Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Good Answer

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Nice one, Mike!!

Just when I was about to write Michael Yon off after his disembedment, he comes up with a comment that is both insightful and relevant…

The father of a veteran now in Afghanistan emailed with a question: “Michael: What would you say to a group of US soldiers if you were a company commander (and it’s easy for me to imagine you in this role) if after a briefing you gave them as you and they were about to participate in the BfK – when after inviting questions a soldier asked: “Sir, are we being asked to risk our lives to prop up Wali Karzai and if so, is he a good man or just my generation’s Diem? (Or some such question.) A beneficiary of the drug industry, a thug, feared and hated by the people of Kandahar City? How would you Michael Yon answer this US soldier?”

Answer:
I would likely say, “Yes, we are being tasked to prop up a drug lord. That’s our orders. Let’s get to work.”

It’s a good point – as much as some elements continue to portray the war in Afghanistan as a ‘nice’ war in which no harm really befalls anyone, except the bad guys, and which is conducted according to the highest moral principles….which, of course, is totally false…if what is going on in Afghanistan was anything close to nice, then there would be no need for the thousands of combat troops, strike aircraft, etc, etc, etc…NGOs and aid agencies could run rampant over the country to do-good their little hearts out…but it’s not like that and we shouldn’t be kidding ourselves that it is…

On the same theme are the bedfellows that we might have to partner up with in order to achieve our national objectives…let’s NOT forget that the reason that all these forces are in Afghanistan in the first place is not an overwhelming concern for the wellbeing of the nation or people of Afghanistan…some nations are their for flag-waving purposes, others because the rest of their gang is there, others again perhaps hoping to secure trade or commercial gains…whatever the underlying motives, there is little room for altruistic partnerships based on niceness and the moral high ground. To be blunt about it, most of the nice people that you might be able to partner up with are probably amongst the least effective…

To get the job done, your partners of opportunity will more than likely be those whom you would NOT bring home to meet Mother or the voters but they are way more likely to advance your aims and objectives…

The other insight that falls from Mike’s comment is that these issues of lawful or unlawfulness generally exist at levels stratospherically above the tactical level where the down and dirty fighting occurs…as Mike implies, these issues are not things that the troops on the ground need to be worrying about – so long as someone has taken the time out to remind them why they are face down int eh dirt and the sand, listening to bullets zing by, just over their heads…the direction and ownership of said bullets is largely irrelevant when you’re face down in the sand and the dirt….

Sallying Forth

My brief foray out into civilisation last week went very well. I had (another) great visit to the Air Power Development Centre @ RNZAF Ohakea and am looking forward to doing a lot more work with them. I overnight in Ohakea this time and must comment on the standard of the rooms in the Mess, even for a casual guest like myself…my room had all the amenities necessary for someone working away from home…especially the little details like an alarm clock, towel, bathrobe, iron and ironing board, even a Do Not Disturb sign for the door and some of those little soap and shampoo thingies…all the little details that are such a PITA to lug around with you on the road…very nice…

The following morning I drove down to Wellington – catching the early bird parking deal @ the James Cook by less than two minutes – to listen in on Josh Wineera’s lecture The Contemporary Operating Environment to Victoria University’s Counter-Terrorism course; after which I delivered  Doctrine, COIN and Kilcullen (critiquing The Accidental Guerrilla). It went OK but only OK and I am really annoyed that I ran overtime (despite numerous rehearsals to the big dogs at home) and had to skim over the Kilcullen section. Hopefully I will have other opportunities to polish up my delivery for this type of work as I think that part of the problem is that I haven’t had any opportunities this year to practise let alone hone presentation skills.

I’m now converting the elements of that PowerPoint brief into a loose paper, combining the images with the accompanying words, for Jim Veitch at Vic as a record of those thoughts. I found last year that both MS Word and OpenOffice’s Writer are sub-optimumal tools for this and have opted to try this using a dedicated desktop publishing application called Scribus. It’s open source as well and like much of these open source apps has an almost vertical learning curve (the reason I uninstalled it last year) but I cracked it last night and am now making pretty good progress. The result for this project probably won’t win too many marks for prettiness as I am learning as I go but progress is progress….

You turn your back for just a second…

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Exhibit 1

Exhibit #1 – authorities believe Grasshopper is just an innocent victim, in the wrong place at the wrong time…the usual suspects (both of them) are being lined up…

We had the twins for the weekend – it’s always fun but full-on and this is just a none-too-subtle reminder of how quickly they are growing up (literally)…the jar was only about one-third full when one of them swiped (the evidence is difficult to argue with) it off the kitchen bench after lunch. It was quite a good effort as they managed to keep most of the jam off themselves (something they refuse to do at actual meal times) and were only busted when the penny dropped for me that there was simply way too much jam around the house to have come from the jam on toast we had for lunch (with healthy stuff as well) in the lounge…

It’s a lesson that one can never become too complacent that little hands will not extend their reach, the guy you install as president of Afghanistan will not decide to go his own way, or that the service you dedicate 18 years to will not dump you like a hot and embarrassing potato…I refer here to the case of Royal Marine Sergeant  Mark Leader [PDF: Two war-weary Marines with a size 10 wellington boot] who was court martialed and dismissed, after 18 years of top quality military service five times decorated with campaign medals , after throwing a Wellington boot at a Taliban terrorist. The Taliban in question had been found burying an IED just 50 metres from base  where Leader had witnessed his best friend and two other mates blown up by an IED just prior to this.

