Rahm Emanuel, October 18, 2009:

What will the Afghan government do or not do? Where are we on the police training? Who would be better doing the police training? Could that be something the Europeans do? Should we take the military's side?

Those are questions that have not been asked. And before you commit troops that are -- not irreversible, but puts you down a certain path -- before you make that decision, there is a set of questions that have to have answers that is never been asked. And it's clear after eight years of war that is basically starting from beginning that those questions never got asked.

Washington Post, October 9, 2008

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, President Bush's senior adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, has told Pentagon, intelligence and State Department officials to return to the basic questions: What are our objectives in Afghanistan? What can we hope to achieve? What are our resources? What is our allies' role? What do we know about the enemy? How likely is it that weak Afghan and Pakistani governments will rise to the occasion?

In his column today, Eugene Robinson writes that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the president's hand-picked general to lead the Afghan campaign, has "no business" outlining his preferred strategy in public. McChrystal and the generals who support more troops and a focus on population security in Afghanistan, Robinson writes, "need to shut up and salute."

Liberals had a very different attitude, of course, when generals like Eric Shinseki and John Batiste criticized the Bush-Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq. But I guess they'd say that was another war, and another president, one who had an "R" appended to his name.

Still, not every liberal has forgotten. William Galston is making sense:

How quickly we forget: That was the rationale used to muzzle General Eric Shinseki during the run up to the Iraq war. Wouldn’t we have been better off to have had a no-holds-barred debate involving senior military officials prior to the invasion about the number of troops it would take to stabilize Iraq after the invasion? Wouldn’t we have had the kind of public discussion that the American people deserved but did not get?

Does McChrystal’s speech put pressure on the president, as some have charged? Sure, and what’s wrong with that? The general is saying that the mission the president articulated back in March after a thorough policy review requires more troops than are now on the ground in Afghanistan. If he’s right about that, the president owes the country one of two things: send the troops or redefine the mission. McChrystal’s intervention makes it more difficult to fudge the decision. In my book, that’s a good thing. And people who don’t want more troops sent should agree.

Galston has emerged as one of the most incisive liberal analysts of the Obama presidency. Every word he writes is worth reading.

The article about Afghanistan policy in today's Washington Post is full of snide, self-confident, anonymous criticism of General Stanley McChrystal, the man Obama chose to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The tone of the criticism is consistent with the arrogance of the Obama White House.

But in this case, it's also counterproductive. Not just because it's bad form to mock your lead wartime commander in news articles, but because in several cases McChrystal is making arguments that the president himself made -- almost verbatim -- in recent months.

For instance, according to the Post:

One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, "A lot of assumptions -- and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions -- were exposed to the light of day."

Among them, according to three senior administration officials who attended Wednesday's meeting at the White House, is McChrystal's contention that the Taliban and al-Qaeda share the same strategic interests and that the return to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaeda.

Is that a myth? Here is Barack Obama on March 27, 2009, announcing his first new strategy for Afghanistan: "And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban - or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged - that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."

He added:

The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence.

Later in the Post article, the reporters quote a "senior Obama official" comparing Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Eight months ago, if you had asked people which was worse, everybody would have said Pakistan is worse and Afghanistan is in good shape."

Afghanistan was in good shape? 2008 was the deadliest year for American troops there. Nobody paying any attention to developments there believed that it was "in good shape."

Consider:

Admiral Mike Mullen, in an interview on March 1, 2009, spoke of the "growing security concerns that we all have with respect to what's going on in Afghanistan."

In late February, President Obama said: "With respect to Afghanistan, I think that all of us believe that the situation has deteriorated somewhat there."

And in his March 27 speech, he said:

The situation is increasingly perilous. It has been more than seven years since the Taliban was removed from power, yet war rages on, and insurgents control parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attacks against our troops, our NATO allies, and the Afghan government have risen steadily.

So who, exactly, is clueless here?

Barack Obama met with General Stanley McChrystal for about 25 minutes this morning in Copenhagen, after McChrystal flew to Denmark from London to meet with the commander-in-chief.

A meeting is better than no meeting, to be sure. But the circumstances surrounding this one are revealing. Obama's first substantive face-to-face meeting with the man he handpicked to lead US forces in Afghanistan -- the war that Obama has said for seven years is a war that must be won -- lasted about as long as it takes to get a haircut. And it came after the White House spent days deflecting criticism after McChrystal told "60 Minutes" that he had only spoken with Obama once in 70 days.

So the meeting was an add-on, squeezed in between meetings and photo-ops in support of the main purpose of his trip: to pitch Chicago as the host-city for the 2016 Olympics. Obama did that, too. His presentation, in which he waxed eloquent on the "sacred trust" between a host city and the Olympics, lasted 15 minutes. Obama also participated in a Q&A session with members of the International Olympic Committee and, later, attended an informal reception with them. After that, he spent some time with Denmark's Queen Margarethe and Prince Henrik, found a few minutes for a photo-op with Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen and spent some more time in a private meeting with the Danish leader.

If Obama believes he doesn't need to spend much time with McChrystal, it could be because his top advisers know much more than the general. How do we know? They tell us in a fascinating Washington Post article on yesterday's Afghanistan meeting at the White House. McChrystal, who has been in Afghanistan since June, accompanied by uniformed and civilian experts on counterinsurgency, has been relying on "myths" about the country and our war there.

White House officials are resisting McChrystal's call for urgent U.S. action on Afghanistan, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London. Officials also are questioning important elements of the general's assessment, which calls for a vast expansion of an increasingly unpopular war. One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, "A lot of assumptions -- and I don't want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions -- were exposed to the light of day."

Oh right, not "myths" but mistaken assumptions. And who at the White House knows so much to expose these mistaken assumptions? "According to White House officials involved in the meeting, Vice President Biden offered some of the more pointed challenges to McChrystal, who attended the session by video link from Kabul."

