The story of interest over the past days in regard to Rolling Stone's "The Runaway General –  Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House" does not go down easily, for more than just the obvious reasons.  I am reminded of General Rupert Smith's comment used in the completing post for the core What Kind of War series:

... we are living in a world of confrontations and conflicts rather than one of war and peace; one in which the clear categories of security and defence – the basic purposes for which force is used – have merged… This is no longer industrial war… absolute and clear threats in recognizable groupings, and… stable political contexts for operations… The threats ... are of and amongst the people – in the flesh and in the media – and it is there that the fight takes place. (My emphasis added)

1. War, warfare, violence, and conflict in this century


2. How we view, categorize, and respond to crisis


3. Control and impact of the narrative


4. Impact of the information sphere on organizational response, the media, rumor, how we think, how we decide


5. System perturbation, purposeful or unintended, in a system-of-system world existing in a state of unstable equilibrium


6. Leadership in complex environments

Over the jump, 10 articles from CNN, Foreign Policy, World Politics Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, World Policy Institute, and Military.Com

1) Islamist websites: McChrystal fired because war is lost (CNN)

The recent change in commanders in Afghanistan is proof the U.S and its allies have lost the war, statements posted on two Islamist websites said Thursday… The Taliban spokesman said the change in command is useless because Petraeus, the new Afghan commander, is weak.  "Indeed, he has got no (more) special qualities than General McChrystal had," Ahmadi said in his statement…. In another statement, a group calling itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said Petraeus is mentally worn out because of the lengthy war, which began in October 2001. ..."Nine years of military actions, different strategies and back-breaking monetary and life damages at the hands of mujahideen have left the crusaders totally in distress," the statement said.

Hastings clearly demonstrates a keen eye for off-color detail, but fails to weave the threads into something more coherent or meaningful. Getting the facts straight and reporting them is one thing; knowing your subject and making sense of it is quite another.

When you form a team, why do you try to form a team? Because teamwork builds trust and trust builds speed. There's always the undercurrent of a little friction in that team, but if that's made public, then it can deteriorate the public trust between people. Whoever hasn't violated that trust should cast the first stone."

If you read the Rolling Stone article carefully, you can see that the reporter, Michael Hastings, has woven three stories together. One story is the story of General McChrystal trying to keep up morale in a tough war with his troops thinking he is too worried about civilian casualties …I bet this is the story Hastings pitched to McChrystal's staff and the story McChrystal thought was being reported. ... The second story is Hastings's rather tendentious reporting on what McChrystal's enemies and critics say against him—their complaints, and their doubts about the war. ... I suspect that this is the story Hastings pitched to his editor. The whole thing has the feel of a hungry guy hoping to hunt a big trophy kill: taking down a four-star hero and showing that his war plan … is fatally flawed and doomed to failure ….The problem for McChrystal is that there is a third story woven through the article. This is the story of McChrystal and his staff on an unexpected layover in Paris when a plane is grounded because of the volcano. This part of the story has a "weekend in Vegas" feel to it. ...This third story was an accident – serendipity for the reporter and a train-wreck for McChrystal.  The underlying facts are not surprising or accidental at all.

 ...after Vietnam, an ethos of exposure swept the culture. The assumption among many journalists was that the establishment may seem upstanding, but there is a secret corruption deep down. It became the task of journalism to expose the underbelly of public life, to hunt for impurity, assuming that the dark hidden lives of public officials were more important than the official performances. Then came cable, the Internet, and the profusion of media sources. Now you have outlets, shows and Web sites whose only real interest is the kvetching and inside baseball.  In other words, over the course of 50 years, what had once been considered the least important part of government became the most important. These days, the inner soap opera is the most discussed and the most fraught arena of political life.

And into this world walks Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

... those who focus on McChrystal's impolitic commentsas justification for his departure risk missing the larger point—namely, the contradictions and fecklessness of a policy that created the frustration on the ground to begin with, and which led some members of McChrystal's staff to vent their feelings to a Rolling Stone reporter. 
... the comments seem to reflect frustration with the administration's tolerance of political maneuvering, both in Washington and Kabul, that runs counter to that strategy's effective implementation.

