This report comes from the AP.

GHUNDY GHAR, Afghanistan — As night falls on this small hilltop base in the heart of Taliban country in southern Afghanistan, U.S. Army soldiers break out their knives and flashlights and go hunting for some of the country’s deadliest inhabitants: snakes and scorpions.

Tracking down the “creepy crawlies” that lurk in the nooks and crannies of the countryside is a favorite pastime, providing education, some entertainment — arachnid fight night! — or even a quick meal.

The expeditions help break the monotony of 10-day rotations the soldiers do once or twice a month at this rugged outpost in Kandahar province. Other than patrolling for a few hours a day, there is little for troops to do except watch movies or lift weights at a makeshift gym.

“Deployments are always 99 percent extreme boredom and one percent sheer terror,” said Spc. Chris Stoughton, a 28-year-old machine gunner with the platoon currently based at Strong Point Ghundy Ghar in Zhari district.

Staff Sgt. Aaron Christensen, a self-described reptile nut who grew up exploring the woods and coastlines of Oregon, leads the charge at night. Unlike most soldiers on their first deployment, he was just as fired up about the wildlife in the Afghan countryside as he was about potentially battling Taliban insurgents.

“I knew we had our job to do, but I was thinking in the back of my mind that I hope to see some of the cool things I have only seen in pictures or at exotic reptile shows,” said Christensen, who has owned cobras, rattlesnakes, lizards and a small alligator as pets. He even has two of his pet snakes tattooed on his left biceps.

The 30-year-old native of Portland, Oregon, has not been disappointed with what he and his fellow soldiers have found around the 200-foot (60- meter) rock and mud hill where their base is located. It is teeming with a wealth of snakes, scorpions, spiders and other wildlife.

This is a good human interest story from the AP reporter (Sabastion Abbot) that raises an issue entirely different from the one he intended.  Why are soldiers bored with little to do except look for reptiles, work out and watch movies?  I don’t want to start another round of internecine rivalry, but the Marines in Helmand aren’t so bored.

“We set out the combat patrol anticipating contact,” said Capt. E.A. Meador from Laurel, Miss., the company commander. “They always try to hit us in that area.”

After moving only about one mile from their combat outpost, the Marines received a heavy volley of enemy gunfire from multiple directions. Without hesitation, the Marines and ANA returned fire to suppress the enemy positions, began to maneuver on the insurgents and call for fire support.

Within minutes, an AH-1W Super Cobra and a UH-1N Huey were on station overhead to help suppress and engage enemy targets. The Cobra fired several five-inch Zuni rockets into one of the compounds from which the patrol was receiving sustained fire.

During the engagement, the squad leaders were encouraging and directing their Marines to ensure they were doing everything they could to stay effective and in the fight. No matter how tired they became as time wore on, the voice of experience could be heard across the battlefield.

“Push forward. Keep your dispersion,” called out Sgt. Jonathon Delgado, a squad leader from Kissimmee, Fla., as his Marines pressed through the corn field to maneuver on one of the compounds hiding the enemy.

The Marines and ANA eventually maneuvered up to and cleared the insurgent positions initially used to launch the ambush. One moment they were fighting in open fields, and the next they were clearing rooms the insurgents had used as fighting positions – two very different and challenging combat techniques. One squad, expecting to encounter some resistance, went to clear the western compound where the patrol had initially taken heavy fire. As they entered the compound, the only thing that was they found were brass casings and links from the enemy’s machine guns.

“It was tense going through the compound,” Daughtry commented. “You never know exactly what is coming around the corner.”

Marines with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, suppress enemy positions to protect the landing zone for a casualty evacuation helicopter in the middle of a six-hour firefight with Taliban insurgents.

This was a six-hour firefight.  Terry McCarthy has written about a four hour and fifteen minute patrol conducted by the 3/1 Marines.  This isn’t about branches of the military.  The Army in the Kunar and Nuristan Provinces is taking heat from the Taliban, and needs help on their many combat outposts.  It’s an issue of expectations and utilization of resources.  The question is why the Marines in Helmand and the Army is Kunar is suffering while the Army in other parts of the battlespace is bored?

Something is wrong with the management of the campaign.

Max Boot on Maliki and the recent Iraqi elections.

Maliki, a sectarian Shiite, won’t accept the possibility that Allawi, a secular Shiite who enjoys overwhelming support among Sunnis, could displace him as prime minister. To prevent this from happening, Maliki is making common cause with the Iraqi National Alliance, a group of religious Shiites close to Iran that includes his archenemies, the followers of Muqtada Sadr.

