Whatever strategy President Obama chooses for Afghanistan, you can be sure that "benchmarks" or "metrics" will be a big part of the prime-time news conference. "Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course," Obama said in March, when he first reassessed the war. "Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable." So, how do we measure success in Afghanistan? If Obama opts for a narrow counterterrorism approach, the ultimate benchmark is simple: no terrorist attacks against the American homeland. But if he goes with the full McChrystal - a long-term, fully resourced counterinsurgency, with lots of new troops - the indicators of success become murkier.
AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN
Karzai Rules Out Sharing Power - Joshua Partlow and Pamela Constable, Washington Post. President Hamid Karzai's team shifted aggressively into campaign mode Saturday and ruled out any possibility of a power-sharing deal with challenger Abdullah Abdullah ahead of a runoff election in two weeks. "In our view there is no alternative to a second round. This is the only constitutional way to establish a new government" and "put an end to the current crisis," said Karzai's campaign spokesman, Wahid Omar, at a news conference. "All our energy is now focused on preparations for the second round." Abdullah, however, has renewed concerns about the credibility of the Independent Election Commission and wants its leadership replaced before the Nov. 7 vote, according to officials in his campaign. He does not want a repeat of the rampant electoral fraud found in the August first round - much of it favoring Karzai. Abdullah fears nothing will change unless officials he considers loyal to Karzai are removed, the sources said. "We want to go to the second round, but provided that there are some conditions, especially to remove some of these figures from the so-called Independent Election Commission," said Ahmad Wali Massoud, a close ally of Abdullah's. "So long as these people are not being removed from the commission, I don't think we are going to have a free and fair election, because they were the main ones responsible for the rigging and fraud."
Afghan Campaign for Presidential Runoff Starts Under Taliban Threats - Sean Maroney, Voice of America. Taliban insurgents are threatening to target Afghans who vote in the country's November 7 presidential runoff. Afghan election officials are working to improve security while minimizing fraud. The lead up to Afghanistan's second round of voting is beginning much like the first round under the Taliban's threats of violence. Campaigning officially began Saturday in the runoff election between incumbent President Hamid Karzai and top rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. In a statement released Saturday, the Taliban denounced the election as an "American process" and vowed to disrupt it. The country's Independent Election Commission spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor says that so far, the preparations are going smoothly. "The preparations for the second round [are] going on," he said. "Until now, we don't have any specific difficulties or challenges, and we are going to go ahead." Massive fraud in the August 20 election led officials to call for a runoff.
As Afghan Runoff Campaign Opens, Taliban Again Threatens Voters - Laura King, Los Angeles Times. Afghanistan's runoff presidential campaign formally opened Saturday with an ominous repeat from the first round: Taliban threats to disrupt the vote. "If anyone finds themselves injured taking part in this dirty process, they have only themselves to blame," the insurgent movement said in a statement posted on its Pashto-language website. It also denounced the election two weeks from now as a foreign-orchestrated sham. The original Aug. 20 balloting, Afghanistan's second-ever direct presidential election, was marked by violence, mainly scattered on voting day itself but preceded by several weeks of concerted attacks, including major bombings in Kabul, the capital. Neither of the two leading candidates won the 50% plus 1 majority needed to win the first round outright. After two months of wrangling over allegations of massive vote-rigging, the runoff between President Hamid Karzai and his former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, was set for Nov. 7. As the abbreviated race kicked off Saturday, Abdullah's campaign called for the firing of a trio of senior Afghan election officials whom it blamed for allowing widespread fraud to occur. About 1 million ballots originally tallied for Karzai, and smaller numbers for Abdullah and dozens of other candidates, were tossed out last week by international fraud auditors.
4 Afghans Killed as US Convoy Fires at a Car - Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times. An American military convoy patrolling in Kandahar opened fire on a car carrying Afghan civilians on Saturday, killing four and wounding three others, according to a NATO military spokesman and the office of the governor of Kandahar Province. The spokesman for international forces in Afghanistan, Lt. j.g. Tommy Groves, said the troops motioned for the car to stop as it approached, but when it continued to drive toward the convoy, the soldiers opened fire. The troops “tried to signal the fast-approaching vehicle, but fearing their safety, they fired,” he said, adding that the international force was investigating the shooting. The commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has ordered his troops to do everything possible to prevent civilian casualties, which have undermined popular support for international troops here. In the aftermath of some of the recent bombings by the coalition forces, including those of two fuel trucks near Kunduz, which resulted in dozens of civilian casualties, General McChrystal has berated his generals for being too quick to fire.
Pakistani Army Captures Taliban Stronghold - Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, New York Times. After a week of fighting Taliban and Qaeda militants in the mountains of South Waziristan, the Pakistani Army said Saturday that it had captured a town important for both its symbolic and strategic value. The town, Kotkai, most of whose 5,000 residents had already fled, is the home of the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, and one of the most feared Taliban commanders, Qari Hussain. Mr. Hussain is believed to be the organizer and trainer of the group’s suicide bombing squads. The army has been struggling in the treacherous terrain in South Waziristan, long a militant sanctuary. Military officials said Saturday that Kotkai had been taken only after “intense fighting.” Four days ago, the militants repulsed the first army attempt to capture the town and killed nine soldiers, according to a military intelligence officer. It was the first notable sign of progress in what military analysts say will be an arduous slog for the army against a resilient enemy. And it came as Pakistan has been enduring a withering series of terrorist attacks over the past three weeks.
Pakistan Recaptures Taliban Stronghold - Haq Nawaz Khan and Karin Brulliard, Washington Post. The Pakistani army announced that it had recaptured the home town of the country's Taliban chief Saturday, as its soldiers dug deeper into the Islamist insurgent refuge of South Waziristan. But the battle for control of Kotkai, the native village of Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and another militant known for training suicide bombers, underscored the difficulty of the army's mission. Insurgents pushed back Pakistani troops who first took the town early on in the week-old mission, and the recapture Saturday followed hours of what the army described as "intense" pre-dawn clashes. The military launched the ground offensive in South Waziristan after months of planning and weeks of near-daily insurgent attacks across the country. The semiautonomous tribal area is home to the Pakistani Taliban network headed by Mehsud, who officials say planned most of the recent attacks. Victory there could help the government reclaim other areas of the restive northwestern border region, which has become a haven for insurgents who attack inside Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan. Elsewhere in the region Saturday, a suspected US drone strike killed at least 16 insurgents, including the son-in-law and nephew of the area's top Pakistani Taliban commander, said an official in the local administrative office and two intelligence officials.
Village of Taliban Chief Captured - Nicola Smith, The Times. The Pakistani army dealt a psychological blow to the Taliban yesterday after taking the home village of the insurgent leader Hakimullah Mehsud. The seizure of Kotkai after a three-day siege is the second strategic victory for the army in its week-old offensive into the mountainous region of South Waziristan, a stronghold for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants. More than 30,000 troops, backed by helicopters, jet fighters and heavy artillery, are engaged in heavy fighting with 12,000 well-armed insurgents in the treacherous terrain bordering Afghanistan. So far 162 militants and 22 troops have been killed in what the Pakistani army has described as the “mother of all battles”. Kotkai is also the home of Qari Hussain, one of Mehsud’s chief lieutenants. The army said the village was full of bunkers and troops were clearing booby traps and landmines from the streets. There are fears that militant leaders, including Mehsud, may have already escaped to North Waziristan. General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the army chief, told ministers on Friday that the military would try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
Lies, Damn Lies and Counterinsurgency Benchmarks - Carlos Lozada, Washington Post opinion. Whatever strategy President Obama chooses for Afghanistan, you can be sure that "benchmarks" or "metrics" will be a big part of the prime-time news conference. "Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course," Obama said in March, when he first reassessed the war. "Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable." So, how do we measure success in Afghanistan? If Obama opts for a narrow counterterrorism approach, the ultimate benchmark is simple: no terrorist attacks against the American homeland. But if he goes with the full McChrystal - a long-term, fully resourced counterinsurgency, with lots of new troops - the indicators of success become murkier. Acknowledging that "using metrics in Afghanistan is more art than science," Brookings Institution scholars Jason Campbell, Michael E. O'Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro map out the key indicators for a counterinsurgency war in the latest issue of Policy Review. In Iraq, they note, the most critical measures focused on violence and civilian deaths; in Afghanistan, "the most important metrics are those that gauge progress in the capacity and viability of the government."
Afghanistan Could Turn Into Vietnam. Let's Hope So. - Joshua Kurlantzick, Washington Post opinion. Vietnam is the nuclear option of historical analogies. Yet, rather than fear that Afghanistan will become another Vietnam, we should embrace the prospect. If the US relationship with Afghanistan eventually resembles the one we now have with Vietnam, we should be overjoyed. Little more than a generation after a bloody, frustrating war, Vietnam and the United States have become close partners in Southeast Asia, exchanging official visits, building an important trading and strategic relationship and fostering goodwill between governments, businesses and people on both sides. The lessons of the Vietnam War are clear and sobering, but history does not end in 1975, when the last American diplomats fled Saigon. Once large-scale fighting ends in Afghanistan, Washington should strive for the kind of reconciliation it has achieved with Vietnam. America did not win the war there, but over time it has won the peace. As unlikely as it seems today, the same outcome is possible in Afghanistan.
IRAN
UN Inspectors Arrive in Iran to Visit Secret Nuclear Plant - The Times. A team of UN inspectors arrived in Iran this morning to visit the previously secret nuclear facililty at Qom, three weeks after Tehran admitted to the plant's existence. The team of scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will spend three days in Iran as they inspect the facility being built inside a mountain near the holy Shia city south of Tehran, the capital. The inspection will be the first time IAEA inspectors have been allowed access to the uranium enrichment plant. Tehran told the international community about the secret plant on September 21, increasing fears that Tehran is enriching uranium with the ultimate aim of making the bomb. The site had been known about by American and other Western intelligence agencies for some time and while the IAEA criticised the late disclosure, US President Barack Obama warned Iran would face "increased pressure" if it did not come clean on its nuclear activities. What the inspectors find could prove crucial to how the world then deals with Tehran.
US Says Patience With Iran on Nuclear Issue Not Unlimited - David Gollust, Voice of America. The Obama administration signaled impatience with Iran after the Tehran government ignored a Friday deadline to respond to a UN-brokered deal aimed at easing concerns over its nuclear program. Iran has promised a reply by next week. US officials say they're willing to wait a few more days for an Iranian response to the nuclear proposals, but they say the Obama administration is looking for concrete action and does not have unlimited patience. The comments from the State Department came after Iran failed to provide a final response Friday to a proposal brokered by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency under which Tehran would ship abroad much of the low-enriched uranium it has produced in an enrichment effort that has drawn international concern. Under the scheme, Russia would further enrich the uranium to the 20 per cent purity needed for use in a research reactor in Tehran which produces medical isotopes but is running out of fuel.
UNITED STATES
Glittering Emissaries’ Dazzle Wears Off in the Trenches - Mark Landler, New York Times. When President Obama named two marquee diplomats as his special emissaries to the Middle East and to Afghanistan and Pakistan last January, many here wondered whether they would eclipse Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nine months later, the two envoys, Richard C. Holbrooke and George J. Mitchell, are the ones fighting to stay in the limelight. For reasons having to do with personality clashes, deteriorating conditions on the ground and the sheer difficulty of reconciling old enemies, Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Mitchell are both struggling with their portfolios, widely acknowledged to be the most treacherous in American foreign policy. On Friday, Mr. Holbrooke turned up at the State Department podium to deliver a briefing on Pakistan that seemed intended mainly to show that he had not been sidelined, after his absence from efforts last week to persuade President Hamid Karzai to accept the need for a runoff election in Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke clashed with Mr. Karzai in August, after the first round of voting, over the president’s refusal even to consider a runoff, according to several officials. So when it was time to talk Mr. Karzai into acquiescing, Mrs. Clinton turned to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was planning a trip to the region.
