Arms and influence

Paperback writer

IN THE NEWS
During his captivity, Saddam Hussein seems to be morphing into a creature of American popular culture. Aside from his love of Doritos, and his brief stint as a Fruit of the Loom model, Hussein may be the first Middle Eastern dictator who's also a published pulp fiction writer. Sure, his book, Get Out, You Damned One faces some obstacles before it reaches widespread circulation, but maybe he's getting just the kind of publicity needed to really boost sales.

Yikes, continued

IN THE NEWS
In the last 48 hours, the American and Italian governments are trading claims and counter-claims about the abduction of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr. Yesterday, US official s said, "The Italians knew what we were planning and let us go ahead." Today, the Italian government is denying any complicitly or cooperation.

When an Italian judge released the arrest warrants for the CIA operatives accused of abducting Nasr, who was handed over to the tender mercy of Egyptian security forces, he appears to have been responding to an independent investigation. However, the abduction is now part of the political struggle between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the opposition parties. Whether the parliamentary debate helps or hurts the prosecution remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, it's a damn shame that any of this is happening. Milan, where the abduction took place, is a well-known meeting place and transfer point for terrorists. The Al Qaeda cell responsible for the March 11, 2004 bombings in Madrid operated out of Milan; in fact, the accused mastermind of the attack, Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, was arrested in Milan and extradited to Spain. The cells responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the United States also had a presence in Milan during the planning phases of the operation. Italy at large is also an entry point into Europe for terrorists from North Africa and the Middle East, so Italians and Americans alike have good reasons to cooperate.

I don't think, however, from the information available, that the judge in the case had a choice--particularly since Europeans in general have been able to identify, track, capture, prosecute, and convict terrorists without these sorts of shenanigans. Whether or not officials in the Italian goverment cooperated with the CIA operatives in Nasr's kidnapping and "rendition," the standard Italian and European approach to counterterrorism has largely stayed within the law and been effective in checking or dismantling terrorist groups.

Broad strokes

IN THE NEWS
The Bush Administration continues to describe the diverse Iraqi guerrilla and terrorist groups as if they were one, monolithic, faceless enemy. The distinctions among these factions—from remnants of the Ba'ath Party to revolutionary Islamists, from zealous suicide bombers to cynical kidnappers-for-profit—are significant, yet the Administration portrays them as if they were all the same. That's more than a semantic problem: we're actively contributing to the mystique that grants real terrorists power and leverage.

True, there is some cooperation among different groups. Sometimes, these represent common outlooks and interests, such as the collaboration between Sunnah al-Islam and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Other times, these groups have alliances of convenience, such as between the Ba'athists and Islamists who happen to share common Sunni backgrounds, but completely different political aims. There is also a substantial amount of enmity among some groups that often boils over into armed clashes, as occasionally mentioned as "red on red violence."

Even worse, the Administration continues to blur distinctions between the Iraqi insurgents and foreign guerrilla and terrorist groups. Top civilian leaders may blur these distinctions to build rhetorical (but spurious) links between the Iraq invasion and the 9/11 attacks, but military leaders have no such compulsion. In public statements, Abizaid, Myers, and other senior commanders do make the line between Iraqi and other insurgents clear, but they still talk about the Iraqi groups themselves as if they were a single organization.

Using broad strokes to portray the enemy groups when more detailed ones are needed, the heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and Central Command (CENTCOM) are ultimately doing themselves a disservice. The US and Iraqi governments will make progress against some groups quickly, and others more slowly (or, for the time being, not at all). Sealing the borders with Iran and Syria decreases the number of "foreign fighters" who can join Al Qaeda in Iraq, but has virtually no effect on the indigenous partisan groups who are more interested in getting rid of the Americans than installing a Taliban-like regime.

During the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration dedicated itself to the defeat of the FMLN in El Salvador, US officials (with a couple of notable exceptions) described the FMLN guerrilla organization in rather matter-of-fact terms. The FMLN had a political wing, the FDR, that worked with the FMLN's military commanders but were distinct from the guerrillas. The FMLN was an alliance of five different guerrilla groups, all founded independently and often at odds with one another. For example, the RN and ERP never fully agreed on methods, and there were personal rivalries among guerrilla commanders. The Reagan Administration exaggerated many aspects of whatever threat the FMLN posed to American interests, but it described the insurgents themselves in terms that made them almost seem pedestrian.

