| June 18, 2007 Edition |
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America's Warrior Spirit is FadingAmerican InterestRobert D. Kaplan Some truths are so obvious that to mention them in polite company seems either pointless or rude. What is left unstated, however, can with time be forgotten. Both of these observations apply today to the American way of war. It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes, and that a society which believes little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military. Obvious as this is, we seem to have forgotten it. Remembering will help us in several ways. First, it will show us that the greatest asymmetry in our struggle with radical Islam is not one of arms or organization or even of ideology in any simple sense, but one of morale in the deepest sense. Second, it will provide an insight into the state of civil-military relations in our own country, which is a growing problem many of us refuse to acknowledge. And third, it will show us why some kinds of wars-"in-between" wars, I call them-have become inherently difficult for the United States to fight and win. If a glimpse of the future is possible, it must come from an intimacy with the present clarified by the great works of the past. For over four years now I have been traveling much of the world in the company of U.S. soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen. Upon a halt in my travels, I re-read both The Art of War by the 6th-century BCE Chinese court minister Sun-Tzu and On War by the early 19th-century Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz. What struck me straight away, thanks to my recent travels-in-arms, was not what either author said, but what both assumed. Both Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz believe-in their states, their sovereigns, their homelands. Because they believe, they are willing to fight. This is so clear that they never need to state it, and they never do. Full Story |
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| QUOTE OF THE WEEK |
| Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. Elbert Hubbard |
| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
Slow-motion TetAl Qaeda is counting on sapping our will, and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win.Weekly StandardFrederick W. Kagan & William Kristol Last week, a group of tribal leaders in Salah-ad-Din, the mostly Sunni province due north of Baghdad, agreed to work with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces against al Qaeda. Then al Qaeda destroyed the two remaining minarets of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, a city in the province. Coincidence? Perhaps. But al Qaeda is clearly taking a page from the Viet Cong's book. The terrorists have been mounting a slow-motion Tet offensive of spectacular attacks on markets, bridges, and mosques, knowing that the media report each such attack as an American defeat. The fact is that al Qaeda is steadily losing its grip in Iraq, and these attacks are alienating its erstwhile Iraqi supporters. But the terrorists are counting on sapping our will as the VC did, and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win. The Salah-ad-Din announcement that Iraqis were turning against al Qaeda was just one of many such announcements over recent weeks and months. Some media reports have tried to debunk this development, reporting, for example, that the Sunni coalition against al Qaeda in Anbar province is fragmenting. But even the fragments are saying that they will continue to cooperate with us and fight al Qaeda. Sunni movements similar to the one in Anbar have developed and grown in Babil province south of Baghdad and even in strife-torn and mixed Diyala province to the northeast. Most remarkable, local Sunnis in Baghdad recently rose up against al Qaeda, and even hard core Baathist insurgent groups have reached out to U.S. forces to cooperate in the fight against the terrorists. Far from being evidence of our desperation and danger, as some have claimed, this turn of events demonstrates the degree to which al Qaeda is repelling Iraqis. Full Story The Enemy's New Tools in IraqTimeBobby Ghosh Saif Abdallah says his inventions have helped kill or maim scores, possibly hundreds, of Americans. For more than four years, he has been developing remote-control devices that Sunni insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The only time he ever felt a pang of regret was in the spring of 2006, when he heard that the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training, once dreamed of studying for a Ph.D. there. "I thought to myself, If my life had gone differently, who knows? I might have been on that team," he says, his eyes widening as he imagines that now impossible scenario. Then he shrugs. "God decided I should be on the other side." Thin-voiced and thickly bespectacled, Abdallah, 28, fits every geek stereotype, right down to the acne and the flash drive on his key chain. His laboratory