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Generals: More forces needed for Afghan offensive

By Steve Hynd

Following Ron's last post about piecemeal incremental escalation being a very real danger in Af/Pak - the Vietnam process whereby ceilings become floors - it should be noted that such escalation is already what the generals are advocating. But they'd prefer the escalation came from other than US troops.

The American general who recently left his post as the top commander in Europe said NATO allies could and should send more forces and specialized help such as medical helicopters for the widening fight in the south.

"Certainly I'd like to see more U.K. forces," Gen. John Craddock said, because home base for the major fight in the south is in Helmand province, where British forces have had the lead for years.

..."I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The fact of the matter is, we don't have enough Afghan forces," [Marine Brig. Gen. Larry] Nicholson said during a telephone briefing from Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan. "And I'd like more."

...Nicholson also said he'd like more U.S. troops in the region, but that "I don't necessarily need more troops."

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen on Wednesday avoided discussing the possibility of sending more troops, telling a National Press Club audience that the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was still assessing his force needs.

Craddock said that review, due in mid-August, will be paired with a similar assessment by NATO.

"I think we'll hear shortly whether that's enough," he said of troops numbers.

The review will probably recommend subtle shifts in policy, such as an express focus on protecting civilians as the top mission, instead of hunting "bad guys," Craddock said.

That last sentence is highly significant. Although Obama stated plainly back in March that hunting bad guys and then getting out was the primary mission, military leaders like McChrystal have been speaking for months as if their Commander in Chief had never opened his mouth. Such a change in mission is definitely not a subtle one; it instead turns stated Af/Pak policy entirely on its head and means a major change in timeline. A full-on counter-insurgency campaign would take many years longer, involving many more deaths and billions more dollars, than a counter-terrorism one where COIN is simply part of the tool set at the operational level.

The military is preparing its infrastructure for exactly such a long war as well, to the enrichment of U.S. war profiteers.

DynCorp International Inc. and Fluor Corp. won Army contracts that could be valued at $15 billion over the next five years to build bases and other infrastructure for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The deals show how lucrative logistics contracts in Afghanistan will be, since the country has a far less developed infrastructure than Iraq.

Would anyone like to bet against there being thousands of more American soldiers bound for Quagmiristan before 12 months have passed, no matter what Obama might be saying publicly right now?

Robert McNamara's Memo To The Bush/Obama Hawks

By Steve Hynd

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam conflict, has died aged 93. Over at Hullabaloo, D-Day reminds us of McNamara's cautionary message for future U.S. leaders, comprising eleven causes and lessons he listed coming out of Vietnam.

We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for – and a determination to fight for — freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values….

Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders….No Southeast Asian [experts] existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam.

We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people’s movements. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to …winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did….We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced…confront[ing] uncharted seas and an alien environment. A nation’s deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, bur rather in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action — other than in response to direct threats to our own national security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

…We thus failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia - our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them, and the necessity of changing course when failure was clear….

D-Day writes:

If this isn't an accusatory note toward the practitioners of American foreign policy during the entire post-war period up through today, I don't know what is... I find these cautions from McNamara to be crucially important, but even in my most optimistic moments I don't believe America is even wired to live up to them.

Certainly in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan - and in their determination to pursue "strategic ambiguity" in the region over Iran - modern U.S. leaders seem hell-bent upon ignoring McNamara's hard-won wisdom.

Back in 2004, Douglas Saunders interviewed McNamara and asked him for his views on the Iraq invasion. The former SecDef was sure it was yet another massive mistake ignoring those 11 cautionary lessons.

"We're misusing our influence," he said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."

While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. "There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world."

On Monday night, we heard the United States at its very worst with George W. Bush's caustic State of the Union address, in which he declared, over and over, that America is serving God's will directly and does not need "a permission slip" from other nations since "the cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind."

Obama's people are too busy reading Ricks, Nagl and Kilcullen to read Revelations, but the unshakeable certainty that America has the right and duty - the White Man's Burden by either divine mandate or through simple technocratic superiority - to re-shape other nations is still omnipresent.

The Name Of The Iran Game Is Still Strategic Ambiguity

By Steve Hynd

There's a story in the London Times today which says the Saudis have secretly okayed any overflight of their territory involved in an Israeli attack on Iran. The rightwing nuts for whom any day is a good day to bomb Iranians love it.

