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Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS. Abu Muqawama retains the right to delete comments that include words that incite violence; are predatory, hateful, or intended to intimidate or harass; or degrade people on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. In summary, don't be a jerk.

  • Q: Why Is Lebanon Drafting the U.N. No-Fly Resolution on Libya?
    March 15, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 12:04pm | 1 Comments

    A: I suspect most of this blog's readers already know this, but charismatic Lebanese leader Musa Sadr disappeared while traveling to Libya in 1978. Musa Sadr, an Iranian-born cleric, was at the time the unquestioned leader of Lebanon's Shia community and was also widely respected outside his own sect. It is hard to imagine the 1980s Hizballah-Amal split among Lebanon's Shia community taking place had Musa Sadr not been "lost" (or, as is likely, executed by Gadhafi). No one knows why Gadhafi disappeared Sadr, though some suspected the hand of the PLO given rising tensions between the Palestinians and Lebanese in (the mostly Shia area of) southern Lebanon. I have at times been critical of the more recent work by both Fouad Ajami and Richard Norton, but they both wrote really great books on Musa Sadr and the Shia political awakening in Lebanon: The Vanished Imam: Musa Al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon and Amal and the Shi'A: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon, respectively. Anyway, Gadhafi has always avoided visiting Lebanon as the result of still visceral anger about the disappearance of Musa Sadr, and no one would be happier to stick the knife in Gadhafi than the Lebanese.

    P.S. How about we just forget about a no-fly zone and ask Hizballah to take care of Gadhafi? I know it's unorthodox, but a) I am ever budget-conscious, b) I like to think outside the box, and c) based on our experiences in Iraq with Jaysh al-Mahdi, Hizballah has some experience with this kind of thing. So maybe we can ring Hassan Nasrallah and ask him if he is busy?*

    *Before anyone loses it in the comments section, this is a joke.

    Books, Lebanon, Libya

  • The Hard Work of Combat
    March 15, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 11:41am | 4 Comments

    Someone once said -- I think it was Bernard Fall -- that the French were not so much outfought at Dien Bien Phu as they were out-engineered. I thought of that while reading this line from a Jon Lee Anderson dispatch from Libya:

    The rebels have lost ground because they have not learned how to hold it. At the front lines at Ras Lanuf and Brega, they didn’t dig trenches, and so when jets came to bomb them they panicked and ran.

    Defending is hard work. No one likes digging fighting positions, and it usually takes disciplined officers and non-commissioned officers to force soldiers to do it. But in the defense, the things you do to prepare yourself when the enemy is not shooting at you -- when you would rather be smoking cigarettes and drinking tea -- are the things that keep you from being killed when the enemy is shooting at you.

    Libya

  • Comment of the Day
    March 15, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:54am | 1 Comments

    The great Trudy Rubin, whose column I used to read while living in Philadelphia, weighed in on Egypt:

    Having recently returned from Cairo, I say thank you, thank you, for pointing out that what is going on in Egypt is the key to what happens in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa.


    The results of this week's referendum in Egypt on constitutional amendments, the timing of elections, whether new political forces are permitted the time to form parties before parliamentary elections - all these are crucial to determining whether a more representative Egypt emerges that can have a positive effect on its North African and other Mideast neighbors.

     

    Yet only the US military, not our diplomats, has links to the Egyptian generals who will determine the country's future. Those links should be used now to:

     

    1) encourage the generals to give new Egyptian political forces a chance to develop (lest the country wind up with a parliament controlled by former regime elites and the Muslim Brotherhood - a sure prescription for more unrest);

     

    2) encourage the generals to immediately act on the Arab League's vote for a no-fly zone vs Libya. Egypt should be taking the lead in protecting Benghazi. That would give the US cover to help with supplies, perhaps training, etc. until the rebels were organized enough to move forward again.

    The only thing I will add to that is, honestly, only the highest levels of our military leadership -- both uniformed and civilian -- really have any pull with the Egyptian military. So using our leverage with Egypt's military leadership will mean direct involvement by Sec. Gates and the CJCS.

    Egypt

  • While you weren't looking ...
    March 15, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:43am | 0 Comments

    ... Saudi Arabia and the UAE more or less invaded Bahrain. Just thought you would want to know.

    The New York Times has assembled a really smart crew of scholars to weigh in on Saudi Arabia, by the way: Bernard Haykel, Toby Jones, Chris Boucek, Rachel Bronson and more. I wish I knew more about the Gulf states, but the first two trips I took to Saudi Arabia came last year. It was fascinating, but I have the feeling that to really say something of consequence about Saudi Arabia, you need to have spent more time there than just a few weeks.

    Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE

  • For Intervention in Libya: Two Views
    March 14, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:26pm | 20 Comments

    It's not as fun to poke holes in arguments for military intervention in Libya when they are advanced by people like Anne-Marie Slaughter and Eliot Cohen, who should basically be the role models for any aspiring foreign policy wonk out there. Presidential administrations are mostly staffed by boring people who have never published or said anything remotely controversial. Slaughter and Cohen, by contrast, are bona fide public intellectuals who somehow managed to serve in high-level positions in the Department of State without ever compromising their personalities or intellects.

    They are also both far too sanguine about military intervention in Libya. Here's Cohen:

    There was momentum a few weeks ago as one town after another fell to enemies of the regime. A stream of defections, betrayals and surrenders seemed to spell Gadhafi's doom. The time to intervene is when a small push can have the greatest psychological effect, even if military planners would prefer to do it only after orchestrating a three-week air-defense suppression campaign.

    Eliot Cohen is a smart enough scholar to where he probably has case studies to support his argument, but if we are to trust what Cohen writes here, we have to believe that Eliot Cohen understands, without any prior specialization in the peoples and politics of Libya, the decision-making calculus of the Gadhafi family and their associates. But one of Libya's defining features is how little we know about it. Even the smartest North Africa specialists I know admit to not understanding regime dynamics and the actors in a country that has been largely closed off to the world for the past four decades. Why is Eliot Cohen so confident he is right and that the Obama Administration could have done more?

    And here is Slaughter:

    Gen. Wesley K. Clark argues that “Libya doesn’t sell much oil to the United States” and that while Americans “want to support democratic movements in the region,” we are already doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Framing this issue in terms of oil is exactly what Arab populations and indeed much of the world expect, which is why they are so cynical about our professions of support for democracy and human rights. Now we have a chance to support a real new beginning in the Muslim world — a new beginning of accountable governments that can provide services and opportunities for their citizens in ways that could dramatically decrease support for terrorist groups and violent extremism. It’s hard to imagine something more in our strategic interest.

    Slaughter has an expansive conception of U.S. interests and is seemingly not very descriminate in how or where the U.S. should intervene militarily. Reading her op-ed, I found myself asking, "Well, okay, then why not intervene militarily in Sudan? Or Congo?" If Libya -- which is in the midst of a civil war, mind -- meets the criteria for military intervention, what other countries merit military intervention?

    Ross Douthat noted in a column today (which referred back to this blog, actually) how remarkable it is that the same left-right coalition that supported the invasion of Iraq is now beating the president up over not intervening in Libya. I'm not sure why we should be surprised by this. Approximately .5% of U.S. citizens served in Iraq, minus the ~4,500 or so who did not make it home.* So we should not be surprised that Iraq has not had an effect on the willingness of smart policy intellectuals to commit U.S. troops to open-ended military interventions in the Arabic-speaking world.

    My sense, though, is that the average American has a much more limited conception of U.S. interests abroad than Slaughter. Whenever I travel to speak about Afghanistan, for example, I hear the frustration from tax-payers. When I go home, only my grandmother -- who, bless her, sent two of her three grandsons to fight in Iraq and served as a WAVE in WWII -- doesn't ask me when the war in Afghanistan will end.

    I would also tell Slaughter that if the United States really wanted to support "accountable governments that can provide services and opportunities for their citizens in ways that could dramatically decrease support for terrorist groups and violent extremism," then we should be helping to reform the security services of Egypt's interior ministry and also working to ensure the referrenda and elections that will take place over the next six months are conducted in a free and fair manner. None of that involves military intervention, but as a country of 82 million people, Egypt's transition to a post-Mubarak order is more important for both democratic values and U.S. interests than what takes place in Libya.

    ***

    In terms of no-fly zones, which would likely not much alter the military balance between Gadhafi and the rebels, I highly recommend this analysis from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (.pdf) on what a no-fly zone might cost.** They present their analysis with both the initial cost listed as well as the weekly cost of maintenance. At the end, though, they ask several key questions policy-makers need to answer before we decide on whether or not to enact a no-fly zone:

    1. What is the end-state of the Libyan conflict?
    2. How would a no-fly zone achieve this end state?
    3. Which nation(s) should take the lead in establishing a no-fly zone and through what international organization, if any, would such an operation be authorized?
    4. Over what timeframe would coalition forces be expected to maintain a no-fly zone?
    5. Would a no-fly zone be accompanied by additional measures to assist Libyan rebels and civilians,
      such as supplying limited military aid, intelligence data, or food and medical supplies?
    6. Under what rules of engagement would US and coalition forces operate?
    7. What legal authorization would such an operation require?
    8. Finally, what are the anticipated costs, in personnel and equipment, of establishing and sustaining a no-fly zone?

