Taliban Leader Threatens Obama

[babylonsister]

Taliban Leader Threatens Obama

by Bruce Reidel


Bruce Riedel is a Senior Fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He has advised Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama on Afghanistan on the staff of the NSC and is author of The Search for al Qaeda.


Mullah Omar, the elusive leader of the Afghan Taliban, has released a bold message to the White House, warning that any plan to boost troop levels in Afghanistan could lead to "bitterness and pain." The Daily Beast's Bruce Reidel decodes the chilling message.

On the eve of President Barack Hussein Obama’s announcement of troop levels in Afghanistan next week, his enemy Mullah Mohammed Omar has thrown down the gauntlet. In a major message to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha this week, the commander of the Afghan Taliban addressed “the rulers of the White House” about their plans to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan and to pursue “illogical strategies” that he promises will only lead to “bitterness and pain.” The self-styled "Amir of Believers," meaning the commander of all the faithful in Islam, tells Obama that he and the Afghan people are experts in defeating empires, having destroyed the English and Russian empires before the invasion of the “imperialistic American crusaders.” In short, Omar welcomes the coming fight with a larger NATO army, and he lays down in this message his no-compromise strategy for victory.

To give him his due, Mullah Omar has staged one of the most remarkable military comebacks in history in the last decade. Utterly defeated in late 2001, he retreated into the mountains of southern Afghanistan and the borderlands with Pakistan to regroup. Thanks to George W. Bush’s failure to finish the job then, the Taliban recovered and now controls much of the south and east of the country and is attacking deeper into the north and west every day. With the benefit of a sanctuary in Pakistan, Omar now believes the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be restored to power in the next couple of years.

He is a remarkably secretive man who has met with less than a handful of non-Muslims in his life and prides himself on his piety and simple life. Badly wounded fighting the Soviets, he practices remarkable operational security. His location is a closely guarded secret; reports recently put him in Karachi to escape CIA drones. Normally taciturn, his Eid message is his longest ever, a reflection of the importance of the moment.

Omar begins by rejecting any offer of negotiations from the Kabul government. He calls President Hamid Karzai a stooge of America and warns all his captains to avoid any discussion with the collaborators in Kabul unless it is to speed their defections. Omar has consistently rejected negotiations with Karzai, and he notes Karzai’s recent reelection was marred by massive corruption and vote fraud. Then Omar urges all the educated and literate of Afghanistan to rally behind the Taliban mujahideen. He warns Afghanistan’s neighbors that collaboration with NATO today will come home to haunt them later, once the Taliban have triumphed—a clear warning that the Taliban intend to export their revolution if they succeed.

At the end of the message, he appeals to the entire Islamic community to join in the jihad against America. He lauds the mujahideen fighters in Iraq, Palestine and other countries fighting America, thus associating himself with the global Islamic jihad movement. Omar has done this in previous Eid messages but more forcefully than ever this year. This message combines both a powerful Afghan nationalist statement with a universal Islamic jihad theme in a way designed to portray the Taliban as both an anti-colonial nationalist movement and a part of the larger jihad against the Crusader Americans. This may be a response to criticisms of an earlier message this fall that seemed more nationalist than jihadist. Omar is saying he is both. He is appealing to the broadest base he can.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-27/taliban-leader-threatens-obama/full/

[LoZoccolo]

1. No comments from the people who want to let the Taliban go, I see.

They'll complain enough about the merger of church and state here, but will let an outright violent religious government oppress people somewhere far away...

[bigjohn16]

2. No all we have to do is send 30,000 troops in and ...

check everyone for a Taliban decoder ring. Thousands of years and multiple empires and it's still a country of tribes and warlords but President Obama will try the one thing no one has every attempted, sending more soldiers in. Why didn't anyone else think of that.

[Robb]

3. Because of course that's the extent of the strategy.

That's the whole plan, naturally. Because Obama's a complete fucking idiot, he's just putting them all on a plane.

There aren't even any plans for where they're gonna eat the first night. :eyes:

[bigjohn16]

4. no? nt

[Robb]

5. The trouble with folks lately

...is the automatic assumption that the options are pull everyone out without a plan or go in shootin' without a plan.

