All your armies,
All your fighters
All your tanks
And all your soldiers
Against a boy holding a stone
Standing there all alone
In his eyes I see the sun
In his smile I see the moon
And I wonder, I only wonder
Who is weak, and who is strong?
Who is right, and who is wrong?
And I wish, I only wish
That the truth has a tongue!!!Song: My Only Wish
The Indian [was thought] as less than human and worthy only of extermination. We did shoot down defenseless men, and women and children at places like Camp Grant, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee. We did feed strychnine to red warriors. We did set whole villages of people out naked to freeze in the iron cold of Montana winters. And we did confine thousands in what amounted to concentration camps. — Wellman, The Indian Wars of the West, 1934By Paul Balles
On Thursday, November 26, 2009, Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving. The holiday is celebrated in remembrance of the pilgrims and in order to give thanks for the harvest. About the holiday, Professor Robert Jensen has written:
European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians.
Today there are approximately 310 American Indian reservations (or should we refer to them as Bantustans?) in the continental U.S. Perhaps we should call the forced Palestinian enclaves reservations. North America, South Africa, Palestine--all invaded and occupied with indigenous populations exterminated and imprisoned.
Their lands and homes have been taken by settlers protected by troops. They've been herded onto refugee camps called reservations or Bantustans and kept in poverty and despair.
Their fathers tell them stories of how they or their grandfathers resisted the oppressors and how their arrows or stones were no match for the guns and cannons used by the foreign settlers.
Now, the young tribesmen read newspapers in English and watch television. Some even have computers and the Internet.
They see films about Japanese Kamikaze pilots during WWII and about the French resistance. We read about Palestinians blowing themselves up because the settlers in Palestine have been their oppressors.
If I die while killing 20 of my enemies, doesn't that serve my people in their war against oppression? Hasn't this been the justification for all soldiers dying in all wars?
Didn’t we send our youth into Iraq because we approved the certain suicide of all those who would die? That's what's so attractive about invading places like Afghanistan and Iraq: we can act like oppressive settlers again.
Perhaps that's what Americans love about Israel. Israelis act like America's early settlers and garrisons of troops murdering and maiming tribes of people they consider lesser breeds.
America has forgotten the outcome of other conquests by nations and empires that over-extended themselves. All have fallen! America should know better, having fallen to resistance in Viet Nam. How many young lives succumbed to our leaders' suicidal commitment?
But what about the resistance to occupations? Isn't South Korea feeling occupied? What about the Philippines? Japan recently complained about American troops in Okinawa. How about all the other places where America has over-extended its military presence?
What would the U.S. do if a number of American Indian tribesmen decided they had been occupied long enough, been impoverished long enough? Suppose they rose up against the oppression.
Should there be an American Indian uprising--a resistance move after generations of submission—would the only path for America to take and remain true to itself be to eliminate the terrorists? Isn’t that what Israel does now?
Destroy their homes and camps; force them across borders into Canada and Mexico, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Build walls. Wipe out all potential weapons sources. Don't call it genocide! Call it “eliminating terrorism”! Call it “self defense”!
Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
As early as 2003, tactics and techniques developed in Iraq -- improvised explosive devices (IEDs), car bombs, suicide vests -- began migrating to other fronts like Afghanistan, where they continue to bedevil our soldiers. RAND analyst Seth Jones, whose book, In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan
Over the past several years, al-Qaeda's fortunes have seriously declined in Iraq. Remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) continue to regularly carry out spectacular attacks, but the Iraq front is no longer seen as the cause celebre that it once was for the global jihad movement. One of the key developments leading to the decline in violence in Iraq was the creation and deputization by U.S. forces of Sunni tribal paramilitaries -- many of them former al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents -- to police their own neighborhoods. Initially referred to as "the Awakening," this phenomenon soon became known as "the Sons of Iraq."
But what of the other "sons of Iraq," namely, the thousands of young men from around the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe radicalized by the Iraq invasion and fed a steady stream of images of U.S. occupation by satellite television channels such as Al Jazeera? Many of these men were inspired to travel to Iraq to join in the fight against the American occupation and the U.S.-supported government -- and others who were unable to go have joined with extremist movements in their home countries.
As the Iraq War wore on, some analysts and historians voiced concern that, in addition to the spread of organizational tactics and technology, which had already begun, the war could give rise to a phenomenon similar to what took place after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Then, thousands of Arab fighters (who had traveled to Afghanistan with the aid and cooperation of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan) returned to their homes across the Middle East, bringing with them newly acquired knowledge of warfare and a battle-hardened commitment to an extreme form of Islam. Writing in Small Wars Journal, Clint Watts notes that "this 'First Foreign Fighter Glut' spawned al Qaeda and a decade of increasingly lethal terrorist attacks leading up to September 11, 2001. … Left unchecked, the Second Foreign Fighter Glut will produce the next generation of terrorist organizations and attacks" much as the first fueled al-Qaeda.
