Brad Taylor's Blog, page 4

I’ve read and watched a plethora of reporting on the Islamic State, and decided I’d set out to give a little base-line information on just what that group is, what they’re attempting to do, and why they’ve been so successful. The majority of information in the U.S. press is tainted by politics, with viewpoints, first and foremost, designed to damage a political party as opposed to informing the American public on the nature of the threat.

As I began writing, I realized that the true problem wasn’t misinformation on the Islamic State. The true problem is that the average American doesn’t understand the phenomenon of terrorism, and thus falls prey to whatever blow-hard expert talking head has to say. Therefore, I decided to take a step back and provide, in as concise a manner as possible, a definition of terrorism for the layman.

Up front, I’ll say this isn’t a PhD dissertation. Much like Stephen Hawkings “A Brief History of Time”, I’m going to condense things for explanatory purposes. And yes, I just compared myself to Stephen Hawkings, so that you’ll think I’m a genius.

Terrorism, as a bogeyman, has been a relatively knew phenomena for the United States. By this, I mean that terrorist attacks which have affected national interests have only been around since the 1960s. Yes, there has always been terrorism, like there has always been crime, but only in the modern era have we seen terrorism capturing the national debate.   But some acts we have called “terrorism” aren’t, and words have meaning.

For instance, a man could run over a child on a bicycle. The facts are what they are. A truck hit a child on a bike, killing her. The intent, however, is decidedly important. Did the man, while texting on a cell phone, not see the child? Or did the man see the child and swerve to hit her while laughing maniacally? Two words will matter here. Manslaughter and Murder. Both will decide that man’s fate, and both should be applied in accordance with the action. It’s no different with terrorism. Words matter. People throw that term around so much it ceases to have meaning, but it should.

Why am I so concerned about a definition? Surely, it’s defined, right? Actually, no, it’s not. In fact, in the United States, we have no overarching definition of terrorism. Our own United States Code – the law of the land – has two separate definitions. We can’t even agree in our own law. Beyond that, every single organization in the government has its own definition. Each is similar, but all have distinct difference.

USC Title 18 calls terrorism : “..activities that involve violent… … that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State and… appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
USC Title 22 says: The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
The National Counter-Terrorism Center says: “premeditated; perpetrated by a subnational or clandestine agent; politically motivated, potentially including religious, philosophical, or culturally symbolic motivations; violent; and perpetrated against a noncombatant target.”
The Department of Defense says: “the unlawful use of — or threatened use of — force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives.”
And the grand-daddy of them all, the United Nations, in a convoluted definition that nobody agrees with, says: “Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought,”

It’s easy to say, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist”, but that’s only because nobody agrees on what terrorism actually means. It is definitely not black and white, but it’s not completely gray either.

In truth, this entire blog came out of a class I taught while a professor of military science at the Citadel. I made the mistake of assuming that everyone understood the phenomena as I did, but that wasn’t the case. My class was not effective because I hadn’t laid the groundwork for what “terrorism” actually meant. So I set out to fix that, starting from scratch.

The first question I asked the class was to give me an example of terrorism. To tell me what act that had happened in the past was terrorism. Invariably, I was given a suicide attack, be it 9/11 or an example of someone with a bomb strapped to their chest in a hotel. At that point, I showed this video, from the movie Platoon.

After it played, I asked, “Is this terrorism?”

Immediately, I was told, “No.” I said, “But why? You just told me a suicide bomber was terrorism? He’s a suicide bomber!” Inherently, the students understood that the attack wasn’t an act of terrorism, even though the method of engagement was precisely what they had described as such. Something was different. Which brought up the primary distinction for a terrorist attack: The method is irrelevant. It’s the intent, and the intent alone that matters. Nothing else counts.

Terrorism has a unique target set. Namely, the physical target of the attack is not the target of the operation. The true target isn’t the one who dies. The true target is everyone watching. And that is the cutline for any act of terrorism. Period. The method of engagement matters not a whit. All that matters is why the attack was perpetrated. ISIS doesn’t cut off heads or burn people alive because the death is the endstate. They do it because the death targets everyone watching. And that is terrorism.

In the “Platoon” example, the bomber was attempting to blow up the U.S. command and control node. If he had run into the wrong bunker, and blown up a bunch of cooks, he would have failed. In essence, his target was the target of the operation, and to miss it would engender failure, which is why my cadets had some cognitive dissonance. They had learned the method of engagement played into what a terrorist does, but also understood inherently that this attack was different. A terrorist cares less about the target’s physical or mental capabilities and more about its psychological impact. His target is outside the scope of his blast. A suicide bomber could decide to blow himself up in a mall next to Victoria’s Secret, killing the hedonistic infidels shopping. If he were to show up at the mall and find it closed, he could simply stroll down the street to the next best thing, killing people at a restaurant. In essence, the target he attacks, is not the target.

This distinction may seem small, but we have called terrorist attacks in the past precisely because of the method of attack. I’ll be a heretic now, because our first supposed experience with “suicide” terrorism was Beirut, in 1983, when a Shia militia drove a truck full of explosives into our Marine Barracks. On the surface, this is clearly terrorism, because how could it be anything but? A guy committed suicide by blowing up a bunch of Marines. The truth is a little bit more nuanced.

We came into Lebanon civil war to separate the warring factions. When we did, we gravitated to those we trusted. We needed cooks, drivers, and other facilitation in the country. Who did we choose to do this? Christians, naturally. The opposition, consisting of a plethora of different sects, saw us choosing sides. It’s irrelevant that we weren’t. Perception is reality. The Shia militias decided that they could win the war against the other sects on their own, but not if the Americans sided with one. We were no longer neutral. In their eyes, we were in the fight. They attacked us, using a suicide bomber, in an effort to get us to leave. And they succeeded. We fled the country shortly thereafter.

Beirut is called a terrorist attack precisely because of the method of engagement, but the question remains, why didn’t they just blow up the barracks with an F-16? Or artillery? The answer is obvious: because they didn’t have that. They had a guy willing to give his life and a truck full of explosives, and they attacked. But it doesn’t make it terrorism, anymore than the Platoon video does.

On the other hand, plenty of attacks against the United States are most definitely terrorism, but called something else. The prime example is Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood. He expressed on multiple occasions how he was displeased about the current actions in Middle Eastern countries, and wanted to cause the United States to rethink its actions. He didn’t kill the people at Fort Hood because he thought THEY were integral to the success or failure of our missions. They were nothing more than random targets who happened to wear a uniform. He did it precisely because he wanted to strike fear in the heart of our military establishment. The target wasn’t the target. And yet, the administration called that workplace violence.

This distinction is absolutely crucial when describing acts as “terrorism”, but it is all too often lost in the shuffle based on the method of attack. The next time a suicide attack occurs, ask yourself, “What was the objective? Was the target THE target, or was it the people watching?” On September 9, 2001, Ahmad Shah, a leader in the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, was killed in a suicide attack by Al Qaeda precisely because AQ knew the terrorist attack that was going to occur in two days, and considered him a threat for retaliation due to his relationship with America. While 9/11 was terrorism, that action wasn’t.

But why on earth would a terrorist even want to do such heinous acts? What’s the point, other than just plain evil? The truth: Because it works.

In 1972, Black September, the military wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, 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. The Palestinians had been fighting to regain their land for over twenty years, since 1948, with everyone on earth oblivious. 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 (86) than Israel itself (72).

Bottom line, terrorism works, but it’s not a guarantee of success. Sometimes the tactic backfires, causing the terrorists to create their own self-destruction. A renowned scholar of terrorism, Brian Jenkins, said, “Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead,” in essence that the level of violence is directly tied to the level of public interest. But this doesn’t explain some horrific acts conducted in the name of various groups. Al Qaeda could have gotten a lot of people watching without killing 3000 in the world trade center, ISIS did not need to burn alive the Jordanian pilot to get an audience, and Zarqawi didn’t need to murder hundreds of Muslims in Iraq in an effort to expel the United States, so what explains it?

All terrorists groups are different, with different goals, constituents, and motivations, but they can be classified with a simple model to determine which ones are prone to horrific acts.

 

The north-south axis represents the goals and motivations of the group, with an organization seeking purely political change at the top, and an organization driven solely by internal motivations at the bottom, usually religious. The east-west axis represents the constituency of the group, with west being an organization in which any human on earth can belong and the east being a rigidly prescribed, exclusive membership. The further a group moves to the south-east – into the exclusive/redemptive zone – the greater the chance for large scale violence. The further a group moves to the north-west – the political/inclusive zone – the less likely mass attacks will be.

The reason is that the group has constituents, and must act in a manner that does not harm them or their interests. The more inclusive the group, the less likely it will attack for fear of harming its own recruiting efforts. If anyone can be a member of my group, and I’m seeking political change, any attack will potentially cause a backlash from the very people I’m seeking to co-opt. On the other end, if my group consists solely of six-fingered men under five feet who believe they are bringing about the end of days, I have a large target set to attack, as I don’t care what anyone else thinks other than those few.

As a real world example, the Irish Republican Army was formed to expel the British from their country. While the “troubles” had some religious overtones, it was primarily a political fight. In the same vein, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was created to purge Israel from historical Palestine. While still a political goal, it had/has some redemptive qualities revolving around Islam. Both groups fall on the center scale of inclusive/exclusive, because while they welcomed help from other parties, generally, to be a member, you had to meet certain requirements – Be Irish/Catholic or Palestinian/Muslim.

This combination of characteristics tends to tamp down massively destructive attacks, but does present a clearly defined target set. The PLO/Hamas could never attack other Muslims, but any Israeli was fair game – within limits. It still must answer to its own constituents – other Palestinians and actors on the world stage – and cannot (or should not) conduct an attack that would harm those interests. This is precisely why Hamas officially denounced 9/11 and currently denounces ISIS. It doesn’t want to get lumped with those groups because it has political goals and needs allies within its own community and the outside world. In the same vein, at the height of the troubles in Ireland, the IRA could count on funding from Irish Americans to help the cause. Burning someone alive would turn off that tap, harming the very political goals they sought to achieve.

Which brings us to the Islamic State, the furthest organization in the south-east corner, and thus the most dangerous. They are a group of mass psychopaths that is literally seeking to engender the apocalypse, and you’re either with them or against them. Period. Anyone not adhering to its extreme brand of Islam is the enemy, an apostate, and should be killed. Not simply avoided, but slaughtered. The entire world is its target, to include any and all Muslims not under its banner, and it has an internal, psychotic worldview driving them to attack. This means that it is the most likely group on the planet to attempt mass casualty events. It has the redemptive motivation and absolutely no checks on the target set. Which is precisely why it conducts such horrific acts. It would seem to be crazy to want to make an enemy of every single Muslim nation through its horrific actions – be it beheading 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya, and making an enemy of the most populous Arab country on earth, or burning alive the Jordanian pilot, thus stiffening the Hashemite Kingdoms will to fight – but in their minds, those countries are already the enemy.

