Insubordination is contagious

It is now the turn of a French general to be in the hot seat for speaking a little too freely about the strategy in Afghanistan and its civilian instigators. General Vincent Desportes, who commands the prestigious French Joint Defense College (Collège interarmées de défense) gave an interview to Le Monde (July 2) on the war in Afghanistan and what he considers the failure of the COIN strategy:

“The traditional COIN doctrine as engaged by McChrystal over the past year, with limited use of fire […] to reduce collateral damage, does not seem to function. […]”

“Among the troops, a movement that puts into question the “winning hearts and minds” mode of action has become increasingly influential. This reinforces the gap between the troops and the general strategy. But it is not possible to wage a war against the soldiers’ morale.”

(The article is accessible to subscribers only, but extracts can be found here and there—I take all responsibility for the crude translation)

Michael Hastings would be proud: the worsening gap between senior officers attempting to implement a COIN strategy and increasingly doubtful troops was the true subject of his article, obscured by the McChrystal and staff locker room comments. Le Monde is definitely not as rock n’roll as Rolling Stone, but it is both more prominent (in France, that is) and influential. There is no confusion here as to whether Desportes really meant for his thoughts to be printed on paper—and for the widest possible audience.

Desportes also has a lot to say about US decision makers. He criticizes Obama’s call to fire McChrystal as “revealing a weakness.” Coming back on the “surge” decision, he adds that “It looks as if the president was not too sure of his choices.” According to the general, 30,000 additional soldiers was a useless middle ground: “Everybody knew it had to be zero or 100,000 more. We don’t wage half-wars”.

Here I have to stop and wonder where we would have found 100,000 more troops… Probably not in France, since Desportes concludes that Afghanistan is “an American war”, adding that “when you have only 1% of the shares, you don’t have the right to speak”. Does this imply that coalitions are viable only when partners contribute more or less equally? Or only as long as there is a consensus on the strategy?

General Vincent Desportes does not have as much to lose in terms of career: he is retiring in a few weeks. And, as Jean-Dominique Merchet at Secret Defense reminds us, Desportes is not a first-time offender: suspicions that he was a member of the anonymous group who strongly criticized the French White Book on Defense published in 2008 cost him a fourth star.

French Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Edouard Guillaud called Desportes’ opinion “unwelcome” and “irresponsible”. The case of General Desportes is now in the hands of Defense Minister Hervé Morin, who has to decide what sanctions to take. Desportes obviously does not have the clout of a McChrystal, but such statements are certainly not going to help win the case for a war that remains increasingly unpopular in France.

A year ago on July 1

Ok, so I said no new, flashy features, but I was lying. Look at this new and flashy feature: Last Year on Ink Spots!

This isn't really going to work on an every-day basis, considering that we're a bunch of chumps and didn't come close to producing one high-content post per day. But some days we did, and some days we even got a pretty good discussion going, so every now and then I'm going to point you back to what we were writing about on this day a year ago.

And so: last year on July 1, we talked Andrew Krepinevich and China's "Assassin's Mace" area-denial concept.

Ink Spots is a year old today!

Picture it: June 2009, five half-in-the-bag security nerds stumbling up 18th Street in Adams Morgan (seriously, I never go to Adams Morgan) late on a Wednesday night.

"So seriously, are we gonna do this blog thing?"

"Sure, why not. I mean, we definitely have plenty to say. Especially MK: look how much he writes in the comments section on Abu Muqawama! He'll surely be a prolific blogger!"

"Yeah, you're right. Let's do it!"

(Some random, drunk French guy walking past:) "SOLIIIIIIIDE!"

And so it was.

Here we are a year into this thing, believe it or not, and 400 posts deep. We were fortunate to get a lot of good pub from folks in our field, bloggers and academics and policy folks alike, back in our infancy last summer, and we've been fortunate enough to sustain a pretty good following over the subsequent months. I wish I had some flashy new initiative to roll out, some commitment to new platforms or concepts or even just to write more often to keep you interested, but alas... Same old Ink Spots.