The two notions have the same problem. And we've tried both, although the "pull everyone out without a plan" we tried last was in 1989 and was Bush I's idea.

We saw how well that worked.

[bigjohn16]

6. I'm not saying pull everyone out without a plan I'm just saying pull everyone out. nt

[Robb]

8. ...Without a plan.

It's like saying you support feeding hungry children. Or lowering taxes. Good for you for standing up for this unpopular position.

[bigjohn16]

9. So you're for sending more troops just so you can be the outsider?

And just so you know I'm totally against feeding hungry children. :P

[Robb]

10. Hardly.

My point is the plan matters. For example if we find out Tuesday Obama's sending a zillion troops but they're all on a school-building mission, we'd have a different reaction than hearing he's withdrawing all US troops, but sending a nuclear missile to raze the entire country.

The plan matters.

[bigjohn16]

14. My reaction would be the same. That's nation building and it will sink us in just as deep.

Building schools with the US military is like doing surgery with a broadsword. It's not what they're for and it's draining them physically and mentally to be there. If we had a real crisis somewhere the manpower would be lacking at this point. I say we try to get our house in order before we go building another one.

[Robb]

17. So it's really an isolationist standpoint you're supporting?

Again, we tried that and it didn't work. Can't we walk and chew gum at the same time?

And the military builds a lot of stuff. I'm not saying hand hammers to Navy Seals and see how they fare. But I also wouldn't drop members of the Corps of Engineers in the water and ask them to re-take a ship.

[bigjohn16]

19. Not isolationism just not nation building.

Schools don't just mean build the structure, you need teachers. Before we do that will we make it a requirement that they educate the girls along side the boys? We then have to pay and train a police force to protect the schools and neighborhoods. Then comes roads,clinics, hospitals, power, water, etc. When does it end?

Al qaeda attacks us on 9/11 we lose 3000 people here, we get to lose more in Afghanistan, and we get to rebuild an entire nation. I think we got hosed on that deal.

[Robb]

21. It's expensive, you got that right.

But 9/11 only really brought us back to Afghanistan.

This time, now, we have a chance to do this correctly. Like it or not, we broke it, we bought it. We continue to pay for the mistakes we made in the Cold War everywhere else on the globe, why not here?

[bigjohn16]

22. Because our house is falling down around us and we're taking out loans to repair it.

Nation build is not what we should be doing with our military. It's a waste of a finite resource.

[Robb]

24. It's not a zero-sum game. Think about it.

When your neighbor moves out and leaves an empty house next door, you spend another few minutes mowing his former lawn or shoveling the snow off his former section of sidewalk.

We're just not admitting the neighborhood is freakin' huge these days.

[bigjohn16]

25. Would you still mow the lawn ...

if you knew that people were going to die? It's not going to be a Habitat for Humanity event. President Obama will be sending people into a war zone to in your words "mow the lawn."

[Robb]

29. It's a trite comparison, yes.

My point remains, we've seen what doing nothing does, so we can't do that again.

Back to the (admittedly weak) neighborhood metaphor: say the reason the guy moved out was because you sprayed your yard with weedkiller, and killed off his lawn. You didn't want to kill his lawn, you just wanted the weeds in your yard dead. But you didn't think about how close you really were to his lawn.

So you screwed up the neighborhood royally. The only people who want to live there now cook meth in the basement. You can call the cops and roust out the meth cookers, but they keep coming back because no one else wants to live there.

What do you do? Move? There's no place else to move to, because the neighborhood is the whole planet.

You call the cops, again. And you fix the lawn you killed. Or you can wait and see if it re-grows on its own, although the meth cookers aren't likely to bother with the lawn, maybe THIS time it'll be different.

This metaphor has gone WAY out of control, and probably has a million holes, so I'll stop now. But you get the idea. :D

[msongs]

28. you volunteering to go do that? nt

[Duende azul]

32. So, go for it. Enlist.

And as long as our Saudi-friends are in the business of "an outright violent religious government oppress people somewhere far away" will they get the same treatment? Come on, don`t be shy.

[arcadian]

47. There is a C-17 taking off with a seat reserved for you.

You gonna enlist?

[Clio the Leo]

7. Of course if this message came from Jimmy Crack Corn bubba redneck....

..... we'd be demanding to know why the police weren't nailing his behind to the wall.

