Last night, a joint force from America’s Tier One special operations command conducted a raid on a pirate camp in Somalia, freeing two hostages – an American and a Dane – and killing their captors before exfiltrating north to Djibouti via helicopter.

USA Today‘s lead paragraph captures the mission well, while also serving as the best recruiting pitch for the Navy’s Sea, Air, and Land teams that I’ve seen a newspaper run:

The same U.S. Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama bin Laden parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness early Wednesday and crept up to an outdoor camp where an American woman and Danish man were being held hostage. Soon, nine kidnappers were dead and both hostages were freed.

The hostages, two aid workers who had been kidnapped three months earlier, were victims of an expanding land-based kidnapping enterprise engaged in by Somali pirates in response to the growing difficulty of hijacking ships in the Gulf of Aden.

“The same U.S. Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama bin Laden,” of course, refers to the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), also known as SEAL Team Six, though as with all JSOC operations there were almost certainly representatives from other services involved as well (possibly Air Force aircraft, and certainly joint terminal attack controllers and pararescuemen from the Air Force special mission unit organic to JSOC).

As with the bin Laden raid, it is worth noting that what sets this mission apart from any other JSOC or DEVGRU operation is not the fact that it took place, but the publicity it is receiving. Hostage rescue is a core component of JSOC’s special mission units’ capabilities, as are counterterrorism, direct action, and strategic reconnaissance. Further, the operational tempo for special operations units as a whole – both “white” and “black” (with JSOC falling in the latter category) – continues to be incredibly high, making this highly publicized mission just another one of hundreds being carried out around the world every month (according to ISAF, for example, 1,879 special operations raids were carried out in Afghanistan alone in the first eight months of 2011).

Aside from results the raid itself – two hostages rescued unharmed, and nine heavily armed “tangoes” dead – part of the reason this mission is being so highly publicized is the high psychological importance of its success, a position which it holds for two main reasons.

Read More →

“U.S. Ponders Ways to Use Force on Iran”

“Here’s How the U.S. Could Invade Iran”

“U.S. Said Set to Attack Iran”

“Does [the U.S. President] Plan to Invade Iran?”

“Saudis Deny U.S. Planned to Attack Iranian Oilfields”

“U.S. May Attack Iran Missiles: White House Mulls Ways to Protect Gulf”

“[U.S.] Navy Denies Plan to Attack Iranian Ships in Persian Gulf”

“U.S., Allies Setting Stage to Attack Iran, Says Paper”

“Chavez Warns Against U.S. Attack on Iran”

“Iran’s Top Leader Warns of U.S. Attack”

“Iran: U.S. Attack May Mean ‘Slaughterhouse’”

“Sharon on the Warpath: Is Israel Planning to Attack Iran?”

“Israel Has Plans to Attack Iran, Says London Times”

“U.S. Planning Nuclear Strike on Iran”

“The Coming War with Iran”

“Report: Israel Asks for ‘Air Corridor’ to Attack Iran”

“News from Israel: [U.S. President] Wants to Attack Iran Soon”

“Iran in U.S. Crosshairs”

Do those headlines sound familiar? Judging by the recent deluge of print, web, television, and radio reports and discussions, America and Israel have responded to a growing “drumbeat for war,” as some have put it, and are on the brink of launching an overt military attack on Iran. As the real newspaper and web headlines cited above clearly show, the U.S. and its ally in the Levant have failed to learn the proverbial dangers of a land war in Asia, and are furiously building toward another engagement with another Islamic country.

But wait. The dates on those headlines are, respectively, November 1979, December 1979, August 1980, August 1980, June 1984, June 1987, March 1988, November 1992, November 1993, December 1996, June 1997, August 2004, March 2005, April 2006, July 2006, February 2007, May 2008, and February 2009.

That’s right: the claim that America or Israel is on the cusp of attacking Iran is as old as the Islamic Republic itself. Such assertions have peppered media reports, op-eds, and other commentary for three decades and change at this point – a fact which should give folks pause about taking such claims any more seriously now than at any point in recent history.

Yes, Iran is hostile to the U.S. and its interests, and yes, it is almost certainly working as quickly as it can on the development of a nuclear weapon. However, despite growing hysteria on the part of media and analysts, and despite public debates like that being hosted by Foreign Affairs (the best piece among which is this one by Colin Kahl, former head of Middle East policy at the Pentagon), a western-initiated war with Iran is little more likely now than at any point in the last three decades, if not altogether less so.

