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?

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. 

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

( From The Counter Terrorism Puzzle; A Guide for Decision Makers, used with permission of the author, Dr. Boaz Ganor, the Associate Dean of the Lauder School of Government, at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, and the founder and Executive Director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism )

The above graphic placing terrorism in context of war and the definitions below of many of the terms used throughout the "What kind of war" series are intended only as reference, not as anyone's formal authorized definition.  They have been gleaned from multiple sources.  Of particular note should be the degree of overlap and ambiguity.

Definitions: Special Operations, Asymmetric Warfare, Terrorism, Guerrilla Warfare, Irregular Warfare, Unconventional Warfare, The Long War, Fourth Generation Warfare, Hybrid Warfare:

Special operations are military operations that are considered "special" (that is, unconventional).

Special operations are typically performed independently or in conjunction with conventional military operations. The primary goal is to achieve a political or military objective where a conventional force requirement does not exist or might affect the overall strategic outcome. Special operations are usually conducted in a low-profile manner that typically aim to achieve the advantage of speed, surprise, and violence of action against an unsuspecting target. Special ops are typically carried out with limited numbers of highly trained personnel that are able to operate in all environments, utilize self-reliance, are able to easily adapt and overcome obstacles, and use unconventional combat skills and equipment to complete objectives. Special operations are usually implemented through specific or tailored intelligence

Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

"Asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the "weaker" combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality.  Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized. This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).

Some definitions also include acts of unlawful violence and war. The history of terrorist organizations suggests that they do not select terrorism for its political effectiveness.  Individual terrorists tend to be motivated more by a desire for social solidarity with other members of their organization than by political platforms or strategic objectives, which are often murky and undefined.

Guerrilla warfare is combat in which a small group of combatants use mobile military tactics in the form of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army.

The term means "little war" in Spanish and was created during the Peninsular War. The concept acknowledges a conflict between armed civilians against a powerful nation state army, either foreign or domestic and uses tactics such as ambush, sabotage and mobility in attacking vulnerable targets in enemy territory. The tactics of guerrilla warfare were used successfully in the recent 20th century by among others the People's Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War, Fidel Castro's rebel army in the Cuban Revolution, and by the Viet Cong, the North Vietnam Army in the Vietnam War, the Kosovo Liberation Army in the Kosovo War and the Bosnian War . Most factions of the Iraqi Insurgency, Colombia's FARC, and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) are said to be engaged in some form of guerrilla warfare — as was, until recently, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Irregular warfare (IW) is warfare in which one or more combatants are irregular military rather than regular forces. Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare, and so is asymmetric warfare.

Irregular warfare favors indirect and asymmetric warfare approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities, in order to erode an adversary's power, influence, and will. It is inherently a protracted struggle that will test the resolve of a nation and its strategic partners.  Concepts associated with irregular warfare are not as recent as the irregular warfare term itself.

Unconventional warfare  is the opposite of conventional warfare. Where conventional warfare is used to reduce an opponent's military capability, unconventional warfare is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict.

On the surface, UW contrasts with conventional warfare in that: forces or objectives are covert or not well-defined, tactics and weapons intensify environments of subversion or intimidation, and the general or long-term goals are coercive or subversive to a political body.

The Long War is a term used by the administration of US President George W. Bush referring to US actions against various governments and terrorist organisations, as a reaction to the September 11 attacks. Other designations are the "War on Terrorism", the "War on Terror", the "Global War On Terror (G.W.O.T.)" and the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE)". It has been criticized as a justification for perpetual war.

Fourth generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian.

The military doctrine was first defined in 1989 by a team of United States analysts, including William S. Lind, used to describe warfare's return to a decentralized form. In terms of generational modern warfare, the fourth generation signifies the nation states' loss of their near-monopoly on combat forces, returning to modes of conflict common in pre-modern times.  The simplest definition includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent non-state actor.  As such, fourth generation warfare uses classical tactics—tactics deemed unacceptable by more traditional thinking—to weaken the advantaged opponent's will to win.

Hybrid warfare incorporates a range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorists acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.  These multi-modal activities can be conducted by separate units, or even by the same unit, but are generally operationally and tactically directed and coordinated within the main battlespace to achieve synergistic effects.  Hybrid wars can be conducted by both states and a variety of non-state actors.

