Zinni on Wargaming ... Value and Danger

Simply a superb interview with General Anthony Zinni, USA (Ret) by Mie Augier and Major Sean F. X. Barrett, USMC over at CIMSEC. 

What is so impressive about it is the the focus of the interview - wargaming. 

There are few things more misunderstood, abused, and poorly done than wargaming. Done incorrectly, either by incompetence or malice, it can lead to the death of millions and the destruction of nations. No, that isn't an exaggeration. 

Let's pull a few quotes that grabbed my attention; 

I think gaming was more valuable at the lower levels, at the tactical level, maybe lower operational level. ... As you go higher up, I found there was too much in the way of service politics and other things that were injected into the games.

Bingo. This is where elections and the system of incentives and disincentives in our promotion systems can bring disastrous effects.

...I watched how the games became more designed as proofs of capabilities—preordained proofs of capabilities—rather than—as much as they advertised it—open testing, having a real willingness to fail, and all that.

You will hear a lot of "X was wargamed and Y was the result" - be very suspicious of these claims, especially with systems and CONOPS that are vaporware.

If somebody talks about a game, I am usually highly suspicious about what the purpose is, who is designing it, and who is sponsoring it.

Question everything until you feel comfortable you know where people are coming from.

I loved the fact that over two decades later, Millennium Challenge keeps popping up. 

NB: we interviews Van Riper 9-years ago on Midrats if you'd like to give it a listen.

There is a lot of great stuff in the interview, especially about the timeframe from DESERT FOX to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yes, there are contradictory stories out there ... but Zinni is part of this and his view should be included in your consideration.

They started the game, and there was a lot of media attention. After the first two or three moves, Van Riper had sunk half of Fifth Fleet and destroyed a corps. They stopped the game because it was now turning into a disaster. They brought everybody in and said they were going to restart the game because some things didn’t go right or whatever. Van Riper didn’t do what they thought or assumed he would do. They thought they had him figured out, had the “enemy” figured out.

They started the game again—same result. Van Riper kicked their butts, and now they stopped again. People were coming down from the Pentagon, and this was becoming a problem. They then said they were going to start for a third time, but this time they told Van Riper what he had to do. He said if they wanted him to go by a script, they had to advertise that it was not free play—that it was scripted. You can’t advertise something as free play when it is really being scripted—that is dishonest. They told him they were not going to do that, but that Van Riper was going to be scripted in many of the things that he could do.

The next thing that happened was a bunch of the majors that were down there revolted and went to the media, and of course Van Riper then became a superstar for every young officer in the military. Malcolm Gladwell even wrote about it. This went all the way up to the Joint Chiefs, and the Joint Chiefs dissed Van Riper and didn’t defend him. Van Riper became the hero for everybody involved in Millennium Challenge below the rank of one-star.

I wonder where those majors wound up?

This part is superb; 1) a view on the present threat from Chinese ASMB/ASCM; 2) beats the assumptions drum I love to hear;

 Yes, it is in our nature to become overreliant on technology because we created this dependency on it, and in addition to that, in some ways, we don’t leverage it enough. Every time I get into a discussion with someone about facing a peer-level military threat, it always comes down to the same thing: Well, they’ve got missiles that are going to crush us. The answer is always that we must go after those missiles, we must find them, and shoot them down. What everybody is losing sight of is one of the first things I ask: How does the missile know where you are? Then there’s a fall back: Tell me how they target you. The missile is back there, and you are out here, and they can’t see you. Something is targeting you. Is it a satellite? Is it a recon unit? Instead of wasting all this effort and resources on new technology to kill the missiles, could we blind their missiles? Could we deceive the missile in some way? Maybe the focus of our technology should be on defeating targeting, and maybe the ways we defeat it is to give it a false image, to blind it, to deceive it. To address the threat through better tactics, using what we already have. No one ever talks about that. Everybody just pushes the technology to kill the missile. My point is that it is not just overrelying on technology. Sometimes it is not knowing how to use technology through tactics to build an advantage.

In Millennium Challenge, the blue force was totally dependent on monitoring the red team’s communications, so Van Riper did not use any digital technology. He used motorcycle couriers and all kinds of alternative, simple sources of communication. He did nothing that could be captured or intercepted, so they were totally blind. They put all their eggs—that they would have superior technology to intercept his communications—in one basket. They assumed he would never initiate the fight—that this enemy would be so overwhelmed he would not attack during the build-up phase. Of course, Van Riper immediately attacked. It was a beautiful thing to watch! When we make too many assumptions, it becomes a vulnerability.

Read it all, and keep an eye out for Part-2.  Yes, I've had some issues with Zinni a decade and a half ago, but time has show that many of his concerns were solid, and I was not fully correct on my own assumptions. As such, agree or not (no one is perfect), he is a person worth listening to. I should have had a more open ear to him in the past.

So, Who Wants to Ponder the Art of Port Clearing

You're a reader of CDRSalamander ... so I know that you not only find port clearing sexy ... but you know it's important.

Do you know the story of Umm Qasr in 2003?

Well, head on over to USNIBlog and ponder with me.

Are You Ready to Listen to me Now?

Over the July 4th weekend, we slipped out of the American fortress in Bagram. The way we left tells you all you need to know about Afghanistan – the conflict we lost in December 2009 when the Taliban were given the last indication they needed that we were not going to press the issue on our time and change Afghanistan our way, but we would let them win on their time and return Afghanistan their way.

It is all as clear now as it was when I wrote about our culmination at Obama’s West Point speech linked above. Regulars here know the story; the rest can follow the link above.

