The mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing has either been released by authorities in Yemen, or is soon to be released.

The United States is dismayed over what officials said was Yemen’s failure to cooperate in the war against Al Qaida.

The Bush administration expressed disappointment with Yemen’s decision to release the man regarded as the mastermind of the Al Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Aden in 2000.

“The United States is dismayed and deeply disappointed in the government of Yemen’s decision not to imprison [Al] Badawi,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. “This action is inconsistent with a deepening of our bilateral counterterrorism cooperation.”

Officials said Sanaa has largely failed to respond to a significant U.S. investment in Yemen’s military and security forces. They pointed to about $100 million in U.S. military and security assistance since 2004, which included the formation of Yemen’s coast guard.
“We have communicated our displeasure to Yemeni officials and will work with the Yemeni government to ensure Al Badawi is held accountable for his past terrorist actions,” Johndroe said on Oct. 26.

In 2004, Al Badawi was convicted of plotting and conducting the bombing of the USS Cole. A Yemeni court condemned Al Badawi to death, but the sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison.

Still, officials said, Yemen has failed to keep Al Badawi and other Al Qaida operatives behind bars. He escaped prison twice since 2004, allegedly with help of Yemeni jailers. The FBI has offered $5 million for information that would lead to his arrest.

Officials said the release of Jamal Al Badawi violated a pledge to capture and prosecute those behind the suicide attack in which 17 American sailors were killed. In mid-October, Al Badawi surrendered to Yemeni authorities in an arrangement that allowed him to return home to Aden. Al Badawi, officials said, pledged loyalty to the regime of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

On Sunday, Yemen asserted that Al Badawi was still in detention. But the Yemeni Interior Ministry would not elaborate.

It is a truism that the best developed plans will come to naught at times when the predicate for the plans is the honor of other men and nations.  The U.S. must negotiate and purchase and obtain agreement and all of the things that the State Department works at, but in the end, we must be prepared to be alone in the pursuit of our own national security interests.

But when other countries fail us, what is the recourse?  The Small Wars Journal Blog is currently hopping with interesting debate about the moral viability of torture – or lack thereof – and while this debate is salient for future detainees, we face a situation in which a major terrorist is about to be released into the global population with the knowledge and consent of the host country.

So will there be a well-aimed sniper round targeted at Badawi, or a neatly devised car bomb set to detonate at exactly the right time?  Will U.S. black operations be his undoing, or will he live to perpetrate yet another disaster on U.S. troops somewhere else in the world?  Mind you, this isn’t a low level actor; this is a major player in the world of jihadist terror.

The answer is a bit involved.  Even if Badawi was on the physical field of battle, there is question as to whether the rules of engagement allow the targeting of even a known enemy if said enemy is not currently brandishing a weapon and currently a threat to U.S. forces.  But this situation is even more murky and complex, and this complexity explains the consternation of U.S. diplomats at the release of Badawi.

Some background.  First in U.S. jurisprudence there is the constitution.  Its liberties and strictures guides the making of laws.  Second comes law, and of course this requires the approval of the Senate and House of Representatives, along with the approval of the President unless there is an override of a veto.  Next comes regulations.  This is where is becomes murky, because the executive branch takes the laws that have been passed by the Congress and interprets them and adds to the law in order to make something actually able to be enforced, i.e., regulations.  At this level, challenge can be brought in court, and negotiations pursued with the proper authorities regarding code compliance.

This process is ugly and tedious, much like making saugage.  It involves thousands of lawyers, federal register notices, comments, incorporation of comments, and ultimately the approval of yet more lawyers resulting in revisions to the federal code.  It probably gives far too much power to the executive branch of the government, but given the dysfunction of the legislative branch of the government, it is understandable.  When one branch abdicates its responsibilities, the others swarm into the gap.

Next comes an even murkier and lower level regulation, the so-called “executive order.”  Effective March 1, 1976, President Ford issued the following executive order: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”  And there is the crux of the issue, and in large part the reason for the panic at the State Department.