Read More →

TEN YEARS HAVE passed since terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  In that period, America has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, carried out hundreds armed drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen (among other locations), and conducted covert operations around the world, all in the name of what President George W.  Bush termed the “Global War on Terror.”  Terror plots and attempted attacks have been foiled, terrorist leaders have been killed or captured in massive numbers – including the world’s most wanted terrorist himself, Osama bin Laden.  All of this has combined, in the words of President Barack Obama, to “put al Qaeda on the path to defeat.”

Given all this, is it possible that America is actually losing the war on terror? In Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues not only that we are losing, but that we as a nation still fail to understand what kind of a war we are fighting, and what our enemies’ actual goals are.  This is a powerful indictment, and Gartenstein-Ross painstakingly lays it out in a book that is both sharply analytical and accessible to any audience.

A KEY PROBLEM with America’s attempt to wage a War on Terror while safeguarding itself from future attack, Gartenstein-Ross writes, is that our ignorance of the enemy we are facing has allowed us to pursue both goals in a profligate fashion that plays right into the hands of an enemy that sees America’s economy as the long-term target.  To understand the reasoning behind this, we must look to the Soviet Union.  Though myriad factors contributed to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., its collapse so shortly after its withdrawal from a decade-long quagmire in Afghanistan helped convince Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen that they had been the cause of its ultimate defeat.

Now, al Qaeda has taken this strategy of embroiling a much larger and wealthier enemy in a long and costly war of economic attrition and has aimed it at the United States, with no small measure of success gained over the last decade.  “Even though it has lost Osama bin Laden and its safe haven in Afghanistan,” the author writes, al Qaeda’s “fight against America is broader, and al Qaeda and its affiliates are key players in more regions than they were engaged in a decade ago…Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is shattered, it faces an almost unthinkable debt burden, and its policy makers have largely been consigned to arguing with each other on the sidelines while the country’s traditional allies…are overthrown or see their power erode” (p. 200).

Read More →

Despite strident opposition from supporters who maintain that Rick Santorum is a “true conservative” in the mold of – you guessed it – Ronald Reagan, the already huge mountain of evidence that he is, at heart, a ‘big-government conservative’ continues to grow. As Erick noted previously, in 2008 Santorum said:

This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone.

Now, consider these two quotes from Santorum’s 2005 book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, both of which are very telling:

What was my vision? I came to the uncomfortable realization that conservatives were not only reluctant to spend government dollars on the poor, they hadn’t even thought much about what might work better. I often describe my conservative colleagues during this time as simply ‘cheap liberals.’ My own economically modest personal background and my faith had taught me to care for those who are less fortunate, but I too had not yet given much thought to the proper role of government in this mission.

-Preface, p. IX; audio here

And:

I suspect some will dismiss my ideas as just an extended version of ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Some will reject what I have said as a kind of ‘Big Government Conservatism.’ Some will say that what I’ve tried to argue isn’t conservatism at all. But I believe what I’ve been presenting is the genuine conservatism our Founders envisioned. One that fosters the opportunity for all Americans to live as we are called to live, in selfless families that contribute to the general welfare, the common good.

-Conclusion, p. 421; audio here

Read More →

WHAT ROLE DO culture myths – the stories civilizations tell about the beginning of law, medicine, arts and sciences, and civilization itself – have in defining a group’s legitimacy within society? In Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam, Will McCants, a Middle East expert at CNA’s Center for Strategic Students and adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University, addresses this issue with an emphasis on explaining the unique development of Muslim cultural beliefs and traditions in the wake of the Arab conquest.

Rather than a dry, linear history, the author presents his study in a comparative format, contrasting the competition for social relevance through control of cultural heritage in three periods of Ancient Near Eastern history: the Hellenistic period following the Alexandrian conquest; the hegemony of imperial Rome; and, of course, the Arab conquest and subsequent Islamic period.

Read More →

The U.S. State Department takes a lot of heat from us on the right, most of which is well-deserved. However, when someone within America’s diplomatic apparatus does something that’s simply awesome, it’s important that we give them credit. The awesomeness in this case is courtesy of the American Embassy in Beijing, which used twitter to strong-arm the Chinese government into releasing accurate data on Beijing smog.

Residents of the Chinese capital have been demanding more accurate air quality readings provided by the local government. The need for improvement was obvious to the naked eye, as “days where buildings a few blocks away can’t be seen have often been described by Beijing officials as ‘light’ pollution” (in fact, only in recent weeks has Beijing begun to acknowledge that the city’s “fog” may actually be, you know, smog).

