After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.
We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.
Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.
I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.
Thank you very much.
Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.
Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of the launch of President Obama's escalated military campaign in Afghanistan. One year later, violence is still getting worse and costs are skyrocketing. After more than nine years, it's time to end this war.
On February 13, 2010, NATO troops launched Operation Moshtarak in the Marjah district of Helmand Province. It was the first major military action enabled by President Obama's 30,000-troop escalation, and was supposed to be proof-of-concept for Generals McChrystal's and Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine. The military hype said Afghan forces would be in the lead as coalition forces invaded Taliban-controlled areas. They'd deliver "government in a box, ready to roll." Over and over, military officials repeated their mantra that the new troops would enable them to "protect the population."
What followed was a fiasco that still hasn't ended.
The pattern of hype and embarrassment repeated itself across Afghanistan all throughout 2010, as U.S. military officials repeatedly asserted that an influx of troops would bring security and protect the population, only to see those areas remain violent hot-spots where civilians were rarely safe. NATO similarly invaded Kandahar in force later in the year, and that area remains hotly contested and violent. In fact, violence in Kandahar and Helmand account for more than half of insurgent-initiated attacks for all of Afghanistan. Worse, areas that were previously relatively secure suddenly saw a spike in the number of insurgent attacks at the Taliban continued their relentless expansion across the country.
So. President Obama has had a full year now to prove that his new strategy is worth the costs. What are the results?
Numerous polls show that opposition to the war is at an all-time high, with 63 percent opposing the war. When you do the math, that's more than 196 million Americans who want our troops to come home.
While we were wasting $100 billion on this war per year, Americans fought to stay above water in a horrible economy. Unemployment has now topped 9 percent for 20 months straight. Groups like the Salvation Army are reporting an alarming shortfall in resources to help the hungry. And state budgets all across the country are considering huge draconian cuts to their public structures and social safety nets that millions of people rely upon. Not only do most Americans oppose the war, but they rightly worry that it's making it harder for us to fix these problems here at home.
After a year of escalated fighting across the country--after more than nine years of this war!--it's absolutely clear that military solutions won't work in Afghanistan, and they're certainly not worth the cost. More than 195 million Americans want this war to end, yet their faces don't seem to be reflected among elected officials to timid to take the morally courageous action of forcing this war to a close. So we're giving people a chance to put their face and their opposition to the war in full public view.
Today, we're launching "Because It's Time" on Rethink Afghanistan to help Americans who oppose this war to make their voices heard. On this page, you can post your photo and a reason why it's time to bring troops home.
Starting next Wednesday, you'll have the chance to vote on your favorite comments. Those who get the most votes will get to star in an upcoming Rethink Afghanistan video.
�I want to ask: What does apology mean? We apologize for our mistakes and repeat our mistakes again? What meaning does this have?� --Sayid Mohammed Mal, Vice Chancellor, Gardez University.
The video above shows a survivor of a brutal, botched special forces raid on February 12, 2010, in which U.S. and allied forces killed 5 civilians, including local Afghan officials and pregnant women. If that were the extent of the bad conduct in this incident, it would be devastating enough. Unfortunately, personnel under McChrystal�s command compounded the outrage by tampering with evidence at the scene and then attempted a propaganda job and cover-up of the massacre, which has now blown up in their faces.
Initially, ISAF claimed that "insurgents" �engaged the joint force in a fire fight and were killed.� The release states the special forces then made a �gruesome discovery,� finding �the bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed� and that the bodies had been �hidden.� They also claim that the �joint force immediately secured the area and requested expert medical support and will conduct a joint forensic investigation.�
Almost every piece of this initial description of the chain of events was later proved to be a lie.
Faced with the persistent, professional reporting of The Times� (UK) Jerome Starkey, multiple witness accounts of the incident and the results of an Afghan investigation, McChrystal�s personnel finally admitted responsibility in an April 4 press release. ISAF wants to pass off their initial lies about the incident as the unfortunate result of �cultural misunderstandings� and �poor wording.� McChrystal has ordered a new investigation, but his personnel�s recent behavior shows exactly why they cannot be trusted to investigate themselves.
