A Walk In the Sun

Dean Jorge Bocobo describes how a massive force of cops unsuccessfully attempted to serve 130 arrest warrants "for suspects in the ambush killing, torture and beheadings of 14 Philippine Marines" by the Abu Sayyaf and its allies. It's black comedy in the inimitable Philippine fashion.

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Aside from "old women and young boys" the crime scene was said to be deserted except of course for the elements of Malacanang's newly formed tripartite investigating committee ... who were there ahead of the police and waving them off to go back home...they need 24 more hours to tie up the loose ends of their own "independent fact finding" committee, which investigation started last Friday after the President's command conference with them in Zamboanga, far, far away.

Just behead me already!

Meanwhile, Dr. Nando Barandino, medico-legal expert of the PNP in Basilan, and a former captive of the Abu Sayyaf, reports that at least two of the fourteen dead Marines showed signs of torture before they were beheaded during the autopsy he performed on them. He makes the strongest case for an end to this savagery, by recalling the sad recent history of decapitation on Basilan.

The First Information Revolution

Also featured developers, tech support and users. Here's tech support in the Middle Ages. (Hat tip: Neo-neocon)

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Mashups

The release of Facebook API has unleashed a torrent of efforts to build applications which leverage it's social resources. "Since the launch of Facebook Platform in May, more than 2,000 applications have been made available on Facebook."

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"Facebook is now a social operating system," says Salil Deshpande, a partner at Bay Partners, which is funding Facebook application developers through its AppFactory program. "There are going to be applications on top of [this and other] social platforms that we can't imagine yet," he says. Although so far many of the applications developed are simple, developers can use their access to the Facebook network to make heavily personalized applications that draw information from the activities of a given user's friends.

Of course, part of the reason for the explosive growth in the creation of these applications is that their target audience is, by its nature, viral and active. Facebook is made up of 30 million users who have frequent and meaningful contact with each other. When a user likes an application, she invites her friends, and these friends invite their friends in turn. The result is that an application can grow exponentially in popularity.

Yep, it ain't the 20th century any more.

The Rise of Chaos, the Rise of Counter-chaos

Daniel Deudney of Johns Hopkins discusses "omniviolence" in the post-9/11 world at Blogging Heads TV. Academia discovers the Three Conjectures and many of the themes that have been discussed on this site independently. Of course the Three Conjectures itself is hardly original, but it's useful as a starting point for discussing why 9/11 showed we were potentially headed for an unstable situation and why it was important to get a grip on it. In my view the War on Terror was necessary if only because a solution to the instability had to be found, even by trial and error. That was better than not trying at all. Dr. Deudney makes the same point about instability via a slightly different route. I think that's good news because it makes thinking about these issues legitimate and may attract first-class minds to focus on the problem in much the same way that Herman Kahn and Tom Schelling focused on the nuclear deterrence problem. It's astounding now to realize that for a long time after Hiroshima nobody knew how to rigorously think about the nuclear age until people like Kahn and Schelling articulated a framework in which nukes could be understood. Six years after 9/11 people are finally beginning to think scientifically about emergent forces in the 21st century world. Finally there's a chance for Presidential candidates to get advice that isn't rooted in the 20th century.

However, I think Deudney, in suggesting that more regulation and world government are necessary to contain chaos, misses the critical importance of counter-mobilizing other emergent trends to combat the subnational forces which he correctly sees as inheriting large parts of the post-Cold War world. While there is certainly room for government action and a new international framework to replace the creaky institutions founded after the Second World War, I will argue that big, institutional solutions are not enough. You might argue that Petraeus key insight in Iraq was to understand that MNF-I had to become viral in order to attain victory. Big institutional solutions were not enough in Iraq and they will not be enough on a global scale. The very same forces -- technology, self-organizations, memetic evolution, etc -- at the metabolic root of terrorism are also at the basis of creative, civilizing forces which can be glimpsed over the Internet. That's good news because it means that the very trends which fuel al-Qaeda also fuel its nemesis. And harnessing those forces, I think, is the part of the solution, which insofar as I can see on Blogging Heads TV, Daniel Deudney fails to emphasize.

Nothing follows.

Laying a Golden Egg

Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post say that a positive report from Iraq might split the Democrat Congress "and impede ... efforts to press for a timetable to end the war".

[House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)]Clyburn noted that Petraeus carries significant weight among the 47 members of the Blue Dog caucus in the House, a group of moderate to conservative Democrats. Without their support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal. ...

Many Democrats have anticipated that, at best, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would present a mixed analysis of the success of the current troop surge strategy, given continued violence in Baghdad. But of late there have been signs that the commander of U.S. forces might be preparing something more generally positive. Clyburn said that would be "a real big problem for us." ...

Clyburn also address the reasons behind declining approval ratings for Congress, which spiked earlier in the year when Democrats took over the House and Senate. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed just 37 percent approving of the performance of Congress.

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The Washington Post story is a sad example of how events are politicized. In a complex event like a military campaign, there will be ups and downs, good days and bad days. New enemies may join the conflict. Others may drop out. Fortune and technological discovery can change the course of events. During the Second World War, Stalin was once Hitler's ally; then later his most implacable foe. Up until 1942 the Second World War went one way and after that it went another. But if Germany had developed the Atomic Bomb first it may have gone yet another. Nothing was "official" until V-J Day. But in Washington DC nothing has a life apart from the official partisan view. Not even the sun shines. Instead it is assigned a shadow existence, fitted into a narrative, and tortured into a Procrustean bed of arbitrary political specification.

The US campaign in Iraq is probably one of the most complex campaigns in military history. It is an event fundamentally unsuited to facile political characterization. And I am afraid that, if General Petraeus' efforts meet with some success, what was officially a "bad" war -- after first having been a "good war" -- will become a "good war" again, as politicians anxiously reposition themselves according to the latest polls. Iraq will become, whatever it is, exactly what the politicians want it to be. And that's bad. Because the one thing that Gen Petraeus is doing right -- if he is doing anything right at all -- is adapting; moving through the OODA loop faster than his enemies and unfettered by restricting shibboleths and doctrinal dogma. Success is based on seeing things as they are as opposed to viewing them through political lenses. In some sense you have to see things different from Washington to have a snowball's chance in Hell.

While Democrat support for creating political reform in the Muslim world, starting with Iraq would be welcome, however reluctant, it would be still more welcome if it were based on a sound assessment of the situation rather than politics. Much has been written about foreign quagmires. But perhaps the mother of all bogs is the really the domestic slough of talking points which clutch at our faculties in so many constricting ways. On both sides of the political aisle.

Flexibility and quickness in both kinetic and information warfare is probably behind much of recent successes in Iraq. Let's not kill the goose that laid the Golden Egg.

An NYT article on Iraq

Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, both fellows at the Brookings Institution, argue in a New York Times entitled "A War We Just Might Win" that the war in Iraq is being won.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with. ...

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

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What factors made the difference? The first is a successful campaign of political warfare: connecting the Coalition's objectives with improvements in the daily lives of the people.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

Second is the availability of Iraqi military units of reasonable quality.

All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark. But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.

Of course these Iraqi units did not spring into existence over night. They are the cumulative result of years of sustained effort. Even the removal of Iraqi deadwood grew from a process of weeding out the failures. Without diminishing the achievements of the current group of commanders the situation in Iraq must reflect both the mistakes and the solid accomplishments of those who came before.

In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

Interestingly, al-Qaeda chose to make Iraq its decisive arena of confrontation with the United States. The US came to Iraq primarily to topple Saddam Hussein and remove one "state sponsor of terrorism" but it was Al-Qaeda that rushed in to stake its reputation there. A networked insurgency with followers in many Muslim countries could have chosen to attack America elsewhere. But instead it decided to focus its efforts on driving the US from Iraq. For that purpose its leadership established al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and funneled recruits into it from all over the world. This force was tasked with the explicit political goal of creating a Islamic Caliphate that would provide a prototype for a future Islamic state after the hated Americans had been driven out. Therefore much of the post-Saddam violence was probably the consequence of al-Qaeda's decision to flood all the resources of world terrorism into Iraq. Clearly Zarqawi's clear intention from the Samarra mosque bombing onward was to incite as much violence as he could. Given that al-Qaeda made Iraq the center of its global efforts, O’Hanlon and Pollack's admiration of MNF-I's decision to focus against it seems perplexing. Surely Petraeus had no alternative? Surely he was simply picking up the gauntlet? But that would not quite be true. Through much of 2005 and 2006 a variety of lines were suggested. Some argued that the US should lash out against Syria or Iran for allowing "militants" to transit their borders. Some believed Shi'a militias should be the primary target operations. Until recently many argued -- and still argue -- that al-Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq at all; so how could MNF-I focus against what was not there? So while taking on al-Qaeda now seems the obvious choice, in retrospect there were many other candidates vying for the title of Center of Gravity. Those bad guys still remain, but MNF-I saw al-Qaeda in Iraq as the key to the position and that choice, according to O’Hanlon and Pollack, appears to be the right one.