Maliki has also counterattacked in the courts. First he pressured a three-judge election court into ordering a recount in Baghdad that could take weeks to finish but that isn’t expected to alter the outcome. Second, and more serious, he has endorsed what are, according to Army Gen. Ray T. Odierno, Iranian-orchestrated attempts by Iraq’s Accountability and Justice Commission to disqualify winning Sunni candidates for alleged ties to Sadam Hussein’s Baath Party.

With Maliki’s support, the commission has already disqualified 52 parliamentary candidates, including one who won a seat as part of the Iraqiya list. At least eight more winning Iraqiya candidates could be disqualified. That would give Maliki more seats than Allawi and fundamentally undermine the legitimacy of the vote.

A victory for Maliki (or a Shiite ally) that is achieved through postelection manipulations would make it extremely difficult for the new government to reach out to Sunnis either in Iraq or in the broader region. It might even reignite civil war if Sunnis feel that they are being disenfranchised.

Senior officials in the Obama administration are reportedly becoming more involved behind the scenes to avert such a disaster, but so far they have made limited progress despite a visit to Baghdad earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, the administration’s point man on Iraq. Diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad put the emphasis on “transition” and “drawdown” rather than on ensuring the long-term success of Iraqi “democracy” (a word avoided by the administration).

That should be no surprise considering that President bama’s overriding objective is to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. The Iraqi-American security accord negotiated by the George W. Bush administration called for the departure of all our soldiers by the end of 2011. Obama added a new twist by ordering that troop strength be cut from the current 95,000 to 50,000 by September.

The presumption was that the drawdown would occur after Iraq had installed a new government. American officials expected that postelection jockeying would end by June at the latest. But Iraqi politicians now expect that no government will emerge before the fall. Thus the Iraqi and American timelines are dangerously out of sync. Large troop reductions at a time of such political uncertainty will send a dangerous signal of disengagement and lessen America’s ability to preserve the integrity of the elections.

The delay in seating a government also endangers the possible negotiation of a fresh accord to govern Iraqi-American relations after 2011. It is vital to have a continuing American military presence to train and advise Iraqi security forces, which have grown in size and competence but still aren’t capable of defending their airspace or performing other vital functions.

U.S. troops also play a vital peacekeeping role, patrolling with Iraqi troops and the Kurdish peshmerga along the disputed Green Line separating Iraq proper from the Kurdish regional government. Kurdish politicians I met in Irbil warned that if Iraqi-Kurdish land disputes aren’t resolved by the end of 2011 (and odds are they won’t be), there is a serious danger of war breaking out once American troops leave. The possibility of miscalculation will grow once the Iraqi armed forces acquire the M-1 tanks and F-16 fighters that we have agreed to sell them. It is all the more important that an American buffer — say 10,000 to 15,000 troops — remain to ensure that those weapons are never used against our Kurdish allies.

Boot hits on some common themes we have already covered in:

Bad Developments in Iraq

Iraqi Elections

Whence Goeth Iraq?

To say that Maliki is bad for Iraq is redundant.  Chalibi is a treacherous liar, cheat and rogue.  He is out for the Shi’ite powers in Iran and Iraq, but first of all himself.  His “Justice Commission” is a front for the Iranians.  He is a scumbag in the superlative degree.  The Maliki-Hakim-Sadr alliance will only end, if it does, as it suffers under the weight of the collective pride, self worship and disdain for the common Iraqi.

It may also be true that U.S. presence is a good thing for tamping down internal sectarian violence.  But there is a very important element of the current situation that Boot is missing, and it must be incorporated into our framework in order to understand the degree of U.S. inability to change the situation.

The Status of Forces Agreement has lead to intelligence ambiguity in Iraq due to the fact that patrols are no longer conducted.  Our once powerful and productive information and intelligence campaign has all but dried up.  It’s difficult to assess atmospherics when you can’t go on patrol and talk with the population.  The SOFA has caused U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraqi cities to the countryside because they cannot even ensure force protection in the cities.  The Marines are entirely gone from the Anbar Province because they couldn’t even move outside of their bases without an Iraqi escort and without giving 72 hours notice.  The Marine Corps Commandant will not leave Marines in a situation in which they cannot ensure force protection.

The U.S. Army is under virtual house arrest in Iraq.  Said Colonel Ali Fadhil of the ISF, “the American soldiers are in prison-like bases as if they are under house-arrest.”  They have been given times that they cannot leave their bases, stipulations for permissions, and requirements for escorts.

I have been brutal on the Obama administration on everything from health care to the  handling of the campaign in Afghanistan.  Additionally, Obama could actually put Iraq under the charge of someone who is competent rather than Biden.  But the hand was dealt long before the Obama administration, even if Obama would have fled the country anyway.  There is little to nothing that U.S. forces can do under the current SOFA, and that is the fault of the previous administration, like it or not.

