Friday, May 14, 2010
Books: ‘The Judge On War’–Blood Meridian, By Cormac McCarthy
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Somalia: Respected Islamic Scholars Declare War As ‘Un-Islamic’
You know, I think this is pretty significant. There have been some new and startling developments in the war in Somalia, and I think it is important to highlight what is really going on. The other reason I want to post this, is to set the record as to who is really responsible for all of this chaos over there.
First off, my message to these extremists groups in Somalia is that Blackwater did not bomb your mosques. Nor did Blackwater dig up Sufi graves and hide the bodies. Nope. Nor did Blackwater allow piracy to continue under their watch in Somalia, or cut off food supplies to the people of Somalia via banning the World Food Program food shipments, or proclaim that a 13 year old girl who was gang raped by thugs to be a whore and then have her stoned to death in public. Nope, Blackwater didn’t do any of that.
But I will tell you who did. It was al Shabab and company, and now that Somalia’s true Islamic scholars have spoken and rejected their war, from here on out they will have that hanging over them. How can you wage holy war, when you don’t have a case for such a thing?
Further more, I will go as far as to say that al Shabab and company care more about power and making money, than living some kind of purist lifestyle under Sharia Law. In other words, I call them hypocrites. You administer your form of sick justice on helpless little girls, yet look the other way when it comes to piracy, desecrating graves, bombing of mosques, chewing khat, recklessly launching mortars into population centers and otherwise making a hard life for the people of Somalia, even worse. And now you have lost the support of the guys who are more knowledgeable of Islam than you. And last I checked, these scholars said nothing about Blackwater at the Garowe Islamic conference. Nope, they were referring to your now ‘un-holy war’ and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
On a side note, I do think it is funny that islamic extremists fear contractors as much as they do. It used to be that the Marines or Special Forces where the ones that everyone feared or put the blame on for everything. But hey, if you guys want to make us into the new bogeyman, so be it……. Boo! lol –Matt
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Aweys rejects clerics’ verdict on Somalia war
11 May 11, 2010
The Islamist leader of Somalia’s Hizbul- Islam rebel group Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys dismissed the declarations of the country’s most respected Islamic scholars, who were in attendance at the recently concluded Garowe Islamic conference, Radio Garowe reports.
The Islamic conference was held last month in Garowe, capital of Puntland in northern Somalia, where more than 50 respected Somali clerics declared that the ongoing war in Somalia as un-Islamic.Aweys defended the war his waging against the foreign troops and UN-backed government as “in accordance with Islamic law.’“The war we are waging is in accordance with Islamic law, because we are not after power. We want to implement Sharia Law in the country,” said the 65-year old cleric.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Afghanistan: Protecting Telecom Should Be A Priority, And How Private Industry Can Help
I have read both of these stories below and I am in absolute disbelief that we are allowing this to happen? Protecting cell towers and telecommunications in Afghanistan should be a wartime priority. For COIN or counter-terrorism operations, this is your connection to the people, and to not protect that connection is just stupid. Who the hell is in charge, and why are they allowing the Taliban to do this?
So with that said, if today’s military strategists and war planners cannot do the job of protecting this stuff, then my suggestion is to contract it out. Private industry could totally protect each and every cell tower, and entire contract vehicles could be set up to do such a thing. You could actually set it up for world-wide telecommunications protection services (WTPS), just because cell towers and phones will be vital to the war effort in those places as well. Both the troops and civilian contractors use cell phones for operations, as well as the civilian populations for their commerce and day to day rebuilding activities of their towns and cities. To allow the Taliban or anyone to shut that down or mess with it, is just dumb.
I can’t stress enough on how important this stuff is, and I am floored that it is not a priority in the war. It’s right up there with logistics. Because more than likely, the tips that will come in and lead to the capture of high value terrorists (like Bin Laden), will come via a cellphone call or text message from a pissed off villager. You allow that to shut down and you have just effectively shot yourself in the foot.
Anyway, private industry will step up if the military doesn’t want to take this on. Hell, DoS or DoD could take charge of this…… that’s if anyone cares. –Matt
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Afghan Cell Carriers Follow Taliban Rules
by Alex Sundby
March 26, 2010
Afghanistan’s cell phone companies and the Taliban have formed a kind of detente in the southern and eastern parts of the wartorn country. The phone companies shut down their cell towers at night, preventing local residents from discreetly calling coalition military tip lines. In exchange, Taliban militants don’t target the costly cell towers with explosives.
It’s a part of day-to-day life The Wall Street Journal explores at length. The deal between the phone companies and the Taliban isn’t a secret to the Afghan government with the country’s communications minister telling the newspaper, “We understand that in some areas, unfortunately, there is no other way … We don’t have security to protect the towers.”
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Letter Of Marque: The Constitutional Law And Practice Of Privateering, By Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Cooperstein
So this is interesting. Here is a guy that works for the US Attorneys Office, who is former special forces and a reserve Army Intel guy, that writes this fantastic paper on the subject of Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Does anyone else find that to be cool, or am I the only constitutional law geek that likes this stuff? lol
The thing about it folks, is that I like the LoM, and I think it is just one more tool that can be used in this long and costly war. It gives congress a means to connect with private industry in a way that will be cost effective, and certainly effective if done properly. The one caveat though, is that congress needs to understand the mechanisms at play with this concept, and they must have the tools on how to properly construct a LoM. It would take some modern day modifications to get it just right, but it is certainly not impossible, and all the pieces are there to put it together.