ISAF�s �aw, shucks� explanation ignores the fact that the original release described a non-existent fire fight and claimed that coalition forces discovered the long-dead bodies of the women hidden in a room when they were, in fact, killed during the raid by U.S. and allied forces. By admitting to killing the women, McChrystal�s forces have implicitly admitted to conveying multiple flat-out lies to the public. Their inadequate explanation and subsequent deletion of the original offending press releases represent a transparent attempt to extricate themselves from a failing web of propaganda intended to shield the personnel involved from accountability without properly acknowledging their role in deceiving the Afghan and American publics.
This brings us back to Sayid�s question above. �What does apology mean? We apologize for our mistakes and repeat our mistakes again?� ISAF apologized to his family, only to turn around on April 19 and do this:
A NATO military convoy in eastern Afghanistan shot to death four unarmed civilians in a vehicle early Monday evening, including a police officer and a 12-year-old student, Afghan officials said Tuesday.
The killings in Khost Province, near the border with Pakistan, led to a dispute almost immediately between local Afghan leaders and NATO officials.
...
NATO described the dead as two insurgents and their �associates.�
NATO's acknowledgment Wednesday that the unarmed young men shot to death two days earlier in Khost province were not "known insurgents," as previously alleged, has prompted another military apology and fueled anger over civilian casualties.
...NATO officials said that fingerprints of two of the men killed in Khost had shown up in an insurgent biometric database but that they later decided the data might not be relevant.
ISAF/NATO forces shoot up a vehicle full of people after claiming they thought it was a threat to them. They then examine the bodies in the car and find no weapons. Then, they check their fingerprints to find out if they were in the insurgent database. Now, why in the world, after you�ve discovered the vehicle and the men and children you just shot posed no threat, would you then think about running a biometric test on their bodies to see if they were in a database of �known insurgents?� Are we thinking maybe we can find something to help cover our behinds, perhaps?
Sound familiar? ISAF excuses their killing of a local official and a child with an initial, immediate claim that the victims were insurgents. After a dispute with locals, ISAF has to admit that they weren�t, in fact, insurgents. See a pattern? If not, maybe you should take a look at the statements of one Col. Greg Julian regarding an airstrike in Farah last year that killed more than 100 people.
What does it mean for McChrystal�s people to apologize for killing innocent people and lying about it, only to have them turn around and keep repeating the same behavior? Why should we be moved or lend credulity to such apologies?
In case you hadn't heard, the next stop in General McChrystal's counterinsurgency plan is Kandahar, the ideological heart of the Taliban. Using the spadework done in advance of the Marjah operation as a template, McChrystal says the plan is to:
"...do the political groundwork, so that when it's time to do the military operation, the significant part of the population is pulling us in and supporting us, so that we're not only doing what they want, but we're operating in a way that they're comfortable with."
Remember that:
"what they want," and
"operating in a way that they're comfortable with."
"What They Want"
That was March, and it sure sounded nice. But this is April, and the people who live in Kandahar are telling the Kabul government and McChrystal's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), "Not so much."
Earlier this month, McChrystal travelled with Karzai to a shura in Kandahar, presumably to get the kind of rubber-stamp for the upcoming operation that the Marjah elders gave them prior to Operation Moshtarak. It didn't go as planned.
Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. �Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?� he asked.
The elders shouted back: �We are not happy.�
�Then until the time you say you are happy, the operation will not happen,� Karzai replied.
General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander, who was sitting behind him, looked distinctly apprehensive. The remarks have compounded US anger and bewilderment with Karzai, who has already accused the United States of rigging last year�s presidential elections and even threatened to switch sides to join the Taliban.
Presumably, ISAF and the Karzai government will keep working the shuras until they get what they need in the way of a signed and sealed invite to flood the region with international and Afghan National Security Forces military and police personnel. But as it stands, it's clear that a military offensive in Kandahar is not "what they want."
"Operating In A Way That They're Comfortable With"
If the shura harangue were not enough, yesterday a U.S. troop fired on a civilian passenger bus in Kandahar, killing at least 4 people and injuring 18.
Before dawn this morning, an unknown, large vehicle approached a slow-moving ISAF route-clearance patrol from the rear at a high rate of speed. The convoy could not move to the side of the road to allow the vehicle to pass due to the steep embankment.
