Bush's Fault, Blah Blah Blah

Uncle Jimbo does not like to repeat himself especially when its so efffing simple to figure out on your own, IF, you take five minutes and think about it BUT he has graciously provided us with the facts on what happened in Tora Bora. You don't believe it? Thats your problem, not mine.

Afghanistan? Tora Bora?
Bush's fault forever
I grow bored of rehashing something we have been rehashing so long that the links to where I did an exhaustive analysis of it at Madison.com are no longer even active.

So Tora Bora, let me make this simple.

1. We invade A-Stan with small number of Spec Ops guys and partner w. Northern Alliance and in amazingly successful operation kick Taliban and al Qaeda asses.

2. Many of them die, some run to Paktia province, some (incl. bin Laden) run toward Pakistan and stop in highly-fortified Tora Bora.

3. We do the math and since Tora Bora is way the hell up high in the mountains figger out we would have a wicked time resupplying any troops we managed to get up there w/ our limited helicopter support and also they would be ambush bait for bad guys
who are real good at that.

4. So we decide to try the same thing that worked to kick their asses already. We partnered with local tribes to provide the manpower while we sent Spec Ops support and massive air power.

5. We push up there and even the Spec Ops guys have a helluva time because of the terrain. The local tribes more or less screw us and take the money but don't fight
much.

6. We still kills hundreds of Taliban and AQ but bin Laden slips off to become a ghost.

7. A talking point for the ignorant left, their enablers and military geniuses like F John Kerry (who served in Viet Nam) is born.

8. Rinse and repeat whenever the left needs a club to try and lose a war.

Next freakin' slide.

If you want to get back in the weeds on this again, Greyhawk is doing his usual
excellent job of journalizing.

Heritage Morning Bell

The admistration needs to fish or cut bait, as my buds over at Blackfive have so eleoquently stated on numerous occasions. This half-assed approach will only get more Warriors hurt or killed.

Obama Must Lead On Afghanistan
On March 27th, President Barack Obama followed through on one of his core campaign promises and announced a New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that included sending an additional 21,000 troops to the region. Speaking from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Obama explained:

"Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban — or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged — that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can. …But this is not simply an American problem — far from it. It is, instead, an international security challenge of the highest order. Terrorist attacks in London and Bali were tied to al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, as were attacks in North Africa and the Middle East, in Islamabad and in Kabul. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or African city, it, too, is likely to have ties to al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. The safety of people around the world is at stake.”

So according to President Obama, victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan is not only essential for the security of the United States, but for “the safety of people around the world.” We couldn’t agree more, which is why it is so alarming to learn that President Obama is considering a different strategy advocated by Vice President Joe Biden. Just as Biden opposed the successful surge in Iraq, Biden now opposes a surge in Afghanistan, instead favoring withdrawing most U.S. troops leaving only special forces and predator drones to strike al Qaeda cells. Biden was wrong about Iraq and he is wrong about Afghanistan. Heritage fellow James Phillips explains:

The war in Afghanistan cannot be effectively waged merely with air power, predator drones, and special forces. In the late 1990s, the Clinton Administration hurled cruise missiles at easily replaceable al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, but this “chuck and duck” strategy failed to blunt the al-Qaeda threat. The Bush Administration’s minimalist approach to Afghanistan in 2001 was a contributing factor that allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from his mountain redoubt at Tora Bora. Afterwards, Washington opted to focus narrowly on counterterrorism goals in Afghanistan–rather than counterinsurgency operations–in order to free up military assets for the war in Iraq. This allowed the Taliban to regroup across the border in Pakistan and make a violent resurgence. The “small footprint” strategy also failed in Iraq, before it was abandoned in favor of General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the surge of American troops, in early 2007.

Despite this record of failure, some stubbornly continue to support an “offshore” strategy for landlocked Afghanistan today. But half-measures–the hallmark of the “small footprint” strategy–will not work. Precise intelligence is needed to use smart bombs smartly. Yet few Afghans would risk their lives to provide such intelligence unless they are assured of protection against the Taliban’s ruthless retaliation.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates seconded this analysis this Sunday telling ABC News’ This Week:

I think that most people who — the people that I’ve talked to in the Pentagon who are the experts on counter-terrorism essentially say that counter-terrorism is only possible if you have the kind of intelligence that allows you to target the terrorists. And the only way you get that intelligence is by being on the ground — getting information from people like the Afghans or, in the case of Iraq, the Iraqis.

