82nd Airborne Casualties Prove Hagel Wrong

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a war critic and collaborator with Democrats on every effort to undermine President Bush’s executive war powers, returned this weekend from his fifth trip to Iraq. What wisdom has Senator Hagel gleaned from these trips? The following is from his opinion column in Sunday’s Washington Post:

We must start by understanding what's really happening in Iraq. According to the National Intelligence Estimate released in February, the conflict has become a "self-sustaining inter-sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis" and also includes "extensive Shia-on-Shia violence." This means that Iraq is being consumed by sectarian warfare, much of it driven by Shiite or Sunni militias -- not al-Qaeda terrorists. Yes, there are admirers of Osama bin Laden in the country, including a full-blown al-Qaeda branch. But terrorists are not the core problem; Sunni-Shiite violence is.... American occupation cannot stop a civil war in Iraq. Our military, superb as it is, can only do so much.

Senator Hagel’s assessment that Iraq is a “civil war” not driven by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups is identical to the Democratic talking points endlessly spouted by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, despite assurances from several generals on the ground in Iraq who insist that Iraq is not in a state of civil war. For a Senator with access to intelligence estimates to argue that terrorists are not the core problem in Iraq is utterly disingenuous. Al-Qaeda itself would soon demonstrate the fallacy of Senator Hagel’s opinion.

Today’s headline AP article “Al Qaeda-Linked Sunnis Claim Bombing” opened with this sentence:

An al Qaeda-linked group posted a Web statement today claiming responsibility for a suicide truck bombing that killed nine U.S. paratroopers and wounded 20 in the worst attack on American ground forces in Iraq in more than a year.

The fallen U.S. soldiers, all members of the Army 82nd Airborne Division, would certainly take issue with Hagel’s ill-informed dismissal of al Qaeda as a minor annoyance in Iraq, if they had not been killed by al Qaeda. This bombing illustrated a couple of important truths: first, Congressional “fact finding” trips never produce any facts, as they are carefully scripted and Congressmen take them to increase their own political stature rather than seeking any real understanding of core issues; second, like Iran’s constant destabilizing war on America via Iraq, al Qaeda is part of a massive effort by outside forces to foment turmoil and the spectre of Iraqi civil war. This is an organized propaganda campaign that Congressmen, with shallow understanding of the intelligence they are supposed to review, swallow hook, line, and sinker.

It is unfathomable that Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, could have come away from five trips to Iraq with the opinion that neighboring nations and terrorist networks are not the core problem in Iraq. Hagel fails to grasp the concept that Iran and al Qaeda, like China in Vietnam, are directly impacting the course of the war and America’s resolve to endure setbacks and casualties. Removing the weaponry, funding, and manpower injected into Iraq like a virus by Iran, Syria, and al Qaeda would afford Iraqis an opportunity to resolve cultural issues between Sunni and Shia in an environment without car bombs, IEDs, and snipers. It is the terrorists and outside interlopers that desperately want to prevent Iraqis from living together under an elected government. Stem the flow of destabilizing elements into Iraq, and the Iraqis will justify our faith in their commitment to freedom.

Forgetting the Unforgettable: Pills May Soon Erase Traumatic Memories

The erasing of memories, a staple of science fiction books and films, has become reality, and soon it may also become readily available in pill or capsule form for patients treated by physicians or psychiatrists. ABC reporter Russell Goldman’s story, “Erasing the Pain of the Past” detailed the development of drugs that target memories of traumatic events and slowly eliminate them. Using an Iraqi War veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a case study, the report describes how these memory erasing drugs could be utilized to target the military veteran’s memories of frequent mortar attacks and over time remove them from his long term memory.

According to researchers, available knowledge of how the brain stores memories is fairly limited, but studies have revealed an important breakthrough:

But in their early efforts to understand the way in which short-term memories become long-term memories, researchers have discovered that certain drugs can interrupt that process. Those same drugs, they believe, can also be applied not just in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event — like a mortar attack, rape or car accident — but years later, when an individual is still haunted by memories of event.

The science involved in these studies is fascinating. The research is being conducted at a prominent hospital, Massachusetts General, by Dr. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pitman’s work, as reported in ABC’s story, identified that adrenaline plays a critical role in imprinting memories into our minds:

"There is a period of time after you first learn something before it's retained," Pitman explained. "This is called consolidation."

Some research has shown that stress hormones, particularly adrenaline, make that process faster and more intense.

"That's why you remember what you were doing the morning of Sept. 11, better than August 11," he said.

Some scientists believe that post-traumatic stress disorder is the result of too much adrenaline entering the brain at the moment the memory of a traumatic event is being consolidated, or stored, for the first time.

But "the real hot topic," Pitman said, is not consolidation but reconsolidation, the process by which an old memory is recalled and the same "window of opportunity" to alter it with drugs is opened for a second time.