So what did the U.S. Embassy do to help make this happen? It set up a twitter feed – http://twitter.com/beijingair – that sends out hourly air quality readings taken from atop the embassy compound. Armed with actual accurate information, residents cranked up the volume on their demands for accountability and accuracy in published air quality information, and the local government caved, agreeing to begin publishing environmental information now that was not scheduled to be made public until 2016.

Well done, embassy staff.

Let me go ahead and stipulate that Mitt Romney has presidential height and hair, and appears to have presidential composure in debates and interviews (at least, when not being mauled by the Great Grizzly of Interviewers, the always fearsome Bret Baier). He also has a history of business success and has the longest private sector career of any participant in the GOP primary – though it’s obviously worth noting that his lengthy private sector career has largely been the result of his utter failure to enter and remain in the public sector, despite trying over and over and over and over again to do so.

However, leaving aside the fact that his positions on most issues have a history of being “multiple choice,” as Ted Kennedy once said, Mitt Romney has two major vulnerabilities to attack – and it just so happens that they are the top two issues of this entire election.

Read More →

President Obama, Secretary of Defense Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dempsey gave a brief press conference this morning on America’s new defense strategy, crafted in the face of massive national debt and looming budget crises (actually, it would be more accurate to say that the latter two gave a press conference; the president gave a statement, and then departed without taking questions). Though the $487,000,000,000.00 in upcoming DoD budget cuts – which Panetta called “politically sensitive” – were repeatedly mentioned (particularly by Deputy SecDef Carter in the second part of the presser), the entire conference on America’s “strategic turning point” (a.k.a. America’s “historic shift to the future“) was an exercise in generalities, with Panetta continually referring reporters to Obama’s forthcoming budget for specifics. Whether he was asked about weapons systems or military health care, Panetta never strayed far from his standard line that “everything was on the table” and “the President’s budget will have more specifics.”

A key message that Panetta and Dempsey repeatedly hammered was that the overall force (particularly the Army and Marine Corps) would be undergoing a “resizing” that, while made necessary by budget imperatives, would ostensibly be prevented from leading to a reduction in overall capability by the accompanying defense strategy.  While the “unique global leadership role of the United States in today’s world” would continue to be recognized and acted on, Panetta said, a necessary part of this will be a stronger reliance on “alliances” and an effort to “find innovative ways to sustain US presence” abroad.  Given the resource problems that have been demonstrated by our effort to engage in combat and nation-building efforts in two countries at once over the last decade (not to mention the contingency operations being conducted in several other locations worldwide), it’s clear such deep cuts will have an effect on defense capability, even if America’s military is reorganized and its strategy rewritten with the new budgetary reality squarely in mind.

Given the cuts being made, the effectiveness, comprehensiveness, and workability of the new military strategy is of paramount importance.  President Obama seemed to acknowledge this with a statement that amounted basically to a perversion of an old Rumsfeldian maxim: We won’t go to war with the Army we have any longer, Obama seemed to say; instead, the Army we have will dictate the wars we choose to participate in.

Listeners to the press conference can be forgiven if they experienced a sense of deja vu upon hearing promises like, “The U.S. force will be smaller and leaner, but more agile, more flexible, ready to deploy more quickly, innovative, and technologically advanced.” As buzzwords like “smaller,” “leaner,” “agile,” “flexible,” and “creative” kept popping up, it was difficult to avoid recognizing the blueprint for this “new” force for what it clearly is: basically the same flexible, mobile, and quickly-reactive force that Donald Rumsfeld attempted to form early in the previous decade, when he was Secretary of Defense.
There’s no question that an agile, flexible, etc. military has its benefits, particularly in an age of widely-diffused, rapidly-emerging threats; however, just how that more agile military is designed and arrived at is an important issue, particularly in light of how stretched the total force has been over the last decade. Though long-term counterinsurgency operations will likely be avoided as much as possible in the near future (particularly by the current administration), and though unmanned ISR and offensive operations are being conducted with greater and greater frequency, there is clear danger in drawing down our nation’s force too far too fast, as well as in indiscriminately slashing defense funding.

Read More →

2011 may not have been the Year of the Infographic, but it was certainly a year that saw a significant increase in the proliferation of pint-sized but powerful visual aids, both on the web and in print. However, though infographics can convey a wealth of information in a compact, creative, and engaging format, the usual principle of caveat emptor applies. Yes, infographics can convey information with an efficacy that written text cannot, but they certainly don’t have a corner on the accuracy market. Rather, they’re merely data displays (albeit frequently engaging ones), so the principle of GIGO fully applies, as does the simple fact that they can be designed to demonstrate anything their authors wish.

