Two weeks ago, senior Bush administration officials gathered in secret with Afghanistan experts from NATO and the United Nations at an exclusive Washington club a few blocks from the White House. The group was there to deliver a grim message: the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse.

Their audience: advisers from the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama.

Over two days, according to participants in the discussions, the experts laid bare Afghanistan's most pressing issues. They sought to make clear that the next president needed to have a plan for Afghanistan before he took office on Jan. 20. Otherwise, they said, it could be too late.

More at The New York Times.

The next US president will govern in an era of increasing international instability, including a heightened risk of terrorist attacks in the near future, long-term prospects of regional conflicts and diminished US dominance across the globe, the nation's top intelligence officer said Thursday.

Competition for energy, water and food will drive conflicts between nations to a degree not seen in decades, and climate change and global economic upheaval will amplify the effects, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in a speech here.

McConnell, who has given security briefings to both major-party presidential candidates, said the list of worries will soon drown out the euphoria as the next occupant of the White House settles into the job.

More at The Washington Post.

We were asked to address one question - how can SWJ assist the COIN community? This 8-slide brief outlines our thoughts on this subject.

Former US Iraq Commander Petraeus Takes on Afghanistan - Al Pessin, Voice of America

The American general widely credited with turning around the war in Iraq takes command Friday of U.S. forces throughout the Middle East and Central Asia - putting him in charge of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan, as well as Iraq and the surrounding region.

It is not difficult to find praise for General David Petraeus' year-and-a-half in Iraq, during which violence dropped 80 percent and U.S. troops began to hand over responsibility to the new Iraqi forces in large parts of the country.

This is how retired General Gordon Sullivan introduced Petraeus at a conference of soldiers, veterans and their supporters in Washington earlier this month.

He said, "You have a very unique opportunity today to listen to this great soldier, scholar, commander, thinker, athlete and leader of troops, a great American and a great American soldier, General David Petraeus."

Such praise appears to slightly embarrass General Petraeus, who is always quick to say he shares any credit with U.S., coalition, and Iraqi troops.

But these days, more than a month after he left Iraq, attention is shifting to what Petraeus will do in his new job, and particularly whether he will be able to apply the counterinsurgency doctrine he published and then used in Iraq to the increasingly tough fight against the Taliban, al-Qaida and associated groups in Afghanistan.

In a VOA interview, Petraeus said the Afghanistan war is a very different fight, but he also said some of what he did in Iraq will apply there.

"There are certain concepts, obviously, that apply to many contingencies - certainly the need to focus on the security of the population, to try where possible, and in the case of Afghanistan, clearly, with President Karzai's support, to pursue reconciliation where that's sensible, where it won't collide with warlordism and so forth," he said.

The general's call for talks with what he calls "reconcilable" elements of the insurgency, potentially including some Taliban elements, was endorsed by his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

General Petraeus listed a dozen other keys to counterinsurgency, including securing and living among the local people, coordinating with civilian agencies from many countries and with aid groups, pursuing irreconcilable enemy leaders and fighters, and training local forces to prepare for a transition of responsibility.

The general will start his command with a thorough review of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the White House are also conducting reviews. All that will be available for the new president to evaluate and make decisions on when he takes office in January.

But General Petraeus told VOA the mission in Afghanistan will require more U.S. troops, just like he got in the famous "surge" in Iraq.

"There is no question but that Afghanistan needs additional forces. Everyone agrees with that," he said. "I am among them. The secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, NATO secretary general, NATO leaders, and so forth, all very much agree on that score. Precisely how many, what configuration and so forth is what will be sorted out over the course of the months ahead."

Officials said the U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan could reach 20,000 or more during the coming year, in addition to the 20,000-troop increase by the United States and NATO allies during the past year. But the United States can only do that if security conditions enable it to reduce the troop level in Iraq by about the same number.

The first additional brigade of about 4,000 U.S. troops is expected to be in Afghanistan by January. The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, says he needs a sustained increase, not just a temporary surge.

Retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and counterinsurgency expert John Nagl said General Petraeus' experience will serve him well in his new job as U.S. Central Command leader.

"The principles of counterinsurgency that General Petraeus employed so effectively in Iraq in fact have much to teach us about a better approach to the war in Afghanistan," he said. "Perhaps the most important of those lessons is the absolute necessity to create security on the ground. And the only way to do that in a lasting way is to put ground troops in."

But some experts warned that sending too many U.S. troops could create more opposition. They urge a more Afghan-based approach, supported by foreign aid.

Professor Andrew Bacevich at Boston University predicted that General Petraeus will not be able to apply the formula that led to success in Iraq to create a successful strategy for Afghanistan.

"I doubt it. The two theaters of war are radically different in terms of geopolitical setting, in terms of their history, culture, the makeup of the population," he said. "So to imagine that if there is a cookie-cutter recipe that it can be applied to Afghanistan I think is probably too optimistic."

