Brad Taylor's Blog

The shockwaves from the Signal chat discussions about attacks in Yemen have ping-ponged back and forth, with one side declaring “It’s the end of the security of the United States and we’re all doomed”, and the other saying, “This is nothing at all.  If anything, someone should arrest the journalist.”  Everyone’s opining about the definition of “War Plans” versus “Timing Schedules”, or whether Signal is a secure system even if it’s not official, or some other arcane aspect.  One of the hottest topics is whether anything “classified” was discussed in the chats.  I’m not going to weigh in on the ramifications or political rhetoric currently swirling.  I’m simply going to provide information on the question of whether classified information was included in the chat.  Having worked in that world for more than two decades, I have a little bit of knowledge on classified information and how it’s handled.  As such, this is not an opinion piece, but a dissemination of the official guidance of the United States Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), taken straight from its website.  That is where I will focus.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is the overseer of everything classified in the US intelligence community.  As such, it has  the responsibility to promulgate guidance across the eighteen different intelligence agencies in the United States so that each agency is operating under the same classification framework.  Because there are so many different platforms in the United States government, it would be chaotic for the CIA to state that one thing is classified while the DIA says it’s not, or the NSA to overclassify something that Army Intelligence routinely discusses in open forums.  The overarching “bible” of intelligence classification is something entitled the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Classification Guide (ODNI CG).  This guide is updated every decade or so with the latest version dated 2014 (updated 2016), and looks like this:

It can be found HERE, from the DNI’s official government website.  (Interestingly, the classification guide itself used to be classified, meaning I wouldn’t have been able to write this blog, but was declassified in 2016).

There are three classification levels in the US Government – C for Confidential, S for Secret (you’ll notice that this document itself used to be classified as secret) and TS for Top Secret.  There are many permutations at each level – like this document, for instance.  It’s SECRET with the caveat that it’s also NOFORN, meaning No Foreigners can read it either, whether they have a secret clearance or not.

The guidance delineates parameters, but it’s not omnipotent in its judgement.  Sometimes the guidance is at odds with our own objectives.  For instance, that NOFORN stamp sometimes caused unintentional problems in my own life.  While serving in Iraq with the British SAS and Aussie SASR – groups that most assuredly were cleared at the highest levels of their governments– everything my unit did was NOFORN, meaning that the Brit SAS guy technically couldn’t be read-on to my plan even as he was helping execute it.

The guide covers a host of different categories trying to encompass everything that an intelligence officer might need to know, from what needs to be classified to how exactly to do that with formatting, cover pages, etc:

For instance, let’s assume you’re an intel analyst just returned from a family vacation in Greece, where you came upon something interesting your boss and/or intel agency might want to know about.  You type it up and then wonder, “Is this tidbit classified?”  You would find the answer in this guide, learning whether you should send the tidbit over Yahoo mail or wait until you’re at your office in the SCIF.

The section we’re concerned about is Military Planning, section 3.4.3.  Under this section there are four categories.  The one we’re concerned about is the third row in the image below: lnformation providing indication or advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack.

As you can see in the second column under “Level”, this is classified as TS or Top Secret.  If you look to the right, this category of information is classified from the day it is created until plus 25 years, and that it MAY be releasable to FVEY – meaning the Five Eyes agreement of the English-speaking countries of Canada, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States.

One thing I’d like to note here is that the classification is on information providing indication or advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack.  There is nothing stipulating that it be war plans or timelines or platforms or targets or anything else.  It’s simply information providing indication or advance warning.  This is the text everyone’s quibbling about, and yes, it most certainly meets the definition of a TS classification:

In fact, according to the ODNI’s own guidance, the entire text chain is classified – beyond SECDEF Hegseth’s specifications of platforms and timelines.  The National Security Advisor simply creating a group chat saying, “Let’s start a Principals Group to discuss our impending strikes against the Houthis” is information indicating we are preparing to attack.

So, bottom line, the information in the text chain was classified information in accordance with our own Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  The paragraph in the guidance may be changed in the future to state that such a thing is not classified, but on the date the group chat was created, it was most definitely classified.

Whether sending the classified information over Signal is the end of the world or no big deal is another discussion entirely.

 

The post A Simple Primer on Classification appeared first on Brad Taylor.

The Pentagon from above in Washington, DC

Most of the conversation about Pete Hegseth’s nomination for secretary of defense has focused on issues of his perceived lack of leadership experience running a mammoth organization like the DoD, or his polemics surrounding culture war issues such as DEI initiatives, females in combat, and so-called “woke” policies.  These are all worthy of discussion, and I myself have written in the past of my own fears about progressive policies overtaking common sense in the military realm.  For me, the larger issue with his nomination runs much deeper, at the baseline level of the character and moral judgement necessary for the execution of policy that leverages the most lethal military on earth.

One of the juicier tidbits swirling around is an accusation of sexual assault in 2017, something he has vehemently denied as consensual.  It has devolved into a he-said/she-said fight, as if whomever is telling the truth should be the break point for the nomination, but it’s the underlying facts that matter to me.

Completely ignoring the accusation of sexual assault and relying solely on the record, the best-case scenario of this sordid tale is that Mr. Hegseth had a drunken tryst with a married woman during a paid speaking engagement in California, while his future wife was at home with his newborn child.  The future wife, in turn, had become pregnant because Mr. Hegseth had cheated on his second wife with her – the second wife divorcing him shortly thereafter.  The second wife met Mr. Hegseth while he was cheating with multiple partners on his first wife, causing the initial divorce in 2008.

I’m no prude, and understand a single mistake, but this points to a lack of character, the type of which transcends the sordid nature of the act, as it breeds dishonesty as a way of life.  Lying about where one has been easily becomes lying about how many troops are in country X.  Covering up a charge on a credit card bill becomes covering up the cost in blood of a mission.  Creating a false pretense to visit city X becomes creating a false pretense to bomb country Y.  If Mr. Hegseth so blithely ignores the vows he made with his wives under the eyes of Almighty God, how is one supposed to believe he holds any vow as worthy of following?  How are we supposed to compare an oath to the constitution made in a brick building with one made to God in a church?  I understand that in politics such a belief is quaint, what with past Whitehouse interns and aging porn stars making the headlines, but the secretary of defense first and foremost should have a character above reproach.  One might not agree with, say, his decision on Afghanistan, or other policy decisions, but one should at least believe what he says is true, and that the decision was made in good faith and not because of a non-disclosure agreement at risk of exposure.

When someone wanted to try out for a unit I once belonged to, we used to screen their application packets first, before we extended the invitation.  One of the mantras we used was “the best predictor of future performance is past performance”.  The unit wasn’t a bunch of saints, and one mistake could – usually would – be forgiven, but multiple episodes of the same failing was no longer a mistake.  It was a pattern of risk that we couldn’t afford.  Had Mr. Hegseth applied with the known baggage he has, he wouldn’t have even been given an invitation to try out, and now he’s worthy of commanding not only that unit, but the entire US military?  I’m honestly flabbergasted he was allowed to stay in the military at all.  While almost never singularly prosecuted, adultery is, in fact, against the UCMJ – as several general officers have recently learned– and multiple infidelities even more so, precisely because it’s corrosive to good order and discipline.  Slap on an accusation of sexual assault coupled with a payoff and a non-disclosure agreement, and there’s no way he should have even maintained a security clearance.

As bad as his faltering character is, Mr. Hegseth’s skewed moral judgement is of greater concern.  The ultimate purpose of the US military is to close with and kill the enemy in a violent confrontation, but in so doing strive to maintain a moral clarity of purpose.  Make no mistake, combat engenders a moral decay the moment one sets foot into it.  You’re told your whole life “Thou shalt not kill” – it’s one of the founding principles of a just existence – and then you’re given a gun and told, “go kill that man”.  Combat is a hellscape of endless moral turpitude, a relentless pounding of the soul, begging one to devolve into caricature of Lord of the Flies, and inevitably some succumb to that.  Others do not.  During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan many men fell into the abyss, and such actions, if not held to account, cause a corrosion of the entire military effort from the roots up.  Sometimes the difference between falling into the abyss and remaining on solid ground is leadership, yet when it is the leadership that fails, it can be catastrophic.

