Revisiting COIN Strategies in Vietnam

This post originally appeared in Cicero Magazine 14 July 2014.

That “Generals are always fighting the last war” may be true, but this is often because they are fighting a different war from their opponent. According to Clausewitz, it is key to military strategy to find the “center of gravity” in any war. If one does not, or focuses on the wrong ‘center’, the battles and ultimately the war will be lost. In Vietnam, the United States did not come to recognize the people of Indochina as the center of gravity and focused on them too little and too late. Many post-mortems on the Vietnam War have recognized this fact. Yet in recent conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq—despite the battle cry of “hearts and minds”—America still believed it could win through “thunder runs”, “economy of force”, “dynamic maneuver warfare”, and remote or walled combat fortresses. Arguably, these tactics won battles, but they have not won the wars.

Mao’s Teachings

The goal and strategy of indigenous communist forces was related directly to winning over the people of Southeast Asia. They wanted to change society, not just change governments. They sought to communicate this goal to the people and mobilise them to support it, not just build a government and centrally-controlled army to fight pitched battles, though they did show ability to do so against the French and, in later stages, against the United States.

Communist forces devised effective tactics to further their strategy of revolutionary guerrilla warfare largely based upon the teachings of China’s Mao Zedong and Vietnam’s General Vo Nguyen Giap. They viewed the wars as a “struggle”—dau tranh—broken further into the “military struggle”—dau tranh vu trang—and the “political struggle”—dau tranh chinh tri. Included in the political struggle was “action among the enemy”—dich van. “Action among the enemy” referred to actions behind enemy lines taken by communist forces among the local population in areas controlled or contested by anti-communist forces. Almost all communist actions conducted in South Vietnam included detailed plans and directives for propagandizing and re-training “liberated citizens”.

The primary and most effective vehicle through which communist forces undertook these actions was the “Agit-Prop Team”, also referred to as the “Armed Propaganda Team” (APT). These teams were first used by the Viet Minh to quickly disseminate news of the 1945 Japanese surrender and standing up of the communist government throughout the countryside—quickly pushed aside byBritish troops. They continued to be employed by communist forces throughout the conflict. Travelling minstrels and drama troupes had been part of Southeast Asian culture for centuries. As retired Army Sergeant Major and veteran of psychological operations in Vietnam,Herb Friedman explains: “Because of the widespread familiarity of the peasant with culture-drama teams and the wide acceptance of this traditional culture form, the communists seized upon the concept and developed it as a PSYOP weapon.”

APTs were a non-violent, culturally-attuned and effective way of communicating the communist message and mobilizing rural South Vietnamese to their cause. As a 1968 article in Military Review puts it: “If the United States had given a higher priority to finding out precisely what the Communists were doing psychologically in remote areas of South Vietnam between 1955 and 1959, and to urging the government of [South] Vietnam to develop and use a counter-psychological operation strategy, the Viet Cong would have been less able to exploit peasant resentments and to get them organized to support a guerrilla war the people did not want.”

Hearts & Minds in Saigon 

Perhaps the greatest testament to the success of the communist Armed Propaganda Teams is the fact that South Vietnamese and U.S. forces adopted the same tactics after coming to understand their effectiveness. These and similar missions were referred to as ‘psychological operations’—PSYOPS—by the U.S. military. Anti-communist APTs conducted operations similar to their communist counterparts and consisted of South Vietnamese cadre accompanied by U.S. troops.

The first two Anti-communist APT companies were organised in 1964 and many of the cadre were former communists who could speak with credibility of the actions and conditions on both sides of the fight. The program grew to 75 companies by 1969. Anti-communist forces also employed entertainment through ‘Culture-Drama Teams’. Their tactics were similar to the communists. They would engage villagers in singing, including teaching the people the South Vietnamese national anthem, teaching them the positive goals of the Saigon government, and giving news of government successes, programs and improvements.

In the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. does not seem to have fully taken these lessons from the Vietnam War on board.

American efforts to combat communism and win hearts and minds in Southeast Asia, and those of the French before them, were referred to generally as “pacification”. For most rural South Vietnamese in 1954, the newly independent government in Saigon was far away and not very relevant to their lives. Many government bureaucrats adopted the hands-off approach French colonial administrators had taken, remaining remote from citizens and more concerned with forms than people.

However, with the 1954 Geneva Accords dividing of the nation along the 17th parallel,  Ngo Dinh Diem’s government had to gain support from its citizens, not least of all because within two years there would—supposedly—be national elections encompassing both North and South Vietnam  in which Vietnamese would decide between communism and democracy. Saigon would have two years to reach the people outside of the provincial capitals before the July 1956 elections and do it better than the communists.

The Special Commissariat for Civic Action (CDV)—Cong Dan Vu—was the brainchild of Kieu Cong Cung, a nationalist former soldier and police chief. He had also been Viet Minh in the fight against the French return in 1945, so knew the communist’s tactics first-hand. The idea was to get the government out of offices and into villages, showing it could improve lives. It “attempted to place the resources of the South Vietnamese state behind an effort to duplicate the tactics of the communists at the village level and beat them at their own game”.

