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Steven Pressfield, author, historian and this year, blogger has made a major revision of his blog, originally an Afghan War-centric site known as “It’s the Tribes, Stupid!”. Pressfield has relaunched the blog today with a sharp new site redesign, a broader focus and a new expert co-blogger, as:

Steven Pressfield Online    

Steve has enlisted scholar-soldier William S. “Mac” McCallister to apply his experience in military affairs and irregular warfare at Agora, a page which will cover the subjects and news formerly housed at “Tribes, where Mac has already put up his first post:

The Reality

Often, ideas are discounted because they don’t mesh with someone else’s concept of reality. I was on the receiving end myself recently, related to my latest recommendations for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. And, well, I’ve shot down the ideas of others in the past, too.

End of day, we have to consider the different realities-because the one thing I think we can all agree on is that, in Afghanistan in particular, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, because the realities on the ground vary so greatly.

“Agora” is a place to consider all of the realities.

Steven will be blogging on “Writing Wednesdays” creativity and other themes on his page, The Creative Process and, I expect, popping in from time to time on Agora as well when the mood strikes.

To those who have written in – I am way behind in my email and will be trrying to catch-up in the next few days.

“The only people celebrating at the Pentagon last week were the Mexicans working on renovating the building.”                               –  Dr. Loren Thompson

It takes a rare class of wit to combine an allusion to an ethnic minority group while shilling for a fabulously overpaid and notoriously dysfunctional industry that is anxious that we are spending too much money on the war wounded. Full story at Danger Room.

Remember people, every dollar wasted on caring for a critically injured combat veteran, or on a pay raise that keeps a private’s family off of food stamps is a dollar that could have gone to cost overruns or a desperately needed executive bonus.

Top Billing! Andrew Exum – CNAS Report:Leverage: Designing a Political Campaign for Afghanistan

Exum has a judicious and deftly played piece of analysis and policy advocacy here that takes as a starting point that the US has few options but to work with the regime of Hamid Karzai, whatever its flaws and previous American mistakes, and then offers his prescriptions for rebuilding that relationship. Exum advocates a strengthened and reorganized civilian agency presence via a “political campaign design”, a template borrowed from military planning and modified to suit the civilian components of the DIME spectrum.

“In the end, by having so vocally and materially committed to the Karzai regime, the United States and its allies are tied to its successes and failures. The goal, then, should be to maximize the former and minimize the latter through focused application of U.S. leverage,” writes CNAS Fellow and author Andrew Exum.  “Designing a political campaign minimizes the role luck plays in whether the United States and its allies are successful.”

By drawing on research conducted through hundreds of interviews with U.S. and NATO military officers and diplomats, policymakers and NGOs in Afghanistan, Exum offers recommendations to design an effective political campaign:1. Convene another strategic review to assess the civilian strategy, not the U.S. and allied military strategy, in Afghanistan. President Obama should ask the tough questions to his secretaries and envoys that he asked his military commander – General Stanley McChrystal – to answer in his fall 2009 review.

2. Build a functioning relationship with Hamid Karzai and demonstrate to the Afghan president that he has an enduring partner in the United States and its allies.

3. Use U.S. and allied leverage to press the government of Afghanistan to either hold elections for district governors or appoint competent governors from Kabul. Effective local governance is a prerequisite for U.S. and allied forces to institute aid and development projects that are essential to addressing the factors driving conflict and violence at the local level

Hat tip to Steve Pampinella. 

I disagree with continuing to hitch our war to Karzai for a number of reasons, but as the USG is going to continue down this path regardless, they might as well look at Exum’s recs to see how they might do so with greater returns on the dollars spent and blood shed.

The New Republic (Nicholas Schmidle) – In a Ditch

Crazies 2.0 in Pushtunistan are here. This is not your Father’s Islamist radicalism.

It’s important to consider what Khawaja might have been doing in North Waziristan. The Pakistani army is apparently gearing up for an offensive there against the Taliban, akin to the ones conducted in Swat and South Waziristan last year. In his confession from captivity, Khawaja claimed that he was sent by two former ISI chiefs to broker a deal with the militants, telling them that they’ll be spared if they simply aim their weapons towards Afghanistan, rather than on targets in Pakistan. It’s also been reported that Khawaja had arranged for the kidnapped British journalist to meet with Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader rumored dead who has recently surfaced. That Khawaja, on either mission, would be kidnapped and murdered illustrates a profound evolution that’s occurred in Pakistan over recent years concerning the dynamic between the ISI and their one-time jihadi clients.

