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[Mark Safranski / “zen“]

Charles Cameron helpfully tipped the news last week in our comment section, but I wished to give this update the prominence friends of zenpundit.com deserve. American Spartan has been re-released and you can get it  from now until July 31, American Spartan is available for $1.99 at BookHub

For those who need a re-cap, long time readers will recall Major Jim Gant coming to wider attention with his paper, One Tribe at a Time with an assist from noted author Steven Pressfield, where he called for a campaign strategy against the Taliban from “the bottom up” using “the tribes” because the current top down strategy of killing insurgents while building a strong, centralized, state would never work – the war would just drag on indefinitely until the US grew tired and quit Afghanistan. Gant forged a tight relationship with Afghan tribal leader  Noor Azfal ,won some fans with his paper in very high places, including SECDEF Robert Gates and Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus who gave him some top cover to implement his ideas but Gant also faced formidable resistance and criticism from Afghan government officials, parts of the ISAF chain of command and academics unhappy with Gant’s conceptual emphasis on tribalism.

Here is an excellent review of American Spartan by Doyle Quiggle in The Marine Corps Gazette:

Whether from Plutarch or Zack Snyder’s 300, we all know the command, “Come back with your shield—or on it.” Special Forces MAJ Jim Gant, USA, came back with his shield, but, like his soul, it’s as mortar-pocked as the face of the moon. The narrator of Gant’s Spartan tale is his lady, a word used with chivalric respect. Ann witnesses, validates, and, by writing this book, binds up the many wounds Gant suffered to mind, body, and soul in Iraq and Afghanistan, an act of healing she began in her home in Maryland, kicking Gant of his drug and alcohol habits to get him back into the fight. As Gen James N. Mattis recently lamented in Warriors and Civilians, true, unflinching acceptance of what warriors become through warfighting is rare. Ann’s narrative asks readers to muster a hard-nosed acceptance of Gant in the fullness of his sometimes brutal, sometimes compassionate (Afghans call this blend of virtues nangyalee) warrior soul.

A collaboration between a warrior and his woman, American Spartan provides an exemplary model for receiving the blood-tainted warrior back into the kill-shy civilian fold. The partnership itself, a cooperative, on-going translation of combat experience into a narrative for communal sharing, is a ritual of homecoming from war, a gift of acceptance that a non-killer, Ann, gives to a killer, Gant. Together, they offer military readership an enduring lesson about how to fight—in mind and battlespace—gray-zone war. With tooth-breaking honesty, Ann records Jim’s edgy mindset after his Iraq deployment:

He had sacrificed everything at the altar of war. War was, by then, all he really knew. He could not imagine a world where the people he had loved most had become strangers, and where—unlike in Iraq—his enemies were not trying to kill him, making them much harder to find and impossible to destroy.

Read the rest here.

I wrote in my own review of American Spartan:

The substance of the book, Gant’s implementation of his “One Tribe at Time” strategy among the Pashtuns and his rise and fall with the hierarchy of the US Army is more complicated and begs for deeper examination. Readers with knowledge of Afghanistan, the Army, American policy or some combination of the three will find nearly as much to read between the lines of American Spartan as they will in the text itself. It is fascinating, really, and the moral implications are deeply disturbing.

To summarize, American Spartan lays out a tragic paradox. My impression is that the tribal engagement strategy Gant championed would never have been permitted to succeed, even had he been a Boy Scout in his personal conduct; and secondly, even if tribal engagement had been fully resourced and enthusiastically supported, Gant himself would have self-destructed regardless.  A Greek tragedy in a khet partug.

Gant has frequently been compared to the legendary Lawrence of Arabia and the fictional Colonel Kurtz.   Interestingly, both of those figures died early and untimely deaths, having long outlived their usefulness for their respective armies. Major Gant is, fortunately, very much alive today which may be the only good outcome associated with his fall from grace.  Given his predisposition for assuming heroic risks, taking battle to the enemy, chance hazards of war and Gant’s own struggle with PTSD, alcoholism and pills chronicled by Tyson, the bitter vendetta of Gant’s immediate superiors ironically may have kept him from also becoming Afghanistan’s John Paul Vann or Bernard Fall.  Gant is not a Colonel Kurtz. That charge would be a slander; nor is he really T.E. Lawrence either, though that is a much better comparison. Gant had more bite to Lawrence’s bark and that was at least part of the equation in Gant’s success.  The al-Saud and al-Rashid tribes and Turkish pashas did not fear Lawrence the same way Taliban commanders and rival Pashtun subtribes personally feared Jim Gant, whom one of his fiercest anthropologist critics called “very scary”.  It was not only tea and beards, nor could it be.

Pick up American Spartan at BookHub today for $1.99!

[Mark Safranski / “zen“]

An episode that will interest those who study all things Afghanistan, COIN, irregular warfare, cultural-linguistic competency, rural environments, HUMINT, insurgency, PME and similar topics,  Jon and Pete interview Bill Mankins at the Break it Down Show:

159 – Bill Mankins

“One of our most compelling guests to date. You’ve never heard Bill Mankins story and that’s about to change.  Bill gets modern combat at a level that you cannot find anywhere else. Fox News, CNN, NPR have all had a chance to get Bill to sit with them and break down the most complex social, military, religious problems anyone can imagine, and they all passed. They didn’t know a great story when it was right in front of them. Nobody but the Break It Down Show has this level of depth and quality…NOBODY The show really breaks into 3 parts.  If you want, skip ahead to Minute 51:30 and get to what Bill is working on…then go back and see why he’s the man for the job…AGAIN this level of clarity, this depth, you’re in for a treat.  Bring a bucket for when your brain explodes.”

Tune in here.

Mankins is spot on in his commentary on the overemphasis of STEM in PME vice humanities and language that provide some understanding of others.

