US Marines launch offensive in Afghanistan

What is more important more troops or change tactics and having the right tools to do the job?

Both but the latter is very important to the first phase of a surge. Surprise can win a campaign, got to keep surprising the enemy before they surprise you. If this new methodology saves troops and civilian life's I salute it.  

However now zad should read Nawzad that's the problem when information is relayed by phone or given verbally, lol 

My opinion about the governors son... 

"war of necessity"

--President Barack Obama, regarding the US military engagement in Afghanistan; image from

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned."

--William Butler Yeats

President Obama's New Strategy in Afghanistan: Questions and Answers - Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institution: "Q. Is military force effective on its own as a means of counterinsurgency? A. Counterinsurgency situations are ones where military force is only one component of the strategy. Since in a counterinsurgency effort, the population is the center of gravity, other tools of statecraft are equally important. These include economic development, public diplomacy, strategic communication, and most importantly, the delivery of the necessary public goods. Public safety, rule of law, and economic conditions enabling job generation are also critical. Yet many insurgencies around the world were defeated or severely weakened by military means alone, without the state ever addressing the root causes of violence. This is, appropriately, not the strategy President Obama outlined."

Not much oil in Afghanistan. Long ways from the Gulf.

Pentagon's War Pitch Belied by Taliban-Qaeda Conflict
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (IPS) - U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen argued in Senate Testimony Wednesday that the 30,000-troop increase is necessary to prevent the Taliban from giving new safe havens to al Qaeda terrorists.

But that argument is flatly contradicted by the evidence of fundamental conflicts between the interests of the Taliban and those of al Qaeda that has emerged in recent years, according to counterterrorism and intelligence analysts specialising in Afghanistan.

Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, "Taliban-ruled areas could in short order become once again sanctuary for al Qaeda, as well as a staging area for resurgent militant groups on the offensive in Pakistan."

Mullen made the same assertion in even more pointed terms. "[T]o argue that should they have...power the Taliban would not at least tolerate the presence of al Qaeda on Afghan soil is to ignore both the recent past and the evidence we see every day of collusion between these factions on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border," he said. "Put simply, the Taliban and al Qaeda have become symbiotic," said Gates, "each benefitting from the success and mythology of the other."

It is well known among government officials working on Afghanistan and al Qaeda, however, that serious tensions between the two organisations emerged after the attack on the "Red Mosque" in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad in July 2007. Western intelligence quickly discovered the attack was an al Qaeda operation, and that it marked the beginning of an al Qaeda campaign calling for the overthrow of the Pakistani government and military.

That created a serious conflict between al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to specialists who followed the issue closely. The Taliban leadership, which is based in Quetta, Pakistan, had been depending on assistance from the Pakistani military to increase its military capabilities and did not look kindly on that al Qaeda policy.

Ignoring these turning points in the Taliban's relationships with both al Qaeda and other Pakistani jihadi groups, Gates suggested that the three groups are closer than ever before. "What we have seen in the last year develop is an unholy alliance, if you will, of al Qaeda, the Taliban in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan," he said.

Two former counterterrorism intelligence specialists who followed the Taliban closely told IPS that the facts do not support the portrayal by Gates and Mullen of the Taliban and al Qaeda as ideologically united.

"We make a serious mistake in equating the two organisations," said Arturo Munoz, who was a supervisory operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center from 2001 to 2009 and is now a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation.

Veteran specialist on counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan Rick "Ozzie" Nelson agreed that the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban that has evolved in recent years is very different from the one they had up to 2001.

"The Taliban is a nationalist organisation, which wants to govern Afghanistan under Sharia law, not attack the United States," said Nelson, who was on the inaugural staff of the National Counter-Terrorism Center's Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2005 to 2007.

For more: see:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49551

The non-profit counterterrorism organization "Nine-Eleven Finding Answers" Foundation (NEFA Foundation) has obtained, translated and transcribed a statement from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan  (aka Taliban), which has been issued in response to President Obama's directive on the Afghanistan war.
The unsigned statement is chillingly insightful and threatening.  Full text here.
Here are some excerpts:

The essence of the strategy shows that the needs and wants of the American people have been overlooked during the framing of this strategy and it has been formulated under the pressure of (Army) Generals in the Pentagon, the American Neo-conservatives and the wealthiest few in America and for the protection of their interests. Hence it is a strategy of colonialism....
He wants to lessen the sensitivities of the Afghans about the surge of 30,000 troops through the ploy of ostensibly starting troops' withdrawal in 2011. He also intends to decrease the opposition of the American public (to the troops surge) and encourage his international Allies to send more troops. But this stratagem will not pay off.  
1. The reinforcement will result in (their) fatalities....
2. Throughout the history of Afghanistan, the Afghans have not been subjugated through deceits, ploys, materials power, troop reinforcement and military might of the foreigners. Therefore, the reinforcement of the American troops and other tactics will not have impact on the status quo. But the reinforcements will provide better opportunities for the Mujahedeen to launch offensives. On the other hand, it will deepen the crisis of the American economy which is already in shambles.
3. Obama's assertion to increase and train more soldiers and police for the Kabul Administration is pointless and not result-oriented....
4. We neither have bases in Pakistan nor do we need such bases outside Afghanistan. We have control over vast swathes of land in the country and do not face any problem about our activities and residence...
5. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has frequently said that we have no intention of harming any one. Therefore, the presence of foreign invading forces in Afghanistan has nothing to do with the security of the world. Obama sometimes calls this war, a war of necessity; sometimes he calls it a war for the defense of the West and some times, a war being waged for the security of the world.
They raise the issue of our residing in Pakistan in order to distract the attention (of the world) from our capability and strong resistance in Afghanistan...."
6. The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate have worked out a vast strategy and prepared for strong resistance ....The Mujahedeen have high morale and complete readiness and believe that Obama's new strategy will fail like it did previously. It will face fiasco.
We deem it necessary to remind the American rulers if you persist in your aggressive policy, America will end up being disintegrated itself, instead of maintaining the occupation in Afghanistan....
We want to point out that the Muslim people of Afghanistan want to lay down their lives and properties willingly but are never ready to give up their faith and freedom.... you must wait a more severe reaction in the years to come.

Neocons Get Warm and Fuzzy Over ‘War President’

http://original.antiwar.com/eli-clifton/2009/12/04/neocons-get-warm-and-fuzzy/

A small group of hawkish foreign policy experts – who have lobbied the White House since August to escalate U.S. involvement in Afghanistan – are christening Obama the new "War President."

Jordan Islamists Blast Obama's Dispatch of New Troops to Afghanistan

The Same Old Pax Americana  by Leon T. Hadar

  Vietnam-Lite Is Unveiled  by Pepe Escobar

'We Managed to Make the Taliban Look Good' by Nir Rosen, 12/2/2009

Fire Gates! by Robert Dreyfuss

Book Review: 'Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan' by Greg Mortenson: Halting an endless cycle of war with education, from the co-author of the bestselling 'Three Cups of Tea.' - Bernadette Murphy, latimes.com:


Mortenson believes that conflict in the region will not be won by combat and airstrikes but with books, pencils and notebooks -- the tools of socioeconomic growth. Image from