Gene Lyons in Salon on the myriad forces that insist we can't afford health care, but just as strongly assure us that $6.73 trillion for the war in Afghanistan is perfectly doable. (That's $1 million per soldier, per year.) Go read the whole thing:

For all its brutality, the Taliban rebellion is mainly a localized, nationalist effort to expel foreigners -- one reason Gen. McChrystal hopes to be able to pacify them, as his mentor Gen. David Petraeus bought off Iraqi insurgents. With winter approaching, Taliban fighters will soon be forced into semi-hibernation. Any U.S. buildup will take at least a year to complete.

The big rush, in other words, has less to do with military necessity than with Washington political theater: specifically, the war lobby's ability to force President Obama's hand. Actually, "war industry" might be more apt. It's both more concise than the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against and it takes into account the "privatization" of military jobs once done by soldiers -- such as driving supply convoys (Halliburton), guarding embassies and other U.S. facilities (Blackwater) and training Afghan soldiers (DynCorp International).

[...] Following upon David Barstow's 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times exposé about blatant conflicts of interest among Pentagon-coached retired generals posing as disinterested "military analysts" on every TV news network you can think of, Americans can no longer afford to be blasé about the war industry.

They're selling us endless war the way they sell cellphones and Viagra.

The question is: How much is President Obama buying?

Spencer Ackerman has done a yeoman's job digging into the details as to whether the 40-44,000 troop estimate by Gen. McChrystal is even realistic to consider, when one counts the number of troops still in Iraq and Gen. Odierno's glacially slow deployment out of that country, the number of troops who have just returned from Iraq or Afghanistan (or Kosovo or the Phillipines or Egypt or any number of other deployments), numbers of troops assigned in Germany and S. Korea, and the number of troops that are left available. It's a pretty close thing.

Obama would have something of a cushion, but not much, in the early months of 2010. An additional five brigades will finish their 12 months of so-called “dwell time” at home between deployments by April 2010, providing an additional 22,600 troops, but by that time, about 10,200 troops will be scheduled to leave Afghanistan, leaving available a net gain of 12,400. More brigades become available in the summer and fall, although others currently in Afghanistan will be ending their scheduled deployments then as well. Under current Pentagon policy, dwell time for the National Guard varies, but can be no shorter than two years, and so it is possible but not certain that two National Guard brigades composed of 6,800 National Guard soldiers might be available for deployment by March 2010 as well, beyond the 24,000 theoretically available now. Pentagon leaders had hoped to extend dwell time this year, but that was before McChrystal’s request for additional troops.

There will undoubtably be a Marine regiment or two included in the mix, but (for all the noise and thunder) the Marines are a small part of the overall "boots on the ground" needed by McChrystal's projection. You can't count on increases from NATO - the Brits may throw another 500 troops into the mix, Germany just announced that its troops would stay another year but didn't commit to increases, and Canada's counting on next year being its last. I sincerely doubt that the other countries are going to do anything different. And I am sure not going to count onany sudden near-term increase of professionalism or competency in the Afgan army.

So my question is this: Did McChrystal select, and the Joint Chiefs endorse, a 40-44,000 troop increase in Afghanistan because it was the right number, or because it was in fact the upper limit of available active duty troops (assuming that the White House will not ask Congress to authorize the call up of more Reserves and National Guard units)? The authorized increase in troops that Congress allowed a few years ago isn't going to kick in enough replacements to really count in any significant way. As I and others have noted, increasing the US troop strength to 102,000 or so still is going to be insufficient to be successful in securing Afghanistan in any time less than several years. If this is the upper limit, that there will be no other active troops available in brigade-size units, then we're really limiting our strategic options to "influence" anyone else in the world.

This is probably a good indication of why the White House is really trying to understand what the options are and what the implications are. As Mark Grimsley notes, there is a general consensus that there is no need for a quick decision in a military sense, given that the situation is stable - AQ is contained, the Taliban aren't about to take Kabul, and our troops aren't on the edge of re-directing the Taliban's growth any time soon.

The real division of opinion is about whether completion of the strategic review is time urgent in a political sense.  Does the length of the review reflect deliberation or vacillation, strength or weakness?  Where people come down on this essentially reflects their opinion of Obama.

