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We received this "Who's Who" current history recap out of the blue from Hamid Hussain. He was born and raised in Peshawar, is an allergist by profession, but has been unable to cure his affliction with military history. That condition has been observed before on these premises. Hamid is now freelancing and doing analysis on security issues in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East.
As for this piece, many of the players and muscle movements will be familiar to regulars around here. For folks that haven't been following the story for long, it's a handy recap and there are plenty of links to many of the milestone articles. Here it is basically as received, with some minimal tweaks to the links. Thanks, Hamid, and good luck with your new venture.
Courageous Colonels
by Hamid Hussain
‘It takes one madman to throw a stone down the well. It takes ten wise persons to get it out’.
- A Persian proverb
In the last three years there has been a subtle shift in U.S. military thinking where colonel level officers have come to the forefront of a debate about ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of this debate is going on the sidelines away from the media limelight but influence of some colonels is being felt well beyond their rank. This article will summarize the background of some of these mid-level officers and the important role they played in the shift in Iraq policy as far as military operations are concerned. It will also look at current ongoing contribution of these officers and point to some of the potential pitfalls of solutions offered by these officers for a diverse and very complex strategic environment.
Traditionally there are two types of mid level officers. One is ‘commander’ type excelling in combat at company and battalion level but not having necessary intellectual capacity to see the bigger picture. Other group is ‘intellectual’ type having the capacity to think in various dimensions but are poor managers of men therefore they are usually not successful in combat. The group under discussion is unique in that they have not only excelled in combat but almost all of them hold a PhD. These colonels have a rare combination of combat experience along with impeccable academic credentials. They have been to the hell hole in Iraq and saw their comrades killed and maimed partly due to the inertia of their own higher command. The group has been given various titles such as ‘Council of Colonels’, ‘Brainiac Brigade’, ‘Patreaus’s PhD Posse’, ‘Petraus’s Guys’ and ‘Baghdad Brain Trust’. Former Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was probably a bit ahead of his time. He was not convinced that army was being trained for coming conflicts and he chose a retired colonel to diagnose the malaise affecting the organization. In 2000, he asked retired Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Wong to look at the overhaul of army training. Shinseki liked Wong’s findings and ‘sent him into the lion’s den of two-star general’s conference to present his findings’. (Dan Baum. Battle Lessons. The New Yorker. January 17, 2005.) As expected this did not stir any enthusiasm among the senior brass. Life was going on at a usual pace in the army until it got its rude awakening when it was ordered into Iraq in 2003.
Soldiers on the ground very quickly realized that all was not well after Iraq invasion in 2003. It became quite clear to company and battalion commanders that things were not going in the right direction, however they also noticed that senior officers had no firm grip on the situation. Senior officers were cowed down by abrasive Defense Secretary Donald Rusmfeld and most of them simply kept their mouth shut. A group of thinking colonels started to voice their opinions which were not in conformity with conventional wisdom. Except one, none of them had any special academic interest in counterinsurgency. Their PhD dissertations were about army budget cuts, infantry offensive in Europe in Second World War, Thomas Jefferson and failure of senior brass in Vietnam. One thing which was common among this group was the intellectual capacity to grasp a rapidly changing battlefield which was unfolding in front of their eyes.
In 2006, one group of colonels was assembled as a study group on Iraq strategy at Joint Chiefs when General Peter Pace was Chairman. In the ensuing year, they contributed their input at various forums. In early 2007, a group of colonels along with few other civilians was herded together under Joint Strategic Assessment Team (JSAT) where they spent long hours debating all options. (See Newsweeks's Braniac Brigade). Goal of U.S. army at that time was to hand over to Iraqi forces as soon as possible no matter whether they were ready or not and pull back as country was sinking rapidly into a ferocious civil war. This group of colonels convinced the senior brass about their case of abandoning the idea of ‘commuter war’. U.S. soldiers were securely penned behind heavily fortified large bases and they were commuting to battlefields in tanks and Bradley armored vehicles with guns blazing and then coming back home in the evening to rest. In the process they had only earned hatred of most neutral Iraqis who were on the receiving end. The colonels advocated a bold albeit risky plan of sending soldiers to live with Iraqi forces and in the neighborhoods to protect the population. Majority of senior officers were not enthusiastic about sending more troops which was in line with American public opinion. However President George Bush was not willing to scale back and this new idea was quickly embraced by him.