It’d be interesting to see the full facts of this case – perhaps there is way more to it that was has been reported to date – but this certainly seems to be yet another application of the perception that we, the good guys, can fight nice wars. Unfortunately the price of niceness is the blood of US and NATO soldiers…The opposite of ‘nice’ is not ‘brutal’ – it is ‘practical’ and ‘pragmatic’ – and this seems to be totally lost on British leaders who seem think this war (lower case) is simply an over-resourced exercise in flag-waving and a great gesture of unity with the US (which, after all, might be required to sail across the Atlantic and bail out the UK for a fourth time)…

Eon

I’ve just finished a great book, Greg Bear’s Eon, which is one of the main reasons that blog updates have dried up over the last few days. Carmen picked it up for me at the Sally Army shop in Hamilton for a dollar at the same time as she bought me The Star Trek yarn Garth of Izar…I must have read another Bear story in the dim dark past as I have always avoided his books for well over two decades but Eon really gripped me right from the start and I will probably have to go off and ferret out some others once the ‘have-to’ reading list gets a little shorter….

The fractal guy…

Benoit Mandelbrot’s The  (Mis)Behaviour of Markets was recommended to me as a fresh look at irregularity and uncertainty, and as such, a possible source for some out of the square illumination on the complex contemporary environment…I haven’t even got to the end of the preface and already I a. love it, b. have dredged out some really good material, and c. taken off on some wild tangential thoughts…once the employment situation becomes a little more stable, I think that this one will be a permanent addition to the library.

Kilcullen again…

The other recent tome that I have decided to add to the physical library is David Kilcullen’s The Accidental Guerrilla. I am speaking on doctrine, COIN and Kilcullen this Friday and have had to wait for the library to reloan me a copy to use as an aid for any parts of my review notes that I can’t, read or remember why I wrote what I did. Dr Kilcullen has secured a place for himself as one of the most influential figures of the last decade and as such is deserving of a place on the shelves in the study here at the Raurimu Centre for Thinking About Stuff (CTAS). He’s just released a new book but I think I’ll test read this from the library first as the abstracts for CounterInsurgency @ Oxford University Press and Small War Journal sounds a little too much like a rehash of previous works…

Ginga Ninja

Andrew Inwald released his 1/33 Yokosuka P1Y Ginga at Paper Models last week…and it surpasses even his Judy and Il-14…those who are into this sort of creative expression might want to download it just to see how it’s done…you can do that here at Paper Modelers although you will need to register and make one post on the forum to get to the downloads…

Yes, it’s paper…!

In other paper news, Ken West of XB-70 Valkyrie and B-58 Hustler fame has announced the start of the design phase of a 1/32 Lockheed SR-71, although the exact model or models is still TBC e.g. A-12, YF-12A, D-21 drone carrier etc…

The Little Orange Book

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I visited the Centre for Defence and Security Studies (CDSS)at Massey University a week or so ago. The nice people there loaned me a copy of Roberto J. Gonzalez’ American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and The Human Terrain so that I might gain a better understanding of those who oppose Human Terrain Systems (HTS). Gonzalez (RJG) is one of the main opponents of HTS and the application of social science techniques in counterinsurgency campaigns.

I started to read this book, The Little Orange Book, at Massey while I was waiting for a meeting to wrap up (not one that I was in!). It’s only 130 pages and I managed to chew through 80-odd then. I use the term ‘chew through’ deliberately as some of the first three chapters was pretty difficult to digest. It’s published by Prickly Paradigm Press which claims to give “…serious authors free rein to say what’s right and what’s wrong about their disciplines and about the world, including what’s never been said before…” The result, certainly in this case, is not as the Prickly Paradigm website claims “…intellectuals unbound, writing unconstrained and creative texts about meaningful matters...” This Little Orange Book, is more a soapbox for a rambling rant than a considered exposition of  RJG’s professional or intellectual opinion.

There are many logical disconnects and inconsistencies in the first three chapters and I think that some rigorous external editing could have helped make this flow and read much better. Part of the problem is that RJG does really define his objections to HTS until the last few pages of the book, forcing the increasingly frustrated reader to wonder ‘where’s this guy coming from?’.

It was a week later that I took a deep breath and dove into the second half of the book. Chapter 4 is certainly a step up from the previous chapters, possibly because I found myself in broad agreement that the US DoD is in cloud-cuckoo-wonderland in its desire for a technologically brilliant system that will take in all the relevant information and punch out all the answers for the complex environment. Maybe it will – someday – but only once a person gets off their butt, gets their boots dirty and figures out what the questions are.

Such a system might have been possible in the heyday of the Cold War when the moving parts were mainly based on platforms with easily quantifiable measurables – had the necessary computing power been available. In fact, had this system been available to Cold Warriors, it probably would have foreseen the Soviet invasion of Iceland that so surprised Pentagon planners when Tom Clancy and Larry Bond released Red Storm Rising in 1986. But the Cold War is over and, as Michael Scheiern identified in 2005, we have now shifted from platform-based tracking to tracking individuals. Not only has the number of trackable entities increased by a factor of hundreds but the individual ‘measurability’ of each entity has increased by a similar amount, and the entities lack the centralised direction inherent in platform-based conflict.

This is not to say, though, the social sciences, anthropology and HTS’ don’t have a role to play in the complex contemporary environment – anything but. What it does mean is that we will have to accept and take risk, develop and rely upon judgement to employ and apply this information. It also means that we need to evolve away from thinking of complex intelligence as being predictive in nature as it may have been around the Fulda Gap. In their place we must develop more responsive intelligence systems support responses to the largely unpredictable activities that erupt across the operating environment.

