Arms and influence

Welcome home, warrior citizens

I’m a flag guy. Medieval banners hit some powerful aesthetic buttons with me. The sight of the flags of all nations flying outside the United Nations is just plain impressive. The regimental standards of Union regiments symbolize the noble cause for which they fought, the end of slavery and the preservation of the Union.

You may have noticed that there are few good flags nowadays. However, there’s one you might not have seen, but which symbolizes where we are as a country.

It’s the flag that the US Army gives soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The motto sums up where we are as a country. We honor the soldiers who have placed themselves in mortal peril on our behalf. We embrace them as fellow citizens given harrowing responsibilities, not hapless employees of a military bureaucracy. We understand their warrior ethos, which finds the proper balance of violence and restraint needed to execute the missions we collectively assign to them.

If I had any influence—and believe me, despite the blogging, I know I have practically none—I’d encourage people to start flying this flag outside their homes. Recognize what American soldiers have tried to accomplish, with the mission handed to them, and remind the rest of us that we’re responsible, as citizens, for bringing them home if the mission no longer makes any sense.

Flag stores sell this particular banner, by the way. I’m just saying.

A man of principle

The key to understanding the US military is principle. On the battlefield, soldiers have to do the right thing without thinking, doing crazy things like charging people shooting at you when your animal instincts might tell you to run away. Off the battlefield, soldiers also have to do the right thing, preparing for moments of unspeakable violence, and living with their consciences afterwards. Military professionals have to live by both a warrior’s and a citizen’s ethic; otherwise, they become divorced from the very people and institutions they have sworn to protect, often at the cost of their own lives.

No better illustration of principle in action is retired general Antonio Taguba, who addressed the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco tonight. Taguba had what on the surface should have been a relatively straightforward assignment: investigate abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison facility. As we all know, this investigation became anything but simple.

We know something of Taguba from news accounts, such as Seymour Hersh’s recent article in The New Yorker, which describe him as wading through a political, bureaucratic, and evidentiary morass in a determinedly straight line. After delivering his report, his career in the US military ended.

Yet, for a soldier like Taguba, there wasn’t an alternative. If you believe in the principles on which the US military is founded—principles codified into military law and procedure—following these precepts may cost you your life. Losing your career at the hands of lesser men is just as honorable and necessary an outcome.

Taguba out of uniform seems much like the descriptions of Taguba in uniform, just as direct and simple in his devotion to the principles on which he was raised. Asked for his opinions about Abu Ghraib, the Iraq war, and other misbegotten offspring of what was originally supposed to be a war against Al Qaeda, he gladly gave his point of view. I’ll have to paraphrase, so please refer to the transcripts or recordings of Taguba’s Commonwealth Club address for his exact wording.

• How high in the chain of command does responsibility for Abu Ghraib extend? “If a US Navy vessel runs aground, the captain assumes responsibility for the mistakes of his subordinates.”
• How well have top leaders responded? “Sgt. Joseph Darby [the whistleblower who gave the CD containing the now infamous photos from Abu Ghraib] found his integrity. I hope a day comes when the people at the top of the chain of command find theirs.”
• Could former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld not known about the abuses? Taguba described how, in the meeting the day before Rumsfeld’s appearance before Congress, he told Rumsfeld that he should look at the CD of photographs. However, he did not really need to do so, since it didn’t take the photos to know that something terrible was happening at Abu Ghraib.
• Is it necessary to bend the normal moral and legal rules to fight terrorists? “3,500 great Americans have died defending our core principles, and thousands more have been wounded. We can only honor their sacrifices by preserving these rules.”

At one point, Taguba became momentarily choked up as he described his respect for the junior officers who assisted with his organization. He later explained that, given the task of completing the investigation and report in a month, they had to make sure that the evidence and conclusions held up under scrutiny. “After all,” Taguba said, “we were going to be scrutinized.”