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

There seems to be a trend toward treating events of terrorism as if they were specifically a law-enforcement problem , rather than  enemy operations in the context of war and warfare. Both require application of force  "but for force to be effective the desired outcome of its use must be understood in such detail that the context is defined as well as the point of application." (The Utility of Force; The Art of War in the Modern World by General Sir Rupert Smith)

The issue here is not crime or war, the context is rather that war plays out "amongst the people" – not only in the villages of Afghanistan, but as readily in the airports, cities, communities, and courtrooms of all nations.  The application of force, -whether by police or military – AND  of law are essential.

Consider the following  3 new points (original list provided in EEI# 15) based on the Christmas Day attempted airline bombing:

• In the wake of the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing, President Obama ordered speedy reviews of how the air security system failed and the Transportation Security Administration began enhanced screening for passengers traveling through 14 nations.


• Eight years after WTC and Pentagon attacks, actionable intelligence still can't seem to get across intelligence agency boundaries so as to create "action."


• Nigerian-born Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab who tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, made its approach to Detroit, Michigan has been read his Miranda rights.

 The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Year War essentially made war and warfare a function of the state and was in part at least an attempt to limit or control devastation among non-combatants.  The 1949 Geneva Conventions set the standards in international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war and established the qualifications for being considered a lawful combatant  – must have conducted military operations according to the laws and customs of war, be part of a chain of command, wear a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance" and bear arms openly.

Does not the above list  give one pause to think, that maybe, just maybe in light of those long standing and current established rules and protocols, we are laboring most vigorously,  quoting General George Patton, to make circumstances meet the plans and rules, rather than adapting as necessary to a very complex and dynamic set of events. Former CIA Chief of the bin Laden Issue Station, Michael Scheuer, asked are we in a war or chasing Thelma and Louise?  The answer would appear to be BOTH, and without succinct definition of the specific kind of war as back-plane for understanding events as they occur and without either usable definition or following rules, we're continually trying to shoe horn square pegs in round holes.

It seems appropriate here to reflect upon some of the introductory words in General Smith's The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern world:

On every occasion that I have been sent to achieve some military objective in order to serve a political purpose, I, and those with me, have had to change our method and reorganize in order to succeed.  Until this was done we could not use our force effectively.

... it became obvious to me that the extant theories of military organization and application and the unfolding realities were wide apart.  No more was I part of a world of wars in which the civilian and military establishments each had its distinct role in distinct stages.  The new situations were always a complex combination of political and military circumstances, though there appeared to be little comprehension as to how the two became intertwined – nor far more seriously from the perspective of the military practitioner, how they constantly influenced each other as events unfolded…. I realized we were now in a new era of conflict – in fact a new paradigm –

... from armies with comparable forces doing battle on a field to strategic confrontation between a range of combatants, not all of which are armies, and using different types of weapons, often improvised.  The old paradigm was that of interstate industrial war.  The new one is the paradigm of war amongst the people.

The next post will provide some discussion of these terms by way of seeking at least a reference point of terminology .

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

America has an impressive record of starting wars but a dismal one of ending them well.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is a retired Army Colonel, graduate of  West Point, serving in Vietnam in 1970 and 71.  In his books [The Limits of Power, The Long War, and The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War ], he is critical of American foreign policy in the post Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over-reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the American people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs.   Bacevich conceived The New American Militarism not only as "a corrective to what has become the conventional critique of U.S. policies since 9/11 but as a challenge to the orthodox historical context employed to justify those policies."  His new book Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War is due out in the spring.

This article found on  The American Conservative would appear consistent with his past writing and the excerpt is offered as yet another view of "what kind of war."

No Exit (Excerpt)

by Andrew Bacevich

President Obama's decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan earned him at most two muted cheers from Washington's warrior-pundits. Sure, the president had acceded to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops. Already in its ninth year, Operation Enduring Freedom was therefore guaranteed to endure for years to come. The Long War begun on George W. Bush's watch with expectations of transforming the Greater Middle East gained a new lease on life, its purpose reduced to the generic one of "keeping America safe."

 Yet the Long War's most ardent supporters found fault with Obama's words and demeanor. The president had failed to convey the requisite enthusiasm for sending young Americans to fight and die on the far side of the world …

... That the post-Cold War United States military, reputedly the strongest and most capable armed force in modern history, has not only conceded its inability to achieve decision but has in effect abandoned victory as its raison d'être qualifies as a remarkable development.

