The Pew Research Center is reporting increasing public optimism about Iraq in poll results released yesterday. From the report:

Public perceptions of the situation in Iraq have become significantly more positive over the past several months, even as opinions about the initial decision to use military force remain mostly negative and unchanged.

The number of Americans who say the military effort is going very or fairly well is much higher now than a year ago (48% vs. 30% in February 2007). There has been a smaller positive change in the number who believe that the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals (now 53%, up from 47% in February 2007).

Opinion on the critical question of whether the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq is now about evenly divided, the first time this has happened since late 2006. About half of those surveyed (49%) say they favor bringing troops home as soon as possible, but most of these (33%) favor gradual withdrawal over the next year or two, rather than immediate withdrawal. Similarly, just under half (47%) say that the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, with most of these (30%) saying that no timetable should be set.

The full report can be found here.

Continue reading "Pew Research Center Poll on Iraq" »

Continue reading "Afghanistan Brief" »

Staying to Help in Iraq - Angelina Jolie, Washington Post
Proxy War - Michael Hirsh, Newsweek
Betrayed by State in Iraq - Owen West, New York Post
Guns, Butter and the War - Jed Babbin, Washington Times
Cut and Run and Then Run Back - James Taranto, Wall Street Journal
Iran: Prisoner of a Symbol - Zarah Ghahramani, Los Angeles Times
Mideast Mayhem - Baltimore Sun editorial
Hamas: What are the Choices? - Frita Ghitis, Miami Herald
Will State Side with Fatah? - Andrew McCarthy, National Review
On Kosovo's Fields - Fouad Ajami, Wall Street Journal
Russia’s Last Hope - Victor Erofeyev, New York Times
Russia: Management Reshuffle? - Ariel Cohen, Washington Times
What Haiti Needs to Sustain Progress - Johanna Mendelson Forman, Miami Herald
Olympic Speech - Washington Post editorial
Lapses in FISA Judgment - Washington Times editorial
If Michael Moore Had a Security Clearance - Gabriel Schoenfeld, Weekly Standard

Continue reading "29 February SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

The Long War: Send in the Marines, subtitled A Marine Corps Operational Employment Concept to Meet an Uncertain Security Environment, articulates the Marine Corps’ concept of force employment to meet the need for counterinsurgency and building partnership capacity. It explains how the Marine Corps will support the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and multinational efforts in the Global War on Terrorism / Long War.

This publication is nested within A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, the Naval Operations Concept 2006 (NOC), and Marine Corps Operating Concepts For A Changing Security Environment, 2nd Edition. The focus of this concept is the establishment of a global, persistent forward presence tailored to build partnership capacity for security, while adapting existing forces and creating new capabilities for an uncertain future. Through these efforts we will enable multinational partnerships to address existing regional challenges, while mitigating the conditions that allow irregular threats to proliferate.

The development of this employment concept outlines the Marine Corps’ strategy for combating irregular enemies in support of the requirements of the NDS. The NDS identifies “uncertainty” as the defining characteristic of the present and future strategic environment.

The Defense Intelligence Community remains convinced that a direct, large-scale military confrontation between the United States and another nation is unlikely for the foreseeable future. Few countries will seek comparable “full-capability” military forces, with most armed forces seeking asymmetric alternatives to functional capability. The US military preeminence in traditional forms of warfare, which we will continue to maintain, has driven our adversaries to irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive methods to further their aims. Together, these methods will comprise a pattern of complex irregular warfare...

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Continue reading "The Long War: Send in the Marines" »

Trying to figure this one out, hopefully the Air Force is not actually blocking all urls with the word blog as a part... Any hoot, if you are reading this blog from an US Air Force controlled network please let us know, either via e-mail or in the comment secton below. Thanks.

From the linked Danger Room blog entry:

The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream."

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "Can You Read Me Now?" »

The Army has announced that the updated Field Manual 3-0 (Operations) is now available online.

The updated version of Joint Publication (JP) 3-0 Joint Operations (with Change 1) has also been publicly released by JFCOM today. (H/T Norfolk at Small Wars Council)

Continue reading "FM 3-0 Now Online" »

How the West Was Won

By Cavguy

This is news the world doesn’t hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious “Sunni Triangle,” is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

- - Ullrich Fichtner, “Hope and Despair in Divided Iraq,” Der Spiegel, 10 August 2007.

