In a sign that the US military is scaling back its goals in Afghanistan, senior Pentagon officials are weighing controversial proposals to send additional teams of highly trained special operations forces to narrowly target the most violent insurgent bands in the country.

The proposals are part of an acknowledgment among senior brass that a large-scale influx of conventional forces is unlikely in the near future because of troop commitments in Iraq. It also reflects the urgency to take some action to reverse recent setbacks in Afghanistan.

The idea of sending more special forces has intensified the debate over the best way to fight the war in Afghanistan. As security worsens in the country, many military leaders are increasingly arguing that an Iraq-style troop "surge" and counterinsurgency plan would not work because of the country's rugged geography and a history of resistance to rule from Kabul.

Unlike Iraq, where large portions of the population are urbanized in the wide, flat plains of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, much of Afghanistan is mountainous and dotted with remote villages that are hard to reach with large bodies of conventional forces, several Pentagon officials involved in the Afghanistan strategy review said.

More at The Los Angeles Times.

As US and European officials ponder what to do about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, they are coming to a perhaps surprising conclusion: The simplest way to stabilize the country may be to negotiate a truce with the Taliban fundamentalists who were driven from power by the United States in 2001.

The question policymakers are pondering, in fact, isn't whether to negotiate with the Taliban but when. There's a widespread view among Bush administration officials and US military commanders that it's too soon for serious talks, because any negotiation now would be from a position of weakness. Some argue for a US troop buildup and an aggressive military campaign next year to secure Afghan population centers, followed by negotiations.

How the worm turns: A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that the United States would consider any rapprochement with the Taliban militants who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden as he planned the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the painful experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has convinced many US commanders that if you can take an enemy off the battlefield through negotiations, that's better than getting pinned down in protracted combat.

More at The Washington Post.

For years, the Lebanese military was ridiculed as the least effective armed group in a country that was full of them. After the army splintered during the 15-year civil war, its arsenal slowly rotted into a museum of obsolete tanks and grounded aircraft.

Now that is starting to change. At the gates of a military base just north of Beirut, groups of soldiers drive new American Humvees and trucks, and some tote gleaming new American rifles and grenade launchers.

The weapons are the leading edge of a new American commitment to resupply the military of this small but pivotal Middle Eastern country, which emerged three years ago from decades of Syrian domination.

The new wave of aid, the first major American military assistance to Lebanon since the 1980s, is meant to build an armed force that could help stabilize Lebanon's fractured state, fight a rising terrorist threat and provide a legitimate alternative to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. That organization, which controls southern Lebanon, has refused to disarm, arguing that it is the only force that can defend the country against Israel.

More at The New York Times.

The US military, bracing for the first wartime presidential transition in 40 years, is preparing for potential crises during the vulnerable handover period, including possible attacks by al-Qaeda and destabilizing developments in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to senior military officials.

"I think the enemy could well take advantage" of the transfer of power in Washington, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, who launched preparations for the transition months ago, and who will brief the president-elect, the defense secretary nominee and other incoming officials on crisis management and how to run the military.

Officials are working "to make sure we are postured the right way around the world militarily, that our intelligence is focused on this issue, and in day-to-day operations the military is making sure it does not happen," Mullen said in an interview. "If it does happen, we need to be in a position to respond before and after the inauguration."

More at The Washington Post.

Afghanistan: The Night I Was 'Killed in Action' by a Taliban Ambush - Nick Meo, Daily Telegraph (21 October 2008)

The Reaction

The Most Self-serving and Incompetent Journalist in the World - Blackfive

A Cowardice Act By a Reporter - Bouhammer's Afghan Blog

Call To Arms - Bill & Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure

Media's Finest - Mudville Gazette

The Rebuttal

Nick Meo Hits Back at Afghanistan Battle Report Slurs - Nick Meo, Daily Telegraph (26 October 2008)

PBS Press Release:

The next president of the United States will inherit a foreign policy nightmare: wars on two fronts, an overstretched military, a resurgent Taliban and a reconstituted Al Qaeda based far from America's reach.

