From Orwell's diaries, 21 September 1942: "Yesterday met Liddell Hart for the first time. Very defeatist and even, in my judgement, somewhat inclined to be pro-German subjectively."

I like this because I was really disappointed when I read Liddell Hart. 

Winston Churchill, writing in My Early Life, mentions how wealth affected one's choice of branches in the British Army:

I qualified for a cavalry cadetship at Sandhurst. The competition for the infantry was keener, as life in the cavalry was so much more expensive. Those who were at the bottom of the list accordingly were offered the easier entry into the cavalry.

Tom again: So, by making the cavalry expensive, the wealthy aristocracy was able to reserve largely for itself job openings in part of the military -- perhaps a place to store second sons without sufficient brains for other jobs? I asked Douglas Allen, an economic historian who has studied the political economy of the British military. He wrote back, "No doubt though, it took a long time for the aristocrats to be replaced by attrition, and they probably did use a price mechanism to keep the vulgar middle class out of their preferred positions."

In a footnote in the Orwell diaries, I learned that more British civilians were killed by enemy action during World War II than were members of the Royal Navy (60,595 vs. 50,758). 

Meanwhile, in other news related to World War II, for the first time in nearly 70 years, there is not a single American tank on German soil.

A woman who had too much to drink fell asleep on a train. Mark Scully, an official in the British Ministry of Defence, pretended to help her to a taxi but instead dragged her into some woods and assaulted her. He worked on reconstruction issues in southern Afghanistan in 2009-10, the Daily Mail reports.

Pretty small to start: Six Irish troops with work with 21 British troops. And less than 100 years after the Easter Rising! (And why six Irishmen -- for the "six counties that live under John Bull's tyranny"?)

I wonder: Has the British Army ever formally recognized and honored the role that Irishmen (not Anglo-Irish aristos) historically played in its enlisted ranks?

In other Anglo-foreign military news, a Canadian reservist who presided over a lethal screw-up with Claymore mines in Afghanistan was demoted from major to lieutenant. I don't remember that sort of two-grade demotion occurring in the U.S. military -- do you?

British military might rested on its navy for centuries, Paul Kennedy reminds us in The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, which I am just finishing. That changed almost exactly 100 years ago with the advent of the submarine. "There is no doubt that this new weapon almost brought the British Empire to its knees," he writes.

By 1937, British spending on the RAF passed spending on its army, and a year later, also passed the navy's budget.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 11, 2010.

The British learned early on the price of underestimating their foe, who rarely allowed a tactical error to go unpunished, writes Andrew Roe in his very useful book, Waging War in Waziristan.

In one major triumph, in 1901, tribesman took over a British outpost. "The success of this attack," Roe states, "was in part due to a number of tribesmen disguised as shepherds who for a number of weeks prior to the attack observed carefully the habits and weaknesses of the garrison."

Think that IEDs are new somehow? In April 1938, "50 home-made bombs were laid on roads and railway lines," and even on military parade grounds.   

Another interesting fact: Historically, Waziri villages have been located near cave complexes, in part because in winter the caves are warmer than their houses. (Tom: I remember being in a cave in Germany Valley, West Virginia, where American Indian tribes had done the same -- 55 degrees inside with a fire for light and warmth sure beat zero and windy in the mountains outside.) I also didn't know that the area was far more forested in the 19th century, but that a lot of trees were cut down, leading to erosion, loss of topsoil, and a drier climate -- not unlike today's Haiti. 

I was also intrigued by an observation Roe mined about the personality difference between the two major tribes in Waziristan: "The Wazirs had been compared to a leopard, a loner, cunning and dangerous; the Mahsud to a wolf, most to be feared in a pack, with a pack mentality, single-mindedness, and persistence." (One of the benefits of this book is that he quotes memoirs and studies liberally.)

The best way to reach out to the tribes was through medical aid, especially to reach the fencesitters in the middle. When one tribe requested a female doctor, they remarked that she didn't need to bring instruments or drugs, as they still had the ones they had stolen in 1919. 

But generally I found the book more illuminating about the British than about the tribes. 