Colonel Sean MacFarland and I teamed up to provide a firsthand account of the “Anbar Awakening” in this month’s issue of Military Review. The article details the efforts of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in Ramadi, Iraq from June 2006 to February 2007. Transferring from Tal Afar into the most violent city in Iraq at the time, the Ready First designed a campaign plan that sought to set the conditions for a tribal alliance, and rapidly exploit success through developing local governance and security forces. Supported by the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force leadership, the plan was successfully executed and achieved results beyond anyone’s expectations. This success in execution was carried forward to greater success by the actions of our follow-on unit, 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division.

The article describes the key facets of the plan – population security through combat outposts, combat operations against Al Qaeda insurgents, tense negotiations with tribal sheiks, and a few key individuals and decisive combat actions that shifted the tide of conflict and began the transformation of the nation.

Continue reading "How the West Was Won" »

Abu Muqawama has a post up concerning the new FM 3-0 (Operations), FM 3-4 (Counterinsurgency) and Council member LTC Gian Gentile's view on both - Standing Athwart History, 'Yelling Stop'. A continuation (with links back to the Small Wars Council) of a dynamic debate that often weaves its way through our pages, AM points readers to the current issue of Military Review (FM 3-0 Operations—The Army’s Blueprint by General William Wallace) for more on why FM 3-0 now includes things like stability operations as important alongside major combat operations.

According to LTC Gian Gentile, though, FM 3-0 doesn't really matter, because for all intensive purposes, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency has become the operations manual of the U.S. Army. Gentile is not too happy about this, and in an essay that also runs in Military Review, he takes great exception to a U.S. Army that -- in his eyes -- is now incapable of doing anything but COIN. And he agrees with MG Charlie Dunlap that we can't grow so obsessively focused on counterinsurgency operations that we forget how to do everything else. "Disciples of FM 3-24," Gentile writes, "see themselves as 'out of the box' thinkers when, in fact, they fit very neatly in a ground-based box, one they are unwilling to look beyond."

More at Abu Muqawama.

Continue reading "3-0, 3-24, and all that stuff..." »

The Long Haul in Afghanistan - Roger Cohen, New York Times
Radical Shift in Pakistan - Ballen and Aslan, Baltimore Sun
The Fading Jihadists - David Ignatius, Washington Post
Baghdad: A Neighborhood, Reborn - Pete Hegseth, National Review
Turkey's Risky PKK War - Stefan Nicola, United Press International
War and Peace, the Army Way - Rosa Brooks, Los Angeles Times
A Bully Goes to Baghdad - Amir Taheri, New York Post
The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism - Jerry Muller, Foreign Affairs
God’s Country - Eliza Griswold, The Atlantic
The Coming Religious Peace - Alan Wolfe, The Atlantic
One Nation, Under Gods - Justine Isola, The Atlantic
Fast Forward to 2009 - Victor Davis Hanson, National Review
The End of History - The Atlantic poll
The Democratic Rollback - Larry Diamond, Foreign Affairs
America the Resilient - Stephen Flynn, Foreign Affairs
A Big Bouquet for al Qaeda - Fossella and King, Washington Times
The Unending Saga of Intelligence Reform - Paul Pillar, Foreign Affairs
Bugging our Enemies - Clifford May, National Review
Suicide Bombing a Crime - John Sullivan, United Press International
Tragedy of Africa - Walter Williams, Washington Times
Sudan: A Genocide Foretold - Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
Don't Risk Army in Kenya's Tribal Divide - Bronwen Maddox, London Times
Egypt's Identity Crisis - Paul Marshall, Weekly Standard
Obama: A New War in the Middle East? - Greg Sheridan, The Australian
Solution for the US–Iran Nuclear Standoff - Luers, Pickering and Walsh, NYRB
Claps and Clapton in N. Korea - Christian Science Monitor editorial
A Little Nuke Music - New York Times editorial
Burma's Faux Democracy - San Francisco Chronicle editorial
Kosovo: Partitions Within Partitions - Ivan Eland, Washington Times
Kosovo is Not Quebec - Val Percival, Ottawa Citizen
Russia 2008 is Not the Evil Empire - Kiril Nourzhanov, Canberra Times
Cyprus Sets an Example - Toronto Star editorial
A Communist for Cyprus - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial
Venezuela's Empty Revolution - Francisco Rodríguez, Foreign Affairs
Cuba After Fidel - Duncan Currie, Weekly Standard
Same Old Guard Pulling the Strings - Marifeli Pérez-Stable, Miami Herald
William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P. - National Review editorial
Up From Liberalism - Wall Street Journal editorial
William F. Buckley Jr. - Washington Post editorial
William F. Buckley Jr. - Washington Times editorial
William F. Buckley Jr. - Robert Semple Jr., New York Times

Continue reading "28 February SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Much Small Wars food for thought over at Kings of War in post Greece and Rome in Iraq.

