The Winds Of Hypocrisy And Idiocy Blow Again

The rather disreputable bunch (or individual) at WikiLeaks has captured the attention of entirely too much of the world's mainstream media.  In a case which resembles a sort of "this verse, same as the first," WikiLeaks has provided its favorite media outlets with advance copies of an enormous (391,000+) low level, tactical "Significant Activities" reports.  These are the same sort and level of routine document as constituted the earlier and much smaller batch release.


The SigAct reports provide a blurry look at a complex war from the perspective of a myriad of eyes quite close to the ground.  Their content varies in actual significance.  Similarly, the documents range in quality from highly incisive to pretty much of a let's-pretend-we've-done-something-today sort.  There are more than a few occasions when two or more SigActs cover the same events in the same period of time but with such different perspectives that the result seems to be several different events occurring at widely separated times and places.  Depending on the mindset of the person compiling the SigAct, the verbiage may be so dense in milspeak as to be incomprehensible without a translator.


The reporting of the contents of the mountain of milspeak by the assorted mainstream media is like that which took place a few months ago after WikiLeak's first release.  The best way to characterize the MSM approach is to recollect a brilliant scene from the classic movie Casablanca.


Remember the scene where Claude Raines as the smarmy French police official tells Rick that his bar is being shut down?  "I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to find out gambling is going on here."  At that point a flunky comes in and says, "Your winnings, inspector."  


A more perfect emblematic rendition of hypocrisy cannot be found--unless it is in the media treatment of the current data dump.  Maidenly protests of shock have ensued over several matters found in the great mound of otherwise boringly repetitive, utterly mundane, and, taken overall, quite insignificant activities.  


(Shock the First) More Iraqi civilians may have been killed by either friendly or hostile forces than officially announced to date.


(Shock the Second) American troops did use lethal force when vehicles approaching checkpoints or overtaking convoys did not heed warning signals--including shots--and stop as ordered.


(Even Bigger Shock Number Three) Iraqi security forces abused, even killed, suspected insurgents without the Americans acting immediately and robustly to stop the illegal acts.


The media could not contain their surprise when the documents demonstrated that the oft repeated American accusations of Iranian direct involvement in the arming, training, and directing of insurgent forces were based in fact.  


Each and every one of these highlighted matters constitutes either base hypocrisy or utter idiocy for two simple reasons.  Simple reason number one: The assorted MSM outlets had reporters in theater, assigned to the relevant American and other allied forces throughout the period covered by this dump.  Simple reason number two: We have been down this road before, during the Vietnam War--and the same MSM had reporters covering that war as well.


If any of the Chorus of Shocked And Outraged Maidens had consulted their own morgues, the result would have been both educational and important for accurate framing of the Iraq story.  Leaving aside the one very high profile war crime committed by US personnel, the Mai Lai shootings, the files would have shown reports both spiked and printed of other American acts which could accurately be termed war crimes.  The files would also have disclosed the widespread and very widely covered stories of South Vietnamese security forces abusing captured hostile personnel and those suspected of assisting the hostiles in manifold ways--including murder.  The US and other media also noted the US personnel on scene usually did not stop the abuses.


The morgue search would also have revealed that in the Vietnam War as in wars generally, civilians are killed.  As in the cases cited from Iraq, the killing of civilians can and often has resulted from actions on the part of the civilians which seem to the soldier to be a threat.  Since war is a get-or-get-got activity, it should not surprise anyone oriented in time and place that the soldier will shoot if warnings have no effect.


Because civilians tend to litter the battlefield in unseemly numbers and at most inconvenient locations, it is not shocking that some are killed despite the best intents of the troops.  Nor is it shocking that fatality counts can vary widely over time.  Disparities of count between "official" reports and the SigActs is not evidence of cover up or a policy of understating the lethal effects of American combat operations.


The war in Iraq was an interventionary war after the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime.  Even though the US was the major actor in theater, the legal and policy fiction that we and other foreign forces were operating in support of the Iraqi government was paramount.  The Iraqi security forces not unlike their South Vietnamese equivalents forty years earlier had a very touchy sense of nationalism.  