No sitting President wants to be the one who reverses this order, and yet no sitting President wants to be responsible for allowing a high level terrorist back into the global population to cause further harm to U.S. forces and assets around the world.  But this executive order is in serious need of revisiting and revision, unless of course, the U.S. is just fine with releasing Jamal al-Badawi to perpetrate his wares.

A son comes home from war, a crucial campaign has been won in Fallujah, and the homecoming of 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, Golf Company, a unit which has performed heroically in Iraq, is as remarkable for who didn’t show up as who did.

In answer to ten thousand prayers, our son, who has earned the Combat Action Ribbon, has come home safely from Fallujah. 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, Golf Company, arrived home on Tuesday, October 16th, from Fallujah, Iraq. Families were ecstatic to see the busses finally arriving at Camp Lejeune from Cherry Point.

The busses arrive at Camp Lejeune from Cherry Point, to waiting family, most of whom had been there for two or more hours.

I had what I believed to be a reliable offer to embed with the Marines and report from Fallujah, but this offer dried up, and I was left with the wonderful reporting by Jim Spiri and Bill Ardolino, along with some of my own research, all of which was better than any report from the main stream media.

It has been a hard ride for me as father of a warrior. Upon the inevitable reports of deaths of Marines in Anbar (without names being released as is the practice), I found myself unable to sleep many nights, and I spent some amount of time at the front door waiting on that visit from Marine officers that thankfully never came. I will find a way to embed with 2/6 the next time they deploy, God willing.

But it has been a productive seven months for the Marines in Fallujah. With the advances against the insurgency in Ramadi and other parts of Anbar, Fallujah (and the surrounding area) had become a safe haven for rogue elements and a veritable witch’s brew of foreign terrorists and indigenous insurgents who were using this area of operations as a launching point not only for attacks in Fallujah, but Baghdad and other areas. It was the last stronghold of the enemy in the Anbar Province, and without pacification of Fallujah, Anbar could have been turned against coalition forces and the tribal “awakening.”

Upon arrival at Forward Operating Base Reaper by 2/6, the security situation had badly degraded in Fallujah, but due in no small part to the bravery and hard work of the 2/6 Marines, it has been reported that last week there was not a single military casualty — Iraqi or U.S. — in Anbar.

The 2/6 Marines (and in particular, Golf Company, 3rd Platoon), engaged in more kinetic operations than reported in the main stream media or the Multinational Force, and 2/6 engaged in more reconstruction and rebuilding activity than reported. From intense fire fights and endless patrols, to gated communities and biometrics and sewage system reconstruction, Fallujah is a model for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. It occurred at an accelerated pace, as if counterinsurgency on speed and steroids. It will be studied in war college classrooms for decades to come – or at least, it should be.

We stayed on Emerald Island, the Southernmost island of the Outer Banks, 20 miles from Camp Lejeune and an extremely well-kept secret and absolutely lovely and wonderful place. The next evening after receiving our son home, we fed him and six other Marines steak and all of the sides. They ate an enormous amount of beef that night, and we listened to stories until very late. It was a good time, and we knew that we were in the company of heros of Operation Iraqi Freedom, brothers to Marines who preceeded them in the great battles of the South Pacific – men, 21 and 22 years old, who had already played a pivotal role in something more important than most people will ever experience in an entire lifetime.

The day 2/6 Golf Company arrived home, only I (as a Milblogger) and Terry Nickelson were there to report on it (Terry embedded with 2/6, and is doing what he hopes to be a PBS special on Chaplains). For the next few days I monitored both the Jacksonville Daily News, and the Camp Lejeune news (The Globe), and there were no reports of 2/6 coming home.

Victor Davis Hanson observed approximately a year ago of the brave troops in battle in Iraq that “The safety of millions of brave Iraqi reformers, the prestige of the United States and its military, the policy of fostering democratic reform in the Middle East, the end to the nexus between failed autocracies and scapegoating the West through terrorists; success of the Bush Administration; the effectiveness of the Democratic opposition; the divide between Europe and America; the attitude toward the United States of the Middle East autocracies; the reputation of the Islamic terrorists — all that will be adjudicated by the verdict in Iraq. Rarely have so many ideologies, so much politics, so many reputations been predicated on just a few thousand American combat soldiers and their Iraq allies.”