The idea was fraught with dangers and in traditionally casualty averse senior brass and American public it could have easily backfired. There was a distinct possibility that new approach would expose U.S. soldiers to more harm and if large number of soldiers were killed and wounded, the public support could have evaporated more quickly. This could have then heralded a hasty and messy retreat. However, at that particular time some senior officers feared a ‘Vietnam style collapse’ of the whole Iraq adventure and started to use the dreadful F word of ‘failure’. In the absence of any coherent plan of their own, they concluded that the risk was worth taking.
A brief review of background of this group of colonels is essential to understand how their thought process evolved in the middle of a sanguine war. Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen is an Australian army officer. His experience includes a short stint in East Timor after which he emerged as expert on terrorist groups. In post-September 11 world, various security entities began mushrooming in all departments of U.S. government, adding more bureaucracy rather than fresh ideas. He landed in one of State Department’s shop named Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism where he was Chief Strategist for the office. In 2006, he wrote a mini counterinsurgency manual for company level officers. (David Kilcullen. ‘Twenty Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency’. Military Review, Insights, May-June 2006, pp. 103-108.) He advised General David Petraeus on various issues pertaining to Iraq war.
Colonel H. R. McMaster served as Director of the Commander’s Advisory Group at CENTCOM from 2003-2004. He commanded 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar area in 2005. His bold initiative in the absence of higher command plan saved Tel Afar which was then known as ‘second Fallujah’. This Sunday Times piece praised him stating that ‘If there had been more McMasters in Baghdad in the beginning, and less US hubris, Iraqis might be in a far better position’. After a stint at International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he served as special assistant to General David Petraeus. McMaster was passed over for promotion twice but finally in July 2008, he was promoted to Brigadier rank and appointed director of newly created Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) at US Army Training & Doctrine Command. Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl is an armored corps officer who served with Ist Battalion of 34th Armored Regiment in Iraq in early part of the war. After Iraq tour, he served as an assistant to then Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and commanded a battalion which trained U.S. soldiers for their Iraq tour focusing on how to train Iraqi forces. He has decided to leave army and join Center for a New American Security. Academically, his PhD dissertation was about war in Malaya and Vietnam.
Colonel Peter Mansoor commanded Ist Brigade of Ist Armored Division in Baghdad and spent a little over a year in combat zone in 2003-04. Later, he served as director of Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth and executive officer of General Petraeus in Baghdad. Mansoor was not promoted to the next rank and joined the faculty of Ohio State University. His PhD thesis was about U.S. infantry offensive in Europe during Second World War. Colonel Michael Meese is a gunner who has served as executive officer of Petraeus when later served in Bosnia in 2001. In 2003, he was special advisor to then Major General David Petraeus who was commanding 101st Airborne in Mosul in the early stages of Iraq war. On academic side he is an economist and currently deputy head of Social Science Department of Military Academy at West Point.
Colonel Sean McFarland commanded Ist Brigade of Ist Armored Division in Ramadi in 2006. On his own initiative, he focused on counterinsurgency measures rather than blindly following senior commanders obsession of ‘capture and kill’ strategy. He was serving as commander, Joint task Force North at US Northern Command when he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier in July 2008. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Miller joined 3rd Battalion of 187th Infantry Regiment where his first commanding officer was then Lieutenant Colonel David Petraeus. His PhD dissertation was about doctrinal changes in U.S. army. In 2004, he became executive officer of Lieutenant General David Petraeus who was then heading Multi National Security Transition Command responsible for training Iraqi security forces and police. Petraeus called him back to Iraq during the surge where he served as Deputy Director of Commander’s Initiatives Group and in this capacity was an influential member of the group of colonels advising about the changed course. Since early 2008, he has been working as special assistant to the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen.
Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Ollivant served as the operations officer for Ist Battalion of 5th Cavalry Regiment in the tough neighborhoods of Baghdad, Najaf and Fallujah. Later, he became Chief of Plans of Multi-National Division in Baghdad and in this capacity was the chief architect of the security plan for Baghdad. He is now Director of Iraq on the National Security Council. Brigadier William Rapp is an Engineers officer with PhD from Stanford University. He served in Iraq with 101st Airborne Division in North where he commanded 555 Combat Engineer Group. He was a key player of the in house team assembled by Petraeus. He served as Director of Commander’s Initiatives Group from February 2007-February 2008 which was advisory group for Petraeus in Iraq executing the surge. Lieutenant Colonel William Ostlund commanded 2nd Battalion of 503rd Infantry Regiment (part of 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team) in Eastern Afghanistan. In July 2008, nine soldiers of Ostlund’s battalion were killed in an attack on the forward post in Wanat in eastern Afghanistan. Lieutenant Colonel Jen Easterly contributed to the deliberations for senior brass and his input was likely about the role of computers and internet in the operation. He served as director’s fellow for the National Security Agency and in July 2008 took command of the newly raised Army Network Warfare Battalion (ANWB).
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling’s case is most important. He is an artilleryman and has served two tours in Iraq. First tour was with an artillery battalion which was involved in training Iraqi security forces. Second time, he served as deputy commander of 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 2005. Yingling holds masters degree from University of Chicago. In May 2007, he published an article in Armed Forces Journal titled ‘A Failure in Generalship’ accusing senior brass of failing the nation and the army. He commented that ‘the system that produces our generals does little to reward creativity and moral courage.’ The piece itself was astonishing as well as the fact that an important army journal decided to publish it. An Iraq veteran and history professor at West Point Colonel Matthew Moten stated that Yingling was ‘speaking some truths that most of us talk about over beers’ but ‘very few of us have the courage or foolhardiness to put them in print’. To the credit of the army rather than ending his career which many expected, he was given a seat at the table of debate. The institutional response to Yingling’s piece shows the approach of different segments of the organization. Fort Hood Commandant Major General Jeff Hammond assembled about 200 Captains to announce that ‘Colonel Yingling wasn’t competent to judge generals because he had never been one and has never worn the shoes of a general’. Colonel Kevin Benson of Army’s School for Advanced Military Studies which trains best Majors of the army for future dropped all lesson plans and let his students discuss Yingling’s article. Yingling co-authored with Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl few pieces about counterinsurgency tactics. (New Rules for New Enemies. Armed Forces Journal, October 2006, and The FA in the Long War: A New Mission in COIN. Field Artillery Magazine. July-August 2006.
Lieutenant Colonel Gian P. Gentile is among the minority of colonels who warns against drinking too much from the goblet of counterinsurgency and a critic of his counterinsurgency enthusiast colleagues. He has doctorate in history from Stanford and teaches at West Point. He has served two tours in Iraq. He argues that decrease in violence in Iraq is mainly due to paying off Sunni insurgents and unilateral ceasefire of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish-al-Mahdi militia and not due to ‘surge’ (Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities, World Politics Review). He warns that counterinsurgency gurus are advocating a narrative which ‘resurrects dubious battlefield lessons from the past – Vietnam, principally – applies them to Iraq, and extrapolates from there into an unknown future’ (A (Slightly) Better War: A Narrative and Its Defects. World Affairs). He is not willing to accept the success of the surge although in 2006 what he wished has now been achieved. He wrote then that, ‘The war I faced was an insurgency within a civil war. I wish it had been the other way around. Had it been a civil war within an insurgency, the extremes could have been targeted and controlled and the large center of the people moved toward local compromise’ (In the Middle of a Civil War. The Washington Post, August 07, 2007). The civil war within insurgency occurred when tribal and nationalist element broke with Al-Qaeda in Iraq and turned on extremists. This also gave U.S. army the opportunity to tame Shia militias and at least a temporary compromise has been reached. However, we should be aware of the fact that ethnic and sectarian communities have been consolidated in their own respective areas after ‘cleansing’ with few mixed areas left which was also a contributing factor in decreasing the ferocity of the fratricidal war among Iraqis.