Since the traumatic memory was imprinted due to a chemical influence (adrenaline), in theory during the moment that memory is being accessed or experienced by the patient, the memory itself can be chemically influenced again. The drugs under development would work to reverse the effects of adrenaline in the storage of that particular traumatic memory, lessening its physical and psychological effects on the body and mind and making it gradually more difficult to access the memory at all. The discovery of adrenaline’s role in traumatic memory retention and PTSD involved patients brought to the hospital emergency room after suffering automobile accidents. To calm the accident victims, doctors prescribed the drug propranolol to some and a placebo to others.

Propranolol has become a popular “social phobia” medication used by performers, politicians, and others whose work demands public speaking appearances that cause anxiety and nervousness. That anxiety manifests itself in releases of adrenaline, which produces rapid heart rate, shaking, and embarrassing voice cracking that all such performers dread. Propranolol was found to counteract the effects of adrenaline, and when researchers realized the link between adrenaline and traumatic memory, the idea to explore Propranolol treatment for PTSD symptoms was born.

Of course, as with any such potential medicinal breakthrough, ethical questions take center stage. Like cloning and other controversial research, the question arises, “Because we CAN do something, does that mean we SHOULD do it?” The President’s Council on Bioethics opposes all research focusing on memory alteration, but apparently the U.S. Army is at odds with the White House on this issue. According to ABC, the Army reportedly offered a monetary grant to help fund Dr. Pitman’s research involving treatment of Iraq War veterans for PTSD.

A question not raised in the ABC story is chemical “leaching” or “bleed over.” If the hormone adrenaline is what causes the mind to store traumatic memories along with the physical and psychological reactions associated with them in long term memory, is there a possibility that chemically altering one adrenaline induced memory could “bleed over” into another existing memory that also resulted from adrenaline release? For example, competitive athletes often experience “adrenaline rush” before, during, and immediately after a race, game, or performance. If such an athlete suffered an automobile accident on the way home after the game or event, the athlete’s memories of that day, the event as well as the accident, would be almost exclusively adrenaline imprinted memories. If this athlete were treated for accident-related PTSD later using Propranolol, would the drug differentiate between good adrenaline imprinted memories (the athletic competition) and negative traumatic memories imprinted on the same day and so closely linked? In the desire to remove the trauma of the accident, will the memory of achievement and competition also be removed?

Even the smallest of confrontations produces adrenaline release. The “fight or flight” response is well-documented and most adults retain vivid memories of schoolyard bullies, fights, sports achievements, and embarrassing situations. Certainly any life-threatening event induces adrenaline release. Law enforcement personnel, fire fighters, paramedics, military personnel, and civilian war survivors experience such moments frequently, and as a result PTSD is much more common among them than in the general population. Even intense training scenarios and tactical exercises will produce sufficient adrenaline to ensure long term memory of each and every such moment.

Removing some or all traumatic memories for such people would fundamentally alter who they are as well as their value as experienced professionals in critical public service fields. Whatever one thinks of Senator John McCain’s politics, it is worth considering what career he would be engaged in and what kind of man he would have become had memory erasing drug treatment been prescribed to him upon his return after 5 years of suffering in North Vietnamese POW camps. Few would suggest that President Kennedy would have been better off without the traumatic memory of his PT boat being destroyed by an enemy destroyer during WWII. He was injured in the incident and was later decorated for rescuing his surviving crewmembers.

A contrasting case to ponder might be Sulejman Talovic, the Salt Lake City youth who went on a shooting spree at a local mall. In a previous post I wrote at length about Talovic’s background as a Bosnian war refugee and genocide survivor, traumatized for five consecutive years by these events. In that post I compared Talovic’s history with battlefield experiences of a U.S. soldier who committed suicide, apparently due to PTSD, after his return home from the Iraq War. Would Talovic have gone on a shooting rampage had he been treated with memory altering medications? Likewise, would the U.S. soldier mentioned in that post have committed suicide had his traumatic war memories been suppressed or erased?

It is worth taking a moment to consider what memories you are storing, particularly those you can recall with little or no effort and that involve significant events in your life. The majority of such memories, whether traumatic or otherwise, likely involved a degree of adrenaline release. Childbirth certainly involves anxiety, nervousness, and intense physical exertion and adrenaline release for the mother, and anxiety and adrenaline release for the father as well. Childbirth is a life-altering event for everyone involved, and most people can recall with relative ease the event years later in great detail, presumably because the memories were adrenaline imprinted for long term memory storage. Who isn’t nervous and sustained by adrenaline on their wedding day? Is there a higher level of excitement induced adrenaline than that found in a child on Christmas morning?

Consequently, it is likely that most, if not all, of our long term memories, whether traumatic or happy, were chemically affected by adrenaline sufficiently to be stored in long term rather than short term memory. What if, while recollecting a traumatic event in order to have it altered and erased by medication, the mind wanders, as it often does, and recalls a different memory than the one targeted for erasure? If the drug therapy targets the memories in the moments they are being experienced, then the superimposition of a good memory or even another traumatic memory could, in theory, result in unintentional and permanent damage to or complete deletion of the wrong memory.

