Mistakes become tragedies when you fail to learn from them: Remembering the day after 9/11 and re-strategizing for the future. September 12th, 2001 - September 12th, 2018

        Today is September 12th, 2018.   17 years ago today, we were waking up from the nightmare of the preceding days terror.  Waking from sleep recollections of  seeing video footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon seemed unreal, almost as if one was waking from a nightmare that would soon be forgotten.  When the TV was turned on; however, it was clear that it was real.  Facts were emerging there was beginning to be clarity about the attack and what transpired but there were still many questions to be answered and plans for a response were only beginning to be planned. At that point, the United States of America had an overwhelming level of sympathy from around the world and it was clear the nations of the world, including many nations that had traditionally been our enemies, were ready to follow US lead and cooperate with us in our efforts to bring the perpetrators of the crime, a group called Al-Qaeda , to a swift and merciless justice.  I was 18, living in the San Francisco suburb of Foster City, CA, enjoying the last month of my summer vacation before my Freshmen year at University of Santa Barbara, California were about to begin.  At the time, it was abstract event on the news for me, something that allowed me to stay home from work yesterday and in a way, a cause for excitement today.  It had not yet changed my life, I was going about with regular life.  I had went to Tower Records to buy the new Jay-Z album, the BluePrint and listening to the song "Renegades," on repeat while continuing to do the things teenagers do in summer, like go visit the Santa Cruz beach board walk, go the movies and party way more than I should have been.  Its easy to Monday morning quarterback, but also important to review the game tape and understand where you made mistakes.  As a nation, we made many.  What was remarkable about the United States of America; however, in the midst of these attacks is that there widespread agreement that in our response the US should not compromise those values and legal norms that had made the United States of America the most free and prosperous nation on earth, and that instead the best means of fighting radical Islamic jihad was to promote Democracy, Free-Markets and Western Legal norms abroad. This had been successful in our efforts to defeat Communism in the cold war and so it was logical that the same would work in our struggle with the ideology of terror.

        With a light, lethal, CIA lead invasion of Afghanistan that involved Clandestine Units leading the Afghan Northern Alliance, largely Farsi speaking Tajik dissidents to the Pashtun Taliban regime, the US and its Allies were able to quickly and effectively drive the Taliban from Kabul and chase them into the rugged and ungovernable mountains along the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.  The victory appeared swift and overwhelming.  Bush's popularity was at historic highs and the neocons were looking to capitalize by pushing forward their Project for a New American Century.   There are a multitude of reasons, many of them very good reasons, that drove the Bush Administration eventually into a war with Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq.  The war in Iraq; however, distracted American resources away from the defeat of core Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and finishing the job in Afghanistan while destabilizing the balance of power in the Middle East and leaving open both a cause for recruitment and near battleground for Islamic jihadist groups such as Al-Qaeda in Iraq to practice a range of guerrilla, terrorist and insurgency tactics primarily focused on driving the US out of the Middle East so that they could establish their fundamentalist Islamic regimes.  The Bush Administration was wildly unrealistic about how the US would be received in Iraq, what outcomes it could effectuate and at what cost, while missing the strategic implications of allowing for a Shi'ite government aligned with Iran to control Iraq's territory and massive oil fields.  The US would completely restructure our domestic security apparatus, including putting 21 agencies under the Department of  Homeland Security, creating new secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts and vastly expanding the budgets of the DoD, CIA and NSA with FBI left to lead domestic counter-terrorism efforts.   While new technologies, like Drones came available and funding provided for the Revolution in Military Affairs, efforts to chase and destroy Al-Qaeda everywhere it slithered brought us into operations as far West as Nigeria and as far east as the Philippines.