Organisations like the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit are founded upon a blend of the principles and practices of social sciences and this responsive philosophy. Rarely if ever will the BAU predict the first in a series of attacks, although once on the trail of a specific adversary will often very rapidly develop accurate profiles of that adversary, be it an individual or group. Yes, I watch Bones too and am well aware of the timeless struggle between the forces of anthropology and psychology to prove which isn’t merely pseudo-science. This is a false distinction and both disciplines must work together, focusing on individuals AND groups in order to provide a commander with employable insights.

Herein lies the problem with This Little Orange Book. RJG is so intent on ring-fencing social sciences that he can not see that no science or discipline can usually function in isolation. He is so fixated on HTS in Iraq and Afghanistan that he forgets that social sciences are subject to (potential) abuse across society every day: as I remarked at Massey after reading the first half of this book, it would be interesting to compare the outputs of the schools of marketing, politics and anthropology at Massey and see whether they are more alike than different.

RJG states again and again that the deployment of HTS to support military operations breaches various understood ‘contracts’ in that social science should do no harm. He totally misses the point that, regardless of how or why these wars started, HTS might actually be doing more good than harm in adding elements of precision, if not perfection, to campaigns where blunt force may be one of the few viable options.

It is not until the Chapter Five that the readers finds the real reasons for this. RJG is making a standing on moral principle – he’s up on a political soapbox to attack the American Empire which he sees as an evil bent on taking over the world. If the evilly bad American Empire was not involved in its evil wars in the Middle East , RJG would be quite happy for social sciences to feed the same predictive machine he denounced in Chapter Four – which would of course only be used for good.

It’s ironic that an ardent proponent of social science is intent upon suborning these tools that focus upon ‘the people’ to the same technological philosophy that drove the platform focussed Cold War. Conceptually this evolved into the Powell doctrine that built upon the false lessons of the 1991 Gulf War and culminated in the ‘shock and awe’ campaigns that failed to produce the goods in Kosovo, Serbia or Iraq. RJG’s campaigns against HTS has driven the Government to seek more technical solutions towards understanding the contemporary environment and to steer away from the blindingly obvious truth.

That truth is that it’s all about people and that includes people doing (at least some of) the collection and people applying judgement to that information, raw and processed, to develop useful (timely, relevant) information. An example is the enhanced Video Text & Audio Processing (eViTAP) tool that was successfully trialed on CWID in 2007. Evitap is a very sharp tool that processes video, audio and digital files for predetermined cues that have been identified (by a person) as potential indicators of an impending incident. When those cues are identified, a person is notified in order to make a decision on actions that may or may not be taken.

Where is all goes wrong is that we have become so fixated on the technology providing the answers that we have stopped teaching people to think critically, to apply professional judgement, make a decision and run with it. By using This Little Orange Book as a soapbox for a raving rant (or ranting rave) instead of coherent consideration of the issues, RJG has actually scored more points for the technocrats and undermined his beloved social science…

More snakes than ladders

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I started to draft this post on Saturday night, thinking to comment on the ups and down of life…eight hours later, an RNZAF Iroquois had crashed on its way to Anzac commemorations in Wellington, and this morning we heard that a young soldier had been killed outside Linton Army Base in the Manawatu so…more downs that ups at the moment…

The second-guessing of yesterdays Iroquois crash has already started…people just need to STFU until the inquiry is done and released…there’ll be no whitewash and the truth will out…in the meantime, so-called experts show feel for the families and show some respect…

The picture is of a cool playground version of Snakes and Ladders, clicking on it takes you to the GoogleMap of how to find it…found the picture on Doing New Zealand…

Because of the downs, it’s just snippets today…

You think?

Wired has a brief item wondering if US pilots will fire on Israeli strike aircraft crossing no-fly zones in Iraq to attack Iranian nuclear facilities…it is really in question? I think that any qualms about engaging targets disappeared on the morning of September 11, 2001, when US pilots had to confront the spectre of engaging hijacked airliners. If Israeli still doesn’t get the message, it may find that big brother carries a very big and nasty stick…and in some ways, a good punch in the nose from the US may be the best way to drag Israel out of its Masada mentality into the 21st Century…

Oh, no!

Yeah, St Michael of Yon again…Wired reports that “Smears Turn Milbloggers on their Frontline Hero“. Actually, Yon is a hero to few but the most blinkered of his followers, the hardliner conspracy theorists who would still follow him if he reported that GENs McCrystal and Menard are actually alien lizards planning to take over the world.  Guys like Herschel Smith who may soon be having second thoughts after his latest outburst…

From what I have heard, Canadian BG Menard fired more than 1 round. The high-profile person in his presence was the Canadian 4 star general. This is a stupid investigation, however. Worst kept secret at TF K is BG Menard’s adulterous affairs with female soldiers at KAF under his command. This is a distracted and selfish commander. He should not be leading troops who are sacrificing everything.

…and even his Facebook fans are now starting to kickback (I wonder how many more will have their ability to comment blocked?)…

Michael… This is not reporting. This is rumor proliferation akin to a TMZ. Come on, man. You’re better than that.

So this reaches us third hand. You’re accusing the man of serious crimes. You’d better have some evidence.

Rumors of rumors of rumors. Mike, you are above this.

Michael. Seems like you take this too far.

Third stool down rumors mean nothing to me!! Just makes you look even worse..why don’t you just stick to reporting about the troops and leave the brass alone.