And so you can’t do this from — from a distance or remotely, in the view of virtually all of the experts that I’ve talked to.

The security of the United States and the “safety of people around the world” depend on President Obama ignoring Biden and listening to Gates on this particular point. But listening to Gates will not be enough. The American people are unsure about which strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. According to Gallup, 41% of Americans favor withdrawing troops from the country while 41% favor increasing troop levels. Gallup’s Frank Newport adds: “The data indicate that Republicans do seem willing to support Obama should he make a decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. On the other hand, Democrats seem willing to oppose Obama in this case.”

If anybody can convince liberals to support victory in Afghanistan it is President Obama. Health care is important. But so is national security. According to the Washington Post, Obama has scheduled at least five meetings with his national security team over the next two weeks to reexamine the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. When this review is completed, the President should announce his decision in a nationally televised speech. He should explain to the American people what is at stake in Afghanistan, why it is necessary to make continued sacrifices to defeat distant enemies there, and why the war is not only necessary, but winnable. President Obama’s March troop surge has not even been implemented yet. The President needs to win over his own party in Washington before U.S. forces can defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Two Views on Zero; Woodward Is Still Connected

Washington Post -- McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'
The first big leak from the military during the Obama era went public hours after the president accused his commanders of putting the “resource question ahead of the strategy question.”

Someone in the chain of command slipped Bob Woodward the 66-page assessment of the situation in Afghanistan by commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal that suggests without a substantial increase in U.S. forces, the war against Taliban insurgents will be irrevocably lost. The report has been on President Obama’s desk for two weeks, but the White House has been sitting on the bombshell as Democrats have complained more bitterly about the president’s escalation of the war.

McChrystal’s message to Obama seems to be that if the president wants a new strategy of nation building in Afghanistan he has to be willing to deliver the resources necessary.

“The assessment offers an unsparing critique of the failings of the Afghan government, contending that official corruption is as much of a threat as the insurgency to the mission of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition is widely known.

‘The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government,’ McChrystal says.”

Wall Street Journal -- Obama Questions Plan to Add Forces in Afghanistan

The Obama team is smarting from the poor reception of their Sunday stunt of having the president appear on five talk shows and still must tape the entire hour with former funnyman David Letterman in New York today.

While Obama said nothing new about health care in his round robin of Sunday chat shows, he did make news about ACORN, racial attitudes, and most of all, Afghanistan. As Examiner colleague Susan Ferrechio points out, five interviews means five headlines. The president, who will need forbearance from liberal members of his party in order to be able to declare symbolic victories on health and global warming, was looking to placate the anti-war base that made him the Democratic nominee.

But by pooh-poohing the rather desperate-sounding request for more troops that he had received from the man he put in charge in Afghanistan, Obama instead opened himself to criticism from the Left (unsatisfied with the status quo) and the Right (anxious that Obama will wimp out).

Just five months after announcing a bold and more ambitious approach to Afghanistan with a lamentation of his predecessor’s inattention to the Hindu Kush, the president seems to be having second thoughts.

‘I don't want to put the resource question before the strategy question,’ Mr. Obama told CNN's ‘State of the Union.’ ‘There is a natural inclination to say, 'If I get more, then I can do more.' But right now, the question is—the first question is—are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?’

Mr. Obama's comments suggested that the White House could be reassessing its strategy in Afghanistan, ahead of an expected request for more troops from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander there. Mr. Obama, who has approved more troops for Afghanistan while ordering a drawdown in Iraq, has already agreed to send an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total number of U.S. forces there to 68,000 by year's end.”

The War in Afghanistan

The War in Afghanistan
Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 3:38 PM

NATIONAL REVIEW
BING WEST
Along the Durand Line, Northeast Afghanistan
The view from the Karir Pass on the Durand Line separating Afghanistan from Pakistan is spectacular. To the west, a river meanders toward the city of Jalalabad. To the east, Pakistani towns lie amidst emerald green swaths of farmland that stretch to the horizon. I am accompanying Lt. Col. Mark O’Donnell, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 32nd Infantry Regiment, and his scout platoon on a visit to the Pakistani outpost, 100 miles northeast of Kabul. Although their post has a panoramic view, the Pakistani soldiers say they haven’t challenged anyone crossing the border. They explain that they cannot even visit the nearby Pakistani village, because the Taliban would kill them.