Since 1945, the United States military has devoted itself to the proposition that, Hiroshima notwithstanding, war still works—that, despite the advent of nuclear weapons, organized violence directed by a professional military elite remains politically purposeful. From the time U.S. forces entered Korea in 1950 to the time they entered Iraq in 2003, the officer corps attempted repeatedly to demonstrate the validity of this hypothesis.

The results have been disappointing. Where U.S. forces have satisfied Max Boot's criteria for winning, the enemy has tended to be, shall we say, less than ten feet tall. Three times in the last 60 years, U.S. forces have achieved an approximation of unambiguous victory—operational success translating more or less directly into political success. The first such episode, long since forgotten, occurred in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson intervened in the Dominican Republic. The second occurred in 1983, when American troops, making short work of a battalion of Cuban construction workers, liberated Granada. The third occurred in 1989 when G.I.'s stormed the former American protectorate of Panama, toppling the government of long-time CIA asset Manuel Noriega.

Apart from those three marks in the win column, U.S. military performance has been at best mixed. The issue here is not one of sacrifice and valor—there's been plenty of that—but of outcomes.

... An alternative reading of our recent military past might suggest the following: first, that the political utility of force—the range of political problems where force possesses real relevance—is actually quite narrow; second, that definitive victory of the sort that yields a formal surrender ceremony at Appomattox or on the deck of an American warship tends to be a rarity; third, that ambiguous outcomes are much more probable, with those achieved at a cost far greater than even the most conscientious war planner is likely to anticipate; and fourth, that the prudent statesman therefore turns to force only as a last resort and only when the most vital national interests are at stake. ...

To consider the long bloody chronicle of modern history, big wars and small ones alike, is to affirm the validity of these conclusions. Bellicose ideologues will pretend otherwise. Such are the vagaries of American politics that within the Beltway the views expressed by these ideologues—few of whom have experienced war—will continue to be treated as worthy of consideration. One sees the hand of God at work: the Lord obviously has an acute appreciation for irony.

... The impetus for weaning Americans away from their infatuation with war, if it comes at all, will come from within the officer corps. It certainly won't come from within the political establishment, the Republican Party gripped by militaristic fantasies and Democrats too fearful of being tagged as weak on national security to exercise independent judgment. Were there any lingering doubt on that score, Barack Obama, the self-described agent of change, removed it once and for all: by upping the ante in Afghanistan he has put his personal imprimatur on the Long War.

Yet this generation of soldiers has learned what force can and cannot accomplish. Its members understand the folly of imagining that war provides a neat and tidy solution to vexing problems. They are unlikely to confuse Churchillian calls to arms with competence or common sense.

What conclusions will they draw from their extensive and at times painful experience with war? Will they affirm this country's drift toward perpetual conflict, as those eagerly promoting counterinsurgency as the new American way of war apparently intend? Or will the officer corps reject that prospect and return to the tradition once represented by men like George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Matthew B. Ridgway?

As our weary soldiers trek from Iraq back once more to Afghanistan, this figures prominently among the issues to be decided there.

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

 To say "warfare is changing" is banal, obvious and thus irrelevant. When did warfare ever not evolve? The acts of Sept. 11 changed nothing in the Thucydidean and Clausewitzian nature of war, or even its modern practice. America's choice of response did change U.S. foreign policy and defense planning, but the attacks themselves were in no way indicative of any change in the aims and purposes, or even methods, of political violence.

My guess would be that he would disagree with much written in this series. My argument with his article would focus on the idea of serious need for  clarity by use of  appropriately defined terms as compared to consideration as "buzzwords," simply because they did not appear in the text of On War by Carl von Clausewitz.

Essay: The war of new words: Why military history trumps buzzwords (excerpt)
by William F. Owen
War isn't just transforming — it's ushering in a whole new language to describe conflict, and this language is used in a way that pays little attention to logic or military history. Thus the forces we used to call guerrillas are now "hybrid threats." Insurgencies are now "complex" and require "complex and adaptive" solutions. Jungles and cities are now "complex terrain." Put simply, the discussion about future conflict is being conducted using buzzwords and bumper stickers.

The evidence that the threats of the 21st century are going to be that much different from the threats of the 20th is lacking. Likewise, there is no evidence that a "new way of war" is evolving or that we somehow had a previously flawed understanding.

In fact, the use of the new words strongly indicates that those using them do not wish to be encumbered by a generally useful and coherent set of terms that military history had previously used. As war and warfare are not changing in ways that demand new words, it is odd that people keep inventing them.