First, the president himself announced plans to begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in July 2011, sending the signal to a range of factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan that they should begin maneuvering for position after the U.S. withdrawal. ...
Second, the U.S. civil-military team in Afghanistan is clearly dysfunctional. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, an accomplished former general who commanded in Afghanistan, notoriously sent two cables to Washington second-guessing McChrystal's operational plans and trashing Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an unreliable partner. ...
Third, the Rolling Stone article raises the question of the role played by Richard Holbrooke, an accomplished and distinguished, if somewhat temperamental, diplomat and the president's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Is such a role even necessary? The president already has a secretary of state, a secretary of defense, an ambassador (normally the president's representative in the country to which he or she is posted), a national security adviser, a regional combatant commander (at CENTCOM), and a commanding general in the field. With that many cooks in the kitchen, no wonder they cannot all get along

Civilian control of the military is as essential to our Republic as is a free press.  But does anyone believe that the dynamic between office dwellers from Foggy Bottom and academia and political cronies with authority over snake eaters, captured through the prism of the media (more office dwellers), will result in something productive?

The general and his aides had faced down terrorists and the enemies of America. They had welcomed into their midst journalists from top news outlets. The result had been stories that mostly made the men running the war in Afghanistan look like a bunch of can-do warriors…. But Team McChrystal and its leader met their downfall this week because they failed to recognize, as soldiers like to say, that the opponent, and the situation on the ground, had changed. ... It appears now that the hardheaded, make-my-own-rules military man didn't recognize that the latest in a series of interlocutors was not like the others. Michael Hastings was the most dangerous kind of adversary — a kindred spirit.

It was not in fact a term born in Iraq — the practice of chroniclers traveling with soldiers is as old as war, and even the word "embedding" itself was in use in the 1990s. But Iraq was certainly where it crossed over into the wider lexicon. Within the military there may now be some debate about whether embedding survives in its current form, after a journalist granted close access helped bring about the downfall of a four-star general within the very military system which spawned it.

According to McChrystal, the "Afghan people are at the center of our mission…in reality they are the mission." These sentiments are reflective of what has become the new way of American war—population centric counter-insurgency (COIN). The focus on COIN doctrine was enshrined by Gen. David Petraeus and the 2006 publication of the Army and Marine counter-insurgency manual, FM 3-24, which calls for a military approach that seeks to convince the population that counter-insurgents, acting on behalf of a sovereign government, can be trusted and are worthy of popular support.
            With its seemingly progressive and humanistic approach, FM 3-24, and counterinsurgency in general, offer a seductive ideal for the future of American war-fighting. But the veneration of COIN conceals a brutal reality. The history of counter-insurgency in the twentieth century is not a story of warm and fuzzy war, of benevolent soldiers providing essential government services to grateful natives, of armed social work, or of the gentleman soldier's antidote to the Shermanesque notion of Total War. Instead, counter-insurgency is a repeated tale of coercion and violence directed largely against unarmed civilians. And this defines both those COIN efforts that have been successful—and those that have failed.

A general is gone, another arrives, 70 plus days into Deepwater Horizon – What do we learn?

A real love for the hard battle, knowing it offers the opportunity to be at your best when the best is required.

Competiveness: John R Wooden

 More reading about Coach Wooden and his "pyramid of success:"

The Official John R. Wooden site

Biography at Wikipedia

Pyramid of Sucess (PDF printable)

 "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail"  in his own words follow the "Favorite maxims" tab to "never stress winning"

There was a time when Americans seemed to view suicide attacks as a sign of the complete conviction of the enemy, an immutable dedication to their cause that many people found terrifying and cause for soul-searching.  "What could we have done to provoke such anger?" Yet with time, American views of suicide attacks have matured and become more grounded. 

Firstly, Americans in particular are far less afraid of suicide attackers and extremely unlikely to capitulate with anyone who attacks on American soil.  Suicide attackers hit American soil.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, they have become commonplace. 

