Twisting The Knife

Digby noted that A Man Called Petraeus was ramping up his 2012 strategy. It continued today:

WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Central Command, Army General David Petraeus, said on Wednesday that both he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen had endorsed an assessment by the top commander in Afghanistan that says more troops would be needed.

"Obviously I endorsed, the chairman endorsed... Gen. (Stanley) McChrystal's assessment and description," Petraeus said at a counterinsurgency conference in Washington.

It's a little more complicated than that. Spencer Ackerman was there.

Question time. Trainor reminds everyone not to ask about Afghanistan. Did Petraeus’ strategy review ahead of the Obama administration include a resource request? Twenty counterinsurgents per thousand civilians was the recommendation in the counterinsurgency field manual, Petraeus says. “Concentrate your efforts in the areas where the insurgency is… most threatening the population.” He references Bruce Riedel’s strategy review for the Obama administration on Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, and shows a slide of insurgent activity focusing on the Afghan south and east to demonstrate where counterinsurgency efforts ought to focus.

Unprompted, Petraeus defends Obama’s review of Afghanistan strategy. “We said we expected some form of assessment that we thought would take place in the fall,” he said, and muses on the Afghan election. There have been “events like election that looks like it may not produce a government with greater legitimacy in the eyes of the people.” He praises Gen. McChrystal’s “superb” counterinsurgency guidance and his “highlight[ing] of the need to change the culture” by such things as obeying Afghan traffic laws. As for the resources McChrystal will request, Petraeus says, “the resource options piece will be in in a few days as well.”

It looks like Petraeus is content to let Obama walk into his own problem here. He asserts an endorsement of the McChrystal strategy, but is solicitous of the President's review process. Of course, with each passing day the Pentagon and the neocons can team up to bang on the "indecisive" President (Mitt Romney's already calling him Hamlet), so Petraeus can just sit on the sidelines, offer a hint of approval for escalation, expect everyone in the media to run with that and slowly constrict the President's options.

Petraeus is a better politician than anyone the Republicans have, at least from where I'm sitting.

Bush's Turn

I guess Cheney and Bush switched undisclosed locations for a week, and now the former pResident delivered the talking points about the torture regime.

In his largest domestic speech since leaving the White House in January, Bush told an audience in southwestern Michigan that after the September 11 attacks, "I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you."

Although he did not specifically allude to the high-profile debate over President Obama's decision to halt the use harsh interrogation techniques, and without referencing Cheney by name, Bush spoke in broad strokes about how he proceeded after the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003.

"The first thing you do is ask, what's legal?" he said. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives."

Well, those are two different things, aren't they? "What's legal" does not necessarily equal "What do the lawyers say is possible." Especially depending on the sequencing of those events. If "what do the lawyers say is possible" comes first, and it's more "what can we get the lawyers to say is possible," then "what's legal" becomes fairly irrelevant, right? Especially when combined with "I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you." That sounds like a vow irrespective of the law.

Then there's this unprovable "the information we got saved lives" statement, and considering that George Bush himself signed the executive order barring public disclosure of specific information gained through torture, and furthermore, he could have released them himself at the time if he wanted to be vindicated. For his part, Carl Levin has called B.S.

Regarding Cheney's claim that classified documents will prove his case -- documents that Levin himself is also privy to -- Levin said: "But those classified documents say nothing about the numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction."

Pretty unequivocal. But the last thing that Bush and Cheney want would be declassification. Because their tough-guy stance that torture saves lives works out better for them than chalking intelligence up to sugar free cookies.

This got to me:

The former president earned a noisy standing ovation when asked what he wants his legacy to be.

"Well, I hope it is this: The man showed up with a set of principles, and he was unwilling to compromise his soul for the sake of popularity," he said.

By the way, I'm willing to believe that Bush didn't compromise his soul. He probably didn't know about the worst stuff, and anyway you can't compromise a soul that would say this:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "

"What was her answer?" I wonder.

"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."

...wonder if George would listen to the advice of his commanders on this one:

MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)

Gen. Petraeus: ....T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them -- those techniques work, that's our experience in this business.

MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we're not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

If Petraeus admits that we violated the Geneva Conventions, isn't he calling indirectly for prosecutions of those who ordered such violations?

Stories Of The Tortured

Just a news flash for the 10 people who still think we don't torture, or that the program wasn't widespread policy across all of our detention centers: we do.

(CNN) -- As one of the right-hand men to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef was one of the first Taliban leaders arrested when the United States began military operations in Afghanistan.

As a detainee, he was held both at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- spending more than three years in Guantanamo before he was released in 2006.

Now free, Zaeef -- who claims he is no longer a Taliban member -- alleges the military engaged in abusive treatment both at Bagram and Guantanamo. He says he is still bitter about his time there. Closing Guantanamo Bay, he told CNN, is only part of the justice those detained there deserve.

"It was a bad stain on American history," he said. "If they are closing Guantanamo for justice, they have to bring the people who are torturing people, who abuse people, to justice."

The military has classified those like Zaeef as "enemy combatants," although the Justice Department in March said it would dispose of that classification. The U.S. military in Afghanistan said it was not authorized to comment on Zaeef's or any other individual case.

"I didn't see a worse situation in my life than Bagram," recalled Zaeef. "They were beating me, they put me in the snow, in the cold, until I was unconscious."

Zaaef didn't "return to jihad," as the New York Times put it, but he certainly expressed how those beaten and tortured in custody would come out of that seeking revenge, even if they had no Islamist tendencies beforehand. Hard to say that these people "returned" to the fight. This is what former elite interrogator "Matthew Alexander" (a pseudonym) means when he says that torture cost us thousands of American lives and created far more terrorist attacks than it stopped.

"At the prison where I conducted interrogations," responded Alexander, "we heard day in and day out, foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason that they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."

Read the story, too, of Lakhdar Boumediene, picked up off the street and falsely accused of terrorism, held at Guantanamo Bay and questioned about events about which he didn't know anything, stuck with a feeding tube and force-fed through a nostril for TWO YEARS, and finally released in Paris when the government had to admit they had no proof. He's a strong man that just wants his quiet life back.

This is why even David Petraeus understands the counter-productive nature of torture. It destroys our ideals and debases our values. It creates a recruiting tool for terrorists and leaves our own troops open to attack and abuse. As a practical matter as well as a matter of law, it makes no sense.

