May
21
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
In a previous post I mentioned how embeds can enhance operations in the media battlespace by providing fact from the ground.
Today's Wall Street Journal shows a classic scenario.
If an embed had been with the unit in question, a lot of the back-and-forth would have ended immediately.
But now we have Taliban sympathizers putting bodies on display and the military offering a 'report.'
The military report is likely 100% correct, but in the media battlespace imagery wins. Gunsight imagery may help, but is no substitute for images and reporting from a third party, on the ground as the events were happening.
It is only a matter of time before the Taliban starts 'arming' their cells and supporters with flip cameras to record images of 'civillian' casualties.
In the media battlespace a $100 camera can be the most effective weapon.
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May
20
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Wednesday, 20 May 2009 |
In discussing the decline of weekly news magazines, John Podhoretz explains the decline in media in general :
"Why was the Time of my professional youth so successful? Because its readers hadn’t died off yet. Because cable news hadn’t hit yet. Because news organizations hadn’t surrendered to the siren song of soft puff pieces that completely destroyed their authority with the readers they still had."
It is not just news magazines and flag-ship newspapers but the entire media universe all the way down to local TV news.
When I was producing the 6 & 10 p.m. news at the CBS affiliate in Topeka, KS the management commissioned a massive market research study by a consulting firm.
The firm came back with their results of the "news" people wanted to see. It was not news, it was fluff.
And while the station retained its top spot in the ratings, total viewers kept slipping.
Another market reasearch poll was conducted and the news cast was loaded with even more fluff and coverage of meaningless events.
Total viewers continued to decline.
Perhaps because I was the only person in the newsroom who studied economics and philosophy vice journalism, I saw the flaw in the poll. It was a random sample of people who owned telephones and did not test in whether or not they actually watched the news.
At one time the local evening newscast was a mass market product--there was nothing else to watch.
With cable and satellite, there are hundreds of other options. News has become a niche, but the station still thought they were a mass market product.
Instead of focusing on what the core of news viewers wanted to see, the station offered them fluff and car crashes with the occasional government or elected official at a press conference.
There is still a market for hard news and in-depth reporting. It is the same size as it always was. There is plenty of "analysis" and opinion chatter. But the organization that fills the gap with real, important, unbiased information will be well positioned for the future.
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May
20
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Wednesday, 20 May 2009 |
The Taliban cannot dislodge US or NATO forces from any outpost or valley. They can make movement in the country dangerous, but not halt it.
The Taliban's best hope for victory--the US leaving Afghanistan--is not on ground, but in the media battlespace.
President Obama is perhaps the first war-time Commander in Chief able to engage in the media battlespace since World War II.
In modern guerrilla/insurgent warfare against an industrial Western opponent, the goal of the insurgent is not to follow the traditional three phases as espoused by Mao, Che and Ho and defeat the Western power on the field of battle.
The goal is to get the Western opponent to leave.
Retired Marine Colonel T.X. Hammes makes the case in his book 'The Sling and the Stone' that the goal of the modern insurgent is to influence the voters and politicians of the Western country. The goal being to sway public opinion to the point that the voters feel the war cannot be won or, even if it could be won, is not worth it.
The modern insurgent understands that the public views the war through the prism of the news media and therefore establishes his strategy around earning maximum Gross Rating Points showing chaos, mayhem and that the war cannot be won or even if it could, is not worth the cost.
The key measurements for the insurgent can be found in a January 2009 poll by the Pew Center for People and the Press.
Q49 Do you think the U.S. made the right decision or the wrong decision in using military force in Afghanistan?
Jan09 Feb08 Dec06 Jan06
Right 64 65 61 69
Wrong 25 24 29 20
Q50 How well is the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan going?
Jan09 Feb08
Very well 7 10
Fairly well 38 38
Not too well 34 31
Not at all well 11 10
Q51 Over the next year, do you think the number of troops in Afghanistan should be increased, decreased, or kept the same as it is now?