But since one of the Times' reporters is serial fabulist Uzi Mahnaimi, the other is neocon shill for war with Iran Sarah Baxter, and the only sources for the tale are anonymous, you can probably chalk it off to a continued propaganda effort which has now spanned successive U.S. and Israeli administrations. 

The aim has always been to create "strategic ambiguity" - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball. D.C. hawks have gotten on board to such an extent that it is already an accepted fact among the Very Serious Person set that Obama's idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, and then the bombs will begin to fall. That's why they're so keen on using Iran's election as an excuse to derail those efforts - they're sure they'll never restart and thus they will be proven correct. Self fulfilling prophecy!

And Joe Biden gets to play too:

Vice President Joe Biden seemed to give Israel a green light for military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat, saying the U.S. "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

..."Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," Biden told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed," Biden said.

Video from Crooks and Liars here.

Everybody, from Obama on down, is ignoring as hard as they can the opinion of successive heads of the IAEA - el Baradei and now Yukiya Amano - that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. It doesn't fit the domestic narrative, which is all about hanging tough to gain votes. As usual, foreign policy is domestic gamesplaying inflicted upon foreigners. But then again, that's true of Iran's leaders too.

Independence Day and Occupation

By Steve Hynd

Happy Fourth of July to our American Readers. As I've said before, as a lifelong voter for Scottish independence I'm jealous as hell.

But on your Independence Day it might be worth giving a few minutes thought to those your nation and mine occupy in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've been reduced to the role of "collateral damage", told they should be greatful for being bombed into submission to our edicts, denied basic rights such as habeas corpus in our foreign prisons, tortured and abused, exposed to our dumb belief in The White Man's Burden. Iraqis have finally managed to gain enough independence to tell us to butt out of their internal struggles, as we always should have.

Days earlier, Iraqis had celebrated the withdrawal of American forces from their cities as a "day of national sovereignty." And while Biden's visit was welcomed as evidence that the U.S. doesn't plan to completely disengage from Iraq, al-Maliki made it clear that he does not want U.S. officials to involve themselves as closely in Iraqi politics as they did in the past.

Al-Maliki told Biden that "the reconciliation issue is a purely Iraqi issue and any non-Iraqi involvement might have a negative effect," al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said. "We don't want the Americans to come and get involved."

But Afghans, citizens of a state which has no power to constrain our colonialism, don't have that luxury. This Independence Day I recommend reading  an op-ed by Rory Stewart, an ex-soldier and diplomat who is Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center on Human Rights Policy at Harvard. From 2000 to 2002 he walked solo across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles, staying in villagers houses, and he has been the UK's Coalition Deputy Governor for two Iraqi provinces.

Rory Stewart's op-ed, The Irresistable Illusion, is available at the London Review of Books website (h/t Newshoggers' regular Geoff). Read it all, but here's a lengthy snippet.

Every Afghan ruler in the 20th century was assassinated, lynched or deposed. The Communist government tried to tear down the old structures of mullah and khan; the anti-Soviet jihad set up new ones, bolstered with US and Saudi cash and weapons supplied from Pakistan. There is almost no economic activity in the country, aside from international aid and the production of illegal narcotics. The Afghan army cannot, like Pakistan’s, reject America’s attempt to define national security priorities; Afghan diplomats cannot mock our pronouncements. Karzai is widely criticised, but more than seven years after the invasion there is still no plausible alternative candidate; there aren’t even recognisable political parties.

Obama’s new policy has a very narrow focus – counter-terrorism – and a very broad definition of how to achieve it: no less than the fixing of the Afghan state. He presents this in a formal syllogism. The final goal in the region is

to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

A necessary condition of the defeat of al-Qaida is the defeat of the Taliban because

if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban . . . that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.

Such efforts are hampered by the nature of the Afghan economy and government. We must implement a counter-insurgency strategy, which includes

the deployment of 17,000 troops [to] take the fight to the Taliban in the south and the east

but also adopt a more ‘comprehensive approach’, aiming to

promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government . . . advance security, opportunity and justice . . . develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.

Finally, Afghanistan cannot be addressed without addressing Pakistan:

To defeat an enemy that heeds no borders or laws of war, we must recognise the fundamental connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Or, in the pithier statement made by Obama last October:

In order to catch Osama bin Laden we have to win in Afghanistan and stabilise Pakistan.

