Feral Jundi

Friday, September 10, 2010

Industry Talk: The Father Of Modern Counterinsurgency Dr. David Kilcullen, Joins MEP’s Board Of Advisors

Filed under: Industry Talk,Leadership,Strategy — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 12:23 AM

     This is a little late, but none the less very important to bring up. Dr. Kilcullen will now be advising MEP on company strategy, ethics, and world affairs. Not to mention that the other board members are pretty impressive as well. Still, the father of today’s counterinsurgency strategy and modern day Lawrence of Arabia has joined a PMC! How cool is that?

     Now the question I have is if this new board will actually take the company to the next level? To me, that level has always been to be profitable as well as earn the respect of it’s employees, world and peers. Could a PMC achieve the status of some of today’s more respected companies, like Google or Apple?

     That is a tall order for our industry. At this point, PMC’s really don’t have a great reputation and are frequently attacked. Hell, I just posted a deal where ABC News attacked MEP. This entire blog is filled with the various problems and histories of this industry, and we need all the help we can get.

     If Dr. Kilcullen can do for this company and this industry what he did for today’s military and counterinsurgency strategy, then that would be really impressive. Perhaps he or one of the board members could come up on the blog and do a little ‘strategic communications’? That’s if they care to engage with one of the ‘few’ new media sources out there that really cares about this stuff? –Matt

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Mission Essential Personnel Announces New Board of Advisors

July 26, 2010

Mission Essential Personnel, LLC, (MEP) today announced the creation of a board of advisors to counsel senior company leadership on company strategy, ethics, and world affairs. A trio of highly accomplished professionals, this board will enhance MEP’s strategic planning, thought leadership, and superior performance throughout the world.

MEP CEO Chris Taylor said, “MEP’s exponential growth has brought us great success and new challenges and choices. In order to ensure we continue to deliver certainty to our customers, we will look to the collective wisdom of our Board of Advisors to help us critically think through the opportunities of the new global economy and how MEP can continue to create value for our stakeholders. We are all excited about this new relationship and Mitchell, Sarah, and David will serve as the cornerstones of MEP’s bright future.”

The board of advisors consists of:

Ambassador Mitchell Reiss – Recently made the 27th president of Washington College, Reiss was previously Vice Provost at the College of William & Mary. He is a scholar and diplomat best known for successful negotiations during the Northern Ireland peace process and the North Korean nuclear crisis. From 2003 to 2005, he was Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department under Secretary of State Colin Powell and earned the Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service. Reiss concurrently served as President George W. Bush’s Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Peace Process until 2007. As a White House Fellow from 1988-89, he served as special assistant to the national security advisor.

Sarah Sewall – Sewall teaches international affairs and directs the Program on National Security and Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and is the founder and faculty director of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) project. She led President Obama’s Transition National Security Agency Review process. Sewall is a member of the DOD’s Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and the Center for Naval Analyses Defense Advisory Committee. She served as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance in the Clinton Administration. From 1983-1996, she served as senior foreign policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell.

Dr. David Kilcullen — Kilcullen served more than 20 years as an Australian light infantry officer before joining the US Government and serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa in counterterrorism, diplomacy, international development, strategy, and counterinsurgency roles. In 2007, Kilcullen was Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to Gen. David Petraeus, then Commanding General, Multinational Force-Iraq. In 2008-2009, he served as Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to the Secretary of State. Since leaving government, he has worked closely with NGOs, international aid agencies and communities affected by conflict. He is the author of “The Accidental Guerilla” and “Counterinsurgency” and is a consultant to NATO in Afghanistan and to the US and allied governments.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Media News: Mission Essential Personnel Calls Out ABC News Over Report On Linguists

Filed under: Industry Talk,Media News — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:17 PM

Marc Peltier, MEP’s chief operating officer, said in an interview with ABC News that he had “no reports from the field” of translators who could not communicate in Dari or Pashto, and said the company has received “100 percent outstanding” ratings from the Army and shared a copy of what he said was an internal company survey that showed 82 percent of its customers were satisfied with the performance of its translators. An attorney accompanying Peltier to the interview said the company would answer Funk’s allegations in court, and not in the media.

