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News analysis and commentary from Phillip Carter -- now located at http://www.intel-dump.com 
"For military analysis, stop by Intel Dump" -Time "(One) of the more interesting war blogs on the Internet." -The Washington Post "[A]n excellent source for real-time military analysis" -Slate RSS Feed E-Mail: inteldump -at- yahoo.com About Phil Phil's Articles 'Intel Dump' Defined Noteworthy Blogs How Appealing Volokh Conspiracy Instapundit Mark Kleiman Kaus Files Oxblog Dynamist Balkinization The Paper Chase FedLawyerGuy Statutory Construction Zone SCOTUS Bag and Baggage Unlearned Hand Winds of Change CalPundit One Hand Clapping VodkaPundit Defense Tech Priorities & Frivolities SGT Stryker Outside the Beltway Citizen Smash BlackFive StrykerNews Plastic Gangster Stop the Bleating Tapped Dan Drezner Brad DeLong War & Piece IRAQ NOW Dagger JAG Law From The Center Noteworthy Books 1. An Army at Dawn 2. Terror and Liberalism 3. Embedded 4. In the Company of Soldiers 5. The New Face of War 6. America's Role in Nation-Building 7. Boyd 8. American Empire 9. Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals 10. A Problem from Hell Archives Amazon.Com Terrorism & Security Bestsellers (c) 2002-2004 Phillip Carter 
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Sunday, February 29, 2004
Lessons learned from America's last excursion to Haiti: Amb. James Dobbins' recent book America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq has an entire chapter devoted to the 1994 intervention in Haiti, complete with a description of what happened and lessons learned. I'm sure the Marine Corps officers headed to Haiti right now have read this chapter, along with Max Boot's passages on Haiti in Savage Wars of Peace. It's a cliche to say that history repeats itself, but in this case, it may be true. It behooves us to study our history, so we can at least make new mistakes this time. Amb. Dobbins also comments in this excellent article by Paul Richter of the LA Times on America's burden in Haiti. For better or worse, America has a special relationship with this troubled nation off our southern shore. Most experts on the subject agree that America cannot help Haiti with military force or nation-building alone. Making a difference in this country will take years of sustained economic aid and development assistance, as well as foreign direct investment and private industrial development. According to an officer I know who served there in the mid-1990s, the real problem in Haiti is not security -- it is poverty. Only a sustained development program, coupled with serious investment in Haitian infrastructure, will enable this country to stabilize itself in the long run, so that America doesn't have to intervene in Haiti for a seventh time. UN authorizes force for Haiti CNN reports that UN Security Council has authorized the deployment of a multi-national peacekeeping force to Haiti for the purposes of securing the country and facilitating humanitarian aid. The UN Security Council authorized an initial 3-month deployment, with the possibility of a follow-on deployment for longer if necessary. Adopting a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for the use of military power, the Council mandated the operation to contribute to a secure and stable environment in the country, to facilitate the provision of relief aid to those in need, and to help the Haitian police and the Haitian Coast Guard maintain law and order and protect human rights.More to follow... Update I: The Pentagon has a press release up describing the Haiti operation that's now underway, and circumscribing its scope to include just a few specific missions: - Contributing to a more secure and stable environment in the Haitian capital to help promote the constitutional political process;That's not all -- the most interesting thing comes at the end of the release, which talks in vague details about the command structure for this force: The United States, working with the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community, is in contact with a number of countries that have expressed a willingness to contribute forces. The initial leadership of the multinational interim force will be the United States. The leadership of the final multinational force will be determined in the days ahead.Very interesting... The fact that we are working through international institutions is somewhat heartening after our difficulties with the UN over Iraq. But the surprising thing is that we may be willing to cede leadership over this mission to another country -- or the UN. Generally speaking, the United States doesn't like to put its soldiers or diplomats under a foreign flag, or a UN flag, unless a US general is in charge. This may be an important concession, though, in securing a large deployment of foreign troops. And with U.S. soldiers and Marines strung out across the world, we have to have foreign help in order to make the Haiti operation work. Update II: Donald Sensing adds some useful information about "non-combatant evacuation operations" -- NEO in military parlance -- and how they might unfold in Haiti. Haiti boils over The New York Times reports that Jean-Bertrand Aristede has resigned as President of Haiti and fled by private jet to the Dominican Republic. In his place, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Boniface Alexandre has taken over as head of an interim government until elections in 2005. Rebels continue to surround the capital city, but at this time, they have not attacked. The U.S. and other nations stand ready to dispatch some kind of military force in order to stabilize Haiti and prevent a humanitarian crisis there. <Update: President Bush has ordered a MAGTF (Marine Air-Ground Task Force) from Camp LeJeune to be flown to Haiti immediately, with a limited mission to secure the ports and provide other security assistance as directed by the embassy.> The Bush administration decided in the past three days, as a senior administration official said Saturday, that "Aristide must go," regardless of his constitutional authority. That message was communicated directly to Mr. Aristide hours before he left this morning. France, Haiti's colonial occupier, also called for the president to step down.Analysis: I opined earlier this week that the U.S. couldn't meaningfully intervene in Haiti even if it wanted to, because of our commitments elsewhere. However, one has to wonder just what is on the table in the way of U.S. contingency plans for Iraq. This is not 1994 -- we can't load the XVIII Airborne Corps onto planes to back up any sort of diplomatic initiative in Haiti. At most, we could probably muster a MEU to send to Haiti on short notice, or perhaps a piece of a unit that's already redeployed from Iraq. But doing so would have tremendously difficult secondary and tertiary consequences for America's military that's already stretched to its breaking point. Our commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan now constrain our foreign policy to the point that we cannot consider the deployment of troops to a place like Haiti as a viable option -- there just ain't any more to give. Ironically, our commitment in Iraq may now force us to pursue an internationalist policy in Haiti, and to support the deployment of an international police force.So, it appears that the contingency plan was to wait for Haiti to resolve its current leadership crisis and then to send some kind of peacekeeping force -- probably a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit). It won't be a very robust force, and it won't be able to patrol every part of Haiti or do everything we were able to do in 1994. But it'll have enough punch to at least make the interim government listen. However, this may not be the appropriate force for this kind of situation. Several prominent thinkers have begun to argue for an expeditionary nation-building capability for the United States, and Haiti is a prime example of where you might send such a force. A MEU (or Army brigade) doesn't have the organic nation-building capabilities to do the job -- MPs, Civil Affairs, intelligence, logistics, medical, and plug-ins from State, USAID, NGOs, and CIA. It also has too much combat power relative to the job at hand, and not enough of the CS/CSS (combat support/combat service support) units needed for nation buildilng. Max Boot, author of Savage Wars of Peace and one of the leading thinkers of the 'neo-con' movement, wrote this in the LA Times this week: Isn't it about time we got serious about dealing with failed states? If we did, we would have to devise both national and international remedies.I think he's right. America needs to create such a capability, either by standing up a separate agency and force for the job, or by building these capabilities into existing units. The current proposals on the table for "transformation" all speak of "full-spectrum operations" -- the ability to do everything on the spectrum from peace to war. But these plans don't put their money where their mouth is. One last point to consider: even if we could intervene in Haiti with a meaningful force, would such an intervention be realistic? Or put another way, is there any sort of domestic authority in Haiti to work with, or do we have to build governments, infrastructure, social institutions, etc., from scratch? One member of the NSRT suggested in a discussion that we could not succeed in Haiti because of the lack of these things, and indeed, that we would squander what remaining U.S. military capability we have on a hopeless mission if we sent U.S. forces there. At least one expert quoted in the New York Times thinks roughly the same thing: Robert Fatton Jr., a native of Haiti and chairman of the politics department at the University of Virginia, agreed.So, the appropriate analogy here is not to Haiti in 1994, but to Somalia in 1992, where U.S. forces has to work with a worthless de jure government and a de facto government of warlords and thugs. Haiti at least has an interim government, but that's not going to mean much if a) it can't control the rebel forces and b) can't control any sort of government apparatus in the rest of Haiti. There is no doubt that we are stepping into a cesspool. But since the mess is on our doorstep, we hardly have a choice. Saturday, February 28, 2004
Inter Arma Silent Leges In time of war, the law is silent -- or is it? I just finished reading All The Laws But One, Justice William Rehnquist's history of American law in wartime. I've had this book on my shelf for some time, but I finally decided to read it for some background before I covered Quirin, Korematsu and the contemporary 'enemy combatant' cases with my Law & Terrorism class. Unfortunately, I found this book to be quite superficial and conclusory. It added little to the legal history that I have been able to glean from other sources, such as Lawrence Friedman's many books and the cases themselves. Moreover, Justice Rehnquist's book obscures certain areas (e.g. the Lincoln Assasination trials) with too much detail and glosses over other important areas (like the WWII internments) with too little detail. He also devotes an inordinate amount of text to biographical detail about justices on the Supreme Court through history, ostensibly because those details reveal something about their character and jurisprudence. But in doing so, he downplays the legal reasoning and facts of these cases. Obviously, the sitting Chief Justice knows a lot about judicial decisionmaking, and maybe he thinks that these personalities are paramount. But it seemed odd to me, because I've learned in law school that facts and law have at least some bearing on the outcome of a case. That said, this book did have some value. It provided me with a great deal of insight into the Chief Justice's views on law in wartime -- something which is quite relevant today, with cases before the Court relating to American detentions at Guantanamo Bay and detentions of U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. Here's what Justice Rehnquist had to say on page 205 (paperback edition) with respect to judicial deference to military authority in the context of Korematsu and the Japanese internment cases: Several criticisms of the Court's opinions in these cases have been made. The most general is of its extremely deferential treatment of the government's argument that the curfew and relocation were necessitated by military considerations. Here one can only echo Justice Jackson's observation in his dissenting opinion that "in the very nature of things, military decisions are not susceptible of intelligent judicial appraisal." But it surely does not follow from this that a court must therefore invalidate measures based on military judgments. Eugene Rostow [former Dean of Yale Law School] suggests the possibility of a judicial inquiry into the entire question of military necessity, but this seems an extraordinarily dubious proposition. Judicial inquiry, with its restrictive rules of evidence, orientation towards resolution of factual disputes in individual cases, and long delays, is ill-suited to determine such an issue as "military necessity." The necessity for prompt action was cogently stated by the Court in its Hirabayashi opinion.So... the Chief Justice thinks the Supreme Court did the right thing in deferring to executive/military authority in upholding President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, the Japanese internment order. And presumably, he would apply the same logic today, where the government has articulated a similar need to pro-actively defend citizens (albeit on the basis of individualized suspicion) whom it deems to be waging war against the United States as an agent of Al Qaeda.Although the results of the attack on Pearl Harbor were not fully disclosed until much later, it was known that the damage was extensive, and that the Japanese by their successes had gained a naval superiority over our forces in the Pacific which might enable them to seize Pearl Harbor, our largest naval base and the last stronghold of defense lying between Japan and the west coast. That reasonably prudent men charged with the responsibility of our national defense had ample ground for concluding that they must face the danger of invasion, take measures against it, and in making the choice of measures consider our internal situation, cannot be doubted. [320 U.S. at 94] After reading this book, I now see something about to happen in the Supreme Court this spring that I hadn't seen before. On the one hand, you have a movement within the law to overturn the precedents of Korematsu and Hirabayashi -- two stains on American jurisprudence that live on as "good law" (in a strictly precedential sense) to this day. Within the Court, I can count a few votes against the government in Hamdi and Padilla that partly rest on the desire to overturn these two decisions. On the other hand, I can also see a part of the Court (led by Justice Rehnquist) siding with the government's position in these cases, under the theory of judicial deference. Justice Rehnquist appears to have had no problem with such deference during WWII (when he served as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps). And the fight right now is not over the wisdom or efficacy of these policies -- it's over whether the President has the power to make them, and whether the courts have the power to review them. With the battle lines drawn that way, I think Justice Rehnquist's book makes it clear how he will come out. Friday, February 27, 2004
H&R Block don't have nothin' on these guys: Stars & Stripes reports on the tax center established in Baghdad for soldiers of the 1st Armored Division, which is expected to net $1 million in refunds for soldiers within a week. As you may know, all the income earned by soldiers in Iraq is tax-free, making for some big refunds for soldiers who continued to have withholding taken out of their paycheck. Soldiers get an automatic extension from the IRS to file their returns, however, many have families back home who could use the return money now. Hence, the need to to have a tax-return center in a combat zone. White House changes U.S. tack on land mines The Washington Post reports this morning that the Bush Administration has reversed a pledge by the Clinton Administration to stop using land mines altogether by 2006, instead choosing to implement a selective ban by 2010 with exceptions for South Korea and smart mines. The move predictably enraged human rights advocates, but probably also comforted American military planners worried about maintaining the balance of power (terror) in South Korea. The new policy, due to be announced today, represents a departure from the previous U.S. goal of banning all land mines designed to kill troops. That plan, established by President Bill Clinton, set a target of 2006 for giving up antipersonnel mines, depending on the success of Pentagon efforts to develop alternatives.Analysis: Actually, the biggest problem right now in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Chechnya is not related to landmines. It is related to the use of cluster munitions, like the CBU-87. These are large bombs dropped from aircraft which, at a certain point close to the ground, break up into hundreds of little bomblets which are essentially the size of a hand grenade or RPG warhead. The dud rate for these bomblets inevitably produces a handful of duds from each bomb or sortie, which stay in the ground long after the bombing run. Some of these remain inert forever; others may eventually explode. But over the course of an air campaign, hundreds or thousands of these may be sown. And this treaty does absolutely nothing to address this problem. Notwithstanding that fact, if you look at the rhetoric of the anti-landmine community, they often talk about these unexploded munitions to make their case stronger, and to implicate the U.S. which generally uses a lot of cluster munitions but not a lot of landmines. Land mines have some practical use, or else the Pentagon would not be fighting for them so hard. In a place like South Korea, they can be used to seal off mountain passes or maneuver corridors, and to make it very costly for any enemy attack. Are they a perfect deterrent? No -- landmines can be defeated through breaching activities or by an enemy willing to spend the soldiers on the minefield (e.g. Iran with its human wave attacks). But they are an effective mechanism for maintaining the status quo, and they have helped to secure the peace in South Korea. However, minefields are carefully marked in South Korea in order to prevent fratricide, and that is generally the norm for US/NATO minefields around the world. In offensive combat, land mines can also be valuable. Generally, you only use "smart" mines in offensive operations because the battlefield is changing so quickly, and the last thing you want is a logistics convoy to get tied up in a minefield that was sown 24 hours before because the front lines move so quickly. So, U.S. commanders train on how to use mines with as short of a 4-hour duration in order to seal off their flanks and prevent enemy maneuver. If an enemy force is counter-attacking into your flank, a minefield can buy enough time to reposition your forces in order to respond. U.S. commanders are loathe to give up this capability. But again, we're talking about smart mines here, with GPS marking and a limited duration. Everyone's always beating up on the U.S. for this issue, but I think that is misguided here. The U.S. does use cluster munitions and those create a problem, but that's not something that this treaty does anything about. Where land mines are concerned, the U.S. is far more conscientious about their use than most countries -- allies and enemies -- for reasons of fratricide and risk management. And, our EOD teams have done more to eliminate this problem in places like Iraq and Afghanistan than we often get credit for. Land mines continue to exact a terrible toll on civilian populations around the world. But by and large, that's due to their indiscriminate use by terrible governments like the Baath Party in Iraq, Khmer Rouge and Taliban -- not their military use by the U.S. War crimes tribunals, politics and vengeance: I was able to attend a talk yesterday at UCLA given by Gary Bass, a former Economist writer and current Princeton professor who is the author of Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. Unfortunately, the contents of the lecture were off the record, so I can't relay some of the interesting arguments that Mr. Bass made. But I have read his book, and I enthusiastically recommend it for anyone who's interested in the subject. More background on the Perle resignation: Laura Rozen has an interesting report on her War & Piece website about Richard Perle, the neo-con hawk who recently stepped down from the Defense Policy Board, which reproduces a 1983 piece in the New York Times on a similar problem with Mr. Perle. Nick Confessore produces a list of Mr. Perle's more recent transgressions at TAPPED, begging the question as to why it took him so long to step down. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser, as the saying goes. Speaking of which, what ever happened to that other lightning rod for criticism in the Pentagon: LTG William "Jerry" Boykin? Remember him -- the general who spoke in uniform at an evangelical event in favor of a holy war between the United States and Islam? (See notes one, two and three for background) Friends in Washington tell me that he's still working as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, and still responsible for a portfolio that includes a lot of Middle East-related issues. Was this general really allowed to just fade away, like the old soldiers in MacArthur's famous quote? Thursday, February 26, 2004