    These are the questions I would also like to hear smart security studies scholars like Cohen and Slaughter start answering if they really want us to intervene in Libya. I am not categorically against military intervention in Libya, but I am deeply, deeply wary of rushing into it. I am not at all sure that "doing nothing" is not the wisest course here in part because I'm quite conservative about what we can expect military force to achieve and because -- in an era when we can't even agree to scrap together $46.5 million to keep USIP in business -- I am not sure the benefits of a military intervention make sense in terms of the costs, both human and financial.

    *Really and truly, I'm really not trying to crassly wave the bloody flag here, but in addition to the $1 trillion we spent in Iraq, I think it is necessary to mention the human cost as well. (Click through to that link to see the numbers of civilian casualties and other coalition casualties. I don't mean to suggest they are not important as well.)

    **Good for Todd Harrison and Zack Cooper. This is a good example of what happens when a think tank does its job to inform the debate over policy.

    Libya

  • Monday Morning Open Thread: Wars and the Service Chiefs
    March 14, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:37am | 24 Comments

    Anyone who has been watching the war in Afghanistan for the past two years knows that ISAF, having focused on southern Afghanistan for the past 18 months, now aspires to shift its focus to Afghanistan's east, where the war has been underresourced and where, in contrast to southern Afghanistan, the Taliban has been gaining momentum. Speak to any commanders on the ground, and they will tell you that if they have their way (and on account of its complexity), eastern Afghanistan will be the last place from which conventional western forces will withdraw in 2013 and 2014.

    Helmand Province, where the drug trade intersects with both inter-tribal rivalries and a binary conflict between the insurgency and the government, is a wickedly complex place to wage counterinsurgency operations.* Eastern Afghanistan is, in many ways, even more complicated. The conflict -- which one French commander recently described as "a series of mini-wars" -- often differs from valley to valley, making local knowledge and intelligent commanders all the more valuable.

    Which is why I do not understand why the U.S. Army is not making better use of two men widely regarded as being among the most talented battalion commanders to have fought in eastern Afghanistan over the past four years. One was just passed over for brigade command, most likely due to his branch (Armor). Another is rotating out of brigade command prior to his unit's deployment to Afghanistan because the U.S. Army does not believe brigade commanders should be in command for too long. (Both of these officers would be mortified to read their names on this blog, so they will go unnamed. And though I know both officers, I have not spoken with either of them about these circumstances, so if you're in the Pentagon and are reading this, know that people are not griping to bloggers.)

    In both cases, the U.S. Army might well be making a decision in the best interests of the U.S. Army as an institution.** But neither decision makes sense in terms of the war in Afghanistan, where it makes the most sense to send officers with experience in regions of Afghanistan back to those same regions.

    Here's the question for the readership that I hope will kick off an interesting debate: by removing the service chiefs from any responsibility for fighting the nation's wars, have we created a system whereby the incentives and motivations of the service chiefs are different than those of the commanders in the field? A service chief, for example, is by role and responsibility more worried about managing an officer's timeline and ensuring as many people as possible get the chance to command and less worried about winning a war -- not because he is unpatriotic but because that's not how he is graded. A field commander, by contrast, doesn't give a rat's behind about officer timelines and promotion pipelines -- he just wants to get the best team on the field.

    Who do you think? Am I right? Wrong? Is there something I am missing?

    *For more on Helmand, check out the journalist Tom Coughlan's excellent chapter in Antonio Giustozzi's Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field.

    **Although, and despite my initial training as an infantry officer, I personally think the U.S. Army needs to realize there are other branches beside the infantry and that the armor and field artillery branches in particular have been really squeezed for opportunities to command at the brigade level. I personally do not think an infantry officer needs to command a BCT comprised of mostly infantrymen if the officer selected -- be he an armor or field artillery or, hell, chemical corps officer has proven himself as a combat leader and has attributes that lead his superiors to believe he would be effective in the field.)

    Afghanistan

  • Quote of the Day
    March 11, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:06pm | 29 Comments

    Peggy Noonan did not much care for Donald Rumsfeld's book:

    The failure to find bin Laden was a seminal moment in the history of the war in Afghanistan. And it was a catastrophe. From that moment—the moment he escaped his apparent hideout in Tora Bora and went on to make his sneering speeches and send them out to the world—from that moment everything about the Afghanistan war became unclear, unfocused, murky and confused. The administration in Washington, emboldened by what it called its victory over the Taliban, decided to move on Iraq. Its focus shifted, it took its eye off the ball, and Afghanistan is now what it is.

