Al Qaeda in Iraq – Frederick Kagan, Weekly Standard

Al Qaeda In Iraq is part of the global al Qaeda movement. AQI, as the U.S. military calls it, is around 90 percent Iraqi. Foreign fighters, however, predominate in the leadership and among the suicide bombers, of whom they comprise up to 90 percent, U.S. commanders say. The leader of AQI is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian. His predecessor, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was a Jordanian. Because the members of AQI are overwhelmingly Iraqis--often thugs and misfits recruited or dragooned into the organization (along with some clerics and more educated leaders)--it is argued that AQI is not really part of the global al Qaeda movement. Therefore, it is said, the war in Iraq is not part of the global war on terror: The "real" al Qaeda--Osama bin Laden's band, off in its safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas of Waziristan and Baluchistan--is the group to fight. Furthermore, argue critics of this persuasion, we should be doing this fighting through precise, intelligence-driven airstrikes or Special Forces attacks on key leaders, not the deployment of large conventional forces, which only stirs resentment in Muslim countries and creates more terrorists. Over the past four years, the war in Iraq has provided abundant evidence to dispute these assertions.

Petraeus' Pivotal Report – Austin Bay, Washington Times

There really is no particularly informative historical precedent for Gen. David Petraeus' upcoming public assessment of Iraq. Perhaps we are entering new historical terrain, where the commanding general's pivotal strategic gambit is a media event. And media event it is. With its certain long-term global import and short-term political impact, Gen. Petraeus' report meets a hustling television exec's primal requirement: drama. When the spotlight strikes his face and he begins to speak, we will witness drama in large letters. No one, however, should confuse the general's appearance with entertainment. The quick commentators will dub his report a historical pivot. That will be true, but only in a narrow sense. Despite the sensationalist headlines and hyperbolic fretting, given the decades of terror and the centuries of political fossilization afflicting the Middle East, the trend lines in The War on Terror are astonishingly good.

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General is 1st a Scholar - Philip O'Connor, Chicago Tribune

I arrived in Baghdad in mid-March to work on electricity issues, just as Gen. David Petraeus returned to Iraq to lead the "surge," of which he is the prime architect. But my sense of identification with the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq goes beyond that. To most people Petraeus is a four-star general, an experienced combat veteran and the consummate military officer. But when I pass him in a hallway of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, I have to catch myself from blurting, "Good morning, Dr. Petraeus." Like me, Petraeus has a doctorate in political science, his from Princeton, mine from Northwestern. I see Petraeus as a political scientist and former professor in the department of social science at West Point who just happens to be an Army ranger and general. It's his persona as a scholar that is key to understanding what the surge is and why it seems to be working. Author of the "Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual," Petraeus has literally written the book on 21st Century real-world application of a well-established political science theory on defanging armed insurgencies. David Kilcullen, the Australian adviser to Petraeus, has said that counterinsurgency is 100 percent military, 100 percent political, 100 percent economic and 100 percent social.

The Kurdish Secret – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)

Iraq today is a land of contrasts — mostly black and blacker. Traveling around the central Baghdad area the past few days, I saw little that really gave me hope that the different Iraqi sects can forge a social contract to live together. The only sliver of optimism I find here is in the one region where Iraqis don’t live together: Kurdistan. Imagine for a moment if one outcome of the U.S. invasion of Iraq had been the creation of an American University of Iraq. Imagine if we had triggered a flood of new investment into Iraq that had gone into new hotels, a big new convention center, office buildings, Internet cafes, two new international airports and Iraqi malls. Imagine if we had paved the way for an explosion of newspapers, even a local Human Rights Watch chapter, and new schools. Imagine if we had created an island of decency in Iraq, with public parks, where women could walk unveiled and not a single American soldier was ever killed — where Americans in fact were popular — and where Islam was practiced in its most tolerant and open manner. Imagine… Well, stop imagining. It’s all happening in Kurdistan, the northern Iraqi region, home to four million Kurds. I saw all of the above in Kurdistan’s two biggest towns, Erbil and Sulaimaniya. The Bush team just never told anybody.

If Iraq Falls – Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal

In contrast to President Bush's dark comparison between Iraq and the bloody aftermath of the Vietnam War last month, there is another, comforting version of the Vietnam analogy that's gained currency among policy makers and pundits. It goes something like this: After that last helicopter took off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon 32 years ago, the nasty strategic consequences then predicted did not in fact materialize. The "dominoes" did not fall, the Russians and Chinese did not take over, and America remained No. 1 in Southeast Asia and in the world. But alas, cut-and-run from Iraq will not have the same serendipitous aftermath, because Iraq is not at all like Vietnam. Unlike Iraq, Vietnam was a peripheral arena of the Cold War. Strategic resources like oil were not at stake, and neither were bases (OK, Moscow obtained access to Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay for a while). In the global hierarchy of power, Vietnam was a pawn, not a pillar, and the decisive battle lines at the time were drawn in Europe, not in Southeast Asia. The Middle East, by contrast, was always the "elephant path of history," as Israel's fabled defense minister, Moshe Dayan, put it. Legions of conquerors have marched up and down the Levant, and from Alexander's Macedonia all the way to India. Other prominent visitors were Julius Caesar, Napoleon and the German Wehrmacht. This is not just ancient history. Today, the Greater Middle East is a cauldron even Macbeth's witches would be terrified to touch. The world's worst political and religious pathologies combine with oil and gas, terrorism and nuclear ambitions. In short, unlike yesterday's Vietnam, the Greater Middle East (including Turkey) is the central strategic arena of the 21st century, as Europe was in the 20th. This is where three continents--Europe, Asia, and Africa--are joined. So let's take a moment to think about what would happen once that last Blackhawk took off from Baghdad International.

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See this post at Small Wars Council. We are trying to work with our web host to eliminate some of the availability problems we are having. We picked a top rated host, but so far it isn't apparent.

This call in particular is focused on those who have consistent (i.e. all the time, 100%) time outs when trying to reach our site from particular machines, but no real other problems. This might effect a number of you on .mil networks, and may be a rare event when the .mil world isn't to blame. In particular, I know some Afghanistan-deployed folks were having woes, but I don't an individual POC to follow up with there. To remedy, I need some info from you. See that post for specifics. And that forum is a good spot to place comments, concerns, etc.

Continue reading "Call for Technical Woes. Of a special flavor in particular." »

The Next War? - Arnaud de Borchgrave, Washington Times

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now stated publicly his country holds the key to the conditions of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, much criticized by the United States for his lack of leadership, and who has been deserted by half his Cabinet, is much praised in Tehran, where he has gone twice in 11 months to confer with Iranian leaders. Mr. Ahmadinejad also says Iran is ready to fill the power vacuum in Iraq following a U.S. withdrawal. "The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," he said, "and soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region." The United States is not alone in trying to prove Mr. Ahmadinejad's geopolitical weather forecast wrong. Saudi Arabia and its five Gulf Cooperation Council allies in the Gulf, Egypt and Jordan, are terrified at the idea of Iraq falling under Iranian domination. Hoping to head off a U.S.-Iran military confrontation, European countries are still pinning their hopes on major Iranian concessions at the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna. Iran is back to cooperating with IAEA — but only one comma or semicolon at a time. The three European Union countries acting as U.S. surrogates on nuclear matters with Iran, and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, detect progress where the U.S. sees only stalling. Iran is still resisting short-notice inspections of sites that are not officially declared nuclear facilities, and where secret nuclear work is believed to be taking place.

Real Crises Aren’t Fixed Overnight – Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times

It is extremely hard to know how big a crisis is while it is actually unfolding. Retrospectively, we tend to think of crises -- whether financial or geopolitical -- as one-day wonders: Think of "Black Monday," the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987, or 9/11, the terrorist attacks of six years ago. This notion of short, sharp shocks fits in well with our human inclination to live for the moment. Perhaps it is also a symptom of our era's chronic attention-deficit disorder. Yet the really big crises in history unfolded over months and years, not mere days. The outcome of the American intervention in Iraq will be determined not in Baghdad but in Washington. Sooner or later, this president or his successor will come under irresistible public pressure to start drawing down American troops in Iraq. This will almost certainly happen, as in Vietnam, before the country they are leaving has genuinely been stabilized. This great crisis of U.S. foreign policy, like the slow-burning financial crisis we are living through, will play out over hundreds, if not thousands, of days. Throughout that time, we shall read many reports in the newspapers that the surge is working and the markets are rallying. But these reports will just be so much "noise" -- mere static on the airwaves of history. As in the early 1970s, the underlying geopolitical and financial crises of our time are in synch -- and inexorable.

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The Gettysburg of this War – Frederick Kagan, National Review

President Bush’s Labor Day visit to Iraq should have surprised no one who was paying attention. At such a critical point in the debate over Iraq policy, it was almost inconceivable that he would fly to and from Australia without stopping in Iraq. What was surprising was the precise location and nature of the visit. Instead of flying into Baghdad and surrounding himself with his generals and the Iraqi government, Bush flew to al Asad airfield, west of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. He brought with him his secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commander of U.S. Central Command. He was met at al Asad by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, as well as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kemal al Maliki, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, and Vice Presidents Adel Abdul Mehdi and Tariq al Hashemi. In other words, Bush called together all of the leading political and military figures in his administration and the Iraqi government in the heart of Anbar Province. If ever there was a sign that we have turned a corner in the fight against both al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgency, this was it. Anbar, as everyone knows, has been one of the hotbeds and the most important base for both the Sunni rejectionist insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq since 2003. It has been one of the most violent provinces in Iraq, and one of the most dangerous for American soldiers and Marines, until recently. Now it is one of the safest — safe enough for the war cabinet of the United States of America to meet there with the senior leadership of the government of Iraq to discuss strategy. Instead of talking about how to convince the Anbaris that the Sunni will not retake power in Iraq any time soon, Bush, Maliki, Petraeus, Talabani, and Crocker talked about how to get American and Iraqi aid and reconstruction money flowing more rapidly to the province as a reward for its dramatic and decisive turn against AQI and against the Sunni rejectionist insurgency. In any other war, with any other president, this event would be recognized for what it is: the sign of a crucial victory over two challenges that had seemed both unconquerable and fatal. It should be recognized as at least the Gettysburg of this war, to the extent that counterinsurgencies can have such turning points.

