Killed U.S. Navy SEAL Team Was on Rescue Mission to Help Army Rangers Pinned Down by Insurgents

At ABC News, "SEALs on Rescue Mission Killed in Afghan Crash."

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "Afghanistan Chopper Downing Raises Concerns Over U.S.":

The downing of an American helicopter full of elite troops deepened concerns among some Afghans that it might symbolize an erosion of U.S. power at an uncertain crossroads in the nearly 10-year-old war.



In the rugged district of Wardak province where the U.S. Chinook helicopter crashed early Saturday, apparently after being struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, NATO and Afghan forces engaged in daylong skirmishes with suspected Taliban fighters, according to Afghan officials.



Wardak Police Chief Abdul Qayuum Baqizoi said there had been Taliban casualties in Sunday's fighting, but he did not know how many. Western military officials said only that the area was being secured.



The Taliban claimed responsibility for downing the helicopter within hours of the crash. Following confirmation from U.S. officials that the 30 American troops killed had included 22 members of the Navy SEALs, the Islamic movement reacted with jubilation.



"We killed America's most elite forces; we achieved one of our biggest goals," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said Sunday in a telephone interview. "This shows that our efforts are unstoppable."

What Do We Say When Johnny Comes Home?

One of my favorite anti-war songs, from T.S.O.L., mainly because it's so haunting on the apathy. Joe Wood sings on "American Zone," during a period when Jack Grisham had left the band. I really enjoyed the studio recording, but I don't see it online, so just turn this up on your tablet:

There's blood on the streets again today
All the people dying what a price we have to pay
Around the world they're fightin'
It's not that far away
feel the darkness
Can we change our ways?

[Chorus:]
We live in the American zone
Free of fear in our American home
Swimmin pool and digital phone
What do we say when Johnny comes home

Johnny just got back from war today
Beruit weekend, the powder keg
He was 20 years old and he lost both of his legs
We're all really sorry today

[Chorus]

What do we say
What do we say
What do we say
When Johnny comes home
and he lost his legs.

RELATED: "Washington Mourns U.S. Troops Killed in Afghan Helicopter Crash."

Los Alamitos National Guardsman Holds One-Man Vigil for Troops Killed in Afghanistan

I felt so hollow when I first heard the news, and I know that the war's been going on so long now that for a lot people, beyond the initial sadness, there probably wasn't a whole lot of reflection about the sacrifices. So, this is something honorable: "One-Man Vigil for the ... Troops Killed Saturday."

Taliban Shoot Down U.S. Copter in Afghanistan

At Los Angeles Times, "31 U.S. troops, 7 Afghans killed in Taliban attack on NATO helicopter."

In a rare event, Taliban insurgents shoot down a Chinook helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade near Kabul. It's the largest single-incident loss of military lives since the war's start.

And at New York Times, "31 Americans Killed as Taliban Shoot Down a Copter." (Via Memeorandum.)

Oshkosh M-ATV MRAP at X-Games 17 (Los Angeles)

I've written about the MRAP previously, but it was quite an experience to see one of these mofos up close. The word is BIG!!

(The Navy set up a big recruitment station at the X-Games.)

The MRAP is a high-mobility mine-resistant ambush-protected combat vehicle. The units were developed as a key anti-insurgency vehicles, designed to protect soldiers from IEDs (improvised explosive devices). By 2005, in Iraq, roughly half of all combat casualties were due to IED attacks. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who retired in June, said the deployment of MRAPs in Iraq and Afghanistan has saved "thousands of lives." The Oshkosh M-ATV page is here.

Click to enlarge the image below:

Keep America Safe: 'More Risk'

Via Theo Spark:

Taliban Militants Killing Civilians Policemen at Pakistan Border — UPDATED!!

Via Bare Naked Islam, "Barack Hussein Obama’s favorite negotiating partners, the Taliban, dish out Taliban justice to 16 civilians in the Swat area of Pakistan."

Content Warning: Extremely graphic.

I don't see a date on this at Live Leak, but Bare Naked Islam links to Bivouac-ID, "Shock Video: The Afghan Taliban execute 16 civilians with machine guns at the border of Pakistan Shaltalu (July 16)," and from there to Himal Southasian, "From across the border (June 28)."

