I don't know if Ms Broadwell works for the Pentagon/CIA or is just a dupe.
If just a dupe, ask yourself these questions.

How do you know this guy was elected from that village, or even lived there? Do you speak the local language? Did you hire your own outside interpreter, or did you trust the one from your local Pentagon spinmaster, who escorted you and told you who to "speak" with and what they said. "Yes, thanks for destroying our homes, they were old anyway."

The Taliban (a CIA created name for local insurgents) are not good guys, but they aren't Arab terrorists, just traditional opponents to foreign occupiers. They view local collaborators as traitors, and the locals are stuck in between. I suppose if you visited Nazi occupied France, you'd do a story about a local Frenchmen saying it was good the Germans destroyed their village, because it was infested by members of the French resistance.

This ruse was common in Vietnam, and on every military base in the USA. You just find a passive stenographer having a great time overseas who will write down whatever you like. If you want to be a real reporter, you must risk your life like Nir Rosen and strike out on your own.

If the American officers there didn't hate you when you left, you failed.

Wed Oct. 27, 2010 2:00 AM PDT

In his new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, journalist (and Mother Jones contributor) Nir Rosen presents a visceral portrait of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's embedded with GIs and jihadists, hung out with Afghan "stoner cops," and has had some close calls, like nearly being dragged before a sharia judge who might have sentenced him to death. In this excerpt, Rosen reflects on his recent experiences in Afghanistan and the prospects of American counterinsurgency efforts in a country with a long history of unsuccessful occupations.

Supporters of General Stanley McChrystal, the former US commander in Afghanistan, liked to say "he gets it," as if there was a magic counterinsurgency (COIN) formula they'd discovered in 2009. But Afghans have a memory. They remember, for example, that the American-backed mujahideen killed thousands of Afghan teachers and bombed schools in the name of their anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s. The Taliban atrocities had not arisen in a vacuum. Similarly, past American actions have consequences. Opinions were already formed. The Taliban were gaining power thanks to American actions and alliances. Warlords were empowered by the Americans. No justice was sought for victims. The government and police were corrupt. The president stole the elections. The message was that there was no justice, and a pervasive sense of lawlessness and impunity had set in.

Afghans who had been humiliated or victimized by the Americans and their allies were unlikely to become smitten by them merely because of some development aid they received. And the aid was relatively small compared with other international projects, like Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, and East Timor. The Americans thought that by building roads they could win over opinion. But roads are just as useful for insurgents as they are for occupiers. The Americans had failed to convince Afghans that they should like them or want them to stay, and they certainly had not been convinced that President Hamid Karzai's government has legitimacy. You can't win hearts and minds with aid work when you are an occupying force.

The Taliban was the most obscurantist, backward, traditional, and despised government on earth. The fact that the Taliban was making a comeback was a testimony to the regime that the U.S. set up there, and to the atrocities that have been committed in Afghanistan by occupation troops and their Afghan allies. It was sheer arrogance to think that adding another 30,000 or 50,000 troops would change the situation so much that the occupation would become an attractive alternative.

There was little evidence that aid money in COIN had an impact. There was not a strong correlation between poverty and insecurity or between aid money and security. The more insecure you were, the more development money you got. The safer provinces felt as if they were being penalized for not having Taliban or poppy cultivation. The aid system raised expectations but didn't satisfy them. Life remained nasty, brutish, and short for most Afghans.

Aid and force do not go well together. The Americans assumed that material goods superseded all other values. This was not true in Iraq or Afghanistan. Positive as the aid was, it did not outweigh the civilian casualties or the offensive and humiliating behavior of the past eight years. In Iraq it took the trauma of the civil war to make the Americans look good. There might have been a new administration in Washington, but for Afghans it was the same America: the America of Iraq, Afghanistan, foreign occupation, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib—the America seemingly at war with Islam.

The Pentagon propaganda machine, for instance, turned Marja from a backwater to a key strategic city, and the American media accepted it. But in fact there were only a few thousand people living in Marja. It took months and thousands of troops for the Americans to seize Marja, only to learn that the Taliban were popular there. And there were up to 20,000 similar Marjas throughout the country. In Marja the Afghan National Civil Order Police too proved a failure, incompetent and dependent on the Americans. Fighting remained frequent.