I didn’t get a chance to ask Taguba the question I had for him: How much debate was there over whether bending and breaking the rules—through, for example, the torture and indefinite detention of prisoners—was necessary to defeat terrorists. I think we have enough evidence from other sources to answer the question: Quite a lot within the US military; a lot less among senior civilian leaders in the executive branch. People who have not served in uniform were quick to order the US military to violate its own principles, without ever determining whether these violations were necessary in the first place.

Corruption isn’t mere graft; instead, it’s the systematic violation of the rules and ethos that govern an institution. Among other grievous wounds suffered in the last several years, the US military has been the target of systematic corruption—again, largely unnecessary, particularly in conflicts where rectitude is as powerful a weapon as any assault rifle, tank, or attack helicopter.

After his talk, I shook Taguba’s hand and said, “Thank you, sir, for your integrity and courage.” He seemed almost surprised at the compliment, even after receiving a standing two standing ovations from the audience for his talk. Given the principles on which the US military runs, that response should be no surprise.

Postscript: About those standing ovations…I wish we would rip down every stupid “Support Our Troops” magnet. People critical of the war don’t need to be berated. (How about a personal statement, "I Support the Troops," instead of an inappropriate command, "Support the Troops"?) The people applauding Taguba share his respect, admiration, and love for our armed forces. They just don't want to see them ground up and discarded.

I join the legion of the damned

Last week, I started using Microsoft Project at work. Please kill me.

About time someone noticed

Finally, someone wakes up and notices that recent briefings about counterinsurgency operations in Iraq call all insurgents "Al Qaeda." This practice is inaccurate, offensive, counterproductive, and it must stop. In case you need more convincing...

Inaccurate: One of the defining features of the Iraqi insurgency is its pluralism. Secular Ba'athists, Salafists, Sunnis unhappy with having lost their position at the top of the power structure, mainstream Shi'ites, people who want Islamic revolution in Iraq, people who want Islamic revolution everywhere, people who just want the United States out, bandits, socialists, native Iraqis, foreign fighters, groups that avoid targeting civilians, groups that try to kill as many civilians as possible...In the thick of this jungle of competing objectives and methods, you'll find a group that called itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" so that it could play on the name recognition of the Al Qaeda franchise. Even if it were to receive direct help from Osama bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq is not the same group that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

Offensive: How stupid do the US officials behind this semantic shift think we are? Pretty damn stupid, obviously.

Counterproductive: As I've discussed before, the pluralism of the Iraqi insurgency is an opportunity that needs to be exploited. A divide and conquer strategy might blow up in our faces, but it's the best strategy available. While the US and Iraqi governments might not want to make peace with some insurgent groups, such as Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad and Jaish al-Mujahideen, they clearly can hold their noses and deal with other groups, including the Army of the Mahdi. The more the US government describes Iraqi insurgents as one monolithic organization of bloodthirsty terrorists, the harder politically it becomes to prosecute the only strategy that has any hope of winning this war, under its current formulation.

For the sake of Iraqis and Americans alike, US officials must drop the "everyone fighting us is an Al Qaeda operative" language immediately.

Seven-day wonders

Clearly, seven days isn't enough time to train Iraqi security forces, including the kind of regional militia profiled in this NPR piece. Seven days is enough time to make someone a target, however, which might actually be the idea behind this program. Form militia units, give them weapons and uniforms, and expect them to come running for additional help.

Of course, I'm just speculating. This training program is hardly the optimal approach to preparing even the lower rungs of the Iraqi security forces for their jobs. US trainers may not be able to provide the additional training, and the militias may not ask. At best, the program might be an effort to recruit young men with guns who would otherwise not have any formal affiliation with the government. At worst, it might further frustrate Iraqis, if follow-up assistance doesn't occur. These militias may join the roster of armed gangs already responsible for violence, intimidation, and corruption already plaguing Iraq.