So Can We End The War Now?

Steve Hynd makes an excellent point:

The head of U.S. Central Command said Sunday that Al Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan, with its senior leadership having moved to the western region of Pakistan.

Gen. David Petraeus said affiliated groups have "enclaves and sanctuaries" in Afghanistan and that "tentacles of Al Qaeda" have touched countries throughout the Middle East and northern Africa. But he said the terrorist group has suffered" very significant losses" in recent months. [...]

There is no longer any rationale for the current UN mandate for the occupation of Afghanistan. The US military, the Bush administration and now the Obama administration are engaging in mission creep beyond that rationale; firstly by invoking the "you bought it, you own fix it" Pottery Barn deception - the real Pottery barn rule always was "you broke it, you pay for fixing/replacing it and get the f**k out of our store" - and by redefining the battlefield as "Af/Pak" so that the UN mandate can be, entirely illegitimately, stretched into sovereign Pakistan.

That has been the practical effect of the "Af-Pak" determination, and while I think we have a role to play in strengthening the central government of Pakistan and encouraging them to deal with their own homegrown threats, as Hynd says we should get a new UN mandate to authorize such a role, as well as a new UN mandate for continuing to occupy Afghanistan absent an Al Qaeda presence. Instead, we continue to carpet-bomb the country at a record pace, perhaps using white phosphorus in illegal ways on the battlefield, and paying off civilians when we accidentally kill their families. How does this repel an Al Qaeda presence that doesn't exist?

Nice Government You've Got There, Be A Shame If Something Happened To It

The Pakistani Army, rousted from their slumber and their preoccupation with India, have finally started moving against the internal threat of the Taliban, with battles continuing to rage. One would think this represents a turning of the corner in Pakistan, a show that the government can be responsive to pressure. Nevertheless, the US has cast about for new options, which is interesting, given that Pakistan is a sovereign nation.

As American confidence in the Pakistani government wanes, the Obama administration is reaching out more directly than before to Nawaz Sharif, the chief rival of Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, administration officials said Friday.

American officials have long held Mr. Sharif at arm’s length because of his close ties to Islamists in Pakistan, but some Obama administration officials now say those ties could be useful in helping Mr. Zardari’s government to confront the stiffening challenge by Taliban insurgents.

The move reflects the heightened concern in the Obama administration about the survivability of the Zardari government. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the United States Central Command, has said in private meetings in Washington that Pakistan’s government is increasingly vulnerable, according to administration officials.

It's an improvement to consider the views of people who may have the support of the local population, and not reject them because "we don't negotiate with terrorists" or whatever. But Pakistan does have a right to self-determination, last I checked. I agree with the President that the country will not collapse but the government is fragile, and the situation bears watching. If Zardari and Sharif can work together, brokered perhaps by American influence, all to the good. What does seem dangerous to me is the wishful thinking in certain segments, particularly from Petraeus and leaders in the Pentagon, of a military coup and another dictatorship to further radicalize the Pakistani people.

It would be naive to think that the Pakistani military, which ruled Pakistan for the past ten years until Pervez Musharraf resigned from the Army in November 2007 and formally relinquished power last August, doesn’t believe it could do a better job of governing than Asif Ali Zardari. And it would also be naive to think that the Obama administration is closed off to the prospect, whatever it might say about democracy. Andrew Exum wonders why the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has a “weird man crush” on Kayani. He might merely be prepared to bet on what he considers the stronger horse — not a strong horse, as the Pakistani army has been repeatedly beaten by the Pakistani Taliban and its allies, but a stronger one. It might also explain why Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy objects to making aid to Pakistan receivable to “civilian authorities of a government of Pakistan constituted through a free and fair election,” among other provisions of conditionalized funding.

The American frustration with the Zardari government stems from the inability of the military, to this point, to deal with Taliban attacks in the tribal areas. I think Matt Yglesias has a point - that could be a function of the military underperforming so that the government looks bad, with an eye toward returning the military to power in the government to make everything all better. But isn't this the military's problem, to begin with? And specifically, the relationship between the military and the Taliban fighters?

Sharif, at this point clearly has more popularity inside Pakistan. His influence could offer greater support to the fight against militants. And throwing money down a hole toward a leader with a history of corruption won't solve the problem. But our ability to manage that political conflict is limited. And our credibility should we actually return the military to power would be even lower in Pakistan that it currently is, if that's possible.

Charles Lemos has more.

Listening To The Generals

If you haven't been following it, Christopher Hill, a career diplomat who negotiated some of the better deals with North Korea under the Bush Administration, has been nominated for the post of US Ambassador to Iraq, and conservatives are flipping out because, well, that's what they do. Despite his credentials and history in the foreign service, they claim he has no experience in the region; really they are displeased with his actual negotiation with North Korea, which circumvented Dick Cheney and the neocons. Now the top US commanders in Iraq are voicing their displeasure with the GOP holdup of Hill's nomination:

There's one as yet unremarked constituency increasingly disturbed by some Republican senators' efforts to block the confirmation of former North Korea envoy Christopher Hill to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq: the U.S. military.

Sources tell The Cable that Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus, top Iraq commander Gen. Raymond Odierno, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are frustrated by the delay in getting a U.S. ambassador confirmed and into place in Iraq, and support Hill's confirmation proceeding swiftly [...]

"I would not at all be surprised if military commanders in Iraq are frustrated that they don't have a new ambassador in position," added Gen. William Nash (ret.), the former top U.S. commander in Bosnia, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The issues are far more political and economic than they are military and U.S. efforts need to move forward on those fronts. That's particularly critical in the execution of the withdrawal plan."

Asked if Republican objections to Hill that he is not a Middle East expert are legitimate, Nash said the opposition is "being difficult to be difficult. I have known Chris Hill for 14 years. He is a wonderful diplomat and exactly the kind of guy we need in Iraq."

Today is the sixth, that's right the sixth anniversary of our misadventure in Iraq, and the fiends who got us in this mess in the first place refuse to cease making life harder on this country. They cannot conceive of a world where economic development and diplomacy supersede the task of the military, so they want a subservient ambassador. Of course, the fact that the generals prefer Hill shows the hypocrisy of the neocons on this. They only listen to the advice of the commanders on the ground when it agrees with their aims. And they never take into account the hopes and desires of the people in the countries over which they mean to project power. The neglect of reconstruction and economic development in the war effort leads to outcomes like the water being undrinkable in Baghdad six years after the beginning of the war.

