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The latest in the series of COIN interviews by Octavian Manea:

COIN and Other Four-Letter Words: Interview with AfPak Hand Major Fernando Lujan 

OM:  In early 2009, I made a tour of a few DC think tanks.  At the time everybody was talking about COIN. Why did COIN become a dirty word, today? Why do you still believe in COIN doctrine?

FL:  Well, frankly I get a bit nervous whenever I hear the words “believe” and “doctrine” in the same sentence… the same way I get nervous when I hear people refer to the current counterinsurgency manual, FM 3-24, as “the good book.”  The counterinsurgency manual should never be dogma, never be seen as some sort of universal solution.  The manual was an attempt to change the culture of the Army at a time when we desperately needed it.  It was written by a group of very smart people who tried to include some lessons from Cold War-era insurgencies, but let’s not fool ourselves–it was written in extremis, for forces struggling through their rotations in Iraq from 2006-2010.  It did a pretty good job helping those units.. and it serves as a decent framework for one type of counterinsurgency effort–the resource intensive, ‘boots heavy’ sort that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 But we should not lose sight of the fact that this type of massive COIN effort is only one extreme of a long continuum of policy options, undertaken when the situation in both countries had already deteriorated so much that major reinforcement became the ‘least bad’ choice in the minds of our civilian leaders.  If we want to keep COIN from becoming a ‘dirty word,’ as you say, we need to make this distinction clear, and leave room for alternate, smaller footprint models.  The next version of the doctrine should not just pull lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan–but also from Colombia, the Philippines, El Salvador, the Sahel, and the myriad of other places we’ve been involved in over the past decades.  To the credit of the Army and Marines, Ft. Leavenworth is in the midst of rewriting the manual as we speak–but it remains to be seen what kind of message the final product will send.  Will we have a cookie cutter model with the five standard lines of effort, built around heavy resources and a 5,000-man brigade combat team or will we have a manual that offers a broad toolkit of different approaches–some civilian-led or embassy ‘country team’ based, some more heavily reliant on targeting and offshore training or 3rd party actors, et cetera.  Knowing what we know about land wars in Asia, I’d personally much rather see the latter…..

Read the rest here.

“The horror! The horror!

Charles Cameron sparked a discussion with his doublequotes post on two colonels, the late strategist John Boyd and the fictional monster,  Walter Kurtz from Francis Ford Coppola’s classic Vietnam War film homage to Joseph Conrad,  Apocalypse Now.  Kurtz is a disturbing figure, one who is recurrent in literature and history going back to Homer’s Iliad. A superlative warrior who excels above all others who nonetheless sheds all trace of civilization in his descent into barbarism. While the fall of a heroic individual can take many narrative forms, Kurtz is of a particular and dreaded kind of fallen man, the warlord.

Warlords are fascinating and repellent figures who seem to thrive best when the normal order of a society is breaking down, permitting the strong and ruthless to carve out their reputations in blood and infamy. As I have written previously:

Kent’s Imperative had a post up that would have been worthy of Coming Anarchy:

Enigmatic biographies of the damned 

“….Via the Economist this week, we learn of the death of an adversary whose kind has nearly been forgotten. Khun Sa was a warlord who amassed a private army and smuggling operation which dominated Asian heroin trafficking from remotest Burma over the course of nearly two decades. In the end, despite indictment in US courts, the politics of a failed state permitted him to retire as an investor and business figure, and to die peacefully in his own bed.

The stories of men such as these however shaped more than a region. They are the defining features of the flow of events in a world of dark globalization. Yet these are not the biographies that are taught in international relations academia, nor even in their counterpart intelligence studies classrooms. The psychology of such men, and the personal and organizational decision-making processes of the non-state groups which amassed power to rival a princeling of Renaissance Europe, are equally as worthy of study both for historical reasons as well as for the lessons they teach about the nature of empowered individuals.

….There are no shortage of warlords for such a study. Among the living we have Walid Jumblatt, the crafty chief of the Druze during the 1980’s civil war in Lebanon, the egomaniacal and democidal Charles Taylor of Liberia, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the Islamist mujahedin commander and a large assortment of Somali, Colombian, Indonesian and El Salvadoran militiamen and paramilitaries. The history of the twentieth century alone offers up such colorful characters as “The Dogmeat General“, the ghoulishly brutal Ta Mok of the Khmer Rouge, “The Mad Baron” Ungern von Sternberg, Captain Hermann Ehrhardt and Pancho Villa among many others.

