News analysis and commentary from Phillip Carter -- now located at http://www.intel-dump.com

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Moussaoui one step closer to a military tribunal?

The Washington Post reports that U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has given the U.S. government another order in the Moussaoui case to comply with her order allowing access to other terrorists the U.S. has in custody. Moussaoui is seeking access to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, in accordance with the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses, in order to gather information which might be helpful to his defense. I think the defense theory is that Moussaoui was actually not a part of the Sept. 11 plan, and these two men can prove it.

Government officials filed no response yesterday, but indicated that they were likely to defy the order and refuse to produce the two witnesses -- identified by sources as former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, a Saudi who allegedly served as paymaster to the Sept. 11 hijackers. Both are in custody and being questioned at an undisclosed location.

Brinkema is expected, if disobeyed, to sanction the government for its failure to produce not only Mohammed and Hawsawi but also Ramzi Binalshibh, another top al Qaeda operative. In January, Brinkema ruled that Moussaoui could depose Binalshibh.

Possible punishments range from dismissing the case against Moussaoui to striking the possibility of the death penalty. Prosecutors are expected to appeal any adverse ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

If they ultimately are ordered to produce the three al Qaeda operatives by the higher courts, government officials have said they would refuse. The case probably would be moved to a military tribunal, where Moussaoui would not have the right to interview the witnesses.

Analysis: If Judge Brinkema backs the government into a corner, I think they will remove this case to a tribunal. Few will shed a tear for Mr. Moussaoui if he's transferred to military custody, and it might even make the U.S. government look more legitimate in the sense that it's treating him like the other non-citizen terrorists it has in custody at Gitmo. (Of course, Moussaoui is a French citizen so there may be some diplomatic complications here)

But the real question is political: does the White House have the political capital (not to mention the chutzpah) to put a person in front of a military tribunal, given the heat they have taken for these trials and other issues (e.g. the USA PATRIOT Act). I don't think the White House wants that kind of lightning rod to be planted on its front lawn at this juncture (wouldn't be prudent). In fact, I think the likely fate for Mr. Moussaoui will be that of Mr. Hamdi and Mr. Padilla. An order will be signed designating him an enemy combatant, and that will be the end of it. No trial, at least not in the short term. No political risk, other than what's already been incurred for those other 'combatants'. This seems like the most likely course of action to me.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:00

 
Two great pieces in Slate to check out

Once again, Slate has two great pieces of writing in two areas I care a lot about: law and war. The first piece comes from Dahlia Lithwick, Slate's outstanding legal correspondent, who details some of the discussion over the USA PATRIOT Act. Ms. Lithwick correctly points out the fact that too few people debating the Patriot Act actually know the minutiae of the act, and she tries to correct that lack of knowledge with her four-part series.

Second, Fred Kaplan chimes in with a great piece on the President Bush's lost opportunities after Sept. 11. Another president might have remade the world... this one did not. There will surely be lots of once-over-the-world analysis of Sept. 11 in the next few days. I'll try to find the better pieces and link to them.
posted by Phillip Carter at 20:53

 
'Training the Brains Behind the Intelligence'

This creative headline will run above a very interesting story in Monday's Los Angeles Times on the FBI's efforts to train terrorism analysts at its academy in Quantico, Virginia. Among the most significant failures before Sept. 11 was the failure to train adequate numbers of intelligence analysts who could find the indicators of terrorism and put those indicators together into a coherent picture. (Other failures included the lack of cross-talk between offices and lack of communication with the intelligence community) Now, Richard Schmitt writes in the LA Times, things are getting better.

. . . these are different kinds of recruits. They will not become FBI field agents, who come to this campus 30 miles south of Washington to hone their shooting skills and engage in cops-and-robbers exercises at a mock village that looks transported from a Hollywood back lot.

Rather, these are analysts who try to outthink their adversaries, and their training is strictly in the classroom.

Analysts "do not do the glamorous things," said Patricia Boord, the FBI unit chief in charge of the College of Analytical Studies. "They do mostly intellectual exercises."

Teamwork, communication and sifting of data — connecting the dots — are at the heart of a transformation the FBI is trying to undergo.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon two years ago, the storied agency was exposed as inept and ill-prepared. Congress and the public clamored for change.

In response, the bureau is redeploying agents into counterterrorism and working more closely with the CIA and other intelligence rivals. And it is struggling to create a mind-set that thinks harder and learns more from what it knows.

The story goes onto discuss the nature of the training exercises being used by the FBI to train these analysts. (A lot gets left out, but you can understand the security reasons for why that's so) Just as America's military must transform itself to deal with the 4th Generation Warfare threat, so too must the rest of America's security apparatus -- its FBI, INS, judiciary, homeland security agency, state and local police, and many others. The FBI has built a legendary reputation for solving crimes and winning convictions, but that's not enough in the realm of terrorism. Now, the FBI has to get so good at inchoate investigations that it can prevent terrorism from happening -- that's a lot harder than catching the bad guys and trying them after the bomb goes off. The key to this transformation is intelligence. And if this story is indicative of a larger trend, I'd say the FBI is on the right track.
posted by Phillip Carter at 21:33

 
Powell: Iraq will cost more than we think

In what should come as no surprise, Secretary of State Colin Powell said today that America's mission in Iraq will cost billions more than projected -- or known -- today. Powell's statement comes as the administration heads to Capitol Hill in search of additional funding for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the global war on terrorism.

"It's going to cost more, and there will be continued sacrifice on the part of our young men and women," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "Hopefully, in the very near future we'll get control of the security situation," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Bush was discussing Iraq and the terrorism fight in a nationally televised address from the White House on Sunday night.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the president believes the "cost of freedom and the cost of peace cannot be measured and that it is important that we put adequate resources to this task."
* * *
Rice declined to offer specifics on how much money would be needed. Congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they would not be surprised if the amount the president requests is higher than the $60 billion to $80 billion figure that has been reported for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

"I think it could be bigger than $80 billion," said a congressional aide, who is familiar with the president's work in refining how much to request from Congress. "I think the expectation is that it's going to be a very, very big number."

A second congressional aide said: "I'm thinking we're in the $70 billion to $80 billion range and I would lean to the higher end of that."

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Congress will approve the money needed to support U.S. troops, but lawmakers want the president to tell them what his "exit strategy" is from Iraq.

Analysis: Former-Army Chief of Staff Gordon R. Sullivan wrote a book titled "Hope is not a method," and that book title has become a mantra among America's military officers. That Secretary Powell would use the word "hopefully" in describing our chances of securing Iraq is not a good sign. Of all people, he understands the futility of hope as a planning method.

The real stakes here are much higher. The authorization and appropriations debate over Iraq is really a battle about who will control American foreign policy -- warmaking, diplomacy, nation-building, and everything else. Art. I and Art. II of the Constitution embody a tension between Congress and the President, and that tension has not been easily resolved for our Constitution's 213 year history. This tension typically plays out each other with the National Defense Authorization Act and its companion authorization bill, where Congress tells the President how to spend money on defense. Suffice to say, if something doesn't get funded, it generally doesn't get done -- especially where large weapons systems (e.g. missile defense) are concerned. The annual authorization bill also includes hundreds (or thousands) of small provisions which set policy for the military as a matter of federal law. Each year, this bill is the largest piece of legislation considered or passed by Congress.

The battle over funding for Iraq is obviously more important than a given year's annual authorization act. The lives of America's sons and daughters are at stake, as well as the direction of a mission that has the potential to influence our foreign policy for decades. Funding is the tool by which Congress exercises oversight of this mission. It would be easier if Congress could simply hold hearings on the wisdom or efficacy of Iraq. But that's not the way that oversight works -- funding is the hook on which the entire process hangs. The authority to fund (or defund) the mission is the leverage Congress has to ask the tough questions of the White House on Iraq:

- Why did we invade Iraq (if not for WMD), and did we accomplish the missions we set for the major combat phase of the war?
- What key tasks remain for our mission in Iraq (e.g. the capture of Saddam Hussein, restoration of electricity, holding of elections, etc)?
- What is our desired end state for Iraq?
- What are the criteria by which we will measure this end state? (And by extension, will these criteria determine our exit from Iraq?
- What is our plan for achieving this end state?

The Constitution empowers the President as commander-in-chief of the military, and it gives him plenary power in the area of foreign policy. But it gives Congress the power to raise and maintain the military, as well as the power to fund the military. Presidents typically criticize Congress for asking these kinds of questions, and for letting partisanship infect foreign policy. The Bush White House will likely say that Congressional probing is hindering our ability to persevere in Iraq. If Congress delays its funding decisions in order to hold hearings, the screaming from the White House will get even louder. That's unfortunate. The Framers intended this tension when they wrote our Constitution. If they were looking at this debate over funding for Iraq, I think they'd be quite proud that their system of checks and balances worked exactly the way they intended.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:02

 
Security v. mission accomplishment -- a really hard tradeoff

Today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a great article by Greg Jaffe and Chris Cooper about the tradeoffs being made by commanders on the ground in Iraq between site security and other missions. In the aftermath of deadly car bombings, many have called for the deployment of U.S. soldiers as security around key sites -- police stations, large mosques, government centers, power stations, et cetera. As we have a finite number of soldiers on the ground, the dedication of U.S. troops to these sites takes away from the available pool of soldiers who can conduct offensive missions.

Careful to say they are not short of troops now, commanders conceded that they are under ever-greater pressure to siphon off troops for defense, as civilians, foreign governments and U.S. politicians clamor for better security. While a United Nations resolution just offered by the U.S. may lead to an agreement to bring foreign reinforcements to Iraq, the Pentagon is concerned the wait may be long.

Quick relief from the U.N. appears unlikely. Thursday, both French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder dismissed the U.S.'s proposed U.N. resolution as inadequate. Mr. Chirac said that while his government is "naturally ready to study" the resolution, he said it was "quite far removed from what we believe is the priority objective, which is the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as quickly as possible." Mr. Schroeder opposed the idea that the U.S. -- not the U.N. -- should oversee political developments in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez warned Thursday that international forces would be needed to help tackle looming security threats, such as Iranian fighters or possible conflict between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims. "If a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt ... that would be an additional security challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for," Gen. Sanchez said. "There are security challenges that are looming in the future that will require additional forces, and those are issues that with the coalition, and with time, can be resolved," he said.

Analysis: I can tell you from experience that this is a really tough balancing act. On the one hand, you have critical sites and high-value assets that must be protected. Some of these are Iraqi sites; others belong to the U.S. But if you leave these unprotected, it's almost a sure thing that the enemy will attack them. And if you lose these things (e.g. U.S. command post), you risk a major tactical or operational setback. So you have to dedicate the assets to protecting these sites.

On the other hand, you can't win a counter-insurgency fight by playing good defense. The way to win a guerilla war is to go on offense -- to gather intelligence, find the enemy, hunt them down, and capture or kill them. If you devote too many troops to this mission, you take away from your ability to prosecute the offensive part of the fight. Commanders and planners are trained to evaluate the operational risk entailed in both courses of action, and it's a safe bet that this balance is being looked at daily to make sure we get it right.

To add another level of complexity, there's a paradox in anti-terrorism planning which goes like this: The more you protect the hard targets, the more you have to worry about the soft targets. Our enemy is not stupid. Al Qaeda has typically chosen its targets after careful reconnaissance designed to determine the vulnerability of their intended target. If we protect something they want to hit, they'll either change methods or change targets. Our jihadist enemies may want to become martyrs, but they don't want to fail in their attacks.

So how do we strike this balance? As always, it's easier said than done. The most important thing is to gather, analyze and produce good intelligence to aid the commander in making these tradeoffs. The second most important thing is to have sufficient resources on the ground so you don't have to guard too few things in order to leave yourself some offensive capability. And the third thing is to constantly reevaluate these decisions in light of new threat information. I think we're doing these things, save some residual concerns about having enough troops in Iraq to do everything we need to do.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:14

 
America's 'grief corps'

Think you have a tough job? Think again. Today's Washington Post has a sobering article on the military officers and NCOs who have one of the toughest jobs in America: casualty notification. There's not much I can say here, except that I have enormous respect for these men and women who personally notify every family of every casualty no matter what the cause. This function exists in war and peace, yet since Sept. 11, it has escalated into quite a large task for America's military.

More troops are dying in Iraq and more families are requesting funerals at Fort Myer than Winborne's 10-person staff can handle. The shortage in the Army's bereavement corps is so acute that her department has started actively recruiting new casualty notification officers and casualty assistance officers -- CNOs and CAOs, the men and women who do some of the grimmest work of war, unheralded and far from the battlefields.

The notification officers have a one-time job: They deliver the bad news and the secretary of the Army's condolences. Then, within a day, the casualty assistance officers take over and spend as long as a year working with the deceased's immediate family, sometimes functioning as stand-ins. On the first visit, the CAO delivers the $6,000 "death gratuity" check. The officers walk a fine line with grieving families, taking kids out for Happy Meals and filling out tax returns but never allowing themselves to get too close.

CAOs are expected to continue with their day jobs but make the family's concerns their first priority. They take care of the funeral arrangements, the transportation costs, the casket selection, the printing of memorial cards, the endless paperwork -- as much as the family wants them to do.

"It's the hardest job there is," says [Army Capt. Rita] Winborne, 37.

posted by Phillip Carter at 07:47

 
Screaming Eagles work hard to rebuild Iraq

The New York Times has an interesting article today on the progress made by the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. The article piqued my interest because I've worked with Col. Linnington before, and his name and unit is featured prominently in the piece. But as I read down, I found some interesting things in this piece -- signs that we may be doing good things in Iraq despite the plans coming out of the Pentagon.

Col. Michael Linnington's brigade fought its way across Iraq. But one of his most unusual missions took place in this remote northwestern corner of the country.

His orders were simple — to work out agreement between local sheiks and Iraqi customs officials to restore trade with Syria. What was unusual was that the decision had been initiated not by the State Department or civilian administrators in Baghdad, but by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division and the dominant political figure in Mosul and the surrounding areas in northern Iraq.

Three months later, there is a steady stream of cross-border traffic, and the modest fees that the division set for entering Iraq — $10 per car, $20 per truck — have raised revenue for expanded customs forces and other projects in the region.

A five-day trip through the 101st Division's large area of operation showed that American military, not the civilian-led occupation authority based in Baghdad, are the driving force in the region's political and economic reconstruction.

So what else is new? Field commanders, junior officers and sergeants are taking the initiative to make things work in Iraq, despite the best efforts at the top to frustrate their efforts. That has been true for decades, if not centuries. I doubt you'll find any of these actions by the 101st in a CENTCOM or JCS operational plan. Captains, majors and colonels figured it out on the ground.

Still, it doesn't surprise me that our military is taking the lead role in Iraq. That tracks a larger trend around the world, which Dana Priest effectively laid out in her book The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military. Essentially, the military has muscled out other U.S. governmental agency by force of its resources, size, rapid deployment capability, and ability to operate in a tense environment. At some point, down the road, we may see more USAID and State Department leadership in Iraq. But for now, it's natural to expect that DoD would take the lead role. Luckily, our men and women in these units are flexible and innovative enough to act as soldier/diplomat/policeman/politician/advisor -- whatever the situation may require. Now it's up to us to give them the resources (troops, money, equipment, international support) they need to do the job right.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:45

 
The post-modern presidency of George W. Bush

Josh Marshall has this provocative essay in the September issue of the Washington Monthly on President Bush, and the argument that he epitomizes the idea of what a post-modern president would be. The piece is a little theoretical for a guy with my public school education, but it makes a very interesting point about this presidency that I hadn't considered yet. Here's the part that I thought said it all:

The president and his aides don't speak untruths because they are necessarily people of bad character. They do so because their politics and policies demand it. As astute observers such as National Journal's Jonathan Rauch have recently noted, George W. Bush campaigned as a moderate, but has governed with the most radical agenda of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, the aim of most of Bush's policies has been to overturn what FDR created three generations ago. On the domestic front, that has meant major tax cuts forcing sharp reductions in resources for future government activism, combined with privatization of as many government functions as possible. Abroad, Bush has pursued an expansive and militarized unilateralism aimed at cutting the U.S. free from entangling alliances and international treaty obligations so as to maximize freedom of maneuver for American power in a Hobbesian world.

Yet this is not an agenda that the bulk of the American electorate ever endorsed. Indeed, poll after poll suggest that Bush's policy agenda is not particularly popular. What the public wants is its problems solved: terrorists thwarted, jobs created, prescription drugs made affordable, the environment protected. Almost all of Bush's deceptions have been deployed when he has tried to pass off his preexisting agenda items as solutions to particular problems with which, for the most part, they have no real connection. That's when the unverifiable assertion comes in handy. Many of the administration's policy arguments have amounted to predictions--tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes, Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower--that most experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn't be definitely disproven until events played out in the future. In the midst of getting those policies passed, the administration's main obstacle has been the experts themselves--the economists who didn't trust the budget projections, the generals who didn't buy the troop estimates, intelligence analysts who questioned the existence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That has created a strong incentive to delegitimize the experts--a task that comes particularly easy to the revisionists who drive Bush administration policy. They tend to see experts as guardians of the status quo, who seek to block any and all change, no matter how necessary, and whose views are influenced and corrupted by the agendas and mindsets of their agencies. Like orthodox Marxists who pick apart mainstream economics and anthropology as the creations of 'bourgeois ideology' or Frenchified academic post-modernists who 'deconstruct' knowledge in a similar fashion, revisionist ideologues seek to expose "the facts" as nothing more than the spin of experts blinded by their own unacknowledged biases. The Bush administration's betes noir aren't patriarchy, racism, and homophobia, but establishmentarianism, big-government liberalism, and what they see as pervasive foreign policy namby-pambyism. For them, ignoring the experts and their 'facts' is not only necessary to advance their agenda, but a virtuous effort in the service of a higher cause.