Pete Hegseth’s moral compass says otherwise.  In three cases of men convicted of war crimes, he decried the prosecutions, proclaiming that they were unfairly accused by meddling bureaucrats far from the battlefield who have no idea what it takes to succeed in combat.  These men had to make split-second decisions in the heat of battle, and now they were being unjustly convicted because of it.  In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth.  First, none of the accused actions involved any decisions made in the heat of combat, and second, in two cases – Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher and 2LT Clint Lorance – it wasn’t nameless woke generals hunting for a scalp, but the very men under their command who turned them in.  In the third case, it was the soldier himself who initiated the investigation.  While taking a polygraph for a potential job in the CIA, MAJ Mathew Golsteyn admitted to an extrajudicial killing of a man in Afghanistan and the subsequent burning of his body. ***

The Navy SEALs are incredibly insular, with a code of Omerta that would rival any of the five families in New York, so much so that when the SEALs in combat with Gallagher reported his actions to their SEAL command, they were ignored.  The SEALs underneath him thought his conduct was so egregious that they took the unprecedented step of going outside the SEAL chain of command and talking directly to big Navy NCIS.  In 2LT Lorraine’s case, it was the low-level enlisted soldiers in his platoon.  While he, as the leader, should have been the moral compass they would strive to emulate in combat, he failed, and it was left to the basic infantrymen underneath him to stand up and be counted.  To endure the slings and arrows of men like Hegseth, with more power and clout than they’ll ever have.  Which, by the way, says a hell of a lot more about their moral compass than Mr. Hegseth’s.

Hegseth turned on his megaphone, got the twitter crowd riled up with false cries of patriotism, and demanded they be absolved of their crimes.  And so they were.  Now, we’re asking him to be the face of the DoD, the very moral compass that 2LT Lorance was not, not for a single platoon, but for the whole damn military.  How will he display the moral clarity we expect all who serve to emulate when he’s shown exactly where his compass points through his own actions?

I hear all the time that Mr. Hegseth is a combat veteran, and that alone grants him the knowledge and experience to lead the department of defense, but that is patently untrue.  While combat experience should imbue the awesome responsibility inherent in the position, in the end it only reflects character.  It doesn’t create it.  Plenty of people have seen combat who remain unqualified.  For instance, LT William Calley was also a combat veteran, and while Hegseth would probably absolve him of the mass slaughter of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, I still wouldn’t want him as my secretary of defense.

 

Footnote

***In the interest of fairness, and using the same metrics as the other cases, MAJ Golsteyn’s men stood by his leadership and refused to testify against him.  After reviewing the preponderance of available evidence, while Gallagher and Lorance’s cases are pretty cut and dried in my mind, MAJ Golysteyn’s case is murkier.  But, like everyone else –including Hegseth –I haven’t seen all the evidence that the jury did, and they convicted him.

The post Character and moral judgement matter. The SECDEF should personify that. appeared first on Brad Taylor.

I wrote a primer on terrorism a few years ago, which discussed why a rational person could be seduced into acting as a terrorist, and we’re seeing that in real time as protests rock college campuses all across the country.  It’s because terrorism works.

Contrary to what the pundits on television will have you believe, terrorists like Hamas don’t conduct attacks solely for the bloodlust – although the Hamas foot soldiers who executed the mission on October 7th certainly could be described as such.  The action has a purpose, and terrorist leaders have learned over time that such killings advance their agenda, regardless of how horrific they are to the rest of the world.  In the words of Brian Jenkins, a recognized expert on the phenomena, “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead”.  The level of the dead is directly correlated with the level of interest news organizations have to cover it.  In order to get eyeballs watching – and by extension, the perceived grievances of the group on the world stage – a terrorist has to make the news. I saw this with my own eyes in Iraq.

The first time a vehicle borne improvised explosive device was used in Baghdad (VBIED to the military, car bomb to everyone else) it killed fewer than five people but made global news due its novelty at the time.  In short order, VBIEDs were everywhere, so much so that it didn’t warrant a news report.  The result?  Terrorists realized they needed a bigger kill chart.  Eventually, on a day that saw four VBIEDs explode in Baghdad, it was the one that killed more than a hundred that made the news.

Terrorism as a phenomenon has been around since humans learned to smash skulls with a bone axe, but for the first two centuries of the United States’ existence it wasn’t a primary driver of our national security conversation.  That changed in September 1972.

Black September, the military wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.  For the PLO it was a debacle. They were vilified on the world stage, the entire action horrific, and Yasser Arafat (the head of the PLO) repudiated the event, swearing off violence. But then a strange thing happened. The PLO’s ranks swelled with recruits. The world, while ostensibly shocked by the action, also took notice of the PLO’s perceived grievances. In 1948, when Israel declared independence, the Palestinians went to war with them – and lost.  Israel, once willing to live side by side, conquered them and forced them to flee in what is known as the Nakba.  The Palestinians had been fighting to regain the land they once held ever since, with everyone on earth oblivious to the struggle.  After 1972, the world took notice. A mere two years later, in 1974, Yasser Arafat, a non-state actor, spoke in front of the United Nations. By the end of the 1970s, the PLO – a non-state organization – had more formal diplomatic relationships than Israel itself.  The murder of the Israeli athletes had served its purpose.

We see this playing out yet again after the heinous October 7th attack.  Hamas willfully slaughtered innocent civilians, going so far as using rape as a weapon of war, then dragging over a hundred hostages into tunnels – including the elderly and infants – for further abuse, something that any normal human would recoil from, but that’s not what’s happened.  Instead, there are now massive protests across our college campuses with people sympathizing with Hamas against Israel.  Sympathizing with people who wantonly raped and pillaged, as if they were the noble ones.  The screaming “enlightened” ones don’t understand that their very protests are validating terrorism as an effective tool.

Currently, Hamas is refusing to accept the ceasefire deal that Israel has offered, even as it has been Israel which has conceded time and time again on their demands.  Why is that?  It’s because Hamas – and their masters in Iran – see the protests occurring and are making a calculation that allowing ordinary Palestinians to suffer strengthens its bargaining position on the world stage.  Both Hamas and Iran are completely willing to sacrifice the Palestinians in Gaza to gain further world vilification of Israel, and a ceasefire would end that. Their terrorism is working.

Why has Gaza suddenly inflamed the passion of students?  At this very moment, the Rohingya in Myanmar (Muslims, no less) are being eliminated in an actual genocide, which has been occurring for years.  Sudan has devolved into slaughter-fest of biblical proportions, with entire villages beheaded simply for being a different tribe, but nobody on any college campus has ever uttered a word about it.  Ukraine has been invaded by Russia, with war crimes being committed as a matter of course, to include Ukrainian children being forcibly removed for “re-education” in Russia– which earned the president of Russia an indictment for war crimes – but American students didn’t protest or lock-down universities with their outrage.  Nobody on college campuses said a word.  Hamas conducts a terrorist attack, raping and savagely killing more than a thousand people, and now everyone’s protesting on the side of Hamas?

The bottom line is that the violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th served its purpose.  The most elite schools in the world are now in turmoil, with uneducated students blathering on about ceasefires and the persecution of Palestinians without even realizing that it’s Hamas that is causing this – and that they’re encouraging Hamas to continue its reign of terror.  Make no mistake, if the protests had gone the other way, with the entire world erupting and holding Hamas culpable for its actions, a ceasefire would have occurred by now.  Iran would not allow Hamas to strengthen Israel.  Instead, the protestors are validating the very terrorist tactics used.

Others will take notice.  If the Rohingya ever develop the capability, make no mistake, they’re going to conduct a terrorist act against an unwitting civilian population, possibly far removed from their home country.  It will seem random and horrific, but they’ve learned a lesson from Hamas:

Terrorism works.