We failed to confront Iran in the regional war it has been waging more than 40 years (and for the eight years we have been in Iraq), and then we tied the hands of our warriors so that they couldn’t effect change in the situation.  They are busying themselves with lifting weights, playing ping pong and going to classes.  They have nothing else to do because we made it that way for them.

Has Mullah Omar been captured?  Brad Thor is saying as much over at Big Government.

Through key intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just learned that reclusive Taliban leader and top Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar has been taken into custody.

According to the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program there is a bounty of up to $10 million on Omar for sheltering Osama bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda network in the years prior to the September 11 attacks as well as the period during and immediately thereafter.

At the end of March, US Military Intelligence was informed by US operatives working in the Af/Pak theater on behalf of the D.O.D. that Omar had been detained by Pakistani authorities. One would assume that this would be passed up the chain and that the Secretary of Defense would have been alerted immediately.  From what I am hearing, that may not have been the case.

This sounds too bizarre to be believed as is.  There has to be more to it than the information wasn’t passed up the chain of command.  But in lieu of confirmation, I’ll make three observations.

First, the insurgency will not die with the capture of Omar.  While a powerful figure, his actual control over his fighters wasn’t significant.  Furthermore, the inbreeding of al Qaeda ideology, Tehrik-i-Taliban radicalism and Afghan Taliban is pretty much complete.  They all swim in the same waters.  Second, even though this is true, it is a good thing if Mullah Omar has been captured.  Third, I’ll wait on official confirmation before saying any more.  This has the distinct possibility of being a ruse or a mistake.  I lost track of the number of times that Baitullah Mehsud was allegedly killed.  Now Hakimullah Mehsud has been killed – but wait, no he hasn’t and there is evidence of his being alive.

This is why I don’t usually cover HVT killings.  In general I don’t think that they are very effective, and quite often the information is wrong.  I think I’ll just wait before breaking out the champagne.

As I have discussed before, in 2004 in Najaf, the U.S. Marines had Moqtada al Sadr surrounded.  The British leadership in Iraq, who felt that we simply had to learn to work with the fabric of Iraqi society, worked feverishly with Ali al-Sistani (the senior Shi’ite cleric in Iraq) to convince the U.S. political and military leadership to release Sadr.  This Charlie Rose interview with John Burns is instructive for its clarity regarding the event (see approximately 17:20 into the interview).

As later disclosed to me, Sadr wasn’t just surrounded.  The 3/2 Marines had Sadr in their custody.  They had arrested him and had held him for three days prior to being ordered to release him.  Today, six years later, a resurgent Sadr after having received religious training in Iran is doing Iran’s bidding for them.  A Shi’ite coalition is attempting to retain control over the government in the wake of the recent elections and not only exclude Allawi from power, but give ultimate authority over final political decisions to religious cleric Sistani.

A recent conversation I had with Omar Fadhil of ITM (perhaps in a preface to his latest post) might bring slightly more optimism than I bring to the table, where he sees the Maliki-Hakim-Sadr alliance as still very shaky.  Nonetheless, there are many U.S. deaths in Baghdad and Najaf that can be directly attributed to Sadr.  We are hearing from the ghosts of Najaf six years later, haunting voices, telling us that Sadr should not have been released.  They are unmistakable and relentless.  This was a bad and irreversible decision.

Such an important decision is in preparations for the Afghanistan campaign.  We are attempting to befriend and work with (even change?) Ahmed Wali Karzai, PM Hamid Karzai’s criminal brother in Kandahar.  To be sure, Wali Karzai doesn’t command an army of fighters the size of Sadr, or even an army at all.  But the similarities exist.  Leaving Sadr unmolested was an error of gargantuan proportions, and working with Wali Karzai may be judged in hindsight to be the single fateful decision that lost the battle for Kandahar.  Karzai’s political and financial fortunes rides on the backs of criminal organizations and drug money, and his friend are bought and paid for.  This is being described as a gamble.

Nato has taken one of the biggest gambles of its mission in Afghanistan by reluctantly deciding to collaborate with Ahmad Wali Karzai, the notorious power-broker of Kandahar — despite allegations that the half-brother of the President is involved in the drugs trade.

The decision comes as Nato planners continue preparations for their next big push against the Taleban in Kandahar and as the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, prepares to depart for Washington, where he is expected to meet President Obama next week.

Senior coalition officers would prefer to see the back of Wali Karzai but they have come to the conclusion that their only option is to work with him. They are trying, in the words of one officer, to “remodel” a man accused of running a private fiefdom in the south.

On Saturday Wali Karzai held a meeting with the US Central Command commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus; the latest in a series of contacts designed to rehabilitate and influence the activities of the chairman of Kandahar’s provincial council.

