After Palmyra: What Next?

Now that Syrian forces have recovered Palmyra, where do they go from here? The campaign to retake Palmyra benefited from the inactivity on other fronts as a result of the ongoing cessation of hostilities (which excludes operations against the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra), and certainly the Syrian government and Russia are claiming a significant victory. The Institute for the Study of War has an analysis of the Palmyra campaign as well as a useful map:

But once control of Palmyra is consolidated, where does the war against ISIS go from here? Syrian pro-government media are pointing in two directions from Palmyra: toward Qaryatayn to the southwest, and toward reopening the road to Deir al-Zor to the northeast in an effort to lift the ISIS siege of the Syrian Army garrison there.

Syrian forces were already pushing toward Qaryatayn from the west; a column from Palmyra could provide additional pressure.

But Syrian reports also say that forces from Palmyra are advancing in the direction of Sukhna, which would suggest an effort to clear the road to Deir al-Zor. It is also claimed that the besieged forces in Deir al-Zor are pushing westward.

If Syrian forces could clear the motorway to Deir al-Zor, they would end the siege, and open a route to the Euphrates, and also find themselves 140 kilometers downriver from the IS capital at Raqqa. Raqqa would then be vulnerable from the expanding area of regime control around eastern Aleppo, the YPG forces already threatening Raqqa from the northeast, and a potential column advancing upriver from Deir al-Zor.

That will not be accomplished overnight. The distances are substantial, though mostly across open desert. The Palmyra campaign relied heavily on elite Syrian Army forces, Hizbullah allies, and Russian air cover. (As part of the Palmyra campaign, Syria has recovered the Tadmur Air Force base, giving Syrian and Russian aircraft a forward operating base.)

As an aside they have presumably also recovered the notorious Tadmur Prison, once the regime's most notorious.

Trudeau to Pull Canada's CF-18s Out of Iraq

 Canadian Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau has announced that he has informed President Obama that, in keeping with his campaign promises, he will withdraw Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets from the anti-ISIS bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. Canada's contribution to the coalition campaign is known as operation Impact, but Canada will retain the special forces troops present as a non-combat training mission while ending combat operations. The RCAF CF-18s based in Iraq have also been used to carry out strikes inside Syria. No date has been announced for withdrawal of the aircraft.

Second Turkish Airspace Incident Raises New Questions: Are Russian and Syrian Aircraft Concealing their Markings?

For the second time in recent days, Turkey has reportedly intercepted Russian or Syrian aircraft in or near its airspace. NATO has rejected a Russian explanation that the first incident involving a Russian Su-30 over Turkey's Hatay region October 3-4 was an accident. The Turks have said that the Russian intruder locked its radar on a Turkish F-16 for a full five minutes. That is often read by combat pilots as a sign of hostile intent. If true the explosive potential is great as a pilot seeing that a potential adversary has locked on him as a target might well fire in self-defense.

The second incident October 5 raises other questions. Initial Turkish reports identified the intruder as a MiG-29 of unidentified nationality and say it also locked its radar on at least one of a flight of eight Turkish F-16s performing combat air patrol along the border. The radar lock lasted for and a half minutes. Again, a radar lock suggests the Turkish aircraft is a potential target.

Western reports of Russia's buildup have not reported that Russia has deployed any MiG-29s to Syria, but the Syrian Air Force flies them. There are superficial resemblances between the Su-30 and the MiG-29, and a misidentification is possible, but why should the nationality be unidentified?

One report in the aviation press a few days ago noted that a video circulated by Russia Today (much as I dislike quoting Russia Today) seems to show Russian aircraft at Latakia air base with the prominent Red Star on the tail painted over. Why, since the Russians acknowledge they are flying bombing missions? Is it to create uncertainty over whether Russian or Syrian aircraft are responsible for specific missions? (Syria's Air Force is Soviet or Russian-built.) In any event, unidentified aircraft violating airspace in a combat zone and radar locking on Turkish aircraft is a recipe for an explosive situation.

UAE Mourns 45 Troops Killed in Yemen

The Saudi and GCC campaign in Yemen, which increasingly involves ground troops fom the Gulf countries, gets little attention in the West. But the death of 45 Emirati troops in a single operation, from a missile strike by Houthi forces, has shocked the Emirates, which has little previous combat experience. Three days of mourning have been declared.

Previous Emirati and Saudi casualties in Yemen have been a few at a time, easily shrugged off Such a large death toll in one day is a reminder to the UAE and the rest of the world that the Yemen operations are ongoing.

The troops, from the 107th Brigade, died when a Houthi missile struck an ammunition depot in the Marib area.

On the Introduction of the Apaches

Up until the last couple of days, the US had relied on high-altitude bombing for its airstrikes in Syria, using a range of Air Force and Navy bombers (including the B-1 Lancer intercontinental bomber) in its strikes on ISIS within Syria. While carrying a lot of firepower, in the absence of forward observers on the ground,  bombing from altitude runs the risk of hitting friendly forces, especially since ISIS is no longer flying its black flags.[Correction: I originally posted they were used at Kobanê. They're being used nearer to Baghdad.]
Only in the last couple of days has the US added AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to the mix. The Apache is a powerful weapon capable of precision strikes at low level, but unlike the fixed-wing aircraft, which fly far above the altitude reachable by ISIS weapons, the Apache is vulnerable to weapons ISIS has, including shoulder-launched SAMs, anti-aircraft artillery, and (though it is well-armored) potentially even small-arms fire. The odds of US fliers becoming casualties is thus greatly increased, and there are reports that ISIS is already circulating information on how to bring down the Apache.

7:45 AM, June 5, 1967: Operation Moked

Forty-seven years ago this morning, Israel launched a "pre-emptive" surprise attack against Arab airfields, virtually destroying the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground. It was the opening salvo of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Though long known as the "Six Day War," the war's outcome was essentially decided by noon on the first day. The remaining days were spent by the Israeli Army proceeding to occupy Gaza, Sinai, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, enjoying total air superiority over the Arab states.