The State of Iraq: An Update - Jason Campbell, Michael O’Hanlon and Amy Unikewicz, New York Times

In advance of the much-anticipated Congressional testimony next week of Ryan Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top United States military commander, many have agreed on what appear to be two crucial realities in Iraq: there is military momentum for combined American-Iraqi forces and there is political paralysis in Baghdad. While the recent Government Accountability Office report on the 18 benchmarks set out by Congress in May gave a very pessimistic view, our data above, culled from official Iraqi and American sources and press reports, support a more mixed picture. Unfortunately, at the moment the political paralysis seems to be a more powerful force than the military momentum, and progress in security is unsustainable without sectarian compromise among Iraq’s Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites. The country remains very violent, and the economy rather stagnant. Nonetheless, the military momentum appears real, despite the tragic multiple truck bombings in Ninevah Province on Aug. 14 that made that month the deadliest since winter. Overall, civilian fatality rates are down perhaps one third since late 2006, though they remain quite high. There are also signs that roughly six of Iraq’s 18 provinces are making significant economic and security gains, up from three a year ago. The story in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province is by now well known: attacks in the city of Ramadi are down 90 percent, and the economy is recovering. But there is progress in several regions with more complex sectarian mixes as well.

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Letter From Baghdad – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)

Peace in Iraq has to be built on a Shiite-Sunni consensus, not a constant balancing act by us. So far, the surge has created nothing that is self-sustaining. That is, pull us out and this whole place still blows in 10 minutes. You’ll know there’s progress if Shiites or Sunnis do something that surprises you — actually reach out to the other. Up to now, though, all I’ve heard from them is either “I’m weak, how can I compromise?” or “I’m strong, why should I compromise?” No happy medium, no stable Iraq. On my way into Iraq, I had a private chat with an Arab Gulf leader. He said something that still rings in my ear: “Thomas, everyone is keeping you busy in Iraq. The Russians are keeping you busy. The Chinese are keeping you busy. The Iranians are keeping you busy. The Saudis are keeping you busy. Egypt is keeping you busy. The Syrians are keeping you busy...”

Dueling Realities in Iraq - Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Times

In the forthcoming testimony of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, a likely main story line has already emerged: Iraq's military situation is improved, but its national political situation is not. Together these dueling realities make it hard to give up on the surge in one sense, yet hard to know how long we should keep risking young American GIs when Iraqi top leaders dither and quarrel in another. At a more detailed military level, another theme seems likely to be discussed by Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker — the distinction between different types of violence in Iraq. Some forms have declined more than others. While all are clearly important, it will be important to understand if some are more significant lead indicators of an improving security environment. That in turn will help us decide if the military progress is only modest or quite substantial.

The New Counterinsurgency Front - W. Thomas Smith Jr., National Review

Colonel Lindsey Graham — the U.S. senator who holds an Air Force Reserve commission as a JAG (Judge Advocate General) officer — believes we are finally getting it right in Iraq: “Finally figuring it out,” he says. Having been to Iraq eight times, twice in the capacity of his Air Force JAG duties, and having just returned over a week ago; Graham ought to know. His time spent in-country is hardly “the dog and pony show” suggested by Democrat Sen. (and former Marine officer) James Webb on Meet the Press. Graham has worked in Iraq’s backcountry, and he’s been heavily involved in that country’s fledgling judiciary and penal/reconciliation systems — one of the keys to winning the counterinsurgency, he argues.

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By Robert J. Bunker and Hakim Hazim

The recent U.S. consideration to designate the 125,000 person strong Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a “specially designated global terrorist” (per Executive Order 13224) has quite a few international security implications. (1) On the most basic level, it highlights growing U.S. and Iranian tensions over Iran’s nuclear weapons program and Iranian involvement—via its Quds Force belonging to the Revolutionary Guard—in both fermenting and supporting terrorist and insurgent activities in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

What may be far more significant, however, is the U.S. designating the military branch of a sovereign state as a terrorist organization. In the past, such designations have applied only to non-state entities. (2) While the intent of such a designation would be to target the Revolutionary Guard’s multi-billion dollar business network with ties to over 100 companies, (3) broader implications concerning state sovereignty, political legitimacy, and, ultimately, non-state-on-state conflict readily emerge. Before these issues are discussed, a short overview of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard or IRG should be provided with a focus on the Quds Force...

Continue reading "Are We Prematurely Designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as Criminal-Soldiers?" »

What’s Wrong With the GAO Report – Frederick Kagan, Weekly Standard

At first glance--as those who leaked it last week saw--the Government Accountability Office's report on Iraq, released today, paints a dark view of progress and prospects in Iraq. Its subtitle offers the most attractive thesis to opponents of the current strategy: "Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks." Its opening paragraph dourly states that "the Iraqi government met 3, partially met 4, and did not meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks." Surely its release marks a grim moment for the Bush administration's efforts to sustain their approach in the war. Or perhaps not. The GAO report reflects everything that has been wrong with the discussion about Iraq since the end of 2006. Through no fault of the GAO's, the organization was sent on a fool's errand by Congress. Its mandate was not to evaluate progress in Iraq, but to determine whether or not the Iraqi government had met the 18 benchmarks. As a result, as the report repeatedly notes, the GAO was forced to fit an extraordinarily complicated reality into a black-and-white, yes-or-no simplicity. In addition, the GAO's remit extended only to evaluating progress on the Congressionally-sanctioned 18 benchmarks, 14 of which were established between eight and 11 months ago in a very different context. As a result, the report ignores completely a number of crucial positive developments that were not foreseen when the benchmarks were established and that, in fact, offer the prospect of a way forward that is much more likely to succeed than the year-old, top-down concept the GAO was told to measure. As the situation in Iraq has been changing dynamically over the past eight months, as American strategy and operations, both military and political, have been adjusting on the ground to new realities, the debate in Washington has remained mired in the preconceptions and approaches of 2006. The GAO report epitomizes this fact.

GAO Disinformation - Washington Times editorial

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) "progress report" issued Tuesday on Iraq has served its purpose for critics of the war: to get a credible-sounding report that would discredit the war effort issued in advance of the September 15 report from Gen. David Petraeus on the progress of the "surge." Sen. John Kerry used the head of the GAO, Comptroller General David Walker, as a prop for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee dog-and-pony show aimed at driving home the point that failure in Iraq is inevitable, and to no one's surprise, Sen. Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the left-wing blogs piled on as well, and the mainstream media dutifully reported the GAO's findings in checklist form with little or no substantive analysis. A central problem with the report is that it barely mentions the fact that Sunni Arabs in Anbar province have turned en masse against al Qaeda in Iraq and have been taking up arms against it — transforming one of the most dangerous places in Iraq into one of the safest. But the congressionally mandated benchmarks don't take account of this transformational change, making it difficult for the GAO to say very much about it. American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan highlights myriad other flaws in the GAO report. For example, the GAO found that the goal of "Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty" for former insurgents had not been met, and that militia disarmament has not been achieved. Technically, these things are true — if you confine your analysis to looking at a legislative fix courtesy of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. But these statements disregard what is actually happening on the ground — the fact that as many as 30,000 former insurgents have joined the Iraqi government and coalition forces in fighting al Qaeda and its terrorist allies. "Because of the presence of U.S. forces and agreements of the Iraqi government, insurgents and terrorists feel comfortable providing fingerprints, retina scans and the serial numbers of their weapons to our forces in order to fight our common enemies," Mr. Kagan writes in the Weekly Standard. "It's hard to imagine a better amnesty than that."

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By Rob Thornton

I promise this is not a NPR or PBS funding drive.

However, we can tell by the number of new Small Wars Council (SWC) members and the number of visits to the site that clearly there are more people who come to read and consider what is being written, then those willing to participate. This is perfectly OK.

However, I would like those both inside and outside the Council to consider some rationale for greater participation...

Continue reading "Recruiting for SWC Members Because...." »

The General vs. the Ambassador – Joe Klein, Time Magazine

A few months ago, after a sweltering day in the field surveying the progress his troops were making in turning Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) extremists, General David Petraeus squinted into the Baghdad sun and allowed himself a moment of astonishment. "It's just amazing how quickly some of these tribes are flipping," he said. Amazing, indeed. Petraeus has presided over a remarkable turn of events in Iraq. The most recalcitrant areas of the country—the heartland of the Sunni insurgency—have suddenly become the most placid. The safest place for President George W. Bush to land when he visited Iraq on Labor Day was al-Asad air base in Anbar province; a year ago, a military-intelligence report said the province had been "lost" to the jihadis. Now AQI seems to have been kicked out of Anbar, pushed back from Baghdad, forced to carry out its most lethal attacks on the northern periphery of the country. It was feared that the weeks before Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker made their September reports to Congress would be dominated by the insurgency's State of Iraq report: spectacular bombings, perhaps even a Tet-style offensive. But—fingers crossed as I write this—Baghdad seems merely murderous these days, without the efflorescence of gore that would have undercut the Bush Administration's story line…

The Partitioning of Iraq - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq's Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned -- and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.

1. The Sunni provinces. The essence of our deal with the Anbar tribes and those in Diyala, Salahuddin and elsewhere is this: You end the insurgency and drive out al-Qaeda, and we assist you in arming and policing yourselves. We'd like you to have an official relationship with the Maliki government, but we're not waiting on Baghdad.

2. The Shiite south. This week the British pulled out of Basra, retired to their air base and essentially left the southern Shiites to their own devices -- meaning domination by the Shiite militias now fighting each other for control.

3. The Kurdish north. Kurdistan has been independent in all but name for a decade and a half...

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Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and Civilians of Multi-National Force-Iraq

We are now over two-and-a-half months into the surge of offensive operations made possible by the surge of forces, and I want to share with you my view of how I think we’re doing. This letter is a bit longer than previous ones, since I feel you deserve a detailed description of what I believe we have – and have not – accomplished, as Ambassador Crocker and I finalize the assessment we will provide shortly to Congress.