UNITED KINGDOM
Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public - Sarah Lyall, New York Times. It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives. A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore. But the intrusions visited on Jenny Paton, a 40-year-old mother of three, were startling just the same. Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car). It turned out that Ms. Paton had broken no rules. Her daughter was admitted to the school. But she has not let the matter rest. Her case, now scheduled to be heard by a regulatory tribunal, has become emblematic of the struggle between personal privacy and the ever more powerful state here.
AFRICA
Fleeing Drought in the Horn of Africa - Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times. For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim's ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hardy enough to survive. This year, Ibrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to this overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya. He's not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia's 18-year civil war. He's fleeing the weather. "I give up," said the father of five as he stood in line recently to register at the camp. After enduring four years of drought and the death of his last 20 animals, Ibrahim, 28, said he has no plans to return. Asked how he proposed to live, Ibrahim shrugged. "I want to be a refugee." Africa is already home to one-third of the 42 million people worldwide uprooted by ethnic slaughter, despots and war. But experts say climate change is quietly driving Africa's displacement crisis to new heights. Ibrahim is one of an estimated 10 million people worldwide who have been driven out of their homes by rising seas, failing rain, desertification or other climate-driven factors.
Africa Signs Off on Intent to Protect Internally Displaced People - Peter Heinlein, Voice of America. An Africa Union summit in Kampala has adopted a landmark convention on the rights of people uprooted from their homes by conflict or natural disasters. But the occasion was tarnished by a lukewarm show of support from member states. The Kampala Convention on the Rights of Internally Displaced People was signed Friday in an elaborate ceremony at an exclusive resort on the outskirts of Kampala. Zambia's President Rupiah Banda was one of the first to affix his signature. He called the document a great achievement, after years of hard work. "I believe I speak for everybody in this assembly when I say that the summit has been a distinct success," he said. The heads of several international humanitarian organizations witnessed the signing. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres hailed the document, noting that Africa, which has roughly half the world's displaced people, is the first region to agree on rules for protecting them.
AMERICAS
Cuban-Americans Rally Support for Honduras Government - Brian Wagner, Voice of America. The ongoing political crisis in Honduras is drawing attention from Cuban-Americans in Miami, who are concerned about the spread of leftist governments in Latin American. Cuban exiles are backing the de facto government, even as Washington supports the ousted Honduran president. Collecting food and medical supplies is a common tool for many Cuban-Americans to offer person-to-person assistance to people on the island. Community leaders say donating basic goods like milk powder and aspirin, which can be scarce in Cuba, has a major impact for Cuban families struggling to survive under Communist rule. A new call for donations, however, is focusing on a different community altogether. Silvia Iriondo is president of the group Mothers and Women against Repression in Cuba. Iriondo says her group wants to stop Honduras from suffering the same fate as Cuba, and it is seeking to defend democracy in Latin America.
ASIA PACIFIC
Asian Summit Off to Shaky Start - Charles McDermid and Jakkapun Kaewsangthong, Los Angeles Times. This year was supposed to be different. Determined to overcome its reputation as an elite fraternity in which hard issues generally went unmentioned, the 10-member Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations gathered in Thailand over the weekend to welcome the dawn of what Thailand's youthful leader has billed a "new" ASEAN. Yet even before the annual summit began, political rivalries and festering embarrassments dominated headlines and raised questions about the group's relevance on the evolving world stage - and its resolve to tackle difficult issues such as poverty and human rights. Under the banner "Enhancing Connectivity, Empowering Peoples," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is hosting the first gathering of ASEAN since the 42-year-old group ratified a long-awaited charter late last year. The charter laid the foundation for forming a European Union-like community, without a common currency, by 2015. "ASEAN used to be a joke," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, a leading Thai journalist and former assistant to the secretary-general of ASEAN. "In the old days, they would get together because they had known each other for years and play golf and talk business. Now it's a different generation, and different language is being used to engage people. "ASEAN is no longer a joke . . . but they have to catch up to new political concepts, or the whole thing will crumble." Kavi said the group is divided along ideological and generational lines that have left it polarized on issues such as human rights, political intervention and territorial disputes.
North Korean Envoy Meets with US Official - Voice of America. A US diplomat has held a rare face-to-face meeting in New York with a North Korean envoy, fueling hopes for progress on stalled nuclear disarmament talks. The State Department said the US special envoy for disarmament talks, Sung Kim, met with North Korean envoy Ri Gun Saturday. The two officials are the second-ranking envoys for international talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. A State Department spokesman said Kim conveyed the US position on denuclearization and the stalled talks to his North Korean counterpart. North Korea withdrew from the talks in April, but says it is ready to return if it gets to speak one-on-one with US officials. The United States has said that any bilateral contacts with North Korea must quickly lead to the resumption of six-party negotiations that also include South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. Ri arrived in the United States on Friday and is due to attend academic forums in New York and California. The State Department stressed that Ri traveled to the United States on the invitation of private US organizations.
As Indonesia Debates Islam's Role, US Stays Out - Andrew Higgins, Washington Post. In the early 1980s, Nasir Tamara, a young Indonesian scholar, needed money to fund a study of Islam and politics. He went to the Jakarta office of the US-based Ford Foundation to ask for help. He left empty-handed. The United States, he was told, was "not interested in getting into Islam." The rebuff came from President Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a US anthropologist who lived in Indonesia for more than a decade. Dunham, who died in 1995, focused on issues of economic development, not matters of faith and politics, sensitive subjects in a country then ruled by a secular-minded autocrat. "It was not fashionable to 'do Islam' back then," Tamara recalled. Today, Indonesia is a democracy and the role of Islam is one of the most important issues facing US policy in a country with many more Muslims than Egypt, Syria, Jordan and all the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf combined. What kind of Islam prevails here is critical to US interests across the wider Muslim world. "This is a fight for ideas, a fight for what kind of future Indonesia wants," said Walter North, Jakarta mission chief for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), who knew Dunham while she was here in the 1980s.
Japan: Burma Could Ease Aung San Suu Kyi's Detention - Voice of America. Japanese officials say a top Burmese official has suggested the military regime could ease restrictions on opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. The officials quote Burma's prime minister, General Thein Sein, as telling a group of Southeast Asian leaders Saturday that authorities could relax the current measures against Aung San Suu Kyi if she, in his words, "maintains a good attitude." Aung San Suu Kyi has in the past supported international sanctions against Burma as a means to pressure the military regime to restore democracy. But recently, she said she is willing to work with the government to get the sanctions lifted. Earlier this month, Aung San Suu Kyi discussed the issue with a Burmese government official and was then allowed to meet with US, Australian and British diplomats. Southeast Asian nations are meeting in Thailand to discuss a range of issues, including human rights, as they seek to form a regional political and economic bloc by 2015.
MIDDLE EAST
Abbas's Call for Elections Deepens Palestinian Divisions - Robert Berger, Voice of America. The Palestinian Authority has announced a date for elections, throwing a wrench into national unity talks with its Islamic militant rivals. Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a decree that presidential and parliamentary elections will take place on January 24. But the announcement only deepened Palestinian divisions. The vote is supposed to take place in the West Bank, which is controlled by Mr. Abbas, and the Gaza Strip which is ruled by its rival faction Hamas. But Hamas quickly rejected the call for elections, saying it is illegal and unconstitutional. Senior Hamas official Ahmad Bahar told a news conference in Gaza that Mr. Abbas's rule is illegitimate and he has no authority to declare elections. He said Mr. Abbas should be put on trial "for impersonating a president." Hamas routed Mr. Abbas's Fatah forces in the Palestinian civil war in Gaza in 2007 and seized control of Gaza; since then, the two factions have been at loggerheads. Mr. Abbas now heads a more moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank that supports the peace process with Israel.