Each year since 2009 I've talked about various aspects of the 1967 War, and I refer you to all of those earlier posts. Almost everything in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967 owes something to that conflict; we are still trying to untangle the world it created. To the Arab nakba ("catastrophe") of 1948 was added the naksa ("setback") of 1967.

I belong to the school that thinks Nasser was on the verge of making a concession that would have avoided war but kept some of the gains he made in the escalating crisis (he was about to send his Vice President, Zakariyya Mohieddin, to the US and the UN), but we may never know for sure; in any event he was not given the chance to step back from the brink. This year's post will address Operation Moked ("Focus"), the Israeli surprise attack that opened the war.

I won't address motivation here, though there is some evidence that Moshe Dayan, who became Defense Minister only days before, believed that Israel had an opportunity that was likely to be lost over time, and so favored going to war once Nasser gave the Israelis a pretext. But that's an argument for another post.

While much of the world talks of a Six Day war, Ezer Weizman, who had only recently given up command of the Air Force to become Deputy Chief of General Staff, called the chapter in his memoirs "two and half hours in June," He says that on June 5, "At about ten o'clock in the morning I phoned [his wife] Re'uma: 'We've won the war!' She was considerate enough not to say what she thought of her husband going mad under the tension. She only said, 'Ezer, are you crazy? At ten o'clock in the morning? You've finished the war?' The war had five and a half days to run, but those were days when the Israeli Air Force had unchallenged control of the skies over Egypt and the Levant.

Air Force Commander "Motti" Hod

The Israelis knew that on June 5, 1967, they had precisely 196 operational combat aircraft, many of them aging. The Arab states challenging them had 500 or more, and much larger, less trained, armies. A first strike to alter the balance was seen as the proper opening blow. Weizman's successor as Air Force Commander, Mordechai "Motti" Hod, along with Dayan and the senior leadership, decided on a fairly desperate gamble. Of those 196 operational aircraft, only 12 (some accounts say as few as four) were held in reserve for combat air patrol over Israeli airspace. All the rest were devoted to taking out the Arab air forces: much depended on a single roll of the dice. And Egypt, the largest of them all, was the first order of business.

Tensions had been running high for weeks. Since surprise attacks often come at dawn, Egyptian pilots had been flying combat air patrols at dawn. But many senior officers did not arrive at their desks until nine AM. At the time, Egypt was on Summer Time but Israel was not. So 7:45 AM in Israel was 8:45 AM in Egypt, and the dawn patrols had returned to refuel the aircraft and allow the pilots to have breakfast. Most of the Air Force was on the ground. Many senior commanders were just arriving at work.

Egyptian air defenses were still rather poor. The concrete aircraft shelters and blast revetments found on most Middle Eastern air bases today (as a result of 1967) were unknown. Egypt had some SA-2 SAMs, but these were effective against aircraft at altitude; for low-level attack they were limited to anti-aircraft artillery. To make matters worse, Egypt's Defense Minister and Nasser's number two man, Field Marshal ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amer and several other senior officers were flying to the Sinai front to meet with troops there, so Egyptian air defenses scaled down their vigilance lest they accidentally shoot down their own boss.

Both sides were using far less advanced aircraft than today. Israel's were mostly French (the US did not sell aircraft to Israel until 1968), with some older British; Egypt's were mostly Soviet by this time, with some older British. Israel did have, and used with effect, a runway-cratering bomb that appears to have been an ancestor of the French Durandal.

The first wave took off from various Israeli bases and proceeded out over the Mediterranean skimming close to the water. In a carefully coordinated move the aircraft assumed formation in Egyptian airspace and began their attack.. The Wikipedia numbers generally track with others: 183 IAF aircraft destroyed 197 Egyptian aircraft and eight radar stations. A second wave (9:30 AM) was also aimed at Egypt, but after the Syrian and Jordanian Air Forces chose to enter the fray, the third wave (12:30 PM) turned against those air forces and Iraq's, hitting the Iraqi base at H3 just east of the Jordanian border.

By a bit past noon most of the Arab air forces were gone, and a great many runways cratered. It was a stunning blow, and made the remaining five and a half days of the war inevitable. By the end of the war Israel had destroyed 452 Arab aircraft, 79 in dogfights and the rest on the ground; it lost 46. It destroyed 338 Egyptian aircraft, most on the first day; 61 Syrian (out of perhaps 100 at most); 29 Jordanian; 23 Iraqi (at the H3 base); and one Lebanese.

Some relevant video:

V

Saab and Singh: One Carrier in the Gulf is More Than Enough

For those of you interested in defense debates, an area I once wrote about a lot myself, here's a challenging piece by defense analysts Bilal Saab (also a contributor to the current issue of MEJ) and Joseph Singh: "Forget the Second Carrier, It's Time to Rethink the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf."

Do read their reasoning. 

A Turning Point in Syria?

The claims made by the Free Syrian Army always need to be taken with a grain of salt.  This would be extraordinary if true

What is clear, however, is that the FSA has captured a string of small air defense bases in recent days and captured both AA guns and shoulder-launched SAMs, and that it has successfully used these in at least one or two cases; the video below is said to show a MiG-23 downed by the rebels:

Josh Landis talks with France24 about the shift:

Can Morsi Broker a Ceasefire?

Hussein Ibish's latest piece at The Daily Beast, "Talk Like an Egyptian," argues that if President Morsi can pull off an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, or get the credit for one at least, all sides might benefit, not least Morsi himself:

The best solution for almost all concerned would probably be a cease-fire brokered by, or credited to, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, which could secure many of the most important aims of the main parties. Both Israel and Hamas have their reasons for wanting to extricate themselves sooner rather than later from the current conflagration. They have both achieved significant results already, but may have overplayed their hands and be facing rapidly diminishing returns ...

Both sides may feel they still have more to accomplish and that the formula for getting out of this mess hasn't yet arisen. But an Egyptian-brokered deal potentially provides something for everybody.