The particularly well-done infographic will convey more information than its surface-level appearance suggests. One particular example of such a graphic comes to us courtesy of the good folks at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Displayed below, this graphic purports to break down the membership of the U.S. Congress according to population-wide income brackets. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward, and accurately conveys the very high percentage of sitting Senators and Representatives who fall into the top 10% of the American population in terms of wealth. Now, it’s no secret that there are some pretty wealthy people in Congress, and this graphic clearly demonstrates that. However, it also suggests something else, which astute political observers can probably quickly figure out:

Read More →

The Fraser Institute has released their latest report on charitable giving in the U.S. and Canada, and once again North America’s leaders in charitable donations from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle reside overwhelmingly in red states. This has been the case for some time, and the reason for it almost certainly comes down to a difference in philosophy regarding charity and the role of private/public institutions in its application. It’s unsurprising that conservatives – who by and large believe in the sovereignty of the individual, particularly in terms of fiscal decision-making – choose to give of their own net incomes to charitable causes and organizations that they find worthwhile. It’s also unsurprising (and stereotypical) that liberals choose to give less of their own net income to charity, instead leaving that responsibility to the government, which replaces the individual as the evaluator and benefactor of charitable organizations and endeavors.  Based on that philosophy of charity and responsibility, it’s no surprise that some liberals have been calling on the government to reduce or eliminate the charitable giving tax deduction.

Based on 2009 data, the Fraser Institute found that the top ten states by percentage of aggregate income donated to charity are: (1) Utah, (2) Georgia, (3) Alabama, (4) Maryland, (5) South Carolina, (6) Idaho, (7) North Carolina, (8) Oklahoma, (9) Mississippi and New York.  The rest of the top half are below the fold:

Read More →

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.” This quote, from Massachusetts Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren, can be found in this otherwise unremarkable (and poorly written) article by Daily Beast writer Samuel Jacobs. It’s nice, in a way, that the true creator of the Occupy Wall Street movement has stepped forward to announce herself; after all, now we know who to credit for their motivation, goals, and actions.

Speaking of what the participants in Liz Warren’s brainchild are doing, let’s take a quick look at Occupy Wall Streeters around the country:

Rape Alleged At Occupy Cleveland (Mediaite)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

Police Investigating Possible Sexual Assault Of Teen At Occupy Dallas (CBS Dallas-Fort Worth)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

Sex, drugs and hiding from the law at Wall Street protests (NY Post)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

Occupy Wall Street Knows Not What It Does Hurting Local Jobs (Bloomberg)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

Is Occupy Wall Street Contributing To Increase In Violent Crime? (Politicology)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

The battle of Wall Street: Violence erupts as police clash with protesters after they force Bloomberg to back down over ‘eviction’ (Daily Mail)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

Occupy Boston Protesters Arrested For Selling Heroin (CBS Boston)

Elizabeth Warren: “I support what they do.”

Read More →

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty crunches some numbers in this post on the topic.

Via Adam Bitely, that direct quote can be seen in the video below:

For context, here’s Sen. Reid’s (D-NV) statement from the Senate floor today:

“The massive layoffs we’ve had in America today-of course they’re rooted in the last administration-and it’s very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine. It’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation’s all about. And it’s unfortunate my friend the Republican Leader is complaining about that. I would also note that my friend said the House passed another bill. Well, they pass lots of bills, but they rarely go anyplace.”

Here’s a fact that Reid should look over before he opens his mouth again. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, government workers have the lowest unemployment rate of any industry or class recorded, at 4.7%, while the national unemployment rate is 9.1% – nearly twice that of public sector workers.

Read More →

Herman Cain is taking a beating – at least judging by my email inbox – over a line he uttered in the interview below with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer earlier today:

The part that folks are taking serious issue with takes place between 0:48 and 1:09, and the transcript is as follows:

BLITZER: Imagine if you were President – we’re almost out of time – uh, and there were one American soldier who’d been held for years, and the demand was, al Qaeda or some other terrorist group, you– ya gotta free everybody at Guantanamo Bay– several hundred prisoners at Guantanam– could you see yourself as President authorizing that kind of transfer?

CAIN: I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer.

The synopses of this I’m seeing are some variation of “Cain said he’d release all Gitmo terrorists in exchange for one American P.O.W.” and “Cain would release all gitmo detainees for one soldier.” However, that’s not what happened at all – and I don’t share the outrage at this point that some of my very good friends and colleagues do over this statement. Here’s why.

