Blog Posts

Peter Principle: A colloquial principle of hierarchiology, stated as "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in his 1968 book The Peter Principle, the principle pertains to the level of competence of the human resources in a hierarchical organization. The principle explains the upward, downward, and lateral movement of personnel within a hierarchically organized system of ranks.

Matt Bennett writes in Third Way Dispatch (The Peter Pandemic Takes Its Toll: H.R. McMaster is Passed Over) of a type of reverse Peter Principle where genuinely gifted and brilliant public servants who are kept far below the level to which they should ascend...

The MEF Engagement Model and Al Qaeda

William S. McCallister

The London Times story "Al-Qaeda faces rebellion from the ranks" provides me an opportunity to further explain the usefulness of the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) engagement model (briefing here) and its application not only when conducting counterinsurgency in a tribal society but in the fight against al-Qaeda. It is also a tool that may explain (in social system terms) the dynamics of the alleged power-struggle within al-Qaeda and its motivating factors (in terms of cultural operating codes and coordinating messages)...

News Item: Iran Bags Spy Squirrels

... From the BBC translators, an editorial by Saleh Eskandari headlined "spying squirrels," published July 10 by the Iranian newspaper Resalat.

"A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task...

News Item: Giant Man-Eating Badgers in Basra

British military officials are denying reports that they released, we kid you not, "strange man-eating bear-like" badgers to sow fear among the residents of Basra, Iraq.

"We have not released giant badgers in Basra, and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river," Maj. David Gell tells reporters, according to The Guardian...

SWJ / MountainRunner Exclusive: Project ACORN

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George Packer at The New Yorker's Interesting Times blog - Guns and Brains

Interesting take and worth the read - here is an excerpt:

I grew up during the Vietnam era and belong to a generation of educated liberals who came of age with a visceral dislike of the military. In the seventies and eighties, it was almost a reflex on Ivy League university campuses, where officer training was sometimes banned, to regard anyone in uniform as funny, if not sinister. At the same time, on military bases, anti-intellectualism became a badge of honor, a subscription to The New Yorker the mark of an oddball, and the words "liberal" and "academic" terms of abuse.

Here's a crude generalization: after the sixties, intellect and patriotism went separate ways, to the detriment of both. This mutual hostility made intellectuals less responsible and soldiers less thoughtful. We've come to think of this antagonism as natural and inevitable, as it is between cats and dogs, but in fact it was a product of recent political and cultural changes in American life. The estrangement was compounded by professionalization on both sides and the adoption of inward-looking and jargon-ridden specializations: the all-volunteer military and the social-theory crowd became equally isolated American subcultures.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun to close the divide. I think the reasons are these: first, September 11th made military service more attractive to the kind of college students who used to find it unthinkable. It's no longer unusual to have a friend whose son recently went from studying photography at the Pratt Institute to searching for weapons caches south of Baghdad. Second, the nature of these wars demands a soldier who is more than an artilleryman with an engineering degree. After the military's failure in Vietnam, it tried to turn war into a matter of firepower and technology—which is why, when the Sunni insurgency began to take off in the summer of 2003, American forces had no idea how to react and made matters far worse. By 2004, battalion commanders in Salahuddin were begging the Pentagon for information about the nature of Iraqi society. This year, the Army is actually deploying teams of social scientists with units in Baghdad and Afghanistan. The soldiers whose reputations have been made and not destroyed in Iraq—General David Petraeus, Colonel H. R. McMaster, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl—have doctorates in the humanities. The best soldiers I met in Iraq were eager to share critical views with professors and journalists. This past spring, when McMaster led a group of officials and private citizens to Iraq to assess progress there, he picked as one member an anti-war British political-science professor who happens to know a great deal about the country. Desperate times breed desperate measures.

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Charlie Rose Show - 17 July 2007

Excerpt

Charlie, I guess we would love to have that crystal ball, and so would the people in Congress who are trying to decide this matter. Some parts of that I do agree with. I think it's pretty clear that the majority Shiites are increasingly confident that if the U.S. troops go, they will have the upper hand. The 60 percent majority they have, the control of the armed forces that they have. The oil resources in the south would give them quickly an upper hand in what would be in effect an all-out civil war.

I think there's quite a lot of reasons to worry about whether or not they're right about that, not to worry about it, to question it. The Sunnis are not going to roll over. The Sunnis are good fighters. They ruled this country for most of the last 1,200 years or this -- at least this terrain. They have the backing of the hinterland of the - of the Sunni Arab world, and I think the outcome would be very much in doubt.