This piece is sure to spark criticism from the neo-con media on the right, such as the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal, just as Mr. Marshall's piece in March 2003 ("Practice to Deceive") did. But while such criticism is inevitable, it's probably also a waste of energy. Mr. Marshall's critique seems spot-on to me. Any salvos launched at Mr. Marshall from the White House will simply prove his point.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:03

 
WP reports on the soldiers wounded in Iraq
Until now, the wounded toll went largely unreported by the major media and the Pentagon

Until now, there has been lots of reporting on those killed in Iraq, but little reporting on soldiers wounded in Iraq. Much of this owes to advances in body armor and battlefield medicine (also covered) which have transformed many wounds that would've been fatal in previous wars into injuries. However, Vernon Loeb reports in today's Washington Post that the numbers of wounded have actually been quite high -- and that thousands of Americans have returned home from Iraq as a result of wounds suffered in action.

The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported.

The rising number and quickening pace of soldiers being wounded on the battlefield have been overshadowed by the number of troops killed since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1. But alongside those Americans killed in action, an even greater toll of battlefield wounded continues unabated, with an increasing number being injured through small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, remote-controlled mines and what the Pentagon refers to as "improvised explosive devices."

Indeed, the number of troops wounded in action in Iraq is now more than twice that of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The total increased more than 35 percent in August -- with an average of almost 10 troops a day injured last month.
* * *
Pentagon officials point to advances in military medicine as one of the reasons behind the large number of wounded soldiers; many lives are being saved on the battlefield that in past conflicts would have been lost. But the rising number of casualties also reflects the resistance that U.S. forces continue to meet nearly five months after Hussein was ousted from power.

Although Central Command keeps a running total of the wounded, it releases the number only when asked -- making the combat injuries of U.S. troops in Iraq one of the untold stories of the war.

With no fanfare and almost no public notice, giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began, more than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, 301 who received non-hostile injuries in vehicle accidents and other mishaps, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill.

I'm no fan of body-count journalism, and I don't think we should make policies exclusively on the basis of projected casualties. (See this note from last week) But I do think it's important to take this into consideration. I also think it's important to be sensitive to the new generation of veterans who will soon rejoin American society. Some will be wounded on the outside; many will be scarred on the inside. The searing experience of battle will change them all in some way, great or small. America has a terrible record (save notable exceptions like the GI Bill) of greeting its returning veterans from war, and our thousands of homeless veterans attest to that fact. We must do better with this generation, and do what is necessary to help these men and women when they come home.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:06

 
Former Army secretary blasts administration on Iraq

Robert Burns, the Pentagon beat reporter for the Associated Press, reports that former-Secretary of the Army (and retired 1-star general) Tom White has a few choice words in his new book for the White House over its handling of Iraq. White was forced by Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld (and possibly the White House) to resign after a series of high-profile clashes between the Army and SecDef over various issues. His uniformed counterpart, Gen. Eric Shinseki, was also forced out by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Now, Tom White writes that the Bush Administration made serious errors in its pre-war planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would instantly produce a pro-United States citizenry ready for economic and political rebirth ignored the harsh realities on the ground," White wrote in a preface to "Reconstructing Eden," which is to be published Thursday.

In a letter to news organizations announcing the book's release, White was even tougher on the administration. "Unbelievably, American lives are being lost daily," he wrote. White said the administration lacks a cohesive, integrated plan to stabilize and rebuild the country.

"We did not conduct the war this way and we should not continue rebuilding the country in a haphazard manner," he wrote. "The result will be a financial disaster, more lives lost, chaos in Iraq and squandered American goodwill."

White, who as a civilian service secretary was not in the military chain of command, served as Army secretary from May 2001 to May 2003. He clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on a number of issues, including the service's plan for the Crusader artillery system, which Rumsfeld viewed as too heavy and cumbersome for the lighter, more agile Army he envisioned.

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim Cassella, said that as a matter of policy the department does not comment on books. He acknowledged that U.S. occupation authorities in Baghdad face severe problems with security in Iraq but believe they are on track toward success.

In the book, White noted the postwar spasms of violence in Iraq.

"It is quite clear in the immediate aftermath of hostilities that the plan for winning the peace is totally inadequate," he wrote.

White wrote that the administration's Iraq policy "threatens to turn what was a major military victory into a potential humanitarian, political and economic disaster." The administration's "anemic attempts at nation building" will be viewed with disdain by other countries, he said.

Analysis: This may be Monday-morning quarterbacking, but it's extremely well-informed Monday-morning quarterbacking by a man who's thrown a few footballs in his time. Secretary White, had he stayed in uniform, probably would've made it all the way up to 4-star rank. As Secretary of the Army, he was widely considered one of the most popular service secretaries in recent memory -- at least within the ranks. And he was a part of the pre-war planning process in the Pentagon until his departure in May 2003, so he knows what he's talking about -- much more than this author. If Tom White thinks we screwed up the post-war planning, and failed to devote adequate resources to the problem, he's basing that opinion on a lot more evidence than any other writers I've read lately.

That said, this story has the potential to create serious civil-military problems for the Bush Administration and America -- especially if retired-Gen. Shinseki decides to speak up as well. Acrimony between uniformed leaders and civilian political leaders is nothing new, either for America or any other nation. (See the history provided by Eliot Cohen in his book Supreme Command) But this flare-up presents a Constitutional crisis of sorts, where the President's very credibility on nuts & bolts military decision is being called into question some of his highest ranking military officials. This criticism is bolstered by the experiential gap between President Bush and Secretary White. Art. II of the Constitution designates the President as Commander-in-Chief of our military, but it does not confer automatic credibility on him in the area of national security policy. President Clinton found this out the hard way with his initial efforts to integrate gays in the military, and it cost him good civil-military relations for the length of his presidency. Now we have a situation which may be worse. President Bush isn't being criticized here for his social policies for the military -- he's being criticized for his decisions sending the military into harm's way by the very military leaders who helped supervise and implement those orders for the Army. In terms of Constitutional crises, this does not rise to the level of Cooper v. Aaron or the Nixon tapes, but it's not a good thing either.

No way out? Fortunately, the President can escape this Catch-22 situation. (And no, he doesn't need to enlist in the Army to close the experience gap with Tom White.) What he does need to do is open his national-security decisionmaking process to smart folks like Tom White and Eric Shinseki. This should be easy for a president who prides himself on being a MBA-type -- someone who succeeds by surrounding himself with exceedingly smart people.

If I had to pin the fault on one aspect of the post-war planning, it was the "group think" that pervaded the White House, National Security Council and Pentagon during the process. Clearly, the plan was based on certain assumptions about the post-war situation, and those assumptions turned out to be wrong. We were not greeted as liberators, and we have become the target of hatred for both Shiite and Sunni Muslims. No "Plan B" was created or effectively resourced, and when our planning assumptions proved faulty, it was too late to spin up a Plan B. In a perfect world, we would've deployed enough of a force package to Kuwait to stage for Plan B if necessary -- but we did not. We assumed a tremendous amount of risk by building a plan on a fixed set of assumptions and fighting that plan despite indications that we would face an insurgency after the war. The best way to mitigate this kind of planning risk is to broaden the planning process and build multiple courses of actions (COAs) which account for each probable set of assumptions.

Luckily, there is no shortage of planners on the Joint Staff to conduct such contingency planning. Nor is there any shortage of civilian experts with security clearances to do this kind of planning for RAND or another think tank. All that's required is a willingness among the denizens of the E-Ring and West Wing to consider ideas from the outside, and to act on them.

Update: James Webb -- former Navy Secretary, decorated Vietnam Vet, and author -- also has some words for the Bush Administration on Iraq.

"I am very troubled by the fact that we went into Iraq and very troubled about how we're going to get out of Iraq,'' Webb said Thursday to about 200 naval officers, veterans and civilians at the Radisson Hotel Norfolk. The lecture was sponsored by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum and the Naval War College Foundation.

The United States should quickly get the United Nations involved in administering and patrolling the country, he said.

"We need to get out of there before the mistake we made gets worse,'' said Webb, a Marine Corps veteran.
* * *
Bob Briner, a retired Navy captain from Virginia Beach, said he appreciated Webb's observations.

"What I like about Webb is that he's been there, he knows what he's talking about,'' he said.

Yes he does.

Update: The Washington Post reported on Friday that retired Gen. Anthony Zinni has joined the chorus of really smart and experienced military leaders who think we may be in trouble in Iraq. Clearly, I lack the experience and knowledge of men like James Webb and Anthony Zinni -- the latter of whom is regarded as the intellectual father of the modern "CINC". (Washington Post writer Dana Priest described Zinni as an American proconsul because of the way he presided over American interests in the Middle East when he was CINC of CENTCOM.) Of course, neither man is particularly beholden to the White House. Webb is more of a Reagan Republican, and Zinni is Colin Powell's man.

But is Josh Marshall right -- is this a sign that Rumsfeld is on his way out?
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:38

 
A few recommendations...

I'll be away from my laptop until Monday evening, so I thought I would recommend a few weblogs which have caught my eye in the last few weeks. Enjoy!

War and Piece -- War and Piece is written by Laura Rozen, a journalist who reports on national security and foreign policy issues from Washington, D.C.

Jusiper -- a center-left weblog that looks like an edgier version of TAPPED and the Washington Monthly. Good reporting and analysis from the left side of the aisle; I suspect this will be a really good site to watch for the 2004 election.

Darren Kaplan -- Thoughts on foreign policy and other issues from an attorney who lives in New York.

Priorities & Frivolities -- a great site run by a soon-to-be student at Harvard's Kennedy School. Sometimes it covers baseball; mostly it covers politics.

Fedlawyerguy.org -- A great weblog on all the administrative law and federal agency stuff that wonks like me find really interesting. This is about the nuts & bolts of government, and it's really good.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:37

 
AFA Scandal: Winds of Change has a good collection on the sexual assault scandal which continues to unfold at the U.S. Air Force Academy. It appears that Gen. John Rosa, the new USAFA commanding general, is making an effort to clean house. Whether he can make a dent on the entrenched culture there remains to be seen. (Thanks to Oxblog for the tip)
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:29

 
A legal obligation to police Iraq?

Eugene Volokh comments on a blog post arguing that America has a legal obligation to police Iraq under the Geneva Convention, and that our failure to protect Iraqis from other Iraqis may amount to a war crime. This argument could give rise to some sort of legal recourse against American authorities for "letting" Friday's car bombing happen in Najaf.

I agree with Eugene's analysis under the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, as well as his distinction between negative and positive obligations. We certainly have an obligation to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and to abstain from killing non-combatants to the extent that's military practicable. However, whether we have an affirmative obligation to protect Iraqis is really a moot point. As Eugene points out, we have compelling political and military reasons for stabilizing the situation there, and those interests are what will control U.S. behavior in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:26

 
Car bomb kills leading Muslim cleric and at least 90 other persons in Iraq

The New York Times reports (along with nearly every media organization) that a major car bomb exploded today in Najaf, killing more than 90 persons. One of the fatalities was Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, a relatively moderate Shiite cleric who had shown some willingness to work with American officials in recent weeks and months.

The explosion occurred moments after the Shiite leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, had left the site, which houses the tomb of Imam Ali and is considered the holiest shrine in Shiite Islam.

Ayatollah al-Hakim was an important Shiite ally of the American occupying force and his death will likely undermine the coalition's efforts to build stability in Iraq.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, which also injured at least 140 people, according to a doctor running the emergency room a the city's teaching hospital.

American officials, speaking about previous violence in Najaf, have said that attacks that harm Shiites are probably the work of other Shiites, while attacks aimed directly at the coalition forces or intended to foment anger toward the coalition are probably the work of Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein.

Quick Analysis: Like the UN car bombing, this is pure terrorism. It is violence with a political purpose, intended for an audience beyond the victims. The purpose here is to intimidate the Americans and Iraqis, and to contribute to a larger sense of bedlam that might force us to abandon our Iraqi endeavor. The question for our side is: will we let it?
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:51

 
ROTC enrollment on the rise

The Washington Post reports that college students across America are joining the military's Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in increasingly larger numbers than before. In percentage terms, these increases are even outpacing recruiting for enlisting personnel, which have hovered just above recruiting target numbers for the last few years.

Across the state and country, other colleges have reported increased interest and enrollment in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Last academic year, Army ROTC enrollment at Maryland colleges and universities went up 20 percent, from 466 the year before to 560. The numbers nationwide grew 3 percent, from 29,818 to 30,824, during the same time.

Cadet Wayne Logan, 18, believes the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had something to do with the increases. He recently signed up for ROTC this fall at Bowie State.

"It was kind of a wake-up call that we're not untouchable," said Logan, who lives in the District. "Everybody can't be a doctor, and somebody needs to protect the United States."
* * *
Recruiters point to other reasons their ranks have grown, namely a bigger push to recruit, new tools such as the Internet and e-mail, a bad economy and better financial incentives.

"My sense was that the events validated a choice that many of the people had already made to join ROTC," said Paul Kotakis, national spokesman for the Army ROTC.

Ann Easterling, spokeswoman for the Air Force ROTC, agreed. Last academic year, the Air Force experienced a 22 percent increase, from 14,308 cadets the previous year to 17,513. The Navy's program grew slightly during that time, from 5,831 to 6,068, a 4 percent increase.

Analysis: I think this a great thing. Military service is not for everyone, but I believe that every American ought to serve his or her nation in some way -- whether in the military, foreign service, Peace Corps, as a school teacher, or in some other needed capacity. I joined the military because I felt it was the best opportunity for me to serve, mature, and lead a diverse group of Americans -- and the military kept its end of the bargain for me.

I think there are at least three trends at work here. The confluence of these factors -- more than any one alone -- has led to this surge in ROTC enrollment.

1. The Economy. Like it or not, the American economy is still not doing well. Recruiters still come to campus to recruit new B.A. and B.S. holders, but not in the same numbers they did in the late 1990s -- and certainly not with the same lucrative offers. ROTC offers a steady job with decent pay and great benefits after college. I don't think you can discount this lure for the military, particularly among working class and middle class students.

1.a. The Economy II - College Costs. The cost of higher education has risen dramatically in the last 10-15 years, particularly at public institutions that used to be relatively inexpensive (or even free) for in-state residents. Much of this owes to the counter-cyclical nature of state budgets, which are tied to income and consumption taxes that do poorly in bad economic times, and squeeze state services like higher education. (See this Wall Street Journal article on the trend in California) In a bad economy, college fees rise as administrators try to balance their budgets on the backs of students. Parents can't afford to offset these increases as they could in a good economy, forcing a student to either work or borrow money. An ROTC scholarship looks awfully attractive to a college student in this predicament.

2. The War on Terrorism. I think it's safe to say that the Sept. 11 attacks made many Americans look inside themselves to their own patriotism, and led many to look for ways to express that patriotism. The military has benefitted in some small measure from this. Recruiting numbers have not skyrocketed as they did in December 1941, but they have gone up. Some of this may owe to economic factors in the larger population, but I think these ROTC students are joining for more than just financial reasons. I've given a class to UCLA's Army ROTC seniors during the last 2 years, and my impression is that they're going out into the force with a purpose -- not just a bottom-line mentality.

3. Worldwide Deployments - Relevance and Opportunities. At a more practical level, the war on terrorism has given the military new relevance and new opportunities. For a young lieutenant (or ensign) just graduated from college, this means real opportunities to serve abroad in harm's way where the nation depends on him or her to get the job done. That's a far cry from the peacetime military, which often revolves around paperwork, PowerPoint, and chickensh*t. The prospects for a new military officer are far more exciting today than they were for me in 1997, notwithstanding the Balkans mission then. I think this has a positive effect on recruiting as well.

Bottom Line: The all volunteer force can only work when successive generations of American men and women make the choice to enter the military -- to personall step into the breach and place themselves in harm's way. In particular, our military depends on young citizens graduating from college to make this choice -- forgoing possible riches in the private sector for a few years while they serve their nation. Unfortunately, the burden of service (as officers and enlisted personnel) has mostly been borne by America's working and middle class. This article didn't discuss the equitable issues of military service, and the current distribution of ROTC students by socioeconomic class. But this is certainly a concern of mine, and something I hope to see reported in the future.
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:46

 
Will Wes Clark run? Can he win?

Amy Sullivan writes in the Washington Monthly that the answer is "maybe" -- but it all depends on Gen. (retired) Clark. It could all depend on one other man from Arkansas who's also a Rhodes Scholar, and for whom Clark worked a few years ago.

Clark just might get the biggest endorsement of them all. In a June interview, former President Bill Clinton told the Associated Press that he has been impressed by every aspect of Clark's career and uttered these magic words: "I believe Wes, if he runs, would make a valuable contribution because he understands America's security challenges and domestic priorities. I believe he would make a good president." The statement has been judged by many political observers to be a non-endorsement endorsement, and a signal to Democratic donors and consultants to wait for Clark.