Israeli leaders can claim they restored deterrence, took out key militant leaders, destroyed infrastructure and demonstrated that there is a heavy price for anyone attacking Israel from Gaza. Hamas leaders can claim to have stood up to Israel, shown the Israeli public they can reach Tel Aviv, once again unfurled the banner of armed resistance, and achieved major diplomatic breakthroughs with the recent high level visits to Gaza.

Morsi can achieve the neatest trick of all: he can continue with what are effectively Mubarak-era policies—Egypt serving as a broker of cease-fires and a liaison between Hamas and Israel—while presenting the whole thing as a reassertion of Egypt's regional leadership, and a new foreign policy that stands closer to Hamas (mainly by symbolically dispatching his prime minister to Gaza). So he can create the appearance of popular change without actually changing policies that would aggravate relations with Israel or the United States.

I think this may have to play out a few more days than Ibish seems to, though I also think that the fact that Israel has not launched a ground invasion means that Netanyahu is hesitating, perhaps knowing full well that IDF casualties could hurt him in the elections. (He could prove me wrong at any minute, of course). And I am unimpressed by Morsi's personal diplomatic skills, which have so far been largely undetectable, but he has good ties with Hamas, and the Egyptian professional diplomatic corps and intelligence services know well how to deal with Israelis. Of course if Morsi gets the credit Ibish is dead on about the likely result: business as usual with Israel and the US while he is able to present himself to his Muslim Brotherhood colleagues as the man who saved Hamas and Gaza.

It could be a way out of the situation for both sides, but I fear we aren't quite there yet.

"Pillar of Defense" or "Pillar of Cloud"?

Others have already commented on the fact that though Israel's operation in Gaza is called, in Hebrew, Operation Amud Anan (עמוד ענן) or "Pillar of Cloud" — a clearly Biblical reference that should be familiar to Jews, Christians, and anyone who has seen Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments — but, for whatever reason, the IDF is referring to in English as "Pillar of Defense."

Some comments have seemingly suggested that "Pillar of Cloud" might not evoke the same resonance in English that it does in Hebrew, and that "Pillar of Defense" makes the idea clearer. But does it? A pillar is not usually a defensive structure, while the imagery from the Biblical account is a fairly familiar part of the Western tradition. Or at least it is to me.

On the other hand, perhaps they were worried that some will misunderstand the Biblical allusion, as this article at Gawker seems to,  as a symbol of "an all-powerful, vengeful God seeking to demonstrate the primacy of his chosen people," not, presumably the PR image the IDF was aiming for. But that is not really the implication of "Pillar of Cloud" in Exodus, for as this article on the Tablet Jewish site notes that the midrash on the Biblical text describes the pillar as defending Israel against the pursuing Egyptians (and not, as smiting them):

The midrash on this section—which is cited by Rashi, the most famous Jewish biblical commentator, and taught in many Hebrew schools—elaborates:

They [the Egyptians] shot arrows and catapult stones at them, but the angel and cloud caught them.

In fact, as this article notes, the Talmud adds a layer of interpretation that may even contradict the image the IDF was presumably looking for:

According to the Talmud, the Pillar of Cloud was a special gift conferred upon the Israelites because of the merit of Aaron, Moses’s brother. And Aaron’s quintessential quality—the quality that would have earned him this gift—was that he was, well, a peacenik. The Talmud teaches in Pirkei Avot that Rabbi Hillel said, “Be among the disciples of Aaron—a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace; a lover of all people, bringing them closer to the Torah.” Another rabbinic text, Avot d’Rabbi Natan, makes clear that this attitude should be extended not just to Jews, but to all nations: “The phrase teaches us that a person should be a pursuer of peace among people, between each and every one.”

I can’t speak for the entire Israeli public, but when I think “Pillar of Cloud,” this—Aaron’s legacy of peacemaking, and the rabbinic injunction to follow in his footsteps—is what springs to mind. So perhaps next time the IDF wants to exploit Israelis’ semantic field to sell them on a new military operation, they should do their homework first—or hire some good yeshiva students to do it for them.

Whichever meaning was intended by the IDF in choosing the name, I still think that "Pillar of Defense" is an awkward choice in English: at worst, it may suggest they're trying to conceal the Biblical reference, as some have inferred.

Personally, I long for the days when military "codenames" really were code, not public relations tools (World War II operations like Torch and Overlord tell you nothing at all, which used to the intention of a codename.)

For October 6, Morsi Honors Both Sadat and Shazly

Gen. Shazly fourth from left, next to Sadat
during October 1973 War

Though Muhammad Morsi was not, as the ludicrous ad in my previous post implied, the "Comander of the Great October Victory" in 1973, Egypt's first civilian President will preside over tomorrow's celebration of Egyptian Military Day, on the 39th anniversary of the crossing of the Suez Canal on October 6, 1973. In advance of that, he earlier this week made an intriguing if somewhat contradictory gesture, by posthumously awarding the Order of the Nile to two key figures of that crossing, former President Anwar Sadat and General Saad El Shazly, Chief of Staff at the time, fired in the midst of the war, and later an outspoken foe of Sadat's from exile. Shazly is widely considered the architect of the successful crossing of the Canal and taking of the Israeli Bar-Lev line of defenses.

The Order of the Nile

Shazly, who died at age 88 on  February 10, 2011 (the day before Husni Mubarak resigned), was previously discussed here. Morsi presented the medals to the Shazly family and to Gamal al-Sadat, the President's son, a few days ago. As Zeinobia notes, there may have been some awkwardness in presenting the two awards on the same day, given the later enmity between Sadat and Shazly, but whatever their later history, both men were responsible for the successful military operation, hence the award of Egypt's highest honor. The fact that the awards were made by Egypt's first civilian President and a longtime Muslim Brotherhood member at that, seems to be part of Morsi's effort to reassure the Egyptian establishment.

The photo below is of Gamal al-Sadat receiving his father's award from Morsi.

Syrian Scenarios: Are There Any Real Options?

You probably already are tiring about the online debate over what to do about Syria: intervention? No-fly zones? Safe havens? Duty to protect? Arm the Free Syrian Army? With the US military now studying its options, every online armchair strategist from the "82nd Chairborne Division" is weighing in. So I might as well chime in.  Let's start with a few basic principles that, I think, are always worth keeping in mind.

