An incredibly junior foreign service officer has resigned over disagreement with our AfPak policy, prompting a high level scramble within the administration and a long feature in the Washington Post.

As I wrote in “While Obama Dithers,” a piece for New Atlanticist,

They’ve brought this on themselves.  Granted, President Obama inherited this war and his people may have fought it differently had they been in charge during the first seven years.  (An unlikely counterfactual, to be sure, since he was an unknown state senator at the time.) But it’s a fight he clamored for during the campaign, stressing it as “a war of necessity.” And he doubled down almost immediately, sending more troops and firing a well-respected four star commander to replace him with a counterinsurgency guru.  But now he’s dithering, signaling in the press that he’s lost confidence in the strategy and can’t make up his mind as to what to do now.

Yes, it’s complicated. There are a lot of unknowns and the number of American casualties is escalating.  But those men are dying while their commander-in-chief hems and haws, trying to decide whether to heed the expert advice of the general he hand-picked three months ago, do a 180 and go with a counter-terror strategy as preferred by Vice President Biden, or some politically expedient middle course.  Their public indecisiveness certainly isn’t doing much to bolster the resolve of the Matthew Kohs of the world, much less the young soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines being asked to risk their lives while they wait.

Much more at the link.

UPDATE: Alex Massey has published an excellent counterpoint, “Afghanistan: A Modest Case for Dithering,” that I’ve republished at New Atlanticist.

UPDATE II:  Kevin Drum shares my sense that this story is rather odd.

Hoh “already had a lot of frustration” after two months?  And he quit two months after that?  Unless Hoh is the fastest learner on the planet, that really doesn’t seem like enough time to get very far up the learning curve.

Otherwise, like me, he thinks Koh’s analysis has substantial merit.

Month to date there have been four U. S. casualties in Iraq. Each death remains a tragedy but that’s a far cry from a year ago or two years ago. Fatalities in the Iraqi security forces have declined, too, each month of this year seeing fewer casualties than in the corresponding month of last year. Things are far from quiet in Iraq but are clealry much better than they were and than they might have been. As U. S. casualties ratchet up in Afghanistan, largely proportional to the increasing U. S. forces in Afghanistan, we seem to hear less and less coverage of Iraq.

In today’s column, lest we forget about Iraq entirely, Tom Friedman warns of Iraq’s continuing significance and its strategic importance relative to Afghanistan:

Watching Iraqi politics is like watching a tightrope artist crossing a dangerous cavern. At every step it looks as though he is going to fall into the abyss, and yet, somehow, he continues to wobble forward. Nothing is easy when trying to transform a country brutalized by three decades of cruel dictatorship. It is one step, one election, one new law, at a time. Each is a struggle. Each is crucial.

This next step is particularly important, which is why we cannot let Afghanistan distract U.S. diplomats from Iraq. Remember: Transform Iraq and it will impact the whole Arab-Muslim world. Change Afghanistan and you just change Afghanistan.

I think he’s simultaneously right and wrong. Real change in Iraq in the direction of liberal democracy would have enormous significance. I’m not entirely sure whether that’s what’s happening or whether we’re merely seeing the emergence of Saddam Lite.

And I think that he’s largely wrong about Afghanistan through oversimplification. It is impossible to change Afghanistan at all in isolation. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the Corsican Brothers, each feeling the other’s pain, and their fates are inextricably entwined. I seriously doubt that we can prevail militarily in Afghanistan in the absence of a legitimate, decent government there and that will be impossible without a legitimate, decent government in control of the territory it claims in Pakistan, too. And that, in turn, would have tremendous implications for the entirety of south and central Asia.

And can whatever we see as the desired end state in each of Iraq and Afghanistan be maintained without an ongoing commitment to both countries?

Over at The Glittering Eye I muse in a related vein over the interrelationship between our military and our grand strategy. Is there an intrinsic conflict between nation-building and having the biggest, toughest military in the world? How should we be using our military and what are our interests?

Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan:

To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, as General McChrystal pointed out in his assessment, since 2001, international forces operating in Afghanistan have “not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley.” To succeed, the United States must “redouble efforts to understand the social and political dynamics of…all regions of the country and take action that meets the needs of the people, and insist that [Afghan government] officials do the same.”

and the counter-terrorism strategy advocated recently by Vice President Joe Biden:

There are narrower objections that should be registered about the “counterterrorism-only” or “counterterrorism-mainly” argument. It is probably impractical over a long period of time to wage an intelligence-derived counterterrorism campaign along the Pakistan-Afghan border if a cooperating Afghan government does not have access to the local population; if American forces are not present; and if the Pakistani state has no incentive to cooperate. This is exactly the narrative that unfolded during the 1990s and led to failure on Sept. 11 for the United States.

The article is chock-full of intriguing observations about the situation in Afghanistan and is well worth your attention. I certainly agree with him that we should focus our energies in Afghanistan on objectives we can actually accomplish and that further real American interests. In the light of this I wonder if the bar has not been set too low for Gen. McChrystal? I read Gen. McChrystal’s report as a recommendation for averting defeat. Are they the same as the requirements for achieving success? Or will that require significantly more resources? Gen. McChrystal does say that both more resources and a definite change in strategy are necessary for success:

Success is achievable, but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or “doubling down” on the previous strategy. Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely. The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.

and

Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it. Resourcing communicates commitment, but we must also balance force levels to enable effective ANSF partnering and provide population security, while avoiding perceptions of coalition dominance. Ideally, the ANSF must lead this fight, but they will not have enough capability in the near-term given the insurgency’s growth rate. In the interim, coalition forces must provide a bridge capability to protect critical segments of the population. The status quo will lead to failure if we wait for the ANSF to grow.

However, I don’t see a commitment in the report that if the general receives what he’s requested that it will achieve the desired outcome. Am I being too critical? Or, as Stephen Coll proposes, should we be seeking more humble objectives in Afghanistan?

Ariana Huffington has generated quite a bit of buzz for her unlikely-to-be-taken suggestion that Vice President Biden resign in protest if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan.   The cuteness of the suggestion has unfortunately overshadowed the opening paragraph in Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas’ Newsweek piece on “A Day in the Life of Joe Biden” (HTML title: “Joe Biden, White House Truth Teller”):

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

As I explain in my New Atlanticist essay “Strategic Balance in AfPak,” Biden’s got a point.

AP Photo

The debate over our policy in Afghanistan continues in the nation’s opinion pages.

Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic makes the case for counter-insurgency:

Obama needs to get behind his chosen general as soon as possible and put this spectacle of indecisiveness behind him. Gen. McChrystal must become the face of a policy that is supported at every level of the Administration, just as Army Gen. David Petraeus was the face of the surge in Iraq during Bush’s last two years of his presidency. Obama must capture the toughness and competence that Bush displayed as a war leader at the end of his term. Otherwise, in the coming months, the Democrats may be seen as having lost a war.

while Michael Scheuer in Foreign Policy argues that we should “go big or go home”:

Team Obama faces quite a dilemma. McChrystal’s plan to stave off defeat by asking for substantial immediate reinforcements — a request that is still far short of what is needed to “win” in Afghanistan — is a sure sign that long-term intense fighting and high casualties lie ahead. The United States’ latest Nobel Prize winner now has a choice: He must act quickly on the advice of McChrystal and the U.S. intelligence community to save a marooned U.S. Army, or dither behind the harebrained split-al-Qaeda-from-the-Taliban strategizing and let more overmatched U.S. soldiers and Marines die amid the ego-building praise of effete Americans, pacifist NGOs, and the Nobelistas.

[…]

This issue merits debate, but that must wait until McChrystal gets the troops needed to delay defeat. Afterward, only the all-out use of large, conventional U.S. military forces can be expected to have a shot at winning in Afghanistan. Since 1996, the United States has definitively proven that clandestine operations, covert action, Special Forces actions, and aerial drone attacks cannot defeat al Qaeda. It has likewise proven beyond doubt that nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool’s errand.

