Arms and influence

Seeing Iraq, thinking Malaya

IN THE NEWS
The latest Foreign Affairs contains one of the most specious rebuttals to critics of the American strategy in Iraq I've read. Stephen Biddle's article "Seeing Iraq, Thinking Vietnam," contains one basic argument: since the Vietnamese insurgency was a "Maoist people's war," and the Iraq insurgency is a clash of distinct communities, divided along ethnic and sectarian lines, Vietnam/Iraq analogies don't stand up. He takes particular issue with proponents of classic counterinsurgency strategy. Since that category includes me, I feel obliged to respond—particularly since Biddle is overlooking important aspects of the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and counterinsurgency theory.

First, let's look at the presumed distinction between a people's war and a communal (a.k.a. civil) war. Although Vietnam had nothing like the obvious divisions between very large sub-populations, it's ridiculous to say that there were no ethnic or sectarian tensions in Vietnam. Long before Ho Chi Minh or Karl Marx were born, lowland Vietnamese and highland "Montagnards," two ethnically distinct communities, regarded each other with disdain. This conflict played a role in the Vietnam War, though it did not define the two sides in the conflict—though the continued suppression of the Montagnards was clearly a goal of both the North and South Vietnamese regimes. It's also worth mentioning the historical animosity between the Vietnamese and Chinese, which was a far more important factor in the People's Republic of China's attack on South Vietnam in 1975 than, say, differences over Marxist-Leninist dogma.

Before the division of the country into North and South, considerable animosity existed between populations of both major regions of Vietnam. Religious tensions also existed, particularly between the Catholic elite that French colonial administrators created, and which continued to dominate South Vietnamese politics after the French withdrawal. To the extent that you buy the argument that Communism was a sort of "secular faith," the Vietnam War was also a clash of ideologies, rooted in inter-group tensions.

It's not worth exaggerating these characteristics of Vietnam to rebut Biddle, however. If Biddle is right, classic counterinsurgency doctrine should have worked better in Vietnam than another country where, like Iraq, the ethnic and sectarian divisions were sharper. Fortunately, there is a very pertinent example from nearly the same time period as Vietnam, the Malayan Emergency. Unfortunately for Biddle, classic counterinsurgency was wildly successful in Malaya, where tensions between Malays and Chinese antedated the Emergency and British colonial rule. The Communist MRLA guerrilla movement, rooted in the minority Chinese population, was therefore not unlike the distinctly Ba'athist bent of Sunni insurgents, or the Islamist orientation of Shi'ite revolutionaries. (There are, of course, Sunni Islamists and more secular Shi'ite insurgents, so the previous sentence is guilty of caricaturing "the insurgency" yet again.)

The British strategy in Malaya, the archetype of classic counterinsurgency theory, should therefore, in Buddle's thinking, have been a spectacular failure. Instead, it was so much of a success that it became an archetype for generations of counterinsurgency practitioners and scholars.

Perhaps because he is stating his opinions in a short article, Biddle didn't have the opportunity to pick apart counterinsurgency strategy per se. Like the facts of the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, however, the strategy itself includes important details that Biddle omits. For example, the primary goal of counterinsurgency is, through a patient program of population security and reform, to defeat the insurgents militarily and politically. For example, in Malaya, the British made a credible case that they would quit their former colony, leaving in their place a new government that represented the interest of Malays and Chinese alike. Meanwhile, British and Malayan forces gathered intelligence on the insurgents, swept them out of a series of "enclaves," and effectively used small-unit tactics to pursue the guerrillas outside of these enclaves.

The fact that the MRLA agents captured, the MRLA guerrillas turned, and the MRLA sympathizers won to the government's cause were Chinese was just another important facet of the strategy. In conflicts like Iraq and Malaya, counterinsurgency's theater or grand strategy requires the reconciliation of battling ethnic or sectarian groups. In other cases, the conflict is more purely ideological, requiring a different outcome. Differences at the higher planes of strategy don't change the general methods needed at the operational, tactical, and technical levels. The same rule applies to conventional warfare: the US military that evicted Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 used the same methods to invade Iraq in 2003.

I do agree with Biddle on other points, such as the risk the United States is taking in pursuing "Iraqization" in a way that's inflaming, not suppressing, inter-group tensions. However, his core argument, the lessons of counterinsurgency do not apply to Iraq, is flawed historically and strategically. Biddle concludes his article by saying, "Whatever the prospects for peace, they would be considerably better if Washington stopped mistaking Iraq for Vietnam and started seeing it for what it really is." Agreed—as long as we don't exaggerate both the similarities and the differences between these two wars, and we don't throw out counterinsurgency strategy altogether in the process.