Clearly the research into memory alteration or erasure is still an emerging science, but the ethical questions involved with it are significant. What will be the medical standard for traumatic memory? As medical ethicist Felicia Cohn, consulted by ABC, wondered, “Who gets to decide what is horrific enough?” Cohn raised another important dilemma that anyone wanting to rid themselves of traumatic memories will face: unless the memories of everyone who has ever known the person are also erased, there will be, as the song bemoans, “always something there to remind me.” Cohn warns:

What are the effects of altering a particular person's memory but not changing the context the person is living in. We might erase a young girl's memory of a rape, but people around her will still know and inadvertently remind her.

Memory alteration drugs may not prove be the panacea hoped for by PTSD sufferers, or the ultimate government conspiracy tool depicted in science fiction stories and films, but perhaps they will, through successful and limited testing, serve to at least blunt some of the physical and psychological trauma characterized by PTSD sufficiently to help war veterans and others retain memories and lessons learned through experience, and regain control over their disrupted lives. If the release of adrenaline these sufferers experience each time they relive a traumatic memory can be suppressed, then the sufferer will be less likely to want the memory itself erased. If Dr. Pitman’s research leads down that path, rather than actual memory alteration or removal, it may prove invaluable to victims of a wide variety of traumas.

Washington Post "Arkinizes" the Army Again: Claims Army and FEMA Synonymous with Disaster

Washington Post National and Homeland Security columnist William Arkin, recently and appropriately condemned for claiming that U.S. military personnel in Iraq are mercenaries, has fired another salvo across the Army’s bow, with stray rounds directed at FEMA for good measure. Arkin’s scathing columns consistently contain sheer venomous criticism, declaring only disaster in every government and military enterprise, but never offer constructive suggestions for improvement. He has become one of the media’s primary Monday Morning Quarterbacks, whining about what the Army, or in this case the Army and FEMA, should have done differently, always after the fact when the results are obvious for everyone to observe.

Yesterday’s column, another attempt to depict the Army as incompetent, included what Arkin apparently viewed as the ultimate insult he could heap upon the Army: likening the Army to FEMA, the federal agency that was blamed by Louisiana’s inept leaders for their own failures to evacuate and assist storm victims. With the help of willing media who seized upon haphazard rescue efforts as somehow being President Bush’s fault, blame for all Katrina-related tragedies and failures was directed at FEMA, which continues to wear, unfairly, the labels of “gross neglect,” “incompetence,” “disaster,” and “bureaucratic tragedy,” to name only a few terms Arkin associated with FEMA. Army personnel should closely observe what Arkin wrote about FEMA, because he painted the Army with the same unfairly tainted brush, implying that whenever FEMA or the Army are involved, disaster is sure to follow.

Arkin refers to FEMA trailers and mobile homes that could have helped the homeless in Louisiana but were under-utilized which are now being sold at auction, and cites this as an example of FEMA’s incompetence. What Arkin conveniently omits, however, is that the trailers were available and in the process of shipping to New Orleans, but the New Orleans City Council, over Ray “chocolate city” Nagin’s objections, REFUSED to allow the trailers into areas FEMA had determined were suitable for their installation. The fact that Nagin, who did absolutely nothing to prepare his city for such a storm despite numerous FEMA and National Weather Service warnings, was literally pleading with his own city council and stubborn New Orleans residents who didn’t want trailers in their neighborhoods, is a clear refutation of Arkin’s condemnation of FEMA. Were the trailers a perfect solution? No, but what would have been? It is true that many of the trailers later developed maintenance problems due to excessive usage. The ideal solution would have been the city of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana utilizing school buses and other available resources days in advance to evacuate those at most risk. Instead, images of school buses submerged in Katrina floodwaters demonstrated where the real incompetence occurred: in the New Orleans city government and the Louisiana governor’s office.

For a true account of why the trailers, which FEMA spent $2.6 billion to acquire, turned into a fiasco, read NBC correspondent Ron Mott’s report from December 2005 titled “Empty Trailers, Reluctant Neighbors: FEMA has the mobile homes, but no one can agree where they should go.” As this report from a network that Arkin surely considers credible confirmed, “500 trailers are arriving every day, but they just sit there because no one wants them in his backyard.” Racial prejudice and fears of crime and traffic, all exhibited by suburban residents (not the Bush administration, despite Spike Lee’s film), kept the trailers out of New Orleans, not FEMA neglect.

It is unfortunate but not surprising that Arkin ignores the only actual valid comparison that can be made between FEMA and the Army: neither can deploy nor utilize its resources to benefit others without executive orders to do so. FEMA could not provide the mobile homes to those who needed them because the New Orleans City government refused to permit it. Likewise, the Army could not prepare for or deploy in Iraq in the manner it preferred because elected and appointed civilian executives chose otherwise. Arkin compares FEMA “incompetence” and lack of preparedness for future disasters with the Army’s alleged lack of preparedness for fighting wars in the Middle East, citing inadequate Arabic language training, and failure to understand Iraqi Army dynamics as reasons “the mess we are in.” According to Arkin:

But the Army, the "professionals," the military men with experience and doctrine and integrity, are not only supposed to have the backbone to speak up, but also the ability to see the right way.