In The War Briefing, airing Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), award-winning FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria and correspondent Martin Smith offer harrowing on-the-ground reporting from the deadliest battlefield in the mountains of Afghanistan, and follow the trail to the militant safe havens deep inside the Pakistani tribal areas, probing some of the most urgent foreign policy challenges facing the next president.

"The situation is worse; there's no question about that," says Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. "Provinces close to Kabul are now having incidents that didn't have incidents before. And to my mind, that is clearly a strengthening insurgency."

The War Briefing begins in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, where FRONTLINE embedded with Bravo Company, a unit posted on one of Afghanistan's deadliest fronts. Bravo Company comes under fire almost daily. Attacks have reached an all-time high, now making Afghanistan a deadlier battlefield than Iraq. Often called the "forgotten war," top U.S. commanders concede that the next president will inherit a security situation that has deteriorated markedly over the last two years.

"The next president will face a situation where, in the next year or two, he will have to make the decision that faced the Soviets in 1988--either to massively reinforce and to wage a war very aggressively, or to get out," says Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit. "That's the inheritance of the next president."

In the short term, commanders agree that more troops are desperately needed. Lt. Col. John Nagl, a former counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, tells FRONTLINE: "In Afghanistan, we simply don't have enough boots on the ground to provide security on the ground, to convince the young men that we're there for the long haul; that if you work with us, we will not only keep you safe, but we'll work with you to build a better future for you and your family."

But the next president's options in Afghanistan will be limited by a depleted military, with some units already on their fifth deployment. "The next president will be told: 'You need to spend more money on training troops. You need to recapitalize the military in equipment. And you might have to think about increasing the size of the military, especially ground forces,'" says Tom Ricks, author of Fiasco. "As one officer at the Pentagon put it to me: 'We're out of Schlitz. There are no extra troops left on the shelf. We're at our limit.'"

Even with more troops, any progress in Afghanistan will be hostage to developments just across the border. As long as the Taliban and Al Qaeda are able to launch attacks from their sanctuaries in the lawless tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan, any policy is likely to fail. But cracking down on the insurgent safe havens in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas presents enormous challenges of its own.

In recent months, special forces have mounted ground assaults on targets inside the tribal areas without the consent of the Pakistani government, prompting growing tensions with the Pakistani army and its new civilian leaders. "The United States does not have the right to go into a sovereign country that is its ally without permission and approval and consent of that ally," Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, tells FRONTLINE. Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations adds: "This was an early and decisive success we had [against the Taliban] after 9/11. If eight years later it collapses before the very force that we defeated and kicked out of Afghanistan, then the symbolism is tremendous. It would be a major morale booster for extremism across the Muslim world."

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think

By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup Press, 2007.

Reviewed by:

Drew L. Schumann

LTC, US Army Reserve

Counter-IED Curriculum Developer, Combined Arms Center for Training

Fort Leavenworth, KS

Since 9/11, terrorism and Islam have been synonymous to many in the West, especially in America. Efforts by individuals and groups to disprove this concept have ranged from ineffective at best, to giving the impression of advocating terror and obfuscatory at worst. For the majority of Americans, according to a recent Gallup Poll, "There is nothing to admire about Islam".

In 2001, the Gallup organization set off on a six-year, 35 country research project to determine what "Islam" thought about America, terror, as well as about their own society. The result is Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. In this book, the authors assert that they can demonstrate conclusively, that most Americans' opinions about Islam are misguided, and that the genesis of terrorism is not the actively religious in Islam.

For those who are reticent about reading a book about a series of polls, fear not, for the book is 204 pages, an introduction, five chapters and two tabs. Reading carefully, I would estimate a four hour read, uninterrupted. Plus, while the scope of the book is rather ambitious, and its execution is fairly sophisticated, it is written in understandable prose for all levels of readers with a minimum of jargon.

Who Speaks for Islam? deals with five central themes. It explores Islamic attitudes and opinions on identity, majority view on democracy and the role of Islam in a democracy, what, if anything contributes to the correlation of Islam and violence, what Islamic women want and what Islamic people worldwide think about the United States.

According to the Gallup Poll, less than 20 percent of Muslims are ethnically Arab, and most live outside of the Middle East. Muslims share belief structures and history with Jews and Christians. While these are fairly obvious facts, the Gallup research reveals that in the eyes of the majority of Muslims, terrorism is antithetical to Jihad. In fact, not only is it antithetical to jihad, but the majority of Muslims see Jihad as a metaphorical struggle, not military.

