Dreams Into Lightning 2

"Cybersecurity Honor System"

Danger Room at Wired updates on the US Air Force drone virus:

Officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada knew for two weeks about a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there. But they kept the information about the infection to themselves — leaving the unit that’s supposed to serve as the Air Force’s cybersecurity specialists in the dark. The network defenders at the 24th Air Force learned of the virus by reading about it in Danger Room.

The virus, which records the keystrokes of remote pilots as their drones fly over places like Afghanistan, is now receiving attention at the highest levels; the four-star general who oversees the Air Force’s networks was briefed on the infection this morning. But for weeks, it stayed (you will pardon the expression) below the radar: a local problem that local network administrators were determined to fix on their own. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Gay Servicemembers Celebrate End of DADT

CNN: 'The Pentagon announced the repeal of the long-controversial ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military will happen on Tuesday.' According to the article, 'no plans for any Pentagon ceremonies or events regarding the repeal have been announced.'

That's not stopping Servicemembers United from announcing celebrations in various places.

One DLI alumni group announces a "Countdown to Repeal" party at the Cannery Row Brewing Company in Monterey.

At 12:01am on September 20th (basically midnight on September 19th), “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will be HISTORY! Just like the start of a new decade or the turn of the millennium, this precise moment will be historic. At midnight, an actual legal restriction will be officially lifted off the shoulders of gay, lesbian, and bisexual servicemembers. Don’t spend this milestone at home alone! Come out and join h...undreds, maybe even thousands, of other servicemembers, vets, and supporters around the country for: The “COUNTDOWN TO REPEAL” Party This is NOT a fundraiser, and there is NO “suggested donation.” This will be a once-in-a-lifetime moment for the gay military community, so come out and celebrate our historic victory with friends. There will be several special announcements from a former service member impacted by DADT about the repeal of DADT, special weekly Active Duty events and much more.

I'll be there in spirit.

From Lebanon II to Cast Lead

Via Small Wars Journal Blog, an article by Lazar Berman (PDF) explores American analyses of changes in Israeli doctrine between the Lebanon war against Hezbollah (2006) and the Gaza war against Hamas (2008/09). Well worth a read.

The Surge

"Did the surge work?" That is, was the dramatic turnaround in Iraq's fortunes attributable to (a) a quantitative boost in US and coalition troop levels, or (b) qualitative improvements in counterinsurgency techniques, or (c) factors indigenous to Iraq and unrelated, or tangentially related, to Coalition efforts? This question has been kicking around since 2008, and it matters because it will affect the way future wars are taught and fought.

Via Small Wars Journal, Robert Haddick's article at Foreign Policy asks that question, and cites Maj. Joshua Thiel's study which comes up with the third answer.

But did the U.S. troop surge in Iraq really win the war? Maj. Joshua Thiel, a U.S. Army Special Forces officer, thinks not. In a study written for Small Wars Journal, Thiel performs a statistical analysis that correlates the arrival of the surge reinforcements into Iraq in 2006 and 2007 with subsequent levels of combat incidents in 2007 and 2008. Using data gathered from each of Iraq's 18 provinces and incorporating lags to account for the time required for new combat units to become effective in the field, Thiel concluded that there was no significant correlation between the arrival of U.S. reinforcements and subsequent changes in the level of violence in Iraq's provinces. Some provinces received reinforcements; others did not. Combat incidents went up in some provinces and down in others. But the connection between surge troops and the change in the level of incidents seems entirely random.

Overall violence in Iraq declined steeply in 2008. But Thiel attributes this to other factors besides the arrival of U.S. combat reinforcements. These factors include the Sunni Awakening against al Qaeda in Anbar province, the completion by 2008 of sectarian ethnic cleansing in the Baghdad area, the erection of security barriers between neighborhoods in Baghdad, a unilateral cease-fire by some Shiite militias, the increased dispersion of joint U.S. and Iraqi combat outposts in Iraq's cities, and perhaps most important, the maturation of Iraq's security forces. These factors could all have occurred without the arrival of additional U.S. forces.

Read the rest at the link.