These are contemptible people.

Strategy THEN Decision, What A Concept

I am encouraged by the fact that President Obama is reluctant to put the cart before the horse in Afghanistan. Right now there is an ongoing strategy review that will likely determine the new policy. But commanders on the ground want an infusion of troops immediately. They may end up getting a brigade or two before the strategy is complete, but there's no way we should continue with the theory that troops are a universal good absent giving them something tangible to do. There's a school of thought that we are papering over a lack of troops in Afghanistan with airstrikes that rile civilian populations, but in Iraq airstrikes went way up after the surge and were used as cover for ground movements. So there is no value in troops without the strategy, and I'm glad the President is thinking hard about that.

Meanwhile, maybe the best near-term option would be to secure our own weapons:

Tens of thousands of assault rifles and other firearms in Afghanistan are at risk of being stolen because U.S. officials have lost track of them, according to a congressionally ordered audit that warns that some weapons may already be in Taliban hands.

The audit by the Government Accountability Office found that inventory controls were lacking for more than a third of the 242,000 light weapons donated to Afghan forces by the United States -- a stockpile that includes thousands of AK-47 assault rifles as well as mortars, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

There were no reliable records showing what ultimately happened to an additional 135,000 weapons donated by other NATO countries, the report said. Many of the weapons, supplied between 2004 and 2008, were left in the care of Afghan-run military depots with a history of desertion, theft and sub-par security systems that sometimes consist of a wooden door and a padlock, the report said.

Ah, the Pentagon. Such a model of efficiency. By the way, losing bunches of weapons is a nasty habit for St. Petraeus.

Thanks For The Afghan Shit Sandwich, Mr. Bush

In my view, one of the reasons why President Obama is hesitating to escalate in Afghanistan, aside from the basing issues, is that his predecessor left him with no good options in the country.

President Obama's national security team gave a dire assessment Sunday of the war in Afghanistan, with one official calling it a challenge "much tougher than Iraq" and others hinting that it could take years to turn around.

U.S. officials said more troops were urgently needed, both from America and its NATO allies, to counter the increasing strength of the Taliban and warlords opposed to the central government in Kabul. They also said new approaches were needed to untangle an inefficient and conflicting array of civilian-aid programs that have wasted billions of dollars.

"NATO's future is on the line here," Richard C. Holbrooke, the State Department's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told attendees at an international security conference here. "It's going to be a long, difficult struggle. . . . In my view, it's going to be much tougher than Iraq."

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, said the war in Afghanistan "has deteriorated markedly in the past two years" and warned of a "downward spiral of security."

In addition to more combat troops, Petraeus called for "a surge in civilian capacity" to help rebuild villages, train local police forces, tackle corruption in the Afghan government and reduce the country's thriving opium trade. He also suggested that the odds of success were low, given that foreign military powers have historically met with defeat in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of empires," he said. "We cannot take that history lightly."

Now, you're the President. You know that NATO allies are extremely reluctant to provide additional troops and that the United States would be likely to shoulder any burden mostly alone. You are aware of the history of foreign occupiers in Afghanistan. You know that progress toward economic recovery from a terrible crisis will be hampered by a negative foreign entanglement. And you're seeing that support for American involvement among the Afghan people has plummeted in recent years, to the extent that Americans are now viewed unfavorably in the country.

Even if you had somewhere to base troops and move them around the country, why would you want to commit them? There is a legitimate role for denying safe haven to extremists who would do America harm, but that could just as easily be handled by law enforcement, intelligence and regional alliances with local governments.

A Man Called Petraeus Storms The White House

Well, we expected this, didn't we? From an excellent piece by Gareth Porter:

CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

One thing we can say about Obama is that, for good or for ill, he has generally kept to his bigger campaign promises. In this case, he knows that his foreign policy success is in large part predicated on getting us out of Iraq, and he refuses to bend to both the foreign policy establishment and institutional military pushback. Not only that, but reneging on a signed agreement with the Iraqis would endanger American troops and ensure chaos in Iraq and abroad. Sure, the warmongers will get a war (Obama is likely to hold to his promise in Afghanistan), but not Iraq.

According to Porter, the Gates-Petraeus plan was to reclassify combat troops as "support troops" to get around that little status of forces agreement mandating set withdrawals of US forces. Apparently Obama wasn't willing to risk American credibility in that shell game.

Of course, Petraeus is trying to circumvent his commander-in-chief, which I believe they call insubordination:

Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama."

Looks like Petraeus is using those handy Pentagon embeds to implement this strategy, too:

The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama's withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the Jan. 21 meeting when retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Gen. Petraeus, appeared on the Lehrer News Hour to comment on Obama's pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal.

Keane, who had certainly been briefed by Petraeus on the outcome of the Oval Office meeting, argued that implementing such a withdrawal of combat troops would "increase the risk rather dramatically over the 16 months". He asserted that it would jeopardise the "stable political situation in Iraq" and called that risk "not acceptable".

The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning.

Here we go again. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would even want the Presidency, beset as it is by palace intrigue on all sides. Then again, nobody told Obama to hang on to Bob Gates. By the way, this epic whine about Obama actually following through on his promise is all about properly assigning blame:

The source says the network (of military officials), which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama's withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.

If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.

I heard Bill Kristol parrot this strategy on Fox News Sunday, answering a question about why Obama hasn't officially announced drawdowns in Iraq by saying "Because he's a responsible man, and he won't withdraw if it isn't safe to do so." Kristol, who has never met a disaster he wasn't responsible for, has his own neocon fantasy agenda of keeping troops in the region to teach Arabs a lesson and enable them to fight in the 8 or 9 other wars he keeps in a list on his Blackberry. And the people who have been wrong about every foreign policy situation for decades upon decades are certainly not the people to listen to about "collapse."

As for Petraeus, it was clear that he was nothing more than a political animal for a while. He figured that his public stature was such that the President of the United States would have to take orders from him. And now he wants to use the media, which is enamored of him, to exact a price on Obama for disobeying him. Maybe he should just declare for 2012 now.

You could see this clash between the military and the young President coming. They don't like taking orders from lowly Democrats and they don't mind undermining their superior officer to make their point.

