An Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft, January 18, 2011

War seems imminent again. According to The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, the Americans believe that there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran before June of this year when Iran is expected to enter what the Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb.

“Very soon,” he writes, “the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon—and only the United States could then stop them militarily.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn’t done yet.

The United States are reluctant to engage in military action against Iran. Attacking the country carries great tactical and strategic risks.

Iran has threatened to shut the narrow Strait of Hormuz if menaced which would put roughly 40 percent of the world’s seaborn oil transports at risk.

Tehran has more retaliatory options at its disposal across the Middle East. It could seek to incite Shī’ah violence in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq where there are no longer American forces to quell sectarian unrest. The Iranians could also encourage Hezbollah to initiate a renewed missile barrage against Israel. Reportedly, the Israelis are anticipating such a counterstrike and expect casualties on their side to number in the several hundreds.

According to Ignatius, Israel believes that a military strike could be limited and contained. “They would bomb the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and other targets; an attack on the buried enrichment facility at Qom would be harder from the air.”

This would appear to confirm a 2004 report in the German magazine Der Spiegel which said Israel had prepared a “complex yet manageable” plan of attack against six nuclear sites which were to be bombed simultaneously. The scenario envisioned Israeli jets traversing Iraqi airspace. With the Americans no longer present in the country, that could be complicated.

Israeli fighters are more likely to fly over southern Turkey or northern Saudi Arabia to reach their targets now. Neither country wants to have another nuclear neighbor.

The mountainous terrain in the northwest of Iran inhibits the country’s antiquated radar warning systems from spotting the Israelis from afar which makes the northern route an attractive one. Turkey, however, likes to think of itself as an interlocutor between Iran and the West and does not want to be perceived as an ally of Israel’s anymore.

The Saudis, by contrast, are engaged in something of a cold war with the Iranians and wouldn’t stop Israeli aircraft from overflying their northern desert. They have even warned that if Tehran gets the bomb, other powers in the region (i.e., Saudi Arabia) will seek a similar weapons capacity.

Ballistic missiles probably aren’t an option for Israel because they aren’t as accurate as aircraft delivering precision guided munition.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are scattered and concealed. It would be nearly impossible for an attacker, whether it’s Israel, the United States or both, to take out all of the Iranian nuclear sites in a single strike even if their bunker busting bombs are capable of obliterating the ayatollahs’ fortified positions. A unilateral Israeli strike this year would at best set the Iranians back several years in their alleged quest for a nuclear weapons capacity. Indeed, it would likely strengthen their conviction that Iran needs the ultimate weapon to defend itself against Israel.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appears on Fox News' On The Record, February 2

Republican senator Lindsey Graham voiced concern about the future of American military involvement in Afghanistan a day after his country’s defense secretary, Leon Panetta, had told NATO allies in Brussels that the United States could suspend combat operations as early as 2013, a year before the alliance is scheduled to transfer security responsibility to the Afghans.

Graham, a South Carolina native and Air Force veteran, is a noted national security hawk who previously questioned the administration’s decision to withdraw thirty thousand surge troops from Afghanistan before the end of this year. “This is all domestic politics,” he said on Fox News’ On The Record on Thursday. “There is no military commander suggesting that we pull out in September of this year the surge forces.”

In bringing home tens of thousand of troops this year, President Barack Obama overruled his military advisors who recommended a slower withdrawal. Admiral Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last June that the president’s plans were more “more aggressive and incur more risk” than he was originally prepared to accept. Before he resigned in July, defense secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that waning popular support for the grinding military effort was a factor in the government’s decision to draw down forces at a faster pace.

“If we take combat operations off the table in 2013, that’s the second fighting season we’ve lost,” Graham lamented. He worried that General John Allen, the commander of international forces operating in Afghanistan, wouldn’t have the resources necessary to expand his counterinsurgency effort into the eastern tribal regions where the Taliban maintain an active presence.