Increased 33
Decreased 39
Kept same 20
Q53 Regardless of what you think about the original decision to use military force in Afghanistan, do you now believe that the United States will definitely succeed, probably succeed, probably fail, or definitely fail in achieving its goals in Afghanistan?
Definitely succeed 13
Probably succeed 49
Probably fail 23
Definitely fail 6
Right now, those numbers are not very good for the Taliban. But at one time, the war in Iraq had similar numbers.
The goal of the insurgent is to sway Western and US voters from the "succeed" to "fail" columns and break the tie on "well" vs. "not so well."
They will do this through the news media.
On two occasions I tabulated the Gross Rating Points on the Iraq war, the most recent was in 2007 .
From June 2006 to June 2007, there were 12,624 pessimistic ratings points and 6,798 optimistic ratings points about the Iraq war.
Even after the success of the Surge was becoming obvious in late 2007, it took until September 2008 for enough points to be earned for the voters to catch up with the reality on the ground.
The Taliban's only hope is to leverage media to their advantage and earn more pessimistic ratings points. They will do this through spectacular attacks that may or may not have any tactical effect on the ground. A dismal failure of an assault on a US or NATO installation still generates the Taliban's preferred headlines.
To the Taliban, the desired strategic effect is through the media battlespace--not on the ground.
President Obama's relationship with the media will allow him to do what his predecessor could not--engage in the media battlespace.
Many would think that the best way to stave off pessimistic ratings points would be to lock the media out of Afghanistan. But, all that does is make the Taliban the primary content generator as they will record and distribute video of their attacks.
The media battlespace would then become a competition between the Taliban's graphic video and a military spokesman at a podium. The graphic video will win every time.
The first step for the Obama administration would be a policy of maximum embedding, preferrably long-term embeds where a reporter lives with one unit not just for days, but for weeks. This is current doctrine, spelled out the Counter Insurgency Manual FM 3-24 written by General David Petraeus, but is rarely put into action.
The more third party eyes and ears on the ground, the less the impact of the Taliban's spectacular attacks on the media battlespace.
The goal is maximum gross ratings points therefore diluting the content generated by the Taliban.
The second step is out reach to small and medium sized media outlets.
At any given time there are dozens of Reserve and National Guard units in Afghanistan, but covering them is complicated and expensive for smaller market newspapers and TV and Radio stations.
To reduce the cost, the DoD could move the embark point from Kuwait or Qatar to a stateside installation, provide body armor and rapid embedding to the Guard and Reserve units to be covered. (The embark point for all US based media could be moved stateside as well.)
The medium and small market outlets should also be given better access to the DIVIDS system to allow for exclusive, real-time reports to be transmitted back to the home market.
Slots for each media market could be awarded by lottery or Nielson ratings or bid--whoever guarantees the most ratings points gets first dibs.
In that same line of thought, rules for long-form or documentary productions could be relaxed allowing more production on speculation and festival circuit directors to embed without backing from a studio.
Media outlets should also be allowed more flexibility to "cross deck" moving from embedded to traveling with private security or a local fixer. This would reduce the cost of maintaining a secure facility as a bureau. The media sets up bureau offices in the White House, Pentagon and most State Capitols. Media organizations should be allowed to build a shack or rent a container to house their bureau on major bases like Victory Baghdad or Bagram.
The current media embed system is major leap forward from the micro-management of Desert Storm, but I do not think it has ever been reviewed in terms of how it can be re-tooled to maximize access and rating points.
The third step is the one that could only be instituted under President Obama, and that is to recognize that modern wars are also fought in the media battlespace and that the DoD needs to aggressively fight in that battlespace.
This is not an endorsement of government generated propaganda, but a policy that the DoD will actively engage the enemy in the media battlespace.
In the past the media howled when the idea was even broached, but President Obama's relationship with the media will allow him to show the neccessity of this policy.