... The most common attempt to redefine the activities of irregular forces and guerrillas has been the using the word "asymmetric," predicated on trying to describe a dissimilar employment of ways and means that was apparently new. Yet history does not support this thesis, nor does it usefully inform thinking about the future.

...It may be that there is a generation of serving soldiers who do not understand war and warfare as well as past generations, but that is not to say that war today is more complex. The Internet does not make warfare more complex. TV coverage does not make war more complex. Public opinion does not make war more complex. If the root of the argument is that society is becoming more complex, therefore warfare will be more complex, then 20 years from now it will become supercomplex or hypercomplex. Obviously, this is rubbish.

To say "warfare is changing" is banal, obvious and thus irrelevant. When did warfare ever not evolve? The acts of Sept. 11 changed nothing in the Thucydidean and Clausewitzian nature of war, or even its modern practice. America's choice of response did change U.S. foreign policy and defense planning, but the attacks themselves were in no way indicative of any change in the aims and purposes, or even methods, of political violence.

... The use of the new words arguably puts good old wine in shabby new bottles. Most of this new vocabulary has been spawned by the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But despite the large amount that has been written about counterinsurgency, very little, if any of it, contains new insights or thinking that was not already part of the vast collection of English-language counterinsurgency writing. For whatever reason, the new words frame obvious and enduring observations about insurgency in a new light, creating an aura of discovery rather than simple relearning. The riposte that every insurgency is unique and requires unique solutions is true, but this is generally true for every war and every form of warfare. What worked for the German Army in France in 1940 failed in Russia in 1942.

... War is not changing. The aims and purpose of organized violence for political gain are enduring and unchanging. Insurgencies are war, and most if not all of the observations made in the Army's new FM 3-24 "Counterinsurgency" manual could have been written in 1991 or earlier. Future wars will be born of future politics, not "globalization" or the Internet. Yes, there will be "unknown unknowns," but they are just that: unknowable. New words won't change that.

... The only thing that can obscure that obvious truth is the application of new words and altered meanings to bend the problem to fit the writer's purpose — or to pretend that military history is less useful than the insights of those incapable of expressing themselves in plain English.

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

 ... familiar arguments about what can and should be done to reduce America's vulnerabilities are again filling the airwaves, editorial pages and blogosphere. Several of these arguments are based on assumptions that guided the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—and unfortunately, they are as unfounded now as they were then..

5 Myths about keeping America safe from terrorrism

by Stephen Flynn

With President Obama declaring a "systemic failure" of our security system in the wake of the attempted Christmas bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner, familiar arguments about what can and should be done to reduce America's vulnerabilities are again filling the airwaves, editorial pages and blogosphere. Several of these arguments are based on assumptions that guided the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—and unfortunately, they are as unfounded now as they were then. The biggest whopper of all? The paternalistic assertion that the government can keep us all safe without our help.

1. Terrorism is the gravest threat facing the American people

 Americans are at far greater risk of being killed in accidents or by viruses than by acts of terrorism. In 2008, more than 37,300 Americans perished on the nation's highways, according to government data. Even before H1N1, a similar number of people died each year from the seasonal flu. Terrorism is a real and potentially consequential danger. But the greatest threat isn't posed by the direct harm terrorists could inflict; it comes from what we do to ourselves when we are spooked. It is how we react—or more precisely, how we overreact—to the threat of terrorism that makes it an appealing tool for our adversaries. By grounding commercial aviation and effectively closing our borders after the 2001 attacks, Washington accomplished something no foreign state could have hoped to achieve: a blockade on the economy of the world's sole superpower. While we cannot expect to be completely successful at intercepting terrorist attacks, we must get a better handle on how we respond when they happen.

2. When it comes to preventing terrorism, the only real defense is a good offense.

 
The cornerstone of the Bush administration's approach to dealing with the terrorist threat was to take the battle to the enemy. But offense has its limits. We still aren't generating sufficiently accurate and timely tactical intelligence to adequately support U.S. counterterrorism efforts overseas. And going after terrorists abroad hardly means they won't manage to strike us at home. Just days before the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the United States collaborated with the Yemeni government on raids against al-Qaeda militants there. The group known as al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula is now claiming responsibility for having equipped and trained Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to blow up the flight. The group is also leveraging the raids to recruit militants and mount protests against Yemen's already fragile central government.

