US Base Abandoned After Being Overrun

It must have been worse than we thought:

After suffering significant setbacks in the fight against insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan troops have pulled out of a combat outpost where nine U.S. soldiers were killed in a pitched battle with Taliban fighters Sunday..

U.S. and Afghan soldiers withdrew from the makeshift outpost near the remote village of Wanat as Taliban fighters swarmed the area near the border of the eastern provinces of Nuristan and Kunar, NATO and Afghan officials said Wednesday. An unspecified number of NATO and Afghan troops remain in the remote region near the edge of Pakistan's western border, said Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for NATO's mission in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.

The combat outpost in Wanat had only been operational for two or three days before Taliban insurgents launched a sophisticated assault on it Sunday, according to NATO officials. Hundreds of Taliban fighters attacked the outpost with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and gunfire. About 100 to 150 U.S. and Afghan soldiers struggled to repel the early morning attack, firing a fusillade of bullets on insurgents who had taken up positions in a village mosque and several other locations.

In addition to the nine U.S. troops killed, 15 American and at least four Afghan soldiers were wounded after insurgents breached the outer area of the outpost. The attack was the deadliest in Afghanistan since U.S.-led military operations began in the country in 2001.

As I speculated here when the attack happened, no amount of "spin" is going to make us believe this didn't matter. Pulling troops out is significant, but doesn't hand much to the Taliban or tribal fighters. They're not interested in real estate because they can obviously assemble and move in larger numbers than before. They're interested in conducting these larger, overwhelming attacks and then disappearing.

Was the outpost poorly positioned? Did someone select a piece of ground that couldn't be defended? If this was a tactical mistake, easily rectified by moving troops to a place that is more suitable to defend, will there be an assessment done of ALL the outposts?

My belief is that we are going to have to consolidate into company-sized elements for defense, add considerable firepower to allow troops to defend themselves better, and start preparing ourselves for a fight more akin to Korea than anything else. Shortages of troops, of weapons, and the undesirable terrain work against us.

[Yes, we acknowledge--they shouldn't be there, we never should have invaded, the Brits lost a bunch of men there, the Russians were whipped, etc. We get that. We're dealing with the here and now, not the woulda-shoulda-coulda.]

--WS

Jailbreak Afghanistan

Photo: Sarposa Prison

This is the best story I could find on what happened in Kandahar today:

Canadian forces and other NATO troops have been deployed to Kandahar after the main prison in the southern Afghan city was attacked by militants, who set most of the prisoners free.

Maj. Jay Janzen, a spokesman for the Canadian Forces, said troops were on the scene and had established a security perimeter in the vicinity.

"We believe the situation is under control,” Janzen said, without elaborating.

Around 10 p.m., Taliban insurgents drove a car filled with explosives up to Sarposa prison's main gate and detonated it, destroying the gate and surrounding shops and killing 10 police officers in the vicinity.

Afghan officials also said Taliban insurgents fired several rockets at parts of the prison.

A Taliban spokesman said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison. Qari Yousef Ahmadi also claimed that hundreds of Taliban prisoners were freed in the assault.

There were reports that 150 to 200 prisoners were still in the prison, with the rest having escaped.

But Wali Karzai, president of Kandahar's provincial council and the brother of President Hamid Karzai, said "all the prisoners escaped. There is no one left."

About 1,170 inmates were believed to have been in the prison and may now be roaming the streets of Kandahar city, Hunter said.

Canadian Forces are in command of Kandahar, and most of the roughly 2,500 Canadian troops in Afghanistan are stationed there.

The prison, the largest detention facility in Kandahar province, housed both common criminals and captured Taliban militants who had been fighting NATO troops and the Afghan government.

"It's a big blow. It's a very significant development," said CBC's Susan Ormiston, who visited the prison last April.

Suspected Taliban members detained by Canadian soldiers and turned over to Afghanistan officials are sent to the prison, located in the outskirts of the city.

Canada has spent $1 million on improvements to the facility, including new cell blocks and new windows.

Ormiston said Canadian officials were hoping the prison would become a model for other prisons in the region.

Sarposa Prison was in the news last year when allegations of detainee abuse and torture came out in the Canadian media:

As the Canadian government defends its policy of handing over Afghan detainees to local authorities, one former detainee has told CTV News about his alleged abuse by police.

Noor Mohammed Noori claims that eight Afghan police officers pinned him down with iron bars across his arms and legs, and beat him unconscious.

"They beat me that night four times, and the last time I couldn't walk," he said through an interpreter.

But Noori, who still walks with a slight limp, said he does not blame Canadian soldiers for giving him to police, because they were only following rules.

"They had only one option and I know it's not the fault of the Canadians that I was beaten by police, because they were not aware," he explained.

This is a pretty serious development in the state of affairs in Afghanistan. What impact, if any, this will have on the morale of the Taliban, whether this will lead to more brazen attacks, whether this means the war is beginning to enter a new phase--that's up in the air right now.

One this is pretty clear--there aren't enough troops in Afghanistan to deal with a full-scale offensive of any kind.

[and, yes, the point has been made--we can't win in Afghanistan, we never should have gone there, we're going to lose like the Soviets lost, etc...]

Afghanistan Enters Another Summer

One of the few generals who can actually command combat troops in the field is General David McKiernan. The US Army actually has precious few of these men left--many left in disgust during the Rumsfeld era. McKiernan ran the show in Iraq in 2003--carrying out the plans handed to him. Of all the things that can be said about the Iraq War, there is no disputing the success of the US military's smashing of the Iraqi military in record time. It was a deep strike that left the follow on support troops vulnerable, but with what he had, McKiernan carried out his orders and succeeded where many would have failed. He was one of the generals who had to watch General David Petraeus pass him by--McKiernan went to be Deputy Commanding General/Chief of Staff for United States Army Forces Command while Petraeus went from being a Division Commander to CENTCOM Commander in a few short years.

McKiernan is an ROTC soldier, not a West Point man--a distinction that might not mean a great deal, but nevertheless. His rise through the ranks was not a foregone conclusion. He has recently been chosen to command all forces in Afghanistan:

The American general who led the ground invasion of Iraq took command of the 40-nation NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan on Tuesday.

Army Gen. David D. McKiernan took charge of the 51,000-member International Security Assistance Force from Gen. Dan McNeill, who will retire from the U.S. Army after 40 years.

Addressing a change of command ceremony Tuesday, McKiernan said he was "honored to walk alongside our Afghan brothers."

General McKiernan faces many new challenges--not the least of which is the fact that his new boss, General Petraeus, has, shall we say, an entirely different problem with Afghanistan:

If the problem in Iraq was introducing political suppleness, the problem in Afghanistan is the opposite: It is reducing the political suppleness. The way to do that is to introduce military force, to change the psychology of the region by convincing it that the United States is prepared to remain indefinitely and to bring overwhelming force to bear. That was the point of the U.S. announcement that it would take over the burden dropped by NATO.

The problem is that this is a bluff. The United States doesn’t have overwhelming force to bring to bear. The Soviets had 300,000 troops in Afghanistan. They held the cities, but the countryside was as treacherous for them as it is for the Americans. The force the United States can bring to bear is insufficient to overawe the tribes and cause them to break with the Taliban. And therefore, the United States is in a holding pattern, hoping that something will turn up.

That something is Pakistan. If Petraeus follows true to his Iraqi form — where he engaged the Iranians based on their own self-interest, inducing Tehran to rein in al-Sadr — then his key move must be to engage the Pakistanis in the fight against the Taliban. The problem is that it is not clearly in Pakistan’s self-interest to create a civil war in Pakistan with the Taliban, and the new government in Islamabad does not appear to have the appetite for such a struggle. And the Pakistani army continues to have elements sympathetic to the Taliban. If the army is not prepared to put up much of a fight in Pakistan’s northern tribal areas, it certainly is not looking for armed conflict with the Taliban — many of whose members are in fact Pakistani guerrillas — in Pakistan’s nontribal areas.

In sum, Petraeus improved the situation in Iraq, but he hasn’t won the war there. And applying those lessons to Afghanistan is simply repeating what has happened since 2001. Petraeus is a good general, so it is unlikely he will continue that same course. But it is also unlikely that he will be in a position to force the Pakistanis to deny Taliban sanctuary. We therefore don’t know what he will do in Afghanistan. But, as we have said before, it is a deteriorating situation, and he will be forced to act on it. That’s why he was placed at the helm of CENTCOM.

If Petraeus had Moqtada al Sadr to contend with, McKiernan has Baitullah Mehsud as his main concern:

While the Pakistani army goes for show, flying journalists in for a brief visit to demonstrate how the Taliban is in retreat, the Taliban goes for a far different tactic.

