Military Operations

Four months after President Obama pledged to the nation in September 2014 “we will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL,” reporters challenged Pentagon spokesperson Rear Adm. John Kirby about his assertion that “We know that we’ve killed hundreds of their forces.” One reporter asked directly, “can you be more specific on that number?” Kirby replied tersely: “I cannot give you a more specific number of how many ISIL fighters…[W]e don’t have the ability to count every nose that we shwack [sic]….And we’re not getting into an issue of body counts. And that’s why I don’t have that number handy. I wouldn’t have asked my staff to give me that number before I came out here. It’s simply not a relevant figure.” Sixteen days later, a U.S. government official offered just such a number: 6,000. Body counts have a long and infamous history in modern U.S. wars, from Vietnam, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and now in the campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. In each of these conflicts, the U.S. government released estimates of enemy fighters killed, all while either doubting the voracity of those numbers or admitting they were largely irrelevant to achieving the longer-term strategic objective. As Gen. Westmoreland said after the Vietnam War: “Statistics were, admittedly, an imperfect gauge of progress, yet in the absence of conventional front lines, how else to measure it?” I have a piece in Foreign Policy today that reviews and questions the Pentagon’s estimates of Islamic State fighters killed and lists the data points it has released: March 3, 2015: 8,500 June 1, 2015: 13,000 July 29, 2015: 15,000 October 12, 2015: 20,000 November 30, 2015: 23,000 January 6, 2016: 25,500 April 12, 2016: 25,000/26,000 August 10, 2016: 45,000 For more on why this recent 80 percent increase is improbable, as well as an official response from the U.S. Central Command, read the full article.

Gabriella Meltzer is a research associate in the Global Health program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Aaron Picozzi is the research associate for the military fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Coast Guard veteran, and currently serves in the Army National Guard. Two years ago, Americans braced for the imminent arrival of Ebola. The virus was spreading rapidly in West Africa, and ended up infecting 29,000 people and killing 11,000 more in the region. Knowing that it could not be contained by underdeveloped and overwhelmed health systems in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, the U.S. military took swift action to mitigate its impact in West Africa and prevent the disease from crossing the Atlantic. Ultimately, only four cases occurred in the United States, resulting in just one fatality. Today we face a new, more complicated public health menace—Zika, a mosquito-borne disease whose outbreak across Latin America has resulted in women giving birth to children with microcephaly and other debilitating neurological disorders. Strategies that focused on behavioral changes were effective in containing Ebola as transmission only occurs through contact with infected people or objects, but they cannot contain Zika, as individual mosquitos’ movement and feeding patterns cannot be closely monitored or controlled. Ebola infections are also much easier to spot—characteristic symptoms present themselves two to twenty-one days post-infection and there are at least seven WHO-approved, reliable diagnostic tests. With Zika, an estimated 80 percent of those infected remain asymptomatic, and rapid, definitive, and affordable diagnostics still remain in development. Airport screening tactics used to protect Americans from Ebola, which screened 94 percent of all travelers coming from areas of high infection, cannot be applied to Zika. West African migrants are unable to travel the 4,000 miles across the Atlantic to reach U.S. shores—but Caribbean and Latin American migrants can, and regularly do. As economic conditions in Latin American countries like Venezuela and Brazil worsen, the threat of Zika provides another push for those already looking to make a new life in the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard indicts thousands of these migrants annually, from Southern California to as far east as the Atlantic coast of Florida. There is no need to pass through an airport—any shoreline is a landing point, making universal screening nearly impossible. The confluence of these factors highlights the necessity for a solution at Zika’s source rather than America’s entry points. However, WHO-member nations have displayed lackluster financial commitment to the fight against Zika. Even if the necessary funds were raised, their dispersal to local public health agencies is a long, arduous process, and vaccine development and approval can take upwards of eighteen months. Instead, there is another actor with resources at its disposal and capable of providing immediate results in this time of urgency—the U.S. military. Rapidly mobilizing the military to conduct advisory missions, strengthening and developing response systems, in areas of high infection would produce a lasting framework tailored not just towards Zika, but a myriad of potential problems. Brazil has turned to its military for domestic response, not because of an inherent skill in mosquito eradication, but because this rapidly deployable, incredibly flexible workforce could be deputized to combat specific problems. The U.S. military has the same ability. Whether responding to the Japanese earthquake of 2011 or the 2014 Ebola crisis, the U.S. military is very effective in aiding local governments while leaving behind a framework to address future disasters. Of course, any U.S. military presence should be tailored to meet local needs, but by focusing on training foreign militaries and other agencies in disaster management, the United States would be making a long term investment in regional stability, as well as U.S. national security. This is evidenced by the Obama administration’s recently introduced Global Health Security Agenda, which highlights the importance of cooperative prevention, detection, and response to infectious disease agents. To realize this agenda, vulnerable nations like Brazil and Venezuela need support to develop the necessary capacities and framework to ensure global stability. In an age of globalization and unpredictability, prevention is preferable to reaction. With trained forces located throughout the western hemisphere, the United States will effectively create a sphere of management and mitigation in its backyard. Be it a health emergency like Zika or Ebola, or a natural disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami, the ability to mobilize a trainable force to respond quickly is crucial. Many of the countries in the heart of the Zika epidemic have weak response systems, governments, and economies. Training and strengthening of response efforts in these countries will help to reassure citizens of stability in times of crisis. This is a long term byproduct of training operations, one that reduces the need for reactive action in the future. With U.S.-led multinational training and partnership, the current hollow framework in place for disaster response and prevention can be strengthened while simultaneously taking steps to counter Zika. Regional problems are quickly becoming international in the age of globalization, and it is often only a matter of time before issues spurred elsewhere arrive on American shores. By training and empowering foreign nations, the United States will feel the beneficial, long-term effects in not only regional, but global stability.

