ON THE FIGHT
The U.S. military in Afghanistan is shifting its focus next year from fighting the Taliban to advising and enabling Afghan forces, senior U.S. officials say, noting that this could allow sizable cuts in the 66,000-strong U.S. troop contingent over the spring and the summer. The coalition’s commander, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, just a few months ago pushed for maintaining U.S. troop levels steady through the 2013 fighting season, which runs until November or so. Some White House officials, however, have been pressing for a more rapid drawdown. Gen. Allen has yet to present his recommendations to President Barack Obama. The change in the military mission—coupled with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s increasingly vocal insistence on stopping U.S. military operations in the Afghan countryside—makes maintaining such a large combat presence for so long unnecessary, senior U.S. officials said in recent days. As a result, U.S. troop reductions in 2013, which some officials expect to total between 20,000 and 30,000, could begin in phases in the coming months. "It’s no longer about our combat power, it’s about the ability of the Afghan national security forces," a senior U.S. official said.
Take a peek behind the curtain at Creech Air Force Base and the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Task Force.
Homeland is immensely entertaining. But how well does it represent reality? In truth, only partially. As a depiction of how U.S. agencies actually go about tracking down and apprehending terrorists, the series misses the mark. It focuses on a few dramatic human-oriented counterterrorism operations that rarely make a difference in practice, and it overlooks the technological capabilities and bureaucratic systems that constitute the bedrock of the country’s counterterrorism apparatus. In short, Homeland portrays a CIA far less constrained than it is in real life but that nevertheless does not use some of the major tools of modern counterterrorism.
ON THE FORCE
The Atlantic asks: is Chuck Hagel (a presumptive Secretary of Defense) a pacifist?
As part of its ongoing strategic "pivot" towards the Pacific, early this year the Defense Department announced it would design a new missile able to quickly cross long distances and penetrate sophisticated air defenses, of the kind rapidly proliferating across Asia. The so-called "conventional prompt strike option" would be submarine-launched, the Pentagon said in its January Defense Budget Priorities and Choices release. The department placed great emphasis on the new weapon, declaring that "we had to invest in capabilities required to maintain our military’s continued freedom of action."
Air Force Special Operations Command’s Building Partner Aviation Capacity Course has been a smashing success.
ON SECRECY – OR LACK THEREOF
Packed into hand luggage and tucked into jacket pockets, roughly hewed bars of gold are being flown out of Kabul with increasing regularity, confounding Afghan and American officials who fear money launderers have found a new way to spirit funds from the country.
As he aggressively seeks the sources of news media leaks of government secrets, President Obama might want to pay close attention to an important and overdue new report that he ordered on classified information from the Public Interest Declassification Board. The report warns that an entrenched system of extreme overclassification of government information ultimately invites leaking. It further concludes that the current system of classifying and declassifying secrets is so dysfunctional and “risk-averse” that democracy suffers in its need for timely information about the workings of government.
Clinton and Panetta have announced plans to leave office soon. Their successors, along with a replacement for disgraced CIA director David H. Petraeus, are expected to be named before Christmas.
After months of accusations and political recriminations, the State Department is getting ready to present the most detailed explanation yet regarding the circumstances surrounding the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Monday, the State Department is expected to get a report on the incident from the independent Advisory Review Board, sources in the State Department told CNN Sunday. The review was ordered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Congress will receive the report from the board ahead of a classified briefing for members on Wednesday by Thomas Pickering, who led the Advisory Review Board. Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was also on the panel, will be part of the briefing as well. The State Department is also expected to present recommendations on improving security. That’s likely to include an explanation of measures that have already been put in place since the September 11 attack on the consulate, which left four Americans — including U.S. Amb. Chris Stevens — dead.
Robert Caruso is a veteran of the United States Navy, and has worked for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Business Transformation Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
