What a drawdown from "combat operations" really looks like

NYT story on the reality of what a post-drawdown US force presence in Iraq will actually entail.

The August deadline might be seen back home as a milestone in the fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, but here it is more complex. American soldiers still find and kill enemy fighters, on their own and in partnership with Iraqi security forces, and will continue to do so after the official end of combat operations. More Americans are certain to die, if significantly fewer than in the height of fighting here.

The withdrawal, which will reduce the number of American troops to 50,000 — from 112,000 earlier this year and close to 165,000 at the height of the surge — is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of matériel since World War II. It is also an exercise in semantics.

What soldiers today would call combat operations — hunting insurgents, joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces to kill or arrest militants — will be called “stability operations.” Post-reduction, the United States military says the focus will be on advising and training Iraqi soldiers, providing security for civilian reconstruction teams and joint counterterrorism missions.

“In practical terms, nothing will change,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the top American military spokesman in Iraq. “We are already doing stability operations.” Americans ceased major combat in Iraq long ago, and that has been reflected in the number of casualties. So far this year, 14 soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, and 27 more from accidents, suicides and other noncombat causes, according to icasualties.org.

Remember this when you hear similar descriptions re: Afghanistan.  The norm for US interventions of significant size is that we go, we fight, we drawdown, but we stay for the long haul. The key is getting casualties down to very low levels.  Once achieved, the US public will allow ad infinitum, because opponents are no longer able to characterize it as "war."

The experts have it backwards;  the American public has little patience for the Leviathan, therefore its operations must be very short and highly victories, but it has plenty more patience for SysAdmin stuff so long as the commitments are seen as small enough, the casualties low enough, and the value-achieved-for-expenditure seem reasonable.

Saudis success rate at militant rehabilitation? About 90% normally, dropping to 80% with the toughest cases.

Reuters by way of Michael Smith, who I know wants me to focus on the 20% versus the 80%:

Around 25 former detainees from Guantanamo Bay camp returned to militancy after going through a rehabilitation program for al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi security official said on Saturday.

The United States have sent back around 120 Saudis from the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, set up after the U.S. launched a "war on terror" following the September 11 attacks by mostly Saudi suicide hijackers sent by al Qaeda.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, has put the returned prisoners along with other al Qaeda suspects through a rehabilitation program which includes religious re-education by clerics and financial help to start a new life.

The scheme, which some 300 extremists have attended, is part of anti-terrorism efforts after al Qaeda staged attacks inside the kingdom from 2003-06. These were halted after scores of suspects were arrested with the help of foreign experts.

Around 11 Saudis from Guantanamo have gone to Yemen, an operating base for al Qaeda, while others have been jailed again or killed after attending the program, said Abdulrahman al-Hadlaq, Director General of the General Administration for Intellectual Security overseeing the rehabilitation.

He pinpointed strong personal ties among former prisoners but also tough U.S. tactics as the reason why some 20 percent of the returned Saudis relapsed into militancy compared to 9.5 percent of other participants in the rehabilitation program.

But honestly, I read the piece and I have to agree with the Saudis calling the program "a success," a claim pretty much mocked throughout the US press.  We're talking probably the most committed (the ones we went after) and the ones with the biggest resulting gripes (time in Guantanamo) and the Saudis still got 4 out of every 5 to walk away from the cause?  To me, that's a pretty amazing success rate.  Good God, I'd take that for the average American convict (more like half go right back to crime once out of prison), so I guess I don't see where we get off pointing fingers on this one.

I think we're awfully unrealistic on this score (indeed, one version of this story in NY state proclaimed that "scores" of Saudi terrorists were back at work, because apparently 25 equals "scores").  Any program that sidelines 90% of a population (only those returned by America scored a mere 80%, as the Saudi standard is 9 out of 10 successfully rehabilitated) has to be deemed a serious success.  I doubt we get that share in most of our efforts in Af-Pak right now, so retract the finger!

Will Pakistan uphold its end of the clear-and-hold effort?