      While the United States of America lead efforts have undeniably both resulted in the capture or death of  tens of thousands of hardened jihadists and aspiring Islamic terrorists and successfully  prevented any other major 100+ casualty terrorist attacks on the US homeland, the threat continues to loom large with some of the highest global terrorism related casualty counts recorded within the past four years, peaking in 2014 when there were over 32,000 terrorism related deaths, largely perpetrated by the Islamic State.  The Islamic State obviously changed the game, but its emergence as a force capable of seizing control of territory the size of France in the Levant, was facilitated by flawed US policies.  The United States removed Saddam, then removed its forces and handed over control of Iraq to Al-Malaki, then put the full force of its State Department behind the Arab Spring which brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, then engaged in overt military support that helped topple Qaddafi's regime in Libya before going on to provide both diplomatic and military assistance to Syrian rebels trying to topple Bashar Assad, at least some of whom and many of whom's US provided weapons ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda linked militias or Islamic State jihadists.  Very few would disagree with the truth that both Qadaffi and Assad were brutal dictators akin to Saddam Hussein.  It is also true however, that these dictators held together rebellious states with vicious extremist groups lurking just below the surface.  It was foreseeable that there removals would bring about chaos and civil war in which terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, or its fire-brand offshoot the Islamic State, would thrive in terms of gaining recruits, controlling territory and gaining battle field practice.  All the while, the Taliban made a comeback and reemerged from the mountains to take back control of significant parts of Afghanistan.  Meanwhile, the so-called refugees from these countries, some recent and other times their adult children radicalized by the internet, Salafi clerics and on trips to their ancestral homelands, waged attacks in most of the major western Capitals from London to Munich, Burbank to Edmonton bringing the terror to Western civilians peaking at a rate of one multi-casualty attack by an Islamic State inspired terrorist every 3 days in the Summer of 2016! Operations intensified in Yemen and Somalia but also expanded into Indonesia and Mali.  Candidates and parties adopting harder lines on immigration found electoral success across the Western nations. While the Trump Administration's change in rules of combat and increased cooperation with Russia clearly helped thump the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban has maintained a steady pace of operations in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda retaining influence on the ground both in Afghanistan as a part of the Taliban and also in  Idlib Provence in Syria, the Eastern part of Yemen, across Somalia, in parts of Tuareg Mali and the lawless deserts of Southern Libya. While Al-Qaeda has shifted its focus towards near enemies and has not attempted any major attacks on Western Civilian populations, likely a success of US deterrence and infiltration, the future is unknown, particularly as the Islamic State loses its safe havens and its now battle tested and experienced jihadists blend into civilian populations (many of whom have Western nation passports).  Aside from within Afghanistan, there will likely be a lull in attack as networks go into hiding and move from controlling territory to operating underground, but over time these surviving members will start trying to reconnect and plan new attacks. I would anticipate that many switch back their allegiances from the Islamic State to Al-Qaeda which has made the establishment of the Emir of Afghanistan a central part of its long-term strategy to gradually bring about a Global Caliphate and impose their strict interpretation of Sharian Law on all of humanity.

