Finally, someone gets it!

About a year and a half ago, I read T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and was captivated by it--the book gives amazing insight into the modern-day Iraq War and its participants--which I've already noted in an article I submitted to Small Wars Journal. From Lawrence and General Allenby's unconventional views on war, to the overly-conventional views of the mainstream British leadership, to the inability of the Turks to deal with an Arab insurgency, to Lawrence's planting of IEDs along the railways of Hejaz, the book is describes a situation eerily similar to our current conflict.

Unfortunately, like many great works, some have been guilty of taking Lawrence's views on war well out of context. Most notably is a line he uses in one of his works advising British service members on how to advise the Arabs during their insurgency, which Lawrence says:

“Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them.

In The War Within, written by journalist Bob Woodward, General George Casey misattributes this quote to Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He also takes the quote out of context and completely misapplies it--the Iraqi government was not operating tolerably in the days prior to the Surge.

Fortunately, Lt. Col. Robert Bateman assists us in placing the story in context, and even provides a little humor on the subject of the book. If you've ever wondered why "Lawrence of Arabia" goes on for four hours and includes several hours' worth of epic shots of Lawrence simply riding through the desert on a camel, you'll find it amusing that the book is little different at times. Only Lawrence could describe himself riding along on a camel through a featureless desert for pages on end.

But with that said, I highly recommend reading the entire book, as it's probably one of the best books I've read not simply for the military strategy involved, but also as a historical framework for the Middle East. Plus, it's a marvelous adventure.

Term of the Day: Maintenance Test Flight

One of the realities of modern aviation is that aircraft need a lot of maintenance. Some would say that the crew chiefs are the unsung heroes of the aviation world, as they toil in the 130F heat day in and day out, leaving at the end of an exhausting day covered in grease.

But there is a group of people even more unsung, unsunger, or something than the crew chiefs. You see, after the crew chief fixes the aircraft, someone has to be the first to fly it.

Enter: the maintenance test pilot.

Of course, the maintenance test pilot has been to school and is highly specialized in performing the checks and tests required to fully validate that an aicraft is ready for flight. Nay, the really brave person is the maintenance test pilot's assistant, the test pilot of the day--the person who wakes up in the morning, sees that he's scheduled to fly an aircraft that was just fully taken apart and put back together again that past week.

And, just my luck, I've been the maintenance test pilot of the day a couple of times this past week or so. At least it makes for interesting flying...I particularly like how I found out that none of the audio warning tones worked. But that's another story for another time.

Something called "Cyberwar"

The Economist released an interesting piece the other day regarding a concept known as “Cyberwar”. With radical advancements in technology in the Information Age, individuals now posess a sort of superempowerment. In the modern era, individuals and trans-national groups throughout the world can pose a credible threat to the security of nation-states.

Cyberwarfare is difficult to categorize and describe, as hacking and other attacks of this nature may be politically motivated, or they may be simple acts of vandalism. Cyberwarfare requires no well-thought-out ideology, simply a challenge for individuals to take on the power of large corporations or governments.

When I was a student at North Carolina State University, I witnessed some of the effects of early Cyberwarfare. In 2001, following an incident in which an American EP-3 aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing on a Chinese island, hackers were able to change Red Hat Software’s home page and post pro-China propaganda. The attack was crude and only served to disrupt Red Hat for a few hours, but it demonstrates the effect a small number of individuals might have on the information mainframes of the United States.

America’s technology is its strength, but our over-reliance on technology is our Achilles Heel. Any Generation Y-er can attest to what happens to their workplace (be it military, government or commercial) when the networks shut down—it’s time to go to Starbucks.

And many of our competitors in the 21st Century realize this. China, likely the emerging superpower in this century, has little means of force projection either by sea or air, giving her little ability to confront the US via symmetrical means. However, China does pose a significant technological risk to the United States via the development of anti-satellite missiles and pursuit of cyberwarfare capabilities. According to a report published by McAffee, the Internet security company, China leads the world in cyberwar programs, and cyber attacks have been traced to China.

Cyberwar groups may not be part of an organized government organization—governments can recruit individual hackers, even criminals, and pay them to attack the computer systems of other countries. This not eliminates the need for the overwhelming bureaucracy that would stifle the creative hacking process, but it also gives legitimate governments an air of plausible deniability when executing cyberwar attacks.

