It’s a little known fact that one of the big reasons Iraq turned around is we simply offered a better price than al Qaeda. Within a month the word got out that we were paying top dollar and the insurgents were turning against the terrorists and the US body count started to drop.

Will the same strategy work elsewhere?

From the Times Online:

Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long years of war — there is an old saying that “you can rent an Afghan but never buy one” — and battles have often been decided by defections rather than combat.

Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165m a day the United States is spending fighting the war.

And here’s a bit about a what we did in Iraq…

The tactic was used to good effect in Iraq where the US government put 100,000 Sunni gunmen on its payroll for about $300 a month each.

Some disagree that this strategy will work without more troops, but a refocusing of priorities along with paying people to not kill us will do the trick. Afghans are like anybody else…they want to be able to provide for their families and if somebody is offering a better deal, they’ll go with the best price in town. This isn’t a holy war even though the Taliban would like to convince everybody it is.

More as it develops…

George Will writes today that we should pull out of Afghanistan and instead focus on Pakistan.

Even though I still think we should stay (and I’ll get into why), at this point he has my ear…

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Couple this with the reality that a soldier dies every 14 hours in Afghanistan and dropping public opinion about why we should be there, and you have a recipe for quick withdrawal.

But here’s why I think we still need to keep pushing for at least another year…opium.

I’ve talked about this before, but to sum it up…if we allow Afghans to grow opium legally (as they do in India and Turkey) and sell it to pharmaceutical companies, we can regulate it and they can pull themselves out of the crushing poverty that is the backdrop for sympathetic views of the Taliban.

If not, we should just pack up and go.

Seriously. Because they’re not going to be able to build a stable economy with anything else and without money there is no hope for the country. And I mean NO hope. Virtually nothing can grow there, they have scant natural resources and their infrastructure is literally 200 years behind ours. It’s a crazy place and we can’t simply pour billions after billions to rebuild. Well, we can, but it’s not sustainable.

The choice is ours, but one thing is for sure…more troops won’t make Afghanistan whole again. No way, no how.

I welcome your thoughts…

” I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan. I think that these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told me that. I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And so — and I believe that information according to the FBI and others could have been gained through other methods.”
- John McCain on Face The Nation today

Yes folks, torture became a recruitment tool. And it’s apparently yet another reason we got bogged down in Iraq. Again, from McCain…

“Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in Camp Bucca, where there’s the 20,000-prisoner camp. We met with a former high- ranking member of al Qaeda. I said, how did you succeed so well in Iraq after the initial invasions? He said two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion, there was no order of any kind. Two, he said Abu Ghraib pictures allowed me and helped me to recruit thousands of young men to our cause. Now that’s al Qaeda.”

Does this surprise anybody?

The question now…will we learn?

What do George Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have in common?

Cindy Sheehan.

The anti-war protester who used to stake herself at George Bush’s ranch in Texas will now follow the Obamas’ to their vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. Her cause is to protest the continuing wars in the Middle East.

She also ran against Nancy Pelosi last November as an Independent. Sheehan garnered 16% of the vote to Pelosi’s 72%.

Her visit to Martha’s Vineyard is unlikely to generate the attention she received in Texas, however. Most liberals are not criticizing Obama as they did Bush, partially because those wars remain linked in the minds of most American with George Bush.

Sheehan said she plans to be at Martha’s Vineyard because “the body bags aren’t taking a vacation.”

With that in mind, I guess Barack Obama is not supposed to either.

(from Foolocracy.com)

During this weekend’s D-Day remembrance ceremony, President Obama urged us not to forget those who fought for our freedom and what they managed to achieve.

Many estimate we are losing as many as 1,200 WW II veterans every day in America alone. But there’s no reason we have to lose their stories. For those of us with parents or grandparents who fought in WWII, it’s up to us to not let that war and its sacrifices drift into distant memory and mythology.

I’ve lived my life surrounded by stories of WW II, whether it’s personal stories about my grandfathers who both served in the Air Force, a college professor’s tale of escaping the Nazi invasion of Austria and then Poland or even just the biographies of the political leaders who’ve served in office during my lifetime: George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Jimmy Carter. Even though I was born 30 years and a few months after D Day, WW II never seemed all that long ago.

