Attackerman

Petraeus: It's Complicated

Not to get all first-sentence-of-The-Stranger on you, but David Petraeus retired today.

That doesn't mean Petraeus is going away or anything. He's going to be the new CIA director, of course. But it does occasion a meditation on Petraeus' Army career. And over at Danger Room, I write that, "Even while his greatest successes revealed his flaws, Petraeus really was that good." Meaning what? Like for instance:

In 2003, when he commanded the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul, he essentially ignored the Bush administration’s decree to fire the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s government, which ran the bureaucracy. The result was that Mosul remained relatively secure while disenfranchised Sunnis around Iraq formed an insurgency. Another, more problematic result was that Petraeus, a two-star general, “had his own foreign policy,” in the words of war chronicler Tom Ricks. Petraeus isn’t just a general, he’s a cautionary tale of civilian-military relations.

The Gamble, Ricks’ account of the surge, judges that Petraeus essentially redefined the aims of the Iraq war without publicly acknowledging it. Bush wanted to defeat the insurgency and negotiate an enduring U.S. presence in Iraq. Petraeus, Ricks argues, sought to diminish the insurgency to the point where the U.S. could get most of its troops out while saving face. It’s one thing for a general to see things differently from his commander. But it’s quite another for him to subtly reinterpret the aims of a war. If the media hasn’t fully accepted Petraeus’ denials that he’s running for president, maybe it’s because he sometimes acted like he already was the commander in chief.

And if I can remix my own stuff some more, I kind of want to call attention to this cautionary warning on counterinsurgency:

Time will determine whether that influence was ultimately positive. Counterinsurgency doesn’t lack for critics. The manual’s famous invocation that counterinsurgency is the “graduate level of war” strikes many in the Army as arrogant. Internal skeptics like Col. Gian Gentile contend that it’s a tactical and operational approach masquerading as a strategy. Others fear its contention that insurgencies don’t have military solutions leaves the Army de-emphasizing soldiering and stressing social and economic development, which are properly civilian tasks. Another criticism is that policymakers’ fascination with the possibilities of counterinsurgency risks enmeshing the U.S. in more grueling, bloody ground wars. With the wars of the future looking likely to occur in sea, air, space and cyberspace, a generation of Army officers forged in counterinsurgency — critics call it a cult — will be challenged to adjust.

All intellectual movements sow the seeds of their own dogmatism, and dissident movements that find themselves in the ascension perhaps moreso. COIN reached its peak ascendency at a moment when ground war looks less relevant to U.S. security interests than, say, Pacific defense. How will the Petraeus Generation adapt? 

P4 Postscript: When I was at TPM in 2007, Petraeus' stats about the Surge Working smelled really funny to me. In particular, I didn't get how he was defining sectarian violence, a critical metric for the war. So I ended up filing a FOIA for his definition... and to my surprise, two weeks later, his command actually provided it to me. In FOIA-time, two weeks is a split second. And it turned out that Petraeus' definition, while not beyond criticism, had merit to it. More importantly, it had consistency in its application, allowing the stat to be tracked over time.

That's less a sexy story than my bizarre interview-slash-workout with the guy, but one that still resonates with me.

Omar Coming!

 

Mullah Omar confirms that he's already entered into negotiations with the U.S. over Taliban prisoners. That's a BFD, as I wrote at Danger Room. A cool Twitter discussion with Joshua Foust, Anne Marie Slaughter, Josh Rogin, Jim Arkedis and Mike Lyons has convinced me I should probably put a finer point on the significance of this, so here goes.

As Joshua Foust rightly observes, Omar's been trying to drum up U.S. interest in negotiations for years now. Only recently did the U.S. commit itself unambiguously* to negotiating a peace settlement with the Taliban: Secretary Clinton's February speech to the Asia Foundation ran it up the flagpole, and President Obama's June speech on the drawdown put the force of the presidency behind it. The Bush administration wasn't interested in peace talks; the Obama administration pre-2011 was interested in peace talks if the Taliban essentially surrendered before they proceeded, meaning it was more open to talking with Teheran than with the Quetta Shura. 

That's the context in which Omar's statement comes. The White House is signaling its willingness to talk; Omar not only clears his throat, but he says that early talks are already ongoing.  Omar's statement further sounds comparatively calm notes about the Karzai government; declines to demand the U.S. do anything for the talks to expand; and suggests that the Taliban are in a sufficiently advantageous military position that talks will simply consolidate their gains. And in case you're freaking out by that last part: that's what every combatant needs to believe, or even just articulate, ahead of coming to the negotiating table. We say it too.

None of that is to say that peace talks have the slightest degree of inevitability to them. But the modalities ahead of talks are no longer uncertain. The challenge now is to channel the momentum from Obama and Omar's statements into a set location, including relevant stakeholders like the Afghan and Pakistani governments, to actually see what a surely arduous negotiation can accomplish for ending the war.