IN THE NEWS
I'm not usually interested in arbitrary anniversaries of major events, but September 11, 2006, seems like the right time for a national status report on what the US government has accomplished in the last five years to make Americans safer.

To measure progress, I propose asking several specific questions, demanding specific answers. We have to start with a version of the null hypothesis: Activity and verbiage do not necessarily translate into progress. This approach makes elected and appointed officials responsible for demonstrating real progress.

Since we're trying to get vital specifics, not rhetorical blather, unacceptable answers include:

• With all the attention on counterterrorism, how can we not be safer?
• There's more spending on counterterrorism.
• The federal government has created new bureaucratic configurations, passed new laws, and issued new presidential directives since 9/11, all of which must make us safer.
• We can't tell you the answer—it's a secret.
• If we talk about what's not working, the terrorists win.

With the ground rules out of the way, here's the list:

1. If the same plot, with the same warning signs, as the 9/11 attacks were to occur again, would the FBI, CIA, FAA, or other agencies would catch them this time? In other words, has the US government improved its ability to piece together a coherent picture of a threat from available information, instead of collecting more information for its own sake?
2. What concrete accomplishments has the Department of Homeland Security made since 9/11?
3. Is the general public better equipped to distinguish between a real terrorist threat and unjustified panic?
4. How have the different levels and branches of government improved their ability to detect foreign terrorists crossing US borders, operating within the United States, or planning to attack targets within the United States?
5. Are Americans safer when traveling abroad?
6. How have different levels of government improved their ability to detect and prevent similar threats from domestic terrorists?
7. How has our collaboration on counterterrorism with police, intelligence, military, judicial, and elected officials in foreign governments improved?
8. Is the language ability of those working in counterterrorism sufficient to keep up with the intelligence gathered?
9. Have the disaster readiness problems seen in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, such as overloaded radio frequencies, been fixed?
10. Is anyone involved in "blue team/red team" analysis of terrorist threats, to better anticipate how domestic and foreign terrorists are likely to respond to US countermeasures?
11. Whose job is on the line if another 9/11-scale attack occurs?

Please suggest any additions or refinements to the list.

Afghan man gets worse than acquittal

IN THE NEWS
Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, is now acquitted—sort of. In the sort of compromise that makes perfect sense in Afghan politics, the judges who had convicted Rahman ordered his release, but still insist that he deserves to die. The Afghan regime got what it needed, the avoidance of a major diplomatic rift between the Karzai government and its Western patrons. The Islamists also got what they wanted, a potential de facto death penalty for Rahman, if not a de jure one. Rahman is now a marked man, who may have to flee the country (and even then may not be completely safe).

There's not much to do at this point, other than try to help Rahman in whatever way possible. It's unclear from the resolution of this particular imbroglio whether future Rahmans will also face the death penalty. It's clear that the Islamists have a card to play, and many of the warlords who are unhappy with President Karzai will encourage them to play it. The Karzai government will only come out ahead if it is able to prevent further prosecutions and verdicts like this one.

FARC this

IN THE NEWS
Needless to say, the Justice Department's indictments of 50 leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is purely symbolic. It may be a useful sop to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, assuring his government that the US remains behind his efforts to fight the FARC. However, the indictments don't commit the United States to anything, and the FARC leaders must have laughed themselves sick at US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's press conference.

The FARC is a tough, mean, and cynical guerrilla group that long ago traded its revolutionary ambitions for the profits that the drug trade brings. While these indictments may be unintentionally amusing, the FARC is no joke.

So much for airline security

IN THE NEWS
After nearly five years since 9/11, someone can still sneak onto an airliner, simply by hiding in the bathroom.

The Taliban's revenge?

IN THE NEWS
The Afghan government's plan to execute Abdul Rahman, who recently converted to Christianity, poses a serious problem for American leaders. Does the US government throw up its hands, claiming it's the sovereign right of an elected government to apply capital punishments outlined in that nation's constitution—especially when we went to great pains to see that constitution drafted? Or do we risk alienating our ally, and possibly a few others in the region, by pressing the claim that universal concepts of human rights supersede any constitutional or religious claims?