...By the way, defense spending will increase by 8% in the 2010 FY budget and unnamed sources at the Pentagon are pissed because it's 10% less than what they asked for, portraying this increase as a spending cut. It never stops.

...Shorter PowerTools - You can't cross David Petraeus because he got a lot of applause at the Super Bowl.

Actually that's almost verbatim.

Time To Have The Debate On Afghanistan

This week, a number of bloggers have formed a coalition called Get Afghanistan Right, dedicated to breaking out of the narrow boundaries of the Afghanistan debate and open the discussion about what it means to escalate in a part of the world that has historically proven to be a graveyard of empires. I have seen a shift both in online and offline media over the last several weeks, with writers more willing to challenge assumptions about this war in its eighth year and what can be done outside of military escalation that meets with our national security and foreign policy goals. I've written a lot about Afghanistan, and I think my concerns with a de facto escalation rests on a number of big myths that have proven false:

1) It's not a "good war". Thomas Ricks speaks for me when he says that he finds the notion of a "good war" to be offensive. All wars are painful and cost both lives and treasure. By casting Afghanistan as unimpeachable and just, we hide the consequences, which are becoming greater as the years pass - more coalition forces died there than in Iraq last year. I'm perfectly willing to have a debate about Afghanistan, but not under the terms that it's a "good war," which is tautological.

2) There is something to "win." This has been ill-defined throughout all of Bush's wars, but particularly in Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich has a brilliant little treatise based on this premise. Once you talk about "winning," you have to define victory, and given our Western biases, we assume that to mean a democratic state able to defend its borders and become an ally in freedom. That is ahistorical to the Afghanistan experience.

Afghanistan is a much bigger country—nearly the size of Texas—and has a larger population that's just as fractious. Moreover, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan possesses almost none of the prerequisites of modernity; its literacy rate, for example, is 28 percent, barely a third of Iraq's. In terms of effectiveness and legitimacy, the government in Kabul lags well behind Baghdad—not exactly a lofty standard. Apart from opium (last year's crop totaled about 8,000 metric tons), Afghans produce almost nothing the world wants [...]

U.S. officials tend to assume that power in Afghanistan ought to be exercised from Kabul. Yet the real influence in Afghanistan has traditionally rested with tribal leaders and warlords. Offered the right incentives, warlords can accomplish U.S. objectives more effectively and cheaply than Western combat battalions. The basis of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan should therefore become decentralization and outsourcing, offering cash and other emoluments to local leaders who will collaborate with us in keeping terrorists out of their territory.

Those who favor escalation have an obligation to define the end state of the mission, as well as how additional troops can accomplish that better than local forces and diplomatic measures.

3) The Afghanistan war is about Afghanistan. Actually, it's about a comprehensive strategy for the entire region. Pushing Taliban remnants and extremists out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan could destabilize a nuclear power. And that doesn't disarm the ostensible goal of US policy, to deny a safe haven for terrorist planning and activity. That requires local law enforcement globally, as well as a strategy of winning hearts and minds that is disabled by violence and chaos far away from Kabul:

More than a thousand Afghans signed up on Thursday to say they wanted to go and fight Israel in the Gaza Strip, many of them blaming the United States which has some 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, for supporting the Jewish state.

Accusations by Taliban militants and some Muslim clerics that Israel and its main ally, the United States, aim to destroy Islam have a strong impact on public opinion in Afghanistan, where Washington plans to almost double its troop numbers this year.

Scores of young men crowded into the library of Kabul's Milad ul-Nabi mosque, lined with banners reading "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," to sign up to fight Israel.

There is a regional strategy that can blunt the influence of extremism globally and increase our national security without a major troop surge. Bringing me to my next point...

4) Surges always work. The cause and effect between the troop surge in Iraq and the modest security gains there, which has been misread as a direct action, colors the potential for throwing troops at the problem in Afghanistan. But the situations are very different. Increasing the footprint of occupation on a country wary of outsiders is perilous. And the Taliban, growing in strength in the country, are not seen as outsiders imposing their views on the locals but locals speaking the language of rebellion and fighting for freedom. Peter Beaumont has more. The top US commander in Afghanistan has said that an Iraq-style surge cannot work.

5) We have to "do something." This is the common lazy style of thinking in Washington, which thinks that actions only have good consequences, and therefore any action must be supported over none at all. Today we saw a tacit admission of this in the Washington Post:

President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but the incoming administration does not anticipate that the Iraq-like "surge" of forces will significantly change the direction of a conflict that has steadily deteriorated over the past seven years.

Instead, Obama's national security team expects that the new deployments, which will nearly double the current U.S. force of 32,000 (alongside an equal number of non-U.S. NATO troops), will help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy for what Obama has called the "central front on terror."

With conditions on the ground worsening by nearly every yardstick last year -- including record levels of extremist attacks and U.S. casualties, and the expansion of the conflict across Pakistan and into India -- Obama's campaign pledge to "finish the job" in Afghanistan with more troops, money and diplomacy has encountered the daunting reality of a job that has barely begun.

I imagine that the Obama team has seen the assessments and they are dire. The Bush Administration muddled through with no overarching strategy and wasted valuable time. But how do you tell a soldier that you're deploying him to buy time while you can come up with a way out? How does that meet the interests of the military, or our national security?

It's in some ways encouraging that the Obama team does not expect a "surge" to automatically succeed. And they have talked about building a developmental and diplomatic counterpart to the military action, so I am confident that the mission will also be concerned with reconstruction and improving regional ties (the admission by Gen. Petraeus that the US and Iran share interests in Afghanistan is a very good new way to think about this conflict). But just airlifting in troops, without a settled strategy or even how to best deploy them seems unwise.

Afghanistan in 2009 does not lend itself to an obvious solution, and there are arguments for more troops that have a certain logic to them. But these lines of debate should be open, instead of arguments against escalation marginalized as the "unserious" alternative in Afghanistan. Hopefully this effort will go a long way in bringing those viewpoints more into the mainstream.

(He Oughta Do It) His Way

Top generals have submitted a timeline to remove troops from Iraq that is far more deliberate than what Obama advocated for during the campaign.

The plan was proposed by the top American commanders responsible for Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, and it represents their first recommendation on troop withdrawals under an Obama presidency. While Mr. Obama has said he will seek advice from his commanders, their resistance to a faster drawdown could present the new president with a tough political choice between overruling his generals or backing away from his goal.

