Patrick Lang, Author at Progress Pond

The Limits of Air Power

Dan Halutz is the first IDF chief of staff who is not a soldier. He is a military aviator. I had missed that, but a statement attributed to a “senior officer” of the IDF in a New York Times story today caused me to look at IDF leadership. The “scales” have fallen from my eyes. “I believe in AIR POWER,” the officer told the Times and Halutz is likely to be the officer who was interviewed.

He has no ground forces experience at all. He reminds me a bit of Rumsfeld, the one time naval aviator and opponent of the use of sizable ground forces. Like Rumsfeld he is a proponent of “modern” warfare, gee-whiz techno- equipment and disdainful of big, heavy armored forces. He has re-organized the armed forces so that the ground forces no longer report directly to him.

Someone will say that Chaim Laskov had been head of the Israel Air Force (IAF) before becoming chief of staff in the early ’50s. This is essentially irrelevant as a comparative situation. Laskov was not a pilot and was a ground force commander and a founder of the IDF Armored Corps before he became head of the air force.

Halutz is an ally of right wing political forces in Israel and an extreme proponent of the “Air Power” ideology that has been an active force in military affairs ever since it was enunciated by the Italian fascist Giulio Douhet in the ’20s. The doctrine was taken up by Hugh Trenchard in Britain, Mitchell in the U.S., and the pre-war 2 German Luftwaffe. It persists in many air forces today.

The “Air Power” ideology in its purest form holds that ground forces have largely been made obsolete and useless by the invention and development of aircraft and other air delivered weapons, missiles, etc.

“Air Power” theorists believe that this is true at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.

In Lebanon the IDF appears to be following a strategy at all levels that is entirely dictated by “Air Power” theory.

At the tactical and operational levels of war, Israel seems to be intent on destroying Hizballah south of the Litani River and north of Metulla to some unknown depth. Thus far, just about all the attacks against Hizballah have been made by air weapons and artillery. These weapons are inherently indiscriminate in their application, especially in the hands of “Air Power” theorists who typically want to “make the rubble bounce.” This is especially true if the aforesaid airplane enthusiasts see that their theories are not yielding the desired result. If you still believe in “surgical strikes,” look at the pictures from Lebanon.

The IAF is “leafleting” all of south Lebanon urging citizens to leave their homes and flee northward. They appear to be intent on “herding the cats” away from their border through the use of aerial firepower. They know that Hizballah is a LEBANESE Shia guerrilla army with its roots in the Shia portion of the Lebanese population. Most of the people of the south are Shia, and the IDF knows that if they remain where they are they will support the Hizballah guerrillas both now and in the future. Indeed, the guerrillas, are, in many cases, villagers from this area. In any event, the present IDF effort to “cleanse” the south of guerrillas by fire will fail. The IAF and its associated heavy artillery simply lacks the weight of fire needed to drive this enemy from its prepared positions in the stony ground of South Lebanon. The actual ground maneuver attempted thus far is a joke and typical of the role imagined by “Air Power” advocates for ground forces. “Maroun al-Ras” is a tiny village less than a mile from the Israeli border, and no amount of fancy graphics on TV “gushed” over by retired generals can alter the fact that its capture is an insignificant achievement that has had and will have no effect on the amount of fire going into northern Israel.

At the strategic level, the IDF under Halutz is following classic “Air Power” theory which holds that crushing the “Will of the People” is the correct objective in compelling the acceptance of one’s own “will” by an adversary or neutral. With that objective in mind, all of the target country is considered to be one, giant target set. Industry, ports, bridges, hospitals, roads, you name it. It is all “fair game.” In this case the notion is to force the Lebanese government and army to accept a role as the northern jaw in a vise that will crush Hizballah and subsequently to hold south Lebanon against Hizballah. Since Lebanon is a melange of ethnic and religious communities of which Shia LEBANESE are a major element and since many Lebanese Shia are supporters of Hizballah, the prospect of getting the Lebanese government to do this is “nil.” As for the Lebanese Army, the US attempted for two years (1982-84) to re-structure and re-train the Lebanese Army to make it a “national” non-sectarian force only to learn when this army was committed to battle in 1984 against Druze and Christian forces, that it simply fell apart. The US then abandoned the effort. Nothing much has changed in Lebanon since then.

