“Some say Google is God,” Sergey Brin once said. “Others say Google is Satan.” The same has often been thought of the United States of America. Bob Woodward claims “the dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists,” a program “which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.”
“It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have,” Woodward said.
In “The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008,” Woodward disclosed the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders.
Woodward has described in his latest book, the War Within, how George Bush spearheaded a makeover of US strategy in Iraq when it was clear that things were not going well. But Woodward argues that other improvements were coming online as well, of which the Surge was only one aspect and therefore the Surge was not entirely central to the victory at all. CNN summarizes Woodward’s argument.
Woodward, associate editor of the Washington Post, wrote that along with the Surge and the new covert tactics, two other factors helped reduce the violence. One was the decision of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to order a cease-fire by his Mehdi Army. The other was the “Anbar Awakening” movement that saw Sunni tribes aligning with U.S. troops to battle al Qaeda in Iraq.
But Max Boot argues that Woodward is putting strategy and tactics on the same level. Better tactical methods alone cannot win a war if strategy is flawed. But a good strategy suddenly makes all the tactical advantages much more effective because they are employed within a winning framework. According to Boot, advances like the Manhattan-style project to take out terrorists were the servants of the Surge, not its drivers. And the Surge itself was an expression of a different way of thinking about winning the war in Iraq. Max Boot asked in his Commentary article why things suddenly became more effective with the Surge. His answer? Because a framework had been established in which it all made sense:
Far be it for me to quarrel with “authoritative sources” or to take anything away from the Joint Special Operations Command which was responsible for for taking down so many bad guys. . . . But ask yourself this question: Why did JSOC’s efforts suddenly become so much more successful starting in the late spring of 2007? Might it possibly be because of the surge, which put large numbers of U.S. troops into neighborhoods where they could provide sufficient security to make more Iraqis willing to come forward and provide invaluable intelligence on Al Qaeda and Special Groups terrorists? The special operators had been working in Iraq since 2003 and it was not until the arrival of more regular troops that violence became to fall dramatically. If we had stuck mainly to a commando-focused campaign-as so many, including the Democratic leadership, wanted to do-the odds of success would have been no greater than they were in 2006, notwithstanding all of the “highly classified techniques” incorporated by JSOC.
The conceptual breakthrough was to realize that winning the information and intelligence war depended on securing the population because that was the greatest source of actionable intelligence. Until that was accomplished, the intelligence war could not be decisively won; and neither American weapons nor military assistance to Iraq could be used to best effect. The decisive battle in the intelligence war was to liberate the human information locked up in the Iraqi population. That could be achieved by persuading the Iraqi population that America would not abandon them; that it would keep them safe. Once this happened then both participation in the Iraqi Army and “tips” were destined to grow exponentially.
William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal makes this exact point about the Surge: “the surge was a shift in mission, not simply an addition of five brigades. Until the surge, we had pursued a political solution, hoping that the answer to Iraq was the rise of a democratic government that would persuade Iraqis to come together for their future. The surge, by contrast, finally recognized the obvious: Until Iraqis started feeling safe in their own homes and neighborhoods, there would be no compromise or rebuilding.”
This is a distinctinctly different approach from the strategies advocated by Biden and Obama to pressure the Iraqi politicians into settling their differences by threatening to withdraw US troops, in the belief that a rapid withdrawal would force all parties to ‘get serious’ about resolving their political problems. Mother Jones described Joe Biden’s “partition” strategy and Barack Obama’s prescription for a simple withdrawal. Both were really extensions of the failed “political solution” taken to the limit; leaving the problem of creating stability in Iraq entirely up to the Iraqis. Those who were critical of Rumsfeld’s bicycle “training wheels” approach to solving the political problems in Iraq should fairly recognize that Biden’s innovation consisted in specifying three bicycles instead of one, while Obama wanted to just push the trainee cyclist down the hill and hope for the best.
In a July 2007 town hall event, Obama said, “[Partition] may end up being the best solution, but here’s the thing. We can’t impose it on the Iraqis. The Iraqis have to make the decision themselves…. If the Iraqi government believes that it can form a unified government they should do that. If they want a soft partition, they should do that. If they want us simply to leave, we can do that too. But they have to make a series of decisions.”
