Center for a New American Security

As regular readers know, I read the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times every morning because I secretly find the world of finance to be as fascinating as defense policy. And every once in a while, something I read in the business pages has relevance to what is discussed on this blog.

As people smarter than me have already pointed out, it does not appear the SEC has much of a case against Goldman Sachs. The investigation into potential wrong-doing, though, has shed a less than flattering light on Goldman's organizational culture and business practices. And something I read on Page C5 of the Journal this morning struck me.

On Saturday, Goldman released batches of emails by Mr. Tourre to girlfriends that revealed doubts about some mortgage securities issued by the company and an occasionally dismissive attitude toward the investors buying them.

 

Goldman also released translations of portions of emails that originally were in French, including some messages with details about Mr. Tourre's personal life.

 

The scope of the released documents led to widespread speculation that Goldman was seeking to make more-senior executives who also are caught in an uncomfortable political and public-relations spotlight look better by comparison to the 31-year-old trader.

This is the kind of thing that makes me thank the Lord that I go to work every morning and answer to a retired U.S. Army officer and a former Marine Corps officer as my supervisors. Because I know that neither John nor Nate will ever throw me under the bus in the way that it appears some of Goldman's executives are throwing this French bond trader under the bus. In fact, on multiple occassions over the past year, I have either offended someone or written something outrageous on this blog, and John and Nate have had my back every time, earning my loyalty in the process. Where did they learn to protect their subordinates? 

The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, of course. It's true that we have all seen field grade officers allow a junior officer to take the fall for something, and I know some guys at Goldman who seem to be top-flight men of character. (Some of them, not surprisingly, are former military officers themselves.) But reading this article in the Journal this morning made my stomach turn on the Green Line into work, because it goes completely against the ethic we learned as young officers. Protect and mentor your subordinates. They will, in turn, reward you with their loyalty and hard work. This is smart advice that applies as equally to business as it does to military organizations, and you wonder if management at Goldman couldn't use some remedial training from the gang at MCB Quantico.

Oh, the story of the dude who showed up at his high school reunion and told everyone he was a highly decorated Marine... Yeah, that's a crime now, bud. I'm sure the readership has some opinions on this one.

Some important weekend reading courtesy of the NYT.

Nicholas Schmidle's portrait of violent extremism in the maghreb pretty much nails it as far as Londonstani is concerned. The six-page article is worth reading if you want to put a personality to the image of a young jihadi, and get a taste of where the "al Qaeda business model" might be going.

Schmidle has pieced together the back story to one young fighter, Sidi Ould Sidna, a young Mauritanian, charged with killing four French tourists in the town of Aleg.

"'Sidi wasn’t a thief, because thieves rob you and run,' one childhood friend told me. 'Sidi took your watch or your T-shirt right in front of you.' By his midteens, Sidna was smoking hashish, drinking wine and hanging out with an older crowd. He liked to dance and earned the nickname Lambada. Besides robbing people, he also stole cars. Friends and law-enforcement authorities claim that he was involved in multiple rapes."

Nearing 20, young Sidi decided to give the straight and narrow a try and enrolled in an "Islamic seminary", where he acquired a taste for Jihadist propaganda.

'"'Why Zarqawi?' I asked the friend who took Sidna to the mahadra. 'What made his sermons appealing?'"

"'Everyone in the Muslim world wants to see American tanks blown up and their troops killed,' he said. 'But bin Laden and Zarqawi were the only ones actually doing it. Sidna admired them for that.'"

You'd think that the ability to recruit from amongst the criminal underclass would be a great asset if you were Osama Bin Laden. But it's actually one of his greatest headaches. Reading Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, it's clear that the Holy Grail is a popular Muslim uprising against Western control. The key word for them is "popular". They see themselves as a catalyst to achieving this goal. What Ayman al Zawahiri, and other ideologues before him, like Abdullah Azzam, have repeatedly cautioned against is the "bloodlust" of the Algerian type that has lost them the popular support they crave.

It's like a self destruct mechanism built into the takfeeri Jihadi life cycle. To tap into the rich vein of anger and frustration across the Muslim world that would like to see "American tanks blown up and their troops killed", you have to militarily take on the Americans. When you start making gains, you are yourself attacked - which damages your control mechanisms - and your access to funds and recruits is choked off. You've now created a counterculture of death and destruction; and who's turned on by this? Criminals looking for a sanctified outlet for the kind of thing they like to do anyway. So now you are stuck with a talent pool of also rans. And when you get really unlucky, this bunch of miscreants - to borrow a cool word - alienate the very people you are trying to whip up.

Schmidle argues that this inherent weakness comes part and parcel of Osama bin Laden's business model; the franchise.

Now, Londonstani agrees that al Qaeda seems to find itself at a bit of an impasse. But that doesn't mean everyone can happily relax. If anything, al Qaeda has proved its resilience and adaptability. It has also shown that it can prosper by allowing itself to run with events instead of obsessing about controlling them. So, yes, the organisation has hit a bit of a brick wall with its present strategy, but that doesn't mean it can't change that pretty quickly.

After all, what's happening in Pakistan seems to have little command and control direction from al Qaeda, but the US invasion of Afghanistan did trigger a chain of events that now threatens the Pakistani government. There's the risk that Somalia and Yemen could head in a similar direction. Admittedly, this wasn't top of al Qaeda's wish list, but it'll probably do; for now.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. From the VQR, some excerpts:

An Army of One: soldiers who dump their girlfriends/boyfriends right before an overseas deployment ostensibly to spare them the pain of long-term separation. Also The Cult of Aloneness.

Combat Corporate: personal style pioneered by L. Paul Bremer, now favored by civilian Green Zone denizens who wish to appear to be in touch with the troops. Look includes power tie, pressed button-down shirt, chinos, and standard-issue desert combat boots. In a further attempt to manifest solidarity with the troops, combat corporateers will go so far as to sunbathe in order to foster a field-savvy appearance. Adherents are sometimes referred to as Fashion-Forward Fobbits.

Deployment Snobbery: condition common to soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division, who have been deployed overseas longer than any other unit in the army. Symptoms include insensitivity to the plight of others who haven’t been in Iraq or Afghanistan as long as your unit. Related to (but not as pernicious as) KIA Snobbery.

Operational Electioneering: practice of halting or slowing military operations to coincide with upcoming stateside elections in the hope that the resultant drop in casualties will have a desirable political impact at home, e.g. Operation Phantom Fury, the second assault on the city of Fallujah, an operation that had been planned months prior but was launched a mere five days after the 2004 presidential election which resulted in the re-election of George W. Bush. Also Casualty Manipulation.

Q’uran-o-centrism: obsessive reading of the Q’uran by combat troops in the futile hope that it will help explain the larger situation in Iraq, e.g. “After my first firefight I emailed my Mom and told her to send me a copy of the Yusuf Ali translation. I just want to understand how these people think.”

Really, Thomas P.M. Barnett? Because the consensus over here at Abu Muqawama is that if one of us had written a piece in Esquire that had helped end a good man's career, we might have at least something to say in either defense of ourselves or of Admiral Fallon. But maybe we're just old-fashioned or crazy or something.

Update: An alert reader points out that Barnett has responded to questions from his own readers in this post.

Folks, there is a great article in the American Scholar on Francis Lieber, the Prussian émigré who wrote America's first code of conduct during the Civil War.

During the hot and desperate summer of 1862, a senior American commander found himself consumed with the question of insurgents. Major General Henry Halleck had become general-in-chief of the Union armies in July of that year, and he soon discovered that the army had no laws or regulations to govern its contacts with the bands of irregular Southern forces in the field. A lawyer by training, Halleck found the absence of guidance maddening. Union troops were encountering an array of rebel forces, some uniformed, some not. “The rebel authorities claim the right to send men, in the garb of peaceful citizens, to waylay and attack our troops, to burn bridges and houses and to destroy property and persons within our lines,” Halleck vented in a letter sent on August 6.

Halleck’s correspondent was eager to help. Francis Lieber (1798–1872) was then a professor of history at Columbia College. A Prussian immigrant, he was a military veteran who had recently devoted himself to studying the conduct of war. What’s more, he was a passionate supporter of the Union cause and was keenly ambitious to influence national policy. Less than a year after that first exchange, a short paper Lieber wrote for the general on how international law regards insurgents and guerrillas had blossomed into America’s first code regulating the conduct of its army in warfare.

“Lieber’s Code,” as it soon became known, was widely disseminated, and it deeply influenced the later Hague and Geneva conventions. It is no exaggeration to say that this émigré professor with longstanding connections to the Southern aristocracy made one of the most substantial contributions to the modern law of war. Lieber was acutely aware of the novelty of his project. “It is an honor of the United States that they have attempted, first of all nations, to settle and publish such a code,” he wrote to Halleck.

The code achieved its stature with remarkable speed. Lieber completed the text in March 1863, and it was cursorily reviewed by a panel of generals and quickly approved by President Lincoln. Dispatched to military commanders in May 1863 as General Orders No. 100, it circulated through the army ranks and within a few years had been lauded by a United States Supreme Court Justice as an authoritative expression of the law of war.

