This is a critical time for U.S. efforts in the war in Afghanistan. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama announced that the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan would draw down by an additional 34,000 troops, to about 33,000, by February 2014, and that by the end of 2014 “our war in Afghanistan will be over.” Further decision-making regarding the U.S. force presence in Afghanistan, including after the end of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission at the end of 2014, is expected later this year. Yet while troop levels tend to steal the headlines, far more fundamentally at stake is what it would take to ensure the long-term protection of U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the region.
Iran-US-Iraq: The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets reported on Thursday that the US intercepted an order from an Iranian official to militants in Iraq to attack US interests in Iraq in the event of a US attack against Syria.
Below is a thoughtful essay by Ambassador Chas Freeman. He describes how the United States has painted itself into a corner on the Syrian Question. Many see this problem in terms of President Obama's missteps, but Freeman shows it goes far beyond one man's grand-strategic foibles.
While Freeman does not express the evolution of grand strategy wrt Syria Question in the following terms, the core issue is, I believe, the increasingly dysfunctional moral design for grand strategy evolved by the United States since the end of the Cold War. Abstractly, this dysfunction takes the form of a growing web of policy-induced mismatches among (a) the codes of conduct and standards of behaviour the United States professes to uphold and others expect the U.S. to uphold, (b) those standards of behaviour we actually adhere to, as demonstrated by our actions, and (c) the conditions in the world we have to contend with. The hypocrisy implicit in this web of mismatches, in abstract terms, is the moral heart of our growing foreign policy crisis and our state of perpetual war.
The crucial importance of having a moral design for grand strategy is described by the late American strategist Col. John Boyd in his seminal Discourse on Winning and Losing. In fact, this notion is the capstone grand strategic ideal synthesizing the tactical, operational, strategic, and philosophical threads of Boyd's entire Discourse. And while the idea is expressed in highly compressed terms on Slides 54-58 of his briefing Strategic Game of ? and ?, one must study the entire Discourse to appreciate both the elegance of his compression, as well as the central importance of forging a grand strategy that is consistent with his ideal.
Exorcising those mismatches from the body politic can start with Syria, but it goes far beyond Syria to our dealings with Middle East, Iran, Russia, China, and indeed the whole world. Nor will it be be easy; extremely powerful domestic factions in the US are profiting from these mismatches, and their corollary state of perpetual war (as I explained here). Ridding ourselves of these mismatches is now the foreign policy challenge of our generation
Ambassador Freeman's thoughtful assembly of the facts associated with our patterns of post-cold war behaviour is worthy of careful study and comparison with Boyd's ideals, because without intending to, he reveals how far the United States has strayed from these ideas. In effect, Freeman has issued a call for an injection of common sense into American foreign policy, and Syria is the place to start working the problem.
US spies missed signs of Aug. 21 Syrian WMD Strike
By KIMBERLY DOZIER
Associated Press, 4 September 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence agencies did not detect the Syrian regime readying a massive chemical weapons attack in the days ahead of the strike, only piecing together what had happened after the fact, U.S. officials say.
One of the key pieces of intelligence that Secretary of State John Kerry later used to link the attack to the Syrian government — intercepts of communications telling Syrian military units to prepare for the strikes — was in the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies but had not yet been “processed,” according to senior U.S. officials.
Syria: President Asad gave an interview to Le Figaro which was published by the Syrian news agency Sana on 3 September. Excerpts follow.
Asad denied Syrian forces launched a chemical attack. He said Syria has no motive to make such an attack because it is winning the fight. He challenged the US to produce its proof and show it to the UN since the party making the accusations has the burden of proving them.
He said his soldiers were wounded in the attack on the 21st and the UN inspectors visited them in hospital.
He accused the US President of being a weak leader who succumbed to pressure from small groups and as one who starts wars instead of prevents them.
Concerning a Syrian response to a US attack, he reminded the interviewer that the architects of a war only control the first shot. He said the first and the greatest danger is that the situation will explode into a regional war.
In response to a question about Russian support he said,