His conclusion is bleak:

Overall, then, we are well along the road to self-imposed defeat in Afghanistan, and about the best we can do is give McChrystal the troops he needs to slow defeat. After doing that, we can figure out how to get out of Afghanistan in an orderly manner, while preparing to absorb more al Qaeda attacks in North America.

A. J. Rossmiller in The New Republic comes closer to my own view:

After eight years of fighting, two things seem clear: First, the insurgency does not have the capability to defeat U.S. forces or depose Afghanistan’s central government; and, second, U.S. forces do not have the ability to vanquish the insurgency. It’s true that the Taliban has gained ground in recent months, but, absent a full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, it cannot retake sovereign control. This is not to say that Afghanistan isn’t unstable; it clearly is. That has been the case for eight years, however, and, in the absence of some shocking, unforeseen development, it could be true for another eight or 18 or 80 years. An increase of tens of thousands of troops will not change that fact, nor will subtle tactical changes. Rather than teetering on the edge of some imagined precipice, the situation in Afghanistan is at a virtual stalemate. Only by appropriately characterizing the current situation in Afghanistan can we begin to determine the best way to achieve our stated goals there.

That last sentence bears consideration. I think we need to identify our actual objectives in Afghanistan very clearly, distinguishing between the “needs” and the “wants”. We need to keep Al Qaeda from re-establishing itself in Afghanistan. We want to be able to leave in the foreseeable future with a legitimate Afghan government in place that’s capable of holding its own against the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies.

We might be able to achieve both our needs and our wants by following Gen. McChrystal’s plan and increasing our forces in Afghanistan substantially, protecting the Afghan people, and playing a long game there, hoping for an Afghan government capable of being a partner emerges. We can achieve our need and part of our wants by increasing our forces in Afghansitan substantially and carrying the battle into Pakistan, where the Afghan Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies continue to find refuge. This approach bears the risk of turning the Pakistanis against us.

Or we can abandon our wants and focus on our needs.

In this morning’s Washington Post Prince Turki al-Faisal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, former director general of their intelligence service and also their former ambassador to the United States offers President Obama some advice on how to proceed in Afghanistan with which I find I am in almost complete agreement. His advice consists of six action items:

• There is no viable opposition to Karzai in Afghanistan. He is a fact. Deal with it.
• Concentrate on fighting foreign terrorists and build bridges with the Taliban.
• Fix the Durand Line.
• Meet with the security and intelligence departments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, China, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to devise ways of eliminating Al Qaeda’s leadership. Nobody has more on the line than the Saudis in that battle and Russia and China are at greater risk than we are from them.
• Exert influence to induce Pakistan and India to resolve the matter of Kashmir.
• Use measures similar to those used in Turkey (in which the U. S. bought the entire crop directly from farmers, something I’ve been suggesting, and allowed them to plant alternative crops).

Read the whole thing. I’m hoping that John Burgess will weigh in on this. John, are you there?

Leslie Gelb, distinguished diplomat, journalist, and scholar, professes befuddlement over President Obama’s strategy with respect to Afghanistan:

I’m lost on President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy—along with most of Congress and the U.S. military. Not quite eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to “defeat” al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country’s political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 U.S. forces for starters. He proclaimed Afghanistan’s strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan—an even more vital nation because of its nuclear weapons. And a mere three weeks ago, he punctuated his commitments by proclaiming that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity,” not one of choice. White House spokesmen reinforced this by promising that the president would “fully resource” the war.

Yet less than one week ago, Mr. Obama said the following about troop increases: “I’m going to take a very deliberate process in making those decisions. There is no immediate decision pending on resources, because one of the things that I’m absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources.” He repeated that on Sunday’s talk shows.

I am befuddled over Dr. Gelb’s befuddlement and even more so by those who are surprised at the course that President Obama has pursued with respect to Afghanistan to date. As a candidate Barack Obama ran on Afghanistan as a war of necessity. As president he re-affirmed the importance of winning in Afghanistan, which we can now say with some confidence is to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qa’ida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future”. In pursuit of those ends he appointed Gen. Stanley McChrystal as U. S. commander in Afghanistan. Gen. McChrystal was well-known to advocate a strategy of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan.

