Blog Posts

RADM Patrick Driscoll speaking with reporters in Baghdad, providing an update on security.

BG Steven Salazar, Commander of the Coalition Army Advisory Training Team, Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq speaks with reporters in Baghdad.

U.K. Maj. Gen. Andy Salmon, General Officer Commanding of Multi-National Division-Southeast, speaks via satellite with reporters at the Pentagon.

Bing West reviews Bill Murphy's In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002 at Forbes in More Perilous Than Proud.

As with other professions, journalism favors its own. Bill Murphy benefited from working for Bob Woodward, the reporter famous for persuading top Washington officials to divulge their secret yearnings along with nasty gossip about their peers during the Nixon administration.

Promising it will move the reader to tears, Woodward and other luminary journalists conferred celebrity status upon In A Time of War. Indeed, the concluding paragraphs in several chapters do stir grief--along with anger and frustration at the apparent stupidity of the mission in Iraq.

Although the book lacks a preface that explains the author's purpose, its subtitle is The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002. The book, however, is not about the class of 192 women and 1,054 men. Nor is it about the legacy and values of West Point. Instead, it is a description of a handful of lieutenants, how they fell in love, where they served and how their spouses bore up.

One is left with the image of savage combat against untrustworthy Iraqis in a frustrating war that exacted sacrifices equivalent in scale and loss to the Greatest Generation of World War II. Yet this war is less intense by orders of magnitude than Vietnam, and Vietnam was far less intense than World War II. Although this does not mitigate the sorrow or sacrifice of each family that lost a loved one, it is helpful to the reader when a nonfiction writer lays out his frame of reference...

Bill Murphy responds (also at Forbes) in Bing West Was Wrong About My Book.

Bing West deserves respect for his military service in Vietnam and for the passion of his commitment to Iraq. But he got so many basic facts wrong in his review of my new book that I have to set the record straight. Readers inclined to decide for themselves might start at www.inatimeofwar.com, where the first chapter of In a Time of War: The Proud & Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002 is available for free. You'll also a find a three-minute video that introduces some of the main characters.

I'll address the worst of West's factual errors in turn:

First, when West writes that two of the main characters in In a Time of War "were previously profiled in newspapers and books," he is almost certainly referring to a 2007 article in The Washington Post. Click the link, and you'll see a byline that reads: " By Bill Murphy Jr., Washington Post Foreign Service." (Yes, I'm that Bill Murphy Jr.) I wrote the profile about then-captain Drew Sloan after interviewing him many times over several years starting in the summer of 2005, and after I had shadowed him in Iraq for about four days. I did not, as West implies, simply pick up on somebody else's work.

A second main character, Todd Bryant, who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country in Iraq, was not profiled in a major newspaper that I am aware of. However, he was one of several soldiers whose letters home were featured in a series of articles in The New York Times. I first learned about this from Todd's widow, Jen, in 2006, well into my reporting for this book. (For a transcript of part of the first long interview I did with Jen, click here, and go to the second page of the article.)...

Much more by West here and by Murphy here.

Army to Activate First Company of Native Linguists-Turned-Soldiers

By John J. Kruzel

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2008 -- The Army will activate its first company of native linguists-turned-soldiers next week to act as interpreters and translators, representing a new phase in the service's reinvigorated approach to foreign language.

This unit of "heritage speakers" -- known as the 51st Tico Company -- comprises members of the service's most recently added military occupational specialty, 09L, referred to as "09 Limas." In addition to holding the Army's newest job, this cadre of native linguists trained at Fort Irwin, Calif., also reflects a change in Army recruiting strategy.

"We've found it's easier to train a linguist to be a soldier than to train a soldier to be a linguist," said Army Brig. Gen. Richard C. Longo, director of training in the Army's Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans and Training.

Since cultivating a working knowledge of foreign language and culture is time- and labor-intensive, the Army is unable to "surge" a group of linguists in the same way it has in the past with combat troops. This is why when the Army was tasked by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in February 2003 to establish a pilot program that focused on recruiting native and heritage speakers of Arabic, Dari and Pashto to meet critical foreign language requirements, it launched 09L...

Excessive force nearly lost us the Iraq War. The brass who gave the orders still don't get it.

Fight Club by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Monthly book reviews

In the latest Washington Monthly - Washington Post military correspondent Tom Ricks (Fiasco) reviews two recent additions to the war in Iraq library - Warrior King: The Triumph and Betrayal of an American Commander in Iraq by Nathan Sassaman, with Joe Layden and Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story by Ricardo S. Sanchez, with Donald T. Phillips.

On Warrior King:

About eighteen months ago, the US Army produced an important new manual on counterinsurgency that, when implemented last year in Iraq, helped American troops greatly improve the security situation there. Retired lieutenant colonel Nathan Sassaman's recent memoir, Warrior King, is the mirror opposite of that document - it is, effectively, the anti-manual. And it should be required reading for anyone who is deploying to the war in Iraq, or who wants to know how we dug so deep a hole there in 2003 and 2004.

