Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 200

'Gendering Counterinsurgency'

That's the title of a talk being given at
Oxford today by Laleh Khalili, a lecturer at the University
of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

For commendable brevity in neatly fusing two
academic fads, Prof. Khalili wins
the Best Defense award for best fusion cooking dish of the month.  

Maybe 10,000 missing MANPADs. Yow!

That's a lot of man-portable
surface to air missiles to have floating around the Middle East even during
a quiet time. Which this is not.

Here's the backstory, given by James Clapper, the director
of national intelligence,  last Thursday
to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

"Well, the
principal area of concern, of course, are the so-call MANPADS or shoulder-fired
weapons -- anti-aircraft weapons.  And
the estimate was going into the upheavals there of about 20,000 MANPADS.  In fact, Libya had more MANPADS than any non-
producing country in the world.

There's
been an active and aggressive program run by the State Department to recover
MANPADS.  And they've, through that
program, we estimate recovered about a quarter of them -- about 5,000 MANPADS.

…There
are many others that we are certain…we are certain were destroyed by
virtue of the fact they were in ammo depots and bunkers and this sort of thing
that were destroyed during the either contest between the opposition and the
regime, or NATO air strikes. That said, there's a large number that are
unlocated and will be very problematic in recovering since they have them all
over the place. 

Lt. Col. Davis' Afghan report: He talks a good game, but there's not much to it

By Joseph J.
Collins

Best Defense
department of critiquing critiques

I spent yesterday morning with Lt. Colonel Dan Davis's
84 page report, Dereliction
of Duty II. It is a dog's
breakfast, written by someone whom I have met many times in the Army: People who see things as true or false, right or wrong, and people are divided
into good guy truth tellers or bad guy liars. Davis's bad guys are
generals Petraeus, Allen, and Caldwell, but he likes generals Chiarelli,
Thurman, Perkins, (who have not been in the top jobs in Afghanistan)
and General Dempsey. Except Davis hasn't gone over Dempsey's assessments on
Afghanistan which -- no surprise -- sound much like Allen's and
Petraeus's.

I was prepared for a real critique and came away profoundly
disappointed. Every veteran has an important story, but this work is
a mess. It is not a successor piece to HR
McMaster's book on the Joint Chiefs during Vietnam, or Paul Yingling's critique of U.S.
generalship that appeared in Armed Forces Journal a few years back.
Davis is not a hero, but he will go into the whistleblower hall of fame. If years hence, he doesn't make full Colonel, it will be construed as
punishment, but there is nothing in this report that suggests he has any such
potential. 

Let's look at the basics:

The title: Dereliction of Duty II ... sorry, this is
tantamount to delusions of grandeur. McMaster's book by the same title
was well-researched and well-written. Davis's work is neither. Davis's work should be called 'Dereliction of Civility' or maybe, 'Death by
Semi-anonymous Anecdote,' or 'My Turn for Warhol-hood.'

The work: 84 pages, but 41 pages are NOT about Afghanistan at
all. 12 pages are about the politics of army acquisitions programs with
material going back to the 1990s. 29 pages are about the Iraq surge, an
essay within the essay that asserts that the troop surge was overrated and
Iraqi socio-political developments --- not U.S. troops --- were what turned the
tide. My view is that the troop surge was a catalyst; it exploited these
developments, but both were necessary for "success," such as it
was. Time will tell about the larger piece in Iraq.

The guy who has nailed the Iraq surge stuff is Doug Ollivant, who helped
plan the troop surge and later went back to the NSC to push Iraq policy. Whatever points Davis has on Iraq have been made better by other people. In any case, the fact that the surge in Iraq did or did not work was not
dispositive in the case of Afghanistan. Many of the same cast of
characters were involved in both surges, but a new president called for their
participation and worked himself for three months on the issue before he made
the surge decision.