Throughout the 1990's up until today, instead of preparing the institution - training and equipping - to fight in the Middle East and then specifically in Iraq, the Army's mind seems to have been elsewhere. . . .

As current Iraq commander Gen. David H. Petraeus said in his own confirmation hearings, "We took too long to develop the concepts and structures needed to build effective Iraqi Security Forces..."

The "we" here is the Army. These are Army decisions.

Arkin makes cursory reference to former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Ambassador Bremer as having made poor decisions, but he places most of the blame on the Army for not having “the backbone to speak up.” Unfortunately, merely speaking up rarely convinces civilian executive leadership to follow the advice given. This lesson is perhaps the only comparison that may be valid between Vietnam and the Iraq War. Military leaders, including Senator John McCain’s father, were well acquainted with and loudly advocated effective strategies but were routinely denied permission to wage a full war because civilian leadership was determined to fight a limited war while grappling with anti-war elements on the political front. There is wisdom in our constitutional division of military command authority, with an elected official as Commander in Chief, but there is also much opportunity for political goals to interfere with and ultimately prevent victory.

Military leaders during the Vietnam War, for example, viewed arms and supply shipments from Russia and China into North Vietnam as intolerable and warned that the war could not be won without stemming the flow from those nations. The civilian leadership in Washington feared that destroying weapons shipments would incite Russia and China into joining the war, and refused to permit any actions against the shipments. As a result, the North Vietnamese received a steady supply of advanced anti-aircraft systems and other important weapons which assured the successful air and land defenses of Hanoi and other major cities. Senator McCain was shot down by those advanced air defenses and suffered 5 years of beatings in POW camps because of that civilian leadership decision. Arkin seems to believe that the military needs to “speak up” and is responsible for not doing so, but clearly when the ultimate decision making power rests in the civilian authority, that is also where ultimate responsibility for the result should rest.

I wrote extensively in a previous post about military strategy decisions in Iraq made largely for political reasons by civilian leadership, specifically the Civilian Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Ambassador Bremer. Most of these decisions were not the preferred strategy of the Army. Apparently it is difficult for an anti-military journalist like Arkin to accept the idea that our military rarely is permitted to engage enemies on the terms and with the level of force our military recommends. The Army has one goal: victory, with whatever force is necessary to achieve it. Civilian leadership, elected or appointed usually possesses entirely separate political goals, with victory defined by very narrow political accomplishments.

As is evident in one of our major parties, among elected officials victory in Iraq is neither expected nor apparently even desired. No amount of “speaking up” by the Army will convince the current Democrats in Congress that this war can be won. They voted unanimously to approve General David Petraeus to take command of the war and days later were working to pass a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush’s troop surge that General Patraeus recommended and was selected specifically to implement. They are simply too heavily invested politically in making sure this war ends in failure while pinning that failure on President Bush and the Republican Party to listen to any “speaking up” from the Army.

While journalists like Arkin make factually incorrect comparisons between FEMA and the Army, ascribing disaster to both entities, it is important to remember that both are restricted to act only when ordered to do so by civilians. They are also similar in that both rely on elected officials to determine their budgets, and therefore their ability to improve equipment, train personnel, or expand duties. Criticism from without and within is important to the improvement of any government agency or armed services branch. However, Arkin’s attempt to blame the Army for decisions made by civilian leaders, or as he called it, to “FEMA-ize” the Army, offers nothing constructive to efforts to improve FEMA or the Army.

Arkin’s well publicized and roundly criticized statement that our military personnel in Iraq are “mercenaries” because they volunteer, are paid, and receive extensive benefits has its parallel in the media. Arkin and his ilk are propagandists rather than journalists because they volunteer to work in their field, are paid to bash the military and the Bush administration regardless of facts, and receive extensive benefits from their employers for doing so. Perhaps the U.S. military should replace “criticized” with “Arkinized” when referring to inaccurate and venomous media reporting of its personnel or actions.

Is the "Mess" in Iraq Fact or Fiction? Newt Gingrich, Winston Churchill, and Robert Kaplan Make Their Cases

I was recently asked, “Is Iraq really a mess, or does the media just portray it as a mess?” The knee-jerk reply to such a question would be to blame the media, since liberal media bias against President Bush and the military has been so well-documented in alternative media including Spy The News! However, the recent criticisms by Senator John McCain of the management of this war, which echoed similar criticisms he leveled in 2004, remind supporters of the war effort that criticizing war management does not equate to being anti-war or in favor of our withdrawal from Iraq.

Is the situation in Iraq a mess? Liberals and conservatives agree that it is. The difference lies in what one does with that realization. Liberals interpret the mess as confirmation that we cannot win the war and should withdraw our troops as quickly as possible regardless of the long term consequences for Iraqis and anxious neighboring nations. Conservative critics, except for cut and run advocates like Chuck Hagel, understand that the current situation is a mess, but favor learning from our mistakes and adapting strategy to achieve the original, noble purpose of the war. Both sides have engaged in useless political posturing, with Democrats and some weak-kneed Republicans passing non-binding resolutions assigning blame to someone else despite their own votes for the war in 2003. Republicans too, like McCain, have attacked former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for what they consider mismanagement of the war strategy.

