Politics Daily

CIA Chief Says U.S. Has al-Qaeda on the Run in Pakistan

Tom Diemer — 2010-03-18T09:57:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, International, Afghanistan

Stepped-up attacks against al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal regions have disrupted the terrorist network and forced its leaders to retreat to deeper hiding places, CIA Director Leon Panetta says.

Panetta, in an interview with the Washington Post, said the coordinated attacks in cooperation with the Pakistani government constitute "the most aggressive operation that the CIA has been involved in it its history."

The agency chief said one intercepted message revealed an al-Qaeda lieutenant pleading with Osama bin Laden to provide leadership.

"It is pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And we really do have them on the run," he said. The U.S. has used unmanned drones to take out some al-Qaeda commanders with missile attacks.

Panetta's burst of optimism may well be warranted, but it should, in fairness, be measured against past claims that the U.S. was closing in on Bin Laden and his allies. In 2005, then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss said, "I have an excellent idea of where [bin Laden] is." And former President George W. Bush vowed in 2001 that bin Laden would be captured or killed. But the man behind the 9/11 attacks remains at large.

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St. Paddy's in Washington: Irish Chief Picks 'Quiet Week' to Visit White House

Tom Diemer — 2010-03-17T15:04:00+00:00

Filed under: Hillary Clinton, House, Barack Obama, Economy, Humor, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, Culture, International, Afghanistan, Congress

Prime Minister Brian Cowen of Ireland didn't come up short on the blarney during his visit to the White House on Wednesday.

"We decided to come on a quiet week," Cowen told President Barack Obama. "We knew there wasn't much going on." No, not much, just a critical juncture for health care reform and passage of an $18 billion jobs bill.

Cowen, who wore a sprig of shamrock in his lapel, knew about that, of course. He also knew that the Irish prime minister has for many years been a welcome guest at the White House on St. Patrick's Day.

The taoiseach (first chief) began his day with a breakfast at Vice President Joe Biden's residence on Massachusetts Avenue, where a harpist played "The Foggy Dew," a song celebrating the Irish rebellion against the British.

At the White House, Cowen said that U.S. investment was responsible for 90,000 jobs in Ireland, a country that has been suffering through an economic downturn, similar to that of the United States, albeit on a much smaller scale.

The improved situation in Northern Ireland was also on his mind. "We are deeply grateful for the continuing and deep commitment (to the peace process) shown by the Obama administration, by the president himself, and by Secretary of State Clinton."

Obama said Ireland "punches above its weight on a whole host of critical issues" -- including the campaign to fight world hunger and providing facilities in Ireland for transport of U.S. military troops in Afghanistan.

Later at a luncheon for Cowen hosted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Obama said "few nations so small have had such an enormous impact on another" country: in the United States 36 million people claim Irish ancestry.

Including the president, apparently. Obama informed Cowen of his own Irish bona fides. He said that he could trace his ancestry on his mother's side to County Offaly, Ireland, which happens to be taoiseach's home turf.

"I believe it was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather," Obama said to good-natured laughter. "This is true. He was a bootmaker, if I'm not mistaken."

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Virginia Terror Suspects Charged in Pakistan

Tom Diemer — 2010-03-17T12:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Crime, Terror, Foreign Policy, Culture, International, Afghanistan

Five young men from Northern Virginia, arrested in Pakistan in December, have pleaded not guilty to terrorism-related charges in Punjab province and will face trial before a special anti-terror court.

Prosecutors accused the men, ages 18 to 24, with using Pakistani soil to plot a terror attack against a friendly country, and with directing an individual or group to carry out terrorist activities. Both charges potentially carry life sentences, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. They also face other charges, including criminal conspiracy to commit attacks in Pakistan.

Pakistani authorities say the five men, who left Alexandria Va., in November without notifying their families, had been in touch with a Taliban recruiter and wanted to join al-Qaeda and fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Their trial could take six months or more; Judge Anwar Nazir scheduled an evidentiary hearing on March 31. A judge will decide their fate, as Pakistan does not have jury trials.

The five are: Umar Chaudhry, 24; Ramy Zanzam, 22; Ahmad A. Minni, 20; Waqar Kahn, 22; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18. They have denied contacting extremist groups.

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Gen. Petraeus Teaches a Lesson -- 'With Respect' -- to Sen. Scott Brown

David Wood — 2010-03-16T17:14:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress

Gen. David Petraeus to Sen. Scott Brown: No confusion here, senator.

Perhaps Brown, the newly elected conservative GOP senator from Massachusetts and a brand-new member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, shouldn't have chosen to take on Petraeus, the smoothly articulate four-star commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Brown, of course, won the seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy, whose office he now occupies in the Capitol. Distrustful of government ("Government is too big,'' his Senate Web site explains), he nonetheless has served almost 30 years in the Massachusetts National Guard as a lawyer. He holds the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He was named a junior member of the committee earlier this month, so he had to wait until every other member had his say Tuesday before he got to speak, a process that took nearly two hours.

"I know I'm new here,'' Brown apologized to Petraeus. But he nevertheless launched into a scathing criticism of what he described as a "confused'' U.S. military policy on how soldiers are to treat enemy fighters they capture in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Brown described it, soldiers don't know whether to arrest or just confine prisoners of war, aren't sure what rights the prisoners have or where they are to be sent after capture, or how long they can be held.

In particular, Brown complained about a rule that said prisoners can be held only 96 hours before they have to be charged or released.

"These are the questions my troops are passing on to me,'' Brown said as Petraeus, the most senior U.S. commander in the Middle East and the man responsible for those rules, sat impassively.

Undaunted, Brown pressed ahead, insisting that the confusing rules are "creating indecision with our soldiers as to what to do with the folks they've captured.''

At that Petraeus sat bolt upright.

"With respect,'' he said softly, "I don't think there is indecision in Iraq or Afghanistan. ... When someone is detained, there are quite clear procedures.'' In Iraq arrests are made under warrant by Iraqi security forces -- unless enemy fighters are captured in battle. In Afghanistan, the "very clear'' rules are that enemy prisoners can be held for 14 days if necessary.

As a military commander, Petraeus went on to explain in dulcet tones, "you have to create conditions in which your soldiers can live our values. One of those values is that if someone puts his hands in the air you detain him instead of shooting him. ...''

