Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 155

Sassoon's memoirs of World War I: Lovely writing but little to say

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After reading the
World
War I memoir by Robert Graves for the fourth
(and, I expect, final) time, I began to wonder why I had never looked at the
autobiographical novel about the war by his friend Siegfried Sassoon. So I did.

I am glad I
did -- sort of. I had feared he would be a whiner, but he wasn't. He is a terrific
writer, with an unusual feel for turning a great phrase. Almost at random,
there is this: "for an infantry subaltern, the huge unhappy mechanism of the
Western Front always narrowed down to the company he was in."

Three pages
later: "The sky seemed to sag heavily over Flanders; it was an oppressive, soul-clogging
country." (I thought the same of Iraq in the late spring, when rain storms
mixed with dust storms resulting in pelting mud.)

And then night
just behind the front: "the whole region became a dusk of looming slopes with
lights of village and bivouac picked out here and there, little sparks in the
loneliness of time." On the next page: "the rockets soared beyond the ridge and
the machine-guns rattled out their mirthless laughter." There is not just
precision of observation here, but also of expression.

"One wet days the
trees a mile away were like ash-grey smoke rising from the naked ridges, and it
felt very much as if we were at the end of the world." I've had that feeling,
both in northern Bosnia and northwestern Ira, but have never been able to
capture in it words.

Watching soldiers
in the trenches: "It was queer how the men seemed to take their victimization
for granted." And, "What in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now
droves of victims."

And finally:
"Last summer the First Battalion had been part of my life; by the middle of
September it had been almost obliterated."

I suspect at this
point he is descending into a kind of madness, but he keeps a British attitude,
deciding that, "getting killed on purpose [would be] an irrelevant gesture for
a platoon commander."  In its last
section the book peters out into diary entries, and then, because he lost part
of his diary, into remembered moments. But he still throws out some good
aphoristic observations. "The better the soldier, the more limited in his
outlook." That's not just for the enlisted ranks: "One cannot be a useful
officer and a reader of imaginative literature at the same time." (He is being
cute there-a few pages later he actually cites his company executive officer as
a terrific help and also a big reader. In fact they are both reading poetry
during a bombardment when their dugout suffers a direct hit from a shell that
turns out to be a dud-the nose of the shell protrudes into their shelter."

What he liked
about patrolling in no-man's-land: "We were beyond all interference by
Brigadiers."

One of his final
lines is about his sense that he died, or part of him did, during the war: "I
seem to write these words of someone who never returned from France."

It is an
interesting book. But at the end, it was less than the sum of it parts. I guess
that the best way to say it is that it doesn't add up to much. He is a better
observer and writer than thinker. Despite the fine turns of phrase, at the end
I didn't take away much. As much I as admire his eye, and his hand at turning
phrases, I don't feel I took away anything larger. I doubt I will read it
again, or even recall it much. The odd thing about his pose as a lightweight is
that, ultimately, he really is.

6 women join the board of 'Orbis'

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I was
intrigued to see that six women are joining the board of Orbis, the foreign policy quarterly.
They are:

Audrey
Kurth Cronin

Janine
Davidson

Mary
Habeck

Martha
Brill Olcott

Susan
Kaufman Purcell

Anna
Simons

That's a
pretty impressive group to bring on board.

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Layka loses a limb but saves lives

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By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Last month in early September, the Air Force's 341st Training Squadron recognized
MWD Layka for her heroic service in Afghanistan. They presented the dog "with a medal of heroism from the unit's
parent organization, the 37th Training Group" -- a first for the TS.

The barely 3-year-old Belgian Malinois was on a Special Ops mission
in June when during a cordon search for explosives the young dog crossed paths
with an insurgent. She was shot multiple times, taking hits to her leg and
abdomen. The wounds were severe but the dog launched at and then detained her
attacker-securing the safety of her handler and the other men behind them.

"She surprised the terrorist, who was waiting to
lay down fire on the team. I heard from people on the mission that if Layka
hadn't reacted like she did, there was a potential for multiple casualties," said Tech. Sgt. Joseph Null,
the 341st TRS military working dogs adoptions coordinator. "Layka needed
to be recognized for her sacrifice." (Maj. Jason Harris, 341st TRS
commander, made sure to note that because honors aren't given to dogs, this
medal was unofficial.)

Layka, whose wounded leg had to be amputated, is now resting
comfortably in the custody of her handler. The full story can be found here.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk,
is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by
Free Press in the fall of 2013.

