Romney charges that the Obama administration’s announcement of a 2013 end to combat missions in Afghanistan and 2014 pull-out date “makes absolutely no sense.”

One of the few moderate, sane Republicans left, James Joyner, responds:

Critics who worry that this announcement of a withdrawal severely undercuts our negotiating position with the Taliban are surely correct. They can easily bide their time now that they have a date certain.

So how can a decision that undermines our allies and our own negotiating power nonetheless be the right one? Because the alternative is to continue getting people killed — not to mention inadvertently killing innocents — in a fight we can’t win.

…As with many other Obama foreign policy decisions, one might have wished for a better rollout. Consultation with our NATO allies and partners on the matter would have been good form. And, after a more than a decade of fighting, a presidential speech rather than a casual announcement by the defense secretary would have been more fitting.

Ultimately, though, hastening the day Americans stop dying for a lost cause is the right call.

The Taliban always could “bide their time” in Afghanistan. They live there. Announce the timetable or not, it’s meaningless.

I’m highly skeptical that this announced transition will actually mean the end to Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan, and even more so that 2014 will see the end to a US military presence there, but I cannot help but concur with James’ sentiments about “dying for a lost cause”.

Alas, I’m fairly sure that Simon Jenkins is right when he writes that nothing has been learned from Afghanistan.

More alarming about the Afghan war has been its psychology. It has generated some two dozen books on my shelf, and every one of them warns, cautions, criticises, condemns. The Pashtun Taliban should not be underestimated. Defeating them by main force flew in the face of all experience. Pakistani intelligence would offer them sanctuary and support. Nato should not drive al-Qaida, a tiny Arabist cell in 2001, into alliance with the Taliban. The idea that force of western arms could turn a corrupt Muslim statelet into a sanitised, pro-western democracy was arrogant and unreal.

Every warning was disregarded in a classic of “cognitive dissonance”.

…Unlike most European countries, sucked into the Afghan vortex by Nato blackmail, Britain and the US were willing warriors, with belligerence in their cultural genes. Discussing “what must be done” to order the rest of the world is second nature to their political class…Which is why this is not the endgame. Britain is even now rattling sabres and dicing with disaster alongside the US against Iran. Such a war would be as catastrophic as could be imagined, and against a country that poses no conceivable threat to western security. The sole reason for going to war against Iran is to go to war against Iran. That is how we went to war against Afghanistan and Iraq. Clearly, nothing has been learned.

If not Iran, then Syria. If not Syria, then somewhere else. It certainly seems correct to say that the US and Britain share some subtextual notion of “manifest destiny” that means they can keep on blithely assuming they have the right and wherewithall to “order the rest of the world” at gunpoint. To truly “hasten the day Americans stop dying for a lost cause” we’re going to have to deal with that notion. I confess, I’ve no blessed clue how.

From A.P.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta laid out the administration’s most explicit portrayal of the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan, saying Wednesday that U.S. and other international forces in Afghanistan expect to end their combat role in 2013 and continue a training and advisory role with Afghan forces through 2014.

Excuse me if I’m skeptical about the sudden cessation of combat duties, the ability of Afghan security forces to guard a henhouse or indeed about all of Panetta’s statement in this election year.

Update: the NYT is calling this “a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan”. Hmmm.

By Steve Hynd

This is breaking news, apparently:

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.

It alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

Seriously, this hasn't been "breaking" news since about 2005. More interesting would be a breaking confession from some D.C. insider as to why U.S. foreign policy makers has bi-partisanly looked the other way for so many years.

But let's talk Saint-General and DCI David Petraeus' favorite subject: momentum.

In a damning conclusion, the document says that in the last year there has been unprecedented interest, even from members of the Afghan government, in joining the Taliban cause.

It adds: "Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government, usually as a result of government corruption."

The report has evidence that the Taliban are purposely hastening Nato's withdrawal by deliberately reducing their attacks in some areas and then initiating a comprehensive hearts-and-minds campaign.

It says that in areas where Isaf has withdrawn, Taliban influence has increased, often with little or no resistance from government security forces. And in many cases, with the active help of the Afghan police and army.

Time's John Wendle doesn't believe that "The Taliban's momentum has been broken" either, even if Obama takes Petraues' word for it.

Still, two more years until the combat troops get relabelled as non-combat advisors and the war officially ends.

Doha, Qatar | January 29

VOA – Taliban negotiators are meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar for a series of discussions aimed at building trust and preparing both sides for upcoming peace talks.

Former Taliban official Maulavi Qalamuddin, who once led the group’s religious police, says about five Taliban negotiators are there for the preliminary talks. He says the talks include the possible release of Taliban prisoners from the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Qalamuddin says the Taliban delegation currently in Doha includes several former Taliban officials and a former secretary to the Taliban’s leader Mullah Omar.

