I didn't pick this photo! I just asked for an image of a baseball player striking out.
Best,
Tom

You may be the first blogger/columnist in the history of the printed word to own up to a mistake. And in your case it was an opinion not a fact, which makes it cooler. Kudos to you for being a mensch!

You may be the first blogger/columnist in the history of the printed word to own up to a mistake. And in your case it was an opinion not a fact, which makes it cooler. Kudos to you for being a mensch!

And this Chicagoan thinks it's fine that you showed a Yankee whiffing. Double kudos to you, even if you didn't choose the specific picture.

Tackling political correctness in the military means also tackling those who see it in all efforts at equal rights. E.g., Limbaugh. E.g., Cdr Salamander.

It means rooting out all vestiges of bias and ideas of superiority based on race, ethnic class, or gender (e.g., submariners opposed to women in the boats).

It means remembering the legacy of racism, anti-semitiem, sexism, and religious bias that forms the backdrop of this issue in the military services.

And it means rooting out the Christer Complex so prevalent in the Army and the Air Force.

Until the playing field gets level, it isn't level and some artificial tilt needs be applied if we are to honor the promise of all created equal.

Your point is taken, but — witness the birther movement and the signs at Tea Bagger gatherings — we're a long way from the healthy society that has perfect equipoise on such matters.

"... from expelling violent extremists from the ranks of the military ..."

Out of context, that's a pretty interesting suggestion.

I'm imagining a review board:

"Um, General LeMay, thanks for coming. Did you really say we should 'bomb them back to the stone-age'?"

"I did."

"'Bomb.' That's pretty violent. And 'stone-age'? Isn't that a little extreme?"

I'm going to have to share that with some of my pacifist friends!

Tom,

One of the things I really like about you and your writing is that you’re willing to reconsider something that you’ve written in light of further information that is brought to your attention.

One minor point, though: personally, I’d prefer to see violent extremists of all stripes behind bars, not just expelled from the military. I suspect that’s what you meant.

Where I come from, when people say they want to be politically incorrect, it usually just means they want to be incorrect.

That's the case here. As Spencer Ackerman noted in a recent post, Japanese-American Sen. Daniel Inouye won the Medal of Honor in World War II, enlisting in 1943-- when the kind of guys who just wanted "to expel violent extremists from the military" dropped their ban on Japanese-Americans. Ackerman also notes the Times story more recently on H.B. Le, the first Vietnamese-American to command a Navy destroyer, and his inspiring return to the country he fled as a boy. Do we really want to foreclose the option of an Iraqi-American or Afghan-American someday doing something similar?

Finally, Ackerman points out that the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood actually AGREES with your apparent view that Muslims shouldn't serve in the military.

With friends like these, right?

(URL for that Ackerman post: http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/11/10/so-we-should-purge-the-next-commander-le/ )

Eikenberry and Leah Farrall are the new king and queen of afg strategy. Afg may be the perfect example of a conflict where we can win by drawing back and drawing down. It is worth every ounce of effort we can muster to try and exploit the Taliban/al Quaeda divide.

Yes, but you were right, and at some point, it will dawn on people that eloquence is useless in the face of mounting casualties and aimless policies.

Some of our best Presidents couldn't give a speech worth a damn, but when they had to act, they acted and they made tough decisions. The President should have gone to Fort Hood and told people what he was doing to make sure something like this didn't happen again.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but has anyone lost their job? Is anyone going to lose their job? If so, why not? If this President can fire the guy who scared some New Yorkers with a low flying plane, then why can't he fire the people who let Major Hasan get promoted and report to Fort Hood Texas after showing his extremist views and after having contacted known extremists.

Oh well. I guess there are other people with courage out there to follow.

I couldn’t agree with you more in matching your desire for Obama to address these issues of political correctness, tolerance and diversity sooner rather than later. And like you I agree that affirmative action even while imperfectly applied has been without question a net plus for our society. Other American institutions would be well served if they studied the U. S. Armed Forces as an example of the benefits of inclusion.

However, the key to making sure that diversity works is a consistent and rigorous application of competency standards so that one and all realize that they are being measured by the same yardstick. This is the essence of meritocracy and lends credibility and honor to all who seek to measure up to the exacting standards of our armed forces.

I am not familiar with Army practice but I am with Naval Special Warfare (SEAL’s) and in their case religion, skin color, ethic background, cultural tradition are all incidental irrelevancies when it comes to Development Command's 'Basic Underwater Demolition' (BUD's). In that unforgiving forge of human iron the only thing that counts is focused determination and physical stamina. All (the very few) who emerge are brothers.

