"I do not want to go over all the successes of the last eight years." Yeah, let's not -- that would take soooo long.

Speaking of Afghanistan, I see where old Steve Coll responds to comments posted on this blog. Having the author of one of the best books ever on Afghanistan (and one who is also an expert on bin Laden) wade in here is a real tribute to the quality of the debate you guys are maintaining. Thank you. Kudos especially to "smci60652," whoever you are.

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Last night I went to see David Kilcullen, the most quotable Australian since the Brothers Gibb, report on his most recent tour of Afghanistan. This is a great way to begin a speech:

One afternoon about six weeks ago I got ambushed in a valley in Dora Nur, in Nangarhar province...

Kilcullen, who is now a consultant to NATO and the U.S. government spent much of his time explaining how the war effort in Afghanistan is being crippled by the debilitating corruption of the Kabul government. (I'd bet this is similar to the straight talk Secretary Clinton is delivering today on her visit to Afghanistan.) He said a Western diplomat in Kabul told him that the government there reminds him of the Nationalist Chinese government in 1949, with an urban elite trying to scrape together as much wealth as they can before time runs out and they have to scoot.

Kilcullen described a "cycle of corruption" that is destroying Afghanistan:

Corruption

Leads to

Rapacious behavior of government officials

Leads to

Rage and alienation of the people

Leads to

Operating space for the Taliban

Leads to

Growing Taliban strength

Leads to

Taliban encouragement of poppy cultivation

Leads to

Poppies producing funds that corrupt government officials

Leads to

More corruption

And so on

"Poppy is the Taliban CERP," he said, a chilling phrase to anyone who knows the major role that that U.S. military acronym refers to money that American commanders used to win friends and influence people. The farmers who grow the dope only make about $800 million total annually, he said, with the vast majority of revenue, more than $3 billion, being split between drug lords, the Taliban, and government officials.

His bottom line is that there are two real options in Afghanistan: Either tell the Kabul government we are pulling out, or put in enough troops to actually break the cycle of corruption, which he said would be a minimum of about 40,000. "We either put in enough to control, or we get out." The worst thing we could do, he added, is put in enough troops to get more people killed but not enough to do anything to break change the behavior of corrupt officials. Also, he said, it is more about what you do than the actual number of troops -- "If you do it wrong, you could put it a million troops and it wouldn't make any difference."

Without quite saying so, he also indicated that time is a factor right now. "We're seeing a lot of money leaving the country. We're seeing tribes associated with the Northern Alliance re-arming. ... A lot of people are getting nervous." He talked about how attuned local Afghan leaders in remote areas are to American politics, being familiar with the various stances of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Carl Levin. "Right now we're sending kind of a message of indecision."

One surprise to me was that he isn't particularly worried about the possibility of al Qaeda moving back into Afghanistan. "I hope so," he said, explaining that it would be a strategic gain for us to see the terrorist group leave Pakistan and move into parts of Afghanistan that essentially are "the moon with gravity."   

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File under "ai yi yi." Here are the headlines from Dawn of Pakistan on Saturday:

• Anti-tank mine kills 18 in Mohmand
• Iran asks Pakistan to hand over Jundallah chief Rigi
• Fifteen injured in Peshawar car bomb blast
• Suicide blast at Kamra PAC entrance; 8 dead
• Six Uzbeks among 13 killed in Waziristan

TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images

Remember yesterday I mentioned David Wood as a good defense reporter? He has a terrific column today about what is going wrong in Afghanistan. I'll summarize it here, but only if you promise to click on this link and read the whole thing.

Wood begins with a good strong "lede" that manages to combine action and policy:

When a warning crackled over the radio of a suspected ambush ahead, Lt. Col. Rob Campbell swore softly and ordered his three armored trucks to a halt. What happened next illustrates why the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan is failing, why commanders here are asking for more manpower -- and why they are pleading for more time.

Then his main character strides into the picture, along with a succinct statement of the problem:

Leaping out with his M-4 carbine, Campbell, a tall cavalry officer with sandy hair and freckles, strode through the empty, sun-baked fields flanking the road while his men fanned out, checking the ground for IEDs, sweeping the fields for snipers. The Afghan police assigned to patrol this stretch of road? Nowhere in sight.

Campbell comes off as a good, thoughtful officer doing well, but conscious that time is running out. Anyway, read the whole thing -- one of the best things I've read on Afghanistan in awhile.

Meanwhile, NATO aircraft hit some hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan, killing a bunch of people. Some of them were insurgents, some of them children and other civilians trying to get the fuel the Taliban was distributing from the trucks for free. The total is somewhere between 50 and 90, it appears. My question: Does this air strike  pass the Petraeus test, which I saw him apply in Mosul back in 2003-2004: Before taking any action, consider whether it will create more opponents than it stops. Anyway, this makes me wonder if NATO forces got snookered into the attack.