The sensitivities of Iraqi personnel--particularly at the command level--inhibited the capacity of the US to act robustly and rapidly to end abusive practices.  The relations between tactical units in the field in Iraq, as had been the case in Vietnam, were always problematic so company and field grade officers rarely felt free to get tough with their Iraqi counterparts.  This meant the most common response was to file a report, kick the problem upstairs, and hope the heavyweights topside would solve it.


More than that the Americans could not do if there was going to be any realistic possibility of shifting combat and security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces.  It is simple for a journalist to sit back and engage in condemnation.  That is not a luxury available to the guy at the spot.


Then it must be recalled that Iraq had a pre-invasion history which was heavy in torture and extajudicial executions.  The history lacked any appreciable dedication to the rule of law or the tempering of "justice" with either mercy or self-interest.  The same history also produced a lengthy record of scores in need of settling while abrading any concern about the judgement of the future.


Given the history of Iraq prior to the invasion as well as the nature of the war being waged between the security forces (including foreign contingents) and the insurgents propelled by faith in violent political Islam, the real shock is how few unnecessary deaths are recorded in the SigActs.  Considering the contexts, both historical and contemporary, the Americans not only fought a clean war but exercised a great deal of influence on the behavior of Iraqi security units.  Had it been otherwise the blood would have gushed rather than merely oozing from the released documents.


Either the NYT or the WaPo (they run together in the Geek's mind) characterized the SigAct reports as providing a "fine grained" view of the war.  That's true as long as it is remembered that in this case the view is an extreme close up, the sort of close up which distorts the image beyond both comprehension and accuracy.  The distortion is made all the greater when a media outlet chooses to ignore the weight of the majority of the reports--mundane, not filled with atrocities real or imagined, but replete with fire missions not fired, aborted air strikes, and all the other consequences of a command structure and operational doctrine which exhibited a sound and accurate understanding of the basic principle of counterinsurgency--You Cannot Kill Your Way To Victory--as well as the corollary--A Dead Civilian Is A Victory For The Enemy.


Arguably, the release of the reports by WikiLeaks has harmed both the US and the fragile polity in Iraq.  But it is incontrovertible that the treatment of the leak by the MSM has done even more damage.  By their framing and inexcusable idiocy, evidenced by willful historical ignorance as well as overlooking the presence of their own reporters during the time and at the places covered by the SigActs, the MSM has done a potentially great harm to the US.


The degree of harm is indicated by the totally expectable demands by the UN for a complete investigation of the American inaction in the presence of Iraqi human rights abuses and possible war crimes.  By setting the stage for an exhibition of America bashing by an organization filled with professional haters of all things and all actions American, the MSM--particularly those located in the US--have hit a new low point in their "buyers remorse" over having sung unquestioning hosannas in support of the invasion of Iraq.


American MSM have not been noted in recent years for having either a sense of shame or a commitment to telling it like it is rather than how they would like it to be.  The full-throated pursuit of a blame-America-first agenda by leading news outlets in the US does journalism no credit.  Nor is it in the better interests of the country or We the People.  


Nor will all the boiler plate special pleadings about the sacred right to know make the treatment of the leak and its contents any less dishonest.  The public does have a right to know, but that right is for the entire story, the whole truth, not carefully selected and framed portions of a complex reality.

Pull Out Now! The UN Says The War Is Lost

The UN has taken a look at the security situation in Afghanistan. The worthies and experts at that strategic think tank didn't like what they saw.

But, being willing to look defeat square in the face without blanching, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon who is, as everybody knows, the finest military theorist since Karl von Clausewitz as well as an operational level commander on a par with George Patton, has informed the Security Council that Afghanistan is going to hell in a high speed, low drag wheelbarrow. Using the ever reliable indicators of roadside bombs, assassinations of low to mid-level government personnel in the provinces, and "complex" attacks, the SecGen all but declared the Taliban to have won.