That might have been a reasonable approach if it had any chance of working. But neither partition nor withdrawal would have unleashed the reservoirs of information from a frightened population that alone could reduce the violence in Iraq. My guess is that both Biden’s retrograde movement into partition or Obama’s curiously passive wait-and-see would have kept the population on the fence, unwilling to commit one way or the other to a central government. In both cases Iraq would probably have collapsed into a morass and not even the ‘Manhattan-style’ technology could change that. But the Surge made it possible to release both the informational energy and use it to build political stability. And the results were devastating.
Joby Warrick and Robin Wright of the Washington Post describe the desperate straits of Iraqi insurgents striving to escape from a targeted US strike capability fueled by the intelligence from the Iraqi population. “Abu Uthman, whose fierce attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians in Fallujah had earned him a top spot on Iraq’s most-wanted list, had been reduced to shuttling between hideouts in a Baghdad slum, hiding by day for fear neighbors might recognize him. In the end, a former associate-turned-informant showed local authorities the house where Uthman was sleeping. On Aug. 11, U.S. troops kicked in the door and handcuffed him.” Uthman was lucky. For others not a knock on the door but a missile bolting down from the blue — the so-called “Hand of Allah” — would be their last experience.
Headquartered in an old concrete hangar on the Balad Air Base, which once housed Saddam Hussein’s fighter aircraft, about 45 miles north of Baghdad, the Joint Task Force in Iraq runs fusion cells in the north, west and south and in Baghdad, U.S. officials said.
The headquarters bustles like the New York Stock Exchange, with long-haired computer experts working alongside wizened intelligence agents and crisply clad military officers, say officials who have worked there or visited. … Huge computer screens hang from the ceiling, displaying aerial surveillance images relayed from Predator, Schweizer and tiny Gnat spycraft.
For the Joint Task Force, the CIA provides intelligence analysts and spycraft with sensors and cameras that can track targets, vehicles or equipment for up to 14 hours. FBI forensic experts dissect data, from cellphone information to the “pocket litter” found on extremists. Treasury officials track funds flowing among extremists and from governments. National Security Agency staffers intercept conversations or computer data, and members of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency use high-tech equipment to pinpoint where suspected extremists are using phones or computers. …
Data gathered in a raid at midnight — collected by helmet-mounted cameras that can scan rooms, people, documents and cellphone entries and relay the pictures back to headquarters — often lead to a second or third raid before dawn, according to U.S. officials. … “It’s been the synergy, it’s been the integration that has had such an impact.”
Synergy had a name. And that name was the Surge. It was the combination of protecting intelligence sources, exploiting the information and feeding it back into the system in the form of increased security and more actionable information that was fatal to the Iraqi insurgency. Finding the correct organizational and social expression of strategy is one of hardest challenges of war. All of the technologies available in Iraq are also available to the Afghan/Pakistani theater. But the correct vehicle to combine them has not yet been found. And that challenge — to find an Afghan/Pakistani equivalent of the Surge — is a problem which the US is still trying to solve. The ongoing search for a winning strategy is a testament to the importance of strategy. Not just the sword, but the idea behind the sword, is what counts.
(Hat tip: DL)
Tip Jar.
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
62 Comments
1. TALCHESS:Fascinating post. Pray that the NYT and other MSM types of similar persuasion do not read it, and continue on their increasingly oblivious path.
Sep 9, 2008 - 6:47 pm 2. NahnCee:I happened to see that little bit of the Woodward interview on “60 Minutes”. Woodward specified several times that the US had invented a new “weapon” — a physical thing, not a process, was what I was understanding him to say. He mentioned other “things” like, for example, the steam engine or the nuclear bomb as being in the same category as this new “device” that the US had come up with.
I’ve looked in various places yesterday and today for someone to talk about whatever this “thing” is but there’s overwhelming quiet about it.
I’m a little disappointed if all he was talking about was the Surge strategy and then following it up with a really comprehensive database of bad guys.
Sep 9, 2008 - 6:56 pm 3. Lifeofthemind:The idea about secrets is that they are supposed to be, secret. The desire of government bureaucrats to over classify their errors is a problem. That is not a reason to extend the presumptive freedom of the press to military operations during an active conflict. The Supreme Court was simply wrong on the Pentagon Papers case.