If anyone thinks the DoD or Administration is generating propaganda, they can take a trip to the combat theaters. Some will say that they just get drive by tours of Potemkin Villages, but it is impossible to sustain a fraud for months or weeks with embeds in every Brigade or Regimental Combat Team.
The DoD will need to engage the media battlespace in theatre as well. This means newspapers, magazines, web, radio, TV, DVDs, satellite and even entertainment television. Yes, many often forget that the ratings points from entertainment programming are just as powerful as points in the news media.
In 2006 the media howled at the Coalition's efforts to take an the media battlespace through paid editorials in Iraqi newspapers. But just as Clauswitz described war a politics through other means, operations in the media battlespace is warfare through other means. President Obama's relationship with the Western 4th Estate could blunt criticism of effective tactics and strategies that will win the battlespace.
The Iraq war was nearly lost in the media battlespace. The Taliban will refine their strategy and wage the battle of ratings points smarter and harder in the coming year.
If President Obama is serious about winning in Afghanistan, and I believe he is, then he must not only fight the battle on the ground but employ his strongest assets and engage the Taliban in the media battlespace.
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May
19
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 |
In today's New York Post , at the end of an interview with General David Petraeus, he is asked what books he is reading.
"The Pathans," by Olaf Caroe, the classic work on the Pashtu of Afghanistan and Pakistan, for its wonderfully rich history;" Petraeus said.
Nice to know Petraeus and I read the same books. I read 'The Pathans' several months ago. It is an old book, thus uncolored by current politics and events.
Other books I consider essential reading include:
'Afghanistan' by Louis Dupree
'Eighteen Years in the Khyber' by Sir Richard Warburton
'Soldiers of God' by Robert Kaplan
'A History of the Kingdom of Cabul' by Mountstuart Elphinstone
The most recent of the book is 'Soldiers of God' written toward the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
The oldest 'A History of the Kingdom of Cabul' is from 1815.
For another interesting view of Afghanistan I would suggest 'The Great Game' by Peter Hopkirk. It is a wonderful narrative of the various adventures and intrigues by the British and Russians during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Reading the old, obscure books helps build a foundation to understand current events. Reading the history of the Arab/Muslims people by al Tabari helped me understand Iraq in greater depth.
Reading the classics of warfare by Caesar and Xenophon shows that despite changes in technology, warfare remains essentially the same because it is still conducted by humans.
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May
17
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 18 May 2009 |
"We can't kill our way out of this," Brigadier General Mark Gurganus told me in the early summer of 2007.
Gurganus, a larger than life character was the embodiment of the warrior general. At the time he commanded the Ground Combat Element of Coalition Forces in western Iraq. I first met him 2005 when he was Colonel on a dusty patch of asphalt north of Fallujah after his humvee was blown up by an IED.
His orders were pretty straight forward that morning--find those SOBs and kill them. A few hours later the IED team caught in the act and a team of snipers dispatched them.
Gurganus' statements in 2005 and 2007 may seem contradictory in isolation, but in 2005 he saw clearly that the solution to the IED threat was not more technology but the elimination of the insurgency.
Later in 2005 his Regiment conducted one of the first and largest census data collection operations of the war. The only technology needed was a digital camera, GPS unit, clip board, pen and an access database. When Marines know who is who and who is supposed to live in a house or village, it is very hard to hide in plain sight.
By late 2007 nearly the entire Euphrates river valley had been photgraphed and listed in a database. There was no where to hide from the Marines and the Son's of Anbar didn't even need the database--they knew if you didn't belong in an area on sight.
You didn't need to spend a lot of time doing targetted raids or tracking and chasing high value targets if you had a really good list--the targets couldn't move and were quickly trapped in the net.
In today's New York Times , David Kicullen and Andrew McDonald Exum make a similar point about the use of drones to carry out precision strikes in Pakistan.
