Small Wars Journal

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SWJ Blog is a multi-author blog publishing news and commentary on the various goings on across the broad community of practice.  We gladly accept guest posts from serious voices in the community.

Now Hear This... (Bumped)
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 10:28pm | 17 comments
Bumped to the top - weekend surge anyone?

We really, really, try to avoid inter-service rivalries but will make an exception in this one case -- because it is for a really good and noble cause, we were asked to help out Team Navy and we like underdogs. Via e-mail from Project Valour-IT shipmate Maggie:

... Every year, just before Veteran's Day, the Milblog world breaks up into service related teams to raise funds. The funds we raise purchase assistive technology for wounded service members. It started with voice activated laptops and has expanded to include WII units (which help with physical therapy) and GPS (which helps brain injured patients stay on track). Because the parent charity -- Soldiers' Angels, covers overhead, 100% of donations to Project Valour-IT go directly into purchasing technology.

This is our 5th year and Navy normally makes a very good showing. This year, inexplicably, we are getting creamed. So I write for two reasons -- one, this is pretty much our one big event and we need to do well in order to meet the needs of the wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. There is a waiting list as I write.

Secondly (and much less important), Navy is getting creamed and it's killing Mary and I!

Here is some additonal information, how to help out Team Navy and contribute to a very important cause:

Project Valour-IT Main Page

Contribute to Team Navy's Efforts

The History of Project Valour-It

Editors' Note: Forgive us Chesty for we have sinned.

Not Enough Troops Available?
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 5:48pm | 2 comments
New Afghan War Headache: Not Enough Troops Available? - David Wood, Politics Daily.

Beneath Washington's political squabbling over a new war strategy for Afghanistan is a deeper concern, this one among the Pentagon's war planners: not enough troops to go around. It's easy to overlook in Washington, but the Army still has almost 100,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq, and it's becoming less clear when they're coming home. With the growing demands of the Afghanistan war and other global commitments, the Army currently has more soldiers deployed overseas than it had at the height of the Iraq "surge'' in 2007.

At that time, it was widely predicted that the strain on soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen and their families was so severe that the military would simply "shatter.'' That was nonsense, of course. The troops, wives, mothers, kids, simply sucked it up and kept on driving. Why? The grunts I've lived with in Afghanistan and Iraq love what they're doing (you gotta ignore the usual and constant griping), they know they're good at it, and their families honor that service. But there has been a cost, and they are paying it.

Here's what worries the planners: The Army has 44 brigade combat teams (BCTs), its basic deploying unit of between 3,500 and 4,500 soldiers. Of those, 19 brigade combat teams are already committed, including 11 in Iraq and five in Afghanistan. One BCT is stationed in Korea, one trains deploying soldiers at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and one BCT is on strategic alert for potential crises...

More at Politics Daily.

This Week at War: Why Don't Stryker Brigades Work in Afghanistan?
by Robert Haddick | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 4:59pm | 1 comment
Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Was it a mistake to send a Stryker brigade to Afghanistan?

2) U.S. troop morale may be slipping in Afghanistan.

Was it a mistake to send a Stryker brigade to Afghanistan?

On July 5, the U.S. Army's 5th Stryker Brigade arrived in Kandahar province for a year-long tour of duty. The brigade was equipped with 350 Stryker combat vehicles, an eight-wheeled armored infantry carrier that has proven successful in Iraq and is popular with soldiers. It was the first time the Army had deployed Strykers to Afghanistan, but the country has proven unforgiving to the brigade. Thus far they have lost 21 of their Strykers to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), at a cost of two dozen killed and over 70 wounded. On Oct. 27, seven soldiers died during the bombing of a single Stryker vehicle.

Why are Strykers seemingly more vulnerable to improvised explosive attack in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq?

Click through to read more ...

Afghanistan: Connecting Assumptions and Strategy
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 9:58am | 1 comment
Afghanistan: Connecting Assumptions and Strategy - Colonel T. X. Hammes, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), Major William S. McCallister, U.S. Army (Retired), and Colonel John M. Collins, U.S. Army (Retired), Proceedings.

Three well-known military thinkers re-evaluate what we've assumed to know—that just wasn't so—about a country where we've been fighting for eight years.