The insurgents are likely Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant organization allied to Mullah Omar, who was the Supreme Leader in Afghanistan prior to the initial rout of the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom. Mullah Omar in turn was closely linked to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Today, speculation is that Pakistan's ISI provides safe haven for Mullah Omar, as it was with Bin Laden. Americans are fighting these insurgents. U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be a victory for the terrorists. Obviously, this is precisely why I've opposed the administration's drawdown from the region. It's been a long time, ten years since September 11, 2001. And we're all tired of this war. But we'd been doing well with the Petraeus surge in Afghanistan staring in 2009. Some argue that Obama's withdrawal agenda will cancel out all that we've gained. See Robert Kagan, at the Washington Post, "Military leaders know Obama’s decision is a disaster." Also, Max Boot, at Los Angeles Times, "Staying the course in Afghanistan."

*****

UPDATE: Okay, more information coming in on this. See Long War Journal, "Video of brutal Taliban execution of Pakistani policemen emerges." (At Memeorandum.)

The Taliban videotaped the brutal execution of more than a dozen Pakistani policemen who were captured during last month's raid in a remote area of northwestern Pakistan.

The graphic video, which shows 16 Pakistani policemen who are lined up and then gunned down by Taliban fighters wielding AK-47s, was taken in early June in the Shaltalu area of the district of Dir in northwestern Pakistan, a Pakistani official and US intelligence officials who track the region told The Long War Journal. The executions were filmed after the policemen were captured during several days of heavy fighting.

So these were apparently police units and not civlians. Be sure to RTWT at Long War Journal.

See also New York Times, "Taliban Video Shows Execution of 16 Pakistanis":

Stratfor's Reva Bhalla on Yesterday's Mumbai Bombings

Reva Bhalla is interviewed at the Dylan Ratigan show. She's Director of Analysis at Stratfor. It's good:

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "Relief and worry after slaying of Hamid Karzai's half brother."

Iran Sends Arms to Iraq, Afghanistan

At Wall Street Journal, "Iran Funnels New Weapons to Iraq and Afghanistan."

TEHRAN—Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has transferred lethal new munitions to its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, according to senior U.S. officials, in a bid to accelerate the U.S. withdrawals from these countries.

The Revolutionary Guard has smuggled rocket-assisted exploding projectiles to its militia allies in Iraq, weapons that have already resulted in the deaths of American troops, defense officials said. They said Iranians have also given long-range rockets to the Taliban in Afghanistan, increasing the insurgents' ability to hit U.S. and other coalition positions from a safer distance.

Such arms shipments would escalate the shadow competition for influence playing out between Tehran and Washington across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by U.S. preparations to draw down forces from two wars and the political rebellions that are sweeping the region.

The U.S. is wrestling with the aftermath of uprisings against longtime Arab allies from Tunisia to Bahrain, and trying to leave behind stable, friendly governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran appears to be trying to gain political ground amid the turmoil and to make the U.S. withdrawals as quick and painful as possible.

More at the link.

This is classic international politics. I'm reminded of how the Soviet Union saw an improvement in the world correlation of forces after the American withdrawal from Vietnam. By the late-1970s the shift of influence and momentum in the Third World had shifted to Moscow. Iran can't operate on a global scale as the Soviets did, but most of the important developments in national security right now are in the Middle East and South Asia. And given how poorly the Obama administration has responded to current events, Egypt's revolution for example, and the political cut-and-run from Afghanistan, things aren't likely to improve a whole lot in the short term.

Britney Spears 'Honored' to Meet HMLA-169 Marines Who Made 'Hold It Against Me' Video in Afghanistan

Now if we could just get her to rethink her position on gay marriage.

At London's Daily Mail, "Patriotic Pop: All American Girl Britney Spears gives lucky U.S. Marines the VIP treatment."

And on Twitter.

The Implosion of Counterinsurgency

At the video is the fascinating exchange where General Petraeus endorses torture in the case of the ticking time bomb. Keith Olbermann, whose "Countdown" program has been resurrected, smeared Petraeus on this in a recent segment, with quotes from other top officials who essentially impugn the general's reputation.

More video from the testimony at Gateway Pundit, "American Hero General David Petraeus: “I Disagree With Barack Obama… I’m No Quitter”."

