Monthly Archives: August 2012

Thoughts on Congressional Oversight of DoD

by Jonathan Rue Posted on August 23, 2012

Rosa Brooks’ weekly column is up at Foreign Policy. She’s been writing mostly on civil-military relations but this week dives into runaway Pentagon spending. She echoes a lot of my own thoughts on the subject, particularly her last paragraph where she asks a lot of tough questions that I’m fairly certain nobody on Capitol Hill or in the Building is asking.

Congress, being the large, slow-moving target that it is, receives a broadside as a major culprit of wasteful DoD spending. Brooks writes:

When I was a newly minted Pentagon employee, one of the things that astounded me most was how hard it was to get Congress to stop funding stupid stuff. This should not have surprised me, since funding stupid stuff is one of Congress’ constitutional functions, but it surprised me nonetheless. I recall, for instance, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ so-called “heartburn letters” to congressional appropriators. Most of his complaints related not to proposed funding cuts, but to Congress’ insistence on giving DOD money for programs the military did not want or need, such as extra VH-71 helicopters or C-17 Globemaster IIIs.

My own thoughts on Congressional oversight of DoD are evolving-this is a really complicated relationship about which much more could be written-and what follows isn’t necessarily a rebuttal or a defense of Congress, but rather some food for thought.

In the 1960s, the Army began issuing new M-16 rifles to soldiers headed to Vietnam. Unfortunately, it did so with some really crappy ammunition. According to Army records, and courtesy of the inimitable C.J. Chivers, 80 percent of 1,585 soldiers surveyed in 1967 claimed a stoppage while firing. Publicly, the Army claimed that nothing was wrong and that the M-16 was best rifle available. A Congressional subcommittee investigation forced the Army into making improvements to the weapon and ammunition.

In 1985, Barry Goldwater assumed the Chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Before the legislative session even began, Goldwater had decided to make defense reorganization his number one priority. The Pentagon fought reorganization tooth and nail for the next two years. Goldwater-Nichols, though not perfect, is widely regarded as one of the smarter pieces of defense legislation ever passed by Congress and it was done against strong objections from the Pentagon.

And my personal favorite was that time when George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, James Forrestal, Lauris Norstad, Clark Clifford, the Navy, and the Army TRIED TO GET RID OF MY BELOVED MARINE CORPS. Good times. Luckily, the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and later the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected their proposals to reorganize the War Department without providing the Marine Corps statutory authority.

I’m not trying to say Congress always gets oversight of the Department right, particularly when it comes to appropriations and acquisitions. Lord knows some things <;cough>; the F-35 alternate engine <;/cough>; can’t be defended. But just because the Pentagon says it doesn’t want or need something, doesn’t necessarily mean it knows what the hell it’s talking about. Sometimes, and I know this will come as a shock, large bureaucracies want what’s in the interest of… large bureaucracies.

*Thanks to Chris, Ryan, and Dan for helping me think through some of this.

Posted in Civil-Military Relations, Defense Acquisition, Military, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off

“I’m Not Dead Yet!”: The UN’s Arms Trade Treaty is Still a Thing

by Hayes Brown Posted on August 22, 2012

The month of July was an acrimonious one for those on opposite sides of the arms control debate. More so than usual, that is. Hosted by the United Nations, the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) Conference met this summer with the goal of producing a binding document that would regulate the legal sale of arms between states. That didn’t quite happen. But rumors of the Treaty’s death are extremely exaggerated.

In the waning hours of the conference, the ‘final’ text that was under debate satisfied absolutely nobody. NGOs like Oxfam and Amnesty International insisted that it was riddled with too many loopholes that would prevent meaningful implementation. Gun rights advocates in the United States had been on a four-week bender to ensure that it would receive absolutely no domestic support if the text passed. They needn’t have worried; seemingly impervious to the raucous debate going on outside of Turtle Bay, the most drama that emerged on the last day had little to do with the issues being discussed externally. While the United States has taken the heat for ‘torpedoing’ the Treaty and ending the Conference in failure, it wasn’t alone - several other states, from those with questionable motives like Russia to democracies like India, quickly lined up behind the US proposal to delay acceptance.

The key word there is ‘delay’. A Report of the Conference was adopted in lieu of an actual vote, so the document wasn’t actually rejected, pushing the text back to the General Assembly. And that’s where the fun begins anew.

There are six Main Committees of the General Assembly, each composed of the full 193 Member States of the UN. Two of them have a credible mandate to allow for the debate of the text: the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) and the Sixth Committee (Legal). While either one of them, or potentially both, could have the Arms Trade Treaty on their agenda when the Committees open for business in October, it’s likely that it will stay with GA1, which had the item during the last session.

From there, Member States will determine whether to utilize the GA for editing the draft of the ATT or whether a second round of negotiations would take place at another Conference. The United States would clearly prefer the latter; when the Obama Administration shifted from the Bush years’ opposition to the Treaty talks, it wasn’t without hesitation. In the 2009 General Assembly Resolution that provided the framework for the Conference (A/RES/64/48), it was determined that the talks would proceed by consensus. That provision proved a major stumbling block to adopting the text in July.

This veto ability may have had several delegations grumbling, but it was the smart choice for the United States. Much like Soviet insistence on a veto in the Security Council back in 1945, the United States was covering its flank both on policy and politics. On policy, they could make sure that any treaty wouldn’t necessarily go against US interests. Politically, the Administration could ensure that the US has the power to stop any treaty from being adopted that displeased us. It is certainly in the US’s best interest to push through another GA Resolution that sets a date for a new Conference.

But it’s far from certain that the US will get its way this time. Now that the text of the ATT is with the General Assembly, it is entirely possible that, with a few edits, the Assembly could hold a vote sometime this year. If that happens, a 2/3s vote of the GA could be enough to approve the text and open the Arms Trade Treaty for signature. It’s impossible to do a whip count for a text that may or may not exist yet, but it would definitely be close.

A final vote in November could also serve what could be a lame-duck Obama Administration in poking a victorious Romney in the eye. Rumor around the United Nations is that the acceptance of the Treaty was delayed in the first place to put off the acceptance of a document that would likely be controversial domestically until after the election. It’s highly probable that, should Romney take the White House, the US’s support for the concept of the ATT would be revoked once more. So it may be better to get something in November over certain rejection after January.

Would that really be for the best? A treaty adopted by two-thirds of the Assembly would likely not have the support of the major arms producers, save maybe Germany and France. And until enough states had ratified to put it into force, it would be just another piece of paper. Which isn’t to say that the enforcement mechanisms within the text were at all strong enough to bring violators in line; they most certainly are not. But the process would run far smoother when those actually producing the weapons being regulated are voluntarily cooperating with the laws surrounding them.

In any case, supporters of a stronger Arms Trade Treaty would be well served by accepting this delay and the US urging for a new round of negotiations. More time would allow supporters to draw on lessons learned from what was a very expensive lobbying effort. And now that there’s an initial text, it will be easier to determine what might discussed in a hypothetical ATT Conference II.

It’s also not guaranteed that a push to get the treaty through the General Assembly would work. Among the issues still to be resolved is whether or not ammunition would join Small Arms and Light Weapons and those systems included in the UN Register on Conventional Weapons under the purview of the Treaty. Western Europe and the African Union are an unlikely pair united on this front, and have been urging its inclusion since Day One - to the dismay of many other states.

Less core to the debate, but still notable, the Arab Group spent the last few hours of the conference pressing that the right to sell arms for groups seeking “self-determination” should be included. Israel was less than sold on this idea - and with good reason. The issue of who would be considered a legitimate buyer will come up again, regardless of where the treaty goes - and could potentially delay acceptance further.