I wouldn't want to handicap the Democrat race just yet, and I'm not part of any betting pools either. But if you had to pick a long-shot horse to take the cup, it'd have to be Clark. The Washington Monthly is known as an opinion leader inside the Beltway -- especially among Democrats. If Clark can get enough buzz, and if he decides to run, he may well have a shot.

Update: Thursday's New York Times reports that Wes Clark is leaning towards declaring himself a candidate -- but is still conducting his reconnaissance.

It's safe to say he wants to run," said a longtime friend who has had frequent political conversations with General Clark. "But he approaches this like a military man. He wants to know, Can I win the battle? He doesn't want to have a situation where he could embarrass himself, but I'm absolutely certain he wants to run."

Whether he does, his friends said, will be determined by his instincts and a firm assessment of Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, whose early success has come in part through criticism of White House strategies in Iraq that are every bit as strong as General Clark's.

While General Clark has consistently maintained that he has not yet made up his mind, his friends said a major obstacle has been cleared — family approval. They said his wife, Gert, who had initially expressed reservations, now favors his running.

"He is going to do it," said another of General Clark's friends. "He's just going back and forth as to when" to announce.

In an interview from his office in Little Rock, Ark., General Clark said today that he intended to announce his decision whether he would run in two weeks or so.

And the race gets more interesting. . .
posted by Phillip Carter at 12:01

 
On casualty and body counts

The New York Times reports that American deaths in Iraq since May 1 (the day President Bush declared an end to major combat operations) now exceed Americans deaths during the actual "war" phase of the war. (sic) According to the AP's tally, 138 American soldiers died during major combat operations, a number which was surpassed on Tuesday when this story was written.

After a bomb killed a soldier this morning on a highway northwest of Baghdad, the death toll since the end of major combat operations exceeded the number killed during the war, according to the Pentagon. The soldier was the 139th member of the armed services to die since the formal declaration of the end of major combat operations. During the war in March and April, 138 died.

Two soldiers were also wounded by the explosion, caused by a homemade bomb. The soldiers were near the town of Habbaniya, in a support convoy traveling on the major highway linking Baghdad with western Iraq and Jordan.

Later in the day, another soldier became the 140th to die since May 1, when he was hit by a car as he was changing a tire on his vehicle on the road near Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, military officials said.

Of the 138 soldiers who died during the war, most died in combat. The Pentagon classified 116 of the deaths as "hostile" and the remaining 22 as "nonhostile," a category that includes deaths due to illness and noncombat accidents.

Since May 1, most of the deaths have been in the nonhostile category — a total of 78, including the roadside accident today. The remaining 62 deaths were in combat situations like the bomb attack.

Analysis: Presumably, this story is supposed to make us pause and reflect on the cost of our Iraqi endeavor, much as the Vietnam Memorial gives us pause every time we see it. The human cost of this war has been high, both in terms of our dead and our wounded -- a number which is largely unreported by the media and the military. We should pause when we see stories like this to reflect on our reasons for waging war. President Bush made the case yesterday that our cause was worth this cost in blood, and I think he made a good case. But this is a judgment that every American should make, based on the best available evidence from all sides.

However, I do not think that death makes a good metric of success in war -- or nation building -- for at least three reasons. First, focusing on death as your metric of success gears every effort towards producing death, or avoiding it. That strategy is not necessarily consistent with our goals in Iraq, especially today. On the inflicting side, we do not want to inflict maximum casualties on a population that we are trying to win over. On the avoiding side, too much emphasis on casualty avoidance and force protection can frustrate a commander who is trying to accomplish his/her mission. Here's a hypo to explain how this works:

You're a logistics battalion commander with an attached Military Police platoon for security. The MP platoon has 10 HMMWVs with crew-served weapons, organized in 3 squads. Ordinarily, you choose to second one squad with each critical convoy as an escort, allowing for a moderate amount of security. But now you're driven less by mission accomplishment and more by casualty avoidance and force protection. Now you want to escort every convoy, not just the critical ones, and you want to do so with more firepower. So you send out two squads of escorts with every convoy, effectively reducing the number of convoys you can send and exhausting the MPs.

That's just one example of how casualty-avoidance can infect the thinking and planning of a ground commander. I'm the first one to say that our soldiers are our most precious resource -- the heart and soul of our combat power. But we can't afford to let casualty avoidance dictate our tactics or strategy. In the long run, this will subordinate our mission to our avoidance of casualties, and ultimately result in failure.

Second, focusing on death as your metric of success reduces warfare to an attrition-based slugmatch where the winner is the one with the least casualties -- in relative or absolute terms. That's essentially how Napoleon waged war in the early 19th Century with his levee en masse, and it's also how we fought the Civil War. It's not the way we want to fight now, in the 21st Century, with an all-volunteer force that is long on technology and short on manpower. We have substituted capital for labor across our military force, and we simply can't absorb the same casualty counts as we could have in WWII and Vietnam. Moreover, our enemy can afford to lose more people, because he's fighting a guerilla war of national liberation and casualties only fuel his cause. We don't want to get dragged into an attrition fight here. (For more on this, see DNI's library on 4th Generation Warfare)

Finally, death makes a lousy metric of success because it aligns poorly with tactical, operational and strategic objectives. This was illustrated quite clearly in Vietnam, where we inflicted thousands (perhaps millions) of deaths on the North Vietnamese -- but ultimately lost the war. Our objectives in the war did not include the wholesale infliction of death on the Iraqi people, and our objectives today in the nation-building phase certainly don't either. Killing Iraqis won't help us win their hearts and minds. Paradoxically, their view is that killing Americans may liberate their nation from our occupation (see, e.g., Somalia). But if we focus too much on our U.S. casualties, then we will unavoidably resort to using Iraqi casualties as a metric of comparison. I don't think that's a road we want to go down.
posted by Phillip Carter at 11:41

 
Cooler heads appear to prevail in India

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported on its International Page this morning that the Indian government has taken a measured response to Tuesday's bombing in Mumbai which killed more than 50 persons. While blaming Muslim groups for the bombing, India stopped short of officially criticizing the Pakistani government for its alleged sponsorship of Muslim insurgents in India. That diplomatic self-censorship may be a sign that cooler heads have prevailed within India's government, and that this latest bombing will not derail the continuing diplomacy between the two nations.

. . . New Delhi's apparent reluctance to blame Islamabad itself for Monday's bombings, as it has after previous terrorist attacks, signaled to many political analysts that India and Pakistan will persevere in their recent attempts at détente. Indeed, officials from the two countries are to meet Wednesday in Islamabad to discuss resuming direct air services.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that the peace process will continue," said Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi. "Over the past six to eight months, so many initiatives have been launched that it will be difficult to go back to square one."

India and Pakistan nearly went to war last year, after Islamic militants attacked India's Parliament in December 2001 and, six months later, assaulted an Indian Army camp in Kashmir. Mr. Vajpayee's government accused the Pakistani government of directly supporting the militants, an allegation Islamabad denied. But in April this year, the Indian prime minister announced that his government would attempt "one last" initiative for peace with Pakistan, an effort that has focused mainly on resuming business and cultural exchanges.

posted by Phillip Carter at 09:45

 
Patriot Act forces investment firms to become nosier

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported this morning that firms offering mutual funds and other investments have started gathering more information about their clients in order to satisfy parts of the USA Patriot Act and Treasury regulations promulgated under its authority. I blogged about this some time ago, when USAA asked me to verify my identity despite my having an account with them for several years when I tried to open a mutual fund. Now, the Journal reports that this has become the norm for mutual fund firms and others in the industry, with some important secondary and tertiary consequences.

Starting Oct. 1, mutual-fund firms won't be allowed to open new accounts without first collecting personal data from investors not always gathered previously. Fund companies also must verify each new customer's identity promptly after opening an account. While some firms already check facts like these, these rules go a step further.

Investors who supply incorrect information that can't be corrected quickly could find their fund accounts closed or their activity in those accounts limited under the rules. Firms also will be required to compare the names of new account holders with lists of suspected terrorists and terrorist organizations.

The changes are required by rules to prevent money-laundering that were adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department as part of the USA Patriot Act approved by Congress in 2001. The rules, on which regulators gave their final guidelines earlier this month, follow a volley of other Patriot Act rules enacted last year. Those regulations required funds to review customer accounts with balances of $5,000 or more for suspicious trades.

The Oct. 1 customer-identification standards for funds -- like similar rules in the works for other financial firms such as brokerage firms and credit-card companies -- could be felt in consumers' wallets. Government and consultant estimates of the cost for the industry to update systems and train staffers to handle these procedures total more than $100 million in the first year and could exceed $200 million. Spending in future years could total nearly as much, all of which could increase fund expenses for investors.

There also may be logistical problems over providing more data when customers open accounts. "Investors might have to jump through a few more hoops," says Laura Chasney, associate legal counsel at T. Rowe Price Group Inc. "They should expect a few more calls."

Analysis: Title III of the Patriot Act contains a variety of provisions relating to financial crimes. Presumably, gathering the identities of investors will help prevent the use of sham accounts by terrorists, and enable us to connect terrorists and their money more effectively. Unfortunately, this is one area where dismantling terrorists' finances may have a direct impact on all of us. Just as we've learned to cope with more security at the airports, we must now learn to cope with more security in our financial system.

At the end of the day, this latter category of security is very important. If we can take down Al Qaeda's financial network, we can hobble the organization. Without its global network and ability to move money, men and materiel around the world, Al Qaeda will be reduced to a group of thugs with regional reach.

Update: I found my earlier post on this subject from Feb. 11, which I wrote after getting an alarming message from my bank that they needed to verify my identity before opening a mutual fund account. Sec. 326 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Public Law 107-56) is the provision which requires this verification -- here's part of the text:

SEC. 326. VERIFICATION OF IDENTIFICATION.

(a) IN GENERAL- Section 5318 of title 31, United States Code, as amended by this title, is amended by adding at the end the following:

(l) IDENTIFICATION AND VERIFICATION OF ACCOUNTHOLDERS-

(1) IN GENERAL- Subject to the requirements of this subsection, the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe regulations setting forth the minimum standards for financial institutions and their customers regarding the identity of the customer that shall apply in connection with the opening of an account at a financial institution.

(2) MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS- The regulations shall, at a minimum, require financial institutions to implement, and customers (after being given adequate notice) to comply with, reasonable procedures for--
`(A) verifying the identity of any person seeking to open an account to the extent reasonable and practicable;
`(B) maintaining records of the information used to verify a person's identity, including name, address, and other identifying information; and
`(C) consulting lists of known or suspected terrorists or terrorist organizations provided to the financial institution by any government agency to determine whether a person seeking to open an account appears on any such list.

posted by Phillip Carter at 13:02

 
Twin blasts hit Bombay, killing at least 45

A pair of car bombs exploded in Bombay on Monday, killing at least 45 persons and wounding scores more. The news comes at a time of great tension between India and Pakistan -- two nuclear nations capable of dragging the world into a third world war. No group has yet taken responsibility, according to the New York Times, and Indian officials were reticent to blame the usual suspects. Nonetheless, it appears this blast may have been the work of Muslim insurgents, who may have been working with a Pakistan-based terrorist organization.

No one has taken responsibility for the blasts, and it was unclear how the bombs were detonated. Suburban Bombay, whose official name is now Mumbai, has been the site of five explosions — two on buses, two at markets and one in a train — in the last eight months that have killed a total of 15 people. The most recent was in July.

Officials have blamed the Students Islamic Movement of India for the attacks, saying the group operated in conjunction with the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Both groups are banned in India. The Bombay police commissioner, R. S. Sharma, said on Monday night that law enforcement authorities suspected that so-called jihadi groups were also responsible for the blasts, although he offered no specific evidence for that assertion.

The blasts come during a period of an easing of hostility between India and Pakistan. The lull has enabled them to take small steps toward rapprochement in recent months. For now, at least, the blasts seem to have done nothing to undermine that.

Indian officials, who have often blamed Pakistan in the past for terrorist acts in India, did not do so after the incidents, and Pakistan condemned the blasts as "acts of terrorism."

Analysis: I'm no expert on the India-Pakistan conflict, and I won't speculate on the facts of this event. However, I would like to point out an fact that should be obvious to most. This is clearly an attempt to derail whatever diplomacy is occuring between India and Pakistan. When I heard Gen. Pervez Musharraf talk in Los Angeles last month, he seemed quite adamant about pursuing peace. I think both nations recognize that they ought to peacefully resolves disputes such as the Kashmir problem and their water problems. (See these essays by RAND expert Chris Fair in The Atlantic Monthly on the region) The use of bombings like this to derail diplomacy is a common tactic used by terrorists. It has been used in India, Israel, Sri Lanka, Ireland, and elsewhere. The goal is to force those who might worry about security into opposing whatever diplomatic entreaties are being negotiated. Often, it works. It takes tough leadership and resolute diplomacy to ensure these tactics fail.

One further note: this conflict is probably not getting the media coverage it deserves. Until an American military officer e-mailed me from India to flag my attention, this event flew under my radar too. The New York Times had it on its home page yesterday; it has since fallen off. The Washington Post ran the story on page A7. The LA Times did not give it top billing either. Only the NYT covered the event from Bombay; the other two papers covered it from New Delhi. Contrast this to the way we treated the recent suicide bombing of a bus in Israel. If we want to have India and/or Pakistan as our allies in our global war on terrorism, we probably need to pay more attention to this conflict. Not to mention the obvious implications for a guerilla war between two of the world's largest nations with nuclear arms...

Adam Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, several years before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, that sympathy was often a function of proximity. He used the example of a man who cut his finger, and felt more pain than he did upon learning that a thousand Chinese men had perished in a disaster. This was almost certainly true in the 18th Century, when Smith wrote, and I think it's true today. But in our increasingly interconnected world, we must learn to appreciate the pain and suffering of our global neighbors. Events in Mumbai can affect us in the United States. Threats to our security will increasingly come from failed states such as Iraq and Afghanistan, not states like the Soviet Union, and we must develop a sense of global situational awareness to understand this.

Update: I blogged this note before reading my print edition of the Wall Street Journal, so I did not give credit where it was due. (Lesson learned: read the Journal earlier in the morning) The Wall Street Journal led with this story at the top of its news summary column on the front page, and reported on the bombing from the actual scene of the attack in Mumbai. Pretty good article too.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:10

 
Top U.S. official for North Korea resigns

The New York Times reports tonight (for tomorrow's paper) that the State Department's top diplomat for North Korea has resigned. This news comes just before the start of 6-way talks between North Korea, the U.S. and four other nations. Suffice to say, this is an awkward time for such a personnel change.

The State Department confirmed the departure of Jack Pritchard, the special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, but denied that he had been forced out. Mr. Pritchard's departure signals disarray in the administration's posture toward that country, experts outside the State Department said. It comes at a critical moment as the United States attempts to rally North Korea's neighbors to persuade the country to drop its efforts to reprocess spent fuel rods for weapons.

Mr. Pritchard's resignation on Friday points to a division in the administration over how best to handle the isolated, unpredictable and highly militarized government of Kim Jong Il nearly eight months after the North expelled foreign inspectors, the experts said.

Mr. Pritchard, who has had long experience in talks with the North, including a stint on President Clinton's National Security Council, is identified with a more conciliatory stance toward the North. He long advocated a carrot-and-stick approach, with incentives to North Korea for good behavior.

But a more confrontational position, favored at the White House and expressed by John R. Bolton, the under secretary for arms control at the State Department, gained ground in recent weeks, and at least one Republican senator complained to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell about Mr. Pritchard's approach.

Analysis: This is a bad time to approach North Korea with different voices. The best analogy I can think of here is from The Godfather, where Sonny Corleone speaks out of turn at a meeting and jeopardizes the family. You never want to show dissent or fracture when dealing with the North Koreans. Now would be a very good time to reaffirm U.S. policy towards the Korean peninsula -- with one voice -- and to clearly designate our point man (or woman) on this issue.

I had a long talk with a friend of mine who's an old infantryman and law school classmate. Between us, we have a few years of service in Korea, where we inhaled deeply whenever we saw headlines like this one. We both agree that North Korea is causing trouble right now because we have committed so much of our combat power to Iraq. The North Koreans did this in 1998 when we rattled our sabers in the desert, and they did it during Kosovo in 1999 as well. The NKs think they can squeeze concessions out of the U.S. right now because we have so little combat power to shift to the Korean peninsula. The Army still has nearly every one of its combat brigades committed to Iraq, or on a deployment plan to go there. Short of calling up the National Guard as we did in 1950, we'd be hard pressed to oppose any major event on the Korean peninsula with ground forces.

Strategically speaking, we have assumed a tremendous amount of risk in the world by committing so much of our combined military capacity to Iraq. At this moment, we lack the flexibility to commit to new missions like Liberia, or reinforce old missions like Korea, or even do continuing exercises like Bright Star. This completely alters our foreign policy calculus, in terms of what we can and cannot do. Our enemies know this too. At this juncture, the most prudent course of action is probably to contain North Korea however we can, lest we allow them to exploit the risk we have created by devoting so much of our blood and treasure to Iraq. More to follow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 19:40

 
Weblogs and politics

Cory Doctorow has this essay in the Boston Globe about the influence of weblogs on politics, and what he perceives to be a sea change in the interaction between information and politics. Among other things, the online version of the column includes "best of" lists from Joe Conason, Mickey Kaus, and Josh Marshall. It's probably worth a read just for those three lists, which I should use to update my blogroll.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:15

 
Tomb of the unknown citizen

The New York Times reports today on a macabre -- but fitting -- tribute to the thousands of persons who died at the World Trade Center. Despite the best DNA technology available, medical personnel were unable to identify thousands of remains left in the rubble of the complex. Rather than preserve these offsite, or inter them somewhere sterile, the decision appears to have been made to create a tomb for these unknown remains on the site of the World Trade Center.

