I'm becoming more and more convinced that this man doesn't actually exist and is instead a collective pen name for a whole think tank on his own right, but he has another update from December 9 on Iraq's Evolving Insurgency. I don't have time to go through all of it right now, but it looks very interesting and well worth reading, including stuff on public support for the war, a look at who's winning and losing as far as the insurgency is concerned, long-term projections, and lessons we can learn from the conflict.
The guy works for a Saudi paid think tank.
CSIS being a Saudi front is news to me.
Cordesman still puts out good stuff on Iraq though and his thoughts on the insurgency are well worth reading.
You know, this may sound alot like I'm just trolling, but after reading that, thinking about it, trying to boil down what it means, and create some plan of action based on it, I'm struck by two thoughts.
1) Duh.
And...
2) Is this the Arleigh Burke chair in in strategy or in bloviation?
Seriously, I thought only amatuers deals in strategy in these sorts of vague terms. Serious strategic study involves examines specific cases and then building up to larger lessons with specific recommendations. Specific recommendations don't involve things like, "Try harder.", "Make fewer enemies.", "Have friends.", "Have a winning plan.", and other marvelous Homerisms. And with no case studies in this worked and this didn't, even a recommendation of some reasonableness is worthless if it offers no insight in how to achieve that goal.
Some of the summation of events is nice as a sort of refresher course in what has happened and the detail is a good deal better than what you'd get in say, Newsweek, but its equally clear that he has no real detailed inside knowledge of specific operations of any sort - military, political, police work or otherwise.
Some degree of this arm chair generaling is fine, but sheesh, when you put that much effort into producing a document that is basically substanceless, it really underscores how pointless comments from the peanut gallery are.
celebrim:
No worries about trolling, but Cordesman seems to me to be pointing out that we need to be cognoscent of some of the problems (political and operational) that we ran into in Iraq for any future campaigns, which is usually a good idea for any war. As for his summary, it's a fairly nice and (most importantly, IMO) non-biased of the summary in Iraq that includes our successes and failures to date by someone who seems more interested in carrying out a serious open-source study of the situation than having a political axe to grind. If you want to read a single document to bring you up to speed on the situation in Iraq, this'd be the one I'd recommend.
All the information was interesting, but the whole thing had a 20/20 hindsight, bitterness and get even feeling. The disasters that did not happen in Iraq have been remarkable, from no burned oil fields, or no millions of refugees to the patience of Sistani. The amazing recent December 15 vote, has shown that democracy is our trump in this complex situation. Our military has performed well, but the CIA, State Department, UN and our European Allies have all disappointed. Cordsman seems to have put a lot of thought put into how to lose a limited war gracefully, but there seem to be signs that what we are actually doing is winning. How will he deal with that?
On the basis of reading the 17 page summary I agree with Rob that Cordesman is too negative overall. There is a difference between ruthless self criticism, which I support, and imbalance. For example, he talks of the need for honesty instead of spin from the administration and dismisses the constant anti war spin the press puts on its coverage as cynical and fails to discuss the disconnect our soldiers feel when they view that coverage. Both are there.
To pick a single revealing point, in his "Draining the Swamp" (p9) he says "...there are no universal values, and the US cannot shape a different culture, nation, or religion." Pfui! One of the key arguments of this war that the president has advanced is that there are universal values. I agree and believe that tyranny of the sort that was in Iraq is universally wrong and immoral and worth ending when we can. Compared to our Vietnamization efforts in '69 we have rapidly been able to bring Iraqi allies into the fight precisely because there are universal values like an aversion to having one's relatives end up in mass graves. Here is one Iraqi's response to the elections a few days ago that is written in very non standard English but which manages to touch universal values very clearly indeed.
"As iraqi we are hungry for democracy and by the name of all iraqis i say we appretiate what american soldgers did for us to liberate from bad dictator and Baath party ,and each blood drop of american soldgers shed in the field of the battle will not go with out victory on dark souls and brains ,and now seeds of each drops they shed comming up from the ground and yelling at us and we hearing them they say go to vote let our soul rest and make us happy ,and we do that we go we go we go"
Nonetheless Cordesman does the best job I've seen of laying out the risks, the things that can go wrong. He falls down by not picking up very often on where we have gotten it right and pointing out clearly where our best opportunities are. I don't buy his rationalizations for accepting defeat for example or that it will not hurt us if we do back out - unlike Vietnam which, while far from consequenceless as he seems to imply, did not involve an enemy determined and capable of bringing the war to our own territory..
1) Duh.
And...
2) Is this the Arleigh Burke chair in in strategy or in bloviation?