Baitullah Mehsud, the head of Pakistani Taliban, called a news conference in the same area, drove up in a new Toyota SUV full of security carrying new AK-47 assault rifles, and holds court, unmolested, for an extended period of time.

Mehsud was not bashful about acknowledging his role in combating U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and promised to intensify those attacks. Articulating the standard jihadi-Islamist view, he stated that “Islam does not recognize boundaries. There can be no deal with the United States.”

[SNIP]

It is time to stop pretending Pakistan can or will be an ally against the Taliban, either in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The group grew and was nurtured under the wings of the [Inter-services Intelligence] ISI, and are broadly supported, both by officials in Pakistan, and, in many places, by the population.

Without being able to rely on the Pakistani authorities to deny the Taliban sanctuary and without being able to take direct action in those areas itself, the NATO forces are hamstrung in an effort that at best can hold the line for a few years. Victory, or any semblance thereof, is simply out of the question as long as these sanctuaries remain.

McKiernan has to move quickly and effectively to effectively deal with Mehsud:

He and his main ally, Qari Hussain, whom officials and associates have described as a highly trained and vicious militant, have methodically built up strongholds in North and South Waziristan — killing uncooperative tribal leaders, recruiting unemployed young men to their jihad and filling the vacuum left by a lack of government services. Now, they also have lieutenants and allies across the tribal region.

In South Waziristan, they run training camps for suicide bombers, some of them children, according to the former Taliban member. Their realm is so secure that in April Mehsud's umbrella group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, held a conference of thousands of fighters that culminated in a public execution, according to a local resident.

Local Pakistani authorities say they are helpless to deal with Mehsud's group. In a measure of their despair, on Wednesday the authorities in the Mohmand district, where the conference and public execution were held, announced a truce with the Taliban.

Mehsud was once a minor figure in the small Shabikhel branch of the fierce Mehsud tribe that lives in South Waziristan, whose inhospitable territory remained a sliver of imperial India left unconquered by the British.

But he managed to enhance his stature through the ambivalence — or protection, according to some officials — of the Pakistani authorities, say former Pakistani military officials and tribal leaders. His strength grew quickly after February 2005, when the military, then under the control of President Pervez Musharraf, signed a peace deal with him.

"That was when I knew the army was not serious," said a tribal leader who has dealt with Mehsud and would not be named for safety reasons. "If the army took firm action they could crush him in two months."

Instead, the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence, the overarching Pakistani intelligence agency, wanted to keep Mehsud "in reserve," said the tribal leader, who is also a former military officer.

It should come as no surprise that as McKiernan takes over in Afghanistan, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrives in Pakistan for an official two-day visit.

While Mullen lays the groundwork to deal with the Taliban, the US media does its best job of hiding its head in the sand. Barnett R. Rubin at Informed Comment recently debated David Ignatius of the Washington Post after Rubin spent some time getting a decidedly "different" picture of what is going on in Afghanistan:

One of the main explanations for the level of violence is a significant increase in infiltration from Pakistan's Tribal Areas, which are directly adjacent to RC/E. The Pakistan army has used the election of a new civilian government as a blame-shifting cover for its decision to withdraw from FATA and conclude a truce with the Pakistani Taliban. This truce has enabled the militants to focus their energy on Afghanistan.

This may be true, but it does not show that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is in fact succeeding, when all factors are taken into account. During my visit to Kabul I found that several officials of the U.S. government there interpreted my challenge to Ignatius' assertions as criticisms or denigration of their efforts in RC/E. That is not at all my intention. I was not able to take up the Embassy's offer of a repeat of the Ignatius tour on this visit, and I last visited RC/E in August 2006, when I went to Gardez, Paktia, to visit Governor Hakim Taniwal, an old friend and academic colleague (Taniwal was a sociologist) . Taniwal was killed by a suicide bomber a few weeks later. I have no reason to doubt the positive accounts of US counter-insurgency work, mostly in Khost, one of the smallest of the 12 provinces in RC/E. The failures of U.S. policy do not result from poor implementation by people in the field. On the contrary, from what I have seen, whatever successes there have been have largely been led from the field, not from Washington. Those working on the ground have worked hard in many cases to reverse or evade policies imposed by the Bush administration.

As good as McKiernan might be as a General, he has to understand that the best way to solve the problems that he faces are to use diplomacy--as in, a diplomatic effort to pacify the Pakistanis who support the Taliban just enough to allow for some "accommodation" between Karzai and the militants. Karzai is going to have to make peace with the Taliban, or at least reach some sort of arrangement with them. He might even--gasp--have to share power with them. Remember--Karzai has asked for just that in the past.

The Taliban's former chief spokesman has revealed that top-level talks are being held between the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and key lieutenants of the former Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

His disclosure that the Taliban "cabinet in exile" is engaged in negotiations appeared to contradict the statement to Parliament yesterday by Gordon Brown that hardline Taliban leaders would be isolated from talks over the future of Afghanistan.

The fact that Karzai has long advocated negotiations and power sharing with the Taliban is a new wrinkle for the US to contend with. This means that diplomacy is the only way to get ourselves extricated from Afghanistan, which should be our ultimate goal. Without a functioning State Department and with a CENTCOM commander who is more focused on Iraq, this might have to wait until a new Administration takes over. The encouraging thing is this--Petraeus was instrumental in bringing in Sunni militiamen. The idea of bringing the Taliban into the mix in Afghanistan isn't too far off the mark. Whether or not the Taliban will abandon their assistance of al Qaeda is something for the diplomats to work out, of course.

McKiernan will need diplomats more than he'll need airstrikes.

*Yes, the best thing to do would have been to NOT invade Afghanistan. We get that. This post deals with the reality as it is today. Making the point that "we never should have gone there in the first place" is simply stating the obvious.

Why Baitullah Mehsud Matters

The man that some believe responsible for the killing of Benazir Bhutto is the primary link between Pakistan and the Taliban. A recent deal between Pakistan and the militants may allow Mehsud to consolidate his power:

Daniel Markey, a former State Department specialist on South Asian issues, sat down with the Council on Foreign Relations to speak about the rise of the "Mehsud" tribes and their leader.

...the Pakistani army has really moved into the area in force and enforced an economic blockade against Mehsud tribes before starting negotiations. It has inflicted various punishments on some of the tribal villages to demonstrate that the army, in fact, has the upper hand. That's one difference. The other difference that I was told about on my trip is that this time the Pakistani government claims to be negotiating, not with the Taliban directly, but with tribal leaders. This is a potentially significant difference because the army—or the Pakistani government—claims that by negotiating with tribal leaders, not militants, they can hold these tribal leaders accountable for enforcing the agreement and make them, the tribal leaders, crack down on the militants who are among them.

So who is Baitullah Mehsud and why should we care about him?

He is viewed as a menace to internal security in Pakistan and is also probably connected to broader terrorist and militant activities in the region and possibly beyond that. Now on the other hand, he comes from the Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan. He is not a traditional leader of the Mehsud tribe. He is a self-appointed leader of a group called the “Pakistani Taliban.” There are other leaders, people who have gained leadership either through hereditary titles or because they are popular representatives of the wider tribe, who would be normal negotiating partners with the Pakistani army under these conditions. Those are the leaders whom the Pakistani government claims to be working with to hammer out a deal. Those are the leaders who would be held responsible for making sure people like Baitullah Mehsud and his associates are kept in line if a deal is worked out.

Now the relationship between those more legitimate tribal leaders and militants like Baitullah Mehsud is not entirely clear. By many accounts, at this stage of the game Baitullah Mehsud and the other militants actually have more power than the tribal leaders and are really calling the shots, in which case this may not be a serious distinction that the Pakistani government may be making. That's one reason why the United States and others need to be concerned about this deal.

Markey breaks down why it is important to know who Mehsud is and why he may either be yet another distant cousin of a wannabe terrorists or someone who may one day be a more deadly threat to the West than Osama bin Laden:

I think there are three broad categories that the United States needs to be worried about in Pakistan's tribal areas. The first would be that of Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani militant of the Pakistan Taliban. The second would be the Afghan Taliban, sort of symbolized by Mullah Omar, the former leaders of Afghanistan prior to September 11 who fled to Pakistan. The third would be al-Qaeda and other foreign, international terrorists. Now the connections between all of these as well as many other types of militant organizations in the area are often very, very difficult to discern.

It would appear, given Baitullah Mehsud's own rhetoric, and he's talked about the need to destroy New York, to destroy London, to destroy Washington, that he is definitely, at least rhetorically, on a similar page as al-Qaeda. He has claimed to have had contact with al-Qaeda leaders, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaeda leader who was killed in Iraq. Also his wide use of suicide bombing as a tactic is something that didn't really happen much in Pakistan much beforehand. So it’s a relatively new thing and it's obviously very consistent with the wider al-Qaeda strategy. So he may be connected to that as well. Whether he is actually involved in helping to harbor senior al-Qaeda leaders or has regular connections with them, is at this point impossible to say.