This rhetorical approach was no accident. People in the Defense Department, State Department, CIA, and other agencies involved in Central America didn't want to add to the "guerrilla mystique." In the 1980s, memories of Latin American conflict in the 1950s and 1960s were fresher than they are now. In the middle of the last century, nearly every country south of the Rio Grande had some urban- or rural-based guerrilla group. Nearly all of them failed, but while the insurgencies lasted, the insurgents themselves cut a dashing, heroic figure. Corrupt, brutal, dictatorial regimes twirled their moustaches and laughed villainously at their citizens' suffering. Meanwhile, Clever, Zorro-like guerrillas struck back—rarely toppling the regime, but usually escaping to fight another day. While this mythology overlooked many of the faults of the guerrillas—sometimes prone to corruption, brutality, and stupidity themselves—the revolutionary mystique was often as powerful as the guerrillas themselves.

In a new century, we face a new type of revolutionary mystique. The region and culture may be different, as are the revolutionaries. But the mystique is the same. If we're puzzled why anyone would think that jihadists cut a romantic figure, just look at the icon that Ernesto "Ché" Guevara became. Twenty years after the fall of Batista, only one among many revolutionary Marxist groups—the Nicaraguan FSLN, a.k.a. the Sandinistas—seized power anywhere in Latin America. Despite that track record of failure, the revolutionary mystique persisted—a testament to its ability to capture the popular imagination. Similarly, militant Islamists merely need to continue their acts and statements of defiance to sustain their mystique.

Obviously, the United States cannot extinguish that perception among Arabs and Muslims in dozens of countries world-wide. US leaders can keep this mystique from bleeding into American society. The mythic version of the guerrilla is inspiring to some, and terrifying to others. When we sweep aside any cloud of ignorance about the Iraqi insurgent groups, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, we find the reality behind it far less frightening. These groups are not invincible, though they're capable of adapting quickly to whatever methods we use against them. (That's nothing worse than the usual cycle of measure and counter-measure in warfare.) They often squabble among themselves, make serious errors, and prove obnoxious to people who once supported them. In Fallujah and Sadr City, for example, many Iraqis who once applauded the Army of the Mahdi soured on the rebels once they actually got to know them first-hand.

Americans certainly understand the power of the unseen. Horror movies that keep the menace off-screen usually frighten audiences far more effectively than when the monster is shambling in full view. Some of the best horror movies—The Cat People (original, not the remake), The Haunting, The Legend of Hell House, Alien—worked because you never, or hardly ever, saw The Big Bad. When the creature shambled into full view of the camera, you immediately saw it for what it was—often just a stuntman in a rubber suit.

The more Americans know about the groups fighting us, the less frightening they appear. The less our collective judgment is clouded by fear, the more likely, as a nation, we are to make the right decisions. We might discover that the Iraqi insurgents are tough opponents, but US and Iraqi forces might be able to make more progress against them than we expect. We might also discover, of course, that many of them are only a threat to Americans as long as Americans are in Iraq. Whatever conclusions we draw, they're likely to be better than charging at or fleeing from a faceless enemy.

False positives

IN THE NEWS
In December 2003, the US Department of Homeland Security raised the color-coded alert level from yellow to orange. The Federal Avation Administration cancelled a couple of dozen international flights, and for a short period, many Americans feared an imminent attack.

And then...Nothing happened. Some AFP reporters recently looked into the event, which turned out to have had an ignominious conclusion.

After the release of an audio tape containing threats from Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, intelligence officials were looking for coded attack orders covertly embedded in other forms of communication. CIA analysts thought that they saw something suspicious in the scrolling text at the bottom of an Al Jazeera broadcast, so they pushed the panic button while they were still analyzing the video. Later, intelligence analysts realized that there weren't any coded messages, but (not surprisingly) no one publicly admitted the mistake.

There's definitely reason to be critical of how Homeland Security and the CIA handled the situation, but assuming incompetence is the wrong starting point. I'd wager that the state of constant alert itself is the primary culprit.

