This is pretty big news. The big progressive groups hadn't yet spoken on the question of escalation in Afghanistan - their silence was pronounced. MoveOn finally broke that silence today, appealing to the President to commit to a clear exit strategy. It's a pretty big step.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan has reached a pivotal moment. President Obama is poised to make a critical decision about the Afghanistan war in the next few weeks. And there’s a big debate happening right now about what to do.

Pro-war advocates both inside and outside the administration—including John McCain and Joe Lieberman—are calling for a big escalation. The general in charge of Afghanistan is expected to request tens of thousands more troops, and that may just be the beginning. They’re cranking up the pressure for an immediate surge.

But other powerful voices are urging caution: Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have raised real concerns about the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan without a clear strategy, as have Democrats in Congress. And a majority of Americans oppose increasing troop levels.

Can you write to the White House and tell them we need a clear exit strategy—not tens of thousands more US troops stuck in a quagmire? You can send the President a message by clicking below:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51843&id=&t=1

Some administration officials are arguing for a smaller, nimbler approach with a narrow focus on the threat from al-Qaeda. But cheerleaders for the war refuse to acknowledge that there could be any viable strategy other than more and more troops. So they’re trotting out the same tired old lines and questioning the motives of those who disagree with them.

They figure they can cut off any debate about our ultimate goals in Afghanistan and the region. But President Obama has consistently shown a willingness to stand up for his more thoughtful approach to foreign policy, and that’s what he needs to do here, too.

The hawks are making their position heard. Now, the majority of Americans—those of us who are for as quick and as responsible an end to the war as possible—need to make our voices heard, too.

With Democrats opposing escalation by more than two to one, MoveOn is just reflecting the opinions of their membership. They're a bit late to the debate, but better than ducking it entirely.

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I wrote earlier (at Newshoggers) that there was still an Iraq debate to be had - namely whether the US' word, as set down in the SOFA agreement with Iraq, is worth the paper it's printed on. There's a considerable body of opinion in military and neo-whatever circles that says it isn't.

Bob Fertik emails to note that, five minutes before Obama announced his withdrawal timetable, NBC was quoting commanders as saying it wasn't binding on them. Just before Obama's said "I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011," NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski told David Gregory that military commanders are making plans as if the SOFA and the orders of the Commander in Chief were irrelevant.

Miklaszewski: Secretary Gates, as early as 18 months to 2 years ago, was saying "look, everyone understands that we're going to have to start withdrawing from Iraq." But at the same time, Gates adds this caveat that he believes significant numbers of troops will remain in Iraq for years to come.

And in fact military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all US forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated.

And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years, David.

Gregory: 15 to 20 years, I think that takes a moment to really sink in. With a mission that is primarily what over that kind of time horizon, Mik?

Miklaszewski: Again it would evolve from a day-to-day combat mission, to more of an oversight mission. We mustn't forget the US is providing nearly 100% of all combat air support over Iraq, and the Iraqi military is not going to be ready to assume that mission within the next 18 months to 2 years, it's going to be impossible.

And there are some discussions, I know Richard Engel mentioned the area of Kirkuk up in the north recently, there are some discussions among Iraqis and I know some military commanders to establish what could end up as a permanent air base, US air base, in Kirkuk.

Gregory: Striking.

Which just goes to show that we should be very leary of leaving withdrawal up to those who have a natural inclination not to withdraw. Generations of "surprise" babies will tell you how well that works out. Bob Gates may say that senior commanders are all behind Obama's plan, but there's a lot of reporting says they aren't.

These people are treading a dangerous course, as Marc Lynch explains. He writes that "Iraqis will be watching carefully to see whether the United States honors its commitments" in the months leading up to an Iraqi referendum on the SOFA agreement on July 31st and that if they don't see the right answer then the referendum will be a resounding "no" - at which point the US will have only 12 months to get everyone out of Iraq or occupy the country illegally again.

The argument for a significant, early withdrawal of U.S. combat forces remains overwhelming. Indeed, a failure to deliver on the promise of early U.S. withdrawals is the most likely thing to cause a rapid deterioration in conditions in Iraq....The new administration will get only one chance to demonstrate the credibility of its commitments, and indefinitely leaving troops at current levels will only postpone rather than solve the problems.