The 19th-century humorist Josh Billings once wrote that "It ain't the things you don't know what gets you in deep trouble; it's the things you knows for sure what ain't so." The fictional Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, who captained the ill-fated minesweeper USS Caine in Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, claimed, "You can't assume nothin' in this man's Navy." He was wrong, of course, because military planners frequently must substitute assumptions for absent facts. Those who did so in preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom erred so outrageously that key suppositions began to clash with reality before the war was one week old, because what they knew for sure wasn't so. (For elaboration, see John M. Collins, "You Can't Assume Nothin'," Proceedings, May 2003, p. 50.)

The Defense Department's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms clearly states that assumptions concerning current and future events must precede sound estimates of the situation and decisions regarding sensible courses of action. Connections between assumptions and strategy for Afghanistan accordingly are inseparable, but the architects of U.S. military involvement cling tenaciously to presumptions that simply aren't so. Armed combat consequently continues to escalate eight years after early victory seemed assured.

President Barack Obama and his advisers will find it difficult (perhaps impossible) to craft sound policies, plans, force postures, and operations without first determining which underlying assumptions to retain, which to discard, and which blank spots to fill, then revise their list accordingly. Senator John Kerry (D-MA), in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, recently announced that "we in Congress have our own assignment: to test all of the underlying assumptions in Afghanistan and make sure they are the right ones before embarking on a new strategy." No official compendium is publicly accessible (if indeed one exists), but several perceived assumptions based on observable behavior seem worthy of reconsideration...

Much more at Proceedings.

The Horror, the Horror: Afghanistan Edition
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 9:47am | 1 comment
The Horror, the Horror: Afghanistan Edition

By Judah Grunstein

Cross-posted at World Politics Review

A paper by Maj. Jim Gant, titled, "One Tribe at a Time" (.pdf), has been getting all sorts of attention since it ran on Steven Pressman's site a few weeks back. I finally got down to reading it last night after Andrew Exum flagged it as an alternative to COIN in Afghanistan.

Where to begin? The paper is a collection of nativist mythologies that have run as a theme throughout the West's imperial age. Last of the Mohicans? Lawrence of Arabia? Dances with Wolves? They're in there. So is an element of Stockholm Syndrome, for that matter. The problem arises not with Lawrence, of course, but with his evil twin, Kurtz, who has already served as a symbol of colonial-era (Heart of Darkness) and modern American (Apocalypse Now) hubris.

Click through to read more ...

Going Tribal in Afghanistan
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 5:34am | 8 comments
Going Tribal in Afghanistan - James Dao, New York Times.

In Washington, the debate over Afghanistan seems to center around two broad ideas: counterinsurgency versus counterterrorism. Should the United States add troops for a more population-centric strategy, as Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal advocates? Or should it use a less ground-heavy approach, disrupting Al Qaeda with Special Operation Forces and unmanned drones, as Vice President Joseph Biden argues? There is, of course, no shortage of other ideas, many of them afloat in the blogosphere. Among the more provocative ones has been posted on Steven Pressfield's blog, It's the Tribes, Stupid, and it comes from an Army Special Forces major who has spent much time in both Afghanistan and Iraq training indigenous fighters.

The 45-page paper, "One Tribe at a Time" by Maj. Jim Gant, argues that one way to undermine the insurgency is to return, in part, to the strategy that ousted the Taliban to begin with: Embed small, highly skilled and almost completely autonomous units with tribes across Afghanistan. Much like the Green Berets who worked with the Northern Alliance to drive out the Taliban in 2001 and 2002, the units, which Major Gant calls Tribal Engagement Teams, would wear Afghan garb and live in Afghan villages for extended periods, training, equipping and fighting alongside tribal militias.

The goal would be to encourage what Major Gant sees as a natural antipathy between many tribes toward some of the more ideological, anti-American segments of the insurgency. Just as the Sunni tribesmen dubbed the Sons of Iraq turned against foreign al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, Major Gant argues that Tribal Engagement Teams can counter al-Qaeda networks in Afghanistan by creating or strengthening indigenous fighting forces built upon local militias. That kind of strategy has been discussed in Afghanistan, where critics argue that it would undermine the central government in Kabul and encourage warlordism...

More at The New York Times.

Should Obama Order Afghan War Troop Surge?
by SWJ Editors | Thu, 11/05/2009 - 11:27am | 0 comments
Should Obama Order Afghan War Troop Surge? Troops Say Maybe Not. - Tom A. Peter, Christian Science Monitor.