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:20 pm 4. jwillie:Not to put too fine a point on it, but Woodward is full of shit!
Excellent post Wretchard – you are a virtual real-time, master aggregator and assimilator of disparate information sources, almost like an “information trader”. How may screens do you read at once? No wonder the thoughts of the preceding post were on your mind.
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:21 pm 5. Cannoneer No. 4:Learning To Think Like A Cop
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:32 pm 6. wretchard:Most of this post is owed to tips from a reader. In reality most of the posts are owed, at least in their inception, in one form or the other, to readers or commenters.
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:32 pm 7. david levine:Here is the quote from the 60 Minutes Interview:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/04/60minutes/main4415771_page3.shtml
CBS) But beyond all of that, Woodward reports, for the first time, that there is a secret behind the success of the surge: a sophisticated and lethal special operations program.
“This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders. That is one of the true breakthroughs,” Woodward told Pelley.
“But what are we talking about here? It’s some kind of surveillance? Some kind of targeted way of taking out just the people that you’re looking for? The leadership of the enemy?” Pelley asked.
“I’d love to go through the details, but I’m not going to,” Woodward replied.
The details, Woodward says, would compromise the program.
“For a reporter, you don’t allow much,” Pelley remarked.
“Well no, it’s with reluctance. From what I know about it, it’s one of those things that go back to any war, World War I, World War II, the role of the tank, and the airplane. And it is the stuff of which military novels are written,” Woodward said.
“Do you mean to say that this special capability is such an advance in military technique and technology that it reminds you of the advent of the tank and the airplane?” Pelley asked.
“Yeah,” Woodward said. “If you were an al Qaeda leader or part of the insurgency in Iraq, or one of these renegade militias, and you knew about what they were able to do, you’d get your ass outta town.”
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:36 pm 8. Cannoneer No. 4:Task Force Black
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:39 pm 9. Cannoneer No. 4:The Secret War Rooms of Iraq
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:42 pm 10. Cannoneer No. 4:How Iraq Changed The Game
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:51 pm 11. Son of Max:If such a weapon exists, may it remain secret as long as man remains capable of evil.
If it exists, could it be nano-spy gear? Smart dandruff perhaps.
Sep 9, 2008 - 7:55 pm 12. Cannoneer No. 4:JPL: Use Sats to Track Terrorists by Their Shadows
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:07 pm 13. Cannoneer No. 4:KBR Bans Cells Phones in Entire Middle East and Central Asia
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:14 pm 14. New Paltz Journal » Blog Archive » A little bit of how the U.S. got serious in Iraq:[...] Fernandez explains how the tactical side worked as part of the comprehensive surge [...]
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:15 pm 15. 3Case:“Opening with Gen. Casey also says something about Mr. Woodward. There’s a case, I suppose, for using the general who opposed the surge to open what is hailed as the definitive account of that surge (not to mention using Robert McNamara, the Defense secretary who helped lose Vietnam to end the book). Surely, however, that would be the same case for wrapping the definitive account of the strategy that brought Robert E. Lee to Appomattox around Gen. McClellan.“
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:34 pm 16. Charles:But beyond all of that, Woodward reports, for the first time, that there is a secret behind the success of the surge: a sophisticated and lethal special operations program.
//////////////////
its not the point of the spear but rather the guidance system.
I talked to a embassy guy the other day. He went on about one thing or another. His discourse was totally chaotic. It occured to me that if US embassies had the same kind of guidance systems as US battlefield commanders had they might be a bit more effective.
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:43 pm 17. Squirrel:John Robb on Woodward’s claims:
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:49 pm 18. whiskey:http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/09/journal-pin-poi.html
That’s funny. Because I recall reading about this “super-secret” stuff in the Wall Street Journal, and online on many outlets. The tasking of a cooperative effort between the Marines, SAS, Delta Force, the Air Force, and others was no secret.
It was in fact much publicized, no doubt as a show of force.
In fact, various Mil Blogs and military press outlets have been talking about this for YEARS. As the ultimate in “jointness” i.e. using Spec Ops in combination with guys on the ground patrolling.