What's especially troubling is that, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Bush Administration lacks a cohesive plan for dealing with the likes of Mehsud. In a report entitled "The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas" from April of this year, the Mehsud tribes and Baitullah Mehsud are not even identified by name. But the most troubling aspect of the report is this:

The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA region. Since 2002, the United States has relied principally on the Pakistani military to address its national security goals. There have been limited efforts, however, to address other underlying causes of terrorism in the FATA by providing development assistance or by addressing the FATA’s political needs. Of the over $10.5 billion that the United States has provided to Pakistan from 2002 through 2007, we identified about $5.8 billion specifically for Pakistan’s FATA and border region; about 96 percent of this funding reimbursed Pakistan for military operations in the FATA and the border region. According to Defense and State Department officials, Pakistan deployed up to 120,000 military and paramilitary forces in the FATA and killed and captured hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives. In October 2007, State reported that it had determined that Pakistan was making “significant” progress toward eliminating the safe haven in the FATA. However, we found broad agreement, as documented in the unclassified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), State and embassy documents, as well as among Defense, State, and other officials, including those operating in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.

No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, recommended by the independent 9/11 Commission, and mandated by congressional legislation. Since 2003, the administration’s national security strategies and Congress have recognized that a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power—diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support—was needed to address the terrorist threat emanating from the FATA. Furthermore, in 2004, a provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Intelligence Reform Act) established the NCTC to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism that included clear objectives, the assignment of tasks among executive branch departments, and interagency coordination. We have previously reported on the need for these and other elements to enhance interagency cooperation and improve effectiveness. The NCTC also was tasked with monitoring each department’s efforts. However, neither the NCTC, the NSC, nor the other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that integrates the capabilities of the executive agencies and the intelligence community. As a result, since 2002, the embassy has had no Washington-supported, comprehensive plan to combat terrorists and close the terrorist safe haven in the FATA. In 2006, the U.S. government, in conjunction with the government of Pakistan, began an effort to focus more attention on other key elements of national power, such as development and public diplomacy, to address U.S. goals in the FATA. In support of this effort, Defense, State, and USAID began to develop department-specific plans and hold interagency meetings to address security and development issues in the FATA.

The GAO went on to call for the Bush Administration to:

We recommend that the National Security Advisor and the Director of the NCTC, in consultation with the Secretaries of Defense and State, and the Administrator of USAID, the intelligence community, and other executive departments as deemed appropriate, implement the congressional mandate to develop a comprehensive plan using all elements of national power to combat the terrorist threat and close their safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA region.

The comprehensive plan should also include key components called for in the Intelligence Reform Act, the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, and components that we have previously reported as being needed to improve the effectiveness of plans involving multidepartmental efforts to combat terrorism.17 The plan should (1) place someone directly in charge of this multidepartment effort to improve accountability; (2) articulate a clear strategy to implement the national security goal to destroy terrorists and close the safe haven in the FATA; (3) clarify roles and responsibilities of each department for implementing the goal; (4) provide guidance on setting funding priorities and providing resources to meet these national security goals; and (5) require a monitoring system and provide periodic reports to Congress on the progress and impediments to meeting national security goals in Pakistan.

So there is no question--Congressional oversight means nothing. Despite the best efforts of the Congress to try to do something, anything to get the Bush Administration to actually fight terrorism, they drag their feet and do nothing. Not surprisingly,

State and ODNI did not comment on our recommendation, while Defense and USAID concurred with our recommendation. In general, they all commented on their individual planning efforts and interagency meetings to coordinate these efforts that began in 2006. This, however, was not the focus of our review; our report assessed whether a comprehensive plan had been developed that incorporated all elements of national power. We plan to conduct a detailed assessment of the individual agency efforts from 2002 to the present as part of our broader engagement efforts and look forward to working closely with ODNI, Defense, State, USAID, and other agencies in assessing their plans and efforts to meet national security goals in Pakistan.

State’s comments assert that embassy and U.S. government efforts to date have resulted in a comprehensive strategy. We disagree and note in our report that, while the initiatives begun by Defense, State, and USAID are being coordinated by the embassy, they have not been fully approved or integrated into a formal, comprehensive plan. While we acknowledge that this effort is a step in the right direction toward implementing the 2003 national security strategy, the recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, and Congress, it is unclear whether the new approach will include all of the key elements of national power, such as intelligence, economic, and law enforcement support.

ODNI’s comments stated that they agreed with our finding that the United States had not met its national security goals in Pakistan’s FATA and that countering the growth of terrorist safe havens requires all elements of national power. They disagreed, however, that the United States lacks plans to combat terrorism in the area.

Your Bush administration at work. While actual terrorists are busy working out the details, they're paralyzed by the Iraq War and they're more concerned with glossy pictures in the entryway, a phony legacy that has already dissipated into nothing, and anything but actually stopping them.

"the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life..."

Photo: Travis and Willard Twiggs

Marine with PTSD kills brother, self:

Last month, Marine Staff Sgt. Travis N. "T-Bo" Twiggs went to the White House with a group of Iraq war veterans called the Wounded Warriors Regiment and met President George W. Bush. Twiggs had been through four tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and months of therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder in which he said he was on up to 12 different medications.

"He said, `Sir, I've served over there many times, and I would serve for you any time,' and he grabbed the president and gave him a big hug," said Kellee Twiggs, his widow. About two weeks later, Travis Twiggs went absent without leave from his job in Quantico, Virginia. He and his brother drove to the Grand Canyon, where their car was found hanging in a tree in what appeared to be a failed attempt to drive into the chasm. The brothers carjacked a vehicle at the park Monday.

Two days later they were at a southwestern Arizona border checkpoint, and took off when they were asked to pull into a secondary inspection area, Border Patrol spokesman Michael Bernacke said. Eighty miles (130 kilometers) later, the car was on the Tohono O'odham reservation, its tires wrecked by spike strips.

As tribal police and Border Patrol agents closed in, Twiggs, 36, apparently fatally shot his 38-year-old brother, Willard J. "Will" Twiggs, then killed himself. Pinal County Sheriff's spokesman Mike Minter said no motive has been established. But Kellee Twiggs said the decorated Marine would still be alive if the military had given him enough help.

[SNIP]

Travis Twiggs, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon, wrote about his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette.

The symptoms would disappear when he began each tour, he said, but came back stronger than ever when he came home.

He wrote that his life began to "spiral downward" after the tour in which two Marines from his platoon died.

"I cannot describe what a leader feels when he does not bring everyone home," he wrote. "To make matters even worse, I arrived at the welcome home site only to find that those two Marines' families were waiting to greet me as well. I remember thinking, 'Why are they here?"'

Weeks later, Twiggs "saw a physician's assistant who said that was the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life," his widow said.

He began receiving treatment, but the Marine wrote that he mixed his medications with alcohol and that his symptoms did not go away until he started his final tour in Iraq.

When he came home, "All of my symptoms were back, and now I was in the process of destroying my family," he wrote. "My only regrets are how I let my command down after they had put so much trust in me and how I let my family down by pushing them away."

Kellee Twiggs said her husband was "very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth," upon his return. "He was just doing crazy things."

She said her husband was treated in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Medical Center and then sent to a Veterans Administration facility for four months.

Most recently, Travis Twiggs was assigned to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, a job he said helped him "get my life back on track."

"Every day is a better day now," he wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette. "... Looking back, I don't believe anyone is to blame for my craziness, but I do think we can do better."

Twiggs urged others suffering from similar problems to seek help. "PTSD is not a weakness. It is a normal reaction to a very violent situation," he wrote.

Kellee Twiggs said she cannot understand why her husband was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey.

"They let him out. He was OK for a while and then it all started over again," she said.

“NATO is in Afghanistan; it’s time they did some soldiering.”

The United States is running into resistance from Pakistan when it comes to securing the border between that country and Afghanistan.

“Pakistan will take care of its own problems, you take care of Afghanistan on your side,” said Owari Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, who is also President Pervez Musharraf’s representative in charge of the neighboring tribal areas.

Mr. Ghani, a key architect of the pending peace accord, believes along with many other Pakistani leaders that the United States is floundering in the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan, he said, should not be saddled with America’s mistakes, especially if a solution involved breaching Pakistan’s sovereignty, a delicate matter in a nation where sentiment against the Bush administration runs high.

“Pakistan is a sovereign state,” he said. “NATO is in Afghanistan; it’s time they did some soldiering.”