As President Obama and his top advisers make their final decisions on whether to send 40,000 or more troops to Afghanistan, it comes on the heels of the bloodiest month for US forces in the history of the eight-year conflict. In October, 55 troops were killed in action in Afghanistan. If there is a surge, US Army Capt. Micah Chapman says there will likely be more months like this ahead. "The more troops you have on the ground, the more chances there are for casualties," says the Fort Drum, N.Y., resident. "But I think you'll see a marked decrease in violence across the board once you get past the initial flood stage." But for many of the soldiers at Combat Outpost Penich, top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's stark warning - to send more troops or risk failure - sounds too dire. At least in the eastern Kunar River Valley, where their company-sized force (about 100 soldiers) is posted, they say the challenges aren't quite so insurmountable. Yes, they say, major results may take time, and soldiers here face difficult living and working conditions, but they say they can get the job done...

In this vast country with much of the population spread across remote villages, US forces must be strategic about where they project strength, trying to block central arteries of enemy movement and disrupt strongholds. McCrystal recently ordered the closure of many remote outposts in an effort to focus on protecting key population centers -- such as the cities of Kabul and Kandahar - and winning over residents. In this company, US soldiers say they don't need a surge. But they agree that with more boots on the ground, they would have the resources to extend their presence farther from the base into areas where the Taliban remain popular. Like combat units elsewhere, this one is stretched thin by the requirements of simply protecting their base. A surge "would make it easier because there would be more people to pull guard [duty] and the infantry can go out and do its job," says Pfc. Daniel Robbins of Iowa City, Iowa. The company's missions include hunting the Taliban with Afghan security forces as well as building roads with local Afghan leaders. Robbins says that when his unit is busy with operations it places stress on soldiers who alternate between guard duty and missions, leaving little time for rest. If there was a surge, says Spc. Nick Armstrong of Chesapeake, Va., "then we could work more in terms of pushing out [into the countryside]." He adds that he can imagine the push happening either with more platoon-sized bases (about 40 to 60 soldiers) or increasing personnel levels on larger bases to allow for more patrols...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Finishing Firefights Difficult in Afghanistan
by Bing West | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 8:35pm | 24 comments
In response to e-mails referencing the fighting cited in my Afghanistan trip report at SWJ and Westwrite, here is a video of three firefights. They illustrate why adding more US troops is separate from imposing more casualties and lowering Taliban morale.

This video shows why coalition and Afghan battalions inflict few Taliban casualties. Causes include terrain, Taliban maneuver, heavy coalition armor and risk aversion to minimize casualties, while doing a professional job and returning in one piece.

Confronting the Hydra: Big Problems with Small Wars
by SWJ Editors | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 6:19am | 2 comments

Confronting the Hydra: Big Problems with Small Wars - Lieutenant Colonel Mark O'Neill, Lowy Institute.

Australia's current role in Afghanistan is the latest experience in a long history of involvement in counterinsurgency conflicts or 'small wars'. Such commitments may begin as wars of choice, but history suggests they can turn into wars of necessity, and their costs and political impact can be large. In this Lowy Institute Paper, Mark O'Neill charts the enduring nature of Australia's problems with such wars. He concludes that, as a democratic middle power that chooses to wage counterinsurgency conflicts, Australia needs improved strategic policy approaches and capabilities to overcome a complex and many-headed threat.

Full monograph at the Lowy Institute.

Security assistance in latest defense authorization bill
by Robert Haddick | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 12:39pm | 0 comments
For aficionados of security assistance programs, the Stimson Center's blog on national security budget issues has a quick summary of what security assistance funding is in the FY10 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama recently signed into law.

The Stimson post discusses:

Section 1206 (Global Train and Equip)

Section 1207 (Security and Stabilization)

Section 1208 (Support to Foreign Forces)

CERP

Pakistan COIN Fund

Iraq and Afghanistan Security Forces Fund

Coalition Support Funds

Combatant Commander Initiative Fund

Cooperative Threat Reduction

Some counter-drug programs

And more

Click the Stimson Center link above to see the details.

DC Cabbies on Afghanistan
by SWJ Editors | Tue, 11/03/2009 - 4:15am | 2 comments
DC Cabbies on Afghanistan - Lydia Khalil, Washington Post opinion.

