Two views on this today. First, from Max Boot, a hard line proponent of the position that we need to maintain sizeable forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan for a much longer term, a stance he says supports the recommendations of the military leadership in the war zone and in the Pentagon. That is followed by a piece by Micah Zenko, who is at the Council on Foreign Relations as is Boot, who lays out the reasons why the U.S. should withdraw its forces this December. Enjoy and ponder.

Ty

Losing Iraq?

Max Boot

The Weekly Standard
September 19, 2011

President Obama did a good job of feinting to the right on national security issues during his first two years in office. Lacking much standing on military policy, he often acceded to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Michael Mullen—a trio of hard-headed centrists. He kept 50,000 troops in Iraq, down from more than 100,000 but still a substantial figure. He sent 64,000 troops to Afghanistan, tripling the size of the American force there. He gave up his initial hopes of high-level talks with Iran. He stepped up drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. He abandoned plans (under pressure from Congress) to close Guantánamo Bay and end military tribunals, and generally kept in place most of President Bush’s counterterrorist policies. The apogee of his unexpected tilt to the right was reached on May 1 with the (extrajudicial, unilateral) killing of Osama bin Laden in a daring special operations raid in Pakistan authorized personally by the president and carried out without the permission of the host government.

Yet Obama has lately been turning dovish—a trend that has accelerated since bin Laden’s demise.

First, in January, the White House budget office demanded $78 billion in cuts from the defense budget. Gates, who had already canceled or delayed numerous programs, reluctantly complied. Then in April, with almost no notice to Gates, Obama announced another $400 billion in cuts—a figure that was soon passed into law by Congress, which might (with the president’s support) cut far more before long. By the time Gates left office, he was complaining in public that he couldn’t “imagine being part of a nation, part of a government .  .  . that’s being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.”

Those complaints were given greater salience when, just weeks before Gates’s departure, Obama decided on a precipitous force reduction in Afghanistan, pulling all 30,000 surge troops out by September 2012 against the advice of Gates, Mullen, and General David Petraeus. Now the president appears to be determined to bug out from Iraq. At least that’s the only way we can interpret the report that the administration will ask to keep just 3,000 to 4,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq after the end of this year.

That is far below the figure recommended by U.S. Forces-Iraq under the command of General Lloyd Austin. It has been reported that Gen. Austin asked for 14,000 to 18,000 personnel—enough to allow his command to train and support Iraqi security forces, conduct intelligence gathering, carry out counterterrorism strikes, support U.S. diplomatic initiatives, prevent open bloodshed between Arabs and Kurds, and deter Iranian aggression. To perform, in other words, at least a few of the crucial tasks that U.S. troops have been carrying out in Iraq since the success of the surge in 2007 and 2008.

But keeping nearly 20,000 troops in Iraq was judged by State and Defense department officials too politically volatile in both Iraq and the United States. So they whittled down Gen. Austin’s request to 10,000 personnel. That’s still a substantial force package—amounting to two Brigade Combat Teams plus enablers—and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Admiral Mullen, and other senior leaders signed off.

When U.S. representatives presented this proposal to Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister gave his tacit support provided that other Iraqi politicos did so. Remarkably enough, despite nationalist sentiment in Iraq against “foreign occupation”—a sentiment fed by Iranian propaganda—all of the major Iraqi political factions, save the Sadrists, gave their assent on August 2 to open negotiations with the United States on precisely these terms. And even the Sadrists merely abstained instead of voting against negotiations.

Moreover, the Maliki government took to heart U.S. complaints that we could not keep a substantial number of troops in Iraq if they were going to be subject to a relentless Iranian-backed terrorist campaign. June was the bloodiest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since 2009—15 soldiers died, most of them in Iranian-backed strikes. But then the Iraqis cracked down, with U.S. help, on Shiite militants, and lo and behold, not a single U.S. soldier perished in August—the first time that has occurred since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

At the same time, the Iraqi government announced a belated decision to purchase 36 F-16 fighters from America. The pieces appeared to be in place for a long and fruitful strategic relationship between one of the world’s oldest democracies and one of the newest. And then, just as negotiations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments were heating up on a new status of forces agreement, the administration let on that it wanted to keep no more than 4,000 troops there. That request, which is completely at odds with the best advice of military commanders on the ground, undercuts the position of American negotiators and suggests that Iraq’s future is of little importance to the United States.

