Eideard

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Germany’s top army officer has resigned over the disclosure that the defence ministry had withheld information about civilian casualties caused by a Nato air strike in Afghanistan.

The resignation of Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the Bundeswehr’s chief of staff, along with that of ministry state secretary Peter Wichert, was announced by Germany’s new defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg during a parliamentary debate on the future of Germany in Afghanistan.

Schneiderhan’s resignation amounts to an admission by the defence ministry that it suppressed information about civilian casualties which was ordered by the Bundeswehr – even though it had numerous sources of information, including from its own military police.

According to Nato information, 142 insurgents and civilians were killed in the attack on 4 September on two oil tankers, which had been seized by the Taliban in the northern region near Kunduz.

The then defence minister, Franz Josef Jung, initially dismissed reports that civilians had been among the victims. The ministry later backtracked, saying some civilians had been killed.

Now, Former German Defense Minister and current Labor Minister Franz Josef Jung has resigned over the fatal Afghan airstrike…

The German newspaper, Bild, said it had access to confidential documents and it posted a video of the airstrike on its Web site. It said German Col. Georg Klein was not able to rule out the possibility of civilian victims before he ordered the strike.

The newspaper said a report dated Sept. 6 — two days after the strike — made clear that it was impossible for Klein to verify information his informant had provided before he called in the airstrike.

Jung said Friday he was taking responsibility for miscommunication following the incident.

Bild reported that for days after the incident, Jung — who was then defense minister — repeated that there had been no civilian victims. That was despite Jung having videos and documents that proved the defense ministry knew about civilian victims and also had insufficient information before the strike was ordered.

The Fog of War claims victims at the top as well as on the battlefield. Though, of course, those at the top don’t get bloodied except in the metaphor.

Under the Taliban, chess was forbidden.

Residents of Kandahar have been taking part in a chess tournament in an attempt to revive one of the city’s former cultural pastimes.

Under the Taliban, chess was forbidden, but the city’s older residents hope this tournament will reintroduce the game to a younger generation.

The event was held at the Kandahar Coffee Shop which also hosts other cultural activities.

Kandahar is a key battleground for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

But Rahim Akrami, a local journalist in the city who watched the tournament, says it is important for younger people to rediscover this once forbidden activity….

“It is very important for us to have something recreational to do that enlightens the mind and is fun as well,” [Aman Ullah, a member of the Kandahar Students Organisation] told the BBC World Service….

A poster saying: ‘It’s better to battle with minds than fists and bullets’ lines the wall.

Mohammed Naseem, the owner of the Kandahar coffee shop, says he wants to provide a place for young people in the city.

“I am trying to create an atmosphere where the youth can hang out and learn something,” he says….

We are trying to show the world that this kind of thing can be done.”

Of course the Taliban would oppose chess, a game of rational thought where, as Lasker said, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long.

Senior administration officials tell ABC News that President Obama at his war council meeting tomorrow will assess four different specific strategies for Afghanistan and Pakistan, including two different options put forward by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

At his meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, October 30, President Obama asked Pentagon officials to assess in detail two other strategy options, including the missions, troop requirements and cost.

All four options increase the levels of US troops in Afghanistan. The president has not yet been presented with those new assessments.

Where’s the fifth option we voted for?

President Obama was asked what variables would play into his decision-making that would cause him to not just take McChystal’s recommendation and implement it…

“I’ve been asking not only General McChrystal, but all of our commanders who are familiar with the situation, as well as our civilian folks on the ground, a lot of questions that, until they’re answered, may — may create a situation in which we resource something based on faulty premises,” Mr. Obama said, “And I want to make sure that we have tested all the assumptions that we’re making before we send young men and women into harm’s way, that if we are sending additional troops that the prospects of a functioning Afghan government are enhanced, that the prospects of al Qaeda being able to attack the U.S. Homeland are reduced…”

“There are a whole host of those questions that we have worked through systematically. I have gained confidence that there’s not an important question out there that has not been asked and that we haven’t asked — that we haven’t answered to the best of our abilities. And as a consequence of the process that we’ve gone to, I feel much more confident that when I issue my orders, that not only do we have a better prospect of success and we are serving our men and women in uniform well, but that we are not also looking at an indefinite stay in — where we have bought, essentially, a — a permanent protectorate of Afghanistan that I think would be unsustainable…”

From respect for General McChrystal and other military visionaries, I long supported options which included expanson of numbers and redirection of the war effort in the Af-Pak region. No more.

