David Brooks thinks so.

Five years ago, the United States Army was one sort of organization, with a certain mentality. Today, it is a different organization, with a different mentality. It has been transformed in the virtual flash of an eye, and the story of that transformation is fascinating for anybody interested in the flow of ideas.

Brooks is writing about the emergence of counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, godfathered by General David Petraeus. I agree this is an important development, even that it should be celebrated, but I have some questions...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Here is Defense Secretary Robert Gates's introduction to a lecture he delivered last Friday to students at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas:

Good afternoon. Thank you, Kevin, for the introduction. I can tell you it is good to be out of D.C. and back in my home state -- at least for a short visit.

However, I realize that it is Friday, and after lunch, so I will be content with thanking you for staying awake, or trying to anyway.

Of course, falling asleep in a leadership class or here is one thing. Falling asleep in a small meeting with the president of the United States is quite another. But it happens. I was in one cabinet meeting with President Reagan where the president and six members of the cabinet all fell asleep.

In fact, the first President Bush created an award to honor the American official who most ostentatiously fell asleep in a meeting with the president. This was not frivolous. He evaluated candidates on three criteria -- first, duration -- how long did they sleep? Second, the depth of the sleep; snoring always got you extra points. And third, the quality of recovery -- did one just quietly open one's eyes and return to the meeting, or did you jolt awake -- and maybe spill something hot in the process? Well, you will appreciate that the award was named for Air Force Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, who was the national security adviser at the time. He was, as you might suspect, the first awardee, and, I might add, won many oak leaf clusters.

The rest of Gates's speech discussed the merger of conventional and irregular warfare and the implications for strategy, officer education, and doctrine.

Click the link above for the transcript.

The just-concluded military trials of three exonerated Navy SEALs showed the terrorism suspect at the center of the case to be one of the most dangerous men in Iraq. Ahmed Hashim Abed initially was described as the insurgent who planned the killings of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah in 2004, with two of their charred bodies infamously hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. But the three SEALs who captured Abed - and were court-martialed afterward - nabbed a far more notorious figure, according to trial testimony and an intelligence report.

Abed is thought to have committed a series of killings, including beheadings, in western Anbar province as a leading al Qaeda operative. He remains in an Iraqi prison awaiting trial in that country's criminal court system. A SEAL team captured Abed in Iraq in September. The team's post-capture report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, said Abed had in his possession a loaded pistol, nearly $6,000 in U.S. cash, five identification cards and one passport...

More at The Washington Times.

This week's state visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai almost wasn't going to happen. The Obama administration, unhappy with Karzai's attempt to pack the Afghan Electoral Commission with supporters —to ignore voting fraud, briefly held the visit hostage this spring. This striking move also followed Karzai's threat to join the Taliban. In the ensuing brouhaha last month much of Washington wondered, loudly, whether Karzai was an adequate partner. This is the wrong question.

Local partners are almost never adequate at the outset -- this is why they face insurgencies in the first place. Almost by definition, counterinsurgency implies a problematic host government. If the local leadership were effective already, there would be no insurgency to fight. Nor is the leader the problem. Americans often want to "fix" things by replacing the leader...

More at The Washington Post.

U.S. military officials in eastern Afghanistan thought they had come up with a novel way to stem the anger and disillusionment about government corruption that fuels the Taliban insurgency here. Instead, their plan to empower a large Pashtun tribe angered a local power broker, provoked a backlash from the Afghan government and was disavowed by the U.S. Embassy.

The struggling U.S. military effort to give the Shinwari tribe more voice in its affairs shows the massive challenges the United States will face this summer in Kandahar province, as it prepares to launch what is being touted as one of the largest and most important military campaigns of the nine-year-old war. One of the main U.S. goals in Kandahar is to reduce the influence of local power brokers, widely seen as corrupt, and to give tribal alliances a stake in how the province is governed and how development contracts are parceled out...

More at The Washington Post.