We are the last people in the world to argue that civilian policymakers should uncritically accept the views of the uniformed military. Many generals (though not all) were dead set against the surge that saved the situation in Iraq, and it was only by relieving Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior commanders on the ground that President Bush was able to implement a change in strategy. But we see no reason to distrust the best judgment of Gen. Austin, a seasoned and respected commander whose views echo those of other military experts, in uniform and out. Nor have we heard the administration offer any explanation of why 3,000 to 4,000 troops would suffice in such difficult and dangerous conditions.

In fact, with such small troop numbers, U.S. commanders would be forced to all but close shop. They could still provide some training and support to the Iraqi Security Forces, but not much more than that. It would be difficult if not impossible to continue conducting counterterrorist raids or patrolling the volatile border separating Iraq proper from the Kurdish Regional Government. And such a small number of U.S. troops could well become targets of the Iranian-backed militias.

So why would the administration decide, at least tentatively, on such a minuscule deployment? A clue can be found in an item posted August 3 on TheAtlantic.com by senior editor Joshua Green. He relayed Rep. Barney Frank’s account of what Vice President Joe Biden reportedly told the Democratic caucus two days before. Here is Frank’s version (which has not been contradicted by the vice president or his aides):

Biden was at the caucus, and I said I was upset about Afghanistan and Iraq. So [budget director] Jack Lew says, “Well, we’re winding them down.” I said, “What do you mean, you’re winding them down? I read Panetta saying that he’s begging the Iraqis to ask us to stay.” At which point Biden asserted himself and said—there’s clearly been a dispute between them within the administration—“Wait a minute, I’m in charge of that negotiation, not Panetta, and we have given the Iraqis a deadline to ask us, and it is tomorrow, and they can’t possibly meet it because of all these things they would have to do. So we are definitely pulling out of Iraq at the end of the year.” That was very good news for me. That’s a big deal. I said, “Yeah, but what if they ask you for an extension?” He said, “We are getting out. Tomorrow, it’s over.”

That item might have looked preposterous in early August, when U.S.-Iraq negotiations were just beginning. But it looks prescient now, because the White House essentially has chosen to pull the plug on a large-scale U.S. deployment to Iraq, regardless of what the Iraqis think. (It is possible that the Iraqis would not approve more than 4,000 troops, but how would we know without pushing for a higher figure?) Joe Biden—who supported the decision to invade Iraq but opposed the surge and instead proposed breaking Iraq into three different parts—appears ascendant on both Iraq and Afghanistan policy. He seems to have been looking for an excuse to leave Iraq, and Iraqi foot-dragging, which is to be expected in such a rickety parliamentary system, provided it to him.

But of course Biden does not get the final vote. He can carry the day only if his boss, the president, lets him. For all of Obama’s feints toward the right, it seems that in the end he cannot get over the fact that he launched his presidential bid—and won the Democratic nomination—by opposing the war in Iraq. Whenever he talks about the achievements of his administration before a partisan audience—as he did, for example, at an August 8 Democratic National Committee event in Washington—he brags not only about rescuing the economy from the 2008 recession and implementing health care and financial regulatory reform, but also ending “the war in Iraq” and “transitioning into a posture where in Afghanistan, Afghans can take responsibility for their own security.”

Given the administration’s current ideological tilt, the best we can hope for in Iraq is an agreement that does not impose a numeric limit on U.S. forces. An open-ended agreement for the United States to help and support the democratic development of Iraq could be used by a future administration to send more U.S. troops—as long as our Iraqi partners see the need for them.

Clearly Obama envisions running for a second term as he did for his first term—as the “antiwar” candidate. The sad irony, however, is that an American drawdown in both countries makes continued war—and with it the possibility of a catastrophic American defeat—more likely by emboldening our enemies and disheartening our friends.

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July 28, 2011

SNAPSHOT

It’s Hard to Say Goodbye to Iraq

Why the United States Should Withdraw this December

Micah Zenko

MICAH ZENKO is a fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World.

In November 2008, representatives of U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which established the operational and legal framework for U.S. soldiers and their civilian counterparts in Iraq. The key line in the agreement was contained in Article 24: “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.” In a major speech a few months later, newly inaugurated U.S. President Barack Obama affirmed that he intended to uphold the deadline.

Yet Baghdad seems unable to make up its mind. Some political leaders privately lobby for U.S. troops to stay, but only in training and advising roles. Still, most Iraqis and many members the Iraqi parliament are weary of a continued American military presence, which is problematic since U.S. officials insist that an updated SOFA be approved by the parliament. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had requested that Baghdad’s fractious political blocs decide by last Saturday whether to ask for an extension of U.S. troop presence into next year. They were unable to reach a consensus and have postponed additional negotiations on the topic “until further notice.”