The post Terrorism Works appeared first on Brad Taylor.

Elon Musk has made multiple headlines in the last few weeks, none of which had anything to do with electric cars or flying to Mars.  First, out of the blue, he posted a poll on Twitter for his solution to the war in Ukraine, which basically involved Ukraine ceding Crimea to Russia, the United Nations overseeing a vote for the rest of terrain Russia has taken, and Ukraine formally promising to remain “neutral” for eternity.  In other words, Elon’s solution is for Ukraine to capitulate to Putin, thereby ending the war.  The only proof he offers that this isn’t lopsided against Ukraine is some strange reference to “Khrushchev’s mistake”, as if he has done some weighty thinking on the matter and understands the history of the region better than the average Twitter user.

When the tweet originally went up, I was going to write about the intricacies of how misguided it was – such as him conveniently missing the history of the United Nations 1994 Budapest Memorandum whereby the Russian Federation agreed to the sovereignty of Ukraine, to include the current borders, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its old USSR nuclear weapons.  Nowhere was “Khrushchev’s mistake” mentioned in the document.  It’s ironic that Elon’s stated purpose for the tweet is to prevent nuclear war with Russia, when the fact is that if Ukraine hadn’t believed Russia’s sincerity in 1994 and kept its nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the Russian bear, none of this would be happening.  Before I could even get my thoughts together, Elon made news again, this time against Taiwan.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he opined that Taiwan should just join China as an autonomous region, much like Hong Kong.  Once again, I was flabbergasted.  If Hong Kong has shown Taiwan anything, it’s precisely that China does not honor any agreements made about autonomous regions, or its “One Country, Two Systems” promises, as Hong Kong itself has lost all ability to manage its affairs, with democracy now a sham and dissidents routinely arrested and jailed over draconian “state security” laws.

What was Elon thinking?  Did he believe that because he is the richest man in the world, his opinion should matter in areas that are completely outside his expertise?  Does putting a rocket into orbit transfer to expertise in military affairs and foreign policy?

When I was in graduate school I took a class in philosophy, and part of the instruction was on common logical fallacies.  Elon is the personification of one:  The Appeal to Authority.  This is when someone who’s an authority figure or perceived expert in one area is touted during an argument completely outside his scope of duties or expertise.  A good example is the old pain reliever commercial where an actor says, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV, and I know painkiller X is the best…”  Because the man played a doctor on television, I’m supposed to believe that he knows what’s best about my health.

Elon is basically doing the same thing here: “I’m not a national security expert, but I play one on Twitter”.  Because he’s the creator of Tesla and Space X, which is admirable and has made him the richest man on earth, we are to assume that such accomplishments transfer to all other endeavors.  Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way.  His incredible work in one industry – and SpaceX is pretty incredible – does not make him an authority in any subject matter on which he chooses to opine.

This is not the first time Elon Musk has applied the fallacy.  In 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach were trapped in a cave in Thailand, with monsoon floods preventing them from exiting.  There was an incredible world-wide response, with experts in cave diving arriving to help.  Elon Musk decided he would do the same, creating a submarine that he said would rescue the boys. He personally traveled to Thailand to present it.  The world swooned that SpaceX was there to save the day.  When presented with the sub, the actual cave diving experts – who had been back and forth under the water to the boys – said it wouldn’t work.  Elon’s response was to call one of them a pedophile on twitter.  What was his crime for the slur?  He used his actual expertise to tell Musk his ability to build an electric car didn’t transfer to a cave rescue.  That “pedo”, by the way, ended up helping to save all thirteen of the Thais – without the submarine.

As I studied the problem set a little deeper, trying to ascertain whether I was being too harsh on Musk – maybe he did have some knowledge in foreign affairs of which I was unaware – I began to believe that both statements were, in fact, within his wheelhouse.  Not in National Security, but within his true expertise: making money.

At the start of the war in Ukraine, Elon Musk’s SpaceX donated a satellite capability known as Starlink to the Ukrainian effort, giving the country access to satellite internet that Putin couldn’t destroy or interrupt.  It proved to be vital to the war effort, and he was profusely praised both by the government of Ukraine and other world leaders.  The problem is that all of the terminals cost money to use and Starlink began losing millions and millions of dollars each month keeping them in operation.  Weeks before he posted his ludicrous peace-plan tweet, SpaceX had told the Pentagon that it could no longer fund the Starlink terminals, and that the DOD needed to start picking up the tab.  The Pentagon balked, leaving Elon with a choice:  Stop supporting the links, which would make him look like a master villain after all the praise he’d received, or continue losing money until the war was over – which could be years.  In order to stop the service, he needed a precursor reason.  In short, he needed Ukraine to do something that would give him an excuse, making them the bad guy.  So, he posted his “peace plan”, which he knew would cause everyone to howl – especially Ukraine.  This is, in fact, what occurred, with the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany telling him to “f*&^ off” on Twitter.  This isn’t just me grasping at straws.  Elon Musk has pretty much admitted it.  Recently, he has begun shutting down the Starlink systems, causing havoc on the battlefield.  When one reporter made the connection between the harassment he’d received over his peace plan and him cutting service, he responded, “We’re just following his recommendation”, complete with a shoulder shrug emoji:

In effect, it’s not SpaceX being Dr. Evil, it’s those ungrateful Ukrainians treating his generosity with vulgar slurs.  In the end, the entire “peace plan” tweet may have been nothing more than him creating drama to provide him an excuse to stop losing money – and squeeze the Department of Defense to pick up the tab so he starts making money off the war in Ukraine.

The China/Taiwan statement was a real head scratcher, though.  Why, in an interview with the Financial Times, would he even broach the issue?  Well, it turns out that Tesla doesn’t export cars into China – it builds them right there.  Tesla has a factory in Shanghai where every car sold in China originates, and while the China share of Tesla is about 50% of the US share, it’s growing in leaps and bounds, with September of this year setting a record for the number of cars sold.  China, as the world’s most populous country, is the biggest market for Tesla – if Elon’s allowed to continue selling there.  The Shanghai factory is the first and only such factory in China that was not required to be a joint venture, meaning that Tesla owns it outright, but only at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party.  Any study of industry in China will show that the Chinese are extremely sensitive to perceived slights against them, with far reaching repercussions to profit – as US institutions from the NBA to Hollywood have learned – and Elon Musk is well aware of that fact.  Either follow the guidance of the CCP, or get out of its country.  It’s more profitable to get on the CCP’s good side, and what better way to do that than to side with the CCP on the issue of Taiwan?  And that’s exactly what’s occurred, as multiple Chinese officials have praised his statement, including the Chinese ambassador to the United States, who tweeted, “I would like to thank [Elon Musk]for his call for peace across the Taiwan Strait and his idea about establishing a special administrative zone for Taiwan…”   So, I don’t think Elon is actually offering a peace plan for the “reunification” of China.  He’s just trying to sell Teslas for his own personal goals at the expense of the thriving democracy of Taiwan.

In the end, I can’t get into the mind of Elon Musk, and don’t know if he’s really trying to play statesman or simply acting as a rapacious profit-driven CEO—it might be a little of both. But I definitely think the question should be asked – especially since all of his pronouncements have major repercussions on the world stage, causing issues well beyond the expertise of the man making the statement.  Attempting to manipulate the international order – with all the faux authority of the richest man on earth – simply to make a profit is not in the best interests of the United States or any other western democracy.  By extension, it’s also not in the best interest of you, the reader.

                                                                                                                    Update 15 Oct.

I literally hadn’t even posted this yet when Elon Musk backed down from not funding the Starlink system.  On twitter, of course.  I guess he did the math and found out that looking like Dr. Evil in Ukraine would be worse for his brand than taking a loss on Starlink.  He snarked about losing money and the US paying for other things besides his systems, but backed down.  Always about the bottom line.