1. When you're in an ordnance factory, don't be too quick to start shooting. Syria does not reside, as Qadhafi's Libya did, in splendid isolation. Iran, and Hizbullah in Lebanon, are profoundly invested in the Syrian regime. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey are increasingly invested n the opposition. Israel will not stand idly by while the whole region goes up. Lesson: unless you understand the whole regional equation, don't shoot any Austrian Archdukes.

2. When you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, but not every humanitarian crisis is amenable to a military resolution.

3. Syria is not Libya. It is not Bosnia. It is not Kossovo. (And have you looked at Libya recently?)

Late last year there was much more talk of direct military intervention by the West or the UN (that, of course, is out due to the Russian and Chinese vetoes). The neoconservative advocates of neoimperial intervention and the humanitarian "duty to protect" advocates seemed to be coming together in their eagerness to do something about the horrors appearing daily on YouTube.

The debate about what to do has changed a bit sine then, and I won't try to rehash everything that has gone before. The calls for Western (US, UN, NATO) military intervention have weakened as even the most interventionist commentators realize the limitations of direct external intervention, no-fly zones, safe havens, and such. Logistically and in terms of regional escalation, it's really not very feasible.  The newer mantra seems to be "Arm the Free Syrian Army." It's not just hawks like Elliott Abrams and John McCain who are advocating this, though they've been among the most vocal. On the opposite side, I think Marc Lynch has been quite coherent in expressing some of the problems arising from this call: the inability of the opposition forces to unite, the local nature of the resistance, the uncertain leadership. At one point he called the Free Syrian Army "basically a fax machine in Turkey," which may be an oversimplification, but the Syrian opposition is hardly a cohesive force under centralized command. See Nir Rosen here as well.

Arming a non-centralized, multi-focused opposition that varies from locality to locality raises some problems. It's approximately what the US and Pakistan did in arming the Afghan mujahdin against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. (Well, it did get rid of the Soviets, but with some unintended consequences.)

Then, the question is, what do you arm them with? Another cool head here is (not surprisingly, an actual military expert), Andrew Exum. His "The Order of Battle Problem," gets to the key point: Syria has 4,950 main battle tanks, 2,440 BMPs and 1,500 other APCs, 3,440 artillery pieces and 600,000 men under arms. So:

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say Syria can only field half of the above equipment and personnel due to maintenance issues and defections or whatever. We're still talking about a ridiculous amount of advanced weaponry. What arms, then, are we talking about giving these guerrilla groups? Nukes?

If Western intervention is out and arming the Free Syrian Army may not work, there are still some murmurs about a regional intervention by Turkey and the Arab League. This article in The National offers a daring vision:

The best-case scenario would be a two-front war. On the northern front, the Turkish army would push south to take Aleppo and sever Damascus's links to the Syrian Mediterranean region (which contains a large Alawite population). This would reduce the likelihood of a repeat of the battle of Sirte, where Qaddafi loyalists held out for several weeks after the fall of Tripoli.

On the southern front, a combined Jordanian-GCC force would take Al Harisa and Shahba, before pushing on to Damascus. The rationale is based on low population density. The Syrian military may have units that are better trained in defensive asymmetric warfare, which would fortify themselves in urban environments, having learnt from the experience of Hizbollah in Lebanon. The southern approaches to Damascus are relatively flat, supported by a road network and have a lower population density, allowing a mobile offensive that avoided urban areas and minimised civilian casualties.

Please. It may be fun to wargame, but does anyone who knows anything about the balance of military forces in the area and the traditional mindsets of these states really believe a Jordanian-GCC invasion force is likely to appear? Although Qatar and Bahrain are very gung ho on intervention (Bahrain because "Asad is waging war on his own people," which some Bahrainis would say their own government is doing as well), a "Jordanian-GCC" force would be in effect a Jordanian-Saudi force. Yeah, that's going to happen.

And, of course, the pipe dream in the quotation above seems to assume that Iran (and Israel, and Hizbullah) will stand aside and watch.

I'm glad at least that the idea of direct Western intervention has faded as advocates realize the genuine military obstacles and potential complications; and for all the imagination in the paragraphs above, the GCC will fund the opposition but won't, if the last, oh, 80 years of history are any clue, actually engage in a full-scale ground intervention.

There are a few other voices, of course, crying in the wilderness, like Dan Serwer's "Yes, Nonviolence Even Now,".

The horrors being inflicted on Homs will, I think, ultimately ensure the fall of the Asad regime, but not tomorrow or the day after. The growing military strength of the resistance is apparent, but its lack of heavy weaponry is a major impediment, though as the Afghan mujahidin demonstrated, that can be overcome. But Afghanistan is a cautionary tale about arming a disorganized and decentralized resistance. Syria is descending into a civil war. If I were convinced any of the scenarios proposed would bring about a stable solution I'd support them, but all seem to be riddled with minefields. The dangers of a much broader regional war are increasingly real, and such a war would involve global implications, including disruptions in oil supply at a time of fragile economic recovery in the US and grave uncertainty about European economies. Caution, despite the horrors of Homs, would seem to be in order.

A Few Thoughts on That Lost RQ-170

I haven't yet talked about the apparent US loss of a highly classified RQ-170 remotely piloted vehicle over Iran. Iran's publication of video of the purported drone seem to suggest it is largely intact. Some leaked suggestions in the US have raised the question of whether the vehicle on display might be a mockup or might have been reassembled after a breakup. The US has doubted Iranian claims that they hacked the aircraft's guidance and landed it. First some background on the RQ-170, and the video:

My own two cents: obviously this is an intelligence setback. Most of the commentary I've heard has focused on the highly classified stealthy material of which the vehicle is made, but there's another point as well: even the exact mission of the vehicle has been highly classified. Is it for photography, electronic snooping, signals intelligence, radar suppression, or some combination? Even if the data gathered over Iran (and the cover story that it went astray from Afghan airspace is a flimsy one &emdash; you don't need stealth against the Taliban. who have only shoulder-launched SAMs) has been erased before the vehicle came down, the nature of the equipment on board will reveal more than the Iranians or anyone else previously knew about the mission of the aircraft. A real intelligence blow to the US in any event.