Obama, then, combines a negative account of Afghanistan’s past and present – he describes the border region as ‘the most dangerous place in the world’ – with an optimism that it can be transformed. He assumes that we have a moral justification and obligation to intervene, that the US and its allies have the capacity to address the threat and that our global humanitarian and security objectives are consistent and mutually reinforcing.

...It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state. They have no clear picture of this promised ‘state’, and such a thing could come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners. Is a centralised state, in any case, an appropriate model for a mountainous country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values? And even were stronger central institutions to emerge, would they assist Western national security objectives? Afghanistan is starting from a very low base: 30 years of investment might allow its army, police, civil service and economy to approach the levels of Pakistan. But Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts US operations. From a narrow (and harsh) US national security perspective, a poor failed state could be easier to handle than a more developed one: Yemen is less threatening than Iran, Somalia than Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan than Pakistan.

Yet the current state-building project, at the heart of our policy, is justified in the most instrumental terms – not as an end in itself but as a means towards counter-terrorism. Obama is clear about this:

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. That’s the goal that must be achieved.

In pursuit of this objective, Obama has so far committed to building ‘an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000’, and adds that ‘increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed.’ US generals have spoken openly about wanting a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers (in a country with a population half the size of Britain’s). Such a force would cost $2 or $3 billion a year to maintain; the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. We criticise developing countries for spending 30 per cent of their budget on defence; we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 per cent of its budget.

Some policymakers have been quick to point out that this cost is unsustainable and will leave Afghanistan dependent for ever on the largesse of the international community. Some have even raised the spectre (suggested by the example of Pakistan) that this will lead to a military coup. But the more basic question is about our political principles. We should not encourage the creation of an authoritarian military state. The security that resulted might suit our short-term security interests, but it will not serve the longer interests of Afghans. What kind of anti-terrorist tactics would we expect from the Afghan military? What kind of surveillance, interference and control from the police? We should not assume that the only way to achieve security in a developing country is through the restriction of civil liberties, or that authoritarianism is a necessary phase in state-formation, or a precondition for rapid economic development, or a lesser evil in the fight against modern terrorism.

After seven years of refinement, the policy seems so buoyed by illusions, caulked in ambiguous language and encrusted with moral claims, analogies and political theories that it can seem futile to present an alternative. It is particularly difficult to argue not for a total withdrawal but for a more cautious approach. The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer – perhaps 20,000. In that case, two distinct objectives would remain for the international community: development and counter-terrorism. Neither would amount to the building of an Afghan state. If the West believed it essential to exclude al-Qaida from Afghanistan, then they could do it with special forces. (They have done it successfully since 2001 and could continue indefinitely, though the result has only been to move bin Laden across the border.) At the same time the West should provide generous development assistance – not only to keep consent for the counter-terrorism operations, but as an end in itself.

A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from state-building should not mean total withdrawal: good projects could continue to be undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. We should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan. It may in the future become more violent, or find a decentralised equilibrium or a new national unity, but if its communities continue to want to work with us, we can, over 30 years, encourage the more positive trends in Afghan society and help to contain the more negative.

Read the whole article. Seriously.

No sign Iran seeks nuclear arms: new IAEA head

By Steve Hynd

Promising to be neither a "soft" Director-General or a "tough" Director-General," the next IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, has already rained all over the neocon parade. (H/t Kat)

VIENNA (Reuters) - The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

That's a bit of a blow to folks like John "bomb them" Bolton and the Weekly Standard's Peter Berkowitz, who have busily been claiming that - despite and indeed because of Iranian election protests and the following clampdown - "the central question for Middle East politics" namely, "what to do about Iran's illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons," is best answered by an immediate Israeli attack because "relying on prayer for Mousavi and the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs is no option at all, at least not for the state of Israel, the front line in Islamic radicalism's war against the West."

They go on to claim, beyond all credibility, that Israel could attack with relative impunity as far as Iranian blowback is concerned - using as part of their data for this wargames conducted by the neocon Heritage Foundation back in 2007 (which of course found the result the participants most wished to find) and for the rest wishful thinking.