Mobile groups of CDV cadre, with support from local government, would connect with the people by living alongside them while working with them on civil projects to improve local living conditions. The first groups deployed in 1955 and began working in villages on information campaigns, attitude surveys and distributing medical aid. Their role expanded to holding classes on government services, ensuring each village had a school, a council, a village hall and a medical station, helping locals to build whichever they did not have. Once they achieved some success in an area, they moved on to another. Initial reports were optimistic.

Unfortunately, the CDV program met with resistance from the beginning. The provincial governors resisted it as encroaching on their power and budgets. Provincial administrators felt the work below their status. Village chiefs did not like the intrusion of outsiders from Saigon. Language and dialects proved to be a barrier. Often when CDV teams left, things would return to their previous state without support to maintain improvements. CDV cadres were being targeted for assassination by communist insurgents. U.S. advisers thought the program too ambitious and costly for Diem’s budget.

Despite its great promise, there simply was not enough support, time, money or cadres. In the end, the July 1956 elections which the CDV was envisioned to help Diem win never took place. It became clear the communists would win them by a wide margin. On the advice of the U.S., the South claimed it had not been party to the Geneva Accords and could therefore ignore them. The temporary split of Vietnam became permanent and set the stage for the Vietnam War.

Early on anti-communist forces recognized the need to control the population to prevent communist communication and weed out communists. One of the tenets of revolutionary guerrilla warfare was Mao’s exhortation that “the guerrilla must move among the people as a fish swims the sea.” Communist guerrillas depended upon the local population for information, shelter, money, food, and new recruits. Separating the guerrilla “fish” from their “sea” of people would do them harm.

During the Malayan Emergency, British forces experienced some success with the “Briggs Plan”, which saw rural populations relocated to fortified, defensible “New Villages” with controlled entry and exit, separating the insurgents from the people and drawing them into the open to find support. As part of his effort to install democracy in Vietnam “from the bottom up”, Ngo Dinh Diem instituted the Agroville Programme in 1959—later Strategic Hamlet Program or New Life Hamlets—in an effort to isolate communists from the people.

The fortified, controlled villages—guarded, moated, barbed-wired and bamboo-fenced—prevented communists from entering to exploit them for supplies and recruits. Residents gave up their ID card upon exiting the village to work the fields and their identity was checked upon return. The program was incentivized by providing electricity, schools and medical facilities. A network of roads linked the hamlets. Hamlet councils linked residents to the government for the first time and the government felt the villages safe enough to extend credit to farmers. Villagers were organised into a self-defense force and devoted one day a week to maintaining defenses. Communication between villages and news awareness improved with the installation of radios. By 1962, the Diem government claimed 39% of South Vietnamese lived in such communities .

The program created as many problems as it solved. Thousands were uprooted from their farms and made to build new homes—unpaid—within controlled villages, often far from their ancestral homes. For Vietnamese, veneration of ancestors is important and leaving behind graves caused great social disruption. In its zeal to complete the project, initially the government uprooted 20,000 people to build a village for that could only hold 6,000, leaving 14,000 angry peasants. Many of those forced to move and into labor held smoldering resentment against the U.S. and the Diem government for uprooting them, something the communists exploited. Communist propaganda against the hamlets pictured them as concentration camps or prisons and they made great efforts to infiltrate the hamlets to agitate against the South from inside.

To America, the program was a way to isolate and starve communists. To the communists, it created further propaganda opportunities to show the repression suffered under the U.S. and Diem. To Ngo Dinh Diem, it was a way for his government to reach and control the people.

Lessons For Counterinsurgents Today

• For government to gain the support of the people, the government must reach the people positively. The newly-independent democratic government was a wholly new beast to its people who had only lived under French colonial administration and had to convince them of its worth. Insurgent forces were more effective at reaching even the most rural of communities. U.S. and government efforts were too little, too late despite their potential to deliver tangible public benefits to rural populations insurgent forces could not have. American and local government efforts were less successful at reaching and convincing the people of their worth than insurgent forces.

• Barriers keep bad things out, but they also keep them in.While barriers separated insurgents from the population they depended upon for support, their use also reinforced the propaganda image of local government and U.S. oppression. It disrupted social cohesion and fostered resentment among the people. The government reached the people in a negative way. Walls can keep people out, but not ideas. People frustrated by the obstacles to normal life constructed by COIN forces presented fertile ground for the insurgent’s ideology—the center of gravity and the focus of their effort to win the war.

In the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. does not seem to have fully taken these lessons from the Vietnam War on board. America’s effort to establish governments that have positive reach outside of Baghdad and Kabul has returned mixed results at best despite billions of dollars and thousands of lives invested in building them. Local governments have been unable to prove their value to their people—or at least no better than their opponents have—despite the claimed importance of winning “hearts and minds” to the American effort. Perhaps it is indeed true that our Generals were still fighting the last war

Will U.S. Military Advisors Face ‘Mission Creep’ in Iraq?

This article originally appeared in Cicero Magazine on 23 June 2014.

President Obama announced as many as 300 U.S. military advisers may be deployed to Iraq to assist the government in fighting the Sunni extremist group ISIS, which has invaded areas of western Iraq. The White House is also considering airstrikes. In 2012 President Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops from Iraq, keeping a campaign pledge to end the American presence there. The President has promised that “American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq” and that military advisers will only be there to assist Iraqi forces to repel the ISIS invaders. But some have called this misleading and pointed out that U.S. military advisors certainly have engaged in combat in the past and will again if sent back to Iraq. But would the deployment of U.S. military advisers mean U.S. troops will be engaged in combat in Iraq again?