Which leads me to my next point. By far, Feral Jundi is the place with the most comprehensive collection and commentary about the subject of the Letter of Marque and Reprisal. I know, I search this stuff relentlessly, and have collected it all. I invite the readership to explore all of this good stuff, and ‘build a snowmobile’ out of it. Hell, write congress and let them know about the LoM and your thoughts about it. Remind them about Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and let’s get the word out. –Matt
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Letters of Marque and Reprisal: The Constitutional Law and Practice of Privateering
Theodore M. Cooperstein, U.S. Attorneys Office (SDFL)
Abstract
The United States Constitution grants to the Congress the power, among others, to issue “Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” Although the practice seems to have fallen into disuse in this century, it was an important tool of national power for the federal government created by the Framers, who placed great import on the federal government’s role in protecting international commerce and in enforcing international law.
Privateering played a significant role before and during the Revolutionary War, and it persisted in American history as an economical way to augment naval forces against an enemy in wartime. A significant outgrowth of the practice of privateering was the body of law resulting from prize court adjudications. United States courts, in deciding title to ships and goods taken prize, determined issues both of domestic and customary international law. In this manner the federal courts significantly shaped the role of international law in the United States jurisprudence as well as assured the role of the United States in the ongoing development of customary international law. Case law concerning prizes and privateering is accordingly a useful vehicle to examine the interplay of U.S. constitutional law and customary international law as they both developed through the Nineteenth Century.
Changes in the methods of warfare during the Twentieth Century diminished the role of privateering. But the Congressional authority to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal remains. As a means to commission private actors to augment national forces in international crises, the Letter of Marque and Reprisal could yet have modern applications. It remains for innovative executive and legislative experiment to revive the ancient practice in a form befitting modern international problems.
Suggested Citation
Theodore M. Cooperstein, “Letters of Marque and Reprisal: The Constitutional Law and Practice of Privateering,” 40 J. Maritime L. & Comm. 221 (Apr. 2009)
Link to publication website here.
LinkedIn Page for Theodore M. Cooperstein here.
Download Pdf here.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Strategy: The New Rules Of War, By John Arquilla
Just a heads up, John was one of Rumsfeld’s advisors. lol But he does bring up some good points to think about, and I wanted to put them out there for the FJ readership to analyze. Here is a quick run down of the rules the author came up with:
Rule 1: “Many and Small” Beats “Few and Large.”
Rule 2: Finding Matters More Than Flanking.
Rule 3: Swarming Is the New Surging.
I guess the common theme of it all, is getting smaller and more mobile, in order to defeat a smaller and more mobile enemy. I just wonder if today’s militaries are even capable of this kind of flexibility? Because if we haven’t been able to get there yet, then when will we?
Better yet, if you are reading this and would like an interesting thought to ponder, here it is. How could a PMC use this information against an enemy it was tasked with destroying? The interesting angle with PMC’s is that the company with the better strategy and tactics, will win. So if these new rules of warfare are sound, then they could be applied by an army or PMC for today’s battles, and they should come out victorious. Right?
Or are these concepts really that radical, and just a rehash of older strategy? I tend to go with this position, and today’s strategists have a tendency to just repackage old themes. The proof in the pudding is for John Arquilla to apply his rules in a war game in which the opposition is let’s say some player taking the side of Al Qaeda. Either way, it is food for thought, and I would like to hear what you guys think. –Matt
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The New Rules of War
The visionary who first saw the age of “netwar” coming warns that the U.S. military is getting it wrong all over again. Here’s his plan to make conflict cheaper, smaller, and smarter.
BY JOHN ARQUILLA
MARCH/APRIL 2010
Every day, the U.S. military spends $1.75 billion, much of it on big ships, big guns, and big battalions that are not only not needed to win the wars of the present, but are sure to be the wrong approach to waging the wars of the future.
In this, the ninth year of the first great conflict between nations and networks, America’s armed forces have failed, as militaries so often do, to adapt sufficiently to changed conditions, finding out the hard way that their enemies often remain a step ahead. The U.S. military floundered for years in Iraq, then proved itself unable to grasp the point, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that old-school surges of ground troops do not offer enduring solutions to new-style conflicts with networked adversaries.
So it has almost always been. Given the high stakes and dangers they routinely face, militaries are inevitably reluctant to change. During World War I, the armies on the Western Front in 1915 were fighting in much the same manner as those at Waterloo in 1815, attacking in close-packed formations — despite the emergence of the machine gun and high-explosive artillery. Millions were slaughtered, year after bloody year, for a few yards of churned-up mud. It is no surprise that historian Alan Clark titled his study of the high command during this conflict The Donkeys.
Even the implications of maturing tanks, planes, and the radio waves that linked them were only partially understood by the next generation of military men. Just as their predecessors failed to grasp the lethal nature of firepower, their successors missed the rise of mechanized maneuver — save for the Germans, who figured out that blitzkrieg was possible and won some grand early victories. They would have gone on winning, but for poor high-level strategic choices such as invading Russia and declaring war on the United States. In the end, the Nazis were not so much outfought as gang-tackled.