There’s the “Sons of Afghanistan” model — that is, standing up tribal or local-based militias to fight the Taliban, or legitimizing those in place — to augment security. That was the so-called Community Defense Initiative that worried, among other people, Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan human-rights commission, and for the obvious reasons of Afghanistan’s vexed [...]

I liked this graf: Leading defense wonks, particularly those on the left, have harsh words for the exemption. “Ridiculous,” said Laicie Olson of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “Completely inappropriate,” said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress. “A political decision,” said Charles Knight of the Project on Defense Alternatives. That’s from [...]

John McCain, constantly mortgaging his soul: In his State of the Union address, President Obama asked Congress to repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. I am immensely proud of, and thankful for, every American who wears the uniform of our country, especially at a time of war, and I believe it would be a [...]

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you to Ana Marie Cox’s liveblog for GQ. Like Ice-T with West Coast gangster rap, she practically invented the genre. I dunno if FDL is doing some liveblogging of our own — I would imagine so? — but there’s nothing stopping you from reading both, right? Update: I [...]

Everyone who covers intelligence knows who Stuart Herrington is. Army intelligence veteran. Vietnam veteran. Early Cassandra about the use of torture and its effects on an insurgency. Tom Ricks brings us an account of a lecture Herrington delivered last fall at Fort Leavenworth about interrogation: “There was no room on our team for charlatans who [...]

Has this happened to you? Have you been frustrated with your iPhone’s ability to fit into your pocket? Have you looked at your laptop and wondered why typing, viewing the screen and sitting upright were so easy and intuitive? Are there not enough feminine-hygiene references and jokes in your life? Redeeming feature: I want to [...]

Josh Foust was on a conference call in advance of the upcoming London conference on Afghanistan, and now he’s chewing over a seemingly contradictory pledge by the western friends of the post-Taliban political order: “This regional framework is not the next version of the 6+3 or some kind of other grouping,” the diplomat said. It [...]

A flat, unequivocal statement from Vice Adm. Robert Harward, detentions-operations chief for Gen. McChrystal in Afghanistan, when I asked him about the alleged “Black Jail” at Bagram. Check it out. Interesting (to a handful of people) fact: by my count, Harward used the phrase “Accidental Guerrilla” twice during a half-hour conference call with bloggers this [...]

Reading this Times piece about the internal debate over negotiating with the Taliban’s senior leadership, you come across a lot of down-in-the-story quotes like this one: “It’s our view that until the Taliban leadership sees a change in the momentum and begins to see that they are not going to win, the likelihood of significant [...]

From an ISAF press release: An ISAF security force manning a vehicle control point searched a vehicle and found approximately 50 75-pound bags of marijuana seeds. The security force detained the suspect and confiscated the drugs for destruction. The Taliban is truly a patient enemy.