Took the words right out of my mouth. Almost no detail or facts, no close examination of actual cases. Lots of big airy thoughts of the bar conversation variety. I have the impression the guy doesn't actually know much. I hope Dan can convince me there is some content buried in there someplace.
Let me throw my two cents in; I know Tony a bit--from other similar interests in the past, though we have joint friends til this day in and out of government and ME and SW asia studies. First, per comments above, Tony is a fairly staunch Gore/Clinton/Kerry Democrat--not a Kossack, but firm enough on his politics to allow them to guide his analysis. He wouldn't necessarily disagree. This is not uncommon, (nor to their mind) unfair among analysts, even at the War College in Carlisle or National WC. Two, sadly, Tony doesn't speak Arabic (or Farsi/Parsi/Dari/Pushtu either) and also is not a traveler; in fact, he's a kind of stay-at-homebody. I've spent many months in these areas since 9/11 and am dismayed at how little local knowledge our 'analysts' and even our 'agents' have; quite depressing indeed. There's always the Pentagon and they do the best they can; as my might guess, they keep us in the game, thankfully. Otherwise, we'd be sunk. My own limited expertise is Afghanistan/Pakistan (especially between the Indus and Oxus) for nearly twenty years and I'd have to conclude unhappily that unless inspired amateurs--especially those with interests and skills in other areas-- decide to get involved in this part of the world (pajama style?) especially in aid and journalism, it's going to be tough slogging, particularly in the information/knowledge industry. Tony's a nice guy, but what he knows is only from a long apprenticeship in the basement of intelligence analysis-- collating, collecting and examining documents, not an inconsiderable task and I don't diminish it at all. His insights are too generic to have any real meaning and too slantly, however slightly he believes them, to consider seriously. And yes, it is a Saudi-friendly 'tank.' (But what isn't in money-grubbing DC?)
Rob/lgude/chuck:
I don't agree with a lot of the first 17 pages either (which isn't a summary of the rest of the piece - for that, you have to put Cordesman into the Winds search engine), as I hope my own posts help to indicate. I think that if you look beyond that though, you can find quite a bit of useful information on Iraq and the insurgency, far more than that which you usually pick up in the press. I certainly with his contention that losing Vietnam didn't cost the US anything - it certainly had a lot of cultural and political repercussions to it, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians who died in the meantime.
Still, I'd consider it useful reading.
John:
Unlike you, I don't have the benefit of knowing Cordesman or anything about his political leanings (I would also note that there's a sizeable gulf between Clinton and Gore these days). The reason I first started reading Iraq's Evolving Insurgency was because I thought that it did a good job of collating all the information, so like the Jamestown Foundation pieces that I link to periodically, I'll keep using it as a resource until someone better comes along.
One quibble I will make is the whole not knowing the language. This is a problem in analysis to a certain extent, but not an unsurmountable one if you get the services of agencies such as FBIS and the like. As I understand it, Scheuer doesn't know a word of Arabic and has relied almost exclusively on FBIS and similar agencies to research and study al-Qaeda. I would also note that the ability to know Arabic or any other language is not in of itself a guarantee for good analysis - one word, the current sorry state of MESA and its current conspiracy theorist president.
CSIS being a Saudi-friendly think tank (as can be seen from the presence that Nawaf Obaid, whom I regard as an unofficial agent of the Saudi government) is one thing, but there are a lot of those in DC without rendering everything they say as enemy propaganda. The acknowledgement that Salafism is a problem rather than a case of just a few bad apples spoiling the cart is in of itself a rather profound one, as are the recognition of the claims that Iran and Syria are complicit on some level with the insurgency.
One quibble I will make is the whole not knowing the language.
Dan, I think John was making the point that without language or travel Cordesman can't have a feel for what people in that region actually think or what the local concerns are. My own impression is that in an area consisting of thousands of tribes and many ethnic groups, an area where family and personal relations seem to play even larger roles than they do in the US, detailed local knowledge is a necessity for any sort of action or understanding of events. What, for instance, do we make of the attempted assassination of Ahmadinejad? I don't think history conforms to big grandiouse laws so I just don't see how these sweeping generalizations are that useful. Niall Ferguson annoys me in the same way.
Anyway, I certainly don't have much knowledge of the area myself. That's why I like your stuff. Keep up the good work.
