Should the United States refrain from any intervention in the world beyond its borders except in its own incontrovertible interest?

Or should it act as the world’s policeman? Does it have a “responsibility to protect”- if so, whom from what? Populations from their rulers? Vulnerable groups from any and all attackers?

To bring the debate to the moment and the actual, should the US keep its forces in Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting savage peasants and failing to crush them? Should there still be a US military presence in Iraq? In Germany? In South Korea? Should the US be fighting – as it is –  in Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen?

Should it not be using force to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power? And immediately against Iran’s ally, Bashar Assad, the bloody tyrant of Syria?

Should it not be outspending China on defense?

Should it not be helping Georgia liberate two of its provinces from Russia?

Should it be protecting South Sudan from its northern neighbors and their Ugandan proxies? Or the Nigerian Christians from their Muslim persecutors? Or the ethnic African Muslims of Dafur from the Arab Muslims who are raping, robbing, hounding and massacring them? Or destroying the pirates of Somalia? Or putting an end to the Arab/African slave trade?

Can those who answer yes to the first question fairly be called “isolationists”?

David Harsanyi considers, in a column at Townhall, whether the label is apt when applied to those who want America to withdraw from Afghanistan and refrain from any further participation in the NATO intervention in Libya:

There’s been a lot of talk about an alleged turn in American public opinion — particularly among Republicans — toward “isolationism.”

In a recent debate among GOP presidential hopefuls, there was some discussion about ending the United States’ commitment to the tribal warlords and medieval shamans of the Afghan wilderness. This induced John McCain to complain about the rise of a new “strain of isolationism” … McCain sidekick Lindsey Graham went on to notify Congress that it “should sort of shut up and not empower Gadhafi” when the topic of the House’s potentially defunding the military — er, kinetic, non-warlike bombing activity over Libya — came up. It would be a mistake, he vented, for Republican candidates to sit “to the left” of President Barack Obama on national security.

So if you don’t shut up and stop carping about this non-war war of ours, you are abetting North African strongmen. Makes sense. It’s the return of Teddy Roosevelt-style Republicanism, in which arbitrary power (and John McCain’s singular wisdom) matters a lot more than any democratic institution.

Sure, some on the far right and swaths of the protectionist, union-driven left oppose international trade agreements and [are] endlessly freaking us out about foreign influences.

Our interpolation: Is this protectionist section of the left aware of the left-elite’s longing for world government?

But isolationists? Judging from our conduct in the real world of economy, we’re anything but insular. So perhaps McCain simply meant noninterventionists — as in folks who have an unwavering ideological aversion to any and all overseas entanglement.

That can’t be it, either. Maybe, like many Americans, some in the GOP are simply grappling with wars that never end and a war that never started.

And with plenty of troubles here at home, it’s not surprising that Americans have turned their attention inward.

We can’t be in a constant state of war. Then again, Afghanistan is not a war per se, but a precarious social engineering project that asks our best and bravest (or, as our ally Hamid Karzai calls them, “occupiers”) to die for the Afghan Constitution, which is roundly ignored — except for the parts codifying Islamic law, that is. But all these conflicts come with the price of endless involvement. We almost always win.

When and where? Since World War Two, where has America won a hot war? Oh yes – against Granada.

But we never really go home. …

Did sometimes. From Granada after victory. From Vietnam after defeat.

This week, we learned that Obama rejected the advice of lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department who questioned his legal authority to continue this nonmilitary military involvement in Libya without congressional authorization. Instead, the administration offered a string of euphemisms concocted to bypass the Constitution.

Without any tangible evidence that this conflict furthers our national interests or any real proof that we are preventing a wide-scale humanitarian crisis, it’s not a surprise that Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we’re “leading from behind” — which is, in fact, as stupid and deceptive as the case it doesn’t make.

Are you an isolationist for questioning those who continue to weaken the Constitution? … Are you an isolationist for questioning this brand of obfuscation? Are you an isolationist for wanting American forces to win and leave the battlefield rather than hang around for decades of baby-sitting duty?

And Tony Blankley writes, also  at Townhall:

I was one of the first GOP internationalist-oriented commentators or politicians to conclude that the Afghanistan War effort had served its initial purpose and that it was time to phase out the war. As a punitive raid against the regime that gave succor to Osama bin Laden, we had removed the Taliban government and killed as many al-Qaida and Taliban fighters as possible. …

But as the purpose of that war turned into nation building, even GOP internationalists had a duty to reassess whether, given the resources and strategy being brought to the new purpose, such policy was likely to be effective.

