... 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...

WaPo : As the Obama administration expands U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, military experts are warning that the United States is taking on security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that will probably eclipse that of the Iraq war. Since the invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago, the United States has spent $223 billion on war-related funding for that country, according to the Congressional Research Service. Aid expenditures, excluding the cost of combat operations, have grown exponentially, from $982 million in 2003 to $9.3 billion last year. The costs are almost certain to keep growing. The Obama administration is in the process of overhauling the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, putting its focus on long-term security, economic sustainability and development. That approach is also likely to require deployment of more American military personnel, at the very least to train additional Afghan security forces. Later this month, Gen. Stanley A. McChrys...

It is particulary bemusing (although not at all amusing) to watch the Obama administration extend and expand the Bushco program of military interventionism into new global fields. Now we are admitting that we have been fueling the fighting in Somalia with shipments of weapons for a couple of months, and intend to increase our involvement: Hillary Clinton pledged US military and other support for Somalia’s besieged transitional Government, and warned nearby Eritrea that it would take action if it does not stop supporting Islamist insurgents terrorising the war-torn nation. Speaking after a meeting with Somalia’s President in Nairobi, the US Secretary of State said that the actions of Eritrea, which is widely accused of supporting the militant group al-Shabaab with arms and money, were “unacceptable”. Eritrea’s Government denies the accusations. “It is long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support for al-Shabaab,” she said.... In June the US admitted that it had sent a ship...

From Anti-war.com : Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says that the United States could wind up sending even more troops to Afghanistan this year than was initially planned. During a visit to Fort Drum in New York, Secretary Gates said the number of troops by the end of the year could exceed the 68,000 planned in the Obama Administration’s escalation , though he said it probably would not be much higher. National Security Adviser James Jones had earlier this month insisted that the US would not be increasing the number of troops to be sent to Afghanistan this year, though he did say the Obama Administration might send another 10,000 troops sometime in 2010. New Afghan Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, however, has been told there is no limit to what he can ask for in additional troops , and he is expected to issue his report on the current troop levels sometime soon. It has been widely speculated McChrystal would ask for more troops. Want an escalation done right? Give the job to obv...

From Anti-war.com : In a high-profile policy address before the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US wouldn’t not hesitate to use its military to “defend our friends, our interests, and above all, our people” during the segment discussing Iran. She elaborated on the declaration with “this is not an option we seek nor is it a threat; it is a promise.” Clinton also warned Iran that the US offer to hold talks, which she had previously said she didn’t expect to work to begin with, would not be open-ended and that “our willingness to talk is not a sign of weakness.” Today’s comments are the latest in a long line of bellicose rhetoric coming from the Secretary of State. Last month during a television interview she said that Iran was risking the possibility of a US invasion, citing the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq as a model. And in the we-never-seem-to-learn category, she's advocating this position despite the lack of evidence t...

... or something like that, since it is difficult to explain why else he would be there advocating that the United States attack not Iran's nuclear capabilities, but that nation's refineries in order to de-stablize the existing regime: The former speaker of the US House of Representatives has said that the US should "sabotage" Iran's oil and gas infrastructure as part of its efforts to bring down the government. In an interview with Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis for the Fault Lines programme, Republican Newt Gingrich said targeting Iran's refinery would spark an economic crisis that would destabilise the government in Tehran. He said the US should "use covert operations … to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime". "I think we have a vested interest, the world has a vested interest, in a responsible Iranian government, just as we have a vested interest in a responsible North Korean government," he said. I love the logic, ...

Actually it's worse than that. According to WaPo : The Afghan army is already scheduled to grow from 85,000 to 134,000, an expansion originally expected to take five years but now fast-tracked for completion by 2011. Several senior Pentagon officials indicated that an adequate size for the Afghan force may be twice the expanded number. So that would be 268,000 soldiers (not counting police) for a country with a population of 32.7 million . That's one soldier for every 122 people in the country. But wait: by fall the US will have 68,000 troops on the ground, plus 8,000 Brits, 2,700 Canadians, and roughly another 4,000-odd NATO soldiers. So that's nearly 83,000 foreign troops, and WaPo also reports that General McChrystal may be gearing up to ask for more American forces early next year --trainers, you see. Let's just deal with the number we know will be there in the fall, which--when added to the potential expansion of the Afghani Army--means that there could be 351,0...