There is some evidence that this is happening. In the summer of 2008, Andrew Exum, a former Army ranger, now a research fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), published an article in Democracy, examining the phenomenon of foreign fighters leaving Iraq to carry on the war elsewhere. Exum notes the presence of Iraq returnees in the battles which took place in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon in May 2007. In addition to the physical return of fighters, Exum, who writes the popular counterinsurgency blog Abu Muqawama, also stresses the extent to which new technologies have exponentially amplified the effects of the Iraq crucible on the wider jihadist movement. "In a wired world,” he writes, "jihadists can transmit their experiences -- their stories, their training, their anger–across the Internet." In the "virtual space" of the Internet is where jihadist organizations have made some of their most impressive and potentially consequential advances in spreading their ethos of global Islamic resistance.
One country in which all of these elements -- returning fighters, new tactics, and new technologies perfected in Iraq -- have combined is Yemen, where the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is currently threatened by a growing insurgency, led by what many analysts believe to be among the most formidable affiliates of the global jihad movement.
On Sept. 17 of last year, terrorists attacked the U.S. embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana'a. According to Brian O'Neil, a Yemen analyst and author of the forthcoming book The Last Refuge: Islam and Insurgency in Yemen, the complexity and skill of the embassy attacks, which involved two bomb-laden vehicles -- the first "to breach the perimeter of a compound, a second to drive inside and explode" -- were evidence of techniques developed by al-Qaeda in Iraq. Initial reports indicated that a number of the attackers had actually returned from Iraq, but analyst Gregory Johnsen -- who co-publishes a blog on Yemen along with O'Neil -- says those reports were wrong. While three of the six Sept. 17 attackers "had attempted to go [to Iraq], and one made it as far as Syria," he says, none of them actually made it. They then chose option B: linking up with an extremist cell in their home country.
On March 15, members of Yemeni al-Qaeda attacked a group of South Korean tourists, killing four, along with their Yemeni tour guide. Three days later, another suicide bomber attacked a convoy carrying South Korean investigators and victims' family members but managed to kill only himself. Analyzing these attacks in a recent article for West Point Counterterrorism Center's CTC Sentinel, O'Neil suggests that they reveal a highly adaptive organization, skilled both in physical attacks and in the use of propaganda in the aftermath of those attacks. As recently as a few years ago, al-Qaeda had almost been snuffed out in Yemen but has been resurrected under the leadership of Nasir al-Wahayshi, a former secretary of Osama bin Laden, and merged with its Saudi Arabian affiliate to form Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This group represents a growing challenge to the Yemeni government -- whose security forces, as with those of Pakistan, seem both unwilling and unable to fully confront the threat.
Ironically, one of the key reasons for the eventual failure of al-Qaeda in Iraq was that the Bush administration's pre-war claims about the strength of al-Qaeda in that country were untrue. Al-Qaeda had never existed in Iraq in any substantial way -- its presence there was largely a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation -- and even after their arrival, al-Qaeda organizers failed to successfully embed themselves in Iraqi society. They alienated Iraqis both with their brutality and with their grandiose visions of a regional caliphate in which Sunni Iraqi nationalists had little interest.
AQAP seems to have learned from the mistakes of the Iraq branch. One of the key elements of AQAP's progress in Yemen, notes O'Neil, has been the extent to which the movement has successfully latched on to a set of local grievances against the Yemeni government, including claims of torture as well as still-simmering anger over Yemen's brief 1994 civil war – and downplayed, for the moment, global jihadist arguments against "the far enemy," the United States. O'Neil writes that "the real talent of AQAP is to not lost sight of what makes their home terrain unique … by addressing specific government misdeeds, connecting with people on a tribal level [while] not losing sight of their global struggle the reconstituted Al Qaeda has managed to outstrip its predecessors in threat potential." In an interview, O'Neil explained that AQAP has "taken propaganda tactics from Iraq, physical propaganda, turning out videos very quickly" after attacks but always making sure to "tie it into local concerns," such as the growing southern secession movement. "It's a way of saying to the local population, 'We're on your side!'"
Al-Qaeda's assimilation of these lessons from Iraq -- the tactical, as well as the political -- is what leads O'Neil to state that AQAP "is at the forefront of the next wave of jihad." It's worth pointing out that the United States learned a lot from Iraq, too -- the counterinsurgency methods applied there are now being employed in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The costs for the United States in manpower-intensive operations, however, have been and will continue to be enormous and are almost certainly unsustainable over the long term. It's neither politically nor economically feasible for the U.S. to attempt to intervene wherever and whenever some al-Qaeda affiliate gains a foothold. In the event that AQAP is successful in destabilizing the Yemeni republic, we'll need to come up with some other plan.