Map here

Pakistani member of parliament via Times of India via Our Man in Kabul.

I quote at length:

There is a saying in Pakistan that if you can’t defeat your enemy, befriend him. This is particularly true in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan, where, in six agencies, there’s an unprecedented military offensive against militants. Despite many tactical alliances and ceasefire pacts in Waziristan, Pakistan has gone in with firepower backed by US drones. The cornerstone of the security policy here is to attack militants close to the al-Qaida, but spare armed syndicates that protect Pakistan’s flanks. 

The turbulence in the Af-Pak border zone has led Washington to put out strategic leaks about possible military intervention inside Pakistan. The heart of the problem is what could alter the dynamics of declining US-Nato successes in the Afghan theatre. North Waziristan agency (NWA), and what the Pakistan army is able to do there, seems to have become the litmus test for US-Pakistan relations. After Faisal Shahzad’s attempted bomb attack in Times Square, the pressure on Islamabad to act against anti-US Taliban in NWA has increased. Islamabad pleads capacity constraints; the US cites commitment gaps. 

The stakes are high. After failing to build institutional structures in Afghanistan, the test for Washington is linking US-Nato ground offensives in the south and Loya Paktiya to Pakistan’s push on the militant Haqqani-led groups from NWA. The Obama presidency needs a game-changer in a theatre where success is elusive despite a COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy that focuses on population safety. The expected Taliban reversals have not happened despite a massive offensive in Marjah. In Washington’s view, Pakistan is pulling its punches as it may need the Taliban when the US exits Afghanistan. 

For Pakistan, this is a battle for its stability and survival. Action is overdue against terrorist and sectarian groups in Punjab, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. There is a compelling need to act against extremist groups after the massacre of nearly a hundred Ahmadiyas in Lahore recently. The Punjab government needs to do a counter-terror sweep of its cities . . . 

The challenge in NWA is that Islamabad does not have the military or civilian capacity to open all fronts at the same time. Enmeshed in a blighted strategic endgame, with a growing terrorist threat, tanking economy and India posturing to the east, the military option in NWA cannot be a hair-trigger decision . . .  Islamabad’s fear is that if it shoves a fist into this hornet’s nest, maintaining the fragile consensus against terrorists at home would be difficult, as well as protecting its cities from further attacks. 

This can be no “shock and awe” exercise that can be switched off by remote control. Pakistan has already lost over 3,000 people in two years as a result of the terrorist backlash; the economy has taken a $35 billion hit. The question is, will the US be around to help hold down Pakistan’s fist when its army swoops on al-Qaida strongholds such as Mir Ali? The military’s tactic in any counterinsurgency initiative in mountainous terrain is ‘pincer and choke’ the enemies’ escape routes . . . If the NWA is grand central for terrorists, then the Afghan border provinces provide strategic depth. While the US-Nato forces in Afghanistan need to do their bit, Pakistan will have to step up border checks and review unwritten peace deals with tribal leaders who change sides too often. 

The other question is: how long can the Pakistani army stay in the agencies it has secured? Is there a civilian ‘build, hold and transition’ component to the project? Once again, before putting pressure Pakistan with an escalating war, huge governance commitments such as ROZ (reconstruction opportunity zones) assistance will have to roll off the US machine . . .

What will help is a phase-by-phase plan for securing the area, holding it until the tribes that have been terrorized by the Taliban are able to return and do business. Second, though the elites in Waziristan’s tribal areas have been marginalized by the Taliban, they will resist governance models that diminish their pre-Taliban political powers. The military will have to stay in Waziristan until the police and frontier corps in that area is strengthened, and the tribal leadership prepares for critical reforms and political activity by mainstream parties. FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) reform will only work if introduced incrementally, and the government’s recent announcements, if implemented, will be a brave start . . .

A glass-half-full take in the near-term, in the sense that Pakistan's serious efforts are acknowledged.  The usual doubts expressed about US staying power--sensible.

