Senior DOD Officer Uses Small Wars Journal to Test Public Response to Domestic Use of Military Force

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Federal Troops Attack Fort Sumter, South Carolina

The Washington Times has a nice summary of the garbage published by the Small Wars Journal (SJA):  http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/7/the-civil-war-of-2016/

For those that don’t know the story, a senior militar officer teamed up with a historian recently to publish an article detailing how the US military could be used to conduct combat operations against Americans.  The fact that the Pentagon brass is wasting their time wargaming scenarios for the domestic use of military force means it is absolutely on their agenda and is chilling. It is disturbing colonels are more concerned with turning guns on Americans than say the North Koreans.  The fact the writers used the “Tea Party,” a group that has never committed a single act of violence or suggested one is very telling.  Instead of using a more likely scenario such as a region of the south-west breaks away and claims it is now a part of Mexico or some left-wing eco-terrorists take over an area, they intentionally chose to fabricate and perpetuate a political storyline and stereotype.  What’s worse is that the underlying cause for the use of military force is a citizens revolt against the excesses of a tyrannical government and the military’s answer seems to default to brutally cracking down on it.  This is ironic in light of how our media has painted the peoples’ wars against dictators in Egypt, Libya, and Syria as just and worthy of our military’s support.  It would appear then that our military now serves to topple foreign dictators for freedom except when it’s the United States government in question.  There should be no doubt that this article was submitted to test the acceptance level within the military ranks to the idea of conducting offensive combat operations against Americans.

As I read this article in the SWJ, one obvious conclusion became apparent about the senior DoD thinkers.  Specifically, the brass apparently has learned NOTHING from the last decade of fighting insurgencies around the globe.  Even the suggestion the proper course of action to deal with civil disorder should be a full military combat operation is absurd.  It is probably the worst course of action unless you want to spark a full civil war or at least a full-blown insurgency.  Apparently, the generals think it wise to try to promote jobs and build infrastructure in Afghanistan to overcome and insurgency, but in their backyard, the answer is to shoot our citizens now.  Usurpers and tyrants are the historical enemies of Americans…NOT the people.  Anyone that tries to pervert that concept and flip it on its head is the enemy Colonel!

You should have no doubt that if the brass are writing on this from the war colleges, they are seriously contemplating the action.  A dedication of professional time to it alone constitutes a traitorous act of sedition from within the military, but in practice is an undoubted litmus test for the readiness of the military to turns its guns on the homeland.  The officer corps needs to be cognizant of this treachery and collectively and intellectually make it well-known that in no way shape or form would they consent to these actions as acceptable or legal and would not follow any orders of the such as they are illegal and illegitimate.  This needs to transcend to operations policy and plans as well as down to the doctrine at the tactical level.  Unless our officers educate our 18 year olds that their Constitutional oath does not cover killing Americans to protect a regime…in fact the exact opposite, they have failed in their responsibilities.

Bloodshed in Afghanistan Continues Unabated Contrary to Government Claims of Improvements

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Wounded Soldier in Afghanistan

Today’s headlines once again announce the death of another 7 Americans in Afghanistan and as many more local nationals.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/10/world/asia/afghanistan-us-casualties/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

http://news.yahoo.com/three-u-soldiers-killed-uniformed-afghan-helmand-064345412.html

These Americans that died were no ordinary people, but elite special forces advisors, a foreign service officer, and battalion level staff officers and a senior non-commissioned officer.  The special forces advisors were killed by the Afghans they were training, the USAID foreign service officer by a roadside bomb, and the majors and a sergeant major by a man wearing a suicide vest.  These deaths sadly highlight the spectrum of how little we have accomplished with our trillions of dollars spent over the last decade plus of war.  As a veteran of this conflict, it pains me to admit the obvious.  The Afghanistan War’s indecisive stalemate can only be honestly described as a strategic defeat for the United States.  Simply put, we never had the leadership, will, or strategy to effectively prosecute and win this war.  Those still drunk on the Administration’s Kool-Aid will vehemently disagree, but they wouldn’t dare walk from Kandahar to Asadabad with any expectation of survival The reality on the ground is simple.  The army left holding the ground is the victory.  This army is the Taliban as we retreat out of Afghanistan.  Our policy of building a forward operating base, so we can clear the routes to it of improvised bombs, so we can bring supplies to the base, so we can clear routes to it of improvised bombs….etc. etc. etc., has become the quintessential example of the futility of this war and the utter lack of a viable, winning strategy.