Interestingly, Lieber was not in favor of extending rights to insurgents and guerrillas:

Lieber’s good will did not extend to the guerrillas and insurgents that bedeviled Halleck. Those Southerners who engaged in hit-and-run attacks on Union forces and then blended back into civilian life could be treated like “highway robbers or pirates,” he wrote. They deserved none of the benefits of prisoners of war, and they could be summarily executed. Guerrillas, he wrote in his pamphlet on the subject to Halleck, “are peculiarly dangerous, because they easily evade pursuit, and by laying down their arms become insidious enemies; because they cannot otherwise subsist than by rapine, and almost always degenerate into simple robbers or brigands.”

That wouldn't pass in the days of Human Rights Watch and FM 3-24. But the main point -- and enduring lesson -- of Lieber's code was this:

As warfare evolves, then, and as conflicts develop, ethicists and regulators must struggle to keep pace: holding the line where they can, ceding ground where they must.

Please read this article if and when you have the chance. All those interested in the laws of war will find it fascinating.

As AM and Charlie both travel over the weekend, here are a few articles to keep you busy:

• Secretary Gates continues his push for "soft power." Can he be dual-hatted at both State and Defense? He might be the only member of this cabinet who ever believed State was useful.
• Sean McFate describes the unique nature of the new Africa Command (AFRICOM). If CENTCOM was designed to be "joint" from the bottom-up, AFRICOM is intended to be "interagency" in the same way. (Sean has extensive experience training and working with African armies; his take is worth listening to.)
• COL Michael Coss details the successes of CJTF-76 in Afghanistan in 2006. Charlie hasn't had a chance to read through this yet, but she'd love to hear from any readers with direct experience.

More to read here. And keep up the good work in the comments section on the Bhutto post. Great discussion going on there.

There has been some discussion in the comments over officer promotions about the requirement that all officers seeking promotion to general officer serve in a joint or "purple" billet first. Abu Muqawama got some clarification on this rule from an Army O-6 a few weeks ago: Yes, the law is in place, and yes, it has held up the promotions of some good officers, H.R. McMaster among them. But there is now a system in place whereby officers can apply for a waiver, and apparently, last year most of the officers who applied for waivers received them. So we'll see what happens in the next promotion board...

Update: Charlie, here. The waivers actually aren't new (they've always been available); it's the ability to accumulate "joint points" throughout one's career without doing the 22 month purple billet that's new. As for COL McMaster, he shouldn't have to apply for a waiver as he's currently getting "joint-qualified" at IISS (unless he's still on GEN Petraeus' staff in Baghdad).

Some weekend reading for all you counterinsurgents out there:

1. Andrew Exum, on what military professionals can learn from Hizbollah. (Middle East Strategy at Harvard)

Tactically, Hezbollah’s performance throughout the 1990s and in the 2006 war raises three red flags for U.S. military professionals. Unlike most other Arab armies since 1948, Hezbollah demonstrates a high proficiency in the maintenance and employment of its weapons systems, Hezbollah performs well in small-unit light infantry operations, and Hezbollah uses a decentralized command structure that allows its subordinate leaders to exercise a high degree of initiative on the battlefield.

2. General Barry R McCaffrey, Iraq After Action Review. (Small Wars Journal) This has been up for a few days, but we have not yet linked to it. There are some good, no-nonsense observations here, and Abu Muqawama will leave it up to you the reader as to what you make of the recommendations at the end. Note you can access the entire .pdf file through a link at SWJ.

3. The Washington Post on Veterans' Care.

NOTHING WILL ever be able to absolve this country for the disgraceful way it has treated its returning war wounded. Congress, though, took a big step in making amends with final approval of legislation aimed at fixing and upgrading the military health-care system. Expected enactment of the measure, along with the installation of a new secretary of veterans affairs, are important developments in righting the wrongs against America's soldiers.

We all know that fighting insurgencies is exhausting work. Almost five years into the Iraq War, more and more soldiers are "burning out" and leaving the Army. (58% of the West Point Class of 2002 elected to leave active duty after completing their minimum service requirement.*) What to do? Retired British Army Colonel Tim Collins has an idea: encourage soldiers to take a year off.

Abu Muqawama cannot say this is a bad idea, though it would wreak havoc on personnel systems. U.S. Army officers, though, should be able to do this anyway. They should be able to leave the service, take 12 to 24 months off (go to graduate school, work for a congressman, smoke pot on a beach in the Sinai, whatever) and then re-enter the military. Junior officers could do this just prior to the advanced course, and it wouldn't even hurt their career time lines too much, would it? They would just jump into a different year group upon their return to active duty, right?

Hugh Shelton, actually, did this. He had a break in service after Vietnam. And it sure didn't hurt his career.

*In an earlier version of this post, Abu Muqawama quoted the attrition rate among YG 2002 USMA graduates as 48%. He was wrong, and had remembered incorrectly -- and too optimistically. The correct percentage is a galling 58%. By way of comparison, the attrition rates in YG 2001 and YG 2000 were 46% and 35%, respectively.

This looks great, though. Seriously. afghanistanica has more...