The counter-insurgency doctrine that currently prevails in the U. S. military is that, in order to prosecute a strategy of counter-insurgency successfully in Afghanistan, we need more troops there. Eventually, some of those troops might be provided by Afghanistan itself. However, the troops are needed now and that means that we must supply them.

As a spine-stiffener, people in the Pentagon are apparently signaling that Gen. McChrystal will resign (hat tip: Bill Roggio) if he’s not given the resources he’s requested. He was put there to do a job, his approach to the job was well-known in advance, and, if he’s not going to be given the resources to do the job in that way, he shouldn’t be there at all. That only makes sense. The military is a profession and he’s ethically required to do so.

If President Obama refuses to give Gen. McChrystal what he’s asked for, it would be foolish or, at the very least, confused. However, it’s too early for befuddlement. Even if President Obama turns Gen. McChrystal down, it won’t be particularly confusing. Either, having become fully informed on the situation, President Obama has changed his mind or he’s yielded to political pressure, as you prefer.

Either way it is likely to be politically damaging to President Obama, leaving him open to charges of naïveté, lack of resolution, or political motivation. But it won’t be confusing.

Corporal John Harrison (left) was killed in the SAS-led operation to rescue British journalist Stephen Farrell (right), which was launched after officials received intelligence that he was about to be moved into Pakistan's tribal areas

Tunku Varadarajan argues the New York Times has a moral obligation for getting two people killed by sending Stephen Farrell into a situation it knew was treacherous in order to get a scoop.

Stephen Farrell was a British citizen reporting from Afghanistan. He’d received very strong advice from British troops to stay out of a Taliban-controlled sector into which he was planning to venture in search of a story. Ignoring that advice, Farrell entered the sector with his Afghan interpreter. Both men were seized by the Taliban within hours, and held captive in conditions that led the British to fear for the life of one of their citizens–hence the rescue mission, in which a British soldier was killed. (The hapless interpreter died, too.)

[...]
That said, let us put moral questions to one side and ask what–now–the duty of The New York Times is. What price should it pay for the trouble caused by its reporter? Here’s my answer: If The New York Times really does subscribe to this philosophy–the public’s right to know, the journalist’s duty to be skeptical of authority, etc.–it should reimburse the British government for the cost of the mission to save Farrell (even if it means taking another loan from Carlos Slim) and compensate the dead soldier’s family. (That it should compensate handsomely the family of the Afghan interpreter who died is not even open to discussion.) After all, the military has quite enough on its plate not to have to worry about extracting reporters from deadly contretemps of their own making.

Farrell took a huge risk on behalf of his for-profit employer to give it an edge in the news business. Afghanistan is an extremely competitive beat; and war and competitive journalism make for a very perilous–and profitable–alloy. So whereas one would be loath to corral and stifle reporters, why can’t there be some financial incentive for journalists to behave responsibly when they venture into battlegrounds? Why not bill publications for the cost of a rescue and require journalists to give half the royalties from any books they write to the military, in the event of a costly rescue?

Andrew Exum links without comment, aside to say these are “some really good questions.”  And I suppose they are, if by “good” we merely mean “likely to spark debate.”

Now, Varadarajan states clearly in the article that governments will be overly cautious — and even sometimes have ulterior motives — in making decisions about where journalists should go and that there are times when journalists simply have to go where the story is.   But, while he’s right that the NYT is in business to make money and that they often treat safety concerns as if war was a game, they’ve got every right to do so.  And, more often than not, the public profits from their willingness to take risks, even when it’s foolish.

The commandos who risked their life to save Farrell did so for the same reason that Farrell put himself into a situation where he could be captured:  It’s what they do.

The NYT owes the family of Corporal John Harrison, the SAS trooper who died in the rescue, nothing more than gratitude.  He did what he trained and bloody well knew the risks when he signed up. Frankly, it would be insulting to offer them money.  Their son died fighting for queen and country, not as a private mercenary for a newspaper.