Late last month, I was honored to be a speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival about my book Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy. The Festival, which the Aspen Institute began in 2005, invites a wide array of thinkers and doers from around the world to present their research or performances in an unusually scenic environment, and in front of super smart and challenging attendees. At this year’s festival, the big-name speakers included Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry, and IMF chief Christine Lagarde. I learned a great deal from the sessions I attended on food insecurity, criminal justice reform, and the expanding universe—I even got to observe evidence of this at night through high-powered telescopes. I’m sharing a recording of my presentation at Aspen primarily because it was run by the brilliant veteran journalist James Fallows, who graciously provided a blurb for my book ten months ago. He is the gold standard for making a book talk compelling and relevant for the audience. The question-and-answer session with the audience was also spirited and enlightening, at least for me. Overall, a highlight of my career.

Jared Wright is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. President Barack Obama’s recent announcement that 8,400 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan at the end of his administration, nearly 3,000 more troops than his previous timeline, reflects the tenuous stability that Afghanistan has achieved after nearly fifteen years of U.S. involvement. A resurgent Taliban and the appearance of self-proclaimed Islamic State forces have tested the ability of the increasingly fragile central government to provide security and political stability and demonstrated the limits of U.S. training and support. Meanwhile, economic and political frustrations across all levels of Afghan society have gone largely unaddressed by the National Unity Government (NUG). The security situation in Afghanistan could worsen, which would threaten U.S. interests in the region. A new Contingency Planning Memorandum released by the Center for Preventive Action, “Strategic Reversal in Afghanistan,” assesses the growing risks of strategic reversals in Afghanistan. Author Seth G. Jones, Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, recommends steps the United States can take to mitigate or prevent such risks. The report highlights the shortcomings of the NUG and the challenges that the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police—which both face rising attrition rates, low morale, and a climbing death toll—are forced to confront in providing for Afghanistan’s security. Jones identifies two principle contingencies to watch over the next twelve to eighteen months: the collapse of the NUG—which is plagued by widespread corruption, deteriorating economic conditions, and competition among Afghan elites—and major gains in urban areas by the Taliban, who now control more territory than at any other point since December 2001. Both outcomes are not mutually exclusive, as one contingency would ultimately magnify the potential for the other. U.S. interests would be harmed if either contingency happens. U.S. objectives in Afghanistan are clear: to target al-Qaeda and other extremist elements in order to prevent future attacks against the United States, and to enable Afghan forces to provide security for the country. A government collapse or the seizure of one or more major cities by the Taliban would severely diminish the likelihood of achieving either objective, while simultaneously rolling back gains made over the last decade. These contingencies could also lead to an increase in extremist groups operating in Afghanistan; introduce regional instability involving India, Pakistan, Iran, and Russia; and possibly signal to other countries that the United States is not a reliable ally, further complicating regional power dynamics. To prevent these contingencies from occurring, Jones recommends the United States leverage its relationship with Afghanistan, focusing on building greater political consensus, encouraging regional powers to support Kabul, pursuing reconciliation with the Taliban, and strengthening Afghan security forces so that they can manage internal security challenges with limited outside involvement. To achieve those aims, the U.S. should:                           Focus diplomatic efforts on resolving acute political challenges, prioritizing electoral reforms and building consensus between the Afghan government and political elites. Address economic grievances that could undermine the political legitimacy of the government. Sustain the current number and type of U.S. military forces through the end of the Obama administration. Decrease constraints on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and grant the military authority to strike the Taliban and Haqqani network. Sustain U.S. support for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.   For a more in-depth analysis on how the situation in Afghanistan might result in a strategic reversal and what the United States can do to prevent that from happening or mitigate the consequences, read “Strategic Reversal in Afghanistan.”

Months after promising to release the number of civilians that have been killed in U.S. lethal counterterrorism operations outside of "areas of active hostilities," the Obama Administration today released its count in a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. According to the numbers provided, there were 473 "strikes" [presumably this includes both manned and unmanned aircraft conducted by both the CIA and the U.S. military] which killed between 2,372 and 2,581 combatants, and between 64 and 116 civilians. According to the numbers that we have provided since our Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies report in January 2013, the numbers of strikes in non-battlefield settings and fatalities of both combatants and civilians is much higher. As of today, there have been approximately 578 strikes—50 under George W. Bush, 528 under Obama, which have cumulatively killed an estimated 4,189 militants and 474 civilians. This information is fully presented in the chart below with the sources used.   Sources: New America Foundation (NAF); Long War Journal (LWJ); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) ** Based on averages within the ranges provided by the organizations monitoring each country as of July 1, 2016.  

Harry Oppenheimer is a research associate for national security at the Council on Foreign Relations. The U.S. military mission in Afghanistan has been subject to restrictive rules of engagement that prohibited targeting the Taliban directly unless they posed a threat to U.S. personnel, or an extreme threat to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Reportedly, this has changed. The recent news was the first major policy change for the Afghan War since General John Nicholson took over command exactly one hundred days before the announcement on March 2, 2016. Combined with today’s story that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bases will remain open in Afghanistan into 2017, Nicholson has latitude that would be the envy of his predecessors. Flexibility over war plans is something that General John F. Campbell, Nicholson’s predecessor, called for publically in Senate hearings but could never achieve. After leaving Afghanistan, reports leaked that Campbell wanted to strike the Taliban directly and created enemies within the Department of Defense (DoD) in the process. Last week’s news makes such direct action possible. But there is a larger story as well—the White House appears to be responding to the concerns of the commander on the ground. When the then–lieutenant general Nicholson testified at his confirmation hearings in January he reiterated the importance of coalition close air support (CAS) and logistical and intelligence enablers for the ANDSF. His written testimony outlined his understanding entering the position: “Although their capabilities continue to grow as DoD fields additional planned aviation and intelligence, security, and reconnaissance (ISR) enablers to the ANDSF, I’ve been informed that there are still many requests for coalition enablers.” However, he added, “in the near term, as their CAS capability grows with the fielding of the A29 and additional rotary wing assets, I expect those requests to diminish. Over the long term, the most important capability we can provide them are the systems and procedures we put in place to ensure their sustainability.” This preliminary view came with a promise that in the first three months in command he would undertake a comprehensive review of the situation in Afghanistan and report back to senior leaders. This assessment would come, “after I have had the opportunity to get first hand insight on the situation in Afghanistan.” Regrettably, the Taliban have been encouraged by a highly successful 2015 that saw them control more territory than they ever have since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Recently, they have had numerous victories in southern Afghanistan. The day before the announcement of the expanded U.S. role, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction warned that Taliban gains jeopardized the efforts of the United States in the past decade. Now President Barack Obama has eased the restrictions on airstrikes in direct support of ANDSF, something that he has been loathed to do despite numerous suggestions from former military leaders and national security experts. ABC News reports that Nicholson, “will now be allowed to determine when American forces should advise and assist conventional Afghan Army units, something that until now had only been allowed for American special operations forces working with Afghan special operations forces.” News that NATO bases will remain open despite planned troop reductions will give Nicholson further flexibility to gauge force size and placement. While we cannot see Nicholson’s report to the president, many have speculated as to its contents. It is unlikely a coincidence that these policy changes come exactly one hundred days into his command. Here the proof may be in the pudding—Nicholson has seen the state of the Afghan military and the reduction of direct support he expected in March is clearly unrealistic. That is the only assessment one can imagine would push the administration to relax restrictions on a war it wanted over long ago. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come—the best military advice, in this case from the vastly experienced Nicholson on the ground, translating directly into policy changes authorized by the White House. Maybe Nicholson learned from his predecessor and went about advocating for new authority with greater political acumen. The upside is that is the influence he could have over the direction of the Afghan War and the trust he has been given by civilian leadership.

