At least, that’s how I read this report:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

[...]

Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.

This is especially interesting in light of this NY Times story from earlier today, which laid out plans favored by his advisors that all called for troop increases of some magnitude:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals — including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control — and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

Is the AP story alluding to this fourth option, that shies away from a troop increase, or at least one of the magnitude proposed by Obama’s principal advisors? Perhaps, according to this NY Times story from later in the day:

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, the officials said. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.

So a massive troop increase is not necessarily a foregone conclusion.

The results of the massively fraudulent Afghanistan Presidential election will stand:

Afghan officials canceled a runoff presidential vote set for Saturday and declared President Hamid Karzai the winner on Monday, a day after his remaining challenger, , Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew.

The announcement capped a fraught election widely depicted as deeply flawed by corruption and voting irregularities.

Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, said the Constitution did not require a runoff and the second-round vote, set for Saturday, had been canceled after Mr. Abdullah’s announcement that he was dropping out.

[...]

…Mr. Karzai and the election commission had been under intense pressure from Afghanistan’s international backers, including the United States, to cancel the runoff, in part because of worries that the vote-rigging that marred the first round might be repeated.

While the international community and the United Nations congratulated Mr. Karzai and urged him to set about unifying the country, the way ahead was foggy at best. There has been talking of forming a unity government, but Mr. Abdullah said he would not participate.

Further, there is little popular support in Afghanistan for that option. For many Afghans a coalition government brings to mind the chaotic period in the 1990s when armed strongmen competed for turf in bloody battles that killed many civilians around the country and destroyed a swath of Kabul.

Officials from the United States and United Nations welcomed the decision and congratulated Mr. Karzai.

“We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election,” said a statement from the United States Embassy in Kabul, “and look forward to working with him, his new administration, the Afghan people and our partners in the international community to support Afghanistan’s progress towards institutional reforms, security and prosperity.”

What does the White House think of this? Take it away Robert Gibbs:

[JAKE] TAPPER: President Obama last month in Pittsburgh said, of the Afghan elections and the aftermath, “What’s most important is that there’s a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for their government.” Is there a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for the Karzai government?

GIBBS: Well, I have no reason to believe there’s not.

“No reason”? To which I say, there’s “no reason” to insult the intelligence of the American people with answers that disingenuous. They don’t honestly believe that up there, right?

Spencer Ackerman, responding to this NY Times article about the military’s frustration with the slow pace of escalation in Afghanistan:

Protracted wars fought by democracies ultimately last only until publics decide they ought to. I doubt that any military officer would disagree with that proposition, no matter his or her perspective on a given war. But I’ve heard people in the broader defense community dismiss, diminish or deride public opinion, and particularly poll figures, in a way that embraces the pat assumption that public opinion is something to be worked around, not grappled with. At a counterinsurgency conference sponsored by Marine Corps University recently, the author and Marine Vietnam veteran Bing West unfavorably compared Obama’s focus on health-care reform with his focus on Afghanistan. West might not have meant it this way, but 47 million Americans and approximately 30 million American citizens without health insurance is not something to diminish, whatever the requirements of a war. Indeed, it’s ultimately counterproductive for elements of the military community to ask for a commitment to Afghanistan that’s just plainly unsustainable, politically. And this seems to be something the defense community needs to grapple with further.

Of course this is understandable to an extent; it is the military’s job to worry about fighting wars, and the politician’s job to worry that public support exist to fight wars. But it does seem that there are blinders on when Gen. McChrystal can go on and on about how crucial public opinion is in Afghanistan, but nobody seems to think for a moment how crucial public opinion might be in America. Let me tell you, the Afghans could support our presence 10 to 1 and it won’t mean a thing if numbers like this continue to worsen.

The NY Times has a couple of interesting reads about Afghanistan. First is this very long piece in the NY Times Sunday Magazine about Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the new effort in Afghanistan. It’s a good read, but I have a problem with how much emphasis the writer Dexter Filkins places on McChrystal’s role in the war, as if by dint of more cleverly executed strategy (via McChrystal) we may yet win in Afghanistan. Filkins is a great journalist, but I take issue with the media’s tendency to focus on individual leaders, and especially generals, in the context of a military campaign. Granted, the article is much more than an examination of McChrystal, but the title-”His Long War”-make it obvious the direction that Filkins is going in.

Second, there is this account by David Rhode of his seven months of captivity by the Taliban in two parts (part one, part two.) His experience is invaluable for the glance at the Taliban that it provides, though it is from the viewpoint of an American hostage and naturally limited in scope. Still, a fascinating read.

In current news, Pakistan has kicked off an offensive against the Taliban in S. Waziristan. They boast of great progress (naturally) but prior offensives have ended in cease-fires when the Pakistan Army faced great casualties and slow progress. Will this be any different? We’ll see, but I wouldn’t be on it.

