Blog Posts

By Jim Hake

An excellent story on Spirit of America and last month's American and Afghan student videoconference was shown on ChannelOne in 8,000 schools yesterday morning. ChannelOne is the in-school TV network of CBS. You can watch it here (click on "Video: Afghan School Skype Chat").

Also see a column on SoA by Dr. James Carafano in the Washington Examiner: "Winning Afghanistan, in War and Peace". Dr. Carafano writes, "Spirit for America pursues its mission with 'zero' government funds. Yet their partnership with the Marines in Helmand is helping win the war in Afghanistan, one village at a time. It's the kind of ingenious problem solving that has always enabled America to win wars ... and to win peace."

We invite you to participate in a teleconference with Marines who just returned from Helmand Province this Thursday (26 May 2011) from 3:00pm-4:00pm (ET). Details are below. The Marines will talk about their experience in Afghanistan and what they accomplished. They'll also answer your questions about Spirit of America or anything else. LtCol Matt Reid, Commanding Officer of 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, will be on the call.

Call-in Details

1. Thursday, 26 May, we encourage you to call in starting at 2:45pm (ET)

2. Dial 877-348-3414

3. Enter the conference ID number when prompted: 70-412-815

4. You will be greeted by the conference call operator (this is not a Spirit of America rep) and they will ask you for your name and current location.

5. The Marines on the call will be at Camp Pendleton.

Your Questions

After the Marines have given a brief overview of their deployment in Helmand province, the operator will open up the call for questions. The operator will ask that those callers who want to ask a question will key in *1 on their phones. This will be a "first come, first served" format, and the conference call operator will moderate this section.

You may address your questions to the Marines, the Spirit of America team, or the entire group.

We hope you can join us,

Jim Hake and the team at Spirit of America

No endorsement of Spirit of America by the US Department of Defense or its personnel is intended or implied.

What remains to be seen is what role Gates himself will play in that debate. The standard practice is for retiring statesmen such as Gates to disappear from the stage for a long interlude, both for well-needed rest and to write their memoir. Gates will no doubt greatly prefer to follow this path.

But will events allow him this option? Will Gates -- for many, the indispensible man on defense issues -- remain silent during the upcoming debate? Although he no doubt wants a long breather, Gates may end up staying in the game after his retirement.

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Voice of America

The United States and Britain are planning to form a joint national security council, designed to allow the two allies close cooperation in dealing with security challenges.

The two are expected to officially announce the creation of the new National Security Strategy Board during U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to London this week.

Mr. Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon, and his British counterpart, Peter Ricketts, will head the group, which is to share information and deal with long-term security challenges.

Officials say the board also will discuss responses to recent developments in the Middle East and will examine rogue states.

The U.S. and Britain already have long-standing cooperation on a wide range of security issues, from terrorism to the war in Afghanistan. But officials say the new body also will address future challenges, not just immediate concerns.

Mr. Obama and Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron reaffirmed their countries' close ties in a joint article published by The Times of London. They wrote that the U.S.-British relationship is not just special, but also essential to the two countries and to the world.

More by Mark Safranski at Zenpundit.

To the SWJ community,

Spirit of America is looking for 3 great veterans of OIF or OEF—especially those with civil affairs or stability operations experience—to join our Commander Support Program (CSP) team. The Commander Support Program is a unique initiative that puts Spirit of America personnel on the ground alongside US military units in Afghanistan to provide rapid humanitarian aid and development assistance for needs identified by US military and civilian personnel at district level and below. You can read more about the origins of the CSP in the Wall Street Journal here.

We're looking to hire at least three field reps to continue our work with the Marines in Regional Command Southwest and to extend our support to Army units operating in Regional Command South's area of responsibility. Start dates would be later this summer. Your tour would be approximately 8 months long, with a two-week leave.

Our basic qualifications: E6 and up, service in Iraq or Afghanistan (preferably at the battalion level or below), patience, maturity, a sense of humor and the ability to explain your role as an SoA field rep to a gunnery sergeant who thinks you're just another civilian eating his chow. Well, only some of the time on that last point. But you get the idea. Check out our full job description here.

Spirit of America is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization that, since 2003, has supported the humanitarian and counterinsurgency efforts of American military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you're interested and think you fit the bill, email me a cover letter and resume to [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.

Matt Valkovic is the Manager of Spirit of America's Commander Support Program. He is a former US Army field artillery officer, who served in Baghdad from 2008 to 2009 with 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment out of Fort Riley, Kansas.

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

No, not COIN as in Counterinsurgency, though we do that too.  Coin as in challenge

coin -- you know, those little things the Army has been flinging around for many

years and the Marine Corps eventually glommed onto as well, and now they're everywhere. 

Well, they're finally here now, too.

For your donation of $50, we'll send

you a freshly minted SWJ Challenge Coin as a thank you gift.  Wield it with

the vigor and flair appropriate to its magnificence.  For those interested

in such details, these are 1 3/4" coins, the perfect size, not too tiny and not

too big.  Just like most wars.

Small Wars Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Contributions are tax deductible for U.S. taxpayers.

For

multiple coins,

contact us.

If you don't want a coin as a premium, you can still:

Prior donors please note, now that we've finally got these, we'll be rummaging

through our records of past donors and contacting those of you that are coin-qualifying

from prior support to see if you'd like one.  You are of course always

welcome to donate again, but we remember and appreciate what you've already

done.  We'll be in touch soon.

Update 1: The front image is called Tracking Bin Laden and was painted by U.S. Army Center of Military History, Museum Division's staff artist Sergeant First Class Elzie Ray Golden, U.S. Army. The back image is called After the Battle and was painted by Michael R. Crook; Tan Hep, Vietnam, 1967. Both paintings are part of the U.S. Army art collection.

Update 2: Tip of the hat to Carl Prine at Line of Departure for his post COINtribute! BLUF: "The Small Wars Journal Foundation is a 501C3 nonprofit. The founders don't seem to have made any moolah off of it and they mostly get by with slave labor from cranky Army majors. Those unpaid editors bring us not only the best essays of the COINdinistas but also (and increasingly) the ripostes of dissenters who don't drink the Kool-Aid."

Update 3: Tip of the hat to Mark Safranski at Zenpundit for his post It Takes a Big Man to Know the Value of a Small Wars Coin. BLUF: "I've got mine. Get yours! It is pretty weighty, moreso than a Liberty silver dollar. And it is a slick presentation."

Update: Apparently the original MIL INT post is blocked by elements of ISAF. By request, and by permission of MIL INT, here is a SWJ server copy of Intelligence at the Battalion Level -- An S2's Perspective by Captain Robert C. Schotter. MIL INT is a new blog covering a wide spectrum of military intelligence issues.

Minister Fox states, "The SDSR has ensured that we will remain in the premier league of military powers. It is not an agenda for retrenchment; it's an ambitious agenda for transformation over time. It is not an agenda for the next general election; it's an agenda for the next generation."

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) NATO wants to get 'more aggressive' against Qaddafi. But how exactly?

2) How to get policymakers to understand tradeoffs -- and then remember them later

NATO wants to get 'more aggressive' against Qaddafi. But how exactly?

Over the past two week, the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi have achieved some modest gains. Rebels in the western city of Misrata have apparently halted Qaddafi's artillery bombardment of the city center. More cracks may have developed inside the leader's inner circle. But some NATO military leaders, concerned that the overall military stalemate remains in place, are looking for ways to be "more aggressive" with the air power at their disposal. The task for NATO policymakers is to figure how to bomb Qaddafi and his forces more aggressively without taking more risks with the civilian population NATO explicitly pledged to protect.

According to the BBC, the rebel militia in Misrata has pushed back government forces a few kilometers in several directions. The bombardment of the port area and downtown has ceased as the modest rebel advance was enough to push pro-Qaddafi artillery and rocket launchers out of range. NATO airstrikes against eight Qaddafi warships -- some of which had mined Misrata's port -- will also provide some relief to the population. As welcome as these developments are for the residents of the city, this local tactical success does not seem to have affected the larger strategic stalemate throughout Libya. The eastern frontline south of Benghazi remains roughly unchanged and Qaddafi's forces remain in control of Tripoli and most of the western half of the country.

With rebel ground formations static and incapable of offensive maneuver, the NATO air campaign appears increasingly focused on attacks against government command-and-control and leadership targets. Foremost among these are repeated nighttime strikes against Qaddafi's sprawling compound in Tripoli. It is hard to imagine the military utility of these return visits to Qaddafi's compound -- Qaddafi himself long since decamped to residential areas or other obvious "no go" areas for NATO bombing. Subordinate commanders who might have once used the compound also must have long since established alternate command sites.

NATO's bombardment strategy is now likely more focused on applying political and psychological coercion against the regime rather than inflicting battlefield damage against military forces.

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by Kristin M. Hall

The Leaf Chronicle

BLUF The challenge the military faced was growing government in eastern regions that have been traditionally resistant to outside influence, said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, outgoing commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan and commander of 101st Airborne Division.

"In a lot of these areas, they don't care about a central government and they don't care about Kabul," Campbell said.

Under his command, the units in the east were redirected for counter-terrorism missions like large air assaults and operations to kill and capture insurgents. Pulling coalition troops out also directed attacks away from the bases, Campbell said, such as Forward Operating Base Blessing in Kunar province, where Afghan units remain.

"At FOB Blessing, in the month of February, they got hit 35 times," Campbell said. "Since March 1, since we came out of it, it's been hit twice."

Much more at The Leaf Chronicle

A picture, annotated with distance, is worth a thousand words.

by A.E. Stahl

It appears that war, that is to say, 'interstate industrial war' or 'regular war', is coming to an end, or so we are led to believe. Rather, we are now challenged with a multitude of hotspots around the world containing "confrontation, conflict and combat". We even have a glut of names and taxonomies for current war and warfare: population-centric counterinsurgency, network-centric warfare, new wars, asymmetric wars, compound wars, netwar, twenty-first century warfare, and even an "actor-centric theory of war." The idea that interstate industrial war has been on the decline and that war has transformed is not new. Scholars such as Martin Van Crevald had persuasively but unsuccessfully already brought this non-Clausewitzian perspective to our attention as early as 1990, which was followed up by a number of other academics that attempted the same feat. However, even newer speculations are being drawn up in order to help place both war and warfare in its proper context -- for example, General Rupert Smith's "War amongst the people". Smith states that war amongst the people "...is the reality in which people in the streets and houses and fields -- all the people, anywhere -- are the battlefield." Interstate industrial war or regular war, where two or more sovereign nation-states face off in a physical competition of force to ultimately impose political will on one's opponent, backed by tank and airpower, artillery and infantry, with aims of decisive battles, no longer exists. That's the speculation, at least. On the surface it would seem that Smith's musings, among others, holds water. After all, post-1945, the world has been witness to more state versus non-state fighting than at any point since the inception of the modern state system. Moreover, many claim that globalization -- that seemingly unstoppable force responsible for our global interconnectedness on all levels -- has begun to diminish the boundaries of the nation-state. That is, the artificial borders that once clearly demarcated a state are becoming blurred, some think soon to the vanishing point and, hypothetically, if states were to become irrelevant, so too would national armies with it, regular war. While these speculations may have some validity, it ultimately leads to the great strategic question: so what?

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Malalai ... For our Afghan partners, the name Malalai is a hallowed name of a woman, a wife, a daughter who assumed a position on the battlefield in 1880 just as the Afghans were faltering against their British foe ... she seized the battle flag and led an Afghan unit. A British bullet pierced her body and took her life, but her bravery in the face of danger has shown the mettle of the Afghan people.

From this bravery rises a group of courageous women who dedicate themselves to Afghanistan and their fellow countrymen and women. Today, I was privileged to be with the Afghan Training Command Commander, MG Karim, and the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC) Commander, BG Patyani, at the second "Malalai Company" Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduation.

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Today at the Opinio Juris blog, Koh finally made the U.S. government's case. He quoted heavily from his 2010 drone speech. He also appended some analysis on the legal requirements for completing a battlefield surrender, which should be of interest to all infantrymen.

In my column I surmised that the purpose of the administration's reticence to thoroughly defend the legality of the bin Laden raid was to avoid declaring a checklist of requirements defining armed conflict status that might end up restricting the legal flexibility of the government against future irregular adversaries. Koh did not appear to add any disclaimers in this regard, so it remains to be seen whether some "lawfare" adversary of the United States will use Koh's blog post against the government in the future.

Nothing follows.

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