Matthew Duss is a research associate with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a blogger at CAPAF’s Wonk Room.1. Exaggerating the threat. An Afghan army foot patrol was attacked by guerrillas in Helmand Province on Wednesday, according to AP. US and Afghan soldiers responded, engaging in a firefight. Then the US military called in an air strike on the Taliban, killing 20 of them. On Tuesday, a similar airstrike had taken out 30 guerrillas.End/ (Not Continued)
It is this sort of thing that makes me wonder why the Taliban (or whoever these guys in Helmand were) are considered such a big threat that the full might of NATO is needed to deal with them. They have no air force, no artillery, no tanks. They are just small bands, apparently operating in platoons, who, whenever they mass in large enough numbers to stand and fight, can just be turned into red mist from the air.
2. The US has actually only managed to install a fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, which is rolling back rights of women and prosecuting blasphemy cases. In a play for the Shiite vote (22% or so of the population), President Hamid Karzai put through civilly legislated Shiite personal status law, which affects Shiite women in that country. The wife will need the husband's permission to go out of the house, and can't refuse a demand for sex. (Since the 1990s there has been a movement in 50 or more countries to abandon the idea that spouses cannot rape one another, though admittedly this idea is new and was rejected in US law until recently).
No one seems to have noted that the Shiite regime in Baghdad is more or less doing the same thing. In Iraq, the US switched out the secular Baath Party for Shiite fundamentalist parties. Everyone keeps saying the US improved the status of women in both countries. Actually, in Iraq the US invasion set women back about 30 years. In Afghanistan, the socialist government of the 1980s, for all its brutality in other spheres, did implement policies substantially improving women's rights, including aiming at universal education, making a place for them in the professions, and so forth. There were socialist Afghan women soldiers fighting the Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas that Reagan called "freedom fighters" and to whom he gave billions to turn the country into a conservative theocracy. I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.
3. The US is building a mass of hardened bases costing over $1 bn. in Afghanistan. That's about the annual budget of the Afghanistan government.
4. It begins. The US is creating local militias in Wardak called the Afghan Public Protection Force. You wonder how long it will be before the Karzai government is engaged in firefights with them (cf. Fadl in Baghdad earlier this week).
5. Now thousands of private security contractors (i.e. mercenaries) will be hired in Afghanistan. But they won't be Americans for the most part. Children, can you say "Hessians"?
I don't understand the concept of paying someone $200,000 a year to guard armed GIs being paid a fraction of that. Wouldn't it be better to expand the size of the army if you need more troops? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have one line of command? Aren't these essentially high-priced MPs?
6. The secretary of defense is predicting that the US military will be in Afghanistan indefinitely and will only achieve limited goals there. (!)
I ask myself, "why?"
7. An attempt by officials in the Obama administration to replace Guantanamo with Bagram in Afghanistan has been shot down by a Federal judge. The government actually argued that the three men (2 Yemenis and a Tunisian) did not have habaeus corpus rights because they are in a war zone.
Why are they in a war zone? Because the US government transported them there!
8. The president is corralling a coalition of the reluctant for troop contributions in Afghanistan.
9. While militaries spend tens of billions on fighting disgruntled Pashtun tribesmen, a fifth of pregnant women or women with newborns are malnourished in Afghanistan. In Iraq, as well, public health crises took a back seat while hundreds of billions were spent on weapons and warfare.
10. A new Friedman unit. It was always the "next six months" that would be "crucial" for Iraq. It is now "this year" that is crucial for Afghanistan. By the math of Friedman units, does this mean the Afghanistan occupation will last twice as long as the Iraq one?
American officials have privately backed Pakistan's "Sharia law for peace" deal with Taliban militants in the Swat Valley despite publicly criticising it as a "negative development".By Dean Nelson, Javed Siddiq in Islamabad and Emal Khan in Peshawar
The Pentagon "was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.
The report is to be made public today.
Marine Corps leaders "stopped processing" an urgent request in February 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from combat commanders in Iraq's Anbar province after declaring that a more heavily armored version of existing Humvee vehicles was the "best available" option for protecting troops, the report says.
Marine officials "did not develop a course of action for the (request), attempt to obtain funding for it or present it to the Marine Corps Requirements Oversight Council for a decision on acquiring" MRAPs, the report says.
The military continued relying mainly on Humvees until May 2007, when then-incoming Defense secretary Robert Gates called procurement of the MRAPs his top priority. Since then, the Pentagon has spent more than $22 billion to buy more than 15,000 of the vehicles.