So, this statement by the next atom watchdog head severely undermines their narrative, as it removes that first premise beloved of neocons and Clintonistas alike: that Iran is in "illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons." Expect the warmongers to ignore Amano as much as possible, just as they always ignore contrary expert advice and evidence. The point is to justify an attack by someone on Iran, not prevent a war.

And these warmongering, lying, cherry-picking Wormtongues are why I want to urge caution on the likes of Fareed Zakaria and Trita Parsi. I respect Trita immensely but he's forgotten the wolves in the wings when he says that the important criterion for American policy right now has to be to reject Ahmadinejad’s attempts at portraying his victory as final and that the best way to do that is by holding no negotiations for now. Steve Clemons points to pieces by Robert Dreyfuss and former UK ambassador to Iran Richard Dalton today and writes " I very much agree with Dreyfuss' kicker on engaging Iran and ignoring the John Bolton types who want to launch a new war." Ignore as in sideline, not hand them ammunition by derailing negotiation attempts.

I'd like to ask Trita - would he rather Obama talked or Israel bombed? Because I think those are going to be his choices. The meme that the election protests humanized Iranians and made an attack harder to justify - as repeated by Zakaria - didn't play at all in Tel Aviv or in US rightwing circles. White House opposition to an attack may also not be a meaningful deterrent factor if Obama himself has already implied, by disengagement, that the current Iranian government cannot be talked to. As long as Netan-yahoo, his Likudniks and their American neocon co-conspirators think US opinion is usefully split on an attack and that the waters of international opinion can be thus muddied, they will be highly tempted to tell themselves there will be no repercussions in the U.S. or internationally.

When Did The Af/Pak Policy Change?

By Steve Hynd

One of these things is not like the other.

Back in March, President Obama set out the broad outlines of his Af/Pak policy. One of the bright lines was supposedly that US forces in Afghanistan were not there to engage in long-term nation building. The US most definitely wasn't in Afghanistan so that in a decade or more at a cost of over a trillion dollars that nation could be bootstrapped up to the level of, say, Chad. Instead, the mission was twofold: to go after Al Qaeda and the Taliban's hardcore militants, disrupting safe havens and killing leaders, while giving Afghans the bare beginnings of providing for their own governance and security.

In his March speech, Obama was plain that a long-term COIN operation wasn't to be on the cards and that the US "surge" was to take the fight to the Taliban.

We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists.

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

...I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border. This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential election in August.

At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan Security Forces, so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That is how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security, and how we will ultimately be able to bring our troops home.

Sometime over the last few months, that mission has changed. Without informing the American people and wthout any real debate, the COINdinista interventionists have taken over and redirected Obama's policy. From the WaPo today:

Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military’s new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan…

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade’s commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban, and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

Counter-insurgency "clear, hold and build" has entirely taken over from counter-terrorism "hunt, kill and disupt". That might be the right thing to do - although I have my doubts - but the point is that it wasn't what Obama said would happen and government policy has radically shifted in favor of an interventionist, long-war, nation-building policy straight from the military and the folks at CNAS without any official announcement or very much public debate. In fact, it's almost as if Obama himself hasn't been told.

Update: In comments over at VetVoice, commenter Ben says that one data point does not a trend make. Ben's critique correctly notes that there was going to be some COIN even in Obama's mainly CT-aimed original plan and so he asks how do might tell the difference from meagre evidence. But of course there isn't just one data point. There's been a continual stream of officers, wonks and policy officials - from Gates and McChrystal on down - saying that it's about civilian protection and nation building, not killing bad guys and getting out. The genesis of the change is easy to see too. CNAS' David Kilcullen has estimated another 10-15 years. Back in March, Eric Martin noted a CNAS report written by four of the leading COIN scholars arguing why a 5-10 year military/diplomatic commitment in Afghanistan was necessary.

Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal sees the same mission creep as I do.

And a new piece at The American Conservative details the alliance between Petraeus' COIN team and CNAS that has quietly changed Obama's Af/Pak policy.

Competing Strategies, Blind Faith In Af/Pak

By Steve Hynd

Bob Woodward's piece for the WaPo, in which he recounts national security advisor Jim Jones telling military leaders that any further calls for more troops in Afghanistan would occasion a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment" from Obama, has both COINdinistas and contraCOINers discussing prioritization of the (still benchmarkless) strategy's confusing components in Afghanistan.

