Peace Intelligence – Page 322 – Public Intelligence Blog

Recently I noticed a post on a social media site honoring Rosa Parks for her refusal to move out of her seat on a segregated bus. Someone commented underneath, that in fact another individual deserved credit for having done the same thing first. What happened next was entirely predictable. Post after post by various people brought out the names of all kinds of forerunners of Parks, pushing the date of the first brave resister to segregated buses back further and further — many decades — into the past.

What we understand as the civil rights movement was successfully started after a great many failed attempts — by organizations as well as individuals. The same goes for the suffragette movement or the labor movement or the abolition of slavery. Even the Occupy movement was the umpteenth time a lot of activists had attempted such a thing, and chances are that eventually the Occupy movement will be seen as one in a long line of failed predecessors to something more successful.

I've been discussing with people whom I consider key organizers of such a project the possibility of a newly energized movement to abolish war. One thing we're looking at, of course, is failed past attempts to do the same. Some of those attempts have been quite recent. Some are ongoing. How, we must ask ourselves, can we strengthen what's already underway, learn from what's been tried before, and create the spark that this time, at long last, after over a century's preliminaries, catches fire?

Continue reading “Let's Begin Ending War Again”

2013/12/07

Neal Rauhauseer: Afghanistan Coalition Casualties, Opium Poppies & Drone Strikes

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Afghanistan: Coalition Casualties, Opium Poppies & Drone Strikes

Funding The Syrian Insurgency was written almost five months ago and it references a 2006 paper by economist Paul Coller, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy. Summarizing to a single sentence, insurgencies market themselves to claim moral high ground, but they always have an illicit network exploiting local opportunity, and they often devolve into regional mafias (think: Colombia’s FARC) once their political objectives are met.

National Defense University’s Convergence is a collected series of papers on the nature of illicit networks that support insurgencies. Afghanistan has a variety of such entities, from the Haqqani Network, which may or may not be cozy with Pakistan’s ISI, to Iranians on the opposite side of the country, more focused on revenue than any political objective.

Here’s a map of Afghanistan’s opium poppy production by province:

Afghanistan Opium Prodution

Here’s a map of coalition casualties in Afghanistan, with a highlight of Waziristan, where drone strikes are most prevalent.

Afghanistan Casualties

Kandahar and Helmand are the gold mine, they are where coalition troops were most at risk. The area being droned is Waziristan, home to the political leadership of the bi-national Haqqani network. Afghan Logistics Just Got Much Harder describes the added distance and costs we face in our withdrawal due to the slaughter of 24 Pakistani troops in 2011. We are simply not wanted in Afghanistan, and the residents have the temperament to make that decision, and then make it stick.

This will never work politically, but if we intended to reduce the hazard Afghanistan poses the right thing to do would have been a short, sharp action against radicalized Arabs in the country, then spending our dollars facilitating legal use of the country’s opium crop. Global Access to Pain Relief Initiative is just one many efforts that could use opium derivatives, relieving the suffering of both Afghans and cancer victims worldwide.

2013/12/07

Chuck Spinney: Uri Avner on Greatest Danger to Israel – Meddling Idiot “Leaders”

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Peace Intelligence

The author of this incisive — and entertaining — analysis of (1) Israel's political condition and (2) its arrogance with regard to pernicious meddling in the domestic politics of it friends is a former member of the Knesset, a hero of the 1948 War, and perhaps Israel's leading (and most rational) peace activist. He is also one of my heros.

Chuck Spinney

The Blaster

The Debacle

Uri Avnery, 30/11/13

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1385746190

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Uri Avner on Greatest Danger to Israel – Meddling Idiot “Leaders””

2013/12/06

David Swanson: What Did Not Kill Mandela Made Him Stronger

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Nelson Mandela's story, if told as a novel, would not be deemed possible in real life. Worse, we don't tell such stories in many of our novels.

