Pretty Rock-i-stan

A recent walk-on in the Military Industrial Complex Conspiracy Cavalcade is just in time to supplant the Michael Moore absurdity about natural gas pipelines as the Real Reason (tm) for going into Afghanistan. Namely, the discovery of  A TRILLION DOLLARS OF PRECIOUS MINERALS!!!1!!1!

Yes, I've been aware of the apparently prodigious mineral finds in Afghanistan since 2010. To the best of my knowledge, there is still insufficient data to confidently support the claims which are made about these discoveries. VERY promising-looking outcrops of mineralized rock have been spotted, but they have not yet been fully characterized as to their extent or purity (and thus their value, regardless of amount). It is not at all uncommon for substantial surface outcroppings to represent the last remains of past deposits which have eroded away, leaving only the *bottom* and not the *top* of a once-rich mineral concentration.

Getting this information is a laborious and hardware-intensive process of drilling and sampling and drilling some more. So, it is not surprising that it took until last year to get any "ground truth" on the deposits. It does look very good so far...but there are non-trivial issues in proceeding to extraction (lining up bidders to undertake these vast projects in the arid, infrastructure-lean, frequently-embattled --especially in the South, where most of the rare earth metals are-- land-locked primordial  moonscape of a "country." And that's not even getting into the near-certainty of enormous corruption and very messy jostling by regional warlords to control the most promising territories).

In short, this thing is a long way from a paycheck.

As for why there were geologists with the Army ("Proof! PROOF!! I say, that all is going as They have Foreseen!"): it is SOP for a battlespace to be characterized in minute topographical detail, via aerial and orbital reconnaissance, in preparation for insertion of forces. This becomes even more critical when supply lines are VERY limited in their access to personnel who must combat a foe who is, himself, widely distributed around a *most* unforgiving AO. Given the extent of the deposits --as evident in the USGS map in the article I linked above-- it is not the least bit surprising (nor does it make it at all necessary to posit some shadily mercenary intent), that these surveys would also have revealed these VERY attention-grabbing mineralogical aspects of the landscape.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Forget 9/11? Fuhgeddaboudit, Pal.

[by Mr.Hengist]

Now, me, I’m not big on anniversaries, not even my own birthday. Just not caring, is all. When I was a kid I looked forward to my birthday, sure – presents! – but as I got older, for a variety of reasons, I grew out of it. There’s no day I set aside for celebration or remembrance of anything anymore, and that’s just me. I’m not against this kind of thing but it doesn’t resonate with me.

That’s why the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone these blogging years without comment from me, although 9/11 marked perhaps the darkest days in my life and set in motion changes in me which were, for me, profound. It’s in the days leading up to the 9/11 anniversary that people reflect on that day and how we move forward. E.J. Dionne Jr. has phoned it in with his September 7th, 2011 column, “Time to leave 9/11 behind”.

As the title promises, the first line delivers:

“After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind.”

It’s a familiar refrain, one I’ve read from Liberal pundits since, well, shortly after September 11, 2001. We shouldn’t use this as an excuse to make war, we’ve gone off-track, we need to understand that we were attacked because we’re hated, and with good reason, we need to make amends so the world will love us again and we’ll all live together in the world with harmony and respect for cultural diversity, and then unicorns will fart rainbows, blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.

Although the Liberal MSM never stopped airing the pictures and video of the planes hitting the towers (look, big explosion!), even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 they wouldn't air the pictures or video of the jumpers. Those were the victims above the inferno in the towers who jumped to their certain death rather than stay and succumb to the smoke and flame. What hell that must have been for those office workers that the better option was to jump from the top floors of a skyscraper. Not a few, either; surviving rescue workers described having to be exceedingly cautious when entering or exiting the towers to avoid being crushed by a random person falling from the sky, and how unnerving it was to hear the bodies thumping on the sidewalk every couple of minutes. Why the media embargo? While not graphic, they were horrifying, and they angried up the blood. Americans were, by and large, ready to unleash our war machine, but already the imploring chorus of restraint was stirring from the anti-war left, who saw us as having gotten our just desserts - Blame America First.

It only took a half a year or so for the focus to shift, as the Lefties knew that this war business wasn't going to treat them well. Modern Liberal Democrats are not the leaders you want in charge in a time of war, and they knew it, so on the whole they thought this 9/11 thing was taking domestic and foreign policy in all kinds of wrong directions. Like hamsters running the wheel for hours on end, they get tired and rest for a spell but soon enough they're back at it. It's their hobby horse and they're not getting off it, because we can't change policy until you people get over the hurt. So, like, it's sad & all, but can't you just leave it in the past? Besides which, you deserved it.

“As a nation we have looked back for too long. We learned lessons from the attacks, but so many of them were wrong. The last decade was a detour that left our nation weaker, more divided and less certain of itself.”

I’ll refrain from rebutting the arguments that Dionne neglects to make himself, but suffice it to say, he’s wrong, wrong, wrong. We learned valuable lessons from 9/11, and perhaps not well enough, and our response has left us stronger, not weaker. Hey, if Dionne won’t make the case against, I’m don’t have to make the case for.

“Reflections on the meaning of the horror and the years that followed are inevitably inflected by our own political or philosophical leanings. It’s a critique that no doubt applies to my thoughts as well. We see what we choose to see and use the event as we want to use it.”

I suppose it would be unfair to point out that Dionne, perhaps tellingly, focuses on how we choose to “use the event as we want to use it”, because in essence, I agree with this paragraph. Let’s just say, for now, that E.J. Dionne and I disagree on all the particulars.

“This does nothing to honor those who died and those who sacrificed to prevent even more suffering. In the future, the anniversary will best be reserved as a simple day of remembrance in which all of us humbly offer our respect for the anguish and the heroism of those individuals and their families.”
“But if we continue to place 9/11 at the center of our national consciousness, we will keep making the same mistakes. Our nation’s future depended on far more than the outcome of a vaguely defined “war on terrorism,” and it still does. Al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy. But our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies.”

Long have the Liberal-Left fervently implored us not to take 9/11 so hard. Let me start hitting a couple of the specifics here:

First of all, it’s arguable whether we place 9/11 “at the center of our national consciousness”, but if that’s the case then it is so for reasons which are far beyond the ability of anyone to simply wish it away. 9/11 will gradually diminish in importance as time stretches the distance between the now and then, but what Dionne and his ilk have either never grasped or simply wanted to make not so, is that it was an event on the order of magnitude of Pearl Harbor. It is both tiresome and insulting to hear from Dionne et al that we should just get over it. Not happening, not anytime soon.

Then there’s the part where he acknowledges that “Al Qaeda is a dangerous enemy”, but “our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies”. I don’t think it’s necessary to belabor the obvious contradiction here, as these two ideas are mutually exclusive. What Dionne means - but apparently lacks the skill to put clearly - is that Al Qaeda will never succeed in reestablishing a caliphate. It's either clumsiness or intentionally intimating that, in some sense, we are really threatened by Al Qaeda.

In the sense that Al Qaeda will never succeed in their mad fantasies of a worldwide caliphate, Dionne and I agree. I wouldn't be entirely sure of their chances for a regional caliphate, nor would I take off the table the possibility of various other states in the being absorbed into the orbit of this yet-to-be established caliphate. At any rate, I wouldn't want to establish odds, as I think they're pretty long on even the most modest of their goals.

This is an entirely separate question from whether Al Qaeda is an ongoing threat. They are. A diminished, less capable threat, not to be underestimated, but pursued to the ends of the Earth and exterminated wherever they are, no matter how long it takes. Further, Al Qaeda is but one organization of many that are like-minded and equally dastardly. The point I'm driving at is that what Dionne wants is for us to go back to 9/10, and I'm here to tell you this a mad fantasy of Liberal-Leftists. They've probably got a better chance of realizing their fantasy than Al Qaeda does for realizing theirs.

“We asked for great sacrifice over the past decade from the very small portion of our population who wear the country’s uniform, particularly the men and women of the Army and the Marine Corps. We should honor them, too. And, yes, we should pay tribute to those in the intelligence services, the FBI and our police forces who have done such painstaking work to thwart another attack.”

I presume Dionne is preferentially giving shout-outs to the Army and Marine Corps based on casualty figures, but really, all of our armed service members have borne an extraordinary burden. One of the lessons we should have learned from the military engagements of the last decade is that our military is inarguably too small to do this without having to resort to extended tours of combat duty. Whether you support the war(s) or not, the presumption that we have the ability to fight such wars can no longer be taken at face value - or be relied upon as a part of our defense posture. If the possibility of going to war to defend, say, Taiwan or South Korea, is off the table because it would outstrip our capacity to effectively prosecute that third front, then that’s an excellent argument for augmenting the size of our armed forces because weakness invites attack. That lesson was, alas, not learned.

