Why, Google Without Terrorist Propaganda is Like Whip Cream Without the Cherry!

Google: helping make terrorist dreams come true

How many Jihadi videos did Hasan watch on YouTube?

Self-radicalization without Jihadi videos is like self-gratification without porn. Pictures get you their quicker.

The Afghan National Army still isn’t ready for prime time.   

The Afghan National Police are more likely to shake you down at a check point on the highway than do any silly cop stuff like fight crime or lock up criminals. The most gung ho Police Mentoring Team can’t fix the courts and the jails.

The National Directorate of Security gets mentored by whom, exactly?

Afghan National Security Forces need more help than we can give them and they can absorb between now and Obama’s declaration of “Peace With Honor.”

So how ’bout we spread some love to sub-national Security Forces at the provincial, district, and tribal levels?

I hate the New York Slimes. I hate linking to them.

I don’t hate Dexter Filkins.

As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias

Reader’s Digest version:

The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.

“The idea is to get people to take responsibility for their own security,” said a senior American military official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “In many places they are already doing that.”

The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by American Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help.

One of the most striking examples of a local militia rising up on its own is here in Achin, a predominantly Pashtun district in Nangarhar Province that straddles the border with Pakistan. In July, a long-running dispute between local Taliban fighters and elders from the Shinwari tribe flared up. When a local Taliban warlord named Khona brought a more senior commander from Pakistan to help in the confrontation, the elders in the Shinwari tribe rallied villagers from up and down the valley where they live, killed the commander and chased Khona away.

The feud between the Taliban and the Shinwari elders caught the attention of American officers, who sent a team of Special Forces soldiers to the valley. This reporter was unable to reach the interior of the valley where the men live, so it was difficult to verify all of the elders’ claims.

Both the Shinwari elders said that “Americans with beards” had flown into the valley twice in recent weeks and had given them flour and boxes of ammunition. (Unlike other American troops, Special Forces soldiers are allowed to wear beards.)

American officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they intended to help organize and train the Shinwari militia. They said they would give them communication gear that would enable them to call the Afghan police if they needed help.

Read the whole thing.

That ODA working with the Shinwari are having some hellacious adventures.  Allowing  their story to be told could persuade, change and influence elements of the domestic target audience in ways beneficial to U. S. Army Special Forces and maybe even beneficial to “victory.”

Meanwhile, back at Camp Eggers . . .

UPDATE 1123090128:  Tim Lynch sez Dexter Filkins writes a great article and it is worth reading but unfortunately as in most things published by the New York Times it is complete bullshit.

UPDATE 1124090215:  Beaucoup links

A question of tribal policy,  November 24, 2009 12:00AM

Secret U.S. plan to support Afghan militias echoes Canadian general’s ideas, Monday 23 November 2009

Gravediggers Disinter Tribal Militia Corpse,  November 23, 2009

US pours millions into anti-Taliban militias in Afghanistan, Sunday 22 November 2009 18.48 GMT

Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Enquirer, Bypassing the Karzai Problem

5. Local security helps keep the peace. At intervals along the newly paved “Chinese road” stand armed local home guards. They are the controversial Afghan Public Protection force, known as the AP3, who are recruited by local elders, paid by the Afghan Interior Ministry, and trained (briefly) by U.S. forces. They are a transitional force meant to watch for outsiders. I was skeptical about their usefulness when I visited Wardak in May. But Fidai, who promoted the AP3, says that “where there are AP3 there are no IEDs,” because locals are more willing to give intelligence tips to homeboys. So the AP3 should be retained until the Afghan national police can be expanded sufficiently to staff remote areas of Wardak.

Message: Local forms of security emerge once an area is cleared and villagers have something to protect.

An AP3 skeptic sees the light.

Been scanning for positive news of the AP3. Not much out there. The Quiet Professionals are too quiet. Who is supposed to be strategically communicating to the American target audience about the successes ( there are some, aren’t there?) of what may be one of the most successful programs for using civilian forces since the Civilian Irregular Defense Group in Vietnam?

More on the Chinese Road. How are they going to get all that copper to China? There’s no road through the Wakhjir Pass trafficable for vehicles.

Che-Supporting Commie Goons Beat Tea Party Protesters In Florida (AMAZING Video)

The Cold Civil War warmed up while you weren’t paying attention.

Unarmed self-defense techniques and handiness with video cameras will be worth more than CCW’s and marksmanship in persuading, changing and influencing the fence-sitters.

Looks like the Guardians of Wardak aren’t meeting expectations.

Allied exit strategy at risk as Afghan police run out of recruits

Recruits for the Afghan Public Protection Force are usually sent to Laghman to be trained by American Special Forces. “There hasn’t been a single recruit for more than a month and a half,” General Agha said. “More than a hundred people were rounded up and sent to the training centre, but the commander in charge told me they ran away. Iran opened the border [in the west] and they all thought it was better to go abroad.”

Those who do graduate are armed with AK47 assault rifles and most serve as “light infantry in counterinsurgency operations”, according to a critical report by the European Union.

Too bad.