The storming of Marja was meant to be the first sally in a larger campaign to expel the Taliban from their southern heartland, especially Kandahar. The Americans thought if they could wrest it from Taliban hands, then it would turn the tide against the Taliban. But Kandahar meant little to anybody who wasn't a Kandahari. It was part of the same focus on population centers that were overwhelmingly urban.

Violence was getting worse. How long would the Afghan people accept the presence of armed foreigners in their country? Even a message of help can be humiliating, more so when it is backed by a gun. The Americans underestimated the importance of dignity and the extent to which their very presence in Afghanistan was deeply offensive.

In May 2006, riots erupted in Kabul after a road accident with American forces, and the Americans shot at the crowd. The episode revealed an underlying anger that could explode at any moment. In September 2009 a British plane dropped a box of leaflets that failed to open, landing on a girl and killing her. Given that most Afghans are illiterate, it would not have been any more persuasive had it opened. Folk poetry throughout Pashtun areas of Afghanistan is now often anti-occupation. Below is one recent ghazal (poem), by a woman called Zerlakhta Hafeez:

Oh Afghanistan, you are my love
You are my soul, you are my body
They want peace while having guns in their hands
That's why all the children are dying for you, Afghanistan
Your children are dying for you because they want you
To be sovereign, to be independent like they did before
Pashtuns from both parts of the black line [the border with Pakistan]
Call you their home, oh Afghanistan, so they fight for it.

Americans lacked the political will for a long-term commitment, regardless of whether it was right or wrong. The Americans would bail on Afghanistan in a few years no matter what. It would be tragic if it happened now or in a couple of years. There was no way to "fix" Afghanistan. According to Andrew Wilder, a longtime aid worker in the country, "It may be more realistic to look for ways to slow down the descent into anarchy." The Soviets never lost the war in Afghanistan. In fact, the puppet regime they installed had pretty much crushed the mujahideen until the Soviets withdrew support. The Soviets won their last battle in Afghanistan. But it made no difference. Only ruins and a few Russian-speaking Afghans remained in Afghanistan.

The Americans too weren't losing, stressed a retired American military officer working on security in Afghanistan. "Every time our boys face them, they win," he said. "We're winning every day. Are we going to keep winning for twenty years?"

Excerpted from Aftermath by Nir Rosen, to be published by Nation Books in November 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Nir Rosen. All rights reserved.

Nir Rosen has covered the Middle East and Afghanistan for publications including The New Yorker and Harper's. He is a fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security

It is true that the tactical situation throughout Arghandab has changed drastically since mid-summer 2010, when the Combat Outposts (COPs) in the district were getting hit every day multiple times, and when patrols as few as a hundred meters south of the COPs—in the direction of the river, among the thickly vegetated grape vineyards and pomegranate orchards—meant certain casualties from underground IEDs.

Here is the story I wrote after spending much of August 2010 with Alpha Battery of the 1-320th, one of the batteries under LTC Flynn's command:

http://assignmentafghanistan.org/story/another-day-dab/article

I still keep in touch with the guys from Alpha Battery—who used to refer to the daily repelling of Taliban fighters from COP Nolen as "defending the Alamo." Back then, flying metal streamed toward COP Nolen all day long, in the form of RPGs, recoilless rifle fire, mortars, AK-47, and heavy machine gun fire. Now, it's astonishingly calm by comparison—the guys tell me they rarely get hit anymore, and that they are now able to patrol clean down to the river without incident, to a town called Laden Tabin where they've set up a new patrol base to interdict Taliban foot traffic in the green zone. They've linked their positions with the unit on the other side of the river to put a tactical roadblock in place, and it makes sense that the fighting is down as a result. There are four times as many troops in the area as there were just this time last year, when Afghan National Army troops are included; the ANA and US Army are a regular presence now in places where they hadn't been seen for years.