     

    You'd think, nearly a decade after the events of Tora Bora, that Mr. Rumsfeld would understand the extent of the error and the breadth of its implications. He does not. Needless to say, Tora Bora was the fault of someone else—Gen. Franks of course, and CIA Director George Tenet. "Franks had to determine whether attempting to apprehend one man on the run" was "worth the risks." Needless to say "there were numerous operational details." And of course, in a typical Rumsfeldian touch, he says he later learned CIA operatives on the ground had asked for help, but "I never received such a request from either Franks or Tenet and cannot imagine denying it if I had." I can.

    Afghanistan, Books

  • The Order of Battle
    March 11, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 1:51pm | 28 Comments

    Anthony Shadid, who has seen a war or two, from Libya:

    Only days ago, rebels were boldly promising to march on Surt, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, then on to Tripoli, where opposition leaders predicted its residents would rise up. But the week has witnessed a series of setbacks, with a punishing government assault on Zawiyah, near the capital, and a reversal of fortunes in towns near Ras Lanuf, whose refinery makes it a strategic economic prize in a country blessed with vast oil reserves.

     

    There was a growing sense among the opposition, echoed by leaders in opposition-held Benghazi and rebels on the front, that they could not single-handedly defeat Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

     

    “We can’t prevail unless there’s a no-fly zone,” said Anis Mabrouk, a 35-year-old fighter. “Give us the cover, and we’ll go all the way to Tripoli and kill him.”

     

    That seemed unlikely, though. Even without warplanes, Colonel Qaddafi’s government could still marshal far superior tanks, armor and artillery, along with the finances and organization to prosecute a counteroffensive.

    I was thinking about these paragraphs on the way into work this morning. It seems to me to be both important and worth noting that if the United States and its allies are to intervene in Libya, simply enforcing a no-fly zone will not be sufficient enough to alter the balance of power in favor of the rebels. (Assuming that this is something in the national interest to do in the first place.) Just going off of field reports as well as a rough order of battle, it seems likely that it would take a more aggressive military intervention to really alter the balance in Libya.* Are the United States and its allies willing to do such a thing? Would that be in our interests?

    Meanwhile, in Japan, a few things: the Japanese Foreign Minister has explicitly requested U.S. aid, and the United States has -- correctly, in my opinion -- dispatched warships and humanitarian assistance to our longtime ally. We have no such clear and open invitation to intervene in Libya, though according to Shadid, some rebels are getting frustrated by our inaction:

    As each day passes, anger among the rebels grows at what they have described as inaction on the part of the international community and in particular, the United States.

     

    “Obama and Qaddafi are the same!” one fighter, Mohamed Mgaref, shouted at a medical clinic about an hour from the front, as ambulances ferried some of the four dead and dozens wounded in the fighting.

    Japan is the world's third-largest economy and a long-time U.S. ally in Asia. Libya, by contrast, is a country of 6.5 million people with the 74th largest economy in the world and roughly 3.3% of the world's proven oil reserves.** So obviously, our interests are far greater in the former than in the latter. But how would it change our calculations if we had a clear and explicit public request from Libya's opposition to intervene militarily?

    *This is what is now known as "static, unidimensional analysis" apparently.

    **Sources are the CIA World Fact Book and the 2010 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

    UPDATE: In related news, Leon Wieseltier continues to carefully weigh U.S. interests and policy options regarding Libya with his usual humility and respect for both the decisions facing our elected leaders and the uniformed men and women who would carry out a military intervention. One senses that Wieseltier is being appropriately humble about what we could expect military power to achieve in Libya as well as about his own limited understanding of the internal politics of -- Hahahaha, but I kid, I kid.

    Libya

  • Quote of the Day: "What Do You Pay Us For?" Edition
    March 10, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 6:18pm | 13 Comments

    Boy, if I were an intelligence analyst working on North Africa right now, I would be steaming.

    Q:  Hey, it's actually Jake Tapper.  Just, Tom, if you could comment on -- DNI Clapper on the Hill today was asked a couple questions that raised eyebrows, one of which was, he said that the -- Libya is a stalemate back and forth, but I think, over the longer term, the regime will prevail.  ...  And I was just wondering if you could comment.

     

    MR. DONILON:  Well ... I guess I'd answer -- I would answer -- I would answer it this way: that if you did a static and one-dimensional assessment of just looking at order of battle and mercenaries, right, you came come to various conclusions about the various advantages that the Gadhafi regime and the opposition has.

     

    But our view is -- my view is -- as the person who looks at this quite closely every day and advises the president, is that things in the Middle East right now and things in Libya in particular right now need to be looked at not through a static, but a dynamic, and not through a unidimensional but a multidimensional lens.  And if you look at it in that way, beyond a narrow view, right, on just kind of numbers of weapons and things like that, you get a very different picture.

     

    The loss of legitimacy matters.  The isolation of the regime matters.  Denying the regime resources matters, and this can affect the sustainability of their efforts over time.  Motivation matters, and incentives matter.  The people of Libya are determined to affect their future.