Still, it’s worth noting that Dionne doesn’t go the route of infantilizing our armed forces by talking about them as if they were children forced to go to war, or as bloodthirsty killbot murderers leaving a wake of devastation and suffering. I wish more antiwar folks were as decent as Dionne is here.

Hey, I wish for a lot of things.

“It was often said that terrorism could not be dealt with through “police work,” as if the difficult and unheralded labor involved was not grand or bold enough to satisfy our longing for clarity in what was largely a struggle in the shadows.”

Here Dionne constructs a straw man but doesn’t even bother to knock it down. Let me set it on fire by pointing out that one of the problems with using law enforcement to prosecute a war is that law enforcement is, by varying degrees, reactive rather than proactive. Without probable cause, how to apprehend suspects? How to obtain sufficient evidence to obtain the issuance of arrest warrants, and under what standard of law do we operate – ours, or the laws of a foreign country? To what degree to we constrain and expose our law officers by working with a foreign government in the investigation? By way of example, let me point out that when it was determined that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration demanded he be turned over to us. The Taliban responded that, no, they would be doing no such thing, but they would consider extradition if we could present a case to an international court of law, and besides which, they had no idea where he was, although they would be happy to pass along any message we might wish to send him.

[Go back and read the rest of that last sentence now that you've stopped laughing at how the Taliban were demanding we persuade an international court of law.]

Further, law enforcement is subject to the legal constraints of a civil society rather than an effectively lawless badlands or an actual rootin’ tootin’ battlefield. In that kind of environment it is impractical to the point of being an impossibility to maintain the integrity of a chain of custody for physical evidence, and even the problematical nature of the reading of Miranda rights makes the notion of a legal battlespace, quite frankly, bizarre. Proverbially speaking, it’s bringing a knife to a gunfight, or in this case, an arrest warrant to a gunfight. OK, the FBI carries guns, but up against RPGs, AK-47s, IEDs and, well, you get the picture.

“Forgive me, but I find it hard to forget former president George W. Bush’s 2004 response to Sen. John Kerry’s comment that “the war on terror is less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement operation.”
“Bush retorted: “I disagree — strongly disagree. . . . After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got.” What The Washington Post called “an era of endless war” is what we got, too.”
“Bush, of course, understood the importance of “intelligence gathering” and “law enforcement.” His administration presided over a great deal of both, and his supporters spoke, with justice, of his success in staving off further acts of terror. Yet he could not resist the temptation to turn on Kerry’s statement of the obvious. Thus was an event that initially united the nation used, over and over, to aggravate our political disharmony. This is also why we must put it behind us.”

What is obvious to Dionne in Kerry’s statement is left unstated, and it deserves to be fleshed out. I won’t do his work for him, but I will point out that intelligence gathering and law enforcement operations do not preclude warfighting as a means of confronting enemy conspirators and combatants. For a couple hundred years now, the U.S. has used all of these tools in the prosecution of war.

The disconnect between these two ideas – those of Kerry and W – is that W was responding to the unstated premise in Kerry’s statement: that we can use intelligence gathering and law enforcement to mitigate the threat of Al Qaeda without waging war.

The political disharmony Dionne laments is a direct result of the disagreement between these two ideological camps over this question. What’s more, that disagreement was fueled by the political calculus of Democrats who parlayed an issue of national security in order to get more political power, which is simply unconscionable.

I’m sure Liberals will take exception to that statement, but let me preempt their howls by asking this question: how else do you explain the promises of candidate Obama, which were very much in alignment with the spirit of anti-war Liberals, to the actions of POTUS Obama? From the continuance of warrantless wiretaps, to the dramatic expansion of drone airstrikes, and the extension of the Patriot Act, to the Libyan war, and so on, it seems obvious that POTUS Obama has fallen far short of the standards he set for himself. I’m not trying to use these reversals as a cudgel against POTUS Obama, but rather, to point out that, in reality, as POTUS Obama either knew or learned, our country is not well-served by prosecuting a war as if it were a matter solely for intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

While I'm at it, let me also point out how disingenuous the Left has been over these past years. Yeah, yeah, when W was in office, the Constitution was shredded, he thought himself a king, the republic was doomed, and America as we knew it was being destroyed by the evil Republicans, damn those soulless ghouls. The Left marched by the tens of thousands, they did, to stop the wars and take back America! When they did take back America, or at least the government - which, surprisingly, still existed, and still somehow allowed free elections - Democrats won all three branches of government and those very same policies were met with... muted grumbling. Only the far left still seems to be waving their pitchforks, but mainstream Liberals have given their guy a pass.

“In the flood of anniversary commentary, notice how often the term “the lost decade” has been invoked. We know now, as we should have known all along, that American strength always depends first on our strength at home — on a vibrant, innovative and sensibly regulated economy, on levelheaded fiscal policies, on the ability of our citizens to find useful work, on the justice of our social arrangements.”

I’ll defer to Dionne that “the lost decade” is a phrase used with some frequency in Liberal circles, but that phrase has no currency on the Right. At any rate, American strength is not dependent on the false choice Dionne presents. Our economy must be strong in order to have a strong national defense, and our national defense can only be strong if our economy is strong. We can’t have one without the other, but regardless of economic circumstances in our national defense we must wage war on those who wage war against us. It always pays to destroy our enemies, even though it costs us.

“This is not “isolationism.” It is a common sense that was pushed aside by the talk of “glory” and “honor,” […]"

… aaaand let me stop Dionne right here and call out this BS. Glory and honor were never used by the Bush Administration to justify warmaking; this is a shameless manufacturing of a lie to serve Liberal dissent. We did not go to war in Afghanistan or Iraq for glory, period. We did not go to war against Afghanistan or Iraq for honor, either. We did not go to war against Afghanistan or Iraq for treasure either, but I digress. Dionne would like to portray hawks and neocons as warmongers seeking glory and honor, but Dionne forgets that these are the facile accusations of the Liberal-Left, now so ingrained as to be taken as self-evident truths. Recall what I said above, about how accusations against their political opposition are first taken as a possibility, then as probably true, and from there a certainty.

“[…] by utopian schemes to transform the world by abruptly reordering the Middle East — and by our fears.”

Here Dionne is alluding to the neocon ambition of upsetting the apple carts of the undemocratic Middle East dictatorships and facilitating the emergence of representative republics. It’s a shame that POTUS Bush largely gave up on that ambition in his second term, but it’s somewhat encouraging to see the possibility of that dream coming to fruition in some parts of the Middle East today as a part of what’s being called the Arab Spring. You might think that current events would have Dionne thinking twice about calling such a scheme utopian, but, well, apparently not.

“While we worried that we would be destroyed by terrorists, we ignored the larger danger of weakening ourselves by forgetting what made us great.”

And what made us great? Glory? Honor? I’d like to address this statement but as it stands I can’t make heads or tails of it and I’m not about to flesh out his argument that isn’t made so that I can rebut it.

“We have no alternative from now on but to look forward and not back.”

We can do both, unless you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Of course, Dionne has been arguing that we shouldn’t look back, not that we can’t, so this statement is simply empty rhetoric, and it’s just so very lame, but it does set up his final paragraph:

“This does not dishonor the fallen heroes, and Lincoln explained why at Gettysburg. “We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground,” he said. “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” The best we could do, Lincoln declared, was to commit ourselves to “a new birth of freedom.” This is still our calling.”

It’s nice that Dionne concluded his piece with a quote from that venerated Republican Lincoln, whom we all hold dear to our hearts, but the conclusion of his piece ends up right where it began, with Dionne lazily waving his arms, chanting, “Forget, forget, forget.”

So let me sum up my fisking with this:

9/11: Never Forget.

Afghanistan: They'll Cut (a deal) and Run

[by Mr.Hengist]

The initial reports had the casualties at 80 dead and 120 wounded in Charsadda, Pakistan, on May 13, 2011. The attack was loosely targeted at a training center for Pakistani security forces. One bomb killed cadets and, notably, bystanders at a nearby market. The second bomb, by design, killed first responders tending the victims of the first bomb. In this how the Taliban expressed their sympathy and anger, in deeds fitting their words, at the U.S. having sent ObL to sleep with the fishes. In deeds, how like ObL and Al Qaeda; their aims and methods make for a well-suited match. It's a timely and poignant reminder of why we unleashed our fury on them in the aftermath of 9/11, and a rebuke of our having let so many flee to safety. We should have done a better job of cutting off their escape routes and killed them in in far larger numbers.