With that, chairman Carl Levin gaveled the hearing to a close.

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Petraeus: Time to Reconsider 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Tom Diemer — 2010-03-16T12:21:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Iraq, Budget, Gay Rights, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, Culture, Afghanistan, Congress, Ethics, Hate Crimes

Gen. David Petraeus said Tuesday the time is right to reconsider the ban on openly gay men and women serving in the military, but he cautioned a Senate committee that any change should be made in a "thoughtful manner."

Petraeus, who, as head of the U.S. Central Command, oversees the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the military should assess how ending the 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy would affect recruiting, morale, unit cohesion and retention, The Hill newspaper reported. The policy, started under President Clinton, permits gays to serve in the Armed Forces as long as they keep their sexual preferences private. For its part, the military is not supposed to ask about an individual's sexual orientation.

The Obama administration wants to do away with the rule and allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has begun a one-year review of how the change would be carried out.

"This is not a sound-bite issue," Petraeus said. His testimony came at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing.

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Were Those Iraqi Elections Really Worth the Price?

Jill Lawrence — 2010-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Bush Administration, Barack Obama, Iraq, Iran, Terror, National Security, International, Afghanistan, 2010 Elections

My eyes didn't get all dewy when Iraqis held their parliamentary elections. Others were moved by inspirational scenes, thrilled that we had bestowed the gift of democracy on a nation that seems, at last, to be taking to it. I found myself trying to remember exactly where "democracy" was on the evolving list of rationales the Bush administration used to justify the war (No. 3? No. 4?), and entertaining a series of dark thoughts about the 4,400 lives and $711 billion it hamis taken us to get this far.

I admit it, I'm still angry. I know it's imperative that we look to the future, but the past is hard to forget. Especially when it keeps cropping up, with all its missteps and tragedies, in books and movies. The March 7 election itself was bracketed by the release of Karl Rove's memoir, in which he says the war probably would not have been waged had it been known that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction -- and "Green Zone," a film in which a U.S. soldier searches in vain for WMDs based on faulty, manipulated intelligence reports. Truth makes pretty good fiction, it turns out.

There is no doubt how most Americans feel about the Iraq war. In January, 60 percent in a CNN poll said they opposed it. Last fall, 67 percent in a CBS News poll said it had not been worth the cost in lives and money. But how do Iraqis feel? To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, are they better off now than they were eight years ago?

They are free of a genocidal dictator, free to live as they please, free to exercise political rights. Their price has included years of violence, more than 100,000 civilian deaths, loss of services as basic as water and power, and - for 2 million to 4 million refugees - loss of their homes. What do Iraqis think of the tradeoff? Was it worth it to them?

Steven Simon, an authority on counterterrorism, national security and the Middle East, calls that an important question. In response he recalls what happened when Henry Kissinger visited China in 1972 and asked Zhou Enlai for his view of the French Revolution (fought nearly 200 years earlier). "It's too soon to tell," came the reply.

Statistics and anecdotes certainly point to improving conditions in Iraq. Just before the election, Newsweek published an upbeat cover story under the headlines "Victory At Last" and "Rebirth of a Nation." The voter turnout rate was more than 62 percent. Nearly two-thirds of the country supported democracy in an ABC News poll of Iraqis last year, 21 points higher than in 2007. And 84 percent rated security in their own area positively, nearly double the level of August 2007. The poll lived up to its headline: "Dramatic Advances Sweep Iraq."

Yet everything in Iraq is relative. Six in 10 people in the ABC survey said they could "obtain basic household goods," meaning 40 percent couldn't -- terrible, but good compared to what ABC polling director Gary Langer called "the dark days of 2007." Only 38 percent said they had reliable electricity -- but that was up from 12 percent in 2008. Only about 4 in 10 said they had access to medical care and clean water -- far below 2005 levels.

There's no question more Iraqis now favor democracy -- 64 percent in the poll last year, 21 points higher than in 2007. And 84 percent rated security in their own area positively, nearly double the level in August 2007. Still, more than half reported at least one violent incident "in their area" - sniper fire, car bomb, fighting - in the previous six months. And it goes on at levels that we would consider shocking in our country. On Iraqi Election Day this month, there were 136 attacks and at least 37 killed. "I've never met an Iraqi who hadn't had somebody in their immediate family killed, injured or kidnapped" since the 2003 invasion, said Rachel Schneller, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Another sobering trend confirmed by the poll: Iraq is becoming more segregated. More than 70 percent said they lived in Sunni-only or Shiite-only communities, up 18 points from just a year earlier. Langer's summation remains accurate today: "Violence continues, even if much abated. Basic services such as medical care and clean water, though better, are still in short supply. ... Sunni/Shiite segregation has increased sharply. Kurdish-Arab relations are tense. And issues from corruption to suspected vote fraud and political gridlock cloud the horizon."

Under the "you break it, you buy it" rule, those are all problems that could be on our plate going forward. To start with refugees, there are 1 million to 2 million inside Iraq and 1 million to 2 million in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and other countries. Those in the latter category pose a particular challenge, said Schneller, who is studying the refugee situation. "You've got another Palestinian problem, basically -- a large population of people with no future," she told me. If in five years they are still stateless and homeless and their children have no prospects, "their only real option is some sort of insurgent group or militia group."

The United States is able to take only about 30,000 refugees a year, Schneller says. Permanent resettlement is a non-starter in Syria, Jordan and other neighboring countries, which have their own economic problems and ethnic tensions. In the best case scenario, Iraq becomes stable and prosperous, refugees want to return, and the Iraqi government figures out ways to handle property claims, restitution and resettlement assistance.

The government is seen as so corrupt that in 2008, Iraq ranked 178 out of 180 nations in a public corruption report card issued by Transparency International. Eric Davis, an author and Middle East expert at Rutgers, sees risks as a consequence of Iraq's rich reserves of oil and gas, and possible plans for an Iraqi-European pipeline. "There will be a huge influx of wealth in the coming years -- just enormous," he told me. "And if you don't have the proper institutions in place, that's a recipe for huge corruption."