Militias are a necessary part of counterinsurgency. Once you've temporarily cleared an area of guerrilla fighters, you need local intelligence, police, and military units to root out any remaining guerrilla presence, and to keep the insurgents out for good. In other words, if you don't hold an area, there's little point in clearing it.

Here, however, is where panicked governments often create their worst self-inflicted wounds. In a rush to put anyone "on the line," conscript units lack the training, experience, resources, and ethos for the delicate work of counterinsurgency. (Click here for a more detailed discussion of this topic.) Here, too, is where the militia can feel abandoned--more often than not, because they are. If not reliably paid, morale plummets. If a militia units, under attack, call for help and doesn't get it from other security forces, the rationale for putting their lives on the line crumbles. If a militia commander is trying to enforce discipline, but widespread abuses and corruption go unchecked, the argument for behaving more virtuously than everyone else deflates.

The lesson from situations like this one--for example, the RF/PF program during the Vietnam War--is that follow-through is everything. Momentary successes or failures aren't the proper measures of how well this sort of program is going. The real question is, a year or two from now, what is happening with the militia unit in Anbar province profiled in the NPR coverage, and how well they're being supported and monitored.

Time to regroup?

Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip is either the biggest opportunity for progress in the Middle East, or it’s the door that Middle Easterners have slammed in the faces of any outsiders who want to have an influence on events in the region. Either way, it’s the Palestinians who need to decide.

What a tangled web
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the major challenge to compartmentalizing any question about the Middle East. Sure, the connection between Hamas fighters and Iraqi insurgents may be tenuous at best, and there may be nothing that really binds the West Bank and Gaza to the Straits of Hormuz and the Golan Heights. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict matters to the potentially restive populations of Middle Eastern states. Not only do these regimes worry about how events in the Occupied Territories can inflame discontent within their own borders, but they have realized how invoking the Palestinian cause can be a useful diplomatic tool, particularly with Europe and the United States. Sometimes, the statement, “I’d love to talk to you about this other issue, but we need to show some progress on the Palestinian question,” is sincere; at other times, it’s a cynical but highly effective dodge.

Unfortunately, the US government has little progress to show on this front of its Middle Eastern policy. During the first half of this decade, the Bush Administration (and, by extension, the extremely uninterested and inert Congress) had hardly anything to say to the Israelis and Palestinians, other than some words of support to the Sharon government. In the last year or so, some portions of the Bush Administration, in particular Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, have been more “actively engaged.” However, the appearance of work isn’t the same as actual progress, or real willingness to exert serious pressure on both sides. The moment of truth came during Israel’s 2006 assault on Hezbollah. While Israeli aircraft and artillery flattened communities in southern Lebanon, American leaders, Rice included, did little to constrain the violence, waiting instead for the Israeli Defense Forces to decide when to stop.

Bunkering up
Part of American unwillingness to restrain Israel was the Administration’s new policy, based on an even closer partnership with the Saudi and Israeli governments, constituting a major tilt towards Sunni factions in different Middle Eastern conflicts. Since Hezbollah was both Shi’ite and heavily supported by Iran, it would have been highly surprising if the Bush Administration, grasping at any new regional strategy that might work, had put the brakes on Israel’s assault—except, of course, if American decision-makers looked more closely at the details of what was happening. 2006 may go down in the history books as the year when, at least for the time being, the United States lost any hope of being an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, given how much latitude the White House was willing to give its Israeli ally.

It would be a grave mistake to assume that, as a neutral or biased outsider, the United States could have stopped the fissure between Hamas and Fatah from breaking wide open. The choice between these two factions is odious to many Palestinians, so the United States had little power to make either side appear as the better standard-bearer for the Palestinian cause. Fatah is pickled in corruption and cynicism; ironically, Hamas is repeating the mistakes of a younger Fatah, displaying neither interest nor skill at the more compromising political strategy needed to escape the political margins. Revolutionary confrontation feels good, but it doesn’t convince the Israelis or anyone else that Hamas should be trusted to govern even the tiniest of states.