I like Tony and took more than a day to decide to throw in my two cents because of that--and now I'm sure I'm beating a dead horse jumping in again even later. But I think Chuck makes an important point, one that Americans in general need to take more seriously: local knowledge, customs and 'language,' especially in the semiotical mode, is desperately important to our future. Language is more than words, more than a lexicon, it's a grammar of life--an alien (but fascinating) life that Americans don't want to take the time to learn, particularily because they believe it comes at a certain risk and worse, with an acceptance of a simple and humble economic existence. And dare I say one of diminished self-importance that few in the west wish to endure or indulge. Hey, it's not permanent!Eventually we get back on a plane and (try to) leave it all behind. American 'experts' have little knowledge in either conventional linguistic or other cultural modes of understanding.
My gripe with Tony and his ilk is that they believe that if they quantify the country and number-crunch the results they have some reliable data. That has really been a disaster for the United States intelligence gatherers who report to the president, the congress and the people. We actually know very little about these burrowed-in Islamic countries in west Asia and the ME. For the analysts, however, every country is still more or less equal and available for scrutiny and understanding--a belief that elevates Cordesman et al (and yes, I definitely throw Cole in there as well) to the level of an initiated priesthood...the only ones capable of reading and interpreting those arcane signs of foreign cultures. Not true. Most of the useful material is more qualitative and mysterious, not easily categorized and is gleaned from an appreciation of the culture that few in MESA even wish to acknowledge. Once you've made your bones in academia, who wants to risk that status-lifestyle by living with the subjects of your (one-time) expertise as a graduate student half-a-lifetime ago? One of the reasons for the great success in Afghanistan is due to the almost complete absence of area studies academics and state/ngo/spook presence. It's the quiet, patient and curious American soldier and citizens that have burrowed into the culture and made a real difference.
chuck:
My own knowledge of Arabic remains exceptionally crude, to say nothing of Farsi, Urdu, Dari, Pashtu, Bahasa, and the like. That's one of the reasons why I'm fairly sensitive to accusations that analysts who can't read the language are worthless, particularly given that some who can (again, MESA) are.
As far as the assassination of Ahmadinejad, here's a couple of possibilities as far as what we make of it:
1) Baluch rebels and/or drug lords decided to take a shot at Ahmadinejad to let him know that they aren't going to let him turn Sistan-Baluchistan back to what it was in the 1980s, when there was more or less open warfare between the government and the local drug lords. The Baluch mafia controls most of the smuggling and drug distribution between Afghanistan and Iran, which is an extremely lucrative market.
2) It was the Baluchs working together with elements of the regular army or IRGC against Ahmadinejad. The IRGC has long been taxing the Baluch drug lords in return for letting them operate in Sistan-Baluchistan, so it's certainly well within their capabilities. OTOH, the Abadgaran movement that backs Ahmadinejad in the Iranian Majlis is made up of ex-IRGC and Ahmadinejad himself is a founder of its elite Qods Force unit. Another candidate would be Rafsanjani and his buddies in VEVAK, but their inclusion in any conspiracy would mean that it was a pretty large one to begin with, in which case the question is why it didn't succeed.
3) The Baluchs were attacking in concert with a third party, such as the US, UK, Israel and so on. The Iranians have openly accused the UK of stirring up unrest in the ethnic Arab province of Khuzestan, an accusation that I take with a whole shaker of salt, but on the off-chance it is credible it could be them. The US has been attempting to reach out to the Pakistani Baluchs for help in the hunt for al-Qaeda and the Israelis have quite understandable reasons of their own for wanting Ahmadinejad dead.
4) It was just a very unfortunate group of local smugglers and bandits as media reports have claimed. I'd assign this a fairly low probability of being accurate.
John:
Definitely agreed, though I would argue that one of the main problems with how multiculturalism is currently set up is that it becomes absolutely impossible to understand other cultures. The US has dumped millions of dollars into Middle East studies on national security grounds over the last several decades with almost nothing to show for it in terms of practical and easily accessible knowledge on the region - most contemporary primers on Islam still don't even address the issue of Salafism or the Qom/Najaf split in Shi'ism, all of which seem to be major issues for the people actually living in the region.
Also agreed on the critique below concerning methods and means of analysis, to which I would add that there is a strong tendency among analysts (one that I think Cordesman has managed to avoid, incidentally) to place non-Western enemies into overly intellectualized boxes with pre-ordained patterns of behavior based on those boxes. Your comment about viewing all countries as being equal is a pretty good one, since that most decidedly isn't the case, especially when it comes to insurgencies.
Can I save that quote for later use?
To come to Cordesman's defense, I'm pretty damn sure he was sitting next to me at a dinner in Riyadh in 2003. In fact, I'm positive of it. Also at the table were two others from CSIS, both of whom were fluent in Arabic.
