The TR and that "Iranian Flotilla"

There has been a lot of attention paid to the US decision to move the USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group in the general direction of Yemen, amid US reports indicating an Iranian "flotilla" said to be escorting merchant ships in the general direction of Bab al-Mandab. Now Iran routinely keeps vessels on anti-piracy duty in the area due to the threat of Somali piracy, and the Theodore Roosevelt (fondly nicknamed "the Big Stick") is reinforcing what is already a considerable US naval presence in the region.

Now, when tensions are high and potentially hostile vessels are gathering in the Tonkin  Gulf Arabian Sea, it's understandable for the media to hype tensions, but the emerging narrative is suggesting that the Iranian "flotilla" is escorting an arms shipment to the Houthis is, as a defense lawyer would say, asserting facts not in evidence. Despite multiple assertions and repetitions that Iran is arming the Houthis," no one has demonstrated that to be true, and there is a Saudi/Egyptian blockading force in place.

Brian Whittaker, for one, provides us with a reality check on this emerging narrative: "Cat and Mouse in the Red Sea." He shares my doubts about the emerging narrative, and concludes:

Meanwhile, the Iranians seem to be almost inviting the US to search their little “armada” – which suggests that whatever game they are playing may be more political than military.

 Both sides should tread carefully, but let's not overdramatize or assume facts not yet in evidence.

On the 150th Anniversary of Appomatox, Remembering the Union and Confederate Officers who then Joined the Egyptian Army

Today, April 9. marks the 150th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on this date in 1865, an event which for many Americans symbolizes the end of the American Civil War. It wasn't, but is a good reason to retell the tale of the ex-US and Confederate officers who were recruited into the Egyptian Army, which wanted Western officers with experience but distrusted Britain and France. But first, why Appomattox was only the beginning of the end.

Though because of its activity in the critical theater between Washington and Richmond, Lee's Army got the most attention, it was the first major army to surrender (since Vicksburg), not the last. Mosby's Raiders disbanded April 21, a week after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; Joseph E. Johnston did not surrender the Army of Tennessee  until April 26. after the Battle of Bentonville. Other Confederate Forces in the southeastern states surrendered between May 2 and May 12, with Union troops capturing the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis on May 5. The last land battle of the Civil War took place at Palmito Ranch in Texas on May 12-13, and General Kirby Smith surrendered the main armies west of the Mississippi on May 26. The last Confederate land force of any size to surrender was Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Watie's Cherokee and allied Indian force, which surrendered June 23, more than two months after Appomattox.

The last shots fired by a Confederate warship were fired by the Confederate naval raider CSS Shenandoah in, of all places, Alaskan waters on June 22. She attacked a fleet of Union whaling vessels. After taking some as prizes, a San Francisco newspaper on one of the captured ships was found on June 27, and the Shenandoah learned of Lee's surrender. That paper dated from before the other surrenders, however, and her captain James Waddell planned to raid San Francisco but on August 2 was hailed by a British ship and learned of the other surrenders and the capture of Davis. Fearing to surrender at San Francisco lest a US court charge him with piracy, Waddell then removed the ship's guns and, appearing as a merchant vessel, sailed her around Cape Horn bound for Britain. The last Confederate naval ship also became the only Confederate warship to circumnavigate the globe. He surrendered her on November 6, 1865, almost seven months after Appomattox, to the Royal Navy. She had fired the last shots in Alaskan waters, and made the last surrender months later — in Liverpool.

Still, the image of Lee and Grant at Appomattox is most people's sense of how the war ended and besides, today is as good a day as any to retell the tale I told five years ago. And given the discursus above, it may be worth noting that the CSS Shenandoah ended her life in the service of the Sultan of Zanzibar. She was not the only Civil War veteran to find an afterlife in the east.

The rest of this post is a rerun of my original post in 2010, "Stone Pasha and the Khedive Isma‘il's Yanks and Rebs,"  with few changes beyond correcting typos.

Charles P. Stone, US Army

This is going to be one of my "And now for something completely different" posts. I've mentioned an interest in military history and you know my interest in Egypt. This post combines the two.

At left, Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone of the Union Army, early in the US Civil War. Below, Lieutenant General Charles Pomeroy Stone (Stone Pasha) during his 13-year tenure (1871-1883) as Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army under the Khedives Isma‘il and Tawfiq.

Probably relatively few Americans, other than Civil War buffs and historians interested in 19th century Egyptian history, are aware of Isma‘il's recruitment of a number of American officers, both former Union and former Confederate, in the years after the American Civil War.

Charles P. Stone, Egyptian Chief of Staff

It's not hard to understand why the Khedive was interested in Americans. He hoped to keep up the expansionist policies of his predecessors Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha, especially in the Sudan; the country was already incurring large debts in Europe, that would ultimately lead to a British (unofficial but de facto) protectorate, and therefore France and Britain were not a good source of military advice since you don't want your potential colonizers to have intimate knowledge of your military. The United States, on the other hand, had no visible interests in the Middle East (except for Christian missions) in those days.