It's necessary to question assumptions, of course. But why should we believe that White House advisers and Joe Biden -- who wanted to divide Iraq into three parts and warned repeatedly that a surge there would never work -- have a better understanding than McChrystal and CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus, who supports McChrystal's assessment?

We shouldn't.

Regular readers of this space know that Michigan Senator Carl Levin is one of the smartest and least intellectually honest members of Congress. (See here, here, here, and here.)

His favorite trick is simply to leave out inconvenient arguments, embrace what he likes and completely change the meaning of the language in question.

His statement from Monday, September 21, on the report by General Stanley McChrystal gives us another example.

In his statement, Levin opens his second paragraph by writing:

Perhaps the most important judgment General McChrystal has made – one with which I wholeheartedly agree – is that “focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely.”

Reading just Levin's account of the McChrystal report one might conclude that McChrystal believes that force and resource requirements are unimportant. Here's the entire sentence from the McChrystal report: "Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely."

In fact, McChrystal's report makes precisely the opposite point: without such additional forces and resources the war is lost. As the Washington Post's Bob Woodward wrote, McChrystal "repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely." The headline over Woodward's piece captured its essence. "McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure.'"

McChrystal believes that a focus on forces and resources misses the point because it is a given that additional resources are required. The war is not winnable without them.

We've come to expect this kind of intellectual dishonesty from Levin. So it's not at all surprising that he is blocking a request from Republican senators on the Armed Services Committee to invite McChrystal to the Hill for a hearing. Republicans on the committee sent Levin a letter yesterday, following up on a September 18 letter from John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. Yesterday's letter, was signed by John McCain, Lindsey Graham, James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, John Thune, Roger Wicker, Richard Burr and David Vitter

We feel that it is essential that the Congress and the American people, who are understandably weary after nearly eight years of war, understand why the future of Afghanistan is linked to our own safety and prosperity at home. it is equally important that they understand the comprehensive strategy and commitment of resources that our military commanders believe necessary to win this crucial fight.

Levin responded to the McCain/Lieberman/Graham yesterday, September 22, calling such public testimony "premature." Why?

At the present time, while General McChrystal has submitted his assessment of the situation on the ground and his recommendations concerning the strategy for Afghanistan up through the chain of command, he has not yet submitted his recommendation as to the resources that he believes would be needed to implement the strategy.

Got that? On September 21, Levin argued that the issue of resource requirements was beside the point. On September 22, he argued that it was so important that he couldn't possibly invite McChrystal to the Hill until such questions were resolved.

Okay, maybe Levin isn't one of the smartest members of Congress after all.

Today's suicide attack in Kabul comes as the debate over European involvement in Afghanistan heats up. Apparently the Taliban carefully chose their latest target well: six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghans were killed in the attack, which took place very close to a U.S. military base and outside the gates of the U.S. embassy. The attack has reignited the debate in Italy and prompted the government to reaffirm its commitment.

The suicide attack prompted a quick look at the ISAF webpage to see what the military had to say about the incident. Unsurprisingly, and sadly, the ISAF webpage looked like a laundry list of the most recent Coalition casualties. The top six items (five of them pictured) all discussed death notices for ISAF troops killed in combat.

A word of advice to ISAF public affairs: there already is a website out there that dwells on Coalition casualties. It is called iCasualties.org, and it maintains a running daily tally of Coalition deaths for Operation Enduring Freedom. As noted on Sept. 8, by deciding not to publicize U.S. and ISAF operations and focusing nearly exclusively on Coalition deaths, the military has become one of the best negative publicity sources on its operations out there.

Tuesday's ambush in Gangigal in Kunar that killed four U.S. Marine military advisers, eight Afghan soldiers and policemen, and an Afghan interpreter will surely raise serious question about the current rules of engagement which U.S. forces operate under in Afghanistan. Jonathan S. Landay, a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, witnessed the ambush and said the Marines and soldiers did not receive air and artillery support to suppress the Taliban firing from the mountains.

According to Landay, the engagement began at 5:30 AM local time. The advisers called for air and artillery support 20 minutes later, at 5:50 AM. No air support was available and artillery support didn't arrive until another 50 minutes later, at about 6:40 AM. Even then, only white phosphorus rounds were fired. Attack helicopters showed up another half hour later, at about 7:10.

Read the entire account of the battle. If Landay's account is accurate, U.S. police and military trainers, as well as regular military units, are going to have to swallow a bitter pill each time they step outside the gates to patrol and conduct other missions. Advisers particularly are exposed when leaving their bases. They rely on the local forces for primary security, then Coalition quick reaction forces and air and artillery support to back them up. In the rural fight in Afghanistan's mountains, sometimes all these advisers have to back them up is air and artillery. If the air and artillery support is being withheld, their confidence in being able to successfully return from a mission will drop dramatically.

Despite several weeks of huffing and puffing about disrupting Afghanistan's election to decide the next president and provincial council representatives, the Taliban had a poor showing today. There were 73 recorded acts of violence in 15 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces; 27 people were killed on elections day, including eight Afghan soldiers, nine police officers, nine civilians, and one US soldier. Security forces stopped suicide bombers in Kabul while small arms attacks were suppressed in Paktika and Baghlan.

It's not that the Taliban lacked targets; there were almost 7,000 polling sites the Taliban could have hit. The Taliban only succeeded in blocking polling in eight of Afghanistan's 398 districts. Those eight districts were already deemed to be under Taliban control.

What won't be known is how successful the Taliban were in intimidating voters to stay away from the polls. Turnout in many areas is said to be low, but a portion of low turnout can also be attributed to voter apathy.

While the Taliban have been resurgent over the past several years, they clearly do not possess the strength to shut down a national event like an election. Events like today's shed light on the limitations and weaknesses of the enemy. The Taliban's power still rests in the shadows, at night, when security forces return to their bases. That is a problem, a major one that can only be fixed by boosting NATO and Afghan security forces and restoring a measure of legitimacy to the Afghan government. And making those two things happen is another set of problems. But we can see today that the Taliban also have problems of their own.

