Why knowing something is important

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Friday, May 8, 2009 - 7:10 PM Share

Antiwar.com rolls in touting Col. Gian Gentile as an unrecognized savior and slams CNAS for being having several people (Nagl, Kilcullen, Exum, me) being focussed on counterinsurgency. Note to bloggers: This is what happens when someone writes about an area about which they know absolutely freaking nothing. This is one reason, for example, I try to avoid writing about, among other things, basketball, golf, cats, oboes, scuba diving, physics, Maxwell's demon, electric cars, farming, abstract sculpture, the works of Anthony Powell, South America, or Buddhism.

What's Antiwar's point here? Bad on CNAS, I guess, for being interested in issues like protecting the population. I mean, does Antiwar.com understand what it is advocating here? I've seen how the U.S. military operated in Iraq in 2003-06, and I really think we don't want to go back to that approach. (I actually was embedded with Col. Gentile's unit in February 2006, and remember asking him why his unit operated on a big FOB instead of being based out among the people.)

Or, as a colleague of mine says,

So let's get this straight: Antiwar.com promotes Gian Gentile, who argues that we should conduct COIN in the form of 19th-century British punitive raids, as the Army's shining light. Ergo, Antiwar.com is in favor of more Predator drone strikes and "direct action" counterterrorism?

Good question, Antiwar.com.

Anyway, there is a good discussion of all this over on Abu Mook's blog.

EXPLORE:MEDIA, MILITARY

(11)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

DAVE123

8:22 PM ET

May 8, 2009

You should not even be

You should not even be responding to the wackos at antiwar.com

DA BUFFALO AMONGST WOLVES

8:33 PM ET

May 8, 2009

You still don't get it...

I know something and it's important...

You still don't get it.

The US IS insurgent, and the people the Pentagon is COINing (or any other mil-specific acronym you'd care to use) are not.

At least I don't recall that Pakistan, Afghanistan, or anywhere else around the region is US territory.

Speaking of sovereignty, Congressman Ron Paul want to know when congress gave permission for aerial bombing of a sovereign nation... Pakistan.

http://tinyurl.com/d64yat

That's a good question, considering it's how the US government works when it's operating under the aegis of the Constitution... Remember the Constitution?

Bushboy thought it was "just another g-ddamn piece of paper'

But I don't...

Although it IS starting to look like Pakistan is becoming a US state: "US Congress approves $1.9 billion for Pakistan including $597 for 'economic bailout', $100 million more than request." http://cli.gs/nb7e1j

I suppose Ron Paul will get the same response Dennis Kucinich received when he asked the Pentagon about covert ops in Iran a few years ago. The silence of a "stone wall".

Word to the wise (and the current sitting president), because I know you're old enough to remember:

Nixon promised to end the Vietnam war, and instead increased the intensity of the war and expanded it into Cambodia, Laos, Thailand.

Then he Carpet Bombed the North and HOLY HELL broke loose in the streets of the US.

The frustration level in American society isn't there yet, and due to that smaller, lighter army thing that Rumsfeld spoke of, hardly anyone in the US KNOWS anyone killed overseas, or the family of anyone who died... unlike then, and that frustration level in America is going to be a looong time coming.

Perhaps an economic collapse due a dysfunctional consumer-based economy where people are no longer getting 'rich' selling homes to each other while manufacturing nothing, with increasingly valueless money, coupled with massive military spending solely to protect ourselves from enemies we've pretty much created for ourselves might do the trick, but that's not on the the agenda next week.

But eventually... It will be.

You and I may not be around to see it Tom, but it WILL come around, and it won't be pretty.

NOONAN

9:03 PM ET

May 8, 2009

Get What?

S.J. Resolution 23 enacted on 14 September 2001 authorized:

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:S.J.RES.23.ENR:

Ergo, as al Qaeda undertook the attacks on 9/11 and as the Taliban harbored al Qaeda, and as al Qaeda's leadership, or parts thereof, are hiding in the mountains of western Pakistan, then they are Congressional-ly authorized targets.

The above having been said, Tom and others have also argued the the dronestrikes may be counterproductive, so I am not sure where you are coming from on any of this "Da Buffalo Amon."

DA BUFFALO AMONGST WOLVES

3:39 PM ET

May 9, 2009

Laughable if not for the mayhem commited against 'the other'

That's EVERYONE who opposes Western interests in the region, right?

‘I’m here to understand what you mean by Taliban’ --Arundhati Roy

"When we say we must fight the Taliban or must defeat them, what does it mean? I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban. Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought? That needs to be clarified.

I think both needs to be fought. But if it’s an ideology it has to be fought differently, while if it’s a person with a gun then it has to be fought differently. We know from the history of the war on terror that a military strategy is only making matters worse all over the world. The war on terror has made the world a more dangerous place. In India, they have been fighting insurgencies military since 1947 and it has become a more dangerous place.

