Sic Semper Tyrannis

"Socio-Cultural Research and Analysis..." Adam Silverman

Socio-Cultural Research and Analysis: A Response to Sale’s Questions Regarding Ethnographic Intelligence

Adam L. Silverman, PhD[1][1]

Mr. Sale finished his excellent post on the current state of American intelligence endeavors with a very important question: “Does our current infatuation with contractors and technology provide us with sufficient ethnographic intelligence on Afghanistan, an area which seems to me very similar in its makeup to Caesar’s Gaul?”  I would like to make this one question into two and deal with the portion that is near and dear to my experience over the past three years: does the US have sufficient ethnographic intelligence (on Afghanistan)?  While I have some pretty set views on the question of contractors and technology, those are, perhaps, columns for another day.  

Army suicide rates. NY Times

 "According to the Army, roughly 20 out of 100,000 soldiers have killed themselves, compared with a rate of roughly 19 out of 100,000 for the civilian population.

The report put a large part of the blame on commanders who either failed to recognize or disregarded high-risk behavior among their troops. “There are instances where a leader’s lack of soldier accountability resulted in suicide victims not being found until they had been dead for three or four weeks,” the report said.

In addition, the report said that the pace of constant deployments in two wars had forced a lowering of recruiting and retention standards. Many new recruits were granted waivers, it said, for behavior that would have kept them out of the service in earlier years. Of 80,403 waivers granted since 2004, the report found that 47,478 were granted to people with a history of drug or alcohol abuse, misdemeanor crime or “serious misconduct,” which it defined as felony.

At the same time, the report found that there was a decrease in soldiers forced to leave the Army for misconduct. “This has likely resulted in the retention of over 25,283 soldiers who would have otherwise been separated in previous years,” the report said.

General Chiarelli said that the majority of Army suicides — 60 percent — are committed during a soldier’s first enlistment, typically four years, and that the most dangerous year is the first. “We see more suicides in that first year than any other year,” General Chiarelli said."  NY Times

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Most of the young people whom I see these days do not seem very likely candidates for military service.  They have been raised to be self centered, undisciplined and addicted to immediate gratification.  Even the jocks among them tend to equate going to athletic practice with actual work.  Their parents do all the household chores or hire Central Americans to do them.

In the general atmosphere of self absorbed modern American culture I don't know how they get anyone to enlist in the ground combat forces.  Ah, I know.  They go out to the country where there still are people who think their children have a duty to society.

Britain is even more of  mystery to me.  How does a country that looks down on patriotism find people who will fight for "queen and country?"  And what does the British public really think of such men?

In the context of two wars, the inability of some recruits to adapt to a life in which one is expected to act responsibly on a schedule that does not reflect one's own wishes should not be surprising.

The desire of General Chiarelli to blame commanding officers for suicides of misfits that they have been sent is deplorable.  pl  

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30suicide.html?src=mv

SB 1070 - People can't read.

 "“If the federal government wants to be in charge of illegal immigration and they want no help from the states, it then needs to do its job,” Brewer said. “Arizona would not be faced with this problem if the federal government honored its responsibilities.”

She added, “Illegal immigration is an ongoing crisis the State of Arizona did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”"  CS Monitor

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I foolishly sent Dylan Ratigan an e-mail today protesting a wrong thing that he said on the air.  He said that the judge blocked the provision in the law that "allowed" the Arizona police and sheriffs to apprehend people for violating US immigration law.  That is not in the law.  What is in the law is a provision that "requires"  Arizona police to seek to know if someone is in the US and Arizona illegally if that seems likely.  

Arizona police have been enforcing federal immigration law for many years, but not uniformly. Some jurisdictions have chosen not to enforce US law.  SB 1070 sought to stop that.

I live in a city that has chosen to become a sanctuary for illegal aliens.  Alexandria, Virginia is ruled by a coalition of transplants, minorities and yellow dogs.  This produces a permanent Democratic majority in the city.  Does this have something to do with the city declaring itself to be a "sanctuary" for illegals?  Perhaps.  Perhaps the city government has some nobler motive than the hope of political advantage.

Does the Obama Administration and the democratic Party majority in Congress have some nobler motive in suing Arizona than a mere search for Latino votes?  Perhaps.  pl 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0729/SB1070-appeal-seeks-to-reinstate-all-parts-of-Arizona-law

Taliban talks shoot allies in the foot - John D. Moore

 "A key factor in the Taliban resurgence is the failure of the international community and Afghan government to gain ground in the political battle for hearts and minds. When the local elite and broader population see a willingness of the Karzai administration and the international community to open talks with the Taliban, the message conveyed is that the Taliban has political momentum and Afghanistan is on the verge of being abandoned yet again by the West. Thus they are less willing to support military and civilian efforts and are increasingly susceptible to insurgent pressure.

This does not mean efforts to divide and fracture the Taliban and associated insurgent and terrorist networks should not continue, as such efforts are also critical. The issue is that treating the Taliban as being a legitimate, monolithic actor -- even if only rhetorically -- transfers to the insurgency a political power they have never actually held."  JD Moore

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/taliban-talks-shoot-allies-in-the-foot/story-e6frg6ux-1225898181960

"Who owns General Petraeus?" Giraldi

 "Petraeus, who is regarded as an intellectual and even somewhat of an iconoclast, is no different.  His counterinsurgency strategy, far from a new development, is a replay of similar thinking during the Vietnam war and a repudiation of the Powell Doctrine, which asserted that wars should be in the national interest, with attainable objectives, fought using overwhelming force, and incorporating a clear exit strategy.  In short, Petraeus is the architect of the counterinsurgency long war combined with nation building strategy that has been embraced by both Presidents Bush and Obama.