Not even Al Qaida is this extreme. Although a Sunni group, Al Qaida splits the world into Islamic believers and infidels. While attacking infidels is a “Muslim’s duty”, attacking other Muslims is seen as wrong, something that created a rift with the precursor of ISIS, Al Qaida in Iraq.

Every beheading, crucifixion or burning ISIS conducts is solely for the audience watching. It wants the west to invade. It has an end of days utopia based on the apocalypse that involves a showdown between the true Caliphate and everyone else. They would like nothing more than to have us – the west – attack them. It would be playing right into their end-of-days plans. So why would we do that? Why get involved in another mid-east war?

Because their idiotic worldview should not alter our view of what’s right. Immediately after 9/11, I had a quote on my desk from General Tecumseh Sherman. It read: “War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

That, in a nutshell, is what I feel we should do to the Islamic State. Eradicate them from existence with a scorched earth policy that has no equivocation. None. Kill them wherever we can find them. Stamp them out like roaches fleeing the light. Kill them without remorse. Show them that their chosen path is death. Then provide the death.

We’re spinning our wheels on whether we’re politically correct talking about Islam or whether we’re causing more people to join the fight, but really, none of that matters. Calling them Islamic radicals does not convey legitimacy. It’s simply a fact of what they are, and they already have all the “legitimacy” they crave by declaring a caliphate. Our nomenclature of them will in no way cause the fight to become harder. In fact, it may do the exact thing we’re so afraid of: cause the average person to combine all of Islam with those psychopaths. By not specifying a distinction, and yet continuing to call them ISIS – as in the Islamic State – we’re subconsciously conflating the two.

We have an enemy. Period. It’s called the Islamic State. I give a flying f**k if they’re Wicken, Christian or Muslim. They have no human capacity for reason and are the most heinous thing the modern world has ever seen. They act like it’s the middle ages, and conduct themselves with absolute violence against anything they view as unjust. And they will be coming here. I completely understand that any action against them could be used against us in a religious context, but I’m also apparently in the minority who understands that such actions will be used against us regardless. It’s already happened. They want to call it a holy war. Fine. They want to call it the apocalypse. Fine. They want to call it the end of days. Fine.

I call it one thing: Eradicating murderers. We can do that. We shouldn’t hamstring our actions by worrying about creating future extremists. Yes, there is the potential for backlash, but the current threat is so grave it must be dealt with. Would we worry about future Nazis based on freeing Auschwitz? Yes, I brought up the die-hard Nazi bogeyman, but I did it for a reason.

There is a school of thought that’s prevalent in the current debate, which is that any action against the Islamic State – or any action even mentioning Islam – only increases their recruitment effort because it legitimizes them. In effect, that there’s a finite group of people who are going to go radical, and we don’t want to encourage them to do so. This is incorrect, as any study of radicalization will show. There is a group of folks who are prone to becoming radicalized, but allowing the Islamic State to exist is increasing the recruitment call.

It’s hard for the average American to understand, but the fact that they proclaimed a caliphate is a siren call to other jihadists. Every minute that bastardization of statehood exists only strengthens them, whether they’re gaining actual terrain or not. It isn’t a static fight. Every minute ticking by solidifies its authority, and every minute past that recruits more members.

There is a counterinsurgency theory called the “oil spot”. Succinctly put, if an element pacifies one hamlet, then another, and another, the pacified areas will expand, connecting like oil spreading on water and defeating the insurgency. ISIS has taken this theory and turned it on its head, using the oil spots not to pacify, but to conquer. Their claim of a caliphate is causing others to swear fealty to them in lands far removed, such as Libya and the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. We need to break that cycle, and its center of gravity is precisely the caliphate they claim. ISIS has to hold the terrain to exist, because there is no caliphate without land. It’s a physical thing. Take that away, and ISIS becomes just one more group, fighting for attention.

Some will say it’s an impossible task, because “You can’t kill an ideology,” and this is true. But you can defeat it. Just ask the Nazis or Sendero Luminosa. In 1944 the Nazis ruled almost all of Europe. Today, they’re called skinheads and they conduct petty crime. Does the ideology exist? Yes, but it’s no longer a threat. Sendoro Luminoso was a Marxist/Maoist movement in Peru that acted not unlike the Islamic State. Led by Abimail Guzman, a nihilistic murderer, they slaughtered peasants unmercifully, lopping off arms and burning people alive. By 1992, it owned vast amounts of terrain and was on the outskirts of Lima, the capital. There was a real concern that the movement was going to topple the government. On September 12, 1992, Guzman was captured, along with a treasure trove of intelligence. Today, the ideology of the Shining Path still lives, but it’s relegated to the jungle and constantly hunted, its control over the countryside gone.

Because the ideology of the Islamic State exists does not mean it’s a forgone conclusion that it will succeed. It’s not a zero sum game. We can defeat it, and we should, sooner rather than later.

On social media, I asked for questions that folks would like answered on the Islamic State. Thanks so much for all your thoughtful responses. I was overwhelmed by the number, and apologize that there is simply no way to answer all of them without an enormous amount of work. The following are the most often asked FAQs.

“Why does the Islamic State have so many different names? ISIL/ISIS/Daesh?” They are all really saying the same thing. ISIL stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. ISIS stands for Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, with al-Sham being a historical area that’s roughly the same as the Levant. Daesh is the Arabic acronym of the same name – Dawlat al-Islamiyah f’al-Iraq wa al-Sham. The Arabs aligned against the Islamic State prefer Daesh because the acronym also sounds a lot like the Arabic verb meaning “to crush underfoot”. The Islamic State, of course, hates the name Daesh for this reason.


“Should we put ‘boots on the ground’ to quash ISIS?” That depends on how you define “boots”. I don’t believe we should invade with legions of tanks and infantry. This should be a Muslim fight, and Iraq itself should take the lead. Having said that, we should embed advisors with those units – and I believe we will. The simple fact is that we ceded influence to Iran when we left Iraq, and this allowed ISIS to flow into the turbulence that followed. We need the support of the Sunni tribes to eradicate ISIS, and yet the brunt of the fighting right now is being conducted by Shia militias under the sway of Iran, a situation that will guarantee no support. Embedding within the official Iraqi army, providing them the firepower and preventing them from committing reflexive atrocities, will tend to marginalize the militias and increase our ability to coopt the Sunni tribes because they trust us a hell of a lot more than they trust Iran or the militias. The problem with this approach, as I said above, is that time is not on our side. Every minute we spend training Iraqi troops for the big push is another minute for ISIS to grow in strength and slaughter anyone who might potentially fight them. They lived through the Awakening, and are conducting a cleansing of the areas they hold of anyone who participated in that action, killing whole tribes. If we wait too long, there won’t be any Sunnis left to coopt. This answer is about breaking the ISIS hold of terrain in Iraq. Syria is a whole other mess of fish.


“What’s the difference between ISIS and Al Qaida?” The precursor to the Islamic State was Al Qaida in Iraq, a terrorist group led by a Jordanian named Abu Musab Zarqawi. He carried the mantle of AQ in Iraq, but had the same extreme view of Islam as the current Islamic State. In Iraq, he set about trying to engender a sectarian bloodbath because he believed the Shia in Iraq were just as bad as the Americans. He killed so many Muslims that Bin Laden himself sent him a request to stop it. He didn’t. Eventually, because of his viewpoint of either being with him or against him, he engendered his own demise. The Sunnis in al Anbar revolted – the famed Awakening movement – and his group was decimated. They still existed, calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq, but in hiding. Fast forward to 2011, and Syria is now in chaos. The official Al Qaida offshoot fighting the Syrian regime was Jahbat al-Nusra. The Islamic State joined the fight, changing their name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL – depending on who’s doing the translating). They claimed to be the representative of Al Qaida in Syria. Jahbat al-Nusra took offense to this and appealed to AQ leadership, Zawahiri. He sided with Jahbat al-Nusra, telling ISIS to either get into the fold, or leave. ISIS chose a third option, which was to fight al-Nusra. They denounced AQ as apostates and began their campaign of slaughter and terror, killing AQ as easily as they did Christians or Alawites. Essentially, Al Qaida is the more moderate of the two groups (I can’t believe I typed that), with ISIS about as extreme as could be.


“Do we need to fear ISIS attacking us in another 9/11 type event?” Yes. Most definitely. They have stated over and over again that they are coming, and if history has shown us anything, it’s that such groups don’t hide their intentions.  Laptops captured in ISIS controlled territory have shown a fascination with biological and chemical weapons, and an earnest desire to weaponize them. Currently, ISIS is fighting to exist, but sooner or later, if allowed to continue, it will conduct a horrific attack.


“How are they financing their fight? How do they make money?” Initially, like other extremist groups, ISIS relied on donations from patrons to function. After they took over Mosul, they stole every dinar from every bank that city had, which gave them a pretty good bit of working capital, some speculate as much as $430 million. Since then, they’ve managed to take over roughly 60% of Syria’s oil fields, extort taxes from every person they control, and have a lucrative hostage ransom racket going. None of this is sustainable, as they don’t have the expertise to work the oil fields, have to sell the oil at a steep discount on the black market, any hostage taken now pretty much realizes he or she is dead, and taxes can only be extorted from someone who has money to pay – which is slowly but surely drying up. Currently, there are rumors that they’re harvesting organs from victims and selling them on the black market. I’m not sure I believe that, but it’s been reported.


“How come it’s always the Americans who have to do the dying? Can’t we let others clean up this mess?” First, it isn’t always the Americans. After our ill-advised intervention into Libya, jihadists looted the Ghadaffi armories, then took their weapons to Mali, almost causing the country to fall and creating one more failed state. We, as Americans, did little. France launched “boots on the ground” and fought them, stabilizing the country. Just because it doesn’t make the news in America doesn’t mean that nothing is being done. Second, like it or not, America is one of the few countries that has the ability to project force into the region. We’re still a global leader, and leading from behind does not work. The good thing about ISIS is they’ve managed to scare the hell out of every Arab country around, and it’s not going to take a lot of convincing to get them involved in the fight. The harder problem will be managing the outcome vis-à-vis Sunni Arab countries fighting alongside Shia Persian militias. It’s a delicate business that requires leadership, but it’s worth it.