Warrior King is a blueprint for how to lose in Iraq. Of course, that's not how it is presented by Sassaman, who commanded a battalion of the 4th Infantry Division in the Sunni Triangle during the war's first year. (Full disclosure: I am mentioned, neutrally, in the book.) In Sassaman's mind, he's a winner who understood that prevailing in Iraq meant breaking some furniture. A former West Point quarterback, he tended to see the civilian population not as the prize in the war, but as the playing field on which to pound the enemy...

On Wiser in Battle:

A companion volume to Sassaman's is retired Army lieutenant general Ricardo Sanchez's Wiser in Battle, a defense of his time as the US commander in Iraq in 2003--04. He is scathing in his criticism of the Bush administration, but about two years too late to be newsworthy, since it is now widely accepted that the handling of the war from 2003 through 2005 was a fiasco.

Sanchez's volume is another report from the old, pre-"surge" US Army that never really understood what it was doing in Iraq and believed that whatever the problem, the answer probably was more firepower. (I'm also mentioned in Sanchez's book - negatively, as supposedly emblematic of an incompetent and biased media in Iraq.) Sanchez is, however, more self-aware than Sassaman. He has a clearer understanding of what went wrong during his time in Iraq. Most notably, he doesn't just blame civilian leaders, and sees that his army was part of the problem.

Even so, he doesn't really get it either. Sassaman writes, "Force was the only thing that seemed to work ... the only thing the Iraqis seemed to understand." Sanchez comes to a similarly wrongheaded conclusion: "Force seemed to be one of the few things that Iraqi insurgents clearly understood." But these are the voices of ignorance. Neither man seems to understand that when force is the only way American forces can communicate, it will be the only thing Iraqis will hear...

Much more on both books at Washington Monthly.

Two items posted today at World Politics Review (always a good read) that Small Wars Journal readers should find of interest.

Future Face of Conflict: The U.S. Army's Doctrinal Renaissance by Jack Kem

This month's release of Field Manual 3-07, "Stability Operations," marks a milestone for the United States Army. With it, the Army acknowledges and codifies a dramatic change in thinking: No longer does the mission of the military stop at winning wars; now it must also help "win the peace." ...

Stability operations have a precise doctrinal definition, and differ from traditional warfighting concepts of offensive and defensive operations, which emphasize the use of lethal combat power against an enemy force. Stability operations instead focus on providing a foundation for conflict transformation. The emphasis is on reestablishing security and control so as to enable other instruments of national power (diplomatic, information, and economic means) to facilitate transition to civilian control by the host nation. They involve a variety of military missions and tasks, and are conducted in coordination with civil instruments of national power to "maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief."

For the Army, offensive and defensive operations rely on the destructive capabilities of military forces; stability operations rely on the constructive capabilities of the military. The reality of today's operational environment is that these actions take place simultaneously; what you break and destroy today, you may have to rebuild tomorrow...

Future Face of Conflict: Human Terrain Teams by Paul McLeary

... For a variety of reasons -- cultural, political, and economic -- the American armed forces have become all things to all people in the prosecution of American foreign policy. There is the obvious deterrent component that a globally-dispersed American force projects. But even when it comes to humanitarian missions, reconstruction projects, and low-level cultural outreach in the more dangerous corners of the world, you'll likely find a mix of soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen working on the problem before you'll find a member of the State Department.

And this is where the Human Terrain Teams come in. Or at least that's the long-term plan. Right now, the teams are wholly focused on extricating American forces from the tribal stews of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Montgomery McFate, one of the architects of the $130 million program and senior social science adviser to the Army Human Terrain System (HTS), says that in the early days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "nobody was looking" at cultural issues. When units rotated out, there would be a tremendous loss of knowledge concerning the complex tribal and cultural webs these societies represent. "People would come back with information in their head and shoe boxes full of CDs, Power Point slides, sticky note cards, and they really [had] nobody to give that information to," McFate explained. "And so much of it was tacit, it was in their head."

This loss of knowledge upon unit rotation meant that the unit rotating in "knew they needed to know something but they didn't know what they needed to know, so they'd get close to an answer but they couldn't find the answer."

The HTTs -- which were stood up in Afghanistan in February 2007 and in Iraq in August of the same year -- are tasked out at brigade level, meaning that they're out in the field with the grunts and the young lieutenants, captains and lieutenant colonels...

Indirect Approach is Favored in the War on Terror - Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times

Weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, a small team of Green Berets was quietly sent to the Philippine island of Basilan. There, one of the world's most virulent Islamic extremist groups, Abu Sayyaf, had established a dangerous haven and was seeking to extend its reach into the Philippine capital.

But rather than unleashing Hollywood-style raids, as might befit their reputation, the Green Berets proposed a time-consuming plan to help the Philippine military take on the extremist group itself. Seven years later, Abu Sayyaf has been pushed out of Basilan and terrorist attacks have dropped dramatically.

"It's not flashy, it's not glamorous, but man, this is how we're going to win the long war," said Lt. Gen. David P. Fridovich, the Army officer who designed the Philippine program.

Fridovich is part of a quiet but significant transformation taking place within the most secret of the US military's armed forces, the Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which encompasses the Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Delta Force and similar units from the Air Force and the Marines...

Much more at The Los Angeles Times.

Is US Fighting Force Big Enough? - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor

American's armed forces are growing bigger to reduce the strains from seven years of war, but if the US is confronting an era of "persistent conflict," as some experts believe, it will need an even bigger military.