Assigning blame will not make Iraq any less of a mess than it is now, and merely creates personal animosity when the more important matter, fixing the current situation in Iraq, receives secondary attention. To improve the current situation, it is essential to recognize what mistakes were made (not who made them) and correct the mistakes.

Critics seem to be in agreement that the biggest mistake was our failure to incorporate the then-existing Iraqi army and local tribal sheiks in our efforts to win the hearts of the Iraqi people and offer them security. In a book frequently recommended by radio and blog personality Hugh Hewitt, Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond, journalist Robert Kaplan, who was embedded with Army and Marine units in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, observed the following about our failure to utilize tribal leaders and the Iraqi army:

In fact, repression had not been the only tool used by Saddam Hussein. He had also bribed the paramount sheiks of the Sunni Triangle with cash, fancy cars, tracts of land, and other tangible gifts. But the American-led invasion dismantled that entire system. And what had the Americans brought in return to assuage such notables, who for millennia had affected the thinking of their extended clans? The promise of elections? What was that? An abstraction that meant little to many here. In a part of the world where blood was thicker than ideas, it was a difficult step for one Muslim to dime out another Muslim, especially for something as intangible as elections.

Thus the Sheiks and others, driven by narrow self-interest-as if that should have surprised anyone-made it known that they were open to deals with Syrians and assorted other jihadists. . . . It didn’t help matters that the very militarization of the state facilitated by Saddam had turned Iraq into one huge ammunition storehouse for the supply of rockets and mortars to the jihadists, and the making of IEDs. . . . And with the Iraqi army disbanded, there was now a pool of people with knowledge of ordnance and explosives, and the incentive to use it against the Americans.

In Kaplan’s writings, it is clear he is no fan of the Bush administration, yet his book provides one of the best firsthand accounts of what our Army Special Forces and Marines have faced. The failure to respect and utilize local tribal sheiks to suppress radical insurgents was perhaps the most shortsighted error made in Iraq. After decades of oppression and firm control by Saddam’s regime, Iraqis lived in fear but knew who was in charge in their local areas. After disbanding the Iraqi army, we left no force other than the American military to suppress insurgents, something the Iraqi army had been successfully doing prior to our arrival.

Lest one think that the observation of one embedded journalist is unreliable, consider this excerpt from Newt Gingrich’s book Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America:

The decision to have an American administration in Baghdad was a mistake. We seemed to be doing relatively well in Iraq until late May 2003 when the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) transitioned into power.

Instead of the CPA, we should have created an interim Iraqi government in June 2003 as we had in Afghanistan. It took only three weeks to identify Hamid Kharzai in Afghanistan. The people actually involved in Iraq’s interim government in June 2004 were all known and available in 2003.

The decision of the CPA to disband the Iraqi military, putting hundreds of thousands of armed young men out of work, was a disaster that our military warned against. Had the Iraqi army been kept intact-as General Tommy Franks and General Michael DeLong recommended-it is possible that most of the subsequent violence would have been averted.

History, in fact, provided ample tactical and cultural information about Afghanistan and Iraq that was apparently ignored in the design of “Shock and Awe” and other chest-thumping strategies. As quoted by Kaplan, in 1897 young Winston Churchill (in his Story of the Malakand Field Force) observed the following about Afghanistan, where the British Empire was attempting to hold sway against indigenous forces:

A roadless, broken and underdeveloped country; an absence of any strategic points; a well-armed enemy with great mobility and modern rifles, who adopts guerilla tactics. The results . . .are the troops can march anywhere, and do anything, except catch the enemy. . . .

“The unpractical,” Churchill replied, “may wonder why we, a people who fill some considerable place in the world, should mix in the petty intrigues of these border chieftains.” Some, whom Churchill calls “bad and nervous sailors,” would simply cut and run, even though that would be impossible in the circumstances, whereas others call for “full steam ahead,” that is, a dramatic increase in military and other resources until the frontier valleys “ are as safe and civilized as Hyde Park.” But, as Churchill intimates, there are usually neither the troops nor the money nor the will to do any such thing. Therefore, he concludes, the “inevitable alternative” is a system of “gradual advance, of political intrigue among the tribes, of subsidies and small expeditions."

Did we enter Iraq with small expeditions and forward operating bases (FOBs) spread throughout the country to assess and adapt to local tribal leaders and situations? No, we drove impressively to Baghdad in a glorified televised event, captured Saddam, disbanded the Iraqi army, failed to “grease the skids” with the local sheiks who employed small military forces of their own, and then Washington seemed surprised that an insurgency arose. Of course, bribing tribal sheiks sounds corrupt and even antithetical to the effort of establishing a democracy, but in reality a democracy can only succeed when each local tribe feels safe to go to the polls and feels adequately represented in the national government.

The tribes trusted their sheiks, but the U.S. CPA was loathe to deal with them and chose its own representatives for the tribes. We lacked adequate cultural intelligence to make appropriate decisions, and the sheiks and their armed followers were understandably offended. It would have been far wiser to “shock and awe” the tribal leaders with our monetary generosity. Gifts and yes, even bribes, would have made them forget the past payments expected of Saddam and secured their cooperation in securing local villages and cities against insurgents who could disturb this comfortable arrangement.

