Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) is "indistinguishable from magic"

[Polish_Silver]

The atlantic's view

About 6 months ago, the atlantic monthly ran a feature article claiming that we had incompetent generals in both wars.

Until Vietnam, generals had to win or they got booted. No excuses, even overwhelming enemy forces.

The Darwinian process meant that only consistent winners would rise to the top and remain there. Since Vietnam,
Generals have a sort of "tenure".

This article had the perspective that the wars were winnable in the first place.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: General Bolger

Astonas, I highly recommend the documentary, "most dangerous man in America" , about the Pentagon Papers.

My memory is a bit hazy, but there is a recording of Nixon talking to Kissinger. Nixon is discussing using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and Kissinger says he should not do it because he would go down in history as a butcher.

[LorenS]

Re: General Bolger

Precisely.

There was no military need to attack Iraq. Hussein was hemmed in by no fly zones, and he was an excellent counterweight to Iran.


Perhaps the only reason we did go in was to satisfy the Saudis that did not forget the attack on Iraqi Kuwait in 1989, and feared they would be next.

The U.S. is not going to solve the 1,000 year division of Sunni and Shiite. Now we have left Iran with no viable counterweight, and possible nuclear weapons at some point.

In my opinion the second Iraq invasion was nothing more than a "family" feud. George W wanted finish what his dad started. I don't see much more to it than that even now. It's been the disaster I expected and maybe more so.

I'm not huge expert on foreign affairs, but one thing is pretty obvious. If you interfere it becomes your problem. I'm not anti war, I'm not an isolationist but there are not a lot of things the US has done overseas in the last 40 years that I support.

[jk]

Re: What magic, what technology?

If voters had been told that up front, the war would not have happened.

.

voters WERE told that. eric shinseki lost his job for telling them.

[Woodsman]

Re: What magic, what technology?

Of course the war was definitely declared. And numerous democrats were stating that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped. (There was a long list posted on another thread a few months ago).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution

There were also a number of reasons for the justification other than WMD's. Some were reasonable, some were questionable. In spite of all this it was still not good political or military need to go after Hussein. We already had given assurances to our allies in the region of U.S protection, which they had seen in our rescue of Kuwait.

Regime change was the goal. The justification was because Hussein's regime had become one "that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world".

Mission accomplished on regime change, but as the rest of the world knew then and knows now the prima facie cause for invasion was false.

The remaining points in Bush's argument were and remain tangential. Such behavior was tolerated and at times encouraged of Hussein and the other autocrats and dictators whom we count as clients in the region. It's the way business is done and hardly a reason to go to war.



The Neocons expressed the belief that regime change would "change the Middle East so as to "deny support for militant Islam by pressuring or transforming the nations and transnational systems that support it." In the face of the breakdown of Iraq, the rise of ISIS and the present disastrous geopolitical realities, time has proven this the fantasy it was said of at the time.

Of course now almost everyone agrees it was "not good political or military need to go after Hussein." Which if you think about it for a moment is pretty funny, since before the invasion almost everyone agreed it was a great idea to go to war.

You know I've heard it said that by 6 June 1954 it was hard to find a single Frenchman or German who wasn't in the resistance.

[don]

Re: What magic, what technology?

and on and on and on . . .

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

The internal discussion took place against the backdrop of this year’s collapse of Iraqi security forces in the face of the advance of the Islamic State as well as the mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House that still lingers since Mr. Obama’s 2009 decision to “surge” 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. Some of the president’s civilian advisers say that decision was made only because of excessive Pentagon pressure, and some military officials say it was half-baked and made with an eye to domestic politics.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

On Friday evening, a senior administration official insisted that American forces would not carry out regular patrols or conduct offensive missions against the Taliban next year.

“We will no longer target belligerents solely because they are members of the Taliban,” the official said. “To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide direct support to Al Qaeda, however, we will take appropriate measures to keep Americans safe.”

If we didn't have Al Qaeda, we would have to invent it . . . .

[Woodsman]

Re: What magic, what technology?

and on and on and on . . .

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

The internal discussion took place against the backdrop of this year’s collapse of Iraqi security forces in the face of the advance of the Islamic State as well as the mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House that still lingers since Mr. Obama’s 2009 decision to “surge” 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. Some of the president’s civilian advisers say that decision was made only because of excessive Pentagon pressure, and some military officials say it was half-baked and made with an eye to domestic politics.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

On Friday evening, a senior administration official insisted that American forces would not carry out regular patrols or conduct offensive missions against the Taliban next year.