A larger military could more easily conduct military and nation-building operations around the world. But whether the American public has the appetite to pursue and pay for such a foreign-policy agenda, especially after more than five years of an unpopular war in Iraq, is far from clear.

Last week, the Army released a new manual on "stability operations" that outlines for the Army a prominent global role as a nation-builder. The service will maintain its ability to fight conventional land wars, but the manual's release signals that it expects future conflicts to look more like Iraq or Afghanistan than World War II. While Defense Secretary Robert Gates has not publicly supported expanding the force beyond what is already planned, he has said the United States must prepare for more counterinsurgency wars like the ones it is fighting now - a hint that a larger military may be necessary.

Some analysts are certain of that need...

Much more at The Christian Science Monitor.

Army Intelligence Views Kidnapping and Terrorism - Secrecy News (Federation of American Scientists) blog

Kidnapping and other forms of terrorist violence have developed into a significant form of asymmetric conflict, according to a new US Army manual (pdf) that describes the theory and practice of kidnapping with numerous case studies from recent years.

"This document promotes an improved understanding of terrorist objectives, motivation, and behaviors in the conduct of kidnapping," the 168 page manual states...

Manual Has Terrorist Kidnapping Theories - United Press International

A US Army manual has incorporated evidence from case studies on terrorist organizations that use kidnapping as a threat tactic.

The Army counter-terrorism instructional series titled "A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century" now features theories on kidnapping and other asymmetric warfare tactics deployed by terrorists and other militants, Secrecy News reported.

The section of the manual titled "Kidnapping and Terror in the Contemporary Operational Environment" is written for official use only. However, officials at Secrecy News, a Federation of American Scientists project on government secrecy, obtained a copy....

Nothing follows.

Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq - Peter R. Mansoor, Yale University Press, 2008, 376 pgs, $28.00.

Before the Surge, and After - Mark Moyar, Wall Street Journal book review

... When Gen. David Petraeus set out to rescue a seemingly hopeless Iraq in February 2007, he brought Col. Mansoor back to Iraq and into his inner circle. Like Gen. Petraeus, Col. Mansoor was a scholar as well as a soldier, having earned a doctorate in military history and written a book about World War II before leading the 1st Brigade Combat Team against Iraq's insurgency.

Thus in "Baghdad at Sunrise," Col. Mansoor displays the knowledge of a soldier alongside the narrative gifts of a true historian, weaving dramatic events together, capturing the thoughts and emotions of street-level fighters, and describing Iraqi society as it tries to emerge from the maelstrom of war.

The war was certainly grim during Col. Mansoor's first tour, in part because the Iraqis were only just learning to fight the insurgency themselves. In April 2004, Col. Mansoor's brigade received orders to escort 200 Iraqi soldiers from Baghdad to Fallujah, where the butchering of four Blackwater contractors had sparked the war's fiercest fighting...

Much more at The Wall Street Journal.

In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point' Class of 2002 - Bill Murphy, Henry Holt and Co., 2008, 384 pgs, $27.50

The West Point cadets Murphy follows through their baptism by fire are an admirable sample of young American men and women: intelligent, ambitious and intensely patriotic. Most come from career military families and hold conservative opinions. Murphy describes their four years at West Point with respect even when discussing their love lives and marriages. All yearn for battle, and most get their wish. The book's best passages describe the confusion of moving to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting insurgents, for which they lack both training and equipment. All feel something is not right but concentrate on the job at hand; some inevitably die or are grievously wounded.

Today's Long Gray Line - Andrew Exum, Washington Post book review

... One constant through the years, however, has been the unique fraternity of officers produced by our nation's military academies. Each summer, some 1,200 cadets enter the US Military Academy at West Point; after four years of arduous training, about 1,000 graduate and are commissioned as junior officers in the army. Amid this perpetual rhythm, the graduating class of 2002 stood out in two ways: Its graduation coincided with the 200th anniversary of West Point's founding, ensuring extra attention for its members, nicknamed the "golden children." And the class of 2002 was the first since Vietnam to emerge, as President Bush noted in his commencement address, "in a time of war." Bill Murphy Jr. takes that phrase as the title for his group portrait, which he assembled from hundreds of interviews with members of the class and those with whom they served in combat.

The story Murphy has written is alternately inspiring and heartbreaking. It's inspiring because the US military continues to attract some of the nation's brightest talent, accomplished young men and women who yearn to serve their country in difficult circumstances. (If the class of 2002 was valorous for leaving West Point at a time of war, one wonders, what about the class of 2006, which entered at a time of war?)...

Much more at The Washington Post.

In a Time of War

Hat tip to Charlie at Abu Muqawama.

How to Smooth the Transition in Iraq - John Nagl and Adam Scher, Christian Science Monitor opinion

Mahmoudiya, a town south of Baghdad, was part of the area long known as the "Triangle of Death" because of the extraordinary number of Sunni insurgent attacks against coalition forces and Iraqi civilians it suffered -- often half a dozen daily in 2006. Today, with violence down to only a few ineffective attacks in any given week, it has earned the moniker "Triangle of Love."

The progress there is due in part to the new US strategy. It involved living among the local population to break the hold of the insurgents and now focuses more on partnering and empowering local Iraqi forces than depending on US troops to target and capture enemies.