Good ideas are timeless, so I want to return to a topic that predates CDRSalamander and this is a decision point where we can decide to return our nation to its natural state.

My view of our place in the world started to gel in the mid-90s and by the late 90s had solidified into what in the 2020s has cured into a firm mass of resolve; we will destroy our republic by playing empire.

Generations of civilian and military leaders – and generations of citizens – had their view of America’s place in the world warped by WWII and the Cold War. In both cases, the world was faced with expansionist totalitarian secular confessions that required America to be the world power that it was. 

That world, thankfully, is gone. There are major threats in this world – Islamic fundamentalism is one, a renewed China is another – but neither of them have the combination of desire and ability that fascism and communism had. Neither are trying to expand their power by military means. 

Islamism has a bleeding edge, but its center of gravity is religious, and it has natural boundaries (unless stupid migrant policies succeed in letting it expand). 

China’s military growth is based on primarily ensuring access to resources to keep its population’s standard of living improving and as such, protect the domestic power of the Chinese Communist Party. 

We do not have a land border with either.

How do we mitigate risk against these two primary and lesser constellations of threats? Generally speaking, it doesn’t take a large standing army … which in a time of limited resources, that is a good thing.  Specifically: 

- Islamic fundamentalism: simple; contain and modernize. Contain Islamic fundamentalism to where is it now, and on the bleeding edge of the territory where it has reached critical mass, support local forces and governments to modernize along moderate lines. We cannot want a modern existence more than the people of those nations. We cannot force it on them. In nations where there is not a critical mass, aggressively eliminate small cells as you find them. The Cold War campaigns against the Red Army Faction, Weather Underground etc are a good template here. A deadly nuisance, but in time will fade through impotence and attrition.

- China: not so simple. China is primarily an economic and diplomatic challenge. She wants to use her economic power to back her diplomatic efforts to ensure that nations do not get in the way of her economic growth and future prosperity. From those two items, she will take was she sees as her natural place for a nation of 1.3 billion souls: the global leader by mid-century. 

China is not advancing primarily through military means. No, she is advancing by a clear national vision, economics, diplomacy, and an evolutionary, iterative advancement of her priorities for her people supporting her national greatness. Her military strength is to underline to others her larger national will; it is supporting, not supported.

While there are some nations such as India, Taiwan, Japan, and the nations around the South China Sea that have some territorial issues, unless you are a very paranoid Russian or Mongolian, China is not otherwise a military threat around her present borders. Where she is – specifically India – they have the land forces they need to counter China if so needed. Though accidents happen, China has no need for a land war on the Asian landmass. Her other conflicts are either at sea or are connected to her access and ability to secure her sea lines of communication to resources. 

That is the key; we do not need a large standing army to mitigate the most likely Chinese threats to us or our friends. We can best address the Chinese challenge through our economic strength and smart diplomacy. We have the advantage there if we choose to use it. Militarily, we also have the comparative advantage at sea, in the air, and space … if we choose to accept that.

How does this tie into what I started the post with? Easy.

We were enabled to think we could change Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc etc because we thought we could do it on the cheap. Sure, a few National Guard forces would have to be activated, but mostly we had a large standing army to pull the effort from. Like former SECSTATE Albright said, “what is the use of a large army if you aren’t going to use it.”

That was the theory. In practice, especially in 2005-7, it turned out different especially in the reliance on National Guard forces, but we just managed to get through it only because we were one standard deviation away in 2003 from General Shinseki’s center point.

No big national discussion was needed. No large sacrifice. No great national mobilization. We went in half-ass, and our results were half-ass. In Iraq, it was a near run thing it was not a worse disaster than it turned out.

Wars of choice need to demand an understanding that wars are a dark room. You don’t know what is in it when you step in, but you will have to deal with it.

If wars are hard to get in to, you do not fall easily in to tar pits of whimsy.

Take that temptation away. Make it hard. Make it a national effort. 

We are a large nation with large responsibilities, but we are also a republic, not an empire.

Give our friends more warning than we did the Afghans last weekend but let them know we have a new strategy. They need to up their land game. We will be there to help, especially in the air and from the sea, but we will not do their work for them.

We plan to move 2/3 of our active ground forces to our National Guard. Except for a few combined logistics, maintenance, and training facilities, all our forward deployed land forces, and most of our air and sea forward deployed forces, need to come home.

WWII and the Cold War are over. Again, we are a republic, not an empire.

We will mitigate risk by ensuring that while we reset our ground forces, we maintain and improve our posture as the world’s premier maritime and aerospace power – including space. 

We will maintain a large and robust ground combat capability, but any large conflict will require mobilization of our National Guard and reserve forces. We will have a standing army, but our friends will need to plan to defend their territory with their ground forces primarily – at least at the start.

That is external … but the real benefit here is internal. Remember, the military did not get us in these long running small land wars in Asia this century nor initiate them.

Politicians and the civilians they appointed did. They provided the Direction and Guidance that drove Initial Planning Guidance. They pointed the military in a certain direction. 

A large standing army makes things too easy for people who have a short-term focus, especially politicians. Wars should never be easy for those who don’t have to fight them. 

Politicians do understand hard work as well as risk/reward. When silky smooth, feel good ideas ooze out of think tanks and faculty lounges into politician’s ears, when those politicians bring those ideas to their military staff, there needs to be a higher bar for yes-men … and more opportunities to deliver the hard truth that the politicians will need to ask more from the American people. No so much money, but the blood of their constituents living in their towns, working in their businesses, friends with their patrons and supporters.