*I put an asterisk beside "unambiguous" because I'm not really convinced the U.S. has the bureaucratic structure in place to support peace talks; and because Obama's strategy in Afghanistan doesn't explain how military efforts actually support a negotiated peace. These are significant self-imposed obstacles to peace. The good news is they can be unilaterally mitigated. But the U.S. has to clearly want to mitigate them.

Gen. Allen's Dhimmitude

That that that so-and-so, what with his respect for Muslims, and his understanding that the Afghan people will make the difference in a war for their allegiance! How dare a man in uniform wish anyone a happy Eid! 

/gellar

Butrillytho. Allen's money line: "We will continue to offer a supporting hand long after the combat troops return to their homes and their families."  

All These Other Dick Cheneys Are Just Imitating

Conor Friedersdorf goes after Dick Cheney's reputation with the psychotic relish of Hannibal Lecter breaking out of his specialty cell and butterflying his captor. The book -- I haven't read it yet, but judging from these reviews, it's brazen. At this point, it really sounds like Cheney is set to deliver Eminem's verse on "Bitch Please II."

What if he's right? I'm just a criminal, making a living off the world's misery/ what in the world gives me the right?/ to say what I like/ and walk around flipping the bird/ living the herbing life like a white kid from the burbs/ screaming at night/ and screaming at moms, scheming to leave/ run away from home and grow to be as evil as me/ I just want you all to notice me and people to see/ that deep down there's a decent human being in me/ it just can't be found / so the reason you've been seeing this me/ is this is me now/ the recent dude who's being this mean

Unlike Em, Cheney probably wouldn't sign off with something as crude as "suck my fucking dick, you faggot,"* since we know prefers "Fuck yourself."

 

This post is dedicated to my old Daily Targum editor/partner in crime, Sally Goldenberg, now of the New York Post, who in college never failed to get into the journalisming mood when blasting Xzibit's verse on this song.

*Let's also pause to reflect on how Eminem commands a "faggot" to "suck his dick," a perfect example of the furtive desires that homophobia usually can't help but reveal.

Before I Break

Courtney Messerschmidt interviews Andrew Exum by deploying her signature rhetorical understatement:

When Captain Ex became exCaptain Ex and made the move into making his brain more bigger, it was easy for for funk obsessed critics to dismiss the new millennium's wunder killer kind  as  another of CNAS cadres Das Unaussprechlichen COIN Külten's expert killers of killers who were sweetly turning AFPAK into a safe word.

That's a pretty killer sentence. I rarely feel as old as I do when I read Great Satan's Girlfriend, whose author was born in the 90s, especially when she (ironically? seriously? serironically?) uses this Motley Crue spawn called Black Veil Brides as a prism into the complexities of the defense world. (That's not me knocking the player or the game, since I've done much the same thing for going on eight years now, although obviously I have infinitely better taste.) 

Anyway, Ex flips it on her and kind of tells Courtney to get off his lawn:

"You know, Moqtada al-Sadr and I really fell out as friends when Uncle Tupelo broke up. I prefer Wilco to Son Volt, but Moqtada can’t stand Jeff Tweedy and thinks he’s pompous. We’ve just never been able to speak in a civil manner since, oh, 1995 or so."

Boom roasted. Back in Ex's day, the kids listened to quality music. (Extra points for having Moqtada take Jay Farrar's side.)

 

Merc Murked

I started investigating a very strange incident in Benghazi in May and came away with something of a counterweight -- if qualified -- to the optimism surrounding the Libyan Transitional National Council:

On a dark night in May, five employees of a prominent French private security company left a restaurant in the Libyan revolutionary capitol of Benghazi. Before they could return to their hotel, they were accosted by a group of armed rebels. As their colleagues explain it, they had little reason to believe there would be trouble: In the morning, the guards had an appointment with representatives of the rebel government to discuss a contract about securing a crucial material transit route from Cairo.

Very little about what happened next is clear. But one stark, bloody fact remains. Moments later, the rebels shot dead Pierre Marziali, a French ex-paratrooper who founded the security company, Secopex.

I got the company to open up -- somewhat -- about what was going on: 

An official statement issued on May 11 accused the security contractors of “illicit activities that jeopardized the security of free Libya.” A promised investigation would determine if they were “spies hired by the Gadhafi regime.”

The curious incident made headlines — briefly. Then it faded away, a murky incident in a confusing war. Secopex has said next to nothing about the incident publicly — until now. Karen Wallier, a Secopex representative, told Danger Room that she herself “do[es] not have all of the answers” to what happened that night. But she said that the Secopex team “made no resistance” to the gunmen before Marziali was shot.

“The circumstances of his death were accidental,” Wallier added. “Allegations of espionage are totally unfounded.”

