Afghanistan is the largest and the most difficult crisis Obama confronts away from home. And here the trap was fashioned largely by himself. He said, all through the presidential campaign, that Iraq was the wrong war but Afghanistan was the right one. It was ‘a war of necessity’, he said this summer. And he has implied that he would accept his generals’ definition of the proper scale of such a war. Now it appears that Afghanistan is being lost, indeed that it cannot be controlled with fewer than half a million troops on the ground for a decade or more. The generals are for adding troops, as in Vietnam, in increments of tens of thousands. Their current request was leaked to Bob Woodward, who published it in the Washington Post on 21 September, after Obama asked that it be kept from the public for a longer interval while he deliberated. The leak was an act of military politics if not insubordination; its aim was to show the president the cost of resisting the generals.
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. ignored warnings before deadly Afghan attack…Three intelligence reports dismissed days before eight U.S. soldiers killed
Bill Gertz, October 16, 2009
Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Mountain Warrior, told The Times that the three reports did not stand out among hundreds of others and that the intelligence was deemed to be not specific and uncorroborated.
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The Economist October 17, 2009 Cover Story
Obama's War: Why the Afghanistan war deserves more resources, commitment and political will
The coalition, however, lacks three essential components of a successful strategy. It needs a credible, legitimate government to work with, the resources to do the job and the belief that America’s president is behind this war.
Many Afghans find it bizarre that the West should devote so much money to Mr Karzai, yet be unable to hold him to account over something so basic as stuffing ballot boxes on an industrial scale. For most, however, the local and provincial leaders matter more than the distant central government.
Phi Beta Iota:Two reports today confirm our grave doubts about the viability of U.S. Departemnt of Defense (DoD) research in general, and Science & Technology (S&T) in particular. In combination with the known grid-loock and inherent loss of integrity within defense acquisition, these two reports suggest that the U.S. taxpayer will continue to pay more and more for less and less, while secrecy is used to avoid accountability. It has long troubled us that in classifying deficiencies, DoD assures a lifetime monopoly on “fixes” to the people that created the deficiencies in the first place–they do not know what they do not know! DoD desperately needs a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) able to get a grip on all Human Intelligence (HUMINT) funded by the U.S. taxpayer. Ideal would be an expansion of the Undersecretary of Defense of Intelligence so as to add this as an integrative ICT and HUMINT integration function, while also assuming collaborative oversight of the Inspector General and of Operational Test and Evaluation. See the latest draft of the HUMINT Monograph for more information.
Taliban claim Afghan bomb, say [Indian] embassy was target
KABUL – The Taliban have claimed responsibility for Thursday's suicide car bomb in the Afghan capital, saying their target was the Indian Embassy.
Phi Beta Iota: India's hands are not clean. There are ample reports of India offering safe-haven bases for cross-border terrorism into Pakistan, and the creation of the new Afghan intelligence and covert action agency under Indian and other auspices bodes ill. In our judgement, there is an urgent need for a multinational containment of Pakistan on the one side, and Israel on the other, to include a total end to the Israeli campaign of genocide and other atrocities against the Palestinian peoples. India is a much more responsible country than Pakistan, but its military and intelligence branches are out of control and must be brought under discipline if we are to contain Pakistan, which has the Sunni nuclear bomb, and prevent the emergence of a new Cold War that uses terrorists and “freedom fighters” to wage proxy war EVERYWHERE. Iran will be a player best contained by rushing to meet their legitimate needs for nuclear power. While everyone else is distracted, China will accelerate and deepen its virtual take-over of the Southern Hemisphere. As once stable governments begin to fail we anticipate an increase in ethnicity-based crime families that strive to meet the need for security and prosperity in the absence of reliable governnance. Naturally no one in Washington is thinking about any of this.
It’s that time again. About once a decade, the military services attempt to reform how they educate officers. This time, the catalyst is a series of Senate and House hearings on how well the services educate officers. The Defense Science Board will begin a study on military education reform soon. The defense intellectual blogosphere is electric with calls for reform. Other creative ideas for reform will follow in the coming days. And all will fail. . . . . . . . The Skelton reforms have shown that often legislation is the only sure way to achieve what cultural friction cannot overcome. To be sure, no effort as culturally disruptive as this can be implemented quickly. At least five years would be needed to get it off the ground, and more than a decade would pass before SSP-qualified officers would advance to positions of authority. But if we are to create a body of gifted officers capable of dealing with the complexities of modern warfare, we soon must begin to break the stranglehold of the service personnel systems and offer the proper rewards to those young, talented and ambitious officers who are most gifted in the strategic art. AFJ
Despite the army's newest technology, one of their most valuable assets so far was an informant: a farmer with a taste for opium.
Seattle Times October 7, 2009 Pg. 1 Hal Bernton
In the farmlands and ancient villages of the Arghandab, an Army campaign launched this summer has been a slow, difficult grind, and insurgent forces continue to hold sway over large areas. Technology alone isn't enough to win this fight
Phi Beta Iota: This piece moved us, and reminded us of the The Soldier's Load. Weight, Water, and “who's got eyes on?” Then we recall The Tunnels of Cu Chi and more recently, Phantom Soldier. President Obama is caught between those he listens to, who want him to see AF in isolation, and those he does not listen to, who want him to address all ten high-level threats by harmonizing all twelve core policies within a balanced budget. The US IC, which should be empowering the President, appears AWOL.
Chuck Spinney Sends: The attached article, “Generals Open New Front in Washington,” by Pat Buchanan describes how the time honored practice of Versailles Groupthink is now closing in to circumscribe President Obama's strategic options in Afghanistan and Pakistan, much as it did to Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam.
Note how the “strategic” options for Afghanistan are boiling down to a consensus view of an either/or decision. Either a large escalation of US ground forces or an escalation of destabilizing Predator attacks, particularly in Pakistan, or a compromise on some combination of the two. In all cases, there will be a large increase in the size of the Afghan Army. That questionable enterprise is taken as a given by the emerging consensus view. If Buchanan is right about this either/or choice … Obama is being set up big time by advisors, because, as near as I can tell, Obama has no access to outside or dissenting views. There is no third or fourth way, because there is no one in the role of George Ball to just say no (who LBJ ignored much to his chagrin), and there is no one on Capital Hill with political or military smarts or the stature to shape a third, more practical alternative.Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan on Groupthinking Apparat Moves to Finish Off Obama”
