Early bird reports Gen Petraeus and Adm Mullen say that Afghanistan would require a “sustained, substantial” commitment from the United States and other nations to stop a downward spiral of violence and a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
A suicide bomber struck U.S. troops patrolling on foot Thursday in southern Afghanistan, killing at least two soldiers and three civilians and wounding at least nine civilians, officials said. The bomber hit the U.S. patrol on a busy street in Kandahar province's Maywand district, said district chief Naimatullah Khan. American victims were taken away by helicopter, Khan said, but he could not provide a number. Army Col. Jerry O'Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that U.S. casualties occurred but said he could not give further details.
President-elect Barack Obama yesterday announced his picks for four senior defense officials, including two who served as top Pentagon budget officials under President Bill Clinton:
1. William J. Lynn III as deputy defense secretary - Lynn, senior vice president of government operations for Raytheon, would run much of the Pentagon day to day if confirmed as Gates's deputy, and he would probably spearhead what Gates has said would be a new approach to acquisition. Lynn served as the Pentagon's chief budgetary and fiscal official in the job of comptroller from 1997 to 2001, and as a strategic planner from 1993 to 1997. Before that he was a staff member for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and focused on military matters. Lynn, who has a law degree from Cornell University, was previously registered as a lobbyist but deregistered in June.
2. Robert F. Hale as undersecretary of defense-comptroller - Hale is executive director of the American Society of Military Comptrollers and served from 1994 to 2001 as Air Force assistant secretary for financial management. He also was head of the Congressional Budget Office's defense unit.
3. Michèle Flournoy as undersecretary of defense for policy - Flournoy, co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, a centrist national security think tank, has worked on a broad range of defense policy and international security issues.
4. Jeh Charles Johnson as general counsel - Johnson is a partner in the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, based in New York City, and previously served as general counsel for the Air Force.
Leading newspaper headlines: The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times lead today with international aid groups' mounting complaints of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza due to the Israeli siege. The Washington Post leads with Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner's plans to overhaul the $700 billion financial industry bailout, which, according to anonymous sources, Geithner will broaden to include municipalities, small businesses, and homeowners. USAToday goes with President-elect Barack Obama's speech yesterday, in which he urged swift congressional action on his forthcoming economic stimulus plan. http://www.slate.com/id/2208279/
Other news:
Major Push Is Needed To Save Afghanistan, General Says - WASHINGTON — The top American commander responsible for Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Thursday that the country would require a “sustained, substantial” commitment from the United States and other nations to stop a downward spiral of violence and a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The General's Next War - The FP interview with Gen. David H. Petraeus
Boxer strike group, 13th MEU to deploy Friday
A suicide bomber struck U.S. troops patrolling on foot Thursday in southern Afghanistan, killing at least two soldiers and three civilians and wounding at least nine civilians, officials said. The bomber hit the U.S. patrol on a busy street in Kandahar province's Maywand district, said district chief Naimatullah Khan. American victims were taken away by helicopter, Khan said, but he could not provide a number. Army Col. Jerry O'Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that U.S. casualties occurred but said he could not give further details.
President-elect Barack Obama yesterday announced his picks for four senior defense officials, including two who served as top Pentagon budget officials under President Bill Clinton:
1. William J. Lynn III as deputy defense secretary - Lynn, senior vice president of government operations for Raytheon, would run much of the Pentagon day to day if confirmed as Gates's deputy, and he would probably spearhead what Gates has said would be a new approach to acquisition. Lynn served as the Pentagon's chief budgetary and fiscal official in the job of comptroller from 1997 to 2001, and as a strategic planner from 1993 to 1997. Before that he was a staff member for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and focused on military matters. Lynn, who has a law degree from Cornell University, was previously registered as a lobbyist but deregistered in June.
2. Robert F. Hale as undersecretary of defense-comptroller - Hale is executive director of the American Society of Military Comptrollers and served from 1994 to 2001 as Air Force assistant secretary for financial management. He also was head of the Congressional Budget Office's defense unit.
3. Michèle Flournoy as undersecretary of defense for policy - Flournoy, co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, a centrist national security think tank, has worked on a broad range of defense policy and international security issues.
4. Jeh Charles Johnson as general counsel - Johnson is a partner in the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, based in New York City, and previously served as general counsel for the Air Force.