Their point — the Spec Ops guys would not survive without the grunts in big numbers on the ground.
Sep 9, 2008 - 9:03 pm 19. Annoy Mouse:Most of the post is attributable to the sharp mind of the host. Brilliant take Wretchard.
It is a chicken egg question and not a gee-whiz technology or boots on the ground problem. The Army always set up as an intelligence/command post, or in a strategic sense, a hammer and anvil of you will. You need both. Slamming a hammer against the air does little.
Technology vs. surge. The technology-slash-special operations argument, incidentally is the Rumsfeld vs. Patton argument.
Sep 9, 2008 - 9:12 pm 20. Amit Green:This article by Wretchard really reminds me of ‘Tooth & Tail’ by Steven Denbeste (from 2003!):
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/Toothandtail.shtml
Wretchard here, is advancing Steven’s argument one point furthur:
Now the tail extends even furthur, to outside the army (and the ‘tooth’ continues to shrink).
Wars in the future will be won mostly on intelligence.
Sep 9, 2008 - 9:22 pm 21. Annoy Mouse:LotM” The Supreme Court was simply wrong on the Pentagon Papers case.”
Haft to agree with you here. Ellsberg, though a fascinating fellow does not successfully explain his transition to Kennedy and Johnson are prudent to it’s Nixon’s war sufficiently well in his own memoir. I read it with astonishment that he does no better at explaining his epiphany. War good me good. War bad me good.
Sep 9, 2008 - 9:45 pm 22. Annoy Mouse:Canoneer:
Task Force Black
“TFB tactics were bold and dangerous, as they went after terrorists who were on their way to an operation (either on foot with explosive belts, or suicide car bombers.) These attacks were are the most carefully planned and executed terrorist operations, and the objective of TFB was to take down the attackers before they could detonate their explosives.”
…
“The TFB operators spent much of their time among Iraqis, so when the Surge Offensive kicked off in early 2007, there was an opportunity to hit many of the suicide bomber support groups hard. By the time the Surge Offensive wound down earlier this year, TFB had taken down (killed or captured) nearly 4,000 Islamic terrorists.”
This nicely captures it. I get confused if a surge is a strategy or a tactic or if preventing an attack at near terminal phase is a strategy or a tactic, but I think they’re all tactics with the strategy of tamping down extreme violence.
Who ya gonna call? Well don’t call your cell partner, the sky net is going to pin point you out of a cloud of relational traffic patterns.
Sep 9, 2008 - 10:06 pm 23. Lifeofthemind:@3Case,
Even his detractors gave Little Mac credit for turning a collection of backwoods civilian boys into the Army that Grant lead into the Wilderness. It is to his credit that when he stood against Lincoln as the Democratic candidate in 1864 McClellan did not repudiate Lincon’s war. By all accounts the troops adored him and then voted for the team and the strategy that promised the bloodiest if surest road to victory.
While I am sure that much good work happened on General Casey’s watch, the Ratlines Campaign that we examined here comes to mind, History may not judge him as favorably. He has shown neither the humanity and principles of McClellan nor the determination and strategic vision of Grant and Petreaus.
That does not mean that I disagree with those old school officers who criticized Rumsfeld’s plan from the beginning for being undermanned. But given the Army we had in 2003 and given the Turkish blockage of the 4th Infantry Division during the initial assault the situation in 2005 was going to be a given. How to press forward from there was the challenge.
Much of what Bush and Rumsfeld did will be praised in the future. Maybe the judgment that traditional heavy forces had to be cut to fund transformation will be found justified. Right now it looks like we need twice the armed forces we have to face very real old fashioned threats.
Sep 9, 2008 - 10:46 pm 24. Cannoneer No. 4:There ya go, Annoy Mouse. Woodward’s “secret program” is not one superweapon, it is a network of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) platforms, and data base analysis techniques borrowed from law enforcement and enhanced for counterinsurgency. Patterns of bad guy activity and networks become visible, our door-kickers hit a node, exploit what they find within hours and go hit other nodes, every night, for weeks, forcing the bad guys to do things they’d rather not, exposing even more nodes, gathering more data for the data base, more laptops for exploitation.