     

    And indeed, Jake, if you had looked at this just through a static, unidimensional lens 45 days ago, and you and I had been discussing whether or not it was possible that the Gadhafi regime would lose half -- control over half the people in his country, we would say probably not.  But change is the order of the day in the Middle East right now.  And again, you have to look at things fresh, and you have to take into account, as I said, the dynamics, right, as well as the multidimensional nature of it.

     

    The last thing I'll say is that a static, unidimensional analysis does not take into account steps that can be taken in cooperation with the opposition going forward here.  So I understand how -- you know, I do this every day.  I understand how someone can do a static analysis, order of battle, numbers of weapons and things like that, but I don't think that's the most informative analysis, frankly.  I think the analysis needs to be dynamic, and it needs to be multidimensional.

     

    So I hope that's responsive, and that -- and, again, based on that analysis, I think that you could -- you could come to different conclusions about how this is going to go -- how this is going to go forward.

     

    Last on this, Gadhafi is isolated, right?  And the isolation is fairly complete in the world.  He -- his resources are being cut off. The international community is engaged in an increasingly deep way with the opposition.  So I would -- I would just caution that a dynamic in a multidimensional analysis is more appropriate in the circumstance.

    Libya

  • The Rebels Love Us, Right?
    March 10, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 3:21pm | 16 Comments

    I was looking through the Sinjar documents (.pdf) today because I remembered (incorrectly, as it turns out) that Benghazi had sent more foreign fighters to Iraq than any other city in the Arabic-speaking world. On a per capita basis, though, twice as many foreign fighters came to Iraq from Libya -- and specifically eastern Libya -- than from any other country in the Arabic-speaking world. Libyans were apparently more fired up to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than anyone else in the Middle East. And 84.1% of the 88 Libyan fighters in the Sinjar documents who listed their hometowns came from either Benghazi or Darnah in Libya's east. This might explain why those rebels from Libya's eastern provinces are not too excited about U.S. military intervention. It might also give some pause to those in the United States so eager to arm Libya's rebels.

    Libya

  • Investigating American Muslims
    March 10, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 2:47pm | 32 Comments

    We need to investigate radicalization in the United States. Peter King's hearings today, though, endanger U.S. counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization efforts in two ways: (1) They run the risk of alienating American Muslims, who have thus far proven -- and will continue to be -- instrumental in countering Islamist terror in the United States by working with law enforcement officials to weed out terror plots within their communities. (2) They run the risk of discrediting other efforts to investigate the causes of and trends in radicalization.

    Also, I also want to take this opportunity to remind this blog's readers of the definition of terrorism:

    Terrorism is "the threat or use of physical coercion, primarily against noncombatants, especially civilians, to create fear in order to achieve various political objectives." (O'Neill, 2005)

    Here's one example of a terrorist attack. Here is another. Here is another. Here is another. And here is another.

    Terrorism can be employed by any individual, sect or creed. And in the eyes of this blogger, at least, it is morally indefensible no matter who does it.

    counter radicalisation

  • Stay classy, Michael Hastings! Part III
    March 10, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 2:26pm | 3 Comments

    Well, hopefully this will end the furor over an ugly and now thoroughly discredited hit piece. In a more just world, Rolling Stone would conduct an internal investigation to determine how one of its reporters managed to so grotesquely smear an honorable man. Kudos to Spencer Ackerman, a friend of Michael Hastings, for doing some actual reporting:

    The “information operations” officer at the center of an explosive Rolling Stone story about an allegedly-illicit propaganda operation will meet on Wednesday morning with an official inquiry to determine if his old boss, the general in charge of training Afghan troops, broke the law.

     

    Only the officer, Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, concedes that Lt. Gen. Caldwell’s effort was little more than spinning legislators — something any press flack could have done innocuously. ...

     

    And all that raises questions about precisely what Caldwell is supposed to have done wrong. (Full disclosure: Both Michael Hastings, the author of the Rolling Stone piece, and Caldwell are longtime friends of this blog.) After the story broke, the Internet was filled with breathless allegations about Caldwell’s “psyop,” making it seem like his staff used Jedi mind tricks to convince senators that the Afghan training mission is going swimmingly. But even Holmes says that’s overblown. ...

     

    He was also asked to contribute to briefings for visiting U.S. dignitaries, like senators and congressmen, who came to Kabul’s Camp Eggers to observe the training mission and talk to Caldwell. Initially, that meant “just a Google search” on their bios, personalities, and voting records, he says. “That’s not illegal… At that point, I wasn’t asked, ‘Hey, what is it we’ve got to tell them to get our message across?’ I wasn’t asked to put a spin on it.”