Leading newspaper headlines: The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times lead today with international aid groups' mounting complaints of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza due to the Israeli siege. The Washington Post leads with Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner's plans to overhaul the $700 billion financial industry bailout, which, according to anonymous sources, Geithner will broaden to include municipalities, small businesses, and homeowners. USAToday goes with President-elect Barack Obama's speech yesterday, in which he urged swift congressional action on his forthcoming economic stimulus plan. http://www.slate.com/id/2208279/
Other news:
Major Push Is Needed To Save Afghanistan, General Says - WASHINGTON — The top American commander responsible for Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Thursday that the country would require a “sustained, substantial” commitment from the United States and other nations to stop a downward spiral of violence and a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The General's Next War - The FP interview with Gen. David H. Petraeus
Boxer strike group, 13th MEU to deploy Friday
Anti/Counter Piracy operations conducted by French forces photos: http://www.defense.gouv.fr/ema/operations_exterieures/piraterie/breves/golfe_d_aden_les_pirates_remis_aux_autorites_somaliennes
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Les pirates sont remis aux garde-côtes somaliens. www.defense.gouv.fr/ema
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Transfert des pirates vers le bateau des garde-côtes somaliens. www.defense.gouv.fr/ema
New York TimesJanuary 9, 2009 Pg. 7
Major Push Is Needed To Save Afghanistan, General Says
By Elisabeth Bumiller
WASHINGTON — The top American commander responsible for Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Thursday that the country would require a “sustained, substantial” commitment from the United States and other nations to stop a downward spiral of violence and a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
General Petraeus, who declined to suggest a time frame for that commitment, also said that Iran, which has been the target of United Nations sanctions because of its nuclear program, had common interests with the United States and other nations in a secure Afghanistan.
Although he hinted that such interests might make talks with Iran feasible, he said he would leave the topic to diplomats and policy makers.
“I don’t want to get completely going down that road because it’s a very hot topic,” General Petraeus told a conference of the United States Institute of Peace, a government-financed research organization. Nonetheless, he said, “there are some common objectives and no one I think would disagree.”
Like the United States, Iran is concerned about the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and the resurgence of extremists there, he said. “It doesn’t want to see Sunni extremists or certainly ultrafundamentalist extremists running Afghanistan any more than other folks do,” he said, while acknowledging that the United States and Iran have “some pretty substantial points of conflict out there as well.”
President-elect Barack Obama said frequently during the campaign that he considered Afghanistan the central front in defeating terrorism. The Obama administration is expected to send 20,000 to 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan over the next year.
General Petraeus also cautioned that security in Afghanistan would not improve if the only initiative was the deployment of more American troops; he said that Afghanistan required a diplomatic and economic commitment as well.
“There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan,” General Petraeus said. Although “the natural tendency will be to look to the way progress was achieved in Iraq for possible answers,” he added, it is clear that Afghanistan is different from Iraq.
Afghanistan has a higher illiteracy rate, more difficult terrain and fewer developed resources than Iraq does, he said.
The daylong conference, which was meant to highlight the foreign policy challenges facing the new administration, also included a warning from William J. Perry, a defense secretary in the Clinton administration, that Mr. Obama will “almost certainly” face a serious crisis with Iran during his first year in office.
Mr. Perry, who is influential in Democratic national security circles and has ties to members of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team, said that Iran was “moving inextricably” toward developing nuclear weapons.
“And it seems clear that Israel will not sit by idly while Iran takes the final steps toward becoming a nuclear power,” he said.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama filled top Pentagon positions under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
For deputy secretary of Defense, Mr. Obama selected William J. Lynn III, an executive and lobbyist at the defense contractor, Raytheon, who served as undersecretary of defense in the Clinton administration. Although Mr. Obama campaigned against the influence of lobbyists in government, a transition spokesman said Mr. Lynn came highly recommended by both Republicans and Democrats.
“The president-elect felt it was critical that Mr. Lynn fill this position,” said the spokesman, Tommy Vietor.
Michele A. Flournoy, a leader of Mr. Obama’s transition team for the Pentagon, was selected for the No. 3 job, under secretary of defense for policy. Ms. Flournoy was the lead architect of the Clinton administration’s 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, a strategy and planning document that the Pentagon is required to produce every four years.
The transition team also said that Robert F. Hale, who was assistant secretary of the Air Force during the Clinton presidency, would become an under secretary of defense, serving as the Pentagon’s chief financial officer.
Mr. Obama named Jeh Charles Johnson as the Defense Department’s general counsel. Mr. Johnson served as general counsel of the department of the Air Force during Mr. Clinton’s second term.
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Foreign PolicyJanuary 1, 2009 Pg. 48
The General's Next War
The FP interview with Gen. David H. Petraeus
As America’s most famous warrior-scholar looks to export his Big Ideas about fighting wars from Iraq to the arguably even tougher battlefield of Afghanistan, FP’s executive editor, Susan Glasser, spoke with him in the Pentagon days after he took over his new command.