But the one thing I think that virtually all of us who - who work here or have worked here for any length of time agree is that the levels of violence would eclipse by quite a long way the bloodshed we've seen to date.

Well, I think, quite simply that the United States armed forces here -- and I find this to be very widely agreed amongst Iraqis that I know, of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds -- the United States armed forces are a very important inhibitor against violence. I know it's argued by some people that they provoke the violence. I simply don't believe that to be in the main true. I think it's a much larger truth that where American forces are present, they are inhibiting sectarian violence, and they are going after the people, particularly al-Qa'ida and the Shiite death squads, who are provoking that violence. Remove them or at least remove them quickly, and it seems to me -- controversial as this may seem to be saying in the present circumstances, while I know there's this agonizing debate going on in the United States about this -- that you have to weigh the price. And the price would very likely be very, very high levels of violence, at least in the short run and perhaps, perhaps - perhaps for quite a considerable period of time.

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22 July Washington Post - Bloggers Raise Red Flags Over New Republic's 'Baghdad Diarist' by Howard Kurtz.

The column in the New Republic, described as being penned by a U.S. soldier in Iraq, is filled with tales of petty, stomach-churning behavior.

The "Baghdad Diarist," writing under the pseudonym Scott Thomas, says he was "shocked by my own cruelty" as he recounts soldiers getting their kicks by running over dogs with Bradley Fighting Vehicles and playing with Iraqi children's skulls taken from a mass grave.

But now the liberal magazine, responding to questions raised online by the Weekly Standard and other conservative Web sites, is looking into whether the soldier's account in this and two earlier columns can be substantiated...

Marine reservist and freelance journalist Matt Sanchez received this response from the 4th ICBT Public Affairs Officer to an e-mail Sanchez sent concerning the "Thomas Affair"...

US Marine Corps

US Army

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During a recent e-mail discussion concerning Iraq's tribal society William (Mac) McCallister provided several insights as well as a briefing presentation on his methodology for tribal structure analysis and a reading list for executing counterinsurgency in a tribal society. The reading list follows his e-mail.

I have been studying and working with various tribes in Iraq for the last four years plus and am currently serving as the "tribal" advisor for II MEF in Anbar. Concerning recent commentary on US forces as a "tribe" - it is old news as far as I am concerned.

We are and have been a major if not the major "tribe" for the last four years. Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, was referred to by Iraqi Sheikhs seeking an audience to pledge their loyalty and seeking patronage as the "Sheikh of Sheikhs" when they came to the palace in search of a meeting. I personally participated in coordinating a meeting with 400 Sheikhs and CPA officials for a traditional "tribal meeting" in Hillah four years ago.

We are engaged in a counterinsurgency in a tribal society. It has taken us four years to realize that we must execute operations within the existing cultural frame of reference. To quote T.E. Lawrence - Irregular warfare is more intellectual than a bayonet charge.

I've attached a reading list for executing counterinsurgency in a tribal society. Also attached is a PowerPoint brief that describes a methodology I developed on structure analysis to assist in gaining an appreciation for the operational environment.

The methodology is now in use in Anbar province and in the process of being "socialized" among the incoming MEF staff and commanders scheduled to replace the units currently serving in Anbar...

In September of 2003 I went into Baghdad's Sadr City Ali Baba market (now called al-Nidawi market) for my first illicit black-market arms purchase. Early on outfitting Iraqi soldiers and bodyguards required use of all resources ... including the street markets. Every one of my men had their own Kalashnikov, commandeered from Police stations, army barracks or Ba'ath party offices but the ability to sustain them with ammunition, working sidearms, high capacity ammunition magazines and light machineguns was beyond anyone's capability except for the local black market.

Prior to the invasion, hundreds of thousands of weapons were widely distributed for use by the 400,000 man Iraqi armed forces, regime security forces and Al Quds civilian defense force. The security forces and intelligence agencies created thousands of caches of weapons for the follow-on insurgency. Most caches included several artillery shells, dozens of mortar shells, rocket launchers, automatic rifles, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Weapons of all types imaginable from the Makarov pistol to the SA-16 Man portable Air Defense Missile System (MANPADS) were cached. They are still discovered daily. In the chaos of the victory of coalition forces over the Iraqi army the population stripped the Iraqi government of well over a million, automatic rifles, light machineguns and heavy crew served weapons...