Bottom Lines:

-Air Power and artillery will not decisively defeat Hizballah or force it to withdraw from rocket range of Israel.

-The Lebanese government and army are not what the Israelis have once again dreamt of and they should have known that. The policy that Israel is following is truly a triumph of hope over experience.

-An international force that will fight Hizballah in the south to disarm it is a pipe dream. Who will do that? The only realistic candidate would be France in terms of military capacity. This would be a major irony of history.

Bottom Line Advice for Israel: Occupy the ground or expect to suffer the effects of failure.

Colbert on Civil War

“National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie, meanwhile, traveled to the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Tuesday to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the Shiite community’s most revered spiritual leader. Al-Rubaie emerged to tell reporters “the way to forming the government is difficult and planted with political bombs. We ask the Iraqi people to be patient, and we expect forming the government will take a few months.” Forbes

——————————————————————————————-

Stephen Colbert of the “Colbert Report” is a new hero of mine. Last night he said on his show that “people” should stop hyperventilating over the words “civil war” in connection with Iraq because “civil war” is spelled “exit strategy.” This is amusing no matter how grim the prospect.

For Rubaie to go to Sistani with his hat in his hand is confirmation for every Sunni in the world of the character of the emerging government in Iraq.

Nevertheless, I would urge “people” not to get their underwear in “a twist” just yet, Iraqis are remarkably tough folk. They are engaged in settling scores that are a thousand years old while re-distributing political and economic power in the only ways that are left to them in the situation that we inadvertently created. The elections “thingy” does not work peacefully in the absence of an electorate that accepts its common identity across ethno-religious group boundaries. There is no “Iraqi People” except in the minds of foreigners who do not understand the ethnography of Iraq or in the minds of Arabs who see what they want to see.

Rumsfeld or someone said that Democracy is a messy business. This isn’t democracy unless one thinks that bullets count more than votes in places like Iraq, but it IS a long term process of settling issues of power and wealth among the communities in Mesopotamia.

I have said for a long time now that Iraq was in a state of civil war. Civil war does not = exit strategy for me. We are where we are in Iraq as a result of our own foolish actions and misconceptions. Yes. Casualties are up. Yes. They may get even higher in numbers. Does that mean that a final crisis is upon us? No. Iraqis would not accept that and I think that they would be right.

Can we walk away? I have seen my country walk away from people who trusted it too many times. If the “American People” want to walk away from those who have sided with us in Iraq. then we should start preparing for refugee re-settlement. There will be no forgiveness for those who sided with us in a post US Iraq.

For my part, I will have nothing to do with abandoning them and I believe that US soldiers in Iraq would not want that either.

Pat Lang

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room (interview), PBS’s Newshour, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” (interview), and more .

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib Posts

Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)

“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2

The Long War

This briefing was sent to me by a concerned citizen. So far as I know and by its markings it is completely unclassified and in the public domain. It is not even marked “For Official Use Only” (FOUO). Since it is so interesting and so likely to be the subject of fruitful debate by my colleagues at this place, I offer it for inspection.

Pat Lang

Download jcslongwar_vicedirectorforstratplansandpolicy (PowerPoint)

So, It Wasn’t the End of History?

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

People pay schools money to have this man [Francis Fukuyama] teach their children? I wonder of he does the dog-paddle or the back stroke as he swims away from the ship? His detailed account of the Left wing nature of the neocon movement is delightful. You don’t like the word Lefty? Lang

"The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930’s and early 1940’s, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan." Fukuyama

"It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930’s and 1940’s came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group." Fukuyama

I once had one of the leading theoreticians of the "movement" tell me that the "con" in "neocon" is the "con" part. Translation: They are not Conservative. Conservatives in America believe in the limited utility of government, the importance of stopping government when it tries to run one’s life and that Freedom has little to do with the Patriot Act. The religious right in America are no more conservative than the neocons. They are merely right wing in a narrow minded and sectarian way. … continued below …