... And herein lies the lesson for the Obama administration: decide already. No matter how many more opinions you seek, they will be contrasting and conflicting. There is no hidden oracle within the Beltway or beyond that will provide the answer. No doubt, this is a difficult decision, and its effects are far-reaching. The ultimate strategy for Afghanistan has ramifications beyond our diplomatic and military strategy for the region. The decision whether or not to go forward with Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendations will cement whether or not counterinsurgency will be the prevailing military doctrine for years to come. How much the US focuses on institutional reform, governance and infrastructure as part of any new strategy will answer once and for all whether the United States has the stomach or the capability to engage in modern-day nation building.

The outcome in Afghanistan will also affect Washington's standing vis a vis its international rival, Iran, just as it presents some unsettling implications for nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India. And once the United States commits itself to a cause and backs away from that commitment, as some have suggested we do in Afghanistan by scaling back our presence and constricting our goals, it is jeopardizing its ability to intervene in future conflicts should the need arise. Just take a look at Somalia...

More at The Washington Post.

U.S. Options and the Karzai Brothers
by SWJ Editors | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 7:43pm | 6 comments
U.S. Options and the Karzai Brothers - The Editors, Room for Debate, The New York Times.

Hamid Karzai was declared winner of the presidential vote in Afghanistan on Monday after his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from the runoff. But questions concerning the Karzai government's legitimacy and corruption remain as unresolved as before.

The case of Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Karzai's brother, shows how difficult it is to deal with the government now in place. The Times reported last week that Ahmed Karzai is paid by the CIA to help recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the agency's direction. He has been linked to Afghanistan's narcotics trade and is the most powerful figure in the swath of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban's insurgency is strongest.

What should be done, if anything, about Ahmed Wali Karzai? Does his suspected connection to the opium trade make it impossible to achieve American goals in Afghanistan, particularly in Kandahar, where he is based? What does his political prominence say about the prospects for reforming the government?

Robert D. Kaplan, Center for a New American Security

Frederick W. Kagan, American Enterprise Institute

Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institution

Stephen Biddle, Council on Foreign Relations

More at The New York Times.

Our Man in Kabul
by SWJ Editors | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 3:43pm | 4 comments
Our Man in Kabul - David Wood, Politics Daily

... He is our man indeed. And Hamid Karzai's casual assumption this morning of another five-year term as Afghanistan's president, after the election runoff was canceled when his only opponent pulled out of the race, saddles the Obama administration with a king-size migraine.

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has rested on a central goal: building public trust in a strong, democratic central government. Sixty-eight thousand American troops are deployed there in service of that goal. The election process, beginning with a nationwide vote in August, was seen as crucial in demonstrating that democracy works and is worth the hard work and risk-taking required to support it.

Today that idea is a shambles. Now the U.S. strategy rests on an undemocratic, corrupt and weak central government, a president who cheated his way into office in an election held under American supervision, an election that even the government of Afghanistan concedes was stolen. The script couldn't have been improved if Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar had put himself to the task....

More at Politics Daily.

Military Refines a 'Constant Stare Against Our Enemy'
by SWJ Editors | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 3:38am | 3 comments
Military Refines a 'Constant Stare Against Our Enemy' - Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times.

The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles. The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles. Military officials predict that the impact on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan will be impressive. "Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," said a senior military official. "The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary."

Unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft now produce a single video feed as they fly continuously over surveillance routes, and the area they can cover largely depends on altitude. The new technology initially will increase the number of video feeds to 12 and eventually to 65. Like the Reaper and its earlier counterpart, the Predator, the newest technology program has been given a fearsome name: the Gorgon Stare, named for the mythological creature whose gaze turns victims to stone. Unmanned aircraft, used both for surveillance and for offensive strikes, are considered the most significant advance in military technology in a generation. They not only have altered the conduct of warfare, but have also changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

On Leadership: A Question of Command
by SWJ Editors | Mon, 11/02/2009 - 1:42am | 0 comments
On Leadership: A Question of Command - Paula Broadwell, Kings of War

In an earlier blog regarding the U.S. Army Officer Shortage, I highlighted a few problems with officer talent management that link to leadership development. In the interest of improving leadership development for our officer corps, I have been reading an great book by Dr. Mark Moyar of the U.S. Marine Corps University, A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq from Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009.

As evidenced by the over-registered Marine Corps University's conference on "COIN Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond," where GEN Petraeus gave the keynote address to the "COIN Nation," there is a thirst for understanding the role of individual leadership in the COIN arena.

Readers from all ranks will be interested in Moyar's succint identification of what it takes to succeed in the contemporary operating environment. Anyone who understands that effective leadership in a counterinsurgency setting - or the conventional battlefield - often does come down to the behavior of one individual will find that this book resonates with important themes...