Defense secretary Panetta insisted that Western troops “will have to be fully combat ready” and will fight “as necessary” even as native forces assume the security lead. However, few NATO countries are still willing to see the war through.

Just two weeks ago, France suspended its combat operations after four servicemen were shot and killed by a local trainee. President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a war weary electorate as well, could pull out French forces by 2013, a year ahead of the 2014 deadline that was set by NATO two years ago.

These moves communicate a weakness to the insurgents, said Graham. “If you’re trying to win a war and negotiate with the enemy, you want to do so from strength.” Republicans are critical of setting deadlines for troops withdrawals altogether, fearing that the Taliban will bid for time and return to power once Western armies have left the country.

Asked what advice he would give the president, Graham said, “What I think he should do is enter into an agreement with the Afghan Government at their request to have military bases in the country, three or four, past 2014, with air power and Special Forces units that can defeat the Taliban in perpetuity. Then you negotiate with them. Not now.”

There may not be the political will to commit to Afghan security in the long term. Vice President Joe Biden told NBC News in December 2010 that the United States were “gonna be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014.” Other administration officials have been less adamant but far from clear on what, if any, military engagement the president envisions in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline.

Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan's foreign minister, addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26 (Remy Steinegger)

Pakistan’s foreign minister on Wednesday rejected claims that her country’s spy agency was actively supporting the Taliban in their fight against NATO forces in Afghanistan. “We have no hidden agenda in Afghanistan,” Hina Rabbani Khar said in Kabul.

The BBC and The Times reported earlier in the day that insurgents captured by Western forces had told them that with Pakistani support, the Taliban were poised to return to power after 2014 when NATO’s mission is supposed to come to an end.

“Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly,” the BBC quoted a NATO report as saying.

This confirms the suspicion that was raised by America’s top military officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, last year when he said that the Haqqani network, a militant Islamist organization that is allied to but not necessarily affiliated with the Taliban, “has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani Government and is, in many ways, a strategic arm” of Pakistani intelligence.

The NATO study that was obtained by British news media also asserted that Taliban leaders meet regularly with Pakistani intelligence officers “who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the government of Pakistan.” It alleged that Islamabad was “intimately involved” in an effort to topple President Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul.

Pakistan’s civilian authorities may not be part of the plot but there is little question that its intelligence services and possibly its military maintain ties with Afghan insurgents in order to regain their influence in the country once NATO forces pull out.

Taliban sanctuaries are known to exist in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. NATO commanders have long complained that they hamper the war effort and that there doesn’t appear to be the political will in Islamabad to crush the Islamist insurgency on their frontier.

The Pakistanis are reluctant to expand counterinsurgency operations because they have to prepare for the eventuality of a Taliban resurgence if not the formation of a “Pashtunistan” in the tribal area that manages to assert itself independently of Kabul.

Pakistan, moreover, regards the modern day mujahideen as a wedge against India, to be deployed whenever New Delhi seeks to strengthen its ties with the Afghans. India has indeed fostered relations with the Karzai regime to upset Pakistan’s quest for “strategic depth” in the country.

The rivalry that has defined South Asia for half a century won’t dissipate overnight, no matter America’s insistence that the Pakistanis have nothing to fear from India and little to gain from betraying the West.

The Pakistanis have problems of their own. Years of antiterrorist operations by a majority Punjabi army in predominantly Pashtun territory have pushed the Muslim nation onto the brink of civil war. The army’s offensives in the region displaced nearly half a million people. Before the Afghan war escalated, the battle was confined to the tribal areas but since 2008, it has spread into Pakistan proper with bombings and assassinations taking place in major cities including Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.

Since the United States are preparing to withdraw, it makes no sense for the Pakistanis to crack down on extremists that might prove an asset in the future. The surest way for them to fill the power vacuum that will be left in Kabul once the Americans are gone is to cultivate ties with the Taliban and their allies. If they don’t, there may be a place for India in whatever power constellation emerges across Pakistan’s porous western border in the next couple of years.

Downtown Damascus, Syria, November 28, 2010 (Marc Veraart)

Despite the Arab League’s decision to extend, and then suspend, its monitoring mission in Syria in reaction to the uptick in violence, the conflict in this historically rich nation is becoming increasingly more violent.  What was once a near resemblance of other “Arab spring” protests, with hundreds of thousands marching for human rights and dignity, has churned into an armed confrontation between security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and defectors from the Syrian army.  It is now common to not only read about the crimes committed by the regime, which are horrific enough, but about retaliatory attacks from anti-Assad rebels as well.

The main armed opposition, the Free Syrian Army, is evolving into the only force capable of inflicting pain on Assad’s powerful security apparatus. And to the consternation of President Assad and his generals, the militia continues to grow in numbers, with dozens of soldiers at a time ditching their Syrian army uniforms to join the rebels’ ranks.

Assad’s most vocal political critics in the opposition Syrian National Council are undoubtedly worried about where this dispute is going.

The SNC has tried to put forth a nonviolent solution to Assad’s indiscriminate crackdown, such as pressing Arab League officials to hand over the Syria portfolio to the United Nations Security Council, which is more trained and experienced in keeping the peace and holding deplorable governments accountable for their abuses. But with Russia stonewalling any opening for a Security Council resolution against the Assad regime, real, not just symbolic, action from the United Nations is far off.

The Syrians getting shot at every day, despite the presence of Arab League observers, are short of options. As one Syrian defector told the Washington Post, “We can’t get weapons, and we don’t have help. We need a no-fly zone.”

That request, however, is out of the question, at least for now. France, Great Britain and the United States, the three states that are trying their hardest to crank up the pressure on Assad, have not included any sort of military action in their list of options. Washington, ever fearful of instability and learning from its mistakes in Iraq, is not keen on using force without plying through of the other alternatives. Many would like to see Assad overthrown but not at the cost of opening up a Pandora’s
box.

Syria is one of the most diverse and heterogeneous societies in the Middle East, with Muslims living in the same neighborhoods as Christians and Alawites sharing the same cities as Sunnis. Eliminate a strongman and the prospects of a multiethnic society simply working out their differences without further violence is highly unrealistic. Washington and its allies are thus limited in options, with economic sanctions and international condemnation the two safest choices for now.

Therein lays the difficulty and complexity of the Syrian crisis. Bashar al-Assad is clearly at his most isolated. Even the Islamist militant group Hamas, which has been a stalwart ally of the Syrian Government since Bashar’s time, is packing up its suitcases and looking for a new home. But his security forces, ruled by family loyalists and packed with officers from Assad’s own Alawite sect, have retained their core. Soldiers are deserting but they are mainly low level Sunni soldiers, tired of shooting fellow Syrians in the back. Only one Syrian general has joined the opposition since the crackdown began last March.

There appears be no end to this cycle of tit for tat violence. The FSA may be making strides and expanding its operational reach to new territory but it is difficult to believe that any of those gains can be sustained without either a wholesale international military support or a sudden influx of new recruits that thins out the Syrian army.

The Syrian military’s latest offensive around the suburbs of Damascus is both a positive and a negative development from the point of the view of the opposition. Positive, because it exemplifies how overstretched Assad’s security forces have become over the last ten months; negative due to faster death tolls on all sides.

One thing is certain. Syria is in the middle of a whirlpool and Bashar al-Assad will use all of his firepower and military resources to not only instill pain on millions of his opponents but on the hope that his supporters in the establishment will continue to back him out of fear of what could come next.

USS Carl Vinson receives fuel and supplies from USNS Yukon during a replenishment at sea in the Pacific Ocean, December 8, 2010

President Barack Obama’s planned reductions in defense spending have earned him considerable criticism from the right. One of his potential Republican challengers, Mitt Romney, laments that the United States Navy “is smaller than it’s been since 1917.” Other conservatives claim that the cuts in military spending will put the nation at risk.