Thanks though, to everyone who has read and commented over the last year, especially our stalwarts like SNLII, Madhu, Starbuck, Schmedlap, and Mike Few -- you've elevated the debate, and the vain hope that we're actually causing people to think is what keeps all of us writing. (Well, it's what keeps me writing, anyway. That, and solipsism.)

So here's hoping for another good year. Thanks again. And on that note, I'm going on vacation.

(No, seriously, I am going on vacation, but it's not a Blog Birthday celebration. At least, you're not sure it is.)

So you guys keep reading and thinking about security policy and whatnot. I'm packing a bag full of golf shirts, a box of cigars, and a long Delillo novel, and I'm not thinking about Small Wars, big wars, or any wars until I get back from Napa on Tuesday. Happy Fourth of July!

P.S. While we're talking about Small Wars, would you just go and donate some damned money to SWJ already? I want to have something to read when I get back!

The farce of Pakistan's counterterrorist F-16s

This past weekend, the U.S. delivered to Pakistan the first three F-16s in an 18-plane foreign military sales purchase. The deal has gotten a lot of headlines as a visible example of the U.S. government's increasing willingness to support Pakistani military modernization in exchange for Islamabad's support in fighting terrorism on its northwest frontier. Some commentary on the subject appears today in the New York Times' At War blog.

Pakistanis are fascinated, if not obsessed, with F-16 fighter jets.

It is the best fighting aircraft in the fleet of the Pakistan air force, allowed to be flown by only the country’s best pilots. Video of F-16 fighter aircraft roaring through the skies figures prominently in the air force’s inspirational anthems.

The sale of F-16s to Pakistan was suspended in the 1990s as an indication of the deteriorating relationship between the countries.

A couple of years ago, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, who was then heading the media wing of the military, stressed in an interview that if America wanted to improve its image, it should expedite the delivery of F-16s.

It wasn’t just a simple wish of the military boys for their toys. The aircraft also serve as an effective diplomatic and public-relations tool.

The blog glosses over what really happened to interrupt the relationship: Pakistan developed a nuclear program. Pakistan already had 40 F-16s they'd purchased from the U.S., and had plans to buy a lot more. Then Islamabad's scientific adventurism not only put a halt to major planned materiel sales, but ended U.S.-Pakistan military-to-military contacts, including educational exchanges and other professional interactions.

This, of course, was kind of a problem when we showed up post-9/11 looking for pro-America senior officers in the Pakistani military. Previous generations had sent their best and brightest to study at the Command and General Staff College and senior service colleges, where they built personal relationships with their peers in the U.S. military.

What's that got to do with F-16s, you're wondering? Well, just like mil-to-mil contacts, materiel sales are a part of a broader, comprehensive relationship. These days everyone wants to talk about "building partner capacity," training and equipping our friends and allies to fight more capably so that we won't have to. But security cooperation -- that is, pretty much all the international contacts and activities executed by our Defense Department -- is bigger than capacity building: it also helps to build relationships and ensure access, and contributes to the broader goal (theoretically) of winning support for U.S. policies and actions.

Of course, that's not going to stop anyone from tossing out some lines about capacity, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and so on:

Officials say the aircraft will be used for precision strikes against militant hide-outs in the country’s tribal regions straddling the border with Afghanistan.

Sure they will!

Seriously, it's ok to talk about the other stuff, the access, the relationships, the confidence-building, the assuring of allies, the enhancement to regional security. And to be fair, Ambassador Patterson's statement pretty much covers that stuff, too:

The office of Anne W. Patterson, the United States ambassador in Islamabad, issued a statement Sunday calling the weekend induction of first three of the 18 F-16s ‘a historic milestone’ of relationship between Pakistan and the United States. It was, the statement said, “both a symbolic and tangible demonstration of our strong partnership and the U.S. intent to stand beside Pakistan over the long-term as an important ally and friend.”

Some of this stuff is just to make people feel good, and that's ok too. Now, as Madhu has noted many times, the link between intent and effect is a little bit obscure to us. We're not exactly sure how all the confidence-building and back-patting we do through exercises or materiel transfers or exchange programs really impacts state action.

But isn't it nice, when the balloon goes up, to be able to pick up the phone to the guy you sat next to at Leavenworth (the Fort, not the prison) for a year, and to be able to remind him of the close cooperative relationship your countries and militaries share?