Bottom line stuff:

 It could be argued that after the initial shooting, the Libyan rebel government acted responsibly by releasing the Secopex guards without charge, instead of keeping them detained. But if their release is an implicit admission of error, the Transitional National Council has never owned up to it — nor apologized to Secopex, France and Marziali’s family. Will that be the style in which it governs Libya?

By the same token, Secopex hasn’t fully explained what it was doing in Libya, a country that has become awash in private security firms and mercenaries. And with Gadhafi still on the loose and NATO sending mixed signals on putting peacekeepers into a wealthy country, it’s unlikely that private security firms are done with Libya.

 

Kingslayer

Finally home. 

The First Chance To Crack The Iron Bank of Braavos, They Try Me

Very minor spoilers for A Dance With Dragons follow. Not really anything you'd be pissed at me for revealing, but better safe than sorry, right? Consider yourself warned.

I was IMing with Alyssa "No Mercy" Rosenberg today and we got to discussing a bit of a Song of Ice & Fire mystery. The Iron Throne is entirely in debt to the Iron Bank of Braavos. How can it be that House Lannister doesn't pay the most important debt in the Realm? Even with a multi-front war going, it's... out of character. There's no textual support for the proposition that Casterly Rock is strapped for gold. 

One possible explanation: debt as war strategy. Keep the Iron Throne impoverished so potential rivals won't want a throne indebted to Braavos. Is Stannis, with his obsessive sense of (a version of) justice, really going to think it's worth it. Well, Stannis probably will. But still. I should mention that there's absolutely no textual support for this proposition, either.

Alternatively, could the debt be a weapon in Stannis' hand? If he knew about it, that is -- there's no textual evidence that he does.  It's not like anyone loves the Lannisters. The great Westerosi houses that acquiesce to Lannister rule do so out of a paucity of other options and the surety of knowledge that finance is the strength of Casterly Rock. Stannis can make himself a more palatable option by going S&P on the Lannisters. 

I guess the Lannisters could point out that it was Stannis' brother who actually bankrupted the realm. But would that really redound to their benefit? Blaming your predecessor typically works best if people hate your predecessor more than you.

This Is Journalism

Dick Cheney, re-litigating The Midnight Ride to John Ashcroft's hospital bed, apparently writes in his memoir that before his incapacitation, Ashcroft informed the White House that he would not object to a reauthorization of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program. That would be awfully convenient for the Cheney and the Bush team: it would imply that Ashcroft was a fickle flip-flopper, not a man of principle; and suggest there wasn't really much of an internal debate over the propriety of the program.

So along comes Cheney's biographer, Bart Gellman, one of the finest reporters of his generation (who happens to be married to another of them, Dafna Linzner):

Even if Ashcroft picked up the phone, there are many reasons to doubt Cheney’s version of the call. It would mean that Bush discussed a codeword-classified intelligence program on an open phone line; that Ashcroft took exactly the opposite position that he took before and after the call; and that the attorney general was even coherent. Those around Ashcroft that evening say he was heavily doped on morphine, slipping in and out of awareness.  “I found him barely conscious,” Comey said in an interview. “I had trouble getting him focused, oriented as to time and place.” Mueller wrote in contemporary notes that Ashcroft was “feeble, barely articulate.”

Even harder to credit is Cheney’s suggestion that the White House did not know until that moment that Comey had assumed Ashcroft’s powers. David Ayres, Ashcroft’s chief of staff, called deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin from the emergency room a full week earlier, on March 4, to say the attorney general was incapacitated. The next day, Justice sent formal notice to Gonzales’s deputy, David Leitch, that Comey had taken the reins. On March 6, newspapers and broadcast networks carried variations of this report from CNN: “Deputy Attorney General James Comey is acting as attorney general while Ashcroft is hospitalized.” For the next four days, Comey repeatedly filled in for Ashcroft in White House meetings. In one of them, Bush asked after Ashcroft’s health and Comey replied, “Not well.”

Cheney misstates another crucial point, alleging that it was not until “the spring” of 2004 that Justice began “raising concerns” about the surveillance program. In fact, the chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, started expressing strong doubts in December 2003, and Comey joined him in January. David Addington, Cheney’s general counsel, engaged in a ferocious effort over the next three months to suppress a growing legal rebellion. When lawyers from the NSA asked to see the opinions under dispute, Addington angrily refused and told them to back off.

Now that is journalism: powerful man tells mendacious, self-serving lie about national security. Journalist mans the ramparts for the truth and calmly dispenses with the bullshit claim. Every time I get cynical about this business, or forget it is what my job truly is, something like Bart's piece comes along, and we're all better off. Even Dick Cheney, who needs the truth whether he understands that need or not.

When There's Nothing On The Horizon, You've Got Nothing Left To Prove

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No. 748-11

August 29, 2011

DOD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Spc. Douglas J. Green, 23, of Sterling, Va., died Aug. 28 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Wainwright, Alaska.

For more information the media may contact the U.S. Army Alaska public affairs office at 907-384-2072.