     Afghanistan today, is a fragile young democracy with endemic issues of corruption fighting to survive in the face of a fierce Taliban insurgency that has about 75,000 active fighters going up again against an Afghan National Army of around 200,000 active military members but both casualty and desertion rates high while loyalties mixed and complicated.  Most of the Tajik and various non-Pashtun Afghani's are committed to preventing the Taliban from regaining control of their country and villages.  It is difficult to evaluate, but I would say at least half of the Pashtun population is willing to engage at least some effort to thwart the Taliban's return.  All of them; however, are frustrated by the mix of corruption and ineptitude at the Afghani national level and dismayed by vulnerabilities in their physical security presented by both the Taliban and the Narco-traffickers competing over the poppy trade and its lucrative profits.  The Taliban is not nearly as forgiving as the US military and its NATO allies and when and where it can it targets Afghanis that have cooperated with US-lead force.  In my opinion, light, tight and lethal worked.  There was enough hatred for the Taliban that limited support for the tough and hardy warlords and their tribal fellows was adequate to facilitate the military defeat of the Taliban.  The US efforts to please the UN, NATO partners, EU Capitals and the bureaucratic interests of the Department of Defense pushed us into a massive military build up and state building operation that I believe is doomed to fail simply because the economy of Afghanistan cannot sustain it without massive foreign investment.  Afghanistan has never truly been a nation in the sense Europeans understand nations.  Yes, it had a Capital and an internationally recognized territory, but it has always been a land of ten thousand villages.  In many of the remote parts of Afghanistan the very concept of nation was entirely foreign, as their identity was defined by faith, clan and tribal dynamics with the focus of government on village level structures which usually involved a form village level, elder deference, patriarchal democracy.  While the US should help the Afghani National Army defend Kabul and many of the other large Provencal Capitals it has too move away from Nation building.  The less control in Kabul, the better.  The US should cut the weight of multi-national organizations and their unrealistic, impossible expectations and focus getting investment directly to the villages and providing the village elders the means to eradicate the Taliban in their villages.  In the pre-Soviet era, when Afghanistan was a promising nation with a fast growing economy, the government in Kabul pursued a policy where they sent money to the Tribal elders with very limited strings attached, allowing them to choose what projects to prioritize and administer according to each unique village's customs  (and often ethnic group as the silk road had brought a diverse array of unique cultures into the region) and traditions.  If you study Afghan history, you will learn that repelling foreign occupation is perhaps the one unifying narrative that dominates the Afghani psyche.  While this is bad news for efforts to maintain a large occupying Army as Obama's Afghani surge entailed, it can also be utilized to turn the Afghani people against the foreign elements dominating Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Pakistani branch of the Taliban.  The Afghani people will fight these groups if we give them the right type of prompting and the right type of support.  What is the right type of support?  Light, tight and lethal like the original Afghani invasion that sent the Taliban running for the hills.  The bright spot in 17 years of war fighting is the massive number of seasoned veterans who already have inside knowledge of Afghan villages and individual people, with an idea of who they can and cannot trust.  They deserve to get paid.  The current strategy is really working and despite the DoDs best efforts to maintain a straight face as they tell us otherwise, a change of strategy is long past due.  Its time to hand over a larger part of this fight Eric Prince and his mercenary ranks which will allow the reconcilable portions of the Taliban's support to save face since technically their demand the US Military leave will have been met, while bringing hell to the hard line terrorists planning attacks on civilian populations.  Officially, they won't exist, but the pain they inflict on terrorists will be very real.  The US will need to continue providing better logistical support to not only Afghani National Army, but also to the police forces fighting the Taliban.  Too many times Afghani men on the front line have fought fearlessly against the Taliban until their ammo ran out.  These men should have been resupplied and provided air support on-call.  The US needs to retain special operating forces and air assets to help provide logistical support and air cover as needed.   In my view, this is our best means of lowering the cost of US involvement in Afghanistan while increasing our effectiveness in mitigating terrorism and preventing the return of the Taliban and resurgence of Al-Qaeda that would follow.  These actions will help signal to the Afghani people that we are not infidel occupiers, rather the helpers.