4GW as a Model of Future Conflict

Boyd 2007 Conference, 13 July 2007

Warfare Since Boyd Panel Presentation

F. G. Hoffman

I have been asked to be the token diversity candidate from outside the 4GW "church" today, and am honored just by the chance to appear at an event that preserves John Boyd's deep intellectual contributions, and to be on stage with my fellow panelists and Col Eric Walters. My assigned task is to explain why academics and historians have problems with the 4GW construct. My remarks will draw up upon my work on an alternative concept called Hybrid Warfare which I have presented at Oxford University this past winter. My comments will also draw upon unpublished work about to be released in a book titled Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict, edited by Dr. Terry Terriff, of University of Birmingham (UK) and Aaron Karp and Dr. Regina Karp of Old Dominion University, in which several of our distinguished speakers have prominent contributions including Mr. Lind and Col Hammes.

Let me begin by summarizing the arguments up front. The 4GW construct is often criticized for three major faults.

The theory is described as "weak" and the concept is too diffused, having become over time the equivalent of everything that is asymmetric.

Second the history that is drawn upon is uneven and often "too selective," that is it is packaged to support a major component of the theory without full examination of trends or detailed counter-findings.

Finally, the generational framework is labeled "indefensible" and unnecessary. In my own assessment, I find that it hides more than it reveals...

I received the following memo by Colonel J. B. Burton (USA), Commanding Officer of Dagger Brigade Combat Team in Iraq, via "Warlord Loop" e-mail. An abbreviated version appeared in the Washington Post - see Tom Rick's Inbox dated 8 July 2007. COL Burton has been kind enough to permit the SWJ to post it in full. Where a military acronym is used I have inserted an explanation...

General Wayne Downing, US Army (Ret.), passed today and will be missed by those that knew him best and those that did not know him but benefited from his leadership, command presence and life-time dedication and critical contributions to our profession and way of life. Our condolences and best wishes to General Downing's family, friends and brothers in arms...

The National Review On-Line recently posted an interview with LtGen James N. Mattis, commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps Forces CENTCOM. Mattis is widely-known for his boldness and ferocity in combat. Yet Mattis did not discuss operations. Instead, he focused on perceptions. "I noticed (in the newspaper) today that 'a bomb went off in Baghdad'... the moral bye, the passive voice by our media, makes it appear like what the enemy is doing is just an act of God of some Godamned thing...getting our narrative out will be as important or more important than tactics."

The jihadist narrative is well developed. In an analysis entitled "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War Of Images And Ideas", Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo of Radio Free Europe examined 966 statements posted on websites by insurgent groups. They concluded that the statements "used religion-based, pejorative code words for the targets of the attacks." The insurgent groups coalesced around a narrative that depicted US forces as Christian crusaders, the Iraqi Army as traitors to Islam and the Shiites as heretics - all deserving death in the name of religion. Mattis called this narrative, "tyranny in a false religious garb"...

Stopped in at Borders for my weekly fix and came across Ralph Peters' latest anthology. (Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts that Will Shape the Twenty-First Century, Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007, 367 pgs, $27.95) While I am pretty familiar with Ralph's worldview and his extensive writings in the Armed Forces Journal, this one appeared to include a lot of his material that I had not seen. A few hours of reading confirmed my suspicion, and I wanted to let the readership know that this may top the cake for a brutal dose of reality and nonpolitically correct reporting from around the globe.

For those tired of the mainstream media's twisted presentation of facts and generally warped reasoning, pick up Ralph Peters' latest book. Anytime you are frustrated by the banal posturing of government officials and want straight-forward thinking, take a close look at Wars of Blood and Faith. It is a coherent assessment of today's most pressing threats and opportunities from Africa to India to the Middle East. So if you're a student of strategic affairs, a policy official enshrouded with the official view and want to break out of the blinkered pap you get from the party line, or simply an American citizen who wants to find insightful and at times brutally frank perspectives on current challenges, you don't need not to look any further. Ralph Peters and Wars of Blood and Faith provide the most penetrating assessment of what could be called the age of identity-based conflict...

More odds and ends from the blogosphere and far flung corners of the Small Wars Journal "empire of knowledge"...

The White House released the Initial Benchmark Assessment Report earlier today.

This report to Congress is submitted consistent with Section 1314 of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 (Public Law 110-28) (the "Act"). It includes an assessment of how the sovereign Government of Iraq is performing in its efforts to achieve a series of specific benchmarks contained in the Act, as well as any adjustments to strategy that may be warranted in light of that performance. This is the first of two reports to be submitted consistent with the Act and has been prepared in consultation with the Secretaries of State and Defense; Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq; the United States Ambassador to Iraq; and the Commander of United States Central Command, consistent with Section 1314(b)(2)(B) of the Act. This assessment complements other reports and information about Iraq provided to the Congress and is not intended as a single source of all information about the combined efforts or the future strategy of the United States, its Coalition Partners, or Iraq.