Up front, my sense is that we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas of Iraq. The result has been progress in the security arena, although it has, as you know, been uneven. Additionally, as you all appreciate very well, innumerable tasks remain and much hard work lies ahead. We are, in short, a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are driving down the field...

Continue reading "7 September General Petraeus Letter to Troops of MNF-I" »

The Surge is Working – Max Boot, Los Angeles Times

As recently as a month ago, it appeared that Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker would be running into a withering fusillade of rhetorical fire when they appeared on Capitol Hill to report on the progress of the "surge" in Iraq. Now that their testimony is upon us, the political environment has become, in military argot, considerably more "permissive."

A sign of how much things have changed: In July, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was pressing for a "date certain" for troop withdrawal; he derided those who wanted to pass a nonbinding drawdown resolution "that has no teeth in it" just so "you can circle and sing 'Kumbaya.' " Today, he's trying to reach accommodation with Republicans on just such a "Kumbaya" bill.

It's obvious what accounts for the more cooperative mood. Notwithstanding all the political hype and hyperbole, events on the ground do matter, and there is no denying that events in Iraq have been moving in the right direction since the surge started. Not even the Democrats deny it. Sens. Jack Reed, Hillary Clinton and Dick Durbin, among others, have acknowledged that, as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it, "The military aspects of President Bush's new strategy in Iraq . . . appear to have produced some credible and positive results." …

How to View the Report on the Surge - Brian Katulis, Washington Post

Next week, a new White House Iraq report and Congressional testimony from U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus will intensify the country's Iraq debate. These latest reports will arrive after a string of pessimistic accounts from past weeks -- including last month's grim National Intelligence Estimate and a Government Accountability Office report, as well as a negative assessment of Iraq's security forces from retired General James Jones.

The more focused debate in the United States is in part due to efforts by members of the 110th Congress to call for a course change and push for independent assessments of Iraq policy. Since 2005, Congressional leaders from Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) have supported beginning a phased redeployment from Iraq. It took Congressional action to get an independent assessment and recommendations in 2006 from the Iraq Study Group. Last May's amendment to the supplemental funding bill requiring reports on 18 key measurements was another positive development. By focusing attention on outcomes, Congress is fulfilling its oversight responsibilities.

To a large extent, we know what the forthcoming administration report will say -- President Bush and other top officials have tipped their hand. The report will try to shift the terms for evaluating the surge -- featuring increased stability in certain neighborhoods of Iraq, while downplaying high levels of overall violence and political deadlock among Iraq's leaders. We also have a good idea of what ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus will say: Give the surge more time. Congress should use this month's full schedule of hearings to ask three tough questions directly relevant to U.S. interests in Iraq.

1. Is any increased stability in Iraq the result of population displacements and sectarian cleansing? …

2. What is the "bottom-up" reconciliation plan for southern and northern Iraq? …

3. What is the plan for integrating irregular Sunni forces into Iraq's national government? …

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Nothing follows.

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Letting Soldiers do the Thinking – George Will, Washington Post

Officers studying at the Army War College walk the ground at nearby Gettysburg where Pickett's men walked across an open field under fire. They wonder: How did Confederate officers get men to do that? The lesson: Men can be led to places they cannot be sent.

Today's officers lead an Army that was sent into Iraq in 2003, and by 2004 the operation became, as an officer here says, "a deployment in search of a mission." Since then, missions have multiplied. Today's is to make possible an exit strategy. Gen. David Petraeus's Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual says counterinsurgency's primary objective is to secure the civilian population rather than destroy the enemy. This inevitably involves the military in organizing civil society, a task that demands skill sets that are scarce throughout the government and have not hitherto been, and perhaps should not be, central to military training and doctrine. Nevertheless, the War College is coming to grips with the fact that what soldiers call "nonkinetic" -- meaning nonviolent -- facets of their profession are, in Iraq, perhaps 80 percent of their profession.

For soldiers, the tempo of change, technological as well as intellectual (and technological change is a driver of intellectual change), is accelerating. For centuries, nations assumed that they could be seriously threatened only by other nations; that terrorism was a weapon of the weak and therefore a weak weapon; that wars are won by large, decisive battles…

The Tide is Turning in Iraq – Kimberly Kagan, Wall Street Journal

The initial concept of the "surge" strategy in Iraq was to secure Baghdad and its immediate environs, which is why its proper name was the "Baghdad Security Plan." But as President Bush pointed out during his surprise trip to Iraq, operations and events on the ground are already showing successes well beyond Baghdad in Anbar, Diyala and Salahaddin provinces--formerly al Qaeda strongholds and hotbeds of the Sunni insurgency.

Considering the speed with which these successes have developed, and the rapidly growing grass-roots movement among Iraqis to support the effort, there is every reason to be optimistic about the prospects for establishing security in Iraq, and every reason to continue supporting the current strategy…

Skillful combat--and skillful negotiation--have transformed the area formerly known as "the triangle of death" into a region of dawning, if precarious, stability. As coalition forces consolidate their gains in these areas, they are also striking Shiite militia sanctuaries east of Baghdad and further south and east along the Tigris River valley. Gen. Odierno and his division commanders cleared territory gradually throughout Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike, so that they could hold it after clearing operations.

The tribal movement begun in Anbar has spread throughout central Iraq, as thousands of Sunnis have either volunteered to join the Iraqi Security Forces or formed local defense groups under Iraqi government and coalition auspices. These "concerned citizens" groups springing up throughout central Iraq have not been previously observed on this scale in the country. They permit U.S. and Iraqi forces to hold territory they have cleared more effectively. The volunteers who make up these groups, recruited and deployed in their own neighborhoods, have incentives to protect their families and communities. They are not independent militias, however. They are partnered with Iraqi Security Forces and coalition forces…

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Listening to Petraeus – John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, Wall Street Journal

Today, Gen. David Petraeus--commander of our forces in Iraq--returns to Washington to report on the war in Iraq and the new counterinsurgency strategy he has been implementing there. We hope that opponents of the war in Congress will listen carefully to the evidence that the U.S. military is at last making real and significant progress in its offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq.

Consider how the situation has changed. A year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq controlled large swaths of the country's territory. Today it is being driven out of its former strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces by the surge in U.S. forces and those of our Iraqi allies. A year ago, sectarian violence was spiraling out of control in Iraq, fanned by al Qaeda. Today civilian murders in Baghdad are down over 50%.

As facts on the ground in Iraq have improved, some critics of the war have changed their stance. As Democratic Congress man Brian Baird, who voted against the invasion of Iraq, recently wrote after returning from Baghdad: "[T]he people, strategies, and facts on the ground have changed for the better, and those changes justify changing our position on what should be done."

Unfortunately, many more antiwar advocates continue to press for withdrawal. Confronted by undeniable evidence of gains against al Qaeda in Iraq, they acknowledge progress but have seized on the performance of the Iraqi government to justify stripping Gen. Petraeus of troops and derailing his strategy…

The Public Looks Beyond Iraq – Michael Barone, Real Clear Politics

This week, the American public will surely be focused on Iraq, as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker present their reports to Congress. Petraeus and Crocker will undoubtedly speak of the striking military success of the surge strategy, while Democrats will try to focus on the failure of Iraqi politicians to reach agreement on major issues.

But Iraq is not the only challenge America will face in the coming years. Islamist terrorists will continue to try to attack the United States and undermine if not destroy our free society. And Americans, for all the media's concentration on Iraq, seem aware of this -- and will be keeping it in mind as they decide on how to vote next year.

That's the message you get from an interesting poll conducted in mid-August by Public Opinion Strategies, a widely respected Republican firm, for the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Unlike most polls, it doesn't include specific questions on Iraq, but rather focuses on the wider struggle…

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Note: This entry is a longer version of an article written for Military.com and Defense Tech with the intent to provide basic background, things to look for and potential roadblocks concerning our counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq.

Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) has been subject to more than their fair-share of Monday-morning quarterbacking by retired generals and colonels; active duty officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted; Representatives, Senators, reporters, pundits, bloggers and think-tankers without throwing yet another so-called “expert” opinion into the hopper.

Moreover, the release of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and General Accounting Office report combined with the partisan bickering in Congress only add to the fog of war as these documents, as well as other reports, have been interpreted by both sides of the aisle as either an encouraging sign of progress or confirmation of a bad war heading south.

The need for restraint in second-guessing and adding to the noise level is especially true leading into General David Petraeus’ and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s much awaited progress report to Congress.

What I offer here are “the basics” - background on the “new” counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and a quick-look guide on what to look for in reports and commentary concerning the dynamic and complex operating environment in Iraq – all against assumptions that “we don’t know what we don’t know” and everything we hold as ground-truth is nothing more than a snapshot in time of a long campaign that is subject to rapid and dramatic change for good or for bad on a recurring basis...

Continue reading "What to Make of COIN Doctrine in Iraq" »

By Major General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF

What are the insurgents thinking as General David H. Petraeus prepares to testify about the state of the war in Iraq? If they are historically-minded, they are thinking about the 1968 Tet Offensive...

Continue reading "Prepare for "Tet"" »

General David Petraeus

Mr. Chairmen, Ranking Members, Members of the Committees, thank you for the opportunity to provide my assessment of the security situation in Iraq and to discuss the recommendations I recently provided to my chain of command for the way forward.

At the outset, I would like to note that this is my testimony. Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been cleared by, nor shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress.

As a bottom line up front, the military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met. In recent months, in the face of tough enemies and the brutal summer heat of Iraq, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces have achieved progress in the security arena. Though the improvements have been uneven across Iraq, the overall number of security incidents in Iraq has declined in 8 of the past 12 weeks, with the numbers of incidents in the last two weeks at the lowest levels seen since June 2006.

One reason for the decline in incidents is that Coalition and Iraqi forces have dealt significant blows to Al Qaeda-Iraq. Though Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq remain dangerous, we have taken away a number of their sanctuaries and gained the initiative in many areas.

We have also disrupted Shia militia extremists, capturing the head and numerous other leaders of the Iranian-supported Special Groups, along with a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative supporting Iran's activities in Iraq.

Coalition and Iraqi operations have helped reduce ethno-sectarian violence, as well, bringing down the number of ethno-sectarian deaths substantially in Baghdad and across Iraq since the height of the sectarian violence last December. The number of overall civilian deaths has also declined during this period, although the numbers in each area are still at troubling levels.