“The plan is to incorporate him, to shape him. Unless you eliminate him, you have to [do this],” said a senior coalition official involved in planning what is viewed as this summer’s make-or-break military operation in Kandahar. “You can’t ignore him,” he added. “He’s the proverbial 800lb gorilla and he’s in the middle of a lot of rooms. He’s the mafia don, the family fixer, the troubleshooter.”

Joshua Foust is even clearer: “ISAF faces a number of political challenges as well. A majority of Afghan watchers point to Ahmed Wali Karzai as one of the biggest barriers to smooth operations in the city—he demands a cut of most commerce that takes place in the area, and the DEA alleges he has ties to the illegal narcotics industry. However, because he is the President’s brother, there is no chance of removing him from power. Similarly, Kandahar is, in effect, run by a group of families organized into mafia-style crime rings. They skim profits off almost all reconstruction projects in the city, and have developed a lucrative trade ripping off ISAF initiatives. They sometimes violently clash with each other.”

My own counsel just prior to this report was directly contrary to the plan.

In order to win Kandahar, we must not run from fights; we must destroy the drug rings (not the local farmers), and especially destroy the crime families, including killing the heads of the crime families; we must make it so uncomfortable for people to give them cuts of their money that they fear us more than they fear Karzai’s criminal brother; we must make it so dangerous to be associated with crime rings, criminal organizations, and insurgents that no one wants even to be remotely associated with them; and we must marginalize Karzai’s brother …

Anyone associated with drug rings, criminal activity or the insurgency must be a target, from the highest to the lowest levels of the organization, and this without mercy.  Completely without mercy.  There should be no knee-jerk reversion to prisons, because the corrupt judicial system in Afghanistan will only release the worst actors to perpetrate the worst on their opponents.  This robust force projection must be conducted by not only the SOF, but so-called general purpose forces (GPF).  The population needs to see the very same people conducting patrols and talking with locals that they see killing criminals and insurgents.  This is imperative.

Two very different approaches, needless to say.  It remains to be seen who is right in this affair.  There seems to be confusion or at least rapidly changing opinion within the ISAF.  Not two weeks prior to this report about co-opting Karzai, it was reported that we had elected to do just the opposite.  ISAF has concluded that nothing else can be done, and I have concluded that something else must be done in order to justify the loss of American life.

Max Boot weighed in around the time of the Washington Post article saying:

There is little doubt that U.S. and other NATO forces can win a military victory in Kandahar. But do they have a political strategy to match their military might? I am dubious. At the very least a lot more groundwork needs to be laid in the realm of strategic communications to convince the world that the coalition can win a meaningful victory in Kandahar without removing AWK from power.

And this demur was posed assuming that we were merely attempting to sideline Wali Karzai.  Now we want to work with him and mold him.  But “can a leopard change its spots?”  In the future the ghosts of Kandahar, including U.S. servicemen, will call out and answer our question, even haunting the dreams of those who controlled their fates.

Allawi was concerned about the Iraq vote recount.  As it turns out, he should have been, and then again, it won’t matter after all.  Iraqpundit notes that Maliki did all of this for his own benefit.

What’s funny about the recount is that Nouri Al Maliki claims he’s doing it for the Iraqi people. He himself said as much on one of the TV channels. And his oil minister said at a press conference that the State of Law want the government the Iraqi people chose. In other words, they are demanding the recount and complaining about how it’s being conducted not for them to all keep their jobs. It’s for the Iraqi people. Now that’s generosity.

It certainly is a curious claim. Because the Iraqi people have not demanded a recount. You really don’t hear anyone other than well-placed government employees who want to keep their jobs waiting for the recount results. You can even see Iraqis interviewed on TV saying the people voted, they chose Allawi, enough is enough. Iraqis just want a government that functions.

An outsider might say they’re afraid to protest. Actually that’s not the case. Because Iraqis marched in the streets a couple of days ago to protest the murder of Christians. If Iraqis really thought the recount was necessary, they might have marched in the streets to demand a recount.

But Maliki won’t need a fake recount.  The two leading Shi’ite factions – including Moqtada al Sadr – have agreed to a power sharing arrangement that will basically exclude Allawi.

An agreement signed by the two main Iranian-backed Shi’ite blocs seeking to govern Iraq gives the final decision on all their political disputes to top Shi’ite clerics, according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press yesterday.

If the alliance succeeds in forming the next government, the provision could increase the role of senior clergy in politics. The provision would probably further alienate Iraq’s Sunni minority, which had been hoping the March election would boost their say in the country.

The newly announced alliance between the Shi’ite blocs practically ensures they will form the core of any new government and squeeze out the top vote getter, Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya list, which received heavy Sunni support. But the terms of the alliance show the deep distrust between the two Shi’ite partners and seek to limit the powers of the prime minister.