More at Kings of War.

The Generals' Revolt
by SWJ Editors | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 10:24am | 10 comments
The Generals' Revolt - Robert Dreyfuss, Rolling Stone.

In early October, as President Obama huddled with top administration officials in the White House situation room to rethink America's failing strategy in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the president an offer he couldn't refuse. They wanted the president to escalate the war - go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire - or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals.

Obama knew that if he rebuffed the military's pressure, several senior officers - including Gen. David Petraeus, the ambitious head of US Central Command, who is rumored to be eyeing a presidential bid of his own in 2012 - could break ranks and join forces with hawks in the Republican Party. GOP leaders and conservative media outlets wasted no time in warning Obama that if he refused to back the troop escalation being demanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander overseeing the eight-year-old war, he'd be putting U.S. soldiers' lives at risk and inviting Al Qaeda to launch new assaults on the homeland. The president, it seems, is battling two insurgencies: one in Afghanistan and one cooked up by his own generals...

More at Rolling Stone.

McChrystal Lite
by SWJ Editors | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 9:55am | 3 comments
McChrystal Lite - Tom Donnelly and Tim Sullivan, Weekly Standard opinion.

In its continuing search for an alternative to General Stanley McChrystal's comprehensive counterinsurgency approach to the war in Afghanistan, and with President Obama having eliminated the minimalist counterterrorism plan of Vice President Joe Biden, the White House has lately been floating a split-the-difference trial balloon: "McChrystal Lite" or, to give the veep his due, "McChrystal for the cities, Biden for the countryside."

Last week the New York Times was allowed a sneak-peak of what this half-pregnant approach might look like. It reported that White House advisers are aiming to defend "about 10 top population centers." A number of press accounts indicate that the number of additional troops would be capped at around 20,000 - half the 40,000 recommended by McChrystal - no more than four brigade-sized units and the needed support. The Times also indicated that McChrystal had briefed the White House on how he would employ any reinforcements: "The first two additional brigades would be sent to the south, including one to Kandahar, while a third would be sent to eastern Afghanistan and a fourth would be used flexibly across the nation."

To the Washington punditocracy, half a loaf sounds about right; even if they don't think it's the right strategy, they think it's what Obama will do as a matter of domestic politics. But does it make any military sense? ...

More at The Weekly Standard.

The Real Afghan Strategy
by SWJ Editors | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 9:25am | 4 comments
The Real Afghan Strategy - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinon.

Hikmatullah, a tall Pashtun farmer dressed in turban and white cloak, looks slightly bewildered as a US Army officer offers him tea and bread and questions him about what he wants from life. A crowd has gathered around them on the steps of the local bakery, young boys and old tribesmen gawking to see what the fuss is about. Hikmatullah says that he's a happy man with five children and that what he wants most is security. From the quizzical look on the farmer's face, perhaps he's wondering: Can these pleasant, tea-drinking American soldiers really be the same people who are assaulting Taliban fighters in this region of eastern Afghanistan?

The answer is yes. Even as US forces show a gentler side with their new stress on people-friendly counterinsurgency, they continue to conduct devastating attacks on the enemy. It's this mix of hard and soft that's the essence of the US battle plan here, but this reality is not well understood back in America. The Washington debate about the Afghanistan war -- pitting advocates of a broad counterinsurgency strategy against those who favor a narrower counterterrorism approach - has sometimes been misleading, at least in terms of what actually goes on here. The fact is that US forces are doing both missions every day and night - and indeed are becoming increasingly effective at each one...

More at The Washington Post.

Obama Seeking Options on Afghanistan Force Levels
by SWJ Editors | Sat, 10/31/2009 - 4:42am | 0 comments
Obama Seeking Options on Forces - Anne E. Kornblut and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

President Obama has asked the Pentagon's top generals to provide him with more options for troop levels in Afghanistan, two US officials said late Friday, with one adding that some of the alternatives would allow Obama to send fewer new troops than the roughly 40,000 requested by his top commander. Obama met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House on Friday, holding a 90-minute discussion that centered on the strain on the force after eight years of war in two countries. The meeting - the first of its kind with the chiefs of the Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, who were not part of the president's war council meetings on Afghanistan in recent weeks - prompted Obama to request another such meeting before he announces a decision on sending additional troops, the officials said.