Indeed. Those brave warriors recently returned to the States, and only their loved ones were there to greet them. I can recall not too long ago the press reports in the main stream media of returning warriors, their accomplishments, and their losses. It has all become so very passé, now, and few pay attention to the details. This attitude prevents us from feeling the grief that parents feel from the losses of Lance Corporal Dale G. Peterson, Lance Corporal Walter K. O’Haire, and Lance Corporal Jonathan E. Kirk; it prevents us from experiencing the joy that others feel upon the safe arrival of their sons or husbands; and it prevents us from being reminded of why we sent these men to war.

In the Saturday, October 20, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Michael Ledeen wrote an interesting and compelling commentary entitled Victory is Within Reach in Iraq, in which he quote me from an article here at TCJ entitled Reorganizations and Defections Within the Insurgency in Iraq: “There is no point in fighting forces (U.S. Marines) who will not be beaten and who will not go away.”

On January 23, 2004, a letter was captured in a safe house in Baghdad from Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi to senior al Qaeda leadership, in which he said (in part) that “America, however, has no intention of leaving, no matter how many wounded nor how bloody it becomes.  It is looking to a near future, when it will remain safe in its bases, while handing over control of Iraq to a bastard government.”  While Zarqawi’s letter pointed to strategical problems he observed of the U.S. forces at the time, this letter might have sounded somewhat different if he had written it after the Marines were handed responsibility for Anbar.

Following this handover was the first and second battles for Fallujah, dangerous and deadly kinetic operations in the balance of Anbar, tribal negotiations in Ramadi, sand berms around Haditha, and integral to it all, combat outposts everywhere the Marines were to ensure the sustaining of risk along with the population.  Nibras Kazimi has commented of the tribal awakening in Anbar that “tribes are a barometer of power; they swarm around whoever has the upper hand.”  The so-called “awakening” didn’t happen in a vacuum.  Its backdrop involved blood and toil on the part of the Marines and Soldiers in Anbar, and just the right set of circumstances to persuade the population and tribal leadership that al Qaeda was a loser.

Bill Ardolino had a recent interview with an interpreter for the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines in Fallujah, the last significant battle for Anbar (Operation Alljah).  The interpreter had this interesting observation about the Marines with whom he had spent much of the last seven months of his life: “They are so patient. And they can fight outside of their country overseas, and I don’t think al Qaeda or someone else can fight like Marines, overseas and so distant from home.”

Ledeen concludes his perspective on the reasons for the winning strategy in Anbar, by saying that “We were the stronger horse, and the Iraqis recognized it.”  Ledeen is not merely bragging about the capabilities or accomplishments of the Marines in Anbar, although there are plenty of reasons to do that.  The point goes further, and is the hinge upon which all of counterinsurgency turns.  Winning hearts and minds has to be about showing and using the strength to pacify a population, bring security to its people, and surgically defeat the enemies amongst them.

Other sources, Dave Dilegge at the Small Wars Journal Blog, Hearts and Minds:

The components of “Hearts” and “Minds”:

Hearts: The population must be convinced that our success is in their long-term interests.

Minds: The population must be convinced that we actually are going to win, and we (or a transition force) will permanently protect their interests.

Essential to these two components is the perceived self-interest of the population, not about whether the population likes COIN forces / government. The principle emotive content is respect, not affection. Support based on liking does not survive when the enemy applies fear, intimidation trumps affection. Disappointment, unreliability, failure and defeat are deadly – preserving prestige and popular respect through proven reliability, honoring promises and following through, is key. Smacking the enemy hard (kinetic operations), publicly, when feasible (and no innocents are targeted) is also key. The enemy’s two key assets are cultural understanding of the target population, and longevity (he will be around when we leave).

From the North County Times:

CAMP PENDLETON —- As Pentagon planners wrestle with a proposal that the Marine Corps take the lead in Afghanistan and leave Iraq largely in the hands of the Army, troops at Camp Pendleton say the idea makes sense.

Several officers and enlisted men spoke to the North County Times last week about the proposal on the condition their names not be used, saying they didn’t want to run afoul of their commanders.

“People are talking it about it all the time,” a lieutenant colonel said of the idea that the Marines be shifted to a new mission. “We go in, we kick ass and we turn it over to the Army. We’re not supposed to be a long-term occupying force.”

A base master sergeant said the idea recently floated by Marine Corps Commandant James Conway is a “hot topic” in staff sessions.

“People are saying it makes sense,” the sergeant said. “We’re not supposed to be in Iraq as a security force. We’re an expeditionary fighting force that trains for combat, not civil affairs.”

Conway has said that he made the proposal because security is improving in Iraq. He said his troops should be serving in a quick-reaction combat role, rather than as an occupying force bogged down by civil affairs work.

Army leaders have declined to comment on Conway’s suggestion, which will ultimately be decided by the White House and by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

On Thursday, Gates threw cold water on the idea.

“I would say if that if it happens, it’ll be long after I’m secretary of defense,” he told reporters during a news conference in Washington.

There is the crux of the issue, isn’t it?  The Marines are an expeditionary force, fighters with an ethos of battle.  Gates may indeed push back against the idea.  However, is his statement more an observation of the inertia in a large bureaucracy with respect to planning and change?  Is he saying that he doubts that the Marines can make the plans and obtain agreement from the other branches of the Armed Forces in the time remaining on his watch?  If so, it would seem that he has set the gauntlet in place, and it is time for the Corps to respond.

Prior:

The Future of the Marines

Marines or State Department: Who Does Afghanistan?

James Janega with the Chicago Tribune follows up the reporting that I and Bill Ardolino have done on the campaign in and around Fallujah area of operations.

The last car bomb in Fallujah exploded in May.

On that warm evening, insurgents drove a vehicle packed with explosives into mourners for a slain local tribal leader as they wound through a ramshackle corner of the city, killing 20. The next day, Fallujah’s mayor banned all vehicles from city streets.

If there were no cars, reasoned Mayor Saad Awad Rashid, there could be no car bombs.

“It stopped,” said Lt. Col. William Mullen, commander of a shrinking force of U.S. Marines in the city who have watched the insurgency melt into the encircling countryside. “The ’significant events’ in the city stopped. I think a lot of [the insurgents] left.”

The Americans are not far behind: After surrounding the city with walls and improving security on its streets, the Marines are pulling back from the one-time insurgent bastion of Fallujah. They are redeploying to surrounding areas as the U.S. troop “surge” allows them to consolidate progress made largely by tribal leaders and local officials in security and civil works.

They leave behind a city devastated by years of fighting and starved for reconstruction, as well as questions about whether Fallujah — a place infamous for the 2004 mob killings of four American contractors and two resulting U.S. offensives — can now serve as a model of stability for a wider American troop withdrawal from Iraq in the months and years to come.

It has been a workable but messy solution, with successes like the reduction in car bombings coming as much from the mayor’s spur-of-the-moment decisions as any military planning.

A partially trained Iraqi police force and bands of armed volunteers now work under American supervision, carefully preserving peace on streets covered by years of trash and rubble. To live under this new protection, most of Fallujah’s 250,000 residents submitted fingerprints and retina scans to get identification cards that let them stay in the city.

As a point of fact, Lt. Col. Mullen is now a Colonel, one of thirty two promoted to Colonel effective October 1, 2007, prior to the publication of the Tribune article.  Also, there aren’t a quarter of a million residents left in Fallujah.  The article does go to show that the Marines in the Fallujah area of operations are currently primarily engaged in reconstruction, rebuilding and public affairs.  The article also reminds the reader that more work needs to be done.

It is a place under 24-hour lockdown, surrounded by berms and barbed wire. But that’s a price Fallujah’s war-weary residents say they are willing to pay for now.