And having just fought the bloodiest war in its history (which proved a temporary boon to Egypt since Southern US cotton was blockaded from the world market), the US also was a source of experienced and underemployed military officers. To the Egyptians, which army they had served in was moot. It would be nice to say it was moot to the Americans as well, but there was one notorious shootout in Alexandria [2010 link now dead in 2015] between ex-Rebs and ex-Yanks.

According to the most detailed study of the Americans who served in Egypt, William B. Hesseltine and Hazel C. Wolf's The Blue and the Gray on the Nile (University of Chicago Press, 1961; still some copies listed on Amazon), around 50 Americans eventually were recruited for Egyptian service. A few of them were prominent enough that the average Civil War buff may know them, among them Stone (more on whom in a moment); Henry Sibley, inventor of the Sibley tent and who, as a colonel, led the Confederate invasion of New Mexico until defeated at Glorieta; William W. Loring, who reached Corps command in the Confederate Army; and a few others. Some would make their name in Egyptian service, however, notably Charles Chaillé-Long, who only rose to be a captain in the Union Army, but achieved lasting fame as an explorer of sub-Saharan Africa, serving under Gordon in Equatoria, then exploring the great lakes (he was the second explorer to visit Lake Victoria), and writing a number of books. (Though I suspect Central Africa: Naked Truths of Naked People would not be given that title today.)

Many prominent ex-Confederate generals reportedly considered Egyptian service, among them P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph Johnston, but didn't go. William Tecumseh Sherman, General in Chief of the US Army in the late 1860s (under the Presidency of his close friend and predecessor, U.S. Grant), encouraged the Egyptian adventure and even released some serving officers to participate.

The driving force of this whole adventure was Thaddeus P. Mott. Before the Civil War he had lived in Constantinople, was a favorite at the Ottoman Sultan's court, married a Turkish wife and was reportedly quite at home in the East. He went home to serve in the Civil War, rose to colonel in the Union Army, then returned to Turkey after the war. There he met the Khedive Isma‘il and soon found himself in Egyptian service in time for the grand opening of the Suez Canal. He became Khedivial chamberlain and went to the US to recruit for the Egyptian Army.

Which brings us back to Charles Pomeroy Stone. Stone had been badly treated by the Army and the political authorities, so much so that later some would refer to him as an "American Dreyfus" for his alleged culpability in the military disaster that was the Battle of Ball's Bluff, up the Potomac from Washington, on October 21, 1861.

Stone's war started well: a West Pointer and a Mexican War veteran, he was considered a favorite of General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. He famously secured the City of Washington before President Lincoln's arrival, and helped set up its defenses.

But Stone was no politician, and he fell out with two key figures from his home state: Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and Senator Charles Sumner, both Radical Republicans and abolitionists. The exact details are not so important as that he made powerful political enemies early on, but among the charges were that he returned runaway slaves in Maryland. But Maryland was a Union state which had slavery, and its law required that, as did Federal law.

In October, with George McClellan having replaced Scott, Stone was given command of a "Corps of Observation" and sent up the Potomac to observe the fords of the river. He was ordered to make a "demonstration" against Leesburg, Virginia.

Stone held a position south of Leesburg and sent half his force, under Colonel Edward Baker, to the north to make a landing and push towards Leesburg from the river. Now, Colonel Baker was also a sitting United States Senator from Oregon. (Yes, a sitting Senator was commanding an Army regiment.) But Colonel/Senator Baker had friends in high places. He'd started out as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and had worked with a chap called Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's son Eddie's full name was Edward Baker Lincoln. Is a picture starting to emerge?

Now it's important to realize that, though ultimate command was his, General Stone was not present at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. Baker was the senior officer on the scene. If you go to the Battlefield today, you will find it still fairly unspoiled (though a Leesburg subdivision is creeping closer) and what you see is this: a steep bluff over the Potomac which required men to physically haul cannon up the cliff face while making an opposed landing on a hostile shore with a river at their back. My nine-year-old daughter [as of 2010 posting; now 15 and even better at tactics] has commented that that makes no sense. She's quite right. One look at the position should have been enough to warn off anyone over age nine. Let's see: steep bluffs we had to climb and drag our cannons up, check; superior enemy forces to our front, check; river at our back and no retreat possible, check; let's attack.

At first things seemed to go all right, and then the Confederates noticed the Union troops were there. The Confederate commander was Nathan "Shanks" Evans, who had a reputation (whether justified or not) for sometimes going into battle drunk, but given the situation at Ball's Bluff, that was no impediment to victory.

In the heated battle that followed, the Union troops found themselves pushed off the steep bluff, some falling to the river below. It's said that for a day or two bodies were washing up on the bridges of Georgetown. During the battle, Senator Baker made his only good career move of the day: he got himself killed, heroically of course. (I'm sure the image at right is highly accurate historically.)

Now, here's a powerful Republican senator and old personal friend of Lincoln (despite his actually having beaten Lincoln for a nomination in earlier years). He has proceeded to die a martyr's death. The war was only some six months old at this point and the carnage to come was only beginning. Somebody had to take the blame.

