Blog Posts

Colonel Charles Flynn, Commander of the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, speaks via satellite with reporters at the Pentagon, providing an operational update on 26 June 2008.

Several items concerning the directive from the ITP article:

ITP reports that critics contend that including SSTR under IW would cast stabilization operations, in which help from civilian government agencies and non-governmental organizations is crucial in too militaristic a light.

There is much more at Inside the Pentagon.

By Andrew Exum

I have a few questions for the learned readership of Small Wars Journal. The first is, how many of you have ever looked up the official Department of Defense definition for 'Information Operations?'

According to JP 3-13, Information Operations, the term is defined as "the integrated employment of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own."

I am confident there exist more confusing definitions in the U.S. military lexicon, but surely there cannot be too many. In effect, the Department of Defense has taken the term 'information operations' as understood by cyberwarfare types and mashed it together with the term 'information operations' as understood by those of us waging wars of narratives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The resulting confusion has left us with a definition that tries to be everything to everyone while at the same time leaving us with a shoddy definition to communicate what we're talking about as counter-insurgency theorist-practitioners when we use the term...

From the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy:

No One in PD Conducts PD Overseas

By Matt Armstrong - Cross-posted at MountainRunner

Strong words from the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Strong and brutally honest. The Commission, an organization reporting directly to the President, unlike any other report before, whether from the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, the Defense Sciences Board, or any other body, assessed the human resource elements of U.S. Public Diplomacy. The topic for this report originated in the Commission. The findings will be presented tomorrow, Wednesday, 25 June 2008, but the report is available at the Commission's website now or at MountainRunner (PDF, 2.2mb).

The function of the Commission is to provide independent oversight and make recommendations on the activities and effectiveness of America's information activities and education and cultural exchanges. It was was established by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and was two bodies, one the Advisory Commission on Information and the other Advisory Commission on Educational Exchange.

Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to sit down with the chairman of the Commission, Bill Hybl, to discuss the report to be publicly presented tomorrow. Bill said that a core requirement is to address people and issues in local terms, including identifying common ground. This requires engagement, something Bill noted is absent. It also requires continuity at the very highest level, which he noted has also been missing with the turnover at the Under Secretary position...

Much more at World Affairs.

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

UPDATE: With a hat tip to Charlie at Abu Muqawama, here is a good campanion piece to Gian's World Affairs article - Review Symposium on the New U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Manual at Perspectives on Politics Journal.

UPDATE 2: More - Gentile, Not Gentle by Dr. iRack at Abu Muqawama.

From today's Washington Post - 4 Americans Die in Attack During Sadr City Meeting by Ernesto Londoí±o:

The article has much more on Steven Farley's work as a PRT member in Iraq and American Embassy, Baghdad, issued a statement by Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

A BAE Systems press release provides some background on Nicole Suveges:

More by Mike Innes at CTLab and Noah Shachtman at Danger Room.

Read the entire review here at Small Wars Journal. You can also read a "review of the review" by Mark Safranski at ZenPundit.

John Nagl is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. A retired US Army officer, his last assignment was as Commanding Officer of 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kansas. He led a tank platoon in Operation Desert Storm and served as the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Nagl earned his doctorate from Oxford University, taught national security studies at West Point, and served as a Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and was on the writing team that produced the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

Major General Jeffrey Schlosser, Commander of Combined Joint Task Force-101, and Commanding General, 101st Airborne Division, 24 June 2008.

Bloggers Roundtable

U.S. Army Colonel Thomas McGrath, commander of the Afghanistan Regional Security Integration Command-South, described operations in response to the Taliban's raid on a prison in Kandahar province on 13 June 2008. (Transcript, Audio)

AFPS Article

General Cites Security, Development, Governance Gains in Afghanistan

By Gerry J. Gilmore

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 24, 2008 -- U.S., coalition and Afghan security forces are hunting down the Taliban and other insurgents operating in Afghanistan, while vital reconstruction and governance programs continue to spread across the country, a senior U.S. military officer said today....

Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, Commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, providing an update on ongoing security operations in Iraq, 23 June 2008.