Yesterday's article in the Wall Street Journal with the attention-getting headline "Taliban Now Winning" in Afghanistan has generated a lot of controversy, and according to some people I've spoken to, some anger in the Pentagon. Jim Hanson at Blackfive rightly noted yesterday that there was little to back up the headline.

They quote McChrystal directly many times throughout the piece but somehow this bit is absent quotes and I think they may be mischaracterizing what he actually said. If he actually believes they have gained the upper hand, that would be quite significant, but it seems more likely he said they have gained ground.

Hanson smartly followed up his suspicions about the WSJ article with an email to the ISAF Public Affairs team, and here is what he got back from Lieutenant Colonel Tadd Sholtis, McChrystal's public affairs officer:

Jim--I sat in on the interview, and the Journal article overstated Gen McChrystal's position. The Commander did not say the Taliban was winning in his interview, as suggested by the headline. Asked by the reporter if the Taliban had the upper hand, he explained that International Security Assistance Forces are facing an aggressive enemy, employing complex tactics, that has gained momentum in some parts of Afghanistan. During the course of the interview he also observed that ISAF has had some success in reversing the initiative, and that insurgents in Afghanistan face their own long-term problems in terms of public support, group cohesiveness and their ability to sustain morale and fighting capacity. There was much more nuance to his analysis than made it into the Journal article.

Tadd

TADD SHOLTIS, LTC, USAF (OF-4)
Public Affairs Officer for the Commander, ISAF
Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force

There are plenty of problems in Afghanistan, but the public is done a disservice when attention-grabbing headlines misrepresent the severity of the problem. A more accurate description of the situation would be a stalemate, but that wouldn't grab your attention in a headline.

If you thought the Brits were going soft on Afghanistan, the UN has one-upped them by demanding direct negotiations with the senior most leaders of the Taliban, including, presumably, Mullah Omar himself. The Brits have also been aggressively pushing for negotiations with the Taliban, but last weekend, the UN's special representative to Afghanistan blasted the Brits for being too hard line.

“If you want important results you need to talk to people who are important,” said Kai Eide, the special representative for the UN secretary-general, in an interview with The Sunday Times.

“We won’t get where we want by negotiating with local commanders on the ground. That’s an inadequate peace process and that won’t work.”

In a speech at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Miliband said military commanders should work with the Afghan government “to separate hardline idealogues who are essentially irreconcilable and violent from those who can be drawn into a domestic political process”.

Many believe there is no real point in negotiating with anyone other than Mullah Omar, the one-eyed Taliban leader, and his ruling council, the Quetta shura.

“If you engage partially you will have partial results. We have to have a political process that is all-inclusive. That’s the only way to bring this conflict to an end,” said Eide.

To be clear, Eide believes we can negotiate with the likes of Mullah Omar, who chose to sacrifice his ideal Islamist emirate in late 2001 rather than hand over Osama bin Laden. What does he think would happen if, by some chance, Omar decided to negotiate, accepted an agreement, and bided his time until foreign forces left? Does he really think Omar, whose regime allowed al Qaeda to thrive and plot and execute the September 11 attacks, will give up his alliance with the terror group? Or is the goal just as Eide said, to "bring this conflict to an end" -- no matter what?

Well, that didn’t take very long. Less than one day after officials touted the peace agreement with the Taliban in Badghis province, the Taliban denounced it. Some of us never saw this one coming. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Within hours, however, clashes broke out in the region, and a Taliban spokesman told media that no deal ever happened. Suspected insurgents ambushed police, and fighting left two militants dead and two police wounded, Reuters reported, citing the Interior Ministry.

Here is what Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told the AP about the Badghis deal:

''This is all propaganda by the Afghan government,'' he said. ''We will continue our jihad and will not accept the request of the government for negotiations and cease-fire.''

One of two things happened here. Either the Afghan government and those pressuring them to negotiate cut a deal with the wrong people in Badghis, which indicates they don’t even know who the real Taliban players are (unlikely in this case), or the Taliban never intended to keep the peace agreement (very likely).

As the Christian Science Monitor reported, Badghis province is an ideal testing ground for negotiations with the Taliban as the Pashtuns there are isolated in a small pocket far from the Pashtun heartlands in the south and east. If a deal can’t be made there, it is unlikely deals can be made in the south and east, where the Taliban control vast tracts of ground and have ready access to safe havens across the border.

Less than a month after the U.S., Britain, and a smattering of Coalition and Afghan forces launched a limited operation to secure central and southern Helmand province, some are looking for the "exit."

A concerted effort to start unprecedented talks between Taliban and British and American envoys was outlined yesterday in a significant change in tactics designed to bring about a breakthrough in the attritional, eight-year conflict in Afghanistan.

Senior ministers and commanders on the ground believe they have created the right conditions to open up a dialogue with "second-tier" local leaders now the Taliban have been forced back in a swath of Helmand province.

They are hoping that Britain's continuing military presence in Helmand, strengthened by the arrival of thousands of US troops, will encourage Taliban commanders to end the insurgency. There is even talk in London and Washington of a military "exit strategy".

This is no way to describe this mindset other than wishful thinking. While the U.S. Marines and the Brits have made good progress in Helmand, the region they have entered and are in the process of securing is but a small part of the conflict area. And the Taliban have by no means been defeated, they've merely gone to ground or shifted into neighboring areas where Coalition and Afghan security forces are absent.

Much of northern Helmand is a Taliban haven. The Taliban control plenty of territory to the west in Farah and Nimroz provinces, to the east in Kandahar, and to the north in Uruzgan province. The Taliban also have a presence in Ghor and Herat provinces. And provinces in southeastern and eastern Afghanistan are either contested or under effective Taliban control. This doesn't even factor in the Taliban havens in Pakistan's Baluchistan and Northwest Frontier Province, and the tribal areas.

