CIA's Climate Change Center

For those of you still in doubt about the link between national security and climate change - natural security as some have dubbed it - the Central Intelligence Agency, not best known for cutting edge innovation, has opened a new Center on Climate Change and National Security. It seems to be mostly to predict when and where natural disasters or natural resource shortages will cause instability, but it's a start.

New Thinkers Needed for Afghanistan

Let me get this straight: what we're doing in Afghanistan is not working; the President has been presented with options, basically double down or go for a minimalist approach; the leading commander in Afghanistan says we could be there for 100 years and still fail; we're promising continued support for Karzai even though the main problem is that Afghanistan's central government is corrupt, incompetent, and generally refuses to pull any weight; and the main argument for adding additional troops is that we tried the alternative (a "counter terrorism" approach) under Bush and it didn't work. Really? Only two options exist? The President is right to think about this one long and hard.

Where are the real alternative ideas? Better yet, where are the alternative thinkers, preferably someone under 50 who has actually been on the ground in Afghanistan without a huge protective escort. Gates, Jones, Petraeus, McChrystal, Holbrooke, Clinton, Riedel... all over 50. Is it any wonder that all of their reviews said basically the same thing -- Afghanistan is critical, but we can still win -- without offering a real strategy or real solutions?

Give me someone really outside the box. How about we make Joshua Foust think of solutions instead of criticizing others. Let's get Fred Kaplan in the room. Why isn't someone asking Katherine Tiedemann for new ideas? Ask Craig Mullaney what he would do. Maybe Greg Mortenson could add an outsider's opinion of what to do. For all the talk about how the Obama Administration is full of young go-getters his Afghanistan team is full of old retreads with the same old ideas. I'm far from the first person to say we aren't fighting an eight-year war in Afghanistan, we're fighting a one-year war eight times in a row. You think going back to the same ideas is going to break that cycle?

Fighting in Afghanistan will die down in a few weeks, as it does every winter. That gives us the luxury of a real debate for new ideas. We don't need another strategic review, we need a real strategy, and we should include new thinkers and new ideas in the debate.

Worse Decision Making: Redskins or the Afghanistan Team?

The Washington Post headline this morning blared out: "McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure;'" I wished they had used the headline from below the fold (about the Redskins): "First and Unsure of the Goal."

It was inevitable that General McChrystal's classified review of the situation in Afghanistan would be leaked. It was almost as inevitable that the review, as Joshua Foust put it, contains "absolutely nothing new." The most disturbing aspect of the review is that it talks about the "counterinsurgency strategy." Our commander in Afghanistan thinks that counterinsurgency IS the strategy. Shouldn't that be a red flag? McChrystal's expertise is supposedly thinking unconventionally, but his review is extremely inside the (counterinsurgency) box in its thinking: more troops, more resources, more time, full speed ahead.

At last week's excellent Foreign Policy and New America Foundation event "Covering Afghanistan:A Conversation On How It Looks From the Ground" Steve Coll expressed optimism that President Obama's team was taking a full and deep assessment of the strategic rationale for being in Afghanistan (look for my question and his answer near the end of the video). I'm still more skeptical that new thinking will emerge, though I'm slightly more hopeful after reading the Post's other article today. The key quote is:

The president, one adviser said, is "taking a very deliberate, rational approach, starting at the top" of what he called a "logic chain" that begins with setting objectives, followed by determining a methodology to achieve them. Only when the first two steps are completed, he said, can the third step -- a determination of resources -- be taken.

And he should work in that order. It's good to hear that starting to happen, although perhaps it would have been nice to start the process four or five "strategic reviews" ago, or during the transition, or in 2002. It remains to be seen who has a plan to score a touchdown first, the national security team or the Redskins. Better late than never?

Overstating my Power? bin Laden, You're On Notice!

Apparently expressing my frustration that we have yet to catch or kill a given terrorist is enough to get said terrorist killed. Do the world's terrorist-hunting teams all read Smart Influence and get motivated when they see me write about their prey? First I expressed my frustration that we had shot at Baitullah Mehsud repeatedly without hitting him and lo and behold we hit him. Last week Jamie Morgan's guest post talked about the right and wrong ways to fight Noordin M. Top's terrorist group in Indonesia; I'm pretty sure killing Top is part of the right way!

So who's left? Lots of people, for sure, but for now, Osama bin Laden, you're on notice (copyright Stephen Colbert)! I'm officially sick of our inability to capture or kill you. Can't we just look where they are sending his record label checks from his new Auto-Tuned album?

Recycled Afghanistan Stories and Ideas

I haven't written much not because I had nothing to say, but rather to avoid getting caught up in the tornado of voices, especially on Afghanistan. The news all seems recycled, and so do the ideas.