The American people have a good, if imperfect, track record of supporting the expenditure of significant amounts of blood and treasure when needed. American politicians have a rather imperfect, rarely good, track record of convincing themselves they can fight wars of choice on the cheap.

The greatest threat to our nation’s future security and place in the world is not an unrestrained China, it is a US political elite’s inclination to empire.

Put up the guardrails. 

Come home. 

The Fight for Baghdad

BZ to the Army University Press for putting this our earlier this month. Simply superb.

Yes, this has a lot of references to official doctrine (which isn't bad) and is not Hollywood production value heavy (which is good), but this is how we create an environment where people can learn from the past to prepare for the future.

It you want to understand better the ground battle for Baghdad in 2003, independent of the POLMIL or bothering about if it were a good idea in the first place, take the 50-min to watch this.

Even you navalists out there ... you can get some ideas and concepts to use ... but even then, it is worth it to better understand the ground side of the war.

There are a lot of lessons from this invasion at the Tactical and Operational Level that we will need to keep in our collective mind, as we will need to understand them for the next war - a war that is coming - and we shouldn't need to relearn what we intentionally forgot.

Hat tip John Spencer.

Fullbore Friday

Somewhere there was a 19-yr old mechanic that made sure it was up and ready for flight.

Somewhere there was a 20-yr old ordnanceman that made sure the weapons were loaded and ready.

Somewhere there was a 30-yr old pilot and 40-yr old copilot who were on their game.

Somewhere there was a large group of intelligence professionals who kept an unblinking eye on their target, giving decision makers real-time, actionable details.

Somewhere there was an entire ecosystem of communications, IT, and satellite professionals that maintained a lashed up of legacy and cutting edge technology enabling world-wide, real time observation of the target over an extended period.

Somewhere there were senior uniformed and civilian advisers providing the Principal the pros and cons of action.

Somewhere there was a Principal who gave the order.

After thousands of deaths and untold tens of thousands wounded … one of the most blood soaked enemies of our nation was eliminated.

Fullbore to everyone.

While You Get Ready to Celebrate ...

...the end of 2019, remember that Foreverwar is still going forward.

From today, these Marines in Kuwait are getting ready to reinforce our embassy in Baghdad.

Via CENTCOM:

A lot of these Marines were in diapers on 9/11/2001.

Going Sideways in Afghanistan & Iraq, with Daniel P. Bolger

In the 5-years since the publication of his book, Why We Lost, each passing day more and more people are starting to look at what, 18-yrs on, we have brought in to being with our long running land wars in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Using his book as a starting point, this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern, our guest will be Daniel P. Bolger, Lieutenant General, US Army, (Ret.) to discuss these two conflicts and larger implications of our Long War.

Bolger served 35 years in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2013. He commanded troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. His military awards include five Bronze Stars (one for valor) and the Combat Action Badge. He earned a bachelor's degree at The Citadel and a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago. The author of nine books and numerous articles, he teaches history at North Carolina State State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

You can listen to the show at this link or below, but remember, if you don't already, subscribe to the podcast at Spreaker or any of the other podcast aggregators.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

We don't do enough of our most recent conflicts on FbF ... so today a story from last decade of a Little Bird bringing giants with big medicine.

Hearing Cianfrini’s warning, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mark Burrows, 35, banked right to evade bullets from a heavy machine gun that had opened up across a field. Then, a second machine gun began firing at them. Burrows turned again, only to face a heavier barrage.

“The whole world just opened up on us, it seemed like,” Cianfrini said in a telephone interview from Iraq on Tuesday. “We zigzagged; we did whatever we could do to get out of the guns’ target line. Then, we started taking fire from behind. That is what took the aircraft down.

The Kiowa started to shake violently, its main rotor damaged.

Burrows said he decided to head into the field, but the aircraft began to spin uncontrollably, and at about 20 feet above the ground he had to shut down its power. The helicopter hit the ground tail first, bounced over a canal, crashed nose down and slid into a ditch beside an adjacent dirt road.

Cianfrini climbed out one door, and Burrows got out the other. They met at the nose and discovered that, miraculously, they had suffered only scratches, they said. The Kiowa by then was on fire, its engine blowing up inside. Insurgents were shooting at them from across the field, and the pilots could hear the rounds hitting the burning helicopter.

“Where’s your weapon?” Burrows yelled to Cianfrini.

“I have no idea,” came the reply.

Head on over to the DenverPost for the rest of the story.

H/t JD.

Fullbore Friday

Saturday in San Diego we will commission the second ZUMWALT Class destroyer, USS Michael Monsoor (DDG 1001).

You can watch the ceremony live at this link 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific.

Not much more to say that the citation does for a young man of 25 years of age.

Attention to citation;.

MASTER AT ARMS SECOND CLASS, SEA, AIR and LAND

MICHAEL A. MONSOOR

UNITED STATES NAVY

For service as set forth in the following CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Automatic Weapons Gunner for Naval Special Warfare Task Group Arabian Peninsula, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 29 September 2006. As a member of a combined SEAL and Iraqi Army sniper overwatch element, tasked with providing early warning and stand-off protection from a rooftop in an insurgent-held sector of Ar Ramadi, Iraq, Petty Officer Monsoor distinguished himself by his exceptional bravery in the face of grave danger. In the early morning, insurgents prepared to execute a coordinated attack by reconnoitering the area around the element's position. Element snipers thwarted the enemy's initial attempt by eliminating two insurgents. The enemy continued to assault the element, engaging them with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire. As enemy activity increased, Petty Officer Monsoor took position with his machine gun between two teammates on an outcropping of the roof. While the SEALs vigilantly watched for enemy activity, an insurgent threw a hand grenade from an unseen location, which bounced off Petty Officer Monsoor's chest and landed in front of him. Although only he could have escaped the blast, Petty Officer Monsoor chose instead to protect his teammates. Instantly and without regard for his own safety, he threw himself onto the grenade to absorb the force of the explosion with his body, saving the lives of his two teammates. By his undaunted courage, fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of certain death, Petty Officer Monsoor gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

H/t KS.