The plan, completed last week, envisions withdrawing two more brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, from Iraq in the first six months of 2009, the military officials said. But that would leave 12 combat brigades in Iraq by June 2009, and while declining to be more specific, the officials made clear that the withdrawal of all combat forces under the generals’ recommendations would not come until some time after May 2010, Mr. Obama’s target.

The good news here is that in the end, this document does meet with the SOFA agreement to remove all American troops by the end of 2011.

Here's the thing. If Obama was stepping into a bitterly divided debate, demanding his solution when there was still plenty of support for staying in Iraq longer. But that's not the case. Americans are pretty united in wanting troops to leave. 70% want him to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months. Obama really doesn't need to worry about the fallout for rejecting the advice of the generals and going with his original timeline. He does need to be concerned about his generals undermining him. Ultimately there may be some sort of compromise, but the President-elect ought to realize that he has a lot of political capital to spend here.

The good news is that, on other issues, it looks like the military is bending to the will of Obama's campaign promises. Bob Gates is drafting plans for the closure of Guantanamo, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is talking up defense spending cuts.

The top U.S. military officer says the Pentagon cannot afford continued cost overruns and is hinting that some weapons systems may be cut or scaled back under President-elect Barack Obama.

"I'm obviously discouraged by the lack of cost control that we've got in so many ... of our programs," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday.

"We are going to have to get a grip on that or we will not be able to buy them," Mullen said, "or we won't be able to buy them in the quantity we need."

Very encouraging. So hopefully Obama will get his way on this one as well.

Major Developments On Ending The War In Afghanistan

I apologize in advance for disrupting close reading of the election, but we have something pretty large breaking in one of the most dangerous trouble spots on the globe, an area of the world where we have already sunk hundreds of billions of our treasury and too many lives. There seems to be a split between the Taliban and Al Qaeda that a smart nation would exploit and use to ensure a responsible withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Spencer Ackerman has the details:

President Karzai is said to have demanded that the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, publicly renounce bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as a condition for further talks. A Taliban representative took this demand to Mullah Omar in his hideout in Afghanistan and returned to Mecca with a positive answer, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Holy shit! Think of the disruption that a public split with the Taliban would cause al-Qaeda. So much of al-Qaeda's propaganda is built around its indomitable-and-rugged-warrior-of-faith image. But if the Taliban, who fit that bill much better than does AQ, goes for a separate peace, then that's not something bin Laden recovers from. Imagine the contortions in a bin Laden videotape as he explains why Mullah Omar, his friend and patron of nearly 15 years, was never a true Muslim. In the eyes of jihadists, UBL would appear isolated, desparate and fanatical.

So what do the Taliban want?

Mullah Omar has sent the Saudis a list of seven demands of his own, according to this source. Among the items on the Taliban agenda are a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan; a role for Taliban representatives in provincial and national government; assimilation of Taliban fighters into the Afghan army; and amnesty for guerrillas who fought against the United States.

I don't relish the prospect of negotiating with the Taliban. Their reign was a human rights disaster and their harboring of Al Qaeda monstrous. But if they are seriously willing to talk, we have to consider it. They control large swaths of the country and hold far more influence than the national government. Isolating Al Qaeda is a noble goal, as is delivering the role for disrupting the terror network to local law enforcement and intelligence. The terms Mullah Omar is seeking are not completely satisfactory, but it's a starting point.

The US appears serious about these negotiations as really the only endgame strategy in Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is actively considering talks with elements of the Taliban, the armed Islamist group that once ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda, in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.

Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both countries have been destabilized by a recent wave of violence [...]

The idea is supported by Gen. David Petraeus, who will assume responsibility this week for U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Petraeus used a similar approach in Iraq, where a U.S. push to enlist Sunni tribes in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq helped sharply reduce the country's violence. Gen. Petraeus earlier this month publicly endorsed talks with less extreme Taliban elements.

These talks have already started between the Karzai government and the Taliban, and we would do well not to disrupt them. Furthermore, starting talks does not mean ceding to the Taliban on every point - their presence in a coalition government can be framed as a choice between peace and future hardship. I think if there's legitimate isolation of Al Qaeda remnants, it's a price worth paying - of course Pakistan has to play a role there. This at least gives a glimmer of hope that there's some manner of endgame here.

What Petraeus understands and the White House doesn’t — or, at least, up till now didn’t — is that insurgencies rarely end with complete victory by one or the other side. They end by co-optation, integration and — yes — appeasement. Give your enemy a positive reason to stop fighting you that meets his core needs and you can probably get him to, you know, stop.

Making an offer like that will, most often, allow the population to view you as reasonable, putting the insurgent in a bind if he refuses. And the hardcore insurgents who refuse reasonable offers of peace can be dealt with militarily. That’s why Petraeus went to Heritage earlier this month, as I reported, and said, “You have to talk to enemies”:

Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if they are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”

The key to all of this is to put an end to our involvement in what is casually known as the "graveyard of empires." There is no "win" in Afghanistan without a buy-in from all the local forces, and right now, the Taliban is a major part of that. We can go down the road of trying to vanquish them, but we've lost seven years of time, and the population is not at all thrilled with the idea of another long war. The Taliban is growing more sophisticated in their attacks (they shot down a US helicopter yesterday) and more powerful in the countryside. We cannot force an occupation on the Afghan people any more than we could force one on the Iraqis.

Furthermore, with a new Administration coming in, the military beyond broke and the Treasury even more so, a clean and honorable exit from Afghanistan would be deeply sought and welcomed. If we can change our strategy, find out what can best serve the whole nation and our interest in seeing Al Qaeda unable to continue operations, that's a major win for everyone. Less air raids on the heads of Afghan civilians would help, too. Assuredly, it's a lot easier to fix a global economic crisis when you're not carrying two wars on your back.

There has not been a lot of hopeful moments in the Afghanistan conflict over the past several years, but this is certainly one. It's a moment that an Obama Administration cannot afford to let go. Negotiate - and find an end to these occupations.

Bringing the Taliban Back In The Fold?

Nir Rosen does away with the happy talk about Afghanistan.