The ongoing discussion of the attempted Times Square bombing in New York has been unsurprisingly colorful. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg invoked the old saying that terrorists only need to be lucky once, while their opponents need to be lucky every time -- and this time, we were "very lucky." The New Republic's Jonathan Chait and former NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism Michael Sheehan noted the incompetence of most plotters: Chait with the memorable assertion "terrorists are basically dolts," Sheehan suggesting that "lone wolves" are generally "as incompetent as they are disturbed."

Luck and incompetence are interesting concepts, especially hard on the heels of al Qaeda's failed underpants bomber, but they're hardly substitutes for good counterterrorism planning. Indeed, for Sheehan, chance favors the prepared. He lauded the NYPD for its counterterrorism acumen: "No other city even attempts to do what New York has accomplished," he wrote, conceding that "money and political risk" limit how far most cities can go when it comes to preventing what, at the end of the day, is a marginal phenomenon. But there are some obvious limits to the logic of Sheehan's point, and as the investigation into the attack deepens and more of Faisal Shahzad's suspected terrorist associates are rounded up inside and outside the United States, things start to get murky.

Case in point: the debate, early in Gen. Stanley McChrystal's tour as top commander in Afghanistan, over whether violence in Afghanistan is best addressed using counterterrorism (CT) or counterinsurgency (COIN) methods. Last fall, when the Obama White House was trying to decide how best to proceed in the region, pundits and policymakers alike were positively animated over the two and how they might be combined to mitigate the twinned challenges of al Qaeda and Afghanistan. Vice President Joe Biden pushed for a "counterterrorism plus" option, and Obama "dithered," finally settling on a compromise plan, the principal rationale of which was to neutralize al Qaeda. Michael J. Boyle, a lecturer in international relations at the University of St. Andrews, provides a highly readable account of the deliberations in a recent issue of the journal International Affairs. The title says it all: "Do Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency Go Together?" ...

Much more at Foreign Policy.

Intriguingly, the international community is not addressing itself to the core issues that are responsible for the situation in Afghanistan.

"How is the situation there?" is a question one is not infrequently asked about Afghanistan from outside. The situation being grim, the answer, "Quite serious" often works to close out talk on the subject. But sometimes, depending on the locus standii of the questioner, there are further queries, and then, time and mood being suitable, a discussion could ensue -- involving geopolitics, regional and super power aims and policies, international narcotics trade, Afghan domestic politics, Islam, more so: radical militant Islam, NATO military strategy, tactics and operations, and Taliban guerilla warfare and propaganda, et al.

The fact of the matter is: things are really quite serious, and getting worse each day - as seen from the viewpoint of someone interested in peace in Afghanistan, - not the icy peace of a morgue or a 'peace' enforced by the edge of the sword, but a meaningful peace engendering progress and human happiness.

Almost nine years since October 2001 when it expelled from Afghanistan the Taliban regime of Mullah Omer, the US, leading a 43 nation coalition, appears unable to suppress Al Qaeda or the Pakistan-based armed insurgency - funded by Saudis and the narcotics trade. Even as insurgency now actually has grown and menaces all of Afghanistan, more than ever, and is making inroads also into Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kirghizstan, public opinion in the countries forming the coalition is turning increasingly averse to continued military involvement in Afghanistan...

Much more at Hardnews.

Nearly nine years ago, terrorists killed thousands of civilians and destroyed iconic symbols of American prosperity and progress. Before that, the same terrorists had taken Afghanistan hostage and had killed and tortured our people for years. These terrible conditions brought our two nations together in a partnership. As in any genuine partnership, this has not been an easy ride. We have had our share of disagreements over some issues and approaches. What has kept us together is an overriding strategic vision of an Afghanistan whose peace and stability can guarantee the safety of the Afghan and the American peoples.

The many sacrifices of both Afghans and Americans have led to tremendous achievements. We are grateful for America's contributions and will always remember your resolve in standing by us. Now and during my visit to Washington this week, I hope to convey my deepest condolences to families of those who lost their lives in Afghanistan.

