"have explicitly said that the revamped approach is focused on only about 40 percent of Afghanistan, and that even within that area, outlying areas won't be handled in a troop-intensive, classic counterinsurgency manner, but rather with focused counter-terror raids."

So Biden is, in fact, correct: it's not a COIN strategy, but a hybrid of classic countersinsurgency in 40% of the country supplemented by counter-terror in the remainders. Now, he may not have meant that, and may have been wrong in the way you ascribe, but this isn't convincing evidence. And adding in the gratuitous rumors of him sleeping during briefings is unprofessional.

"remainder", sorry.

Counterinsurgency is not, NOT, a strategy. I am continually amazed by folks who so easily throw that term out there. Even David Kilcullen has acknowledged as much that it is not strategy.

Instead Population Centric Counterinsurgency which the de jour term of Coin implies is an operational method, nothing more and nothing less. The mistake we make is when folks elevate it to the realm of strategy which it is not. But see that is the problem nowadays in Afghanistan in that we really have no strategy, but just a set of Coin operational methods and tactics; or, a strategy of Coin tactics.

Um, Tom, in fact Counterinsurgency is by demand a massive nation building effort. Nation building is the essential element to the kind of Coin that has become the American Army's New Way of War. FM 3-24 acknowledged that Coin is nation building as did Galula, Thompson, and the rest.

But I ask, if we are not doing nation building in Afghanistan then what are we doing there, Jack McCuen's notions of Hybrid War? I get more and more confused by the minute in this age of the graduate level of war.

gian

COIN isn't a strategy, Tom, and you should know better by now. I think if you look at recent speeches by Patreaus and McChrystal, you'll see that they make a distinction between operational tactics and national strategy for the wars in the Middle East. The president sets the strategy, the military executes operations and tactics.

"...how consistently good Joe Biden and John Kerry have been as counterindicators of what their party, and their nation, should do:"

Really, Tom? Considering the "leadership" of the Democratic party for the past 3-8 years, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Establishing an alternative to the Republican party's past (failed) direction seems to be something the Dems have not done well, so if Biden and Kerry have ideas that are new and different, I'm willing to go there.

Biden's view that (in effect) a federal-ish partition of Iraq into the three ''stan's" is inevitable, and therefore a policy imperative, may have been stated at impolitic times and impolite ways.

But as the 'unravelling' thread here indicates, the 'Partition Happens' thesis is far from proven wrong. At the 2006 tipping point, several prominent democratic wonks were preparing 'managing the partition' policy positions. Then "THE SURGE" and 'strategic patience' became the next new thing.

Watch the Barzani play for a greater independent Kurdistan. If the Hakim-Maliki coalition falls apart, visions and versions of a Shiastan will re-emerge and clash with resurgent Anbari-Sunni regionalism.

VP Joe may not be as dumb (in hindsight) as his foot-in-mouth timing makes him look.

Found on another website:

The ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the NATO Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of al-Qaeda by proving the non-existence of God.

Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, notoriously known as the Les Bérets Noirs or "Black Berets," will be parachuted into various combat zones to spread doubt, despondency, "ennui," and existential "anomie" among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris' Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of sidewalk cafés at strategic points near the front lines.

There they will drink coffee, sip Pernod, and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.

The brigade leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very intense and unshaven young man in a black turtlenecked pullover, gesticulated wildly and said, "The al-Qaeda, they are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am talking."

Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating freedom of action with special reference to the works of Kierkegaard, Foucault, Nietzsche, plays by Camus, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of second hand smoke from the Frenchmen's endless Gauloises could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area.

Speculation was mounting last night that Britain may also contribute to the effort by dropping Professor Stephen Hawking into Afghanistan to propagate his non-deistic theory of the creation of the universe. Other tactics to demonstrate the non-existence of God will include the dropping of leaflets pointing out the fact that Michael Jackson has a new album out and Jesse Helms has not died yet. This is only one of several Psy-Ops operations mounted by the Allies.

Col Pat Lang's take on the article frrom the District of Corruption's propaganda organ, WP.

"It appears that the Afghan policy war is not over. Chandrasekaran is a good reporter but not good enough to get this unaided. Sooo, someone(s) at the NSC briefed him so that the message would be delivered to the "other team" that their behavior is being watched closely and that the NSC team is prepared to use the public media as a weapon if need be.

The reporter then went to the Defense Department where he was told their side of the story. Secretary Gates appears to have become the leader of the pentagon faction.

Petraeus is interestingly absent from this nearly open struggle. He will wait to see what the outcome may be.

A major confrontation over policy and presidential authority is coming. The policy review scheduled for July 2010 may well precipitate it. "

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/12/men-on-horseback.html#comments

As the great Vinturi once said, "Knowledge and expertise are quite unlike one another." I think Biden has a good grasp of domestic policy, but give the guy a break. He wasn't elected to command armored divisions.