There's another factor to consider: who exactly will take over security once the U.S., British, and Coalition forces pull back? The Afghan police are far from ready. And the Afghan Army is sparse in the south. The Army could only devote a little more than 600 troops to the current offensive, despite the numerous requests from the Marines running the show in southern Helmand. The Marines have contributed more than 4,000 troops to the operation.

The Taliban have a saying about the U.S.: we have all the clocks, they have all the time. Prematurely implementing a half-baked "exit strategy" will prove the Taliban right.

As the U.S. and Britain are pushing for greater "integration" of the Taliban into Afghan society, the Afghan government cut a deal with the Taliban in the northwestern province of Badghis.

The ceasefire agreement calls for the Taliban not to interfere with the upcoming elections in one district in the province and an end to attacks on construction companies working on the Ring Road passing through the region. In exchange the military will not enter the district to secure the polling stations.

Afghan, British, and Pakistani forces have signed numerous agreements with the Taliban, only to see them backfire. The British debacle in Musa Qala led to the Taliban takeover of most of northern Helmand province. The British and Afghan armies couldn't oust the Taliban until they launched a major operation more than a year later.

Across the border in Pakistan, deals with the Taliban in Swat, North and South Waziristan, and a slew of tribal agencies and districts led to the rise of the Taliban that encroached to nearly 60 miles outside of the capital of Islamabad. The military had to launch a major operation in Swat to push back the Taliban, and in the process displaced more than three million people from their homes. The Taliban still control vast regions in northwestern Pakistan.

Perhaps things will be different with the Taliban in Badghis, but recent history says otherwise. And as the push for Taliban "integration" increases, deals like these will become more attractive to those looking for the easy way out of Afghanistan..

The military has decided to stop reporting enemy casualties in Afghanistan and to put out positive press releases. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Under the order, issued last month by Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, the military will not release specifics on how many insurgents are killed in fighting, and instead will give general estimates.

The change is part of the focus on making the Afghan population feel safer and comes as U.S. commanders are taking new steps to avoid civilian casualties.

"We send the wrong message if all we talk about is the number of insurgents killed. It doesn't demonstrate anything about whether we have made progress," said Smith, who arrived six weeks ago to overhaul U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization communications efforts. "We want to shift the mind-set."

Smith has asked commanders to issue fewer news releases and to focus on improvements in security where international forces are operating.

"We have to show we are here to protect the people," he said.

There are a few questions I'd like to see Rear Adm. Smith and those who advocate the suppression of enemy casualties answer:

How does supressing enemy casualties show we are here to protect the people?

Does the U.S. military think the Afghan people, who have one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, actually read military press releases?

Will the US military stop reporting on US and allied casualties?

Won't the reports of the increase in Coalition casualties, which have more than doubled since last year, cause a heightened sense of unease, both at home, abroad, and in Afghanistan, specifically when the US refuses to identify the number of enemy casualties?

Does purposefully obfuscating enemy casualties sow distrust in those who read the military press releases, including the media?

What happens when the US is vague on casualties and the Taliban is specific? To whose story do you think the press will lend credence?

And finally, how will the press handle this news? The media has kept meticulous body counts on US and Coalition casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are body counts for US and Coalition troop good, yet enemy body counts are bad?

To be clear, body counts on either side don't win wars. Ultimately those who are willing to pay whatever price is required -- in time, casualties, treasure -- win. This is a question of honesty and credibility. If the military in Afghanistan is purposefully suppressing information, then they should not be surprised when the information they do release is viewed with skepticism.

News from Afghanistan has been -- admittedly -- less than stellar lately. Here's a little ray of hope from the estimable Michael Yon, embedded with the US Marine Corps:

The U.S. Marines are flooding in, and you might think that every Marine helicopter in our arsenal is here. I’ll not give numbers and types other than to say the line of aircraft is long and formidable. The U.S. Marines are a spectacle for the U.S. Army and also the British Army. The Marines will come in and live like pure animals, and build a base around themselves, whereas the British and American Armies will tend to build at least part of the base before coming in. One Marine commander told me that during the early part of this war, his men didn’t even shower for three months. We talked for a couple of hours and he was proud that his Marines didn’t need a shower for three months, and that his Marines killed a lot of Taliban and managed to lose only one good man. That’s the Marines. They’ll show up in force with no warning, and their reputation with U.S. Army and Brits who have fought alongside them is stellar. A NPR photographer who just spent more than three weeks with the Marines could not praise them enough, saying he’d been with them in Iraq, too, and that when Marines take casualties, their reaction is to continue to attack. They try to stay in contact until they finish the enemy, no matter how long it takes. Truly they are animals when it comes to the fight. Other than that, great guys. Tonight at dinner, a young Marine Lance Corporal sat in front of me at the crowded dining facility. “Good evening, Sir,” he said. I asked, “Are you living like animals out there?” “Livin’ the dream, Sir!” They are fantastic.

Read the whole thing.

If you are concerned the Obama administration may be heading for the exit in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Gate's statements to the Los Angeles Times should worry you:

“After the Iraq experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where it is not apparent we are making headway,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview. “The troops are tired, the American people are pretty tired.”

To be fair, the above paragraph was preceded by this:

Gates said that victory was a "long-term prospect" under any scenario and that the U.S. would not win the war in a year's time. However, U.S. forces must begin to turn the situation around in a year, he said, or face the likely loss of public support.

But this still leaves the unanswered question: what happens if U.S. forces cannot show significant progress in one year? Aside from that, Gates handed al Qaeda, the Taliban, and every allied extremist group the best piece of propaganda they could hope for: a U.S. secretary of defense telling the world the mujahideen have exhausted the Great Satan's army.