The post A not so simple primer on terrorism appeared first on Brad Taylor, Author.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions over the recent revelations of the various SEALs on the UBL mission, and for the most part, I’ve brushed them off, feeling somewhat hypocritical because, while I’m not a supporter of what they’re doing, I write fiction novels. Even though there is no comparison, I felt like it wasn’t my place to comment, but, with the latest interviews, I’ve had enough. I want to present why such things matter, and give a little inside skinny on what’s occurring.

I do feel very strongly about the revelations, for reasons you’ll see below, and make no mistake, the interviews are structured in such a way as to make the speaker look like the poor, beleaguered commando who just had no choice. The underdog who’s fighting for the truth without any thought of profit for themselves. Which isn’t accurate. They had a choice, and they made it. And I don’t mean they broke some ridiculous fraternal commando code that has no effect in the real world. If that were it, I wouldn’t care, but they – and those that follow behind, using them as inspiration – can actually harm our national security, something that appears to be lost in the debate. And they did so for personal gain. I don’t say that as a bitter Army SF guy aggravated at them talking just because their jaws are moving. This isn’t about service – or even unit – rivalries. The truth is in their very own words and deeds.

Whenever I read about Matt Bissonette’s revelations, and now Rob O’neill’s, there are three main defenses, and all of them are ridiculous. I’d like to take them on one at a time.

1.  I read the book/saw the interview, and he didn’t give anything up classified.

Whenever I hear this, the first thing I think is, “How in the hell would you know?” The very reason things are classified is to ensure they remain secret. If you heard a secret, and didn’t understand it was secret, how would you know?

There’s no way anyone not read-on to the mission – civilian or prior military – could read the book and determine if there was anything classified in it. NO WAY. It’s humorous that Bissonette is now suing his lawyer for “bad advice” because the lawyer supposedly told him he’d read the book and determined it was good to go. Really? So, Matt spent ten years in a unit where he wasn’t allowed to tell even his wife what he was doing, spent every mission being restrained from saying anything that had happened to even his closest relatives, and now had written a book that would expose the most famous classified mission in recent history to the GLOBE and he thought that was okay? Because a lawyer who supposedly had a clearance said it was acceptable? Sorry. That dog don’t hunt. Matt knew better. The lawyer’s security clearance is just that: Clearance to read classified information. It doesn’t give him omnipotent ability to DETERMINE classified. It’s comparable to having a driver’s license. You’re cleared to drive a car, but if a man pulled up and said, “Tell me where this car has been”, you’d say, “I have no idea. I’m allowed to drive it, but I can’t tell you where it’s been just by looking at it”.

On top of that, the very reason there is a clearance procedure within the department of defense is precisely because even Matt himself doesn’t understand what is harmful to American interests. Having lived in that world, you’re exposed to a ton of stuff that doesn’t have any real meaning to your mission, but if revealed could be detrimental to missions that you didn’t even know were being conducted. It’s why there is a review process. So that someone else, who DOES know, can read what you’ve written and see if it has an impact. I know of instances in books and press reports that could have a definite impact right now. They haven’t yet, but the information is out there, and if anyone makes the connection, it would be detrimental. The guy who wrote it didn’t do it because he was evil. He did it the same way Matt did: He didn’t know what he was giving up. It was secret, even to him.

I can’t give out specifics, but let me put out a hypothetical: I write a book about my exploits, and include photos. In the thirty pictures I put in, all innocuous because I’m by God not going to give up classified, I have one with me getting an award or some other crap from years ago. In the crowd is a man that I’ve never met, but he’s in my room, with a bunch of other Special Forces types. Unbeknownst to me, that man is now, ten years later, doing work on behalf of the United States acting as a nerdy computer salesman in a hostile country. One look at that picture, and he’s blown, captured and tortured because of the associations with my book. I had no intention of doing that, but I just DON’T KNOW what I don’t know. It’s why books are vetted. It’s why someone other than the author needs to look at the manuscript.

This very scenario played out in Vietnam when Nick Rowe was captured. He was an SF officer, and had managed to convince the Viet Cong that he was a lowly engineer. His hometown newspaper did a glowing article on his POW status, describing his Special Forces training. Anti-war idiots visited Hanoi and handed the enemy the article, and Nick Rowe came very close to being killed, actually escaping captivity while he was being led away for execution. That newspaper certainly had no intention of putting anyone in harm’s way. Quite the opposite, they were lionizing a home-town hero, but the damage occurred nonetheless.  The fact remains that most intelligence is gleaned by open source, with our enemies reading everything they can on us to determine weakness.  With terrorism it’s pretty much 100%.  The Al Qaida version of the KGB doesn’t exist, so they rely on open source information, and the data built is done brick by brick, one tidbit at a time.  One thing that seems innocuous can be pieced together with another thing from a separate article/book that also seems innocuous.  I hear people say, “What’s the big deal?  That stuff is in Call of Duty.  It’s not secret.”  You know why it’s in Call of Duty?  Do you think it’s because that geek code-writer knew what to put in?  No.  It’s because someone talked.  And yes, in the COD case, that someone is Matt Bissonette, along with a bunch of his friends.

Matt’s story is that he thought he’d done what was necessary, coupled with a statement that he had no intention to profit. It was all about telling the story of the “team”. It wasn’t about him. An altruistic effort done solely to honor those he served with. This is belied by the facts. Take a look at his latest mea culpa on 60 minutes. He makes some telling statements. When asked if he gave up classified, he says, no, he didn’t, “To the best of my ability”. Which isn’t exactly honest. The best of his ability would have been to submit the book for review. Why didn’t he? If he had no intention of profit? Interestingly enough, there was another book about the UBL mission coming out at that time. Mark Bowden’s book, “The Finish”. The DOD revision process for Bissonette would take twelve months (Bowden had no such requirement, as he wasn’t on the ground and was basically fishing for information – which I’ll get to below). If it was all about setting the record straight, why not go the correct route? Did the lawyer convince him that waiting for the process and allowing Bowden’s book to release first would tarnish the reputation of his team? Or would waiting that long have taken the teeth out of his manuscript, losing profits by giving them to Bowden?

“Shooter” Rob Oneill’s latest interview with Bill O’reilly has him ostensibly coming to grips with going public after an emotional speaking engagement at the 9/11 museum, where he spontaneously went on stage to give his story for “closure.” Yet, by Peter Doocy’s admission (the man who initially interviewed him for the FOX special), O’neill had contacted him beforehand to film it, “in case he wanted to go public five, ten or twenty years from now.” To hear O’neill tell it, he had no intention of exposing his role, but was driven to do so by the “closure” he gave the families. Once again, this is belied by the fact that he gave a disgusting interview to Esquire the previous year complaining about how he’d killed Bin Laden and now had no military benefits. He was the greatest hero of our generation, and now he couldn’t get a job. Yeah, he can’t get a job because he just gave up his security clearance by blabbing. I’m no hero, and I get fourteen emails a day asking me if I’d like to work. But that requires a clearance, which you can’t have if you spend all your time giving up classified information to anyone who will listen on the motivational speaking circuit.  One comment in the 60 Minutes interview is telling. When asked if he provided classified information in the book, Matt’s answer is, “Not intentionally.”

Yeah, I agree. That’s why there’s a review process.

2.  It’s not fair that Generals, Admirals, and the head of the CIA can write books when the guy getting shot at can’t.

This argument is a straw man, and what’s ironic is that Matt Bissonette’s next book proves it so. Nobody said he couldn’t write his story. Only that it had to be reviewed. Generals, Admirals, and everyone else at that level do two things when they write a book.

They write about the hard life they had getting to their level or about the overarching strategic decision-making in their actions. They don’t write about tactics, techniques, and procedures. They talk about vague meetings in the oval office, or a deer hunt they were on as a child.
They get their books VETTED in accordance with the law.

Comparing their books to No Easy Day is a false analogy that plays on their rank to give Matt breathing room for relief from criminal prosecution. I mean, how is it possible to beat up the enlisted man when these generals get away with it? It’s a great legal tactic, and plays well with the population, but the two situations are not comparable. Hypocritically, when asked this very thing by the 60 Minutes interviewer, specifically whether it was right for the lowly enlisted man to write a book when the generals do so, his answer is “Absolutely”, ignoring the nuances of the process the generals went through.

But he’s got another book that just came out. That one is EXACTLY like the very generals he chastises. It’s his “How I became a SEAL” book, without specific mission information, and low and behold, he submitted it for review. Just like the generals. And amazingly, the evil department of defense said he could publish it. Anyone saying it’s unfair for generals and admirals to publish books while others are attacked for doing so have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s apples and oranges. Submit the book, get it reviewed, then publish it. Just like Matt Bissonette. Well, like Matt Bissonette’s second book, anyway.

3.  Everything on the mission was already given up. There have been magazine articles, books and movies about the mission. He didn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said.

Just because someone writes something doesn’t make it true. I’ve actually talked about this in another blog when people spout absolute fantasy about classified organizations. Yes, there has been a lot of information written about the Bin Laden raid, but nobody knew if it was accurate or not. They assumed, but didn’t know. There’s only one way to know, and that’s when the man on the ground says so.

As an example, Mark Bowden’s book appears to be, by all accounts, pretty accurate (full disclosure, I have no idea. I wasn’t there). But, right after the actual mission, before Bowden’s book, a man named Chuck Pfarrer, a former member of SEAL Team 6 with “inside sources”, came out with a book called Target Geronimo, and it’s been pretty much hammered as complete hogwash.

Just because it’s published doesn’t mean it’s accurate. And this is the cutline. Yeah, an unnamed “official” can be quoted in an article, and “sources close to the mission” can be used, but at the end of the day, it’s just speculation. When Matt Bissonette or Rob O’neill talks, it’s confirmed. Using the fact that unnamed sources gave up accurate information first as an excuse to confirm that very same information is still giving up classified. For every unnamed source that talks accurately, there’s another one spouting crap (IE – read Seymour Hersh). When men who’ve signed a non-disclosure statement talk, they confirm or deny all the stories. In the news world, someone becomes the winner, and someone becomes the loser. Unfortunately, everyone becomes the loser in the real world.

At the end of the day, all of this appears to be just he said, she said. I mean, does it really matter? Yes, it does. We don’t keep secrets because we want to. We don’t do it so we can sit in the back of a party and secretly feel superior that we know something you don’t. We do it because it protects lives.

Matt Bissonette described the launch point for the operation in Afghanistan. An innocuous base, seemingly unclassified, he felt it wouldn’t cause any harm to do so – which is a little naïve considering he’d just killed the head of al Qaida. After the book came out, that base was attacked, and an American was KIA. On 60 Minutes, he was questioned about this, as a SEAL master chief said he was responsible. His answer was that it was a stretch to say a mortar attack was a result of his book. I know he must do this in order to sleep at night, but the answer is a little too pat.

