This news analysis by Michael Gordon appears in today's NYT magazine; with its point of view and directness, it reads like an Atlantic Monthly article.

The rules posted on the wall of the Marine base in Barwana concisely summed up the American predicament in Iraq: Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

What I saw in more than three weeks in Anbar Province was not reassuring.

Anbar has long been what the military calls an "economy of force" operation, which is a polite way of saying that troop requirements elsewhere in Iraq have led American commanders to employ fewer forces in the province than the situation warrants. As a consequence, counterinsurgency operations have taken on the quality of a whack-a-mole arcade game.

This lethal game would be more manageable if the insurgency were weakening. Instead, it is stronger than ever.

Officially, the Bush administration’s strategy is: Clear, hold and build. But with limited American forces to do any clearing, the war in western Iraq looks much more like hang on and hand over. Hang on against an insurgency that seems to be laying roadside bombs as quickly as they are discovered, and hand over to an Iraqi military that is still a work in progress.

An Army of Some

Stop picking on Pakistan!, says Richard Armitage.

It is critical that Pakistan not be shortchanged in our engagement in the region. While India is clearly important to us for its strategic and economic promise, the success of Pakistan holds the key to stability in the region and perhaps throughout the Muslim world. Were Pakistan to fail, there would be no hope for Afghanistan, a dimmed future for India and an increased threat of Islamist terrorism globally.

While a failed Pakistan would be bad news for Afghanistan, Musharraf's success does little to create legitimate business opportunities for Afghans.

Keep Pakistan on Our Side

The report of the 9/11 Commmission is now available as a comic book. Check it out.

"Never before have I seen a non-fiction book as beautifully and compellingly written and illustrated as The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation. I cannot recommend it too highly. It will surely set the standard for all future works of contemporary history, graphic or otherwise, and should be required reading in every home, school and library."
     --Stan Lee

I ran across this at the bookstore yesterday. It seems well done.

Washington Post ran a story on it back in July:

The book condenses the nearly 600-page federal report released by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to fewer than 150 pages, and the creators say they hope their book will help attract young readers and others who might be overwhelmed by the original document. With sans-serif captions, artist renderings, charts and sound-describing words such as "Whooom!" and "R-rrumble," the adaptation recounts the attacks with parallel timelines of the four hijacked planes.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals -- to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah.

“Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me.

Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said.

“You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”

Do you have a dog in this fight? Does it hunt?

WATCHING LEBANON, by SEYMOUR M. HERSH | The New Yorker

The challenges posed by insurgency and instability have proved difficult to surmount. This difficulty may embolden future opponents to embrace insurgency in combating the United States. Both the current and future conduct of the war on terror demand that the United States improve its ability to conduct counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. This study makes recommendations for improving COIN based on RAND’s decades-long study of it.

First, organization for COIN must be improved. The Provincial Reconstruction Team model that has been implemented in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan is a good start, but does not go far enough. This model, which unites U.S. civilian and military personnel with local government, should be expanded and made the basis for current and future COIN efforts. Second, amnesty and reward programs should be implemented or expanded. These programs push insurgents out of the movement without having to fight them literally to the last person. A new study of insurgent motivation and morale should also be undertaken. Third, given the cross-border elements of insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, border security systems should be studied for both conflicts. Finally, pacification efforts should be focused on the lowest political echelons and combined with census-taking and national identification cards.

On 'Other War': Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research

Testimony presented to the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cybersecurity, Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, and Technology on August 8, 2006.

Border Security and the Terrorist Threat

While considering worst-case scenarios is important for the development of sound policy, taking action based only on worst-case thinking can introduce unforeseen dangers and costs. We argue that a better approach to managing risk involves an assessment of the full portfolio of risks – those reduced by the proposed intervention, as well as those increased. We argue that decision makers developing counterterrorism measures need mechanisms to ensure that sensible risk analysis precedes precautionary actions.

Paper By Jessica Stern and Jonathan B. Wiener

Precaution Against Terrorism