Ten Commandments Of Counterinsurgency From Afghanistan

The Foreign Policy Research Institute has a good email bulletin service, with articles that may be of interest to folks interested in such things. One of the latest "E-Notes" I got in the mail while on travel was one with the above title, available in its entirety from ROFASix. Greg Mills is the author, and it's a good summary for people who aren't too familiar with the ideas.

John Nagl over at the Small Wars Journal blog also had an interesting article about moral dilemmas in counterinsurgency. He's been talking with NPR, which surprisingly enough isn't treating him as automatically eeeeevil so much as some kind of alien being. Which, for NPR, is sometimes the best you can get. Excerpt:

...He remembers working closely with an Iraqi police chief who provided valuable intelligence. Then, he learned that the man he had trusted was supporting the enemy -- "providing weapons, ammunition, body armor to the insurgents in Fallujah who were then fighting the Marines. And against some of my soldiers."

Nagl said he found himself "faced with a horrible dilemma."

"What do I do to this police chief who has clearly risked his life to help us? Every time I think about it, I wonder if I did the right thing. But ultimately what I decided to do was -- nothing. My assessment was that for Ishmael to stay alive this is the minimum he had to do -- this is the minimum tax he had to pay to the insurgents."

Austin Bay on MNF-I Staff Judge Advocate

Interesting profile by Austin Bay in today's Washington Times on the Multinational Force-Iraq Staff Judge Advocate, COL Mark Martins.

Arguably, Col. Mark Martins runs the most multifaceted, pressure-packed and press-scrutinized law practice in the Middle East.
Col. Martins serves as staff judge advocate for Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), which makes him Gen. David Petraeus' top legal adviser.

He is prepared for the job. Col. Martins' military career began with a tour leading an airborne infantry platoon. His resume is a record of demanding military law assignments, including a stint in the office of the chairman of the joint chiefs. His academic record speaks volumes: first in order of general merit in his class at West Point, Rhodes Scholar with first class honors at Oxford, Harvard Law School and Law Review.

The piece does a good job distilling what, beyond the more nuts and bolts job of trial work and investigations, the JAGs in theatre are accomplishing.

However, Col. Martins, his staff and civilian legal personnel serving with other U.S. agencies in Iraq have an even more complex and, in my view, more critical assignment. These legal experts are helping Iraq's nascent democratic government implement the rule of law.
Replacing the violent whims of ideological, theocratic or tribal tyrants and terrorists with democratic law is a slow, frustratingly incremental process, but nevertheless a strategically essential and potentially decisive endeavor if peace, justice and genuine security are your goals.
In a phone interview from Baghdad, Col. Martins told me that in his estimation the Iraqi government made a small but significant step on April 2, when the Iraqi judiciary opened criminal trial proceedings in its new Rule of Law Complex in Baghdad.

Too cool.