Articles by Herschel Smith

We’ve covered the Taliban strategy of using Nuristan as a safe haven, and a base from which to launch attacks against the government of Afghanistan.  Kunar is adjacent to Nuristan, and there may as well not be a border between provinces.  As stated by one Taliban commander, “Trouble here can break the central government,” said Qari Ziaur Rahman, a regional commander for the Taliban who is also a leader of the Punjab-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad, in a 2008 interview. “Whoever has been defeated in Afghanistan, his defeat began from Kunar.”  For this reason I have insisted on aggressive U.S. troop presence and kinetic operations in both the Kunar and Nuristan provinces, and all along the Pech River Valley.

Thankfully, Tim Lynch of Free Range International could not completely desist from writing about Afghanistan, and he educates us with yet another good post on the current situation in Helmand.

A few months back as they were pushing south, the Marines would run into situations that, for guys like them, are a dream come true.  An ANP commander pointed out a village where his men have hit 3 IEDs in as many weeks and each time the villagers poured out with AK’s to start a firefight.  So, a few nights later the Marines blow a controlled det on the road to simulate an IED hit and when the villains rushed out with their flame sticks they met what we lovingly call the ‘L shaped ambush’.  No doubt (knowing the Lava Dogs) the villains also met Mr. Claymore, were introduced to the proper use of a machine gun section, and were treated to a 40mm grenade shower from those new and super deadly  M32’s.  Bad day.  Not many survived that textbook lesson on the proper use of an ambush squad, but those days are long gone.  Rarely now will somebody shoot at the Marines in southern Helmand, and when they do, it is from so far away that it is hard to notice anybody is even shooting at you.

So the Taliban has returned to doing what guerrillas do when they suck so bad at regular fighting – they rely on the indiscriminate use of  IED’s to fight.  And as everybody in the world (except President Karzai) knows, these IED’s kill and maim vast numbers of innocent Afghans, yet rarely inflict casualties on ISAF units.

Because of a long, flat narrow area, where the population is confined mostly to strips of land in close proximity to the Helmand River and its main canals, the Marines are able to spread out into COP’s (combat outposts) PB’s (Patrol Bases) and OP’s (observation posts) covering the entire AO.  These positions are manned by junior NCO’s and in one PB the senior Marine was a Lance Corporal.   They move positions frequently;  every time the Marines set up in a new one of any size,  local families immediately move as close to the positions as they are allowed and start building mud huts. For them a small band of Marines equals security and the implicit trust shown by this pattern of behavior is something in which the Marines rightly take great pride.

Read Tim’s entire post.  More forces are needed in order to maintain security, but as for the direct firefights, it’s over with the Taliban in Helmand.  They cannot match the U.S. Marines.  The Marines are currently needed elsewhere, specifically, Kunar and Nuristan.

The Taliban are still active there, and are still pursuing their strategy.

“Bullets rained on our house which was close to the site of the clash,” one resident told me. “We were so terrified that we didn’t step out of our house until the next day.”

Another resident said by launching an attack in Mehtar Lam, the insurgents wanted to show that they can still strike at will in any of the seven locations handed over by Nato to Afghan security forces.

In the past month insurgents have killed a judge, a prison guard and a local official in this strategic city known as the gateway to Kabul.

Security handovers like the one in Mehtar Lam are seen as the first step in a lengthy process ultimately aimed to put the Afghan army and police in control of their country by 2014, the deadline for complete withdrawal of Western forces from combat operations.

But judging by developments in Mehtar Lam, the road to transition appears to be far from smooth.

“People live in fear,” said Shah Gul, a barber. “People think that if the security forces can’t protect themselves, how will they protect the people?'”

Insurgents – mainly in the shape of the Taliban or the Hizb-e-Islami militia of former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – are active in many districts of this mountainous province.

Laghman borders the eastern provinces of Nuristan and Kunar.

“This allows insurgents to carry out attacks in Laghman and then escape to Nuristan or Kunar,” said an Afghan intelligence officer.

“By targeting cities handed over to Afghans, the insurgents and their foreign backers intend to prove that Afghan security forces are not capable of protecting their people.”

Just like I predicted.  But in a twist that leverages this lawless area as the trouble-spot of the world, Pakistan is directly involved.

The Pakistani spy agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), with the help of Taliban, has revived the Al-Huda outfit of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar to target Indians in Afghanistan.