Now many others in the GOP and in the non-isolationist wing of the Democratic Party are likewise judging failure in Afghanistan to be almost inevitable. That is not a judgment driven by isolationism. Neither are we isolationist in our judgment (along with the opinion of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and almost the entire uniformed chain of command) that we see no national interest in Libya.

This is not isolationism; it is a rational effort at judging how best to advance American values and interests in an ever-more witheringly dangerous world.

Both Harsanyi’s and Blankley ‘s opinions are apt as far as they go.

But  the problem is deeper, the questions that need to be raised about foreign policy harder than those they are answering.

Can America have a coherent foreign policy that America itself and the other states of the world can depend upon for any useful length of time? The two political parties are now so divided ideologically that foreign policy will depend on whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat. It will necessarily chop and change. Or if relations with some states stay more or less the same for a while, they will do so unreliably.

Could the very uncertainty characterize foreign policy usefully? No foreign state being secure in its relations with the US, each would have to be vigilant, tack according to the US wind, adjust to the changes. A case could be made that a Machiavellian preference to be feared by other nations rather than loved might serve America well.

But there are other developments to be considered. In countries throughout the world – led in this by Europe –  there is an ideological tendency towards world government. The nation state is not liked: new political alignments, such as the European Union, are trying to phase it out. Democrats, for the most part, are in sympathy with the movement; Republicans are not. Democrats – like most leftists everywhere – have a vision of the UN turning into a world government; Republicans – many of them at least – would be happy to see the monstrous institution disbanded. It cannot continue long as it is: being a house of lies, it must fall down.

NATO is weakening. Letting Turkey into it was fatal. No longer secular, Turkey is now in the camp of Islam, inimical to the West.

The world as it was conceived to be after World War Two is changing kaleidoscopically under our eyes.

In relation to the rest of the world, what are American interests? How should they be pursued?

Should America concentrate on preserving itself as a fenced-in area of freedom on an otherwise unfree planet?  That would be isolationism. Should it form a union with other as-yet-free nation-states: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel? India perhaps? Honduras? Papau? …

What would such a union do, what would be in its joint interest – “spreading democracy”, “protecting civilians”, “building nations”? The questions troubling America now would trouble it jointly, and the answers remain as hard to find.

“Both the terrorist attacks and the good life that terrorists enjoy in prison are subsidized by aid money from governments that claim to oppose terrorism. And then go on to subsidize it anyway,” Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page.

He describes the life of convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons:

Six years ago, Saeed Shalalde stabbed an Israeli chocolate manufacturer named Sasson Nuriel to death. Today Shalalde lives the good life in an Israeli prison. There terrorists mingle, throw parties, study for advanced degrees and stay in touch with their adoring fans on Facebook using their 3G mobile smartphones.

For Muslim terrorists in Israeli prisons, life is more like a vacation. Hamas terrorist Haytham Battat, who was responsible for the murder of four Israelis, uses his Facebook page to share Jihadi videos from YouTube. In his recent facebook photos, PFLP terrorist Saeed Omar, who was sentenced to nineteen years in jail, poses with his favorite soccer team’s banner, feasts with other terrorists on a table covered with dozens of dishes supplemented by bottles of Coca Cola, and posts scraps of poetry calling for the destruction of Israel. …

Other terrorists use smartphone video to go shopping with their friends and pick out their own clothes, which are then brought to them in prison, and remotely attend family events. …

And thankfully they’re not forced to watch television programming from the Zionist entity. Instead they enjoy satellite Arab TV channels. Courtesy of the Israeli prison system.

He explains how we are all being forced to fund terrorism:

One of the charges leveled against Saddam Hussein was that he was promoting terrorism by making payments to the families of suicide bombers. But every country that provides aid to the Palestinian Authority is indirectly doing the same thing. The only difference between what Saddam Hussein was doing, and what the EU and the US are doing, is that we have one degree of separation that provides plausible deniability. The Palestinian Authority [PA] acts as our middleman, requesting money for security and then doling it out to terrorists.

The Obama Administration dramatically escalated aid to terrorists. In 2008, it provided 600 million dollars worth of assistance to the Palestinian Authority. In 2009, it pledged 900 million dollars. By 2010, the PA had pulled in almost 4 billion dollars from international donors, including the US. But that hasn’t stopped [PA] Prime Minister Fayyad from denouncing US aid as “extortion”. Foreign aid makes up 60 percent of its Gross National Product. The Palestinian Authority does not have an economy. It has foreign aid.