Was there military intelligence or training material that could have predicted this eventuality? Kaplan quoted the following from the U.S. Marine Corps Small Wars Manual(initially published in 1940):

Hostile forces will withdraw into the more remote parts of the country, or will be dispersed into numerous small groups which continue to oppose the occupation. Even though the recognized leaders may capitulate, subordinate commanders often refuse to abide by the terms of the capitulation. Escaping to the hinterland, they assemble heterogeneous armed groups of patriotic soldiers, malcontents, notorious outlaws. . .and by means of guerilla warfare, continue to harass and oppose the intervening force in its attempt to restore peace and good order throughout the country as a whole.

It seems clear that the Marines in 1940 were already providing keys to success in the War on Terror 61 years before 9/11, Afghanistan, and eventually Iraq. Kaplan and Gingrich also identified other mistakes that we have made that can still be corrected. Kaplan was embedded with a Marine unit in Al-Fallujah and witnessed what he described as progress in the battle against the insurgents there. Just as our military seemed poised to score what could have been a decisive victory, the Bush administration called for a cease-fire for, as journalist Kaplan writes in Imperial Grunts, media and public opinion reasons:

The focus of the media. . .on Al-Fallujah. . .was central to the decision-made at the highest levels of the U.S. government-to call a cease-fire that would end the Marine assault. This happened just as the Marines, strengthened by the arrival of a whole new battalion, may have been about to overrun the insurgents.

To be sure, the decision to invest Al-Fallujah and then pull out just as victory was within reach demonstrated both the fecklessness and incoherence of the Bush administration. While a case can be made for either launching a full-scale marine assault or continuing the previous policy of individual surgical strikes, a case cannot be made for launching a full-scale assault only to reverse it because of political pressures that were foreseeable in the first place.

The tendency of our political leaders to be swayed by media coverage and subsequent public opinion polls, led to decisions that rendered the tasks of the on the scene military commanders impossible. Those commanders are not being allowed to wage brutal war against a brutal enemy. Had we decisively defeated the insurgents in Al-Fallujah, one of the most violent areas of Iraq, the course of the war might have been vastly different than what we have experienced. Newt Gingrich went into more detail about our mistakes in the public opinion war, specifically that we have not waged one:

We also underestimated the effect of the Arab media’s propaganda campaign against us. We had no information program in the Arab world or in Europe capable of effectively communicating what we were trying to do. CPA media efforts were wrongly focused on American public opinion, not Iraqi public opinion. That made it much harder for us to mobilize Iraqis to our side.

In the global struggles against fascism and communism, the United States waged a military, economic, and propaganda war. Yet we have done nothing similarly organized and coherent in the war against Islamists and the rogue states.

While there is much to criticize about the management of the Iraq War, and plenty of blame to go around, the enduring lesson is that in the course of difficulty it is preferable to recognize and mend mistakes than to withdraw in defeat before the stated goal of the mission is accomplished. The stakes are high for our own security, our international credibility, and most importantly, the future of 50+ million Iraqis. The Boy Scouts are taught to always leave a place better than they found it. Regardless of how Iraq became a mess for us or who contributed to the mess, we are now obligated to leave Iraq better than we found it. Removing Saddam was the right thing to do, but we will not be leaving Iraq better than we found it if we abandon it to a Sunni-Shiite conflict that will quickly escalate and embroil neighboring nations eager to expand their borders and resources.

The only asset in short supply for Americans is patience. The media, possibly influenced by the initial “shock and awe” bluster, focus only on body counts, rarely reporting the rebuilding of infrastructure and other humanitarian work occurring in Iraq. But in fairness, the civilian affairs groups that typically provide humanitarian efforts have been largely unable to operate in Iraq because we have not yet secured the country from insurgents. As a result, as Kaplan describes effectively, our military is forced to fight insurgents while also rebuilding villages, schools, and utilities. The dissatisfaction among the troops in Iraq stems mainly from not being allowed to focus on the duty they are best trained for: engaging and killing the enemy.

Why are they not allowed to engage the enemy fully? Because casualty rates kill campaigns, and we are now in another election cycle. It is time for Republicans and Democrats who are serious about national security and winning the War on Terror to stop making war decisions based on small random sampling polls that purport to represent national opinion. Engaging the enemy more fully despite casualty risk, along with our propaganda efforts and outreach to local tribal leaders, can be corrected and proven effective, but only if we avoid a rash rush to retreat.

Society's Standards, Not Military's, in Decline

It wasn’t enough for John Kerry to insult the intellectual capacity of the soldiers in Iraq. Congressman Marty Meehan, D-MA, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, has now added “criminals” to the list of derogatory terms used by Democrats to describe our troops. That is what passes as support for the armed services in the new Congress. Rather than praise the military for giving some who have made mistakes the chance to improve their skills and future employment prospects, Congressman Meehan puts a negative spin to recently published Pentagon recruiting statistics and warns that the military is filled with criminals.