As many as 350 persons have been trained so far particularly to target Indian business interests and development works being executed in the war-torn country.

India’s premier external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), recently reported the development to the Centre. Following the RAW report, security of Indian assets has been beefed up with a view to thwarting any misadventure by the ISI-backed militia.

According to the report, the ISI will provide funds, training and shelter besides intelligence on movement of Indians to the trained recruits of Al-Huda for anti-India operations.

Two training camps were organised recently by the ISI to train the recruits in southern Afghanistan at Chunar and mountainous regions of Nuristan in Afghanistan on Pakistan border, intelligence sources said.

Both — Chunar and Nuristan — are areas dominated by the Hikmatyar group and the NATO forces suffered heavy reverses in the recent past while carrying out operations in these regions. The Hikmatyar group is known for its mastery in ramming explosive-laden vehicles on targetted assets and executing landmine attacks.

India is funding over 300 developmental projects in Afghanistan, including construction of roads, bridges, hospitals, Government office complexes and also the Parliament building of that country. India is the biggest donor country extending aid in revival of the war-torn nation pledging a budget of over $2 billion.

Besides the construction engineers, supporting staff and the personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police guarding the work sites of the ongoing development projects there, the Indian assets in that country also include as many as 24 consulates across Afghanistan and the Indian embassy in Kabul.

Following the inputs, the Indian embassy and the consulates there have been alerted and a security audit of the installations are being carried out to further tighten the security measures, particularly the outer periphery of the office complexes so that any fidayeen attack or blast of an explosive-laden vehicle is checked at a reasonable distance from the perimeter of the buildings, the sources added.

The Taliban had attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul on October 8, 2009 killing 17 persons and injuring 63 others. The Taliban had in the past also targetted work sites maintained by the Indian companies.

The ISI move comes following reverses at the hands of the Americans amid talk of withdrawal of the US forces from the war-ravaged country.

The Pakistani sickness and obsession with India, its own importance in the world, and having access to things (e.g., nuclear weapons, the Taliban, etc.) way beyond their ability to control is working directly against the stability of Afghanistan, the security of U.S. troops, and in fact, the security and stability of the entire region.

Marines to Kunar.  It’s the move that should be made, and sooner rather than later.  If we need more Marines to Helmand in order to pull this off, then so be it.  Someone tell the Marine Corps Commandant to stop playing Iwo Jima, as if we are ever going to conduct a large scale amphibious assault against a near peer state again.  Without chasing and killing the Taliban in his safe haven, the campaign will be lost.

Dennis A. Henigan, acting President of the Brady Campaign, waxes breathless in his most recent hysterical rant at Huffington Post.

Remember two summers ago when most Americans were appalled by the sight of guns openly carried by protesters at presidential speaking events and town hall forums on the health care issue? Now it’s not just the protesters bringing guns to political events. Now it may be the candidates themselves.

Texas governor and newly-announced presidential candidate Rick Perry has taken the incendiary mixture of guns and politics to a new level. When it comes to carrying concealed weapons, Perry certainly walks the walk. He has a concealed carry permit and proudly says that he carries a gun when he is out jogging.

Briefly commenting at this point, I’ll observe that I don’t ever recall in my entire life being appalled at the sight of weapons being carried by anyone, at any time.  But as for the concealed carry of weapons while jogging, I guess I have to weigh in with Henigan on this one.  I don’t jog.  I do lift weights and engage in open carry while I’m walking my dog.  But continuing:

Perry recently was asked if he is armed while campaigning. He didn’t respond by saying the question is ridiculous. He didn’t say that in the close quarters of a rope line, with a multitude of people pulling and tugging at him, a gun could easily drop to the ground or be taken from him. He didn’t say that an armed candidate would be a nightmare for the Secret Service. He didn’t say any of those things. Instead, he smiled and refused to say whether or not he carried while campaigning. He added, “That’s why it’s called concealed.”

Rick Perry apparently doesn’t think the question is ridiculous. In fact, his sarcasm suggests he has no objection to political candidates carrying guns to campaign events; he seems to imply that he may do so himself. One thing is clear. The governor has been so thoroughly marinated in pro-gun ideology that he is unashamed about taking it to its logical extreme. If it is true that more guns in public places make us safer, why shouldn’t political candidates carry guns? Isn’t it the least they can do for their own safety?