The post Elon Musk and the Fallacy of Faux Authority appeared first on Brad Taylor.

 

The discussion of a no fly zone has been debated for weeks, and I’ve answered many questions from neighbors, friends, readers at book events and folks on social media, and at the end of the day, each question was based on a misconception of what a no fly zone is, how it’s achieved, and what it can accomplish.  A myriad of articles have been written about the mission set, but most are overly long or overly complex, and I figured I’d attempt clean the debate up a little.  So, here you go:

The original granddaddy of no-fly zones occurred after the first Gulf War, otherwise known as Desert Storm in 1991.  After we’d chased Saddam Hussein back to Baghdad, there was a Shia and Kurd uprising in Iraq.  Saddam quelled the uprising with unrelenting aerial bombardments, including the use of chemical munitions.  We weren’t going to invade Iraq proper to stop the barrage, but something had to be done to prevent the slaughter of innocent people.  Operation Provide Comfort and Southern Watch was born, meaning that between certain geographic parallels in the north and south of Iraq, no planes would be allowed to fly.  Since neither the Shia nor the Kurds had any aircraft, what we really meant that none of Saddam’s attack aircraft could enter the space to harm the population.

It was a resounding success, so much so that the American public forgot it was continually being executed.  Most don’t realize it, but those no-fly zones existed from the end of the first gulf war to the beginning of the second, in 2003.  Through it all, we didn’t lose a single aircraft, and the cost was relatively cheap.

Because of that success, the no-fly zone became a thing.  Since then, we’ve used it multiple times to greater or lesser effect, in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya, to name a few, begging the question, “Why can’t we use it in Ukraine?  Surely that is a strategy we can deploy to aid the civilians getting pummeled in Ukraine?”

Not really.  And here are the three reasons why:

A no-fly zone automatically implies air supremacy, not air superiority, meaning our patrolling aircraft can fly through the area as easily as a Delta Jet flying from Atlanta to California.  This means the US and our allies must first eliminate ALL threats to our dominance, both in the air and on the ground.  There’s a misguided notion that a no-fly zone entails NATO aircraft entering the airspace and flexing their muscles, end of threat, but that’s not the case.  Before we even begin patrolling, all threats will have to be eliminated through a SEAD campaign – the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses.  In Iraq, we blew up all radar- and surface-to-air threats prior to starting our patrols, and we continued to attack those sites for the duration of the operation.  Iraq was a second-tier SAM threat, Russia is not.  NATO will be up against a first-world capability, and it will be forced to annihilate all threats to its aircraft.  This includes the S400 and S300 weapon systems – which are positioned on Belarusian and Russian soil, but can reach in-depth throughout Ukraine.  Let me be clear here:  We will have to attack anti-aircraft systems in Russia and Belarus to protect NATO’s aircraft in Ukraine, which will be an act of war.  In addition, since Ukraine has a healthy air defense system of its own, NATO will have to parse the radar painting it gets as either friend or foe, and quite possibly run the risk of getting shot at by the very people we’re trying to protect.  In Iraq, the Kurds and Shia had no ADA capability.  If something had triggered our systems, it was most definitely from Saddam, inviting annihilation, but in Ukraine that is not the situation.  Worst case, we end up with one (or many) friendly fire incidents.The no-fly zone is total. The Kurds, Bosnians, Libyans and Kosovars had no aircraft to compete with the forces attacking them, and thus the effort was lopsided in our favor.  That is not the case in Ukraine.  It still has an air force, and is using it to great effect.  If we conduct a no-fly zone, that force is off the table.  As NATO will be ostensibly neutral and conducting the operation to protect Ukrainian civilians, it can’t conduct a “Russian only” no-fly zone. We can’t allow Ukrainian aircraft to conduct strikes under NATO’s protective umbrella, because we’ll basically be entering the war on Ukraine’s side.  Russia most certainly isn’t going to stand by while we shoot down all Russian aircraft, while letting Ukrainian planes continue to strike—especially if NATO has neutralized Russian forces’ ability to protect themselves from the attacks.  I’m sure President Zelenskyy would love that, and I don’t blame him, but it’s not in the cards.  Since its “just” a no-fly zone, meaning we won’t use our airpower to attack ground formations not involved in air defense, meaning we aren’t going to be perceived as attempting to alter the balance of power, it might be better to let the Ukrainian air force fly.  At the end of the day, we might actually be helping the Russian ground forces to maneuver because we restrict the ability of the Ukrainian Air Force to strike them.The no-fly zone in Iraq was successful because the majority of attacks were precision aerial strikes. Once we took away Saddam’s ability to fly, we took away his ability to strike.  This will not be the case in Ukraine.  The majority of strikes against civilians in Ukraine are conducted via rockets, artillery, missiles and mortars, and a no-fly zone will do nothing to prevent those attacks.  This problem set reared its ugly head in Bosnia.  The greatest massacre of the war—Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosniaks were systematically slaughtered—occurred under the Right now, the Russian air force hasn’t really factored into the attacks—so much so that there are a plethora of articles written asking why Russia isn’t using its aerial strike capability.  In fact, some analysis has shown that even when it does use its capabilities, the Russian aircraft let their missiles loose while still inside the territory of Russia or Belarus due to the SAM threat from Ukraine.  How are we going to prevent that?  Chase the aircraft across the Russian border and shoot it over Moscow?  If the enemy isn’t relying on the very zone we establish to conduct its attacks, be it from the air or the ground, it serves no purpose, as the people in Srebrenica learned.  And that, at the end of the day, is where we are in Ukraine.

I completely understand why President Zelenskyy wants a no fly zone.  He understands everything above and realizes if we agree to it, the United States and all of NATO will be in the fight.  I don’t fault him for that, he’s in an untenable situation.  He doesn’t care if the war spreads outside of the confines of Ukraine, he’s rightly trying to save his homeland.  He’s in the fight right now, and he knows that the only way he’s going to survive is by dragging in NATO.  The United States, as the leader of NATO, should look at the problem set on its merits with clear eyes.  Barking US politicians looking for points with no skin in the game shouldn’t matter.  Your drunk uncle on FaceBook who is grasping for anything to attack the current administration doesn’t count.  Only one thing matters:  Does a no-fly zone make sense.  And no, it doesn’t.  A no-fly zone will do nothing to protect the civilians of Ukraine, but might do everything to get us into World War III.

The post Ukraine’s No-Fly Zone isn’t as Simple as it Sounds appeared first on Brad Taylor.

The world is a-twitter (pun intended) after Senator Lindsey Graham’s tweet stating that the only way to end the conflict in Ukraine is by removing Putin – in effect, calling for his assassination.

He was immediately rebuked by members of both parties, with Senator Ted Cruz saying it was an “exceptionally bad idea”, Rep. Ilhan Omar simply quote tweeted with “Seriously, Wtf?”, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stated we don’t need, “…bloodthirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations.” (which is especially rich because she was removed from her committees in congress in part because she indicated support for the executions of members of the democratic party.  I guess supporting the killing of members of the opposite party in the United States is okay, but is nuts when applied to leaders of an enemy state).

Most of the outrage is along moral or legal lines, and I’ve seen very little analysis as to whether the action itself would affect the trajectory of the conflict in Ukraine, so I set out to provide some.  Up front, all I’m going to do is tell you the ramifications of the action and what should be known before attempting it.  I’m not going to address the moral or legal implications, nor am I going to do a deep dive on the modern Russian governmental model, as I’m no expert.

Generally, Counter Leadership Targeting will be attempted by the rational actor for one of two reasons:

To cause the dislocation of the opponent organization’s ability to function in the prosecution of a conflict by removing the leader of the organization.To cause the opponent organization to alter its policy towards a conflict by replacing the leader with one whose objectives are in line with our own.

A CLT strategy of dislocation attempts to remove or hinder the direction of the organization.  This strategy is not a means to an end, but rather creates conditions that allow the targeting organization to exploit the target’s loss of efficiency and effectiveness in the prosecution of the conflict.  Conversely, an intent of replacement strives to alter the vision of the targeted organization and is an end unto itself.

