Word hit the street over the weekend that senior CIA officials have been pushing the Obama administration to expand unmanned aerial drone attacks against targets in Pakistan.  In the spies’ cross hairs are top Taliban commanders based in Quetta, a large regional city.

If counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations aren’t your cup of tea, you may have missed the ever-expanding role that unmanned drones have played in Pakistan.  While it’s true that President Obama has signed off on the program’s expanded use to now include more of Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, the issue of targeting Quetta - a major population center - seems to have given the White House some pause.

A former senior CIA official said he and others were repeatedly rebuffed when proposing operations in Baluchistan or pushing Pakistan to target the Taliban in Quetta. “It wasn’t easy to talk about,” the official said. “The conversations didn’t last a long time.”

That sounds about right - attacking Quetta is a bridge too far in the drone war.  Here’s why:

Many question whether we should have an unmanned drone program in the first place.  There are strong and reasoned arguments from intelligent analysts who believe the costs of a drone program outweigh its benefits.  The strongest argument offered against the program is that by unintentionally causing civilian casualties with off-target or ill-timed strikes, the program agitates and alienates the population that the counter-insurgents are supposed to be protecting.

After this story first broke, I agree with that basic premise, but said that drone attacks should be “extraordinarily limited, not stopped” because they were a “valuable tool in certain rare circumstances.”  Further, I developed a five-part criteria as a guideline to determine when those might be.  My forth criterion says that it’s “unrealistic to say that drone won’t fire on population centers because then the targets would just hide in plain sight.  However, the US must carefully weigh the chance of civilian casualties and seek to avoid them - by using smaller missiles, modifying times of the strikes, etc. - at all costs.”

However, Quetta is a city of 850,000 people, and it is difficult to imagine that innocent civilians could be reasonably avoided in any single strike - no matter how good the intelligence is.  Therefore, the administration is right to endorse the general practice, but to oppose its application in this specific instance.

In the wake of the president’s West Point speech announcing the administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan,  the White House must have been concerned that charges that lingering charges of warmongering (on the left) or dithering (on the right) were going to dominate the public debate.  Why would there be major weekend stories in the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times to set the record straight?  Coming from sources as wide-ranging as National Security Advisor Jim Jones to “more than a dozen senior administration and military officials who took part in the strategy review”, these newspapers’ broad consensus of the strategy sessions shows a president asking careful questions to redefine the mission in a way that protects the country while limiting open-ended commitment.

Last week, I was in the offices of a certain, nameless 24 hour cable news channel that’s nice enough to put my ugly mug on the air fairly often.   I overheard one of its regular pundits exclaim breathlessly, “I just don’t understand why Obama just doesn’t do what his commanders on the ground tell him.”  This weekend’s trio of articles paints the best picture I’ve seen of why not.

Here’s the short version of that answer from the NYT:

The decision represents a complicated evolution in Mr. Obama’s thinking. He began the process clearly skeptical of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, but the more he learned about the consequences of failure, and the more he narrowed the mission, the more he gravitated toward a robust if temporary buildup, guided in particular by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. …

The group went over the McChrystal assessment and drilled in on what the core goal should be. Some thought that General McChrystal interpreted the March strategy more ambitiously than it was intended to be.

And the longer version from the WaPo:

In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.”

“Is that really what you think your mission is?” one of those in the Situation Room asked. …

“I wouldn’t say there was quite a ‘whoa’ moment,” a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. “It was just sort of a recognition that, ‘Duh, that’s what, in effect, the commander understands he’s been told to do.’ Everybody said, ‘He’s right.’ ”

“It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent” of the NSC document, said Jones, who had signed the orders himself. “I’m not sure that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same thing, as a military commander.” But what McChrystal created in his assessment “was obviously something much bigger and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended.”

Whatever the administration might have said in March, officials explained to McChrystal, it now wanted something less absolute: to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, deter it and try to persuade a significant number of its members to switch sides. “We certainly want them not to be able to overthrow the government,” Jones said.

On Oct. 9, after awaking to the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama listened to McChrystal’s presentation. The “mission” slide included the same words: “Defeat the Taliban.” But a red box had been added beside it saying that the mission was being redefined, Jones said. Another participant recalled that the word “degrade” had been proposed to replace “defeat.”

Already briefed on the previous day’s discussion, the president “looked at it and said: ‘To be fair, this is what we told the commander to do. Now, the question is, have we directed him to do more than what is realistic? Should there be a sharpening . . . a refinement?’ “ one participant recalled.