The US and NATO regularly target Taliban forces on either side of the border:

On Wednesday night, the United States fired its fourth Predator missile strike since January, the most visible symbol of the American push for a freer hand to pursue militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban who use Pakistan’s tribal areas as a base to attack Afghanistan and plot terrorist attacks abroad. In Afghanistan, cross-border attacks have doubled over the same month last year and present an increasingly lethal challenge to American and NATO efforts to wind down the war and deny the Taliban and Al Qaeda a sanctuary.

In an unusual step during a visit to Pakistan in March, Adm. Eric T. Olson, the commander of United States Special Operations Command, held a round-table discussion with a group of civilian Pakistani leaders to sound them out on the possibility of cross-border raids by American forces. He was told in no uncertain terms that from the Pakistani point of view it was a bad idea, said one of the participants.

Instead, Pakistani officials are trying to restore calm to their country, which was rattled by a record number of suicide attacks last year. Within days, they are expected to strike a peace accord with Pakistan’s own militants that makes no mention of stopping the infiltrations. In fact, Pakistani counterinsurgency operations have stopped during the new government’s negotiations with the militants.

[SNIP]

American officials in Washington said the Predator strike on Wednesday killed a handful of Qaeda militants, including one they described as a “significant leader.” The strike indicated that the C.I.A. retained some freedom to operate in the tribal areas. But as the gap between Pakistani and American policies widens, United States officials are pushing harder for still more latitude.

During his visit to North-West Frontier Province, Admiral Olson was taken to the military headquarters of the 14th Division of the Pakistani Army in Dera Ismail Khan, an area just outside the tribal region, where he was struck by the extent of the anti-Taliban sentiment, Pakistani officials said.

Still, in the talks, which were organized by the United States Consulate here in late March, the civilian leaders said they advised the Americans against fighting in Pakistani territory populated by Pashtuns. Pakistan’s government has long been wary of nationalist and separatist strains among the Pashtuns, whose population straddles the Pakistani-Afghan border.

“I said it would be extremely dangerous,” Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of North-West Frontier Province, said he told Admiral Olson. “It would increase the number of militants, it would be a war of liberation for the Pashtuns. They would say: ‘We are being slaughtered. Our enemy is the United States.’"

Map-languages and regions of Afghanistan

Within Pakistan, there are indications that the coalition government is coming apart:

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of Pakistan's six-week-old coalition government on Monday, plunging the volatile Muslim nation back into political uncertainty.

Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) was the second-largest member of a four party alliance, made the announcement after failing to break a deadlock with its main coalition partner over the reinstatement of dismissed judges.

Sharif made the restoration of 60 judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf in November the main condition for joining the coalition led by the party of Asif Ali Zardari, the widower and political successor of the late Benazir Bhutto.

Three days of talks in London between Sharif and Zardari, whose Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leads the coalition, ended on Sunday without any breakthrough.

"Our ministers will meet the prime minister tomorrow and will submit their resignations," Sharif told a news conference.

Nine of the 24 ministers in Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's cabinet belong to the PML-N, including Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.

Sharif said his party would continue to support the PPP government despite quitting the cabinet.

"For the time being, we'll not sit in opposition."

Despite the possibility of the collapse of the Pakistani government, however, the New York Times says that the US is stepping up its rhetoric:

Last week John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, used perhaps the strongest language yet against Pakistan, saying that the United States found it “unacceptable” that extremists used the tribal areas to plan attacks against Afghanistan, the rest of the world and Pakistan itself.

“We will not be satisfied until the violent extremism emanating from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is brought under control,” Mr. Negroponte told the National Endowment for Democracy.

Earlier this month, Afrasiab Khattak and Asfandyar Wali Khan, the leaders of the Awami National Party, which leads the government in the North-West Frontier Province, met with Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and Mr. Negroponte in Washington.

In their meetings, Mr. Khattak said, it was hard to deter the Americans from the notion of launching their own operations into Pakistan. The topic came up “again and again,” he said.

The Americans specifically mentioned their concern that Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas were preparing an attack on the United States, he said.

“We told them physical intervention into the tribal areas by the United States would be a blunder,” Mr. Khattak said. “It would create an atmosphere in which the terrorists would rally” popular support.

Should the United States and its NATO allies be focused on operations along the Pakistani border at all? According to researcher Sarah Meyer, the Afghan people are facing starvation and famine due to a particularly harsh winter, coupled with ongoing war in their country:

Among the resources compiled by Meyer, this article highlights the need to take care of the Afghan people:

If instead of the fields of poppies there were expanses of wheat, 18 million Afghans who today suffer from hunger would have enough food. With these statements - which appear a bit naive - the experts of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have declared that by better using international funds, the development of new irrigation and technology systems for agriculture could be realised. But the most difficult thing is convincing Afghan farmers to change their extensive opium cultivation to the production of wheat, fruit, and vegetables.

According to data supplied by the UN, Afghanistan uses 193,000 hectares of land for the cultivation of poppy, and produces more than 90% of the opium in circulation. The estimates reveal that by the end of 2008, the country will produce more than 8,200 tonnes of raw opium.

According to some experts, the world economic crisis and the dizzying rise in food prices everywhere could prompt farmers to convert their poppy fields to wheat. In fact, the price of wheat has risen from 157 dollars per tonne in January to 500 dollars in April of this year.

Tekeste Ghebray Tekie, the FAO representative in Afghanistan, is certain that by growing wheat with the appropriate irrigation systems, more than two and a half tons per hectare could be produced. "If you use this land for high cash crops like vegetables, fruit or cotton", Tekeste says, "then the contribution to food security will be enormous".

Before the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan had much more irrigated land, but the irrigation systems were destroyed during the war. After the United States military intervention in the country, begun in October of 2001, 15 billion dollars in international aid was invested. But according to Oxfam, only 300 million of this has been earmarked for agriculture.

Photo: Dara, Afghanistan

Herschel Smith at The Captain's Journal highlights efforts by the US Department of Agriculture to assist Counterinsurgency Operations in Afghanistan:

Body armor is not in [Jeff] Knowles’ typical wardrobe as an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). But then again, working with farmers in Afghanistan to help rebuild their agricultural system isn’t his typical work either.

Knowles, who now lives in Hawaii, spent six months in the war-scarred nation talking with farmers about what they grow and what their needs are. He was honored last week by USDA secretary Ed Schafer for his service in Afghanistan in 2005-06.

“I think it’s one of the best things we’re doing in the country,” Knowles said via a phone interview from his USDA office in Hawaii. “If we can help improve quality of life for farmers — and 95 percent of the Afghan people are farmers — we’re doing something real.”

Living conditions are rough. And most farmers are subsistence farmers, growing crops like wheat, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, apricots, apples and almonds.

But getting enough water for crops is a major issue …

It was in Hawaii that Knowles decided to volunteer for a six-month stint in Afghanistan.

“It was really intriguing to me — they were facing problems with erosion, heavy and widespread, and a lot of their irrigation system was destroyed,” he said. “It seemed that my entire career was pointing to this. The things I’d been working with for close to 30 years were the things they needed in Afghanistan.”

Handling the Cremation of Fallen Soldiers

A facility in Delaware that cremates both human and animal remains in different incinerators at the same site was cited as a reason for reviewing how the remains of fallen soldiers are handled.

The Pentagon is recommending changes in the handling of troops' remains, after it was revealed that a crematorium contracted by the military handles both human and animal cremations.

A military official said there have been no instances or charges that human and pet remains were mixed. But officials are now recommending that troops' remains be incinerated at a facility that is dedicated entirely to humans, in order to avoid any appearance of a problem. Or, officials said, families can opt to have a relative's remains sent to a local funeral home for cremation, which would be paid for by the military.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed the earlier situation was "insensitive and entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

"Our heroes deserve to be better treated than that," Morrell said, adding that a sign at one of the crematoriums noted that it also does pet cremations. He said Gates offered an apology to military families for the insensitivity.

The Dover Air Force Base Port Mortuary, where all troops' remains arrive from the battlefield, does not have its own crematorium, so it contracts with two funeral homes for the cremations: Torbert Funeral Chapel and Pippens Funeral Home.

The policy of cremation for household pets has grown in popularity in recent years. There are facilities, such as this one, that handle only pet cremation. The notion of processing both human remains and animal remains in different retorts, or incinerators at the same site is not without precedent:

Bayview Crematory, which had been considering acquiring two retorts, or new cremation units—one for human remains and coincidentally, one for animal remains—supported Robinson’s idea, and a new business —A Paw Print In Heaven, LLC—was born. Robinson printed up business cards and started an advertising campaign. And these days, she’s keeping busy.

“When I get a call, I talk to the person and I find out what’s going on—what kind of pet it was, what happened, how they are doing, where they are.” Robinson makes it clear to pet owners that she is sympathetic to their loss because “you have to understand that the pet is a family member. Sometimes what they need is someone to listen to them cry.”

