War & Face of Battle – Page 15 – Public Intelligence Blog

Above is a picture I took looking down on Anzac Cove in Gallipoli during my recent trip to Gallipoli. The Aussies and New Zealanders assaulted a beach that is about 25 meters wide and 600 meters long. After crossing the tiny beach, they hit a slope rising at about 60 degrees or more, covered by dense Mediterranean maqui. Bear in mind, the road in my picture did not exist and the first major summit was probably 700-800 feet high, but to get there, you had to cross a labyrinth of steep, irregular ravines, covered with the dense prickly undergrowth. Moreover, it is the wrong beach. [Continued below.]

Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney on Gallipoli”

2009/07/252009/10/06

Review: Winning the Long War: Retaking the Offensive against Radical Islam

5 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Democracy, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Information Operations, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

First, Understand the Enemy Within

July 25, 2009

Ilan Berman

I love the book, not least because it reiterates the Secretary of Defense view that the military cannot win this Long War alone.

What this book does NOT address is the raw fact that we are our own worst enemy, and that as long as we make policy based on delusional fantasies combined with rapid profiteering mandates from Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, as long as we lack a strategic analytic model, and as long as we are completely opposed to actually creating a prosperous world at peace, then the USA is destined for self-immolation.

Buy the book. Also consider:
Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom
Unfolding the Future of the Long War: Motivations, Prospects, and Implications for the U.s. Army

HOWEVER, if you recognize as I do that those in power are completely divorced from reality, having become “like morons” as Daniel Ellsberg lectured Henry Kissinger in Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and that both Congress and the White House consist of good people trapped in a bad system that robs each and every one of them of their integrity, then no happy ending is possible.

I have posted my book Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography) online, the Annotated Bibliogrpahy will lead those who wish to connect to reality to over 500 non-fiction reviews here at Amazon.

Books I specifically recommend for anyone who can actually talk to Obama about reconnecting with both reality and the 70% of eligible voters that did NOT vote for his well-greased win:
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

The power and common sense of the Average American (see the book by that title, I am out of authorized links) can still be brought to bear, but first we have to stop this nonsense of thinking that if we only have the right strategy, we can evil and force not just the emerging powers, but Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like the Congo, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey into their “role” as playthings of the American Empire.

Please. We have gone from a village idiot to a major domo that gives good theater, and books like this are still being written? Get a grip!

Phi Beta Iota, the new honour society committed to public intelligence in the public interest, is now publishing the free online Journal of Public Intelligence. There are no costs or qualifications save one: have a brain and use it in the public interest.

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2009/07/202009/10/24

Review: GIS for Decision Support and Public Policy Making

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Disaster Relief, Games, Models, & Simulations, Geography & Mapping, Geospatial, History, Humanitarian Assistance, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

ESRI Sales Material, Excellent Price, Recommended,

July 20, 2009

Christopher Thomas and Nancy Humenik-Sappington

As a publisher who is also an author, I continue to be outraged by the prices being charged for “trade” publications. This book is properly-priced–other books on GIS I would have bought are priced at three to four times their actual value, thus preventing the circulation of that knowledge. Those publishers that abuse authors and readers refuse to respect the reality that affordably priced books are essential to the dissemination of knowledge and the perpetuation of the publishing industry.

The book loses one star for refusing to address Google Earth and elements of the Google offering in this industry space. While Google is predatory and now under investigation by the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice, to ignore Google and its implications for cloud management of data in geospatial, time, and other cross- cutting contests, is the equivalent of poking one eye out to avoid seeing an approaching threat.

Having said that, I found this book from ESRI charming, useful, and I recommend it very highly, not least because it is properly priced and very well presented. Potential clients of ESRI can no doubt get bulk deliver of this volume for free.

Return on Investment factors that ESRI highlights up front include:
+ Cost and times savings
+ Increased efficiency, accuracy, productivity of existing resources
+ Revenue generation
+ Enhanced communications and collaboration
+ Automated workflows
+ More efficient allocation of new resources
+ Improved access to information.