I agree with Carol. This is the rumour profligation, bordering on tabloid rumour mill, versus professional journalism. It makes a reader wonder if this is bitterness from losing embed privileges, or the inability to report on news because of the lack of access. I wonder if Canadian attorneys are monitoring for possible slander?

Regarding that last comment, I think it would be funny as all hell if the targeted generals play Yon at his own game and actually do start a campaign against him – probably starting with Facebook and any other services and ISPs that host his libel…as an independent, I’m not sure how far journalistic privilege will protect him, if at all…

On target

Smart guy that GEN Mattis…

Mattis is an evangelist for risk with two core principles. The first is that intellectual risk-taking will save the military bureaucracy from itself. Only by rewarding nonconformist innovators will the services develop solutions that match the threats conceived by an enemy that always adapts. The second is that technology cannot eliminate, and sometimes can’t even reduce, risk. Mattis warns about the limitations of sophisticated weapons and communications. They can be seductive, luring military planners into forgetting war’s unpredictable and risky nature, leaving troops vulnerable.

I couldn’t agree more. I’d heard a few ripples in the pond that the US military (or elements of it) might be reverting back to the old Fulda Gap zero defects way of thinking, what you might call i-don’t-want-to-get-into-trouble-itis rather than making judgement calls. Ben Shaw’s comments on Herschel Smith’s Yon post at the end of last week are worth reading regardless of the original post. Ben raises a number of issues regarding this – I’ve since contacted him direct and it sounds pretty dire in some units. It’s unknown yet whether contributing factors could be ‘winning the war in Iraq’ or maybe a lowering of standards to meet deployment outputs. More to follow on this…

There is also still a strong school of thought in the US DoD that still sees this whole COIN, ‘little war’ thing as an aberration, a side step or even a step backwards from ‘real war’. This especially seems to be driven from senior echelons of the USAF (except for the A-10 drivers) and USN, with a following in those branches like Armour and Arty that perceive that they have taken a back seat to the SF and infantry in Iraq and Afghanistan. For these types, technology rules in the sterile structured environments of a Tom Clancy story – wouldn’t be surprised if some sleep with The Bear and The Dragon under their pillows…dreaming of push-button wars…

In the end it’s all about risk-taking AND judgement – and teaching and practising it before ever getting close to the start line. Of course that would mean that DS might have to part with their trusty whites and actually think…

Wow! Way cool…

On Curzon

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I started Leonard Mosley’s Curzon in January and only finished it early this morning. It’s not a big book, only some 300 or so pages, but it is a very good book and I have been savouring it as one might a fine wine or one of our butterscotch puddings. Even the paper in was printed on in 1960 is of a quality far removed from the recycled egg-crate material used in publishing today.

I found Curzon an interesting read, more so against the current backdrop of more former colonies descending back into anarchy and chaos. As untrendy or politically palatable that colonialism may be perceived today, there is a certain inescapable logic in his belief that “… that Englishmen, let alone Scotsmen, Welsh, Indians and other lesser breeds, had [not] earned the right to equality with those who had spent their lives and their brains in learning to rule them…” as I commented in January. Funnily enough, as  speak, it is just being announced on Breakfast that New Zealand is signing up to the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples…

Curzon covers a period of British history, the early 20s, that is not well-known nor particularly well covered in popular media. Whether Curzon himself would have been a better Prime Minister than Baldwin, Law or Lloyd-George whom he despised, is debatable but his biography offers a fascinating insight into some of the other key players and events of this time. Mosley is scathing about the (lack of) ability of A.J. Balfour, of Balfour Declaration notoriety “…for rarely in the history of British statesmanship can there have been a man who cared less about the eventual results of the aims and objects of the policies he espoused…” So very right as we still reap the results of Balfour’s ambivalence in the Middle East…

I see in the search results in the blog stats page that someone today was searching for “…curzon by leonard mosley…“. If that person revisits this blog, I’d love to learn more of their interest in Curzon…

Afghanistan’s new owners?

In the inbox last night was an update from Sicuro Group covering Iran’s call for NATO and ISAF to withdraw from Afghanistan in favour of a regionally based force. Normally I take articles from this source with a pinch of salt, more because their ‘assessment’ is usually a statement of the blindingly obvious stated with the pretension of original thought. But I thought that this call from Iran was interesting…

The Iranian president has called on the US to withdraw its troops from the Gulf region and Afghanistan.

“The region has no need for alien troops and they should return home and let the regional states take care of their own affairs,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech marking the country’s annual Army Day on Sunday.

“They must leave the region and this is not a request but an order and the will of the regional nations,” he said.

The president said the deployment of US and NATO troops in Iraq and Afghanistan under the pretext of fighting terrorism had not only failed but also increased insecurity in both countries.

Assessment : The US–NATO campaign in Afghanistan receives brickbats and laurels at the same time. While some countries are opposed to the US withdrawal beginning next year, Iran mounts attacks on the US, urging it to withdraw immediately from Afghanistan and the Gulf region. Turkey also threatens to disassociate with NATO forces if more civilian casualties occur in military offensives.

Maybe Iran is doing a France and looking for a colony in which to test its new nukes…? Could be a win-win situation for everyone…

Three strikes…

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War journalist and active blogger, Michael Yon, has been disembedded from US forces in Afghanistan. As the saying goes, what goes around, comes around…while Yon offers a valuable hearts and minds service to families of deployed service people, his conduct as a precious prima donna with a predilection for shooting from the lip has obviously not made him any friends in GEN McCrystal’s headquarters.