     

    And that’s the extent of what Holmes says Caldwell did wrong: “putting a spin” on what to tell legislators about the training.

    Holmes is upset about the command climate at NTM-A, and that's now what his complaint to a specially appointed investigating officer will be about. In the interests of full disclosure, LTG Caldwell's former chief of staff is a friend of mine, so I'm going to refrain from commenting about all that. But those of you who jumped the gun and were calling for Caldwell's head a few weeks ago should now feel free to both apologize to Caldwell and to cancel your subscriptions to Rolling Stone.

    Afghanistan

  • Brigitte Gabriel, the SLA, and Khiam
    March 8, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:11pm | 21 Comments

    Here's a question for the editors of the New York Times: when you guys ran your profile of Brigitte Gabriel today, did your reporter not know of or just choose not to report on Ms. Gabriel's ties to the South Lebanon Army? I ask because several times now, I have met fellow Christians who, when they learn that I have studied in Lebanon, tell me all about Ms. Gabriel and her tales of Muslim oppression and brutality. I usually respond that the Lebanese Civil War was a conflict in which all the armed factions were guilty of some pretty heinous crimes at one point or another during the conflict and that Ms. Gabriel herself worked for and was alligned with an Israeli proxy militia in southern Lebanon that was responsible for some particularly horrific brutality -- including widespread and systematic torture at the detention center in Khiam. Assuming Christianity is not just a sectarian identity and is actually a system of beliefs, I would like to hear Ms. Gabriel explain the crimes of the SLA to one of her evangelical Christian audiences in the United States one of these days in the same way that Peter King is now being challenged to explain his support for Irish terror groups in the 1980s.

    Lebanon

  • Quote of the Day
    March 8, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:24am | 14 Comments

    From Anne Applebaum:

    ...being right, even morally right, isn't everything. It is also important to be competent, to be consistent, and to be knowledgeable. It's important for your soldiers and diplomats to speak the language of the people you want to influence. It's important to understand the ethnic and tribal divisions of the place you hope to assist. Let's not repeat past mistakes...

    To which I would only add that if you are morally justified to intervene but do so incompetently, the incompetence itself amounts to immoral behavior.

    Iraq, Libya

  • The Pale Blue Dot
    March 7, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 12:46pm | 6 Comments

    Many thanks to the reader of this blog who pointed me toward this moving video of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia set to Carl Sagan reading from "Earth: The Pale Blue Dot." This is amazing and beautiful.

    Egypt, Tunisia

  • Wael Ghonim and Wadah Khanfar at TED2011
    March 7, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 11:40am | 2 Comments

    I'm still waiting to see and hear Stan McChrystal's talk.

    Arab Media, Egypt

  • Quote of the Day II
    March 7, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:51am | 10 Comments

    From a Libyan shaking his head at the behavior of the British government:

    This is no way to conduct yourself during an uprising.

    Libya

  • Quote of the Day: Op-Ed Edition (and an excuse to remind Tom Friedman why we're still in Afghanistan)
    March 7, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:21am | 7 Comments

    Here's Nick Kristof in Saturday's Times:

    It’s a sophisticated argument that a column can’t do justice to...

    I'm not the only one who read that phrase and smiled. What a relief it is to see a writer aware of the limits of his medium.

    I wanted to highlight that phrase, though, because on Sunday we got the latest Tom Friedman mess. Friedman's last column, in which he suggested the Beijing Olympics and Salam Fayyad helped lead to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, attracted widespread derision and inspired some very funny if brutal satire.

    For me, though, Sunday's column was even worse. Friedman gripes for 854 words about all the money we are spending in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as far as gripes go, it's a pretty reasonable one, so you're probably wondering why I was so frustrated by the column. Well, there were a lot of little things about the column that annoyed me, such as the conflation of the ISI and the Amn al-Dawla, but the biggest thing that got me about this column was what I was screaming aloud as I read it.

    One of the reasons why we are still spending so much money in Afghanistan and had to surge tens of thousands of troops there in 2009 was because we made the fateful decision as a nation to shift the vast majority of our available military and intelligence resources away from Afghanistan in 2002 and toward a war in Iraq. (Peter Bergen does a nice job talking about the consequences of this decision in his latest book.)

    Within that context, Tom Friedman is the very last person I want to hear complaining about the fact that we are still in Afghanistan after all these years. Because Tom Friedman was one of those public intellectuals who argued vociferously that going to war in Iraq was the right decision. What kind of fantastic lack of self-awareness must you possess to then complain about why we are still in Afghanistan? Watch this clip from a Charlie Rose interview with Friedman in 2003. The arrogance and ignorance on display here still makes me angry almost eight years later.*

    *In the past, let it be known, I have tried not to beat up on Friedman too much in large part because I so very much respect the reporting he did from Beirut during the civil war in Lebanon. His dispatches for the Associated Press and for the New York Times were very, very solid. Their quality stands out to even a graduate student reading through the newspaper archives 25 years later.

