http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ The uniquely askew worldview of an ex-journalist, ex-PR guy, and ex-Afghan military advisor"endearingly macho" -- Mark Steyn"wonderfully detailed analysis" -- John Allemang, Globe and Mail"unusually candid" -- Tom Ricks, Foreignpolicy.com en-us 2010-09-09T01:58:39-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_09.html A colleague of mine was taking up an Afghan S2 (military intelligence) mentoring job: we talked for a while on the phone and in email, and the following is some of the general advice I offered. If I had to... 6779@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-09T01:58:39-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_07.html I always find that whenever I bring up John Paul Vann, I get the best emails afterwards. I thought this interchange I had with another Afghan vet, one who's forgotten more about the Spin Boldak area of Kandahar province than... 6783@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-07T23:52:06-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_07.html From the New York Times, a useful statistic: NATO late last year estimated Taliban strength at 25,000 fighters, an increase of 25 percent over the previous year.... 6782@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-07T02:08:25-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_07.html Tim Lynch, at FRI, once again: As the summer started I was optimistic regarding the chances that we would see some indications that we are gaining ground in Afghanistan but that has not happened. Incident rates are skyrocketing which in... 6781@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-07T01:54:12-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_07.html There's been a couple good pieces on the ethics of using UAVs recently, better than that Ron Rosenbaum failure I wrote about earlier. Dominic Tierney's is the one that most merits additional comment. The reliance on robots can make the... 6780@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-07T01:22:48-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_06.html I always feel a little bad about reading web comics... the better ones have given me so much happiness over the years, but it's like free ice cream... I really don't say how I'm incentivizing the creators very effectively. That's... 6778@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-06T00:29:56-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_03.html Twenty-two years ago, in the first week of September, I moved to Toronto. I remember sitting at a cafe at Bay and Charles with my dad, and watching the jets overhead warming up for the big Air Show. I don't... 6777@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-03T15:29:21-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_01.html I agree: the new Priority Inbox feature in Gmail and Google Apps-based mail is pretty nifty. I also appreciate the creative use of the word "woohoo!"... 6776@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-01T10:54:38-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_09_01.html Ron "Explaining Hitler" Rosenbaum starts off the month of bad Afghan articles early on UAVs. This is going to take a while... more below the fold.... 6775@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-09-01T02:08:06-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_08_31.html Letter writer Masud Sheikh, in the Globe today: Our government has behaved as if there are different classes of citizens; Rick Hillier made his famous “scumbag” comments. Our mental models make us see such actions as being within the bounds... 6774@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-08-31T09:15:36-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_08_30.html I may start a new award. This is a really poorly argued piece. Christian has already dissected much of it. I'll just add my thoughts on what's left. But allied attention has been focused on the easier fight of evicting... 6773@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-08-30T23:10:07-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_08_30.html Fired anti-PowerPoint crusader Col. Lawrence Sellin: Last autumn the US government announced that after 8 years and $27 billion, the Afghan Army training program was being declared a failure. Despite the fact that symptoms of failure were already appearing in... 6772@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-08-30T21:45:37-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_08_26.html From Ackerman, in Danger Room: What [soldiers] wanted to hear was a sure path — any path — to winning it. Or even just a clear definition of success. If the goal is stabilizing Afghanistan, what does that have to... 6771@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-08-26T10:33:41-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_08_23.html FRI, on the new Afghan anti-contractor law: Ignoring that there are not enough Afghan security forces to go around as it is and also that their proficiency in preforming these tasks is suspect (to put it politely) what about the... 6770@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-08-23T11:11:48-05:00 http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2010_08_19.html One of the better uses of the Wikileaks data to date, here. For those who still haven't figured out that this has been a war of the Afghan south and east, and much less so the north and west, hopefully... 6769@http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ 2010-08-19T15:58:53-05:00