For now, this is a lot of inside baseball on what has the potential to be a wide-reaching text, affecting many aspects of the estimated $60B annual arms trade. Both sides of the debate are regrouping in an attempt to sway the outcome more solidly in their favor, but neither Oxfam nor the NRA will actually be casting a vote in the GA Hall. In the end, it will be the States who decide whether the Treaty lives or dies.

Posted in GunsGunsGuns, Slightly Larger Arms, Small Arms | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Four Percent for Freedom

by Jonathan Rue Posted on August 20, 2012

It’s campaign season and the defense budget, after a decade of bipartisan support for steady growth, is once again a battlefield for Democrats and Republicans. Having used a credit card to fund a forty-year bender, both parties recognize the need – in theory if not practice – to get a handle on the national debt. Representing 20 percent of total Federal government spending and 50 percent of Federal discretionary spending, the defense budget is a large target. And while it may not be the primary driver of deficit spending, to use a basketball analogy, it’s dishing assists like John Stockton. Even some prominent Republicans recognize that some reduction in defense spending is necessary if cutting the debt is to be a real goal and not just a talking point.

Mitt Romney apparently didn’t get that memo. He has pledged to increase the defense budget, spending a minimum of four percent GDP. Pegging defense spending to GDP is not a new idea. The Heritage Foundation wrote a series of reports in 2007 under the tagline Four Percent For Freedom. Around the same time, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen also publicly supported the four percent baseline. In 2009, Sen. James Inhofe and Rep. Trent Franks introduced a joint resolution that would have required DoD base spending to remain above the four percent figure.

A couple of themes emerge among the arguments for pegging defense to GDP. Some argue that “measuring defense spending as a percentage of GDP is the most appropriate and realistic means to gauge America’s commitment to ensuring an adequate national defense.” Without the four percent baseline, they claim that “America’s military will become a ‘hollow’ force placing the lives of our young men and women in uniform at risk and jeopardizing the Pentagon’s ability to defend the nation’s vital national interests.” Others note that because it is the primary responsibility of lawmakers to “provide for the common defense,” DoD is not just another line item in the Federal budget and thus deserves a baseline. And perhaps the most common refrain is that setting a four percent baseline sends a message that the United States is committed to its security.

Of course, the Constitution does not stipulate minimum spending on defense. Instead, the Preamble states that “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense… do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” (emphasis mine). The Oath of Office requires our elected leaders to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” (again, emphasis mine). Neither of these texts, however, defines defense or how to provide for it. A narrow interpretation might hold that these clauses require defense against threats to the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of the United States. A more expansive definition might include defending against threats to American interests far away from our shores. The former would seem to be guaranteed by a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons and two oceans, and the latter by a robust navy, a moderately sized army, significant intelligence capabilities, a fleet of unmanned aerial systems, and special operations forces. Many might disagree with these prescriptions, and how well they serve in the defense of the United States and/or its interests, but that’s the point—there’s no Constitutional instruction for defense, and reasonable people can and should debate these points.

Instead, the premises often used to support a defense-by-GDP conclusion are a mixture of vacuous platitudes (hollow force!), red herrings (entitlements are the real cause of runaway government spending!), and/or irrelevant facts (we can afford it!) making the conclusion itself a giant non sequitur. Putting aside the illogical nature of the arguments, what are the practical consequences of setting a baseline on defense spending that is tied to GDP?

For one, pegging defense spending to GDP is divorced from the strategic environment. In the words of one budget specialist, it has “no analytical basis.” Defense spending does not occur in a vacuum. It takes place in the context of threats, interests, obligations, allies, revenues, and other spending requirements. None of these are static. Once upon a time, the U.S. fought Japan and Germany. Once upon a time, the U.S. faced an existential threat from the Soviet Union. Once upon a time, the U.S. didn’t have a large network of allies. Pledging to spend four percent of GDP on defense disregards changes to the strategic environment. Furthermore, it focuses on only one variable of a multi-variable equation. Richard Betts writes:

Today’s supporters of increased military spending justify their advocacy by pointing out that current levels of spending, measured by the share of GDP devoted to defense, are well below those of the Cold War. This is both true and irrelevant. The argument focuses on only one component of the equation — spending — and conveniently ignores that the scope of commitments, the choice of strategy, and the degree of risk accepted can be adjusted as well. And it draws the wrong lesson from history, which when properly interpreted suggests that today’s lesser threats could be handled with greater aplomb.

I’m sympathetic to the argument that setting a minimum investment in defense sends a message to other branches of government, allies, and potential enemies that defense is a priority. But does anyone think that if the U.S. only spent 3.5 percent of GDP, which is roughly $525 billion, on DoD’s base budget, that we would be any less secure? Conversely, if we spent 9 percent of GDP, roughly the proportion we spent in 1968, would lawmakers feel more secure? Would we actually be more secure? Remember, no amount of money will completely mitigate risk.

Pledging to spend four percent of GDP is no more than a campaign slogan. It serves to cast Democrats in the role of dove played opposite the familiar Republican hawk, but does so without evaluating the strategic environment or (re)assessing potential threats and American interests and how the military should be used to protect them. And the great irony is that many of the proponents of setting a defense baseline have stated unequivocally “strategy should always guide the defense budget.” Pegging defense to GDP as one’s starting point would seem to violate this maxim.

Except, in the Republican worldview, it doesn’t. Mitt Romney and the Defense Defenders’ (worst band name ever?) plan to devote increasingly larger piles of money to the defense budget makes perfect strategic sense. In their view, which for all intents and purposes is a neoconservative one, U.S. military power is the only thing holding this crazy, anarchic world together. Moreover, it’s the only tool the U.S. has for getting what it wants. Rather than reassess commitments and obligations, or tailor strategies, they would double down on old ones, like defending Europe as if it was 1984, and take on new ones, like periodically bombing Iran and intervening in Syria. Thus, a perpetually rising DoD budget becomes necessary, and pegging it to GDP, rather than Federal government revenues (which go up and down), forms an appropriate benchmark.

In reality, setting a floor on defense spending pegged to “the number of Big Macs meals sold at McDonald’s” seems to be a myopic scheme designed to ensure the defense budget rises in perpetuity while assiduously avoiding consideration of the possibility that after spending $4 trillion fighting violent non-state actors, deposing regional pretenders, and fighting wars that never seem to end that maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it wrong. Throwing money at a problem might be good politics, but it’s rarely sound defense policy.

Posted in Analysis, Military, Strategery, War | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Protecting Advisors

by Jonathan Rue Posted on August 18, 2012

The bad news out of Afghanistan won’t stop. It’s like the longest nightmare ever and we just can’t wake up.

After seven green-on-blue attacks in the last eleven days, Gen John Allen has ordered all ISAF troops stationed on Afghan bases to remain armed at all times. The story does not specify if this order requires forces to be Condition 3 (magazine inserted, chamber empty) or Condition 1 (magazine inserted, round in chamber, weapon on safe).

When I last wrote about the green-on-blue problem in April, I wondered about this specific issue. Many observers will wonder why this order was such a long time coming, myself among them. But I think it would be a mistake to conclude that these pernicious attacks will be stopped simply because advisors are keeping their weapons loaded. To draw such a conclusion is akin to saying a movie theater patron with a concealed weapon would have stopped James Holmes before he killed twelve people.

I don’t recall a specific order from my team leader or our higher headquarters about our weapons condition. We were issued an M-4 carbine and an M-9 pistol as advisors. I carried both on the 200m walk from the advisor compound to my office. The advisor building was a windowless building located amongst the Iraqi office buildings. We had one entrance, with a high table just inside the door and sandbags stacked underneath. We kept two M240B machine guns nearby, I guess in case the Iraqis decided to lay siege to our building.

