Start Packing

As readers of Nettertainment know, I'm a big fan of our current President. However, I'm less and less a fan of the U.S. being in Afghanistan and hope he starts/sticks to exit plans. You've got that President Karzai trying to stop investigation into his corruption, you've got interpreters who don't know the language, and now you're starting to get the freaky, evil, Casualties of War-type rogue U.S. soldiers targeting civilians and collecting fingers for sport:

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them".

One soldier said he believed Gibbs was "feeling out the platoon".

An amazing story, if proven to be true, brutal. Read the rest, and I'm sure there's more coverage of it to come.

Bye-bye.

WikiLeaks: Afghanistan

I leave it up to Nettertainment's readers to determine for themselves whether this leaking of 90,000 military records regarding Afghanistan to the WikiLeaks site is tantamount to treason or a public service similar to the leaking of The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg back when the Vietnam War was being propped up with horrendous lies, but it seems like something of a bombshell being covered by major newspapers as well as throughout the blogosphere. One thing The New York Times focuses on in their lead story is how the documents reveal Pakistan aiding the Afghanistan insurgency:

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

England's The Guardian is digging deeply into these logs, and their coverage of this hour-by-hour account of the war is accompanied by an explanation of why WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange posted these logs:



Clearly the ability to keep governmental secrets is diminished, if not demolished, in our brave new Internet age. Is the answer greater fortresses of secrecy or, as I suspect will happen, markedly less guile in the future. This can cut both ways, with a country that commits to war doing without apology, damned the torpedoes.

And, of course, these documents are going to force consideration of the key question to it all:

Is it (well-past) time for our United States to get out of Afghanistan?

New President

I didn't watch the President's speech last night all the way through so I can't pass judgment, but the part I saw was not inspiring and the reaction, particularly on the Left, has been negative. I believe, and certainly hope, that we are experiencing the lowest point in the Obama Presidency. He's got an unwinnable hole in the Gulf and an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. North Korea is a powderkeg, Israel/Palestine is a powderkeg, Iran is a powderkeg, our economy is still fragile and misshapen.

None of these problems is of his doing, but he needs to get all magical on those first two. It's not fair, but life's not fair and we're starving for the paradigm change we voted for when we voted him into office. For Afghanistan, it'll mean withdrawal starting right after the Iraq withdrawal, stuff he can do that the unified Republican obstructionist block in the Senate can't impede or poison.

For the Gulf he should channel Rachel Maddow.

Best political speech of the year thus far.

Why We Don't

So here's a good reason to get out of Afghanistan:

The Feb. 12 nighttime raid left three women — two of them pregnant — and a local police chief and prosecutor dead. It was one of the latest examples of Special Operations forces’ killing civilians during raids, deaths that have infuriated Afghan officials and generated support for the Taliban despite efforts by American and NATO commanders to reduce civilian casualties.

The joint American and Afghan assault team shot five Afghans — all family members — from the roofs of buildings in a large residential compound near Gardez, in southeastern Afghanistan, where members of an extended family lived in different homes, survivors said. The Americans did the killing, they said.

At first, the American-led military command in Kabul said that the two men who died were “insurgents” who had “engaged” — in other words, shot at — the forces at the scene. The initial account also said that the troops then stumbled onto the bodies of three women “tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room.

Military officials later suggested that the women — who among them had 16 children — had all been stabbed to death or had died by other means before the raid, implying that their own relatives may have killed them.

But the military later said the men were innocent civilians shot after they went outside, armed, to investigate the presence of the forces conducting the raid. Then on Sunday night they admitted that the women were also killed during the raid.

...

In the interview, Mr. Yarmand said he did not know whether bullets had been dug out of the bodies. He said he would not dispute family members’ claims, but added, “We can not confirm it as we had not been able to autopsy the bodies.”

Here's more:



Select frames here.

Can you say "war crime?"

Holiday in the Sun

Our President makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan, dropping in unexpectedly on President Hamid Karzai:

President Obama made an surprise stop in Afghanistan today, his first visit to the war zone since moving into the White House. The one-day visit, which lasted a total of about 6 hours, included talks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his government, which the U.S. sees as key to completing its mission in Afghanistan on on the timetable Obama outlined in December. While on the ground, Obama also addressed U.S. troops and met with American commanders.
...