The “cuts,” worth nearly $900 billion over the next ten years, won’t necessarily reduce spending from today’s $671 billion defense budget. Rather, they will reduce projected increases in spending. Part of the reduction will happen if America winds down its engagement in Afghanistan in 2014. For 2012, the Pentagon has requested $118 billion for overseas military operation, the bulk of which is to finance the Afghan war.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates identified some $400 billion more in savings, largely in organization and procurement. He capped production of the new F-22 fighter jet for instance, much to the dismay of national security hawks in Congress.

Yet it’s because of Congress’ failure to find cuts elsewhere that the Defense Department faces an additional half a trillion dollars worth of reductions.

In budget negotiations last year, Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a plan for long term fiscal consolidation. As a result, some $500 billion in automated cuts was enacted.

Defense secretary Leon Panetta, Gates’ successor, had forecast “doomsday” if the sequester cuts were to come into effect. The American military would be reduced to a “paper tiger,” he said, one that “invites aggression.”

Whatever the effect on the military’s ability to project power, even with the $500 billion in additional savings, the defense budget will not shrink in real terms but remain stagnant for the next ten years.

Since September 11, 2001, defense spending has increased by almost 7 percent a year, up from $291 billion ten years ago. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that in order for the military to execute its base budget plans for this decade, it needed a total of $597 billion or 11 percent more than if funding was held at the 2011 level. Military spending would thus rise by almost $60 billion a year on average unless entire weapons programs were reconsidered or pay and benefits for servicemen and -women was reduced.

As procurement costs rise because weapons system are ever more sophisticated, there will have to be reductions in the force to accommodate the budget squeeze. Army and Marine Corps will lose troops as the strategic emphasis shifts to the Pacific realm where air and sea power are deemed critical.

It’s because of this “Asia pivot” that the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Brian Slattery questions the wisdom of not having a more robust navy. “The US fleet, amid a host of defense issues in need of attention, cannot atrophy any further,” he believes. Among those issues; China’s “increasing efforts to assert its ‘indisputable sovereignty’ over the South China Sea.”

If President Obama wishes to follow through on pledges of a greater Pacific presence, he must either somehow overturn much of the defense slashing he has implemented or attempt to loot other defense accounts to fund a sustainable blue water navy.

In real terms, the US Navy has diminished in size from nearly six hundred ships at the end of the Cold War in 1989 to 283 in 2009. Under current plans, the force could approach the number of 245 ships that were in service before the United States joined the First World War in 1916.

Before it faced the $500 billion in sequestered cuts, the Pentagon envisioned buying 275 new ships over the next thirty years at a total cost of $465 billion—although the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost would be closer to $539 billion through 2041, about 16 percent more.

More than two hundred of those ships would be for combat with seventy for logistics and support missions. Given the rate at which the Navy planned to retire ships from the fleet, the total number in service would remain over three hundred throughout the thirty years period.

It’s unclear how the additional $500 billion in reductions will impact long term procurement although the Pentagon announced Wednesday that it plans to cut sixteen ships from its five year budget plans which would reduce the number of new ships funded in fiscal 2013 by three, from thirteen down to ten.

Secretary Panetta, moreover, insists that whatever the size of the cuts, the navy will maintain its eleven carrier strike groups with the newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, scheduled to replace the USS Enterprise in 2015.

It seems altogether unlikely that the fleet will approach 1917 levels. Even if it did, it must be noted that simply counting the number of ships gives one a poor indication of American naval power. The vessels that are in service with the US Navy today are among the most sophisticated (and most expensive) in the world. Numbers matter less than capacity and in this regard, the United States military is—and will for decades remain—unparalleled.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey meets with Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, chief of General Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, January 20

America’s and Israel’s top military officers on Friday downplayed differences in policy between the two countries. Despite rumors of discord on how best to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapons capacity, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, the head of Israel’s defense forces, said, “I do know that both our countries share the same interests, both the same values, and I’m sure that we can somehow work it out together.”

