In war, and particularly in an Afghanistan counterinsurgency effort, there are always three sides to the coin: the good, the bad and the ugly. This is especially true in President Obama's new Afghanistan strategy, finally announced to the American public Tuesday from a West Point backdrop.

The prescribed influx of much-needed American warriors onto the battlefield is clearly and rightly the good. And the good can withstand the bad, a Taliban enemy in the absence of reliable partners in the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

But the glimmering light of the good will surely be eclipsed by the ugly, an incoherence of strategy beneath the surface sheen of a surge. The devil is always in the details.

Sending additional troops, whether decided upon from intellectual deliberation or from political calculation, is the right call. The details of their usage, the never-ending questions of "exit strategy" and the general unwillingness to commit to victory is wholly unacceptable.

As the commander in chief, the president must act with a clarity of mind and mission. In doing so, he sends a message that the American people will do what is necessary, for as long as necessary, to defeat those who would oppress others or hide while plotting additional attacks on innocents in Afghanistan, Pakistan or here in the United States. The necessity in doing so should be clear, as the Afghan people are resistant to American aid due to the questionable commitment we've made to them. In this vital aspect, the commander in chief has failed.

For a counterinsurgency effort to succeed, the willing partners aren't in Kabul or Islamabad, no matter the demands made upon each. Rather, they reside in the villages and towns spread through the provinces of Afghanistan. Winning over the local leaders will strengthen our position and ultimately lead to the Afghan people demanding better governance from Kabul.

This requires - in both word and deed - clear demonstration of presence and resolve, not in intellectual arguments for an exit strategy. There are no exits for the Afghans we seek to defend in parallel with our own security and interests.

White House thinking is evident in carefully managed leaks throughout the months-long process. The latest wave consistently explains the strategy as being centered on this demand for an exit strategy.

The guiding exit strategy is based upon handing control over to Afghan forces. Two things fly in the face of this logic. First is the administration's recently expressed, inexplicable opposition to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request to double the size of Afghan security forces.

Second, according to yet another managed leak to the New York Times on Monday, is a determination to hand over control of provinces down that road on an undefined timetable that "would not be tied to particular conditions on the ground." Considering the rabble-like state of the Afghan army and the current initiative of the Taliban enemy, how can conditions on the ground not be the determining factor? What conditions remain other than purely political?

The president has yet to use the word "victory" or even "success" in describing Afghan-theater ambitions. Last week, he offered merely that he intends "to finish the job," a purposely vague reference to which we have become accustomed. This affords his political allies and adversaries alike to infer their own meaning. It is Mr. Obama once again voting "present." Don't for an instant think that this goes unnoticed by the Afghan population. When and where it is needed most, this is not leadership.

And on top of it all, while the commander in chief sells the American public on the numbers of an Afghanistan surge, there is even inconsistency in that. The leaders of NATO nations last week announced an intention to supply an additional 7,000 troops for a surge. Yet these same leaders will descend on London in January to hammer out the final details of a proposed full withdrawal from Afghanistan within a year. This explains why European representatives are so steadfastly "negotiating" with Taliban factions within Afghanistan, even while it is the Taliban who are negotiating from a position of strength.

None of this bodes well for the Afghans, who have no exit. Nor does it bode well for the American war fighters valiantly defending them. Short of major changes to this Afghanistan strategy on the fly, the outcome is predictable.

Taking the long view, the Taliban and al Qaeda must be licking their chops as American leadership, even in announcing a surge strategy, demonstrates more clearly than ever before that it lacks the stomach for the fight. "Ride the storm out," Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar are surely saying. "The Americans want exit more than they want victory."

This OpEd was written for the Washington Times and appeared in its December 2, 2009, edition.

7:15 AM | Permalink | Feedback (1) | Print

As the Earth spins, the effect dictates that its inhabitants are driven into the predictable cycle of night and day, day and night. And so too it can be said of the effect of periods between election cycles and American media coverage of war.

Bill Dupray at the Patriot Room notes an article drawing attention to the fact that in Afghanistan "Obama's war casualties nearly double Bush's worst year," and the American media are virtually silent.

Statistical Reference: iCasualties: Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan

Now, I'm no more a fan of calling our fallen "Obama's casualties" any more than I was of calling them "Bush's casualties" over the previous 7+ years. It's ignorant political hackery and a cheapening of their sacrifices. This isn't a criticism of Bill Dupray, as I'm reasonably certain that he sees it much the same way, even in noting the article as it was written.