The SecGen is not alone in his dismal appraisal of American and allied fortunes in Afghanistan. Over the past few weeks, those two pillars of independent, disinterested, and agenda-free impartial assessment of American success or failure in both war and diplomacy, the WaPo and the NYT, have made reached the same conclusion, at least by implication. The only feature lacking in either outlet is an editorial demanding a prompt American surrender to the Mighty and Pure Defenders of the One Truth Faith.

Admittedly, there are a number of good reasons to feel both gloom and doom hovering over the valleys of Afghanistan. The Afghan National Forces are far more a myth than a substantial reality capable of effective action in the field. The Karzai regime is corrupt, inefficient, self-serving, and far more interested in continuing its hold on power than seeing hostilities termination leading to long term conflict resolution. Mr Karzai himself is an excellent Afghan politician but a very infuriating partner with whom to engage.

At the same time Taliban deserves credit. It is comprised of tough, resilient fighters led by reasonably competent commanders. It has a set of clear goals. A very definite agenda well founded on religion. Beyond that Taliban has the support and assistance of the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence and, thus, constitutes a branch of the armed forces of Pakistan. As if that were not sufficient, Taliban receives support from Iran. Training camps are located convenient to the Afghan border in the wastes of rural Iran while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps provides instructors. In a gesture of religious fraternity, the Iranians also provide explosively formed penetrators and other useful gadgets.

Even with the augmentation of American combat forces, the manpower available to the US and ISAF for combat missions is minimal (to put it charitably.) The correct decision by General McChrystal to limit the use of indirect and air delivered fire places more of a burden on the ground pounders, thus making the war even more manpower intensive. In order to assure that few (preferably no) Afghan non-combatants are killed by the "infidels," it is necessary to conduct each and every operation no matter how large or small on a retail basis, up close and personal.

Longer term this self-imposed constraint on the lethality of the battlefield is not only good, it is absolutely necessary. McChrystal understands perfectly that if civilians are to be killed, it is essential that they be killed by the insurgents. Insofar as Taliban et al kill civilians, non-combatants, women, children, and old men, whether by a roadside bomb, a suicide IED, or a "complex" attack, the resulting body count strengthens the counterinsurgent while weakening the insurgent.

That consideration constitutes a critical nuance unnoticed by either Generalissimo Ban Ki-Moon or the Deep Strategic Thinkers at the WaPo and NYT. The primary victims of the increased usage of roadside bombs and similar IEDs have been Afghan civilians. The same is true of attacks carried out by "martyrdom seekers" whether using suicide vests or vehicle borne IEDs. Even many of the larger attacks, characterized in the UN report as "complex" have resulted in more civilian than foreign combatant deaths.

The roadside bombs, the assassinations of minor government, police, and military personnel, even the majority of the "complex" attacks such as the strikes on foreign occupied guesthouses have not only resulted in an increased loathing for Taliban on the part of Afghans but show a high measure of desperation driving Taliban.

In previous insurgencies, assassination of local personnel have been a prominent feature either of the beginning of the insurgency or as a strong indicator of its being defeated. The same applies to indiscriminate attacks resulting in a high level of casualties among the uncommitted majority of the civilian population.

Previously in Iraq, in Pakistan, and in Afghanistan, when the insurgents have started killing civilians in large numbers, there has been an immediate push-back on the part of the threatened civilians. This is being seen again in Afghanistan in the past few months--the same period employed by Feldherr Ban Ki-Moon as a base for his prognostication of impending defeat.

Increasingly, local villagers equipped with (to use the term employed by US military sources) "personal assault weapons" have joined Afghan, US, and ISAF units to engage and destroy Taliban cells. The same upward trend is seen in the flow of unsolicited and actionable intelligence from locals who have had it up to their beards with Taliban.

Afghans, not unlike most people everywhere, are not strong on the idea of getting killed. They don't even appreciate the fine theological distinction between being killed by an "infidel" or an "apostate" rather than a good Muslim, a jihadi. Not surprisingly, the Afghans are ready, willing, and eager to seize the moment and abate the Taliban nuisance.