What would such a historical/cross-cultural/psychological “warlord study” reveal ? Primarily the type of man that the German journalist Konrad Heiden termed “armed bohemians”. Men who are ill-suited to achieving success in an orderly society but are acutely sensitive to minute shifts that they can exploit during times of uncertainty, coupled with an amoral sociopathology to do so ruthlessly. Paranoid and vindictive, they also frequently possess a recklessness akin to bravery and a dramatic sentimentality that charms followers and naive observers alike. Some warlords can manifest a manic energy or regularly display great administrative talents while a minority are little better than half-mad gangsters getting by, for a time, on easy violence, low cunning and lady luck.

Every society, no matter how civilized or polite on the surface, harbors many such men within it. They are like ancient seeds waiting for the drought-breaking rains.

There are occasionally positive portrayals of warlords. Ahmed Shah Massoud, “the Lion of Panjshir” who fought tenaciously first against the Soviets, then later against the murderous Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s army of thugs and the Taliban’s fanatics, providing a modicum of civilized governance to ordinary Afghans wherever his power ran, until his assassination by al Qaida. The cagey and mercurial Walid Jumblatt, made the transition from Druze warlord in the 1980’s to Lebanese politician and something of an elder statesman.

In literature, Xenophon was the de facto strategos of the retreating Greek mercenaries in The Anabasis of Cyrus, cut a noble example, but like Massoud, this is a rarity. In recent fiction, Stephen Pressfield created as an antagonist in The Profession, General James Salter, a totemic and caesarian figure who takes on the great powers with his PMC forces with impressive ruthlessness. In the popular fantasy series of George R.R. Martin that began with The Game of Thrones, the notable warlord is the outlandish, cruel and somewhat demented Vargo Hoat, who leads a freebooting company of misfit brigands “The Brave Companions“, whose nonstop atrocities and ludicrous pretensions lead all the other characters to call them “the Bloody Mummers“.

Given the world’s recent experiences with the Lord’s Resistance Army, General Butt Naked and the uprisings in Syria and Libya, I think Martin and Coppola have captured warlordism in it’s most frequent incarnation.

[by J. Scott Shipman]

The Twilight War, The Secret History of America’s Thirty-year Conflict with Iran, by David Crist

When President Obama made a heartfelt opening, a smug Iranian leadership viewed it as a ruse or the gesture of a weak leader. Iran spurned him. Obama fell back on sanctions and CENTCOM; Iran fell back into its comfortable bed of terrorism and warmongering. Soon it may no longer be twilight; the light is dimming, and night may well be approaching at long last. [emphasis added]

Thus concludes senior government historian David Crist’s The Twilight War, and be assured Crist’s language is not hyperbole. Crist masterfully details the tumult of U.S.-Iranian relations from the Carter administration to present day. Using recently released and unclassified archived data from principals directly involved in shaping and making American foreign policy, Crist provides the reader an up-front view of “how the sausage is made;” and, as with sausage, the view often isn’t pretty for either side. Crist’s access wasn’t limited to U.S. policy makers, as he conducted interviews with principles on the other side as well, for instance, he had secret meetings/interviews with pro-Iranian Lebanese officials in south Beirut. In all, Crist estimated he interviewed over “four hundred individuals in the United States and overseas.”

Crist begins his story with the Shah of Iran in the last days of his leadership, as popular sentiment was turning against both his regime, as well as his American enablers. He reveals the Carter administration’s fleeting notion of military intervention following the fall of the Shah, and includes details how the clerics reigned in professional Iranian military members, purging the “unreconstructed royalists.” From the start, the U.S. learned how difficult, if indeed impossible, relations were going to be with the new Iranian leadership. One State Department report summed up the situation:

It is clear that we are dealing with an outlook that differs fundamentally from our own, and a chaotic internal situation. Our character, our society are based on optimism—a long history of strength and success, the possibility of equality, the protection of institutions, enshrined in a constitution, the belief in our ability to control our own destiny. Iran, on the other hand has a long and painful history of foreign invasions, occupations, and domination. Their outlook is a function of this history and the solace most Iranians have found in Shi’a Islam. They place a premium on survival. They are manipulative, fatalistic, suspicious, and xenophobic.

While I am certain the writer of this report was not intending to be prophetic, as it turns out this paragraph captures the essence of our conflict. Each American president has thought himself equal to the challenge and each has thus far failed.

The Twilight War includes the birth of Hezbollah, accounts of the Marine barracks bombing in 1983 (from the men who were there), and the details of the Kuwaiti request for American protection of their tanker fleet from the Iranians. From this decision, the U.S. committed military force to protect Middle East oil—a difficult and at times, contentious decision. This decision resulted in continued sporadic confrontations between the U.S. and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf.

Crist’s book is an illustration writ-large of a book previously reviewed here at Zenpundit.com; Derek Leebaert’s Magic and Mayhem, The Delusions of American Foreign Policy—as both “magic” and “mayhem” figure large in our on-going relationship with Iran. Most U.S. administrations when dealing with Iran came to rely on the “magic, ” and often divorced, or worse, ignored the realities.