Which is why the Republicans are already set to take cheap shots at the White House no matter what the decision is, and despite any rationale for the final direction that President Obama identifies. I can understand Obama's focus on the economy and on health care - these domestic issues capture the attention of the public and he needs the political capital from the presidential election that is running out.  But now we're finally in that point in time where Obama will have to announce his final decision. There's a lot riding on this decision, and I hope that Obama has the sense to identify his exit strategy and timeframe as justification for that decision.

Talking Points Memo notes that former SecState Condi Rice and former NSA Stephen Hadley are joining forces to create a" strategic consulting" firm. May I suggest that this is probably an even bigger farce than former FEMA Director Michael Brown's decision to start a consulting firm on disaster preparedness following his stellar performance during Katrina?

I really want to know what clients these two take on, so that I can relentlessly mock their stupidity for hiring the dynamic duo who brought us into the adventures of invading Iraq and Afghanistan without any idea of the resources required or any form of an exit strategy.

UPDATE: In the comments, jenne corrects me:

I think the Cheney "Keep America Safe" Institute is a bigger farce than both Brown and Condi's thingies put together.

OUCH. And touche'

If this is real resistance, and not a choreographed dance to make himself look "strong," we might possibly (it's a long shot, I know) avoid sinking deeper into this Afghanistan quagmire:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy — most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama's thinking.

Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama's resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.

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I am shocked, shocked to discover that US contractors bribed Iraqi government officials to overlook its misconduct... Really, does this surprise anyone when it comes to Blackwater?

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
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The four former Blackwater executives, who had held high-ranking posts at the company, would speak only on condition of anonymity. Two of them said they took part in talks about the payments; the two others said they had been told by several Blackwater officials about the discussions. In agreeing to describe those conversations, the four officials said that they were troubled by a pattern of questionable conduct by Blackwater, which had led them to leave the company.

A senior State Department official said that American diplomats were not aware of any payoffs to Iraqi officials.

Of course the US government was blind to this - they didn't want to know, they turned a blind eye to what Blackwater was doing because it would have been too hard to arrange for another contractor to do all the security missions that it had ongoing. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are as many private contractors as there are uniformed military personnel. Most of them are not security guards as Blackwater's most visible function was. The lack of oversight is abhorrent but not surprising; the State Dept's failure to can this company is inexcusable.

My only observation on this article is to suggest how the US government got into this predicament, and it's pretty easy to see. The Bush administration wanted to hold onto the fiction of a few conservative principles, one of those being the concept of a small federal government. Since it already blew that "principle" with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, I'm betting there was White House guidance that directed "no more personnel growth in DOD or State." That didn't mean that there wasn't lots of work to be done, however. The beans and the bullets still had to get out to the Middle East, and it was still dangerous Injun country for all those unarmed State Dept civilians doing Condi's work out there.

So out come the sole source, cost-plus contracts for KBR, Haliburton, and Blackwater, adding tens of thousands of additional personnel to the mix. The growth of contractors wasn't only apparent overseas, it's very apparent in the Washington DC area in support of larger defense contracts and operations (confession: I is one of them). Now SecDef Gates is trying to flush out the system, and it's going to prove much harder than he puts on in his speeches. Everyone admits there's a problem - but no one wants to create the necessary oversight mechanism to stop this misbehavior in the future. Regulating industry is bad, don't you know.

It's a good thing that people insist that the government investigate important scandals like ACORN, isn't it? It's your tax money, going to only the best and brightest that money can buy.

I am sure that John Hannah, former deputy national security advisor to VP Dick Cheney, didn't mean to confess how badly the Bush administration screwed up Afghanistan before it turned over the mess to President Obama, but that's exactly what his post in the Foreign Policy Magazine's "Shadow Government" blog did. Spencer Ackerman provides a very appropriate take-down of the Hannah lecture:

Wherein the former foreign-policy aide to Dick Cheney attempts to exonerate the Bush administration’s complete and total fuck-up-itude on Afghanistan. Words fail. It’s hard to excerpt. But I’ll try.