I served as a U.S. military adviser while attached to a Military Transition Team (MiTT) in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Our job was to provide for our assigned Iraqi infantry battalion what they did not have themselves–namely medical evacuation capability (MEDEVAC), air and artillery support, and certain forms of intelligence. We also facilitated training in administration, logistics, equipment and weapons maintenance, electronic communications, and operational and tactical strategy—all the skills of professional soldiers. We acted as liaison between our Iraqi battalion and its sister U.S. battalion responsible for the same sector. We also evaluated and reported on the readiness of the Iraqi unit to function autonomously. We were certainly engaged in combat, accompanying Iraqi units on patrols and cordon and search operations. Several U.S. members of our unit were killed and seriously injured in combat operations, along with scores of Iraqi soldiers.

Throughout WWII, U.S. military adviser General ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell and his staff provided high-level military assistance to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and commanded Chinese and Western troops as Chiang’s Chief of Staff. Though their role was originally envisioned to be purely advisory in nature, the United States pushed for Stilwell to be placed in charge of all allied forces in the Chinese theatre, something Chiang resisted until the last. Stilwell and his staff had to fight their way out of Burma following Chinese defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1941, and Stilwell spent the rest of his time in China fighting with Chiang rather than the Japanese.

The re-deployment of U.S. military advisors to Iraq will not automatically mean putting American troops back into combat. But it could.

Perhaps the clearest example of U.S. military advisors becoming engaged in combat comes from Vietnam. Following the 1945 Japanese surrender, France attempted to regain control of its pre-war colony, Indochina. They returned to strong nationalist and communist resistance in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos which they lacked the understanding or will to fight. A small contingent of U.S. advisers were first dispatched to Indochina in 1950 to support the French military, still recovering from WWII and desperately trying to fight the communist insurgency with antiquated equipment. The U.S. mission was to train French forces on new military equipment the U.S. had supplied them to aid France in its fight against the communists.

After the final French defeat of the First Indochina War at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the U.S. began to directly advise the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem in its fight against communist North Vietnam and their indigenous Viet Cong allies. From 1955 to 1960, the U.S. mission grew to as many as 1,500 military advisors. As the Viet Cong insurgency grew in the South, the number of U.S. military advisors grew exponentially, with over 16,000 U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam by 1963. In an extreme example of ‘mission creep’, the soldiers of the Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam (MAAG-V) and the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MAC-V) from 1950 to 1973 moved from a small advisory role to an allied Western military to an open combat role in a grinding Cold War counterinsurgency. They did much more than engage in ‘self-defence’, as once claimed by the Kennedy administration.

Not all U.S. military advisory missions have led to U.S. troops engaging in combat, however. Following WWII, U.S. military advisors assisted in the rebuilding of Germany, the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe, and reconstruction efforts in Japan, China and Korea. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. military advisers trained South American military forces to stabilise their governments against communist rebels during Foreign Internal Defense (FID) missions. More recently, the United States has increased its military advisory presence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. U.S. military advisers have trained troops and advised governments in Nigeria, South Sudan, Chad, Congo, the Central African Republic, Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines, among others, in recent years. Civilian civil servants with the U.S. Department of Defense also engage in military advisory missions through programs such as the Ministry of Defense Advisors Program (MoDA). The U.S. has frequently deployed civilian and military defence advisors during peacetime to assist allies through structures such as NATO in Europe and the defunct Cold War-era SEATO in Asia. The re-deployment of U.S. military advisors to Iraq will not automatically mean putting American troops back into combat.

But it could. U.S. Special Operations Forces, especially U.S. Army Green Berets, were originally conceived with the intent of training and organising indigenous troops to become a competent and coherent fighting force to engage in unconventional warfare or to train allied government troops in Foreign Internal Defence or counter-insurgency missions. Building an effective fighting force can hardly be done solely in a theoretical, classroom environment, and even field training under simulated fighting conditions is no substitute for real combat. Special Operations Forces often provide theoretical instruction, followed by field training, and progressing into leading, advising and evaluating performance in combat operations when necessary. If U.S. military advisers are deployed to Iraq, they will likely be Special Operations Forces who possess language and cultural skills and years of previous experience on the ground in Iraq. Anonymous U.S. officials have said the Pentagon would ask for U.S. Special Operations Forces to be on the ground in order to support advisory and intelligence operations there.

The U.S. has already invested billions of dollars, scores of American lives, and six years into training and equipping Iraqi government troops. That is more years of U.S. military training and experience than I had when I first deployed to Iraq myself in 2003. The Iraqi military has been engaged in a counterinsurgency battle on their home turf for years so are not novices to combat. They have already been trained by U.S. advisors. Difficulties in agreeing to an acceptable SOFA agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are the reason there has been no U.S. military advisory presence in Iraq since 2012. Now al-Maliki and the Iraqi government want U.S. forces to return.