I think most people would agree that the US government is making a morally justified argument: no one, regardless of national origin or creed, should be executed for their faith. It remains to be seen how effective the Bush Administration's diplomatic approach will be.

In most ways, this "crisis" is not as bad as it looks; unfortunately, in some ways, it's worse. The Afghan government is highly dependent on American financial and military support, which gives President Karzai and other leaders a strong incentive to find a clever, face-saving route out of this standoff. Even so, it's important for Americans to phrase their appeal for an Afghan audience—particularly since Muslims in other parts of the world are listening to the Afghan-American conversation. In short, US officials need to make the case that the Dar al-Harb is no threat to the Dar al-Islam, to the extent that it exists in Afghanistan. Further, executing a Christian convert is contrary to Islam's history of toleration for other "religions of the book." The judges who have sentenced Rahman to death are also basing their decision on a very narrow view of Islamic law, a position with which not everyone, including many Afghan citizens, would agree.

A basic tenet of Islam is the distinction between Dar al-Islam ("the house of submission"), the parts of the world where Muslim leaders apply Shari'a law, and the Dar al-Harb ('the house of conflict"), the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, the Dar al-Islam is depicted in a much more positive light than the Dar al-Harb, but for most Muslims, the distinction is not Manichean. People of other faiths can live within the Dar al-Islam without being pressured to convert to other faiths. For example, Jews evicted from Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella found the Ottoman Empire far more tolerant than the Castilian monarchs, for whom even the conversos were suspect. The connotation of Dar al-Harb is a world of strife, since (from a Muslim perspective) the just, harmonizing influence of Islam is not guiding its rulers. Muslims in the Dar al-Islam can therefore be content that they don't live in the Dar al-Harb. In mainstream Islam, therefore, there has not been a strong spiritual justification for conquest. Suleiman the Magnificent did not justify his invasion of Eastern Europe on presumed threats to Muslims living there (there weren't that many), nor on the need to spread Islam by the sword (the Ottomans largely left the Christian population alone, with the exception of Europeans required to convert before they could help administer the empire or join the elite Janissary corps). To the extent that Suleiman felt he needed a justification, it was to build a wider buffer around the core Ottoman territories, to keep the Dar al-Harb at bay. The primary interests of Suleiman and other Ottoman rulers were the princely pursuit of wealth, territory, and power, something neither Suleiman nor his European contemporaries needed to justify.

The sense of threat from the Dar al-Harb has waxed and waned during the history of Islam. Sometimes, the missionary zeal of Christians represented a real threat to Islam; at other times, like the Fatimid ruler Hakem's persecution of Christians, the "threat" was largely imaginary. Nonetheless, a great deal of the historical tension between Islam and Christianity is focused on the question of conversion. The residents of predominantly Muslim countries can easily see Christian missionary work as a deliberate undermining of the Dar al-Islam, however imperfectly it exists under their current governments. Just as easily, Christians hear in the demand of many Muslims to live under Shari'a law the expansion of Islam through a political, not missionary, avenue.

When American leaders supported the drafting of the new Afghan constitution, they knew that they were acting as midwife to a child of both secular and Islamic thinking. The preamble to the 2004 constitution begins:

We the people of Afghanistan:

1. With firm faith in God Almighty and relying on His lawful mercy, and believing in the sacred religion of Islam…

Later, the first articles of the constitution echo the Islamic basis of the Afghan constitution:

Article One
Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.

Article Two
The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam. Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law.

Article Three
In Afghanistan no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.

Other sections echo the spirit of tolerance for different strains of Islam, as well as other faiths, that's the traditional connotation of the Dar al-Islam:

Article Six
The state is obliged to create a prosperous and progressive society based on social justice, protection of human dignity, protection of human rights, realization of democracy, and to ensure national unity and equality among all ethnic groups and tribes and to provide for balanced development in all areas of the country.

Article Seven
The state shall observe Charter of the United Nations, international treaties, international conventions that Afghanistan is a part to, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The state prevents all types of terrorist activities, cultivation and smuggling of narcotic drugs and production and consumption of intoxicants (muskirat).