When field commanders first began requesting MRAPs, military officials saw the armored Humvees as a more immediate option to countering IEDs, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. "The threat has evolved and our force protection measures have evolved with it," he said.
The Marines requested the inspector general's investigation in February after an internal report accused the Corps of "gross mismanagement" of the urgent request for MRAPs. Hundreds of Marines died unnecessarily because of delays in fielding the vehicles, said the Jan. 22 study by Franz Gayl, a retired Marine officer and civilian science adviser.
Two U.S. senators — Democrat Joe Biden of Delaware, now the vice president-elect, and Republican Kit Bond of Missouri — demanded an investigation after details of Gayl's study were published.
"The Pentagon was aware of the threat IEDs posed to our troops prior to our intervention in Iraq and still failed to take the steps to acquire the technology needed to reduce the risk," Bond said after reviewing the report. "Some bureaucrats at the Pentagon have much to explain."
USA TODAY detailed the Pentagon's failure to move quickly on MRAP development in a series of stories last year. Gates credited one of those stories with sparking his interest in the vehicles.
Marine commanders in Iraq's then-volatile Anbar province sought 1,169 MRAPs in the February 2005 urgent request. "There is an immediate need for an MRAP vehicle capability to increase survivability and mobility of Marines operating in a hazardous fire area," it said.
The inspector general's report says that Marine officials advised Marine Corps commandant Michael Hagee at the time that armored Humvees were the "best available, most survivable" vehicles to meet the request.
MRAPs are far more resistant to IEDs and landmines than armored Humvees because they're higher off the ground and rest on a V-shaped hull, which deflects blasts from the vehicle's underside.
Perhaps the Taliban are observing the old military axiom that amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics. In a pair of attacks over the weekend in northwest Pakistan, militants destroyed more than 150 Humvees and other vehicles bound for U.S. troops and allies fighting in Afghanistan - the third attack on NATO supply lines inside a month. Those attacks have highlighted an ongoing vulnerability along the overland routes through mountain passes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier that are used to transport more than 75% of the supplies sent by the U.S. to its 32,000 troops in Afghanistan. So, as President-elect Barack Obama prepares to send more troops to join the fight in Afghanistan, Pentagon planners are scrambling to figure out how to keep those already there - and the anticipated reinforcements - supplied with food, fuel, bullets and everything else a modern army needs.
"Without adequate sustainment, the operational deployment cannot maintain constant pressure on the enemy," Lieutenant Christopher Manganaro, a young U.S. officer in Afghanistan has written in the professional journal Army Logistics. And the Pentagon can't do it all with airplanes. "Few airfields in Afghanistan can support aircraft larger than a C-130," Manganaro added, "limiting the number of high-value items that U.S. Army units can transport by air." (See pictures of NATO troops in Afghanistan.)
There is no sharper contrast between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than their supply routes. In Iraq, the U.S. military basically owns the skies and roads that run from Kuwait into Iraq, through which nearly all supplies flow. But that's hardly the case in Pakistan, where most goods arrive at the Indian Ocean port of Karachi and then are shipped over land, often to Peshawar. Then they're funneled through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, 40 miles away. Pakistan is plagued with hit-and-run militancy even in some of its major cities, and everything west of Peshawar is pretty much enemy territory.
Militants hijacked a convoy of more than a dozen vehicles nearly a month ago, and last week 22 trucks were destroyed by fire at a truck stop. U.S. military officials downplay the impact of recent attacks, noting that about 350 supply vehicles a day travel the route. Still, they're nervous enough to have begun looking for alternatives.
That's because the choke-point in the Khyber Pass is an attractive target for the enemy. Marine General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was asked in September how much trouble his forces in Afghanistan would be in if Islamabad shut down supply lines through Pakistan. "It would be challenging to sustain our presence," he answered. "It is very difficult then to get to this landlocked nation in a way that would provide the quantity of resources that we need, particularly as we see ourselves growing." Bearing in mind projected future deployments, the U.S. will need to deliver up to 70,000 shipping containers (15% of them refrigerated) a year to its troops in Afghanistan. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable northwest passage.)
The U.S. has recently tested alternate supply lines, and "we're working our way through to understand rail, pipelines, customs, what would it take, are they there in a sufficient scale to allow us to do this? And so we're working this one pretty hard," Cartwright added. The impact of a shutdown triggered by Taliban attacks would have the same result.