Iraqi Security Forces have also continued to grow and to shoulder more of the load, albeit slowly and amid continuing concerns about the sectarian tendencies of some elements in their ranks. In general, however, Iraqi elements have been standing and fighting and sustaining tough losses, and they have taken the lead in operations in many areas.

Additionally, in what may be the most significant development of the past 8 months, the tribal rejection of Al Qaeda that started in Anbar Province and helped produce such significant change there has now spread to a number of other locations as well.

Based on all this and on the further progress we believe we can achieve over the next few months, I believe that we will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge level of brigade combat teams by next summer without jeopardizing the security gains that we have fought so hard to achieve.

Beyond that, while noting that the situation in Iraq remains complex, difficult, and sometimes downright frustrating, I also believe that it is possible to achieve our objectives in Iraq over time, though doing so will be neither quick nor easy.

Having provided that summary, I would like to review the nature of the conflict in Iraq, recall the situation before the surge, describe the current situation, and explain the recommendations I have provided to my chain of command for the way ahead in Iraq...

Full Transcript (PDF)

Briefing Slides (PDF)

Ambassador Ryan Crocker

Mr. Chairman, ranking members, members of the committees, thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

I consider it a privilege and an honor to serve in Iraq at a time when so much is at stake for our country and the people of the region, and when so many Americans of the highest caliber in our military and civilian services are doing the same.

I know that a heavy responsibility weighs on my shoulders to provide the country with my best, most honest assessment of the situation in Iraq in its political, economic and diplomatic dimensions and the implications for the United States.

In doing so, I will not minimize the enormity of the challenges faced by Iraqis, nor the complexity of the situation. At the same time, I intend to demonstrate that it is possible for the United States to see its goals realized in Iraq and that Iraqis are capable of tackling and addressing the problems confronting them today.

A secure, stable, Democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbors is, in my view, attainable. The cumulative trajectory of political, economic, and diplomatic developments in Iraq is upwards, although the slope of that line is not steep. This process will not be quick. It will be uneven and punctuated by setbacks, as well as achievements, and it will require substantial U.S. resolve and commitment.

There will be no single moment at which we can claim victory. Any turning point will likely only be recognized in retrospect. This is a sober assessment, but it should not be a disheartening one. I have found it helpful during my time in Iraq to reflect on our own history. At many points in our early years, our survival as a nation was questionable...

Full Transcript (PDF)

Continue reading "General Petraeus / Ambassador Crocker - Boots on the Ground Assessment" »

The General's Long View Could Cut Withdrawal Debate Short - Karen DeYoung and Thomas Ricks, Washington Post

If Gen. David H. Petraeus has his way, tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be in Iraq for years to come.

Iraq's armed forces are improving, Petraeus told Congress yesterday. Overall violence is down. Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and many Baghdad neighborhoods are more peaceful. Political reconciliation, said Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, who testified alongside the general, is a now-visible light at the end of the tunnel. But the two men offered no clear pathway or timeline to reach the end…

Judging by the relatively mild congressional reaction in a joint hearing of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, Petraeus and Crocker may well succeed this week in deflecting Democratic demands to bring the troops home sooner rather than later. They are likely to face tougher questioning -- and stiffer challenges to the emerging trends they described -- from two Senate committees today. But by the time President Bush speaks to the nation later this week, September's much-anticipated battle over Iraq policy may be all but over…

Bush Policy to Bequeath Iraq to Successor – Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country -- perhaps more than 100,000 troops -- when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009.

The plans also would allow Bush to live up to his pledge to the defining mission of his presidency, and perhaps to improve his chances for a decent legacy. He can say he left office pursuing a strategy that was having at least some success in suppressing violence, a claim that some historians may view sympathetically.

"Bush has found his exit strategy," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former government Mideast specialist now at the Brookings Institution. As Petraeus met with lawmakers and unveiled chart upon chart showing declining troop levels, the U.S. commander seemed to have opened a new discussion about how the United States would wind up its commitment to Iraq. Yet viewed more closely, his presentation, and that of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, were better suited to the defense of an earlier strategy: "stay the course." …

Amateur Experts – Thomas Sowell, Real Clear Politics

Sometimes I feel as if I must be one of the few people left in America who is not a military expert.

For example, all sorts of politicians have been talking about all sorts of ways we ought to "redeploy" our troops. The closest I ever came to deploying troops was marching a company of Marines to the mess hall for chow.

But people who have never even put on a uniform are confident that they know how our troops should be redeployed. Maybe this is one of the fruits of the "self-esteem" that is taught in our schools instead of education.

The biggest flurry of amateur military pronouncements occurred just before General David Petraeus testified before Congress on the situation in Iraq. Many Democrats publicly dismissed what he said before he said it, and some implied that he was a liar before he opened his mouth.

The real problem is that many Democrats have bet the rent money on an American defeat in Iraq, and without that defeat they could find themselves in big trouble in the 2008 elections.

Politically, the Democrats are caught between Iraq and a hard place. Their left-wing base has been angrily pressing them to cut off financial support for the war in Iraq but Congressional Democrats dare not outrage the rest of the country by doing that…

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Continue reading "11 September SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Army PRT Playbook, USMC lessons learned, Army-Marine Corps division of labor, lessons from Iraq on negotiating, Mac McAllister, John Nagl, Hugo Chavez, unrestricted warfare, and the People's Liberation Army...

Continue reading "SWJ Odds and Ends" »

The Assault on Petraeus – Michael Gerson, Washington Post

… On Petraeus's brief watch, al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered a major setback. It has been cleared out of the main population centers of Anbar province; its cells scattered into the countryside. The resentment of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda's highhanded brutality predated the surge -- but the surge gave those leaders the confidence and ability to oppose al-Qaeda. And this approach is showing promise among other Iraqi tribal groups as well.

In Baghdad, the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy -- a kind of community policing with very serious firepower -- has reduced sectarian murders significantly. Some militia activity has been pushed outside Baghdad or gone underground -- and this is also a victory of sorts, because order in Iraq's capital has great symbolic and practical importance.

But for opponents of the war, such progress is beside the point. Anything less than perfection in reaching a series of benchmarks is evidence of failure and reason for retreat…

An Only-Time-Will-Tell View on Political Gains – Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

Maybe the Iraqi government will seize the opportunity for political reconciliation that the United States set out to buy for it with blood and treasure, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said yesterday. And maybe it won't.

"My level of confidence," Crocker replied dryly to a question from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), "is under control."

Monday's House appearance by Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, focused on President Bush's troop buildup and improving security trends. In two Senate hearings yesterday, Crocker took the lead in offering a look at the political side of the Iraqi equation. His message was one of lowered expectations and small seeds of progress that might bear fruit in some distant future.

"We are pushing them constantly in all sorts of ways," he said of the Iraqi government.

"But I've got to be honest. This is going to take more time." …

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Update 12 September 2007: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced yesterday that the President has nominated U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis for appointment to the rank of general with assignment as Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, VA. NATO has also agreed to appoint LtGen Mattis as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

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A rumor we have been hearing since May was reported on yesterday in the North County Times – Lieutenant General James Mattis (USMC) has been nominated for his fourth star and slated to take over US Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

Camp Pendleton's Lt. Gen. James Mattis will be nominated for the rank of general and appointed commander of a high-level military planning and strategy unit based in Virginia, the North County Times has learned.

Mattis, whose present job is commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command and head of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force, will become head of the Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation.

Multiple sources within the military and in Washington, D.C., confirmed that Mattis, who has overseen Marine Corps forces in the Middle East for the last 15 months and is regarded as a "warrior monk" for his intellectual acumen and war-fighting skills, will be nominated for a fourth star by President Bush.

An announcement of the nomination is expected to come from the Defense Department within days. The move is subject to Senate confirmation.

While this nomination will remove one of our most capable generals from command of operationally deployed units it does hold good tidings for the future of Joint operations capabilities, concepts, and doctrine and training development.

USJFCOM was the command that, in 2002, served up the experiment, war game, computer simulation, live field exercise (one-size fits all) Millennium Challenge (MC02). Setup by JFCOM to showcase Joint Vision 2020 (JV 2020), Effects Based Operations (EBO), Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO) and Operational Net Assessment (ONA) – and there were other ornaments on that Christmas tree – MC02 came to a grinding halt when the ‘Red Team’ (enemy) commander, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper (USMC Ret.), conducted his own rapid, decisive operation to achieve desired effects based on information superiority and soundly defeated the Joint Force of the future - using asymmetric tactics and commercial-off-the-shelf technologies.

The Mattis nomination is one small step for sound Joint capabilities, one giant leap for a future firmly grounded in reality.

Continue reading "LtGen Jim Mattis to US Joint Forces Command (Updated)" »

‘Iraq First’ – Iraqi National Security Strategy 2007 – 2010, in English, dated July 2007.

Continue reading "Iraqi National Security Strategy" »

By J. Eli Margolis

Earlier this week, America’s top two officials in Iraq testified before Congress about the war in Iraq. Ambassador Crocker described slow but sure progress; General Petraeus spoke more strongly, citing goals met and “substantial” progress.

I was surprised. After a steady public debate of stalemate and withdrawal, the pair put forward recommendations to remain. The disconnect between how America sees Iraq and how our two most knowledgeable professionals view it is great...

Continue reading "How to Measure Insurgencies" »

Petraeus Returns to War That Is Now His Own - Peter Baker and Thomas Ricks, Washington Post

He sat absolutely still as members of Congress discussed his credibility and patriotism. His face did not twitch. He did not nod or frown or smile. Not a single muscle moved. He was as impassive as a boot-camp recruit resisting a drill sergeant's provocations.

For Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, navigating the political shoals of Washington this week has been a challenge unlike any he has faced. When he testified before the Senate for his confirmation hearing in January, Petraeus was widely regarded as the quintessential military professional, a credible, independent voice who stood above the political fray.

But when he returned to Capitol Hill this week for marathon hearings and a media blitz, the general labored to retain that image. Partisans sought to portray him either as a politicized officer carrying water for the White House or as the only possible savior of an increasingly unpopular war.