US Army on discussing the Iraq War: "Can't this wait until I PCS?"

Do you get the feeling that the US Army does not really want to talk about its performance in Iraq? 

Well, judging by how they've slow rolled their own report - you might be right.

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog.

Come by and help me rend clothes and gnash teeth.

The Once and Future Arab Spring

One of the most under-reported stories of 2017 - to our great collective shame - was the almost complete destruction of the Islamic State's caliphate (minus a few holdouts). This was done mostly through local forces enabled by newly invigorated USA-led Western capabilities in support. Russia deserves a best supporting actor mention as well - but that is a different topic for a different day.

There are many more chapters in the Long War to come, but as this one comes to and end, we need to remember how we got here.

Over at The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain has an interesting take that deserves your consideration. Some of his writing comes from an angle you may not read all that often.

Among the revolutionaries there was a democratic trend that included liberal activists, nationalists, and Islamist groups willing to engage in the electoral process. Alongside the democrats was a violent, wildly utopian religious movement launched by groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda that tried to destroy Muslim societies and recreate them as a “caliphate” — an imaginary community where all the world’s Muslims would ostensibly live happily-ever-after under the rule of jihadis.

The democratic movements were largely crushed by the brutal response of local dictators. The jihadis, meanwhile, briefly managed to achieve a version of their caliphate, only to see it destroyed in a final cataclysm. But while the core idea that animated the Arab democrats continues to be attractive despite its repression, the utopian project of the jihadis has been undermined in critical ways by its failure.

IS should never have existed - but there was an opening when the chaos of the Syrian civil war coincided with the disastrous early withdrawal of USA forces from Iraq. It took the opportunity and created a nightmare.

Its strategic Center of Gravity was always the religious justification for its existence. It had to be destroyed by Muslim forces, on local terms, in order to make sure that CoG was thoroughly undermined. The Trump administration annihilation policy in support of local forces made this more effective.

The defeat of the Islamic State might ironically be a letdown for some in the West. Western politicians, military officials, and their assorted hangers-on in the media and think tank world have already begun planning for a long war against “global jihadism,” an analogue to the Cold War that would justify their inflated budgets and provide a continued sense of purpose. Unlike communism or nationalism, however, there’s little indication that apocalyptic jihadism as an ideology is attractive or sustainable enough to meaningfully compete with Western democracies in the way that those ideologies did. Diehard Islamic State sympathizers may continue committing individual acts of terrorism for the foreseeable future and mini proto-states pledging allegiance to the group will still proliferate, but the rapid rise and fall of the caliphate demonstrates an important lesson about the fundamentally self-destructive nature of millenarian movements.

Exactly. Recognize what they are, ID their weakness, destroy it. Notsomuch a national or ethnic movement - but a movement based on a cult-like belief system - but here is a critical point that the author mentions but underplays; there is not an insignificant religious basis for their actions. Destroying such systems are not easy, but once defeated, the intrinsic fragility of its foundation can make its immediate defeat effective. We did it with Nazism, and mostly to State Communism. Both of those movements have something in common with Islamic terrorist movements;

Instead of a return to traditional values, Saleh describes Salafi jihadism as the latest iteration of a quintessentially modern phenomenon: nihilism. A philosophy with its roots in 19th century Europe, nihilism denies that the material world and life itself hold any intrinsic value or meaning. While nihilism does not inevitably lead to violence, its world-denying tenets helped inspire numerous campaigns of terrorism by its adherents. In Europe, where atheism had already become normative, local expressions of nihilism were atheistic. But in Muslim-majority societies like Syria, nihilism “looks for its pillars of support in the religion of Islam,” Saleh says.

The nihilism analogy goes deeper into the practices of groups like the Islamic State. Suicide and murder are normally considered to be grave sins by Muslims. But during periods of widespread crisis and trauma, radical groups like the Islamic State exploit a cognitive opening to try to portray these acts as acceptable, even positive. The religious concept of an afterlife is also twisted to support a nihilistic worldview, by devaluing acts committed in the material world in favor of a promised hereafter.

Yet this radical inversion of traditional values is not one that has shown itself to be appealing to large groups of people in Muslim countries. Rather than a mass movement with deep social and cultural roots, Saleh says that jihadism relies mainly on exploiting conditions of crisis to coerce the support of people who would normally find its tenets repellent.

Though I'm not in full alignment with Saleh quoted here, he is not wrong on all counts. Percentage matter - especially when the majority is powerless and supine - but this is a global war in the small details vice broad fronts;

“There is a lot of attention to jihadism because it feeds into the narrative of the U.S. global war against terrorism and because Western media and politicians are generally obsessed with Islam. But I don’t think we should be deceived by this — we are not talking about a civilizational conflict here,” says Saleh. “These are armed groups that combine religion with military training and fascist educational indoctrination. But they are mainly concerned with violence. They do not have any meaningful social, political, or cultural base, nor do they offer any real emancipatory potential for Muslim societies.”

There is one big difference between the IS's philosophical underpinnings and those of the Nazis and Communists the author references for comparison; they were secular philosophies - this is religious.

