Center for a New American Security

Well, how is this for a motley crew? From left, that would be Gian Gentile, Celeste Ward, John Nagl, and myself. This picture was taken about five minutes ago -- and about ten minutes after Gian, Celeste and I had lunch together and debated the Surge, Afghanistan, and counterinsurgency doctrine without weapons being brandished or blood drawn. Incredibly, Gian and John had never before met, so I invited both Celeste and Gian up into the Lion's Den of all things counterinsurgency, where pleasantries were exchanged under a sign of truce. It was Christmas 1914 all over again, really.

The Financial Times has really been devoting a lot of time to Lebanon in advance of next weekend's elections -- more so than any other Western English-language newspaper I follow. Check out Anna Fifield's reporting as well as the commentary of Roula (any relation to Samir?) Khalaf, a more or less sensible staff editorial yesterday, and the incredible news that Hizballah is already in negotiations with the IMF on aid to Lebanon in advance of the poll.

The new report on Afghanistan and Pakistan that I helped put together here at CNAS will have an entire section devoted to metrics for following the President's strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One thing, though, that I will be watching closely in the next 12 months will not so much be events in the FATA or NWFP but the frequency with which the urban areas of Punjab and Sindh are struck by attacks by militants. Yesterday's news, then, is all kinds of bad. Coordinated attacks? On cities across the country?

The attacks in the northwest followed an assault on a police building and intelligence agency office in the eastern city of Lahore on Wednesday that killed as many as 30 people. The Taliban asserted responsibility for that attack, and government officials were quick to blame the group for Thursday's attacks as well.

I missed this book review from the Sunday Washington Times on the U.S. Army's all-black Ranger unit during the Korean War. More on the unit can be found here.

Pity the Project on Middle East Democracy, a well-meaning group of young(ish) scholars and advocates dedicated to pressing U.S. policy in the Middle East to support for democratic reforms. They have a new paper on Egypt written by a longtime Egypt analyst which is probably worth the time of the president's staff in advance of his trip there. But I fear five years of neoconservatism (11 September 2001 - 14 August 2006) has tainted democracy promotion in the region for even the most thoughtful...

I made only my second trip to the Pentagon today to have lunch with General George Casey and about seven other defense policy wonks and a few journalists. I was probably the youngest guy in the room by 10 years, and I'm guessing the mean age was around 58. But true to form, that didn't stop me from asking my usual array of pesky questions.

The entire lunch was on the record, so I will write down what I wrote in my notes. A lot of the discussion had to do with force structure and the QDR -- as one would expect, given that Gen. Casey's role these days is running the U.S. Army as an institution. So my notes are not all-inclusive because I did not write down every question and answer. And apologies in advance to Gen. Casey's PAO team -- if I wrote something down incorrectly, write in and correct me.

Gen. Casey said his single biggest concern was the long-term health of the commissioned officer and non-commissioned officer corps.

He said his mission was four-fold:

1. Sustain soldiers and their families.
2. Prepare them for combat.
3. Reset the force upon return.
4. Transform the force.

He said the Army's challenge is also four-fold:

1. Win the wars we're in.
2. Train and support other nations and their militaries.
3. Embrace the full spectrum of combat.
4. Deter and defeat hybrid threats.

Gen. Casey said he is trying to move the U.S. Army toward a rotational force which -- by 2011 -- deploys its active duty units for one year and then brings them back for two years of dwell time.

That said, Gen. Casey said repeatedly -- and stressed repeatedly that this was his own estimate and not policy -- that he thought the U.S. Army would be engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan for at least the next decade.

Opening the floor to questions, people smarter than me asked about the budget and the QDR. I was more interested in current operations, so my ears perked up when Ralph Peters asked whether or not counterinsurgency warfare is causing younger officers to "lose their killer instinct." Gen. Casey responded by talking a little bit about how he has seen the pendulum swing from too kinetic to too non-kinetic and then back again but that he does not worry about the younger officers not knowing how to kill. He said he is "not worried about the long-term impact because it is a combat-seasoned force." Not unreasonably, he explained that his generation learned to "fight" at NTC and JRTC. This generation, by contrast, has learned to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I then asked him about Afghanistan. It is obviously difficult to carry out the same tactics in Afghanistan as we did in Iraq. Those urban patrol bases we used in Iraq, for example, do not translate into Dari. So we're left with a strategy that looks a lot like the one Gen. Casey tried to implement in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Does he look at Afghanistan and have worries about that theater based on his experiences in Iraq?

Gen. Casey responded that the similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan are two-fold:

1. They need a government that will be broadly representative of the population.
2. They need credible and effective security forces.