A revelation today about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State may indicate her preference using military force over diplomatic considerations. It was known since January that the content of twenty-two emails that went through the private server were classified at the “top secret/SAP [special access programs]” level, referring to highly classified intelligence gathering or covert programs run by the Pentagon and CIA. At the time, Clinton told NPR, "the best we can determine" is that the emails in question consisted solely of a news article about drone strikes in Pakistan. As Clinton stated: "How a New York Times public article that goes around the world could be in any way viewed as classified, or the fact that it would be sent to other people off of the New York Times site, I think, is one of the difficulties that people have in understanding what this is about.” Today, Adam Entous and Devlin Barrett reported that the e-mails were not merely forwarded news articles, but consisted of informal discussions between Clinton’s senior aides about whether to oppose upcoming CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. According to Entous and Barrett when a potential strike was imminent—or if it occurred during the holidays when staffers were away from government computers—the covert operation was then debated openly, albeit vaguely without mentioning the CIA, drones, or the militant targets specifically. The State Department was given a voice in the intensity and timing of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, after then-Ambassador Cameron Munter reportedly opposed certain covert operations that occurred during especially sensitive points in the U.S.-Pakistani bilateral relationship, or when domestic opposition to the strikes were at their highest. As he later described this process: “I have a yellow card,” Munter recalled, describing the new policy. “I can say ‘no.’ That ‘no’ goes back to the CIA director. Then he has to go to Hillary. If Hillary says ‘no,’ he can still do it, but he has to explain the next day in writing why.” It was after Munter raised objections to drone strikes that Sec. Clinton and her aides would debate the merits of them, including through emails that were forwarded to Clinton’s private account. Entous and Barrett’s reporting includes this critical passage: “With the compromise, State Department-CIA tensions began to subside. Only once or twice during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State did U.S. diplomats object to a planned CIA strike, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials familiar with the emails.” During Clinton’s tenure between January 2009 and February 2013, the CIA conducted 294 drone strikes that killed 2,192 people, 226 of whom were civilians. (For the data see here, which is based on averages within the ranges provided by the New America Foundation, Long Wars Journal, and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.) In other words, of the 294 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Clinton’s State Department objected to fewer than one-percent of them. If elected to the White House, would she similarly prioritize CIA counterterrorism operations over the concerns of senior U.S. diplomats? The evidence from her time as Secretary of State suggests that the answer is overwhelmingly “yes.”

Aaron Picozzi is the research associate for the military fellows and Lincoln Davidson (@dvdsndvdsn) is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. South China Sea claimants are awaiting a decision by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in an arbitration case on the legality of the Chinese government’s claims. But regardless of how the UN tribunal decides, South China Sea disputes won’t go away anytime soon. Military activity in the South China Sea is expanding, increasing the risk of “dangerous brinksmanship” over the islands and reefs scattered throughout the region. While the United States Navy has taken the lead in responding to regional military activity, we believe that coast guard-coast guard exchanges can reduce the risk of conflict, while still assuring regional partners of American dedication in the South China Sea. Over the last year, China has conducted dredging activities at an unprecedented scale, using the newly-built islands to base missile systems and military aircraft. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has conducted substantial drills in the region. India has considered joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, and the Philippines and Vietnam have considered similar cooperation. Just last week, the French defense minister called on European countries to have a “regular and visible” presence in the region to maintain freedom of navigation. The United States has also long been active in the South China Sea, conducting known freedom of navigation operations near Chinese-controlled features in October 2015 and in January and May 2016. In April, the U.S. Air Force stationed four A-10 Warthogs—which carry one of the most powerful aircraft guns ever built—in the Philippines, sending a clear signal to China that the United States is prepared to deal with military conflict in the South China Sea. The U.S. military has increased the presence and visibility of aircraft and naval vessels to assure regional partners that the United States remains committed to their security, going tit-for-tat with the Chinese military in force escalation. Recent expansion of the Chinese Coast Guard marks a pivot point for America’s posturing, however. Chinese Coast Guard cutters—although lacking sufficient armament to challenge a U.S. Navy vessel in direct combat—are capable of meaningfully affecting the situation in the South China Sea. Lots of ink has been spilled about how China’s reclamation activities “change facts on the ground,” but Chinese Coast Guard activities do at least as much to alter the reality in the South China Sea. When the Chinese Coast Guard threatens or actually uses force to enforce Chinese law within areas that Zhongnanhai claims are their waters, they are effecting functional control of the region. The islands claimed by the countries surrounding the South China Sea have little intrinsic value—their value hinges upon the effective assertion of sovereignty and subsequent control over surrounding waters. With approximately $5 trillion worth of international trade passing through the region annually, an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas located under the region, and nearly 10 million tons of fish caught in the South China Sea each year, the control of these waters is extremely important to regional economies. Coast guard cutters enable governments to enforce law and assert sovereignty claims without the overt presence of a warship. This ability to maintain control over an area, without fear of an impending attack, offers an entirely different set of tactics compared to the involvement of a naval vessel. Cutters and the embarkable boarding parties they carry can effectively control merchant vessels within their jurisdiction. China is not the only South China Sea claimant expanding its coast guard activities. In March, an Indonesian Coast Guard vessel apprehended a Chinese fishing vessel illegally fishing in Indonesian waters. The Chinese Coast Guard responded by ramming the apprehended vessel, freeing it from Indonesian control. Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia have all expanded their coast guards in recent years, and the United States has committed to selling more cutters to partners in the region. Continuing the United States’ current tactic of mirroring Chinese show of force in the South China Sea by deploying Coast Guard assets to the region would be a mistake. Conducting law enforcement activities in certain parts of the South China Sea on behalf of regional allies and partners would involve a recognition of those countries’ territorial claims, something the United States government has been unwilling to do. And while interactions between the PLAN and the U.S. Navy are tense, they exist within a set of predictable, well-defined rules that govern the way the navies of different countries handle encounters. Interactions between military vessels and civilians, on the other hand, are inherently volatile, as civilian ships are not as well trained and regimented as naval vessels—nor are they governed by the same established procedures or subject to as robust government oversight. As Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, director of operations for U.S. Pacific Command, recently pointed out, it is highly unlikely that an interaction between military vessels sparks a conflict in the South China Sea. Civilian vessels, however, are another story. “My worst maritime experiences have been with fishing boats,” Montgomery said. “The highest risk is associated with non-military vessels.” Compounding this risk, any action taken by the U.S. Coast Guard towards Chinese civilians would be a propaganda victory for the Chinese government, cementing their claims of American aggression. The United States is not left without options. By training and equipping the coast guards of our regional partners, the United States can help them counter control of commerce in the South China Sea by the growing Chinese Coast Guard. The United States has worked alongside Pacific partners in a number of exercises in the past, including coast guard training with the Philippines in 2015, the U.S. Navy training operation Exercise Balikatan in 2016, and the training of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force for expeditionary warfare. While in Vietnam last month, President Obama acknowledged the importance of the Vietnamese Coast Guard, stating that the United States would continue to train them in maritime law enforcement in order to improve capabilities in the South China Sea. These trainings are designed as responses to specific Chinese actions. For example, during this year’s Exercise Balikatan, the United States, Australia, and the Philippines conducted “a simulated gas and oil platform recovery raid in the South China Sea”—a clear counter to China’s positioning of an oil platform in disputed waters south of the Spratly Islands in 2014. At the same time, by increasing the professionalism of the maritime law enforcement forces of claimants, trainings serve to mitigate the spectre of conflict in the South China Sea. By continuing to train and support the coast guards of regional partners, the United States will contribute to countering Chinese claims,while reassuring partners and allies of our dedication to our regional commitments—in a way that reduces potential conflict between U.S. forces and Chinese sailors and civilians.

On Saturday, the Pentagon released a remarkable statement: “Today, the Department of Defense conducted an airstrike that targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mansur.” Soon after, a tweet from the Office of the Chief Executive of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, read, “#Taliban leader #AkhtarMansoor was killed in a drone strike in Quetta, #Pakistan at 04:30 pm yesterday. His car was attacked in Dahl Bandin.” An anonymous U.S. official stated, “Mansour was the target and was likely killed,” while the Pentagon press release noted, “We are still assessing the results of the strike.” As of Monday afternoon, the Taliban had yet to release any statement. The attack was significant in that it was acknowledged by the U.S. military (and thus not a covert CIA drone strike), and was conducted in Balochistan (only one other strike—under CIA covert authorities—has occurred outside of either North or South Waziristan). There have been other clandestine U.S. military operations within Pakistan: a March 12, 2008 artillery shelling against a suspected Haqqani network house within the Pakistani border, a September 3, 2008 Navy SEAL raid in the town of Angor Adda in South Waziristan, and Apache helicopter and AC-130 airstrikes—which killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers—a few hundred meters into Pakistani territory. Defense officials later admitted to the artillery shelling and airstrikes after the fact as being justified under “hot-pursuit” requirements, while the SEAL raid was never acknowledged. What is most consequential about Saturday’s drone strike was its target: the leader of the Taliban, who had succeeded Mullah Omar after his death purportedly in a Karachi hospital in 2013. This is notable because it had been U.S. policy that Taliban leaders should explicitly not be killed, because their participation is essential in the Afghan peace process. American (and of course Pakistani) intelligence and military officials have known the, often, day-to-day location of Taliban leaders for almost a decade, but had largely refrained from attempting to kill them. Mansour’s potential death provides a real-world, real-time ability to test two hypotheses about the policy of killing terrorist leaders. These are based upon the objectives of the strike, according to the Pentagon press release, as well as subsequent statements by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. Hypothesis one: Mansour’s death will reduce Taliban attacks and fatalities against Afghanistan national security forces, U.S. and coalition troops, and Afghan civilians. Hypothesis two: Mansour’s replacement will be more likely to participate in the long-stalled peace and reconciliation negotiations with the Afghan government. There has been a tremendous amount of social science research on these challenging policy puzzles. These policy-evaluative publications have reached somewhat conflicting conclusions, and are often contested by U.S. military and intelligence staffers who I speak with. However, those staffers never publish their research findings for public scrutiny, and are unable—given they would be referring to classified information—to clearly articulate their problems with the existing research. On whether killing terrorists leaders and lower-level militants reduces violence, Max Abrahms and Phillip Potter assessed that when leaders of militant groups are killed or targeted, lower-level members have to assume tactical responsibility, and they increase the proportion of the group’s violence against civilian targets. Patrick Johnston and Anoop Sarbahi determined, “We find no statistically significant evidence of a positive relationship between drone strikes and terrorism.”  