Operation Moshtarak: from Offensive to very offensive

by anderson

Readin' the ICoS's report on "lessons learned" from the
Pentagon publicity stunt loudly and widely broadcast as Operation
Moshtarak -- oh, so marvelously native sounding!

I'll spare you
the think tanky verbiage and fill it all in with one word: Failure.
Or, if you do care to read 29 grinding pages of drab, militarese
discourse on that failure, you can do that here.
And, they appear to have learned nothing.

Bottom line the
dumbasses in Washington require study to figure out: people don't like
being invaded and occupied. You can feel the astonishment, even in the
pallid prose of an ICoS report.

Alarmingly, 67% did not support a strong
NATO-ISAF presence in their province and 71% stated they wanted the NATO
forces to leave.

Refund! Refund! Those blighted,
ungrateful bastards.

And pulling off a move that ungrateful bastards who don't
know freedom's glory would do, droves of Afghans are fleeing
the freedom agenda of General Stanley McChrystal. In the short term,
the Marjah offensive has been wasted, as,

Taliban fighters
have found a way to resume their insurgency, three months after
thousands of troops invaded this Taliban stronghold in the opening
foray of a campaign to take control of southern Afghanistan.
Militants have been infiltrating back into the area and the prospect of
months of more fighting is undermining public morale, residents and
officials said.

So, the offensive as designed, produced the
expected though largely unconsidered outcome: a standoff with civilians
fleeing the area. The design, of course, was an upfront plug for
American and British public consumption. Who fails to recall those heady days of not so yore when adorned the front pages promises of the looming, massive operation, the largest
since the invasion, we were told repeatedly, as though what a great and
grand thing this would be, this massive military operation?  Ah, I cherish those militarily charged and torrid Sunday Times headlines.  The propaganda beast in its most naked form.  Operation
Moshtarak was the most trumped up military-media construct seen since
the orchestration of the invasion of Iraq . Marjah was to be, as we
would learn in due course, the gimme, an easy op that would convince the
American public that victory in Afghanistan was at hand. Ha, ha, ha!
An easy tap-in, that Marjah.

But, it didn't turn out that way.
At all. Dozens of families daily fleeing the grinding stalemate
fighting. Taliban are moving back in, as other emerge, once hiding as
local farmers -- well, not so much hiding as doing what they would be
doing if they weren't freakin' Taliban! And now McChrystal wants to
double down on this sterling effort in Kandahar.

The media swarm
in the lead up to Operation Moshtarak was proof of establishment
pudding. By which it would seem unlikely that due attention will be
paid to the actual outcome of the much touted operation. No matter the
death, the mayhem, the uproot, the constant grinding fear that thousands
are subject to, the American public had to be convinced that the effort
in Afghanistan was a positive force that happened to have on hand a
"government in a box," ready to roll out at a moment's notice.

Turns
out, nobody has ever heard of this amazing new device. And the other
easy part? That didn't happen either.