[snip]

The animal is cremated almost immediately upon arrival, and the ashes put into a wooden urn, which is returned to the owner, along with the I.D. tag that matches the one the owner is still holding. The knowledge that the ashes in the urn are indeed those of the deceased pet has become a prime concern to many owners. Many have heard horror stories, such as the 2004 legal case brought by nearly 1,700 families against a Georgia crematory that failed to cremate bodies, and returned cement dust rather than ashes to family members after charging them fees for crematory services.
“That sort of thing is just horrible,” said Robinson, “and I do think people are distrustful. They’ve had reason to be.”

However, the notion of handling the bodies of soldiers killed in the Iraq war or the war in Afghanistan in such a facility has forced the military to look into the manner in which it conducts this type of operation.

Pippens' crematorium is located at the funeral home and is used only for human remains, while Torbert's has incinerators for both human and animal remains.

While most facilities don't advertise the fact that they handle both human and animal remains, there is a sign near the Torbert crematory advertising the "Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service."

Officials said there are three incinerators at the Torbert facility, and two are used for humans, while one is used for pets. The human and pet facilities are separated by about 20 feet.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, Air Force staff director, told Pentagon reporters that it is not uncommon for crematoriums to provide both services.

It is not known whether the military would have conducted a review of the policy if one military officer had not complained to Congress about the facility in Delaware that handles both human and pet cremations:

Klotz said the issue came to light Friday when an officer who works in the Pentagon went to Dover to pay respects to a fallen comrade who was being cremated. The soldier noticed the pet cremations sign, and was concerned about the fact that the facility handled both human and animal remains.

The officer alerted senior officials at the Pentagon, who notified Capitol Hill and quickly pulled together the policy changes.

Bill Torbert, president of Torbert Funeral Chapel, said a representative from Dover Air Force Base visited a crematory run by his company earlier this week, but was satisfied there was nothing amiss.

Torbert said the human and pet crematories are in adjoining buildings on the same property but have separate entrances. A sign advertising pet cremation services is in front of the Friends Forever office, but there are no signs on the building housing the human crematory facilities, which Torbert said are not used for cremation of pets.

“We do a lot of work with the military,” he said. “We service them very well.”

Mission NOT Accomplished

Remember how we left Afghanistan on the back burner to go after Iraq? Well, it looks like someone is either trying to kill this story by leaking it or float it as a trial balloon...

Pentagon officials are quietly considering a significant change in the war command in Afghanistan to extend U.S. control of forces into the country's volatile south.

Such a move, partly linked to an expectation of a fresh infusion of U.S. troops in the south next year, would in effect mark a partial "re-Americanization" of the combat mission in Afghanistan.

Taliban resistance has stiffened in the south since NATO took command there in mid-2006, and some in the Bush administration believe the fight against the Taliban could be strengthened if the U.S., whose span of control is now limited to eastern Afghanistan, were also in charge in part or all of the south.

Blaming our NATO allies for the resurgence of the Taliban isn't going to fully satisfy people who have been paying attention. Frankly, there is huge disagreement between NATO and the US over the use of airstrikes. The people who know Counterinsurgency within NATO understand that killing dozens of civilians with a JDAM makes their work harder, not easier. This rift has been around for a while, going back to this Reuters article from January, 2008:

Behind stepped-up commitments from the United States and Britain, stark differences are emerging between the two biggest powers operating in Afghanistan about how best to tackle the Taliban and al-Qaeda threat.

On the face of it, there's joint action: the United States is sending 3,200 more troops [the Marines who just arrived] and a British politician is to be named as the new, high-profile envoy to Afghanistan.

But analysts say the squabble is symptomatic of uncertainty over how to deal with Afghanistan, which is emerging as a more complex and nuanced battleground than Iraq, and a desire to show who is in the lead under the NATO umbrella.

The dispute has focused on Britain's proposal to use untrained neighbourhood defence teams -- known as 'arbakai' -- to help improve security in the volatile south were it operates.

In unusually frank and public criticism, U.S. officials and military commanders have said the idea will not work, could fuel fighting and that Britain doesn't understand counter-insurgency.

The dispute began after Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a speech to parliament last month saying he wanted to see a shift in strategy towards "hard-headed realism" that worked "with the grain of Afghan tradition".

"One way forward is to increase our support for community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai," he said.

Immediately afterwards, Washington began speaking against the plan, even though similar tactics have been employed by U.S. forces to quell the Sunni-led insurgency in western Iraq.

General Dan McNeill, the commander of NATO's International Security and Assistance Force, told the Financial Times flatly that the idea would not work and could fuel insurgency.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates took the criticism a step further on Wednesday, telling the Los Angeles Times that Britain and other forces operating in southern Afghanistan didn't seem to know how to combat a guerrilla insurgency.

"Most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counter-insurgency," Gates said.

What the hell is the difference between the "neighborhood defense teams" and "the Sunni Awakening councils?" It seems to me that we're being a little disingenuous--the British are simply using a very basic approach of getting the local population invested in their own security and defense, one that we've used in Iraq. And it takes a lot of balls to suggest that the British, who make up a large chunk of the NATO force in Afghanistan, don't know COIN. They're joined by elite troops from other European powers who have probably had as much, if not more training and instruction in these areas. This goes back to sneering at the Canadians--big mistake. They have a smaller but professionalized military that emphasizes competence and skill over 19th century drill tactics and overwhelming firepower.

The resurgence of the Taliban owes itself to the safe haven provided by Pakistan. Without that safe haven, it is highly unlikely that the Taliban could have come back so strong.

Change in the command structure in Afghanistan is being driven by political realities and won't happen soon:

The defense officials doubted a decision would be made before fall and possibly not until a new administration takes office in 2009. Two officials said there appears to be no high-level advocate for making such a change in the near term, although there is growing concern that while higher U.S. troop levels in Iraq have helped reduce violence there, the trends in Afghanistan are less positive.

There are now about 34,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan — the most at any time during the war, which began in October 2001. They include 3,400 Marines who arrived this month as reinforcements for combat missions in the south and to help train Afghan security forces. Those Marines are scheduled to leave in October, but if replacements are not offered by NATO allies soon the Pentagon likely will either extend the Marines' deployment or tap another unit to fill the void.

With who? Who do they think they're going to send? We're down to a few National Guard brigades that are stressed as it is.

Hey Chickenhawks

Somewhere, there's a soldier from another country making a sacrifice to keep America safe. The next time you see a chickenhawk, kick him in his tailfeathers and ask him when he plans to enlist and go fight in the war on terror.

The new Dutch Minister of Defense just lost his son in Afghanistan:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The son of the new Dutch defense chief was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and the Taliban claimed they deliberately made him a high-profile victim of their deadly insurgency.

Lt. Dennis van Uhm, 23, was one of two Dutch soldiers killed in the explosion 7 miles (12 kilometers) northwest of Camp Holland, the Dutch military base in restive Uruzgan province, spokesman Lt. Gen. Freek Meulman said. Two more soldiers were injured, one critically.

Meulman was standing in for Gen. Peter van Uhm, who was installed as defense chief only on Thursday and would likely have delivered the news had his son not been among the victims.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed that the militants knew in advance about Van Uhm's movements.

"When he came out the Taliban planted a mine, which killed him," Ahmadi said in a phone call from an undisclosed location.

The Dutch government, however, rejected the claim.

"Our information is that there is no indication of any link between this cowardly deed and the fact that it was the son of the defense chief," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told reporters in The Hague.

Did Drudge have anything to do with this? Probably not--it was Prince Harry he was trying to get killed. Yet another brave young person from one of our NATO allies falls in battle, and not one chickenhawk has the decency to stop advocating for war and sign up to go fight. Do they even notice how ridiculous they look these days? Sitting on their fat little asses while others do the job they tell us HAS to be done but by anyone BUT them?

No mercy for the fucking chickenhawks, ever.

The War In Afghanistan Enters an Escalation Phase

Today, we're going to take a look at what's going on in Afghanistan.

Capt. Chris Hammonds expected it. In a mud-brick command center, the 32-year-old Army Ranger pivoted between a radio and a map, tracking reports of approaching Taliban. Several explosions soon ripped through the night as U.S. forces hit the suspected Taliban positions, including a cross-border guided-munitions strike on a compound about a mile inside Pakistan where senior associates of Siraj Haqqani -- considered one of the most dangerous Taliban commanders -- were thought to be meeting.

The U.S. military usually strikes across the border only when taking accurate fire from Pakistan, and standard practice calls for informing the Pakistani military about threats from its side. But Hammonds argued that the Pakistani military checkpoint was "under siege" from the Taliban and that Pakistani officers -- fearful of retaliation -- could tip off the insurgents.

