Nike Pro Combat promo wants us to ‘finish the mission’

On my way to teach this morning, I was surprised to see a black, wannabe MRAP in front of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium–known as the “Swamp” to Gator bait everywhere. I thought someone might have taken the mantra “in the swamp, only gators get out alive” a step too far, but it turns out it is part of a Nike Pro Combat promotion:

Pseudo-MRAP (Photo courtesy of Simone Nageon de Lestang)

Prepare for Combat (Photo courtesy of Simone Nageon de Lestang)

Behind the truck was a trailer that was a mobile retail space with the Florida’s new jersey and shirts emblazoned with the slogan “finish the mission.” Someone needs to send one of these to General McCrystal. Size ‘badass?’

"Finish the Mission" (Photo courtesy of Nike)

Personally, I find the comparison of sports to war in poor taste, but it is interesting to see the “finish the mission” slogan evoked when the debate on our policy in Aghanistan is still simmering. You can’t tell me that images such as these haven’t crept into advertisers’ minds.

Follow-Up on IAR: Au revoir SAW?

My post on the IAR solicitation continues to get hits, so when I saw this article in the Marine Corps Times I thought you would be interested:

Marine acquisition officials are considering a high-capacity magazine that could hold 50 or 100 rounds and fit numerous 5.56mm weapons, raising questions about the Corps’ plans to move forward with development of the controversial infantry automatic rifle.

Marine Corps Systems Command, based at Quantico, Va., is “seeking potential commercial sources for a high capacity magazine for use in a semi or fully automatic rifle,” with responses that were due by Nov. 17, according to a new advertisement to industry. The magazine would need to fit “the M16/M4/HK 416 family of weapons,” which includes the new 5.56mm auto-rifle SysCom is considering as a replacement for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in most fire teams.

Marine officials did not respond to requests for comment, but adopting a high-capacity magazine for the IAR would address concerns posed by some grunts worried that replacing the SAW with the IAR would cut firepower in situations where a sustained rate of fire is needed.

The SAW typically holds a 200-round drum of 5.56mm ammunition, while the IAR is designed for use with 30-round magazines.

Maj. John Smith, the weapon’s project officer, said in September that the Corps was “close to having a decision” on the IAR contract competition, which pits one rifle from FN Herstal, two variants from Colt Defense and one from Heckler & Koch against each other. At the time, Smith acknowledged that Commandant Gen. James Conway had questioned how the IAR will fit into fire teams, but said that his concern was “answered in short order.” Smith declined to elaborate, and Maj. David Nevers, a spokesman for Conway, said the commandant was unavailable for comment.

At the Modern Day Marine exposition held at Quantico in October, FN Herstal displayed a high-capacity magazine for its IAR variant that can hold 100 to 150 rounds. Another contractor, Armatac Industries, has approached the Corps about a 150-round magazine it makes and says is compatible with each of the finalists’ weapons.

Early in the evaluation process for the IAR, the Corps’ requirement called for the weapon to use 100-round magazines. That was eventually eliminated in favor of using the same 30-round magazines, as Marine officials sought to cut weight from the SAW’s replacement.

According to Darren Mellors, LWRC had been developing a high-capacity magazine like this for its candidate as well. I am not sure what this bodes for the IAR or the SAW, but I would be curious to see how well they perform in the field. To say the least, the BETA C-Mag has not gotten very flattering reviews. In theory, I like the idea of a system like the RPK that can alternate between drum and box magazines. However, drum magazines are much more complex and getting them ‘right’ is no easy task. It might be worth looking into 40- and 50-round box magazines akin to the RPK and Galil as another option. (For more information on Kalashnikov drum magazines, see this thorough article in Small Arms Review.)

With all this talk of high-speed low-drag mags, it is worth noting that soldiers could always use more regular vanilla 30-round magazines. These things are intended to be disposable items, and their springs wear out from repeated compression and decompression. Bad magazines are a top culprit of M16/M4 malfunctions, and they are a lot cheaper than a brand-new weapon system–particularly when the new system uses the same mags a la the SCAR. I have heard too many stories about warfighters not having enough, good-quality mags, and it is a pretty sorry commentary. I do not have an exact figure for what the DoD pays for a plain Jane STANAG magazine, but I have to imagine its less than $10. That’s $10 for truly life-or-death equipment.