Something tells me that Perry wouldn’t be ashamed of taking gun ownership to its logical end, whether Henigan wants to call that “extreme” or not.  But Henigan is getting increasingly worked up and hysterical over things, and he eventually drops this bomb.

Yes, it is a good thing that senators can’t carry guns onto the Senate floor because the presence of guns, even carried by well-meaning, law-abiding citizens, increases the risk that arguments and conflicts will escalate to lethal violence. It is the same reason that our national parks are less safe because (due to legislation sponsored by Senator Coburn himself) concealed carry of weapons is now permitted within their borders.

There you have it.  There in a nut shell is the Faustian bargain that gun control advocates are willing to make.  They don’t really believe that an individual cannot protect him or herself or family with a weapon.  They don’t really believe that an individual is less safe with a weapon, regardless of what they might claim.  What they believe is that there is a greater good to be served, and that greater good lies in not allowing provocations to escalate into deadly incidents.  It’s their solution to original sin.  Allow weapons and violence escalates.  Remove weapons and utopia flourishes.

But even here, Henigan cannot help but spuriously link an article that does nothing more than report that weapons are now legal in national parks.  He claims that our national parks are less safe than they were because of this new latitude.  And the article has nothing to do with this claim.

Oh, but he has no evidence.  In fact, I do.  Several months ago I completed a FOIA request to the national parks service, and they returned to me an Excel spreadsheet with crimes outlined by type and delineated per year in the national parks.

11-409 Smith NPS&USPP LE CRIME REPORT 1995-2010

It doesn’t show what Henigan wants it to.  In fact, our national parks are not less safe than they were prior to 2010 when firearms were made legal.  And I did research most of the homicides (through local news accounts) and they mostly have to do with situation-specific (and sometimes bizarre) incidents involving individuals who had no right to carry a firearms anywhere because they were convicted felons, or prisoners on the run, or other such exigencies.  Not one incident that I researched had to do with an otherwise law-abiding citizen who suddenly went berserk because he had a gun in a national park.

Myths die hard.  They are usually built on lies, and Henigan and the Brady Campaign freely traffics in them.  Something as simple as a FOIA request can usually dispel silly myths like this one, and yet we know of at least one instance in which a man’s life was saved from a bear attack because of the new rule in national parks.  He used a .45 handgun to drive the bear away.  I’ll side with the new rule and gun ownership any day.

Occasionally I feel that it’s necessary to leave behind my focus on military matters, policy and national security, and turn inward towards politics.  The vista is usually an obscene spectacle, and it’s no different with the increasingly heated national political debates.  When serious national discussions are needed in light of the dire economic and national security situations we face, some politicians and pundits revert to insults like a pig returns to its slop and filthiness.  Witness.

On CNN:

This morning Bruce Bartlett, the former pioneer of supply-side economics turned latter-day Keynesian, said on CNN’s American Morning, “Rick Perry’s an idiot, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. To the extent that he has people thinking that the Fed doing its normal job is somehow or other a treasonous act is grossly irresponsible.”

Jon Huntsman on Perry’s view of climate change and science:

From the moment Rick Perry declared he would run for president, Jon Huntsman has doled out nothing but love for his fellow candidate, calling him “a good friend and a good man.”

But that changed today when Huntsman took to Twitter, subtly calling out Perry’s views on global warming. Huntsman tweeted: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

The tweet comes on the heels of a comment made by Huntsman’s chief strategist, John Weaver, to the Washington Post about views Perry made clear in his book, Fed Up!.

“We’re not going to win a national election if we become the anti-science party,” Weaver said. “The American people are looking for someone who lives in reality and is a truth teller because that’s the only way that the significant problems this country faces can be solved. It appears that the only science that Mitt Romney believes in is the science of polling, and that science clearly was not a mandatory course for Governor Perry.”

Ron Paul on Perry:

Presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has long called for abolishing the Federal Reserve, said he now looks “like a moderate” compared with GOP rival and fellow Texan, Gov. Rick Perry, who said it would be “almost treacherous, or treasonous,” if the central bank increased the money supply before the 2012 election.

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas speaks with area business leaders, Thursday, at the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole) Referring to Mr. Perry, the Texas congressman told supporters at a campaign event in Concord, N.H., Wednesday that “He realizes that talking about the Fed is good, too. But I tell you what: He makes me look like a moderate.”

Mr. Paul added,  “I have never once said [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke has committed treason.”