For instance, say Country A invades Country B, a smaller, weaker state, in order to “reunite the fatherland”.  Country B would conduct CLT with the intent of replacement if it believed that the successor leader of Country A had no irredentist feelings and would withdraw his troops from country B given the chance.  On the other hand, if Country B believed that the successor had every intent of continuing the campaign, but Country A had highly centralized authority, Country B would conduct CLT with the intent of dislocation, using the loss of efficiency in Country A’s organization as leverage to even up the military balance in the conflict.

Obviously, what Senator Graham is referring to here is a strategy of replacement, as we’ve already unequivocally stated that we will not engage in combat with Russia, thus dislocation is irrelevant.

Simply put, a strategy of replacement is not employed to disrupt the ability of the organization to make decisions, but to change the decisions overall.  It attempts to end the conflict by replacing the belligerent leadership with one that is more agreeable.

Of the two strategies presented, replacement is the most difficult to accomplish.  Success does not ride on the elimination of the current leader, but on the policies of the successor.  These policies, in turn, are influenced by the power base of the organization.  The goals of the overall organization will drive the successor’s vision.  Thus, there must not only be a replacement leader whose views coincide with the targeting organization, but the power base of the target must feel that the replacement is the legitimate head of the organization and worthy of following.  Do we know any of this about Russia?  Does the power base include the oligarchs, the people, the military, the politburo, or something else?

Whenever one leader succeeds another, he immediately faces a “crisis of legitimacy.”  Until he can consolidate his own power base, he will be working with the power base of the old leader.  If the old power base is still viewed as the legitimate vision of the organization, he will have to conform to its views in order to remain in power. Thus, in order to succeed, the targeting organization must know that there is a replacement leader with a vision that conforms to its own; that the replacement will in fact assume the position of leader; and that the replacement will have the ability to execute the new vision once in the leadership position.

There are two primary reasons why such a situation will not exist.  First, it is unlikely that the replacement leader will have a vision that is different from that of the previous leader.  In the majority of organizations, the successor is chosen precisely because he holds the same or similar beliefs as the current leader.  Generally speaking, if the successor did not hold the same views as the acting leader, then he would not have achieved the post of successor in the first place.

Second, even if the successor espouses a new vision, he might find it difficult to execute because of opposition from within the organization. If the organization was opposed to the vision of the previous leader, chances are the conflict would not be occurring in the first place.  The previous leader would already have altered his vision to conform to the organization.  Thus, the successor will have to conform to the old vision to ensure his survival in the leadership position, at least in the short term.

This could be exacerbated by the very fact the leader was killed, making him a martyr.  An organization may be amenable to the targeting group’s vision and would leave the conflict if the current leader died of natural causes, but may become incensed with a targeted killing, forcing the successor to adhere to the leader’s original policies out of a shift in beliefs due to his death.

Senator Graham has stated that it must be the Russian people who do the dirty work, thinking that will alleviate any “martyr syndrome”, but that is naïve.  If Putin is killed, it doesn’t matter who does it, the west will be blamed – not the least because a United States Senator called for it.  Propaganda is a way of life in Russia, and the state will convince the population that it was the west that conducted the strike no matter who pulls the trigger.

At any rate, for a replacement strategy to work, there must exist a substantive difference between the vision and policies espoused by the targeted leader, and the vision and policies espoused by the dominant coalition of the organization.  This situation rarely exists in an actual organization.

Because of this rarity, very few assassinations accomplish their intended purpose.  While removing the current leader appears to solve the perceived “problem,” in actuality the assassin is merely attacking the person who is executing the vision of the organization.  The history of assassination is replete with examples.

In 1981 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was killed by Islamic fundamentalists in an attempt to spark a religious revolution much like the fundamentalist revolution in Iran.  The exact opposite occurred.  Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, ruthlessly cracked down on all Islamic extremists, purging them from the country.

In 1984 the Prime Minister of India, Indira Ghandi, was killed by Sikhs to thwart her attempts to prevent the creation of a Sikh state.  However, far from enhancing the move for Sikh separatism, her assassination precipitated the deaths of some three thousand Sikhs at the hands of mobs in eighty cities, and the stability of a united India was more assured than ever.  Her son, Rajiv Ghandi, succeeded her as Prime Minister in an overwhelming victory during a general election, thereby ensuring that her policies would continue.

This is where Senator Graham and others who support his views are engaging in wishful thinking.  Does anyone have any idea who the successor of Vladimir Putin would be?  What if he’s worse than Putin?  What if he’s sitting there right now urging Putin to take it to NATO and go all out, but Putin – so far – is refusing to do so?  Removing Putin may ensure the exact opposite of what we desire.  Our own counter-leadership targeting of terrorist groups is replete with examples of replacement leaders who ended up being much better at terrorism than the man we killed.

In the end, before using twitter to call for Putin’s removal, a healthy amount of research needs to be done on the Russian succession system and overall views of the actual Russian power base – starting with determining what that is – to even see if the targeting would have any effect on the conflict – worst case, the effect exacerbates the conflict outside the confines of Ukraine.

One last note:  There are always second and third order effects to any targeting action.  Reciprocal targeting is a thing.  The primary reason states don’t officially target the leaders of opposing states is precisely because it is morally repugnant and could invite tit-for-tat attacks.  By calling for Putin’s removal, Senator Graham has opened a Pandora’s box of what is acceptable in this conflict.  And he’s done it with a man who has assassinated dissident leaders all over the world, using everything from plutonium to nerve agent, including poisoning a man’s underwear.  Do we really want to get in a tit-for-tat with a guy who has shown absolutely no compunction about personally targeting his opponents?

By rational, I mean that the targeting is attempted for reasons beyond simple redemption or revenge within a framework that is looking toward future policies or goals.  Irrational actors could attempt CLT for any reason, and will not be discussed.

 

The thoughts above are distilled from my master’s thesis, Counter-Leadership Targeting and Conflict Resolution.  For further examination, to include the moral and legal implications, it can be found here.

 

The post A Simple Primer on Counter-Leadership Targeting appeared first on Brad Taylor.

The rapid fall of Kabul tore a hole in my heart. It’s taken me days to get my mind around what we’re witnessing and garner some focus to write this. First and foremost, I’m not surprised at the speed with which this happened.  Why everyone in our defense establishment is surprised, is what baffles me. I’ve been asked many times over the last few days, “What went wrong?” or “How could we have miscalculated so badly?” and my answer is, we didn’t.  Look at the assessments before this debacle and the answer from every intelligence product is clear:  The Taliban would own the country.  The only question was the timeline.

Hell, we forgot our own history in Afghanistan.  I was one of the first soldiers to set foot on Afghanistan soil, and the Taliban fell apart so quickly even we were surprised.  Why were we surprised when it went the other way?  Did we think we were so superior that the Taliban caved to our inevitable end state, or should we have known that the Afghan society writ large would inevitably default to the pragmatic – wanting to be on the winning side?  There is an obscure book written about the Vietnam war called The Rational Peasant, and that is what happened in Afghanistan.  The minute we announced we were leaving, the rational peasant picked a side.  It’s not hard to see which side.  Were they going to pick the Americans who were leaving?  Or the Taliban who were staying?  So, we knew that Afghanistan was lost, we just didn’t know how quickly the clock would run.

Which brings us to today.  The current administration is hell bent on not getting in a shooting war with the Taliban because by God we’re leaving that country and any gunfight will drag us back into the “forever war”. So, we’re doing nothing for the enormous number of American citizens, green card holders, and courageous Afghans who helped us during two decades of war.  I heard the US Secretary of Defense, Gen. Lloyd Austin, tell a news reporter that he didn’t have the ability to go into the city of Kabul and rescue Americans, and my jaw hit the floor.  The United States military has no ability to rescue American citizens in Kabul?  Seriously?  I know for a fact that’s absolute bullshit because I personally know the general in charge of security at Kabul’s airfield.  He’s the commander of the 82nd Airborne, and if you give him the word, his boys are on the street in ten minutes.

