By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

At the same time that President Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, he said the U.S. would begin pulling out by July of 2011—just before his reelection campaign begins in earnest, and only one year after our forces will have been deployed fully.  It is a political decision, and tantamount to conceding the country to our enemies sometime that year.  The president’s decisions are not surprising because he is an anti-war politician who never served in the U.S. military, and he knows nothing about running a war.  His plans are designed to appease his political soul mates and constituency, America’s anti-war far-Left.

His “dithering” for months now has undermined the support of our allies, and sent a clear signal to our enemies that he is weak and indecisive, and America is too.  The halfway measures of his new Afghan policies will not satisfy the American political Left or Right, our allies or the Afghan people—whose suffering will continue.  However, the president will have pleased our enemies, especially when he is focused on an “exit strategy” instead of winning.  It is disturbing to watch him pathetically try to micro-manage the war in Afghanistan from the White House.[2] Indeed, it smacks of Lyndon Johnson’s tragic handling of the Vietnam War that resulted in the senseless deaths of more than 58,000 Americans, and more than 150,000 who were wounded[3]; and the end of his presidency.

We began in Afghanistan militarily shortly after 9/11, and were successful in taking over the country and ousting the Taliban.  The poppy crops should have been eradicated then, so the worldwide supply of heroin would have been reduced dramatically.  The Associated Press reported on November 23, 2009: “The poppy crop in Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world’s supply of opium, is linked to corruption, addiction and a drug trade that bankrolls the Taliban insurgency.”  Opium poppies are the raw ingredient in making heroin.

We should not have turned our attention to Iraq until Afghanistan was stabilized fully.  Because we directed our resources to Iraq, Afghanistan was allowed to “languish” and the Taliban were permitted to regain traction.  We have made great strides in helping the long-suffering women of Afghanistan, and that must not cease or be neglected.  Afghanistan is important to us strategically as well, because the Taliban “straddle” both Afghanistan and Pakistan; and if Afghanistan falls, Pakistan might descend into unfathomable chaos, with its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of our enemies.

President Obama is a far-Left neophyte who is in the process of presiding over a failed presidency, which is likely to get worse with the passage of time.  General David Petraeus and other leaders in our military chain of command have endorsed General Stanley McChrystal’s requests for more troops, which according to reports involve far more than 40,000.  The president should let the military handle Afghanistan, and allow General McChrystal to do his job.

Obama has not been successful at running anything, ever; and it is unlikely that Afghanistan will be an exception.  At best he is a failed “community organizer” from Chicago, who was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia.  Just read his book, “Dreams from My Father”—which is a real eye opener—if you have any doubts.[4] His beliefs are premised on naïveté and defeat, as well as the notion that the U.S. cannot send additional troops without a plan for getting them out.  For example, the Washington Post quotes White House officials as stating: “[Obama’s] desired end state in Afghanistan envisions more informal local security arrangements than in Iraq, a less-capable national government and a greater tolerance of insurgent violence.”[5]

This is a prescription for defeat, and it sends precisely the wrong message to our enemies, who will simply wait for Obama to get weaker and for America to leave Afghanistan.  It will result in the shedding of American blood and that of our allies for nothing, like Vietnam.  Former Vice President Dick Cheney is correct when he says that the average Afghan citizen “sees talk about exit strategies and how soon we can get out, instead of talk about how we win.  Those folks . . . begin to look for ways to accommodate their enemies.  They’re worried the United States isn’t going to be there much longer and the bad guys are.”

President Obama is correct that the people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades, which makes his exit strategy of one year after deployment so unrealistic.  A year passes in the flash of an eye; and it is not long enough to make a difference in Afghanistan.  Just imagine Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying that he would not commit U.S. troops to the war against Hitler in Europe, or the war against Japan in the Pacific, unless he had an exit strategy in place and operating one year after they were deployed.  Thank God that Obama was not in charge of the D-Day invasion of Europe, or other decision-making in World War II.  Hitler would have won, and Europe (including the UK) would be speaking German.

More and more Americans are realizing that Obama is a mistake, even though he is personable, intelligent and certainly a fine speaker.  The highly-respected Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll—for December 24, 2009—shows that 43 percent of U.S. voters Strongly Disapprove of the way Obama is performing his role as president, while 27 percent Strongly Approve, giving him a negative Presidential Approval Index rating of -16.[6] That speaks volumes about where Obama and America are heading.

The president’s Afghan policies are doomed from the start because he is not sending enough troops to succeed; he has set an unrealistic exit date; Al Qaeda and the Taliban will be active and aggressive in Afghanistan long after Obama exits politics; he will not be able to hold even his own party together with respect to this issue; and like Vietnam for Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan may prove to be Obama’s political undoing—apart from the economy, ObamaCare, national security and other vital issues.  Since when does an anti-war far-Left community organizer know how to run a war, much less successfully?

© 2009, Timothy D. Naegele

[2] See, e.g., http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122501923_pf.html

[3] See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_casualties_of_war

[4] See Obama, “Dreams from My Father” (paperback “Revised Edition,” published by Three Rivers Press, 2004); see also http://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/

[5] See infra n.2.

[6] See http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Rhetoric in the United States regarding our military opponents has descended to the point where childish name-calling has become the default. Calling others ‘evil’ and ‘bad guys,’ without explanation, should be the stuff of children’s entertainment. Instead, the widespread use of these terms is anti-democratic as it hinders citizens’ understanding of our opponents and selves, and it impedes peace-making through compromise.

‘Evil’ fosters war

In his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama asserted that “evil” exists. Then he predictably trotted out the Nazis and al Qaeda as self-evident exemplars, without actually explaining what constitutes evil. Since he was arguing in favor of wars against evil, this seems like a considerable omission. Perhaps he would be hard-pressed to find a definition that would not encompass some actions in recent years by the United States or its allies.

But his use of this term – popularized especially during the Bush years – creates deeper problems. The first is the easiest to convey: who decides what is evil? Indeed, al Qaeda and the United States government have portrayed each other as consistently engaging in evil actions. Which is made of rubber, and which of glue?

The second problem is actually more practical. ‘Evil’ is such an absolute term that its use makes it easier to fight wars but hard to compromise to end them. George Orwell demonstrates this problem, perhaps unwittingly, in 1984 and Animal Farm, as the reader feels frustration at the rulers’ blatant (albeit successful) redefinition of allies and enemies. While I believe that the United States was less likely to make a deal with Saddam Hussein after depicting him as another Hitler during the Gulf War, we did in fact reach a compromise that lasted for years. I suspect that the Taliban can expect similar treatment soon.

I am most concerned that public figures use the term ‘evil’ to trick people into supporting or participating in military actions without serious contemplation. How can we not fight evil with everything we have? If Nazis were evil and so are al Qaeda, North Korea, and Iran, shouldn’t we fight World War II against them all? Won’t that make us heroes?

A major change must have occurred since 1983, when President Reagan described the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire.’ This phrase received widespread ridicule for being cartoonish and engendered criticism for making coexistence less imaginable. Today, I hear even anthropologists saying ‘evil’ as if it had a self-evident referent. How have so many Americans, of so many political persuasions, become so simplistic? So fundamentalist? It frightens me.

I understand the attraction of the concept: It makes it easier to stop thinking. What we are doing is ‘good,’ even if it entails killing the people that the ‘evil’ ones are primarily victimizing. And demagogues have the Nazis as a handy resource in making evil seem self-evident. How can we describe such systematic murder as if it were committed by ordinary humans? And yet clearly it was, as evidenced by the ability of murderous concentration-camp personnel to lead quiet, inconspicuous lives after WWII.

It may be difficult to understand our opponents, but peace-making (and democracy) depend on relative estimations of our peers – not absolute ones. As Obama said in his acceptance speech, “no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint …” Perhaps, then, he should eschew the absolutist rhetoric of ‘evil’ and work to promote a more relative assessment of our actions among our erstwhile enemies and vice versa. This might create the conditions for a less belligerent coexistence in which dialogue replaces epithets.

A cartoon world with ‘bad guys’

At least Obama seems to shy away from the term “bad guys” to refer to the United States’ momentary targets. The nearly ubiquitous use of this phrase shares all of ‘evil’s’ problems. Mostly, though, it appears to be part of an attempt to reduce our analytical sophistication to the level of a seven-year-old. Perhaps I’m being generous, but I believe that adults should be using this phrase with tongue in cheek, as exemplified by a list of “Top Ten Evil Bad Guys Ever” and an “Evil League of Bad Guys” t-shirt.

Aside from the question of who gets to decide who is “bad,” this phrase masks the complexity that we, as citizens in a democracy, should understand as we guide our representatives in making decisions regarding war. If someone is ‘bad’ or ‘evil,’ why bother trying to understand their motivations? They are what they are … until they support us, at which point they become selfless forces of ‘good.’ Indeed, some of yesterday’s ‘bad guys’ in Iraq are now being called ‘good guys’ because they are cooperating with U.S. forces. It seems unlikely that their moral or ethical standing has changed en masse.

We might also ask whether such automatic and partisan moralizing of positions impedes self-reflection. Could it be reasonable for Iraqis (or Panamanians or Dominicans, etc.) to oppose an invading foreign army that their country had never attacked or even threatened to attack? Might the so-called ‘bad guys’ reasonably see themselves as ‘patriots’?

A question of democracy

Finally, I want to give our public figures’ sophistication the benefit of the doubt. I believe that the childlike use of these simplistic, absolute terms started as part of a cynical, Nixon-like attempt to frame the debate regarding our country’s military operations. This is part of politics in a democracy.

But if military figures use this loaded language to conjure support for war, then they are propagandizing the populace. This is not their role in a democracy, in which influence should flow from the people through the elected officials to the military. It is anathema to the military’s status as a nonpartisan institution that implements political leaders’ decisions. So, General Petraeus, please stop.

Who was your favorite speaker of 2009? Madeleine Albright, Michael Pollan, David Petraeus, or Nicholas Kristof? Please take a moment to let us know by visiting our poll.

If your favorite is not listed here, please let us know in a comment.

Obama’s Delusion, David Bromwich’s essay on the slowly unfolding disaster that is the Obama presidency, is about the best thing I have read to date on the subject. It’s more charitable than I tend to be towards the current ruling party and its head, and at the same time more damning.

Blame goes in all directions: to the right-wing noise machine and the unseemly machinations of Limbaugh, Cheney, Bob Woodward and the generals; and also, to Obama himself, whose political instincts are shown pretty convincingly to amount to a delusion.

Yet he is also encumbered by the natural wish of the moderate to hold himself close to all the establishments at once: military, financial, legislative, commercial. Ideally, he would like to inspire everyone and to offend no one. But the conceit of accommodating one’s enemies inch by inch to attain bipartisan consensus seems with Obama almost a delusion in the literal sense: a fixed false belief. How did it come to possess so clever a man?

Worthy of note, this beautiful and concise characterization of the opposition party:

The Republican Party of 2009 is a powerful piece of contrary testimony. It has become the party of wars and jails, and its moral physiognomy is captured by the faces of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, faces hard to match outside Cruikshank’s drawings of Dickens’s villains, hard as nails and mean as dirt and with an issue still up their sleeve when wars wind down and the jails are full: a sworn hostility towards immigrants and ‘aliens’.

(Even his supporters would probably be content to see “money is speech” engraved on McConnell’s tomb. It’s an epithet the unpleasant man who represents my woebegone state seems perversely proud of. “Hard as nails and mean as dirt” seems more apt.)

As for Obama himself, it would be hard to find a better chronology of the president’s serial missteps than you’ll find here. And there are plenty of harsh words left over for the “prosperous neoliberal consensus,” something with which Bromwich, who teaches at Yale, is intimately familiar:

Equality in the United States in the early 21st century has become a gospel preached by the liberal elite to a populace who feel they have no stake in equality. Since the Reagan presidency and the dismemberment of the labour unions, America has not known a popular voice against the privilege of the large corporations. Yet without such a voice from below, all the benevolent programmes that can be theorised, lacking the ground note of genuine indignation, have turned into lumbering ‘designs’ espoused by the enlightened for moral reasons that ordinary people can hardly remember. The gambling ethic has planted itself deep in the America psyche – deeper now than it was in 1849 or 1928. Little has been inherited of the welfare-state doctrine of distributed risk and social insurance. The architects of liberal domestic policy, put in this false position, make easy prey for the generalised slander that says that all non-private plans for anything are hypocritical.

This is not a pretty picture, and Bromwich concludes in an unsatisfactory manner, by addressing only one of the many traps faced by the president. This particular trap, Afghanistan, is the one most of Obama’s own making. “The best imaginable result just now, given the tightness of the trap, may be ostensible co-operation with the generals, accompanied by a set of questions that lays the groundwork for refusal of the next escalation. But in wars there is always a deep beneath the lowest deep, and the ambushes and accidents tend towards savagery much more than conciliation.”

F.C. agrees with Tom Engelhardt. 

 Obama is taking orders from the generals instead of giving orders to them.

…..in less than two years, US troop strength in that country will have more than tripled to approximately 100,000 troops. So we’re talking near-Vietnam-level escalation rates. If you include the 38,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces also there (and a possible 5,000 more to come), total allied troop strength will be significantly above what the Soviets deployed during their devastating Afghan War of the 1980s, in which they fought some of the same insurgents now arrayed against us.

Think of this as Obama’s anti-MacArthur moment. In April 1951, in the midst of the Korean War, president Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of command of the American forces. He did so because the general, a far grander public figure than either McChrystal or Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Petraeus (and with dreams of his own about a possible presidential run), had publicly disagreed with, and interfered with, Truman’s plans to “limit” the war after the Chinese intervened.

Obama, too, has faced what Robert Dreyfuss in Rolling Stone calls a “generals’ revolt” – amid fears that his Republican opposition would line up behind the insubordinate field commanders and make hay in the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns. Obama, too, has faced a general, Petraeus, who has played a far subtler game than MacArthur ever did. After more than two months of what right-wing critics termed “dithering” and supporters called “thorough deliberations”, Obama dealt with the problem quite differently to Truman. He essentially agreed to subordinate himself to the publicly stated wishes of his field commanders. (Not that his Republican critics will give him much credit for doing so, of course.) This is called “politics” in our country and, for a Democratic president in our era, Tuesday night’s end result was remarkably predictable…. (more)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL05Df01.html

Some claims are too petty even for Media Matters to make on the merits alone.  Unfortunately, that’s not to say they have the good sense to abandon such attacks—no, they just need a little extra padding, like dredging up old, unrelated controversies to make them seem more significant.

Such is the sorry state of their latest attack on Sean Hannity, who, in a discussion last night with Fox News’ John Gibson, observed:

Look at, for example, MoveOn.org. Look at how ugly this got. Here’s a guy that has dedicated his life — General [David] Petraeus — to saving his country: “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” […] Why do you think there wasn’t more outrage and why wasn’t there more media coverage — in the mainstream media — on this?

First, Media Matters runs down a long list of media outlets that did cover the General Betray-Us ad.  Unfortunately, they don’t describe or link to any of them, leaving the reader to guess just how accurate, biased, or “extensive” any of that coverage really was.  Are we talking full reports, or passing references in other discussions?  Substantive criticism and reporting on the ad’s offensive nature, or attempts to equivocate?

In any event, Media Matters seems to have caught Hannity speaking less precisely than he should have in an off-the-cuff reference to a two-year-old controversy.  Keep up the important work, guys!  Maybe you can follow-up with a special report exposing all the typos in Gibson’s new book!

Perhaps sensing that this observation might not be stunning enough to warrant a full post, Media Matters introduces a hypocrisy angle, claiming that many of the same outlets who pounced on the Betray-Us story ignored the faux controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” remarks.  Yes, because we all know the mainstream media’s real problem is its right-wing bias!

Unfortunately for Media Matters, a quick Google search reveals several media outlets did cover them—including the New York Times, CNN, USA Today, the Boston Herald, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, and even “right-wing” Fox News.  At the time, NewsBusters pointed out that MSNBC covered the story obsessively, and speculated that the rest of the MSM might have ran away from it because it was so quickly shown to be bogus, they recognized “how hypocritical it would be to castigate Limbaugh for basically reiterating what ABC’s Brian Ross and Charles Gibson reported last Monday evening just two days before,” and/or they hoped to bury then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing ties to the smear machine.

It never ceases to amaze what non-stories pass for scandal on the Left.  Media Matters’ strategy might be to overwhelm conservatives with the sheer number of their daily attacks, but their tactics only prove that quantity is no substitute for quality.

_____

Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

The Guardian has reported that President Obama’s plan is to  add 30,000 troops over 6 months and then begin withdrawing all troops in 2011 with the last ones leaving in 2013. There’s nothing quite like telegraphing your intentions to a patient and cunning enemy. This is Vietnamization cubed.

1 – The one thing the Afghan people need above all else is to know that we are with them for the future. 4 years is not enough to provide long term stability.Any expectation to the contrary is a pipe dream. We will immediately lose what little trust and cooperation we have had as they see the writing on the wall.

2 – The Taliban have built a more vicious and successful narcostate than anyone in history, and it will take years to root out. They are now self financing through a 70% market share in the heroin business. This business both corrupts the West (Think of the Opium trade in the 1800’s and what it did to China) and funds external terrorism and jihad.

3 – The Afghans in the villages and cities must see justice done. Corruption on both sides is endemic and must be rooted out brutally to both destroy the narcotics trade and the historical feud driven culture that made the country so violent in the first place. This would  provide the legitimacy to the government so desired by the Western states. But to do this will require incredible force of will and commitment, which our president has now telegraphed we do not have.

4 – Security of the people must be another priority. 30,000 troops simply are not enough to geographically provide this.

5 – Real economic opportunity must be fostered and subsidized until the Afghan economy can stand on its own.

The strategy as reported in the Guardian, the Telegraph, and other outlets mixes the worst of Johnson and Nixon. The Taliban can simply lay low for a few years and then drive to Kabul after they have built up their forces and strength. They now have a target date. Opium production can be moved accordingly.

By losing the people, our troops will be even more exposed, causing significantly increased casualties. Fatalism will set in, and we will see an increasing loss of key personnel as we near the date of withdrawal. Who wants to be the last man killed in a pointless war? And make no mistake, Obama has made the war pointless now.

The Telegraph reports that Obama wants a major onslaught in Helmand, the center of the heroin trade, in January and yet even there, fighting conditions are miserable and the enemy is in hiding at that time of year. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells us the president wants to deliver a “quick punch”. Once again, telegraphing intentions and also the president’s need for a photo op. By the time we get to Marjeh, one of the centers of the trade, the enemy will be long gone.

The president is, it seems this time, long on specifics and short on an overarching strategy. Exactly the reverse of  every successful major military campaign since Lincoln.

This morning, Iran dropped another bomb in their standoff with the West when they announced another 10 nuclear uranium enrichment sites. At the same time, members of their parliament are calling for their withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, pushing the nuclear envelope even further. In addition, the mullahs have taken over much of the education establishment and in a show of raw power the government  seized the Nobel Prize medal of Shirin Ebadi. Ms. Ebadi, a human rights lawyer, was awarded the Peace Prize in 2003 as one of the few outspoken critics of rights abuses in that country. The descent into Islamofascism continues. Mahmoud Achmedinejad, in the meantime, is being feted in countries such as Brazil and Venezuela.

It seems that in Israel and Palestine, it really can’t get much worse without the bullets flying. The Israelis continue to expand the settlements within their interpretation of the Oslo Agreements while the Palestinian government withers away into irrelevance. Both sides rejected Hillary Clinton’s intrusion a couple of weeks ago as she acted very undiplomatically. Special Envoy George Mitchell has also been politely told to pound sand.

In Afghanistan, the warlords and the Taliban are arming and reprovisioning  to face an ever more feckless ISAF as the president prepares to face the nation and explain why it has taken 95 days to come up with a new policy to replace the policy that was agreed to in March. The 2010 fighting season promises to be brutal.

And oh yeah, there’s Iraq. Is there a czar for Iraq, or have we forgotten about it entirely? In Iraq, the government is once again at war with itself as the factions battle for advantage. Bombings in Baghdad are increasing and the Kurds in the north are doing their best to set up a de-facto Kurdistan. The tremendous framework for peace and reconciliation established by Petraeus & Co. is in real danger of falling apart.

We are disengaged in the U.A.E., where Dubai World is threatening to default on $60 Billion in debt. In Saudi Arabia, the cancer of Wahabbism continues to be the second largest export. Pakistan is at war with itself. Luckily the Uzbeks, the Tadjik’s, the Armenians, the Kazakh’s, the Khyrgiz and the Turkmens are reasonably quiet. Syria has emerged as a critical player and yet we have done nothing.

One of the primary messages of the Obama Administration from the outset was engagement with the Islamic world. His speech in Cairo was supposed to be a milestone in U.S. – Middle Eastern relations. Instead, events seem to be spiraling out of control. Israel has clearly telegraphed their intentions if Iran continues along the nuclear path, and despite the lives lost and the cost, all of our efforts in Central Asia could be blown to pieces.

I do not want to be labeled as an anti-Obama agitator. But the reality is that our government’s policies are out of control. Measured diplomacy has been replaced with rhetoric and smoke. In the most complex and mine laden arena in the world, our policy is a disaster.

An article today by AP illustrates the pretzel logic of many reporters and analysts on Afghanistan, as well as the White House’s dereliction of duty. In the article by Amir Shah and Heidi Vogt on rocket attacks on French forces in Tagab, they state that an increased military presence will attract more violence. This is true for a short period of time, as was found as recently as during the Surge in Iraq in 2006. But in the long run almost every case in history tells us pacification and stability operations do succeed.  Short term pain leads to long term gain. It is not a hard concept to understand and yet the media mythologizes uncivilized barbarians with AK-47’s as unbeatable in a land where they have murdered far more of their peaceful countrymen than the enemy since 2001.

Bases must be built or expanded. Check points must be set up and manned. Provincial Construction (there is little reconstruction when it never existed in the first place) Teams need to have missions defined and be tasked and funded and equipped. All of this takes long lead times. And yet we are allowing the argument to be redefined with elliptical logic more suited to college bull sessions than serious discussion of the war effort. And every day without a clear direction, the war drags on pointlessly. We have the best equipped and most professional military in the world, but at the top and in the media, they see what can only be called incompetence and a defeatist mentality.

Why this is now being debated when the experts are virtually unanimous on what is required is simply a mystery. It has now been 80 days with no sign of a decision by our President since General McChrystal’s urgent request arrived at the Pentagon. It is as if the Commander in Chief either doesn’t care or wants us to lose. Maybe he can apologize to our military and the Afghan people next.

Buy Cheap The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008

Buy Low Price From Here Now
Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks’s #1 New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq—The Gamble is the next news breaking installment

Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.

Since early 2007 a new military order has directed American strategy. Some top U.S. officials now in Iraq actually opposed the 2003 invasion, and almost all are severely critical of how the war was fought from then through 2006. At the core of the story is General David Petraeus, a military intellectual who has gathered around him an unprecedented number of officers with both combat experience and Ph.D.s. Underscoring his new and unorthodox approach, three of his key advisers are quirky foreigners—an Australian infantryman-turned- anthropologist, an antimilitary British woman who is an expert in the Middle East, and a Mennonite-educated Palestinian pacifist.

The Gamble offers news breaking information, revealing behind-the-scenes disagreements between top commanders. We learn that almost every single officer in the chain of command fought the surge. Many of Petraeus’s closest advisers went to Iraq extremely pessimistic, doubting that the surge would have any effect, and his own boss was so skeptical that he dispatched an admiral to Baghdad in the summer of 2007 to come up with a strategy to replace Petraeus’s. That same boss later flew to Iraq to try to talk Petraeus out of his planned congressional testimony. The Gamble examines the congressional hearings through the eyes of Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and their views of the questions posed by the 2008 presidential candidates.

For Petraeus, prevailing in Iraq means extending the war. Thomas E. Ricks concludes that the war is likely to last another five to ten years—and that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that “the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened.”…….
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 “Seemed To Be In Hurry” 2009-10-25
By Patrick Lair (Missoula, MT United States)
I don’t want to take away from the impressive amount of work that had to have gone into this book, but reading The Gamble right on the heels of Fiasco, it kind of felt like the former was a hastily thrown together sequel.

First and foremost, the copy editing was terrible. There were typos galore. That aside, the second book didn’t appear to have the structure that the first one had. It read more like a series of addenda to the first. I also noticed lots of quotes, descriptions and phrasing that was cut and pasted right out of the first into the second.

This is all nitpicking on details. Overall, it got the job done and was a fascinating read. Mr. Ricks is obviously a first-class reporter. But while reading The Gamble, I couldn’t help thinking it must have been cranked out with less time for reflection.

 “This book has information people should know” 2009-10-04
By Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida)
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Ricks subtitled this superb description of the recent problems of the Iraq War “General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008.” Ricks had disclosed the earlier Iraq War troubles in his New York Times Bestseller Fiasco.

Ricks reveals how the United States fought against Iraqi insurgent forces with outdated counter-productive methods designed for large military engagements, such as World war II, resulting in thousands of American and many more Iraqi deaths, as well as an Iraqi civil war, until just a handful of active duty and retired generals were able to persuade President Bush and the military establishment to use instead counter-insurgency methods.

Everyone interested in knowing the inside information about what is only sketched out in newspapers and TV, who want to know what will happen in Iraq in the future, and when the United States can leave Iraq, must read this book.

The United States attacked Iraq in 2003 and President Bush announced that he had achieved a military victory within weeks after American forces began to fight. He, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and virtually the entire Pentagon establishment saw success continuing for the next three years despite several thousand American deaths, constant suicide bombings, deadly explosives left on roads, assassinations, and the apparent need for American soldiers to hide in fortified enclaves. Frustrated and confused American soldiers indiscriminately and brutally murdered twenty-four innocent Iraqis at Haditha in Iraq in 2005, including women and children and a wheelchair-bound old man, and this was not an isolated murder.

It was not until 2006 that President Bush was forced to admit that the actions of the past three years were a dismal fiasco.

Ricks interviewed hundreds of people and relates their assessments. One expressed the view of many: “The truth is that many commands in Iraq (before 2007) are no longer focused on winning and instead are focused on CYA” – that is, covering your ass. Another highlighted the problem: “Part of this loss of focus is lack of clear guidance on exactly what winning means and how to achieve it.”

Ricks shows that the answer for what to do in Iraq would come in large part from General David Petraeus. Petraeus changed the war from conventional fighting to counterinsurgency. He taught that rather than focusing on killing insurgents, the primary objective of the American forces should be the Iraqi people “figure out how to win them.” The military should concentrate on providing security and opportunity for every Iraqi. The troops needed to get out of their enclaves and move among the Iraqis, live among them, protect them, stay with them, separate them from the insurgents, give them a sense of security, and they will begin to talk with the Americans. This would also bring over many dissatisfied insurgents to the American side.

Petraeus insisted that he could only spread out his forces among the Iraqi people if he had an increase in forces. The American government and most of the general population were against an increase; they were tired in 2006 of seeing the increases in deaths, no reason for staying Iraq and no plan to end the war.

President Bush increased the number of forces in 2007. General Petraeus was given command in Iraq. He led his soldiers in a “surge” that cleaned out many areas and began to place forces among the population. The psychological impact of the surge was huge. As predicted, the number of insurgent attacks decreased and some local Iraqis and some tribal chiefs began to work with the American forces. But the underlying festering problem in Iraq was not solved.

In 2008, President Bush announced that the surge was “doing what it was designed to do,” but, he admitted, it had not done what he hoped it would do – it did not lead to political reconciliation among the Iraqi people, among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. These people could not get along with one another and there was a simmering civil war boiling underneath the surface of Iraq. It was only the presence of American forces that held the civil war at bay.

The Iraqi government was and is unable and unwilling to solve this basic problem. The Iraqi Prime Minister “Maliki government is very dysfunctional, and unwilling to reach out to his enemies…. He has a conspiratorial mind-set, and is fearful of a coup.”

While many Americans and their representatives in Congress saw the reduction in deaths, they still have “a hard time seeing the big picture and what constitutes success.”

What is the current American goal in Iraq?

One observer described it as a very limited hope: “We have given up on having a shinning beacon of democracy in Iraq. We want a nation that is relatively stable, not a threat to its neighbors, and can protect its borders. We have also largely given up on sectarian reconciliation; we now simply hope for some type of sectarian accommodation that will reduce the likelihood of widespread conflict when we leave…. We’ve planted the seeds and will know the time to leave when the seed blooms. Unfortunately, we cannot tell the American people how long this particular flower takes to bloom” (emphasis added). In the mean time, America needs to spend time, money and lives to try to keep Iraq stable.

How long, realistically speaking, will Americans need to stay in Iraq? Ricks points out that history has shown that states as divided and weak as Iraq rarely become stable; and experts predict that even the current minimal American goals cannot be achieved for over a decade.

But why should America care? Leaving aside the humanitarian answer, that to leave now would result in chaos and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in civil war; there is an important American, indeed world interest. Ricks makes it clear that the internal civil war in Iraq will spill over the Middle East, involve countries such as Iran, which is viciously hostile to the US and US interests, and cause the US to become involved in a much greater war.

Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of fifteen books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, www.israelbooks.com.

 “Solid Ricks” 2009-09-06
By William Gole
A good follow-up to Fiasco. Extremely readable and insightful. With these two books (Fiasco and Gamble), the author has firmly established his position as an expert on US military affairs, especially as they relate to the Middle East.

 “Outstanding Book” 2009-08-24
By Robert D. Bechill (Lodi, CA)
Another exceptional book by Ricks. Hopefully our current military is reading this and prepping for life in Afghanistan. We can be successful by truly winning the hearts and minds.

 “Not as much of a bombshell as “Fiasco” but still well worth reading” 2009-08-11
By Joseph C. Sweeney (Portland, Maine)
Ricks writes of The Surge and its aftermath with insight, compassion, and intelligence. Should be read by any American wondering what has gone right and what has gone wrong in Iraq. Very highly recommended!

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There are many proclaimed fathers, grandfathers, and godfathers behind the ”surge” of American and allied troops in the Iraq War.  Who designed the approach that turned the tide of the war?  How did the new approach gain traction inside the DC Beltway?  What are the lessons learned for aspring military leaders?

The Surge: the Untold Story provides a historical account of U.S. military operations in Iraq during the Surge of forces during 2007 and 2008. This documentary offers audiences a unique look into the real story of the Surge in Iraq, as told by U.S. military commanders and diplomats as well as Iraqis.

For those interested in the history of the “surge,” you can now view a well developed online documentary produced by the Institute for the Study of War.

For COIN, Iraq War, and military history researchers, there is an excellent timeline and detailed biographies of the key players available as well.

What makes this different from other stories I have heard about the Surge?
Audiences will watch never-before-seen interviews from high profile figures like General David Petraeus, General Raymond Odierno, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. This documentary reveals the personalities of this generation of U.S. military leaders and explains how they successfully implemented a counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq that brought the country back from the brink of civil war and catastrophe.

There wasn’t a great deal of hope, audacious or otherwise, before yesterday, but with the Republicans back on the ascendant, here’s some more things that aren’t going to get better:

Obama has said that the US will no longer torture prisoners, but he’s after all a lawyer, and with lawyers, one would do well to carefully scrutinize the fine print.  The CIA may have packed it’s waterboarding equipment in the attic at Langley, but that doesn’t mean that the occasional suspect doesn’t have to be forcibly deported to Syria, Jordan, or Egypt.  If the Syrians or anyone else hook the prisoner up to some car batteries or extract the odd fingernail, we can’t really be held responsible.  Hey, shit happens, right?

And some of us figured that when we pulled the lever for Obama last year at this time that we might finally stop wasting time, money, and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Well, at least in Iraq.  That’s not gonna happen.  You just know that the president is going to cave to the generals, lest he be perceived as an unpatriotic terrorist-hugging pussy by Beck and Limbaugh and all those compromise-and- consensus-minded Republicans in Congress who have been such a big help to him so far.  He ought to take some advice from George Mcgovern (and might it not be a much better world today if he’d been elected president back in 1972?)  As an aside, McGovern’s comment on health reform: “I would have just had a one-sentence bill: ‘Congress hereby extends Medicare to all Americans.’  Period.”  Gee, where have we read that before?  Instead, Obama is probably going to take his advice from generals McChrystal and Petraeus which for all intents and purposes is like endorsing his most dangerous opponents in 2012.  This country might just be ruled by a military junta by then.  Paranoid delusions?  Just wait.

BW

The Afghanistan situation clearly doesn’t seem very pleasant. The war seems to heading to a dead end and increasingly, we are hearing voices from certain sections within the USA and elsewhere of an American pull-out from Afghanistan too. Their arguments include the fact that even 9/11 was planned and carried out from Western cities. This is fallacious as none of this would have been possible but for the ideological backing that the Arab and Middle Eastern radical fringe groups give. Pulling out, it goes without saying, would be disastrous both for the region and the world.

The new American administration realizes that this war cannot be won by military means alone. This, in spite of the all the news reports we read about increasing military action in Islamic-extremist infested regions. Drone attacks, for example, have increased. And, consecutively, so have civilian causalities.

Taliban and other outfits will continue to enjoy support from a ‘fair’ proportion of people in the region for several reasons. These include the ingrained idea of sovereignty, where certain people continue to see the USA as an outsider and they hence wrongly assume that the Taliban are the local heroes fighting the foreign evil.  Such sections prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t. At the margin, however, there exists another section that finds itself an easy prey for Afghan warlords to hire, a section that would probably not have tended to such a direction had they had they been safely employed elsewhere. (Note that this is not a generalization for all militia, but only a reference to a section at the margin)

Bottom-up and Top-down strategies of Education

Increasing of peaceful employment might pull such a section out of the local militias and into meaningful contribution. Education is an enabling factor that helps in this regard. However, everyone recognizes the shortcomings of an impractical goal of establishing a strong primary and secondary schooling system in a short span of time. Even if this was done, by the time a sizeable proportion of people got educated, a good 10-15 years would have passed, surely passing the political sell-by date of the war to the American public. Also, schools become easy target of militants, as to them, they represent symbols of American occupation.

An education policy which seems more practicable is the top-down strategy, as opposed to the bottom-up strategy of primary school setting discussed above. Specifically, I propose the setting up of the Afghanistan Institute of Management (I’ll refer it as AIM henceforth), in the lines of the infamous Indian Institutes of Technology. The nuances and advantages are discussed below:

1.  It is easier to build one big institution and secure it from militant strikes, rather than building several small schools in every district with relatively lesser or no security.

2. The AIM would be completely residential and anonymity of students will be maintained so that they and their families aren’t targeted by militants.

3. Finding able and excellent teachers might seem to be a big problem. However, in today’s day, it shouldn’t be. English speaking professors can be hired from universities around the world and be asked to teach as little as 2-4 hours every week from the comforts and safety of their universities in, say, New Delhi, Singapore or London, via videoconferencing facilities.

4. To compensate for the lack of quality education in their schools, an extra semester or two of basic education and English training can be imparted.

5. AIM can be funded by many countries that have a stake in a stable Afghanistan.

6. The students studying here (at least initially) shouldn’t have to pay anything, and must be selected by a merit test.

7. There would be a small and important condition for admission: After completing their education, they will be required to stay and work in Afghanistan, and hence contribute to their economy, for at least 5-7 years. If they want to leave, they’ll have to pay up, say, 150% of the cost of their education.

8. On successfully completing their education, those who wish to be entrepreneurs will be given a capital grant of, say, Rs. 1-2 crore ($210k-420k), on submitting a project report of their intended firm/industry. This ‘loan’ will not need to be paid back if certain goals are met. These could include conditions such as: the enterprise should be employing ~20 workers at the end of year 1, ~50 at the end of year 2, ~100 at the end of year 3, and so on. Of course, profitability is important. If for various reasons profits cannot be maintained, they can submit reports to governing councils of these loans for restructuring of conditions and terms.

9. Since this project is of international interest, at least temporarily, these firms should be allowed to trade without barriers with these nations. Hence even if their own markets saturate, which I presume they will, they can produce for or serve foreign markets.

10. Worker training will be important, of course, given our unstated assumption that people are unskilled because of a lack of good, or any, education. Worker training should be subsidized by the international community, where the workers pay should be paid in part until they are fit to productably begin work.

What could potentially be achieved

Every year, hundreds of students from Afghanistan come to India to study in various universities. Clearly, there are several more who don’t qualify for the scholarships. This shows that there is more than a handful of students looking forward to quality education. Let us assume 100 students are taken in each year. Of these, only 10% end up as successful entrepreneurs at the end of their courses. Going by the conditions of worker employability given above, this would mean that there would be 700 workers working at the end of year 2, 1700 at the end of year 3, 3200 at the end of year 4, 5200 at the end of year 5, and so on and so forth. The rise in workers in such stable jobs is exponential.

The governing council will have to be careful to promote only such industries that do not cause harm on already existing local industry, or at least protect the workers if they are harmed. If they don’t do so, this can actually be counterproductive to the security scenario.

Over a period of time, worker supply would saturate (markets might not as free trade between these firms and other markets in assumed). This might raise demands for quality lower levels of education, for which the local government will have to respond, and will be more able to respond, given the growing economy.

I do not imply, not by a long shot, that these workers will be people who gave up on their fundamentalist groups to join work. However, eventually over years, this might begin to happen. I also understand that there already exist foreign universities in Afghanistan. But the model of the AIM clearly different from what already exists.

And why stop here? There can be such Institutes of Medicine, Technology, Economics, you name it.

Of course, I understand, and it is important to realize that this will not solve the problem. Hardly. Development measures such as these only contribute marginally to a direction that might eventually lead to stability. But it is important, as with such increments in peaceful development might eventually help Afghanistan reach its tipping point towards stability.

In an earlier blog regarding the U.S. Army Officer Shortage, I highlighted a few problems with officer talent management that link to leadership development. In the interest of improving leadership development for our officer corps, I have been reading an great book by Dr. Mark Moyar of the U.S. Marine Corps University, A Question of Command:  Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq from Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009.

A Question of Command

As evidenced by the over-registered Marine Corps University’s conference on “COIN Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond,” where GEN Petraeus gave the keynote address to the “COIN Nation,” there is a thirst for understanding the role of individual leadership in the COIN arena.

Readers from all ranks will be interested in Moyar’s succint identification of what it takes to succeed in the contemporary operating environment. Anyone who understands that effective leadership in a counterinsurgency setting — or the conventional battlefield — often does come down to the behavior of one individual will find that this book resonates with important themes.

Some background on why the book is a “must read:”

Moyar’s book has valuable lessons for the Army as well as other organizations and industries that operate in extremis. Operating effectively in extreme environments requires more than a “competent” leader. It requires a talented leader. Anything less than the right talent could make the difference between life and death. Lending viability to Moyar’s claims, a newly released Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) paper discusses the related implications of talent management, highlighting key definitions:  the “definition of talent is a special natural ability or capacity for achievement. Competent, on the other hand, is defined as merely proficient or having requisite or adequate ability.” Unfortunately, the U.S. Army doesn’t always acknowledge the varied distribution of skills that our officer corps brings to the table; and therefore, we don’t always do a great job placing them where their talents are effectively used, nor where the military needs them most. Moyar’s insights, based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, offer explicit criteria for the variables that we should screen for in our officer recruitment efforts and better develop in our leadership training efforts to ensure we identify an employ the right talent for the right position.

With that caveat emptor in mind, I present below a brief overview of the book, insights from field leaders who have reviewed the book, and a tacit response to a Small Wars Journal review of the book by Matthew Caris.

Book Concept

A Question of Command challenges the two main conventional COIN approaches — the population-centric and hearts-and-minds theory, and enemy-centric warfare — as means to an end. It presents instead a thesis that the most effective counterinsurgency is “leader-centric” warfare, a contest between elites in which the elite group with superiority in certain leadership attributes usually wins. Moyar basis his thesis on survey responses from field practitioners and data gathered from seven historical and two contemporary case studies (Iraq and Afghanistan) that cover 100 years of counterinsurgency operations.

Moyar’s argument states:

The better elite gains the assistance of more people and uses them to subdue or destroy the enemy elite and its supporters. Whereas the population-centric theory considers the people’s social, political, and economic grievances to be the foremost cause of popular insurgencies, the leader-centric theory maintains that a talented insurgent elite, which may or may not be motivated by such grievances, is the principal cause. The masses, however aggrieved, do not turn into insurgents on their own; they become insurgents only by following an elite that has decided to lead an insurgency, and only if that elite appears to be more virtuous and capable than the governmental elite. Consequently, insurgencies tend to be strongest where the insurgents enjoy the greatest advantage over the counterinsurgents in leadership quality, not where the people live in the most objectionable conditions.

More specifically, Moyar makes the argument that the side that recruits, retains and employs the right talent – individuals who possesses the “Ten Attributes of Effective Counterinsurgency Leaders” –  has a higher probability of achieving their objectives.  The desirable attributes (which he finds do not differ much between friendly or enemy forces) include: initiative, flexibility, creativity, judgment, empathy, charisma, sociability, dedication, integrity and organization. Moyar’s analysis shows that “The most valuable attributes did not vary from case to case despite wide variations in the nature of the insurgents and the counterinsurgents, although the relative importance of each attribute did vary according to the dynamics of the insurgency and the level of the counterinsurgency commander in the counterinsurgency hierarchy.” Whether red or blue force, the tasks of recruiting, retaining, and employing the right leaders (and getting them into key command positions) are far more complex and daunting than is generally recognized.

Still, scholars are often dubious about new theories, so I thought I would ask those who have served in counterinsurgency environments for their reflections on the book. I pinged a few and heard back from various Army SOF and conventional force officers, Marine Corps officers, and general officers, all of whom have served in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and/or the Philippines and other small wars.  In summary, many members of the active duty U.S. military think highly of its arguments. 

Feedback from the Frontline (opinions expressed are those of the author).

One of our more gifted senior officers, BG H.R. McMaster, gave me the following quote: “We are in Mark Moyar’s debt for placing the demands on today’s military leaders in historical context. The leadership qualities he identifies serve as valuable guideposts for leader development and education.” BG McMaster is a decorated combat veteran from the first Gulf War. He was a former Commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar where he illustrated the adaptive leadership qualities that Moyar highlights in his book by presciently identifying the non-kinetic missions that would help his unit achieve greater results.  

COL Todd Ebel, the Director of the School for Command Preparation at Fort Leavenworth, told me that the Army’s schoolhouse for senior command has added Moyar’s book to their suggested reading list. COL Ebel was a former Commander of Task Force Ramadi, Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad 2005-2006, and Special Assistant to then MG Petraeus, CG of the 101st Airborne Division, and  BG Hamm, the Commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul Iraq 2004. He gives high accolades for the qualitative attributes that Moyar identifies, but goes on to say that he feels “strongly that the ten attributes of effective counterinsurgency leaders apply equally as well to leaders serving in other operational environments.” 

Moyar’s focus on leadership as a key enabler in countering insurgencies is “spot on,” according to LTC Dale Alford, a Marine Corps special advisor to COMISAF with two Iraq and two Afghanistan tours under his belt.

MAJ Bill Chesher: MAJ Chesher is an Army Infantry officer and with four deployments including a tours Kuwait, two tours in Afghanistan, and a tour to Iraq. He says, “This book will benefit today’s leaders with a different perspective of counterinsurgency operations and provide a foundation for officer development that will assist the next generation of operational leaders as they aspire to next level of leadership. I can speak from experience when I tell you that leader development and mentorship is critical for our profession. It enables subordinates to understand more about their leaders and the situation that faces them. Whether it is through open dialogue or formal classroom instruction, officer development is the vehicle by which we professionally grow as an organization.”

CPT Kelly Howard, special assistant to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, GEN Casey, offers her personal insights. CPT Howard served in Baghdad as a special assistant to two commanding officers of MNF-I, GEN Casey and GEN Petraeus.  

I think Dr. Moyar did a good job of correcting the current narrative that the Surge was a fundamental departure from the strategy that was already in place.  In this respect, and by providing a broader perspective, he gets the story more “right” than many current works by journalists.

 Military leaders should read this book, at a minimum, for its insights into current army leadership.  Little has been written thus far about Casey’s tenure in Iraq.  In particular, Moyar does a good job of bringing certain decisions to light, such as Casey’s think tank of distinguished military officers selected to do a study of successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgency practices in 2004, making ISF improvement his top priority in early 2005, securing the transfer from the MoI from the State Dept to MNF-I a few months later, confronting MoI Jabr about firing those responsible for the prison scandal in late 2005, and his willingness to supplement forces when necessary, such as the time he sent a large number of forces to Al Qaim to secure the border that same year.

Thankfully, the emphasis on developing and rewarding most of these qualities has gained traction in the Army’s new (but work-in-progress) holistic leadership development training and education programs.  The fact that the current Chief of Staff of the Army is presently so focused on hybrid-warfare centered (scaleable, of course) leadership development lends credence to the value of Moyar’s ideas and analysis  

Howard goes on to say:

Current leaders will be glad to hear that GEN Casey as CSA is using his position to reward adaptive leadership and high intellectual abilities that are necessary for leadership in a COIN environment with his instructions to promotion and command boards.  This should improve military decision making at the strategic level and finally start to move away from rewarding officers solely for time spent in a war zone or in command.

Critique of a Book Review

Recently, a Small Wars Journal review by Matthew Caris criticized Moyar’s book on several grounds – several of which I would like to address. The below quotes are from Caris’s review:

[Moyar’s] own argument (‘leader-centric warfare’) does not seem so groundbreaking an idea.  Leadership is recognized as key in all forms of warfare, and while this certainly warrants reinforcement, arguing that leadership is the determinant factor in unconventional warfare in particular is not a novel idea.

Which other scholars have argued that leadership is the determinant factor in unconventional warfare? I don’t know of any but would like suggestions for my own literature review. May I invite Mr. Caris to find other writings on counterinsurgency that make many of the same points contained in the first and last chapters of A Question of Command? As for the nine wars in the middle chapters, very few histories emphasize the role of the leadership to the extent that Moyar does (those few that do are listed on p. 304, note 10).

Caris goes on to comment that FM 3-24, not A Question of Command, does the ground breaking in presenting leadership as a key element in COIN. While FM 3-24 is an excellent manual, I am afraid that Caris overlooked some sections of Moyar’s book when he makes this claim. Here is what Moyar actually wrote about FM 3-24: “With respect to leadership, the manual attached the greatest weight to adaptation, calling upon leaders to be flexible and to use judgment and creativity to identify solutions…. The counterinsurgency field manual advocated decentralized command…. The counterinsurgency manual also called for greater risk tolerance in the interest of promoting initiative.” (See page 242.)

That said, Moyar does fault the manual for devoting too little attention to important leadership issues. (See 244) In fact, a comparison of FM 3-24 with the first and last chapters of his book will show that the manual does not cover many of the issues addressed in the book. (Maybe the progenitors of FM 3-24 knew of the complimentary focus on adaptive leadership described in the new FM 6-22, Army Leadership; this is an excellent field manual that interleaves the new “adaptive leader” attributes that the Chief of Staff of the Army is promoted with the COIN and hybrid threat environment.)  

In my opinion, as a territorial and proud former Army officer, he is also slightly judgmental towards the Army while accepting many the myths about Marine COIN performance. However, I don’t think the book should serve as a divisive force between the services or between protagonists and antagonists of the COIN nation’s doctrine. All camps must surely agree that the right leader in the right place at the right time is essential to achieving our objectives. As I have written on this blog in the past, leadership development and talent management are key.

Caris also states:

Moyar describes how in 1983 El Salvadoran leaders and their American advisers plotted a textbook oil-spot operational plan, yet were foiled by pre-emptive insurgent activity in other regions. Many factors contributed to this defeat, including relative slowness in implementation, over-deliberation, and superior intelligence on the part of insurgents who sniffed out the plan and struck first. It is an excellent example of the many problems counterinsurgents have to overcome to be successful, yet Moyar chalks it all up to inferior leadership. While in the most general sense this is accurate enough, it fails to convince the reader that the specific virtues Moyar advocates are the root cause of COIN success or failure.

Slowness in implementation and over-deliberation are clearly signs of leaders who are short on some of Moyar’s ten key attributes—initiative, judgment, and organization. The fact that the insurgents had better intelligence suggests that the insurgents had better leadership, for, as Moyar argue repeatedly in A Question of Command and his earlier Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, leadership is critical to intelligence collection, both because intelligence collection itself requires formidable leadership skills, and also because good leaders increase the willingness of the populace to provide information by virtue of their successes in security and governance.

As a side note, anyone who has worked in the intelligence field will agree that social network analysis provides additional support for Moyar’s claims. Network analysis quickly illustrates that the “key leaders” may not always be the individual at the top of the food chain. On the contrary, an organization’s most influential member may be an intermediate leader. This is true whether focusing on friendly forces, indigenous partnerships (as illustrated through MNF-I key leader engagement strategies), or enemy forces. The right individual (with the right attributes) placed to fill structural holes (e.g., to serve as a link between friendly, indigenous, or enemy organizations or teams) can be the greatest network enabler – regardless of the organization. 

Concluding Thoughts

Finally, as GEN Creighton Abrams once said, “In war, it is extraordinary how it all comes down to the character of one man.” If GEN Creighton meant to say “one man or woman,” (in light of my New York Times article about women’s roles in COIN) then nothing could be truer than his statement and the implicit importance he places on individual values and character attributes. Indeed, the aforementioned SSI report supports Moyar’s theory when it succinctly states, “effective organizations should hire not merely for technical and cognitive skills, but also for values, attitudes, and attributes that fit their culture.”  

Moyar’s theory does not preclude the still salient value of conventional COIN theories focusing on hearts and minds or enemy-centric warfare; in fact, I think it compliments them. He insists that many of these critical attributes can be enhanced through self-improvement, experience and guidance from superiors. Understanding, developing, and employing leaders who illustrate the key attributes that we need to accomplish certain missions, therefore, is in the interest of the collective good. Moyar’s book illustrates how important talent management is in this regard.

Interested in how you can best develop yourself and subordinates for the next counterinsurgency? Pick up Moyar’s book today.

First and foremost, I wish to thank David Betz and his fellow KOW contributors for allowing me to join their illustrious ranks. By way of background, I am a semi-anonymous Captain in the US Army, currently affiliated with the War Studies Department at King’s College London and expressing my own personal views in this and all subsequent posts.

After reading the review in The New York Times, the next book on my to-read list will be The Fourth Star by journalists David Cloud and Greg Jaffe.

A grumbling campaign that has troubled me in recent years is the one prevalent among many of my military peers and our field-grade (major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel) bosses: the “stab in the back” narrative placing the blame for our early distraction from Afghanistan, and subsequent years of misdirected operations in Iraq, exclusively on the shoulders of the civilian leadership in the United States. The implication is that our generals and admirals were always standing up to the civilians behind closed doors and were overruled at every turn, which does not appear to be the case from accounts that have come to light since. This narrative is, to put it mildly, self-serving for the US military as an institution, and puts us in danger of re-learning all of the wrong lessons the military believed were true after Vietnam, only reinforced by a misreading of the 1991 Gulf War.

One of the most trenchant discussions of these wrong “lessons learned” post-Vietnam is General David Petraeus’ PhD dissertation, which the review of The Fourth Star mentions tangentially. While Petraeus might have “irritated many of his fellow officers on his way up,” he also identified an important bureaucratic reality, noting it in his dissertation: any serving officer who writes a PhD dissertation critical of the US Army as an institution and publishes it as a book will not rise to the ranks of the general officer corps. Petraeus, of course, heeded his own advice, as his dissertation remained safely tucked away in the Princeton library (until the age of scanning and posting to the Internet; h/t to Paula Broadwell for sharing the link). He was able to continue his upward trajectory, unlike such recent soldier-scholars as Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) John Nagl, whose Oxford DPhil became Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, arguably a self-inflicted career wound as an Army officer because of its coherent, incisive critique of the Army’s failures as a learning organization.

Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, however, is the exception that proves the rule, because it was only the patronage of General Petraeus that made him a general officer after twice being passed over for promotion from colonel to brigadier general. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty was the oft-cited, seldom-read mantra of senior officers in the last decade and appeared to be part of the hold-up for his advancement. Further compounding the delay, his successful counterinsurgency campaign as the commander of an armored cavalry regiment in Tall Afar made his conventionally-minded brigade commander peers look bad (or at least that’s one interpretation of how it was viewed within the Army).

How a bureaucracy without lateral entry promotes and selects its leaders is a vital issue with implications measured in decades, dollars, and lives. I look forward to reading how Cloud and Jaffe capture this dynamic in the US Army today.

As of today, there are less  than 125,000 American troops in Iraq, most of them on bases outside of the cities where they have become garrison troops. Our government has committed to a reduction to 50,000 troops by August 2010. In the meantime, Iraq is once again experiencing a significant rise in violence. Many of the gains seen during the Surge are being lost.

Suicide bombings are rising, with 130 killed in Baghdad yesterday, and Bill Roggio reported a few days ago that another Iranian Qods force agent was captured in Basra smuggling weapons to terrorists. IED rings are becoming more active again. The Iraqi government has been especially active in rounding up insurgents in the south.

One of the overarching issues today in  Iraq is corruption. Blogger Devil Dawg at Abu Muqawama points out one of the central issues in his entry of the 23rd. In it he describes a ride along mission with the Iraqi Army to distribute food. The problem is that a lot of the food, even when American advisers do accompany the Iraqi troops, never gets to the intended recipients. In this case, the Iraqis snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as they were seen to be loading their own vehicles with food and the crowd turned against them. Any hearts and minds program must begin with accountability and a lack of graft or it will be lost. The trust of the people is critical.

In the north, the Kurdish government has established working oil fields since 2004 that generate much of the country’s wealth. In the South, production is still hampered by theft and decrepitude. Production contracts have been a source of contention, with several of them going to Chinese companies, who are wise in the ways of the third world.  Just across the Shatt al Ahrab in Iran, they cannot even produce their much of own gasoline because the system itself is so corrupt. 40% is imported, fueling more corruption. Much of Ahmedinejad’s reputation was originally founded on his anticorruption efforts, so we can see even that it is an issue that transcend borders.

So Iraq, with a still nascent government is faced with  gross opportunities for graft through Western aid programs and its own oil wealth while the only arbitrators generally looked upon as honest brokers, the Americans, are no longer living alongside their counterparts, which was a major part of the success of the Surge. It is much more difficult to steal if someone is looking over your shoulder. We have always tolerated high levels of graft in Iraq in the interest of national determination, but in a culture of corruption it will be an almost insurmountable task to gain trust on multiple fronts; sectarian, economic, and ethnic. Removing the policeman allows the crooks to flourish.

But this is now American policy. Iraqification, if you will. And as we are finding in Afghanistan now, sometimes the people, wanting simple justice, will even subject themselves to tyrants such as the Taliban rather than crooks. Iranian subversion, foreign suicide bombers, and the ever present danger of sectarian violence mean that Iraq has a long way to go. But in a simple analogy to Vietnam in 1972, the U.S. government only wants out now, whatever the cost. There is no will to see it through even though success there might fundamentally change the long-term power equation in the Middle East for the positive. There is no strategy any more except withdrawal.

American leaders have short-term vision. We knew in 2006/2007 what would be required and started the job admirably. Now it is becoming a dog’s breakfast. That 4,000 American lives have been lost to date in that country trying to do the right thing only makes it all the more bitter to lose.

Every military counter-insurgency strategy concerning the war in Afghanistan hits up against the probability that it will, in time, create more enemies than it kills.

So you blow up a suspected Taliban site and kill two of their commanders – but you also kill 98 women and children, whose families are from that day determined to kill your men and drive them out of their country.

Those aren’t hypothetical numbers. They come from Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, who was General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency advisor in Iraq. He says that US aerial attacks on the Afghan-Pakistan border have killed 14 al-Qa’eda leaders, at the expense of more than 700 civilian lives.

He says: “That’s a hit rate of 2 per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It’s not moral.”

It explains the apparent paradox that broke the US in Vietnam: the more “bad guys” you kill, the more you have to kill.

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

All hail the birth of Afghan democracy!

The willingness of Americans to allow our political leaders to spend $1 million per troop, per year in Afghanistan has been rewarded: we can now stand back in awe as the unpunished perpetrators of massive election fraud vie for control of the criminal enterprise called the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Extra-constitutional President Hamid Karzai (whose initial vote totals were 32.2 percent fraudulent) and prime challenger Abdullah (whose initial vote total was 12.8 percent fraudulent) will face off on November 7. The process of the last election was so corrupt that the UN is replacing 200 — more than half — of the top election officials who were complicit in the fraud. No matter who loses, fraud wins.

So here’s a question for those who are pushing COIN who haven’t totally abandoned their own doctrine’s prerequisites for success (and believe me, those are few and far between these days): what systemic changes have or will be made prior to November 7 that will prevent a replay of the August fiasco? While replacing bad apples is essential, it won’t prevent rot if the barrel itself is corrupted. Recall that during the last round of voting, fraud schemes included:

Alliances with warlords, who will deliver votes from their territories for Karzai by hook or by crook. Some have already made threats of reprisal against village elders if they did not cooperate with the vote fraud schemes.

Massive registration of underage voters (up to 20 percent of the rolls)

Rampant (as in 85-percent occurrence) issuance of multiple voting cards to single individuals, including one case where one person was given about 500 voting cards.

Issuance of voting cards to people before they registered.

Issuance of cards to women without their physical presence based on lists provided by family (in some provinces this practice was used in 90-99 percent of registration stations).

Allowing men to take registration books home for the ostensible purpose of obtaining their women-folk’s fingerprints for registration. This practice, combined with the list practice mentioned above, led to outrageously fraudulent numbers of “women” being issued cards–between double and thirty percent more than the number of cards issued to men. Female Members of Parliament in Afghanistan have called these numbers not credible.

Purchase of voting cards from locals by warlord vote organizers.

Manufacture and sale of many thousands of fake registration cards.

What steps have been taken to prevent these sorts of violations of the process from recurring? I’ve not seen a single indication that the systemic factors that allowed and rewarded election fraud have been addressed. Not one. Have you?

In this context, it’s understandable that Nagl and Co. would want to wave their hands and assert that counterinsurgency can work when host-nation elections break, but that’s contemptible, dishonest, face-saving bull. Sarah Sewall’s introduction in the COIN manual calls host-nation government legitimacy a “north star.” The main text of the manual defines victory flatly as the moment when “the populace consents to the government’s legitimacy and stops actively and passively supporting the insurgency.” And Nagl’s backpedaling in the L.A. Times’ opinion section aside, it’s clear throughout the manual he helped write that he wasn’t talking about the local mayor: he was talking about the host-nation government. And there’s not a single possible outcome now for the ‘09 Afghan elections that leaves us with a credible, legitimate partner. What we’ll get is a regime staffed with former warlords, human rights abusers and drug lords, headed by Mr. 32.2 Percent, Mr. 12.8 Percent, or both. Take your pick.

I can’t prove it, but the willingness of the pro-COIN crowd to fudge their own doctrine’s prerequisites for success and definitions of victory makes me suspect the American people have been the victims of what’s essentially an intra-military turf battle, with the Petreauses and the Nagls and the McChrystals of the world (all Army men) fighting to return the infantry to primacy in a world of stealth bombers and killer drones. The Army’s doctrinal weapon in that fight, COIN, seems to have fit perfectly with the Bushies’ PNAC-sponsored imperial eschatology, paving the way for a civilian/military public relations campaign to make infantry-heavy pacification campaigns the new, sexy way of war. Congrats on the snow job, gentlemen.