Marine general Lawrence Nicholson is quoted by Woodward as having a mission of “Protect the populace by, with and through the ANSF,” where “killing the enemy is secondary.” By contrast, Obama back in his March Af/Pak stratergy speech said that "These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border." Pretty much everyone agrees that there aren't enough troops on the ground - whether they be U.S., allied or local Afghan forces - to cover all the bases; to both secure population centers in a COIN "clear, hold and build" operation and to go after the insurgency in its own rural and border territory. Something has to give - and it looks like it will be the latter.

No matter what Obama may have said in March, the military and the CNAS-propelled Obama administration foreign policy team have set the strategy as a COIN-based one. That means a loooong war, at a cost of upwards of a trillion, as the US pursues a chimerical dream whereby Afghanistan one day (no one will guess when) emerges as a nation where economic development and reconstruction defeat the Taliban, albeit with a heavy occupation presence of foreign troops. But will that presence be heavy enough? At the CNAS blog, "Ibn Muqawama" writes in a post entitled "Repeating Mistakes?" that insufficient force was what hampered Iraq all those years and that:

if we are committed to our current strategy in Afghanistan, it seems pretty darn important that we're confident we have the force levels necessary to establish that minimum level of security.  Otherwise our "civilian surge" and reconstruction initiatives seem likely to be DOA.  That's not a call for the administration to reflexively throw in more troops without a rigorous analysis of strategic costs and benefits, but it does suggest that it needs to double-check to ensure that its ends, ways, and means in Afghanistan are are all aligned.

Hang on, the "mistake" wasn't to try to make an invasion based on lies and a years-long occupation turn out a "victory" for US interests in the first place? Apparently not - for CNAS is neoliberal interventionism at its very worst. "Can we invade it? Yes we can!"  All of which leaves contraCOIN writer Michael Cohen very frustrated:

If I had my druthers the President would conduct ... a cost benefit analysis and come to the right conclusion that the currently stated mission in Afghanistan is worth neither the blood nor treasure that are needed for it to be successfully achieved. Instead he has chosen a muddled course that pretty much guarantees the US won't achieve his goals for Afghanistan. Personally, I think fighting a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is the modern equivalent of fighting a land war in Asia, but if that's the mission you decide upon then you have to give the military the resources to actually do it.

The President can't have it both ways. Either you fight the war in Afghanistan to achieve the mission you've laid out, or you don't. There isn't really a middle ground here. History provides a pretty good road map for how that usually works out.

In the end, this whole situation reminds me of another old military expression: FUBAR

But the "civilian surge" is already in trouble too. As my friend and COINdinista-with-misgivings Spencer Ackerman notes:

The so-called “civilian surge” into Afghanistan isn’t happening. Proposals earlier this year for hundreds of new U.S. civilian officials to deploy to Afghanistan have given way to “triage” attempts at getting smaller amounts of key civilian personnel into advisory capacities to bolster Afghan governance.

Even if the "civilian surge" was sorted out, though, the whole "population-centric" strategy is based on the idea that economic improvement, reconstruction and reconcilliation would mean that the Taliban would lose their foothold in Afghanistan and be unable to regain it either by bullet or ballot box afteroccupying forces (eventually) leave. There's no particular reason why this should be so and indeed real world evidence suggests that it's simply bulls**t, but it's taken as an article of blind faith by the COIN crowd. Neither Afghanistan or Pakistan are Iraq and the Taliban movement is not foreign in the way Al Qaeda was in Iraq. In fact, this blind faith underpinning of the entire COIN strategy for Af/Pak is most akin to believing, just because, that economic reconstruction and democracy would prevent the Sunni Arabs of Iraq ever again holding any kind of power in that country after US troops leave - a pretty unlikely proposition.

"Out, America out!"

By Steve Hynd

The Washington Post today has a piece on the Iraqi celebrations I mentioned yesterday which are happening in advance of the formal pullout of US troops from their cities which is on schedule to conclude today.

"Out, America, out!" a group of sweat-drenched young men chanted Monday at a Baghdad park as the sun was setting. They jumped up and down to the deafening beat of drums and the wail of horns.

Across town, the virtual absence of American troops and helicopters, the cheerfulness of Iraqis in military uniform, and the cries of joy gave this scarred, bunkered capital a rare carnival-like atmosphere. Iraqi police and army cars were decked with ribbons, balloons, plastic flowers and new flags. A few Baghdadis drove under the sweltering midday sun honking horns as passengers hung out the windows waving flags and yelling euphorically.