Ghosts of Empire: T. E. Lawrence and the Haunted Narratives of U. S. Counterinsurgency Doctrine

On Thursday and Friday, the University of Florida hosted the 2009 EGO Conference.  The topic was “Home/sickness: Desire, Decay, and the Seduction of Nostalgia,” and Dominick LaCapra–a historian from Cornell–gave the keynote address.  I took part in a panel called “Evocations of Empire: Political Analyses of the Past and Present” in which I delivered a 15 minute conference paper that examined counterinsurgency theory and doctrine as literature.  In particular, I looked at how this theory and doctrine has a ‘haunted’ quality.  Among other things, I address the lasting appeal of Lawrence to writers such as Kilcullen.  Since this is a literary analysis, it will be a very different take than policy- and practice-focused COIN theory, but I hope you will find it interesting nonetheless:

The title of my paper is “Ghosts of Empire: T. E. Lawrence and the Haunted Narratives of U.S. Counterinsurgency Doctrine.”  Ordinarily, military doctrine is not placed in the domain of literature.  During this talk and afterwards, I hope you will consider not only why military doctrine and theory counts as “literature” but also how cultural critics can contribute to its study as well as the urgency of this project.  The fact is that with counterinsurgency doctrine and theory we are dealing with texts that are quite literally weaponized.  In an article entitled “The Evolution of a Revolt,” T. E. Lawrence himself called the printing press “the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.”  This line is one of Lawrence’s most cited throughout American military doctrine.  Most notably, it appears in the U. S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual–the official how-to guide for the ongoing interventions not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also The Philippines, Somalia, Yemen, and countless other past, present, and future sites of intervention. This manual also states that “some of the best weapons for the counterinsurgent do not shoot.”   In effect, counterinsurgency advocates that the military do its shooting with TEXTS.  Not only is this a complete reorientation of the masculine mythologies of war, but also it is what makes this cultural movement so RIPE for our intervention.

Now, let’s return to the key question addressed in this paper:  that is, “why are these weaponized texts ‘haunted?’”  To answer this question, I turn to Freud’s “The Uncanny.”   In this article, Freud writes, “The German word ‘unheimlich’ is obviously the opposite of ‘heimlich’ ['homely'], ‘heimisch’ ['native'] the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is ‘uncanny’ is frightening.”  However, Freud is arguing something very different.  He continues, “Something has to be added to what is novel and unfamiliar in order to make it uncanny.”  That, for Freud, is the uncertainty of place and time in league with a frightful doubling.  Of course, issues of the ‘home’ and the ‘native’ are particularly relevant to colonial discourses, but there are two common features inherent in counterinsurgency texts that make them uncanny.

The first is what I call “temporal disorientation.”  This term points to the text’s disorientating place within the tangle of memory and trauma.  As Benjamin writes, “To articulate the past historically…means to seize hold of memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.”  Of course, the unfortunate reality for postcolonial history is that these violent flash points reoccur in the same locales with a tragic repetition.  For critical readers, the effect is a classic text of counterinsurgency theory has the sense that it could have been written 100 years ago, today, or perhaps 100 years in the future in some apocalyptic vision.  A good example of this is David Galula’s foundational counterinsurgency text, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. In an aside, Galula writes, “A revolutionary situation exists today in Iran.  Who can tell what will happen, whether there will be an explosion, and if so, how and when it will erupt?”  Without context, one might just as easily assume this was one of the countless Tweets coming out of Iran after the election this summer, but these words were not written in 2009 but rather 1964.  This haunted repetition conjures the ghosts of a violent past replayed again and again in the postcolonial.  This could apply to a range of texts including, say, Kipling poetry’s about intervention in Afghanistan.

The second of these haunted qualities is a conscious (and often self-critical) channeling of colonial discourses.  In this talk, I will be addressing the channeling of Lawrence in particular, but there are many others who have been similarly evoked.  An example of this phenomenon is a third-person novella called The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa.  Written in 2009 by two American military officers, Michael L. Burgoyne and Albert J. Marckwardt, it serves a howto guide for soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan presented in a series of dreams.  Above and beyond the form of the book, its most striking feature is the channeling of another text written in 1905 about the Boer War called The Defence of Duffer’s Drift.  This is not a repetition a la Pierre Menard’s rewriting of Quixote as much as a seance in which past colonial voices are made to speak through a distinct narrative as part of a new (often literal) mobilization.

These two shared qualities, temporal disorientation and channeling of colonial discourses, contribute to these texts’ sense of ‘haunted-ness’–that is, the uncanny in Freud’s sense.  This particular form of the “uncanny” is what I will be exploring today in the doubling of the T. E. Lawrence’s 1917 advice to military advisors, “The Twenty Seven Articles of T. E. Lawrence,” and David Kilcullen’s 2006 advice to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency.”  They will stand as two exemplars of the hauntedness of counterinsurgency doctrine and theory.