The war in Iraq has diminished the reputations of many of its generals. As Petraeus returns to Baghdad to continue carrying out President Bush's strategy, his image has changed as well. Like it or not, he has become a political player, and more than ever before, the U.S. venture in Iraq has become his own…

US Tactics at Odds with Contradictory Iraq Strategy - Michael Lind, The Australian

… The tactic of reducing violence by Shia and Sunni militias and jihadists, some Iraqi and some foreign, was supposed to serve two goals: reconciling the Iraqi population to the central government and giving Iraq's three main ethnic groups - Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds - time to agree on a stable power-sharing arrangement in a national unity government.

Unfortunately, it appears that however successful the surge may be as a tactic, the two strategic goals are incompatible. The Iraqi nation cannot be reconciled to the Iraqi government if there is no Iraqi nation, only three ethnic nations, each of which prefers a government it controls to one in which it shares power with the others.

Petraeus is a brilliant soldier and he has sought to apply the time-tested lessons of counterinsurgency in Iraq. The purpose of a counterinsurgency or pacification strategy, carried out by native troops and their foreign advisers, is to provide firm and enduring security to the people so they are not intimidated by rebels. Through time various non-military projects will win the hearts and minds of the population over to the government's side.

It is not true that counterinsurgency efforts by outside powers supporting local allies are always doomed. The Americans, although they failed in Vietnam, succeeded in The Philippines in the 1950s and the British succeeded in Malaysia in the '60s. The premise of traditional counterinsurgency is that there is one government and one population. The premise is reflected in the term nation-building: there is one majority nation and a majority nation-state.

However, traditional counterinsurgency does not apply to dissolving multi-ethnic states such as Iraq, an incoherent entity created by the British from a few Ottoman provinces and artificially held together by the tyrannical rule of members of the Sunni minority until the fall of Saddam Hussein…

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The U.S. Army Combined Arms Center has posted the September - October 2007 issue of Military Review. Always a 'must read', links to individual articles follow, enjoy.

Featured Articles

Learning From Our Modern Wars: The Imperatives of Preparing for a Dangerous Future by Lieutenant General Peter W. Chiarelli, U.S. Army, with Major Stephen M. Smith, U.S. Army. Looking beyond the current wars, a former commander of the 1st Cavalry Division and Multi-National Corps-Iraq calls for significant changes to the way we train and fight.

Iraq: Tribal Engagement Lessons Learned by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Eisenstadt, U.S. Army Reserve. As the “Anbar Awakening” suggests, tribal engagement could be a key to success in Iraq. MR presents a useful primer on the subject.

Fighting “The Other War”: Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan, 2003-2005 by Lieutenant General David W. Barno, U.S. Army, Retired. The former commander of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan offers his assessment of operations in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

Linking Doctrine to Action: A New COIN Center-of-Gravity Analysis by Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, U.S. Army, and Major Mark S. Ulrich, U.S. Army. A new tool from the Army/Marine Counterinsurgency (COIN) Center can help bridge the gap between COIN doctrine and real results on the ground.

Much more...

Continue reading "Military Review: September – October 2007 Issue" »

President Redefines ‘Victory’ - Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times

For more than four years since the invasion of Iraq, President Bush most often has defined his objective there with a single, stirring word: "Victory."

"Victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America," he told cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in May. "Victory in this struggle will require more patience, more courage and more sacrifice," he warned National Guardsmen in West Virginia in July. But this week, the word "victory" disappeared from the president's lexicon. It was replaced by a slightly more ambiguous goal: "Success."

"The success of a free Iraq is critical to the security of the United States," Bush said Thursday evening in his brief televised address from the Oval Office…

On the Nation's TVs, A Familiar Picture – Tom Shales, Washington Post

In what NBC's Brian Williams said was George W. Bush's eighth speech on the Iraq war since he began it, the president finally talked about reducing American troop strength in that country. In a 24-minute address from the Oval Office that aired live last night on all the major networks, Bush said a total of 5,700 troops should be home by Christmas and, watching this on television, one could almost hear a nation shout hurray.

Katie Couric of CBS News called the speech a "state-of-the-war report," but Chris Matthews, looking more dignified than usual on MSNBC, compared Bush to Lucy in the "Peanuts" comic strip as drawn by the late Charles Schulz. Every autumn Lucy swore to Charlie Brown that she wouldn't pull the football away when he tried to kick it, and every year Charlie Brown fell for it and landed on his posterior. Matthews said Bush had been dealing in "false promises and false arguments again and again and again."

Even on Fox, the channel considered to be kindest to the Bush administration, opponents of the war were heard and few, if any, sounded impressed by Bush's speech or what he said in it.

Bush said his announcement could bring together opposing factions -- not opposing factions in Iraq so much as "people who've been on opposite sides" in the "difficult debate" about the war in this country…

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Michelle Malkin has the details and most likely will be posting additonal links to this event.

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "President Bush Meets With MilBloggers" »

The Next War – Wesley Clark, Washington Post

Testifying before Congress last week, Gen. David H. Petraeus appeared commanding, smart and alive to the challenges that his soldiers face in Iraq. But he also embodied what the Iraq conflict has come to represent: an embattled, able, courageous military at war, struggling to maintain its authority and credibility after 4 1/2 years of a "cakewalk" gone wrong.

Petraeus will not be the last general to find himself explaining how a military intervention has misfired and urging skeptical lawmakers to believe that the mission can still be accomplished. The next war is always looming, and so is the urgent question of whether the U.S. military can adapt in time to win it.

Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran, a radical state that America has tried to isolate for almost 30 years and that now threatens to further destabilize the Middle East through its expansionist aims, backing of terrorist proxies such as the Lebanese group Hezbollah and even Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and far-reaching support for radical Shiite militias in Iraq. As Iran seems to draw closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, almost every U.S. leader -- and would-be president -- has said that it simply won't be permitted to reach that goal.

Think another war can't happen? Think again…

Confederation of Terror - Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Washington Post

On September 6 the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan marked the first anniversary of its de facto recognition. On that day last year, the Taliban used the name when it signed a ceasefire agreement with the Pakistani government. The ceasefire is in tatters, but the terror trail of the recent plots in Germany and Denmark indicates that the Emirate is doing fine.

The Emirate's writ is spreading among the mountainous areas that make up the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that run along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Going by trends, the Emirate is more than just a safe haven: It is on a nightmare path of nation-building. Osama bin Laden will be its sultan; Mullah Omar its spiritual leader; heroin and smuggling its economic drivers; and terrorism its primary export. "Al Qaeda is building a mini-state, an enclave, in the FATA," says Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al Qaeda…

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Continue reading "Australian PRT Sunday" »

Lindsey Graham's Realism – David Broder, Washington Post

Now that the president has endorsed the Petraeus-Crocker plan for Iraq, it is worth noting one exchange from their Senate hearings.

Some senators, such as Barbara Boxer of California, were so self-absorbed they could not manage to ask a single question in their allotted time, even when they had Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker ready to provide answers.

Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is not like that. An Air Force Reserve officer, Graham is an incisive questioner whose unexpected and provocative inquiries often produce revealing answers, whether the subject is Iraq, immigration or a Supreme Court nomination.

A Republican with a notable record of independence, Graham has been an outspoken advocate of the surge strategy -- claiming real success on the ground and urging its continuation…

Somebody Else’s Mess – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)

George W. Bush delivered his farewell address on Thursday evening — handing the baton, and probably the next election, to the Democrats.

Why do I say that? Because in his speech to the nation the president basically said that on the most important, indeed only, legacy issue left in his presidency, Iraq, there would be no change in policy — that a substantial number of U.S. troops would remain in Iraq “beyond my presidency.” Therefore, it will be up to his successor to end the war he started.

“In one fell swoop George Bush abdicated to Petraeus, Maliki and the Democrats,” said David Rothkopf, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, referring to Gen. David Petraeus and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. “Bush left it to Petraeus to handle the war, Maliki to handle our timetable and therefore our checkbook, and the Democrats to ultimately figure out how to end this.”

The sad thing for the American people is that we have no commander in chief anymore, framing our real situation and options. The president’s description on Thursday of the stakes in Iraq was delusional. An Iraqi ally fighting for “freedom” against “extremists”? There are extremists in the Iraqi government, army and police. There is a civil war on top of tribal, neighborhood and jihadist wars, fueled not by a single Iraqi quest for freedom, but by differing quests for “justice,” revenge and, yes, democracy. The only possible self-sustaining outcome in the near term is some form of radical federalism…

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Continue reading "16 September SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Yellow Ribbons on Cars Don't Measure Real Support – Douglas MacKinnon, Houston Chronicle

Hat Tips to Dave Maxwell and Mac McAllister for pointing to this op-ed.

Who in the United States really supports our troops? If truth be told, basically nobody.

My former boss, Sen. Bob Dole — who was grievously wounded in combat during World War II and then spent the next three years of his life in various hospitals trying to survive and recover from his wounds — says this generation of soldiers, not his, is truly "The Greatest Generation." Over the course of the last few years, he has quietly visited with hundreds of wounded soldiers and been brought to tears, not only by their sacrifice, but also by their determination to rejoin their fellow soldiers back in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Bob Dole, who clearly supports our troops, may think of them as "The Greatest Generation," not many of us agree with his very accurate assessment. Out of a nation of now 300 million people, who really cares about the young men and women we send into harm's way?

Let's see. Those on active duty obviously care, their families care, veterans care, a small number in the media care, some states like Texas care more than others, and a minute amount of the national population actually cares. But for the vast majority of the rest America, the young men and women who serve on the front lines and protect us from evil are all but invisible. They don't exist in our lives, they occupy no space in our minds, and their sacrifice goes unnoticed and unappreciated…

Go to the link to read it all.

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SWJ News Links

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Continue reading "Yellow Ribbons Don't Measure Real Support" »

Sinking in the Polls – Karen Hughes, Washington Post

The video reappearance of Osama bin Laden is a reminder that extremists with murderous methods continue to threaten innocent people worldwide. His emergence after three years of hiding also provides an opportunity to take stock of how differently the world now views the terrorist leader -- and that view is turning darker than bin Laden's newly dyed beard.