Irony, huh?

[AllentownJake]

11. Jimmy Crack Corn Bubba Redneck

Is probably a citizen of the United States and by the fact he lives in the United States is subject to US laws.

Kind of an odd comparison to the insurgent leader of a country we are occupying, unless you want to give moral equivalence to Jimmy Crack Corn Bubba Redneck who had the legal right to vote in the past election and lives in a 1st world country with a legal code and a flawed but decent criminal justice system.

[Clio the Leo]

20. So it's wrong for Americans to threaten other Americans....

.... but if they're foreign nationals we give them a pass?

I KNOW that's not what you're saying .... but it certainly sounds like it. ;)

I understand that there are pragmatists in the Democratic party and there are ideologues. .... But I fail to understand how an ideologue can be so even at his or her own peril.

(But being a pragmatist, I suppose I'm looking at it with my own bias.)

Jake, you're a reasonable person, so I'll try asking YOU the same question I keep asking and am not getting an answer to.

How do we pick and choose our battles? When do we deem a battle is worth fighting or not? Or do we withdraw all of our forces and have them man our air and sea?

Why are we more upset about more troops being sent to Afghanistan when we've had troops in Germany and Korea longer than most of us have been alive? When is an occupation wrong and when is it right?

[AllentownJake]

23. Last time I checked

South Korea, Japan, and Germany have democratically elected representatives. In the cases of Germany and Japan there is a treaty ending a declared war that allowed for the occupations. The last time we had active combat in these regions there were 48 states. It is silly to even try to compare Germany, Japan, and Korea to Afghanistan or Iraq it is also silly to compare occupations that were result of a declared war by congress and a UN resolution.

What would the US Government do if they were asked by these governments to leave. We left our bases in France per French request in the 1960s so I'm guessing we would leave.

I don't see how you are any more pragmatic than I am making false equivalencies.

Jimmy Crack Corn Redneck has political recourse to US policy that he disagrees with. He is a citizen of the empire, allowed to participate in the American Political System, and is able to enjoy the full rights guaranteed to him by the US Constitution.

Mullah Omar is an American trained terrorist used as a weapon against the Soviet Union and now turning his training against the country that created him. He has none of the legal rights as a citizen. Trying to put an equivalency on someone inside the American political process and outside it is a little crazy. Jim Crack Corn Redneck is involved in breaking US laws, which by nature of his birth is legally subject to.

I do not agree with Mullah Omar's aims, but his recourse to American power is less than that of the redneck. Also the redneck fully enjoys the advantages of being an American citizen. He lives in a democratic republic and has representatives in government with his world view. Omar is your typical revolutionary, and the historical successful way of dealing with such people is something neither you or I are willing to swallow. Nor would our standing in the world morally survive such measures.

[AllentownJake]

26. You are making an equivalency

with sedition and treason in a democratic republic vs. a terrorist in a 30 year civil war in a country that has had no stability or centralized government in my lifetime. The country the terrorist is living in has also been occupied by the 2 largest empires of the 20th century with only a 15 year period without occupation of foreign troops.

The redkneck is breaking the laws of the society he grew up in, the terrorist has never lived in a society with any laws.

[Duende azul]

35. Why should Afghanis give foreign nationals a pass?

[BeFree]

12. Hey, Omar

So, you want to fight, eh? Can't say I blame you.

But think about this. You can have all the power you want and do it peacefully. Just go back to your cave and hide out. Quit seeking war and just chill for a coupla years.

If you truly are a man of Allah, he will reward you for making peace. But it seems you believe in your own self more than Allah the way you're acting. That's a problem with no good end.

Just chill out for a few years and we will leave your country and then its all yours. As long as you keep poking our troops our knuckleheads are gonna want to stay and fight. Lay low, we leave, you win. And in the meantime lots of innocents get to go back to life with some peace.

[AllentownJake]

13. They want to bankrupt us

As far as I can tell, they did a pretty good job at that effort the first 8 years.

The goal is not to "win" against US forces, it is to outlast. This is the same tactic that has been used for thousands of years, by various revolutionary forces including our own.

The only effective response is the one that was used by the Romans, and quite frankly I don't have the stomach for that type of response.