To begin, let’s turn to the image of Lawrence in the past as a subversive figure in larger context of British military culture as well as colonial discourses coming out of the metropole.  It is import to acknowledge how difficult it is parse myth from reality with Lawrence, but for the purposes of this discussion we are only interested in Lawrence as a mythic figure.  As such, Lawrence is an agent of British imperial ambition, but he remains a queer cog in their war machine.  When I speak of Lawrence as a “queer cog,” I am not simply acknowledging the questions and complications that rise from discussions of his sexuality but also his relative position within the larger context of British military culture.  Consider for a moment that Lawrence was not like Prince Harry attending Sandhurst.  Rather, Lawrence was–and more importantly for us, positioned within military and colonial discourses as–this delicate, if not effeminate, archeologist-poet turned guerilla fighter who would meet with his commanders in sandals and Arab dress.  Contrast him to a contemporary figure such as British General Douglas Haig whose absolute lack of imagination and failure to comprehend new inventions such as the machine gun led to the needless slaughter of tens of thousands in the First World War.  Lawrence was the complete opposite of Haig in terms of his place in military culture.  Indeed, Lawrence dared to diverge one-hundred percent from the established program:  that is, he was willing to travel to a dark place on the map as in Heart of Darkness, get off the boat as in Apocalypse Now, or simply and radically go “native.”  This is what makes Lawrence this queer, ill-fitting cog in British Empire, but it is also exactly this the uncanny positioning that is now celebrated.

His subversiveness can be observed in his short piece, “The 27 Articles of T.E. Lawrence.”  As an example of colonial rhetoric coming out of the Metropole, it is among the most subversive as it demonstrates a willingness to be led by rather than lead the colonial other.  Lawrence writes, “Your place is advisory, and your advice is due to the commander alone.”  Later, he suggests, “Win and keep the confidence of your leader. Strengthen his prestige at your expense before others when you can.”  In both cases, the commander or leader is an Arab, not British, figure.  Certainly, Lawrence’s end is the service of Imperial goals, but the values of the metropole are all but erased or otherwise made invisible.  He writes, “Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them.”  He goes further and dismisses Western modes of warfare altogether.  He writes, “Learn the Bedu principles of war as thoroughly and as quickly as you can.”  Most notably, he places paramount importance on learning and mastering Arab culture.  These were some very radical proposals in 1917.  Even from this small sample of writing, it is easy to see why Lawrence has such a vexed relationship to the British Empire at large.

Let’s now move to the present day.  We are living in an era in which Lawrence’s position within military and colonial discourse has moved from one of subversion to a place within the dominant narrative.  At this conference, we have seen nostalgia posited as many things.  Here, it serves as a mobilization.   Enter David Kilcullen, a former Australian military officer, who came to prominence in America as a member of General David Patraeus’s personal staff.  He contributed to the writing of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, and his book The Accidental Guerrilla is a bestseller.  Currently, Kilcullen is serving as a counterterrorism advisor for the State Department.  Although he is undoubtedly a “rock star” within the national security community, Kilcullen began as a subversive figure.  He was reported to have said invading Iraq was “fucking stupid”–a comment he later disavowed–but he nonetheless maintains that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a “serious strategic error.”

Kilcullen’s “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency” captures this subversive quality.  Here, Kilcullen is very overtly conjuring Lawrence on the ouija board of military doctrine.  However, he is not simply evoking “The 27 Articles of T.E. Lawrence” but also the very SPIRIT of Lawrence’s counternarrative.  Recently, on Australian television, Kilcullen mused on the context in which he initially wrote his “Twenty-Eight Articles.”  He proudly states how his piece was being discretely passed around the Pentagon via email at a time when Rumsfeld and like-minded Pentagon wonks were suppressing the advice of counterinsurgency advocates who argued first for not invading Iraq and secondly for more troops in order to secure the country after the invasion.  Rumsfeld, of course, ignored this advice.

However, there is more to “The Twenty-Eight Articles” that make it such a subversive counternarrative.  Evoking that subversive voice of Lawrence, Kilcullen claims, “Rank is nothing: talent is everything.”  Again, we see a divergence from the valuation of Sandhurst or, to a lesser extent, American military academies.  He writes, “Remember the global audience.”  This is not simply casting out the media as in Sri Lanka’s counterinsurgency but rather a genuine awareness of the global community.  If this sounds familiar, it should.  A similar sentiment permeates President Obama’s “reset” of diplomatic relations across the world.  Kilcullen also advises, “Engage the women, beware the children.”  This is not some simplistic “saving colored women for white men.”  Instead, he recommends real political engagement with women as a key component of networks that can either encourage or discourage insurgency as well as a cautious desire to protect children.  Lastly, and most interestingly, Kilcullen suggests the counterinsurgent “exploit a ‘single narrative.’”  For Kilcullen, this exploitation is establishing an alternative narrative to, for example, the Taliban or other opposition figures as well as tapping into existing narratives to score non-violent political victories rather than violent ones.  (Throughout his work, Kilcullen’s mantra is that “a defection is better than a capture and a capture is better than a kill.”)  This underscores notion that the best weapons don’t shoot, and, as I suggested earlier, that counterinsurgents now advocate these weaponized narratives.

