A classy one

I spent Wednesday morning in a series of video teleconferences with people in Afghanistan. The last focused on the area we're supposed to be headed next year, which, naturally, is the most violent and the greatest open sore on our efforts to do whatever we think we're doing the last couple of years.

The most shocking thing to me, having only heard bad news about this place for years, was that the current brigade commander said in his closing remarks that they'd made amazing progress in the three months they've been there. I wondered when someone was going to realize he'd been dipping into their confiscated opium supply.

But that was nothing compared to my shock this morning when I saw he's also sharing it with the New York Times, who published this amazing slobbery, balls fondling blow job that reads like it was printed straight out of someone's information operations department.

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said.

A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base.

Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy — like a small cruise missile — and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said.

NATO commanders are careful not to overstate their successes — they acknowledge they made that mistake earlier in the year when they undertook a high-profile operation against Marja that did not produce lasting gains. But they say they are making “deliberate progress” and have seized the initiative from the insurgents.

First, there's nothing new about HIMARS firing GMLRS. Second, I just bought a lot of new life insurance.

(Title reference.)

Update: That's more like it:

It sounds like wonderful news—finally, a reason for optimism!—until you read some news that isn’t sourced to the military. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, reported earlier this month that civilian war casualties in Kandahar are at an all time high, indicating the military never did a very good job of “protecting the population,” its counterinsurgency mantra under General McChrystal. Pajhwok Afghan News reported last week that death threats, nearly 600 assassinations by the Taliban, and low pay have gutted Kandahar’s provincial and municipal governments, leaving hundreds of vacancies and crippling any sort of governance efforts. When reporters talk to locals, the story is of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting, not of a triumphant NATO building victory on Taliban corpses.

Three guesses which Army officer is responsible for planning, coordinating, and assessing military governance efforts in Kandahar starting next summer. And in unrelated news, I'm going to be Washington DC the week after next for this.