But now it is long ago. Soon there will be WW II remembrances with only a handful of veterans, or none at all. Soon, the only breathing link between our world and the world of the 1930s and 1940s will be through those of us who’ve heard the stories first-hand, who knew the very real people who served both at home and abroad.

We may call them the Greatest Generation or the WW II generation, but many of us just called them Mom or Dad or Grandma or Granddad. We know they were just human, no more or less flawed than we are, no more or less brave. And that’s what makes what they achieved all the more extraordinary. All the more worth remembering.

In memory of Henry Casey Carl. 1925 – 2009.

This is Mike Fritz and David Murdock from ANP.

Senator Lindsey Graham was a passionate critic of the Bush Justice attorneys during this past summer’s Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogation.

Lately, however, Graham seems to have had second thoughts on the matter. At a recent Judiciary subcommittee hearing investigating the torture memos, Graham mounted a feisty defense of Jay Bybee, John Yoo and the lawyers who provided legal cover for detainee abuse.

This performance sent producer Mike Fritz back to the ANP archives to confirm that this was indeed the same Lindsey Graham we remembered from the summer, and sure enough, it was. As this video reveals, same guy – different message.

Click to view the whole story at Huffington Post.

While some have worried that the Democratic controlled Congress might strip our war efforts of funding, that wasn’t the case in the House where members passed $97 billion in war funding by a vote of 368-60 — $12 billion more than President Obama requested.

The senate is in the process of passing a similar bill, making it almost a sure thing that Obama will get all the money he needs to fight our wars the way he wants. I wonder if a President McCain would have gotten the money as easily?

For those who’ve worried that under the command of President Obama, our military in Iraq won’t be able to adjust to realities on the ground, there’s this story out of Mosul. Conditions in the region are not good and our forces are likely postpone the scheduled withdrawal if Iraqi authorities ask us to stay.

Army Colonel Gary Volesky, commander of U.S. forces in the Mosul area, said U.S. and Iraqi officials are now assessing security in the northern Iraqi city to determine whether his troops should leave by June 30, when U.S. combat forces are due to pull back from towns and cities across Iraq.

The deadline is part of a U.S.-Iraqi pact reached last year that also calls for all U.S. troops to depart Iraq by 2012.

Neither we nor the Iraqis want to leave a terrorist haven/destabilized region in Iraq. If Mosul is too violent for the Iraqis to govern effectively, there’s good reason to keep our forces involved. Such flexibility is necessary if we want to withdrawal from Iraq responsibly. At this point, it’s pretty clear Obama supports the responsible withdrawal side rather than the withdrawal-at-all-costs side many feared he’d follow once elected president.

Since taking office, Obama has tended towards pragmatism in military endeavors, even trending somewhat to the hawkish side, particularly in Afghanistan. For those listening closely during the election, this isn’t a huge surprise, but it is welcome.

Obama warned that al-Qaida is actively planning attacks on the United States from secret havens in Pakistan. He said he was setting new benchmarks and sending in 4,000 more troops, hundreds of civilians and increased aid for a war that has lasted more than seven years and still has no end in sight.

“I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future,” Obama said. “That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just.”

The president, who declared last weekend an “exit strategy” was needed for Afghanistan, never used those words in announcing his plans on Friday. His strategy is built on an ambitious goal of boosting the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 troops by 2011 — and greatly increasing training by U.S. troops accompanying them — so the Afghan military can defeat Taliban insurgents and take control of the war.

I’ve always believed there has to be a military aspect to combating terrorism and am willing to trust the president that greater military force is needed in Afghanistan to secure our safety. Given that Obama’s plan has us substantially invested in Afghanistan until at least 2011, this is now his war.

Politically, it’ll be interesting to watch how having a liberal conduct a militaristic war against terrorism compares to having George Bush conduct that war. Some of the familiar narratives of both the left and the right will likely change. After all, like it or not, support for a president and support for current wars tend to strongly interrelate.

Of course, what really matters is that our strategy is sound and our success is substantial. I think most of us can agree on that.

Looks like President Obama isn’t the reactionary pacifist some of his critics (and supporters) thought he was. Tomorrow, the administration is expected to announce a major increase in forces in Afghanistan.

Confronting an inherited and faltering war, President Barack Obama plans to dispatch thousands more military and civilian trainers to Afghanistan by the fall on top of the 17,000 combat troops he has already ordered, senior administration officials said Thursday.

Obama’s war strategy, which will he announce on Friday, includes no timeline for withdrawal of troops. The war began more than seven years ago.

As he plans to put more U.S. lives and money into the war zone, Obama will set benchmarks for progress in Afghanistan and neighboring, troubled Pakistan. The goal is to show Congress and the American people that the strategy is working — and to set a clear framework for making corrections as needed.

While Obama did campaign on refocusing on the conflict in Afghanistan, this news is likely to surprise more than a few. Apparently, the president believes military force can help our ongoing war on terror conflict against various terrorist organizations. Obviously, Obama wants to be very sure to put in place the kinds of benchmarks his predecessor resisted. That’s probably for the best considering the war has gone on for over seven years. I doubt the public will have much patience for more war and will expect measurable results.

More when the official announcement comes.

The Obama administration is abandoning one of President George W. Bush’s key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant In court filings Friday, the Justice Department said it will no longer use the term to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. But his Justice Department says that authority comes from Congress and the international laws of war, not from the president’s own wartime power as Bush had argued.

This appears to be an attempt by the new administration to rid our nation of some of the gray areas the Bush administration created in the years after September 11th. While many of Bush’s supporters thought the threat of terrorism necessitated the president having the power to operate outside of congressional authority and international laws of war, many felt Bush was overreaching and creating powers that could be too easily abused. In a conflict which could continue for generations, our nation needs to operate under policies more exact than “because the president says so.”

Today, Obama took an important step in reconfiguring how we pursue the war on terror. While the move doesn’t change current realities such as specific incarcerations, the effect of the change is to remove some of the executive branch’s power. For those of us who never felt uncomfortable with the level of presidential power Bush wielded, this is a welcome change.

One of my favorite comedians is on his way overseas to entertain our brave men and women and he’s posting a lot of pictures and commentary detailing the whole thing.

Here’s the first entry…

Last December (2008) I went to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the Seargent Major Tour for the USO. I did shows in Army bases all over the Middle East. I had never done anything like it before and it left me with a lasting impression. I took lots of pictures and wrote several emails back to my family throughout the trip, mostly to let them know that I was okay, but they were very detailed. I have intended since then to post these stories and pictures on my site but I am a lazy idiot.

Today I feel four percent less lazy and stupid than usual, so I am going to try to start posting these stories. What I intend to do is post an entry each day as if I was there doing those things now. The reason for this is that it means I have to do less work to edit the emails that I sent my mom and sisters. I don’t have to change all the present tense stuff to past tense.

So this will start tomorrow. But let me just add the caveat that… I might not do it. I have a lot of energy right now and I’m all excited about this but tomorrow I might just lay in a pool of my own vomit instead.

And so it begins…

By the way, if you haven’t see his now famous “Everything’s Amazing. Nobody’s Happy.” bit on Conan’s show, well, you’re in for a treat…

“You’re sitting in a chair…in the SKY!”

Love it.

Break a leg Louis.

The Department of Defense has altered the policy concerning the photography of America’s returning war dead. Now, news organizations will be allowed to photograph and disseminate photos of flag-draped coffins — as long as the families of the fallen soldiers give permission.

While the no-photographs policy has been in place since 1991, the issue became contentious when President Bush put a total ban on the release of photos of coffins returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Opponents contended Bush was trying to hide the true cost of the war while supporters of the policy argued such pictures are too easily exploited.

The new policy seems to be an acceptable compromise. While photos of flag-draped coffins lined up in the back of a plane might be dramatic, I don’t think they serve any notable purpose and don’t inform us nearly as much as the soldier obituaries run in papers across America and released regularly by the DoD. But, if news organizations feel compelled to print such photos and if the families of the deceased soldiers are amenable to having those photos published, I see no compelling reason to prohibit the act. Bush’s total ban always seemed too extreme of a policy.