The thesis: Give Davis a point for BLUF, bottom line up
front. His thesis is in the first sentence of the paper: Senior officers
"have so distorted the truth" on Afghanistan "that the truth has
become unrecognizable." Exhibit A here is a statement (pg. 6 6) by
Petraeus in March 2011. He excoriates Petraeus for claiming that Taliban
momentum "has been arrested in much of the country," and
"reversed" in places. Petraeus goes on to say in the
"damning" quote that progress was still "fragile and
reversible," and that "much difficult work lies ahead with our Afghan
partners."

On p. 8, we find out the real problem: things in Afghanistan are
not as clear as they were during the Battle of the Bulge. No
kidding! Davis craves clarity and surety in the case of protracted
insurgency in a fractious country that has been at war for 33 years. The
generals cannot deliver clarity in this sea of ambiguity, therefore, they must
be liars. As for statistics, the U.S.
government has never released more.

On p. 9 and on the last page (84), Davis shows that he is stuck on the
fact that as we put more assets in, the number of security incidents increased,
including those caused by the enemy. He finds these stats to be proof of
surge failure, and prima facie evidence that all optimistic statements or
projections are lies.

But much of Davis's stats -- which I can't verify as authentic --
have other explanations: 1) The enemy gets a vote and has himself gone all in
to stop the surge. (It is clear from nearly all observers, but not
Davis,that the Taliban have been soundly defeated -- even if fragile-y and
reverse-ibly -- in much of RC S and RC SW); 2) Adding 40,000 combat troops to
the mix has stirred things up, and 3) We still have "much difficult work
lies ahead with our Afghan partners," in Petraeus's phrase.

Davis cherry-picks statistics, but he never picks on any of the
voluminous data about night raids that shows the vast numbers of Taliban
leaders killed or captured in past two years. He also castigates LTG
Caldwell, but fails to walk through his impressive stats on ANSF development. He shames himself by writing that the ANSF are cowards who aren't fighting
hard.

On the ANSF, the facts get in the way of Davis's argument. Since
2007, Afghan cops and soldiers have died and been wounded in greater numbers
than ISAF forces. The Brookings
Index, again using USG-released numbers, confirms that. On p. 41, Davis cites redacted material about
poor ANSF performance. I was in Afghanistan last spring and heard lots of
the opposite story and found many Afghans in uniform who had been in the fight
and were spoiling for more, just as the
Marines noted in the New York Times Magazine two weeks ago. Every man or woman in uniform has a right to his anecdotes, but no matter
how many anecdotes you can string together, they don't constitute data or sound
judgments.

At the end of his text in his epilogue, Davis tries to give the Taliban a
writeoff. He says that al Qaeda wouldn't come back into Afghanistan and
that the Taliban have every incentive to disavow the al Qaeda. Except they
never have, even when asked by the King of Saudi Arabia to do so (See Dexter Filkins'
2010 article in the New York Times). I think -- but can't be sure
-- that Davis is trying to say that the war is not worth it, and only the
lying generals want to keep the farce in perpetual reruns. I could be
wrong about that ... many things in this document are unclear, although
obviously the "truth."

Let me summarize: This unclassified report is not worth the
reader's effort. Davis's Armed Forces Journal article promised
much, but this report delivers very little.

Joseph J. Collins, a retired Army Colonel, teaches at the National War
College. From 2001-2004, he was the Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defense for
Stability Operations. He wrote  Understanding War in Afghanistan,
published by the NDU Press in
2011. The views expressed herein are
those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the
Department of Defense or the U.S. Government, nor even, perhaps, those of "Pumpsie" Green. Congratulations for reading this far. Slow day, huh?

CO of USS Wyoming gets the heave-ho

For mishandling
classified materials. This makes three Navy skippers fired this year, which
strikes me as behind last year's breathtaking pace.

Anthony Shadid, rest in peace

This is a sad day for me. I've lost friends in the post-9/11
wars, but the
death of Anthony Shadid in Syria yesterday hits particularly hard. He was a
terrific reporter. He also was one of the kindest people I've ever met. He
was one of my heroes.