First of all, I'm not going to criticize Captain Hammonds in any way, shape or form. He is on the ground and he is carrying out his orders and he is protecting the lives of his men. Second of all, I am going to criticize the tactics. Third, I'm going to explain why criticizing the tactics DOES NOT mean that I'm finding fault with Captain Hammonds.

The end result of carrying the fight across an International border:

The rare strike averted an imminent Taliban attack, Hammonds said, but across the border a starkly different account emerged. "Two women and two children got killed, so whatever was assessed was not correct," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistani army. No Taliban were meeting in the family compound, he said. The Pakistani government issued a protest, and demonstrations erupted. "We were never informed about the strike," Abbas said. "This has serious implications for operations."

The March 12 incident highlights how, more than six years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, efforts to stabilize the country increasingly focus on the rugged frontier area straddling the border with Pakistan. Over the past 18 months, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have exploited peace deals by Pakistan's government to create an unprecedented haven in the region, U.S. officials said. From there, insurgents have escalated attacks in Pakistan and in eastern Afghanistan, leading the United States last year to double its troop presence along more than 600 miles of frontier.

The short answer--we're escalating the war into Pakistan. Do we need to? If that's where the enemy is, yes. But there's a right way and a wrong way, and the wrong way is to get lazy and rely on airstrikes or long range artillery. This just creates insurgents. I'm sorry, but send the F-16s home and replace them with helicopters that can ferry in supplies and extra troops when there's trouble.

What do leading proponents of effective Counterinsurgency or "COIN" tactics say about these types of incidents?

Indiscriminate attacks against non-combatants and human-rights abuses aid and abet the enemy’s cause. In our globalized world, abuses such as prisoner maltreatment in Abu Ghraib are quickly broadcast around the globe. Our enemies use these accounts and images as part of their propaganda campaign to discredit host-nation governments and distort popular perceptions of our intentions. Such propaganda mobilizes those who were previously friendly or at least neutral to our efforts to bring stability and security.

Now, this was a fairly discriminate attack. This was not a case where there wasn't a good reason to make a move against the Taliban. The motive was clear but the end result was a propaganda victory for the enemy.

Instead of Captain Hammonds and his men being in a position they are forced to defend, why not take Captain Hammonds OUT of his position and put him in a position to succeed. That is, allow him to close with his real enemy and kill that enemy, irregardless of the International boundary? Here's why I think this is a better approach:

Toward that end, the Army should consider abolishing branch distinctions among field-grade officers for most within the operational career field. Under the current model, an officer remains in his basic branch until he retires or is promoted to the rank of general officer. This lifelong branch affiliation narrows an officer’s perspective and limits his familiarity with capabilities outside his branch. The new model for career advancement should terminate branch affiliation for most officers in the operational career field at the rank of captain. A captain who commands with distinction within his basic branch should have the opportunity to command again in another branch. Officers who command successfully in two organizations from two different branches — maneuver and logistics, fires and intelligence, etc. — are those most suited to command battalions and brigades. The pathway to high command should be reserved for officers who demonstrate a facility with a variety of tools, both lethal and nonlethal. While there would still be a significant need for specialized officers, the surest pathway to high command ought to lie open to the adaptive generalist over the narrow specialist.

To win the Long War, the Army must embrace the combined-arms battalion (CAB) as the basic building block for tactical operations and develop a flatter organizational structure. The development of modular brigade combat teams is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough. The current organization is too hierarchical and too specialized to operate most effectively in the Long War.

During the Plains Indian Wars, many of the tribes opposing America’s westward expansion adopted decentralized hit-and-run tactics to terrorize settlers. In response to these threats, the U.S. Cavalry abandoned the large-scale tactics of the Civil War in favor of small-unit operations. Cavalry troops and squadrons conducted area security operations to protect settlers dispersed over wide areas of the frontier. Cavalry squadrons were combined-arms formations that contained intelligence collectors and cultural advisers (then called scouts) as well as maneuver forces and an organic indirect fires capability. This decentralized approach was necessary to ensure that these organizations possessed the tools they needed to bring security to the frontier.

Again, I don't fault Captain Hammonds. I fault a system that puts him in a place at night that is vulnerable. He and his unit should be integrated with an Afghan Army unit that can cross the border with the cooperation of the Pakistani forces and attack and surround any Taliban unit it finds. Whatever cultural differences exist, it's in the best interests of the Afghans and the Pakistanis to set aside their differences and work together. If it starts with a dozen of each at a time, fair enough. But we should be constructing small, rapid movement units that take parts of each entity and fuses them into something that we haven't seen yet. This force should be capable of fighting and sustaining itself for short periods of time and it should be able to break contact and move where it needs to move. It should feature a creative implementation of fast movement and ambush tactics. It should be a force large enough to be effective but small enough to emplace itself anywhere it wants and catch any insurgent Taliban movements off guard.

Instead of reliable Afghan and Pakistani counterparts, Captain Hammonds deals with a shortage of US troops, an Afghan Army mutiny, and Pakistani corruption:

In the latest operation, in the Kowchun Valley just north of Paktika, Hammonds's company staked out a position above a narrow streambed that snakes through a gorge into North Waziristan, the scene of dozens of firefights between U.S. troops and the Taliban. From his base, Hammonds can see for miles into Pakistan. Haqqani "is extremely upset and can't get anything through," said Fenzel, citing U.S. intelligence.

But because of a shortage of U.S. troops, Hammonds's company can stay in the area only for several weeks. He doubts that Afghan and Pakistani soldiers will be able to control the route once he leaves.

"You're in the middle of an ANA mutiny," Hammonds said one afternoon, referring to the Afghan National Army, as Afghan soldiers from the 203rd Battalion piled into pickup trucks and quit the camp. The Afghans left after learning that the operation, originally to last nine days, would continue for weeks. The exodus underscored Hammonds's belief that Afghan army units cannot guard the border because they rotate every three to six months and they lack enough local knowledge. "The key to securing the border is to remove the ANA completely," he said.

Instead, Hammonds favors the Afghan border police, but eastern Paktika now has only 66 percent of its 857 authorized border police officers and, until December, they were led by a corrupt commander who colluded with the Taliban.

A greater frustration, he and other U.S. troops said, is that they cannot trust their Pakistani counterparts. "The Pakistan military is corrupt and lets people come through," Hammonds said. Pakistani forces reportedly told insurgents the location of his observation post, and when U.S. troops in a firefight call the Pakistani military for help, he said, "they never answer the phone."

Criticizing the situation that this officer is put into means I'm criticizing the strategic lack of vision and not what this officer goes through on the ground. These men are tired, cold, hungry for good food and doing work that most Americans--myself included--couldn't do and wouldn't do for all of the money in the world. These are far better people than we realize and deserve way more than we're capable of giving them. They don't want yellow ribbon magnets, lapel pin wearing loudmouths, or platitudes. Shut the fuck up and appreciate what they do.

Captain Hammonds should be paired up with an Afghan Army officer and loyal troops who can fight, a Pakistani Army officer and troops that can also fight, and they should combine their efforts to effectively identify, track, chase and kill any Taliban that enter their area of control. If it takes US money to get quality troops, pay it. If it takes concessions, make them. Out of the chaos, use whatever means necessary to solve the fucking problems instead of tolerating indifference, corruption and neglect.

Instead of Captain Hammonds sitting in a bunker waiting for an attack, Captain Hammonds should be waiting in ambush for the Taliban, for as long as necessary, safe in the knowledge that a quick-reaction force can come in with enough firepower to help them out. That doesn't mean parking B-52s overhead. It means his unit is rotating in and out with other units that know what he's going through. When the Taliban cannot move in that area for fear of being ambushed by a combined American/Afghan/Pakistani force that cannot be located or tracked, only then will you take the initiative away from the enemy.

And when they're not doing that, Captain Hammonds should sleep at night in peace and security, in an area protected from Taliban attack. And how do they do that? By making sure the population around them are giving them good intel and alerting them if they see Taliban elements appear in the vicinity.

That's how you make the long war a shorter war.

An Inescapable Truth

Here's where the Bush Administration paints itself into a corner:

WASHINGTON - The situation in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where al-Qaida has established a safe haven presents a "clear and present danger" to the West, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Sunday NBC's "Meet the Press."

Hayden cited the belief by intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden is hiding there in arguing that the U.S. has an interest in targeting the border region. If there were another terrorist attack against Americans, Hayden said, it would most certainly originate from that region.

"It's very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able for the past 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, and that they're bringing in operatives into the region for training," he said.

Hayden added that those operatives "wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport, outside Washington) with you when you're coming back to the United States — who look Western."

What do we learn from the public pronouncements of General Hayden?