Obama’s plan would pull out all combat troops 19 months after his inauguration, although he had promised repeatedly during the 2008 campaign that he would withdraw them 16 months after taking office. That schedule, based on removing roughly one brigade a month, was predicated on commanders determining that it would not endanger U.S. troops left behind or Iraq’s fragile security.

Really, I don’ t think Obama can be criticized by anti-war folk because he’s added three months onto his initial pledge. In fact, given that he now has access to information he lacked during the campaign, I’m surprised his withdrawal plan is so close to what he promised. I don’t know if this means the majority of commanders are in agreement that we can safely leave or if this means Obama is determined to follow through with removal of our troops, no matter the consequences.

I have always tried to view the Iraq situation in the present tense, looking at the situation as it is now and not as it was when we invaded or how I ardently wish it might be in the future. For a long time, I opposed withdrawal because I found the idea too reckless, more likely to cause greater turmoil than to bring any semblance of lasting peace. But with the success of the surge and other anti-insurgent policies (both American and Iraqi), we may have reached a point where the drawdown of our forces will not threaten Iraq’s or the greater region’s stability.

Once the redeployment of combat troops begins, we will get a better sense whether or not their absence is causing more problems than it’s solving. I hope to God we can get our men and women out of there without setting off another crisis. President Obama makes a good case that he knows what he is doing. I just hope he keeps a steady hand on the situation.

A U.S. combat outpost in the endless mountains of Afghanistan

President Obama said in his campaign that he would shift U.S. attention to the war in Afghanistan and rethink American strategy there.  It’s clear he intends to do just that.  But according to a New York Times story sourced to “senior administration officials,” in a somewhat surprising move, Obama plans to take a “tougher line” toward Afghan President Hamid Karzai and “put more emphasis on waging war than on development.”

Mr. Karzai is now seen as a potential impediment to American goals in Afghanistan, the officials said, because corruption has become rampant in his government, contributing to a flourishing drug trade and the resurgence of the Taliban.

All that development and “nation building” stuff will be left to NATO, most of which shows little interest in contributing more troops or engaging in combat:

They said that the Obama administration would work with provincial leaders as an alternative to the central government, and that it would leave economic development and nation-building increasingly to European allies, so that American forces could focus on the fight against insurgents.

“If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who served under Mr. Bush and is staying on under Mr. Obama, told Congress on Tuesday. He said there was not enough “time, patience or money” to pursue overly ambitious goals in Afghanistan, and he called the war there as “our greatest military challenge.”

The U.S. is shifting its strategic focus away from lofty goals for Afghanistan’s future and protection for — who has been called the “Mayor of Kabul” because he doesn’t wield authority beyond the capital — so the planned doubling of U.S troop levels by this summer can be used to battle the Taliban in the countryside and ratchet up the military pressure on Qaeda in hiding across the Pakistani border.

As the “senior official” (I get the feeling it’s Gates) put it:

“What we’re trying to do is to focus on the Al Qaeda problem. That has to be our first priority.”

A report by Stratfor, the private intelligence service, sees U.S. policy evolving quickly along lines similar to those suggested by the Times’ source.

Stratfor for believes that the counter-insurgency war to defeat the Taliban and defend the Afghan central government is essentially not winnable, even with a half million U.S. troops, and that the U.S. interest in Afghanistan is the suppression of al Qaeda, not the governance of that sprawling, divided and inhospitable “nation.”

Accordingly, Stratfor believes that U.S. strategy will wind up looking something like this:

“[T]he search for al Qaeda and other Islamist groups is an intelligence matter best left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command. Defeating al Qaeda does not require tens of thousands of troops — it requires excellent intelligence and a special operations capability. That is true whether al Qaeda is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Intelligence, covert forces and air strikes are what is needed in this fight, and of the three, intelligence is the key.

Sounds like a plan.  Tell us what you think in the comments.

(Visit me at The Purple Center)

AP reports…

And here’s a partial transcript just in case you can’t see the video…

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

I do love Joe’s honesty though, because the fact that he prefers the pro-war propaganda created by the government instead of actual facts is pretty much all you need to know about him.

By the way, I will never forgive McCain for unleashing this guy on us.