A leading member of the prime minister’s coalition who signed the agreement on Tuesday confirmed that it gives a small group of clerics led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani the last word on any disputes between the two allied blocs.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

“The marjaiyah has the final say in solving all the disputes between the two sides, and its directives and guidance are binding,’’ the agreement said, referring to the religious Shi’ite leadership based in the holy city of Najaf.

The provision applies only to the alliance, not to any new government. But if the Shi’ite alliance dominates the new government, clerics would potentially have a direct say in policy.

In the past, Shi’ite politicians have often turned informally to Sistani for advice and to resolve disputes. The agreement would enshrine that role in writing.

As recently as April 19, 2010, MEMRI got it very wrong.

The young Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, who opposed the American invasion of Iraq from the outset and has remained consistent in his opposition to the presence of foreign forces in the country, is emerging as a voice of Iraqi nationalism and as an obstacle to the unification of the two leading Shia groups – Nouri Al-Maliki’s State of Law [Dawlat Al-Qanon] and Ammar Al-Hakim’s Iraqi National Alliance [Al-I’tilaf Al-Watani Al-Iraqi], a measure strongly advocated by Iran to prevent the Sunnis, under Ayad Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya, from returning to power.

Sadr has done no such thing.  He is another pawn of Iran, and the empowering of Iran in this whole affair is troubling in the superlative.  Moqtada al Sadr was actually in the custody of the 3/2 Marines in 2004 (not surrounded, but in the custody of the Marines), and the British worked with remarkable precision and perseverance to persuade the powers that Sadr should be released.  Released he was, and we are now faced with a Shi’ite coalition in Iraq that threatens the very fabric of the nation with Persian hegemony.

Actions have consequences, and something done in 2004 rings with ghostly sounds in 2010.  I have exchanged e-mail with Tom Ricks on the situation in Iraq in response to, oh, I don’t know, his 320,687th post about how Iraq is collapsing.  I am not worried about al Qaeda in Iraq retaking Anbar.  It won’t happen.  But the biggest worry I have is that Iran’s power would increase in the region.  I was right, and I am right.  Our failure to do the hard things in 2004 and our failure to take on Iran as the regional bully that it is might still cause us to lose the costly campaign in Iraq.

from Herschel Smith to markos@dailykos.com, dailykos@gmail.com date Thu, May 6, 2010 at 11:23 PM subject Assistance mailed-by gmail.com

Markos,

Regarding this:

Truth is the first casualty of Kos

I had initially taken some degree of pleasure and humor in reading the exchange.  But then I felt some degree of guilt.  I am certain that you don’t actually intend to come off as a thirteen year old girl hysterically text-messaging her enemies with run-on sentences.  I am certain that you wish to be seen as less effeminate and much more manly than this, but perhaps don’t know how.

Please allow me to assist you.  I am here to help.  I can hook you up with some hard core manual labor: ditch digging, shoveling gravel, bailing hay, etc.  I can even get you hooked up with training stud horses and ‘coon dogs.  Stud quarter horses are quite a handful when trying to break them, especially in the warm weather.  And there is nothing better than watching a ‘coon dog bite the eyeballs out of a Raccoon – or, watching the dog go limping away from being torn to shreds by the ‘coon.

I think you will feel much more manly after doing activities such as this.  Let me know when you want to come down and hang out.  BTW, I am assuming that at least right now you would disagree with my brand of counterinsurgency.

What we must do to win Kandahar

Maybe after we go ‘coon hunting you will see things my way.

Very Warmest Regards,

Herschel Smith

The Captain’s Journal

Via Andy McCarthy, the State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization list is incomplete, and should include the Taliban.  It currently includes:

1. Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)
2. Abu Sayyaf Group
3. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
4. Al-Shabaab
5. Ansar al-Islam
6. Armed Islamic Group (GIA)
7. Asbat al-Ansar
8. Aum Shinrikyo
9. Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA)
10. Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army (CPP/NPA)
11. Continuity Irish Republican Army
12. Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group)
13. HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
14. Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami/Bangladesh (HUJI-B)
15. Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)
16. Hizballah (Party of God)
17. Islamic Jihad Group
18. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)
19. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) (Army of Mohammed)
20. Jemaah Islamiya organization (JI)
21. Kahane Chai (Kach)
22. Kata’ib Hizballah
23. Kongra-Gel (KGK, formerly Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, KADEK)
24. Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous)
25. Lashkar i Jhangvi
26. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
27. Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)
28. Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM)
29. Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)
30. National Liberation Army (ELN)
31. Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
32. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
33. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLF)
34. PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC)
35. Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (QJBR) (al-Qaida in Iraq) (formerly Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad, JTJ, al-Zarqawi Network)
36. al-Qa’ida
37. al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
38. al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (formerly GSPC)
39. Real IRA
40. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
41. Revolutionary Organization 17 November
42. Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C)
43. Revolutionary Struggle
44. Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, SL)
45. United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)

Yes, it should include the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, Ansar al-Sunna (which is different than Ansar al-Islam), the Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (whom we have been fighting in Iraq for eight years now), and the Quds Force (if they called out the IRG there may be no reason to call Quds out separately).  In any case, this list is horribly incomplete.  The State Department is it’s own worst enemy, and the biggest impediment to taking them seriously.