Sex in the military The New York Times carries this disturbing report today by Eric Schmitt on testimony given yesterday by the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding the sexual assault/harassment issues the military is facing around the world. In the last 18 months, more than a hundred sexual misconduct reports have been filed by servicemembers in Southwest Asia; various surveys of soldiers overseas have also indicated this is a real problem. (Also see this transcript of a Pentagon press conference with Undersecretary of Defense David Chu on the 2002 Sexual Harassment survey.) The Army has reported 86 incidents, the Navy 12, the Air Force 8 and the Marine Corps 6.Analysis: A large percentage of these reports grow out of fraternization charges -- that is, consensual sexual relations between servicemembers of different rank, or within the same unit, that is improper for reasons of good order and discipline. Fraternization is somewhat akin to sexual harassment in the civilian context, but not really, because the difference in rank/power is what makes the crime -- not a lack of consent. In a sense, the military's conception of fraternization embodies what many feminist scholars have said all along about sexual relations in the civilian workplace -- that it is harassment per se for a superior to have relations with a subordinate, because there can be no real consent in an uneven power structure. The military presumes coercion in such relationships, and bans them because of their deleterious effect on unit cohesion and military effectiveness. So, I say that to say this: fraternization is not the same thing as sexual assault. These are not all rape cases, or sexual assault cases, as various headline writers say. It's still a bad news story, but it's important to note this distinction. The sexual assault cases, on the other hand, are an extremely serious matter. They reflect a breakdown in unit leadership and unit cohesion at the most basic level, and if these go unreported/unsanctioned, they have the potential to destroy the unit. There are really two problems here. The first is that the assaults were probably committed by "bad apples" who need to be severely punished for their actions in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This is not a matter for unit discipline, or for non-judicial punishment under Art. 15. This kind of conduct cannot be tolerated, and anything less than a general court martial for a soldier who rapes/assaults his fellow soldier is seting the wrong example. A lesser punishment will send a message of tolerance to other sexual predators in the ranks, where the message we should be sending is one of zero-tolerance for this behavior. Second, there is the issue of military culture and command climate. Although these criminal acts were committed by bad soldiers with the requisite intent to harm their comrades, these acts were not committed in a vacuum. There may be systemic leadership issues or unit issues which created a climate of hostility towards women in the ranks, or allowed soldiers to behave badly in other contexts without sanction, such that they thought they could do so in this case. Women have come a long way in the military -- they now fly Apache helicopters, fight as military police, bridge rivers as engineers, decode enemy networks as intel officers, and survey the battlefield as chemical warfare officers -- but that doesn't mean that commanders can be lax when it comes to policing the friction between men and women in their units. Managing gender integration in the military is a hard job, and it takes constant vigilance by officers and NCOs. Ultimately, the military has many of the same problems as any civilian employer or college would when it comes to sex. Indeed, the statistics that I've read indicate that the Army has less of a problem with this stuff, and that military leaders generally do a good job. But a good job isn't good enough where this is concerned. Sexual misconduct in the ranks can and will lead to a downward spiral in unit morale, cohesion and effectiveness. That's bad enough in peacetime; it can be fatal in wartime. More importantly, however, military leaders hold a sacred trust when it comes to the lives of America's finest sons and daughters in uniform. Incidents like these violate that trust, and commanders must take swift and certain action to prevent their reoccurence and send a strong message of deterrence. Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Comanche cancellation will have secondary, tertiary effects A pair of articles from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) talks about the effects that the Army's cancellation of the Comanche helicopter system will have on the defense industry. Bear in mind, this is an industry that has already gone through extensive consolidation and reorganization in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War. Nonetheless, someone in the Pentagon appears to be reading Fred Kaplan's stuff, because this was one of the program she recommended cutting in this influential Slate column. According to the WP: The cancellation could spur a helicopter industry consolidation that some analysts say is long overdue. The only major players in the U.S. industry are Boeing, Sikorsky and Bell Helicopter Textron, a unit of Textron Inc. "The overcapacity of the helicopter industry warrants consolidation," Sam Pearlstein, defense analyst with investment bank Jefferies Quarterdeck, said in a research note yesterday.J. Lynn Lunsford adds in the Wall Street Journal: Now that the Pentagon has axed what had been one of the most promising programs financially for the contractors, each helicopter maker will be forced to examine its future in an environment in which the role of helicopters themselves are being weighed against alternatives like unmanned vehicles.Analysis: The Comanche program was a big one, and as the articles say, it will likely lead to more consolidation in this industry. Look for one of the major contractor's helicopter arms to be dismantled, or sold to a competitor, within the near future. The guys who will be really hurt by this move, however, are the smaller smaller subcontractors that may not be able to avail themselves of the money that is being shifted from Comanche into other helicopter lines such as the Blackhawk and Chinook. The Comanche was a sufficiently new helicopter to have very little overlap in its design or parts with older helicopters, and the subcontractors that made those parts will be left holding the bag here. They likely won't be able to retool their lines to make parts for the UH-60, OH-58 and CH-47 lines that are about to be restarted. And even if they could, other firms already have the subcontracts for those lines, so they can't really walk in at this stage. This cancellation will be quite bloody, I'm afraid, for a lot of these subcontractors. There is some value to efficiency in the defense industry. (See this survey by The Economist on the subject.) We obviously don't want to encourage a lot of bloat or inefficiency, because it drives up the cost of weapons systems and it slows the industry down. (See Chuck Spinney's analyses and statements at DNI for an explanation of how this happens; see also this GAO report on the Comanche.) However, there is also a down side to consolidation and reorganization -- the lack of surplus capacity and surge capacity. If the industry downsizes, consolidates and reorganizes too much, it may become too efficient for operational purposes. In such a state, the defense industry may no longer have the capability to rapidly produce certain items, such as JDAM bomb kits, Interceptor body armor, or up-armored HMMWVs, for immediate use in combat. That's a problem. Thus, I am very wary of any event that threatens further consolidation in the defense industry. Efficiency is a good thing, but in this area, you can certainly have too much of it. Update: But the fight may not be won just yet. Michael Remez reports in the Hartford Courant that a team of Congressmen and defense contractors is rallying to fight for the Comanche program in Congress. It looks like there's going to be a fight over this one... WASHINGTON -- The day after the Army announced plans to kill the Comanche helicopter, the top manager for the Sikorsky-Boeing program headed to Alabama to meet with Army officials on what lies ahead and Connecticut's senators met with the governor to plot efforts to keep the long-troubled program alive.Update I: Cindy Webb has a great roundup on this story in the Washington Post "Government IT" section. Like a 'blog, her story has lots of interesting links to other sources on the subject. Check it out. Tuesday, February 24, 2004
America's 'force of choice' That was the phrase used by former-Army Chief of Staff Dennis Reimer (now retired) to describe the Army's military police during the 1990s, where they proved their ability to conduct ambiguous operations somewhere in between peace and war in places like Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. In Iraq, MPs have proven themselves so able that the Army has cannibalized several brigades of artillerymen in the National Guard to create new MP units. Now comes an anecdote from Iraq that bears testament to just how well trained MPs can be, and how they epitomize the notion of "full spectrum capability." MOSUL, Iraq - Someone threw a grenade at Brig. Gen. Carter Ham's convoy on his way to a meeting Sunday morning with a local security commander.Just like they're trained to be. Without taking anything away from my infantry brethren and their combat abilities, I've always thought that MPs brought a unique capability to the force that other units would do well to learn for missions like Iraq. Specifically, I'm talking about the ability to rapidly transition from peace to combat, or from relative calm to the use of deadly force. MPs also know how to stop along the way, using varying degrees of force in accordance with the situation's demands. They are, without exaggeration, the ideal force for a mission like Iraq where the needs for force differ by the minute. In a situation like this, MPs are trained to respond to a convoy ambush with precise, lethal fires. The next day, the same MPs might engage local citizens in "police intelligence operations" to learn about this attack, using no force other than interpersonal communication skills. Law School Veterans Organizations File Amicus Brief in Support of Military's Right to Recruit on Law School Campuses Three student organizations representing veterans of the armed forces have filed a "friend of the court" brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to reject a lawsuit that threatens the ability of the military to recruit on campus, on the grounds that allowing law schools to ban on-campus military recruitment would hurt both the military and law students. "[A]llowing law schools to exclude military recruiters without facing the consequences provided for in the Solomon Amendment would cause serious harm to the Nation, to those individuals who are now serving or who in the future will be serving in the military, and to law students with an interest in military service," the brief argues.The brief was filed by Howard J. Bashman, a Philadelphia-based appellate lawyer who edits the How Appealing weblog, on behalf of three veterans organizations: the UCLA School of Law Veterans Society, Washburn University Veterans Law Association, and the College of William & Mary School of Law Military Law Society. It marks the first time in the current series of court battles over this issue that a student organization has filed a brief supporting the military’s unrestricted ability to recruit on law school campuses. Update I: The author of Law From the Center weighs in on this issue; he contributed a lot to the writing of this brief, and like me, is a fellow veteran enrolled at UCLA Law School. Update II: The Harvard Crimson ran an unfortunate -- and somewhat erroneous -- story today about the brief and the participation of the Harvard Law Vets. Suffice to say, the position of the Harvard Vets in the story is substantially different than that articulated by that organization in e-mail traffic. Here's what Harvard's vets said in the story: "Our organization maintains a strict policy of not taking sides on controversial issues," said the group’s president, second-year Harvard Law School (HLS) student Andrew S. Friedberg.I echo the sentiment of my colleague at Law From the Center, as well as Law Dork: this is not an issue for neutrality. Moreover, Harvard Law's vets have not taken a position of neutrality, according to non-vet friends of mine in their third year class. Instead, Harvard's vets have facilitated the administration's desire to exclude the military from campus by setting up alternate interview facilities and processes. In my opinion, that's a dangerous path to go down, because it just makes it easier for Harvard to cut all official ties to the administration. And as one HLS alum writes to me, it discourages the military from doing any meaningful recruiting on campus, because of the availability of this other path with less friction. Update III: Finally, I think that Centrist has it just right when he talks about the unfortunate timing of our brief (which I support) and the President's announcement on a Constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage (which I oppose). Our group intentionally avoided the issue of "don't ask/don't tell" for three main reasons. First, we felt that it was outside our expertise as law students (even though we're vets) to opine on the wisdom behind "don't ask/don't tell." It's a matter of federal law, and our opinion is that if you disagree with it, you should take it up with Congress and the President. Second, we felt that targeting military recruiting for this policy was a bad idea, and that it would have bad consequences for the military, for law students, and for veterans. Third, our group does not have a consensus on this policy; our opinions as veterans are as diverse as the rest of society. Our common ground is our belief in the value of military service, and that's what we chose to write about. Update IV: The Daily Texan has a story on this brief in its Friday paper. President orders military tribunals for two detainees The AP reports that the President has designated two men, alleged to be close aids to Osama Bin Laden, for trial by military commission. The commissions were authorized by the President in a 13 Nov 01 executive order for non-citizens captured in the war on terrorism who met certain criteria. Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, of Sudan, was a paymaster for al-Qaida, and Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul, of Yemen, was a propagandist for bin Laden, the government charged in military indictments unsealed at the Pentagon.This is big news -- I'll have an analysis of this move later in the day. More to follow... Update I: The Pentagon's announcement of these charges has some useful details about the specific charges against these two detainees. Al Bahlul and al Qosi are charged with willfully and knowingly joining an enterprise of persons who shared a common criminal purpose and conspired with Osama bin Laden and others to commit the following offenses: attacking civilians; attacking civilian objects; murder by an unprivileged belligerent; destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent; and terrorism. Congratulations to the 2004 Truman Finalists: The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation announced the finalists today for its 2004 competition, which is often seen as a stepping stone to other prestigious scholarships like the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarship. I'm also proud to see the service academies represented on this year's list, as well as my school (UCLA). If I have any Truman finalists in my audience, please feel free to e-mail me with questions about the interview stage. (Robert Tagorda's also a Truman, and I'm sure he would extend the same invitation.) This is one way to change the subject of the 2004 elections, and ensure that hard questions about Iraq, national security, terrorism, and fiscal responsibility play second-fiddle. The conventional wisdom says this is going to mobilize the President's base more than it hurts him, because pro-gay marriage folks wouldn't vote for President Bush anyway. I'm not so sure. I think this is worth millions of dollars in fundraising for the Dems, just like the AG's recent subpoena'ing of abortion records has been. I'm not savvy enough about national politics to predict what will happen, but I do think this is a gambit to shift fires from the White House over substantive issues of the kind I usually write about. Here's a point to ponder: is this proposal by the President a tacit (or implicit) admission that the Constitution (as it stands today) allows for gay marriage? I mean, why else would you have to change the document? Proposing a Constitutional amendment means that the current Constitution doesn't do what you want, which in this case means that the current Constitution (as interpreted by the courts) probably allows gay marriage. And if that is true, then the President can't really call the judges in Massachusetts and the mayor in San Francisco "renegades" or "activists", because all they're is upholding the Constitution of the United States. Indeed, the real activists here are the ones who want to change the Constitution. I'm not the most sophisticated Constitutional Law scholar in the world, but it seems to me that the White House is all but saying that gays already have a right to marry under the Constitution. Update: This whole issue may be moot. Josh Marshall reports that 34 Senators have pledged to oppose this amendment. And since a Constitutional amendment requires 2/3 majorities in each house of Congress -- that's all, folks. What heartens me most about this story is that 8 Republican Senators (Alexander, Chafee, Collins, Hagel, Lugar, McCain, and Snowe) have already pledged their opposition, in varying degrees. That's good news for moderates like me, who always like to see common sense on both sides of the aisle. But it's bad news for the White House, especially if this turns out to fracture the GOP the way right-wing ideology did in 1992. Monday, February 23, 2004