The military chiefs have been largely supportive of a resource request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, that would by one Pentagon estimate require the deployment of 44,000 additional troops. But opinion among members of Obama's national security team is divided, and he now appears to be seeking a compromise solution that would satisfy both his military and civilian advisers. Obama is expected to receive several options from the Pentagon about troop levels next week, according to the two officials, who discussed the deliberations on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly...

More at The Washington Post.

Obama Meets Joint Chiefs to Review Afghanistan Strategy - Thom Shanker and Helene Cooper, New York Times.

President Obama met Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the way ahead in Afghanistan - in particular how sending more forces might affect the health of the military, already strained by eight years of war. Administration and military officials said the top officers from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force briefed the president on the long-term consequences for personnel and equipment under various options being considered. The central question is whether the scope of reinforcements would require the military either to cut time at home between deployments or to extend tours in the combat zone. No decisions were made Friday. With Mr. Obama scheduled to leave Washington for a weeklong trip to Asia on Nov. 11, one administration official said the likelihood of announcing his decision before then was fading.

The meeting came as administration officials are starting to grapple with how Mr. Obama will make the case for his Afghanistan strategy, whatever his decision. Mr. Obama has come under fire from critics who say he has yet to explain clearly to the country or the international community what he is trying to do in Afghanistan, and why it is worth risking more American troops. The issue of deployments is of particular concern to the ground forces, which are carrying the burden in Afghanistan and in Iraq. An important variable is the current timetable for Iraq, which envisions almost all Marines out by next spring, with overall troop levels scheduled to drop to about 50,000 by the end of next summer...

More at The New York Times.

This Week at War: You Can't Always Pick Your Afghan Friends
by Robert Haddick | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 5:36pm | 5 comments
Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy.

Topic include:

1) Why would 'American officials' expose their own intelligence source?

2) U.S.--India military cooperation: some rare good news in Asia.

Why would 'American officials' expose their own intelligence source?

On Oct. 27 the New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and a major power broker in Kandahar, was a paid intelligence asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Times's sources for this allegation included "current and former American officials" including a former CIA officer and perhaps a senior U.S. military officer in Kabul. Ahmed Wali Karzai acknowledged aiding U.S. efforts but denied receiving any payments from the CIA.

The piece asserted that Karzai's alleged connections to Afghanistan's drug trade created deep frustrations with senior political and military officials in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

Did frustration and moral outrage with Karzai's illicit activities lead U.S. officials to expose him as a paid CIA asset? It would certainly be understandable, for these officials may have a low opinion of him and perhaps by association his brother the president. But this collective outburst is folly and will make a nearly impossible task for the Americans in Afghanistan only that much harder to achieve.

Click through to read more ...

Déjà  vu from the Soviet archives
by Robert Haddick | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 12:31pm | 0 comments
Yesterday, Dave cited this op-ed from the New York Times written by a historian who chronicled the collapse of the Soviet Union. He opened with this excerpt:

THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: "There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another," he said. "Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

"Our soldiers are not to blame. They've fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills." He went on to request extra troops and equipment. "Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time," he said.

These sound as if they could be the words of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama in recent days or weeks. In fact, they were spoken by Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, to the Soviet Union's Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986.

The op-ed, a quick summary of top-level Soviet policy in Afghanistan, concludes with this:

In 1988, Robert Gates, then the deputy director of the C.I.A., made a wager with Michael Armacost, then undersecretary of state. He bet $25 that the Soviet Army wouldn't leave Afghanistan. The Soviets retreated in humiliation soon after. Mr. Gates, we can assume, paid up.

I am sure Robert Gates never imagined that 20 years later he would find himself flying into Bagram for exasperated conferences with his generals.

Soviet tactics in Afghanistan were brutal in the extreme and the slaughter and refugee crisis that ensued in the 1980s in no way compares to the current experience.

But although the U.S. has used a much gentler hand than the Soviets, the results (or lack thereof) seem the same. Perhaps those Afghans who choose to fight don't care what tactics, techniques, and procedures their enemies use. Now the hope is that one final addition of troops and reconstruction spending will isolate those Afghan recalcitrants and achieve a recognizable improvement in stability.

Success requires commitment. But commitment makes failure much more painful. Military historians have many examples in both categories. Committing to success means taking a risk on great pain, a dilemma President Obama and his advisers must now understand.

The Tenacity Question
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 6:35am | 5 comments
The Tenacity Question - David Brooks, New York Times opinion.

