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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘counterinsurgency’
Hope
Posted: July 10, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Austin, Brave New Foundation, Central market, COIN, counterinsurgency, insurgency, Meetup, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban, Vietnam
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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, [...]
President Obama, Bringing the Truthiness on Afghanistan
Posted: May 14, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, COIN, counterinsurgency, Defense Department, Flournoy, insurgency, Obama, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability, Rethink Afghanistan, war in Afghanistan
President Obama told reporters on May 12, 2010, that “we’re beginning to reverse the momentum of the insurgency” in Afghanistan. According to his administration’s own report given to Congress last week, that’s not true. The insurgency is growing in size and capabilities. Simply put, the president’s continued troop increases aren’t working. It’s time to change [...]
Plagiarism and Afghanistan
Posted: May 4, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, Brave New Foundation, civilian deaths, COIN, counterinsurgency, Defense Department, failure, Kandahar, Marjah, McChrystal, Michael Flynn, Michael McMahon, Pentagon, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, Rethink Afghanistan, Russ Carnahan, war in Afghanistan
Last week, the military published an ironically titled “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” that wrapped blunt admissions of strategic collapse in typical Pentagon happy talk. Short version: Violence is up 87 percent (p. 39), the insurgency has population sympathy/support in 92 of 121 key regions, and local support for International Security [...]
Pretentious Brutality
Posted: April 16, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, civilian casualties, civilian deaths, COIN, counterinsurgency, McChrystal, special operations forces, Spencer Ackerman, UNAMA, war in Afghanistan
I usually don’t do this, but I have to take my friend Spencer Ackerman out for a ride. (In my defense, brother, just keep in mind that I’m taking you out for a ride for a blog post in which you took your friend out for a ride. Just sayin’.) And, I want to say [...]
Kandahar Bursts Gen. McChrystal’s Counterinsurgency Bubble
Posted: April 14, 2010 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, Brave New Foundation, counterinsurgency, insurgency, Kandahar, Karzai, Major General Nick Carter, McChrystal, military, Rethink Afghanistan, Taliban, war in Afghanistan, war on terror, war on terrorism
Cross-posted from Rethink Afghanistan. In case you hadn’t heard, the next stop in General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency plan is Kandahar, the ideological heart of the Taliban. Using the spadework done in advance of the Marjah operation as a template, McChrystal says the plan is to: "…do the political groundwork, so that when it’s time to do [...]
An Interview with Matthew Hoh
Posted: November 21, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, al-Qaida, COIN, counterinsurgency, Karl Eikenberry, Matthew Hoh, Rethink Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, Taliban
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog. If Matthew Hoh could tell you one thing to help you understand the U.S.’s predicament in Afghanistan, he’d tell you: The presence of our ground combat troops [...]
Lost in the Afghan Labyrinth
Posted: October 28, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Abdul Rashid Dostum, Abu Muqwama, Afghanistan, Ahmed Wali Kharzai, Andrew Exum, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, COIN, counterinsurgency, Dexter Filkins, Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq, Hamid Karzai, Helene Cooper, James Risen, John Kerry, labyrinth, Mark Mazzetti, Michael Flynn, Mohammed Qasim Fahim, Muhammed Karim Khalili, Rethink Afghanistan, Steve Hynd
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog. My previous post intentionally left out mentions of Senator John Kerry’s defense of Ahmed Wali Karzai–the drug-dealing, election stealing, possibly Taliban-connected brother of the Afghan president–in an [...]