Rather than being indicators of near-term defeat, the increased Taliban reliance upon IEDs, assassination, and the odd media spectacular points to a loss of confidence within the command echelons of the insurgents. Taliban has lost the initiative in the quotidian conduct of operations; as a comparison between friendly initiated, hostile initiated, and meeting engagements shows, the capacity to control the pace and direction of operations has shifted increasingly in favor of the US and ISAF.

This pleasant reality in no way lessens the underlying reality that the war is not over. The US and its allies are not yet sure of achieving the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing," but the vectors have shifted in that direction. The next six to twelve months will be a long, hard pull in Afghanistan. Marja is not yet fully secured. The Kandahar operation has been delayed. Most importantly, the Afghan national government and forces have not yet shown either the will or the ability to carry their share of the freight.

Right now the major lost opportunity is not military but falls rather in the area of governance. The US and its allies have fallen too far into the trap of believing that the central government of Afghanistan is just that--a government. The US has also allowed itself to believe that success in Afghanistan cannot occur without the existence of a strong, credible, and effective central government.

These twin notions are bogus. For much of its existence, Afghanistan has gotten along quite well without a strong, credible, and effective central government. The Afghan culture states that a person's primary loyalty is to the extended family, secondary loyalty is to the clan, and the tertiary loyalty is to the tribe. This hierarchy allows but does not compel a loyalty to the central regime in Kabul.

This situation implies that Afghans have a high propensity toward and a good capacity for self-organizing. The self-organizing process moves from the most local to the more distant and has the automatic advantage of assuring high group coherence through the necessity for voluntary collaboration in the search for mutual self-interest.

The operational consequence of this orientation within the human terrain of Afghanistan is obvious. The US and its allies should--must, perhaps--put Kabul to the side and deal with the local power structure. The winning political approach is that of empowering the self-organizing capacities of the Afghan villages, the neighborhoods of Marja or Kandahar. Working with and backing the needs of the locals in all aspects of security, governance, and economic development would allow the effective circumvention of the obstructionists of Kabul. Doing things this way would have the additional advantage of cutting off Taliban from any pretense of legitimacy, by denying it the large target of central government corruption, cronyism , and flat out inefficiency.

There is a very high probability that General McChrystal is as aware of the self-organizing and provincial orientation of the Afghan human terrain as he is of the grave inadequacies of the central regime. If his lords and masters inside the Beltway can be brought to see the light, there is a better than good chance that the next few months will see a political success parallel the probable military defeat of Taliban.

There is, of course, only the slimmest of chances that the Obama administration can wake up to the tribal and family realities of Afghanistan so as to give a green light to adding the final ingredient which would well neigh onto guarantee success of an acceptable sort in Afghanistan. And, there is absolutely no chance in hell that the WaPo-NYT Strategic Studies Academy or Geo-Political Genus Ban Ki-Moon will ever get it.

Some Academics Are More Gripless Than Politicos!

More than twenty years ago the Geek started writing on the nature of insurgency. As many of his previous posts show, the Geek is firmly convinced on the basis of historical experience that counterinsurgency is waged on what he has called "the human terrain." When the Geekmo started lecturing to the military on this need, he was met with stony indifference mixed with gales of derisive laughter.

The laughter grew to Category V hurricane level when he suggested that the military would benefit from the insights of anthropologists and other social scientists when the US next engaged in counterinsurgency.

The laughs are gone now.

The Pentagon has inaugurated the experimental inclusion of anthropologists and others in combat units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This development has even made the mainstream media. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin.

Thumbs up to whoever suggested and, more importantly, approved the experiment. The "human terrain" project, if correctly employed, will prove to be a force multiplier. It will also prove to be a casualty reducer.

It is the second consideration that leads the Geek to froth at the mouth over the stance taken by some academics quoted in the cited article. To put the matter short and simple, these gripless inhabitants of the Groves of Academe apparently don't care if the use of insights gained from anthropology, social psychology, and akin disciplines save lives.

That's right, these pseudo-moralists do not give a rodent's anus if lives, particularly those of Iraqis and Afghans are saved by techniques that limit the need for deadly force.

All the Geek can do is gnash his teeth.