The US must make a substantial down payment on withdrawal now, or suffer later. Not just in Iraq, although the problems there would be bad enough, but on the world stage.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

The majority of Iraq has voted in provincial elections today, with a very minimum of violence, as I had hoped. Which is great news but unsurprising given the massive security lockdown mounted for the event. Razorwire cordons, security checkpoints, closed airports and a total ban on vehicular traffic in cities - all just to have an election. Still, that it happened at all is encouraging, even if far from the shining victory the American right are hailing it as. I hate to rain on their victory parade but there are a couple of flies in their Mission Accomplished" ointment.

Not least, of course, that such elections might never have happened at all if the Bush administration had had its way. Despite the popularity nowadays of the conservative meme that Bush wanted to bring democracy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, head of the CPA, had wanted to simply keep US-appointed tame politicos in power. But Ayatollah Sistani demanded real elections with thinly veiled hints of a general Shiite insurrection to go with the Sunni-led insurgency if no elections were held, and a quick historical revision swifty ensued.

But there are still deep-seated problems in Iraq which these provincial election's won't touch, or will actually make worse. The Kurdish North didn't participate and neither did the disputed region of Kirkuk. Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga have already faced off there a few times and most analysts see Kurdish aspirations as the primary future source of violence. Then there's the resurgent Sunni minority, where the old and entirely undemocratic tribal power structure is set to be the election winner. And among Shiites, factional infighting which has fractured Maliki's own coalition heavily, looks to be another potential source of future violence. We may not know the full results for a month or more and there are going to be divisive allegations of intimidation, vote-rigging and double-crossing to navigate.

These elections are a good thing, but they're not a universal panacea. Still, the American Right wants to have its cake and eat it. They want to pretend that provincial elections mean "victory" while getting ready to blame only Obama if Iraqi social fractures ignored by Bush for so long lead to more violence later.

Back in December, during the transition but before Obama was sworn in, General Odierno was publicly saying that he thought the US/Iraq agreement on withdrawal was ignorable. In his view, US troops should stay in Iraq's cities past the summer 2009 deadline and the 2011 final withdrawal date should be flexible. A few days later the Three Amigos - McCain, Lieberman and Graham - threw their weight behind Odierno in a WaPo op-ed by describing him, rather than Commander-In-Chief Obama, as "the person whose judgment should matter most in determining how fast and how deep a drawdown can be ordered responsibly." Suitably emboldened, Odierno announced that he was the Deciderer: "any decision on force structure here in Iraq will be made by me," and that there would be no substantial drawdown of troops from Iraq until he was ready to agree it. Odierno got backing from Gates, Ambassador Crocker, Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus in the dying days of the Bush administration too, with all making statements suggesting that the SOFA wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

Now that President Obama in in the Oval Office, Odierno is still suggesting publicly that Obama's campaign promise of a 16 month withdrawal - one that would be in advance of the SOFA requirements and has been endorsed by primeminister Maliki of Iraq - isn't Obama administration policy because he's the Deciderer, not Obama. And he still apparently has a lot of backing among the Bush-appointed senior cadre at the Pentagon and, of course, the hawkish foreign policy elite who were always just fine with Bush's invasion of Iraq and only got upset when Bush so cack-handely mismanaged the occupation.

The military/VSP plan, however, is just the same old imperialist hubris re-packaged for a new administration. It ignores any Iraqi say in the matter and ignores any impact that arrogance might have on Iraqi stability in favor of yet more Friedman Units of occupation. Marc Lynch:

Odierno's intention of keeping troops in Iraq through the national elections is dangerously wrong. The CFR/Brookings/Odierno "go slow" approach ignores the reality of the new Status of Forces Agreement and the impending referendum this summer -- which may well fail if there is no sign of departing American troops. It sends the wrong messages to Iraqi politicians and the Iraqi population. It would badly hurt Obama's credibility in the region and with Iraqis, who will see his most important public commitment fall by the wayside. And it would lose the unique window of opportunity offered by the transition to signal real change.

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The Pentagon is still focussed on 24-36 months (or more) despite what Obama or Maliki might say.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri "Napoleon" al-Maliki says he expects the US to withdraw from Iraq faster than promised, and he's just fine with that.

President Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to remove all combat troops within 16 months and has asked the Pentagon to plan for "a responsible military drawdown from Iraq."

With planning under way, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a political rally south of Baghdad that he believes the end of the U.S. mission "will be brought forward" and that Iraq must bolster its own forces to meet the challenge after the Americans leave.

The Shiite-led government pushed for a faster U.S. pullout during last year's negotiations on the security agreement, overcoming longtime Bush administration opposition to a fixed withdrawal schedule.

Al-Maliki has been campaigning actively on behalf of his allies for next weekend's provincial elections, promoting his image as the leader who restored stability and ended what many Iraqis see as a U.S. military occupation.

Of course, Maliki expects to be left in charge of the Iraqi security forces if he can get US forces out before his rivals manage to oust him. And at that point, those rivals have no chance of ousting him if he doesn't want to go. He's already shown willing to use the security forces to bolster his own position.

But that's hardly our business. It's always been stated American policy that the US would leave when the Iraqi leadership asked them to - something that "SOFA stretchers" like Odierno and Crocker could all do with a Presidential reminder on.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Yet another from the over-stuffed cabinet of Iraq invasion and occupation "nobody could have anticipated" files. And another sign that all is not the rosy victory that the right would wish us to believe it is. (h/t Kat)

Marine Maj. Gen. John F. Kelly told The Associated Press that his greatest "mission failure" was his inability to bring together the government in Baghdad and the Sunnis in Anbar to take advantage of the steep decline in violence.

"What the Iraqi government in Baghdad should have done is said Anbar is getting peaceful, let's commit," Kelly told the AP in a telephone interview from his headquarters southwest of Baghdad, as he begins to make preparations to hand over command of 23,000 Marines next month to Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tyron.

"It drives me to distraction," he said. "I would count it as a mission failure."

Reconciliation? Meh, not so much. The many faction feuds and sectarian rivalries which helped make Iraq so bloody are still there, just tamped down for a while - hopefully long enough for the US to declare victory and (pretend to) withdraw. I'm mostly OK with that, since it's the Iraqi people's "pottery barn" and it should always have been their perogative to break it more or mend it as they see fit. I just wish the US government, politicians, militrary and mainstream media would be honest about it.

By the time it flares up again, US leaders appear to be hoping, those troops left in Iraq will be rebranded as trainers and securely inside fortified bases where they can get on with their original primary mission, as conceived by neo-whatevers from left and right, of being the US dog in the Gulf manger.

And I fully expect the Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan to be doing exactly the same thing there.

The Surge in Iraq essentially became a plan to bribe militants with guns and barrowloads of cash to not attack US troops and that left the core corruption, graft and incompetencies of the Iraqi government untouched and thus left the seeds of future conflict while temporarily tamping down violence to a level which would still horrify anyone West of Beirut. The planned surge in Afghanistan is likely to do the same there.

Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.

Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.

Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.

“It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe,” Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. “Everything is possible in this country now. Everything.”

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

It's utterly unclear how 30,000 extra American soldiers in the South are intended to remedy this situation - and if corruption remains untouched then allied forces will have to remain there in perpetuity to ensure any level of cohesive governance at all. Thus the two greatest drivers of the Taliban's resurgent insurgency will remain intact and anything done in Helmland takes on the character of an extended game of whack-a-mole.

However, extending cycles of violence until the point where they dropped off the medias radar worked in Iraq and gave the US an excuse to head (mostly) for the exits. The same might be true in Afghanistan. Matt Yglesias writes:

What I do think it’s worth reflecting on is what a big deal it really turns out to have been that the Bush administration screwed up back in the winter of 2001-2002 and failed to capute Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and the rest of the top al-Qaeda / Taliban leadership. Had we done that, I think we still would have been under a general moral and prudential obligation to try to assist the people of Afghanistan. But transforming Afghanistan into a prosperous, stable government with an effective central authority has always been a tall order. And if we’d achieved our core security objectives back six and a half years ago, then the stakes would be much lower if down the road foreign troops started to wear out their welcome for whatever reason. We could just leave.