Meanwhile, Vincent Bauer, Keven Ruby, and Robert Pape found that “drone strikes are only marginally effective at reducing militant violence in the short term, and that the effect dissipates over time.” On leadership targeting and the strength and durability of terrorist groups: In 2009, Jenna Jordan examined 298 leadership targeting incidents from 1945 through 2004, and concluded that "decapitation is not an effective counterterrorism strategy," and oftentimes prolongs the life of a terrorist group. On the other hand, Bryan C. Price concluded, by analyzing the effect of leadership decapitation on 207 terrorist groups from 1970 to 2008, the killing or capturing leaders significantly increases the mortality rate of the group. In 2014, Jordan reviewed the impact of 109 attacks on al-Qaeda leadership from 2001 to 2011, and did not find a “significant degradation of organizational capacity or a marked disruption in al-Qaida’s activities,” measured in the number of attacks and their lethality. There is also a CIA “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency” report from July 2009 that examined nine cases of high-value targeting and found that five failed outright, two succeeded, and two had mixed results. The report specifically warned, “The Taliban’s military structure blends a top-down command system with an egalitarian Afghan tribal structure that rules by consensus, making the group more able to withstand HVT operations, according to clandestine and U.S. military reporting.” How might someone determine if hypothesis one has been achieved? United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has produced reports on the protection of civilians since 2007. Fortunately, for determining causal effect, UNAMA began releasing its reports bi-annually in 2009, and just last month releasing them quarterly. So when the third quarter UNAMA report is released in November, look for an increase or decrease in attacks by “anti-government elements,” meaning the Taliban. (It is worth noting that Taliban attacks are decreasing relative to other perpetrators: In 2015, the group was responsible for 62 percent of all civilian fatalities, a decrease from 78 percent in 2013.) There is also the Global Terrorism Database, which produces its excellent summary of terrorist attacks for all countries by date, perpetrator group, fatalities or casualties, and target type. The 2016 data for Afghanistan will probably be posted online sometime in mid-2017. There has been no new data for total attacks on U.S. or coalition forces since 2013, but U.S. troop fatalities are constantly updated at the Pentagon’s casualty status website, and military contractors working for the Department of Defense at a Department of Labor website. As for Afghanistan security forces, the Ministries of Defense and Interior apparently prepare an annual total of military fatalities, which has previously been provided to western journalists. How might one determine if hypothesis two has been achieved? This simply requires determining if Mansour’s replacement, or a council of recognized Taliban leaders, decide to negotiate directly and faithfully with the government of Afghanistan. One member of the government-appointed High Peace Council stated, “Mansour’s death doesn’t necessarily mean that peace is closer than it was yesterday.” We will soon find out if this is true, and if targeting Taliban leadership succeeds at achieving the objectives as articulated by the Obama administration.

This blog post was coauthored with my research associate, Amelia M. Wolf. In our latest piece at ForeignPolicy.com, we evaluate the Obama administration’s long-standing claim that drone strikes are more “precise” and cause fewer civilian fatalities than airstrikes by manned aircraft. We approach this challenge recognizing the limits of understanding who is being targeted and killed by all U.S. aerial operations. In addition, we admit that there are no wholly reliable or independently verifiable data sources, either from the U.S. government or research NGOs. Our conclusion, based upon the best available data, is that the White House is deeply misleading about the precision of drone strikes. They are, in fact, roughly thirty times more likely to result in a civilian fatality than an airstrike by a manned aircraft. In air campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, U.S. Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) has provided monthly data on total coalition airstrikes. Estimates of civilian fatalities, however, are more controversial. We therefore used an average of estimates given by the Pentagon and non-profit research group Airwars, which collects reports from numerous regional monitoring groups. AFCENT also provided airstrike data for Afghanistan, and civilian fatalities estimates were gathered from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) annual reports on the protection of civilians. UNAMA reports specifically on fatalities from airstrikes by pro-government and international forces. Finally, estimates for drone strikes and resulting civilian deaths are based on an average of three reporting organizations: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, New America Foundation, and Long War Journal. In the overdue debate about the relative benefits and downsides of drone strikes, these numbers are important to keep in mind. Drones have been used more frequently because of their inherent advantages, but they have turned out to be no more “surgical” than airstrikes by manned platforms. Based upon the best available information, drone strikes result in far more civilian fatalities than airstrikes by manned platforms. This is likely the result of what military doctrine CJCSI 3160.01A refers to as “target misidentification,” where the precision-guided missile accurately impacts upon an inaccurately identified person. We hope that analysts and scholars of drones and air power explore this finding in greater detail. Read our article here.