Yes, journalists are a pain in the ass and Harrell’s capture led to a mission that put troops in harm’s way without any foreseeable advancement in their overall mission.  But, while I’m not sure how think tanker Exum feels about it, I’m quite sure that Ranger Exum would have gladly led such a mission.  (1LT Joyner’s skill sets would not have been suited for such a mission, although I’d have been happy to send a few rockets downrange after it.)

Who Dares  Wins. Rangers Lead the Way.  They’re more than slogans. They’re a way of life.  All too often, a short one.

Photos: Daily Mail

Add Chuck Hagel to the chorus of voices rising in opposition to the escalation of our military commitment to Afghanistan:

No country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. As the new world order takes shape, America must lead by building coalitions of common interests, as we did after World War II. Then, international organizations such as the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and GATT (now the World Trade Organization) — while flawed — established boundaries for human and government conduct and expectations that helped keep the world from drifting into World War III and generally made life better for most people worldwide during the second half of the 20th century.

Our greatest threats today come from the regions left behind after World War II. Addressing these threats will require a foreign policy underpinned by engagement — in other words, active diplomacy but not appeasement. We need a clearly defined strategy that accounts for the interconnectedness and the shared interests of all nations. Every great threat to the United States — whether economic, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, health pandemics, environmental degradation, energy, or water and food shortages — also threatens our global partners and rivals. Accordingly, we cannot view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only “winning” or “losing.” Iraq and Afghanistan are not America’s to win or lose. Win what? We can help them buy time or develop, but we cannot control their fates. There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control. For example, the future of Afghanistan is linked directly to Pakistan and what happens in the mountains along their border. Political accommodation and reconciliation in this region will determine the outcome.

But what about the Al Qaeda leadership that were believed to be holed up in the ironically named Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan? There are now reports that at least some of the Al Qaeda remnants in Pakistan have fled to Somalia or Yemen. If your objective is truly to pursue the Al Qaeda leadership, we won’t be able to stop in Afghanistan or even in Pakistan.

The current strategy in Afghanistan appears to be one of pursuing counter-insurgency through a combination of increased troops on our part and building up the native Afghan military to make up the rest of the forces needed for a successful counter-insurgency operation. There are no prospects whatever for Afghanistan itself to support an Afghan Army of the size and abilities necessary to pursue such a strategy. That means that supporting a sizeable commitment of U. S. troops in Afghanistan for, perhaps, a decade and billions in support for the Afghan Army for the foreseeable future.

Are we prepared to make similar commitments in Somalia, Yemen, or anywhere else that harbors takfiri terrorists?

Update

The Washington Post editors come out in favor of a “stay the course” approach in Afghanistan:

The Democratic left and some conservatives have begun to argue that the Afghan war is unwinnable and that U.S. interests can be secured by a much smaller military campaign directed at preventing al-Qaeda from regaining a foothold in the country. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) has proposed a timetable for withdrawal — the same demand the left rallied around when the war in Iraq was going badly. Its most cogent argument is a negative one: that the weakness of the Afghan government and the general backwardness of the country mean that the counterinsurgency strategy, with its emphasis on political and economic development, can’t work.

That might prove true. But the problem with the critics’ argument is that, while the strategy they oppose has yet to be tried, the alternatives they suggest already have been — and they led to failure in both Afghanistan and Iraq. For years, U.S. commanders in both countries focused on killing insurgents and minimizing the numbers and exposure of U.S. troops rather than pacifying the country. The result was that violence in both countries steadily grew, until a counterinsurgency strategy was applied to Iraq in 2007. As for limiting U.S. intervention in Afghanistan to attacks by drones and Special Forces units, that was the strategy of the 1990s, which, as chronicled by the Sept. 11 commission, paved the way for al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington. Given that the Taliban and al-Qaeda now also aim to overturn the government of nuclear-armed Pakistan, the risks of a U.S. withdrawal far exceed those of continuing to fight the war — even were the result to be continued stalemate.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan is not Iraq. It’s a significantly larger, landlocked country without significant resources and in which we have no strategic interest absent Al Qaeda’s presence there and Al Qaeda has no presence there. It’s decamped. Today we’re fighting the Taliban, native Afghans who oppose the Kabul government.

