I'm blogging the latest news about America's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Email or instant message me at NicoAfPak [at] gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter.
Full Eikenberry memos go public. America's ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry "repeatedly cautioned that deploying sizable American reinforcements would result in 'astronomical costs' -- tens of billions of dollars -- and would only deepen the dependence of the Afghan government on the United States," according to memos obtained by Eric Schmitt of the New York Times.
The memos, written (and reported on in broad terms) last November, also express "serious doubts about the ability of the Afghan police and military forces to take over security duties in the country by 2013. 'The Army's high attrition and low recruitment rates for Pashtuns in the south are crippling,' he wrote. 'Simply keeping the force at current levels requires tens of thousands of new recruits every year to replace attrition losses and battlefield casualties.'"
Eikenberry concludes by "cautioning of competing risks 'that we will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves, short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.'"
Read the full memos here, and Schmitt's write-up here.
2:07 PM ET -- Taliban car bomb near U.S. base injures 14.
A suicide car bomber targeted a U.S. base in Kabul on Tuesday, wounding 14 people, including eight American, officials said, hours after gunmen killed four policemen in southern Afghanistan.
The car bombing was the latest attack to hit Kabul, coming just over a week after a team of Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers staged an assault that paralyzed the city and left 12 people dead. The violence has underscored fears that militants would try to stage attacks ahead of a key international conference on Afghanistan to be held Thursday in London.
The bomber detonated a minivan packed with explosives near Camp Phoenix, an American base inside Kabul, wounding at least six Afghan civilians, said Jamil Jumbish, the head of Afghanistan's criminal investigation unit.
1:58 PM ET -- Obama team all over the place on Afghan timeline. A really brutal video by Derrick Crowe and the Rethink Afghanistan crew.
1:48 PM ET -- Expectations for the London conference. Laura Rozen recaps a reporter call with Britain's U.S. ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald:
On the security front, Sheinwald said the conference would seek to increase the number of trained and equipped Afghanistan national security forces by 104,000 troops and 71,000 police by October of next year.
Also sought as a deliverable from the meeting is an international trust fund to fund a reintegration and reconciliation program for Afghan Taliban. Sheinwald said the reintegration program was envisioned as an Afghan led effort.
Challenged by journalists about the empirical evidence of whether such a program would work, and whether hard-core Taliban had any interest in being reintegrated or would simply infiltrate supporters into Afghan government jobs and the cities through the program, Sheinwald acknowledged there are "some who remain irreconcilable, there is a always a hard core," but the point is "to whittle down the irreconcilable from the persuadable."
Sheinwald has an op-ed on the London conference here.
1:32 PM ET -- Like reading the Pentagon Papers in real time. Yale professor and HuffPost contributor David Bromwich asses the Eikenberry memos: "It is as if we had been offered a long look at several pages of the most disturbing prognosis in the Pentagon Papers; as if we could see the president reading them with us, and then deciding in spite of everything to go ahead with the war."
The extent to which these governments have destroyed the meaning of innocence and guilt is highlighted by Andrew Sullivan in his “Email of the Year” on his blog, the Daily Dish: The conclusion drawn by each of my colleagues – some of
Well it looks like Robert Reich isn't too thrilled about the President's latest proposal to freeze spending on domestic programs either. Ron Paul thinks it's not going to go anywhere in the Congress and from what I've read so far he's likely right. As Reich noted, when the economy is headed for the tank the government needs to act and is the purchaser of last resort. Sadly as so many have noted like Paul Krugman, we've gotten nothing but a weak stimulus bill that really didn't do enough to get us back on the road to recovery. I don't know how much worse the economy has got to get before someone in Washington decides to start taking the problem seriously.
When I hear more than talk about reigning in Wall Street and some regulation passed and the repeal of our crappy trade laws, I'll start to believe that our leaders in Washington are actually concerned about us not turning into a Banana Republic some time in the near future. Talk is cheap folks. We need some action.
KING: Before we get into the stimulus project, as promised, CNN's Ed Henry reports tonight that President Obama is set to announce a three-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending. That move would freeze discretionary spending at 447 billion dollars.
Joining us now to talk about that and to debate the stimulus and whether it is actually working, Robert Reich -- he was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration and now professor of public policy, University of California Berkeley. His most recent book is "Super Capitalism." And Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. He's the author of "End of the Fed."
What do you make -- we'll start with you Robert -- of the freezing of domestic programs for three years?