Davis said his work on a forthcoming book, "Taking Democracy Seriously in Iraq," had made him bullish about the Iraqi parliament. "While it hasn't been great in terms of laws that have been published, it has been an incredible place for developing trust" among ethnic groups, he said. "They have the opportunity to negotiate rather than to kill each other." He also found hopeful signs in this month's elections: "cross-ethnic alliances," like Islamic conservatives trying to win votes of women who wear makeup, and voters more interested in services than sectarianism. Gen. Ray Odierno, looking further into the future, talks of a long-term partnership with a democratic Iraq.

Others have more limited hopes. Matt Bennett, who studies military issues at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, predicts our "staggering" investment will bring us "a half baked democracy that probably will slip toward some kind of strongman government eventually ... There isn't a single functioning Arab democracy and there never has been." Simon, who is co-writing a book about Muslims in Europe, said Iraq likely will stabilize "under an illiberal Shia majority government. As the shooting dies down, people are going to be better off... But violence will be pretty pervasive" given how many weapons are floating around.

In the near term, we haven't closed the book yet on these elections. Fraud allegations, slow returns and deep divisions are testing Iraq's fragile institutions, and there are anxious memories of post-election violence that broke out in 2005.

Among the many things I can't get past - the lives, the money, the distraction from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the regional instability we've fueled, the uncertainties of the future -- is the oxymoronic nature of what we've done. Democracy by its very definition should be organic, nurtured and fought for by people who want it -- not imposed by sometimes stunningly incompetent Americans.

Two-thirds of Iraqis are under the age of 25. The country is in a churning state of renewal. "It's not going to be long before the bulk of the population has no memory of Saddam or the war," Simon said. That may help Iraq recover from decades of trauma. For us, one hopes there will be no forgetting. Elections, as encouraging as they are, cannot justify the mistakes we made or diminish their magnitude.

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Pentagon Shifts Focus in Hunt for Deadly Afghan Bombs

David Wood — 2010-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

Soon after U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, Islamist extremists hit upon what a senior official calls a "winning'' strategy: targeting U.S. troops with cheap but deadly makeshift bombs hidden in roadways, trash heaps and abandoned cars.

The United States has mounted a costly and ambitious effort to detect these Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), spending billions of dollars on sophisticated detectors and sensors, like ground-penetrating radar and high-tech jammers. The Pentagon has spent $32 billion on heavy armored trucks alone, even though insurgents have found ways to blow some of them up, too.

As IED attacks spread to Afghanistan, improved training enabled American troops to spot many of the devices before they exploded.

The result: Five years ago, about half of all IEDs detonated before they could be found and disarmed. Today, about half of all IEDs still detonate before they are found. Worse, the number of IEDs planted in Afghanistan is roughly doubling every year, taking a horrifying toll on American troops. In both theaters of war, IEDs have killed 2,575 Americans and seriously wounded 24,120 since 2001, according to the most recent Pentagon accounting.

Now, the new director of the Pentagon's war against IEDs, Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, is taking a different approach. Fed up with a sluggish Pentagon bureaucracy and risk-averse defense contractors, Oates is leading a renewed effort to penetrate and dismantle the shadowy enemy networks that acquire, emplace and explode IEDs.

However, this new approach demands far better intelligence than has been available to U.S. ground commanders in Afghanistan so far. According to a recent assessment by Army Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan, the intelligence community is "only marginally relevant . . . unable to answer basic questions'' about the country and "hazy about who the power brokers are and how we might influence them.''

Oates, a veteran of two combat tours in Iraq, took over leadership of the Defense Department's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) last December. He took one look at its multibillion-dollar struggle to use costly technology against cheap IEDS and made a quick decision.

"You're gonna lose that fight,'' he said in an interview.

In Afghanistan, for instance, Taliban insurgents have mixed homemade explosives using diesel oil and fertilizer, a few cents worth of wire and old flashlight batteries to make devices buried in plastic buckets beneath dirt roads -- and destroyed the heaviest (and most expensive) armored vehicles the United States can field.

Now there are signs, Oates said, that the enemy is moving to more sophisticated devices, including IEDs detonated by remote control using a cell phone or a garage-door opener, as insurgents learned to do in Iraq. Do the math, Oates suggests: Insurgents have hundreds of options for building slightly different IEDs. For each variant, he said, the United States has to provide a technological fix for each variant, across the entire force.

I did the math, and the bottom line looks like this: In Afghanistan, what the military calls IED "incidents'' -- in which an IED is found or explodes -- rose from 2,677 in 2007 to 3,867 in 2008 to 8,159 last year. The bombs that exploded killed an increasing number of U.S. and allied troops: The death toll rose from 77 in 2007 to 183 in 2008 to 322 last year. Those wounded rose from 415 in 2007 to 790 in 2008 to 1,818 last year.

That is what Oates calls "a winning proposition'' for the insurgents, with this strategic consequence: The rising cost of the war, including casualties, is already causing serious doubts among the European allies about the wisdom of continuing.

For the United States, he said, "that kind of fight, where the enemy has the advantage of both low cost and high numbers, is not winnable.''

He is especially frustrated that when troops in the field come up with smart ways to defeat IEDs, the Pentagon bureaucracy is too slow and cumbersome to respond in time. "It's a dog's breakfast of rules and regulations, protocols and procedures,'' Oates said.

"I have enormous resources invested in the technical end of this and not a whole lot to show for it,'' he told an audience of Army officers and defense contractors last month. "If that upsets anyone, I apologize, but I've been around too many of these things when they go off.''

JIEDDO, for instance, has invented a simulator in which, soldiers can play both the role of an insurgent devising and planting an IED and a soldier trying to thwart him. Officials have found it a valuable tool for teaching soldiers to think like insurgents. "We produced a couple of these, but the services don't seem interested,'' he said. "Eventually I think they'll get around to it, but by that time a couple of years will have gone by.''

A smarter strategy, he said, is to fight the IED network - the Eliot Ness equivalent of attacking inside Al Capone's crime syndicate instead of just going around smashing bottles of bootleg gin. Oates' organization has launched a significant effort to crack the networks, to "understand these networks, why they are engaging us and what is their purpose,'' Oates said. "Every IED has a purpose, whether it's criminal, tribal or ideological.''

Getting inside the networks, understanding the players and their motivations, can give U.S. battalion and company commanders local insights on how to operate against them, instead of merely staying in a defensive crouch and trying to whack Taliban leaders.

But there's more to it than just identifying the network leaders.

In Oates' analysis, the Taliban is structured more like a tight military organization than is generally appreciated.

"It's very different from Iraq," Oates said. "The Taliban really have very good control over their fighters. Guys are taking military orders. The leadership is very capable.''

As a result, he said, U.S. forces have concentrated on trying to identify and kill Taliban leaders. "That's a losing strategy in the long term, because the No. 2 guy just moves up,'' Oates said. "Some of these guys you do have to kill or capture. Some you can de-motivate. Some criminal factions can be manipulated.''

At JIEDDO, teams of analysts are working through reams of data, including unclassified media reports and academic papers as well as highly classified information gathered from electronic eavesdropping and reports from agents on the ground, to help build understanding of enemy IED networks and what motivates individuals within them.

But as the Army's Flynn warned, it's an uphill battle. In a highly critical paper he published through the Center for a New American Strategy, a centrist think tank in Washington, Flynn argued that U.S. intelligence has been too focused on "scanning the countryside in hopes of spotting insurgents burying bombs,'' and is largely ignorant about the larger population, where their sympathies and loyalties are, and how they can be "brought over to our side.''

In the few places in Afghanistan where battalion commanders have focused their intelligence collectors and analysts to understand and work with the local environment, IED attacks fell dramatically, Flynn wrote. Oates is pushing his teams of analysts to scan more data, to reach out beyond traditional military sources of information, and to help analysts and commanders in the field build comprehensive pictures of the friendly and enemy forces in their operating area.

At his end, Flynn is demanding that more analysts be sent out of headquarters and down to the battalions spread out across Afghanistan to make sense of the reams of information already available from sources like soldiers strolling through local markets and civilian aid officials working with local Afghan organizations. Meanwhile, shipping expensive armored trucks to Afghanistan will continue -- the Marine Corps recently announced it is spending more than $1 billion on 1,200 new armored trucks.

The sustainment costs of these Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles -- the operating costs as well as spare parts and maintenance -- run about half the purchase price each year, Oates said. "There's no way you could buy a $20,000 car and be paying $10,000 a year to keep it going, but that's what we're doing,'' he said. "I don't think that's wasteful -- you need the dad-gum vehicles. And you can't surrender that part of the fight to the enemy.

"But the real fight is at the network. We have to keep trying to figure out how to keep these guys off the firing line.''

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Army Suicides Grow, but This Soldier Was Saved

David Wood — 2010-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Iraq, Afghanistan

On a dusty afternoon in a squalid U.S. Army base in eastern Baghdad, the world seemed to cave in on Spec. Joe Sanders. On daily patrols, soldiers around him were being killed and grievously wounded by improvised roadside bombs. The sweltering August heat and stink of Baghdad were oppressive. He was thousands of miles from home. And he had just learned that his wife -- his lifeline to the sane, normal world -- wanted a divorce.

Alone in his barracks room at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah, Sanders, a soft-spoken young man with a pleasant demeanor, seized his M-4 carbine, put the barrel under his chin, squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger. It was August, 2008. Sanders was 26 years old.

Data released by the Army this week show what seems to be a steadily increasing number of suicides among soldiers, from 128 in 2008 to 160 last year, an average of about 13 suicides each month.

Last month, despite a strenuous effort by the Army and the other military services, 14 active-duty soldiers took their own lives. The Army cites "relationship difficulties'' as a key factor in causing soldiers to consider suicide.

A powerful factor in preventing suicides, officers say, is the active intervention of a close friend who sees the warning signs and steps in to help.

When Sanders pulled the trigger of his loaded carbine, there was only a light click. Horrified both at what he had done and what he had failed to do, Sanders tore open his weapon, searching frantically to find why it hadn't fired. He quickly identified the reason: no firing pin.

At that moment his roommate, Spec. Albert Godding, walked in. "Where's my firing pin -- I don't have a firing pin!'' Sanders yelled, terrified that he'd misplaced that critical piece and would get in trouble for losing it.

"And how,'' Godding asked gently, "did you discover it was missing?''

When Sanders realized what had happened -- that Godding was worried enough that he'd removed the firing pin -- Sanders broke down in great, wracking sobs. "Okay, let's go get you some help,'' his buddy told him, putting a hand on Sanders' heaving shoulder.

The signs, in retrospect, were obvious. After his wife had called demanding a divorce, Sanders knew he had fallen into a very dark place. He felt alone, with no one to talk to. The Army had provided combat stress counselors at FOB Rustamiyah, but Sanders didn't feel he had combat stress.

"I'd been through break-ups before, no big deal,'' he told me last week. "I'd seen a lot of bad (combat) stuff in Iraq, no big deal.'' Sanders and his wife were newlyweds, unprepared for the intense stress of a 14-month combat deployment. "When she told me she couldn't take it and was leaving me it was ... she was really all I had to ... my therapy. She left, the woman I loved. Everything we had planned for, just -- gone. I was stuck in Iraq, everybody was trying to kill me, and I had no one to talk to.''

"I just didn't think it qualified me'' to see the combat stress counselor, he said.

But he confided to Godding that he was thinking of killing himself, pondering how it might be done most cleanly, in a place where the blood could be washed away.

"I noticed he wasn't talking to anybody,'' Godding told me in a phone conversation from Fort Carson, Colo. "He said it had been a real bad week, that he was thinking of bad things like killing himself. I'd heard other guys talking about killing themselves, but when he (Sanders) said it, I knew he was serious about the whole situation. When he went off to check his e-mail, I took the firing pin out and hid it in my locker.''

Sanders went to see the combat stress counselor at Rustamiyah. "She was excellent; every time I talked with her it lifted a weight off my chest,'' Sanders said. They gave him some ideas on how to stave off depression -- by taking up a hobby, for example. Sanders bought a guitar and "played my a-- off. Also writing, just writing down your thoughts, working out the aggression, that helped,'' he said.

"The thing I learned is, don't be afraid to seek help. A lot of guys are scared of what their leaders will think, that they're weak.''

Sanders, now 28, had always wanted to be a soldier. Growing up in the Atlantic coastal town of Sebastian, Fla., he saw honor and glory in military service. His grandfather had served in Korea, but would never talk about his experiences, until Sanders enlisted and they shared the common bond of soldiering.