Yeah. A hero. Not to Keith Olbermann.

Anyway, on the implosion of counterinsurgency, see National Journal, "Washington Losing Patience with Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan."

John Nagl is the kind of guy who brings to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wicked line in The Great Gatsby about people who succeed at such an early age that “everything afterward savors of anticlimax.” A star at West Point and a Rhodes scholar, the native Nebraskan was only 37 when he landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in January 2004. In that article, Nagl offered an inside-the-Sunni-Triangle tutorial on what he came to call “graduate-level war.” Nagl’s mantra: “We have to outthink the enemy, not just outfight him.” In an era when small but wily bands of nonuniformed insurgents could stymie America’s mighty military machine with stealthy guerrilla attacks and roadside bombs planted in the night, the U.S. had to figure out how to hunt down the bad guys and cut off their support from the local population. Nagl, after studying the British and French colonial experience, as well as America’s handling of the Vietnam War, helped to develop what has since become famous as U.S. “counterinsurgency doctrine,” or COIN. As his celebrity grew, Nagl proselytized about it everywhere, even on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

By the late 2000s, the precocious Army major had become part of a brain trust around America’s uber-general, David Petraeus, the commander who implemented the Iraq troop surge. Commissioned by Petraeus, Nagl helped to author the official counterinsurgency manual that has since reoriented American military doctrine, shifting the center of gravity from rough-and-ready conventional war fighters to cerebral specialists in irregular warfare and targeted response. After retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in early 2008—even though he seemed to be on the fast track to four-star fame—Nagl took over a little-known think tank, the Center for a New American Security, and turned it into what journalist Tara McKelvey called “counterinsurgency central in Washington.”

Brilliant and brash as ever at the advanced age of 45, Nagl delivers a sober endorsement of the military’s current COIN strategy in Afghanistan, which, because it was adapted from Iraq, is partly his brainchild. It is a strategy that many experts believe is not working—and the skeptics may now include President Obama himself. “I think any sane person would be disillusioned,” Nagl says over a lunch of mussels and mozzarella salad at Finemondo, a lushly decorated restaurant around the corner from his office. Even some of those around Petraeus (who is retiring from the military to run the CIA) are losing heart. But Nagl says that the Janus-faced core of COIN strategy—winning over the Afghan population with kindness, aid, and a multibillion-dollar policy to “clear, hold, and build” towns and villages while ruthlessly killing off insurgents—is just starting to succeed. He laments that the debate in Washington is dominated by critics who complain that the war is almost 10 years long and already more hopeless than Vietnam.

RTWT.

Yet another reason I'm unhappy with the president. Cut-and-run is one thing, but running when the tide is turning is another. George W. Bush refused to abandon Iraq, and that's when the consensus from all quarters was that the war was a "fiasco." We persevered in Iraq, and it's a stable emerging democracy today. In Afghanistan, I'm not confident we'll be able to say the same thing a fews years from now.

'The Crush at the Afghan Exits'

An editorial at the Wall Street Journal.

The NATO allies will follow Obama's move and cut-and-run from the deployment: "France to gradually pull troops from Afghanistan."

I noted previously that it's not the Afghans who're forcing us out. Domestic political calculations are driving policy, and I pray the region doesn't deteriorate into a million Mumbais, but that's asking a lot from the Man Upstairs.

Afghans Wary of U.S. Drawdown

At Los Angeles Times, "Afghans fear U.S. drawdown will allow Taliban to regroup":

Next month, Afghanistan is expected to assume security responsibility in two provinces, four provincial capitals and most of Kabul. One of those provincial capitals, Lashkar Gah in Helmand, has been the site of fierce fighting between coalition troops and Taliban insurgents. Even relatively quiet provinces like Bamian, also slated for a handoff to Afghan forces next month, recently have been hit by Taliban violence. This year, the beheaded corpse of the Bamian provincial council chief was found on a roadside.

[Hamid] Karzai welcomed Obama's speech, saying the drawdown announcement signaled the start of Afghanistan's self-determination.

"Every nation protects its own land, and Afghans can do it better," he said in a statement. "We have proved it over the course of history, and we are proud of that."

