The speakers, national security journalist Peter Bergen, Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine Susan Glasser, and president of NAF Steve Coll, rarely disagreed on each other’s takeaways, often adding personal anecdotes of interviews with prominent foreign leaders whose input fell on deaf ears.

Questionable Military Tactics

Glasser told the audience she spoke to General Boris Gromov, the commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan at the time of the 1989 pullout, who told her days after the Twin Towers fell, an American foot presence in Afghanistan would be a disaster.

For Coll, whose book on the subject, Ghost Wars, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the wrong lessons were learned from previous Soviet and British campaigns in the country and elsewhere.

While admitting the “thought experiment” in Afghanistan was skewed by the Iraq war, Coll explained the diagnosis of mistakes NATO and the U.S. made were not those of the USSR. “The latter had a much more illegitimate cause,” he said. “The U.S. revolt (by the Afghans) took much longer,” he added, and required “many more mistakes and more years to unfold.”

The speakers explained the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in the early days was designed to minimize the visibility of ground forces. Glasser remarked he didn’t see an American soldier until 2002, some three months after Operation Enduring Freedom commenced. Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst and director of NAF’s National Security Studies Program, shared an exchange he had with a senior commander. Bergen asked why the 10th Mountain Division — a light-infantry unit with specialized training to fight in harsh terrain — wasn’t called in to join the assault on Tora Bora, a decision Glasser wrote in an essay was one of the worst decisions of the decade. Bergen says the commander “feared, on basis of advice, if he put men there, it would provoke a Pashtun uprising,” a reality the three panelists say the U.S. wasn’t prepared to face.

The footprint of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was so light, the panel maintained, that more journalists were killed than soldiers in the opening months of the conflict.

Role of Pakistan

The panelists agreed the Bush administration erred in outsourcing the security and political apparatus to then-President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a move done to focus personnel and resources on the imminent war in Iraq. Coll points the finger at the lack of South Asian experts on the Bush staff, arguing Bush’s advisors were too credulous of Pakistan, and took for granted the Asian country’s interest’s aligned with America’s. Coll, mirroring Glasser’s analysis, said, “It didn’t require deep investigation to see the duality in how Pakistan managed its relationship with the U.S.”

What frustrated the panelists most about the U.S. pullback in the country was the willingness of Taliban officials to integrate themselves in the new pro-U.S. Karzai government, and the missed opportunity of securing the trust and stability of regional leaders.

Coll recounted a meeting replayed to him of Taliban regional leaders gathering a few weeks before Karzai formally took over. After the leaders discussed surrender policy and securing their role in the new government, one member asked if they would still receive car allowances. To Coll, that anecdote plays to the ease with which rival factions in the war-torn country shift allegiances.

But what should have been an easy and nation-building transition was sundered by what Coll says was a U.S. policy of giving rein to “proxy warlords.” He says Bush Afghan policy made the U.S. “a bunch of warlords,” selling local and regional Taliban leaders to bounty under the assumption all Taliban members were in toe with the group’s senior members.

Glasser said Pakistan continued to play both sides, something obvious to journalists and senior policy makers. She brought up an observation that hundreds of Pakistani families living outside of Islamabad were sending their sons off to war in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, their return facilitated by the Pakistani government.

Hitting upon a theme used throughout the 90-minute discussion, Coll said, the “problem, even today, is that we overlearned the lesson. Being shocked by our inability to see what was obvious, we’re becoming firm in the other direction.”

To Bergen, the Bush administration’s reliance on Musharraf smacked of wishful thinking. He explains the U.S. approval rating in Pakistan is 12 percent, down from the higher teens earlier in the decade. Bergen mocked the notion held by Bush officials that Pakistan would understand its real strategic interests and curry favor with the U.S. Alluding to the country’s conflicts with India, he said, “If we lost 3.5 wars with Canada over 60 years, we’ll have a different focus.”

How important was 9/11, anyway?

Coll and Glasser proposed 9/11 was a false ground-zero to the international developments most important to U.S. strategic interests. Coll, after describing an essay that appeared in the Financial Times, portrayed the events of September 11th as a “side-bar” to the economic expansion of China and Brazil, and the economic crises of the last three years.

Glasser referred to a spread in Foreign Policy that identified events following 9/11 that were more impactful domestically and abroad than the terrorist attacks. Social networking appeared on the list, as did the fastest transition from poverty to the middle class in the last ten years the world has ever experienced, she said.