Analysis & Commentary

Ron Paul’s comments are much less insulting that the prior two, of course, and more opportunistic, but we’ll get to that momentarily.  Huntsman is of course referring to Perry’s statements on evolution, in which he said something like “it’s a theory … that has some gaps in it.”  Huntsman paints himself as the loyal follower of modern science and Perry as ignorant.  Leaving aside the fact that the voting public isn’t likely to penalize Perry for his views, his statement is dripping with sarcasm, and is an out-of-place sentiment given that he has no formal scientific training.  It’s further rendered hypocritical given his own admonition to leave his own religious views out of his politics: “These presidential nomination contests aren’t about religion; they’re about leadership.”

But let me briefly address the presupposition that underlies his insult, i.e., that scientific folk reject creationism and accept both evolution and anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  I might object to the characterization, and challenge the critics to see who can solve a second order differential equation faster, or a radiation transport problem the fastest (or best and most elegantly).  Or, I might respond to the snooty critic by quizzing him to see how much he knows about Professor Alvin Plantinga’s unique formulation of the ontological argument.  You see, I don’t believe in [macroscopic] evolution, and I don’t consider myself ignorant compared to Huntsman.  At least I’ve had some formal scientific (and also some theological) training.  Or perhaps it would be better to reference friends who are far smarter than am I, such as Professor Nolan Hertel.

Nolan has informed me in the past that many of his own colleagues are creationists, and that the robust debate is usually between young earth and old earth adherents.  Nolan and I, holding radiometric dating in rather high regard for obvious reasons, adhere to the old earth view.  But the point is not to begin a debate over the merits of views of the origin of man, or to assess the age of the earth (and therefore I will delete comments that press the discussion in that direction).  The point is also not to line up authoritative adherents for my views (which is the genetic falacy).  Anyone with any view can do that.  The point is that thoughtful people have pondered this issue for a very long time and come to different conclusions.  It’s just a myth that all scientific people reject creationism and accept AGW.  In fact, I will observe that it’s usually the laymen – those who are untrained in science and engineering – who hold it in such high esteem, ascribing to science abilities far beyond it’s boundaries (e.g., the ability to explain versus the ability simply to describe and formulate models).  At any rate and whatever the case, I’m not advocating that the Republican party (or any other party) become the party of creationism.  I wouldn’t be able to effect that change, and I wouldn’t do it if I could.  The point is that there is no place in national politics for insults based on one’s religious views, even as they impact his or her views on science (and I think Huntsman made that very point, but it’s apparently asking too much for him to be consistent).

As to Huntsman’s acceptance of AGW because the scientists said so, one has to wonder two things.  First, where has he been the last year or so while the climate change scandal has occurred?  It’s remarkable that he so willingly accepts AGW based on such shoddy scientific work (see endnote).  Second, doesn’t Huntsman see the contradiction in his views?  He charges Perry with scientific ignorance in his demurral on evolution, and yet accepts AGW because the scientists said so (not because of his own research or understanding).

Concerning Bruce Bartlett (who? … oh yea, that guy no one knows who shot off his mouth over national television), I don’t think he’ll get the agreement he seeks from everyone in America that Rick Perry is an idiot.  In fact, I’m willing to wager that more people place Bartlett in that category given his sweeping bromide concerning what all of the good American people really believe.

Turning to Ron Paul’s response to Perry’s criticism of Bernanke, Perry didn’t say that he was a traitor.  He said “almost treasonous.”  In fact, I had a dear friend who suffered a massive heart attack and died after degrading health, induced from pressure of not having work to support his family.  I take the health of our economy very seriously, and to me it bears on more than just differences in “monetary policy” by individuals who can and should remain “civil in their discourse” (Senator Santorum has harped on that for several days now).  And what about Ron Paul?  What does he believe?

Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the average American, it benefits those in a position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy. The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy. Federal Reserve policies also benefit big spending politicians who use the inflated currency created by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state. It is time for Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of special interests and their own appetite for big government.

Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy. The United States Constitution grants to Congress the authority to coin money and regulate the value of the currency. The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to delegate control over monetary policy to a central bank. Furthermore, the Constitution certainly does not empower the federal government to erode the American standard of living via an inflationary monetary policy.

And Paul recently referred to the Fed’s ruinous monetary policy.  So according to Ron Paul, the existence and practice of the Federal Reserve has been an unconstitutional ruination of the wealth of the American people.  So how does this differ so much from”almost treasonous?”