I am glad you came to your senses. I agree with your thoughts on PC but Obama's speech was not the time for that.

I completely agree "that we should not shy away from expelling violent extremists from the ranks of the military." But the tougher question is what standard of proof should we apply in deciding who is a violent extremist?

Don't get me wrong, maybe this guy would have been found to be a violent extremest under any standard we would apply. But too many people are saying what you said on today's episode of Public Radio's Here and Now, that since there was evidence that he was an extremest he should have been expelled.

We cannot expel someone from the service, or school, or a government job or take any other official action against someone because there is some evidence of a fact. Certainly "beyond a reasonable doubt" would be too high a standard. Maybe we should use the standard for ordinary civil litigation -- "preponderance of the evidence." Or one could say even a lower standard of proof, e.g. "probable cause," should be used. But whatever level of proof we require before taking this kind of action against someone, no one should be expelled just because there is some evidence of any fact. What standard would you use?

One more thought, if anyone in a position of responsibility was too busy avoiding criticism (being politically correct) to do his or her job faithfully, that person should be ridden out of the army on a rail. I am sure there will be an investigation and if there is such a finding, heads will role, after an appropriate finding of wrongdoing.

"For example, I think affirmative action did this country a lot of good, and that diversity and tolerance are great strengths to be cultivated-but that we should not shy away from expelling violent extremists from the ranks of the military."

So supporting affirmative action is an example of good political correctness? I don't see what affirmative action has to do with political correctness at all. It's becoming apparent that several folks along the line who should've rung alarm bells re: Major Hassan didn't; it seems like the proper solution isn't to whine about PC run amok but to instruct the chain of command to do its job and not take the path of least resistance.

Saying "we shouldn't shy away from expelling violent extremists" is a pretty incredible strawman; certainly people should've been more cautious w/ this guy, but I don't think anyone looked the other way knowing he was a violent extremist.

As far as affirmative action goes, it's doing this country a lot of good. Specifically, it's doing a lot of good in the American military.

diversity and tolerance are great strengths to be cultivated-but that we should not shy away from expelling violent extremists from the ranks of the military.

You're right, we shouldn't shy away from that. But the two conditions you lay down: that one be violent, and also an extremist, are problematic.

For starters, Hasan wasn't violent until the morning of November 5th.

And as for extremism, what's the litmus test? Who has the authority to decide which ideas are extreme and which are tolerable? We're opening up a whole crap-bag of problems when we start prosecuting and destroying people's careers over what some Americans might find as 'unsavory' and 'dangerous' ideas.

Prior to his flipping out, to date, there don't seem to be any VERIFIABLE accounts of Hasan unequivocally saying that he felt it was an individual religious obligation for him to murder as many non-Muslims as possible, regardless of the setting. There's an unverified story floating around out there that someone remotely recalls him saying in, what can only be described as the world's most awkward power point presentation, that non-Muslims should be killed for not converting. Another more sound piece of evidence comes from a conversation he had a few weeks ago with a Muslim colleague of his where he said he found it heresy to be cooperating with Jews and Christians against Muslims in war.

That guy should have said something, but it may already have been too late. Who knows?

Bottom line, the military would be asking for a world of pain if it starts asking religiously invasive questions about personal faith in their psych evaluations. And let's face it, it's only gonna be the Arabs and Muslims that get that 'special treatment.'

Maybe I'm getting old, but can some officers comment on the Army's dress code. At a huge funeral on national television with the POTUS present, everyone was wearing field cammie uniforms, including the honor guard and General Casey!

Has the Army abolished its service uniforms? Is it too much trouble to get dressed for an important event?

is that our information borders are open to an extremist behavioral technology, allowing the mad mullah's web presence, a virus trolling for vulnerable maladjusted wackos. In both Hasan and the 6/07 Little Rock cases, there appears to have been 2-way contact. But it's not necessary, and may be counselled against in Lone Wolf 3.0.

9/11 used hardware, psychology, and gravity against a known fixed target. Lone wolf jihad is now shown to recruit via software and psychology against targets of opportunity. The vulnerability is there, in an integrated interdependant society. Applied psychology that works is a behavioral technology.

Like it or not, the suicide jihad argument became more compelling to a larger target audience, when we went to war over there with tanks, occupation, bombs, 'enhanced interrogation'.

150 years ago, some Kansans were willing to burn other citizens in their homes, if they held opposing views about slavery. Christians go crazy too; it's happened before, and will happen again.