This switch in Mahmoudiya has spurred economic growth in the area and sheds light on how to manage a drawdown of US forces without sacrificing the hard-won security gains of the past 18 months.

It's clear that the ultimate success of our counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq requires not just a reduction in all types of enemy activity, but also an increase in the capacity of the Iraqi Security Forces and the local governing councils...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

3 BCT - 101st Airborne Division (AASLT) - Rakkasans - Transition Task Force Brief

The Case for Keeping Gates - Nancy Soderberg and Brian Katulis, Washington Post opinion

Here's a free piece of advice to President Barack Obama or President John McCain: There's no need to look for a new secretary of defense. You already have the best man in the job.

The Obama campaign in particular seems to have noticed the virtues of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. It's a little head-spinning to see senior Democrats lauding a Bush cabinet officer in the heat of the campaign, but earlier this month, Richard Danzig, the former Navy secretary who has become one of Obama's closest national security aides, said that many of Gates's pragmatic policies at the Pentagon "are things that Senator Obama agrees with and I agree with." Danzig added that Gates could do "even better" if he stayed on the job in an Obama administration.

The case for Gates goes beyond the obvious question of assisting the next president in handling Iraq, which Gates has helped haul back from the brink of total collapse. But he has also been instrumental in launching a sweeping revolution in US national security...

Much more at The Washington Post.

Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned - Rufus Phillips

Phillips details how the legendary Edward G. Lansdale helped the South Vietnamese gain and consolidate their independence between 1954 and 1956, and how this later changed to a reliance on American conventional warfare with its highly destructive firepower. He reasons that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies, or even ourselves took us down the wrong road. In summing up US errors in Vietnam, Phillips draws parallels with the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and suggests changes in the US approach. Known for his intellectual integrity and firsthand, long-term knowledge of what went on in Vietnam, the author offers lessons for today in this trenchant account.

Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq - Peter Mansoor

This is a unique contribution to the burgeoning literature on the Iraq war, analyzing the day-to-day performance of a US brigade in Baghdad during 2004-2005. Mansoor uses a broad spectrum of sources to address the military, political and cultural aspects of an operation undertaken with almost no relevant preparation, which tested officers and men to their limits and generated mistakes and misjudgments on a daily basis. The critique is balanced, perceptive and merciless - and Mansoor was the brigade commander. Military history is replete with command memoirs. Most are more or less self-exculpatory. Even the honest ones rarely achieve this level of analysis. The effect is like watching a surgeon perform an operation on himself. Mansoor has been simultaneously a soldier and a scholar, able to synergize directly his military and academic experiences.

The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq - Bing West

From a universally respected combat journalist, a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around - and the choice now facing America. We interpret reality through the clouded prism of our own experience, so it is unsurprising that Bing West sees Iraq through the lens of Vietnam. He served as a Marine officer there, and he thinks politicians and the media caused the American public to turn against a war that could have been won. Now a correspondent for the Atlantic, West has made 15 reporting trips to Iraq over the last six years and is almost as personally invested in the current conflict as he was in Vietnam; this book, his third on Iraq, is his attempt to ensure that the "endgame" in Iraq turns out better than in his last war.

Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq - Linda Robinson

After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war. Linda Robinson conducted extensive interviews with Petraeus and his subordinate commanders and spent weeks with key U.S. and Iraqi divisions. The result is the only book that ties together military operations in Iraq and the internecine political drama that is at the heart of the civil war. Replete with dramatic battles, behind-doors confrontations, and astute analysis, the book tells the full story of the Iraq War's endgame, and lays out the options that will be facing the next president.

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 - Bob Woodward

Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is a stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when the White House realizes the Iraq strategy is not working, through the decision to surge another 30,000 US troops in 2007, and into mid-2008, when the war becomes a fault line in the presidential election. As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the US military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the US government from 2006 through mid-2008. The White House launches a secret strategy review that excludes the military. General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, believes that President Bush does not understand the war and eventually concludes he has lost the president's confidence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also conduct a secret strategy review that goes nowhere. On the verge of revolt, they worry that the military will be blamed for a failure in Iraq.

We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam - Harold Moore and Joe Galloway

In their stunning follow-up to the classic bestseller We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway return to Vietnam and reflect on how the war changed them, their men, their enemies, and both countries - often with surprising results. It would be a monumental task for Moore and Galloway to top their classic 1992 memoir. But they come close in this sterling sequel, which tells the backstory of two of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battles (in which Moore participated as a lieutenant colonel), their first book and a 1993 ABC-TV documentary that brought them back to the battlefield. Moore's strong first-person voice reviews the basics of the November 1965 battles, part of the 34-day Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Among other things, Moore and Galloway (who covered the battle for UPI) offer portraits of two former enemy commanders, generals Nguyen Huu An and Chu Huy Man, whom the authors met - and bonded with - nearly three decades after the battle. This book proves again that Moore is an exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate and courageous leader (he was one of a handful of army officers who studied the history of the Vietnam wars before he arrived) and a strong voice for reconciliation and for honoring the men with whom he served.