Having been an academic for nearly twenty years, the Geek knows the relentlessly clueless nature of most members of the professorate. He is all-too-well acquainted with the standard issue professor's obliviousness to reality when the real world conflicts with ideological predilections. He is also well aware of the typical emotionally driven, ideologically polluted prof's great need to bloviate if asked a question--particularly by a member of the media.

As a result, he is willing to discount much of the empty-minded quacking quoted in the cited article. But, when individuals who know nothing of the history they distort to meet ideological requirements are cited, the Geek has to blow the whistle.

During the Vietnam War there were a number of attempts to use the social sciences to assist in the American effort to understand and fight effectively on the human terrain. The Geek has read many, even most, of social scientists' reports and studies.

Some were, to put it as kindly as possible, travesties. Many were innocuous. A few were good, even excellent. None were, as the NYT article implies, sinister or possessed of evil effect.

What is true, but ignored by both the academic critics and the NYT writers, is that the social science efforts were almost entirely discarded by the same Pentagon that funded them. All intelligence, including the fruits of specialized knowledge in a field of social science, is useless if it is ignored by those who make and implement decisions.

A prime characteristic of the Vietnam War, a characteristic that was in large measure responsible for our self-inflicted defeat in that war, was the willingness of decision makers and implementers to discard intelligence. If the intelligence wasn't exactly what commander guys from the White House down to the combat brigade level wanted to receive, the response was always the same.

Toss it out!

Accepting some of the better studies by social scientists would have required admitting that the American way of war in Vietnam was a failure. Accepting the results of the field work would have necessitated the construction of an entirely new doctrine, a new method of fighting.

That was unthinkable. Literally.

Right now, as a result of experience backing the truth of the criticisms of US counterinsurgency doctrine made over the preceding two decades, the Army and Marine Corps have a new doctrine for counterinsurgency. Right now, the two services are wide open to the idea that successful counterinsurgency requires approaches that are opposite to those needed in conventional war.

Right now, today and into the near-term, anthropologists and other social scientists can have a great impact. A positive impact. A life-saving impact. An impact that can help assure the difference between losing and not losing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ideologues who oppose the inclusion of social scientists in the effort to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan evidently want the US to fail.

Worse, infinitely worse, these exemplars of academic purity and ethical vacuum want more human beings to die. Down deep inside the empty wells that constitute their brains, these critics and opponents must relish the pornography of blood, feces, and death.

The Geek cries, "Spare me from academics!"

Afghanistan--The NY Times Gets it More Wrong Than Right

Last Saturday, the New York Times, which bills itself as the "newspaper of record," did an extensive piece on our efforts in Afghanistan http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html?_r=1&ref=asia&oref=slogin. The Geek gives the NYT a thumbs-up for resurrecting the forgotten Afghan adventure from the obscurity which it does not deserve.

Moreover, the Geek commends this article not so much for what is contained within it so much as how it inadvertently shows the critical deficiencies in both the formulation of American policy and the nature of American journalism.

OK, people, what do Afghanistan and Iraq have in common?

Ignore the obvious such as a US led coalition invaded both. Or that each was ruled by a government we (and many others) considered obnoxious. You can even set aside that the US got itself bogged down in a long, bloody, frustrating counterinsurgency which it had neither planned nor properly prepared for.

Now that the really, really obvious commonalities had been disposed of, we can eliminate some others. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US employed far too few troops, particularly infantry maneuver battalions at the outset. In both cases too much credence was given to the purportedly positive effect of our mobility and firepower--its ability to "shock and awe." Then there is the unfortunate fact that insufficient attention was given to the state of play in each the day after conventional forces were defeated and victory declared.

Hiding under all these very obvious and almost as obvious commonalities is a very important, very basic feature. It is a feature that can be overlooked only with risk. It was ignored by US policy makers, policy implementers, and the NYT alike.

So, give it over, Geek!

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a nation-state. Neither has had a history as a nation-state extending more than a few decades.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan are mere geographical expressions. Each was manufactured by forces external to their inhabitants for reasons that in no way were organic to the people who lived within the artifacts of borders.