Indeed, the seduction of Lawrence is that he is a misfit, a rebel.  When counterinsurgents evoke Lawrence, they are evoking this spirit.  This uncanny doubling of Lawrence’s image in Kilcullen’s writing is more than a repetition of colonial discourse but rather a summoning of Lawrence’s powerful marginality.  However, this sense of the uncanny is not limited to Kilcullen’s “The Twenty-Eight Articles” but also to a wide range of counterinsurgency theory and doctrine.  Most importantly, this narrative has shifted from the margins of military culture to a dominant position.  A once-insurgent literature in Lawrence has literally become counterinsurgent in figures such as Kilcullen.

Happy Veterans Day

First and foremost, I would like to thank all those men and women who have served or are currently serving in the military. We would remiss not to also acknowledge the service of the Intelligence Community. It was not too long ago that the CIA put its 90th star on its Memorial Wall in honor of fellow Floridian Gregg Wenzel who died in the line of duty in Kenya. As a civilian, I do not feel like I have much to add to these tributes besides restate the moving sentiment of veterans like this one, which honors each and every member of the military, from the good folks at Blackfive.

My own small tribute has been not on this blog but in the classroom with my course “Narratives of War, 1865-Present.” Although the goal of the course is to expose students to a wide range of literature and film about war as well as issues confronting warfighters and their families, there has been an unexpected and perhaps greater significance to my class.  As the semester progresses, a growing number of students who have family or loved ones in the military have told me that the works we have read have given them an insight into their experiences and sacrifices. It is incredibly rewarding to hear a student remark that a book or film has given him or her a greater understanding of their father, mother, brother, sister, or other loved one.

Even then, it is hard not to feel somehow inadequate in the face of so many–including members of my own family–who have given so much in service of the United States of America.  For now, this is all I have to offer.

Remembering 9/11 through Teaching

This semester, I have been teaching a survey of American Literature course at the University of Florida titled “Narratives of War, 1865-present.” (For the initial draft of my syllabus, see this post. I have changed it since then.)

We began the class with Walt Whitman’s Civil War poetry such as “The Wound-Dresser,” Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Each has had its unique teaching moments. With Whitman, it was the complex emotions towards war ranging from near-jingoistic patriotism to his profound sympathy for those wounded and killed on both sides of the conflict. Crane gave us a chance to explore the trauma and transformation of a young soldier whose expectations more closely resembled the fantasies of 300 than the realities of the Civil War. Then, we read Bierce’s short story as the last moments of–to borrow Kilcullen’s phrase–”an accidental guerrilla.”

On the anniversary of the September 11th Attacks, we moved forward in time and for the first time addressed a conflict that all my students had experienced in one way or another. Indeed, I underestimated the extent of their experience. Most were only 11 or 12 when these attacks occurred, so I thought it would be necessary to remind them how scared we all were on that day. However, they too had been afraid. Those who had had been living near or on military installations repeated the same thing: “we thought we would be next.” Some teachers had sheltered them from the coverage, because they had family members who might be at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, or otherwise involved. However, there was sense among almost all of them that something was wrong. Many parents came to get their children and took them home. As I look back at that day now, it was not merely fear that motivated these parents. There was a collective reaching out to friends and family on that day and afterward that was made more palpable in light of those on the hijacked airliners and in the World Trade Center and Pentagon who were forever lost to their loved ones.

Over the summer, I struggled with what would be the most appropriate commemoration of that terrible day and those who died and settled on Paul Greengrass’ 2006 film United 93. As always, a memorial–film or otherwise–is a painful thing. Some students cried watching the film; others were demonstrably moved in class. I lectured more than wanted, which was more difficult than I expected. This film’s teaching moments had even higher stakes than the other cultural works we have studied so far. We discussed the ethical and artistic choices that Greengrass made in representing the hijackers and their victims. It was necessary to explain so much: the cultural and religious forces driving Al Qaeda, the history of Western intervention in the Middle East, and tragic ignorance of pre-9/11 America. Moreover, the class reopened a wound of my own–much less of a wound than so many but a wound nevertheless–and I found it difficult to focus.