Still, according to anonymous U.S. officials, the White House is prepared to keep 10,000 ground troops in Iraq after the end of this year. It apparently has two reasons. The first is to prevent Iran from supplying improvised explosive devices and rockets to Shia militants in Iraq who have used such weapons to kill U.S. troops. According to U.S. officials, nine of the 15 U.S. soldiers who were killed in Iraq in June died from such attacks. The second is that somehow the mere presence of 10,000 U.S. troops will mitigate Iran’s long-term influence in Iraq, which has been a proxy battlefield between Washington and Tehran for decades.

There are a few problems with this logic. For starters, it does not make sense for the United States to keep soldiers in Iraq to prevent Iranians from providing Iraqi Shias with weapons to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. As the Pentagon noted in its “Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq” report last summer, “Iran will likely continue providing Shi’a proxy groups in Iraq with funding and lethal aid, calibrating support based on several factors, including Iran’s assessment of U.S. Force posture during redeployment.” In other words, Iran will continue its behavior as long as there are U.S. soldiers in Iraq to target, which suggests that the surest and fastest way to prevent further bloodshed is to withdraw the remaining U.S. soldiers on schedule.

Further, no matter what the United States does, Iran will continue to try to influence Iraq. Tehran has a strategic interest in its neighbor’s political makeup and will use a combination of soft-power initiatives — including outreach to sympathetic political parties, such as Dawa, Maliki’s Islamic party — and providing weapons to Shia extremist groups for targeting U.S. forces and gaining the upper hand in the region. Countering those attempts should not primarily be the job of a diminished and constrained U.S. military presence; diplomats are better suited for such a mission, and the transition to a U.S. civilian-led mission in Iraq is already under way. After 2011, the U.S. civilian presence in Iraq will remain massive. The State Department will eventually deploy some 17,000 personnel at 15 sites across the country, 5,100 of whom will be security contractors.

If the 46,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now (and the 166,000 U.S. troops deployed there during the 2007 surge) have not been able to shut down the Iranian weapons pipeline, there is no reason to believe that the 10,000 troops the Obama administration would have stay in the country could do so. And even if Iran’s weapons continued to flow into Iraq after 2011, the U.S. military would have few appealing options for addressing the problem along the 900-mile Iran-Iraq border.

The United States could choose to target assets and operatives outside of Iraq that are connected with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. But that would not be wise, either. In 2008, U.S. special operations forces did something similar when they killed Abu Ghadiya, an al Qaeda commander, in Sukkariyah, a city near Syria’s border with Iraq. The mission did nothing to convince the Syrian government to close its borders to al Qaeda, which U.S. officials claimed Syria had been directly supporting. Such a move against Iran would be perceived as an attack on the state, and any resulting retaliation would needlessly place Americans in Iraq in immediate danger.

If the Obama administration believes that leaving troops in Iraq would prevent the impression that Iran is “driving us out,” as a senior U.S. defense official put it, it should reconsider. The United States should not indefinitely maintain 10,000 troops in Iraq for second-order psychological reasons, such as attempting to alter the thinking of Tehran’s opaque political leadership structure. Furthermore, U.S. strategy in Iraq should not be based on what Tehran might say about it.

Instead, the United States ought to base its Iraq strategy on a clear-eyed assessment of national interests, which would mean ending the U.S. military presence, reducing the operation’s financial burden on U.S. taxpayers, and providing assistance to Iraq so that it can defend its borders. Sooner or later (and probably sooner) Iraq must be able to protect its own sovereign territory. Whether it succeeds is not a matter of resources; as U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently noted, the “damn country has a hell of a lot of resources.” It is primarily a matter of Baghdad’s political will, which was lacking when 166,000 U.S. troops were fighting the Sunni-led insurgency at a cost of some $12 billion a month in 2007, and remains lacking today.

In the meantime, the United States should continue to help build up Iraq’s military capacity. As in other countries, this effort should be led by the State Department in Washington and the U.S. embassy’s Office of Security Cooperation in Baghdad. Efforts should include training Iraqi Ministry of Interior police and border forces, educating Iraqi officers at U.S. war colleges and academies, conducting military-military exchanges, and sharing intelligence. The United States could also help by selling Iraq advanced conventional weaponry; Iraq is reportedly interested in buying 36 F-16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin.