The Palestinian Authority is run by terrorists. The shortest path to the top is to form your own terrorist cell and begin murdering Israeli civilians. And the reward is a chance to dip into the golden river of foreign aid and divert some of it [your] way. Terrorists who are on the loose enjoy wealth and international respect. And even when they are captured, they receive kid glove treatment in prison.

The tidal wave of human rights accusations leveled at Israel has caused the government to bend over backward to show how well it treats Muslim terrorists. IDF soldiers operate under tightly restricted rules of engagement, similar to those which are causing serious US casualties in Afghanistan. And Israeli prisons turn a blind eye to terrorists posting propaganda on Facebook from inside their own walls.

Do convicted Palestinian terrorists live more comfortably in Israeli prisons than their families do in Gaza? Maybe. But life in Gaza is nowhere near as bad as the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and the New York Times make it out to be.

Human rights activists often describe Gaza as a prison. A prison with free electricity and free water. While Israelis pay premium amounts for water, Hamas supporters in Khan Younis [in Gaza] get it free of charge. Israel provides 40 million cubic meters of water. So much water that while in Israel residents carefully measure how much water they use, in Khan Younis they opened up their own water park. …

The truth is that there are “refugee camps” full of mansions paid for by international aid. The truth is that terrorists in prison are gorging themselves on luxuries paid for by American taxpayers and preening for their admirers on Facebook using smartphones that many American and Israeli families can’t afford. The truth is that terrorism is big business. And we’re the ones picking up the tab. …

Every convicted Muslim terrorist receives a salary from the Palestinian Authority. Even members of Hamas. That money is provided by American and European taxpayers. As much as 10 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s budget is dedicated to paying the salaries of imprisoned terrorists, benefits to their families …

And to the families of dead terrorists who died committing their atrocities. The quickest, easiest way for a Palestinian to have his family provided for is to go out and kill in the name of “the resistance”.

Some “$100 million annually goes to benefits for captured or killed terrorists”. It comes as “aid money from governments that claim to oppose terrorism” yet “subsidize it anyway”.

And not only in the Middle East are Islamic terrorists subsidized by you and me:

The Israeli example is not unique. Muslim terrorists live on the dole in every Western country. Major newspapers give them flattering profiles and taxpayer money is pumped into their organizations. And still they cry that they are persecuted, tormented, abused and deprived of their rights.

If Muslims think the West is full of suckers, fall guys, pushovers, they are absolutely right. Leftist ideology has deeply sentimentalized our culture. It’s time for America, in the economic crisis the left has brought upon it, to cut off foreign aid, starting with the billions that go to Arab terrorists.

All Mark Steyn‘s columns are so good, so funny however serious and important the point he is making, that it’s hard to say this one or that one is the best or the funniest. But a recent article titled Too Big To Win, on the highly important subject of America’s wars, must surely be among his best and funniest.

We are picking sentences and passages from it to give our readers a taste, but we hope they’ll be enticed to read the whole thing here and enjoy the feast.

Why can’t America win wars? …

Afghanistan? The “good war” is now “America’s longest war.” Our forces have been there longer than the Red Army was. The “hearts and minds” strategy is going so well that American troops are now being killed by the Afghans who know us best. …

Libya? The good news is that we’ve vastly reduced the time it takes us to get quagmired. I believe the Libyan campaign is already in The Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest quagmire on record. In an inspired move, we’ve chosen to back the one Arab liberation movement incapable of knocking off the local strongman even when you lend them every NATO air force. But not to worry: President Obama, cooed an administration official to The New Yorker, is “leading from behind.” Indeed. What could be more impeccably multilateral than a coalition pantomime horse composed entirely of rear ends? Apparently it would be “illegal” to target Colonel Qaddafi, so our strategic objective is to kill him by accident. So far we’ve killed a son and a couple of grandkids. Maybe by the time you read this we’ll have added a maiden aunt or two to the trophy room. It’s not precisely clear why offing the old pock-skinned transvestite should be a priority of the U.S. right now, but let’s hope it happens soon, because otherwise there’ll be no way of telling when this “war” is “ended.”