Veterans' Day

Countercolumn: Disabled.

... Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

--Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

Mudville Gazette: In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae (1872-1918)

Anonymous US Army soldier in Fiji, 1943: Soldier, where's your hatred now?

SOLDIER, WHERE'S YOUR HATRED NOW? (F.I., March 1943)

Soldier,
Where's your hatred now?
You haven't any? But you ought to have.
Remember the advice we gave.
Where will you be anyhow
If you forget that you must fight,
That they are wrong, and we are right?
You must make their heads to bow.

"I will fight because I must.
My hatred falters. In the heat of war
The hatred that was once a sore
Festered with a bitter lust,
Becomes a heartache, throbbing deep,
So that I cannot help but weep
Seeing comrades fall to dust."

Soldier,
Why that tear-wet eye?
Your fallen comrades you won't see again?
Remember, this affair is plain:
You may be about to die
Like them; but while you live, be strong,
For right will conquer all that's wrong.
Fight till they for mercy cry.

"You are right, my hatred's gone,
But I remember they are human too -
Those boys who in a sick world grew,
Groping - while afar, the dawn
Awaits to shine on them again
As it has on Freedom's men.
Can I , hating, speed the dawn?"

Soldier,
Spare no love for those
Who try to tear down what we want to save.
They're bestial, and they're not so brave.
Bring conflict to a quicker close:
Destroy their tanks, destroy their planes;
It is this Justice ordains.
Give them death if death they chose!

"I will wreck their tanks and planes
And let their cities fall, for all I care,
And in the name of right, I'll tear
Their bowels out, and smash their brains,
(For you, my country, killed my soul)
And as we approach the goal,
Clamp them in Revenge's chains!"

Soldier,
Bear it for a while,
And if you find no hatred for the foe,
Hate, then, the evil that brought woe.
Hate the greed and hate the guile.
Hate, then, the motive, not the man.
Love the Truth, for if you can,
Soldier, you have won God's smile.

My father's memoir of the Second World War may be found at Pacific Memories.

"The reality of war is hellish enough"

Beauchamp treed.

Yearly Kos: Military Progress Not Welcome

Ezra Klein at The American Prospect blog:

AN ODD CLOSE. As the Military and Progressives panel came to an end, a young man in uniform stood up to argue that the surge was working, and cutting down on Iraqi casualties. The moderator largely freaked out. When other members of the panel tried to answer his question, he demanded they "stand down." He demanded the questioner give his name, the name of his commander, and the name of his unit. And then he closed the panel, no answer offered or allowed, and stalked off the stage,

Wes Clark took the mic and tried to explain what had just occurred: The argument appears to be that you're not allowed to participate in politics while wearing a uniform, or at least that you shouldn't, and that the questioner was engaging in a sort of moral blackmail, not to mention a violation of the rules, by doing so. Knowing fairly little about the army, I can't speak to any of that. But it was an uncomfortable few moments, and seemed fairly contrary to the spirit of the panel to roar down the member of the military who tried to speak with a contrary voice.

In the Comments, a response to JoeCHI produces this memorable quote:

"Since when is it a progressive principle to act as the "thought police"?"

Shut up, troll. you have become tiresome.

UPDATE. LGF has video. The soldier's (I'm assuming that the person is in fact a soldier) words are inaudible here.

For the record, I'm not sure I think the moderator was "shouting down" the questioner, and I think there's some reason for concern as to whether the questioner violated DOD policy by participating in a political rally in uniform. This Ain't Hell quotes the relevant regulations, and concludes that

the guy was within his rights to be there and in uniform. It’s just a lame excuse to keep people from hearing that current operations have improved life in Iraq, while hiding behind a DoD policy that the Left doesn’t agree with when it suits them.

I'll follow up on this as more information becomes available.

On Scott Thomas Beauchamp

Except for linking to Greyhawk's post, I've put off commenting on the business of Scott Thomas Beauchamp's article "Shock Troops" at The New Republic, because I wanted to wait until I had a good clear picture of the incident. Now that TNR has issued its response to the various questions raised about the article, I think it's time to offer a few thoughts of my own.