     When you look closely, the situation in Iraq is a very different situation than that in Afghanistan.  Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq actually was nation, even if only held together by secular dictator, as powerful ethnic forces at odds with each-other and many international players on the perimeter worked towards opposing geostrategic interests and control of Baghdad.  The Iraq war has certainly had its peaks and pits.  The initial invasion was by all accounts a spectacular operational success.   It may have been the most awesome show of overwhelming military capability in the history of warfare.  What was once the world's fourth largest military was wiped out and overrun with only limited allied losses in a matter of three short weeks.  What happened after, was a series of blunders and grave mistakes that would provide for bloody and expensive protracted insurgency.  After victory, the US never should have disbanded the Iraqi military, this sent Iraqi army home with their guns and no promise of a next paycheck.  Doing this, basically forced some form of insurgency to take place.  The US should have cleaned the military of threats but largely kept its structure and chain of command below the general level in tact.  Instead, the US decided to force anyone who was a Ba'athist party member out of their jobs in government.  The problem is that Iraq only had one political party for decades, so everyone in government, whether it was a teacher, a police officer or a utility company employee was likely to be a Ba'athist.  Now, despite not having any role in the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Saddam Hussein, they were sent home while the US Soldiers were suddenly asked to train novices how to do technocratic jobs that the Soldiers themselves had no experience doing.   With Ba'athist party members, there was nobody to police the streets, manage the jails, run the courts, operate the power plants, educate the children, run waste management programs, facilitate hospital administration or even make sure there was drinkable water and the working sewers. If these poor decisions were not already straining the Iraqi people's patience with our presence, we allowed American Liberators to take pictures of Iraqi prisoners during enhanced interrogations and then leaked them to the public making the US out to be Hippocrates and providing recruitment material for enemy propaganda that clearly helped fuel a growing insurgency lead by Al-Qaeda in Iraq among the Sunni population and al-Sadyr's militias among the Shi'ite population. By creating a parliamentary structure similar to European states (as opposed to creating three states with regional representative democracy like in US) and then holding democratic votes at a time terrorism was suppressing the Sunni vote, the US allowed for Iranian aligned Shi'ite parties to sweep to power, further fueling the insurgency in Sunni dominated Anbar Provence that after US Departure (largely quelled during the US lead surge) would erupt as the Islamic State benefited from an alliance of Al-Qaeda in Iraq religious hardliners and former Ba'athist technocrats (many of whom became acquainted when detained during counter-insurgency operations).  Fortunately, the Islamic State has been overwhelmingly defeated in Iraq as the Iraqi National Army with the help of a large multi-national air support and special operating forces along with support from Iran and Al-Quds lead Shiite militias took back Anbar Provence, city by city, village by village.  Interestingly, Al-Sadyr's political movement, traditionally a Shi'ite movemement aligned with Iran, has moved away from Iran and taken in far left elements to push for a sovereign multi-ethnic Iraq free from sectarian divides (at least in rhetoric) and increasingly even Shi'ite cities such Basra have taken to massive protests again Iran and its proxies in the region, including burning down the Iranian embassy.  While the history of Iraq has been very dark, the future of Iraq is actually much brighter than many other nations in the region.  The US needs to make friends out of old enemies and allow Iraq to enjoy greater sovereignty and freedom. While USA will still have significant role in supporting the Iraqi Military and its counter-terrorism efforts, increasingly US support should come in the form of helping train better teachers and technocrats.  As the security situation improves significant investment opportunities are emerging in Iraq.  Coordinating a framework that matches projects to capitol can go along way to allowing the Iraqi Nation to make a huge leaps in terms of development and integration with global community of nations.  The Kurdish controlled regions particularly, have the potential to model higher standards of living for the rest of the region if they could just get over their radical fanaticism and repressive norms of governance.  Maybe it took the challenge of overcoming the Islamic State to pull Iraq together and show to the world that there was at truth to the connections between the Ba'athist Party and Al-Qaeda. As horrific as the past 15 years since the Iraqi invasion occurred and the insurgency began, I am somewhat optimistic about Iraq's future.  10 years from now the initial invasion of Iraq may not seem like the strategic mistake it appeared to be 10 years ago.

