'The Americans Don't Care about More European Troops'

Jeremy Shapiro: In my view, there are four key problems in the country: The situation at the border with Pakistan where insurgent fighters find sanctuary, a deficit of international civilian assistance and inadequate coordination of what does exist, the shortcomings of the Afghan government, and the corrupting influence of narcotics. Clearly sending more troops will improve security in some local areas, but unless there is a plan to deal with these issues, more troops will only perpetuate the military stalemate in Afghanistan at higher levels of violence.

Shapiro: Some of the whispers I hear from the current discussions in Washington point towards a more promising new political strategy: stronger efforts at local reconciliation, more focused and coordinated civilian aid programs, efforts to improve Afghan government provision of services to the population, and increased police and army training. There also rumors about attempts for a regional deal with Pakistan that involves India. If such a strategy is coordinated with the troop deployment, that is, if the international community and the Afghans are able to use improved local security to implement such measures, we could see progress.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But haven't most of these measures already been tried? Europeans, most notably Germans, have been trying to train the Afghan police for years.

Shapiro: The European effort, including the German one, has been absolutely appalling in this area. In some ways, we would be better off if they had not done anything at all. That is one of the overriding problems in Afghanistan: A lot of the efforts are simply wasted. We need more effective unity of command and that is something that I think the current strategy reviews in Washington will push for.

Uhh, the news?!

Plus, the current "stream flow" rates throughout virtually all of the United States are at 10% of normal.

Plus the Southern hemispheric drought continues unabated and the Chinese have already taken action to mitigate their wheatbelt drought (detected in mid February).

California is already in a drought emergency situation. There goes all your fresh veggies.

Separately USPS revenues (derived from letters) FELL well over 15% below a year ago while at the same time they could only recover about 5% of costs ~ which indicates the revenues fell from loss of mail in an area with low variable costs ~ which, in USPS terms, is described as that part of the country dominated by NCDBDUs, post office box and rural carrier delivery ~ that is, the rural agricultural regions of the country.

The reason for the fall off in mail is simply that the rate of farm bankruptcies seriously outpaced everything but the Great Depression, and that led farmers (and the associated employee base) to stop paying bills.

You wouldn't believe how quickly non payment of bills is leveraged into deletion of your name from direct mail advertising lists ~ or maybe you would. The big mail volume decline is, by dollar value, mostly in standard rate mail.

In effect, USPS serves as a very large drought monitoring system. All you have to do is know what their financial reports are saying to figure it out.

I've done this before BTW. However, this particular fall off looks to be ENORMOUS. Combined to the stream flow data I'd say it's going to be the kind of drought that brings widespread famine, if not here, then downstream with our customers. Food exports will be way down this year while at the same time commodity prices ought to go to historic highs.

The Americans don't care about more European troops. They want more effective commitments, which means using resources already deployed more efficiently and offering new capabilities that fill urgent needs.

Example (link):

THEY are on the front line of the war on terror, but German pilots facing the Taliban are insisting they stop at tea time every day to comply with health and safety regulations.
The helicopter pilots, who provide medical back-up to Nato ground troops, set off for their base by mid-afternoon so they can be grounded by sundown.
Their refusal to fly in the dark is hampering Operation Desert Eagle, an allied offensive, which involves 500 Nato-led troops plus 1,000 Afghan troops and police.
[...]
One Norwegian cavalry officer, who was engaged in a day-long fight with more than 40 Taliban near Jari Siya in Badghis, said: “It’s hopeless. We were attacking the bad guys, then [at] three or four o’clock, the helicopters are leaving.
“We had to go back to base. We should have had Norwegian helicopters. At least they can fly at night.”
Abandoned by their western allies, the 600 men from the Afghan army’s 209 Corps were forced to retreat until a convoy of American Humvees arrived the next day to reinforce them.

Afghanistan has proven just how useless America's European "allies" really are in a war. It's not a pleasant realization, but it is better to learn it now than later, when World War III (otherwise known as the Great Jihad, or Armageddon) gets under way in earnest.

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