Are military recruiting standards being lowered due to the strain of 5 years of the War on Terror and “mounting casualties”? That is the question raised in an AP story reported by Fox News today titled “US Military Letting in More Recruits With Criminal Records.” According to Defense Department statistics, the number of Army and Marine recruits with criminal records requiring waivers for military service nearly doubled between 2003 and 2006, the AP reports. Congressman Meehan argues that the rise in the number of recruits with criminal records demonstrates a lowering of standards by the armed services that is the direct result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Congressman Meehan stated:

The data is crystal clear. Our armed forces are under incredible strain and the only way that they can fill their recruiting quotas is by lowering their standards. By lowering standards, we are endangering the rest of our armed forces and sending the wrong message to potential recruits across the country.

Do the statistics actually reflect what the Congressman alleges? According to Pentagon statistics, the armed services provided “moral waivers” by service branch as follows:

Army – 12.7% needed waivers in 2003, 20% needed waivers in 2006.
Marines – Slightly less than 50% needed waivers in 2003, slightly more than 50% needed waivers in 2006.
Navy – Less than 18% needed waivers in 2003, 18% needed waivers in 2006.
Air Force – More than 8% needed waivers in 2003, 8% needed waivers in 2006, trending downward.
Overall Average – 20% needed waivers in 2003, 25% needed waivers in 2006.

The Pentagon report divides moral waivers into the following categories: felonies, serious and minor non-traffic offenses, serious and minor traffic offenses and drug offenses. These categories are intentionally broad because many states differ in what constitutes felonies or misdemeanors.

Congressman Meehan’s “crystal clear” data actually only show a 5% rise in waivers throughout the armed services between 2003 and 2006. 5% does not reflect an incredible strain or a mad rush to throw recruiting standards out in order to meet recruiting quotas. On the contrary, the high percentage for the Marine Corps is not an alarming result of lowering standards; it is caused by the strict Marines' standard drug use policy that requires waivers even for single experience marijuana use.

In defense of the waiver program, the Pentagon issued the following statement:

The waiver process recognizes that some young people have made mistakes, have overcome their past behavior, and have clearly demonstrated the potential for being productive, law-abiding citizens and members of the military.

While statistically it may appear the military is lowering recruiting standards, the explanation for the increase in moral waivers is far more attributable to the decades-long decline in national morals than to any cause/effect stemming from the War on Terror. When I was recruited for government service, the entity that recruited me had a zero tolerance policy against drug use of any kind at any time. Those who lied about recreational use in their youth were weeded out in the polygraph stage. The standard behind that policy was: in sensitive government positions involving life and death decisions and actions, anyone who could prove unstable or succumb to physical addictions that involve violating laws should be excluded without exception.

In the intervening years, however, that standard has “evolved” as fewer applicants could state with confidence that they had never used illegal narcotics of any kind. The current standard allows exceptions for recreational use of marijuana, as long as that use was no more than a few years prior to application for employment with this specific government entity. Was the change a result of this entity’s manpower-intensive contribution to the War on Terror? No, it was the result of a shrinking pool of applicants who had never experimented with drugs in their youth.

I view the change in standards as a troubling but not at all surprising trend that is impacting all employers, not merely the US Government or military. Finding recruits who have ethical standards, can successfully pass intensive background investigations, polygraphs, and psychological fitness tests, is becoming more difficult. The parental permissiveness of baby-boomers has spawned more recreational drug experimentation, growing serious criminal behavior among youth, and a moral relativism that has taught young Americans that right and wrong depend entirely on the situation and how you feel about it, not that there are clear differences between right and wrong. All forms of sexual deviance are likewise embraced and displayed as popular entertainment, further obscuring the once accepted values of self-restraint and responsibility. Criminals, once societal pariahs, have become the heroes in our popular entertainment, while our government and military are nearly always portrayed as the true villains. Drug use is portrayed as adventurous, daring, and socially enlightened. Drug lords, smugglers, and dealers, are afforded respect and glory in today’s Hollywood productions. Hollywood attaches no stigma to indulgent or illegal behavior.

One wonders how much effort Congressman Meehan has expended in fighting Hollywood’s culturally suicidal assault on American morals, or how concerned he is that Americans are subjected daily to Hollywood’s disdain and mockery of government and military personnel. If the Congressman worries about sending the wrong message to potential recruits, why not start with the anti-military messages spewing from Hollywood and his own party?

Congressman Meehan’s policy statement on Iraq includes terms he believes show support for our troops: Quagmire; Torture Accountability; Haliburton; Rifts in International Relationships; Failure; and Damaged Credibility. He is far less dedicated to improving military recruiting than he is to casting the military in a poor light in order to discredit the Bush Administration and the Iraq War.

Because generations of Americans have willingly embraced Hollywood’s values and definitions of right and wrong (i.e. there is no difference), fewer Americans are living the lives the government and military once demanded from recruits in preparation for service. The private sector is likewise facing a shortage of applicants with high standards, but unless an employer is a government contractor providing sensitive government support, background checks are shallow and polygraphs are non-existent. Thus the decline in moral standards throughout society would naturally be most visible in government and military, where security clearances and access to weaponry and intelligence reports require far more character than is expected in the private sector.