All this relentless door-kicking is tough on the door-kickers. We needed more of them. Thus The Surge.
Sep 9, 2008 - 11:41 pm 25. outa my league:“gathering…more laptops for exploitation”.
We loaded up all the Circuit City’s and Best Buy’s in Baghdad with cheap laptops, the terrorists went nuts, and voila!
All this talk of a modern day “Manhatten Project” awfully much waters down the concept, IUDBM, read up not only on Los Alamos, but also the fasinating & lesser known story of the goings-on at Oak Ridge, Tennessee under the direction of Col. Leslie Groves.
The only current-day equivalent of a “Manhatten Project” to take out bad guys, that I can think of, is Sarah Palin!
Sep 10, 2008 - 12:07 am 26. outa my league:Ooops, sorry, Manhatten, Manhattan, it’s 2am here.
Sep 10, 2008 - 12:11 am 27. Wadeusaf:“Technology vs. surge. The technology-slash-special operations argument, incidentally is the Rumsfeld vs. Patton argument.
The most favorable proposition lies in an admixture of Tech and Boots, SpecOps and Surge. We expect a lot of our soldiers these days, I find it heartening to realize they deliver time and time and time again.
I think Woodward wishes the secret weapon has something to do with ESP and mind melding, that way he could avoid giving credit to anyone for doing the kinds of basic research and follow up that he left on the cocktail circuit long ago.
Sep 10, 2008 - 12:27 am 28. Wadeusaf:The Hand of Allah, (may it always find its mark) is finding more than a few fellows in N. Waziristan, too.
Sep 10, 2008 - 12:32 am 29. Rob:This article is about 6 months old, but it goes to show that the reality may actually be the opposite of how our media portrays things:
Esteem for US rises in Asia
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | April 26, 2008
THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23599516-7583,00.html
Sep 10, 2008 - 1:22 am 30. MG:I suspect the “Secret Weapon” is the database operations that synthesize all forms of data into some sort of graphical portrayal of connections. In short, datamining applied to warfare.
Or, perhaps it is a bunch of freakin’ dolphins with freakin’ lasers mounted to their heads.
Sep 10, 2008 - 1:37 am 31. programmer:Does the Jedi project at Ft. Bragg ring any bells?
Sep 10, 2008 - 3:16 am 32. programmer:Not enough coffee. Hit the submit button before I was through.
The Jedi project is an example of the type of “out of the box” thinking that makes military research and development so darn much fun. In civilian R&D, there can be no failures. In military research there seems to be an attitude of, well let’s look at this because if it works, it will be awesome and if it doesn’t work, we can be reasonably sure the bad guys won’t be using it against us. Young people who want to do really interesting research with real world contributions should seriously look at getting involved in engineering/hard science and working with the so called military/industrial complex after graduation. And where else do you get to design devices that blow things up, pack up your lab and go to the field, live in a tent, and blow things up. A civilian related job is never the same, ever.
Sep 10, 2008 - 3:26 am 33. DanM:MG,
SAIC would be interested in talking to you about how you breached security… They planted the sharks in Michael Myers’ movie as a Red Herring… Expect a knock on the door… Right about…now!
Sep 10, 2008 - 3:32 am 34. starling:Here’s my uninformed speculation concerning the innovation about which Woodward is so tight-lipped: it involves social network analysis. Through trial-and-error, data mining, number crunching, modeling/simulation, and multiple information sources, our guys have figured out how to identify (with a very high degree of certainty) the key node in an otherwise loosely connected and shifting network. That is to say, they know much more now about how to identify the particular SOB whose absence would cause the most damage to the network.
Sep 10, 2008 - 5:02 am 35. Jim Nicholas:Wretchard,
I think you are too modest. Minimizing your own contributions to this site is like attributing most of the success of the surge not to its new strategy but to the Anbar Awakening and Muqtada al-Sadar’s ordering the Mehdi Army to cease fire.
Sep 10, 2008 - 5:23 am 36. Mad Fiddler:The reason folks like Woodward actually believe in tooth fairy imaginings goes back to the utter vacuousness and mushiness of their own culture. The mainstream alleged news media for decades have been busy first posing for, then awarding each other awards for journalism, believing themselves the heroes of the age.
