans did/do) of the failed 1958 invasion of Indonesia, which was also run by CIA but with 10x the number of people.
Knew that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Lemnitzer) and his sidekick (LeMay) were bona fide “nuts” (as Kennedy put it early in 1961) — already sending memos about the need to nuke China now.
Kennedy in short had a lot more experience with, and thus healthy skepticism about, the National Security Apparat than Obama, who seems to love the dudes and is, manifestly, so far, allowing them to run foreign policy.
Will he begin to dig in his heels is the question. Doing so was not easy for Kennedy, and of course in the end he lost the struggle.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
ed says:
Fast forward to July: The Pakis, after ten months of misguided mass murderous CIA missile attacks, are presenting a remarkably united front as they shout Yankees Go Home.
It seems clear that the whole big idea that Gates-Mullen crafted post Rumsfeld, and sold to both Obama and McCain more than a year ago, will be stillborn. Petraeus is getting his troops. But where will they go? What will they blow up and bury? The sand itself, Sahib?
It will be interesting to see if the additional 10,000 troops Petraeus asked for (ahem) in February (beyond the 16,000 then in transit) will actually be put on ships. If not, it will be a quiet sign that Gates-Mullen have reconsidered.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Conversation » Things Getting Rough: Pakghanistan & China | Guatemala Today says:
[...] rest is here: Conversation » Things Getting Rough: Pakghanistan & China Tags: Headline, invasion, opposition, texas-at-the [...]
August 5th, 2009 at 5:17 pm