We can’t legitimize the Kabul government and plow billions into it at the same time. The billions intrinsically delegitimize it. And I know of no precedent for our making this level of commitment to a country in which we have so little interest.

There are middle grounds between doubling down in Afghanistan with a significantly increased force and an essentially permanent commitment to fund its government and huge army on the one hand and complete withdrawal of our forces and support on the other. Imperfect as that may be it may well be the best that we can do.

Update 2

The Wall Street Journal urges President Obama to take a stand on Afghanistan:

President Obama may not want to spend any political capital on Afghanistan, but he has no choice. The main job of his generals should be to win the war, not also to have to sell it, especially when the main opposition so far is emerging from the President’s own left-flank. The opposition will also grow on the right if Americans conclude he isn’t providing the forces or personal leadership needed to win. Now is the time for Mr. Obama to give his generals everything they need to defeat the Taliban, or leave and explain why he’s concluded that Afghanistan is no longer worth the fight.

Although it has a somewhat more truculent tone, that’s not too different from what I wrote earlier this week.

I believe there’s a strong analogy between the way in which President Obama seems to have allowed his generals to define the Administration’s policy WRT Afghanistan and his handling so far of healthcare reform, the energy bill which appears stalled in Congress, and the handling of the financial crisis. I don’t know whether, as Michael Reynolds suggested, it’s an ingenious approach based on his background as a community organizer, it’s because he’s a technocrat strongly inclined to rely on the expertise of those who are supposed to know something, it’s because he’s inexperienced, it’s because he’s a weak manager, he’s trying to deflect political criticism from himself onto others, some combination of the above, or some other reason entirely. I genuinely don’t know.

Update 3

Raymond Pritchett at New Atlanticist articulates the case that COIN isn’t appropriate for Afghanistan very succinctly:

Counterinsurgency theory applies a population centric military strategy for promoting an existing credible governing body in a weak state where the government is facing an armed rebellion or occupation. Counterinsurgency is not the establishment of credible governing authority in a failed state where no credible governance exists. How does a counterinsurgency approach work in a failed state? I thought COIN was for weak states?

We are being told that Afghanistan is a weak state because there is an elected government in power today. How much control does that government have over the people even without the Taliban influence? The Taliban has not been the only problem in Afghanistan over the last eight years, and the governments authority didn’t exist over much of the country even when the Taliban wasn’t the main problem. I am having trouble digesting the suggestion that what we see in Afghanistan is a classic insurgency. Show me the evidence. Can someone please explain why the conditions are that of a classic insurgency, and not the chaotic soup one finds in a country suffering from 30 consecutive years of war caused primarily by foreign power influence compounded by centuries of tribal conflict and mistrust.

I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a case of when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem begins to look like a nail.

If you only read one thing today, read the for-the-record answers from the Director of National Intelligence to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2009. At the very least read the tickler summary from the blog of the Federation of American Scientists, which has done a genuine service in obtaining this document under the Freedom of Information Act and is hosting it on its site (hat tip: Washington Post).

There is something to rain on practically every parade in these answers. The number of “security personnel” required for COIN in Afghanistan? 818,000. When will Iran produce highly-enriched (weapons-grade) uranium? 2013. Russia doesn’t have the ability to project a lot of military force beyond its borders.

This last comes as no surprise to me. Something we should always keep in mind: without nuclear weapons Russia is a regional power.

There’s tons more. Al Qaeda’s resilience and capabilities. The KSA’s terrorist rehab program. The KSA’s relationship with Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda in Africa. Iran’s role in supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. How effective is the Pakistani army in dealing with the insurgency in the FATA? Pakistan’s stability. The relationship among the Iranian regime, HAMAS, and Hizbollah.