I have looked into embedding as an independent journalist, but for those who have a mortgage and children in college, as Bill Ardolino and Michael Totten told me once, it’s financially always a losing proposition to embed.  Always.  When I had a button for donations on the web site I didn’t receive a single penny.  But Andrew Lubin is braving the odds again.  I received this from him.

I’m looking to raise money to fund a trip (my 5th) to Afghanistan. I’m an author, journalist, and independent foreign correspondent who writes on current events, which in the last few years has brought me to Beirut, Iraq (4 times), GTMO, Afghanistan (4 times), and I’ve recently returned from Haiti.

I’ve already been accepted to embed with the 1st MEF (Marine Expeditionary Force) Fwd to write a “boots-on-the-ground” series – they’ll be pushing me out into Helmand-Nimroz-Farah Provinces where are young Marines will be located.

This is a critical time in the war. President Obama has tripled American troop strength, most of it Marine, and the troops are fighting with and training Afghan forces as well as dealing with Afghan leaders. It’s important to chronicle and document how our troops are performing.

With my prior embed experience, I’ll be out on the front lines as our Marines deal with Taliban, locals, and Afghan government officials. My writing is totally non-political. I’ll be writing two to three stories weekly, plus gathering info for a piece on U.S. military counterinsurgency tactics.

Funds are needed for round-trip airfare and miscellaneous expenses in Afghanistan.

Length of the embed is approximately six weeks — mid-May through the end of June. I already own my own flak, kevlar, boondockers, and other equipment.

But the first step is getting there, and corporate and other sponsorship has dried up. I need your help in traveling to Afghanistan in order to document what our brave young men and women are doing!

Send Andrew Back to Afghanistan

Please click on the above link to contribute! And feel welcome to email me with any questions or comments you might have at ajlubin@earthlink.net

Thank you for your support!!

Andrew is a top notch journalist.  Donate if you can.

Before we address the issue of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ position on the sea services, let’s debunk the mythical notion that either the military or the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan is bankrupting the country (or even demanding the lion’s share of money).  From CATO (h/t Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit).

That’s quite enough said about that.  On to the sea services.

“Our current plan is to have eleven carrier strike groups through 2040,” Gates said. But a look at the facts is warranted, he added. The United States now has 11 large, nuclear-powered carriers, and there is nothing comparable anywhere else in the world.

“The U.S. Navy has 10 large-deck amphibious ships that can operate as sea bases for helicopters and vertical-takeoff jets,” he said. “No other navy has more than three, and all of those navies belong to allies or friends.”

The U.S. Navy can carry twice as many aircraft at sea as the rest of the world combined, Gates said. Under the sea, he told the group, the United States has 57 nuclear-powered attack and cruise-missile submarines – more than the rest of the world combined, and 79 Aegis-equipped surface ships that carry about 8,000 vertical-launch missile cells.

“In terms of total-missile firepower, the U.S. arguably outmatches the next 20 largest navies,” Gates said. “All told, the displacement of the U.S. battle fleet – a proxy for overall fleet capabilities – exceeds, by one recent estimate, at least the next 13 navies combined, of which 11 are our allies or partners.”

The United States must be able to project power overseas, Gates said. “But, consider the massive overmatch the U.S. already enjoys,” he added. “Consider, too, the growing anti-ship capabilities of adversaries. Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?”

The Marine Corps is now 202,000 strong. It is the largest force of its type in the world, and exceeds in size most nations’ armies. Between the world wars, the Marine Corps developed amphibious warfare doctrine and used it to great effect against the Japanese during World War II. Whether that capability still is needed, however, is worthy of thought, the secretary said.

“We have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious landing again – especially as advances in anti-ship systems keep pushing the potential launch point further from shore,” Gates said. “On a more basic level, in the 21st century, what kind of amphibious capability do we really need to deal with the most likely scenarios, and then how much?”

The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) will take a particularly tough beating over the course of the next several months and years, but the Marines have rolled out their case.

The Marine Corps unveiled its new $13 billion landing-craft program on Tuesday, a day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates questioned the Pentagon’s need for it …

“Secretary Gates has placed his marker, and he’s not in favor of continuing the program,” said Dakota Wood, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a retired Marine officer. “The Marine Corps is going to have to come up with a whale of a rationale to convince him otherwise.”