Many of Arghandab district's villages were entirely deserted as of last summer; the entire country has a huge crisis of internally displaced persons (IDPs, internal refugees), and Arghandab district is one place like so many others afflicted with Taliban infestation and coalition occupation that has generated a lot of IDPs. Before the fighting calmed down—as a result of units like 1-320 cleaning house and seizing key terrain—villagers simply could not farm their land in much of Arghandab District. It was too dangerous; too many IEDs in the ground, too much crossfire, too much harassment from the criminal gangs running drugs, weapons, and personnel through the valley on the way to Kandahar City and Helmand Province.

Now that things are calmer, villagers are moving back in. This was part of the grand plan. This is the fruit of the human terrain campaign. Will it hold up when the next unit comes in? I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Will it withstand the American pullout or drawdown? Again, no one knows—but it seems reasonable enough that enhanced security has purchased enough confidence among Arghandab's IDPs to encourage them to move back in and get their farms running again. Should LTC Flynn get the credit? Does it matter?

Only a dedicated naysayer would attempt to completely contradict the evidence, or assume that people in a place as violent as Afghanistan would be unable to make decisions that seem utterly bizarre to us, sitting where we are in our peaceful and warm living rooms. Yes—in Afghanistan, people who have had horrible things happen to them make decisions motivated by self-preservation and self-interest to forgive US forces, to forgive Taliban, and a huge array of other seemingly counter-intuitive decisions. They also backtrack on those decisions, switch alliances, betray allies, etc.; the ultimate goal is self-preservation, and that impulse may cause Flynn's new alliances in the Arghandab to crumble at a moment's notice in the near future. We simply can't know.

Well, if Paula Broadwell’s breathless reporting is correct then all is right with the world and we can anticipate a shinning success in Afghanistan. For a minute there I thought we might have been stuck in the proverbial Afghan tar pit but fortunately Ms. Broadwell has cleared things up and put those fears to rest. Now onto Iran!

Why the snark and condescension in Broadwell's author description where she says this about herself:

"Because her idea of a good time is riling up Josh Foust and Spencer Attackerman, she will be blogging from there through February, or, who knows, maybe March."

It does all seem to be like a game for her where cheerleading and poking fun at the non-cool kids (you know all of us pogues back here who don’t know the truth from being on the ground like she and dare to question or criticize) and she seems from the tone and vibes of her posts to really enjoy it all.

gian

If I wanted to read feel good stories written by currently serving field grade officers, I would go to the ISAF home page and read press releases. It is difficult for me to take any of MAJ Broadwell's writing seriously, considering she is about to release a book about General Petraeus' rise through the ranks. Her work reads more like that of an Army PAO, not blogger, scholar, or any other title that could be applied. I can only wonder who is covering the bill for this little excursion.

She's just one of many flacks who have been cheerleaders for anything the US military does.

Maybe there is some truth to what she writes, but her stupidity and snark, as related by GIANGENTILE makes it difficult to take her seriously.

Ten years from now when historians are going over yet another disastrous American foreign adventure will she admit she was wrong or will she and up like Bill Westmoreland and the revanchists?

Ms Broadwell describes an interview with a village malik, without naming his tribe (Pashtun?), the language used, the origin of her translator, or whether ANSF persons of whatever ethnicity (Tajik?) were present. Huh.

Is she uninformed on these matters, thinks they are unimportant, or simply thinks the reader is uninterested? My understanding is that the Taliban is overwhelmingly Pashtun, and the ANSF is led by Tajik officers, communicates in their dialect of Farsi. I also have heard that villages of different ethnic makeup become checkerboard in areas; a mainly Hazara village might have a completely different reaction to Taliban or ISAF forces than a Pashtun ville.

As a thought experiment, cast this in an American context:

Let's say I witness Col. Kit Carson, using native Pueblo or Ute scouts to translate an interview with a Navaho clan leader. Knowing that the translator's tribes have engaged in lethal slave-taking wars for hundreds of years with the Navajo, that Carson's spanish wife 'employs' Navajo slaves, that might inform my observation, no? Am I aware that any conversation with Navajo that doesn't begin with both paternal and maternal clan deliniation is off to a poor start?