And expect to see this soon. If you watch the complete Taliban propaganda video of the U.S. soldier captured in Afghanistan, you can see that the Taliban are extremely media savvy. They are closely following U.S. newspapers. The soldier was asked about American support for Afghan warlord General Dostum in light of accusations he slaughtered thousands of captured Taliban fighters in 2001. That story was just breaking here as the soldier was being interviewed. The video also shows other timely questions taken from current news.

I fully expect the captured soldier to be required to respond to Secretary Gates' remarks in a future Taliban video. The soldier has already been forced to comment upon about US troop morale and the mission in Afghanistan. Secretary Gates just handed the Taliban the ideal follow-up question on a silver platter.

The U.S. military has taken a lot of heat in Afghanistan over airstrikes that target Taliban leaders but in some cases kill civilians. In the most recent airstrike in the remote Afghan province of Ghor, the U.S. military targeted a Taliban commander they say has links to Iran's Qods Force.

The U.S. military thought they killed Mullah Mustafa along with 16 Taliban fighters, but later reports indicate Mustafa is still alive. The governor of Ghor province is now claiming 12 Taliban fighters and 10 civilians were killed in the attack. The U.S. military maintains that no civilians were killed, but refuses to release the evidence that supports their case:

But American officials Friday said the strike killed up to 16 militants and no civilians. A spokeswoman, Elizabeth Mathias, said the strike hit a vehicle “in the middle of nowhere, away from civilians and homes.” She said the military has a video showing the strike hitting the militants away from populated areas, but the military will not release it because its source cannot be revealed.

The military's refusal to declassify video of incidents such as the strike in Ghor is a major reason the Coalition is losing the information war in Afghanistan. The military is concerned the methods that are use will compromise future intelligence gathering operations, but in the process, the narrative is ceded to the Taliban or to civilian leaders who have a vested interest in inflating or manufacturing civilian deaths. After all, the U.S. military pays well if civilians are killed. To be clear, civilians are often killed during airstrike against Taliban, but in many cases the casualties have been hyped.

Unless the military had a special operations team nearby filming the attack (unlikely as the military said Mustafa's convoy was observed moving from his compound to a "the middle of nowhere"), there is little reason to keep this video classified. Everyone, including the Taliban, knows that UAVs are in the sky and watching. Until the military learns to shake its hangups and quickly declassify strike video to counter the negative narratives, they will continue to lose the information war.

Remember the near-revolt at the State Department when then-Secretary Rice announced that diplomats might be compelled to take assignments there in late 2007? Here is what a senior diplomat said at the time. Note his revulsion in being deployed to a war he doesn't believe in:

"Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone," said Jack Crotty, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with NATO forces. [...]

"It's one thing if someone believes in what's going on over there and volunteers, but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment," Crotty said. "I'm sorry, but basically that's a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?"

"You know that at any other (country) in the world, the embassy would be closed at this point," Crotty said to loud and sustained applause from the about 300 diplomats who attended the meeting in a large State Department auditorium.

Fast forward to today, when the U.S. wants to execute a civilian surge in Afghanistan to accompany the military surge. Guess what? The more things change, the more things stay the same. State and other civilian government employees don't want to go to Afghanistan, which we are told is the good war, the war that everyone supports, the real battle against al Qaeda:

The Obama administration is finding that it must turn to military personnel to fill hundreds of posts in Afghanistan that had been intended for civilian experts, senior officials said Wednesday.

In announcing a new strategy last month, President Obama promised “a dramatic increase in our civilian effort” in Afghanistan, including “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers” to augment the additional troops he is sending.

But senior Pentagon and administration officials now acknowledge that many of those new positions will be filled by military personnel — in particular by reservists, whose civilian jobs give them the required expertise — and by contractors.

But unlike the kerfuffle over Iraq, which was characterized as being related to political opposition to the Iraq war, today's civilian surge fiasco is being blamed on a lack of resources:

The shortfall offers more evidence that the government’s civilian departments have not received enough money to hire and train people ready to take up assignments in combat zones. Unlike the armed services, nonmilitary agencies do not have clear rules to compel rank-and-file employees to accept hardship posts.

Of course the burden to make up for the shortfall of civilian volunteers falls on our soldiers, and in this case, our reservists, thanks to our elite's unwillingness to shoulder a small fraction of the burden of the so-called good war.

The media is conducting serious mental gymnastics in an attempt to tout reconciliation with the Taliban. This headline from Reuters, "U.S. holds out olive branch to non-violent Taliban," really takes the cake. This headline raises the question: If there are non-violent elements of the Taliban, why would the U.S. and Afghan governments need to offer them an olive branch?

To her credit, Secretary of State Clinton, who is quoted in this Reuters story said no such thing. In fact, she said the goal should be to reach out to the elements of the Taliban that are reconcilable -- the opportunistic or nationalist elements that have latched on to the Taliban movement. But by no means are these "non-violent Taliban".

This is far easier said than done, however, and is one of the real areas of weakness I see in President Obama's plan for Afghanistan. A reconciliation program has been in effect for years in Afghanistan, and thousands of Taliban fighters and low level leaders have taken advantage of it. But the middle and upper echelons of leadership are by and large committed to the cause. And my guess is very few of them, if any, are non-violent.

Barack Obama will unveil his plan for Afghanistan Friday. Mike Allen reports that the new plan will include 4200 more troops, as well as civilian reinforcements. (See Goldfarb on the politics of the plan here.)

Allen writes:

The plan is at the heavier end of the spectrum of possibilities the White House considered, according to several top officials briefed on the plan.

A minimalist approach would have focused on counterterrorism and providing security past national elections later this year. An even more robust approach would have included a broader counterinsurgency campaign and an even longer and more idealistic commitment to the central government.

John McCain warned against such a "minimalist" approach in a thoughtful speech at the Brussels Forum last weekend. And he laid out his vision -- a compelling one, in my view -- for a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy.