Swat and the Taliban boy

It is very important for me to understand what exactly is going in Swat. How did it start? A Taliban boy asked me why women can’t be like plastic bags and banned. The point is that the plastic bag was made in a factory but so was the boy. He was made in a factory that is producing this kind of mind(set). (The question is) who owns that factory, who funds it? Unless we deal with that factory, dealing with the boy doesn’t help us. "

http://tinyurl.com/q3b7kt

I want to deal with that factory too!

For me, That 'factory' is inherent in the attempt by the West to rape the extractive resources of Asia and the Middle East.

That's what creates 'terrorists'

"terrorists? Why, they're people lacking identity... They're trying to be noticed"

Marshall McLuhan said that a long long time ago, after the first couple of airline hijackings in the 60s.

I want to expand on that and state that "lacking identity" is putting it mildly now... it's been refined and employed as a tool... The people who become terrorist now have been raped and stripped of identity intentionally.

To wit:Pakistani Students: The militants destroyed Swat's economy, now the military is destroying the rest of the infrastructure

http://tinyurl.com/pocbox

...and for what it's worth, the Talib offered to use their influence on UBL after 9/11 (if they really had any over a NATO employed mercenary recruiter) and the US rejected that offer, opted for invasion.

My opinion? The only time UBL and friends (at least the AQ leadership) were anywhere near Afghanistan or Pakistan was when they were hiding out at Tora Bora... a facility built by either the US or NATO as a listening post spooking Russian Comms during the 'Cold War' and given to AQ as a hideout for them in our Proxy War on Russia in Afghanistan.

More likely to find these guys living in a Fairfax Va condo or hanging out waiting for their handler at the back gate of Langley now days.

I'm only half kidding on that last point. AQ gave the US an excuse, a rationale if you would, to run militarily amuck throughout that region and indeed the world, to the benefit of Bushboy's friends in the military-industrial-educational-journalistic complex and no one else seems to have benefited except for a few pet, cooperative 'strongmen' in the region.

I say "follow the money". The money emanates from the US treasury and Pentagon and trickles down to Lockheed, Loral, and the rest, including, indirectly to journalists like Tom Ricks.

J SWANSON

5:03 AM ET

May 9, 2009

Although I totally disagree

Although I totally disagree with Antiwar.com on this and nearly every other issue, I don't think they're saying exactly what you say they are.

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't their argument something along the lines of:

"If we want to win a 'small war,' we need to use pretty brutal tactics focused on subduing, not protecting, the population. Since the tactics necessary probably wouldn't survive domestic and international pressures, and are immoral, we shouldn't even try and should instead just leave."

So rather than arguing that we should use more brutal tactics in Iraq, they're arguing that we could only win through brutal tactics and that thus we shouldn't even try to win.

I totally disagree, but if you accept their premise (population-centric COIN doesn't work) it seems like a fairly logical argument for the anti-war perspective.

TOM RICKS

12:58 PM ET

May 9, 2009

Interesting thought

I'll go back and re-read the AntiWar.com piece in that light.
Thanks
Tom

JSINAIKO

10:04 PM ET

May 9, 2009

Oh Chill

If I disagree with you does that mean that FP has zero cred?

Tom - you seem a tad defensive on this one - why?

Finally, as we blithely discuss tearing ass all over the globe killing folks, rightly or not doesn't it seem reasonable to air all POVs in a broad and wide ranging discussion? You may not like antiwar.com, but it has a broad range of viewpoints. The tone you are taking risks making you look as if you should be writing for some website called prowar.com. At least these guys are taking the notion of war outside the strategic and tactical realms and looking at the human cost of this stupid human activity.

Tom - I respect your writing and (most of the time) your POV. But you are wrong - and wrong-headed on this one, whatever the merits or lack thereof this particular piece has. So chill! And try to remember those great words of Georges "The Tiger" Clemenceau: "War is too important a matter to be left to the military." Cut us a break and take a look at what some lowly civilians are thinking.

FITZHUGH

2:53 AM ET

May 10, 2009

Cut us a break

"Cut us a break and take a look at what some lowly civilians are thinking."

Mr. Ricks is a civilian too, though sometimes it's hard to tell. He does come across as unhealthily attached to a group of people who will never view him as their peer. Kind of like a faculty brat. He should take a cue from the storied career of R. W. Apple Jr. and report on something else for a change. How about a feature on nightlife and dining in Baghdad. Or to make a clean break of it: Antarctica.

PIBE04

3:40 AM ET

May 10, 2009

please edit your writing

some serious issues in the first sentence.

you use being three times in a row and spell focused, focussed

slams CNAS for being having several people (Nagl, Kilcullen, Exum, me) being focussed on counterinsurgency.

TOM RICKS

4:02 AM ET

May 10, 2009

Lesson learned

I was in a bad mood when I wrote this, and since have learned that I was coming down with the flu.