Said a senior White House adviser who took extensive notes of the meeting: “The big moment when the mission became a narrower one was when we realized we’re not going to kill every last member of the Taliban.”

Separately, a few other nuggets, like on troop numbers (NYT):

On Oct. 9, Mr. Obama and his team reviewed General McChrystal’s troop proposals for the first time. Some in the White House were surprised by the numbers, assuming there would be a middle ground between 10,000 and 40,000.

“Why wasn’t there a 25 number?” one senior administration official asked in an interview. He then answered his own question: “It would have been too tempting.”

And from the LA Times’ piece on the date of withdrawal:

Gates was also persuaded by Petraeus and others that announcing the date would help create an incentive for the Afghans to act, he said this week.

The proposed date also would make it such that the withdrawal of troops would begin just as the campaign for the 2012 presidential election was heating up.

Still, it was crucial to Gates and other military officials that Obama not announce a specific drawdown plan. Doing so could embolden militants, Defense officials said. Gates and others wanted to make sure that the pace of the drawdown would be based on the security situation — not a set timetable.

“Ultimately,” said a senior Defense official, Gates “wanted conditionality, and got it.”

All three articles are a must-read to anyone who wants to understand the complexity of the White House’s decision.  In sum, it seems that the review sessions narrowed the goal, and resourced it as robustly and quickly as possible.  I understand that the administration needed to fix a date for beginning withdrawal as a political concession to the progressive base, and I still remain uncomfortable with that notion even though these articles do a good job clarifying the withdrawal’s pace is subject to the security situation.

Was the attack on Fort Hood terrorism?

Senior politicians like Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) and Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich) are being careful not to call terrorism outright, but are beginning to raise the issue.  Addressing the issue of Hassan’s relationship with a former Virgina-based imam Anwar al Aulaqi, Hoekstra said:

For me, the number of times that this guy tried to reach out to the imam was significant,” Hoekstra said. “Al-Qaeda and radical jihadists use the Internet to spread radical jihadism. . . . So how much of [Hasan's] lashing out is a result of . . . his access to radical messages on the Internet and the ability to interact?

“I believe that the responses from Aulaqi were maybe pretty innocent,” Hoekstra continued. “But the very fact that he’s sent e-mail . . . to this guy and got responses would be quite a concern to me.”

While I was tempted to make fun of Hoekstra (”He sent an email?!?!?! You’re right, Congressman, it must be a plot!”), after reading Aulaqi’s post-incident praising Hassan’s actions, it’s clear that there is enough confusion to warrant a discussion.  After all, Aulaqi’s words are pretty derisive and chilling:

The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

However, based on what we know now, the totality of presently-available evidence compellingly suggests that the Fort Hood tragedy was a case of a very sick man who reacted violently to his impending deployment to Afghanistan.  In other words, it was not terrorism.

If you ask the State Departement, EU, or United Nations, definitions of  the term will slightly vary.  However, all definitions agree that terrorism’s aim is to “to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” (from 2004’s UN Security Council Resolution 1566).

On balance, Hassan’s case does not meet this standard.

While you could argue that Hassan’s attack was motivated by a 2007 speech where he recommended Muslims should be released from military service as conscientious objectors, that “policy” recommendation was masked as cover for his growing objections and mental confusion and uncomfortableness as a Muslim in the American military.  It was personal, not political.

Consider his life story that lead up to this tragedy:  A second-generation Muslim-American, he joined the military probably more for what it offered (an eduction), than because of his conviction to serve.  His faith grew, and he became more aware of objections to the military’s deployments, eventually hiring a lawyer and offering to repay tuition fees in return for a discharge.

As a psychiatrist, he was exposed to an endless parade of mentally and physically tramatized servicemembers whose experiences no doubt reinforced Hassan’s objections to military service and deployment to a war zone, and placed him in a more fragile mental state.  As a result of this incident, hopefully improving “care for the caregiver” will be improved.

All the while, he mainted communication with the former imam, Aulaqi (now based in Yemen), whose own (and possibly very different) motivations for hating the United States may have indeed influence Hassan to “do something” about his upcoming deployment.  While Congress will also surely question the FBI about what it knew about their communications, hindsight is 20/20, and that the Bureau’s assessment at the time was appropriate given its finite resources.