Best line heard lately: 'Aliens are kosher'

A friend in the military writes: "Aliens
are kosher. I can't go into detail, but I work in the Pentagon so I know stuff
like this."

Meanwhile,
Nethanyahu
goes Gangnam style in this video. More here,
thanks to Andrew
Sullivan.

And
someone finally speaks up for the second
lieutenants of the world.

Finally,
to bring us back full circle to outer space, here is Star
Wars Gangnam-style.

Sometimes I think I should just turn this Best Defense blog over to Jim Gourley

Quote of the day from him, in a comment
about drones:

We are 'evolving' the military to be a
human force that performs civil-military relations and infrastructure work with
a smaller 'killer elite' group of spec-ops, intelligence, and drone units that
operate in the dark without the knowledge, let alone supervision, of the
civilian society that's supposed to control them. We know less and less about
what our military is doing, but the really troubling part is that we like it
that way. 

Bringing the war home: Re-discovering Alexander Gardner's photos of the carnage of Antietam

By Bob Kozak

Best
Defense bureau of Civil War imagery

By
the start of the Civil War, portable wet-plate technology made it possible for
photographers to follow army campaigns. While long exposure times precluded
action photos, the aftermath of battle could be documented. Two days after the
Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), which to this day is still the single
worst day for the American military -- with over 23,000 killed or wounded --
Alexander Gardner began photographing the carnage. By the time he and his
assistant James Gibson left, they had taken approximately 100 images on the
battlefield. Less than a month later Gardner's boss, Mathew Brady, had twenty
of the images, referred to as the "Dead of Antietam" displayed in his New York
City Gallery. As the New York Times reported on October 20th 1862:

"Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible
reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in
our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it."  

Starting
this Friday, October 5th, for the first time since 1862, you will
have the chance to see this exhibition. We have reproduced the photos to their
original form using high resolution Library of Congress digital files of the
negatives and have recreated the display with clues from 1862 accounts. We have
five originals in the display. And, since Gardner took most of these photos
using stereoscopic cameras, we also have a 3-D theatre to see them in their
intended format.

But
for us who have organized the show -- a partnership of the National Museum of
Civil War Medicine, Hood College, and the Frederick Maryland Civil War
Roundtable -- just having a chance to see these images is not enough. We have
also produced commentary on the images for your consideration.

We
start with the moral and visual context at the start of the Civil War and introduce
viewers to 1862 responses to the photos written in light of President Lincoln's
release of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Information is presented
on the evolution of war image censorship in response to the availability of
high quality mass produced photo images throughout the 20th and 21st
century. We conclude with the present, where a single image of a mortally
wounded Marine in Afghanistan, an image that would not be out of place with
Gardner's, causes the Secretary of Defense Gates to say:

"Your lack of compassion and common sense in
choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page
of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy
or constitutional right -- but judgment and common decency."

We don't provide answers with
this exhibit. But we do hope that visitors will consider some
of the questions that voices in the exhibition, including those of fathers and
mothers of war fighters ask about the role of war time images and when war is
moral.

Bob
Kozak is the director of the exhibit, which will be
on display at the Pry House Field Hospital Museum at Antietam National
Battlefield from October 5 to December 1, 2012. For more information, click here.

Pentagon to McChrystal: Put a sock in it

The Pentagon security clearance office
has forced General McChrystal to delay publication of his memoir, which was supposed to come out next
month. No word on how long the delay will be.

Word is that McChrystal wrote about a
lot of special operations actions. This wasn't a problem until No Easy Day came out and freaked out everybody in
officialdom.

I e-mailed
McChrystal to ask about this and got one of those cryptic Special Ops responses: "Thanks. Passing this to my publisher." They didn't
have any immediate comment but said one is forthcoming. 

Apparently no one has mentioned the
delay to Amazon -- they still have the book coming out Nov. 12. That's just over a
month from now, which makes me think that the publisher probably already has
printed the first batch.

UPDATE:  At 10 am, I
received this statement from Will Weisser, marketing director for Portfolio
publishers:

"We have decided
to delay the publication date of General McChrystal's book, My Share of the Task, as the book
continues to undergo a security review by the Department of Defense. The new
publication date has not been confirmed yet.

General McChrystal has spent 22 months working
closely with military officials to make sure he follows all the rules for
writing about the armed forces, including special operations. The clearance
process has been detailed and time consuming. General McChrystal was extremely
careful not to include information that would endanger any military personnel
or their mission, and he's confident the book does not do so. Even so, he
remains committed to securing official clearance from DOD.