Throughout it all, students wanted to understand how and why this could happen. There were the inevitable questions: “How could the terrorists bring knives aboard?” and “Why didn’t someone try to stop them before 9/11?” Regardless of question, no explanation was adequate.

If today’s class was any indication, it will be members of this generation who are the harshest critic of our failure to stop the attacks. It is not that they have forgotten. They were afraid. They were most vulnerable. Most importantly, they were just old enough to remember yet young enough to believe that they had been safe.

‘Contractors Gone Wild’ News Round-Up

After a crazy summer myself, I am returning to blogging to comment on some even crazier times at the Embassy in Kabul. As I am sure you have read by now, private security contractors under the employ of Armor Group were dismissed for some very juvenile behavior caught on film. Before we go further, it is important to note that there are great people–some of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting throughout my research–in the PSC community. When I see contractors depicted as mustache twirling villains such as in District 9, my first reaction is to cringe at the narrow representation of a very diverse group. This same prejudice has colored the reception of this news if not the coverage itself. However, there has been some thought provoking discussion to come from it.

The Combat Operator, for one, points to a need for greater oversight and accountability of the PSC industry:

The command structure, the rules, regulations, policies, guidelines and standing operating procedures which are normal in any military organization do not exist to any meaningful degree within the private security/military industry. At best you have a few companies who, relatively speaking, do better than most but even that’s a pretty low standard to meet.

Furthermore, the consequences for breaking rules (that is…the few rules that actually exist) is virtually non-existent. In the U.S. military the UCMJ governs service personnel and all soldiers, airmen and Marines know that failure to comply with any lawful order, law or rule or even policy or guideline runs the risk of prosecution non-judicial punishment (NJP), or court martial under the UCMJ. Again, nothing even close to this exists within the world of private security. There really is no accountability comparable to the UCMJ and NJP amounts only to dismissal from your current contract. And we all know that this is, in reality, no punishment at all since the offender often simply pop-ups somewhere else for another firm in a matter of weeks or months.

However, TCO also points to a failure of leadership at the State Department:

Now then.  That takes care of the industry side of the equation.   What about the client side?  Increasingly it is coming to light that government clients, in contrast with private clients, are systemically inept at managing the procurement, selection and oversight of security contracts.  I have personally worked on contracts which have both private clients and government clients and though neither do a very good job, the government side and in particular the U.S. State Department are painfully ill equipped to do this work.  The reasons for this are puzzling, especially as at this stage, after 8 years of war in Afghanistan and 6+ years in Iraq there are literally hundreds of senior contractors with multiple years of operational management experience who could be hired by State in to sit on the ‘client side’ of the table during contract negotiations as well as during the later phases of contract execution.

For decades the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Services (DSS) program was always a sleepy little backwater in the security world.  It was, and to some degree still is,  full of lifelong government civil servants who, despite their hard work and good intentions, have not been able to adapt to the pace and complexity that operating in a war-zone imposed on them.  They got pushed into a fast-paced and complex game that they were not prepared for.

But to date this has been like asking a local high school football coach, no matter good his record has been at that level,  to jump into the NFL.   Oh sure, on the surface there are many similarities,  the field is the same dimensions, it’s still 11 vs. 11 players  and the rules are mostly the same and certainly the concepts is the same in principle.  But the speed, level of complexity and knowledge and experience to say nothing of the media attention necessary to perform at the highest level make it impossible for him to take go from High School to the NFL without a natural maturation process which usually involves a stop for many years at the university level.

The DSS small staff of only a couple thousand agents oversees (and I am using that term lightly) over 30′000 contract personnel in the protection of over 200 Embassies and consulates around the world.  But, the problem is that your standard, run-of-the-mill, contract and mission to protect the Embassy in Berlin or even Kuala Lumpur or Mumbai  is still about three solar-systems away from what is required to protect the Kabul embassy.  Kabul and Baghdad are the big leagues and the DSS has not demonstrated anything near the capability of playing on that field.  They certainly do not have a commanding position of respect or authority over the security firms they are supposed to supervise.  At best they are perceived as an administrative nuisance which should be avoided at every opportunity.

To some degree the State Department knows they are are in over their head and they have relied, far too heavily, on the professionalism (I use that term lightly as well…) of the private security sector to pull their bacon out of the fire.  But, as I have alluded to before the professionalism they desire and frankly rely on generally just does not exist.