And the logistical needs that will accompany the doubling of the U.S. troop contingent over the next year or so makes securing supply lines even more urgent. "The larger the force, the greater the need" for security, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a congressional panel September 23. But the challenges of Afghanistan's rugged terrain has long been a key weapon for locals eager to keep foreigners at bay. The Afghans drove the British out through the Khyber Pass more than a century ago, killing more than 16,000. And they forced out the Soviet Union in 1989, following a 10-year occupation that cost the Red Army 15,000 men.
"The [latest] strike is going to embolden those who see the loss of 150 vehicles as a pretty big blow," says Anthony Zinni, a former Marine general who once headed U.S. Central Command, which includes Afghanistan. "It's going to inspire more bad people."
Stephen Biddle, a military expert with the Council on Foreign Relations who recently returned from Afghanistan, believes the militants' goal is to slowly bleed U.S. troops. But a complete shutdown of the Pakistani routes by the insurgents would force the Pakistan military to act more forcefully than it has until now.
"[The Pakistan-based militants] don't want to do anything that would bring the government down on them like a ton of bricks," Biddle surmises. "But it's entirely plausible they could ramp the violence up slowly in an attempt to squeeze the U.S. in Afghanistan."
The alternative supply routes being investigated by the U.S. military run through the Caucasus and the former Soviet Stans of Central Asia. "The route studies exist for alternative supply lines through the Caucasus, but they're wildly expensive," says a retired military officer now serving on Obama's Pentagon transition team. The U.S. Transportation Command issued a notice to transport companies in September, saying "strikes, border delays, accidents and pilferage" in Pakistan and "attacks and armed hijackings" in Afghanistan make the current route dangerous.
The Pentagon wants to require that 90% of the goods shipped over alternate routes be delivered by deadlines ranging from 30 to 45 days. It's also demanding a "cargo loss rate" of less than 1% due to "pilferage, accident, spoilage, attacks and acts of God." No doubt the Taliban will love that last category.
See pictures of U.S. troops' 5 years in Iraq.
See pictures of art from war-torn Afghanistan.
View this article on Time.com
Related articles on Time.com:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- The new U.S. Air Force doctrine on insurgency and irregular warfare was fast-tracked to completion so the service could get a seat at the table for discussions about an overarching policy on the topic for the U.S. military as a whole. But critics say the new Air Force approach takes insufficient account of the need to win hearts and minds in such fighting.
A senior Air Force official said last week that planning had begun over the summer for the so-called joint doctrine on insurgency -- policy for all three services and the Marine Corps.
“In order to have a voice at that table,” Maj. Gen Allen Peck told the Air Force Association conference in Washington, “We had to have doctrine written down … so we fast-tracked (it).”
The Air Force wants a voice because the way the joint doctrine is written “appears likely to affect service budgets, programs, and more,” observed Robert Dudney, editor in chief of the association’s magazine.
The new Air Force policy document was published in August. Peck, who runs the Air Force Doctrine Center at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., said it aimed to leverage the “asymmetric advantages” that U.S. airpower produced.
Insurgents have “dedicated and experienced ground forces,” but “they don’t have our access to air and space,” he said.U.S. air dominance gave its forces strategic advantages that were “almost like cheating,” he said.
The doctrine defines irregular warfare as “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations.”
But Peck cautioned this was not necessarily the same as a battle for hearts and minds.
“It doesn’t have to be kinder and gentler,” he said, citing the Viet Cong, who he charged had “won influence over the population how? Not by going in and immunizing the kids and building schools. … They’d go in and they’d grab a couple of the tribal elders and hang them.”
The doctrine also emphasized that counterinsurgency could not be won with military power alone, said Peck, enumerating the so-called DIME concept -- Diplomacy, Information operations, Military force and Economic power -- of a four-pronged approach to the problem.
Critics in Afghanistan have charged that increasing U.S. reliance on airpower has led to a growing number of civilian casualties -- and increasing alienation of The Local population from the international military presence in the country -- undermining the U.S. mission.
Peck acknowledged that the Air Force was now much more active in Afghanistan. “It’s become much more kinetic over there,” he said. But he added that airpower often got the rap unfairly, when it was essentially acting in a support role to the ground forces.
“Rarely does the ground commander ask for a weapon to be delivered and then we miss. Normally the weapon goes there and then due to poor intelligence or something else” it turns out the target was wrong.
Nonetheless, “We end up reading about ‘airstrike kills’” in such situations, Peck said. “The airman takes the blame.”
He rejected criticism that the new doctrine took too little account of the potentially negative effects of employing powerful explosives from the air.
“If there’s a troop in a contact event … that’s where you gotta do what you gotta do to save (the personnel) on the ground.”
But for operations that don't involve immediate danger to U.S. forces, he said, “We have a pretty strict matrix that we have to run through” before the use of certain kinds of weapons is approved. “We’re restricting ourselves.”