POTUS Obama reluctantly fulfilled his campaign pledge by increasing our troop presence in Afghanistan by paltry numbers. Having done so, POTUS Obama is now once again looking for the exit. Instead of redoubling our efforts in response to Taliban atrocities, the Administration "has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban" and "U.S. officials say they hope [this] will enable President Obama to report progress toward a settlement of the Afghanistan war when he announces troop withdrawals in July." Let's hope the Taliban don't cut a deal until at least the next round of U.S. elections so that we can replace these Democrats before they can run away.

Two Shots and a Splash

[by Mr.Hengist]

The news came late and I was already visiting the Land of Nod, during which all I could dream about was making stock. Vegetable & meat stock in my slow-cooker. All night long, dream after dream. I kept waking up and thinking, "Augh, another one - why can't I have better dreams?" I've been planning on making that dream come true this weekend when I'll use my slow-cooker for the first time to make vegetable/meat stock, and I've been sort-of looking forward to it, but spending a whole night dreaming about is kind of lame.

When I woke up and checked the news I learned that another dream had already come true. A desire, really, not a dream - an angry, blood-lust desire for death upon that POS ObL. I read the banner headline and, as is typical of me, I had no reaction but an unverbalized need to read more, to learn more, to put the headline into a context into which I could weigh its veracity. ObL dead, they say, but we know that many of Al Qaeda leadership have been declared killed many times, only to pop up alive again whack-a-mole style. The more I read the more certain I became that it was a believable claim, although I will admit that when I read that the body had been dumped at sea I had my first verbal thought, which was "How convenient." I'm a skeptic by nature. I guess it just takes time to sink in when the news is big; further reflection elevated the probability of the truth status of this news to high. OK, look, I hadn't had any coffee that early in the morning and, in retrospect, it probably would have helped things along. The news started to sink in when I got into the shower.

ObL is dead. Well, good.


Surprisingly, that's all it's amounted to for me, in terms of the emotional resonance it's had on me. Not triumphalism, not jubilation, not even satisfaction. Pity, that; I'd hoped to get more mileage out of it. Granted, I'm not one for celebrations in general, but I've gotten more jollies out of finding a stray sawbuck on the sidewalk. I'm not sure why. I still feel anger and sadness at 9/11 when I think about the horror of that day, and I still feel the hot anger and bloodlust well up when I think about the jihadists and their evildoings. I don't know and I'm not going to dwell on it because it's not important. ObL is dead and that's a good thing, even if that's all there is to it for me.

Kudos to our combined intelligence and military which carried out the mission, with well-deserved accolades to follow. Surely the kill-team need never buy their own drinks again. Kudos to the Obama Administration for following through with the pursuit and having the cojones to execute when the opportunity was established. Really, you have to hand it to POTUS Obama: candidate Obama said he would go into Pakistan to get high-value targets, and, by Crom, he has. He's long-since stepped up the missile attacks inside of Pakistan, and with this mission he's ordered a boots-on-the-ground assassination of a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, highest value target. May the Cambodianization of Pakistan continue until we've reached a satisfactory outcome.

There's snark and criticism to be had at the expense of the Obama Administration, yes, but it's mostly persnickety. I will add the following thoughts:

- Assassination mission against ObL, not "kill or capture": good. The potential for intelligence gleaned from interrogation has little promise in this case. Let's face it: there's nothing we could offer to coax it out, and this administration would probably not extract it by force. The fiasco of trying to apply the due process of a civil prosecution which we've already seen with the Gitmo detainees would go to 11 for ObL; better to avoid it altogether.

- Burial at sea: good. For exactly the reasons given for doing it, it's good. Granted, my first impulse was far more excessive even than Glenn Beck's ("wrapped in bacon"), so much so that I will not sully this blog with my dark and profane fantasies, but I've reconsidered the matter and the disposal of the corpse as it was done was the correct strategic decision, IMHO.

- The ever-changing details of the mission: sadly, it's to be expected. I've come to the point where I note with a mental "Asterisk of Doubt" all information we get in the opening days of crisis. Even seemingly unmistakable chunks of a story can later turn out to be altogether wrong.

- Not releasing the ObL kill-photo: my loss. I'd like to add it to my collection, as a trophy. At any rate, the era of photographic "proof" has passed for this kind of thing, as everybody knows that, given enough time and a motivated forger with good photoshop chops, one can fake such a thing. It reminds me of a podcast to which I'd listened of an event at the Heritage Foundation, "The Role of Psychological Operations in Strategic Communications" in which one of the speakers describes talking to Afghan villagers after 9/11 and how they didn't believe it happened, even after being shown video. Oh, they knew about airplanes, sure, because airplanes flew over the skies of Afghanistan, but skyscrapers? Why, everyone knows you can't build a building that high! They were convinced it was some kind of Hollywood trickery. At any rate, there is an accounting to be made amongst the Leftists who oppose the release of the ObL death-photo yet clamored for the release of Abu Ghraib photos - another time, surely.

Not surprisingly, there's a chorus from Liberals that the death of ObL means we should get out of Afghanistan. As if that was ever the point. Well, I'll give the hippy-dippy peaceniks credit for consistency on this: when things go well, they see that as a reason we can finally leave, and when things don't go well, they use that as an argument for why we should leave. They did that for Iraq just as they're now doing it for Afghanistan; it's sort-of an unfalsifiable assertion in that regard.

This is why it's important for the Obama Administration to make it clear that our fight wasn't just against Al Qaeda, but rather it is against the jihadists who seek to destroy the West and subjugate the world under Sharia Law. Sadly, of course, he won't do any such thing, as neither he nor Democrats in general seem to believe any such thing.

At the very least there must be a dear price to be paid by Pakistan for their complicity and aid to Al Qaeda, and the jihidists who fight us and our Allies in Afghanistan and India and elsewhere. Perhaps Obama has the temerity to cut off aid; I suppose it possible he might more closely ally the U.S. with India. I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised - but not hopeful.

Counter-Counterinsurgency

Obama's speech at West Point, and the politically calculated half-measures it proposed, are the occasion for the latest spot-on post by "Doctor Zero" over at Hot Air. Counterinsurgency is a Long Game, a dogged demonstration of dedication and integrity which is meant to woo a population from the camp of our foes to the circle of our friends. The President's dismal delineation of time-tables and "exit strategies" (Gods! How I have come to detest that phrase) signals the very antithesis of COIN's spirit. His short-changing of troop levels and characteristically naive reliance on NATO commitments (oxymoron spoken here) to make up the difference is nothing short of a declaration that victory (perish the thought that he should ever utter that word) is a long shot against which to hedge, rather than an unconditional prerequisite for joining the fight.

But, as Doctor Zero articulates with the usual blistering clarity, such is the monotonic tenor of the Obama presidency:

Every moment of the “historic” Obama presidency has been wrapped in the rhetoric of failure and decline. A nation slipping into endless debt, to buy off the social concerns of the moment, cannot help but feel helpless and doomed… because it wouldn’t be so quick to mortgage a future it believed in. To accept the leadership of Barack Obama, either in Afghanistan or at home, is to accept that triumph is a fantasy, and achievement is a relic of the past, so the only rational course is carefully managed decline.

 Indeed. Whether it is the ham-handed intrusion of government into the auto industry and banking system, or  the on-going attempt to effect a fateful phagocytosis of the health insurance market, this administration has broadcast with unerring consistency the message that the proper management of our lives and resources are so far beyond the ken of the "average" citizen that nothing short of Central Planning stands the faintest chance of achieving the goals of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Doctor Zero quite rightly makes the analogy between the confidence and vigor of a civilian population, and the morale of a military force. Per Obama, both are in need of careful control from the top, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of an orderly and placid mediocrity. Try as I have (and I have tried mightily!), I can find no evidence that he believes this Nation can or should aspire to anything higher.

Needless to say, I disagree. And, as should be abundantly clear by now, I have officially abandoned the effort to give this administration the benefit of the doubt.

A properly resourced and inspired COIN force can achieve wonders, once it has shown itself willing and able to accept elevated risk, and to "walk the walk" for the sake of a host nation's population. An under-resourced and ambivalent COIN force sends the message to would-be insurgents and collaborators that they had best keep their powder dry, against the day of their inevitable abandonment.