Because the Pakistani (and Afghan) border forces aren’t up to the job, the mission of the 1st Battalion is to control an 80-mile section of the border. But the Durand Line runs for 1,600 miles. Looking down on the valleys on both sides gives an impression of the vastness of the challenge. After leaving the Durand Line, I visit the seasoned French 10th Mountaineer Brigade, operating in the mountains and valleys east of Kabul. I ask their commander what the critical strengths of the Taliban and the ten other fundamentalist gangs opposing him are. “Watchers and information manipulation,” he says, succinctly summarizing the security problem.
By “watchers,” he means the network of sympathizers and sentries, including women and the ubiquitous goat herders, who warn of the approach of NATO forces. When I accompanied patrols with Viper Company of the 26th Infantry Regiment in the Korengal Valley, the interpreters could hear the watchers reporting our movements over handheld radios. The fundamentalists took inaccurate shots at us from 600 meters away and then ducked into ravines when our A-10 jets appeared. This system of over-watch has enabled the enemy to control their casualties in their mountain strongholds, while in the villages their spies intimidate the people, preventing the flow of information to friendly forces.

When I accompanied a U.S.-Afghan army platoon to make a rare arrest in a thriving town north of Kabul, hundreds of unsmiling Afghan males with folded arms gathered around us. Some muttered “feringhee” (foreigner) as I walked past. Well, I was wearing my Red Sox cap in a cricket-playing nation. But who was watching them? “I don’t know what’s in their minds,” First Sgt. Jason Rivas said, staring back at the dispassionate crowd. “I do know the Taliban owns the night. They come and go as they please. We’re rarely out here, and everyone knows when we’re coming.”

Maj. Jason Dempsey, the battalion’s operations officer, showed me pictures of teenagers placing boulders behind U.S. vehicles so they cannot turn around when under attack. The Taliban and other opposition groups appeal to a mixture of tribal jealousies, xenophobia, and Islamic fundamentalism. Yet instead of issuing a nationalist rallying cry to discredit the Taliban, Afghan president Hamid Karzai emphasizes civilian casualties caused by American air attacks. “We don’t have the moral high ground,” Karzai said recently, while comfortably ensconced in a TV studio in Washington, D.C. A weak leader likely to be reelected for another five-year term in August, Karzai is politically tone-deaf. He reinforces the disinformation campaign of the Taliban, instead of developing messages that undercut theirs. Despite little fighting and very low casualties by Afghan or other historical measures, his administration has lost ground to the Taliban and like-minded fundamentalists. A shadow government has gradually emerged in large swaths of the rural areas.

In response, over the past year, the U.S. military in Regional Command East, around Kabul and to its north and east, has adopted the Petraeus model from Iraq and deployed over 100 U.S. and Afghan companies in outposts among the population. This maneuver has reestablished some control, as evidenced by a drop in violence affecting civilians. But the Americans are still foreigners controlling a population that, fearing retribution, rarely offers information that identifies the fundamentalists. In Iraq in 2007, Gen. David Petraeus presided over a shift in Sunni attitudes that led to a steady flow of information against al-Qaeda. Nothing similar has happened in Afghanistan. Until the local population decides to inform, the government in Kabul faces a serious problem.

In Regional Command South, including the key poppy-growing centers and the city of Kandahar, the security situation is worse. But 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines are surging into that area to clear the populated zones and then turn over the task of population protection to Afghan forces. By the fall, they can be expected to push back the Taliban. But what happens after that? How will Kabul solidify the gains?