It was “flat not true” that lawyers were in the decision-making process, he said, but they were advising the commanders who were.
“The bottom line is,” he said earlier, “I don’t think airpower is being used to its full potential capabilities in either Iraq or Afghanistan.”
A longtime critic of U.S. strategy, retired Air Force Col. Chester Richards told UPI that airpower was inherently unsuited to counterinsurgency.
“When you blow things up from the air, there’s a good chance that you’ll kill civilians,” he said. “Almost any kinetic application of airpower is bound to be counterproductive” in counterinsurgency conflicts.
“Shooting at people from airplanes (makes) you look like a physical and moral coward,” he said, adding that he was not impugning the character of any U.S. personnel, but rather emphasizing the propaganda value of an enemy narrative about U.S. airpower.
The storyline that “They are afraid to fight us face-to-face but not to bomb us from the air and kill our women and children” is “a good recruiting tool for the enemy,” he said.
“I don’t even know how to respond to that,” said Peck, when a reporter put Richards’ views to him.
“I take great pride in the fact that we Can Do these things without putting our forces at risk -- to me that’s the goal. We don’t want to fight a fair fight.”
Part 1The problem, say many who have studied the topic, is that the things the U.S. Air Force has made its priority capabilities -- establishing air supremacy over the enemy and perfecting the timely and pinpoint delivery of high explosives -- tend to be less useful in irregular or asymmetric conflicts like those in which the U.S. military is currently engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In particular, critics have singled out an over-reliance on air strikes in Afghanistan as a significant barrier to the success of a "hearts and minds" strategy on the ground, given the inevitability of "collateral damage" -- the accidental killing of civilians.
"From an Air Force perspective, we were told to plan for a different kind of war," Lt. Col. Michael Pietrucha told United Press International, commenting on the general direction of post-Cold War strategic thinking, which emphasized the potential for conventional conflicts with strategic competitors or regional powers like China or Iran.
Pietrucha, a specialist in irregular combat who until recently worked at the Air Force Warfare Center, stressed he did not speak for the service.
He added it was appropriate the Air Force had different priorities, because of its strategic roles in assuring "force projection" -- the ability of the U.S. military to strike anywhere in the world -- and in operating the nation's nuclear strike capabilities.
"We have a set of global responsibilities that require us to keep a slightly different focus," he said, adding that while counterinsurgency might be the most common kind of conflict the military would face in the immediate future, "The most common conflicts are not necessarily the most dangerous."
Other observers agree that, if the Air Force has been slow to meet the counterinsurgency challenge, they have other priorities, too.
"They have always put their emphasis on air supremacy," said a senior congressional staffer, "on the basis that unless you have that, your troops on the ground are at risk."
"The question," he added, "is whether they have overemphasized it."
One suggestion of an answer comes from the Air Force's now infamous congressional "whispering campaign" -- behind the backs of the Pentagon leadership and the administration -- to get more money for its hugely expensive new planes, the F-22 Raptor and the still-in-development F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
In picking Gen. Norton Schwartz, the first ever non-fighter or bomber pilot to head the service, Gates has ensured that, in future, that question will be answered from a different perspective.
Gates told reporters he chose Schwartz as the new chief of staff because he "brings fresh eyes to these (procurement) issues."
"It was mobility, jointness, special operations and being very, very smart" that led him to pick Schwartz, Gates said.
Observers say the choice of Schwartz, a veteran of special operations who most recently headed the Air Force's Transport Command -- in charge of mobility and lift -- is significant given the service's culture.
"It's not something I ever expected to see in my lifetime," retired Air Force Col. Chester Richards told UPI. Richards, a strategist who has studied and written about military power for three decades, said the nomination represented a chance for the service to "reinvent itself" and "shift away from being a force that just kills people on the ground" to one that brings other capabilities to the table, more relevant to the hearts and minds mission.
The Air Force itself says it already provides those capabilities, such as surveillance and lift, the ability to move troops and materiel around the combat theater.
"No one in the world can replicate the speed, volume and flexibility of the United States' air mobility team," USAF spokeswoman Maj. Olivia Nelson told UPI. She said that, on average, an Air Force mobility aircraft was launched somewhere every 90 seconds, and that in Iraq, Air Mobility Command was flying more than 200 sorties a day.
Pietrucha noted that lift, which can move relief supplies or drop packaged humanitarian rations as easily as it can ship troops and weapons, is a key capability in hearts and minds missions.
"There are lots of ways air (power) can help from a hearts and minds standpoint," said Pietrucha. "Jet noise is a great non-lethal effect … an indicator of presence," which tells friends and foes alike on the ground that the U.S. military is there.