One of the persistent truisms among many Westerners is the incompatibility of Islam and democracy. The book explores the views of Muslims on democracy, and comes to the conclusions that the majority of Muslims desire democracy, and theorizes that the lack of democracy in the Islamic world is more a function of history than religion. On the subject of religion and democracy, the authors also point out that the majority of Muslims agree that the legal structure of their government law should be based in Sharia. While Western conventional wisdom appears to support the notion that Sharia is fundamentally undemocratic and anti-civil rights, the majority of Muslims polled think that Sharia and democracy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, these numbers agree almost exactly with similar polls in America, concerning the role of religion in the making of laws.

While anti-Islam thought is generally attributed to "neo-conservatives" or the religious right, Who Speaks for Islam? also takes traditional liberal conventional wisdom to task, in that the authors make some fairly convincing points that disassociates the traditional secular/liberal view that correlates religion and violence/wars.

According to the poll data, over 90 percent of Muslims disapprove of terrorism. Ironically, this number is much higher than those who disapprove of terrorism among Americans. In addition, the great majority of terrorists who self-identify by action or by opinion are not demonstrably religious. Both of the above points are particularly eye-opening, in that they appear to swim directly upstream from prevailing Western, secular, liberal traditions and thought.

Perhaps the most compelling point of the book is the examination of Muslim women and their opinions about Islam, and women's rights. In sum, Muslim women want liberty, but not libertinism. Contrary to the popular Western view that women are suppressed by men in Islamic society, Muslim women's opinions track Muslim men's opinions on nearly every issue. For instance, the majority of Muslim women support Sharia as a basis for law. In fact, a large percentage of Muslim women consider Sharia as "protective" of women and feel that those protections gives them an advantage over men, before the law. Perhaps disappointingly for many who oppose Muslim women's traditional dress, a large number of Muslim women see traditional dress as superior to Western dress. Muslim women also have a better self-image than Western women, perhaps not coincidentally.

This dissonance is probably a result of Muslim women not sharing the same "issue set" as western women's rights activists, and see western "women's rights" as a justification for neo-colonialism. Where some Western activists think that Muslim women should demand an end to female mutilation and traditional dress, and demand access to abortions and "equal rights" before the law, the majority of Muslim women really want better economics and peace, as well as medical care and infrastructure.

The authors close the book with data about whether the Muslim World hates the US for its freedom and prosperity, as espoused by many pundits. In fact, according to their polling data, the majority of Muslims admire American freedoms and technology. Perhaps surprisingly, self-identified terrorists admire American freedoms at a higher rate than the general population. The authors close by theorizing that perhaps disillusionment with the disconnect between American ideals and American actions has a role in the formation of terrorists in the Muslim world.

Contrary to many academic books, reading the research methodology was actually highly entertaining, especially since most writers describe their methodology in tedious, highly technical terms. The Gallup organization is rightfully proud of their product, and takes the time to make the two tabs on their methodology both educational and interesting.

Who Speaks For Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think is an important book, that should be on "required reading lists" that wish to examine The Long War, Islam, or terrorism. The authors' assertion that religious and fundamentalist does not mean "violent" will be sure to raise a fair amount of controversy among many quarters, because the Gallup Poll numbers used in the book contradict both neo-conservative and traditionally American "liberal" ideas about the Islamic world. Most of all, the book will provide "grist for the mill", especially for those of us who seek a better understanding of Islam, and the causes of non-state violence in the world.

The US Embassy in Baghdad represents a massive engineering feat. Complete with its own power, food, shopping center, apartments, and formidable defenses, it is a marvel on the same scale as the finest World War Two-era battleships...and about as applicable to the current conflict as iron dreadnaughts were in the era of the aircraft carrier.

The building of massive redoubts has been an obsolete military strategy for centuries, and for good reason. A leader who retreats to a castle or fortress only controls the land on which that fortress stands, and can influence only the people who live within its walls. Within the walls of a fortress, leadership can grow increasingly out of touch with the local populace, with communications both to and from the fortress being increasingly difficult.

