tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-175033292009-12-02T21:15:21.449-05:00Col. Dan Smith, USA (Ret.) Talks About Military AffairsDan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.comBlogger533125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-20929054195270293122009-12-02T21:13:00.000-05:002009-12-02T21:15:21.456-05:00

December at West Point in the early mid-1960s. Normally at that time of year, I can remember the air was bitterly cold as invariably a northern wind whipped down the Hudson River, often blowing snow across the parade ground and into the shivering corps of cadets. No time was lost under such conditions once the roster was reported the formation broke as everyone sought shelter from the numbing

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-2821350117477820392009-11-27T21:38:00.004-05:002009-11-28T20:19:22.033-05:00

Bill Moyers' weekly Public Broadcast System (PBS) hour long Journal last Friday (November 20th) was an interesting retrospective by Moyers of the critical 1964-1965 discussions among members of the informal “war cabinet” President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) assembled to advise him how to continue the U.S. presence in South Vietnam without wrecking the Great Society.The choice and format of that episode

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-53504716418295602112009-11-20T13:59:00.003-05:002009-11-20T14:06:03.919-05:00

I received an e-mail yesterday in which my correspondent mentioned a book written ten years ago by Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics at Washington’s Georgetown University. Titled The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words, Professor Tannen focused on the decline she had observed in the quality – that is, the tenor – of verbal and written exchanges between prominent persons

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-86237499292114668212009-11-11T21:20:00.002-05:002009-11-11T21:24:02.902-05:00

As the calendar would have it, Veterans’ Day (Armistice Day in Europe) in 2008 fell one week after the U.S. electorate selected the person who would become the nation’s 44th president beginning January 20, 2009.Together with the electoral success of the Democratic Party in the Senate and House of Representatives, many commentators predicted that the election of Barack Obama would mark a

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-88757812625477125992009-10-28T17:08:00.002-05:002009-10-28T17:12:33.390-05:00

The Washington Post on October 27 carried a front-page article describing the career of American Matthew Hoh – a construction engineer by training, a Marine with two tours in Iraq, and until the end of October 2009 a respected civilian working with Foreign Service Officers in Afghanistan.What brought Hoh to the attention of the media was his decision to resign from his affiliation with the State

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-31760490527941858662009-10-24T13:33:00.002-05:002009-10-24T13:36:54.410-05:00

Last week (October 13), television’s Public Broadcasting System aired an examination of the war in Afghanistan on its weekly investigative program “Frontline.” The core of the program, titled “Obama’s War,” focused on a three-week photo journal record of a U.S. Marine Corps company’s operations as a lead unit of the 4,000 strong U.S. force deployed into southern Afghanistan.This was not a “good

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-41027866241207907262009-10-16T16:48:00.003-05:002009-10-16T16:54:06.727-05:00

The Pentagon declared yesterday unconditional success in a 36 year long low-intensity campaign to win hearts and minds to its vision of the future.For the first time since the inception of the all-volunteer military in 1973, the Pentagon succeeded in surpassing the numerical goals it set for the recruiting commands in each of the services. This year’s unexpected run-away winner was the active

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-50280737754915782362009-10-10T20:28:00.002-05:002009-10-10T20:31:53.596-05:00

Some weeks nothing goes as expected.For example: President Barack Obama flew from Washington to Copenhagen last week to push Chicago’s chance to be the host for the 2016 Olympics. However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as the 2016 host. Detractors of the U.S. President called the Rio choice by the IOC “a stinging repudiation” of the president and an

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-41773718559704109112009-09-29T20:37:00.002-05:002009-09-29T20:40:16.511-05:00

“An occupying army cannot expect to find friends but [it must] give the uninvolved population every opportunity to have some kind of a quality of life.” MGEN Yair Naven (ret.), Israeli Defense ForcesOctober 7/8 will mark the eighth anniversary of the opening salvo on the “Taliban” faction of the ruling Afghanistan government, institutions, and people. At that point, there will be only 123

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-40959968149033860462009-09-22T17:12:00.005-05:002009-09-26T19:32:04.087-05:00

ROE IIIAs the first decade of the 2st century has amply demonstrated, war remains an encountered in which those who command are often confronted with conflicted information -- or even any information – on which to act.Clearly, on the night of September 4, the 12-24 Taliban fighters had completely misread the tractability of the ground at the fording site on the Kunduz River. On finding that the

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-66552127730251622582009-09-14T19:05:00.003-05:002009-09-14T19:30:21.832-05:00

If you were to ask most soldiers whether they believed their “side” would be capable of exercising restraint in war, the answer would probably be “yes” more often than not and regardless of evidence to the contrary. International law , specifically the “institutional” guidelines such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, dictate the general restraints on violence that all participants in armed

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-53100719985762926972009-09-10T16:02:00.001-05:002009-09-10T16:04:34.400-05:00

Last Friday’s news out of Afghanistan’s northeast province of Kunduz was bad – in fact quite bad. During the night, U.S. warplanes, responding to a request from the senior coalition commander in the province, fired two satellite guided “smart munitions” at as many as 100 men who were trying to free two fuel tankers that were mired in deep mud. The result was predictable: U.S. pilots hit exactly

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-16207127070610890592009-09-01T18:43:00.004-05:002009-09-01T20:26:14.140-05:00

II. When Strategy MiscuesIn the last entry (above), I ended by summarizing the number of troops who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 or 2003, respectively. While the nation knows the toll in blood and lost lives in Iraq, only recently has the public began to focus on Afghanistan and to ask – again – how many more?Unfortunately, the answer is always the same: how many is as unknown

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-38935330593533529732009-08-31T19:22:00.001-05:002009-08-31T19:25:06.886-05:00

Gender and Arms: Equality in Life and DeathIntroductionIn early August I started on what I thought would be a single-entry update of personnel statistics regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the arrival of mid-month, however, my original intent seemed out of focus, even overwhelmed, by other issues. Lobbyists and other representatives of “special interests” were clamoring for

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-61448434485802882922009-08-21T16:51:00.002-05:002009-08-21T16:57:43.016-05:00

Afghani MusingsThe Afghani presidential election held yesterday has been deemed an unprecedented success for the people and the process. Afghani officials claim that 95 percent of polling sites were open while only 300 sites were not operating. Total fatalities associated with election violence came to 26, a signal – according to a Kabul administration spokesperson – that the Taliban had again

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-21584003639418813842009-08-13T20:31:00.001-05:002009-08-13T20:34:08.997-05:00

There is now left only one week – a mere seven days – until the people of Afghanistan are to choose their country’s national leader in the very first multi-party and multi-candidate competition in Afghanistan’s history.That is to say that the participation of voters will occur if the nearly 130,000 foreign soldiers, together with the Afghanistan army and national police, are able to secure the

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-75567194851348062182009-08-05T07:06:00.001-05:002009-08-05T07:09:36.293-05:00

Nearly five years ago, on October 9, 2004, the people of Afghanistan participated in an overt political action that few of them had ever expected to see: a national election for a president of their nation.Media coverage of the preparations for the balloting was heavy. As predicted, the winner of the contest, with 55.4% of the vote – a comfortable margin – was Hamid Karzai, who was the head of

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-6393354476974306552009-07-30T20:13:00.001-05:002009-07-31T11:13:59.544-05:00

As agreed in November 2008 between U.S. President George Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, July 1, 2009 was set as the date for transferring sovereignty over military operations in Iraq. As the 130,000 U.S. forces still in Iraq pulled back from cities and towns and settled in temporary base camps in less populous areas, Baghdad took full command and control of decisions on the

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-26251318281244229842009-07-23T15:20:00.003-05:002009-07-23T15:26:04.247-05:00

Somewhere, Dorothy is assured, there is a way for her and Toto to get to Oz and from there to Kansas. It seems so easy, a single, resolute step “over the rainbow” back to her family and friends in Kansas. But there is a catch: the rainbow has no substance, no “materiality.” It is ephemeral, an apparition of the ability (or power) of water to bend the sun’s light and separate that light into

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-92164956187416492642009-07-16T19:10:00.004-05:002009-07-16T19:17:22.726-05:00

Like the proverbial “bolt from a cloudless blue sky” that strikes and kills with no warning, the incidence of lethal political violence generated around the globe in 2009 is rising in frequency and fury. This is particular true over the last five weeks during which national governments seemed surprised if not stunned by the origin and subsequent development of opposition mass movements.During the

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-7812586526068014622009-07-09T16:49:00.006-05:002009-07-09T17:26:07.254-05:00

For a number of months last year and spilling into the first quarter of this year, I co-authored a book that is on the verge of being published. Its principal author is an elderly gentleman who, in the 1970s, joined with like-minded anti-military organizations to lobby Congress against spending billions of dollars to create and deploy a massive nuclear weapons arsenal. Vietnam may have ended

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-56921081605208782242009-07-05T21:17:00.001-05:002009-07-05T21:21:15.973-05:00

Today is July 5.For Americans its significance is straight forward: July 5th is the day after the one on which, 233 years ago, 56 men approved and signed a document they called a “declaration of independence” -- after which a number of them left Philadelphia before agents of King George could detain them. (Overall, during the War of Revolution, five signers of the Declaration of Independence

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-19639070889836108482009-07-01T13:13:00.002-05:002009-07-01T13:19:58.599-05:00

Yesterday, June 30, 2009, may well become known as Independence Day in Iraq. If so, I would expect those who celebrate might be jumping the gun a bit.June 30 is the second milestone on the road of transferring to the Iraqi government full responsibility for the security of their country. (The first milestone centered on creating and sustaining (funding) the indigenous Sunni “Sons of Iraq”

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-67466194765474790852009-06-29T14:14:00.002-05:002009-06-29T14:22:19.739-05:00

Greetings once again to those whose tenacity and persistence have brought them once again to “The Quakers’ Colonel” in the virtual blogsophy.In my last entry at the end of March, I expected to be out of circulation (in surgery this is not a lighthearted observation) for about a combined 30-day hospital and recuperative stay-at-home recovery. As it turned out, that 30 day period was fully devoted

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17503329.post-45335921502129130252009-03-30T21:04:00.000-05:002009-03-30T21:06:14.924-05:00

The headline read: “Denominations Trim Presence on Capitol Hill.”Daniel Burke, writing for beliefnetnews on the web, relates the paradox facing many faith-based nongovernmental groups that lobby in the public interest. Just as they finally get a seat at the policy and program table and a chance to be heard in governing, the sharp drop in the markets has forced many to severely cut back the number

Dan Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08705512943099791992noreply@blogger.com1