VOA quotes a top military official who says that US troops will be brought under NATO command. “U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered the reorganization before traveling to Kabul last week.”
In another significant shift, NATO’s top commander, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, said he has brought most U.S. Special Operations forces in the country under his direct command.
Afghan officials have complained that Special Operations troops are responsible for a large number of civilian casualties, and they have pressed McChrystal to restrict their night-time combat missions.
Human rights advocates have accused Special Forces units of being out of control and a law unto themselves. “Meanwhile, officials say Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President Barack Obama held a video conference to discuss prospects of peace with the Taliban.” The conversation lasted for more than an hour. Special Operations have been a political sore point.
The New York Times says “critics, including Afghan officials, human rights workers and some field commanders of conventional American forces, say that Special Operations forces have been responsible for a large number of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and operate by their own rules.
“In most of the cases of civilian casualties, special forces are involved,” said Mohammed Iqbal Safi, head of the defense committee in the Afghan Parliament, who participated in joint United States-Afghan investigations of civilian casualties last year. “We’re always finding out they are not obeying the rules that other forces have to in Afghanistan.”
“These forces often operate with little or no accountability and exacerbate the anger and resentment felt by communities,” the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan wrote in its report on protection of civilians for 2009.
The administration is also attempting to limit the use of contractors in intelligence gathering operations. David Ignatius at the Washington Post says efforts to fix the CIA’s perceived failures and to find kidnapped American journalists led to outside hires. But their use was continued indefinitely, which posed a problem according to another VOA article because US law “forbids employment of mercenaries”. Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, was said to be arguing “privately that the country may need … a coherent framework with proper controls.”
These reorganizations are taking place as General David Petraeus warned that the next year in Afghanistan would be a difficult one. “the going is likely to get harder before it gets easier,” he said. The Department of Defense suggested it was looking beyond Afghanistan in isolation and at the broader strategic threat. A DOD press release said:
While the United States draws down in Iraq and builds up in Afghanistan, “we must not lose sight of our other challenges” in the Middle East, the commander of U.S. Central Command said here today.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States must remain vigilant in overseeing broader security challenges throughout the region.
Petraeus called Iran the “primary state-level threat” in the Middle East. He told the panel that Iran undermines security throughout the region in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons, which threatens a broader arms race, and uses its paramilitary force to influence Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan and the Gulf region.
Petraeus hinted that he was preparing for what he called the “pressure track”, which might follow the diplomatic effort now under way.
President Barack Obama “has not taken the military option off the table” with regard to Iran. “No one can say Iran has not had every opportunity possible to them,” he said. “Our hand was outreached, and they didn’t grasp it. The focus is shifting to what is known as a pressure track, but I don’t want to get ahead of the administration.”
But despite Petraeus’s protestations, it is the military’s job to anticipate events, at least for contingency planning purposes, rather than merely react to them. What the efforts to bring things under control and go beyond Afghanistan portend is not easy to predict, perhaps intentionally so. Are we witnessing a shift in strategic focus back to the Middle East? If “Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan and the Gulf region” once again become the focus instead of the “war of necessity” that Barack Obama once described Afghanistan to be, it will mark a return to a theater which the President once felt was secondary.
Does it suggest a broader failure of the administration’s engagement policy? Getting the “pressure track” ready that “engagement” now needs pressure to get it going. The recent demands of Israel to make concessions may indicate the administration’s diplomatic weakness rather than strength. The Grand Bargain bus is stalled and needs to be pushed out of a rut.
Or does it just mean that time is up and the President is winding things down preparatory to ending the Afghan operation?
Time will tell whether the administration is returning to port or changing the destination.
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These policy and organizational changes sound like recipes for defeat. Everything is about ideology for this president.
