Abu Muqawama: Post
Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Catching Up
I have not been posting much recently, enjoying my retirement from daily blogging, but Richard Fontaine and I got name-checked in the lead editorial from today's Washington Post on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on account of this policy paper we wrote on Yemen for CNAS, so if you have not read it, do. I re-read it today to make sure I still agree with what we wrote and ... yup, I still do. My friend Gregory Johnsen is the real subject matter expert on Yemen, though, and since he's the guy I turn to for a sanity check whenever I say anything about the Arabian Peninsula, you could do worse than to follow his blog for more information on Yemen and AQAP.
In other news, I read and greatly enjoyed Stefan Aust's page-turning history of the Red Army Faction
A few readers have sent me Sean Naylor's unbelievably damning article in the Army Times on the Stryker Brigade in southern Afghanistan. Friends like Gian Gentile are worried good battalion and brigade commanders are being slandered for not bowing to the COIN orthodoxy, but while I have some sympathy for that lament, the relevant question about Col. Harry Tunnell is is not whether or not COIN is the correct or incorrect operational response to the problems facing U.S. forces in Afghanistan but whether or not the commander is following the pretty explicit guidance issued by the commanding general in Afghanistan. Sean has been a friend of mine since he embedded with my platoon during Operation Anaconda in 2002, and he's not the kind to go hunting the scalps of tactical commanders for the sake of it. What he saw in southern Afghanistan, though, raised a lot of questions for him, and it segues in nicely with Noah's worry about whether the U.S. Army can or will even do what's being asked of it.
Now I'm trying to catch up with some work while listening to the Nosaj Thing remix of Charlotte Gainsbourg's "Heaven Can Wait", which has the second most bizarrely awesome video for any song to which I have ever listened. First prize in that category goes to Bat For Lashes for "What's a Girl to Do?":
Gian Gentile is GOD. GO Cal!
You mean Bat for Lashes, not Bat Your Lashes. You nerd. Here's another wonderfully odd music video for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HvjK29Gpn0.
abu muqawama, you have so many rich and powerful man-friends. i'm jealous.
on that note, get over yourself.
If Islam was so great, why can't they produce talent like this among their women folk?
http://video.yahoo.com/network/100063489?v=5123291
AM. Have you been to Yemen and for how long? How about he co-author?
I love the idea of brigade-level sweeps described in that Army Times article.
Just WTFFFFFF is a 'brigade-level sweep' supposed to do, aside from triggering IED's and cleansing the enemy of the bottom 10% who try to stop large maneuver forces through open battle?
Re: Aust /RAF: I liked the book when I read it some 10 years ago (in the original version).
Didn't see the movie, as the trailer + discussion gave the impression that the movie was too "romantic", as you put it ...
Hmm, I just realize that I didn't add anythin of value to this thread. Let me change that:
Happy new year ... ! (ok, a little early, but still ...)
AM, think the writting is on the wall. America's influence in the future world will be reduced. Think that is a proven fact. Why? In my mind in is money driven, America is selling itself out. America became a world power by manufacturing, now our economy is becoming service based. Why? Part of that is because technology has matured, much is no longer proprietary, it can be purchased. If technology is not proprietary, then the cost of a product is driven by labor and overhead. It becomes a question of regulation and cheap labor. Cost of cleaning up industrial headaches in America became a problem in the 80's. Off-shoring of American manufacturing jobs has accelerated and now white collar jobs are starting to leave. Not all of us are wired for higher education, we need manufacturing to provide jobs for many of our people. Those jobs equate to a tax base and spending that puts money into the national treasury. Right now America owes China about $800 billion, the deficit is horrible. Those big bonuses that the American public dislike are being driven, in part, by the revenues of cost-reduced off-shore operations. In other words, American management exceeded their cost reduction goals. We are seeing the effect of globalization in the U6 unemployment number which is over 20% (U6 = underemployed + newly unemployed). Most of the jobs America lost in the past year are being pushed off-shore, they will not come back to America. We are weakening ourselves.
So what is the point?
AQAP is sending little boys to America to blow-up our planes. In response we drop a trillion dollars into Iraq and AFPAK to build their economies. Now we are talking about ramping up a response to Yemen and Somalia. Think we are falling into the terrorist's trap. They spend little, America goes bankrupt. This low level attack is designed to cost the victim the most and we are giving them exactly what they want!
