A bad day in Afghanistan

Bad news today that 9 soldiers were killed and more injured in an attack on a base near the Afghan-Pakistan border.  ‘I told you so’ is really getting less and less satisfying after 5 years but this is really another indication that the U.S. hasn’t lost the initiative in its “War on Terror” but that it has never really tried to win it.  We got roped into Iraq based upon our own hubris, wacked out ideology and theology, then let Al-Qaeda decide that would be the focus of all our attention.  We then spent the next four years with the famous ‘whack-a-mole’ strategy only to switch to the glorious, answer to all our problems SURGE. 

So, what happens next?  Exactly what you’d expect of an enemy who decides the rules.  They just moved to an area where we don’t have a preponderance of force.  We’re just seeing the same old ‘whack a mole’ strategy except now it’s on a regional scale instead of a national one.  What’s the administration’s answer?  Let’s go chase the enemy and declare Afghanistan the ‘central front’.  Great, we’ll take troops out of Iraq ship them off to Afghanistan and then we can ship them back to Iraq in a couple of years when that place falls apart without the huge influx of money, men and arms that we’re putting into it.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m a big fan of sending extra support to Afghanistan and have been since we invaded.  The problem is the reason for the recent interest in such a plan.  It’s got everything to do with reacting to what the enemy is doing and is not part of any coordinated grand strategy on our part. 

We should be deciding where (if anywhere) the main focus of our anti-Islamist efforts should be, not the Islamists we’re fighting.

You’ve got to be kiddding me

I just wanted to check.  This is 2008, right?

Then how the hell do we explain the fact that only yesterday was Nelson Mandela taken off of the U.S. terrorist watch list?

I thought we had thousands of sharp people working in our counter-terrorism/homeland security sector.  Is it possible that no one could figure this out over the past 18 years?

The Axis of the not so bad

I have no idea if this is true or not but I came across this report that the Bush administration is planning on taking North Korea off of the list of states sponsoring terrorism.

What?

It appears that the North Korea is about to relegate its nuclear program to the dustbin of history and so, as a quid pro quo, the administration is going to take them off the list.

Now, according to the State Department: “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.”  So, why were they on the list in the first place?  Could it be that the ‘official’ list of state sponsors of terrorism is a sham and really should be titled “List of nations we just don’t like but can’t think of any other way to label them as bad guys.”

The best heroin our taxes can buy

J, over at the Armchair Generalist, has a post about a Philadelphia Inquirer story (geez, this better be good, I’m blogging about a blog about a news article…talk about an echo chamber) that described how a marine unit (an element of the 24th MEU) has set up shop in a poppy growing region and allowed local farmers to continue harvesting their crop.  I can only assume the marines will allow the harvest to begin that long, winding journey to the streets of Europe, Asia and the U.S.

J is a big proponent of eradication efforts to destroy the poppy harvest in Afghanistan but I remain skeptical.  Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s any realistic way to destroy the whole (or even a significant amount) of the crop and our puny efforts to do so will only result in the following outcomes:

1. Hostility among the local population towards the U.S./coalition
2. Increased prices (and profits) for the Taliban/drug runners due to reductions in supply (perceived or real)
3. Increased poverty among Afghan farmers

I would argue (and have) that the solution is for the West to buy the poppy crops and destroy them after purchase.  In this way you could deprive insurgents/drug traffickers of both a major source of income and supply of their product and prevent the further impoverishment of Afghan farmers.  While this wouldn’t be a good long term solution, it would go a long way in taking the initiative away from the insurgents and force them to either find alternate sources of revenue or fight to hold poppy producing territory.  This would also contribute to winning that ‘hearts and minds’ campaign we keep hearing about among the local population.

Once you’ve got the poppy farmers on the payroll, the goal then should be to build the infrastructure up as quickly as possible so those farmers can transition to legitimate crops which can be sold on the open market.  One of the problems facing farmers is that crops which could be profitable can’t get to market now without significant spoilage because of the lousy transportation system.  Poppies stand up pretty well to the hardships of long transportation routes.