Free Range International offers another take on the incident and the larger problems that, as the author writes, “have little to do with the behavior highlighted in the tsunami of international coverage.” This speaks to the PSC talent pool, how much contractors are paid, and how they are treated:

Managing contracts of this size in Iraq or Afghanistan is an impossible job and there is a very small pool of talent who have the ability and energy to do it well. I came to Kabul from the American Embassy in Baghdad where I first joined the circuit with a British firm. I received a call around Midnight on a Sunday from the company recruiter who I could barely understand and he said in a very loud voice “mate do you have your kit?” I replied in the affirmative and he says “I need a fill in Baghdad mate can you leave in two days?” I again said yes and he yelled “great mate see you in 24 hours.” The next morning I had a ticket to London and I left the following day. It was a weird thing to do but I hated being retired and was a really crappy civilian. I was lucky, the project manager in Baghdad, who would come to back fill me in Kabul two years later was one of the best I have ever seen. He was from Zimbabwe, had extensive combat experience, was of the quiet confident type who paid keen attention to what his expats did both on and off duty.

Camp Happy on the day we assumed the duty at the US Embassy – this dump housed over 300 Expats and TCN’s and it sucked. The upside to being in a real shit sandwich like this was that everyone had to respect the need for off shift personnel to sleep so everyone was excessively considerate. We had to pull one 24 hour shift in order to allow our night shift to sleep – the roof was still being attached and the rooms built so they were never able to get any sleep off shift for the first two weeks of the contract.

[...]

The main reason why managing these contracts is so difficult is that it is impossible to stay ahead of the stupidity curve your men will generate. There is no way to anticipate it because some of these guys do the most unbelievably stupid things sober; add alcohol and the potential for Darwin Award level stupidity goes up exponentially. In the military I knew my Marines well because we spent so much time together – often in prolonged field exercises. Your average young enlisted Marine has the ability to do stupid things too but they fall into an easily anticipated set of behaviors which savvy leadership can recognize and at times circumvent. Not true with contractors – some of stories I have heard are amazing.

[...]

When Armor Group won they were heading down the same path as MVM but at the last minute the CEO came in, immediately fired his management team and entered into negotiations with the existing project manager for him and his crew to come aboard. I am hesitant to go into detail due to an acute congenital fear of lawyers. Runs in my family according to my Father, but suffice it say the pay for new joins was low and did not favor Americans who cannot be paid on leave by an American company without becoming an employee with the full benefit and tax load. That lasted a little less than a year until the PM got bored and left which caused the immediate exodus of all the old guards who Armor group wanted to be rid of so they could bring in guys at a much reduced daily rate. You get what you pay for in this industry and Armor Group was not paying much.

The pay thing is a problem which can worked through with good on the ground leadership and incentives for people who are on their second, third or fourth year of the contract; the real problem is with the living conditions and job requirements of the guard force. The average living space per man in Camp Sullivan is less than the square footage required for inmates in federal penitentiaries. I put that in writing in a memo to the RSO when the camp was being built which may help explain the stained relationship I had with him. The recreation facilities are inadequate and the gym full of third rate Turkish equipment. There is no space on the camp for the men to do anything outside of their crammed barracks and they have little ability to get off camp. When you are designing camps to house hundreds of guards for years at a time you have to pay attention to their morale recreation and welfare needs which is something the military excels at. If you do not think through what they are going to do off duty as thoroughly as their on duty tasks than you are set up to fail.

Personally, what I find most disturbing is that part of this failure can be traced to that prejudice I mentioned earlier:

But that contract will still be have a ton of problems and the men working there will continue to be even more miserable than the FOB bound military who at least have good gyms, pizza hut, lots of girls on their bases, green beans coffee houses etc..

There is only way to fix the Embassy contract and that is to cut the number of guards in half, make them all Americans and pull them into the embassy where they can work and live along side the other Americans. The security guards are not now and never have been able to use the gyms or bars or tennis courts or swimming pool which are all reserved for embassy staff. That should change. The security guard contract should also be combined with the Ambassadors PSD contract (currently Blackwater and before them DynCorp) so that guards joining the contract can work their way up onto the Ambassador’s detail – that way when a new guy joins that team he has a clue about Afghanistan. Knowing how to “evasive drive” or shoot is useless here – knowing the people, how they drive and what is normal behavior is critical and you can’t learn that in security “operator” school. What are the chances that the State Department is aware enough to recognize the problems they created on this contract and then really fix them? Absolutely zero. Like I said I hated working that contract because the people you are serving are just plain rude, arrogant and worse yet completely clueless about what is happening outside the walls of their plush digs.

At the very least, this compartmentalization speaks to a condescension towards those who provide security for embassies. More importantly, this prejudice creates blinders that inhibit real solutions on the ground.

