Iraqi Withdrawal: Sooner vs Later

The NY_Times_asks six high-profile Military Experts for their opinion on recent calls for  accelerated_withdrawal from Iraq.   I find noteworthy that five of the six, employing Military/ National Security Theory and Logic, argue that withdrawal should proceed slower rather than faster, basically rejecting the “Time to Go Home” memo.
Fair enough.  But I really wish that the Times had [...]

Unputdownable Status

 This doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East, but readers looking for good stuff to read  should check out  A_Tree_Grows_In_Brooklyn.  Simply put, this is one of the best novels I have ever read ( not coincidentally it’s considered one of the best in American history).  It’s the extremely inspiring story of a poor family [...]

“Time to Go Home”

From The_New_York_Times: 
WASHINGTON — A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that the Iraqi forces suffer from deeply entrenched deficiencies but are now capable of protecting the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”
Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an [...]

The Book Must Not Be Dismissed

CNN reports_on_the_Taliban’s_new_book that I’ve been talking_about the last couple of days.  I’m really struck by these dismissive comments from a US Military spokesperson:
Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul, said it was notable that the document is intended to be “prescriptive on how the bad guys are supposed to conduct themselves.”
“Their day to day actions contradict [...]

Taliban Making a Power Play Inside Afghan Government

Remember,  US strategy in Afghanistan is to convince the Afghani people that they should side with the pro-US government and not the Taliban.  It’s an old-school competition for hearts and minds — kind of like a high-school student council election.  US wins if the Afghanis choose the pro-US Central government, and looses if they choose [...]

What I’ve Been Saying Since March 2008

I want to direct readers to Judah Grunstein’s interview with Counter-Insurgency specialist  Andrew Exum  at World Politics Review . 
Taking that same question, what isolated snapshot would make you feel pessimistic about the outcome?
Andrew Exum: One word: Kandahar. Keep in mind that I was in one of the first waves of soldiers to go into Afghanistan, in [...]

Taliban “gets” Pop-Centric Warfare

US strategy in Afghanistan is quite simple: convince the Afghani people that they should side with the pro-American Afghani government.  Whereas in WWII America was fighting “Enemy-Centric” warfare, meaning it wins by obliterating the German and Japanese Army, in Afghanistan it’s  fighting “population centric” warfare, whereby it achieves victory by  winning over the Afghani population and convincing them to side with [...]

Absolute Trash

Went to go see Bruno last night at the cinema.  I want to apologize to readers for even mentioning it at all in previous posts . I hope none went to see  it because of the links I posted on the site.  This is one of the most disgusting, stupidest, tasteless and unfunny films I have ever seen.   It’s [...]

What Dominoes?

There are logical arguments supporting American Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Afghanistan –  the best one being (in my view) that unless the Taliban are kept from power and Afghanistan governed by a pro-US  government, there is a chance that al-Qaeda could and would use Afghani territory to plot terrorist attacks against the US.  After all, this is why America invaded in the [...]

Up-and-comer Hungriness at Work

Yesterday,  I wondered when was the last time I saw a US diplomat speak on an Arabic TV station (it’s been at least a year).  Today, I learn that China has just started a  24-7 Arabic_language_TV_station  that is — most impressively — staffed by Chinese speakers of Arabic. 
This further reinforces my hypothesis that as globalization has [...]

Arabic expert off to Equatorial Guinea

Alberto Fernandez, one of the few high-level US Foreign Service Officers who knows Arabic well enough to speak it on TV is being assigned to Equatorial Guinea.   Some people have speculated that his 2006 on-air comment  during an al-Jazeera interview that the US was “stupid_and_arrogant“  in Iraq got him reassigned to Sudan.    On another note, I can’t [...]

“Afghanistan: Lost in Translation”

I’ve long argued  that the lack of people fluent in critical languages inside US Government is a serious national security problem, although many people I talk to do not agree.  One thing I often hear is “yeah it’s bad…but we can always rely on translators.”  Well, I think this  video-clip illustrates how translators can be problematic and are hardly a [...]

That’s it?

I’ve been reading all week about how NBA superstar Lebron James got “dunked on” by some college kid in a pickup game — and how it was so bad that his PR team wants to suppress the evidence but when I finally  saw the  tape yesterday  I was a bit  disappointed.   Sure, he got “dunked on” but not [...]

Pakistan, US = Do not have mutual interests

This is an extremely important NY_Times_article on Pakistan’s disagreements with the US over Afghanistan strategy.   Many in America, especially inside the COIN community,  keep harshly criticizing Pakistan, asking why they “don’t get it”  and won’t develop their own Counter-Insurgency strategy to take out pro-Taliban elements inside Pakistan. 
I, however,  don’t understand why we keep hearing these criticisms of Pakistan.  The situation [...]

New blog: “Dispatch From Damascus”

I want to take a minute to highlight a brand new blog on Syria called “Dispatch from Damascus” by al-Furabi.  Syria is an important country, but one that doesn’t get nearly the same media-focus as say, Egypt or Jordan or even Iraq,  so I look forward to reading his dispatches.   Here’s the first_post:
Presidential Envoy to the [...]

“For Radical Islam, the End Begins”

From the Washington_Post: 
Is history ending yet again?
Much as the hammers that leveled the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, so might the protests rocking Iran signal the death of radical Islam and the challenges it poses to the West.

No, that doesn’t mean we’ll be removing the metal detectors from our [...]

Bacevich v Kilcullen

Just by chance I turned my TV on at 5:40 EST last night and caught this interesting_discussion at  Fareed Zackaria GPSon  Afghanistan strategy between Australian  Counter-Insurgency Guru David Kilcullen and American professor Andrew Bacevich.  For those unfamiliar, Kilcullen is one of the most influential people shaping US strategy in Afghanistan-Pakistan, while Bacevich is one of it’s chief [...]

Tourism= Prostitution?

The July 14th episode of the Al-Jazeera talk-show “Al-Itijah Al-Muakis” (The Opposite Direction) was one of the better I’ve seen in a while.   Essentially, two guests debated the value of Western tourism to the Arab world.   On one hand, an Economics professor at Cairo University argued that it’s a critical component of the Arab economies, pointing [...]

Game’s Over Man

I just watched Ahmed Monsour’s al-Jazeera  interview with Ali Al-Jabouri, the General-Secretary of the Iraqi Resistance Political wing.  Jabouri spends alot of time talking about their big “achievement” in forcing the US out of Iraq.   I guess.  Although since the US wants to leave anyway it’s an open-question how much the Sunni Resistance has played a role [...]

The Pattern Continues

A recent article  in The National outlined an  intellectual framework for understanding the region-wide trend of Islamic radicals abandoning  “Near-Enemy” violence:
These developments have generally been regarded as separate and distinct events. There are differences, to be sure: in Egypt the shift came from within the jihadist movement, while in Saudi Arabia the state funded and sponsored [...]