But what depresses is the realization that unless the two efforts match up, most of this will have been a complete waste of time--the same old, same old effort.

Most telling, none of this seems like it can credibly wrap up by the summer of 2011, when Obama wants to start leaving.

'It was my decision to die. I was getting beaten every day'

Brutal stuff from Japan Times via WPR's Media Roundup.

Picture found here, along with the quote above.

No surprise:  where you find the Taliban you find one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. An old theme for me: given the choice, most women would prefer living in the Core to the Gap; hence, they welcome globalization's embrace far more than men inside the Gap, because it liberates them disproportionally.

The usual details on the plight of women in Afghanistan, but then this jumps out at you:

It is not surprising, then, that the average life expectancy for a woman in Afghanistan is only 44 years.

Women don't fare any better in education. It is estimated that 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Many girls fear going to school for lack of security. Although some aspects of their lives have improved, women are still at a clear disadvantage with men.

"Women who try to advocate for their rights in public life are subject to violence and physical attacks," said Zia Moballegh, acting country director for the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development.

"Violence against women and girls is widespread and deeply rooted in society," Norah Niland, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan, said last year.

"Our field research finds that rape is under-reported and concealed, a huge problem in Afghanistan," Niland added. "It affects all parts of the country, all communities and all social groups."

It is estimated that one in three Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Paradoxically, shame is usually associated with the attacks, and the victims often find themselves prosecuted for adultery rather than the perpetrators. While adultery is punishable by jail sentence, no provision in the Afghan penal code criminalizes rape.

A sad result of this oppressive atmosphere is that an increasing number of women in Afghanistan are choosing suicide as a way to escape the violence and abuse in their daily lives, according to a human rights report prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. "Self-immolation is being carried out by increasing numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances, and women constitute the majority of Afghan suicides," states a report completed at the end of 2009.

Something to remember as the Long War proceeds.

Central Asia for the long haul

Eurasia.net story via WPR's Media Round-Up.

I remember getting in trouble while working in OSD for saying in a public speech that the US would have military bases in Central Asia for decades.

Well. . .

The Pentagon is preparing to embark on a mini-building boom in Central Asia. A recently posted sources-sought survey indicates the US military wants to be involved in strategic construction projects in all five Central Asian states, including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In perhaps the highest-profile project, the Pentagon intends to construct an anti-terrorism training center in southern Kyrgyzstan. The facility was originally intended to be built in Batken. But now it appears that it will be situated in Osh.

According to the notice posted on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website in mid-May, the US Army Corps of Engineers wants to hear from respondents interested in participating in “large-scale ground-up design-build construction projects in the following Central South Asian States (CASA): Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; and Uzbekistan.”

Just so we remember who the neighbors are, because they have a HOA known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

By virtue of Obama's vigorous use of drones, he needs to establish the rule-set cover for their operators

WAPO story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The essential danger/challenge:

On The Post's op-ed page Sunday, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey called the killing of Yazid a "major blow" to al-Qaeda because "Yazid has essentially served as al-Qaeda's 'chief financial officer,' coordinating the group's fundraising and overseeing the distribution of money essential to its survival." By the ACLU's reasoning, this would make the strike that killed Yazid illegal. Does the ACLU want to see the Predator operator who took out al-Qaeda's third in command prosecuted for murder? The ACLU has already gone after CIA interrogators -- surreptitiously photographing these covert operatives and sharing the images with al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo. CIA drone operators may soon be in for similar treatment.

The Obama administration has put the Predator operators at greater risk by dramatically narrowing the legal underpinnings for their actions. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh -- a harsh critic of the Bush administration -- explained in a March 25 speech that the Obama administration was no longer invoking the president's Article II authority as commander in chief to justify many of its policies in the war on terrorism. But Koh said that drone attacks were lawful because "Congress authorized the use of all necessary and appropriate force through the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF)."

The problem -- as Koh's predecessor, John Bellinger, told The Post last week -- is that Congress authorized the use of force against those who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And many of those currently targeted -- particularly outside Afghanistan -- had nothing to do with those attacks.