But he added that "kinetics" or "fires" -- striking with bombs or other ordinance -- is a central part of any combat situation.
"The delivery of weapons in a counterinsurgency environment is still a very useful capacity," said Pietrucha, "especially if you are on the ground and in contact with the enemy," he added, in a reference to "close air support" -- the use of air power to win firefights on the ground.
The problem, said Richards, is that "When you fly over and you look down, everyone pretty much looks the same," which can easily lead to errors, like the recent friendly fire killing of 11 Pakistani troops, reportedly by a U.S. airstrike.
In a study last year, Brian Glyn Williams, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, found allied forces in Afghanistan were hampered in their hearts and minds mission by an over-reliance on air power.
The inevitable collateral damage from close air support actions was "the main complaint from Pashtuns" who had been displaced by the fighting, and one of the major factors fueling anger at foreign military forces, and thus potentially generating support for the insurgency.
Pietrucha said the propaganda value of reports about civilian casualties probably outweighed their truth value. "Because the adversary is the only presence on the ground, they can get their story out first -- whether it is true or not."
"We may know it's not the case (that an air strike hit a wedding party or a school), but we can't prove it, or at least not quickly enough."
Part 2
WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- To make the U.S. Air Force more relevant to the military's new counterinsurgency mission, experts say, the new leadership of the service has to "reinvent itself," look for alternatives to high-cost, high-tech, fuel-guzzling aircraft, and break out of its decades-long planning and procurement cycle to become a more agile, diverse force.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week broke the mold in at least one regard by naming as USAF chief of staff a transport pilot -- the first non-fighter, non-bomber pilot ever to head the service -- after firing the incumbent, along with the Air Force secretary, earlier this month.
Gates recently chastised all the services for what he called "Next-war-itis" -- "the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of (acquiring) what might be needed in a future conflict" rather than focusing on what is required to win the war they are actually fighting now and are most likely to face in the coming years.
"To remain viable," he said, the military's major weapons programs "will have to show some utility and relevance to the kind of irregular campaigns that … are most likely to engage America's military in the coming decades."
The Air Force's defenders say purchasing now for the next conflict is a necessity when new aircraft can take more than a decade to plan, develop and produce.
"Secretary Gates has accused the Air Force … of planning for the next war, but that is what you have to do with air forces because you cannot produce the aircraft needed when you need them," said retired Air Force Gen. Michael Dunn, president of the Air Force Association.
Retired Air Force Col. Chester Richards, who has studied and written about military strategy for three decades, told UPI the leadership changes were an opportunity for the service to "reinvent itself … to stay relevant in those kinds of (irregular and asymmetric) conflicts."
"They have been trying," he said, noting the service's forays into non-conventional areas such as cyberwarfare. But he said the new leadership will "inherit these huge procurement programs (like the F-22 Raptor and the yet-to-be built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter) … with their own momentum."
Richards believes the service will have a hard time justifying the cost in terms of counterinsurgency capabilities, and other observers say the Air Force -- and the military as a whole -- may face a budgetary crunch when the practice of funding through special emergency supplemental appropriations ends next year.
"The procurement priorities of the department are not well orientated towards the current conflict," a senior congressional staffer told UPI. "Does that mean some of the things that have been (USAF procurement) priorities will not get funded? Probably so."
But he added that the Air Force historically has been successful at getting Congress to fund its priorities and "has done a lot better (on the F-22 and F-35) than the Army has with (its huge-ticket procurement program, the Future Combat System, or) FCS."
Lt. Col Michael Pietrucha, a specialist in irregular combat who until recently worked at the Air Force Warfare Center, told UPI that, in 1965, when the North Vietnamese army began using surface-to-air missiles against U.S. aircraft, the Air Force was able to field a newly configured aircraft, fitted with electronic countermeasures and seating for an operator, within months.
"In the past, we adapted quicker," said Pietrucha, who stressed he did not speak for the service. He blamed "a much smaller, less diverse force" and the proliferation of acquisition regulations for the loss of flexibility.
"Not everything needs to take 20 years," he said. "We need to depart from the plan," he said, and break out of the planning and budget cycle that created "such long lead times" in procurement.
It is "a legitimate criticism" to say the Air Force, like most large organizations, has "not adapted quickly enough to the new challenges" of counterinsurgency.
Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Olivia Nelson told UPI the service was "focused and proactive in acquiring and using new systems that are needed in our fight now," giving as an example the new Wide Area Airborne Surveillance System and other high-technology tools being developed for the collection and analysis of intelligence.
Pietrucha cautioned that in the future, the Air Force would "need to think right-tech rather than high-tech," pointing to the enormous success of the A-10 -- a gunship considered lumbering and inelegant by some.