He says the group traveled to Qatar from Pakistan, a possible sign that Islamabad may be on board with the peace process.

The LA Times ran a great OpEd yesterday highlighting that, as much as the Pentagon would like to convince you otherwise, assessing “progress” in Afghanistan is up to interpretation — kind of like reading tea leaves. For instance, on the “success” of driving the Taliban out of Kandahar:

“Yes, we’ve made gains against the Taliban around Kandahar,” a minister and former Kandahar governor told me recently. “But it takes 18,000 men for a single district. We can’t sustain that.”

And there have been other costs. As troops moved into rural districts the Taliban had held, they built dirt roads right through farmers’ vineyards and orchards. I saw the results when I went to visit a friend’s family land. Debris had been shoved into an irrigation channel that once watered the whole village, razor wire had been looped across a road, and buildings where families dry their grapes to make prized raisins had been destroyed.

There were good tactical reasons for inflicting such damage. Many of the buildings had been booby-trapped by the retreating Taliban, or they obstructed the troops’ lines of sight. But the local economy, already one of the most threadbare on Earth, has been badly hurt. Compensation money was paid out, but still, success against the Taliban came at great cost to residents.

They are left with the question: What now? If their grapevines or fruit trees dry out, what should they plant? If insurgents offer poppy seeds, should they accept? And what about the Afghan soldiers who stole the furniture out of the blown-up buildings? Villagers can’t take them to court because the judicial system is deeply corrupt. So who can give them recourse? A sense of justice? Maybe the Taliban.

And this doesn’t help clarify matters:

The aggressive efforts by some to spin perceptions of Afghanistan have grown unseemly as well as dangerous. I’ve seen dissent disappear from interagency documents. I’ve heard officials tell public affairs officers to pressure reporters about their stories.

Jay Price | Fayetteville | Jan 25

The (Raleigh) News & Observer – Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema, the con man extraordinaire from Fayetteville who spent years in an Afghan prison for running a private jail and torture chamber while claiming to be a secret Pentagon operative, has reportedly died in Mexico.

His death at age 55 marks the end of perhaps the most colorful, unpleasant and self-dramatizing character to tread North Carolina soil since Blackbeard.

Idema was a former soldier who reinvented himself repeatedly as he ran cons from Fayetteville, N.C. to Uzbekistan. At various times he claimed to be a businessman, author, “superpatriot” terrorist hunter, drug and gun smuggler, bodyguard, security consultant, CIA paramilitary operator, Pentagon-backed special operator and, finally, charter boat captain.

The cause of death was complications from AIDS, according to local newspaper reports in Mexico and a former girlfriend, Penny Alessi, who was in contact with him until days before his death.

He apparently succumbed several days ago, but a U.S. State Department official in Washington said the government has not been able to confirm his death. A consulate official in Merida, Mexico, said the office is being careful because they’ve had trouble confirming his identity.

They are hardly the first.

I spent a lot of time traipsing all over Afghanistan in the ’60s and ’70s. What a spectacularly beautiful and unique country! And what terrific, hospitable people! Because I also operate a travel blog, people are always asking me if it’s safe to visit Afghanistan yet. And I always tell them the same thing: Maybe your grandchildren will be able to someday. Although Afghanistan was only ranked #7 last year among the world’s worst failed states… well #1 is Somalia, and Afghanistan was named the second most dangerous place to visit, right after Somalia.

And these days, it’s not even safe, or especially not safe, if you’re heavily armed and trained to kill. The Afs want their country back and they want the occupiers out. They’ve always been like that, and they always win in the end.

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report obtained by the New York Times.

A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan.

Underscoring the danger, four French service members were killed and a number were wounded on Friday when a gunman wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon on them, according to an Afghan police official in Kapisa Province in eastern Afghanistan where the incident occurred and a Western official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The Afghan police official, Asdullah Hamidi, said the shooting happened in Tagab District, an area that is viewed as dangerous and dominated by insurgent forces.

The gunman is in custody, a NATO official said.

The violence, and the failure by coalition commanders to address it, casts a harsh spotlight on the shortcomings of American efforts to build a functional Afghan Army, a pillar of the Obama administration’s strategy for extricating the United States from the war in Afghanistan, said the officers and experts who helped shape the strategy.

The problems risk leaving the United States and its allies dependent on an Afghan force that is permeated by anti-Western sentiment and incapable of combating the Taliban and other militants when NATO’s combat mission ends in 2014, they said.

One instance of the general level of antipathy in the war exploded into uncomfortable view last week when video emerged of American Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters. Although American commanders quickly took action and condemned the act, chat-room and Facebook posts by Marines and their supporters were full of praise for the desecration.