How do we defend the 1st Ammendment, freedom of religion, defend our society from being strangled by our own Bill of Rights? I don't think you can make that easy for us, Tom.

Stratfor has some useful thoughts on lone wolf.
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/442059/b612960556/1641504879/5fe34e8fbb/
http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/26665/challenge_lone_wolf?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091111&utm_content=related1

I have to strongly agree with the comments about the informal appearance and lack of military bearing of Army troops at the Fort Hood memoriam for the slain soldiers. Recently, five Guardsmen of the 1st. Battalion the Grenadier Guards were killed in Afghanistan. As their bodies were returned to the U.K. impeccably turned out fellow Guardsmen in the regalia of the Brigade of Guards met them with all the honors and ceremony of the British Army. In my view our lads deserve at least a similar effort. The U. S. officers in command need to get the men properly uniformed and in ranks to receive their fallen brothers, particularly when the Commander-in-Chief is in their presence. They earned it.

Read this: http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/story.asp?STORY_ID=2070

For those of you not registered at USNI...

US Naval Institute Proceedings
Issue: November 2009 Vol. 135/11/1,281

Afghanistan: Connecting Assumptions and Strategy

By Colonel T. X. Hammes, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), Major William S. McCallister, U.S. Army (Retired), and Colonel John M. Collins, U.S. Army (Retired)

Three well-known military thinkers re-evaluate what we've assumed to know—that just wasn't so—about a country where we've been fighting for eight years.

The 19th-century humorist Josh Billings once wrote that "It ain't the things you don't know what gets you in deep trouble; it's the things you knows for sure what ain't so." The fictional Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, who captained the ill-fated minesweeper USS Caine in Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, claimed, "You can't assume nothin' in this man's Navy." He was wrong, of course, because military planners frequently must substitute assumptions for absent facts. Those who did so in preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom erred so outrageously that key suppositions began to clash with reality before the war was one week old, because what they knew for sure wasn't so. (For elaboration, see John M. Collins, "You Can't Assume Nothin'," Proceedings, May 2003, p. 50.)

The Defense Department's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms clearly states that assumptions concerning current and future events must precede sound estimates of the situation and decisions regarding sensible courses of action. Connections between assumptions and strategy for Afghanistan accordingly are inseparable, but the architects of U.S. military involvement cling tenaciously to presumptions that simply aren't so. Armed combat consequently continues to escalate eight years after early victory seemed assured.

President Barack Obama and his advisers will find it difficult (perhaps impossible) to craft sound policies, plans, force postures, and operations without first determining which underlying assumptions to retain, which to discard, and which blank spots to fill, then revise their list accordingly. Senator John Kerry (D-MA), in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, recently announced that "we in Congress have our own assignment: to test all of the underlying assumptions in Afghanistan and make sure they are the right ones before embarking on a new strategy." No official compendium is publicly accessible (if indeed one exists), but several perceived assumptions based on observable behavior seem worthy of reconsideration.

Six assessments and recommended replacements summarized here might serve as a useful model for executive and legislative branch reviews. Political factors dominate the first three critiques, and military matters the next two, while the sixth involves a slew of strategic influences. Cultural considerations overlap the lot.

Perceived Assumption One:
A democratic, centralized Afghan government is desirable and feasible.

Many outsiders have ruled territories that now comprise Afghanistan, beginning with the Indian Mauryan Empire (~250 BC), but no strong centralized Afghan regime has ever enjoyed enough popular support to weld disparate tribes into the nationally cohesive structure that proponents of assumption one visualize. The monarchy (1747-1973), which came closest, was able to administer major cities, highways, and national customs entry points, because its reign was based on consensus and power-sharing agreements. Zahir Shah, the last king, never was particularly effective but retained nominal control precisely because he exerted minimal influence over traditionally ruled areas.

Modernization initiatives, regardless of the source, have always met with stiff resistance in Afghanistan's cities as well as across the countryside if they radically challenged the status quo. Local coalitions that preserve patronage are exceedingly important, because competition for scarce resources eternally fuels discord. Attempts to project the central government into every district without first developing solid patronage relationships with the local elites therefore encourage rebellion. Resultant friction makes it extremely difficult for any central government to raise revenues, implement day-to-day programs, or manage the social transformation needed to modernize the nation.