Egypt's Campaign in North Sinai

Is there anything that both the Israeli Government and Hamas agree upon? Why yes: they both are supportive of Egypt's current military operations in Northern Sinai.

In the wake of a series of bombings of Egyot's gas pipeline to Israel, an outburst of militant violence recently in al-‘Arish, and the apperarance of flyers in Rafah claiming to speak for "Al-Qa‘da in Sinai," Egyptian Army units have moved into northern Sinai, restoring order and arresting militants.

Egypt had to obtain prior consent from Israel, since under the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, eastern Sinai is demilitarized. Hamas in Gaza reportedly has also approved the operation.

There are also reports that Ramzi Muhammad al-Mowafi, "the chemist," a former personal doctor of Usama bin Laden, escaped from prison during the Revolution, and has since been spotted operating in Sinai.

Leftwing activist Hossam al-Hamalawy has wondered if this is a "Wag the Dog" operation to increase support for the Army; noting that as recently as June, the Head of the National Security Sector (State Security's replacement) told reporters there were no al-Qa‘ida supporters anywhere in Egypt. (Report at link is in Arabic.)

But there's no doubt that her has been escalating violence in Sinai, the bloodshed in al-‘Arish, and the attacks on the pipeline, and that Islamist militants of some variety are involved. Nor is Mowafi believed to be the only militant to have escaped prison in January.

Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, Israel's Armored Theorist and Father of the Merkava Tank, 1924-2010

Major General (Reserves) Israel Tal, nicknamed "Talik," the creator of Israel's Merkava tank, Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF during the last part of the 1973 war, a key military theorist of armored warfare, a tanker's tanker, and a man who famously refused an order to attack Egyptian troops after the 1973 ceasefire, costing him higher rank though he was ultimately vindicated, died yesterday just a week short of his 86th birthday.

Israel is known for its armored prowess, from the 1956 Suez War onward, and some of the biggest tank battles in the post-World War II era (since Kursk) have been fought in the Sinai and Golan in 1956, 1967, and 1973. Tal was Israel's armored prophet, its analog of J.F.C. Fuller, Basil Liddell Hart, Charles de Gaulle, Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel, or George S. Patton. He is remembered as the father of Israel's indigenous main battle tank, the Merkava ("chariot" in Hebrew), and he developed armor doctrine that proved dominating in Sinai in 1967, based on mobility, long-range fire, and rapid penetration. When Arab military academies study Israel's tank tactics (and they do), they are studying Tal.

Some have suggested the triumph of armor in 1967 led to a weakening of the infantry arm and the consequent fallback of Israeli forces from the Suez Canal in 1973; but it was armor which struck back across the Canal and turned the tide in the war.

Here's Ha'aretz' obit, here's the Jerusalem Post's, and here's his Wikipedia bio, The Jerusalem Post obit says that "Tal was named one of the top five armored commanders in history at The Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor in Fort Knox, Kentucky, along with Maj.-Gen. Moshe Peled, General George S. Patton, Creighton Abrams and German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel." Two Israelis in the top five seems a bit much (Patton and his protégé Abrams were probably givens at the Patton Museum), and some Brits and Russians might object, but he was in that class.

Tal deserves to be remembered for another matter: after the ceasefire in the 1973 war, in his role as Officer Commanding, Southern Command, he received an order from Chief of Staff David Elazar and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordering him to attack Egyptian troops. Viewing it as an illegal order after the ceasefire, he refused to obey, demanding confirmation from Prime Minister Golda Meir and the Supreme Court.

In the aftermath of the war he was vindicated, but the seeming insubordination probably kept him from ever occupying the Chief of Staff's position.

We may not hear any acknowledgment of it, but I suspect many Arab tankers who fought against him will quietly note his passing as one of the great tankers of the 20th century. If he can be criticized, it is probably for making Israel too armored-mobility dependent in its military theory in the 1960s and 1970s, a tactical leaning which would be of limited use in Lebanon in the 1980s or in the far different conflicts which have followed.

The USS Liberty Incident: Still Starting Fights After All These Years

I'm a day late on this one; that may happen during the convalescence period; but 43 years ago yesterday, the USS Liberty, collecting intelligence signals in the eastern Mediterranean, was attacked by Israeli aircraft, leaving 34 Americans dead. Forty-three years later, you can get a good argument going among Mideast watchers (or in the "Communcations" section of The Middle East Journal) by producing a new book or article on the subject of whether Israel knew it was attacking an American ship (fervently believed by the US intelligence community and the Liberty survivors, as well as critics of Israel), or a tragic mistake (Israel's explanation, and that of most of its defenders). It doesn't divide easily on pro-Israeli/anti-Israeli lines; many who were in the State Department or NSA at the time were pro-Israeli but convinced it was deliberate. (And as an aside, a Liberty survivor was on board the Gaza aid flotilla.)

For background, the Wikipedia article offers an introduction. For a sampling of the "deliberate" argument, there are the USS Liberty Veterans' Association website, survivor Jim Ennes' USS Liberty Memorial; and NSA watcher James Bamford has argued the "deliberate" side forcefully, though I can't locate a website by him. On the "accident" side, the most fully researched and argued case is in A. Jay Cristol's 2002 book The Liberty Incident, which either decides the issue once and for all (if you assume it was an accident), or, to be fair, at least dispels some myths that have lingered about the case (if, like me, you still have doubts). Cristol maintains a website with documents and links.

Given the huge number of trees and, more recently, bandwidth that have given their all to fuel this debate over four decades, I'm not going to shed any major new light here, but do have a few comments. Due to a couple of coincidental factors, I've had to deal with the Liberty a few times at MEJ, mostly in flame wars related to the publication of new books such as Cristol's. Now, as it happens, my distinguished predecessor as Editor of MEJ, Richard Parker (former Ambassador to Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco), was Political Officer at the US Embassy in Cairo in June 1967. He has written a lot about 1967, in his book The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East and elsewhere, hosted an anniversary conference and edited the proceedings (The Six-Day War: A Retrospective), and has retained an avid interest in the subject.