1. How do you determine a source's biases? That's the topic of a popular post that appeared here at DiL last year. I think the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair is a good opportunity to review some of the ideas I presented there.

First, there's the business of anonymous (or in the case of "Scott Thomas", pseudonymous) sources. Neo cited a 2003 Poynter report - written by 18 prominent journalists in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal - offering some suggestions for improving credibility when citing anonymous sources. Here are the Poynter report's recommendations on "attribution and sourcing", in the report's own words:

Our responsibility to the reader is to make clear where we got our information.

We focused on two areas: anonymous sources and attribution in narrative reconstructions.

The use of anonymous sources should be a last resort when the story is of compelling public interest and the information is not available any other way. A supervising editor must know the source’s identity.

We also agreed that:

• Anonymous sources should be encouraged to go on the record.

• We should weigh the source’s reliability and disclose to readers the source’s potential biases.

• The more specific we can be in describing the source in the story, the better.

• Anonymous sources should not be used for personal attacks, accusations of illegal activity, or merely to add color.

• The source must have first-hand knowledge.

• Journalists should not lie in a story to protect a source.

Journalists may not be able to avoid the use of anonymous sources in such places as Washington, D.C., but they should constantly challenge their use. The use of anonymous sources should never be routine.

News wire services should share their standards for the use of anonymous sources and aspire to the ones articulated above.

Narratives are a form of vicarious experience and put readers at the scene. We admire the power of this technique but remain concerned about making clear to the reader where the information comes from. Use deft textual attribution, detailed editor’s notes, or the newspaper equivalent of "footnotes."

The attribution in the narrative should ensure the reader knows the information is verifiable.

Well, I don't think there's really anything for me to add here, do you? In my post on source biases, I went on to suggest some factors to consider; these included:

- the source's ideological orientation
- the source's financial interests
- debts and favors
- role of the publisher or broadcaster
- the source's experiences and perceptions
- psychological factors

I also listed some factors that I think are important in determining the reliability of a piece of information:

- internal consistency
- external consistency
- insider details
- dialog and dissent
- nuance
- the human voice

For full explanations of what I mean by these terms, please go to How can you determine a source's biases? And keep them in mind as you read the rest of this post, and as you continue following the Scott Thomas Beauchamp / TNR affair.

2. Beauchamp wasn't twisted by war - he was twisted to begin with. We've already established that Scott Thomas Beauchamp is an asshole. In fact, he should probably be listed in the Wikipedia article on "asshole" ("this article may require cleanup"), but that's outside the scope of this discussion.

What is important, though, is TNR's admission that the famous (or infamous) story of Beauchamp mocking the burned and disfigured woman - with which Beauchamp begins his article - did not take place in Iraq, but in Kuwait:

The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.

So "Beauchamp acknowledged his error," did he? Well that was mighty damn brave of him. "When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error." Those ten little words just tell such a story, don't they? Oh, but I'm ranting. Let's move on.

The point is, this isn't a minor detail, it's the focal point of the article. Here, I'll let TNR tell it:

Beauchamp's latest, a Diarist headlined "Shock Troops," was about the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war.

And again, that's right out of the magazine's own statement on the controversy. But the incident with the burned woman in the mess hall didn't have anything to do with "the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war", did it? Because no such "effects" could be present in someone who had not, as yet, been exposed to war.

Here's Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard:

So just to be clear, the first line of the original piece stated that Beauchamp "saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq." That turns out now to be a blatant lie--and one that Beauchamp stuck with after THE WEEKLY STANDARD first asked Foer to reveal the base at which this incident occurred. Further, TNR says in this new statement that "Shock Troops" "was about the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war." But now we find out that Beauchamp hadn't even gotten to Iraq when this incident allegedly took place. He was, in fact, a morally stunted sadist before he ever set foot in Iraq.

None of this would have come to light, of course, without the pressure and scrutiny of the military blogging community. This post at the Standard has a roundup of some of the important ones. Better yet, just go to Michael Goldfarb's main page (or his July 2007 archives) for links to the milbloggers. Kudos to Goldfarb for the hard work he's been putting into this - and of course, kudos to the milblogging community for knowing what questions to ask.