Another defense analyst, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington, was also skeptical of any effort to directly apply tactics that worked in Iraq to Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is actually in some ways a harder problem at this point, and not totally analogous to what Iraq had been two years ago," he said. "I do think it's actually a situation that's going to require some fresh new ideas."

General Petraeus acknowledges things have not gone well in Afghanistan in recent months, and he recognizes the country and the conflict are very different from Iraq. In addition, many players have a voice in how the Afghanistan war is conducted, including NATO countries and the Afghan government. There is also the added complexity of insurgents who have bases in Pakistan, and the increase in violence they have been able to generate.

He said, "In some respects, there has been a downward spiral in some areas. The trends have gone in the wrong direction. So in certain areas you clearly have to arrest those trends, reverse them, and then begin moving forward."

Afghanistan is the main challenge General Petraeus will face in his new command, but not the only one. Among the many other concerns in his region, he will also have to support the continuing U.S. effort in Iraq, manage security in the Persian Gulf, worry about the potential for conflict with Iran and work with Pakistani leaders to help address the insurgent safe havens along the Afghan border. Iraq was a difficult problem. Petraeus' new job is exponentially more complex.

The Afghan government and its allies in the region have begun approaching the Taliban and other insurgent groups with new intensity to test the possibilities for eventual peace talks, Western diplomats and Afghan officials here say.

The diplomatic approaches have been stepped up over the last several months by the Afghan government, as well as by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the officials said. They are part of a broad political effort to stem the downward spiral of violence in Afghanistan and the steep decline of public support for the government during a year that has proved to be the bloodiest of the past seven.

Security has deteriorated to the point that a growing chorus of Western diplomats, NATO commanders and Afghans has begun to argue that the insurgency cannot be defeated solely by military means. Some officials in Kabul contend that the war against the insurgents cannot be won and are calling for negotiations...

More at The New York Times.

Good for Dave Dilegge for speaking out in Small Wars Journal about the October issue of Rolling Stone magazine, wherein Nir Rosen, an American reporter, described his visit with Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Rosen left no doubt about his active cooperation with the Taliban fighters. "They have promised to take me to see the Taliban in action: going out on patrols, conducting attacks," he wrote, ".... once we are on the road we should take the batteries out of our phones, to prevent anyone from tracking us."

Having told the reader what his intent was, Rosen described the Taliban as "religious students who knew little about the rest of the world and cared only about liberating their country from oppressive warlords." Rosen concluded his piece by declaring that the war was lost -- unless we negotiated an ending with the Taliban.

But in addition to providing the Taliban with a propaganda coup, did he violate moral strictures, given that killing Americans was an objective of the very Taliban attacks he wanted to watch? Is a journalist guided by virtues higher than those of patriotism or nationalism? Does a journalist transcend the laws and norms governing other American citizens? And who is not a journalist, if every blog and e-mail is a branch of journalism?

This isn't an obvious call in journalistic circles. Last year, David Schlesinger, chief editor for Reuters, e-mailed to me from the UK that "we (Reuters) are regularly in contact with established Taliban spokespeople via email and satellite phone to get the Taliban's view of various news events. Our competitors are as well. This is the normal and essential journalistic practice we follow anywhere in the world -- we report the views of all sides in a conflict without taking any side."

While he did not say that Reuters sent correspondents into Taliban camps, his belief that not "taking any side" was an "essential journalistic practice" reveals an attitude that transcends patriotism and cries our for a national debate. It is doubtful if Reuters in 1941 would have interviewed Nazis while informing fellow Londoners that Reuters was not "taking any side". And although most Americans who fought in Vietnam were outraged when Jane Fonda posed with North Vietnamese soldiers in 1970, the American government never said a word about her conduct, and millions of Americans supported her. Vietnam affirmed an American tradition of journalistic "independence" during a war.

Rosen is in elevated journalistic company in detaching from the American soldiers and their cause. In describing his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins wrote, "This was not my war. This was not my army." Whose army, then, was it?

Rosen described how he and two Taliban fighters deceived the guards at a government checkpoint. Suppose during World War II an American reporter had sneaked through the lines with two German officers wearing civilian clothes. "When we caught enemy combatants out of uniform in the 1940s," a veteran wrote in The American Heritage, "we sometimes simply executed them." The Greatest Generation had a direct way of dealing with moral ambiguity.

"I am a guest of the Taliban." Rosen wrote. Supposing in 1944 he had written, "I am a guest of the Waffen SS." It is doubtful if Rolling Stone would have published Rosen's article during World War II. The norms and values of American society have changed enormously in the past half-century.

Yet had Rosen been captured by Afghan soldiers, it is likely Rolling Stone magazine would have asked the US military to intercede for his release. But if the reporter has no obligation toward the soldier, does the soldier have the obligation to protect the journalist? Should Rosen, if captured, have been released or put on trial for aiding or abetting the enemy?