I understand the reticence of our political leadership, but we should take our Afghan blinders off and treat this like any other NEO on the planet – which is to say, “We’re Americans, and if you want a fight, we’ll give it to you. But I’m getting these people out. Now.”

A NEO – the acronym for a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation – is a highly orchestrated event for evacuating United States’ citizens out of harm’s way when a country falls apart.  It is the final result of the United States pulling down our flag and leaving an embassy. Because of this, it’s a very volatile action to trigger. In so doing, the United States is saying, “We give up.  Time to go.”  In the land of lawyer speak, it’s when the lead Federal Agency moves from the State Department to the Department of Defense, meaning the State Department has failed in diplomacy, and now it’s the knuckle-draggers turn.

We have entered that land in Afghanistan, and yet our ‘leadership’ is acting like we have to ask for Taliban support in order to facilitate safe passage to the Kabul airport for United States’ citizens for exfiltration. This is absolutely crazy. For some reason, we’ve let our past involvement in Afghanistan cloud our future options.  And by that, I mean our near-term plan.

I’ve been involved in exactly one NEO in my military career – Operation Bevel Edge, when Cambodia went to hell in the late-90s.  We deployed from Okinawa to Thailand and prepared to evacuate every AMCIT (American Citizen) in the place.  We didn’t actually do the operation, because things settled down, but as an operations officer for the Special Forces battalion dedicated to executing the mission, I had to drink from a firehose on everything from how to vette people attempting to leave, to the rules of engagement with hostile elements – and if there was one thing I learned, it was this:  AMCITS take priority.  If there is a threat, eliminate it.  Rescue the AMCITS…period.

And that’s where we stand in Kabul right now.  Actually, it’s where we stand with the entire country.  We should not be asking the Taliban for clear passage to the airport and then telling AMCITS in Kabul to make their own way. We should be executing a forcible entry into the city and evacuating every last AMCIT. The message should be clear:  We aren’t hostile to you, unless you’re hostile to us, but we’re establishing corridors of evacuation, and if you attempt to stop us, you will die.  And then back up that threat with firepower.

There’s actually a modern-day precedent for this, where we dealt with another faction that lived by the gun, and that was the release of Michael Durant after he was captured in Mogadishu during the so-called “Blackhawk Down” firefight.  We were leaving that country much like we’re leaving Afghanistan, but Durant was held by the warlord Mohammed Aidid.  Retired ambassador Robert Oakley was charged with getting his release.  He arrived in Somalia, and was met by Aided thinking he held the keys to the kingdom of taunting the Great Satan.  Oakley told him Durant was actually the key to his own destruction.  In no uncertain terms, after President Clinton had already said we were leaving Somalia and giving him victory, he told Aided that the United States wanted Durant back, and they would lay waste to everything Aided held dear to accomplish this.  Aided understood the threat.  Durant was released as a “goodwill gesture” shortly thereafter.

The Taliban won so easily they’re not even sure what they own, and make NO mistake, now that they’d won, they do not want to pick a fight with the United States. Out of the entire universe of hostile actors, we are the only one that can reverse their victory, and they know that.  Why we’re sitting on our hands here is beyond me.  In Bevel Edge, the plan was to establish collection points throughout Cambodia by force, basically telling the warring sides, “Hey, you guys want to duke it out, have at it, but if you screw with me, I will annihilate you.”  There should be no argument that we should be doing the same thing here, but we’re not because of our inherent involvement in Afghanistan. I’m not even sure who has primacy of the mission right now.  Is it the State Department in its makeshift embassy at the airport, or is it the Department of Defense in its makeshift TOC at the airport?  Do they even know?

The fourth act of the Shakespearian drama of Afghanistan is playing out right now, and we’re apparently taking into account the first three, hobbling our effort based on a mistaken belief that any action will draw us back into the “forever war”.  Which is just devoid of logic.  We have an obvious mission, plain and simple.  We can’t alter the outcome of this disaster, but we also shouldn’t fall prey to it. This should be treated like any other NEO we would execute.  If country X fell apart, and United States’ citizens were in danger, we would execute Operation Bevel Edge, which is to say, we’d descend with overwhelming force and tell all fighting sides to back off until we leave.  We could do the same here, only ten times more due to our military footprint and inherent knowledge of the terrain.  We need to immediately Impose overwhelming force and evacuate both American and Afghan civilians who helped us.

In the end, this is a matter of political will as opposed to military capability.  It’s not that hard to do, because if there’s one thing that the Taliban understands, it’s Mao Ze Dung’s words: Diplomacy comes from the barrel of a gun.

The post This is a NEO. It’s Time to Execute it. appeared first on Brad Taylor.

The New York Times has a “Bombshell” report out with the headline At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror.  The story was followed by multiple other outlets with headlines stating the same thing:  37 million refugees since 9/11 are a direct result of United States’ military operations.  The articles are based on an analysis conducted by Brown University resulting in a report titled: Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars.

The reporting is designed to inculcate in the reader that the exorbitant number of refugees since 9/11 are the sole result of United States military action.  The report includes a graph of wartime refugees since 9/11 with the title: Millions displaced by U.S. post 9/11 wars, and one line in NY Times article states, “…yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated.”  Read that closely.  The number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement.

While I completely agree that conflict displacement is a tragedy that requires robust attention, saying the U.S. is the source of it is a causal fallacy.  It’s like saying, “Every time I see a car accident, there’s an ambulance.  Ambulances must cause car accidents.”  The problem with all of this inuendo is that the report is based on eight conflict countries where the United States has had military involvement, regardless of how small, and yet goes on to lay the refugee crisis solely at the feet of the United States.  This is irresponsible on the part of the researchers and shoddy journalism from the New York Times.  The question shouldn’t be “Were there any refugees in a country within which the United States has a military presence?”, but the opposite: “Would there have been refugees had the United States not had a presence at all?”  Or better yet, “Did the U.S. presence lesson the number of refugees?”  But that would belie the point.  The NY Times isn’t looking to shine a light on displacement of civilians during conflict.  It’s looking to paint the United States as the bad guy.

The eight countries in the study are Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Syria and Libya – conflict countries that the United States has had an involvement, and thus, apparently, gleaning sole responsibility for the resulting refugees.  I read the list of nations, and, given my knowledge of U.S. involvement, my immediate thought was, “This title is completely misleading”.

For instance, why is Syria on this list?  How on earth are we responsible for the Syrian refugee crisis?  Bashar al Assad used barrel bombs and chemical weapons on his own population.  Turkey invaded the Kurdish areas, killing wholesale.  Russia has propped up Assad relentlessly using its own aircraft for strikes against civilian populations, and ISIS went ripping through the country tearing it apart – all before we planted one boot on the terrain – and yet it’s the fault of the U.S. that there are refugees?  I have a memory long enough to remember Obama getting castigated for doing nothing in Syria as Assad slaughtered his own people.  Remember the failed “red line” that was crossed?  Remember the chemical weapons use?  And so when the United States finally does step in as a response to the atrocities, we’re now responsible for the creation of all Syrian refugees?

And how are we responsible for the humanitarian disaster that is Yemen?  The Houthis – a proxy force funded by Iran – took over the capital of Sanaa, causing a civil war.  Because we conducted some drone strikes against Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, we’re now the cause of the entire refugee crisis that’s the direct result of a civil war?  The study makes the tenuous link that since we are supporting Saudi Arabia with weaponry and logistics in its effort to prop up the government against the Houthis, we’re responsible for those refugees as well.  The truth of the matter is that our help is stemming the collateral damage.  KSA was flinging bombs all over the place, causing horrific damage to civilian populations, and it was the United States that said, “If you want our help, you need to stop the collateral damage”.  The result?  It decreased.  And yet according to the inferences in the report and the NYT piece, every single refugee from the greatest humanitarian disaster since World War II is the fault of a U.S. “9/11 War”.