The ISAF patrol warned off the approaching vehicle once with a flashlight and three times with flares, which were not heeded.
Perceiving a threat when the vehicle approached once more at an increased rate of speed, the patrol attempted to warn off the vehicle with hand signals prior to firing upon it. Once engaged, the vehicle then stopped.
However, at least one eyewitness who credibly claimed to be the bus driver had a different story:
Abdul Ghani, an Afghan man who told The Washington Post in a telephone interview that he was the driver of the bus, said the soldiers "didn't give me any kind of signal. . . . They just opened fire. No signal at all."
Ghani's account could not be independently confirmed, and other news organizations quoted a different person who said he was the driver. But Ghani, 35, related to The Post specific details about the bus and the incident that suggest he knew what had occurred.
He said the green and white 1984 German vehicle left a Kandahar city bus depot at 4:30 a.m., bound for Nimruz province, seven hours away. Half an hour into the trip, the bus drove up behind the U.S. convoy. The gunfire erupted when the bus was 80 to 100 meters behind the convoy, he said.
The bullets tore into the passenger side of the windshield and struck several rows. The American soldiers walked around the bus after the shooting stopped, Ghani said, then climbed on board without speaking to him. "They saw the people who were killed and left them there. And then they took the injured ones and started doing first aid immediately."
Ghani said he was eventually was able to drive the bus back to the city. "Why we are being killed by these people?" he said. "They are here to protect us, not to kill us."
The locals were understandably enraged, and hundreds of them gathered around the bus shouting, "Death to America!" and related anti-Western phrases. The local NATO commander, Maj. General Nick Carter (no, not that Nick Carter) tried to apologize, but just couldn't seem to help himself and got a dig in at the local hicks in the course of the apology (Skip to 1:56 in the video below). Apparently, when you shoot up a civilian bus at a checkpoint, "it's a two-way street" when it comes to responsibility.
"We have shot an amazing number of people [at military checkpoints], but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat," said McChrystal during a recent video-conference with troops...
But hey, at least he could rattle off "salaam alaikum" at the beginning of the "apology."
Here's what one local had to say about this incident:
�Zhari [district in Kandahar Province] is where they were planning to do an operation,� Haji Wali Jan said. �Now the people there are furious with the Americans, and everyone knows that without local support from the people, it�s very hard to do an operation.� Haji Jan Mohammed, another elder who lives in Kandahar city, said: �These incidents have a bad effect. Already, most people didn�t trust the foreign troops. With this incident, foreign troops lost all their trust.
�All the elders, everyone knows, if the operation starts, there will be lots of civilian casualties.�
Somehow I doubt that this qualifies as "operating in a way that they're comfortable with."
Sending more troops to Kandahar will not make us safer. The president should decrease, not increase, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan project has been following the story about a night raid in Gardez by U.S. and Afghan forces (see the video above), and today those forces made a major admission about their responsibility for civilian deaths. In a press release issued on Easter (gee, I wonder if they hoped people would be distracted today), the U.S. and allied forces under General McChrystal's command, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), admitted they killed three innocent Afghan women, two of whom were pregnant.
By a variety of measures, U.S. military policies in the Afghanistan war are failing.
You probably haven't heard much about this, in part because of the justified media focus on Haiti, but a confluence of very bad indicators point to failure even by the military's avowed yardsticks. The civilian casualty rate in Afghanistan rose significantly in 2009. War-related violence is at its peak since 2001. The armed resistance to the Kabul government is spreading rapidly and can now "sustain itself indefinitely" according to the top military intelligence officer in the region. Efforts to build the Afghan National Army are flailing, as are pro-government efforts to rebuild infrastructure. In short, despite the happy talk from General Stanley McChrystal and Admiral James Stavridis, a great many signs indicate that the U.S.-led pro-government coalition is headed for failure.
The Primary Benchmark: Civilian Casualties
In his confirmation hearing, McChrystal said:
Although I expect stiff fighting ahead, the measure of effectiveness will not be enemy killed. It will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence.