“Negotiation might be a great idea,” Rosen says, “but the Taliban may not feel like they should” negotiate, because they might get more out of a war with the Karzai government than by any promise of inclusion. The Taliban already have governors in Afghanistan loyal, or acquiescent, to them.

Interesting items from Nir’s Afghanistan trip:

the Taliban he talked to drew a distinction between the Afghan security forces (they kind of like them) and U.S. forces (they don’t like them) [...]

With some of the Taliban, “I wouldn’t call them moderates or liberals,” but there’s a strain that Rosen describes as “pragmatic” and would negotiate with the Karzai government. In parts of Ghazni, the Taliban patrol openly, with RPGs out and everything.

Some of them talk about “fighting the Americans after they leave” as a matter of national pride. Police defected in Helmand to join the Taliban. In Ghazni, the Taliban governor actually issues Taliban passports.

“They’ve really taken over much of the countryside,” Rosen says, “I think the U.S. is incapable of defeating them. … There’s a real sense of hopelessness on the part of the international community in Kabul. … The Afghan government is a joke.”

The movement among even the Bush Administration toward negotiation with the Taliban shows just how dire the situation is. I guess "America doesn't negotiate with the enemy" has been thrown out the window. Privately, Bush and his cohorts are admitting they took their eye off the ball and let Afghanistan slide into neglect.

A draft of the latest National Intelligence Estimate says conditions are worst now since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Bush administration officials said privately today that Afghanistan is now the single most pressing security threat in the war on terror.

Control from a military standpoint over the region now falls to David Petraeus, and last week he signaled a policy with Afghanistan that looks much more like what the Democratic nominee would propose rather than the Republican one.

Petraeus discussed whether his strategy in Iraq — protecting the population while cleaving apart the insurgency through reconciliation efforts to crush the remaining hard-core enemies — could also work in Afghanistan. The question has particular salience as Petraeus takes over U.S. Central Command, which will put him at the helm of all U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, thereby giving him a large role in the Afghanistan war.

“Some of the concepts used in Iraq are transplantable [to Afghanistan] while others perhaps are not,” he said. “Every situation is unique.”

Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if they are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”

In saying that, Petraeus implicitly allied with U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Last week, McKiernan rejected the idea of replicating the blend of counterinsurgency strategy employed in Iraq. “The word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word ’surge,’” McKiernan said, opting against recruiting Pashtun tribal fighters to supplement Afghan security forces against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “There are countless other differences between Iraq and Afghanistan,” he added.

If we rely on the central government in Kabul we're sunk. They are deeply corrupt and have little power outside the capital. If the Taliban actually wants to join the government - a big if - the question becomes whether they would again sponsor repression of dissent and violence against women. But talk of reconciliation and negotiation is a whole lot better than the alternative.

Meanwhile In Iraq

With less than 60 days to the election, it's easy to get caught up in the back and forth of politics. But the very serious developments in Iraq require some scrutiny.

First of all, the President made his big announcement - 8,000 troops will leave Iraq after he's out of office, with a few thousand re-routed to Afghanistan. He's calling this "return on success" but it's really just kick the can. Bush's advisors seem to understand that the need for a strategic redeployment out of Iraq is palpable, but he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. So the next President has to work out the mess he created, which was really the plan all along.

Let's be clear where we are in Iraq. Violence is down but not out; just today brought news of a pretty horrific car bombing in Dujail. The political factions are still at an impasse, with tensions growing, and Nouri al-Maliki is trying to rub out his rivals and use the leverage of the US troop presence to make it easier. The troop drawdown is so minimal because, under the current strategy, the security gains are fragile because the political reconciliation has not been managed hardly at all. But that's only because the strategy is deeply wrong, concerned only with keeping a lid on violence for political purposes. Barack Obama gets this right.

"His plan comes up short — it is not enough troops, not enough resources, with not enough urgency," Obama said. "The next president will inherit a status quo that is still unstable."

We have, to an extent, coddled the Iraqi government, which says in public that the occupiers must be driven out but says in private that the troops must stay. There are still major political gaps that we're filling in with military force, which is simply untenable.

1. Centralizers vs. de-centralizers. Some Iraqi factions want to see more power placed in the hands of the national government, while others continue to push for more power to be vested in local and provincial governments.

2. State power holders vs. popular challengers. Certain factions have disproportionately benefited from the national government’s spoils, such as Dawa, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and the Kurdish factions who are part of national government. Some factions that have not benefited from the national government’s increased oil wealth and military power have stronger support in key areas of Iraq such as the Sons of Iraq in central and western Iraq and the Sadrists in central and southern Iraq.

3. Sunni vs. Shia. Sectarian conflicts are much reduced since high levels of violence in 2006, but the Sunni-Shia sectarian strain endures.

4. Arab vs. Kurds. The Arab-Kurd division is coming to a head in the unresolved crisis over the status of Kirkuk and other disputed territories.

5. Religious factions vs. secular factions. Latent tensions remain between Iraqis who are concerned by the religious nature of Iraqi politics versus those who see politics as one facet of advancing enduring religious principles of either Sunni or Shia Islam. Religious minorities such as Christians and Yazidis have suffered from persecution at the hands of other groups in Iraq since 2003.

These are major conflicts that have yet to be resolved, and they won't be with a purely military solution. Iraqis have simply not been responsible for their own sovereignty when they are "under the umbrella" of a US occupation. Only the Iraqis can make these decisions, and our presence makes that decision-making process remote. This is a key point:

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is not politically neutral. It creates a distinct set of incentives for political actors that directly work against the reconciliation that U.S. diplomats try to promote. U.S. military dominance and support absolves the major political actors from having to make the tough decisions necessary to achieve a power-sharing equilibrium.

In the months ahead in Iraq, the United States will have to distinguish between those outcomes that are truly catastrophic and those that are simply suboptimal given the limits on U.S. leverage over Iraqi actors—leverage that declines each day as the Iraqi government becomes financially self-sufficient and more assertive. Iraq’s leaders over the next year will increasingly demand greater control over their own affairs. The United States needs to rebalance its overall national security approach by stepping outside of the trenches of intra-Iraqi disputes over power and putting the focus back on its core national security interests.

General Petraeus says that he cannot declare victory, but this just serves to put our eventual withdrawal at a constant arm's length. Before declaring it, he and his Republican cheerleaders ought to define it:

WARE: Winning, however, is a matter of definition. Now, if by winning, you mean strengthening a member of what President Bush called the axis of evil, Iran, the very thing Senator Obama -- Senator McCain says that they prevented, Iran is stronger because of this war.

