The Moral Injury

Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo provides one of the more coherent and compelling accounts of the penultimate cost of war:

[T]he ethical damage of war may be worse than the physical injuries we sustain. To properly wage war, you have to recalibrate your moral compass. Once you return from the battlefield, it is difficult or impossible to repair it... War makes us killers. We must confront this horror directly if we’re to be honest about the true costs of war.

Read the article here.

The Legal Basis for Killing U.S. Citizens in Al Qaeda

Administration lawyers have asserted that it would be lawful to kill a United States citizen if “an informed, high-level official” of the government decided that the target was a ranking figure in Al Qaeda who posed “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States” and if his capture was not feasible, according to a 16-page document made public on Monday.

The white paper is available here.

Out of Touch...?

As long as there has been war, there has been disgruntlment among the troops, sometimes aimed at the leaders. Here's a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel's take on OEF and ISAF. Is this that observation of someone who's out of touch with digital warfare, or is there some ground truth?

When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European “chateaux generals” of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we’d have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do. Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected “good” tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a “fingertips feel” for on-the-ground reality.

Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.

Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind).

Read the full commentary here.

The Strategic Staff Sergeant

From the NYT:

PANJWAI, Afghanistan — Displaced by the war, Abdul Samad finally moved his large family back home to this volatile district of southern Afghanistan last year. He feared the Taliban, but his new house was nestled near an American military base, where he considered himself safe.

But when Mr. Samad, 60, walked into his mud-walled dwelling here on Sunday morning and found 11 of his relatives sprawled in all directions, shot in the head, stabbed and burned, he learned the culprit was not a Taliban insurgent. The suspected gunman was a 38-year-old United States staff sergeant who had slipped out of the base to kill.

Read the article here.
In contrast, read USMC Gen. Charles C. Krulak's original 1999 article on the Strategic Corporal here.

Hearts and Minds

A report prepared for ISAF's RC-East claims the rising number of coalition forces being killed by Afghanistan National Army and Police partners is indicative of a deeper animosity growing between the allies' lower ranks.

“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” said the report. Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest.”

Read the article here.

The Shifting Application of Airpower

From carpet bombing and cluster munitions to overwatches and shows of presence, the (re)development of COIN Ops in Afghanistan has brought combat aviation to heel:

The use of air power has changed markedly during the long Afghan conflict, reflecting the political costs and sensitivities of civilian casualties caused by errant or indiscriminate strikes and the increasing use of aerial drones, which can watch over potential targets for extended periods with no risk to pilots or more expensive aircraft.

Read the article here.

What's Wrong with Torture?

If you missed the Reich Lecture last evening, here's a link to Dr. David Sussman's article, "What's Wrong with Torture?" Dr. Sussman's talk was based on this article.

A Due Process in War

What legal argument authorized the targeting of an American citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, in Yemen?

The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials...

“What constitutes due process in this case is a due process in war,” said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closely held deliberations within the administration...

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights argued on behalf of Aulaqi’s father last year that that there is no “battlefield” in Yemen, and that the administration should be forced to articulate publicly its legal standards for killing any citizen outside the United States who is suspected of terrorism.

Read the article here.

From Guantanamo to Abbottabad

Emerging details about the investigation that culminated in the killing of Osama bin Laden have re-ignited debate over the practice and effectiveness of torture. John Yoo, former Justice Depaertment official in the Bush administration, cites the interrogation program he helped define as responsible for producing the actionable intelligence that led to bin Laden:

Sunday's success also vindicates the Bush administration, whose intelligence architecture marked the path to bin Laden's door. According to current and former administration officials, CIA interrogators gathered the initial information that ultimately led to bin Laden's death. The United States located al Qaeda's leader by learning the identity of a trusted courier from the tough interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and his successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi.

In response, editors at the NYT claim the technique played a small role in finding bin Laden and cost the nation far more in terms of harming our reputation abroad:

There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive. The Bush administration’s abuses — and ends justify the means arguments — did huge damage to this country’s standing and gave its enemies succor and comfort. If that isn’t enough, there is also the pragmatic argument that most experienced interrogators think that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means.

Read the editorials here: WSJ; NYT

‘Three Cups of Tea’ Author Defends Book

The CBS news program "60 Minutes" investigated and questioned events portrayed in Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea:

While the publishing industry waited to see whether it faced the embarrassment of yet another partly fabricated memoir, Greg Mortenson, the co-author of the best-selling “Three Cups of Tea,” a book popular with the Pentagon for its inspirational lessons on Afghanistan and Pakistan, forcefully countered a CBS News report on Sunday that questioned the facts of his book and the management of his charitable organization.

An unofficial reponse:

“We continue to believe in the logic of what Greg is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know the powerful effects that education can have on eroding the root causes of extremism,” said a military official, who asked not to be named under ground rules imposed by the Pentagon.