The book consists of very easy-to-read and very well-illustrated small case studies, most previously published in Government Matters, which appears to be a journal (there are a number listed by that title).

Here are the highlights of this book for me personally:

+ Allows for PUBLIC visualization of complex data
+ Framework for “seeing” historical data and trends
+ Value of map-based dialog [rather than myth-based assertions]
+ Allows for the visualization of competing perspectives past and future
+ Illuminated land population dynamics, I especially like being able to see “per capita” calculations in visual form, especially when per capita can also be sliced by age, sex, income, religion, race, and so on.
+ Mapping derelict vessels underwater is not just a safety function, but opens the way for volunteer salvage and demolition
+ GROWS organically by attracting new data contributors who can “see” the added value of contributing their data and then being able to see their data and everyone else's data in geospatial terms. This is a POWERFUL incentive for information-sharing, which more often than not receives lip service. GIS for me is the “key” to realizing sharing across all boundaries while also protecting individual privacy
+ Shows “pockets” of need by leveraging data gaps in relation to known addresses (e.g. immunizations, beyond 5 minute fire response, etc.)'
+ Gives real meaning to “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB)” and–not in this book–offers enormous potential if combined with a RapidSMS web database that can received text messages from hundreds of thousands of individuals across a region
+ Eliminates the time-energy cost of data collection in hard copy and processing of the individual pages into an aggregate database.

The book discusses GIS utility in the routing of hazardous materials, but avoids the more explosive (pun intended) value of GIS in showing the public as well as government officials where all the HAZMAT is complacently stored now. For a solid sense of the awaiting catastrophe, see my review of The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters.

The book also avoids any discussion of the urgency as well as the value of GIS in tracking and reducing natural resource consumption (e.g. water usage visible to all house by house), and the enormous importance of rapidly making it possible for any and all organizations to channel their data into shared GIS-based aggregations. For a sense of World Brain as EarthGame, see my chapter in Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace the chapter is also free online at the OSS.Net, Inc. website forward slash CIB.

This book, 189 pages of full color, is a righteous useful offering. I would encourage ESRI to become the GIS publisher of choice, buy out the titles that I could not afford, and enter the business of affordable aggregate publishing in the GIS field. Other titles by ESRI on GIS:
Measuring Up: The Business Case for GIS
The GIS Guide for Local Government Officials
Zeroing in: Geographic Information Systems at Work in the Community

Five other cool books on data pathologies that GIS can help resolve:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
The Age of Missing Information (Plume)

The latter remind me that GIS will not blossom fully until it can help the humanities deal with emotions, feelings, and perceptions across tribal and cultural boundaries. Right now, 23 years after I first worked with GIS in the Office of Information Technology at CIA, GIS is ready for the intermediate leap forward: helping multinational multiagency data sets come together. ESRI has earned deep regard from me with this book and I will approach them about a new book aimed at the UN, NGOs, corporations, and governments that wish to harmonize data and in so doing, harmonize how they spend across any given region, e.g. Africa. This will be the “master leap” for GIS, enabling the one billion rich to respond to micro-needs from the five billion poor, while also increasing the impact of aggregated orchestrated giving by an order of magnitude.

ESRI: well done!

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2009/07/172013/07/03

Review: The Trouble with Africa–Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Civil Affairs, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Country/Regional, Democracy, Diplomacy, Disaster Relief, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Humanitarian Assistance, Information Operations, Information Society, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Credible, Pointed, Relevant, Useful, Essential,

July 17, 2009

Robert Calderisi

I read in groups in order to avoid being “captured” or overly-swayed by any single point of view. The other books on Africa that I will be reviewing this week-end include:
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
The Challenge for Africa
Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's FutureUp front the author stresses that since 1975 Africa has been in a downward spiral, ultimately losing HALF of its foreign market for African goods and services, a $70 billion a year plus loss that no amount of foreign aid can supplant.

The corruption of the leaders and the complacency of the West in accepting that corruption is a recurring theme. If the USA does not stop supporting dictators and embracing corruption as part of the “status quo” then no amount of good will or aid will suffice.