Gen. David Petraeus: In looking at which lessons learned in Iraq might be applicable in Afghanistan, it is important to remember a key principle of counterinsurgency operations: Every case is unique. That is certainly true of Afghanistan (just as it was true, of course, in Iraq). While general concepts that proved important in Iraq may be applicable in Afghanistan—concepts such as the importance of securing and serving the population and the necessity of living among the people to secure them—the application of those ‘big ideas’ has to be adapted to Afghanistan. The ‘operationalization’ will inevitably be different, as Afghanistan has a very different history and very different ‘muscle memory’ in terms of central governance (or lack thereof). It also lacks the natural resources that Iraq has and is more rural. It has very different (and quite extreme) terrain and weather. And it has a smaller amount of educated human capital, due to higher rates of illiteracy, as well as substantial unemployment, an economy whose biggest cash export is illegal, and significant challenges of corruption. Finally, it lacks sufficient levels of basic services like electricity, drinking water, and education—though there has been progress in a number of these areas and many others since 2001.
One cannot adequately address the challenges in Afghanistan without adding Pakistan into the equation. In fact, those seeking to help Afghanistan and Pakistan need to widen the aperture even farther, to encompass at least the Central Asian states, India, Iran, and even China and Russia.
FP: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that U.S. efforts in Afghanistan were really on the verge of failure. What’s your incoming assessment?
DP: I told [then] Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in September 2005 that Afghanistan would be the longest campaign in the so-called ‘long war.’ That judgment was based on an assessment I conducted in Afghanistan on my way home from my second tour in Iraq. And having been back to Afghanistan twice in recent months, I still see it that way. Progress there will require a sustained, substantial commitment. That commitment needs to be extended to Pakistan as well, though Pakistan does have large, well-developed security institutions and its leaders are determined to employ their own forces in dealing with the significant extremist challenges that threaten their country.
FP: I was rereading an account of an Afghan veteran from Soviet operations there. After every retaliatory strike, he said, ‘Perhaps one mujahideen was killed. The rest were innocent. The survivors hated us and lived with only one idea—revenge.’ Clearly [U.S.] engagement in Afghanistan didn’t start out in the same way as the Soviets’ did, but one of the questions is whether all these occupations wind up similarly after seven years.
DP: A number of people have pointed out the substantial differences between the character of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and that of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, especially in the circumstances that led to the respective involvement, as well as in the relative conduct, of the forces there. Foremost among the differences have been the coalition’s objectives: not just the desire to help the Afghans establish security and preclude establishment of extremist safe havens, but also to support economic development, democratic institutions, the rule of law, infrastructure, and education. To be sure, the coalition faces some of the same challenges that any of the previous forces in Afghanistan have faced: the same extreme terrain and weather, tribal elements that pride themselves on fighting, lack of infrastructure, and so on. In such a situation, it is hugely important to be seen as serving the population, in addition to securing it. And that is why we’re conducting counterinsurgency operations, as opposed to merely counterterrorism operations.
FP: Tell me where you see lessons from Iraq that might not apply in Afghanistan, and things that you will export.
DP: We cannot just take the tactics, techniques, and procedures that worked in Iraq and employ them in Afghanistan. How, for example, do you communicate with the Afghan people? The answer: very differently than the way you communicate with the Iraqi people, given the much lower number of televisions and a rate of illiteracy in the Afghan provinces that runs as high as 70 to 80 percent. Outside Kabul and other big Afghan cities, Afghans don’t watch much television; they don’t have televisions. In Iraq, one flies over fairly remote areas and still sees satellite dishes on many roofs. In Afghanistan, you not only won’t see satellite dishes; you also won’t see electrical lines, and you may not even find a radio. Moreover, you can’t achieve the same effect with leaflets or local newspapers because many Afghans can’t read them. So, how do you communicate with them? The answer is, through tribal elders, via hand-crank radios receiving transmissions from local radio stations, through shura councils, and so on.
FP: What people most want to know, of course, is: Where does this end? The counterinsurgency principles, your own statements in the past, have focused on the idea that such wars end with political solutions—you don’t kill your way out of it.
DP: One of the concepts we embraced in Iraq was recognition that you can’t kill or capture your way out of a complex, industrial-strength insurgency. The challenge in Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq, is to figure out how to reduce substantially the numbers of those who have to be killed or captured. This includes creating the conditions in which one can have successful reconciliation with some of the elements fighting us. Progress in reconciliation is most likely when you are in a position of strength and when there are persuasive reasons for groups to shift from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution. In Iraq, that was aided by gradual recognition that al Qaeda brought nothing but indiscriminate violence, oppressive practices, and an extremist ideology to which the people really didn’t subscribe. Beyond that, incentives were created to persuade the insurgents that it made more sense to support the new Iraq.