At 572 pages, the fast paced narrative is a must read for anyone wanting insight into the origins and issues that remain in the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict. The Twilight War is exhaustively sourced.  Crist says in the Notes his book was twenty-years in the making and it shows. Further, this book comes with excellent maps, so keeping up with the geography is made easier.

Tom Ricks said, “this is the foreign policy book of the year, perhaps many years,” and Ricks may be right. The Twilight War is an important and timely book on a vital topic, and comes with my strongest recommendation.

Postscript:

A copy of The Twilight War was provided to this reviewer by the publisher.

[ by Charles Cameron — of the Naked Breasts of Justice and the Verse of the Sword ]
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Two more quick notes on the Gunpowder & Lead / Bernard Finel discussion:

The first concerns similarities between a figure — not in this case, Rick Santorum — on the American Christian right and his Iranian counterparts:

These two instances — which if I recall correctly, were reported within a month of one another between Dec 2001 and Feb 2002 — can be used as indicators to illuminate both the similarity and the difference between religiously-influenced thinking as between two nations and two religions. The similarity — a common Puritanism, to give it a name — is immediately apparent: but the difference — that the Christian Ashcroft merely veils the statue, whereas the Iranians grind off the figure’s breasts — surely speaks to a deeper intensity on the part of the Iranian authorities.

**

My second point is by way of counterpoint to my discussion of RJ Rushdoony in Recommended Reading: salad.

A recent COMOPS paper, How Islamic Extremists Quote the Qur’an [.pdf], explores a substantial body of jihadist materials:

Islamist extremists make heavy use of the Qur’an (Islam’s most sacred text) in their strategic communication. This study analyzed the most frequently cited or quoted verses in the Center for Strategic Communication’s database of over 2,000 extremist texts. The texts date from the years 1998 to 2011, and originate primarily from the Middle East and North Africa. Taking this data as a starting point, we provide a qualitative analysis of the historical contexts and core narrative components of the cited passages.

and notes:

The most surprising is the near absence of the well-known “Verse of the Sword” (9:5) from the extremist texts. Widely regarded as the most militant or violent passage of the Qur’an, it is treated as a divine call for offensive warfare on a global scale. It is also regarded as a verse which supersedes over one hundred other verses of the Qur’an that counsel patience, tolerance, and forgiveness.

We conclude that verses extremists cite from the Qur’an do not suggest an aggressive offensive foe seeking domination and conquest of unbelievers, as is commonly assumed. Instead they deal with themes of victimization, dishonor, and retribution. This shows close integration with the rhetorical vision of Islamist extremists.

Based on this analysis we recommend that the West abandon claims that Islamist extremists seek world domination, focus on counteracting or addressing claims of victimage, emphasize alternative means of deliverance, and work to undermine the “champion” image sought by extremists.

That’s a significant insight to chew on. And since we are still in “recommended reading” mode, let me also point you to the COMOPS Qur’an Verses Study: A Response to Our Critics. Different people — as the discussion between Mark Jacobsen and Tim Mathews illustrates — will have different reasons for and levels of interest in these documents, but it is good to have serious scholarship challenging some of our easy (and dubious) assumptions.

[ by Charles Cameron — a follow up to Recommended Reading: the meat, discussing the word Christianist, also an intellectual foundation for the desire to fuse church and state ]
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In a comment on Daveed and Laurel’s post, Tim Mathews writes:

The views of a hypothetical “Christianist” yearning to fuse church and state are clearly ad hoc and usually incoherent, with little to no significant intellectual foundation. Thus, the Islamist versus Christianist dynamic seems, to me, to be an invented controversy. “Islamist” is a descriptive label applied to an agenda with an intellectual foundation. “Christianist” is a label in search of a description.

I’d like to make two comments here:

First, FWIW, the term “Christianist” already has a usage promoted by the essayist Michael Ventura, who writes in Shadow Dancing in the USA:

In following the lead of James Hillman’s work, I’m going to use “Christianism” in place of “Christianity” and “Christianist” in place of “Christian” whenever possible in an attempt to get around the enormous bias for the religion built into our very language.

This isn’t the same as using the term in parallel to “Islamist” – but it’s a usage worth noting.

As to there being “little to no significant intellectual foundation” for the desire to fuse church and state in Christianity, Rousas John Rushdoony opens his monumental Institutes of Biblical Law with the following observations:

When Wyclif wrote of his English Bible that “This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” his statement attracted no attention insofar as his emphasis on the centrality of Biblical law was concerned. That law should be God’s law was held by all; Wyclif’s departure from accepted opinion was that the people themselves should not only read and know that law but also should in some sense govern as well as be governed by it. [ … ]

No less than Israel of old, Christendom believed itself to be God’s realm because it was governed by the law of God as set forth in Scripture. There were departures from that law, variations of it, and laxity in faithfulness to it, but Christendom saw itself as the new Israel of God and no less subject to His law.