Ambassador Parker lived through the Liberty incident at first hand, and has sometimes described himself as "the only Gentile in the US government who believes it was an accident." That against-the-grain condition, Dick's natural tendency to welcome a good argument, and his links to The Middle East Journal, all mean we have often been the venue for the debate, most recently when Parker reviewed Cristol favorably.

My own take: unlike Dick Parker, I wasn't there. I was finishing my sophomore year of college. I don't know what happened. I've read the major books on both sides and I still don't know for sure. Cristol has knocked down some of the arguments for it being deliberate, but not all of them. I do have a nagging feeling that something's missing. Neither the "Israel knew it was American and attacked it deliberately" nor the "It was a tragic mistake" explanation accounts for all the data. If it was deliberate, the why is a problem: to cover up the planned attack on the Golan? It was in the wrong place, and the timing is wrong. To cover up a war crime in the Sinai? Nobody's successfully substantiated that. For some other reason? If it was an accident, it was an incredibly stupid one, as the Liberty had a large US flag, was broadcasting its identity, etc.

There may be a clue out there. In 2007, Israeli scholars/journalists Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez published Foxbats over Dimona, a revisionist look at 1967 based on interviews with veterans of the ex-Soviet Union and memoirs published in obscure ex-Soviet veterans' publications, not to mention Soviet-era documents. It was a controversial book, welcomed by those who want to portray 1967 as a Soviet-Arab plot against Israel, but despite the many favorable reviews it received from folks like Daniel Pipes, it also received powerful reviews from Foreign Affairs and from Professor Mark Katz in (ahem) The Middle East Journal. (That, in turn, sparked a spirited exchange between Ginor and Remez and Ambassador Parker in MEJ.) Here's their Amazon page. Personally — and I've discussed this with Ginor and Remez so I hope they won't mind me mentioning it here — I think they may overstate what the Soviets were prepared to risk, but that they do bring new evidence to the table.

The Liberty does get a chapter in their book, and when I read it I was struck by the fact that while nothing they reveal answers all the questions, it could provide a missing link: a Soviet role, or even just both the US and the Israelis treading cautiously to to avoid engaging the Soviets, could have been a factor. There's always been a question about why the US recalled aircraft dispatched from the carrier Saratoga; one explanation has been they may have been armed with nuclear weapons. Of course they weren't going to nuke the Israelis; but could they have pulled back from providing air cover for Liberty out of concern Russian ships in the area would think they were the target? Ginor and Remez find hints of two or three Soviet ships and perhaps submarines operating in the general area of the Liberty. They don't draw firm conclusions, but could his be the missing link in the Liberty debate?

I don't know. I do suspect that either nuclear issues or issues of Soviet involvement would be the sensitive issues that would still not have been declassified, and it does seem as if somebody somewhere is covering up something, even if you accept Israel made a mistake.

Will we ever know for sure? Lots of people on each side are confident they already know. I admit that I don't. Heck, we still don't know for sure who ordered the killing of Admiral Darlan in 1942. (Before the comments start, note I didn't say there were no obvious suspects. There are too many.)

The Raid

What a mess. I have been really busy with Memorial Day activities etc. and said I wouldn't post unless something happened. Well, obviously, Something Happened.

I know the Israeli government and Israel's good friends everywhere are defending the raid on the aid flotilla, and noting that activists on the ship were beating Israeli commandos with iron rods and so on. But when a high-profile effort (yes, a publicity stunt and propaganda ploy) ends with nine dead, some or all of them civilians, in international waters, Israel gets another black eye. It could also find itself subject to sanctions against its merchant marine, if I'm not mistaken.

Before I offer my early take please take note of Gideon Levy's column in tomorrow morning's Ha'aretz. He's tougher than I will be.

A week or so ago my wife and I watched the DVD of the movie Thirteen Days, the movie made a few years back about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I then reread a few chapters in some of the classic works on that crisis, which marked a very vivid experience of my early high school years. The US was claiming some of the same rights Israel is claiming — the right to a "quarantine" of Cuba in international waters, and inspection of ships crossing a quarantine line — but managed it without a shot being fired or a casualty suffered, save for the U-2 pilot shot down over Cuba. It was handled with finesse.

This was not. I don't know what the rules of engagement were — did the Israelis use traditional naval challenges like a shot across the bow before trying to board from a helicopter? — but the tactics seem closer to what you'd use to retake a ship held by Somali pirates than an international civilian mission. And since they'd insisted they would enforce their blockade of Gaza, why not wait until the flotilla reached territorial waters? Enforcing a blockade in international waters is real dicy in international law. It's one reason why the US called its blockade of Cuba in 1962 a "quarantine," since "blockade" would have been an act of war, and in the US Civil War the Union Blockade of the Confederacy was portrayed by Lincoln as the US "closing" its own ports, not as a blockade of a state (which would have recognized the Confederacy).

I'd also like to know who was in charge. The fact that Netanyahu had to cancel his visit to Washington makes me think he didn't expect this result. Was it the Defense Minister (Ehud Barak), the IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Navy Commander Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom (who's a quarter Chinese, as I've noted before), or the commander on the scene, who chose the tactics? (And of course, given the mess it's created, somebody may take the fall, but that may not tell us who really made the call.) The Navy is the junior service in the IDF, and its experience is limited. Perhaps that's part of this, but if so, Israel might do well to admit it screwed up.

Israel is scrambling to defend the results, but diplomatically this is a disaster. Militarily it accomplished nothing that I can see. From a PR point of view, well, what can I say?

Netanyahu, so far, seems to be hanging tough and defending everything. I think it would have been better for him (and I'm sure it would have been better for Israel) if he'd flown home announcing he was going to find out who was responsible for this disaster. But he didn't.