And it wasn't going to be the ruling party's newly martyred Senator/General.

And Stone, remember, had powerful enemies. The Radical Republican-controlled Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a Congressional watchdog, called hearings.

Ball's Bluff was a disaster, and professional officers naturally may expect a disaster on their watch, even if due to a subordinate's incomprehensible decisions, to affect their career. But Ball's Bluff didn't just tarnish Stone's career. Amid charges of suspicious links with Confederates (his wife's father had been a roommate of Jeff Davis at West Point or something like that, but of course Jefferson Davis had later been the US Secretary of War) and hints of treason, Stone was arrested and confined to prison.

That was in January of 1862. He served in various fort-prisons until August when, no charges ever having been filed against him or specified, he was released. No apologies, explanations, or charges were ever forthcoming.

Of course his military career in US service was over. So when the war ended, he was looking for a way to vindicate is reputation. And Mott showed up, recruiting for the Khedive.

Stone became Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army in 1871 and served in that post until 1883, serving Isma‘il and, from 1879, his son and successor Tawfiq. He built up a general staff (though it drastically countered the traditional command structure of Egyptian military forces) and also participated in some campaigns.

General Loring, CSA

Most of the Americans did not stay as long as Stone Pasha. Ultimately, when Colonel ‘Urabi's revolt broke out in 1882, Stone stayed with the Khedive in Alexandria though his wife and children were in Cairo.

The British intervention ended the ‘Urabi revolt, but also brought new masters to Egypt. Frustrated by the emerging British protectorate-in-all-but-name, Stone finally stepped down in 1883.

His reputation seemingly redeemed in his homeland, Stone later directed the construction of the base on which the Statue of Liberty stands in New York harbor.

General Loring, Egyptian Army

Since I've shown the US and Egyptian photos of Stone above, it is perhaps appropriate to do the same for one of his Confederate analogs: General William "Old Blizzards" Loring, one of the more senior Confederates in Egyptian service (probably the most senior since he'd held Corps command in the CSA), first as a Confederate General, then as Loring Pasha, variously Inspector General of the Egyptian Infantry, chief of Coastal Defenses, and a field commander. (You may note the empty sleeve in both pictures: he lost his left arm in Mexico City in his first war. For those of you reading this outside the US or Mexico, the US-Mexican war of 1846-48 was the training ground for a lot of Civil War generals, then junior company and field officers for the most part.)

There was a fan site in 2010 for Old Blizzards in fact, [link  appears dead in 2015] with the motto "Three Flags, Four Continents" (the flags are the US, the Confederacy, and Egypt, though they (correctly for the era) use the Turkish flag. I think the continents are North America, Europe, Asia and Africa).

The name "Old Blizzards" comes from the early days of the Civil War when, opposing George McClellan in what was to become West Virginia, he supposedly gave the battle cry, "Give them blizzards, boys! Give them blizzards!" (Wouldn't have worked in Egypt, I fear.)

The site says he's the only one of the Americans who actually commanded Egyptian troops, but I'm not certain about that as some of the other Americans went on Egyptian operations from Sudan to the Indian Ocean.

US Hands Over Manas to Kyrgyzstan

In a ceremony today, the US handed over to Kyrgyzstan the US-run Manas Transit Center; which has been used as a logistical and staging base for the war in Afghanistan. Last year, the Kyrgyz Parliament, pressured by Russia,ave the US until this summer to withdraw. drawdown in Afghanistan means that Manas is less critical to the US effort, but the handover reflects Russia's increasing influence in former Soviet states.

Remembering 30 Years Since the Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing

October 23, 1983 — 30 years ago today — the US Marines suffered their worst single day of losses since Iwo Jima, and the French Parachutists too their worst losses since Algeria, when two truck bombings ripped through their respective headquarters in Beirut. It was one of the earliest uses of vehicles for suicide attacks, a weapon that would become all too familiar in subsequent years. At the US Marine Barracks near the airport, 220 Marines, 18 Navy and three Army personnel died, along with one Lebanese. At the headquarters of the French 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment, another bomb killed 58 paratroopers.The group that would soon emerge as Hizbullah was widely blamed.

It was not America's first baptism of fire, coming four years after the Iranian Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, but the toll of dead was a shock and there was a rush to assign blame, leading to the Long Commission Report and to the withdrawal of the Marines. (Though the Reagan Administration was interventionist, it knew when to cut its losses and go home.)

I'd have to put America's loss of innocence in the Middle East quite a bit earlier, but it was a shock to the public (and the voters) who thought the Lebanon intervention was essentially a separation of forces peacekeeping mission. (It started that way, but then we took sides.)

None of my friends died there but I knew a lot of people involved with Lebanon at the time and one old friend wrote a lot of the Long Commission Report, so a lot of this is fairly fresh in my mind. Let's hope we learned something.