The fighting is growing more intense as Israel has started their ground offensive. And if Israel doesn’t realize that they’ve overreached here and are losing sympathy around the world, then they better wake up and realize it soon. You can’t kill this many women and children and not get a ton of backlash.

From CNN:

“Every couple of minutes we hear an explosion,” Safa Joudeh, a Gaza City resident, told CNN early Monday. “We can see tanks coming closer and closer into Gaza.”

She said most residents are confined to their homes, without electricity and running out of food and water.

Palestinian medical sources say Israeli forces have killed 37 Palestinians — both civilians and militants — since moving into the territory Saturday night.

With those deaths, at least 507 Palestinians, including about 100 women and children, have been killed since Israeli airstrikes began December 27, and 2,600 Palestinians have been injured, most of them civilians, sources said.

The question now: what will Obama say? He’s being put between a rock and a hard place because of the whole “there aren’t two presidents” thing, but would it be better for him to say something sooner rather than later?

Still, that doesn’t mean Bush’s presidency will be a failure…

Personally, I don’t think Iraqi democratization will ultimately turn out the way Bush and company said it would. Because my guess is that Iraq and Iran will form a political coalition and Iraq will seek to legitimize Iran’s nuclear program so down the road they can build their own nuclear program.

Because, like it or not, nuclear energy is clean and it’s the only way these Middle Eastern countries will survive after the oil runs out eventually. That will be the argument. That it’s actually a stabilizing force in the region. And Russia and China will obviously side with Iraq and Iran because they need access to oil so they can build up their infrastructures to compete with America.

Sound plausible?

A new report from the Senate Armed Services Committee places significant blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay on former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

The report’s executive summary, made public by the committee’s Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed to the abuse by authorizing aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay on December 2, 2002.

He rescinded the authorization six weeks later. But the report said word of his approval continued to spread within U.S. military circles and encouraged the use of harsh techniques as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report concluded that Rumsfeld’s actions were “a direct cause of detainee abuse” at Guantanamo and “influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques … in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The report concluded that the abuses were not merely a case of a few soldiers acting on their own but the result of decisions made at the highest levels within the Department of Defense. The report also faults President Bush for signing a memorandum in February of 2002 that stated the Geneva Convention did not apply to the U.S. war with al Qaeda.

While I know there are still plenty of people who view torture as an acceptable means of extracting information from terrorists, I have long argued that we damage the deepest principles of America and compromise our moral authority when we resort to abuse — even when we do so in the name of our own defense. The “but our enemies are worse” argument holds no water for me. Yes, they are much, much worse. That doesn’t matter. We can’t let our enemies set the standards for morality.

Careful observers have long known that the instances of detainee abuse were not just the result of a few “overzealous” soldiers but the result of an administration that overreached in its quest for victory. I’m glad the Senate Armed Services Committee was willing to place the blame where it belongs: at the top.

Why?

Because it’s still a mess…

BAGHDAD – For the past two weeks I’ve been embedded with the United States Army in Baghdad, and I find myself unable to figure out what to make of this place. Baghdad, despite the remarkable success of the surge, is as mind-bogglingly run-down and dysfunctional as ever, even compared with other Arabic countries. Iraq is a dark place. At times it feels like a doomed country that has only been temporarily spared the reckoning that is coming. Other times it is possible to look past the grimness and see progress beyond the mere slackening off of violence and war. Is Iraq truly on the mend, or has a total breakdown been merely postponed? Opinions here among Americans and Iraqis are mixed, but nearly everyone seems to agree about one thing at least: terrorists and insurgents will respond with a surge of their own in the wake of the upcoming withdrawal of American forces.

My guess is that since Obama kept Gates on, the withdraw will be slower…but it’s inevitable and we all know it. Iraq has to stand on its own, and there’s little we can do to stop internal tensions that have been going on for as long as anybody can remember. We would literally have to be there for decades and watch a generation die out, and that’s not politically or economically feasible at this point.

By the way, the photo above is of a mini bus that was full of 15 police cadets that was hit by a car bomb near a police academy in Baghdad on Monday. 36 people died in bombings around the country yesterday.