One of our favorite morning reads here at N&S is NightWatch, published by AFCEA and edited by John McCreary, a long-time veteran strategic intelligence analyst at the Defense Department. NightWatch is particularly good in coverage of the Koreas, and of South Asia.

Last week, McCreary reported that Kim Jung-eun, who is being promoted to succeed his father, ailing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, has been given a new moniker by the regime: Youth Captain.

Kim Jong-il, it will be remembered, is known by his long-suffering countrymen as the Dear Leader while his late father, founder of the North Korean state Kim Il-sung, was the Great Leader.

Critics and analysts say the middle Kim, Kim Jong-il, who suffered an apparent stroke in August 2008, waited too long to begin the process of succession to his offspring. Kim Jong-il's own father designated him as his successor years beforehand, and North Korea's state-controlled media practically beatified him for years, smoothing the transition of power when the elder Kim died.

Indeed, Kurt Campbell, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told South Korean leaders recently that Kim Jong-il probably has only three years left to live, according to the (occasionally reliable) South Korean news media.

In a subsequent report (found here), McCreary noted that a better translation of the young Kim's new title might be Young General.  "Mid-twenties is young for a general in most armies, especially one that never wore a uniform or fired a weapon," he writes. We like Youth Captain better, in any case.

Amongst the swirl of soldiers, diplomats and contractors at America’s largest military bases in Afghanistan are congressional delegations, CODELs as they are often called. Members of Congress and their staffs come through, take a lot of photos with various commanders and ask questions that frankly could have been answered in Washington, all over a matter of no more than a couple days. Then they head back home. The trips are as much about theater as substance. The photos make their way onto campaign materials and the visits serve as the foundation for the questions they pose to commanders when they eventually testify on Capitol Hill. As in, “Gen. McChrystal, during my visit to Afghanistan, I learned….”

The latest VIP visitor was President Obama who spent six hours in Afghanistan over the weekend. The stated purpose was to meet with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. But somehow the photo op with the troops made the front page of today’s New York Times.

A couple weeks ago, the State Department Inspector General released a report that found that department personnel spend so much time greeting the scores of congress members who come to visit, they don’t have enough time to do their jobs. The report found that during the first nine months of last year, the State Department hosted 167 members of Congress and their staffs. It is a real problem indeed, both for the State Department personnel and top U.S. military officials. One commander serving in Afghanistan told me that he spends 40 percent of his time entertaining such visitors.  Besides that, members of Congress demand the limited resources of helicopters and the like. Simply put, those on the ground find the whole experience time consuming and frustrating. And they complain about it….a lot. I can’t help but revisit the issue in light of the President’s six-hour visit. If one is going to travel, why not make an effort to learn more about what is happening before arriving? And why not spend more time than a day or so? The president himself never went to an outpost where he has sent the bulk of the 50,000 troops he has deployed there. It seems to me to treat such a visit simply as political opportunities in unjust particularly by those who decide to send troops to harm’s way.

CNN released a poll today of 1,030 adult Americans about the war in Afghanistan. The poll, which was conducted between March 19-21 found that more Americans are optimistic about the war in Afghanistan then they were just two months ago, the last time a similar poll was conducted. CNN found that 55 percent of Americans approve of the way President Obama is handling the situation in Afghanistan, compared to 51 percent. According to this story, support is highest in rural areas. Yet, opposition to the war itself, irregardless of Obama, remains the same at 48 percent. Since January, there has been the Marjah offensive and the beginning of the Kandahar offensive. Could that be behind the slight jump in the poll? If not, what else do you think is contributing to the jump?

In the battle between American consumption and Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the general has prevailed.

As N&S reported earlier, McChrystal tried to cut down on the number of fast food chains at some of the largest military installations in Afghanistan. No sooner than he ordered Burger Kings to come down in some places, TGIF appeared in Kandahar Air Field.

Well, my always intrepid colleague Dion Nissenbaum reports that the American staple is gone. You can read the latest here.

Meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top U.S. officials here in Washington are going on much longer than expected, and by all accounts the going is rough.