“Eight years of drift,” according to Obama administration officials seeking to explain their lengthy deliberations over strategy and troop numbers. But, as Stephens suggests, the reality is a good deal more complex. The fact is that, after a period of genuine progress following the Taliban’s removal in late 2001, the situation in Afghanistan only began to deteriorate markedly between 2005 and 2006. Suicide attacks quintupled that year. Remotely detonated bombs more than doubled. Insurgent attacks nearly tripled. And the trends have steadily worsened every year since.

Yeah, except for that, it was all going so well!

The question is why?

An ideological inability to embrace the necessity of state-building? A defense secretary who refused to allow U.S. forces to perform peacekeeping tasks? Consistent and thorough underresourcing? A president who never treated Pakistan as a theater of the Afghanistan war? Or who reduced policy in both countries to two chiefs of state? A totally unnecessary additional war that you geniuses decided to launch?

I certainly don’t have an exhaustive answer…

May I offer one?

To summarize Hannah's three points, the US advisor to Karzai left in 2005 to go to Iraq on Bush's orders; NATO took over operations, largely because the Bush administration didn't want to put more US troops in Afghanistan and it wanted European troops there; and the Bush administration didn't hold Pakistan to any accountability to hold down its side of the border. It's interesting how Hannah forgets to mention that these were all key Bush decisions.

The most ironic part of his post is the ending, where Hannah says (paraphrasing his words), "yeah, we screwed it up pretty good and now it's going to cost a lot more than we anticipated, but hey, at least we'll stop those Taliban tribes from taking over Pakistan and stealing its nukes." What an incredibly lame and useless man this is.

Because we've outsourced so many functions that used to be handled by federal and/or military employees, we've also lost control of outcomes like this:

Contractors working for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan are fouling the nests of U.S. soldiers with pollution, poisoning the troops in the very bases meant to be their sanctuaries.

That's the central allegation in a new set of lawsuits filed in Nashville and elsewhere across the country. The legal actions name as defendants the controversial contracting firm KBR Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root), as well as Halliburton Co., of which KBR used to be a subsidiary, and a Turkish general contracting firm, ERKA Ltd.

"These for-profit corporations callously exposed and continue to expose soldiers and others to toxic smoke, ash and fumes," says the complaint filed in Nashville on Friday, which asks for damages on behalf of two Tennessee soldiers. "These exposures are causing a host of serious diseases, increased risk of serious diseases in the future, death and increased risk of death."

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, describes "burn pits" at U.S. bases in both military theaters that contain "every type of waste imaginable." Reading like a postmodern version of Jonathan Swift's Description of a City Shower, the catalog of rubbish in the pits includes:

"Tires, lithium batteries, Styrofoam, paper, wood, rubber, petroleum-oil-lubricating products, metals, hydraulic fluids, munitions boxes, medical waste, biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."

"Flames shoot hundreds of feet into the sky" as the huge pits are set ablaze, the Nashville lawsuit claims.

Noting that "burning plastics emit dioxins, which are known to cause cancer," the complaint accuses the defendants of negligence, battery and inflicting emotional distress. Saying an estimated 100,000 soldiers and contract personnel may have been harmed by the smoke from the pits, the plaintiffs want the court to force KBR and the other companies to cover future medical expenses and pay other compensatory damages.

I wonder who the human corpses were? And why were they burned?

What is it about Democratic hawks that makes them so indistinguishable from Republican hawks? From the AP:

Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy said a strategy decision on new deployments involving the U.S. and other troop-contributing nations would be made within the next few weeks, according to an official transcript released Saturday.

Flournoy, the Pentagon's policy chief, led a U.S. delegation that briefed NATO ambassadors Thursday on the Obama administration's review of the Afghan war. Officials released a transcript of her remarks from that meeting.

"No one is talking about leaving Afghanistan, or even standing pat. We are increasing our commitment and we're talking about how best to do that with both civilian and military resources," Flournoy was quoted as telling NATO ambassadors.

Tell me, Ms. Flournoy, how many thousands of troops NATO is going to be providing, given their limited participation to date and their nations' people also coming out more and more against further involvement in Afghanistan? How many more years, how many more deaths, how many more billions will it take before Afghanistan is "secure"? Honestly, someone needs to clue in Ms. Flournoy about the failed wisdom of following in the footsteps of the "stupidest guy on the face of the planet."