At the same time, an emphasis on offense has often come at the expense of investing in effective defensive measures, such as maintaining quality watch lists, sharing information about threats, safeguarding such critical assets as the nation's food and energy supplies, and preparing for large-scale emergencies. After authorities said Abdulmutallab had hidden explosives in his underwear, airline screeners held up flights to do stepped-up passenger pat-downs at boarding gates—pat-downs that inevitably avoided passengers' crotches and buttocks. This kind of quick fix only tends to fuel public cynicism about security efforts. But if we can implement smart security measures ahead of time (such as requiring refineries next to densely populated areas to use safer chemicals when they manufacture high-octane gas), we won't be incapacitated when terrorists strike. Strengthening our national ability to withstand and rapidly recover from terrorism will make the United States a less appealing target. In combating terrorism, as in sports, success requires both a capable offense and a strong defense.

 3. Getting better control over America's borders is essential to making us safer.

Our borders will never serve as a meaningful line of defense against terrorism. The inspectors at our ports, border crossings and airports have important roles when it comes to managing immigration and the flow of commerce, but they play only a bit part in stopping would-be attackers. This is because terrorist threats do not originate at our land borders with Mexico and Canada, nor along our 12,000 miles of coastline. They originate at home as well as abroad, and they exploit global networks such as the transportation system that moved 500 million cargo containers through the world's ports in 2008. Moreover, terrorists' travel documents are often in perfect order. This was the case with Abdulmutallab, as well as with shoe-bomber Richard Reid in 2001. Complaints about porous borders may play well politically, but they distract us from the more challenging task of forging international cooperation to strengthen safeguards for our global transportation, travel and financial systems. They also sidestep the disturbing fact that the number of terrorism-related cases involving U.S. residents reached a new high in 2009.

4. Investing in new technology is key to better security.

Not necessarily. Technology can be helpful, but too often it ends up being part of the problem. Placing too much reliance on sophisticated tools such as X-ray machines often leaves the people staffing our front lines consumed with monitoring and troubleshooting these systems. Consequently, they become more caught up in process than outcomes. And as soon procedures become routine, a determined bad guy can game them. We would do well to heed two lessons the U.S. military has learned from combating insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan: First, don't do things in rote and predictable ways, and second, don't alienate the people you are trying to protect. Too much of what is promoted as homeland security disregards these lessons. It is true that technology such as full-body imaging machines, which have received so much attention in the past week, are far more effective than metal detectors at screening airline passengers. But new technologies are also expensive, and they are no substitute for well-trained professionals who are empowered and rewarded for exercising good judgment.

5. Average citizens aren't an effective bulwark against terrorist attacks.

Elite pundits and policymakers routinely dismiss the ability of ordinary people to respond effectively when they are in harm's way. It's ironic that this misconception has animated much of the government's approach to homeland security since Sept. 11, 2001, given that the only successful counterterrorist action that day came from the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93. These passengers didn't have the help of federal air marshals. The Defense Department's North American Aerospace Defense Command didn't intercept the plane—it didn't even know the airliner had been hijacked. But by charging the cockpit over rural Pennsylvania, these private citizens prevented al-Qaeda terrorists from reaching their likely target of the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The government leaders whose constitutional duty is "to provide for the common defense" were defended by one thing alone—an alert and heroic citizenry.

This misconception is particularly reckless because it ends up sidelining the greatest asset we have for managing the terrorism threat: the average people who are best positioned to detect and respond to terrorist activities. We have only to look to the attempted Christmas Day attack to validate this truth. Once again it was the government that fell short, not ordinary people. A concerned Nigerian father, not the CIA or the National Security Agency, came forward with crucial information. And the courageous actions of the Dutch film director Jasper Schuringa and other passengers and crew members aboard Flight 253 thwarted the attack.

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

A  "lesson in aerodynamics" might be of interest as painting- hopefully- a useful "picture" of the period from  shortly before the September 11, 2001 8th hour, 46th minute, 40th second impact of American Airlines Flight 11, on through the remainder of the day as initial reaction and response took place, and on into the  12th as intial world level response was planned. 

Boundary conditions – the set of conditions specified for the behavior of the solution to a set of differential equations at the boundary of its domain – are important in determining the mathematical solutions to many physical problems.

  More specifically, concerning flight, the condition is noted as the boundary layer – the layer of reduced velocity in fluids, such as air and water, that is immediately adjacent to the surface of a solid – the wing – past which the fluid is flowing.  Truth is the air moving at different speeds around the upper and lower surface of the airfoil, thereby creating lift, rides not on the wing itself but rather on the boundary layer. Friction generated with the surface by the air's movement creates the slower moving  layer with the air  not only riding but additionally holding the layer to the surface. 