Other parts of the constitution echo the democratic, universalist principles common to modern societies. For example:

Article Thirty- Four                           
Freedom of expression is inviolable.
Every Afghan has the right to express thoughts through speech, writing, or illustration or other means by observing the provisions of this Constitution.
Every Afghan has the right to print or publish topics without prior submission to the state authorities in accordance with the law. Directives related to printing house, radio, television, press, and other mass media, shall be regulated by law…

Article Thirty-Seven
Confidentiality and freedom of correspondence and communication whether in the form of letters or through telephone, telegraph and other means are immune from invasion.
The state does not have the right to inspect personal correspondence and communication unless authorized by the provisions of law.

The constitution also explicitly binds Afghanistan to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects freedom of religion, including the freedom to convert. Nowhere in the Afghan constitution is there a death penalty to conversion. The judges who have decreed Rahman's death base their decision on their reading of Shari'a law, which is indirectly the law of the land, according to the constitution. The judges' argument, therefore, is not necessarily the final word. Both their interpretation of the Quran and their application of Shari'a within the Afghan constitutional framework are highly debatable. There is also room to debate whether the interpretation or application of the Shari'a can be influenced by sources outside the Quran and the Hadith Reports. Islamic history is, in large part, a debate between advocates of this broader approach (ijtihad) and those who argue for strictly cleaving to these sources (taqlid).

The Rahman controversy is larger than the constitution's uncomfortable mixture of Islamic and secular principles, both of which can be abused. (Take a look at the "state of emergency" section of the constitution for a potentially dangerous, purely secular law.) The problem is even larger than the Afghan judiciary, in which "conservatives" (i.e, those who want the government to strictly apply a particular interpretation of the Shari'a, and are hostile to purely secular arguments) predominate. Undoubtedly, behind the scenes, some of Karzai's chief political opponents, the leaders of "warlord" factions, are exploiting this situation.

"Warlords" like Ismail Khan have been testing the limits of their fealty to the new Afghan government ever since the United States and its NATO allies ousted the Taliban in 2001. Warlordism, as Karzai bluntly tells anyone willing to listen, is the number one defect of Afghanistan, making it far harder for the new Afghan regime to defeat the Taliban once and for all, curb the production and shipment of opium (a problem that has exploded since 2001), build some measure of economic prosperity and security, and cement a sense of Afghan national identity that's needed to make any other improvements permanent. Even if the Rahman controversy wasn't engineered by one of the warlords, it's safe to say that they're enjoying the political troubles in which this imbroglio has placed Karzai. The more the Americans press Karzai in terms that many Afghans find incomprehensible, even offensive, the easier time his opponents will have undermining him.

To save Rahman's life and extricate our closest allies in Kabul from this political mess, American leaders need to speak in more than one diplomatic language. It's important to press the Afghan government on its adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human rights, not to mention the promises of tolerance in its own constitution. It's also important to respectfully disagree with this draconian, narrow reading of the Shari'a. After all, the Quran itself says, in Surah 2:256:

Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand- hold, that never breaks. And God heareth and knoweth all things.

In other words, Afghanistan's government can make it easier for the pious Muslim to follow the path to salvation. However, salvation will always be God's decision, not an Afghan court's. American leaders also need to distance themselves from Christian missionaries working in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries, since many pious Muslims see these missionaries as a deliberate incursion of the Dar al-Harb into the Dar al-Islam.

"The insurgency"

IN THE NEWS
After three years of conflict in Iraq, we still don't have a good term for whom we're fighting. The recent Frontline documentary, "The Insurgency," is a good illustration of the problem. While Frontline did a better-than-average job of differentiating between Ba'athist leftovers and al-Zarqawi's "Al Qaeda in Iraq," it omitted all the other insurgent groups. Not all foreign fighters belong to Zarqawi's organization. There is no unitary command exercising complete operational control over all the Ba'athist remnants. Not all "nationalists" are strictly Sunnis or Shi'itses. The native Iraqi Salafists do not belong to the same organization, nor do they adhere to the same creed. A decreasing but still extant number of "insurgents" are little more than brigands.

"The insurgency" is a pretty diverse enemy, which is not too different from other insurgencies. For example, "Republicans" in the Spanish Civil War represented a broad range of political affiliations, from what we might term "liberal democrats" to diehard Comintern loyalists. However, I suspect that the wholly inadequate term, "the insurgency," reflects American ignorance of the enemy as much as the pluralism among insurgent groups.

I've been struggling to find a better term, and the best I can offer is dropping the term "the insurgency" altogether. Distinguishing among insurgent groups is a necessary mental exercise, since the counterinsurgency war in Iraq will neutralize these groups in succession, rather than building to an apocalyptic confrontation with all of them. It's better to know how well the Iraqi government and its American and British patrons are doing against a particular group like Al Qaeda in Iraq, instead of talking about nebulous progress against a mysterious, indefinable enemy.

