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We hope that our single-issue voters will at least attempt to look at this issue from all sides.

In The Know: New Iraqi Law Requires Waiting Period For Suicide Vest Purchases

Let me ask all our curmudgeons and luddites to just ignore this post. But for the more progressive of you that might actually know what we think we're talking about, here are some of the things to look for:

We have a long way to go, but we actually have some resources now and can break ground. Implementing a full CMS and adding web 2.0 features to our Reference Library, Reading List, and Research Links is on the plate, as is a freshening of the site design and finally un-@$$ing the interim Journal format. We are in the market for technical expertise in that regard, and are particularly interested in Drupal as a platform. Your advice and solicitations are welcome.

In the interm, please make use of the new features, and continue to advance our profession and interest.

(Nothing more follows)

I'll defer to Bill, Robert and our Council moderators to post their CPs...

Dear CCO Members,

Greetings from the CCO Support Center. Attached is the latest issue of the CCO Newsletter. We hope you will continue to find it an informative and useful vehicle for keeping apprised of recent CCO activities. The biggest news is that the CCO recently moved to the National Defense University, and is now located within the Center for Technology and National Security Policy. In conjunction with the move, the CCO is now the Center for Complex Operations. Our new location and name will enhance the CCO's role by positioning it in an academic setting, while maintaining close links to policymakers in our partner organizations at Departments of Defense and State, and USAID.

This edition of the newsletter also includes a number of interesting features, including a contribution from Colonel Daniel Rubini (Ret.) on developing rule of law in Iraq, information on the Case Study series sponsored by the CCO together with the Cebrowski Institute at Naval Postgraduate School, an interview with Bing West on his most recent book The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq, upcoming events in the complex operations community and more.

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to your colleagues who may not have heard of the CCO and who might be interested in our activities.

Best regards,

David A. Sobyra

Acting Director, Center for Complex Operations

More at The Washington Post.

By Gary Anderson

2009 is being called a Year of Decision in Iraq. The counterinsurgency campaign will be largely turned over to Iraqi control. We have not successfully turned over a counterinsurgency effort from the American military to a host nation since the middle of the last century in the Philippines. The turnover of the Vietnamese counterinsurgency effort was interrupted by the North Vietnamese conventional invasion in 1975; consequently, we will never know how successful that effort might have been. We are in unfamiliar, but not unknown, territory. In many ways, we will have to use common sense and lessons learned from what has gone right or wrong to date.

Perhaps the first thing we need to realize that the days of brick and mortar projects are largely over in the COIN fight. Future building projects should be largely left to long term development agencies such as USAID and the NGOs. If we do find the need to build new facilities, we need to ensure that we have hard Memorandums of Agreement with the Iraqi agency that will be taking over to include salaries for employees and operations and maintenance. We have a depressing history of building facilities and training staff only to see the Iraqis bring in their own people, often untrained, when they take over. Even though it may well involve some graft and nepotism, it is much more cost effective to have them identify the long term operators up front and train them whether or not we think they are the best people to do the job.

Likewise, we need to try to ensure that the Iraqis have identified the long term operations and maintenance (O&M) funding. It does us no good to build a clinic that will not have a staff or supplies. Otherwise it becomes an instant relic...

By Dr. Steven Metz

I've just returned from a Department of Defense symposium which discussed the future strategic environment twenty years out. This was a useful window on official thinking and expectations, but it reinforced my feeling that American security strategy is careening forward on flawed assumptions. Specifically, we have not grasped the magnitude of the revolution underway in the strategic environment and the nature of security, and hence have not adjusted.

A few years ago symposia and documents dealing with the future strategic environment were dominated by discussions of "the long war," "GWOT," terrorism, proliferation, and Islamic extremism. For the past two years, the focus has been on "hybrid threats." In the event I just attended, those things were almost wholly absent from the discussion. Everything centered on technological change, economic turmoil, culture, demographics, and climate change.

Two things about this jumped out at me. First, there was very little discussion of exactly what the U.S. military is going to do about these trends and the threats that they generate. The unspoken assumption seems to be that the primary military mission over the next few decades will be stabilizing collapsed states. I don't buy this. I think it is a misreading of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if things turn out well in those two places, I'm convinced that future political leaders and strategists will conclude that the costs (economic, political, and human) outweighed the benefits (in terms of greater security).

Second, I was convinced that the U.S. military and strategic community have not fully grasped the extent and depth of change underway in the strategic environment. At the symposium everyone nodded when a speaker said that the threats of the future will be dispersed, non-state entities, but few seemed to understand that this obviates the very essence of American strategy and the current focus of the military. Put simply, our strategy seeks to reverse history--to strengthen nation states so that they can "control ungoverned spaces" when trends are toward the devolution of economic, political, and economic power AWAY FROM national governments...

Via Milblogging Conference - 24-25 April 2009, Washington, D.C.

We're pleased to announce another panel, and moderator Greyhawk has tweaked the focus of the panel a bit.

New Media Agora: What is the impact of the "new media" on issues concerning national security, military doctrine and concept development, training, education, and lessons learned? A discussion of the issue by those at the frontlines of the debate.

Moderated by: Greyhawk - Mudville Gazette

Panel Members:

Dave Dilegge - Small Wars Journal

Andrew Exum - Abu Muqawama

Bill Roggio - Long War Journal

Update: This was a good one indeed. You can listen to a recording of this morning's broadcast here at WAMU.

More at The Washington Quarterly.

FMI 3-24.2 is designed to be a user-manual for tactical level units and establishes doctrine for tactical counterinsurgency operations by combining the historic approaches to COIN, lessons learned from current operations, and the realities of today's operational environment.

More at The Washington Post.

More at The Washington Post.

More at Kings of War.

Center for a New American Security (CNAS)

A Pathway to Success in Afghanistan: The National Solidarity Program

We'll auto-tweet the title and a link of all new entries on the SWJ Blog and most new threads in the Small Wars Council. At the moment, the following things do NOT feed: blog comments, discussion board posts on old threads, and new discussion board threads within the members-only area.

Thanks to many folks who encouraged and/or nudged us to get aboard. The list includes Jules Crittenden, Matt Armstrong, Julian Tolbert, and, indirectly, Ellyn Angelloti.

For those of you who prefer your RSS straight up, feeds are available for the SWJ Blog and the Small Wars Council.

We have also established a Facebook page, but aren't driving content feeds there yet. If you join us on Facebook, you still might be able to say you were there before it was cool. However, we already have 127 members in the group there, and some of them are raising the cool bar for us.

From 27 April - 1 May 2009, the United States Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center will present its next Counterinsurgency Leader Workshop at the Lewis and Clark Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This event is a five-day program focused on understanding the fundamentals of insurgency and counterinsurgency. This is a version of the same extremely popular workshop offered to hundreds of military and civilian attendees over the past two years.

This workshop will feature presentations from prominent general officers and guest speakers from the interagency community on the COIN environment in addition to the instructional material.

We have expanded the number of slots available to compensate for the high demand of previous sessions. The proceedings are UNCLASSIFED and registration is open to all interested US government and allied personnel.

The COIN Leader Workshop Site is open for registration. Please head to the COIN Center website, click on "Events" and then click on the "27 April - 1 May 2009 COIN Leader Workshop" to view more detailed information and register.

The March issue contains the following articles:

Somalia's New Government and the Challenge of Al-Shabab by David H. Shinn

Inside Look at the Fighting Between Al-Shabab and Ahlu-Sunna wal-Jama by Abdulahi Hassan

Pakistan's Continued Failure to Adopt a Counterinsurgency Strategy by Ahmed Rashid

Al-Qa`ida's Involvement in Britain's 'Homegrown' Terrorist Plots by James Brandon

Lashkar-i-Tayyiba Remains Committed to Jihad by Farhana Ali and Mohammad Shehzad

Deconstructing Ibn Taymiyya's Views on Suicidal Missions by Rebecca Molloy

Muslim Brotherhood Faces Growing Challenges in Egypt by Steven Brooke

The Current State of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group by Carlos Echeverrí­a Jesíºs

Recent Highlights in Terrorist Activity

March 2009 issue of the CTC Sentinel.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

More at Newsweek.

More at The New York Times.

More at National Review.