For all its faults, there are hooks in Islamic teachings to justify what the IS did. The IS is almost gone, but the hooks remain - just waiting for someone else using a different name and justification to hang their bag on.

While the movements were not morally equivalent, sometimes the intensity of the conversion experience for jihadi recruits and former communist revolutionaries were not dissimilar. Arthur Koestler described his initial belief that Soviet communism would liberate the oppressed masses of Europe as a feeling of “mental rapture,” in which “the new light seems to pour from all directions across the skull [and] the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw.” The euphoria of that conversion was equaled only by the pain of his eventual disillusionment.

“Though we wore blinkers, we were not blind,” Koestler reflected. “Even the most fanatical among us could not help noticing that all was not well in our movement.”

Surveying the destruction of ancient cities like Raqqa and Mosul, and the millions of shattered lives left in the wake of the Islamic State’s failed revolution, it’s hard not see the group, now stripped of its power, as anything other than the latest, most fanatic attempt to remedy the ills of long-tyrannized societies. Although jihadis may be killed and their ideology may even fall out of favor, until the people of the region experience genuine emancipation, there is unlikely to be an end to terrorist violence, nor to radical armed groups promising to bring heaven down to earth by any means necessary.

There is much unfinished business in the Arab world and the non-Arab Muslim outer belts.

History is not done here - and for the West, the Long War is not going away.

Fullbore Friday

As the lead-up to Veterans Day also happens to be the USMC Birthday on FbF ... of course we have to have a certain focus today.

Every day, American's men and women are serving in places no one knows about, cares about, or even if they did - have any clue why they are there and why what they are doing is important.

Today I ask you to give a nod to our Marines in Anbar.

For you listeners to Midrats, you'll recognize their leader.

Susannah George of AP reports; over to you;

The US-led coalition’s newest outpost in the fight against the Islamic State group is in a dusty corner of western Iraq near the border with Syria. Here, several hundred American Marines operate close to the battlefront, a key factor in the recent series of swift victories against the extremists.
...
Under a plastic tent, the Marines run an austere joint command center about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border. A dozen monitors relay surveillance footage and troop positions in the town of Qaim nearby. Using racks of radio and satellite equipment, the coalition forces and Iraqi officers at the base pass information between forces on the ground and al-Asad air base, the coalition’s main base in Anbar province some 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the east.

Such outposts have become more common the past year, bringing the Americans out of main bases and closer to the action. U.S. commanders say the tactic has paid off in the swift rollback of the Islamic State group.
...
U.S. Marines Col. Seth W. B. Folsom, commander of Task Force Lion, oversaw the Qaim fight and said he expects clearing and holding the retaken territory in Anbar to be more difficult than the assault itself.

“It’s much more challenging, no doubt in my mind it’s more challenging,” he said. Motivating troops to attack to regain their country is easy, he said. “What’s less easy to motivate men to do, is to stand duty on checkpoints.”
...
“Anbar is the far reaches of Iraq,” said Col. Folsom. “The challenge that we’ve got here that they have not had as much up in the north is really just the tyranny of distance.”
...
Col. Folsom said he hoped within the next year Iraqi forces would be able to hold the western edge of Anbar on their own and coalition forces can fall back to al-Asad air base.

“We have to find some sort of sustainable presence,” he said. “What that will look like, I don’t know. There may still be some commuting to work in one way or another.”

Best to you and your Marines Seth.

You can listen to our interview with Seth about his previous book, Where Youth and Laughter Go, below.

A Pre-Thanksgiving Turkey Problem

Hopefully everyone is keeping at least a glancing eye on the developments around Mosul, especially the fact that Turkey has an outpost there. She isn't helping all that much, she rarely does, but she is there.

A dispute between Iraq and Turkey has emerged as a dramatic geopolitical sideshow to the complicated military campaign to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the Islamic State.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has insisted on a role in the battle for Mosul, trying to ramp up an involvement in Iraq that has already alarmed the Iraqi government.

“We have a historical responsibility in the region,” Mr. Erdogan said in a recent speech, drawing on his country’s history of empire and defeat, from Ottoman rule of the Middle East to its loss in World War I. “If we want to be both at the table and in the field, there is a reason.”

In response, the normally mild-mannered Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, warned last week of a military confrontation between Turkey and Iraq. If Turkish forces intervene in Mosul, he said, they will not “be in a picnic.”
...
Turkey has already angered the Iraqi government by keeping a unit of troops at a base in Bashiqa, an area of northern Iraq near Mosul and surrounded by Islamic State territory. For more than a year, the Turks have also been training Kurdish pesh merga forces and Sunni Arab fighters in Iraq, including a militia led by a former governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi.

The Turkish military deployment, even just to train local forces, has been bitterly opposed by the Iraqi government, and Mr. Abadi has demanded that the troops leave.

Now that the battle for Mosul has started, Mr. Erdogan has given a number of incendiary speeches in which he has seemed to suggest that he is itching for the Turkish military to become directly involved in the fighting.

I want to show you two maps. First, the Turkish Republic as we know it;

There is another map that I've seen in a few places over the summer and fall. At first, I did a raised eyebrow eye-roll, but as I saw it more, just pursed my lips at seeing it. Even when one version or another showed up in newspapers, I dismissed it as standard issue populist chest thumping. Here, take a look;

Greece, Iraq, Syria (whoever you are), Armenia - call your office.

Now I want you to watch the video below. I'm not eye-rolling anymore, I'm watching a bit closer.