U.S. sends Marine team into Haiti The President called on his 9-1-1 force yet again today with the dispatch of a U.S. Marine Corps Fleet Anti-Terrorism Support Team (FAST) to secure the U.S. Embassy in Haiti. According to CNN, the Marines arrived without a hitch to secure the U.S. compound in Port Au-Prince; no word yet on their follow-on missions. Approximately 50 Marines charged with protecting the U.S. Embassy and its staff against possible attack by rebels arrived in the Haitian capital Monday.Analysis: Securing U.S. embassies abroad is a bread & butter mission for the Marines, and they have decades of experience at doing it. We already had Marines in Haiti before this deployment to provide the security detachment for the embassy there. This deployment augments those Marines, and gives them a more robust capability should anything happen. It also lays the foundation for any subsequent Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO), or other operations that the Marines might execute in Haiti. However, one has to wonder just what is on the table in the way of U.S. contingency plans for Iraq. This is not 1994 -- we can't load the XVIII Airborne Corps onto planes to back up any sort of diplomatic initiative in Haiti. At most, we could probably muster a MEU to send to Haiti on short notice, or perhaps a piece of a unit that's already redeployed from Iraq. But doing so would have tremendously difficult secondary and tertiary consequences for America's military that's already stretched to its breaking point. Our commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan now constrain our foreign policy to the point that we cannot consider the deployment of troops to a place like Haiti as a viable option -- there just ain't any more to give. Ironically, our commitment in Iraq may now force us to pursue an internationalist policy in Haiti, and to support the deployment of an international police force. Army cancels Comanche program The AP reports that the Army has decided to can its procurement program for the Comache helicopter -- a multi-billion dollar system that would replace the OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and replace some capabilities of the Apache helicopter program. It is one of the biggest program cancellations in the Army's history and comes less than two years after the service's $11 billion Crusader artillery project was dropped after $2 billion had been spent.Analysis: This cancellation comes on the heels of heavy criticism about the amount of pork in the FY2005 Pentagon budget. It also reflects two sentiments within the American military and national security community: 1) America can't afford to spend massive amounts of money on current operations and big weapons programs, and 2) if the U.S. is going to invest in big weapons programs, they ought to be truly transformational -- not just an incremental improvement on existing capabilities. I couldn't agree more with the Army's decision here, both because I think the Comache didn't add much value to the Army's aviation capability and because I think the money is better spent on maintenance and recapitalization for the current helicopter fleet. Note: An informed reader writes to let me know that my characterization of the Comanche as pork was inaccurate. "Pork", in its legislative connotation, properly refers to those items added by Congress after the President sends DoD's budget to the hill. (Interesting side note: the President actually proposes the majority of legislation considered in any year, under his Art. II, Sec. 3 power to "recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient", even though all legislative power is Constitutionally vested in Congress.) So, according to this definition, the Comanche, Crusader, Missile Defense, F-22, and other programs in the budget are not pork per se -- they're more accurately characterized as "fat". Fat, as legislatively defined, refers to bloat or largess in the original budgetary plan sent over by the executive branch. (Although, arguably such products can be considered "pro-active pork" because they seek to ensure passage by continuing projects already in members' districts.) Anyway, I will try to be more clear about when I refer to legislative pork and fat respectively in the future. Spy Suspect Was Devoted to God, Guns: The LA Times has an interesting report on SPC Ryan Anderson, the Washington state National Guardsman accused of attempting to contact Al Qaeda to give them information about how to attack his unit and kill his buddies. If convicted, Anderson could face the death penalty, though his case is still in the preliminary stages and he hasn't even had an Art. 32 hearing yet. Securing a free Iraq -- Going beyond 'talking points' to effect real change for Iraq's women Erin Solaro, another NSRT member who frequently contributes articles to various newspapers, has a hard-hitting op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the need to enfranchise women in Iraq. As one might expect, there are fundamentalist forces in Iraq which seek to disenfranchise women and deny them their political and civil rights. Yet, Ms. Solaro argues that we ought not allow that to happen. Now that it's clear there are no WMD, our most compelling reasons for staying in Iraq relate to human rights, and the building of democratic government. For those reasons, we must ensure some amount of democratic equality for men and women in Iraq. The issue in Iraq is no longer Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction but the country's future and its soul. The neoconservative domino theory of democratic regime change is wrong: Democracy is spread not by proximity but a growing societal demand for the peaceful transfer of power and respect for inviolable civil rights. Unless these preconditions are met, elections merely mean one man, one vote, one time. For that reason, democracy cannot tolerate, much less coexist, with the disenfranchisement of women in Iraq or anywhere else.Analysis: So far, so good. It does make intuitive sense that we would want to establish equality as a fundamental principle of life in Iraq. This principle is an important part of American law, and though it wasn't always so, it is a good ideal to strive for. When an Iraqi Constitution is ultimately written, I hope that its Framers shape the document around principles like liberty and equality. However, there exists a basic tension between these imperatives and the larger imperative of restoring Iraqis' right to self-determination. The latter is much more fundamental as a matter of international law. The very concept of state sovereignty (not to mention democracy) rests on the idea of free self-determination. It will be hard to reconcile the demands of self-determination with the U.S. desire to instill certain values as part of the new Iraqi government. In a sense, this is like parenting, where the U.S. wants certain things for its child -- but ultimately, it must let the child decide on her own what is right. It has often been argued in the United States an informed citizenry is a necessary precursor to democracy, and that the right to self-determination is meaningless in the absence of an informed public. (This argument is often made by First Amendment lawyers seeing media access to things closed off by the government.) Presumably, such logic applies to the citizens of Iraq too. If we could only inform the Iraqi people; educate them about such principles as liberty and equality; enlighten them as to the rights of man and woman -- then, they would surely choose democracy and choose equality for the sexes. At least, that's the hope. But it's also a very Western hope. Iraq and the other nations of the Middle East have a long history, and their culture is engrained more deeply than many realize. It will be very hard to change these attitudes through education and enlightenment; it may take generations in Iraq to do so, and I don't think we want to stay there that long. One final point -- a determined, overt American push to create equal rights for women in Iraq will inevitably create a backlash in the fundamentalist Muslim world. Paul Berman writes about the ideological conflict between terrorism and liberalism (small 'l') in his book of the same name, and the takeaway point is this: the terrorists stand against every principle of the liberal Western tradition, with equality and the secular state at the top of the list. Pushing the rights of women may be the right thing to do, but it will give our enemies more ammunition for their fight against us, and enable them to motivate more of their followers with evidence that we seek to destroy the Islamic tradition. Sunday, February 22, 2004
Total Information Awareness lives on to die another day The Associated Press reports that several subsidiary programs under the now-defunct Total Information Awareness program have been reconstituted, refunded, or moved to other agencies in an effort to continue research into data-mining systems and non-obvious relationship analysis ("NORA"). This is big news, and sure to spark protest from civil libertarians on the left and right -- not to mention Congressional leaders who thought they had put a spike through TIA's heart with several funding restrictions on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA"). ... some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press.Analysis: In addition to these quasi-TIA projects moving forward, there are two conceptually-similar projects that are moving forward under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security and several state governments respectively. They're not as powerful (or threatening, to some) as TIA, but they share a lot of the same technologies and concepts. The first is CAPPS II, or the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System which will sort airline passengers into levels of risk. The second is MATRIX, an interstate information sharing system designed to support state and local law enforcement and anti-terrorism work. These two projects aren't in the conceptual stage -- they're almost ready for implementation. (See this speech by Asst. AG Deborah Daniels for more on TIA-like projects in the works right now.) Generally speaking, I support these projects. I believe in technology, and I think that technologies like NORA can exponentially increase the ability of the intelligence community to process information and produce intelligence. Pick your metaphor -- connecting the dots, looking for needles in haystacks, hunting for plankton in the deep sea -- they're all apt. There is more information in the anti-terrorism arena than any intelligence agency could ever hope to sift through. NORA offers one of the best shots we have for sifting through this information to see what our enemies are doing before they do it to us. Is there risk? Yes, absolutely. There is always risk in pursuing a new capability like this. There is operational risk that the thing won't work. There is strategic risk that we may blind ourselves to new enemy avenues of approach because of the faith that we put in these systems. There is technical risk of failure. There is also great risk in the area of civil liberties -- a system like this has great potential for abuse, in ways that my Orwellian imagination can only dream about. But as with military operations, you weigh the risk as one factor -- but not the only factor -- in choosing a course of action. If you choose a course of action that entails risk, then you develop measures to mitigate and control that risk, and reduce it to an acceptable level. (See FM 100-14, Risk Management) I think the benefits here outweigh the risks, and that the risks can be mitigated. Whether that means establishing an oversight panel of federal judges (analogous to the FISA Courts) to look at these DARPA programs, I don't know. But I think the benefits are worth pursuing, and that the risks can be mitigated. One final note: TIA (and its progeny) will not fix the intelligence community. It will only aid in certain areas of analysis that are very important, and produce better intelligence from the information that we gather through other means. However, TIA will not make up for a deficit of human intelligence ("HUMINT") or gaps in our intelligence collection abilities that prevent us from accurately detecting WMD in the hands of our enemies. TIA won't go out into the world to find Osama, or infiltrate North Korea to learn about their intentions. It may help us detect Osama's signature in world banking records, or find traces of North Korean arms sales there, but it won't actually gather the information. TIA has promise, but it's no panacea. Similarly, TIA will only partially cure the bureaucratic problems in the intelligence community that have been faulted for the events of Sept. 11. TIA will not bridge the information gap between the FBI and CIA, nor will it foster cooperation between the two agencies. TIA may support efforts to assess indications and warnings of future attacks, but it will not provide the creative thinking necessary to plan for threats that are 20-30 years in the future. Ultimately, most of the issues underlying our failure on Sept. 11 were human, and TIA won't fix those. Criminal Appeal is the name of a great new weblog by criminal law attorney Jonathan Soglin. Its stated focus is post-conviction criminal law in California and the 9th Circuit, but its entries cover a lot of related areas such as pre-trial criminal issues and interesting articles in major legal publications. This looks like an excellent resource for anyone who wants to stay current on this (constantly changing) area of the law. Saturday, February 21, 2004
Alleged 2005 BRAC List Leaks List is probably false -- but is there a sound methodology behind these proposed base closures? Citizen Smash, another military blogger whose credentials include a recent tour in Operation Iraqi Freedom, posted a list of bases slated for the 2005 round of the Base Realignment And Closure ("BRAC") process. He also added the caveat, in big bold letters, that he could not verify the list or even its source. I sent a couple of e-mails on Friday to check this list, and the answer I got echoed some of his commenters: the posted list was bogus. Nonetheless, its leak portends a very bloody political battle over the next two years. The outcome of this battle will affect more than just where America's military bases are -- it will have a profound impact on military transformation and civil-military relations. I've been discussing this issue with some smart folks on the National Security Round Table, and I think that this BRAC round may have more significant than past BRAC rounds. The reason is that it coincides with several other major shifts in American national security policy, such as a proposed shift in our European base footprint and South Korean base footprint. The Pentagon's current plan is to shift from its current Cold War-era posture to an expeditionary posture for the 21st Century. Instead of large overseas garrisons, we will maintain strategic "lily pad" bases from which U.S. forces can jump off to the next conflict. It only makes sense that we would realign our bases at home towards the same end. Past BRAC rounds have focused on the micro/macroeconomics of base closure, and whether certain closures would make the military more or less efficient in fiscal terms. I don't think that we can afford to use fiscal criteria as our primary means for figuring out which bases to close in 2005. The needs of the military have changed a great deal since the current footprint of bases was established after WWII. America's bases ought to reflect the nation's strategic/operational realities, not shape them. Anything else is backwards. More to follow... Friday, February 20, 2004