Afghanistan was finally assembled by the pressures of two empires, the Russian and the British, in their fat guys bumping bellies approach to the expansion of empire during the era of the "Great Game" a hundred and more years ago. While there had been an Afghan kingdom for a few centuries, it had always been a loose and fractious assemblage of differing ethno-linguistic groups with the Pushtu being the largest single component.

The presence of either a strong, clever, and able king assured a degree of unity between the several groups. Even better was the presence of an external threat. A British or Russian military penetration would find the hills crawling with locals eager to nail a foreigner. No venue proves the truth of the statement, "pressure consolidates long before it fractures," better than Afghanistan.

The amphyctony called Afghanistan was both called into existence and permitted to continue to exist because it served the interest of both Great Britain and Imperial Russia for it to exist as a buffer. (The fact that the local natives were darn good at killing invaders may have had something to do with the decisions in London and Moscow.)

To summarize all the important little bits about the place. Afghanistan is a buffer area inhabited by differing ethno-linguistic groups that do not necessarily get along nor want to get along with one another. A charismatic, strong, and wiley man can provide a semblance of central government--particularly if the area faces an external threat. Other than as a buffer, there is no reason for Afghanistan to exist.

It isn't pushing the reality envelope too far to assert that should Afghanistan be permitted to simply fade away in a crimson haze of inter-group fighting, the world would neither note nor mourn its passing. Neither would the inhabitants. Each ethno-linguistic group would merge with its neighbors across the now erased borders.

Get a grip on this. Nation building is a nice, warm, fuzzy idea that requires the semblance of an identifiable, reasonably unitary group of people living in a definable region which by consensus of the inhabitants exists within recognizable borders. Afghanistan does not meet this basic criterion.

Thus the emphasis that the Times and several of those interviewed placed upon nation-building is unsupportable. Equally unsupportable was the thrust given by the current Administration upon "regime change" in Kabul, kicking the (admittedly) distasteful Taliban out and putting a "democratically elected" government in.

Simply put, just because the "international community" (whatever that is), the UN or the White House and Congress think that an entity called Afghanistan exists and ought to continue existing does not change reality. The entity in question is an artificial creation of dead empires. If we are to be honest, we must say our goal is to create out of a loose congeries of mutually rather antipathetic peoples a functioning nation-state as such is understood in Washington or London or Beijing.

This will be the Labor of Sisyphus on steroids. Think in terms of decades, even generations.

Strategically, the first and most basic mistake of the current Administration and the Pentagon war planners was the statement of goal for our invasion. We should have focused simply on the capture or total destruction of the al-Qaeda leadership cadre. Other than killing any Taliban fighters who confronted us, we should have ignored the regime.

We didn't have a realistic goal.

As the definition of victory arises organically from the political goal of the war, any definition which we had was irrelevant to the realities on the ground. Victory would have been easily defined if we had focused on the destruction of al-Qaeda. As we didn't have the right goal, we could not enjoy a victory.

Since our goal was both hazy, too expansive, and not achievable, there is no surprise that our theory of victory emphasizing an economy of force effort whose impact would be magnified by our advanced technology driven capacities in battlefield surveillance, intelligence acquisition, and high lethality firepower delivery was the equivalent of playing Ultimate Frisbee with truck tires.

In the final analysis, given our wrong-as-a-soup-sandwich political goal and our irrelevant definition and theory of victory, the Times' carping about the redeployment of assets from Afghanistan to Iraq (a war the paper loves to hate) is both false and misleading. The well-meaning assessments offered by many of those interviewed simply illustrate how little the US understood and understands about Afghanistan.

One more feature of American thinking demonstrated by the article and those whose words appear in it is the nature of our capacity for both mirror imaging and self-delusion.

We thought that Afghanistan is a nation-state just like ours in which differing cultures and peoples can share a sense of overarching belonging and fidelity. This is not so.

We imagined that we would hate living under a repressive theocracy such as Taliban and thus believed the Afghans did to. This is not so, at least not for many.

We believe in the value of elections and representative democracy and imagined the Afghans would to. This is not so.

We believed that we could win some sort of meaningful victory on the cheap in lives and time. This is not so.

Belief is not reality. Get a grip on it.