Time will tell. But if focusing on al-Qaeda in Iraq is the right choice the most interesting question is why. My own guess is that by attacking al-Qaeda, the US took engaged not only the most fanatical force in Iraq but the one with the most powerful narrative. And by shrewdly matching kinetic warfare with political warfare, organizing the victims of al-Qaeda's depredations, it brought the myth down to earth. As long as al-Qaeda remained an "idea" it might be regarded as invincible, a mystical will o' the wisp. But once this mystical force was forced to materialize in Iraq, it became embodied in the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his henchmen, who, viewed up close, turned out to be nothing more than brutal gangsters of the lowest and most sadistic type instead of latter day Companions of the Prophet. Even Zawahiri, despite his pretensions to refinement, could not avoid discrediting himself as he proved unable to resist threatening to gouge people's eyes out if they did not follow his bidding. It is said that no man is a hero to his own valet. Familiarity with the genuine article brought disillusionment, contempt and finally hatred for al-Qaeda.

And without the romantic mantle of apocalyptic Islamism to puff them up, both Syria and Iran would shrink to the third-rate powers that they truly are. In choosing al-Qaeda as its focus, MNF-I indirectly weakened both Teheran and Damascus in ways that both were powerless to counter. None of this has been completely achieved yet. But as O’Hanlon and Pollack state, Iraq while not yet won is getting better. And if the process continues much will be accomplished if al-Qaeda can be defeated in Iraq; their image tarnished beyond repair and their narrative shown to be a pack of lies. The New York Times article concludes "there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008." Yes, but to some degree it misses the point. What is happening on the battlefield is changing perceptions in Iraq and perhaps throughout the region. Ironically, the US Armed Forces may now know much better than the press that operations go beyond body counts. But whenever US forces are withdrawn the information war must go on. Because the one great probability in the Middle East is that each failed creed gives rise to a new one. The same Six Day War which discredited Nasserism simultaneously launched its successor movement. Radical Islamism harnessed the tide of disillusionment and redirected it to its purposes. And as Al-Qaeda falls in esteem in the Muslim world from its post-September 11 halcyon days, other ideologues will probably attempt to fashion a new movement based on its carcass. That's why the information war should go on until politics in the Middle East is transformed from a sequence of messianic movements to practical endeavor. Until then the victories on Iraq's battlefields will be temporary.

An Surge in the Soccer Field

"Younis Mahmoud headed home his fourth goal of the tournament as Iraq secured a memorable 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium on Sunday to win the AFC Asian Cup," according to the AFC website. Sometimes sports are easier to follow than diplomacy or politics. You can understand how and why a soccer team wins a game. It's harder to see the reason for selling a whole bunch of high-tech weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Nothing follows.

Making it up as you go along

The Educated Soldier recalls the calm days after the fall of Baghdad.

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The level of calm that immediately followed the downfall of the Baathist regime in Baghdad was remarkable. It now seems asinine to suggest that the following events occurred, but they did. My unit used to travel to city center Baghdad, abandon our Humvees but to a couple rotating guards, drop all of our protective gear, enter restaurants and eat full-service meals. Imagine this: I used to travel to this same area of the city and receive a haircut from an Iraqi barber who would wield a straight-edged blade without so much of a raised eyebrow from my compatriots. There was even an instance that our Humvee, by its lonesome, left the Baghdad International Airport after escorting an official and traversed the streets of Baghdad in search of pirated DVDs. Occasionally, I will tell stories of complacency, of soldiers asleep while behind the gun atop a Humvee, that occurred during this period and then wonder how I ever let one partake in such lazy and dangerous activity. And then it occurs to me that this sort of activity was a product of the environment that we then knew. ...

So this raises many questions that I have yet to hear quality answers. The answers lack, in part, because this is now a forgotten part of Iraq history. But this soldier, nonetheless, wonders, “What happened?” There was a notable period of time in Iraq between the fall of the government in Baghdad and the beginning of the greater insurgency conflict as we now understand it, which was void of violence. Why was this? Did the “bag guys” really need a month to two to regroup and retaliate? Or was it the case that, during this two month gap, combatants from outside the country were being filtered in?

I have no good answers. I hope, however, that by continuing to spread the experiences that I remember, some may come to pass. And, hopefully, these answers can go a long way in helping us understand the enemy that we currently face.

My own guess is that the subsequent violence was the result of two things. As soon as Saddam fell, forces opposed to the US began to plan and execute their riposte with remarkable speed. Ex-regime elements, Islamists etc. began to make their move. In contrast, the Coalition was unable to both take control of the post-Saddam situation and respond to enemy countermoves. There followed a period in which the Coalition was forced on the defensive all across Iraq. And that continued until the Coalition was eventually able to learn, adapt and regain some initiative.

The stories related by the Educated Soldier illustrate the lack of continuity in the script. Having defeated the Iraqi Army, the idea was that it was "over". In retrospect things had only just begun. But not only was the force mentally unprepared for what came next, it was physically and organizationally unready. There were inadequate numbers of interpreters; I suspect that intelligence networks were underdeveloped; probably most importantly, the force was unfamiliar with Iraq. When the trouble began, much of the attention focused on the "armor" gap. The striking difference between 2003 and 2007 is not the lack of steel plate on the Humvees -- something which obsessed the media for a long time -- but the difference in attitude and doctrine between that era and Gen Petraeus' force.

The fateful decision of Paul Bremer to dismantle Saddam's Army may have saved Iraq from a continuation of the fallen regime under other color; it might have avoided a Shi'ite insurgency that may have developed in response; it might had many things to commend it in the long run. But off-handedly dismantling the ancien regime without the Coalition capability to take up the slack meant that for some years it would be operating in a debatable void. It was as if the forces on the ground had to jump out of an airplane without a parachute and only a bale of silk from which they were expected to knit their own as they plummeted through the air and hopefully finish before they hit the ground. Policy makers may not have been aware they were doing it, but therein lies a tale.

Yet fundamentally, I don't know the answer to Educated Soldier's questions. And apart from the few facile speculations I've sketched out it remains a stark and valid challenge, not simply to historians, but to operators and policy makers. The parachute isn't finished yet.

All Thumbs

Meet Robert Bernocco, an IT professional who decided to write a 384 page book on his cell phone as he commuted to and from work. "Bernocco would type out a few short paragraphs, save them on the phone, then transfer them to his computer at home. He kept the master file, and did most of his proofreading and editing, on this machine, but we're still amazed that he could crank out all of that material using only his thumbs."

Life will shine through. One of the most amazing acts of authorship must be that of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

On December 8 1995, Elle magazine editor-in-chief Bauby suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye. Bauby had Locked-in-Syndrome, a rare condition caused by stroke damage to the brain stem. Eye movements and blinking a code representing letters of the alphabet became his sole means of communication. It is also how he dictated this warm, sad, and extraordinary memoir. Bauby's thoughts on the illness, the hospital, family, friends, career, and life before and after the stroke appear with considerable humor and humanity.

Bauby died two days after the publication of his book.

Nothing follows.

The "Invisible Men" Seen Naked

There's outrage in the Gulf over naked workers walking in public view. The Secret Dubai Diary says, "accompanied by what must be the least effectively pixellated photo in the history of digital imaging, Gulf News reports that a Dubai labour camp has become "a virtual nudist colony" due to the summer heat."

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One commenter at the Gulf News site writes:

I don't think most people who are commenting on this article realize what type of harsh conditions these labourers work in. They are not fed well, they share there accommodation with a minimum of ten other people in a cramped room with barely any comfort. Most people who live in Dubai are living in a bubble of wealth driving their Ferraris and Porsches and living in grand style with there executive salaries. I used to work as a consultant for a major contractor that helped develop some prime real estate in the Dubai Marina area; I have seen what type of abuse these labourers go through daily. They barely get fed a proper meal twice daily if they are lucky and work under the sun for a minimum of ten hours at least six days a week. If they are lucky they make maybe around three hundred dollars a month. If they are walking around naked they are doing so at the labour camps which are 100 per cent filled with expat labourers comprised of mostly Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani men who pay a lot of money to come to Dubai only to find cheated and have no choice to work to pay off their debt to the scamming recruiting agencies. People in the UAE need to wake up and have a look around at what is really going on in there country.

Saleem
California,USA

While the immigration debate in the US focuses on whether illegal aliens should be allowed to send their children to school and avail of social services, the plight of the vast torrent of expatriate workers from poor countries in the Middle East is virtually ignored. They are today's invisible men. Some reckon that expatriates make up half the entire labor force of Saudi Arabia. While some expatriates, typically those with American or Western passports, make up the highly paid upper tier of the labor force and live in splendid conditions, at the lower end workers live exactly as Saleem described them. Its a world of hidden from view where the inhabitants must make shift as best they can. They even worship in secret. Parts of the Vicariate of Arabia -- perhaps millions of Christians -- must survive in a virtual underground church in a place where no religion but Islam is allowed.

And in some ways, people like Saleem are far more outspoken in their criticism of the system than so-called humanitarians in the West, who will provide every legal courtesy to suspects in Guantanamo Bay, but remain indifferent, if not ignorant of men who must work stripped down to their skin in order to remit a pittance back to their families at home.

They are the invisible men, but unlike the character of Wells, only excite attention when they're not wearing clothes.