The saga unraveled on Facebook (the dates may be a little out owing to the dodgy datestamps that Facebook applies to posts):

10 April. Got word from military today. Am being disembedded as of 30 April. No idea why. Not a big deal. Not going to fight it this time. Will cover Battle for Kandahar from outside the wire from the Afghan perspective. (Still some dispatches in the pipeline.)

Lunch with Afghans was not so good today. Just bread, rice and taters. The beans usually are good but they were out. Insofar as being disembedded, it’s been said that I’ve spent more time with the military at war than anyone in U.S. history. I do not know that this is true but it sounds good. It’s been a long road that I’ve been lucky to survive. Am looking forward to more work outside the wire.

11 April. Have sent a message to Public Affairs:

Response from military re embed cancellation just arrived. Important to consider that I invested heavily in time/expense to stay with 5/2 SBCT to the end. I came at invitation of 5/2 SBCT and they understood that I was coming for a long embed. Having done this work more than anyone during at least the last two wars, I strongly believe that this decision had to be blessed by a General officer. Will say it clearly: I do not trust General McChrystal or his PAO staff to honestly report to the American public.

I must leave Afghanistan to get a visa and will come back alone. Important to bear in mind that though I am best known for my work with troops, have spent a great deal of time outside the wire. Have written far less about that time, but it has informed my writing and the record is clear that I have called the trajectory of Iraq and Afghanistan as well or better than anyone, and typically far ahead of the pack. This comes from hard work and constant study of the people involved. (Not studying what they say, but what they do and who they are.)Operating with combat troops is very, very dangerous. It is in fact a relief to me (if unfortunate for readers) to get the boot; my chances of emerging from the war with all my arms, legs, eyes and life are probably 5x higher when going alone. There is a journalistic-swagger to going alone which is perpetuated by those who refuse or mostly refuse to go into combat. Reality is that danger and discomfort typically are far higher with combat troops. I know the military side very well. Contacts are vast and varied. Going alone will hardly diminish my access to intelligence, opinions, and operations. I just won’t be getting shot at or picking up arms and legs after a bomb.

So this is Adios to combat with the military, and Hello to streets of Afghanistan and elsewhere, and to halls of influence in power centers around the world where the decisions are made.

This email just in from Public Affairs:

First, thanks for all the great work you’ve done since arriving in February. I hope the three months you’ve spent here was what you hoped for and that you’ve gotten all the support you’ve needed.  Unfortunately, we have an extremely long wait list of other professional journalists (81!) that we need to give an opportunity. We’d love for you to come back at some point and I wish you the best in your remaining time here and safe travels in the future.

12 April. Got messages today from high level that military reversed decision on my embed and can stay. Unfortunately I have already made definitive moves to leave. To change now would be expensive and would likely upset others. This work is expensive in every way. Not smart to change directions so quickly. Too late. Also had to kindly decline to go back with British. Carpet has been pulled out from my feet for final time.

13 April. Email just sent to General McChrystal’s Media Man:

Rear Adm. Smith,
I’m a writer embedded with U.S. Forces in RC-South. RC-South PAO recently apprised me that the embed was ended. This happened precipitously and for dubious cause. Cited cause: embed overcrowding. I rarely see journalists. Those journalists I see have been doing drive-by reporting. Having embedded before, the PAO pattern is familiar and predictable.
Am with 5/2 SBCT. It was agreed, as prerequisite of my coming back with infantry, that I would stay with 5/2 to RIP. As a matter of business, these moves are expensive and time consuming. When the military fails to uphold its side, persistent problems are created from air.
After extracting from the field to KAF after PAO notification, was told by 5/2 Commander that I am welcome to stay. I am considering this offer but need assurance by your office that PAOs will go through you before disembedding me.
And so it’s down to you, Sir.
Shall I stay or shall I go?
Very Respectfully,

Michael Yon

15 April. Response came in from Rear Admiral Smith (General McChrystal’s Media Man): Michael, I understand both the IJC and HQ ISAF PA shops are aware and working to resolve. They should be back to you shortly. ATB, GjS

McChrystal’s crew has spoken: Embed is ended. This comes from McChrystal’s own spokesman (through one CPT Jane Campbell USN cc RADM Greg Smith and COL Wayne Shanks USA). This lends confirmation to ideas that the disembed came from McChrystal’s crew. (If not before, 100% now.) McChrystal cannot be trusted to tell the truth about this war. Packing my bags.

The disembed from McChrytal’s top staff (meaning from McChrystal himself) is a very bad sign. Sends chills that McChrystal himself thinks we are losing the war. McChrystal has a history of covering up. This causes concern that McChrystal might be misleading SecDef and President. Are they getting the facts?

Bottom line? Good riddance… Michael Yon needs to go away for a while, get a life and consider his relationship with the hand that feeds him. Maybe all the adulation from his fans has gone to his head and he actually has begun to believe that he is some kind of water-walking super-journo but he’s had his three strikes and then some with his public attacks on US allies in Afghanistan like Canada and Spain, his recent attacks on President Karzai (he is probably right but there are limits to what am embed can write), and his accusations of dishonesty in the highest echelons of GEN McCrystal’s keadquarters. While I don’t agree with the current Cursed Earth strategy in Afghanistan, it is a big leap from there to the dishonesty and corruption claimed by Yon.

Perhaps when Michael Yon grows up a little, he may realise that the easiest way to deal with a thorn in one’s side is to rip it out and discard it. All the good Michael Yon has done promoting the human side of this war, has been undone by his inability to bite his tongue and see a bigger picture and a world that does not revolve around him. In time, I hope he does come back, but wiser and stronger…

FOB Frontenac, Afghanistan. Under an early morning sky, a red glow is cast from the lights on an Air Force water drilling rig. (c) Michael Yon 28 March 2010

Edit: Michael Yon has pointed that my original Tui on his disembedment gave the impression that he had stated “I am a victim” which he had not so I have amended the ‘billboard’ accordingly.

The New War #5 the new intelligences

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“…the game of chess, even three-dimensional chess, is simplicity itself compared to a political game using pieces that can change their minds independently of other pieces…” ~ Mr Spock, Garth of Izar, Pocket Books, 2003.

It being the twins’ birthday the weekend just gone, I was offline most of the weekend and it was only last night that I  saw a Stuff report of the contact involving Kiwi personnel in Afghanistan on Saturday “…a group using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a combined New Zealand and US patrol from the New Zealand provincial reconstruction team in the northeast of Bamiyan province…the patrol returned fire, driving the insurgents off after a 15-20 minute engagement…”

There’s not much information in the Stuff article but with the recent changeover of Operation CRIB (the NZ PRT) contingents this might be simple cases of the local likely lads testing the mettle of the newest kids on the block – although ‘newest’ may be a bit of the stretch as some of these troops will be on their third or maybe even fourth deployment in this theatre…chatting with a colleague yesterday, the conversation turned to ‘what is an insurgent?‘ and ‘who says so?‘.

Obviously a lot of information on this contact has not been released but one wonders what confirmation there has been that the instigators of this attack were actually insurgents i.e. activists seeking to render political change through acts of violence. Or were they were something else? Perhaps…

a couple of lads out to impress some local lasses with their courage and prowess…?

or

some bored locals seeking to spice up a small ISAF patrol because they could…?

or

an attempt at ‘accidental insurgency’ to meet local quotas for attacks on the ‘infidel invaders’…?

As it appears in the Collateral Murder story released by Wikileaks last week, if you go out in the badlands looking for insurgents, then ‘insurgents’ are what you find, often with significant second order effects at both strategic and tactical levels. In all fairness, those who engaged the combined NZ/US patrol on Saturday may very well have been insurgents of some sort, possibly even more focused than accidental…but as attacks go in this theatre, it was in “…good country for ambushes…, “‘…driven off...” in “…15-10 minutes…” and was all over before air support arrived on the scene.

In places like Afghanistan, carrying an AK or an RPG does not necessarily an insurgent make, not does arcing up in the general direction of an ISAF patrol. So if the shooters have been confirmed as insurgents, which would be a an outstanding intel flash to bang noting the time between the attack and the NZDF media release, well and good…if not yet proven, then perhaps some less martial language would be more appropriate.

As David Kilcullen proposes in The Accidental Guerrilla and is further discussed in The New War #4 – Normalcy, the birth of an insurgent is a direct reaction to actions of host nation or foreign interventions…we need to understand not just the process of ‘accidentalisation’ but the local nuances and catalysts that often make incidents of  ‘accidentalism’ so distinct and different between different areas and groups.

I was interested to read in Wired that the UK is deploying its Defence Cultural Specialist Unit (DCSU) to Helmand Province. This may be an example of learning from the experiences of others, specifically the US Army’s Human Terrain Systems teams that have been operating for some years now. I was intrigued by the last paragraph in the Wired article “…the US Human Terrain System has seen its fair share of controversy. It will be worth watching this initiative as well to see if it provokes backlash among British social scientists…”

I did some research into the HTS teams after mention of them appeared in one of the Interbella briefs. From what I saw then, I rated the HTS as a damn fine idea that’s time had definitely come; more so when it appeared to be a logical  consequence of Michael Scheiern’s platform- to individual-based transition model.

So, I was quite surprised to find the degree of active resistance within the anthropological community, or certainly a very vocal element within it, to the employment of HTS teams in operational theatres like Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve yet to find a copy of Roberto Gonzalez’ Human Science and Human Terrain [note: I reviewed it later]. Gonzalez is reportedly critical of the US Army’s adoption of anthropological techniques to aid in the understanding and interpreting of contemporary operating environments. In all the reviews and articles I have read in the last day or so that support Gonzalez, I can find few threads of logic; instead I get a very real feeling of rampant prima-donnaism amongst what is really quite a small and relatively insignificant strand in the broader carpet of science. Indicative of this content are Fighting militarization of anthropology, The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems, and The Dangerous Militarisation of Anthropology.

Another finding of the New Zealand COIN doctrine review was that intelligence in the complex environment will need to transformed to closer resemble police-style criminal intelligence (CRIMINT) focussed on a. individuals and b. providing fast and accurate response to an initiated action. This would require a clear shift, transformation even, from traditional military intelligence that is…

…focussed on conventional platforms and groupings, and

…driven largely by predictive philosophies.

Science and warfare have always gone together in an alliance that is both logical and inevitable. Eight years into the war on terror, there seems no reason why the CRIMINT finding does not stand true. We should also accept that sciences like anthropology offer us useful tools to assist with the uncertainty and complexity of the contemporary environment.