Unfortunately, I have intimate knowledge of this attack. It wasn’t a mortar. It was a synchronized suicide assault against the same classified compound Bissonette launched from. Something that had never occurred at that base. His book was released in September of 2012. The attack was in December of 2012. About enough time to study the book, determine what the enemy could effect with their limited reach, then utilize the very indigenous networks he disparages to plan an assault where the “top secret” base was located within the perimeter.

The person who was killed wasn’t a random individual walking down the street. He was Taz, a close personal friend and the man I dedicated The Widow’s Strike to. He died repelling the attack. I can’t prove that Bissonette’s book had anything to do with his death, because every terrorist who attacked was killed, but there’s one sure way to prove it didn’t.

Don’t write the damn book.

 

Update, 15 NOV

A reader commented below that not all generals do the correct thing, and brought up the case of LTG Boykin, a retired SOF commander.  He is absolutely correct, and Boykin was actually in the original blog.  I had a ton of other stuff in as well, and it was becoming too long, so I cut his example, along with other information.  In hindsight, that was a poor decision, because a) it looks like I’m hiding officer/Army wrongdoing at the expense of the enlisted/Navy, and b) his book is a prime example of the brick-building analogy I discussed at the beginning of the blog, whereby the enemy can glean information.  For the record, he was, in fact investigated, and was found to be criminally negligent of disclosing classified information.  He was not formally charged, however.  He was only given a reprimand – a scathing reprimand, but a reprimand nonetheless.  In the end, two wrongs don’t make a right.

The post The quiet professional, and why it matters appeared first on Brad Taylor, Author.

I did a piece for the blog War on the Rocks as a rejoinder to a professor at the US Army War College.  You can find the original article here.  And find my response here.  If you’ve read my posts, you know I don’t take intervention lightly.  I’ve castigated our operations in Libya, and am definitely reluctant to enter into Syria’s mess of a war, mainly because of the fallout should we “succeed” in removing Assad, but ISIL is a different breed altogether.  One that rises to my level of threat, and one that needs to be dealt with.

The post No, containing ISIL is not “good enough” appeared first on Brad Taylor, Author.

President Obama recently gave a wide ranging interview to the New York Times, and his comments on Libya made my jaw hit the floor.  I really try not to be political on this blog, but after hearing them, I couldn’t believe our foreign policy could be that naive.  Before we get to that, though, a little recap of Libya analysis done by a peon outside the administration’s foreign policy team (me).

The Libyan Conundrum, (14 March 2010 -Before we conducted airstrikes, and I completely agreed with the administration against the Republican Hawks):

“…And therein lies the rub.  The problem with doing anything at all in Libya is that we cannot predict what the rebels truly want – or even if there is a unified rebel command.  People state that getting rid of Ghadafi is the answer, but that’s only part of the equation.  What comes after will be the true test, and we can’t accurately predict what that will be…Gates has been castigated recently for saying a no-fly zone would potentially cause us to enter into a third war in the Middle East.  He’s ridiculed by people looking at half the equation, thinking our involvement will end when Ghadafi is gone.  He knows it’s more, and that just getting Ghadafi out doesn’t mean victory… The U.S. can’t just walk away like we did in Afghanistan in the ‘80s after the Soviets left.  Well, we could, but that would be foolish.  Something the administration understands.”

2. The Libyan Conundrum Part II: What Now? (20 March 2010 – After airstrikes were initiated, and we went down the rabbit hole):

“…This ‘adventure’ into Libya is one of the most ill-conceived, poorly coordinated efforts that has ever come out of the United Nations, a body famous for ill-conceived, poorly-coordinated policy.  Especially when other leaders in the region are committing the same types of atrocities, such as Saleh, the president of Yemen, who just killed 56 civilians with sniper fire.  Are we going to attack Yemen next?  While France and others are screaming for Ghadafi’s removal, I haven’t heard a single statement about whom or what sort of government would replace him.  Does anyone have any idea at all?  Does anyone care?

One thing’s for sure – I was wrong about the Obama administration understanding we can’t simply walk away after causing Ghadafi’s fall.  Apparently we can – and will.”

3. The Libyan Conundrum Part III: Marx Brothers Foreign Policy (22 April 2010 – Airstrikes ongoing, Ghadaffi is doomed).

“Am I saying we should take him out?  No, actually I’m not. Primarily, because I’m worried about what ‘leadership’ would replace him.  I’d like to think that we have some sort of secret plan in place behind-the-scenes – and that this had been thought through before committing to action. Maybe that we had found some Libyan “Thomas Jefferson” to take over.  After seeing this play out, I’m fairly sure we have no idea whether the rebels are extremists or not, and we are now blindly following a path based not on helping Libya, but simply protecting the damage to our own reputation, regardless of the cost to Libyan civilians.  We’re simply throwing good money after bad so we don’t look stupid.   Even General Ham, Commander of Africa Command and the person who oversaw the initial operations of Odyssey Dawn, told congress he was against arming the rebels because we don’t know enough about their intentions or where the weapons would end up.  What does that say about our policy?  Why is removing Ghadafi a goal when we’re unwilling to trust the very people who will replace him?  What on earth is the United States doing?”

4. The Libyan Conundrum Part IV: How Do You Like Me Now? (13  September 2012 – two days after Benghazi)

“If anything, Libya should remind us that there is never a conflict “won on the cheap”, and that victory is not achieved the moment the opposing side capitulates.  Believing such folly inevitably leads to what we now have in Libya, and a president giving a hollow promise to bring the killers to justice. ”

5. President Obama on the current Libyan chaos, in an interview conducted with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times on 8 August 2014:

“I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions. … So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day after?’ ”

 

 

 

When I heard that statement, I was astounded.  Literally flabbergasted.  This was from the President of the United States?  Really? He had to wreck a country, with all the follow on death and destruction, to learn that lesson? Well, to his credit I guess he DID learn. It’s a shame that his entire foreign policy team had to turn a sovereign nation into a terrorist mecca for that little nugget of wisdom, though. They could have simply talked to ANYONE who’s had a tour in Iraq.  Which is the ultimate irony: Obama was against the Bush administration’s attempt to reconstruct Iraq after demolishing its institutions, and yet he now realizes that that’s exactly what was needed in Libya. AFTER he pulled our troops out of Iraq.  In his words from the clip above, “…They had a despot for forty years in place…There were no traditions to build on….”

Huh, sounds vaguely familiar…did you check the Iraq tapes on CNN before going in?  Did anyone in your administration? An administration picture should be next to the word “Irony” in the next dictionary.

Or the word stupidity.

 

Disclaimer: This blog is a little more emotional than usual. Sorry.

I recently posted a blog about the coming bloodshed in Iraq, but I never expected it to come so soon. The Islamic State has taken over the town of Sinjar – a historical Yazidi home – forcing all in the town to flee for their lives or get beheaded, just like they did in Mosul, only this time, there was nowhere to run to. 40,000 people are now dying of thirst and starvation on the side of a mountain, surrounded by Islamic psychotics, and we sit here doing nothing.

I’ve had it with the dithering. Our damn government is literally trying to decide the pros and cons of delivering water and food to the people about to starve to death. 40,000 men, women and children begging for help. Genocide in the making. What in the world is our problem? There IS NO CON. Start dropping supplies, NOW.

I am ashamed to say I’m an American, while we stand by and allow these people to be slaughtered. I cannot believe we are sitting on our hands while the Islamic State rampages about. It’s time to eradicate them, and I don’t say that lightly, like an armchair blowhard yelling “Kill’em all!” The Islamic State is an abomination to every civilization on earth. They are the pinnacle of evil, and the only language they speak comes from the barrel of a gun. I mentioned in another blog that they were comparable to the motorcycle gang in the Road Warrior, and the more I think about it, the more apt that seems. They are insanely bloodthirsty killers that behead everyone who doesn’t believe like them – literally. It’s like World War Z – and they’re the zombies. They have no diplomacy, no nuance, no redeeming qualities. They have no business walking the earth, yet we still dither. Why? Is it because it’s in Iraq? Hell, pretend it’s in the non-governed badlands of Mexico. Because it very well may be there soon.

I know the talking heads will continue discussing how “complex” the situation is, and that there are “no easy solutions.” I get that. I truly do (Read some of my other blog posts if you think I’m a frothing at the mouth ideologue), but sometimes the answer really isn’t that difficult. Yes, helping the Kurds could engender them to attempt to break away and claim independence. Yes, using airpower with the Maliki government could be seen as us taking sides in a sectarian war. Yes, working with the Iraqis could mean passing intelligence to Iran. Yes, attacking IS could give cover to Assad in Syria, leaving him on the world stage saying, “We’re doing the same thing as the United States.” Yes, the administration will have to look in the mirror and realize that fleeing Iraq didn’t end the war. Yes, yes, yes, to the next fourteen “what ifs” that might happen. At the end of the day, there is one constant: NO OUTCOME WILL BE WORSE THAN THE ISLAMIC STATE. None.

We used the United Nations Responsibility To Protect doctrine to intervene in Libya, and that was based on a paltry 1000 civilians that MIGHT have been killed. We entered that conflict with the President saying, “I refuse to wait until images of slaughter and mass graves appear before taking action.”

And yet here we sit while the Islamic State slaughters with wild abandon. Where’s the R2P doctrine now? Is that only when the decisions are low cost and we can “lead from behind”? Or is it a true doctrine?

Our paralysis reminds me of training for combat trauma. When encountering a severally wounded soldier, it can be hard to determine what to do first, but some things are more critical than others. The guy could be bleeding out from multiple wounds, but what will kill him first is if he can’t breath. Our foreign policy is staring at Iraq and seeing all the wounds, then doing nothing but waving our hands about. The Islamic State has blocked the airway. Fuck all the blood, deal with that first, or the patient will die.

Saudi Arabia – the Sunni focal point – will applaud the decision. Iran – the Shiite focal point – will applaud the decision. Hell, Al Qaida will applaud the decision. The Islamic State is a disease that is the most forbidding thing I have seen in over thirty years of studying war, terrorism and insurgency. It’s time to quit dithering.

The other day, the Islamic State posted a tweet of six men just before they were beheaded. The caption read, “Kill them wherever you find them.”

That’s the only thing IS and I will agree on. Kill those Islamic State sons of  bitches wherever you find them. Starting now.

 

UPDATE 2100 8 AUG 2014

News reports are saying we’re finally dropping supplies.  Wow.  That must have been a tough decision trying to figure out how those life-saving flights would affect the poll numbers.