US Cancels Bright Star. But Wait: The Last One was in 2009

The US has canceled the Bright Star joint military exercise with Egypt, scheduled to begin next month. What isn't being mentioned as frequently is the fact that the last exercise was actually held in the fall of 2009.

Originally begun in 1980 after Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Bright Star originally began as an annual exercise but for some time has been held every two years. But the last one was Bright Star 09/10, held in October 2009. The one scheduled for 2011 was postponed since the Egyptian Army was busy running the country at the time; the next one would have been this fall.

So, while the cancellation of Bright Star sends a message that the US is displeased, it is hardly equivalent to cutting off the billion-plus in military aid provided to Egypt annually.

While I think the bloodshed of yesterday could have been avoided with more careful implementation (far more people died in a day than in the five-month "siege of Imbaba" in 1992, an event I hope to post about soon), I also agree with the caution the US is showing about canceling aid. The aid is the last card the US has to play with Egypt, and, once played, the last bridge may be burned. Secular Egyptians blame the US for supporting Morsi, and and the Brotherhood blames us for, well, all the troubles in the world. Once canceled, the aid might be difficult to restore. At any rate, I think the US is wise to move deliberately and with caution before taking a precipitous act. Whether canceling Bright Star (which a once-again-busy Egyptian Army might have been looking to avoid anyway) is enough of a slap on the wrist, though, is another question.

Saab and Singh: One Carrier in the Gulf is More Than Enough

For those of you interested in defense debates, an area I once wrote about a lot myself, here's a challenging piece by defense analysts Bilal Saab (also a contributor to the current issue of MEJ) and Joseph Singh: "Forget the Second Carrier, It's Time to Rethink the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf."

Do read their reasoning. 

Morocco Cancels Joint Exercise with US over Sahara Rights Dispute

Morocco has canceled a joint military exercise with the US scheduled to begin tomorrow, in a show of its displeasure over a US announcement that it is considering supporting a proposal to give the United Nations force monitoring the Western Sahara, MINURSO, a human rights oversight capability.

The decision to cancel the African Lion exercise followed a meeting of the Royal Cabinet summoned by the King (link in French).

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. (1934-2012)

H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. who died yesterday at age 78,  won fame as the commander of US forces during Operation Desert Storm in 1991,the liberation of Kuwait. Two decades later, his fame may seem bit of a mystery to some, but at the time the US was still mired in the legacy of the defeat in Vietnam: the image of the evacuation of the Embassy on Saigon in 1975 (the iconic image of people clinging to the runners of helicopters leaving the Embassy roof). Other than small-scale operations against weak opponents (Grenada 1983, Panama 1989), the US had not had a combat success ins recent memory. That, plus his photogenic and colorful press conferences, made him an instant military hero in the US, where the press dubbed him "Stormin' Norman."

Schwarzkopf, as Commander of US Central Command (CINCCENT), had an interesting bsckground in the Middle East. His father. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Senior, had been head of the New Jersey State Police and Chief Investigator on the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping in 1932. Subsequently, after (re)joining the US Army at the beginning of World War II, the older Schwarzkopf was tasked with taking over the Iranian National Police after the US and Britain deposed Reza Shah and placed his son on the throne. Young Norman joined his father in Tehran at the age of 12. After West Point, the young man served in Airborne units.

Like his senior during Desert Storm, Colin Powell, Schwarzkopf was a product of Vietnam, and had s "never again" attitude towards that war: both had risen to senior commands in the era when the US Army was rethinking its entire doctrine and emphasizing mobility, deep attack, and air-land-battle doctrines, which came to fruition in Desert Storm. It was a totally different training and mindset that Schwarzkopf the Vietnam leader and 1956 West Point graduate brought to warfare than that, say. of David Petraeus, who graduated from West Point in 1974 after US forces were no longer engaged in combat in Vietnam. Schwarzkopf had extensive tactical combat experience in Vietnam, initially as a captain, and won three silvers stars in that conflict. Few US generals since his time have had that kind of infantry experience.

Schwarzkopf's execution of Desert Storm was very much by the book. a result of the new doctrines the Army had hammered out after Vietnam. His most distinctive maneuver, the "Hail Mary pass" or "left hook" to outflank the Iraqi Army, captivated American imagination at the time, though Napoleon would have found it in his own playbook. His choice of title for his memoir, It Doesn't Take a Hero, may have been an attempt to downplay some of the hero worship. He was not politically ambitious.

I think, however history may remember Desert Storm for its motivations and results, Schwarzkopf will be remembered by military historians as a highly competent practitioner of the military art as defined by the Army of his day. He was popular with those who served under him and successfully executed the most important military operation of his career. He was also called "The Bear," which may have been a better characterization than "Stormin' Norman," however fond the press may have been of the latter.  Like other West Pointers who took the phrase "Duty, Honor, Country" more seriously than their own fame, may he rest in peace.