Complaints about Special Operations people must, I think, be based on Hollywood caricatures of what they are like. All of the SOC folks I know and worked with were more disciplined than the rest of the military population. Rambo-like actions might make good screenplay, but doesn’t advance their mission — and that was what they were all about. Sounds to me like an effort to pull the plug on our most effective capability. F
Some time ago, I recommended impeachment. The comments to my suggestions. were that then Joe “Israels Best Friend [TM]” would then become president. The question I have now is: how much more FUBAR would that be?
This president seems to want to bring on WW III.
I greatly worry for all of us.
Is McCrystal becoming a politician?? If Special Operations people can’t operate why wast their talent and put them at risk?? If they continue to micro-manage SEALS and SF those people may chose a different employer and who could blame them. We may need these operators much closer to home before to long.
sounds like Afghan politics meets the Beltway snakepit.
Well it was a short path from “We own the night” to, night time? You can’t operate at night! It’s not fair. This political sore spot is certainly because of their war-fighting effectiveness. It is counterintuitive that Special Forces are the branch of the military that is most likely to minimize their foot print and minimize civilian casualties and the BAD guys are terrified of them. Everything else is so big and clunky the rats can always stay ahead of it. SoF is destabilizing the Taleban and this is an admission that the Afghans are throwing in the towel. Most COIN strategies start and end with SoF. It sounds like the Blackwater with hunt to me. Next it is going to be the CIA. We concur and they divide and conquer.
Perhaps it is good that listless NATO owns this war completely now. At least we can see once in for all how moribund this organization really is. Pressure Iran? We’ll see. That would be an October surprise.
What a Charlie Foxtrot.
The enemy must be hurting to complain like this, so we must be doing something right. We will see victory snatched from our own grip by our own leaders, reacting to our enemy’s propaganda. Now just WHO is the real enemy of the United States here? Inquiring minds want to know.
See my comments @ 60 and PR’s link @ 67 for more, Obama will simply blame it all on Israel.
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story
Maybe Obama would like all US personnel to convert to Islam before serving in the middle east.
“We’re always finding out they are not obeying the rules that other forces have to in Afghanistan.”
LOL!
M O R O N ! ! !
That’s one of the primary reasons Special Forces exist.
Another of the reasons the SF task forces, which include significant numbers of “conventional” forces within them, are so very effective is that they are not tied to NATO, and don’t have Afghani laison officers to spill the beans when some distant or not so distantly related war lord is about to have a fight develop within their territory.
Another primary reason is the much shortened kill chain. Many conventional force commanders have to ask “Mother may I…” so many times before they’re able to do what needs to get done, that the emerging target or tactical opportunity is gone by the time they finaly get permission to do the necessary. This has been an ongoing problem since Viet Nam, when mobile telecommunications reached the point that higher headquarters could start making decisions best left to a team chief or company commander.
We’ve improved telecommunications even more, so now instead of speeding up the function of the kill chain, we’ve added additional layers of oversight, including in some cases, lawyers, G_d save us!
I must agree with Annoy Mouse here. This is whiners complaining that SF troops and tactics are effective. They should compile a list of the complainers. The next time operational information is leaked, they’ll know where to start waterboarding!
Maybe Obama will ‘deem’ the war over…like Pelosi wants to deem the constitution null and void.
The “large number of civilian casualties” are dependent on how you define a civilian and how you assign responsibility to forces that illegally operate behind civilian cover. If the Taliban show up at a house then it is a target and if there are 20 of them present it isn’t a wedding party.
The VoA says that the employment of mercenaries is illegal? The issuance of Letters of Marque and Reprisal are in the Constitution. The amendment withdrawing that has escaped my notice. If the VoA staff think that some International Convention signed by a Civil Servant or line added to an appropriation bill can be “Deemed” the equivalent of an Amendment then they need an education.
We should have one clear goal, Victory. That is not the same as the silly word “prevailing” or establishing the groundwork for an ongoing process. It means identifying the enemy and killing them until everyone agrees not to challenge our authority or foment violence in the area. If the tools to do so are being denied to him then the Commander should ask to get the troops out or resign.