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 10, 2010

At the center of British operations in Waziristan was not the military commander but the political officer, writes Andrew Roe in his useful study Waging War in Waziristan. As best as I can make out, we really don't have a parallel position -- the "political advisors" that senior generals have in the Army are nothing like it.

The British political officer frequently was someone of military background, holding a rank, but not in the military chain of command, and with his own small forces to use on a daily basis. When things fell apart, he would call in the army, and the military commander would take over. But most of the time, says Roe, he was "the central player around whom the entire local administration revolved."

One agent, Capt. Jack "Lotus" Lewis, was not only fluent in Pushtu, he was fluent in its local tribal dialects, Mahsud and Wazir. This appears to have been more the rule than the exception. The Indian Political Service was a popular destination for young Britons seeking excitement, and it could pick and choose from applicants. Those going to the frontier had to pass the Higher Standard Pushtu examination, and "mastery of tribal dialects was a matter of pride." Military commanders came and went, but the political officers stayed for several years -- and the tribes gave them their allegiance as individuals, Roe says.

Describing one successful political officer, Roe writes that he employed

steady and unfaltering conciliation, combined with personal interaction. It was reinforced with a range of tribal subsidies for undertaking militia duty.

There always was friction between political officers and military commanders, Roe notes, especially because the politicals would put limits on operations, or order them to stop altogether. Also, the better a political was at his job, the less he tended to be noticed. "[S]uccessful tribal management could consign the officer concerned to political oblivion," Roe notes. By contrast, combat operations led to medals and recognition.

His account of their role makes me wonder if we need to put political officers on multi-year tours in Afghanistan. I bet Capt. Matt Pottinger would volunteer.

Q: What do these six people have in common?: Geoff Hoon, John Reid, Des Browne, John Hutton, Bob Ainsworth, Liam Fox.

A: Over the last six years, all have served as the British chief of defense.

By Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent
Rebecca Frankel

As President Obama made his announcement this week about the troop drawdown this week, allied forces in Afghanistan are on the topic table again. European allies responded positively to the president's announcement. U.K. prime minister David Cameron, who announced his own plan for British troop withdrawals in May, was quick to applaud Obama, adding: 

We will keep UK force levels in Afghanistan under constant review. I have already said there will be no UK troops in combat roles in Afghanistan by 2015 and, where conditions on the ground allow, it is right that we bring troops home sooner."

Britain has approximately 10,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan -- the second highest number after the United States. Working alongside Cornish soldiers on the frontlines out of Camp Bastion -- Britain's largest military base in the country -- are a troop of 70 military dogs. So what's life like for a British military dog in Afghanistan? Actually, not too shabby.

Read on

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense chief canine correspondent

Last weekend a Royal Air force team and their dogs took a sponsored-stroll to raise funds for charity. Starting at half past midnight on Saturday morning the determined group walked a whopping 37 miles following a predetermined route in order to raise "more than £14,000 for Help for Heroes and Children's Hospice South West." The press release posted by the RAF made it clear that: "All of the dogs are very friendly and can be approached by the public on route."

The incredible canines who made the journey were:

Campbell, a Springer Spaniel, is a Vehicle Search Dog who can search any type of vehicle [who did tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan]; Kontessa, a Shepherd, is a police dog and carries out very similar duties as civilian police dogs; Zeus, a Shepherd, is a Patrol Dog who patrols and guards RAF Lyneham and the Service Families Accommodation; Jack, a black Labrador, is a Drug Detection Dog.

A 37-mile walk over two days is no stroll in the park, and the officers -- both four-legged and the two-legged alike -- had to be physically up to the challenge in order to participate.

A British Forces News reporter caught up with the walkers along the way and spoke to Cpl. Chris Archard who called the walk as a bit of a "roller coaster." For while the first leg relatively easy, as the group moved into a more open area, the temperature dropped. Soon after the walkers encountered a series of hills that, as Archard described, appeared "to [grow] incredibly as we were walking them." The team, which carried on straight through the night, made it to their destination in one piece albeit tired and sweaty. This wasn't the first time the do-gooding dogs and their handlers had marched to raise money for a cause. After that first, long walk in 2009 Archard recalls, "we said never again, [but after] a year ... we thought, let's do it again."