Here's a basic rule of thumb: The more relaxed your posture, the more likely you'll get hit with a surprise attack. The more you stay at a state of alert, the more "false positives" will distract you, perhaps from real threats headed your way. There's another cost for being at "general quarters" all the time, exhaustion, but we'll stick with the false positives issue for the time being.

The most famous incident of surprise attack may also be the most misunderstood. The US military wasn't exactly sleeping when waves of carrier-based Japanese aircraft struck at Pearl Harbor. In fact, the US government was anticipating some kind of confrontation. A naval raid on the primary US naval base, on the opposite side of the Pacific from Japan, seemed less likely than other possible threats. Fearing that saboteurs might cripple or destroy US warplanes based in Hawaii, base commanders moved the planes closer together to make it easier to patrol them. Bunching these planes together, of course, made it easier for Japanese pilots to bomb or strafe large numbers of them.

The Pearl Harbor attack has many other facets. For example, warnings of a naval raid came from several sources, including a Soviet spy in Japan. Some of these messages didn't get to top decision-makers in time; some were deemed unreliable; others were interpreted to fit the predominant thesis about where the Japanese blow would strike (probably the Western Pacific, many American leaders surmised). For details, I'd recommend reading Essence of Decision, Graham Allison's excellent analysis of decision-making during a crisis, and Cohen and Gooch's Military Misfortunes. There are plenty of good histories of the Pearl Harbor raid, but these two books frame the event as a systemic failure, not a personal one.

Now, let's fast forward to 2003 again. People working in the US national security bureaucracy are operating on the assumption that another 9/11-like attack might happen at any time. In fact, the public statements of Tom Ridge, George Tenet, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and other top Administration officials  reinforce this view. People fear that the attack might come from any direction, and Al Qaeda might be changing its methods for organizing and executing the attack. A general frustration with Al Jazeera's willingness to broadcast or publish statements from Al Qaeda leads to a suspicion of the network's motives. No one wants to miss the warning signs preceding another 9/11, so the CIA analysts sound the klaxon, on the assumption that an Al Qaeda strike might be imminent in (1) Washington, DC, (2) Seattle, Washington, and (3) Tappahannock, Virginia. (Is there something there we don't know about?)

Had the national security bureaucracy not been on war footing, CIA analysts probably would not have been combing Al Jazeera video feeds for hidden messages to terrorist operatives. Had there been no war footing, perhaps there might have been hidden messages they would have missed. Of course, the time spent analyzing Al Jazeera video might have been needed to process other audio, video, or text messages preceding a real attack.

Could the US government have handled this situation better? Definitely. It's necessary to put people on alert if terrorists make credible threats. However...

• The statement from al-Zawahiri was too vague to justify the heightened alert, flight cancellations, and widespread fear of imminent attack. The recording could have been the harbinger of an immediate strike, or just a regular morale-bolstering speech from a top Al Qaeda leader to the rank and file of the organization. There is a considerable risk that Al Qaeda regularly tests the American response to these statements, to see how into many knots US officials can tie themselves.
• The filter for separating real warning signs from "false positives" is still fairly crude. There are efforts behind the scenes to develop better ways to distinguish between what's worth follow-up and what's not. When top officials say, "Be afraid, an unspecified attack from an unknown source may occur at any moment," that frightens the public needlessly, and it makes the national security bureaucracy even more jumpy.
• The continued public brawl with Al Jazeera is counter-productive. Enough already. Even if Al Jazeera producers knew all the secret Al Qaeda handshakes, the network behaves like a fairly responsible news organization with a different view than American officials wish it had.
• Intelligence about possible attacks provides a less reliable early warning system than intelligence about the attackers. Anyone who has familiarity with Al Qaeda's goals, organization, and methods would immediately discount many scenarios depicting new attacks on American soil. Worrying about "chatter" is justified, but only if you have some idea the kind of attack that "chatter" might be discussing. US officials should narrow the focus down to the type of attacks Al Qaeda is likely to make, keeping in mind that they will undoubtedly shift their tactics to maintain the initiative.

[Many thanks to Booman Tribute for the original pointer to this story.]

From balance to restraint

IN THE NEWS
The lead story in today's Washington Post dives more deeply into the memos (plural) drafted within the British Cabinet before the invasion of Iraq. Here's a paragraph that caught my eye:

Blair defended his approach, Cook reported, by saying Britain's national interest lay in staying closely allied with the United States. "I tell you that we must steer close to America," Blair said, according to Cook. "If we don't, we lose our influence to shape what they do."