... with throw-down words by Brookings fellow Michael O'Hanlon at the Washington Post : After three months of very impressive decisions regarding national security, President Obama made perhaps his first significant mistake. It concerns the defense budget, where his plans are insufficient to support the national security establishment over the next five years. Thankfully, this mistake can be fixed before it causes big harm -- either by Congress this year or the administration itself next year. The administration is hardly slashing funds for defense; it is simply adopting a policy of zero real growth in the "base budget" (the part that does not include war costs, which are too unpredictable to include in this analysis). Specifically, the base budget is to grow 2 percent a year over the next five years. But with the inflation rate expected to average over 1.5 percent, the net effect is essentially no real growth. Cumulatively, that would leave us about $150 billion short of...

This, from McClatchy , is exceptionally worrying: WASHINGTON — Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has given the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan 60 days to conduct another review of the American strategy there, the fifth since President Barack Obama took office less than five months ago. The Defense Department announced Monday that Gates has ordered the new U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, to submit a review of the U.S. strategy within 60 days of their arrival in Afghanistan. OK, you say, they're still fumbling around--nothing new here, except for the WHY the're still fumbling around: The need to review a strategy that hasn't been implemented yet is being driven by U.S. domestic politics , as well as by developments on the ground. The first five months of this year have seen a 59 percent increase in insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, a 62 percent increase in coalition deaths and a 64 percent incre...

This will really help ratchet down tensions regarding a possible new Korean war (as well as get us prepared for that military draft Kilroy is worried about ): US Army Chief of Staff General George Casey today insisted that the army was “prepared” to fight a war against North Korea, in the event one broke out. Given the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gen. Casey conceded that “it would probably take us a little bit longer to shift gears” into fighting a more conventional conflict with the massive North Korean army. You may recall that Casey is the fellow who promised us the other day that the Pentagon was planning on staying in both Afghanistan and Iraq for at least another ten years . What's happening here is that (a) we are reaping the whirlwind of nearly two decades without a real foreign policy for dealing with the world that was destabilized by the end of the Cold War; and (b) we are being prepared for a return to the permanent war state necessary to keep the Defense bu...

Last week the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff discovered that our air raids were killing large numbers of civilians in Afghanistan to the point where those deaths could compromise our ability to win the war, but he couldn't think of anything better to do... This week, the venerable Admiral has twigged onto the fact that our operations in Afghanistan are de-stabilizing Pakistan, and once again--predictably--he can't think of anything better to do: Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen insisted that the United States has “a clear national security interest” in taking on the Taliban in Afghanistan and that the 21,000 additional troops coming in the surge is “about right.” At the same time, Adm. Mullen cautioned that the attempt to reverse the Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan could have dire consequences for neighboring Pakistan. “We can’t deny that our success in that regard may only push them deeper i...

The Times suggests that this might be the case: AMERICA made clear last week that it would attack Taliban forces in their Swat valley stronghold unless the Pakistan government stopped the militants’ advance towards Islamabad. A senior Pakistani official said the Obama administration intervened after Taliban forces expanded from Swat into the adjacent district of Buner, 60 miles from the capital. The Pakistani Taliban’s inroads raised international concern, particularly in Washington, where officials feared that the nuclear-armed country, which is pivotal to the US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda, was rapidly succumbing to Islamist extremists. “The implicit threat - if you don’t do it, we may have to - was always there,” said the Pakistani official. He said that under American pressure, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency told the Taliban to withdraw from Buner on Friday. However, reports yesterday indicated that the Taliban withdrawal was le...

I think he's still pissed that he didn't get to be Secretary of State: Having just wrapped up his high-profile visit to Pakistan, Senator John Kerry (D - MA) pointed to growing turmoil in the South Asian nation, and slammed the Obama Administration for not having “an adequate policy or plan to deal with it.” According to Sen. Kerry, the “comprehensive new strategy” the administration presented last month “is not a real strategy.” Sen. Kerry also cautioned the administration against talking about an “Af-Pak” policy. Though aimed at presenting the administration’s view that the two conflicts are inexorably linked through a unified US strategy, the senator says “it does a disservice to both countries and to the policy” and that the respective governments “don’t see the linkage.” But, as much as I generally think he's a pompous ass, this time Kerry's right on the money.