 If the angle of incidence of the airfoil in relation to airflow is increased, whether  initiated by the pilot or by impact of turbulent air, the layer flow can slow to the point of turbulence  ( loss of laminar flow)  and in this disruption,  the flowing air can no longer stay attached to the layer/airfoil, drag over comes lift and the wing is no longer in stable positive flight – not flying it stalls.

Characterized and understood by most under the context "lack of imagination," the 9-11 attack was planned, enabled and occured  successfully because the initial conditions – the boundary conditions –  that existed on 11 Sept were ideal for the al Qaeda attackers. They were those of the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as strategy, and what do do with the supposed peace dividend  as the only global suoper-power. Not appropriately factored in were events such as the Khobar Towers attack, the first WTC bombing, or bombing of USS Cole, nor the emergence of non-state, religous and ethnic  players suddenly attempting to control their own destiny in the wake of the USSR's demise and demise of acceptance of the state boundaries imposed at the end of WWI.  The conditions "of war" were metaphorically laminar for both American Flight 11's high speed attack on the World Trade Center and for al Qaeda.  A new set of boundary conditions with a great deal of turbulent flow in the layers around any future activity now existed. The fact that "what kind of war" has never been adequately addressed is evidence that "new norm" indicates only partlial recognition of  the flight environment for the ship of state.

Further, not recognized even as clearly, the initial 11 and 12 September plus later responses -

[the attack against the Taliban, invasion of Iraq, the Global War on Terrorism, the implementation of population-centric COIN tactics – and continued dithering (evidence offered in this series) on everything about "the war on terrorism" from its name to what do to with prisoner enemy combatants, to how to fight, where to fight, who or what to fight with, who gets to know what,  to how much money goes to each city or state to how to keep explosives off of airplanes] -

are direct result of operating with the wrong or at least insufficiently defined and understood boundary conditions. With the Cold War mind set prevailing to enable  the attack, the WWII, big war (tanks, fighter jets, war by technology) mind set defined the boundary layers of our planning for response.  All did what they know.  Initial Spec Ops with horses and B-52s with precision bombs, and the run up the Tigris and Euphrates by Marine and Army forces worked well.  Since then our metaphorical wing-of-war has seen more of the air flow shown at the end of the graphic than the beginning. Indeed not all airfoils are usable in all types of flight conditions.

Since Sept 11, 2001 the airfoil of our ship of state continues flight in turbulence – mostly resulting from trying to make the plans of another time and place meet a changed and ever changing 21st century circumstance.  As stated in daVinci's Horse #5 and in the lead article in this series by Dr. vob Lubitz, we persist in doing what we know, rather than taking the apparently difficult path leading to  knowing what we should do. Unstable air, unstable flight, indeed.

Rectifying the current situation – beginning by answering the question: "what kind of war is it?" – cannot be based on what we would like it to be considering our current defense posture, planning,  and investment, nor can it be built on urban legend or myth.  Retired Coast Guard Commander and recently selected president of the Center for National Policy, Dr. Stephen Flynn  elaborated on this subject  in the Washington Post on  Sunday January 3, 2010.  5 Myths about keeping America safe from terrorrism:

With President Obama declaring a "systemic failure" of our security system in the wake of the attempted Christmas bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner, familiar arguments about what can and should be done to reduce America's vulnerabilities are again filling the airwaves, editorial pages and blogosphere. Several of these arguments are based on assumptions that guided the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—and unfortunately, they are as unfounded now as they were then. The biggest whopper of all? The paternalistic assertion that the government can keep us all safe without our help

The graphic "Boundary Layer Separation" is from Computational Fluid Dynamics and Visualization

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

 As stated previously this site is not specifically focused on war and warfare, and most specifically, it has never been intended as one providing political commentary.  The "kind of war" – as essential element of  information- series is being extended because today's war,  how we define it, and how we defend our country in that defined context is a critical element of survival in our tightly coupled system in unstable equillibrium  world. (PWH Edition #8, DaVinci's Horse 5 by Dag von Lubitz)

To whatever extent you  believe or not von Clauswitz's "war as extension of politics by other means," the political arenas of the world and war are certainly intertwined beyond separation.  In this kind of war – whatever "this"  is -  a critical difference beween kinds is noted by the fact that there is no political entity on the other side to negotiate with to come to terms for cessation of conflict.  The war then continues so long as one side desires to carry out attacks. This is very distinctly different from the kind of war of Roosevelt's World War II or Lincoln's War Between the States.  How then do we win in the "war on terrorism", how then do we make this end?  What are the boundary conditions of victory, defeat, co-existence, survival?