It's no secret that successive British governments since World War II have shared this opinion. Great Britain was once Europe's chief "balancer," blocking any country (most famously, Napoleonic France and Imperial Germany) that threatened to upset the balance of power. Now, Britain seeks to be the chief "restrainer," tempering the actions of the world's greatest power.

However, Blair seems to have failed to restrain the Bush Administration at all. In fact, the memos indicate that his own advisers saw Blair as an "enabler," in the sense that psychotherapists use that term. Here's the best defense of Blair anyone could give, in spite of his failure to put the brakes on the ill-conceived Iraq venture:

"No doubt from the British point of view Iraq has been a strategic blunder -- not just a mistake, but a mistake that we're still paying for," said Clarke, of King's College. "Still, while no one in government would ever say it, the rationale from the British point of view is that our strategic relationship with the U.S. is more important than any single campaign we fight on its behalf. The basic calculation was: Right or wrong, it is in our interest to stand with the United States."

The next generation of British politicians may re-visit this policy of friendly restraint. Clearly, the strategy depends on avoiding "strategic blunders" like Iraq. The cost may be too high for just one such misadventure: during their last one-on-one meeting, Bush pushed Blair for a larger troop deployment in Iraq. If the relationship between the United States and the European Community worsens, Britain may have to choose between the two.

Yikes

IN THE NEWS
An Italian judge has issued arrest warrants for 13 people, purported to be CIA operatives, in connection with a "renditioning" case. The suspects are accused of kidnapping a radical imam and handing him over to Egyptian security forces, who tortured the cleric. The warrants are round one in what is likely to be a political brawl within Italy over collaboration with the United States over counterterrorism and the Iraq war.

What a roadmap looks like

IN THE NEWS
Here's a proposed roadmap for the US intervention in Iraq, from a blogger in the Army Reserves. We can debate the specifics, but this is what a roadmap, however long (say, twelve years), should look like.

How long, did you say?

IN THE NEWS
The other classically Rumsfeldian moment from the last week was the following statement:

"That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years," Rumsfeld said. "Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."

It's not news when someone states the obvious. Internal wars do last far longer than conventional wars. In many cases, they never stop altogether, though there may be so few guerrillas or terrorists left that it's hard to talk about a war per se. In Iraq, the US and Iraqi governments haven't even regained the initiative yet. We're far from seeing the end, or the manageable containment of, the myriad Iraqi insurgent groups.

People lower in the national security bureaucracies have been making similar observations for quite some time. What's surprising, of course, is hearing someone near the top of the Administration make a rhetorical nod toward this reality—just enough to baffle or frighten, but not enough to reassure anyone or rebuild flagging support.

What's missing, of course, from Rumsfeld's comment is what a ten or twelve year war might look like. Will American troops be there for the duration? Did he mean to say that US forces will withdraw well before that time, with Iraqi forces fighting on their own (with, perhaps, US military aide) for the remaining years? Are we talking about shifting the fight outside of Iraq, if Iraqi insurgent groups decide to take the fight to us elsewhere?

Here's where Rumsfeld retreats into the following all-too-familiar position: I'm a tough, experienced Pentagon insider who knows you can't help the enemy by stating what you're going to do. Stop asking me these questions. Of course, no one is asking the Administration to fess up that it's planning to carry out a multi-brigade operation in Mosul tomorrow. At the same time, no one—the Iraqis, the Americans, even the Bush Administration itself—is served by vague statements like Rumsfeld's.  Here's something Rumsfeld might have said, at no cost to himself, his boss, or the war effort:

We're less concerned about the groups that are just criminal gangs operating under the label of Islamic revolution. The Iraqi police will take care of them, over time. There are also many of the truly revolutionary groups whom we're confident lack the personnel, resources, or appeal they need to survive. We do understand, however, that there are some groups, such as Ansar al-Sunnah, that will not disappear overnight. As experience shows in other conflicts like the one in Iraq, it may take a decade or more for the last remnants of these groups to be defeated. But, with our help, the Iraqi government and people will defeat them.