Some of the Tools behind the Iranian DDoS Attacks

If you have been following #iranelection like I have, you might have heard about the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that the opposition has used against government web sites.  On the SANS Internet Storm Center, Bojan Zdrnja includes some details of the attacks.

In last couple of days we posted two diaries (http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6601 and http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6613)  with information about Slowloris, a tool that was released last week that performs a resource exhaustion DoS attack on Apache web servers.

There has been a lot of chat about the tool on the web, so it was just a matter of time when we would see it using in real DoS attacks. Last week I posted a diary about two groups launching DDoS attacks on Iranian web sites (http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6583). Both of these attacks were relatively simple and used existing, old tools for performing DoS attacks.

However, over the weekend some forums and web sites asking people to run DDoS attacks “expanded” their selection of tools by including Slowloris – nothing we didn’t really expect to see.

If you follow the links in the post, there is a lucid explication of the tools and methods behind the attacks. Even if you are not a technophile, the “nuts and bolts” of a DDoS is pretty interesting stuff.

Iran’s Firewall and Election Protests

Craig Labovitz from Security to the Core has some interesting observations on the Iranian firewall. I was most interested in what traffic isn’t filtered:

While the rapidly evolving Iranian firewall has blocked web, video and most forms of interactive communication, not all Internet applications appear impacted. Interestingly, game protocols like xbox and World of Warcraft show little evidence of government manipulation.

Perhaps games provide a possible source of covert channels (e.g. “Bring your elves to the castle on the island of Azeroth and we’ll plan the next Ahmadinejad protest rally?”)

Of course, World of Warcraft has not escaped the scrutiny of the ODNI and others in the United States. For commentary, see these posts at Danger Room (here and here) and Schneier on Security.

Check out Arbor Network’s “Security to the Core” for more.

America’s Army 3 available today

Via @USArmy. Today, the US Army will release a new version of its video game and recruitment tool, America’s Army. According Grafton Pritchartt of Army.mil, America’s Army 3 will introduce a number of new features that will provide a better simulation of combat for prospective recruits:

The original game has been out since July 4, 2002, but the new version will provide gamers with improved features, thanks in part to the use of Unreal Engine 3.

Unreal Engine 3 will allow the game to have effects like lighting and shadowing and rendering. The effects make the 14 different choices of characters more realistic, project developer and creator Col. Casey Wardynski said.

“America’s Army 3 involves enhancements of the technology from America’s Army’s original version, which has made the sound (and graphics) dramatically better,” Wardynski said. “This gives them a chance to test drive the army. Instead of it being all the stuff they think they know from the movies, it demonstrates what it is really like because this game is made by the Army.”

A trailer for the video game is available here. Or, if you can bring yourself to set down your Baudrillard for a moment, go download a copy and join the fray. You can “pre-load” the game at the America’s Army website, and the game will “unlock” around 3:00 PM EST.

Teaching American Literature through Narratives of War

Jeff Withington, posting at the US Naval Institute blog, shared an email exchange he had with Admiral Jim Stavridis on the value of an English major and the impact it has had on his life.  Admiral Stavridis also recommends a “must-read” list for midshipmen before receiving their commission. Well, I have one-upped the admiral.  In the fall, I will be offering an American literature course entitled “Survey of American Literature: Narratives of War, 1865-Present.”  You don’t even have to be a midshipman or an English major–only a student at the University of Florida.

“Narratives of War” will focus on novels, short stories, films, and memoir that deal with aspects of armed conflict since the end of the Civil War.  The course will encourage students to think critically about an number of issues including but not limited to post-traumatic stress disorder, women in the military, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” Arab-Americans after 9/11, Revolution in Military Affairs, and counterinsurgency.

My inspiration for the course was John Nagl’s characterization of American military culture as one of survival in the face of existential threats. That culture of survival permeates all of American culture including the struggles facing various waves of immigration, the GLBT community, and Arab Americans post-9/11. As diverse as America itself, our military faces many of these same challenges.