“The last four months, things have been going better,” said Khamis Auda Najim, a 38-year-old cabinet-maker in Fallujah’s Andalus neighborhood. “But the changes are just on the security side. The street surfaces, the sewage, the electricity, the water? Those aren’t as good.”

U.S. forces promise those services are coming, along with U.S.-funded reconstruction projects and more money from the federal and provincial governments. But nothing in Fallujah moves quickly. As they face impatient city residents, the Americans are learning that everything is important now.

“I’ve been an infantry officer for 10 years. Since I’ve been here, I’ve learned more about water treatment and sewage than I’ve ever wanted to know,” said Marine Capt. Jeff Scott McCormack, 32, a company commander from Oak Forest, Ill.

Quick transitions have been made from the U.S. forces that established security to civilian Iraqi forces deployed to preserve it. The last Iraqi army troops left a month ago; the streets are now in the hands of 1,500 volunteers and police officers, some of whom have completed abbreviated training courses.

Heavy kinetic operations in May and June of 2007 were followed on by gated communities and biometrics, and involvement of the local Iraqi police along with paid individuals engaged in community watch.  Marines filled sand bags and constructed joint combat outposts – Police Precincts, and patrolled with Iraqi Police in order to give them confidence.  With the comparative irrelevance of tribal leaders in the Fallujah area, Muktars were engaged to provide leadership of and communication with the communities.

Upon pacification of Hit, Haditha, and Ramadi (all by different means, Haditha with sand berms, curfew and a ban on vehicular  traffic, Ramadi with tribal engagement), the insurgency fled to Fallujah, where kinetic operations routed them from the area in the second quarter of 2007.  Many of them left and went home to Lt. Col. Bohm’s area of operation, where they are being carefully assimilated back into society.

Col. Richard Simcock who commands Regimental Combat Team 6 is measured and careful, yet honest with where he believes Anbar currently stands.

U.S. Marine Colonel Richard Simcock, who commands the 6th Marine Regiment, says his forces have successfully routed the insurgents in Anbar province.

“There are still attacks in Fallujah and surrounding areas,” said Colonel Simcock. “We have not killed or captured every single al-Qaida member that is here. But their capabilities are greatly diminished. I would characterize them as a defeated force from my perspective.”

Speaking to reporters in Washington via satellite from Iraq, Colonel Simcock says the surge of more U.S. forces in Anbar and Baghdad has allowed Marines to stay in areas where al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists have fled to prevent insurgents from returning.

He also credits the cooperation of the Iraqi army and police, as well as local tribal leaders in the effort to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq and bring security to Anbar.

“That has been the building block that has allowed the people to come out and participate in governance,” he said. “But, probably more importantly, it allows them to come out and do the things that a lot of the citizens here in al-Anbar have not been able to do because of murder and intimidation that al-Qaida was doing. We have made great strides in regards to that, and we are very, very pleased with the progress that we are making.”

Measured, careful and honest.  There are still attacks – we have not killed or captured every single AQI member – but they are a defeated force.  Exporting this model is complicated and nuanced, and involves more than just the participation and approval of tribal shiekhs, no matter what the current narrative says.  Nibras Kazimi has crafted a smart analysis of tribes and their saliency in Iraq for the New York Sun.

Does it really matter, whether tribes were the primary factor in defeating Al Qaeda or not, given that the story coming out of Iraq is more and more hopeful? Yes it does: the implication is that if you don’t know why and how you’ve won, then you won’t be able to replicate victory. The tribes, like the American troop surge, were catalysts that sped up the demise of the insurgency, but they did not trigger the process the insurgency’s failure predated the surge and any tribal strategies.

I believe the insurgency failed because it had bad ideas and unrealistic expectations. When the price paid by the local population for these ideas and expectations — fighting the Shiites and re-establishing Sunni hegemony — became too steep, Sunnis turned against the insurgents and tried to find shelter, yet again, under the central government This latter trend is the one that should be reinforced: Sunnis should be encouraged to throw in their lot with the New Iraq, rather than falling back into the tribal identities of Iraq’s past.