Making these statements requires some justification and history so allow me to recap the last few years of the war.  As General McChrystal was unceremoniously dismissed and replaced by the much lauded General Petraeus in June of 2010 the media cheered as the savior of Afghanistan had arrived.  This is ironic as much of the failing counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy that McChrystal tried so hard to implement was directly from the play book of Petraeus.  Nonetheless, General Petraeus wasted no time installing his public relations machinery and implementing “his” counterinsurgency strategy.  To begin, he had to spin the much hyped, “government in a box” that had already proved to be better on paper than in practice.  The battle for Marjah was the center piece of this strategy and was far from going well.  In fact, the Taliban had simply done what guerilla fighters do and quietly dispersed into the surrounding areas and then reconstituted where NATO forces were now spread thin as a result of concentrating troops in Helmand Province.  This situation caused a near immediate destabilization of surrounding regions once considered “immunized” in the words of David Kilcullen, who had been the “COIN Whisperer” at the General’s side for most of the war.

Unfortunately, for the troops on the ground and the Afghan people, Kilcullen should have spent more time in actual combat instead of analyzing peacekeeping operations with staff officers.  Further, contrary to how Kilcullen inflates or perhaps distorts his record, ridealongs in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t count as combat as any veteran will tell you.  Not surprisingly, the war in Afghanistan has continued to drag on without any decisive outcome irrespective of the great General Petraeus’ intervention.  As the bodies and bills piled up though for the United States, Kilcullen and Petraeus continued to rake in the fame as the ground truth in Afghanistan was whitewashed from the public.  In fact, casualties hit record numbers during Petraeus’ tenure.  Even worse, Americans were being told with celebration how the Afghans had taken control of greater and greater areas.  However, what was actually going on would have been more honestly stated as handing over territory we couldn’t control to the Taliban.  Even Petraeus’ premium placed on training the Afghan army and police was an abysmal failure.  According to a recent GAO study, barely 10% of the Afghan units are mission capable even to this day and this is only after the Defense Department had to redefine the definition of a “capable” unit as “independent with advisors” that could call for support.  Considering that our advisors are going home and the only support that 10% can call on will be the 90% incapable of independent operation, the outlook for Afghanistan looks bleak.  This is especially true when you consider the Taliban has done just fine surviving the onslaught of the most powerful military in this world’s history without advisors or support!  This is the same game plan the Soviets laid out to cover their retreat and it will end no differently.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the prescient political general skipped town with his entourage to takeover as the Director of the CIA leaving an indecisive mess to blame on his predecessors that looks worse now than it did in 2001.  In speaking with senior policy makers involved in the war strategy, I was told that the people working this were “brilliant and trying very hard” as if that made up for the thousands of dead and wounded in vain.  I was also told there were “no good solutions” as if their inability to develop a working strategy was accented by an elitist mentality that assumed no one else was capable since they failed.  In the world of business, that type of answer usually gets one fired and replaced with someone who can do the job rather quickly…not so for the U.S. Government.  What’s worse is that even when confronted with hard facts the senior officials change the subject and refuse to acknowledge the reality, seemingly disappearing into their own make believe worlds for comfort.  For example, why we didn’t secure the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?  Many studies have been done proving a COIN strategy focused on border security vice training and advising would have been quick, simple, and effective saving countless lives and dollars.  Further, border security is the only strategy with a rock-solid, proven historical precedent for delivering decisive gains against cross-border insurgencies like we are fighting in Afghanistan.  Training and advising have never shown to provide decisive strategic outcomes against this type of insurgency as any well read historian would quickly realize, but this glaring fact was seemingly missed by the “brilliant” folks in charge.