Read More →

Five years, three months, two weeks, and three days ago, Hamas militants from Gaza tunneled under the sequestered Strip’s border with Israel and popped up near the Kerem Hashalom crossing, where they attacked an Israeli tank, killing two crewmembers and injuring five. The militants grabbed Corporal Gilad Schalit from the tank, and escaped back into the Gaza Strip with him.

He had been a captive of Hamas ever since, held in undisclosed locations and prevented by his captors from receiving the most basic internationally-recognized human rights, including visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross (whose requests for access were repeatedly rebuffed on the grounds that such access would betray the location where he was being held) and contact with his family, while Hamas demanded exorbitant prices for his return, including the release of 1,500 prisoners – among whom were several terrorists and murderers – from Israeli prison.

This week, a groundbreaking deal was announced between Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government and Hamas that will reportedly – finally – bring the French-Israeli citizen Schalit home.  The price is extremely high: over 1,000 prisoners, including many Hamas militants, will be returned to East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip in two waves of repatriation.

While this deal weakens Israel’s defenses and emboldens Hamas, it also may have been a necessary move. Let’s look at why.

Read More →

AT A TIME when so many books on politics, religion, and world events are little more than puffed-up pamphlets which are simultaneously high on hyper-partisanship and low on facts, J. M. Berger‘s Jihad Joe, a treatment of the radicalization and actions of American Muslims who have dedicated themselves to “violent jihad” (the author’s chosen term), is a breath of fresh – and troubling – air.  Painstakingly researched and heavily footnoted (the author, an investigative journalist, consulted thousands of pages of court records and documents obtained through FOIA request, as well as source material from the making of multiple documentaries on jihadi activities in Bosnia and in the U.S.), Jihad Joe does not couch opinion as fact, but instead makes use of often disparate stories and information sources to weave together a factual account of radicalized American Muslims, from their diverse motivations and processed of radicalization to their actions.

The bulk of Jihad Joe is a lesson in recent history, recounting the motivations and activities of Americans who have “go[ne] to war in the name of Islam” from the siege of Mecca in 1979, where two Americans were involved, to the present.  It traces the heady days of the heavily-endorsed (by Islamic leaders and the U.S. alike) jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, when Muslims from America and around the world traveled to fight against the Russian invaders, to the founding of al Qaeda, where an American from Kansas City served as note-taker, through the Bosnian conflict, to the “war on America” that al Qaeda began in the 1990s (which included action in Somalia during the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident), and which is currently ongoing.  Among the major takeaways from this fast, engaging read (it can be comfortably read in a single weekend) is the realization that the radicalization of, and participation in what Berger refers to as “violent jihad” by, American Muslims is far from a new phenomenon.

Read More →

The far-left Center for American Progress (CAP) today released a report on the “Islamophobia network” it claims is responsible for the “genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda” in America, which coincidentally began, the report claims, ten years ago (“[S]even foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America,” writes Faiz Shakir at the CAP’s ThinkProgress blog).

It’s both typically ironic and sadly predictable that CAP lays blame for the instigation of the last decade of skepticism about Islam and its adherents’ aims in the west and around the world at the feet of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy while almost entirely ignoring another, far more responsible and relevant event that took place ten years ago: the hijacking of four airliners by radical Islamist terrorists and the murdering of 1,629 Americans in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.  September 11, 2001 is mentioned only twice in the 130 page CAP report, and both times it is entirely in passing (pp. 42 and 75, with both mentions using 9/11 only as a reference point for supposedly extremist commentary by members of the “Islamophobia network” CAP seeks to unmask).  Additionally, blame is laid at the feet of this “Islamophobia network” for the actions of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who murdered nearly seventy people in a bombing and shooting spree in July, while also blaming the “network” for the speculation that abounded while Breivik’s attacks were ongoing that the perpetrator(s) might be Islamist extremists (bear in mind that credit for the attacks was claimed on a jihadi message board while they were ongoing).

That unsubstantiated attacks on Muslims exist is undeniable.  Unfortunately, the Center for American Progress’s predictably hyper-partisan “scholarship” and presentation only serves to further exacerbate the extreme rhetoric and factually-challenged talking points that characterize our important national discussion about the nature of Islam, Islamism, and violent jihad, and how it should best be dealt with and, when necessary, combated.  An example of the grievances aired by the CAP writers can be seen on pp. 94-95, where the authors take the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) to task for translating and disseminating the words of international Muslims and Islamists.  Such selective outrage, which blames “Islamophobia” on those who translate and publicize what Islamists themselves are saying (within a document that seeks to lay the blame for initiating a decade of Islamic skepticism at the feed of right-wing Westerners), is not only utterly useless in terms of furthering our national discussion of these important issues, but only further widens the divide between the involved parties.