The topics at hand are U.S. opposition to Israel's construction in East Jerusalem and the Obama administration's desire to get Israeli-Palestinian peace talks started right away.

The White House is saying virtually nothing about the meetings _ there have been no official statements, no press conferences, no cameras allowed. But we at N&S hear that the talks have been difficult indeed, pointing to continued stresses in the US-Israeli relationship.

One reason may be that, just as the temperature seemed to be turned down a bit, news came out of Israel late Tuesday afternoon that the Israeli government had allowed yet another building project in East Jerusalem to go forward. This one involves the Shepherd Hotel in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, a development that the Obama administration and Netanyahu have sparred over before. (Israel and its supporters say approval for the project was given last year, and the fact that a group of settlers will be allowed to build compounds there is nothing new).

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor was quoted as saying the Obama administration is seeking "clarification" of the latest building plan.

U.S. officials wouldn't say whether the Shepherd Hotel plan was specifically discussed at White House meetings yesterday and today, but it seems hard to believe it wasn't.

The current crisis was sparked by Israel's decision to go forward with another project, involving 1,600 apartments, during a visit to the country by Vice President Joe Biden.

Netanyahu, who has reaffirmed Israel's right to build anywhere in Jerusalem, met with Obama for 89 minutes on Tuesday. But the prime minister and his staff stayed on at the White House, conferring in the Roosevelt Room, and then requested a second meeting with Obama, which lasted for half an hour.

Netanyahu was back at the White House today, meeting with U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, but not, so far as we know, Obama. 

 

We here at N&S stumbled across this stunning photo essay about the war in Afghanistan. Not only were the pictures captivating but the introduction leading up to it, which reads:  “In March, the war in Afghanistan will become the lengthiest military conflict in U.S. history.” I can’t think of a conflict the U.S. military has engaged in that has lasted longer than nine years. Can you?

Assuming it is true, I think more than anything, this fact will contribute to a debate already picking up at the Pentagon about the future of counterinsurgency. Will the U.S. military be engaged in another counterinsurgency effort after Iraq and Afghanistan? And if so where? Three of the biggest arguments against it are that counterinsurgency warfare is man intensive, expensive and protracted. That is, it is demanding of any military but especially an all-volunteer force. The case is building in some parts of the Pentagon to stay out of counterinsurgency. Given the state of the economy, there is not as large an appetite for a costly military effort, and the military knows this. And now that Afghanistan appears to be the longest U.S. military engagement in history – even as it is far from over for the United States –only bolsters the case for the United States staying out of counterinsurgency war, at least for the foreseeable future.

British intelligence sees the threat posed by al Qaida as more serious than does its close partner, the CIA, which thinks that its intensified drone attacks on extremist hideouts in Pakistan's tribal area have helped undermine the terrorist network's ability to carry out sophisticated operations.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government released a progress report Monday on the implementation of its national security strategy that warned that the danger of an al Qaida attack remains dangerously acute.

"Although under significant pressure in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, we know that al Qaida continues to plan and conduct terrorist operations, both in the region and against the West," says the British report. "The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre judges the current threat level in the UK to be SEVERE, meaning that a terrorist attack is highly likely."

Contrast the British analysis with the views of CIA Director Leon Panetta. He told the Washington Post in a March 17 interview that the intensified U.S. drone attacks and better coordination with Pakistan's security services have seriously hampered al Qaida's ability to plan sophisticated operations and have driven Osama bin Laden and his top aides deeper underground.

"It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run," asserted Panetta.

Perhaps the CIA and MI6 need to talk.

Like other senior Bush administration officials, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thinks that invading Iraq was the right thing to do and she would do it all over again if she had to.

"I would many times over liberate Iraq again from Saddam Hussein," Rice was quoted as telling an audience on Friday at the Chinese University of Hong Kong by the Associated Press. "I think he was a danger to the Middle East."

The only thing she would do differently, she said, would be to focus the massive U.S.-led reconstruction effort outside of Baghdad.

"We tried to rebuild Iraq from Baghdad out, and really should have rebuilt Iraq from outside Baghdad in," she said. "We should have worked with the tribes, worked in the provinces.

Wouldn't she also question the intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs and ties to al Qaida much more critically next time around?

Or perhaps Ms. Rice didn't read a recently declassified 2006 study by U.S. Joint Forces Command of the turbulent period that followed the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

The study, entitled "Transition in Iraq: Changing Environment, Changing Organizations, Changing Leadership" and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Federation of American Scientists, confirmed that the Bush administration's post-invasion planning was riddled with flaws.

It found that the plan for coordinating U.S. military and civilian efforts to stabilize Iraq following Saddam's ouster was not available until after the invasion began and that the steps it outlined were not followed. Among other things, the plan called for "reform of the Iraqi military vice disillusion of the Iraqi military."

"The transition that occurred was not the one that was planned," it said.

Moreover, assumptions underpinning the plan were unrealistically rosy, the study found.

The plan called for the withdrawal of the U.S.-led invasion force within two months, employing the U.S. troops who replaced it for only 120 days, and establishing "a functioning government within 30-60 days."

An "insufficient and untimely availability of resources," including shortages of personnel, communications and intelligence capabilities, "impeded (the) effectiveness of post-combat operations and contributed to a difficult transition," the study said.

As it is known seven years and tens of thousands of Iraqi and American casualties later, difficult is an understatement.

The anniversary has come today without so much as a whimper. Seven years ago today, the United States invaded Iraq, marking the commencement of one of the most controversial national security decisions of our time. I was in Jordan at the time, reporting on the Arab streets, and I remember a colleague called and told me a the war had begun (President Bush made his announcement in the middle of the night local time.) After weeks of haggling, stammering, negotiating and cajoling, the news that the invasion had actually begun stunned me silent. I had a sinking feeling as I heard the news. That call, and the events that followed, have fundamentally altered the lives of millions of Iraqis and troops. It also redefined how we think about preemptive warfare, counterinsurgency and nation building.

Is the war over? The United States says it is for her. U.S. troops will be down to 50,000 by the end of the summer, from 97,000 today. But if it not over for the Iraqis, can we call it over? And if so, how? Iraq has just completed a national election and officials are determining who won what and who should get seats in the government. Ye Iraqi governance and the elections process itself remains nascent. And the war still feels far from over. Security remains a concern, and it is still not clear that U.S.-backed form of Iraqi governance can sustain itself after the U.S. forces leave.

Yet for most Americans, it is somehow irrelevant. They want out. So does the Obama administration. Now, many will say there is nothing more the United States can do in Iraq, that Iraq is a sovereign nation that has asked us to leave. But today, seven years later, I can’t help but wonder where U.S. responsibility should end, not only to the Iraqis but the U.S. troops killed and injured there. And how does one determine that? I have been covering the war since the day of that phone call, and I still wrestle to find an answer. I would welcome your thoughts.

The largest military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan burst every preconception one may have of what being stationed in a war looks like. Simply put, they have been supersized. An installation that houses 20,000 is commonplace. And they feel farther away from the war front with each passing year. In Kandahar, there is a boardwalk, several fast food chains, a beauty parlor, coffee houses and stores that look much like a Walmart. The idea was to make the soldiers feel comfortable. But to troops stationed in remote outposts where showers are a luxury, the sight of such megabases can be galling. Having visited several bases, it never ceases to be a shocking sight. I always walk away stunned that the fastest development happening in these troubled states are on these bases.

Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal tried to stop the burgeoning of bases that so contradict the experiences one associates with war. McChrystal wanted the military to use space to support the war, he said, not America’s need to consume. Sending in pizza boxes, Whopper wrappers and the like demand convoys, after all. And such facilities take up valuable space. Out came Burger King from some bases, McChrystal declared earlier this year. But no sooner had he announced the military should scale down the Whoppers, I learned there is now a TGIF restaurant at Kandahar Air Field. You can read a CBC reporter’s visit to the restaurant here. That’s right, a chain restaurant. It’s along the boardwalk, the very place where the Burger King once sat. Now instead of standing in line, placing an order and scurrying back to work, soldiers can now sit down, chat with the server and relax.

I guess there are some things even a war commander can’t defeat, namely America’s need for chain food.