Turkish president says "we did not accept current borders voluntarily." pic.twitter.com/XFuwBJQiyJ

— Turkey Times (@turkey_times) October 25, 2016

If Forced to Choose; Iraq vs. Kurdistan?

There was a little I&W last week that needs your attention.

From just a few sources, in this case Kurdista24, the Kurds are seeing a moment they don't want to let pass. I don't blame them, it was only a matter of time. This isn't a new issue, just another card being pulled out of the deck as facts on the ground are meeting centuries of desire.

If this continues forward, there will be a point when we will have to make a choice. 

Since 1991, there has been one part of Iraq that has been reliable; Kurdistan. There is one major ethic group in Iraq that is respectful of religious and ethnic minorities; Kurds. If there is one ethnic group in the Middle East that offers a view of how we wish the rest of the area would behave, there would be just one; the Kurds.

Things are moving in a direction that may force us to choose between backing the chimera of dysfunction that is what ever power holds in Baghdad, or the Kurds. Here's why.

A member of the Iraqi parliament stated on Thursday that Peshmerga forces will receive the same treatment as the Islamic State (IS) if they do not withdraw from liberated areas.

Mohammed Saihoud an Iraqi MP from the State of Law bloc, led by the former Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki, said that “if Peshmerga forces do not retreat from the liberated areas, they will be considered as occupiers, not liberators.”

“IS and Peshmerga forces are equal before the gunfire of the Iraqi security forces and Hashd al-Shaabi if they insist on the occupation of the liberated areas,” the Shia MP told an Iraqi news outlet.

The Kurds are known for understated firmness. They do not fail to deliver;

...KRG spokesperson Safeen Dizayee told Kurdistan24 that Peshmerga forces will not withdraw from the areas in their control because Peshmerga is the source of security and stability for people.

Dizayee stated that Peshmerga forces will make further advances towards the Islamic State (IS)-held areas surrounding Mosul that are considered outside of the Kurdistan Region administration.

“The areas were liberated by the blood of the Peshmerga forces. Peshmerga will not retreat,” he reaffirmed.

I'd take them at their word.

Here is the part that shows where the game is;

Arif Taifoor, the commander of Peshmerga forces in Khazir frontline told Kurdistan24 on Thursday that the Peshmerga forces will liberate all the areas included in the Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, particularly IS-held Christian-populated areas and they will stay there.

What is Article 140?

Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution is supposed to deal with the country’s disputed territories – that is, land that Iraqi Kurdistan says is part of its quasi-independent region but which Baghdad says belongs to Iraq proper. This includes the much disputed area of Kirkuk. Article 140 outlines a series of steps that should be taken in order to resolve who exactly the disputed territories belong to – these are, firstly, normalization - a return of Kurds and other residents displaced by Arabisation – followed by a census taken to determine the demographic makeup of the province's population and then finally, a referendum to determine the status of disputed territories. Obviously whether a territory is home to mainly Kurds or mainly Arabs will have an effect on who can lay claim to the area.

As the Iraqis are learning, paper is paper.

“And if the Iraqi Kurdish region demands that Article 140 be implemented, then they would have to do that according to the Constitution,” Qurbani argues. “In which case, Iraqi Kurdish forces would need to withdraw from the land they are now occupying. But instead,” he concludes, “the Iraqi Kurdish are creating their own reality, on the ground.”

The scramble for the most land to negotiate with is well underway.

The Long War – Eternal

Take the time this evening to watch this segment from ViceNews: The Road to Fallujah.

What struck me the most was this quote, as this is roughly in line with what we put in our Operational Plans the half decade I worked on them.

“The Islamic State is one face of the al-Nusra Front. Al-Nusra is one face of al-Qaeda. All these hold oppressive, corrupt, and backward ideologies. I can’t see how they can be conquered by military means alone. We have to defeat them ideologically. We have to defeat the extremist ideology, we have to spread education, and we have to spread tolerant Islam.”
- Major Salam, Iraqi Army Golden Division, Special Forces.

Absolutely nothing has changed. Read every bit of this and understand why this is the Long War. This is a religious war. This is a war that takes changing and then defending systemic changes in culture that must be done from the inside, while outside, efforts must be made to contain the bloody edges of a radicalized death cult.

Watch it all.

Dithering and Spinning is not a Course of Action

When I first saw Kristina Wong's latest at TheHill, I thought it was just a case of the editor picking a clunky title, US military drafting 'new narrative' for ISIS war.

It turns out that no, they are serious.

The U.S. military is seeking to craft a “new narrative” for the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in part to push back on the growing perception that President Obama does not have a strategy.

Military officials on the Operation Inherent Resolve task force have recently formed a working group to formulate the narrative, defense officials told The Hill. Separately, the Joint Staff has drafted its own messaging document.

The steps are preliminary and are part of a larger effort to better communicate the United States's military strategy amid heavy criticism from Republican presidential candidates who say Obama is losing the battle against the terrorist group.
"To say there's no strategy is just flat out wrong," said Army Col. Christopher Garver, public affairs officer for the Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve.

"If you want to have a debate about it, that's good, let's talk about it. But there is a strategy," he added.

The new working group will look at "how best to articulate what it is we're trying to do ... and do it in a concise, easy to understand way," Garver said.

It is not clear who is overseeing or directing the effort, which appears to be internally driven within the military.

What do they say in domestic politics, "If you are explaining, you are losing."

Of course, we know where this is coming from - a complete lack of effective leadership at the POLMIL level from the Commander in Chief. He simply is not a leader in this segment of his responsibilities.