Continue reading “Review: The Trouble with Africa–Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working”

2009/07/152009/07/16

2008 War and Peace in the Digital Era (Draft)

Monographs, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Priorities, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

General Peter Schoomaker–the same general that gave Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) a proper hearing at the U.S. Special Operations Command, created the first active duty Army Civil Affairs Brigade since WWII, stood up by Col Ferd Irizarry, USA. I personally believe that the theaters commands must become Whole of Government commands, and that Army Civil Affairs Brigade should become the hub for a global Earth Rescue Network that includes all relevant personnel from all eight “tribes” (government, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-profit and non-governmental, and civil society including labor unions, religions and citizen wisdom councils and advocacy groups.

This monograph, commissioned by the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) had *not* been validated and is offered in draft to avoid delay in sharing the core ideas for enhancing US Army performance in Stabilization & Reconstruction operations. I am *very* interested in having a dialog on this including errors and omissions, and will respond to any comments.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Never Surrender–A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

Helpful, Illuminating, and Inspiring, October 12, 2008

Jerry Boykin

I ordered this biography on a whim, as one of a dozen books on irregular warfare that I am using to review the thoughts of others before I publish my own book. When the three boxes from Amazon arrived, this book was buried under others, but was immediately the most attractive for the week-end.

Several important insights are available from this book:

1) Charlie Beckwith, whose book Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorist Unit I really enjoyed, especially the part where he refused to leave a British field hospital for an American one, learned from the SAS the most important lesson it had to teach, and brought it to DELTA: to be *truly* unconventional, to be *truly* irregular, you must be UNMILITARY. From this page (69) I simply relaxed and enjoyed a great account. I got what I was looking for, sooner than expected.

2) The 12-hour long march from point to point is a time-tested method of screening for individuals who have inherent resolve that cannot be trained for. I quote from page 78: “The Army can train a man to spy, shoot, blow things up, and kill with his bare hands. But it cannot instill in a man the series of two-sided personality coins that cash out as a successful operative: patience and aggression, precision and audacity, the ability to lead or fall in line. Above all, the Army cannot instill resolve beyond physical and mental limits.”

3) In the above context, faith is helpful, and faith cannot be taken for granted. Early on I enjoyed the author's explanation of how he reconciled faith with a profession that wages death (for life), finding that every war is a spiritual battle. The author explicitly identifies America as God's land of faith and tolerance, and I agree with him.

4) On page 130, he concludes that some men are evil and simply need to be killed. I agree with that completely. In the 1990's when I first started advocating the need to shift away from the Soviet Union and toward Third World terrorists and criminals, I used the phrase, “one man, one bullet.” We still cannot do that today, while the Navy and the Air Force continue to buy fewer really big things for more and more money.

I enjoyed every minute with this book. This is not a “shoot 'em book.” This is, as the subtitle communicates, the story of an extraordinary individual, a man born and trained to be the best possible fighter, who found faith and kept faith with God and America. He is “the way it ought to be.”

Here are some side notes.

Rumsfeld created the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence because he was furious that his Special Forces had to be “led” into Afghanistan by the CIA (see my review of Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander.

George Bush Junior betrayed all of us in crucifying and disavowing General Boykin in the face of media lies and exaggerations for which the author was fully exonerated by two Inspector General endeavors.

Media–the out of control largely ignorant media–is the best weapon that terrorists and others who hate America can use. I agree with that, and I am especially concerned at the ignorance of both our current presidential candidates, neither one of whom can talk substance in the context of a balanced budget–and they get away with it because the media has no idea what the substance of governance is (see the free online book, also on Amazon, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography).