According to partisan taste, one can blame the trio of current morasses on Bush or Obama, but in the bigger picture they’re part of a pattern of behavior that predates either man, stretching back through non-victories great and small — Somalia, Gulf War One, Vietnam, Korea. On the more conclusive side of the ledger, we have . . . well, lemme see: Grenada, 1983. And, given that that was a bit of post-colonial housekeeping Britain should have taken care of but declined to, one could argue that even that lone bright spot supports a broader narrative of Western enfeeblement. At any rate, America’s only unambiguous military triumph since 1945 is a small Caribbean island with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. For 43 percent of global military expenditure, that’s not much bang for the buck. …

At the dawn of the so-called American era, Washington chose to downplay U.S. hegemony and instead created and funded transnational institutions in which the non-imperial superpower was so self-deprecating it artificially inflated everybody else’s status in a kind of geopolitical affirmative-action program. …   In 1950, America had a unique dominance of the “free world” and it could afford to be generous, so it was: We had more money than we knew what to do with, so we absolved our allies of paying for their own defense. …

By the time the Cold War ended … U.S.–Soviet nuclear standoff of mutual deterrence decayed into a unipolar world of U.S. auto-deterrence. …

At a certain level, credible deterrence depends on a credible enemy. The Soviet Union disintegrated, but the surviving superpower’s instinct to de-escalate intensified: In Kirkuk as in Kandahar, every Lilliputian warlord quickly grasped that you could provoke the infidel Gulliver with relative impunity. Mutually Assured Destruction had curdled into Massively Applied Desultoriness. …

The Pentagon outspends the Chinese, British, French, Russian, Japanese, German, Saudi, Indian, Italian, South Korean, Brazilian, Canadian, Australian, Spanish, Turkish, and Israeli militaries combined. So why doesn’t it feel like that?

Well, for exactly that reason: If you outspend every serious rival combined, you’re obviously something other than the soldiery of a conventional nation state. But what exactly? In the Nineties, the French liked to complain that “globalization” was a euphemism for “Americanization.” But one can just as easily invert the formulation: “Americanization” is a euphemism for “globalization,” in which the geopolitical sugar daddy is so busy picking up the tab for the global order he loses all sense of national interest. … The Pentagon now makes war for the world. …

An army has to wage war on behalf of something real. For better or worse, “king and country” is real, and so, mostly for worse, are the tribal loyalties of Africa’s blood-drenched civil wars. But it’s hardly surprising that it’s difficult to win wars waged on behalf of something so chimerical as “the international community.” If you’re making war on behalf of an illusory concept, is it even possible to have war aims? What’s ours? “[We] are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people,” General Petraeus said in April. Somewhere generations of old-school imperialists are roaring their heads off, not least at the concept of “the Afghan people.” But when you’re the expeditionary force of the parliament of man, what else is there? …

Nation building in Afghanistan is the ne plus ultra of a fool’s errand. But even if one were so disposed, effective “nation building” is done in the national interest of the builder. The British rebuilt India in their own image, with a Westminster parliament, common law, and an English education system. In whose image are we building Afghanistan? Eight months after Petraeus announced his latest folly, the Afghan Local Police initiative, Oxfam reported that the newly formed ALP was a hotbed of torture and pederasty. Almost every Afghan institution is, of course. But for most of human history they’ve managed to practice both enthusiasms without international subvention. The U.S. taxpayer accepts wearily the burden of subsidy for Nevada’s cowboy poets and San Francisco’s mime companies, but, even by those generous standards of cultural preservation, it’s hard to see why he should be facilitating the traditional predilections of Pashtun men with an eye for the “dancing boys of Kandahar.” …

So the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity is building schoolhouses in Afghanistan. Big deal. The problem, in Kandahar as in Kansas, is not the buildings but what’s being taught inside them — and we’ve no stomach for getting into that. So what’s the point of building better infrastructure for Afghanistan’s wretched tribal culture? What’s our interest in state-of-the-art backwardness?

Transnational do-gooding is political correctness on tour. It takes the relativist assumptions of the multiculti varsity and applies them geopolitically: The white man’s burden meets liberal guilt. No wealthy developed nation should have a national interest, because a national interest is a selfish interest. Afghanistan started out selfishly — a daringly original military campaign, brilliantly executed, to remove your enemies from power and kill as many of the bad guys as possible. Then America sobered up and gradually brought a freakish exception into compliance with the rule. In Libya as in Kosovo, war is legitimate only if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever conflict you’re fighting. The fact that you have no stake in it justifies your getting into it. The principal rationale is that there’s no rationale, and who could object to that? Applied globally, political correctness obliges us to forswear sovereignty. …

On we stagger, with Cold War institutions, transnational sensibilities, politically correct solicitousness, fraudulent preening pseudo–nation building, expensive gizmos, little will, and no war aims . . . but real American lives. … Sixty-six years after V-J Day, the American way of war needs top-to-toe reinvention.