A narrow short-term focus on counterterrorism, by contrast, would repeat precisely the mistakes we the United States made for years in Iraq prior to the surge, with the same catastrophic consequences. Before 2007 in Iraq, American Special Forces had complete freedom of action to strike at terrorist leaders, backed by more than 120,000 conventional American forces and overwhelming airpower. Although we succeeded in killing countless terrorists – including the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq – the insurgency continued to grow in strength and violence. It was not until we changed course and applied a new approach – a counterinsurgency strategy focused on providing basic security for the people and improving their lives – that the cycle of violence was at last broken.

One indication of the extraordinary success of that strategy in Iraq is this fact: "Iraq didn't come up once," reports someone who traveled with McCain. "Amazing what a year and a surge will do."

Indeed.

Anand Gopal of the Christian Science Monitor kindly responded to last week's post on the so-called negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban and the Haqqanis. Anand notes that last year's "negotiations" in Saudi Arabia clarified that what really is going on here is simply contact and one-sided peace plans destined to go nowhere, and not meaningful negotiations:

I came across your Weekly Standard piece and I think it raises a really important question. You are right--in October I wrote that there were no negotiations. This is because the meeting in Mecca was between former Taliban and the government, and there were no actual Taliban present. Without the two antagonistic sides, we can't really call it negotiations in any way. What happened over the next months is that this group of former Taliban reached out to the current group. They did so by putting forth a set of terms that the Taliban would accept but that we in the west would never agree to (such as stopping key counter-insurgency methods like house raids). So then the Quetta Shura (Mullah Bradar specifically) and the Haqqanis came around.

But the fundamental point is that as long as extremely slanted deals like this one get proposed, groups like the Haqqanis will be open to talking. Absurdly, the deals don't even ask for the insurgents to stop fighting or planting bombs.

The way I see it is that neither side has really publicly offered anything to the other side except surrender, disguised as "negotiations". The government has said that the Taliban should respect the constitution and drop their arms, which would amount to a surrender. The Taliban has said that the foreign troops should leave, which would basically amount to a surrender on our part. So these mediators tried to come up with something more amenable to an actual agreement. Hence the "roadmap" I mentioned. But the problem, as I see it, is that it is basically designed to be favorable to the Taliban, not the US/Kabul. I guess this is because the Taliban are in a favorable position. Anyway, I'm guessing this isn't really going to get anywhere, as long as we in the West have the will to keep fighting.

So in sum, I agree that it's really "contact", more than real, sit-at-the-table negotiations. That's why I tried to qualify it in my story as "preliminary negotiations", although I can see how that might be a muddy term.

The election of President Barack Obama led many to believe that the Europeans would change their tune on Afghanistan and beef up the NATO forces deployed there. Just one day after President Obama’s inauguration, both France and Germany, Europe’s two largest powers, have signaled that no additional troops are in the cards:

France's defence minister said Wednesday said Paris had no plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, despite plans by US President Barack Obama to step up the pressure on a resurgent Taliban.
"As far as France is concerned, we have made the necessary efforts and there is no question, for now, of considering extra reinforcements," Defence Minister Herve Morin told French radio Europe 1.

And:

Germany is among European nations bracing for demands from the new US administration that they do more in Afghanistan, but the Germans are reluctant to send more troops and believe talks on a new strategy for stabilizing the country are the main priority.

Chancellor Merkel has said that she would not accede to any request from the new US administration to send troops to southern Afghanistan, the scene of much of the heavy fighting against Taliban insurgents. "Wherever Germany commits itself, a wholeness of military and civilian assistance should be visible," she said.

NATO isn’t meeting its obligations to send police trainers to Afghanistan, and those who are there often have "no transport, no armoured vehicles and no money," one NATO official complained to Reuters. Experts believe that there is little chance of NATO significantly increasing troop levels. The result may lead to the fracturing of NATO.

But Michael O'Hanlon of Washington's Brookings Institution think tank saw little hope for more than a 10 percent increase in European troop numbers, and said that would not go down well the other side of the Atlantic.

"The European rationale for why it's hard to do more will not be met with a great deal of American sympathy -- and will especially fail to impress American voters, who will be disappointed that Obama's style of leadership does not elicit more genuine burden-sharing," he said.

Bob Jackson of London's Chatham House think tank said that in turn could lead to fresh U.S. disillusionment with NATO. "If the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, the French aren't going to find a cooperative strategy with the United States, what's the point of keeping NATO? The United States will just go it alone," he said.

Despite President Obama’s popularity in Europe and particularly among the political elites, European governments will continue to act in their own self interests. President Obama has declared Afghanistan the central front against al Qaeda, and without NATO assistance, U.S. troops will be left manning the bulk of the front, just as they did in Iraq. The vast majority of NATO countries have tired of the Afghan mission, and no amount of hope will change that.

Yesterday the Taliban conducted a heinous suicide attack in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives outside of a government center just as a group of school children was passing by. A U.S. military surveillance camera captured the bombing, and the Department of Defense released the tape to the Associated Press.

Watch the video, you will see the suicide bomber weaving through the barriers designed to slow down vehicles. The school children are walking against the wall on the right, and are in clear view. The suicide bomber clearly had a view of the children - he was moving slowly enough. Yet he detonated his bomb just as the line of children passed by his car.

Today, the Taliban took credit for the attack, claiming "at least 20 American and puppet terrorists were killed and more than 50 were wounded, and the building was destroyed."

The statement praised the attacker, identified as Afghan Qari Hameedullah, claiming he had rammed a "explosive-laden vehicle into a puppet Afghan government building."

Perhaps the Taliban didn't see the video of their suicide bomber blowing up those puppet school children.

Recent reports from Afghanistan claimed the Taliban are willing to negotiate with the Afghan government and NATO forces. A report in Iran's Press TV said Mullah Omar offered a seven point plan to end the insurgency, which was sent to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. The plan, according to the news outlet, called for a phased withdrawal of NATO forces, power-sharing with the Afghan government, integration of Taliban forces into the Afghan Army, and immunity for Taliban fighters.