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group. He is a noted conservative writer and the Townhall.com article below  is very obviously a political OPED, but no matter your political affiliation or opinion on the current administration's action, his points of distinction about "kind of war" need to be considered critically.

War? What War?

The Obama administration refuses to admit that we are at war.

By Charles Krauthammer

Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: "The system worked."

The attacker's concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.

Heck of a job, Brownie.

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." It's over — that is, if it ever existed.

Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."

And produces linguistic — and logical — oddities that littered Obama's public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions" — code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan's mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.

More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a "suspect" who "allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device." You can hear the echo of FDR: "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor."

Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant — an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians — and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point — surprise! — he stops talking.

This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that "we will not rest until we find all who were involved." Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed, and sent him.

This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as "extremist(s)."

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali, and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and they are openly pledged to wage war on America.

Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy — jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon — turns laxity into a governing philosophy.

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Fooling ourselves into thinking that terrorism is a just a criminal problem best handled by halfhearted security measures and civilian courts that rely on a "reasonable-doubt" standard is both naive and dangerous. 

Bob Brooks is the Sheriff of Ventura County California. He has a Master of Arts in Security Studies (Homeland Defense and Security) from the Naval Postgraduate School.  An excerpt of his Masters' thesis Creating a Coordinated Game Plan: Improving the Effectiveness of Miliary Civil Support to Law Enforcement appeared in Edition #6 of this website. He has served as a Project White Horse 084640 advisor since first publication.

This article was originally published by the Ventura County Star on Wednesday Jan 6, 2010 and is presented with permission of the author.

Civilian Courts no place for terrorists - Sunday morning, I listened to the president's top counterterrorism adviser say that there was no "smoking gun" that could have prevented the attempted mass murder of airline passengers approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.

As a member of the executive committee of the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force, it is troubling to believe that specific information available on this terrorist was not enough to generate a response that would have prevented him from conducting an attack on our shores.

The adviser, White House aide John Brennan, went on to defend the decision to prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a common criminal protected by all the rights granted to a citizen of the United States, saying that prosecutors may be able to use our system to make a deal for him to disclose information about other threats.

Abdulmutallab stated that there were other terrorists coming with similar intent, before his taxpayer-funded attorney prohibited him from making further statements.

If Abdulmutallab was right, can we afford to wait weeks or months before finding out if there is an imminent threat? If he was willing to die for his cause, will a plea-bargain agreement convince him to divulge al-Qaida's plans? How many potential terrorist recruits will be influenced by this trial being played out on a world stage?

This is a continuation of a shocking trend toward treating a war as a law-enforcement problem. Changing the political terminology does not change the reality. Clearly, this terrorist is a soldier of an extreme ideology that intends to destroy the West and, therefore, he should have been dealt with as an enemy combatant. We must acknowledge that our enemies do not have to be nation-states, or we will enable our enemies and handicap those charged to protect us.

Later Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration announced that individuals flying to the United States from one of the 14 countries we recognize as state sponsors of terrorism will be subjected to additional screening measures.

While this policy, in addition to the use of full-body scan technology, are good ideas, why did it take this attack to implement these common-sense measures? Unfortunately, most of our security screening is directed at stopping certain items from being taken on planes, while a trained terrorist can make a weapon out of a wide variety of materials that can make it through screening.

In contrast, Israel's state-run airline has an outstanding record for passenger safety. It relies on the far more successful approach of looking for terrorists rather than a four-ounce shampoo bottle or nail clippers.

Israel's security personnel do pay attention to country of origin, but they also gather additional passenger information and rely on careful questioning of individuals to determine whether they display a combination of characteristics consistent with someone who may pose a threat. I have been subjected to the process several times and found it to be respectful and reassuring.

If we are really serious about protecting our skies and our communities, we need to acknowledge that we are at war with a serious and determined enemy and that this conflict may continue for decades.

Fooling ourselves into thinking that terrorism is a just a criminal problem best handled by halfhearted security measures and civilian courts that rely on a "reasonable-doubt" standard is both naive and dangerous.