Recently seceded from the state of Sudan, South Sudan is to become an independent state on July 9, 2011. The majority of its population is Christian. The north is Muslim. Between the two countries is a disputed oil-rich area where the Muslims are attacking the Christians.

According to the following report by Faith J.H.McDonnell, they are also using proxy forces, notably the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), to attack the western region of South Sudan.

The Lord’s Resistance Army is so atrocious a thing that no words – “atrocious”, “evil” – seem strong enough to convey how evil it is.

The LRA is a Northern Ugandan rebel group led by the now-middle-aged madman Joseph Kony. For over twenty-five years it has been abducting children, and so brutalizing them that they become mindless killing machines. It has used these children to kill hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, and more recently, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. By 2006, the LRA had abducted over 50,000 children to make child soldiers and sex slaves. …

Escaped child soldiers and other LRA abductees frequently have reported seeing Sudan Armed Forces trucks during their time in captivity … delivering food, weapons, and uniforms to LRA commanders. And in recent days, the LRA has teamed up with the Janjaweed, the killers in Darfur, receiving training and weapons at Islamic camps that have been set up there. For although some (usually secular elites, hostile to Christianity) refer to Kony as a “Christian,” his current belief system is a combination of the demonic and Islam.

Kony claims he is possessed by “spirits”. Possession by spirits and Islam – that’s demonic squared!

Details of horrific acts … have been repeated in villages all over East Africa since Kony began taking children in 1986, to ensure himself an ever-replenished army of boys and girls, some as young as five or six years old. …

The rebels gathered all the children together and started killing people right in front of their eyes. They forced the children to kill their own parents. After the slaughter, the boys had to carry large metal barrels, and the girls had to fetch water to fill the barrels. They built fires around the barrels, and while the water was heating up, the children were forced to hack up their parents and fellow children’s bodies and throw their dismembered parts in the boiling water. After some time, the children were then made to eat the flesh. In this way the LRA commanders knew that the children were so traumatized that they would do anything. They would not try to run away because there was nowhere and no one left to which to run.

That’s what happened. The children were forced to cook and eat their own parents. Behold Africa in the 21st century. Still the heart of darkness.

Why are the Muslims using the LRA to destabilize South Sudan?

They are targeting Western Equatoria State, which borders Uganda, because it is so fertile, and has the potential to be the breadbasket for the region. If it is destabilized, it will affect the food supply of the country, as well as lessening the possibilities of profitable commercial agriculture. Khartoum’s proxy militia is also targeting it because it is a strong Christian community. …

The people of Western Equatoria … have always been extremely self-sufficient… Now people are abandoning their homes and attempting to find shelter in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. …

The Equatorians do not want to be dependent on NGOs and the U.N. for their existence. At present they are trying to provide their own security with “arrow boys,” young men armed with nothing but homemade bows and arrows who protect against the well-armed LRA. They want the government to supply them with real arms, but there is little chance of that taking place if only for the reason that the Government of South Sudan is well aware that it is under scrutiny by the global community, and it is always held to a higher standard than the Islamists in Khartoum.

Can this really be true? Is defense with arms now held by “the global community” to be impermissible? Well yes, for some it is – Israel, for instance.

What is really needed to help the people of Western Equatoria State as Khartoum wages its proxy war against them via the LRA is the full implementation of U.S. law found in the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act” of 2010. In this legislation, which was heartily supported on both sides of the aisle, Congress required the U.S. government to develop a regional strategy supporting multilateral efforts to stop the LRA. The president was to report on the creation of that strategy within six months of the act’s passage.

In November 2010, the Obama administration presented its strategy. The four major objectives were: protect civilians, apprehend Kony and senior commanders, promote the defection and disarmament of LRA fighters (remember these were abducted children), and increase humanitarian access to the region.

A fine strategy that was not implemented. The author of the report has this opinion:

Ending Khartoum’s proxy war on South Sudan would cost far less than our continual bombing of Libya, or our largess to President Mubarak’s successors in Egypt, or our unending jizya to the Palestinian Authority. And in this case, we actually would know that in helping the people of South Sudan we were helping true friends and allies in the fight for secular democracy and religious freedom.

