Perry backs sending U.S. troops into Mexico to quell drug violence

AUSTIN (Dallas Morning News) - Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday he would support sending U.S. troops into Mexico to fight the drug war.

The Republican has long urged beefed-up security on the American side of the violence-plagued border, but he said stronger tactics are needed to defeat the drug cartels.

"You have a situation on the border where American citizens are being killed, and you didn't see that back when George Bush was the governor," Perry said in an interview with MSNBC.

Asked whether the U.S. should consider deploying troops inside Mexico, Perry said the federal government should consider all options "including the military."

(Full story)

You know you've been at war for too long...

...when your enemies have no idea why you're trying to kill them:

Few Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, Taliban strongholds where fighting remains fiercest, know why foreign troops are in Afghanistan, says the "Afghanistan Transition: Missing Variables" report to be released later on Friday.

The report by The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) policy think-tank showed 92 percent of 1,000 Afghan men surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar know nothing of the hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. targets in 2001.

"The lack of awareness of why we are there contributes to the high levels of negativity toward the NATO military operations and made the job of the Taliban easier," ICOS President Norine MacDonald told Reuters from Washington.

"We need to explain to the Afghan people why we are here, and both convince them and show them that their future is better with us than the Taliban," MacDonald said.

And yet we Americans still can't figure out why so many people hate us.

Baffling presentation to try to explain Afghanistan mess

(Mail Online) - Even the sharpest military minds in American were left baffled by this PowerPoint slide, a mind-boggling attempt to explain the situation in Afghanistan.

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing.

(Full story)

Scrap the Navy?

Fred Reed thinks the U.S. Navy (you know, that "global force for good") is a relic of the past. But don't expect anyone to admit it just yet:

Does the Navy say to Congress, "We really aren't of much use any longer. We suggest that you scrap the ships and put the money into something else"? Mankind doesn't work that way. The appeals of tradition, ego, and just plain fun run high. (Never underestimate the importance of ego and fun in military policy.) A CVBG is a magnificent thing, just not very useful. The glamor of night flight ops, planes trapping ker-whang!, engines howling at full mil, thirty knots of wind over the flight deck, cat shots throwing fighters into the air – this stuff appeals powerfully to something deep in the male head. The Navy isn't going to give this up.

Read the rest here.