In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point' Class of 2002 - Bill Murphy

The West Point cadets Murphy follows through their baptism by fire are an admirable sample of young American men and women: intelligent, ambitious and intensely patriotic. Most come from career military families and hold conservative opinions. Murphy describes their four years at West Point with respect even when discussing their love lives and marriages. All yearn for battle, and most get their wish. The book's best passages describe the confusion of moving to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting insurgents, for which they lack both training and equipment. All feel something is not right but concentrate on the job at hand; some inevitably die or are grievously wounded.

Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy - Steven Metz

Today the US military is more nimble, mobile, and focused on rapid responses against smaller powers than ever before. One could argue that the Gulf War and the postwar standoff with Saddam Hussein hastened needed military transformation and strategic reassessments in the post--Cold War era. But the preoccupation with Iraq also mired the United States in the Middle East and led to a bloody occupation. What will American strategy look like after US troops leave Iraq? Metz concludes that the United States has a long-standing, continuing problem "developing sound assumptions when the opponent operates within a different psychological and cultural framework." He sees a pattern of misjudgments about Saddam and Iraq based on Western cultural and historical bias and a pervasive faith in the superiority of America's worldview and institutions. This myopia contributed to America being caught off guard by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then underestimating his longevity, and finally miscalculating the likelihood of a stable and democratic Iraq after he was toppled. With lessons for all readers concerned about America's role in the world, Dr. Metz's important new work will especially appeal to scholars and students of strategy and international security studies, as well as to military professionals and DOD civilians. With a foreword by Colin S. Gray.

Carried over from a June 2008 Small Wars Council post by Jedburgh - Another classic reprint from Rand: Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16-20, 1962.

This April, 1962 symposium was held at a time when Kennedy Administration officials were focusing increasingly on the growing communist insurgency in Vietnam and on the verge of radically expanding the numbers, roles, and types of US military forces in that country. The purpose of the symposium was to distill lessons and insights from past insurgent conflicts that might help to inform and shape the US involvement in Vietnam and to foster the effective prosecution of other future counterinsurgency campaigns.

To gather these lessons and insights, Rand brought to the same conference table twelve US and allied officers and civilian officials who had expertise and a proven record of success in some aspects of guerrilla or counterinsurgency warfare. As their biographies will testify, the accomplishments and backgrounds of the symposium's formal participants gave their views significant credibility. Each participant could claim firsthand experience with guerrilla or counterinsurgent operations in one or more of the following post-World War II conflicts: Algeria, China, Greece, Kenya, Laos, Malaya, Oman, South Vietnam, and the Philippines. Three of the participants had led or operated with anti-Japanese guerrilla or guerrilla-type units in Burma and the Philippines during World War II.

During five days of meetings, the participants exchanged views on a wide spectrum of topics relating to the political, military, economic, intelligence, and psychological measures required to defeat insurgencies. Convinced that the fundamental verities of effective counterinsurgency policy and practice that were elucidated by the participants remain as valid today as they were 44 years ago, Rand decided to republish the symposium proceedings.

Among the insights that emerged from the discussions, the reader will find a number of counterinsurgency best practices that seem especially germane to the insurgency challenges confronted today by the United States and its allies.

Formal Participants

Charles T.R. Bohannan, Lieutenant Colonel, AUS-Ret.

Wendell W. Fertig, Colonel, USA-Ret.

David Galula, Lieutenant Colonel (French Marine Corps)

Anthony S. Jeapes, Captain (British Army)

Frank E. Kitson, MBE, MC, Lieutenant Colonel (British Army)

Edward Geary Lansdale, Brigadier General, USAF

Rufus C. Phillips, III

David Leonard Powell-Jones, DSO, OBEY Brigadier General (British Army)

John R. Shirley, OBE, Colonel (British Army-Ret.)

Napoleon D. Valeriano, Colonel (formerly with the Armed Forces of the Philippines)

John F. White, Colonel (Royal Australian Army)

Samuel V. Wilson, Lieutenant Colonel, USA

Counterinsurgency: A Symposium, April 16-20, 1962 - Rand report.

Matt Armstrong over at MountainRunner has more on the release of FM 3.07 Stability Operations.

While military operations may neutralize immediate "kinetic" threats, enduring change comes from stabilizing the unstable and building capacity to self-govern where there is none. Security, humanitarian relief, governance, economic stabilization, and development are critical for ultimate democratization, but more importantly, for peace and security locally and globally. Without competent and comprehensive engagement in these areas of "soft power," tactical "hard power" operations are simply a waste of time, money, and life.

This week the US Army released a new field manual, FM 3-07 Stability Operations, to adapt the military to these requirements of the modern age. The manual "represents a milestone in Army doctrine," writes LTG Bill Caldwell in the foreword.

It is a roadmap from conflict to peace, a practical guidebook for adaptive, creative leadership at a critical time in our history. It institutionalizes the hard-won lessons of the past while charting a path for tomorrow. This manual postures our military forces for the challenges of an uncertain future, an era of persistent conflict where the unflagging bravery of our Soldiers will continue to carry the banner of freedom, hope, and opportunity to the people of the world.

FM 3-07 elevates capacity-building to be co-equal with traditional offensive and defensive military operations of Big Army. This doctrinal shift is not new, but also found in the updated Operations Manual for the Army, FM 3-0, Caldwell also oversaw earlier this year.