I never went to see my counterparts without my M-9 in Condition 1 status. Never. And this was in Iraq where the insider threat was much, much lower, maybe even nonexistent compared with the current situation in Afghanistan.

In the beginning, I tucked my utility blouse behind my hip holster so that the weapon could be easily seen, and reached. I tried to sit at the table with my back to a wall so that I could see everyone in the room and anyone who entered. After a couple months, once I got to know everyone (and some modicum of trust was established), I began covering my holster with my blouse. I sat with my back to the door. I let my guard down. Not so much that I was totally oblivious to my surroundings, but I definitely wasn’t constantly “at the ready.”

I’d like to think that I could have reacted quickly enough to save my life had someone walked in with a loaded AK and started spraying bullets indiscriminately. But the truth is I’m not sure that’s the case. The USMC taught me how to aim and fire the M-9 with lethal consistency, but it didn’t teach me how to draw like Doc Holliday. Not that it would have mattered-the aggressor in these attacks has the advantage.

Gen Allen’s order is welcome news, and long overdue. But we should temper our expectations about it making a significant difference in the lethality of green-on-blue attacks. Far more important than weapon status is the advisor’s mental alertness. Regular troops are used to keeping their guard up outside the wire, but everyone needs a place where they can let it down and recharge. At this point, ISAF advisors aren’t afforded this luxury. This obviously takes a toll over the course of a six- or twelve-month deployment.

Carrying a Condition 1 weapon is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for better protecting advisors. Hopefully, it will save some lives. But it wouldn’t surprise me if our advisors were abiding by Gen Allen’s order long before he issued it.

Posted in Afghanistan, Military, War | Tagged | 7 Comments

Reflections on Byman’s “Breaking the Bonds”

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on August 12, 2012

The incisive Daniel Byman recently published a new study with the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy entitled Breaking the Bonds between al Qaeda and Its Affiliate Organizations. This is a critical topic for the contemporary study of al Qaeda driven and inspired terrorism, in large part because how we judge al Qaeda’s strength in late 2012 comes down to the question of how to assess gains made by the affiliates against losses inflicted on the core. Debates on this issue are often crude, with strong assertions made about affiliates’ connection, or lack thereof, to al Qaeda’s core without factual or theoretical substantiation. It seems that a significant amount (but by no means all) of the commentary about the relationship between core and affiliates is outcome-determined, based on whether the commentator in question wants to find a strong or weak al Qaeda.

Byman’s study can significantly sharpen this debate by providing a sound framework for such discussions. In it, he elucidates various degrees of connection between affiliates and the core; motivations for linkage from both the affiliates’ and core’s perspective; the reasons that other salafi jihadi groups have chosen not to affiliate; and possible strains in the affiliate-core relationship. Byman concludes with policy prescriptions about how the U.S. can magnify tensions between al Qaeda’s core and affiliates, and thus minimize cooperation between them. A careful reading of Byman’s report makes clear that it doesn’t try to answer the question of how tightly bound al Qaeda’s core and affiliates truly are today — which is almost certainly a wise decision, given our limited visibility into that issue based on available open source information. He does, however, provide a great deal of sound historical information that can improve our consideration of the core-affiliate relationship.

Byman provides seven different motivations that might cause a regional jihadi group to join up with al Qaeda, mustering historical examples of how each of them operated in the past. One reason is failure, when a salafi jihadi group’s inability to make progress in its fight against a local regime produces an internal crisis. Second, there are monetary considerations, with both al Qaeda’s core and also certain powerful affiliates (such as al Qaeda in Iraq during its heyday) being able to influence other groups due to their prosperity, at least by jihadi standards. Third, a safe haven from which to operate has proven to be a strong motivator for linkage in the past. Fourth, Byman notes that training, recruiting, publicity, and military experience have all been assets of the al Qaeda core; it has been able to bolster regional groups’ capabilities in all of these ways. Fifth, there is the issue of a common defense. Byman writes, “A number of individuals or cohorts within groups that loosely cooperated or operated in proximity to al Qaeda have chosen to affiliate as a result of being subjected to counterterrorism measures.” Sixth, there have been branding benefits to affiliates, in terms of recruits and funders. Earlier I mentioned monetary considerations; yet it is unlikely that al Qaeda’s currently diminished core will be able to channel money to regional affiliates as it once did. However, despite the core’s relative weakness, al Qaeda’s brand may help these groups to raise money from al Qaeda’s donor base (such as certain individuals and foundations in the Gulf Arab states). Seventh, there is the importance of personal networks. “Once a connection among jihadists has been forged,” Byman writes, “it is very challenging for an outside party to break it, so much that because of the prevalence and breadth of personal networks, it is difficult to truly destroy jihadist organizations.”

Byman also outlines five reasons why al Qaeda’s core may want to join with new affiliates. One reason is mission fulfillment, seeking affiliates in areas where Islam is perceived to be under attack, and in turn pushing the affiliates to adopt more global agendas. Second, relevance: al Qaeda has been on the defensive ever since the 9/11 attacks unleashed U.S. and international counterterrorism efforts against the organization. Byman notes that “some of the most notorious ‘al Qaeda’ attacks since 9/11 have in fact been carried out by affiliate groups.” Third, al Qaeda’s reach will grow due to its relationship with new affiliates. Fourth, affiliates can offer logistical advantages to al Qaeda, including “access to their media resources, recruiters, and other core parts of their organization.” Fifth, al Qaeda has often been able to gain new experienced members through its relationship with affiliates.

Yet despite the advantages that both regional jihadi organizations and also al Qaeda’s core can gain through affiliation, many groups have decided not to affiliate with al Qaeda when the opportunity presented itself. One reason is ideological differences, something illustrated by the decision of Egypt’s Gama’a al Islamiyya (GI) not to affiliate with al Qaeda due to the latter’s prioritization of “jihad over other forms of Islamicization.” One GI leader, Najih Ibrahim, told the Arabic-language London daily Al Sharq Al Awsat that GI decided not to join al Qaeda “because their goal is jihad, whereas our goal is Islam.” Other reasons that Byman provides include the question of takfir (declaring other Muslims to have apostatized themselves from Islam), the targeting of civilians, local agendas that predominate over the global, the fear of taking on new enemies, limited contact or interaction between the prospective affiliate and the core, and personal rivalries. In addition to this, Byman also outlines strains that may exist in the core-affiliate relationship even where both entities have chosen to take on an explicit affiliation.

Overall, Byman’s study makes a tremendous contribution to our thinking about the relationship between al Qaeda’s core and its affiliates, and analysts trying to assess this relationship would do well to use it as a basis for thinking about this question. Byman concludes by illustrating the complexity of acting (or not) on a developing core-affiliate relationship in a way that is often not reflected in popular debates about the subject:

There are no simple choices when confronting al Qaeda affiliates. On the one hand, ignoring groups until they become affiliates, or ignoring affiliates until they strike at U.S. targets, risks leaving U.S. intelligence and security officials in a defensive and reactive mode and vulnerable to a surprise attack. On the other hand, too aggressive an approach can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, strengthening bonds between al Qaeda and other jihadist groups by validating the al Qaeda narrative and leading groups to cooperate for self-defense and organizational advancement.

For any study of this kind, I will have quibbles, find evidentiary points with which I disagree, and the like. Byman’s study is no exception. Yet the overall contribution that Byman’s study makes on this important issue renders my quibbles and minor disagreements almost beside the point. This is one of the five most relevant studies about terrorism published this year, and I encourage all readers interested in the issue to give it a careful read.

