Arms and influence

A sticky wicket

IN THE NEWS
It was obvious that the slow drip, drip, drip of leaks in Great Britain foretold some catastrophe in the making. The only question was, where would the crack open, and how big the damage. Today's Independent reports the leaks that establish, with little question, the fact that the Blair government hadn't received a green light from its legal experts for the Iraq invasion. So much for the "I'm as mortified as anyone" defense.

If you really had to ask...

IN THE NEWS
As it turns out, neoconservative tales of Iraqi WMDs smuggled in the dead of night (and, apparently, under the noses of the US military) into Syria prove to be unfounded. No word yet on whether the overlords of Tau Ceti, or the reptilian civilization in the hollow core of Earth, have admitted to hiding Iraqi WMDs.

I've been wracking my brains to think of a cassus belli that proved as completely unfounded as the Iraq invasion. Certainly nothing in US history, at the scale of this conflict. Whatever you thought of the US intervention in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were genuine bastards bent on conquest of the South. They really were an unhealthy military and political presence in Laos and Cambodia. We can continue to argue about the US strategy for the war, or whether it was worth sinking as much as we did into that quagmire. But the official reason for fighting the war--stop the North Vietnamese from erasing South Vietnam and destabilizing its neighbors--was legitimate.

Iraqi WMDs? Nowhere to be found. In fact, as we discovered, the US and its allies were far more successful in containing the Ba'athis regime and drawing its WMD fangs than American officials were comfortable admitting. Once American soldiers couldn't find unconventional weapons depots around post-invasion Iraqi, supporters of the US invasion began speculating about clandestine WMD caches in Syria. Of course, the Syrian Ba'athists were never friends of Hussein's regime, but that fact didn't get in the way of fevered speculation.

Syria was also in no position to help Iraq. Bashir al-Assad may not be his father, but he's no fool. Already under the scrutiny of the Americans, British, and Israelis, long ago abandoned by a superpower ally that no longer exists, feeling the resentments in Lebanon swelling, the Syrian government would have been reckless beyond belief to hide Iraqi chemical and biological weapons. The Bush Administration, however, is hell bent on arguing that some regimes are far more menacing than they are, while others like North Korea get an occasional mumbled mention.

Perhaps the saddest part of the Washington Post article is Duelfer's plea to release the Iraqi scientists still in US custody, even though they clearly have nothing to tell their interrogators. Which may be, of course, why they're still in custody.

Kiss up, kick down

IN THE NEWS
The venom directed against Richard Clarke when he gave his now-famous testimony to the 9/11 Commission was understandable. People in the core Bush national security team have made enemies--many, many enemies. Top officials who resented being pantsed in front of the world,  generals who were slapped for not giving the desired answer about necessary force levels, intelligence analysts suckered into the games played around Iraqi WMDs estimates, only to be blamed later for the entire war--the legions of the outraged have been growing daily. Certainly, people in the Administration are smart enough to know that, once a person like Richard Clarke successfully gets to the podium, many are likely to follow.

The John Bolton nomination has now reached that point. The first through the breach--what, in real wars, was once called the Forlorn Hope--was Carl Ford. When he described Bolton as a "kiss up, kick down" person, he did more than confirm a general impression about Bolton as a public servant. Ford tartly described the kind of co-worker that nearly everyone has endured at one time or another. In one phrase, Bolton fell from the lofty plane of national security policy policy into the grubby world of bad bosses and corporate bullies.

Now joining the ranks of the Forlorn Hope is Colin Powell. Not surprisingly, the incident Powell wants to talk about is when, against orders from the State Department, Bolton went out of his way to deliver an inflammatory speech about the North Koreans. With Bolton now clearly defined in the public eye as the Employee From Hell, it's easier to understand how bad this incident really is. The Employee From Hell usually goes too far, sexually harassing a co-worker, speaking out of line in a customer meeting, or abusing a supplier to the point where they'll never do business with the company again. An Employee from Hell usually don't get the chance to anger a nuclear-armed totalitarian autocracy. When he does, however, he probably should be fired.