Yesterday, President Obama was asked a revealing question at the end of an appearance at the University of Chicago defending the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  A student inquired about the president’s unilateral authority to authorize drone strikes outside of traditional battlefields, asking specifically:  “How are these killings morally and legally justified, and what kind of message does this drone program send about American values to the world, the American people, and to law students like myself who refuse to put trust in an opaque process.”  Naturally, Obama did not respond directly to the student’s question, but this twelve minute video segment (starting at 1:10:42) is worth reviewing in its entirety, as it is Obama’s longest unscripted reflection of the drone strikes that have come to define his approach to counterterrorism. The most remarkable detail that Obama admitted to was the following: “It’s fair to say that, in the first couple of years of my presidency, the architecture—legal architecture, administrative architecture, command structures—around how these were utilized was underdeveloped relative to how fast the technology was moving….The decisionmaking was, was not ad-hoc, but it was embedded in decisions that are made all the time about you know a commander leading a military operation, or an intelligence team trying to take out a terrorist. And there wasn’t enough of an overarching structure.” Recognizing this shortcoming, Obama continued: “We have to create an architecture for this, because the potential for abuse, given the remoteness of these weapons and their lethality. We’ve got to come up with a structure that governs how we’re approaching them. And that’s what we’ve done. So I put forward a presidential directive, that’s basically a set of administrative guidelines whereby these weapons are being used.” An unclassified version of this Presidential Policy Directive was released on May 23, 2013. This means that for four years, four months, and three days, Obama authorized drone strikes based on what he believed were poorly developed structures and decisionmaking processes. That military and intelligence officials were applying to unmanned platforms the doctrine and principles that they applied to all other weapons platforms, which ignores the wholly unique capabilities that drones provide, which makes their use far more likely. This also suggests that the final authority was further down the chain-of-command than the White House was selectively claiming with their “kill-list.” Obama’s acknowledgement yesterday echoes the CIA’s response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) study on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The SSCI’s Conclusion 10 found that, “CIA never conducted its own comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.” Writing a response that was dated June 27, 2013, the CIA declared: “We agree with Conclusion 10 in full. It underpins the most important lesson that we have drawn from The Study: CIA needs to develop the structure, expertise, and methodologies required to more objectively and systematically evaluate the effectiveness of our covert actions.” Just as Obama was permitting drone strikes without the structure in place to support them, the CIA was detaining and torturing people without the processes to even understand whether their actions were necessary or effective. But more consequentially, during the time frame between January 20, 2009 and May 23, 2013, the United States conducted 377 drone strikes in non-battlefield setting, which killed 2,741 individuals, 334 of whom are believed to be civilians. How can the White House today stand behind those operations and the deceased victims when Obama admits that there were inadequate processes in place? This is yet another reason why there must be a systematic retroactive assessment of U.S. counterterrorism strikes in non-battlefield settings, resembling the SSCI study that examined only the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects. If those 119 detainees deserved such a study, why wouldn’t the 2,741 drone strike victims deserve the same? Obama also added: “I don’t want our intelligence agencies being a paramilitary organization, that’s not their function. As much as possible this should be done through our Defense Department so that we can report, ‘here’s what we did, here’s why we did it, here’s our assessment of what happened.’ And so slowly we are pushing in that direction.” It is impossible to believe Obama is unaware of how deeply immersed CIA analysts and operatives have been at finding and killing terror suspects, or of the seamless blending of Title 50 (covert) and Title 10 (national defense) government entities at the operational level. But, if he really wanted the CIA to get out of the drone strike business—which many have proposed for years—he could have assured that it happened five years ago. Moreover, the level of detail that he claims will be reported would be a positive push toward authentic transparency or accountability, but it similarly begs the question of why he chose to wait until just months before leaving office to undertake these drone strike reforms.

Tina Huang is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. The rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State will be a leading foreign policy issue for the incoming administration. Thus, it is crucial to understand the proposed policies of the candidates. The current results of the primary elections indicate that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump will likely win their party’s nominations. Though both candidates use strikingly similar rhetoric to describe how to counter the Islamic State, a close analysis of the details they each have provided exposes starkly different approaches. First, Clinton and Trump have both stated that they would disrupt the Islamic State’s Internet access and social media presence. During a Republican debate, Trump said, “I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet.” Similarly, Clinton expressed that her administration would “deny them virtual territory.” The two candidates agree that, to do this, private companies should play a role. Clinton has urged Silicon Valley to “disrupt” the Islamic State by blocking or removing militant websites, videos, and encrypted communication. Trump, more vaguely, has claimed, “we have to get them [Silicon Valley] engaged.” However, other details the candidates have proposed for limiting the group’s online presence differ. Clinton has focused on attacking specific online infrastructure that the Islamic State utilizes to disseminate propaganda and communicate, whereas Trump has suggested he would close undefined “areas” of the Internet where the group is known to operate. He has not expanded on where those “areas” are, which therefore could be interpreted as cutting off specific geographical areas in the Middle East or blocking part of the Internet worldwide. Second, Clinton and Trump both believe that severing funding to the Islamic State is vital to defeating the group. Currently, the Islamic State brings in about $500 million a year from oil revenue, which makes up nearly 38 percent of its annual income. The group’s remaining profits stem from kidnapping ransoms, anonymous donations from governments and individuals, agricultural trade, and taxation. If elected, Trump has claimed he will “take away their wealth…take away the oil…I’d bomb the hell out of that oil field.” Contrastingly, Clinton has argued, “we have to go after nodes that facilitate illicit trade and transaction,” urging the UN Security Council to “update its terrorism sanctions” and “place more obligations on countries to police their own banks.” She directs responsibility toward governments and international organizations to take action that would prevent funds from reaching the Islamic State; whether states will take this initiative is speculative. Lastly, both candidates have expressed support for U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and ground troops to counter the Islamic State, but they differ on the specifics. Trump has advocated employing airstrikes to destroy oil fields, as previously mentioned. During a campaign speech in Iowa, he stated, “I would just bomb those suckers…I’d blow up the pipes…I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left.” Though he suggested he would target the families of terrorists—a statement he later disputed—he did not clarify whether he would use airstrikes for this purpose. Rather, Trump has claimed, “I don’t like talking so specific….I want to be unpredictable.” Clinton, on the other hand, has proposed a three stage counterterrorism campaign that, in addition to targeting the group’s finances and online presence, aims to strip its control over territories in Syria and Iraq by executing a “more effective coalition air campaign, with more allies’ planes, more strikes, and a broader target set.” Looking to their proposals for ground troops, when Trump has been asked if he would send troops to the Middle East, he has provided an ambiguous response such as “I would do whatever you have to do” or “...you’ll need some ground troops.” Trump has said that their purpose would be "to protect the oil," but has not elaborated. Clinton has delineated her plan to take back territory and asserted that “airstrikes will have to be combined with ground forces.” She insisted that Congress should approve the deployment of U.S. special forces, not exceeding one hundred thousand soldiers. Clinton has gone further to explain what these groups should do once they are deployed: “We need to lay the foundation for a second Sunni Awakening” by providing training and support for Sunnis within the region. Clinton and Trump both agree that defeating the Islamic State will require precluding the group’s exploitation of the Internet, hindering its funding, leading an air coalition, and deploying ground troops. However, how they would each go about this and for what purpose differs. Clinton is firm in her position that defeating the Islamic State requires destruction, not containment, and has developed a thorough campaign to reinforce her stance. While Trump has yet to buttress his strategy with details, he should take the opportunity to expand on the specifics of his plan as the primaries continue and, potentially, during the general election debates. If Trump and Clinton compete in the general election, comparing and understanding their strategies for countering the Islamic State is imperative to ensuring the greatest security for the United States during the next administration.

