In Afghanistan, Taliban Controls Most Territory Since 2001; ISIS Preparing 'Greatest Religious Cleansing in History'
Remember how Obama likes to go around saying, "We ended two wars"? What he means is, "We ended two wars by losing them." In Afghanistan, the bad guys are winning: In private, top Afghan and American officials have begun to voice increasingly grim assessments of the resurgent Taliban threat, most notably in a previously undisclosed transcript of a late October meeting of the Afghan National Security Council. "We have not met the people's expectations. We haven't delivered," Abdullah Abdullah, the country's chief executive, told the high-level gathering. "Our forces lack discipline. They lack rotation opportunities. We haven't taken care of our own policemen and soldiers. They continue to absorb enormous casualties." With control of -- or a significant presence in -- roughly 30 percent of districts across the nation, according to Western and Afghan officials, the Taliban now holds more territory than in any year since 2001, when the puritanical Islamists were ousted from power after the 9/11 attacks. For now, the top American and Afghan priority is preventing Helmand, largely secured by U.S. Marines and British forces in 2012, from again falling to the insurgency. As of last month, about 7,000 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed this year, with 12,000 injured, a 26 percent increase over the total number of dead and wounded in all of 2014, said a Western official with access to the most recent NATO statistics. Attrition rates are soaring. Deserters and injured Afghan soldiers say they are fighting a more sophisticated and well-armed insurgency than they have seen in years. There's a good milestone in Iraq . . . Iraq's army declared victory over Islamic State fighters in a provincial capital west of Baghdad on Sunday, the first major triumph for the U.S.-trained force since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the militants 18 months ago. The capture of Ramadi, capital of mainly Sunni-Muslim Anbar province in the Euphrates River valley west of the capital, deprives Islamic State militants of their biggest prize of 2015. The fighters seized it in May after government troops fled in a defeat which prompted Washington to take a hard look at strategy in its ongoing air war against the militants. After encircling the city for weeks, the Iraqi military launched a campaign to retake it last week, and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday. But it sounds like ISIS is just getting warmed up . . . A German journalist who spent 10 days with Islamic State says that the radical jihadist group that has captured wide swaths of Syria and Iraq is deterred by only one Middle Eastern country -- Israel. In an interview with the British Jewish News, Jurgen Todenhofer recalls his brief time behind enemy lines during which he spoke with ISIS fighters. "The only country ISIS fears is Israel," Todenhofer, a former member of the German parliament, told Jewish News. "They told me they know the Israeli army is too strong for them." The writer said that ISIS wants to lure British and American forces into Syria and Iraq, areas where it thinks it has an advantage. "They think they can defeat US and UK ground troops, who they say they have no experience in city guerrilla or terrorist strategies," he told Jewish News. "But they know the Israelis are very tough as far as fighting against guerrillas and terrorists." Gee, what gave these guys the idea that the Americans and British can't fight in cities? Todenhofer said that ISIS was "preparing the largest religious cleansing in history" and that he was "pessimistic" that the threat it poses could be neutralized. He added that the Paris attacks was just the first of "a storm" that is coming to Western cities. "They are not scared of the British and the Americans, they are scared of the Israelis and told me the Israeli army is the real danger. We can't defeat them with our current strategy. These people [the IDF] can fight a guerrilla war." "In Mosul there are 10,000 fighters living among 1.5 million people in 2,000 apartments, not in one place -- so it would be difficult [for western soldiers] to fight them. ISIS fighters are ready to die in a war against a western soldiers." Todenhofer said that ISIS plans to topple local governments while at the same time carry out terrorist atrocities abroad. "They are a very strong danger for Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Libya, while the West will be subjected to big acts of terrorism instead of a full blown ISIS war because they say they don't want too many battles at the same time," he said. The war may be going badly, but don't worry, America: President Obama remains determined to win the news cycle: During a National Security Council meeting held at the Pentagon on Dec. 14, President Barack Obama told top military officials and other officials he wanted to see a better job of having the so-called "narrative" of the war on ISIS communicated to the American people, a senior defense official told CNN. The easiest way to change the perception about something is to change the reality about something. If ISIS loses territory, they'll be seen as weak and beatable. What Can Workers without College or Technical School Hope For? David Frum's analysis of the "Republican Civil War" is getting a lot of buzz. Let's focus on one aspect of electorate he describes: The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the people we used to call Middle Americans. Middle-class and middle-aged; not rich and not poor; people who are irked when asked to press 1 for English, and who wonder how white male became an accusation rather than a description. You can measure their pessimism in polls that ask about their expectations for their lives--and for those of their children. On both counts, whites without a college degree express the bleakest view. You can see the effects of their despair in the new statistics describing horrifying rates of suicide and substance-abuse fatality among this same group, in middle age . . . Half of Trump's supporters within the GOP had stopped their education at or before high-school graduation, according to the polling firm YouGov. Only 19 percent had a college or post-college degree. Thirty-eight percent earned less than $50,000. Only 11 percent earned more than $100,000. There was a time when an American could get a high-school education, go out and get a job at age 18-19, feel secure that they would have that job for a long time, and support a family, buy a house, buy a car, and so on. But that was a long time ago, when the rest of the world's economies were rebuilding from World War II. If you drop out of high school, or only have a high-school education, you will have a difficult time getting ahead in life. That's not a value judgment or snobbishness, it's just a reflection of who's hiring and what they're paying. This is the case today, it has been the case for quite some time, it will be that way for the foreseeable future, whether the next president is Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton, or someone else. We can argue about whether employers overvalue a college education or require it for jobs that don't really need it, but the mentality of the hiring class is unlikely to change quickly. If your definition of "Making America Great Again" is to somehow return to an age where a high-school education was sufficient to live the good life, you're going to be disappointed. Yes, we can build an effective border wall. Yes, we can deport 11 million illegal immigrants. (It's easy to forget those other necessary steps: a universal employment verification system, with enforcement and a method to track visa overstays.) We could even slap tariffs on all kinds of imported goods, making it more expensive to manufacture them overseas and sell them to Americans. Even with all that, the economic prospects for those with only a high school education or high school dropouts will be starkly limited, in a world of $1.2 million average two-bedroom apartments in Manhattan, a building full of $35 million apartments, $700 sushi, and so on. They'll still feel like they're getting a raw deal, or somehow been unfairly denied the opportunities and joys they deserve. And then they'll turn to the next guy pledging to deliver economic Nirvana. ADDENDA: Dr. Jamie M. Morin, director of the Pentagon's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, on what the real long-term costs of . . . er . . . building a Death Star would be: If we think of the Death Star as a ship, and we accept the previously published $193 quintillion acquisition cost estimate, then $300 quintillion might be in the right range for a lifecycle cost estimate. However, it's important to note that lifecycle cost estimates for weapons systems depend heavily on how long you intend to keep that system in your inventory. Based on the Empire's past experience, they may not want to assume that they can keep their orbital battle stations around very long. But think of the economic stimulus it would provide! Douglas Murray: "There is no better way to get the present wrong than by getting the past wrong." | 
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