Major General Qassim Atta, Spokesman for Operation Fardh al-Qanoon, and Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, MNF-I Spokesman, discussing sercurity operations in Iraq, 22 June 2008.

- Secure and serve the population. The Iraqi people are the decisive "terrain." Together with our Iraqi partners, work to provide the people security, to give them respect, to gain their support, and to facilitate establishment of local governance, restoration of basic services, and revival of local economies.

- Live among the people. You can't commute to this fight. Position Joint Security Stations, Combat Outposts, and Patrol Bases in the neighborhoods we intend to secure. Living among the people is essential to securing them and defeating the insurgents.

- Hold areas that have been secured. Once we clear an area, we must retain it. Develop the plan for holding an area before starting to clear it. The people need to know that we and our Iraqi partners will not abandon their neighborhoods. When reducing forces and presence, gradually thin the line rather than handing off or withdrawing completely. Ensure situational awareness even after transfer of responsibility to Iraqi forces.

- Pursue the enemy relentlessly. Identify and pursue AQI and other extremist elements tenaciously. Do not let them retain support areas or sanctuaries. Force the enemy to respond to us. Deny the enemy the ability to plan and conduct deliberate operations.

- Generate unity of effort. Coordinate operations and initiatives with our embassy and interagency partners, our Iraqi counterparts, local governmental leaders, and nongovernmental organizations to ensure all are working to achieve a common purpose.

- Promote reconciliation. We cannot kill our way out of this endeavor. We and our Iraqi partners must identify and separate the "reconcilables" from the "irreconcilables" through engagement, population control measures, information operations, kinetic operations, and political activities. We must strive to make the reconcilables a part of the solution, even as we identify, pursue, and kill, capture, or drive out the irreconcilables.

- Defeat the network, not just the attack. Defeat the insurgent networks to the "left" of the explosion. Focus intelligence assets to identify the network behind an attack, and go after its leaders, financiers, suppliers, and operators.

- Foster Iraqi legitimacy. Encourage Iraqi leadership and initiative; recognize that their success is our success. Partner in all that we do and support local involvement in security, governance, economic revival, and provision of basic services. Find the right balance between Coalition Forces leading and the Iraqis exercising their leadership and initiative, and encourage the latter. Legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people is essential to overall success.

- Employ all assets to isolate and defeat the terrorists and insurgents. Counter-terrorist forces alone cannot defeat Al-Qaeda and the other extremists; success requires all forces and all means at our disposal—non-kinetic as well as kinetic. Employ Coalition and Iraqi conventional and special operations forces, Sons of Iraq, and all other available multipliers. Integrate civilian and military efforts to cement security gains. Resource and fight decentralized. Push assets down to those who most need them and can actually use them.

- Employ money as a weapon system. Use a targeting board process to ensure the greatest effect for each "round" expended, and to ensure that each engagement using money contributes to the achievement of the unit's overall objectives. Ensure contracting activities support the security effort, employing locals wherever possible. Employ a "matching fund" concept when feasible in order to ensure Iraqi involvement and commitment.

- Fight for intelligence. A nuanced understanding of the situation is everything. Analyze the intelligence that is gathered, share it, and fight for more. Every patrol should have tasks designed to augment understanding of the area of operations and the enemy. Operate on a "need to share" rather than a "need to know" basis; disseminate intelligence as soon as possible to all who can benefit from it.

- Walk. Move mounted, work dismounted. Stop by, don't drive by. Patrol on foot and engage the population. Situational awareness can only be gained by interacting with the people face-to-face, not separated by ballistic glass.

- Understand the neighborhood. Map the human terrain and study it in detail. Understand local culture and history. Learn about the tribes, formal and informal leaders, governmental structures, and local security forces. Understand how local systems are supposed to work—including governance, basic services, maintenance of infrastructure, and the economy—and how they really work.

- Build relationships. Relationships are a critical component of counterinsurgency operations. Together with our Iraqi counterparts, strive to establish productive links with local leaders, tribal sheikhs, governmental officials, religious leaders, and interagency partners.