Instead, of course, he's getting promoted. Not only does he not deserve the honor, but the new job lets him fling his feces at an even larger number of targets. Many of us wish Powell had done less "trying to change the system from the inside," and a bit more "speaking truth to power." Now that he's out of government, and Carl Ford has charged into the fray, he's marching into the battle himself. Not the most heroic moment, but laudatory nonetheless.

PSYOPS and counterterrorism

IN THE NEWS
While much foolishness about counterterrorism may be happening in some parts of the US government, particulary at the highest levels, the rest of the national security community soldiers on. A good example is the Joint Forces, one of the combatant commands (along with Central Command, European Command, Special Operations Command, and the like). Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) combines the work of all the military branches, plus our allies. As you might expect, an environment like this one breeds some interesting ideas.

For example, check out this article from the Joint Forces Quarterly, a publication of JFCOM. The author's thesis runs counter to a lot of what you hear from top-level DoD and White House briefings. Rather than relegating psychological operations (PSYOPS) to a highly tactical role, the author argues for its elevation to the operational and theater levels of strategy.  In other words, the whole point of military and non-military measures is...

• Inhibiting potential terrorists from joining terrorist groups
• Producing dissension within groups
• Facilitating exit from groups
• Reducing support for groups and their leaders

Intrigued? How about this passage from the article:

Indeed, research on the effects of retaliation on terrorist behavior conducted by the author and Ariel Merari, with support from the U.S. Institute of Peace, demonstrated that the major goal of retaliation against terrorism was solipsistic—meant to convey to the public that the government was strongly defending them. There was no statistical evidence in the three cases examined, which included Israeli retaliation against the terrorist campaign in the 1970s, that retaliation deterred terrorist actions. To the contrary, in some cases there was a trend suggesting that it reinforced the terrorist group. Thus the way to counter psychological warfare is with psychological warfare, and PSYOP should be the primary weapon in the war against terrorism.

I recommend you read the article (short enough for a Friday afternoon break). You should also check out the other articles in JFQ.

Casual Friday: guerrilla games

IN THE NEWS
Since it's Friday, I'll get off the Serious Express for a moment.

As I've mentioned before, I've been an avid wargamer since I was a teenager. If you don't know what wargames are, they're board games designed to, in some fashion, simulate military history. For example, my latest acquisition, Empire of the Sun, depicts the Pacific Theater of WWII.

Some wargames do justice to their topic, while still making the game playable. The designers who can strike this balance deserve much praise. It's easy to cut corners, damaging the value of the simulation. It's just as easy to create a game so bogged down in detail that no one could ever play it.

Most wargames cover conventional conflicts. The American Civil War and World War II, not surprisingly, are popular topics. Some wargames cover the entire war; others cover particular battles, or representative clashes at the level of the individual soldier or squad.

There are very few wargames that cover revolutionary warfare, or even the unconventional aspects of otherwise conventional wars (for example, anti-fascist partisans in WWII). This neglect of unconventional or "little wars" is odd, since there have been far more of them in the last century or two than major conventional wars between states. It's not hard to understand: more people are interested in the American Civil War than the Shining Path rebellion in Peru.

But, say, if there were a good game about the Shining Path, people like me would sit up and take notice. I've found one, an amateur-press wargame published several years ago. The rules are a bit hard to follow, so I'm thinking about asking the designer for permission to rewrite and post them on one of the major boardgame aficianado web sites. The basic game, as I've found, is a great laboratory for anyone interested in learning about guerrilla warfare.  Want to see the difference between Leninist and Maoist strategies in action? Curious how revolutionary strategies evolve over time?  Wondered why many governments have a tough time beating insurgents? Shining Path does a very good job of illustrating these and other points, in a wargame that's low on the complexity scale.

Books about military affairs, including revolutionary warfare, are essential. Sometimes, you need the experience of sitting on one side of the battlefield or the other to deepen your understanding. Happily, with wargames, no real bullets are fired at you in the process.

Data mining for terrorists

IN THE NEWS
A while ago, I poked fun at the Total Information Awareness program and other efforts to use business intelligence and data warehousing technologies to make suspected terrorists stand out from the crowded landscape of law enforcement information. The privacy concerns about these efforts are valid, and the potential for abuse is high. But, at bottom, someone in law enforcement needs a better way to query information about domestic and foreign terrorists from the fragmented sources of information across the country. Because we have to collaborate with other countries, I'll amend that last sentence with, "across the world."