If the Obama administration does convince Maliki to ask U.S. troops to stay, it must explain what the operational constraints of a new SOFA would be, and provide a new timetable for withdrawal. Moreover, in a war that two-thirds of U.S. citizens oppose and that has left 4,474 U.S. soldiers dead, Obama should be pressed to provide a clear and compelling reason why leaving 10,000 troops in Iraq is in the United States’ national interest and, more specifically, how it would plausibly mitigate Iranian influence. Despite his mastery of rhetoric and eloquence, chances are that he will not be able to, which is why the United States should implement the 2008 SOFA now and finally end its military presence in Iraq

Enjoy! Ty

Petraeus doesn’t seek ‘graceful exit’ from Afghanistan war. What’s the timeline?

Gen. David Petraeus last Sunday said he may recommend against any drawdown of troops next summer. Here’s what to expect in the coming year.

By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer
posted August 16, 2010 at 9:30 am EDT

New Delhi — With the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan surpassing 2,000 this weekend, what does the road ahead in Afghanistan look like?
The tally – now at 2,002 – comes from the independent iCasualties.org website. It includes 1,227 Americans, 331 Britons, 151 Canadians, and 45 French.

The mounting numbers have put pressure on coalition countries to wrap up their involvement in Afghanistan; the Netherlands ended its military mission Aug. 1, after four years. At the very least, such grim milestones offer a moment for taking stock and seeing what lies ahead.

September: Another Afghan election

Afghanistan is planning to hold parliamentary elections Sept. 18. More than 2,000 candidates are running for 240 seats in the lower house.

A top election official expressed serious concerns Saturday about the security preparations for the more than 6,000 polling stations. So far, two candidates have been killed, three kidnapped, and 10 threatened with death. Both candidates and voters have shifted their registration to Kabul due to insecurity in the provinces.

The election will still include suspected war criminals, even though the Electoral Complaint Commission (ECC) said it would try to disqualify candidates with ties to militias.

Early warning signs like voter registration problems and cynicism among candidates themselves suggest this election – like last year’s presidential contest – could be dogged by fraud.

October: Winter slowdown?

Traditionally, the intensity of the Afghan conflict has decreased over the winter months as some mountain passes fill with snow. That slowdown tends to start sometime in October or November.

If the trend continues this year, it could take some of the political pressure off President Obama as he enters a couple of crucial reviews. The first will be rendered by the American people, as they head to the polls in November; the second will be a strategic reassessment of the Afghan “surge.”

November: US Congressional elections

Whether the Afghan war factors much in the upcoming Congressional elections remains to be seen. On the one hand, voters tell pollsters that it’s far from top of mind. In a Gallup poll released Friday, two-thirds of Americans rate economic concerns as the nation’s top problem. Only 4 percent mentioned war.

That said, Afghanistan has dealt Obama almost nonstop negative news since he came into office on a pledge to fully resource the war. The conflict has eroded some confidence in Obama among his base, which is increasingly restive over a range of issues.

Political analysts are expecting losses for the Democrats at the polls, putting pressure on Obama for mid-term course changes. But those changes are likely to come in the domestic arena given voter concerns. Even the criticisms about the growing deficit have largely remained domestic, with the Tea Party remaining mute on the $325 billion Afghan price tag so far.

December: Obama’s policy review

Obama will reassess this December the strategic course he announced last December, namely the temporary build up of US soldiers to break the Taliban’s momentum and strengthen Afghanistan’s military and government.

In some ways, this reassessment was foreshadowed this summer when Obama chose a successor for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. In tapping Gen. David Petraeus, Obama chose both the architect of the current strategy and the general with the most political capital in Washington. That decision makes significant changes in strategy unlikely.

Indeed, in interviews given to the press over the weekend, Petraeus said he did not come to Afghanistan to engineer a “graceful exit” and may recommend against any drawdown of troops next summer.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai today set a December deadline for closure of all private security companies in the country. US military officials have said they support the goal but would not comment on whether it would be possible in four months. There are currently about 26,000 private security contractors working for the US government in Afghanistan; replacing them would constitute a major force reconfiguration.

July 2011: Drawdown?

Lost in some of the initial reporting on Obama’s July “deadline” was that he only promised to begin drawing down force levels. That could mean bringing home tens of thousands of the current 140,000 foreign forces – or just a few thousand.

With reports of Taliban expansion on the battlefield, poor performance of independent Afghan operations, and Petraeus pushing for more time, any drawdown will likely be small.

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Five myths about the Iraq troop withdrawal

By Kenneth M. Pollack
Sunday, August 22, 2010; B03, Washington Post

Early Thursday, less than two weeks before the president’s Aug. 31 deadline for ending American combat operations in Iraq, the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait. With the departure of this last combat brigade, the U.S. military presence in Iraq is now down to 50,000 troops, fewer than at any time since the 2003 invasion. The shift offers a useful moment to take stock of both how much has been accomplished and how much is left to be done in what is fast becoming our forgotten war.