UPDATE 2130 8 AUG 2014

President Obama has promised airstrikes “if ISIS continues its march on Irbil. We have started humanitarian assistance to the people on Mount Sinjar….”  WTF?  So are we going to continue airdrops on a mountainside, giving the people there the life of a caveman for the forceable future?  Break the damn siege.  At least crack open a lane to let them flee.  He spent so much time trying to convince the American public of the necessity of action it made me wonder if I was the only Soldier in the United States who thought the fight was just.  He mentioned the greater political struggle inside Iraq, which is the bleeding I I talked about earlier.  Iraq is a hard, hard Rubic’s cube, but the Islamic State is NOT.  Kill them.  Now.  The entire town of Sinjar has fled.  Anyone looting on the streets of that town is the enemy.  Kill them.  Break the siege.

I appreciate that we, as a nation, are war-weary.  Trust me, after nearly a decade at it, I get that, but the enemy gets a damn vote.  At the end of the day there’s a reason we are the United States.  It isn’t about polls, it isn’t about opinions.  It’s about leadership.  I applaud President Obama for initiating operations, but I wish it were more.  Foreign fighters are flooding into Iraq because all they see is success.  Give them some pain.  Force a future foreign fighter to decide if it’s worth it.  All they see are tweets with IS men holding the heads of a Shia or Christian.

The President said, “I will not allow us to get dragged into another war in Iraq.”, but that’s not completely in our hands.  The enemy has a vote.  As he said at a press conference earlier, “We don’t control the world.”  We do control something, though.  Give the Islamic State an alternate future.

One where they’re a smoking body.

I’ve seen the massive number of tweets from celebrities on the Gaza conflict and am flabbergasted at the capricious nature of American empathy. The Israeli incursion into Gaza has apparently sparked a fire of outrage in the conscious minds of the celebrity culture, and it’s become fashionable to show support. From Selena Gomez to Mia Farrow, #FreePalestine has become the hashtag of choice. But why?

Ostensibly, it’s the number of civilian deaths, but there have been many more civilian deaths in our own backyard of Mexico due to the drug cartels, and nobody’s tweeted #FreeJuarez. Maybe it’s because they’re Palestinians, and thus deserve much greater support due to the perceived injustices they’ve endured, because a peasant in Mexico doesn’t rate. Mexican trials are recent, and the Palestinians are perceived to have been persecuted for years. But that fails the test when applied to Syria. The Syrian people have lived under the brutal dictatorship of the Assad family for generations, and the current civil war has killed more civilians than all deaths of every Arab/Israeli conflict of the last fifty years combined – yet no celebrity has ever tweeted #FreeDamascus.

So it must be the belligerents. Syria is an internal fight, Arab on Arab, but the Gaza conflict is between a western country (Israel) and the Palestinians. That must be the cause of concern.

But that doesn’t hold water when applied to Libya. The U.S. led a host of western countries to remove Ghadaffi in Libya, and then our feckless “lead from behind” strategy let the country descend into absolute chaos. Kidnappings and murders by the various militias are occurring so prominently that our foreign policy culminated with us fleeing the country last week and abandoning our embassy. Ansar al Sharia just declared an emirate in Benghazi, and has begun to purge anyone who doesn’t believe the way they do, murdering civilians left and right, yet nobody’s tweeting #FreeBenghazi. Tripoli, the capitol, is literally burning to the ground, which we saw from the rear exit ramp of a Marine Corps Osprey as we ran with our tail between our legs, but nobody’s tweeting #FreeTripoli – despite the begging and pleading from civilians in that country for help in stopping the violence. Violence that we – the West – created with our “No War” war. Makes me wonder.

In no way do I mean to detract from the suffering, but in the greater scheme of carnage and death, Gaza is a pimple on the ass of destruction, yet for some odd reason people treat it as if it were the Jewish Holocaust, when real genocide is occurring in places just around the corner. While celebrities verbally joust over the conflict in Gaza, Iraq is poised to become a cyclone of violence of Biblical proportions, and nobody seems to even notice.

Two days ago, Iraq took a huge step towards all out slaughter when Shia militias kidnapped, killed, and then hung from light poles multiple Sunni men as a warning to others who might have a mind to support the ISIS, now known as the Islamic State (IS). On the other side, IS has begun to purge Mosul, demolishing shrines and forcing Christians to flee with nothing but the clothes on their back or face a horrible death. That’s when they’re being charitable and not beheading hundreds of soldiers at a single time.

The war is coming, and when it does, it will not be a slight pinprick. It will not be Gaza. It will be a slaughterhouse, and I wonder if anyone will tweet. I mean, besides IS using twitter to flaunt their beheadings of innocents. In 2007, I was in Baghdad at the height of sectarian tensions, and we were seeing 1,000 murders a month in the morgue. Those were the ones that were found. It was easily triple that number, with scores of people disappearing without a trace. And that was an underground war, not an all out fight, which is what’s currently gathering like a storm on the horizon. Something nobody is paying attention to as they tweet about Gaza. Because that’s what’s cool. It’s not about death. It’s about being popular.

Iraq is headed towards a river of blood – and if you think I’m using hyperbole, Google ISIS on YouTube. If you can stomach the atrocities (Warning – Extremely graphic.  This website is morally reprehensible.  Do not click the link unless you want to see savagery. By no means do I condone its content and hesitated to post it here.).  The Islamic State is the personification of the motorcycle gang in The Road Warrior. Literally. It is a mass psychosis unlike the world has ever seen, a duplication of the Assassin cult in the 12th century magnified by a thousand, and eventually, they’re coming here. But nobody’s tweeting about them.

Iraq didn’t have to be this way.   To hear the talking heads on TV, the troubles hinge on religion and, “there’s nothing we can do. It’s a cauldron of violence waiting on a match. They’ve been fighting FOR A MILENNIUM.”

“They” being the Shia and Sunni factions, because, you know, those two sects just hate each other. Which is false. Iraq is about as complex as any conflict in history, with many, many different actors, and it isn’t a neat split along Sunni/Shia lines. That’s just an excuse we use in America because we like neat problems. There is a split, but it’s encapsulated in the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham – now known as the Islamic State – and not in Iraq writ large.

When people talk about Iraq they mention three things: Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. When I hear that, I think “Kurd? What religion is that?” The answer is, it isn’t a damn religion. It’s a nationality. The Kurds span four countries, from Iran to Syria, and they are Muslim. Which is to say, they encompass the general split of the Muslim world. 80% are Sunni, and 20% are Shia. So why aren’t they attacking the hell out of each other? Why aren’t the Kurdish Sunnis killing the Kurdish Shia, or vice versa? Clearly, there is something greater at play in Kurdish unity than religion. As there is something greater at play in the sectarian tensions in Iraq beyond simple Shia/Sunni hatred.

Whenever I hear that the government of Iraq has fallen sway to Iran because of the Shia religion, I shake my head. The government HAS fallen sway to Iran, but that is a symptom of the power vacuum the U.S. left versus a genuine love of the theocratic state. Iran is Persian. Iraqis are Arab. Iraq fought a war with Iran for eight years, which is about the length of time the U.S. was in the country. We lost about 4,500 soldiers. Iraq lost 500,000. I say again, Iraq lost a HALF A MILLION of their citizens in the same time frame fighting Iran. Shia and Sunni. Make no mistake, Shia or Sunni, there’s not a lot of love for the Persians. The worst that could happen would be Iran entering the current fight, because it would polarize everything on religion. It would no longer be about government, or nationality, it would be split exactly on religious lines.

The problem in Iraq isn’t a religious one – it’s a government one. Religion only comes into play because ISIS (or IS) makes it so. It isn’t about Sunni and Shia, but it has become so because of history. You want to know the primary issue in Iraq? It’s this: “The Shiites never thought they won, and the Sunnis never thought they lost.”

That quote is from a friend of mine who worked the Sunni Awakening, a Princeton grad of Arabic studies and a member of the United States Army Special Forces. A much smarter man than me, but he hit the nail on the head. He used the terms “Sunni” and “Shia” because of convenience, knowing the simplicity didn’t really explain the complexity, so I’ll try to do so now.

Religion is nothing more than a backdrop for the troubles. People talk about how the Sunnis and Shiites have fought forever, but honestly, that’s no different than the fight in Christendom. We had our own “reformation”, given a king who decided that the papal authority was not worthy (because he wanted a divorce) with a large amount of fighting and bloodshed, some horrific. Do you, as an American, look at a Catholic (or at a Protestant) and think to yourself, “I’d like to gut that guy.”

No, you don’t, and that’s no different than the split from Shia and Sunni writ large. Only a genuine radical psycho would want to kill someone for simply being Protestant or Catholic, but that’s exactly the Islamic State. They are literally frothing at the mouth nut-jobs, wanting to behead anyone who doesn’t believe like them, starting with the Shia, and they are beautifully manipulating the Iraqi population to meet that goal – along with recruiting western foreign fighters, including some from the US. When they’re done killing in Iraq, make no mistake, they’re moving on. And the west is the target. Don’t believe me? Believe the words of the first U.S. suicide bomber in Syria, when he says in his martyrdom tape, “We’re coming for you.”

I don’t mean to downplay the Shia/Sunni split, because the comparison to Christianity is less than perfect, and there are distinct differences, including some serious bloodshed, but there are more parallels than people want to admit. People talk about how long these two sects have been fighting, using that as a convenient blanket for Iraq, but they fail to understand the underlying cause inside Iraq. And that is, religion is secondary. Tribalism comes first.

Iraq has a national identity, but Maliki has failed to unify it. Anyone who says differently, pulling up the sawhorse of Sykes-Picot, fails to understand the very meaning of the nation-state. The lines weren’t perfect, but they were by no means ridiculous. Saddam Hussein himself understood this, and worked hard to solidify them. But he had a problem, namely that he was a sadistic dictator, and he couldn’t rely on the goodwill of all. He did what’s known as “Coup-proofing” his levers of power. To do that, he resorted to people he trusted. First, the tribes of Tikrit, then of other tribes. Saddam was Sunni, and thus, the men he chose were Sunni. He didn’t do it because of religion, he did it for survival, using trusted friends. They were in his tribe, and happened to be Sunni. He didn’t build a “Sunni state”. He built a state that would allow him to survive, and religion took a backseat. As I said, 80% of the Kurds are Sunni, and yet he dropped nerve gas on them. Why? Because the Kurds were a threat, and it was never about religion. It was about controlling the country.

Fast forward to 2008, when Maliki took over. He did the exact same thing. He never thought he’d won, and was petrified of swinging from a lamppost, as had happened when the Ba’athists ruled. When we left, he resorted to what he knew: “Coup Proofing”. We should have expected nothing less. The man had lived his entire life watching his friends get executed. Why did we think he would govern any differently? We could have influenced that, but the administration chose to leave. From that decision one can draw a direct line to ISIS taking over half the country.