There are no shortage of texts, so it is inevitable that I will miss some here or there. My goal was to cover a wide swath of historical periods and genres. There may be some changes, but here it is as it stands today:

Week 1
Monday (8/24): Course overview and introductions; reading journal explained

Wednesday (8/26): American Civil War; Walt Whitman, selected poems

Friday (8/28): Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1-75)

Week 2
Monday (8/31): Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (76-152)

Wednesday (9/2): selection, Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “A Son of the Gods,” “One Officer, One Man,” and “One of the Missing” (Available at The Ambrose Bierce Project, http://www.ambrosebierce.org/works.html)

Friday (9/4): Spanish-American War; Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” [Available at http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/kipling.html]; Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” [Available at http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/twain.htm]

Week 3
Monday (9/7): No class

Wednesday (9/9): Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat” [Available at http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CraOpen.html]

Friday (9/11): September 11th; Flight 93, directed by Peter Markle (in-class screening)

Week 4
Monday (9/14): 9/11 and Arab Americans; Randa Jarrar, “Lost in Freakin’ Yonkers” and “A Frame for the Sky” (course packet)

Wednesday (9/16): Introduction to Research Writing: Asking Questions and Finding Answers; Group Activity on Topics, Questions, and Problems

Friday (9/18): World War I; selection, Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (3 – 35) [course packet]

Week 5
Monday (9/21): Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (36 – 74) [course packet]

Wednesday (9/23): Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home”

Friday (9/25): Research Writing, continued: Sources and Citation

Week 6
Monday (9/28): World War II; Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (part 1)

Wednesday (9/30): Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (part 2)

Friday (10/2): Research Writing, continued: Claims and Support; for class discussion, watch the following WWII Disney Propaganda films: “The Spirit of ‘43″ [Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqMVpcbhpqw], “Der Fuerher’s Face” [Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiRiIpZVF4], “Commando Duck” [Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H81Nna8fo5g]

Week 7
Monday (10/5): Vietnam War; selection, Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

Wednesday (10/7): selected poems, Yusef Komunyakaa

Friday (10/9): Revolution in Military Affairs; selected military technology articles; Donald Rumsfeld, “Secretary Rumsfeld Speaks on ‘21st Century Transformation’ of U.S. Armed Forces,” US Department of Defense, January 31, 2002 [Available at http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=183]; John Nagl’s and Frederick Kagan’s responses in Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife [e-reserve] and Finding The Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy [e-reserve]

Week 8
Monday (10/12): Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1-75)

Wednesday (10/14): Heinlein, Starship Troopers (75-150)

Friday (10/16): No class

Week 9
Monday (10/19): Heinlein, Starship Troopers (150-225)

Wednesday (10/21): Heinlein, Starship Troopers (225-272)

Friday (10/23): 1991 Gulf War; Jean Baudrillard, “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,” Jarhead [in-class screening]; Reading Response Paper due

Week 10
Monday (10/26): Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; selection, Gabe Hudson, Dear Mr. President; James J. Lindsay, Jerome Johnson, E.G. “Buck” Shuler Jr. and Joseph J. Went, “Gays and The Military: A Bad Fit,” The Washington Post, 15 April 2009, A19; Andrew Exum, “DADT and the Age Gap,” Abu Muqawama

Wednesday (10/28): The War in Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq War; Colby Buzzell, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (1-75)

Friday (10/30): Buzzell, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (75-150)

Week 11
Monday (11/2): Buzzell, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (150-225)

Wednesday (11/4): Buzzell, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (225-300)

Friday (11/6): Buzzell, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (300-368)

Week 12
Monday (11/9): Women in the Military; Kayla Williams, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army (1-75)

Wednesday (11/11): No class

Friday (11/13): Williams, Love My Rifle More Than You (75-150)

Week 13
Monday (11/16): Williams, Love My Rifle More Than You (150-225)

Wednesday (11/18):Williams, Love My Rifle More Than You (225-300)

Friday (11/20): Williams, Love My Rifle More Than You (300-320)

Week 14
Monday (11/23): Counterinsurgency; Spenser Ackerman, “Women Prominent in Defense Movement (Seventh in a Series: The Rise of the Counterinsurgents),” The Washington Independent; Research Paper (First Draft) due

Wednesday (11/25): Montgomery McFate, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture”; Roberto J. González, “Towards mercenary anthropology? The new US Army counterinsurgency manual FM 3-24 and the military-anthropology complex”; Montgomery McFate, “Building Bridges or Burning Heretics?”

Friday (11/27): No class

Week 15
Monday (11/30): No class; student conferences (required)

Wednesday (12/2): No class; student conferences (required)

Friday (12/4): No class; student conferences (required)

Week 16:
Monday (12/7): Unmanned Systems; Sig Christenson, “Air Force looks to keep more pilots grounded,” MySA.com; David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, “Death from above, outrage from below,” Eagle Eye, directed by DJ Caruso [in-class screening]

Wednesday (12/9): Conclusion; Research Paper (Final Draft) due

I will be interested to hear your feedback on the syllabus. If you are a student at UF, the course is AML2070: Section 1625. I would welcome any cadets or midshipmen from the ROTC program.

I may require a blogging component to students’ reading journal, because I am sure students will have some great perspectives not only on the works themselves but also the issues we will cover together.