The fact of the matter is that Perry is being attacked because he is seen as a threat.  When politicians who have previously had kind words for Perry (Huntsman) turn on him, they prove how small they are.  It’s the same for Ron Paul, who has no chance of being President but who believes that he does.  Thus far, I haven’t detected attacks from the Perry camp against the GOP.  He continues to focus on Obama and the ruinous monetary policies that are “almost treasonous.”  And no one I know seems to care much about his views on the origin of mankind.

Who looks like the winner in all of this?

Endnote: For the uninitiated, here is the best short synopsis I can deliver on the AGW scandal (and I do mean short).  AGW proponents point to temperatures recorded over past years and decades to show that there is global warming.  The data wouldn’t otherwise be statistically significant (there’s just not enough of it) were it not for the correlation of tree ring data with temperature.  That is, in order to fill out the data base with temperatures, they have had to assume that there is a correlation of tree rings with temperatures.  This correlation was generally good up until a few years ago, where tree ring data significantly diverged from recorded temperatures.  They haven’t just ignored this divergence, they have hidden it.  Why?  Not because it shows some massive decrease in global temperature (although tree ring data does show a decrease), but because it challenges their own assumptions using tree ring data as a replacement for temperature measurements where we have no such historical measurements.  I have performed thousands of calculations myself in my line of work, and reviewed the same performed by colleagues.  No one in the engineering community would be allowed to posit such a problematic model.  It would be prima facie rejected.  The modelling assumptions, just like the American economy, sit in ruin and ashes.

From The New York Times:

The United States is expanding its role in Mexico’s bloody fight against drug trafficking organizations, sending new  C.I.A. operatives and retired military personnel to the country and considering plans to deploy private security contractors in hopes of  turning around a multibillion-dollar effort that so far has shown few results.

In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, where, for the first time, security officials from both countries work side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of American contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counternarcotics police unit.

Officials on both sides of the border say the new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil, and to prevent advanced American surveillance technology from falling under the control of Mexican security agencies with long histories of corruption.

“A sea change has occurred over the past years in how effective Mexico and U.S. intelligence exchanges have become,” said Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. “It is underpinned by the understanding that transnational organized crime can only be successfully confronted by working hand in hand, and that the outcome is as simple as it is compelling:  we will together succeed or together fail.”

Robert Haddick writing for Foreign Policy observes:

Policymakers responsible for the U.S. assistance effort in Mexico seem to be applying some lessons learned during America’s decade of war. The intelligence analysis centers the U.S. contractors are now setting up in Mexico are innovations developed by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and elsewhere. As described by General Stanley McChrystal in an essay he wrote for Foreign Policy, the centers are deliberately located down at the tactical level and gather collectors and analysts across intelligence agencies together in one room. The goal is to improve collaboration and more rapidly respond to incoming information and adversary activity. A decade of practical experience across the globe has refined this concept, which the United States is now exporting to Mexico.

We’ve heard this before – this notion of shared organic intelligence assets, different perspectives from different agencies working in concert and in real time, the employment of electronic assets and signals intelligence combined with on the spot analysis, all being used by real operators on the ground who know more about their enemies than they know about themselves – and it has become folklore that General McChrystal and his special operators hitting high value targets put an end to the insurgency in Iraq.  It’s a narrative that I reject, and it isn’t born out of good historiography.  It’s just myth that high value target hits won the campaign in Iraq.

Forecast: We shouldn’t oppose high value target hits in the war on the cartels, since they seem to operate with a more centralized focus than classical insurgencies (which tend more towards swarm theory).   But this will not itself end the cartels, or even hold their growth and the increase in terror in abatement.  This will prove to be a failed effort if it is the only point of impact in the campaign.

The tools exist to seal the border (Marines deployed to combat outposts on the border, with loosened rules for the use of force, conducting daily patrols and combining their efforts with force multipliers such as drones, increased numbers of border agents and comprehensive searches of all vehicles crossing the border, etc.).  The question is will they ever be put to use, and this is a direct function of the will to win the campaign against the cartels?

From The LA Times:

The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.

All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office.

[ … ]

McMahon was promoted Sunday to deputy assistant director of the ATF’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations — the division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems.