In former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden’s new memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, he describes the case of Al Kibar, in which Israeli officials informed the United States in 2007 about a building under construction in Syria that they thought was a nuclear reactor. Hayden writes, “Then we gave the data to a red team, dedicated contrarians, and directed they come up with an alternative explanation. Build an alternative case as to why it’s not a nuclear reactor; why it’s not intended to produce plutonium for a weapon; why North Korea is not involved.” (p. 258) For the full story of the red teaming of Al Kibar, read this excerpt from my book—based upon interviews with senior Bush administration officials—Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy. Red teaming is not only about using a devil’s advocate to scrutinize and challenge day-to-day operations. For institutions facing a significant decision, red teaming may also be a one-time effort. We can see how a properly administrated red team can help ensure that a crucial decision is the right one by studying the following example found in recent national security decision making. In April 2007, Israeli national security officials surprised their American counterparts by informing them about a large building under construction at Al Kibar in a valley in the eastern desert of Syria. In oneon- one briefings, the Israeli officials provided dozens of internal and external color photographs dating back to before 2003. The evidence strongly suggested that the building was a nuclear reactor, remarkably similar to the gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor in Yongbyon, North Korea. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert then delivered his request to President George W. Bush: “George, I’m asking you to bomb the compound.” Senior Bush administration officials were deeply troubled. North Korea had conducted its first nuclear weapons test the previous October using plutonium produced in the Yongbyon reactor. The Israeli briefings reinforced the US intelligence community (IC) assessments of “sustained nuclear cooperation” between North Korea and Syria. Though the IC had been monitoring the construction of a facility that they had described as “enigmatic” since 2005, the new Israeli photographs cast the compound in Al Kibar under a harsh new light. Immediately, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-led task force reevaluated all of the available intelligence related to Al Kibar and North Korea’s nuclear cooperation with Syria. Given the flawed intelligence assessment that resulted in the incorrect conclusion in 2002 about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), nobody wanted to be wrong again. As Bush told his intelligence chiefs: “Gotta be secret, and gotta be sure.” The CIA task force reaffirmed the Israeli officials’ claims, but Bush administration officials took extraordinary measures to increase their confidence level. To ensure that they could be nearly certain in their assessment of Al Kibar, they employed devil’s advocate techniques markedly similar to those invented by the Vatican centuries earlier. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told IC officials to assemble some of their best analysts to review the data to see if the facility could be anything other than a reactor. The CIA director, General Michael Hayden, was similarly concerned given that “we had a poor record of assessing the WMD programs of countries bordering the Euphrates River.” He noted, “You increase your certainty by widening the circle, but we still had to keep the circle small to keep it a secret.” To do this, the IC employed two red teams that were totally independent from the task force and had not yet been “read in” on the intelligence regarding Al Kibar. Bush’s intelligence chiefs so thoroughly bought into the concept of red teaming that they issued the two groups opposing goals: one would be commissioned to prove “yes” and the other to prove “no.” The “yes” red team assessment came from a private sector analyst who held a top-secret security clearance and was well known for his proficiency in monitoring nuclear weapons programs. The analyst was not told where the facility was located, but was provided with the Israeli and American internal and overhead imagery of it. The obvious efforts to camouflage the reactor vessel and the spent fuel pools within a building that had nearly an identical footprint to that of the Yongbyon reactor, and the trenches and pipes leading to a nearby water source (the Euphrates) were among several telltale giveaways. Within a few days, the analyst informed the IC officials, “That’s a North Korean reactor.” Hayden’s “no” red team was composed of senior analysts from the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). This team received the same access to all the available data and intelligence as its counterpart, but was explicitly instructed to reach a hypothesis that the facility in Syria was not a nuclear reactor. “Prove to me that it is something else,” the CIA director told them. Over the course of the following week, the WINPAC group considered whether Al Kibar could contain a chemical weapons production or storage site, or something related to missile or rocket programs. Anything was plausible—they even investigated the possibility that it might be some sort of secretive nonweapons- related vanity project of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They also explored whether al-Assad had directed that a mock-up of a reactor be built, simply because he wanted it to be bombed for some reason. Another senior CIA official recalled that they had particular difficulty finding an alternative explanation for the internal photographs of the facility, which not only closely resembled Yongbyon but also even contained what appeared to be North Korean workers. “The alternative hypothesis that they came up with, for which the most evidence unquestionably and markedly lined up behind, was that it was a fake nuclear reactor,” Hayden recalled. At the weekly Tuesday afternoon meeting in Hadley’s office, a handful of senior officials met to discuss what to do about the purported Syrian reactor. The results of the red-teaming exercises gave officials a high degree of confidence that they had their facts straight. They took comfort in the additional levels of scrutiny that had been applied to the initial intelligence estimates. “It gave us more confidence about the instinct and conclusion of the intelligence community regarding whether it was a reactor. Every other alternative explanation was not plausible,” according to Hadley. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who attended all of these meetings, also recalled, “Everybody agreed that we could not find an alternative to this being a nuclear reactor.” However, even though the Al Kibar compound was all but confirmed to be a nuclear reactor, this did not mean that the United States should accede to Prime Minister Olmert’s request to destroy it. While Hayden could comfortably declare, “That’s a reactor. I have high confidence,” the red teams had notably found no evidence of a facility required to separate spent reactor fuel into bomb-grade plutonium or of weaponization work, which further led him to state, “On [the question whether] it is part of a nuclear weapons program, I have low confidence.” Bush subsequently told Olmert that the United States would not participate in a military attack: “I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program.” The two independent intelligence assessments provided Bush administration officials with far greater confidence about what was being constructed in the Syrian desert. They informed Bush’s decision-making calculus, even though his primary concern remained the risks to US interests in the Middle East if he authorized another preemptive attack on a Muslim country. With bombing now off the table, the CIA developed options to covertly sabotage the reactor before it went critical; however, CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes told the White House that sabotage had a low likelihood of success. Therefore, Bush chose to pursue diplomatic channels by going public with the intelligence to the United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency, in order to pressure Syria to verifiably dismantle the reactor. Before this could happen, four Israeli fighter jets destroyed the suspected reactor at Al Kibar on September 6, 2007, without any resistance from Syria’s air defenses or overt support from the United States. In this case, the findings of the two devil’s advocates, based on their independent analysis of available intelligence, greatly enhanced the credibility of the intelligence estimates regarding the existence of a nuclear reactor, and enabled Bush to make up his mind on the basis of more complete and vetted information. Ultimately, the president decided to refrain from launching strikes. This was a classic example of red teaming in action—having outsiders test the validity of the intelligence and consider the possibility of alternate hypotheses.