You have to think that if Obama lays out his case, however classified the presentation, to the Congress and says, "I'm taking the fight to them where they hide and I need this legality question settled for the long haul of this Long War," that he'd get the fix the CIA needs and deserves.

The longer the administration delays this inevitable step, the more jeopardy to which operators will be subjected.

Pretending this fight can be prosecuted in a neat, country-by-country basis, with all i's dotted in advance by Congress, is dangerous.  Better to clear the air and incentivize the operators. No reason to be mealy-mouthed about it or hide behind "interpretations."  Most Americans will see this as a very reasonable extension of Executive Branch writ.

Chivers on what Marja means--so far

NYT piece by the always astute C.J. Chivers.

As NATO and Afghan forces flow into neighboring Kandahar Province, where for the next many months the latest high-profile effort to undo the Taliban’s hold will unroll, the continuing fighting in Marja can be read as a sign of problems in the American-led surge. It can also be read as something less worrisome: a difficult period in a campaign always expected to be hard.

A prevailing assessment among officers on the ground is this: The outcome is too soon to call.

“Right now it’s gray,” said Maj. Lawrence Lohman, the operations officer for Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, which operates outposts in northern Marja.

Those who deem the Marja offensive a disappointment, or even a failure, point to the daily violence and to the signs that Afghans have been leaving the area, at least temporarily, to avoid the fighting. They also point to Taliban intimidation of residents, a still limited government presence, and the continued reliance of Afghan police officers and soldiers on American supervision and logistics. These, they say, are ill-boding signs.

But the signals are contradictory.

Most of Marja’s civilians returned after moving away ahead of the initial assault. Most of them remain. Compounds that were empty in February are inhabited. Roads once quiet are busy. Fields are thick with crops. Shops in some bazaars have reopened. Afghan units participate visibly in dangerous missions.

Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, the battalion’s commander, noted that some of Marja’s residents had begun providing information on the Taliban, including sharing the names and locations of fighters. Many civilians have been seeking aid and a few have sought contracts for small scale development projects, the early steps in engagement.

“I’ve seen good growth and good progress,” the colonel said. He added: “There is still a lot to be done.”

The Marines point to what they clearly hope is a Helmand pattern, apparent in other districts, including Nawa, where the Taliban were strong and fighting was initially intense. The pattern, they said, is this: With time and resources, the insurgents’ position erodes, villages become secure, and engagement and the Afghan government presence expand.

Pursuing this goal, Marine companies have been sending out constant small patrols.

Time and patience and skills, we seem to have a plenty--at least on the military's side.

More and more we hear generals voicing out loud their thought that Afghanistan will take longer--the implied follow-on being ". . . than President Obama wants."

Obama will reach a Bush moment on Afghanistan, and he will either fold or play on.

The more Pakistan goes after the frontier extremists, the more they seem to penetrate Pakistan's interior

The victims of terrorists bury their dead

Economist story that argues the extremists are growing strong in the more advanced areas of Pakistan--in effect, spilling out of the frontier into what most would consider to be Pakistan proper.

Vibe: the more the Pakistan military/security forces go after the extremists (Pak/Pashtun Taliban, Afghan Taliban in refuge, al Qaeda & other militants) in the FATA and NW Frontier Province, the more those groups retaliate by spreading eastward and southward into previously stable areas--returning the favor, so to speak.

Corollary argument is that whenever the same happens, radical elements are driven over border into Afghanistan, something that, as a rule, Islamabad is okay with, because it prefers Pashtun dominance in the north (the "strategic depth" argument).

Upshot being, this is why Islamabad in general likes to take a hands-off approach to the FATA and NW province: the hornet's nest stirred up is bad for Pakistan's usually more stable areas.

Story highlights a recent gunmen attack on the Ahmadis in Lahore.  They are a religious minority often persecuted as heretics by fundamentalist Muslims.  Over 90 were killed, and the shocking events retriggered a debate about how pervasive the Taliban are across the country as a whole.  Gov says there ain't no such thing as Punjabi Taliban, but local police in Lahore argue otherwise, saying they were behind recent Ahmadi assault.