Back
in 2003, even into early 2004, Anthony used to take taxis all over Baghdad. For
fun he would drive down for lunch in Karbala, a town he enjoyed. When I was
embedding with American troops, he would kind of embed with Sadr's people,
going over to the eastern part of the city on Fridays to listen to the sermons.
We'd sit at night and compare notes over Turkish beers. My favorite
article that I ever did in Iraq was co-written with him, on June 2, 2003.
It was the simplest of concepts: I walked with an American foot patrol in west
Baghdad, and he (with the knowledge of the patrol) trailed us, talking to
Iraqis about the American presence. 

Unlike
many reporters, Anthony also had humility. In 2004 I asked him a question about
Iraqi politics. Anthony spoke Arabic fluently, and had knocked around Iraq
before the invasion as well as after it. (His book Night
Draws Near is for my money the best study of what the American
occupation felt like to Iraqis.) He looked at me and said, "Actually, the more
I know about Iraq, the less I understand it." Wise words. Wise man. A big loss
for us all.

Revolutionary reading lists (II): And now a few strategic words from the opposition

By Zygmunt F. Dembek and Dean Cheng

Best Defense department of
revolutionary affairs

This list is an attempt to compile the readings that provide
insight into the philosophies and tactics of our enemies, past, present, and
perhaps future. It is surprising that
few of these books are required reading for those who aspire to be our nation's
military and political leaders.

In no uncertain order:

My
War with the CIA by Norodom
Sihanouk and Wilfred Burchett:

Cambodian crown Prince Sihanouk describes his years of
struggle in fighting U.S. government covert and not-so-covert operations, with
assistance from neighboring countries, including China.

Ho
Chi Minh: A Life by William Duiker:

The definitive biography of the son of a civil servant, and
founder of the Vietnamese Communist party, who became president of North
Vietnam.  His 30 years in exile, and 50
year struggle to liberate Vietnam, are described. [Not sure I'd include
biographies (as opposed to autobiographies), for this list. Which isn't to say
that this isn't worth reading!]

Guerilla
Warfare by Ernesto "Che" Guevara:

This 1960 treatise provides tremendous insight into a Latin
American revolutionary's methods for overthrowing dictatorships (and democracies)
by a small determined groups of guerilla fighters.

How
We Won the War by General Vo Nguyen Giap:

North Vietnam's top military strategist describes how
victory from occupying forces was won, from the founding of the Army in 1944 to
the departure of the U.S. in 1975.

On
Guerilla Warfare by Mao Tse Tung:

Mao's textbook on guerilla warfare is the result of his
fighting the Japanese in China, and is a timeless reference to the organization
and conduct of a successful guerilla campaign.

The
Triple Agent: The Al Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA by Joby Warrick:

A well-researched description of
how the Jordanian double-agent Humam Khalil al-Balawi, while promising to help
the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden's top deputy, became a suicide bomber,
killing seven CIA operatives, the agency's worst loss of life in decades.

Balik
Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf  by Zachary Abuza:

A technical treatise that provides great insight into the
origins, organization, and operations of a primary terrorist group opposing the
Philippine government. This writing can
be obtained as a free
download from the Army's Strategic Studies Institute.

Street
Without Joy by Bernard Fall:

The 1961 classic about the hubris and blunders of French
forces in Vietnam, leading to the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. An epic book in many dimensions, the most
important of which may be its omission from the readings of American military
leaders during the 1960's and 1970's, facilitating a repeat of history.

Surrender
to Kindness: One Man's Epic Journey for Love and Peace by Joseph David
Osman:

Wisdom acquired by first-hand experience and shared by an
Afghan-American on how to actually win "hearts and minds" in Afghanistan.  Personally recommended by those who know
Osman and of his work.

Commander
of the Faithful: The Life and Time of Emir Abd el-Kader by John W.
Kise:

A thoroughly researched book on the life and tactics of a
Muslim military leader who fought the French occupying forces in Algeria during
the 19th century, and won their respect.

The
Science of Military Strategy, edited by Peng Guangqian and Ya Youzhi of
the Chinese Academy of Military Science:

Translation (in 2005) of a Chinese
military textbook published in 2001. It provides a distinctly Chinese view of
concepts such as deterrence and military strategy.