So the marines protecting the farmers and their opium crop may be denying the Taliban some revenue in their work but that’s not clear at all.  The Taliban may just demand their cut from somewhere higher in the distribution chain.  EIther way, it doesn’t deprive narcotics processors or traffickers from their revenue (and may even benefit them now that their fields are secured free of charge courtesy of the U.S. government) which means they will be staying in business. 

So how well would the Taliban function with $100 million less in revenue every year?  I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out.

You want the bad news or the bad news?

I had the opportunity to see Michael Scheuer speak last week and he was quite interesting. His talk focused on the Islamist threat as well as the difficulties our intelligence community (IC) has in getting it’s collective act together and cooperating. Regarding the latter, he said that any list of IC shortfalls would have to include the following (none of these are direct quotes but they’re pretty close. My extrapolation will be in italics):

1. Pride of bureaucratic place and prerogatives. Turf battles.
2. Resistance to changing tactics and procedures (we still like to operate like our enemy is a Soviet like state). In fact, the U.S. Army Intelligence Center continued to teach Soviet tactics and doctrine to new intelligence analysts years after the USSR collapsed and ceased to be a significant threat to NATO. I think this was essentially because it was easier to keep training about a threat that no longer existed than do the heavy lifting of identifying new threats, understanding them and developing a new doctrine to deal with them.
3. Agencies have different aims, charters and goals, many of which are not compatible. The FBI is all about criminal prosecutions and the CIA is about intelligence gathering. Those things don’t mix too well.
4. Complex procedures for classifying and declassifying information. Everyone classifies way too much stuff, doesn’t unclassify it, and refuses to share it. Even more frustrating is that (until relatively recently at least) security clearances weren’t always transferable. For example, the Department of Homeland Security might not recognize a clearance granted by the military. I don’t know why this is/was but I’ve heard some horror stories. I suspect this might have more to do with issues surround #1 above than actual department policy.
   

Other than that he repeated themes that he wrote about in his most recent book. The Islamists don’t hate us because we let women drive to the mall, have Howard Stern on the radio or vote for our local dog catcher. Rather it’s because of our policies, particularly in the middle east (support of Israel and ‘apostate’ Muslim regimes, military presence in the holy land, support for other nations’ battles with Muslims, etc.)

I got to ask him a couple of questions. The first was in response to a statement he made that he thought that Al-Qaeda was just as powerful today as it was on September 11. I asked if that was the case, why hadn’t we seen a significant attack from them since 2001. He replied that he felt there were two reasons:

1. It’s difficult to surpass the attack of 9/11 and anything less will be seen as a weakness
2. There’s no need since things are going so well with Al-Qaeda now. Their enemy (us) are losing two wars, spending gobs of money at home and abroad to counter Al-Qaeda, descending into political factionalism and strife, and eroding civil liberties. A massive attack now would only risk reuniting the American population.

Then at one point in his presentation he said that Al-Qaeda would view a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as a victory similar to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.  He also said that Al-Qaeda views continued involvement by the U.S. in Iraq as a victory since it proves their claim that the U.S. is intent on invading and occupying Muslim countries in order to take their oil and establish secular states.  I asked him that if, in fact, we are ‘damned if we do and damned if we don’t’ that how to we achieve any sort of non-disastrous resolution to Iraq.  He first recommended that we try to change the definition of ‘victory’ with the dictionary people but then, in a more serious note, said that the best move would be to withdrawal immediately.

Scheuer thinks that when challenged we should quickly and massively respond without too much concern for causing civilian casualties.  I have to admit, I can’t agree with him here but I can see the logic behind the argument.  Since he didn’t see us as willing to commit to that level of violence in Iraq he argued that we just cut our losses and let the inevitable civil war take place now.  While I don’t think he explicitly stated it, I think the hope may be that the battle between Sunnis and Shia over the corpse of Iraq might prove a magnet for all the jihadists for some time, allowing the U.S. to figure out how to best retake the initiative.

He was great speaker and offered a lot of views not easily pigeonholed.

What is it about ‘North Atlantic’ doesn’t he understand?

Rudy Giuliani has just announced his plan to get Israel into NATO.  Why (apart from the shameless pandering of course)?

