"A war born in spin," observes Steve Coll, "has now reached its Lewis Carroll period." His comment, in this week’s New Yorker, takes a swipe at White House treatment of free-speaking senior military officers. He cites the impending retirement of U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff William Cody as context, following his brief last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which he suggested that the health of US forces is less than vibrant. Cody, who at the end of his career may have felt freer than most to provide an honest assessment, quoted by Coll:

The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply, and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies. . . . Soldiers, families, support systems and equipment are stretched and stressed. . . . Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it. If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the all-volunteer force and degrades the Army’s ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.

Coll notes that "Flag officers in the Bush Administration’s military have learned that they can be marginalized or retired if they speak out too boldly. The Administration does not romanticize the role of the loyal opposition." This does not bode well for Gen David Petraeus, who though "a loyal Army man… has distinctive views about military doctrine." Coll suggests that the suppression of public dissent from professional military officers "is depriving American voters of an election-year debate " on critical defence issues.  "In the long run," he points out, "success or failure for the United States in Iraq will not hinge on who wins the argument about the surge; it will depend on whether it proves possible to change the subject."

‘T was brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe…

Coll, Steve. "Military Conflict." New Yorker (14 April 2008).

The April 2008 issue of Prospect has an intriguing story of Hugh Miles’ (best personal website I’ve ever seen) voluntary conversion to Islam. "I moved to Cairo and fell in love with a beautiful Egyptian doctor," he writes. "We decided to marry, but first I had to convert to Islam. It didn’t take long." I couldn’t figure whether he was being cynical – or rather, just how cynical he was being. You decide.

Miles, Hugh. "A Cairo Conversion." Prospect (April 2008).

The recent 26 March 08 RUSI conference, "Countering Asymmetric Taliban Strategies in Afghanistan", covered some interesting ground. Normally it wouldn’t take me so long to generate a post-event write-up, but events, as always, conspire. I’d also usually do a much more thorough job of it, but in this case, I spent more time listening than taking notes, and I missed the last session of the day. The speakers were all interesting, but I thought the briefs given by Antonio Giustozzi, Dave Sloggett, Ian Tunnicliffe, and Laura Winter were especially fascinating.

As with all RUSI events, the best parts were in the off-the-record discussions (which I won’t get into), and I think I learned as much from audience comments as I did from the speakers. The key messages that I took away from the day were that the Taliban are doing it better than we are, and that while all politics might not necessarily be local, the details needed to defeat certain types of problems certainly are. That might sound trite, but obviously the need is being felt to drive home the message – references to ground-level perspectives, granularity of information, and human terrain certainly reinforced the point.

Tropes of torture afloat in the 24 March 2008 issue of the New Yorker. An opening essay by George Saunders, who teaches English at Syracuse University, starts off dark, becomes  flip and cruel in the best neo-con tradition, remains generally tongue-in-cheek, and then signs off with a hard right hook. On the artistic merits of washboarding:

I myself have been washboarded. It’s true. I used to live downstairs from an oldtime jug band. And, believe me, it was not torture. It was torturous, yes—especially at three in the morning, what with the banjo and the jug and the high, whiny singing and (horror of horrors) the occasional harmonica—but torture?

Please.

Was it annoying? Yes, it was. Was it maddening? It was to me. Did it disgust with its ostentatious “embracing” of the faux nostalgic? Oh, big-time.

But was it torture?

At this time, I would like to decline to say. I do not want to give our enemies aid and . . . and that other thing we’re not supposed to give them. Comfort stations. I would like to deny our enemies comfort stations.

Huh.

Well, it couldn’t hurt. After all, it’s a war. Do not threaten my culture, then ask to use our comfort stations.

Not going to happen.

Saunders’ message is quite serious, and you’ll need to read straight through to get just how serious he is. The same issue of the magazine features a brilliant expose on Sabrina Harman, the young U.S. Army reservist cum Abu Ghraib pictoriographer. Co-written by Phillip Gourevitch and Errol Morris, the report focuses on the essentially kind-hearted young woman who couldn’t hurt a fly (although she didn’t mind posing for glory shots with its corpse). The narrative offers a sensitive and balanced exploration of the moral ins and outs of survival at Abu Ghraib, somewhere between Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt in its scrutiny of the human condition. Well worth reading.

Saunders, George. "Y’All Torture Me Home." The New Yorker (28 March 2008): 28-29.

Gourevitch, Phillip  and Morris, Errol . "Exposure: The Woman Behind the Camera at Abu Ghraib." The New Yorker (28 March 2008): 44-57.

This report was found on the website of the Centre for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), University of Maryland School of Public Policy:

Ungoverned Areas and Threats from Safe Havens

Final Report of the Ungoverned Areas Project

Prepared for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

by Robert D. Lamb

Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning

 

Abstract

"Individuals and groups who use violence in ways that threaten the United States, its allies, or its partners habitually find or create ways to operate with impunity or without detection. Whether for private financial gain (e.g., by narcotics and arms traffickers) or for harmful political aims (e.g., by insurgents, terrorists, and other violent extremists), these illicit operations are most successful — and most dangerous — when their perpetrators have a place or situation that can provide refuge from efforts to combat or counter them. Such places and situations are often called safe havens, and potential safe havens are sometimes called ungoverned areas. A key component of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, counternarcotics, stabilization, peacekeeping, and other such efforts is to reduce the size and effectiveness of the safe havens that protect illicit actors. Agencies in defense, diplomacy, development, law enforcement, and other areas all have capabilities that can be applied to countering such threats and building the capacity and legitimacy of U.S. partners to prevent ungoverned, under-governed, misgoverned, contested, and exploitable areas from becoming safe havens. To do this effectively requires careful consideration of all the geographical, political, civil, and resource factors that make safe havens possible; a sober appreciation of the complex ways those factors interact; and deeper collaboration among U.S. government offices and units that address such problems — whether operating openly, discreetly, or covertly — to ensure unity of effort. This report offers a framework that can be used to systematically account for these considerations in relevant strategies, capabilities, and doctrines/best practices."

Full report available at http://cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/ugash_report_final.pdf. Accessed 5 April 2008.