The
Quranic Concept of War by S.K. Malik:

One Muslim perspective on war in
the context of Quranic teachings.

Col. Zygmunt F. Dembek,
Ph.D. (US Army Reserve,  Ret.)  is a senior scientist at the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine
(CDHAM) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). Dean
Cheng is the research fellow for Chinese Political and Security Affairs at
the Heritage Foundation. The views expressed herein are those of the
authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
Defense or the U.S. Government, nor of the Heritage Foundation, nor even,
perhaps, those of  Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd.
Any reproduction of this broadcast without the express written consent of the
Major League Best Defense is forbidden.

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Kondi retires alongside soldiers at Fort Lee

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

At the end of January, Virginia's Fort Lee held one of its
bi-monthly retirement ceremonies. So large was the crowd gathered that day it
was "nearly standing room only." In addition to the eight servicemen being
honored there was Kondi, the
first MWD to be retired alongside soldiers at Fort Lee. 

Kondi's six-year career ended this year after laboring with
the pains of arthritis became too much for the eight-year-old German shepherd.
According to her handlers the pain was interfering with her ability to keep
attention on the task at hand and she'd grown increasingly more interested in
play than work.

However brief, Kondi's time as a MWD was flush with impressive
achievements. Back in her heyday this canine was a model detection dog with skills
that "always exceeded
the standards set by the Department of the Army and always resulted in a 98
percent first time certification rate with three different handlers."

In 2007,
Kondi and then-handler Sgt. Jason Bird were named the top military working dog
team after placing first in the narcotics detection event at the U.S. Army Training and
Doctrine Command Military Working Dog Warrior Police Challenge of that year. (In
this photo Kondi and Bird search for drugs at the 2007 competition.)

In the weeks following her retirement, Kondi has been settling in with her new family,
the Jordans of Chapel Hill, NC. The Jordans, who were at the January ceremony, have
been sending reports of her progress; Kondi is making friends in the
neighborhood and enjoying being "spoiled." But it seems that
sometimes even when you take the dog out of the military, you can't always take
the military out of the dog.

We were
watching the NFL Pro Bowl when the National Anthem began to play,' [said the
Jordans]. 'Kondi, who had been playing, stopped and sat "at attention." She sat
staring straight ahead until the anthem was complete…At first, we didn't
know what she was doing -- then it dawned on us, she was showing respect for
her country.'"

In other MWD news, Buckley AFB in Colorado has officially
opened its new
K-9 kennels. I was lucky enough to visit the top-of-the-line facility back in
December and I can say that the new digs - and the dogs -- were looking pretty good.
Congrats to kennel master Tech. Sgt. Edward Canell and
his team.

Is Google becoming Big Brother?

Quote of the day, from a very good
article by Richard
Falkenrath in the Financial Times:

Google, by gaining the consent of its users in the form of a quick tick, has secured the power to build an electronic surveillance apparatus that far exceeds anything the Bush administration tried to do.… The potential is vast. For instance, Gmail has a contact-tracking feature, which integrates with Picasa, its free product for managing digital photographs. Picasa has a tagging feature that can tell Google where and when photographs were taken, and an advanced facial recognition feature that allows Google to identify individuals it has seen in one photo in any photo in the user's digital library. Integrating just these three services with Google's core search function could allow Google to locate individuals in virtually any digital photograph on the internet, and so derive where each user has been, when, with whom and doing what. Add YouTube to the mix, or Android smartphones, or whatever other database Google develops or buys -- the implications are breathtaking.

To remedy this problem, Falkenrath
advocates adding a new "right to be forgotten" to laws protecting privacy. He
predicts that companies such as Facebook and Google that profit by monetizing
data on people would fight this fiercely. Unfortunately, given their financial
strength, plus the power of the California congressional delegation, I think
they would succeed in putting down any such legislation.