The military, to its credit and despite the AP report on Pentagon recruiting statistics, gives far more scrutiny to its recruits than the private sector, including the news media, gives to its employee applicants. To attribute the rise in moral waivers for military recruits to the strains of the War on Terror misses the larger cultural context in which recruiting occurs. The military should be applauded for working to recruit the best available representation of American culture, and not criticized because America’s culture is in decline.

Army Counterinsurgency Manual Gives "Graduate Level" Instruction to our Enemies

The timing of the Pentagon’s recent release of a newly overhauled counterinsurgency manual could not have provided a more appropriate illustration of the point I made in one of yesterday’s posts: we are our own worst enemy in the War on Terror. While our intelligence agencies, including the military’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, spend billions on efforts to infiltrate and/or monitor terrorist organizations worldwide in order to learn their methods and culture, those same terrorists can get far more detailed information about our military methods and predictable courses of action at no cost.

Our intelligence field operatives and support personnel risk their lives to obtain information about our enemies, yet those enemies can perform the same tasks from the comfort of their homes, hideouts, tents, caves, or wherever their Internet connections can reach. One click on this link (be forewarned the downloaded manual is over 12Mb) will open the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine manual in full to your view. Of course, it is also now available to the entire world, so terrorists and nation-states who desire our destruction have a literal playbook to use in planning how best to thwart our stated goals and strategies. Newt Gingrich, in his Sunday interview on Meet the Press, stated that our adherence to free speech liberties in some instances may be suicidal. While I disagreed with the example he used to illustrate his point, the Internet availability of the new 282 page unclassified counterinsurgency manual certainly could be considered a suicidal practice for a nation engaged in a War on Terror.

If this is in fact a war, far more scrutiny should be given to what documents are released for public use. How much easier is it for our enemies to formulate effective strategies, political and military, when we provide them with a guidebook containing a complete explanation of all of the options available to our military and which ones are most likely to achieve victory? In the interest of fairness, should the Ohio State Buckeyes willingly provide the Florida Gators with their BCS Championship Game playbook with plenty of time for Florida to study it and develop plays to counter Buckeye intentions? Common sense would suggest this would not be a wise decision for Ohio State, and of course the Buckeye coaching staff is sufficiently wise to keep all strategy and operational planning close to the vest, revealed ONLY during the game at the opportune moment to achieve maximum effect.

The above example may seem ridiculous, and one would surmise that no team would be foolish enough to give away its playbook. The Defense Department, on the other hand, has for years published its field manuals, operational manuals, and military doctrine manuals for public consumption. The new counterinsurgency manual begins with a quote from a Special Forces Officer in Iraq: "Counterinsurgency is not just thinking man's warfare -- it is the graduate level of war" [emphasis added]. Accepting this statement as being accurate, I suppose that means the Defense Department, by releasing this manual for public use, is now offering insurgents and other enemies PhDs in Defeating the American Military.

The argument is always put forth that citizens need to have the ability to monitor the military, to make certain it is not becoming too powerful on its own. The fear of military coups is certainly justified by history. Pakistan is now led by a man who came to power through a military coup. General Musharaff later became President Musharaff after “elections” were held. If a coup can occur in a country with nuclear arms such as Pakistan, it is reasonable to fear one could take place anywhere, even here. This argument for public military publication is well-intentioned but fundamentally misguided. The wisdom of our Founding Fathers resulted in the inclusion of many protections against concentration of power in any one branch of government or in the military. With a civilian Commander in Chief elected by the people, the likelihood of a strong military figure gathering a sufficient following to overthrow our government is very small. With Congress, also elected by the people, controlling the funding of military operations, the military is required to fully justify its operations and weapons programs, mainly through appearing before Congressional committees where Top Secret and higher classifications of information are shared.

It is in this context that the argument for open military publication unravels. The public is given control of the military through Congressional oversight and executive control. Of what use is an Army counterinsurgency doctrine manual to the average citizen? Would it be interesting reading? The answer for many would be yes. However, there are a lot of documents read in Washington DC every day that would truly fascinate everyone, especially our enemies. Interest alone is an insufficient reason for public release. Unprecedented access to information and facilities has been granted by the Defense Department to authors, Hollywood film crews, and reporters, usually in the interest of the Department “tooting its own horn.” In fairness, nearly every federal department is just as enamored with self-promotion, but this does not justify the practice, it merely exacerbates the problem of excessive openness.

While our intelligence agencies struggle to determine the intentions and capabilities of our enemies, we are, quite literally, an open book to them. If this is a War on Terror, then let us act as if it were a war and suppress the publication of military manuals for public use. Let us fully prosecute those (of either party) who leak sensitive documents, and above all let us make our enemies expend time, money, and personnel to fight us. Let us fight to win by keeping our playbooks out of enemy hands.

 counterinsurgency
 Defense Department
Newt Gingrich