If you mean by dividing a community with blast barriers, if you mean by having to build an American militia, if you mean by destabilizing the entire region, then, sure, that's winning, that's victory. But I'm not sure that's why people went in there.

BROWN: It doesn't sound like you think that's winning.

WARE: Well, at this point, a win may just be getting out while minimizing the damage.

We aren't facing the facts in Iraq. We praise the fine work of our soldiers and point to charts of body counts and think that stability will just spontaneously sprout. It's damaging the long-term success of the region. A careful withdrawal along with a surge in diplomacy is the only solution.

2012 Campaign Begins

The Man Called Petraeus puts out his first dogwhistle:

Gen. David Petraeus is used to controversy surrounding the war in Iraq, but his publicized thoughts on an Army chaplain's book for Soldiers put him squarely in the middle of the ongoing conflict over religious proselytizing in the U.S. military.

The book is "Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel," by Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) William McCoy, and according to Petraeus' published endorsement of the work, "it should be in every rucksack for those times when soldiers need spiritual energy."

But the endorsement - which has spurred a demand by a watchdog group for Petraeus' dismissal and court martial on the grounds of establishing a religious requirement on troops - was a personal view never intended for publication, the book's author now says.

"In the process of securing … comments for recommending the book I believe there was a basic misunderstanding on my part that the comments were publishable," McCoy said in an Aug. 19 email to Military.com. "This was my mistake."

This endorsement has been on the book for close to a year. Petraeus must have been starting to worry that nobody would find out about it!

Can't you hear the theocon right, musing, "I knew that Gen. Petraeus was a good Christian man! If only he were our guy instead of this McCain fellow. I'll bet Petraeus wouldn't consider one a' them baby killers for his Vice President..."

McCain's doing his best to keep the fundies in the tent this time around, but in their heart, they want the guy who writes blurbs on the "Jesus in the foxhole" book.

Oh, Judgment?

Today John McCain set the record straight. He's not questioning Obama's patriotism, he's questioning Obama's judgment.

That would be the judgment that was against invading Iraq. That would be the judgment that has been calling for an increased commitment to Afghanistan for years, and now that Afghanistan is reaching a point of crisis (a HUNDRED insurgents attacked the French? A separate attacked tried to overrun an entire base in Khost?), even the Pentagon is starting to agree:

The Pentagon will be sending 12,000 to 15,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, possibly as soon as the end of this year, with planning underway for a further force buildup in 2009.

A request by Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, for three U.S. brigades with support staff has been approved. "Now that means we just need to figure out a way to get them there," adds a senior defense official [...]

And there may be even more to come. "I've also asked for some additional forces on top of that for the current fight," says McKiernan, who wants to bolster the 101st Airborne Division in Regional Command East, which has been rocked by recent insurgent attacks. In July, nine U.S. troops were killed by insurgents who overran a combat outpost on the Kunar border of eastern Afghanistan. This week, militants tried but failed to overrun a base in Khost, just a few miles from the border, launching waves of attacks just before midnight on Monday.

Finding those particular troops to supplement the 101st, however, depends on conditions and troop levels in Iraq, adds McKiernan, who took over the NATO command in June. "That's really a zero-sum decision."

I don't agree with dumping more forces into Afghanistan long-term, although there does appear to be a short-term security crisis. But isn't it interesting how Obama is driving the actual foreign policy results, with McCain (and Bush) following? More troops for Afghanistan, a time horizon for Iraq, moving beyond Musharraf in Pakistan? On all of these judgments, Obama is on much more solid ground, and gets there much faster than his opponents.

Another facet to this: Spencer Ackerman flags NATO Commander McKiernan's comments about more troops being a "zero-sum decision" and says that comment was directed right at David Petraeus. Iraq has its own problems - the looming powderkeg in Kirkuk, a more assertive Nouri al-Maliki pushing around prominent Sunnis throughout the country and muscling out Shiite rivals before provincial elections, the very real threat of spasms of violence if the elections are seen as rigged - but those are localized and, honestly, inevitable in the jockeying for power, and our troops there are serving no national interest. Whereas in Afghanistan, there's at least some notional national interest in a short-term effort to garner some sense of stability. But with troops tied up in Iraq, Afghanistan gets short shrift, and it will soon be Petraeus' job to make assessments of the whole region, at which point he'll need to take the Iraq blinders off.

The People Want To Leave

I know it's a novel concept to listen to the mere plebes about Iraq, but they are speaking with essentially one voice.

Here's one result from the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that will be released tonight at 6:30 pm ET on Nightly News and MSNBC.com... With the news that Iraq's prime minister wants the US to set a timetable for withdrawal, 60% of registered voters believe it's a good idea for the US to set such a timetable, while 30% say it's a bad idea.

When the people in America want us to leave, and the people in Iraq want us to leave, and the Iraqi government wants us to leave.... you get the idea.

Fred Hiatt asking us to stay so we can rape the country of its oil is not a good enough reason. And just because St. David Petraeus doesn't want a timetable doesn't mean his commanding officer, the President, should allow him that. The days of passing off comprehensive military decision-making to local commanders who have no sense of the big picture is over.

Maybe He Needs To Go Back To Iraq

I guess the right thinks this "Obama's afraid to visit Iraq, nanny nanny poo poo" taunt is a political winner for them. It certainly fits in with their strategy to paint the Illinois senator as un-American and weak. Of course, the exact phrases that John McCain is using in making the taunt match the words from Vets for Freedom, a 527 group which is off limits to any McCain supporters, but OK for the Presidential candidate as far as coordinating messages, I guess. McCain is also using unauthorized images of American military personnel in pushing this message along.

“The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest-ranking officer. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.” [...]

Three days [after Mullen’s advice was published], Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, sent a fundraising solicitation using an image of him and Gen. David Petraeus.

“Something is wrong with your judgment when you want to sit down unconditionally with Raul Castro and Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but you don’t take the opportunity to sit down with General Petraeus and learn about the situation in Iraq firsthand,” the letter reads. “My friends, this is not the ‘change’ we need in our next president.”

I believe this comes very close to McCain breaking the law.

