No Marines in Afghanistan

I can't help but wonder what this is all about.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 5 — Senior Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had decided against a proposal to shift Marine Corps forces from Iraq to take the lead in American operations in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates told top Marine Corps officials and his senior aides that the situation in western Iraq, where the Marines now operate in Anbar Province, remained too volatile to contemplate such a significant change in how the ground combat mission in Iraq is shared by the Army and the Marine Corps.

[...]

Senior Defense Department officials said Mr. Gates met at the Pentagon on Friday with Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, and received a formal proposal that would shift Marine forces from Anbar Province and deploy them in Afghanistan.

The proposal was based on Marine Corps concepts in which an integrated “air-ground task force” of Marine infantry, attack aircraft and logistics could carry out the Afghanistan mission, and build on counterinsurgency lessons learned by marines in Anbar.

The idea also was based on an assessment that a realignment could allow the Army and the Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

[...]

At present, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq, there are about 25,000 marines among the approximately 160,000 American troops.

In Washington on Wednesday, General Conway said that he felt the Afghan mission “is one that matches our strength and capabilities.” But he acknowledged that “it doesn’t appear that additional Marine units will be needed in Afghanistan in the near future.”

He added that “that’s not to say that in the future, were there additional U.S. troops needed, that we would or would not be called — that would be a determination made on what the nature of the request was at the time and what the availability of forces were between, probably, Army and Marines.”

When word first surfaced of the Marine Corps proposal in October, some officials in the Air Force expressed private fears that its mission in Afghanistan could be ended if the mission went to the Marines, who deploy with their own tactical fighter and attack combat aircraft.

Army officials acknowledged that the idea could streamline their force planning, by giving them only one mission to fulfill — although some Army officers also expressed wariness that the Marines were trying to move from an unpopular war, Iraq, to Afghanistan, which has more popular support.

Somehow, I don't think we've heard the last of this. Gates knows that Afghanistan -- more popular a war or not -- is invisible to most Americans. Iraq remains highly visible. The goal for Gates and the Bush administration is to quell as much violence for the next 12 months so that Iraq is not the central issue of the election.

But meanwhile, in that "more popular" war...

A suicide bomber killed six Afghan soldiers and seven civilians, including four children, in an attack south of Kabul today.

The explosion happened on the last morning of US defence secretary Robert Gates's visit to Afghanistan, but it was not immediately clear if he was still in the country at the time.

Aziz Ahmad, an Afghan army officer at the site of the blast, said the bomber was in an explosives-laden Toyota Corolla that struck a minibus full of soldiers in the Chihulsutoon area, south of Kabul.

Seven other soldiers and 13 civilians were wounded.

A member of the Taliban who was quoted by Reuters said the attack was a "welcome" to Gates, while Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message to the Associated Press. Mujaheed identified the bomber as Abdul Rahman, a resident of eastern Khost province.

The blast was the third suicide attack in the city in the past eight days. A similar attack yesterday against a Nato convoy injured 22 civilians.