Not fully trusting the Taliban, Rosen employed the threat of murder more commonly associated with drug lords than with Rolling Stone magazine. "... Those I accompanied knew that they and their families would be killed if anything happened to me," Rosen wrote, alluding to shadowy Afghan associates who had arranged his trip. But supposing Rosen had died and in retaliation six children were beheaded. What is the difference between the Mafia and Rolling Stone, when reporters are protected by threatening to wipe out families?

Most disturbing was the lack of outrage to Rosen's sojourn by the administration, the military, the civilian appointees and the politicians. Secretary of Defense Gates is a cool, detached official who reacts to events. He does not plot a course into the future. He does not project a determination or a vision about how to succeed in Afghanistan. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral William Mullen, calls for a strategic review -- after six years of fighting! - laments that "we cannot kill our way to victory", a vacuous absolution that transfers responsibility for failure to others. Why increase from 32,000 to 50,000 US troops, whose basic training is as riflemen, if the application of force -- killing - is not the objective? A policeman protects the population by arresting criminals; a soldier protects the population by shooting the enemy soldier. Our military succeeds in confusing us all by reverting to Rodney King's plaint that we should all just get along.

When our leaders lack moral clarity and courage, then agnosticism about our mission in Afghanistan is understandable. Rosen's conduct is not the problem; he was taking advantage of American moral lassitude. Our leaders don't stand up for the righteousness of our cause. Why not hang out with the Taliban, if America's leaders see nothing wrong with it?

We are fighting a war. Yet the Department of Defense lacks commitment and passion in the cause. It is morally wrong for an American citizen to deceive friendly troops in order to sneak into enemy territory in the company of enemy soldiers. When not one American official or general will speak out, our Soldiers and Marines who are fighting and dying are let down by their leaders.

US commanders in Afghanistan now believe they need about 20,000 additional troops to battle a growing Taliban insurgency, as demands mount for support forces such as helicopter units, intelligence teams and engineers that are critical to operating in the country's harsh terrain.

The troop requests, made in recent weeks, reflect the broader struggles the US military faces in the Afghan war. Fighting has intensified, particularly in the country's eastern region, where attacks are up and cross-border infiltration of insurgents from Pakistan is on the rise. US troop deaths in 2008 are higher than in any other year since the conflict began in 2001.

The Pentagon has approved the deployment of one additional combat battalion and one Army brigade, or about 4,000 troops, set to arrive in Afghanistan by January. Commanders have already requested three more combat brigades -- 10,500 to 12,000 troops -- but those reinforcements depend on further reductions from Iraq and are unlikely to arrive until spring or summer, according to senior defense officials. Now, US commanders are asking the Pentagon for 5,000 to 10,000 additional support forces to help them tackle the country's unique geographic and logistical challenges.

Afghanistan's rugged mountains, bitter winters and primitive infrastructure pose a major hurdle as the US military seeks to build up its combat forces there. The conditions contrast with those in Iraq, where roads, runways and built-up urban areas helped absorb nearly 30,000 US forces during the troop "surge" last year...

Much more at The Washington Post.

Today's public diplomats wear boots, not wingtips. Increasingly, the Defense Department is at the forefront of US efforts to engage public opinion overseas. While the State Department formally leads the effort, the Pentagon has more money and personnel to carry out the public diplomacy mission.

This trend is risky. The message foreign publics receive -- not the message the US sends -- changes when the Pentagon is the messenger. Putting our military, not civilians, at the forefront of US global communications undercuts the likelihood of success, distorts priorities, and undermines the effectiveness of US civilian agencies.

According to a Washington Post report, the Department of Defense will pay private contractors $300 million over three years to produce news and entertainment programs for the Iraqi public. These well-intentioned efforts aim to "engage and inspire" Iraqis to support the objectives of both the US and Iraqi governments.

Such outreach campaigns can be powerful if done well and as part of a broader strategy of engagement, political reconciliation, and economic development. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has argued eloquently that the United States must call increasingly upon "soft power" to advance national interests. Soft power can take many forms, but it is primarily the use of culture, values, and ideas to attract, instead of military or economic threats to coerce.

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Here is the scoop on the remaining articles listed as reports by the Sentinel:

Islamic State of Iraq Commemorates its Two-Year Anniversary by Pascale Combelles Siegel, British Muslims Providing Foot Soldiers for the Global Jihad by James Brandon, Anatomy of Spain's 28 Disrupted Jihadist Networks by Javier Jordan, The Impact of Global Youth Bulges on Islamist Radicalization and Violence by Colleen McCue and Kathryn Haahr, Jama`at al-Fuqara': An Overblown Threat? by Farhana Ali and William Rosenau, The Threat of Terrorism to the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa by Anneli Botha and Iraq as the Focus for Apocalyptic Scenarios by David Cook.

Check it out.