The moral objections of Manhattan Project scientists are somewhat strained when these same scientists were remarkably silent on such topics as the firebombing of German and Japanese cities, actions which causing far more civilian deaths than the atomic bombs ever did. The ‘do no harm‘ stance of Gonzalez and his fellow bleating liberal anthropologist cronies is sickening in both its naiveté and its preciousness. If this group really cared about those most likely to be harmed through misuse of social sciences, then surely they embrace the HTS concept as a practical and employable means of promoting greater precision of both information and effects in current theatres of operation?

Tied into the need to transform towards individually-focussed CRIMINT, was a need to better integrate operational analysis (OA) techniques into contemporary intelligence systems. These techniques would enhance and evolve pattern analysis processes to better grapple with the greater amounts of information in far greater detail than conventional intelligence systems were ever designed to manage. Unfortunately this finding seemed to die a death when the term ANALINT developed a perverse life all its own, alienating a proportion of the OA community.

In the last two decades, we have spent too long declaring war (lower case) on every real or imagined threat to western society that we have become somewhat blase and have forgotten what actual War really is. While the generation that sacrificed 5000 of its members in Afghanistan and Iraq may lead the way in remembering what War really is, it’s influence has yet to be felt…War is not nice, War is not safe…War is not a game…War is not something where we can artificially pick and choose based on what is convenient or suits at the time…

To artificially deny the utility of science like anthropology in winning the Wars we are in, to discard tools that save lives on BOTH sides, to dignify self-centred egotists like Gonzales is an insult to every one of those 5000…

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/middle-east/3555243/US-military-can-t-find-its-copy-of-Iraq-killing-video

A busy chap

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…that’s how I’d describe Curzon @ Coming Anarchy this week…in fact, I wonder if he was late getting his spring break leave app in and the other members of the team have bailed on him for a few weeks…? In Anyone Care For  A Burger?, he flags the decreasing public confidence and interest in global warming after a number of Climategate incidents that have called into question the science and method behind so much of the global warming literature and ‘studies’. I guess that ‘Be First With The Truth’ applies as much in the scientific community as it does elsewhere…

I saw the same STRATFOR article on Mexico as a failed state that Curzon comments in STRATFOR GOES CLINTONIAN ON MEXICO and had intended to make similar comments today (great minds…?). Like democracy and normalcy, failure is also in the eye of the beholder and totally subject to local conditions, expectations and cultures. One can actually sympathise with and even appreciate the Mexican Government’s pragmatic approach to a problem totally beyond its capacity to oppose, and one in which it is really on a way station between source and market. If the US is really that committed to the w(W)ar on drugs, then maybe it needs to look at turning off the tap at its end i.e. kill the market and thus the demand. Then the domestic and international distribution networks lose their raison d’etre – drugs is a business like any other and when the profits drop, the business dies…

If the US really is waging a War on drugs, then maybe someone in the Pentagon needs to reread Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger for some tips on military means to stifle the flow of drugs. If we have little compunction about Predator and Reaper raids into various Middle East nations with varying levels of apparently acceptable collateral damage, then slipping a few extra lines into the ATO might give the cartels some food for thought…

And on the topic of ‘Truth’…

I stumbled across a link to the official report into the ‘accidental’ deaths of two Reuters reporters and a number of civilians in the Apache gunship attack discussed in Be First With The Truth the other day…it is an interesting read but one which ultimately reeks of whitewash. It notes that “…details that are readily apparent when viewed on a large video monitor are not necessarily apparent to the Apache pilots during a  live-fire engagement.  First of all, the pilots are viewing the scene on a much smaller screen…Secondly, a pilot’s primary concern is with flying his helicopter and the safety of his aircraft. Third, the pilots are continuously tracking the movements of friendly forces in order to prevent fratricide. Fourth, since Bravo Company had been in continuous contact since dawn, the pilots were looking primarily for armed insurgents. Lastly, there was no information leading anyone to believe or even suspect that non-combatants were in the area…” Taking each of those points in sequence…

Yes, the pilots were viewing the sensor imagery on a much smaller monitor in the Apache cockpit…but…the report also states that they were able to identify at least two other members of the group armed with AKMs and a RPG – detail that is not that discernible or obvious when the footage is viewed on a much larger monitor. Nitpicking but how does one discern between a AK-47 and AKM through graining gun camera footage?

Correct, a pilot’s primary concern is with flying his helicopter – that’s why the Apache and most other helicopter gunships since the damn things were invented carry a personality known as a gunner, or copilot/gunner (CPG), whose primary tasks is to manage the sensors, targeting and weapon systems.

OK, so the Apache crew is continuously tracking the movements of friendly forces. So what? That’s has nothing to do with the manner in which this incident played out other than in the avoid of fratricide which never seems to have been an issue here.

If the Apache crew was primarily looking for armed insurgents, then maybe they were only seeing what they expected and/or wanted to see – not what actually was there.

Why, after four years of fighting insurgency in Iraq would anyone not suspect let alone EXPECT the presence of non-combatants e.g. civilians, media, NGOs, etc in a large urban area. According to Chief of Operations at the time, MAJGEN Jim Molan in Running The War in Iraq, even during the final battle for Fallujah in 2005, US forces went out of their way to confirm the combatancy of targets before engaging them.

I’m sorry but this report reads as one where the objective from the start was clearly to butt-cover the Apache crew and not, in fact anything but, be first with the truth…

What was it all for?

Neptunus Lex provokes thought in Losing It…maybe America should just batten down and let the world go to hell in the proverbial hand-basket…? Somewhere down the track we need to objectively look at Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically the conduct of the wars there and LEARN for the next round – has anything really been achieved with these two long drawn-out campaigns or should the approach have more simplistically been “…just as soon as the invasion was done, we should have killed Hussein (and his sons), hand the reins over to the next guy, then said ‘don’t make us come back’….“?