The foundational flaw of our Afghanistan strategy, universally ignored by its proponents

Supporters of the current approach in Afghanistan seem to have settled on one primary rationale for the strategic necessity of this war: if we leave Afghanistan, it will again become a haven for terrorists to find sanctuary, train, and prepare to launch attacks against Americans. Leaving aside for a moment the reality that such a sanctuary already exists on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line, let's consider the implications of this rationale.

If we start from the assumption that Afghanistan's territory must be controlled by someone who will deny sanctuary to terrorists (as George Packer, Ross Douthat, and John Nagl have all recently insisted it must), we're basically left with two options: control Afghanistan with U.S. forces, or build Afghan capacity to the level required for the host government and ANSF to execute this task with minimal support. Our purported current approach is to do the former in the near term, while simultaneously accomplishing the second for a transition of responsibility over the medium to long term.

Douthat rather disingenuously suggests that the administration "hasn't been choosing between remaining in Afghanistan and withdrawing from the fight. It's been choosing between two ways of staying": COIN and Biden's "CT-plus." This is a curious way of framing the options, and one wonders if Douthat believes that the limited U.S. presence in Iraq after this year similarly constitutes just another "way of staying" rather than a pretty significant departure. But I digress. Here's why Douthat thinks we're sticking around:

First, the memory of 9/11, which ensures that any American president will be loath to preside over the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul. Second, the continued presence of Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan’s northwest frontier, which makes it difficult for any American president to contemplate giving up the base for counterterrorism operations that Afghanistan affords. Third, the larger region’s volatility: it’s the part of the world where the nightmare of nuclear-armed terrorists is most likely to become a reality, so no American president can afford to upset the balance of power by pulling out and leaving a security vacuum behind.

And so how do we avoid leaving that vacuum? Through the COIN approach, Douthat suggests, "which seeks to lay the foundations for an Afghan state that's stable enough to survive without our support."

But it doesn't just have to survive, does it? It needs to be capable of denying its territory to terrorists. As we should all know by now, governments that are friendly to terror organizations aren't usually the problem -- it's governments that are too weak to do anything about those organizations that are the real trouble.

So if these are our worries -- the memory of 9/11, a base for CT operations, and "the nightmare of nuclear-armed terrorists" -- then any U.S. departure is going to be contingent on creating a government and security force that can secure our interests in these areas to the same degree that U.S. presence can, right?

Here's the thing: is there anyone who believes that the Afghan government will be capable of functioning in even the limited capacity required to deny sanctuary to those committed and confirmed terrorists who already exist within, say, the next decade?

If so, why?

As you'll no doubt have heard by now, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released a report yesterday on the status of international efforts to train ANSF. The report was not good: it concluded that the capability rating system being used by ISAF to evaluate ANSF "basically has not been a dependable system," seeing as "even top-rated Afghan units could not operate independently and that the ratings of many security forces overstated their actual capabilities." NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), the ISAF organization charged with the ANSF training mission, has since changed its metrics and overall rating system to try to get more useful data.

In his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, GEN Petraeus addressed the report and tried to "clarify" in a manner that downplayed the significance of SIGAR's conclusions. The old Capability Milestone (CM)-based system conveyed information about the levels of manning, equipping, and training of Afghan units; that is, the system that was being used for the first NINE YEARS OF THIS WAR was based on how well the Table of Organization and Equipment was filled out, or how many boxes you could check on a training plan. The CM system didn't tell you anything about the actual FIGHTING ABILITY of the unit being rated. (For metrics geeks, you could say this was a Measures of Performance-oriented rating system, rather than Measures of Effectiveness.) And apparently it took a SIGAR report for us to figure out that this wasn't a terribly effective mechanism.

But that's a bit of a digression, isn't it? Our rating system isn't exactly the point here -- the capability of the ANSF is what we should care about. And size, but in this context, size is really only significant as a factor in determining capability to accomplish a certain mission set or secure a defined end-state. So this becomes a sort of a math problem: can 400,000 ANSF (ANA + ANP) do the business, assuming we get to the target size within the expected time period?