There is a historical danger a renewed U.S. military advisory mission in Iraq could “creep” from helping Iraq to help itself into doing it for them. The U.S. may launch airstrikes against ISIS forces—something President Obama has announced he is considering—but they could not do so effectively without trained American controllers on the front lines, which would necessarily place them ‘in combat’—something the President has promised not to do. During the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, President Obama promised there would be no U.S. presence on the ground and that the U.S. would take a backseat to its European allies. Behind the scenes, paramilitary forces from U.S. intelligence were indeed on the ground in Libya and the U.S. military played a much larger role than was publicly acknowledged.

JCS Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, once in overall charge of the American effort to train police and military forces in Iraq, warned that the U.S. does not have the intelligence capability to effectively lead and target airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. The Iraqi army was not trained or equipped with communications equipment which would enable them to effectively guide U.S. airstrikes. The U.S. was rightly hesitant to train and equip a foreign military with that capability. Arguably only U.S. boots on the ground—filled by troops trained in combat air control—could make the difference.

In sum, U.S. military advisors have historically been deployed in both combat and non-combat roles. While there is a precedent, it does not necessarily follow that the re-deployment of U.S. military advisors to Iraq will lead to “mission creep” or putting American troops into combat there again. For the option of U.S. airstrikes being employed against ISIS in Iraq to be effective, however, U.S. controllers would most likely have to be on the ground at the front lines. So how does one definitively determine if U.S. troops are “in combat”? This is probably the question that is easiest answer. Forget what the President, Congress, the lawyers, the experts or the media say on the issue. To quote one of Murphy’s Laws: “If you are being shot at, you are in combat.”

Antagonizing America: Our Enemies Depend Upon us

This article originally appeared on The Truman Doctrine on 28 March 2013.

There’s a theory that says when you’re the new kid in a rough neighborhood the first thing you should do is find the biggest, toughest kid on the block and punch him in the face. The sheer audacity of the act will make anyone else think twice about tangling with you, especially if you manage to go toe-to-toe for a few rounds before losing. Power perceived is power achieved–until the contrary is proven. America is the biggest, toughest kid on the block. There is value in antagonizing America.

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders … tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” –Hermann Goering

This is very much the idea that states such as Iran follow. The regime gains its power by focusing the minds of the population on a common enemy—America. The weekly anti-American demonstrations in Tehran, complete with flag burning, occur with such clockwork regularity that they have to come up with new gimmicks just to keep people interested.

It’s been said they pay people from the countryside to come into the city for a day to hold up signs and chant. Who wouldn't like to hop on a bus for a day in the city on the government’s dime? What university student would turn down a few bucks for burning a flag?

There’s nothing like an enemy to focus the mind of the people on external factors. The benefit is that while they’re worried about the enemy outside their borders they won’t give too much thought to life and problems within their own. Keeping the country safe from the enemy is a good justification for all kinds of internal security measures that would be questionable in other circumstances. A perpetual state of wariness exists on a pseudo-wartime footing.

Ironically, the Iranian regime and other dictatorships and theocracies like it throughout the world depend upon the United States. Their continued grip on power depends upon having America as an enemy to rattle their saber against. They derive their power from a manufactured need to bravely resist American imperialism that would destroy their culture and way of life. Every time commodity prices go up and put strain on peoples’ wallets, it can be blamed upon the enemy and their embargo, not on the regime and its actions or policies.

North Korea under the Kim dynasty has made an art of cycling between alternately opposing and folding to America and its allies. They develop nuclear weapons and elicit all manner of inducements from the West to get rid of them. The U.S. has delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid, almost none of which made to ordinary Koreans.

After the Obama administration structured the aid to ensure it reached the people directly, the North called it off, going ahead with missile tests, beginning to rebuild its dismantled nuclear facilities and has recently threatened nuclear war against South Korea and the United States. There are signs the North is preparing for another underground nuclear test.

However, two or three years from now America and its P+5 allies will likely find themselves on the verge of another diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea. But once again, the North will snatch final victory from our mouths and the cycle will begin again. Iran follows a similar pattern in its own nuclear talks with America. Every time a breakthrough is reported through public or back channels and there seems to be progress, it runs off the rails almost like clockwork.

If Iran were really determined to build a nuclear arsenal, they could certainly have done so by now. Pakistan did so as a hedge against India and we couldn't or didn't do a lot to stop it. Some have been predicting a nuclear-armed Iran since the 1990’s. In reality, it isn't the nuclear weapons Iran is seeking; it is the confrontation and antimony with America that it wants and depends upon. Iran has had an open door to developing nuclear weapons for many years now and will likely sit on the fence for years to come.

None of this makes Iran or North Korea stuffed tigers. The Iranian regime has done actual damage to America going back to 1979 and the Cold War. Anywhere America becomes involved in the Middle East, Iran backs the other horse. It funds international terrorist groups, targeting Israel in particular. In Iraq, Iranian intelligence operatives were caught on the ground by U.S. forces and their footprint was easily seen in the training, weapons and explosives training funneled to the insurgency there. Iranian operations have likely killed thousands of Americans directly and indirectly.

The deep cult-of-personality that exists around Kim Jong-un and his father before him is grounds to wonder if North Korea will one day stop being a rational actor. Right now, Kim has decided that he is going to punch tough-kid America in the face to show the world and his people that he is made of sterner stuff. However, if he begins to believe his own propaganda and it turns to mania, he has his fingers on a lot of buttons.

Understanding this behavior is important. Unfortunately our response often seems to be to adopt the same model of these states in our own national political discourse on the topic. The war drums come out and red lines are drawn. Accusations are hurled back and forth and there’s a scramble to take up the patriotic mantle.

