Today, the U.S. Marines kicked off a new push against bad guys in Afghanistan's fertile and poppy-rich southern province. Per the AP:

Gen. David Petraeus says the Marine Corps offensive launched Friday in southern Afghanistan is part of preparations for the arrival of 30,000 new U.S. reinforcements.

The Places In Between was my introduction to Afghanistan. Published in 2006, it was written by Rory Stewart, who at age 36 has already lived a life at once so adventurous and so quirky to defy easy narrative. He will soon take a safe (Tory) seat in the British parliament and rise quickly in the ranks, so quickly that he will still be thought young when he ascends to 10 Downing Street. Why not? (Rory is the second of my friends who is thought to be the future prime minister of an American ally, the first being Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party aspirant in Ottawa.

No matter what you think of it, the kind of troop increase that President Obama announced tonight is going to be expensive. With an estimated $1 billion dollar price tag for each additional thousand troops deployed, the new strategy will drive costs well above the $130 billion originally budgeted by the administration for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2010, likely requiring a supplemental spending bill to pass sometime early next year. You can expect the fight over that bill to get nasty.

The middle can be an awkward place. NRO's Cliff May attended a RAND conference on Afghanistan and didn't like what he heard from the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman:

I stayed on to hear Sen. Carl Levin. He argued that in Afghanistan a “change in strategy is essential and more important than force levels.” His implication: We can have a change in strategy without increasing force levels.

A friend following Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee sends over this exchange between Mullen and John McCain, who asked the general about Carl Levin's proposal to prioritize training of Afghan security forces over U.S. troop increases:

MCCAIN: Is there any reasonable scenarios, Admiral—a prospect that trained Afghan security forces can handle the bulk of the fighting over the near to medium term?

MULLEN: No, sir.

Via the WSJ:

"I don't think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in the Congress," Ms. Pelosi told reporters.

Meawhile Carl Levin is adopting a "stand them up so we can stand down" position. And things are sounding awfully reminiscent of the Iraq war circa 2004-2005.

I suppose it's good that the Swat Valley Taliban spokesman has been captured, but I have to question the wisdom of luring in people under the guise of negotiations and then snatching them. If we really are serious about trying to cut deals with some Taliban elements, it's probably not wise to give them reason to suspect any outreach might be a trap.

Relatedly, Carl Levin had this complaint in today's NYT: