re: "The Responsibilities of Civilian Policy Advocates: Syria, R2P, and the Obligation of Honesty"

Peter J. Munson at the Small Wars Journal blog ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") deconstructs some of the Syrian fantastists.

Money quote(s):

"My views on the responsibility to protect concept and its advocates cavalier promotion of their cavalierly acronymed (R2P) construct previously boiled over into a debate on civil-military relations. When I rhetorically asked on Twitter if they were ready to head down to the recruiting station to back up their convictions, I was accused of stepping afoul of the dictates of civilian control of the military. I had no such intentions, as I subsequently stated. Instead, I was asserting that R2Pers' moral certitudes were not backed up by a sufficient and sober counting of the costs. Thinking of the "sacrifice" in the sterile terms that have accompanied a decade's worth of airport thank-yous and sporting events kickoffs is not the same as the heart-rending, gut-wrenching feeling of losing someone close to you; the flesh-tearing, life-changing pain of being maimed or killed by war; or the numbing, mind-altering experience of searching for parts of bodies, pulling dead children from rubble, and the like. These are not a prerequisite for policy prescription, however the very terrible realities of war should not be glossed over in an attempt to sell lethal policy. The advocates will state that these things are on-going in Syria, that they have contemplated them, and that we have a responsibility to stop it. They will also state that the military has signed up for such things and that it must stand ready to make such sacrifices." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Stating that such attitudes make my blood boil greatly overestimates my capacity for understatement.

Those without "skin in the game" are always eager for someone else to make the "necessary" sacrifices.

A pox on their house!

"They also believe, against the weight of recent experience and longer historical example, that this will somehow be different. That nifty technology will somehow make it easier, cleaner. That aseptic corridors will be acceded to by a dictator determined not to find his end in a roadside ditch under the blows of his once-subjects, a gunshot, and the slow bleed, in great pain, during which he knows he is dying. This image is undoubtedly seared into Assad's mind and that of his coterie. But, surely, he will play fair with us."

This time will be different. Just like socialism imposed from the top down, this time, will work and not cause a society to implode into an abattoir.

Pay no attention to every single time we've intervened with high-minded motives rather than those selfish sorts of national interest-y ones which would cause us to stick around and finish the job.

"They do not see that their desire for a limited and humane intervention faces the vote of a determined enemy that will want to draw us into the quagmire, will want our precision-guided munitions to fall into the ambiguous targets of war, where cameras capture the wreckage of children, bright clothes smeared with blood and dusted with the gray remnants of a home collapsed upon them."

No, it'll the those red-stater baby-killers who had, after all, "signed up for such things" with the actual blood on their hands, rather than the R2P folks upon whom the guilt will morally reside.

"We will stand, the lines now vanished, trampled by the movement of patrols into the ambiguity, not wanting to press beyond our conception of a limited intervention, but unable to leave. The R2Pers will not be in the midst of this. They will be writing from their study, incredulous that military and civilian officials could have botched such a simple mission once again. Wondering why we hadn't learned all the lessons of the better wars we could throw.

Surely, it cannot be as bad as all that, you might say. True. It may not be as bad as I say, but it will surely be more messy than the glib op-ed that Anne-Marie Slaughter threw together for the New York Times last week. CNN reports that the military is looking at using as many as 75,000 troops just to secure potential Syrian chemical weapons sites. The realities of a Syrian intervention are far messy than Dr. Slaughter is willing to countenance in her infantile fantasy masquerading as policy prescription. Therein lies the rub. Dr. Slaughter is a respected policy elite and people take her ideas seriously. Therefore, she has a responsibility to be honest and open in her advocacy with regard to the risks and complexities of her proposal." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Happily, Prof. Slaughter has left her high-ranking position at State Dept. so at least she won't be able to directly screw things up for us anymore.

"Slaughter states that simply arming the opposition would lead to destabilizing civil war. However, arming the Free Syrian Army to create "no-kill zones," that is enabling the FSA to control swathes of territory just within the sovereign borders of Syria would somehow bring an end to the butchery. Not mentioned is how the FSA would take or hold this territory against the likely violent disagreement of the regime. We are talking about battle here. Not potshots against regime forces, but the taking and holding of territory. This is not just glossed over in the Slaughter plan, but completely ignored. She speaks blithely of the use of special forces to enable the FSA, and how they could enable the FSA to cordon population centers and rid them of snipers. What you don't see here is the bloody battle and likely airstrikes needed to push the bulk of the regime forces away from these population centers to be cordoned. Nor does it discuss the brutal and psychologically exhausting game of counter-sniper operations.

Slaughter next discusses locating tank and artillery units. What she does not discuss is what is to be done once they are located. Will they be showered with leaflets? Or will she expect us to neutralize them? That is a clean term. It involves using aircraft, which means destroying an extremely capable integrated air defense system (IADS). While there has been commentary to the contrary, this is much different than slipping through once or twice on raids as the Israelis have done. Rest assured, any use of air in Syria will require an elaborate take-down of the IADS that will shock the bleeding hearts in our midst. Even with the use of new technology to electronically disable the system temporarily, any attacker will use bombs to take them out permanently. Also, no matter how precise the weapons, whether used against IADS, tanks, or artillery, the amount of explosive and shards of metal required to destroy such targets creates a deadly bloom that extends well beyond their intended target. When missiles, artillery pieces, or tanks are located in and amongst civilian structures, collateral damage (as described above far more messily) will occur."

Mr. Munson went into some considerable detail pointing out the absolute idiocy of Prof. Slaughter's concept of operations for Syria.

He concluded:

"I do not believe that only those with military experience are qualified to advocate military intervention. Nor do I object to the primacy of civilian control over the military. I do object to policy advocation so simplistic and incorrect as to be deliberately misleading. War and military force is a brutal and imprecise instrument. It is ugly, destructive, wasteful, and stupid. It makes no clean cuts, creates no neat solutions. Sometimes it is the only option and sometimes the terrible horrors of war are required to prevent catastrophe. We must be brutally honest and circumspect, however, in our advocacy of policy. If the benefits truly outweigh the costs, let us discuss and air the best estimates and make an informed decision. Advocacy like that of Anne-Marie Slaughter, however, is so disingenuous and so powerful with the pulpit that she commands as to be its own sort of evil. It is an evil that I hope she corrects."

3/4

re: "No Apologies"

Mike Few at the Small Wars Journal blog (" facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field ") answered the question:

"What do I miss from Iraq?"

Money quote(s):

"Control- it’s not the killing, the war, or the violence. It is the absolute respect, authority, responsibility and accountability that I was afforded and bestowed by the nation. In Iraq, my bosses gave me their confidence to execute my mission."

After years of nanny-like garrison mentality, the Army shook off the institutional dust of trying to treat deployed troops like they were taking the short bus on a field trip and facilitated their getting on with the job. That is, get them to where the action was, point them at their mission, and do their best at keeping them supplied while staying out of their way.

Ideally, that is. It's not a perfect world, after all. For all the things that can, and did, go wrong, it's still better than the silly season stuff that comes from higher headquarters most of the rest of the time.

"We come home to a nation that not only does not acknowledge our war, but dismisses who we are by immediately portraying us as victims and wounded warriors.

I am neither a victim nor a warrior. I am a professional soldier. As an officer, I took a sworn oath to defend the Constitution.

The garrison Army cannot even get the name right for those soldiers and marines wounded in battle. The term warrior is the most disrespectful label."

Mr. Few quotes LTC Robert Bateman on the subject of "soldiers and warriors."

"(C)alling us warriors is not only inaccurate, it displays an ignorance about what a warrior is all about. The bottom line is that a real "warrior" is really just about himself. Indeed, the key difference between a Soldier (or a Marine, or an Airman) and a "warrior" is almost that simple. A serviceman does his job as a part of a complex human system, he does so with discipline and selflessness as his hallmarks. Courage also matters, of course, but it is but one of several values that are needed. The serviceman is the product of a Western society which, while it values individualism intrinsically, values subordination in pursuit of a collective objective as well. A warrior, on the other hand, is the product of a culture or subculture which is essentially purely honor-driven."

Soldiers are civilized men (and women), under military discipline. Warriors are barbarians, and that's the nicest thing I can find to say about them.

(LTC Bateman's use of the term "honor-driven" is accurate, to an extent, but somewhat misleading. As is, for instance, the term "honor killing," and for the same reasons.)

"I fought not for profit or personal gain; I fought for my men and my mission. I was not a mercenary. And so, this is the world that we live in. I accept that, but I will find my own control in this world. As it is, I refuse to go back into that other world and relive battles that I already won. I refuse to feel sorry for the poor souls who chose hate and anger and death over living."

2/2

re: "Getting Embed with the Military"

Peter Van Buren at posted at Small Wars Journal blog (" facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field ") shared some lessons-learned from his time with an ePRT.

Money quote(s):

"As a Foreign Service Officer plucked from a cozy cubicle in Foggy Bottom and dropped into an embed situation with a succession of can-do Army units (3/82nd Airborne, 2/10thMountain and 1/3rd ID) with no military experience of my own, I had a lot of learning to do. In the end I practiced more diplomacy and cross-cultural skills inside the wire than outside. Of the many uncertainties of the next gasps of our foreign policy, one thing is certain: our future wars will continue to feature civilian-military combined efforts.

Getting along is not always easy; military personnel will always vastly out number (and out spend) civilians and so most of the adapting needs to happen on our side of the equation, not theirs."

Peter provided 19 "additional ideas" for those embedding with the military; CAA's best picks of those are the first four:

"1) Earn respect by being very good at whatever it is you are doing there. Don't expect second chances to move from the dumb ass to the useful category. Don't be a know it all either, especially if your knowledge is mostly book learning.

2) 0900 means be there no later than 0845. Don't operate on civilian time. If you're late for a movement, you'll be left behind, or worse, they'll wait for you. Don’t be late even though you know the movement will start late, as it often does.

3) If you are entitled to privileges beyond what the military gets, share if you are allowed (sat phone, laptop, movies, books) or keep quiet about it (booze).

4) Follow the rules even if you can get away with not following the rules. Shave, keep your hair cut, don't dress like a slob."

Read them all, especially #19:

"19) Special for fellow State Department heroes: don't ask officers to fetch coffee for you, don't wear bow ties, don't speak in passive-aggressive slights, don't complain when your shoes get dusty, don't wear white pants to the field, don't show up without a PowerPoint to briefings, don’t expect soldiers to make your PowerPoint slides for you, don't ask soldiers to take notes for you, don't talk about your next assignment to Paris, overall just don't be a weenie and make it harder on the rest of us."

9/26

re: "Iranian bomb plot blows up deterrence theory"

Robert Haddick at the Small Wars Journal blog ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") examined the problem of applying deterrence to Iran.

Money quote(s):

"U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder revealed an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States by bombing a restaurant in Washington. Holder’s description of the plot – which allegedly involved a bungled attempt by Mansour Arbabsiar, a dual citizen, to recruit the notorious Zeta cartel from Mexico – appeared simultaneously brazen and inept. What should worry policymakers the most is how this incident undermines the theory of deterrence, which some hope to use against Iran after it acquires nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. If Iranian policy cannot be checked with Cold War-style deterrence, the prospect of an inevitable shooting war against Iran will go up."

Cold warriors like CAA will recall deterrence theories such as MAD and the like; the bottom line was that while it's unclear just how much of which theories actually worked, clearly something worked and the world did not end in nuclear fire, despite decades of bipolar international standoff.

"(T)he operation may have been authorized by the highest level of the Iranian government. This would indicate that top-level Iranian officials are not concerned with the possible retaliatory consequences of a mass casualty attack in downtown Washington, DC. Iran’s leaders would come to that conclusion either because they perceive the U.S. government to be self-constrained or because they perceive the maximum likely U.S. retaliation against Iran to be inconsequential to their interests. Either way, U.S. retaliation against Iran lacks credibility, something the U.S. government will have to fix if it is to usefully employ deterrence theory in the future."

U.S. retaliation against Iran has, ever since the 1979 revolution, amounted to sanction regimes of varying strictness. Why would the Iranian regime ever consider that a U.S. response to provocation would ever amount to anything more than that?

"(I)ntermediate-level Quds Force officers may have initiated the operation without authority from top-level decision-makers. If so, this too would undermine deterrence theory. Deterrence is not useful if those to be deterred don’t have complete control over their weapons, an assumption U.S. and Soviet leaders both correctly made during the Cold War. Alternatively, the organizational culture inside the Quds Force may reward mid-level officers who “freelance” their own operations. Once again, not a comforting conclusion for deterrence theory." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

The theory of deterrence requires a target of that deterrence. If the target (i.e., top Iranian leadership) doesn't actually have full control over their WMD, then the situation is drastically destabilized.

"(I)t is hard to believe that there is some attainable level of financial and travel sanctions, even with the best possible international cooperation, that will change the behavior of either top-level Iranian leaders or officers inside the Quds Force. The U.S. is thus left with a deterrent strategy against Iran that lacks credibility and in any case may be unsuitable for the situation.

Washington should expect more provocations and thus more pressure to eventually display a retaliatory response that will impress Iranian leaders. What kind of display would impress Iranian leaders is a subject many in Washington would prefer to avoid."

Unlike, for instance, the kleptocratic leadership class of various south-of-the-border countries, attempting to put a crimp into the Miami/New York/Paris-bound shopping trips of the mullahs just doesn't register on the viable-threat-o-meter.

10/12

re: "Overcoming Our Dearth of Language Skills"

Morgan Smiley at the Small Wars Journal blog ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") looked forward at meeting the foreign language requirements of the future.

While this is from a military perspective, this is of diplomatic readiness relevence as well.

Money quote(s):

"In order to fully appreciate any culture we are learning about, especially if we expect to conduct operations in that particular culture, it follows that learning the language will not only help one learn about that culture but be able to operate more effectively once immersed in it."

This so blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever served abroad, in uniform or out, as to seem fairly condescending when plainly stated. It's not. Not condescending, that is. Those of us who serve their country abroad at any time in our lives are a minority of Americans. Let's not fail to make a persuasive argument by not laying the logical foundation necessary.

".... the importance of culture and language training by the US military due to the changing nature of the global security environment in which state-on-state conventional wars have been supplanted by smaller scale regional conflicts, trans-national and non-state terrorist actions, and other irregular security challenges conducted among local populations and lasting several years if not decades."

The language requirements of the State Dept. are much more constant and diffuse. State is responsible for over 260 diplomatic and consular posts requiring staffing by U.S. personnel speaking scores of languages, and the need to reliably refresh those positions with language-proficient replacements every 2-3 years.

"(W)hat languages & regions to focus on given the changing security environment and our role in it. After all, conflicts affecting US and allied interests - whether they involve foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, counter-terrorism, or post-conflict reconstruction efforts - could spring up most anywhere."

Language proficiency is a labor-intensive undertaking, and carries the opportunity costs, particularly for military personnel, of whatever training is forgone in favor of that gaining, and maintaining, that skill. It's also something of a long-lead-time item, resistant (up to a point) to surge procurement, since qualified language instructors don't just grow on trees either.

"Read Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" and Thomas P.M. Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century". In "Clash of Civilizations", Huntington talks of potential conflicts arising along cultural "fault lines", for example, where Christianity meets Islam (Central Asia/ Turkey/ Caucasus regions) or where Hindu culture meets Sinic culture (Himalaya/ Central Asian region). In "The Pentagon's New Map", Thomas Barnett posits that the world is divided between the "connected" (primarily Western) regions/ countries and the "disconnected" or "Gap" areas, with many of those "gap" regions being in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, etc. Given these two authors & ideas they put forth, the Army may want to look at educating Soldiers in Turkish, Persian, Hindi, and Chinese as well as focusing on those areas for cultural/ regional education." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Here Brother Smiley makes a mildly adventurous but intellectually-defensible leap about how to hedge one's future bets about where language training should be focused as a long-lead-time item, making an educated guess about where future conflicts are likely to be found.

"(W)e may want to revive the British concept of a "shooting leave" (we'll call it something else of course). During the period of British rule in India, both Company and Government, a "shooting leave" involved a British officer taking a few weeks or months of leave in order to travel through potentially hostile lands and gather information and intelligence, which involved the possibility of shooting or being shot at. For our purposes, our officers ought to be able to take a sabbatical, perhaps no more than 3 to 6 months, and embed themselves in non-governmental organizations (NGO) operating in one of the regions we are interested in (with Doctors Without Borders in Tajikistan for instance) so that he may use/ improve his language capabilities, learn first-hand information about the region he is in, and work with organizations that we may end up dealing with should we become involved in those areas."

Embedding military personnel, unless they are also medical personnel, in NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders is problematic, to say the least. There still seems to be something of a cultural wall between the two worlds, although perhaps a program of this nature would help in this regard.

"Building partner capacity has been identified as a key area of concern as we look for better, and cheaper, ways to assist friends and allies, and help others defend themselves as Mr. Gates put it. In order to do this effectively, we must field more leaders that can communicate with host-nations forces in their own languages which will allow us to better understand those host-nation environments since little will be lost in translation and cultural understanding will be enhanced. Improving our language skills may lead to more effective and efficient techniques for building the capacity of our current and future partners and reduce the need for deployments of robust US forces." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

8/23

re: "The Closers Part VI: Dealing with the U.S. Military"

Colonel Gary Anderson at the Small Wars Journal ("contributed work from across the spectrum of stakeholders in small wars") identified a real problem and offered some help at solving it.

Money quote(s):

"Many of the civilians who gravitate to counterinsurgency (COIN) work for the Departments of State and Justice have some knowledge of the military or have served in uniform. But many people from other agencies will not have such a background. Suddenly living among the military on a daily basis, and often depending on them totally for security can come as a culture shock that is almost as great as that experienced by stepping into a host nation's culture. It helps to come somewhat prepared. The Provincial Reconstruction Team classes given by the State Department's Foreign Service Institute are good but short, and they give out excellent advice, but it would help if you do homework on your own. This piece will attempt to give some background and perspective."

Read the entire, helpful, article.

Bonus quote(s):

"If they come to trust you, your military counterparts will ask you to share information gained in your interactions with the population. I have known civilian representatives from some agencies that had come to view themselves as quasi NGOs, and were reluctant to share information with their military counterparts, apparently seeing themselves in a neutral NGO-like status. Make no mistake about it, when you swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States as a government official or sign a contract with the government as a consultant, you have already taken sides. The insurgents will view you as the enemy, and the population will see you as a representative of our government. You need to accept that responsibility."

"Soldiers, in combat zones (and out of them) use a lot of profanity; it helps them to relieve the stress. If you are offended, I’d suggest keeping it to yourself. "

&

"Conclusion

If you do not have military experience, it is best to treat the military as you would any foreign culture by respecting its mores and customs, and learn as much as you can." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)


7/22

re: "COIN and FM 3-24"

SWJ Editors at the Small Wars Journal blog ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") shared some COIN inside baseball.

Money quote(s):

"Be Honest: Who Actually Read FM 3-24?"

7/13

re: "How We Became a Nation of Warriors"

Stephen Glain published a condensed version of his new book at Salon ("the award-winning online news and entertainment Web site").

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF):

"State vs. Defense, the century-old competition between those who would confront America's overseas challenges through diplomatic means and those who would subdue them by force of arms, is all but decided. The economic and political resources commanded by the latter group are vast and powerful, while the former has been reduced to a cadre of supplicants forced to beg before the lavish table of the national security state. Such a lopsided state of affairs has been abetted by a citizenry generally uninterested in the policies carried out in its name and unwilling to share in the burden of their prosecution. Only now, with the specter of bankruptcy looming over the national accounts, are some in Washington daring to contest the bill for, if not the value of, unchecked global hegemony."

_____

Hat tip to The SWJ Editors

re: "Prine on Abrams and Primary Sources"

Gian Gentile at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") comments on some interesting military scholarship.

Money quote(s):

"What prompted Carl’s post was a newly released set of volumes by Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) that contain a series of discussions between President Nixon and Henry Kissinger during the Easter Offensive in Spring of 1972 regarding the performance of the MAC-V commander, Creighton Abrams. Pay attention to the quote that Carl cites where Nixon and Kissinger are seriously considering relieving Abrams. Their frustration with Abrams had to do with how Abrams conceived of using firepower delivered by B52s. Abrams wanted to concentrate most if not all of the B-52s to thwart the NVA offensive along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in South Vietnam, whereas Nixon and Kissinger saw an opportunity to use the B52s and massive amounts of firepower to pummel Hanoi and other key strategic points in North Vietnam in order to force a better political compromise at the negotiations table." (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Two different vantage points: Saigon and Washington. Two different sets of priorities and agendas: theater and strategy/grand strategies.

re: "Ties that bind Defense, State"

Michael Clauser at Politico ("published every day that Congress is in session") get this mostly right.

Money quote(s):

"(A) key Washington budget debate: the proportionality of military spending relative to nonmilitary international affairs spending.

The U.S. spends roughly 20 cents of every tax dollar on defense, compared with slightly more than a penny for nonmilitary-related international affairs activities.

Advocates of soft power bemoan Washington’s overly militarized approach to the world, while conservatives are critical of what they view as an ineffective bureaucracy run by establishment elites in Foggy Bottom. Yet of all national budget debates, the fratricide for funds between State and Defense is most puzzling as their roles are so intrinsically complementary."

As Mr. Clauser notes, SecDef Gates didn't exactly take a parochial approach to this dichotomy. He knew that there were some things that the military shouldn't do, at least not in more than a supporting role.

"Deficit and debt reduction are necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure long-term U.S. strength and well-being. And the price should not be forfeiture of essential hard or soft U.S. national security capabilities or America’s leadership role in the world."

Usually we wait until a war is over before cashing in on a peace dividend. The Clinton administration crippled the military services doing this, while shrinking our diplomatic force multipliers just when they should have been growing them.

What' do you call doing this when the wars are still ongoing?

"U.S. leadership requires both hard and soft power working in concert.

The past 10 years of unconventional conflict have reminded the military and its congressional overseers of the inherently political nature of war and the importance of nonkinetic capabilities — like civil affairs teams, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, rule of law educators, development and reconstruction specialists, counter-drug personnel and police trainers. These capabilities are as vital to contemporary conflict as some major weapons systems. Cutting funding for them is, therefore, a kind of unilateral disarmament."

Preach it. "(U)nilateral disarmament." And he doesn't see that as a feature; be secure in your appreciation that it is indeed a bug.

USAID (and the former USIA) need to be re-established as more than contracting and out-sourcing entities, and as independent agencies. The stealth assimilation of USAID into State is just as bad an idea as absorbing USIA was.

"(F)ederal and nongovernmental aid groups are coming to realize how much they rely on the military to provide security for aid workers in pre-, post- and active conflict zones. Human rights watchers admit that the use of force, as in Libya, can stave off grave human rights atrocities. U.S. diplomats know that their ability to “speak softly” hinges on the presence of “a big stick.” " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Being a superpower means people return your calls in a timely manner. Which is nice.

They don't need to necessarily fear you, just respect that you're big enough that you can squash them by accident if you're not careful.

"Federal budget politics remain the quintessential zero-sum game. As Congress considers where to identify savings, it must acknowledge that defense, diplomacy and development cannot be devolved to state or local-level government. Instead, Congress should redirect its scalpel to departments and agencies whose missions are not as intrinsic to the federal government and to key drivers of long-term debt."

Yeah, good luck with that.

"Granted, this is far easier said than done.

With so many domestic political constituencies benefiting from federal programs in housing, health, education, labor, pensions and agriculture, it is all the more important for advocates of strong and balanced U.S. leadership in the world to work together — and work harder to be mutually reinforcing about the importance to each other’s roles."

Defense and State lack domestic constituencies for their missions except in time of war or international crisis, when American citizens are forced to look beyond their normal everyday lives to the wider world. And State lacks the big ticket items like large domestic bases, expensive procurement programs, and the like that make it a cash cow for legislators looking for a little pork.

Being a continental power that is in fact continent-wide, America is fortunate to be so large that for many of us the outside world is just so far away it hardly seems real. You just have to drive across too many states to even reach an international border for other countries to seem more than something you watch on National Geographic.

_____

Hat tip to the Editors at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field").

re: "What's Wrong and What's Right With the War Colleges"

Dr. George E. Reed at Defense Policy ("a non-partisan forum for news, opinions, viewpoints, blogs, commentary, analysis, and debate from America’s defense and national security community") has a great round-up of recent kerfuffles surrounding the war college system, and has his own ideas about it.

Money quote(s):

"A cascade of withering criticism has recently been leveled at the war colleges– those venerable institutions that represent the pinnacle of the hierarchy of professional military education. Each service maintains a war college or equivalent designed to prepare lieutenant colonels and colonels for the highest levels of responsibility, and while they have different cultures in many respects they also share some common attributes and challenges."

Foreign service officers above a certain rank have the opportunity to attend most (if not all) of these colleges, as well as some others. It broadens both the FSO and the student body of which they become a part, giving military and naval officers a chance to see past the stereotypes (which works both ways).

If you read (as I do) the published biography sheets of our most senior diplomatic appointees, you'll often notice that they are graduates of one or more of these institutions.

"The most widely read and vitriolic criticism came from a series of Foreign Policy.com blogs by former Washington Post writer Thomas Ricks. Ricks actually called for closure of the war colleges calling them both expensive and second-rate."

There are several of these colleges, run by both the individual services and by various parts of the DoD itself, so individual mileage may vary widely.

"Ricks made some good points that we are likely to see again as defense spending decreases and tough decisions are made about where to get most bang out of a much smaller budget.

Daniel Hughes published a chapter, “Professors in the Colonels’ World” in a 2010 book entitled Military Culture and Education edited by Douglas Higbee that examined the divide between military and academic cultures. His depiction of the Air War College pointed out a nasty strain of anti-intellectualism, ultra conservativism, Christian nationalism and a largely disinterested student body. While some might reject the observations of an outsider like Ricks, Hughes served for eighteen years at the Air War College providing an insider view, albeit from the perspective of an underappreciated academic imbedded in military culture. Some might be inclined to dismiss him as a disgruntled former employee."

Dismiss away, but disgruntled former employees were often disgruntled during their employment, and with good reason.

"(P)articularly insightful from a systemic perspective, was an article published in Proceedings Magazine by Robert Scales, retired two-star general and former commandant of the Army War College. He did not address the war colleges specifically, except for noting that the average age of attendees has increased from 41 to 45 making an expensive educational experience more of a preparation for retirement than a platform for leadership at higher levels. He lamented the possibility that the military is becoming “too busy to learn.” He decried the wane of experienced officers as instructors in the system of professional military education and suggested that a bias for action over learning and organizational malaise in the schools have made them an “intellectual backwater.” His solution is to change the military’s reward system to elevate soldier scholars rather than denigrate them. He advocates a return to the day when uniformed officers rather than civilian instructors and contractors are assigned to the schoolhouse to teach, not because their careers are dead-ended, but as career enhancing assignments on the way to even higher levels of responsibility."

It's difficult, especially during wartime, to balance the competing needs to reward and promote proven combat leaders, not disadvantaging their warzone service by favoring promotion of those who stayed behind in staff or educational assignments. The military (correctly) took a boot in the behind during the early years of Iraq and Afghanistan for pulling out military officers from their deployments in order to get them into their scheduled military educational assignments on time. Which led to deferment, sometimes indefinitely or permanently, of useful military education for exactly those upcoming leaders who should get it.

There's no (to my understanding) perfect solution to this problem. Real leaders want to be with their troops, to be in the fight, to win the fight. Taking a year or more at a time for "book learning" can seem pointless. But unless you want your generals and admirals to all be staff weenies, you need to get your gunslingers into the schoolhouse too.

"An increasing number of officers are deferring attendance. Allen points out that over the last five years 50 percent of those initially selected will choose to defer attendance leading him to assert that it is becoming more important to be selected for senior level schooling than to actually attend. Combat arms officers are apparently going elsewhere, perhaps to fellowship programs or joint service colleges that are viewed as more career enhancing." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Both the fellowship programs and joint service colleges are all good programs, but if the service's war colleges are perceived as being second-rate in comparison, then they will get neither first-tier students or faculty. And become tempting targets for the budget axe.

"My time as a student at the Army War College resulted in an intellectual awakening. Before attending I was so busy doing things like commanding a battalion that I had little time to reflect on larger issues affecting my profession. Reflection is the essential bridge between experience and learning. The Army War College gave me opportunities to delve deeply into national security issues and other aspects of my profession that I never would have had in a civilian academic institution. Comparing war colleges to traditional civilian graduate institutions is an “apples to oranges” exercise. The very best graduate program at a top tier university would, in many respects, be a poor substitute for what should happen at the war colleges. The model for the War Colleges is much more akin to that of a professional school (e.g., law or medicine) where sophisticated craft knowledge is blended to a lesser degree with disciplinary forays more common to where I now teach. I loved my time at the Army War College both as a student and a teacher. The adult learning model, seminar method, use of case studies contextually appropriate to a unique group of experienced practitioners, and the many opportunities to engage in no holds barred professional discussions with a parade of flag officers and civilian officials are bright spots that should not be underestimated for their positive impact on future senior military leaders. It is important to have a place where military officers can delve deeply into the nuances of their profession, and most importantly plumb the tensions, intricacies, and limitations of operating a large standing military in a democracy. If done properly that very process can serve as an important protection of the republic. Uninformed and undereducated officers who control vast amounts of military power can fall, or be led, to serious mischief."

That paragraph should be required reading for all military and naval officers at all ranks.

FSOs too.

Military and foreign service officers spend a lot of their careers in training assignments, getting ready for their next jobs. This is not a bug, it's a feature. If anything, FSOs need more of that, not less, although since Sec. Powell's tenure the gap seems to be narrowing in comparison to our military colleagues' career patterns. This is a good thing. But there's a difference between training and education.

The war colleges bridge the difference between training and education and offer the opportunity to take officers to that next level, where they're thinking those deep thoughts about big issues, stuff that you expect generals and admirals (at least American ones) to understand, that go beyond the (expected) technical and tactical proficiency in the profession of arms.

"The war colleges may be the only institutions of higher learning that have such paltry control over who attends them. Boards comprised of officers from the field select attendees who have not necessarily expressed any interest at all in attending. No writing samples are required and there’s no graduate record exam or any other testing considered for admission."

This is not completely true. But it will suffice as a general qualification.

&

"The war colleges really should be, and indeed could be, intellectual centers of excellence with a mix of the best and brightest military and civilian faculty members. They have the potential to serve as incubators of big and even disruptive ideas fueled by cutting edge research on important and relevant questions and dedicated to preparing high potential senior military officers for the great challenges of our age. In return for the investment of national treasure that goes into operating the war colleges, the American people and indeed the service members who will serve under their graduates deserve far better than mediocre."

_____

Hat tip to the editors at Small Wars Journal ("news and commentary on the goings on across the broad community of small wars practitioners, thought leaders, and pundits").

re: "This Week at War: Moral Hazard at NATO"

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") foresees the end of the free ride.

Money quote(s):

"Europe may not be able to rely on America's free security guarantee forever."

Nothing is forever. That should be plain enough. But even in geopolitical terms, where a single lifetime approximates for "forever," alliances require constant tending, by all their members. Or they're not really alliances.

(Don't get me wrong, as an old "Cold Warrior," I think NATO, when it worked, was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.)

"In blasting NATO, Gates explains what moral hazard feels like

In what he termed his "last policy speech as U.S. defense secretary," Robert Gates ripped into his policymaking peers at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week for allowing "significant shortcomings in NATO in military capabilities, and in political will" to occur. Gates noted that although the non-U.S. alliance members have more than 2 million troops in uniform, these countries struggle to deploy 40,000 soldiers into an effective military campaign. Gates also pointed to NATO's embarrassing performance in Libya, noting that European members, despite having a multitude of officers collecting paychecks at frivolous staff billets, have failed to generate the intelligence support and command capabilities needed to wage an effective air campaign. Gates warned of a "dismal future for the transatlantic alliance."

Gates's frustration was no doubt sparked by the realization that his department has become the victim of moral hazard. The United States provides a free security guarantee to Europe. Europeans, meanwhile, have responded in an economically rational way by taking greater risk with their external defense. With the collapse of the Soviet Union removing the last plausible military threat, it was logical for European policymakers to avoid spending on expensive space, communications, and intelligence systems that the United States was largely providing for free. Gates and many other U.S. policymakers see an alliance with too many free riders"

This has always been the case, at least as long as I can recall. But at least before, when NATO as an alliance had as its primary military purpose the defense of Western Europe, even the smaller, less militarily-capable members knew, and planned for, a fight that would probably take place on, and above, their own territories. So even if they didn't have that many chips to put into the pot, they planned to ante-up with what they did have.

"Gates fears that the United States will have to bail out the Libya operation. This week, Adm. Mark Stanhope, Britain's top naval officer, warned that budget limits and unit rotation requirements could force NATO combatants over Libya to soon have to choose between Libya and Afghanistan. Should a shortfall of European forces in either campaign result, Gates undoubtedly fears that the United States will have to make up the gap.

Over the longer term, the moral hazard issue extends beyond NATO into the Western Pacific, the South China Sea, and soon the Persian Gulf. For example, the United States has a great interest in signaling to China that it has strong security commitments to its partners in the region. Washington likewise wants those partners to share the defense burden and to also avoid provocative behavior. The stronger the signal it sends to China, the less incentive the partners have to do their part."

&

"Gates concluded his speech by warning Europe's leaders that the next generation of U.S. leaders lacks nostalgia for the Cold War struggle and could walk away from the NATO alliance. In the future, Europe will undoubtedly have to do more for its external defense. That doesn't seem like a problem now since there is no apparent external threat. But should they have to more fully insure themselves, European defense planners should consider how they would rebuild their defenses. They should consider how much time it would take to mobilize political and budgetary authority to prepare for these threats and how long it would take to rebuild the required military forces. Most notable in this regard is the risk of losing both a defense industrial base and functioning military institutions, which once gone might never be restored, at least within a relevant time frame."

You're a member of the NATO alliance you have, not the one you wish you had.

(Or, alternatively you're not.)

A country which so degrades its military institutions to the point where there's not any there left, is likely to have to learn the harsh lesson that one doesn't reconstitute that institution by last-minute conscription notices. This is as true for our European (and other) allies as it is for the U.S.

re: "re: "This Week at War: Rise of the Irregulars" "

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") turns a frequent criticism on its head.

Money quote(s):

"Last week, the Washington Post's David Ignatius discussed how the line between the Central Intelligence Agency's covert intelligence activities and the Pentagon's military operations began blurring as George W. Bush's administration ramped up its war on terrorism. In his column, Ignatius took some swipes at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for exceeding his authority by encroaching on turf legally reserved to the CIA. The Defense Department also was criticized for taking on too many diplomatic and foreign aid responsibilities as well. Ignatius expressed concern that without clearer boundaries separating covert intelligence-gathering from military operations, "people at home and abroad may worry about a possible 'militarization' of U.S. intelligence."

Ignatius missed the larger and far more significant change that continues to this day. In order to survive and compete against the military power enjoyed by national armies, modern irregular adversaries -- such as the Viet Cong, Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban, and virtually all other modern revolutionaries -- "civilianized" their military operations."

Read the whole thing here.

re: "This Week at War: Send in the Lawyers?"

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") answers the question "Why the president's legal advisors are in no hurry to justify the bin Laden raid."

Money quote(s):

"Osama bin Laden's fourth son Omar along with some of his brothers have called for an international investigation into the killing of their father. A statement written by the sons and published in the New York Times calls for President Barack Obama to cooperate with their demand for a U.N. inquiry into the question of "why our father was not arrested and tried but summarily executed without a court of law." Should there be no response within 30 days, the sons have pledged to assemble a "panel of eminent British and international lawyers" to pursue legal action against the U.S. government and its officials."

This is called lawfare.

"Bin Laden's sons as well as other analysts outside the United States view the raid in the context of the procedures of criminal law. By contrast, Holder and most observers inside the United States view the raid as a military mission with bin Laden just another combatant. Enemy military personnel are not subject to the rights due a suspect under criminal procedure but rather are at risk of ambush and sudden lethal attack without warning. In the military context, it doesn't matter if the combatant is not holding a weapon, is not in a military uniform, or is in an "unthreatening" posture (such as asleep). The only circumstances under which military forces are required to "give quarter" is after an enemy combatant has completed a surrender or is too wounded to resist, something very unlikely to have occurred in the bin Laden compound given the aggressive rules of engagement issued to the assault team. Bin Laden's sons reject this interpretation, viewing bin Laden as a criminal suspect deserving the rights of legal process."

Those inclined to take the criminal law/enforcement model seriously (Sen. Kerry, call your office) will do so. All young Omar and his ilk deserve from the U.S. Government is, perhaps, the traditional telegram notification sent to next-of-kin.

"The U.S. view is that the 9/11 attacks sparked an "armed conflict" between the United States and al Qaeda, a legal status that both the Congress and the United Nations quickly affirmed. The "armed conflict" status has allowed the United States to use its military power and the international laws of war to permit such techniques as lethal drone attacks and commando raids against combatants -- legally delivered without warning or legal process.

All modern conflicts involve irregular non-state actors as combatants. These combatants and their fellow travelers seek to emphasize their status as civilians when useful, both for defense against modern military technology and in an attempt to take advantage of legal rights. Conversely, the United States government will seek, when necessary, to achieve an international recognition of armed conflict status against its irregular adversaries in order to take advantage of the military and legal advantages it gains from such a status. The government's challenge will be justifying the particular circumstances that warrant unsheathing the government's armed conflict powers against specific adversaries."

Considering that UBL had issued his own declaration of war against the U.S. as early as the 1990s, plus all those fairly damning video diatribes, it's difficult to imagine a more clearcut case of an irregular non-state actor qualifying as a combatant (unlawful or otherwise).

re: "The Lawfulness of Killing Bin Laden"

Butch Bracknell at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") lays out the legalities of schwacking UBL.

Money quote(s):

"Much has been made of the recent revelations that Osama bin Laden was unarmed at the moment he was killed by U.S. special operations forces in close quarters battle. Let us put this issue to rest with dispatch, once and for all: Killing bin Laden was not an extrajudicial execution, a murder, or a war crime. It was a combat engagement lawful under U.S. and international legal authority – full stop."

Mr. Bracknell takes some care explaining the self-defense and jus in bello rationales before continuing:

"Osama bin Laden was an enemy combatant – again, full stop. His status as a virtual enemy of the United States is grounded on several factors: his declaration of war (fatwa) by Al Qaeda, of which he was the nominal chief, against the United States; the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) of September 18, 2001 (Public Law 107-40); and, most likely, declaration of a state of hostilities (essentially, a state of “war”) by the President against an opposing belligerent: Al Qaeda, its footsoldiers, and its leaders. The qualifier “most likely” indicates that if the President has, in fact, declared Al Qaeda to be a hostile, belligerent force, the designation probably would be classified and non-public. It is also superfluous, as Congress supplied the necessary authority in the AUMF to make combat actions against Al Qaeda lawful. They described a category of combatants who may be targeted by U.S. forces, and Osama bin Laden fell squarely into that category more precisely than any other person in the world. Targeting bin Laden was based on bin Laden simply being bin Laden: his conduct as he stared down the wrong end of an MP-5 was immaterial.

Once designated a hostile enemy combatant, there are only two ways a combatant can be exempted from lawful targeting: by manifesting a clear and unequivocal intent to surrender, and by becoming wounded or otherwise incapacitated and incapable of resistance (hors d’combat). There is no evidence bin Laden was wounded prior to administration of the lethal force which ended his life. Moreover, U.S. forces engaged in armed conflict are under no obligation to give an enemy combatant a chance to surrender; the enemy combatant must practically force his surrender on the U.S. force by manifesting it clearly, timely, and in a manner which enables U.S. forces to discontinue the use of lethal force. At this instant, a shield of legal protection descends around him, and U.S. forces are obligated to treat him humanely and consistent with the laws of armed conflict pertaining to detainees. Until the shield is present, triggered by manifest surrender, it is absent. Without the shield that only he could initiate through his surrenderous conduct, bin Laden remained a legitimate target and was treated so by the assaulting U.S. force.

Bin Laden’s death was a triumph for the American intelligence community and the armed forces and provides, at long last, some solace to the victims of 9/11 and Al Qaeda’s other terroristic acts. His death will likely prove to be a strategic gain, and it eliminates a continuing threat to Americans at home and her citizens and forces abroad. It also was completely sanctioned under U.S. and international law."

Bottom line: it was a righteous shoot.

re: "A really bad day for bin Laden - and for Pakistan"

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("news and commentary on the goings on across the broad community of small wars practitioners, thought leaders, and pundits") cuts right to the essentials.

Money quote(s):

"The killing of Osama bin Laden is a satisfying triumph for Americans and the U.S. government. It would have been even more satisfying had it occurred in the weeks and months after the September 2001 attacks. But the fact that it took a decade to finally kill bin Laden should be warning to any who doubt the long memories and persistence of the U.S. government’s counterterrorism forces. They didn’t forget and they never stopped working on the problem.

The Joint Special Operations Command, presumably the command responsible for the mission, should get credit for demonstrating its ability to successfully raid targets virtually anywhere in the world. The CIA also gets credit for patiently developing the required intelligence and for reminding everyone of the value of battlefield captures, interrogations, and human intelligence." (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA)

It was a job well done.

More than that, it was years of jobs well done and literally decades of capacity building from the disaster that was Desert One to today's robust and diverse special operations capacity.

"(T)his raid is a black day for Pakistan and its relationship with the United States. As the White House background briefing on the raid makes clear, the United States kept the raid completely concealed from the Pakistani government. Combine this with the fact that bin Laden was found in a highly protected compound in a wealthy town near Pakistan’s capital, and a stone’s throw from a Pakistani military academy. Americans will be right to conclude that Pakistan was bin Laden’s long-time friend and not America’s. What little support Pakistan still enjoys in Washington will now likely melt away. Pakistan will have to look to China, its last friend, for the support it will need to survive."

The political fallout from this will play out over the coming several years. Pakistan, as a unitary state, may not survive it; the hazards it faces are too numerous to mention.

re: "Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars"

Hat tip to the Small Wars Journal editors ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") for bringing this Ralph Peters article to my attention.

A word about Ralph Peter first.

Ralph Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer, a strategist, an author, a
journalist who has reported from various war zones, and a lifelong traveler. He is the author of 24 books, including Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World and the forthcoming The War after Armageddon, a novel set in the Levant after the nuclear destruction of Israel.

Retiring as a lieutenant colonel, Ralph Peters was a military intelligence officer. He's written (and obviously read) extensively on the topics of strategy and conflict in the world that's come to be since the end of the Cold War.

LTC Peters is, in some respects, sort of like that crazy uncle in the family who says the impolite-but-true things at family gatherings. If we didn't have him around to say those things, to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable, we'd have to invent him.

During the Cold War, there came to exist whole professions of people whose business it was to think the unthinkable and plan for the unspeakable. By and large these were decent, educated, moral people, trying to keep their countries and their families alive and free. Their moral and spiritual heirs exist today throughout the military and intelligence services.

The opener:

"The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay any price and bear any burden” to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties—hostile, civilian and our own—continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves."

Allowing attorneys to pronounce on the acceptability of targets and objectives is an awful misstep, very difficult to retract, and incredibly has become necessary due to the scapegoating-in-hindsight which has come to be the norm in American politics today.

Some money quotes:

"(I)rregular warfare is not new—it is warfare’s oldest form, the stone against the bronze-tipped spear—and the crucial asymmetry does not lie in weaponry, but in moral courage. While our most resolute current enemies—Islamist extremists—may violate our conceptions of morality and ethics, they also are willing to sacrifice more, suffer more and kill more (even among their own kind) than we are. We become mired in the details of minor missteps, while fanatical holy warriors consecrate their lives to their ultimate vision. They live their cause, but we do not live ours. We have forgotten what warfare means and what it takes to win."

"(C)ollective memory has effectively erased the European-sponsored horrors of the last century; yesteryear’s “unthinkable” events have become, well, unthinkable. .... I am stunned by the common notion, which prevails despite ample evidence to the contrary, that such horrors are impossible today."

Rwanda. South Sudan. Democratic Kampuchea. Darfur. Teheran. Mexico.

"(E)nding the draft resulted in a superb military, but an unknowing, detached population. The higher you go in our social caste system, the less grasp you find of the military’s complexity and the greater the expectation that, when employed, our armed forces should be able to fix things promptly and politely."

Thank CNN, gun camera footage, and video games. Everything looks like it's neat and settled and then cut to commercial break. Mysteries are solved and the inscrutable unscrewed in either 30 or 60 minutes time.

"Our rising generation of political leaders assumes that, if anyone wishes to do us harm, it must be the result of a misunderstanding that can be resolved by that lethal narcotic of the chattering classes, dialogue."

Intelligence analysts have lots of terminology for the sort of mental biases endemic to this sort of thing: mirror-imaging, rational actor bias, &tc. Long before I ever heard of such a thing, it was very apparent to me that some of our national policy leaders seemed to think that their counterparts had all attended the same seminars at Harvard's Kissinger School or something.

"(H)istory is no longer taught as a serious subject in America’s schools. As a result, politicians lack perspective; journalists lack meaningful touchstones; and the average person’s sense of warfare has been redefined by media entertainments in which misery, if introduced, is brief."

Even within the military, intelligence, and foreign-policy services, the poverty of our educational system has resulted in a deficit of historical knowledge and perspective among the people who need it most. The good ones spend their careers playing catch-up, trying to fill in the intellectual potholes which are the legacy of public education in America.

"We have cheapened the idea of war. We have had wars on poverty, wars on drugs, wars on crime, economic warfare, ratings wars, campaign war chests, bride wars, and price wars in the retail sector. The problem, of course, is that none of these “wars” has anything to do with warfare as soldiers know it. Careless of language and anxious to dramatize our lives and careers, we have elevated policy initiatives, commercial spats and social rivalries to the level of humanity’s most complex, decisive and vital endeavor.

One of the many disheartening results of our willful ignorance has been well-intentioned, inane claims to the effect that “war doesn’t change anything” and that “war isn’t the answer,” that we all need to “give peace a chance.” Who among us would not love to live in such a splendid world? Unfortunately, the world in which we do live remains one in which war is the primary means of resolving humanity’s grandest disagreements, as well as supplying the answer to plenty of questions. As for giving peace a chance, the sentiment is nice, but it does not work when your self-appointed enemy wants to kill you."

In war, the enemy gets a vote. The truism about no battle plan surviving contact with the enemy is true for a reason. The enemy has his own plan and it's not one you're likely to favor; that's why he's called "the enemy."

"(O)ur expectations of war’s results have become absurd. Even the best wars do not yield perfect aftermaths."

A truly brilliant opponent would melt away before a Western invasion, shower the liberators with roses, pop-up with a democratic collaborationist government, and then quickly usher the Westerners back out of the country. Sort of a double-reverse Grand-Fenwickian strategy.

"Expecting Iraq, Afghanistan or the conflict of tomorrow to end quickly, cleanly and neatly belongs to the realm of childhood fantasy, not human reality. Even the most successful war yields imperfect results. An insistence on prompt, ideal outcomes as the measure of victory guarantees the perception of defeat."

Lack of clearly communicated objectives in war only makes it easier for the media and for opposition politicians (but I repeat myself) to move the goalposts and declare a quagmire.

"We have the power to win any war. Victory remains possible in every conflict we face today or that looms on the horizon. But, for now, we are unwilling to accept that war not only is, but must be, hell. Sadly, our enemies do not share our scruples."

The American political public really only has a visceral grasp of the last half-dozen of the nation's war. Anything earlier than World War II is essentially pre-history not quite rising to the level of mythology, other than Washington crossing the Delaware (why didn't he cross on one of the Interstate highway bridges?) and Martin Sheen losing at Gettysburg.

So our national knowledge of war is limited to World War II (a global, existential struggle between good and evil), Korea (reruns of M*A*S*H but nobody's quite sure why we were there), Vietnam (we lost and that's a good thing, right?), &tc.

No wonder there's ignorance and confusion about the nature of war.

We're supposed to win, except when we're not, and the enemy population should greet us a liberators (none of them were really nazis). And in the hindsight of three-score years things like the Marshall Plan and the German economic miracle look easy.

"The willful ignorance within the American intelligentsia and in Washington, D.C., does not stop with the mechanics and costs of warfare, but extends to a denial of the essential qualities of our most-determined enemies. While narco-guerrillas, tribal rebels or pirates may vex us, Islamist terrorists are opponents of a far more frightening quality. These fanatics do not yet pose an existential threat to the United States, but we must recognize the profound difference between secular groups fighting for power or wealth and men whose galvanizing dream is to destroy the West."

Islamist terrorists do not yet post an existential threat to the United States, but.....

They'd like to.

(Honor the threat.)

"The problem is religion. Our Islamist enemies are inspired by it, while we are terrified even to talk about it. We are in the unique position of denying that our enemies know what they themselves are up to. They insist, publicly, that their goal is our destruction (or, in their mildest moods, our conversion) in their god’s name. We contort ourselves to insist that their religious rhetoric is all a sham, that they are merely cynics exploiting the superstitions of the masses. Setting aside the point that a devout believer can behave cynically in his mundane actions, our phony, one-dimensional analysis of al-Qaeda and its ilk has precious little to do with the nature of our enemies—which we are desperate to deny—and everything to do with us."

Having taken prayer out of the schools in homage to the second-most-easily-offended religious group (i..e, atheists), with the Ten Commandments taken out of the courthouses, Christmas displays from out of the town squares, and memorial crosses out of national and state parks, it's no wonder that our political classes are so clue-less about religion.

"The notion of killing to please a deity and further his perceived agenda is so unpleasant to us that we simply pretend it away. U.S. intelligence agencies and government departments go to absurd lengths, even in classified analyses, to avoid such basic terms as “Islamist terrorist.” Well, if your enemy is a terrorist and he professes to be an Islamist, it may be wise to take him at his word."

Honor the threat. It's not up to us to define our adversaries; our adversaries will do that nicely enough for themselves. It is up to us to avoid willful blindness in that regard.

"To make enduring progress against Islamist terrorists, we must begin by accepting that the terrorists are Islamists. And the use of the term “Islamist,” rather than “Islamic,” is vital—not for reasons of political correctness, but because it connotes a severe deviation from what remains, for now, mainstream Islam. We face enemies who celebrate death and who revel in bloodshed. Islamist terrorists have a closer kinship with the blood cults of the pre-Islamic Middle East—or even with the Aztecs—than they do with the ghazis who exploded out of the Arabian desert, ablaze with a new faith. At a time when we should be asking painful questions about why the belief persists that gods want human blood, we insist on downplaying religion’s power and insisting that our new enemies are much the same as the old ones. It is as if we sought to analyze Hitler’s Germany without mentioning Nazis.

We will not even accept that the struggle between Islam and the West never ceased. Even after Islam’s superpower status collapsed, the European imperial era was bloodied by countless Muslim insurrections, and even the Cold War was punctuated with Islamist revivals and calls for jihad. The difference down the centuries was that, until recently, the West understood that this was a survival struggle and did what had to be done (the myth that insurgents of any kind usually win has no historical basis)."

Even some of the insurgents believed in common knowledge to have won, did not, as a matter of history, do so in fact. The Viet Cong did not defeat South Vietnam and the U.S. military. After the Tet Offensive in 1968, the Viet Cong were essentially obliterated and rendered permanently non-combat effective. Most of the "insurgents" from that time forward were actually NVA regulars infiltrated south from the DMZ. South Vietnam fell to armor-heavy regular forces from North Vietnam.

"When the United States is forced to go to war—or decides to go to war—it must intend to win. That means that rather than setting civilian apparatchiks to calculate minimum force levels, we need to bring every possible resource to bear from the outset—an approach that saves blood and treasure in the long run. And we must stop obsessing about our minor sins. Warfare will never be clean, soldiers will always make mistakes, and rounds will always go astray, despite our conscientious safeguards and best intentions. .... we must return to the fundamental recognition that the greatest “war crime” the United States can commit is to lose."

I pray for the safe return of American citizens trying to exit some of the Middle Eastern countries which are now experiencing uprisings and other instability. Some of our fellow citizens may well experience something of what it's like to "lose" in a war, as four yachters recently experienced off the coast of Somalia.

"Yet another counter-historical assumption is that states have matured beyond fighting wars with each other, that everyone would have too much to lose, that the inter-connected nature of trade makes full-scale conventional wars impossible. That is precisely the view that educated Europeans held in the first decade of the twentieth century."

Globalization is not new. It wasn't new when Marco Polo was working the issue. It's a process and a tendency. It's not a panacea or an immunity.

"(W)e need to remember that the apparent threat of the moment is not necessarily the deadly menace of tomorrow. It may not be China that challenges us, after all, but the unexpected rise of a dormant power. The precedent is there: in 1929, Germany had a playground military limited to 100,000 men. Ten years later, a re-armed Germany had embarked on the most destructive campaign of aggression in history, its killing power and savagery exceeding that of the Mongols. Without militarizing our economy (or indulging our unscrupulous defense industry), we must carry out rational modernization efforts within our conventional forces—even as we march through a series of special-operations-intensive fights for which there is no end in sight. We do not need to bankrupt ourselves to do so, but must accept an era of hard choices, asking ourselves not which weapons we would like to have, but which are truly necessary."

Recall that in 1929 Germany was doing everything in its not-inconsiderable power to hide its ability to rearm and to make war. It did so quite successfully, with horrific results for its neighbors and the world.

"Whether faced with conventional or unconventional threats, the same deadly impulse is at work in our government and among the think tank astrologers who serve as its courtiers: An insistence on constantly narrowing the parameters of what is permissible in warfare. We are attempting to impose ever sterner restrictions on the conduct of war even as our enemies, immediate and potential, are exploring every possible means of expanding their conduct of conflicts into new realms of total war."

If you don't believe this, start reading some of the stuff posted over at Opinio Juris. Those are some big-brain lawyers over there, who really know their international law (if there can be considered to be such a thing, which is another debate), and some of what they write about amounts to a handicapping system weighted against Western powers involved in armed conflict. I know they mean well but they really need to go on some patrols on the bad side of Basra for a few weeks, or take a long field trip to the Kandahar valley in winter.

"Our homeland’s complex infrastructure offers ever-increasing opportunities for disruption to enemies well aware that they cannot defeat our military head-on, but who hope to wage total war asymmetrically, leapfrogging over our ships and armored divisions to make daily life so miserable for Americans that we would quit the fight. No matter that even the gravest attacks upon our homeland might, instead, re-arouse the killer spirit among Americans—our enemies view the home front as our weak flank."

Adm. Yamamoto understood the risk, and paid the ultimate price, for awakening the sleeping giant.

"Our potential enemies believe that anything that might lead to victory is permissible."

And so it is. The laws of land warfare and other codes of conduct clustering around the various Hague and Geneva conventions are Western artifacts, not laws of nature. The American experience fighting practicioners of, for instance, the code of Bushido, was very instructive in this regard. These strictures are not meant to be suicide pacts (at least not the earlier ones) or strait jackets, but ways to minimize the suffering of innocents during wartime. When fighting an adversary who, in the main, respects these norms, we should by all means return the courtesy. When not so fortunate, we must dust-off those articles of war dealing with reprisal and apply them with strict interpretation.

"Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media."

The unbiased media. On my way out of Iraq in 2004 was when I was first exposed to "unbiased" and "objective" journalism as it was then practised by such networks as CNN and MSNBC. Their reporting was so at odds with the reality of Iraq as I had just spent the prior year experiencing, the cognitive dissonance so awful, that I became an immediate convert to the Fox News Channel. I had colleagues who, upon their return home, actually broke their television sets they were so angered by the biased reporting. Most just turned them off.

"The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the “rights” and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion—were any additional proof required—that human beings are rational creatures."

Daniel Pearl. Lara Logan.

"Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters."

&

"We need to regain a sense of the world’s reality.

Of all the enemies we face today and may face tomorrow, the most dangerous is our own wishful thinking. "