[For examples of how diverse the portrayals of the diverse "insurgency" can themselves be, here are the descriptions from GlobalSecurity.org and Wikipedia.]

¡Viva, España!

IN THE NEWS
The Basque separatist group ETA's announcement that it will be giving up the armed struggle is as dramatic and important a development as the IRA's similar decision. ETA has been dedicated to its terrorist campaign for decades, in spite of clear indications that it was doing real damage to the cause of increased Basque autonomy, and ETA's ever-dwindling support among Basques. Like the IRA, ETA resisted evidence that violence wasn't getting either their organization or their cause anywhere.

This is a real victory for the Spanish government, which fought a long, difficult counterterrorist war against ETA. In the last three years in particular, the Spanish government has squeezed ETA through successive arrests and trials. Apparently, the surviving leaders of ETA finally decided there wasn't enough of an organization left to sustain terrorist operations.

Spain, of course, is one of the newest democracies in Western Europe, emerging from decades of Francoist authoritarianism to enact a democratic constitution in 1978. (Spain has also experimented with granting varying degrees of autonomy to Andalusia and other regions, including the Basque portion of the country.) Perhaps because the Spanish won their democracy relatively recently, they felt it was too precious to let a few terrorists ruin it for them.

Counterterrorism laid bare

IN THE NEWS
Yesterday, I mentioned that the Atlantic Monthly's lead article on two British spies in the IRA was a "must read" item. This important piece of the story about how the British government drove the IRA to the ceasefire shows how counterterrorism is simultaneously simple and hard.

The two spies in question, Fulton and Scap, took parallel paths in both the IRA and British intelligence. Both rose through the IRA's ranks to important positions, one in the IRA's bomb-making unit, the other in its internal security branch. Both had to continue doing the work of terrorists—building and deploying bombs, assassinating suspected spies within their ranks, etc.—despite the fact that they were working for the British government. In fact, their bloody work at a high rate of success had to continue because they were spies.  Otherwise, they could not achieve and maintain positions of importance and trust in the IRA, from which they could pass on critical intelligence about IRA members, resources, methods, and operations. Unfortunately, this hard reality occasionally made the British government an invisible co-conspirator with the IRA. At one point, Fulton's British handlers help him travel to the United States to purchase new infrared remote detonators, a terrorist innovation that has been passed on to other terrorist groups, including some of those attacking British and American targets in Iraq. Both Fulton and Scap contributed to Great Britain's counterterrorism campaign that eventually persuaded the core IRA (not the splinter groups) that the armed struggle wasn't going to achieve the political outcome they had expected.

As I discussed in my first "Counterterrorism is easier" post, this steady campaign of infiltration is a familiar story to any government who has fought organized crime. You need people "on the inside," since no electronic surveillance can ever hope to capture the full picture of who the terrorists are, and what they are doing. (Terrorists, like Mafiosi<, are normally very skilled at keeping few written or electronic records, speaking in code, and confusing their activities with those of "legitimate businessmen.") Infiltrators provide the critical information that, at the tactical level, shows how to defeat terrorists at the tactical level, revealing their methods for bombing, kidnapping, assassination, planning, financing, and recruiting; at the operational level, by alerting the government to planned terrorist operations; and at the theater and grand strategic levels, by dismantling terrorist organizations through raids, arrests, convictions, psychological operations, and other means. Violence has its place: for example, British soldiers have shot and killed IRA terrorists just before they detonated their bombs. However, violence still has to follow the Clausewitzian logic at each level of strategy to its conclusion. There's no point in killing top leaders of the IRA, Al Qaeda, or ETA if the organization survives.

Recruiting and running a network of infiltrators is difficult, even when you speak the same language. However, this and other aspects of counterterrorism are not arcane, representing a new form of warfare that defies every convention. In fact, Britain's worst moments in fighting the IRA happened when it broke these conventions. The American officials who support the maintenance of indefinite "detention" facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, and elsewhere should study carefully the cost the British government paid for the indefinite imprisonment of suspected IRA terrorists and supporters, a practice that the British abandoned when it was clear how counterproductive it was (not to mention illegal).