... as the Telegraph suggests President Obama may be considering: The US has warned Eritrea it risks American military action for its support for a Somalian terrorist group linked to a plot to attack President Barack Obama. The Red Sea dictatorship has drawn the wrath of America by backing extremist Islamic groups in Somalia as part of a proxy war with Ethiopia, its former ruler. It champions al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked group that American intelligence believes has trained a dozen of its own citizens to carry out attacks in the US. President Obama's January inauguration was hit by FBI warnings about a potential suicide threat from 12 American citizens that had left Africa to infiltrate the US and disappeared. Subsequently Washington quietly warned Eritrea, a former Italian colony which was occupied by Britain during the Second World War, it could suffer the same fate as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks, if the plot was carried out. "Eri...

This ran first a couple days ago in the LA Times , and is picked up this morning in the WNJ . Bacevich is the highly regarded Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University: When he visits Strasbourg, France, this week to participate in festivities marking NATO's 60th anniversary, President Obama should deliver a valedictory address, announcing his intention to withdraw the United States from the alliance. The U.S. has done its job. It's time for Europe to assume full responsibility for its own security, freeing the U.S. to attend to more urgent priorities.... Present-day NATO is a shadow of what it once was. Calling it a successful alliance today is the equivalent of calling General Motors a successful car company -- it privileges nostalgia over self-awareness. As with GM, so too with NATO: Fixing past mistakes will require painful changes. Continuing along the existing trajectory is not an option. If the alliance pursues any further eastward expansion ...

OK, so North Korea launched a missile. And apparently a majority of Americans--Republicans and Democrats alike--think the appropriate response should be a military strike: 57% of American voters favor a military response to North Korea’s rocket launch. Rasmussen reports that a majority of Americans want the U.S. government to take military action against North Korea after the communist country launched a long range missile (which landed in what was an epic failure in the middle of the Pacific Ocean). President Obama condemned the rocket launch in the strongest words possible earlier this weekend. However, he said beforehand he would not order the U.S. military to intercept the North Korean rocket. Instead, Obama waited for the North to make the next move, and said after the rocket was launched that he would ask the United Nations to subject it to tougher sanctions than ever before. Interestingly, a broad consensus exists among voters: 57% favor a military response, 28% are not sure, w...

We cannot rebuild the world in our own image, as much as we would like to pretend. So we spend billions on propping up societies whose belief systems are abhorrent to our own, in a fruitless quest for an elusive and illusory level of security that could best be achieved (if it's possible at all) through a practice of non-interventionism and trade. Three offerings for your Sunday reading: One: homosexuals killed in Baghdad by the militias we bankroll: BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said on Saturday, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality. Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous for gays and lesbians in Iraq since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein six years ago. "Two young men were killed on Thursday. They were sexu...

General Petraeus reports Pakistan as being on the verge of collapse : Less than a week ago, the Obama Administration unveiled a “new, comprehensive strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which included massive increases in spending as well as adding yet more troops to the ongoing surge in Afghanistan. Now, days later, top defense officials have informed Congress that the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is growing worse by the day , and that the brand new strategy is no longer enough. SOCOM head Admiral Eric Olson described the situation as “increasingly dire.” At the same time, foreign military figures in Afghanistan have said they expect the surge to be a “game changer” and to cause a significant spike in militant attacks in that nation. Beyond that, while acknowledging that Pakistan had “betrayed America’s trust in the past,” General David Petraeus warned that Pakistan’s militants “could literally take down their state” if the US didn’t intervene. Undersecretary of Defense Mi...

... which is something that it has required only that many weeks to determine. We have a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who has been allowed to discuss publicly the general outline of a US attack on Iran: In an interview today on the Charlie Rose show, Admiral Michael Mullen cautioned that a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran could endanger the stability entire region, leading to an escalation that could imperil American forces in the Gulf region. Then Mullen spoke about a hypothetical US attack on Iran, declaring that it was in “a maritime part of the world, where the emphasis would certainly be on those two forces (the Air Force and Navy).” Mullen also insisted that there was no disconnect between the United States and Israel on the question of Iran. Israel has repeatedly been reported as being on the cusp of launching an attack on Iran. At the same time, there is evidence of a disconnect within the Pentagon itself about Iran. Mullen has repeatedly been on the same page as I...

... as (to borrow a phrase from Jeremiah Wright) America's interventionist chickens are coming home to roost. Pakistan howevers on the brink of civil war that could end up with the world's first Islamist nuclear power. A potential naval show-down looms between the US and China. Which becomes especially significant in light of the new China-Iran gas deal. And, meanwhile, a Shi'a secessionist movement is threatening Saudi Arabia. In the middle of all of this? Tens of thousand of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of supply lines and withdrawal routes that day by day grow more tenuous.