Religious freedom? Freedom from religion is what’s needed. There would still be a struggle for control of oil fields, and men like Joseph Kony would still brutalize and kill for the joy of it. But one persistent excuse for the infliction of massive human suffering would be gone.

Light breaks where no sun shines, as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote prophetically of the Obama administration’s collective mind when it finally notices the glaring futility of the Afghan campaign.

The Washington Post reports:

The hugely expensive U.S. attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan has had only limited success and may not survive an American withdrawal, according to the findings of a two-year congressional investigation … [It] calls on the administration to rethink urgently its assistance programs as President Obama prepares to begin drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer…

The report, prepared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority staff, comes as Congress and the American public have grown increasingly restive about the human and economic cost of the decade-long war and reflects growing concerns about Obama’s war strategy even among supporters within his party.

[It] describes the use of aid money to stabilize areas the military has cleared of Taliban fighters — a key component of the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy — as a short-term fix … But it says that the enormous cash flows can overwhelm and distort local culture and economies, and that there is little evidence the positive results are sustainable.

Why couldn’t they foresee it? Was there nobody in the White House or the Pentagon or the State Department who could take a long hard look at the Afghans and their “culture” and see how things were and will remain? No economist with six Ivy League degrees who could explain that when poor and primitive people are suddenly showered with money they won’t know what to do with it? –

One example cited in the report is the Performance-Based Governors Fund, which is authorized to distribute up to $100,000 a month in U.S. funds to individual provincial leaders for use on local expenses and development projects. In some provinces, it says, “this amount represents a tidal wave of funding” that local officials are incapable of “spending wisely.” … The fund encourages corruption.

The plan was that the Afghan government would “eventually take over this and other programs” – such as training and making proper use of an army and police force, and spreading literacy, and – Oh, who knows what else – setting up factories to improve and exploit nanotechnology and any number of other cockamamy schemes – but have now discovered to their dismay that the said government “has neither the management capacity nor the funds to do so”. Nor, let it be added, the will and power to change the time-honored custom of corruption.

The report also warns that the Afghan economy could slide into a depression with the inevitable decline of the foreign military and development spending that now provides 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

But as the natural state of such an economy is one of depression, that should be nothing for Americans to worry about. True, some Afghans will find to their wonder that they actually miss the Americans and all the military and “development” activity that provided the locals with employment and opportunity for rip-offs and other little treats and luxuries, but they’ll soon get over it as they return to the old ways.

The “single most important step” the Obama administration could take, the report says, is to stop paying Afghans “inflated salaries” — often 10 or more times as much as the going rate — to work for foreign governments and contractors. Such practices, it says, have “drawn otherwise qualified civil servants away from the Afghan government and created a culture of aid dependency.”

Which is something the socialist West has become very good at. And in Afghanistan in particular, the US has outdone itself in lavishing care on the populace regardless of expense, using the military as the care workers.

Even when U.S. development experts determine that a proposed project “lacks achievable goals and needs to be scaled back,” the U.S. military often takes it over and funds it anyway …

The report … calls for “a simple rule: donors should not implement [aid] projects if Afghans cannot sustain them.”

If they were really to follow that rule, it would mean no aid money going there at all. So they won’t follow it.

Next come more surprises which should not be surprising from a Senate committee –

Last week, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said in a separate report that billions of dollars in U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in both countries could fall into disrepair over the next few years because of inadequate planning to pay for their ongoing operations and maintenance. That report warned that “the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Foreign aid expenditures by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, about $320 million a month, pale beside the overall $10 billion monthly price tag for U.S. military operations. But Afghanistan is the biggest recipient of U.S. aid, with nearly $19 billion spent from 2002 to 2010. Much of that money has been expended in the past two years, most of it in war zones in the south and east of the country as part of the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by Obama just months after he took office.

The strategy, devised by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, calls for pouring U.S. development aid into areas that the military has cleared of Taliban fighters to persuade the population to support the Afghan government.

Evidence of successful aid programs based on “counterinsurgency theories” is limited, the Senate committee report says. “Some research suggests the opposite, and development best practices question the efficacy of using aid as a stabilization tool over the long run. The administration is understandably anxious for immediate results to demonstrate to Afghans and Americans alike that we are making progress. … However, insecurity, abject poverty, weak indigenous capacity, and widespread corruption create challenges for spending money.”