Supreme Court Expands Review of 'Enemy Combatant' Rule: More on this later, after I'm done with some meetings today. My prediction is that the Court will announce some sort of judicial review for executive branch actions in this area, while leaving substantia discretionary authority to fight the nation's wars in the hands of the President. More to follow... Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Task Force Ironhorse begins its journey home: The 4th Infantry Division, in which I served from 1999-2001, is on its way home after a year of duty in Iraq. The Army's first digitized division did not see action during the "combat" phase of the operation, due to diplomatic problems securing permission for 4ID to invade Iraq through Turkey. However, 4ID eventually saw more than its share of combat in the post-war phase of the operation, with responsibility for the area north of Baghdad known as the "Sunni Triangle". 4ID's 1st "Raider Brigade" conducted the operation to net Saddam, and the division's troops conducted a variety of operations from raids on insurgents to the establishment of local elections. Welcome home -- job well done. Rebirth of the Armored Gun System What current operations tell us about the Army procurement system A friend passed along a story from Inside the Army that ran in yesterday's Early Bird about a push in the Army's airborne community to restart the procurement process for the "Armored Gun System". The push comes as the result of a need, perceived by officers on the ground in Iraq, to have mobile, light, air-droppable firepower that can quickly turn any firefight with Iraqi insurgents into an unfair one. The officers in the 82nd Airborne also want a mobile gun system they can deploy with if they're called to do a "forced entry" operation -- an airdrop into hostile territory. ... [T]he division recently passed along an "operational needs statement" to Army Forces Command that outlines the unfulfilled requirement, said Maj. Rich Patterson, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, which oversees the division. The Army’s operations and plans office, or "G-3," is reviewing the requirement with Training and Doctrine Command, but no decision has been reached, Patterson said.Analysis: Ironically, the Army is building a new variant of the Stryker light armored vehicle that has a 105mm cannon and could serve as the 82nd Airborne's direct-fire weapon of choice. I'm not sure if it's air-droppable or not, but it is C-130 capable, so presumably it could be brought in quickly once paratroopers secure an initial airhead. The first M1128 Strykers with 105mm cannon are slated to roll off the line in April 2005. Presumably, this program could be enlarged to accomodate an additional purchase for the armor needs of the 82nd Airborne and the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps. However, what this episode highlights is a basic truth about the Army procurement system: that the battle labs and field tests of Army equipment until now have been woefully inadequate when compared to the crucible of combat. I'm not surprised for one minute that programs like AGS are getting a second look now. Some of this owes to the actual experience of combat, where the enemy gets a vote and you get to pay for your mistakes in blood. Some of this dynamic is also political. Army officers now have the political capital from experience in Iraq to use in their arguments for weapons system, instead of arguments about how well something did in testing, or at the National Training Center. Although the 11th ACR and 1/509th Inf are far superior to any Iraqi force, they're not the same in political terms. (See this note for more along these lines) And when it comes to procurement programs, everything is political because everything has to ultimately be funded by Congress. In my lane, I've seen a lot of indicators recently that tell me the Army's force structure was broken -- specifically its allocation of personnel and equipment to combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) units. From the ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company to daily reports of life on Iraqi MSRs, it has been made abundantly clear that CS/CSS units lack the right vehicles, personnel and equipment to do their jobs. This is not to say that they should be refit to fight as infantrymen, or that we should use such units to conduct dismounted patrols as their primary mission. They shouldn't -- the Army needs these units to do their primary CS/CSS missions, e.g. setting up commo nodes, healing soldiers, and doing maintenance. But these units absolutely have to be able to protect themselves while they do it, and there are no more "rear areas" in which they can do these jobs in relative safety. A couple of illustrative areas where the Army has to change its force -- specifically personnel, force structure and equipment -- to get the job done: - Vehicles. The Army equips its CS/CSS units with soft-skinned HMMWVs and trucks, as well as the command echelons of its combat units. These vehicles are woefully inadequate for a theater where the "Improvised Explosive Device" is the primary threat. Consequently, units in Iraq now are bolting on after-market mod kits to armor their HMMWVs, putting sandbags on the floor of their vehicles, and taking lots of other steps to harden these soft vehicles against the IED threat. On top of that, the Army is buying a lot of new vehicles and armored HMMWVs to meet the threat. Wouldn't it make sense to procure vehicles that are suitable for dealing with a non-permissive, combat environment? The current fielding of vehicles is predicated on the assumption that CS/CSS units will work in a "rear area" where there is not a significant direct-fire threat. Daily events in Iraq show that's not going to always be the case, and if you buy into asymmetric warfare/4GW theory, it may never be the case again if our enemies always choose this mode of warfare to fight us. The Army must harden its CS/CSS units' vehicles to work in an environment where there are no more rear areas. Update: Also check out this Slate essay which makes roughly the same point about armored HMMWVs and the Army's failure to procure them in sufficient numbers for Iraq. - Crew-served weapons. Currently, most CS/CSS units have only a few crew-served weapons, such as the M240B 7.62mm machine gun or the M2 .50 caliber machine gun. These are generally allocated on the basis of what it will take to secure a base cluster. However, they are not allocated on the basis of what it will take to secure these units as they do their job, or as they move in a convoy. The result is that most CS/CSS units don't have a crew-served weapon to use for these missions, and they either have to be given one ad hoc or have an external security element (i.e. MPs and infantry) attached to them for security. (Note: ad hoc fielding of weapons often doesn't work well because the soldiers in the unit don't get the chance to train with the weapons before deployment and incorporate them into battle drills.) This is a drain on manpower, and it would be far more efficient for the CS/CSS units to secure themselves. - Individual weapons and equipment. Some soldiers in Iraq are equipped to conduct patrols, checkpoints, and other missions in the Iraqi operational environment. These include infantry units and MP units, in which the squad or team-sized unit has a good mix of individual weaponry, night vision goggles, GPS equipment, body armor, etc. to do its job. Unfortunately, these items are not allocated on the same basis to CS/CSS units. Indeed, they're sometimes not allocated at all to CSS units. For example, an MP team has 2 M4/M16 rifles, 1 M249 machine gun, 1 (sometimes 2) M203 grenade launcher(s), a GPS device, and 2 PVS-7 or PVS 14 night vision goggles per 3-man team. A comparable small unit in the CS/CSS community, such as a signal retrans team or a section of ambulances, probably only has its M4/M16 rifles. It probably doesn't have extra firepower, and the basis of issue for other items like NVGs and GPS varies widely. Typically, such items are allocated to platoons or companies, but not to the lower-level elements that actually need them. The result is that such units cannot defend themselves adequately while doing their CS/CSS mission. Not having NVGs and GPS also constrains them, forcing them to work with units that do have them, or curtail their operations significantly. But the real problem is the inability of these units to secure themselves with the equipment on their MTOE, whether they're running a convoy or manning a checkpoint or setting up a health clinic. The list goes on, and includes such things as communications equipment and extra vehicles for MEDEVAC. But the basic point remains the same. The Army's procurement system has bought a lot of stuff over the last few decades that is now being used in Iraq. Most of it (like the Interceptor Body Armor) works very well. Some of this stuff (like soft-skinned vehicles) needs to be refitted in order to fight in the Iraqi operational environment. Other items, like the Armored Gun System, may merit a second look. Ultimately, what's needed is a bottom-up, holistic review of the Army's force structure to see what the lessons learned in Iraq mean for the way the Army builds and equips its units. Monday, February 16, 2004
Why the President's Record Matters: I have an op-ed in Sunday's Chicago Tribune (registration required) on why I think the current controversy is important and relevant today. A full-text version is available on their website, as well as here in PDF form. Here's the first few paragraphs of the piece: Leadership by example is a principle that's hammered into every newly minted American military officer. Soldiers want to follow leaders they trust, and the proven way to earn that trust is by force of personal example. Friday, February 13, 2004
Out of the net: I'm traveling this weekend and won't have access to my e-mail, my laptop or my news feed. Intel Dump will pick up again on Tuesday. President Bush orders the release of all National Guard records The Associated Press reports that President Bush has authorized the release of his entire National Guard record to refute criticism that he did something less than his duty as a Texas Air National Guard officer during the Vietnam War. This after a week of sporadically releasing parts of his records, including his pay records, retirement point reports, and even dental records. In theory (and hopefully in fact), the truth about the President's military record lies within these hundreds of pages about to be released. Hundreds of pages of documents detailed Bush's service in the Guard in Texas and his temporary duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign there in the early 1970s. Democrats have questioned whether Bush ever showed up for duty in Alabama.Analysis: This is the kind of full release that I think most people expected after the President's interview on Meet the Press, where he said: Russert: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?Now that the pay stubs and retirement records have been released, we may have started to get a handle on the *quantity* of the President’s National Guard service. These records look inconclusive right now, especially about the summer of 1972, but let’s stipulate for the moment that this issue will eventually be resolved. The records being released tonight will probably shed a lot of light on this question. The rest of the President’s personnel records – particularly his evaluation reports for the entire period of duty – are as important because they indicate the *quality* of his service. - Was he really the kind of junior officer that we now want to be Commander-in-Chief? - Was he, to use the term of art, a "sh*t-hot" pilot? - Was then-Lieutenant Bush a natural leader? An effective officer? - Did the President do his duty, or did he just show up for duty? The evaluation reports will show all of this. Generally speaking, all such reports are written positively, with degrees of praise indicating the quality of an officer. (Example: a slacker officer's report says he "performed his duties well" or "met the standard", plus a lot of boilerplate language. A stud officer's report says he/she "performed his duties in an outstanding manner" and "always exceeded or set the standard".) Damning by faint praise is common in officer evaluation reports where an officer's performance is mediocre, but not so bad as to merit being spiked on the report. So you might have to engage in some interpretation to divine what his evaluations really mean. But the contents of these evaluations are relevant, because they will indicate the quality of the President's performance. And to me, these evaluations of his quality are more important than whether he missed an occasional drill. Lies, damned lies and statistics The Los Angeles Times has a tongue-in-cheek story today about romance and traffic -- specifically, how crosstown romances rarely work because L.A. traffic imposes such an opportunity cost on any such relationship. I was mildly amused by the story, having experienced my share of this situation in L.A. where getting from Santa Monica to UCLA (just 5 miles) can occasionally take 30-45 minutes. But when I got to this section, the article stopped me in my tracks: Nationwide, 30.3% of males older than 15 have never married, according to the 2000 census. But in Los Angeles, 37.9% of the guys are stuck in bachelorhood. For women across the country, 24.1% of those older than 15 have never married. In Los Angeles, 30.5% are single.Huh??? Why would the statistic of marriage over the age of 15 be relevant? Are there really that many love-struck long-distance-romance high schoolers in L.A. that we should be concerned? I didn't even know that you could marry if you were 15, 16, or 17. And I'm certainly puzzled about why this would be relevant in a story about L.A. love angst. Why should we care if a 16-year-old hasn't married yet? Are they trying to make some statement about the love prospects of California's car-driving population? (This state's driving age is 16.) I just don't get it. Maybe the editor and reporter have a message they're trying to convey with this statistic, but it's lost on me. All I think after reading this article is how badly most newspapers use quantitative facts, and how right Mark Twain was about statistics. 1st Cav platoon regroups from losses in Iraq Greg Jaffe has an interesting article on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about a platoon in Iraq which has taken so many losses as to be declared "combat ineffective" by its senior commanders, only to regroup with replacements and new leadership in order to return to the fight. The platoon was sent with an element of the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, TX, to Iraq five months ago to augment the combat forces in Iraq (the rest of 1st Cav is currently on its way to Iraq as part of the second Iraq force rotation). In the time it has been there, the platoon has seen nearly 1/3 of its number killed or badly wounded, including three platoon leaders. This small unit -- the third platoon of the First Cavalry Division's Bravo Company -- has been hit harder than any other in Iraq, Army officials believe. A few days after the bombing Army officials declared the unit "combat ineffective," a rare designation indicating that it has suffered such a large number of casualties that it can't continue fighting without new equipment and people. Then they sent the unit here to Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad and about 15 miles from their old home in Khaldiya, to rest and regroup.Analysis: It's hard to generalize from the example of one platoon, because so much depends on the mixture of soldiers and leaders in any particular unit. However, I doubt that these issues are unique to CPT Beaudin's platoon -- although they may be exacerbated there because of the losses. Prolonged exposure to combat has always had an effect on unit performance. There is a large body of literature (see Acts of War, Men Against Fire, On Killing, and A War of Nerves) on exactly what these effects are. In general, it is prudent to rotate units out of contact from time to time to decompress, reconstitute, train on fundamental tasks, and rest. If you don't, you risk having an explosion of combat stress in those units, as well as a drop in unit effectiveness. I think the Army's decision to pull this platoon out of the line reflects this wisdom, as well as on-the-ground judgment that these soldiers needed to be reconstituted into a new cohesive unit before seeing more action. Thursday, February 12, 2004
Calling all media -- military commissions set to start soon The Pentagon invited American and international news bureau chiefs today to submit requests for media access for military commissions (aka military tribunals) which are set to begin soon at Guantanamo Bay. Here's what the release had to say: It is possible that one or more enemy combatants suspected of having violated the laws of war could face trial by military commission. To the extent possible, the Department of Defense intends to open the proceedings for media coverage. If conducted, these proceedings will most likely take place at the U. S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Analysis: They're getting closer... more to follow... Update: Neil Lewis (legal reporter) and Eric Schmitt (defense reporter) write in Friday's New York Times that the Guantanamo detentions may last for several more years to come. Also, the administration is considering the establishment of a parole board of sorts to adjudicate which prisoners should be released in the near future. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is slated to speak on these issues today (Friday), according to the LA Times. Notwithstanding that panel, senior defense officials said that they may keep a large portion of the Gitmo detainees in custody for years to come -- if not indefinitely. The officials said they would soon set up a panel to review those long-term prisoners' cases annually to determine whether the men remained a threat to the United States or could be released.Analysis: It would be a gross understatement to say there's a difference of opinion between the administration and the more centrist/liberal parts of the legal community as exemplified by the CCR statement above. This story is sure to inflame the debate over Gitmo more, and critics will probably pounce on 1) the fact that the detentions can be indefinite, and 2) the "quasi-parole-board" which may not have sufficient procedural and substantive protections to satisfy the critics. (Query: is such a board a "competent tribunal" within the meaning of Art. V, 3rd Geneva Convention?) I don't think this story will help the administration very much at all; it would've been better (politically) to leave some public doubt as to the length of the Gitmo detentions. Legally, it will be a challenge to reconcile the separate systems in play here. The international laws of war (also known as the laws of armed conflict) do allow a government to detain POWs for the duration of hostilities, and that is a well-settled and time-honored proposition under the 3rd Geneva Convention and its predecessor treaties and customs. The practice of taking prisoners dates back centuries, and its legitimacy as a state action has never seriously been questioned in international law. On the other hand, the U.S. Constitutional system of criminal justice contains certain procedural systems which are triggered by the detention of anyone in the criminal justice system. These include the right to counsel, the right to a speedy trial, the right to stop interrogations by the invocation of the Miranda right or right to counsel, etc. I think there's a pretty good argument for not extending these procedures to the men at Guantanamo, or the battlefield POWs in Iraq for that matter, and I think most would agree with that. But there is a rising chorus in the legal community that says we must give some kind of legal process to the men at Guantanamo. Does that mean military commissions? Criminal trials? A "quasi-parole-board"? More to follow... National Guard soldier arrested on suspicion of ties to Al Qaeda The AP reports that Army National Guard SPC Ryan G. Anderson has been arrested at Fort Lewis, Washington, for allegedly trying to pass information to Al Qaeda. Anderson belongs to the 81st Armored Brigade, an enhanced-readiness National Guard brigade which has been mobilized for deployment to Iraq in the next few months. The Army refuses to give any details about the arrest, except that SPC Anderson has been charged with "aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to al-Qaida." According to the AP: Defense officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said Spc. Ryan G. Anderson, 26, signed onto extremist Internet chat rooms and tried to get in touch with al-Qaida operatives, offering the organization information on U.S. military capabilities and weaponry.Analysis: I'm not going to rush to judgment here, the way I did about the cases of the men charged with various security violations at Guantanamo Bay. (See this column for Findlaw and CNN.Com) I'm skeptical of what an M1 crewman would know that was valuable enough to pass to Al Qaeda. It's possible that he passed information about the M1's vulnerabilities or unit SOPs, but most of that stuff is in the public domain anyway. (I should note that the value of such information is only relevant if the Army decides to pursue the capital version of an aiding the enemy charge, but speculation about that is premature at this point.) Second, I am chastened by the government's conduct in the Gitmo cases, where it appears to have overshot with its initial charges. This time around, I'm willing to give a soldier the benefit of the doubt before I see any real evidence of his guilt. If these charges are true, they are very serious. But until proven otherwise, SPC Anderson is innocent in my book. Update: CNN passes on some more details from unidentified DoD sources that seems to corroborate my theory of what information SPC Anderson was trying to pass: Anderson allegedly offered to pass the information to al Qaeda agents through an Internet chat room, Pentagon officials said. But it is not believed he actually made contact with al Qaeda members, the sources said.Stay tuned for more information -- I'll try to stay on top of this case. Taking care of reservists The Pentagon announced today the extention of several important health insurance provisions that help to provide medical and dental care for reservists and their families. The programs had been set to expire, but they will now continue until at least Dec. 31, 2004. "These new temporary provisions were designed by Congress to improve readiness and enhance access to care for Reserve servicemembers and their families," said Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "We are implementing these new provisions as soon as possible," he said.Analysis: You'd think these kinds of things would be a no-brainer in Washington; supporting medical care for reservists is like supporting balanced lunches for schoolchildren. Amazingly, this legislation was not that easy to get through Congress, partly because of the largess already in the DoD budget and partly because of institutional reticence to give these kinds of benefits to reservists. But with more than 200,000 reservists on active duty today, that more to follow in the coming months, it only makes sense for the Pentagon to take care of its reservists. They are, after all, the men and women who pick up the slack and fill in the gaps for the stretched-too-thin active force. And if you don't take of their health care needs, they won't be ready when the call comes to mobilize. Law & Terrorism Research Resource of Note: Jenner & Block has set up a pair of online repositories for the documents connected to Al-Odah v. United States and Padilla v. Rumsfeld, a pair of cases which deal with the Guantanamo Bay detentions and enemy combatant detentions respectively. (Thanks to Howard Bashman for pointing this site out.) The Al-Odah site has a great deal of material, including a number of interesting amicus briefs in the case. The Padilla site has less stuff now, but I imagine this will grow if the Supreme Court grants cert in this case (which my Court watcher friends tell me is likely). Query: Where's the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld webpage? His case is before the Supreme Court, unlike Padilla v. Rumsfeld, and the briefs and decisions in this case from the 4th Circuit were really interesting. Coda: Also check out Findlaw.Com's resources in this area. They have sections of their document archive devoted to Hamdi, Padilla, Al-Odah, and lots of other cases. Book recommendation: In the Company of Soldiers : A Chronicle of Combat, by Rick Atkinson I've been looking forward to this book for a while; Glenn Reynolds lets us know that early copies have begun to ship. Rick Atkinson is perhaps one of the best war journalists in the business. His reporting from the front lines as an embedded reporter with the 101st Airborne Division was superb, particularly when combined with the big picture reporting of Vernon Loeb and Tom Ricks in Washington. (Update: I just learned that Vernon Loeb is moving to L.A. to take an investigative position with the Los Angeles Times.) I am reading An Army At Dawn right now, which is Atkinson's brilliant book on America's first experiences with land warfare in the North African theater of WWII. Last year, I had the opportunity to read Crusade, Atkinson's book on Gulf War I which is regarded as one of the definitive histories of that conflict. In the Company of Soldiers has a few tough acts to follow. But if his war reporting from last year is any indicator of this book's quality, I think this latest work will be well worth the money. New plan to curb the spread of nuclear weapons The Washington Post reports this morning on a new push by President Bush to strengthen the global arms control regime with respect to fissile material and nuclear-weapons technology, among other things. The effort announced yesterday is mostly a diplomatic/legal effort, and will entail several major changes to existing documents of international and domestic law. Bush, in a speech at the National Defense University, proposed revoking the long-standing bargain in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows countries to develop peaceful atomic energy in return for a verifiable pledge not to build nuclear weapons. Calling that agreement a "loophole" exploited by North Korea and Iran, Bush instead proposed that nuclear fuel be provided only to countries that renounce nuclear enrichment and reprocessing.Analysis: As a matter of fact, these non-proliferation regimes are working quite well right now, notwithstanding the popular image of a rogue state with a bomb. The Nunn-Lugar Act and the cooperative threat reduction program it authorizes has been very successful in curbing the movement of fissile material out of the former Soviet Union; it has also helped to secure the technology and knowledge of the former-Soviet nuclear community. I agree that it has been severely underfunded in recent years, and that American would make a better investment if it took some money from missile defense and put it into CTR (as Fred Kaplan and others suggest). But the real issue here is not the efficacy of these programs. It's whether the U.S. can embark on a major diplomatic and legal initiative in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the diplomatic actions it took in the course of this conflict. To say bridges were burned would be to put it mildly. My read of the European media is that the Europeans simply don't think America wants to follow the rule of law anymore when it comes to international relations. Regardless of legal technicalities with respect to UNSC Resolution 1441 and the post-Gulf War I resolutions, the perception is that America disdains international law. (See also the international discussion of our actions at Guantanamo Bay, and the tenor of world criticism towards America in that context) If the world doesn't think that we take international law seriously, how well is the world going to receive a major American international law initiative? Answer: it depends. The U.S. may actually have a great deal of credibility with Third World nations right now as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I've previously called this the "smackdown effect" of the war in Iraq, and suffice to say, other nations are scared of what the U.S. might do. A nation looking at U.S. military superiority might look very kindly at an expansion of international law in this area. Libya certainly was, although it's likely that negotiations were going on there before OIF. Similarly, Russia will likely be very receptive to these moves, especially if it means more money through Nunn-Lugar and any help combatting terrorists in Chechnya and elsewhere. As for other nations like North Korea, India and Pakistan... we'll have to see what happens. This stuff is really important, so I hope it works. Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Squadrons -- like the bar where everyone knows your name The Associated Press did some yeoman's work by tracking down several members of the Montgomery (AL) based 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, which President Bush said he drilled with during the summer of 1972. Squadrons are the building block of the Air Force, much as battalions are the building block of the Army. It's the level of organization where Air Force pilots and airmen feel they're part of the same unit. And yet, no one in the unit seems to remember then-Lieutenant Bush. The Associated Press contacted more than a dozen people who were members of the Montgomery-based 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in 1972. All were quick to point out that the unit had as many as 800 members and Bush was not yet famous.In fact, only one person outside the White House has stepped forward to vouch for the President's service in Alabama. (Note: An officer has stepped forward to vouch for the President's service in Texas, and he has a letter in today's Washington Times about it. But I'm a little suspicious, because the letter's written a high level of generality. He doesn't even offer one anecdote of the Preisdent's exploits in the Guard. You'd think given the President's past proclivity towards having a good time, and the fact that he was a fighter pilot, and the general inclination of military pilots to have a good time, there'd be at least one colorful anecdote to share... it kind of makes you go hmmmm.) Emily Marks Curtis, who dated Bush during the time he spent in Montgomery working on Blount's campaign, told the AP she cannot remember seeing him in uniform or going to Guard duty while he was in Alabama.Analysis: I'm about to finish an article on why I think this stuff is relevant today, 30 years after the fact. But for now, I'll opine on the fishiness of the situation. Squadrons are like battalions, and people tend to know each other in them. This is especially true for the officers in a squadron, which form more of a tight-knit and insular group within the organization; and it's even more true of the pilots who are officers. Although then-Lieutenant Bush was just on temporary duty, he was an officer who wore flight wings, and it's a little hard to believe that he wasn't noticed. After all, he was out of the ordinary as a TX officer in an AL Guard unit. And there aren't that many officers in a squadron that he would get lost in the crowd. The only plausible explanation, if he did actually show up, was that he was so lackluster and quiet that no one noticed him. Not exactly exemplary service for the guy that we now look to for leadership as Commander-in-Chief, but maybe he's a late bloomer. More to follow... Pentagon gives alleged 'dirty bomber' access to counsel Lots of big news stories today, and I'm too busy with an article to write on them. But one news story falls squarely in my lane of law & terrorism -- the Pentagon's announcement that it would provide Jose Padilla with access to an attorney. Defense Department and Justice Department lawyers have waged a scorced-earth legal campaign against any sort of court order forcing them to provide "enemy combatants" with access to an attorney. Now, as a matter of military discretion and policy (read: Padilla has outlived his usefulness to interrogators), the Pentagon has changed its mind. DoD is allowing Padilla access to counsel as a matter of discretion and military authority. Such access is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent. A similar decision to allow Yaser Esam Hamdi access to a lawyer was announced Dec. 2, 2003.Analysis: I'll have more on this decision's implications later. But for now, I want to focus on the two-part test articulated by DOD in the last paragraph. Here are two questions that I will probably ask my class to consider as we evaluate this test: 1. Does this DOD framework provide a Constitutional way to limit the access to counsel? In other words, is it legal? The right to counsel is a strong part of the Supreme Court's 5th and 6th Amendment jurisprudence, and it's not immediately clear whether the Pentagon can limit this right at all, let alone in such a Draconian way. According to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, it can't.I tend to think the answers to both questions are "yes", largely because I think that some amount of isolation is necessary for the conduct of effecitve interrogations. I also tend to think that such isolation is Constitutional in the context of wartime, where there is a legitimate (maybe even compelling) state interest in the interrogation of enemy combatants. Moreover, I think the courts will be willing to defer to the executive branch on this issue, so far as there is some mechanism for reviewing these determinations and some finite-ness to this isolation. More to follow... Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Update on President Bush's Military Records Fox News, of all sources, has the documents released by the White House on their website, complete with cover pages which describe the contents of these documents. I'm not sure yet what these pages say because they're mostly printouts from the DFAS computer system, which means they have to be translated first into military jargon, and then into plain English. Also, the White House has the transcript of today's press briefing available on its website, along with audio and video links for the briefing. Kevin Drum's CalPundit also has comprehensive coverage (see here, here and here) on this subject, including links to major media, official sources, and other weblogs. Finally, if you want to hear my thoughts on this issue and a few others, you can listen to my interviewwith David Weintraub of WCTC radio in New Jersey from Sunday evening. (Right-click and download this MP3 file to listen.) More to follow... Intel Dump gets results White House releases military pay records to document National Guard service The AP reports this morning that the White House plans to release pay records and retirement records to document the President's service in the Texas Air National Guard, and specifically, his temporary duty in the Alabama Air National Guard during the summer of 1972. Such records, as I indicated in a note last week that was picked up by major print, Internet and broadcast media, will prove conclusively whether the President attended National Guard drill during the period in question. Until now, it had been thought that these records were missing, but it appears that they may have been resurrected in response to these inquiries. The material, to be released Tuesday, was to include pay records and annual retirement point summaries to show that Bush served.Analysis: My first reaction is to be impressed by the existence of these records. These events happened 30 years ago, and it seemed plausible to me that these paper records would have been destroyed by now. Or at least, it seemed possible. But now it appears that the records do exist, and that they will be released by the White House. However, until I see the records and analyze them for what they prove or disprove, I will withhold judgment. More to follow... Update I: CNN reports that the records have been released, but I still can't find a copy. But CNN also reports on an interesting admission from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan today that may place the value of these records in considerable doubt: But under questioning from reporters, McClellan said the records do not specifically show that Bush reported for Guard duty in Alabama, where he spent much of 1972 working on a Senate campaign. And he said the White House has been unable to locate anyone who remembers serving with Bush during that period. Update II: The Washington Post has a good report on the subject too. Monday, February 09, 2004
News for the men and women we send into harm's way Cuts to Early Bird and Stars & Stripes will lead to a less-informed military The Washington Post reports this morning on policy changes instituted by the Pentagon that have drastically cut the material which appears in the daily "Early Bird". This is the self-described "concise compilation of the most current published news articles and commentary concerning the most significant defense and defense-related national security issues." (In other words, it's a real Intel Dump.) But seriously, the Early Bird is the one-stop shop for news in the military -- where commanders and soldiers go for information about their mission and their world wherever they're at. It sits on a .mil server, so it's accessible via military networks that are blocked from the outside Internet, and it's often printed in paper form for distribution to lower level units that don't have Internet access. Here's what WP media critic Howie Kurtz reports: Senior Pentagon managers have repeatedly ordered the department's widely read clipping service to exclude articles critical of the military and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to officials familiar with the practice.Also today, we learn from an article in the Pacific Stars & Stripes that severe cuts are being planned for Stars & Stripes' news operations around the world, including news gathering operations in Iraq where America has 125,000+ soldiers deployed right now. The operational tempo of the Global War on Terrorism has stretched the Stars & Stripes budget, and the Pentagon has been unwilling to provide additional funding for the primary newspaper serving American troops and families overseas. Staffers are studying how to consolidate the paper's four weekly magazines into a single Sunday magazine of up to 32 pages, Kelsch said. The most popular features from each magazine will be merged into one product, he said. Currently, Stripes publishes Accent on Tuesday, Pulse on Wednesday, Travel on Thursday and Sunday magazine on Sunday. It also publishes a TV guide in the Pacific on Sunday, and a sports magazine, Time Out, about nine times a year.And there's more!!! A friend in Washington passes along this e-mail from an acquaintance who's an employee inside Stars & Stripes. It appears that there's more to the pressure on the newspaper than the simple pressure to balance the Pentagon's budget (and since when has that been a pressing need anyway?). Among other things, the Pentagon is less than thrilled with the paper's coverage of the war in Iraq, particularly issues of soldier morale where the Stripes staff has really done a great job. Take a look -- FROM STAFFER:Analysis: So, let's review the facts. We have a somewhat intentional effort by the Office of Secretary of Defense to reduce the amount of news going to soldiers in the field, partially on what lawyers might call "content-based" criteria. The Early Bird constitutes the primary source of real-time news for military officers and higher-level commands around the the world. Next, we have fiscal pressure on Stars & Stripes, the primary news source for soldiers, officers, and their families stationed overseas. The net effect of both of these efforts is to reduce the amount of news being conveyed to our men and women in the military, at a time when we are asking them to go into harm's way. Maybe I'm overstating the case here, but I think that's a real problem when you have an all-volunteer force of citizens who you're asking to put their lives on the line. Sunday, February 08, 2004