This older article chronicles a similar effort, Matrix. It's notable for the recurrent problems, but just as importantly, for a hint at how the effort isn't altogether hopeless. Difficult, with some inherent risks, but not beyond possibility. As they say in the software business, "It's all a matter of how much time and money you want to spend." Plus, of course, people who know what they're doing, as opposed to what seems to have been the case with the Total Information Awareness initiative.

Sacrifice

IN THE NEWS
Last week, I was on a business trip to Virginia that consumed pretty much every waking moment of my time. A bad cold had me in its grip, killing what little chance I had of writing on this blog.

Before the schedule kicked into high gear, I had a couple of hours to visit the Virginia War Museum. The description I read of it beforehand said that it provided an overview of the wars that the United States has fought, starting with the War of Independence. I was happily surprised to see that, no only had the curators done a good job of depicting American military history, but the museum also displayed a large number of artifacts from other countries in their own wars, particularly WWI and WWII. For example, in the Germany section, you can see a collection of the famous "pickle" helmets from the First World War, and an exhibit about Dachau from the Second World War. I'm not as much of a hardware buff as other military history buffs I know, but it's always interesting to see the weapons you've read about for years. The ubiquitous American version of the 81mm mortar from WWII was bigger than I had expected. Any GI who toted this around hedgerow country in France, the mounts of Italy, or the jungles of the Pacific has my respect. From the same period, the Soviet PPSh submachine gun (the one with the drum magazine) was actually somewhat smaller than I had envisioned. The museum is definitely worth the time, if you're ever near Newport News.

The museum had two special exhibits that caught my eye. The first, about African-Americans at war, was a decent summary for those who know about the subject, and probably better suited for someone who hasn't seen this kind of survey before. It's always worth remembering how, in matters of grave national importance, attitudes can progress and regress. During the American Civil War, not only did black regiments fight on the side of the Union, but the South, desperate for manpower, began a program of arming slaves. Fortunately, the Confederacy started far too late for slaves to fight for their collective oppression.

The second exhibit was the one that really got me thinking. I've seen some pretty good collections of American propaganda posters from WWII, and some exhibits of British, Nazi and Soviet propaganda from the same period. I can't remember seeing all of them together, with examples from Italy, Japan, and other countries.

What's striking is their similarity. Nearly all the exhortations—work hard for the war effort, watch out for spies, etc.—look roughly similar. While there's no comparing American racism with Nazi genocide, many countries, the United States included, had their ugly depictions of the brutish, subhuman enemy. The American example in the Virginia War Museum, a gorilla-like Japanese soldier guarding the nurses of Corrigedor, is merely one example of many racist depictions of the Japanese. Americans were, without a doubt, the white hats in WWII, but in exhorting the masses against Imperial Japan, we often used imagery and techniques that we later regretted.

Another common thread throughout WWII-era propaganda from all countries is sacrifice. Use your ration cards wisely. Buy war bonds—not the best investment for your portfolio, perhaps, but the best investment for America. Women, join the factory labor force that's building the bombers needed to strangle German industry and transportation. Take the time to collect your scrap metal, or even your extra set of flatware, to contribute to the war effort.

Every American had a sacrifice to make. Every American also had a job in the war effort. Not only did the US government have a visible military budget, but every citizen had a tangible contribution. Learn these plane silhouettes. Call the authorities if you see someone where they shouldn't be, photographing the shipyards.

When the war ended, Americans felt, to every man, woman, and child, some sense of contribution to the Allied victory. During the war, people with this sense of investment followed world events closely, through newspapers, radio reports, and newsreels. National mobilization, dedication, and sacrifice were all accomplished without the Internet, cell phones, or other recent achievements in telecommunications.

