Gian Gentile versus Abu Muqawama, Round 582 - yep.

I assume most of you have seen Gian Gentile's latest piece, in Foreign Policy. He takes a series of statements regarding defense policy and then offers a short argument in favor of or in opposition to each one. Always one to rise to the bait, here's my take on each...

One take-away by Gian posted at the comments section:

Dude, AM, brother in arms, please stop calling me anti-coin. Dave D at SWJ loves to apply that moniker to me; but it is not true. I am not anti-coin and if you have read any of my stuff you will see how over and over again I call for the Army to maintain, institutionalize what we have learned from coin over the past seven years. I have also said over and over again that the army does need a coin capability in the future. However, we should not transform the army to a force built primarily for coin and irregular war. For scholarly and professional arguments that support this view see Colin Gray's new excellent essay in SSI on US Strategy and MG Dunlap's brand new piece in AFJ.

Defense Policy Nominee Pledges Work on Iraq, Afghanistan, National Security - Sara Moore, American Forces Press Service

During her Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to become undersecretary of defense for policy vowed to rebalance U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and advance U.S. security interests in other parts of the world.

Michele A. Flournoy told the Senate Armed Services Committee that if confirmed, she will work with Obama to responsibly end the war in Iraq and shift more focus to stabilizing Afghanistan. She also said she will work to reduce the strain on the military and ensure military members have the resources they need.

"This is a critical time for our country," she said. "The stakes are high, the resources are tight and the need to make hard choices is pressing."

Flournoy said she believes the United States needs to increase its troop presence in Afghanistan, and that the increase should happen quickly. Creating a new strategy in Afghanistan by working with NATO, the Afghan government and international donors will be one of the top priorities for the new administration, she said.

"I think our objective in Afghanistan has got to be to create a more stable and secured environment that allows longer-term stabilization and prevents Afghanistan from returning to being a safe haven for terrorism," she said.

As the United States focuses more on Afghanistan, emphasis will shift away from Iraq, Flournoy said. However, she emphasized, that shift needs to be done in a responsible manner, in accordance with the status-of-forces agreement between the United States and Iraq.

"I don't know what the long-term support for Iraqi forces in our long-term relationship is going to look like," she said. "I don't know if the Iraqi government will want any U.S. forces in Iraq once ... we reach the end of the SOFA agreement. So I think it's an open question."

Flournoy, who served as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction in the Clinton administration, said she looks forward to again contributing to national security and working to support the troops.

"I will do my best to help the U.S. military adapt to the challenges of the 21st century," she said. "I will also do my best to ensure that our brave men and women in uniform have what they need to be successful in the field and that they have the peace of mind knowing that their families are receiving the support that they deserve."

Update: Comment, via e-mail, on the new USG COIN Guide by Colonel John Agoglia, Director of the COIN Training Center in Kabul...

Congratulations are in order for all who helped write and publish it. And while a sign of changing times - having DoS, USAID and DoD co-writing and co-signing this document - what would be even more useful is to get many who wrote it out here helping us implement it as we prepare for this upcoming campaign season that will be fraught will challenges as we flow in additional troops, I believe additional DoS and USAID officers would seriously help prepare for the upcoming election here - as our new President's team gets their feet on the ground. I know as the Director of the COIN Training Center Afghanistan in Kabul I can use and would welcome all the help I could get and I am sure the folks in the Embassy, the various commands and the PRTs would agree!!!!

Congratulations again, but now it's time to implement the guidance and get this campaign back on track!!

US strikes against terrorist suspects in Pakistan's tribal region have become more accurate in the past few months, leading to the confirmed deaths of eight senior al Qaeda leaders and a decrease in civilian casualties that have roiled US-Pakistani relations, The Washington Times has learned.

Among those killed was the mastermind of a 2006 plot to detonate liquid explosives aboard planes flying across the Atlantic and the man thought to have planned the Sept. 20 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, that killed 53 people, including two members of the US military.

More at The Washington Times.

Drones Shatter Invincible Image of Osama bi Laden - Michael Evans, The Australian

Osama bin Laden is not yet a busted flush, but the damage caused to his organisation by US Predator spy drones operating close to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has torn a huge hole in his global network.

Al-Qa'ida's tentacles still reach out to bin Laden supporters and sympathisers in dozens of countries, but every time a senior commander is eliminated by a Hellfire missile or a precision-guided bomb from an unmanned Predator, the effect is felt across the terrorist network.

Although al-Qa'ida has no central communication system and no headquarters, cells in Europe or North Africa will have points of contact (individuals who can act as messengers or as lower-echelon supervisors, and who can pass on advice or guidance).

In recent months, the Predators' successes unquestionably have weakened al-Qa'ida's global reach, and the prosecution of 86 Islamic terrorists in Britain over the past two years has forced supporters to adopt a low profile.

More at The Australian.

Mexico is now in the midst of a vicious drug war. Police officers are being bribed and, especially near the United States border, gunned down. Kidnappings and extortion are common place. And, most alarming of all, a new Pentagon study concludes that Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state. Defense planners liken the situation to that of Pakistan, where wholesale collapse of civil government is possible.

One center of the violence is Tijuana, where last year more than 600 people were killed in drug violence. Many were shot with assault rifles in the streets and left there to die. Some were killed in dance clubs in front of witnesses too scared to talk.

It may only be a matter of time before the drug war spills across the border and into the US. To meet that threat, Michael Chertoff, the outgoing secretary for Homeland Security, recently announced that the US has a plan to "surge" civilian and possibly military law-enforcement personnel to the border should that be necessary.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Among defense intelligentsia, there are few mantras more chic than that which claims the US military "forgot the lessons of Vietnam." Had it not done so, received wisdom insists, America's armed forces would not have struggled in Iraq for so long. Powerful adherents to this theory have spawned a follow-on analog, that we must not "forget the lessons of Iraq."

Unfortunately, some of the key lessons these enthusiasts believe should be learned are the wrong ones, and these mistaken ideas are causing America's military to be altered in ways that may prove troubling as the US faces an increasingly complex and dangerous range of security threats.

Indeed, the devotees of the forgot-the-lessons-of-Vietnam philosophy have become so ascendant that they might be said to form the New Establishment of defense strategists. The New Establishment is especially strong in the Army. As a result, much of the service is being reconceptualized into a constabulary force in which nation-building and stability operations all but trump force-on-force war fighting...

What say you?

What the world cannot remember the Israelis cannot forget. The Israelis know the Jewish nation has been one defeat away from extinction for 70 years. They know that every partition plan in the region, from the dawn of Zionism to the present day, has failed because of the Arab failure to accept the State of Israel. They know that the Palestinian leadership is virtually hopeless, wherein the people who are moderate are not effective and the people who are effective are not moderate.

Today the impossible Yasser Arafat has been replaced by the impotent Mahmoud Abbas. It was Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who presided over the division of the Palestinians into Fatah and Hamas. Hamas doesn't want peace, and Fatah can't deliver it. Fatah is so weak that it cannot enforce the rule of law against terrorism or make compromises for fear of the radical Islamists. Indeed, without the support of the Israeli Defense Forces, even now it is under threat of being displaced by Hamas. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a major Hamas leader, underlined Fatah's weakness when he said, "Fatah can't stop us from seizing control of those [West Bank] territories. It is only a matter of time."

Much more at U.S. News and World Report.

When developing a list of the best defense-related books published in 2008, I sent e-mail messages to people I respect to ask what books are getting their attention and a piece of their ever-dwindling time. Given the sheer volume of books published, and the flood of war and military-related titles that have hit the market during the past few years, I was surprised to find that a few recommendations came up time and again...

Dave Dilegge, who runs the Small Wars Journal web site, splits the difference between Metz and Nagl. Like Metz, he names Baghdad at Sunrise (DTI October 2008, p. 68) and like Nagl, he shortlists In a Time of War. From there, he strikes out on his own, citing Bing West's The Strongest Tribe (reviewed on the Ares blog in October), as "a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the Iraq war was turned around and the choice now facing America."

Dilegge also includes Tell Me How This Ends by Linda Robinson, which he describes as "an inside account of [Gen. David Petraeus's] attempt to turn around a failing war." Rounding out his list is We Are Soldiers Still, Joe Galloway's follow-up to his classic bestseller, We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, in which Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Galloway return to Vietnam and reflect on how the war changed them, their men, their enemies and both countries...

Both Metz and Dilegge include Baghdad at Sunrise on their lists of the year's best, and with good reason. The author, Peter Mansoor, was a brigade commander in Baghdad in 2003-04...

See more recommendations from John Nagl and Steve Metz at Aviation Week.

New battlefield reports indicate that at least eight and as many as 25 of the 202 prisoners paroled by the Pentagon from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have rejoined the fight as members of the pro-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, or as part of al-Qaida. One of the now-free prisoners fighting in Afghanistan proudly proclaimed that he won his parole simply by lying through his teeth throughout the time he was at Gitmo. And the Pentagon blames fibbing prisoners and inadequate screening systems - driven by this summer's Supreme Court terrorism decisions -for allowing these men to escape from captivity.

It's more than a little disingenuous to blame the Supreme Court for these problems, though, especially since most of these detainees were released before the June decisions were handed down. The real problem is that the Defense Department and U.S. intelligence community developed inadequate and unreliable systems for screening detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Just as one might expect, detainees exploited the flaws in this system to secure their freedom by any means available - including telling a few lies to deceive their captors into believing that they were innocent. Ironically, it didn't have to be this way - international law would have allowed the United States to warehouse the Gitmo detainees until "the cessation of active hostilities" and to interrogate them, too. But by rejecting the Geneva Conventions' restrictions on Gitmo detainee operations, the United States also rejected its benefits - creating the situation we have today in which paroled detainees have returned to fight against us...

More at Slate.