Secondly, most importantly, wild use of suicide attackers is seen not as evidence that we are attacking the "wrong people" whose dedication to their cause is unstoppable, but as concrete evidence that we are attacking the right people and that they should be destroyed. ... Overuse of suicide attackers does not appear to cause Americans to cower, but to evoke Americans to want to kill the perpetrator. (March 25, 2010 – Michael Yon)

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian casualties cause the people to turn against the side perpetrating the casualties. This photo was taken after a suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq, in May 2005. The neighborhood had been pro-insurgent. After this bomb in the midst of children, the neighborhood turned against the terrorists. The little girl's name was Farah. She died shortly after this moment. (Michael Yon Photo)

*****************************************************

While asking "what kind of war is it?" it's important to reflect on the old adage "you may not be interested in war, but WAR is certainly interested in you!" if you're not a follower of Michael Yon, you should be. (From his site) "Michael Yon is a former Green Beret, native of Winter Haven, Fl. who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004.  No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars.  Michael's dispatches from the front lines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation.  His work has been featured on "Good Morning America," The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world."

His 25 March, 2010 "dispatch" from Afghanistan on suicide bombers closes with:

In 2009, one report indicated there were 148 suicide bombings or attempts in Afghanistan.  Suicide murders continue to occur a short drive from here that are not meeting the above requirements.  Taliban continue to hit all manner of targets, and regularly slaughter non-combatant men, women and children.  Within a week subsequent to the publication of this dispatch, suicide murderers will likely kill innocent people here.  The Taliban's efforts at repackaging themselves as kinder, gentler mass-murderers is failing.  Their suicide bombing campaign is backfiring.  The Taliban are losing their cool.  Something is in the air.  The enemy remains very deadly, yet the scent of their weakness is growing stronger while our people close in. (emphasis added)

For further reading on the issue of cults read Hakim Hazim's American Realism Revisited: Lethal – maybe enlightening -Minds & Latent Threats ("There is no shortage of militant cults, and, unfortunately, those who are eager and willing to follow them. Hazim invites you to take a journey and gain insight into lethal minds and latent threats facing our country today.")

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Alternative analysis is the super-class of techniques of which red teaming may be considered a member… these techniques are designed to help debias thinking, enhance decision making, and avoid surprise. (From Red Team Journal)

http://redteamjournal.com/

As noted in The 2010 Announcement post, Project White Horse focus for 2010 will explore "what kind of organizations and indeed groups of organizations can operate at the required tempo demanded for survival when faced with worst case, unconventional crisis, or hyper complex events – the "CAT 5's."  

Now, consider just a quick bit of background to link red Team Journal's effort with Project White Horse perspective.

Considering that the PWH focus on decision making in unconventional crisis/hyper complex events has at its core the thread and ideas of "alternative analysis," the concept of integrating red teaming into organizational learning as significantly impacting the survival process is offered as absolutely critical – an essential element of understanding for a culture of preparedness. As such Red Team Journal is offered as an important resource. Note that the writing of Assistant Editor Adam Elkus has been featured multiple times on PWH, most recently in EEI #25 "What kind of War… Science, Defence, and Strategy … and John Boyd."

Defined by Red Team Journal – "loosely, red teaming is the practice of viewing a problem from an adversary or competitor's perspective. The goal of most red teams is to enhance decision making, either by specifying the adversary's preferences and strategies or by simply acting as a devil's advocate." For a quick look at red teaming and the writers see About.

A year ago PWH introduced a specially focused "carve-out," the INTERSECTIONS page, stemming from Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect and his model for gaining understanding, and developing innovative action -the intersection:

Intersectional ideas are those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields – areas of specialization gained through education and experience – as compared to those created traditionally by combing concepts within a field – noted as directional ideas. Success in intersectional idea generation is dependent upon breaking down barriers of association that would more than likely indicate a "non relationship" or at best limited context between or among fields.