So it goes with a people and their president. Tell us, in a host of ways, that we are ineffectual and in need of paternalistic control, and you offer us a choice: bow low before the beneficent State and accept its putative boons, or be moved by the affront to reclaim our dignity and repudiate your condescension. This American "insurgency" has taken the form of Tea Parties, raucous town hall meetings, and a rapidly growing grass-roots movement, self-organizing around the reclaiming of the muscular and pragmatic optimism which lies at the heart of the American consciousness. I live in hope (the real kind) that this insurgency will triumph at home....and in dread that its dark counterpart will do the same in the shadow of the Hindu Kush.

A Double Cross to Bear

Earlier, I linked to Dick Cheney's very excellent October 21 speech to the Center for Security Policy. Portions of this speech centered on the Obama administration's "dithering" on the question of how best to implement Gen. McCrystal's counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy for Afghanistan (mainly re: how many troops to send and how soon to send them). Embedded in the subsequent back-and-forth on that speech is an example of the sort of chicanery which is merely the latest in a series of deal-breakers for any vestige of a benefit of a doubt I may once have been inclined to give this POTUS' administration.

As summarized by this post by Stephen Hayes from the Weekly Standard, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' peevish prevarication went something like this:

"What Vice President Cheney calls 'dithering,' President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," said Gibbs. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously." Gibbs went on, calling Cheney's comments "curious" and claiming that a request for troops from General David McKiernan during the final year of the Bush administration "sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president's, for more than eight months."

Gibbs is saying here that the Bush Administration --which, presumably, did not take the "solemn responsibility" to the troops as seriously as his successor is currently running out precious clock cycles to do-- let requests for more troops sit idly by, lacking a clear strategy for the mission of those troops. Pretty serious stuff. Too bad the charge bears not the slightest resemblance to what actually transpired, as cited by Hayes:

"The idea that we just sat on our f--ing asses--it's really a slander," says one senior Bush administration official. "It's just not credible that we didn't take this seriously."

In fact, the Bush administration did ask those questions. From mid-September to mid-November 2008, a National Security Council team, under the direction of General Doug Lute, conducted an exhaustive review of Afghanistan policy. The interagency group included high-ranking officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the office of the director of national intelligence, the office of the vice president, the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its objective was to assess U.S. -policy on Afghanistan, integrating a simultaneous military review being conducted by CENTCOM, so as to present President Bush with a series of recommendations on how best to turn around the deteriorating situation there. The Lute group met often--sometimes twice daily--in a secure conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. (The group used the room so frequently that other national security working groups that had been meeting there were required to find other space including, occasionally, the White House Situation Room.)

The Lute review asked many questions and provided exhaustive answers not only to President Bush, but also to the Obama transition team before the inauguration. "General Jones was briefed on the results of the Lute review, and that review answered many of the questions that Rahm Emanuel says were never asked," says Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. Jones and Hadley discussed the review, and Lute gave Jones a detailed PowerPoint presentation on his findings. Among the recommendations: a civilian surge of diplomats and other non-military personnel to the country, expedited training for the Afghan National Army, a strong emphasis on governance and credible elections, and, most important, a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy.

Jones asked Hadley not to release the results of the Lute review so that his boss would have more flexibility when it came time to provide direction for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Bush officials reasoned that Obama was more likely to heed their advice if he could simply adopt their recommendations without having to acknowledge that they came from the Bush White House. So Hadley agreed. (emph. added)

 Got that? An exhaustive, comprehensively interdepartmental review was conducted, comprising myriad meetings, and arriving at recommendations which bear a striking resemblance to those at which Obama's own review arrived. Further, those findings were offered to the incoming administration sub rosa, with the full expectation that  Obama's team could claim credit for them, and implement them seamlessly, and without the political complications of accepting (and having his flexibility constrained by) his predecessor's policy recommendations. See also this quote, via Power Line, from Kristopher Harrison, who served as Chief of Staff to the Counselor of the Secretary of State during the Bush administration, and was intimately involved in the review process for the strategy in Afghanistan:

It is also true that Obama's transition team asked us to hold the Afghanistan review findings, a request to which President Bush acquiesced because (as it was relayed to me) he did not want to box the new president into a narrow set of options. In March, when Obama announced his new Afghanistan strategy, I did not notice a single change from the new plan that we had given him...only Obama did not resource it with enough troops.

And how does this Great Uniter repay this professionalism and graciousness? Why, of course, by taking endless swipes at his predecessor's policies, and accusing him of squandering the chance to turn the Af-Pak theater around while "wasting" time wresting victory from the jaws of defeat (and landing some vicious body-blows on al Qaeda) in Iraq.

Whatever. Politics is politics, and class is optional. Obama plainly still believes that he can score political points by trashing the Bush administration, and he is probably right...up to a point. That point begins where the interests of the United States, of its troops and its allies become endangered by political maneuvering at the expense of substantive action on vital issues. On that frontier, Obama is demonstrably floundering.

The stated (and endlessly re-stated) rationale for Obama's sitting on the decision to deploy more troops to Afghanistan lies with the results of that country's demonstrably tainted national elections. Makes a certain kind of sense, since one of the goals of COIN is the fortification of a host nation's confidence in its government by providing security and stability and civil affairs support. If that government is viewed as illegitimate, then there are hard limits on the amount of good which COIN operators can bring about in the field. Therein lies a not altogether incoherent argument for waiting till the the run-off election, and coordinating operations with the hopefully more well-regarded government which emerges from it.

And if we were talking about just about any place besides Afghanistan, that would be a convincing argument. But we're not, and if there is one thing about Afghanistan which has held true for decades, it is that any central government is going to be viewed with suspicion and/or hostility by the denizens of the largely unpaved hinterlands which make up the majority of the country's territory. "Legitimate government" is practically an oxymoron in the average Afghan's eyes, so the niceties of electoral politics in Kabul amount to less than a hill of rotted poppies. 

The task is not so much to shore up a government which is generally viewed as legitimate, as it is to establish pockets of security and the concrete promise of prosperity, by crushing the Taliban and its al Qaeda proteges, denying them re-entry into the communities from which we chase them, and training locals to shoulder the burdens of picking up where we, in due course, leave off. It is from those deeds that the legitimacy of the government which partners with us will arise, rather than descend from some abstraction of a polity, far away in an alien city, whose words the villagers and tribal elders of the primordial hills and steppes are somehow supposed to take on faith, pending the delivery on the promises of foreigners.

Naturally, however, this concept is apt to be just as foreign to an inveterate statist like Obama.

It is, however, worse than even such naivete. As per Mr. Hengists's superb and destined to be oft-cited post on the "pretext of principles," this whole matter of waiting on Afghanistan's elections does not bear scrutiny as anything but a smoke-screen, a cover story for what is more properly viewed as a political matter for internal consumption. Obama is struggling with the question of how to create political cover for the implementation (or  parsing) of a policy which both his hand-picked general and his predecessor's team have determined to have the lowest probability of failure in "The Necessary War."  As the Left wrings its hands about troop deployments, and the Right continues to be embarrassingly supportive of  the policy which Obama articulated back in March, the President feels his hands to be tied...and he is loath to take responsibility to cut the knot.

And so he plays the blame game, shifting responsibility hither and yon, while even NATO grows restive at the delay in declaring a clear course of action.

If there is one thing at which the Bush Administration displayed a singular talent (probably to a fault), it was absorbing the vicious and mendacious attacks of its foes. The Obama team's crass and dishonest attempt to shift its indecision onto its predecessors is hardly the worst political stunt in the history of the Republic, and it is a double-cross which --for all of Cheney's characteristic piss and vinegar in response-- the Bush team is uniquely well-prepared to bear. But it is the brave and long-suffering service-people in Afghanistan (to say nothing of the Afghans themselves!) who stand to be counted as collateral damage in this beltway boogie.

And that is simply inexcusable.

The New Decider

Oh, my.

Some things, you just can't make up.

Via Instapundit comes this post on President Obama's unintentionally (I hope) ironic taste in art.

On this anniversary of the initiation of military action in Afghanistan, however, the humor falls rather flat. Kind of like the art itself.

Dropping some COIN on Afghanistan

The Christian Science Monitor has a couple of excellent articles (Part One and Part Two) on the hopeful developments and lingering challenges in the implementation of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in the tribal regions of Afghanistan. Recommended reading, in that they lay out what appear to be the ingredients of a well-crafted COIN approach to the protection of civilian populations against the Taliban and al Qaeda forces in their midst. As usual, there is substantial mistrust and the weight of centuries of less-than-inspiring history standing in the way of the locals welcoming the Coalition forces who assume the risk of moving into close proximity with those populations (versus huddling in heavily fortified bases and emerging only to wreck things and kill folks)...but not so close that they violate traditions of privacy. Very tricky business, that.