As we have discussed many times here about leadership, if you have a failure at the top, it is a critical requirement that lower echelons, while being loyal, do what they can to fill the gap. That is the only way they can mitigate damage to the mission as they understand it, and also to fill their responsibility to their subordinates.

When this happens, more often than not it is a clunky arrangement. That is what I believe is going on here.

No way to run a railroad.

As if to underline my thoughts above, Paul Saunders over at TheNationalInterest weighs in;

When President Barack Obama acknowledged in September 2014 that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), he stunned his supporters and detractors alike. Obama was similarly candid nine months later, when he announced in a June 2015 statement, “we don’t yet have a complete strategy.” But why not?

Three reasons appear paramount. The first is the president’s defensive approach to foreign policy. On too many issues, President Obama seems primarily motivated by what he wants to avoid rather than what he wants to achieve. Consider Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Iran, where Obama has sought to avoid military operations in recent years. Libya is the exception that proves the rule, in that the American role in deposing Muammar el-Qaddafi seems to have validated the president’s instincts about the perils of what he terms “military adventures.”

Secondly, Obama too often resembles a pedantic law professor: he is clearly quite skilled at pointing out the flaws in his subordinates’ proposals. The problem is this: a professor’s job ends at that point; a president’s starts. Yet this president’s avoidant foreign policy seems to prevent him from going further. Finally, Obama does not intuitively understand the exercise of power—not just how and when to use it, but its foundations, its psychology and its consequences. The result of these three factors is a “none-of-the-above” policy assembled from the shards of discarded options.

That is where we are. Elections have consequences, and these are ours. Claim 'em and own 'em American, you voted for it twice.

In to the breach will be lower echelon leaders who will try to provide some kind of holding action in hope that the American people will elect a leader in '16 as opposed to a campaigner. 

Leadership in any matter of international seriousness is not Obama's skill set. A smart guy and a very talented politician - but leader? No, not in this way - and it won't get better.

Embrace the clunk.

Fullbore Friday

Just one man who will represent thousands.

Null out the background buzz that you hear from DC where our leaders seem to want to talk of those who serve as racists, sexists, criminals, and somehow culturally divided from the nation they serve, etc. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Now and then we are reminded every day that there are people who have made the decision to serve. They trust their leaders to not sell their mortality lightly. They trust that the person to the left and the right of them are what they hope to be - the best their nation has to offer. There to serve, and to serve with.

That trust is key, as in a moment they will go anywhere and execute any mission they are ordered to do. They will do it as it is their job. Their job will, in the end, support the core values they hold and of the nation they serve. They will, and do, accept that the cost for that service may be their life - a cost they hope buys something of greater value.

At our best, as a nation we will do what other cannot. We will help our friends do what they cannot. At home, that may be something as simple as helping your neighbor move a fallen tree off their driveway. On a larger scale it may be helping rescue the innocents from slaughter.

One man who steps forward. One man who represents many. One man who did this for you. For others. For an ideal.

Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, USA; fullbore.

he Pentagon identified the U.S. Army soldier who died as part of a rescue mission in Northern Iraq earlier this week as Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler of Roland.

About 70 hostages facing “imminent mass execution” were rescued in the operation at an ISIS-controlled prison that killed Wheeler, 39, according to a Pentagon statement.

Wheeler, who was was part of the Army’s Delta Force and assigned to Headquarters of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., is the first American to die in combat in Iraq since November 2011.

The hostages he was helping to rescue included more than 20 members of the Iraqi Security Forces, local residents and several ISIS fighters accused of spying. They were liberated Thursday after a helicopter assault that involved U.S. special operations troops as well as Kurdish and Iraqi forces, U.S. officials said.

“There was not a lot of time,” one U.S. official told CNN on condition of anonymity. “The threat of execution was imminent.”

Mass graves dug inside the compound were spotted during surveillance, a U.S. official with direct knowledge of details of the raid told CNN. After the rescue, hostages said they had been told they would be executed after morning prayers.

For a few, for a small moment, the world is a slightly less vile and nasty place. Master Sgt. Wheeler paid for this moment. I hope those who are benefiting from it - earn it.

The Most Important Documentary You Won't (it seems) See

OK folks, I've tried to find where in the USA you can watch this - but I can't. Any ideas?

Next Wednesday (15 July), Channel 4 airs a documentary in its Dispatches slot so important it ought to rank with John Pilger’s exposés of Cambodia’s Killing Fields or even the footage of British troops liberating Belsen. Escape From Isis uses secret footage — filmed by extremely brave people who would have been killed if discovered — to show you in unsparing detail what it’s like behind the Black Flag curtain: everything from the small talk of Islamic State fighters as they jauntily discuss what they’re going to do with their Yazidi captives to the dull thump heavy rocks make as they hit the flesh of a woman being stoned to death by a group of religious zealots led by her own father. It’s ugly, it’s almost unbearable to watch and it’s essential viewing.

One of the questions most often asked about the Holocaust is: why didn’t the Allies do something to stop it sooner? I imagine the time will come when we give ourselves a similar beating-up over our inertia in dealing with Islamic State. (‘So the Prime Minister wrote to the BBC urging it to call them by a different name. And that was it?!’) 

I remember when the Prime Minister was trying, unsuccessfully, to co-ordinate military action against the Assad government, one of the things he urged MPs to do before they voted was to watch a film he’d seen showing the atrocities Assad’s supporters had committed. This, it struck me at the time, as it does even more so now, was an hysterical and irresponsible suggestion. Important decisions regarding military action should not be decided in a mood of heightened emotion. The same applies to this Dispatches documentary. 