Many Israelis had already doubted that the Palestinians were capable of elevating a generation of leaders interested in making the fabled “final settlement” that would give Palestinians statehood and Israelis security, while also being able to deliver on the Palestinians’ part of the agreement. Hamas’ coup in Gaza seems to confirm these doubts. An even more fundamental question now arises: is there any one faction or coalition capable of representing all Palestinians? If not, the Israelis will “bunker up” until that situation changes.

Likely paralysis
For those who think that the Israelis might seize on this moment to reach a settlement with Fatah about the West Bank, don’t hold your breath. Two obstacles stand in the way. First, the Israelis know that they can’t stop Palestinians from moving between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, unless Israel is willing to sever all family, business, and other tie between Palestinians living in these two regions. Second, an agreement about Jerusalem that does not include the representatives of a sizeable fraction of Palestinians is no agreement at all.

The United States might benefit for a short time from the Palestinian fissure. Many regional governments, including the Saudis, were already tired of the Palestinians’ political intransigence. US officials might make some short-term progress on other issues, without looking over their shoulders. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will return. If no one invokes it, there will be some new crisis—a shooting, bombing, hostage-taking, whatever—that will bring this ongoing tragedy to the forefront again.
Given the Bush Administration’s partiality to Israel, and disinterest in the Palestinian conflict, it’s hard to imagine US leaders jumping into the thick of the Hamas-Fatah conflict to help resolve it. With Iraq continuing to soak up resources and attention, it’s even harder to imagine that scenario. However, as long as the regional equation does not change, and the Israeli-Palestinian question has the power to complicate other issues, even the best outcome in Iraq will be, from a regional standpoint, only a holding action.

Where numbers can't make the difference

In counterinsurgency, numbers do matter--to a point. You might calculate the minimum number of soldiers needed to protect important public facilities from sabotage, or patrol a neighborhood in Baghdad. However, what you can't solve simply by adding more troops are the sorts of problems that demand cultural and political sensitivities. Counterinsurgency doesn't let you pick and choose: you either take all these missions, or you don't get into the counterinsurgency business in the first place.

Case in point: Great Britain is deploying special teams to Iraq to handle "honor killings." If you think that the reconstituted Iraq needs the rule of law, more effective law enforcement, and a better role for women than what some Salafist insurgents would like to see, you can understand the logic behind these special units. Here are some details from The Guardian:

The complex investigation and three-month trial for Ms Mahmod's murder relied on initiatives more often used to tackle organised crime, such as the use of covert investigative techniques and special measures for key witnesses, two of whom needed police protection. Such techniques are increasingly used to deal with honour crimes.

The CPS will also introduce a "flag" for any forced marriage or honour crime cases, so they can be logged and monitored.

Nazir Afzal, the CPS lead on honour-based violence, said that such crimes are often elaborate, pre-planned and can involve many suspects.

One in nine honour killings in the UK is carried out by hit men, he said. It is also common for the youngest member of the family to carry out the murder, with the others playing a lesser role.

In this case, you can't help Iraqis "stand up so that we can stand down," simply by putting another exhausted National Guardsman on a street corner in Sadr City.

The authority to whack

Naturally, the details in Seymour Hersh's latest piece for The New Yorker that have caught people's attention are (1) the further details about the abuse and torture of prisoners, and (2) the shoddy treatment of Major General Antonio Taguba. However, we knew that there were more horror stories from Abu Ghraib to come, and other articles (including some by Hersh) have already described how badly Taguba's superiors treated him for doing his job professionally and honorably.

Therefore, the more newsworthy part of Hersh's article appears in the middle:

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”—in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, “Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?’ ” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’ ”

A recently retired C.I.A. officer, who served more than fifteen years in the clandestine service, told me that the task-force teams “had full authority to whack—to go in and conduct ‘executive action,’ ” the phrase for political assassination. “It was surrealistic what these guys were doing,” the retired operative added. “They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the chief of station.”