Posted in Al Qaeda, Terrorism | Tagged | Comments Off

Weapons Still Don’t Make War

by Dan Trombly Posted on August 10, 2012

Colin S. Gray notably claimed that “weapons don’t make war.” Gray did not mean that no relationship existed between weapons, policy, and strategy, but that as instruments, weapons only have meaning in the context of policy and strategy. While this idea seems intuitive enough, it is easily muddled; particularly when weapons appear to provide technical solutions, policymakers and strategists may be tempted to abdicate their duties by substituting a weapon for a policy or strategy.

One significant part of the problem is that analysts and advocates alike can be tempted to impute weapons with certain political, strategic, and moral considerations that do not derive from some inherent aspect of the weapon itself. This problem is rampant in commentary on drones. Even in the most cogent critiques, analysts often imbue drones themselves, rather than they ways they are wielded, with a sinister quality that has little do with drones as drones, and more to do with drones as a stand-off strike platform being deployed in a targeted killing campaign.

Imbuing drones with strategic or political qualities they do not actually possess distorts discussion of the targeted killing campaign. Firstly, it feeds into a false narrative that targeted killing is easy and cheap, when in fact it involves massive amounts of hardware and personnel. Witness the casual calls by some commentators for the U.S. to simply put Assad on a drone “kill list,” as if Syria’s significant air defenses would not pose any problem for drones which have never had to brave the hostile firepower of a state-equipped military. Secondly, it needlessly injects irrational fears and erroneous thinking into all discussion of drones. Few Americans worry about the fact that military-grade assets such as helicopters and light aircraft have been frequent fixtures of American law enforcement, and even fewer think these would ever be deployed against Americans they way they are against enemies in a war zone. Yet such logical leaps pervade drone commentary, inserting a bizarre suspicion into the discussion of all unmanned systems, despite the fact that military operating concepts for unmanned systems treat them primarily as an additional, useful tool to fill already established operating parameters and military missions.

Murtaza Hussain’s recent article in Salon serves as a good example of this common sort of drone analysis. Hussain rightly recognizes that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) follow in the footsteps of millenia of human innovations in the quest to find a way to kill hostile humans more effectively with less harm to oneself, but still insists that drone warfare is “particularly insidious,” for three primary reasons.

First, Hussain argues, drones inherently undermine the Geneva Convention, specifically, Article 41 of Protocol I, which prohibits killing of those “hors de combat.” Since a potential drone target cannot surrender to an unmanned aerial system, there is no choice but to kill them.

Is this an inherent quality of a drone? There is no opportunity to surrender to a sniper whose location is unknown to his target, and who may not be in a position to take his target prisoner anyway. There is no opportunity to surrender to a mortar bombardment. There is certainly no opportunity to surrender to a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, or the precision-guided bomb of a B-2 stealth bomber. The inability to surrender to a drone is not a problem unique to drones, or even particularly insidious, but a context, in some cases, of the way we may choose to employ a stand-off weapon, and not one that is all that morally or legally questionable. –

Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognized as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is:

(a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;
(b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or
(c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender;

provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.

‘Hors de combat’ status is determined not by the type of weapon, but by the military circumstances. For example, in the controversy over an American attack helicopter killing Iraqis who appeared to be surrendering, it may not have been possible to establish clearly that they were. Throwing up one’s hands but then getting back in a vehicle and traveling is not surrender, since retreating or fleeing is distinct from surrender under international law. Virtually no signatory of the Geneva Convention believes there is an unmitigated legal obligation to accept surrender in circumstances where receiving surrender is militarily impossible or would impose significant risks to personnel granting quarter.

The issue with drone strikes is not that unmanned systems carry them out (any stand-off weapon would face this problem), but that, outside the use of drones as close air-support in Afghanistan, drones are being deployed with only minimal special operations and covert personnel on the ground. That is, it is the nature of the conflict-a series of covert, clandestine, and stand-off strikes outside the context of a major conventional ground deployment-that causes these issues. And, indeed, looking in the larger context of the targeted killing program and the types of organizations they target, the much bigger - and more blatant - issue is the relentless violation of Article 41, which prohibits combatants to engage in perfidy, and which contributes to the next problem Hussain outlines.

As Hussain correctly notes, much reporting about the drone program indicates that their massively increased precision compared to other weapons systems is not particularly useful if the U.S. fails to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants for want of adequate intelligence. The problem of which Hussain speaks is one of any force confronting an enemy which flirts with violations of international humanitarian and customary prohibitions against perfidy. This Any veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan could explain that identifying legitimate combatants and targets is difficult even with troops on the ground. The moral issue at stake here - killing a potential noncombatant because their behavior may indicate hostile attempts at perfidy - has very little to do with the platform itself. If anything, drone operations, which occur in concert with manned Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, prolonged surveillance, and ground-based covert or clandestine units, provide more opportunity for discrimination than simply lobbing TLAMs or JDAMs would (or conduct ascribed even to men with boots on the ground after curfew in purported “free fire zones” or “Indian Country” in Vietnam). It is not a problem with the so-called drone war, even less drones.

I say so-called drone war because that term fundamentally replaces context and analysis of the war with the weapon most publicly associated with it, significantly contributing to my issue with Hussain’s third point, which is that drones are insidious for enabling a “no cost” form of warfare. As one of this blog’s guest posters has pointed out for Foreign Policy, while drones may be cheaper than using other types of weapons for the same mission, that does not make the mission cheap. The argument that drones make war more likely, or let it persist for longer, does not hold up to any serious scrutiny.

The notion that somehow drones created low-risk, low-scrutiny warfare lacks historical or contemporary perspective. If there were no unmanned systems, casualties would still be low, and a massive targeted killing campaign could still be affordable, albeit with a slightly different execution. Open-ended authorizations of force for clandestine programs pre-date drones and do not require them. It’s not even as if drones allowed such secret wars to employ aircraft, either - the notion of a secret CIA air force precedes drones by decades.

That these campaigns are “low risk” has less to do with drones and more to do with the fact that the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia are all basically acquiescent, tacitly or overtly, with Americans killing suspected terrorists or insurgents inside their borders, and that the targeted insurgents lack the military equipment or tactical acumen to inflict serious casualties on such a force. This targeted-killing program, employing a wide variety of air, land, and sea-based, manned and unmanned, overt and covert assets, is enabled by the unrelenting U.S. desire to kill terrorists and an open-ended legal authorization or acquiescence from Congress and the public. When Hussain argues:

Thus to a degree unprecedented in history the advent of drone warfare has given the government a free hand to wage wars without public constraint and with minimal oversight

he is doubly incorrect. The “nature” of the targeted killing program is inherent in the targeted killing, not drones or even “drone warfare,” since high-value targeted killing campaigns can take place with anything capable of lobbing a warhead to a forehead. And furthermore, the kind of conflicts we are seeing now are, by any empirical metric, not unprecedented in their lack of public oversight, their duration, or material constraints, regardless of platforms.

Another common fallacy of the sort of thinking that ascribes strategic or moral values to weapons or weapons systems is that of “lightly” or “defensively” arming foreign irregular groups, particularly in Syria. Critics who oppose arming Syria’s rebels rightly note that arms do not inherently constrain the purposes of human beings using them, and fear that adding more weapons to a major civil war could lead to post-conflict arms trafficking and their use in less-than-desirable activities, such as terrorist attacks, reprisal killings, continued internal violence, and attacks against the arming powers’ own interests.

The problem with linking arms provisions with defense of safe zones or protection of civilians is that there are no weapons systems that cannot be used to violate these intentions. Particularly with weapons that individuals or small groups can transport and operate on their own, speaking of an “offensive” or “defensive” weapon is foolish. A man-portable surface-to-air missile is defensive when it shoots down a helicopter strafing a rebel position, but it is offensive when its users encamp outside an airfield and use it to shoot down a landing transport or airliner.