Foreign troops have already worn out their welcome - even Karzai is looking for a timetable nowadays. But we're no closer to "a prosperous, stable government with an effective central authority" than we've ever been in Iraq - just as the Kurds or the federalist/seperatists of Basra - yet we're still leaving. It occurs to me that an Obama administration might look to re-engineer the exit from Iraq for Afghanistan. Paper over the cracks for long enough if they can, declare victory and visibly leave, while repurposing a large part of any occupation forces as "trainers". Then, of course, any later collapse isn't officially our fault for invading in the first place...

Crossposted from Newshoggers

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When is a withdrawal not a withdrawal? Apparently, when it's conducted by the Obama administration's "bipartisan" hangovers.

This Sunday,Joe Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that a NY Times report alleging U.S. military commanders argued at Biden's national security meeting this week that they could not meet the 16-month U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq deadline called for by Obama was false.

"I'm not going to get into detail, but the answer is, nothing was that stark at all. There is -- there isn't any -- there isn't any conclusion reached or presentation made that suggests that we cannot rationalize the -- the status of forces agreement terms and the objectives of the Obama-Biden administration," Biden said.

"He is committed within the context of what he said at the time," Biden said of Obama. "He said he would at the time confer with the military leaders on the ground. We will be out of Iraq in -- in the same -- in the -- in the way in which Barack Obama described his position during the campaign. That will happen."

But on Charlie Rose midweek, Bob Gates was clear that withdrawal doesn't mean withdrawal, not by a long chalk.

ROSE: As far as you understand it, how many residual forces will be left [in Iraq] after 2011?

GATES: Well, I think that remains to be seen, and first of all, because any forces remaining there after the end of 2011 will have to be there as a result of a new agreement negotiated with the Iraqis. So they will clearly have a voice in how many are there as well.

ROSE: If they say none, it’s none or not?

GATES: That’s absolutely right.

ROSE: Yeah.

GATES: That’s absolutely right. They are a sovereign country, and if they tell us after the end of 2011, we want you all out, I think we have no choice but to do that. I think that just in a ball park figure when I think of the support that they likely are going to need for their air force, for their navy, for counterterrorism, for continued training, for intelligence, for logistics and so on, my guess is that you’re looking at perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops, but clearly, in a very different role than we have played for the last five years.

Gates went on to say that these "several tens of thousands" of troops - the equivalent of at least ten brigades - wouldn't have a combat role, but this is still clearly parsing "complete withdrawal" as required by the SOFA beyond the boundaries of the language. Gates obviously expects three years to be "a long time", as both General Mullen and General Odierno have recently phrased it, and expects that what's in the SOFA right now won't be what happens when the day comes due to live up to it.

There's a massive disconnect between Gates and Biden here, one that's only explainable by two possibilities; either that major parsing of Obama's "withdrawal" and the letter of the SOFA agreement is taking place with Obama's permission, or that it isn't. The people deserve to know which one it is.

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The Deciderer, according to the Three Amigos

There's a lot of fluff about bi-partisan agreement, withdrawing to leave a democratic Iraq and the "successes" of the last two years in an op-ed by John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham in the Washington Post today. But there's only one important bit.

Gen. Odierno was the operational architect of the surge in 2007, when he served as deputy to Gen. Petraeus, as well as of the tribal engagement strategy that persuaded Sunnis to abandon the insurgency and join our side. Gen. Odierno -- as the current commander on the ground -- is the person whose judgment should matter most in determining how fast and how deep a drawdown can be ordered responsibly.

This is the same General Odierno who recently forgot his place in the chain of command, saying that he had no intention of sticking to the U.S. agreement with Iraq which says all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the summer. He also hinted that the 2011 final withdrawal date might be ignorable, saying "Three years is a very long time."

The Maliki government was quick to respond that it expected the letter of the status of forces agreement to be adhered to. But Bush administration loyalist Odierno, by indicating that the U.S. would continue to try to bend treaties and deals all out of shape instead of sticking to its word, has badly damaged Obama's political capital abroad before the President Elect has even taken office. It's off a piece with other military statements, as Gareth Porter reported on Thursday:

Gen. David Petraeus, now commander of CENTCOM, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who opposed Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan during the election campaign, have drawn up their own alternative withdrawal plan rejecting that timeline, as the New York Times reported Thursday. That plan was communicated to Obama in general terms by Secretary of Defence Robert M.Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen when he met with his national security team in Chicago on Dec. 15, according to the Times.

