The U.N. placed responsibility for the majority of killings squarely on the shoulders of the Taliban and allied anti-government forces, blaming them for more than three quarters of civilian deaths. Here’s a chart from the U.N. report attributing blame for civilian killings in 2010 and 2011, with blue representing anti-government forces’ responsibility and red representing pro-government forces’ responsibility:

Improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, which accounted for 45 percent of anti-government attacks in a six month period in 2011, caused more civilian deaths — 967 total during 2009 through 2011 — than any other tactic used by anti-government forces. But targeted killings, accounting for nearly 500 deaths in that period, and suicide bombings were also on the rise.

Aerial attacks accounted for the most civilian deaths caused by pro-government forces, which include the U.S.-led international coalition there. The U.N. report noted a nine percent uptick from 2010 to 187 such deaths in 2011. Night raids, which international forces continue to carry out over objections by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, saw a 22 percent drop in civilian deaths from 2010, down to just 63 in 2011.

The report paints a bleak picture for Afghan civilians, with injuries from fighting also on the rise. The report said:

As 2011 unfolded, ordinary Afghan people experienced growing intrusion into and disruption of their daily lives by the armed conflict in their country. Conflict and insecurity displaced 185,632 Afghans in 2011, an increase of 45 percent from 2010.

Thousands more Afghans lost their livelihoods and property, were denied access to justice, had their right to freedom of movement restricted or taken away, and had their access to food, health care and education compromised. The unremitting toll of civilian casualties coupled with pervasive intimidation affected many civilians directly, and many more indirectly, by fueling uncertainty, tension and fear.

With the first signs of possible peace talks and an imminent transition from U.S.-led forces to Afghan forces, the U.N. report called for both sides of the conflict to reaffirm and enforce international humanitarian law.

Vincent worked as a doctor at the New York University hospital – and was working On September 11, 2001 when the towers came down. Long story short, a wounded Vincent ends up in a medical clinic where he’s injected with a DNA-changing drug. The drug turns him into an unstoppable soldier type that is used in Afghanistan. Think ‘Captain America’ or a ‘Universal Soldier’. Unfortunately, the strength and stamina comes with a price…it also changes Vincent’s look — in particular, hair sprouts hair everywhere. When he returned from Afghanistan, looking like he is, he hid himself away.

That’s a way of integrating fairy tales into our self-mythology of our actions after September 11, I guess? There are certainly real side effects of the way we treat our veterans, including a dramatic overprescription of really powerful painkillers that are more serious than a lot of body hair. But I have to say that I think Sherlock has done a better job of linking an old story to a new Afghan war.

And I’m actually more interested in the way in which Beauty and the Beast narratives intersect with our schlub-gets-the-girl trope popularized by Judd Apatow’s movies. There have already been some feints in mashing up those movies with superhero or secret identity narratives, most notably Kick Ass. But it’s one thing to take a guy who’s always been a schlub and putting him in the path of a gorgeous, talented woman, and another to take a guy who’s been popular and attractive, strip him of his physical assets, and then put him in the path of the kind of woman he’d be able to conquer easily were he his old handsome self. That whole breaking a main character down before he can be built back up thing sounds suspiciously like what we so often do to female characters.

Today, his secretary of defense unleashed such a policy. His secretary of defense said that on a day certain, in the middle of 2013, we’re going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan… So the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops?

But Panetta did not announce any troop withdrawals. He said that in in mid-2013 the U.S. and its allies will shift in roles from one of primarily combat to one of primarily training and advising local allies — a move many experts have said is a necessary step toward ending the war. And this plan isn’t necessarily all that new. U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen laid it out last month. In fact, Panetta even added, amid the same announcement that Romney misstated, that U.S. troops would remain at the ready to fight if needed. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” Panetta said.

J.D. Gordon

But the White House’s efforts to explore a negotiated settlement to the 10-year war in Afghanistan haven’t been welcomed by the administration’s hawkish critics. J.D. Gordon, a Fox News contributor and former Herman Cain foreign policy adviser said to Fox News’ Jonathan Hunt last Friday that negotiating with the Taliban was akin to doing business with Nazis:

JONATHAN HUNT: The Taliban are still trying to kill us on pretty much a daily if not hourly basis and now we’re going to talk to the Taliban. Where’s the logic in that?

J.D. Gordon: I don’t really think there’s a lot of logic other than the administration’s desire to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, which I could understand. [...] But I think negotiating with the Taliban is a mistake because, number one, they’re terrorists. And number two, they’re a lot like the Nazis. Instead of being supremacists for race though, they’re supremacists for their tribe and supremacists for their religion.

Watch it:

Gordon, whose foreign policy background includes serving as a public affairs officer at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and working at various right-wing pressure groups, continued his simplistic explanation of Afghanistan’s tribal politics with the observation, “If you look at Afghanistan you see it’s so much of a different country than the West.”