1. The war in Iraq is NOT the central front in the war on terror.

2. The US is NOT threatened by al Qaeda in Iraq in any way, shape or form.

3. Pakistan is where we need to pursue terrorists who want to attack the West.

4. The Bush Administration has broken our military and we don't have the troops available to choke off al Qaeda in the region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

5. Every day we leave troops in Iraq is a day spent fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong place with troops we desperately need to refit, retrain and rest.

They should really be careful not to let people like General Hayden speak publicly. Instead of rallying the American people, this administration's failure to coordinate its message and get everyone rowing in the same direction only further humiliates our country in the eyes of the world.

Procurement: 300 Million Dollars for Club-Hopping Trash

You can't make this stuff up. You just can't. It's sad, it's pathetic, and it's just another outrage. And this is just another post about it. But there's no way we're ever going to stop talking about this stuff and there's no way we're ever going to give up fighting against it.

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Here's an original posting about the award from 2007 in Defense Industry Daily:

Small business qualifier AEY Inc. in Miami Beach, FL received a delivery order amount of $48.7 million as part of a $298 million firm-fixed-price contract for various ammunition for the Afghanistan Security Forces. AEY, Inc. was established in 1999; unsurprisingly, Craigslist says they’re hiring.

Work will be performed in Miami, FL and is expected to be complete by Dec. 30, 2008. Bids were solicited via the World Wide Web on July 28, 2007, and 10 bids were received by the U.S. Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, IL (W52P1J-07-D-0004).

Ammunition and weapon shortages been an reported issue in Afghanistan, where police and other security forces trainees have been forced to use fake wooden rifles at times.

So they got the contract by lowballing it, obviously. I mean, who were the other 9 people that bid?

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

China? As in, manufactured in China recently? No.

But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.

Yes--that's cultural revolution era China, right there. What happened when people tried to backtrack and figure this out?

In January, American officers in Kabul, concerned about munitions from AEY, had contacted the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, in Illinois, and raised the possibility of terminating the contract. And officials at the Army Sustainment Command, the contracting authority at the arsenal, after meeting with AEY in late February, said they were tightening the packaging standards for munitions shipped to the war.

And yet after that meeting, AEY sent another shipment of nearly one million cartridges to Afghanistan that the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan regarded as substandard. Lt. Col. David G. Johnson, the command spokesman, said that while there were no reports of ammunition misfiring, some of it was in such poor condition that the military had decided not to issue it. “Our honest answer is that the ammunition is of a quality that is less than desirable; the munitions do not appear to meet the standards that many of us are used to,” Colonel Johnson said. “We are not pleased with the way it was delivered.”

Several officials said the problems would have been avoided if the Army had written contracts and examined bidders more carefully.

In the rush to throw billions of taxpayer dollars at people who weren't interested in doing a good job, an extremely young and inexperienced Diveroli suddenly found himself doing business well above his paygrade. As in, well above his educational level and his experience level.

By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY’s president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment — weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines — for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere.

It was also providing supplies to the American military in Iraq, where its business included a $5.7 million contract for rifles for Iraqi forces.

Two federal officials involved in contracting in Baghdad said AEY quickly developed a bad reputation. “They weren’t reliable, or if they did come through, they did after many excuses,” said one of them, who asked that his name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.

Seeing as how most of those armaments probably went to the insurgents anyway, it's probably a good thing that this guy was selling them weapons that were probably outdated and procured from the old Eastern bloc.

What kind of person is Diveroli? Is he the sort of person who should be getting millions of dollars from the US Government?

As AEY’s bid for its largest government contract was being considered, Mr. Diveroli’s personal difficulties continued. On Nov. 26, 2006, the Miami Beach police were called to his condominium during an argument between him and another girlfriend. According to the police report, he had thrown her “clothes out in the hallway and told her to get out.”

A witness told the police Mr. Diveroli had dragged her back into the apartment. The police found the woman crying; she said she had not been dragged. Mr. Diveroli was not charged.

On Dec. 21, 2006, the police were called back to the condominium. Mr. Diveroli and AEY’s vice president, David M. Packouz, had just been in a fight with the valet parking attendant.

The fight began, the police said, after the attendant refused to give Mr. Diveroli his keys and Mr. Diveroli entered the garage to get them himself. A witness said Mr. Diveroli and Mr. Packouz both beat the man; police photographs showed bruises and scrapes on his face and back.

When the police searched Mr. Diveroli, they found he had a forged driver’s license that added four years to his age and made him appear old enough to buy alcohol as a minor. His birthday had been the day before.

“I don’t even need that any more,” he told the police, the report said. “I’m 21 years old.”

Mr. Diveroli was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor, and felony possession of a stolen or forged document.

The second charge placed his business in jeopardy. Mr. Diveroli had a federal firearms license, which was required for his work. With a felony conviction, the license would be nullified.

Here's the kicker--someone inside of the DoD reviewed Diveroli's company and looked at everything that had gone on. And what decision did they make? They simple threw more money at the guy:

To be accepted, the company had to be, in Army parlance, “a responsible contractor,” which required an examination of its financial soundness, transport capabilities, past performance and compliance with the law and government contracting regulations.

The week after a relative paid his bail, the Banc of America Investment Services in Miami provided Mr. Diveroli a letter certifying that his company had cash on hand to begin buying munitions on a large scale. It said AEY had $5,469,668.95 in an account.

AEY was awarded the contract in January 2007. Asked why it chose AEY, the Army Sustainment Command answered in writing: “AEY’s proposal represented the best value to the government.”

Club-hopping trash that can't stop beating and threatening women now gets millions from our government to buy up outdated ammunition and resell it? How does that keep America safe from anyone or anything?

War is "Romantic?"

Well, you're not going to believe what Bush said today:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful on Thursday about problems and progress in Afghanistan where a war has dragged on for more than six years but been largely eclipsed by Iraq.

In a videoconference, Bush heard from U.S. military and civilian personnel about the challenges ranging from fighting local government and police corruption to persuading farmers to abandon a lucrative poppy drug trade for other crops.

Bush heard tales of all-night tea drinking sessions to coax local residents into cooperating, and of tribesmen crossing mountains to attend government meetings seen as building blocks for the country's democracy-in-the-making.

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Yeah, he said that serving in Afghanistan was "in some ways romantic."

This is one of those moments where you drop to one knee and just weep for the spectacle that is the state of the leadership of this country. A grand folly is all they are now. A pathetic, debased and delusional folly entirely of their own making.

Violence in Afghanistan--the UN Weighs In

Photo: Panjshir, Afghanistan


No matter how hard they want us to stop paying attention to the failure of this administration to finish the job it started in Afghanistan, we're still going to keep a watchful eye on what's going on. When you outsource your responsibilities to NATO and the United Nations and hope a few thousand British, French and German troops can make up for all of those brigades that are tied down in Iraq, you're just asking for more scrutiny:

(AP) Insurgent and terrorist violence in Afghanistan increased sharply in 2007, with over 8,000 conflict-related deaths and an average of 566 incidents per month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban said the number of violent incidents rose from an average of 425 per month in 2006. The number of suicide attacks jumped to 160 attacks in 2007 from 123 in 2006 — with 68 attempts thwarted in 2007 compared with 17 in 2006, he said.

While the insurgency draws strength from some Afghans, the secretary-general said, "the support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial to its viability."

Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since U.S. forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers, who harbored al Qaeda leaders blamed for planning the attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The focus of the violence has been in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces, but the insurgents are increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings to hit foreign and Afghan targets around the country.

"Afghanistan remains roughly divided between the generally more stable west and north, where security problems are linked to factionalism and criminality, and the south and east characterized by an increasingly coordinated insurgency," the secretary-general said.

"In fact, even within the south, conflict has been concentrated in a fairly small area: 70 percent of security incidents occurred in 10 percent (40) of Afghanistan's districts, home to 6 percent of the country's population," Ban said.

That's what is so heartbreaking about Afghanistan--forty or fifty thousand US troops could make a significant difference there. In turn, perhaps other nations would up the ante. Securing and clearing areas might work better in Afghanistan than it does in Iraq--we'll never know.

What we do know is this--the margin by which Afghanistan is slipping away from us gets thinner by the day, and we don't have the troops to make a difference.

Successful Counterinsurgency Begins With the Family Farm

[Photo: Poppies in Afghanistan, Livestock in Iraq]

Did you know that one of the few areas where we had any success at all in Vietnam came from the policy of land reform--that is, we helped local farmers gain ownership over the plots of land that they had farmed for generations?

Sadly, we see nothing but obstacles ahead for Iraq and Afghanistan:

A provincial reconstruction team surveyed a dairy farm in a community south of Baghdad to determine its technical and financial needs.

Floyd Wood with the U.S. Department of Agriculture accompanied an area PRT to talk with local farm managers and workers to see what the farm needed to reach its full production goals.