But at the end of the day, Hassan acted alone, and because of a tragic combination of being a Muslim-American in the military who was exposed to a series of encounters that degraded his emotional health.  Closer to the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech, Hassan’s killing spree was the result of deep mental instability that reflected personal anxieties and tragically manifest themselves in the most horrific way possible.

The numbers don’t lie:  A late-April Rasmussen poll says 58 percent of Americans believe that the release of the torture memos hurts national security.

The directionless conservative movement is desperate to find any sort of rallying point and has grasped on to the security issue with all it’s might.   Though progressives can make a thousand rational arguments why the release of the torture memos both upholds American values and makes the country safer, the issue could be a big loser.  Because when it comes to politics and national security, emotion wins over intellect and values; and at this point, the right is going to drive any advantage it finds right down Main Street.

So Bienvenido A Guantanamo, amigos!  Having hit a single with torture memos, conservatives are shamelessly striding this particularly dark chapter in America’s foreign policy history on up to the batter’s box.

Today, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) proposes that not a single dime be used to transport the last remaining detainees to American soil for either imprisonment or trial. Says the Congressman:

They are known, dangerous criminals who have vowed to destroy our way of life… I think it’s pretty factual that we have known enemies who we would be turning loose on our streets.”

Quite.  Yes, yes, Khalid Shiek Mohammed is being placed on AirForceOne as we speak, soon to be roaming the bi-ways of Topeka unabated.  Nevermind that the remaining suspects would be jailed in America’s most secure facilities until trial or deportation.  Seriously, nevermind the logic - Tiahrt is tapping emotion.

Just after the inauguration, 53 percent of Americans agreed with the president’s decision to close the prison (perhaps not coincidentally, that’s the same percentage Obama won in the popular vote; 42 percent were against).   In the context of the torture memos’ release and the conservative onslaught, it will be fascinating to see if the cumulative affect of emotionally driven national security issues erodes that number.

Conservatives will continue to trump progressives on the emotional aspect of this argument; it will remain a major progressive vulnerability.

That’s why progressives can’t shirk this fight. I fear the only way to defeat it is with more volume — getting out the progressive side of the argument more often and with more zing.

Crossposted to ppioinline.org

When Bob Gates announced he was going to cut production and acquisiton of the F-22, he said the decision “wasn’t even close.”  I agreed, having from my own perch in this corner of the internets made no hidden secret of my feelings about the plane.

Though he took the butcher’s cleaver to the F-22, notice that Gates remained high on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  The Pentagon was counting on the allegedly cheaper, more tactically applicable JSF to essentially cover for the F-22, thereby giving Lockhead some good wound-licking material.

So the F-35 is great, right?  To pull out a Corso-ism, not so fast my friend!  Winslow Wheeler, the guy I’d nominate as the Chief Justice in a court of Defense procurement, has this expose out on the F-35.

Sold as “affordable” by its advocates, the Joint Strike Fighter was actually designed as anything but. Its price has been climbing ever since.
In 2001, the Pentagon planned a total of 2,866 aircraft for USD226.5 billion. That meant a pricey USD79 million per copy - one of America’s most expensive fighters ever, except, of course, for the F-22.

Subsequently, the Pentagon plan was altered to reduce the buy to 2,456 (14 per cent less) for a 32 per cent increase in cost, USD298.8 billion.
At USD122 million each, it is hardly “affordable”. Moreover, that not particularly affordable number is sure to increase. In fact, it already has. Late last year, the Pentagon accepted a new cost estimate for the 30 aircraft to be bought in 2010. Originally projected to cost USD10.4 billion, Secretary Gates told us on 6 April they will cost USD11.2 billion, or on average an appalling USD373 million each.

That unit cost will decline somewhat as the buy increases but it is entirely possible that it will end up at about USD200 million. Current in-house DoD cost re-estimates already predict USD7 billion more in cost growth between 2011 and 2015 for problems already identified, and there is surely more to come.

So much more cost growth is easily predictable because the F-35 programme managers failed to learn any of the lessons of the botched F-22 programme.
Instead of embracing “fly before you buy”, they are rushing headlong into their plan to produce up to 513 aircraft with only two per cent of flight testing complete now. In that handful of test hours, the programme has already discovered significant problems in the avionics and engine that now must be fixed.

Even more astounding, the programme plans to verify only 17 per cent of the aircraft’s characteristics with flight testing, according to the Government Accountability Office and Pentagon insiders. The rest will be verified by computer simulations, test beds, and desk studies. Desk studies?

It gets even worse. Read the rest of this entry »

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