But the most troubling fallout has been the mounting number of Westerners killed by their Afghan allies, events that have been routinely dismissed by American and NATO officials as isolated episodes that are the work of disturbed individual soldiers or Taliban infiltrators, and not indicative of a larger pattern. The unusually blunt report, which was prepared for a subordinate American command in eastern Afghanistan, takes a decidedly different view.

“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” it said. Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” said the report, and it played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings.

The coalition refused to comment on the classified report. But “incidents in the recent past where Afghan soldiers have wounded or killed I.S.A.F. members are isolated cases and are not occurring on a routine basis,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings Jr. of the Army, a spokesman for the American-led International Security Assistance Force. “We train and are partnered with Afghan personnel every day and we are not seeing any issues or concerns with our relationships.”

The numbers appear to tell a different story. Although NATO does not release a complete tally of its forces’ deaths at the hands of Afghan soldiers and the police, the classified report and coalition news releases indicate that Afghan forces have attacked American and allied service members nearly three dozen times since 2007.

Two members of the French Foreign Legion and one American soldier were killed in separate episodes in the past month, according to statements by NATO. The classified report found that between May 2007 and May 2011, when it was completed, at least 58 Western service members were killed in 26 separate attacks by Afghan soldiers and the police nationwide. Most of those attacks have occurred since October 2009. This toll represented 6 percent of all hostile coalition deaths during that period, the report said.

“The sense of hatred is growing rapidly,” said an Afghan Army colonel. He described his troops as “thieves, liars and drug addicts,” but also said that the Americans were “rude, arrogant bullies who use foul language.”

…“If you get two 18-year-olds from two different cultures and put them in New York, you get a gang fight,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has advised the American military on its Afghan strategy.

“What you have here are two very different cultures with different values,” he said in a telephone interview. “They treat each other with contempt.”

The United States soldier was killed this month when an Afghan soldier opened fire on Americans playing volleyball at a base in the southern province of Zabul. The assailant was quickly gunned down. The deadliest single incident came last April when an Afghan Air Force colonel, Ahmed Gul, killed eight unsuspecting American officers and a contractor with shots to the head inside their headquarters.

“U.S. soldiers don’t listen, they are too arrogant,” said one of the Afghan soldiers surveyed, according to the report. “They get upset due to their casualties, so they take it out on civilians during their searches,” said another.

The Americans were equally as scathing. “U.S. soldiers’ perceptions of A.N.A. members were extremely negative across categories,” the report found, using the initials for the Afghan National Army. Those categories included “trustworthiness on patrol,” “honesty and integrity,” and “drug abuse.” The Americans also voiced suspicions about the Afghans being in league with the Taliban, a problem well documented among the Afghan police.

“They are stoned all the time; some even while on patrol with us,” one soldier was quoted as saying. Another said, “They are pretty much gutless in combat; we do most of the fighting.”

Stoned all the time? You bet. Gutless? Not on your life. They fight differently, but Afs are anything but gutless and probably have similar feelings about Americans… or maybe consider them terminally reckless. But since the first day of the invasion I’ve been saying that this is a place America doesn’t belong, will never understand and can never defeat– short of nuclear carpet bombing. And even the Russians couldn’t bring themselves to do that. The AP reported that the U.S. puppet leader there, Hamid Karzai, met personally with Hizb-i-Islami insurgents.

Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan’s northeast and launches attacks against U.S. forces from Pakistan. Its leader, powerful warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.

Based over the Pakistan border, Hekmatyar has ties to al-Qaida and has launched deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Fighters loyal to Hekmatyar also have strongholds in Baghlan, Kunduz and Kunar provinces in the north and northeast Afghanistan.

The other main insurgent group is the feared Haqqani network, which maintains close ties to both al-Qaida and the Taliban and commands the loyalties of an estimated 10,000 fighters. The Haqqanis have been blamed for a series of spectacular attacks, including suicide bombings inside Kabul.

Kapisa province, Afghanistan | January 20

BBC – Four French soldiers have been killed in northern Afghanistan after a serviceman from the Afghan National Army opened fire, officials say.

Another 16 French soldiers were injured, some seriously, in the incident in Kapisa province.

An official told the BBC that an Afghan non-commissioned officer got into a “verbal clash” and opened fire.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was suspending its training programmes in Afghanistan following the attack.

[...]

He said it was unacceptable for French troops to be fired on by their allies.

A Taliban spokesman said it was not clear if the attacker was a member of their group but described him as a “conscientious Afghan soldier”.

. . . how and why coalition troops have died in Afghanistan? Too bad. You don’t need to know.

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