But the media? Yeah, they're fair game. Their prior conduct makes them so.

From the period of the 2004 Presidential election cycle through about the middle of the Iraq Surge that turned the tide there, it was virtually impossible to drive a car and listen to a radio news break that did not contain a nameless mention of how many Americans were killed in action the previous day. Nor could one watch a single newscast without the same episodic phenomenon even more laden with anti-Bush commentary in context of the casualty figure of the day. It was a daily rolling body count. It was a disgusting display of the demise of journalism in which honoring the fallen by name or personal story simply could not manage a measure of committed air time.

Driving to work or watching the news today is a blessed relief. Gone are the incessant nameless, faceless body counts as commentary disguised as news. All one needs the stomach for is a daily dose of Nancy Pelosi and the apparent life-and-death crisis of our generation's time: Government-run and -mandated health care.

I'm actually all for it. If you can never find the time or space to honor even a few of the fallen by name, show his or her face and tell their stories, I prefer not to be deluged with body counts.

But even in relief, the crickets from the MSM double-tiered and double-standard observation deck on reporting casualties is an outrage that should not go without conscious acknowledgment. For only the cognitively challenged can conclude that if President George W. Bush or any other Republican were president today, the reportage on casualties would be no different than it is for President Barack Obama.

And that is not an indictment of President Obama. It is an indictment of a media congregation that clearly reports and editorializes similar circumstances differently depending on which political party and/or popular figure is in power.

The war is ours, not his. The casualties our ours, not his.

Editors and journalists, report on our war and pause before selecting and editorializing news to suit your political agendas and favorites. Leave that to us, the ever-dwindling consumers of your product. But it is unlikely you will heed our plea. But Christmas is coming soon. And that leaves us relegated once again to ask for that from Santa. For the eighth year - and two presidents - running.

4:40 PM | Permalink | Feedback (1) | Print

"Never again" we told ourselves, as we tacked pictures of victims leaping from the World Trade Center buildings to the streets below to the walls of our cubes. Eternal vigilance is what we pledged, openly or silently, so that another 9/11 would never happen if we had anything to say about it.

Well, on the aspect of scale the massacre at Ft. Hood may not be a 9/11, but in many other respects it is still an astonishing failure.

Leave ethnicity and religion out of it: A man who seemed at odds with his oath to his country; a man whose superiors questioned his fitness to serve and his mental state; a man who openly communicated with people who advocated violence against Americans and in particular soldiers; a man who donned the garb of those who have a substantial track record of violence and hatred against Americans; does this sound like the sort of person who shouldn't have been under intense scrutiny for the threat he posed? Someone whose ability to carry out such acts should have been minimized?

Of course he was under some scrutiny, but what data was collected and evaluated was given short shrift for myriad reasons, not the least of which is political correctness. Yet if we take ethnicity and religion out of the equation again, we would still find ourselves in a place where the people who could have made the most use of the information at hand - the people with the most to lose given the circumstances - were apparently ignorant of the threat in their midst.

Barring the revelation of some greater and more sinister plot that Major Hasan was linked to, and to which our ability to deal with effectively would have been compromised had he been taken out of play (his violent actions being an unforeseen event), there are far too many indicators that point this being yet another intelligence failure. To be more accurate, an intelligence-mechanism failure: a failure of the system to serve all its customers - not a simple case of being caught unawares because of ignorance.

Of course post-9/11 the ODNI was supposed to help fix all of that. New rules about "responsibility to share" and new tools to help collaborate across the intelligence community were supposed tear down stovepipes and help ensure that everyone studying the same problems worked together to cut down on institutionalized ignorance and reduce opportunities for surprise.

How's that working out then?

No security mechanism in place on any military base or shopping mall or high school stops what happened at Ft. Hood last week from happening tomorrow. Nothing, except for what intelligence we have on those like Maj Hasan (ethnicity or religion immaterial). Is this an intelligence problem? Yes. Is this a law enforcement problem? Yes. But the age-old argument about what to do with such people (law enforcement says get them off the street, intelligence says keep them around to see what else they drag up) comes to the same conclusion: they are threats to be dealt with rapidly and comprehensively. If they cannot be isolated, it should be made painfully clear to them that they are under intense scrutiny, thereby neutralizing their effectiveness as instruments of terror and death.

Somewhere, someone new to this business is tacking up a picture of the victims of the Ft. Hood massacre and telling themselves "never again." Next door to that person is an old intelligence hand shaking his head and wondering "why can't we get this right?"

6:43 AM | Permalink | Feedback (0) | Print