This is unfortunate, because this is an important topic, and one which deserves clear-eyed, fact-based discussion.  Even more unfortunate is the fact that efforts like this to execute smear campaigns while avoiding the simplest of facts – like the role of the 9/11 attacks in initiating the last decade of increased skepticism of Islam and Islamism – further add to the Perception Problem that Islam currently faces in the West.

Read More →

This weekend brought good news for those who have lived under the oppressive regime of Moammar Qaddafi for all or part of his 42 year reign of terror, as the dress-wearing perma-Colonel and his regime have been largely overthrown after a months-long civil war.   As has been noted across the international affairs-sphere over the course of the last 24 hours, the toppling of Qaddafi’s regime is not the end of Libya’s challenges, but merely a preliminary accomplishment in what will likely be a long, hard slog toward self-determination and, hopefully, national security, stability, and success.

In a statement this afternoon, President Obama took credit on NATO’s behalf for playing a significant role in this development, and called on Libya to pave a way forward that is “peaceful, inclusive, and just,” and which relies on a peaceful settling of differences rather than on reprisals for justice.  Though these admonitions will likely make little difference to those on the ground in North Africa, they are correct: Libya’s future will hinge on how the aftermath of Qaddafi’s overthrow, and its accompanying unifying euphoria, is handled by the citizenry and by those who are currently carrying the guns.

Though I’m admittedly not an expert on Libya itself, I’d like to address a couple issues of note (out of many) below the fold.

Read More →

Bow your heads…

This weekend saw the deadliest day in the almost ten years of America’s war in Afghanistan, as well as the deadliest day in the history of the U.S. Navy’s Special Warfare community, when an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter and crew carrying Navy SEALs and direct support personnel, Air Force combat controllers and pararescuemen, Afghan commandos and an interpreter went down in Wardak Province in eastern Afghanistan, apparently after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The Associated Press is reporting that the helicopter carried an immediate reaction force that arrived on the scene to support an Army Ranger force that was engaged with the enemy on the ground, and that the crash happened during exfiltration after the fight had ended and the objective secured (ISAF has refuted this, saying that the chopper was shot down on ingress rather than on egress). As with last week’s New Yorker article on the bin Laden raid, people should only believe half at most of what they read or hear about this event and the circumstances surrounding it.

Naturally, the media – who pay attention to special operations once in the bluest of moons, and then proceed to get almost every detail wrong – are hyperventilating even more than usual about this tragedy because the helicopter was carrying operators from “SEAL Team Six,” more correctly known as the Navy Special Warfare Development Group, or “DEVGRU.”  They’re also quick to report that no operators lost in this tragedy were participants in the famous May 1 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, as if (1) the tragedy is any less because the operators were different individuals than those, (2) those who took part in the bin Laden raid should be granted immunity from peril and death in perpetuity, and (3) these two missions were the only time SEALs or any other special operators had ever encountered risk or gone outside the wire.  Points one and two are self-explanatorily ridiculous, while point three simply reinforces the drive-by nature of today’s media, and their pervasive attitude of treating anything that they didn’t find worthy of reporting at the time as though it never happened.

According to the AP, which cites a NATO source for the statistic, 2,832 special operations raids were carried out between April and July of this year alone.  Regardless of its precision, that number should provide a general idea of just how common and routine these missions are for special operations units whose bread and butter is direct action and counterterrorism operations.  In other words, just like high-value target (HVT) missions of the type that brought bin Laden to justice are daily occurrences for deployed special operators, so are the risks so horribly seen this weekend encountered on a daily and nightly basis for the entirety of military special operators’ careers. Over the course of ten years of special operations in Afghanistan, our enemies have had plenty of time to observe our tactics and to plan countermeasures. Conspiracy theories aside (such as the Admiral Ackbar-ish media claims that this was a “trap” set by Taliban), it’s entirely unsurprising that enemy fighters would have observed the routes used to infiltrate various sites and set up RPG-wielding fighters at points along them, hoping to catch a troop-carrying aircraft with a well-placed shot.