"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support." Fukuyama

Apparently, this is not exactly right. I mean the part about "no longer support." Fukuyama’s solution for the mess that he and his pseudo-conservative Jacobin friends have gotten us all in is that the US should have much the same policy with regard to "friendly autocrats" but should be careful not to do anything that might further break up the China (dishes). In other words, he has no solution for the mess that he and his pals made but is frightened by the result of their sophomoric meddling with the deepest forces in human nature and Middle Eastern history. Ah, I forgot. History has no meaning for them because like all good little Utopians, the past is dead and only the future matters. Lang

"Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing." Fukuyama

This is the best part really. This "scholar" has not learned a damned thing about Islam, Muslims, human nature and can’t read the newspapers evidently. I guess he hasn’t read Lang’s Rules of Epistemology or "Pie in the Sky." Oh well, I don’t suppose that readers of the New York Times magazine will be more than 75% of those who even know who he is. Lang

Pat Lang

cfr.org Interview on Iraq

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

The Council on Foreign Affairs folks talked to me today about the present inter-communal violence in Iraq.

Pat Lang

Lang: Political Process Will Move Forward in Iraq, Despite Sectarian Violence

Introduction & First Question:

Interviewee: W. Patrick Lang
Interviewer: Lionel Beehner, Staff Writer

February 24, 2006
“Save this country,” U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad pleaded with Iraqi leaders on February 24. The bombing of a golden-domed shrine in Samarra sacred to Shiites set off a fury of reprisal attacks that left at least 138 people dead, including several prominent Sunni clerics. A curfew was called to restore order. Shiite leaders urged restraint, as Iraq descended to a level of anarchy and sectarian violence unprecedented in the postwar period. Headlines around the globe warned of civil war. The New York Times claimed “political talks are in ruins.” Yet W. Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East Affairs and Counterterrorism at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, disagrees with these pronouncements. He doesn’t believe the attack on the Askariya Shrine will scuttle the political process, nor does he think it will impede the insurgency. In an interview with cfr.org, Lang discusses the looming threat of a general civil war, the role of Shiite militias in stoking violence, and what this all means for U.S. forces in Iraq.

What should the U.S. response be to this latest round of violence in Iraq?

LANG: There’s really nothing we can do about it. We lit a fuse on this by the kind of political process we’ve been sponsoring, which is clearly reversing the social order in Iraq to the unhappiness of the Sunnis. The Shiites have been pretty quiet because the electoral process has clearly been going in the direction of handing power over to them. Leaders have urged [Shiites] to be quiet, and not carry out reprisals. But this [latest attack against the shrine] is such an outrage from their point of view. This is like blowing up St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. … Read all

“Deja Vu all over again?”

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

I was sent this pair of “Army Times” articles (.pdf) by a friend now serving in the military advisory effort in Iraq. These stories give a good picture of what is happening on the ground country wide. I have advocated this kind of approach for several years and so am happy to see it progressing.

I do have a few comments on the “understanding” expressed in the stories of what the analogous situation was like in South Viet Nam.

It will be interesting to see if the country (Iraq) can pull itself together enough to sustain what they are building. I would say that the outcome in that area is still in doubt.

As for VN, Anthony Cordesmann (a brilliant scholar) doesn’t really know anything about the war there except what he has read, which is a lot. In fact, the early advisory efforts in that country failed because the communist army (NVA) that had defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, was brought to the South to deal with increasing SVN capability. This was in 1964. All of a sudden in that year, Special Forces (SF) led irregulars and the half trained Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) found themselves facing regimental sized units of highly skilled regulars under the command of men who had defeated a major European army ten years before. Before that happened they had been fighting the guerrillas of the local Viet Cong. … Continued below …
Incidentally, the ARVN was never trained by SF. There was a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in country from start to finish who did that. The unit advisers with ARVN units all belonged to the MAAG.