Who’s good at small wars?

The answer is still debated, but the question endures because it goes to the heart of Atlantic relations and British identity...

This is an argument about a lot of things. About history: the British fought many insurgencies. So too did America, as Max Boot shows. American has a whole heritage of small wars, won and lost, it could draw on. But Britain prides itself on a depth of experience and inherited wisdom. One only has to start talking about COIN and the reverent names of Malaya and Templer are summoned.

Its also an argument about Britain’s place in the world. More bluntly, about the eclipse of British global power. Its empire lost, its armed forces shrunk, and its strategic role and identity ambiguous, the complex business of patrolling frontiers overseas has become a site through which Britons (and Americans) articulate a relationship between the old hegemon and the new.

There are, in fact, good reasons to doubt whether anyone really has a natural expertise at counter-insurgency. Who is intuitively good at eating soup with a knife?

Read it all.

Continue reading "Kings of War: Greece and Rome in Iraq" »

Bumped, last contribution has been posted and the link is to the entire Osinga Roundtable archive...

Roundtable on Osinga’s Science, Strategy and War at Chicago Boyz and moderated by Zenpundit.

A blogging roundtable on Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Colonel Frans P. Osinga. Slightly over ten years since his death, the influential strategist and iconoclastic USAF Colonel John Boyd remains a subject of controversy despite the fact that (or more likely, because) many of his ideas impacted and informed military “transformation”, Network-centric Operations and the theory of 4th Generation Warfare.

Good stuff and several Small Wars Council members are participating.

Continue reading "Roundtable on Osinga’s Science, Strategy and War (Bumped)" »

FOX News is reporting that Marine Commandant General James Conway is heeding his combat Marines' advice by ordering a halt to the rest of an unfilled order of Protective Products International's Modular Tactical Vest (MTV).

The Pentagon and Marine Corps authorized the purchase of 84,000 bulletproof vests in 2006 that not only are too heavy but are so impractical that some U.S. Marines are asking for their old vests back so they can remain agile enough to fight.

Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway wants to know who authorized the costly purchase of the nearly 30-pound flak jackets...

Body Armor Wars in the Marine Corps - Herschel Smith, The Captain's Journal

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

Continue reading "Marines Give Modular Tactical Vest (MTV) Thumbs Down" »

Matt Armstrong has a piece up at his MountainRunner blog - AFRICOM: DOA or in Need of Better Marketing? No and Yes.

Like Mark Twain's "death" in 1897 (he died in 1910), reports of AFRICOM's demise may be exaggerated. Concerns that AFRICOM hasn't been thought out or is unnecessary aren't supported by the actions and statements of those charged with building this entity. However, based on the poor marketing of AFRICOM, these concerns are not surprising.

I attended USC's AFRICOM conference earlier this month and between panel discussions and offline conversations, I came away with a new appreciation (and hope) for the newest, and very different, command.

This is not like the other Combatant Commands (one DOD representative said they dropped "Combatant" from the title, but depending on where you look, all commands have that word or none of the commands include that adjective). Also unlike other commands, this is "focused on prevention and not containment or fighting wars." This is, as one speaker continued, is a "risk-laden experiment" that is like an Ironman with multidisciplinary requirements and always different demands (note: thank you for not saying it's a marathon... once you've done one marathon, they're easy, you can "fake" a marathon... Ironman triathlons are always unpredictable, I know, I've done five.). The goal, he continued, was to "keep combat troops off the continent for 50 years" because the consensus was, once troops landed on Africa, it would be extremely difficult to take them off...

Much more at MountainRunner.