Cyber warfare has been witnessed throughout Europe and Asia, most recently during the South Ossetia War of 2008, in which Russian hackers attacked Georgian computers. While not effective, the attacks do show promise. Thousands of years before computers were even invented, Sun Tzu advocated winning the battle before it was even fought by sowing confusion in the minds of the enemy. With governments and militaries increasingly relying on computers for command and control, the potential for disaster looms large.

Cyberwar organizations are a highly evolved form of 4th Generation Warfare, and exhibit characteristics unique from traditional guerilla or insurgent groups. Hacker organizations require a safe haven (the un-policed portions of the Internet), much like terror organizations. However, this safe haven is virtual, not physical--hacker organizations can unite from all corners of the globe, even within the targeted nation itself. Unlike traditional terrorism, which tends to originate in areas where economic opportunities are limited and central government is weak or corrupt, cyberwarfare can originate simply among bored teenagers looking for a quick thrill, those with no real political motivation, simply young adults looking for a challenge. Unlike military organizations, which have a command structure and unity of command, hacker organizations may revolve around “swarming” attacks, largely de-centralized and difficult for traditional military organizations to fight.

The solution is not easy. Just recently, the US military came up with a Cyberwarfare division, aimed at ways of preventing attacks on the US. However, one wonders how a large government organization will remain adaptive in the constantly-changing world of cyberwarfare. For the time being however, it is an important first step for a military realizing the full implications of what a handful of people with a network of computers might wreak on our electronic infrastructure.

You know how you can tell these guys aren't American?

How can you tell these guys aren't American?

No reflector belts in the whole video!

Seriously, though, this video is a re-make of a British comedy sketch acted out by actual British troops in Iraq.  The video was so popular, that repeated download attempts crashed the Ministry of Defence's computer systems.  And the DoD thought my use of Youtube was bad...

General Eric Shinseki Nominated as VA Secretary

It’s nice to see that some good karma has come back to General Shinseki.  You may remember General Shinseki as the father of Army Transformation—having the foresight to re-organize the Army into a rapidly-deployable force capable of fighting in the 4^th Generation battlefield.  He was also the man that suggested to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that the US would need several hundred thousand more troops in order to effectively secure and pacify Iraq, contrary to Rumsfeld’s original plans.  

Years later, Shinseki has been vindicated in his decisions, and it looks as if Obama is giving Shinseki, a wounded warrior from the Vietnam War, a new lease on life as the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs.  

Is this the same army that invented the Blitzkrieg?

Well, this is what happens to an army--possibly only a brigade of a few thousand soldiers--that consumed some 1,700,000 pints of beer and 90,000 bottles of wine in 2007, and consumed over 800,000 pints of beer in the first six months of 2008.

German forces have come under intense scrutiny after several reports had indicated that they largely failed to train the Afghan police as they were originally intended to. Wonder if this has anything to do with it:

The physical condition of [German] soldiers [in Afghanistan] was already in question after a German armed forces report found that 40 per cent of its soldiers aged 18-29 were overweight, compared to 35 per cent of the civilian population of the same age.

The report, published in March, concluded that the Bundeswehr lived on beer and sausages while shunning fruit and vegetables. It said that an overdeveloped bureaucracy was also contributing to a “passive lifestyle” on the part of the soldiers.

Reinhold Robbe, the parliamentary commissioner for the German armed forces, concluded: “Plainly put, the soldiers are too fat, exercise too little and take little care of their diet.”

So, for once, there's an article pointing to a significant portion of the population being overweight that doesn't involve us Americans. Globalization at work, my friends!

Mail Bag

One of my soldiers got a care package the other day consisting of beanie babies and toys. Now, you might question the logic of giving toys to Soldiers. Interestingly enough, in many cases, toys can be an effective "weapon", as it may be, in the War on Terror--give one to a local Iraqi man to give to his children, or give one to a kid and hey, maybe he or she might regret blowing you up just a tad.

In some cases, however, I get to keep the toys. My Soldiers earmarked this Lego Yoda pen for me:

Time to go indulge in some Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones...

An informal poll

So I conducted an informal poll of the local population the other day while flying. Flying over the local area, I tried to count how many people waved and how many people jeered at us. Results: one wave, and one kid that tried to throw a rock at us.