Nevertheless, Afghans say the drawdown probably will rekindle fear of a U.S. abandonment of the region akin to that of the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Washington no longer saw a need to nurture strong links with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington has said on numerous occasions that it will not make the same mistake, but Afghans remain unconvinced.

"America left us, and Afghanistan became a safe haven for terrorists," said Samad, a manager of a Kabul wedding hall who, like many Afghans, goes by one name.

Also at Agence France-Presse, "Withdrawal Symptoms: Afghans Anxious Over Obama’s Out of Afghanistan Plan."

I think it's a mistake, but Obama's on a political timetable, not a strategic one.

And ICYMI, see that Charles Lane essay at WaPo, "Obama’s Afghanistan exit."

Presidential War Powers and Obama's Wars

Video c/o Reason.

This is a fascinating exchange. Gene Healy opens with a compelling argument, but comes off as more ideological. Michael Ramsey, speaking second, sounds more scholarly, and makes implicit reference to the political science consensus on the expansion of presidential power. Healy gives short shrift to the impact of the Cold War, and especially the concentration of power in the executive dealing with a U.S. response to nuclear danger. There are no more existential threats than those the U.S. faced from Soviet strategic weapons during the Cold War. Has the U.S. gone too far with the war on terror? Perhaps. It's worth noting that we're having the most robust discussions on the War Powers Resolution in decades under a Democratic administration. A needed discussion, in any case. If it were me, we wouldn't be in Libya and we'd be fighting to win in Afghanistan :

Obama Declares Afghanistan Victory Before It's Been Achieved

At WSJ, "Unplugging the Afghan Surge":

President Obama delivered a remarkable speech last night, essentially unplugging the Afghanistan troop surge he proposed only 18 months ago and doing so before its goals have been achieved. We half expected to see a "mission accomplished" banner somewhere in the background.

Not long ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke about only a token drawdown this year, but he's now on his way out of the Pentagon. This time Mr. Obama overruled his military advisers and sided instead with Vice President Joe Biden and his political generals who have their eye on the mission of re-election. His real generals, the ones in the field, will now have to scramble to fulfill their counterinsurgency mission, if that is still possible.

Mr. Obama said the U.S. will start to remove troops next month, returning 10,000, or three or four brigades, by the end of the year. The entire 33,000-soldier Obama surge will be gone by next summer, and withdrawals will continue "at a steady pace" after that. So the full surge force will have been in Afghanistan for only a single fighting season, and even the remaining 68,000 troops are heading out. Mr. Obama reiterated NATO's previously agreed on date of 2014 for the full transfer of combat operations to Afghan forces, but that date now seems notional.

The President rightly pointed to the coalition progress against the Taliban in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south, in building up an Afghan army and eliminating terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan. But the military knows these gains are tentative, and it pressed the White House to keep all the fighting brigades in Afghanistan to press the advantage.

Still more at the top link.

It really is cut and run. And too bad too. Afghanistan was the one area I'd given Obama credit. I thought it weird for so long that folks like Pamela Geller and Diana West were calling for an American withdrawal. But they were right. The president's never been committed to strategic victory. It's all been political, depressingly so, considering so many people of good faith and morals who placed trust in this man, this president. He's betrayed a lot of people, and when Taliban and Al Qaeda violence escalates, the blood with be on his hands, and Joe Biden's. Losers.

VIDEO: President Obama Speech on Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal, June 22, 2011

And the transcript is at ABC News, "Full Speech: Obama on Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal (Transcript)."

Also at New York Times, "Obama Orders Troop Cuts in Afghanistan." (At Memeorandum.) Also, at Los Angeles Times, "Obama announces drawdown of forces from Afghanistan, saying 'tide of war is receding'."

Americans Involved in Too Many Foreign Conflicts, New Poll Finds

At The Hill, "The Hill Poll: Majority says military involved in too many places." (At Memeorandum.)

And pluralities don't think U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has made us safer. Check the link. For the general public, it's war-weariness that explains this. But on the ideological fringes, the findings will give support to isolationist voices who deplore the forward exercise of American power.

What's interesting about about the survey is there's no mention of President Obama's deployment to Libya. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times had an outstanding piece on outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. He's been on record of late saying that the U.S. is a little tired of war, and that the military needs a break. And from the Times' piece:

Gates' concern for the troops is a key part of his legacy as he leaves office.