Coll and Glasser considered whether the military expeditions in Asia were a “late-imperial overstretch,” rather than a response to terrorism. In terms of path dependencies, the two proffered whether the military build-up in Afghanistan occurred independent of 9/11 and proposed that 50 years from now, history books could view the last decade that way.

Why the wars happened

Coll explained 9/11 provoked extension “of what was building up anyway.” He asked whether the war in Iraq  was instigated by 9/11, or was it inevitable the U.S. and Tony Blair of Great Britain would over-interpret their international role given Saddam Hussein’s UN violations.

For the panelists, that over-interpretation was premised on how speedy and cost-effective previous U.S. and British military engagements were following the collapse of the USSR. The budgets that dramatically undershot the massive debts the U.S. would incur were a manifestation of the luck the two powers had. Coll pointed to the quick and successful intervention in Bosnia, the bombing of Serbia, the first Gulf War and UK engagement in Sierra Leone as motivation for entering Iraq regardless of its 9/11 culpability. “That’s the overstretch, that basically success of the Gulf War (and other victorious conflicts) was so rapidly over-learned,” Coll said.

Bergen was uneasy putting so much stock into the US-led conflicts. He said the war in Afghanistan costs 1 percent of U.S. GDP, compared to the 9 percent Vietnam commanded. And while that conflict spelled significant political unrest domestically, the current military expedition is on the back of the minds of most Americans. He summarized the decade since 9/11 as a time of relative peace and limited economic wealth.

Bennet also met with military leaders and Colorado service members in Afghanistan.

“The Coloradans serving in Afghanistan have done our state and our country proud,” Bennet said in a prepared statement. “Something must be done to stop the flow of materials used in roadside bombs from Pakistan to Afghanistan that continues to threaten the safety of our troops. I hope to continue working with the Pakistani government to end this ongoing threat.”

In Afghanistan, Bennet said he met with and thanked service members from Colorado at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, a forward operating base in Kandahar province and the Regional Command East headquarters.

In Pakistan, Bennet said he met with the president, prime minister, Army chief of staff, legislators and other officials to press them to implement a plan to establish tight restrictions on ingredients found in bombs which kill and injure American troops in Afghanistan.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are the No. 1 killer of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and are also used to target civilians and security forces in Pakistan. In 2010, 268 U.S. service members were killed by IEDs in Afghanistan, and 125 more have been killed by IEDs since the beginning of 2011, Bennet’s office said.

FRC blamed gays for the spread of HIV in Malawi, despite evidence to the contrary.

“African nations are warring to contain homosexuality’s spread because it is morally taboo, and has had a devastating impact upon Africans,” FRC said in its prayer alert on Monday. “Two thirds of all reported AIDS cases world-wide (24 of 36 million) have been in Sub-Saharan Africa. Amid this, the Obama administration is pushing homosexuality, using taxpayer dollars.”

But, according to USAID, the vast majority of HIV infections can be traced to heterosexual activity.

“The primary mode of HIV transmission in Malawi is heterosexual contact. Information about the proportion of infections among men having sex with men (MSM) is limited, as homosexual contact is illegal in the country,” USAID wrote in a recent report on HIV in Malawi. The report went on to say that heterosexual practices involving young women are driving that nation’s epidemic.

“HIV prevalence among young women (15 to 24 years old) in Malawi is 9 percent, more than four times the prevalence among men of a similar age (2 percent). The United Nations Development Assistance Framework reports that the continuing rise in HIV infection rates among young people, particularly girls, is due to several psychosocial and economic factors, including cultural/sexual initiation practices that often expose young girls to HIV.”

FRC is upset that the Obama administration threatened to withhold $350 million in foreign aid if the country did not change its laws that imprison gays and lesbians.

“The U.S. government has become the chief player in efforts to promote homosexuality and homosexual rights overseas,” FRC wrote and then offered this prayer to its followers. “May God restrain the Obama administration from promoting the LGBT agenda at home and abroad. May He give targeted nations courage to withstand U.S. coercion! Forgive us for this evil (Ps 94:16; Is 3:9-15; Jer 7:3-11; Lk 17:2; Rom 1:32; Jas 3:13-18; Jude 7).”

Malawi, like the FRC, is mainly conservative Christian in nature.