“We will no longer target belligerents solely because they are members of the Taliban,” the official said. “To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide direct support to Al Qaeda, however, we will take appropriate measures to keep Americans safe.”

If we didn't have Al Qaeda, we would have to invent it . . . .

Actually...never mind, it's on again.

Obama extends U.S. combat role in Afghanistan

BY JUSTIN GREEN | NOVEMBER 22, 2014 | 9:44 AM

And on such as auspicious date, no less. Satan has a sense of humor.

[jk]

Re: What magic, what technology?

missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government

in other words, u.s. troops have just become the afghan government's internal security force. what will it take to have THAT "mission accomplished"?

[don]

Re: General Bolger

Daydream Believers
Posted by Andrew Bacevich

The money should stagger you. Journalist James Risen, author of Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, a revelatory new book about the scammers, counterterrorism grifters, careerist bureaucrats, torture con artists, and on-the-make privatizers of our post-9/11 national security state, suggests that the best figure for money spent on Washington’s war on terror, including the Iraq and Afghan wars, is four trillion dollars. If you add in the bills still to come for the care of American soldiers damaged in that global war, the figure is undoubtedly significantly higher. In the process, an array of warrior corporations were mobilized to go into battle alongside the Pentagon and the country’s intelligence and homeland security outfits. This, in turn, transformed the global struggle into a highly privatized affair and resulted, as Risen vividly documents, in “one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history.”

But here's a question: After 13 years of the war on terror, with terror running rampant, isn’t a name change in order? A simple transformation of a single preposition would bring that name into greater sync with reality: the war for terror.

And here’s a seldom-mentioned guarantee that leaps directly from today's post by TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author most recently of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. Given Washington's bedrock assumptions about the Greater Middle East, we should have no problem kissing another four trillion taxpayer dollars goodbye in the years to come. Eight trillion? If that isn’t a record, what is? Some “USA! USA!” chants might be in order.

Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air

“Iraq no longer exists.” My young friend M, sipping a cappuccino, is deadly serious. We are sitting in a scruffy restaurant across the street from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been years since we’ve last seen each another. It may be years before our paths cross again. As if to drive his point home, M repeats himself: “Iraq just doesn’t exist.”

His is an opinion grounded in experience. As an enlisted soldier, he completed two Iraq tours, serving as a member of a rifle company, before and during the famous Petraeus “surge.” After separating from the Army, he went on to graduate school where he is now writing a dissertation on insurgencies. Choosing the American war in Iraq as one of his cases, M has returned there to continue his research. Indeed, he was heading back again that very evening. As a researcher, his perch provides him with an excellent vantage point for taking stock of the ongoing crisis, now that the Islamic State, or IS, has made it impossible for Americans to sustain the pretense that the Iraq War ever ended.

Few in Washington would endorse M’s assertion, of course. Inside the Beltway, policymakers, politicians, and pundits take Iraq’s existence for granted. Many can even locate it on a map. They also take for granted the proposition that it is incumbent upon the United States to preserve that existence. To paraphrase Chris Hedges, for a certain group of Americans, Iraq is the cause that gives life meaning. For the military-industrial complex, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Considered from this perspective, the “Iraqi government” actually governs, the “Iraqi army” is a nationally representative fighting force, and the “Iraqi people” genuinely see themselves as constituting a community with a shared past and an imaginable future.

Arguably, each of these propositions once contained a modicum of truth. But when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and, as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell predicted, broke the place, any merit they previously possessed quickly dissipated. Years of effort by American occupiers intent on creating a new Iraq out of the ruins of the old produced little of value and next to nothing that has lasted. Yet even today, in Washington the conviction persists that trying harder might somehow turn things around. Certainly, that conviction informs the renewed U.S. military intervention prompted by the rise of IS.

So when David Ignatius, a well-informed and normally sober columnist for the Washington Post, reflects on what the United States must do to get Iraq War 3.0 right, he offers this “mental checklist”: in Baghdad, the U.S. should foster a “cleaner, less sectarian government”; to ensure security, we will have to “rebuild the military”; and to end internal factionalism, we’re going to have to find ways to “win Kurdish support” and “rebuild trust with Sunnis.” Ignatius does not pretend that any of this will be easy. He merely argues that it must be -- and by implication can be -- done. Unlike my friend M, Ignatius clings to the fantasy that “Iraq” is or ought to be politically viable, militarily capable, and socially cohesive. But surely this qualifies as wishful thinking.