There have always been Sunni Muslim extremist outfits in the settled areas, typically banned yet tolerated (and even supported by Pakistan's ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]), especially if they proved useful vis-a-vis India in the Kashmir "olive-tree" fight (like the most publicized player, Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 Mumbai assault).  Conventional wisdom has long said that these groups were distinct from the Taliban in the NW; now many are saying that's no longer true. More and more these groups decry the "foreign domination" of the US, so everything seems to be increasingly mushed together in that nasty "stew" you keep hearing about.

Conclusion of piece:  the more the US pushes Islamabad to work the Taliban issue in the NW, the more likely we end up pushing them to address militants throughout the country.  In short, either a comprehensive element or the usual whack-a-mole selectivity on Islamabad's part will become too apparent to hide from all interested parties.

This analysis falls in with the arguments you see more and more in the community that our focus in South Asia should be Pakistan, not Afghanistan.  That dovetails with my choose-India-first arguments.

Inevitably, I think this is how events are funneled. 

SOCOM turned loose by Obama administration

WAPO story by DeYoung and Jaffe.

Key point:

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

'More access'

Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush's administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We have a lot more access," a second military official said. "They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."

So the soft-on-terror bit doesn't hold with Obama.

I approve of this message:  I see no reason why my trigger-pullers should not stay trigger-happy.  They are good at what they do, and I prefer to take the fight to its sources.

Doesn't obviate the nation-building realities of the international security landscape, where we definitely need to swap out Old Core allies for New, but it demonstrates our commitment to waging the Long War on its own terms.

So a solid course from this White House that earns my respect.

Pakistan: pre-approved for retaliatory strikes.

Mohammad al-Corey Haim makes an appearance in court.  Add just a touch of success to his efforts and the plans currently being put together inside the Pentagon (would you expect anything less?) would have instantly morphed into operations that involve more than sending our incredibly flying machines to pick them off in onesies-twosies.

The gist:

The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the event that a successful attack on American soil is traced to the country's tribal areas, according to senior military officials.

Ties between the alleged Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, and elements of the Pakistani Taliban have sharpened the Obama administration's need for retaliatory options, the officials said. They stressed that a U.S. reprisal would be contemplated only under extreme circumstances, such as a catastrophic attack that leaves President Obama convinced that the ongoing campaign of CIA drone strikes is insufficient.

"Planning has been reinvigorated in the wake of Times Square," one of the officials said.

At the same time, the administration is trying to deepen ties to Pakistan's intelligence officials in a bid to head off any attack by militant groups. The United States and Pakistan have recently established a joint military intelligence center on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, and are in negotiations to set up another one near Quetta, the Pakistani city where the Afghan Taliban is based, according to the U.S. military officials. They and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding U.S. military and intelligence activities in Pakistan.

The "fusion centers" are meant to bolster Pakistani military operations by providing direct access to U.S. intelligence, including real-time video surveillance from drones controlled by the U.S. Special Operations Command, the officials said. But in an acknowledgment of the continuing mistrust between the two governments, the officials added that both sides also see the centers as a way to keep a closer eye on one another, as well as to monitor military operations and intelligence activities in insurgent areas.

Obama said during his campaign for the presidency that he would be willing to order strikes in Pakistan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a television interview after the Times Square attempt that "if, heaven forbid, an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."

I do love the way that woman speaks the truth without apology.

Honestly though, this possible dynamic makes me question the entire lets-choose-Pakistan-over-India logic of this administration.

We are letting others drive our strategy, others who have our worst outcomes in mind.

Chart of the day: America's "longest war"

USA Today cover story.

When you do the division, you get this for frequencies:

• 13,000 or so deaths a month, or 400 a day for the Civil War (where both sides are counted in the total);
• 9200 deaths a month, or 300 a day for WWII;
• 565 deaths a month, or 19 a day for Vietnam;
• 308 deaths a month, or 10 a day for the Revolutionary War;
• 51 deaths a month, or 1-2 a day for Iraq; and
• 9-10 deaths a month, or one every three days for Afghanistan. 

America has only about 31m people during the Civil War, so the percentage of the population is stunning at 1 in every 50 Americans dead.

The same ratio for WWII (132m population) is 1 in every 325 Americans.

For Vietnam (200m), it's 1 in every 3,450 Americans.

For Afghanistan/Iraq combined (300m), it's 1 in every 56,000 Americans.

A sense of the burden relative to the population and over time.

If we count Afghanistan as a war, I believe it's fair to argue that it's still shorter than our counterinsurgency effort in the Philippines from 1899 to 1913, or roughly 175 months.  We lost 4,200 troops there (24 a month or almost one a day, on average).

Long war planning: for when Obama decides to re-engage--or the world decides to re-engage Obama

Gist of Mazzetti piece in NYT:

The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said. Its goals are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces, the document said. The order, however, does not appear to authorize offensive strikes in any specific countries.

In broadening its secret activities, the United States military has also sought in recent years to break its dependence on the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy agencies for information in countries without a significant American troop presence.

General Petraeus’s order is meant for small teams of American troops to fill intelligence gaps about terror organizations and other threats in the Middle East and beyond, especially emerging groups plotting attacks against the United States.

But some Pentagon officials worry that the expanded role carries risks. The authorized activities could strain relationships with friendly governments like Saudi Arabia or Yemen — which might allow the operations but be loath to acknowledge their cooperation — or incite the anger of hostile nations like Iran and Syria. Many in the military are also concerned that as American troops assume roles far from traditional combat, they would be at risk of being treated as spies if captured and denied the Geneva Convention protections afforded military detainees.

The precise operations that the directive authorizes are unclear, and what the military has done to follow through on the order is uncertain. The document, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, provides few details about continuing missions or intelligence-gathering operations.

Several government officials who described the impetus for the order would speak only on condition of anonymity because the document is classified. Spokesmen for the White House and the Pentagon declined to comment for this article. The Times, responding to concerns about troop safety raised by an official at United States Central Command, the military headquarters run by General Petraeus, withheld some details about how troops could be deployed in certain countries.

The seven-page directive appears to authorize specific operations in Iran, most likely to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear program or identify dissident groups that might be useful for a future military offensive. The Obama administration insists that for the moment, it is committed to penalizing Iran for its nuclear activities only with diplomatic and economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has to draw up detailed war plans to be prepared in advance, in the event that President Obama ever authorizes a strike.

Doesn't signify anything other than our military plans to be ready, no matter what the leadership decides.  The alternative is to do nothing and then suffer the headlines about how, "Prior to the intervention, the Pentagon didn't even have maps for the areas in question!"

After all, this is why you have Special Ops guys.

He's a real nowhere man, living in his nowhere land

I pretty much tune Fouad Ajami out when he talks anything having to do with Obama, because on that score, he's about as reliable as Karl Rove in his one-sidedness.

But when he writes directly about what's wrong with the Middle East and Arab culture, he's often quite powerful in his observations--to wit, the subtitle of this WSJ op-ed:  "Millions like Faisal Shahzad are unsettled by a modern world they can neither master nor reject."

That is a microcosm of the Arab world in general:  globalization has embraced it--thinly, and it is both amazed and repulsed by the possibility/inevitability of deeper integration.

But it is an especially good capture of expats who never quite connect in their adopted Western countries--hence the susceptibility to the chimera of dropping out and tuning in to jihad. It is the perfect, Calgon-take-me-away Deus ex machina. You hit the rough patch and booyah! You've got this noble out that suddenly makes your life historic and genuine and not such a failure. We're talking the ultimate Plan B--a concept most of us known well after the last tough year and a half.