REICH: I don't think it makes much sense, Larry. I'll tell you why. The government, under the circumstances we now face, is the purchaser of last resort. Consumers are not buying. They're still scared for good reason. Businesses are not investing very much. They don't want to invest if they're not consumers out there.
So government has to spend. This is something that a lot of people have difficulty understanding, because you don't want bigger deficits in the long term. But in the short-term government has to spend more to get the economy moving, to get jobs, so people can actually work and generate a larger economy and therefore get the outside budget, the long-term budget down.
Having a freeze right now on discretionary spending, and effectively saying to the world, to Wall Street, to the country, we're not doing any more deficit spending, makes absolutely no sense.
KING: All right. Congressman Paul, your thoughts?
PAUL: Well, I don't think Mr. Reich has too much to worry about. Nothing is going to be frozen in Washington, DC. As a matter of fact, even what Obama is saying is not going into effect for a year, and the Congress won't let it happen.
I think Mr. Reich's sentiments are well represented in Washington. -- because I actually want to see more money spent, not less. It's just that who has the discretion to spend it? That's the issue. When the government spends it, they mal-invest, they misdirect it. They can't correct capital directly.
We don't have our problem because there's not enough consumption or spending. We have too much. We borrowed. We're in debt. So that is not going to solve the problem. What we should have done is maybe suspend the income tax for three years. It would have cost us less than bailing out the big banks and the special interests. They've been more money -- then the people could make a decision on whether they should liquidate their debt and how they would invest. This would be a wiser choice.
REICH: Larry, let me agree --
KING: Address the stimulus. Do that quickly, Robert.
REICH: I just want to agree with the congressman on one point. That is bailing out the big banks instead of helping main street was a version of trickle down economics, and it doesn't work.
Survivor has been renewed for a 21st and 22nd season, but its host has not yet officially signed on. I can't quite imagine anyone except Jeff Probst hosting Survivor, so I hope he decides to stick around, because as both a producer and host, he's an integral part of the series that has worked so well for 19 seasons.
If (or when) Jeff leaves, though, I fear CBS and SEG will try to find someone who's Probst-like to replace him, or some old cast member like Andrew Savage or even Richard Hatch. And even if they went with an unknown host, when's the last time you watched a new reality show and truly liked and appreciated whatever host they dredged up? There's just not that much workable talent, so these options would be a disaster, I think.
And that's why Conan O'Brien should host Survivor. For real.
Conan would be the anti-Probst, and that's what's so great about it. Anyone who tries to duplicate Probst is going to be so obviously not Probst that they'll suck. Past cast members have weird relationships to the show that probably won't translate well to the screen. A new host needs to completely re-imagine the role, and needs to be someone we wouldn't immediately think of as perfect for the job. Conan isn't a TJ Lavin; he's accessible, human, and comfortable on camera, and can handle everything a host needs to do.
Because Probst treated the game seriously--even the more ridiculous parts: he never even laughed at that fake chest of money at Tribal Council in season one--his hosting gave the game some weight and importance it might not have had otherwise. Conan wouldn't need to do that, in part because the show is well-established enough now that some self-deprecating humor would be welcome, and also because that's not Conan's strength. Instead of being serious, he could embrace the absurdity, even while presiding over a game worth $1 million. That would be a nice change for series that could use some refreshing, especially with less money being spent on challenges and locations now.
Perhaps the biggest advantage is that taking Conan out of a studio and onto a remote Tribal Council set will allow him to rediscover and emphasize what he does best as he works without writers. Some people didn't watch The Tonight Show over the past seven months in part because it was a watered-down version of what Conan did on his old show, and it's only when he let loose during his final weeks that the show took off, ironically enough.
This free, liberated Conan would be a blast as he stands in the sun, providing color commentary as tribes compete in challenges. And can you imagine him asking cast members questions at Tribal Council about their behavior and decision-making? If Conan can wrangle celebrities pimping their latest projects, never mind a masturbating bear, he can handle 20 model/actors, and it'd bring some levity--never mind new viewers--to the proceedings that could help sustain Survivor for another 10 years.
The logistics work, too: Conan can't appear on TV until Sept. 1, but that works for season 21, which won't debut until mid-Sept. And since the show now tapes over 12 weeks in the summer, he could conceivably do a late-night show on or another network and take a hiatus to host Survivor, though the network politics might make that difficult.
But if Jeff leaves, CBS executives should do everything they can to make this work, because everyone would benefit from being on Tribe Coco.
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