Additionally, helicopter crashes are far too common overall – let alone in the dangerous topographic and human terrain that make up Afghanistan – having claimed the lives of a significant number of crews and soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines alike (I frequently say that I’ve lost more friends and former colleagues to helicopter crashes than to enemy fire, though this case appears to qualify as both). The eye-opening aspect of this incident is the sheer number of deaths, not the fact that a helicopter was apparently taken down while approaching what was evidently a hot LZ. It is interesting that the helicopter and crew were conventional, rather than from the 160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment that normally transports and supports Tier One special mission units, and the possibility – as yet unconfirmed – that the chopper and crew may have been from the Army National Guard raises further questions about the effect that an underpowered aircraft and a crew lacking experience in this type of direct action mission may have had on its tragic result. However, at this time this is simply an aspect of the case that bears watching and consideration; there is no evidence at this point that would support casting aspersions on chopper and crew for the tragedy that befell the military community as a whole this weekend. Evidently among the other augmentees on the mission were SEALs from one of the “white” Teams, which is not at all uncommon; the units the Air Force special operators came from have not been reported, though the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, which is incorporated into JSOC, usually provides the combat controllers and pararescuemen that operate as members of the command’s special mission units.

In their effort to conform to the scoop-outweighs-precision culture that our 24 hour media have created, numerous outlets ran to press and television without most (if any) facts about this incident. It took a full day for the public to have access to a narrative with any level of accuracy at all, an account by Navy Times reporter Sean D. Naylor which still stands as one of the best accounts available of the incident, albeit a brief and preliminary one.  The rest of the story will eventually come out, likely in bits and pieces over the course of days, weeks, and months, though it will as usual be augmented with heavy doses of media chattering and speculation, most of which comes from a place of total ignorance on the subject.

In the interest of not contributing to that cacophany of ignorant chatter, I won’t offer any other up front comment on his situation, though I’ll be happy to update this post in response to questions posted in the comments, provided (1) I know the answer, and (2) doing so doen’t violate OPSEC in any way. I’ve also been addressing some questions and issues on Twitter since Saturday.

JE

CH-47 Chinook helicopter preparing for a night Air Assault in 2007. Photograph first published by Jeff Emanuel, September 3, 2007.

Note: This is an updated version of my original post on Naser Abdo and the Fort Hood terrorist plot which was prevented last week. The updates have been made in-text due to an increase in the amount of information available on the case.

A second terrorist attack on soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered last week, and its plotter, Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested before the attack could be carried out. The latter fact, of course, differentiates this plot from the successful attack carried out by Major Nidal Hasan in November 2009, when the Army officer and Islamist radical gunned down thirteen people – including a pregnant woman – and wounded thirty-two more, while yelling “Allahu Akbar!” after receiving counseling and religious justification for the attack from the Yemen-based, American-born al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Abdo was formally charged in federal court Friday with possession of an “unregistered destructive device.” The plot that was foiled last week, allegedly inspired by Hasan’s rampage (Abdo reportedly yelled “Nidal Hasan, Fort Hood 2009!” in court Friday), involved attacking a popular (and still unspecified) off-post restaurant with pipe (pressure cooker) bombs, and then using a handgun to shoot any who survived the blast.  According to law enforcement officials, the attack was planned for Thursday – the day after Abdo was arrested. His next appearance in court is reportedly scheduled for 2 pm on August 4, at the Waco Federal Courthouse.

This is an interesting case for many reasons, and Abdo is an interesting central figure; as such, it deserves significant attention from the public, counterterrorism experts, and the media. For our purposes, Abdo’s story begins last year. After enlisting in the Army as an infantryman and being assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Abdo decided on the eve of his unit’s deployment to Afghanistan that he was a “conscientious objector” (CO) whose Muslim faith was incompatible with service in the military in general, or with combat in particular. “I [had been] under the impression that I could serve both the U.S. Army and my God simultaneously,” he told CNN in one of several interviews with major news media outlets that highlighted his claim of conscientious objector status last fall.

During the period between his enlistment and infantry training, and the completion of the pre-deployment readiness process, Abdo said his impression changed. “I don’t believe that Islam allows me to operate in any kind of warfare at all, including the U.S. military and any war it partakes in. I believe that our first duty as a Muslim is to serve God.” He told ABC that “a Muslim is not allowed to participate in an Islamicly [sic] unjust war. Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the US military.” ABC, in turn, reported that Abdo sought to dedicate his life to combating “Islamophobia” and serving as a vocal advocate of Islam as a peaceful religion, while other news organizations also provided Abdo with a platform and aided him in becoming a face of an Islamic peace movement that is woefully lacking in public participants, and anti-war groups championed Abdo and his story as the “missing story of a Muslim peacemaker” (more discussion of Islam’s perception problem below). “I want to use my experience to show Muslims how we can lead our lives,” he told ABC, “and to try and put a good positive spin out there that Islam is a good, peaceful religion. We’re not all terrorists, you know?”