The value of M’s insight -- of, that is, otherwise intelligent people purporting to believe in things that don’t exist -- can be applied well beyond American assumptions about Iraq. A similar inclination to fanaticize permeates, and thereby warps, U.S. policies throughout much of the Greater Middle East. Consider the following claims, each of which in Washington circles has attained quasi-canonical status.

* The presence of U.S. forces in the Islamic world contributes to regional stability and enhances American influence.

* The Persian Gulf constitutes a vital U.S. national security interest.

* Egypt and Saudi Arabia are valued and valuable American allies.

* The interests of the United States and Israel align.

* Terrorism poses an existential threat that the United States must defeat.

For decades now, the first four of these assertions have formed the foundation of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The events of 9/11 added the fifth, without in any way prompting a reconsideration of the first four. On each of these matters, no senior U.S. official (or anyone aspiring to a position of influence) will dare say otherwise, at least not on the record.

Yet subjected to even casual scrutiny, none of the five will stand up. To take them at face value is the equivalent of believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy -- or that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell really, really hope that the Obama administration and the upcoming Republican-controlled Congress can find grounds to cooperate.

Let’s examine all five, one at a time.

The Presence of U.S. Forces: Ever since the U.S. intervention in Lebanon that culminated in the Beirut bombing of October 1983, introducing American troops into predominantly Muslim countries has seldom contributed to stability. On more than a few occasions, doing so has produced just the opposite effect.

Iraq and Afghanistan provide mournful examples. The new book “Why We Lost” by retired Lieutenant General Daniel Bolger finally makes it permissible in official circles to declare those wars the failures that they have been. Even granting, for the sake of argument, that U.S. nation-building efforts were as pure and honorable as successive presidents portrayed them, the results have been more corrosive than constructive. The IS militants plaguing Iraq find their counterpart in the soaring production of opium that plagues Afghanistan. This qualifies as stability?

And these are hardly the only examples. Stationing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after Operation Desert Storm was supposed to have a reassuring effect. Instead, it produced the debacle of the devastating Khobar Towers bombing. Sending G.I.’s into Somalia back in 1992 was supposed to demonstrate American humanitarian concern for poor, starving Muslims. Instead, it culminated in the embarrassing Mogadishu firefight, which gained the sobriquet Black Hawk Down, and doomed that mission.

Even so, the pretense that positioning American soldiers in some Middle East hotspot will bring calm to troubled waters survives. It’s far more accurate to say that doing so provides our adversaries with what soldiers call a target-rich environment -- with Americans as the targets.

The Importance of the Persian Gulf: Although U.S. interests in the Gulf may once have qualified as vital, the changing global energy picture has rendered that view obsolete. What’s probably bad news for the environment is good news in terms of creating strategic options for the United States. New technologies have once again made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil. The U.S. is also the world’s largest producer of natural gas. It turns out that the lunatics chanting “drill, baby, drill” were right after all. Or perhaps it’s “frack, baby, frack.” Regardless, the assumed energy dependence and “vital interests” that inspired Jimmy Carter to declare back in 1980 that the Gulf is worth fighting for no longer pertain.

Access to Gulf oil remains critically important to some countries, but surely not to the United States. When it comes to propping up the wasteful and profligate American way of life, Texas and North Dakota outrank Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in terms of importance. Rather than worrying about Iraqi oil production, Washington would be better served ensuring the safety and well-being of Canada, with its bountiful supplies of shale oil. And if militarists ever find the itch to increase U.S. oil reserves becoming irresistible, they would be better advised to invade Venezuela than to pick a fight with Iran.

Does the Persian Gulf require policing from the outside? Maybe. But if so, let’s volunteer China for the job. It will keep them out of mischief.

Arab Allies: It’s time to reclassify the U.S. relationship with both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Categorizing these two important Arab states as “allies” is surely misleading. Neither one shares the values to which Washington professes to attach such great importance.

For decades, Saudi Arabia, Planet Earth’s closest equivalent to an absolute monarchy, has promoted anti-Western radical jihadism -- and not without effect. The relevant numbers here are two that most New Yorkers will remember: 15 out of 19. If a conspiracy consisting almost entirely of Russians had succeeded in killing several thousand Americans, would U.S. authorities give the Kremlin a pass? Would U.S.-Russian relations remain unaffected? The questions answer themselves.

Meanwhile, after a brief dalliance with democracy, Egypt has once again become what it was before: a corrupt, oppressive military dictatorship unworthy of the billions of dollars of military assistance that Washington provides from one year to the next.