Israel Conference to Open Amid Controversy - Dan Eggen, Washington Post. A Washington conference hosted this week by a new liberal Jewish advocacy group has sparked a diplomatic row and proxy battle over the Obama administration's stance on Israel at a time of simmering tensions between Washington and Israel's right-leaning government. J Street, an advocacy and lobbying firm created 18 months ago, is holding its first annual conference beginning Sunday, with participation from about 150 Democratic members of Congress, many current and former Israeli politicians and US national security adviser James L. Jones, who will be giving a keynote speech Tuesday. But the self-described "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group has been rebuffed in its attempts to get Israel's US ambassador, Michael Oren, to speak at the gathering. In a statement explaining the refusal, the Israeli Embassy accused J Street of endorsing policies that "could impair Israel's interests." The organization also abruptly canceled plans for a "poetry slam" at the event after conservative activists and bloggers unearthed writings by two participants that compared the suffering of Holocaust victims to that of Palestinians in Israel's occupied territories. In addition, at least 10 members of Congress, including Republicans, canceled participation in the conference under pressure from conservative critics, according to J Street and legislative aides.
In Yemen, War Centers on Authority, Not Terrain - Robert F. Worth, New York Times. For almost seven weeks, Khasan Muhammad Abdullah and his family cowered in their house in northern Yemen while a war raged outside and their food slowly ran out. He could hear government fighter jets screaming across the sky, and he knew the Houthi rebels by their distinctive logos and headbands. But he could not understand what the two sides were fighting about. “What do they want, what are they thinking?” Mr. Abdullah said wearily, sitting on a friend’s floor here a week after escaping the war zone, along Yemen’s remote northwestern border with Saudi Arabia. Those questions are being asked across the Arab world and beyond. More than two months of fierce fighting have left thousands dead. Whole villages have been pounded to rubble. The conflict has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, fueling a humanitarian crisis and worsening the chaos that has already made Yemen a new haven for Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Yet this mysterious war seems to have more to do with the crumbling authority of the Yemeni state than with any single cause. The Houthi rebels, after all, are a small group who have never issued any clear set of demands. They have been fighting the government on and off since 2004, and it is not clear why President Ali Abdullah Saleh decided in August to force an all-out war. Many in Yemen’s own government say the conflict is less about controlling terrain - always a tenuous prospect in this tribally splintered country - than about Mr. Saleh’s struggle to reassert his military powers, in the face of widening insurgencies and intensifying political rivalry in the capital.
EVENTS
The US Military Academy’s Department of History is pleased to invite you to a West Point Symposium on the History of Irregular Warfare, 18-20 November 2009. The symposium will feature the scholarship of five cadet panel presenters with commentary by distinguished guest scholars, including: Dr. Stephen Biddle as our keynote speaker, Dr. Jeremy Black, Col. Robert Cassidy, Dr. Conrad Crane, Dr. George Herring, Dr. Brian Linn, and Dr. Peter Mansoor. Additionally, Dr. James Le Sueur (Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics, 2005) will present a special lecture on Algerian society since 1963. Col. Gian Gentile, a History faculty member, will participate as part of the “Visiting Scholars Panel” with Dr. Crane, Dr. Mansoor, and Col. Cassidy. (Invitation and POC Information) (History of IW Symposium Agenda)
BOOKS
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan - Doug Stanton.
Horse Soldiers tells the important story of the Special Forces soldiers who first put American boots on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001. Fighting alongside the Northern Alliance, the troops, often riding on horseback, achieved several important victories against the Taliban.
War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age - Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker.
War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age argues that two intimately connected trends are putting modern armies under huge pressure to adapt: the rise of insurgencies and the rise of the Web. Both in cyberspace and in warfare, the grassroots public has assumed increasing importance in recent years. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Web 2.0 rose from the ashes. This newly interactive and participatory form of the Web promotes and enables offline action. Similarly, after Rumsfeld's attempt to transform the US military into a lean, lethal, computerized force crashed in Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency rose from the ashes. Counterinsurgency is a social form of war - indeed, the US Army calls it armed social work - in which the local matrix population becomes the center of strategic gravity and public opinion at home the critical vulnerability.