Robert Kaplan, doing his best impression of a right-wing blogger (excerpted at length to make the parallels clear):

When it comes to foreign policy, Republicans and Democrats are each suspect in their own way. Republicans used to be the party of competence in world affairs. They lost that aura during President George W. Bush’s first six years in office, when he mismanaged the wars both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The Democrats, for their part, are often accused of being wobbly on national security, lacking both toughness and gumption. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s recent handling of the war in Afghanistan plays to those charges. Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize will only intensify the perception that he is a weak war leader.

Wait…what? Never mind…we’ll get back to that:

It’s perfectly legitimate for Obama to review Afghanistan strategy and troop numbers. But by calling into question the very strategy that he put into place earlier in the year, when he called Afghanistan the “necessary war,” and promised to properly resource it, Obama is courting charges from the right that he is another ineffectual Jimmy Carter—that other Nobel Peace Prize winner.

[...]

The Administration had many months, beginning the moment Obama was elected, to recalibrate Afghan strategy. Yet it’s now in the position of publicly questioning the fundamental wisdom of the general it has chosen. The position Obama’s now in is similar to that of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld some years back—appearing not to be listening to his generals. If the president doesn’t agree with his field commander, that’s fine. Just don’t make a public spectacle of it.

Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban—even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama’s public agonizing. Meanwhile, fundamentalist elements of the Pakistani military, opposed to the recent crackdown against local Taliban, are also taking heart from developments in Washington. This is how coups and revolutions get started, by the middle ranks sensing weakness in foreign support for their superiors.

Obama’s wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India’s geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with bush, Obama’s dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington’s indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan. So, too, other allies far and wide—from the Middle East to East Asia, and Israel to Japan—will start to make decisions based on their understanding that Washington under Obama may not have their backs in a crisis. Again, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama only plays to such fears.

Alright, now hold up there partner. Now it does appear that the Obama administration has at least been caught somewhat flat-footed by McChrystal’s request for an additional 40,000 (or more) troops. If you buy Spencer Ackerman’s analysis of this Washington Post story (and I do) it seems like administration officials might not have known precisely what resources were required for what they had in mind, and as a result are now re-entering a period of assessing precisely what mission they want to engage in, counter-terrorism aimed at Al Qaeda or counter-insurgency aimed at Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Even if the administration made one call earlier this year, and now appears to be hedging on that, you don’t rush more troops into Afghanistan just so you can appear to look decisive, or because you already said you would even if you didn’t think that’s what you were saying. This isn’t a blind date you wish you could back out on but can’t.

And this idea that the Afghans are waiting with baited breath on Obama’s decision? Nonsense. Perhaps Kaplan’s been too busy playing war-pundit with Iraq, but we have been fighting a see-saw battle with the Taliban for eight years now. It is nearly a decade of warfare and terrorism, not some bureaucratic brain-storming, that has prompted Afghans to wonder if in fact we, or the Karzai government that recently stole itself into power, are up to the job of keeping a lid on the Taliban.

And yes, I’m sure the Taliban are quite ecstatic that we are now re-considering exactly how many soldiers we want to send after them (and in turn, how many of our soldiers they can hunt.) But as I have said time, and time, and time again on this blog and elsewhere throughout the course of the Iraq war, you don’t base your strategy on how your enemy feels about it. You make calculations that include an honest assessment of raw self-interest, the limitations of your own power, and your willingness to expend lives and money in a conflict. Were we to plunge head-long into a wider conflict, I’m sure the Taliban would shed a small tear for the lost opportunity to drive out an enemy…then they’d go right back to killing our soldiers until we re-consider our strategy once again.

And India? Since when did justify upping conflicts to suit the self-interest of second-tier allies?

Lastly, the Nobel Price…I’m not sure what Kaplan is saying here, but it sounds like by merely accepting the Nobel, Obama has failed to demonstrate sufficient war-mongering-ish tendencies so as to intimidate the Taliban. I would ask Kaplan to explain that in more detail, as I honestly wonder whether any member of the Taliban right up to Mullah Omar himself has spent more than one minute thinking about the implications of the Nobel Peace Prize on the war in Afghanistan.

As I said, all in all a solid day’s work for a right-wing blogger. Thanks Robert Kaplan.

Eight years ago today, American forces began the bombardment of Afghanistan that signaled the beginning of the operation to topple the Taliban. The war in Iraq has largely fallen off the radar, to be replaced by a war in Afghanistan that is only become more difficult to prosecute. The Obama administration is presently conducting a strategy review (as the senior commander in Afghanistan calls for an infusion of 40,000 more American troops) in an effort to determine to what extent we should continue to commit our troops and resources to the war effort, and to determine what our final goals in Afghanistan should be. Whatever those goals may be and whatever course of action this administration may choose to undertake, I can promise you that we will be in Afghanistan in some fashion for years to come. This war is nowhere near over for us.