This field manual is more than a revision to Army thinking and training of future officers. It is a linchpin in effective global engagement by the United States.

Much more at MountainRunner.

US Urgently Reviews Policy On Afghanistan - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

The White House has launched an urgent review of Afghanistan policy, fast-tracked for completion in the next several weeks, amid growing concern that the administration lacks a comprehensive strategy for the foundering war there and as intelligence officials warn of a rapidly worsening situation on the ground.

Underlying the deliberations is a nearly completed National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan and the Pakistan-based extremists fighting there. Analysts have concluded that reconstituted elements of al-Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban are collaborating with an expanding network of militant groups, making the counterinsurgency war infinitely more complicated.

As the US presidential election approaches, senior officials have expressed worry that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is so tenuous that it may fall apart while a new set of US policymakers settles in. Others believe a more comprehensive, airtight road map for the way ahead would limit the new president's options.

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, President Bush's senior adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, has told Pentagon, intelligence and State Department officials to return to the basic questions: What are our objectives in Afghanistan? What can we hope to achieve? What are our resources? What is our allies' role? What do we know about the enemy? How likely is it that weak Afghan and Pakistani governments will rise to the occasion?

More at The Washington Post.

US Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan - Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, New York Times

A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan.

The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a global campaign against terrorism.

Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in neighboring Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of Afghanistan's most vexing problems are of the country's own making, the officials said.

More at The New York Times.

Gates Seeks European Troops for Afghanistan - Peter Finn, Washington Post

US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Wednesday asked defense ministers from southeastern Europe to send more troops to Afghanistan, a message that he is likely to forcefully echo at a meeting with other NATO defense officials this week.

"As the situation on the ground in Iraq continues to improve, I urge you to consider sending your military forces to Afghanistan, where there is an urgent need for trainers as they expand their army," Gates said at a meeting of the South-Eastern Europe Defense Ministerial, a 12-member organization composed of NATO members and countries such as Macedonia that want to join the military alliance.

More at the Washington Post and New York Times.

No Afghan-Taliban Peace Talks, For Now - Anand Gopal, Christian Science Monitor

The Taliban are not engaged in peace talks with the Afghan government, despite recent reports to the contrary, say sources close to the insurgents and the government.

Instead, meetings held last month in Saudi Arabia - which brought former Taliban officials together with members of the Afghan and Saudi governments - may be an attempt by Kabul to start negotiations with the current Taliban.

"The meetings signal that the Afghan government is weak and is desperate for a solution," says Waheed Muzhda, a political analyst in Kabul and former official in the Taliban government.

They've come at a time when the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan is reaching unprecedented heights, causing some analysts to doubt that the militants will be interested in making peace.

Moreover, the former Taliban members who participated in the Mecca meetings may not have much sway in persuading current militants to come to the table. "These people don't represent the Taliban," Mr. Muzhda says. "Most of the people have almost no standing with the current Taliban leadership."

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Charlie Rose Show - Conversation with Manouchehr Mottaki, Foreign Minister of Iran.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) International Security Program (ISP) hosted Lt. General William B. Caldwell, USA, Commanding General, United States Army Combined Arms Center and Ft. Leavenworth; to introduce Field Manual 3-07: Stability Operations yesterday. SWJ was able to attend and found the panel discussion very informative as well as interesting. We hope to post some highlights from the discussion here in the near future. In the meantime CSIS has posted video and audio at their web page for this event.

The army's new stability operations doctrine calls for a comprehensive approach to stabilization efforts that envisions integration of a variety of stakeholders not traditionally combined as full partners in complex contingencies. The CSIS panel discussion included Ambassador John Herbst. Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, United States Department of State; Ambassador Dick Solomon, President, United States Institute for Peace; Ambassador Michael Hess, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, United States Agency for International Development; Samuel A. Worthington, CEO and president of InterAction, Nathan Freier, a senior fellow at CSIS, and Rick Barton, codirector of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project.

Position: Arab Cultural/Political Subject Matter Expert

Location: Counterinsurgency Center For Excellence (COIN CFE), Camp Taji, Iraq

Qualifications: Instructor should have a PhD in Arab political / cultural studies. Candidates who have an MA and are currently working toward a PhD are acceptable. Instructor must be able to travel throughout Iraq when required as part of Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) and COIN Survey Teams (CSTs) augmenting information collection efforts for both the COIN CFE (Counterinsurgency Center For Excellence) and the ICS (Iraqi Counterinsurgency School). Wide ranging discovery and analysis of this kind should be presented to the Commander, Iraqi COIN School and his mission design team as part of the overall criteria that will ultimately shape the mature form and purpose of the Iraqi COIN School. Instructor must have a working knowledge of both historical and contemporary Iraqi government and the ability to instruct coalition forces about the nature of this system and its effects on day-to-day military operations; have an understanding of the structure of the Iraqi Army Division and its components and the processes and politics of the Iraqi Ground Forces Command, the Ministry of Defense and the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. Instructor should be familiar with the current civil-military situation in Iraq as it relates to basic counterinsurgency doctrine as taught by the COIN CFE and the ICS.