Start bringing our troops home.

Matonoha wearing the emblem of the 9th SS panzer division

Two commanders of the Czech rapid reaction brigade had Nazi symbols on their helmets during their deployment in Afghanistan, the Prague daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today.

Hynek Matonoha wore the symbol of the 9th SS panzer division Hohenstaufen, Jan Cermak of the SS Dirlewanger brigade, which was one of the most infamous SS combat units of World War Two, the paper writes.

Czech Defence Minister Martin Bartak and chief-of-staff Vlastimil Picek decorated both men on Friday after their return from the Afghan mission, MfD says.

Picek and Bartak may have not known about the commanders’ helmets, MfD notes.

But Czech police serving in Afghanistan reported the case. They confirmed this to the paper, requesting anonymity because they believe that the Czech military wants to keep the case secret…

The single incident that prompted my best friend to get into parachutes reconnaissance – after he lied about his age and enlisted at the start of WW2 – was the massacre of all the men and boys over 16 by the SS in Lidice, Czechoslovakia.

Believe me, there is no one in the Czech Republic who doesn’t know what Nazi symbols mean.

UPDATE: The two commanders have been fired.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Afghan officials on have canceled plans for a runoff presidential vote, declaring President Hamid Karzai the winner after the withdrawal of his last remaining challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. The announcement capped a fraught election widely depicted as deeply flawed by corruption and voting irregularities…

Mr. Karzai and the Independent Election Commission had been under intense pressure from Afghanistan’s international backers, including the United States, to cancel the second round because of security perils and worries about a potential repetition of the vote-rigging that marred the first round. At a news conference, Mr. Ludin said Mr. Karzai had won the majority of votes in the first round “and was the only candidate in the second round.”

Accordingly, Mr. Ludin said, Mr. Karzai was “declared the elected president of Afghanistan.”

Advisers to President Obama called Mr. Abdullah’s decision a personal choice that would not greatly affect American policy and was in line with the Afghan Constitution. They portrayed the election of Mr. Karzai as essentially settled, enabling Mr. Obama to move forward with deciding whether to send as many as 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, although an announcement probably remains at least three weeks away…

Administration officials…sought to focus on security questions rather than governance and political stability, emphasizing that the chief American goal now in Afghanistan was to make sure that Al Qaeda would not re-establish bases there…

Mr. Abdullah has been under intense pressure from Western officials to avoid confrontation and end a two-month dispute over the election results. That has been in part because the outcome of the runoff had been identified as a vital benchmark before Mr. Obama was to announce his military strategy in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to hold at least two Afghanistan meetings at the White House this week, following his session on Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he pushed his military commanders to return with more specific options.

The same questions we’ve been asking remain unanswered. At what point do we justify being the cops of the world?

Obama should move beyond conventional wisdom, beyond rule by politics and opportunist consensus.

A State Department employee who resigned last month in protest over America’s war in Afghanistan said he has received an outpouring of support from Afghan-Americans and U.S. active-duty military.

“I’ve had a lot of Afghan-Americans contact me and say, ‘Matt, you get it,’ ” Matthew Hoh told CNN. “You understand — yes, there is a civil war going on. You understand how Afghan society works. You understand this split within the Pashtuns. You understand valley-ism, or whatever you want to call it.”

The 36-year-old former Marine Corps captain resigned on September 10 over what he termed a “cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannaish misadventure.” Since then, even active-duty military have supported his decision, he said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS”.