In Afghanistan today, Obama met with Karzai one-on-one for about a half hour. The White House described the talks as "very productive" and "businesslike," and included discussions of about "governance, merit-based appointments of Afghan officials, and corruption," according to reports from the ground.

After the meeting, Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for the continued American efforts in Afghanistan. Obama said he was "encouraged by the progress that's been made" by Karzai's regime.

But it was clear from reports that one of the American goals on the trip was to push Karzai's government to do better. After Obama and Karzai met, the American delegation -- which also included U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eichenberry -- met with members of the Afghan cabinet to discuss the future, which Americans hope will include the scaling up of Afghan security forces and the scaling down of American involvement.

Jones told reporters on the ground in Afghanistan before the one-on-one meeting that Obama intended to take a hard line with Karzai and "make him understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have been not paid attention to, almost since day one."

Speech to the troops:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gotta like the boss dropping in to shake up Karzai and his corrupt partners, hope it makes a difference but have to wonder. The important thing to do is to get out gracefully, but firmly.

Godspeed, Mr. President. Gets home before the gefilte fish.

The Speech

Interesting that there's love for Obama's speech from left and right, but with more members of the left falling out than the right, and more members of the right once again over-simplifying that the President somehow justified Bush-Cheneyism in his speech.

He didn't -- no preemptive war in the Iraq sense. No real American Exceptionalism to justify everything we do -- rule of law necessary here to keep us on the moral highground.

Here's Glenn Greenwald on the oddities of the (mostly) bipartisan phenomenon:

Indeed, Obama insisted upon what he called the "right" to wage wars "unilaterally"; articulated a wide array of circumstances in which war is supposedly "just" far beyond being attacked or facing imminent attack by another country; explicitly rejected the non-violence espoused by King and Gandhi as too narrow and insufficiently pragmatic for a Commander-in-Chief like Obama to embrace; endowed us with the mission to use war as a means of combating "evil"; and hailed the U.S. for underwriting global security for the last six decades (without mentioning how our heroic efforts affected, say, the people of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Central America, or Gaza, and so many other places where "security" is not exactly what our wars "underwrote"). So it's not difficult to see why Rovian conservatives are embracing his speech; so much of it was devoted to an affirmation of their core beliefs.

The more difficult question to answer is why -- given what Drum described -- so many liberals found the speech so inspiring and agreeable? Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama: someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace? As Tom Friedman put it on CNN yesterday: "He got into their faces . . . I'm for getting into the Europeans' face." Is that what we needed more of?

The New York Times is one of the speech supporters:

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, President Obama gave the speech he needed to give, but we suspect not precisely the one the Nobel committee wanted to hear...

...In a speech that was both somber and soaring, he returned again and again to Afghanistan, arguing that the war was morally just and strategically necessary to defend the United States and others from more terrorist attacks.

In a moving passage, he invoked the memories of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that without Dr. King’s vision, leadership and sacrifice, he never would have been standing at that lectern in Oslo.

But he said he could not be guided by their examples alone. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.”

I keep asking all of my friends who think Obama shouldn't have ordered the 30,000 additional troops to Afghanstan if they believe withdrawal was the answer. Otherwise, Obama chose the best option. But if you truly believe there is nothing more to be gained there, no threat now or future that we can stem by changing our strategy from the Bush-Cheney one (whatever it was -- belligerent neglect?), then fine, it's up to Obama (or Osama, with another 9/11-type attack, God forbid) to prove you wrong.

I'll end with a less sanguine quote from Professor Juan Cole's post on the speech, a different kind of warning:

Obama has yet to decide whether he is a visionary or a technocrat. The prize committee hoped for the former. In this speech they got the latter.

One month from now will be one year in with Obama, and State of the Union time.

And with it come the first legitimate judgments.

How He Works

There's no more revealing or, I have to add, reassuring story about how our current President works his way through the toughest of decisions than this page-turner (page-clicker?) of a story from The New York Times entitled, "How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan."

This is the plan developed as "Max Leverage," and God bless our young President for doing what one cannot imagine ol' John McCain would have in his place:

Now as his top military adviser ran through a slide show of options, Mr. Obama expressed frustration. He held up a chart showing how reinforcements would flow into Afghanistan over 18 months and eventually begin to pull out, a bell curve that meant American forces would be there for years to come.

“I want this pushed to the left,” he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.