The Afghanistan Debate Transforms

Pretty much everyone noted that George Will wants to withdraw from Afghanistan. Because he's a conservative Republican, that draws attention. He's not a neocon, but a traditional conservative, but it's still news when he seems to be arguing we should "bug out" of Afghanistan, to use an old term that goes back to Korea. But the whole national debate over Afghanistan (the war there didn't used to be much debated) has shifted dramatically. And not just on the Democratic side of the fence.

Andrew Exum over at Abu Muqawama, who knows this as well as anybody this side of General McChrystal, has a post on this intensifying debate over the war in Afghanistan.

Here's the gist of the post, though you should read it all:

As I walked out of the [Newshour] studio last night, though, Gwen Ifill turned to me and said, "Look, I understand you're not some fire-breathing hawk, but you're about the only person we can find in Washington to defend this war at the moment."

Woah. The only person who will defend this war? If this blogger is the only person in the nation's capital willing to defend the war, we have a big problem. I'm more used to hosting debates on Afghanistan than participating in them. I do not think it would surprise any reader of this blog, though, to note the speed with which the debate has shifted on the war in Afghanistan. What was, 12 months ago, "the good war" has now become, for paleoconservatives and progressives alike, a fool's errand. And the Obama Administration has thus far shown little energy for defending a policy and strategic goals (.pdf) they themselves arrived at just five months ago. I thought that once the president had settled on a policy and strategic aims, the rest of the administration would then go about executing that policy. That's the way it's supposed to work, right? Yet the policy debate seems to continue within the White House, with the Office of the Vice President apparently pushing for a much more limited approach than what was articulated in March by the president himself and following a lengthy policy review. No wonder, then, the uniformed military is getting nervous about the administration's support for their war. Either the White House has been too busy with health care, or they have failed to notice how quickly the debate has shifted under their feet (as with health care).

I'm not a professional counterinsurgency type like Abu Muqawama, but I've been wondering the same thing. The shift from "withdraw from Iraq to win in Afghanistan" to "why are we in Afghanistan?" has been rapid and profound, despite the change of command to General McChrystal and rethinking of strategy. Once again the historian in me thinks back to the British experience in the 19th century (and the Soviet in the 20th), and to Lady Butler's painting of Doctor Brydon riding, alone, into Jalalabad (Remnants of an Army):

History doesn't repeat itself, of course (though historians do repeat themselves), and the British and Soviet adventures were essentially imperial adventures while ours is — well, that seems to be the issue here. What are we doing? We ousted the Taliban. We oversaw the creation of an elected government. There is still a Taliban-based insurgency. Is our goal to help the Afghans defeat this insurgency, to defeat it ourselves, or what? I don't want to do what my generation (the Vietnam generation) tend to do too often and compare everything to Vietnam, but the problem is starting to echo arguments heard then: we may not be winning, but we can't afford to lose, because that would be a victory for the other side in a global struggle. But you don't just keep upping the ante because you don't want to fold: that's how you lose even more. You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, as the great geopolitical strategist Kenny Rogers once put it.

Or to put it the way some did in Vietnam: if we're unsure about our objective, how exactly will we know when we've won? (Or, for that matter, lost.) The Taliban aren't going to surrender on the Battleship Missouri, after all. When does it end? Or to quote General Petraeus in an entirely different (well, maybe not entirely) context: Tell me how this ends.

When Walter Cronkite died, everyone quoted Lyndon Johnson's famous remark after Tet: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." George Will is as different from Walter Cronkite as can be, but the war in Afghanistan lost George Will this week. (I can't quite picture Obama saying, "If I've lost George Will, I've lost the Republican right," but still, if he's lost George Will, who does he have left among Democrats? See Exum's comments above.) Something is happening here, and the uncertainties about the Afghan election aren't helping. We need to redefine our goals and make certain they are achievable. I haven't really bailed completely on Afghanistan yet, but like Exum I'm starting to feel lonely. Vietnam was called America's longest war, but at best it engaged US troops for 10 years. This fall we'll be eight and counting in Afghanistan.

I am also forcibly reminded of a quote by that old radical pinko peacenik pro-bugout dove, Carl von Clausewitz, who headed that notorious wimpy leftwing institution, the Prussian Kriegsakademie:

No one starts a war — or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so — without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective. This is the governing principle which will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort which is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail.

— Karl von Clausewitz, On War (Vom Kriege), Book VIII, Chapter 2
Trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 579.

Note: "no one in his senses ought to do so."

Reading for a Long Weekend

Since the Fourth of July falls on Saturday this year, the Federal Government is taking Friday as the holiday, and MEI, like most Washington institutions, observes Federal holidays. (Actually today, July 2, marks the date the Continental Congress actually cast the vote for independence, anyway.) Barring the outbreak of war (or peace) I'll be taking family time, so I'm providing my usual end-of-week wrapup a day early.

• Recently from MEI: a podcast of the event "A View from the Front Lines: the Condition of Pakistan's Internally Displaced," with Dr. Nasim Ashraf, head of MEI's new Center for Pakistan Studies. (Clicking on the first link will start the podcast.)
  

• Another MEI podcast: "After the Fire: The United States and Iraq," with John A. Nagl of the Center for a New American Security. Again, clicking the link will start the podcast. (I include this each time since if you're in an office you may not want your speakers to start blaring.)
  

• The sense that things are returning to normal in Tehran, that the revolutionary moment has passed, seems widespread. Juan Cole had an interesting commentary from an anonymous friend in Tehran yesterday that deserves your time.

• From the Institute for the Study of War, a new report, "Balancing Maliki: Shifting Coalitions in Iraqi Politics and the Rise of the Iraqi Parliament." Executive Summary is here; the full text of the report is here (PDF).
  

• Operation Khanjar, the big Marine Corps push in the Helmand Valley, is being called the biggest Marine combat operation since Vietnam (though others say the biggest since Falluja; I'm quoting the Marines here; it's also the first major operation since counterinsurgency expert Gen. Stanley McChrystal took command. Counterinsurgency blogger Abu Muqawama (Andrew Exum) has some early thoughts; also, as an Editor I have a comment for the press release writers at CENTCOM: you guys named the operation; so try not to misspell it in your own press releases.
  

• Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy offers some gossip on possible appointments at State once Jeffrey Feltman is confirmed.

The COIN Lobby Takes Afghanistan: More Thoughts on McChrystal and McKiernan

I can't resist, when blogging about Afghanistan and asymmetric warfare, posting Lady Butler's once-famous Victorian era painting of Dr. William Brydon riding alone into Jalalabad, entitled Remnants of an Army. It is a reminder that we aren't the first to try to solve the puzzle of winning a war in Afghanistan. (That was during the First Afghan War in 1842. If you don't know the story, a column of some 16,000 people — mostly camp followers, but about 4,500 military, mostly Indian Army but also British Army — left Kabul for Jalalabad. Doctor Brydon arrived alone. Here's Wikipedia on the First Afghan War. It's happened other times as well: you could ask the Soviet Union, if it still existed.) And, while I know I've quoted Kipling already this month and will start to look like some sort of nostalgic imperialist if I'm not careful, his lines from The Young British Soldier are hard not to quote:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

I certainly don't mean to imply that this (or Doctor Brydon's) will be our fate in Afghanistan, but it's increasingly clear that yesterday's virtual firing of General McKiernan amounts to an attempt to innovate and avoid conventional warfare.

Instead of updating the two previous posts (yesterday afternoon and last night) I'm going to offer a new one. As the military blogging community and other analysts have weighed in, it seems I'm not the only one to see this virtual firing of General McKiernan as highly unusual and also as a sign that General Petraeus is going to put his mark on Afghanistan through General McChrystal. My two earlier postings introduce the basic biographies of McKiernan and McChrystal. On the assumption that not everyone in the Middle East analysis community follows the military debates on counterinsurgency, let me share some links and some opinions.

First off, the blog Abu Muqawama is always a good resource for the COIN (counterinsurgency) field; among other comments they link to is this one on McChrystal's "dark side;" this one on his "scary smart" side (though I note that unlike Petraeus, who has a PhD. from Princeton, McChrystal has two masters' degrees in different fields). They also link to the post by Fred Kaplan at Slate, also worth a read.

I've been wracking my brain for the last time that a general was essentially fired in the middle of a war. Lincoln did it constantly in the Civil War, but has it happened since Truman fired MacArthur? Not that McKiernan was fired so summarily or that he was so senior, but I can't recall any major replacements of a theater commander in the midst of a campaign. Ricardo Sanchez stepped aside at the height of the Abu Ghraib controversy in Iraq, but continued as Commander of V Corps in Germany. George Casey succeeded him in Iraq, but served a full tour, and then was made Army Chief of Staff. (Which was also William Westmoreland's reward after Vietnam.)

Gen. David Rodriguez will be the new Deputy Commander in Afghanistan. He and McChrystal both are apparently West Point Class of '76 (Petraeus is Class of '74). Do those dates ring any bells among those of us who are old enough to remember those days? Those are the West Point classes that just missed Vietnam and witnessed, as junior officers or underclassmen, the lost war. The young officers who actually fought in Vietnam — Colin Powell, Norman Schwartzkopf — took one lesson to heart: don't go to war unless you have popular support, and then commit overwhelming force (the so-called Powell Doctrine). The generation that missed Vietnam took counterinsurgency theory more seriously.

The more I look at this the more I see a real coup on the part of the counterinsurgency wing of the Army. McChrystal is a Special Operator, who as head of Joint Special Operations Command went after Saddam Hussein and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi. Petraeus is cashing in the political and military capital he gained in the surge, and applying it to Afghanistan. General McKiernan, by all accounts a solid conventional warrior — tanker, Seventh Army commander in Europe, ground forces commander in Iraq in the initial invasion — is the loser; the COIN community is in the ascendant for now. Whether that is a harbinger of success or disaster will, of course, be proven on the battlefield, not on blogs. If it works, Petraeus will be Chief of Staff of the Army and maybe Chairman of the JCS. It's a big if, however. Afghanistan is not Iraq.

There are aspects of Afghanistan — a history of weak central governments and fierce warrior cultures typical of mountain redoubts like the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Kurdistan; the Pushtun code of hospitality in which tribal loyalties transcend much else, of isolated mountain valleys which are ideal for defense and hard to subdue, and so on — that may prove hard to reconcile with classic COIN theory. But it is an alternative to Dr. Brydon riding alone into Jalalabad.

One of the oddities of Vietnam was that the Kennedy Administration started out as a very pro-counterinsurgency-theory adminstration: Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of JCS was, of course, an old paratrooper; the Green Berets were a favorite project of JFK, and so on. But when Vietnam came along, despite some intriguing initial counterinsurgency efforts on the part of the Green Berets and Marines, ultimately the old conventional warriors (of whom William Westmoreland was the classic model) took over and fought a conventional war, mostly. And, of course, lost it.

Of course, we have always had a counterinsurgency lobby in the US military: it's just that it was called the Marine Corps. They wrote the book (the Small Wars Manual of 1940) that was pretty much the book on counterinsurgency until General Petraeus' Army Field Manual of 2006. But there were always prophets among the Marine Corps. At the very end of last year, at the age of 95, retired Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak died. Would that he had lived to see this day when the COIN folks seem triumphant. Krulak argued for a counterinsurgency approach in Vietnam, and lost. As a result, he never became Commandant of the Corps despite being one of the most innovative Marines of his generation. He did, however, live to see his son, Gen. Charles Krulak, become Commandant. Now the Army is preaching the Marine Corps doctrines of small wars and counterinsurgency (Petraeus co-wrote the Counterinsurgency Field Manual with a Marine general; it's a joint field manual, and the Bible of the COIN folks in the Army today. But it's something new in the Army, old hat to the Marines.)

I have no idea how things will play out in Afghanistan, or the increasingly linked issue of Pakistan. But I am certain that Gates — and President Obama, who clearly signed on to this — just changed the game in Afghanistan by changing the doctrine. I'm not the first person to say it, but Afghanistan just became Obama's war, since he's now committed to a dramatically changed strategy, and fired a general to do it.