“I have received many many e-mails from active-duty military and some guys who just separated from the service,” Hoh said. “Some guys are here in the States. I’ve gotten many e-mails from guys in Afghanistan. Some are people I know. But a lot are people I do not know. Men and women who are saying, ‘Thanks for doing this. Keep it up. We don’t know why we’re here. We’re not sure why we’re taking these casualties. We don’t know what it’s accomplishing.’”

In his letter, the senior civilian representative in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, said he was resigning because “I fail to see the value or worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war.” He concluded the letter by saying that he had “lost confidence” that the “dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished and promised dreams unkept.”

Since Obama’s election I have been willing to re-examine the Afghan War in light of the potential of new and intelligent leadership. The leaders are there – especially Gen. McChrystal – and I think that absent the worst political pressures, President Obama is capable of making a decision on the war that will bear fruit.

I hope we finish getting the hell out of Iraq, remove the bulk of offensive troops from Afghanistan – and while we’re at it, let’s bring the rest of our military home from around the world and quit throwing good money after bad by retaining a Cold War infrastructure that is past due on closing down.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter (.pdf) to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end…”

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer,” Holbrooke said in an interview. “We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him.”

RTFA. The breadth and range of questions being asked publicly is an indication of the transparency gained in the last election.

Support for agreement – and disagreement – with administration policies in the region are stoked by a thoughtful political act. Again, something missing in recent years.

Understand that half the “Change” Obama has to bring to the government of these United States is the elimination of Cheneyesque corruption and cronyism – and reversing Bush Era stupidity.

Sure blends into the landscape doesn’t it?

More than six years after sending the first Stryker armored vehicles into desert combat, the Army has decided that it’s probably a good idea to start painting them tan so they will blend in with the environments in Afghanistan and Iraq…“Strykers will blend into surroundings better. They’re less likely to stand out like silhouettes…”

The Army and its contracting agencies have been talking about changing the color of the Strykers since 2004, according to Butts, “but nothing firm was planned out until now.”

RTFA. There is some real “insight” displayed by soldiers and officers who just discovered that standing out like a sore thumb isn’t an advantage.

The production line vehicles can only be ordered in one color; so, green it is unless the Pentagon changes to desert tan – for everywhere.

Thanks, Mr. Justin

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Japan’s has confirmed that its refuelling ships will be withdrawn from the Indian Ocean in January – the first real sign that the new Tokyo administration is honouring its election pledge to break free from decades of subservience to US foreign policy…

Since 2001 Japanese vessels have provided fuel and water to US and allied warships in support of the war effort. Hatoyama, whose Democratic party of Japan (DPJ) has consistently opposed the mission, will instead attempt to ease US concerns with a raft of humanitarian measures. He hopes to have a comprehensive plan in place before Barack Obama arrives in Tokyo on 12 November for a two-day visit.

“We believe that civilian support for the people’s livelihood in that country, such as agricultural reconstruction, will lead to a fundamental solution to what constitutes the basis of terrorism,” said the government’s chief spokesman, Hirofumi Hirano.

Japan’s determination to offer new, non-military solutions to Afghanistan’s problems was evident at the weekend when the foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, made a surprise visit to Kabul to discuss long-term reconstruction with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Japan has already committed itself to paying the Afghan police force’s salaries for six months and is funding several education projects that it hopes will weaken the lure of the Taliban among disaffected Afghan men.

Although the US and Britain have urged Japan to extend its refuelling mission beyond January, Washington has indicated it will accept a withdrawal in return for deeper involvement in Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Among the extra measures being considered by Japan, which has pledged $2bn in aid over the last eight years, is job training for former Taliban fighters…

Further evidence of the shift in Tokyo’s foreign policy priorities came last week when Hatoyama met his South Korean and Chinese counterparts, Lee Myung-bak and Wen Jiabao, in Beijing for talks on the formation of an “east Asian community” inspired by the European Union. The leaders said they would explore the idea of a free-trade pact and co-operate more closely in other areas, including climate change and sustainable growth.

Nations which stand to benefit from cooperation and commerce are talking about developing forms and protocols for doing just that. I guess some people think that more beneficial than waging war.