J.S.O.C.’s special status undermined military discipline. Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State, told me that, on his visits to Iraq, he increasingly found that “the commanders would say one thing and the guys in the field would say, ‘I don’t care what he says. I’m going to do what I want.’ We’ve sacrificed the chain of command to the notion of Special Operations and GWOT”—the global war on terrorism. “You’re painting on a canvas so big that it’s hard to comprehend,” Armitage said.

Just for a moment, let's leave aside the constitutional, legal, and moral problems with this approach to counterterrorism. From a purely practical level, this means that the people responsible for theater-level strategy--the chief US diplomat in Iraq, the CinC of CENTCOM, and the senior US Army and Marine officers in Iraq--were not part of the decision to assassinate Iraqi targets. The "authority to whack" may have not helped the war effort in Iraq. To the extent that assassinations lead to retributions, and that the exact source of an assassination isn't always known, these operations might have deepened Iraq's political crisis.

Depending on the details that aren't provided in Hersh's article, the situation might be even worse--again, from a purely practical perspective.  Many US officials have confused counterterrorism, primarily directed against Al Qaeda since 2001, with counterinsurgency in Iraq. If "direct action" operations, planned to defeat Al Qaeda, were being conducted against Iraqi insurgent groups,
the "authority to whack" was directed against entirely the wrong people.

Now, let's bring back the constitutional, legal, and moral problems, and you can see exactly how bad this program really is.

Optimus Prime, Lord of the Pit

Since the Transformers movie is coming soon, I thought I'd share this clip.

A different 9/11 anniversary

On September 11, 1944, American troops were preparing for an assault into the Hurtgen Forest, a dense tangle of pine trees southeast of Aachen. The campaign to seize the Hurtgenwald started before and ended after the Battle of the Bulge, though few Americans have ever heard of this other operation in the winter of 1944. Like the slow crawl up the Italian peninsula, the fight for the Hurtgen Forest was, at best, a Pyrrhic victory for the Allies.

The US Army was not used to fighting in a forest like the Hurtgenwald--certainly not as experienced in that sort of terrain as its German opponent. The Wehrmacht had fought through forests in Poland, Belgium, and France, including the unexpected dash through the Ardennes Forest that led to the collapse of the French army. German soldiers had also seen combat in the forests of Denmark, Norway, and most significantly, the USSR. They had learned the deadly advantages that forests could give the defender and applied these techniques to their defense of the Hurtgenwald.

The US Army believed it had the material advantages, and certainly the initiative, over its German adversary. What American generals did not have was a clear reason to be fighting in the Hurtgen Forest, which was not critical for the Allies to meet their theater-level objectives. American forces, driving into Germany, had other routes into Germany. However, once the Army had started fighting, its generals were loathe to give up the fight. The prestige of the US Army was at stake, and they worried about the blow to morale a retreat from the Hurtgenwald would have delivered.

However, it's hard to imagine worse damage to the 10 divisions that entered the Hurtgen Forest in September 1944 than what they suffered in the actual battle. Many units suffered casualties of 100% and higher. (If you're wondering how that's possible, consider that casualty rates include replacements, who are cycled into units to replace soldiers who are killed, wounded, captured, or missing.) In the second attempt to seize the town of Schmidt, the 112th Infantry Regiment lost 2,093 out of 3,000 men in two weeks of fighting.

The battle shattered the nerves of those fighting almost immediately. Combat fatigue struck not only soldiers in the front lines, but captains, majors, and colonels, many of whom had to be relieved of their commands.

Eventually, the Allies evicted the Germans from the Hurtgen Forest. However, that victory happened, in large part, because of the general collapse of German defenses across the Western Front, along with the pressure from the Soviets in the East.

It's worth remembering and analyzing the US failure in the Hurtgen Forest because, as the Army itself says, defeat is often a better teacher than victory. It's also worth remembering the cost of refusing to retreat, particularly when the reasons for fighting were never clear in the first place.