Gaza Is Not Lebanon and Israel's campaign against Hamas may succeed says Thomas Donnely and Danielle Pletka at The Weekly Standard.

The conventional wisdom about the incursion by Israeli ground units into Gaza, mirrored in Sunday's Washington Post, is that "Israeli leaders run the risk of repeating their disastrous experience in the 2006 Lebanon war, when they suffered high casualties in ground combat with Hezbollah." Apparently, reporters and pundits are even more prone to refighting the last war than generals: Gaza is not Lebanon; Hamas is not Hezbollah and, most critically, Israel now is not Israel in 2006.

Andrew Exum, at Abu Muqawama, asks why is it so quiet along the Blue Line? He lists three points on why Hezbollah has been so quiet these past two weeks and solicits AM's readership to sound off in the comments. Ex also points to what he considers as good an article on the fighting in Gaza as any he has read in an American newspaper by Charles Levinson at The Wall Street Journal.

As forces move deeper into Gaza, Israel's leaders seek to avoid the mistakes made in the ambitious 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

Tom Ricks also wants to know why Hezbollah is being so quiet on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

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As mentioned earlier - Tom Ricks - the special military correspondent for The Washington Post and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq - is writing a blog for Foreign Policy (Passport) called The Best Defense. From SWJ friend Tom:

This is the first day this blog has been live. As you can see from the last couple of weeks of postings, I aim to offer commentary and news on national security and related issues. I appreciate tips and feedback, especially when it is civil.

That's only part of today's news on Tom - the Center for a New American Security announced that he has joined CNAS as a Senior Fellow.

Prior to becoming a Senior Fellow, Ricks was affiliated with CNAS as a Senior Writer in Residence, at which time he completed his new book, The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-08, published on February 10, 2009 by The Penguin Press. In The Gamble, Ricks documents the inside story of the Iraq war from 2006 through 2008. Using hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reporting, Ricks -- working in the tradition of his highly lauded Fiasco -- examines the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.

You can read more on the new Foreign Policy here - and along with the new "look" they have added other first-rate writers to their lineup at Passport.

Harvard's Stephen Walt, coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, will inject a dose of realism into the online political debate. Superclass author David Rothkopf will give readers an inside look at the global powerbrokers who really run the world. FP senior editor Carolyn O'Hara and a crack team of Clinton-watchers will be obsessively following all things Hillary at Madam Secretary. And a coterie of conservative foreign-policy heavyweights, including Peter Feaver, Philip Zelikow, and FP's newest editor -- and Condoleeza Rice's longtime speechwriter -- Christian Brose, will be on hand to critique the Obama presidency at Shadow Government: Notes from the loyal opposition.

Some blogging veterans are also adding their names to our digital masthead. Daniel Drezner's readers already know that he has brought his must-read blog on foreign policy, international economics (and occasionally the Red Sox) over to FP. Marc Lynch's essential Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark has also come aboard. And investigative journalist Laura Rozen will be writing The Cable, featuring original coverage, scoops, and behind-the-scenes reporting about the making of Washington's foreign policy in the age of Obama.

We'll also feature partnerships with the Small Wars Journal and a new column, The Call, with political forecasting by Ian Bremmer and the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group.

Robert Haddick will write the SWJ-FP feature, adding that to his writings at Westhawk, The American, and elsewhere.

Continue reading "One Busy Guy and the New FP" »

Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition by Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl in the January / February 2009 issue of Foreign Policy.

For the past five years, the fight in Afghanistan has been hobbled by strategic drift, conflicting tactics, and too few troops. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, got it right when he bluntly told the U.S. Congress in 2007, “In Iraq, we do what we must.” Of America’s other war, he said, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can.”

It is time this neglect is replaced with a more creative and aggressive strategy. U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is now headed by Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency strategy widely credited with pulling Iraq from the abyss. Many believe that, under Petraeus’s direction, Afghanistan can similarly pull back from the brink of failure...

Much more at Foreign Policy to include a conversation with John Nagl and Nathaniel Fick and an exclusive interview with General David Petraeus on how Afghanistan is not Iraq, it's harder.