Can 400,000 ANSF deny sanctuary to al-Qaeda? Can 400,000 ANSF ensure that America won't be attacked by individuals who train or plan their attacks from Afghan territory? (We already know they can't do anything about the AQ folks on the other side of the Hindu Kush, but again, we're going to leave that aside for now.) Can 400,000 ANSF do the job that 130,000 ISAF troops plus ~245,000 ANSF are currently doing? So, basically, what's the time frame on which we can expect ANSF to effect a one-for-one, straight-up capability match with the ISAF troops who will be departing the country?

Seriously: is there anyone who thinks this can be done in a decade?

And if not, then why is this our strategic concept? Why aren't we working on some other plan to mitigate the nearly certain shortfalls that will exist when U.S. troops pull chocks and head home?
Or perhaps the better question: why do we insist on repeating the tired and utterly unsubstantiated line that Afghanistan will be vital to U.S. national interests until its territory can be wholly secured against the presence of terrorists and militants?

Update on the purported political brilliance of the Petraeus pick

Here's a couple of U.S. Senators speaking yesterday about the selection:

Meanwhile, with Petraeus' confirmation hearing set to be held this week, [Sen. Lindsey] Graham said he wants the administration to clarify how hard-and-fast the withdrawal deadline is.

[Sen. Dianne] Feinstein said that if Petraeus asks for more time, "I would say give it to him."

That's one prominent senator from either side of the aisle suggesting that the timeline should be flexible, an opinion that in Feinstein's case, at least, seems to be predicated almost entirely on the fact that Petraeus is running the show now.

So if the president decides he wants to "finesse the 2011 deadline," he's got Petraeus' cred on the Hill to work with. If he decides he doesn't, then he's got Petraeus (and Gates, and Mullen) on the record in Johnathan Alter's book saying that he's not going to come back later and ask for more troops, that he's not going to try to flex the deadline, that he thinks significant progress can be made in 18 (now 12) months.

Politics is about options, and now the president's got all he wants.

Hey Scions of Great American Newspaper Tradition, stop sucking so bad and embarrassing yourselves

Just last week we had James Risen carrying the Defense Department's jock with a silly war-justifying story about Afghan mineral wealth in the NYT. Then today Karen DeYoung drops a thinly-sourced and badly-headlined expose on how "Rolling Stone broke interview ground-rules with McChrystal, military officials say."

Of course, "military officials" will only "say" that anonymously. You know, "on background." To a reporter. Who won't print their names because of, well, you know, "ethics." (And to preserve access. [Speaking of, click that link. Did you know that Politico editors removed a line from an online story published yesterday that suggested Hastings, as a freelancer, might have been willing to print things that a beat reporter would have held back in order to preserve access? The editors say they did it to keep the story "tight and readable."])

"Many of the sessions were off-the-record and intended to give [reporter Michael Hastings] a sense" of how McChrystal's team operated, according to a senior military official. The command's own review of events, the official said, gleaned "no evidence to suggest" that any of the "salacious political quotes" in the article were made during a series of on-the-record and background interviews Hastings conducted with McChrystal and others.

The official, one of many subject to a Pentagon advisory not to discuss the situation without authorization, spoke on condition of anonymity. He said he was motivated by what he described as untrue claims made by Rolling Stone.

Two others with direct knowledge of the command's dealings with Hastings offered similar accounts.

You see, if "military officials" really wanted to denounce this story, they'd issue a press release through official channels. If anyone had really broken any kind of binding rules, you'd be sure the Department would tell everyone about it. But instead, you have the Washington fuckin' Post -- theoretically one of the two media organs best positioned to challenge the government's baseless assertions -- reporting exactly what the Department wants them to.

That makes Old Media 2/2 in the last two weeks.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with the Post feeling burned that someone else is #1 in the media-on-media meta-commentary this week.

Embarrassing.

Another COE...

The National Intrepid Center of Excellence just opened at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. It is a "state-of-the-art facility designed to provide leading edge services for advanced diagnostics and treatment for service members with psychological health issues and traumatic brain injuries."

I think this is great and I'm glad DoD is investing in this, if much later than they should have. But I'm sure glad I was never a patient at the National Intrepid Center of Crapulence - I heard that place sucks. We really need to work on our use of language here...

