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Wack-A-Mole Advance 360 For Windows 7 Wii

As Obama heads into what is purportedly his last big Afghanistan meeting, he’s trying to outplay his own generals, gaming a sort of sophisticated wack-a-mole strategy … not just that clunky, grimy old arcade game with a choice of wacking the “Afghanistan” mole or the “Pakistan” mole, but a high-speed Afghan province-specific one. Light. It raises the question of whether he’s actually manuevering for 3-D ”Go.” (It’s the Washington version of the ancient Japanese strategic board game. No “h.” Very complex and counterintuitive. One wins by quitting. The enemy, by undermining one’s out-of-theater public opinion, becomes is one’s strongest ally.)  OK, here’s what the board looks like, and what the reviewers are saying: 

Reuters has your quick and dirty options. It’s an Afghan cheat sheet.

Views from the game board via Thunder Run.

Heritage.org doesn’t like this game. Doesn’t think Obama plays well.

Apparently, after ten months on the job, the commander-in-chief still can’t figure out how to be commander-in-chief. This would be like if almost year after Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt was still seeking input on what to do.

Ignatius, waxing hawkish again, wants to play tough. Sort of:

I think he should add enough troops to continue the mission he endorsed in March to “reverse the Taliban’s gains” and improve security in Afghanistan’s population centers. I don’t know whether the right number is the roughly 40,000 that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has recommended, but it should be the minimum number necessary.

Minimum necessary? I wouldn’t want to play that way.  

Brooks weighs in with a good one. “The Tenacity Question.” Does O have a long game?

I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I tried to get them to talk about the strategic choices facing the president. To my surprise, I found them largely uninterested.

Most of them have no doubt that the president is conducting an intelligent policy review. They have no doubt that he will come up with some plausible troop level.

They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

Ted Sorensen thinks he’s played this game before. It always ends badly. … Sure, if you play old school.

Hey, this has a Kennedy-era ring to it. HotAir: Did O admin pressure NYT into changing its Dover story? That’s playing dirty.

Krauthammer: “Three Envelopes.” Old Stalin gaming instructions joke made new again. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.

It’s a deadly, dangerous game. Remember the game pieces. The pawns in this big fight. The guys out there still fighting after they’ve been knocked off the board. The Valour IT push is on, to give laptops to wounded servicemen. At the invitation of Cassandra at Villainous Company, whose Marine husband is forward deployed in Afghanistan, we’re with Team Marines this year. Pushing the Marines ahead is just the fun part of the drive. It all goes to everyone in all branches. Give as you can.

Donate via Team Marines

Topics: Afghanistan, Obama

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:12 am Comments (4) on Friday, October 30, 2009

4 Responses to “Wack-A-Mole Advance 360 For Windows 7 Wii”

1. An Average American Says:
   October 30th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

   I think the “One Tribe at a Time” strategy advocated by Major Jim Gant is the best option. It seems as though it has the best chance of success with the smallest commitment of troop numbers (not troop quality though).

   Since it is such an obvious winner I’m certain the Obama team will not choose to implement that strategy.

2. bloc Says:
   October 31st, 2009 at 12:14 am

   I think David Brooks tapped into the “realism universe” when he pointed out:

   And if these experts do not know the state of President Obama’s resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He’s cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country.

   Nor do the Pakistanis or the Iranians or the Russians know. They are maintaining ties with the Taliban elements that would represent their interests in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.

   I wonder what a “hope ‘n change” ideologue thinks when he encounters such a lucid appraisal of real world realities . . ..

3. ast Says:
   October 31st, 2009 at 2:08 am

   Why do I have that sinking, sick feeling that I get whenever I think about how we abandoned the Vietnamese to the tender mercies of Ho Chi Minh?

   That may still happen to Iraq once we withdraw our troops, but it will at least be at the request of an elected government.

4. Roque Nuevo Says:
   October 31st, 2009 at 11:41 pm

   Most disturbing paragraph from WaPo article: “In reviewing McChrystal’s bracing assessment of the war, the president and his senior advisers have concluded that the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a military and political force, regardless of how many more troops are deployed.”

   Does this mean what it says? What if it were 1861 and the paragraph read, “In reviewing McClellan’s bracing assessment of the war, the president and his senior advisers have concluded that the South’s slave secessionists cannot be eliminated as a military and political force, regardless of how many more troops are deployed?” If that had happened we literally wouldn’t be here today.

   Or do I need new glasses? I’m a HS grad, by the way. Is it really possible that the Taliban cannot be defeated? I can’t believe that any of the president’s senior advisers include anyone with a military background. Hell, maybe he just needs some of those hick biblegun clingers on his team of advisers. They wouldn’t just kick back and say that the enemy can’t be “eliminated as a military and political force.”

   From the links you posted, it seems that “the high-speed Afghan province-specific one. Light” means standing pat with additional emphasis on training the ANSF. According to Kagan/Kagan (”Enemy reations….. etc” Inst for study of war, etc etc.) this will certainly prove the president’s advisers’ point. The Taliban/al Qaeda can’t be “eliminated” this way. In addition to allowing the enemy to upgrade its weaponry (potentially threatening our air transport), it would strengthen pro-Taliban elements in the government of Pakistan, which could then reduce US operations in that country as well. That’s just for starters. Read the whole thing.

   Maybe this is why McChrystal said that the current strategy was a failure?

   Otherwise, the idea of forging some bogus alliances with so-called moderate Taliban as “local leaders” sounds naïve even to me. Maybe it just means finding some Taliban that can speak the Western language of rights and democracy to deal with. But if that Taliban isn’t committed to imposing Islamic law by extreme violence on the whole world, then he isn’t a Taliban and no self-respecting Taliban would tolerate his presence longer that it took to stake him down in the public square and run him over with a tractor.

   Is it possible that Obama will try and sell this crock of shit to the public? Who does he think he’s talking to?

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