Israel: The United States and Israel share more than a few interests in common. A commitment to a “two-state solution” to the Palestinian problem does not number among them. On that issue, Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s purposes diverge widely. In all likelihood, they are irreconcilable.

For the government of Israel, viewing security concerns as paramount, an acceptable Palestinian state will be the equivalent of an Arab Bantustan, basically defenseless, enjoying limited sovereignty, and possessing limited minimum economical potential. Continuing Israeli encroachments on the occupied territories, undertaken in the teeth of American objections, make this self-evident.

It is, of course, entirely the prerogative -- and indeed the obligation -- of the Israeli government to advance the well being of its citizens. U.S. officials have a similar obligation: they are called upon to act on behalf of Americans. And that means refusing to serve as Israel’s enablers when that country takes actions that are contrary to U.S. interests.

The “peace process” is a fiction. Why should the United States persist in pretending otherwise? It’s demeaning.

Terrorism: Like crime and communicable diseases, terrorism will always be with us. In the face of an outbreak of it, prompt, effective action to reduce the danger permits normal life to continue. Wisdom lies in striking a balance between the actually existing threat and exertions undertaken to deal with that threat. Grown-ups understand this. They don’t expect a crime rate of zero in American cities. They don’t expect all people to enjoy perfect health all of the time. The standard they seek is “tolerable.”

That terrorism threatens Americans is no doubt the case, especially when they venture into the Greater Middle East. But aspirations to eliminate terrorism belong in the same category as campaigns to end illiteracy or homelessness: it’s okay to aim high, but don’t be surprised when the results achieved fall short.

Eliminating terrorism is a chimera. It’s not going to happen. U.S. civilian and military leaders should summon the honesty to acknowledge this.

My friend M has put his finger on a problem that is much larger than he grasps. Here’s hoping that when he gets his degree he lands an academic job. It’s certain he’ll never find employment in our nation’s capital. As a soldier-turned-scholar, M inhabits what one of George W. Bush’s closest associates (believed to be Karl Rove) once derisively referred to as the “reality-based community.” People in Washington don’t have time for reality. They’re lost in a world of their own.

Andrew J. Bacevich, currently Columbia University’s George McGovern Fellow, is writing a military history of America’s war for the Greater Middle East. A TomDispatch regular, his most recent book is Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.

[Polish_Silver]

the war on terror

Daydream Believers
Posted by Andrew Bacevich

The money should stagger you. Journalist James Risen, author of Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, a revelatory new book about the scammers, counterterrorism grifters, careerist bureaucrats, torture con artists, and on-the-make privatizers of our post-9/11 national security state, suggests that the best figure for money spent on Washington’s war on terror, including the Iraq and Afghan wars, is four trillion dollars. If you add in the bills still to come for the care of American soldiers damaged in that global war, the figure is undoubtedly significantly higher. In the process, an array of warrior corporations were mobilized to go into battle alongside the Pentagon and the country’s intelligence and homeland security outfits. This, in turn, transformed the global struggle into a highly privatized affair and resulted, as Risen vividly documents, in “one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history.”

But here's a question: After 13 years of the war on terror, with terror running rampant, isn’t a name change in order? A simple transformation of a single preposition would bring that name into greater sync with reality: the war for terror.

. . .

That pretty much sums up my thinking about the whole thing. People are more worried about terrorism than the Soviet Union. Terrorists killed the people of two months of traffic accidents and we sacrifice the constitution and peaceful foreign policy for that.

Now the Soviet Union, they had thousands of nuclear weapons, dominated half of europe, had offensive war plans against the other half, had a germ warfare lab in Siberia with 30k people working in it, etc.

What I haven't figured out is how to discuss this without demeaning the soldiers. If you say the truth, you are taking away the rationale for the suffering and injury they have experienced. But if you don't say the truth, there will be more suffering and injury.

[astonas]

Re: General Bolger

Thanks, Don. A nice article, that.

Others can comment better than I on whether the fracking-based gas surge is a sustainable game-changer, or merely another bubble. (I'm curious, for example, what GRG55 thinks.). But I do think Bacevich has the general theme right in this piece. Reality-based decision making is both harder, and more politically unpopular, than believing in daydreams.

Of course, this isn't the first time that's been pointed out here, or even in the popular media.

What I'm really wondering is if anyone has ever encountered an actionable response. One that doesn't merely point out the existence of the problem, but identifies something the average person can do about it.