SF trained tribals and villagers in the boondocks to try to organize what amounted to counter-guerrillas at the village level. This also failed because the camps that were the bases for that activity were under continual pressure and frequent assault by the NVA. The villages could not be organized because the SF and their men were engaged in Ranger type light infantry operations rather than in doing counterinsurgency work among the people of the countryside. SF led Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) troops were, in effect, a separate army which fought the NVA in the vast woods and mountains of Indochina.

US Maneuver units attempted to destroy the NVA in the major battles of 1965-1967. This produced a lot of big fights but not much movement because the enemy always brought forward more men from North Vietnam to make up their losses.

A reversion to counterinsurgency occurred in 1967 with the creation of CORDS.

The MAAG continued to supply all the advisers to the very end. It was claimed there (in Vietnam), as well, that service as an adviser counted as much in one’s career as service in a US unit. This proved not to be true.

Pat Lang

“A Loaf of Bread, A Jug of Wine” etc.

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

Global Security – Nuke

Global Security – Missile

————————————

“..And Thou Beside Me In the Wilderness.” Omar Khayyam was always an odd Persian but I think he would have serious problems living with many of his present countrymen. He was a scientist and mathematician as well as a poet, but his skepticism would not have been appreciated in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

What are we to make of Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities? Courtesy of my Alexandria neighbor, John E. Pike and the “Daily Telegraph” we have the materials shown above.

Shahab-6? 10,000 kilometers in range? “Two to three years” to weaponization?” If this is true, then Iran would hold English cities at risk. When? No one really knows how long that would take. Three years? Five years” Ten years? Nobody knows really? The Mullahs probably do not know.

Would they use the weapons? This is actually rather unimportant. As a consequence of Iranian nuclear weapons, the playing field would be leveled to a remarkable degree. T. Friedman would begin to be right about something in his vision of the future. Could we still crush Iran? … continued below …

Certainly, but it would probably not come to that. Rather, we would experience a marked diminution of US influence and leverage in the region, and an upsurge in the general willingness of crazies around the world to believe that we are weaker. A perception of weakness on the part of one’s enemies is a dangerous thing. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other “emerging” countries would feel encouraged or threatened (choose your term) into taking similar paths. Would this danger drive these countries further into our arms? It is impossible to say, but with my usual pessimism I fear the worst.

Obviously, diplomacy and persuasion should be played out to the end, but the reactions of the Iranian government thus far are not encouraging.

People will say that this is all “cooked up” by the neocons and Bushies. I do not think that is true.

Pat Lang

The NIO Speaks

by Patrick Lang (bio below the fold)

Paul Pillar was the National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East during the period when the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was written, staffed across the Intelligence Community and approved as the ground truth of the US government. That was in October, 2002. He was supposedly in charge of that process as the member of the National Intelligence Council responsible.

He is now retired and has written an article for “Foreign Affairs” in which he says:

That there was no evidence that Iraq had nuclear weapons and that Iraq was in no way close to possessing a nuclear weapon at the time the NIE was written.
That the supposed Iraq-Al-Qaida connection was fabricated and non-existing.
That the Bush administration was not informed by the work of the Intelligence Community. Rather they used products of the IC to justify strategic decisions already taken.
That contrary to the conclusions of the Senator Roberts led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, analyst were pressured subtly but strongly to produce desired conclusions with regard to this subject.

You can access his article at the Foreign Affairs site), and if you wish you can access my article on much the same subject which was written in early 2004 and published in Middle East Policy in Autumn of that same year.

Pat Lang

“Pie in the Sky”

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

“So,” he said, in a conclusion that may not seem immediately logical to outsiders but was repeated again and again in interviews here, “I think it is the best chance for peace. I think Hamas can understand there is no way to destroy the state of Israel and will take a course to peace.

“Hopefully.”

Among Israelis, already reeling from having a prime minister in a coma, there is no lack of shock and anger that Palestinian voters overwhelmingly chose a radical Islamic group with a deadly résumé: 21 dead at the disco here in 2001; 19 dead on the No. 32A bus in Jerusalem in 2002; 23 dead on the No. 2 bus in Jerusalem in 2003; a double bombing on buses in Beersheba in 2004, killing 16 and injuring 100. And that is only a small, and recent, part of the list.” NY Times

“We will continue to fight against the occupation…” Hamas speaker in Gaza.