Good stuff includes the President and key staff members reading up on Vietnam so as to try and avoid those mistakes -- like not questioning the Domino Theory and avoiding open-ended engagement -- as well as massive consideration of Pakistan, which we should all be reminded has both Taliban and nuclear weapons, so far kept separate.

The depth of learning, questioning, openness to all opinions prior to decision-making, and the climax, where the President has revealed his decision to those working with him and goes around the room to ask if anyone disagrees, could not be more different from what we learned about the previous Administration.

However, it is interesting to note this key exchange on November 11th:

He turned to General Petraeus and asked him how long it took to get the so-called surge troops he commanded in Iraq in 2007. That was six months.

“What I’m looking for is a surge,” Mr. Obama said. “This has to be a surge.”

If one must fault El Presidente Bush for getting us into Iraq, I have to grudgingly credit him for the surge, which may become a staple of U.S. military policy against insurgencies going forward this century. The difference is that Bush's decision came in January 2007, over six years into his reign. That's a tragically long time for on-the-job learning.

Here's to our young President, moving quickly.

Godspeed.

Notes on the President's War Speech

It's as odd as can be to see the President I helped elect stand before an auditorium filled to the gills with West Point Cadets and lay out his strategy for adding 30,000 troops to our commitment in Afghanistan. Yet he ran on the platform that we needed to get our of Iraq and finish the job in Afghanistan, and he laid out information that the recently apprehended terrorists in the U.S. had come from the Afghan border region. And I believe in mentioning Pakistan over twenty times he did the most he could to hint that the mission is maybe more about that country.

Here's some interesting notes that had been embargoed until after the speech, from Marc Ambinder who attended the special journalists lunch with the President today (an hour long discussion). You see a President who could not be more different than the previous one (or two, if you count Cheney as well as Bush) in articulating a convincing rationale for his Commander-in-Chief decision. For example:

At one point in the session, Obama gave a thumbnail sketch of the three basic arguments he's heard about escalation.

"One argument is that this is Vietnam and we should just abandon the field completely. I don't know anybody who has looked at this very carefully who thinks that we are going to be as effective as we need to be in targeting Al Qaeda and other extremists if we simply allow Afghanistan to collapse. The other argument is that we can sort of stand pat, whether it's at 30,000 or 40,000 or 50,000, you have some platform there, you're basically pulled back and hunkered down but you're able to prevent Kabul from being overrun; you can still project some counterterrorism operations in the region. The problem there is whether that level is 50 or 60 ot 70, you have sort of a flatline, where there is no inflection point, there's no point at which, we can say conditions have changed conditionally sufficiently so that we can start bringing out troops home. The strategy that I'm pursuing is designed to say let's see if we can change the conditions on the ground in a time certain period. There are risks associated with that, but in the absence of that push, we are in a situation that doesn't change, and there are big costs associated to troop presence, to casualties, to a slowly deteriorating situation over a course of years that are at least comparable and probably worse than us going ahead and making this big push now."

Gotta give the guy credit: he even named the cost in his speech tonight. When did W. ever do that?

Meanwhile, the GOP/Foxers are still just trying to bring him down. Filthy.

Even Sen. John McCain, watching him on MSNBC right after the speech supporting the President but all up in arms about the time limit, it became comical at the end as he desperately tried to get back in that "I support the President!" as Brian Williams was movin' on.

And Away We Go

I don't know how you fall on President Barack Obama's expected announcement to increase our troop commitment to Afghanistan in his address Tuesday, but even as my own feelings are mixed, I have to wish my President good luck, especially as the Republicans who love the idea of doubling down over there are already criticizing his expected announcement of an exit strategy.

Morons. This is exactly why we hired then Senator Obama, to strategize and execute a way out of your messes.

Good luck on the climactic Senate healthcare reform debate as well.

Solemn

A moving story by New York Daily News reporter James Gordon Meek who ran into the President unexpectedly in the Iraq/Afghanistan section of Arlington National Cemetary on Veteran's Day yesterday:

"What's your name?" a somber President asked as he extended his hand.

"James Meek, sir," I replied, struggling to pull off my wool glove and pull my hood back from my head. "I'm here visiting a friend, Pfc. David H. Sharrett II, who was killed in Iraq last year."

He asked how I knew Dave. I explained that his father, also named David, was my high school English teacher in nearby McLean, Va. My classmates and I knew Dave as a little boy playing at our feet.

