Joost R. Hiltermann. New York Review of Books, 19 November 2009.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23371
Excerpt:
Festering unresolved for years, the Kirkuk conflict has started to contaminate Baghdad politics to the point of disabling Maliki’s government. It has already complicated efforts to create a law governing petroleum and natural gas, for example, and it may well hold up the formation of a new government in the spring. America’s legacy in Iraq could be a divided country that is left to fight over an undefined boundary with Kurdistan while a dysfunctional Baghdad government governs in name only.
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Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 16 November 2009.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/16/building_on_2_blunders_the_dubious_case_for_counterinsurgency
Editor’s Comment
Walt makes a fundamental strategic point. The Bush wars involved operational and grand strategic errors, so why institutionalize a shift in defense planning that in effect has the U.S. military prepare for more strategic errors by our leadership? Why not opt to correct the error? It is really an elemental point of strategy: Don’t compound error!
I understand how military professionals who have been ordered to take on foolish strategic missions might feel that counterinsurgency theory is an attractive way out of their tactical and operational dilemmas. But there is really no excuse for civilian leaders, including Sec Def Gates, chasing the mirage of COIN as if it were an answer for our current problems dealing with the consequences of a disastrous Bush national security strategy. Change the strategy and there will be no need for investments in COIN!
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Christopher Drew. New York Times, 14 November 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15cost.html
Excerpt:
…even if Mr. Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan’s new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.
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David Rogers. Politico, 10 November 2009.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29357.html
Excerpts:
Under almost all scenarios before Obama, billions more than the contingency funds requested in his 2010 budget will be needed…
Most estimates of how much more the Pentagon may need now run in the range of $30 billion to $40 billion.
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Alissa J. Rubin. New York Times. 31 October 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/weekinreview/01RUBIN.html
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Gian P. Gentile. New York Times, 31 October 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31iht-edgentile.html?_r=1
Excerpt:
History shows that occupation by foreign armies with the intent of changing occupied societies does not work and ends up costing considerable blood and treasure.
The notion that if only an army gets a few more troops, with different and better generals, then within a few years it can defeat a multi-faceted insurgency set in the middle of civil war, is not supported by an honest reading of history.
Algeria, Vietnam and Iraq show this to be the case.
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Paul Rogers. Open Democracy, 29 October 2009. Hosted on the Commondreams website.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/03-6
Excerpt:
If there is a way ahead, it rests not on short-term calculations about troop numbers but on a larger reassessment by the Barack Obama administration of the entire US security posture in the middle east and southwest Asia. This will have to do more than crisis-manage the dire problems inherited from George W Bush; what is needed is no less than a move beyond military-led thinking to an integrated understanding of what security in the 21st century actually is.
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Tom Hayden. The Nation, 14 October 2009.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/hayden/single
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Katherine McIntire Peters. Government Executive, 28 September 2009.
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=43682&dcn=todaysnews
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David Petraeus and Bernard Trainor. Marine Corps University, 23 September 2009.
http://www.mcu.usmc.mil/COIN%20Symposium%20Documents/Transcript%20-%20GEN%20Petraeus.pdf
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Chuck Hagel. The Washington Post, 03 September 2009. Posted on the Atlantic Council Website.
http://acus.org/new_atlanticist/limits-force
Tara McKelvey. Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2009.
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/too_close_for_comfort.php?page=all
William Pfaff. Tribune Media Services, 24 July 2009.
Amy Belasco, Congressional Research Service, 2 July 2009 (printable .pdf file).
Amy Belasco, Congressional Research Service, 15 May 2009. Posted on the Federation of American Scientists Website.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
Archives of 14,000 documents and articles on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan compiled by the Project on Defense Alternatives. This site has been archived as of 31 March 2009.
http://www.comw.org/warreport/
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Colin S. Gray. Strategic Studies Institute Monograph, Army War College, 13 January 2009. Posted on the Commonwealth Institute Website (printable .pdf file).
Andrew J. Bacevich, The Atlantic, October 2008.
Gian P. Gentile. World Affairs, Summer 2008.
Fabius Maximus, 04 March 2008.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/stratfor-iraq-goals/
Excerpt:
Five years after the invasion most Americans do not understand why we are there, which Stratfor clearly saw even before the first airstrikes. We planned to occupy Iraq and build bases from which to project power throughout the Middle East.
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Barry Posen. The American Interest online, Nov-Dec 2007.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=331
Excerpt:
Iraq should therefore be seen not as a singular debacle, but as a harbinger of costs to come. There is enough capacity and motivation out in the world to increase significantly the costs of any U.S. effort to manage global politics directly. Public support for this policy may wane before profligacy so diminishes U.S. power that it becomes unsustainable.
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Andrew R. Hoehn, Adam Grissom, David Ochmanek, David A. Shlapak, Alan J. Vick. RAND, 2007.
Full report: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG499.pdf
Summary: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG499.sum.pdf
George Packer. The New Yorker, 18 December 2006.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact2?currentPage=all
Excerpt:
In 2004, Kilcullen’s writings and lectures brought him to the attention of an official working for Paul Wolfowitz, then the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Wolfowitz asked him to help write the section on “irregular warfare” in the Pentagon’s “Quadrennial Defense Review,” a statement of department policy and priorities, which was published earlier this year. Under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned in November, the Pentagon had embraced a narrow “shock-and-awe” approach to war-fighting, emphasizing technology, long-range firepower, and spectacular displays of force. The new document declared that activities such as “long-duration unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and military support for stabilization and reconstruction efforts” needed to become a more important component of the war on terror. Kilcullen was partly responsible for the inclusion of the phrase “the long war,” which has become the preferred term among many military officers to describe the current conflict. In the end, the Rumsfeld Pentagon was unwilling to make the cuts in expensive weapons systems that would have allowed it to create new combat units and other resources necessary for a proper counterinsurgency strategy.
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Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt. New York Times, 20 April 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/world/nation-war-strategic-shift-pentagon-expects-long-term-access-key-iraq-bases.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Excerpts:
Regardless of how quickly the Americans reverse the buildup of the last several months, it is plain that since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a concerted diplomatic and military effort to win permission for United States forces to operate from the formerly Communist nations of Eastern Europe, across the Mediterranean, throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and across Central Asia, from the periphery of Russia to Pakistan’s ports on the Indian Ocean.
It is a swath of Western influence not seen for generations.
In Afghanistan and in Iraq, the American military will do all it can to minimize the size of its forces, and there will probably never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops.
Permanent access is all that is required, not permanent basing, officials say.
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