... which he cast as if given in a speech by President Obama : 1. We have no partner in Afghanistan. The control of the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai hardly extends beyond the embattled capital of Kabul. He himself has just been returned to office in a presidential election in which voting fraud on an almost unimaginably large scale was the order of the day. His administration is believed to have lost all credibility with the Afghan people. 2. Afghanistan floats in a culture of corruption. This includes President Karzai’s administration up to its highest levels and also the warlords who control various areas and, like the Taliban insurgency, are to some degree dependent for their financing on opium, which the country produces in staggering quantities. Afghanistan, in fact, is not only a narco-state, but the leading narco-state on the planet. 3. Despite billions of dollars of American money poured into training the Afghan security forces, the army is notoriously understren...

Sometimes it doesn't take paragraphs of analysis to get the point across. From Politics Daily : Half a million Americans have served two 12-month tours in Iraq or Afghanistan; 70,000 have served three combat tours; and 20,000 have served five or more deployments, according to Defense Department data. That's one out of every 600 American citizens.

It's in today's Daily Beast , and even though it has been said here and elsewhere before, reaching the MSM with this story is a good thing. General McChrystal is being not just disingenuous but damn near dishonest, as Leslie Gelb details: The key for McChrystal is getting the 44,000 troops in battle within the next 12 months. But that just can’t be done. The most optimistic assessment comes from Kimberly Kagan of the ever-optimistic, fighting Kagans (the others being Bob and Fred). According to The Wall Street Journal, her recent study for the Institute for the Study of War assessed that “it would be difficult to move enough troops from other posts to deploy anywhere close to 40,000 troops before next summer at the earliest." U.S. armed forces are so thinned out and ill-prepared from having to fight two wars and stay ready for a slew of other conflicts that it is indeed “difficult,” if not outright impossible, to deploy the requested troops in time to head off McChrystal...

You'd think he might have helped the CIA twig to the fact that most of the American-trained Afghan police force had, uh, been infiltrated by the Taliban : Following this morning’s incident, in which a long-serving Afghan policeman shot five British soldiers and then disappeared into the Helmand Province, the status of the nation’s police force in increasingly coming under question. Officials say the police have been successfully infiltrated “at every level” by the Taliban, meaning even seemingly loyal police, today’s attacker served without incident for three years for instance, could be ticking time bombs just waiting for the order to attack. Corruption and incompetence are long-standing issues with the nation’s police force – as one British soldier put it “we were literally training them how to point a gun on the ranges, and telling them why you should not stop cars and demand ‘taxes.’” Which is probably the reason why the CIA is so disappointed to be caught having paid of for ei...

... is what the headlines should read, instead of attempting manufacture phony outrage and comparison with the Cheney/Libby leaking of Valerie Plame's name a few years ago. Predictably, the two-bit press--both nationally and locally --attempts to make this a serious issue, ala Rasmussen : Well, last week, The New York Times again published on the front page the name of an alleged CIA-paid undercover asset. This time, it was none other than Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful brother of the Afghan president. The Times cited, on background, Obama administration "political officials," "senior administration officials" and others as its sources to the effect that Karzai has been secretly on the CIA payroll for eight years and has been helping the United States with intelligence, logistic and base support for our special forces, and recruiting and running an Afghan paramilitary force on the instruction of the CIA -- as well as being a major narcotics trafficker. This ma...

... because in this country Generals execute the policies of the civilian government, they don't set it. This article deserves a full read : In early October, as President Obama huddled with top administration officials in the White House situation room to rethink America's failing strategy in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the president an offer he couldn't refuse. They wanted the president to escalate the war — go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire — or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals. Obama knew that if he rebuffed the military's pressure, several senior officers — including Gen. David Petraeus, the ambitious head of U.S. Central Command, who is rumored to be eyeing a presidential bid of his own in 2012 — could break ranks and join forces with hawks in the Republican Party. GOP leaders and conservative media outlets wasted no time in warning Obama that if he re...