Civilian deaths in Afghanistan climbed in 2009 to their highest number since the fall of the Taliban, the United Nations says in a recent report.
The rising number of innocent Afghan casualties constitutes a major failure for the American forces if judged by the standards set out by General Stanley McChrystal in the summer of 2009, when he testified before Congress.
Here are the specifics from the UN report Grim references:
“At least 5,978 civilians were killed and injured in 2009, the highest number of civilian casualties recorded since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001...UNAMA Human Rights (HR) recorded a total of 2,412 civilian deaths between 01 January and 31 December 2009. This figure represents an increase of 14% on the 2118 civilian deaths recorded in 2008. ”
Several bloggers have touted the fact that the U.S.-led, pro-government forces killed about 28 percent fewer civilians than last year: 596 in 2009 compared to 828 in 2008. This sort of self-congratulation is as myopic as it is callous. The pro-Kabul-government coalition killed roughly 600 people whose right to life exists independent of the U.S.'s desire to eliminate Al-Qaida and the Taliban. Only the most idiotic messengers would cheer about this statistic in public. Imagine a man cheering that he only beat his wife six times this month compared to eight times last month. That's what chief ISAF spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks means when he says, "Statistical kinds of things don't play that well [in Afghanistan].'' Journalists, bloggers and public officials who tout this statistic like it's some sort of victory should have their pulses checked and their canines examined.
The same goes for comparisons between the number of combatants killed by the pro-government forces and the number killed by the armed opposition. U.S. policymakers rationalized the addition of more U.S. troops in Afghanistan by claiming the new forces would be able to protect the civilian population. Noting the ratio of casualties attributed to either side of the conflict is a weak salve if the addition of new forces did not lead to an overall drop in the civilian death rate. If coalition leaders can only point to the ratio of civilians killed by either side, they are tacitly admitting that they new troops cannot protect the population from the insurgents. That admission would fit with the facts in the UN's report.
Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine claims that putting troops among the local population while exercising restraint versus the enemy will allow an actor to win the local support. But when the inserted troops fail to protect the population - i.e., if their insertion is followed by an increase, not a decrease, in civilian casualties - COIN tactics can backfire. Consider the analogy of a neighborhood plagued by gang violence: Locals are outraged by the violence of the local gangs. If the police, as representatives of the legitimate authority in a community, show up on the streets in force and protect the bystanders while taking down the gang, they and the city government win the citizens' support. However, if police claim to be representatives of the legitimate authority in town, but their arrival on the streets in force is followed not by a decrease in local violent deaths but an increase, police will not only get the blame for the deaths they cause, but also for the total situation which they've promised to rectify as it spirals out of control. That's exactly what's happening in Afghanistan. As Grim notes:
[N]o matter who's actually causing the violence, the people hold the coalition forces and central government responsible -- as veteran combat reporter David Wood wrote on Friday for Politics Daily.
Wood's article quotes Col. Shanks confirming this dynamic:
As a result, he said, "When the Taliban blow up a bunch of people, you don't see a lot of protest. But when we screw up and accidentally kill somebody, you get riots in the streets.''
Cheering that we're killing fewer innocent bystanders than anti-government elements is a losing argument. Referring back to the gang violence analogy: If police officers declare they are moving into a neighborhood to deal with a gang problem, touting the fact that today they're killing fewer innocent bystanders a) is just another way of saying "We're killing some bystanders," and b) tells you absolutely nothing about their success or failure in dealing with the gang problem. But, it turns out that the U.S. military has some very good statistics on the state of the "gang problem" in Afghanistan. It's spiraling out of control.
The Strengthening Insurgency
Major General Michael T. Flynn ruffled some feathers earlier this month when he released a scathing critique of U.S. intelligence operations in Afghanistan through a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Less attention was given to a far more consequential presentation authored by Flynn in late December 2009: The State of the Insurgency [h/t Wired's Danger Room blog]. The graphics in the slide show are time lapse images of creeping yellow and red smears, ever-escalating bar-chart waves of mayhem. It shows an insurgency on the wax and a dynamic of violence that grows as we add troops.