Lessons Learned in Iraq Tom Ricks has an interesting report on the front page of Sunday's Washington Post on the lessons learned by Army officers and NCOs in Iraq. These reports are now being collected, analyzed and disseminated in earnest to help prepare the second rotation of troops for Operation Iraqi Freedom -- troops without direct experience fighting Iraqi insurgents, IEDs, and other threats. As one of the biggest troop rotations in U.S. history gets underway in Iraq, with almost 250,000 soldiers coming or going, the seasoned units that are leaving are doing their best to pass on such hard-won knowledge to their successors, in e-mails, in essays, in PowerPoint presentations and rambling memoirs posted on Web sites or sent to rear detachments. And in the process, these veterans of Iraq have provided an alternate history of the Army's experience there over the past nine months -- one that is far more personal than the images offered by the media and often grimmer than the official accounts of steady progress. Saturday, February 07, 2004
Check out IRAQ NOW ...... Media Analysis with a Sense of Insurgency, a weblog by a U.S. Army officer currently deployed to Iraq as an executive officer for a company under the operational control of the 82nd Airborne Division. The art of intelligence work Austin Bay, another former military officer whose regular columns illuminate the world of military and intelligence affairs, has a great column in Friday's Washington Times on the art of intelligence work. I've never been a spook, but I've used their products, and sometimes thought of the same metaphor for the way that intel officers connect the dots that seemingly have no connection. Now, everyone is an art critic. Better a million new art critics than a dozen suddenly frantic mass-casualty morticians.Analysis: While I don't think this perspective necessarily dismisses American pre-war intelligence questions, I do think it's important to understand the process before one criticizes it. Intelligence is not an exact science -- it's much more of an art, informed by scientific things like signals intelligence and satellite reconnaissance. The fact that it is an art makes it all the more important for it to be done professionally -- without ideological biases or predispositions. I'm sure this is something that the new presidential commission will look at when they analyze America's pre-war intelligence, and the gaps between what we thought we knew then, and what we think we know now. A bona fide war hero There is an common story in American war stories about the brave combat medic who selflessly dashes to wounded soldiers under fire to give them lifesaving aid, or to ease their suffering in their final moments. This story has more than a grain of truth; many of those awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (often posthumously) have been combat medics, and many more have served with less public recognition but no less valor. Now comes the story of Army Pvt. Dwayne Turner, a combat medic in the 101st Airborne Division whose exploits under fire in Iraq earned him the Silver Star for gallantry in action. "I didn't figure myself a hero. I just wanted to make sure everybody came home," Turner said after the medal and 101st Airborne coin were presented to him. "Nobody was going to die on my watch."My book too. Inquiry ordered into sexual assaults in the military The Washington Post reports this morning on a probe ordered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into approximately 88 incidents of sexual assault among American forces in Iraq and Kuwait. Tragically, this number includes many cases where a U.S. male soldier is alleged to have attacked a U.S. female soldier -- a violation of the sacred trust that binds units in combat. There also appear to be a large number of "fraternization" cases, where sexual activity is deemed misconduct because it crosses unit or rank lines. "Commanders at every level have a duty to take appropriate steps to prevent sexual assaults, protect victims, and hold those who commit offenses accountable," Rumsfeld said in a memorandum to David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.Analysis: By and large, I think the military does a good job of maintaining good order and discipline -- particularly on overseas deployments like those to the Balkans and Southwest Asia. However, there are breaches of that discipline from time to time, and it is incumbent on the command to respond appropriately. In the area of sexual misconduct, I believe strongly in a zero-tolerance policy, especially for anything that comes close to sexual assault. I am somewhat heartened to see the same approach endorsed by the senior levels of the Pentagon. Also, I think the fraternization numbers may be somewhat misleading without some understanding of what these numbers mean. Fraternization is essentially sex between soldiers where there is a leader-subordinate relationship, or a difference in rank. It is roughly analogous to sexual harassment in the civilian world, although it's presumed in the military that a junior cannot consent to sexual activity with a senior because of the inherently coercive nature of military rank relationships. Actual consent between the soldiers may exist, but legal consent may not. Moreover, the military treats such relationships as unlawful because of the effect they have on discipline and unit cohesion, regardless of consent. It looks like these fraternization numbers are rolled up in the number of 88 assaults, and thus that number may be artificially high. I'm no fan of fraternization, but I'm also realistic that it will happen in units on a year-long deployment. When there's no actual issue of consent, I tend to think such issues should be dealt with by company- and battalion-level leaders as a unit matter. But what worries me is that this number also includes a sizable number of sexual assaults -- something I find inexcusable. But I also think we are seeing something of a learning effect here. In the last three decades since the military integrated women into its all-volunteer force, it has steadily learned that: a) incidents of sexual misconduct happen, unfortunately; and b) they are prejudicial to good order and discipline; and c) such incidents must be dealt with strictly and fairly; and d) any attempt to cover up the incidents, or treat them as "boys being boys", will be viewed poorly by the public. The most recent example of this was the sexual assault scandal at the U.S. Air Force Academy -- a fine institution, but one with flawed institutions for dealing with this kind of issue. It was bad enough that the assaults happened. But the Air Force didn't earn points for its handling of the problem -- which apparently, they knew about years before the matter broke in the press. Eventually, the SecDef appointed a blue ribbon commission (the "Fowler commission") to look into the matter, and it found a number of systemic issues at USAFA that facilitated the problems there. But the commission also found a pattern of neglect and dereliction by the most senior levels of the Air Force's civilian leadership. In the instant case, I think we're seeing a departure from that style of management, and a change for the better. The current Pentagon's leadership clearly watched the USAFA scandal unfold and said to themselves "we're going to do better next time." Hopefully, the investigation into these assaults is able to find places for improvement, such that America's women in uniform can focus on the threat from the enemy -- not from their brethren. Friday, February 06, 2004
The final word on President Bush and the Guard My note on the ways to document the President's military service has earned me some attention, both in the blogosphere and the mainstream media. For those links, I'm grateful. But I'm also a little bit disturbed by the traction this story has gotten, and I'm not looking forward to the kind of election where this stuff takes precedence over the stuff I really care about: national security, ballooning deficits, a stagnant economy, etc. This morning, I read an op-ed by retired-Sen. Bob Dole in the Wall Street Journal that summed up my feelings pretty well. I disagree with Sen. Dole that an honorable discharge is itself dispositive of any questions about military service, since I think such a discharge is the lowest common denominator of characterizations for military performance. However, I agree with Sen. Dole that war records the only thing that matters in this election, and that there are much more important things to talk about between now and November. These attacks are offensive. Service in the National Guard is one of the finest things any citizen can do, and there are tens of thousands of guardsmen and women serving our country today all over the world. Thousands are serving in Iraq, and some of those have made the supreme sacrifice in the service of their country.Analysis: I like Sen. Dole's self-deprecating sense of humor. He's right -- if war records counted, we'd have seen Sen. John McCain run against Al Gore in 2000, and Sen. Dole would have beat President Clinton hands-down in 1996. But there's more to a candidate than what he did in his twenties, and though such service can reveal a lot about a person's character, it can also obscure the issues that count. Also, Sen. Dole makes an important point: today's National Guard is not your father's National Guard. It's not a place where rich (or lucky) kids can go to avoid the draft. In today's National Guard, the question is not if you will deploy overseas, it's when. Today's citizen soldiers join up in the absence of conscription because they want to -- whether it's for college money, adventure, the chance to do something big, or any number of reasons. Anyone who attacks the reserves and National Guard today is a fool, given the sacrifices of American reservists since Sept. 11. If partisans on the left want to attack the President's military service record, that's one thing. But they should be very careful to avoid attacking the National Guard and the reserves in the process. Update: I think Tim Russert reads Intel Dump (see this note), based on the following question & answer exchange with the President broadcast this morning on Meet the Press. Here's the transcript from the interview: Russert: And we are back in the Oval Office talking to the President of the United States.So, the President is willing to release all of his documents in order to settle this matter. Any bets on how/when that will happen? Thursday, February 05, 2004
Pentagon to announce changes to rules for military tribunals The AP reports that the Pentagon plans a rule change for its planned military tribunals which would make it harder to monitor conversations between defense attorneys and detainees. Under revised rules not yet released by the Pentagon, defense lawyers would have much more information about whether and how the government might eavesdrop on their conversations with suspects, people familiar with the changes told the AP.Analysis: Minor rule tweaks like this are probably a sign that these tribunals are around the corner. I'm not sure what the ramifications of these trials will be for the 2004 election. Presumably, the mere presence of these tribunals will help the ACLU and the left raise money. On the other hand, military tribunals could be a public relations coup for the Pentagon if they're conducted fairly and presented that way to the public, because they will look like a victory against terrorism and a victory for the rule of law. More to follow... Update: The Pentagon spells out exactly what these changes will look like in a press release issued on Friday. Among the changes: The Department of Defense issued Military Commission Order No. 3, “Special Administrative Measures for Certain Communications Subject to Monitoring,” and an amended Annex B to Military Commission Instruction No. 5, “Qualification of Civilian Defense Counsel.” Additionally, DoD announced that it would waive administrative costs for processing top secret security clearances for civilian defense counsel who have been retained by an accused and whose representation in the case would require access to top secret material. Inside the Gitmo defense team Jeffrey Toobin has a great piece in the new issue of The New Yorker on the military defense lawyers appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to defend the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Unfortunately, the magazine hasn't put this article on its website, so you'll have to buy a copy in person. But here's a short excerpt from the story, which details the legal fight these detainees (and their lawyers) are facing. Will Gunn was on a training mission to Buenos Aires when he learned that he might be chosen as the lead defense counsel in the trials by military tribunal of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The military has placed approximately six hundred and fifty suspected war criminals, captured in connection with the war in Afghanistan, in custody at the American naval base in Cuba—the interrogation and detention center now officially known as Joint Task Force Guantánamo. Their ranks, and thus Gunn’s potential clients, could include Osama bin Laden, if he is ever captured. "My first reaction was, Is somebody trying to torpedo my career?" Gunn, a colonel in the Air Force, recalled recently. "It occurred to me that there would be people who would not be able to understand how I could represent individuals who are characterized as enemies of the United States."Analysis: The rest of the article is really good, so I recommend buying a copy if you can. The Al-Odah case before the Supreme Court, which involves the challenges of detainees now at Gitmo, has the potential to revolutionize American constitutional law. Theoretically, the justices could use this case (as well as Hamdi and Padilla, if they take the latter case) to repudiate Korematsu and other WWII-era internment cases. The high court could also set forth a new paradigm for the construction of law in the national security context -- whereby the President's actions in this arena are subject to some form of judicial review. Or, the Court might decide the case purely by stare decisis -- upholding the precedent of Johnson v. Eisentrager, and deciding that these detainees deserve no right of access to federal court. I teach on this subject, but I'm not smart enough on the Supreme Court to offer a good prediction here. But, Mr. Toobin's article has some ideas on where the Court might go, so the article's worth a read. Hunting the low-tech insurgents in Iraq A classic story of asymmetric warfare: IEDs vs. the US military The Washington Post has a great report today by Daniel Williams in Fallujah on the efforts underway in Iraq to deal with the Improvised Explosive Device ("IED") problem. IEDs have taken a major toll on U.S. troops in Iraq; they are responsible for a sizable chunk of all casualties in the post-war phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. By and large, these IEDs have hit "soft" units like logistics convoys and command vehicles -- they have not been targeted at well-protected armor or mechanized infantry units. In recent months, the Army has developed passive and active means for defeating these devices, including the use of combat engineers and EOD units to deal with them. The article focuses on those TTPs: Along with car bombs, the signature weapon of the Iraqi insurgency has been what the military calls an improvised explosive device, or IED. Car bombs have largely taken the lives of Iraqi civilians. IEDs have killed and wounded large numbers of U.S. troops. Hardly a day goes by in Iraq when a roadside bomb isn't discovered. Few days pass without one exploding, damaging convoys that are the Army's lifeblood. During the last week of January, eight American soldiers were killed in four bombings in the Sunni Triangle area west of Baghdad.Analysis: This is a classic story of asymmetric warfare. The U.S. Army (and Marine Corps) has rolled in with the most impressive military juggernaut in human history -- a force with unparalled capability and destructive power. The Iraqi insurgency can't hope to fight this force on the open fields of battle and win. Nor can they hope to oppose them in Iraqi cities with anything resembling conventional tactics -- they'll be annihilated by U.S. ground forces reinforced by U.S. airpower and artillery. So, the Iraqi forces have decided to seak out America's relative areas of weakness: its lines of supply/communications, its logistics units, its command units -- the soft underbelly of America's military. Against these targets, the enemy has decided to employ tactics which aim to inflict casualties, because of the effect of casualties on America's will to fight, as well as tactics that minimize Iraqi exposure to U.S. firepower. Enter the IED -- the perfect asymmetric weapon. It can be targeted against these soft logistics targets; it can be remote-detonated; it tends to inflict random casualties in whatever it strikes -- including Iraqi citizens on the street. To deal with the IED threat, the U.S. Army has improvised tactics, techniques and procedures of its own. It has spot-welded armor onto soft-skinned vehicles (see this report in the Chicago Tribune); armed convoys with crew-served weapons that they weren't originally authorized to have on Army MTOE documents; and trained its soldiers how to spot IEDs and deal with them. To manage the threat of secondary