A violent young rebel is imprisoned for decades but turns that imprisonment into the training he needs. He turns to negotiation, diplomacy, reconciliation. He negotiates free elections, and then wins them. He forestalls any counter-revolution by including former enemies in his victory. He becomes a symbol of the possibility for the sort of radical, lasting change of which violence has proved incapable. He credits the widespread movement in his country and around the world that changed cultures for the better while he was locked away. But millions of people look to the example of his personal interactions and decisions as having prevented a blood bath.

Mandela was a rebel before he had a cause. He was a fighter and a boxer. Archbishop Desmond Tutu says that South Africa benefited greatly from the fact that Mandela did not emerge from prison earlier: “Had he come out earlier, we would have had the angry, aggressive Madiba. As a result of the experience that he had there, he mellowed. … Suffering either embitters you or, mercifully, ennobles you. And with Madiba, thankfully for us, the latter happened.”

Continue reading “David Swanson: What Did Not Kill Mandela Made Him Stronger”

2013/12/062013/12/06

Chuck Spinney: Mike Lofgren Reinforces Bill Polk — Get A Brain, Reconnect with Ethics, Leave the Middle East, Ideally All Three

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Mike Lofgren Responds to William R. Polk’s, “Intellectual and Political Foundations of 21st Century Jihad.

Lofgren retired after 28 years on the congressional staff. He held senior staff positions in the both the House and Senate Budget Committees, where he specialized in Defense and Foreign Policy. After he retired, he authored “The Party Is Over: How the Republicans Went Crazy, the Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted” (Penguin 2012), which made the New York Times Best seller list for a short time.

Lofgren’s opinion piece addresses the logical policy implication of a U.S. counter-terrorism strategy that is playing into the hands of the strategy enunciated by Abu Bakr Naji, as so well described by William R. Polk.

Chuck Spinney

It’s Time for a Total Withdrawal from the Middle East

2013/12/06

Chuck Spinney: The Intellectual and Political Foundations of 21st Century Jihad Sayyid Qutub’s Fundamentalism and Abu Bakr Naji’s Jihadism

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

My friend, Bill Polk, a distinguished historian specializing in the Middle East, is busily writing a series of extended essays aimed at increasing our understanding of the conflict in Syria and, by extension, our seemingly perpetual war with the Islamic world. I posted the first part of this series, collectively entitled Understanding Syria, on 8 November 2013 here. Attached below is the next essay in the series. More will follow.

I found this essay to be a particularly powerful argument. Those on this list who follow the strategic theories of late Colonel John R. Boyd will find Bill’s analysis of the intellectual/philosophical basis for moral and political cohesion in the first half and the basis of the strategy for Jihad laid out by Abu Bakr Naji (in the last half of the essay) to be entirely consistent with Boyd’s ideas — from grand strategy to tactics. I found the discussion of Jihadist strategy rings lots of Boyd’s bells — particularly those relating to Sun Tzu, Boyd’s critique of Clausewitz’s failure to address the idea of pumping your adversary’s friction to increase his expenditure of effort, his conception of generating non-cooperative centers of gravity, and Boyd’s dissection of insurrection, revolution, and guerrilla war.

What I find to be particularly disturbing about Bill’s analysis is that the counter strategy being pursued by the United States to counter militant Islam fits Naji’s strategy — to paraphrase Eric Von Manstein’s description of the French strategy in 1940 — like a “hand fits a glove.” If you doubt this, think about the nature of our strategic “achievements” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No doubt, T.E. Lawrence would be smiling ironically at the “Lob-Ottomanization” of U.S. counter-terror strategy.

Readers are feel free to distribute/post Polk's analysis (including my intro if they so desire).

Chuck Spinney

The Blaster

The Intellectual and Political Foundations of 21^st Century Jihad

Sayyid Qutub’s Fundamentalism and Abu Bakr Naji’s Jihadism

William R. Polk, December 1, 2013

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Intellectual and Political Foundations of 21st Century Jihad Sayyid Qutub’s Fundamentalism and Abu Bakr Naji’s Jihadism”

2013/12/022013/12/02