    Looking back, the idea that because the Surge worked in Iraq that it would work in Afghanistan seems so naive, but mistakes are only tragedies if you fail to learn from them.  If there is a positive from the events of 9/11, it was how it united our nation and reminded America of its many allies and friends, who united behind us.  In our retaliation we made many mistakes, but as Middle East and North African Studies have ballooned our understanding of the region and the institutional knowledge of matters relating to the region has grown exponentially.   Today, we can avoid seeing the Middle East a monolith where syndicated one-size fits all approaches to the war on terror are prescribed; instead we have to customize and tailor different strategies for each nation and region (something I intend to do on future blog posts).   At the center of our strategy; however, we must understand that it is ideology driving this conflict and that the only way America can prevail in the war on terror is for our ideas of collective freedom and individual liberty to prevail over the ideology of terror.  Since the collapse of the cold war we have under-invested in the war of ideas, as funding for scholars and outlets like The Voice of America- that promote and advance the ideas of free-enterprise, democracy and the rule of law-, have largely been scaled back and muffled out by the noise of boisterous radical clerics, socialist demagogues and the cliche anti-American attacks that downplay America's sacrifices and contributions to the betterment of humanity, instead scapegoating the United States with anti-Semetic conspiratorial allegations that deflect blame for problems that are the result of internal issues neither the US nor Israeli Governments has anything to do with.  When America projects its values loudly, clearly and confidently, our true allies will rise and stand with us to defend the Free World.  With pressure mounting from state actors, most noticeably China and Russia, but also North Korea and Iran, it would be easy for the War on Terror to be pushed to the back burner as more immediate existential threats emerge.  Turning up the volume on the war of ideas is relatively low-cost, low risk way magnify US influence and advance US interests to our adversaries' detriment.  From the past 17 years, its become clear that a forward approach to counter-terrorism is expensive and unsustainable considering the role it plays in terrorist recruitment and free-riding affect it permits host nations.  This is not to say the US should depart from the Middle East, its to make it clear that it should serve a supporting role, bridging gaps in technological capability that allow the host government to be successful.  The US needs to be careful; however, that US support is used for the right reasons by host Governments and not for inappropriate repression and the mere elimination of political rivals under the guise of counter-terrorism. Allowing for such, feeds terrorist recruitment that depict host governments as apostate puppets of the infidels, Americans and Jews.  The US should not abandon efforts to prod the Middle East towards more free economies and social systems but needs to recognize that successful Democracy has pre-requisites.  Security has to come first, economic development second.  Democracies can quickly become tyrannies without adequate  education levels and institutionalized legal norms conducive to the implementation of Republican Democracy.  Having institutionalized Republican norms or institutional safe-guards such as monarchy, often help young democracies in their nascent stages to stay on track.  There is nothing morally wrong with supporting Emirs and Military Leaders pursuing the prior if doing so improves standards of living for the people and advances the security and economic interests of America.  The US needs to be more restrained in its use of force and weary of getting its self drawn into high risk, low payoff engagements, focusing instead on low risk, high payoff engagements that will generate a sense of momentum as we tally small wins.
     
              The Post World War II norms of charity by trade have continued long past their strategic pertinence.  The US can no longer afford Charity by trade, it has to pursue fair trade and work towards addressing the causes of trade imbalances to sustain its position in the world. The military capability and diplomatic influence of the United States of America is something that can only be sustained with a strong US economy.  Unfair trade practices and sustained massive deficit spending can becomes threats to national security.  The Cold War norms of mutual attack retaliation alliances have also run past their strategic relevance and risk pulling the US into major great power confrontations and wars as occurred in World War I.  Instead of making America safer, the current state of alliances has allowed many of our wealthy allies to free-ride as they have not fairly shared the burden of mutual defense and security.  The United States cannot count on maintaining the current number of foreign military bases it currently has overseas in foreign nations.  To project its power in the future, our nation will need a substantially larger Navy that can either project power, serve rescue operations or launch punishing attacks when necessary.  Getting our Navy back up to 350 naval military vessels will help limit the need for foreign military bases, reducing our needs to make costly compromises with the host governments.  Finally, the most cost effective and intelligent means of lowering costs while improving effectiveness in the war on terror, is by strengthening Homeland Security.  Gaining resolute control of entry into our country by developing the capacity to effectively make sure that no unauthorized entrants can access our homeland without undergoing effective background checks and vetting is the surest means of preventing future terrorist attacks.  We can not only employ veterans to use their ample counter-terrorism experience, but pair them with new technologies, tactical walls and surveillance of the sea, land and air to be certain that what happened on 9/11, never happens again.   Its time to see Homeland Security investments as a means of reducing the need for costly foreign operations that put our service members of the armed forces in harms way, thousands of miles away from the families and communities they are trying to defend.  If there is one thing that I would like my readers from all parties to understand, it is that have resolute control over entry into our country, is the only safe way the US can begin extracting its military from the Middle East and North Africa.