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Foreign Policy launches its new look today and rolls out its new A-list of bloggers, headed by Tom Ricks. Small Wars Journal will be publishing a weekly op-ed / week-in-review of what's hot in Small Wars and what's been hot at SWJ, appearing Friday nights at FP. We're happy to be partnering with FP, and wish Susan, Blake, and everyone there all the best with their expansion and growth.  We are also very lucky to be joined here at SWJ by Robert Haddick.  Robert will write the SWJ-FP feature, adding that to his writings at Westhawk, the American, and elsewhere.

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John Pike of Global Security in today's Washington Post opinion section - Coming to the Battlefield: Stone-Cold Robot Killers.

Armed robotic aircraft soar in the skies above Pakistan, hurling death down on America's enemies in the war on terrorism. Soon -- years, not decades, from now -- American armed robots will patrol on the ground as well, fundamentally transforming the face of battle. Conventional war, even genocide, may be abolished by a robotic American Peace...

More at The Washington Post.

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It is a sad reflection of our time that Che Guevara is seen as a hero. So says Nigel Jones at The DailyTelegraph and Mary Anastasia O'Grady at The Wall Street Journal.

We could not agree more.

Continue reading "So Che, So True" »

Oxford University Press Enters the Tabloid Market

A review of:

Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

by Gerard Prunier.  Published by Oxford University Press, 2008.

Reviewed by:

Thomas (Tom) P. Odom

LTC US Army (ret)

Author, Journey Into Darkness: Genocide In Rwanda

In early 1994 while serving as the US Defense Attaché in Kinshasa, Zaire I had an unexpected visitor, a Zairian army lieutenant colonel who told the Marine Security Guard that he had “urgent business” to discuss with “le Colonel Odom.”  Since he knew my name, I asked my NCO, Stan, to go get him.  As I sat down with my visitor, I signaled Stan to stay and listen.

The Zairian began with a blast against US perfidy, imperialism, and assorted rot until I asked him to explain what had him all excited. Swelling even more, he proclaimed he had written proof that the US had secretly invaded Zaire in the 1970s. Intrigued I asked him to show me and he handed me a dog-eared copy of Michael Crichton’s novel, Congo. 

Crichton’s book began with a introduction that treated a fictional infiltration of the Congo in 1979 as fact to entice a would be reader. Central to the story was a heretofore unknown breed of super apes who would wreck havoc on the 12-person invasion force. 

The literary slight of hand worked on the Zairian colonel, so well in fact that he then tried to blackmail me with a threat to go public.  He was crushed when I told him that a movie made from the book was already available. I offered to find him a copy but offered no cash. He left no doubt in search of further conspiracies whose revelation might help his cash flow.

Reading Gerard Prunier’s latest book, Africa’s World War, made me feel like I had that Zairian colonel back in my office.  A tale of dark conspiracy woven with incompetence made me wonder if there was indeed a fictional Congo with an eastern neighbor, Rwanda, out there. Prunier’s writings suggest there has to be a parallel universe.  Certainly there are elements of recognizable truth involved in Prunier’s tale if you have the regional expertise to recognize them.  Without a firm grounding in the region, however, one risks being fooled just like the Zairian colonel back in 1994.

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"High Time" To Move Marines To Afghanistan - Cami McCormick, CBS News

The Commandant of the US Marine Corps says it's "high time" his troops leave Iraq and take their battle skills to Afghanistan. "We are a fighting machine," Gen. James Conway tells CBS News, and the fight is now in Afghanistan...

Their role in Iraq, he says, has been reduced to nation building...

"That’s not what we do," Conway told Marines in Afghanistan. "Where there’s a fight, that’s where the Marine Corps is needed."

More at CBS News.

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US Hands Over Green Zone Authority to Iraq - Edward Yeranian, Voice of America

US forces in Iraq have handed over control of Baghdad's Green Zone to the Iraqi government. Iraqi officials hailed the move, which was mandated under a new US Iraq security arrangement that also calls for US forces to withdraw from Iraq by 2011.

An Iraqi army band played the country's national anthem, during the handover ceremony, as the Iraqi flag was raised over the presidential palace for the first time since a U.S.-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presided over the emotional ceremony. Addressing a crowd in the foyer of the Presidential Palace, Maliki described the historic moment.

He says that Iraqis should consider today the day of sovereignty and a new beginning, where Iraq regains every bit of its soil, in addition to its national will and sovereignty...

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