"The drone campaign is in fact part of a larger strategic error — our insistence on personalizing this conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Devoting time and resources toward killing or capturing “high-value” targets — not to mention the bounties placed on their heads — distracts us from larger problems, while turning figures like Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban umbrella group, into Robin Hoods. Our experience in Iraq suggests that the capture or killing of high-value targets — Saddam Hussein or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — has only a slight and fleeting effect on levels of violence. Killing Mr. Zarqawi bought only 18 days of quiet before Al Qaeda returned to operations under new leadership.
"This is not to suggest that killing terrorists is a bad thing — on the contrary. But it’s not the only thing that matters, and over-emphasizing it wastes resources. The operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi, for example, was not a one-day event. Thousands of hours of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance were devoted to the elimination of one man, when units on the ground could have used this time to protect the people from the insurgency that was tearing Iraq apart."
During my trips to Iraq I saw entire High Value Target lists captured or killed only to replaced by more vile targets. This does not mean that High Value Targets should not be pursued and dealt with, but that in warfare resources are scarce and have alternative uses. Resources should be used for what yields the maximum gain and that is eliminating the insurgent's ability to operate rather than trying to eliminate insurgents one or a few at a time.
The strategies and tactics that led to the reduction of the IED threat were the ones that restricted the ability of the IED team to operate, not technologies that countered individual IEDs.
The true solution to the IED threat was to get off the roads and out of vehicles, live in the village, know everyone in the village, protect the locals, provide some essential services and kill or capture the insurgents when they popped up--in that order.
Hellfire missiles from a drone are the exact opposite. The Soviets ravaged entire valleys with helicopter gunships but the Mujahadeen multiplied. The Soviets tried killing their way out of an insurgency and proved that it is impossible.
The drone strikes in Pakistan will prove just as futile.
The battle in Afghanistan will be won much in the way the British did in Malaya. Units moved deeper and deeper into the jungles setting up small outposts and gaining the trust of the villagers by protecting them. Then the next step was to provide things the insurgents could not like medical care and commerce.
The remote villages of Afghanistan, like the villages of Malaya decades before, will reject commerce at first. It is change and humans universally dislike change, until they see the personal benefits of it.
The communist insurgency of Malaya was, ironically, beaten by the human desire for profit. The Taliban will be undone by the most basic of human emotions--greed, not hellfire missiles.
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May
12
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 12 May 2009 |
I looked at the young guys as they prepared for another mission and started to choke up in tears and anger.
An hour earlier I had interviewed their commanding general. After the camera and mic were off and I was packing my gear, I asked him why he became an officer.
His answer shocked me. "To avoid the draft."
I looked at the guys I was about to on a mission with. The younger onese enlisted after the initial invasion of Iraq. Many more after 9/11. They were all volunteers.
I had to get out of sight for a moment while regained my composure.
Their Commanding General lacked their character and, in my opion, was unfit to lead them.
For many senior general officers, their first time leading in any type of combat is in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many were platoon and company officers in the 1970s and came up through the ranks in garrison commands where the criteria and metrics for promotion have zero relationship to what it takes to win a complex modern counter insurgency.
What is amazing is that there even are general officers of the caliber required during this time of war, who can adapt and understand the micro-tactics and macro-scale.
But for every larger than life warrior general, there are two or three who will never ever leave the wire to conduct the intensive battlefield circulation required to get real unvarnished information from the Captains who are out on the streets and down in the villages.
Counter insurgencies are won by Captains and Lt. Colonels, but lost by Generals.
And sometimes it difficult to find the right General.
In Iraq, from my personal observation, the best commanders were the ones on their second tour--Division Commanders who previously commanded a Brigade or Regiment. Brigade or Regimental Commanders who previously commanded a Battalion.
The proficiency and experience at the NCO level is unparalelled, same with Company level officers. Field grade is still a mixed bag, but the weak link is with the General Officers.
The only way to find the General Officers needed to win in an enviroment like Afghanistan may be to keep firing and replacing them until the right ones are found.