Occupation—- Interesting word. The sweet in nature and soft of head have heard that kind of language a lot from Palestinians (and generally heard in it what they wished). “All we want is our land back..” It took me some time to understand that what is really meant is all of Palestine, all of it, maybe a piece now, a sliver later. Maybe it will take more generations of struggle and death. “I will struggle and live in misery and pain, but my grandson will live free in his own land.” I have heard that many times, from Muslims, from Palestinian Christians.

The “occupied” have a certain right to be deceptive and disingenuous in pursuit of what they see as FREEDOM. A lot of us in the West still have a remarkable naive and patronizing attitude towards the Arabs, and the Palestinians are not made exceptions to this rule. We still think of them as essentially childlike and waiting to have revealed to them the “truths” of our civilization, which we “know” must constitute the unitary path to the future and progress of mankind.

The exit polls told us this would not happen? Surprise! People routinely lie to pollsters in the Arab World. Why? It is because knowledge is power and why should one give power to strangers?

So, when we find that they are filled with guile and skillful at manipulating words to tell us what they see we desire to believe, then we are surprised. Delightful! Mufaja’a ya al-Ajanib! The same pollsters have told us for years that the Palestinians want PEACE, like the Israelis are said to want peace, but in neither case have they ever convincingly told us WHICH PEACE either group wants.

Now we are predictably told that Hamas are not really religious-nationalist fanatics (seemingly mutually exclusive but nevertheless doable). No, rather, they are the next wave of negotiators who will come to the table once they realize that they can’t collect the garbage on time and that the Americans are unhappy.

“There’ll be pie in the sky bye and by, bye and bye………”

Joe Hill (sort of. My old man was a wobbly at heart. This is for him.)

Pat Lang

The Price of Fantasy

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

[O]n Thursday morning, Hamas officials said the group had won up to 75 seats — giving it a solid majority in the 132-member parliament. Officials in Fatah conceded that Hamas had won at least 70 seats, or enough to rule alone. They spoke on condition of anonymity because counting in some districts was continuing.

Palestinian pollsters were at a loss to explain the discrepancy between the exit polls and the reality. It may have been partly due to a reluctance by some voters to admit to pollsters that they were abandoning the ruling party.

Also, the errors appeared especially glaring in the district races, where smaller numbers of voters were polled. ” Yahoo News

Some estimates indicate an 80 seat majority for HAMAS. If this were not so sad a development, it would be amusing. What is “revealed” here is that in a popular democracy, voters, given a chance to vote their will in secret will do just that. I wonder how “Miss America” is going to deal with this outcome.

As in Iraq, and with regard to Iran as well, the neocons and other utopians have operated on the assumption that if empowered, Muslim and Arab voters would vote for western style secular liberals, heavily acculturated away from their own people and traditions. … continued below …
This has not happened anywhere, not in Lebanon, not in Iraq, not in Egypt, not in Iran and now most spectacularly in Palestine. Nevertheless, the “faith” of people at AEI, Heritage and in the West Wing has not been shaken and we will probably continue to seek the creation of earthly paradise through the mechanism of implementation of electoral reform. Well, good for us.

Why do the Muslims and Arabs keep voting for theocracy? Don’t kid yourself. Theocracy is what HAMAS, Hizballah, The Shia Alliance in Iraq, the MB spin-offs in Egypt and the Ahmadedinajad all really want.

I live with a very perceptive observer of the Middle East. She says that the reason we don’t “get it” about the Middle East is that we have missed the point that many people in the Middle East really do believe in God and are really more concerned with salvation (look it up) than they are with democracy.

I can hear it now! Surely that can’t be right!! Surely, these folks really want what we do; a “chicken in every pot,” an SUV parked out front of the single family dwelling and freedom from religion.

Maybe not.

Pat Lang