Army General Martin E. Dempsey said his first visit to the Jewish state since assuming the chairmanship of the Joints Chiefs of Staff in October of last year reflected “the commitment we have with each other, and I’m here to assure you that’s the case.”

In a later meeting, Dempsey was told by President Shimon Peres that Israel had confidence in the United States military and “that even today in a very complicated situation we can find a common ground.”

Dempsey’s trip, despite assurances that there is no daylight between the two allies, is perceived as part of an effort by the United States to convince Israel to give international sanctions more time and stave off unilateral military action against Iran.

The two Western countries suspect that Iran’s uranium enrichment program is aimed to developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has denied this and threatened to shut access to the Persian Gulf if more sanctions are enacted which would put 40 percent of the world’s seaborn oil transports at risk.

Israeli officials have welcomed tightening sanctions against Tehran but sometimes questioned America’s resolve. Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli military chief, suggested on Sunday there is “hesitation” on the part of the Obama Administration to apply tougher sanctions “for fear of oil prices rising this year.”

Gasoline and oil transport insurance costs could skyrocket if there is a naval skirmish in the Persian Gulf. A prolonged Iranian blockade may lead to shortages because the United States import more than a million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia, the bulk of which is transported by sea through the Gulf. After Canada, the kingdom is America’s second largest oil supplier.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities but his defense minister, Ehud Barack, this week offered more conciliatory words, saying that an Israeli decision on whether to attack Iran was “very far off.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France participates in a military remembrance ceremony in Paris, June 6, 2011

France on Friday warned that it may accelerate the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan after four unarmed French servicemen were shot and fifteen others wounded in a killing spree by an Afghan soldier in the northeastern Kapisa Province.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the immediate suspension of training and joint combat operations with Afghan forces. “The French army stands alongside its allies but we cannot accept that a single one of our soldiers be wounded or killed by our allies,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”

NATO played down the threat. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the organization’s secretary general, insisted that attacks by Afghan forces are rare. “Such tragic incidents are terrible and grab headlines but they are isolated,” he said before pointing out that there are some 130,000 foreign soldiers serving alongside three hundred thousand Afghans.

France’s participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan is unpopular. Sarkozy’s two main challengers for the presidency this year, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande and Marine Le Pen of the far right and isolationist Front nationale, have each promised to bring the roughly four thousand Frenchmen who serve in Afghanistan home. Elections in France are scheduled for April and May.

The president on Friday said that he would dispatch his defense minister to Afghanistan to investigate the shooting. He added that if Afghan authorities cannot ensure the safety of French troops, “the question of an early withdrawal of the French army would arise.”

Afghanistan’s defense ministry said the attacker had been arrested and was being questioned. President Hamid Karzai is due to visit Paris next week.

French troops in Afghanistan concentrate on training local security forces which includes accompanying them on patrols. The force is set to be reduced to three thousand this year before NATO hands over security responsibility to the Afghans in 2014.

The latest deaths brought to number of French soldiers killed in Afghanistan since deployment to eighty-two.

View of Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, January 13, 2007 (Eesti)

Al Qaeda’s core organizational leadership may be at its weakest point in over a decade but the group’s regional franchises are certainly making up for their losses.

Nowhere in the world is this more obvious than in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, with a government fractured internally and system of political parties fighting among itself. Add acute child undernourishment, widespread illiteracy, inaccessible health care services and a country awash in weapons to the picture, and it is a wonder why terrorists did not try to expand their territorial reach in Yemen sooner.

Yemen was in horrible shape to begin with, even before millions of Yemeni demonstrators took to the streets in strong opposition to their president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. But with eleven months of turmoil pitting security forces against demonstrators and armed tribes, in multiple cities, Al Qaeda’s wing in this Arabian Peninsula state has been given a gift from the ruling regime.