The Global War on Terror has been used to excuse many security measures in America wholly unacceptable in other circumstances. If we have learned anything in the last decade of conflict, it is that we should never sleepwalk towards war as inevitability without a full consideration of its necessity and aftermath and a wholehearted commitment to seeing it through to the end if we do.

Rand Paul is Wrong; International Development is Vital to U.S. National Security

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic on 18 March 2013.

It's not a stretch to say that there is a lot of dishonesty in our political discourse in America. One of the most brazen but overlooked examples comes from the wing of one of our major political parties that claims to believe in no or very little government, yet is led by figures who spend their entire careers working in government under the questionable claim that they do so to protect the rest of us. To expect figures such as Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to be good shepherds of government policy and programs they ideologically oppose is the same as trusting a cat with your gold fish bowl. Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans accept government has a role to play in our lives, especially regarding our national security. Unfortunately, blind ideological allegiance to slashing government in ignorance of this vital role threatens our national defense.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and we should not ignore the lessons we learned from our struggle there. I served two tours in Baghdad and often the best metrics we had to measure the impact of our security operations and reconstruction was to measure how many hours of electricity were provided each day, how many shops were open, if the water, sewage, and trash removal were working, and how long the gasoline lines were. We learned that we can never ignore the aftermath of military actions and simply hope for the best. However, we also should have already picked up this lesson following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, as made famous by Charlie Wilson’s War. Had we spent money on international development then, perhaps we wouldn't be fighting there now. It would be more than a mistake to make the same mistakes twice.

Our troops were forced into the role of international aid workers, social workers, and public works directors. Though they certainly rose to meet the challenge, such work is best left to professionals who are experienced in such matters so our troops can concentrate on winning the fight. Our military leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan learned through experience on the ground that providing public works and educational and economic development is just as valuable as performing traditional military operations. They requested funding for such programs. CENTCOM Commander Gen. James Mattis recently testified before Congress, "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition." That is quite an endorsement and these hard-learned lessons should not be ignored now.

Unfortunately, small government zealots such as Paul are doing just that. Just recently here on PolicyMic and elsewhere Paul has lumped spending on important international development programs in with the massive amount spent upon the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an example of out-of-control spending that needs to be cut. Rather ironically, it was Paul's own party that pushed hard for America to enter into these long and costly wars. It seems to be a dishonest attempt to capitalize on the misunderstanding the public have on the amount spent on "foreign aid" to lump these two very different categories together. It is just as dishonest for Paul and others to lump international development in with our trade and borrowing deficit with China, a wholly unrelated issue.

In fact, the U.S. spends less than 1% of its entire budget on international development. Spending on international development returns much more benefit than military spending. Those truly concerned about getting the best for taxpayer dollars spent should take heed. It costs over half a million dollars to put one soldier in the field in places like Iraq or Afghanistan for one year. The effect of spending an equal amount to build schools or water treatment plants or a new local market lasts decades longer than a soldier's one year tour and the effect multiplies as local conditions are improved. It also keeps our troops out of harm's way when it works. If Paul or others are concerned with how America spends its money, they should welcome these programs.

Though its benefit is harder to quantify than the number of terrorists captured or killed, it has a real recognizable impact and for a longer period. The question should not be "can we afford to build a school in Afghanistan and not in America," but rather "is it more cost effective to build a school there now to avoid possibly having to send our troops there later?" Those concerned with spending our security dollars in the most effective way possible understand this.

Such spending also builds a positive image for America, as opposed to conducting armed house-to-house searches that, though often necessary, receive a negative response. A national security operation that builds a positive image and costs far less than fighter jets and smart bombs should be a welcome tool. Our military understands why international development funding is important, but some in Congress are not listening to them. They cannot honestly claim to know better.

The world today is a complex place and America cannot afford to retreat within its own borders as isolationists. Sen. Paul and his followers want a "little America" that has a smaller role in world events and that willfully gives up its mantle as world power. Such behavior will not make threats and our problems go away and they'll show up on our doorstep sooner or later whether we like it or not. The world is a safer place with America active in it. We cannot afford to ignore the lessons our troops fought and paid so dearly to learn. International development paired with the proper application of military force when necessary is an effective tool America should fully fund and apply. We cannot afford to ignore these lessons or to relearn them again the hard way.

Joint Operations in Afghanistan: There Has to Be a Will to Be a Way

This article originally appeared on The Truman Doctrine on 19 September 2012.

NATO has announced it will limit joint military operations alongside Afghan forces following a recent string of turncoat attacks against ISAF forces. Over 50 NATO soldiers have been killed in ‘green on blue’ attacks in 2012 alone. Anger caused by the accidental trashing and burning of a Koran and recently over an anti-Muslim web video has been blamed for the upsurge in these attacks.

America has been in Afghanistan for over a decade, longer than the USSR. The parties to the two wars are the same. Fortunately America has only suffered one sixth the casualties the Soviets did, despite likely spending more money on the war. It is arguable that the goodwill Afghans felt toward America for forcing out the Taliban is running out. The diversion of money, forces, and attention away from Afghanistan and into Iraq from 2003 may have cost America a better result, though that will never be empirically proven or disproven.