Today, Sanders is an artillery gunner. He serves with the 5^th Battalion, 25^th Field Artillery based at Fort Polk, La., and is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan this fall. His sergeants think highly of him as a soldier. But when his four-year enlistment is up in the middle of what is scheduled to be a 12-month combat tour, Sanders is going home -- despite the Army's efforts to convince him to stay.

He has found a new love and is engaged to be married, looking forward to a calm, civilian life.

"I chose to get out because this is a very, very hard life for your family,'' Sanders said. "I want a family and I don't want to be away from them. A lot of guys in the Army miss what goes on in their families at home.

"I am about to get married, and she understands I have to go to Afghanistan. But we just want to have a family, settle down. We just want to have a normal, nine-to-five existence.''

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Gates Hints Afghan Pullout Could Start Before July 2011

Tom Diemer — 2010-03-10T11:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in an unannounced visit to Afghanistan, raised the possibility Wednesday that some U.S. troops could begin leaving the country before the July 2011 deadline for withdrawal.

Gates hedged his bets and did not elaborate. "We will begin that transition no later than July 2011, but the pace will depend also on conditions on the ground," he said, according to CNN.

President Obama ordered 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan last year and coalition forces are in the midst of an offensive against Taliban fighters.

The defense secretary toured training camps in eastern Afghanistan, observing exercises at Camp Blackhorse, where U.S. and British forces are working with Afghan soldiers.

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Afghan War Strategy Risks: Go In Hard or Go In Soft?

David Wood — 2010-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

CAMP GUERNSEY, Wyo. -- Spread out in combat formation, M-4 carbines loosely held at the ready, Chaos Company's 1^st platoon stepped across tufts of dry grass and clots of late-winter snow. When they crested a hill, the village of Ali Kehl came into view. At that point, Sgt. 1^st Class Jerell Daniels had a choice: go in hard, or go in soft.

He peered across the western plains at the motley collection of steel shipping containers meant to represent an Afghan village. Video from a Raven drone overhead showed armed men in the village. If they were hostile, Daniels should launch his platoon into the village like marauding Mongols. That abrupt offensive would keep his soldiers safe from ambush.

But the armed Afghans could be local police, potential allies. And Daniels' orders were to make friends, if possible. That meant approaching the village in a non-threatening posture -- a more dangerous proposition.

Daniels took the risk. "Don't do anything hostile!'' he barked to his men. "Your hands should be nowhere near your triggers,'' and they strode into the village wary but smiling, weapons pointed down.

With its combat deployment to Afghanistan coming up soon, the soldiers of Chaos Company and the rest of the 2^nd Battalion, 30^th Infantry Regiment, are training here to master the most vexing set of questions the U.S. military has faced in generations:

How to sort out ordinary people from the enemy? How to win the trust of ordinary Afghans, and then how to protect them? And what to do with the enemy - kill them, chase them away, or try to win them over?

It used to be that such questions were considered in the sanctity of generals' offices in the rear, where strategy was debated and settled, often in consultation with the White House. Guys like Daniels, a 41-year-old Texan from Dallas, were never asked their opinions.

Now these decisions are made on the spot by the lieutenants and sergeants who lead platoons of roughly two dozen soldiers. It is their assessment of local conditions that will determine how much risk to their soldiers to accept to accomplish the objective set out by the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal: secure the local population, win their trust, support the Afghan government.

McChrystal's strategy directives also put American troops squarely on the defense. With rare exceptions, like the recent battle for Marja, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan assaulted last month by U.S. and Afghan forces, American troops will react to attacks, not initiate them.

"The fight has changed 100 percent,'' said Daniels' battalion commander, Lt. Col. Chris Ramsey. "Somebody's going to have to push you -- and you'll have to react.

"McChrystal's guidance? We've all read it. This is harder for guys with multiple (combat) deployments. Iraq was a different dynamic, you just went kinetic,'' Ramsey said, meaning, you start shooting. "We understand you can't kill 'em all. This is harder. You're in a place where you're hit with an IED one day and the next day you're doing humanitarian assistance in the same place.

"You have to control your emotions,'' said Ramsey, 43, who has fought in Iraq under the Army's Special Operations Command.

How Daniels and other platoon leaders do that is crucial as the Afghan war moves into a new phase, more tricky and dangerous than the past eight years. Under McChrystal's direction, troops will focus on protecting the population, not on killing the enemy.

That means troops will leave behind their armored trucks and fortified bases and get out into the villages. Winning local trust will often mean removing sunglasses, helmets and body armor.

Going in "soft'' like that might "expose military personnel and civilians to greater risk in the near term,'' McChrystal has acknowledged. "But historical experience in counterinsurgency warfare ... suggests that accepting some risk in the short term will ultimately save lives in the long run ... face-to-face relationships, rather than close combat, will achieve success.''

In this new phase of war, even the enemy might not be the enemy. U.S. and allied troops "must identify opportunities to reintegrate former mid- to low-level insurgent fighters into normal society by offering them a way out,'' says a McChrystal directive.

In short, McChrystal said, "the enemy may be killed, captured or reintegrated.''

All these ideas and theories fermented inside Daniels' head as he led his platoon on its deceptively simple mission: scope out the village, look around for bad guys, meet the village elders and make friends.

He engaged a man who turned out to be the local Afghan police officer, (played by an off-duty trooper) while the platoon's infantrymen fanned out through the village's muddy lanes, nodding at the locals (more off-duty troopers).

"His security piece is just garbage,'' observed 1st Sgt. Joe Gaskin, watching Daniels' men stroll through the village. Gaskin wanted, like Daniels, to expose his soldiers to less risk, maybe by flanking the village with two machine gun teams for added security. But it's Daniels' call. "Villagers outnumber us 2 to 1,'' Gaskin grumbled. "Hey! You think the middle of the street is a good place for you?'' he yelled at an idling infantryman.

"No, first sar'nt,'' the soldier replied, moving to the edge of the street for better cover from a potential sniper.

In this training event, Daniels had called it right: There were no enemy in the village, and his men finished up the operation safely. But talking it over later with Gaskin and Chaos Company's commander, Capt. Paul Rothlisberger, it was clear there are no easy answers.