Duties: Educates coalition military and inter-agency personnel on Arab political and cultural topics and their relationship with and significance to the Contemporary Operating Environment (COE) and ongoing counterinsurgency operations. Maintains situational awareness of day-to-day political / military events in the Iraqi theater of operations and incorporates this information into presentations as required. Infuses instruction with practical linkages between political/cultural issues and military operations. Assists in the collection, analysis and summation of COIN best practices for distribution to US and Iraqi training centers. Assists in curriculum development and course content design as it relates to political/cultural learning objectives in order to insure continuity, validity and currency of coalition and Iraqi COIN curricula.

Contact: William Rebarick, Raytheon Company, 321.235.1750 office, DSN 312.960.8647, [email protected]

The release of FM 3.07, Stability Operations, is an important step in the Army's - and the nation's - process of understanding the fundamental changes in the international system since the end of the Cold War. In conjunction with FM 3.0, Operations, and FM 3.24, Counterinsurgency, this document codifies a longtime but unacknowledged reality - that it is the Army's task not just to win the war, but to create a lasting peace in the aftermath of conflict.

Important as these doctrinal manuals are in correctly understanding the nature of conflict in the 21st century - one in which weak states rather than strong ones are the greatest threat to our security and the smooth functioning of the international system - they are but a first step. Doctrine drives the way we organize and train our forces, educate our leaders, and select and promote our people. The Army now faces the difficult task of implementing significant changes in all of those areas to build the military we need for the 21st century.

Nearly three years ago, Department of Defense Directive 3000.05 stated that "Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning." Since then, much progress has been made, but much more work remains to be done. Secretary of Defense Gates felt compelled to note just a week ago today that "Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in our budget, in our bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress. My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support - including in the Pentagon - for the capabilities needed to win the wars we are in, and of the kinds of missions we are most likely to undertake in the future."

The publication of FM 3.07 is an important step in the direction of preparing the Army for the wars we are in and the kinds of missions we are most likely to undertake in the future. Now comes the hard part of building the capabilities we need to win the wars of today and tomorrow.

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SWJ Editors Notes:

FM 3.07, Stability Operations was released / posted this morning by the US Army Combined Arms Center.

Also see It's Time for an Army Advisor Corps by Dr. John Nagl.

Winning the Battle, Losing the Faith - Nathaniel Fick and Vikram Singh, New York Times opinion

"The lion of the people will turn on you," warned Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, a former Taliban foreign minister, as we sipped green tea at his home in Kabul a few weeks ago. He noted that while Americans had been shocked by a series of spectacular insurgent attacks over the summer, the United States-led coalition faced a far greater danger than the resurgent Taliban: growing despair among average Afghans that their government is fundamentally illegitimate.

Every aspect of sound counterinsurgency strategy revolves around bolstering the government's legitimacy. When ordinary people lose their faith in their government, then they also lose faith in the foreigners who prop it up. The day that happens across Afghanistan is the day we lose the war.

With more than 230 military deaths since January, this year is on track to be the deadliest yet for the coalition in Afghanistan. July alone saw a brazen attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the deaths of nine Americans at a combat outpost in Nuristan and the killing of 10 French soldiers on the outskirts of Kabul. The response has been a growing consensus around sending two to four more combat brigades to Afghanistan - 8,000 to 16,000 troops.

Although larger and more populous than Iraq, Afghanistan has fewer than half the coalition forces, and critical programs to advise the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police operate at one-third to one-half of their authorized strength. As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Michael Mullen, told Congress last year, "In Afghanistan we do what we can; in Iraq we do what we must."

More at The New York Times.

A Manhunt or a Vital War? - Robert Kaplan, New York Times opinion

The rising violence in Afghanistan and fractious political situation in Pakistan have become leading issues in the American presidential campaign and the debates between the candidates. Indeed, after seven years of war in the region, it's time to ask a very impolite set of questions: If we did, by chance, capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, would Afghanistan still matter? Would there be public support for sending more American troops to stabilize a country that has rarely in its history enjoyed strong central government and that abuts a tribal area in Pakistan that neither the British nor the Pakistanis have ever been able to control? Is the war in Afghanistan, deep down, anything more than a manhunt for a handful of individuals? And if it is, how do we define victory there?

After all, Afghanistan is not the only ungovernable space with an Islamic setting around the world that can provide a base for terrorists who want to attack the United States. The world is full of them: from Somalia to the southern Philippines to the Indonesian archipelago. Better, perhaps, not to be tied down with thousands of troops in one or two places, and instead use sophisticated, high-tech covert means to hunt down hostile groups wherever they crop up. The problem with Osama bin Laden, one could argue, was not that he had a haven in Afghanistan in the 1990s but that he was not pursued there with sufficient vigor.

So, here's my answer: In fact, Afghanistan is more than a manhunt, and it does matter, for reasons that have not been fully fleshed out by policy makers or the military.

More at The New York Times.

Standard Warfare May Be Eclipsed By Nation-Building - Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post

The Army on Monday will unveil an unprecedented doctrine that declares nation-building missions will probably become more important than conventional warfare and defines "fragile states" that breed crime, terrorism and religious and ethnic strife as the greatest threat to US national security.

The doctrine, which has generated intense debate in the US military establishment and government, holds that in coming years, American troops are not likely to engage in major ground combat against hostile states as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead will frequently be called upon to operate in lawless areas to safeguard populations and rebuild countries.