I have never understood the grasping need of Dem politicians to be viewed as being as tough as - and often, as foolish - Repub politicians when it comes to issues of national security. Afghanistan is not vital to American security interests - going after al Qaeda is, and they're in Pakistan. We need a strategy of containment rather than one of nation-building - we can't afford the current strategy, and it's overdue for a change.

What happens after all the fear mongering that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons bunker turns out to be bunk?

U.N. inspectors found "nothing to be worried about" in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

Mohamed ElBaradei also told the New York Times that he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.

The nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to Western fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.

ElBaradei was quoted in a New York Times interview as saying his inspectors' initial findings at the fortified site beneath a desert mountain near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom were "nothing to be worried about."

"The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things," ElBaradei, alluding to Tehran's references to the site as a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant were bombed by a foe like Israel.

"It's a hole in a mountain," he said.

But, let's not let you get too comfortable about Iran...GuardianUK's Julian Borger comes up with a new scare:

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Ooooh...booga booga booga! Two things that glare out for me: one, Borger cites the IAEA unpublished report without one single quotation. Two, Borger claims the "two point implosion" is "officially secret" in the US and UK, but how secret can it be when it has its own Wikipedia page?

The media really does think you're dumb and can't figure out teh Google.

There's just not much to say about the tragic news yesterday - twelve 13 dead and 30 injured as a result of a "lone gunman," now identified as an Army major. MAJ Nidal Hasan was a psychiatrist who had graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997 and spent six years at Walter Reed Army Medical Clinic before moving to Fort Hood. He was not a happy man.

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

"I know what that is like," she said. "Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay" for his medical training.
--------------
He had been affected by the physical and mental injuries he saw while working as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed for nearly eight years, according to his aunt. "He must have snapped," Noel Hasan said. "They ignored him. It was not hard to know when he was upset. He was not a fighter, even as a child and young man. But when he became upset, his face turns red." She said Hasan had consulted with an attorney about getting out of the service.

On the rare occasions when he spoke of his work in any detail, the aunt said, Hasan told her of soldiers wracked by what they had seen. One patient had suffered burns to his face so intense "that his face had nearly melted," she said. "He told us how upsetting that was to him."

It's clear that this was not a simple case of "Vietnam Vet" syndrome. He was a prior enlisted soldier who got a commission through ROTC, and was promoted to major last year. Hasan had not deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, but he was faced with the aftermath of that conflict on a very personal basis. In a big organization like the Army, and on a huge and busy base like Fort Hood, it's clear that his colleagues and other people who probably saw his behavior worsen didn't see the opportunity to intervene. With big organizations, sometimes the system fails the individuals who need the most help. It's a horrible situation, but this is what war can lead to - the injuries aren't limited to the battlefield. Thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims at Fort Hood.

I don't usually comment on a blog post that comments on another blog post, but I believe Matt Yglesias hits on an important issue in his observations on Andrew Exum's interview with Washington Post reporter and author Greg Jaffe.

Greg Jaffe, speaking to Andrew Exum, says “This whole conventional vs. irregular debate is stupid.”

War is war. And we waste far too much energy trying to categorize it. I think most lieutenants, captains and majors are beyond this false conventional vs. irregular frame that we try to impose on war. I wish I could say the same for the more senior people in the Pentagon.

I think there’s a lot of truth to that. At the same time, just because things look one way to “lieutenants, captains and majors” and another way to “senior people in the Pentagon” doesn’t mean we should take a dismissive view of the senior people’s outlook in a rush to celebrate the insights of the practical warfighter.
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And when you get down to the guts of defense budget politics, these high-level strategic concepts matter a great deal. Nobody, of course, is going to say that the U.S. should somehow completely abandon its ability to fight conventional wars. But the choice between a mindset that says “the main purpose of the military is to scare China & Russia” or a mindset that says “the main purpose of the military is to intervene effectively in third world backwaters” has very real implications for what kind of hardware purchases look cost effective.