This brings us back to the gut wrenching reality of the seven dead Americans that this Administration desperately wants to make inconsequential when in reality, it represents everything.  This “everything is fine” whitewash till the November election is a blatant insult to the duty and lives of those dead.  Our political leaders are made up of two types.  The idiots that are drinking the Kool-Aid and actually believe we have accomplished something in Afghanistan and the liars that are mixing the Kool-Aid.  To help you see through the smoke screen ask some hard questions that I have repeatedly pointed out year after year.  “If,” the Taliban were so bad we had to declare them terrorists and dive headfirst into a decade long war costing trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of wounded and killed, then how can we now pull out when they are more powerful, more numerous, and control more territory than they did in 2001?  For those die-hard Kool-Aid drinkers, if you think the government has returned peace and order to Afghanistan, you are welcome to test your theory personally.  Go buy a ticket and have a fun time walking cross-country as an American tourist…just make sure you name me in your government life insurance plan before you go!  On the other hand, if in fact, the Taliban are not really that big of a threat after all and can be left alone, then how can we justify the war was ever necessary in the first place?  Simple logic will tell you someone is lying to the American people AGAIN.  Using the previous quoted retort from a senior policy maker, there is not a good answer to either question.  Either A, they were a threat and will remain an even greater threat after our pull out or B, they never were a threat and the post 9/11 wars were nothing but a sham for the biggest power grab ever by our government, erosion of your civil liberties and rights to next to nothing, and the enrichment of a very few.  So I ask, which is it?

Realizing the Negatives: Proliferation of Drones

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Drone attack

B2W has repeatedly warned of the emerging threats from drones, unmanned systems, and autonomous technology to the United States.  It is only now that the public is beginning to recognize the implications of the last ten years of drone proliferation.  Like the atomic bomb, when it was only the U.S. that had it, it was a great weapon.  However, once the Soviets acquired nuclear weapons, they became a pariah and the central focus of U.S. security policy for half a century.  Drones will be no different.

In fact, drones may actually be much worse from a perspective of actual versus potential threat when compared to nuclear weapons simply because drones have been and will continue to be widely used.  As this easily proliferated technology, which is nearly impossible to contain, spreads to nations and non-state actors, it will open a host of new threats.  For starters, it is already revolutionizing smuggling.  Drugs, weapons, and soon people will be moving freely across borders with impunity.  Autonomous submarines, remotely controlled jet boats and vehicles, and unmanned aircraft will make the human smuggler obsolete and unnecessary.  Why take the risk of paying someone to move drugs when you can fly a drone across a border and make a precision air delivery without any way to track down the smugglers?  Further, what counter measures do we have for this?  Place air defense systems along our borders and shoot down anything that looks like an airplane?  Get real, the cost alone would be prohibitive to mention nothing of the risk of an inevitable accidental shoot down of a manned craft!

Even more ominous will be the ability for our enemies to conduct targeted assassinations from the comfort and safety of protective regimes situated on the opposite side of the globe.  This is when the demons we created truly come back to haunt us and we have to take our own medicine we have dished out from Pakistan to Libya.  Imagine a Secret Service detail now having to worry about a hellfire missile launched from a stealth drone ten miles away or a remote controlled army of vehicle borne explosives driving toward critical infrastructure!

Policy makers take note.  This is only a very small portion of the huge range of drone implications for domestic security.  For those that deal with security, it will only be a matter of time before drone issues overwhelm your daily calendar.  In the interim, we suggest policy makers consider what it will be like “when” our drone technology is used against us before authorizing more spending on drones and passing laws allowing drone flights across the United States.  Slow down and let common sense catch up with the technology.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/06/2930381/the-emerging-drone-culture.html

Border Security Threatens to Collapse Israel-Egypt Peace

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Just as we warned when civil war broke out in Egypt, the breakdown in security along the Israel border with Egypt has begun to undermine the peace in the region. Israel has relied on Egypt for years to maintain the Sinai buffer between the two countries as a demilitarized area free of threats. However, as the civil war in Egypt grew the government’s ability to maintain security in the Sinai deteriorated and then collapsed. This opened a super highway for insurgents, weapons, and equipment to move in and out of Gaza. These fighters then moved to attack Israel from its less defended flanks leaving Israel in a security conundrum. Israel now has to choose between attacking to defend its territory or absorbing the attack on its own soil. Both actions come with major consequences for the populations of both Egypt and Israel. In short, if the situation persists, Israel will be forced to action. This will escalate tensions with Egypt to the point of war just as the growing crises with Syria and Iran climax. This will then place the United States in an extremely awkward position between two of its historic regional allies.