"He became a star football player and was one of the toughest soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division," I told Obama.

I didn't tell the commander in chief that Dave was killed by friendly fire. Or that the Army bungled notifying Dave's parents of a probe that concluded his lieutenant tragically mistook him for a terrorist in the dark and shot him. Or that his family had to fight for accountability - which two battlefield commanders promised but stateside generals derailed.

That wouldn't have been appropriate, Dave's deeply grateful father later agreed.

"Well, we appreciate his service very much," Obama told me.

I then told him I'm a reporter for the Daily News - but was just there to visit friends.

"Well, James," he said, looking me in the eye, "just because you're a journalist doesn't mean you can't honor your friends here."

The whole story packs emotion -- a President who, as Meek describes in the clip below, didn't have screeners keeping him from the ordinary citizens there to honor they dead friends and family, refreshing:

More pictures here like this one:

As Meeks points out towards the end of the interview, he knew the President was at Arlington with the Afghanistan strategy and troop deployment decision weighing heavily on his mind. After all the leaks, the White House is happy to let people know that the President has rejected the four options so far offered to him because, and I know this is a shock in a President of any recent vintage -- he wants a clear endgame.

This is why we hired this guy instead of shoot-first McCain. Our Ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, isn't buying the McChrystal line and has voiced major doubts about President Karzai, who's own brother is being paid by the CIA and runs massive heroin operations there. This is making Eikenberry unpopular around the Pentagon, but it's clearly affecting President Obama's decision.

With his sound judgment and any luck, we might just avoid another Vietnam in the country known as the place "where empires go to die."

Deliberate

After his unexpected and extraordinary Ft. Hood speech yesterday and his equally grave Veteran's Day speech today, President Barack Obama appears to be taking the risking of American military lives more seriously than any President in recent memory:

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.

The whole article is worth reading, as our President appears working hard to avoid the key mistake of America's involvement in Vietnam -- supporting a corrupt regime doing our servicemen and women no favors.

Bravo, and here's to a wise, considered, responsible and effective decision.

Haywire

Nothing but tragedy at Ft. Hood. The shooter suspect is still alive and, as he's a Muslim, the leading American Islamic advocacy group has come out with a statement condemning (duh!) the senseless slaughter.

Looks like the teabaggers picked the wrong day to capture the news cycle.

Oh, and I'm in agreement with George F. Will (on something other than baseball).

Military Matters

A tremendously bad day for Pakistan citizens who prefer not to be blown up, with ninety-one confirmed dead and several hundred wounded by a car bomb set off at a crowded market like the very announcement of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's arrival. Assuming this was the Taliban, they also struck in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing five members of the U.N. foreign staff, their goal appearing to be disruption of the upcoming run-off election.

All of this is likely to put pressure on President Obama to send more troops, although rumor has it he won't go as far as General McChrystal wants. It's not a problem solved just with guns, although one wonders if the Taliban are there to stay -- and, if they gain power, suppress freedoms like rights of women, for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the White House did enjoy a victory in paring away wasteful spending in the military appropriations bill it signed today. The President says there's more he's like to see cut and next year with Congressional midterms will be a bigger test, but it's a move in the right direction. For some reason the GOP (and a lot of Dems) love to complain about all pork but the military kind.

The President also took a special midnight trip to honor the return of military dead at Dover Air Force Base. It is heartening, if grim, to know the President is making himself palpably aware of the cost.

Winning Diplomatic Path?

Here?

Here?

Sense on Afghanistan?

Here's the news revealed today about the Administration's approach to Afghanistan:

The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States.
...

“It would be irresponsible,” Mr. Emanuel told CNN. Then he continued, paraphrasing the senator, that it would be reckless to decide on the troop level without first doing “a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing.”
...

The election in Afghanistan was so badly marred by allegations of fraud that they helped prompt Mr. Obama to rethink the strategy he unveiled just in March, officials have said. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., among others at the White House, had already soured on Mr. Karzai, whose government and family are accused of corruption and ties to drug dealing. The election reinforced those doubts, officials said.

This sounds to me like the opposite answer that we gave in Vietnam, the opposite of trying to prop up a corrupt regime that will just look at the U.S. as fools with money to waste on them. I'd be interested to see if there's consensus agreement among Nettertainment readers on this, since I haven't seen as much divergence on the Afghanistan issue as, say, health insurance reform.