The slow, patient, and dangerous work of infiltrating terrorist organizations is not the hardest part of counterterrorism, however. Instead, the most demanding aspect is the moral dimension, for which many people—and not just in the United States. When people say that terrorism is arcane, they often add, "especially for Western democracies." According to this view, the shadowy world of counterterrorism is antithetical to democratic institutions, which demand openness and accountability, and to Western values, which try to impose some version of the just war doctrine on every kind of conflict.

In fact, the moral challenge of counterterrorism is unique to neither terrorism nor the West. Fulton and Scap's British handlers had to let them build bombs that would be detonated in public places, killing civilians, and assassinate people in the British government and the IRA's own ranks. In some cases, Scap killed people he knew were innocent of spying to keep the IRA from suspecting him. If you were the mother of a child killed by a bomb on the way to school, or the wife of a leader in a terrorist group's political front who was wrongly fingered as a spy, how much would it matter that your loved one died in the name of the "greater good" of defeating terrorists? The government's agents in the terrorist group, and often the government itself, had foreknowledge of a terrorist operation. They may have tried to sabotage it. Unfortunately, in all too many cases, to preserve the infiltrator's position, both he and his government handlers let the attack proceed. Would the grief or outrage be any less if the victims were Nigerian, Burmese, or Colombian?

This moral fault line starkly divides counterterrorism from counterinsurgency. To defeat guerrillas, you need infiltrators. The guerrillas' strategy, attacking the government to impress, mobilize, or intimidate the population, is much different from the standard terrorist programme, attacking the population to coerce the government into capitulation to the terrorists' demands. Therefore, counterinsurgency's moral morass is neither as deep nor as noxious as counterterrorism's. At least the guerrillas can claim they were fighting an unjust government by attacking that government. (Again, it's worth noting that we're talking about the ideal types of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. In practice guerrillas sometimes resort to terrorist methods, such as the NLF's shelling of villages during the Vietnam War. However, there is a point of no return, once your primary target becomes the population, that defines the difference between terrorists and guerrillas.)

This moral fault line is nowhere more clear than in the direct or indirect blessing terrorists often demand before an operation. Hamas suicide bombers confer with sympathetic religious figures before an attack, receiving confirmation that, despite the Quran's taboo on suicide and its own version of the just war doctrine, killing civilians is both justified and necessary. Timothy McVeigh was an avid reader of Christian Patriot tracts, whose authors include a disproportionate number of pastors and ministers. Even secular terrorists like the Red Army Fraction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine look for a similar "blessing" from grand historical forces of dialectical materialism or nationalism.

To a more limited extent than the terrorists themselves, governments become enmeshed in the same moral universe as the terrorists by recruiting infiltrators who participate in terrorist operations. If you want to fight terrorists, there is no alternative; you can only limit the moral and spiritual damage inflicted on those directly involved, and those who supported this campaign—which includes, by necessity, the general public. That's a good argument for defining your targets clearly, so that you don't have to face more moral crises than you strictly need, or can handle.

Finally, a national dialogue?

IN THE NEWS
Is it me, or is the quality of journalism and commentary about counterterrorism, Iraq, intelligence, and related topics suddenly better than it has been since 9/11? It might be just coincidence, or my own limited perspective on the world. Whatever the explanation, I've read several excellent articles in the course of the last week:

• The Armed Forces Journal has an excellent piece by Sean Naylor about the Taliban's "lay low" strategy. Naylor also provides an excellent look into the multinational counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.
• Also in the Journal is a persuasive article about the reasons why the US government needs to devote more attention to Al Qaeda's presence in sub-Saharan Africa. While some countries like Djibouti, Somalia, and the Sudan are targets of quiet American counterterrorism efforts, Al Qaeda is recruiting and operating in more country than just those.
• The Atlantic Monthly has a superb article about two British spies in the IRA. I'll have a lot more to say about this must-read piece in another posting.
• Also in The Atlantic Monthly are a handy summary of the history of the NSA by James Bamford, and Robert Kaplan's excellent profile of what's working and what's not in the joint American-Iraqi counterinsurgency efforts in the Mosul region.
• Parameters has a good summary of the British approach to counterinsurgency, as exemplified by its campaigns in Malaya and Kenya.

It's a shame that it has taken five years since the 9/11 attacks, and three years since the invasion of Iraq, to see a regular stream of good publications about counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. I just hope that this information reaches the opinion-makers and the general public before the United States swings from one misguided set of strategies to their equally misguided opposite.