PrairiePundit

AP: Hundreds of Chicago police officers are hitting the streets on overtime every night in dangerous neighborhoods, the latest tactic by Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration to reduce killings in a city dogged by its homicide rate and heartbreaking stories about honor students and small children caught in the crossfire. The decision by Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy last month to put small armies of officers working overtime in specific "hot zones" corresponds with a notable drop in homicides in the nation's third-largest city in February and March. But the latest "Violence Reduction Initiative" raises concerns about whether the policy is sustainable for the financially struggling city and whether it could further strain officers working long hours at a stressful and dangerous job. If it continues, the tactic would cost millions of dollars each month — putting the one initiative on pace to exceed the department's entire overtime budget...

NY Times: Hawks on Iraq Prepare for War Again, Against Hagel The campaign now being waged against Senator Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense echoes his dispute with fellow Republicans over the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Hagel was for the invasion before he was against.  Like many Democrats he became defeatist and like Obama and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton he was dead wrong about the surge.  In being wrong he showed a lack of comprehension of counter insurgency warfare and a lack of willingness to listen to those who did understand it and effectively executed it.  And like all of those people including Obama he has been unwilling to admit he was wrong and that is what makes him a very poor choice for Secretary of Defense. In fact it appears that Obama is putting together a cabinet of people who were eager to lose the war in Iraq.  Obama is still in a mode of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory in b...

Brian Bresnahan: Our men and women in uniform deserve much better in a Secretary of Defense than Chuck Hagel. He does not understand war fighting at that level, doesn't comprehend the nature of the threats we face, and can't bring himself to champion our troops' success when it conflicts with his political ambitions. After voting to send us to war in Iraq, Chuck Hagel abandoned us when things got politically tough. Through his self-aggrandizing public criticism of the war we were fighting (the troops can't be segregated from his criticism), he also made our service even more dangerous than it already was. Military success often lies with learning the lessons of previous efforts, whether at the tactical or strategic level. "Lessons learned" are an important part of reviewing nearly every military activity, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Iraq proved that Chuck Hagel clearly missed the lessons of the war he fought in. Our nation's Secreta...

I am not sure I buy the criticism of sending the troops to Helmand.  It was infested with Taliban  that were using it as a base for attacks elsewhere.  The real problem is that Obama cut the troop request needed for an effective counterinsurgency operation.  The Washington Post is running a book excerpt of this guys criticism of US troop deployment.

Image via Wikipedia Washington Post: Military leaders and President Obama’s civilian advisers are girding for battle over the size and pace of the planned pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan this summer, with the military seeking to limit a reduction in combat forces and the White House pressing for a withdrawal substantial enough to placate a war-weary electorate. Gen. David H. Petraeus , the top allied commander in Afghanistan, has not presented a recommendation on the withdrawal to his superiors at the Pentagon, but some senior officers and military planning documents have described the July pullout as small to insignificant, prompting deep concern within the White House. At a meeting of his war cabinet this month, Obama expressed displeasure with such characterizations of the withdrawal, according to three senior officials with direct knowledge of the session. “The president made it clear that he wants a meaningful drawdown to start in July,” said one of the officials, w...

Image via Wikipedia Guardian: The US military onslaught against the Taliban in Kandahar has dealt a major blow against insurgent commanders who have been forced to flee areas they used to control and reduced two of the most senior insurgent field commanders to squabbling over footsoldiers, residents in the critically important southern province say. Tribal elders and ordinary villagers living at the centre of Barack Obama's military surge in and around Kandahar city say it has severely damaged the Taliban's capability, with senior commanders and foreign fighters quitting the key districts of Zhari , Panjwai and Arghandab altogether. Local fighters have been promoted to leadership positions and left to fend for themselves and continue attacks against coalition forces. But local people say that, cut off from their leaders, local Taliban have shied away from fighting. "Two months ago the Taliban were everywhere," said Malim Juma Gul, a tribal elder from Zahri ...

Rowan Scarborough: The U.S. military is starting to see signs that the troop surge in Afghanistan is working on a timetable similar to the Iraq reinforcement campaign in 2007, according to an outside adviser and military sources. "There are already some early signs of a beginning of a momentum shift in our favor," retired Army Gen. Jack Keane told The Washington Times. Gen. Keane just returned from a two-week tour of the battlefield, where the focus is on ousting the Taliban from Kandahar, its birthplace, as well as from Helmand province and other southern and eastern areas. Gen. Keane reported his findings to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, who saw the surge of 30,000 troops completed in August, placing about 100,000 American service members in country. An architect of the Bush administration's surge of troops in Iraq, Gen. Keane advised Gen. Petraeus when he was the top commander there. Gen. Keane told The Times he has ...