I've been struggling with that for a bit now, triggered in part by my trying to find a response to some other posts here.

So far the political landscape appears to be shaping the world of all the PACs I've encountered more than anything that can be called an objective reality.

[Woodsman]

Re: the war on terror

What I haven't figured out is how to discuss this without demeaning the soldiers. If you say the truth, you are taking away the rationale for the suffering and injury they have experienced. But if you don't say the truth, there will be more suffering and injury.

I think that's a false dilemma. The truth is its own rationale and soldiers are not demeaned when we stand up for it. I think most soldiers, certainly most combat veterans, have seen enough futility, pointlessness and waste of in the course of their operations and general experience. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? For a lie? Bacevich wrote about this too.

[Polish_Silver]

Remembering the Past

General Bolger raises some valid points.

But the MOST telling are the ones he fails and/or chooses not to raise....I suspect a bit of both.

Anyone who sees the world for what it is knows that Afghan and/or Iraq wars or not.......there is a multi-layered "forever war" going on in the region.

Ask an Afghan Pashtun and they will tell you stories of British loss in Afghanistan in the 1800's as if it happened more recently than the Soviet forced entry on Christmas Eve 1979. . . .

I have heard so often that middle easterners have a long historical memory. But why? My belief is that the governments are so abusive to the population that the obsession with past history is a means of distracting people from what is going on now.

What is really holding Egypt back? Is it lack of water, Israel, the British, or the Romans? No. It is an over sized and self serving political and military class. If people had a high degree of awareness, they would not spend time on the past, but on the present.

[jk]

Re: Remembering the Past

I have heard so often that middle easterners have a long historical memory. But why? My belief is that the governments are so abusive to the population that the obsession with past history is a means of distracting people from what is going on now.

now apply that argument to northern ireland. or the basque group, eta, a few decades ago.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Remembering the Past

I have heard so often that middle easterners have a long historical memory. But why? My belief is that the governments are so abusive to the population that the obsession with past history is a means of distracting people from what is going on now.

What is really holding Egypt back? Is it lack of water, Israel, the British, or the Romans? No. It is an over sized and self serving political and military class. If people had a high degree of awareness, they would not spend time on the past, but on the present.

I think people(individually and collectively) use what they have to advantage.

The west has expensive precision guided weapons, their opponents use precision guided humans.

The west has wealth, their opponents have time(Afghan expression "you have all the watches, we have all the time.")

It is true that in Afghanistan some locals still talk of victory over the British, not just the Soviets and American coalition.

i think those individual and collective perceptions are partly a coping mechanism for tribal/national/ethnic/religious cultures that have produced little of tangible intellectual property for the better good of the planet since they invented/discovered math. Just being honest.

That must be incredibly frustrating and an easy leap towards both justified and unjustified rage targeted externally at the infidels. Rage that would be both naturally occurring and artificially encouraged.

Large numbers of young people multiplying by the second feeling disenfranchised and culturally/ethnically/religiously emasculated both naturally and artificially shaped to focus their rage.

GRG55 has posted repeatedly about the risk of an event in Egypt. I would agree.

What I've posted before is the single common denominator shared by Egypt, Iran, and Pakistan which is the depth and breadth of the military/security state's stranglehold on not just politics, but in direct control of a rather substantial chunk of the economy.

Turkey's government has been competitively severing the Turkish military's "secular reboot button " as well as its economic power.

While I agree with the latter, the former is a bit worrying in the current and likely future climate.

Some regional countries have great natural resource wealth, but it's often mal invested in biblical proportions and often a curse.

My worries projected into the future revolve around regional sovereign states lacking the tax base to govern, resulting in the rise of leaner and meaner entities that can. Entities that may not(probably not) wish to align with the west who supported their predecessors.

For all the complaints about the Taliban(many and justified) they did possess some self policing control measures regarding both corruption/graft and consistency.

What sparked the first Arab Spring?

Self immolation related to corruption/graft?

Corruption makes the world go round. But while a little may be a good thing(or less bad option) in the developing world, too much can lead to quite bad consequences.

i reckon the answer is acceptable levels of corruption, combined with fair/consistent rule of law for all, and a velvet gloved fist to maintain order.

Combined with it ha plan on how to deal with future urban mega ghettos warlords.

Arab Boss Tweeds and Tammany Halls maybe? And that's IF they can transition towards some form of democracy. Look at our own sordid democratic past.

I suggested before that maybe Chile and Pinochet might be a break some eggs and make an omelet model to consider.

Where's the next Ataturks?