The question was then asked "Can the "train to the ace level" concept behind Top Gun, Red Flag, National Training Center at Ft Irwin, i.e. the combat training center or "CTC" concept be applied to hyper complex crisis, worst case  disaster command control learning, can ace decision makers be developed?" The following sub-pages continue to address various aspects of this question that include "red team" type functions and capabilities: 

These are considered "open/living threads.  PWH target audience will remain oriented at a community "team of leaders" inclusive of not only emergency management and first responders, but also private sector, and citizens, as required for survival of that community when faced with events that  are inherently severely de-stabilizing – marginalizing prior planning and anticipated response structure. Understanding risk – assessment, mitigation, management and the eventual acceptance level is crucial for a resilient community and part of a culture of preparedness.   By way of starting examples these Red Team Journal articles seem most appropriate

The Defense Science Board Calls for More Red Teaming    "Red teaming as the norm instead of the exception. Secretary of Defense direct the use of red teaming throughout DOD by developing and employing best practice guides, intellectual focus in professional military education, and more aggressive use of red teams in exercises."

 Interposing Tactics  " ... we are now seeing a new form of granular conflict, where the essence of tactical supremacy is achieved through coordination of multi factor, and multidimensional attacks and defense by individual force elements interposed against each other. ... will continue the process of dissolving force elements beyond the individual level to a new level of autonomous actions, which will lead to totally chaotic battles. The winner will be the force composed of individuals who are better at operating in this environment.

An Introduction to Reciprocal Net Assessment  ... good decision making is more than just reacting to threats in time to avoid them; good decision making involves avoiding surprise and creating it. The RNA approach can help analysts and decision makers do both. (and) is useful primarily as a complement to existing methods of red teaming, competitive and intelligence analysis, deception and counterdeception analysis, and business and military wargaming.

 Modeling and Simulation of Red Teaming   This and future position papers will explore possible ways to use M&S to augment or replace traditional red teams in some situations, the features Red Team M&S should possess, how one might connect live and simulated red teams, and existing tools in this domain.

Please make Red Team Journal part of your "resilient community" reading.

We continue to discuss the idea of "team of leaders."  This video well worth your time. Thanks to John Robb at Global Guerrilllas.  See his site for comments.

But let's take this one step further into the context of  "What kind of war"  determination as impacting how we approach "the war" once we have determined "what kind."  Consider the comments from  the Blog – Challenge COIN; Perspectives on the evolving U.S. Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism doctrine. What works, what does not, and what we think we know: "COIN/CT Lessons from drug induced dancing."

... The main lesson to walk away with is how crucial it was to easily mimic the dance. Were this a difficult dance, the originator would have been nothing more than an observed solo performer. Also the role of the first follower made it acceptable for a few more people to join. Once the first follower's friends join in, the tipping point is then reached at 1:15. From then on, people join in groups and the originator or "leader" is irrelevant as the movement has a life of his own. Only the music ending stops everyone from dancing, not the "leader."

Now take that template and apply it to al Qaeda in Iraq. What sort of impact would killing or capturing the leadership have today? This is precisely why the classic insurgency texts emphasized the need to destroy an insurgency at its onset. Otherwise it becomes an integrated part of a society for at least a generation if not longer. So how do we end the al Qaeda-styled movements? Find the music and turn it off…

See Targeted for death -  the killing of Hamas' Mahmoud Mabhouh.  (See  background report on the operation itself)

Los Angeles Times' Marjorie Miller sought the views of an array of military and human rights lawyers on the legality and legitimacy of targeted killings.

So what kind of war or warfare or confrontation or conflict against non-state actors is war amongst the people? How do you fight, how do you survive, how does a country do both and yet maintain its sense of right and wrong?

Over the jump, key thoughts from the above article.

 If new to this site or the What Kind of War series please see the first article: EEI #15 So What Kind of War Is It?

Philip Alston
U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings

If a foreign intelligence agency was responsible for the killing of Mabhouh, the matter should clearly be classified as an extrajudicial execution. There is no legal justification for the cold-blooded murder of a man who, if alleged to have committed crimes, could have been arrested and charged. Political murders of this type undermine the fabric of international law as well as stoke the fires of conflict

Amos Guiora
Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah

I have long advocated person-specific operational counter-terrorism as a means to protect the state and to protect innocent lives… targeted killings are lawful, predicated on the following caveats.