In its memorial design competition, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation required every entry to include a suitable space to store the remains. The contestants were not required to actually design the storage — that will be done later. There were 5,200 design entries from 62 countries; a winner is to be selected this fall.

The memorial will not just store unidentified remains. It will also house remains that have not been collected by victims' relatives. Families, not surprisingly, have reacted in many different ways to news of a positive identification of a relative's remains, which sometimes are made up of dozens — perhaps hundreds — of pieces. Relatives are given the choice of being notified when the first identification is made, or at any point over the course of the investigation. Some buried or cremated the first remains, only to face the task of dealing with remains identified later.
* * *
The medical examiner's office continues to identify remains, officials said, but most of them are from victims who have already been identified. The preservation process for all uncollected remains will be complete long before the memorial is built. The remains will stay with the medical examiner's office until a final resting site at the memorial is completed.

posted by Phillip Carter at 07:55

 
A four-letter word for France

Wine. Get your mind out of the gutter. Though I'm a native Californian and a devoted consumer of California wines, I also enjoy French wines when I can get my hands on a good one. (Not too often on a grad student's budget)

Two articles in the New York Times give me reason to celebrate. The first article says that the deadly heat wave sweeping Europe may be creating the best wine vintage in half a century. Vintners and other experts are ecstatic about the 2003 grapes -- being picked early now.

Vintners are busy with an early vendange, the annual grape harvest that normally does not start until mid-September. As a rule, hot summers and early harvests produce great wines, winemakers say.

"It is the earliest harvest since 1893," said Bernard Hervet, who runs Bouchard Père et Fils in Burgundy. Mr. Hervet said that his vineyards began harvesting grapes for its Beaune-Grèves Vigne de l'Enfant Jésus wine this week and that he expected to start harvesting farther north in Chablis on Aug. 25, the earliest date for that region on record.

To reach maturity, grapes require a long stretch of hot dry weather. Without it, they end up with too little sugar and too much acid to make a great wine. But an excessively hot summer like this one increases the sugar content grapes need for fermentation, particularly in temperate regions like Western Europe. Winemakers are expecting this year's grapes to produce wines with a slightly higher alcohol content that could make them last for decades.

Outstanding! I've been told there's a wine futures market, and I imagine it's wild with speculation right now about the prospects for the 2003 vintage. The second article discusses some of the latest research on the French population's health, and posits that red wine may be to blame for the so-called "French paradox" -- why the French eat so poorly, stay so thin, and live so long.

Biologists have found a class of chemicals that they hope will make people live longer by activating an ancient survival reflex. One of the chemicals, a natural substance known as resveratrol, is found in red wines, particularly those made in cooler climates like that of New York.

The finding could help explain the so-called French paradox, the fact that the French live as long as anyone else despite consuming fatty foods deemed threatening to the heart.

Besides the wine connection, the finding has the attraction of stemming from fundamental research in the biology of aging. However, the new chemicals have not yet been tested even in mice, let alone people, and even if they worked in humans, it would be many years before any drug based on the new findings became available.

The possible benefits could be significant. The chemicals are designed to mimic the effect of a very low-calorie diet, which is known to lengthen the life span of rodents. Scientists involved in the research say that human life spans could be extended by 30 percent if humans respond to the chemicals in the same way as rats and mice do to low calories. Even someone who started at age 50 to take one of the new chemicals could expect to gain an extra 10 years of life, said Dr. Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the pioneers of the new research.

Great! One more reason to drink red wine. Thankfully, this research applies to all red wine, not just French red wine, that contain the right chemical mix. So I can enjoy my Californian petite syrahs (e.g. Bogle and Stag's Leap) and cabernets (Carmenet and Plumpjack) with the knowledge that they're helping my heart. Now I just need to mimic the French by making red wine a normal part of my diet. Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem.
posted by Phillip Carter at 18:18

 
An interview with one of America's leading Al Qaeda experts

Josh Marshall has posted an excellent interview with Peter Bergen at TalkingPointsMemo. Bergen is a journalist too, and he has authored one of the three best books on Al Qaeda and contemporary multinational terrorism that I've read: Holy War, Inc. (The other two must-have books are Countering the New Terrorism and Inside Al Qaeda) Bergen is one of the few journalists to have personally interviewed Osama Bin Laden, and his research on the Al Qaeda organization is first-rate. I think his expert opinions on the organization -- and its activities in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are as good as any out there. Here's an exceprt from the second part:

BERGEN: . . . We did a very smart thing in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Mullah Omar made a calculation that we would be drawn into a Soviet-style invasion. They would respond with guerilla warfare. They would have some tactical successes in that warfare, and a strategic success that the United States would be reviled around the Muslim world for its brutal occupation of Afghanistan.

That didn't happen, obviously, and there are only 300 Americans in the whole, on the ground. That was very smart. Obviously, the US and British occupation of Iraq is different from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in many many ways -- not least of which is that Soviets killed a million Afghans and made five million of them refugees. Obviously that hasn't happened in Iraq. But there are some similarities in the following way: We are occupying in large numbers in thick spaces and we are doing that in the middle of the Middle East. And it seems that we're going to be there indefinitely. It seems that way, according to the Iraqis and to everybody else. Obviously we're in a period of guerilla warfare, these kind of high-profile terrorist attacks. You know, that's the future. I mean al Qaida is not going to get off this little exercise. Obviously the United States is not about to change its policy in Iraq. So I think, given those two facts, we're going to see more of what we saw at the United Nations Headquarters in the future. I mean this is just the beginning, I think.

TPM: I think I saw an interview you did on CNN in which you discussed the the question of who, if there are foreign fighters in Iraq now, who are they? And I think you had said that a lot of them seemed to be Saudis who'd actually come in through Syria. Whatever details you have -- who are these people? Where are they coming from? Are governments assisting in bringing these people in?

BERGEN: I don't think governments are assisting in bringing these people in at all. Because if you think about, Syria has been quite cooperative in the war on terrorism, Jordan has fallen all over itself. That's one of the reasons the Jordanian embassy was attacked. Kuwait, don't have to explain that. But judging from what US counter-terrorism officials say and what Saad al Fagih says they're predominantly Saudi, which makes sense. Saudis were predominantly the people in Afghanistan, and the major group of people at Guantanamo Bay are Saudis. So that all kind of coheres. Some Kuwatis, and I would imagine a sprinkling of other nationalities, although I haven't heard any other than the Saudis and Kuwatis--that's all I've heard about. Now you know, if Zarqawi is in Iraq--although apparently he might be in Iran. So maybe there are some Jordanians, I don't know. But it doesn't sound like people from the Philippines are coming to Iraq, as it were, and coming to Afghanistan.

TPM: They would stand out?

BERGEN: They'd stand out. And also maybe it's just a matter of time. After all, this whole thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. I mean it seems to me that these volunteers, as it were, jihadist volunteers, either came directly before the war, during the war, or even more so after the war. The Saudi volunteers especially have come in the last few months. But I think this is all totally predictable. I don't see this as being a surprise.

The first part of the interview is available here on TalkingPointsMemo, and it's also worth a read. The nature of the insurgency in Iraq appears a lot like previous insurgencies in other parts of the world -- most notably Afghanistan. I think we should pay careful attention to the thoughts of experts like Peter Bergen, Brian Jenkins, Bruce Hoffman, and Rohan Gunaratna. They know this threat very well, and their historical insight will help us craft a successful strategy this time around.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:32

 
In defense of anti-terrorism measures

Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who writes from the right on legal policy issues, has an interesting op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post on the USA Patriot Act. Ms. McDonald takes issue with the ACLU's recent challenge to Sec. 215 of the act, which authorizes the FBI to seek a court order to look into library records and internet browsing records, among other things.

Section 215 allows the FBI to obtain documents in third-party hands if they are relevant to a terrorism investigation. According to the ACLU, this power allows the FBI to "spy on a person because they don't like the books she reads, or because . . . she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy."

The charge is baseless. To begin with, it ignores the fact that the FBI can do nothing under Section 215 without the approval of a federal court. Let's say the FBI has received a tip that al Qaeda sympathizers have taken scuba lessons in preparation for an attack on Navy destroyers off the California coast. Under 215, the bureau could seek a court order for local dive school records to see if any terror suspects had recently enrolled.

The key phrase here is "seek a court order." It is inconceivable that the court that oversees espionage and counterterrorism investigations will approve a records request made because the FBI doesn't "like the books" someone reads, or "because she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy," as the ACLU claims.

The ACLU also argues that Section 215 violates the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. But like it or not, once you've disclosed information to someone else, the Constitution no longer protects it. This diffuse-it-and-lose-it rule applies to library borrowing and Web surfing as well, however much librarians may claim otherwise. By publicly borrowing library books, patrons forfeit any constitutional protections they may have had in their reading habits.

Memo to Main Justice: Hire Ms. MacDonald to replace the AG on his current roadshow, or at least hire her to serve as his chief speechwriter and political adviser. These are the sort of concrete legal arguments that must be made in support of the USA Patriot Act. Rhetorically speaking, the ACLU and DoJ can fight each other to a draw, with one side extolling the virtues of liberty and the other praising the virtues of security. Concrete arguments like these can cut through the rhetoric, and help the American public understand that the act is not as bad as widely perceived.

On balance, I think the USA Patriot Act is a good piece of legislation. Title II of the act gives the FBI broader discretion to apply for FISA warrants, and recognizes that it's not so easy in the age of terrorism to separate criminal investigation work from counter-intelligence work. Title III of the act gives law enforcement more power in the area of financial crime, something which is necessary to take down the intricate financial network on which Al Qaeda relies. Titles VII and IX contain important provisions with respect to information sharing and intelligence analysis -- the bread and butter of anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism. These provisions do carry some risk of abuse. But so too does every criminal statute, and we rely on substantive and procedural protections in our courts to protect us from those risks. Whether the courts do a good job is a matter of dispute, but on balance, I think most Americans are willing to trust the judiciary with their rights.

The defense of the USA Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures is important. The American people must buy into our anti-terrorism measures in order to support their enormous fiscal cost and the potential cost in delay, hassle, intrusiveness, and change (see, e.g., airport security). I support these measures, for the most part, but I also sense that many Americans have legitimate questions about them. In the long run, this PR problem will frustrate anti-terrorism efforts by lowering political support for such measures, and for the politicians who support them. Terrorists will exercise tactical patience, and wait for our complacency to set in. They will see political support for anti-terrorism decline, along with discretionary funding for anti-terrorism measures. Manpower and materiel will be shifted to other government programs, and soon, vulnerabilities will start to appear. Terrorists will lie in wait for this moment, and then they will strike. We can't let that happen.

This issue is too important to leave to the Justice Department alone; real policy leadership here must also come from the White House, and from opinion leaders and public intellectuals in society. Mr. Ashcroft does not have the credibility to defend this act, or to advocate for the administration on this issue. Simply put, the American public does not trust Mr. Ashcroft to tell the truth on these issues, regardless of how concrete his arguments are. If the administration is really serious about defending its anti-terrorism measures -- and it ought to be -- it needs to do more here. Jack Balkin thinks this may be part of a deliberate White House strategy to test the waters on this issue for the 2004 political season. That is possible. But I think the results are already obvious -- the public will not react well to Mr. Ashcroft's roadshow.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:52

 
The book to buy for lawyers, law students, and other law-minded academics

Eugene Volokh's new book Academic Legal Writing scored a rave review from Michael Herrington in Writ today. I haven't purchased my copy yet (financial aid just showed up), but I intend to. Eugene taught my First Amendment law class last semester, and I think he's absolutely brilliant. Herrington agrees, and recommends this book without reservation:

Having now, for the first time, carefully read a style book, I now see the error of my ways. If you have a sibling, a child, a friend, even a distant acquaintance, in law school or trying to get something published in a legal publication, buy them a copy of Academic Legal Writing.

posted by Phillip Carter at 17:46

 
Final thoughts from Oxblog on the BBC: Josh Chafetz has a lengthy discussion of his Weekly Standard article on the BBC, and the allegations he made in that article. As one can imagine, the article provoked a fair amount of criticism, which proved the old adage: never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:56

 
LT Smash is about to redeploy from Iraq. I think the right expression in the Navy for a job well done is "Bravo Zulu". In the Army, we'd grunt "hooah" at you. In either case, stay safe and thanks for the reporting from the desert.
posted by Phillip Carter at 07:45

 
Ashcroft goes on the offensive
But will his PR blitz really lead the public to trust him?

Seeking to defend the administration and defuse criticism of its stance on civil liberties, Attorney General John Ashcroft has hit the road on a speaking tour of the United States. His goal, according to the Washington Post, is to explain why measures like the USA Patriot Act are so vital, and to reassure Americans that his Justice Department is finding the right balance between liberty and security.

In a strongly worded speech that included quotations from Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, Ashcroft portrayed the Patriot Act as a linchpin of the government's war against terrorism.

"We know now that al Qaeda exploited the flaws in our defenses to murderous effect," Ashcroft said. "Two years later, the evidence is clear: If we knew then what we know now, we would have passed the Patriot Act six months before September 11th rather than six weeks after the attacks."

Ashcroft also issued a veiled warning against any attempts to curtail government powers under the law. Two civil liberties groups have filed legal challenges to parts of the Patriot Act, and the law comes up for review by Congress in 2005.

"To abandon these tools would disconnect the dots; risk American lives; sacrifice liberty; and reject September 11th's lessons," Ashcroft said, adding later: "To abandon these tools would senselessly imperil American lives and American liberty."

The Washington Post follows this news story with an editorial about "Mr. Ashcroft's Roadshow". The editorial echoes some things I wrote on TIA and the planned terrorism futures market, regarding the general American sentiment towards the Bush Administration on these issues.

. . . if people are worried about how the Justice Department is wielding its authority under the Patriot Act, a big piece of the blame lies with Mr. Ashcroft himself. Muscular congressional oversight of this new law is critical, but the department has until recently balked at answering reasonable questions from lawmakers. At one point last fall, House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) was so exasperated he was threatening to issue a subpoena to get the information. This is no way to make the public feel better about how the department is handling sweeping new powers.

More important, it strikes us that a great measure of the public's "unease" over the law, as Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) put it, is in fact discomfort -- legitimate discomfort -- over the administration's broader disregard for civil liberties: its insistence that American citizens can be held for months without access to lawyers simply by designating them "enemy combatants"; its sweeping roundup of non-citizens in the days after 9/11; and its unapologetic stance toward the treatment of detainees who had nothing to do with terrorism but were held for months. Technically, these are separate matters from the Patriot Act. In reality, the Patriot Act has become something of a repository in the public mind for wider worries about Mr. Ashcroft's Justice Department. As the attorney general barnstorms the country, he might do a little less preaching to the already converted and a little more listening to the legitimate concerns of the American public.

I think that's right. Granted, I live in Santa Monica, which ranks with Berkeley and Cambridge, Mass. as one of the more liberal cities in America. But I associate with a balanced cross section of friends and colleagues, on the left and the right, who all evidence some distrust of John Ashcroft and this admininistration with respect to civil liberties. Mr. Ashcroft has almost become a punchline of sorts to any joke about spying, eavesdropping, or otherwise invading someone's privacy. ("Don't talk about your last date on your cell phone; John Ashcroft's listening.")

The net result of this distrust was seen very clearly in the debates over TIA and the Pentagon's planned terrorism futures market. Americans -- and their legislative representatives -- didn't care how these programs actually worked. They didn't care that academics on the left and right supported such ideas in the abstract. Despite TIA's fate, we still need computerized tools to look for "non-obvious relationships". And a closed-access futures market for experts could have been a great way to quantify collective expert opinion. Nonetheless, the American public answered these programs with a resounding "Enough already!"

After a series of anti-terrorism measures passed since Sept. 11, I think the Bush Administration has effectively spent its political capital on terrorism. These measures include, but are not limited to:

- The USA PATRIOT Act, which has become a lightning rod for criticism of the Bush Administration. I think some of that criticism should be directed at others, such as Congress, who raced to pass an omnibus bill after Sept. 11 without considering any of the secondary or tertiary implications of its provision.

- The Homeland Security Act, which consolidated and reorganized America's domestic security apparatus. I think this consolidation was probably necessary because of the inefficiencies and gaps which existed before, but some people feel threatened by the consolidation of all these agencies under one roof -- and the sharing of intelligence between them.

- The implementation of a new security regime for airports, including the use of computer-assisted passenger screening system that may have racial-profiling implications.

- Expanded powers to detain and deport immigrants, based on the USA Patriot Act and executive rulemaking authority in this area, which have led to the detention and deportation of thousands of immigrants.

- The secrecy of these proceedings, which has left Americans guessing about their true extent, and left Americans with a tangible distrust of the Justice Department on this issue

- The decision to detain Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay without formal designation as prisoners of war, despite Art. V of the Third Geneva Convention. (See this essay from Feb. 2002)

- The decision to detain two American citizens and a Qatari man as "enemy combatants" based on a Presidential declaration -- a designation which has resulted in their imprisonment without charge or legal process, solitary detention, seclusion from counsel.