is a workbench in the bedroom of his Baghdad home. He says his tools are primitive - soldering irons, old printed circuit boards, discarded TV remotes and other bits of electronic detritus. But he has a talent for fashioning instruments of death from such dreck, turning an old toy walkie-talkie into a trigger for an explosion 100 yards away or programming a washing-machine timer to set off an IED two hours later. Such capacity for destruction makes him invaluable to the disparate groups that make up the Sunni insurgency, including al-Qaeda. "In our circle, everyone has heard of him," says the commander of one rebel group, al-Nasr Salahdin. Full Story Courage Under FireThe story of Major James Gant.Weekly StandardRichard S. Lowry MAJOR JAMES GANT remembers his latest brush with death like it was yesterday. He will remember December 11, 2006, for the rest of his life. That's the day he earned one of the Army's highest honors, a Silver Star. Major Gant is the chief of the Iraqi National Police Quick Reaction Force Battalion Transition Team. On December 11th, after six weeks of fighting insurgents he and his team were returning home to Baghdad along the road to Balad. Major Gant and his small American advisory team were riding in three up-armored Humvees. These were not the Humvees of Jessica Lynch's era. These were mini-tanks on tires with bullet proof-glass, blast-proof armor plate, and turret mounted machineguns. The Iraqi National Police were riding in 23 soft-skinned trucks. The insurgents (anti-Coalition forces as they are now called) wanted to bloody the unit's nose one last time, so they planned an elaborate running ambush in which they hoped to destroy the unit that had been their nemesis for more than a month. This was no ragtag bunch of thugs. They were well armed and well organized. They were a formidable enemy. "They were full-up al Qaeda," said Gant, and they had prepared three separate ambush sites along a four kilometer stretch of road, just north of Taji. Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
What I Saw in IraqIran remains a problem, but Anbar has joined the fight against terror.Wall Street JournalJoseph Lieberman I recently returned from Iraq and four other countries in the Middle East, my first trip to the region since December. In the intervening five months, almost everything about the American war effort in Baghdad has changed, with a new coalition military commander, Gen. David Petraeus; a new U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker; the introduction, at last, of new troops; and most important of all, a bold, new counterinsurgency strategy. The question of course is--is it working? Here in Washington, advocates of retreat insist with absolute certainty that it is not, seizing upon every suicide bombing and American casualty as proof positive that the U.S. has failed in Iraq, and that it is time to get out. In Baghdad, however, discussions with the talented Americans responsible for leading this fight are more balanced, more hopeful and, above all, more strategic in their focus--fixated not just on the headline or loss of the day, but on the larger stakes in this struggle, beginning with who our enemies are in Iraq. Full Story In Gaza's ShadowNew York PostRalph Peters WONDER what Iraq would look like if we left to morrow? Take a look at Gaza today. Then imagine a situation a thousand times worse. We need to stop making politically correct excuses. Arab civilization is in collapse. Extremes dominate, either through dictatorship or anarchy. Thanks to their dysfunctional values and antique social structures, Arab states can't govern themselves decently. We gave them a chance in Iraq. Israel "gave back" the Gaza Strip to let the Palestinians build a model state. Arabs seized those opportunities to butcher each other. The barbarity in Gaza has become so grotesque that not even the media's apologists for terror can ignore it (especially since Islamist fanatics began to target journalists). Over the weekend, Hamas gangbangers-for-Allah grabbed a Fatah functionary and dropped him from the roof of a high-rise to check out the law of gravity (the only law that still obtains in Gaza). Tit-for-tat, Fatah gunmen grabbed a Hamas capo and gave him the same treatment. Full Story China's Military Ambitions-And OursThe New AtlantisJeff Kueter On January 11, 2007, a missile was launched from Chinese territory. It arced upwards into space to an altitude of about 537 miles, where it slammed directly into its target, an obsolete Chinese weather satellite. The target was destroyed, reportedly producing some 900 trackable pieces of space debris in orbits from 125 miles to about 2,300 miles and resulting in an increase of 10 percent in the total amount of manmade debris in orbit. This demonstration of an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) was just the latest in a series of tests of China's space weapons program, and was a warning sign the United States should take very seriously. In the decades after