Obama scraps Afghanistan drawdown; US diverts jets, abandoning friendly Syrians; Navy patrols near fake islands; new vet-suicide stats; and a bit more...
Obama formally scraps Afghanistan drawdown. On Wednesday, he announced that he “will keep 8,400 American troops in Afghanistan through the end of his administration, effectively halting the war drawdown he had wanted, reflecting the inability of NATO and American military forces to quash decades-old insurgent fighting and force the Taliban to a negotiated peace,” reports D1 exec editor Kevin Baron. “Obama’s announcement comes one day before the start of a NATO summit of its heads of state, where members are expected to make additional commitments of troops and funding for the war.” Read more, here.
And how is that war going? NPR’s Tom Bowman offers a bracing assessment built around his recent reporting in-country — including the ride in an Afghan convoy that was attacked by the Taliban, killing his colleague David Gilkey. “This terrible moment in Helmand province reflects the current state of the Afghan war. Time and again, the Afghans, with American help, push insurgents out. Then the insurgents come back. Then the Americans increase their help for the Afghan government forces,” Bowman wrote. “To sum it up, the war is not going well. The Taliban are still strong in parts of the south and east. And the Afghan army, while improving, still needs a lot of help from the Americans. One of the top U.S. trainers, Col. John Kline, said if the American troops stopped advising the Afghans in Helmand, it would be a struggle for them to do the job.” Read the whole thing, here.
“U.S. jets abandoned Syrian rebels in the desert. Then they lost a battle to ISIS.” That’s the take-no-prisoners headline on a Washington Post report about U.S. commanders’ June 28 decision to divert warplanes from supporting an assault on an eastern Syrian town to destroying a column of Islamic State forces withdrawing from Fallujah, Iraq. After the planes left, ISIS forces routed the American-backed ones, a defeat the Post called “a significant blow to the Pentagon’s Syria strategy of building a Syrian Arab force capable of taking on the Islamic State.”
DoD’s explanation: “You have a finite number of resources and you try to get the biggest bang for buck that you can out of the resources you have,” said Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Chris Garver. “Prioritization was given to one target over another.”
David Maxwell, for one, took a dim view of the decision: “The priority here appeared to be going after the target, going after the big shiny object,” said the former Special Forces officer who is now associate director of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. “It’s the manifestation of a mind-set of the last 15 years, of these drone strikes and Special Operations force raids, where we want to achieve immediate effects on the battlefield without thinking about what might fall to the wayside.” Read it, here.
From Defense One
Obama asked the military for a plan to protect civilians. Here’s one. David Petraeus and Christopher Kolenda write, “We learned through experience the importance of preventing civilian casualties in today’s wars.” Read their plan, here.
U.S. Navy is rigging locusts to sniff out bombs. Although dogs’ noses remain the gold standard for chemical detection, bugs’ simpler neurological system make them easier to engineer and control. Via Quartz, here.
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U.S. Navy ships are sailing near the Chinese fake islands in the South China Sea. “Over the past two weeks, the destroyers Stethem, Spruance and Momsen have all patrolled near Chinese-claimed features at Scarborough Shoal and in the Spratly Islands, according to two defense officials,” Military Times reports. “Experts say the tactic serves as a message of resolve to the Chinese and U.S. allies in the region and is a deliberate show of force ahead of a major international ruling on the legality of some of China’s claim.”
Here’s how Jerry Hendrix, a naval analyst at the Center for New American Security (and an occasional D1 contributor) sees it: “I anticipate that China will take additional actions after the Hague tribunal, and I think there is a desire to show that after that happens there is not going to be a ramp-up of U.S. forces in the region: that they are already there.”
Interestingly, the ships are passing “within 14 to 20 nautical miles” of the islands, which keeps them in international waters. The missions are therefore not like the handful of earlier “freedom-of-navigation” missions that assert the right of passage through other nations’ waters — and which must be approved at very senior levels. Hendrix, again: “I still believe there is hesitance on the part of the political leadership but the operational leadership is taking the opportunity to show its interest in the region.” Read the whole thing, here.
Top U.S. intelligence leaders back proposal to give NATO an intel chief. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and UnderSecDef for Intelligence Marcel Lettre argue that the new post would improve “daily management” of shared intel, as well as foster “professional advice” to political and military leaders. Read their opied at The Cyber Brief, here.
About 20 veterans a day commit suicide, according to “the most comprehensive suicide study ever conducted” by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Military Times reports. “In 2014, the latest year available, more than 7,400 veterans took their own lives, accounting for 18 percent of all suicides in America. Veterans make up less than 9 percent of the U.S. population. About 70 percent of veterans who took their own lives were not regular users of VA services.” Read on, here.