- The executive order establishing military tribunals as an option for non-citizen terrorists -- an option that would incorporate fewer legal protections for the defendant than a civilian criminal trial or military court martial. It's not clear whether the President has the power to issue such an order, let alone conduct such tribunals.

- The prosecution of so-called "little fish" for providing "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations, under a statute added by the 1996 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. It appears that most of these individuals have contributed some measure of support, whether money or training, to some terrorist organization, but there is no clear nexus between these men and a) actual terrorist activity and b) future terrorist acts. At most, defendants like the Lackawanna Six appear to have visited Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan (which is probably a bad thing). These men appear to have pled guilty in order to avoid designation as enemy combatants. But the prosecution of these little fish -- in the absence of any big fish prosecutions -- makes Americans feel threatened. It may ultimately be the right course of action, given the way Al Qaeda's network depends on these little fish, but it has political consequences.

- The secret detention of top-level Al Qaeda operatives at undisclosed locations, where they are being interrogated with undisclosed methods, and where their fate is uncertain. We are at war, and it is legal to detain and interrogate enemy prisoners of war. But there are rules for doing so, developed after abuses during WWII created an international consensus about the proper treatment of prisoners of war. Following the rules may impede us in some respects, but it helps us retain the moral high ground in the war on terrorism. We should not discount the importance of the moral dimension of warfare. That is what gives us international support to lead campaigns in places like Iraq; that is what enables foreign politicians to support us, because their population supports us. Moral capital is one more form of ammunition in the war on terrorism, and we squander it when we don't live by the rules of war.

Blowback: The term "blowback" refers to the unintended consequences of a policy choice. The classic example is Al Qaeda -- which appears to have developed out of the Afghan Arab movement that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan with our covert funding and support. (See Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc. for more on Al Qaeda's history)

Now we are seeing another form of blowback, from the policy choices made by the Bush Administration in its war on terrorism. The common perception (true or not) is that this administration has a cavalier attitude towards civil liberties -- and that it will not let those things stand in the way of fighting terrorists. That's a normative judgment, and one that may be justified if you think the threat of terrorism on the scale of Sept. 11 is real and imminent.

But this normative judgment also has consequences -- the biggest one being that the American public no longer trusts John Ashcroft or the administration with their civil liberties. Every policy recommendation -- whether from the Pentagon or DoJ -- that touches civil liberties will meet a firestorm of criticism from now on. I'm not sure how the administration can remedy this distrust, or prevent this blowback from reoccuring. But I don't think Mr. Ashcroft's roadshow is going to do the trick.

Update: This isn't going to do the trick either. The Washington Post reports that the AG has instructed his 94 U.S. Attorneys to lobby Congress about the success of the USA Patriot Act and the problems with a provision in a pending House bill that would cut off funding for "sneak and peek" searches.

An Aug. 14 memorandum from Guy A. Lewis, director of the executive office for United States Attorneys, encourages federal prosecutors "to call personally or meet with . . . congressional representatives" to discuss "the potentially deleterious effects" of an amendment approved in the House last month that would cut off funding for "sneak and peek" warrants in terrorism cases.

Attached to the memo is a list of names and telephone numbers of House members, with an asterisk next to the names of those who voted in favor of the amendment sponsored by Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho).

Justice officials said they believe the effort does not violate the Anti-Lobbying Act, which generally prohibits government employees from lobbying for or against legislation. But Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday questioning whether a current speaking tour by Ashcroft and contacts between U.S. attorneys and members of Congress amount to a violation of the law.

Justice spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said the campaign was fully vetted by government attorneys, and the memo warns that only U.S. attorneys themselves, who are political appointees, can initiate and attend the congressional meetings. "Congress has been saying they want to know how the Patriot Act is being used. The 93 U.S. attorneys are people who can . . . help tell members of Congress how the Patriot Act is working and how important it is," she said.

I'll reserve judgment on the Anti-Lobbying Act (18 U.S.C. 1913) issue, except to say that there is an issue here that could land U.S. Attorneys and their staffs in trouble if they don't follow the letter of the law. If anything, this order almost screams for some sort of independent prosecutor, because it would be odd for the Justice Department to prosecute one of its own U.S. Attorneys for something the AG told him or her to do.

Furthermore, this could frustrate attempts by the AG to sell the Patriot Act as something that's not threatening. Waging guerilla warfare (also known as lobbying) in the halls of Congress is not something the American public probably wants to see on this issue -- it will only make them more suspicious
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:59

 
WSJ: Army needs more MPs to do its job

Most of the defense community agrees that we need more "nation building" troops these days than ever before -- especially Military Police and Civil Affairs soldiers. Unfortunately, the Army has too few of these specialties to go around, particularly in its active force. Christopher Cooper writes in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about this very problem, and the difficulties the Army is facing as it tries to develop more MPs for missions like the one going on today in Iraq.

Out of a total fighting force of about 490,000, the U.S. has only around 37,000 military police -- a figure that hasn't changed much in decades. The MP, a specialist soldier with the kind of training and equipment needed to enforce order on urban areas, is the closest the U.S. has to a peacekeeping soldier. Almost half of them -- 15,000 -- are active-duty troops, with the balance in the Army reserve or the National Guard. There are about 12,000 MPs currently assigned to Iraq.

In the past, with fewer hot spots demanding attention, reserve forces weren't needed as much and less than 20% of them were called up at any given time. But today, the Army has nearly 200,000 reservists on active duty, including 90% of its MPs. Some 5,000 of these reservists are bumping up against their two-year service limit, which hasn't happened since the Vietnam War.

On Tuesday, U.S. military police worked alongside infantry troops in Baghdad hauling the dead and wounded out of the U.N. compound. MPs set up a security perimeter around the rescue-and-recovery operation. They detained witnesses for questioning.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and two wars that removed standing regimes, MPs have never been more in demand. With many bases now closed to the public, they man checkpoints at installations in the U.S. and around the world. They act as guards at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and they continue to keep order in the Balkans. And thousands of them are helping to control the restive citizenry in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One reason MPs are in such demand is their versatility. Just as infantry and armor troops receive a smattering of peacekeeper training, MP troops are trained for combat and are issued rifles. In Army talk, MP troops are considered "force multipliers" -- they are sprinkled in with combat troops to provide perimeter and supply-line security and to deal with prisoners of war and refugees. They also set up roadblocks on dangerous highways and contain civilian protests. In combat, "it's kill, kill, kill," says Sgt. Joshua Griffith, an MP drill instructor at the Army's only military-police school, in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
* * *
If the Army needs more MPs, the solution might seem to be simply adding them -- but that is more complex than it sounds. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is opposed to increasing the size of the Army, which would require congressional approval, anyway. So adding MPs means decreasing another class of soldier. The Pentagon already is attempting to free up MPs by tapping infantry troops to staff the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Brig. Gen. Stephen Curry, who is studying how to reduce the Army's reliance on reserves, hints that infantry may have to shoulder even more of the mundane work that traditionally falls to MPs. "It doesn't take an MP to check an ID card" at the entrance to a U.S. military base, he says.
* * *
One idea being floated in the Pentagon calls for shifting reserve units that are operating overseas into the active military and moving infantry units into the reserves. But such a plan would take years to implement and would probably meet resistance, both in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. In a variation of this idea, commanders have begun looking at reprogramming reserve infantry units as MPs or other specialists.

Note 1: This isn't just about MPs -- it's about all of the specialties necessary to execute missions along the spectrum of operations from peace to war. America's military doesn't just need tanks and infantry to execute high-intensity combat operations; it needs Special Forces to conduct low-intensity combat operations, MPs to manage peacekeeping/peace enforcement operations, and other specialties too. Inside the Pentagon (subscription required) had a great piece today that argued we needed more Special Forces in Iraq to conduct the stealthy, secretive combat ops necessary to undermine the Iraqi insurgency -- essentially to "out-guerilla the guerillas". It's an interesting idea, but one that we can't execute now because we don't have enough SF on active duty for that kind of commitment.

Note 2: So why not just build more MP, Civil Affairs and SF units? Because the true value in these units is not their hardware or their organizational setup -- it's their people. What makes an MP unit so special is its experience in dealing with law enforcement and peacekeeping situations -- experience which is earned through decades of collective work on those missions. You can't build an MP sergeant overnight, just as you couldn't create a civilian police sergeant overnight. It takes years to build the kind of "street smarts" and professional maturity that is necessary for troops in Iraq. So even if you reclassify infantrymen and scouts and tankers as MPs, they will take time to develop the necessary experience levels. There are alternatives, such as cross-assigning personnel to put a critical mass of old MPs in new units. But it still takes time.

In the special operations community, this is even more true. SF operators can't just jump out of an airplane five times, go through Ranger School, and then deploy to Afghanistan and expect to succeed. The strength of America's Green Berets lies in its people, their experience, and the synergies they develop by training and working together over long periods of time. The special operations community has really embraced Col. John Boyd's mantra of "People, Ideas, Hardware -- in that order!" You can't create quality SF soldiers overnight, and you certainly can't create quality SF teams overnight.

Note 3: A well-informed reader wrote to remind me of the detrimental effect on infantry units when they're used for MP missions -- especially lousy ones like guarding prisoners or checking IDs. (See BG Curry's quote above: "It doesn't take an MP to check an ID card.") BG Curry's implication is that MPs are scarce, therefore we should use less scarce resources, like National Guard infantry, to do mundane tasks like this. I think that's a little short-sighted too. Recent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the need for trained, lethal, effective infantry -- especially light infantry. The National Guard contains an awful lot of these units, and though they don't train as much as their active-duty brethren, they have seen combat in Iraq. Had these units been used as MP-retreads, I don't think they would've been ready for combat in Iraq as infantrymen.

There are a finite number of training days available -- even for the active force -- and you have to choose where you focus your training time and training resources. Army doctrine specifies that all units will focus their training on their "Mission Essential Task List" ("METL") in order to get as much bang for their buck as possible. Changing the METL of infantry units to incorporate more MP functions may make them less effective as infantry. That's a very risky proposition, and one that I think is unwise. If we have mundane tasks that can be done by untrained soldiers, I think those are things we ought to think hard about contracting out. To add a variation on BG Curry's words: It doesn't take a soldier, who we've spent thousand of dollars and man hours to train, to check an ID at the main gate of Fort Hood.

What this comes down to is a choice between 2nd Generation Warfare and 4th Generation Warfare. Napoleon developed 2nd Generation Warfare, fueled conscription which was termed the "levee en masse". It was an industrial, conscription-based, grinding, casualty-heavy form of warfare where nations threw legions of men against one another and assessed victory as a function of casualties taken and terrain seized. 4th Generation Warfare, on the other hand, is what our enemies wage against us today. They reject conventional norms and rules of warfare and fight with asymmetric means. The goal in 4GW is to find the enemy's strategic, operational and tactical center of gravity -- and attack it. The goal is to seize the moral high ground, and to win the battle of public opinion.

To the extend that we now face a 4GW conflict, we can't simply throw men and materiel at the war as we did in WWII. We must deploy trained, effective, cohesive, lethal units who can conduct operations at any point on the spectrum from peace to war. Numbers alone won't do the job.
posted by Phillip Carter at 13:36

 
Keegan: Iraq is no Vietnam, but we still need more troops

John Keegan, the world's preeminent military historian, writes today in the London Daily Telegraph about the situation in Iraq after Tuesday's bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad. Keegan, whose military histories cover the past 5,000 years of Western civilization, doesn't think we're stuck in a quagmire -- but he thinks we could get there if we don't deploy more combat power to do the job.

The bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday raises two principal questions. The first, couched in media language, asks: "Is Iraq becoming another Vietnam?" The second, a policy-maker's question and the more important, asks: "Are there enough coalition troops to pacify the country and, if not, how many more are needed?"

The answer to the first question is comparatively easy to give. No, Iraq is not becoming another Vietnam, nor is it likely to turn into one. The situations are quite different, much as alarmists would like to draw similarities. Many factors differentiate the nature of the disorders, including terrain, politics and the strategic location of the trouble spot.
* * *
The result is that the coalition, as America never did in Vietnam, controls, if imperfectly, the whole operational area. What it faces is not a guerrilla war, but an insurgency, and one supported by only a fraction of the population.

The Kurdish north is undisturbed. The Shia south is largely untroubled, despite sporadic attacks on the British. It is in the Sunni centre, around Baghdad, that the murders and bombings are taking place. They are directed against the Americans, but it remains unclear by whom.

Some of the insurgents are die-hard supporters of Saddam, some are local Islamists, and some are foreign fundamentalists connected more or less closely with al-Qa'eda.

The coalition force opposing them is now about three divisions strong, say 20,000 fighting troops. It is undoubtedly overstretched. There are probably only 10,000 troops available for duty at any one time. They need to be reinforced. By how many is one question; where they should come from is the other.

A note on math. . . Keegan writes that the coalition (US and UK) forces include just 20,000 "fighting troops". How can that be? The Pentagon tells us that we have roughly 140,000 - 150,000 troops in Iraq, plus a bunch of British troops. How can Keegan be right that we have just 20,000 trigger-pullers?

The answer lies in the structure of the typical Army or Marine division, and the ratio of support troops to combat troops. Typically, support troops will outnumber trigger pullers by a factor of 7:1 in a given theater of operations. I think that Keegan is using that as his planning factor to estimate 20,000 combat troops. He may also be looking at the Globalsecurity.org pagethat describes exactly which units are deployed to Iraq right now. This site also lists the deployed soldiers by battalion-sized unit, which enables you to literally count heads because the configurations of those units are relatively easy to determine.

In a given division of 15,000-20,000 soldiers, you will only have 9-12 combat battalions of 300-500 soldiers apiece. The 4th Infantry Division, in which I served, had three organic brigades, which in turn had three organic battalions -- 5 tank and 4 infantry -- plus a divisional cavalry squadron. In total, this amounts to roughly 4,000 trigger pullers. On top of the infantry divisions like 4ID, you have to add in all the support and command/control structure above these units -- all the way from 4ID up to CENTCOM. When you add up the numbers, it becomes clear that you really have a lot of people in Iraq who aren't actual combat troops.

Caveat: Keegan may be wrong in two ways. First, American units have tasked their support units to conduct checkpoint operations, security patrols, and other combat missions in the Iraq occupation. Infantry and armor units aren't the only ones doing this stuff -- artillerymen, engineers, MPs, and others are running these missions too. Second, Keegan's wrong in the sense that combat has spread to everyone in the Iraqi theater of operations -- combat troops and support troops. Indeed, support troops driving in convoys have been more likely to come under fire and take casualties than their combat arms brethren, probably because the Iraqis are going after the soft targets.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:20

 
Can the military be used to promote democracy?

According to Robert Tagorda, a Truman Scholar and first-year student at Harvard's Kennedy School, the answer is yes. America's military can be a potent tool for the promotion of democracy abroad, particularly through military-to-military contacts. Tagorda writes for Tech Central Station about the case of the Philippines, and why such programs might be the right answer for reforming the Philippine military.

. . . as a short-term alternative, the Bush administration should revise its May proposal to include professional as well as combat training. The proposal calls for a comprehensive security review that details "how the United States can best support Philippine military modernization and reform." In addition to discussing UH-1H helicopters and other equipment, this review should devise ways in which the assistance program can be used to strengthen military adherence to civilian authority. Education will hardly serve as a panacea. But it will at least begin to put the spotlight on stabilizing and strengthening institutions that have important counterterrorism responsibilities.

In "Supremacy by Stealth," Robert Kaplan states that the fourth rule for managing an unruly world is to "use the military to promote democracy." The Philippines already shares democratic ideals with Western allies. Still, if the United States wants to advance the war on terror, it must find a creative way to apply this rule in the Pacific.

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:02

 
Moral courage
VA Secretary falls on his sword in today's Wall Street Journal

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a disturbing article about the ordeal of Jason Stiffler, an Army soldier seriously wounded in Afghanistan who has been fighting the Army and the VA for several months to get the benefits he needs to survive as a disabled veteran. I discussed this article on the day it ran, saying that this matched my experience with the VA disability system -- which can even be Byzantine to someone with an administrative law education like me. Today, a letter from VA Secretary Anthony Principi appears on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page (subscription required). Here is the full text:

When a Bureaucracy Fails, Veterans Suffer Inexcusably

Your article about the Afghanistan veteran whose injuries returned him to a civilian life of medical and financial hardship is a wake-up call for our department ("Seeking Benefits, Disabled Soldier Faced New Battle," Aug. 12). Veterans Affairs has no higher obligation than meeting the needs of veterans returning wounded or injured from combat, and we have improved our ability to do so. But the fact remains that we did not provide Jason Stiffler the level of service that he and every veteran deserve. The events described in your article are unacceptable and we need to fix our problems. I am fully committed to doing so.

Anthony J. Principi
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Washington

Wow... that's not the kind of candor I've seen in a while from a senior administration official in any administration. But it is the kind of integrity and candor that Mr. Principi is known for, and he should be commended for this letter. In the Army, falling on your sword can be the best way to admit fault and move forward, and I think that's what Mr. Principi has done here. Admittedly, the ordeal of Mr. Stiffler is an awful one, and no veteran deserves to be treated that way by his own country.