Mystery meeting

IN THE NEWS
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's "startling" admission that the United States has had recent discussions with Iraqi insurgents shouldn't be startling. After all, combatants should have talks all the time—about prisoner exchanges, areas kept off-limits by both sides, and yes, the possibility of peace overtures. However, what's surprising isn't the fact of the talks, but to whom the US government is talking.

The group cited in news reports, Ansar al-Sunnah, is part of the same network that includes Ansar al-Islam, which existed before the 2003 invasion, and Al Qaeda in Iraq. All three groups have a notorious record of kidnappings, executions, assassinations, and bombings. Ansar al-Sunnah is, more or less, the decendant of Ansar al-Islam; Al Qaeda in Iraq ranks among its top leaders Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had the same role in Ansar al-Islam. Remember, these are loose networks, not hierarchical military organizations, so the boundaries and connections among them can be a bit fuzzy.

The word "insurgent" in this conflict is definitely misleading. Ansar al-Sunnah and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the classically terrorist groups in their methods and organization. They are also some of the most determinedly anti-Western groups in their ideology and choice of targets.

So why, might you ask, are US officials talking to them? Perhaps to work out some deal about the upcoming election, though what the US would offer to Ansar al-Sunnah in exchange for limiting its operations during the election is unclear. Perhaps they hoped that Ansar al-Sunnah would lose confidence, choosing to demobilize the way the Army of the Mahdi did. Perhaps the only point of the meeting was to deliver a warning. Or, perhaps, Ansar al-Sunnah wanted the meeting for its own reasons—to leak news of it to score a few easy points off the United States, or make the Iraqi government fear the US was moving toward a "separate peace" before withdrawal.

The reason Rumsfeld stated, to discuss Sunni representation in the Iraqi government, sounds a bit contrived. It also sounds as though he was counting on the audience not knowing with whom US representatives were dealing. It's hard to know what to make of this odd piece of news, except that there's probably less there than it seems.

The all-volunteer army

IN THE NEWS
Bob Herbert's latest column in The New York Times starts with a statement that's as stark as it is wrong:

The all-volunteer Army is not working. The problem with such an Army is that there are limited numbers of people who will freely choose to participate in an enterprise in which they may well be shot, blown up, burned to death or suffer some other excruciating fate.

The all-volunteer Army is fine in peacetime, and in military routs like the first gulf war. But when the troops are locked in a prolonged war that yields high casualties, and they look over their shoulders to see if reinforcements are coming from the general population, they find--as they're finding now--that no one is there.

The all-volunteer army was part of a strategy to keep the United States out of wars like the one in which we're now mired in Iraq. The use of force required several steps--stating the objective, mobilizing domestic and international support, calling up the Guard and reserves, deploying to the theater of battle, and winning the war--that could only be achieved within a limited amount of time. The point was to keep the United States out of Vietnam-like commitments.

Even during the 1980s, when concerns about El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala were running high, civilian and military decision-makers did not seriously contemplate invasion of even the weakest of countries in "our own backyard." The United States limited the military effort in that region to aid packages and a small number of advisors. (The notable exception, of course, was Grenada.) When, finally, the US government decided to go to war in Panama, and then later in Somalia, the Balkans, and Kuwait, US leaders worked hard to preserve the formula. When it worked, as it did in the first war with Iraq, American public opinion continued to show signs that voters were more comfortable with the use of force, as long as it stuck to the program. When military action threatened to break the formula, as it almost did in Somalia, the US decided to withdraw, rather than risk a long-term, bloody commitment for low stakes.

There were never signs that the United States could only fight a war if suffered practically no casualties. In fact, the results of the  2004 political election fly in the face of that thesis. Public support of the war hasn't collapsed completely, but it has eroded as voters get less willing to grant the current Administration the benefit of the doubt. It also erodes as political differences in the country sharpen, something for which Republicans like Karl Rove bear substantial responsibility. (See his comments last week on liberals and 9/11.)

The all-volunteer army failed when we invaded Iraq with insufficient force, an unclear strategy, and weak domestic and international support. We lacked the both the staying power if the fight were important enough to stay for a longer period than expected, and we also lacked the reasons to stay longer. True, in terms of manpower, the volunteer army formula--with its reserve and Guard supplements--is breaking down. However, we could re-introduce the draft tomorrow, and the formula behind the all-volunteer force would still be broken.