The challenge in Afghanistan, of course, is figuring out how to create the conditions that enable reconciliation, recognizing that these likely will differ somewhat from those created in Iraq.
FP: Do you think that does involve speaking with warlords, people like [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar, who up to now have been absolute non-starters?
DP: Any such outreach has to be an Afghan initiative, not the coalition’s. In Iraq, frankly, it was necessary for the coalition to take the lead in some areas where there was no Iraqi government or security presence.
FP: Do you think there is something qualitatively or quantitatively new and different about the insurgencies that U.S. forces have encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan?
DP: We looked at this issue closely when we were drafting the counterinsurgency manual. And we concluded that some aspects of contemporary extremist tactics are, indeed, new. If you look, as we did, at what [French military officer] David Galula faced in Algeria, you find, obviously, that he and his colleagues did not have to deal with a transnational extremist network enabled by access to the Internet. Today, extremist media cells recruit, exhort, train, share expertise, and generate resources in cyberspace. The incidence of very lethal suicide bombers and massive car bombs is vastly higher today. It seems as if suicide car bombs have become the precision-guided munition of modern insurgents and extremists. And while there has been a religious component in many insurgencies, the extremist nature of the particular enemy we face seems unprecedented in recent memory.
FP: The counterinsurgency manual, an object of huge praise, is seen as a key moment in the rethink that put the war in Iraq on a different course. But it has not been uncontroversial. There are people on the left who see it as a form of neocolonialism; conservatives are skeptical of anything they see as nation-building, while others believe that by organizing to fight this kind of war, the United States risks not being prepared for a more conventional conflict in the future. How much of an intellectual debate have these principles stirred up? What do you say to these critics?
DP: It’s important to recognize the most important overarching doctrinal concept that our Army, in particular, has adopted—the concept of ‘full spectrum operations.’ This concept holds that all military operations are some mix of offensive, defensive, and stability and support operations. In other words, you’ve always got to be thinking not just about the conventional forms of combat—offensive and defensive operations—but also about the stability and support component. Otherwise, successes in conventional combat may be undermined by unpreparedness for the operations often required in their wake.
The debate about this has been a healthy one, but we have to be wary of arguments that imply we have to choose—or should choose—between either stability-operations-focused or conventional-combat-focused training and forces. It is not only possible to be prepared for some mix; it is necessary.
A wonderful essay that I read as a graduate student captures the essence of my view on this. The essay discussed the different schools of international relations theory, and it concluded that ‘the truth is not to be found in any one of these schools of thought, but rather in the debate among them.’ That is probably the case in this particular discussion. We would do well to avoid notions that we can pick and choose the kinds of wars in which we want to be involved and prepare only for them.
FP: You said [that] even in 2005 when you were in Afghanistan, you reported to Secretary Rumsfeld that this could be the longest part of the long war.
DP: I didn’t say it could be. I said it would be. My assessment was that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of the long war. And I think that assessment has been confirmed by events in Afghanistan in recent months.
FP: Just how long did you have in mind?
DP: Those are predictions one doesn’t hazard.
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Boxer strike group, 13th MEU to deploy Friday
Staff reportPosted : Wednesday Jan 7, 2009 20:55:58 EST
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SAN DIEGO — More than 4,000 Marines and sailors with the Boxer Expeditionary Strike Group will leave from the naval base here Friday for a scheduled seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific and Persian Gulf regions.
The departure marks the first operational voyage of the San Antonio-class New Orleans — the Navy’s newest amphibious transport dock — and the first operational deployment of the Marine Corps’ UH-1Y Huey utility helicopters, which feature four-blade rotors and increased speed, lift and range.
The strike group and embarked 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit have spent several busy months training at sea and at various military ranges to prepare for a variety of missions, ranging from humanitarian aid and boarding vessels to conducting amphibious operations and strike missions.
Along with New Orleans, the Boxer strike group includes the amphibious assault ship Boxer, dock landing ship Comstock, guided-missile destroyer Chung-Hoon, guided-missile cruiser Lake Champlain and Coast Guard cutter Boutwell. Joining them for the deployment are elements of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 21, Naval Beach Group 1, Assault Craft Units 1 and 5, Beach Master Unit 1 and Fleet Surgical Team 5.
The Camp Pendleton-based 13th MEU includes: Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 1st Marines; Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 163 (reinforced); and Combat Logistics Battalion 13.
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