If you don't know who David Drake is, you don't read science fiction. He is a Vietnam vet (with the Blackhorse) whose experiences there caused him literally to recreate military science fiction based on his experiences there. He is the creator of Hammer's Slammers , which is [if its not an oxymoron] some of the most realistic combat writing about wars that never happened that you will ever find. Recently I have been reading a Baen books reprint of some of Mark Geston's classic SF that has an introduction written a few years back by David Drake. Drake is making the point the he first encountered Geston's work on returning from Vietnam, which causes him to take a four paragraph detour into Vietnam as an American experience. What strikes me about this piece is what would happen if you changed the names. Vietnam = Afghanistan Eisenhower = Bush Lebanon = Iraq JFK/LBJ = Obama McNamara = Gates Westmoreland = McChrystal Here's the original; you make the changes yours...

Maybe, just maybe, it's because the Obama administration has recently floated the idea of paying off Taliban followers to stop fighiting , that more and more people find plausible the idea that NATO is using its own headquarters to move the insurgents areoundt the countr y.

Here's the money sentence of his resignation letter, but if there is any justice this entire letter will become an American state paper : I fail to see the value or the worth in continued US casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war. You owe it to Americans risking their lives to read and heed the words of this Marine veteran. Even if you disagree with his conclusion, you should have the intellectual honesty to rebut his arguments before you dismiss them.

Hard as it may be to recall now, when the Afghan presidential election originally came off, the US State Department praised it as well-run and closely scrutinized , even as President Karzai's political supporters organized 800 completely fictitious polling places to garner phoney votes. Now, thanks primarily to public pressure brought to bear by Peter Galbraith (resulting in UN election observer Kal Eide finally admitting that Karzai's election was fraudulent) , the US has reluctantly joined those agreeing that a run-off will be necessary after first suggesting that we would not allow one . In fact, this has no opened up something of a breach between the Obama administration and Senator John Kerry (who was, if you recall, one of the other finalists to become Secretary of State, and who might well be Hillary Clinton's replacement if she decides to quit and run for Governor of New York). Kerry says no decision about US troop levels should be made until there is a legitimatel...

Maybe folks are starting to understand : WASHINGTON (CNN) - A slight majority of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan is turning into another Vietnam, according to a new national poll which also indicates that nearly six in 10 oppose sending more U.S. troops to the conflict. Fifty-two percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say the eight year long conflict has turned into a situation like the U.S. faced in the Vietnam War, with 46 percent disagreeing. According to the poll, 59 percent of people questioned opposed sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan with 39 percent in favor. Of the 59 percent opposed, 28 percent want Washington to withdraw all U.S troops, 21 percent are calling for a partial American pullout, and 8 percent say the number of troops should remain the same. "Has Afghanistan turned into Barack Obama's Vietnam? Most Americans think so, and that may be one reason why they oppose sending more U.S. troops to ...

There is little to cheer about--ever--in seeing my fellow servicemembers killed or wounded, and even less reason for joy when a senseless loss proves my point that our troops are being squandered for political expediency rather than the legitimate defense of our country. The Kamdesh evacuation cost at least eight American and three allied Afghani soldiers their lives last week , and the battle never should have been fought in the first place. Exposed, isolated firebases in hostile territory heavily dependent on air power for combat support have been losing propositions since Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh. Even an enemy with modest means will eventually be able to concentrate sufficient forces to overrun some small isolated base--or even take advantage of a planned withdrawal--to declare a major propganda victory, as the Taliban has done here. It is certainly worth it, in the grand scheme of things, for the Taliban to lose over 100 fighters in exchange for such a "victory." Al...

From the Times : The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.... One official said the key emphasis in the White House meetings had been to identify options that would prepare the way for American troops to leave. Apart from training more Afghan troops, the focus has shifted to accepting a political role for the Taliban, while also trying to weaken them by winning some over. Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long years of war — there is an old saying that “you can rent an Afghan but never buy one” — and battles have often been decided by defections rather than combat. Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% a...

First, two significant quotations. From Randolph Bourne's War is the Health of the State : The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been known to decline the request of an Executive, ...