It looks to me that Obama is seeking a Grand Bargain where he bullies all our allies and forces into untenable positions so he can sell out everyone to everyone. Karzai could not be blamed if he loads up two suitcases and decamps with the code to a numbered bank account.
If McChrystal is asserting control over the SF operations to protect the troops and ensure more effective operations then this is much noise over very little with the press and grievance mongers just looking for a free meal.
The SOF are gangsters
Say we at Human Rights
They leap about like pranksters
Just because they own the nights
They sneak about and kick down doors
And shoot the bad guys too
Not caring that the Left abhors
The bad things that they do
We lefties bridle at the thought
That these men, left unchecked
Will kill all Taleban uncaught
And our plans will be wrecked
Our plan to make the world a place
Where men can live in peace
Where right wing thugs can’t show their face
And democracy will cease
And on that note I’ll close for now
It’s night and what is more
The SOF are on the prowl
And kicking in my door
Funny stuff Walt!
Walt,
When the rough men of the SOF are not on the prowl then people far nastier will come to kick in the door. If America becomes a “normal nation” like most of the world then days spent watching the girls over a latté in Greenwich Village and trusting a doorman in a fancy coat to guard your mother on Park Avenue will be over. Those who are in the really wealthy elites live in gated communities that are guarded like the White House and travel with hired guns. Those who rubbish America, like those who rubbished tolerant old Imperial Britain, have no idea how the bubble is maintained. They have though sought to come into that bubble and enjoy the freedom, to just sit and enjoy that coffee or walk down a Manhattan or Vail street that it offered them.
LOTM
Yes, I have lived for many decades in a country where I could sit and enjoy a coffee and watch the girls, but lately I have the nagging feeling it might be coming to an end, not in one great cataclysm, but in tiny increments, the death of a thousand cuts. How many cuts have we had so far, do you think, and how many mojre before the end?
“The idea was not to create a perfect state operating by the clockwork principles of Marxist law but to promote a chaos that would cripple America and ultimately cast it into a receivership that would be administered by the morally superior third world … people shouldn’t expect the revolution to achieve a Kingdom of Freedom; more likely, it would produce a Dark Ages.” — Jim Mellen, leftist radical, 1967 (from Destructive Generation, Peter Collier, p.77)
Our Congress of Poltroons and tarted-up sluts -
Pelosi and Reid wrinkled up like King Tuts -
It’s bleeding us dry like a gigantic leech
With legerdemain and cheap little tricks.
They need to be told now to just hit the bricks.
But ravening drooling and lusting they aim
to empty our piggy banks showing no shame.
Their hands in the cookie jars so much distract’em,
Jihadis will triumph before they extract’em.
Eject them before opportunity shuts
Or else die from ten thousand papery cuts.
Special Forces have a record of being the most disciplined troops in the field when it comes to protecting civilians. They are also the most effective against the enemy. They have a habit of rooting out the corrupt, the two-faced and enemy moles. In the land of cutting deals they are very inconvenient.
this is for public consumption. special operators will not be restricted; they simply rearrange the command structure, and putatively the political structure, but notice McChrystal is still supreme NATO commander. moreover no German or Dane is going to frustrate the combat forces which work; what do they have to replace them with? so the barbarians complain, as their masters instruct them, and the overlords oblige by a change of deck chairs. it’s all a fart in the wind.
Dan, I thought the same, the biggest problem the SOF boys create is that they get things done, in a land where nothing of note has been accomplished since the time of Alexader the Great (another of those damned Western Imperialists) this is very upsetting. They probably interfered with the opium trade to boot!
LOTM, re: civilian casualties; Taliban fighter killed by SOF last night (minus his AK-47 which the locals will take) becomes a “innocent farmer” when the International human rights bozos show in the morning. I’m not buying that nonsense either.