• They are a democracy
• They’d be willing to help us in the effort against terrorism.

That’s the criteria we should use to determine if a country can join NATO?  Hmmm….that’s not what the NATO charter says:

• The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.    WHAAAAT?!!  A Republican in favor of the purposes and principals of the U.N.!!???  I thought that place was considered about as cursed as those Indian burial grounds that people keep building their McMansions on.
• They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. Hmmm….While I’m no expert on plate-tectonics I don’t think Israel is anywhere near the North Atlantic.  I’m also guessing that good old Rudy doesn’t think that the situation in the North Atlantic region is so perilous that we need Israel’s help to tip some sort of balance.

This guy has got 9/11 myopia.  He actually makes me a little nervous because my (admittedly superficial) impression is that he’s the kind of guy that loves living in a world that seems to permeated with danger and threats.

No…the NEXT 4-6 months will decide it…

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is the latest in a long string of knuckleheads to buy into the use of Friedman units to tell us that the ‘next 4 months are critical’. Purists will note that a Friedman unit is, technically, six months but I think Odierno is well aware of how that unit of measure hasn’t panned out and doesn’t want his comments at the end of a long string of predictions all saying ‘the next 6 months’ showing up on the Daily Show or YouTube.

So, why drag out the fiasco that is the Iraq war?

1. We can (well, at least until April when we won’t be able to sustain the ’surge’ without extending tours yet again).
2. There’s progress! (Well, not really. See below)

All that nonsense you hear about ‘grassroots change in Al Anbar is a lie. Local Sunnis have started to partner with us not because they’ve suddenly seen the virtue of liberal democracy and can’t wait to “let freedom reign!”. Rather, it’s the old arab axiom “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The Sunnis in Al Anbar have (at least) three enemies:

1. The Shia who want to take revenge for the Saddam years, don’t want to share oil revenue and will exclude the Sunni from any real political power.
2. Al qaeda who made the fundamental error of any insurgent group - ‘Don’t piss off your sympathizers.’ Mao was right:

“Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it. How may it be said that these two cannot exist together? It is only undisciplined troops who make the people their enemies and who, like the fish out of its native element cannot live.”

3.  The U.S. - Let’s face it, we’re the least of the Sunnis enemies now.  We aren’t going to be there forever, we’ve got our hands so full that if someone is even mildly cooperative we’ll throw all sorts of money, weapons and training their way

The Sunnis aren’t working to support the central government.  They’ve got their eyes on a prize further out on the horizon.  The U.S. will eventually leave Iraq and the Sunnis are trying to position themselves best for when that day comes.  If working with the Americans and killing a few foreign fighters now translates into a steady flow of money, weapons, training, etc. to better prepare them for the next battle so be it.

All we’re doing in Iraq now is postponing the inevitable bloodbath and ensuring that it will be even more violent and destructive.

“Heck of a job, Bushie!”

What do black holes and fusion centers have in common?

They both suck in all the matter around them and nothing can escape…

Back in early July, the Congressional Research Service wrote this report titled: Fusion Centers: Issues and Options for Congress.

Now, Fusion Centers are the latest thing in the law enforcement/homeland security realm. There are more than 40 of the buggers around the country and they act like big cash magnets (the DHS claims to have shelled out over $380 million in support of fusion centers as of December of 2006).

What are fusion centers supposed to do?

The value proposition for fusion centers is that by integrating various streams
of information and intelligence, including that flowing from the federal government, state, local, and tribal governments, as well as the private sector, a more accurate picture of risks to people, economic infrastructure, and communities can be developed and translated into protective action. The ultimate goal of fusion is to prevent manmade (terrorist) attacks and to respond to natural disasters and manmade threats quickly and efficiently should they occur.

That’s a pretty hefty mandate. The real challenge is that such a center requires a robust intelligence function yet very few people involved, at any level, of fusion centers has experience in intelligence or even has a clear concept of what intelligence work is. Instead, fusion centers tend to be planned, run and staffed by people with law enforcement backgrounds. While it may not be readily apparent those are two totally different fields that often work at cross purposes (as Richard Posner has written about quite eloquently). A whole host in institutional and cultural factors work on law enforcement agencies to prevent them from doing just the sort of intelligence work that is required for fusion centers to work to their potential.