"My idea is to come in with a non-aggressive posture, but with clear fields of fire,'' said Rothlisberger, who has also fought in Iraq. "I favor accepting more risk. Going in, your posture sets everybody's expectations. You go in too aggressive, you potentially shut down people's cooperation. But be prepared if something happens.''

Gaskin had slightly different advice. "Always assume the worst,'' he said. "I liked the way you came in not too aggressive,'' he told Daniels. "It showed you as a platoon leader are not afraid. But you might have sent your security element in ahead of you, so just rethink that.''

"What about the cell phones?'' Gaskin demanded. During the training scenario, several "villagers" were talking on cell phones -- which could be used to call in Taliban or to set off makeshift bombs. "We don't want people using cell phones, but we don't wanna grab them and smash them on the ground, either. Just go, 'Hey, put that thing away for later,' or something like that. You gotta do it without offending the population -- though sometimes you have to offend the population.''

McChrystal's guidance "means accepting more risk -- we understand that,'' said Rothlisberger. But he instructed his platoon leaders always to keep violence as a ready option.

"Don't forget the kinetic stuff,'' he said. "That's real important and one day it'll save your life.''

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Kucinich to Get House Vote on Afghanistan Pullout

Tom Diemer — 2010-03-09T09:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama, Iraq, Dennis Kucinich, Obama Administration, International, Afghanistan, Congress

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an outspoken Ohio lawmaker who twice ran for president as an antiwar candidate, plans to bring his case for a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan to the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Kucinich, a Democrat, is a leader of the House Progressive Caucus and among those disappointed that President Obama, himself an antiwar candidate, has not moved faster to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kucinich's resolution, with 16 co-sponsors, will get three hours of debate on the question of withdrawing within 30 days, or by the end of the year, if an immediate pullout would be too dangerous. Obama is moving toward an end of combat operations in Iraq but has increased troop strength in Afghanistan.

Kucinich is invoking the 1973 War Powers Act, which requires congressional approval for a president to keep troops in a conflict for more than 90 days, the Washington Post reported. The law, passed during the Vietnam War, has many provisos and is difficult to enforce. Congress has never declared war against Afghanistan, but approved a use-of-force resolution following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"We haven't had a real debate -- we want to light the fire of the American peace movement," said Kucinich, onetime mayor of Cleveland and a presidential hopeful in 2004 and 2008.

His resolution, though largely symbolic, gives voice to lawmakers unhappy that Obama ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan before Congress approved funding for the surge.

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Suicide Bomber Says He Lured CIA Agents With Phony Intelligence

David Sessions — 2010-03-01T12:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Afghanistan

The suicide bomber in a late-December attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan claims in a posthumously released video that he lured U.S. intelligence officers into a trap by feeding them false information, The Washington Post reports. The bomber, a Jordanian physician named Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, says in the video that he sent U.S. and Jordanian officers fake tips about terrorist activity and videos he made of senior al-Qaeda operatives. He originally planned to kidnap one Jordanian operative, but stumbled on an unexpected opportunity to kill several Americans as well.

"It wasn't planned this way," Balawi says in the 44-minute video released Sunday by al-Qaeda's media arm. He discusses "the stupidity of Jordanian intelligence and the stupidity of American intelligence" in inviting him to Afghanistan to set up a strike against al-Qaeda.

The bombing, which killed six Americans and three others, was the deadliest attack on a CIA base in 25 years. The new video, if authentic, is the second featuring Balawi discussing his path from doctor to suicide bomber, after U.S. and Jordanian officials offered him millions of dollars for help in planning a raid.

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Sen. Graham, White House Talks on Gitmo Worrying Some Republicans

Tom Diemer — 2010-02-25T16:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, House, Barack Obama, John McCain, Iraq, Crime, Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, International, Afghanistan, Congress, Conservatives, Rahm Emanuel, Yemen

Sen. Lindsey Graham's private conversations with the Obama administration on closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are making some of Graham's fellow Republicans nervous.

Graham (R-S.C.) has been involved in meetings and phone calls with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel over the past several weeks discussing his conditions for supporting a shutdown of the prison, the Hill newspaper reported Thursday. Graham wants assurances that it would not hurt national security, and he favors setting up a new national security court where most of the remaining detainees could be tried.

But Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, said Graham should leave a central issue in any shutdown -- where the prisoners would be moved -- to state and local authorities with jurisdiction over the facilities seen as potential sites. "I think it is crazy to be negotiating with the White House on this," Hoesktra said. Graham, he added, didn't want Gitmo detainees in South Carolina when such a move was considered.

Rep. Don Manzullo, a Republican representing a district that includes a prison in Thomson, Ill. -- one possible relocation facility -- said he hoped Graham "would talk to me first" if he is involved in any talks about moving terror suspects to Illinois.

Graham, architect of legislation creating military commissions and an advocate of prosecuting accused terrorists in miiltary courts, is expected to meet with Manzullo this week, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said.

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Lawmaker Wants to Limit CIA's Moonlighting Agents

Tom Diemer — 2010-02-24T13:01:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Democrats, Iraq, Iran, Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Culture, Afghanistan, Congress, Nuclear Proliferation, Ethics, Yemen, Law

A California lawmaker, skeptical of CIA scrutiny of its moonlighting agents, wants to crack down on active-duty intelligence officers who take part-time jobs in the private sector.

Politico said Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) intends to add an amendment to the Intelligence Reauthorization bill that would require the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Government Ethics to issue regulations barring agents from taking second jobs if they create "a conflict of interest or appearance thereof." The intel director would also have to annually disclose all moonlighting arrangements to Congress' intelligence committees.

Earlier this month, Politico reported on the little-known CIA policy of permitting agents to take on part-time work as long as their supervisors approve and are satisfied no conflict exists.

Eshoo said she sensed that the current policy amounted to a "rubber-stamp deal" and that "no one's really looking at it or keeping a close eye on it."

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U.S. to Cut Back on Night Raids in Afghanistan

Tom Diemer — 2010-02-24T12:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, International, Afghanistan, Ethics, al Qaeda

In an effort to ease tensions between U.S.-led military forces and Afghan civilians, coalition commanders have decided to restrict risky nighttime raids on private homes and compounds in Afghanistan, a senior U.S. official has told CNN.