New comment system = McChrystal, old comment system = Petraeus

We briefly messed around with some external comment interface that made all of our lives awful for about an hour and a half. You may have experienced an interruption in service (/there may have been posts on which you couldn't comment). The problems should be fixed now. Comment away!

Firing officers who deserve it (or: I agree with Tom Ricks!!)

While reading it certainly violated my New Year's resolution, I thought Tom Ricks' op-ed in the Times was actually pretty good. After some cogent analysis on the events of the past day, he talks about an important issue: the Army doesn't fire enough people and really should do so more often. I imagine the Army's reluctance to do so stems from the old "zero defect" Army and how it destroyed morale up through the mid-1990s. And like most large institutions, their reaction to changing that culture was an over reaction. But the fact remains that bad officers (or officers promoted beyond their capabilities) don't get fired.

The other side of Ricks' argument, how failure to remove ineffective senior officers prevents talented junior officers from progressing, will become more of an issue as general officer careers are extended to 40 years. There are, after all, so many GO positions in the Army. If Iraq and Afghanistan are any indicators, too many senior officers are being kept on beyond their capabilities while extremely competent subordinates could easily replace them. This, too, will (and in some cases already has) caused morale problems in the middle ranks of the officer corps.

I would, however, be wary of anything like the anecdote that Ricks mentions about GEN Marshall promoting a major because he was doing a general's job. While there should probably be changes to the promotion system to streamline the advancement of our best officers, a system should still be used. Otherwise, there would be greater opportunity for abuses of patronage.

All in all, good work Tom.

Why the unexpected Petraeus pick is incredibly savvy (UPDATED)

UPDATE: I have no idea why comments were disabled up until this point, but they're not anymore. We're trying out a new system, so let us know how you like it.

The news is in: McChrystal out, Petraeus in. There's tons of analysis out there already, so I'm not going to waste your time and mine by parroting the same sorts of things everyone's writing. But here's my brief take on why this is an inspired pick, from both the political and practical perspectives.

Politics:

1. If King David can't do it, no one can. The president tapped the one guy more tightly associated with our chosen operational approach than GEN McChrystal was. If Afghanistan goes bad, it will look like it was because of an impossible mission... not a bad plan. The White House can complain that the COINdinistas sold them a bill of goods, an they didn't know any better. The president has put himself under GEN Petraeus' flag; as afpakchannel noted on Twitter, P4 "would probably have to punch Joe Biden in the face before Obama would fire him." Daddy's home from work, and he's gonna take care of everything.
2. The right has to shut the hell up. Republicans trip over themselves to compliment Petraeus, and none of them have the nads to publically question whether his success in Iraq is transferrable to other theaters. If the president sticks to his guns and his withdrawal timeline, or even reverses course and speeds up the drawdown, the right won't be able to suggest that he's sabotaging the effort or failing to support the troops. After all, he sent the number one guy!
3. GEN Petraeus is already on the record with his commitment to the drawdown timeline. Jonathan Alter reported on a conversation where P4, Secretary Gates, and Admiral Mullen all agree to the president's plan, and pledge not to come back for more troops in 18 months. GEN McChrystal did, too, but you'd expect the theater commander to say just about whatever he needed to to get his resources. GEN Petraeus has said he thinks it can be done, which insulates the president when it comes time to make the drawdown happen.

Practical:

1. We already know how GEN Petraeus does business. Look, there's always going to be a little bit of lag time while a new CG gets up to speed, especially in a coalition command the size and complexity of ISAF. Not too many people have ever done a job like that. P4 has. He's got a system, he's got a routine, he's got a way of doing business... and there are dozens, even hundreds of people who saw it up close.
2. CENTCOM's regional responsibility will help keep Afghanistan in perspective. GEN Petraeus has spent his time in Tampa looking at how Afghanistan fits into a broader regional picture, both with regard to Pakistan and to wider central and south Asian security. This perspective will hopefully help mitigate against the theater commander's natural tendency to think that his war and his command is the only thing that matters, and to ignore the consequences of his efforts on the bigger picture. Petraeus is going to do his damnedest to succeed in Afghanistan, but we can reasonably hope that his definition of success will be bigger than just that country.
3. There's no doubt about P4's COIN credentials. Whether you think it's good or bad, GEN Petraeus is the leading light of the COINdinista movement in today's American military. McChrystal could always be criticized as a door kicker, a special operator, a guy who "got it" because he had to, but didn't really get it. (Some have fairly criticized the outgoing COMISAF for trying to slap on the COIN template without really understanding the whys and wherefores. I don't know if this is true or not, but I do suspect that McChrystal's ideas about what was rhetorically necessary and what is tactically required were probably a touch out of synch.) You can't say that about Petraeus. If the execution of this COIN enterprise in Afghanistan fails, you can't say it's because of user error. So it's a win-win for critics and proponents: if we're successful, then great! If we're not, then it will demand a critical look at the failings of our doctrine and operational methods.

Like I wrote before, this is just a quick take. I know it's not exactly novel to say "Petraeus is a good pick!," but hopefully this helps illuminate why this is precisely so.

Do you agree?

I don't have much to add to this McChrystal thing

Surely you've heard the details by now: Rolling Stone publishes a profile of the "Runaway General," Washington justifiably freaks out, McChrystal apologizes, Secretary Gates admonishes him, and an Af-Pak meeting tomorrow at the White House will include at least one four-star participant who usually chimes in by VTC.

A lot of people are calling for GEN McChrystal to be fired. (I'm one of them.) Several others suggest that they don't know what all the fuss is about, or that firing the ISAF commander is too disruptive to consider.

Ex helpfully lays out the reasons why either COA is risky.

Read all that stuff if you want. Until tomorrow's meeting happens, there's not much to add.

The one thing I do want to note here is exactly why I think this is such a big deal, why the piece is so damning: it's not just a matter of what GEN McChrystal thinks or says or writes or feels about his superiors and civilian colleagues, but rather the command climate that he's fostered.

Leadership and command are not the same thing. Tactical leadership and strategic leadership are not the same thing. A platoon leader and the commander of an international coalition force have very, very different jobs.

All of this seems obvious, right? So why do I bother writing it? Because invariably someone's going to come along and tell me about how the only lieutenants who don't backtalk and stretch the truth with higher are the terrible ones. And fair enough. (Mike Few and Matt Gallagher have both made that point, and to the extent that I know anything at all about the subject, I'd agree with them.) But that's the difference between being a lieutenant and a four-star.

A theater-level command is not a football team. Us-against-them leadership, pitting your own staff and subordinates against the implacable bureaucratic/political enemy, is just not appropriate. It's been said a hundred times, but I'm going to say it again: unity of effort is absolutely essential to an operation like this one, both because of its scale (requiring coordination across dozens of coalition governments and militaries, as well as regional actors and most importantly, the Afghan government) and its nature (that is to say because a COIN effort requires even deeper multinational, interagency, and interservice coordination than a purely kinetic effort).

Whatever GEN McChrystal did or didn't say, it seems obvious from the overall tenor of the comments attributed to his staff and advisors that the general fostered an environment in which "our team" -- that is, the uniformed folks at ISAF -- faced opposition from all sides, from its political masters just as much as from the Taliban or the Karzai kleptocracy.

There's not an employed individual on this earth who feels completely unconstrained by higher, totally and absolutely permitted to do his job as he sees fit. Some people deal, and some don't. Some people just bitch a lot and get on with the job. It seems to me that GEN McChrystal probably falls into this latter category.

Unfortunately this attitude erodes that vital sense of unity of effort, and creates an atmosphere where the followers think they know better than the leaders. And if the COMISAF is so cynical about the administration's competence that his senior staff and closest aides feel comfortable mocking the civilian senior leadership of this country, then why should the American people, our coalition partners, or the Afghans themselves have any faith?