As Mara Naselli observes:

The debate between truth and fact in personal essay and memoir is an old one, and the test of authenticity has rarely been, “Did it really happen that way?” Many argue that memory is just too slippery to be held to that kind of standard, and that the discernment of fact itself isn’t obvious.

The question, then, is whether the US military should use such slippery accounts as a staple in COIN training.

Read the NYT article here.

SECDEF Addresses Cadets at USAFA

In case you missed it... SECDEF addressed the wing and permanent party today:

"I’m concerned that the view still lingers in some corners that once I depart as Secretary, and once U.S. forces drawdown in Iraq and in Afghanistan in accordance with the President’s and NATO’s strategy, things can get back to what some consider to be real Air Force normal. This must not happen."

Read the speech here.

Criticizing COIN

NYT reviewed Bing West's The Wrong War, which offers and account of the U.S. Military's COIN strategy from the soldiers' perspective:

“The Wrong War” amounts to a crushing and seemingly irrefutable critique of the American plan in Afghanistan. It should be read by anyone who wants to understand why the war there is so hard... [The] basic argument can be summed up like this: American soldiers and Marines are very good at counterinsurgency, and they are breaking their hearts, and losing their lives, doing it so hard. But the central premise of counterinsurgency doctrine holds that if the Americans sacrifice on behalf of the Afghan government, then the Afghan people will risk their lives for that same government in return. This isn’t happening. What we have created instead, West shows, is a vast culture of dependency: Americans are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them. Afghanistan’s leaders, from the presidential palace in Kabul to the river valleys in the Pashtun heartland, are enriching themselves, often criminally, on America’s largesse. The Taliban, whatever else they do, fight hard and for very little reward. American soldiers, handcuffed by strict rules of engagement, have surrendered the initiative to their enemies. Most important, the Afghan people, though almost certainly opposed to a Taliban redux, are equally wary of both the Americans and their Afghan “leaders.” They will happily take the riches lavished on them by the Americans, but they will not risk their lives for either the Americans or their own government. The Afghans are waiting to see who prevails, but prevailing is impossible without their help.

Read the review here.

TMI

Advances in technology have surpassed the human capacity to process data. Under more benign conditions, that's a good thing; computers can process in seconds or minutes what might take us hours. But in war, where we insert a human in the loop of an otherwise automated killing system, humans are sometimes overwhelmed.

Across the military, the data flow has surged; since the attacks of 9/11, the amount of intelligence gathered by remotely piloted drones and other surveillance technologies has risen 1,600 percent. On the ground, troops increasingly use hand-held devices to communicate, get directions and set bombing coordinates. And the screens in jets can be so packed with data that some pilots call them “drool buckets” because, they say, they can get lost staring into them.

“There is information overload at every level of the military — from the general to the soldier on the ground,” said Art Kramer, a neuroscientist and director of the Beckman Institute, a research lab at the University of Illinois.

The military has engaged researchers like Mr. Kramer to help it understand the brain’s limits and potential. Just as the military has long pushed technology forward, it is now at the forefront in figuring out how humans can cope with technology without being overwhelmed by it.

If you're inundated with data and you misprocess an important piece, should you be held accountable?  Read the NYT article here.

Army Deploys Soldiers Accused of Felonies

"Deploying troops accused of felonies is one of a growing list of accomodations, ranging from airport body scans to uncharged detainees at Guatanamo Bay, that the United States has made in the past decade to fight terrorism. And it is one with an ironic twist:The effor to impose civil order abroad is eroding the rights of some at home."

Read the article here.

Another Runway General

Links to media articles tracking Gen McChrystal's interview & resignation:

Rolling Stone - The Runaway General
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236

NYT - McChrystal’s Fate in Limbo as He Prepares to Meet Obama
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/politics/24mcchrystal.html?hp

NYT - General Faces Unease Among His Own Troops, Too
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/asia/23troops.html?ref=politics

NYT - The Fury of a General, Released by Nature
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/23rollingstone.html?ref=politics

WSJ - Why McChrystal Has to Go
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704853404575322800914018876.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

RCP - Statement by General Stanley McChrystal
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2010/Statement%20by%20General%20Stanley%20McChrystal.pdf

Newsweek - Why Military Code Demands McChrystal's Resignation
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/22/why-military-code-demands-mcchrystal-s-resignation.html

WSJ - Decision to Dismiss McChrystal Came Swiftly
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575324673218719434.html

CSM - The McChrystal Rolling Stone article: the story behind the story
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0623/The-McChrystal-Rolling-Stone-article-the-story-behind-the-story

LAT - A rapid-fire chain of events led to Gen. McChrystal's downfall
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-mcchrystal-obama-20100624,0,558830.story

Miami Herald - Obama, officials stress no Afghan policy change post-McChrystal
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/24/1699251/obama-officials-stress-no-afghan.html#ixzz0rpRsMxRc

NYT - The Culture of Exposure
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/opinion/25brooks.html?hp