In Basra, the sentiment was inscribed on walls with spray paint: "No No Americans." Another graffiti artist instructed: "Pull your troops from our Basra, we are its sons and want its sovereignty."

Yet, despite the celebrations, as Spencer Ackerman points out, this is a withdrawal in name only.

Milestones don't always mark what they should. Tomorrow all these things are true: there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; procedures and circumstances and contingencies pertain whereby urban security will still be a U.S. mission; there is a U.S. combat mission, by binding diplomatic accord, for an additional 13 months; another year will pass after that before U.S. troops depart; there is ever-present danger in Iraq, if not necessarily strategic peril; and the scope and contour of a U.S.-Iraqi relationship on January 1, 2012 remains to be determined, and may feature a small U.S. military advisory presence.

What these Iraqis are celebrating isn't this shadow of withdrawal, it's the idea of returned sovereignty, the concept of withdrawal. If I were Tom Friedman I'd probably write they were celebrating the platonic ideal of an end to their occupation.

Let's not forget that it is an accidental and mismanaged occupation -  one never planned for - which the whole world knows was born from outrageous lies. And that even so, as US officials and officers talked about helping Iraq find its feet again these past six years, they've continually betrayed those promises by looking out for often petty and mean U.S. national interests instead of Iraqis. Neither should we forget that there have been only minor convictions for all the brutality, torture and abuse, and mostly minor sentences even then.

But if Iraqis are celebrating the first flavor of an end to that occupation, they're not celebrating reconstruction or reconcilliation. They're not celebrating peace. Tom Ricks and others are correct that there will be a spiral of upward violence as the U.S. stiffener departs the Iraqi central government's backbone. (Although Ricks is a special case as he pleads that Petraeus and Odierno are geniuses for the Surge even while he argues the Surge didn't work.) There will be some level of civil war in Iraq yet, whether it's between Shia and Sunni, Kurd and Arab, Shia money-grabbers in the oil-rich South or a combination of all three.

That's not an argument for extending the occupation, though. It was always an argument for shortening it. Imagine if the U.S. and it's allies had never invaded but an act of God or Alien Space Bats had destroyed Iraq's Saddam-era leadership, devastated the nation's infrastructure, killed thousands and displaced millions anyway. Of course there would have been a multi-sided civil war. Without Saddam's repression keeping a lid on and with those other stresses to society, the fractures and imbalances in Iraq would have split wide open exactly as they did - the only difference being no U.S. occupation to focus a goodly portion of those stresses upon, to magnify and perpetuate them. The same conditions will obtain after the US leaves, whenever that is, and would have obtained at any time in the last six years.

The point, blindingly obvious to jubilant Iraqis celebrating some meagre sovereignty today, is that all of that is their problem, never ours. The Pottery Barn Rule was never "you broke it, you own it". It was always meant to be "you broke it, pay for it, and get the f**k out of our store before you make things worse!"

The Next Neocon Government

By Steve Hynd

British Conservative leader David Cameron is considered a dead certainty to become the next prime minister of the UK by just about everyone. Cameron's talked a lot about caring conservativism, just as Bush did - and according to journalist Neil Clark, like Bush his time in office will be playtime for the neocons.

Cameron's campaign was masterminded by a triumvirate of MPs: Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey and George Osborne.

Gove, who believes the invasion of Iraq was a "proper British foreign policy success", is the author of the polemic Celsius 7/7, which has been described as a "neo-con rallying cry" for its attacks on Islamism, which he describes as a "totalitarian ideology" on a par with Nazism and Communism, and says must be fiercely opposed.

He, along with Vaizey, is a signatory to the principles of the ultra-hawkish Henry Jackson Society, an organisation founded at Peterhouse College Cambridge in 2005 and named after a warmongering US Senator who opposed détente with the Soviet Union.

The Society supports the 'maintenance of a strong military' with a 'global reach'; among its international patrons are the serial warmonger Richard 'Prince of Darkness' Perle, a former staffer of Henry Jackson who was considered one of the leading architects of the Iraq war, and Bill Kristol, the influential American journalist, formerly with the New York Times, who called for military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2006.

