DOD Responds To Attacks, Continues Efforts To Deter Spread of Israel-Hamas War

Jim Garamone at the DoD News offers a piece on the U.S. military in the Middle East. 

DOD assets in the Red Sea, Iraq and Syria responded to missile and drone attacks over the past two days, as U.S. service members look to deter groups from using the Israel-Hamas war as an opportunity to launch conflict that could engulf the region, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said today.

Ryder also spelled out the steps Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has taken to strengthen DOD posture in the region to bolster regional deterrence efforts.

Ryder said the crew of the guided missile destroyer USS Carney (seen in the above photo) operating in the northern Red Sea earlier today shot down three land attack cruise missiles and several drones launched by Houthi forces in Yemen. "This action was a demonstration of the integrated air and missile defense architecture that we built in the Middle East and that we are prepared to utilize whenever necessary to protect our partners and our interests," he said. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

DOD Responds to Attacks, Continues Efforts to Deter Spread of Israel-Hamas War > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News 

America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists And The Shaping Of The Modern Middle East

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Hugh Wilford's America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East for the Washington Times.

Over lunch several years ago, as chaos descended on the Middle East, a retired CIA operations officer sadly mused about the diminished role of the United States in the region. When he was station chief of a nation in the area, he said, the defense minister routinely sent him a list of officers proposed for promotion. “I could put a tick mark against the names of men I approved, or cross out the ones to whom we objected,” he said. “Simple as that.” (Given that this was a private conversation, I am not identifying the officer, now deceased, nor the country to which he referred.)

The officer’s point was obvious: In the not-too-distant past, the United States had the capability to orchestrate events in a broad swath of the Middle East, and the principals through which policy was executed were a trio of CIA officers, two of whom did their tasks well, and a third about whom more shall be said later.

... Despite the richness of his material, Mr. Wilford's book is not an easy read. His sentences tend to wrap themselves into serpentine snarls, which often had me having to start reading again. Another shortcoming is all too common among people writing about 20th-century intelligence. The subtitle suggests that the CIA, on its own, worked in secret to shape American policy in an important region, but Mr. Wilford skirts around an important link in the chain of command; namely, that the agency was acting on White House orders to execute national security policy.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/22/book-review-arabists-in-the-cia/

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine interview with Joseph C. Goulden via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/05/q-with-joseph-c-goulden-author-of.html

I also interviewed Mr. Goulden for a Counterterrorism magazine piece on the history and mystique of espionage and you can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/a-look-back-at-myth-mystique-and.html

Lawrence In Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly And The Making Of The Modern Middle East

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review of Scott Anderson's Lawrence In Arabia: War, deceit, Imperial Folly And The Making of The Modern Middle East in the Washington Times.

For political scientists, and especially academics, intelligence is the dark angel of foreign affairs, eager to topple governments and betray other persons — including allies — through stealth and lies.

Oh, perhaps. The chronicles of spookdom certainly brim with case histories of chicanery. But in terms of flagrant international treachery, few episodes in diplomatic history surpass the sordid record of the allied powers — including the United States — in their dealings with Middle East nations during World War I, 1914-1918.

Much of what the average reader knows about intrigue during the period revolves around the British anthropologist-turned-intelligence-operative T.E. Lawrence, a covert agent for the Crown who strove to inspire the so-called “Revolt in the Desert,” an attempt to stir an Arabic uprising against Germany. Lawrence’s image benefited from his own books and from an adoring “biography” by Lowell Thomas, the famed radio commentator.

But Lawrence was far from being the only intelligence agent in the game. The United States, Germany, France, even stateless Israelis trying to form their own nation, vied for influence among the disparate tribes that occupied Arabia. The goal was to wean away Turkish support for Germany during the first years of the war so as to protect Britain’s routes to India.

Scott Anderson relates the story with vivid writing supported by a staggering amount of research — one of the more fascinating reads I have encountered in years. His cast of characters alone satisfies one’s appetite for how espionage really works in the field.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/11/book-review-lawrence-of-arabia/

Retired Four Star General Jack Keane On The Use Of U.S. Military Action In Syria

Retired Four Star General Jack Keane, a Fox News military analyst, offers his view of the use of U.S. military action in Syria.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/2632820604001/gen-jack-keane-on-military-strategy-in-syria/

Krauthammer: Brotherhood Vs Military In Egypt

Charles Krauthammer in his syndicated column looks at the choice between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military in Egypt.

Egypt today is a zero-sum game. We'd have preferred there be a democratic alternative.

Unfortunately, there is none. The choice is binary: the country will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood or by the military.

Perhaps the military should have waited three years for the intensely unpopular Mohamed Morsi to be voted out of office. But Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi seems to have calculated that by then there would be no elections - as in Gaza, where the Palestinian wing of the Brotherhood, Hamas, elected in 2006, established a one-man-one-vote-one-time dictatorship.

What's the United States to do? Any response demands two considerations: (a) moral, i.e., which outcome offers the better future for Egypt, and (b) strategic, i.e., which outcome offers the better future for U.S. interests and those of the free world.

You can read the rest of the column at the Philadelphia Inquirer via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20130826_Charles_Krauthammer__Brotherhood_vs__the_military.html

Iraq In Retrospect

 

The Wall Street Journal offers a look back at the Iraq War.

It was 1998, and Iraq and the U.S. were edging toward war.

The Iraqi dictator, President Clinton warned that February, "threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal." In October, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy, passed 360-38 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate. In December, Mr. Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox, a four-day bombardment of Iraq with the declared purpose of degrading Saddam's WMD capability.

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, justifying the case for military action on the eve of Mr. Clinton's impeachment.

Whatever else might be said about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began 10 years ago, its origins, motives and justifications did not lie in the Administration of George W. Bush. On the contrary, when Mr. Bush came to office in January 2001 he inherited an Iraq that amounted to a simmering and endless crisis for the U.S.—one that Saddam appeared to be winning.

... Today's conventional wisdom is that the Iraq war was an unmitigated fiasco that squandered American lives and treasure for the sake of a goal that wasn't worth the price. It's certainly true the Iraq war is a cautionary tale about the difficulty democracies have in sustaining lengthy military campaigns for any goal short of national survival.

What's also true, however, is that the war came about because the crisis of Iraq was allowed to fester for a decade, because Saddam was a real menace, and because a world in which he had been allowed to survive would have been far worse for America and the region. The men and women who fought and died removed a grave threat to the Middle East and to America.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323393304578358691247678454.html

Note: Above is a Defense Department map of Iraq and the Middle East.