I was sent an email by Dr. Carter Malkasian stating that you wished to speak to me. I then quickly was informed that an article was published with a quote from this summer's CNA/Press Club book launch.

I wished you had waited to speak to me, since I would have put the quote in context. There are many positive developments within the British Army at the moment.

British officers and soldiers were embarrassed since they felt they could not complete their COIN mission in Iraq, due to issues outside their remit.

There is recognition that the Americans have reformed beyond all expectations. The British Army has recognised the need to reform as well.

The British Army and HMG had many issues in MND SE due to a variety of decisions, one being the US approach to the campaign from 2003-06, which was not appropriate. However, the British Army recognised that the war had changed dramatically in 2007 and many commanders, officers, NCOs and soldiers wished there had been a shift of strategy from Whitehall for MND SE.

The shift finally occurred with the Charge of the Knights and the British were able to support the Iraqi 14 DIV in its efforts to clear and now hold the city of BASRA, through proper embedding into MITTs. The British Army in their time honoured tradition of learning and adapting, was able to restore honour to their mission in MND SE. Many lessons are being learned from the campaign in Iraq that have had a positive impact on British operations in Helmand and RC South.

The British campaign in RC South and Helmand has been difficult but not due to the efforts of the officers, NCOs and soldiers of the British Army. Their preparation for Helmand has been stronger with each HERRICK due to lessons from the past as well as Iraq. There are issues for the Army that are outside their control but rest with Whitehall that need to be addressed.

All armies need to learn and adapt. The Americans have done so and now the British are doing it as well.

I feel that I should write a letter to the editor or an op-ed to put these 'quotes' in their proper context. Do you have any ideas how best to do this?

Best

Daniel Marston

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SWJ Editors Note: This letter is in response to an article in today's Times entitled US Accuses Britain Over Military Failings in Afghanistan by Tom Baldwin and Michael Evans.

Nothing follows.

The performance of Britain's overstretched military in Afghanistan is coming under sustained criticism from the Pentagon and US analysts even as Gordon Brown ponders whether to send in further reinforcements.

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary who has been asked to remain in his job under Barack Obama, is understood to have expressed strong reservations about counterinsurgency operations in British-controlled Helmand province.

He has already announced plans for a surge of 20,000 US troops into Afghanistan but Mr Brown, who was given a bleak progress report when he visited Afghanistan at the weekend, is said to be reluctant about committing another 2,000 British troops on top of the 8,400 already there.

More at The Times.

One of the most important national security challenges facing the next president of the United States will be preserving America's maritime power. The U.S. Navy has been cut in half since the 1980s, shrinking steadily from 594 to today's 280 ships. The fleet size has been cut by 60 ships during the Bush administration alone, despite significantly increased Pentagon budgets.

Several naval analysts and commentators, including the observant Robert Kaplan, have argued that America's present naval fleet constitutes an "elegant decline" or outright neglect. A former Reagan administration naval official contends that our current maritime policy and investment levels are "verging towards unilateral naval disarmament."

This is something of an overstatement. The American naval fleet is still substantially larger than any other, and has unmatched global reach and endurance. The U.S. Navy's aggregate tonnage is the equivalent of the next 17 international navies, of which 14 are U.S. allies, and our power projection capabilities retain a 4:1 advantage in missiles. Looking simply at overall naval ship totals may not be the most accurate measure of naval power, but it is an historical standard of measurement. By that criterion, the U.S. Navy has not been this size since World War I, when Britain's Royal Navy was the guarantor of the global commons.

While one can debate whether today's Navy is sized properly, there is little doubt that U.S. maritime capabilities are critical to the execution of any national security strategy. The so-called American Century has largely been coterminous with the U.S. Navy's mastery of seapower. In a global economy that is increasingly interdependent and dependent on the security of the global highways of international trade, maritime security will remain a vital national interest...

From Preponderance to Partnership: American Maritime Power in the 21st Century

Plucked from the Small Wars Council's Non-Virtual Community forum -- in the spirit of the 3Bs of deep thinking -- basements, bars, and backyards; this forum is to facilitate local get-togethers. Council members have met in DC, Arlington, Quantico, Ft. Leavenworth, Ft. Hood, Ottawa and even Estonia. The skinny has it that additional non-virtuals are planned in even more exotic locations - can you believe that? Any-hoot, if you are near Leavenworth this Wednesday, the 17th of December, take a break and join in the fun and great conversation. H-hour is 1800. Be there or be square and check this thread (Council members only) for updates.

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag - particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army - the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces - the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.' "

More at The New York Times and read 'Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience' in full via the NY Times.

And while you are at it, do your last minute shopping through those little Amazon links on the top right. Free money for us, no cost to you. Clearly, we are in need of some technical help.

Now I am not a big one for the whole "emotional" thingeemabob. In most debates I want footnotes, documentation, and fracking proof for everything. People who know my history know this about me. But there are limits, and Jim's simple statement hit the mark. Sometimes, some very rare times, you don't need proof. You don't need evidence. You need only know how to feel, and be human. Jim, I knew instantly, was right.

So here I suspend. Watch this video.

No, wait. STOP. Backstory first. Because, as you all know, I'm Mr. Context.

OK, so a few years ago this doofus Seattle kid, a 20 something named Matt, decided he wanted to see the world. He took off, and it being the internet age and all, he updated his friends with short snippet videos from all over. The hook was that all of his friends firmly believed that this fellow, Matt, was quite possibly the worst dancer in all of human history.

They were probably right.

But because young Matt had a sense of humor, the snippet videos he sent to his friends from around (that time) South and SE Asia, were all of him dancing his somewhat, ahhhh, unique "dance" in various locals.

Then somebody tied all the videos together. It went "viral"...meaning that people across the planet watched it. Millions upon millions of them. Including some very saavy marketers at an Australian gum company called "Stride." They wrote to Matt and said, "Hey mate, like to do it again on our dime?" So Matt went around the world again, doing his doofy dance. That video was even bigger. Matt was inundated with mail, and Stride saw a global marketing boost, so they (being Aussies) said, "Double down mate." And Matt fused the two...all of the e-mail he had from around the planet...people who loved his video, and a travel expense account that his unemployed butt could have never supported.

This video was the upshot:

And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is what we fight for. Or at least it is one part of what I fight for. Your mileage may vary, but for me, the vision of the world that this dumb-ass, 20-something, no-talent Muldoon gave us through his genius is enough. Our world is farked up, or at least large parts of the world...the parts that we Soldiers (and our brothers, the Marines) see, are often farked up. But young Matt, with this effing magnificent, transcendent, unifying-the-whole-goddamned-planet vision, which he demonstrated to the world all by his lonesome far better (judging by the 26 million hits on this video) than DoD, or State, or than any part of our government ever has, is a vision of the planet that represents what I want for our collective future.

My friend Jim is right. "It's a People Thing."

I hope this is what you fight for as well. Regardless of your nationality.

Secretary Gates Urges Greater Balance in Military Capabilities

by Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in a Foreign Affairs magazine article, calls on the defense establishment to recognize the importance of low-intensity, irregular capabilities and unconventional thinking to succeed in the war on violent extremism.

The outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan will set the stage for the United States' ability to deal with future threats, Gates wrote in an article called "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age," published in the magazine's January/February issue.

"To be blunt, to fail -- or to be seen to fail -- in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to U.S. credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries," he wrote.

While calling it "irresponsible" not to look ahead to future conventional and strategic threats, Gates said the defense establishment can't lose sight of today's pressing requirements in the process.

The secretary expressed frustration over the Defense Department's budget and bureaucracy, calling them overly committed to conventional modernization programs. He urged balance, as spelled out in the new National Defense Strategy, which gives equal focus to nonconventional capabilities and know-how.

"My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support ... for the capabilities needed to win today's wars and some of their likely successors," he wrote. Gates extended blame to the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress and the defense industry.

Direct military force will continue to play a role in the prolonged, worldwide, irregular campaign against terrorists and other extremists, Gates acknowledged.

"But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory," he said. "Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit."

Those goals won't happen overnight, he conceded. Instead, they'll require "the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies," he wrote.

While the United States isn't likely to face the exact circumstances taking place in Iraq or Afghanistan any time soon, Gates said, it should expect to encounter challenges elsewhere in the world. When facing these, Gates advised taking the indirect approach whenever possible. Building the capacity of partner governments and their security forces can prevent problems from turning into crises that require direct U.S. military intervention, he wrote.

The secretary, a staunch advocate of the "soft" as well as the "hard" elements of national power, lauded renewed emphasis on State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development capabilities. But even with more funding and manpower channeled to those organizations, Gates said, he doesn't envision a day when military commanders won't be tied in some way to security and stability missions.

He cited "impressive strides" the military has made in recent years to support those missions. These include steep increases in special operations funding and personnel, advances in the Air Force unmanned aerial operations programs, and a new Navy expeditionary combat command and restoration of its units capable of operating on rivers.

Meanwhile, he added, new counterinsurgency and Army operations manuals and a new maritime strategy incorporate lessons learned in recent operations.

Gates pointed to vivid reminders of the dangers insurgencies and failing states continue to present if not adequately addressed. These threats and others the United States is likely to face in the future are too big and too potentially catastrophic to be overlooked today, Gates wrote.

"The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with these scenarios cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions," he said. "The United States does not have the luxury of opting out because these scenarios do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war."

This is first article in a series based on Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' article, A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age, published in the January/February 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

I saw the SWJ Minerva Project entry and thought you might be interested in an essay written by a Stanford history Prof. who has some reservations about the project. History Professor Priya Satia wrote the essay for the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) which has set up an on-line platform where invited scholars post their concerns and arguments relating to the Minerva Project. In her essay, Satia explains that the DoD's appeal to scholars is a misguided attempt to involve academics without fully considering the consequences of the act. Satia uses her history expertise to illustrate her point and explains that the British military was involved in a similar situation in the Middle East following WWI.

Read the entire SSRC essay, The Forgotten History of Knowledge and Power in British Iraq, or Why Minerva's Owl Cannot Fly, or this short story about Prof. Satia's involvement with the SSRC.

BTW, our friends at the American Anthropological Association aren't big fans of Minerva either. They seem pretty well dead-set against anything to do with DoD. But it is still wise to grasp the well-reasoned reservations that academia has about the project. It is, after all, engagement, which must be done on mutually acceptable terms.