Still, our people seem to be hitting all of the important marks: they are consulting with the local Tribal elders, staying visible, asking how they can help, and showing a willingness and capability to deliver on their promises. The results are, as expected, uneven, but this is not something which happens overnight. This passage in particular made an impression on me as a fine example of how COIN operations really begin to gain traction:

The troops admit there are no easy solutions. In the meantime, some soldiers are finding their own ways to win hearts and minds.

Pfc. Joshua Lipori has decided to learn Pashto, the prevalent language here. While standing on guard duty one day at a combat outpost in Sayadabad, he practices his fledgling Pashto with some passing locals.

"Tsenga Ye?" or "How are you?" he asks. "Jore Ye?" – "Are you doing OK?"

The Afghans stare in wide-eyed astonishment at the foreign soldier speaking their tongue. They whisper to each other in Pashto.

"See," one says to the other, "there are some good Americans."

This is a modest but meaningful example of how COIN operations are really more about building relationships then they are about killing insurgents (though the latter can help with the former...which in turn can yield actionable intelligence for more effectively performing the former, etc., etc.).

Of course, the Predator drone attacks continue. They have a very special importance in the "Clear" part of "Clear-Hold-Build." These should continue, but with extra-special caution, owing to the even greater sensitivity of tribal Afghan (predominantly Pashtun) people to 'collateral damage' than that which exists in Iraq. Beginnings are such delicate times, and we have scarcely begun to crinkle the paper on the surface of this onion we must peel. But for every tribal sura we can win over, for every village which sees its people breathe easier in the absence of enemies we are seen to be pursuing and neutralizing resolutely and successfully, we move incrementally closer to the tipping point which was passed in Iraq.

And there are signs that this combination of approaches is having the desired effects on our enemies in theater:

"I haven't ever seen this kind of language from senior Al Qaeda commanders before," said Daniel Lev, who works for MEMRI. "In general, Al Qaeda speaks in a very triumphant tone," but in the new book Al-Libi speaks of the group's dire straits and serious problems, Lev added.

"Such an admission of distress on the part of a senior Al Qaeda commander makes this a very unique book in terms of the author."

The signs of fragmentation and distress which come across in the aforementioned new book by senior al Qaeda leadership attests to the degradation of that organization by the relentless attrition which we have been visiting on its organizational structure. The more demoralized and --alas!-- desperate and brutal the Taliban/al Qaeda nexus becomes, the less they will be able to rely on the silence and passivity of those locals with whose lives they have become so interwoven. Even the title of this new al Qaeda book, "Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies," points to the paranoia spreading through the minds of our enemies. This is an advantage which can be greatly expanded through the implementation of intelligent PSYOPS. The need to vet recruits, spy on the membership (and on the spies!), and periodically (and not always accurately) purge suspected double-agents greatly slows the tempo and effectiveness with which al Qaeda and the Taliban can mount and maintain their attacks. It also signals weakness to those who are standing on the sidelines, trying to decide which is the stronger horse. Like Napoleon said, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." True enough. But when the opportunity arises to magnify the scope of that mistake, it would be foolish to squander it. I can just imagine the havoc we could wreak with a few carefully-placed bits of disinformation...

The more we can trap al Qaeda and the Taliban in the vise between ordnance and ostracism, the greater our chances of repeating the spectacular reversals we won in Iraq. But it would be perilously unrealistic to think that we've done more than saddle up the camel on this one ("watch out, they spit").

"We shall not sleep, though poppies grow..."

This is just good sense, and good counterinsurgency.

For too long, the chief modality employed for depriving the Taliban of the revenues from opium production (not to mention protecting the lives of countless addicts abroad) has been the eradication of poppy fields. Trouble is that the main victims of that policy were the poor farmers who would monetize the poppy crop, owing to their ability to store that crop for long periods of time, and sell it off to feed their families (as previously discussed in the comments section of this post):

So, instead of torching the livelihoods of rural farmers, the emphasis is shifting to interdicting the products further down the supply chain, while simultaneously providing aid and instruction in the production of alternate crops. Thus, the farmers are not alienated to the point that they throw in with the extremists, while the poisons and profits are denied the true villains in this travesty. Smart.

The libertarian in me is strongly in favor of judicious legalization of recreational substances. The Sisyphean effort to regulate behavior is a costly and destructive boondoggle which destroys more lives than it saves, and squanders precious resources for a doomed and wrong-headed goal. However, the psychologist in me cannot deny the recent uptick in the number of clients who labor under their addictions to pernicious and ignoble mind-killers in the opiate family, owing at least in part to cheap and plentiful supplies of the "good" brown heroin (as opposed to the black tarry stuff from Mexico) in recent years. Any project which simultaneously makes it more difficult to maintain a multiple bag-per-day habit, while also starving the miscreants who throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls counts as a win-win in my book.

As for the costs involved in aiding Afghan farmers to transition from poppy to some other crop (which may be less profitable by a wide margin, but which allows them to come in out of the cold), they are non-trivial in an absolute sense. However, given the obscene excesses of spending and debt with which the Obama Administration seems hell-bent on saddling our grandchildren, this at least has the rare distinction of appearing to be money well-spent, and a drop in the reservoir, at that.

Balance Tilting Against the Taliban?

This afternoon, I was listening to NPR and heard a report on the "new" tactics being employed by US Special Forces operators in the tribal regions of Afghanistan. The report described public works projects, outreach to tribal elders, protection of civilians, and training of indigenous security forces. If none of this sounds particularly new to any of you out there, then do keep in mind that this was NPR. Any clear acknowledgment that this is precisely the sort of COIN strategy which had been implemented so very successfully under the Bush Administration in Iraq would have robbed the Obama Administration of its credit for a Bold New Approach in the 'Stans. Context is everything.

Still, I have long thought that some variant of the COIN doctrine which has been so effectively applied in Iraq could be adapted to take root in Afghanistan and Pakistan, provided the local conditions were taken into account and the strategy adjusted accordingly, and if the Jihadis would over-play their brutality hands as egregiously as they had in Iraq. Encouragingly (if tragically!), there have recently been growing signs that the latter may be occurring in Taliban-controlled areas of the 'Stans:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Villagers are rising up against the Taliban in a remote corner of northern Pakistan, a grass-roots rebellion that underscores the shift in the public mood against the militants and a growing confidence to confront them. More than a thousand villagers from the district of Dir have been fighting Taliban militants since Friday, when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload during prayer time at a mosque, killing at least 30 villagers.

The Pakistani government is taking advantage of this tentative groundswell against the militants and gangsters and terrorists loosely assembled under the rubric of "Taliban," but they have their work cut out for them. Resentment against the atrocities perpetrated by Islamist militants is indeed growing...but that does not mean that the fiercely independent, downright xenophobic peoples of the tribal regions have any more love to spare for the interference of distant bigwigs in Islamabad or Kabul...let alone the US. It will indeed be a long row to hoe for the Pakistani government and military to convince the Tribes that their interests will be respected, their lives and livelihoods protected, and their insurrections supported against reprisals. There is a lot of unlearning to be done there.

Meanwhile, on the Afghan side of the border, Army Rangers and other operators are, as previously mentioned, hoeing that row as we speak. The extent to which the Tribal elders feel respected, their Lashkars backed up, and the influx of replacements for the miscreants they succeed in dispatching is successfully stemmed is going to make all the difference. Extremely valuable operational memory from Iraq is available to be deployed in service of this end, and the leadership of General Petraeus and his chosen officers should not be underestimated.

All in all, these are some tentatively promising signs on the COIN front in a far more complex operational environment than it has faced to date.

Oil Spots in Afghanistan

Just finished this nice little article over on the Small Wars Journal (PDF). Nothing there which is especially new to any who are conversant in COIN theory. But it does present in promisingly fine-grained operational detail some of the ways in which that theory may be applied in the 'Stan.

I do so love reading about this COIN stuff; I'm routinely, forehead-smackingly floored by just how smart it is, how it balances force with (admittedly utilitarian) philanthropy, routing the fruits of each to where they will do the most good. It is an imperfect learning process which balances risk with benefit, and often falls short in its execution. But I see this as a feature, not a bug (I am quite fond of that phrase). When you link the rising and falling of your fortunes with the people you seek to woo and win, your intentions can become plain in the ways in which you recover from those inevitable errors. The first (or at least the third) time coalition forces suffer casualties and do not respond with a hail of angry, ill-aimed bullets, some will see exploitable weakness, while others will see that-much-more plausible partners in deals they just might honor...And we'll get better at telling the differences between these groups.