When is a person a legitimate target in the context of lawful, preemptive self-defense? There is a requirement for an intelligence picture suggesting significant future action that endangers national security.

There are four categories of legitimate targets in the suicide-bombing infrastructure: 1) the mastermind—quarterback—who identifies targets, recruits the bombers and plans the action; 2) the suicide bomber; 3) the person responsible for logistics—the driver, the person who makes the bomb and facilitates the bombing. 4) the financier

People who object to targeted killing often seem to have a covert premise that amounts to functional pacifism—yes, of course you can protect yourselves, but any practicable ways of doing so are, sorry, illegal.

But targeted killing can be an important, discrete, discriminating way of projecting lethal force. Sometimes people mistakenly think that any time you're using force, it must be better to do it in the open, transparent and acknowledged. However, the ability to use force can allow you to take out someone who is a genuine threat without raising the circumstances into open, overt, large-scale war, which could have drastically worse consequences for everyone…

"armed conflict" in a legal sense—and perhaps surprisingly to the non-lawyers—isn't the only basis for using force in international law. The U.S. and many other countries have traditionally relied on at least the international law of self-defense, permitting uses of force even though the fighting does not rise to the level of an "armed conflict" against a nonstate actor.

My view is that there's no question but that the Dubai operation, if it was Israel, is illegal. Under international law, it's a basic rule that you don't operate in another state without its consent. This is a pretty clear violation of Dubai's sovereignty, presumably without the Emirates' consent; Dubai seems to have a murder case on its hands.

So let's talk consequences: Imagine a Chechen leader, considered extremely threatening by Russia, makes his way to the United States. Russian authorities decide they cannot seek his extradition from the United States back to Russia for any number of reasons, and because he is perceived as such a great threat, Russia mounts an operation to kill this person in the United States. Are we OK with that?

The Dubai killing could be a harbinger of a lawlessness in which any state that sees a threat out there can use force in another state to stop it. International law may not always be enforceable, but it provides a sense of settled expectations about how states are to behave. If Israel did it, and if we consent to its use of force in this situation, then what is the principled response to another state's similar action in the United States or elsewhere?

... In the pre-9/11 era, the U.S. would have considered such a targeted killing to be an "assassination," which, under a presidential executive order in effect since the Ford administration, was prohibited if done by U.S. intelligence officers. Indeed, the CIA could not even share intelligence with a foreign intelligence service, including our close allies, if there were any chance it could be used to target and kill an identified terrorist.

Today, that executive order is still on the books.
Our moral code and policy pronouncements once reflected an understanding that such treacherous killing was not how a great nation should defend itself—unless, like Israel, its very survival is at stake. At one time, the United States did not kill in the shadows—until we became as afraid for our lives as the Israelis have been for decades. But are we really afraid now for our survival as a nation? How can a bunch of thugs reduce us to this?

Targeted assassinations can be justified when the target is a legitimate enemy who is actively engaged in planning or organizing or carrying out criminal or terrorist activities, and when it's possible to hit the target without killing innocent people. Also, when it's not possible to bring the targeted person to justice in a normal way; when he isn't living in a zone of peace where law and order prevails and policemen make arrests, but when he is living in something more like a zone of war. When those conditions are met, I think this is a legitimate response to international terrorism.
... It should be the policy of the United States in Afghanistan, and probably in Pakistan too, that after you carry out one of these raids, you should be prepared to defend it. You're using the coercive power of the state in a lethal way, and in a democracy—in a country committed to the rule of law—actions of that sort should be subject to some kind of public scrutiny. 

On the morning of Feb. 19, 1945, an armada of 880 ships with more than 100,000 Marines, Coast Guard units and Navy support personnel sat offshore. More Marines were sent to Iwo Jima than any other battle. Of the 84 Medals of Honor awarded to Marines in World War II, 27 were earned on 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima, an unsurpassed record in military history… One-third of the Marines killed in World War II died at Iwo Jima. ... 