[BeFree]

15. Nah

They just are as ignorant as any of our fundies.

And all they want is naked power over their fellows.
At least that isn't our gig. Really, all we want is peace. Well, most of us that aren't Bush-ass-kissers.

So, we are slightly more morally correct than they are. Only slightly.

Militarily, why isn't Omar pushing up daises?

[AllentownJake]

16. I think you are underestimating the enemy

They may be fundamentalist, but they certainly aren't ignorant. Many of their leaders were educated in western schools and have significant exposure to western society.

This isn't just a battle over Afghanistan. Remember, this battle started over Saudi Arabia and is still about Saudi Arabia.

[BeFree]

18. You give them way to much credit

The real reason we are there is to grab the oil.

They are just reacting. And they are using weapons we sell them to react.

It must be nice to live under the impression that we should be over there making war on cavemen. Makes life real simple, I imagine. Just trust the M$M and follow along?

[Diclotican]

38. AllentownJake

AllentownJake

I doubt that any modern man or people have the stomach to fight a war as the romans did it.. They REALLY stoped a war, with some of the most brutal form of force.. You know if you get the roman legions after you, you was screwd big time... As many discovered... The idea behind roman military var rather primtive.. Beat the enemy so hard that they dosen't deared to stand up to the roman empire again.. Some romans used the roman soldiers smart and others was not to smart when they used their roman soldiers.. But the life in the army in roman times was also rather harsh, So maybe it was therefore they act out as they did?

And we have not slave markeds either.. The romans was famous for their selling of slaves to every corner of the "world"..

Diclotican

[AllentownJake]

40. The Brittish came pretty close

as did the French and Spanish in their colonies when dealing with non-European populations. America has it's own history of dealing with a population that wouldn't surrender to rule by another ethnic group.

In modern times you have the Germans, Japanese, and Russians who turned such policies not only externally but also internally.

Like I said, I have no stomach for genocide.

Germany and Japan were unique cases in occupation history, than again they had educated populations, a history of democratic government before fascism and we took all their weapons away for a significant time period with martial law.

Alexander was pretty good at it too without adopting the most brutal tactics, however it didn't hold when he died without a successor. I doubt Michelle will allow Barack to take a second wife though.

[Diclotican]

43. AllentownJake

AllentownJake

Absolutely true, the british, french and spanish was all pretty close to how they treated their non-european populations in the colonies. And the US do have their share of blood when it came to stop they who was not european..

The Germans, japanse and russians have in modern times using their own type of violence against their own and where the result was really bloody. The Russians is maybe a special case most becouse of their history.. But both Japan and Germany had a educated population and also a history of somewhat democratic government before the savage facism got into place, and made it posible to turn eductated peopole into a gang of murderes...

It is also correct that after world war two, who the Allied forces bombed both Germany and Japan to surrender, it was a long time where they dosen't was free, in Germans case it ended in two seperate country for more than 40 year.. In Japan it ended in a democratic monarcy, where the Emperor for the most part is political insifigant, but behind the throne he still have a lot of political power.. Not officially, but he is by most japanse seen as a reveraged man who they have to respect deeply..

But, both Germany and Japan was after a decade free to make their own shoices, and is today democratic country, where facism that be in german or japanse form posible wil never repeat itself.. Japan even have a pasific constitution who in fact bar all use of armed forces is forbidden by law.

Alexander the great, was a bloody man who was pretty brutal in his tacics.. Not like the movie Alexander show him as.. If you read some history about the man you wil soon discover that this man had a complex personality. On the one hand he was an military man, who was more than interested to fight.. But he was also in love with the greek idelogy, and wanted ALL his Empire, to be like one empire.. And he shoose the Hellenism, who was in many cases the same ideology that was in the eastern part of meditarian allready.. And the empires who followed Alexanders death in 323 BC was all deeply involved in the politic of hellenism who also in the end was discovered by the romans, and in many cases made officiall policy in all parts of the greater roman empire... Alexander the Greats empire was in many cases a empire to big to survive a single man's death. He was one of the few men who managed to keep it all togheter, and who also made it posible for many of his generals, to take up the arms after he was dead. And build their own little empires Some of them even managed to get the bigger pices of the pussle.. Most known is maybe the Empire who was made from Egypt, where Alexandria was the centerpiece of the best the greek word have to offer. And even long untill the late Byzantine period, Alexandria was still one of the BIG City's and one of the jewels at the Meditarian..