Glenn Greenwald condemns David Brooks most recent idiocy in far great detail and with far greater passion than I can summon, but there is one small point of fact that I’d like to point out regarding Brooks’ column. This, from Brooks’ column:

Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon’s Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping your troops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.

There is simply no historical record to support these illusions. The historical evidence suggests that these middling strategies just create a situation in which you have enough forces to assume responsibility for a conflict, but not enough to prevail.

The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.

To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.

Yeah, about that Mr. Brooks:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military officer in Afghanistan, has told his commanders to pull forces out of sparsely populated areas where U.S. troops have fought bloody battles with the Taliban for several years and focus them on protecting major Afghan population centers.

But the changes, which amount to a retreat from some areas, have already begun to draw resistance from senior Afghan officials who worry that any pullback from Taliban-held territory will make the weak Afghan government appear even more powerless in the eyes of its people.

Senior U.S. officials said the moves were driven by the realization that some remote regions of Afghanistan, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountains that range through the northeast, were not going to be brought under government control anytime soon. “Personally, I think I am being realistic about this,” said Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan. “I have more combat power than my predecessors did, but I won’t be as spread out. . . . This is all about freeing up some forces so I can get them out more among the people.”

The changes are in line with McChrystal’s confidential assessment of the war, which urges U.S. and NATO forces to “initially focus on critical high-population areas that are contested or controlled by insurgents.”

I’m not actually just going to type “gotcha!” with a smirk on my face to conclude this post. McChrystal has certainly not abandoned COIN and yes, protecting the population is obviously the key behind this move. But to write a column suggesting that the only appropriate strategy is to deploy American forces to sparsely populated ares and “remote valleys” only days after the U.S. senior military commander in Afghanistan has announced his intent to pull forces from such places, is just sheer idiocy. Nonetheless, I do not expect Brooks’ next column to acknowledge this change in events, or more absurdly, call out McChrystal for not understanding the importance of deploying American soldiers to remote places where they both fail to protect Afghan civilians and are more easily killed.

Some things you should be reading on this Wednesday, the first full day of Fall:

1. You may have heard recently that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, issued a dire report indicating that the security situation in Afghanistan is certain to deteriorate without the infusion of thousands more U.S. and NATO troops. The report makes clear how much the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated already (conditions which have prompted McChrystal to consolidate American forces in more populous areas) and that, combined with the sagging legitimacy of the Karzai government in the wake of fraudulent elections, apparently has the Obama administration considering a widespread shift in strategy:

Mr. Obama met in the Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing over the problem, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Mr. Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; James L. Jones, the national security adviser; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled. “There are a lot of competing views,” said one official who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.

Of course we’ve been wondering since earlier this year if a shift in Afghanistan is warranted, though liberals remain divided on the issue (the opinion of conservatives is typical, thoughtless and so pointless to examine.) Is such a shift around the corner? We’ll see.

2. The Obama administration is considering limiting use of the State Secrets privilege:

The new policy, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, would require approval by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. if military or espionage agencies wanted to assert the privilege to withhold classified evidence sought in court or to ask a judge to dismiss a lawsuit at its onset.

“The department is adopting these policies and procedures to strengthen public confidence that the U.S. government will invoke the privilege in court only when genuine and significant harm to national defense or foreign relations is at stake and only to the extent necessary to safeguard those interests,” says a draft of a memorandum from Mr. Holder laying out the policy and obtained by The New York Times.

[...]

Leading Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have filed bills that would restrict how the privilege could be used. The Obama administration has not taken a position on those bills, but the new policy, which is intended to rein in use of the privilege by erecting greater internal checks and balances against abuse, could blunt momentum in Congress to pass legislation.

The bills would encourage courts to find a way for lawsuits to continue, even if particular documents or information must be withheld. They would also require judges to take a more searching look at executive branch claims that certain evidence cannot be used in court because its disclosure would result in a “significant harm” to national security.

That requirement would be tougher than the current legal standard, which comes from a 1953 Supreme Court decision approving the withholding of information whenever there is “reasonable danger” of exposing information that should not be divulged for national security reasons.

The real problem of course is that since that 1953 decision, courts have held that it’s the government, not a federal judge, who decides whether there exists a “reasonable danger” of exposing delicate national security information. This new policy doesn’t change that, so I’m not entirely sure how useful it will be. Glenn Greenwald has hammered the Obama administration on this and other national security policies; I expect him to have quite a bit to say about this announcement.