As of this month, the United States no longer has combat troops in Iraq.
1.Not even close. Of the roughly 50,000 American military personnel who remain in Iraq, the majority are still combat troops — they’re just named something else. The major units still in Iraq will no longer be called “brigade combat teams” and instead will be called “advisory and assistance brigades.” But a rose by any other name is still a rose, and the differences in brigade structure and personnel are minimal.

American troops in Iraq will still go into harm’s way. They will still accompany Iraqi units on combat missions — even if only as “advisers.” American pilots will still fly combat missions in support of Iraqi ground forces. And American special forces will still face off against Iraqi terrorist groups in high-intensity operations. For that reason, when American troops leave their bases in Iraq, they will still, almost invariably, be in full “battle rattle” and ready for a fight.

What has changed over the past 12 to 18 months is the level of violence in Iraq. There is much less of it: The civil war and the insurgency have been suppressed and the terrorists have been marginalized, so American troops have been able to pass the majority of their remaining combat responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces. Most U.S. troops now have little expectation of seeing combat in Iraq. Instead, they are spending more time acting as peacekeepers, protecting personnel and facilities, and advising Iraqi formations. But that didn’t start this month: It’s more or less what they have been doing since the “clear and hold” operations to take back the country from militias and insurgents ended in 2008.

Thanks to the troop “surge,” Iraq is secure enough that it will not fall back into civil war as U.S. forces pull out.
2.Security in Iraq has improved enormously since the darkest days of 2005-2006, but the jury is still out on what will happen in the months and years ahead.

Extensive research on intercommunal civil wars — wars like Iraq’s, in which a breakdown in governance prompts different communities to fight one another for power — finds a dangerous propensity toward recidivism. Moreover, the fear, anger, greed and desire for revenge that helped propel Iraq into civil war in the first place remain just beneath the surface.

Academic studies of scores of civil wars from the past century show that roughly 50 percent of the time, war will recur within five years of a cease-fire. If the country has major “lootable” resources such as gold, diamonds or oil, the odds climb higher still. The important bright spot, however, is that if a great power is willing to make a long-term commitment to serving as peacekeeper and mediator (the role the United States is playing in Iraq today), the recidivism rate drops to less than one in three. This is why an ongoing American commitment to Iraq is so important.

It’s also worth pointing out that a civil war doesn’t recur because the public desires one. Most people recognize that civil war is a disaster. Instead, such wars flare up again because leaders still believe they can achieve their objectives by force. Until they are convinced otherwise — ideally, by a great power’s military forces — they will revert to fighting.

The United States is leaving behind a broken political system.
3.If some on the right want to claim (incorrectly) that the surge stabilized Iraq to the point that civil war is impossible, their counterparts on the left try to insist (equally incorrectly) that the change in U.S. tactics and strategy in 2007-2008 had no impact on Iraq’s politics whatsoever.

Partisans will debate the impact of the surge for years to come, and historians will take up the fight thereafter. However, Iraqi politics are fundamentally different today than they were in 2006. The nation’s political leaders have been forced to embrace democracy — in many cases very grudgingly, but embrace it they have. Party leaders no longer scheme to kill their rivals, but to outvote them. They can no longer intimidate voters; they have to persuade them. And the smart ones have figured out that they must deliver what their constituents want, namely, effective governance, jobs, and services such as electricity and clean water.

Yes, Iraqi politics remain deadlocked and deeply dysfunctional, and yes, long-term stability and short-term economic needs depend on further political progress. But it is now possible to imagine Iraq muddling on toward real peace, pluralism and even prosperity — if it gets the right breaks and a fair amount of continuing help from the United States, the United Nations and its neighbors.

Iraqis want U.S. troops to stay. Or they want them leave.
4. Be very, very careful with Iraqi public opinion. Polls are rarely subtle enough to capture the complexity of Iraqi views. Typically, they show a small number of Iraqis who want the Americans out immediately at any cost, a small number who want them to stay forever and a vast majority in the middle — determined that U.S. troops should leave, but only after a certain period of time. When Iraqis are asked how long they believe our troops are needed, their answers range from a few months to a few years, but are strongly linked to however long the respondent believes it will take Iraq’s forces to be able to handle security on their own.

One typically hears the same from people across Iraq and throughout its social and political strata. Iraqis are nationalistic, and they resent the American military presence. Many are also bitter over the mess that the United States made by invading and then failing to secure the country or to begin a comprehensive rebuilding process, failures that led to civil war in 2005-2006. Most Iraqis are relieved to have been rescued from that descent and are frightened that it will resume when the Americans leave. This is because their security forces are still untested and their political process has yet to show the kind of maturity that would provide Iraqis confidence that they are safe from the threat of more civil war. Consequently, a great many people are both determined to see all American troops leave — and terrified that they actually will.