Counterterror roundup: Americans worry about drones but support lethal actions

By
Matthew Irvine

Best
Defense department of counterrorism

A few recent articles that mark evolutions in the U.S.
counterterrorism debate.

The first is a fascinating
article by Amy Zegart about how the U.S. public now supports more
aggressive policies and actions to counter terrorism than in the past.
Highlights or the poll include 69 percent of Americans supporting the use of "assassinations" in counterterrorism (vs. 65 percent in 2005) ; 25 percent of Americans supporting
the use of water-boarding techniques (vs. 16 percent in 2005); and 25 percent are willing to
use nuclear weapons in counterterrorism operations. The article postulates that
the controversies have faded from the public eye, a Democratic administration
can get away with more aggressive tactics (Nixon can go to China), and
media/pop-culture have changed public attitudes.

The second is a study by researchers at Stanford's
International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic and NYU's Global
Justice Clinic titled, Living Under
Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From U.S. Drone Practices in
Pakistan. The study argues that administration estimates of civilian
casualties caused by targeted strikes in Pakistan are significantly undervalued
compared to reality on the ground. Additionally, the study cites increasing
Pakistani public opposition to drone strikes and calls for greater transparency
in targeting processes and program oversight. The study deserves a good scrub
since it is getting a lot of attention and its findings are being used as
authoritative. For example, Andrew Sullivan cited the report in saying, "But those numbers, in so far as we can judge them, go over the 'just war' line for me."

The third, a very worthwhile review and critique of the
Stanford/NYU study by Joshua
Foust in the Atlantic. Foust highlights
sourcing and data problems within the Living Under Drones report and
contends that regardless, civilian casualties remain very low even with the new
unscientific data. Secondly, he wisely points out that the report does not
evaluate the efficacy of the use of drones in Pakistan relative to U.S.
security concerns or available alternatives. The use of UAV's to conduct
strikes in Pakistan fills a security vacuum in Pakistan's border areas, Foust
argues, and represent the lightest footprint and most precise counterterrorism
option available. Imagine the alternatives as doing nothing, conducting U.S.
military operations on the ground in FATA, somehow coaxing the Pakistanis to
launch a major offensive like they did in South Waziristan in 2009, or working
with local groups to secure U.S. interests.

Lastly, Rosa Brooks has been charting new waters in touching
some counterterrorism third rails for former DOD officials in her Foreign Policy columns.
Specifically, she looks at the challenges posed by drone strikes precedents
proliferating to non-allied countries like Russia or China as well as some
myth-busting on what drones/UAV's/RPA's actually are. She also takes a crack at
the blurred lines between CIA operations and Special Forces missions in some
parts of the world.

It appears that we are seeing quite an odd paradox: while
the American public increasingly supports the use of "assassination" in
counterterrorism, the topic of drones is increasingly controversial. As the
U.S. turns toward a broader CT strategy in South Asia and our Middle East/North
Africa counterterrorism operations are likely to increase, it's helpful to see
where the policy debate is going and how the public is reacting.

Matthew Irvine is a research associate at the Center for a New American Security .

Syria blasts Hamas

Knock yourselves out, fellas!

A dollop of Trollope: 'The most dangerous man in the world'

Over the summer,
taking a break from military history after three years of reading pretty much
nothing but, I read the first of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her? (Short answer:
Yes, you can. But it takes him about 800 pages to explain how.)

Trollope strikes
me as a male version of Jane Austen. He is just as cynical, and still concerned
with manners and marriage, and with how people make their way in through the
cold world. But he also has a lively interest in the public worlds of finance
and politics.

One of the best
lines in the book, with some contemporary resonance: "I dare say he's not very
bright, but I don't know that we want brightness. A bright financier is the
most dangerous man in the world. We've had enough of that already."  (Vol. 1, p. 348)

Another good
observation: "in politics, I would a deal sooner trust to instinct than to
calculation." (Vol. 2, p. 194)

And this, on one
kind of marriage: "She despised her husband because he had no vices." (Vol . 2,
p. 297)

And, this being
the Best Defense blog, we should mention Trollope's reference to Iraqi affairs:
"I want Plantagenet to take us to see the Kurds, but he won't." (Vol. 2, p.
273)

Then I started
the next of the Palliser novels, Phineas
Finn, but gave up because it felt so similar. Almost the same characters
but with new names, like the handsome rotter and the noble but plodding good
guy.