• Afghanistan is corrupt and the election was likely stolen. We knew that was the case, and we knew the elections would probably be stolen.
• Both Fareed Zakaria and Fred Kaplan had the same brilliant idea that we should simply throw money at the problem by bribing everyone and their brother in Afghanistan.
• Paul Pillar sums up the "safe haven" debate nicely, but it's nothing I, or others didn't say.
• Another smart, young officer, Joseph Kerns Goodwin, returned from Afghanistan to tell us how bad the situation is on the ground, which we will likely ignore.
• A draft of the metrics was released today, and while it appears to be thoughtful and contain a list of good things to measure, it lacks any actual numbers. Don't worry, apparently Afghanistan is like kindergarten, we can keep trying as many reviews and metrics as it takes to get it right. For as long as I've waited for the metrics you might think they would get me excited, but nope, nothing.
• The COIN crowd keeps arguing that COIN is awesome and the solution to everything and ignoring the lack of a strategy that COIN is supposed to help implement. They are even having a big COIN conference to talk about how important COIN is. Fun! (would they seem even nerdier if we called them numismatists?)
• Even Osama bin Ladin's message seemed phoned in. "Death to America and Israel, blah blah blah." (although at least one blogger has promised to Auto-Tune the tape; maybe that can spice it up.)

Is it the economy? Is there a down market for ideas right now? Even I feel repetitive: Pakistan is not going to collapse despite the heavy-handed Pakistani military; we need an actual strategy in Afghanistan; we need to work on our smart power; etc, etc.

I'm all for recycling, but this is ridiculous. Wake me up when you're ready to have a non-circular debate.

Wrong Answer for Indonesian Terror

Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Jamie Morgan. The views expressed are her own.

Indonesian officials announced a plan to tighten anti-terrorist laws, which would allow the government to detain suspects for up to two years. The government claims this will allow them to get more in line with the laws of Western nations. (Are two year detention allowances standard in Western nations now?) Additionally, several of the senior-level government Ministers are seeking an amendment to a terrorism investigation law that would allow non-police forces, including the Indonesian Military (TNI), to conduct anti-terror investigations.

All of this is disconcerting for two reasons. First, we are talking about a country that just emerged from a brutal dictatorship 11 years ago. The military was the major instrument of former President Suharto to control the population during his rule, and expanding the military’s powers such a short time after his fall does not send a good message to the population, nor is it a good idea for the fledgling democracy.

Second, and possibly more importantly for the rest of the world, expanding the amount of time the Indonesian government can legally hold terrorism suspects without charge is not going to do anything for its fight against Noordin M. Top’s terrorist group. It actually might harm it. The government needs to focus on identifying the root causes of support for Top’s group among certain areas of the Indonesian population, rather than inflame public opinion against it. The International Crisis Group reports that support among the local population, and even among the less militant terrorist group Jemmah Islamiyah (JI), is not high for Top’s extremist faction. However, if Top’s faction is allowed to continue to infiltrate Islamic boarding schools, it will continue to find the few supporters it needs to plan operations like the July 17 hotel bombing in Jakarta.

Recent revelations connecting Top’s group and various extremist groups in the Middle East and South Asia make all of this even more alarming. Unfortunately, given the lack of general media attention on this issue, I am not hopeful for improvement anytime soon.

The Afghanistan Genie: Wish Three

The war in Afghanistan is a funny thing. Who ever thought that Nicholas Kristof, Thomas Friedman, George Will, and Cindy Sheehan would all agree on something? For that matter, who thought that a band of neocons including Sarah Palin and I would basically agree?

But at a time when our presence in Afghanistan is being compared to everything from Vietnam to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (ignoring the many obvious differences) hope and optimism can spring from the most unlikely places. We were all waiting on General McChrystal's strategic review, which apparently will not be released publicly. But Laura Rozen, in her job over at Politico, unearthed a gem dated August 10th entitled "United States Government Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign for Support to Afghanistan." Wow. Why didn't THIS receive more publicity? A coordinated approach from McChrystal and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Eikenberry, what a concept. The plan seems very well thought out, I'm highly impressed. I challenge anyone to read the plan and not be more optimistic than they were before. It leans very heavily on counterinsurgency theory, but it doesn't make the mistake so many Beltway think tankers do of equating COIN with actual strategy.

You may recall that I first wished we would actually hit Baitullah Mehsud with a Predator drone strike after so many tries, and with my second wish asked for actual metrics for success in Afghanistan (and Pakistan). Well guess what? The "Integrated Civ-Mil Campaign" plan contains metrics! Not the National Security Council's metrics, set to be delivered to Congress by September 24th, but pretty good ones. The loquacious Spencer Ackerman has a very nice write up of the metrics.

So what should I wish for with my third wish? A job on the National Security Council? Fifteen minutes alone in a room with Holbrooke to try to talk sense to him? Those seem in the realm of possibility; my other option--magically having the personnel for an actual "civilian surge"--does not.