The Pentagon wants you to ignore some inconvenient facts about the failure of the escalation strategy in Afghanistan. The latest Petraeus/Gates media tour is under way in preparation for the general’s testimony to Congress next week, and they’re trotting out the same, tired spin they’ve been using since McChrystal was replaced in disgrace last year. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘COIN’
Pentagon Assertions of “Progress” In Afghanistan Are a Bad Joke
Posted: March 9, 2011 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, civilian casualties, civilian deaths, COIN, counterinsurgency, escalation, Gates, insurgents, Obama, Pentagon, Petraeus, propaganda, Rethink Afghanistan, Robert Gates, spin, Taliban, targeted killings, troop increase
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ISAF Press Shop Can’t Keep Their Spin Straght, Part 2
Posted: November 9, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Foundation, civilian deaths, civilian killings, civilians, COIN, counterinsurgency, insurgents, Petraeus, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban
Last week I posted about the silly contradictions in the various spin pieces coming from General Petraeus’ press shop in Afghanistan. At the time, ISAF was claiming that a) Kandahar and Helmand were “security bubbles” and b) ISAF was obviously winning because they were confining most of the violence in Afghanistan to…Kandahar and Helmand. This [...]
Afghanistan, Year Ten
Posted: October 8, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, afghanistan year 10, Brave New Foundation, COIN, counterinsurgency, McChrystal, mckiernon, Pentagon, Petraeus, Rethink Afghanistan, war in Afghanistan, white house, year 10
Watch Rethink Afghanistan’s latest video at RethinkAfghanistan.com. I spent several days last week giving guest lectures about the Afghanistan War to freshmen and seniors at Anderson High School in Austin, Texas. It’s no secret that I loathe this brutal, futile war that’s not making us safer. So, when I talk to kids about it, I [...]
Who’s Really “Relying on Assumptions and Beliefs to Shape Reality” in Afghanistan War Debate?
Posted: September 14, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan Study Group, Andrew Exum, COIN, counterinsurgency, Joshua Foust, Matthew Hoh
The Afghanistan Study Group report is out, and the fight is on. A number of critiques have been leveled at the report, one of the most influential being Joshua Foust’s over at Registan.net, chunks of which are percolating upward into larger outlets. Foust is a smart guy with whom I regularly debate, but there’s a [...]
Security in Afghanistan Crumbles as Counterinsurgency Fails
Posted: September 12, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghan National Army, Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, anti-war, Army, Brave New Foundation, COIN, corruption, counterinsurgency, failure, Hamid Karzai, Kabul Bank, Kabulbank, military, Obama, Pashtuns, peace, Rethink Afghanistan, strategy review, war in Afghanistan, white house
As President Obama’s strategy review for Afghanistan commences, let’s hope he’s balancing the information coming to him from his happy-talking generals with some independent news reading of his own. While General David Petraeus serenades the major news media in the United States with the siren song of “progress,” security in Afghanistan is rapidly deteriorating, and [...]
We Bought Thoreau This Straw Pony for His Birthday
Posted: July 12, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, civilian casualties, civilian killings, COIN, counterinsurgency, Petraeus civilian deaths, ponies, Rethink Afghanistan, Spencer Ackerman
Spencer Ackerman wants you to meet him halfway between his house and the straw man: Here’s where those who base their opposition to the war its promotion of human suffering have to meet halfway as well. If the U.S. stops prosecuting its end of the war, civilian casualties will not end. What will end is [...]
Hope
Posted: July 10, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Austin, Brave New Foundation, Central market, COIN, counterinsurgency, insurgency, Meetup, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban, Vietnam
This evening, I spent a couple of hours at Central Market in downtown Austin, Texas, with 7 other people in one of the first Meetups to Rethink the Afghanistan War. I’ve been involved in a serious way in the struggle to end the war for a little more than two years. This was the most [...]
Love the Afghanistan War in Public at Your Peril
Posted: June 27, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Brave New Foundation, COIN, Congress, counterinsurgency, Newsweek, polling, Rethink Afghanistan
One of the gems buried in Michael Hastings’ now ubiquitous Rolling Stone article is a senior adviser to General McChrystal thanking his lucky stars for public ignorance of the state of the war: Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn’t begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things [...]
Before the COINdinistas Start Spinning the UN Report…
Posted: June 19, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, civilian casualties, COIN, COINdinistas, counterinsurgency, insurgent, ISAF, NATO, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban
You’re going to hear a lot of crowing about the reduction in NATO-caused civilian casualties in Afghanistan during the last few months compared to the same time last year. (Read the full report here in PDF format.) This reduction took place in the context of a massive spike in overall violence and a continually degrading [...]
Secretary Gates, Backpedaling
Posted: June 9, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, COIN, counterinsurgency, Daniel Ellsberg, Defense Department, Department of Defense, Helmand, Kandahar, McChrystal, Obama, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, Rethink Afghanistan, Robert Gates
Defense Secretary Gates wants to extricate himself and the president from the impending P.R. disaster shaping up around the flailing Kandahar operation set for this Summer Fall. “I think it’s important to remember that Kandahar is not Afghanistan,” Gates said in comments that appeared to play down a U.S.-led operation for control of the area, [...]