Today, President Obama will lead another meeting to debate strategy in Afghanistan. He will presumably discuss the questions that have divided his advisers: How many troops to commit? How to define plausible goals? Should troops be deployed broadly or just in the cities and towns? For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do. I've called around to several of the smartest military experts I know to get their views on these controversies.

I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I tried to get them to talk about the strategic choices facing the president. To my surprise, I found them largely uninterested. Most of them have no doubt that the president is conducting an intelligent policy review. They have no doubt that he will come up with some plausible troop level. They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination...

More at The New York Times.

On the War's Front Lines
by SWJ Editors | Fri, 10/30/2009 - 5:50am | 7 comments
On the War's Front Lines - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

Here's what you would see if you traveled this week to Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the two big battlegrounds of the Afghanistan war: a conflict that is balanced tenuously between success and failure. The United States has deployed enough troops to disrupt the Taliban insurgency and draw increasing fire, but not enough to secure the major population centers. That's not a viable position. I visited four US bases in the two provinces this week, traveling with the military. I was able to hear from local commanders and talk with a few Afghans. I'll describe what I learned, positive and negative, so readers can weigh this evidence from the field. Then I'll explain why my conclusion is that President Obama should add some troops.

We began in Kandahar city, at the headquarters of what's known as Regional Command South, which oversees the battle in the two provinces. It's a city on the edge of the desert, surrounded by jagged, slate-gray mountains. Just over the border to the east are the Taliban's supply lines in Pakistan. America's NATO allies have been running the war in Kandahar province, but they have been badly outgunned. So several months ago, the United States sent an Army brigade of about 4,000 troops with Stryker armored vehicles. That disrupted the Taliban insurgents, but they have responded with more roadside bombs along Highway 1, the main route that connects Kandahar to Afghanistan's other major cities...

More at The Washington Post.

Troop Level in Afghanistan is the Easy Part
by SWJ Editors | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 6:45am | 0 comments
Troop Level in Afghanistan is the Easy Part - Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times opinion.

President Obama's in-house debate on troop levels in Afghanistan isn't over yet, but it's a safe bet what he'll do: split the difference. Obama's military commander, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, requested between 10,000 and 40,000 additional troops. The president appears headed toward a number in the middle. But the number of troops, as both McChrystal and Obama have said, is not the most important thing. More important are the answers to three questions: Will US goals be limited to make them more achievable? Will Obama make it clear that this troop increase is the last one the Pentagon will get? And can the US succeed in nudging Afghanistan toward a more functional, less corrupt government, without which the whole enterprise will fail?

First, the mission. Last March, when he made his initial decision to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, Obama declared what he apparently thought was "a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future." The problem was that the military's counterinsurgency strategists took the president at his word and began planning a strategy to prevent Al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan, which in turn meant they would have to prevent Al Qaeda's ally, the Taliban, from controlling Afghan territory. Defeating the Taliban required a counterinsurgency campaign over most of the country. For such an ambitious mission, McChrystal's request for 40,000 US troops atop the 68,000 deployed seems too modest...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

For Every Iraqi Party, an Army of Its Own
by SWJ Editors | Thu, 10/29/2009 - 6:25am | 0 comments
For Every Iraqi Party, an Army of Its Own - Najim Abed al-Jabouri, New York Times opinion.

Sunday's coordinated suicide bombings in Baghdad, which killed more than 150 people, were a brutal reminder of how far Iraq still has to go in terms of security. While things are far better than a few years ago, one huge task remains: getting the public to trust the Iraqi security forces. From 2005 to 2008, I was the mayor of Tel Afar, a town in Nineveh Province in northern Iraq that become the model for the "clear, hold and build" strategy credited with turning the war around during the surge. In some ways, the story of Tel Afar is indicative of what we are now seeing on a larger scale in Iraq. In 2004, Tel Afar was plagued by insurgency and terrorism, the result of missed chances and poor decisions by both the American and the Iraqi governments. In early 2005, however, I was approached by Col. H. R. McMaster, an innovative American brigade commander (he is now a brigadier general) who agreed with me that security efforts should focus on gaining the confidence of the people and not only on killing the enemy. We went to work building bridges with the population...

The Iraqi government needs to apply these same principles to the national security forces. Both the military and the police remain heavily politicized. The police and border officials, for example, are largely answerable to the Interior Ministry, which has been seen (often correctly) as a pawn of Shiite political movements. Members of the security forces are often loyal not to the state but to the person or political party that gave them their jobs...

More at The New York Times.

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