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By Cernig

And so the coalition of the unwilling dwindles even further. Even UK conservatives abandoned Iraq as the wrong war, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, some years ago - as did the bulk of the British populace. Now Gordon Brown has flown to Bagdhad to announce a withdrawal of British forces by the end of July next year. Only 300 troops will remain to train Iraqi forces.

Brown had to spin it as completing a noble exercise in "the tasks of overthrowing a dictatorship, the task of building a democracy for the future and defending it against terrorism", of course, but I don't see him, his ministers or his senior officers heaving any kind of sigh except one of relief. Britain only stayed because of the "special relationship", not because anyone believed the narrative Bush and Blair concocted any more.

Oh, and the Iraqis tacked five other nations with a smaller troop presence, including Romania, El Salvador and Estonia, onto Britain's withdrawal agreement

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for a timetable to end the occupation of Afghanistan by Western forces or if not, said that the West must accept negotiations with the Taliban to end bloodshed there.

President Hamid Karzai told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation Tuesday that the international community should set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan.

It appeared to be the first time Karzai has called for a time limit on the international effort to defeat Taliban militants and raise a stable and competent Afghan security force and government.

"If there is no deadline, we have the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations," Karzai was quoted as saying in a statement from his office.

Spencer Ackerman has the essential analysis, as usual. Although he thinks that Karzai is indeed trying to box the US and its allies into accepting a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, Spencer also writes:

My first instinct is that this is a measure to shore up Karzai’s waning support among war-weary Pashtuns. But could he really mean there ought to be a set date on ending the Afghanistan war? One thing that’s been entirely missing from the policy debate on Afghanistan — in the U.S., in NATO, in Afghanistan — is that no one even pretends to think about how the war is supposed to end. No one knows the endgame, and no one even proposes endgames.

Brian Beutler is right - it's about time someone in the West did start talking about an Afghanistan endgame and that someone is Barrack Obama. He was right about needing one in Iraq, something the Bush administration has belatedly signed on to in an embarassing climbdown. Now here's an opportunity for some more much-needed foresight and international leadership.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Here's a historic picture from AFP, via the NY Times - The Iraqi cabinet has approved the current wording of the so-called Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraq, which will replace the UN mandate at the end of the year, with only one dissenting voice.

Spencer Ackerman writes:

The Bush administration intended the SOFA process to entrench the occupation. Instead it gave the Iraqi government the means to end it. And that's the best-possible way for the war to end: with the Iraqi government -- the one we've disingenuously told the world we're in Iraq to support -- showing its political maturation to get us out the day after tomorrow. And out actually means out. The SOFA demands that every last U.S. serviceman is on a plane by December 31, 2011. Obama's plan for a 30,000-troop residual force? Officially overtaken by events. As I say, the impact of this appears not to have sunken in. The Iraqis have forced an end to the war.

But the neocons are determined to get every last day out of their war. At Commentary, Abe Greenwald spins the cabinet's vote as favorably as he can:

What happens to the claim that Barack Obama’s drawdown plan was consonant with the hopes of the Iraqi leadership? The agreement calls for American troops to be in Iraq for three more years. That’s 36 months - more than twice the length of time Obama has proposed troops stay in the country.

Nevertheless, President Obama will heed the new reality.

There is far too much resting on the successful fulfillment of this agreement for Obama to defy it. For starters, it is a watershed moment for American-Iraqi relations and Iraqi sovereignty... Tearing up a cooperative agreement so delicately arrived at would go down as a diplomatic and geopolitical travesty for the Obama administration — proving, as it would, that America’s talk of freedom and democracy is piffle.

I'm not sure that Obama couldn't stick to his 16 month deadline, if he wanted to, without contravening the agreement. As far as I'm aware (and I only have leaks to work with - no-one's seen the final wording in public yet), the agreement only says US troops must withdraw no later than Dec. 31, 2011, and makes no mention of prohibiting an earlier withdrawal.

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TPM's Josh Marshall asks "Why Gates?" Tuesday.

Gareth Porter at IPS has been talking to (anonymous, as ever) Obama transition team folks who tell him that the chances of Robert Gates staying on as SecDef "are now about 10 percent".

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that two unnamed Obama advisers had said Obama was "leaning toward" asking Gates stay on, although the report added that other candidates were also in the running. The Journal said Gates was strongly opposed to any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and it speculated that a Gates appointment "could mean that Mr. Obama was effectively shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010."

