Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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SHORT QUIZ - AFGHANISTAN, PRES. OBAMA'S VIETNAM AND PAKISTAN, HIS CAMBODIA

1. How long was Alexander the Great able to hold Afghanistan after conquering it in 330 BC?

2. What is unique about the GEOGRAPHY of Afghanistan that makes it almost the constant target for conquest?

3. What is nearly unique about the TOPOGRAPHY of Afghanistan that historically has made it impossible to conquer for more than a few years?

4. What famous graduate of Sandhurst (Britain's West Point) saw his first military campaign in Pakistan's (then India's) Northwest Tribal Area on the Afghanistan border in 1897-8 when Britain was using Afghanistan as a buffer zone to halt expansion of the Russian Empire?

5. How long were the Russians able to hold Afghanistan after conquering its major population centers in 1980? How many Soviet troops were involved in the occupation before they were forced to withdraw?

6. How long is the border between Afghanistan and the Northwest Tribal Area of Pakistan? Is this longer or shorter than the U.S.-Mexico border?

7. Where has the Taliban been headquartered since shortly after 9/11?

8. Where has al Qaeda, in general, and Osama bin Laden, in particular, been located since 9/11?

9. How long have the Northwest Territories been effectively autonomous from the rest of Pakistan?

10. How long has the Swat Valley been autonomous from the rest of Pakistan by agreement between the Islamic Fundamentalists and the Pakistani Central Government?

11. Even though the Northwest Territories and the Swat Valley are autonomous from the rest of Pakistan and a "safe haven" for the Taliban and al Qaeda, why does the U.S. government not dare to do anything more than send over the occasional drone aircraft to assassinate a Taliban or Al Qaeda leader?

12. If the American public is constantly told that we should NOT take "our eye off the ball" then what is "the ball" - Afghanistan where the Taliban and al Qaeda were once located, or the Taliban and Al Qaeda themselves, which have moved to the Northwest Tribal Area of Pakistan?

13. Even if America "takes it eye" off the Taliban and Al Qaeda to concentrate on Afghanistan, what hope is there that America can do a better job of subjugating Afghanistan than the Russians in the 1980's?

14. What percentage of the world's supply of opium is grown in Afghanistan?

15. If America is to make Afghan farmers happy to grow other crops instead, do those crops have to be supported at artificially-inflated prices and does a vast road or rail network have to be created to get those crops to market (since they would be so much bulkier than opium)?

16. Does the traditional counter-insurgency program of conquering and holding real estate and providing security for its population have to take into account how ecstatic the local population is to see us destroy their opium fields?

17. What percentage of the territory of Afghanistan does the Taliban control today from its sanctuary in Pakistan's Northwest Tribal Area?

18. What is the difference between a "war lord" and a "tribal chief"?

19. What was the bitter assessment of the Russians in trying to "stand up" local village militias?

20. How many US Air Force bombing strikes (not including helicopter rocket and cannon fire - in other words, just bombing from airplanes) were there in 2004? In 2007? What implications does this have for "collateral damage"?

21. Who was R. James Woolsey Jr.?

22. Will it ever be possible to undo the damage done to America's human intelligence capability by the policy that caused Woolsey to become the last high American official to follow the time-honored tradition of "resigning as a matter of principle"?

23. Who is Marine General Jim Jones?

24. What is the reported position of Gen. Jones?

25. What is the reported position of Defense Secretary Gates?

26. Is relying on human intelligence more compatible with the position of Gen. Jones or Secretary Gates?

27. Why is reliance on human intelligence "the elephant in the room" that nobody is willing to talk about?

28. Is there anything that could ever be done to pacify Al Qaeda if they resent not only the existence of Israel but also resent even more (according to Osama's statements) the repressive regimes that they believe have been imposed on oil-rich Islamic countries in the Middle East to keep oil flowing? Would we be willing to sacrifice our oil-based economy in order to avoid the wrath of Al Qaeda? Would Osama bin Laden even be willing to withdraw his fatwa to nuke 10 million Americans if we did sacrifice our oil-based economy to let oil-rich regimes topple?

29. Isn't the war in Afghanistan "for show"? A probably-ineffective "insurance policy" for whatever American administration is in place when the first American city is nuked (as most experts believe will happen soon, including the Founding Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government who wrote a book about Osama's fatwa when it was only for nuking 4 million Americans and who was a "moving force" on the 2007 Democratic Congress' Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism)? After all, isn't it better to have been doing something before disaster strikes, no matter how ineffectual and downright counter-productive might be the action taken?

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AND FOR EXTRA CREDIT, SINCE THE NEWSWEEK COVER STORY COMPARED AFGHANISTAN TO VIETNAM -

A. How did the French colonial masters get back to French Indochina (which later fragmented into Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) following World War II?

B. What happened to the French in 1954?

C. How was Eisenhower able to salvage anything following the French withdrawal?

D. How many American military personnel were there in South Vietnam at the time President Kennedy was assassinated? Were they combatants or merely advisers? For what did President Kennedy (by his own admission) bear the most blame?

E. What was the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident and what was the "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution?

F. To what level did President Johnson build American troop strength INSIDE VIETNAM following the "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution?