Blog Posts

Here is the scoop on the remaining articles listed as reports by the Sentinel:

Islamic State of Iraq Commemorates its Two-Year Anniversary by Pascale Combelles Siegel, British Muslims Providing Foot Soldiers for the Global Jihad by James Brandon, Anatomy of Spain's 28 Disrupted Jihadist Networks by Javier Jordan, The Impact of Global Youth Bulges on Islamist Radicalization and Violence by Colleen McCue and Kathryn Haahr, Jama`at al-Fuqara': An Overblown Threat? by Farhana Ali and William Rosenau, The Threat of Terrorism to the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa by Anneli Botha and Iraq as the Focus for Apocalyptic Scenarios by David Cook.

Check it out.

More at The Los Angeles Times.

More at The Washington Post.

More at The New York Times.

More at The Washington Post.

Afghanistan: The Night I Was 'Killed in Action' by a Taliban Ambush - Nick Meo, Daily Telegraph (21 October 2008)

The Reaction

The Most Self-serving and Incompetent Journalist in the World - Blackfive

A Cowardice Act By a Reporter - Bouhammer's Afghan Blog

Call To Arms - Bill & Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure

Media's Finest - Mudville Gazette

The Rebuttal

Nick Meo Hits Back at Afghanistan Battle Report Slurs - Nick Meo, Daily Telegraph (26 October 2008)

PBS Press Release:

The next president of the United States will inherit a foreign policy nightmare: wars on two fronts, an overstretched military, a resurgent Taliban and a reconstituted Al Qaeda based far from America's reach.

In The War Briefing, airing Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), award-winning FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria and correspondent Martin Smith offer harrowing on-the-ground reporting from the deadliest battlefield in the mountains of Afghanistan, and follow the trail to the militant safe havens deep inside the Pakistani tribal areas, probing some of the most urgent foreign policy challenges facing the next president.

"The situation is worse; there's no question about that," says Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. "Provinces close to Kabul are now having incidents that didn't have incidents before. And to my mind, that is clearly a strengthening insurgency."

The War Briefing begins in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, where FRONTLINE embedded with Bravo Company, a unit posted on one of Afghanistan's deadliest fronts. Bravo Company comes under fire almost daily. Attacks have reached an all-time high, now making Afghanistan a deadlier battlefield than Iraq. Often called the "forgotten war," top U.S. commanders concede that the next president will inherit a security situation that has deteriorated markedly over the last two years.

"The next president will face a situation where, in the next year or two, he will have to make the decision that faced the Soviets in 1988--either to massively reinforce and to wage a war very aggressively, or to get out," says Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit. "That's the inheritance of the next president."

In the short term, commanders agree that more troops are desperately needed. Lt. Col. John Nagl, a former counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, tells FRONTLINE: "In Afghanistan, we simply don't have enough boots on the ground to provide security on the ground, to convince the young men that we're there for the long haul; that if you work with us, we will not only keep you safe, but we'll work with you to build a better future for you and your family."

But the next president's options in Afghanistan will be limited by a depleted military, with some units already on their fifth deployment. "The next president will be told: 'You need to spend more money on training troops. You need to recapitalize the military in equipment. And you might have to think about increasing the size of the military, especially ground forces,'" says Tom Ricks, author of Fiasco. "As one officer at the Pentagon put it to me: 'We're out of Schlitz. There are no extra troops left on the shelf. We're at our limit.'"

Even with more troops, any progress in Afghanistan will be hostage to developments just across the border. As long as the Taliban and Al Qaeda are able to launch attacks from their sanctuaries in the lawless tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan, any policy is likely to fail. But cracking down on the insurgent safe havens in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas presents enormous challenges of its own.

In recent months, special forces have mounted ground assaults on targets inside the tribal areas without the consent of the Pakistani government, prompting growing tensions with the Pakistani army and its new civilian leaders. "The United States does not have the right to go into a sovereign country that is its ally without permission and approval and consent of that ally," Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, tells FRONTLINE. Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations adds: "This was an early and decisive success we had [against the Taliban] after 9/11. If eight years later it collapses before the very force that we defeated and kicked out of Afghanistan, then the symbolism is tremendous. It would be a major morale booster for extremism across the Muslim world."

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think

By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup Press, 2007.

Reviewed by:

Drew L. Schumann

LTC, US Army Reserve

Counter-IED Curriculum Developer, Combined Arms Center for Training

Fort Leavenworth, KS

Since 9/11, terrorism and Islam have been synonymous to many in the West, especially in America. Efforts by individuals and groups to disprove this concept have ranged from ineffective at best, to giving the impression of advocating terror and obfuscatory at worst. For the majority of Americans, according to a recent Gallup Poll, "There is nothing to admire about Islam".

In 2001, the Gallup organization set off on a six-year, 35 country research project to determine what "Islam" thought about America, terror, as well as about their own society. The result is Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. In this book, the authors assert that they can demonstrate conclusively, that most Americans' opinions about Islam are misguided, and that the genesis of terrorism is not the actively religious in Islam.

For those who are reticent about reading a book about a series of polls, fear not, for the book is 204 pages, an introduction, five chapters and two tabs. Reading carefully, I would estimate a four hour read, uninterrupted. Plus, while the scope of the book is rather ambitious, and its execution is fairly sophisticated, it is written in understandable prose for all levels of readers with a minimum of jargon...

The US Embassy in Baghdad represents a massive engineering feat. Complete with its own power, food, shopping center, apartments, and formidable defenses, it is a marvel on the same scale as the finest World War Two-era battleships...and about as applicable to the current conflict as iron dreadnaughts were in the era of the aircraft carrier.

The building of massive redoubts has been an obsolete military strategy for centuries, and for good reason. A leader who retreats to a castle or fortress only controls the land on which that fortress stands, and can influence only the people who live within its walls. Within the walls of a fortress, leadership can grow increasingly out of touch with the local populace, with communications both to and from the fortress being increasingly difficult.

Attempts to control insurgencies and hold dominion over foreign countries through the building of massive isolated fortresses was attempted with disastrous results by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. T.E. Lawrence, one of the intellectual fathers of modern insurgency, talks about a strategic situation in Hejaz in 1916 that was eerily similar to the strategic situation the United States faced from 2003-2007...

Alice in Wonderland asked the Cheshire Cat, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

The answer was, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

The Honorable Les Aspin, as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked much the same question on 9 October 1985 when he held hearings entitled "What Have We Got for a Trillion dollars?"

The world has changed a lot since then, when the US-Soviet military balance was still center stage, but structured ways of appraising national security problems and potential solutions have not. I'm therefore resurrecting my 23-year-old testimony for reconsideration, because it deals with a flock of fundamentals that the new Administration might usefully apply in its quest for ways to match military ends, ways, and means most successfully. Mismatches between forces and objectives, forces and threats, forces and strategies, forces and other forces remain prominent today.

Our superlative All-Volunteer Force, to cite just one of many examples, is hard pressed to cope with simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less Iran, North Korea, or anywhere else, because concentration on quality at the expense of quantity creates gaps between objectives and military power. A more prudent posture depends on increased capabilities, decreased ambitions, or both in some combination.

US policy-makers, planners, and programmers in the upcoming administration therefore would be well advised to review short-, mid-, and long-range requirements across the board, bearing in mind that the most dangerous enemy capabilities imaginable do not necessarily constitute dangerous threats, for reasons the attachment explores.

John M. Collins began to amass military experience when he enlisted in the Army as a private in 1942. Thirty years and three wars later, in 1972, he retired as a colonel. He spent the next quarter century as the leading analyst on military and defense issues at the Congressional Research Service. Many of us address him as Warlord.

Much more at The Atlantic.

Monday 27 October 2008

1430-1600: Reserve Officers' Association - Main Conference Room

The Foreign Policy Research Institute will kindly be hosting the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies from London for a panel discussion at the Reserve Officers' Association.

Afghanistan: Is It Winnable? A British Perspective

The operation in Afghanistan remains in the balance. It is winnable, but it is not being won and the future of the Transatlantic Relationship, and much else, depends upon its eventual success.

We now know the strategy and tactics that need to be adopted for success, but the fact is they are not being applied sufficiently or with enough political will.

New approaches will be needed on both sides of the Atlantic in the next four years and a different approach to expeditionary operations will have to be shared by all NATO members if the potential for success in Afghanistan is to be realised.

Panel Speakers

Professor Michael Clarke, Director of RUSI, will provide an analysis of current challenges in Afghanistan as well as a view of the new strategic thinking in the UK. Professor Clarke will discuss the progress of the conflict in Afghanistan so far as well as the issues surrounding UK policy in Afghanistan and its implications for the US.

Rear Admiral Chris Parry CBE MA FCMI will discuss the future of expeditionary warfare after Afghanistan. He will address such questions as: Are the operations in Afghanistan re-defining the character of future warfare? Or, are they a temporary aberration distracting the attention of strategic and military planners away from addressing the more complex challenges of the future? Admiral Parry's presentation will also discuss UK strategic thinking, procurement and training.

Chairman

Frank Hoffman, Senior Fellow, is a national security affairs analyst and consultant. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia. Mr. Hoffman serves as the Center's strategic and global affairs analyst, develops advanced concepts and conducts research into the nature of future conflict. Prior to this position, Mr. Hoffman served on the staff of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman Commission); was the National Security Analyst and Director, Marine Strategic Studies Group, at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico; and served on the Professional Staff, Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces.

Location

The Reserve Officers' Association is located at:

One Constitution Avenue NE

Washington D.C. 20002-5618

Tel: 202.479.2200

ROA Point of Contact: Bob Feidler

For enquiries or to RSVP for this event, please contact Alan Luxenberg at [email protected]

This essay is based on his full-length article in the Fall 2008 special issue of Orbis on "The Future of War."

Much more at FPRI.

The recent release of the Army's latest Field Manual, FM 3-07 Stability Operations, has generated as much controversy as it has praise. On one side of the debate are those who see it as a great step forward in helping the military make sense of the complex, violent, and population-focused environments in which it increasingly finds itself. To the extent that our future conflicts are likely to look more like our current ones as Secretary Gates has asserted, it is high time we stopped muddling through and got serious about learning how to do this stuff. On the other end of the spectrum, however, are those who see the new doctrine as another dangerous step on the slippery slope toward U.S. imperialism. The better we become at nation building the critics claim, the more likely we are to try to do more of it. Moreover, teaching soldiers how to do stability operations not only erodes their war-fighting skills (i.e. their "real" mission), but it lets the civilian agencies who are supposed to do it off the hook in building their own capabilities and capacities. There are merits to both arguments, but on balance FM 3-07 should be seen as a great accomplishment.

Why FM 3-07?

It is perfectly understandable to hope that the military will conduct fewer stability operations in the future, but hoping does not make it so. The military still needs to prepare itself for the missions it will most likely be called on to perform. Given the thousands of troops over the last 200 years who have repeatedly been called to conduct these messy stability operations with little to no doctrine, education, or training, it seems high time someone put some rigorous effort into understanding how to conduct them better.

The concern over the U.S. as an imperialist power may be valid, but let's not get carried away. Doctrine is not grand strategy. For those who worry that this new doctrine will make it more likely that we will try to invade and occupy more countries, consider that it might just have the opposite effect. If there is one thing this manual makes very clear, it is that stability operations are not rocket science -- they are actually more complex and uncertain. Having a better understanding of the complexity and cost of these missions can only enhance the policy and strategy-making processes...

Much more at The Washington Times.

A review of:

Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man

by Dalton Fury, St. Martin's

Press, 2008.

Reviewed by:

Thomas (Tom) P. Odom

LTC US Army (ret)

Author,

Journey Into Darkness: Genocide In Rwanda

In January 1977 a brave man and a living legend by the name of Major Richard

Meadows reached down and pulled my patrol of RANGER students out of a freezing swamp

after 10 hours of agony had killed two of my classmates.  Thirty-one years

later I can still feel that cold.  I remember how effective Major Meadows was

in pulling us together when we were barely capable of thinking. I also have never

forgotten how Meadows' low key manner radiated calm authority. Special Operations

Detachment-Delta or Delta was soon to take root.  Major Meadows—battlefield

commissioned in Viet Nam and member of the Son Tay Raiders—would be retired before

Delta came to be.  But Dick Meadows would return as a contractor scout to guide

Delta into Tehran.  He made it to the target city in mufti when Delta did not. 

Kill Bin Laden was written by another brave man, Major Dalton Fury, about other

brave men in their efforts to hunt down and kill the most hunted man in the world. 

For those of us who were raised in Fort Bragg circles in the late 1970s and early

1980s, Delta emerged as a rumor and soon became legendary as tales of selection

and non-selection circulated.  After my RANGER student experience, I had no

desire to try my hand; I have several comrades who did and some made it.  I

respect them all for even trying.  Major Fury's description of his final selection

took me right back to 1977.  His low key, outward focused prose in describing

his men reminds me of Dick Meadow's radiated authority.

Yea, yea, okay -- some people's terrorists are other people's freedom fighters -- yada, yada -- save it for the think tank- or university-circle sponsored seminars, studies and white papers. There is still black and white in today's complex environment and our efforts in South Asia should most certainly fall within that category.

If there was ever a grouping of individuals and supporters that deserved complete annihilation (yea - I said the A word) -- the Taliban and their support structure would and should be up front and center. It will take quite some time (that is why it is called The Long War) and there will most certainly be peaks and valleys along the way -- but we must - and will - win this one and we will write the last chapter of the history book reserved for the victors.

But this is not about me and my particular passion for defeating a brutal enemy, it's about Nir Rosen and his latest Rolling Stone piece entitled How We Lost the War We Won: A Journey Into Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan. Opinions via e-mail and several blogs and their comment sections are generally favorable to Rosen's latest dance with the devil.

It's Official: Nir Rosen, Who Embeds With the Taliban, Is More Impressive Than I Am

--Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent

My colleague Nir Rosen, who is also a contributor to The Washington Note, is quickly becoming the preeminent Robert Kaplan-esque chronicler of Islamist insurgencies and conflict.

--Steve Clemons, The Washington Note

I read a draft of this story a few weeks ago and was, no kidding, glued to the page.

--Andrew Exum, Abu Muqawama

More blog traffic here -- the vast majority strongly disagree with my humble opinion on Rosen and his reporting -- so be it.

So, with a nod to Sun Tzu concerning knowing your enemy, I'd say read Rosen's article for any insight it may provide in defeating this gang of thugs.

-----

Update 1

Creative Dissent - Andrew Exum, Abu Muqawama

Our World - Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club

Nir Rosen and the Taliban - Herschel Smith, The Captain's Journal

Why Nir Rosen Isn't To Be Trusted - Terry Glavin, Chronicles & Dissent

Nir Rosen: the Neo-Taliban's Nancy DeWolf-Smith? - Joshua Foust, Registan

Update 2

I've received several e-mails indicating there might be some glaring errors or misrepresentations of fact in Rosen's Rolling Stone account of his most excellent adventure. For those so inclined, please send along such items to SWJ - documented / referenced of course. I'll post them here as an update.

Update 3

Embedded With The Taliban - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement

As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Washington D.C., Wednesday, October 15, 2008...

A Very Short Review of an Important New Essay on the Vietnam War

By Colonel Gian P. Gentile

Historian Andrew J. Birtle has written a very important new essay in the current issue of the Journal of Military History* that I recommend as a must-read to Small Wars Journal readers, Council members and the greater reading public who pay attention to matters of history and current defense policy and actions. Of note the Journal of Military History is considered the flagship journal for American historians of military history. Its standards of scholarship are impeccable and it is a "peer-reviewed" scholarly journal; which means that anytime an essay is published in it the essay is anonymously reviewed by usually 3-4 other historians who are experts in a given field. Often times, proposed essays for the Journal that go through this peer-review process are rejected for publication if they do not meet standards of scholarship, originality, quality of argument, etc.

Andrew Birtle is one of the leading historians in the country on the history of American Army counterinsurgency doctrine and operations. He has two books out on the subject and his scholarly work has received very strong reviews by such noted counterinsurgency experts as Dr Conrad Crane (primary author of FM 3-24) and Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cassidy.

Birtle's essay, PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal is an in-depth historical analysis of the well known US report making recommendations for strategy and methods for the conduct of the Vietnam War written in 1966 titled A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam. But Birtle's essay is more than just a close historical analysis of the PROVN report. As Birtle's title hints the essay directly and rightly refutes the abuse of the PROVN report by historians over the last thirty years.

Essentially Birtle's essay demolishes a deeply flawed historical caricature of the Vietnam War that historians like Guenther Levy, Andrew Krepinevich, and Lewis Sorley (among others) have constructed over the years. The flawed historical caricature can be reduced to a simple set of sentences (remember, what follows is the flawed caricature and not truth):

2. In 1965 General William Westmoreland did not understand classic counterinsurgency theory and was a knuckle dragging artilleryman who only wanted to fight the Normandy campaign again in the Central Highlands using search and destroy missions.

3. THE PROVN report proposed a radically different way that focused on Galula-style coin, but Westmoreland didn't "get it," dismissed it, and even covered PROVN up.

4. But then, after almost three long years under Westmoreland not getting it, the Coin Cavalry comes to the rescue under General Abrams who does get it, understands the secrets within PROVN, unlocks those secrets and deploys them.

5. Abrams, therefore, immediately brings about a radical change in approach and method from his predecessor Westmoreland by applying PROVN

6. Abrams was winning the war with his new approach and if the American people had not lost their will the war could have been won.

This, in its essence, is the FLAWED historical caricature that Birtle's essay finally and thankfully demolishes. What he convincingly shows in his essay is that Westmoreland's strategy was for the most part in line with the recommendations by PROVN; that PROVN acknowledged that before pacification could go forward the United States military in Vietnam had to continue its large scale conventional operations to defeat a real-world and substantial VC and NVA regular threat in South Vietnam. Westmoreland, in fact, agreed with most of PROVN's conclusions. The important point is that the in 65 Westmoreland and the US Army did understand classic counterinsurgency theory and practice and the strategy that Westmoreland came up with was a reasonable one.

Birtle also shows through meticulous historical research and documentation that when Abrams took over from Westmoreland in 68 he did not radically alter strategy at all; there was a shift in priority with Abrams toward pacification but that was primarily because Abrams could shift priorities after Tet in 68 when much of the South Vietnamese communist main force units were crushed. Arguably, if Westmoreland would have stayed in command through 1968 he would have done exactly what Abrams did.

Consider this quote from Birtle's essay that sums up quite well the essentials of his argument:

The truth about PROVN that Birtle brings out in his essay is especially important now as we try to understand the recent past of the Iraq War and where we are headed in the future. Since the flawed historical caricature of PROVN, Westmoreland, Abrams, and Vietnam is often deployed to argue as a juxtaposed historical case study of the purported extreme differences between the pre-Surge and Surge Army units in Iraq. The flawed caricature is deeply ingrained in the current Iraq War triumph-narrative. For example, Iraq War writer Tom Ricks has gone so far as to label a "pre-Surge" Army as a failure and a newly transformed "Surge" Army as successful in Iraq; just like the flawed caricature of Westmoreland being the "loser" and Abrams the savior in Vietnam.

So it is important now to decouple flawed understandings of the history of the Vietnam War from our current understanding of the Iraq War so that we can get at a more accurate assessment of what has happened in Iraq over the past 6 years to guide us into the future.

*The Journal of Military History does not offer open access to its articles on line; recommend those interested in reading it in is entirety go through a library source to get it.

Colonel Gian Gentile commanded 8-10 Cavalry armored reconnaissance squadron for three years until his posting to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He commanded his squadron during a deployment to western Baghdad in 2006.

Network Works to Help Interagency Crisis Response

By Fred W. Baker III

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2008 -- As a reserve affairs soldier serving in Iraq in 2005, Andy Castro saw a problem.

Fresh drinking water systems took too long to set up, there was little standardization, they produced poor water quality and often failed quickly for a lack of maintenance, he said.

So, Castro returned to the United States, quit his full-time job, worked with the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter to raise money, teamed with a handful of guys who could help him design a solution, and started a business called Alrafidane, an Arabic word meaning "between two rivers."

Today, in the Pentagon courtyard, Castro set up and demonstrated a system that he said can produce thousands of gallons of clean water every day, cheaply, quickly and reliably.

"It takes me 20 minutes to set up. I push the green button, and I walk away," Castro said. "It's designed to be simple. It's designed to be user-friendly, so anyone can operate it."

Castro is part of about a dozen companies gathered in the Pentagon courtyard for a STAR-TIDES research demonstration that runs through tomorrow.

STAR-TIDES stands for sustainable technologies, accelerated research - transportable infrastructures for development and emergency support. The program is headed by the National Defense University and serves as a worldwide network of defense leaders, educators, and technical experts and civic and industry executives who work to match experiences and technologies to aid relief efforts for people suffering in areas ravaged by war, disaster or poverty...

Pushes for Stronger International, Interagency Relationships

By Donna Miles

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2008 -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last night he's struck by universal interest in bridging stronger ties with the United States in the roughly 50 countries he's visited since taking office, and that allowing the evolving U.S.-China relationship to unravel would be a huge strategic mistake.

Gates also offered assurance that the military has no interest in dominating in operations best left to other departments and nongovernmental agencies.

Responding to questions at the U.S. Institute of Peace's first Dean Acheson lecture, Gates called insights he's gained during meetings with his international counterparts one of his biggest surprises during his 22 months at the Pentagon...