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POPSEx-Army commander says MoD 'institutionally incapable He cited personal reasons for leaving, but it was widely reported that he was unhappy with the MoD's treatment of British soldiers. He had commanded the 7,750-strong 52 Infantry Brigade in Helmand in 2007/08 and achieved much lower casualty rates in the operation to take Musa Qala than comparable operations by other British brigades, which he attributed to the adoption of different tactics. Maj-Gen Mackay's paper claims that if the military was to be successful in battle, it had to use a more 'behaviourist' approach alongside its traditional 'kinetic' power.
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POPSCanada in Afghanistan When all the Moaning Minnies finish whining on about we Brits fighting the Push toons all on our own, perhaps a glimpse at my sisters' kids doing their bit. The Canadians have pledged to withdraw by 2011. Thank you, again, Canada and may your Gods keep a close eye on you and protect you.
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POPSA Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue. (sobering write up, read in full @ source)
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POPSForget Vietnam Analogies - Remember Cambodia and Laos - now Pakistan Pakistan is beginning to look like a combination of the not-so-secret wars in Cambodia and Laos - Those pesky Viet Cong kept slipping into Laos and Cambodia to escape B-52s. Those Taliban - they just won't stay in one place. Didn't the British say the same thing about those pesky Minute Men and Green Mountain boys. Not saying the Taliban are right in any way, it's just that - we are the British to the Afghans. When Afghans unite for their own freedom against the Taliban view of the world, they will win and we can go home. The training up of Afghan army and police also seems a lot like what we did not get right in Vietnam. why? Because, we are simply empowering rule by old tribal war lords. I suspect that the Afghan people want none of the Taliban, us or the tribal war lords. Think about how to help them come to fore might help to bring peace that will last.
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POPSThe message from Lawrence of Arabia: Watch Your Back From Money and Power Grubbers Imperialists hungering for power ruined what could have been and gave us 90 plus years of conflict that runs up to today's conflicts. Now old fashioned imperialists are gone but global oil, the military-industrial complex, fundamentalist wannabe dictators and terrorists have agendas that don't support an Afghanistan for Afghans, a free Palestine and Israel, a prosperous Paskitan and on and on it goes. Simple solutions for complex social-political issues are almost always wrong and cause more harm.
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POPSCan Afghans Leap from 13th Century to 21st in 16 Months? Seems as though Mark Twain could have been writing about Afghanistan when he said "habit can't be changed by throwing it down the stairs, it has to be eased down one step at a time." Some of our military and President's "advisers" should read this blog!
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POPS Faces of Displaced Afghans “The beneficiaries of our winter aid programme in Afghanistan are a mix of vulnerable recently returned refugees and internally displaced people, as well as others at particular risk in the cold winter weather,” said Ewen Macleod, UNHCR's representative in Afghanistan.(20 images)
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POPSIs Obama making America look weak? While I think it is important for a nation to appear strong, it isn't the only thing that is important. Taking the time to make a choice, might make the nation appear weaker, but it might also make it appear more rational and thoughtful. Both important qualities.
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POPSAfghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base 
The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his stated desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces. Military officials said as recently as this summer that the Afghanistan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said recently that there were no plans to close the jails. In August, the administration restricted the time that detainees could be held at the military jails to two weeks, changing previous Pentagon policy. In the past, the military could obtain extensions. The interviewed detainees had been held longer, but before the new policy went into effect. Mr. Hamid
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POPSAmerican with AK-47 says he fights off attack in Kabul... Interesting article. I'm sure the media will at some point determine if this story is true since those who escaped have been evacuated. He is 62 and according to his father had fought with the Afghans against the Russians so he's been there quite some time.
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POPSAfghan Pres. Karzai's Brother on CIA Payroll Watch for an overthrow of the Karzai puppet government in total. Even Pres. Karzai (propped up in Congress by Bush in post-9/11 addresses) has become caught between U.S. and Afghan native interests, and increasingly at odds with U.S. military and the White House.
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POPSU.S. Official Resigns Over Afghanistan War Policy Hoh's letter caused a stir in the Obama administration, and he was hastened to meetings with senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. They praised his record of service and begged him to stay, offering him new positions in both locations. Hoh initially accepted the Washington job, but changed his mind a week later. Hoh said that his act of protest and decision to speak out were painful, even "nauseating" at times, but he was strongly motivated by the friends he had lost on the battlefield and the mental anguish he has experienced since returning home. "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right,' " he explained, adding that he "is not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love."
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POPSAfghanistan: 'No Democracy~Just Islam' and Burn Obama Effigy Afghan university students shout anti-US slogans and hold a banner reading 'No Democracy; We want just Islam!' during a demonstration in Kabul on October 25, 2009. ISLAMIZATION WATCH More than 100,000 foreign troops are battling a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, where violence this year reached its highest level since the austere Islamists were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001. Thick plumes of smoke rose above the crowd as protesters set fire to a large effigy of what they said was U.S. President Barack Obama. "Death to America. Down with Israel," chanted one man at the rally, which was organized mainly by university students. Others threw stones and clashed with police but no casualties were reported. "No to democracy. We just want Islam," said one banner carried by protesters, many of whom shook their fists in the air. Captain Elizabeth Mathias, a media officer for U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan,
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POPSLast-Man-Mistake-Death Opportunity Knocks
who said in a separate interview from Kabul, “I don’t see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces, or even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here today, without an adequate government in place.” His interview was broadcast on “Face the Nation.” The signals come as Republican critics already are complaining that the president is taking too long to decide They argue that Mr. Obama has left the impression of indecisiveness that has only emboldened the Taliban, making the task of the 68,000 American troops already there that much harder. Well, sometimes not making a decision is a decision. Not making a choice when you really have no choice is pretty much a forfeit, though. With every last one of our allies looking on, doing the mental calculus on which way to go now that the United States has shown itself to be utterly gutless and unreliable. With no vote of US confidence in any elected outcome whatsoever,
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