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Capt. Matt Mabe, a friend of the blog who is now on an involuntary tour of duty in Afghanistan (after two tours in Iraq) has a terrific piece in Columbia Journalism Review about going from the Army to Ivy League graduate school. It doesn't make me think much of Columbia Journalism School -- but to its credit, their magazine did print it.

Here is a thoughtful note I received from the mother of a soldier who fought and fell at Wanat. It speaks for itself. I am of course posting it with her permission:

Dear Tom,

I am the mother of Cpl. Jason Bogar, killed in the battle of Wanat, Afghanistan. I am so thankful for your superb coverage of the heartbreaking incident and the military's subsequent lack of transparency in its circumstances. I believe your articles will bring awareness and ultimately justice to the situation. There needs to be accountability from the US Army and many times that only happens when great investigative journalists like you cover a story. Please keep up the fabulous work and intense pressure on the issue.

I do have a concern, however, with your blog of yesterday. I believe certain parts stereotype the soldiers of Chosen Company as people who were disgusted with the Afghan culture and had no contact with it. That is simply not true, as these photos my son shot reveal (he also expressed his respect for much of the Afghan culture in emails). I am sending you several pictures, out of the hundreds he sent home, of the Chosen Company interacting with the Afghan population in the Waygal Valley.

Here are the quotes that concern me:

"In addition, while Ostlund, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, has stated that he was carrying out a COIN campaign, with a focus on 'living with the population,' the report finds that statement to be inaccurate. 'This was not the case in the Waigal Valley, where the paratroopers occupied only two COPs, and had almost no interaction with the population.' The report finds the statement of one machine gunner in the unit to be more accurate: 'We didn't interact with them...They didn't come near us and we didn't go near them.' Underscoring the hazy grasp Ostlund and his subordinates had of COIN, the report says, they were precise about the number of engagements they had, and even the number of bombs and missiles fired, but were 'unable to provide commensurate statistics' for their efforts to actually help the local population.

The report quotes one soldier's view was representative: 'These people, they disgust me...Everything about those people up there is disgusting. They're worthless.' This is not an attitude that tends to produce productive relationships."

I've read this quote in the Cubbison report and the two soldiers quoted are men who I do not recognize as anyone from the Chosen Company involved in the battle at Wanat (I do think Cubbison does a marvelous job otherwise in his report).

The Brass ordered the terrible indiscriminate bombing of this area and should definitely be held accountable. Certainly some soldiers in the trenches became callous, but for most of them, they were carrying out orders and felt they were targeting the Taliban and not civilians.

Thank you again for the attention you've drawn to the injustice that occurred at Wanat. Please feel free to call or email me.

Carlene Cross
Seattle, Washington

As I read it over a second and third time, I thought about what this woman has endured, and how carefully she chooses her words.

Courtesy of Carlene Cross

Gen. McChrystal, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told the Los Angeles Times that the new focus on protecting the Afghan people might mean temporarily permitting the Taliban freer rein in some rural areas.

"Practically speaking, there are areas that are controlled by Taliban forces," he told reporter Julian Barnes, who wrote that "first priority will to be to make sure populated areas are free of insurgent influence."

I think this is pretty much one of the key recommendations Exum and his posse made for Afghanistan in their "Triage" paper in June.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The Army's study of what happened in the Wanat battle a year ago in eastern Afghanistan is even harder on senior U.S. military commanders than I was in my series on it back in February, saying that they didn't understand counterinsurgency doctrine and also that some of their statements about the fight were misleading at best.

The report, which is still in draft form, contradicts a few aspects of the accounts provided by some of the senior officers involved, implicitly raising integrity questions. That's especially significant because two officials at Fort Leavenworth have told me that the Army inspector general's office is investigating how the Wanat incident was reported and reviewed. I also hear that congressional interest in the situation is growing.

The report, which has not been released and was written for the Army's Combat Studies Institute by military historian Douglas Cubbison, finds multiple failures by the battalion and brigade commanders involved, Lt. Col. William Ostlund and Col. Charles Preysler. The core problem, Cubbison writes, is that the battle resulted from "a failure of COIN [counterinsurgency] manifested in a major combat action that although a marked tactical victory, became an operational and strategic defeat." Indeed, the report concludes that the unit's attempts at counterinsurgency were so badly implemented that they "were more likely to foster hostility than reciprocity from the local population."