The behavior of armed factions in Syria will be determined by their interests and the strategic context in which they seek to achieve them. Weapons are only part of that strategic context, and they are not a driving or controlling factor. For example, one justification analysts such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and others have long used for arming the Syrian rebels is that this would enable the creation of “safe zones,” but safe zones may not be the best military or political strategy for the rebels. If they believe taking those weapons and waging a continued guerrilla campaign that focuses on exhausting the regime as the goal, and considers the protection of civilians a secondary priority, then providing nominally “defensive” weaponry enables an offensive campaign.

When Slaughter and many others argue for providing “anti-tank, countersniper and portable antiaircraft weapons,” they are banking on several things. First, that whoever signs pledges to behave defensively actually means it and won’t manipulate foreign backers for their own interests. Second, that whoever signs the pledge has effective command and control down to the front lines where the weapons get used. Finally, that in the post-ceasefire or post-Assad stage, those weapons will not be used contrary to the desires of the rebels’ foreign patron. Characterizing the weapons as “defensive” or “light” does not eliminate any of these problems.

Consequently, arguments for arming the rebels often imbue the weapons with the intentions of the policy proponent. Take the following example. In this article, the author makes the case for providing RPG-7s and other light anti-armor weapons to the Syrian rebels, because they pose a low risk for post-conflict violence or a low degree of threat to the American counterpart to Syria’s tanks - the M1 Abrams. This is a perfect example of ascribing implicit political and strategic characteristics to a weapon rather than the context of its use: provide RPG-7s for destroying tanks, and dismiss it as a threat because post-conflict violence is less likely to involve tanks, and the weapon in question does not seem dangerous to American tanks.

It could not be more misleading. RPG-7s can do serious harm to virtually every other vehicle in the American land arsenal, and not only that, they have done serious harm to American aircraft, such as the Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu or, more recently, Extortion 17. RPG-7s have very short arming ranges, which make them particularly useful for urban combat, and they have more than enough firepower to destroy cars and armored personnel carriers, or to attack targets inside buildings. The number of terrorist attacks involving RPG-7s likely numbers in the tens of thousands. Simply because rebels received them to kill Syrian government tanks hardly means they cannot make use of them in a post-conflict environment. Nor, under the criteria of the safe zone advocates, would they necessarily make safe zones feasible. They hardly solve the issue of Syrian artillery, and anyone familiar with the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan can explain how RPGs, along with improvised explosive devices, mortars, snipers, and other weapons systems, can enable tactics to further a guerrilla movement or terrorism.

It is not only when discussing the arming of rebels that weapons are used as totems for broader discussions of policy. In Libya, Syria, and many other conflicts, the use of air power is often seen as a signal that a government’s suppression of a rebellion is reaching some sort of policy-relevant turning point. Aerial defections receive nearly as much attention as political defections. But why should that be? Air power may be used for indiscriminate bombings, but few regimes rely on their air power for conducting such operations. Nor is the air force the critical element of regime military strength. Indeed it is their artillery, as Brett Friedman explains, that provides the backbone of their killing power in operations for reducing cities. Pro-regime paramilitaries operate without much in the way of heavy weapons, let alone airpower, yet we frequently hear - from the highest levels of government - that it is helicopters that will “escalate the conflict quite dramatically.” What does this actually mean?

The primary effect of helicopters appears to be psychological. The greatest amount of violence will come from more mundane weapons, and the story of Syrian air power is hardly the bellwether of the Syrian civil war. Overly focusing on Syrian air power not only distracts from the more important drivers and dynamics of conflict, it also distorts discussion of potential policy solutions.

Calls for “no fly zones” over Syria play into a problem that is at least relatively easy for Western powers to solve - taking the Syrian air force out of operation - but will likely not produce meaningful strategic or political results. If the object of an intervention in Syria is to prevent the government’s reduction of urban centers or end the violence, merely targeting Syrian air power is not a particularly effective way of doing so, since such actions would not immediately or effectively impede the action of the more critical Syrian ground forces. If a certain type of intervention is unlikely to be efficacious in actually achieving our overall aims in a conflict, that is important to know. Focusing on a weapon system rather than the strategic context and outcomes impedes that process significantly.

Gray’s statement holds true. Weapons still do not make war. They are wielded and directed by humans against those of an opposing force or forces, in the midst of a host of mitigating factors, to achieve strategic aims. When Gray made his argument, he was challenging the notion of “strategic weapons” - weapons which have much more credible claims to transformative power or unique political or strategic quality than any of those discussed here - but even they are ultimately still devices whose meaning for politics, policy, and strategy derives from that broader ensemble of factors. Understanding what weapons systems are capable of is absolutely important for determining what kinds of strategies and policies are feasible, but they must be viewed as instruments subordinate to established ends. While weapons may appear easier to grasp than the complexities of warfare and the even more multifaceted issue of war, they should not take a lead role in coloring our analysis of policy.

Posted in Military, Small Arms, Strategery | 1 Comment

You Don’t Have to Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here: A Review of Last Men Out

by Diana Wueger Posted on August 7, 2012

I grew up hearing fantastical stories about the fall of Saigon from my dad, who witnessed the terrifying and chaotic final days of South Vietnam as a young foreign service officer. Panicked South Vietnamese parents, having heard horror stories about the brutality of the approaching North Vietnamese Army, tossed infants over the U.S. embassy gates in the hopes they’d be taken to safety. Rich politicians and their wives demanded that their gold-bar-filled luggage and prized dogs be allowed on board the tiny helicopters, even though space and weight were already at a premium. Helicopters were pushed off flight decks of Navy ships into the South China Sea so more could land. Stories like these seemed absurd and unbelievable to me, so when I was offered a copy of Bob Drury and Tom Clavin’s Last Men Out to review, I jumped on it, if only to get some independent verification of these tales. Who knows? Maybe my dad made it all up.

Not pictured: My dad (he’s behind the cameraman).

Except… turns out he didn’t. In roughly 270 pages, Last Men Out covers the finals days of April 1975 when, in the face of General Van Tien Dung’s push towards Saigon, the United States finally closed up shop after 25 years in Vietnam and rocked a helicopter-based evacuation called Operation: Frequent Wind. Last Men Out narrates the fantastical evacuation through the lens of the Marine Corps Security Guards (MSGs) posted to the embassy at Saigon and a few other provincial capitals, and it’s all there - thrown babies, gold and dogs, the disposal of perfectly good helicopters into the sea.

The authors do not, of course, mention Afghanistan, but the parallels are hard to miss.* The heroes and villains are clear: the MSGs are the very portrait of Real American Heroes, while the CIA, the State Department, and Washington come out covered in mud. Sound familiar? The narrative of America in Afghanistan is that the troops are doing their best with the policies and information available to them, while the politicos and policymakers that are to blame for the way things are going.

Interestingly, NVA’s General Dung, who (SPOILER ALERT) conquers Saigon in the end, is treated generously for refraining from attacking the city until Americans had left. The calculus behind his decision to wait for the Americans to evacuate gave me pause. While Dung certainly wanted to punish the U.S., he chose not to close on the city lest the Americans come back en masse to rescue or avenge their countrymen. I’m hardly suggesting we’ll see Kabul encircled by the Taliban on the day we finally close up shop - merely noting that the enemy has a say in how that day goes. Looking past the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan to the idea of a small advisory mission that will continue to help the Afghan National Security Forces, Last Men Out makes clear that as the number of U.S. troops declines, the risk to those still on the ground grows. The twin pressures of weak and fearful local allied forces and an enemy emboldened by fewer troops and the reduced likelihood of open hostilities could put any advisory mission in jeopardy.