Having lived and worked in the KSA--and speaking Arabic--I think Cordesman has the most accurate assessment of that country.
But then, I probably have Saudi cooties, having actually shaken hands with one or more...
The report looks hurriedly thrown together. Some of the syntax is awkward or downright incorrect. More like the writing one might expect on a blog, ironically.
Just to be fair, there are several interpretations one might have of the term "failure" in this context, as well as "planning for failure." The most pragmatic would have to do with what we intend to do should Iraq, or the entire ME, descend into a civil war. It seems to me that the only thing we could do in that instance is make sure that the ethnic divisions are crosscut by ideologica alliances, and that it winds up as a war between the totalitarians and the "moderates" or liberals.
Assuming the "mustard seed" approach in Iraq doesn't work... That, it would seem, is "planning for failure," in the narrow sense. But ulitametly the reason we're in Iraq in the first place it to take actions that halt a cascading set of failures leading to a thermonuclear (third conjecture). And I'm not convinced that Cordesman grasps this dimension of the current struggle.
Dan...please use. I seem to be slogging Tony but I don't mean to. It's certainly not personal ('cept for some of his taste in music) since there's very few with whom I'd rather spend an afternoon comparing audio rigs and sonic attributes of components--and music, of course--than Tony. We're both crazy hobbyists. But I do see him as symptomatic of a couple of problems currently plaguing the national dialogue on terrorism. The first is the overreliance on 'experts'--the latter are typically (charitably; one might more rationally say always) compromised by the concessions they made to crawl out of the massive bureaucracy to become renowned or eminent. Look at Tony, for example. Two books in the first twenty years, the first the usual reworking of the dissertation. A strong signal in the federal system that he'd not marked himself for promotion, fame, stardom...whatever they call it in DC. Basically, he was a plodding analyst stuck in the basement...until he became political, and the party that dominated his rise was the Democratic. So Tony began his skillful sideway shuffle towards the Clintons--the second problem of our 'experts,' i.e. the extreme politicization of 'facts'--and thus ensured himself the requisite staff and interns to turn his very modest production in the first two decades of his career into a virtual factory of efficient, if tedious--and tendentiously titled, mass production of ME thoughts. I dare say, and I'd put some serious lucre on it, that the average bright Army officer (or better yet, an ex-Seal--if you know what I mean) returning from duty in Afghanistan knows more about the country, successful policy, failed initiatives and what to do next than anyone ('cept Ledeen, or me, of course) in official DC. And believe me, CSIS or fed, no difference. Tony is merely making the case to become a major force in Hillary's regime. He doesn't know very much about the Islamic world that he hasn't learned from data, books and the assiduous production of his clerks and researchers since he fought out of the basement into the sunlight.
BTW, Dan (re: your comments elsewhere on TC's work) I know a bit about Al Qa'eda in Iran presently, and have know them in a personal capacity since their origins in Peshawar, where I lived with them in U-Town as they plotted to co-opt the emerging Taliban movement.)
John:
As I mentioned before, I don't know a lot about Cordesman personally or his political views, you seem to be a lot better informed than him on this score. I would also note that a lot of what he writes in Iraq's Evolving Insurgency seems to track pretty well with a lot of the stuff that myself, my buddy Bill Roggio (now out in Anbar with plenty of interesting stories to tell), and others have written in contrast to other folks I consider far less credible like Cole, who is still arguing (depending on the time of day or phase of the moon) that there is no Zarqawi or that he isn't a major force inside Iraq when just about everybody over there says otherwise. Since Cordesman has a lot of credentials and seems pretty well-respected by a lot of the people I know up at Fort Leavenworth and many people on either side of the political spectrum, I'm inclined to pay attention to his analysis and cite it as needed. That was more or less the situation that came up on the other blog WRT Kohlmann, since I know that he respects Cordesman and Brisard, so I'm inclined to cite them as a result.
I dare say, and I'd put some serious lucre on it, that the average bright Army officer (or better yet, an ex-Seal--if you know what I mean) returning from duty in Afghanistan knows more about the country, successful policy, failed initiatives and what to do next than anyone ('cept Ledeen, or me, of course) in official DC.
No doubt. Them and my buddies among the enlisted men are some of the people I consult with on Iraq, Afghanistan, and any number of places. Learned some interesting stuff from them just today about EUCOM, for instance, though I don't mention it here because of the problems one runs into with citing such material online.
Speaking of the al-Qaeda in Iran, if you're really interested feel free to drop me an e-mail (scorpius@shwiggie.com), as I got a little tidbit that I can't post here but can disseminate through e-mail that I'm sure you'd enjoy taking a look over.