We are walking into a dangerous arena if we over simply the past experience by arguing that Vietnam was lost due to bad tactics and if we had a good cook book of a counterinsurgency manual we could have won it. And now that we have mastered a cook book we can simply march into any country whenever we want. Gentile is not willing to give surge the credit it deserves, however he also has a point. In this regard, colonel Gentile is correct when he states about Vietnam that ‘we lost it for reasons having less to do with tactics than with the will, perseverance, cohesion, indigenous support, and sheer determination of the other side, coupled with the absence of any of those things on the American side’. (Gentile. A (Slightly) Better War, World Affairs) Similarly, if we learn a wrong lesson from Iraq, we risk a much greater danger in the future military posture. In any foreign adventure, no matter how we present it, a large number of people of host country and world opinion will consider presence of U.S. troops as an occupation force. We have the luxury of using euphemisms of ‘host nation’ but in reality counterinsurgency gurus are advocating occupation of lands of other people. Many of these countries are very fragile and sometimes our own ill thought actions generate new waves of complex violent paroxysms. Our ill fated entry into Iraq generated a tsunami of hatred among the Muslim world. The result was radicalization of hitherto neutral Muslim populations all over the world. The anger and sense of humiliation generated meteors traveling in all directions and the result was horrific bombings in London and Spain.
First rule of the game is to see things as they are and try not to create an alternative reality which fits into our own narrative. The plain fact is that we are not welcome in many parts of the world in any capacity let alone tolerance of our heavily armed troops knocking at doors of other people. It is crucial that information is two way to include narratives from other societies and cultures to understand their point of view whether we agree with it or not. Current input from some dedicated officers is valuable in extracting ourselves from a difficult situation but we should not loose the sight and still need to focus on the central theme of how not to get into the mess in the first place. Americans have very little interaction at a level where others can express their opinions freely. The sources of information from ‘other side’ on the basis of which we are drawing our conclusions are based on opinions of some ‘overrated natives’ (a group of Americans of Arab or Afghan descent) or people who are actively competing with each other for political and economic resources in Iraq and Afghanistan and using us for their own reasons.
One flaw in most of the writings of these new military counterinsurgency experts is that their narrative is being woven in a vacuum. They are letting their imagination run wild and simply adding a long laundry list of restructuring of the army and personnel training. Any end needs to be carefully balanced with means and we can not keep checking on ‘to do list’ without paying attention to the political, social and economic landscape of our country. Asking a platoon and company commander to be master of language and culture, negotiator, diplomat, economic advisor as well as a first rate soldier is quite a tall order. Nagl and Yingling created a new acronym SWEAT-MS which stands for Sewer, Water, Electricity, Academics, Trash, Medical and Security. (Nagl & Yingling. FA in COIN) We are churning so many acronyms that very soon army will have its own encyclopedia of acronyms. They are advocating that a low and mid level officer should be trained to be an academic, electrician, plumber and garbage collector in an alien country. He is expected to learn things in few years which will need a life time. General Abraham Roberts spent fifty years in India and his son Field Marshal Frederick Roberts spent forty two years in India. Between father and son it comes out to be ninety two years which helped British to embark on significant social engineering projects in alien lands. We are sending young men for twelve months rotations and expecting the same results. The means simply don’t match the goals.
Advocates of counterinsurgency need to streamline their thought process. Their long list for army overhaul includes making it more decentralized, adding combined arms battalions, making the officers not only good at shooting but also proficient in languages and culturally adept to little known societies all around the globe. These are all fine ideas but they need to be put in a proper perspective. In addition, some first criticize army for being too specialist oriented and not well rounded but then turn around and advocate raising a whole new corps of super specialist advisors consisting of no less than 20,000 soldiers (see Lt. Colonel John A. Nagl and Lt. Colonel Paul L. Yingling. New Rules for New Enemies. Armed Forces Journal, October 2006, and Interview of Lt. Colonel John Nagl with Laura Rozen, Mother Jones, October 18, 2007). On one hand, they advocate that the basic tenet of counterinsurgency is to empower central government and make it supreme not only in coercive power but also in political and economic arenas. This they consider essential to overcome competing tribal, sectarian and ethnic power centers. Then in a one hundred and eighty degree turn, they applaud arming and directly paying tribal and sectarian militias which operate in their own fiefdoms completely out of control of central government. (For this see view see Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Ollivant and Captain Eric D. Chewning. Producing Victory: A 2007 Postscript for Implementation. Military Review, March-April 2007) Now that General Petraeus is heading CENTCOM, it is likely that same recipe of directly arming and supporting tribal groups is being contemplated for Pakistan’s turbulent tribal areas.