It is not an argument for or against anything. It merely shows you what is. I’ve made it sound ghastly but what makes it bearable, uplifting even, is the extraordinary story it tells of the rescue operations that have brought at least some of these captured Yazidis back to the bosom of their tearful families. Watch and you will share their joy. This is TV at its most unmissable.

---

UPDATE: Kim let me know that it is also going to be shown on PBS tonight on FRONTLINE. Check your local listing. It is on 22:00 here.

Flournoy, Fontaine and the Path Not Followed

There is something to be said for the "go big or go home" school of defense policy. A nation's reputation is a fragile thing, not to be trifled with. Decades and centuries of accrued national capital can be wasted in an amazingly short period of time.

Though sometimes lost through the superior efforts of a stronger external force, most great powers throw away the hard work of their predecessors from internal weakness and bad decisions.

Great nations can impose their will on a global scale without firing a shot, simply based on economic power, superior military force, or just a reputation based on past use of both.

With action there is risk, and every action must be fully evaluated with risk in mind. A firm understanding of history must reinforce that in the field of arms, things are rarely as simple, cheap, or fast as can be briefed by those who are selling their bright, shiny idea. 

Once can bring too much force to a problem, but the only downside to that is the accountants "what if'n" you to death. Bring too little to do the job? People will be "what if'n" you for centuries over graves, changed borders, and strange imperial capitals without empires.

Going big can mean tank divisions, but it doesn't have to. It can just mean going big with a certain concept, and you go to win.

In a very important piece over at WaPo, Michèle Flournoy and Richard Fontaine firmly set a marker back to a very successful and traditional bi-partisan consensus point in the diplomacy and national security arena. 

Set opposite the discredited war-is-new theories of the interventionist right and left; nation building and responsibility-to-protect, they provide a way forward that could garner support from both parties, even with the acknowledged constraints and restraints we have to realistically consider;

The announcement this month that 450 additional U.S. trainers and support troops will deploy to Iraq represents a modest step forward in the fight against the Islamic State. But the move by itself will not turn the tide in a faltering effort. To succeed in the president’s ambition of ultimately destroying the Islamic State — or even to contain its gains or roll them back — a broader and more intensive effort is needed.
...
Iraq is the locus of the current U.S. military effort against the Islamic State, and the administration’s strategy of working with and through Iraqi forces is the right one to achieve gains that are sustainable over the long term. But the execution of this strategy has lacked the urgency and resources necessary for success. A re-energized and more forward-leaning approach should combine the following elements:
- Establish an integrated political-military plan for Iraq. ...
- Provide arms directly to Sunni tribes and the Kurdish peshmerga. ...
- Embed Special Operations forces at the battalion level and allow them to provide advice during operations. ...
- Intensify the coalition air campaign and deploy forward air controllers to call in close air support during combat. ...
- More meaningfully aid the Syrian opposition. ...
- Intensify the global campaign against the Islamic State. ...
...
Together, these steps would mark a significant intensification in the campaign against the Islamic State, especially in Iraq. Yes, they would involve putting a small number of U.S. “boots on the ground” and would expose our troops to greater risk. Yet the risks of inaction are greater still. If we have learned anything since 9/11, it should be the need to deny sanctuary to a terrorist group that wreaks unspeakable violence and brutality against all except those who share its tortured worldview.

I have been critical of the steps we have taken from Libya to Afghanistan over the last few years - mostly because we never seemed in it to win it, with half-measures and timidity that only encourages our enemies and frustrates our friends.

F2's plan? In it I see a broad bi-partisan consensus point that a plurality could gel around, but to do that, it would take executive leadership. Leadership that simply is not there to do the above.

So. We wait - but as we wait, the world and the Islamic State will keep moving. Where will it find us in early 2017? Who knows, but whoever is waiting for the 3am call will not have an easy job to do.

Timing.

The Good and Bad of Dogs and Cats Living Together

As our nation continues to dig for that one last grain of sand in its collective bellybutton with a dull pickax, nations in the drift are finding themselves falling in to bed with the strangest partners; some in the main good but fraught with danger; others creating both policy problems and the potential for significant strategic risk.


One hookup looks like a productive and pleasantly surprising one;

For the first time, Japan has deployed one of its P-3C maritime patrol aircraft to Palawan, Philippines for an exercise. The aircraft, along with 20 personnel arrived on Jun. 21.

Hopefully no one will be offended by the meatball.

A little more close to home - this hookup seems morbid and a bit ghastly in it potential downside.

Many of you know how many were killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iran's actions - and yet;

The U.S. military and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are getting closer and closer in Iraq, even sharing a base, while Iran uses those militias to expand its influence in Iraq and fight alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime in neighboring Syria.

Two senior administration officials confirmed to us that U.S. soldiers and Shiite militia groups are both using the Taqqadum military base in Anbar, the same Iraqi base where President Obama is sending an additional 450 U.S. military personnel to help train the local forces fighting against the Islamic State. Some of the Iran-backed Shiite militias at the base have killed American soldiers in the past.

What could go wrong?

The U.S. intelligence community has reported back to Washington that representatives of some of the more extreme militias have been spying on U.S. operations at Taqqadum, one senior administration official told us. That could be calamitous if the fragile relationship between the U.S. military and the Shiite militias comes apart and Iran-backed forces decide to again target U.S. troops.

Both of the above remind me of reading old newspapers articles about mildly obscure events that set in motion significant events. Maybe nothing ... but a good fiction writer could do a lot with both.

It couldn't get any more "interesting."