Today nothing at ground level exist of the greek Alexandria.. Most of it is razed by time, some ruins there and here, but nothing important.. Most of it is underground, and the center of Alexandria are still a nightmare for constructors, becouse of all the old ruines and so on they find there...

Wel Alexander the great did have a her, a small kid named Alexander IV of Macedonia.. The sivil war between the different fractions after Alexanders death ended with most of his family and many of his close friends dead. Most of them by the sword in combat, or by poison who often was the way of killing your opponent in that day of age.. And by the way it was the favorit way of killing your enemy long up to our own days... The empires, or kingdom if you want who was surviving after the dust was setlet was all greek in name, even tho they often had great groups of peopole of another religion or groups.. But what made it posible was the fact that they all belived in Hellenism, and it was one of the few things who made all the empires to go forward..

But for all that it is worth. Alexander was a man who wil NEVER been forgotten.. Even after more than 2500 year both the name and what he did is known, and the reputation of him have not exactly been less than it was before.. And he is also known by many names, in many corner of the planet.. And his name is still used. So I gues that Alexander wil be with us even many thousands year after he was dead for many years to came..

Diclotican
Diclotican

[LWolf]

31. That message is just as appropriate on the other foot.

"So, you want to fight, eh? Can't say I blame you.

But think about this. You can have all the power you want and do it peacefully. Just bring the troops home. Quit seeking war and just chill for a coupla years.

If you truly are a man of God, he will reward you for making peace. But it seems you believe in your own self more than God the way you're acting. That's a problem with no good end.

Just chill out and take away the target, and the rallying point. As long as you keep poking the taliban, those knuckleheads are gonna want to keep up the fight. Lay low and focus on domestic priorities. And in the meantime lots of innocents get to go back to life with some peace."

[BeFree]

37. But of course,,,

Thing is it is his country that will suffer the most. And the way his country is laid out what with the anti-women crap and all that, he's the one in a hole.

The US has a slightly higher moral calling.

Not that we should be there, but we are, and he could, by changing just a few of his ways, bring peace to his country almost over night.

All I am saying is give peace a chance, which is what I preach here at home as well.

[LWolf]

44. Who is "he?"

Bin Laden?

Afghanistan isn't his country, except that he chose at one point to hole up there. He's not the government.

We aren't at war with any nation, or with any individual unless you count bin laden, and our government hasn't been too concerned with finding him for a long time.

[BeFree]

45. he is who...

...this thread is about: Omar

Odd case. The people of Afghanistan are anarchist. And they live in the crossroads of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Its almost as if American Empire has this deep seated urge to bring them under control just to prove how big and bad we are.

Omar is in the way. And his job is to prove how big and bad he is.

We'll see who wins.

[LWolf]

46. As far as predicting goes...

it depends on what is required for Washington to claim a win. They'll claim a win regardless.

I don't see any win in sight for the U.S.. One Taliban leader may not "win," either.

I don't think the military can make the Taliban go away. If it gets too hot in Afghanistan, they can simply go somewhere else for awhile. It's not their nation.

Meanwhile, real, non-Taliban people suffer when we wage war in their home.

Personally, I think Greg Mortenson has a better approach to diminishing the prominence of the Taliban, and of Al Qaeda.

Educate them.

https://www.ikat.org/

[arcadian]

48. Thank goodness you aren't dictating policy.

:rofl:

[freddie mertz]

27. They have been winning this so far by NOT LOSING

Same strategy used in the Vietnam war by Ho Chi Minh.

Do you really think sending 30-40,000 troops is going to make the difference?

[Mythbuster]

33. You are correct, and...

they can continue "not losing" a "guerrilla style war" on their own turf for a lot longer than we can pump soldiers into the Afghanistan meat grinder. The entire plan from this point on needs to be built around our exit strategy... not winning or losing.

[LWolf]

30. He's probably correct

that "any plan to boost troop levels in Afghanistan could lead to 'bitterness and pain.'"