The report is gently but unmistakably critical of the “whole of government” approach implemented by Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as Obama’s special representative for the region until his death in December.

From Creeping Sharia

The planning for 9/11 was done in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, it now transpires.

Here’s the report that reveals the facts of the matter:

A trial under way in Chicago could be the next nail in the coffin of Washington’s unholy alliance with Islamabad, which looks more like a state sponsor of terror.

The federal case involves terror suspect David Headley, a Pakistani-American who says he was recruited by Pakistani intelligence (known as the ISI) to help attack India’s business hub.

In graphic testimony, he has revealed ISI’s role in the murder of 163 people — including six Americans — in the Mumbai terror attack of 2008.

Headley, who pleaded guilty last year to casing targets in Mumbai and European cities, detailed meetings he had with the Pakistani military and ISI officials. He’s fingered a Pakistani intelligence officer, a former Pakistani army major and a navy frogman among key players behind the Mumbai massacre. He’s also testified that ISI hooked him up with al-Qaida in Pakistan.

FBI agents and U.S. attorneys prosecuting the case find him credible. Among corroborating evidence: emails between him and his ISI handlers.

Headley swears that Mumbai was “ISI jihad.” But there may have been another ISI jihad — 9/11. Scattered throughout the 9/11 Commission Report is overwhelming evidence the 9/11 operation was rehearsed in Pakistani safe houses and financed through Pakistani money-transfer networks.

“Almost all the 9/11 attackers traveled the north-south nexus of Kandahar-Quetta-Karachi,” the report said. In fact, the hijackers met with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Karachi, where the 9/11 mastermind instructed them on Western culture and travel.

He showed them movies depicting hijackings. He passed out brochures for flight schools, and phone directories for San Diego and other U.S. cities. He used game software to increase their familiarity of jetliner models and functions, and advised watching the cockpit door during takeoff and landing.

“To house his students,” the report said, “KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) rented a safe house in Karachi with money provided by (Osama) bin Laden.” KSM and other key plotters — including Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi — found refuge in Pakistani cities after the Twin Tower/Pentagon slaughter. Residual funds for the operation were wired back to Pakistan.

In short, the 9/11 plot was hatched in Pakistan. So it only follows that the man who gave the final order to attack us on 9/11 — bin Laden — was found hiding not far from Islamabad, right under the nose of the Pakistani military.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that the ISI introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Afghanistan. Then, years later, they warned him U.S. missiles were heading his way. The rockets missed bin Laden, but killed ISI personnel. What were they doing there? Training jihadists at bin Laden’s camps to fight as proxies against India in the war over Kashmir.

The panel found that al-Qaida terrorists have been marshaling war against the U.S. from inside Pakistan since 1993.

On Jan. 25, 1993, Mir Amal Kansi, a terrorist from Pakistan, shot and killed two CIA employees at Langley. Kansi returned to a hero’s welcome in Pakistan. Only a month afterward came the World Trade Center bombing, which was hatched by Ramzi Yousef, who fled back to Karachi where he and his uncle KSM went back to the drawing board.

After 9/11, U.S. intelligence found KSM living in a villa in Rawalpindi — headquarters of the Pakistani army.

In preparing the 9/11 attack, al-Qaida enjoyed “the operational space” within Pakistan’s cities to gather and sift recruits and to indoctrinate them, according to the 9/11 report, which was published in 2003.

“It built up logistical networks running through Pakistan,” it said. “Within Pakistan’s borders are 150 million Muslims, scores of al-Qaida terrorists, many Taliban fighters and — perhaps — Osama bin Laden,” the report added.

How right it was. Bin Laden’s deputies are more than likely holed up there as well. We’ll find them — if the CIA and Special Forces are allowed to keep up the hunt.

Can this possibly mean that the war in Afghanistan, now obviously pointless, was never necessary?

And is American tax-payers’ money, given to Pakistan to buy its alliance, used there to train terrorists to attack America?

Seems so.

The pointless and insane war in Afghanistan goes on. And on.

Diana West writes at Townhall:

The Karzai Ultimatum story is entering national consciousness in three parts. (1) U.S.-led airstrike on May 28 kills Afghan women and children in Helmand Province. (2) Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivers ultimatum on U.S. airstrikes — stop, or else Afghans will revolt against U.S. “occupation.” (3) US-led forces (ISAF) apologize.