Analysis/reportage of the anti-Taliban campaign that speaks of human terrain, without ANY mention of Pashtun, is rightfully suspected of blowing smoke up my skirt. Ms Broadwell is supposed to be doing graduate level research over there, isn't she?

Someone here referred to her as Major Broadwell. That makes sense since this is an obvious political PR article designed to fool people while helping General P cover up an embarrassing event. However, this is not is her byline, and Mr. Ricks did not make note of that. Why? I googled and learned she is a West Point grad who makes money off the counter-terrorism racket and is a U.S. Army Major. I'd guess the U.S. Army paid for her trip, where she earned money for reserve duty, plus combat pay and all those campaign ribbons for breathing Afghan air.

Come clean Mr. Ricks. Have you been caught (again) deliberately attempting to deceive your readers with BS? You knew she was an Army Major but didn't think it was important while she pretends to be an independent outside observer. Will you apologize for this deception, or were you fooled by her too?

Outstanding points WALKING WOUNDED.

But this is a bit of rah-rah PR, not a serious analysis. Hence the breathless, pseudo-descriptive feature-story journalistic style. It isn't a serious attempt at analysis or description.

What is clear is that EVERYTHING is much more complex than us simplistic (stupid perhaps?) Americans want it to be which is why our pols are doing such a good job of formulating serious policy on this stuff (and a lot of other important issues as well), NOT.

Along with being complex, all conflicts of this nature are LOCAL. Your post speaks to both points. Maj. or Ms. or whatever she is Broadwell is doing her best to bypass both obstacles to a clean, attractive puff-piece.

Along with her previously mentioned snarkiness, the whole thing strikes me a an adolescent effort. I'm surprised that Tom takes this drivel seriously.

Even in "conventional" wars things are complicated and local. For example, the political minefield of the French maquis in the latter stages of WW II. Not taking into account the internal issues within the organizations, who was a communist, who was a conservative, etc. means that one never gets a reasonable understanding of WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

The same holds true in Afghanistan, except that I have the depressing sense that it's on purpose; use the KISS principle and maybe we'll be able to sell off some of these sows ears!

I'm sorry, but the quotes from the elected village chief are simply not credible. Who has the PHD in English, Mr. Malik or the interpreter? It really does read like typical Army PAO pap. It destroys the credibility of the rest of the Major's story.

Also, LTC Flynn placed this all in perspective when he stated that only 4 of 38 villages were creating a self-defense force. OK, how many villages are undergoing this type of development work? Only those we smoke?

MAj Broadwell quotes civilian trepidation about traveling through this village and then says, however, that she can as though she were a civilian! She remarks that villagers find the presence of a female "soldier" unusual. Well heck, then I guess that she is not a civilian. If they think she is a soldier, I imagine that she is in BDUs, armor, and carrying a weapon. Do ya think she's walking alone?

This "reportage" is an embarrassment and I fear that her book on General Petraeus will not serve him well. Her Harvard graduate adviser should be ashamed.

She and Nir Rosen are well-matched - neither appears to deal in the facts.

Are these erroneous times ascribed to our comments actually GMT instead of ET?

Our guest contributor answered my question (raised in an earlier posting), how the 'no CIVCAS' statement could be made with certainty. Answer: Expert full-time military observation confirmed local authority's statement that he could locate all his people outside the kill zone, where the Taliban had militarized the structures. As described, it's war, but in no way a war crime, NOT indiscriminate.

For ansering that, and for putting it out their in the first place, I thank the witness to my country's war, Col. Flynn also, and hope the HT issues I raised above may also be addressed, in due course.

As a strictly literary issue, I 'got' the 'voice' on the first installment. It's not the one I would choose, but in a way it's fresh and unselfconscious. If the report talks in a corporate newsletter sort of way about warfighting, maybe that's how the team sees itself. I'll take accounts from a true believer with eyes on, over long rants from the peanut gallery seats, where I sit.

I have been saying for over a year that Mr. Ricks is running info ops for the pentagon. Do we need anymore proof? I am glad to see that some commenters are starting to realize the game Mr. Ricks is playing. By publishing garbage propaganda from Broadewell shows how desperate the situation is in Afghanistan. This site is engaged in truth supression.