    Afghanistan, Iraq

  • Quote of the Day
    March 6, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 12:21pm | 20 Comments
    Words cannot express how thankful I am for the administration's responsible approach to the civil war in Libya. This is the new White House chief of staff, speaking on Meet the Press: "Lots of people throw around phrases of 'no-fly zone,' and they talk about it as if it's just a ... videogame or something. Some people who throw that line out have no idea what they're talking about. ... The president knows that the ultimate decision he has to make, at times, is to put men and women in harm's way, and you do that only with great consultation with your allies. You do that in a way that can PROTECT those young men and women. And so at this point, as the president said, all options ARE on the table. But this has to be an international effort. It cannot be done by one country."
    Libya

  • The New APFT
    March 4, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:18pm | 31 Comments

    Stars and Stripes reporter Jeff Schogol takes on the new Army Physical Fitness Test.

    U.S. Army

  • Military Intervention: A Checklist of Key Considerations
    March 4, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 1:02pm | 12 Comments

    Col. (Ret.) John Collins spent 30 years (and three wars) as an officer in the U.S. Army and then another 25 years as a researcher for the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Known in the defense policy community as "The Warlord" for his stewardship of an email listserv that goes by the same name, he is one of the most experienced and wisest strategic thinkers in the United States. As the national defense community considers the possibility of military intervention in Libya, the Warlord's checklist of key considerations, first published by the CRS and then by Parameters, demands careful study and provides a useful framework for policy makers:

    Military Intervention

    defense policy, Libya

  • Dana Milbank, We Forgive You For "Mouthpiece Theater"
    March 3, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:10pm | 11 Comments

    He really takes the House defense appropriations subcommittee -- and especially its chairman -- to task:

    In his opening statement, Gates fervently appealed for funds requested by Gen. David Petraeus for equipment to protect troops in Afghanistan. The money has been held up because it would come from a project benefiting a major contributor to the committee chairman, Bill Young (R-Fla.).

     

    "Mr. Chairman, our troops need this force-protection equipment, and they need it now," Gates pleaded. "Every day that goes by without this equipment, the lives of our troops are at greater risk." He urged action "today" on the funds, admonishing: "We should not put American lives at risk to protect specific programs or contractors." ...

     

    Yet Gates couldn't get the lawmakers to agree to his urgent - and modest - request to shift $1.2 billion in Pentagon funds to protect soldiers' lives in Afghanistan. He asked for the money a month ago, but Young's committee hadn't acted.

     

    Why? Because Young objects to the money being taken away from the Army's Humvee program. Never mind that the Army has more Humvees than it wants. They are manufactured by AM General - which happens to be Young's third-largest campaign contributor. Its executives have funneled him more than $80,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

     

    Gates told Young in blunt terms that his delay was putting lives at risk, but the gentleman from AM General was unmoved. "We would like to analyze with you in some detail another source of that funding," he replied, suggesting they talk more about a "helpful way to approach this."

     

    Helpful to whom, Mr. Chairman? Your country, or your contributors?

    Dang.

    I went searching around Rep. Young's website to see if he had posted a response, but as of this afternoon he had not. If you are at all motivated to contact Rep. Young, his office number is (202) 225-5961.

    defense policy

  • 8-1
    March 3, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 1:57pm | 26 Comments

    I spent some time yesterday afternoon thinking about the Westboro Baptist Church and yesterday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Obviously, I am disgusted by the rhetoric and actions of the Westboro Baptist Church, which is a bit hypocritical of me since I too profess to be a Christian but don't let a lifetime of Bible study get in the way of often using my sharp tongue to ill effect on this blog, via my Twitter feed, etc. I have been just as guilty as Fred Phelps of employing poisonous language in debates over policy. (Unlike Fred Phelps, I am not proud of this.)

    But as a veteran, I have particular empathy for the families of those fallen servicemen whose mourning has been disrupted by the hatred of the Westboro Baptist Church. You might even expect me to argue that there must be reasonable limits to freedom of speech. Instead, again speaking as a veteran here, I was quite satisfied by yesterday's ruling. As horrified as I am by the rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church, I am incredibly proud to have served in uniform to defend a remarkable document that protects even -- no, especially -- the most unpopular speech.

    Yesterday's court decision was not a slap in the face of those fallen on the field of combat wearing the uniform of a U.S. soldier but was rather a validation of the ideals for which they died and for which those in uniform serve every day. The founding ideals of the United States are bigger than a collection of Kansas bigots. God bless America.