Wolf in Sheik's Clothing

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tells the Marine Corps association about his most embarrassing moment -- it has to do with Nixon, the Pope and a cigar -- then moves to a more serious topic: what America is doing right and needs to do better, in the War on Terror. First the cigar. It seems that Henry Kissinger tried to keep Melvin Laird from attending a meeting between Richard Nixon and Pope Paul VI. But Laird showed up anyway smoking a cigar. Kissinger was furious but contented himself by saying "Well, Mel, at least extinguish the cigar." Laird stubbed out his cigar and put it in his pocket. You can guess what happened next.

The American party a few minutes later went in to their general meeting with the pope. Pope was seated at a little table in front, Americans in two rows of high-backed chairs. Back row, Kissinger on the end; Laird next to him. A couple of minutes into the Pope’s remarks, Kissinger heard this little patting sound, and he looked over, and there was a wisp of smoke coming out of Laird’s pocket. [Laughter] The Secretary of State thought nothing of it. A couple of other minutes went by and the secretary heard this patting sound, slapping going on, and he looked over and smoke was billowing out of Laird’s pocket. The Secretary of Defense was on fire.

Then Gates turned to reflecting on the current world crisis.

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In the years since September 11th, hundreds of thousands of our troops have done all these things and more in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the globe. There are the Marines who set up a daily news report over loudspeaker – “the Voice of Ramadi” – to counter the hostile propaganda blaring out of some of the mosques. Then there is an Army staff sergeant, a field artillery radar specialist, who was elected a sheik by Iraqi village elders for his work in their communities. He was given white robes, five sheep, and some land; he was advised to take a second wife – a suggestion frowned upon by his spouse back in Florida.

But in these campaigns, the men and women wearing our nation’s uniform have assumed the roles of warrior, diplomat, humanitarian, and development expert. They’ve done so under the unblinking, unforgiving eye of the 24-hour news cycle while confronting an agile and ruthless enemy. And they’ve done it serving in a military that has for decades been organized, trained, and equipped to fight the “big wars” rather than the small ones. They have shown what General Victor Krulak later wrote was the “adaptability, initiative and improvisation [that] are the true fabric of obedience, the ultimate in soldierly conduct, going further than sheer heroism.”

For the next 10 minutes or so, I’d like to offer some thoughts on where our military – and our government – must apply the lessons that we’ve learned from the ongoing conflicts to build the capabilities we will need in the future. These points are clear:

•  Our military must be prepared to undertake the full spectrum of operations including unconventional or irregular campaigns – for the foreseeable future.
•  The non-military instruments of America’s national power need to be rebuilt, modernized, and committed to the fight.
• And third, we must think about, envision, and plan for, the world, the future – of 2020 and beyond.

All of these points will be familiar to the readers of this site. And it's eerie how close the wording Secretary Gates uses is to the ideas expressed, even by commenters, in this forum. Only a few days ago, commenting on Michael Yon's dispatch of political action in Baquba, I wrote:

This is all good news, but there is something wrong with this picture. The diplomats, the aid-workers, professional information warriors, the "nation-builders" are all missing from the scene. Yon describes how the military had been forced to discover hidden political and administrative skillsets within themselves. It was not something they had signed up to do when they joined the Armed Forces. This involuntary retooling probably occurred because they had no choice but to learn it and kept at it like a man learning to hammer tacks for the first time, however sore his thumb got. And the retooling was necessary because the State Department, the aid agencies and other civilian agencies, for reasons related to their organizational culture and inability to provide their own organic security, were unable to do the job.

In the long run it might best if the West evolved some other way to deploy "all the sources of its national power" other than the modes provided by traditional diplomacy and aid-working. Those modes may work just fine when operating in a functional nation state. Then diplomats can meet with the counterparts in the capital; aid workers can fan out to the countryside in comparative safety and things can proceed more or less as before. But in the places where terrorism is mostly likely to be rooted -- in failed or failing states, in places wracked by ethnic conflict, sown with mines, infest with assassins and snipers, crawling with infectious diseases, etc -- the military is the only agency of government which is organically able to survive.

And I think that with variations in emphasis and wording, my screed is very similar what Secretary Gates is saying. And more importantly, the similarity is not due to any particular aptitude on my part at reading anyone's mind but because the idea itself has now become obvious to a wide group of people. The old received wisdom is passing away. A new paradigm is taking its place. Gates goes on to explain why the other non-military sources of national power have been absent from the scene. Many capabilities had simply been abolished by a leadership confident the Cold War was over, that the world was at "the end of history" and nothing remained except to perfect the machinery of multilateralism. The nonkinetic instruments of national policy were dismantled and the kinetic instruments were drawn down.

We’re still struggling to overcome the legacy of the 1990s, when so many of the key non-military capabilities in the American government – in diplomacy, strategic communications, international development, and intelligence – were slashed or eliminated following the end of the Cold War.

During the 1990s, the State Department froze new hiring of Foreign Service officers. I was in the White House in the Carter administration after the fall of Iran, and we had a group called the political intelligence working group and we examined what had happened. And among other things, we determined that in 1979, in the embassy in Riyadh, we had two Foreign Service officers who spoke Arabic and they spent 40 percent of their time squiring around CODELs.

The United States Information Agency, which had been an enormously successful organization for communicating America’s values and message around the world, was abolished in the 1990s as an independent entity and folded into the State Department – a shadow of its former self. The Agency for International Development saw deep staff cuts – its permanent staff dropping from a high of 15,000 to 3,000 today, becoming essentially an outsourcing and contracting agency.

Today, the total number of U.S. government civilian employees working in the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in both Iraq and Afghanistan is approximately two hundred.

So, the goal for us must be an integrated effort, a reinvigoration of all elements of national power. It will require a serious commitment of resources and priorities from the Congress and the country. I believe we have little choice if we are to secure our nation and our freedoms in the years ahead.

I might disagree that the Cold War capabilities, had they not been dismantled, might have been adequate to fight the nonkinetic portion to today's war on terror. But from a bureaucratic point of view their retention might have been an advantage. They would have provided a kernel around which to build new capability. And maybe as things Washington go, Gates wishes there were someone he could call as a place to start. But the numbers have been disconnected, consigned to history. Yet looking on the bright side, perhaps it's best that the Cold War information warfare arms were dismantled. Their abolition means they can be built from scratch, without the bother of tearing down old and obsolete organizational structures.

Roasted Chickens Roosting

Mike Littwin at the Rocky Mountain News argues that in case anyone thinks the Ward Churchill saga has ended, in fact it has only just begun. Churchill plans to sue CU for firing him, arguing that his dismissal on grounds of academic misconduct were simply a pretext for firing him for his political views. Rocky Mountain News summarizes Churchill's suit:

In his suit, Ward Churchill claims he has been hounded by the media and politicians since January 2005, when his controversial essay about the 9/11 attacks was widely circulated. In response to the "outcry," CU pored over his published works in search of "some excuse for terminating his employment." That process violates his rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. CU should pay his legal bills.

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As matters stand, Churchill is still entitled to a pension and separation pay. But that would be slim pickings for a man used to rock-star status and national attention.

Former CU professor Ward Churchill will get a state pension of about $70,000 if he chooses to take his retirement benefits. ... Under CU rules, Churchill also is entitled to one year’s salary as severance pay.

Littwin argues that Churchill's lawyers will argue that 'Everything happening here is in retaliation for his First Amendment protected speech. I don't have to prove it as the main reason. I just have to prove that it was a motivating factor.' They will maintain that politics is the real reason why Churchill was dismissed. There is of course, his academic misconduct. And while I disagree with Littwin's belief that the misconduct will be viewed only as a pretext -- Churchill's violations are so large and glaring -- that it's a wonder he could style himself a "professor" at all, Littwin is probably right in asserting it wasn't academic fraud that drove CU into ditching Churchill. It was politics. The kind that wants to cover up how such creatures could get into academia in the first place. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently wrote a report which asked, "How Many Ward Churchills?" The answer? Too many. And it asserts that Ward Churchill, rather than being an isolated instance of a rogue academic, is actually representative of a large number of faculty members in colleges and universities today. The report said:

But to understand Churchill as a one-of-a-kind phenomenon is to miss the lesson that he has to teach us about higher education today. Recruited into a tenured position with only a master’s degree in communication, Churchill has followed an exceptional path to academic prominence; even so, he is not at all unusual, and as an example of academe’s increasingly unapologetic ideological tilt, he is far from alone. In recent years, studies of faculty across America have shown that diverse and competing academic viewpoints are largely absent. And a student survey commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in 2004 found that nearly half of college students at America’s top colleges feel their professors use their classes to preach politics rather than teach, while fully a quarter believe they must parrot their professors’ views in order to get a good grade.

By ridding themselves of this Jonah, academia might stand a chance of picking up where they left off. But they never reckoned with Wardo. Good old Wardo. Churchill's lawsuit against CU, fueled by his unlimited egocentrism, will not only threaten CU with large financial losses but keep the light shining where many would rather it not.

Maybe the chickens do come home to roost.

My friends made me fat

The Washington Post has a video from Harvard researchers who find that social networks spread obesity "like a real epidemic". "Obesity," they conclude, "is not an individual phenomenon, but a collective phenomenon" as well. Those researchers might be interested in extending their study to the Third World, where social networking among the elites and upwardly mobile can sometimes reach the intensity of a mania. It's easy to see how an endless round of dinners, coffees, cocktail parties, etc can bulk a person up very quickly. But the Third World offers an opportunity to study social networking among the poor as well, and here, I think the Harvard researchers may find the correlation doesn't hold. Members of prosperous social networks in Third World countries have the money to stuff themselves, but people at subsistence poverty, however convivial, run up against the hard problem of finding anything to eat.

In some countries, obesity is actually attractive because it is directly correlated to economic success. Rail-thin man with washboard abs in a Third World setting are likely to be day-wage workers or dirt farmers. And when you realize that "party time" means boiled sweet potatoes and swamp cabbage, the attractiveness of thin men diminishes fairly quickly. But ponderous men with shiny white shoes, hung about with jewelry and possessed with a mouthful of gold teeth are courtship signals of prosperity.

Nothing follows.

The Field Grade Mayor

Michael Yon describes why the kinetic battle in Iraq can be precise beyond belief and follows one command center as it tries to root out al-Qaeda holed up in a house with a minimum of violence. Then he segues directly to the political battle, where the battlefield is the meeting the room or with people along the street.

What our people are trying to accomplish here is simple. Simple in the sense that a simply stated goal might be very hard to achieve. After vanquishing al Qaeda (that’s what the Iraqis here call them), the goal is to have no pause in the restoration of services. This is about mental inertia and psychology. The idea is to jump start the people and facilitate their taking responsibility for their communities.

After the initial invasion of Iraq, things seemed to just stop in most places. Many people held their breath. We paused. The type of folks who read these words are more likely to know the rest of the story. ...

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Yon continues.

Even though LTC Goins must leave the meeting and return to the field, each day he and other commanders has to put his mind to work on how to administer Baqubah, and he knows one of his problems is water. Solve water, and lots of things can be carried forward on that momentum....

The idea is to get the Iraqis to run their own cities but most of the old leaders are gone, and the new ones are like throwing babies to cow udders. Many just don’t know what to do, and in any case, most of them have no natural instinct for it. So our soldiers are mentoring Iraqi civil leaders, which is a huge education for me because I get to sit in on the meetings. The American leaders tell me what they are up to, which amounts for free Ph.D. level instruction in situ: just have to be willing to be shot at. ...

I have wondered now for two years why is it that American military leaders somehow seem to naturally know what it takes to run a city, while many of the local leaders seem clueless. Over time, a possible answer occurred, and that nudge might be due to how the person who runs each American base is referred to as the “Mayor.” A commander’s first job is to take care of his or her forces. Our military is, in a sense its own little country, with city-states spread out all around the world. Each base is like a little city-state. The military commander must understand how the water, electricity, sewerage, food distribution, police, courts, prisons, hospitals, fire, schools, airports, ports, trash control, vector control, communications, fuel, fiscal budgeting, fire, for his “city” all work.

This is all good news, but there is something wrong with this picture. The diplomats, the aid-workers, professional information warriors, the "nation-builders" are all missing from the scene. Yon describes how the military had been forced to discover hidden political and administrative skillsets within themselves. It was not something they had signed up to do when they joined the Armed Forces. This involuntary retooling probably occurred because they had no choice but to learn it and kept at it like a man learning to hammer tacks for the first time, however sore his thumb got. And the retooling was necessary because the State Department, the aid agencies and other civilian agencies, for reasons related to their organizational culture and inability to provide their own organic security, were unable to do the job.

In the long run it might best if the West evolved some other way to deploy "all the sources of its national power" other than the modes provided by traditional diplomacy and aid-working. Those modes may work just fine when operating in a functional nation state. Then diplomats can meet with the counterparts in the capital; aid workers can fan out to the countryside in comparative safety and things can proceed more or less as before. But in the places where terrorism is mostly likely to be rooted -- in failed or failing states, in places wracked by ethnic conflict, sown with mines, infest with assassins and snipers, crawling with infectious diseases, etc -- the military is the only agency of government which is organically able to survive.

Perhaps one reason institutions like the UN have been sympathetic to a withdrawal from Iraq and the replacement of field operations by a negotiated settlement among the regional countries is the need to shift the scene of action back to the green baize table, where they are most effective. But whether the traditional instruments of statecraft alone can address the problems of chaos in the Third World or a networked insurgency is doubtful. Who knows how or whether the problem can be solved. But a good place to start would be recognizing that some means must be found to project "all the instruments of national power" to the field. The military found a way. But only because it had to.

So, You Want to Join al-Qaeda?

George Wittman at the American Spectator gives a concise description of the stages each recruit must pass and the training received. "It might be a surprise to most people to realize how little training it takes to be a terrorist." Here's the first hurdle ...

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When recruiting individuals for al Qaeda-type terrorist jobs, the first requirement is to be able to pass the clearance tests. Recommendations from acceptable imams are the best way to get through the door. Similarly, known and trusted mujaheddin references are always useful. It is true, however, that the vetting process continues during the entire training period through to the final operational stage. There is an overarching need to avoid penetration by "crusader" security services and their apostate agents. ...

Having successfully gone through the initial vetting period, the second stage could involve a trip from Pakistan to the border areas of the Baujur region and Waziristan for field training -- but not necessarily. The truth is that in practice local volunteers in target countries often never leave their home environment and merely receive limited training within their cell group. ...

A technically competent recruit with special access or potential access to a high value target also might never go for field training. Such a candidate, perhaps already living or studying in a target country, might be introduced into an established cell. Special recruits such as these might even remain "singletons," as national intelligence agencies call agents who operate alone. In the case of al Qaeda, a recruit already ensconced in a key position of access -- such as a security or police official -- might be protected from compromise by remaining totally outside any cell structure....

Put yourself in Zawahiri's place. How do you maintain ideological and operational control over a force like this? What is the procedure for sending acks and nacks to see if your forces are in place? Wouldn't a network like this tend to degrade over time and isn't there an incentive to use a recruit immediately, either to expend him or test his mettle and move him into a closer position in the organization?

Put yourself in the recruit's place. Now that you are badged al-Qaeda, how do you communicate with higher authority if you are displeased with your local sponsoring organizaiton? Can you communicate with higher headquarters? Suppose you receive an operational order that you believe to be ill-advised? Can you retire from the fray?

Just thinking.

The Charleston AFB Speech

President Bush issued a detailed defense of the proposition that fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is integral part of the broader War on Terror in a speech at Charleston Air Force Base. "There's a debate in Washington about Iraq, and nothing wrong with a healthy debate. There's also a debate about al Qaeda's role in Iraq. Some say that Iraq is not part of the broader war on terror. They complain when I say that the al Qaeda terrorists we face in Iraq are part of the same enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001. They claim that the organization called al Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon, that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and that it's not interested in attacking America."

Whether or not you agree with President Bush, the speech provides an insight into how he understands the strategic role that Iraq plays. Or at least, it lays out how he wishes it to be regarded by the public. The text of the speech is in Read More.

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Nearly six years after the 9/11 attacks, America remains a nation at war. The terrorist network that attacked us that day is determined to strike our country again, and we must do everything in our power to stop them. A key lesson of September the 11th is that the best way to protect America is to go on the offense, to fight the terrorists overseas so we don't have to face them here at home. And that is exactly what our men and women in uniform are doing across the world. 

The key theater in this global war is Iraq. Our troops are serving bravely in that country. They're opposing ruthless enemies, and no enemy is more ruthless in Iraq than al Qaeda. They send suicide bombers into crowded markets; they behead innocent captives and they murder American troops. They want to bring down Iraq's democracy so they can use that nation as a terrorist safe haven for attacks against our country. So our troops are standing strong with nearly 12 million Iraqis who voted for a future of peace, and they so for the security of Iraq and the safety of American citizens. 

There's a debate in Washington about Iraq, and nothing wrong with a healthy debate. There's also a debate about al Qaeda's role in Iraq. Some say that Iraq is not part of the broader war on terror. They complain when I say that the al Qaeda terrorists we face in Iraq are part of the same enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001. They claim that the organization called al Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon, that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and that it's not interested in attacking America. 

That would be news to Osama bin Laden. He's proclaimed that the "third world war is raging in Iraq." Osama bin Laden says, "The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever." I say that there will be a big defeat in Iraq and it will be the defeat of al Qaeda.

Today I will consider the arguments of those who say that al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq are separate entities. I will explain why they are both part of the same terrorist network -- and why they are dangerous to our country. 

A good place to start is with some basic facts: Al Qaeda in Iraq was founded by a Jordanian terrorist, not an Iraqi. His name was Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Before 9/11, he ran a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. He was not yet a member of al Qaida, but our intelligence community reports that he had longstanding relations with senior al Qaida leaders, that he had met with Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Zawahiri.

In 2001, coalition forces destroyed Zarqawi's Afghan training camp, and he fled the country and he went to Iraq, where he set up operations with terrorist associates long before the arrival of coalition forces. In the violence and instability following Saddam's fall, Zarqawi was able to expand dramatically the size, scope, and lethality of his operation. In 2004, Zarqawi and his terrorist group formally joined al Qaida, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and he promised to "follow his orders in jihad." 

Soon after, bin Laden publicly declared that Zarqawi was the "Prince of Al Qaida in Iraq" -- and instructed terrorists in Iraq to "listen to him and obey him." It's hard to argue that al Qaida in Iraq is separate from bin Laden's al Qaida, when the leader of al Qaida in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden. 

According to our intelligence community, the Zarqawi-bin Laden merger gave al Qaida in Iraq -- quote -- "prestige among potential recruits and financiers." The merger also gave al Qaida's senior leadership -- quote -- "a foothold in Iraq to extend its geographic presence ... to plot external operations ... and to tout the centrality of the jihad in Iraq to solicit direct monetary support elsewhere." The merger between al Qaida and its Iraqi affiliate is an alliance of killers -- and that is why the finest military in the world is on their trail. 

Zarqawi was killed by U.S. forces in June 2006. He was replaced by another foreigner -- an Egyptian named Abu Ayyub al-Masri. His ties to the al Qaida senior leadership are deep and longstanding. He has collaborated with Zawahiri for more than two decades. And before 9/11, he spent time with al Qaida in Afghanistan where he taught classes indoctrinating others in al Qaida's radical ideology. 

After Abu Ayyub took over al Qaida's Iraqi operations last year, Osama bin Laden sent a terrorist leader named Abd al-Hadi al Iraqi to help him. According to our intelligence community, this man was a senior advisor to bin Laden, who served as his top commander in Afghanistan. Abd al-Hadi never made it to Iraq. He was captured, and was recently transferred to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The fact that bin Laden risked sending one of his most valued commanders to Iraq shows the importance he places on success of al Qaida's Iraqi operations. 

According to our intelligence community, many of al Qaida in Iraq's other senior leaders are also foreign terrorists. They include a Syrian who is al Qaida in Iraq's emir in Baghdad, a Saudi who is al Qaida in Iraq's top spiritual and legal advisor, an Egyptian who fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s and who has met with Osama bin Laden, a Tunisian who we believe plays a key role in managing foreign fighters. Last month in Iraq, we killed a senior al Qaida facilitator named Mehmet Yilmaz, a Turkish national who fought with al Qaida in Afghanistan, and met with September the 11th mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, and other senior al Qaida leaders. 

A few weeks ago, we captured a senior al Qaida in Iraq leader named Mashadani. Now, this terrorist is an Iraqi. In fact, he was the highest ranking Iraqi in the organization. Here's what he said, here's what he told us: The foreign leaders of Al Qaida in Iraq went to extraordinary lengths to promote the fiction that al Qaida in Iraq is an Iraqi-led operation. He says al Qaida even created a figurehead whom they named Omar al-Baghdadi. The purpose was to make Iraqi fighters believe they were following the orders of an Iraqi instead of a foreigner. Yet once in custody, Mashadani revealed that al-Baghdadi is only an actor. He confirmed our intelligence that foreigners are at the top echelons of al Qaida in Iraq -- they are the leaders -- and that foreign leaders make most of the operational decisions, not Iraqis. 

Foreign terrorists also account for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq. Our military estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by foreign-born al Qaida terrorists. It's true that today most of al Qaida in Iraq's rank and file fighters and some of its leadership are Iraqi. But to focus exclusively on this single fact is to ignore the larger truth: Al Qaida in Iraq is a group founded by foreign terrorists, led largely by foreign terrorists, and loyal to a foreign terrorist leader -- Osama bin Laden. They know they're al Qaida. The Iraqi people know they are al Qaida. People across the Muslim world know they are al Qaida. And there's a good reason they are called al Qaida in Iraq: They are al Qaida … in … Iraq. 

Some also assert that al Qaida in Iraq is a separate organization because al Qaida's central command lacks full operational control over it. This argument reveals a lack of understanding. Here is how al Qaida's global terrorist network actually operates. Al Qaida and its affiliate organizations are a loose network of terrorist groups that are united by a common ideology and shared objectives, and have differing levels of collaboration with the al Qaida senior leadership. In some cases, these groups have formally merged into al Qaida and take what is called a "bayaat" -- a pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden. In other cases, organizations are not formally merged with al Qaida, but collaborate closely with al Qaida leaders to plot attacks and advance their shared ideology. In still other cases, there are small cells of terrorists that are not part of al Qaida or any other broader terrorist group, but maintain contact with al Qaida leaders and are inspired by its ideology to conduct attacks. 

Our intelligence community assesses that al Qaida in Iraq falls into the first of these categories. They are a full member of the al Qaida terrorist network. The al Qaida leadership provides strategic guidance to their Iraqi operatives. Even so, there have been disagreements -- important disagreements -- between the leaders, Osama bin Laden and their Iraqi counterparts, including Zawahiri's criticism of Zarqawi's relentless attacks on the Shia. But our intelligence community reports that al Qaida's senior leaders generally defer to their Iraqi-based commanders when it comes to internal operations, because distance and security concerns preclude day-to-day command authority. 

Our intelligence community concludes that -- quote -- "Al Qaida and its regional node in Iraq are united in their overarching strategy." And they say that al Qaida senior leaders and their operatives in Iraq -- quote -- "see al Qaida in Iraq as part of al Qaida's decentralized chain of command, not as a separate group." 

Here's the bottom line: Al Qaida in Iraq is run by foreign leaders loyal to Osama bin Laden. Like bin Laden, they are cold-blooded killers who murder the innocent to achieve al Qaida's political objectives. Yet despite all the evidence, some will tell you that al Qaida in Iraq is not really al Qaida -- and not really a threat to America. Well, that's like watching a man walk into a bank with a mask and a gun, and saying he's probably just there to cash a check. 

You might wonder why some in Washington insist on making this distinction about the enemy in Iraq. It's because they know that if they can convince America we're not fighting bin Laden's al Qaida there, they can paint the battle in Iraq as a distraction from the real war on terror. If we're not fighting bin Laden's al Qaida, they can argue that our nation can pull out of Iraq and not undermine our efforts in the war on terror. The problem they have is with the facts. We are fighting bin Laden's al Qaida in Iraq; Iraq is central to the war on terror; and against this enemy, America can accept nothing less than complete victory.

There are others who accept that al Qaida is operating in Iraq, but say its role is overstated. Al Qaida is one of the several Sunni jihadist groups in Iraq. But our intelligence community believes that al Qaida is the most dangerous of these Sunni jihadist groups for several reasons: First, more than any other group, al Qaida is behind most of the spectacular, high-casualty attacks that you see on your TV screens. 

Second, these al Qaida attacks are designed to accelerate sectarian violence, by attacking Shia in hopes of sparking reprisal attacks that inspire Sunnis to join al Qaida's cause.

Third, al Qaida is the only jihadist group in Iraq with stated ambitions to make the country a base for attacks outside Iraq. For example, al Qaida in Iraq dispatched terrorists who bombed a wedding reception in Jordan. In another case, they sent operatives to Jordan where they attempted to launch a rocket attack on U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea. 

And most important for the people who wonder if the fight in Iraq is worth it, al Qaida in Iraq shares Osama bin Laden's goal of making Iraq a base for its radical Islamic empire, and using it as a safe haven for attacks on America. That is why our intelligence community reports -- and I quote -- "compared with [other leading Sunni jihadist groups], al Qaida in Iraq stands out for its extremism, unmatched operational strength, foreign leadership, and determination to take the jihad beyond Iraq's borders."

Our top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has said that al Qaida is "public enemy number one" in Iraq. Fellow citizens, these people have sworn allegiance to the man who ordered the death of nearly 3,000 people on our soil. Al Qaida is public enemy number one for the Iraqi people; al Qaida is public enemy number one for the American people. And that is why, for the security of our country, we will stay on the hunt, we'll deny them safe haven, and we will defeat them where they have made their stand.

Some note that al Qaida in Iraq did not exist until the U.S. invasion -- and argue that it is a problem of our own making. The argument follows the flawed logic that terrorism is caused by American actions. Iraq is not the reason that the terrorists are at war with us. We were not in Iraq when the terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. We were not in Iraq when they attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We were not in Iraq when they attacked the USS Cole in 2000. And we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. 

Our action to remove Saddam Hussein did not start the terrorist violence -- and America withdrawal from Iraq would not end it. The al Qaida terrorists now blowing themselves up in Iraq are dedicated extremists who have made killing the innocent the calling of their lives. They are part of a network that has murdered men, women, and children in London and Madrid; slaughtered fellow Muslims in Istanbul and Casablanca, Riyadh, Jakarta, and elsewhere around the world. If we were not fighting these al Qaida extremists and terrorists in Iraq, they would not be leading productive lives of service and charity. Most would be trying to kill Americans and other civilians elsewhere -- in Afghanistan, or other foreign capitals, or on the streets of our own cities. 

Al Qaida is in Iraq -- and they're there for a reason. And surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaida would be a disaster for our country. We know their intentions. Hear the words of al Qaida's top commander in Iraq when he issued an audio statement in which he said he will not rest until he has attacked our nation's capital. If we were to cede Iraq to men like this, we would leave them free to operate from a safe haven which they could use to launch new attacks on our country. And al Qaida would gain prestige amongst the extremists across the Muslim world as the terrorist network that faced down America and forced us into retreat. 

If we were to allow this to happen, sectarian violence in Iraq could increase dramatically, raising the prospect of mass casualties. Fighting could engulf the entire region in chaos, and we would soon face a Middle East dominated by Islamic extremists who would pursue nuclear weapons, and use their control of oil for economic blackmail or to fund new attacks on our nation. 