3. And look who’s coming around now:

Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, two of the nation’s biggest banks, announced plans on Tuesday to drastically overhaul their debit card programs by lowering or eliminating fees, changing the way they credit transactions and allowing customers to opt out of overdraft protection.

The moves come as lawmakers and regulators in Washington push proposals to reform what critics say are excessive charges of which consumers are unaware. The penalties, known as overdraft fees, bring the banking industry tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually.

Bank of America said it would allow current customers to turn off the ability to spend when their account hits zero, starting Oct. 19. Next June, the bank plans to limit the number of times each year that current customers can overdraw their accounts when using a debit card at a store. It will let new customers choose whether they want overdraft protection when they are opening their account.

Chase plans to eliminate by the first quarter of next year a common industry practice that enraged many consumers. Instead of lumping a day’s worth of debit card and A.T.M. transactions together and then processing the highest amounts first — a practice that has caused large numbers of consumers to overdraw more quickly and pay more fees — it will credit the transactions chronologically. Chase also plans to allow customers to opt out of overdraft coverage.

I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the extremely bad press these banks have gotten as of late, or the fact that Congress is chomping at the bit to regulate them. In all seriousness though, I’m sure lobbyists for the banks are right now pointing out to members of Congress how legislation is now completely unnecessary because the Banks are taking steps to regulate themselves. To which I say, screw that, pass the legislation.

Glenn Greenwald, at his mocking finest:

But at least we paid lip service to (even while often violating) the notion that wars should be waged only when absolutely imperative to defending the nation against imminent threats. We largely don’t even bother to do that any more. Consider today’s defense of the war in Afghanistan from the war-loving Washington Post Editorial Page. Here’s their argument for why we should continue to wage war there:

Yet if Mr. Obama provides adequate military and civilian resources, there’s a reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate, as it did in Iraq.

Does that sound like a stirring appeal to urgent national security interests? Why should we continue to kill both Afghan civilians and our own troops and pour billions of dollars into that country indefinitely? Because “there’s a reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate.” One can almost hear the yawning as the Post Editors call for more war.

Ouch. Of course, he’s right. This exactly the sort of open-ended language of commitment that plagues our discourse regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate” is a notch above “we can’t afford to lose” rhetorically, but it’s at the same level logically. What chance is “reasonable”? Eighty percent? Thirty? Any? What “something” is “better than a stalemate”? The Taliban controlling half of Afghanistan? A quarter? Pakistan only? And if you think officials in the Obama administration are talking in more concrete terms than this, then you my friend are naive. This is how we’ve been fighting wars since Korea; the “pure” 1991 Gulf War was the exception, not the rule.

And as has become depressingly common, an airstrike in Afghanistan has killed at least eighty civilians, all to achieve the dubious military goal of blowing up a couple of stolen fuel trucks. Spencer Ackerman is wondering if we even know how to achieve specific goals in Afghanistan such as not turning Afghans against us:

McChrystal has already restricted airstrikes in Afghanistan. This one still happened. And it caused a civilian death count that, if history is any guide, will be revised upward. After each of these airstrikes, there are lots of promises to fix what went wrong, and still this one happened. Any military commander will say that he or she can’t completely rule out the tool of airstrikes. But if avoiding civilian casualties and protecting the population from violence really is the preeminent goal of the Afghanistan war, and if McChrystal believes that Afghan sentiment really is strategically decisive, then as absurd as it may seem, the logic of counterinsurgency really does point to ruling them out. There is no reset button to be hit on an eight-year war. The legacy of years of U.S. and NATO airstrikes and the civilian casualties they have caused hovers like a shadow over today’s Kunduz attack.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not out on the war…yet. But I am out on the sort of counterinsurgency “strategy” that relies on airstrikes to achieve minor military victories, and I’m definitely out on editors and pundits encouraging us to remain committed to Afghanistan because there’s some chance that something might still go right in the end. Soldiers should be made to die for less fuzzy goals.

Good news:

The United States announced a new drug policy Saturday for opium-rich Afghanistan, saying it was phasing out funding for eradication efforts and using the money for drug interdiction and alternate crop programs instead.

The U.S. envoy for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, told The Associated Press that eradication programs weren’t working and were only driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

“Eradication is a waste of money,” Holbrooke said on the sidelines of a Group of Eight foreign ministers’ meeting on Afghanistan, where he said it had been warmly received, particularly by the United Nations.

The previous policy was always short-sighted and more or less put our stupid war on drugs before the war in Afghanistan. It didn’t reduce significantly the cash flow to the Taliban and just gave Afghans another reason to hate the U.S. for destroying their livelihoods.

Maybe along with an increased force and a real policy to reduce civilian casualties, we might actually salvage our efforts there.