- Look for Sustainable Solutions. Build mechanisms by which the Iraqi Security Forces, Iraqi community leaders, and local Iraqis under the control of governmental institutions can continue to secure local areas and sustain governance and economic gains in their communities as the Coalition Force presence is reduced. Figure out the Iraqi systems and

help Iraqis make them work.

- Maintain continuity and tempo through transitions. Start to build the information you'll provide to your successors on the day you take over. Allow those who will

follow you to virtually "look over your shoulder" while they're still at home station by giving them access to your daily updates and other items on SIPRNET. Encourage extra time on the ground during transition periods, and strive to maintain operational tempo and local relationships to avoid giving the enemy respite.

- Manage expectations. Be cautious and measured in announcing progress. Note what has been accomplished, but also acknowledge what still needs to be done. Avoid premature declarations of success. Ensure our troopers and our partners are aware of our assessments and recognize that any counterinsurgency operation has innumerable challenges, that enemies get a vote, and that progress is likely to be slow.

- Be first with the truth. Get accurate information of significant activities to your chain of command, to Iraqi leaders, and to the press as soon as is possible. Beat the insurgents, extremists, and criminals to the headlines, and pre-empt rumors. Integrity is critical to this fight. Don't put lipstick on pigs. Acknowledge setbacks and failures, and then state what we've learned and how we'll respond. Hold the press (and ourselves) accountable for accuracy, characterization, and context. Avoid spin and let facts speak for themselves. Challenge enemy disinformation. Turn our enemies' bankrupt messages, extremist ideologies, oppressive practices, and indiscriminate violence against them.

- Fight the information war relentlessly. Realize that we are in a struggle for legitimacy that in the end will be won or lost in the perception of the Iraqi people. Every action taken by the enemy and United States has implications in the public arena. Develop and sustain a narrative that works and continually drive the themes home through all forms of media.

- Live our values. Do not hesitate to kill or capture the enemy, but stay true to the values we hold dear. This is what distinguishes us from our enemies. There is no tougher endeavor than the one in which we are engaged. It is often brutal, physically demanding, and frustrating. All of us experience moments of anger, but we can neither give in to dark impulses nor tolerate unacceptable actions by others.

- Exercise initiative. In the absence of guidance or orders, determine what they should be and execute aggressively. Higher level leaders will provide broad vision and paint "white lines on the road," but it will be up to those at tactical levels to turn "big ideas" into specific actions.

- Prepare for and exploit opportunities. "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" (Seneca the Younger). Develop concepts (such as that of "reconcilables" and "irreconcilables") in anticipation of possible opportunities, and be prepared to take risk as necessary to take advantage of them.

- Learn and adapt. Continually assess the situation and adjust tactics, policies, and programs as required. Share good ideas (none of us is smarter than all of us together). Avoid mental or physical complacency. Never forget that what works in an area today may not work there tomorrow, and may or may not be transferable to another part of Iraq.

SWJ Book Review by Bill Van Horn

With more and more of the World War II generation passing away, oral history has become an important component of much recent scholarship, adding the memories and experiences of those who took part in the battles to what might otherwise be standard battlefield histories. Interest in Iwo Jima was revived by director Clint Eastwood's two fine movies (Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima), so it seems fitting that a book would come along combining the finest elements of oral history with the conflagration on Iwo Jima. Larry Smith has crafted such a work with Iwo Jima. Any reader with an interest in how combat impacts the individuals involved, and in seeing how a single battle can touch many different areas of military activity, would do well to read and re-read Iwo Jima....

By Gerry J. Gilmore

American Forces Press Service

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., June 19, 2008 -- The U.S. military will be engaged in irregular warfare operations for some time to come, a senior U.S. military officer said here today.

"Irregular warfare, from my perspective, is the key problem that we face today," Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, told attendees at the 2008 Joint Warfighting Conference...

Here are the take-aways:

1) The Department of State (DoS) like the Army needs to greatly expand in order to have the proper force structure for the wars we are fighting.