That finding on the failure to properly carry out a counterinsurgency campaign is to my mind the most significant part of the Cubbison report. He flatly concludes that, in sharp contrast to their predecessors from the 10th Mountain Division, the commanders in the Wanat area mishandled their COIN campaign, both in the long term, over several months, and in the days preceding the Wanat fight. In sum, they alienated the population, failing to protect it and treating it as hostile. They then compounded the problem by instituting a "clear, hold and build" COIN operation without sufficient troops to clear Wanat, let alone hold it. "A single platoon in the open field near the bazaar lacked the capability of holding Wanat," the report finds.

Those errors came on top of the ones I discussed in my series, such as launching a major new operation even as the brigade was pulling out of Afghanistan, plus failing to ensure that the troops in Wanat had adequate building supplies or any drone aircraft for intelligence surveillance or even enough water. Cubbison also is more emphatic than I was about the fears the platoon in question justly had about their assigned mission.

The brigade commander, Col. Preysler, and the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Ostlund, come in for repeated criticisms. (I e-mailed a copy of this post to both officers yesterday, asking for their comments or responses, but didn't hear back from either.) Preysler, for example, has flatly stated that the Wanat outpost was never intended to be a "full-up combat outpost," or COP. "That is absolutely false and not true," he said after the fight. "So, from the get-go, that is just [expletive] and it's not right." The report finds that statement to be misleading, because, it notes, there were extensive plans for construction of a "permanent COP," with walls, housing and sewage control.

In addition, while Ostlund, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, has stated that he was carrying out a COIN campaign, with a focus on "living with the population," the report finds that statement to be inaccurate. "This was not the case in the Waigal Valley, where the paratroopers occupied only two COPs, and had almost no interaction with the population." The report finds the statement of one machine gunner in the unit to be more accurate: "We didn't interact with them...They didn't come near us and we didn't go near them." Underscoring the hazy grasp Ostlund and his subordinates had of COIN, the report says, they were precise about the number of engagements they had, and even the number of bombs and missiles fired, but were "unable to provide commensurate statistics" for their efforts to actually help the local population.

The report quotes one soldier's view was representative: "These people, they disgust me...Everything about those people up there is disgusting. They're worthless." This is not an attitude that tends to produce productive relationships.

These findings on COIN, by the way, sharply contradict the findings of the Army's 15-6 inquiry into the firefight, conducted by Col. Mark Johnstone, who recommended in Powerpointese, "Continue to interact closely with the local population as per current counterinsurgency doctrine."

Cubbison also writes that, "The highly kinetic approach favored by TF Rock...rapidly and inevitably degraded the relationships between the US Army and the Waigal population." To top it off, a helicopter attack on some trucks just a few days before the Wanat outpost was established wound up killing a good percentage of the doctors and other health care workers in the valley.

Also, while there was every reason to expect an attack on the outpost as it was being established, which had happened with previous outposts, Ostlund didn't appear to be focused on it. As a result, he and his subordinates appeared to neglect repeated signs that a major attack was imminent. "Until it had actually been the target of a major ACM [anti-coalition militia] attack, no senior leadership visited the new installation," the report states.

The report also states that assertions made by officers involved that UAV surveillance wasn't in place because of "weather issues" was "not accurate."

In addition, Cubbison casts doubt on Col. Presyler's assertion that, "The enemy never got into the main position." Rather, he finds, the "defensive perimeter was positively penetrated, and fighting occurred within the OP [outpost] perimeter." At any rate, Cubbison notes, overrunning the outpost doesn't appear to have been the aim of the insurgents, who instead seemed to have been trying to capture soldiers or their bodies. Two of the American dead appeared to have been dragged several yards, probably in a failed attempt to do so, he notes.

Cubbison also makes the important point that the platoon was saved from being overrun mainly by its own discipline and professional competence. They did just about everything they could do to establish the defenses of their outpost, despite being dehydrated from a lack of potable water. They were attacked just as they were doing a pre-dawn "stand to," in which every soldier, despite being exhausted from building walls and digging holes, was awake and fully armed and armored and surveilling his assigned sector of fire. As sergeants fell during the fight, junior soldiers were able to step into their shoes. He also marvels at the skill and courage of medical evacuation pilots and crews who picked up out wounded American and Afghan soldiers even as Apache helicopters were conducting gun runs 30 meters from the landing zone. Of the 20 evacuees, not one died of his wounds.

The report also is in awe of the bravery and persistence of the 42 soldiers and 3 Marines who fought at Wanat, as I am. I knew that some continued to fight after being hit several times. But I didn't know that one continued to pass ammunition even when he was mortally wounded.

I also think the Army deserves praise for having the honesty to have this report done. I am told that the final version will be released soon. Let's hope it isn't thrown out the back door at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon in August.

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