Boy, if you can believe someone like Woodward is a hero, you will believe ANYTHING.
Sep 10, 2008 - 5:37 am 37. RWE:A friend of mine told me of a WWII fighter pilot describing one especially memorable mission.
A force of 57 P-51 Mustangs was on its way into Germany. Suddenly, they noticed a lone ME-109 approaching from the left, flying straight and level directly across their route of flight. No one said anything over the radio, or made any move to go after the German, but all wondered what in the heck he was doing.
They all knew the instant the 109 saw the Mustangs. The airplane jerked as if the pilot had sneezed violently. Then it rolled over on its back, the canopy came open, and the pilot bailed out. None of the P-51s had ever broken formation.
Finally one Mustang pilot asked over the radio “Do we all get to claim 1/57th of a kill?”
What secret weapon caused this reversal in the attitudes within the much vaunted Luftwaffe? When the U.S. entered the war Herman Goring said “Don’t worry about the Americans. They make great refrigerators and fine Chevrolet cars but that is all.” When Mustangs showed up over Berlin Goring was asked if he knew where the Luftwaffe might get some of those refrigerators.
There wasn’t one secret weapon, or at least not just one. There was the Mustang itself, but there were a whole host of things that went with it and before it. And most of those things were not even designed for that purpose originally. Around 2002 the U.S. Army put our a purchase request for backpacks designed to carry “a laptop computer, a water bottle and a 9MM handgun.” A friend of mine sent me that notice with the caption “They are giving the nerds guns!”
We have seen the Terminator. He is a nerd carrying a laptop and a gun, driving a Chevy with a Fridgidare in the back seat.
Sep 10, 2008 - 5:48 am 38. DWMF:A few weeks ago, I bought some DVD packs of the TV series “The Wire”. It seems to me that the Army have developed advanced police techniques to analyze and listen in to gang networks. Like the TV series, but more advanced, especially in analysis and interpretation of the data.
Will these methodologies be given to the police back home too, I wonder?
Sep 10, 2008 - 6:11 am 39. programmer:http://www.periscope.ucg.com/mdb-smpl/weapons/sensors/grdradar/w0003502.shtml
Take a look at the date this was fielded – 1966. If you can’t envision how to use this in a tactical situation, I can provide some hints. Also, consider, this is old Viet Nam era technology.
Sep 10, 2008 - 6:23 am 40. programmer:More old Viet Nam era technology
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBS/is_3_26/ai_67544227
For those not familiar with our capabilities 30 or more years ago, it is hard to imagine what we are capable of now.
I have observed well trained artillery units using Q-4 radars identify incoming mortar rounds, locate the mortar, and have counter mortar fire in the air before the incoming rounds hit the ground.
I suspect technology has increased the response time quite a bit.
Sep 10, 2008 - 6:45 am 41. Armando:I think the surge was more than a military exercise or tactic. It conveyed commitment. The people in Iraq where on the fence believing that the US would not have the will to stay to the end and win. The surge was The US Statement that said “I am here and I am going to win this” That statement convinced many of the fact that they could trust the US determination, and thus they could take the chance with us.
Sep 10, 2008 - 6:48 am 42. Cannoneer No. 4:starling,
Did you see COIN: The Gravity Well from April 23, 2007?
Your 5:02 am on this thread reminded me of it.
Sep 10, 2008 - 6:50 am 43. starling:@ Cannoneer No. 4: no I had not seen this as I rarely read BlackFive. I have nothing against the site, mind you. It’s just not on my regular reading list. The post looks interesting and will read it now.
Sep 10, 2008 - 7:01 am 44. Storm-Rider:In retrospect this is a recapitulation of the struggle that our Founding Fathers endured – our War of Independence from tyranny. The philosophical framework for liberation from tyranny is laid out in our Declaration of Independence. In order to have creative pursuit of happiness you must first have political and economic liberty – human liberty. In order to have human liberty you must first have the right to life – the right to live – the right to defend your and your family’s life.
First life, then liberty and then pursuit of happiness.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Thomas Jefferson
Sep 10, 2008 - 7:58 am 45. slade:Maybe we should get some of those TFB people to implement C4ISR technology to balance the current accounts.