Here’s the statement on the status of Iraq’s ISF:

The capabilities of the ISF have continued to improve. The ISF’s increasing professionalism and improvements in war-fighting skills have allowed it to assume more responsibility for Iraq’s internal security, as demonstrated by the successful operations against Shia militants in Al Basrah, Sadr City, and Al Amarah, and against Sunni extremists in Diyala and Mosul. Despite these improvements, the ISF remains dependent on the U. S. for enabling capabilities such as logistics, fire support, and intelligence and will continue to require Coalition assistance during the next three years.

Short version: our military still has its work cut out for it in Iraq.

The provincial elections in Iraq. HAMAS capabilities. Hizbollah capabilities. Cyber-warfare by the Chinese government. Russia’s energy war. GITMO. The global economic crisis.

It’s truly a remarkable document. If nothing else it provides a keyhole view into the thinking of our intelligence community on a wide range of security issues. I’m still digesting it.

Steve Benen brings up a point I’ve seen made in a few places recently: Dickering over how to pronounce “foreign” names like Sotomayor or Pakistan.

I’m in agreement with Mark Krikorian that “Deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits.”  Where to draw the line, however, is unclear.

He continues that “Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference).”  That was probably the case twenty years ago but, although I’d only read Sotomayor’s name until this morning, my mental pronunciation of it in fact put the emphasis on the final syllable.  Hispanic names are now sufficiently common that they’ve become part of American culture.

But it’s a complicated matter.  Oftentimes, it’s not immediately obvious to an untrained observer whether a name is, say,  Hispanic or Italian.  Or, whether one’s family has Anglicized the name along the way.  For example, on last week’s Best. OTB Radio. Ever., it occurred to me that although I’d been reading Bill Roggio for years, I didn’t know how he pronounced his name.  My internal version was something like “ROW gee Oh” and it turned out to be more like “RAH ghee Oh.”

On the issue of country names, I grew up with EAR-ahn and EAR-ock but the American pronunciation has mostly changed to EYE RAN and ERE rack; my pronunciation likely varies with context.  I’ve always pronounced Pakistan as PAK ih STAN and will likely resist the conversion to POWCK ee STAWN.   (In those cases, incidentally, the issue isn’t “native” pronunciation but rather British English versus the American version, since the names were imposed by colonialists.)

Similarly, I say Munich, Rome, and Florence rather than München, Roma, and Firenza.

Ultimately, American English both evolves and has regional variants.  The further a foreign pronunciation from sounds familiar in American English and its local dialects, the less likely we are to adopt it.  But once-unfamiliar names can become familiar over time.   I’m sure even in Tuscaloosa, they pronounce our president’s name “Oh BOM uh” rather than the more natural “Oh BAM uh.”

Photo by Flickr user avlxyz under Creative Commons license.

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 7-8 Eastern.

Joining regular cohost Dave Schuler and myself will be Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal. Bill’s coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan has been among the very best and we’ll be discussing the most recent developments there on the show tonight.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

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(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

UPDATE (Dave Schuler)

Best. OTB Radio. Ever. Bill made a great guest and Bill, James, and I really clicked. We started off talking about the Iranian missile test and then sequed into the situation in Pakistan. The hour just flew by.

Do you recall the aid we’ve been sending Pakistan so that the Pakistani government will let us supply our troops in Afghanistan via Pakistan, secure their nuclear weapons, and oppose the Taliban and Al Qaeda being harbored within Pakistan’s borders? Apparently, Pakistan is seizing the opportunity to build up its nuclear arsenal:

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

“Yes,” he said quickly, adding nothing, clearly cognizant of Pakistan’s sensitivity to any discussion about the country’s nuclear strategy or security.

So, let me see if I’ve got this right. We’re concerned about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal so we’re giving money to the Pakistani government which in turn is using the money (remember, money is fungible) to build up the nuclear arsenal that we’re concerned about.

Well, at least the money’s being put to a good use. I’m sure the Indians will be thrilled.