People in America and many other Western nations have expressed strong disapproval of bin Laden and al-Qaeda since the Sept. 11 attacks. What's new is the dramatic decline in his standing in majority-Muslim countries. Polls in the two nations that have suffered some of the worst of al-Qaeda's violence -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- show that more than 90 percent of those populations have unfavorable views of al-Qaeda and of bin Laden himself…

Petraeus Makes the Case – Donald Lambro, Washington Times

There is no doubt Gen. David Petraeus won the politically charged slugfest on Capitol Hill last week when he called for withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Iraq between now and early next year.

He won it on his case that, as bad as things are in Iraq, the troop surge of the last six months has made verifiable progress in key battlegrounds now cleansed of terrorists. And he won it by outflanking the Democrats' demands that we begin now precipitously pulling out all our forces by a specific deadline…

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Continue reading "17 September SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Iraq Trip Report

By Linda Robinson

During a three-week trip to Iraq in late August and early September, I found the security situation improved compared to the spring and even more markedly over last year. But it was harder to determine whether there had been any change in the all-important question of Iraqi political will. The views about the Iraqi government’s true intent among those working most closely with it tend to break down into two groups. Senior U.S. military and civilian officials believe that they can painfully and haltingly nudge the Maliki government forward on reconciliation as its fears of a Sunni return to dominance are allayed. Many of them believe this option is merely the least worst option. Lower-ranking officials are more pessimistic, perhaps because they can afford to be. They tend to believe that the Shia-led government is bent on domination of Sunnis, who are now largely fighting for their survival rather than a return to power.

Behind closed doors, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker and their subordinates are engaged in a full-court press to get more Sunnis into the government and to push Maliki ahead on reconciliation. They have achieved some success on local initiatives, though not on passage of key legislation and not enough to demonstrate unequivocally that the Maliki government has the will or ability to achieve a power-sharing agreement if given more time. Success in Iraq, if it comes, is not going to come in a big bang but rather through a series of piecemeal steps that at a minimum give the Sunni minority the ability to secure and govern the areas they inhabit, with funding from the central government. The vision is federalism, not partition. The U.S. officials hope to allay Shia fears as it becomes clear that these local concessions do not court the return of their oppressors. In the lingo of peacemakers, these are called “confidence-building measures.” It is a grinding, exhausting business, and certainly not one given to headline-making breakthroughs...

Continue reading "Where Do We Go From Here?" »

Putting Politics Aside to Save Iraq – Henry Kissinger, International Herald Tribune

Two realities define the range of a meaningful debate on Iraq policy: The war cannot be ended by military means alone. But neither is it possible to "end" the war by ceding the battlefield, for the radical jihadist challenge knows no frontiers.

An abrupt withdrawal from Iraq will not end the war; it will only redirect it. Within Iraq, the sectarian conflict could assume genocidal proportions; terrorist base areas could re-emerge.

Under the impact of American abdication, Lebanon may slip into domination by Iran's ally, Hezbollah; a Syria-Israel war or an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities may become more likely as Israel attempts to break the radical encirclement; Turkey and Iran will probably squeeze Kurdish autonomy; and the Taliban in Afghanistan will gain new impetus.

That is what is meant by "precipitate" withdrawal - a withdrawal in which the United States loses the ability to shape events, either within Iraq, on the anti-jihadist battlefield or in the world at large…

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Continue reading "18 September SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Continue reading "A Conversation with General David Petraeus" »

Several items from the latest edition of Armed Forces Journal:

Eating Soup with a Spoon - Lieutenant Colonel Gian Gentile

The Army's new manual on counterinsurgency operations (COIN), in many respects, is a superb piece of doctrinal writing. The manual, FM 3-24 "Counterinsurgency," is comparable in breadth, clarity and importance to the 1986 FM 100-5 version of "Operations" which came to be known as "AirLand Battle."

The new manual's middle chapters that pertain to the conduct of counterinsurgency operations are especially helpful and relevant to senior commanders in Iraq. But a set of nine paradoxes in the first chapter of the manual removes a piece of reality of counterinsurgency warfare that is crucial for those trying to understand how to operate within it...

Flashpoint: No Bungle in the Jungle - Peter Brookes

Whether you agree with it or not, it's likely there will be some changes to the current size and shape of U.S. forces in Iraq over the next year. For reasons from the political to the practical, the current troop surge in Iraq isn't going to last forever.

So, as the politicians and policymakers search for a future strategy in Iraq that would be amenable to the American people, Congress, the Pentagon and the White House, it makes sense to open the intellectual aperture pretty wide in the search for good ideas.

In some corners of defense intelligentsia, the U.S.-backed effort in the southern Philippines against the al-Qaida-affiliated Abu Sayyaf group ("Bearer of the Sword") is being touted as the most successful counterterrorism campaign of the post-Sept. 11 period. Indeed, some are promoting Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines (OEF-P) as a model counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN) operation. Although not everyone would agree with that characterization, it's worthwhile to take a look at OEF-P to see whether the strategy and policy might be applied to the ongoing challenges in Iraq — or elsewhere...

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U.S. Military Air Needs Quick Expansion – George Will, Newsweek Magazine

Two and a half minutes. That is how quickly ground troops in Iraq can receive requested close air support from "the iron over head." The request might pass from a ground unit to a forward air controller, to an intelligence analyst, to someone who does risk assessment (should air power be used against a sniper? A building? A city block?), to a combat lawyer who advises the commander if the risk is consistent with the rules of engagement and the laws of war. Based on that advice, the particular munition or angle of attack axis might be changed.

At the Air University here at Maxwell Air Force Base, officers are studying their service's new roles. Time was, air power's primary purpose was to attack massed enemy forces, or the enemy nation's "vital center." Insurgencies have neither. Yet in "the long war" against terrorists, air power is, Air Force people insist, "our asymmetric advantage." The enemy has no comparable capacity for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance…

Spread the Word – Helle Dale, Washington Times

Clearly, judging by his most recently released tape Osama bin Laden "had some work done," as they say. Sporting a newly darkened beard, he reminded the world on the anniversary of September 11 that he's still around, three years after his last appearance.

The interpretation of the strange emanation offered by Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes in Monday's Washington Post is that radical Islam is in fact losing public support across the world, and that bin Laden is trying to rally his supporters. This would perhaps not be entirely surprising given what it has to offer — death, destruction and violent oppression even of Muslims themselves…

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Shock Waves From Syria – Washington Post editorial

There’s been no official confirmation of the targets or results of an Israeli air raid in northeastern Syria on Sept. 6. Yet, like a subterranean explosion, the event is sending shock waves through the Middle East and beyond. Syria has protested to the United Nations, though it hasn't been very clear about what it's protesting. On Tuesday, a front-page editorial in Damascus's main government-run newspaper criticized the United States for not condemning the attack. An Israeli newspaper, meanwhile, noted triumphantly that no nation other than North Korea had come to Syria's defense, rhetorically or otherwise.

What happened? Media accounts are beginning to converge on a report that Israel bombed a facility where it believed Syria was attempting to hatch its own nuclear weapons program with North Korea's assistance. The Post's Glenn Kessler reported that the strike came three days after a ship carrying material from North Korea docked at a Syrian port and delivered containers that Israel believes held nuclear materials. It's not clear whether U.S. intelligence agencies concur with Israel's conclusion, and independent experts have said that Syria lacks the resources for a credible nuclear weapons program…

Reckoning with Syria - Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, New York Sun

Recent reports that the regime in Damascus has been developing its nuclear facilities with the assistance of North Korea are only the latest manifestations of Syria's increasing belligerent stance. Despite attempts to "embrace" the regime in Damascus by some in Congress, under the misguided notion that Syria will moderate its behavior in return, that regime remains actively engaged in dangerous and destructive policies that threaten America, our allies, and our interests in the region. Make no mistake. Syria poses a growing threat that must be confronted.

Damascus remains a stalwart supporter for terrorist organizations and activities throughout the region, from Beirut to Baghdad and Jerusalem, and the fact that Syria remains a hub for Hezbollah and Hamas and a gateway for jihadists to infiltrate Iraq. For example, during last summer's war in Lebanon, Hezbollah reportedly received Russian-made anti-tank missiles from Syria and used them to disable several Israeli tanks…

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It has come to my attention that a Joint Staff memorandum by Information Operations analyst Stephen Coughlin describing the nefarious aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafi-Wahhabi-al Qaeda look-alikes has been circulated in the anti-Terrorism community -- and includes patently false inferences that I am somehow in collaboration with these self-proclaimed "Death to America" killers and hate-mongers.

The outrageous charge is that my "Truespeak" efforts to promote a new truth-in-language glossary of terms for use in the "war of words" aspects of the broader War on al Qaeda-style Terrorism are being done in league with fomenters of suicide mass murder who, like Mr.Coughlin himself, insist on calling their atrocities "Jihadi Martyrdom" -- but which I propose to condemn as "Hirabah" (unholy war, forbidden "war against society") and as "Irhabi Murderdom" (terroristic genocide), instead...

Continue reading "TrueSpeak Responds" »

Lost at Sea – Robert Kaplan, New York Times

The ultimate strategic effect of the Iraq war has been to hasten the arrival of the Asian Century.

While the American government has been occupied in Mesopotamia, and our European allies continue to starve their defense programs, Asian militaries — in particular those of China, India, Japan and South Korea — have been quietly modernizing and in some cases enlarging. Asian dynamism is now military as well as economic.

The military trend that is hiding in plain sight is the loss of the Pacific Ocean as an American lake after 60 years of near-total dominance. A few years down the road, according to the security analysts at the private policy group Strategic Forecasting, Americans will not to the same extent be the prime deliverers of disaster relief in a place like the Indonesian archipelago, as we were in 2005. Our ships will share the waters (and the prestige) with new “big decks” from Australia, Japan and South Korea…

Middle East Volcano – Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they're not saying.

We do know that Israel carried out an airstrike. How do we know it was important? Because in Israel, where leaking is an art form, even the best-informed don't have a clue. They tell me they have never seen a better-kept secret.