Will Afghanistan collapse after U.S. troops leave? Maybe, but not why you think

By Ethan B. Kapstein

Best Defense directorate of military-economic affairs

Will Afghanistan collapse after the departure of American
troops in 2013? That grim outcome appears all too likely. But the reason why
Afghanistan may be heading toward anarchy is not simply due to the Afghan National
Army's lack of military preparedness to fight an insurgency without foreign
support. Rather, some of the most challenging problems that the government must
face once the U.S. leaves will be economic.

Today, the United States and its allies provide the government of Afghanistan with the vast majority of its operating budget.
American taxpayers have not only built up schools, hospitals, government
ministries, and the Afghan National Army and police force; they have also
paid the salaries of those who man these institutions. Further, U.S. military
and foreign assistance operations in Afghanistan support many thousands of
soldiers, foreign aid workers, and contractors, who pump millions of dollars
into the local economy.

What will happen when the last Americans depart? If history
is any guide, "foreign assistance follows the flag," meaning that aid spending
will flee in the absence of a strong military presence. First, Americans will
inevitably lose interest in Afghanistan and redirect spending to the next
crisis zone; today, for example, the calamity in Syria is dominating the airwaves. Second, without American troops around to provide a modicum of security,
foreign aid workers will have no choice but to leave the country; they won't be
able to work in safety (and it shouldn't be forgotten that several hundred aid
workers have already been killed during the war). As a result of the American
withdrawal, both the motivation for aid spending and any possibility of
monitoring aid effectiveness will quickly disappear.

An abject lesson in how economics can shape a war zone is
provided by Vietnam. During the early 1970s, there were some glimmers of hope
in South Vietnam following the North's severe military defeat during the 1968
Tet offensive. The United States, however, had already grown tired of the war,
and the Nixon administration embarked upon a path of Vietnamization. As
America's military and economic commitment to Vietnam declined, the weak Saigon
government had no choice but to raise taxes and impose austerity measures.
These policies fueled popular opinion against the regime, helping smooth the
way for the North's successful invasion in 1975.

In preparing for its eventual departure from Afghanistan,
there is much the United States could have done on the economic front but has
tragically failed to implement. Incredibly, after more than ten years of war,
the U.S. has no free trade agreement with Kabul, inadvertently promoting
cross-border flows with Iran and Pakistan instead. Worse, these flows consist
largely of needed imports, since the U.S. has promoted a strong Afghan currency
that makes it near impossible to produce goods competitively within the
country. The lack of an export-oriented industry, in turn, means that
Afghanistan lacks a strong and forward-looking entrepreneurial class that could have served as a foundation for an anti-Taliban society; this is an
even greater shame when one recognizes the tremendous craftsmanship that Afghan
society is capable of in such sectors as woodworking and glassmaking.

The U.S. has also failed after more than a decade's presence
to help Afghanistan create a credible statistics agency or a system of
"national accounts" that would track how the government's money is being
spent. This lack of transparency, in turn, enables corrupt practices to
flourish. A cynic might think that America's failure to develop more robust
Afghan economic data has been one of commission rather than omission.

When the history of America's involvement in Afghanistan is
written, there will be much ink spilled over military strategy and tactics.
Analysts will debate whether the U.S. should have been more aggressive in
Pakistan or risked higher numbers of civilian casualties when taking the fight
to the Taliban. Less attention, sadly, will be paid to the economic policies
made in Washington and Kabul that were also instrumental in bringing about the
demise of the Afghan regime.

Ethan B. Kapstein teaches global
strategy at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. A retired
naval officer, he has served as an academic advisor to the Counterinsurgency
Advisory and Assistance Team in Kabul. The opinions expressed in this piece are
strictly his own and do not reflect the views of any organization with which he
is or has been associated.

North Korea: Like father, like Sung?

Looking at this propaganda leaflet from the Korean War
(telling North Koreans their leaders were living well while they starved) at
how much the young Kim Il Sung looked like his grandson, Kim
Jong Un, the new kid on
the communist monarchy's block. Except grandpa's eyes were much harder.

Meanwhile, today is Kim
Jong Il's birthday.