Here are the "bottom-line" findings (excerpted from the report) on achievements and shortfalls...

Four years on in Iraq, the White House still portrays the war as a life and death struggle between the forces of good, the US led Multi-national forces, and the forces of evil, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

With the advent of the new "surge" strategy, the media ledes have been triumphing the numerous coalition "anti-Al Qaeda" operations in Anbar province including the areas of Karmah, Baqubah and the Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad. These operations have the intent to secure Baghdad and other major urban areas from insurgent terrorism. The strategy writ simple is to deny the insurgents an urban sanctuary and killing ground as well as to secure the Iraqi population from their sectarian attacks through a series of wide-area operations. But are we fighting the right enemy?

This essay analyzes the failed June 2007 London and Glasgow car bomb attacks. Observations include an assessment of the attacks and identification of future areas of concern for counterterrorism, police and intelligence operations.

We have a number of great submissions of original works for publication in SWJ Magazine. An overwhelming number, actually.

In an analysis entitled "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images and Ideas", Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo of Radio Free Europe examined 966 statements posted on websites by insurgent groups. They concluded that the statements "used religion-based, pejorative code words for the targets of the attacks." The insurgent groups coalesced around a narrative that depicted US forces as Christian crusaders, the Iraqi Army as traitors to Islam and the Shiites as heretics - all deserving death in the name of religion.

Sunni insurgent groups that call themselves "the honorable resistance" rebelled against American occupation and rejected democracy with a Shiite majority. After four years of fighting, many of these rejectionists have reluctantly concluded they cannot wrest central power from the upstart Shiites. Knowing the Americans do not intend to stay, they now fear that Qaeda extremists will become their rulers. Many of these fighters supposedly can be reconciled...

In their just-released special report, "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images and Ideas," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty regional analysts Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo take an in-depth look at the multi-layered media efforts of Sunni insurgents, who are responsible for the majority of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.

Insurgents and their supporters communicate with the world through daily press releases, weekly and monthly magazines, books, video clips, full-length films, countless websites, and even television stations. Mainstream Arab media amplify the insurgent message to a mass audience.

The insurgency's media efforts are decentralized, fast-moving, and technologically adaptive, with the overall message emerging from the collective efforts of individuals and small groups, transmitted daily to an audience of millions. Anti-Shi'ite hate speech is an increasingly prominent part of the insurgent message.

Kimmage and Ridolfo argue that popularity of online Iraqi Sunni insurgent media reflects a genuine demand for their message in the Arab world. At the same time, the greatest strengths of the insurgency's media strategy -- decentralization and flexibility -- have revealed vulnerabilities that can be exploited by forces interested in a free and democratic Iraq.

Join the New America Foundation and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for a timely discussion (12 July - Washington, D.C.) on the Iraqi Sunni insurgency's media campaign with Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo, followed by commentary from James K. Glassman and Jeffrey Gedmin. Schwartz Senior Fellow Peter Bergen will moderate the question and answer session.

Copies of the report, "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images and Ideas," will be available at the event.

A few years ago, a bunch of smart guys at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms decided to teach a new course and open it up to any student -- not just engineering and computer science types. The course was called "How To Make (Almost) Anything." The instructors had developed a suite of off-the-shelf equipment that, when worked by those with a modicum of training, could enable students to quite literally make almost anything. They called it a "FabLab." The equipment and materials for one such Fablab cost around $20,000, and included such capabilities as the ability to print circuit boards, injection-mold plastic, and cut and fashion materials to exact tolerances. One of the professors, Neil Gershenfeld, went on to describe how the phenomenon played out in a book entitled FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop: From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. Essentially, the professors were surprised to find that a large number of those interested in the course had nothing to do with traditional disciplines involved in designing and making stuff...

The current situation in Gaza is a laboratory for the kind of conflicts that we are likely to see in the immediate future throughout the world. The best case solution would be to broker an agreement where the Hamas radicals and the more moderate Fatah faction can agree to accept that the existence of Israel is a fact and for Hamas to stop shooting rockets at the Israelis and threatening to annihilate them, which Hamas is not in a position to do in any case. If that fails, the big question for America and her allies is whether or not to support a Fatah military attempt to retake Gaza...

E Pluribus Unum