Pakistan is one rabid rhinoceros of a wild card in all this, of course. But one of the benefits of successful COIN operations is the insulation of a local population from the influence of external actors who have not shown themselves to be as capable as agents of desirable change. This a necessary, though most assuredly not a sufficient condition for success in the AO. But applying pressure on the assorted avatars of the Taliban on both sides of the Af-Pak "border" by mounting credible competition for the hearts and minds (and bellies and skins) of susceptible populations cannot help but raise the temperature of the situation to a more malleable condition.

At that point, we best aim our hammers really freakin' true.

Required Reading on Afghanistan

Courtesy of FormerSpook, comes this lengthy but indispensable essay by Fred Kagan on the challenges facing General Petraeus and the Obama Administration as we prepare to ramp up our efforts in the Af-Pak theater. As I have written previously, the tasks of adapting the sophisticated counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy which has been so successful in Iraq to the profoundly different terrain and cultural milieu in Afghanistan represents a formidable set of tests for the resiliency and resolve of our military and diplomatic corps. Kagan lines up nine general categories of challenges which we face, and offers suggestions on how to develop plans to overcome them.

Those of us who are diligently watching the fledgling Obama administration's handling of the geopolitical tasks which it has inherited would do well to read this essay very carefully, and to pay very close attention to the signs that its prescriptions are being followed. This is one which Obama absolutely has to get right, and simply throwing troops into the theater without such a carefully thought-out strategy is a recipe for a very costly disaster. Still, Obama has so far been smart enough to keep Bob Gates on as SecDef, and has shown no inclination to mess arround with the command structure of our military (most notably, he has tasked CENCOM head General Petraeus with developing the strategy for winning in Afghanistan. Very good sign, that). This is going to be a very difficult campaign, requiring steadfast and intelligent committment. Let us hope most fervently that Obama is made of the sort of stuff which it will take to see us through it. As Kagan sums up:

This essay does not provide a plan or a strategy for success in Afghanistan. It provides, rather, a set of guidelines for thinking about how to develop one, and for evaluating plans articulated by the administration, its generals, and outsiders. Ultimately, a plan for winning in Afghanistan has to be developed in Afghanistan, just as the plan for winning in Iraq was developed in Iraq. It is a truism that any plan must involve not only the U.S. and allied militaries, but all relevant civilian and international agencies, and must deeply involve the Afghans themselves at every level. Our military and civilian leaders understand that truism. We have failed to date in accomplishing the objective not because we haven’t known that we must, but because it is very hard to do.

But hard is not hopeless in Afghanistan any more than it was in Iraq. The stakes are high, as they always are when America puts its brave young men and women in harm’s way. President Obama has an opportunity in the difficult challenge he faces. So far, he appears determined to try to do the right thing. He deserves the active support and encouragement of every American in that attempt.

Again, Obama has seen fit to keep some very capable people at the reins of this very balky beast. Let us Hope that he gives them everything they need on the dark and dangerous path they must walk.

Actionable Intelligence

Last week, shortly after his slim but historic victory in the US Presidential election, Barack Obama finally got a chance to peek beneath the veil. He has begun to receive classified intelligence briefings about the full range of the threats arrayed against the US and its interests at home and abroad, and about the responses to those threats which he will presently be entrusted to oversee. This is information which would not have been available to him as a senator and a candidate, and it appears to have been a sobering experience for him.

Obama can hardly be blamed for seeming a bit less ebullient as the full weight of the responsibilities he must bear begins to settle on his shoulders. In characteristically irresponsible fashion, the New York Times has reported (again!) on a portion of the covert operations which were authorized by the Bush Administration to pursue and harry al Qaeda across the globe. Depending on your orientation, this story reads like a Bush-Derangement fantasy of Imperial overreach, or as a sobering account of the hitherto (and appropriately!) unseen portions of the Long War in its far-ranging and valiant campaign to keep us safe from the murderous ideologues who would slaughter our children for the sake of piety. Either way, it is part of Obama's world now.

The full scope of the threat landscape in which our President-Elect must immerse himself is daunting in the extreme. However much he has staked his claim on the notion that the US must withdraw from Iraq with all possible speed, I strongly suspect that his access to the Full Story will (hopefully!!) act to stay his hand (no doubt to the considerable annoyance of his supporters):

Iran would cheer a quick American withdrawal, but as soon as the US leaves Iran will use its Shia proxies in Baghdad to create an Iraqi government manipulated like a puppet by strings that stretch to Tehran’s mullahs.

Iraqi Sunni and Kurdish minorities will feel disenfranchised by a quick withdrawal because they expect the Shia majority will then manipulate Baghdad’s government to deny them opportunities and resources. That could ignite a real civil war.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, al Qaeda’s [fictional] Iraq leader, offered President-elect Obama a truce in exchange for removal of all forces from the region. But American intelligence officials caution any step that could be perceived as a victory for al Qaeda, like pulling troops out of Iraq before the country stabilizes, would only strengthen the terror group’s ability to recruit.

A precipitous US withdrawal is opposed by important allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis fear that Tehran might take advantage of an early withdrawal to seize oil fields in the Shia dominated eastern Arabian Peninsula. Israel, which says it faces an existential threat from a nuclear Iran, wants the US to remain in Iraq in order to keep Tehran in check and hopefully deal with the mullah’s atomic weapons program.

To his credit, Obama has stuck by the theme that a nuclear-armed Iran is "Unacceptable." Indeed, it is. However, the path which he must walk to prevent this is far less than clear. Iran has gamed the international system most adroitly, and has scoffed at all attempts to rein in its nuclear ambitions. There is no reason to believe that this will cease as a result of Obama's much-vaunted willingness to engage in diplomacy with the Mullahcracy. Indeed, on its face, that willingness would seem to play right into the Persians' hands, offering the opportunity to play for time while its centrifuges spin inexorably toward the unacceptable. I expect that the most current intelligence estimates of Iran's capabilities and intentions have now become available to Obama. What will he do with them?

Much has been made of Obama's ill-advisedly public though essentially correct intention to violate Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of al Qaeda Prime. Indeed, he has made it a cornerstone of his war plan to address the as-yet unfinished business in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. But I have long felt that he has glossed very badly over the complexities of the Af-Pak theater, and so painted himself into a perilously untenable corner:

Recently, Obama’s staff was briefed that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse – American casualties are up and the Taliban militias are gaining strength and now control large swaths of that country. That’s why the Bush administration told Obama’s people that they must come to office with a battle plan that addresses troops, Pakistan’s safe havens area (where as many as one million Islamic radicals have refuge) and whether to negotiate with the enemy.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan must be part of a winning strategy. But US forces are overstretched globally and that’s why Obama must ask NATO allies to provide more forces. Even though Europeans overwhelmingly endorsed Obama’s presidential bid they have no desire to increase their Afghan role. In fact, the Taliban’s recent campaign of violence has shaken European will to contribute any troops much less more to NATO’s Afghan mission.

Obama’s Afghan war plan must also address the politically sensitive issue of aggressively pursuing Taliban militias and al Qaeda terrorists that are taking refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In 2007, Obama promised that “…if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan and that government “won’t act, we will.”

Recently, the US increased cross-border raids and drone missile attacks against enemy forces inside Pakistan. Those assaults have angered Pakistani officials such as Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s military chief, who promised to defend his borders at “all costs.” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said US attacks were “…counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government.”

Obama must now confront the reality of a precariously unstable Pakistan's domestically unpopular alliance with the West, the extensive infiltration of its military and intelligence services by Islamist radicals, the fractiously feudal composition of the populations along its border with Afghanistan, and --perhaps most poignantly-- the likely intransigence and apathy of our so-called "traditional allies" in Europe, whose military capabilities are only slightly more limited than their willingness to use them. He must thread multiple needles, with the growing knowledge that many lives will be lost if he should so much as drop a stitch.

Already, Russian puppet-president Medvedev (for the record, pronounced med-VYED-yev) has wasted no time in throwing down the gauntlet before the untried POTUS-to-be. Puppet-master Putin is banking on Obama's previous statements expressing skepticism about the effectiveness and desirability of missile interceptor batteries stationed in Eastern Europe, and, as usual, has masterfully scoped the table before playing his hand:

Medvedev said he holds no animus for Americans and hopes “…the US administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia.” But he didn’t backdown [sic] on any front to include expanding Moscow’s military activities in the Middle East, Northern Africa and the Caribbean where Russian bombers and warships recently visited Cuba and Venezuela.

President-elect Obama will need all the political savvy he can muster and allies to deal with a belligerent Kremlin. But he shouldn’t expect help from Europe because Russian energy markets tend to be European-based and Moscow will leverage them to make the European Union squirm.