And in news a little closer to home, here's a PSA for the DC area. America's VetDogs -- a nonprofit organization that matches up disabled Vets with specially trained dogs -- is sponsoring its first annual 5K Run/Walk in Annapolis, MD on Sunday, April 3. The group's goal is to generate the funds necessary to cover the cost of one of these remarkable canines -- $50,000. To register or for more information, you can visit their site or on facebook. "Every participant will receive a free shirt, a free raffle ticket, and free food and drinks after the race! The top three finishers in each age division will receive a beautiful medal." And I've been told there will be plenty of dogs on site...

That's what he said. Funny that just seven years after the invasion, the British and American governments both basically feel this way -- but I bet the Iraqi government doesn't. But who expected in 2003 that in 2010, the president of the United States would have "Hussein" in his name but the president of Iraq wouldn't?

Meanwhile, here is the hot-off-the-press testimony on the Iraq invasion of former British intelligence bigwig the Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller. Basically she megadittoes: "we regarded the threat, the direct threat from Iraq as low." As for al Qaeda and Iraq, she said, "there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

The BE M-B added that some unnamed parties made much too much of "tiny scraps" indicating some contact between Saddam Hussein and AQ.

Lady M-B also mentioned that she went to see Paul Wolfowitz once to tell him that disbanding the Iraqi army and banning Baathists from public life was a mistake:

"SIR RODERIC LYNE: But you didn't convert him?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: Not a hope."

One of the themes of the British testimony has been the pernicious influence of "special advisors"-people who stepped in and mixed the policy and intelligence roles. I think there probably is a good PhD dissertation to be done on this, looking at the situations in both the British and American governments. If I had time I would do it, but I already am deep into my work on my next book.

(HT to David Betz)

I've been reading an examination by British Col. I.A. Rigden of the British record in counterinsurgency campaigns. Here's the post-1945 scorecard, by his accounting:

• Wins: 7
  Losses: 5
  Ties: 1
  Incompletes: 2 (Iraq and Afghanistan)

Well, it's a tough league.

Rigden has an interesting bio -- he commanded a Gurkha battalion in Afghanistan, and spent seven years in company command. That's more troop time than most U.S. Army officers probably get in 20-year careers. Anyone out there who knows how the British Army works that very different approach to officer management? 

I am not advocating that we adopt an imperial stance, or even that everything the British did was right or even moral. But I do think we can learn from them, which is why I am dwelling this week on Roe's fine book on the British experience in Waziristan.

For example, in 1947, the new Pakistani government invited the former British governor of the North-West Frontier, Sir George Cunningham, to come out of retirement and administer the province, because he was seen as an honest broker. That might be the end-game we should aim for in Iraq, where the American officials eventually subordinate themselves to the Baghdad government and even are seconded to work for it.

That's my lesson, not Roe's. Here are some of his. You'll find more on almost every page:

• Be prepared to conduct a "constant mapping of political, economic and social information to gain a temporal insight into the views, motivation, and differences among the tribes and subclans."
• Don't underestimate your enemy. "To take on the tribesman and defeat him in his own hils is a game demanding a lifetime of specialized study."
• Tribesman will study your tactics and punish lapses or even simple repetitions. "This is one read on why an advance is seldom disputed with vigour, whereas the withdrawal is ferociously harrassed."
• Political officers must counter the tendency of military commanders to rely on their "instinct and their own values and standards, which often will be mistaken, unsuitable or inappropriate." (Tom: I saw this tendency a lot in Iraq in 2003-06.)
• "Tolerating ambiguities, shortfalls and inconsistencies must be central to any sustainable policy." (Tom: Hmm, sounds like FM 3-24.)
• Don't fight the tribal structure. "Employing and, where necessary, reinforcing the existing tribal framework and structures offers the best opportunity for success."
• Be prepared to pay off the enemy.
• Local forces should be the heart of your effort, not regular Army troops.