Hamid Karzai’s trip to Kandahar to herald the “process” for securing the city that he, President Obama and Gen. McChrystal agreed to publicly in Washington places some doubt around Friday’s Times piece about Karzai seeking a peace-at-any-price deal with the Taliban. “This operation requires sacrifice, and without sacrifice you cannot restore peace to Kandahar,” Mr. [...]

Via Feral Jundi, ISAF released this video yesterday in which Gen. McChrystal explains eight of his guiding principles in counterinsurgency, much of which will be familiar to observers of the Afghanistan debate. In the spirit of McChrystal’s “imperative” that the force recognized it will be judged “every minute of every day” by what it does, [...]

Something else from Gen. McChrystal’s Brussells chat today: the commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan mused on his Special Operators and actually gave a body count. I’ve never heard him do that. And it’s a fairly rare occurrence for a flag officer to mention the kill-or-capture total, as no one wants to be accused [...]

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported there were early discussions between U.S. and Afghan officials to “carve out” some U.S. use of the Parwan/Bagram detention facility near Kabul so as to serve as some kind of neo-Guantanamo. Parwan is to be handed over Afghan government control by early next year. But in a Brussels briefing [...]

I wanted to clarify the circumstances under which Gen. McChrystal’s command is/isn’t securing local buy-in for a prospective Kandahar operation, and so the general’s spokesman, Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, fielded some questions. An excerpt: “We remain committed to political dialogue in Kandahar and elsewhere: through the discussions that coalition officials have with Afghans in shuras [...]

I put this on as an update to yesterday’s COIN post, but then expanded it for the Washington Independent, as it’s only fair, given the debate we had yesterday. USA Today reports on a disturbing statistical rise in ISAF-caused civilian casualties during the first three months of 2010 versus the first three months of 2009. [...]

No matter how many times Gen. Petraeus tries not to make news in the D.C. area, I’ll probably attend, and watch the PowerPoint presentation on Centcom’s area of responsibility, because he might say something newsworthy or I might get to ask a question and this is what I get paid to do and enjoy doing. [...]

Gen. McChrystal goes after the Kandahar TGI Friday’s. It’s not my place to snark, as I’m a soft civilian journalist, but I have friends who’ve been asked to risk their lives to protect convoys carrying soda. And this is the sort of argument worth applauding: Rock concerts, hockey games and Americana kitsch in the Taliban [...]

So says Gen. McChrystal. What he means is that he’s dealing with the power structure as he finds it in Kandahar — I look forward to the Registan post raising questions about whether McChrystal is looking in the right places — in order to enter the city and its surrounding areas with maximum political legitimacy. [...]

First, a bit of self-pity. I’m kicking myself the Times beat me to a story I started pursuing late last month. Whatever. They did a good job. You can’t bag every deer. What? Of course not, it’s just something in my eye. OK. After at least five and a half months of putting JSOC on [...]