We always need to look at the strategic landscape which is indeed complex. Risk benefit analysis of any action needs to be more thorough and methodical taking into consideration different views to limit negative fall out. A good example is wholesale use of Predator attacks inside Pakistan. We have been able to eliminate some extremists but in the process we have also made the position of Pakistan government very precarious. It is like pulling the rug from under the feet of political and military leadership of Pakistan. Our dilemma is that to achieve some immediate tactical gains we end up speeding up the process of fragmentation of fragile societies. We then turn around to try to put back the humpty dumpty so that non-state actors do not operate freely in the ungovernable areas. These actions are a good example of self fulfilled prophecies. These countries have enormous social, economic, political and security problems. They are going to tackle them in their own way and go through social upheaval and fight their own civil wars. If we directly insert ourselves in this complex equation, we will get all the blame for everything wrong and no credit for anything which goes well. We will surely be spending our blood and treasure in a thankless job.
There needs to be a clear differentiation between conventional war, insurgency and fight against extremism perpetrated by non-state actors. Our major focus should be on tackling threats from extremist groups for which we have to look for different tools in our tool box. The fight against extremists will be fought by bridging gulfs between nation states, solving existing conflicts, preventing new conflicts, forging regional cooperation and developing close working relations between intelligence agencies. American people want a safe and secure environment but the very temperament of American people is not conducive for such neo-colonial concepts even if we are able to co-opt some liberal human right activists or intellectuals from liberal east coast universities (Columbia University held a reunion of its graduates in the Green Zone in Baghdad). Military obviously has a very important role in the national security but we have to come up with a better model.
There are some disturbing signals that we are not paying attention to feelings of common man on the streets of Middle East. Steve Coll of New Yorker Magazine confronted Petraeus about views of some that current U.S. posture in the region resembles very closely with colonial era where expeditionary forces were followed by civilians to administer the region. Petraeus didn’t address a very important question which is the talk of the town in every café in the Middle East and dismissed the notion stating that at a certain point you have to ask “let’s take the rearview mirrors off the bus”. Petraeus is happy to use Lawrence of Arabia’s methodology who was responsible for restructuring of modern middle east for British colonial empire and work of Captain David Galula of French army on French Algeria; the last battle of French colonialism. However, he does not want to acknowledge the obvious similarities of these past efforts with his own projects in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any strategy prevalent perceptions no matter how unpalatable need to be seriously studied rather than dismissed cavalierly.
A small group of colonels who had participated in combat in Iraq in very difficult circumstances had the intellectual capacity to comprehend the gross mishandling of war effort by senior brass. Most importantly, they had the moral courage to stand up and express their views quite divergent from the senior brass. Senior military brass in the run up to Iraq war and in its conduct of operation was a dismal failure. They failed not only the preparation and competency test but most importantly failed the moral courage test. To the credit of the army as an institution, it turned over ‘the war to its dissidents, who have criticized the way the service has operated there the past three years’ and then literally let them ‘try to wage the war their way’. (Thomas E. Ricks. Officers with PhDs Advising War Effort. The Washington Post) Breaking down many taboos, a batch of colonels was allowed to express themselves freely and according to Colonel Peter Mansoor, “You had colonels challenging the thinking of four-star generals and admirals”. (Steve Coll. The General’s Dilemma. The New Yorker) This is truly unprecedented not only in U.S. army but it will be hard to find such an example in modern military history. Some of these colonels are now advising General Petraeus in his new position of command of critical CENTCOM. Colonel Peter Mansoor has been asked now to look at the wider horizons in the area of responsibility of CENTCOM.
In the years to come, when operational details of the surge are declassified then a clear picture will emerge about the role of the colonels in this endeavor. No matter what is the outcome of the Iraq war, at least at tactical levels, the impact of this ‘colonel’s intellectual coup’ will be felt in U.S. army for the coming decades. However, we will be deluding ourselves if we do not fully comprehend limitations of the case presented by the colonels. It is at best a tactical recipe to get out of a messy situation with least damage. Each colonel brings a sack of leaves to the table which he has carefully collected and catalogued from his respective tree. Now we have several sacks of different varieties of leaves on the table along with flashy power point presentations which can overawe anyone. However, we will still need someone way above among the senior military and political leadership to look at these sacks in their proper perspective and not to confuse these sacks with real jungle. There is a clear and present danger of militarizing our foreign policy if current thought process gains traction at higher echelons of armed forces.