We've already seen how al Qaida used a failed state thousands of miles from our shores to bring death and destruction to the streets of our cities -- and we must not allow them to do so again. So, however difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it. And we can win it. 

Less than a year ago, Anbar Province was al Qaida's base in Iraq and was written off by many as lost. Since then, U.S. and Iraqi forces have teamed with Sunni sheiks who have turned against al Qaida. Hundreds have been killed or captured. Terrorists have been driven from most of the population centers. Our troops are now working to replicate the success in Anbar in other parts of the country. Our brave men and women are taking risks, and they're showing courage, and we're making progress. 

For the security of our citizens, and the peace of the world, we must give General Petraeus and his troops the time and resources they need, so they can defeat al Qaida in Iraq.

Thanks for letting me come by today. I've explained the connection between al Qaida and its Iraqi affiliate. I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection. The facts are that al Qaida terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again. Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of al Qaida in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat. If we were to follow their advice, it would be dangerous for the world -- and disastrous for America. We will defeat al Qaida in Iraq.

In this effort, we're counting on the brave men and women represented in this room. Every man and woman who serves at this base and around the world is playing a vital role in this war on terror. With your selfless spirit and devotion to duty, we will confront this mortal threat to our country -- and we're going to prevail. 

I have confidence in our country, and I have faith in our cause, because I know the character of the men and women gathered before me. I thank you for your patriotism; I thank you for your courage. You're living up to your motto: "one family, one mission, one fight." Thank you for all you do. God bless your families. God bless America.

I think some critics of Bush's speech will say "Well, al-Qaeda may be in Iraq now and Bin Laden may be sending important assets to it now, but that was only because we got rid of Saddam. Had Saddam been kept in power then al-Qaeda would never have been able to expand in the aftermath of a regime change". There are a few problems with this argument. The first is that the decision to remove Saddam was a bipartisan one. Therefore the more proper and robust criticism of the President's thesis is probably: "Ok. We all agreed to remove Saddam but had you not made a hash of the the subsequent situation, al-Qaeda would never have gotten a foothold in Iraq."

But that case is quite a different kettle of fish because it concedes the basic correctness of the policy but attacks the shortcomings of the implementation. And invites the riposte "ok, if things are wrong, how do we improve the implementation." Barack Obama correctly understands the dangers of going down that line of argument and has maintained steadfastly that Iraq was a mistake from the beginning. That the US ought never have tried to topple Saddam. In order to be on the soundest possible ground, the antiwar case against OIF must hold it to be conceptually flawed and not simply defective in implementation. Otherwise critics will be invited to "fix it". In truth, they want no part of it.

Historically, very few of those opposed to toppling Saddam in the first place objected in anticipation of getting into a fight with al-Qaeda there. Most of the reservations about the soundness of the original decision to mount OIF center around the presence or absence of WMDs or disagreements about International Law. Had anyone in 2003 actually argued we ought not to go into Iraq because we would find al-Qaeda there or that al-Qaeda would come out of its caves to meet America it would have been a very unpopular argument at the time.

However the history may be, the current question is whether al-Qaeda is now to be found in Iraq. And I think the honest answer to that must be yes. Al-Qaeda claims to be in Iraq on every website it can post on. Since it is still apparently the national goal to fight al-Qaeda, the problem facing the anti-war camp is how to justify walking away or retreating from Iraq when the enemy claims to be there in large numbers. And as best I can figure out, the answer to that challenge has been to put forward arguments of varying sophistication maintaining that the best way to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq is not to fight it in Iraq. The basic logic behind these types of "fight by retreating" assertions is that the US is an accelerant which enables al-Qaeda in Iraq. Remove America and al-Qaeda dies on the vine as a fire dies when oxygen is withdrawn.

If that's true however, then there is no reason why the same argument shouldn't apply everywhere else. If "fighting" terrorism is an incitement to more terrorism, then why fight it at all? Therefore we have in the wings a number of undeveloped, but supposedly promising alternative methods of fighting terrorism without physically fighting it. These include a "new Peace Corps", regional diplomacy, or personal diplomacy with heads of "rogue" states. Though how a future President will make his way to see Zawahiri or Bin Laden still remains to be explained.

That I think, is a tour d' horizon of the debate. Many people will be unhappy with the President's strategic argument about Iraq. And equally many will be dissastisfied with the antiwar counterarguments about Iraq. One of the most disappointing things about the last seven years has been watching the two ideological sides, like two washed up fighters in a ring, waltzing around in the parody of a contest, knowing you had to score each round.

Home Is Where They Stand By You

It's not often I'll quote al-Jazeera, but this is the exception. "The Bulgarian president has pardoned five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-born doctor, convicted in Libya of infecting children with HIV. Georgi Parvanov pardoned the health workers on Tuesday after they arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, having spent eight and a half years in a Libyan prison." Here are some of their stories:

Valentina Siropulo, 48, nurse: "I confessed during torture with electricity. They put small wires on my toes and on my thumbs. Sometimes they put one on my thumb and another on either my tongue, neck or ear ...

Kristiana Valcheva, 48, nurse: "I was tortured with electric shocks, beaten and submitted to every kind of torture known since the Middle Ages. ...

Ashraf Juma Hajuj, Palestinian doctor granted Bulgarian citizenship: "I thank great Bulgaria ... I am happy that all this ended well. Hope dies last."

Nothing follows.

The Last Rites

The Ambulance Driver blog recalls the moments, over seven years, when he had to tell anxious loved ones the person he was crouched over was dead; beyond his help. There were men gone from old age, young blond accident victims, the middle-aged expired from a heart attack, daredevil young men on their shattered motorcycles. And the anxious survivors "... and then I say The Words. 'I'm afraid she's dead.' "

As children we know one sort of God, the kind who loves us like our parents. He is the God who we spoke to just as if He was in the next room in the moments before we went to sleep. And as we grow up, the God of our childhood slips away forgotten, but He is replaced, if we are in Grace, by one we can speak to as adults. He never truly goes away, but as we are adults, leaves us mostly on our own. The God of adulthood comes seldom and usually in moments of great happiness and loss. There finally is the Lord who speaks to us when we are old, when we awake bewildered to watery brightness of each new day, when we know we are close to leaving the flowers and yet are not wholly despairing of meeting them again.

The Ambulance Driver captures the most secret moments of society. The ones most hidden from view. Here's the end paragraph from one of his most interesting vignettes.

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"Are you a Christian, AD?" she asks. "All this time, and I've never asked."

"Yes, Ma'am," I answered. "I am. Not as good a Christian as I should be, but I believe, yes."

"The doctors all say that Jeremy wasn't aware of anything. He had never been Baptised before the accident. I didn't find my faith until after it happened. He was born out of wedlock, you know."

"Yes Ma'am, you told me."

"Do you believe people can go to Heaven if they've never accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior? My religion says no."

"I believe in a loving and merciful God," I tell her, "one who wouldn't condemn Jeremy as he was. So yes, I believe he's in Heaven."

"So do I," she smiled with utter conviction. "So do I."

"Tell ya' what I believe," Pardner broke in laconically. "I figger Jeremy wouldn't be sittin' here gettin' all weepy like this, wonderin' if he's with Jesus or not. He'd be up, actin' up and bein' a sixteen-year-old kid. Then he'd grab Heather's boob."

And we all laughed uproariously and listened to funny stories of Jeremy's childhood, many of which we had heard before. When the coroner arrived, he thought we were all nuts.

Coercion

Who knew that Tigerhawk wrote his undergraduate thesis in counterinsurgency? Back in 1983 he foresaw that the indiscriminate application of terror -- such al-Qaeda has been engaged in would swing the intelligence advantage to the side which was discriminating in its application of coercion.

Neither side needs the love or loyalty of the population nearly as much as its cooperation. The insurgent must have nondenunciation so that he may carry on his war against the authority from the midst of the people. The counterinsurgent needs information, so that he may determine the nature, power and membership of the insurgency. Because a credible threat of sanction (death or torture, for example) frequently outweighs love or loyalty, the side that imposes stiff penalties for noncompliance will often win the cooperation of the people away from the side that inspires merely moral support for the merits of its cause. ...

More concisely, a noncombatant will cooperate with the side that punishes noncooperation with the greatest specificity. If one side punishes capriciously, most rational noncombatants will decide that they are better off cooperating with the other side. Why? Because the more capricious side -- lacking good intelligence about who is and is not cooperating -- may punish noncombatants whether or not they cooperate with the other side. The side that punishes accurately, on the other hand, will only punish genuine noncooperation. Therefore, the smart noncombatant cooperates with the side that neither punishes too many actual cooperators or fails to punish too many actual non-cooperators, because he reduces his risk of punishment by the side that punishes efficiently without altering his risk at the hand of the side that punishes capriciously. ...

Because perceptions are so important in counterinsurgency, capricious acts and the publicity of those acts can actually hurt the war effort. When supporters of the Coalition and the government of Iraq object to the widespread and one-sided publicity of purported American war crimes, it is not that we think, a priori, that these events should be covered up or that we care about the political fortunes of the Bush administration. Rather, it is because we know that anything that increases the perception of the counterinsurgency as capricious will actually hurt the war effort insofar as it motivates noncombatants to cooperate with the other side. Similarly, relatively muted publicity of enemy atrocities artificially dims the perception that al Qaeda kills capriciously and brutally. Both problems would diminish if the press, which has an enormous capacity to magnify perceptions, applied the same moral standard to both sides.