Continue reading "AFRICOM: DOA or in Need of Better Marketing?" »

Lessons on the Long War - Pete Hegseth, National Review
15 Years@War - Andrew McCarthy, National Review
Why We Need to Nail Osama - Elbridge Colby, Washington Times
Al Qaeda's Resurgence - Gartenstein-Ross and Dabruzzi, Weekly Standard
Clinging to Defeatism - Washington Times editorial
Guns in the Iraqi Desert - Michael Trotten, Middle East Journal
Canada: The General Goes Too Far - Toronto Star editorial
Canada's Military-industrial Complex - Linda McQuaig, Toronto Star
Waiting for a US-Iran Handshake - Iason Athanasiadis, Christian Science Monitor
Mullahs in Space - Peter Brookes, New York Post
Setback in Kenya - Los Angeles Times editorial
China Gestures on Darfur - Washington Times editorial
Darfur First - Helle Dale, Washington Times
Another Conflict Could Dwarf Darfur - Scott Baldauf, Christian Science Monitor
Europe's Time to Choose - Paul Belien, Washington Times
Serbia: One Nation, Indivisible - Vuk Jeremic, New York Times
EU Angst - Richard Rahn, Washington Times
British Muslims Trying to Prove Loyalty - Daniel Hannan, London Daily Telegraph
Vladimir Putin’s Russia - New York Times editorial
In Concert with North Korea - Boston Globe editorial
Winter of the Patriarchs - Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Fidel Now the Consultant in Chief - Michael Putny, Miami Herald
A Tortured Defense - Jonathan Turley, USA Today
How Do You Take Down a Great Soldier? - Sabin Willett, Boston Globe
Australia's Defence Pitfalls Still a Worry - Neil James, Canberra Times
Better Treatment for Allies - Los Angeles Times editorial

Continue reading "27 February SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

The March – April 2008 issue of Military Review has been posted to the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center web site. Ton of good stuff, enjoy.

FM 3-0 Operations—The Army’s Blueprint by General William S. Wallace, U.S. Army. TRADOC’s commander introduces the newest version of FM 3-0, Operations, the Army’s guide to operating in the 21st century.

Featured Articles

Restoring Hope: Economic Revitalization in Iraq Moves Forward by Paul A. Brinkley, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Business Transformation. A good news update concerning efforts to modernize Iraq’s economy.

Human Terrain Mapping: A Critical First Step to Winning the COIN Fight by Lieutenant Colonel Jack Marr, U.S. Army; Major John Cushing, U.S. Army; Captain Brandon Garner, U.S. Army; Captain Richard Thompson, U.S. Army. Human terrain mapping offers a systematic method to obtain the information Soldiers need to succeed in counterinsurgency.

Combating a Modern Insurgency: Combined Task Force Devil in Afghanistan by Colonel (P) Patrick Donahue, U.S. Army, and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Fenzel, U.S. Army. Two principals describe how Combined Task Force Devil employed a balanced strategy of kinetic, non-kinetic, and political actions to quiet eastern Afghanistan.

Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point by Major Niel Smith, U.S. Army, and Colonel Sean MacFarland, U.S. Army. The “Anbar Awakening”—what some have called the “Gettysburg of Iraq”—resulted from the careful application of multiple lines of operation, among them the deliberate cultivation of local leaders.

Polish Military Police Specialized Units by Major General Bogusław Pacek, Polish Army. Poland is taking the lead in developing NATO’s special police units. The concept’s designer rounds out the specifics behind these highly capable modular forces.

A Strategic Failure: American Information Control Policy in Occupied Iraq by Dr. Cora Sol Goldstein. U.S. press policy implemented in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad failed miserably. Decision-makers might have looked to occupied Germany circa 1945 for a better plan.

The Reflective Military Practitioner: How Military Professionals Think in Action by Colonel Christopher R. Paparone, U.S. Army, Retired, Ph.D. and Colonel George Reed, U.S. Army, Retired, Ph.D. Understanding the social processes at work in the Army’s construction of professional knowledge can prevent inertia, ossification, and, ultimately, irrelevance.

Lessons in Leadership: The Battle of Balaklava, 1854 by Dr. Anna Maria Brudenell. Balaklava and its famous charge have become bywords for stubborn heroism, devotion to duty, and steadfastness in the face of overwhelming odds—but also futility, waste, incompetence, and poor communication.

Follow the Money: The Army Finance Corps and Iraqi Financial Independence by Lieutenant Colonel Laura Landes, U.S. Army. Without a sound currency and an interbank market, any appearance of progress in Iraq may be illusory.

Contest Winners

Preparing for Economics in Stability Operations by Lieutenant Colonel David A. Anderson, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired, and Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wallen, U.S. Air Force. During stability operations, economic actions become as important as military actions.

Stabilizing Influence: Micro-Financial Services Capability by James E. Shircliffe Jr. Micro-financial services that offer very small loans and savings accounts to the less affluent should be part of all U.S. stability operations.