The war will end “on schedule.”
5. Much as we should want the Obama administration to succeed in Iraq, this statement by the president in a speech to veterans this month should make us wary. If uttered in the first act of a Greek tragedy, it is exactly the kind of claim that would end in a Sophoclean fall.

As George W. Bush learned to his dismay, once you start a war, a lot of bad, unpredictable things can happen. No war has ever gone precisely according to schedule, not even those that have ended in the most dramatic victories, such as Israel’s Six-Day War or the Persian Gulf War. What’s more, war’s aftereffects linger for many years.

Going forward, America’s involvement in Iraq can (and hopefully will ) be much reduced, but the need for a U.S. presence will endure for many years. Iraq has demonstrated great potential, but at this point it is only potential. The country still holds great peril as well — not just for Iraqis, but for our interests in one of the world’s most strategically important regions.

For these reasons, Obama was right to also warn that the United States will need to remain deeply involved in Iraq and will probably face casualties there in the years to come, regardless of how we label our mission.

Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is “A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East.”

SAVE THE DATE

Friday, July 23, the Sienna, 9 am breakfast

STEPHEN FRYE, M.D.

The War on Drugs: A Super-Colossal Failure

How The Legalization of Drugs Will Dramatically Reduce Drug Use, Reduce Crime, Provide an Enormous Economic Boost and Enhance Our National Security Interests

Dr. Frye, author of “We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs”  was a former professor at the University of Nevada  School of Medicine. A practicing psychiatrist, he received his MD from George Washington University, did a residency at UCSF, and served two years in the Army with the 10^th Special Forces. He is an outspoken advocate of drug legalization, which he believes will reduce our prison population, save us billions of dollars that are now going to Mexican cartels and leading to the possible destabilization of the Mexican government, reduce the number of teen gangs, and provide an economic boost to the treasury.

Controversial to be sure, and I am hoping to have a commentator rebut the professor on the program.
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The National Security Forum website is now operational! Please visit it and get caught up on items I sent out that you may have missed—they are all archived here. The site is “nationalsecurityforum.net”. Yes, please note, that is “.net”

The website was developed by Airman Rex Barton under Tony Lockhard’s guidance, and we also now have two bright, young grad students from the Small Business Center at UNR helping improve the site and get our “mailings” into a newsletter format (Chuck McCumber and Ben Tedore).

I recommend visiting the site every few days–that way something that you did not receive by my clumsy AOL account can be accessed.

Have a great 4^th!

n  Ty

June 27, 2010

CONSPICUOUS RESTRAINT AND TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS

In the wake of GEN Stanley McChrystal’s (M4) resignation last week, there has been considerable speculation regarding possible changes in the U.S. strategy for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. In particular, some have stated that with his assumption of command in Kabul of NATO/ISAF forces, GEN Dave Petraeus (P4) will revise the current stringent Rules of Engagement (ROEs), adopt more aggressive tactics in the field, and even “stand up to the civilians in the White House” who have allegedly “shackled the military”.

They are dead wrong. The “Counterinsurgency” (COIN) strategy being pursued in Afghanistan has been devised by military professionals and is being implemented as the Defense Department has requested. In fact, if there is a civilian-military split over the conduct of the war, it is that some highly-placed civilian officials would favor less of an emphasis on “winning the hearts and minds” of the populace and more reliance on a “counter-terrorism” strategy; i.e., less concern with nation-building but a focus on striking hard and deep against known or suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets (VP Biden has been the primary proponent of this approach).

Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Afghanistan

The architects of the COIN strategy for winning the struggle in Afghanistan are Generals Dave Petraeus (US Army) and Jim Mattis (US Marine Corps), as laid out in the combined Field Manual 3-24. The key precepts of this doctrine are that victory will come when the citizens of Afghanistan render allegiance to the government in Kabul, reject the threats or incentives of the Taliban, are able to pursue a livelihood in a secure environment, and refuse sanctuary to terrorist forces. The mission is to deliver security and connect Afghans to their government.

This is to be accomplished not by “body counts” or blowing up villages indiscriminately, but by being embedded with the Afghans themselves and meeting with Afghan elders to learn their concerns and needs. Troops must exercise restraint in the application of force, deploy to small outposts, and focus on economic development. This strategy relies heavily on a cadre of Western reconstruction experts being available, a relatively honest and functional central government in Kabul, the transition of the Afghan Army and national police to an effective fighting and security force, and citizen willingness to inform on Taliban/AQ insurgent locations.