Here are just a few key statements from the presentation:
"The Afghan insurgency can sustain itself indefinitely"
"The Taliban retains required partnerships to sustain support, fuel legitimacy and bolster capacity"
"Organizational capabilities and operational reach [of the insurgency] are qualitatively and geographically expanding"
"Taliban influence expanding; contesting and controlling additional areas."
"The Taliban now has “Shadow Governors” in 33 of 34 provinces (as of DEC 09)" ...up from 11 in 2005.
"Regional instability is rapidly increasing and getting worse"
"Kinetic events are up 300% since 2007 and an additional 60% since 2008."
Also notable is what Flynn's presentation does not describe: there are no mentions of a swing in momentum brought on by the significant increase in U.S. troops over the last year. It certainly does not describe the beginnings of a dynamic hoped for by the COIN pushers; absent is any mention of a population throwing its lot in with the Kabul-centered government. To the contrary, Flynn notes that detained insurgents were motivated by a "Karzai government universally seen as corrupt and ineffective" and pervasive crime and corruption amongst security forces.
If You Don't Have a Dream, How You Gonna Have a Dream Come True?
In an interview made public on January 11, 2010, ABC's Diane Sawyer asked McChrystal, "Last we heard you said we needed a 'quantum shift.' We needed something dramatic, something to shift the momentum. Have you done it? Have you turned the tide?"
McChrystal answered, "I believe we're doing that now...I believe we are on our way to convincing the Afghan people that we are here to protect them."
Sawyer plays the skeptic for about one second in this interview when she responds, "Already?"
McChrystal answers, "We've been at this for about 7 months now."
The general is either deceiving himself or Sawyer. There has been no quantum shift, according to Flynn's presentation. The cyclical, seasonal spikes in violence are steadily worsening and the Taliban retains the momentum. And, various other indicators aside, McChrystal himself pointed to a singular measure for our success in Afghanistan during his confirmation hearings: "the number of Afghans shielded from violence." The United Nations' latest report shows that the U.S.-led coalition is failing by the very measure proposed by its commanding general.
McChrystal's statement that "we've been at this for about 7 months now" is a two-fold assertion. On one hand, he's asserting that we're moving towards success in Afghanistan, an assertion flatly refuted by the information in Flynn's report. On the other, he's asserting that his "new" policies have been in place long enough to lead to have measurable effects on the ground in Afghanistan. With the first assertion being such a transparent untruth, McChrystal's (and the wider Obama Administration's) policies are damned by the second. If having been "at this for about 7 months now" has produced causal links rather than simple correlation between U.S. actions and the various indicators on the ground, the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is leading to failure, along with massive human suffering purchased at enormous cost.
Dave Schuler makes a very good point in response to Steve's recent post concerning the McChystal leak; the policy options being discussed in the leak should not be surprising as this is where the policy debate has been ambling along for a while:
Having appointed Gen. McChrystal to his post, with the full knowledge the Gen. McChrystal would advocate a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, and given conventional counter-insurgency doctrine, I think it will be difficult for President Obama to deny him more troops....
As I and others noted two months ago, the writing was on the wall as to what McChystal would recommend just be examining his advisory group. Everyone of his advisers either are full fledged COINistas or advocates for the Iraqi Surge who conveniently forget that the Iraqi Surge while tamping down violence through a combination of factors, failed in its grand strategic intent of creating a peaceful window for a comprehensive political settlement agreeable to all parties to be hashed out. The range of acceptable discourse within that advisory group was small, and mainly limited to means and not ends; much like the range of discourse in our foreign policy in general.
Again, the Overton window of potentially plausible options under discussion is very narrow. And getting the argument that an open-ended system and society transforming effort that optimistically will take a decade or more and cost several trillion dollars may not be a good idea has been damn difficult because there is no "credentialled" and "legitimate" figure who will make that argument.
And we have been seeing the steady drum-beat of officially unofficial leaks from that advisory group. First Anthony Cordesman wrote that he thought the US needed to deploy another 40,000 to 45,000 more troops in addition to the current (and newly ratcheted-up) baseline of 68,000 US soldiers. Now we have the Kagan family mentioning the same number, despite the fact that the US Army and Marines do not have a spare brigade available for another six months unless someone takes a sledgehammer to the deployment schedule.