As for Osborne, Cameron's Shadow Chancellor and right-hand man; he praised the "excellent neoconservative case" for war against Iraq.

There are other strong neocon influences on Cameron. Policy Exchange, which has been described as the Tory leader's 'favourite think-tank', and which will have an open door to Number 10, was set up in 2002 by Michael Gove and fellow hawk Nicholas Boles, a member of the Notting Hill set who the Tories plan to parachute into the safe seat of Grantham and Stamford at the next election. Dean Godson, the group's research director and adviser on security issues, has been described as "one of the best connected neoconservatives in Britain".

All three would have prominent positions in Cameron's cabinet, alongside fellow hawks William Haig, Chris Grayling and Liam Fox. And as for David Cameron himself:

Although he said that Britain should learn from the 'failures' of neoconservatism in a speech in September 2006, and denied that he was a neocon himself, Cameron's public pronouncements on foreign affairs since then certainly give the Tory uber-hawks no grounds for believing that they have backed the wrong man.

Last summer, during the South Ossetia conflict, he called for Russia to be expelled from the G8, for Georgia's Nato membership to be "accelerated" and lambasted the British government for allowing Moscow's "aggression" to go unchecked.

He has consistently called for a tougher stance on Iran, warning that "every week, every month that goes by brings Iran closer to possessing a nuclear weapon." And, while staying largely silent on Israel's military assault on Gaza, he has declared his belief in Israel to be "indestructible" and pledged that he would be an "unswerving friend" to the country if he became Prime Minister.

Neoconservativism isn't dead, nor is it even a spent force. The trans-Atlantic ties between neocon groups are still strong and they look ready to become Wormtongues to yet another major Western leader of a nuclear power in the very near future. That won't lead anywhere good.

Democrats' "radical, pro-war agenda" on anti-war money

By Steve Hynd

My friend Derrick Crowe, who blogs at Return Good For Evil and HuffPo, is pissed. He has a truly righteous rant today over the actions of Dem leaders on the Hill and at the White House, who have, he writes, sought to "wrap themselves in the flag" and jettison "the contrary arguments they employed during the last several cycles" in a shameful copying of past Republican tactics of pandering to the public for support for a pro-war agenda under cover of claiming to "support the troops".

Read the whole thing. Derrick points to the new DCCC ad campaign which mirrors previous GOP camapigns against principled anti-war Dems, and goes on to highlight how the Dems are using a heavy hand to browbeat their own anti-war members, threatening to ostracize and defund them unless the voted to fund Obama's continuation of Bush's wars. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) told the HuffPo that the White House and Dem leadership had threatened Dem freshmen "We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," although an administration spokesman denied the charge. There were also rumors of about "Rahm Emanuel cutting deals with Republicans to go easy on them in the 2010 elections in exchange for votes" on the funding bill.

Thus, Derrick observes:

funds solicited from donors on the premise that they will be used to elect more Democrats and defeat more Republican incumbents are actually being used to ensure the election and incumbency of House members who will vote to support war funding.

As a prior Democratic donor and highly active volunteer, I am absolutely disgusted. I know I’m not alone.

And he concludes:

Incredibly, despite five policy reviews in six months, the President who ran on a platform of finishing the fight in Afghanistan presides over a military campaign now wandering into neighboring countries, adrift in the exhibition of qualities for which he once decried the policies of President Bush: “undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

At moments like this, we desperately need a Congress and a congressional leadership team with the spine to check the listlessness and violence of the executive’s actions overseas. The actions of House leadership and their political campaign operation down the street have revealed that we have no such thing. Rather, what the war funding vote and its aftermath revealed is the further infiltration and dominance of the official structures the Democratic Party by a radical pro-war caucus, perfectly willing to sell out their constituents and their donors in the name of out-of-control militarism and continued, highly profitable mass murder overseas. This radical caucus running the party in the House flexed its muscles just this past week, teaming with Republicans to defeat legislative language to require an exit strategy from Afghanistan, despite the fact that the majority of rank-and-file Democrats supported it and despite its similarity to the exit strategy for which Democrats agitated for Iraq under President Bush. Until we force changes, expect more of the same on future votes.

I encourage every anti-war DCCC donor to close your checkbooks and put your debit cards away until we see a party worth another penny. Right now, the Democratic party isn’t. In fact, I’d like my money back.

Righteous.