After all, Karzai appears to be stonewalling any attempt at an honest election result:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai may not accept the results of a vote recount from the summer's general election, officials from his campaign hinted, adding a further twist to the already fraught post-poll political environment. On Sunday, his supporters began demonstrations against "foreign interference" in the elections.

As they await the results of a recount to try to adjust for widespread fraud, officials from the Karzai campaign began over the weekend to cast aspersions on the process, centering their criticism on the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which is re-tallying the numbers. The commission finished its audit Saturday, and is reviewing it before releasing it in coming days. If Mr. Karzai is found to have less than 50% of the vote, it could force a run-off with his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Sounds like a little too much like Iran, doesn't it?

Confusistan Pt. 2

I stand corrected, as comments in the past two posts directly address the Afghanistan question, even if answering with uncertainty. I find myself leaning towards Master Fu's argument for the Biden position which is essentially limited and surgical without totally giving up. One wonders if it eventually leads to escalation, maybe not with this President, but perhaps keeping it as Special Ops as possible will keep it off the public radar as well, for better or worse.

New news or new no news, the President met today with Congressional leaders for a frank discussion where he said he would not substantially reduce troop levels and assured them that, "that his decision won't make everybody in the room or the nation happy." Agreed, no matter what he decides. After all, even in his own Party, there's a bill being introduced from the left by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) to cut off any funding for a troop increase in Afghanistan, while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is calling for massive troop increases.

Meanwhile, NATO says that while 8 U.S. soldiers may have been killed in that big eastern Afghanistan battle this past weekend, over 100 enemy fighters were killed as well. Suspicious number? Is this like Vietnam again -- what day of the month is it = # of Vietcong reported killed by U.S. forces?

Master Fu does question the value of Afghanistan. We can't deny the threat -- the man at the center of the recently foiled bomb plot in NYC was an Afghan immigrant, Najibullah Zazi, trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan. This is the threat that the Dems have run on, the threat they said Cheney/Bush took our eye off of in pursuit of the man who did not attack us. And then there's China's stake in the country, per Robert D. Kaplan:

In Afghanistan, American and Chinese interests converge. By exploiting Afghanistan’s metal and mineral reserves, China can provide thousands of Afghans with jobs, thus generating tax revenues to help stabilize a tottering Kabul government. Just as America has a vision of a modestly stable Afghanistan that will no longer be a haven for extremists, China has a vision of Afghanistan as a secure conduit for roads and energy pipelines that will bring natural resources from the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. So if America defeats Al Qaeda and the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban, China’s geopolitical position will be enhanced.

This is not a paradox, since China need not be our future adversary. Indeed, combining forces with China in Afghanistan might even improve the relationship between Washington and Beijing. The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America’s military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit.

Just when you think you're starting to make sense of it, things just get more Confusistaning.

Confusistan

The latest news from Afghanistan is grim: 8 U.S. soldiers killed in a remote eastern province. The recent election, which should have solidified the new democracy, appears to have been rife with corruption. At home, President Obama is facing pressure from both the left and the right, and for those of us who agreed with candidate Obama that the Cheney-Bush Administration squandered our gains in the country which actually contained those who attacked us on 9/11 by fomenting their pre-determined (as in before even getting elected) war in Iraq, we're also concerned about creating an Obama Vietnam, pace President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

There's an interesting collection of contributor advice in The New York Times that's worth a read. Unfortunately, the first entry is entitled "Reform of Go Home" which would seem to be answered by the Afghan election news cited above. Disconcerting notes include this being a "Type B" war where the enemy has little to lose (i.e. no land) and uses the length of time against the democracy (U.S.A.) trying to beat them, and the funding of the Taliban by Pakistani sources.

So as there's been a legitimate debate about U.S. internal policy in the comments section of this blog recently, here's my question: do we know what to do next in Afghanistan yet, are we waiting on the President's decision to react pro/con, or does someone have a strong opinion about what our country should be doing -- or not doing -- over there?

Good Week

You might not know it by the town hall ragers (and all their racial baggage) but last week was actually an excellent week for President Barack Obama and his Administration. There was a slowing in new unemployment (yes, not yet a recovery, but where it has to begin), the birthers/deathers/teabaggers are actually starting to boomerang in his favor, and he got his first Supreme Court Justice choice ever sworn in.