In their treatment of the South Vietnamese, the authors display a frustrating tendency to stereotype - the politicians are corrupt, the civilians are childlike and helpless, the local security forces are sullen and liable to turn on their allies. Scattered moments of heroism and agency are all the more notable for their scarcity. The final moments of chaos in which the Vietnamese attempt to get to the roof to catch the last helicopter out make them seem like animals or barbarians - not frightened human beings who know what will happen when the NVA arrive. Again, this tracks with current popular understanding of the Afghans - politicians corrupt, civilians can’t help themselves, green-on-blue killings becoming endemic, etc. - with little attempt to understand the war from the Afghan perspective.

Honestly, it’s hard to read Last Men Out as straight history. It reads somewhat like a historical novel, like the war nerd’s version of The Other Boleyn Girl, and it’s a gripping story, especially if you’re not familiar with the intricacies and dramatis personae of Frequent Wind. You’re not sure who will live or die, whether the NVA will enter Saigon before the MSGs get out, or who gets left behind. If you can suspend disbelief a little bit it makes for a real page-turner (the level of detail suggests some liberties were taken with the dialogue and descriptions, but the authors address this in the endnotes, so I’ll forgive them that).

But it also makes for some sobering reading when read with half a mind to the next war we’ll leave unfinished. Though the parallels are not perfect, it’s especially worth considering how we treat - and leave - our local allies, both civilian and military, and how they’ll perceive themselves to have been treated. The image of 400 non-Americans patiently standing in the embassy courtyard waiting for a helicopter that never came is haunting, much like the stories about Iraqi interpreters left languishing in visa application purgatory. While we can’t save everybody, and we can’t and shouldn’t stay forever, we should take care not to offer false hope and to do what we can where we can.

* NB: I’m not arguing that Afghanistan is Vietnam 2.0, nor am I suggesting analogical thinking is particularly valuable in this instance. I’m merely noting the elements of this narrative that led me to consider their modern parallels.

Posted in Afghanistan, Book Reviews, Iraq, Military, War | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Nidal Hasan’s “Fairly Benign” Correspondence with Anwar al Awlaki

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Lauren Morgan Posted on August 4, 2012

When Nidal Hasan carried out his notorious massacre at Fort Hood in November 2009, it was quickly revealed that he had previously exchanged between ten and twenty emails with the extremist imam Anwar al Awlaki (the exact number was eighteen). Thereafter, a Joint Terrorism Task Force had taken “a look” at Hasan, but according to officials, they “concluded his communications with Awlaki were ‘fairly benign.’” This conclusion seemed dubious when it was first made public. But following the release of all eighteen emails that comprised their exchange (which can be found here, at J.M. Berger’s excellent website), the wrongheadedness of the conclusion is clear.

This blog entry provides an exposition of the email exchange, and outlines why initial claims about the benign nature of the exchange are so implausible. The entry is in part inspired by Charles Cameron’s inquiry into the exchange. On his blog, Cameron looks into the first of Hasan’s emails to Awlaki, and writes that he was struck by Hasan’s claim that “he was dealing with soldier patients returning from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan who had doubts as to the religious legitimacy of killing fellow-Muslims in those wars.” Cameron notes that, “on the face of it, that’s a topic a psychiatrist who didn’t feel himself expert in his religion … might wish to consult with clergy about.” Cameron concedes that he hasn’t been following news reports closely-so rather than making an argument that the emails were benign, he is simply making a query about the subject, stating that he’d “welcome a pointer or pointers, and closure.”

What Was Known About Anwar al Awlaki?

Critical to determining whether this email exchange was benign, or tipped Hasan’s hand about what was to come, is understanding what was known about Anwar al Awlaki back in 2008-09 when the exchange occurred. Cameron notes that there was ambiguity about whether Awlaki was an extremist after he left his job as the imam of the Falls Church, Va. mosque-and in fact an Associated Press report notes that most of the worshipers “did not find him to be overtly political or radical.”

This might be a compelling data point if analysts knew nothing about Awlaki between the time he left the Falls Church mosque and 2008-09. But, in fact, he was a known quantity by then; it is not a coincidence that the JTTF took an immediate interest in Hasan upon seeing that he had sent emails to Awlaki. An extremely useful report in terms of understanding why Awlaki raised red flags even then was published by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack, from which we draw the data points in this section of our entry.

Essentially, by 2008-09, Anwar al Awlaki was known as a “radicalizer” within the U.S. intelligence community, had given public addresses agitating against the U.S., and had come up in multiple criminal cases as a key influence in homegrown terrorists’ radicalization. Specifically, in 2008 DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis Charlie Allen had already identified Awlaki as an “example of al Qaeda reach into the Homeland.” Awlaki, Allen said, “targets U.S. Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen.”

And this material was effective at actually motivating people to violence. The Senate report details in a number of bullet points how this effectiveness could be seen in a succession of court cases that all occurred prior to Hasan’s attack:

  • Over four years prior to the Fort Hood attack, Mahmud Brent. a man who admitted to attending a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Pakistan was found with “audiotapes of lectures by Anwar al Awlaki.”
  • Nearly three years prior to the Fort Hood attack, six individuals planned to attack Fort Dix, New Jersey, and to kill “as many soldiers as possible.” The FBI arrested the group in May 2007. According to expert testimony at the trial, al Awlaki’s lecture explaining Constants on the Path to Jihad was a cornerstone of their radicalization to violent Islamist extremism.
  • Nearly a year and a half prior to the Fort Hood attack, U.S. citizen Barry Bujol was allegedly seeking al Awlaki’s advice and counsel on how to join a terrorist organization. In June 2009, the FBI arrested him for attempting to provide material support to AQAP. Bujol had emailed al Awlaki requesting assistance on “jihad” and wanting to help the “mujahideen,” and in response al Awlaki sent his 44 Ways of Supporting Jihad. Bujol believed that al Awlaki’s email would attest to his bona fides to AQAP.
  • A year and three months prior to the Fort Hood attack, Hysen Sherifi, one of seven men in North Carolina charged in a plot to attack the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, allegedly told an informant that he was going “to send [the informant] more books on Islam and jihad and that one of the books was ’44 Ways to Help the Mujahidin’ by Anwar Awlaki .”
  • Four months prior to the Fort Hood attack, in a case investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, U.S. citizen Zachary Chesser reached out to al Awlaki through al Awlaki’s Web site for spiritual guidance and solicited al Awlaki’s recommendations on his desire to join al-Shabaab in Somalia. In charging documents against Chesser, the FBI noted that “various Islamic terrorists were in contact with Awlaki before engaging in terrorist acts.” Chesser explained to investigators that “Awlaki inspires people to pursue jihad.” He watched online videos and listened to digitized lectures “almost obsessively” including those by his favorite spiritual leader, al Awlaki. Al Awlaki responded to two of Chesser’s messages.

In each of these criminal cases, Awlaki’s lectures played an important role in inspiring acts of violence against the United States. Was Hasan, like the individuals mentioned above, seeking guidance and validation from Awlaki as he considered whether to undertake violence? Or was the correspondence ambiguous at best? Let’s turn to the Hasan/Awlaki correspondence to explore this question. (Note that Hasan’s spelling and grammar can be described as idiosyncratic. The original spelling/grammar has been retained.)

Nidal Hasan’s Exchange with Anwar al Awlaki

First email to Awlaki, Dec. 17, 2008. Nidal Hasan’s first email to Anwar al Awlaki alarmingly invoked Hasan Akbar, a Muslim soldier who was convicted of the double-murder of two officers in a grenade attack in Kuwait in 2003 (also wounding 14 other soldiers). Akbar has the distinction of being “the first U.S. service member prosecuted on charges of murdering fellow troops in wartime since the Vietnam War era.” Hasan wrote to Awlaki that “there are many soldiers in the us armed forces that have converted to Islam while in the service…. Some appear to have internal conflicts and have even killed or tried to kill other us soldiers in the name of Islam i.e. Hasan Akbar, etc. Others feel that there is no conflict. Previous Fatwas seem vague and not very definitive.”