    Misc.

  • On Nine Afghan Boys
    March 2, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 6:35pm | 26 Comments

    I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to some colleagues the effect the Qana massacre of 1996 had on Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon and then came back into the office to read this:

    KABUL, Afghanistan — Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.

     

    The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.

    In 1996, on the same day as the Qana massacre, the IDF also accidentally killed a family of seven in Nabatiyeh.The IDF compounded their errors by initially refusing to take any responsibility for the horror, so, by contrast, it was good to see Gen. Petraeus personally apologize for the killings in Afghanistan. Civilian casualties have a serious effect on military operations (.pdf), and anyone who argues that we can just apply force indiscriminately in this kind of war simply doesn't understand the nature of the war itself.

    Afghanistan

  • What We Are Reading (And What We Are NOT Reading)
    March 2, 2011 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:11pm | 17 Comments

    1. Yesterday, it was Gen. Mattis. Today's big cup o' ice water comes from Sec. Gates:

    In his most pointed comment, Mr. Gates said that “we also have to think about, frankly, the use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East.”

    I have written about how horrified I am that so many folks here in Washington are so casually considering military intervention in Libya -- just 24 months after the negotiation of a status of forces agreement effectively wound down the U.S. war in Iraq. Many* of the people I have read advocating for military intervention in Libya

    a) have no expertise in no-fly zones or other military operations,

    b) will not be the ones responsible for the lives of any U.S. troops committed to such an intervention,

    c) were prominent advocates for another military intervention in an Arab state a few years back and,

    d) were themselves no where to be found when Capt. Exum and his Merry Band of Rangers actually ended up fighting in Iraq several months later (and thus were not on hand to learn the lessons about the limits of power than some of us did).

    The U.S. military should give the president every available option on Libya and should plan for possible contingencies. But it is good to hear Gen. Mattis, Adm. Mullen and Sec. Gates informing what has thus far been a woefully informed public debate. And it is good to see some needed push-back against what, again, has been an entirely too casual dialogue about possible military intervention.

    2. That's a great segue to this heart-breaking, beautifully written piece by Greg Jaffe in today's Washington Post about Lt. Gen. John Kelly, USMC, and his son, who was killed in Afghanistan. I myself fought in Afghanistan in 2002 and again in 2004 and, since 2009, have pretty consistently advocated for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan because I think they support the president's strategy to end that war. But when my cousin leaves active duty next month, my family will, for the first time since 2000, be one of those many, many American families that do not have any members serving on active duty or fighting overseas. And it will then be my turn to feel a little guilty about the incredible sacrifices that have been made by far too few Americans and their loved ones.

    3. Finally, one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I have read in quite some time is this article in the Washington Monthly on the lucrative and poorly regulated terrorism counsultancy business. We basically have a cadre of yahoos running around the country teaching our police forces to fear any and all Muslims, which, if you're trying to radicalize your Muslim population, seems like a damn good way to go about doing it. Very few of these yahoos have any formal training or education in radicalization or currents of thought in political Islam. One consultant they profile is from the minority Christian community in Jordan and has a decidedly hostile view of Islam which he proceeds to share with his audience. Now, don't get me wrong, some of the very best scholars of Islam and political Islam in particular have been Arab Christians and Jews -- you can learn a lot from Albert Hourani (Protestant, Lebanese) and Sami Zubayda (Jewish, Iraqi), to name but two. But this article reminded me of this one scholar who often consults for the U.S. government and teaches about radical Islam without ever mentioning his ties to a certain right-wing Christian militia during the Lebanese Civil War. That has always rubbed me the wrong way.

    What am I not reading? Well, Tom Friedman gets the bit about Google Earth and Bahrain right, but all the rest of this column -- the stuff about Salam Fayyad, al-Jazeera's coverage of Israel, President Obama and the Beijing Olympics -- just strikes me as crazy. Students of and experts in the politics of the Arabic-speaking world have never been big fans of Tom Friedman, but I have never seen a column of his greeted with such derision as this one, and I understand why. In defense of the man, let me just say that I once spent six months of my life reading newspaper dispatches in English, French and Arabic from the Lebanese Civil War, and Friedman's reporting for both the Associated Press and the New York Times stood out as top-notch. I sure can't defend this column, though.

    *Note: "Many" does not mean "all," gang. Crisis Group has called for a no-fly zone, to pick but one example, and no one would dare accuse the folks on staff there of being callow about military interventions in the Middle East. I have read others make a case -- responsibly, and aware of the gravity of their recommendation -- for military intervention, and the majority of my above criticism does not apply to those people. So relax, David Kenner!

    Afghanistan, Islam, Libya, Middle East, Political Islam

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