Peace Intelligence – Page 441 – Public Intelligence Blog

After Action Report–General Barry McCaffrey, USA (Ret)

Visit to Kuwait and Afghanistan 10-18 Nov 09

11 pages

Extracted points

01 Phenomenally useful report with too much cheerleading. This is a 10-year regional war, State Department and AID are pulling out for next several years (too dangerous), costing us roughly half per day what we paid for all of WW II per day. Allies not really showing up and being effective, less the British.

02 Talked to Generals, Ambassadors, and Ministers–no Captions, no village chiefs. Nothing in her on intelligence, glosses over the C4I and protocol issues (see Journal: Beyond Weber to Epoch B Leadership).

03 Achilles' heels are multiple: 90% of the logistics come through Karachi, Pakistan and then overland. Without fire support and aviation this war is lost. Taliban now up to battalion-sized operations and believe they have high moral ground and time on their side. 100% US movement by air. (See Review: Firepower In Limited War; aviation sounds like a repeat of Viet-Nam; only thing keeping logistics open are the same decision made by NVA in Viet-Nam and by Iran-Syria in Iraq: better to let the Americans bleed themselves to death than cut their main supply line.

Continue reading “Reference: General McCaffrey's Trip Report on AF”

2009/12/092009/12/09

Journal: US Begins Regional War on Pashtun

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Chuck Spinney sends:
In my opinion, this is an extremely important piece of writing and needs to be read very carefully. The author of this article built an international reputation for excellence during his reporting on the Iraq War, and now he is positioning himself to do the same on Afghanistan. Conflating al Qaeda with the Taliban will mutate the so-called war on terror into an Anti-Pashtun (AF-Pak) War, with unknowable ramifications that could very well make the lunacy of Mad King George's aggression in Iraq look miniscule in comparison.

Full Story Online

A Wider and Unnecessary War: The March of Folly

By PATRICK COCKBURN December 7, 2009

By treating Pashtun villagers as if they were all Taliban, and Taliban as being the equivalent of al-Qa’ida, Mr Obama is increasing, not reducing, the threat of terrorist attack on the US or Britain. He is providing the battleground bin Laden hoped for and, like President Bush before him, has jumped willingly into the al-Qa’ida trap.

. . . . . .

One of the most foolish and misleading claims by US and British generals is that fighting a guerrilla war can be successfully combined with dispensing aid and building bridges and roads. But, as one commentator puts it, such a mixture of Wyatt Earp and Mother Theresa is not feasible. Soldiers are trained to get what they want by force and that is generally what they do. Afghans whose families have just been killed by a bomb will not be conciliated by a fine new drainage system.

Other minefields face incoming American and British forces. The Afghan government is in many respects a criminal racket.

2009/12/082009/12/08

Journal: Questions on AF & PK, The Larger Question

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Civil Society, Ethics, Government, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

What Congress Should Ask McChrystal

Phi Beta Iota: WIRED Magazine has put together a number of questions that ably illustrate the confusion in the public mind over why we are in Afghanistan and what that has to do with Pakistan. Based on the history of the Cold War, which appears to have been a Fity Year Wound, In Search of Enemies, or as General Smedley Butler, USMC (Ret) put it, War is a Racket, we have to wonder. When one combines the scandals associated with health care (50% waste according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers), the economy (a fraudulent Federal Reserve and phantom wealth leveraged by Wall Street to the detriment of the commonwealth), and all of the other pressing problems facing America, the larger question is not really about Afghanistan or Pakistan but rather about process. Is America a democracy? Is our policy process reasoned and informed? Is the public interest being served? Does the White House really understand The True Cost of Conflict/Seven Recent Wars and Their Effects on Society?

2009/12/07

Journal: Citizen Cyber-Detectives on the March

10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Real Time

Video 9:40 Min

The Internet Detective – Switzerland

There is a new breed of super-sleuth emerging in the virtual world of the web. For both petty criminals and major terrorist groups, internet detectives are fast becoming a force to be reckoned with. Making it his business to track down criminal activity through the web, Guido Rudolphi, the Sherlock Holmes of the cyber world, considers himself a legal hacker. “So much more information can be accessed, quite legally, than the individual user would ever imagine.” Rudolphi has taken advantage of this new free-flow of online information to catch paedophiles, fraudsters, and even unearth international cells of Al-Quaeda. He demonstrates how it takes less than twenty minutes to establish a persons credentials, locate them and hand them over to the police. “People seem to think theyre anonymous online, that nothing can happen to them there thats very naive.”

2009/12/072009/12/07

Journal: US Navy Right Idea Wrong Level

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Key Players, Peace Intelligence

The U.S. Navy Builds An MMOG

December 6, 2009: The U.S. Navy is looking for a game development company to bid on a project to help create a multiplayer game for training and brainstorming. What they want initially is a feasibility study on the creation of a ” Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI).” The proposals are due by December 28th.

Phi Beta Iota: This is exactly the right idea but at the wrong level. This should be sponsored by the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI) in full partnership with the Director of Intelligence (DNI) and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It should be multinational and multifunctional in design from day one, with a multinational board of advisors including at a minimum Brazil, China, Indonesia, Russia, Malaysia, South Africa, and Turkey. Earth Intelligence Network knows how to do this for only $4 million a year, but of course the contract will be awarded to a beltway bandit whose sole priority will be to create a close proprietary system that locks the client in and shuts out everyone else.

2009/12/042009/12/04

Worth a Look: MicroPlace Giving to the Poor

11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Gift Intelligence, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Real Time, Threats

MicroPlace for Poor

Level of poverty

Poor | Very poor | Extremely poor

Green Serves rural areas Focus on women Fair trade

Financial My financial return 1% – 3% | 4% – 6%

When I get repaid Anytime | < 1 yr | 1 – 3 yrs | > 3 yrs

My money is going to Single institution | Multiple institutions

Support small coffee growers in the mountains of Nicaragua

Support Fair Trade Coffee Farmers in Tanzania

Phi Beta Iota: Evidently an EBay initative with a PayPal front end, this impresses us. Subject to audit, it is precisely what we were thinking of (see our Denmark Briefing) as a means of connecting the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity now) with the five billion poor at the household item level of need. The major FLAW with with implementation is that it relies on intermediaries that will suck off 50% or more of the actual value. Still needed: the Global Range of Needs Table. This would also benefit from a Twitter application and a near real time “close by can do easy” option.

2009/12/032009/12/03

Reference: Measuring Success and Failure in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism–US Government Metrics of the Global War on Terror (GWOT)

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence

Alex P. Schmid, one of a handful of trully expert scholars in the field of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and his colleague Rashmi Singh, have created a summary that is devasting on multiple fronts. The “Global War on Terror” or GWOT has lasted longer than World Wars I and II combined; the money expended (the authors do not include the military costs of occupying Afghanistan and Iraq) has been enormous, and in all that time, no one has defined the metrics by which to measure the endeavor. The chapter in included in After the War on Terror: Regional and Multilateral Perspectives on Counter-TerrorismStrategy

See also:

Search: Strategic Analytic Model

Search: QDR “four forces after next”

Category: Peace Intelligence

Reference: General McCaffrey’s Trip Report on AF