Who benefits from the oil in the middle east? The middle east and the world. Who is paying for middle east security? America (I know the UN too, look at the number of foreign troops we beg for). Does that make sense? Not to me. America needs to take a hard look at who profits and start making the people getting the most pay for the security of their operations. Top of the most profit list would be UAE. China would be another on the top of the well moneied list. Middle east security is best handled by the people in the middle east, they know the land, people, and Allah. Just think of how fast the radical islam problem would evaporate if the world stopped buying oil, the best cure that I can think of!.
Radical Islam points a finger at the US goverment for expansion. The only expansion that I can see is corporate expansion(which is not purely American owed anymore) trying to open emerging markets. I would not be surprised of Walmart tries to put a manufacturing/distribution center in Afghanistan! The low wages in Afghanistan would be a natural new age manufacturing center. China is getting expensive and government too restrictive, they are maturing too. Operations are looking at the Islamic world for cost reduction.
America pays billions for foreign aid. Think it is time America takes a hard look at immigration. The west is taking the cream of the crop from foreign lands. It is time these people are sent home to develope their home countries, the best foreign aid that I can think of. This is starting to happen naturally, the good jobs are no longer in America!
Protecting corporate expansion is getting old. I have read "On the Knife's edge". Maybe twenty years ago, it would make sense. Not sure America playing the world cop makes sense anymore. Coming out of corporate America, I have seen the future. The future is not about America, it is about Globalization. It is about profits.
Radial Islam and the middle east have come full circle and now they are looking at themselves face-to-face, but they have yet to figure it out. The American people and its govenment are not their enemy.
As an after thought of the above vistor 11:19....forgot to sign the post.
In Londonstani's latest......
Londonstani said - "Many Pakistani officials Londonstani has met do not connect the country's present conflict to the internal tensions that exist within the country."
If you're sitting on a pile of US aid and petro dollars in the ME, which way would you rather fan the bonfire in Karachi?
Towards your self or at the west?
Follow the money and profit ........that is the motive.
Barry wrote (at 9:43am): "Just WTFFFFFF is a 'brigade-level sweep' supposed to do, aside from triggering IED's and cleansing the enemy of the bottom 10% who try to stop large maneuver forces through open battle?"
Smell like victory.
I haven't read Naylor's piece, but I wouldn't be surprised if Tunnell as a BCT Cdr in Afghanistan is simply following on from his lessons as battalion commander in Iraq: "Red Devils; Tactical Perspectives from Iraq" (http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/tunnell.pdf).
I'd note the following from his epilogue:
"Military leaders must stay focused on the destruction of the enemy. It is virtually impossible to convince any committed terrorist who hates America to change his or her point of view—they simply must be attacked relentlessly. CMO and stabilization operations are important; commanders should use these activities to help define the operating environment, and gain knowledge about an adversary. It is appropriate for military units to develop goals that include appreciating local culture, improving quality of life for the populace, and promoting good governance whenever these concepts improve access to the enemy. However, if the pursuit of them does not advance one’s knowledge of threats and a unit’s capability to maintain the offensive, then they are of little practical value as tactical or operational objectives. Destruction of the enemy force must remain the most important step to defeating terrorists and insurgents—everything else supports this goal but is not a substitute for it."
semper fi
Phil R.,
Thank you VERY much for that link. What a great attachment to go with the linked article. Thanks again.
Boy, that Baader-Meinhof trailer really is ... American. Makes it look like some kind of gung ho action movie. I obviously grew up watching American action movies, but Baader-Meinhof was a different kind of action for me. Appaling and brutal. Anyway, I wasn't alive when those terrorists were roaming the streets, I didn't really follow the discussion in the papers and I didn't know much about the RAF. So I could really enjoy the movie, no bias whatsoever. It gives you an amazing sense of German post-war society and is a great action movie (in that order).
I'd also like to recommend another movie dealing with a related subject, the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane Landshut in the "German Autum" of 1977: "Mogadishu". It's made for TV, but you really don't see that. And with Christian Berkel and Thomas Kretschmann it has two actors who may be know to an American audience (think "Valkyrie").
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