Frank Fleming Asks the Hard Afghanistan Questions

I’m confused on what the Democrat narrative on Afghanistan is now. The war in Iraq distracted from fleeing Afghanistan?

For more, see here.

Quiet Progress in Afghanistan

A tonic to the general cries of doom and gloom in the graveyard of empires: (H/T: Chequerboard)

The United Nations Security Council, who has issued almost 40 quarterly reports on the situation in Afghanistan since 2001, most recently reported in March that "the number of districts under insurgent control has decreased.… As a result of the increased tempo of security operations in northern and western provinces, an increasing number of anti-Government elements are seeking to join local reintegration programs.… In Kabul, the increasingly effective Afghan national security forces continue to limit insurgent attacks."

If current trends continue, the Invincibility of Insurgency will take another, hopefully final, blow.

Thoughts on Bin Laden

1. It's obviously true and totally irrelevant that Al Qaeda and the Taliban will continue just fine in his absence, just as Iraq continued bloodily after Saddam was caught and hung. It matters not. This man declared war on us, and now he is fodder for worms. The message is clear: you may run, and you may hide, and the long years may seem to stretch on, but one day you will turn around, and one of ours will be behind you, and he will put two in the back of your head, and we will take your gangly corpse and display it to the four corners of the realm. Sleep tight.
2. Teleprompter hiccups aside, Obama looked presidential last night. He's milking this win for his own political capital, and there's no reason he shouldn't. As he said, he gave the order, and it redounds to the Commander-in-Chief's credit. Democrats are going to use this as evidence that The Shadow Way, the Non-Invasion Way, is the better way to defeat terror. After all, Bush missed Bin Laden for eight years, and Obama got him in two. But there's no way we would have done so without the assets that Bush put in country. Obama relentlessly praised the men and women, military and intelligence, who made this happen. We should not pretend that they started in January 2009, whatever Double Secret Probation that the President ordered then.
3. On a religious note, I don't really care all that much about Bin Laden's Final Judgment. If he should be barking in Hell, so be it. If I should run into him in Purgatory, and we stare dumb-foundedly at one another as the last of our wickedness is scorched away from us, so be it. Bin Laden's death means that he is no longer a problem for me and my countrymen. That is enough. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Good Morning, Mr. Taliban. You are Dead.

 

The XM25 allows Soldiers to engage defilade targets -- those behind a barrier, protected from oncoming weapons fire. The XM25 measures the distance to the enemy's protective barrier, and can then program the round to detonate a user-adjustable distance past that -- allowing Soldiers to put an air-bursting round directly above the enemy's head, inside their protected area. 

 We're just beta-testing the things now.

Lick 'Em Tommorrow.

General David Petraeus quoting Ulysses S. Grant in the WaPo's On Leadership Video Series:



That's one of my favorite lines from the Civil War. It's vintage Grant, pure unperturbability in the face of chaos. Nor was it bravado: he turned his army right around the next morning and handed the rebels their ass, shoving them out of West Tennessee for the remainder of the war and establishing a safe base of operations against Vicksburg and the rest of the Western Theater. The last thing the Confederates were expecting to see on the morning of April 7, after knocking the Yankees around like tenpins the previous day, was to see those same Yankees pushing after them, full of fight. Not even Lee's masterful display at Chancellorsville the following year beats Shiloh for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

And that is a lesson about war that seems to need re-learning with every passing generation: it's not over until it's over. Afghanistan wasn't over in '03; Iraq wasn't over in '07. They're never over until one side stops fighting.