That last point deserves special mention: the degree to which the Russian economy is based on its ability to leverage its considerable energy supplies to gain geopolitical advantage cannot be overestimated. A sharp drop in the cost of oil and natural gas on the global markets would be devastating to Russia (as indeed it would be for a host of our adversaries). Obama's laudable but ill-conceived reluctance to develop domestic hydrocarbon energy supplies in favor of renewable sources which are just entering a very long pipeline (if you will pardon the pun) indicates a degree of naivete of which I hope he is presently cured. The global economic contraction which has accompanied the recent financial crisis has already precipitated a steep reduction in demand (and thus a concomitant drop in price) for petroleum. If this opportunity were maximized through aggressive pursuit of additional supplies, it could signal a perfect storm for the economies (and accompanying capacity for global mischief) of our various foes.

It is entirely possible that Obama's recent briefings will apprise him of the manifold ways in which these multiple threads wind round each other and form the fabric of the geopolitical veil-dance which George W Bush has doggedly (if often clumsily) executed during these last seven-plus years. It is still my belief that history will vindicate the Presidency of George Bush, but that is out of my hands (maybe the Li'l Cyte will write a thesis on the subject someday...). It is no secret that Obama was not My Guy...but he will presently be my President. As such, I wish him well, and would be more than happy to research the best ways to prepare a hearty dish of crow.

In the meantime, Senator Obama has tasted of the unexpurgated menu whose aroma outsiders like myself can discern only through a probably-unhealthily obsessive daily sniff. I have little doubt that it has seared his taste buds something fierce. I can only Hope that the experience will help him to Change his mind about how he deals with the kitchen staff. It could happen; he is a very smart man. But as with Intelligence, intelligence is only as good as what you do with it.

SOF Raid Into Syria: Multitasking in Mesopotamia

Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal reports that today's raid 5 miles into Syrian territory from Iraq was an unprecedented operation whose purpose was apparently the capture of a very high value target:

The US military incursion into Syria was aimed at the senior leader of al Qaeda's extensive network that funnels foreign fighters, weapons, and cash from Syria into Iraq, a senior intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

US special operations hunter-killer teams entered Syria in an attempt to capture Abu Ghadiya, a senior al Qaeda leader who has been in charge of the Syrian network since 2005. US intelligence analysts identified Ghadiya as the leader of the Syrian network, The Washington Post reported in July. Ghadiya was identified as a “major target” by the US military in February 2008.

When I first heard that Special Forces had actually infiltrated and dismounted from their gunships for this raid, my first thought was that we had received some extremely credible intel on the location of some very important AQI figure, possibly even AQI leader Abu Ayyub al Masri himself. There was simply no other explanation for not just launching a hellfire or five down a chimney. This post from the invaluable FormerSpook at "In From The Cold" echoed my suspicions.

Excellent as it would have been to capture or kill al Masri, this is just about as good. Capturing or eliminating someone like Ghadiya, while he was strolling free and unworried on Syrian soil would accomplish several ends at once.

First, it would deal a severe blow to the organizational and command structure of what remains of AQI. You can rightly make the "Hydra-head" argument here, but it would only go so far; the capacity for an embattled organization like AQI to continually replenish its senior-most commanders and facilitators is finite. The loss of organizational memory and continuity which such merciless attrition inflicts will have a cumulative effect on an organization's ability to integrate its activities and stay anywhere near inside the decision cycle of its enemies. Its activities will fragment, its operational security will degrade (yielding more actionable intelligence, and thus accelerating the cycle), and the degree to which it is able to attract recruits will erode in much the way that the oft-quoted character from The Sun Also Rises went broke..."gradually, and then suddenly."

Next, a raid into Syrian territory would send a message to Syrian president Assad that there are costs associated with continuing his policy of winking at the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. Although that flow has slowed to a relative trickle over the last year or so (but don't say the Surge worked!), it is a particularly toxic trickle. The tacit (?) complicity of the Damascus regime in the continued flow of terroristic Jihadis into northwestern Iraq had greatly complicated the pacification and reconstruction of that region, and it is high time that it encountered consequences. For, despite the predictable plume of propaganda which rises from any such bold action, the fact is that such a highly politically dangerous operation --which would have had to be approved at a very high level-- would not have been undertaken unless there were rock-solid intel which supported the taking of such risk. Much like last September's Israeli strike on what is generally believed to have been an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor site, this operation is a signal to Assad that others are, indeed, paying attention to his actions, and that there are limits to how far he can push without experiencing push-back. Given the renowned Syrian penchant for gamesmanship, such firm limits are absolutely essential.

On yet another geopolitical level, an action like today's raid puts a prominent punctuation mark on efforts to drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran. There are definite carrots dangling before Assad's eyes (the potential return of the Golan Heights, via some sort of negotiated settlement with Israel, for example). But the sticks which would drop on his head if he should be less than comprehensive in his divorce from the Mullahcracy do bear emphasizing. One of the Iranian regime's most potent weapons (given how "tiny" a country it is...) is its ability to forward-deploy Hezbollah operatives into a variety of theaters. Since Hezbollah is very much a creature of Lebanon and Syria (though nurtured and funded from Tehran), a schism between Syria and Iran would drain much of the mojo from that organization in its capacity as unconventional forces of the Islamic Republic.

Finally, this action further emphasizes the fundamental continuity between the various theaters of operation within the Long War. Reading about the raid into Syria, I was reminded of nothing else so much as the various similar raids and strikes into Pakistani territory, in an effort to attack AQ Prime and its Taliban lapdogs. At the most fundamental level, the two areas of operation are as contiguous on a strategic level as they are distant on the tactical. This last is a reality which is, alas, all-too often obscured to score political points, amid much nonsense about where the "Real Enemy" resides. The Real Enemy resides wherever the ideology of Radical Islamism takes up arms to expand its purchase in the world. The task of our generation is to beat it back wherever it so asserts itself.

I fear the time may soon come when we will look back wistfully on the days when we lived in a Nation which would take bold risks such as these to protect our allies and ourselves. As of this writing, there is still just a bit of time to weigh the real risks, to decisively reject the pious pontifications of addle-headed amnesiacs, and to keep us on the offensive against the evil (there, I said it!) arrayed against us.

(UPDATED to airbrush several small but irksome spelling and minor structural errors from wee-hours blogging)

Taliban Trash Talk

Bill Roggio over at the Long War Journal writes about how senior Taliban spokesvermin have seized on the statements of certain Western officials to score some free talking points:

Over the last week, several senior Western officials have said the International Security Assistance Forces could not win the war militarily and that negotiations with the Taliban were necessary to secure the peace. Brigadier Richard Blanchette, a British general who serves as the spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, advocated negotiations with the Taliban and said no military solution was possible in Afghanistan.

Kai Eide, the United Nation's Special Representative in Afghanistan, echoed Blanchette's statements. "I've always said to those that talk about the military surge ... what we need most of all is a political surge, more political energy," Eide said on Oct. 6. "We all know that we cannot win it militarily. It has to be won through political means. That means political engagement."

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the outgoing commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said winning the war was “neither feasible nor supportable” and the West should work to reduce the level of violence in the country.

The valor and dedication of British troops in theater is generally above reproach. My issue is not with them. But something is clearly awry with the general officers across the Pond. The very notion that active-duty Brigadier Generals during a war could toss off statements like these, with major policy implications, not to mention the potential effects on troop morale, is stunning. What did they think would happen when they opened their tea-holes in this manner?

This is what:

The Taliban said the al Qaeda-linked group is "on the verge of victory" while the West is engaged in "a series of artificial gestures and a hue and cry about talks."

The Taliban issued three prior statements on the reports of negotiations between the Taliban and Western and Afghan officials. The statements derided the negotiations and said the Taliban would only settle for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces. One of the statements was issued by Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

The first statement, issued by the Taliban on Sept. 28, rejected any idea of a peace agreement. "The Shura Council of the Islamic Emriate of Afghanistan considers such baseless rumors as part of the failed efforts by our enemies to create distrust and doubts among Afghans, other nations, and the mujahideed," the statement read. "No official member of the Taliban--now or in the past--has ever negotiated with the US or the puppet Afghan government... A handful of former Taliban officials who are under house arrest or who have surrendered do not represent the Islamic Emirate."

The second statement, signed by Mullah Omar on Sept. 30, made it clear the Taliban believed it was close to victory. Omar offered the West harsh terms for peace. "If you demonstrate an intention of withdrawing your forces, we once again will demonstrate our principles by giving you the right of safe passage, in order to show that we never harm anyone maliciously," Omar said.