Gen. Casey worries, though, that we do not have nearly enough trainers on the ground in Afghanistan and that the police are falling way behind the Afghan Army in terms of its development. He also noted that he thought Afghanistan had no organization comparable to MNSTC-I. We have, simply, invested more in training Iraqi security forces than we have doing the same in Afghanistan.

I then asked if Gen. Casey was worried that his goal of 2:1 by 2011 might be endangered by events on the ground in Iraq. (What happens if Arab-Kurd relations flare up, I asked?) He said contingencies worried him, so I asked at what phase do U.S. forces in Iraq cease to be a decisive factor? Gen. Casey said he thought the residual force would be between 35,000-50,000 but that he honestly did not know if such a force would continue to be decisive. He said it would be a factor on the ground but did not know if it would be the decisive factor. (Obviously, this is Gen. Odierno's problem more than it is Gen. Casey's. I was just curious to hear his thoughts given his time in Iraq.)

Toward the end, someone asked about DADT and what the soldiers thought about gays in the military. He said it was a "mixed bag" but that all his evidence was anecdotal since the U.S. Army has not formally surveyed soldiers on the issue. I then asked what he thought about the State Department extending benefits toward same-sex partners and whether or not it was only a matter of time before the U.S. military followed suit. Gen. Casey responded that it was clearly the policy of the president to end DADT and that he and the U.S. Army would become engaged when and if the Congress and the president took action. (I don't know, maybe it's just me, but if I were the Chief of Staff, I would probably commission a study and surveys in advance of a request considered to be inevitable -- rather than wait to hear from Congress and then irk the president by taking my time on study and implementation.)

Finally, Gen. Casey talked a little about the strides made by Military Intelligence during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said, first of all, that the fusion cells had really had an impact. He then said that in contrast to before the war, commanders now understood how to train and use their S-2s and G-2s. A month in Kosovo, he said, had taught him more about intelligence than all his rotations to the NTC.

And then the lunch ended and we all shook hands with the general. And that's about it. Overall, Gen. Casey was candid and forthright. And the chicken caesar salad was nice as well.

I have a rule. As soon as someone invokes Nazi Germany to bolster their argument about anything (not related to genocide, of course), I stop reading. So if David Brooks said anything smart in the rest of this column, let me know.

These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II.

Dave Barry understood this way back in 1982:

*Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler.

This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly. Say: "That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler might say" or "You certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler."

Man, the speed with which the neo-cons can write! One day after the North Korean nuclear test, the Washington Post and the New York Times feature commentary from Robert Kagan and John Bolton, respectively. To be fair, Bolton's piece isn't about the North Korean test, but still, someone in the AEI public relations shop should get a medal.

Anyway, if you're looking for North Korea analysis, you would probably do better reading what my office mate has to say.

I can't be sure, of course, but I would guess my readership is pretty near the last group of U.S. readers on the internet who need to be reminded of this day and what it means. For our readers outside the United States, today is Memorial Day -- a day when we remember those who have fallen on the field of battle. Again, I suspect my readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, etc. are more likely to know men and women who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan than the average reader browsing espn.go.com to check out news from the NBA playoffs this morning.

Many thanks to all of our readers who have served the allied nations in combat, and especial thanks to those who have sacrificed in blood.

This morning, a few articles of note caught my eye. The first was this article on civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should we accord them the same honor we extend to servicemen?

But don't expect President Obama to remember or thank the contractor personnel who died supporting our troops or diplomatic missions. Instead, expect to see contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be portrayed as expendable profiteers, adventure seekers or marginalized members of society who are not entitled to the same respect or value given to members of the military.

While I agree that contractors are often subjected to cartoonish stereotypes like the ones mentioned above, I respectfully disagree on the question of whether or not they should be accorded the same respect given to our fallen servicemen. Contractors are active not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but all over the world in environments where the U.S. military is not present. They often work for large, transnational corporations which negotiate contracts to provide certain services and then reimburse their workers with financial incentives in league with the difficulty and danger of those services. While contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan may be great patriots (and are often veterans themselves), they find themselves conducting operations there and elsewhere working for for-profit corperations. That's a lot different than a kid in 2-22nd Infantry on patrol in Paktia Province or wherever. So, sorry -- circumstances matter. And while the U.S. military cannot do its job without the support -- especially the logistical and engineering support -- provided by expeditionary contractors like KBR and Bechtel, those individual contractors should not be honored in the same way we honor our nation's fallen soldiers and sailors.