If 9/11 was our generation's Pearl Harbor, and Operation Enduring Freedom was our Operation TORCH (the first American assault against the Germans, a North African prelude to the D-Day landings), none of these events has inspired the same national call for sacrifice. While daily life never drew to a standstill, World War II had its impact on American society. In fact, when the war ended, there were major concerns that the United States might not successfully make the transition from wartime to peacetime economy. Factories building planes might not be converted fast enough to refrigerator and automobile production to avoid an economic downturn. American GIs, trained and experienced killers, might find it hard to return to normal life. Women who had a taste of independence might not want to return to a housewife's existence. These concerns proved overblown, but the fact that they existed at all shows how much Americans felt the war effort was part of their lives.

Today, we live in a country that's at war—sort of. While we certainly are paying a price in blood and treasure, we're not seeing it the same way "the greatest generation" saw their sacrifices. Nor are we being asked, directly and forcefully, to make any sacrifices at all. The costs are indeed seeping into the cracks of American life, but we're certainly not feeling responsible to take a full accounting of them.

This situation has consequences, the subject of a later post. For now, I'll just note that daily life in America today looks much as it did on September 10th—at least for most people on the "home front."

POSTSCRIPT: If you want to see an excellent online collection of WWII propaganda posters, click here. And here are some amateurish photos I took while at the Virginia War Museum.

The Department of Lysenkoism

IN THE NEWS
Marking the anniversary of a mass killing is a morbid task already. News this week about the Department of Homeland Security's priorities make the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing even more tragic.

According to guidelines leaked to the Associated Press, the DHS is instructing its employees to be vigilant about Islamist terrorists and "militant" left-wing groups like Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. What's conspicuously missing from the list are the right-wing fanatics who, ten years ago, blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The 9/11 attacks may have added to the public mind another threat worth taking seriously. 9/11 should not have subtract home-grown, right-wing terrorists from the list—nor should anyone encourage this subtraction.

When future historians puzzle over our strange age, the Department of Homeland Security will stand out for its pernicious perversity. While the idea of the DHS was a good one, what emerged is a bureaucratic and political abomination. The Hart commission recommended the creation of the new Department because, if done correctly, centralization would make many agencies focused on different parts of "homeland security" more focused and effective. What we have now is a highly ineffective bureaucracy that exists primarily to appease its political masters.

Obviously, in any organization, there are dedicated professionals trying to "swim against the stream," if the policy currents threatens to pull everyone over a waterfall. I'm obviously not leveling my criticism against these people, since some of them probably still work in the DHS. But what can you say about the decision-makers who put groups PETA, noted only for flinging animal blood at furriers, in the same category as Al Qaeda? While Earth First may have caused mutilations among loggers whose saws cut into "spiked" trees, that's obviously a different level of crime than Timothy McVeigh's. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Army of God, and other groups that fall into the categories "white supremacist," "anti-government militia," or "Christian Identity" are genuinely violent. In fact, they do a lot more than the suspects recently arrested for monitoring the headquarters of major financial companies. Visit their web sites and read about their programmes for the violent overthrow of the US government, the imposition of a race- or religion-based form of apartheid, and the assassination of government officials who cross their paths. Listen to the lyrics of the white supremacist punk bands, or drop into the message forums for the fellow travelers within these extremist circles.

If you believe they're no longer much of a threat, keep in mind how dangerous real militant groups can be when they're feeling truly threatened. Remember how the Nazis quickened the pace of the Holocaust when they decided the war was lost. And that's assuming the groups are as much in decline as some might depict, which is highly arguable.

Why on earth would the DHS overlook right-wing groups, while rather crazily elevating non-violent environmental or animal rights groups—most of whom risk their own freedom and safety, and explicitly never anyone else's—to the ranks of global terrorists? The answer is simple, but most people will have a hard time believing it. The DHS has now turned into something as ridiculous and dangerous as the old Soviet doctrine of Lysenkoism.

For those not familiar with this pseudo-science, Lysenkoism was a Soviet spin on genetics, based on a tortured application of dialectical materialism instead of the works of people like Darwin, Watson, and Crick. Stalin ordered Lysenkoist methods applied to Soviet agriculture; the results were a disaster, killing millions in the pre-WWII famines. Lysenko didn't have his facts straight, and Lysenkoism never went through the kind of scientific review on which "bourgeois" scientists insisted. It did have the favor of Stalin, which is all that mattered. If you want to know what happens when you grant power to people presumed to have "their hearts in the right places," but virulently resistant to any facts, take a long, good look at the horrific legacy of Trofim Lysenko.