Another Anniversary: 29 Years Since the Beirut Marine Barracks

Not only is today the anniversary of El Alamein, it's also the 29th anniversary of the bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983. That bombing, which killed 220 Marines, 18 Navy and three Army personnel, was the greatest loss the Marines had suffered in a single day since Iwo Jima, and the greatest US military loss in a single day since the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. One Lebanese was killed. On the same day, another truck bomb struck the headquarters of the French 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment and killed 58 paratroopers, the French Army's worst day of loss since the Algerian War.

Imad Mughniyya, later a key figure in Hizbullah, was later accused of planning the attacks.

Truck and car bombings became a common weapon in Beirut; one aimed at Sheikh Muhammad Fadlallah in 1985 has sometimes been seen as a retaliation by US surrogates Hizbullah, though that group was not yet using that name in 1983.

And as we have been forcibly reminded just in the past week, the car bomb remains a weapon of choice in Beirut.

My Only Comment on Tonight's Debate: Those Were the Days: The Great White Fleet in the Suez Canal

Everyone will be talking about the Middle East Policy substance of tonight's Foreign Policy debate between the candidates. This is not a blog about US politics, but since my nostalgia posts are well received, and since Mitt Romney has shown a certain nostalgia for the United States Navy as it was in 1916, though battleship navies seem to have faded away after Pearl Harbor, I thought it might  be appropriate to run a  couple of pictures of the Great White Fleet's transit of the Suez Canal on January 1909.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Teddy Roosevelt sent the United States Navy on a round-the world cruise to display American power, the "big stick" part of his "speak softly and carry a big stick" policy. The cruise lasted from December 1907 to February 1909. It transited the Suez Canal in January 1909. Left, a photo from the Battleship USS Connecticut, from this US Navy site. To the best of my knowledge, the felucca in the picture was not a part of the Great White Fleet.

Below, sailors from the Great White Fleet pose at the sphinx.

For Memorial Day: the US Military Cemetery, Carthage, Tunisia

US Battle Monuments Commission Photo

Twenty years ago or so, an airline check-in agent in Washington, noting my ticket was to Frankfurt and Tunis, asked me if Tunis was in Germany. Many hours later, taxiing into town from Tunis-Carthage airport, I saw the sign for the turnoff to the US Military Cemetery at Carthage, where 2,841 American military personnel lie fallen, victims of a somewhat forgotten campaign, buried near a city which at least one airline employee had not heard of.  The juxtaposition of events stuck in my mind. Of the 24 officially-maintained US Military Cemeteries overseas, there is only one in the Middle East and North Africa, the one at Carthage, Tunisia, for the dead of the North Africa campaign. As the American Battle Monuments Commission website notes:

At the 27-acre North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial in Tunisia rest 2,841 of our military dead, their headstones set in straight lines subdivided into nine rectangular plots by wide paths, with decorative pools at their intersections. Along the southeast edge of the burial area, bordering the tree-lined terrace leading to the memorial is the Wall of the Missing. On this wall 3,724 names are engraved. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. Most honored here lost their lives in World War II in military activities ranging from North Africa to the Persian Gulf.

Though it is the only US military cemetery in the Middle East, the North Africa campaign of World War II was sadly neither our first war in the region ("...to the shores of Tripoli") nor our last, obviously. But on this day when Americans venerate their fallen of all wars, it seems an appropriate, if little-known, place to remember. Perhaps we do not remember the fighting in Tunisia because our first battle there, at Kasserine, was a disaster. Aside from the 1970 film Patton, Tunisia is little discussed.

 Here is the video from the American Battle Monuments Commission:


Added: Erik Churchill's Kefteji blog visits the Memorial Day ceremonies. 

For Memorial Day, for the fallen of all wars, Taps. Memorial Day began as a US holiday to remember what is still our bloodiest and most uncivil war, the Civil War, so I've always felt it appropriate to remember the fallen of both sides in war.

Deeper and Deeper in Afghanistan

"Remnants of an Army"

Coming on the heels of the Qur'an-burning debacle, the killing of 16 Afghan civilians by an American NCO compounds the deepening problem the US faces in Afghanistan. These presumably unrelated incidents simply make it harder to see how US efforts to disengage and draw down for a peaceful and stable transfer of power can work. Increasingly, the US forces are finding themselves under siege.

As Bruce Riedel notes, the incidents also complicate efforts to initiate some kind of diplomatic dialogue. And, of course, they have gotten injected into the US political debate as well.

Fortuitously or perhaps serendipitously, The Washington Post just had a review by David Isby of Diana Preston's new book The Dark Defile,  a popular work about the British debacle of the retreat from Kabul in the First Afghan War in 1842. A British and Indian Army of some 4,500 and up to 12,00 wives, accompanying civilians left Kabul. On January 13, Dr. William Brydon rode alone into Jalalabad 90 miles away. When asked where the Army was, he is said to have replied, "I am the Army." A few other stragglers also survived, but Dr. Brydon's arrival alone at Jalalabad became a famous symbol of the disaster, commemorated in Lady Butler's once famous painting, Remnants of an Army (above).