In 2003 I worked closely with Iraqi security forces. In 2004 I assisted in screening new Iraqi police recruits. In 2006 I served as a member of a team of U.S. military advisors to an Iraqi infantry battalion. While, as anywhere, there were certainly varying degrees of quality and commitment among members of these fledgling security forces, there were enough who believed their country was worth fighting for and felt the same commitment to it that U.S. troops feel for theirs.

Regrettably there were some who were agents for the other side. That was a constant worry for our ten-man team, constantly surrounded by Iraqi soldiers. An Iraqi officer at a police station we often visited stabbed one of their U.S. advisors. We had no doubt some police were involved in sectarian violence. But I would have trusted some Iraqi soldiers with my life. Many of them hated insurgents and Baathists as much as we did. They took great personal risk to join, as many were kidnapped from their homes and turned up floating in the Tigris River if the wrong people found out they were soldiers. We had guarded posts to return to, but most of them and their families lived on the streets they were fighting on.

The difference between the moderately successful security transition in Iraq and its less successful counterpart in Afghanistan comes in the understanding and commitment to transitioning to a nominally modern republican state with at least some vestiges of a central government. Iraq is still a violent place today, but it has been ruled by different strong central governments throughout its history—Babylon, Great Britain, and Saddam Hussein among them. Though today’s Iraqi government cannot claim to rule over the entirety of a peaceful nation, most Iraqis understand the necessity of a government that provides certain necessities, including internal and external security through competent police and military forces. There may be sectarian divisions, but this basic need is at least recognized.

Afghanistan has never been ruled by a central government, strong or otherwise. Today, Hamid Karzai’s power extends little past Kabul. Afghanis don’t see the need for a government they feel is remote and corrupt and has thus far been unable to provide them security, nor have they ever had such a government in their history. The understanding of and commitment to building such a government and an accompanying security mechanism is not there.

Afghanis are not ready to make such a change. Perhaps such will could have been developed with a stronger commitment from America early on. But we’ll never know. Such a transition can only be made when the people of Afghanistan are ready for it.

The Navy SEAL's Bin Laden Raid Bestseller and US National Security

This article originally appeared in The Guardian on 14 September 2012.

Everyone holds an opinion, even those who are obligated by law or profession to remain neutral. It is human nature. It can foreseeably become difficult to sit by and listen as everyone around you who is free to gives their opinion, some misguided and others even profiting from it, while professional obligations require you to stay silent. Such is the burden, however, of being a professional in a position of importance to national security.

This conflict is not new, but the pressures and incentives for breaking the rules are growing. With TV pundit spots, big publishing advances, and organizations such as WikiLeaks providing opportunity and motivation, are western democracies even capable of keeping secrets anymore?

Matt Bissonnette, calling himself "Mark Owen", was a member of Navy Seal Team 6 and took part in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He has written a book that extensively details the raid and has unleashed a controversy in doing so. Paired with this debate are the attacks of Opsec, a rightwing political action committee started by other former Navy Seals who are attacking President Obama and his administration for releasing generally similar information on the Bin Laden raid to the press.

Both Bissonnette and Opsec have been rebuked by senior military officials at the Pentagon such as special operations commander Admiral William McRaven and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The US government has not ruled out taking legal action.

When one swears an oath to serve the country as a member of the military or any national security-related agency, a different set of rules applies immediately. A measure of your personal freedom, freedom of speech, and political participation rights are curtailed. Inductees know this beforehand, are well-briefed upon induction, and periodically afterward. They sign non-disclosure statements to the effect, and laws prevent the disclosure of identified security information. You also know that some, much, or all of what you do will remain anonymous and unaccredited. Matt Bissonnette knew this when he wrote his autobiography.

All this is necessary for many reasons, foremost among them being to preserve the dedication to the nation such jobs require. You may be putting your life, or the lives of many others, at risk for the country, and be privy to sensitive information; you should be doing so because you feel a sense of duty, commitment, and patriotism. To allow public servants working in national security roles or members of the military to profit financially or to have an outsize influence on partisan political debate because of what they've done or what they know is detrimental to national security. Allowing this behavior would mean having soldiers and civil servants motivated by the opportunities of fame and fortune, leaving aside the selfless commitment and dedication to duty and country such roles do and ought to require.

This larger point is one many seem to miss. It is arguable that both the information in Bissonette's book and the information disclosed by the White House following the Bin Laden raid were not classified or going to get anyone killed. The difference is that the president has the obligation and duty to inform the public about such an important event, regardless of one's opinion of him personally: he is the commander-in-chief. But soldiers or civil servants profiting personally, or even for charity as Bissonnette claims he is doing, by giving their own personal accounts of the facts calls into question his selfless dedication to country and duty first. Allowing this to continue would attract the wrong sort of people with false motivations into military or government service.

This has become a problem of late for the United States. Television news channels and bookstore shelves are filled with pundits and commentators who are former CIA agents or soldiers. The gap in time between events and the release of bestsellers about them is getting ever smaller. Many of America's intelligence agencies have lax policies toward private-sector recruiters pulling their employees and some are even allowed to "moonlight" and offer their services privately while still employees of the agency. These policies have become a problem with intelligence agencies losing many of their top people to private firms after years of training and service. Disgruntled civil servants and soldiers have released secured government information in the media.