Should we be surprised, therefore, that when the Bush Administration discards fact for orthodoxy, we get a DHS that echoes a crazy, right-wing notion of who's really a threat? Or, for that matter, a Justice Department that is willing to cut a deal with Eric Rudolph, accused of the Olympic park bombing as well as a series of abortion clinic bombings? Before you congratulate the federal authorities on a job well done, remember who captured Rudolph: an off-duty police officer, who found Rudolph digging through a dumpster in his home town, where, possibly, people he knew helped hide him.

Meanwhile, there's apparently no cell dark or dank enough for someone with a Middle Eastern-sounding name who went to Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, was trained in light weapons, and (according to their testimony) returned post haste to the United States when they learned the nasty truth about the people running the jihadist camps. According to American law, people who commit crimes are supposed to be punished harder than people who are just planning them—or, in the case of the Lackawanna Six, might have planned something. (There was no actual evidence they were planning terrorist attacks, even if they were less shocked by their Al Qaeda and Taliban trainers than they claimed.)

The DHS has produced no measurable results. In fact, when Congress raised the question of how the DHS measures progress in its work, it had almost nothing to say about the matter. Money, of course, is spent. But has a single terrorist attack been averted by the color-coded alerts? Has the bureaucratic consolidation of many agencies into one demonstrably led to the capture of a single terrorist suspect? Has the good work of the DHS relieved the burden of defending our own borders? Or, as a recent study has called into question, are the airlines any safer now than they were on September 10, 2001?

If the DHS' budget is being wasted on a feckless organization, but terrorists are truly prowling the periphery and interior of our country, the Department of Homeland Security is worse than useless. It wastes resources that should be available to people who actually can produce results. (Or, perhaps, the number of actual terrorists poised to strike is far smaller than the public thinks it is.)

But, of course, all these points are immaterial, as long as the person at the top of the organization is happy with what he hears. Don't forget that the reigning orthodoxy in the White House is ideologically not too far from the Eric Rudolphs hiding in the woods: anti-government, confident in its revivalist faith, ready to fight the culture war anywhere, any time. There is, of course, a critical difference in methods. But bureaucrats, whether they're cynical opportunists or fervent enthusiasts, take their cues from the people at the top of the org chart. The message heard from the White House is far too silent, or far too ambiguous, about homegrown terrorism. And the DHS is far, far from being the efficient, knowledgeable, and respected counterweight to foolishness that it needs to be.

Local Fox affiliate unveils terror van

IN THE NEWS
What makes the satire on The Onion wickedly funny is how close to the bone it slices. This week's Onion includes a fake news story, "Local Fox Affiliate Debuts Terror Alert Van," which is funny on its own, without reference to the real world.

What makes the joke even funnier, however, is the fact that such vehicles do indeed exist. One day, I was driving my daughter home from school when we spotted the city of San Carlos' anti-terror truck idling next to us at the stoplight. I don't believe Belmont is a likely terrorist target, nor are there terrorist networks based out of Belmont, a quiet suburban community 30 minutes south of San Francisco. The guy behind the wheel looked pretty serious, though, whatever he was doing.

Military intelligence

IN THE NEWS
I've been a regular reader of Parameters, the official research publication of the US Army War College, for years.There are always at least a couple of gems in each issue--a good sign that the people who are most directly involved in counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations today are, left to their own devices, pretty bright, open-minded, capable, and dedicated people.

The home page from the Army War College site features a few interesting articles outside Parameters and other research venues. Check out this piece about using the Koran, the Hadith Reports, and Islamic scholarship as weapons against Al Qaeda. Also, read this excellent summary article by Max Manwaring about the lessons we can learn from past conflicts. The underlying message, of course, is that counterinsurgency and counterterrorism are not new, so we should not be groping around in the dark while a mysterious, deadly enemy waits to pounce again. If I read these articles correctly, they're intended to be primers for military and civilian professionals new to this topic. Therefore, it's enormously encouraging to see the war against Al Qaeda framed this way. (But I beg the scholars at the War College to drop the acronym GWOT. Please.)