Second, Paul Farnan has a nice apology (in the classical sense of the word) for General David McKiernan:

Over the past year, I have seen our focus in Afghanistan shift from kinetic military operations to one of engaging the population, building the capacity of the Afghan government, and ensuring that the military's top priority is the training and mentoring of the Afghan army and police. Integrated strategic planning with the United Nations and the Afghan government is now the rule rather than the exception, as it was when McKiernan arrived last June. The general has traveled around the country and has held countless forums, known as shuras, with Afghans in various localities. He has engaged local and provincial leaders one on one to hear their concerns and ensure that they understood the intentions of the international coalition. All of our Special Forces operations combined cannot win the support of the Afghan people the way these shuras do. [AM: And to whom is that remark directed toward?] ...

This struggle is not about killing insurgents. We have killed more insurgents than we can count over the past seven years and have moved no closer to victory by doing so. This struggle is about the Afghan population. Afghans must believe that their government will provide them greater security and opportunity for prosperity than the insurgency will. We are not naive; we know that military operations must continue and that some people must be killed -- but under McKiernan a more holistic approach to winning the peace has been our focus.

This is great, if it is true, and I have no reason not to believe Mr. Farnan. As my readership has heard me say on this blog and on various mainstream media, a perception had grown that McKiernan did not "get" counterinsurgency warfare. This may be unfair. And again, as I said on NPR and the Rachel Maddow Show and elsewhere, it appears as if General McKiernan was not so much a bad general -- he actually seems to have been quite competent -- as just not the right guy for the specific job. Or maybe not the guy that Secretary Gates and General Petraeus felt would either win the war as fast as they needed to see progress toward that end or with whom they did not feel as comfortable working as with General McChrystal. I don't know. But I do know this: as excited as I was and am to see a real sense of urgency about Afghanistan, and as excited I was to see a certain ruthlessness in President Obama, Secretary Gates, and General Petraeus, I also have a tinge of sadness: General McKiernan was hard done by, and I think the U.S. Army officer corps and most commenters recognize that unless he was guilty of some kind of insubordination we do not know about, then his relief could have been handled in classier way by all parties.

Hard to parse the words here, but I believe the U.S. military leadership will continue to vigorously resist an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear weapons program.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you just said that you believe that a nuclear Iran would be calamitous for the region. But last year, Sy Hersh in the "New Yorker" reported that you pushed back very hard against any notion of a military strike during President Bush's administration. And you've spoken publicly about the unintended consequences of a military strike by Israel. So what worries you more? A nuclear Iran or war with Iran?

MULLEN: Well, they both worry me a lot. And I think the unintended consequences of a strike against Iran right now would be incredibly serious. As well as the unintended consequences of their achieving a nuclear weapon.

And so that's why this engagement in dialogue is so important. I think we should do that with all options on the table. As we approach them.

And so that leaves a pretty narrow space in which to achieve a successful dialogue and a successful outcome, which from my perspective means they don't end up with nuclear weapons.

Mia Bloom:

But the Tigers' legacy remains intact. Their perfection of suicide bombings, their recruitment of women and children, their innovation in IEDs, have been emulated by other terrorist groups worldwide, from al-Qaeda to Hezbollah. Though they considered themselves superior to jihadi terrorists -- who regularly target civilians -- the Tigers opened the door to terrorism as a strategy of liberation and resistance to an unwanted government or occupying force. And they reached a standard of deadly efficiency envied by U.S. enemies and terrorists around the globe. ...

Over more than three decades, the LTTE perfected suicide terrorism by loading all sorts of vehicles with explosives: cars, boats and even bicycles. They devoted a unit especially to suicide bombing, recruited cadres of child soldiers known as "baby tigers" and launched a women's unit commanded by women. They attacked the government by air and by sea and used operatives who defied terrorist profiling. ...

The LTTE's improvised explosive devices (IEDs) set the industry standard. Using a combination of military-grade explosive packed with ball bearings that performed like buckshot, the belts were far more deadly and effective than anything used by jihadi terrorist groups or suicide bombers in the Middle East and elsewhere. When al-Qaeda made inquiries in 2001 into whether the group would share its advanced technology and IED blueprints, it was told in no uncertain terms, as my sources said, "No, we don't want to kill Americans." The leaders whom I interviewed in December 2002, all dead now, looked down on Islamic suicide bombers. "We don't go after kids in Pizza Hut," one high-ranking Tiger leader told me in a clear reference to Hamas's 2001 Sbarro attack in Jerusalem, which killed 15 civilians (including six children) and wounded 130. ...

To counter the Tigers, the government implemented a policy of targeted assassination and did it with amazing accuracy. And though they did kill off the entire LTTE leadership in the end, Sri Lanka would do well to keep in mind that in other parts of the world, killing the leadership simply radicalizes the next generation and does not resolve the conflict. [emphasis added]