Which suggests that whatever happened near Dayr az Zawr was no accidental intrusion into Syrian airspace, no dry run for an attack on Iran, no strike on some conventional target such as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base or a weapons shipment on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Circumstantial evidence points to this being an attack on some nuclear facility provided by North Korea...

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Audio interview at National Public Radio with Colonel Sean MacFarland (USA). COL MacFarland played a key role in the effort to stabilize Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province. He returned from Iraq earlier this year; in the interview he discusses what the military is doing in Anbar, and weighs in on the region's political influence in Iraq.

Continue reading "NPR: A Profile of Iraq's Anbar Province" »

In a 17 September The Atlantic Dispatch article (Will the Petraeus Strategy Be the Last?) I offer a view from Iraq's restive Anbar province on Congress's recent Iraq hearings...

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‘Mugged by Reality’ Part II – Thomas Sowell, Washington Times

Nothing is easier than to second-guess other people's decisions, ignoring the inherent limitations of knowledge, the pressures of circumstances, and the dangers of alternative courses of action.

Americans in all parts of the political spectrum have made serious mistakes about Iraq.

Some have been the mistakes of honorable people — indeed, mistakes to which honorable people may be more prone than others. Other people have acted with utter dishonor and dishonesty — the most shameful recent example the smearing of Gen. David Petraeus as a liar before he had said a word.

Precisely because congressional Democrats already knew there had been progress after the troop surge in Iraq — some of their own colleagues had been there and seen it — they had to discredit Gen. Petraeus to prevent the people from knowing it…

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Authors Note: This article was written in late August 2007, well before the present controversy over the Mansour neighborhood shootings by Blackwater Security. It is not a response or intended to address that incident.

The role of Private Security Companies (PSCs) operating in Iraq has always been controversial. It is said Iraq is a ‘different kind of war’. That is true in the sense that all Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, no matter what their regular duties, suddenly became light infantry in a vicious counterinsurgency. It is a battle without a rear area and an extremely small military presence in proportion to the local population...

Continue reading "All Hands On Deck – Radically Reorienting Private Security in Iraq" »

Continue reading "Iraq Briefing 21 September 2007" »

Inside the Pentagon’s Fawzia Sheikh reports (subscription required) that Ft. Leavenworth’s new commanding general, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, wants to revamp how Army officers are educated.

Caldwell has decided to focus on developing leaders, increasing the interagency representation of certain officer courses offered by the Command and General Staff School and crafting strategic communications.

How to think, not what to think…

Continue reading "How to Think, Not What to Think at Leavenworth" »

Restructuring America’s Ground Forces: Better, Not Bigger - September 2007 paper by Frank Hoffman and Steven Metz for The Stanley Foundation.

The core defense debate of our time is how to make the US military more effective at irregular warfare (IW) and stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) operations in weak or failing states while still retaining some aspect of its strategic capabilities for major power warfare. Given the current global security system and likely future American strategy, the configuration that provides the best balance is one with ground forces about the size of today’s, with the Marines and the Army organized around a geographic division of labor, but with enough cross-training that each service could, in an emergency, operate outside its normal region. While the ground forces must retain the capability for large-scale conventional combat, they clearly should focus most of their efforts on the requirements of IW/SSTR. This may not be the force we would prefer to have in 2020, but it is the most realistic one for the coming decade.

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Discuss at Small Wars Council

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Marines in Search of a Mission – George Will, Washington Post

… Marines have an institutional memory of "small wars," from the Philippines to Central America, and this competence serves them well in Iraq, which is, an officer here says, "a thousand microcosms." But the exigencies of the protracted Iraq commitment have forced the Marines to adopt vehicles that are heavier and bigger than can easily travel with an expeditionary force on ships. And there is tension between the "nation-building" dimension of the Marines' Iraq mission and the Corps' distinctive warrior esprit, which is integral to why the nation wants the Corps.

Officers studying here at the Marine Corps University after tours in Iraq dutifully say they understand that they serve their combat mission -- destroying the enemy -- when they increase the host nation's capacity for governance. Besides, says one officer, when his units are helping with garbage collection, they know that "garbage collection is a matter of life and death because there are IEDs [improvised explosive devices] hidden under that garbage."

Still, no one becomes a Marine to collect garbage or otherwise nurture civil societies. And as one officer here notes with some asperity, there is "no Goldwater-Nichols Act for the rest of the government." That act required "jointness" -- collaborative operations -- by the services. Civilian agencies that do not play well together have fumbled the ball in Iraq, and the military has been forced to pick it up. This draws the military deeper into the sensitive responsibility for tutoring civilians who assign the forces nonmilitary tasks…

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Of all the military bugle calls, none is so easily recognized or more apt to render emotion than the call Taps.

The melody is both eloquent and haunting, while the history of its origin is interesting and somewhat clouded in controversy. In the British army, a similar type of signal called Last Post has been sounded over soldiers' graves since 1885, but the use of Taps is unique to the United States military, since the call is sounded at funerals, wreath-laying ceremonies, and memorial services.

A bugle call that beckons us to remember patriots who served our country with honor and valor, it is the most familiar call and one that moves all who hear it.

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Return on Success? - Michael Barone, Real Clear Politics

For most of the last year, the dominant narrative in most media, and for most voters, has been that we are getting nowhere in Iraq and that the Democrats, after their victory in last November's elections, are going to get out of Iraq.

But events are not playing out that way. Last week, the Senate failed to pass an amendment that would have made it more difficult to rotate troops into Iraq -- and passed, by a 72-to-25 margin, a resolution denouncing the moveon.org ad that attacked "General Betray Us" for "cooking the books."

Polls show that the public approves of Petraeus' performance and endorses his recommendations for going forward with the surge -- the first margin of approval for the administration's course of action in a long time.

Petraeus argued convincingly that we are making real progress in Iraq, that the downward spiral of violence has been turned around and that the battle against al-Qaida in Iraq is meeting with success...

Can't We Get Along? - Dan Thomasson, Washington Times

The drawdown of troops in Iraq without leaving the country and the region in absolute chaos needs one elusive ingredient to succeed — bipartisanship. Without some political detente between Republicans and Democrats and the White House and Congress, the insurgents, terrorists and warring political factions will continue to be emboldened.

At least that's the consensus of the foreign-policy and military analysts who make a living in the arcane world of international politics by sucking long-range solutions out of their thumbs. In this case, they are probably right, seeing what the lack of civility and extreme partisanship have produced on the domestic front. Extending the presidential election stumping to more than two years has exacerbated divisiveness even on issues like the war that cry out for accommodation…

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The full video of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's Columbia Speech can be found here at CBS’s Raw Video. What follows is a Voice of America report on the same by Gary Thomas.

Iran's president got a frosty reception during a rare public appearance at an American university Monday. As VOA correspondent Gary Thomas reports, the less-than-warm welcome came from an unexpected quarter.

Protesters were kept well away from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to Columbia University in New York. But there was one protester he could not avoid: the university's president, Lee Bollinger.

In blistering opening remarks, the university leader, who had been criticized for inviting President Ahmadinejad to speak, lashed out at the Iranian president for his government's record on human rights, support of terrorism, denial of the Holocaust, and the threat to eliminate Israel...

Continue reading "Ahmadinejad's Columbia Speech" »

Why I Want to Keep Fighting in Iraq – Chris Brady, Christian Science Monitor

Despite strong public appeals by Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush this month, American views on the Iraq war remain dim. The latest Pew survey shows that 54 percent say US troops should come home as soon as possible, while 47 percent believe the US will probably or definitely fail to achieve its goals in Iraq. Many experts and politicians, meanwhile, have suggested the war can't be won.

I am a US soldier in Iraq. And I disagree. It's not too late to succeed. The stakes in Iraq are too high not to keep fighting for progress.

As a National Guardsman serving on a Provincial Reconstruction Team, I've seen what is working on the ground in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq…

Iraq's Inevitabilities – Richard Cohen, Washington Post

The creation of modern India and Pakistan entailed the uprooting of more than 12 million people. Bangladesh was itself ripped from Pakistan. The creation of Republika Srpska, an entity you probably have never heard of, was a consequence of the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, which did not exist before the 20th century and did not make it into the 21st. Countries come and countries go. It is time -- isn't it? -- that Iraq went.

The way it should go was long ago devised by Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, unbeknownst to most Americans, a candidate for president of the United States. Biden and Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations, advocate breaking Iraq into a federation consisting of three parts: a Kurdish north, a Sunni center and a Shiite south. Those terms -- north, center and south -- are the vaguest approximations, but they represent a thought, or a despair, or a resignation: The only way Iraq is going to work is if we concede that it is not likely to work the way we wanted it to…

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Volume 9 was published on 25 Sept 07. Volumes 1-8 are available in the back issues area.

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A Bipartisan Way Out of Iraq - Joe Sestak, Christian Science Monitor

There is a bipartisan "way ahead" in Iraq if viewed in terms of progress for America's security and not solely Iraq's, with a strategy that focuses on our national interests in this conflict, not just the interests of Iraqis.

Our troops have served our country courageously and brilliantly, but our engagement in Iraq has degraded our security, pushing our Army to the breaking point so that it cannot confront other pressing security concerns at home and abroad.

My military service as a three-star vice admiral – having led an aircraft carrier battle group in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and served as director of the Navy's anti-terrorism unit – convinces me that an inconclusive, open-ended involvement in Iraq is not in our security interests. Ending this war is necessary. But how we end it is of even greater importance for both our security and our troops' safety. These two considerations are the dual catalysts for a bipartisan discussion on this issue…

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Bush and Iran – Wall Street Journal editorial

The traveling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad circus made for great political theater this week, but the comedy shouldn't detract from its brazen underlying message: The Iranian President believes that the world lacks the will to stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear program, and that the U.S. also can't stop his country from killing GIs in Iraq. The question is what President Bush intends to do about this in his remaining 16 months in office…

We belabor this rhetorical record because it so clearly contrasts with how little the Administration has done about it. As with Syria, the Bush Administration has repeatedly told Iran that it would have to pay a price for its hostile behavior while in the end demanding no such price. This undermines U.S. diplomacy, but in the case of GIs in Iraq it is worse: It means the Commander in Chief is letting an enemy kill Americans with impunity. And the Iranians have got the message: Mr. Ahmadinejad felt confident enough to declare this week at the U.N. that the issue of its nuclear program was "closed." …

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MountainRunner discusses the implications of rescinding Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order 17 and identifies the critical issues associated with integrating Private Military Companies (PMCs) into the military’s mission and providing PMCs with the protection required to successfully conduct assigned tasks.