Been tracking AP3 about 10 months now:

Wardak Awakening, 12/23/09

Afghan Public Protection Force, 02/02/09

Did ANSO Strategically Leak a Classified Email to HuffPo?, 02/11/09

Saydabad Jezailchis, 03/25/09

Jalrez Jezailchis on AlJazeera, 03/28/09

Jalrez Jezailchis Off To Rough Start, 04/09/09

No Zayawalat Jezailchis, 04/14/09

Will Johnny Utah Ever See His Surefire Again?, 05/2/09

Commander Tor Gol, Nirkh Jezailchis, 06/03/09

Wardak Jezailchis Didn’t Cover Themselves With Glory

Clicking on the above links will give you a good idea of what the Quiet Professionals have strategically communicated, or allowed to be strategically communicated unrebutted, about what used to be one of their core competencies.

Read The real thing @ TBC.

America won’t be run out of Afghanistan. It will lose interest and walk away.

6. Nomenklatura:

‘Managing a conflict’, which means actually extending it for the mutual convenience of collaborators in Washington and Karachi, and continuously bleeding our armed forces to make it happen, is not what the US Armed Forces have ever been about, nor should it be. Only a politician who sees the US soldier as no more than an ignorant, expendable peasant could commit this error…

32. Armeggedon Rex:

Many have commented here at the Belmont Club and elsewhere asking something similar to: “If Obama were intentionally trying to wreck the U.S., without being immediately impeached, how would his actions be any different than everything we’ve seen thus far?”

At first I wrote these folks off as excessively partisan, but as time passes, and mind-blowing idiocies pile up, I’m thinking more and more that they make an excellent point.

50. wretchard:

The difference between what Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson did is an example of right versus wrong application. One gave you Korea and the other Vietnam. It’s easy now to forget the Iraqi sanctions regime, the Bosnian crisis, etc. were not obviously better, or carried on ad infinitum, necessarily cheaper in terms of human life than going in and doing something. But going in doing something created its own complications. That’s probably what President Obama is afraid of, to give him his due. Giving McChrystal extra men lets him change the game — which the general wants to do — but which carries the risk of introducing new elements. It’s like letting him shuffle the deck and re-deal. What does the President prefer? The devil he knows or the devil he doesn’t?

Not who I thought it was at first glance

The author of Fundamentals of Guerrilla Warfare

Media Malpractice: Tom Brokaw’s World Implodes

Americans have learned the hard way that there was and is a serious effort by some of the most powerful figures in American journalism to quite deliberately keep Americans from making “informed decisions” by denying them accurate information. By ignoring major news stories. By not reporting stories that were or are at variance with liberal politics

More:

. . . across five decades of American journalistic history, the instinct of many Old Media institutions — specifically including NBC and the New York Times — has been to deliberately withhold the truth. To quite deliberately use their journalism skills and tools to misrepresent those whose politics they do not favor.

The money quote:

What once was a considerable reservoir of trust and respect has been drained bone dry.

Found in a comment at TAH:

8 Dave Thul Says:
September 15th, 2009 at 10:07 pm Whatever else comes of this, you have to admire the two people behind the camera. The film maker said on Beck that they had spent about 1300 bucks on the whole thing.Imagine that. Two kids with a video camera and some cheesy clothes have done what all the talk show hosts haven’t been able to do over the last year-take a bite out of ACORN. The census bureau cut ties, and the Senate voted to cut all federal funding. Whether or not the House goes along with it, it was inconceivable two weeks ago that ACORN would be on the outs with Congress.

Good work to those two.

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles are the Civilian Irregular Information Operators /Strategic Citizens I’ve been waiting for.

Strategy Page list this under Peacekeeping:

September 7, 2009: China has quietly been training Afghan police, in the area along the China/Afghan border (the Wakhan Corridor). This area has never been very violent, and escaped most of the fighting that has torn apart Afghanistan since the 1970s. But China refuses to open its border with Afghanistan, fearing complications with the mainly Moslem population on their side of the frontier.

While the Chinese training effort, which is fairly small, has been reported inside China, it has received little, or no, notice by the Western media.

That piqued my interest when I read it, so much that I commented over there:

Cannoneer No. 4 China has a Police Mentoring Team in Badakhshan? 9/7/2009 6:53:28 PM
Does Regional Police Advisory Command of Afghan Regional Security Integration Command – North know about this?

What kind of Afghan Police are being trained by the Chinese? Border Police? Counter Narcotics Police? Counter Terrorism Police? Copper mine security Auxiliary Police?

What kind of Chinese are training Afghan Police? People’s Liberation Army Special Operations Forces? Chinese Armed Police Commando Unit?

Why should China open a border crossing at 4,293 meters [14,084 feet] above sea level that is snowed under seven months of the year? Did the Chinese PMT enter Afghanistan at Wakhjir Pass?

Nobody answered any of my questions over there. Perhaps the readership over here knows something.

I don’t think China refuses to open its border with Afghanistan.  I think there is no there, there at the border crossing.  No town, no road, nothing.  I can’t even find a pic of a guard shack. According to Wikipedia,

There is no road across the pass. On the Afghan side the nearest road is a rough road to Sarhad-e Wakhan (also known as Sarhad-e Broghil), about 100 km [62 miles] from the pass by paths. On the Chinese side there is a jeep track about 15 km [9.3 miles] from the pass, which leads to the Karakoram Highway 80 km [50 miles] away. The pass is closed for at least five months a year and is open irregularly for the remainder.