While this all looks good on paper, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban has flatly rejected reports that negotiations are underway.

"The fact is that the Islamic Emirates has neither held any negotiations in Saudi Arabia or in the United Arab Emirates and neither anywhere else," the Taliban's Website quoted Omar as saying in a statement.

"I neither have sent any letter addressed to Saudi... King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, or to the opposite side (Afghan government) and neither have (I) received any message from them."

The statement added that whatever was being said on this issue was false and part of a propaganda campaign by vested interests.

On the last point, Omar is correct. There has been a concerted effort by ex-Taliban officials to claim the Taliban is willing to negotiate. And it is an open secret that NATO is searching for a way to split the Taliban from al Qaeda, so there should be little doubt these claims are being promoted by Western intelligence services.

While splitting the Taliban from al Qaeda would aid in the fight in Afghanistan, the problem is that such propaganda isn't isolated to the combatants in Afghanistan. The "Taliban is willing to negotiate" meme has taken hold among western elites, and this belief can lead to bad policy decisions. NATO countries looking for a reason to disengage from Afghanistan will push negotiations that will lead nowhere.

As U.S. forces prepare to "surge" an estimated 20,000 soldiers and Marines into Afghanistan, the focus in the media has largely centered on where the forces will deploy. Will they be placed in the East along the border with Pakistan to stem the flow from the Taliban infested tribal areas? Will they be deployed to the provinces surrounding Kabul, where the Taliban is tightening a noose around the capital? Will they go to the South, where some of the most intense fighting occurs? Or will they be spread throughout the regions?

One question that is rarely asked is how the additional forces will be used. When fighting an insurgency, the way the troops are used is far more important than the number of troops in theater. The "surge" in Iraq was successful largely because the U.S. military and Iraqi forces decided to live amongst the people to provide security rather than operate from large bases. The additional 30,000 U.S. troops enabled U.S. commanders to get more troops out into the field and gave the commanders additional flexibility to take the fight to al Qaeda and the wider insurgency.

Unfortunately in Afghanistan, the United States and NATO have learned little from the success in Iraq, and are still largely operating from large bases (there are of course exceptions to this, but as a whole, combat power is concentrated in large bases). My friend Tim Lynch, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan for almost five years,says this is a major mistake and the primary reason we have not been successful in curbing the Taliban insurgency.

This problem is demonstrated with the military's application of the Human Terrain Teams, or HTTs. These are the teams of social scientists attached to U.S. military units that are tasked with mapping out the tribal structures and how they can be leveraged to succeed in defeating the Taliban. Tim provides a scathing critique of the HTTs and how they operate, and then explains this is part of the risk-averse culture that exists with much of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. This paragraph sums up the problem in Afghanistan nicely.

America cannot bring security to the rural population of Afghanistan if every time they interact with that population they treat them as potential enemy fighters. The military believes “force protection” is the job number one and I have listened to officers wax eloquent on the subject of protecting their men and woman no matter what because this country is not worth the noble sacrifice that their young troopers would represent if they lost life or limb here. I have used all my self control to avoid kicking these idiots in the teeth which is what they deserve. That kind of thinking will lead to our defeat just as certain as day follows night. It is ridiculous and based on an inflated self centered egotism which I find alarming. Infantry officers are paid to think – to think about the best way to beat those who ask for it while maintaining the cohesion and high morale amongst their troops. The job of military leaders is to spend blood, American blood, and spend it wisely in pursuit of the missions and objectives given them by their civilian masters. I know what those masters have said is our mission in Afghanistan. I also know the current American TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures) do not in any way support the mission they have been given and in fact do the exact opposite by alienating the very population we are supposed to be “winning.” I might be being a little harsh here but how else do you explain the performance of our military to date?

Lest you think Tim is being overly harsh on the U.S. military, it must be noted is a retired Marine officer who has spent much of his five years in Afghanistan outside the wire. He regularly meets with tribal leaders to gauge the security situation in the areas he works in. He isn't asking anyone to do what he isn't doing already.

Tim says we need to stop operating from the big bases and get the HTTs meeting with tribal leaders at the district level. To do this, small, specialized teams of warfighters and problem-solvers must live at the district level to understand and deal with the local problems.

Afghanistan's president raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday when he insisted he would provide safe passage to senior Taliban leaders for negotiations, including Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar. The Taliban responded immediately to Karzai's offer, rejecting it of course.

Mullah Bahadar, the Taliban's second-in-command, insisted NATO forces must leave. "As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit," he told Reuters. "The problems in Afghanistan are because of them."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also weighed in. "The Taliban's (leadership) decided they will not take part in any peace talks with Karzai or Karzai's administration until such a day when foreign forces leave Afghanistan," he told the Associated Press. "The Taliban will pursue jihad against foreign forces and (Karzai's) government."

Combined with other rejections of offers to talk, it is safe to say the senior Taliban leadership has no interest in negotiations. So why did Karzai make the offer? Slate's Fred Kaplan comes close to figuring it out:

Two inferences can be made from [Karzai's offers to talk to Omar]. First, Karzai is not really proposing anything; Omar has no interest in negotiating for peace, and Karzai certainly knows this. Second, he made the remarks in Kabul after returning from a meeting in London, so he may have meant them for domestic consumption—as a demonstration that he's not a puppet of the West.

There is another component to this: Karzai has to show the Afghan people he has repeatedly offered the olive branch to the Taliban, and that it is the Taliban leadership that refuses to sit down and talk.

Kaplan then asks if there are any Taliban that can be turned. The answer is yes, but the current focus on peeling off low mid-level Taliban leader and their fighters is not a new effort. In may of 2005, the Afghan government established the Tahkim-e-Solh program (Strengthening Peace) that did just that.