9/11 struck the author as the opening salvo in a long battle for our own soul. I agree with the soul part, but the battle started when we decided to run the world for 50 years, very badly, while ignoring the spread of violent Islam funded by Saudi Arabia. See these four books:
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century

Other tid-bits:
+ 1 of three officers to make cut in creating DELTA. Peter Schoomaker was another.
+ DELTA pool was 118 of whom 25 finished the Long Walk, of whom 19 were selected (in the first class)
+ Boykin's dad was one of five brothers who served in “The Good War,” three in the Army, two in the Navy.
+ He was 6 feet tall and weighed 180 lbs in the eighth grade.
+ Played guitar and wound up playing at World's Fair in 1965 (the thought, “well-rounded” came into my head–not a thug stereotype)
+ Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets
+ Drawn to brotherhood of infantry, inspired by Viet-Nam stories.
+ One of his coaches taught him that faith and reality could go together
+ Once married, his first child drove him to the Dean's List
+ “I really wanted to learn everything the Army had to teach.”
+ Found faith for real in the Army, it filled a void.
+ He LIKED Ham and Lima Beans in C-Rats. That alone makes him strange in an amusing sort of way. I always thought of that C-Ration as one step down from bread and water.
+ He had his failures, in both school and the Army, but they drove him to excel and honors came his way when he bore down.
+ Aide de Camp tour in Korea got him to Viet-Nam for three months, and gave him a strategic understanding of the Army
+ Lost the general's dog, ended up running him down. Very funny.
+ Was one of the originals as paratroopers migrated into air assault.
+ Almost shut out of DELTA by the shrink for “excessive faith in God,” but he connected with Beckwith in the final interview and got in, the clear message being that the faith was not misplaced.
+ Excellent discussion of the time value of instinctive shooting (with the necessary training) over aimed fire–life of a hostage, the first takes one second, the second takes two seconds, time for the hostage to be killed.
+ Beckwith understood the killing nature of bureaucracy
+ I have a note, this book is the anti-thesis to Colin's Powell's biography, My American Journey and a shorter different book-end to Hackworth's About Face: Odyssey of an American Warrior

The author takes us through a number of operations in a manner that does not compromise any tradecraft and is not tedious. I appreciated very much the light once over on Tehran (the students thought they would have to get out in three days, they under-estimated the timidity of the US under President Carter), Sudan, Graneda which was not a surprise and for which CIA had no intelligence of substance for the fighters, Panama, Somalia, and then Bosnia.

Sixteen pages of photos are in the middle of the book, all appropriate and helpful. There is no index.

I thought to end this review with several of the phrases from the Bible that the author quoted in the book. I bought Leadership Lessons of Jesus: A Timeless Model for Today's Leaders because it was on sale in the uniform store at MacDill, and now that I have read this book, believe that our Irregulars of the future will be well-served by being required to understand faith, and to memorize portions of the Bible, the Koran, and other Holy Scriptures (just think of the impact as shown in Lawrence of Arabia, when his completing a reading instantly won over King Faisal and sidelined the conventional colonel).

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 9.4-5

“He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40

“For they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings of eagles, they shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40.31, faxed from around the world as he struggled to survive a 50 caliber bullet shattering a radio into his body.

Amazon won't let me have more than ten links, but this one, by Navy Capt Doug Johnston, is worth a close look: Faith-Based Diplomacy. There is an intersection of UNMILITARY, faith, and Irregular War: Waging Peace that no one in power seems to understand.

2009/07/032012/10/07

Review: Kill Bin Laden–A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man

4 Star, Insurgency & Revolution, Terrorism & Jihad, War & Face of Battle

Dalton Fury

Over-Hyped by Marketing, Excellent for Students of SOF, October 15, 2008

This book has been very heavily over-sold by the publisher and will disappoint those who are expecting something other than a professional account of a professional mission with all its warts.

This is a very fine first person account with ample detail that I for one found very rewarding and worthy of both my time and money (the book is very reasonably priced). The reader will benefit from first reading the reviews of the books I list at the end–one would never know from this account that Rumsfeld gave the Pakistani's an air corridor to evacuate 3000 Taliban overnight from Tora Bora, that the Navy was certain they killed Bin Laden, or that General Franks refused to put a battalion of Rangers on the back door (the author does tell us of his understanding that President Bush personally ruled that the back door belonged to the “trusted” Pakistanis).