There is no doubt in my mind that the issue of "hardware purchases" looms very large in the minds of senior military and civilian decision makers. Conventional warfare means lots of tanks, armored vehicles, stealthy jets, next generation bombers, submarines, destroyers, and aircraft carriers. And let's not even get into the care and feeding of that massive military machine. Counterinsurgency operations, or COIN, is completely the opposite, with a focus on maintaining security and diminishing the insurgent grasp on the population without destroying real estate. Also a no-brainer that the DOD budget is already too bloated, and that in managing two wars, protecting the homeland, and trying to modernize its equipment, there's going to be some in-fighting.

But more importantly, the issue is also in the theory and execution of national strategy. The basic idea of military doctrine is that small military units execute tactics on the ground that must support the overall plan of operations within a theater. The theater commander needs to ensure that he has adequate numbers of personnel, that operations continue toward a particular set of goals, and that the logistics support those operations - and his operations must support the overall national strategy for that region. If your tactics and operations don't align against the strategic goals and expected outcome, then you're doing something wrong - even if you're General McChrystal.

Now under the Bush administration, strategic goals and outcomes changed every Friedman unit (six months), which made it difficult to effectively plan operations or execute tactics. But one thing that was certainly clear was that conventional tactics that destroyed the Taliban in 2002 and that took the Iraqi army out in 2003 didn't support the post-conflict goals. You can't prosecute military operations with a conventional frame of mind when what one really needs is an approach to irregular warfare. That's why we failed in Lebanon in 1983.

Greg Jaffe is a good journalist, and I look forward to reading his book. On the other hand, making a statement like "War is war. And we waste far too much energy trying to categorize it" is a remarkably stupid statement. Nuclear war is not the same as conventional war. Conventional war is not the same as irregular war. Our military needs to be able to operate across a range of different operations, and needs to be equipped properly to execute its operations quickly and efficiently. But what we really need is national leadership that understands the nature of war, that knows how to develop a strategy that is executable, and that knows when it's time to go. From Sun Tzu:

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Thus ends the lesson.

Of course, considering how little Israel has conceded to the peace process in the past, just about anything would look good. But I'll cautiously give the Obama administration some props here - they do appear to be serious about forcing at least some progress with Israel:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that Israel is making "unprecedented" concessions on West Bank settlement construction — a position clearly at odds with the prevailing Palestinian view.

Palestinian leaders have said they will not return to peace talks with Israel unless it halts all settlement building on lands they claim for a future state, and they believe Israel has blatantly defied a U.S. demand for a settlement freeze.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, Clinton said Israel is putting significant limits on settlement activity.

"What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements ... is unprecedented," she said.

The issue of settlements has become the biggest sticking point in getting Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

Clinton made it clear that she wasn't pleased with Israeli settlement construction but that it was no reason to hold up talks.

"There are always demands made in any negotiation that are not going to be fully realized," she said.

Likely translation: We're going to take whatever crumb you throw as encouragement, but you're not going to get off the hook that easily.

Palestinians expressed deep disappointment and frustration at Clinton's words, which signaled a departure from past U.S. calls for a complete freeze on settlement activity.

"If America cannot get Israel to implement a settlement freeze, what chance do Palestinians have of reaching agreement with Israel on permanent status issues?" Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Similar sentiments were voiced by Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab countries to have peace agreements with Israel. The two countries said most of the blame lay with Israel, but signaled their unhappiness with the American shift.

Jordan's King Abdullah II traveled to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. After the meeting, a royal palace statement released in Jordan said both leaders "insisted on the need for an immediate halt of all Israeli unilateral actions, which undermine the chances of achieving peace, especially the settlement construction."

I wanted to echo Brother Matt's point at Foreign Policy Watch that this AP article at the Huffington Post, "Troops In Afghanistan Outnumber Taliban 12-1" written by Slobodan Lekic, does completely miss the point.  We don't expect journalists to understand military theory before they write about military issues, so this doesn't surprise us. But it does bear correcting the observations within the article.

There are already more than 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan working with 200,000 Afghan security forces and police. It adds up to a 12-1 numerical advantage over Taliban rebels, but it hasn't led to anything close to victory.

Now, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan is asking for tens of thousands more troops to stem the escalating insurgency, raising the question of how many more troops it would take to succeed.
-----------
The 12-1 ratio may be misleading because two-thirds of the Allied force is made up of Afghans, who lack the training and experience. The Taliban usually fight in small, cohesive units made up of friends and fellow clansmen. A more meaningful ratio, then, might be 4-1 or 5-1.