And it was the milbloggers who pinned down STB and TNR on the disfigured woman in the messhall incident. When presented with this important discrepancy, TNR acknowledged its error.

UPDATE: Right now there are a couple of new threads emerging which - if they pan out - look very bad for STB and TNR. But I haven't got anything I consider solid enough to post about yet. I'll write a new post when I've got something.

Lethal and Non-Lethal Action

Psyop Cop at OpFor:

World War Two was won through sheer industrial might and brute force. It was the conventional warrior’s wet dream and something that will probably never be seen again (and thank God for it).

The War on Terror is something entirely different. Inasmuch lethal action has a role to play (because, as they say, “some men you just can’t reach”), non-lethal action has to be the driving force in this war. Otherwise, logic demands that you must wipe out vast swaths of population to convince them they’re wrong and we’re right (essentially the driving strategy behind WW2). ...

What's on Psyop's mind? This article -
Ahmed al-Shayea renounces terrorism:

The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news, he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004.

Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.

At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency. ...

Ahmed concluded that “There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death.”

Psyop continues:

The trouble is that, in the Arab world, you cannot communicate with another person without referencing Islam. It is as much a part of those people’s culture and mindset as oil is a part of the ground there. And, by simply refusing to play, the Army allows the extremists to dominate the field and convince the fence-sitters that Allah commands them to go and kill Americans and those who support them. Without another opinion to listen to on the matter, the issue is pretty much decided for them.

A low literacy rate contributes to this. It is not unlike the Catholic church in Europe during the Middle Ages. Liturgy was in Latin only, as was the Bible. Because the local priest was the only man who could speak or write Latin, he could pretty much tell the people whatever he wanted and, because it was the “church” speaking, it was the truth. Burn a heretic, send your kids on a crusade, give me money… you get the idea. Imams in many of the towns and villages across the Arab world have that same power.

Convincing detainees (or EPWs or whatever you want to call them) of the wrongness of their actions can be done. This story proves it. However, it has to be done through the venue of Islam and Arab culture, not the progressive, western, Christian way of doing things.

Instead of locking ‘em up and throwing away the key, which will ultimately NOT pass a Constitutional litmus test, they could be turned and then let loose to spread their new ideology.

Meanwhile, another battle on the ideological front goes down in Britain, reports the Counterterrorism Blog:

In yet another landmark legal case in the United Kingdom regarding Internet-based terrorism, a judge in London has sentenced a group of five British-born youngsters to a total of 13 years in prison for conspiring to use the web in order to accumulate vast amounts of terrorist propaganda in hopes of eventually traveling to Pakistan and joining Al-Qaida's forces there. The convicted defendants--Mohammed Irfan Raja, Usman Malik, Aitzaz Zafar, Awaab Iqbal, and Akbar Butt--were all between the ages of 17-21 and had made contact with each other through an Internet chatroom. In explaining his decision, Judge Peter Beaumont admonished the defendants: "Each of you is British. You were born here, your families lived here, you went to school and university here, you hold British passports. You live under the protection of its laws, which give you freedom of speech and religious observance, yet each of you were prepared to break its laws. Why? Because in my judgment you were intoxicated by the extremist nature of the material each one of you collected - the songs, images and the language of violent jihad - and so carried away by that material were you that each of you crossed the line. That is exactly what the people that peddle this material want to achieve and exactly what you did... To stop them and you and to protect this country and its citizens abroad, a message has to be sent."

Speaking of messages, M. Zhuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy will be on the air in Arizona tonight. Here's the release:

M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD Chairman will be a guest today with William Wolf on "Middle East Radio Forum" on KKNT 960AM from 12PM-1PM PST. They will discuss Islam vs Islamists. Topics will include the controversial PBS documentary (see www.freethefilm.net ) which is set to appear locally on Channel 8 KAET on August 14, 2007 at 10 PM and other national and global issues related to the topic of Islam and Islamism.