He has pushed the lumbering Pentagon bureaucracy to turn out new armored vehicles and other equipment to keep soldiers safer in combat and to get them treatment faster when they are wounded.

And he has become a voice of caution and even outright opposition to committing American forces to new wars. Gates publicly questioned the need to join the NATO air war in Libya, arguing that the military already was overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then, he has sought to limit the U.S. role.

Gates emphasizes that he would not hesitate to support sending troops to another conflict if national security were threatened, and he favors only "modest" reductions in troop levels in Afghanistan in coming months. That puts him at odds with some in the Obama administration who want to bring U.S. troops out sooner.

But the longer he is in office, Gates said, the "heavier" the burden he bears when he is asked to make decisions that inevitably involve sending more American troops to their deaths.

"I've got a military that's exhausted," he said. "Let's just finish the wars we're in and keep focused on that instead of signing up for other wars of choice."

I think that's a fair statement, and it's especially noteworthy considering President Obama's amateurish and hypocritical rationale for military intervention.

Candidates Show G.O.P. Less United on Goals of War

At New York Times:

DERRY, N.H. — The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya.

The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.

I noticed this, and I wondered a bit about Michele Bachmann on foreign policy. She hardly sounds like a neocon, but I think that's good. We've been in Afghanistan for almost 10 years, and that's hard to sustain politically. Look for a lot of folks to declare victory and advocate a rapid drawdown.

Bin Laden on Killing Americans

At LAT, "Osama bin Laden's journal contains his thoughts on killing Americans":

Osama bin Laden kept a personal journal in which he contemplated how to kill as many Americans as possible, including in terrorist attacks against Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, according to U.S. officials.

The handwritten journal was part of a vast cache of digital and printed material hauled away from Bin Laden's hide-out after U.S. Navy SEALs killed him last week in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

One official said Wednesday that the trove provided "terabytes" of new information about Al Qaeda.

The official described the journal as full of planning ideas and outlines of potential operations — "aspirational guidance" on how to kill the maximum number of people rather than specific proposals or plots that were actually underway.

In one passage, Bin Laden wondered how many Americans would have to die in U.S. cities to force the U.S. government to withdraw from the Arab world. He concluded that it would require another mass murder on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks to spur a reversal in U.S. policy, an official said.

The officials declined to provide details about potential plots in Los Angeles and Chicago. Bin Laden discussed an operation in Washington, one official said, "because of its iconic value."

Read it all at the link upstairs.

Show the Proof, Mr. President

It's so elementary.

See Peggy Noonan, "Americans don't want to 'spike the ball.' They want to show they crossed the goal line."

Here is the fact of the age: People believe nothing. They think everything is spin and lies. The minute a government says A is true, half the people on Earth know A is a lie. And when people believe nothing, as we know, they will believe anything. We faked the moon landing, there was a second gunman in Dallas, the World Trade Center was blown up in a U.S.-Zionist conspiracy, Hitler grew old in Argentina.

There will always be people who believe conspiracy theories, and with the Internet there will be more. They are impervious to evidence. But people who care about the truth need to be armed with evidence to refute them.

Mr. Obama misunderstands all this. He tells Steve Croft Sunday on Sixty Minutes that showing photos of the dead Osama would be to "spike the football." "We don't trot this stuff out as trophies." Trophies? Who does he think we are?

It's not about pride, it's about proof. "We got him, shot him and immediately threw him in the sea" is not enough. The U.S. government should release all the evidence it has that does not compromise security. Pictures of Osama are said to be gruesome. Then get the least gruesome one and put it out. Release the DNA evidence, incriminating information found in the house, and pictures of the raid. If there was a passport under the mattress, make it public. And let the SEALs tell their story. Allow them, if they are willing and eager, to go on "Nightline," "Frontline" and "60 Minutes." If they cannot be identified or don't wish to be, put a blue dot over their faces, filter their voices, and don't use their names.

All of this should be put in one big package and released to the world. In this way you give the nation and the world data, and a lot to talk about. That talk will crowd out and diminish conspiracy theories and deather denialism.

Americans don't want to spike the ball. They just want to show they crossed the goal line.