These events call into question the motivations, independence, and commitment to duty of the individuals who take part in them. Serving in the military or government should be about a life dedicated to protecting and serving the country, not serving one's self by securing a nice paycheck and nice retirement.

Many would push back against this by saying that those who occupy positions in the White House or Congress profit greatly from their service, or even the service of others, so why shouldn't people like Matt Bissonnette, who actually put their own lives on the line, be allowed to profit from it? Yet, presidents and congressmen and women should not profit personally from their jobs either – and their perceived abuse and misuse of their offices to do so is a reason why the majority of Americans have lost respect for these institutions and officials. Overwhelming majorities of Americans still hold a great deal of respect and esteem for the military and intelligence services because they are seen as representing selfless commitment to the country above self. They're not seen as corrupt, as other militaries and intelligence agencies around the world are. Allowing such behavior to continue may put this view in jeopardy.

Such events as the Abbottabad raid don't need to remain a secret forever, especially since the fact that the event occurred is public knowledge. It is important to our democracy, history, and society that the public learns what, how, and why events such as this happen. But there should be a space of several years in between.

Matt Bissonnette should be allowed to tell his story, but not while it is still such a present event. There are many possible consequences. Detailing such a raid may amount to providing "open-source" intelligence for our international opponents. Disclosing details of equipment, tactics, techniques, or procedures that may seem harmless and mundane on their own can be pieced together with other information. For Bissonnette to wait a couple years to tell his story would not have reduced its national historical significance – though it may have reduced his big-name television interviews or book sales.

There is a difference between Bissonnette's book and the disclosure of a crime or "whistleblowing". The reporting or disclosure of a felony or fraud, waste or abuse is quite different from writing a bestselling autobiographical book. Whistleblowers rarely profit from making what they know public: frequently, they lose their jobs, and often endure lawsuits or years of abuse afterwards. Their motivation is usually to correct a wrong. Rewards are offered to encourage them to come forward. Bissonnette was not reporting or disclosing some great crime and he stands to enjoy a great deal of positive attention and profit from his book, even if he donates most of the proceeds to a Navy Seal charity (as he has already attempted to do twice unsuccessfully).

It's hard to be too angry with Matt Bissonnette: he is a genuine hero who put his life on the line more than once and is deserving of the profit and attention he's received. It's pretty hard to keep a secret, especially when that secret is that you had a part in killing Osama bin Laden, one of those rare events which most Americans will recall where they were when it happened. Members of Seal Team 6, already famous before the raid, will probably never have to buy their own beers again.

But what Bissonnette and his defenders miss, and what the majority of his Seal colleagues understand, along with most other members of the military and intelligence community, is that the wider consequences to the national security of the country he risked his life many times to defend outweigh the right to fortune and fame for his bravery, even if it is well-deserved.

In order for the sterling reputation of the United States military and intelligence services to be preserved, and the trust placed in them by average Americans maintained, national security professionals cannot be allowed to profit from their acts, even if they go above and beyond duty or what is normally expected. Seeking fortune and fame, even if merited, cannot be allowed to cloud judgment when it comes to defending America. When it concerns our national security, we need those defending it to continue to put duty and country first. This extraordinary selflessness and dedication is what has kept us safe and strong throughout our history.

Matt Bissonnette has an extraordinary story to tell; he should be allowed to tell it. But he should have waited for it to pass from current affairs and into history first. That a small group of brave and dedicated men finally delivered justice for their country is a story not likely to be forgotten by Americans anytime soon.

September 11 2001: The Day Everything Changed for the US Military

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic on September 11 2012.

For many who spent time in uniform on 9/11/01, life is very much a story of before and after. I listened to the broadcast of the attacks on BBC radio while on an Army field exercise in Graefenwoehr, Germany. Much was different for soldiers before that day and much has changed since then.

Before, we trained with deployments to places like Bosnia or Kosovo in mind, not Afghanistan or Iraq. We wore Cold War-era equipment and woodland camouflage uniforms and slept in tents in the woods or in soft-sided military vehicles. Being stationed in Germany, we were all more practiced at fighting a Warsaw Pact enemy in the snow, mud, and rain of Europe than the urban or desert terrain of the Middle East. The Army life was generally as routine as military life can be. You get a new assignment and pack your bags for someplace new about every two years.

As we listened to the towers fall, still hoping it was some kind of an accident, we didn’t know how much things were about to change. Our exercise was cut short and we loaded into our vehicles and headed back to our post the next morning. An image I will always remember from that convoy is of Germans driving past waving small American flags out of the windows of their cars and shouting slogans of support. If any country knows what good the U.S. military has done in the world, it is Germany. Fifty six years before, America and its allies had rolled over the Nazis and then spent the next several decades rebuilding our former enemy under the Marshall Plan. U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany have been supporting the economy and our NATO ally since 1945. It may have been a rocky relationship since 2003, but I’ll always remember the faces of those German men and women waving the flag in support of America, in support of a country not their own and to people they would never meet.

Less than two years later our convoy was greeted again with waves from smiling citizens, but this time we were rolling into Baghdad. The results of ‘shock and awe’ were still very apparent. The people there were glad to see us at first. They all said thanks and then asked when we were leaving. Over the coming months we would all come to learn much about Iraq, Islam, Baathists, IEDs, snipers, and ambushes on city streets. The learning curve was steep. As we rolled back down to Kuwait on the way home 15 months of combat later, we did so with 10 of our brothers dead and four times as many, including myself, wounded in action.