But what's done is done, and we now must focus on how to take care of the hundreds of thousands of combat veterans now serving overseas. America has not had such a large generation of combat veterans in 13 years, and given the nature of the conflict in Iraq, it's arguable that we haven't seen combat like this since Vietnam. These veterans have already started to come home, and many have begun to seek help from the VA. Over the next 3-5 years, the VA will face a bow wave like it hasn't seen for some time. America owes it to its veterans to give them the benefits they deserve, and this will become a campaign issue if the VA fails to deliver.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:28

 
Texas senator advocates for a larger military
Washington Times piece sounds eerily similar to Washington Monthly pieces

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) writes today in the Washington Times that America's military is stretched too thin to accomplish all of its missions -- and missions which may come in the future. Specifically, she argues that we lack the requisite number of boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator Hutchison starts her piece with a quotation from a famous piece of military history:

"You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life — but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud."

Those words, written nearly 40 years ago by my good friend T.R. Fehrenbach in the definitive work on the Korean War, "This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness" — still ring true today. Our recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq reinforce those very lessons. We prosecuted a very successful war, but if we are going to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi and Afghan people while preserving the peace elsewhere, we will need young men and women with their boots on the ground. I am increasingly concerned we don't have enough soldiers and Marines to do all the jobs that must be done.

Shortly before he retired, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki advised that postwar Iraq might require several hundred thousand soldiers and Marines to keep the peace. Gen. Shinseki commanded peacekeeping operations in both Bosnia and Kosovo, and he knows what it takes to get the job done right. But if we were to place several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, the unfortunate truth is that the Army may be stretched too thin elsewhere. Indeed, the man nominated to take his place, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, is another who apparently doesn't shy from offering his frank opinion. He recently said, "Intuitively, I think we need more people. It's as simple as that."

Sounds good to me. In fact, it sounds very much like this piece by Nick Confessore in the Washington Monthly, and this piece by me in the same magazine:

The architects of the war might be forgiven for misgauging the number of troops required had the war come a dozen years ago, when the United States had little experience in modern nation-building. But over the course of the 1990s America gained some hard understanding, at no small cost. From Port-au-Prince to Mogadishu, every recent engagement taught the lesson we're now learning again in Iraq: America's high-tech, highly mobile military can scatter enemies which many times outnumber them, in ways beyond the wildest dreams of commanders just a generation ago. But it's not so easy to win the peace.
* * *
Not only did Wolfowitz and Shinseki publicly disagree over how many troops would be needed to win the war in Iraq, they also disagreed on how many troops would be needed to win the peace. Shinseki testified to Congress that we would need "several hundred thousand" and Wolfowitz, very publicly, argued that the situation called for far fewer. What's become clear in the aftermath is that Wolfowitz simply didn't grasp, as Shinseki (who's commanded Army units in peacekeeping operations) clearly did, just what this kind of mammoth peacekeeping and nation-building operation would entail.
* * *
On the shelf of nearly every Army officer, you'll find a book by retired Col. T.R. Fehrenbach on the Korean conflict titled This Kind of War. At the end of World War II, confronted by the military revolution brought on by the atomic bomb, America cut its military from a wartime high of 16 million down to a few hundred thousand. Bombs and airplanes--not soldiers--would now protect America's shores and cities. After fighting as a grunt in Korea, Fehrenbach thought otherwise. Transformation was great for the Air Force and Navy, but for the Army and Marine Corps, the essential nature of warfare remained unchanged.

"You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life," wrote Fehrenbach. "But if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud." It's time Don Rumsfeld brushed up on his Fehrenbach. The book is on Gen. Shinseki's official reading list for the Army, so it's a good bet that one of his generals has a copy he can borrow.

I should be clear: I allege no plagiarism or dishonesty here. I borrowed from Fehrenbach, and I certainly didn't come to my own conclusions about everything I wrote about. The accepted norm is to borrow good ideas where you find them, whether it's in the Washington Monthly or the Weekly Standard.

Therein lies the irony. Sen. Hutchison's politics are quite different from mine, and probably quite different than the average Washington Monthly reader. I find some irony in the fact that a Republican senator from the President's home state would seize on ideas in a liberal magazine to criticize the foreign policy decisions of the Bush Administration. But I guess that truth is often stranger than fiction.
posted by Phillip Carter at 14:03

 
Intermission -- Intel Dump will begin regular news coverage again on Thursday or Friday of this week. In the interim, please stop by my friends and supporters on my blogroll. Thanks.
posted by Phillip Carter at 17:35

 
Update to Pentagon plans to reduce combat pay
Top DoD official says the plans were misconstrued, and pay will not drop

Undersecretary of Defense David Chu gave a press conference yesterday explaining this reversal a little further. In Dr. Chu's words, this isn't actually a reversal at all -- the original story was wrong. The Pentagon never intended to cut "total compensation" for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it intended to shift around different kinds of pay to more selectively target those actually in a combat zone -- as opposed to those in support of a combat operation in Qatar. Here's an excerpt from the press conference:

Q: Just to be clear, there was never any intention on the part of the Defense Department to even look at eliminating these increases. Is that correct?

Chu: I want to be careful about the reference to "these increases". The department's position is to maintain compensation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now how we --

Q: At the same level?

Chu: At the same level. Total compensation. What counts is the bottom line. Remember the typical person -- E-5, E-6, E-7 in Iraq/Afghanistan is being paid $4,000 or $5,000 a month. So what's at issue here is around $200 a month in these changed levels in these allowances.

We're going to try to maintain total compensation. Now we would prefer to do it with a different set of authorities than are at stake in this authorization issue. From that difference, unfortunately, this rumor has that we’re going to cut compensation in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, we're not.

Q: Is there also a difference in criteria? In other words where you may be reducing combat danger pay but increasing something else?

Chu: It could be. We haven't decided which instrument to use. Obviously it's a bit contingent on what Congress does. So if they do something we have to be sure we're thoughtful in responding to that direction.

Earlier in the press conference, Dr. Chu described the legislative and legal differences between what was being reported, and what was being done by the Pentagon:

Chu: No, no, no, no. I don't mean to be a technocrat here, but we have plenty of authority that we think is frankly better suited to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan to maintain that compensation at the level it now stands without this power. And what we're saying in this document is we don't need this authority. What Congress really would do if they extend this is actually pay it to a lot of people who aren't in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So we said look, we're just fine, guys. We have plenty of authority. We have never said we're going to cut -- I couldn't believe this rumor getting started. We have never said we are. We haven't touched this issue. In fact the whole debate inside the department has been the other side. What do we need to do for the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially those there for long periods of time.

Q: So if that money goes away you would make up for it in some other way, is that what you're saying?

Chu: Well you're dealing here not with money. You're dealing here with authority. This is not an appropriation. This is the authorization bill. This gives us authority. In fact actually this mandates, this is a bit of entitlement kind of thing, this mandates pay. We're saying we've got plenty of authority. We'll use that authority. In fact we are busy debating how best to use that authority. We haven’t come to our conclusion yet. All we're saying in this appeal document which actually is a much larger document, all sorts of issues in it, is we don't need this authority, guys. Don't muck it up.

Okay, I understand now... Congress has created an "entitlement", for lack of a better word, that authorizes certain troops to certain pay under certain conditions. The Pentagon thinks those conditions are overly broad, and would rather use other kinds of pay with other conditions to pay our troops in harm's way. The current model probably authorizes Family Separation Pay for anyone on any deployment -- whether in harm's way or not. And the current danger pay may include folks in Qatar, Kuwait, and elsewhere. The Pentagon's position is that it cannot afford to pay those folks not actually in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defense authorization/appropriations process is one of the most over-legislated, hyper-technical areas of the policy process imaginable. The annual National Defense Authorization Act is the largest piece of legislation considered by Congress, and it can run into the hundreds of pages. Often times, small provisions are inserted that may or may not mesh with the rest of the defense budget, the priorities of the President, or the priorities of Congress. But since it's part of this bill, it's the law of the land and it must be implemented somehow by the Pentagon. It's a policy nightmare.

Bottom Line: If we take Dr. Chu at his word, the "total compensation" for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will not drop -- it will change. Instead of receiving $225 and $250 for "imminent danger pay" and "family separation pay" respectively, soldiers may now receive $475 in some other special-purpose category. However, there will undoubtedly be friction in this process, and some soldiers will fall through the cracks. Some of this pay may lag, or hiccup, since the defense pay system is quite large and complex. It remains to be seen whether "total compensation" will actually stay the same, notwithstanding the comments by Dr. Chu. More to follow...

posted by Phillip Carter at 14:08

 
Using government plastic to buy... well... plastic

Defense Week, a Pentagon trade journal, reports that a Marine Corps staff sergeant was convicted in June of using her official DoD credit card to buy, among other things, a breast augmentation.

Staff Sergeant Sherry Pierre, an active duty Marine who worked for Marine Forces Reserve headquarters command in New Orleans, used her Pentagon plastic to rack up $129,709 in goods, services and upgrades to her physique, a command spokesman confirmed.

Pierre's previously unpublicized surgery may have given her a lift, but the tale is hardly uplifting. It is among the more egregious examples of a military employee abusing a government purchase card that is meant to increase efficiency, not waste. Her story illustrates a larger problem: A lack of management controls on nearly $7 billion in annual Pentagon credit-card purchases. The Pentagon has made strides to solve the problem, but many of the solutions are just now taking root.

Pierre's scheme transpired between 2000 and 2001, a period that, the Pentagon points out, pre-dates its major initiatives to rein in credit-card waste.

Pierre's rip-off was detected by the experimental use of data-mining techniques, which can detect telltale trends and anomalies in large databases. But these monitoring methods are only now being made part of the military's regular oversight of its credit-card purchases. So similar cases may not have come to light-though they soon could be unearthed as the technique is more widely used.

Analysis: This really is the tip of the iceberg where credit card abuse in DoD is concerned. There are two categories of cards which have been heavily abused by DoD employees --

(1) Government credit cards where the individual can purchase goods and services in Uncle Sam's name, subject to a long list of regulations;
(2) Government-backed travel credit cards, where the individual can charge travel expenses to bridge the gap between the dates of travel and the date of reimbursement.

Staff Sergeant Pierre's case falls in category (1) -- she used Uncle Sam's credit card to buy personal stuff, and charged those things to the taxpayers. This is a clear-cut case of larceny, and I think the service made the right decision to prosecute her. Luckily for us taxpayers, these cases are fairly infrequent, because there are a number of management controls on these government cards -- controls which unfortunately broke down in this case.

The tougher cases fall into category (2), and these are much more common. Military personnel often legitimately use their cards, only to have problems on the back end when they seek reimbursement. That can put them into arrears. The more disturbing problem is the heavy use of these cards by military personnel for personal charges totally unrelated to official travel. I can remember anecdotes from Fort Hood, Texas, where soldiers were caught using the card at strip clubs, car dealerships, hotels in Austin, and other unauthorized uses. At one point, I think a statistical analysis showed that 80% of all government travel-card transactions were done within a 25-mile radius of the installation. Clearly, those cards were not being used for travel.

The good news is that the Pentagon has really cracked down on this problem. Some would say the Pentagon is being too Draconian here, but I'm inclined to think this is one area where the system needs to be tough. The Defense Department has an enormous budget, and it owes the American people no small measure of fiscal responsibility.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:58

 
About face!

After taking heavy artillery fire from critics for its decision to downwardly adjust its family separation and imminent danger pay for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon abruptly reversed course today -- saying it would maintain such pay "at least at the current levels." Here's what the Pentagon press release had to say:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 600-03
August 14, 2003

DoD Statement on Family Separation Allowance and
Imminent Danger Pay

In April, after the President's Budget was submitted, Congress authorized an increase in both the Family Separation Allowance (on a worldwide basis) and Imminent Danger Pay and legislated that these increases would expire on Sept. 30, 2003. The department is aware of the problem that would result for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan if these allowances were allowed to expire. This is an issue of targeting those most deserving, and certainly people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are in these categories. We intend to ensure they continue to receive this compensation at least at the current levels.

The administration's official stance on this issue was that the two forms of special pay cost too much to maintain over the long haul. I imagine this was doubly true because the Pentagon has had to keep more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than it expected, to deal with problematic situations in both nations. According to Ed Epstein of the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Defense Department supports the cuts, saying its budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities.
* * *
Last month, the Pentagon sent Congress an interim budget report saying the extra $225 monthly for the two pay categories was costing about $25 million more a month, or $300 million for a full year. In its "appeals package" laying out its requests for cuts in pending congressional spending legislation, Pentagon officials recommended returning to the old, lower rates of special pay and said military experts would study the question of combat pay in coming months.

Analysis: Despite its $380 billion budget, the Pentagon does have to contend with finite resources. It must choose between using its money for personnel, equipment, research, and other areas. In theory, the money from this special pay could be transferred to one of the SecDef's other priorities -- missile defense, for example. But is that really more important that this special pay? I don't think so. I suppose if you had to choose between extra body armor for soldiers in Iraq and special pay for them, you might have a tough decision. But clearly, there is enough largesse in this year's Pentagon budget to spare the money to pay our sons and daughters in harm's way.

When faced with recalcitrant bureaucrats who simply wanted to buy gadgets, the late-Col. John Boyd used to thunder "People, ideas, and hardware -- in that order!" at his audiences. Col. Boyd was onto something. Or as Gen. Creighton Abrams (creator of the all-volunteer force) said: "People are not in the Army, they are the Army." It's time we recognized this basic truth, and put our money into our most important military asset: America's sons and daughters in uniform.
posted by Phillip Carter at 16:12

 
The case of Faith Fippinger

With a name like that, you'd think I was decribing a law school exam hypothetical. Unfortunately, I'm not. The U.S. government is currently seeking to fine Ms. Fippinger under various Treasury and State Department regulations governing sanctions against pre-war Iraq. Ms. Fippinger went to Iraq before the war to act as a "human shield" against American military action.

From a policy perspective, I agree with the U.S. government's sanctions against pre-war Iraq, and think this method of enforcement is proper. However, as Julie Hilden points out in today's FindLaw column, there are some serious First Amendment issues to contend with:

Before packing her bag for prison, Fippinger should visit a lawyer. Her lawyer should then move to have the charges against her dismissed, among other reasons, because they violate the First Amendment. The government's treatment of Fippinger may well outrage a judge enough to grant that motion.

Fippinger might also have a claim against the government - either under the federal civil rights statute that allows citizens to sue for damages when their constitutional rights are violated, or under the theory that she suffered from selective prosecution. Were other Americans who spent minimal money in Iraq, and did not speak out against the government, pursued under the unconvincing "trade violation" theory? If not, then Fippinger may have a strong case against the government.

Selective prosecution arguments are always hard to win. But this case might be an exception: It seems so obvious that it's Fippinger's speaking out that has made her a target. Why else would the government bother to enforce obsolete sanctions against a retired schoolteacher who did no real harm with her tiny purchases, and plainly lacks the money to easily pay the fines?

Many nonviolent protesters before this have gone to jail for their beliefs. But Fippinger need not necessarily be one of them.

So what do I think? I think there's a balance to be struck here, and that courts are pretty good at weighing individual rights against governmental interests in cases such as this one. Ultimately, I think Ms. Fippinger will lose because of the tremendous deference accorded the executive branch by the judicial branch in matters of foreign policy and national security. But this will be a close call.
posted by Phillip Carter at 09:50

 
Torts, cigarettes and french fries

Slate's brilliant legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick has a great essayon the new wave of litigation over fast food. I think Ms. Lithwick has one of America's finest legal minds, and she's certainly one of the legal journalists in the business. This piece, like her others, is worth a read. Here's her conclusion:

The best solution doubtless lies someplace between the absurd extremes. As Ben Kelly points out in today's Washington Post, Big Food will likely survive just by moderating its behavior, posting warnings, and taking it easy on peddling their junk to the kiddies. But we may want to keep an eye on the John Banzhafs of the world, who have observed that their next target may well be "Big Milk"—full of saturated fats and cholesterol and not nearly as healthy as those moustache commercials would suggest.

Got a lawyer?

posted by Phillip Carter at 08:55

 
DARPA -- an American version of Hogwarts school for wizards?

The Los Angeles Times has a great Column One piece on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has taken fire recently for its Total Information Awareness and Policy Analysis Market programs. In the piece, Charles Piller looks at some of the great successes -- and great failures -- of the Pentagon agency.

Over the years, millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on a variety of projects, from telepathic spies and jungle-tromping robotic elephants, to its most recent fiasco - FutureMAP, an online futures market designed to predict assassinations and bombings by encouraging investor speculation in such crimes.

"Morally repugnant," said Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

A "sick idea," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

"Unbelievably stupid," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.).

It's the type of criticism that DARPA is not only used to, but also lavishes on itself. "When we fail, we fail big," said former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld, summing up the agency research disasters in an official 1975 history of DARPA.

Such is life on the absolute bleeding edge of technology.

The whole article is worth a read. Besides inventing the Internet (originally called "ARPANet"), DARPA has had a hand in a number of other key innovations in American society. The article details some of those, as well as the the current debate over TIA and other programs.