 Something about foxes and henhouses comes to mind.  Criminals, every one of them.  So this is the order of things.  Shill for the administration, violate the Arms Export Control Act, and then get promoted by the Obama administration.

The National Interest has an important account from the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The money quotes follow.

November 11, 2007—Veteran’s Day. I was a veteran waiting to meet the Taliban. I hated this, but I was here now. A young man, called Abu Hamza, a nom de guerre, entered the room and sat down, pointing his rifle low, but at me. He wore an infrared light on his turban. Someone was backing him. Why was he fighting? “We are fighting jihad,” he said. Who supported him? “Elders,” he replied. “Pakistan. We live in the mountains, but for training we go to Pakistan. Sometimes the army comes and trains us. “We know they are in the army, but they have gray beards, like you.”

[ … ]

A month later, at midnight, I sat in the mountains south of Tora Bora. A Predator buzzed above us and I shivered in the cold. A Taliban commander, about forty years of age, quoted from the Koran before he answered each of my questions. Their support came from God, from the tribes and religious parties in Pakistan, he said. Jihad was jihad. They didn’t care about or look for support from the Pakistani army. He was from Waziristan. I asked about al-Qaeda. “The Taliban and al-Qaeda are the same,” he responded. “We fight under Mullah Muhammad Omar. He started on the mountain tops as we do now.” A dozen teenagers and young men in their early twenties sat with us. I asked how they trained. “They are the sons of the mujahideen,” he said proudly. “Fighting is in their blood, as it was in the blood of their ancestors.”

[ … ]

The more the U.S. pushes into the east near the Pakistani border, where there are mountains and forests, places to hide and where men have been fighting outsiders for centuries, the more that Pakistan, and its proxy army, the Taliban, will fight back. “Not a shot would be fired in Afghanistan,” my jailer said, “without Pakistan’s approval.” It knows that the U.S. is pulling out of Afghanistan and is desperate to regain its influence there—and to sit at the negotiating table.

Encapsulated in this one account of a man who was kidnapped by the Taliban are two themes I have pressed before: the ideological alignment of the Taliban and AQ, and the duplicity and in fact even role of direct opposition that Pakistan plays in Afghanistan.

Can we please end the juvenile pretensions that we can play nice with the Taliban and re-engage them in the government?  The Taliban and al Qaeda are the same.  Those aren’t my words.  I just quoted them.

Robert Farago has a hard hitting report at The Washington Times.

Why did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) let criminals buy firearms, smuggle them across the Mexican border and deliver them into the hands of vicious drug cartels? The ATF claims it launched its now-disgraced Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 to catch the “big fish.” Fast and Furious was designed to stem the “Iron River” flowing from American gun stores into the cartels’ arsenals. The bureau says it allowed gun smuggling so it could track the firearms and arrest the cartel members downstream. Not true.

During the course of Operation Fast and Furious, about 2,000 weapons moved from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug cartels – exactly as intended.

In congressional testimony, William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, testified that the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “full partners” in Operation Fast and Furious. Mr. Newell’s list left out the most important player: the CIA. According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious.

The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon.

Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory. They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country.

Former CIA pilot Robert Plumlee and former CIA operative and DEA Director Phil Jordan recently said the brutally efficient Mexican drug cartel has stockpiled thousands of weapons to disrupt and influence Mexico’s national elections in 2012. There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.

In an effort to prevent a Los Zetas takeover, Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military. Recent court filings by former Sinaloa cartel member Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, currently in U.S. custody, reveal that the United States allowed the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace – unmolested.

The CIA made sure the trade wasn’t one-way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious – a “no strings attached” variation of the agency’s previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government’s preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active.

Operation Fast and Furious may not have been the only way the CIA helped put lethal weapons into the hands of the Sinaloa cartel and its allies, but it certainly was an effective strategy. If drug thugs hadn’t murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with an ATF- provided weapon, who knows how many thousands more guns would have crossed the U.S. border?

If Robert’s report is accurate, the list of culpability runs from the ATF to the DEA to the FBI and … now … to the CIA as perhaps the ringmaster.  One very astute commenter to one article I wrote about the Mexican cartels adopting military tactics has pressed down on me for details in my recommendation to utilize the U.S. military in response to cartel violence (as he should – I have some of the best readers on the web, and they help keep me honest).  Would I use combat outposts, would I use ex-infantry and role them into the border patrol, would I use invasive techniques, and so on.  I have been struggling mightily to craft a cogent and coherent response, while also keeping in the back of my mind that there are stipulations: Tennessee v. Garner for the use of force, the Posse Comitatus Act, the sovereignty of neighboring nations to consider, the Arms Export Control Act, etc., etc.

