Odds and ends

DATELINE: US Airways flight from Reagan to Indy, 30 November 2006

Blur of two days.

Up very early Wednesday for one-way rental drive to Oak Ridge and great meeting with Steve DeAngelis and Shane Deichman and number of senior Lab officials to discuss future collaborations. ORNL is amazingly talented at getting federal money because they've got such a super reputation for on-time and under-budget work. What we're cooking up next will make the Esquire storyline seem small in comparison, not that the December issue didn't attract some serious attention from players in NYC...

But that's another trip.

Then a flight to DC, where I veg out at hotel, blogging as best I could.

Then this morn I'm up for 90-min brief at GAO's HQ, where I've never been before, to three defense/int'l security units totaling over 100 people. Great crowd, good interaction, solid questions.

Then to McLean for afternoon with Native Alaskan-owned IT firm that's found itself improbably wiring up the Green Zone and the Iraqi gov these past three-plus years. Solid 2 hours with them on brief and Q&A. Definitely see good possibilities there.

Then check voicemail from "Kudlow & Co.," but got it too late to accept invite, meaning I called back at 1500 and they had booked up already. Too bad because I was plenty warm.

Nice email from Sean showing that last weekend's column on Dems picked up more than any to date, with many of the pubs being ones that now plug me in each week, so that seems to be going well enough.

Also finalizing deal right now on piece for Fast Company that should be a lot of fun. That's a spin-off from Pop!Tech. Will write week after next, methinks.

Jenn, my colleague and master of my sked, says she's combining the Alaska university junket with the Hawaii trip for the international special ops conference. The Alaska university hosts don't want me coming in February, as they worry the weather will be too iffy (already 21 below in some places). That will be a more interesting trip now, getting HI and AK in the same journey!

Also landed invite for return address to student body at Leavenworth next fall, which is gratifying. Hoping Petraeus will still be there.

Story blurb catches my eye in USA Today: in written responses to senators ("Gates to push for postwar planning"), SECDEF nominee promises "to improve the department's capabilities in this area."

Very nice to hear that Gates has both an agenda and some real ambition for his two years. If aggressive, he can still accomplish a lot. Nothing like the tail-end of a second term to load up on bureaucratic changes. Seriously, I see it happening.

Last bit from David Gallula's classic (published by old Harvard haunt, the Center for International Affairs, where Kissinger and Brzezinski both cut their academic teeth), Counterinsurgency Warfare (a book Petraeus makes everyone at Leavenworth read), where one is reminded that the Chinese communists originally devised the calculation that "revolutionary war is 20 per cent military action and 80 per cent political."

Here's the best part from Gallula himself:

It seems natural that the counterinsurgent's forces should be organized into two types of units, the mobile ones fighting in a rather conventional fashion, and the static ones staying with the population in order to protect it and to supplement the political efforts.

What bifurcated force concept does that sound like to you?

So even with the classic COIN volume, the Leviathan-SysAdmin logic surfaces.

If Gallula is mainstream, then how far off can I be?

Comments

[Steve Skalski]

Petraeus and McMaster had their acts together on dealing with insurgency in Iraq. Hopefully their new positions will provide a "cloning" effect for future generations of military personnel.

In Dereliction of Duty, McMaster makes a similar point several times.

"He [McNaughton] feared that, no matter what action the United States took against North Vietnam, governmental instability and popular discontent would exhaust South Vietnam's ability to resist the Viet Cong"

In another spot McMaster relates a meeting many years after the war between a Viet Cong colonel and American military colonel. Paraphrasing the conversation, the American colonel states that we never lost a battle. The Viet Cong colonel says that while that may be true, it was nevr the objective.