For more on DARPA and its newest project to digitize the human body, see this Wired article by Noah Shachtman.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:42

 
Prof. Krugman: "Critics, do your homework!"
Critic to Prof. Krugman: Quotation does not necessarily equal fact-checking

In response to my criticisms and those of others, Princeton economist Paul Krugman has posted a page on his personal website citing two letters from Stars & Stripes and a Financial Times article to back up his position on heat casualties in Iraq. As a young law student at UCLA, I'm flattered and surprised that a Princeton professor would take the time to do this. But since he did, I think it's only fair for me to "do my homework" and respond to Prof. Krugman, who doesn't appear to have done his homework.

1. The Water Issue

Prof. Krugman starts by quoting two letters -- one from PFC John Bendetti of the 220th MP Company (Colorado National Guard) and one from SPC Jason K. Sapp in Kuwait. PFC Bendetti's letter contains the part about receiving two 1.5 liter bottles of water per day:

Due to more attacks on convoys, more items are becoming rare. Two examples are mail and bottled water. Our mail has been reduced to two times a week. Due to a lack of bottled water, each soldier has been limited to two 1.5 liter bottles a day. We’ve had two soldiers drop out due to heat-related injuries.

A person with common sense knows that a normal person can’t survive on three liters of water a day. One would think that the Army could coordinate with the Air Force and have supplies flown in from Kuwait. All I’m saying is that we’ve been “climatized” to the heat, but new troops have not. There will continue to be more heat casualties until something is done.

There's a lot in here. First, I should say that PFC Bendetti's gripes are legitimate, in the sense that mail and food and water are things that a soldier should care about. (Whether he should write Stars & Stripes with them instead of using his chain-of-command is another matter) That said, mail twice a week in a combat zone is not unreasonable -- it's 1/3 of the delivery rate in the United States. The critical metric for mail is not frequency of delivery, but how long it takes for mail to get to the soldier and get home from the soldier. In those areas, the military has made great improvements since April, largely by consolidating delivery and shifting resources to other parts of the postal chain. Prof. Krugman, as an economist, could have written a great column on the way the military postal system works, and some of the infrastructural/systems issues therein.

PFC Bendetti mentions that he only gets two 1.5 liter bottles of water a day. Again, I don't dispute this fact -- I've seen it in Pentagon press briefings, and I've talked to Army logisticians who say this is true. But what he doesn't say is that his unit also has a supply of unbottled water -- "tap" water if you will. I stand by my original contention, because I've fact-checked it, that a soldier will die in a desert environment on 3 liters/water a day. (The same is true in a cold weather environment, actually) I've led soldiers in the frozen hills of Korea and in the hot Mojave Desert, and I know how much water it takes to keep them alive under body armor and full battle rattle. 3 liters/day would result in a lot more than 2 heat casualties in one MP company -- it would result in a dead MP company.

Prof. Krugman should have fact-checked this quote by calling someone at Princeton -- say another professor at Princeton -- to ask if it's even possible to survive on 3 liters/day. Or he could've picked up the phone to call a New York Times staffer who's knowledgeable on such matters, like C.J. Chivers, a former Marine who now writes for the paper. He could've even called the Princeton Army ROTC department, and talked to an active duty officer or NCO there with experience surviving in the desert. (The Princeton Army ROTC cadre includes at least two Desert Storm veterans)

I know, I know... I'm a hard a** because I think soldiers should drink water from their "water buffaloes" instead of from a plastic bottle. Heaven forbid soldiers should drink "tap" water instead of bottled water. But this boils down to a simple matter of military logistics. PFC Bendetti suggests that the Air Force somehow fly in the requisite number of water bottles for the occupation force. A grand idea, to be sure, but one that's unsupportable. America has a finite amount of "strategic lift", which includes all the big aircraft which can move men and materiel around the world. Water, at 8 pounds/gallon, is very heavy; bottled water is very bulky; it's incredibly inefficient to move it by air. That's why the Army has "reverse osmosis water purification units", or "ROWPUs", and other means for producing water in the field. Granted, the water doesn't taste as good as Evian, but it's still water and it will still keep you alive in the desert.

We'd all love to drink bottled water, but until the French decide to donate Evian by the pallet and the airlift to get it to Iraq, that's not going to be a viable option. Once again, Prof. Krugman could have checked this fact by calling up a logistics expert -- either in the military or in a company like FedEx. But he failed to do so, because it made his column sound better to include this factoid about bottled water.

2. Mobilization of reservists

The second letter, from SPC Jason Sapp, blasts everyone in his chain of command from lieutenant colonels on up to the National Command Authority. SPC Sapp doesn't identify himself, but it looks like he's a reservist stuck in Kuwait as part of a unit mobilization. He's clearly bitter about the mobilization.

There are thousands of soldiers in Kuwait who were never supposed to be here. My unit was told that we weren’t supposed to be here. We were told by a lieutenant colonel on our second day in country that we were supposed to demobilize and return home. We asked if we could return. He laughed and said, “No. We got you here. Now we will find something for you.” As with tens of hundreds of other units, we were without a mission. How do readers think our morale was as of day two in country, let alone all the other units that sat here waiting for a job but never got one? Like us, they are still waiting for a way home.

Griping about mobilization is a reservist's pastime, and it's something that is to be expected. (The words "mobilization" and "demobilize" are reservist terms; active duty guys speak of "deployments" and "redeployments") In all fairness to SPC Sapp, I agree that the mobilization plan for reservists has been somewhat disjointed. Initially, as I wrote in The Washington Monthly, the Pentagon intended to fight this war with a lighter, faster, 21st Century force that had less boots on the ground. Part of this was that the Pentagon did not want to call up large numbers of reservists, for political and practical reasons. After the post-war situation deteriorated, this calculus changed, and the Pentagon changed its planned force structure in Iraq. The new force included a lot more troop units than previously expected, and that affected the number of reservists who could be demobilized, as well as the number of troops who could be redeployed. This is the reason why 3ID was held in country for so long.

Mobilization is a stressful experience; it tears reservists away from their families, jobs and communities. But it's also something which is foreseeable, particularly since the 1990s when reservists have increasingly borne the brunt of missions from Bosnia to Afghanistan -- and now Iraq. I sympathize with SPC Sapp, but I think his complaints are disingenuous. He signed up for the reserves; he received the benefits of reserve service; his nation called him when it needed him. If he's in Kuwait, he doesn't have it that bad compared to my friends who are in Baghdad, Tikrit, Mosul, and elsewhere in Iraq.

3. Military contracting

Finally, Prof. Krugman cites an article from Financial Times, which itself cites an article by David Wood of the Newhouse News Service. (Give Mr. Wood some credit -- his Pentagon beat reporting has been exceptional over the last several months.) This article is supposed to stand for the proposition that privatization of military functions is bad, and that it's indicative of a larger, more dangerous trend towards privatization in the Bush Administration. Generalization is what great columnists love to do -- to paint large, sweeping themes with small facts. Unfortunately for Prof. Krugman, his foundation lacks adequate support, and thus it falters.

Here's an except from the FT story:

But the growing dependence on such private sector support concerns some military experts. Part of the problem is that contractors are not subject to military discipline and could walk off the job if they felt like it. The only thing the military could do would be to sue the contractor later on - the last thing on the mind of a commander on the battlefield.
* * *
"We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt Gen Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, was quoted as saying by Newhouse News Service this month. He said it got "harder and harder to get (them) to go in harm's way".

This is interesting stuff... and that's why I flagged Mr. Wood's story in early August when it ran. (Maybe Prof. Krugman's reading Intel Dump...) But it still appears that Prof. Krugman is drawing the wrong conclusions from LTG Mahan's statement and the problems we're having with military contractors. Much of this owes to a misunderstanding of the way that government contracts work, and the clauses that these contracts probably had.

As a matter of federal law, most clauses in a government contract are set by the Federal Acquisitions Regulation -- the "FAR". (Each agency has its own subset of regulations, such as the "DFAR" for the DoD) These clauses are incorporated into any government contract, and they're non-negotiable. The government usually gets to choose which clauses it puts into a contract ahead of time, and that is the contract which is put out for bids. The contract then becomes a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for the government contractor.

This is informed speculation on my part, based on interviews I've done with several people in the Pentagon, State Department, and USAID. (I try to fact-check, not just quote) But I think these contracts for post-war services were developed in early 2003 during the planning phase of the war, when senior Pentagon officials thought we'd be greeted as liberators. All of their time-phased troop deployment plans and operations plans included the assumption that the post-war situation would rapidly stabilize, and that security would not be a continuing problem. That assumption was probably built into these contracts as well, such that the contractors did not get coverage for things like security costs, added insurance costs, etc.

We know now that those assumptions were flawed; a guerilla war continues in Iraq to this day. This presents government contractors with a choice. They can perform the contract under the new conditions, and subsequently make a claim against the government for a constructive "change" in the contract. Let's assume they try to make the claim before they perform, and the government says no. Then the contractor can decide between losing money in contractual damages, and getting its employees shot up in Iraq and losing money on insurance costs and security costs. What would any rational corporation do? Prof. Krugman could have written a brilliant piece on the economic calculus of a government contractor, and how rational choices are made in this situation. But he didn't. He ignored these details of government contract law and corporate decisionmaking to paint the corporations as the villain. That's sloppy reporting, as far as I'm concerned.

Bottom Line: I respect Prof. Krugman; I even have one of his books ("Pop Internationalism") on my bookshelf. But I think that he should stick to what he knows when he writes, because it's clear that he's too far afield here. Prof. Krugman could have written a brilliant piece analyzing any aspect of this situation from his perspective as an economist -- and I probably would have linked to it with praise. Instead, I think he was forced by the NYT editorial board to stretch himself beyond his expertise, and it shows.

Coda: While running with my dog Peet on the beach this morning, I clarified my thoughts a little. Prof. Krugman and I are actually in agreement about one thing: privatization of military functions can be problematic. LTG Mahan's comments about contractors going to war have a great deal of merit, and I think it's fair to say that the decision to outsource certain military functions carries a great deal of strategic, operational and tactical risk. However, I don't think you can arrive at that conclusion merely from the points that Prof. Krugman cites. I think you really need to dig into the contingency contracts from Iraq, find if/where they broke down, and buid an argument based on the facts.

Ultimately, I think most of the problems trace back to poor planning -- which resulted in poorly drafted contracts based on flawed assumptions. Consequently, I would put the burden on the Pentagon's planners -- not the contractors. These contractors had very little leverage in the negotiations because of the way the FAR works. And to borrow a term from economics, these contractors faced an "information asymmetry" -- the Pentagon simply knew more about the situation on the ground in Iraq than they did.

The Pentagon could have drafted contracts with cost provisions and contingency provisions to cover the eventualities which did occur -- namely the deteriorating security situation after 9 Apr 03 -- but they didn't. The contractors made the only rational business choice they could be expected to make.

A larger question looms about the wisdom of contracting our certain military functions in the first place (a question which Tapped raised yesterday). Outsourcing certain support functions -- such as mail service, food service, tank repair, etc -- is risky, because contractors aren't soldiers and you can't order them into combat on pain of criminal punishment. On the other hand, it can be more cost-effective to outsource these functions, largely because of the institutional costs inherent in training, equipping, leading and maintaining soldiers and military units. At the end of the day, America has a finite amount of money it can afford to spend on defense, even if that finite amount reaches nearly $400 billion. We can't afford to internalize every defense function -- from mail service to depot-level tank repair. Privatizing certain functions enables the military to focus its resources on the critical functions which must be done by "green suiters". If we can make our trigger-pullers more effective, more efficient, or more lethal by privatizing certain support functions, then the risk of privatization may be justified. (For more on the calculus of defense spending, see this book by Michael O'Hanlon and Military Readiness: Concepts, Choices, Consequences, by Richard Betts.)

In theory, that's the way it's supposed to work. It's possible that the system may have broken down at some points, but I think the general wisdom of privatization has been proven over time in Gulf War I, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Now we just need to make it work better in Iraq.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:00

 
As if Korea wasn't tense enough . . .

The English-language Korea Times reports today that American and South Korean officials are in disagreement about how and when to move the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division to new locations south of Seoul. 2ID currently sits astride the main corridors of advance from the DMZ to Seoul, as a "tripwire" to deter any North Korean attack on the Seoul. Earlier this year, American and South Korean officials agreed to a strategic redeployment of the 2nd Infantry Division, as a step to free up real estate in near the DMZ and to make 2ID less vulnerable to a North Korean first strike. Now, there's a row over how to make that happen.

"The U.S. expressed its hope that the construction of new camps will be finished by 2008 during the bilateral military consultations in Hawaii last month," ministry spokesman Hwang Young-soo said. "It was an expression of their wishful thinking," Hwang said.

Despite their agreement to relocate the frontline positioned U.S. camps, Seoul is eager to delay it as long as possible to soften the impact on the public’s sense of security, ministry officials said.

For the relocation to go as planned, South Korea must first purchase land in southern Kyonggi Province, Hwang said.

The two nations agreed to combine smaller U.S. camps near the border into two camps at Tongduchon and Uijongbu by 2006 as the first phase to be followed by a second southward repositioning. But they have not revealed the exact timetable for the relocation to Pyongtaek and Osan in southern Kyonggi Province.

And in other news, the Korea Times and New York Times both report on an incident that's sure to inflame the Korean public. An American military officer has been arrested by Korean authorities on suspicion of murder after he was caught dumping a woman's body off a bridge near Seoul.

Police said they had placed the 45-year-old U.S. Army major under arrest after he was caught throwing a vinyl bag containing the body of his wife off the Yeongjong Grand Bridge into the Yellow Sea at 3:40 a.m. The 4.4 km-bridge links Seoul to Yeongjong Island, where Incheon International Airport is located.
* * *
Under a bilateral pact governing the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed here, South Korea has jurisdiction over American servicemen who commit serious crimes such as murder or rape, except for cases that take place while suspects were conducting their official duties or if the crime was committed between U.S. soldiers themselves.

In Tuesday’s case, Korean police must hand over the major to the U.S. military forces soon according to the Status of Forces Agreement. However, if the victim is found to be a civilian and her death is found not to be linked to the suspect’s execution of official duties, the Korean authorities will have jurisdiction over the U.S. officer.

Analysis: We have a very delicate relationship with our South Korean allies, and these two stories are not going to help matters. It's pretty hot over there right now, and when college students return to their campuses, I imagine we'll see another wave of protests across the country. To an extent, that's to be expected, and it's a good thing. Protesting is almost the national sport in Korea, and it's a great way to let off steam for a vibrant young democracy. If, however, sustained protests go on for a while, they could start to affect the way South Korean politicians act on these issues, which may further complicate regional security issues.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:36

 
Operation Ivy Lightning... or OIL

Dana Milbank, the Washington Post's White House reporter, has a tongue-in-cheek piece this morning about the latest campaign in Iraq to root out insurgents. This one is named "Operation Ivy Lightning," and is spearheaded by my old unit the 4th Infantry Division.

Yesterday, U.S. Central Command issued a news release announcing lightning raids in the remote towns of Ain Lalin and Quara Tapa "to isolate and capture noncompliant forces." The name of the mission: Operation Ivy Lightning. Or, if you prefer the acronym: OIL.

The military has had all kinds of far-out names for its strikes -- last week brought Operation Soda Mountain -- but it has been careful to avoid embarrassing acronyms. In fact, it was rumored that the overall action was called Operation Iraqi Freedom rather than Operation Iraqi Liberation to avoid the very acronym Centcom produced yesterday for the strike by the 4th Infantry Division (or IV Division -- hence the Ivy).

A military spokesman joked, "We struck a dry hole when we tried to find someone to take credit for this one."

Brief History: The Roman numeral "IV" was used for the division a long time ago, and the division picked up the moniker "the Ivy division" during WWI. Today, 4ID soldiers wear a patch with 4 ivy leaves pointing north/south/east/west on their shoulder.

Today's 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) also calls itself the "Ironhorse" division, in a not-too-subtle reference to the armored vehicles it rides on into battle. The division plans team (of which I was a member) names every operations plan using a convention that incorporates either Ivy or Ironhorse into the name -- e.g. Operation Ironhorse Venture or Operation Ivy Lightning. Unfortunately, this means that every 4ID operation that ends in "L" will result in the acronym "OIL".

Bonus: There is actually an art and science to the naming of operations. For more on this subject, see this article in Parameters, the Army War College quarterly.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:23

 
Rumsfeld's priorities for the military

Joe Katzman has a great note at Winds of Change discussing SecDef Rumsfeld's priorities for the military -- as briefed to the Army's new class of 1-star generals at their indoctrination and training seminar. The list looks like most doctrinal statements -- broad, sweeping, vague language that doesn't necessarily mean one thing or another. Joe does a good job of explaining each of Rumsfeld's priorities though -- example:

1. Successfully Pursue the Global War on Terrorism
* Reset the force
* High value target plan
* Global Peace Operations initiative

Reset the force... yeah, they need that. I think I like the "high value target plan." To those asking: "does this mean al-Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea?", my answer would be "yes."

This GPO initiative looks interesting... seems Liberia may be a test case for something greater. See yesterday's AfricaPundit Regional Briefing, and esp. Part 3 of The Buggy Professor's materials in Top Topics.
* * *
9. Streamline DOD Processes
* Shorten PPBS and acquisition cycle time
* Financial Management Reform
* Shorten DoD processes by 50%
* Output metrics built around balanced risk and President's Management Agenda

The budgeting and acquisition cycle time is a major problem - weapons systems are taking 10-15 years from planning to fielding, and that's just too long.

