McChrystal eyes securing Kandahar – CNN.com
The top U.S. general in Afghanistan vowed that coalition forces “are absolutely going to secure Kandahar,” as security efforts expand in the country’s south.….The push to secure Kandahar from what McChrystal calls a “menacing Taliban presence” is part of a larger counterinsurgency effort in the country’s south, started last month [...]

Opinion: It’s Still George Bush’s World – AOL News
Even more than a year after his inauguration, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda is still largely devoted to fixing the messes he inherited from Bush. And that’s likely to continue to be the case for quite some time to come, unless Obama makes a more fundamental [...]

Who knew it would turn out to be quite so simple to round up much of the senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban?
Well, the reality is that most of us suspected it would be easy.  They’ve been operating more or less openly in Quetta since 2002, and have been active in Karachi for at least [...]

I’ve been very skeptical of escalation in Afghanistan. Part of my skepticism was based on the belief that our actions would have little impact on Pakistan’s willingness to take action against the Afghan Taliban.  But recent arrests certainly cast doubt on that assessment:
Half of Afghanistan Taliban leadership arrested in Pakistan / The Christian Science Monitor [...]

In his column featured in this month’s Armed Forces Journal, American Security Project (ASP) Senior Fellow Bernard Finel makes a convincing argument for the use of conventional military operations over counterinsurgency (COIN) operations to defeat threats. For a military designed to enact quick, decisive military operations, Finel explains that counterinsurgency operations do not reflect the [...]

Britain, Japan to help reintegrate Taliban foot soldiers – washingtonpost.com
Britain and Japan have agreed to head an international fund, expected to total up to $500 million over the next five years, as part of a broad plan to help lure Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with the promise of jobs, protection against retaliation, and [...]

U.S. Envoy’s Cables Show Deep Concerns on Afghan Strategy – NYTimes.com
The ambassador, who left the military last April to become Mr. Obama’s emissary, also complained about an inadequate civilian counterpart organization to the NATO military command in Afghanistan. Nearly three months later, he is still expressing concerns about too few civilian experts in Afghanistan.
He also [...]

CongressDaily – Obama To Request $14.2B To Train, Equip Afghan Forces
President Obama is preparing to ask Congress for another $14.2 billion to grow, train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces for the remainder of this fiscal year and in FY11
This is roughly equivalent to Afghanistan’s GDP.  Think about that.  And is just addition train [...]

U.S. ambassador puts brakes on plan to utilize Afghan militias against Taliban – washingtonpost.com
Afghan officials and Eikenberry have also expressed concern that unless there is a detailed plan to connect these village security forces to Ministry of Interior oversight, they could fuel the rise of warlords and undermine the already fragile government in Kabul. Another [...]

From Max Boot:
Commentary » Blog Archive » The Need for Getting Good at Nation Building
Problem is, the U.S. government still lacks the right resources and structures to tackle effectively the difficult task of state-building (or, as it is popularly known, “nation building”) in the Third World.
I find this sort of essay tremendously disheartening. Boot [...]