A crucial part is missing. I refer to the shooting, also on May 28, that killed a U.S. Marine on patrol in Helmand, triggering the fighting which led to the airstrike that Karzai would take to the microphone on the world stage. Neither Karzai, nor, come to think of it, ISAF has made much noise about this fallen Marine. In ultimatum news stories, he remains anonymous. In the rush to apologize, his sacrifice is overlooked.

But I think I’ve found him. The only American killed in Helmand Province on May 28 was Lance Cpl. Peter Clore. He was 23 years old.

Only six weeks in Afghanistan, Clore and his war dog Duke were leading a patrol to find and clear IEDs somewhere in Zad District. … Shots rang out and Clore was hit. He died. His fellow Marines pursued the attackers who took refuge in a compound where they continued to fire at Marines. At some point — details aren’t just sketchy, they’re unavailable — the Marines called for an airstrike on the building the militants were in.

This takes us to where the consensus narrative begins with its familiar prompts and conditioned reflexes: women and children killed in a U.S. airstrike; Afghan outrage; American apology. Lost in the diplomatic furor — along with the life of this young Marine — is the fact that in calling on Americans not to strike at Taliban-filled houses, Karzai is demanding a free-fire zone for insurgents.

That’s fine — for Karzai and the Afghan forces he ostensibly commands. Let him send Afghans, not Americans, to patrol the IED-laced byways of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Let’s see what that Potemkin Police Force and Ghost Army, which a delusional Pentagon and a snoring Congress think they have created with your money, can really do. …

This whole nation-building misadventure in Afghanistan is a mirage, a dream that young Americans in our armed forces are paying to perpetuate with their limbs, their lives — and that includes their own “hearts and minds” — in a nightmare many never wake from.

The Afghans are not going to change, no matter how long American forces stay in their benighted land. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained by fighting the Taliban for ten long years and more.

Diana West suggests the American people should deliver an ultimatum of their own to the politicians and generals who are pursuing the nightmare mirage of nation-building in tribal, Muslim, savage Afghanistan: “Get out, or else”.

Typically, this Christian report of an attack by Muslims on Christians stupidly avoids mentioning the word “Muslim” or “Christian”.

Sudan was recently partitioned, following a referendum on independence in the largely Christian south.

Sudanese forces attacked Abyei town on Saturday at around 8pm. The whole town was completely set on fire and approximately 20,000 people fled towards the bush and towns in Warrap State. The situation on the ground is worsening. Displaced people and children are seriously affected living under trees in Agok. Civilians are down on streets and in bushes, no food, no shelter, no water and no medical assistance.

A local school has accommodated 2,800 displaced people despite the fact that there is very limited space for such a huge number of people. There is no other option, the deteriorating conditions force us to accept them in. The majority are still under trees with children, sick people and elderly people. People with communicable diseases are forced to sleep together with healthy people. … We [the Anglican Alliance] are left no choice but to raise the voice of the voiceless for relief assistance.

Implying?: We hate to complain, we know we should just thank Jesus for the martyrdom of the 2,800 people, but we feel somehow forced to ask for some help for them.

The humanitarian situation, already critical, was compounded last night by heavy rainfall and the cancellation of a planned food distribution due to lack of security.

Lack of security? So they’re afraid? But surely either Jesus will protect them or they’re missing another chance of martyrdom!

A fertile area claimed by both the North and the South, Abyei was due to vote on its future during a referendum on independence in the South earlier this year. The vote was postponed because of disagreements over eligibility and fears over increasing tension.

Which was not avoided by trying to avoid it:

Continuing ambiguity over the town’s final status has led to … ongoing friction and conflict.

No “conflict” actually – just Christians being victimized by Muslims. They say “conflict” to suggest that both sides are equally to blame, which is not the case. But they fear to offend Muslims. Christians the world over are afraid to offend Muslims. The Christian world has been thoroughly dhimmified – even outside of the Muslim-ruled countries.

Oh, Christians! Ye of little faith! You could be enjoying martyrdom at their hands!

Anglicans who would like to donate money to the relief efforts in this emergency are encouraged to do so through the Anglican aid agency where they live.

Anglicans are also asked to provide prayers of support and sympathy to those who need assistance.

That’ll do the trick of course  – putting their hands together and mumbling some words. Works every time.

They shouldn’t bother to send money or food or medicine themselves. They should just ask God to do it. They know that God exists and is all good and merciful, and if he is only prayed to, he will surely do what he is asked.