As Cameron notes, one might be inclined to see this as a psychiatrist reaching out to an Islamic scholar because he was confronted with fellow Muslim soldiers who felt conflicted about America’s wars. Or was Awlaki instead referring to “some soldiers” who appeared to have internal conflicts as a stand-in for his own internal conflicts? In pondering this question, it is worth noting an oddity in the question Hasan ultimately posed to Awlaki. This is the entirety of what he asked: “Can you make some general comments about Muslims in the u.s. military. Would you consider someone like Hasan Akbar or other soldiers that have committed such acts with the goal of helping Muslims/Islam (Lets just assume this for now) fighting Jihad and if they did die would you consider them shaheeds.” (The Arabic word shahid can be translated as either witness or martyr; here he was asking if Akbar would have been a martyr if he had died during his attack.) Hasan went on to say that though these questions may be difficult, “you seem to be one of the only ones that has lived in the u.s. has a good understadning of the the Qur’an and Sunna and is not afraid of being direct.”

So Hasan affirmed that Awlaki was one of the only scholars who, understanding the Qur’an and sunna well, was “not afraid of being direct.” But more significant, his question to Awlaki didn’t actually deal with the valid question that he raised, the feeling of inner conflict between one’s faith and serving in the U.S. military. Instead, he leaped right to a question that should rightly trigger alarm: if Hasan Akbar died while attacking fellow soldiers, would he be a martyr? Hasan skipped over questions about whether serving in the U.S. military is religiously acceptable; whether going to war against fellow Muslims is a violation of religious principles. Instead, in addressing “some” soldiers who felt conflicted about fighting fellow Muslims, Hasan right away asked whether it was permissible to kill other U.S. soldiers in the way Hasan Akbar.

Fourth email to Awlaki [no date provided]. In a political diatribe, Hasan made clear that rather than feeling “internally conflicted,” his allegiances were not with the United States. He wrote that “the Western world makes clear that it does not want Islamic rule to prevail. Again- they make that quite clear; not only in their own lands but in the lands of the Muslims as witnessed by their mighty plotting around the world.”

Fifth and sixth emails to Awlaki, Feb. 16, 2009. In the first email sent this day, Hasan wrote: “Please have alternative to donate to your web site. For example, checks/money orders may be sent to This can assure privacy for some who are concerned.” His second email was largely the same: “Please have alternative methods to donate to your web site. For example, checks/money orders may be sent to This can assure privacy for some who are concerned and maximize the amount given.” At this point, Hasan had not only expressed his great admiration for Awlaki, but expressed the desire to donate money to him as well. Further, he wanted to find a secure way to send Awlaki money, thus indicating that he understood that there were perceived problems with doing so.

Seventh email to Awlaki, Feb. 16, 2009. Hasan wrote that an advertisement would be posted in the March 2009 issue of the publication Muslim Link advertising a $5,000 scholarship prize for the best essay entitled “Why is Anwar Al Awlaki a great activist and leader.” He asked Awlaki to personally award the prize. This reference to a scholarship prize prompted the only two emails in this exchange that Awlaki would send to Hasan (the other sixteen were from Hasan to Awlaki). In the first response email, Awlaki noted that he doesn’t travel, “so I wont be able to physically award the prize.”

Hasan sent a follow-up email on Feb. 19 explaining that the essay contest would not in fact occur. He wrote that “obstacles have been placed by Muslims in the communtity that are petrified by potential repercussions.” Among other things, this indicates that Hasan is well aware of the controversies that have surrounded Awlaki. Hasan in fact castigated those Muslims who would not stand with Awlaki:

Allah willing everything will work out in such a way that pleases Allah (SWT). You have a very huge following but even among those there seems to be a large majority that are paralyzed by fear of losing some aspect of dunya. They would prefer to keep their admiration for you in their hearts. In any case, my personal experiences have taught me that if you align yourself to close to Allah (SWT) you will likely not have many friends but pleny of hardships. Even the Prophets use to say when is the help of Allah (SWT) coming.

The Muslims who found Awlaki too controversial are portrayed as not only cowardly but also betrayers of their own faith, desiring the life of this world (dunya) over God’s pleasures. Not ending there, Hasan goes on to offer Awlaki any kind of assistance he may need, stating that “I believe my biggest strength is my financial situation.” He wrote that he was looking forward (inshallah; God willing) to seeing Awlaki in Jannah (heaven), where they will see each other “sipping on non-intoxicating wine in reclined thrones and in absolute and unending happiness.”

If there were any doubt at this point about Hasan’s feelings toward Awlaki, he even asked Awlaki to help him to find a wife. In fact, his expressions of love for Awlaki would continue to grow during the course of the correspondence.

Fourteenth email to Awlaki, May 25, 2009. Hasan sent an email to Awlaki with encouraging words for him, and noting a Qur’anic verse that made him think of Awlaki. This is precisely how Hasan rendered the Qur’anic verse, including the internal bracketed material:

O you who believe! Whoever from among you turns back from his religion (Islaam), Allah will bring a people ([like Anwar Al Awalaki] whom He will love and they will love Him; humble towards the believers, stern towards the disbelievers, fighting in the Way of [Allaah], and never fear of the blame of the blamers. That is the Grace of [Allaah] which He bestows on whom He wills. And [Allaah] is AllSufficient for His creatures’ needs, All-Knower.

Note the bracketed material in this Qur’anic verse: Hasan has gone so far as to insert Awlaki’s name into a Qur’anic verse. Muslims believe that the Qur’an is the literal word of God. Adding words to it in brackets is not blasphemous: for example, the controversial al Hilali and Khan translation of the Qur’an has engendered criticism because of bracketed material that purports to aid the reader’s interpretation of various verses, but in fact guides the reader in a militant direction. But, though not blasphemous, it is an extraordinary step for Hasan to actually place Awlaki’s name inside a Qur’anic verse.

Fifteenth email to Awlaki, May 31, 2009. This is the most striking email of all. In it, Hasan first justifies suicide attacks at some length, and then queries Awlaki about the permissibility of collateral damage while in the process of killing enemy soldiers. He began by describing “a speaker” who defended the suicide portion of suicide bombings as religiously permissible:

[The speaker] contends that suicide is permissible in certain cases. He defines suicide as one who purposely takes his own life but insists that the important issue is your intention. For example, he reported a recent incident were an American Soldier jumped on a grenade that was thrown at a group of soldiers. In doing so he saved 7 soldiers but killed himself. He consciously made a decision to kill himself but his intention was to save his comrades and indeed he was successful. So, he says this proves that suicide is permissible in this example because he is a hero. Then he compares this to a soldier who sneaks into an enemy camp during dinner and detonates his suicide vest to prevent an attack that is know to be planned the following day. The suicide bombers intention is to kill numerous soldliers to prevent the attack to save his fellow people the following day. He is successfull. His intention was to save his people/fellow soldiers and the stategy was to sacrifice his life.

Hasan wrote that this logic made sense to him. But what he wanted to know from Awlaki is whether killing innocents in the process of killing enemy soldiers is permissible: “If the Qur’an it states to fight your enemies as they fight you but don’t transgress. So, I would assume that suicide bomber whose aim is to kill enemy soldiers or their helpers but also kill innocents in the process is acceptable. Furthermore, if enemy soldiers are using other tactics that are unethical/unconscionable than those same tactics may be used.”