With Yemen’s elite counterterrorism units diverted to the capital and its army picked apart, AQAP is on the ascendancy, grabbing territory in the south and attempting to do what they miserably failed to do in Iraq years earlier—establish an Islamic emirate in an Arab state.

Abyan Province along Yemen’s southern coast has been, and continues to be, the hotbed of AQAP’s governing project. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni outfit, which used to call itself Ansar al-Sharia, has been in firm control of two large Yemeni towns in the province, including the provincial capital of Zinjibar since May of last year.

Eight months later, AQAP militants remain in the city, administering their code of justice and attempting to exert their will on the local population, despite multiple offensives from what is left of Yemen’s armed forces. The city of one hundred thousand now resembles a deserted town, with buildings completely abandoned, streets marked with potholes and what were homes that have transformed into military garrisons  Residents are only just returning, after being refused entry by the militants twice before.

Two towns held by Al Qaeda are disturbing enough. But evidently, the militants are only beginning their trek for more land and resources.

Earlier this week, fighters connected to AQAP entered the interior Yemeni town of Rada’a without resistance from the police forces. Residents in the area reported that some policemen voluntarily gave their weapons to Al Qaeda before fleeing town. AQAP is now essentially the policemen, service provider and mayor of the city, all rolled into one. In case anyone doubted its strength, the militants hoisted their black flag above the town’s mosque in a show of defiance to the central government, demonstrating, in the meantime, that the people of Rada’a are now beholden to Al Qaeda rule.

Yemen’s interim unity government may not view Al Qaeda or terrorism in general as its top priority. Given the country’s horror story, from Saleh prolonging the transition process to a desperate cash flow problem, perhaps Yemen’s government should not be. But Al Qaeda is not waiting around for Yemen’s leaders to pounce before making their move. The Yemenis may not be worrying about it but you can bet that the United States intelligence community is.

At sunset a convoy of Canadian Light Armored Vehicles overwatches the area near Khadan Village, Afghanistan, January 25, 2010

With American and NATO forces preparing to pull out of Afghanistan in 2014, will counterinsurgency soon be over? No, writes retired United States Army Colonel Robert Killebrew at Foreign Policy. The real counterinsurgency is only just beginning.

Killebrew defines counterinsurgency as the deployment of American power in support of local combat forces. If a foreign army becomes too involved in a local struggle, he points out, it risks “stealing the oxygen” from the essential relationship between native government and the insurgents who are fighting it.

It may be necessary for one of our troops to shoot an insurgent from the next village but killing somebody’s cousin isn’t going to make either us or the local government loved. If there ever was a doubt, look at the celebrations breaking out in Iraq with our departure.

The intense counterterrorism campaign that has been waged in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan for roughly the last two years hasn’t made the United States very popular there. Both Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul and officials in Islamabad have demanded an end to nighttime raids by special forces and aerial bombardments by unmanned “drone” planes in the unruly tribal area along the frontier.

By 2014, American and other Western armies currently fighting in Afghanistan are scheduled to transfer security responsibility to the Afghan forces. “What this means,” writes Killebrew, “is that Afghan forces do the fighting, helped by small American advisory teams embedded in Afghan units, living and fighting alongside Afghan troops, and backed up by US air power and logistics.” No longer would the Americans be perceived as meddling in an internal conflict, rather the central government bears responsibility for ending the insurgency.

“This is not new to us,” writes Killebrew. The United States have worked alongside and supported local troops in conflicts for decades, most recently in Vietnam, El Salvador, Colombia and the Philippines.

In Colombia, a success story, a Colombian general complimented the US for getting it right and “letting us fight our own war.”

Colombia’s guerrilla against the FARC as well as Sri Lanka’s battle against Tamil insurgents provide lessons for counterinsurgencies elsewhere.