But let's break down his substantive "point," if we can dig it out. He's saying that you cannot show proper judgment about Iraq unless you physically set foot in the country. But, as Michael Ware notes, McCain has been in Iraq multiple times, and yet has screwed up assessments of the situation on the ground over and over again, most recently... yesterday:

All week we've been hearing about all those trips McCain has made to Iraq. We know about some of them. Like the one where he claimed he could stroll safely through a Baghdad. Or the one recently where he didn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shi'as.

Just yesterday, McCain was talking about how "quiet" Mosul is. But, Nico Pitney compared McCain's words to what was actually happening yesterday in Mosul:

"Moreover, McCain's claim that Mosul is "quiet" was disproved earlier today in grim fashion. Three suicide bombings -- two in Mosul and another in a surrounding town -- left 30 Iraqis dead and more than two dozen injured, according to press reports."

And the reason for that is that there's no such thing as a legitimate "fact-finding mission" in Iraq. The trips are highly sanitized dog-and-pony shows which make it nearly impossible to get a real picture of things. So on every level, McCain "killer attack" is more like a lead balloon.

Petraeus and Odierno Off Message In The Senate

A Man Called Petraeus is back in Washington today, for his Senate confirmation hearings to be the head of Centcom. Gen. Odierno is there as well, looking to be confirmed as Petraeus' successor in Iraq. And they've both had some interesting things to say.

First, Petraeus got the same question Ryan Crocker got from Joe Biden in April about the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area. And he had the same answer.

Jack Reed finally brings up the gorilla in the room. He asks Petraeus if he agrees with the intelligence community and Chairman Mullen's assessment that the next terrorist attack on the United States would most likely come from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

Petraeus says YES.

And Reed naturally asks, then why does the campaign plan focus on Iraq not Afghanistan and Pakistan? Reed also asks how Petraeus would plan to actually bring more troops into that area, since they're all in Iraq.

Petraeus, nominated to Centcom, cannot hide behind his "I'm just a simple country general focused on Iraq" shtick, but really the policymakers at the White House should be the ones answering this question. Especially since the new Pakistani government is doing nothing to stop cross-border raids in Afghanistan, and has signed another peace deal with Taliban elements in the Swat Valley. This makes sense for the Pakistanis in a self-interested sense, but if you do believe that Afghanistan is waning and a safe haven for terrorist plotters is a bad thing, it's something we should probably devote some attention to.

Later, Jim Webb backed Raymond Odierno into a corner:

Webb tells Odierno that a key part of strategizing is to "be able to articulate clearly what the endpoint of that strategy is." So: What's the endgame, "in military terms"?

Odierno: "A self-reliant government that is stable, a government that will contribute inside of the regional context and the international context. Obviously, that means they need a professional security force... Obviously, a place that will not allow a safe haven for terrorists or extremists that threaten region... or the United States. ... An economic engine that [provides for] the continued improvement of the Iraqi people. ... From a military perspective, the ability to secure themselves, and do it in such a way that allows the government to continue to grow. ... and we will continue to do less and less." [...]

But what's the endpoint? Say U.S. meets all these conditions. Should there be a continued U.S. presence there? "That's a discussion... for policy." Webb won't let it go! What do you think, Gen. Odierno? Will there be a need for the U.S. military in Iraq if those conditions are met? "I do not." Finally.

Now that's how an adult asks a question.

Indeed, and it's really the entire point about Iraq. We can continue to put the country on lockdown and rule under the methods of an occupation, but it doesn't get us to that desired end-state. And if we pull back, and let the Iraqis handle things, we have no reason for being there. Webb finally got Odierno to admit that.

But the most interesting bit from the Petraeus hearings happened before them, when in written answers to the Senate Armed Services Committee he showed himself to be an un-American appeaser of the Chamberlain school:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, President Bush's nominee to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, supports continued U.S. engagement with international and regional partners to find the right mix of diplomatic, economic and military leverage to address the challenges posed by Iran.

In written answers to questions posed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he will testify today, Petraeus said the possibility of military action against Iran should be retained as a "last resort." But he said the United States "should make every effort to engage by use of the whole of government, developing further leverage rather than simply targeting discrete threats."

Petraeus's views echoed those expressed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who this month said that talks with Iran could be useful if the right combination of incentives and pressures could be developed.

There's every reason to believe that Tehran wants talks like this, too.

This is so obvious that you can't help but go off the Bush-McCain reservation. Diplomacy is not just a tool in the shed along with bombers and tanks, it's the most powerful tool. In the Muslim world, the growing trend is that as terrorist attacks increase, terrorism grows less popular. And the flip side is also true; as American military attacks increase, that decrease in support for terrorism shoots back up as it can be recast as resistance. Without public support for terrorism it can be choked off, therefore public diplomacy becomes a much greater way to reach the desired result than bombings which inflame the population. Give terrorists the rope to hang themselves, in other words, by building a broad coalition against them. And Iran can be a player on that stage.

Commander Petraeus

So Gen. David "A Man Called" Petraeus is slated to become the commander of CENTCOM. It's somewhat unusual for military leaders to take over their bosses' job, I'm told. This is from an email from a national security expert:

Part of the reason the military moves officers around is that so no one person can promote their personal agenda, but rather this is "checked and balanced" by the fact that someone else has to come in after you and look at things with a fresh set of eyes. From that perspective, it is very unusual that the theater commander would become the Combatant Commander.

We know that Petraeus has a self-interest in staying in Iraq to "finish the fight," whatever that fight is. You can see a scenario where he would focus on Iraq to the exclusion of the other global security trouble spots that would be under his command, and that this would color his advice to the commander-in-chief. In the short term, we know that Admiral Fallon was dumped in part because of alleged indifference over an attack on Iran, the country that comes up most often in Petraeus' reports to Congress about meddlers in Iraq. Draw your own conclusions.

Ilan Goldenberg adds this:

Third, there was speculation that Petraeus was going to move off to SACEUR right around January. This guarantees that if there is a Democratic administration, Petraeus may end up playing a central role in helping design an exit strategy. Of course, in testimony last month he brought into question whether he'd actually be willing to do that. Which is huge, and must be asked again during the hearings.

I have absolutely no confidence that these confirmation hearings will be pulled off adequately. He's getting confirmed. Now we have to wonder whether this is another Bush Administration landmine, designed to cripple a Democratic President on the issue of national security by sowing discord among the top commanders.