Bill Roggio – US pressures Pakistan to target North Waziristan

The Pakistani military has been reluctant to move into North Waziristan, citing concerns about its forces being overstretched due to offensives in neighboring tribal agencies, including South Waziristan, Arakzai, and Bajaur. But the real reason, US officials say, is that Pakistan is reluctant to move against the so-called “good Taliban” groups – those who wage war against NATO in Afghanistan and serve as jihadist depth against arch-enemy India.

“It is time for Pakistan to go in there [North Waziristan] and gut the Taliban and al Qaeda once and for all,” a top US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. “They are hitting us in Afghanistan and are trying to hit us at home, and this has to be stopped. Airstrikes alone won’t solve this problem,” the source said, referring to the attacks carried out by unmanned Predators against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and camps in North Waziristan.

Pundita –U.S. to Pakistan: We’re really, really upset with you this time so we’ll have to give you more money

“There’s going to be enough here to trigger a policy debate,” predicted one senior official with access to U.S. intelligence on Pakistan and involvement in White House discussions about the bombing attempt. …What U.S. intelligence on Pakistan?

Cut to the sound of chirping crickets.

 Foreign Policy (Michael Innes) – COIN confusion

Are COIN and CT “incompatible”? Are the terms “globalized insurgency and counterinsurgency” hopelessly muddled?

Now things not related to Pakistan or Afghanistan or terrorism…… 

Automatic Ballpoint –Reagan, Thatcher, and the ‘Tilt’ 

Falklands si, Malvinas no! 🙂

WIRED (Ryan Singell) – Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

Yes.

The New Atlantis (Ivan Kenneally) – The Technocratic American University

….The modern university’s mission to promote the rational autonomy of the individual is in tension with its charge to cultivate the virtues necessary for civic life. This conflict, between the rejection of philosophical authority and the concession to the need for moral authority, reflects modernity’s sanguine optimism regarding the coincidence of intellectual and moral virtue. In this respect, both the university and the modern theory out of which it was born take quite literally Socrates’ ironic identification of virtue with knowledge.

Joseph Fouche – Saturday Night’s All Right For Linking

This saves me time of typing “hat tip”.

That’s it!

New acquisitions….

Street Without Joy: The French Debacle In Indochina by Dr. Bernard Fall

The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture by “Ishmael Jones“

Sadly, my effort to “stay on the wagon” and refrain from the purchase of books until I wade through some of my unread shelves is failing miserably. I also think this will be a COIN heavy year for the 2010 reading list.

ADDENDUM:

My colleague, Lexington Green, points to this fine review of The Human Factor by fellow Chicago Boyz blogger, James McCormick:

Mini-Book Review – Jones – The Human Factor

….Other reviews of this book have proclaimed Human Factor a rather boring recollection of examples of institutional ineptitude and better as a guidebook for potential employees than a useful description of the CIA but I feel this is in fact the most useful book on the CIA’s clandestine service since:

Orrin Deforest and David Chanoff, Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam, Simon & Schuster, 1990, 294 pp.

David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service, Atheneum, 1977, 309 pp.

which covered clandestine case officer activities, first person, in Vietnam and Latin America.

Like these two aforementioned titles, Human Factor focuses on the day-to-day challenges of being a covert case officer … the “teeth” in any intelligence organization. It is noteworthy that the Director of Central Intelligence has rarely, if ever, been one of those covert (non-State Department) officers. It’s as if your dentist was being overseen by experts in small-engine mechanics.

Ishmael recounts the minutiae of what reports he needed to write, the porous e-mail systems he had to manipulate, and the permissions he needed to gain. The timing and delays of decisions from Langley … the phrasing and terminology that was necessary to get anyone back in the US to allow any activity whatsoever. As a former stock broker, Jones was entirely comfortable with the challenges of “cold-calling” and dealing with “No” over and over again. But this wasn’t the case for his fellow trainees or for any of his superiors. At every turn, he was able to contrast his experience in the Marines (and military culture), and with Wall Street’s “make the call” ethos, with what he was experiencing as one of the most at-risk members of the Agency

Read the rest here.