Some Obama advisers have been manoeuvering for a Gates nomination for months. Former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig publicly raised the idea of a Gates reprise in June and again in early October. Danzig told reporters Oct. 1, however, that he had not discussed the possibility with Obama.

Obama advisers who support his Iraq withdrawal plan, however, have opposed a Gates appointment. Having a defence secretary who is not fully supportive of the 16-month timetable would make it very difficult, if not impossible for Obama to enforce it on the military.

A source close to the Obama transition team told IPS Tuesday that the chances that Gates would be nominated by Obama "are now about 10 percent".

The source said that Obama is going to stick with his 16-month withdrawal timeline, despite the pressures now being brought to bear on him. "There is no doubt about it," said the source, who refused to elaborate because of the sensitivity of the matter.

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While the presidential candidates try to outdo each other on hawkishness on their Afghanistan/Pakistan policies and violence rises even further, the military seem to be the ones really running U.S. foreign policy in the region. And they're looking for a Grand Bargain.

This week's Sixty Minutes has eye-opening footage from a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, which includes up-close combat with Taliban militants.

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The footage underscores what a recent draft of a National Intelligence Estimate called Afghanistan's "downward spiral", with a 30 percent increase in attacks in the last year.

These soldiers had not come this close to their enemy in Afghanistan before - close enough to lob hand grenades. Staff Sgt. Jake Schlereth had to crawl into a cornfield in pursuit. "You couldn't see [the enemy]…and…I had to get down on the ground and look and see if they were down there…you knew they were in there," he tells Logan.

At least twelve enemy fighters were killed in the skirmish and one U.S. soldier was wounded. The soldiers found a camera left behind by the enemy that contained images of at least 50 heavily armed fighters, showing details of their training and actual attacks. But it also showed enemy surveillance of U.S. soldiers on patrol. Says Capt. Thomas Kilbride, who leads such patrols, "This is showing a [U.S.] unit driving. I don't know if this is us or not." Does he think he and his men are being watched every time they go on patrol? "Oh, yeah," he says.

The images on the camera prove the enemy is better armed and organized. One of the men killed was carrying an identification card issued across the border in Pakistan. The U.S. military plans more fighting ahead in the winter months, when violence is usually less. "I'm here to predict this winter will be the most violent winter so far," says Gen. Schlosser.

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Amy Goodman talks with Nir Rosen about his Taliban embed.

Nir Rosen imbedded with the Taliban for his latest report on Afghanistan, out now in Rolling Stone. His experiences included almost being executed by a fanatical Taliban local warlord, but he came away with the conclusion that adding more troops to Afghanistan won’t work, and that we should prepare an exit strategy.

Simply put, it is too late for Bush's "quiet surge" — or even for Barack Obama's plan for a more robust reinforcement — to work in Afghanistan. More soldiers on the ground will only lead to more contact with the enemy, and more air support for troops will only lead to more civilian casualties that will alienate even more Afghans. Sooner or later, the American government will be forced to the negotiating table, just as the Soviets were before them.

"The rise of the Taliban insurgency is not likely to be reversed," says Abdulkader Sinno, a Middle East scholar and the author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. "It will only get stronger. Many local leaders who are sitting on the fence right now — or are even nominally allied with the government — are likely to shift their support to the Taliban in the coming years. What's more, the direct U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is now likely to spill over into Pakistan. It may be tempting to attack the safe havens of the Taliban and Al Qaeda across the border, but that will only produce a worst-case scenario for the United States. Attacks by the U.S. would attract the support of hundreds of millions of Muslims in South Asia. It would also break up Pakistan, leading to a civil war, the collapse of its military and the possible unleashing of its nuclear arsenal."

In the same speech in which he promised a surge, Bush vowed that he would never allow the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan. But they have already returned, and only negotiation with them can bring any hope of stability.

John McCain's strategy - following the Bush administration in handing policymaking to General Petraeus - isn't going to work any better. Talking our way to an exit from the doomed adventure in Afghanistan really is the only way out of that grim trap.

Spencer Ackerman calls Rosen's report an instant classic of war reporting and I totally agree. Just read it, ok?

Crossposted from Newshoggers