In retrospect, this appears to be a query related to the attack that Hasan would carry out at Fort Hood later in the year. But even if the specifics of the coming attack were not foreseeable, this email raises a number of questions, particularly in light of Hasan’s stated view that the West was at war with Islam-and thus the West is likely cast in the role of the “enemy soldiers.” First, why is a U.S. army officer emailing Awlaki to express his belief in the permissibility of suicide bombings? Second, why is he asking a man like Awlaki if collateral damage is acceptable in the process of carrying out a suicide attack? Third, he began this correspondence with reference to Hasan Akbar, and whether Akbar might have been considered a shahid had he died in the course of his attack. Does this latest inquiry take on new meaning when related to Hasan’s first email?

Conclusion

The initial defense of Hasan’s emails as “fairly benign” is simply not defensible. The only explanation for why officials might reach that conclusion is that they simply did not know what they were looking at.

To review, Hasan repeatedly expressed what can only be described as a school-girl crush on Awlaki, who was known as a radicalizer in actual cases where Americans were driven to violence. Hasan even expressed a desire to send Awlaki money, tried to set up a $5,000 essay contest on the topic of “Why is Anwar Al Awlaki a great activist and leader,” and inserted Awlaki’s name in a laudatory manner into a Qur’anic verse. Hasan clearly expressed the view that Western forces were at war with Islam. And he sought Awlaki’s counsel on such questions as whether suicide bombings were acceptable, whether collateral damage was permissible in the course of a suicide attack, and-in his very first email-whether Hasan Akbar, who murdered fellow U.S. soldiers, might have been considered a martyr.

We are not claiming that understanding this correspondence better would have stopped the Fort Hood attack; counterfactuals are always a difficult game, and they risk overestimating what could have been done to prevent a tragedy. But at the very least, these emails should have triggered additional interest rather than being seen as “benign.” They were not benign; and Hasan was not asking the kind of questions that might naturally come up in the course of his professional duties. It is by understanding past mistakes that we can do better in the future, and writing off the Hasan/Awlaki correspondence as innocuous should be seen as a clear and unequivocal error now that the actual emails have been made public.

UPDATE, AUG. 5, 2012: In light of the above, it is worth noting what officials had said about Nidal Hasan back in 2009, shortly after the Fort Hood shootings. From the New York Daily News (with emphases added):

Agents pulled Hasan’s military records, but the FBI in a statement said his contact with Awlaki was “consistent with research” he was doing “as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center.”

“There was no indication that Maj. Hasan was planning an attack anywhere at all,” a senior investigator said last night.

The FBI shared the info with Army brass, who not only refused to boot Hasan from the service but promoted him - even after colleagues were stunned by his views on the wars abroad.

Needless to say, there are multiple problems with all the statements we have highlighted above.

UPDATE, AUG. 6, 2012: J.M. Berger weighs in with a couple of important points about the context of the Hasan/Awlaki email correspondence. We agree with both of his major points: our purpose was to undertake a content analysis of the correspondence rather than to claim that better understanding the red flags would have saved lives at Fort Hood. Often the ease with which terrorist events could have been averted is massively overestimated in the public sphere.

Posted in Terrorism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Powering Guantánamo

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on August 2, 2012

Last month, I undertook field research into U.S. detention policy at the detention camp operated by Joint Task Force-Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO). While out there, I had the opportunity to interview Captain John R. Nettleton, the commanding officer of Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, who only recently assumed his command. As Nettleton observed during our conversation, if you pay attention to media coverage of Gitmo, you might overlook the fact that there is a naval base at all — and that fact apparently surprises some media visitors as well. As the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman noted, “In what might come as a surprise to many, there are many recreational facilities at the naval base, from a golf course to an open-air cinema as well as a Starbucks Coffee and a McDonald’s restaurant.”

The Naval Station Guantánamo Bay is separate from JTF-GTMO (the latter being responsible for detentions). However, it faces some issues that other overseas bases simply do not. First and foremost, it is the only naval station located in a country with which the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations. As the U.S.’s oldest overseas base, the country has been making use of this territory since February 1903, when it first leased 45 square miles of land to use as a coaling station. In 1934, a treaty between the U.S. and Cuba affirmed the lease agreement, with the stipulation that the lease could not be terminated unless the U.S. and Cuba both agreed to it, or the U.S. abandoned the base. International agreements do not simply expire following revolutions, and hence the U.S. legally maintained its base at Guantánamo Bay even after the Fidel Castro-led revolution. However, in February 1964 Castro cut off water and other avenues of supply to the base, which forced it to be self-sustaining. It has been self-sustaining for more than forty years, generating its own power and — as of 2012 — desalinating about 1.2 million gallons of water per day.

Before “war on terror” detainees were moved to Gitmo, the base was almost in a caretaker status. That is, enough people were kept on the base to keep it going, but no money was put into maintaining buildings that were unlikely to be used again. So when JTF-GTMO began, the base was not fully manned: instead, the basic functions included guarding the perimeter, refueling ships coming through, and upkeep of the base. Most of the prominent base facilities — including the Starbucks and McDonald’s that Today’s Zaman specifically noted — are recent additions, specifically created to serve the needs that arose after JTF-GTMO’s establishment.”The JTF was created and suddenly you had a lot more people here, and that created the need to build up the base,” Nettleton told me. “All of a sudden you had a doubling of our base population. You had to feed them, clothe them, build new buildings.” Today there are over 5,400 personnel at the Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, including about 2,435 military and 2,965 civilians (of whom about 1,570 military and 320 civilian personnel are attached to the JTF).

Because the base has to be self-sustaining — and because food, supplies, building materials, etc. have to be brought in from elsewhere — that significantly increases costs at the naval station. One thing that I found particularly interesting is that a large percentage of the base’s electrical power comes from liquid fuels. Costs are not just related to the expense of the fuels themselves, but also the expense of bringing them to the naval station in the first place. Given the military’s push for green energy, I wondered if this might be an area where the base could save money in the long term.

To be clear, one of the very prominent features of the Guantánamo naval station is four windmills atop one of the hills (only three of which are functioning at present). However, only 2-3% of the base’s electricity on any given day is generated by the windmills.

Based on the sheer amount of sunlight it experiences, Guantánamo Bay also seems like it could be an ideal place to harness solar energy. And indeed, the base features a small solar field that is set inside an old high school running track that is no longer in use. But like the windmills, this solar field does not make a significant dent in the base’s overall electricity consumption.

The naval station’s solar field

Nettleton told me that they have been looking into a variety of alternative energy options because “this would be a great place” for it. “DoD has looked here for algae,” he said. “You can grow algae here all day long.” He also mentioned possible further development of solar power, in that new technology has been bringing down the cost of solar.

One barrier to expanding the base’s use of green energy is the cost of building new projects. The cost of transporting materials to Guantánamo Bay doesn’t just increase the expense of liquid fuels, but would also make new solar or wind projects more expensive as well. “Building anything here costs twice as much,” Nettleton told me. “You bring all the materials down, and you’re paying to have them shipped down. You’re paying a contractor to build it for you; you’re not only paying their end of the contract, but also they’re billing all their living and sleeping expenses, and everything else. So it’s twice as expensive here than it would be to build anything in the States.”

The other factor impeding green energy at Guantánamo Bay is uncertainty about the future of the base. “There is no end state in sight for the JTF,” Nettleton said. “It could end next year, or ten years from now. If you don’t know, you’re kind of in this nether region. You plan the best you can, but until the bosses make up their mind what they want to do, it is hard to make a case to invest a lot in infrastructure for 6,000 people when you don’t know if there will be 8,000 or 3,000 two years from now.”

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