Skyrocketing fuel prices are imposing "a huge logistics penalty" on the service, Pietrucha said, noting relatively low-tech solutions like the A-10 are "cheaper to build and more economical to employ."
"You need a high-low mix" of technology, he said, adding, "Our capabilities are really in our people."
He said the service also needed to "better utilize our unconventional thinkers." At the moment, he said, it was "too easy to be slapped down and spoil your career" by thinking "out of the box."
Nurturing such mavericks would be "sometimes a bit painful and sometimes a bit embarrassing, but we can take a little of that at the individual level to help us avoid it at the national one."
Part 3
WASHINGTON, June 23 (UPI) -- U.S. Air Force policy states, and experts agree, that two of the most important ways in which the service can contribute to the military's new mission in irregular warfare are through surveillance and partnership -- building the air power of U.S. allies.
"Using a forest fire analogy," Lt. Col. Michael Pietrucha told United Press International, "our allies can be the smoke-jumpers" who can more quickly be mobilized to react to emerging insurgent threats in the regions where they are based.
Pietrucha, a specialist in irregular combat who until recently worked at the Air Force Warfare Center, and stressed he did not speak for the service, added the U.S. Air Force needed to be a "big brother to other, smaller air forces" as a way of "helping other (allied) nations threatened by irregular warfare problems."
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials say, the USAF is working to train and help equip air forces, and is making good progress.
According to Col. Maryellen Jadick, a spokeswoman for the air component of U.S. Central Command which is prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iraqi air force's "operational capabilities" currently comprise pilot training, battlefield mobility, surveillance and reconnaissance, and command and control.
Figures from the U.S. military's Combined Air Forces Training Team show that, in April, the Iraqi air force flew a record 383 sorties in one week and that, during the continuing Iraqi-led operations in Basra that began in March this year, the force airlifted 287 tons of cargo, transported 3,449 passengers, evacuated 111 patients and flew 76 surveillance missions for a total of 136 hours on-station, all with what the team called "minimal coalition support."
But the figures also note the force's 60-odd helicopters and fixed-wing planes include no ground attack or air combat craft.
And Jadick acknowledged the Iraqis' ability to use their own air power directly to strike insurgent forces was still some way off, since they "just began their initial development of ... ground attack and counter-terrorism capabilities, which will advance over the next two years."
She gave no dates as to when the Iraqi air force would be able to operate independently, controlling and defending its own airspace. "The ability to provide airspace control and air defense will follow in subsequent years," she told UPI in an e-mailed statement.
Similarly, the Afghan National Army Air Corps includes just four ground attack helicopters and no air combat planes in its roster of 26 aircraft, according to figures from the U.S. Combined Air Power Transition Force in Kabul. The transition force says an "ambitious expansion program" the Afghans have embarked upon will see that number grow to 67 by 2011 -- but the 40-odd new aircraft include just six more helicopter gunships and no combat airplanes.
On the surveillance front, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced earlier this year he had set up a special Pentagon task force to increase the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance -- ISR in military parlance -- capabilities available to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively," he said, adding he had "been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater."
"Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth," he concluded.
For critics of the Air Force, one example of those "old ways" has been the service's attitude to the new generation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator.
Gates said the service was slow to embrace UAVs, but the Air Force's defenders say that reluctance is gone.
"It is unfair to say we have not embraced UAVs," said Pietrucha, noting the Air Force recently announced it had already exceeded its target of having 21 Predator combat air patrols by 2010.
"We're at 25 (combat air patrols) now and growing to over 30 by year's end," said Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Olivia Nelson, adding the service was also maximizing its use of the high-altitude Global Hawk UAV. "We are flying our Global Hawks at maximum capacity, and buying them as fast as they can be built," she said.
Nelson also defended the service's practice of allowing only fully qualified pilots to fly some of its UAVs, which critics have compared unfavorably with the practice of other services, such as the Army, which allow trained operators who are not pilots to fly them.
A PowerPoint presentation she e-mailed to UPI argued the level of responsibility and difficulty in operating medium- or high-altitude UAVs like as the Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk -- especially when armed with missiles and laser-guided bombs and operating alongside manned aircraft -- was little different than that for regular combat aircraft.
"It is backwards thinking to suggest that we provide a less-skilled operator to employ those systems as we place more and more responsibility upon them," says the presentation, adding that Army and other non-pilot operators generally are only allowed to operate in certain restricted areas. "This prohibits the employment of airpower's greatest tenet: flexibility," concludes the presentation.
Nelson also noted smaller Air Force UAVs, without the large weapons payload of the Predator, for instance, often are flown by non-pilot Air Force personnel.
However, Gates has said maximizing the potential of UAVs "may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not."