So what does this mean in practical terms? Fusion centers end up becoming bloated, paper-shuffling exercises that exist primarily to 1) generate promotional opportunities for the people it employs and 2) generate revenue for the owning agency via state and federal grants. That means a whole lot of self promotion and flat screen TVs and very little intelligence work.

Most of the products you see come out of Fusion centers consist of recycled ‘alerts’ whose main purpose is to provide enough ‘CYA‘ so that no one will be held responsible if something bad happens but without any real information that would enable decision makers to allocate resources, take precautions or change priorities.

And those are the ‘good’ products of fusion centers.

Fusion centers also are widespread disseminators of urban legends, politically biased information and shoddy analysis. All of which, of course, is passed along as true and then forwarded through other fusion centers giving it increased credibility.

What don’t fusion centers do? Admit mistakes. Ever.

I have never once seen a fusion center send out a correction to a product they’ve produced. Admitting mistakes or errors is seen as a sign of weakness which could negatively affect both the fusion center and (perhaps more importantly) the career aspirations of the people running the center.

Now, those are just my personal observations. The report has it’s own critique of fusion centers across the country and they don’t paint a particularly good picture either.

It could be argued that if information flow into fusion centers is limited, the quality of the information is questionable, and the center doesn’t have personnel with the appropriate skill sets to understand the information, then the end result may not provide value.

The CRS is very polite in this report. My only recommendation when reading it is to replace the phrase ‘It could be argued’ (and similar phrases) with ‘No one in their right mind would argue that this isn’t true’.

It’s a very thoughtful, well-written report…check it out.

Just call me Huck Finn

This past weekend I was kayaking along the Delaware River from Dingmans Ferry to Smithfield Beach. It gave me a chance to put my new inflatable kayak through a water trial.

I was a bit hesitant about getting an inflatable but it really is shaping up to be a great decision. Advanced elements makes a kayak that is light, quick to set up and works well. It doesn’t track or maintain momentum as well as a hard shell kayak but it does better than I expected (I did 21 miles in a little less than six hours and -even though I wasn’t racing- passed everything on the river that didn’t have a motor attached to it) and its portability is a huge plus.

Two events were especially noteworthy on my trip.

First, it’s not unusual to see park rangers patrolling the river, making sure no one is causing a ruckus, getting drunk and that everyone has their life preserver with them. This time was no different except this time the rangers had a couple of M4 carbines in their boat.

Now, I don’t know what kind of crime they’re seeing on the Delaware river but this struck me as a bit of overkill. The Delaware (at least within the area of the national recreation area) doesn’t host any commercial traffic, isn’t close to any high value infrastructure and while people visit it for fishing, boating and swimming, there are plenty of better opportunities for some crazed terrorist looking to kill people. I hope I’m wrong (all the rangers I’ve ever met have been professional, courteous, and a wealth of knowledge) but this looks like yet another agency that succumbs to the lure of post 9/11 money and fear mongering. It seems as if theirs an element within every law enforcement agency that is dying to militarize their organization. I’m a big fan of the military and think it has many valuable lessons it can teach other government (and many private) organizations but those lessons don’t have to be transfered verbatim. I’m just a bit dubious about every Tom, Dick and Harry carrying around a popgun regardless of the threat.

The second item of note on the trip was the really cool part. Twice I got to see a bald eagle flying right overhead. I’ve never seen one so close outside of a zoo so I was very happy that I decided to bring my camera around for the trip. It was nice enough to perch long enough for me to get about 20 good pictures of it. I missed the shot of it flying which would have been great but maybe next time. For now, this was a pretty big rush.

The Future of War

I stumbled across this lecture accidentally last week and found this guy’s presentation style and content quite interesting. I’ve often toyed with the idea that the country really needs a force separate from the traditional military to do all those ‘non-war’ missions that the military gets called upon to do. He actually gave this speech two years ago but it’s still relevant…check it out.