Even the most forceful of the adherents of this doctrine admit that progress in all of these areas has been slow, and that victory—however defined—will not come quickly or cheaply. At best it entails the commitment of American troops, and increasingly civilians, and billions—maybe even a trillion– of dollars for at least a decade.

More Restrictive Rules of Engagement

Generals Petraeus and McChrystal and their superiors are in lock step on the wisdom of this approach. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argues that “Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way……The battlefield is not necessarily a field anymore. It is in the minds of the people”. He argues that in this war restrictions must be placed on use of indirect fires, drones and long range artillery/naval gunfire, saying that, with respect to the application of force, “less really is more”.

Despite his background as a Special Operations warrior, M4 placed considerable restrictions on indiscrimate “knocking doors” down, especially limiting indirect fires and night raids. The “Tactical Directive on Night Raids”, which I have seen, stresses that night raids are the single biggest factor in lessening support for ISAF, that “all other options must be explored before effecting a night raid”, and, if employed, must be “judiciously used, tactically sound, and as transparent as possible”.

Going beyond these restrictions, the U.S. military has even begun awarding medals for “conspicuous restraint” in the application of force. That is, applauding the courage of the soldiers who, despite the potential of an insurgent ambush, exercise caution in place of the “shooting first, taking names later” philosophy. Obviously this stress on “population-centric” military action rankles some soldiers in the field who feel they are being asked to perform dangerous tasks in a very restrictive combat environment. The proscriptions seem to multiply as each lower level HQ seeks to implement the ROEs, resulting in fewer patrols, less “kinetic” activity, and an avoidance of “incidents”.

M4 and his critics

We now have a professional military greatly influenced by Greg Mortensen (“Three Cups of Tea”), one now focused on nation-building, protecting the population, constructing schools, training Afghan security forces, and exercising “restraint” on the battlefield. So much so that conservative former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy charges that M4, who voted for Obama it appears, is “for his entire undeniable valor, a progressive big-thinker who has been conducting a sociology experiment in Islamic nation-building”. He charges that our troops are under “increasingly straight-jacketed ROEs imposed by GEN McChrystal to avoid offending Afghans”. Too much emphasis on drinking tea with Afghan elders at too many Shuras in order to insure the possibility of the imposition of Islamic Sharia law, he argues!

Other critics, such as George Will, were taken aback by some of the lesser noted revelations in the Rolling Stone piece on the “Runaway General”. Specifically, M4’s predilection for a “Zen” approach to combat—he liked to be called the Zen Master and instructed his staff to provide him a Bruce Lee quote on a daily basis. I guess that what M4 aspired to is to be the synthesis of “warrior” and “reflective philosopher” as embodied in Zen philosophy.

In contrast, the Obama-Panetta-Biden Trio Stresses Aggressive Tactics

It seems that the Obama administration feels less shackled by a “pop-centric” COIN strategy, and is relying increasingly on drone attacks against suspected AQ/Taliban strongholds, not only in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other locales. Critics have charged that the Predator/UAV attacks and secret employment of Special Ops forces under CIA control against suspected targets is, in reality, an illegal scheme of “targeted assassinations”.

That charge is not without grounds. The clearest public description of this doctrine came from White House CT expert, John Brennan, who said that the U.S. “will not merely respond after the fact of a terrorist attack”, but will “take the fight to Al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond”. Wow, sounds somewhat reminiscent of Bush 43’s “pre-emption doctrine”!

CIA Director Leon Panetta stated forcefully today that while “We don’t have an assassination list…..we do have a terrorist list”, and several suspected AQ/Taliban figures are on it, including some U.S. citizens. The White House and Panetta’s Agency and his forces seem bound by much less restrictive Rules of Engagement! (You might want to Google Panetta’s appearance on “This Week” today—he comes across sounding more like George Patton than George Kennan!)

So is there really a civil-military split and what are the core differences?

Yes, there is, but a much different one than you normally hear. The professional military approach, one supported by Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, stresses that this conflict will be prolonged and difficult, that the military needs to have the resources (manpower, money and many more civilian experts) to conduct the COIN strategy over time, and that the Commander in Chief needs to be more vociferous in enunciating and demanding support for the commitment. While all key players in the chain of command signed on to the July 2011 reduction of troops, the military will be resisting, saying that can happen only if “conditions on the ground warrant”.