And the Philippines?  It has an insurgency on the island of Mindanao from a group of Islamic radicals who swore fealty first to Al Qaeda, and then ISIS.  That is what is causing the refugees fleeing the area – internal conflict.  The United States was asked to help to quell the violence – in effect, help stop the creation of refugees – and yet, since we were involved, it’s our fault there are refugees.  In truth, had we stayed out completely, the refugee flow would have been much worse.  Of course, if that were the case, it wouldn’t have counted as a “9/11 U.S. War”, and thus wouldn’t have made the list.  It doesn’t appear that actual refugee numbers are the purpose here so much as placing blame on the United States.

On to Libya, yet another crisis which had nothing to do with a “9/11 War on Terror”.  In fact, it had nothing to do with terrorism.  It was a civil war rising out of the Arab Spring because Qaddafi was a despot.  Yes, we did join a NATO alliance to secure a no-fly zone to protect the civilian population from being slaughtered, and that ultimately caused the downfall of Qaddafi, but so did France, the United Kingdom, and other NATO allies. Had we stayed out completely, there might very well have been a smaller refugee problem out of Libya – but only because all of them would be dead.

Reporting on the causation of conflict refugees is a worthy endeavor, and make no mistake, two countries on the list are most definitely the byproduct of US involvement. One is Iraq.  The refugees there are truly a direct result of United States actions, and the fallout from that endeavor will be felt for generations.  There is no sugar coating that fact. Afghanistan is the other, but it was a US reaction to the attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11, something conveniently forgotten in the analysis – as if the United States went into Afghanistan for some imperialist reason, instead of it being the result of all the NYC “refugees” and dead created by the terrorism of 9/11.

Stating that the United States is responsible for the creation of refugees all over the world since 9/11 simply because we had a presence in a conflict country is disingenuous and destroys the credibility of both the report and the intentions of its authors (and I’m being charitable here, because I fully believe that disparaging the United States military was the intention, cloaked in a refugee story).  I suppose if they had written a report following World War II it would have been titled, “Creating Refugees:  Displacement by the United States invasion of Europe and Japan”, conveniently forgetting Hitler, Tojo, and the AXIS powers.

I know it’s hard for professors at Brown and journalists at the NY Times to fathom, but sometimes the United States military helps prevent displaced persons in wartime.  The article and study are focused on post-9/11, but if they were to expand it, would they blame the United States for trying to separate the warring factions in Somalia in 1993 in order to prevent a famine, leading to the death of 18 Americans in Blackhawk Down?  The turmoil continuing in Somalia today is a direct descendant of that civil unrest.  Why is the current fight – according to the report – a direct reflection of the United States creating refugees, when the genesis of that conflict is decades old and the first introduction of U.S. forces in the country was done trying to prevent the creation of refugees?  Going further, would they castigate the United States for the flow of Bosnian refugees because we stopped the killing that was occurring there?  Now that I think about it, thank heavens we stayed out of the Rwandan Genocide and let those people get slaughtered, because if we’d stepped in, the NY Times would have then blamed the U.S. military for the creation of the refugees that were left alive.

In the end, the United States is not perfect, and we should be cognizant of the second- and third-order effects of any engagement, be it military or otherwise.  Simply tallying up total numbers and using that total in a salacious headline to smear the United States and its military does nothing for refugees – as I’m sure the New York Times and Brown University are fully aware.

The post American “Journalism”: A Case Study in a Causal Fallacy appeared first on Brad Taylor.

I watch or read a plethora of different news feeds daily, but I confess, most of my TV time is spent watching Fox News, because I’m a conservative. Given that, I’ve been a little embarrassed by the coverage of the latest LTG Michael Flynn saga.

To hear the talking heads on Fox, the FBI was duplicitous and sneaky, endeavoring to gain a perjury trap against Flynn, and because of that, Flynn is completely innocent, and a wrongly convicted man.  A hero who wore the uniform and who’s been maligned by the evil deep state, never mind the fact that he himself pled guilty to the charge. I understand that we are in competing narratives in this polarized world, but wearing the uniform means something to me.  Something more than the ratings conservative media attempts to gain from viewers by cheering on the absolution of war criminals.

There very well might be a “deep state” involved in his indictment, and the FBI should absolutely be held to account, but this isn’t a black and white situation, meaning if one side is black, the other is white.  From what I can see – outside of being able to read the actual documents, like every other person spouting in the 24/7 news cycle – the FBI was duplicitous in its interactions with Flynn, and probably outside the bounds of what should be permissible, but that doesn’t mean LTG Flynn is innocent.

To hear the media talk about the episode, because the FBI was purportedly out to entrap him in a lie, it proves that he isn’t guilty.  Even President Trump said the new documents “exonerated” him.  That’s simply not true, and the man should be held to account.  It reminds me of the movie “Training Day”, where Denzel Washington is a corrupt cop, beating suspects and extorting drug dealers.  Is Denzel Washington a bad guy in the movie?  No doubt, but that doesn’t mean the drug dealers are innocent or “exonerated”.  This entire episode is like having a couple of cops invade the home of a pedophile on a trumped-up reason of “probable cause” and then having the case thrown out because they violated his 4th amendment rights.  Yeah, the cops were bad, but the guy is STILL a pedophile.

When Trump was elected president of the United States, my father asked me about the military members he’d chosen for his staff and what I thought.  I gave him an answer, and to be sure I wasn’t misremembering, I went back and looked at my texts from years ago.  I said, “GEN Mattis is a good dude.  Best thing he could do.  LTG Flynn is questionable.  He’s going to be nothing but trouble, both in the administration and on the world stage.”

I said that not because I had any personal animosity, but because I had personally served with both men.  And that reflection holds true to this day.  I was proven right.

For all the people that are doing the black-is-white analogy, here is a timeline:

1. Russia interfered in our election. This is undisputed by both sides of the aisle.

2. Obama, because of the interference, threatened to kick out multiple “diplomats” and impose sanctions against Russia.

3. Russia said that if the US does such a thing, they will respond in kind, kicking out our own diplomats inside Russia.

4.  Flynn talks to the Russian ambassador, amongst a host of other world leaders as the incoming National Security Advisor.

5.  The Russian diplomats are kicked out, sanctions are imposed, but Russia does nothing in return, with Putin indicating they will take the high road. There are no repercussions for Obama’s actions. President Elect Trump comments on the decision, saying, he knew “Putin was smart.”

6.  People scratch their heads, saying, “WTF? Why would Putin do such a thing?” Questions began to be raised about Flynn’s conversation with the AMB of Russia.  Did he, as an incoming presidential national security advisor, undercut the current administration by promising relief in one month, when the new administration takes over?  It grows into such a crescendo that the Vice President elect goes on all the Sunday shows.

7.  On just about every Sunday news show, VP Pence says this is untrue. He assures everyone that LTG Flynn has personally told him he did not offer the Russians sanctions relief.

8.  The acting attorney general sees this on the same TV screen America watched, and realizes that LTG Flynn is now open to blackmail from Russia. She knows this because Flynn precisely said such a thing because they were doing routine monitoring of the Russian Ambassador’s phone. She approached the incoming administration and said, essentially, “Hey, Flynn’s lying.  He absolutely discussed sanctions relief.  We have it on tape.”

9,  Flynn gets fired for lying to the Vice President elect of the United States.

TIMELINE BREAK.

Okay, that is what happened.  These are the facts, and they are not in dispute.  Today, you hear President Trump saying over and over that “What happened to Flynn should never happen to any person in the United States”, and that absolutely might be true with respect to the FBI, but Trump himself fired Flynn, not because of the FBI, but because he had lied to the Vice President.  As a person who served in uniform, I’ll echo Trump’s comments, saying “What Flynn did should not be allowed by any person in a position of power in the United States.”  This is a three-star general, and the new National Security Advisor, who is contacting a hostile state and undercutting his own country’s policies in order to curry favor for an incoming administration.  Not only that, he’s dealing with a country that is an enemy of the United States.  One that indisputably interfered in our own election.  It is, as the judge in his current case said, bordering on treason.