Now, a lot of news articles have been written about the local attitudes towards the US based on how many kids throw rocks at Americans. I advocate the point of view that you really can't draw a whole lot of political opinions out of kids throwing rocks at trucks, helicopters, etc. Most kids really aren't expressing profound geopolitical views when they throw rocks at things...they just like to throw rocks at things.

Now, you may ask what my evidence is for my bold claim that kids just like to throw rocks at objects with no obvious political message. Let's just say that I probably still owe my parents a few hundred dollars for broken stuff from throwing rocks, baseballs, etc at things...

It's all relative

Coming from Upstate New York, cold weather is nothing. This is a place that receives more snow than any other place in the continental United States...an area where you deal with temperatures of 45F in the morning...in August.

Now, the Middle Eastern deserts can get somewhat cold as well. For example, T.E. Lawrence holed himself up in a crusader castle somewhere in either Syria or Jordan (one that he had studied as a college student years prior) during his campaigns in the winter of 1917-1918, as the winter was that cold. Additionally, just last year, Baghdad received snow for Christmas.

But by Upstate NY standards, it really isn't that cold in the mornings...maybe around 45F. Certainly not 5 feet of snow cold. But everything is relative.

I run marathons, so obviously, I run in the mornings. Today was my rest day, so instead of running, I hopped on a bus to get a cup of coffee at base local coffee shop. I was clad in a long-sleeved shirt and shorts, and I even brought along my Amazon Kindle to read a bit of Ovid's Metamorphoses at the bus stop.

I hopped on the bus to meet some soldiers from the California Reserves who were mortified that I'd be wearing shorts in this weather, as they were clad in heavy fleece jackets and gloves. I explained to them that this is typical summer weather for Upstate NY.

Plus I pointed to an excessive amount of hair on my arms and legs. After all, you always see Luke Skywalker and Han Solo bundled up on the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, but Chewbacca just runs around in the snow as if nothing bothers him. Maybe this is a case against manscaping, who knows.

Iraq on its feet for now?

Christian Science Monitor ran an interesting article a few days back chronicling the security situation in Iraq. While the title rings optimistic, it is important to heed some of the warnings in the article regarding the delicate balance of power which could easily shift come 2009:

"I think there is wide recognition that the role of the United States – the leverage of the United States – has diminished and will diminish further," says a senior Iraqi official. "Some will welcome this but, ironically, those who were so opposed to the Americans before are alarmed by it."

"I want to kiss you," jokes Abu Ibrahim, a jovial Sunni security official to US Army 1st Lt. Benjamin Dalton. Abu Ibrahim, formally known as Mohammad Abu Alaa, heads 300 Sons of Iraq, a neighborhood security force, in Baghdad's Amariyah neighborhood.

His mother, three sisters, and his grandmother were killed when a US cruise missile hit a shelter in Amariyah in 1991, but like many of the other almost 90,000, largely Sunni Sons of Iraq, he has aligned himself with the Americans.

As always, good news, but the reason for the Sunni enthusiasm is a bit disturbing, as the article mentions that the Sunni locals want the American protection from the Shia majority, headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is currently in control of the Iraqi government. The long-running fissures in Iraqi society need to be patched if any long-standing peace is to be achieved. The article concludes:

Concern over Iraq's stability has turned from threats from extremists to more complicated political fissures.

"Politics is partly show but it is also a reflection of the struggles going on within society," says a senior Iraqi official. "If we don't address the underlying political issues the security gains could unravel. If we don't address the political issues we risk a confrontation among the mainstreams as opposed to the extremists."

The SOFA has also sparked fears among counterterrorism analysts and some Iraqi officials that gains made against Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups could be significantly set back as American forces withdraw and are replaced by Iraqi security forces that are still disproportionately Shiite.

"I'm worried," says one senior Iraqi official. "This is one area the Sunnis had major, major concerns about – they say we trust the Americans more than we trust the Iraqi security forces – this is not a statement of confidence in the present state of affairs of Iraq."

YES!

Looks like I got a brand-new Amazon Kindle to replace my old one free of charge from Amazon.com!

For those of you that read a lot of books and newspapers (and I'm one of them), the Kindle really is the device for you. Particularly back in the US where you can get books and newspapers delivered to you automatically over the Kindle's wireless transfer feature. Now I don't have to surf around to buy a copy of the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal...I just get it on my Kindle, along with hundreds of other books.