Also on Monday, NOM posted a message on its blog critical of the U.S. State Department for hosting a LGBT rights meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.

NOM asked, “Will Hillary’s Pakistani Gay Rights Meeting Sponsor More Terrorism?”

“Pakistan is not happy about a U.S. embassy-sponsored gay rights meeting, calling it second only to a military drone strike as an attack on Pakistan,” NOM wrote. “We do not concur, but we worry about our embassy’s priorities. Is this worth breaking an alliance or spurring more terrorism? Is Pakistan our business on this issue? America less than 20 years ago decriminalized homosexuality. Can we not allow cultures to evolve?”

The efforts by the Obama administration, in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to encourage nations doing business with the United States to drop laws that imprison or execute gays and lesbians has drawn fire from the religious right in the past.

The conservative Christian-based Institute on Religion and Democracy derided Clinton in January saying that decriminalizing homosexuality is a violation of “religious freedom.”

That’s a charge that’s also being lodged by Catholic groups who worry that decriminalization and acceptance of gays and lesbians abroad could lead to gay marriage and gay adoption.

MSNBC reports:

Fifty-two percent said they strongly believe the Obama administration should not release the photos, and an additional 12 percent agreed, although not as strongly.

By comparison, 24 percent said they strongly believe the photos should be released, and 5 percent more agreed not so strongly.

The complete results of the poll will be released later today.

The news may come as a surprise to public figures like Sarah Palin who have pandered to the so-called “deather” conspiracy holding that last weekend’s raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound was somehow faked. Last week, Palin used her Twitter account to command Obama to release the photos. She contended that releasing the images would scare would-be terrorists from tangling with the U.S. “No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama,” she said. “[I]t’s part of the mission.”

Other Republicans, including Sen. Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), have also come out in favor of releasing the photos, though they both said it was out of concern that conspiracy theories surrounding bin Laden would create political fallout at home and abroad. DNA tests and an al Qaeda statement have since confirmed bin Laden’s death at the hands of the U.S. military.

The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced late Sunday that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, was killed in a firefight during an operation he ordered inside Pakistan, ending a 10 year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist. American officials were in possession of his body, he said.

The fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda number two in command, was unclear.

The death of Mr. Bin Laden is a huge punctuation in the American-led war on terrorism. What remains to be seen is whether the death of the leader of Al Qaeda galvanizes his followers by turning him into a martyr, or whether it serves as a turning of the
gives further impetus to the Obama administration to bring American troops home.

Update: This post was amended to add that the Navy SEAL Team Six, a top military counter-terrorism unit, carried out the operation with the help of the CIA.

Responding to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request of “records relating to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly known as ‘drones’ – for the purpose of targeting and killing individuals since September 11, 2001,” which was submitted July 2010, the Department of Defense told Jonathan Manes of the ACLU’s National Security Project that while this department does possess documents estimating the number of civilian casualties that result from operations involving military aircraft, it does not distinguish between weapons platforms.

“The only documents that address estimates of civilian casualties related to drone strikes are individual battle damage assessments evaluating each military aircraft mission, which the ACLU and DoD have agreed are outside the scope of documents to be processed in this litigation,” writes Mark H. Herrington, the DoD’s associate deputy general counsel.

The letter is dated Dec. 30, 2010, but ACLU spokesperson Molly Kaplan said the department held on to the letter for months, “apparently by mistake,” and it did not make it to the ACLU’s desk until last Friday.

Herrington further writes:

“In July 2010, the Department of Defense (DoD) informed the ACLU that all records related to this section of the request are classified and not maintained in a format that allows searching without significant cost. However, in light of ACLU’s insistence that civilian casualty information was of particular interest, DoD agreed to conduct 40 hours of searching for estimates of civilian casualties caused by such strikes, after which the parties would discuss whether additional searches would be undertaken.

DoD’s search confirmed that DoD does not create or maintain documents to compile estimates of civilian casualties related to drone strikes separately from estimates related to other weapons systems.”

Last year the civil liberties organization sued DoD after it would not fill its FOIA request on unmanned drones used to target killings overseas. The ACLU wanted to know when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, as well as the number and rate of civilian casualties. Generally, the ACLU wanted the government to clarify the legal basis for using unmanned drones.

“It is remarkable that the Defense Department does not compile data about the total number of civilian casualties inflicted by unmanned drones – a new and controversial technology,” said Manes in a press statement. “The public must have accurate information about civilian casualties in drone strikes in order to assess the ethical, legal and strategic concerns that these weapons raise.”