I saw this program in action in June of 2006 when I was embedded with the Canadian Army in Kandahar. The Canadians coaxed a Taliban leader named Mullah Ibrahim, who was influential in the Panjwai and Zari districts, the birthplace of the Taliban. At the time, the Strengthening Peace program had peeled off 1,569 low and mid-level Taliban leaders and fighters over the course of a year.

So the effort to pull in the rank and file of the Taliban really is nothing new. So what changed? The media has finally started to pay attention to Afghanistan after years of dwelling on Iraq. And so has the U.S. military.

Over the weekend, the Pakistani government closed down the vital border crossing to Afghanistan in the Khyber tribal agency. The decision was made after the Taliban hijacked and looted a convoy of vehicles transporting supplies and two Humvees to NATO forces in Afghanistan. The crossing was reopened today after Pakistan said it would provide military escorts for the convoys.

Attacks on NATO convoys have risen dramatically the past month. More than 70 percent of NATO’s supplies pass through Khyber, making this route the key supply line for our forces in Afghanistan. With the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s northwest worsening, NATO’s main supply route will increasingly be threatened.

The United States is looking for alternate routes, but these come at a cost: poor infrastructure along the alternate routes in the central Asian countries or China. Plus, the United States would have to rely on Russian or China to keep its troops in Afghanistan supplied. The reliance on these rivals for our lifeline to Afghanistan will come at a cost in other theaters vital to the United States’ national security.

There is much talk of a “surge” for Afghanistan to deal with the spiraling violence and the resurgence of the Taliban. Some experts, such as David Kilcullen, say we don’t need a surge in forces, but need to rethink how we are using our forces in Afghanistan. No matter what the answer is, until we secure our supply lines through Pakistan, the U.S. and NATO forces currently there are in danger of being choked off. Richard Fernandez sums up this problem well:

The two major issues raised by the situation are 1) the future of Pakistan’s ability to keep its territorial integrity and 2) the viability of the lines of communication between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s no use talking about a Surge in Afghanistan if the supply lines to the sea are largely cut. Pakistan has to be fixed first.

The Pentagon is planning to expand the number of air bases in the remote regions of Afghanistan’s south and east, USA Today reports. The bases will allow the U.S. military to sortie more of the deadly unmanned Predator and Reaper aircraft that provide surveillance and striking power for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bases are needed “particularly in the rugged mountain area near the border with Pakistan” as the region “has seen some of the toughest fighting for U.S. troops.”

The article focuses on using the Predators and Reapers to support U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, but the USA Today misses the elephant in the room. The U.S. military and CIA have been conducting covert airstrikes into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas that border eastern Afghanistan, primarily with unmanned Predators and Reapers. The strikes have skyrocketed over the past year after President Bush loosened the restrictions on striking inside Pakistan. U.S. intelligence is deeply concerned the next attack on the West will be hatched in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The United States has conducted at least 28 airstrikes and cross-border attacks in Pakistan in during 2008 (you can see the current list here). Twenty-one of these attacks have occurred between Aug. 31 and Nov. 7. At least four senior al Qaeda leaders have been killed in these attacks. In comparison, there were only 10 recorded strikes during 2006 and 2007 combined.

The big question is whether or not President-elect Barack Obama will continue the current policy of hitting al Qaeda and their Taliban allies inside Pakistan. The Pakistani government has already implored Obama to halt the attacks. Obama has run on a platform that emphasizes a kinder, gentler foreign policy that stresses diplomacy. He also promised to be aggressive inside Pakistan. He will soon learn that being “liked” and “respected” by the international community often conflicts with vital U.S. national security interests.

President-elect Obama's most confounding national security challenge may not lie with our enemies, but rather our allies.

Michael Yon writes

Most of our allies are not very helpful. With the exception of the British, Canadians, Dutch, and a few others such as the Aussies, we are not fighting this with an “A-team” of international allies. With a few exceptions, our allies on the ground are comprised of several dozen countries that mostly refuse to fight. The bulk of NATO amounts to little more than a “Taliban piñata.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is proving nearly worthless and provides no credible threat to armed opposition groups (AOGs) in Afghanistan. Most of the NATO member countries seem to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of “Taliban.” They piled in when the war looked easy and largely humanitarian. But now that it’s getting harder and more dangerous, they would like to pile out.

In addition, Obama will have to figure out a way to harden the softening alliance against a newly aggressive Russian Bear. The invasion of Georgia, much like Afghanistan, forced NATO to take a hard look inward. The same western European member states vetoed the assimilation of Georgia into the treaty organization--a move that ultimately led to the Russian invasion of South Ossetia--also have refused to engage the enemy in Afghanistan.

Nearly all of the NATO nations spend less than 2 percent on defense, compared to the United States' 4 percent. The British Admiralty is in a state of open revolt with the Labour government over their neglect of the Royal Navy. German Special Forces--constrained by politicians at home--have been forced to let high-value Taliban commanders slip away. And French carrier based fighters take the weekends off.

The alliance is weak. Defense bureaucrats at home know it. Our enemies know it. So here's hoping that Obama can forge all of that newfound goodwill abroad into steely determination on the battlefield.

On the heels of a successful mission in Kandahar, which cleared the area of hundreds of Taliban fighters, U.S. and Afghan forces dealt a second major blow to insurgents in the past week:

U.S.-led forces rained fire for two days on militants near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, officials said Monday, killing about 55 insurgents and underscoring how fighting with Taliban insurgents is escalating.

The battle in eastern Paktika province was the second in the past week to reportedly inflict major casualties on militants, whom Afghan officials insist are swarming in from strongholds in Pakistan.

Pakistan's government on Monday reiterated an offer to fence the craggy, 1,500-mile frontier--a project begun but abandoned last year amid criticism that it would only enrage the tribes who straddle the frontier and among whom the Taliban find many recruits.

Yes, why would anyone risk upsetting the terrorists by building a wall to keep them away? Until President Karzai dismisses such frivolous concerns, successful battles will not translate into long-term stability.