Such "stability operations" will last longer and ultimately contribute more to the military's success than "traditional combat operations," according to the Army's new Stability Operations Field Manual, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post...

But as the Army struggles to define its long-term future beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, some critics within the military warn that the new emphasis on nation-building is a dangerous distraction from what they believe should be the Army's focus: strengthening its core war-fighting skills to prepare for large-scale ground combat.

The critics challenge the assumption that major wars are unlikely in the future, pointing to the risk of high-intensity conflict that could require sizable Army deployments to North Korea, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere. "All we need to do is look at Russia and Georgia a few months ago. That suggests the description . . . of future war is too narrow," said Col. Gian P. Gentile, an Iraq war veteran with a doctorate in history who is a leading thinker in the Army camp opposed to the new doctrine...

Civilian officials and nongovernmental groups voice a different concern: that the military's push to expand its exercise of "soft power," while perhaps inevitable, given the dearth of civilian resources, marks a growing militarization of US foreign policy...

More at The Washington Post.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

At the end of the third inning we declared victory and said the game's over. It ain't over. It isn't going to be over in future wars. If we're talking about the future, we need to talk about not how you win the peace as a separate part of the war, but you've got to look at this thing from start to finish. It's not a phased conflict; there isn't a fighting part and then another part. It is nine innings. And at the end of the game, somebody's going to declare victory. And whatever blood is poured onto the battlefield could be wasted if we don't follow it up with understanding what victory is.

--General Anthony Zinni- Naval Institute Forum, Sept. 2003

First item - Blast Kills 7 Russian Troops in S. Ossetia - Philip Pan, Washington Post

A car bomb exploded outside Russia's military headquarters in South Ossetia on Friday, killing seven soldiers and two others in what leaders of the Kremlin-backed separatist region immediately described as a terrorist attack launched by Georgia.

The blast in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, came amid continuing tensions as a cease-fire deadline approached for Russian troops to withdraw from territory around the breakaway region, which has declared its independence from Georgia.

Russian troops had seized the car in a Georgian village outside South Ossetia and taken it to Tskhinvali to be searched after detaining four individuals who were carrying guns and grenades, Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, the commander of the Russian forces, told the Interfax news agency.

More at the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press.

And this broader item - in tomorrow's Post - Behind the Bluster, Russia Is Collapsing by Murray Feshbach

The bear is back. That's what all too many Russia-watchers have been saying since Russian troops steamrolled Georgia in August, warning that the country's strongman, Vladimir Putin, was clawing his way back toward superpower status. The new Russia's resurgence has been fueled -- quite literally -- by windfall profits from gas and oil, a big jump in defense spending and the cocky attitude on such display during the mauling of Georgia, its US-backed neighbor to the south. Many now believe that the powerful Russian bear of the Cold War years is coming out of hibernation.

Not so fast. Predictions that Russia will again become powerful, rich and influential ignore some simply devastating problems at home that block any march to power. Sure, Russia's army could take tiny Georgia. But Putin's military is still in tatters, armed with rusting weaponry and staffed with indifferent recruits. Meanwhile, a declining population is robbing the military of a new generation of soldiers. Russia's economy is almost totally dependent on the price of oil. And, worst of all, it's facing a public health crisis that verges on the catastrophic.

To be sure, the skylines of Russia's cities are chock-a-block with cranes. Industrial lofts are now the rage in Moscow, Russian tourists crowd far-flung locales from Thailand to the Caribbean, and Russian moguls are snapping up real estate and art in London almost as quickly as their oil-rich counterparts from the Persian Gulf. But behind the shiny surface, Russian society may actually be weaker than it was even during Soviet times. The Kremlin's recent military adventures and tough talk are the bluster of the frail, not the swagger of the strong.

While Russia has capitalized impressively on its oil industry, the volatility of the world oil market means that Putin cannot count on a long-term pipeline of cash flowing from high oil prices. A predicted drop of about one-third in the price of a barrel of oil will surely constrain Putin's ability to carry out his ambitious agendas, both foreign and domestic.

That makes Moscow's announced plan to boost defense spending by close to 26 percent in 2009 - in order to fully re-arm its military with state-of-the-art weaponry - a dicey proposition. What the world saw in Georgia was a badly outdated arsenal, one that would take many years to replace - even assuming the country could afford the $200 billion cost.

Something even larger is blocking Russia's march. Recent decades, most notably since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, have seen an appalling deterioration in the health of the Russian population, anchoring Russia not in the forefront of developed countries but among the most backward of nations.

Much more at The Washington Post.

Follow the Money: Why the US is Losing the War in Afghanistan by Anthony Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Synopsis:

Most of the literature on the cost of the Iraq War, Afghan War, and "war on terrorism" focuses on the burden these wars place on the federal budget and the US economy. These are very real issues, but they also have deflected attention from another key issue: whether the war in Afghanistan is being properly funded and being given the resources necessary to win.

Anthony H. Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS, has prepared a new report showing that the US has consistently failed to provide the financial and military resources necessary to win the war, and that these failures may well mean the US is losing it.

Follow the Money: Why the US is Losing the War in Afghanistan