We made a lot of mistakes in Iraq – starting with going in in the first place – but out of all of them, leaving was the worst. It takes years to build a cohesive government – especially given the trauma Iraq had been through. Hell, it took us nine years to even ratify the U.S. constitution, yet we thought we could leave a country that had experienced the evil of Saddam Hussein within four years of establishing a nascent democracy? Really? They NEEDED our guidance. Needed our help. We, in the United States, looked at the country and said, “Your ball now”. Plenty of Iraqi’s – Sunni and Shia – said, “Don’t do this. Please….”

And we did. As for the argument of “It’s all Iraq’s fault. They wouldn’t give us a Status of Forces Agreement”, I call bullshit – as will anyone who knows about the end-game. PM Maliki wanted us to stay. He went so far as to tell us he’d sign a decree – outside of the government – that our soldiers would be protected. We would have none of that. It was time to go, based on the political winds in Washington. We demanded Maliki bring it to his parliament, and we knew the proposal would lose. It did.

Think I’m making up the state of U.S. commitment? Take a look at Afghanistan right now. Karzai – the president of Afghanistan – has told us repeatedly he wants us out. We presented him with a SOFA for continued operations and he has refused to sign it. What are we doing in Afghanistan? Running away? No. We decided to wait him out, letting the elections go in the hopes that the new guy would sign it. Don’t talk to me about Maliki.   The differences are too stark. He wanted us to stay, and we didn’t. Karzai wants us to go, and we won’t. We could have stayed in Iraq. Period.

Maliki was left to his own devices, floundering in a world of tribalism, and he did what he knew best: Coup Proofing. Iran became his protector, and the military became his enemy. He was fearful of Ba’athist influence (Sunni was a sideshow – they just happened to be so), and he began his purges, wrecking eight years of American work. We’d picked men out of merit, he turned them out because of Tribe. We trained the Sunni Awakening, he saw a threat. I could go on, but the answer in Iraq isn’t Sunni versus Shia. It’s about a population that doesn’t trust its government. At least it was.

Now that the Islamic State is on the scene, and Iran is contributing troops to fight them, it has most definitely become religious, so much so that I fear there is no turning back. Maliki could have tried to use a national identity to fight IS, but he chose Iranian help. To any Sunni watching, having Persians in their country fighting can mean only one thing: Religion has triumphed over nationalism.

Make no mistake; ISIS/IS is a religious endeavor, so much so that it scares the hell out of both Iran and Saudi Arabia – two of the staunchest religious countries in existence on both sides of the fault line. ISIS wants a war between Sunnis and Shiites. Period. That is its goal, and, due to the incompetence of the Maliki government, they’re about to get it. There is potential for enormous bloodshed in Iraq, and it’s coming closer and closer. When that happens, I doubt there will be any hashtags proclaiming #FreeBaghdad. The celebrities will just sit back and tweet about missing girls in Nigeria for a day and a half, oblivious to the slaughter.

Right up until a group of American foreign fighters, trained in the deadly arts of terrorism at an IS camp, come home, slipping through our nets with a blue passport and an American flag. They’ll cause an attack greater than 9/11. We’ll be forced to intervene, stepping once more into Iraq to eradicate the nascent Islamic State, or face an onslaught of further attacks.

When that happens, we’ll see the celebrity hashtags appear. Against the United States.

I’ve received numerous emails, texts, and Facebook messages asking me my opinion on the Bowe Bergdahl release/swap for five Taliban commanders, and to each I replied, “There’s too much smoke and not enough fact.  Everything is political posturing”, and that’s where I still stand, but the cacophony in the press has gotten so loud it’s obscuring whatever truth remains.  The only thing I’m going to try to do is clear the air regarding some of the information out in the media.

For instance, on the left, at the Huffington Post, an Australian civilian who obviously knows well the US military culture and our national security dilemmas discusses statements made by Senator McCain with someone who was apparently around twelve when Bowe was taken into captivity.  In the hipster’s esteemed scholarly mind, he enlightens the Australian on the nuances.  At around the 1 minute 40 second mark, he states, “You have to let them go.  This is how ‘international war law’ works.  It’s in the constitution.”

“International War Law…”  “It’s in the Constitution…”  What an idiot.  Why is he even given the ability to speak on the subject?  Much less on camera.

Bergdahl’s father made the mistake of showing off his Rosetta stone knowledge in the Rose Garden, and on the right you have conservatives hyperventilating that a CIA analyst stated he was speaking Arabic and had just sanctified the White House for Islam – and the President is SMILING about it.  If it were me, I’d fire the vaunted analyst, because she can’t even recognize the language, much less what he was saying.  He was speaking Pashtu, something he’d been trying to learn since his son had been taken, and from the best I can find, he said, “I love you.  I am your father.” While I don’t understand why he thought it was a good idea to speak in the same language as the Taliban on national television, he wasn’t giving the White House to Islam.

The statements get more and more ridiculous as the days go on, so here’s a little clarity from the main talking points:

On the right:

1. “We’ve just put a bulls-eye on all soldiers and Americans.  Everyone will be trying to kidnap them to exchange them for prisoners.”

I hate to tell all the people spouting this line, but the terrorists pretty much know the “exchange hostages for prisoners” routine.  It’s one of the top reasons hostage situations occur in the first place.  From the ETA/Basque separatists in Spain to the Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian diaspora, they have always demanded prisoners in exchange for hostages.  Al Qaida knows the value of western hostages, and in fact gleans most of their income from ransoms.  Hell, even Hollywood gets this.  You can’t have a terrorist in a movie without him demanding the release of his “brothers”, from the evil genius in the original bit of Chuck Norris cinematic glory called “The Delta Force” to the more modern Arabic terrorist caricature in Arnie’s “True Lies”.  Even the fake terrorist Hans Gruber in “Die Hard” made the fake demand to release a trove of terrorists currently held in prison to cover up his theft of money.  The Taliban/AQ/Haqqani network would actively be seeking to capture US soldiers and personnel whether or not Bowe was released.  It’s not going to increase because of the transfer of Taliban prisoners.

In fact, it might actually help those who are unfortunate enough to be captured.  In the recent past, if a soldier was taken on the battlefield, he could pretty much guarantee his fate:  Fourteen or fifteen hours of gruesome torture, then a beheading.  It happened in Iraq on multiple occasions, and Bowe was literally the first time a modern insurgent didn’t brutally kill a soldier outright.  The outcome may persuade future insurgents to keep the poor bastard alive instead of chopping his head off.

2.  “We just destroyed a two-hundred year iron-clad rule about negotiating with terrorists.  Katy bar the door, it’s the apocalypse.”

Once again, history tells a different tale.  The first time we negotiated with terrorists was when Thomas Jefferson was president.  He paid bribes to the Barbary pirates to keep them from taking US ships and holding the crews hostage.  Eventually, we got sick of that and sent in the Marines – founding the line in the Marine Corps hymn “…to the shores of Tripoli”, when we stormed the place and kicked a little Pirate ass.  But before that happened, make no mistake, we were paying money for hostages.

Since then we have engaged in a multitude of negotiations to secure hostages.  Everyone knows about Iran Contra, but probably doesn’t realize we released a man with American blood on his hands to free a British citizen in Iraq as recently as 2007, and pressured other countries to release terrorists for our own citizens throughout the years, including the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in 1985.  It does happen, more than people are aware and typically doesn’t make the news.  And if you think the five for one deal was bad, in 2011 Israel released from prison 1,027 confirmed terrorists with the blood of over five hundred Israelis, all for one soldier.

3. “There’s a report saying Bergdahl converted to Islam and swore fealty to be a mujahidin…He’s a collaborator!  We just released five Taliban for a damn traitor!”

A major news organization broke a story a couple of days ago about some private “subcontractor” working in Afghanistan who gleaned “intelligence” on Bergdahl, and that the reporter had seen the SITREPS detailing him shooting weapons, converting to Islam, and generally acting like a collaborator.  While all of that may ultimately prove true, there is no context to the reporting.  No evaluation of the viability of the information.  It’s just a piece of paper that could have been typed by a monkey in the dark, yet it’s now being treated as concrete fact.

Every true source report comes with a rating that details reliability and placement and access to the information.  In other words, was this someone who heard from a friend who had dinner with a man who knew someone in the Haqqani network who said blah blah, and we’d never dealt with him before, or was this a reliable, vetted source with access to the close ring of the Haqqani network?  Right off the bat, because it’s from a private intelligence contractor, and I’ve worked in that world since leaving the military, it raises the hair on my neck, telling me there’s an agenda here.  Even if there isn’t, intelligence reporting is never black and white.  You are always trying to penetrate the motivations of the source.  I have never seen an official report that didn’t say, “Contact may have been intending to influence as well as inform.”

Right after 9/11 I was working with a government intelligence agency that was, shall we say, solely focused on finding Osama bin Laden, and we were receiving reports at a flood level.  One said he was in a cave with failing kidneys, on a dialysis machine.  Another said he was selling oranges in Shkin.  A third said he was in a caravan north of Tora Bora rallying the troops.  We had to evaluate each and every one for veracity, and would never have gone on TV and said, “Bin Laden’s on a dialysis machine selling oranges in Shkin for money for troops in Tora Bora.  We got a report.  It’s got to be fact”, yet that’s exactly what the news is doing with this ridiculous private report that’s just now coming to light.  I’d give it about as much credence as my daughter telling me the latest gossip she read on the Internet.

On the left:

1) “He was a soldier.  It’s our sacred duty to get him back.  We had to do something.  We never leave a man behind.”

I’ll agree it’s a sacred duty, but there’s a limit to what that something is.  If we mean we’ll do anything to get Bowe home, then maybe we should have just told the Taliban in 2009, “We’ll pull out completely from Afghanistan.  We start leaving tomorrow and will cease all offensive combat operations right now.”  Oh, wait, Brad, that’s crazy!  If you think that, then – like me – you believe there is a limit to what we’ll do to get our POWs home, and in my mind we crossed it by the release of five hard-corps Taliban.

When I hear the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs say, “This was our last, best chance,” I call BS (and not just because he posted it to Facebook.  Welcome to the new JCS).  It was more than that.  The five were tied up into a greater attempt to negotiate with the Taliban and gain an ability to successfully withdraw our troops, leaving Afghanistan to fend for itself.  Talk about a poke in the eye.  “We’re leaving now, hey, no hard feelings, but we’re going to give the Taliban some help on our way out the door.”  Doing something does not mean harming our national interests to fulfill our sacred duty.  You think Admiral Stockdale, after years of torture, would have agreed to President Nixon getting on TV and saying, “We were completely wrong, and all the men in your prison are war criminals.  Now can we have them back?”  I think not.