It was one of those great disastrous defeats, like Balaclava or Isandhlwana, that Victorian-era Britain managed to find worthy of heroic memory despite the fact that large numbers of people died due to incompetence of the commanders (Wellington used the term "imbecility" for Elphinstone in the retreat from Kabul). And no, I don't think the US is going to leave Kabul the way Elphinstone did — at least I hope not. But being of a generation that remembers people clinging to the strut of a helicopter taking off from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon, I worry that incidents such as the Qur'an burning or the latest massacre, which alienate the very people whose hearts and minds we're supposedly fighting for, will not be survivable.

Lincoln Battle Group Joins Vinson Near the Gulf as Threats and Brinksmanship Continue

I already reminded readers a couple of weeks ago of the sort of tragedy that brinksmanship in the Strait of Hormuz can lead to. But with Parliamentary elections due March 2 in Iran and the US in the midst of a Presidential campaign, and the Israeli government (though decidedly not the Israeli military and intelligence communities) talking tougher and tougher, the situation is increasingly one of those that could spin out of control beyond the control of either side, a powder keg waiting for a stray spark.

When the John Stennis carrier group left the Gulf at the end of the year after conducting the last combat aviation missions over Iraq, Iran warned the US against sending another carrier. That was, of course, a non-starter; the Carl Vinson, though apparently it is still outside the Straits, quickly replaced the Stennis. Now it has been announced that the Abraham Lincoln is also moving to the Gulf Area of Operations.

Iranian Frigate Sahand Burning, 1988 (Wikimedia Commons)

During the Iraq War, the US usually kept two carriers in the area, but the dispatch of the second carrier is a potent reminder that the Iranian threats (made but then backed off from) to close the Strait, but it does raise the level of tension though, frankly, it seems a measured response to an overt threat. Just as I previously hoped the US would bear in mind the lessons of Iran Air flight 655 in 1988, I would also hope the cooler heads in Iran will keep in mind the results of the US Operation Praying Mantis the same year,

In that action, in response to a US frigate striking a mine, the US struck two Iranian oil platforms, sank an Iranian frigate and several smaller craft and damaged a second frigate. It is said to have been the US Navy's biggest surface engagement since World War II, and the first time US Naval surface units used ship-to-ship missiles in combat. The US is no paper tiger, and while Iran has a Navy much rebuilt and armed with modern missiles since 1988, the Vinson and  Lincoln battle groups can defend themselves, too. That just adds to the powder keg, though, and while I personally doubt that Iran really wants a shootout with the US Navy, or that the US Administration is as eager as some in the commentariat to light the spark. I just hope everyone remembers that playing with fire around a gas pump can be risky.

On Iran's Hormuz Threats: Remembering What Brinksmanship Can Lead To

I haven't commented on Iran's bluster, first threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz (which is so unlikely they backed off the threat a bit: it's a bit like threatening to choke yourself to death, anyway), and now threatening the US if the John C. Stennis battle group, which recently left the Gulf (after its aircraft flew the very last Naval Aviation missions over Iraq), I would hope I don't have to remind Iran of what can happen when brinksmanship on both sides tensions to a fever pitch: the tragic shooting down of the civilian Iran Air flight 655 in 1988 by the US  Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes. That was a horrible case of mistaken identity, but when everyone's fingers are on the trigger, anything can happen. Every carrier battle group has a guided missile cruiser with it; in the Stennis' case it's the USS Mobile Bay, a sister ship of the Vincennes. Flight 655 may have been 24 years ago, but it's a terrible lesson both sides should keep in mind.

A Few Thoughts on That Lost RQ-170

I haven't yet talked about the apparent US loss of a highly classified RQ-170 remotely piloted vehicle over Iran. Iran's publication of video of the purported drone seem to suggest it is largely intact. Some leaked suggestions in the US have raised the question of whether the vehicle on display might be a mockup or might have been reassembled after a breakup. The US has doubted Iranian claims that they hacked the aircraft's guidance and landed it. First some background on the RQ-170, and the video:

My own two cents: obviously this is an intelligence setback. Most of the commentary I've heard has focused on the highly classified stealthy material of which the vehicle is made, but there's another point as well: even the exact mission of the vehicle has been highly classified. Is it for photography, electronic snooping, signals intelligence, radar suppression, or some combination? Even if the data gathered over Iran (and the cover story that it went astray from Afghan airspace is a flimsy one &emdash; you don't need stealth against the Taliban. who have only shoulder-launched SAMs) has been erased before the vehicle came down, the nature of the equipment on board will reveal more than the Iranians or anyone else previously knew about the mission of the aircraft. A real intelligence blow to the US in any event.

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Today Marks 25 Years After El Dorado Canyon

Today, with NATO bombing Libya yet again, marked the quarter century anniversary of the US bombing of Libya on April 15, 1986, in response to a terrorist bombing in then-West Berlin. (Berlin was divided then, for the youngsters among you.) Since France and Spain refused overflight permission to the US,  Operation El Dorado Canyon combined Naval Aviation assets with Air Force aircraft flying from the UK via the Strait of Gibraltar. One US F-111 was lost.