On May 11, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replaced the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Changing commanders had less to do with redirecting strategy than with strengthening teamwork. In March, President Obama had announced a new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy that sounded like a continuation of the Bush policy. At that time, Bruce Riedel, Obama’s point man on Afghanistan, stressed that the president had laid out “a strategy” and that “it’s not intended to be a campaign plan.”
Not picking up on the clear signal that a campaign plan was necessary but still missing,

McKiernan failed to produce one. Petraeus, when in Iraq, had issued clear letters of his intent to all the soldiers. In contrast, McKiernan did not share his vision with his soldiers. He remained aloof and detached from his troops and from Washington. So Gates, in a shift that showed the power of Petraeus behind the scenes, selected some aggressive but compatible personalities. McChrystal had worked closely with Petraeus, Gates, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Because they are comfortable with one another, these four men share perspectives candidly. Soon there will be five: Adm. James Stavridis has just been appointed NATO commander. For the past three years, he has served as U.S. commander for Latin America, dealing with the drug wars. That experience is critically needed in Afghanistan, which is a major opium producer.

Gates must insist that either Mullen or Petraeus provide an objective risk assessment, independent of McChrystal. By way of analogy, every corporate board of trustees has an assigned risk assessor. Some senior general must remain detached enough from the day-to-day diplomatic and military crises in Afghanistan to warn if the strategy writ large is going awry.
As for the military campaign plan itself, it has still not been written. “Our mission,” Gates said, “requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders.” Does that mean that the deployment into outposts was a mistake — or that the Marines are wrong to try to clear the populated areas and then transition population protection to Afghan forces? No: The basic concepts appear sound. But operations are proceeding at a slow pace, because the size and bulk of each unit leaving the bases is large in order to minimize casualties.

So what “new approaches” should be included in the campaign plan? The first step is to agree that the goal is not to win, but to turn the war over to the Afghans. Many — perhaps most — Afghans have become accustomed to letting America and NATO do most of the fighting for them and deliver economic improvements. At the same time, they want to keep their distance from foreigners, accommodate the fundamentalists, and cling to the tribal values challenged by modernity. How do we put Afghans in the lead in their own country, to settle their own differences, while not losing the country to fundamentalists intent on attacking us?

There are two basic options. First, we can put more resources and urgency into the standard counterinsurgency approach. Militarily, this means recruiting more local militia at the village level. Once the overt Taliban fighters are pushed out of a populated area, a force has to come in to impose order, and that includes arresting seditionists. The traditional solution would call for improving the wretched police and installing American civilians to advise (and supervise) the district and provincial officials and thus strengthen the sinews of government. This approach would take several more years and several hundred million dollars not yet budgeted.

The second approach is more radical: strengthen the Afghan military as the backbone of government. Since the war cannot be won by killing the fundamentalists, they must be separated from the population. That is not happening. The U.S. holds about 600 prisoners in Afghanistan. Another 400 are held in the central Afghan prison. The number of enemy fighters imprisoned is absurdly disproportionate to the violence and intimidation — and amounts to a severe critique of intelligence and police effectiveness.

The enemy lives somewhere; it needs housing, food, transportation, resupply, etc. We have not trained Afghan units to acquire and run agents at the village and district levels, and to arrest the supporters of the fundamentalists. Our Special Operations Forces and CIA do a good job with the high-level enemy operatives, but the lower-level agents are walking around free and without fear. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and 13,000 Americans were arrested under martial law. There must be a similarly stiff penalty for sedition, and knowledge among the population that the Afghan government has agents, a net of informers, a military that makes arrests, and adequate prisons.

The U.S. should fund a pension plan to allow the quick retirement with dignity of a raft of superannuated Afghan officers who are performing poorly but have no means of living if they retire. In return, the U.S. should insist on joint U.S.-Afghan promotion boards for Afghan military and police officers at the company command level and above. As it stands now, our advisers can tell which leaders are poor or corrupt — but they can do little about it.

The police cannot function without a military umbrella, but the military can function as police. Instead of moving frequently, Afghan battalions should remain for years in one locale, so they become acquainted with the local politics. The police should be placed under army control. The army can also supervise the services supposedly provided by district and provincial officials.

This is a step back from the democratic model by which the Eastern European nations emerged from Communism. It points toward Turkey or Pakistan, or Mexico until recently. The American goal, however, is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming again a sanctuary for Islamic fundamentalists. The Afghan army, the nation’s most respected institution, is already working hand in hand with our military and offers the fastest means of reducing our burden in that country.

President Pantywaist

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution.. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley , Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers...President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America 's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans.

Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?