Niel Smith wrote about the Sri Lankan experience in Small Wars Journal more than two years ago. The conditions for a successful counterinsurgency, he argued, included an unwavering political will; disregard for international opinion and internal opposition distracting from the goal; no negotiations with the forces of terror and; complete freedom for the security forces.

Smith admitted that, “Most Western readers will find the lack of concern for civilian casualties in this strategy disconcerting.” A “ruthless” counterinsurgency however does resolve a conflict more quickly and therefore incurs less collateral damage whereas a “population centric” approach, aimed at winning the “hearts and minds” of the populace, “while humanistic, takes longer, with uncertain probabilities of success.”

So the question Killebrew raises is whether the Obama Administration, “the Defense Department and the services have the stomach for such a shift to the actual prosecution of a counterinsurgency effort.” This, he admits, is still an open question.

A US Marine greets local children during a partnered security patrol with Afghan National Army soldiers in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, December 18, 2011

American and NATO forces in Afghanistan have enough to deal with as is but a video that surfaced a few days ago of US Marines urinating on three dead Taliban militants—the men joking and laughing as they did—will only make the job of pacifying the country that much more difficult.

On top of bomb blasts, IED attacks straddled along major roadways and ambushes during neighborhood patrols, the soldiers that are now operating in Taliban infested areas will very likely be faced with an uptick in violence in response to the video.

Even more disparaging, the Afghan people who have either seen or heard of the tape, the very people that NATO has been trying to court for the past two years, could very well start distancing themselves from the war effort.

The video has yet to be fully authenticated but Pentagon officials say they have no reason to believe that it is a farce. Senior American officials have certainly been acting as if the video was real. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have issued press statements and interviews strongly condemning the actions of the individual Marines.

In a joint press meeting with Algeria’s foreign minister, Secretary Clinton said she joined Secretary Panetta in “condemning the deplorable behavior that is reflected in this video.”

It is absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel and the vast, vast majority of our military personnel, particularly our Marines, hold themselves to.

Both officials have been frantically telephoning their Afghan counterparts. Panetta called President Hamid Karzai to reassure him that the United States military will spare no effort in investigating why the soldiers in the video did what they did; who those soldiers are; and what type of punishment fits their misconduct.

Marine Commandant General James Amos has ordered the Naval Criminal Investigative Services and the Marine Corps to look into the matter as diligently and thoughtfully as they can.

The United States clearly understand that this incident is extremely serious and that if not handled properly, could have a lasting impact on not only Afghans but Muslims around the world.

Sadly, the urination video is not an anomaly or the first of its kind. The US military has been embarrassed a number of times over the last ten years of war, not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq.

The most graphic and publicized case was back in 2004 when CBS News aired dozens of disturbing photographs depicting American military policemen posing in the front of naked and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison facility.

In 2006, Time magazine ran a story about a band of Marines from Kilo Company that shot and killed twenty-four Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha without inquiring whether any of those individuals were belligerents. The casualties included unarmed women and children.

In 2010, Rolling Stone broke a controversial story describing a rogue American unit in Afghanistan where some of its soldiers hunted Afghan civilians for sport. Photographs of the accused troops smiling next to the dead Afghans accompanied the publication’s version of events.

The “vast, vast” majority, as Secretary Clinton put it, of American armed forces personnel operating in Afghanistan and other war zones is professional, disciplined, brave and caring—not only caring deeply for their country but for the people who are entrusted in their area of operation. This must be remembered especially when something terrible like Abu Ghraib happens under America’s watch.

One hopes that the perpetrators of this video are brought to some kind of justice, if not for the sake of justice itself then for the health of the war effort which relies on gaining the trust of the people and host government the American troops are fighting for. But as the inquires are launched and the final judgments made, it must also be recognized that the unethical or illegal acts of a few soldiers do not tinge the character of the entire service. If that were the case, the morale of the enemy would be reinforced and the heroism of people who choose to answer their nation’s call to arms unjustly tainted.