These trial balloons have been filled with hydrogen, and besides bloggers asking pertinent questions without answers, none of them have burst into flames.
And again, none of this should have been a surprise, for the second most important thing a leader can do besides promulgate a clear vision and objective set for an organization is ensuring that his subordinates are on the same page and working towards the same objective set. I know if I interviewed for a major position with significant discretion, the individual with ultimate hire/fire authority over me would want to know whom I would be seeking advise from in order to judge whether or not my vision coincided with the greater strategic vision. If the person holding the hire/fire authority sees the advisory group built for a strategic review and does not object to its composition as well as the highly probable outputs given past history, then I have to assume that the advisory group and its probable conclusions are acceptable to the organization's leadership.
So while the Sunday leak timing is a bit odd, the policy conclusions are not particularly surprising given the signals that have been telegraphed for the past eighteen months.
Dave Schuler makes a very good point in response to Steve's recent post concerning the McChystal leak; the policy options being discussed in the leak should not be surprising as this is where the policy debate has been ambling along for a while:
Having appointed Gen. McChrystal to his post, with the full knowledge the Gen. McChrystal would advocate a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, and given conventional counter-insurgency doctrine, I think it will be difficult for President Obama to deny him more troops....
As I and others noted two months ago, the writing was on the wall as to what McChystal would recommend just be examining his advisory group. Everyone of his advisers either are full fledged COINistas or advocates for the Iraqi Surge who conveniently forget that the Iraqi Surge while tamping down violence through a combination of factors, failed in its grand strategic intent of creating a peaceful window for a comprehensive political settlement agreeable to all parties to be hashed out. The range of acceptable discourse within that advisory group was small, and mainly limited to means and not ends; much like the range of discourse in our foreign policy in general.
Again, the Overton window of potentially plausible options under discussion is very narrow. And getting the argument that an open-ended system and society transforming effort that optimistically will take a decade or more and cost several trillion dollars may not be a good idea has been damn difficult because there is no "credentialled" and "legitimate" figure who will make that argument.
And we have been seeing the steady drum-beat of officially unofficial leaks from that advisory group. First Anthony Cordesman wrote that he thought the US needed to deploy another 40,000 to 45,000 more troops in addition to the current (and newly ratcheted-up) baseline of 68,000 US soldiers. Now we have the Kagan family mentioning the same number, despite the fact that the US Army and Marines do not have a spare brigade available for another six months unless someone takes a sledgehammer to the deployment schedule.
These trial balloons have been filled with hydrogen, and besides bloggers asking pertinent questions without answers, none of them have burst into flames.
And again, none of this should have been a surprise, for the second most important thing a leader can do besides promulgate a clear vision and objective set for an organization is ensuring that his subordinates are on the same page and working towards the same objective set. I know if I interviewed for a major position with significant discretion, the individual with ultimate hire/fire authority over me would want to know whom I would be seeking advise from in order to judge whether or not my vision coincided with the greater strategic vision. If the person holding the hire/fire authority sees the advisory group built for a strategic review and does not object to its composition as well as the highly probable outputs given past history, then I have to assume that the advisory group and its probable conclusions are acceptable to the organization's leadership.
So while the Sunday leak timing is a bit odd, the policy conclusions are not particularly surprising given the signals that have been telegraphed for the past eighteen months.
With the planned leak of the request by Gen. McChystal for seveal more combat brigades to socially re-engineer several hundred years of Afghan political arrangments in one or at the most two deployment cycles, there is massive problem with this strategy, if it can be called that. COIN is an operational doctrine, and it does not examine the political goals that are being sought, nor the political constraints. One of those political constraints is that the American public is indierennt at best towards supporting the current level of activites in Afghanistan, much less escalating thos activites.
But support for the Afghan war hit an all-time low in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released last week. That survey found 39 percent still favor the war, compared with 58 percent who oppose it -- making it almost as unpopular as the Iraq war has become in recent years. And calls for more troops could be a tough sell in Congress.
Expanded and expensive committments for an already unpopular war in a shitty economy with no hope for employment or wage increases for a while where the only supporters for the increase are political adversaries of the President and the majority is not a formula for success or sustainability.