Insights

Hybrid Wars by Colonel John J. McCuen, U.S. Army, Retired. To win a hybrid war, the U.S. must succeed on the conventional battlefield and in the “population battlegrounds” at home and abroad.

Listen to the Airman by Lieutenant Colonel Gian P. Gentile, U.S. Army. An Air War University monograph warns that we have become dogmatic in our single-minded pursuit of a proper COIN strategy. It should be required reading for all Army officers.

Get Smart on COIN

The Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS) has established an Army-level knowledge management system to support Soldiers and leaders in the performance of their respective operational missions. BCKS’s primary mission is to support the operational domain (deployed units) with a secondary mission to the institutional domain (schoolhouse). BCKS provides ongoing, near real-time support to the Army’s battle command, doctrine development, leader development, and education and training programs. In January 2006 BCKS established the COIN Forum to provide an opportunity for military, government, and civilian personnel, as well as organizations, to come together to collaborate and share their professional knowledge on all aspects of counterinsurgency operations.

Continue reading "Military Review: March - April 2008 Issue" »

The Department of Defense Bloggers Roundtable featured Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV on the Army's new new operations manual (FM 3-0) that elevates the mission of stabilizing war-torn nations to make it as important as defeating adversaries on the battlefield.

LTG Caldwell currently serves as the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, the command that oversees the Command and General Staff College and 17 other schools, centers, and training programs located throughout the United States. The Combined Arms Center is also responsible for: development of the Army’s doctrinal manuals, training of the Army’s commissioned and noncommissioned officers, oversight of major collective training exercises, integration of battle command systems and concepts, and supervision of the Army’s Center for the collection and dissemination of lessons learned.

Here are the essential links - Roundtable Audio and Roundtable Transcript.

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "Revised Army Doctrine Elevates Stabilization" »

Continue reading "24 - 25 February Iraq Briefings" »

Lieutenant Colonel Gian Gentile, who commanded 8-10 Cavalry armored reconnaissance squadron for three years (including a deployment to Baghdad in 2006) until his posting last year to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, hammers out an idea that began on the Small Wars Council in this Army Times piece titled What Lies Beneath.

Reports from Iraq are showing that the war-torn country might finally be on the road to some mix of local and national reconciliation. The recent reduction in violence suggests this might be the case and Iraq’s bleeding may have been stopped.

Yet deals cut with our former Sunni-insurgent enemies to stop fighting us and become our allies against al-Qaida, along with the hope of compromise between the different factions in Iraq and the Iraqi government, may be taking our eyes off the fundamental issue that has yet to be resolved: Who will hold absolute power in Iraq, Shiites or Sunnis?

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "What Lies Beneath" »

Tom Ricks of the Washington Post is reporting that Army Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli appears to be the most likely officer to succeed General David Petraeus as commander Multi-National Force - Iraq by the end of this year.

Since taking over in Iraq in February 2007, Petraeus has become the face of the war effort, receiving unusual deference from the White House and using high-profile testimony last September to stave off Democratic efforts to sharply curtail the U.S. presence in Iraq. Widely credited with the success of the "surge" -- the counteroffensive that sharply reduced violence in Iraq last year -- Petraeus has indicated interest in moving sometime this year to the top U.S. military slot in Europe, where he could attempt to revitalize the flagging NATO alliance.

Chiarelli is currently the senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Prior to that he was the Special Assistant to the Commander of United States Central Command for the Development of Regional Military Capability. From November of 2005 through February 2006, he served as the Commander of the Multi-National Corps - Iraq. Prior to that he was Commanding General, 1st Cavalry Division to include the Division's participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "Chiarelli Likely to Replace Petraeus" »

We linked earlier to this fine New York Times Magazine piece, now reposting in case you missed it. As an e-mail from LTC John Nagl said...

The cover story of yesterday's "New York Times Magazine" is the best reporting I've seen on Afghanistan, ever.

The story is about CPT Dan Kearney's B/2-503 IN. 2-503rd is commanded by my friend LTC Bill Ostlund and is responsible for the Korengal River valley, the site of the toughest fighting now happening in Iraq or Afghanistan. The people in the Korengal River Valley don't support the coalition or the Afghan government; 2-503 has no one to drink tea with and nowhere near enough troops to provide security to the population.

The story illustrates clearly how many more troops we need in Afghanistan--NATO, Afghan, and US--and how hard counterinsurgency is when you don't have anyone to partner with; Battle Company soldiers are simply strangers in a strange land. If you don't have time to read it, at least look at the photos.

Once you see them--some of the best combat footage of any wa