Wood and the PRT team determined the irrigation system couldn't support the farm's full capacity following a meeting with local veterinarians and feed specialists.

The farm was designed to sustain about 8,000 cattle, but irrigation problems depleted that to around 1,000 dairy cows, the Multi-National Forces-Iraq reported.

Wood said the farm needed to have 50,000 gallons of water a week shipped in to supply the cows with drinking water, general maintenance and to irrigate the 3,500 acres of farmland.

Wood said the farm was once one of the largest distributors of milk to south-central Iraq and Baghdad, but noted now about 25 cows a month are slaughtered due to malnutrition.

The lack of milk supply means the Baghdad community has to import more products from Kuwait and Jordan, driving prices up and having a ripple effect on the local economy.

And Afghanistan:

In 2004, Afghanistan produced 87% of the world's heroin, according to UN data. Just three years later, that same group will report in September that the number is now 95%.
Between 2005 and 2006, Afghanistan increased its opium yield by 49%. In 2005, the yield was 4,100 metric tons. In 2006, it was 6,100 metric tons.

Today, that number is getting worse and worse.

The work of USAID in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been very difficult, but they are able to talk about some tentative accomplishments since the start of the war five years ago. USAID is one of the best things going for us--it is the ultimate "hearts and minds" program. This gives you some background on why this is important in Iraq:

Agriculture is Iraq's largest employer, the second largest contributor to GDP, and an effective engine for promoting stability through private sector development, poverty reduction, and food security. The revival of a dynamic, market-driven agricultural sector will strengthen private business, increase income and employment opportunities, and help meet the food requirements of the Iraqi people. From 2003 through the fall of 2006, USAID's Agriculture Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq (ARDI) restored veterinary clinics, introduced improved cereal grain varieties, repaired agricultural equipment, and trained farmers and ministry staff. USAID recently initiated a new agriculture program, Inma. The new program will extend the production improvements made by ARDI by working at the provincial level to support the development of agribusinesses and agricultural markets, improving farmer livelihoods. Inma will Complement USAID's other economic growth programs.

And Afghanistan:

USAID ASSISTANCE
INFRASTRUCTURE
USAID is funding the construction and rehabilitation of infrastructure critical for further economic development and national integration. The primary focus is roads, including a major portion of the Kabul-Kandahar-Herat Highway and approximately 1,000 km of provincial, district and rural roads. USAID is also investing in the construction and rehabilitation of power plants, transmission lines, dams, irrigation and flood control systems, industrial parks, bridges, universities, schools, and clinics.

ALTERNATIVE LIVELIHOODS PROGRAM
The Alternative Livelihoods Program (ALP) provides Afghans with opportunities to participate in the licit economy in key poppy growing areas. In meeting immediate needs to provide economic opportunity, ALP supports labor-intensive cash-for-work projects to build or rehabilitate productive infrastructure, and funds income generation and training efforts for vulnerable households as part of Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics strategy.

Some history on why USAID is an effective means of combating terrorist insurgencies:

Mike Korin spent nearly seven years in Vietnam, from 1967 to 1973, working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture on loan to USAID. He spent two years in the city of Tam Ky in Quang Tin Province, where he shared an office with USAID civilian doctors and construction experts, U.S. military civic affairs specialists and a Vietnamese professional and support staff.

Korin worked there on a wide range of development activities, including rice production, and fisheries, forestry and irrigation systems development. "My work was with Vietnamese government officials," he said in an interview, "representing different agencies and providing USAID resources to help fund those activities."

Korin said the experience was, in most respects, a positive one. "It was exciting. We felt a sense of accomplishment," he said. "But there was also a certain degree of frustration because there was a lot of fighting going on in the province, including attacks on the provincial capital." The main problem in Korin's area was the large number of refugees. "It made things difficult," he said. "People were constantly being routed out of their villages and their villages were being burned down either by the bad guys or the good guys. People were put into refugee camps. It was very difficult for the people."

Korin was based in Saigon during his last four years in Vietnam. He was among nearly 200 USAID agricultural experts in the country at the time. His Saigon office was made up of about two dozen American USAID agriculture professionals involved in land-reform programs. Korin traveled throughout the country working on the Montagnard land reform and land-to-the-tiller programs, which paid landlords to give land to peasant farmers.

Seven years in a war zone is long enough to become an expert; contrast that with the youthful and inexperienced people who are going [yes, kudos to them in any event] and the people at places like the State Department who refuse to go at all.

The USAID involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq is vital for rebuilding those countries (or bringing them out of poverty and neglect) and serves as a bastion of what is good about America. The fact that we send people and money to do mundane things like build schools, hospitals and roads and to teach people how to improve their farming methods is a basic tenet of American foreign policy.

At the height of the Vietnam War, one of the most effective methods of reducing the insurgency was to give people title to the land that they lived on:

...MACV advisors did work closely with 900,000 local GVN officials in a well-organized pacification program called CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development.) It stressed technical aid, local self government, and land distribution to peasant farmers. A majority of tenant farmers received title to their own land in one of the most successful transfer projects in any nation. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of peasants entered squalid refugee camps when CORDS moved them out of villages that could not be protected. In the Phoenix Program (part of CORDS with a strong CIA component) GVN police identified and arrested (and sometimes killed) the NLF secret police agents engaged in assassination.

Given the atrocious example of displacement of people in Iraq and the explosion of poppy growing in Afghanistan, how is it that the lessons learned in Vietnam failed to carry over?

AFGHANISTAN: Agricultural development in most of RC East proved necessary for long-term economic viability. United States Department of Agriculture officers provided development advice to the IRoA, the CTF, and, to a lesser extent, cooperatives and individual farmers. Although not present in most RC East PRTs, USUSDA officers worked on the staffs of three key posts (task force headquarters and the Ghazni and Jalalabad PRTs) for much of CTF Devil’s tenure. These officers breathed life into USAID’s alternative livelihood programs. They provided advice on which crops to substitute for the opium poppy and focused on implementing agricultural programs like micro-credit for farmers. They also helped devise high-impact but simple projects that enhanced the value of crops grown by desperately poor farmers. That said, the relatively limited USUSDA presence in RC East prevented the task force from making the most of its agricultural development programs. ["Combating a Modern Insurgency: Combined Task Force Devil in Afghanistan, Donahue & Frenzel, March-April 2008, Military Review]

IRAQ: Another example is the agricultural facet of the Iraqi economy. Our estimate was that the area around Baghdad, if resourced and irrigated, could easily feed all of Iraq. But the antiquated farming methods were only providing for 25 percent of the country’s needs, forcing imports of most foodstuffs. Although the $18.4 billion Iraqi supplemental did not provide for any agricultural improvements, we were able to import, through reprogrammed funding, over 2,000 tons of grain, fertilizer, and feed. Immunizations, coupled with rejuvenating the irrigation apparatus around Baghdad, created conditions for economic independence. [Winning the Peace The Requirement for Full-Spectrum Operations,Chiarelli & Michaelis, May-June 2005, Military Review]

From the Asia Times:

...But now Iraqi farmers struggle to get water to their crops. There is severe lack of electricity to run pumps and fuel to run generators.

"The water is there and the rivers have not dried up, but the problem lies in how to get it to our dying plantations," said Jabbar Ahmed, a farmer from Latifiya south of Baghdad. "It is a shame that we, our animals and our plants are thirsty in a country that has the two great rivers."

Iraq now imports most agricultural products because of lack of irrigation.

"I used to sell 50 tonnes of tomatoes every year, but now I go to the market to buy my daily needs," said Numan Majid, from the Abu Ghraib area just west of Baghdad. "I tried hard to cope with the situation, but in vain. One cannot grow crops in Iraq anymore with this water shortage."

So the proven tactic of agricultural reforms--and the assistance of people at USAID--could have a positive impact on what we're doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. It could help us reduce the number of people who take up arms against us AND improve their quality of life. And how do we approach it? We started off by short-changing them and focusing on their oil and on using critical resources to build the largest Embassy ever out of shit and cardboard that we can't even use.

When they write the books about Afghanistan and Iraq, and do the scholarly studies, the word "folly" comes to mind. And we could have avoided that folly if we had just remembered thousands of years of human history--farmers typically pacify and improve areas beset by violence. But here we have a perfect example of short-sightedness--it would go a long ways towards getting Iraq back on track if we could just keep a dairy farm operating. And we can't even do that. It would go a long ways towards helping people in Afghanistan grow food instead of poppies. And we haven't made a dent in that problem yet.

Is it too late to expect USAID to improve the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq? It probably is, and the symbol of that is a malnourished cow and a field of poppy plants. It's never too late to appreciate the wisdom of using a different approach from carpet bombing people from high altitudes and blowing up their homes, but five years into this war in Iraq and over six years since going into Afghanistan, it's hard to see much progress.