The need, the Marines say, stems from their need to replace its Nixon-era Amphibious Assault Vehicles. The new vehicle will allow Marines to land on a hostile shore, a capability needed, for example, in the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia in the 1990s and civilians from Lebanon in 2006, said Lt. Gen. George Flynn, who leads the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. The amphibious capability also forces adversaries to undertake “costly defensive measures,” Flynn said.

Analysis & Commentary

The issue of expense of military hardware, systems and size has nothing to do with overspending.  It pertains to the relative commitment of this particular administration to national defense as opposed to government-run, government-administered programs and subsidies.  We have the economy to support an even larger military than we currently have.  What we don’t have is the national will.

Aircraft carriers, as much or more than any other military hardware, is a way of projecting power across the globe.  My support of them is well known, and my support for the F-22 program has been made clear.  In fact, I have proposed an increase rather than a decrease in Carrier battle groups.  The size of the Marine Corps is not a problem for the national economy, and it’s easy to question expenditures for a strong national defense while comfortably enjoying the peace and security that it has brought.

But this isn’t the same thing as questioning the need for the EFV and the forcible entry doctrine of the Marine Corps.  I have taken the doctrine to task.

I do not now and have never advocated that the Marine Corps jettison completely their notion of littoral readiness and expeditionary warfare capabilities, but I have strongly advocated more support for the missions we have at hand.

Finally, it occurs to me that the debate is unnecessary.  While Conway has famously said that the Corps is getting too heavy, his program relies on the extremely heavy Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, that behemoth that is being designed and tested because we want forcible entry capabilities – against who, I frankly don’t know.

If it is a failing state or near failing state, no one needs the capabilities of the EFV.  If it is a legitimate near peer enemy or second world state, then the casualties sustained from an actual land invasion would be enormous.  Giving the enemy a chance to mine a beach, build bunkers, arm its army with missiles, and deploy air power, an infantry battalion would be dead within minutes.  1000 Marines – dead, along with the sinking of an Amphibious Assault Dock and its associated EFVs.

No one has yet given me a legitimate enemy who needs to be attacked by an EFV.  On the other hand, I have strongly recommended the retooling of the expeditionary concept to rely much more heavily on air power and the air-ground task force concept.  It would save money, create a lighter and more mobile Marine Corps (with Amphibious Assault Docks ferrying around more helicopters rather than LCACs), and better enable the Marines to perform multiple missions.  I have also recommended an entirely new generation of Marine Corps helicopters.

This is not suggesting that the Marine Corps in any way needs to have its funding cut or decrease its size.  It is to suggest that the money might be more wisely spent in other areas.  The mission still isn’t clear.  Above it has been suggested that the Corps needs the EFV for withdrawal of forces (such as from Somalia) or evacuation of civilians (such as from Lebanon).  But this explanation doesn’t comport with the facts of the program.  “The Corps aims to buy a total of 573 EFVS. This would give it the capacity to amphibiously transport eight infantry battalions of about 970 Marines and sailors per battalion, the Congressional Research Service said in a report dated August 3, 2009.”

We don’t need 573 EFVs and eight infantry Battalions to evacuate civilians from Lebanon.  The Corps obviously plans to replace its amphibious transport of Marines (currently with the LCAC) with the EFV.  The Corps also plans to continue its doctrine of amphibious-based forcible entry.  But as I have pointed out, there is no reason that this cannot be done via air and a new helicopter fleet.  If the plan is to be prepared to invade a near-peer via an amphibious landing, this is lunacy and madness.  If the plan is to save ships by allowing them to be 25 miles offshore, this is naive and sophomoric.  The Navy had better be designing better counter-measures.

While there is every good reason to be more efficient in both military spending and non-defense spending, there is no good reason to cut funding to the Corps.  But the Corps needs to rethink its basic doctrine and reassess the real need for the EFV.  Going in the direction of a lighter, air-sea-based, rapid reaction force has its merits, and should warrant some attention.  Gates should hear fresh thinking from the U.S. Marine Corps, not warmed over 60 year old doctrine.  It’s too bad that the QDR, that brainchild of Michelle Flourney,  is such an incredible waste of ink and paper.  It would have been a good repository for fresh thinking.

Joshua Foust, writing for PBS, gives us an interesting analysis of the upcoming battle for Kandahar.  The entire analysis is highly recommended, but several quotes will be reproduced below.

The current plan to “retake” Kandahar from the Taliban is loosely modeled after this year’s earlier operation in Marjeh, in neighboring Helmand Province. While in Marjeh the campaign began with a massive incursion of military forces, followed by a small cadre of civilian reconstruction specialists, in Kandahar there is a concerted effort to make the push more political and less militarized — General McChrystal calls it a “process” now instead of an “offensive.” Part of the campaign involves warning citizens of Kandahar that they need to report Taliban activity, or, if they can, flee the areas most likely to be mined or bombed, thus sparing innocent casualties.