the Soviet Union and the United States first designed and deployed so-called space weapons, some observers came to hope it would be possible to turn back history's pages and preserve space as a sanctuary, a pristine place of peace and international cooperation, where terrestrial disputes could be left behind. If these hopes were ever given credence, they have surely been dispelled by China's recent actions in space: vivid demonstrations that the country could threaten essential satellites both directly, by physically destroying them, and indirectly, employing lasers and other jamming techniques to make them unusable. China is now a military space power and space is once again an undeniably contested arena. Full Story A positive story from the Iraq warPhiladelphia InquirerKevin Ferris Here's one problem with Washington's war-is-lost chorus: It too often drowns out the accomplishments of those who are actually trying to win. But it shouldn't. Consider the recent reports of the Anbar Awakening, a movement by Sunni sheikhs who have rejected al-Qaeda's vision for Iraq and aligned themselves with U.S. forces. Army Col. Sean MacFarland was in Anbar province most of last year, part of the First Marine Expeditionary Force commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer, who wanted to be more aggressive in challenging al-Qaeda's control of Ramadi. In an e-mail interview from his current post in Germany, MacFarland described the birth of the Awakening as a "chemical reaction" needing "two compatible ingredients and a catalyst." "The ingredients were some frustrated sheikhs who were frozen out of the provincial government due to a bad decision to boycott the first elections, and a new brigade combat team in town," he says. Full Story Standing Up to KillersWashington PostHussain Abdul-Hussain A bomb in Beirut yesterday killed Walid Eido, a member of the Lebanese parliament, and his son, Khaled, one of the smartest, sweetest and most delightful friends I have ever had. I should wait for the results of an investigation into the explosion to learn who killed Khaled and his dad. But I will not wait. I am tired of the murders in Lebanon. I accuse the Syrian regime, headed by President Bashar al-Assad, of killing Khaled. As a friend of the family, I want to press charges against Assad and his Syrian and Lebanese associates. Enough is enough with the Syrian regime and its Lebanese puppets. Walid Eido was a member of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority. Before his untimely death, the majority bloc comprised 69 of the legislature's 128 members. Now, the majority's margin has been narrowed to five, and there is no reason to believe that Syria will not go after these people and kill them, one after another, until it forces the government to collapse. For the past few months Eido had been the target of a demonizing campaign by Syria's foremost ally, Hezbollah. Similar Hezbollah campaigns against other anti-Syrian lawmakers preceded their assassinations. Hezbollah has been a supportive partner to Syria, often thanking the Assad regime for what it has "offered" my country. In truth, Hezbollah has sold out Lebanon's national interests to the regional autocrats of Syria and Iran. Full Story |
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Our Latest Man In BaghdadNo American diplomat seems better qualified than Ryan Crocker to turn Iraq around-but can he do it?NewsweekMelinda Liu Two months into his most recent Baghdad posting (his third in nearly 30 years), Ryan Crocker still hasn't opened all his airfreight crates. "I've been a little pressed," he dryly explains to NEWSWEEK. When he finally unpacks, though, the U.S. ambassador will take out a battered calendar from 24 years ago and hang it in his office. It was on his office wall in Beirut when a suicide truck bomb destroyed the U.S. Embassy there on April 18, 1983, killing 64 people. Slammed against a wall but not seriously hurt, the young diplomat immediately began clawing barehanded through the rubble, searching for his colleagues. The calendar has traveled with him ever since, bearing the scars of that day: "a little bit of glass, a little bit of blood, a little bit of spilled coffee." His voice gets quieter: "It reminds me of my responsibilities to the mission. And that in diplomacy, as in the military, you're playing for keeps." Crocker needs no reminders. That is why he and his military counterpart, Gen. David Petraeus, are in Iraq now: to salvage a mission that seems increasingly hopeless. Both men are extraordinarily perceptive, pragmatic and comprehensive thinkers. If they fail, it's hard to imagine who could do better. Crocker's last stint in Iraq was as Coalition Provisional Authority governance director in the summer of 2003. Full Story Pentagon Report Criticizes Troops' Mental-Health CareWashington PostAnn Scott Tyson U.S. troops returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer "daunting and growing" psychological problems -- with nearly 40 percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of the National Guard members reporting symptoms -- but the military's cadre of mental-health workers is "woefully inadequate" to meet their needs, a Pentagon task force reported yesterday. The congressionally mandated task force called for urgent and sweeping changes to a peacetime military mental health system strained by today's wars, finding that hundreds of thousands of the more than 1 million U.S. troops who have served at least one war-zone tour in Iraq or Afghanistan are showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety or other potentially disabling mental disorders. "Not since Vietnam have we seen this level of combat," said Vice Adm. Donald Arthur, co-chairman of the Department of Defense Mental Health Task Force. "With this increase in . . . psychological need, we now find that we have not enough providers in our system," he said at a Pentagon news conference yesterday unveiling the report. "Clearly, we have a deficit in our availability of mental-health providers." The ongoing "surge" of more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will exacerbate this gap, as will the rapid growth in the number of soldiers, Marines and other troops -- now about half a million -- who have served more than one combat tour, heightening the risk of mental illnesses, the report said. Full Story The Laptop Is Mightier Than the SwordNew York TimesOwen West and Bing West WHILE waiting to see if the Iraq surge strategy pays off, President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have shown Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the door and brought in Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as the new White House "war czar." Well, they can shift senior leadership all they want, but unless they give our troops patrolling the streets the tools they need, our leaders are going to see this strategy fizzle. Part of the problem was that when the military surge was announced, it became commonplace for officials to assert that political compromise, not military force, would determine the outcome of the war. This vacuous idea would startle George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, to mention only a few unlikely bedfellows who forged success during an insurgency. Buying time with American lives is not a military mission. No platoon commander tells his soldiers to go out and tread water so the politicians can talk. The goal of American soldiers is to identify and kill or capture the Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents. Full Story The War InsideTroops Are Returning From the Battlefield With Psychological Wounds, But the Mental-Health System That Serves Them Makes Healing DifficultWashington PostDana Priest and Anne Hull Army Spec. Jeans Cruz helped capture Saddam Hussein. When he came home to the Bronx, important people called him a war hero and promised to help him start a new life. The mayor of New York, officials of his parents' home town in Puerto Rico, the borough president and other local dignitaries honored him with plaques and silk parade sashes. They handed him their business cards and urged him to phone. But a "black shadow" had followed Cruz home from Iraq, he confided to an Army counselor. He was hounded by recurring images of how war really was for him: not the triumphant scene of Hussein in handcuffs, but visions of dead Iraqi children. In public, the former Army scout stood tall for the cameras and marched in the parades. In private, he slashed his forearms to provoke the pain and adrenaline of combat. He heard voices and smelled stale blood. Soon the offers of help evaporated and he found himself estranged and alone, struggling with financial collapse and a darkening depression. At a low point, he went to the local Department of Veterans Affairs medical center for help. One VA psychologist diagnosed Cruz with post-traumatic stress disorder. His condition was labeled "severe and chronic." In a letter supporting his request for PTSD-related disability pay, the psychologist wrote that Cruz was "in need of major help" and that he had provided "more than enough evidence" to back up his PTSD claim. His combat experiences, the letter said, "have been well documented." Full Story Seizing the MomentUS News and World ReportKenneth T. Walsh On the pleasantly warm but overcast afternoon of June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall and spoke six words that resonated deeply with millions who endured Soviet domination throughout Europe and among proponents of democracy around the world. "Mr. Gorbachev," Reagan said firmly, with a hint of anger and a flash of indignation, "tear down this wall." It was an archetypical moment for Reagan, who had fought communism all his life and as president had made the destruction of the "evil empire" his raison d'être. His words have stood the test of time. As Reagan's admirers prepare to mark the 20th anniversary of that historic speech this week, and as many wonder if inspirational presidential rhetoric is dead, the question is how a president manages to capture a moment and define an era the way Reagan did. It doesn't happen very often-only a handful of times, experts say, in more than two centuries of U.S. history. But political scientists, historians, presidential advisers, and experts on public communication tend to agree on the factors that allow a chief executive to speak for the ages. Full Story |