It seems that the CIA (and someone higher in the administration?) doesn’t care about the law as much as I do.  We’ve decided to take sides in the Mexican cartel war as a means to keep the current Mexican administration in power.  And this possibly runs to the top of the CIA, and recently confirmed defense secretary Leon Panetta.  This is just a horrible, horrible commentary on the curent U.S. administration and the lengths to which they are willing to go to skirt the law.

UPDATE #1: Agent Terry’s family has been denied crime victim status in Gun Walker case.

Coffey and others wonder if Burke has a conflict. It was his office that led Operation Fast and Furious. The operation, while executed by agents for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was managed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley. Hurley drafted the response to the family’s motion. It was signed by Burke.

Congressional investigators are expected to subpoena both to appear before the House Government and Oversight Committee next month to answer questions about the flawed operation that put some 2,000 weapons in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel.

LaJeunesse goes on to speculate that Avila might have cut a deal with prosecutors that would keep him out of jail, a development that would go over especially poorly if Terry’s family was seated in the courtroom, armed with official crime victim status.  The family may also be considering a wrongful death suit against the federal government, which would involve Burke.  Victim status would pump a lot of energy into that case.

Note again.  His own family has been denied crime victim status.  With this threshold, who could have ever met the criteria, whatever it is, for crime victim?

The Combating Terrorism Sentinel has an extremely interesting and well-informed piece entitled The JRTN Movement and Iraq’s Next Insurgency.  It’s well worth the reading time invested in it, and it explains why we no longer need to be in Iraq at all without significant changes to the Status of Forces Agreement where we would be allowed to operate more autonomously than we currently are.  I’ll leave the balance of the report to the reader, but the money quote (for the point I’m trying to make) is this.

JRTN’s branding and messaging has yielded a number of significant advantages for the group. One private security analyst with access to U.S. and Iraqi Security Force officers stated: “At the operational level, JRTN’s appearance of a religious connection gives it credibility in the eyes of the population and therefore increases the support offered and reduces the interference by the local population.” The analyst noted that JRTN’s stated “policy of only attacking the ‘occupiers’ and not the local population (whatever their ethnic or religious group) makes it one of the least ‘interfered with’ terrorist groupings. The population turned its back on many of the foreign fighters but JRTN are still seen as Iraqis first.” In areas along the federal-Kurdish line of control, JRTN’s anti-Kurdish agitation may have assisted its penetration of Sunni security forces. Kurdish factions recently accused JRTN of influencing the 12th Iraqi Army division in southern Kirkuk and flying JRTN’s flag on Iraqi Army vehicles during anti-Kurdish protests. Through sympathizers in the security forces, JRTN is assumed by U.S. officers to have at least some basic insight into the workings of joint U.S.-Iraqi operations centers, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and signals intelligence.

The apparent focus on U.S. forces (plus its capacity to intimidate local judges and call upon tribal support) has earned the movement sympathetic treatment by some parts of the Iraqi security forces and judiciary. One intelligence officer from Diyala noted that his Iraqi counterparts “rarely stated in public that JRTN was much of a threat and every time we detained a JRTN leader, we had to fight tooth and nail to keep them detained. In other words they did not accept that JRTN was a serious risk to the [government of Iraq], only to Americans.” JRTN appears to have successfully used loopholes in Iraqi law that means “resistance activities” are not treated as seriously as crimes with Iraqi victims. According to one analyst, this legal aspect “is one reason that [JRTN] is deliberately not leaving a trail of evidence and claims connecting it to car bombings or assassinations that target Iraqis.”

The Iraqis want our logistical capabilities, our MEDEVAC capabilities, our stability, our discipline, and so on.  They don’t want us to operate in such a manner that we quell an insurgency, or target Iranian forces who destabilize Iraq.  We should be killing insurgents, and instead we are still tipping our hat to incarceration of insurgents, which we have demonstrated is never a successful strategy in counterinsurgency (kill them or let them go – prisons are counterproductive in COIN).  And with the current state of affairs in Iraq, we can’t even do that against favored insurgent groups.

So be it.  It’s time for the Iraqis to go it alone.  Our military forces shouldn’t play second fiddle to anyone.