We have assurances that the five won’t harm the US, but that’s naïve.  How do you define “harm”?  Say they return to the battlefield in a year (conveniently after our drawdown) – like they’re already saying – helping the Taliban to regain control of Afghanistan?  Is that in our national interests?  I mean, was Bergdahl’s release worth actively harming the very national security goals we’ve spent the last thirteen years trying to achieve?  Not in my mind.

As for never leaving a man behind, tell that to William Buckley, Korean war veteran and Chief of Station in Lebanon in 1983.  He was captured and tortured unmercifully for over a year, with videos detailing his torment delivered to our embassy.  He eventually died from the treatment.  He was not freed because of the cost it would incur to bring him home.  Make no mistake, we tried.  And he was a much better man than Bergdahl.

John Stuart Mills said, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

2. “This is how wars end.  You exchange prisoners of war.  They were leaving GITMO regardless.”

First, the damn war isn’t over, and I’m absolutely weary of hearing those words.  Just because we’re pulling the bulk of our troops out doesn’t mean the fighting will cease.  Maybe if the war was really ending, I’d agree with the sentiment, but we’re going to have upwards of ten thousand troops still in country, so how is the war over?  Tell that to the ten thousand still there.  As far as America is concerned, the damn war has been over for five years, when the press quit covering it.  Last time we “ended” a war in this fashion was when we fled Iraq.  Google ISIS and Iraq and take a look at what this administration calls “peace”.  We weren’t leaving Bergdahl on the backside of the moon, with no way to return.  In fact, we aren’t leaving at all.  Just drawing down, and the war will go on.  There was no clock on getting him back.

Secondly, the Taliban have never been classified as POWs in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.  When I was chasing them, they were classified as “illegal combatants”, meaning we would treat them in accordance with the law of land warfare, but they would not act in accordance with that same law.  Meaning they’d cut your head off if captured.  They are not soldiers, and calling them POWs gives them a legitimacy they crave, but do not deserve.

Thirdly, in that vein, we didn’t return all POWs after WWII.  Some we tried at Nuremberg and hung until they were dead.  At least two of the Taliban we released have been indicted by the UN for war crimes of massacring civilians before 9/11.  Why did we give them to Qatar instead of the Hague?  Could it be because that didn’t fit our agenda for getting the hell out of Afghanistan?  Could it be because when a war truly ends, there’s a winner and loser, and a reset where we begin reengaging the belligerent country on our terms?  That didn’t happen in Vietnam, or Iraq, and apparently that’s the new normal.  Welcome to “ending the war.”

3. “Bergdahl’s health was failing.  It was now or never.”

The administration was shown a proof of life video, and in it Bergdahl apparently looked pretty damn bad.  This spurred the administration to accelerate their efforts to save the man from certain death.  It gives a little bit of a Jack Bauer, “We’re running out of time!” for the administration to hide behind, but unfortunately, facts get in the way.  The video in question was shown to the administration in January, and a full six months later we get him back?  If Jack Bauer operated that way, the entire United States would be a nuclear slag-heap.  This whole argument is a straw man – buttressed by the video of the transfer where Bergdahl looks perfectly healthy – designed to hide the ulterior motive of getting the five Talibs out to enhance our negotiations with the opposition and facilitate our withdrawal.

Okay, I’m done.  I didn’t even broach the question of desertion, because there’s no doubt in my mind that he did desert, and I think that fact will be borne out once the Army investigates. Whether he was in his right mind is another question, but it’s not even worth my time to discuss ridiculous capture scenarios.  He walked off, period, with no intent of coming back.

In the end, there’s too much partisan political bickering on all sides to determine the true intent of Bergdahl’s release.  There is much more that will come to light eventually, and some that will remain hidden forever. It’s a sad mess of politics, which has now snared the military in its disgusting embrace, with CJSC Dempsey and others in uniform coating their political asses in the offal of the whole affair in an attempt to defend the indefensible.

“They make a wasteland and call it peace.”

–Tacitus

 

Every time Edward Snowden opens his mouth, another fabrication appears.  In an interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams, he apparently took affront to being called a “simple hacker” and took great pains to explain that he was, in fact, just like James Bond.

“I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover overseas — pretending to work in a job that I’m not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine,”

Uh…no.  Like his lie that he could wiretap the President of the United States from his desk, that statement is a whopper of an exaggeration at best and a complete fabrication at worst.

Being a “spy” is a hell of a lot more than getting a fake passport handed to you and working out of a cubicle in Geneva, Switzerland.  If all it took were a phantom job and a different name, then most Americans are, in fact, spies.  At least the ones who drank in college when they were underage.  How many underage drinkers have sauntered into a bar with false identification – a different name and birthdate – and told the bouncer they were working construction or some other BS job story?  Does that make them a spy?  No, but they have MORE in common with being a spy than that ass Snowden, because at least they were on the streets using their skills instead of growing pale staring at a computer screen.   While he grandstands about the “traditional espionage training” he received, the truth is he was sent home from Switzerland, then fired from the CIA.

Him saying he’s a spy is an insult to every Operations Officer at the CIA, and not just because he’s a traitor, but because he has no idea what it actually takes to live in that world.  The CIA’s own website, says it requires 18 months to even get probational status, and then years of overseas work in hazardous areas that Snowden has never even imagined.  Next, he’ll be telling us he’s a SEAL, because that’s where all the liars eventually end up.

This man is a “spy”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Spann, Operations Officer with the Special Activities Division of the CIA, KIA in Afghanistan.

 

This man is a shit-weasel:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the same interview, when asked if he’s a patriot, Snowden says he is, then states, “Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen…”

Oh, really?  Is that why you keep offering to tell whatever country will listen US  capabilities?  First China, then Brazil, and most recently, Germany.  Was that your patriotic duty, designed to protect your country?

Later on, in a confusing bit of language, when asked if he was working with the Russians, he says, “I’m not a spy, which is the real question.”  Funny, I thought you just said you were?  I’ll agree with him on this one, though.  He’s definitely not a spy, but there is an intelligence term that applies to Edward Snowden.

It’s “asset”.   As in “Any resource at the disposition of an intelligence organization for use in an operational or support role. Often used with a qualifying term such as agent asset or propaganda asset.”

He’s no spy, but he’s certainly being cultivated as an asset.  That title fits him perfectly.

After my first GI Jennifer blog about opening combat arms positions to women I received numerous emails and comments from all sides of the spectrum.  One thread that kept reoccurring was that if a woman could meet the standard, she should be allowed to enter the combat MOS, whatever that may be.  For elite units, this argument is fine, as they are all volunteer organizations, but for the average combat arms position, such as Infantry, Field Artillery, or Armor, the more I thought about it, the more unfair I realized the argument is.  Believe it or not, it’s setting up gender discrimination the opposite way – against males.

What is being discussed right now is opening up combat arms to woman who want it.  In effect, to those who volunteer, but even now, that number isn’t very high.  In a recent Army – wide survey, few women wanted a combat assignment, with fewer than 8% saying they did.  Out of that, more than 30% percent who did say they wanted combat, wanted to fly with TF 160 SOAR, something I wholeheartedly support.  Very few said they wanted to be in other combat arms positions like the Infantry.  Some have said the survey was skewed, but from my experience, that’s about the same as the males.  In my first Infantry platoon of thirty-two men, only seven said they wanted the Infantry.  The rest ended up there because there was nothing else available (see below), or they didn’t score high enough on entrance exams for another technical MOS (or they were lied to by the recruiter – something that did happen.  In my initial counseling, I actually had three who told me they wanted to be Forest Rangers and the recruiter told them the Infantry was perfect training).  I was shocked at the time, because I certainly wanted and fought to get Infantry, but it didn’t mean they served any less admirably.  The germane fact is that they didn’t get a choice.  Why shouldn’t that be the case with the females?  Why should the males be forced into the Infantry, while the females are allowed to volunteer?  If we’re saying that everything is gender neutral, and females can serve in all combat arms positions, then why the voluntary choice?  The original lawsuit stated that the females were being discriminated against because they weren’t allowed to serve in combat, but there’s a flip side to being “allowed”, and that’s being forced.

Take this hypothetical example:  A male who grew up working with computers graduates high school and goes to the recruiter looking for a computer programing job in the Army.  At the same time, a female with no special skills walks into the same recruiter’s office.  For the sake of simplicity, say there are two positions available:  an Infantry MOS and a computer MOS.  The two recruits take initial entry exams and the male scores significantly better than the female for the computer MOS.  Under current considerations, all of that is irrelevant.  Unless the female volunteers for the Infantry, the male will be told the only position available is the Infantry MOS and the female will, by default, obtain the computer MOS because she’s female.  In effect, no matter how much better suited the male is for the computer MOS, he will be forced into the Infantry or not join the Army – all because of his gender.  Is that fair and equal treatment?  If we determine that females can do the mission, then they should get the mission whether they want it or not, just like the males.  The initial assignment should be based on equal testing and skills regardless of gender.

Take that one step further:  In the event of a draft for a large-scale war, the primary MOS needed will be those involving grunts – the combat roles for such things as the WWII Normandy invasion or island hopping in the pacific.  If we’re proposing that females should be allowed into combat arms like the males, then shouldn’t they also be subject to the flip side and be forced into the combat arms role in the event of a draft?  If everything is equal, then why is it only males that are required to sign up for the selective service?  Shouldn’t the females also be subject to the draft?  Think about that the next time someone says a female shouldn’t be discriminated against by not being allowed in the combat arms role.  There is a flip side, and if we’re saying everything is equal then let’s really be equal.  I’ve heard the comment over-and-over from females saying, “I couldn’t do it, but if someone else can, they should be allowed to.” But that’s not really fair.  The males don’t get that choice.  In the event of a draft, they’re getting a one-way bus ticket to Fort Benning and an Infantry MOS.  They won’t get the option of saying, “I couldn’t do it…”  Now what’s fair and equal about that?

The initial reaction will be, “That’s extreme, we won’t have a draft and Brad’s just using scare tactics”, but take a look at what’s happening right this minute:  We’re drawing the Army down to the lowest levels since before World War II, and the world isn’t getting any safer.  Russia is pushing in the Ukraine, North Korea is testing our boundaries in the Far East, and Syria still threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had a pretty good quote about the United States military predictions.  He said “Our record of predicting where we will use military force since Vietnam is perfect — we have never once gotten it right.”  Just because we don’t think there will be another major high-intensity conflict doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

This entire issue is larger than simply allowing select females to get what they want.  If we’re truly arguing that gender is irrelevant, then the primary mission of the military should come to the fore: protecting the nation.  And that mission has more to it than simply career aspirations.  Fighting for the “right” to serve in combat could have unintended consequences beyond our current perception of what’s “fair”.  There might come a time where our sons AND daughters are on the bus to Fort Benning.