This is an avoidable outcome if Tel Aviv and Cairo can quickly move to lock down the border region. If Cairo stalls, Israel must work quickly to isolate Gaza from the Egyptian border and build a bigger buffer. This will at least mitigate some of the cross border insurgent movement. However, without Cairo’s intervention to lock down the Sinai, Israel will be faced with a unilateral military move into the Sinai, which could lead to the outbreak of yet another Israel-Egypt War. Washington, holding the strings on billions of dollars of aid to both countries, needs to reign them both in and force them to immediately correct this erosion in security or face its own interests being damaged.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/06/israel-egypt-relations-sinai-attack?newsfeed=true

U.S. Provoking War in the Middle East

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Jihadist Forces Fighting in Syria

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-28/panetta-heads-to-middle-east-as-iran-dominates-israel-talks.html

The US is now openly admitting it is supporting the rebels as exposed months ago.  The public doesn’t recognize the significance of this.  What this means is the U.S. has actively taken a side in an ugly civil war with very undefined lines.  Further, I can say with some degree of authority, many of the “rebels” that are recipients of our  aid and Saudi/Qatari weapons and funds are hard core jihadists.  The very same “terrorists” the U.S has been fighting for over a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If that doesn’t raise all kinds of uncomfortable questions in the public’s mind, the public is naïve or worse.  Further, the open ended option to strike Syria under the pretext of preventing weapons from falling into the hands of the “terrorists” the U.S. is actively supporting is as contradictory a policy as one could be for those paying attention.  One could reasonably say the U.S. “is” creating its own crisis…or at the very least making the bloodshed much worse.  The Russians are not wrong about their accusations in this regard.  Our hubris to think we can pick a winner is pretty outlandish.  After all, we have a horrible track record.

I would also point out that our actions in Libya have supercharged Islamic insurgencies throughout the northern half of the African continent just as I warned before NATO injected itself into the civil war.  The rebels in Mali with brand new 14.5mm anti-aircraft guns strapped to the back of their pickups didn’t buy them on Amazon…they got them from Libyan arms depots that were raided by rebels.  Now we have had to commit SOF assets to try and contain this mess (rather ineffectively).  We have all of the hallmarks of this going repeating in Syria, with even more dire consequences for both regional and global stability.  For example, if this spills over and involves Turkey (not exposed to be training rebels), we are looking at a major problem with the Kurds.  On the southern flank, if the Israelis get the green light or feel threatened, they will launch into Syria.  Once that chip falls, the U.S. is looking at almost inevitably being drawn into a war with Syria and then Iran and a potential new Cold War with Russia.  Our best course of action would have been to stop fomenting insurgencies, but we have long past that point.  Now all we can hope for is to contain the mess to Syria and Syria alone and even that is not likely at this point.  If/when Assad goes down, the world will be looking at an orgy of special interests, ethnic identities, and religious factions fighting for power all while a vast amount of weapons to include WMD are unaccounted for.  The CIA will do all it can to buy and take control of WMD stockpiles as soon as it can, but the fact is there are so many different factions, no one central hub of command exists.  The decentralized command structure and massive amount of weapons almost guarantees even the CIA’s best efforts will be a miss.  This can be viewed in no other way than very bad.  From a policy standpoint, Syria again has become a lesson in what not to do and the worst is yet to come.  Sadly, in all of this talk in policy circles, people seem to forget that tens of thousands of people are being killed, displaced, and wounded.  I really think Washington’s elite needs a field trip to say…umm…Aleppo to internalize what that kind of horror looks like.  I just don’t think it registers back here at all.