(Does anyone know who thought of the codename El Dorado Canyon? This was the Reagan era and Reagan was known for his cowboy roles, but I can't find any reference to the choice of names.)

This was  an earlier era when Qadhafi was widely demonized  (a famous 1981 Newsweek cover above right).  Qadhafi was the demon at the time, though Abu Nidal sometimes made the cut; Usama bin Ladin was as yet unknown. (An artifact of the era for those of you too young to recall it, but familiar with pop culture, will be the "Libyan hit squad" in the 1985 film Back to the Future.)

Twenty-five years later, to quote Yogi Berra, it seems like "déjà vu all over again."

Have a good weekend. As usual I will only post if events demand it.

Obama's Speech: First Take

Some initial thoughts on the President's speech [If you haven't seen it, transcript here; embedded video at end of this post.]:

• While I'm sure the domestic debate will continue, I think it was a good speech in its attempt to say this is an international commitment; the goal is to get rid of Qadhafi but it isn't our military mission, which is winding down.
  
• US interests and values were emphasized up front; regional concerns at the end. We can't bear the brunt alone. Perhaps a bit of overemphasis that it's NATO's issue now. NATO has decided to add protection of civilians to the military mission, not us. Last time I looked, we're a member of NATO.
  
• Only a 30 minute speech (some say because ABC didn't want to preempt Dancing with the Stars): why from NDU rather than the Oval Office? Probably to assist military credibility.
• I noted with interest that he said we had to act quickly to prevent the fall of Benghazi, a city of 700,000, "a city nearly the size of Charlotte." Why the choice of Charlotte? It' s a nice city, the banking capital of the South, but other cities in the 700,000 range include Fort Worth, Detroit, El Paso, Memphis, Baltimore, Boston . . . Do you suppose this could have anything to do with the 2012 Democratic Party Convention being in Charlotte? Surely just a coincidence.

Here's the video:

Libya: Tactical Successes but Strategic Muddle

Strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise of defeat.

— Sun Tzu

Several days into the operations against Libya, the coalition seems to be fraying around the edges. The Arab League, whose call for a no-fly zone became the rhetorical underpinning of the US case so far, has flinched at the actual implications of implementation. NATO is divided with Turkey staunchly opposing any NATO role. President Barack Obama's statement yesterday that the US would hand off command of overall operations within "days, not weeks" left open the question of who would take control, and confusion about command seems to be causing some wavering among coalition members. Much of what I'm going to say here has been said before by others, but I want to chip in my two cents worth.

Some of the criticism in the US Congress is just politics as usual, but some stems from a legitimate concern about strategic goals and endgames and exit strategies. No one wants classic "mission creep" as in Beirut 1982-83 or Somalia 1993. But no one wants another Rwanda either, where the West stands by as genocide happens. The problem here, I think, is that the real danger that Benghazi was about to fall over the weekend forced the opening of hostilities: it was a "don't just stand there, do something!" kind of crisis, without the luxury of full strategic planning. Now such niceties as figuring out the strategic objective need to be addressed, though they may divide the ad hoc coalition.

To quote another well-known theorist:

No one starts a war — or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so — without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective. This is the governing principle which will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort which is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail.

— Karl von Clausewitz, On War (Vom Kriege), Book VIII, Chapter 2
Trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 579

The immediate political purpose in this case was to prevent a genocidal attack by Qadhafi on his own people from turning into a humanitarian nightmare. The tactical objective of a no-fly zone seems to be almost if not completely achieved. But the operational objective of which Clausewitz speaks and the strategic endgame are still works in progress.

The US, for obvious diplomatic reasons, continues to say that Qadhafi should leave, but does not define that as its strategic goal since it is not authorized under UNSC Resolution 1973. Both the US and UK have said that the attacks on the Qadhafi compound were not aimed at regime decapitation. Yet, unless the removal of Qadhafi is at least the implicit goal of the operation, it is hard to understand how the commitment can end. Without any ground force component (and believe me, I'm not advocating committing Western ground forces to Libya), it is hard to be sure that the rebels could take Tripoli, even with air cover. One can hypothesize things like Egyptian intervention on the ground, but present realities likely preclude that With overt Western training, arms, and support (as the US provided the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan), and provided the Libyan Army is not more cohesive than we think, there might be a chance but that goes well beyond the UN Resolution. But if Qadhafi survives and the rebels cannot win on the ground and take Tripoli, a long-term stalemate in which a pro-Qadhafi west and pro-rebel east struggle over the intervening land (where the oilfields happen to be) in a drawn-out civil war fought under an international no-fly umbrella becomes a serious prospect. Holding a coalition together under such an open-ended long-term conflict is a real challenge. But absent a change in the ground forces balance, it could produce a situation where the coalition cannot force a victory, but also cannot abandon its air umbrella without dooming the rebels. It is a grim prospect for the coalition, and also for Libyans on both sides.