It wouldn't be the first time escalating a guerrilla war produced bitterness and pain for those responsible for the escalation.

In reading the article, I see a call to attack American soldiers here on home ground. That could spark a clusterfuck. Are we going to round up all our homegrown muslims and put them in internment camps? Spark a religious war on home soil?

The title is misleading, though. I don't see any threat against Obama. The threats are against our citizens.

And, if American muslims heed this call, we could be in a perpetual state of religious civil war.

Escalating the war in Afghanistan will not provide a victory over the taliban. It WILL create more conflict and, yes, more bitterness and pain, at home.

[Duende azul]

34. Wow, that guy is good at the game. He wants you to send your troops.

(If the article isn't just an overblown attempt by the author to scare the public and to stir up emotions. see end of post)

To call out the White House like this and with that timing.
Raises the stakes.
If Obama doesn't send the cannonfodder he will be painted as weak (both by the Jihadists and your rightwingers at home.)

If he didn't want the escalation, Mullah Omar could have kept his profile low, hoping the reasonable half of the US could convince Obama not to escalate.

The time for the US to get out while saving the face is running out. Maybe has run out already.

And btw: those who stand to profit from the prolonged maybe never ending wars are not the ones who care for your national pride.

Nobody cares about the crappy source?
From the article

Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He has advised Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama on Afghanistan on the staff of the NSC and is author of The Search for al Qaeda.

From wikipedia

The center is named for Haim Saban, an American-Israeli media proprietor. Saban, according to the center<1> and its parent organization<3>, "made a generous initial grant and pledged additional funds to endow the Center." According to a press release from Saban's charitable foundation<4>, Saban "donated $13 million for the establishment of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution."
.....
US government indictment

A U.S. government indictment alleges that the Center's Director of Research, Kenneth Pollack, provided information to former AIPAC employees Steve J. Rosen and Keith Weissman during the AIPAC espionage scandal.<10>

So who helps Mullah Omar to get the message across?
Who helps us to "decode the chilling message" (A message to which the article not even gives a link.)
A crappy journalist writing for a rightwing institution trying to paint the war as personal enmity between "the good guy: Barack Hussein Obama" and "the bad guy: Mullah Omar". (I wonder if this journalist ever used the bush middlename. I would bet something he had to restrain himself not to write erroneously Barack Hussein Osama).

But what's the smart move now? Don't escalate Mr. President. If the wrong people want you to do it, just don't do it.
That at least would be some good old two dimensional chess that even I could understand.
If the White House is into something more sophisticated (more dimensional) count me out.

[AllentownJake]

36. Of course he wants an escalation

The more troops roaming the Afghan countryside the more collateral damage that is going to be done, the more collateral damage the more local support he is going to have.

Now, I expect a whole bunch of people telling me that there won't be as much collateral damage under a democratic President. Collateral damage is a part of modern warfare. No matter how careful your soldiers are ordinance is going to hit civilians in a guerrilla war and if you aren't doing enough of it, the enemy will do it and than blame you. Who are you going to believe, me your fellow countrymen who speaks your language and shares your religion or the lying invading godless foreigners.

[avaistheone1]

39. Isn't a film from Osama Bin Laden due at noon?

This sounds like the same old stuff, engineered by the Pentagon to get the saber rattling going here at home for the war escalation.

Interesting timing. But sorry, I am not buying.

[Duende azul]

41. Seems you are right

If you read some of the comments at the source you can see how they want it to work.

But Tuesday is coming and there's so little hope Obama will avoid the trap.
And with "journalism" like that, personalizing the war as a fight between the two contenders, the right builds up a fallback position. If the escalation goes wrong it's finally Obama's personal war.
If against all odds the thing is a success for the US (not necessarily for the Afghanis), the praise will go to Bush for having started that thing and Cheney for having pushed Obama not to "dither". Count on it.

That's what I don't get: All the folks on DU that really like Obama should help him avoiding that Quagmire.
When someone you love is about to commit a colossal error, do you try to stop him or do you try to justify his actions at all costs? Do you let him walk right into the trap?

[zulchzulu]

42. The message saying Get The Fuck Out of AfghaniNam brought to you by...

...Get The Fuck Out of AfghaniNam, a reality-based solution.