Walt, a freind likened the current state of affairs to a sand-castle standing in the rain, none of the individual raindrops bring the structure down, but come back in an hour and it is just a shapeless lump, only memory can assign meaning to it’s form. We are rapidly reaching that state, and we will need some “hard men” with good memories to push the sand-heap back into shape.
Does anyone get the impression (from our generals, among others) that our administration is trying to speed up the denouements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and draw out the track with Iran–in order to prepare for–have the military ready for–a real confrontation with Iran? Or is this giving the Obami too much credit?
Special operations are frequently characterized by speed, small units, and quick withdrawal.
This means fewer guys on our side–with cameras or recorders–for less time, to document the affair than a conventional op, footage of which is available on Youtube or Liveleak.
That means the bad guys get to frame the story. Guys like State, NGOs, and Taliban.
21. DG: Credit for cojones or foresight?
He has never given evidence for either.
Obama’s foreign policy has comsisted of leaving things largely on auto-pilot, when he has gotten involved the results have been uniformly poor. I cannot see him even countenancing a land war in Iran. If any action is taken it will more likely resemble the Clinton “missle tirade” that was Billy’s answer to foreign problems (or slipping polls).
DG @21:
Way more credit than is due.
Back before Darth Sidious Cheney’s and ChimpyMcBusHitler’s evil, EVIL!!1!1!! plans were derailed by a certain fact challenged National Intelligence Estimate from CIA executives with an agenda, we were conducting target analysis and strike planning on Iranian air defenses, command and control, and nuclear infrastructure. All that was shut down due to fall out from the CIA’s lies. All that work would have to be reaccomplished before much could be done.
I believe Obamassiah is a pacifict chickenshit at heart and isn’t going to do anything unless he thinks that lack of action will result in him being out of power. But, if he does decide to rattle the sabre, look for movement of M-1 Abrams tanks from storage in the Middle East to Mesopotamia and additional units shipped in from CONUS. That would make certain IRGC staffers twitchy.
Posturing for their publics, it would seem. Of course, sometimes the proper tactic for the strong is to appear weak.
For a good historical look at how things work in Afghanstan, read this book about an American who became a king there in the early 1800s:
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Would-King-Afghanistan/dp/0374201781/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
Special operations are frequently characterized by speed, small units, and quick withdrawal
Darn, that phrasing sounds disconcertingly like my ex’s description of me as a lover.
I, of course, do not concur with her conclusions
Don R.
I presume none of the evidence is currently available?
I presume none of the evidence is currently available?
Yes, I was very thorough and covered my tracks.
Don (#26), you reminded me of another Don R, in a funny bit.
Speaking of which, I’m with f47 (#3) in not being deterred from impeachment of Obama by the specter of Biden. If we must have tragedy, then at least we should get to enjoy some comedy with it.
(Am I the only one who saw that interview of Craig T. Nelson on Beck and thought he would be great for a Biden biopic?)
OK, carry on with your serious conversation…
When the flak gets intense, you’re over the target. The SO guys must be getting too close to somebody’s graft cash flow.
Afghanistan is a bed of tribal unity and corruption. Their own export is opium, and its derivatives. This has been true since the 1500′s; when to bypass the arab land routes, shipping began in earnest to the spice islands. I used to think the spice was cinnamon. Nope. It never was. It was always hallucinations. And, the ships, not to travel empty, were packed with rum in Portugal. To sail to the ‘spice islands,’ where they brought home opium on their return trips.
Sure, I’m disappointed with eveything we are doing in irak, and afghanistan. Made worse, because in afghanistan we gave these tribal nomads 8 lane highways and superior guns. At least when we leave, it would be nice if we took out the mountain roads. Instead? We’re like the old Romans. Long after the Romans were gone, all that were left were the roads through the forests of europe.
Human rights advocates have accused Special Forces units of being out of control and a law unto themselves.
Imagine that! Forces acting as “a law unto themselves.” In the middle of a war. Just imagine.