According to the ACLU, the CIA, for its part, has entirely refused to respond to a request for information about the drone strikes in Pakistan.

Because the government has not been much help coming forward with this information, independent organizations and other media have attempted to pick up the slack. Last October, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) released a report that concluded that innocent civilians in northwest Pakistan were being killed by both U.S. drone strikes and the ground and aerial attacks from the Pakistani military, as well as local militants.

The report found that in 2009, an estimated 2,300 civilians were killed in terror attacks alone and noted that “there is no governmental or military mechanism that systematically and publicly investigates or collects data on civilian casualties.” The group also discovered that the Pakistani government runs several compensation programs and suggested that drone victims be included in one of these programs.

On Thursday, CIVIC released a statement calling on the DoD and the CIA to “count and compensate civilians harmed by U.S. drones,” in light of the ACLU’s reveal.

“The US has a duty to know where it has caused civilian harm, including whether it was caused by close air support or unmanned aerial vehicles,” said Sarah Holewinski, CIVIC’s executive director, in the statement. “Let’s say civilian casualties skyrocket. Why the spike? How can the problem be fixed? Without good data, the US is operating with blinders on. After ten years at war, the US should know better.”

The New America Foundation is another organization that has attempted to quantify the civilian casualties of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, compiling data and information since 2004 from sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and the BBC and English-language newspapers and media in Pakistan, such as The Daily Times, Dawn, The Express Tribune and Geo TV.

Thus far, NAF has found that the 233 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan — including 20 in 2011 – have killed between 1,411 and 2,247 people, of whom about 1,134 to 1,810 have been described as militants. According to the organization: “The true non-militant fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 21 percent. In 2010, it was more like six percent.”

NAF has also created a map with estimated locations of each drone strike.

…and Rep. Anthony Weiner is still angry.

July was the deadliest month of the war in Afghanistan for the U.S.

People try to get really strange things through airport security.

The N.Y. aide who wrote a memo on “Jewish money” gets the ax.

Arizona’s immigration law is OK, if your kids “don’t look Hispanic.”

Most Pakistanis don’t know drones strikes exist.

Tea Party Patriots are glad Mark Williams is a racist.

Bristol Palin might be getting a step-daughter.

Substantively, there it is: the officer most credited with miracle work from Iraq, an architect of the current strategy in Afghanistan, going to attempt to pull the war out of the fire. It’s an amazing expression of faith — not just in Petraeus, but in the strategy itself. With one crucially important caveat: Petraeus’s conception of the July 2011 date for transition to Afghan security control is most certainly not what many progressive supporters of Obama and opponents of the war hope. He told the Senate last week that he supports the date as a way of pressing President Karzai to perform, but understands it as a very gradual “conditions based” withdrawal of U.S. troops. And while he said that it wasn’t “envisioned” to send more troops to Afghanistan, he refused to rule it out as an option. Petraeus’s accidental arrival in Afghanistan signifies Obama has firmly sided with Petraeus against Vice President Biden, who wants a very substantial drawdown of U.S. forces beginning in 2011.

Now expect to hear all this from Obama and Petraeus themselves.

This is obviously another crucial failure for a law-enforcement-based response to terrorism.

Update: From the Justice Department:

“Faisal Shahzad plotted and launched an attack that could have led to serious loss of life, and today the American criminal justice system ensured that he will pay the price for his actions,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. “We will not rest in bringing to justice terrorists who seek to harm the American people, and we will use every tool available to the government to do so.”

The war in Afghanistan is winnable for three reasons: because for the first time the coalition fighting there has the right strategy and the resources to begin to implement it, because the Taliban are losing their sanctuaries in Pakistan and because the Afghan government and the security forces are growing in capability and numbers. None of these trends is irreversible, and they are not in themselves determinants of victory. But they demonstrate that the war can be won if we display the kind of determination that defeating an insurgency requires.

It’s a decidedly big-picture op-ed. Nagl has much less to say on NATO’s prospects for reversing the insurgency’s gains in southern Afghanistan ahead of the July 2011 date for beginning a gradual transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan control — and correlative U.S. troop withdrawals. And he has less to say about the costs of the war, writing instead that success is a “vital national interest” and that counterinsurgency is hard and takes time.  Will that persuade doubters?