More:

The maxim that Pakistan is governed by a trinity—Allah, army, America—gives away this confusion: The young man who would do his best to secure an American education before succumbing to the call of the jihad is a man in the grip of a deep schizophrenia. The overcrowded cities of Islam—from Karachi and Casablanca to Cairo—and those cities in Europe and North America where the Islamic diaspora is now present in force have untold multitudes of men like Faisal Shahzad.

This is a long twilight war, the struggle against radical Islamism. We can't wish it away. No strategy of winning "hearts and minds," no great outreach, will bring this struggle to an end. America can't conciliate these furies. These men of nowhere—Faisal Shahzad, Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born renegade cleric Anwar Awlaki now holed up in Yemen and their likes—are a deadly breed of combatants in this new kind of war. Modernity both attracts and unsettles them. America is at once the object of their dreams and the scapegoat onto which they project their deepest malignancies.

We can succumb to the tempting notion that it's all about "empire," hence it's always we who are the ultimate target, followed by the Brits in a residual sense. But that's our version of escapism. The globalization we began has escaped our grasp. This dynamic won't end by our quitting the contest.

We will be killing the un-redeemables and the irrationals until they stop being born.  Globalization, in the form of that massive (as in, now close to 60% of the world's population) global middle class, will simply keep paying somebody to make them go away. Might be us, for as long as we want it to be, but it will definitely be somebody with a gun.

There will always be a "cause celebre"; take your pick in the Long War

From a David Sanger Week-in-Review piece in the NYT:

When President Obama decided last year to narrow the scope of the nine-year war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he and his aides settled on a formulation that sounded simple: Eviscerate Al Qaeda, but just “degrade” the Taliban, reversing that movement’s momentum.

Now, after the bungled car-bombing attempt in Times Square with suspected links to the Pakistani Taliban, a new, and disturbing, question is being raised in Washington: Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan — notably the Predator drone strikes — actually made Americans less safe? Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgencies to think of targeting Times Square and American airliners, not just Kabul and Islamabad? In short, are they inspiring more attacks on America than they prevent?

It is a hard question.

At the time of Mr. Obama’s strategy review, the logic seemed straightforward. Only Al Qaeda had the ambitions and reach to leap the ocean and take the war to America’s skies and streets. In contrast, most of the Taliban and other militant groups were regarded as fragmented, regional insurgencies whose goals stuck close to the territory their tribal ancestors have fought over for centuries.

Six months and a few attempted bombings later, including the near-miss in New York last weekend, nothing looks quite that simple. As commanders remind each other, in all wars the enemy gets a vote, too. Increasingly, it looks like these enemies have voted to combine talents, if not forces. Last week, a senior American intelligence official was saying that the many varieties of insurgents now make up a “witches’ brew” of forces, sharing money handlers, communications experts and, most important in recent times, bomb makers.

Yes, each group still has a separate identity and goal, but those fine distinctions seem less relevant than ever.

Whether it's the decision to "take our eyes off the ball" and go into Iraq and put them back and stick it hard to al-Qaeda in Af-Pak, the "cause celebre" issue will always be there, so it's damned if you do and damned if you don't on the pro-active choice.

The alternative is to stay at home and let them find you at their leisure.  That was 9/11.

There is no detaching our ownership of the Long War from our parentage of globalization.  Our enemies will admit no such distancing.

Local resilience versus national policing

WSJ story.

Nice image from Times Square, eh?  Pay no attention to those men in the tower!

Gist of piece:

The Times Square bombing attempt has re-energized a debate between spies and domestic-security officials within the Obama administration over how to handle ideologically driven violence in the U.S.

Intelligence officials at the National Counterterrorism Center have pushed for more responsibility over countering domestic radicalization, officials said.

But Homeland Security officials say the plot has strengthened their argument for a broader approach that would train local law-enforcement and citizens to spot early warning signs of any violence.

I have to side with the Homeland people on this one--fewer "czars" and more suspicious peasants!

I'd rather have everyone be a bit more suspicious and vigilant than have more powers vested into federal authorities.

Our best deterrence is exactly an outcome like this--repeated ad nauseum.