Of course, this is all hypothetical food for thought, as this issue is truly about political correctness and not fairness.  I don’t believe for a minute that any of that will happen.  The US population is happy to allow others to seek their dreams out of choice, but will in no way stand for their own daughters being forced.  It does bring up an interesting dilemma, though.  If females are allowed into all combat MOS’s, I wonder if the ACLU will take up the case on behalf of the male who was discriminated against solely because of his biological gender, just as they did for the four female service members?

 

When the Department of Defense announced that it would be opening combat roles to women, I immediately began receiving questions regarding my opinion on this issue.  I strove mightily to be noncommittal, and begged off for the most part because I really didn’t want to poke the sore.  Then, a couple of days ago, 2LT Sage Santegelo wrote an OpEd in the Washington post decrying the “double standard” she endured, which made her fail the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course, and so I decided to blog.  Against my wife’s better judgment, because no matter what I type I’m going to aggravate someone, here’s what I think.

First, whenever I hear this issue debated, the two sides are typically talking about separate topics, and neither seems to understand that.  The argument has two consistent points:  A. Should woman engage in direct combat, with all the baggage that entails, and B. Can woman handle the physical demands of the Military Occupational Specialties that engage in direct combat, whether bullets are flying or not.

I’m not going to deal with point A, since it’s a sociological element beyond the scope of this blog.  I don’t know whether or not America will crumble if women start coming home in body bags, or whether unit cohesion will be destroyed because all the males will be focused on either protecting the females or trying to bed them.  Only another war, with multiple engagements over time, will decide that fate.  I will say that, personally, I have no problem with women engaging in direct combat, and have known plenty of females on active duty who I would not have any reservations whatsoever being on my left or right during a fire-fight.  It isn’t a question of the female gender’s leadership, courage or judgment.

Point B, on the other hand, does cause me some concern.  People say this issue is no different than the integration of the Army in the fifties and sixties, but to me, that makes about as much sense as all the talking heads who compare Vietnam to Iraq or Afghanistan.  Topically, there are some similarities, but at the root, where the solution will be found, they are profoundly different.  The fact remains that women and men are not the same.  Period.  Most of the differences are irrelevant, but one is not: Women, as a gender, are inherently physically weaker than men.  I know that might mark me as a chauvinist, but it’s simply a fact, and that fact could very well cause someone’s death.

My argument here is about selected units, and not combat in and of itself.  People may be scratching their heads right now, saying, “But one of your primary characters is Jennifer Cahill, a woman you put in combat situations.  Even Pike Logan appreciates her abilities.”  And that’s absolutely true.  There are plenty of combat units in which females are currently banned from serving within, but only because of point A – engaging in combat.  Point B – the physical demands of the job – doesn’t really come into play.  Not all combat jobs are equal in physical demands.  Can females drive a tank?  Sure.  Can they fire artillery?  You bet.   They can fly a fighter, drive a submarine, man an air defense gun, be a combat engineer, and successfully tackle a plethora of other combat jobs  out there if they want to get their jihad on.  In fact, they may actually be better equipped than men for some of them.  A recent study showed that woman, which make up 10% of the Army aviation corps, only account for 3% of accidents, and that mixed-gender Apache crews had better performance than all-male crews.  But there are also combat jobs that require enough physical ability to mandate keeping a ban on those specific occupational specialties.  This very thing can be seen on the national sports stage.  There’s a reason that Danica Patrick can race NASCAR competitively but there aren’t any woman in the NFL, and it’s all about physical ability.  If we want true gender equality, then let’s stop having the Olympics with females racing females and males racing males.  Throw them all in together.  In the 2012 summer Olympics, the fastest female marathon time ever recorded would have finished in 20th place against the males.   

This entire turmoil started, like most things in America, with a lawsuit by four females service members who stated they were being discriminated against because of their gender.  In effect, they didn’t have the same opportunities for advancement because they weren’t allowed to get shot at.  In the words of one, “I left in 2011 when my active commitment was complete, in large part because I felt the combat exclusion policy limited my opportunities in the military.”  On the whole, I find this a straw man argument.  The highest ranking general our country ever had – General Eisenhower – was in charge of not only all of American forces during World War II, but ALL allied forces in the greatest war the world has ever seen, and he hadn’t served a single day in combat.  Not one.  In fact, he spent most of his time in staff positions.  He was promoted because of his capabilities, period, not because of some mythical badge of honor after having been shot at.  And the promotions were deserved, as history will attest. The straw man of “limited opportunity” does not hold up.  In modern combat, from Desert Storm through Operation Enduring Freedom, for every combat arms position there have been roughly three support positions, mostly filled by men who will never see combat.  Are we to believe that 70% of the military has no hope for advancement?

The purpose of our military is to fight and win our nation’s wars.  Period.  It isn’t a social experiment designed to make sure everyone gets everything they want, regardless of the needs of national defense.

The fact is that males and females have different physical abilities, and all the wishing in the world won’t change that.  The Army has had lower physical training standards for females as long as there have BEEN standards, not because it’s patronizing of women, but because females as a group are simply not as strong as men. A multitude of physiological studies have been conducted to define what PT Test is best suited for determining fitness for the Army, and the Army Physical Fitness Test has gone through multiple changes – four in my time in the military alone – but one thing has always remained consistent: The male standard was higher than the female standard.  Currently, for a 20-year-old male to pass the pushups with the bare minimum – in effect, do just enough to remain in the Army – he needs to do 42 (for the uninitiated, a score of 60 is minimum on any Army APFT event).  For a 20 year old female to get the maximum score possible – be the top, ass-killing cream of the crop – she needs to do the exact same.  42 pushups. The bare minimum time for males to remain in the Army on the 2 mile run is 15 minutes and 54 seconds.  A perfect score for females is 15 minutes and 36 seconds. This isn’t a reflection of chauvinism in the US Army.  It’s a reflection of basic facts gleaned through years of research.  In the Marines, every male has to do a minimum of 3 pullups.  The females have to do what’s called a flexed-arm hang, basically hanging from the bar for a minimum of fifteen seconds.  The Marines decided to make all standards the same, and chose the 3 pullup minimum.  Before they were set to implement it Marine Corps wide, they tested it at recruit training.  55% of the females failed, causing them to reconsider, as they might be forced to kick out a hell of a lot of Marines.

Once again, I’m not saying keep the ban on women in combat as a blanket statement, but I DO think we need to be smart about how we integrate.  Certain combat units are physically demanding, and that physicality is beyond what the average female can accomplish – especially over the long term.  Before I get stoned as a Neanderthal, I’m not the only one who says this.  Last summer, a Marine Corps Captain made the same argument, stating that females have no place in the infantry.  The captain speaks from the experience of two separate deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan working alongside the infantry, and the toll it took on her body.  Yes, the captain is a female.  More importantly, a collegiate athlete, and a Marine.  She gave her opinion in an article for the Marine Corps Gazette because the Marines were about to admit the first two females to their infantry training as a precursor to what we are debating today.  Both failed.  Since that time, fourteen females have attempted the course, and all have failed.  Only one made it to the second day (make no mistake, a ton of men failed as well).

2LT Santegelo makes the case that because she was treated like a female in OCS, with female standards, she wasn’t prepared for the follow-on Infantry course.  In effect, a self-licking ice cream cone – and an unintentionally embarrassing indictment of her mindset.  So she knew she was going to the Infantry Officer’s school, and knew her physical training was not as rigorous as the males, and yet did nothing on her own to prepare?  Does she not realize that there isn’t a man out there who, before attempting Ranger school, Special Forces Assessment and Selection, or Navy BUD/S, did not rely solely on his unit PT, but instead put in the extra sweat and hours to ensure success?  In her words, “Female lieutenants aren’t as prepared as male lieutenants for the Infantry Officer Course’s tests of strength and endurance because they’ve been encouraged to train to lesser standards.”  So because the Marine Corps didn’t dictate a harder PT schedule she failed to make it past day one?  And that’s the Marine Corps’ fault for treating her like a female to begin with?  But I digress.

2LT Santegelo argues that women have performed exceptionally well in combat, and uses a few real world examples, but in so doing she confuses the issue like everyone else.  The examples she gives all revolve around point A – Should women be allowed in combat, whereas she failed the Infantry course because of point B – She couldn’t physically handle the tasks of the MOS.   As I said earlier, it’s not a question of courage, judgment, or leadership.  It’s a question of strength.  Humping a rucksack in the Hindu Kush at 13,000 feet is hard, demanding work, and that work has nothing to do with pulling a trigger.  But maybe the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course standards are “unnecessarily high”.  Maybe that course has been knocking the males about for no damn good reason for years.  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, GEN Martin Dempsey, is on record saying that if enough females fail any combat occupational standard, that standard would have to be justified as necessary.  Getting rid of the brutal first 48 hours of the Marine Infantry course is one way to solve the problem, but unfortunately, the true standard is Infantry combat, on a two-way rifle range, and that is unforgiving.

I know people will say I’m simply “protecting the tab” and trying to keep females out of Special Forces or Infantry, but I’m not.  My fictional character Jennifer Cahill provides a tangible contribution to the realities of the global war on terror that the military currently does not recognize – despite Hollywood portrayals to the contrary.  The Israeli Defense Force is continually bandied about as a model for female integration (which in this case is a little disingenuous precisely because the IDF prohibits females from direct combat roles), and they actually provide a very good example.  In 1973, Sayeret Matkal – the Israelis version of 1st SFOD-D – conducted Operation Spring of Youth, a mission pulled straight out of a Pike Logan novel.  They penetrated Beirut and eliminated three PLO leaders who were responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre.  They infiltrated the stiff security as tourist couples, with half the force dressed as females (because females in Israel don’t do these missions, despite what everyone says).  Now, would you rather try to trick a hostile security force into believing you’re a couple out on a date with a guy who’s wearing a bad wig and a bra stuffed with socks, or a female with skills you trust?  For me, it’s the female all the way.  There is a role for females in combat.

The endstate of this entire effort shouldn’t be about egalitarianism.  It should be about national security.  If including females in military occupational specialties previously banned doesn’t detract from our combat effectiveness, then by all means let’s do so.  But if it does, then let’s have the courage to say so.  Combat alone should not keep females from serving in a job, but by the same token, gender equality, in and of itself, isn’t a strong enough argument to open up every military occupational specialty.  There remains a need for a logical, unemotional appraisal of the best way to secure our nation, regardless of gender.

Because at the end of the day, someone’s life will be on the line, which should weigh more heavily than someone’s career aspirations.