EDIT: I totally forgot the reason that I even thought to write this post. In running down the risks involved in replacing GEN McChrystal, Ex (and The Security Crank) notes that a third straight summer of churn at ISAF would almost certainly hamper the war effort. This is certainly true, and probably more true in this case than it would be normally: McChrystal has collected a sort of all-star team of hand-picked staff and advisors, and as one can easily see from the article, many of them are extremely loyal to the boss. Now don't get me wrong -- these guys are professionals, and it's their job to work for the new guy just the same as they worked for the old guy. But wouldn't the resentment about this particularly high-profile (theoretical) sacking be even more significant considering the circumstances? Wouldn't you be basically starting with a blank slate, seeing as ISAF HQ seems to basically be composed entirely of Papal True Believers?

A Reporter Plays Afghan Police Officer

I just finished reading this CSM story about a US filmmaker who pretends to be a cop and sets up a roadblock in Afghanistan. But, instead of soliciting bribes from people, he gives them money. The story explains that McClatchy reporters bought police uniforms and equipment ($13) and then set up the roadblock. Once there, they gave drivers $2 each and apologized for the fact that police officers normally take bribes. Some drivers refused. The story says that at the end, the reporters had about $8 left, which when the real cops asked for it, they gave them.

This strikes me as a pretty silly stunt and a useless one at that: doing this kind of thing is supposed to help how exactly? I really don't get what they hoped to accomplish. We know Afghan cops are corrupt, underpaid, that their work is dangerous, and that they suffer a disproportionate amount of casualties.

On a different note, for the duration of the World Cup, I've given up my French citizenship. Seriously--between the coach (incompetent and crazy) and the players (selfish idiots), they don't deserve to move to the next round.

Five Styker brigade soldiers charged with premeditated murder

The Army announced today that three more soldiers are being charged with murder in a series of civilian deaths in Afghanistan between January and March of this year, bringing the total number charged to five. Details are pretty sparse.

Pvt. 1st Class Andrew Holmes, Spc. Michael Wagnon and Spc. Adam Winfield were charged Tuesday evening with one count of murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to a news release issued today from the base. Each is accused in separate incidents.

The three men returned to Lewis-McChord on Monday and have been placed in pretrial confinement.

Five soldiers from the base are now accused in the deaths of Afghan civilians between January and May.

Spc. Jeremy Morlock was charged June 4 with three specifications of premeditated murder and one specification of assault. He’s being confined at the base.

Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 25, was charged in Kuwait on June 8 with three counts of premeditated murder and one specification of assault. The infantryman from Montana should be at Lewis-McChord within the next several days, the base reported. He was on his third deployment.

All five soldiers are assigned to B Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. They deployed to Afghanistan last July.

Here's the Joint Base Lewis-McChord press release (pdf).

"Separate incidents" is a really, really foreboding detail. Let's hope this doesn't turn out like the tale of 3/101, told by Raffi Khatchadourian in "The Kill Company."

5/2 SBCT, you may remember, is commanded by COL Harry Tunnell and sustained heavy casualties (though mostly in 1-17 Infantry, a different battalion than the one these soldiers come from) last fall in the Arghandab Valley.

Putting time on the Washington clock (UPDATED)

Today's New York Times brings us the not-so-new revelation that Afghanistan contains bountiful untapped mineral resources. You've no doubt seen this story by now, but I'm going to go ahead and excerpt at length just the same:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists.

The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

Others have already reflected on the fact that this news doesn't exactly qualify as an unvarnished good: for one, it takes a lot of money and time to extract these resources, perhaps more money than you'd get from the sale of them. And on top of that, it's not like resource-rich and politically-poor countries have a really good track record with stability and nonviolence.

But the Pollyanna-ish suggestion that speculative, hypothetical mineral wealth will (/could) solve all of Afghanistan's problems isn't really what bothers me about all of this. What's most annoying is that this is exactly the sort of story we should've predicted back in the winter, not long after the President made the silly but politically essential decision to sell his "Afghan surge" decision to a reluctant majority by promising a totally unrealistic departure deadline.

Mark Ambinder and Blake Hounshell each speak to this point (to a greater and lesser degree, respectively): Hounshell says he's "skeptical of the timing of this story, given the bad news cycle," while Ambinder writes that "[t]he way in which the story was presented... suggest[s] a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war." I'm inclined to agree with this latter characterization.