My choking up after my interview with the draft avoiding General was not the first, nor the last time I got choked up and angry.
Outside the wire, I am emotionless.
But everytime I see a hero flight, or wounded young men being evaced from a remote emergency hospital to one the major hospitals in Baghdad or Balaad, tears well up.
The Soldiers and Marines will go out and fight as hard and as long as required. They deserve a General who knows how to win.
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May
10
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Sunday, 10 May 2009 |
Well, not entirely but I agree with him on one point in his column in today's New York Times:
"But opinions, however insightful or provocative and whether expressed online or in print or in prime time, are cheap. Reporting the news can be expensive. (snip) But we can't have serious opinions about America's role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents...tell us in real time what is actually going on there."
Of course the inability to rely on the mainstream media is what sent me off to cover Iraq in the first place.
But Rich's point on opinion being cheap, easy and meaningless without hard news information is valid.
The point was driven home to me in 2007 at the start of the Surge.
I was back inside the wire, having an actual breakfast with some Marines and Fox News was on the big screen TV.
Two "strategists" one Democrat, one Republican were debating the Surge.
Midway through the segment, a young Marine leaned over to me, "Mr. Johannes, those two women have no idea what they are talking about."
The Marine was correct. They had no idea what they were talking about, but they played their parts well and with conviction.
It was later that I learned where these chat show "strategists" come from .
I am now in the spool up for an expedition to Afghanistan. It is not cheap. And after having enough bullets, mortars and bombs come close but, by the grace of God, fail to kill me, the real price is that I put my life and limb on the line. Oddly enough though, financial desolation scares me more than physical decimation.
But after the first shot across the bow from the new defeat caucus last week, the trip is required.
My expeditions are financed by sales of my documentary DVDs . Occasionally I will be able to sell some footage to news outlets, but the primary is DVD sales.
My goal is to sell 200 DVDs before I depart.
The debate over AfPak will be heating up. Opinons will aired. But the facts will be in short supply because they are expensive and dangerous to ascertain.
The one time I was matched up against a "strategist" I ended the debate cold by asking, "have you ever been to Iraq? Because I just got back three weeks ago."
I have not been invited back as guest on that network.
This Summer and next Fall will be an important time in Afghanistan. Strategy and policy will be set determining the shape of the conflict. Absent information from the ground, the strategy and policy debate will likely devolve into something like the segment I watched about the Surge in 2007.
If you feel that first hand reporting from the ground is important, please buy a DVD .
In the battle of ideas, facts win. Gathering those facts is my mission.
In the modern era, wars are fought on the ground and in the media battle space. I have no doubt the Taliban and Al Qaida will be doing everything they can to create spectacular headlines, thus influencing the American public. They nearly succeeded in Iraq and did win over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
To win the media battlespace requires facts. I am going to Afghanistan to document those facts and ask that if you can afford to, buy a DVD so I can afford to gather the facts and report them.
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Apr
30
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Friday, 01 May 2009 |
After reading this report from Threats Watch , my crazy idea of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US unilaterally declaring the Tribal Frontier territories of Pakistan their own country is making more sense.
Several months ago I blogged about it here .
The Frontier territories were supposed to be able to have a referendum decades ago on whether to become their own country or join Afghanistan or Pakistan.
That never happened. And now decades later, they have become their own country and are waging a war against Pakistan proper.
If Pakistan is as close to meltdown as some fear, Pashtunistan may be the only way out.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries in the region declare that they recognize the sovereignty of Pashtunistan, then promptly declare war on it with help from the U.S. and anyone else willing to help resolve the issue.
It is far from an ideal solution, but in a mix of bad options and possible outcomes--the worst being a Nuclear Talibistan--it is something to consider or something that could very likely be forced upon us.
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Apr
20
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 20 April 2009 |
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Two years ago Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared the Surge a failure and the war in Iraq lost.
I was in Iraq when Reid made the statement. Here is what I wrote then .
Here are two more follow-ups.
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