Woodward could write another book.
Sep 10, 2008 - 8:46 am 46. 3Case:“Woodward’s “secret program” is not one superweapon, it is a network of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) platforms, and data base analysis techniques borrowed from law enforcement and enhanced for counterinsurgency.
Woodward is a rube.
@lotm – I thought the point of the WSJ essay was that Woodward’s approach to reporting the success in the War in Iraq was like trying to write about the successful conclusion of the War between the States without getting to General Grant.
Sep 10, 2008 - 9:30 am 47. David M:The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 09/10/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Sep 10, 2008 - 9:49 am 48. Roderick Reilly:While I’m always irritated when journalistic snitches leak state secrets in wartime, I’m delighted to read that the U.S. has chosen to be “ruthless” when that is necessary.
It was, supposedly, George Orwell who said something like, “We sleep better at night knowing that Rough Men are about doing their dirty business on our behalf.”
Let’s raise a glass of our favorite poison to our “Rough Men.”
Sep 10, 2008 - 10:06 am 49. JA:I think the “new weapon” is satellite audio surveillance, combined with impossibly fast and fine-grained sorting analysis, combined with voice-recognition and/or key-word datamining software.
If you talk out loud, you’re dead.
Note, this is a guess.
Sep 10, 2008 - 10:19 am 50. Storm-Rider:“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” George Orwell
“War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.” George Orwell
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson
“As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.” Thomas Jefferson
Sep 10, 2008 - 10:28 am 51. Neo:There was a story sometime back about and intel officer saying that “they can see everything they [insurgents/terrorists] are doing and the they have no idea.”
Sep 10, 2008 - 1:02 pm 52. Al_Batross:This topic reminds me of the one under discussion back when I first stumbled on this site:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/08/unintended-consequences.html
It is a very long thread, and the comments get a bit disorderly towards the end, but I was very struck by the idea that the Jihadis
Sep 10, 2008 - 1:35 pm 53. Bob Hawkins:would be completely unprepared for the eventual and, from their point of view, entirely unintended consequences of their actions,and that their boasting from the shadows would fade away as the shadows
finally closed around them.
What is happening to the Jihadis now may be due to a combination of many things, or of just a few, or perhaps there really is one “silver bullet” technology. Whatever, it certainly sounds like good news, though it has seemed to be a very long and bloody time coming.
I’m tempted to say, “Congratulations, Mr. Woodward, you have discovered the principle of the Objective.”
As far as I can tell, the “new weapon” is: systematically bringing all possible force to bear on the objective of destroying the command structure and high-value assets of the enemy.
The fruits of social science research, and electronic data collection and reporting, allowed this principle to be applied comprehensively even to a diffused target. That’s the big news: something like the kind of concentration of force that an armored corps can put on an opposing armored corps, can now be put on a terrorist/guerrilla force by fast-reacting infantry and special forces. Think about that for a minute.
The Surge was the knockout blow, but it was just part of “all possible force,” set up by the numerous jabs and combinations that preceded it.
Sep 10, 2008 - 4:23 pm 54. Annoy Mouse:Check out the technology and forces employed in the book by Mark Bowden “Killing Pablo”. Pablo was killed in 1993 by a Columbian strike force that worked in conjunction with a joint operations group. Imagine Centra Spike after a decade of refinement, intell, spec ops, law enforcement, and a crazed militia that scared the crap out of the narco terrorists, Los Pepes working in a plausibly deniable alliance. This was all done covert. Imagine how that works in open warfare.
Sep 10, 2008 - 5:45 pm 55. Bob Murphy:@RWE-Neat yarn!
Sep 10, 2008 - 10:04 pm 56. Bob Murphy:I spoke to some old Luftwaffe fighter aces who were all full Colonels in the new Luftwaffe in the mid 1960s. They all spoke good English because they had been trained to fly their new jets in the US.
One told me he was sure they were doomed when the Yanks dropped their camouflage paint jobs and started to polish up their planes to a nice silver.
The USAAF pilots wanted old Kamerade to see them so they would come up to fight.
Heheheheheh. I loves that old American attitude. And the 1,000 bomber raids. No other country could do it. Rich, strong, young, confident and the product of the best system in the world (if not the neatest).
