Conflict // Current

Sri Lanka Art Camp (In Pictures BBC NEWS)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8341615.stm "Tamil, Sinhalese, and Muslim... more

TaylorAlexandra
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Rabbi's remarks sharpen differences between Jewish leaders and youth over human rights

How can one decry young American Jews' disaffiliation from Israel, while at the same... more

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Wither Afghanistan: More troops or less troops?

FROM THE NEWS BLOG:
With the two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan today (killing 14 Americans), we wanted to check in real quick on how war #1 of our two wars is going.

Wired's Danger Room talks about how today's crashes reveal that helicopter are the "achilles' heel of the Afghan War", absolutely necessary in a country with few roads and constantly undersupplied. Maintenance on those that are there is apparently critical as well:
"Earlier this year, Popular Mechanics reporter Joe Pappalardo spent some time with the wrench-turners who keep the helicopters flying in Afghanistan. “Afghanistan,” he concluded, “is hell on helicopters.” Here’s a list of just a few of the things he noted that can go wrong: Temperature extremes that destroy seals and gaskets; “high/hot” flying conditions that reduce engine performance; dust and sand that ruin rotor blades and clog up hydraulics. And, of course, there’s the enemy. (Soviet helicopter operations were also vulnerable, albeit for a different reason: The delivery of the Stinger missile, courtesy of the United States.)"

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria looks at the question of troop levels in Afghanistan and points out that Obama is considering not "a surge" but "a third surge":
"The number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in January 2008 was 26,607. Over the next six months, the Bush administration raised the total to 48,250. President Bush described this policy as "the quiet surge," and he made the standard arguments about the need for a counterinsurgency capacity—the troops had to not only fight the Taliban but protect the Afghan population, strengthen and train the Afghan Army and police, and assist in development. In January 2009, another 3,000 troops, originally ordered by President Bush, went to Afghanistan in the first days of the Obama presidency. In February, responding to a request from the commander in the field, Obama ordered an additional 17,000 troops into the country. In other words, over the past 18 months, troop levels in Afghanistan have almost tripled. An additional 40,000 troops sent in the next few months would mean an almost 400 percent increase in U.S. troops since 2008. (The total surge in Iraq, incidentally, was just over 20,000 troops.) It is not dithering to try to figure out why previous increases have not worked and why we think additional ones would."

Boston.com's Big Picture also has another amazing set of photographs from Afghanistan, all taken in the month of October. (LINK BELOW)

Question of the day for you: What should Obama do with Afghanistan? Should he send more US troops to pacify rural areas? Reduce the troop levels and focus on urban areas? Or should he "Why not do the Petraeus plan [counterinsurgency] for the major population centers and the Biden plan [counterterrorism] for the rest of the country?" (Defense expert Tom Ricks in the Zakaria article)FROM THE NEWS BLOG: With the two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan today (killing 14... more

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The 34th Red Bull Infantry Division : C

Modern combat operations are not a simple matter of loading weapons, lacing boots and... more

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The Iran Attack

The Iran Attack Plan

By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

When the Israeli army's then-Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Halutz was asked in 2004 how far Israel would go to stop Iran's nuclear program, he replied: "2,000 kilometers," roughly the distance been the two countries.

Israel's political and military leaders have long made it clear that they are considering taking decisive military action if Iran continues to develop its nuclear program. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the United Nations this week that "the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

Reporting by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other sources has made it clear that whether or not Iran ties all of its efforts into a formal nuclear weapons program, it has acquired all of the elements necessary to make and deliver such weapons. Just Friday, Iran confirmed that it has been developing a second uranium-enrichment facility on a military base near Qom, doing little to dispel the long-standing concerns of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S. that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Bryan Christie
Iran has acquired North Korean and other nuclear weapons design data through sources like the sales network once led by the former head of Pakistan's nuclear program, A. Q. Khan. Iran has all of the technology and production and manufacturing capabilities needed for fission weapons. It has acquired the technology to make the explosives needed for a gun or implosion device, the triggering components, and the neutron initiator and reflectors. It has experimented with machine uranium and plutonium processing. It has put massive resources into a medium-range missile program that has the range payload to carry nuclear weapons and that makes no sense with conventional warheads. It has also worked on nuclear weapons designs for missile warheads. These capabilities are dispersed in many facilities in many cities and remote areas, and often into many buildings in each facility—each of which would have to be a target in an Israeli military strike.

It is far from certain that such action would be met with success.The Iran Attack Plan By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN When the Israeli army's then-Deputy... more