Independent: One of the chief proponents of the US military's "surge" policy in Afghanistan has declared that "unrealistic expectations" were raised over the gains made by Nato's offensive to capture the Taliban stronghold of Marjah. General Jack Keane, a former vice -chief of the US Army, also warned that politicians talking about the early pullout of troops from the conflict send the wrong signals to both allies and enemies about the West's commitment. Before a visit to Helmand last weekend, the Defence Secretary Liam Fox said there should be a quick withdrawal of British troops from a country which he described as a "broken 13th-century state". President Barack Obama has set July 2011 as when US forces would begin a drawdown. General Keane's warning comes after General Stanley McChrystal described Marjah as a "bleeding ulcer". The US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has told US and Afghan troops and off...

Times: The campaign to drive the Taleban out of Kandahar province has until the end of the year to succeed if it is to capitalise on maximum troop numbers and political unity, Nato commanders and Western diplomats told The Times . “Our mission is to show irreversible momentum by the end of 2010 — that’s the clock I’m using,” Brigadier-General Frederick Hodges, the US Director of Operations in southern Afghanistan, said. “We’ll never have more capacity than we have by late summer 2010. We ’ll never have it any better.” The joint Nato-Afghan campaign — codenamed Hamkari, which is the Dari word for co-operation — will use the biggest number of troops and police in the country yet. Thousands of Afghan National Army soldiers and paramilitaries are to combine with the existing coalition force in Kandahar as well as additional units from among the 13,000 troops being sent in the second phase of the US surge. The military strategy involves combining regular US soldiers and spec...

Guardian: The coming of spring always brings an influx of Taliban fighters to the district of Zhari, where the young leaves on the grapevines and fruit orchards provide cover so thick that Nato's hi-tech thermal imaging cameras struggle to see the insurgents hiding within. But this year things are different. The Taliban are back once again, but the locals who live in the area on the western doorstep of the city of Kandahar say they have arrived in far higher numbers than in previous years. "Two months ago there were only around 30 in the area, but it has increased dramatically in the last two weeks," said Faiz Mohammad, a shopkeeper from the town of Sanzari in Zhari district. "We now see hundreds of them, young teenage boys, led by older commanders. They are clean shaven and look like everyone else, except they carry good weapons and communications equipment." It is a similar story in the nearby villages of Pashmol and Ashgho, locals say. According ...

NY Times: American forces have begun operations to push back Taliban insurgents in this most important southern province, the birthplace and spiritual home of the Taliban, and a full-scale offensive is expected in coming weeks. But the Taliban have already turned this city into a battlefield as they prepare for the operation, which American officials hope will be decisive in breaking the insurgency’s grip on southern Afghanistan. When American forces all arrive, they will encounter challenges larger than any other in Afghanistan. Taliban suicide bombings and assassinations have left this city virtually paralyzed by fear. The insurgents boldly walk the streets, visit shops and even press people into keeping guns and other supplies in their houses for them in preparation for urban warfare, residents say. The government, corrupt and ineffective, lacks almost any popular support. Anyone connected to the government lives in fear of assassination. Its few officials sit barr...

Cal Thomas: Plagiarism, as defined by dictionary.com, is "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." In 1987, then-senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden was accused of plagiarizing from a speech by then-British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock. Biden eventually withdrew after a media firestorm, which was egged on by the eventual 1988 Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis. Now Vice President Biden is involved in a more serious act of plagiarism. He is trying to take credit for progress in the Iraq war, which he, then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and many Democrats opposed, calling it a failure. On CNN's "Larry King Live" last week, Biden shamelessly claimed: "I'm very optimistic about -- about Iraq, and this can be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 troops come marching home by the end of the ...

NY Times: Senior White House advisers are frustrated by what they say is the Pentagon’s slow pace in deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and its inability to live up to an initial promise to have all of the forces in the country by next summer, senior administration officials said Friday. Tensions over the deployment schedule have been growing in recent weeks between senior White House officials — among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. , Gen. James L. Jones , the national security adviser, and Rahm Emanuel , the White House chief of staff — and top commanders, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal , the senior commander in Afghanistan. A rapid deployment is central to President Obama ’s strategy, to have a jolt of American forces pound the Taliban enough for Afghan security forces to take over the fight. Administration officials said that part of the White House frustration stemmed from the view that the longer the American military presence in Afghanistan continue...