“Free Naser Abdo” Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, as well as a personal website, were established to support Abdo’s CO application and to take donations for his “legal defense fund” (content has not been added to these accounts since last year, and the personal website is no longer online [404 error]), and the leftist organization Courage to Resist highlighted Abdo as an exemplification of “the missing story of Muslim peacemaking.” After initially being recommended against, Abdo’s conscientious objector application was approved in May of this year, and he was put on the path toward discharge from the U.S. Army. However, his discharge was delayed for an unrelated issue: child pornography (reportedly 34 pictures on his government-issued computer), for which Abdo had been under investigation since November, and with which he was charged in May and arraigned June. His CO discharge was put on hold pending his court-martial. Then, after the four-day 4th of July weekend, Abdo failed to return to duty at Fort Campbell, instead going AWOL (absent without leave) from the post until turning up in Killeen, Texas this week, “in possession of a large quantity of ammunition, weapons and a bomb inside a backpack.”

Read More →

The headline of the day is that a second terrorist attack on Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered this week, and its plotter, Private First Class Nasser Jason Abdo, arrested before the attack could be carried out.  The latter fact, of course, differentiates this plot from the successful attack carried out by Major Nidal Hasan in November 2009, when the Army officer and Islamist radical gunned down thirteen people – including a pregnant woman – and wounded thirty-two more, while yelling “Allahu Akbar!” after receiving counseling and religious justification for the attack from the American-born al Qaeda member Anwar al-Awlaki.

He was formally charged in federal court today with possession of an “unregistered destructive device.”  The plot that was foiled this week, allegedly inspired by Hasan’s rampage (Abdo reportedly yelled “Nidal Hasan, Fort Hood 2009!” in court today), involved attacking a popular off-post restaurant with pipe (pressure cooker) bombs, and then using a handgun to shoot any who survived the blast. According to law enforcement officials, the attack was planned for Thursday – the day after Abdo was arrested.  His next appearance in court is reportedly scheduled for 2 pm on August 4, at the Waco Federal Courthouse.

This is an interesting case for many reasons, and Abdo is an interesting central figure; as such, it deserves significant attention from the public, counterterrorism experts, and the media. For our purposes, Abdo’s story begins last year.   After enlisting in the Army as an infantryman and being assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Abdo decided on the eve of his unit’s deployment to Afghanistan that he was a “conscientious objector” (CO) whose Muslim faith was incompatible with service in the military in general, or with combat in particular.  “I [had been] under the impression that I could serve both the U.S. Army and my God simultaneously,” he told CNN in one of several interviews with major news media outlets that highlighted his claim of conscientious objector status last fall.

During the period between his enlistment and infantry training, and the completion of the pre-deployment readiness process, Abdo said his impression changed.  “I don’t believe that Islam allows me to operate in any kind of warfare at all, including the U.S. military and any war it partakes in.  I believe that our first duty as a Muslim is to serve God.”  He told ABC that “a Muslim is not allowed to participate in an Islamicly [sic] unjust war. Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the US military.”  ABC, in turn, reported that Abdo sought to dedicate his life to combating “Islamophobia” and serving as a vocal advocate of Islam as a peaceful religion, while other news organizations also provided Abdo with a platform and aided him in becoming a face of an Islamic peace movement that is woefully lacking in public participants, and anti-war groups championed Abdo and his story as the “missing story of a Muslim peacemaker” (more discussion of Islam’s perception problem below).  “I want to use my experience to show Muslims how we can lead our lives,” he told ABC, “and to try and put a good positive spin out there that Islam is a good, peaceful religion. We’re not all terrorists, you know?”

“Free Nasser Abdo” Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, as well as a personal website, were established to support Abdo’s CO application and to take donations for his “legal defense fund” (content has not been added to these accounts since last year, and the personal website is no longer online [404 error]), and the leftist organization Courage to Resist highlighted Abdo as an exemplification of “the missing story of Muslim peacemaking.”  After initially being recommended against, Abdo’s conscientious objector application was approved in May of this year, and he was put on the path toward discharge from the U.S. Army.  However, his discharge was delayed for an unrelated issue: child pornography (reportedly 34 pictures on his government-issued computer), for which Abdo had been under investigation since November, and with which he was charged in May and arraigned  June.  His CO discharge was put on hold pending his court-martial.  Then, after the four-day 4th of July weekend, Abdo failed to return to duty at Fort Campbell, instead going AWOL (absent without leave) from the post until turning up in Killeen, Texas this week, “in possession of a large quantity of ammunition, weapons and a bomb inside a backpack.”

Read More →