Not that I have an easy out to offer. To scale back now would guarantee the defeat of the rebels and would give Qadhafi a victory he would trumpet to the world; it would give other autocrats a license to make war on their own people. To commit ground troops is simply impossible barring a return of conscription, which is not in the cards.

That leaves a decapitation strategy, unlikely to be approved by the UN and certainly not by the Arab League. I'm going to go there anyway since I'm sure many are (while preserving deniability) talking about it. And while I'm certainly not advocating assassination, I'm starting to wonder if some won't begin to question if that is the only route out of the muddle in which we find ourselves. So we should at least acknowledge the question is out there.

Our ability to target individuals has certainly improved since we bombed Qadhafi's tent in 1986, but even with Predators we still take out the occasional innocent target in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and Qadhafi's security is much more professional than the Taliban's. Our attempts in 2003 to target Saddam Hussein not only failed, but even though Baghdad fell in April, Saddam was not captured until December. It's not as easy as some people think.

Something more direct, up-close and personal than a Predator, such as a special operations squad targeting Qadhafi, makes a lot of people more uncomfortable than a Predator strike. The US officially abjured political assassination in the 1970s amidst the CIA scandals of the era, though since 9/11 the boundaries have become fuzzier. But there is also a clear tradition of targeting command and control in war, and the old question of whether killing Hitler wouldn't have been better than the mass carnage of World War II is a favorite of debate in ethics classes. The US chose to directly target Japanese Navy Chief Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku in 1943, recognizing that removing the genius behind Japan's naval power would shorten the war. But Yamamoto was a uniformed military man in the direct combat chain of command, and a legitimate wartime target, flying in a military plane in a combat zone when he was shot down, though even so the personal element of the targeting is still controversial. Qadhafi's command role is far less direct, and while he still wears (ever differing) uniforms occasionally, his legitimacy as a target is at best debatable.

But if we don't target Qadhafi personally and no one close to him does either, this could devolve into a long-term civil war in which our role is merely an open-ended commitment to provide air support. We may face one of those awful escalate-or-quit choices which forces us to choose between mission creep and betraying those we intervened to save.

Tactics without strategy is the noise of defeat. Sun Tzu was a very wise man, considering many people think he never even existed.

More on Intervention: The Military Issues

Further to my initial reactions of last night, a few thoughts before anything starts to happen in the Libyan intervention:

• A robust European participation. It's good that the US will not be taking the lead, though of course US forces, AWACS and other surveillance assets will be present. The absence of a US carrier contributes to this, but it's best not to let Qadhafi paint this as an American operation.

• Air strikes are essential, but may also be enough. Bosnia and Kossovo may be suitable parallels. The main advantage the Qadhafi forces have is their air power and armor. This is classic tank country, made famous by Rommel and Montgomery. If the armor can be blunted by air strikes, it can have real effect.

• There probably already are special operators on the ground. Everyone has made clear that there sill be no invasion, no "boots on the ground." In terms of infantry that will surely be the case, but special operations forces are probably already present. Recall that an SAS team already got caught blundering around in eastern Libya. I suspect their American and French equivalents are there too.

• The question of Egyptian involvement. Egypt has the most immediate interests in play here, and the largest Army in the region. There are already reports that Egypt is providing small arms to the rebels and may be providing elite special forces to train the rebels as well. I suspect that, short of Qadhafi forces crossing the international border, the Egyptians will keep their involvement fairly low-key and deniable; they are still in the middle of revolutionary ferment and the military, which is running the country now, is understandably preoccupied. But if push came to shove, the only nearby state that could field a large enough Army to crush the Qadhafi forces is Egypt's.

Historical Ironies: The USS Enterprise

There are many ironies about the present situation; I already noted Libya's place in the history of aerial bombing. With talk of establishing a possible no-fly zone (some of the issues involved are discussed here), one of the problems involved is that the US has no carrier group in the Mediterranean at this time. The one that was there, the USS Enterprise, is being transferred to an Indian Ocean deployment and is somewhere en route, perhaps in the Red Sea. A no-fly enforcement would need a carrier (though France, Italy and Spain could also provide carriers), and the nearest American one would be the Enterprise. It's the second oldest commissioned ship in the Navy and is scheduled for decommissioning. (It's actually the oldest operational ship: the oldest on the commissioned list is Old Ironsides. Enterprise, the first nuclear powered carrier, has been in service since 1961.)

If the Enterprise were to deploy off Libya, it would evoke memories of the first US vessel of that name, which played an important role in the First Barbary War. The picture above is of that original Enterprise capturing the Tripolitan corsair Tripoli off Malta on 1801. There have been many successor ships in the Navy to bear the name, and if Star Trek is any guide, will continue to be.

I have some doubts about how useful military power may be in this situation, and am not sure it's time to return to "the shores of Tripoli." But when I checked on what our nearest carrier group was, I was amused by the historical irony. A similar echo of the Barbary Wars occurred in 2009 when the USS Bainbridge, named for a hero of that war, engaged Somali pirates.