*****

     I am not going to comment too much about the case between Mr. Funk and MEP, because I really don’t know enough about it. What I will comment on though is how ABC News decided to attack this company in such an obvious way. I would be cheering on this news broadcast if in fact their stuff was true or unbiased, but there are too many details that we are not privy too. I just cannot see how this mainstream media outlet thought that this was appropriate? It is more bashing of companies for the sake of ratings I guess?

     The show was completely one sided and the viewer is made to think that the translator in the film they showed from Afghanistan was one of MEP’s translators. This was not the case after reading MEP’s statement, and I was shocked. Who is ABC News for misleading the viewer, and especially when there were so many variables with this case?

     Also, I despise the idea of poor translators going out into the field like anyone else. I have witnessed exactly what poor translation services can produce. But really, if the government has identified poor service by MEP and they were not at all satisfied with the translators performance, then they should have reflected that in the customer surveys and reviews. Or better yet, they should have fired MEP and went with a better company. It makes no sense to keep paying for poor services, if in fact you are getting poor service. It’s called exercising your power as the consumer and the government does a terrible job of this. –Matt

Edit: 09/14/2010- Check out David Isenberg’s excellent post about the subject here.  He didn’t have much good to say about ABC’s track record on reporting and he pointed out many holes in this case.

Edit: 09/23/2010- The American Spectator did a story on this recently.

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Mission Essential Personnel Response To ABC’s 9/8/2010 Broadcast

9/8/2010

Mission Essential Personnel today released the following statement in response to the ABC News story “Whistleblower Claims Many U.S. Interpreters Can’t Speak Afghan Languages.”

MEP is an American success story and a responsible partner to the U.S. Government and to service members around the world. Our linguists play a critical role in sharing the United States’ message of goodwill and deciphering the hidden messages of those who seek to harm Americans. MEP’s linguists risk their lives each day to accompany brave troops into the field, and many have made the ultimate sacrifice to advance the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, while saving many lives. While there are always challenges on a changing battlefield, MEP, in partnership with the U.S. military, has helped bring a greater level of peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Afghanistan: Military Weighs Private Security on Front Lines

Filed under: Afghanistan,Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 2:50 AM

   Walter and the rest of the media is a little late to this party, but we can deal with that.  Although it would be nice for the Washington Post to add a little balance to their articles about such things.  Like mentioning a crucial quote that Defense Secretary Gates gave in regards to security contractors.  Here it is, and I posted the story below this one as the source.

     “As recently as February, however, Gates called the use of private security contractors in certain parts of Afghanistan “vital” to supporting U.S. bases. A contract for the work also creates job opportunities for Afghans, he said.”

   Also, the article mentions the dangers of these forward operating bases in Afghanistan, as if that is a new thing or something totally unreasonable for a private security company to handle.  Guess what, we have been protecting bases for awhile now.(TWISS, etc.)  I think what this article was trying to get at is that somehow contractors would not be up to the task of actually doing the job they are contracted to do.  As if somehow Afghanistan is ‘too much for them to handle’.  Pffft.

   And then Michael O’Hanlon enters into the discussion with his thoughts on the matter.

“We don’t want to waste scarce Afghan army and police, so we must be creative,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and military expert at the Brookings Institution.

But O’Hanlon also said he is concerned that if contractors were to take over security at forward operating bases, they would be the first to see hostile fire, and they — not soldiers — would have to decide whether to employ weapons against an enemy.

Instead of hiring a private firm, O’Hanlon said, the Americans and Afghans could create a local version of Iraq’s Facilities Protection Service, the modestly trained but government-paid guard force that was pulled together to provide protection for government ministries in Baghdad and the oil fields. “We should create a different branch of the Afghan security forces that has minimal training,” he said.”

(more…)

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