For those outside Arizona, the program can be heard online at:

http://www.middleeastradioforum.org

Jasser sounds a cautionary note in this NRO symposium on the apparent erosion of support for suicide terrorism in the Muslim world:

This week’s Pew study results are dangerously oversimplified. Improvements in economics and moods in the developing world are in no way reason enough for the sharp decline in support for suicide bombing. The recent 45-doctor plot in London and Glasgow told us that much. For now, it is not only too early, but downright irresponsible to have a collective sigh of relief.

As we have often seen, Pew avoids the why. In their latest report, they again ignore the most central global question: Islamism and its conflict with America and the West.

What if, in fact, the general support for the tactic of terror was decreasing simply because the Islamist enemy was beginning to achieve their ideological goals in their native countries? What if the Islamists were actually sensing a general global retreat of the uniquely American ideologies of pluralism?

Terror is only a means to the ends of political Islam. If political Islam is on the rise, doesn’t it stand to reason that apologetics for terrorism may then actually decrease?

Certainly freer markets, economic growth, and education may ultimately drive Muslim populations away from autocracy and corruption. But to where will it drive them? What alternative Muslim narratives are available in this war of ideas? With the current American mainstream-media (MSM) distractions, Islamists are free to control Arab and Muslim media alongside their dictators and monarchs and spread political Islam in the Middle East and in the West.

Our private and governmental resources have yet to hardly focus on the anti-Islamists and anti-Wahhabist Muslims. The Bush administration and MSM would similarly rather avoid any critical ideological engagement of Islamist movements around the world. Our public diplomacy has actually turned into “Islamist facilitation.”

Manifestations of Islamist fascism (i.e. terrorism) may wax and wane depending upon how threatened the Islamist ideologues are with extinction. The underlying disease — political Islam— however, will never go away without a direct ideological counter-jihad and counter-Islamism from within the faith. ...

Muslim reformer Irshad Manji is doing her part. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail conversation:

"I'm an Iraqi agnostic that lives in the UAE. I was part of an online community where everybody was free to share his ideas. Until I started talking about the Israeli-Arab conflict. I said that Arabs were making a lot of massacres, as well as the other side. I was insulted and kicked out.

After that, a lot of users asked me make another free Arab forum. The forum is now in the design phase. I have a handful of thinkers, believers and non-believers. I am now looking for Arab Israelis who can give their side. I grant full freedom of speech, providing that everything is supplied with evidence. Looking forward your help, Irshad." - The Free Arab

NOTE: Irshad put The Free Arab in touch with with another Arab dissident, who wrote this to him:

"In agreement with what you said, here are only some examples of Arab/Muslim atrocities committed against our own which we are too proud to admit:
Pakistan’s General Yahya Khan slaughtering Bengali Muslims in 1971.
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein slaughtering the Kurds and Iranians using chemical weapons.
The Taliban slaughtering Shi'a Hazaras, committing war crimes comparable to the Serbs killing the Bosnians.
Jordan’s King Hussein and Pakistan’s General Zia ul Haq slaughtering Palestinians during Black September.
Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad slaughtering 40,000 Muslims and leveling the city of Hama.
The Amman bombings of November 2005 when Zarqawi even proudly claimed responsibility for the attacks.
On-going ethnic cleansing in Darfur...

Remarks. Some men you just can't reach. But there are some people who can be reached, and that's where the real action is in this war.

Scott Thomas Beauchamp is an asshole.

Greyhawk nails it.

1. Scott Thomas Beauchamp's story is now in the hands of his superiors. They know him and his overall worth as a soldier and will decide his immediate future. If you are fortunate enough to be someone other than one of those superiors (or his wife) you are officially relieved of concern for this asshole and his future.

2. In the meantime, something to bear in mind as his story is bandied about: Scott Thomas Beauchamp is an asshole. He either did what he said he did to a disfigured woman in a DFAC (which makes him an asshole) or he fabricated the story for reasons unknown (which makes him an asshole). This same methodology can be applied to his other war stories, too.

3. As for anything else he might have to say regarding past, present, or future events: nobody in their right mind cares what an asshole has to say. ...