The author tries hard to be nice to intelligence, but his true bottom line is captured in his description of what they had for him:

1) It's winter in Afghanistan
2) Bin Laden can ride a horse

We all know they had more than that–even with a US Senator blowing the fact that we were listening to Bin Laden's cell phones and satellite phones–but the reality is that CIA could meet with the warlords but did not have actual people within the tribes and on the ground as the Pakistani ISI did.

The author also makes clear that it was just as hard to figure out the friendly situation as it was the enemy situation. From where I sit, “total battlefield awareness” is a pipe dream–a fraud–and it's time we started refocusing on humans that can live up to the Gunny Poole “Tiger's Way.”

Here I my notes, ending with my conclusions and ten books I recommend in partnership with this one.

Early on the role of snipers, and the possible uses of snipers if we could get bureaucrats and politicians out of the way, impress me.

Small teams with a forward air controller that can go deep and stay for days impress me, very much. Unfortunately, we don't field them often enough (I only have read of use in Colombia, not generally, but SOF operates in over 150 countries so who knows).

Author reinforces the concept of Irregular Warfare as bottom-up thinking in which every person has a say, but takes pains to distinguish this from leadership, with the self-effacing comment that the leaders will decide after the enlisted personnel tell the leaders what they need to know.

Early on he laments to misplacing of the Special Operations “truths,” the first one being “Humans are more important than hardware.” Today privates are being selected for special operations right out of boot camp, and between private military contractors being allowed to loot the public treasury of both money and skilled manpower, and the complete dismissal of all standards, one can sense the author's thoughts between the lines: DELTA is the last vestige of “true” special forces (although I would include SEALs and some special air).

Air Force air strikes were not great–1 out of 3 hit the target, and the so-called super bomb, the BLU-82, did not explode as advertised.

Bin Laden's “order of battle” was surmised to be an inner circle of Saudis, Yemenis, and Egyptians, with an outer circle of Afghans, Algerians, Jordanians, Chechnyans, and Pakistanis.

Taliban liked to wear black on black…I could not help being reminded of the Viet-Cong.

Terrain blocked our radios. General Clark and others have made it clear that we are not trained, EQUIPPED, or organized for mountain operations, and between this point, and the personal knowledge I have of how few special Chinooks we have that can operate above 12,000 feet–and only because their CWO pilots have learned to fart into the fuel–it's clear the US is not serious about mountain or jungle warfare, and marginally competent as urban warfare.

After seven days they were out of batteries and water.

There was a “surrender” gambit when they got close, the primary purpose being to keep an Afghan warlord between Bin Laden and the Americans.

We still have total disconnect between ground troop use of grids on a map, and Air Force demand for latitude and longitude. The $150 GPS conversion is great, Navy and Air Force still not joint.

Lovely account of how they did a field hire of a seeming gift from heaven, a second translator who spoke English, only to learn later he also spoke Arabic and had been sent as a penetration. Sidebar on Pakistani penetration of the Afghan group they were with.

No mules. Very very tough to resupply in the mountains in winter. Even without loads, four kilometers on one occasion took five hours.

Bin Laden evidently wrote his will on the 14th of December, coincident with his rather desperate sounding call over the radio to all to arm their women and children.

We dropped 1100 “precision” bombs and $550 “dumb” bombs on Tora Bora, plus tens of thousands of rounds of other artillery and ammunition. I am so reminded of Viet-Nam, where what we paid for artillery shells being fired could have bought every Vietnamese a two-story cinderblock house with electricity and running water.

Author concludes that the CIA model of buying warlords DOES NOT WORK for specific objectives.

I learn for the first time that a visit was made to Tora Bora after the fact, a forensic visit. [He know from Bin Laden's later emergence that he did get out.]

The author is scathingly critical of the Army Center for Army Lessons Learned, which has exactly one hit on Tora Bora against thousands of documents visible via the web.

What I learned from this:

DELTA is over-trained and under-utilized.
Conventional Army leaders have no idea how to use special forces in advance of operations or deep behind enemy lines–they simply do not have the mind-set.
CIA paramilitary and some clandestine needs to be transferred into a new Active Measures Command that is the dark and dirty side of Irregular Warfare.