When New England began its existence as a law-order, its adoption of Biblical law was both a return to Scripture and a return to Europe’s past. It was a new beginning in terms of old foundations….

You can read the complete Introduction here (.pdf).

Max Blumenthal‘s 2009 Republican Gomorrah opens with a chapter on Rushdoony, contrasting him with Billy Graham, who:

routinely urged his audiences to “create a culture with Christ at its center,” but his message was consistent with the evangelical tradition of effecting change through personal persuasion, not political imposition. … By contrast, Rushdoony’s concept of cleansing the land of sin by seizing the reins of government was genuinely revolutionary.

John Frame‘s much earlier review of the first volume (of three) of the Institutes appeared in the Westminster Theological Journal 38:2 (Winter, 1976), 195-217. It offers the uninitiated reader a decent overview of the book:

Rushdoony not only acknowledges biblical authority, knows the Bible, and knows our cultural situation; he is also able to apply biblical principles to our culture in creative and cogent ways. Rushdoony has grasped a hugely important point that theologians rarely acknowledge, namely, that theology must involve the application of the word of God to the whole world. Otherwise, theology is a “lie,” testifying that God himself is irrelevant (p. 597; cf. pp. 308, 652ff). The Institutes, therefore, presents a plan for the reformation of all aspects of human society in accord with biblical law. Rushdoony advocates this reformation in various ways:

(a) He sets forth eloquently the beauty of a society governed by biblical law: a society where the power of the state is strictly limited (pp. 429f, passim); where eminent domain belongs to God alone, not to the state (pp. 492f, 499ff); where there are no property taxes (pp. 56, 283), no expropriations beyond the tithes (pp. 846ff), but where welfare is effectively provided through covenantal institutions; where all citizens expose and prosecute criminals (pp. 271, 463ff); where criminals are responsible to make restitution to their victims (p. 272); where crime is rare because habitual and serious offenders are promptly executed and because others are caught and forced to make restitution, a society without prisons and the farce of pseudo-rehabilitation (pp. 228ff, 458ff, 514ff); where war is not permitted to take precedence over every other human activity (pp. 277ff); where the environment is protected by following the instructions of its Creator (pp. 141ff, 164ff).

(b) Where the biblical laws at first glance appear not to be so beautiful, but rather (to our humanist-indoctrinated minds) to be strange, trivial, or even cruel, Rushdoony effectively explains the divine logic underlying them. The denial of full citizenship to eunuchs (p. 100), the execution of blasphemers (pp. 106ff) and incorrigible juvenile delinquents (pp. 185ff, 48lff), the prohibition of taking a mother bird together with her young (pp. 169, 257, 267), the levirate (pp. 308f), the dowry legislation (pp. 185ff, 48lff) and other perplexing biblical statutes are cogently defended.

(c) Besides showing the inherent logic of biblical law, Rushdoony shows how that biblical law has been used through history, how its observance has brought about justice and happiness in many societies, and how its abandonment has brought about cultural disaster. He is quite specific with regard to American culture, and advocates dramatic changes in our legal and institutional structure. His strongest and most frequent polemic is against “statism,” the view that the state has the right to tax, control, and disturb all areas of human life. In that regard, his rhetoric closely resembles that of political conservatism which, indeed, he acknowledges as resting on Christianity to an extent (p. 289). Yet he strongly opposes laissez faire capitalism (pp. 288ff, 432f, 472) as a deification of the abstract laws of economics. Rushdoony’s proposals really do not fit very well under any contemporary label, and that in itself is an index of his zeal to follow Scripture rather than to please men.

Finally, I’d suggest that Rushdoony has more influence than many would like to admit these days – hence Caleb Hayden‘s comment in his Amazon review:

Rushdoony influenced many prominent and visible leaders in Christian circles today, even though many of these men are afraid to identify with him for fear that their reputations will be tarnished. Most people do not want to be thought of as radical, but Rushdoony had a different mentality. That is why, love him or hate him, a student of theology, philosophy, history, and law can greatly benefit from Rushdoony’s distinctly Christian analysis and critique of society.

See also, Jeff Sharlet, The Family, pp. 347-351.

In a second follow up, I’ll present a case where similar governmental practices resulted from arguable similarities between particular Christian and Islamic worldviews, and offer a comment on the degree to which even jihadists may not be directly attempting world conquest in the name of Islam.