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Blackwater® Personal Protection Specialist CourseSecurity Managers, Law Enforcement agencies and individual security professionals have asked Blackwater to offer open courses on conducting protective operations in permissive and semi-permissive environments. Blackwater Lodge and Training Center now does just that with the first in a series of Personal Protection Specialist courses and seminars! Upcoming Course Dates: July 8 - 14, 2007 Fairfax/Loudon County, Virginia August 12-18, 2007 Moyock, NC This course reflects how we train our own personal protection teams. Course content includes classes and discussions as applied to protective operations in permissive and semi-permissive environments. This is a practical application course students attending must be prepared for long days and training exercises which may take place overnight or out of town operations. This course meets the training requirements for the Virginia DCJS PSS Personal Protection Specialist registration (032E) DCJS #88-1453 Course Cost: $2,500.00 includes: most meals, student transportation during course and student handbook. Please contact Blackwater for assistance with lodging needs. Class size is limited to 24. Please register early! To register or for more information contact: Blackwater Sales at (252) 435-1748 or e-mail David Taft at: dtaft@blackwaterusa.com | |
| FRANKS REVIEW |
Tactical Equipment EvaluationExtrema Ratio RevisitedAs I was sorting through all my kit the other day, both in my house, in my attic and in my shed in an attempt to get some camping and emergency preparation supplies together, it occurred to me that I've had an assortment of Extrema Ratio knives on hand (and often in hand) for a couple years now. These knives have been around for awhile, but have always been difficult to procure in North America. EXXCESS Quality Products reduced the challenge of procurement when they became the exclusive importer for the continent. Having reviewed an assortment of Extrema Ratio knives that couple of years ago, I figured it was time for an update - and they've been more thoroughly tested in field conditions now.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/knives/exratio.htm Recreational Equipment ReviewSelf-Customizing Your GlockSelecting a handgun for protection or even for competition is a highly personal choice. Much of what is considered prior to selection is subjective and what YOU might think is great, I might not be so impressed with. Still after the weapon has been selected and purchased, many of us want to change minor things to make the gun more "mine". Having owned Glocks for a little more than a decade now, I've come to realize that there are a few things that can be easily done - even by someone who isn't a gunsmith (or even a certified armorer) - to make Glocks more unique to the owner. Let's take a look at them:Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/huntfish/customglock.htm |
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PEOPLEIn the adventure of being a Peace Keeper the most amazing part is those exceptionally fine people that we are privileged to meet and get to know. I am working with one of those people. She is my Field Training Officer.She is the daughter of a U.S. Marine... Wife of a U.S. Marine... and Mother of three Peace keepers who have served or are currently serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. One of these three is now in Basic Training in the Police Department in Henrico County, Virginia. My trainer is an amazing person. She is an excellent Community Services Officer. She is an excellent trainer and we have had some interesting calls together these past two weeks. I am truly blessed to work with such great people. Besides her I am working with and for people that I have known for a long time through my service as chaplain to this police department. I worked with my Captain when he was a rookie officer. I have had a great relationship with my Sergeant for a long time. Most of the officers greet me as chaplain and address me as chaplain even though I am wearing a totally different uniform. Our supply clerk is also one of the Administrative Chaplains in the chaplain program. When I was issued my new shirts (short sleeve, dark red polo) she exclaimed, "You have arms and a neck!" because she had never seen me in any clothing but my long sleeve black or blue uniform and clergy collar. Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/article/061807chaplain.htm |
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