Zombies Rule

I keep forgetting to post this link to a great show that Dean @ Travels with Shiloh put me onto…We’re Alive…that he has been following and that I have been downloading as my next big listen once I get through A Just Determination in a week or so…there’s at least twelve chapters to We’re Alive, each in three parts @20-30Mb, so you can only imagine fun I am having getting the parts – over the last fortnight I have so far managed to squeeze the first six parts through the dial-up straw…

So do Zulus…

Peter @ The Strategist has a top review of Washing of the Spears, one of the best tellings of the Anglo-Zulu Wars of the late 19th Century that is well worth reading. One of the points that comes out in the comments regards the value of popular movies on historical events – regardless of the accuracy or even quality of the movie, it can often serve a useful secondary purpose in encouraging viewers to find out more about the back story. One example of this would be the 1969 movie Mosquito Squadron, a blatant rip-off of 633 Squadron (without even a rousing theme track), and not a good movie at all but one which has inspired many people, myself included to find out more about the real exploits of the Kiwi Mosquito squadrons in WW2 that pulled off precision strikes like the Amiens prison raid…

 

Target Amiens Prison (c) Robert Taylor

…and here’s a list of links to the first six parts of Peter’s novel, The Doomsday Machine…

“Can’t handle half a year without a Whopper?”

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Today’s title is drawn from a comment in a Michael Yon Facebook item over the weekend:

Fast Food Purge in Afghanistan: It’s the end of the war as some people know it. In reality, there will be lots of places still open. There is a big pizza sit-down at KAF (the pizza is okay, too), and TGI Fridays and so forth. The shutdowns are limited. Most bases actually don’t have coffee shops, Pizza Huts and so forth. Only the mega-bases have such places.

It linked to this National Post article Tim Hortons escapes U.S. fast-food purge in Afghanistan. I have fond memories of the Tim Hortons on the Kingston waterfront. It was about the halfway point on our daily trek from our hotel to Fort Frontenac during the 2006 CLAW and a logical spot to stop off for our first real coffee each day.

I’m not sure if this ‘purge’ is part of the fallout from the Tarnak Bridge debacle where Michael Yon challenged the emphasis placed on maintaining the comforts of home on the FOB at Kandahar and, by implication, other mega-FOBs in Afghanistan; or whether GEN McCrystal, who maintains an austere lifestyle in Kabul, already intended to re-introduce a greater element of austerity into the mega-FOBs.

This move is long overdue. As McCrystal’s Command Sergeant Major states “…this is a war zone — not an amusement park…” By allowing some troops more of the comforts of home, typically those groups known endearingly as REMFs, pogues or fobbits, than other troops, typically those that go out to the sharp end, ISAF has introduced a major divisive element into its force. No matter how it is spun, it is simple human nature that such a disproportionate gap in the lifestyles of various groups of deployed soldiers will adversely affect morale and cohesion.

The article also makes a couple of other good points regarding the logistic effort needed to support these comforts, In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Afghanistan isn’t well-served by shipping lines or railways – most stuff that comes in, comes in by air “…what it comes down to is focus, and to using the resources we have in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Supplying non-essential luxuries to big bases like Bagram and Kandahar makes it harder to get essential items to combat outposts and forward operating bases, where troops who are in the fight each day need to be resupplied with ammunition, food and water…”

I understand that the USAF faces similar issues with its US-based UAV operators who deploy virtually to the sharp end every day but return to the mundane issues and distractions of the real world at the end of each shift. Some operators were experiencing difficulty reconciling their work life where lives are often dependent on the UAVs to the stark contrast of domestic life each evening. It is now proposed that operators will deploy on-base for a ‘deployment’ period of some weeks in order to be able to better focus upon supporting the deployed forces.

The time for deployed troops to re-acquaint themselves with the niceties of the real world is when they go on leave out of theatre. Regardless of the length of deployment, trying to recreate these niceties in-theatre, unless at a secure leave centre, is just a recipe for disaster. That BK, Starbucks et al were ever allowed to establish themselves in the FOBs is indicative of the prevalent attitude in many sectors that Afghanistan is a war in lower case only. William Tecumseh Sherman had some thoughts on what war is…

You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing!

I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers …

Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all Hell!

Similarly, that Greatest Generation that defeated the Axis in World War 2 came to do a job, get it done and then go home again. They knew what they were there (wherever ‘there’ may have been) to do, and that to get home again, they had to do the job. Charles Upham commented once, when asked why he hated the Germans so much, that he just wanted to go back to his farm. The Germans stood between him and going back  to his farm. As he saw it, the sooner they ran out of Germans, the sooner he could go back to his farm. It’s tough to maintain that kind of commitment when the war has too many comforts…

Peace in our time?

Curzon @ Coming Anarchy comments on the results of the Iraqi elections. I suppose like many others, I daren’t hope that Iraq might actually pull this one off and stay the course it appears to be on. It would at least be some return on the investment in blood…

“Militias” – racist scum with wacky ideas

Read more at The Strategist – I agree with Peter on these nutjobs and the suggestion that they be harnessed as an instrument of national power…the instrument would probably be a banjo…I’m not so sure that I totally agree re citizen militia as the distinction between these and run of the mill nutjob militia is possibly a little fine. There is a mega-gap between citizen militia, a concept that probably did its dash with the gentlemen of Walmington-on-Sea, and the citizen armies that dealt to the Axis…