Unfortunately, fixing it will require a major mindset shift. For example, this mindset will accept cutting the Marine helicopter fleet to equip it with V-22 Ospreys. Yeah, yeah, longer range, more speed, more capacity, great. Also more maintenance, more expense if you lose one, hence more protective systems and doctrines focused on protecting the investment, hence even higher cost, longer development time, less availability, and sometimes even reluctance to take risks with the equipment. Bad idea. Personally, I'd rather replace the CH-53s and CH-46s with updated version of conventional helicopters (the EH-101 is an example), which work just fine and use proven technology. That way more Marines can be air-transportable, which lets the Marines do more interesting things with concepts like seabasing and widens their choice of tactics on the ground.

As we've found with the Internet, availability = capability too. Against low-tech opponents "more good enough" has advantages of its own, numbers make a difference when surges are required, and they also allow U.S forces to absorb losses without making the next mission unviable. But the procurement culture of the Pentagon rarely thinks that way, and despite scattered successes like the JDAM broader change will be difficult.

If Rumsfeld can actually make a dent in that mindset, he'll be one of the greatest Defense Secretaries ever. This "Pentagon Procurement Death Spiral" is the major problem at the heart of more and more monies going for fewer and fewer resources, and that long-term trend needs to turn around.

The whole thing's worth a read, and I imagine we'll see more on this subject in the near future. More to follow...
posted by Phillip Carter at 05:48

 
A cartoonist with a sense of humor

Daryl Cagle, who for some time has run Slate's political cartoon section, has a weblog. From what I see so far, it's great -- Cagle's weblog belongs at the top of every reader's list for morning news & views.

No stranger to controversy, Daryl Cagle reprints this letter and rebuttal cartoon from LA Times cartoonist Michael Ramirez. The new cartoon is a response to a previous cartoon from Mr. Ramirez which caricatured President Bush as the victim in a famous Vietnam War photo of a public execution. Following a visit by the Secret Service, Mr. Ramirez had this to say:

"The controversy over this cartoon is ridiculous. As political cartoonists, we are supposed to push the envelope to try to engage the reader in debate. I intentionally chose to use a disturbing image to convey a very salient point. President Bush is the target of a political assassination because of sixteen words which he uttered in the State of the Union speech that were, by the way, accurate. The cartoon was obviously not meant to encourage violence but was a reference to a famous photograph from the Vietnam era. There is a parallel between the politicization of the Vietnam war and the deconstruction of the success and the politicization of the current Iraq war. That photograph is one of the most powerful images from the Vietnam era . It was perceived as an a unjust act in an war mired in politics. Metaphorically, there are people currently engaged in the political assassination of our president. Those with political motivations are using the uranium story to attack the president. The photo is a very disturbing image. The editorial cartoon is meant to be a disturbing image. But the current manifestation of attacks on the president driven by political ambition rather than fact is far more disturbing then my cartoon. "

"PS from Michael: the weather in GITMO is beautiful. Life is good but I have to have all my cartoons screened by John Ashcroft before publication now..."

You really have to see the cartoon that Mr. Ramirez penned to go with this letter...
posted by Phillip Carter at 15:44

 
Another 3ID brigade comes home

The Associated Press reports that the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, has returned home to Fort Stewart, Georgia.

The last of the division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team landed at Hunter Army Airfield to turn in their weapons and the rest of their combat gear before being released to their families. Only the division's 1st Brigade remains in Iraq, and it is scheduled to begin heading home in the next few weeks.
* * *
The infantrymen flew home on a chartered Delta Airlines flight decorated with red, white and blue streamers, U.S. flags and yellow ribbons. After months in the desert, surrounded by drab camouflage gear, the soldiers smiled broadly at the flight attendants as they boarded the plane.

"You are now in the United States. This plane is officially U.S. territory. It may not be the state you want to be in, but you're already home," Connie Teitel, one of the attendants, told Spec. Kenneth Clark.

"Thank you, it feels good," Clark replied.

posted by Phillip Carter at 09:31

 
One veteran's battle for disability benefits

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a brilliant article this morning on the case of Jason Stiffler, an Army soldier who was seriously injured in Afghanistan. Following his fall from a watchtower, Stiffler went through several hospitals and medical evaluations before being given a partial disability by the Army -- good for $731 a month. Stiffler appealed that adjudication, but ran headlong into an Army and VA bureaucracy seemingly designed to frustrate veterans.

Mr. Stiffler's story shows the human toll when critical benefits judgments are delayed, and the confusion veterans and their families often feel when they're forced to confront bureaucracy. It also illustrates some of the flaws in the $60.4 billion veterans agency, and how those problems could prove overwhelming as veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq start to enter the VA's rolls.

The roughly 175,000 military personnel who have served in the war against terror have not begun to apply for VA services in big numbers. But about 50,000 of them will file disability claims in coming years, if the 30% rate of VA utilization after the Gulf War is any guide.

That will place added burdens on a system that has been swamped for years. The average wait to get a medical appointment with the VA is seven months, according to a recent survey by the American Legion. There's a backlog of 280,000 veterans awaiting a disability rating, which determines how much they should receive in benefits; 108,000 veterans are waiting to hear back on appeals of rating decisions.

One reason for the backlog: a 1996 Congressional decision that expanded benefit eligibility to all veterans. Previously, the VA had been open only to indigent veterans and those wounded or injured during service. Since the change, the number of veterans seeking VA medical services has doubled to 6.8 million, while VA spending has risen 56%.
* * *
The VA system is particularly slow when it comes to assessing veterans with permanent disabilities. The agency is divided into separate medical-care and disability bureaucracies, which have a history of not communicating effectively with each other on disability cases. So, when a veteran is treated at a VA hospital, changes in his or her condition aren't automatically reported to officials who consider disability claims. As a result, those changes can't immediately be factored into claims decisions.

Moreover, in making disability decisions, the VA relies heavily on military records. But these largely consist of paper files that must be located and shipped when a request is made, slowing response times. Often files are misplaced or incomplete. "Stuff just goes into a big black hole sometimes," says Mr. Principi.

Under Mr. Principi, the VA has made a priority of fostering better cooperation and communication between its Veterans Health Administration, which operates VA hospitals, and the Veterans Benefits Administration, which makes disability and pension decisions. Last year, the VA centralized management of the two entities' information-technology operations. And, to streamline the transfer of files, the Department of Defense has begun sending certain military medical records into an electronic database that VHA doctors can tap into. But most Defense medical records are still kept only on paper and must be transferred by hand.

Thoughts... I can sympathize with Mr. Stiffler, as a veteran who has gone through the VA process to seek a disability rating. (I have a 10% disability for leg injuries sustained on active duty) The process is Byzantine, and I can only imagine how it treats lower-ranking soldiers who don't have the legal or bureaucratic experience that I do. In fact, I sought my VA rating at the same time I took Administrative Law at UCLA, and I found that knowledge to be invaluable in dealing with the VA. There's something wrong with a VA system that takes a law degree to navigate.

VA Secretary Principi is doing a good job of pushing the VA to become more responsive to the veterans who need the care the most. His proposal to shift resources to lower-income and service-disabled veterans -- to the detriment of higher-income, non-disabled veterans -- is the right thing to do. Secretary Principi has also pushed an aggressive program of privatization to purchase more medical resources for each dollar of VA funding, and I think that's also the right thing to do.

The VA's mission is clear: it must be ready to deal with the bow wave of veterans about to leave the service after fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Historical data suggests that the majority of those who have fought in these wars will not reenlist at the end of their enlistments, and that hundreds of thousands of combat veterans will soon reenter the civilian world. Many will leave the service with injuries from combat, or conditions that merit a VA disability rating. The VA must be ready to serve these men and women when they come home.
posted by Phillip Carter at 08:59

 
Krugman: Privatization partly to blame for American problems in Iraq?
NYT columnist/economist takes on the Pentagon, but his ducks aren't all in a row

Paul Krugman takes the Bush Administration and Pentagon to task in his New York Times column today. Some of this is certainly justified, but Krugman takes some license with the facts to make the ultimate argument that privatizing certain military functions has led to problems for the military in Iraq. Here's his basic argument:

The U.S. military has always had superb logistics. What happened? The answer is a mix of penny-pinching and privatization ?— which makes our soldiers' discomfort a symptom of something more general.
* * *
Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills ?— reversed when the public heard about it ?— was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)

There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat ?— and the system failed.

Analysis: Krugman's first mistake is to rely too heavily on the reporting of Col. David Hackworth. I respect Col. Hackworth a great deal, both for his military record and his criticisms of Washington. But Col. Hackworth has a particular agenda that includes a lot of stuff that Paul Krugman probably doesn't know about -- or doesn't agree with. Moreover, Hack's criticisms provoke such a visceral reaction in the Pentagon that anything citing him will immediately be rejected by the Pentagon establishment. Even if this was a more accurate piece, its citation to Col. Hackworth would diminish its credibility in the halls of the Pentagon. Citing authority with that effect can be risky.

History also matters. Military history is conspicuously absent from Krugman's column. In the realm of military affairs, history matters a great deal because you rarely want to advocate for things that haven't been done successfully before under fire. In fact, privatization has been used with some success by various nations at various times in the world. "Mercenary" armies are one example, though an unsavory one. Another example could be the way industry was co-opted in the mass mobilization efforts of WWI and WWII. There is a fuzzy line between contracting out for services from industry, and simply enlisting industry in the cause. Krugman fails to account for this gray area.

Here are some other points that leaped out at me while reading Krugman's piece:

1. Krugman starts his column with a description of American woe in Iraq -- based on the griping of a soldier about food.

A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He'd been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.'s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" ?— and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.

This should bring a smile to any veteran's face, because it's a time-honored tradition in the Army to gripe about food. In fact, they taught us as new lieutenants that your soldiers probably had a real problem if they weren't griping about their food, and that such gripes about Army chow were a sign of good morale. Frankly, I'm not a fan of eating MREs for 4 weeks straight, let alone 4 months. But I'm not too concerned when I see this gripe in the news... in the pantheon of Army b*tching, it's pretty low.

2. Krugman cites to some letters on Hack's website, including one where soldiers complain about water supplies.

One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?

This is a flat-out false statement. The truth is, according to Sergeant Major of the Army Jack Tilley during a recent press conference in Iraq, that soldiers are being issued two 1.5 liter plastic bottles of water today in addition to their regular water supply, which is provided in 500-gallon "water buffaloes" and other means. In fact, the planning factor for a soldier in a desert environment is something like 10 gallons of water per day -- plus between 10-50 pounds of ice per day (Note: a lot of this ice goes to food preparation and bulk water cooling, not directly to the soldier). A significant portion of the logistical effort goes to pushing this "Class I" supply forward to soldiers in the field, and distributing it. The physiology of this is obvious. If soldiers in Iraq were being forced to live on 3 liters/day, they would die.

Clearly, there is other water out there. Some soldiers are simply whining because they can't get an unlimited supply of Evian bottles, the way they did in Gulf War I when the Saudis footed the bill and the American supply lines weren't set up yet. I say: "Tough". Get your water in bulk from the water buffalo, fill your CamelBak, and deal with it.

A note on CamelBaks: I could write a book on this subject, from my active duty experience in the desert, but I won't. Suffice to say, the CamelBak is the best tool for hydration available, and every soldier should have one -- but doesn't yet. The Army has not procured these for every soldier in every unit. Many units have taken the initiative to spend their own funds on a commercial purchase, and many more soldiers (like me) have bought their own. Personally, I would buy enough CamelBaks to had one to every soldier in CENTCOM. Krugman could have written a great column (like this one) on the private gadgets that soldiers have bought for themselves because the military failed to buy them.

3. Next, Krugman tries to link military cost-cutting to homeland security cost-cutting, to make a more general argument about the Bush Administration. Once again, his argument falls flat:

Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports.

Not quite. The Bush Administration has poured money into the new Department of Homeland Security, and has given quite a bit of money to local fire/police departments for things like chemical-protective gear. But structurally, our domestic anti-terrorism effort is structurally impaired by the fact that it depends on state/local funding, not federal funding, and most state/local governments are strapped right now. (See, e.g., my home state of California) This is an unintended consequence of the 10th Amendment, which reserves general powers to the states. Nearly all of America's anti-terrorism capacity -- save the FBI and CIA -- resides at the state/local level. Krugman, as an economist, ought to understand these structural issues and be able to explain precisely why domestic security goes underfunded. Instead, he simply blames the Bush Administration's penchant for privatization -- something which I think is inaccurate and unfair.

4. Going back to Iraq, Krugman says the military's contracts in Iraq have been a failure. He writes:

The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat ?— and the system failed.

Interestingly, he cites to the same article from Newhouse News Service that I wrote about here and here. First, Krugman's wrong that this is the first major performance by contractors in a battle zone. Civilian contractors played an enormous role in the first Gulf War, sparking a great deal of argument in the policy and academic sector over the wisdom of privatization. (Legal scholars also debated the Geneva Convention implications of this trend) Second, contractors like Kellogg Brown & Root have followed the U.S. military for some time, such as to places like Bosnia and Kosovo. They've done a good job in those places, often with similar dangers (e.g. landmines), and they know the operational environment. Krugman fails again to understand the details of the problem here, which largely are a matter of government contracts law. (See this note) No business is going to take a contract where the costs outweigh the benefits. In government contracts law, there are ways to shift the risk and extra costs (such as insurance) to the government, but those weren't done in Iraq initially because of faulty assumptions by the government about the post-war situation. The contractors in question made a business decision to back away from contracts they thought were too risky. But ultimately, it's the government that bears the responsibility to build a contract (since the clauses are all imputed as a matter of law with little negotiation) that works for both parties. Once again, Krugman ought to know this as an economist, or at least pick up the phone to call a government contracts lawyer who can explain it to him.

Bottom Line: Krugman's column adds little to the debate over America's endeavor in Iraq. I could spend more time picking his column apart, but I won't because I think you get my general point. There are problems in Iraq, most of which trace back to poor planning before the war that was predicated on bad assumptions about the post-war situation. But those problems are steadily being fixed, and we are steadily making progress. As an economist, Krugman could provide great insight into the Iraqi economy and its failings, rather than going out on a limb to write about military affairs. This column falls flat because he doesn't provide the detailed analysis necessary to connect each of these issues to the problems in Iraq.

Update: I've been tapped as a member of the "Krugman Truth Squad" by Donald Luskin in his National Review Online column. I try to avoid taking political sides, as NRO does, but I'm flattered by the quotes nonetheless. Mr. Luskin has an interesting column, summing up some of the other authors (such as Robert Musil) who criticized Prof. Krugman's column on privatization. It's worth a read.
posted by Phillip Carter at 06:49

 
WSJ: Guilty pleas expected in first military tribunals

Jess Bravin reports in Monday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that 2 British citizens and an Australian citizen are expected to plead guilty before a military tribunal in order to avoid harsh punishment -- possibly including the death penalty. The three men are currently being held as "unlawful enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and have been put on a short list of 6 individuals who are under consideration for the tribunals. Pleas are being hashed out for these three between the U.S., British and Australian governments. Two other defendants are expected to face adversarial tribunals in the near future.

British subjects Feroz Abassi and Moazzam Begg and Australian David Hicks are among six prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba that President Bush decided last month could be prosecuted before the tribunals. The three, currently subject to indefinite detention as unlawful enemy combatants, have been providing information to intelligence agents, and officials say they wish to reward the prisoners with a clear resolution of their futures.

Although the prisoners -- captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan after fighting alongside Taliban and al Qaeda forces -- initially were defiant, "they've all, shall we say, mellowed over time," a U.S. official said.

The Bush administration prefers to inaugurate the tribunals with relatively simple proceedings to record a guilty plea, rather than a contested trial likely to see aggressive challenges from defense attorneys. Officials say plea bargains would show the tribunals can be used as leverage to gain cooperation from prisoners. They hope statements from defendants expressing remorse and attesting to their good treatment will help stanch foreign criticism of the tribunals.

"You renounce terrorism, you renounce Osama bin Laden, and, by the way, you say, 'The Americans treated me very well in Guantanamo' -- that would be a phenomenal public-relations coup for the United States," said a person familiar with the cases. "And by the same token, a defendant who was willing to say something like that would probably be favorably viewed by the government."

Analysis: Mr. Bravin's article has a lot of other good stuff. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce the full text here because of copyright laws. I highly recommend buying the Monday issue of The Journal, or waiting until Tuesday to read the post-scoop story in the NY Times or Washington Post. This is a big story, and one that should hit the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco with a tremendous "thud".

On the merits... It's not clear whether justice is being served here. On the one hand, taking prisoners and trying them for war crimes is an accepted part of war. On the other, we have not scrupulously followed the law with respect to these prisoners (See Art. V, Third Geneva Convention, requiring a "competent tribunal" to determine the status of any prisoner). And there are legitimate legal questions as to whether the President has the authority to order military tribunals under his 13 Nov 01 order. These tribunals will live under a cloud as long as these questions linger.

The Economist ran a strongly worded editorial last month excoriating the Bush Administration for its use of military tribunals. Such trials diminish the moral and political capital that the U.S. enjoys in the world, and diminish the values that stand in stark opposition to our enemies. I'm not sure what the right outcome should be here, since I'm not privy to the actual facts of these cases. But I think The Economist raises valid concerns about the fallout from our choice to use military tribunals. We should weigh this step with a great deal of caution.
posted by Phillip Carter at 22:14