There's not a single serious person who thought that the July 2011 deadline to begin bringing troops home from Afghanistan was anything but a political determination; the administration can make noises about how it was essential to convince the Afghan government that it could not rely on American benificence forever and must take the lead in providing security for its own country, but no one buys it. (Check out the video from this panel at last week's CNAS Conference: from Barno to Crocker to Pillar to Tellis to Fontaine, not a single one of the speakers thinks that the deadline is realistic or operationally useful.)

And so the timing of all of this seems, as Ambinder wrote, to "engender some fairly acute skepticism." After all, Amb. Ryan Crocker's entire presentation at CNAS revolved around the assumption, the prerequisite, that for the next president to begin his term facing anything but certain disaster in Afghanistan, this administration will have to find a way to "finesse that July 2011 deadline." While progress in Afghan governance and security is obviously important to anyone's definition of "success" in that campaign, the one absolutely essential front in this war is the domestic political one. As Crocker said, the president needs to find a way to put more time on the DC clock, because the Afghanistan one ain't speeding up.

Which, when it comes right down to it, is some serious bullshit.

We all knew this war wouldn't be won in 18 months, even back in December. We all knew that to begin withdrawing troops at that point would imperil the entire effort, whatever we think about the necessity of the war or our broader chances of success. We all knew the president was bullshitting us then because Generals Petraeus and McChrystal convinced him that they could get enough done to change the optics of the war in that 18-month period, just like a gambler looking for one more bet on credit, certain he can't lose this cash that he doesn't have.

So now we're finessing that deadline, putting time on that DC clock, pushing stories that make another two or three or eight or 15 years in Afghanistan seem like steps towards the pot of lithium gold rather than a tragic extension of what has become a senseless waste of lives and money.

Almost makes you embarrassed for your government, if only for being so ham-handed.

EDIT: I should also note at least one small technical mistake in Ambinder's post that makes him sound a little more conspiracist than I feel comfortable with. Here's the entire sentence that I reproduced above in ellipsesed form:

The way in which the story was presented -- the on-the-record quotations from the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM, no less -- and the weird promotion of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense to Undersecretary of Defense suggests a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war.

First of all, there's only one Commander in Chief, and it's the president. GEN Petraeus is the commander of CENTCOM, or alternatively, the commanding general. But that's not really the thing I wanted to draw attention to.

The second half of that bit -- "weird promotion" -- refers to a place in the article where Paul Brinkley is quoted. He's correctly identified in the article as a deputy undersecretary of defense, though it's sort of confusing, because they call him the "DUSD for Business," which doesn't really exist. Brinkley IS a deputy undersecretary of defense, though, and is the director of the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. Ambinder seems to be under the impression that Brinkley is a deputy assistant secretary of defense, which is a lower-tier role in the bureaucracy, and that the article is promoting him to sort of increase his gravitas or something. But no, there's no shady journalistic promotion going on here.

UPDATE: Let me just tell you, I am shocked, SHOCKED!, to learn that there are people in the U.S. government who think that the July 2011 timeline is unrealistic.

Six months after President Obama decided to send more forces to Afghanistan, the halting progress in the war has crystallized longstanding tensions within the government over the viability of his plan to turn around the country and begin pulling out by July 2011.

Within the administration, the troubles in clearing out the Taliban from a second-tier region and the elusive loyalties of the Afghan president have prompted anxious discussions about whether the policy can work on the timetable the president has set. Even before the recent setbacks, the military was highly skeptical of setting a date to start withdrawing, but Mr. Obama insisted on it as a way to bring to conclusion a war now in its ninth year.

For now, the White House has decided to wait until a review, already scheduled for December, to assess whether the target date can still work. But officials are emphasizing that the July 2011 withdrawal start will be based on conditions in the country, and that the president has yet to decide how quickly troops will be pulled out.

Even if some troops do begin coming home then, the officials said that it may be a small number at first. Given that he has tripled the overall force since taking office, Mr. Obama could still end his term with more forces in Afghanistan than when he began it.

Don't worry, though -- they've been saying "contingent on conditions on the ground" all along!

UPDATE 2: And just for shits, here's the DoD press conference transcript with DUSD Brinkley and one of the fellas from the U.S. Geological Survey, in which they basically admit that there's no new data here.