We have discussed the notion that the Mexican cartels, rather than being simply related to drugs and drug trafficking, should be seen as warlords and insurgents.  Warfare has come to Mexico and the border states of the United States.  Their reach now goes all the way to Idaho.  But the degree of militarization of the cartels and their armies is still relatively unknown to most Americans.

Mexican drug cartels are using military weapons and tactics while also recruiting Texas teenagers to carry out their operations, which are evolving into full-blown criminal enterprises, experts said.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven C. McCraw said last week in a report given to Congress that the cartels “incorporate reconnaissance networks, techniques and capabilities normally associated with military organizations, such as communications intercepts, interrogations, trend analysis, secure communications, coordinated military-style tactical operations, GPS, thermal imagery and military armaments, including fully automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades.”

[ … ]

“Cartel-run training camps are typically located in Mexico,” testified Zapata County Sheriff Gonzalez. “However, in 2008, law enforcement authorities discovered a training camp in South Texas that was operated by members of the Gulf cartel’s (former) enforcement arm, Los Zetas.”

The Sinaloa cartel, which is waging a bloody battle against the Carrillo Fuentes cartel for control of the Juárez-El Paso corridor, also employs a military-type approach.

According to another U.S. government document, “the Sinaloa cartel uses military-style training camps high in the Sierra-Durango mountains.”

[ … ]

McAllen’s police chief said there is a war going on between drug-trafficking organizations. “It has taken the form of direct challenges and firefights with authorities in Mexico,” Rodriguez said. “If they, the drug trafficking organizations, were forces from another country, Mexico could be seen as being at war and not winning.”

The cartels aren’t simply drug cartels, and are now engaged in human trafficking.  This isn’t about the war on drugs.  This is about warlords and insurgents across the border in Mexico … and indeed, here in the United States.  War has come to America, and unless it is fought like a war, we will lose it, and not just in the border states.

Michael Yon has another great report of heroism, fallen comrades and Soldiers saved by SAPI plates, entitled Men at War: Come Home With Your Shield, Or On It.  Visit Michael’s web site and hit the tip jar if you can.  It’s usually bad form to consume band width to splash a photograph on one’s own web site by using feed from another web site.  But I asked and Michael graciously granted me permission to use this one photograph below.

Michael gives us the following caption: Another Soldier had been on the roof when Brice was hit, and this Soldier was shot in the ribs.  The bullet was stopped by his SAPI plate.  He said it felt like he had been stabbed.  Other Soldiers said that the troop who had been shot in the ribs collected his wits and stayed in the fight.

Michael has worn body armor for a very long time, and certainly there are many hundreds of thousands of Soldiers and Marines who have worn it in combat long enough to comment with authority on it.  I don’t want to steal their thunder here with my comments.  But I will make them anyway.

I have worn the Marine MTV (Modular Tactical Vest) only for a short period of time, but I have worn it.  It’s tight, obtrusive, hot, heavy (with its SAPI plates), and constrictive (it hugs the torso in order to place its weight on the hips, rather like an internal frame backpack).  It’s hard to move, and must be even harder to fight in combat.  I recently humped a 65+ pound backpack on Mount Mitchell, up and down terrain changes, and I would rather do that than hump that body armor.  It’s more than just the weight.  It’s hard to breath when it’s on.

That said, I confess that I felt some degree of relief when I knew that the Battalion Commander in Fallujah in 2007 (FOB Reaper) ordered all Marines to wear all PPEs when outside the wire.  At that time the Marine Corps Commandant had given Battalion Commanders the discretion to wear or jettison PPEs as they saw fit, and depending upon the circumstances.  The Battalion Commander didn’t leave it to the discretion of the Marines under his charge.

My own son was saved from a piece of mortar shrapnel by his front SAPI plate, and Michael posts an example of yet another Soldier who was saved by his SAPI plate – his side SAPI plate, no less.  There are many more such examples.  I know that it is totally obnoxious to wear the stuff, especially up and down hills in Afghanistan, and especially on hot days.  But I’m just saying … another Soldier saved.

The U.S. should do all it can to give our warriors the best armor, including lighter polymer (the existing SAPI plates are ceramic surrounding a metal plate).  That prospect seems at risk now that the Pentagon is set to face severe budget cuts.

Visit Michael Yon’s web page.

Prior: Body Armor Category