Iraq's Parliament is considering rescinding CPA Order 17 that protects PMCs from Iraqi law. (BBC and AP stories here). Nice story but bad for the PMCs and incompatible with their mission. If the private military companies, especially the private security companies, are augmenting, or at times replacing US military forces, they must not only be fully integrated into the mission at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, but also protected accordingly. The risk of not doing so is political. By definition, these firms operate in less than secure geographies (no, I'm not using the word state) with weak or absent legal, judicial, and police systems and any action against them such as rescinding CPA Order 17 may be suspect.

The noble but meaningless modification to the UCMJ was a step in the right direction. The companies must be held accountable to the overall mission and not just their profit margin nor beholding exclusively to their principal. The latter is the toughest nut to crack. Also by definition, PSCs are hired for two reasons: military or other security forces are unavailable or they are not flexible enough for the mission…

Read the entire post at MountainRunner.

Continue reading "Rescinding CPA Order 17" »

The U.S. Department of State has launched its first blog – Dipnote. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack:

Welcome to the State Department's first-ever blog, Dipnote. As a communicator for the Department, I have the opportunity to do my fair share of talking on a daily basis. With the launch of Dipnote, we are hoping to start a dialogue with the public. More than ever, world events affect our daily lives--what we see and hear, what we do, and how we work. I hope Dipnote will provide you with a window into the work of the people responsible for our foreign policy, and will give you a chance to be active participants in a community focused on some of the great issues of our world today.

With Dipnote we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the Department. We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about how we operate around the world.

We invite you to participate in this community, and I am looking forward to stepping away from my podium every now and then into the blogosphere. Let the conversation begin.

Also see the DoS Video / Audio page and YouTube channel.

Hat Tip MountainRunner

Continue reading "Dipnote" »

‘I Do Not Belong to Any Tribe’ – W. Thomas Smith Jr., National Review

Iraqi soldiers can fight. That’s something Americans serving alongside them have not always said with complete confidence. At the individual and small-unit level, Iraqis have been fighting well for close to three years. But only now are U.S. troops seeing the dramatic kinds of improvements and capabilities among the brigade and division-sized Iraqi units that one might expect from similarly trained Western forces.

Much of the success of the Iraqi army is a result of training and operational leadership on the part of coalition forces, primarily — at least from my vantage point while there — U.S., British, and Australian soldier-instructors. But there’s another factor: One that has only been a variable in the mix for less than two years: The new Iraqi officer corps.

Iraqi officers today are — by and large — hard-working, battle-seasoned, and generally incorruptible. There are exceptions, (as in any army), but as Iraqi Brigadier General Ishmayil Shihab Muhammad says, “We will deal with them.” …

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September 2007 Foreign Policy Research Institute E-note - Iraq and the “Metrics” System by Michael Noonan. Hat tip to Frank Hoffman for sending this along.

Michael P. Noonan is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he served on a Military Transition Team with an Iraqi Army light infantry battalion. He is the managing director of FPRI’s national security program.

The past few weeks have introduced a whirlwind of reporting on the current situation in Iraq. In particular, the reports of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces in Iraq, the U.S. General Accountability Office’s report, and the September 10-11, 2007 testimonies of Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Army General David Petraeus before the House and Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, respectively, have caused much debate and political mudslinging. The pro- and anti-Bush camps tend to see such reports entirely through their own analytical prism. Worse still, each side has some ground to stand on in making their particular arguments, because the metrics for judging success or retrogression on the ground are often inexact and therefore can yield contradictory findings for or against the war. That being said, the surge and refined counterinsurgency strategy that began earlier this year does appear to be working. Whether the metrics continue on an upward path remains to be seen; still, given the consequences of defeat, they suggest that the current strategy should be allowed to continue until the spring, at which time a fuller picture of the situation on the ground should determine whether the strategy should be totally reexamined and other options undertaken. What follows is a discussion of the surge strategy, the abovementioned reports, and the options moving forward to provide more context and evidence for the position stated above…

Read the entire E-note.

Continue reading "Iraq and the "Metrics" System" »

Does a Bigger Army Mean Another Iraq? - Mark Benjamin, Salon

Hillary Clinton wants 80,000 more soldiers in the Army. Republican hopeful Mitt Romney and Democrat Joe Biden are calling for 100,000 additional troops. Barack Obama thinks the military needs 92,000 more soldiers and Marines. In a speech at the Citadel this spring, Rudy Giuliani said he would add 70,000 new soldiers to the Army. John McCain seems to want 200,000 more soldiers and Marines. John Edwards has said the U.S. “might need a substantial increase of troops,” but has not given a number.

With the Army and Marine Corps stretched to a breaking point because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has become a no-brainer for the major presidential candidates to call for the biggest increase in ground forces since the 1960s. All three Democratic front-runners are either on board or open to the idea, perhaps because for Democrats in particular, it's a risk-free way to look hawkish and burnish national security credentials. "[Democrats] don't want to look weak on defense," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Calling for more troops "is an easy signal of your bellicosity and your willingness to be serious about defense policy."

The next president, therefore, is almost certainly going to be an advocate of adding tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines. But setting aside where these fresh recruits will come from, given current recruiting woes, adding troops will have serious consequences that may not be obvious more than 13 months before the general election. And the consequences may not please antiwar Democratic primary voters. Committing to an expanded Army and Marine Corps implies spending a great deal of additional money on the military. But it also means the presidential candidates are choosing sides in an internal Pentagon dispute -- and they are choosing the side that wants a military designed to fight another war just like the unpopular war the United States has been waging in Iraq since 2003...

Lessons From an Anbar Sheik - Sterling Jensen, Washington Post

From May 2006 until May 2007, I was an interpreter for most of the meetings between U.S. government officials and Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni sheik killed by a car bomb Sept. 13 in Ramadi. I watched as Abu Risha changed over time from an unknown local tribal leader to arguably the United States' best hope in Iraq. His death was a shock to me, but it was not unexpected, given the dangers surrounding him. Unfortunately, though, Abu Risha's life and efforts are being misinterpreted by some in Washington.

Abu Risha was no ordinary sheik or ordinary man -- he was fearless, even if it meant being branded pro-American in an area that not long before had been crawling with al-Qaeda forces…

Abu Risha had hit on how we are going to win the war in Iraq. It's not about having more American troops on the ground. Success will come from supporting local leaders and their security forces…

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Herschel Smith, Captain’s Journal, weighs in with two posts concerning LTC Gian Gentile’s Armed Forces Journal article Eating Soup With a Spoon and ‘hard vs. soft’ COIN:

Small Wars are Still Wars

... I cannot possibly hope to recapitulate the breadth or depth of discussion in the thread at the Small Wars Council, but would hasten to point out several things concerning the discussion now that the subject has become a little more ripe and the argument is slowing. First, I agree wholeheartedly with Gentile’s rebuke of the notion that counterinsurgency is “armed social science.” Second, concerning Dr. Metz’s statement that “we treat counterinsurgency as a variant of war not because that is the most strategically effective approach, but because we have been unable to transcend Cold War thinking,” I respond that counterinsurgency has been a variant of war since at least the Roman empire (which faced a Jewish insurgency in Jerusalem), or even before. In recent history, all one needs for proof of principal is the Small Wars Manual, published in 1940, well before the cold war...

A Modest Proposal

There is yet another discussion thread at the Small Wars Journal that convinces me that I must try one more time to explain the involvement that coalition forces should have with culture and religion in a counterinsurgency campaign. Much confusion swirls around this issue because, in part, people reflexively respond (a) by assuming that you are calling for a holy war, or (b) assuming that your mindset is one of a social scientist hunting for another lever to pull or button to push to cause certain reactions. The former category reacts to my modest proposal by denying that religion should have any role in how one man relates to another, with the later category honestly attempting to engage the issue, but as counterinsurgency professionals using ideas such as center of gravity and societal power structure. Neither camp really gets it yet. So let’s use two simple examples that might show how religion and cultural understanding might aid the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq. These examples are not meant to be sweeping or comprehensive, nor am I constructing doctrine in a short, simple little article. I am attempting to make this simple rather than complex...

Discussion on these issues can be found at the following SWJ and SWC links:

Will the Petraeus Strategy Be the Last? by Bing West

Armed Forces Journal by SWJ Editors

Eating Soup with a Spoon - Small Wars Council

Engaging the Mosque - Small Wars Council

IHT Op Ed: A Soldier in Iraq - Small Wars Council

Continue reading "Small Wars, No Small Debate" »

Blackwater and the Business of War – Los Angeles Times editorial

On Sept. 10, 2001, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gave a speech at the Pentagon on the need to combat "an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America." The enemy wasn't Russia, China or Al Qaeda. It was the Pentagon bureaucracy. Rumsfeld declared a crusade not merely to attack waste but to transform the military into a technologically superior fighting force that would achieve what no modern military ever had: corporate-style efficiency.

Alas, the dream of managing the government more like a business is central to some of the Bush administration's most disastrous mistakes. It was at the heart of the decision to browbeat the generals into agreeing to invade Iraq with a "light footprint," which allowed the insurgency to flourish. Contempt for the bureaucratic process doomed serious postwar planning -- after all, governmental decision-making is political, collaborative and agonizingly slow, and the result is almost always a compromise that may avoid disaster but stifles innovation. To run the occupation of Iraq, President Bush chose a man who promised to make decisions like a CEO, which is why L. Paul Bremer III made the fatal mistake of disbanding the Iraqi army without consulting the cumbersome Washington bureaucracy. And corporate thinking about efficiency led to vastly expanding the outsourcing of functions traditionally performed by the military. The biggest beneficiary has been Blackwater USA, a private security firm with powerful political and personnel ties to an administration that has awarded it more than $1 billion in contracts since 2002…

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Additional Video Interviews Concerning IEDs - Washington Post

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