2) Although there has been bureaucratic tension between the DoS and the military, at the lower levels both agencies work well as demonstrated by the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT).

3) The dysfunction of the higher levels is demonstrated by the creation of Lieutenant General Douglas Lute's position of "war czar" and the need for a better organized National Security Council. The best way to fuse the DoS and the Department of Defense is to expand on the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 and create a Foreign Policy Director (FPD) who would manage both departments. If this happened, bureaucratic rivalries would diminish much like Goldwater-Nichols eliminated much inter-service rivalry.

4) Goldwater-Nichols has been a tremendous success, in Iraq today we have Navy and Air Force personnel serving with Army Soldiers at the platoon level. Building on this, we should in turn have the DoS and the Army work at battalion and lower levels.

5) Counterinsurgency is not only the realm of the military but also the State Department. The DoS has the personnel who have the intellectual capabilities to tackle many of the issues relating to Counterinsurgency. They should be the "spoon" for eating the soup we call insurgency.

6) The PRT model should be preserved even after the conflicts at hand are over. Its predecessor, the CORDS program, was quickly eliminated in Vietnam. The PRT has many uses beyond just counterinsurgency, e.g. humanitarian missions and building military and diplomatic ties at the midlevel between the US and other nations.

By Mike Innes - Cross-Posted at CTLab

I've been reporting on the Opinio Juris Insta-Symposium (OPJIS) on the Boumediene Case in dribs and drabs as I stumble through the wealth of offerings from various contributors. My cherry-picking certainly doesn't do justice to the whole of it, and I'm not certain I'll have the time to review the proceedings in toto for CTLab. Suffice it that anyone looking for first-round responses on the case from the law-bloggigentsia should go to it and start digging in. Meanwhile, I cite the bits that catch my eye, the parts that I can relate back to my own research on sanctuary concepts and practices.

Much of the discussion at OPJIS turned on issues of territoriality and territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. Constitution. OPJIS convener Roger Alford introduced the issue in his post, "The Territorial Reach of the Constitution". Citing earlier spatial models of Constitutional jurisdiction - "universalism, membership, territorial, and a balancing approach of global due process" being the major ones - he asks...

By Robert Lamb

I was the lead author of the DoD report Ungoverned Areas and Threats From Safe Havens that William McCallister cites in his SWJ Blog piece, "Operations in Pakistan's Tribal Areas". With full respect for the author, I would like to clarify what seems to me a serious misreading of the report's central argument.

Mr. McCallister begins his article by criticizing the UGA/SH report's definition of "governance" as implying "a social service centric function for government emphasizing 'delivery' and distribution of social services. It further implies that only democratic institutions are a safeguard against militancy, extremism and terrorism."

In fact, the definition implies nothing of the sort; it is a fairly standard academic definition of governance: "delivery of public goods," with "public goods" spelled out for non-academic audiences.

More importantly, the report itself says explicitly that U.S. efforts to build what we consider to be "democratic" or "good" governance usually fail to counter militancy, extremism, and terrorism precisely because we fail to account for how local populations view what counts as legitimate ways of governing -- the same point Mr. McCallister makes in his next sentence: "Not all cultures view the role and function of government in quite the same way. Tribal society, particularly along the North-West frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan judges the role and function of effective government quite differently."

As the report's lead author, I couldn't agree more!

As the report's second main finding states: "In many cases, provincial, local, tribal, or autonomous governments ... are simply better positioned than the central government to address the local conditions that enable illicit actors to operate there." It goes on to suggest that "capacity-building" as a foreign-assistance model for countering safe havens is generally not effective unless it facilitates "legitimacy-building": That is, if we want local populations (e.g. tribal leaders) to be inhospitable to terrorists, imposing outside control or foreign models of governance on them will probably backfire spectacularly. Instead, we need to do something more difficult: help build relationships with them, taking their own views of what counts as "legitimate" as given.