The third statement was made by Taliban military commander Mullah Baradar on Oct. 3. "We reject an offer for negotiation by the Afghan's puppet and slave President Hamid Karzai," Baradar said. "[Karzai] only says and does what he is told by America."

So, these are the sorts of people with whom we should be engaging in "tough and principled diplomacy?"

Now, to be perfectly fair, the Brigadier General (BG Mark Carleton-Smith) went on to speak in terms which were very much in keeping with counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine. It is indeed not possible to defeat an insurgency through typical brute-force attrition tactics (though we can quite severely degrade their logistics and command structure through relentless surgical strikes, which is what we have been doing for some time now in Afghanistan and, increasingly, across the border in Pakistan). "Clear-Hold-Build" depends on a sensitive understanding of the societal dynamics of an insurgency's AO, such that a combination of diplomacy, social and infrastructure development, and straight-up bribery can turn segments of the population against the predator/parasites in their midst. Part of this is turning some of our enemies into allies against their more intransigent co-insurgents, which the BG quite rightly points out.

Still, as I wrote in the comments section of the LWJ post, the BG's statements to the effect that no military defeat of the Taliban is possible do invite mischaracterization, even if --in their full context, and given an understanding of COIN doctrine-- they are technically correct. They do not signal resolve and strength to those who we would call upon to risk all in support of a counterinsurgency strategy against the hard core Taliban and AQ who would raze their clans if they should so much as take tea with us.

At the very least, individuals in such influential positions should pick their words with far greater care.

It should also be pointed out, though, that the British general officer class has not exactly had a stellar record when it comes to distinguishing situations which call for negotiation from those which are better suited to more kinetic sorts of problem-solving.

Totten on the GWOT

And isn't that just a fun title? Say it a few times.

No time to blog long-and-thinky-like tonight. The Li'l 'Cyte turned three (!!) yesterday, and today was dominated by a wonderful little shindig at the local firehouse (images of the wee hobbit in the cab of an enormous fire engine, firmly and resolutely gripping the wheel, while scanning the gauges. Makes a body plotz).

I found this article by Michael Totten, which is just about the most cogent summary of the scope and nature of the Long War as I've found. Really a must-read. The fact that it also highlights the shallowness of the Obama campaign's comprehension (or at least articulation) of that conflict will be as bitter a pill to some as it was savory gravy to me.

Here's a taste:

If Afghanistan were miraculously transformed into the Switzerland of Central Asia, every last one of the Middle East’s rogues gallery of terrorist groups would still exist. The ideology that spawned them would endure. Their grievances, such as they are, would not be salved. The political culture that produced them, and continues to produce more just like them, would hardly be scathed. Al Qaedism is the most radical wing of an extreme movement which was born in the Middle East and exists now in many parts of the world. Afghanistan is not the root or the source.

And it just gets better from there. Totten is a well-traveled and incisive thinker, and his words should carry weight with anyone who seeks a comprehensive understanding of these matters. This article is a gem, mined from a very rich deposit. Worth your time.

Pakistani Pashtuns Tiring of Taliban?

Yesterday at the Long War Journal, Bill Roggio posted about the efforts underway by the Pakistani government and military to reach out to the multifarious but predominantly Pashtun tribes straddling that nation's embattled border with Afghanistan, and enlist their aid to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda "miscreants" in their midst:

Pakistan has touted its tribal strategy as being crucial to it security plan, but the rise of the Pakistani Taliban and the existing tribal dynamics work against the government.

The idea of using the tribes to fight the Taliban is not new in fight against the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan. The government raised lashkars to fight the Taliban in North and South Waziristan in 2004 and 2005. The Taliban, then led by Nek Mohammed and Abdullah Mehsud, routed the lashkars and fought the Pakistani military to a stalemate. These battles led to the government to negotiate a series of humiliating peace accords in North and South Waziristan, and beyond.

But today, the Pakistani government is engaging the tribes throughout the tribal areas and the greater Northwest Frontier Province and possibly inside Afghanistan.

Naturally, this brings to mind the enlistment of Sunni tribes in Iraq, whose Awakening Movement and its mobilizations of local security forces (the "Sons of Iraq") have proved so instrumental in facilitating the implementation of the Petraeus counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, along with a surge of troops and fundamental changes in the deployment patterns and rules of engagement for those troops. However, these comparisons need to be made with great caution, as the situation on the ground in the Af-Pak theater is qualitatively different, and presents a far more complex challenge than even Iraq had in store:

The Pakistani government has to coordinate different strategies for each individual tribe, making the task of tribal engagement difficult. "The dynamics [with each tribe] are very different, as is the strategic situation of each tribe," the source stated. "The biggest single hurdle is that there is no over-arching body to coordinate tribal resistance In contrast to the TTP [the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan]."

The Pakistani tribes are operating as distinct, local fighting forces, while the Taliban can coordinate their activities across the northwest and inside eastern Afghanistan. The Pakistani government claimed the Taliban and al Qaeda are pouring in from Kunar and neighboring provinces in Afghanistan to reinforce the legions fighting in Bajaur.

The challenge which this operational environment poses cannot be overstated: In Iraq, the Sunni tribes which began to push back against AQI well before Petraeus' COIN doctrine came on-line arose from a relatively homogeneous geographical and socio-cultural medium. There were common frames of reference and relatively well-established channels for communication and coordination, even as rivalries continually percolated. This showed in the seeming ease with which those tribes were able to act together when common interests were perceived -- at first for the Insurgency and its Jihadi agents provocateurs, then against the latter, and ultimately for the Nation of Iraq.

By stark contrast, the tribes of the isolated and perennially ungovernable hinterlands which stretch between Afghanistan and Pakistan live within an almost unimaginably rugged terrain in which historical divergences within formidable geographical contraints have given rise to a motley and mutually mistrustful melange of societies. Herding cats would be a mere trifle alongside the challenge of getting these people to work with each other, let alone with a Central Government and outsiders:

The problems are complicated by the tribes' unwillingness to cooperate with the government and the military. "We keep the government away," a senior tribal leader in Lakki Marwat told Geo TV. The tribes fear cooperation with the government will further turn the Taliban and sympathetic tribes against them. "If we became part of the government they would become an excuse, a liability, a rallying cry against us," the Lakki Marwat tribal leader said. This attitude prevents the military from providing the needed security to oppose massed Taliban attacks.

Other tribes claim to be equally opposed to the Taliban and US and NATO forces operating across the border in Afghanistan. "For us, the Taliban, NATO and the United States are all equals," a tribal leader in Bajaur said.

It is noteworthy that there should be such seeming agreement among many of these disparate groups that the Taliban represents at least a potentially malign force capable of meting out vengeance on those who stray from its agenda. That some tribes support the Taiban/AQ axis, while some bitterly oppose it may be seen as an exploitable bifurcation in the tribal ecosystem, one which the Pakistani government appears to be attempting to leverage (which seems to have gotten the miscreants' attention).

In this, it may be that the broad outlines of a viable battlespace for COIN operations is taking shape. If the fear of retribution for resistance against the Taliban, AQ, and their allied tribes can be credibly mitigated, it is conceivable that a more organized resistance could coalesce. The key would be to establish relationships with the tribal elders that are deeply informed by the nuances unique to each tribe, yet coordinated toward the attainment of a common purpose. This would take a special breed of field operators, led by an uncommonly perspicacious commander. Someone like....David Petraeus. As head of CENTCOM, Gen. Petraeus would be in the position to deploy conventional and (especially) Special Forces into the AO which could train and support local militias against their Taliban and AQ foes...not to mention rival tribes (which would likely be seen as a nice perk).

This possibility sheds an interesting light on what might otherwise appear to be another in a series of depressing accounts of counterproductive appeasements, in this case the overtures of Afghan president Karzai toward Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Karzai is a very smart man, with ample grounds for comprehending the malignancy represented by Islamist forces in the region. I don't think it is entirely out of bounds to speculate that by making an amnesty offer to those Taliban who choose to come in out of the cold, he is intentionally applying pressure to fracture lines within the Pashtun tribes which may be on the fence, separating the more intransigent elements from those who might be flipped. If so, it would be a cunning gambit which would make any subsequent COIN operations in the area a bit less difficult. If not, then the net results could still be exploited to good effect. At the very least, it could sufficiently disrupt the logistics and organization of AQ in the area enough to undermine or destroy the development cycles of any planned attacks on US or European interests.

If anything, this underscores the danger of simply throwing troops at Afghanistan, and potentially alienating the very people who are showing signs --albeit tenuous and sputtering-- that they might make enemies of our enemies. To borrow a phrase, this will take more scalpel than hatchet.