The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the US Military for Modern Wars - David H. Ucko.
Confronting insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has recognized the need to "re-learn" counterinsurgency. But how has the Department of Defense with its mixed efforts responded to this new strategic environment? Has it learned anything from past failures? In The New Counterinsurgency Era, David Ucko examines DoD's institutional obstacles and initially slow response to a changing strategic reality.
Journey into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda - Thomas P. Odom.
In July 1994, Thomas P. Odom was part of the US Embassy team that responded to the Goma refugee crisis. He witnessed the deaths of 70,000 refugees in a single week. In the previous three months of escalating violence, the Rwandan genocide had claimed 800,000 dead. Now, in this vivid and unsettling new book, Odom offers the first insider look at these devastating events before, during, and after the genocide.
Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage - Donovan Campbell.
Donovan Campbell, first as a Marine and then as a writer, shows us that the dominant emotion in war isn’t hatred or anger or fear. It’s love. His story stands as a poignant tribute to his men–their courage, their dedication, their skill, and their love for one another, even unto death.
The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose - Anthony Zinni and Tony Koltz
The intellectual complement to Zinni and Clancy's bestselling Battle Ready (2004), a narrative memoir salted with specific policy recommendations, this volume provides the former US Central Command chief's analysis of America's current global position. Zinni begins by asserting that America's status as "the most powerful nation in the history of the planet" has created a de facto empire. The US has no choice: if it fails to take the lead, nothing significant happens. At the same time, Americans must recognize that, in a global age, there can be no zero-sum games.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education - Craig Mullaney
The Unforgiving Minute is the ultimate's soldier's book - universal in its raw emotion and its understanding of the larger issues of life and death. Mullaney, a master storyteller, plunges the depths of self-doubt, endurance, and courage. The result: a riveting, suspenseful human story, beautifully told. This is a book written under fire - a lyrical, spellbinding tale of war, love, and courage. The Unforgiving Minute is the Three Cups of Tea of soldiering.
Great Powers: America and the World after Bush - Thomas P.M. Barnett
In civilian and military circles alike, The Pentagon’s New Map became one of the most talked about books of 2004. “A combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Carl von Clausewitz on war, [it is] the red-hot book among the nation’s admirals and generals,” wrote David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Barnett’s second book, Blueprint for Action, demonstrated how to put the first book’s principles to work. Now, in Great Powers, Barnett delivers his most sweeping - and important - book of all.
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One - David Kilcullen
A remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror. Kilcullen takes us "on the ground" to uncover the face of modern warfare, illuminating both the big global war (the "War on Terrorism") and its relation to the associated "small wars" across the globe: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Chechnya, Pakistan and North Africa.
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 - Thomas Ricks
Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.
Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned - Rufus Phillips
Phillips details how the legendary Edward G. Lansdale helped the South Vietnamese gain and consolidate their independence between 1954 and 1956, and how this later changed to a reliance on American conventional warfare with its highly destructive firepower. He reasons that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies, or even ourselves took us down the wrong road. In summing up US errors in Vietnam, Phillips draws parallels with the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and suggests changes in the US approach. Known for his intellectual integrity and firsthand, long-term knowledge of what went on in Vietnam, the author offers lessons for today in this trenchant account.
Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq - Peter Mansoor
This is a unique contribution to the burgeoning literature on the Iraq war, analyzing the day-to-day performance of a US brigade in Baghdad during 2004-2005. Mansoor uses a broad spectrum of sources to address the military, political and cultural aspects of an operation undertaken with almost no relevant preparation, which tested officers and men to their limits and generated mistakes and misjudgments on a daily basis. The critique is balanced, perceptive and merciless - and Mansoor was the brigade commander. Military history is replete with command memoirs. Most are more or less self-exculpatory. Even the honest ones rarely achieve this level of analysis. The effect is like watching a surgeon perform an operation on himself. Mansoor has been simultaneously a soldier and a scholar, able to synergize directly his military and academic experiences.