The nation-state system equates controlling any capital city with possession of sovereign authority. Kabul is no exception, but that metropolis at this time is much less important as the seat of Afghanistan's government than as an administrative, commercial, financial, cultural, transportation, and telecommunications hub. Foreign aid concentrated there represents wealth from which to build patronage relationships and territorial control. By controlling Kabul, strategically located between the Tajik, Pashtun, and Hazara regions, ethnic strongmen have traditionally hoped to imply that they exert power far beyond their provincial territories. But that seldom has been so.

Recommended Replacement for Assumption One: Governance in Afghanistan must involve power sharing between the national and local governments.
Perceived Assumption Two:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai can form a government that most Afghans recognize as legitimate.

Two major obstacles undermine the legitimacy of President Karzai's government. Many Afghans believe that foreigners imposed themselves on his regime and that it represents their interests. Complaints about pervasive corruption within his government are commonplace, even in areas where he is most popular. Widely disputed results of the recent presidential election greatly magnified those negative impressions. The European Union's election-monitoring commission estimates that 1.5 million ballots may be fraudulent—more than one-third of them votes President Karzai received. The United Nations recommends recounting up to ten percent of the ballots, and the Afghan government is complying. Many Afghans will continue to challenge the legitimacy of Karzai's regime regardless of the outcome.

Recommended Replacement for Assumption Two: President Karzai must create a functionally legitimate administration before continued U.S. support is justified.
Perceived Assumption Three:
Public opinion will approve the commitment of sizable U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan for several more years.

Victory in Afghanistan was front-page news in October 2001, immediately after 9/11, when a few CIA agents, Army Special Forces A-Teams (aka Green Berets), and U.S. Air Force combat controllers coordinated the efforts of, supported, and advised four competitive, xenophobic warlords commonly called the Northern Alliance, whose forces rapidly routed Taliban troops. The Taliban thereupon retreated to sanctuaries where they rested without interruption, regrouped, rearmed, resupplied, and recruited many new members, then reentered the fray with increasing effectiveness.

Afghanistan remained the "forgotten war" until budgetary costs began to balloon and "faces of the fallen" substantially outnumbered those being killed in Iraq. U.S. and allied operations increasingly compete with expensive domestic problems and programs, such as ways to reverse economic recession and reform health-care practices. Popular support, which strongly influences presidential decisions, will have to survive an undetermined number of congressional and presidential election campaigns as long as U.S. military intervention lingers, a doubtful proposition.

Recommended Replacement for Assumption Three: U.S. presidential and popular support for operations in Afghanistan will continue to sag unless the Afghan government and security forces demonstrate substantial improvements within the next year.
Perceived Assumption Four:
Current counterinsurgency practices will win the hearts and minds of most Afghan people.

The late French military officer and scholar David Galula's little gem, titled Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Praeger, 1964), asserts that victory, however defined, demands permanent isolation of insurgents from the populace, maintained by and with the willing cooperation of common people. As it stands, however, many of the most sympathetic Afghan citizens remain passive, even supporting Taliban oppressors as long as their lives are at stake. Resultant requirements to win hearts and minds therefore are monumentally important.

In his 30 August 2009 report to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander Army General Stanley McChrystal nevertheless notes: "ISAF is not adequately executing the basics of counterinsurgency warfare. In particular . . . it must focus on protecting the Afghan people, understanding their environment, and building relationships with them." The notoriously corrupt Afghan police, courts, and prison system are parts of the problem rather than parts of the solution. In some respects, so is the increasingly capable Afghan Army, whose commanders often pledge allegiance to regional centers rather than the national government and arrogantly demand patronage from inhabitants within respective jurisdictions. Winning hearts and minds seldom commands a high priority.

Recommended Replacement for Assumption Four: Neither the Afghan government nor ISAF can win the hearts and minds of most Afghan people without first providing consistent protection, accompanied by effective, non-corrupt governance teams that establish locally acceptable governments.
Perceived Assumption Five:
The International Security Assistance Force will provide the resources necessary to conduct population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns.

Failures to provide reasonably adequate resources have been routine since 2002. Despite the recent infusion of 17,000 U.S. troops, ISAF senior officers contend that the grand total on site remains hopelessly insufficient to implement current Afghan security force training programs, much less rapidly build the force to 400,000 while concurrently securing the population. The so-called "civilian surge" in March 2009 provided ISAF far fewer advisers than necessary to support population-centric COIN plans. Three full-time civilians, for example, assisted several thousand Marines during the recent offensive in Helmand Province.