NY Times: President Obama strongly opposed President George W. Bush ’s surge in Iraq during his presidential campaign, and even now he has never publicly acknowledged that it was largely successful. But in the White House Situation Room a little more than a month ago, he told his aides, “It turned out to be a good thing.” And as many of Mr. Obama’s own advisers have recounted in recent days in interviews, the decision on the surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan by next summer was at least partly inspired by the success of the effort in Iraq, which Mr. Bush’s aides say is their best hope that historians will give them some credit when the history of a highly problematic war is written. In fact, Iraq analogies have been flying back and forth so furiously in recent days that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates , the only holdover from the Bush-era cabinet, told Congress, “This is the second surge I’ve been up here defending.” But probe beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that ...

Ralph Peters: ust plain nuts: That's the only possible characterization for last night's presidential declaration of surrender in advance of a renewed campaign in Afghanistan. President Obama will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan -- but he'll "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011." Then why send them? If you're going to tell the Taliban to be patient because we're leaving, what's the point in upping the blood ante? For what will come down to a single year by the time the troops hit the ground? Does Obama really expect to achieve in one year what we haven't been able to do in more than eight? Adding to the confusion, Obama qualified his timeline by insisting that "we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground." If conditions of the ground are key, why announce a pullout date? And what did this "new strategy" come down to, otherwise? Mor...

What Obama is doing is giving the military about one year to succeed. The forces will not be in place until June of 2010 and he wants them to start coming home in July of 2011. One suspects that time table is so his kook base will still support him in 2012, but the rest of the country probably will not if he brings the troops home as losers. He is giving the Taliban a reason to avoid contact for a year in hopes of winning the next year following Obama's retreat. The preordered retreat is a disaster waiting a few months to happen.

Washington Times: President Obama's pending decision to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan weighs heavily on U.S. forces already on the ground. A Washington Times reporter and photographer spent much of October - the deadliest month for American troops there thus far - with U.S. Army soldiers in southern Afghanistan, who spoke openly of the need for more boots on the ground, the more and sooner the better. "We need more troops," said Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Paul Rabidou, 24, stationed at a small combat outpost in the Maywand district. "It's just as simple as that." The Blackwatch unit - Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, with the 5th Stryker Brigade - arrived at the outpost Sept. 13. Since their arrival, they have lost three soldiers and two civil-affairs officers. Bombings have destroyed three of their four Stryker vehicles. ... Capt. Jeffery Givens, 25, with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, Mobile Gun System Plato...

Small Wars Journal has a 34 minute video done by the Institute for the Study of War . It "features many of the top commanders and others responsible for its implementation - including GEN Jack Keane (Ret.), GEN David Petraeus, Amb. Ryan Crocker, GEN Raymond Odierno, GEN Nasier Abadi (Iraq), COL Peter Mansoor (Ret.), COL J.B. Burton, COL Ricky Gibbs, COL Bryan Roberts, COL Sean MacFarland, COL James Hickey, COL David Sutherland, COL Steven Townsend, LTC James Crider, and LT James Danly (Ret.)." It is an impressive cast.

Telegraph: President Barack Obama's administration is understood to have told the British government that it could announce, as early as next week, the substantial increase to its 65,000 troops already serving there. The decision from Mr Obama comes after he considered a request from General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to send tens of thousands of extra American troops to the country. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said: "I don't want to put words in the mouths of the Americans but I am fairly confident of the way it is going to come out." An announcement next week could coincide with a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Bratislava, Slovakia, due next Thursday and Friday. ... I hope this story is true. The Brits have committed to sending an additional token force of 500 troops and it looks like the timing of the commitment was to coincide with the US troops build up. It is cl...

Karl Rove: So our top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has told CBS's "60 Minutes" that he has spoken with President Barack Obama only once since June. This is a troubling revelation. Right now, our commander in chief is preparing to make one of the most important decisions of his presidency—whether to commit additional troops to win the war in Afghanistan. Being detached or incurious about what our commanders are experiencing makes it hard to craft a winning strategy. Mr. Obama's predecessor faced a similar situation: a war that was grinding on, pressure to withdraw troops, and conflicting advice—including from some who saw the war as unwinnable. But George W. Bush talked to generals on the ground every week or two, which gave him a window into what was happening and insights into how his commanders thought. That helped him judge their recommendations on strategy. Mr. Obama's hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his governing style. Ove...