The directive is in a classified document signed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, according to the unidentified official who saw it.

Nighttime raids -- aimed at rooting out terrorists and finding weaponry -- can turn violent and have caused problems for U.S. and NATO forces that enter homes in what's understandably seen by Afghans as an affront and an invasion of privacy.

The new directive urges use of Afghan troops when possible to knock on doors before going into homes at night. It says troops should conduct analyses of whether night raids are essential or could be put off until daybreak, CNN said.

Earlier this week, McChrystal released a video apology after an incident in which 27 Afghan civilians were killed in an airstrike. "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people," he said. "I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans."

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Senior Taliban Commander Reportedly Nabbed in Pakistan

Tom Diemer — 2010-02-23T11:18:00+00:00

Filed under: Iraq, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, International, Afghanistan, al Qaeda

Another top Taliban military commander, active in the fight against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, has been captured in Pakistan, a Pakistani intelligence official says.

Details are scant, but U.S. officials have gotten signals about the apprehension of Mullah Abdul Kabir, though they have not yet confirmed the capture, the New York Times reported.

Kabir, identified as a member of a small Taliban inner circle called Quetta Shura, which reports directly founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, was nabbed in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province several days ago, a Pakistani official told the newspaper.

He is the second member of the leadership group caught in recent weeks. Kabir's capture in the town of Nawshera was apparently carried out solely by Pakistanis, and initially kept secret.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA officer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of the Pakistan's new-found determination to crack down on Taliban operating within the country's borders: "We still need to see how far it goes, but for Obama and NATO this is the best possible news. If the safe haven is closing, then the Taliban are in trouble."

Also reported Monday was the assassination of Afghan warlord Hajji Zaman Ghamsharik, the man accused of helping Osama bin Laden escape U.S. forces at Tora Bora in December 2001. A suicide bomber reportedly killed Ghamsharik and 14 others near Jalalabad, a city in eastern Afghanistan.

Last month, Ghani Baradar, said to be the top Taliban battlefield commander, was captured by Pakistani and American intelligence agents in Karachi, Pakistan.

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Former Intelligence Chair Roberts Says He Didn't OK Destruction of Waterboarding Tapes

Tom Diemer — 2010-02-23T09:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Democrats, Republicans, Iraq, Investigations, Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Afghanistan, Congress, Ethics, al Qaeda

The former Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee is in a dispute with the CIA over the destruction of videotapes that reportedly showed CIA agents waterboarding terror suspect Abu Zubayda, once thought to be a leading member of al-Qaeda.

The CIA, in a summary of a 2003 briefing, said Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas "listened carefully and gave his consent" after high-ranking CIA officers described circumstances surrounding the tapes and signaled that the agency intended to destroy them, Politico reported Tuesday.

But Roberts said he never signed off on such a plan.

"At no time did Senator Roberts assent to the destruction of any videotapes," spokeswoman Sarah Little said. "Senator Roberts today called on the Justice Department to release all the memoranda that exist regarding briefings for all members of Congress."

Top aides to then-Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) were also present at the closed-door briefing on Feb. 4, 2003, but Rockefeller said he had only limited information about the tapes and was not consulted on plans to get rid of them.

Meanwhile, a special prosecutor, named by the Justice Department, is looking into whether laws were violated in the destruction of tapes that could have become evidence in a federal trial.

Zubayda's value as a source of intelligence information was later downgraded. The Washington Post reported that information surfaced indicating he was not a top al-Qaeda leader and apparently was not even a formal member of the loose-knit organization.

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NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan Kills 33 Civilians

David Sessions — 2010-02-22T08:50:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan

The Afghan Cabinet said Monday that an airstrike by NATO forces on Sunday killed 33 civilians, including three women and one child, the Associated Press reports. The deaths came amid a major offensive in which U.S. and NATO forces have put a strong emphasis on protecting civilians from the Taliban and earning their trust.

"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives," NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said. "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will redouble our effort to regain that trust." McChrystal apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the mistake.

The strike hit three minibuses that were driving down a major road in southern Afghanistan. A total of 42 people were aboard. NATO confirmed that it fired on the buses, believing them to be an insurgent brigade.

The incident was another in a string of misfires since the U.S.-led coalition began a major offensive in nearby Helmand Province. On Thursday, a rocket missed its intended target -- a group of insurgents -- and killed seven police officers. Another errant rocket killed 10 civilians on Feb. 15.

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No Punishment for Bush Lawyers Who Wrote Waterboard Memos, Justice Dept Says

Tom Diemer — 2010-02-20T12:25:00+00:00

Filed under: George W. Bush, Bush Administration, Senate, Iraq, Dick Cheney, Scandal, Investigations, Crime, Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Culture, Afghanistan, Congress, Ethics, Law

The Bush administration lawyers who gave legal advice clearing the way for waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques used against terror suspects won't be disciplined or disbarred, the Justice Department has decided.

The Justice Department documents, released Friday, said the two lawyers "exercised poor judgment" in writing the memos. But the decision also represented a rejection of the agency's ethics investigators who had earlier urged that former Justice lawyers John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee face the scrutiny of state disciplinary officials, according to the Washington Post.

A separate criminal inquiry is under way as to whether CIA contractors went beyond what is allowed legally in the questioning of detainees who died or suffered serious injuries.

The Office of Professonal Responsibility at Justice had earlier said that Yoo, in relation to five memos, "violated his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough and candid legal advice." The ethics office had said Bybee, in a 2002 memo, offered an expansive view of presidential authority in connection with tactics used against al-Qaeda suspects in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Post reported.

But Deputy Attorney General David Margolis concluded that -- despite the "close question" presented at times by the allegations -- the two lawyers did not intentionally break ethics rules and were trying to prevent another terrorist attack in this country.

Yoo is currently a professor of law at the University of California; Bybee is a federal appeals court judge in Nevada. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt..), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Bybee should resign from his lifetime appointment.

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Marja: Armageddon for the Taliban?

David Wood — 2010-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Barack Obama, Iraq, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

The full fury of a U.S. military air-ground task force is being unleashed on a small town in southern Afghanistan. Strike jets, helicopter gunships and armed robot drones directed by airborne and satellite sensors tracking enemy movements, and thousands of heavily armed infantrymen are advancing (with a heavy media presence) behind armored trucks and ground-penetrating radar sweeping for IEDs, while rapid-fire artillery rockets whoosh overhead.