[Mark Safranski / “zen”]

Professor Totorici has the second issue of Central Standard Time up.

My contribution for this issue comes from the ZP archives – in keeping with the cultural spirit of CST I decided on a book review, the one on American Spartan by Ann Scott Tyson, but with an updated prologue:

American Spartan

If even the simplest things in war are difficult, as Clausewitz claimed, counterinsurgency wars are also dirty, dark and dysfunctional. This is so partly because counterinsurgency wars are as much about politics as they are combat, the clarity of victory usually proves elusive. The other reason is that the few “rules” that govern warfare, rules followed even by the Wehrmacht on the battlefield, are routinely ignored by guerrillas, insurgents and terrorists who try to swim among the people as fish in the sea. That is if we assume the fish are piranhas engaged in a contest against sharks.

….I reviewed Gant’s story, American Spartan by Ann Scott Tyson, two years ago at my home blog zenpundit.com and elsewhere online. The book, like Jim Gant himself and his approach to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, remains highly controversial in military circles and outside of it to this day. To be blunt, I am an admirer of Jim Gant; he did everything as a soldier that the U.S. Army asked of him as an officer and more at great personal cost and the Afghan tribesmen with whom he worked considered Gant to be one of them, part of the tribe. This is not to say Gant was without flaws or error – they were perhaps as significant as his strengths. But Jim Gant’s story is also America’s story; I can think of no better book at the human level to explain America’s rise and fall in Afghanistan than American Spartan.

Read the rest here.

JUNE 6, 1944…..72 Years Ago Today….

Seventy-two years ago over 9,000 American men, some hardly older than boys, laid down their lives on the beaches of Normandy in the greatest military operation in the history of the world. The white crosses stand row upon row in Colleville-sur-Mer,  in silent testimony of their supreme sacrifice.

Others who scrambled ashore on bloody Omaha Beach, or who climbed the rocky cliffs of Pointe du Hoc or who parachuted behind enemy lines with the 82nd and 101st Airborne lived to fight their away across France and across the Rhine into the heartland of Germany to break the power of the Third Reich forever. Others who survived the terrible ordeal of D-Day and fought on were not so lucky and did not come home.

Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. at age fifty-six was the oldest man, the highest ranking soldier and the only general officer in the first wave of the Normandy invasion. Roosevelt was seriously ailing and relied on a cane; he had been refused permission to join the landings twice before his superiors finally relented. Roosevelt’s 8th Regiment missed their objective at Utah Beach by a mile. There was no cover from withering German fire or prospect of swift reinforcement. Allied bombardment there had been light and the men had to cross hundreds of yards of beach to engage the enemy. When nervous subordinates asked if they should re-embark, Roosevelt seized the moment:

“We’ll start the war from right here!”

Heedless of enemy fire Roosevelt strode up and down the beach, reorganized units, directed landings and led his men in battle. By the end of the day the 8th Regiment had taken their sector and Roosevelt had earned the Medal of Honor.

He died forty-four days later during the Battle of France, one among many American GIs.

The “Greatest Generation” is receding into history in increasing numbers with each passing year but their deeds are destined to become legend.

[by Mark Safranski / “zen“]

Octavian  Manea sits down with historian, military futurist and veteran of 73 Easting and Tal Afar,  LTG H.R. McMaster at Small Wars Journal.

Future Missions Through the Lens of the US Army Operating Concept

Q: Let’s revisit your Tal Afar experience with an eye to the future operational environment where (mega)cities, urban slums and operating among populations is becoming the new normal. What are some of the personal lessons that you see relevant for this not very distant future?

A: Most importantly, we need to generate, develop and maintain understanding in these very complex environments. We need to understand our enemies and we also need to understand the populations among whom these wars are fought. We need to understand the political, tribal, religious, ethnic dynamics that often affect the missions and the security situation. The cultural, social, economic, religious, and historical considerations that comprise the human aspects of war must inform wartime planning as well as our preparation for future armed conflict. In Iraq in particular and across the Middle East if we look at Daesh; they are able to use violence and propaganda to excite historical grievances, magnify sectarian identities, and pit communities against each other and then portray themselves as patrons and protectors of an aggrieved party. Once they are in those communities they establish control mainly through intimidation and coercion, and also through a broad range of other incentives and disincentives they apply among the populations. They use that control of territory to mobilize resources in order to perpetuate and accelerate the conflict usually by committing mass murder and mass rape and mass child abuse.  Daesh directs violence against the other community in order to incite retribution which then fuels the cycle of violence. The cycle of violence creates chaos and Daesh use that chaos to establish control over territory, populations and resources. We need to understand the fear, the sense of honor, and the interests of communities that are party to that conflict.  What Daesh does is they essentially use ignorance to perpetuate hatred, hatred to justify violence, and violence prevents education and perpetuates ignorance, and it becomes a cycle. This is perfect for them. They will have a population that is undereducated, largely illiterate, and susceptible to demagoguery. The cycle has to be broken by defeating the enemy physically and then by consolidating gains to protect populations and territory. What it is equally important is to consolidate gains psychologically by addressing the fear, sense of honor and interests of the communities that are in conflict. This was what was critical in Iraq especially between 2007 and 2010 where we were able, along with Iraqi leaders, to forge what turned out to be a very fragile political accommodation between the parties in the sectarian civil war. I think it is clear in retrospect that we didn’t do enough to sustain that fragile political accommodation and as a result there was a return of large scale communal violence that set the conditions for the ISIL/Daesh to establish control over territory in Iraq and create this horrible situation. The lesson is that we have to understand these complex environments and we have to address what is driving the conflict.  And ultimately what is necessary is mediation between the parties that were in conflict to remove support among the population for murderers and extremists on all sides of the conflict.