One image that is forever burned into my memory is of two kids in an alley way near the bank of the Tigris. As I pulled security at the end of the alley, they snuck up on a mangy stray dog asleep in the sunshine, one of them holding a cup of gasoline and the other a lit piece of newspaper. They threw it on the dog and laughed as it cried and burned and died. Kids play with dogs; they don’t kill them. The things you want to remember, you forget; the things you’d like to forget, you always remember. Some people would call American soldiers savages, but there are worse things in this world.

We went home for a year and came back again. This time we flew in and slept in air-conditioned trailers and had showers and Burger King. But the streets outside were still the same, if not worse. I was assigned to a small team embedded with an Iraqi army unit we were to train and support. As the sectarian war raged, I remember getting a call from the U.S. battalion paired with our unit. They had found six bodies and five heads and needed us to come out. That wasn’t the first time I took a call like that or the last.

Three days before we all flew home, on the last mission he was to go on, we lost a platoon mate. The mixture of sorrow and joy left you feeling almost drunk. We sat around in the gravel, numb under our ponchos in the rain, and smoked and talked about what we were going to do when we got home. At that point, I was supposed to have been out the Army for three months already, but they had ‘stop-lossed’ me. They let me go three months later and I decided to make a clean break of it. I went to college on the GI Bill. I finished my degree in 2010. I’m starting grad school next week.

9/11 changed a lot in my life and in a lot of other lives. Everyone that went to war knows someone that didn’t make it back. A lot of veterans left a piece of themselves there. A lot of young men and women saw more than most others will see in a lifetime. Many soldiers came home to empty houses or drank themselves to sleep at night or worse. Families split up. Kids have grown up without a parent. People politely thank me for my service and I politely thank them back, but talking about the wars makes people back home uncomfortable. Usually I don’t offer up that I’m a veteran, but most know by looking at me.

Everything is different after 9/11. If you told me I could throw a magic switch and take back 9/11 and stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I would do it in a heartbeat. No question. But if you said that I could only take back my own part in the fighting, I wouldn’t do it. It was the most terrible time in my life, but it was also the best time of my life. It made me who I am. I know that is hard to understand for most people. I have trouble understanding it myself. But there it is. 9/11 changed everything for our soldiers.

Lightly Arming Syrian Opposition U.S.' Best Option

This article appeared on the Truman Doctrine and The Diplomat in August 2012.

The media presents daily reports of the escalating violence in Syria. There have been confirmed reports of mass executions by the regime. Women are being raped and men are disappearing.

Thousands of civilians and combatants are dying from shelling and firefights every day. The cities of Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo, among others, stand in ruins. Russia and China continue to block UN action in the Security Council. Thus far in the Arab uprisings, America has taken the successful approach of developing the situation from the outside to ensure the revolutions maintain their own national character. The threat of chemical weapons makes any ground intervention more difficult. America should build on past success and break the Syria stalemate by arming the Syrian opposition with anti-tank weaponry and non-lethal supplies.

It is well-known the Assad regime possesses a large stockpile of chemical weapons. They’ve been manufacturing them domestically for decades. A regime spokesman stated chemical weapons could be used against any outside invasion force, though the statement was later walked back. Even for well-equipped and trained militaries such as America’s, conducting operations in a lethal nerve agent environment multiplies the difficulty level and will greatly increase casualties in ground combat. An invasion of Syria is a much more difficult prospect than some imagine.

The same regime spokesman asserted Syria would not use chemical weapons on their own people, no matter the situation. Contaminating large swathes of countryside, effective when necessary against outside invasions, is undesirable domestically. It can present short and long-term contamination hazards for people, animals, crops, and water, not to mention the international mores it would break. Outside of Saddam Hussein, even brutal dictators have hesitated to use these weapons. The Syrian regime using nerve agents could lead to evaporation of Russian or Chinese support.

Arming the Syrian opposition is a better option. The Assad regime has shown no hesitation in using artillery and armor against the Syrian people. Equipping Syrian rebels with light anti-tank weapons such as RPG-7s will allow them to combat the regime’s T-55 and T-72 tanks. RPG-7s and lighter anti-tank weaponry are not capable of penetrating U.S. M1 Abrams tanks.

The Middle East is already awash in such weaponry so America wouldn’t be introducing anything new. Getting them quickly and directly into the hands of Syrian resistance fighters will bring the timely turning point needed to end the violence. Keeping an eye on the future after the Assad regime falls, America should stop short of providing small-arms weaponry, such as machine guns which may be used in the turmoil after the regime falls.

The U.S. should provide the opposition with non-lethal effects as well. Providing radio and other equipment to opposition commanders will allow them to coordinate their forces locally and nationally. Medical and food supplies are vital as well as the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Providing such supplies directly to Syrians already on the ground will get them closer to those who need them as America and its allies develop a coordinated response to the humanitarian situation following the fighting.

Providing light anti-tank weaponry and other non-lethal support for the opposition combined with continued international diplomatic and economic pressure on the regime, followed by a coordinated international humanitarian response to the aftermath, is America’s best course to end the Syria stalemate.