To this end, there have been a series of low-key Special Forces raids into the city proper, attempting to identify and either capture or kill known Taliban commanders. To supplement this push into the city, hundreds of troops are being arrayed in the vast farming areas around Kandahar in an attempt to “choke off” the Taliban’s supply lines. At the same time, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, has been meeting with local elders and politicians in an attempt to gin up popular support for the coming offensive.

[ … ]

ISAF faces a number of political challenges as well. A majority of Afghan watchers point to Ahmed Wali Karzai as one of the biggest barriers to smooth operations in the city—he demands a cut of most commerce that takes place in the area, and the DEA alleges he has ties to the illegal narcotics industry. However, because he is the President’s brother, there is no chance of removing him from power. Similarly, Kandahar is, in effect, run by a group of families organized into mafia-style crime rings. They skim profits off almost all reconstruction projects in the city, and have developed a lucrative trade ripping off ISAF initiatives. They sometimes violently clash with each other.

Finally, the Taliban: in part because of the miserable performance of the government, and ISAF’s inability to stem the growing insecurity around the city, the Taliban have been steadily building support. It is likely they will enjoy a lot of popularity when the big troops push finally arrives, even if it is grudging — it’s probably a safe bet that Kandaharis don’t especially like the Taliban, they just happen to be a safer, more reliable bet than the Coalition. Judging by the way all the initial meetings about the Battle for Kandahar have shaped up so far, ISAF hasn’t yet figured out how to address the concerns of regular people or present the campaign in a relatable way.

There are reports that the rules of engagement in place in Afghanistan has given the insurgents enough space to operate that they have been seen laying down their weapons, walking to another location (where a weapons cache is located), picking up another weapon, and then firing again.  There are even reports that Taliban fighters have been seen forcing women and children to carry their weapons to the next fighting location, all the while peering at U.S. troops without fear because they know that they cannot be fired upon due to the ROE.  The Strategy Page explains why the ROE has not lead to decreased casualties.

The majority of civilian combat deaths are at the hands of the Taliban or drug gangs, and the local media plays those down (or else). It’s a sweet deal for the bad guys, and a powerful battlefield tool. The civilians appreciate the attention, but the ROE doesn’t reduce overall civilian deaths, because the longer the Taliban have control of civilians in a combat situations, the more they kill. The Taliban often use civilians as human shields, and kill those who refuse, or are suspected of disloyalty.

Our view towards substantiation of the national political authority as part of the COIN effort causes us to work for the legitimization of the local authorities as part of that framework.  But rather than being the solution, it is part of the problem.

In order to win Kandahar, we must not run from fights; we must destroy the drug rings (not the local farmers), and especially destroy the crime families, including killing the heads of the crime families; we must make it so uncomfortable for people to give them cuts of their money that they fear us more than they fear Karzai’s criminal brother; we must make it so dangerous to be associated with crime rings, criminal organizations, and insurgents that no one wants even to be remotely associated with them; and we must marginalize Karzai’s brother.

I am (as a perusal of my posts will show) opposed to the special operations forces driven high value target campaign as being ineffective.  Anyone associated with drug rings, criminal activity or the insurgency must be a target, from the highest to the lowest levels of the organization, and this without mercy.  Completely without mercy.  There should be no knee-jerk reversion to prisons, because the corrupt judicial system in Afghanistan will only release the worst actors to perpetrate the worst on their opponents.  This robust force projection must be conducted by not only the SOF, but so-called general purpose forces (GPF).  The population needs to see the very same people conducting patrols and talking with locals that they see killing criminals and insurgents.  This is imperative.  This is imperative.

We can revert to the softer side of counterinsurgency if all of this seems too barbaric.  We can run from fights with the insurgents, we can continue to pour tens of millions of dollars into a failing and corrupt system, and we can continue to prop up a parasitic government.  But in the end, we must count the costs in lives, lost limbs, lost reputation, and national wealth.

Mark my words, do it clearly, and do it now.  We will go in and stay in as the strong horse, and we will force the conclusion that suits our interest, or we will lose the campaign.  If this is too brutal for some, then withdraw, but don’t send our warriors on a fool’s errand.  The leftist web sites will call me a war mongering, barbaric brute and sociopath who wants our Soldiers to violate the rules of war.  All manner of venom may come my way.  I don’t care.  I really don’t care.

Rarely are things so clear cut and measurable by metrics as this.  Again, count the costs.  Start now, and keep the data.  Count the men who die, the men who lose arms, legs, hearing and brain function due to IEDs, and take measure of the situation in Kandahar in the future (how “legitimate” is the government after our costly efforts in Kandahar?).  I will be proven right or wrong, but the best thing about putting prose down on paper is that it can be judged in the future.