Attempts to control insurgencies and hold dominion over foreign countries through the building of massive isolated fortresses was attempted with disastrous results by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. T.E. Lawrence, one of the intellectual fathers of modern insurgency, talks about a strategic situation in Hejaz in 1916 that was eerily similar to the strategic situation the United States faced from 2003-2007.

Lawrence noted that thousands of Turkish troops had holed themselves up in a massive forward operating base in the Arab city of Medina, digging in for an Arab offensive that never arrived. Lawrence was content to leave the Turks on the perpetual defensive in Medina. For although the Turks may have held the city, it represented only a few square miles of Arabia, an area throughout which the Arab Bedouins moved and occupied at will, spreading their insurgency through the Arabian Peninsula towards Aqaba and eventually Damascus.

Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, his account of the Arab War, is even more prescient when he discusses his raids against the Hejaz Railway. The Turks would typically only venture out of the safety of their base in Medina in trains along the Hejaz Railway, much as US forces, under the auspices of force protection, would venture out of their forward operating bases in armored columns. Lawrence and the Arab insurgents in Hejaz placed improvised explosive devices along the railroads, much like our current foes place similar devices along the highways of Iraq.

Seeing that the United States was suffering a fate similar to the Turks in Hejaz, General David Petraeus immediately changed US military policy. As part of the comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy which accompanied the American troop surge of 2007, American forces were pushed off of the massive forward operating bases and into smaller patrol bases throughout the cities of Iraq, particularly Baghdad. American troops patrolled the streets on foot, rather than in up-armored HMMWVs. Even though this represented a huge risk for force protection, it also paid huge dividends.

Leaving the safety of their vehicles, the dismounted troops were then able to interact regularly with the local people, provide security, shop in the local markets, collect valuable human intelligence, and gain the trust of the Iraqi people, responsibilities typically falling to other governmental agencies, such as the US State Department.

No one can doubt that the US military should be able to successfully interact with the local population in order to better serve in nation-building endeavors. However, the simultaneous convergence of military and diplomatic policy—that is, the tendency of American diplomats to behave in a more soldierly fashion (i.e., fortress-like embassies), and the tendency of American soldiers to act increasingly as the sole American diplomats--has led to what many foreign policy experts are referring to as a militarization of American foreign policy. Or, to quote a common catch-phrase, "American public diplomacy wears combat boots".

The militarization of the public diplomacy and American embassies is not only limited to volatile area like Iraq. In the United Kingdom, the United States is moving its embassy away from its prime location in Grosvenor Square in downtown London to an isolated area south of the Thames River. The American embassy in Berlin, in accordance with the latest policies in embassy building, is 30 meters away from the nearest street, and was jeered in the German press as being a hideous "lump".

This is a far cry away from the era of the Marshall Plan, when American embassies were designed by the greatest architects, and featured public libraries in which the locals could read and experience American culture. American embassies were a means by which the United States could serve as an example to the world; to showcase the best that the American superpower had to offer.

The design of our embassies serves to reinforce the popular perception of the United States throughout the world. During the Cold War, our embassies served as examples to nations all over the world, reflecting our role as the rebuilder of Europe and promoter of democratic values for many nations. Unfortunately, the design of modern day embassies reflect America's increasing isolation in the world community (both diplomatically and culturally), as well as reinforcing the global community's uneasiness towards American military power.

The US Department of State needs to adopt a two-fold approach to re-examining its public diplomacy policies. First, it needs to stop wasting billions of dollars on embassies that are counter-productive to US foreign policy. While the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 remind us of the need for the protection of our embassies and diplomatic personnel, it should not come at the risk of our diplomatic mission abroad. Secondly, the State Department needs to hire far more foreign operatives and accustom them to life in dangerous areas. Engaging the local population is the key to success in public diplomacy, and should not be left entirely in the hands of the military.

The State Department would be wise to emulate the success of General Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy and public diplomacy. American Public diplomacy needs to re-discover its past so that it can continue towards a more successful future.

Captain Crispin J. Burke is a UH-60 pilot with assignments in the 82nd Airborne Division and with Joint Task Force-Bravo in the Republic of Honduras. He is currently deploying to Iraq as a commander within the 10th Mountain Division.