The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq - Bing West
From a universally respected combat journalist, a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around - and the choice now facing America. We interpret reality through the clouded prism of our own experience, so it is unsurprising that Bing West sees Iraq through the lens of Vietnam. He served as a Marine officer there, and he thinks politicians and the media caused the American public to turn against a war that could have been won. Now a correspondent for the Atlantic, West has made 15 reporting trips to Iraq over the last six years and is almost as personally invested in the current conflict as he was in Vietnam; this book, his third on Iraq, is his attempt to ensure that the "endgame" in Iraq turns out better than in his last war.
Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq - Linda Robinson
After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war. Linda Robinson conducted extensive interviews with Petraeus and his subordinate commanders and spent weeks with key US and Iraqi divisions. The result is the only book that ties together military operations in Iraq and the internecine political drama that is at the heart of the civil war. Replete with dramatic battles, behind-doors confrontations, and astute analysis, the book tells the full story of the Iraq War’s endgame, and lays out the options that will be facing the next president.
The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 - Bob Woodward
Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is a stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when the White House realizes the Iraq strategy is not working, through the decision to surge another 30,000 US troops in 2007, and into mid-2008, when the war becomes a fault line in the presidential election. As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the US military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the US government from 2006 through mid-2008. The White House launches a secret strategy review that excludes the military. General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, believes that President Bush does not understand the war and eventually concludes he has lost the president's confidence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also conduct a secret strategy review that goes nowhere. On the verge of revolt, they worry that the military will be blamed for a failure in Iraq.
We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam - Harold Moore and Joe Galloway
In their stunning follow-up to the classic bestseller We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway return to Vietnam and reflect on how the war changed them, their men, their enemies, and both countries - often with surprising results. It would be a monumental task for Moore and Galloway to top their classic 1992 memoir. But they come close in this sterling sequel, which tells the backstory of two of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battles (in which Moore participated as a lieutenant colonel), their first book and a 1993 ABC-TV documentary that brought them back to the battlefield. Moore's strong first-person voice reviews the basics of the November 1965 battles, part of the 34-day Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Among other things, Moore and Galloway (who covered the battle for UPI) offer portraits of two former enemy commanders, generals Nguyen Huu An and Chu Huy Man, whom the authors met - and bonded with - nearly three decades after the battle. This book proves again that Moore is an exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate and courageous leader (he was one of a handful of army officers who studied the history of the Vietnam wars before he arrived) and a strong voice for reconciliation and for honoring the men with whom he served.
In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point' Class of 2002 - Bill Murphy
The West Point cadets Murphy follows through their baptism by fire are an admirable sample of young American men and women: intelligent, ambitious and intensely patriotic. Most come from career military families and hold conservative opinions. Murphy describes their four years at West Point with respect even when discussing their love lives and marriages. All yearn for battle, and most get their wish. The book's best passages describe the confusion of moving to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting insurgents, for which they lack both training and equipment. All feel something is not right but concentrate on the job at hand; some inevitably die or are grievously wounded.
Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy - Steven Metz
Today the US military is more nimble, mobile, and focused on rapid responses against smaller powers than ever before. One could argue that the Gulf War and the postwar standoff with Saddam Hussein hastened needed military transformation and strategic reassessments in the post–Cold War era. But the preoccupation with Iraq also mired the United States in the Middle East and led to a bloody occupation. What will American strategy look like after US troops leave Iraq? Metz concludes that the United States has a long-standing, continuing problem “developing sound assumptions when the opponent operates within a different psychological and cultural framework.” He sees a pattern of misjudgments about Saddam and Iraq based on Western cultural and historical bias and a pervasive faith in the superiority of America’s worldview and institutions. This myopia contributed to America being caught off guard by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then underestimating his longevity, and finally miscalculating the likelihood of a stable and democratic Iraq after he was toppled. With lessons for all readers concerned about America’s role in the world, Dr. Metz’s important new work will especially appeal to scholars and students of strategy and international security studies, as well as to military professionals and DOD civilians. With a foreword by Colin S. Gray.