Best of all, he appears to have killed the Taliban chief of Pakistan, who was also their military leader:

Pakistan considered the al-Qaida-linked Mehsud its No. 1 internal threat. He was suspected in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and many other assaults. He claimed responsibility for some, including an audacious attack on a police academy in March that killed 12 people.

His death would be a victory for President Barack Obama and a nod to the Bush administration, both of whom have relied heavily on the CIA-controlled missile strikes to take out militants in Pakistan's wild northwest. The U.S. had a $5 million bounty on Mehsud, whom it considered a threat to the Afghan war effort.

Caught like a Somali pirate in the crosshairs of a CIA missile strike. And it appears that the ensuing power struggle to replace him is upping the body count:

According to sources, commanders Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, the two leading contenders for the chief slot, exchanged hot words at the shura meeting in Sara Rogha over the choosing of a successor to Baitullah. A shootout followed, leading to the death of Hakeemullah while causing life-threatening injuries to Waliur Rehman. A government official in Peshawar said that both Hakeemullah and Waliur Rehman had been killed in the clash.

How crazy would it be if Obama's war strategy turned out to be the shining success of his Administration? Up next: Afghan drug lords:

The generals told Senate staff members that two credible sources and substantial additional evidence were required before a trafficker was placed on the list, and only those providing support to the insurgency would be made targets.

Currently, they said, there are about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.

“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency,” one of the generals told the committee staff.

As another President once said, "Bring it on."

Served

Dick never served in the military, he got five deferments. He was wrong on Iraq and he directed the outing of a CIA agent. He's pro-torture, as is his family.

Jesse volunteered to be a Navy S.E.A.L.:

KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That's right. I was water boarded, so I know -- at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence -- every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

And, back to the real world, here's our new man in Afghanistan:

“If you asked me the first thing that comes to mind about General McChrystal,” said Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the council, “I think of no body fat.”

Seriously, McChrystal has Spock ears, check out the photo in the Times link above.

It's the Spock Administration.

Strapping In

This may be my favorite advertisement ever:



Then there's Matt Taibbi, the hardnosed young journalist who took the self-pitying resignation letter that AIG exec v.p. Jay DeSantis ran in The New York Times and not only shredded it, but has balled up the pieces into bullets and shoved them back down DeSantis' throat:

Only a person with a habitually overinflated sense of self-worth could think he deserves a $700,000 retention bonus, even if it has to be paid by taxpayers, when in reality no one "deserves" that much money. It may be that some people do get paid that much, but most people who make that much money have enough sense to realize their cushy lifestyles are an accident of fate, of birth, of class, not something that is "supported" by some unwritten natural law of compensation.

Hey Jake, it's not like you were curing cancer. You were a fucking commodities trader. Thanks to a completely insane, horribly skewed set of societal values that puts a premium on greed and severely undervalues selflessness, communal spirit and intellectualism -- values that make millionaires out of people like you and leave teachers and nurses, the people who raise your kids and clean your parents' bedpans, comparatively penniless -- you made a lot of money.

Good for you. Consider yourself lucky. But your company went belly-up and broke, almost certainly thanks in part to you, and now you don't get your bonus.

So be a man and deal with it. The rest of us do, when we get bad breaks, and we've had a lot more of them than you. And stop whining. Jesus Christ.

Taibbi's just as much fun to hear in person. Prime time's not quite ready for his truth, but he's so dead on that they're enjoying having him on the show:



But the big game is changing once again thanks to the change agent we elected last fall. Today the President picked his war, the one he said we needed to finish all throughout the campaign, and now it is upon us:

In announcing a plan on Friday that could be his signature foreign policy effort, Mr. Obama said that he would send more troops — some 4,000 — but stipulated that they would not carry out combat missions, and would instead be used to train the Afghan Army and the national police. He left himself open to the possibility of sending more as the situation warrants.

All is could think of was John Cale, whom I saw in London in 1980 performing his biggest "hit" off his career-defining Sabotage/Live album, "Ready for War". At the end of the performance I saw, Reagan ascending, Cale screamed into the microphone until the band dropped their instruments and scurried off, ultimately leaving himself only to stick his head out from behind the curtain one or twice more to scream the anthemic line again.

This performance from a few years later may end more quietly, but it says exactly what I've been thinking ever since our new President announced his War:



Strap in.