It could be Armageddon for the lightly armed bad guys. But I doubt it.

Ever since U.S. combat troops descended on Afghanistan in October 2001, the Taliban fighters have been flaunting their ability to fade away when facing this kind of combat power. It seems childishly petulant even to repeat it: insurgents simply don't fight big modern armies head-on. They disappear, only to pop up later at a time and place of their own choosing.

In fact, that's what they did almost exactly eight years ago when I covered the first big conventional U.S. military strike against the Taliban. Operation Anaconda was designed as a classic anvil-and-hammer maneuver, where you drive the enemy up against an anvil of dug-in troops, then pulverize them with the hammer of assault forces.

Except in that case, the Taliban fighters vanished from the high Shah-e-Khot valley into the towering mountain passes, and by the time the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne troops arrived, the trap was empty.

Now, just 48 hours after the battle for the southern Afghanistan market town of Marja was launched, military commanders are confirming that many of the Taliban fighters who had made Marja a base of operations had slipped away during the weeks that U.S. forces were loudly preparing the assault and freely broadcasting its location and purpose. A senior officer told me this morning that the Taliban leadership had "bugged out,'' leaving behind 100 to 150 fighters with orders to fight and die in place. "And they are,'' this officer reported. As in previous battles, the Taliban are fighting from compounds jammed with families, and there have been resultant civilian casualties. Given all this, it was odd to hear a British military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Gordon Messenger, assert that the goal of "surprising the Taliban'' seemed to have been met. His evidence: "The Taliban have not been able to put up a coherent response. They appear confused and disorientated.''

I saw the same thing happen 18 months ago with the Marines in Garmsir, a town just down river from Marja. There again, the Marines assaulted the town with waves of helicopters, but the Taliban counter-attack they expected (hoped for, actually) never materialized. With the insurgents gone or just mingling with townsfolk, the Marines took over the town, re-opened the market and stayed for a few months. As soon as they left, the Taliban moved back in, reportedly executing those who'd befriended the Americans.

That's not going to happen this time, Obama administration officials vow. This time, as soon as the insurgents are chased out of town, U.S. aid will pour in to make Marja a model, modern community. U.S. and Afghan security forces will stay on, officials say, indefinitely.
What could make a difference is the capture by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence teams of the Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani. His detention in Pakistan, where he is said to be talking with his captors, could at least temporarily paralyze the Taliban, hampering its ability to maneuver in southern Helmand Province.

This concept for the Marja operation grew out of the intense political-military studies undertaken last summer and fall by the Obama White House, counterinsurgency experts drawn from the State Department, CIA, the Pentagon and academia, and the battle staff of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top allied commander in Afghanistan. The problem was this: given limited military manpower (American, allied and Afghan) and an impatient and skeptical public at home, how could U.S. forces score an impressive victory and demonstrate that this eight-year war is not lost and could, in fact, be won?

Thus was conceived the idea to demonstrate, in microcosm, what U.S. counterinsurgency strategy could achieve in Afghanistan with a potent application of military and civilian power.

What was attractive about the idea of a mini-victory was that it would nimbly skip around the obstacles that the United States has placed in its own way in Afghanistan: too few troops, too few military resources, too few civilian reconstruction experts and too little time, attention and money. If there were too few combat troops spread across Afghanistan to be effective, that could be fixed by pouring Marines and soldiers into the town of Marja. If there were too few Afghan soldiers and police being trained and equipped to make all of Afghanistan secure, at least there could be enough for Marja. And if the U.S. civilian aid effort was under-funded, under-manned and disorganized, those problems could be fixed, at least temporarily, in Marja.

The hope behind Operation Moshtarak ("Together,'' in local Dari dialect), is that a victory in Marja can buy time for the same approach to be used elsewhere, at some point in the future.

Moreover, some of the planners told me, a victory -- clearing out the Taliban, setting up Afghan government services, bringing in civilian aid to restart a vibrant marketplace, open schools and begin weaning local farmers away from growing poppies -- could reverse the deepening pessimism about the war and convince Afghans and Americans alike of eventual victory.

And public opinion, in both Afghanistan and America, needs some shoring up. A series of polls by the Independent Republican Institute found that Afghans who believe that their country is "headed in the right direction'' dropped from 67 percent in 2004 to 30 percent last year. A huge majority -- 68 percent -- said their government should talk to and reconcile with the Taliban, not try to kill them.

Here at home, meantime, opposition to the war has risen to 52 percent, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Poll in January. After eight years of war that has killed or wounded 5,684 Americans, two-thirds of Americans said they believe neither side is winning in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a notoriously difficult place to pull off elegant concepts conceived in faraway capitals. Ask Alexander the Great of Macedonia, or Alexander Burnes and William McNaughton, two 19^th century British diplomats who led a well-intentioned but ill-fated expedition to Kabul. Or any of the Soviet officials who planned to create a new Afghanistan in the 1980s.

It's not likely that the United States will follow their fates in being violently ejected from Afghanistan. It seems more likely that the battle for Marja will dwindle into a peacekeeping operation which will, save for tragic combat deaths, be described as a success. The Taliban will regroup. Suicide bombers eventually will reappear in Marja. And the war will go on.

Meantime, of course, the larger war against Islamist extremists rages on well outside Marja, with a U.S. drone attack this morning in Pakistan that reportedly killed four Taliban insurgents in North Waziristan. They were part of a network allied with al Qaeda and the brutal Haqqani gang who have been killing Pakistanis as well as U.S. troops and Afghan civilians across the border.

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the war's various fronts, during a speech at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday, " Extremists have recently attacked pilgrims in Iraq with the intent of destabilizing the government and reigniting civil war. In Nigeria, extremists are exacerbating Muslim-Christian tensions. In Somalia, they are working to take down the government. And in Yemen, al-Qaeda seeks to exploit internal and regional divisions to create a new base for global terrorism.''

Even as American and Afghan troops continued what a spokesman described as "steady, methodical'' progress into Marja, Clinton summed up the U.S. policy toward Afghanistan: "The United States has no interest in occupying Afghanistan,'' she said, adding: "We also have no intention of abandoning Afghanistan.''

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