... appears to be what we're doing : In a taped speech intended to be aired tomorrow, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates blamed the lack of more US and NATO troops in Afghanistan for the growing momentum of the Taliban, chiding NATO nations in particular for their small commitments to the ongoing conflict. The comments come as the Obama Administration is mulling a commitment of another 45,000 troops to the war effort, and inexplicably enough the same day that Secretary Gates chastized others in the administration for making public their positions on the proposed escalation. Gates cautioned that the US could not afford to ever retreat from the nation, saying it would empower al-Qaeda and give the appearance that the mujahideen had defeated a second superpower after a decade-long occupation. Whatever it would look like internationally, it seems apparent that eight years of occupation, as with the Soviets, has done little to strengthen pro-invasion forces in the nation and has rather r...

You knew--or should have known--that being deeply in debt to China would eventually have consequences. Not just the increased speed of movement toward a different world reserve currency than the dollar, or refusal to tolerate criticism of its human rights record, or its open analysis of Alan Greenspan's mistakes in managing the American economy.... Nope. Now Bejing is sending a clear message to President Obama regarding what it sees as the appropriate US foreign policy with respect to Afghanistan. Originally published in China Daily, this piece by Lin Qinggong is pretty clearly speaking for the old men in Bejing: The United States should first put an end to the war. The anti-terror war, which the former US administration of George W Bush launched in 2001, has turned out to be the source of ceaseless turbulence and violence in the past years. To promote much-needed reconciliation among the parties concerned, the US should end its military action. The war has neither brought the Is...

OK, I officially never want to hear about the 2000 US Presidential election again from anybody who does not question this decision : The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have been fraudulent. Abandoning its previous policy of not prejudging investigations of vote rigging, the Obama Administration has conceded that Mr Karzai will be President for another five years on the basis that even if he were forced into a second round of voting he would almost certainly win it. The decision will increase pressure on President Obama to justify further US troop deployments to Afghanistan to prop up a regime now regarded as systemically corrupt. The acceptance was conveyed by Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, in a meeting with her Afghan counterpart hours before Mr Obama received a formal request from General Stanley McChrystal, the comman...

... which is something we need to admit before too many more young Americans, Brits, Canadians, Germans, and Italians die to prove it to our military and political leadership. Yes, with the 40-45,000 additional troops that General McChrystal wants , we could win a short-term victory against the Taliban, at the cost of several thousand casualties over the next three years. But what then? Exactly how long is the United States willing to leave a garrison force of 50-100,000 in Afghanistan to enforce the so-called peace? Five years? Twenty? Nor can we depend on the Afghan security forces, whose budget will be nearly four times the GDP of the entire country. The Canadians, it seems, are being much more honest about this than the Americans, as The Independent reports : It is instructive to turn at this moment to the Canadian army, which has in Afghanistan fewer troops than the Brits but who have suffered just as ferociously; their 130th soldier was killed near Kandahar this week. Every t...

From Reuters regarding President Obama's rather vague strategic goals for Afghanistan and Pakistan: Topping Obama's objectives, according to a draft document obtained by Reuters, was improving Pakistan's counterinsurgency capabilities and building up Afghan security forces so that the role of the United States could be reduced. But the document offered few specifics and set no target dates. It said the administration would assess its progress against the goals by the end of next March. Now let's go off the net for the moment, and examine Thomas T. Hammond's Red Flag over Afghanistan , which is pretty much seen today as the definitive contemporary short work on the Soviet experience there: From page 160, the sub-section entitled "The Disintegration of the Afghan Army": The Soviets probably assumed that the Afghan Army would be of great assistance in suppressing the rebels, but they have been disappointed. In fact, one might say that the Afghan army has be...

In response to one of my usual rants against interventionist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, commenter Marshfox raises an important point : Here is what I remember about 9/11, I went back to war, for the second time in my career. Only this time, the attack was on us. I have a problem with the WMD issue, and history says that the odds are against us in Afgan. That being said, I know now what the Vietnam Vets feel like, alone and abandoned, they did what they thought was right, and look what they got for it. I equate my position on this like that of the commander of the U-Boat in Das Boot. He is my kind of patriot, compared the the true beliver Nazi first officer he had. You may find fault with my analogy yet it fits for me. My eyes aren't blind, I am no mindless robot, but we started it now we need to finish it, if not you betray those who gave their lives already. I am old, but I go and volunteer for the kids, they need old hands and maybe I will bring them all home again safe one...