General David Petraeus achieved a remarkable tactical respite in Iraq and he showed true leadership skills by bringing diverging opinions to the table. However, now that Petraeus has found the right hammer in the tool box to address the Iraq conundrum, he needs to tread carefully. There is a risk that by bringing a group of people with similar ideas in the inner circle, his close advisors may become an echo chamber, a charge which was leveled at senior brass earlier. If he carry’s the same hammer now as CENTCOM commander and start to use this hammer for a different job in troubled border areas of Pakistan, then he may be remembered as the general responsible for unleashing the ‘mother of chaos’ by destabilizing Pakistan. If ‘Anbar model’ is replicated in Pakistan’s border areas without serious and in depth analysis then there is a clear and present danger of sending the instability on a new trajectory thus setting the stage for a conflict which may last for at least a generation. The situation is very difficult and complex but if in the quest of stabilizing Afghanistan, Petraeus ends up destabilizing Pakistan, then he may surely bring strategic disaster for U.S. national security interests. Pakistan is surely responsible for some of its ills but some of our actions are adding fuel to the fire and Pakistanis are paying a very heavy price. Large number of Pakistanis both soldiers and civilians are being killed and maimed in steadily escalating violence and majority of Pakistanis hold us responsible for this. No matter how aseptically we think about military affairs, we need to consider the human suffering and can not absolve ourselves. A more cooperative approach between United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan and brining others such as Russia, China and even Iran to the table to focus on common interests is the way forward.
It looks like that everybody is jumping on the already crowded train of counterinsurgency. We are witnessing the process of establishment of a ‘counterinsurgency theme park’ with a huge bureaucracy of its own. In no time, this will become another expensive fixture in Pentagon and vendors and purveyors of its ideas and products will be traveling salesmen of their products. At strategic level, if political and military leadership for a minute thinks that we have mastered the art of counterinsurgency, they may get some delusional ideas in their heads which can send the nation to a real disaster. At strategic level, still U.S. interests are best served by a little pull back rather than thrusting ourselves more deeper into un chartered territories. Strategic myopia of our political leadership coupled with lack of moral courage of military leadership has brought us to our current strategic cul de sac. We need to ponder and reflect more; otherwise we risk political, economic and military bankruptcy in near future making us more vulnerable rather than secure.
War against extremism will be won by earning respect of others and in this an ounce of humility will help us more than anything else. Chinese philosopher and strategist Sun Tzu said long time ago that ‘You don’t want to go to bed at night with more enemies than you started with in the morning.’ Friends are gained by understanding others and focusing on common interests. Respect is earned not demanded and these are the tools which will be needed to isolate extremists. A large part of this war will be fought in the shadows. If we approach in this way, then we need not to patrol the dusty roads in God forsaken lands all around the globe. In the newly found gospel of counterinsurgency, it is stated that counterinsurgency is twenty percent military and eighty percent political endeavourer. By this standard, the fight against extremism is less than five percent military and more than ninety five percent intelligence and building alliances across various divides. Even these new apostles of counterinsurgency know the dangers as one of them colonel H. R. McMaster said, ‘It is so damn complex. If you ever think you have the solution to this, you’re wrong, and you’re dangerous. You have to keep listening and thinking and being critical and self-critical’. (George Packer. The Lesson of Tal Afar. The New Yorker, April 10, 2006.) Recent U.S. presidential elections have generated a wave of hope all around the globe. President elect Barrack Obama will be well served by national security advisors who bring fresh ideas to the table. We have already squandered international goodwill generated in the aftermath of September 11 attacks. It will be tragic if we do it again in eight short years and in that case history will not judge us with kindness.
Victory in the true sense implies that the state of peace, and of one’s people, is better after the war than before. B.H. Liddell Hart
Dr. Hamid Hussain is an independent analyst based in New York. He is an American of Pakistani origin with interest in security affairs of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Middle East. He is President of Coeus Consultants LLC, a private consulting firm specializing in military and security issues of Middle East, Pakistan & Afghanistan. For corrections, comments & critique coeusconsultant@optonline.net