BACK TO THE TIMELINE:

10.  The FBI is accused of improperly interviewing him, without using proper White House channels, and, quite possibly entrapped him for lying about his conversations with a hostile foreign power.

And here we end.  This is the conservative media focus.  This last line.  This is what everyone is blathering about, conveniently forgetting all the transgressions that had happened before.  It’s the public defender decrying the lack of a search warrant against his client, not the fact that his client is a pedophile.  And I’m honestly a little sick of it.

Yes, let’s hold the FBI to account, but in so doing, we shouldn’t whitewash LTG Flynn into some American Patriot.  He is not.  Beyond what the evidence for this specific case shows, he’s used the veneer of his “general” creds to act as a foreign agent for Turkey, writing OPEDS in newspapers to sway US policy without ever revealing he was being paid to do so by a foreign power, and has taken other money to speak in Moscow for Russian TV, sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin.  He is not a hero.  He is the worst of America, a man willing to prostitute his own reputation for money and power, and I, for one, don’t have any sympathy for him.

At the end of the day, the FBI might be the devil here, but don’t ever think because that’s true that LTG Flynn is an angel.

The post A Lie is a Lie. Especially When Wearing the Uniform appeared first on Brad Taylor.

As is typically true following any military strike, the armchair quarterbacks are out in force on television, and as is also typical, I get aggravated watching them.  I’ve received a lot of questions about the potential repercussions of the act, but have also seen most of the discussion on the news revolve around the legality of the strike —specifically as it relates to Executive Order 12333—which prohibits “assassinations”.  I wrote a blog about this in 2010 and thought it instructive to revisit it and post an updated version.

Soleimani’s killing was most definitely targeted.  It wasn’t a random drone strike, but was it an assassination, contrary to the proscriptions in EO 12333? What does that term actually mean?   Is this action that some talking heads are frothing at the mouth over truly illegal?

It’s not an easy question.  In fact, it’s so difficult to quantify that there isn’t a recognized legal definition of the term.  Sure, the dictionary has a definition.  But there’s not a definition which is recognized by the international community – which means there’s no international legal prohibition against it – and no U.S. definition that’s codified in law.   Although there is a prohibition.

In November of 1975, the U.S. Senate investigated alleged U.S. assassination plots.  The committee, named the Church Committee, found U.S. involvement in five assassination attempts from 1960-1975.  At the conclusion of the investigation, the committee recommended legislation banning assassination.  Although there were three different proposals brought before Congress, the legislation was never passed.

Since Congress was unwilling to act, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which read in part “no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”  This prohibition is now embodied in Executive Order 12333, signed by every president since President Carter.  Unfortunately, the term assassination was not defined in the order (or anywhere else).  Some say this was done intentionally to allow leeway for action.  What has actually occurred is the opposite.  Anything that could potentially be construed as an assassination results in the immediate termination of the operation or enormous hand wringing after the fact.

Since nobody else has defined it, I’ll give it a go.  Assassination is murder up front, but what else distinguishes it from other homicides?  The first thing that comes to mind when anyone hears the term is that the killer knew the person he or she was killing.  It wasn’t random; you sought him or her out and killed them.  That’s certainly an element, but can’t be the total definition.  If it were, then almost every homicide that occurs is an assassination.  The only ones that aren’t are random drive-by shootings and robberies gone wrong.  The truth is we already have a word for that.  It’s murder, plain and simple.

Assassination implies something more.  The murder was done for a purpose, beyond greed or a lovers’ quarrel.  So, at first blush, I’d say you need to specifically target an individual, but the targeting has to be for a purpose greater than your individual satisfaction.

But is that enough?  Is the definition limited to that?  Suppose I’m in a tank platoon leader in World War II and I tell my men to focus all of their efforts at the tank with three antennae, because I know it’s the company commander’s vehicle.  I’ve singled out a man, knowing who he is, and it’s for a greater purpose, namely the loss of command and control, giving me leverage in the battle.  Am I now an assassin?  Or what if I see my neighbor, whom I know, beating his wife to death and step in to stop it.  In the ensuing fight, I kill him.  Am I an assassin?   I think most everyone would say no.  Neither example is murder.  So something else is needed in the definition.  A killing that is not initiated to defensively protect someone from harm or offensively win a battle.  And that something is political.

The term assassination implies a targeted killing for political purposes.  Which is why the Church Committee came about in the first place, namely because of US attempts at Castro and others.  They were attempted political murders in the absence of overt hostilities, designed to engender a political solution, which was favorable to the United States.  So where is the line drawn?  When is it political and when is it a conflict falling under the Law of War?  In the deliberations, the committee drew a line at self defense against a belligerent organization seeking to harm the United States.  The draft legislation read that assassination would be prohibited against a foreign country with which the United States was not at war pursuant to a declaration of war, or engaged in hostilities pursuant to the War Powers resolution.  Senator Church himself stated he was “not talking about Adolf Hitler or anything of that character.”

In short, the genesis of the EO 12333 was not designed to prevent self defense.  It was designed to prevent political murder – which, in and of itself is a detestable act and worthy of the executive order.  The term, and the prohibition, have a distinct definition that is not applicable to terrorists hell-bent on harming United States interests.   And General Soleimani, along with his Quds Force, was most definitely a terrorist.

To the point, assassination means more than murder, and less than the weight the press gives it.  In a legal piece that’s better than most that I’ve read, Tyler J. Harder postulates that an assassination has three components:  1. An intentional killing.  2. Of a targeted person.  3. For political purposes.

I think that’s just about right.

So, in the end, is killing a terrorist like Soleimani assassination?  Hell no.  It’s self defense plain and simple.  There are no political ramifications in the act.  It’s no different than killing a man in a recognized war-zone who’s hell bent on killing you, personally.  The battlefield has changed, but the intent has not.  That’s international law – which gives every sovereign state the right to self defense. 

Yeah, I’m a knuckle dragger and that’s exactly what you would expect me to say, but respected jurists have been saying it since BEFORE 9-11.  Since 12333 was so contentious, and could have repercussions on soldiers in wartime (If I tell my men to kill the company commander, have I breached 12333, etc.) the Department of Defense did a review in 1989.  Yes, 1989.  In a Memorandum of Law, a remarkably short legal essay, Hays Parks distinctly showed that targeting anyone who’s a combatant preparing to physically harm United States citizens or interests are fair game for targeting and does not break the proscriptions inherent in 12333.    The meat of the essay:

‘That the clandestine, low visibility or overt use of military force against legitimate targets in time of war, or against similar targets in time of peace where such individuals or groups pose an immediate threat to United States citizens or the national security of the United States, as determined by competent authority, does not constitute assassination or conspiracy to engage in assassination, and would not be prohibited by the proscription in EO 12333 or by international law.”

After the killing of Soleimani, other legal scholars have echoed that opinion; namely, that self-defense isn’t assassination, and thus not illegal.

Think about that the next time you see the term “assassination” on the news.  As soon as that word is used in a news story, you have a pejorative sense that something’s wrong.  “Assassination” has a ring to it that “killing” does not, but using the term, as so often is the case in the press, doesn’t make it true.  Killing someone who is out to harm the United States isn’t assassination by any application of domestic or international law, especially in an active war zone.

In the end, discussing the judgement of the action vis-à-vis a potential war with Iran is justified and logical, but spinning our wheels accusing Trump of breaking international or domestic law is simply a waste of breath.

 

Notes on the Church Committee came from the book “Regulating Covert Action” by Michael Reisman and James Baker, Yale Univ. Press, 1992.

The post No, Soleimani Wasn’t Assassinated. appeared first on Brad Taylor.