Tigerhawk's post is so full of insight it is hard to know where to begin. But here's a starting point. Counter-terrorist warfare is never won by merely by rising to a supreme height of moral magnificence. Sadly, war requires coercion in one form or another. But as Tigerhawk cogently argues, coercion cannot be applied indiscriminately. It is most effective when combined with a kind of justice because the smart noncombatant, can avoid arbitrary punishment by adhering to the rules of the just, or at least predictable party. The party governed by decency and law. But the real order of things can be misrepresented by lies. The consequence of habitually making wild accusations against the Coalition, such as were brought against the Haditha Marines; sensationalizing relatively events as torture, running the relatively few cases of actual torture for weeks on the front pages; sponsoring contests to concoct stories like tank drivers running over pet dogs and claiming that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed by aerial bombardment as "excess deaths" was to imprint the image of a mindless, brutal coalition on the Iraqi side. Thus the Leftist enablers of terror successfully portrayed the more just -- albeit imperfect side -- as being unpredictably coercive.

Only after the Iraqis discovered, by sad and bitter experience, what a crock of s..t this narrative was, by repeated atrocity at the brutal hands of al-Qaeda, did they understand they had it all wrong. It was the al-Qaeda which cut your face off with cheese wire; al-Qaeda which shot you for mixing tomatoes and cucumbers in the market bag; al-Qaeda which blew up any and every public assembly; al-Qaeda which routinely tortured innocents in slaughterhouses and had a manual to do it with; al-Qaeda which beheaded innocent children. Only after all the fake memes were repelled and was some semblance of the truth established; and only then did the tipping point start to come.

The bottom line is that in fighting bad hombres it pays to have a six gun, a white hat and to shoot straight. The problem is getting some of the papers to tell it that way.

Definitions

Hugo Chavez describes his idea of free speech. The BBC reports.

"No foreigner can come here to attack us. Anyone who does must be removed from this country," he said during his weekly TV and radio programme. Mr Chavez also ordered officials to monitor statements made by international figures in Venezuela.

His comments came shortly after a senior Mexican politician publicly criticised the Venezuelan government. "How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" Mr Chavez said during his "Hello, President" broadcast on Sunday. "It cannot be allowed - it is a question of national dignity," he said.

Blasphemy, national dignity, hate speech, fairness, cultural insensitivity. They are all invoked to justify actions which are synonyms for the un-word. Censorship. Censorship of course, is a dirty old word traditionally been associated with Fascists and the perverted monks depicted in Sergei Eisenstein's closeups. Today it travels under different colors: those of progressivism. But despite its modern garb it resembles not only the modern, but the most ancient version of censorship. New Advent relates:

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As soon as there were books or writing of any kind the spreading or reading of which was highly detrimental to the public, competent authorities were obliged to take measures against them. Long before the Christian era, therefore, we find that heathens as well as Jews had fixed regulations for the suppression of dangerous books and the prevention of corruptive reading. From numerous illustrations quoted by Zaccaria (pp. 248-256) it is evident that most of the writings condemned or destroyed offended against religion and morals. Everywhere the books declared dangerous were cast into the fire--the simplest and most natural execution of censorship. When at Ephesus, in consequence of St. Paul's preaching, the heathens were converted, they raised before the eyes of the Apostle of the Gentiles a pile in order to burn their numerous superstition books (Acts 19:19). No doubt, the new Christians moved by grace and the Apostolic word did so of their own accord; but all the more was their action approved by St. Paul himself, and it is recorded as an example worthy of imitation by the author of the Acts of the Apostles. From this burning of the books at Ephesus, as well as from the Second Epistle of St. Peter and the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, it clearly appears how the Apostles judged of pernicious books and how they wished them to be treated. In concert with the Apostle of the Gentiles (Tit., iii, 10). St. John most emphatically exhorted the first Christians to shun heretical teachers. To the disciples of the Apostles it was a matter of course to connect this warning not only with the persons of such teachers, but first and foremost with their doctrine and their writings. Thus, in the first Christian centuries, the so-called apocrypha above all other books appeared to the faithful as libri non recipiendi, books which were on no account to be used. The establishment of the Canon of Holy Writ was, therefore, at once an elimination and a censuring of the apocrypha.

From the earliest times the control of the narrative has been of paramount importance to nearly every human and philosophical endeavor. Maybe for a brief period in the late 20th century, popular culture in the West "forgot" how important censorship was to shaping attitudes and policies because its operation had been become so invisibly transparent. Perhaps they have learned to detect censorship again. Now the 21st century has brought it back in all its more or less explicit forms, reminding us once again that freedom is not a permanent condition, merely a period of hard won, momentary grace.

What's Going On?

Bill Roggio has a roundup of the continued offensive against al-Qaeda and both Sunni and Shia tribal leaders in and around Taji have banded together to fight the Mahdi Army and al Qaeda, in the continuing Coalition effort to raise the grassroots against the terrorists. After reading that, you may want to listen to Glenn Reynolds interview Michael Yon. Also, here's the Iraqi National Security adviser arguing that things are getting "better".

Now suppose one were inclined to be skeptical that things were getting better and dismiss these reports as wishful thinking. What kinds of things would you need to see before you were willing to grant that "progress" might actually be happening? And would such indicators, if present, be sufficient to alter an inclination to withdraw from Iraq?

The question is more than hypothetical because if things were getting better the most important thing to ask is why they are getting better, if indeed they are. Then it would be possible to rationally assess whether a withdrawal or a drawdown or even an augmentation would have any effect, positive or otherwise. Some hypothesis of the machinery at work would go a long way towards weighing whether Option A or Option B were best. Of course, the pitfall is that because the situation is dynamic, it may be the case that the key factors for success will change in the future.

Nothing follows.

The "Fairness Doctrine" in Fiction

Newsbusters reports on efforts to turn Kiefer Sutherland into an environmental crusader. Robert Bidinotto argues that the Greens will finally succeed where every fictional terrorist has failed: to kill Jack Bauer. "Folks, this demonstrates once again that you cannot win a cultural war when your enemies -- in this case, the proponents of liberal "selflessness" -- are setting the moral Rules of Engagement."

But on the other hand it also demonstrates how the grip on the public microphone has been slipping from the grasp of its former masters. Time was when things would never get this far. Now they have to mount a public campaign to gradually, imperceptibly kill a cultural icon they could never challenge directly.

Nothing follows.

High Noon for Ward Churchill

Kesher Talk says a watch has begun on Ward Churchill's fate. "The wheels of academic justice grind slowly, and the regents will announce their decision tomorrow, July 24th. Churchill's fans will turn out in force (they hope) to protest what they expect to be a thumbs-down on Churchill's continued employment at Colorado U. The ACLU of Colorado has issued a statement supporting Churchill, casting this controversy as a free speech issue, by minimizing - as do Churchill's other supporters - the charges of academic malfeisance."

It's interesting to contrast this with calls for Mitt Romney to apologize. He is being criticized for posing with a sign that said "No to Osama, Obama and Chelsea’s Moma." Hot Air asks, 'what, no Bush=Hitler?'. If Bush-Hitler type criticism is a protected by Free Speech, why is posing by a fairly innocuous sign outrageous? Maybe because speech and truth has become tribal, as the previous post has argued.

Nothing follows.

The Book Sent Round the World

The New York Times describes Harun Yahya's goregous coffee table book the "Atlas of Creation". Mailed to scientists a round the world, it is "probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory, which Mr. Yahya calls a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran." Joshua Cohen of Boston University reviews it on Blogging Heads TV.

The book caused a stir earlier this year when a French translation materialized at high schools, universities and museums in France. Until then, creationist literature was relatively rare in France, according to Armand de Ricqles, a professor of historical biology and evolutionism at the College de France. Scientists spoke out against the book, he said in an e-mail message, and “thanks to the highly centralized public school system in France, it was possible to organize that the books sent to lycées would not be made available to children.”

So far, no similar response is emerging in the United States. “In our country we are used to nonsense like this,” said Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who, like colleagues there, found a copy in his mailbox.

He said people who had received copies were “just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is.

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Well whatever the book might be, the response of a "highly centralized public school system in France" that made it "possible to organize that the books sent to lycées would not be made available to children" indicates one thing: it's almost impossible to refute anything these days. Large parts of the public live in hermetic belief systems which maintain for example, that steel doesn't melt when subjected to fire, the September 11 attacks were a Jewish plot, that the Moon Landings were faked, and that the sea level has risen ten feet in the Andaman Islands. That Muslims should believe that Allah created the world is distinctly possible.

The Balkanization of fact and the disparagement of consensus reality has been going on for some time now. Hence, the astonishment of people who live within closed groups to discover the existence of people "out there" who believe in something else. Pauline Kael famously remarked after Nixon's election, "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him." Probably no one Harun Yahya knows believes in Darwin either. And as to the truth, the scientific, jen-yoowine, solid truth, well that's another matter.