Gordon’s less than insightful analysis might offer some explanation for Herman Cain’s inability to lay out a cohesive foreign policy vision.

But while Gordon and Fox News choose to portray the U.S.’s involvement in Afghanistan as analogous to the European theater of World War II, Stephen Hadley of the U.S. Institute of Peace and John Podesta, chair of the Center for American Progress, argued in a ForeignPolicy.com column last week that the war in Afghanistan “will not end by military means alone.” Hadley, a George W. Bush administration adviser, and Podesta, chief of staff in the Clinton White House, concluded that “Efforts to reach a settlement should include an approach to Taliban elements that are ready to give up the fight and become part of the political process.”

The authors pushed back at critics, such as Gordon, writing, “Such an approach would not — as some have suggested — constitute ‘surrender’ to America’s enemies. Rather, convincing combatants to leave the insurgency and enter into the political process is the hallmark of a successful counterinsurgency effort.”

But on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, flagging GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry broke with his fellow Republicans and, while calling for the Marines to be “reprimanded and appropriately punished,” blamed the Obama administration for condemning the actions depicted in the video and initiating a full investigation. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta condemned the acts and called for an investigation, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Anyone found to have participated or known about it, having engaged in such conduct must be held fully accountable.”

This apparently did not sit well with Perry, who compared urinating on Taliban corpses to a photograph of Gen. Patton urinating into the Rhine River and Winston Churchill urinating on the Siegfried Line, then said:

But what I’m saying is what is really disturbing to me is just, kind of, the over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military, it appears, whether it’s the secretary of state or whether it’s the secretary of defense.

I mean, these kids made a mistake. There’s not any doubt about it. They shouldn’t have done it. It’s bad. But the — the — to call it a criminal act, I think, is over the top.

Watch the video:

Actually, far from being “over the top,” labeling the act of desecrating corpses on the battlefield a “criminal act” is in line with international treaties to which the U.S. is party. That means those treaties, since they are ratified, carry the force of U.S. law. The First Geneva Convention states unequivocally:

At all times, and particularly after an engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled.

Neither micturating into a river nor onto a battle line constitues a war crime. Desecrating those who died in battle — no matter what side they’re on — is considered one. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), to his great credit, told the same CNN program: “I think a full and complete investigation is entirely appropriate.”

A full investigation, when video evidence appears to document a war crime, would seem to require a criminal investigation. (The four Marines were questioned but not arrested and relevant authorities are deciding whether to press charges.) Just like his plan to abolish civilian control of the armed forces (which incidentally the military’s current commanders seem to disagree with), Perry’s comments eschew not only proper military conduct, but also the rule of law.

With the U.S. expected to begin talks soon with the Afghan Taliban insurgency, all parties were quick to distance themselves from the act. The Marines said in a statement that the actions “are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps.” In a separate statement, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said a criminal probe was being launched and added:

This disrespectful act is inexplicable and not in keeping with the high moral standards we expect of coalition forces.

ISAF strongly condemns the actions depicted in the video, which appear to have been conducted by a small group of U.S. individuals, who apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the incident, “I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” Panetta has ordered an investigation to the matter.

Afghans offered across-the-board condemnation as well. “It was inhuman and despicable, an unforgivable act which we condemn in the strongest terms,” said a Taliban spokesman. Karzai called the act “completely inhumane” and asked that those found responsible by an investigation get the “most severe punishment” possible.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who served in the U.S. military, said:

Here’s a handful of obviously undisciplined young people of the hundred and some thousand Marines that we have. And it makes me so sad. There should be an investigation and these young people should be punished, but it does great damage. It makes me so sad.

Not everyone, however, was saddened by the events. Anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller wrote in favor of the incident. “I love these Marines,” she said, adding, “Perhaps this is the infidel interpretation of the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the body for burial.” A former Republican National Committee researcher tweeted wondering, “this is a story?” He added: “I could care less. Liberal media at work.” Michael Goldfarb, a neoconseravtive Republican operative (a former McCain campaign spokesman), lobbyist and, as of recently, chairman of a new conservative online media venture, retweeted the comments from the RNC researcher.

Had the map documented the pace of work, its picture would have been less hopeful. The paving of the 80-kilometre road had started out well: 30 kilometres in the first three months. The pace had halved in the next three, and in the past two months, only seven kilometres had been completed. The insurgents weren’t just interfering with construction. They were blowing up “red” – sections of already-completed road – almost as fast as the contractors could build. Explosives erupted from new, ingenious hiding places: culverts and cliffsides, the asphalt barrels themselves. Assailants haunted the hills, hunted from them. A night raid on the road workers’ camp left 13 Afghans and four Nepalis dead. A sniper shot felled a respected Turkish engineer, and stopped work for two days while American and Afghan forces combed the rises.
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The colonel tried to take more territory alongside the road just to get it built, but terrain cleared was soon lost: the heights couldn’t support a continued military presence. A war to win a battle, Aziz sometimes thought, but he held his tongue. Winter had arrived. Soon the snows would come, stopping work until the spring. Aziz was beginning to despair that he would be grey-bearded, and still a virgin, before the road was complete.

It’s also just worthwhile as a story about Christmas, and how it looks to people who don’t celebrate it, and the power the cultural practice exerts anyway. There’s a lot of good culture about Christmas, but not a lot about Christmas as part of a larger tapestry.

The Navy supported two women sailors who became the first to share a coveted “first kiss” upon the ship’s return from sea. Also, a gay sailor who was discharged twice under DADT was readmitted to active duty earlier this month.

ABC’s Jake Tapper interviewed a group of five gay soldiers serving in Afghanistan who have come out in the past year. One soldier said, “The most important thing that has changed since the repeal is now we can focus on the mission.” Watch it:

BIDEN: We’re engaged in a reconciliation process. Whether it will work or not is another question. But we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.

Of course, the right wing ignored everything Biden had said and focused on the “Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy” line. Mitt Romney was particularly perturbed, tweeting that the comment is “an outrageous affront to our troops carrying out the fight in Afghanistan.” His campaign also released a statement, saying that Biden and President Obama “must immediately explain themselves.”

But as the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen points out, Romney may have to have a little chat with his top adviser on Afghanistan, who has endorsed the same policy Biden laid out with Newsweek:

And as it turns out, Romney’s top foreign policy advisor on Afghanistan happens to agree with Biden’s line about talks with the Taliban. In June, [Former Bush administration official James] Shinn endorsed direct negotiations with the Taliban, and in August, Shinn endorsed “a negotiated settlement” with the Taliban, which would give them a formal role in the Afghan government. “Negotiation does not represent an easy or early way out of Afghanistan for the United States and its NATO allies, but it is the only way in which this war is likely to end,” he argued.

What are the foreign policy differences between what Joe Biden said and what Romney’s top foreign policy advisor on Afghanistan said? There are no differences.

“I do not negotiate with the Taliban,” Romney said during last month’s GOP foreign policy debate. Indeed, Benen writes, “I’ll look forward to the Romney campaign explaining why its own foreign policy is misguided.”

Drone operators fly missions over Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and Iraq from bases in Nevada and California. The study — conducted by the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio — found that frequent shift-changes, “mind numbing” monotony, and increasing workloads contributed to the heightened stress levels. Between 65 and 70 percent of drone operators with symptoms of mental illness were not seeking treatment.

The dramatic growth in the use of drones in recent years has led the Air Force to increase the number of drone pilots but the ratio of pilots to drones remains low. The Pentagon has about 7,000 aerial drones and about 1,100 drone pilots. “There’s just not enough people,” Wayne Chappelle, an Air Force psychologist who helped conduct a six-month study of drone operators from 2010 to 2011, told USA Today. “You have to constantly sustain a high level of vigilance, both visual and auditory information, and that would be really tough to do when there’s a lot of monotony.”

While Lt. Gen. Larry James, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told USA Today that he didn’t think instances of pilot error could attributed to high stress levels among drone operators, instances of pilot error and civilian deaths have increased as drone mission over Afghanistan and Pakistan increase.

In April, a Predator done killed a Marine and a medic in what appeared to be the first case of “friendly fire” from a drone. And in late October, the drone program drew more negative publicity after 16-year-old Tariq Aziz and his cousin were killed in a drone strike one day after attending a “Waziristan Grand Jirga,” an official meeting, to discuss the impact of drone strikes on communities in Pakistan.

Newt Gingrich has also attacked Obama for not doing whatever the generals tell him to do. Here’s what the former House speaker said shortly after Obama’s decision was made:

GINGRICH: I think we are drifting to a very, very dangerous situation. None of the generals recommended the speed of the drawdown the president wants. [...]

And if you watch what is happening there’s a steady drift from the United States at a time when the president is signaling his desire to get out as fast as he can and potentially faster than the generals think is safe. … You should go to the White House and ask the president why did he overrule all his generals?

Yet there was at least one point in Gingrich’s career in which he understood the chain-of-command, and actively promoted it. In 2006, a number of retired generals called on then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to step down because of poor leadership in the Iraq war. Gingrich defended Rumsfeld in an April, 2006 interview on Fox News, saying, “We have civilian control. … The generals don’t control”:

WALLACE: Do you agree with any of the criticism from those six retired generals that Secretary Rumsfeld went in with too few troops, went in without a plan, hasn’t been listening to the generals?

GINGRICH: Look. First of all, Don Rumsfeld listens to generals. He doesn’t obey them. We have civilian control. The president is in charge as commander in chief. The secretary of defense works for the president. The generals advise. The generals don’t control.

Watch the two clips:

So what does Gingrich really believe? Does the president control the military or do the generals control the president? For Newt, it probably depends on which political party the current White House occupant belongs to.