On December 5, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) while speaking at the FreedomWorks “Rising Tide” Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, made the alarming pledge, “If I am elected president, we will utterly destroy ISIS…We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!” Cruz’s promise to authorize the commitment of war crimes, presumably in an effort to sound “tough,” was met with derision by most other Republican presidential candidates, politicians of both parties, and senior military officials. Cruz subsequently amended his initial promise to say, “you would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops…you have embedded special forces to direction [sic] the air power. But the object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.” Thus, after Cruz first promised to carpet bomb a dispersed militant army of some thirty thousand members, he then watered this down to essentially continuing the current U.S.-led coalition air campaign. To be clear, carpet bombing consists of dropping unguided bombs on a selected geographic grid to destroy or damage as much as possible that is contained therein. One prominent example was the U.S. B-52 attack in June 1965 against buildings forty miles north of Saigon in southern Vietnam that were believed to be used by the Viet Cong. Here is how the attack—the opening phase of Operation Arc Light—was described in the U.S. Air Force’s official history: “The planes crossed the Vietnamese coast at half past six; 15 minutes later, from altitudes ranging from 19,000 to 22,000 feet, began dropping their bombs on the 1-mile by 2-mile target box. The drops were controlled by the portable beacon that had been flown by helicopter the evening before to its location 11 miles from the target. Within 30 minutes, 1,300 bombs fell, slightly more than half of them in the target area… The immediately observable results of the bombing were less than spectacular.” This final point why carpet bombing has not been featured by the U.S. military since the massive bombings of Vietnam and Cambodia: it does not provide a military advantage, nor harm an adversary’s will to fight. Or, as one senior air force official recently put it to me, “it’s just a tremendous waste of weapons, and not how we do things anymore.” As Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown, commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, told the Air Warfare Symposium last week, 99 percent of all the weapons in his area of operations are precision-guided. It would take a tremendous amount of “dumbing down” both the target development process and the weapons used to become a carpet-bombing air force again. Moreover, this tactic is unnecessarily disproportional and indiscriminate, and therefore a potential war crime, which no military commander should ever authorize, nor pilot should conduct. This does not mean that, as I have written often, U.S. air power does not cause collateral damage and civilian casualties—including catastrophically like the February 13, 1991, F-117 bombing of the Amiriyah air shelter in Baghdad that killed over four hundred civilians—or that civilian and military officials are not misleading about the alleged “surgical” precision and effectiveness of airstrikes. Rather, it is a fact that the saturation bombing of geographic grids simply is not part of U.S. military air campaigns today. This gets to another misstatement that Sen. Cruz has repeated, even while he weakened his initial carpet-bombing pledge. In December 2015, he stated, “we carpet bombed them for 36 days, suturing bombing,” and in January, “You want to know what carpet combing is. It’s what we did in the first Persian Gulf War.” Actually, the United States did not carpet bomb during the first Gulf War. To understand why and how Cruz is wrong, I recommend a new article by Rebecca Grant in Air Force Magazine that coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Gulf War. To quote from Grant’s analysis: “Glosson’s staff first laid a grid over the battlefield dividing it into 30-mile blocks, then subdividing each into kill boxes measuring 15 miles by 15 miles. The bulk of Iraq’s army clustered in nine of the 30-mile boxes spanning Kuwait and the northwestern borders with Iraq...The Republican Guard divisions ringed the northern kill boxes. Most held elements of multiple divisions. Kill Box AE6 held the Tawakalna Republican Guard Division, 52nd Armored, and 12th Armored. Kill Box AF7 perched on Iraq’s border with Kuwait contained parts of four different Republican Guard divisions. At dawn on Feb. 4 the first of eight new Killer Scouts—call sign Pointer —began one-hour orbits over the Republican Guard. The forward air controllers would fly over their assigned box or boxes, spot Iraqi equipment, drop a marker bomb, then call in fresh fighters to follow up with more bombs. F-16s with new Global Positioning System units could pinpoint coordinates. In this concept, the same pilots would fly over familiar kill boxes each day. They’d learn the status and terrain and report back with accurate bomb damage.” Grant then details the “tank plinking” process: “Try 500-pound laser guided bombs against Iraqi tanks, Phillips recommended. This tactic had also been successfully tried out late in the Vietnam War. By placing a laser spot on an enemy tank, a bomb equipped with a laser-homing guidance system could drill in on the laser dot and hit with great precision. The F-111F swing-wing fighter-bomber had just such a system called Pave Tack. A pod projected a laser beam. A guidance kit on the Mk 82 500-pound bomb followed the laser-designated spot on the target…The F-111Fs tried the first laser tank plinking mission on Feb.  5. Their targets were in the Medina Division of the Republican Guard. Col. Tom Lennon, the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing commander, flew the mission himself on Glosson’s orders. ‘Unbelievable,’ Lennon reported back. ‘I got seven out of eight hits.’ By late February, the F-111Fs were achieving up to 150 armor kills per night.” This is not “carpet bombing” by any stretch, but rather the division of battlefield positions into geographic grids in order to more effectively call-in precision strikes upon military targets within those grids. As I noted five years ago in a piece titled, “The Mythology of Intervention,” both opponents and proponents of using military force draw upon historical examples in order to bolster their arguments. They often do so in a way that is highly selective and deeply misleading. Sen. Cruz is merely part of a long and ignoble tradition of political leaders misusing American military history to mislead American citizens.