Petraeus’ apparent close relationship with the neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby is a matter of concern, particularly if he does aspire to be president. "  Giraldi

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Yup.  The COIN manual is just old wine in a new bottle.  That has been said here many times.  It remains the truth.  Not only is COIN old wine but it is also sour wine.  It does not work except in exceptional circumstances.  Those circumstances did not exist in Iraq and they do not exist in Afghanistan.  So what and who is David Petraeus?  Giraldi provides a plausible answer in this article.  pl 

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/07/28/who-owns-general-petraeus/

Arizona and the immigrants.

 "The law, adopted in April, was aimed at discouraging illegal immigrants from entering or remaining in the state.

It coincided with economic anxiety and followed a number of high-profile crimes attributed to illegal immigrants and smuggling, though federal data suggests crime is falling in Arizona, as it is nationally, despite a surge of immigration.

Seven lawsuits have been filed against the law, challenging its constitutionality and alleging it will lead to racial profiling."  NY Times

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Maricopa County (Phoenix) sheriffs and police arrested over 26,000 illegals last year.  They were turned over to ICE and were deported.  So far as I can see this ruling by Judge Bolton doesn't seem to affect the Arizona authorities ability to continue to do that.  SB 1070 "required" the police to question immigration status in certain situations.  The ruling does not prevent them from continuing to do what they have been doing for years.   Many other local Arizona jurisdictions (Tucson for instance) have been doing the same thing.  No? 

ICE will refuse to accept suspected violators of federal law from the local police?  I think that would probably be actionable.  pl 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/us/29arizona.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

How did he do it?

"Col. Lang, No, you are right about thumb drives and such. While they are indeed disabled on most networks, in theater they are very common because there are a large number of laptops and stand-alone computers that require a "sneaker-net." When I was there, we had to use a thumb-drive to load threat data into our helicopter's moving-map display, for instance. You're also right that these documents come from an operational and not an intelligence source. They look to me to be a dump from the theater SIGACTs database which is accessible by pretty much everyone in the theater. It's a mix of operational and low-level intel information - a kind of news ticker for the theater. As a result, a lot of the reports turn out to be wrong or incomplete. Therefore, the information contained in this should be taken with a huge grain of salt. We don't know which reports turned out to be accurate, which ones only provided part of the picture and which ones were flat-out wrong. Without additional sourcing it's impossible to look at this database and determine which category a particular report falls into. In the end this database will only be useful to those who subscribe to the Doug Feith method of analysis, a five step process: 1. Begin with the desired conclusion. 2. Troll whatever data is available and specifically look for and pull information that supports the desired conclusion. Ignore any contrary information. 3. Assemble the collected data and make it look like "analysis" supporting the conclusion from step 1. 4. Disseminate the "analysis" to useful idiots, particularly those who can affect policymaking. 5. Profit! =="

Andy

A Few Musings on Intelligence - Richard Sale

By Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars 

As the brilliant Washington Post piece made uncomfortably clear, the dilemmas of intelligence are not only as intractable as they have ever been, they have become contaminated in a very dubious and even sinister way by questions of marketing. 

I am speaking, of course, of the hiring of outside intelligence contractors whose field may be intelligence assessment but whose survival and financial success depend on finding backing among decision makers who are no way exempt from the dangerous fallacies associated with the formation of opinion. 

The Afghan Papers

 "...a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.

The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."  NY Times

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Ho Hum.  I suppose that the media are going to ride this hobby horse until the wheels fall off.  This appears to be the "war diary" of some major operational headquarters (not intelligence) in the theater of war.  It appears to be a compilation of the daily message traffic that passed through the headquarters.  A record of all that traffic is kept so that it can be known what happened at a given time.

It is sequential and made up of operational reports from the field, unconfirmed raw intelligence information, analysed intelligence, etc.

I think that a military clerk type stole it by copying it electronically and then gave it to Wikileaks.  I think that clerk is in custody and an investigation is being conducted to determine what to do with him.  This is the UCMJ equivalent of a grand jury proceeding.  I expect that he will be tried by general court martial.

Everything I have seen so far from this collection of data is merely a repetition of things that have been reported in the news before.  The one possible exception is a report in which the Taliban are said to have used a MANPAD against a helicopter several years ago.  The press seems to like that tidbit.  Ho hum.  ISI supports some of the Taliban.  That is news?

pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

"After Shirley Sherrod, we all need to slow down and listen" Washpost

 "Racial inequality is perpetuated less by individuals than by structural racism and implicit bias. Evidence of structural inequality is everywhere: in the grossly disproportionate numbers of young black men and women in prison; in the color of students shunted into remedial and special education tracks; in the stubborn segregation of our neighborhoods and schools; in the lack of recreational and academic opportunities for children of color in poor communities; in the inferior medical treatment that people of color receive; and in the still appallingly small numbers of men and women of color in law firms, corporations and government. It is evident, too, in the history of blatant discrimination against black farmers practiced by the Agricultural Department."  Washpost

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"We need a national dialog on race."  This is the unending mantra of Black people on television.  Is it true what they say or do they really want an audience for their diatribes and monologues on the need for greater economic concessions and groveling on the part of white men.  I was counseled here a few days ago by a fellow Southron that I should be careful of what I say because I can easily be thought a racist as the Ziocons consider me to be an anti-Semite.  Well,  I would have been as insistent in the 19th Century as I am now that people must be treated with dignity and respect.

Nevertheless, it makes me feel good that Andrew McWhorter admits that what Black people want is basically MORE.  It makes me sad to hear Jesse Jackson say that what was said about that basketball player makes him think of "Dred Scott."  The reason he gives for that is "my cultural background."  Fair enough. but he is as much a dinosaur as I am.

Hispanics don't whine.  They just work.  pl  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072304583.html