While the book selection is limited for now, I think I can really see this being the way of the future. Nothing can quite beat the feel of a paperback, but for carrying around a book collection on the go, you'll want the Kindle.

Performance in the desert is still under scrutiny, though. I had a screen issue with my old Kindle (although I suspect it wasn't related to being in Kuwait), but Amazon replaced it for free, so the warranty is definitely a plus on this device.

Only in...Britain?

The other day, I saw a headline stating that holiday sales were actually up despite the recent economic downturn.

I was beginning to think, "Only in America", until I saw an article that said that sales of lap dances jumped some 469% or so since the recent economic downturn.

My day has come...

Madness in Mumbai

As is the norm in the 21^st Century, the entire world has watched the crisis in India unfold in real-time. The first question on everyone’s mind is, of course, who could have pulled off such a coordinated attack? Recent sources have suggested that an organization in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region known as Lashkar-e-Taiba might be responsible for these attacks.

The rise of this organization represents an interesting pattern in the development of terrorist organizations. Unlike Al Qaeda, which is a “pure” terror organization, LeT is an organization much like Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Organizations such as these may be classified as “terror” organizations, but their military wing is just one aspect of their power. Their true popularity stems from the fact that they, unlike the legitimate central governments in their respective regions, are able to provide essential social services to areas to the local population, typically a minority ethnic community within a nation-state. Their ability to effectively govern their areas has led to “terror” organizations actually becoming an elected body in some countries, as is the case of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The advent of these hybrid terror groups only further demonstrates the US miltary’s need to support nation-building efforts as simply one arm of national power, combined with economic, diplomatic and cultural power. Unless the US is able to fully complete with these groups in all areas of power, the US will find itself grossly outmaneuvered in the sort of warfare which has dominated the early portion of this century, the type of warfare that we often call "4th Generation Warfare".

The link of the day comes from the New Yorker and it regards the nature of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Mail Bag

All right, I got two separate packages in just recently.

The first is from Lauren at Adopt A US Soldier. My first meeting with Lauren is an interesting story. It begins like most of my stories--on the Internet. At the time, I was in college and posting on what is now the largest (and certainly most mischievous) college message board in the US. Lauren was what you might call an "internet troll", often making fun of people. But she was so rip-roaringly hilarious (and anonymous) that I had to meet her in person.

As it turns out, she had just turned 22 and was celebrating her birthday at a local bar near our college. It was quite a remarkable party, as it seems that half the people on the website came out and literally packed the bar to see who had been making fun of them for so long.

Lauren now volunteers at Adopt A US Soldier, and just sent a care package. Let's see what she sent:

Also in this box were several packs of chocolate bars (which got snatched up by a lot of people).

This is an example of a good care package for a few reasons:

1. Toothpaste and floss are always good, but the Gold Bond medicated powder is a must, especially when the hot season rolls around. It's not only good for preventing blisters and athlete's foot, but also a few other moisture-related issues men get in the warm months. Sadly enough, it seems that the local PX is almost always sold out of Gold Bond and other foot care products, but will always have plenty of Crock Pots for sale. I have no idea who buys a Crock Pot in Iraq, especially because no one can cook in the housing units, but they sell Crock Pots.
2. Flavored drink mix (sugar free). This is also a must when the summer months come around, as we drink lots of water, and having a powdered drink mix makes the water a little more palatable, plus it provides some electrolytes.

It seems that Lauren, always the one for a good joke, decided to put in a little humor for the people at US Customs with the packing list:

"Package Contains: Snacks, Lipstick, Nail Polish, Duct Tape"

Also arriving in the mail was a care package from Sarah in Syracuse (hey, that almost rhymes). Let's take a look:


Aha! Looks like Sarah remembered my penchant for healthy snacks and added some jerkey snacks, cliff bars and fruit snacks--these I horded for myself. She also added in a pair of decent flip-flops, as my $.99 flip-flops performed like, well, $.99 flip-flops, adding the note "Do you know how hard it was to find flip-flops in Syracuse, NY in November?!"

This package was just as good as Lauren's, but there was one thing that put it ahead of Lauren's package. That was this:




All in all, I reveled in everyone's jealousy over the Darth Vader figurine. Or at least I humored myself and pretended to revel in everyone's jealousy. Don't judge me.