When I began my second term as president, I put forth a vision for our nation of Afghan leadership, sovereignty and full ownership of providing security, governance, justice, education, health and economic opportunity. That is a vision I know that President Obama shares...

More at The Washington Post.

Reasons to be Anxious About Afghanistan - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

The Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan is to gradually transfer responsibility to the Afghans, starting in July 2011. But on the eve of President Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington, there's little evidence so far to demonstrate that this transfer process will actually work.

The much-touted offensive in Marja in Helmand province in February succeeded in clearing that rural area temporarily of Taliban insurgents, at least by day. But plans for the Afghans to provide more security and better governance there are off to a shaky start, officials at the State Department and Pentagon say.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's boast in February that "We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in" to Marja now sounds wildly over-optimistic. A senior military official concedes that this phrase "created an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now."

The official Pentagon line, after a White House review Thursday, is that there's "slow but steady progress" in Afghanistan. But the senior military official cautions that 90 days after the offensive, "Marja is a mixed bag," with parts of the area still controlled by the Taliban and Afghan government performance spotty. A top State Department official agrees: "Transfer is not happening" in Marja...

More at The Washington Post.

The Military Tries Nation-building in Afghanistan - George Will, Washington Post opinion.

When asked whether nationalism is putting down roots in Afghanistan's tribalized society, Gen. David Petraeus is judicious: "I don't know that I could say that." He adds, however, that "we do polling" on that subject. When his questioner expresses skepticism about the feasibility of psephology - measuring opinion - concerning an abstraction such as nationalism in a chaotic, secretive and suspicious semi-nation, Petraeus, his pride aroused, protests: "I took research methodology" at Princeton. There he acquired a PhD in just two years: His voracious appetite for knowing things is the leitmotif of his career.

Petraeus thinks he knows that President Hamid Karzai is widely viewed as "the father of the new Afghanistan." Although there was widespread fraud in the election last August that extended Karzai's presidency by five years, Petraeus says "ordinary people are not seized with anxiety about electoral corruption." Besides, "there is a democratic culture in these tribal councils," which are "like caucuses, if you will."

Perhaps, but the limitations of this culture are evident in Petraeus's belief that part of the Taliban's appeal, where it has had appeal, has been its ability to offer "dispute resolution" that is sometimes harsh but at least is rapid. And, Petraeus adds, with an inconvenient candor, the Taliban are sometimes "less predatory" than the Afghan security forces. Although strengthening the central government is a U.S. goal, that government's corruption and brutality might make the localities less than eager for it to be strengthened...

More at The Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates vowed Saturday to lead an effort to cut as much as $15 billion in overhead costs from the Pentagon's $550 billion budget and warned that without the savings, the military will not be able to afford its current force.

Under Gates's plan, the billions taken from the Pentagon's vast administrative bureaucracy would be used to pay for weapons modernization programs and the overall fighting force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates also hinted that additional cuts to major weapons programs would probably be necessary in the coming years.

The Pentagon's budget has almost doubled over the past decade, but the faltering national economy and surging U.S. debt will impose new austerity on the military, Gates warned...

More at The Washington Post.

Within the Afghan National Army

Afghan National Army Lessons Learned Center

This report includes input from members of a Collection and Analysis Team (CAAT) from the Afghan National Army Lessons Learned Center and the US Center for Army Lessons Learned.

22 February 2010

This report brings together two very important military capabilities: Counterinsurgency Operations, and Lessons Learned. Counterinsurgency operations are how we fight. The Lessons Learned process allows us to change how we fight by showing the Amy what works, and what doesn't work on the battlefield. The battlefield we fight on today is our own backyard. We are fighting an enemy who has the nerve to bring the fight to the streets, villages, and cities of Afghanistan. We must be able to call upon our countrymen to support our security forces as we fight for the protection of our country.

One of the main tenants of counterinsurgency operations is the cooperation of the people. The people are our countrymen. They are our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. If we lose them as allies, we have truly lost.

MG Salem

General Director

Doctrine & Concepts Directorate

Afghan National Army Training Command

Read the entire report here.