The report defines "legitimacy" as "the political support or loyalty that a local population provides to a central, provincial, local, tribal, or autonomous government because the population believes the government has a right to govern or is worthy of their support or loyalty" -- it purposely mentions nothing about social services or democracy. (For the record, I am a strong supporter of democracy -- but there are many forms that "rule by the people" can take, and democracy is more enduring when its form is defined locally.)

In short, Mr. McCallister gets it exactly right, and his article is important for the precisely the reasons the UGA/SH report gives for why our efforts to counter illicit "safe havens" are often less than successful in places such as Pakistan.

Colonel Terry Ferrell, Commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, and John Smith, Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team Leader, speak with reporters on 19 June 2008.

11-12 September - DNI Open Source Conferece 2008 (Public Event - Conference). Washington DC. Sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of the DNI is pleased to announce the "DNI Open Source Conference 2008" to be held on Thursday, 11 September and Friday, 12 September, 2008 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington DC.

The conference is free; however, all who wish to attend must register online in advance (deadline 31 July). The two-day conference will explore a wide range of open source issues and open source best practices for the Intelligence Community and its partners. We invite participants from the broader open source community of interest including academia, think tanks, private industry, federal, state, local and tribal entities, international partners, and the media to attend. The conference will include speakers from across the broader open source community participating in panel discussions and focus group sessions.

Information about the agenda and break-out sessions is now available. The DNI Open Source Conference 2007 was held 16-17 July 2007 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. More than 900 registered participants and speakers attended. Presentations made at the conference break-out sessions are available on the DNI Open Source Conference 2007 website.

JFCOM Commander General James Mattis has directed that the command "make irregular warfare a command core competency."

Nothing follows.

When to Leave Iraq

Well worth reading in its entirety - and we even get a plug.

Shortest, but Most Important SWJ Post to Date - Small Wars Journal, 13 June 2008

Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 2:32 PM

Subject: CSA Sends - Transition Team Commanders (UNCLASSIFIED)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: NONE

CSA SENDS

Soldiers that serve on our Transition Teams (TTs) and our Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are developing exactly the type of knowledge, skills and abilities that are vital for our Army to be effective in an era of persistent conflict. These are tough, demanding positions and the members of these teams are required to influence indigenous or surrogate forces as they execute missions that are of vital interest to this Nation. The tasks associated with Transition Teams, from direct combat to stability operations, will be a major part of full spectrum engagement in theaters of interest now and for the foreseeable future. I want to ensure that the officers that lead these teams are recognized and given the credit they deserve.

I am directing that the Major's positions on these teams be immediately designated and codified in DA PAM 600-3, for all branches, as Key and Developmental (KD). Any officer holding one of these positions will be considered "KD" for his or her branch as a Major. Additionally, these officers will be afforded the opportunity, should they desire, to hold an additional 12/24 months of a branch specific KD position (e.g. XO, S-3, etc). Our promotion board guidance already stresses the importance of these positions and this additional information will be added to all upcoming board instructions. Additionally, because the success of these teams requires our best leaders, I have directed HRC to award Centralized Selection List (CSL) Credit for LTCs serving specifically in the TT Commander positions that have direct leadership responsibility for a training/transition team.

Therefore, we are creating a new CSL sub-category called "Combat Arms Operations". It will be open to all eligible officers in the Maneuver, Fires and Effects (MFE) branches and to Foreign Area Officers (FAO). It will fall under the Operations category and will be effective on the FY 10 CSL board which meets this September.

As a bridging strategy, for FY09 we will activate officers for these command positions from the alternate lists of all four major MFE command categories - Operations, Strategic Support, Training, and Installation. Officers accepting and who serve will be awarded CSL credit in the Operations category for serving as a Transition Team Commander. Additionally, if selected by the FY 10 CSL board, the officer may opt to command in the category they are selected after completion of their TT Command. Those that do command will receive credit for a second CSL command. If chosen, and they opt not to command, they will still receive credit for their TT command.

Our ability to train and operate effectively with indigenous forces will be a key element of 21st century land power. We need our best involved.

GEN Casey

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Discuss at Small Wars Council

From the AEI synopsis:

The Frontline Country Team: A Model for Engagement