All maybe helped by the fact that the leftist chattering classes were on Sam’s side for once, after the Germans invaded their spiritual homeland.
@DWMF
A few weeks ago, I bought some DVD packs of the TV series “The Wire”. It seems to me that the Army have developed advanced police techniques to analyze and listen in to gang networks. Like the TV series, but more advanced, especially in analysis and interpretation of the data.
Will these methodologies be given to the police back home too, I wonder?
And whether they can use the Army’s other systems to neutralize the targets?:) The Hand of Allah speaks to street gangs? Just kidding, guys (and Nahncee).
Sep 10, 2008 - 10:16 pm 57. Joseph Somsel:While I have no insider information, the key decision on the Surge was not if, but when.
Bush had long asserted that the US would stand down when the Iraqis stood up. Surging extra troops into Iraqi would have been premature until the Iraqis had a creditable army and a cohesive government willing and able to command it. Once the Iraqis were ready to roll and to hold the reclaimed territory, THEN it was time for us to commit our reserves to a final flushout of A-Q. The two elements of extra US troops AND real Iraqi governance made the Surge work. Prior to that, the US was just keeping a lid on things and attriting fanatical young Muslim fighters.
I think McCain understood this program/timeline and was able to get ahead of it politically and use it to his advantage. A few months before the Surge was ready to roll, he started demanding it publicly, thereby taking credit for prescience and great stategic accuman.
Programmer – your encouragement to work on military R&D by bright young engineers rings true. At the last place I worked, the brightest guy had worked on the human sniffer program for the Viet Nam war. The idea was a machine that could smell humans and so warn our troops when the NVA or VC were hidding in the bushes. He even took it to the field for testing. Today, he is designing the computerized controls for new nuclear power plants.
Sep 11, 2008 - 12:46 pm 58. Fletcher Christian:Storm Rider; the central problem of democracy is “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Thomas Jefferson
It simply isn’t true. Some people are inferior to others, by any yardstick one cares to name. And thus people who have no capacity whatsoever to really understand the issues they are voting about have an equal right to those who have; and thus politicians get into power by promising “bread and circuses” or, to put it another way, by bribing the voters with their own money.
I may be paraphrasing this: “No democracy long survives the discovery by the electorate that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”.
No, I don’t have an answer to this problem. Perhaps qualification requirements for voting, of which the best I’ve seen is Heinlein’s.
Sep 11, 2008 - 3:23 pm 59. Ravalli County News » Blog Archive » A Winning Strategy in Iraq:[...] “The conceptual breakthrough was to realize that winning the information and intelligence war … [...]
Sep 11, 2008 - 7:01 pm 60. Bob Murphy:In these times I quite agree with Heinlein’s in Starship Troopers.
Sep 11, 2008 - 9:05 pm 61. Cannoneer No. 4:But Fletcher, America was not founded as a democracy but a Republic with all kinds of checks and balances to avoid the kind of democratic/populist thang you speak of.
That is one of the reasons the founding fathers, for instance, made a bicameral Congress where there were two Senators from each state regardless its size or population base.
And I guess that’s the reason we have a President with a direct mandate from voters as head of the Executive Branch rather than a Prime Minister who is selected by his party and is a member of the legislative side of government.
And, of course, that is why we have an explicit Bill of Rights compared with the UK’s Common Law.
And I guess that Bill of Rights might be the main reason we are citizens here and not subjects as in the UK.
Our rights come from God/nature/Tao whatever you want to call it, not from any monarch or government. And they are inalienable rights.
It’s got nothing to do with government giving us anything.
They’ll do as they’re told or we replace them every four years and, if all else fails, we’ve got the 2nd Amendment.
The army and marines have been doing the same thing police forces and corporations have been doing for over a decade; taking data from many different sources and quickly sorting out what all the pieces mean. It’s called fusion and data mining, and it’s a weapon that is having a dramatic impact on what many thought was an unwinnable war.
Speed Becomes A Weapon
Sep 12, 2008 - 4:47 am 62. buddy larsen:I second that by Murphy –in spades.
Sep 13, 2008 - 12:17 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.