Plans call for the Afghan National Police to expeditiously double in strength from about 80,000 to 160,000, although ISAF provides far too few advisers for the current contingent. Afghan courts and prisons also need many additional civilian advisers, because the populace consistently complains about the corrupt justice system. Taliban programs and propaganda use every opportunity to exploit that deficiency. Some Taliban leaders, for example, sponsor "Islamic courts" that provide swift resolution of commonplace legal conflicts in areas they control.

In his 30 August memo, General McChrystal asserted that mission failure seems probable without more U.S. boots on the ground, but decisions to provide how much of what and how fast are still pending. Although they clearly will be needed to mentor additional Afghan National Security Forces, the numbers of foreign troops assigned to ISAF seem certain to decrease rather than increase. Canada has reaffirmed its intention to withdraw 2,500 soldiers in 2011. Holland is set to follow suit. And the German and Italian governments find it increasingly difficult to justify their troop contributions.

Recommended Replacement for Assumption Five: ISAF civilian and military personnel totals will decrease during the next two years. U.S. military reinforcements will arrive less rapidly than planned. U.S civilian personnel strengths will remain static during the next year.
Perceived Assumption Six:
Afghanistan is significantly more important to American security than Pakistan.

Isolated, impoverished Afghanistan was strategically important to the United States and its allies in 2001 mainly because al Qaeda's transnational terrorists used that territory as a basic training base and springboard from which to launch global as well as regional attacks on targets of their choosing, including those they hit on 9/11. Threats to international security that emanate from Afghanistan have been less intense since U.S. and allied troops made Osama bin Laden and his henchmen head for hideouts in Pakistan.

Then, in a classic example of mission creep, U.S. policy-makers decided to create a viable government, a national army, competent police, and jump start that country's primitive economy. Every measurement, from dollars spent to troops deployed to time dedicated despite mounting casualties, indicates that U.S. leaders still believe Afghanistan is strategically more important than Pakistan. This is despite the persistent presence of al Qaeda's terrorist bases in and near Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas that feed regional as well as local instability. Potential scenarios that could dangerously damage U.S./allied security interests include another governmental takeover by the Pakistan Army, a coup by Islamist extremists within the Army, and economic collapse, any of which could magnify prospects of nuclear warfare between Pakistan and India, accompanied by adverse implications for many other countries.

Even so, some strategic thinkers claim that a psychological defeat of gigantic proportions would ensue if the United States fails to stay the course in Afghanistan, thereby encouraging mischief by Muslim radicals everywhere. Those seers could be correct, but public support almost surely would dissolve if this great nation pursues present political, economic, and cultural objectives in Afghanistan with no end in sight. The future would look much rosier if U.S. policy-makers transferred top priority from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Actions needed to prevent al Qaeda or any other transnational terrorist cell from using Afghanistan as its base after U.S. armed forces withdraw would become far less expensive in terms of required forces (which are rapidly wearing out), resources, and time, plus missed opportunity costs in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. Savings used to help Pakistan safeguard itself would be more rewarding in every respect, but only if strict monitoring replaces currently lax oversight. Success in such regard awaits renegotiation of U.S. terms that one Pakistani source describes as "insulting and unacceptable" interference with national sovereignty. The Taliban's humiliating assaults on Pakistan's heavily fortified military headquarters in Rawalpindi on 10 October may help expedite that process.

Recommended Replacement for Assumption Six: Pakistan is much more important than Afghanistan from the standpoint of threats to U.S security interests around the world.
We Need A New Set of Assumptions—Now

Assumptions, which are presumed to be true in the absence of contrary proof, fill informational chasms when facts are unavailable. Seasoned planners, in an endlessly iterative process, assemble and scrutinize a carefully selected list, then adopt those that seem best suited for particular purposes. They routinely replace favorites that subsequent events invalidate, because fallacious assumptions, whether tacitly or consciously stated, can sabotage national security strategies just as surely as enemy actions.

The six assumptions assessed here collectively promise prodigious expenditures of U.S. national treasure during an unpredictable number of years with scant assurance that U.S. and allied security interests will ever be well secured. Precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan would by no means be advisable, but realistic replacements for current plans are urgently required. Now is the time for President Obama and his trusted advisers to consciously articulate a new set of assumptions and subject them to constant scrutiny so conjectures will correspond with facts as closely as possible while events unfold.

Colonel Hammes, a counterinsurgency authority and author of The Sling and The Stone: On War in the 21st Century (Zenith Press, 2004), is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Major McCallister is the intelligence analyst for a U.S. construction company that supports military operations in Regional Commands North, East, and South Afghanistan.

Colonel Collins conceived, recruited, and steers a national security e-mail forum called the Warlord Loop.

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