In the Financial Times David Kilcullen, one of the architects of the changes in our Iraq strategy, is quoted on the bleak situation in Pakistan:

“The Pakistani military has really no capability for what we would call counter- insurgency,” he said. “What they are doing in the Swat valley is a conventional offensive against the main- force Taliban . . . They need a more sophisticated approach and they need training and assistance, which they are currently refusing.” Mr Kilcullen said of the Pakistani military: “They will move into Swat, they will fight the Taliban, there will be half a million refugees, there will be immense dislocation. I’m not sure that, looking back on this in six months, we will see any improvement.”

He added that Pakistan “has a long history of doing the minimum necessary” to keep western aid flowing into the country. “I hope we will see something different out of this offensive but I remain to be convinced.”

The article continues by noting that if Pakistan faces an existential challenge the political class there certainly isn’t behaving as though that’s the case.

Fierce fighting continues between the Pakistani military and the militant Islamist Taliban fighters that have taken control of the Swat valley and neighboring areas northwest of Pakistan’s capital in Islamabad:

May 13 (Bloomberg) — Pakistani army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said he has told troops to ensure minimum collateral damage by resorting to “precision strikes” in the operation against Taliban militants in the country’s northwest.

“Consequent to any military operation in populated areas, collateral damage and refugee issues are always a natural outcome,” according to a statement released today in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, citing Kayani.

The United Nations yesterday said it had so far registered more than 500,000 people who have fled the fighting in the Swat valley and neighboring districts since May 2. Of these, about 73,000 are staying in temporary camps, while the others are with relatives or friends, it said.

The military has intensified efforts to wrest control of the Swat valley and neighboring districts from Taliban gunmen as Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, yesterday defended requests to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for further financial aid to Pakistan.

The military said yesterday it had killed 751 militants since the operation began on April 26 against insurgents who reneged on a peace accord and advanced toward the capital.

However its press releases may read air power remains a blunt instrument rather than a scalpel. I wonder if the inevitable collateral damage that results will cause criticism to be heaped on the Pakistani government either in Pakistan or the western media.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Bret Stephens considers the “existential challenge” that the Taliban presents for Pakistan:

Today, Somalia is a space not even pretending to be a country. The result is destitution, piracy and a sanctuary for Islamic jihadists, but little by way of ideas for how to change things. Historically Afghanistan has always been a space, defined mostly by its power to repel: The Obama administration would be smart to take this into account by keeping its expectations for nation-building low. Whether post-invasion Iraq is a country or a space remains a question, though it seems to be leaning in the former direction.

As for Pakistan, we’re about to find out.

The world took note last month when a Taliban advance brought it to within 60 miles of Islamabad. But that offensive was less intrinsically distressing than the seeming nonchalance with which Pakistan’s rulers, current and former, surrendered sovereignty to Islamic extremists, first in the tribal hinterlands and then in the Swat Valley.

What kind of state simply accepts that its judicial and political writ doesn’t actually run to its internationally recognized boundaries? Three cases are typical.

One is a weak state that lacks the capacity to enforce its law and ensure domestic tranquility — think of Congo. Another is an ethnic patchwork state that knows well enough not to bend restive or potentially restive minorities to its will — that would be present-day Lebanon. A third is a canny state that seeks to advance strategic aims by feigning powerlessness while deliberately ceding control to proxies — the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

I would submit that in order to face an existential challenge something must first exist. Pakistan exists in the sense that there’s a government in Islamabad with a military and nuclear weapons. However, that government has never exerted much control in the auto-antonymous Federally Administered Tribal Areas in which the Pakistani Taliban have their greatest strength.

Pakistan has four provinces (see map above—click for a larger image): Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh, and the Northwest Frontier Province. In all but Punjab there is some level of rebellion against the Islamabad government. Indeed, I think an argument can be made that the Pakistan government is the government of Punjab. When the Islamabad government cut its deal with the Taliban over the Swat valley it released the jinn from the bottle, it acknowledged its limited ability and will to control the country and only time will tell whether it can be recaptured.

I don’t believe that the Taliban poses an existential challenge to Pakistan in the sense that it can overcome or seize control of the government’s military and impose itself in Islamabad but I do think it presents a challenge to the idea of Pakistan, to its unity. The larger question is whether that’s something that should concern us.