ambushes, the Army has trained its soldiers how to accelerate out of the kill zone and fight their way out if necessary. To some extent, these counter-IED tactics have worked. But the enemy retains the initiative in the deployment of these devices, and thus they maintain a tactical edge in deciding where and when to strike. The trend has started to look good in recent weeks. U.S. countermeasures are working, despite casualty counts that remain high. Furthermore, U.S. efforts to reduce the threat by finding caches of weapons and explosives are also working. The major issue on the horizon is how fresh troops from the U.S. will adjust to the IED threat. It will take some time for them to acquire "situational awareness" when they get to Iraq. As these fresh units climb their learning curves, they will be somewhat vulnerable to the threats that units now in Iraq have learned how to deal with. The planned overlap between outgoing/incoming units will help this; so will pre-deployment training and pre-deployment countermeasures like the addition of armor to HMMWVs. Update I: For more on the exploits of combat engineers in Iraq, see this article on the 37th Engineer Battalion by Justin Willett of the Fayetteville Observer (the hometown newspaper of the 82nd Airborne Division). Update II: Also check out this article by Rick Scavetta of Stars & Stripes on the 94th Engineer Battalion, one of the first units to complete a full 365-day tour as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Workin' hard for the money New American labor force flocks to opportunities -- and dangers -- in Iraq Thursday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) carries an interesting report from Russell Gold about the mostly-American workers manning the immense private efforts to rebuild Iraq. These individuals work for large contractors like Halliburton and DynCorp, as well as smaller subcontractors brought in for specific projects or pieces of projects. And while the jobs pay well -- annual salaries in the six-figure range are common, and it's tax-free -- they also carry some degree of risk. Here's a brief excerpt from the article: One recruit is Skip Hoehne, a goateed 26-year-old who had been making $12 an hour hauling chickens in Destin, Fla. He had heard about the job from his brother, who was already in Iraq driving trucks for Halliburton. Mr. Hoehne was drawn by the money and a chance to see the world beyond the Florida panhandle.Analysis: That's an interesting description for these jobs, but one that may be quite apt. Generally speaking, these workers will get exactly what they bargain for: a dangerous tour in a combat zone where they wil make more money than they could in two equivalent years in the U.S. Whether it's worth it depends on your personal decision calculus. I looked at similar jobs as I was getting out of the Army, as a backup plan in case I didn't get into law school. The decision calculus didn't quite add up for me then, and I'm not sure that it would now. But clearly, it does for a lot of these workers, as it doesn't appear that Halliburton has any trouble filling its ranks for duty in Iraq. In the old days, the military used to do everything -- from armored combat to kitchen duty to mail sorting. But the old days are no more. Today's professional force cannot afford to spend manpower the way the conscript-based American army of WWII did. In today's Army, you don't have spare manpower to throw guys at KP, mail duty, security, etc. The force has been pared down to what is mission essential, and manpower is a scarce commodity in many units. In the professional force, the Army has substituted capital and technology for labor in many parts of the force, and there simply aren't the excess soldiers to go around anymore. Thus, many of these ancillary and support functions fall to contractors. Despite the sticker shock of a $100,000 blue collar worker, many of these contractors can actually accomplish these tasks more efficently than a comparable military unit, because you don't have to pay for the institutional costs and overhead associated with a military unit. Think about it -- it's an awfully big waste of money to train a soldier to fight, equip him to fight, pay his sergeants to lead him into the fight, and then assign him to a mess hall for the duration of his tour in Iraq. At the same time, there are risks associated with the contracting of duties in a combat zone. These government contracts have to be written in such a way that the workers will be taken care of -- i.e. if they're shot, they should have access to U.S. military medicine. Contractors have to ensure their workers are trained on the rules of engagement, and the laws of war, and that they act as non-combatants. And whether it's through the contracting process or in-theater oversight, the U.S. military must maintain control over these contractors to ensure that they are doing things in accordance with American foreign policy. Every article I've read in the past 10 years on the subject says that battlefield civilian contractors are here to stay -- and that they're probably going to become more common in the 21st Century. If that's true, then we should probably devote more thought to the kind of issues raised by this article. "...no constitutional right for the media to embed with U.S. military forces in combat" Porn publisher's case tests the legal limits of the Pentagon's "embedding" policy That's the holding of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Flynt v. Rumsfeld, a challenge initiated by pornographer Larry Flynt to the Pentagon's rules for embedding journalists with ground forces in the Global War on Terrorism. (Thanks to Chris C. and the Volokhs for the heads up.) The U.S. District Court dismissed the suit on ripeness and standing grounds, but the appeals court decided to go a step further: they held that there was no Constitutional right at issue in this case, that would give publisher Larry Flynt a right to sue for media access to the battlefield. (The Washington Times carries this UPI report on the case) Here's what the judges had to say: As a threshold matter, it is important to clarify the right appellants seek to protect. In candor, it is not at all clear from appellants' complaint below or briefs in this court precisely what right they believe was violated or contend the courts should vindicate. After some pressing, at oral argument it became clear that they claimed a right, protected under the First Amendment, in their own words, to "go[ ] in [to battle] with the military." This right is different from merely a right to cover war. The Government has no rule at least so far as Flynt has made known to us that prohibits the media from generally covering war. Although it would be dangerous, a media outlet could presumably purchase a vehicle, equip it with the necessary technical equipment, take it to a region in conflict, and cover events there. Such action would not violate Enclosure 3 or any other identified DOD rule.Analysis: For what it's worth, Larry Flynt and publishers of risque' material have always been at the forefront of First Amendment law (see, e.g., Hustler Magazine v. Falwell; Flynt v. Ohio), so I'm not surprised to see Flynt Publishing carrying the guidon in this fight. And frankly, I agree with the argument advanced by Flynt in this case -- that the media deserve some Constitutional right of access to the battlefield. That's a controversial position to take, and a position that may conflict with my feelings about military necessity and effectiveness. But ultimately, I believe that Americans have a strong -- even compelling -- interest in media access to the battlefield, because it is their sons and daughters who we are sending into harm's way. Moreover, I do not believe that the people can effectively check the government through democracy if they are not armed with information. The war powers of this country rest with the President and Congress -- the political branches of government -- and the Supreme Court generally defers to the considered wisdom of these branches on national security matters. (See Rostker v. Goldberg) Part of the reason why the courts defer to these two branches on national security matters is the supposed influence of the people upon them. If the people do not have information about the use of America's war powers, gathered by a free media with full access to the battlefield, then the system breaks down. Like I said, I put military effectiveness at the top of the values I support, because a degradation in that effectiveness could cost the lives of American men and women in harm's way. So I support DoD's right to establish regulations -- even strict regulations -- for operational security and press management that may impede some rights of reporters in the combat zone. But ultimately, I think the media has to be there in the zone, and they have to have the ability to eventually report what they see. So, would I kick Geraldo Rivera out of the zone for reporting on the troop movements of the 101st? Absolutely. But I would also recognize that 99% of reporters in Iraq did the right thing -- and America is better for it. Moreover, there's a strategic and political argument for embedding that's often missed. Embedding journalists with combat troops ensures that a nominally objective eye will be there to witness anything and everything that happens in combat -- the good, the bad and the ugly. If those journalists also have video/satellite capability, as they did in OIF, then this observation will be enhanced a hundred-fold. The world will be able to see the operations unfold for themselves, and they will be able to judge the wisdom and the virtue of these operations. Embedding is the best antidote for enemy propaganda, and it's also the best antidote for claims that American troops sacked Iraq in search of blood and treasure. At the strategic and political level, military campaigns are as much about hearts and minds -- and ideas -- as they are about casualties lost and territory won. The presence of media on the battlefield aids America in securing those hearts and minds, at least when we commit our military to the right strategic objectives and when our military does the right thing. The DC Circuit also ignored the long history of battlefield reporting in its decision, sweeping it away with a conclusory statement that such a history does not really exist. The court's opinion states that "the history of press access to military units is not remotely as extensive as public access to criminal trials," and that "No comparable history exists to support a right of media access to U.S. military units in combat." Oh really? I don't mean to insult the venerable judges of the DC Circuit, but haven't you heard of Ernest Hemingway or Ernie Pyle? David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan? Even Benjamin Franklin's newspaper engaged in some war reporting in its day. I've read a fair amount of American military history, and my sense is that war reporting has been an integral part of every American war since the revolution. Moreover, it has typically included some form of embedded reporting -- whether those were reports from journalists serving in the military as correspondents (like Ernie Pyle) or from unilaterals like David Halberstam who simply hopped on a helicopter when he wanted to cover something. (See A Soldiers' Tale, Reporting Vietnam, and Embedded for more on this subject.) Bottom Line: I think this case was wrongly decided, mostly for policy and political reasons. Granted, I'm no fan of Larry Flynt and I'm not sure what his reporters would contribute to the American debate over the global war on terrorism. But this case now stands for the proposition that the Pentagon can exclude reporters from the places where it sends American men and women because no Constitutional right to media access exists in those places. That's a precedent that's bad for American democracy. Thoughts on President Bush and the National Guard Pay records, tax records and retirement records could document the service in question The story about President George Bush's service in the Alabama Air National Guard during the summer of 1972 has started to grow legs, despite efforts by the White House to cut them off. The Washington Post carried a couple of reports on it yesterday; Josh Marshall devoted a column to it; it made most of the major networks' news shows last night. The Post reports: The White House, the Republican Party and the Bush-Cheney campaign mounted a choreographed defense yesterday of President Bush's attendance record in the National Guard and denounced Democrats for raising questions about his service.Analysis: I've spent some time in the Guard, and I know a little bit about the way that military personnel systems operate. So here are a few separate ways the President can document his Guard service -- or that Democrats can use to document the lack thereof. 1) Attendance records. Guard units aren't like active units, in that they meet on the weekends (or weeknights) on a quasi-regular basis, plus two weeks during the summer. They're part-time units, and the only way they know their readiness is to see their personnel on a regular basis. Tracking attendance is an integral part of measuring this readiness, because a unit isn't fit to fight unless it has its personnel. Thus, every Guard unit I've served in (and every one I've ever heard of) keeps pretty good attendance records. But, in this case, it appears that the attendance records are either missing or incomplete. That's not altogether unbelievable to me. After all, this was 30 years ago, and this was before the age of computers. So let's assume for the sake of argument that President Bush did attend drill, but that the attendance records were lost. 2) Pay Records. If you attend drill, you get paid by Uncle Sam. This is a fundamental principle in the reserves -- federal and state National Guard -- that is true for a variety of reasons. Soldiers join the reserves to earn money and college benefits, and thus pay is very important. Also, Uncle Sam's legal umbrella only covers you for accidents, medical treatment, etc., if you're on duty -- and being paid is the way you know if you're on duty. If President Bush drilled on the dates in question, his attendance would have been compensated by the Guard. (On occasion, Guard officers do volunteer their time, especially when they're in a critical position like company command. But the President says he was doing menial paperwork, so I don't think he was volunteering his time on weekends) In any event, even if the President's attendance records were lost, his attendance at drill would have generated pay. That should have also resulted in the creation of pay records, and/or bank records documenting the receipt of that pay. 3) Retirement Points. If the President attended drill during the summer of 1972, he would have received retirement points for those drill dates. Different units use different means for the computation of these points, but they're generally computed using either pay or attendance records. If President Bush attended drill for the dates in question, his attendance should have generated something on his Guard retirement report for those dates. (A copy of the President's retirement points report for 1973 is available online.) In all likelihood, he would have received a rollup of his retirement credit for 1972 that indicated he did not serve the requisite number of days on duty in order to earn credit for a year towards retirement. 4) Income Tax Records. As stated in #1 and #2 above, the President's drill attendance would have almost surely been paid attendance. Military income is taxable, both as a matter of federal law and state law, although there are exceptions for income earned in a combat zone (not the case here), housing pay, flight pay, and other special forms of military income. The AL National Guard (or the TX National Guard if it were paying him) would have reported this income to the IRS, along with any withholding it kept from these paychecks. (Note: there's no state income tax in TX, so there's no state tax records to speak of here.) President Bush would have had the legal duty to report this income on his tax returns. Like the records above, these tax returns could positively establish that President Bush attended drill by the receipt of income for it. But the President hasn't come forward with these returns yet, possibly because he doesn't keep his returns going back that far. Update: It's not clear whether the IRS keeps tax records going back this far; several tax lawyers and accountants have written me that the IRS only keeps such records going back as far as its criminal and civil statutes of limitations. I'm not sure -- I think these documents may be archived in some form, somewhere. If they are, the President has the personal power to request production of them. And since the IRS does nominally work for the President, he could presumably influence them to respond to his request with all due diligence. 