Historically in guerrilla wars, security forces have usually had at least a 3-1 advantage.

Now, any strategist worth his/her salt will tell you that numerical supremacy within a theater of operations doesn't count for squat. It doesn't matter whether the US coalition outnumbers the Taliban by a ratio of 12-1, 5-1, or 3-1. What matters is what the ratio is when US forces are engaging the Taliban in tactical battles, such as those in Nuristan provinces. If the side with superior forces is spread out and trying to cover everything, then the side with fewer numbers and more agility has the combat advantage. This has happened time and time again through history.

These numbers and rations ought not to be considered in McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops. What matters is what strategy is pursued - country-wide COIN operations, conducting combat operations, protecting "ink spots" and vital regions, or just training Afghan security forces and protecting the government. McChrystal didn't ask for enough to do a country-wide option, so I'm guessing that he's going for "ink spots" plus combat operations. President Obama seems to be leaning toward just doing the "ink spot" strategy, which might not require additional troops.

So ignore the talk about force ratios and troop increases - it's not relevant until a sustainable long-term regional strategy is developed and implemented. The real unanswered question remains, "How does this all end?"  

If you don't read anything else about Afghanistan, make sure that this NY Times article on President Karzai's brother is the one you read. It's a very interesting piece, and has implications far beyond the immediate shock waves that it will inevitably cause.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
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These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

Now the fact that Mr. Karzai is profiting both from the drug trade and from supporting the CIA's operations is not in and of itself particularly amazing or outlandish to most people who understand the Afghani culture and who have to demonstrate short-term progress against the Taliban. A former CIA intel officer is quoted in the article:

“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

The CIA has a long record of supporting bad actors in the name of getting intelligence or achieving progress against other countries whose goals are inimical to US interests, and that may be understandable in some situations, except when that practice runs counter to official US policy in those particular regions. The brother to the president of Afghanistan uses his position to profit from the drug trade and also is a prime suspect in trying to fix the election (in a disappointingly transparent and amateurish fashion). That might be acceptable except for the fact that he's not helping the US government advance its efforts to stabilize the country.

Our government's goals do not align with the brothers Karzai's goals. Mr. Karzai's interests are to protect the drug lords in the south provinces, who in turn pay and rely on the Taliban for protection. Those are the same provinces where US, British, and other forces are fighting and dying every day. Until the current Afghani government is replaced by a legitimate group which has a real desire to advance the Afghani people's needs and interests, there is no way that a strategy based on COIN tactics will work. And if there is no way that COIN tactics will work, then there is no reason to support Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000+ additional troops.

Of course, there is the possibility that our government's actual goal is to develop Afghanistan into "a horrific, full-fledged quagmire by 2012."

(This is a follow-up on Heather's earlier post on same subject)

Editor's note: Please welcome to the Crooks and Liars team Jason Sigger, who many of you may already know from his superb work at the Armchair Generalist. Jason is going to be writing about national-security issues for C&L; we're pleased and excited to have him aboard.

There has been some talk in the papers about the NATO Secretary General's support for Gen. McChrystal's report. I would suggest that what he said was that Afghanistan clearly does need some COIN support. What he also said was this (see around 3:30 mark):

"NATO will consider the addition of ground forces when the time is right."

Wow. So it's okay to endorse the strategy, but there's no way that NATO is going to actually add any substantive amount of troops to the mix. Other than Britain, I am not sure we're going to see more than a few dozen military personnel from the rest of the community. So whenever NATO wants to get serious about sending its fair share of troops - say, about 20,000 or so of the 40,000 request on the table - then feel free to discuss how our operations in Afghanistan ought to be conducted, Mr. Rasmussen.

More from Spencer Ackerman.

Minor disclaimer - My usual audience at Armchair Generalist knows that I am not a COIN fan and pessimistic as to how NATO works in these coalition operations. As others wiser than I have noted, the US govt can certainly stay and do COIN, but it's long term and very expensive. I'd much rather see a limited COIN/CT strategy such as the one described by VP Biden, Gen Krulak and others, with a disengagement and pull out before 2012. The US engagement won't end overnight, but we certainly need to put a cap on the future investments of "blood and treasure" in this region.