BTW, a question for post-modernists, does it -- the truth I mean -- exist?

Another Satan Emerges

The Great Satan (Al-Shaytan Al-Akbar) now has company. No not just the Jews. Nor even the godless Russians. Nor the Indians. Make way for the Chinese. The News reports that the "attack on Chinese nationals in Balochistan is said to be the first reaction to Chinese government’s steps to curb Muslim insurgency in its own territory." This follows on recent attacks by Islamic radicals on Chinese in Islamabad. What's it all about? The Online Times describes the ongoing war between China and Islam on its Western boundaries.

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The Chinese executioners came for Ismail Semed before 9am. They led him out of his cell as the sun climbed over the Tien Shan mountains in the land he called East Turkestan. ... The end seems to have been quick. A group of prisoners were executed at the jail that morning, February 8, Chinese officials confirmed, and economy was the order of the day. ... Buhejer [his wife] described it to a reporter who called from Washington on behalf of Radio Free Asia, about the only source of regular news on this forbidding place. “I saw only one bullet hole,” she said, “in his heart.”

The dead man was one of 9m Uighur Muslims in China’s far west, a Turkic people whose quest for national identity is one of history’s lost causes. The dying embers of their struggle flamed into protests, shootings and bombings in the 1990s, all concealed from the world until September 11, 2001, when China discovered the usefulness of the “war on terror”.

I guess it's Bush's fault. But however that may be, China is waging a battle of cultural extermination against its Muslim minorities with a genuine ruthlessness, before the word became debased by the accusations of CAIR.

“I was in the People’s Armed Police when the rebellion broke out in ’97,” said a burly Chinese driver, who proceeded to give a vivid and satisfied account of this barely known massacre.

“For a while we lost control,” he said. “The insurgents got into an armoury, killed our men and seized the weapons. There was chaos. We brought in the army - they changed into police uniforms - and then we got even. The central government ordered us to crush them without any hesitation. Believe me, we did.

“We lost a few people but we killed - I don’t know exactly - thousands of them. These people know our strength. We taught them a good hard lesson.” Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and politician now in exile, says she saw a horrific police video of the “good hard lesson” when she went to Yining in 1997 to investigate. It showed unarmed adolescent boys and girls shot dead on camera, their bodies tossed into trucks. A mother and her group of children, aged five or six, crumpled under a volley of bullets. The taped slaughter went on and on, with excited commands and shouts of glee from the Chinese on the soundtrack. Perhaps one of them was the driver.

One of the most fascinating questions -- one worthy of a book -- must be why Osama Bin Laden chose to order his suicide airplanes into Manhattan rather than say, Beijing or Moscow. Both these nations have been campaigning against Muslims for centuries. And the answer, I suspect, lies in the "excited commands and shouts of glee form the Chinese on the soundtrack". Or the veritable rain of shells that fell on Grozny in the recent past or the vicious campaign that still rages through Chechnya today. Maybe Bin Laden attacked America because he knew how it would fight. In a mode where even prisoners in Guantanamo Bay could insist upon their Korans being handled with white gloves, while a large section of America's own media would condemn this treatment as too harsh.

Attack Beijing or Moscow? Any Chinese or Russian response to a Bin Laden attack would have gone as unreported as the Chinese reprisals of 1997 -- the year incidentally that Hongkong was returned to its motherland -- no need to raise any jitters about that. War by al-Qaeda against China or Russia would have been just kinetic war. One in which radical Islam would lose 100 men, women and children for every Chinese or Russian it killed. That was a losing proposition. What Osama needed was information war, one which would allow him to dish out propaganda instead of take losses, and that could only be started by attacking the United States of America. Western politics would do the rest. Only after the information war started was it feasible to extend the military campaign. Strange as it may seem September 11 was a necessary prelude to attacking the Chinese.

There are times when I am tempted to think that the Western Left is radical Islam's Ring of Power. And the brilliance of al-Qaeda's reliance on it as a force-multiplier is that the defeat of radical Islam must consequently come at the price of altering the structure of post-war Western politics itself. In a sense the Western Left has become a hostage to the current world crisis, and perhaps the only part of the Left that understands this are the signatories of the Euston Manifesto, who realized that al-Qaeda had already claimed its political soul: that unconciously, almost imperceptibly, the Left in uncritical embrace of any foe of America had come to align itself with the most brutal, obscurantist, repressive theocrats on the planet. And would conceivably share its fate with them.

But al-Qaeda's allies can only control events up to a point. Elemental forces are ranged against it. Chief among which is the sheer, simple brutality of countries like Putin's Russia and China. If a snapping point is reached, even the Left may not forever restrain the West. The end point of debasing the coin of information is absolute bankruptcy.

The Devil and the Details

The American Thinker notices that Time Magazine's article, "How to Leave Iraq" is illustrated with a picture of a helicopter pulling a Stars and Stripes "A" out of Iraq. It is pretty dramatic in artistic conception, the only fly in the ointment being that the image is that of a Russian helicopter, an Mi-24 Hind. American Thinker expresses a certain disappointment.

Accompanying TIME/CNN's current online article by Michael Duffy entitled, "How to leave Iraq," and reportedly on the cover of the TIME print edition, is an illustration graphically demonstrating how limited these so-called news organizations' knowledge of the American military happens to be. The "last helicopter out" a vision harking back to Vietnam and beloved of the Mainstream Media, in this case just happens to be Russian, an MI-24 Hind gunship, according to the folks over at Blackfive, a leading milblog where contributors tend to know what they are talking about when it comes to things military, unlike the mainstream Media weenies.

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The blooper is no big deal in itself. But I suspect it comes from the same circles where all tracked vehicles are known as "tanks", all automatic rifles are described as "machineguns", all aerial ordnance is described as "cluster bombs" and the general idea of warfare is one in which stupid, yelling men advance shooting from the hip at everything that moves. Amazingly enough none of these shortcomings in knowledge are regarded as disqualifying anyone from discoursing on grand strategic concepts -- which is what the Time article is about.

Such ignorance, rather than undermining the authority of a strategic commentator, is sometimes regarded as actual proof of a wider mind, unlumbered by the low tradesman's obsession with machinery, technics, calibers, ranges, doctrines, history and whatnot. Ever since the Great War "proved" that professional military men were 'donkeys who led lions', a substantial percentage of Western intellectuals wouldn't be caught dead with more than a smattering of knowledge about things military. To know any more might create suspicions of stupidity; a first-rate mind could never interest itself for long with such dumb muck. While the actual rote operation of warfare could be left to the tradesmen, there arose the belief that the really important questions had to be left to the unfettered, liberally educated mind able to see problems in the round. Nowhere was this better expressed than in Clemenceau's dictum, "war is too important to be left to the generals."

Yet it is sobering to remember that before the Great War, the reason Joffre, Haig and the other Great War generals possessed such authority -- Joffre was absolute dictator at the front, even when the front was on French territory -- was the reaction to the catastrophes produced by an aristocratic officer corps. Before society learned to mistrust the professionals they first learned to mistrust the amateurs. So great was the disillusionment with the amateur leadership of the social upper crust that the safety of the nation could never be entrusted to them, but to the professionals. Only after the Great War would the attitudes turn again.

Up until the 19th century officers bought and sold their commissions in the British Army. It had the inestimable virtue of preventing the "wrong sort of people" from becoming officers. But the system had disadvantages in practice. Chiefly, it invited incompetence.

The worst potential effects of the system were mitigated during intensive conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars by heavy casualties among senior ranks (which ensured that the vacant commissions were exchanged for their face value only), and the possibility of promotion to brevet army ranks for deserving officers. An officer might be a subaltern or Captain in his regiment, but might hold a higher local rank if attached to other units or allied armies, or might be given a higher Army rank by the Commander-in-Chief, or the Monarch, in recognition of meritorious service or a notable feat of bravery....

The malpractices associated with the purchase of commissions reached their height in the long peace between the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War, when Lord Cardigan paid £40,000 for his commission. It was in the Crimea that it became most obvious that the system of purchase led to incompetent leadership, such as that which resulted in the Charge of the Light Brigade. An inquiry (the Commission on Purchase) was established in 1855, and commented unfavourably on the institution. The practice of Purchase of Commissions was finally abolished as part of the Cardwell reforms which made many changes to the structure and procedures of the Army.

The aristocrats confidently believed their inherent superiority would win out. It would be "all right on the day". Of course it very often was not, and the dull technicians often beat the men who fancied themselves the first rate minds. One thread that runs through strategic history has been to what extent the amateurs and professionals should play off against each other. And it's reasonable to think that they both need each other. This debate was renewed in Vietnam when the "Best and the Brightest" saw fit to run the war without the old-fashioned concept of victory; when Lyndon Johnson swore that not an outhouse could be bombed without his specific approval. When national leadership became obsessed with "sending signals", as if the Armed Forces were nothing but a woodfire and blanket to be used for communicating with people who didn't speak English. If the Great War showed that the professionals did not always have the answers, Vietnam illustrated that the amateurs didn't always either.

It isn't necessary to be able to tell an MI-24 from a UH-60. Yet given that intellectual superiority is never to be taken for granted, it helps, ceteris paribus to know the distinction. It's a safe bet that al-Qaeda can tell the difference.