5) DD 214. (Thanks to Mark Kleiman for the reminder on this one) The DD 214 form is given to every soldier when he/she leaves the service as the official legal record of military service rendered. It contains data on the soldier's legal residence, military schooling, military duty stations, and time served in the military on active duty, among other things. However, I'm not sure whether the DD 214 form, as filled out today or in 1973, would reflect days served in a National Guard drill status. (There's a technical/legal difference between active duty and National Guard drill duty.) If a DD 214 was generated, it form would indicate the soldier's "reenlistment code" on the bottom of the form, which is used to characterize the soldier's past service and potential for future service. If the President had any adverse disciplinary action on active duty, this code would reveal that. But I haven't heard of any such action, so I doubt this RE code reveals anything worthwhile. (Note: a reader who served in the 1970s military reports that the DD 214 used "Separation Program Numbers" to denote the type of discharge given, not RE codes, and that an honorable discharge was the default type given to any serviceperson without formal UCMJ action on his/her record.) Update: The President probably never received a DD 214 for his state National Guard service. A couple of readers have written to tell me that it's possible such a federal form wouldn't have been used anyway by the Texas Air National Guard to document the President's discharge. I checked this with a couple of old California guardsmen that I know and they verify this. (For what it's worth, I never received a DD214 from the Guard either -- just a transfer order.) That's because the DD 214 is a federal form used to document active federal service, not National Guard service and certainly not National Guard drill attendance. However, the National Guard has an equivalent form, and a copy of the President's NGB 22 form (Report of Separation and Record of Service) has surfaced. This redacted copy looks authentic to me. It characterizes the President's service as "honorable", which is not surprising because that's what he says, and it's the default type of discharge for nearly all servicemembers. The form also documents the President's aggregate service dates, from 1968-1973, including his brief term as an enlisted airman in 1968. However, the form does not detail any of the President's drill attendance dates, nor does it give a detailed characterization of service in the form of a Separation Program Number or Reenlistment Code. Additionally, the same website produces copies of the front and back page of the President's evaluation report for this year -- a report which leaves much to the imagination about the President's service during this period. The Big Caveat: Things slip through the cracks in the reserves -- especially when you're drilling away from your home unit and you're trying to get paid for that duty. I know because I've been there. I requested permission from my California Army National Guard commander to drill in Washington DC during the summer of 2002, where I was interning after my first year of law school. Suffice to say, there were some administrative snafus, and I'm sure I was reported absent at my unit for the drill weekends I missed even though I had an alternate drill plan approved. (I didn't get my pay straightened out until I returned to California at the end of the summer, among other things.) It's possible that President Bush did attend drill, but that he never got paid for it, and that he never pushed the issue because wasn't in a bad spot financially so as to need the money. Possible -- but not probable. The military pay system doesn't discriminate on the basis of socio-economic status. And more importantly, military pay is used in the reserves to measure whether you're on active duty for legal purposes, and units generally don't let soldiers perform duty for no pay because of this. It's also possible that the Alabama National Guard's records were so bad that none of the aforementioned records exist today -- either because the state policies directed their destruction after 5, 10, or 20 years, or because they just weren't kept well at all. That's believable for the attendance records, which are often kept at the unit level -- but not for pay, retirement, and tax records, which are kept at a higher-level headquarters. It's possible that the lack of records supports the President here, but not probable. But let's remember that President Bush is the Commander-in-Chief. If he served on these dates and he thought there might be records to prove that service, he could easily order the production of those documents -- either from the military or the IRS. So if I were a reporter sitting in the White House press room, asking questions of Scott McClellan, I'd start asking about his pay records, retirement records, and tax records from 1972. Even if the attendance records are gone -- there are still plenty of ways to document the President's service. It's entirely possible that these records exist, and that they will document the President's honorable service in the National Guard. But only the records can show that conclusively. Update: Some reporter did try to ask this question today, but he was dismissed with a brusque answer from the White House press secretary. Here's the transcript from Wednesday's White House press briefing. Q How is the President going to counter Democratic challenges that he got preferential treatment while serving in the National Guard during Vietnam?Where, exactly, was that? It seems to me like the issue remained open yesterday. If someone were casting my military service in a bad light, I'd be the first guy to produce the documents that said otherwise. I can understand the impulse to play this one down, given the military credentials of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But I think that brushing aside these inquiries will only make people more curious. More to follow... Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Lighter, faster, more flexible How should America transform its Army for the 21st Century? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld writes his answer to that question on the op-ed page of Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required). The Secretary starts by citing the victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, but quickly moves on to say that those victories have not yet been fully realized. Next, he acknowledges that the strain on America's military today is quite great -- "the increased demand is real." The solution, Rumsfeld argues, is for a more flexible military built around modular brigades which leverage existing personnel strength to essentially do more with less. Another way of relieving the increased demand on the force is to add more people -- and we have done that as well. Using the emergency powers granted to the president by Congress, since September 2001 we have increased active force levels above authorized levels -- by 33,000, or more at times. If the situation demands it, we will not hesitate to add still more -- whatever is needed. However, the fact that we have to increase force levels at all should give us pause. U.S. Armed Forces currently total about 2.6 million men and women -- 1.4 million active forces, 876,000 guard and reserve in units, and 287,000 individual ready reserves. Yet despite these large numbers, the deployment of 115,000 troops to Iraq has required that we temporarily increase the size of the force.Analysis: First of all, I think the Secretary understates the strain on the military that exists today. Elsewhere in his piece, Secretary Rumsfeld says that we should not worry about the reserves because we've only tapped into 36% of the Selected Reserve. That is true -- but we've tapped into the most ready 36% of the reserves. When Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom generated requirements for troop units, military planners didn't take a uniform slice of the reserves from every part of the force. They took the best units they could find, because it only makes sense to send the best units you have to the place where they're actually shooting bullets at you. Many of the units left behind were fenced for future deployments, like the enhanced National Guard brigades now on their way to Iraq. But many more reserve units were left alone because they're hollow units, or because their capabilities don't match the mission. This has been exacerbated by the tendency in the Army Reserve and National Guard to cannibalize units staying behind to fill deploying units to 100% strength -- both in terms of personnel and equipment. Thus, many of the units left behind are in no condition to do anything, whether it's deploy to the airports to provide security or deploy to Iraq. Additionally, current attrition numbers and future attrition estimates indicate a looming exodus of reserve personnel at the end of their current deployments -- something which has been staved off by "stop loss" policies thus far. If the reserves hemorrhage personnel at the rates expected, there won't be much left in America's reserve for the next fight. Second, I think that Secretary Rumsfeld overstates his enthusiasm for transformation of the Army. The fact of the matter is that he has not put his money where his mouth is, to use the old aphorism. The 3rd Infantry Division, which he refers to in his article, has been directed to reshape itself into 5 modular "units of action" from its current structure of a division with 3 maneuver brigades. But it hasn't been given the authority to add extra personnel or equipment -- it has been told to do this in zero-sum fashion. The Stryker Brigade, in contrast, has received billions of dollars over the past few years, both to buy its new vehicles and to conduct a variety of exercises. But it's not clear that the Stryker brigade represents true transformation, or the ability to do anything more than sent a conventional brigade into contact with new light armored vehicles. Their doctrine is a rewritten version of the 1965 manual for an M113-equipped brigade, and the new brigade doesn't include the kind of full-spectrum capability envisioned to fight tomorrow's wars. Its structure was changed in the design phase to strip out much of the logistical and combat-support capability that would give it more staying power and more full-spectrum capability, and its headquarters was cut by nearly 100 personnel -- including those responsible for coordinating with NGOs and other agencies. The Stryker brigade is a great first step, and by all accounts, it's doing well in Iraq. But it is much more evolutional than transformational -- and it is not necessarily the solution for tomorrow's threats. Tomorrow's threats will require a strong military, but it will also require a different military than the one America built to fight the Cold War. We have successfully adapted our Cold War military to meet the threats of the 1990s, but that change isn't enough. Neither are the changes advanced by Secretary Rumsfeld; at least, not without more resources. Tomorrow's force must be rapidly deployable, with the capability to fight tonight (and not after sitting 6 months in the desert), with the capability to conduct any operation on the spectrum from peace to war -- and it must be able to sustain itself for the longer task of nation building that comes after any war. There are some ideas (see here and here) out there for how to make this force, but the real answers are still hidden. It may be time for another "bottom up review" -- another holistic review of defense policy from soup to nuts, soldier to SecDef -- that assesses the threat and what it will take to fight it. Update: Lawrence Korb, who served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, thinks the Rumsfeld plan for defense transformation adds up to a big pile of pork -- and says so in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. Korb's also not a fan of the current U.S. national security policy, which he says has led to a skewed sense of priorities in the defense budget for next year. The new strategy should lead to changes in the defense budget. But rather than wait for President Bush, Congress should take the following measures now: First, to enable the Army to meet its global commitments, the size of the active Army should be increased by 40,000, permanently. This should be done by transferring peacekeeping-type functions to the active component and creating a new active-duty division dedicated to stabilization and reconstruction. Second, the number of WMD support teams in the National Guard, which are designed to assist local authorities in the event of a biological, chemical or nuclear attack on the homeland, should be increased from 32 to 100. Finally, funding for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which helps the states of the former Soviet Union protect and destroy their nuclear weapons, materials and delivery systems, should be increased from its current level of $450 million to at least $2 billion.Fred Kaplan agrees, and writes in his Slate column that the Pentagon would do well to cancel or scale back several major defense projects currently scheduled to receive billions in the FY2005 budget. Yes, we live in a dangerous world. Yes, we must support our troops with decent pay and the finest hardware. Yes, an uncertain future requires us to maintain an adequate technical and industrial base. But does even a conservative extrapolation of these mandates require spending nearly half a trillion dollars?Bottom Line: The fight over the FY2005 budget is not just a fight over money, machines or manpower -- it's a fight over the very direction of American national security policy, and competing visions of the military that America must build to secure the nation in the 21st Century. Islam v. the West, through the eyes of Bernard Lewis The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a brilliantly written article by Peter Waldman on today's front page about Princeton historian Bernard Lewis. The article discusses Prof. Lewis' scholarship, and the role that his ideas have played in shaping America's view of Islam in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Bernard Lewis often tells audiences about an encounter he once had in Jordan. The Princeton University historian, author of more than 20 books on Islam and the Middle East, says he was chatting with Arab friends in Amman when one of them trotted out an argument familiar in that part of the world.Very interesting... try to pick up today's Journal if you can to read the whole thing. I'm skeptical of the latest tectonic shift in American foreign policy, and I think its wisdom will likely be debated for some time. But this article does a good job of summing up Prof. Lewis' views (if that's possible), and drawing the link between those views and contemporary U.S. policy. Definitely worth a read. Pre-war intelligence -- a historical oxymoron? Slate answers that question in the affirmative with this History Lesson column from Matthew Wall, a journalist now writing a book on the U.S. invasion of Grenada. The basic argument is nothing new -- that America has often stumbled or blundered into its major wars. But obviously, this historical perspective has a new meaning today with the relevations of faulty intelligence that led America into Operation Iraqi Freedom. Here's one of the excerpts that Mr. Wall offers: The Spanish-American War and the Sinking of the USS Maine, 1898: For the generation of 1898, the phrase "Remember the Maine" was as powerful as "Remember Pearl Harbor" was to the Greatest Generation and "Remember the Alamo" was to the John Wayne generation. The USS Maine was dispatched to Havana, Cuba, on Jan. 24, 1898, on a flag-showing mission whose ostensible purpose was to "protect American lives and property" during the growing Cuban uprising against Spanish colonial rule. On the evening of Feb. 15, quietly at anchor, the Maine exploded, sinking the ship and killing 266 crew members.Analysis: I liked this article, and I think it puts an interesting spin on a very important subject. But I'd say that it misses a couple of major points in order to stay on-topic and stay brief. (1) The U.S. has unprecedented ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capability today that should mitigate the problem of faulty pre-war intelligence. But it doesn't because our ISR capability has gaps, and those gaps precisely mirror the threats we now seek to preempt like terrorism and rogue state WMD production. (2) America's stumbling and fumbling into war has had some utility, insofar as it has given us the casus belli of self-defense in a number of situations (like Pearl Harbor). Tactically, we committed a horrendous blunder by letting our guard down and ignoring the intelligence we had in the Pacific. But strategically, doing so may have given America the will to fight that was necessary to win WWII. Historians can quibble about the tactical points, but I think it's well settled that America's popular raison d'etre in WWII was revenge for Pearl Harbor -- at least the propaganda machine kicked up against the Germans and Italians. So, here we are in 2004. We are now engaged in a war against a shadowy enemy dubbed "terrorism" that can't even be precisely defined, let alone quantified in terms of victory and defeat. Even our Secretary of Defense is unsure about how to measure success or failure in this war. Intelligence has never been more important than today, because of the potential this enemy has to strike our homeland and inflict civilian casualties. Yet, we still have gaps. In the coming fight over the President's $2 trillion+ budget, I hope that intelligence capabilities get more than a passing argument. Monday, February 02, 2004
Equal opportunity satire: Slate has posted a series of 1971 Doonesbury cartoons by Garry Trudeau which take potshots at then-Vietnam Vet Against the War (now presidential candidate) John Kerry. I've always been a Doonesbury fan; it was one of my first introductions to politics as a child reading the funny section of the Los Angeles Times (that's not meant to be a pun). I'm not surprised to see how well these cartoons (from before I was born) nail John Kerry. But I'm sure he's changed a lot since then. I'm sure John Kerry's time in politics has made him less willing to run to the sight of a press gaggle and the sound of clicking cameras. Right... On a more serious note, it seems the campaign story du jour is the battle of the veterans -- Kerry vs. Clark -- and who will win the loyalty of this voting block, and the votes of those who listen to the opinions of this voting block. (I tend to see veterans as an important opinion leader block, rather than an important voting block per se.) Here's a sample of what the wires have to report on this battle: Kerry, Clark vie for veterans' votesHey, I'm all for veterans. But I'm not sure this tide is going to carry John Kerry, Wes Clark or any other Democrat into the White House. Despite the mudslinging at President Bush about his Air National Guard record, he is a veteran in every legal sense of the word that I know. More importantly, however, he is a veteran of the White House in wartime. This course of attack may fall flat against a President who has led America through two wars, and a massive homeland security effort that some might call a war. While I think that Americans value military service, and they certainly respect men and women like John Kerry and Wes Clark who have been decorated for bravery in combat, they want more from a President. Even with Iraq and terrorism in the headlines, American voters will make part of their 2004 choice on the basis of a candidate's domestic agenda -- health care, the economy, education, the environment, and all those other issues which have very little to do with veteran status. We'll see how long this story lasts, and whether it has enough traction to stick until November. I doubt it will stay around much longer than super Tuesday... more to follow. Interesting interview: Howard Bashman has an interview today with Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Judge Reinhardt has been described as the "rudder which steers the 9th Circuit to the left"; he recently authored a decision on America's detentions at Guantanamo that squarely rejected the Bush Administration's arguments on jurisdiction and the role of the courts. But irrespective of his politics or ideology, he is one of the most prolific and well-respected jurists in America today. His interview covers everything from the politics of confirmation to the politics of judicial precedent -- take a look. Also, Howard announces some important news of his own today: his decision to leave the chairmanship of Buchanan Ingersoll's appellate department in order to start an appellate litigation firm of his own. Good luck on your new endeavor, Howard -- I'm sure your new firm will exceed all expectations. |