In contrast, the civilian leadership is very worried about the human and monetary drain Afghanistan represents, that the effort has lost the support of the voters who see this increasingly as a quagmire, and that it is only one of many crises the administration must address—the Oil Spill, a second recession, accelerating deficits, health care, and, yes, climate change! The White House will be leaning toward troop withdrawals, shifting to a “counter-terrorism” strategy, and looking for an attractive “exit strategy”.

Stay tuned!

Tyrus W. Cobb

Should the President Accept It?

GEN Stanley McChrystal has apparently submitted his resignation to President Obama, following a very damaging series of interviews he and his staff did for a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine. It’s only the latest in a series of missteps and gaffes committed by a very dedicated and talented field commander, but one who has a knack for demonstrating extraordinarily bad judgment in the public arena.

One has to wonder, first, what the hell McChrystal was thinking in granting so much access to a reporter from Rolling Stone? One has to assume that he would realize that the correspondent, Michael Hastings, had little interest in reporting the nuances of successes the General’s counter-insurgency campaign had racked up. More to the point, his primary purpose would be to elicit juicy comments and critiques of the civilian leadership in order to make the story a sexy sale at the news stands. In that Hastings succeeded and the General and his staff fell feet first into the trap.

In the story, which will be available Friday but is attached here (“The Runaway General”) McChrystal says little, criticizing only Obama in one instance and AMB Holbrooke in another. But his staff went far beyond, calling the National Security Advisor (4-star Marine General) Jim Jones a “clown”, the Vice President as a know-nothing irritant (you mean “Bite Me”, not “Biden”, said one staffer), accused the President of being totally unprepared for a session with McChrystal, hammered AMB Holbrooke, and denigrated the President’s team unmercifully (many of whom are 3-4 star Generals and Admirals).

We should understand that the General’s interviews, and that of his staff, come in the midst of a sense that the mission in Afghanistan is failing. There seems to be no credible central government in Kabul, the Afghan national police and Army have fallen far short of expectations, corruption and mismanagement are rampant, and the Taliban seems to be making significant operational gains. In this general downturn no doubt some will be looking how to shift the blame for ultimate failure.

It might be hard for McChrystal to argue that he did not get the resources he asked for to implement his war strategy. Certainly the President gave him 95% of it. Or that the strategy is directed by Washington—the COIN tactics being pursued in the field are certainly those advocated by the military establishment. The General would have a good case that the commitment to begin withdrawing troops in July of 2011 gave the wrong signal to the enemy as well as to the Kabul government, but everyone in the chain of command is on record saying that they agreed with that commitment.

The quotes illustrate also how dysfunctional the civil-military relationship in Afghanistan has become, with (retired 3-star General) Ambassador Karl Eikenberry at odds with McChrystal and ISAF. Quite a contrast with the excellent working relationship AMB Ryan Crocker and GEN Dave Petraeus had in Iraq!

My colleague, Steve Metcalf, has noted that “The death of a warrior….is always a sad event, particularly when he has served so honorably for so many years”. But, Metcalf argues, the General’s continuing challenge of the political leadership (remember his outspoken comments in London at the IISS last year, or his very public differences with AMB Eikenberry), “has reached a level that can no longer be countenanced”. I agree.

The frustration that the General and, especially his staff, is feeling is mainly an outgrowth of the sense that public opinion in America has given up on the wisdom of the commitment in Afghanistan, and that this weariness is manifesting itself at the highest levels of the White House. Increasingly there is a sense that the war is unwinnable, that we are being “held captive” by a corrupt and intransigent Karzai, and that the military strategy Obama agreed to support is not tenable.

GEN McChrystal (or his staff) complained that he was “betrayed” by AMB Eikenberry, that Obama handed him “an unsellable position”, that the NSC was unsupportive (GEN Jones and LTG Doug Lute ??), mocked VP Biden’s alternative in Afghanistan (“Counter-terrorism”), dissed a meeting with the President as a “10-minue photo-op”, and described AMB Dick Holbrooke as “dangerous—because he is a wounded animal”.

The President faces a difficult decision tomorrow, but despite GEN McChrystal’s extraordinary experience, record and dedication, the President should accept his resignation and move on. That will be painful for all concerned, and both the Commander in Chief and his field commander are badly wounded from this encounter.

But the General wasn’t elected, as was the President. Maybe he will be in the future! Doubt it—the “stab in the back” rhetoric won’t find much ground here and the American public will be hard pressed to believe that if only the nuanced differences in the General’s strategy were adopted, we would have secured a certain victory in Afghanistan.

Stay tuned! Would love to be a fly on the wall in that Oval office session tomorrow.

– Ty

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