"... Reminders that our freedom was bought not in courtrooms, not from podiums, not in classrooms, but in dirt and rocks, water and sand, in Godforsaken places like the beaches of Iwo Jima and the men who paid the price never bought anything again…

They are, indeed, always faithful, eternally Marines. In dress blues, they march in cadence across the skies with the thousands before and after them. The wind plays taps and wings are their epaulets."

The words above are by Mary Alice Altorfer.  Please read the complete article here at the Ventura County STAR.

And for an indepth view of what kind of war Iwo Jima was see The Battle for Iwo Jima, here and here.

From Thucydides, to Michael Yon today in Iraq and Afghanistan,  confrontation, conlict, warfare, wars AND War have been recorded for some  2500 years. We are discussing differences in this series.  But Thermopylae to Gettsburg to Midway to Baghdad to mountains of Afghanistan, much remains the same for those who do the  fighting.  This is the carrier Navy piece – in color.

Hat tip to Jim Dunkle for this one.  Sometimes Supply officers do come through.

Making war upon insurgents is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.  T.E. Lawrence

In a new think piece, one of the best writer/thinkers on line, Mark Safranski at Zenpundit in "The Post-COIN Era is Here; Learning to eat Soup with a Spoon Again" -provides not only more detail on the COIN ("or not") debate and its significance (real or imaginary), but also gives serious thought to the possible fallout, noting the following:

• ... to father a doctrine does not mean that you can control how others interpret and make use of it.


• COIN is an excellent operational tool, brought back by John Nagl & co. (Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam) from the dark oblivion that Big Army partisans consigned it to cover up their own strategic failures in Vietnam. As good as COIN is though, it is not something akin to magic with which to work policy miracles or to substitute for America not having a cohesive and realistic grand strategy.


•  We are all COINdinistas now. Instead of being controversial, COIN having a secure place in our operational arsenal of ideas has become the new "conventional" wisdom; it is past time to look at some of the other serious challenges America has ahead.

The Post-COIN article has received significant discussion on other blogs, critical review, and comment including from author of The Pentagon's New Map, Thomas P.M. Barnett. One line of reasoning introduced by Barnett is the degree to which COIN and the debate and decisions have impact on the larger defense and security issues facing DOD and the nation.

In  preliminary articles (EEI's #6, #7, #10) to the "what kind of war" series, the point was made that as we move in time from 9-11, the  force structure and technical direction decisions made by and for DOD will impact decisions on risk mitigation, risk management, and  level of risk acceptance that the homeland security, public safety and first responder organizations nation-wide will have left on their plate. Understanding these issues, it would seem then , is essential and critical for citizens, private sector and local government alike.  In that sense, to what degree counter insurgency, COIN, is considered method, tactic, tool or core to strategic thinking has significant ramifications –

Gates is attempting to change not just what the Pentagon is buying, but its fundamental understanding of what it is procuring weapon systems for and why. Cold War-era weapons with such focused utility as the F-22 are not what he believes the Pentagon needs with an uncertain future… Gates is attempting a more fundamental reorientation of the entire Pentagon, with greater emphasis on the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, 'hybrid wars' and 'fourth-generation' warfare. (STRATFOR analysis on the F-22 decision)

Please read the original AND the comments: The Post-COIN Era is Here by Mark Safranski.

Haiti – Essence of Decision – Operation Unified Response

In attempt to establish a framework for discussion of the many facets of the Haiti disaster, and as a precursor  to addressing the question – What kind of a community or organization –or indeed, group of organizations – can survive and thrive in unconventional, uncertain and severe crisis environments? - multiple articles from varying perspectives on Operation Unified Response  are being posted on  DaVinci's Horse,  the Facebook Page.

•  Note:You do not have to be a Facebook Member to view the page and follow the links to articles.Facebook may present an interim page with requirement to click  Continue.  To go to DvH , after following a link click the page tab rather than using the back arrow.