Once tribal leaders realized that Al Qaeda was losing, they turned towards Baghdad for guidance. As one Iraq observer put it to me, “Tribes are a barometer of power; they swarm around whoever has the upper hand.” The danger now is that Americans are trying to resuscitate a clannish social system that had withered away in Iraq, and turning it into a power in of itself.

We agree with Kazimi.  Nonetheless, the U.S. has worked with tribes where it suited our needs, and community Muktars where it suited our needs.  Given the constricted time frame that the U.S. public will allow for this counterinsurgency campaign, efficacy and expediency is the order of the day.  Thus, following the model in Fallujah, do we see retinal scans being taken by Army troopers south of Baghdad.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article in which they examine the export of the Anbar model to Shi’ite parts of Iraq.

Forward Operating Base Iskan, Iraq – The violence has dropped dramatically, say US commanders, in the towns surrounding this base in northern Babil Province, south of Baghdad.

In May, four improvised explosive device (IED) attacks targeted the battalion; none in August, says Maj. Craig Whiteside, executive officer of the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment. Fewer undetonated IEDs have been found – five in May and two in August. Indirect fire and small-arms violence have also dropped from about a dozen incidents in May to less than three in August.

The reason, they say, is that the same approach that won success in Anbar Province, where the Marines gained support of Sunni tribesmen against Al Qaeda, is taking hold in mixed-sectarian areas. But here, Americans have enlisted Shiites frustrated with extremists from such groups as the Mahdi Army, run by Moqtada al-Sadr.

Across the Euphrates River Valley, known to the military as the southern belts of Baghdad, about 14,000 Shiite and Sunni “concerned citizens” are being paid to man checkpoints and patrol roads in an effort to prevent attacks from violent extremism of either sect.

Largely untrained and armed with weapons they already own, the citizens wear armbands and monitor traffic along the roads, keeping watch to ensure no outsiders or other extremist elements come through to bury roadside bombs. If they fail to keep violence out, they could lose their monthly paycheck. Ultimately, the idea is that they will become members of the Iraq security forces.

“They are making their community safe,” says Army Capt. Charles Levine, one of the company commanders here. His battalion has recruited more than 1,300 participants since mid-September. A little less than half of them are Shiite.

Concerned citizens and turnover to the local communities is the key to the current counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.  If the hope is that people are taking responsibility for reasons other than their tribal Shiekh says to do so, this strategy is seeing some success.

A 72-year-old man stopped a suspected suicide bomber from detonating himself at a checkpoint in Arab Jabour Oct. 14.

The man approached a checkpoint where Mudhehr Fayadh Baresh was standing guard, but did not make it very far.

Baresh, a tribal commissioner and member of the Arab Jabour Concerned Citizens program, said he ordered the man to lift his shirt – using training received from Coalition Forces – when he did not recognize him as a local villager. 

The suspect refused to lift his shirt.  Baresh repeated the command again, and the suspect exposed his suicide vest, running toward the checkpoint.

Baresh opened fire which caused the vest to detonate, killing the suspect.

“I did it for the honor of my family and the honor of my country,� said Baresh, when he met with Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division.

All counterinsurgency is local, and whether it is for family, tribe, remuneration or simply for personal safety, the enemy is being defeated in Iraq.  There are fights remaining, and a precipitous departure of U.S. forces might turn a positive situation into a negative one.  Yet it is impossible to ignore the gains on the ground in Iraq.

Other sources:

TCJ, Payment to Concerned Citizens: Strategy of Genius or Shame.

TCJ, Reorganizations and Defections Within the Insurgency in Iraq.

TCJ, Iraq: Al Qaeda’s Quagmire.

TCJ, Al Qaeda’s Miscalculation.

TCJ, Operation Alljah and the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment.

Bill Ardolino, Operation Alljah: The Swarm.

Bill Ardolino, Confidence is Key: The Evolution of the Fallujah Police Department.

Bill Ardolino: Shuffling Paperwork to Victory: The Evolution of the Fallujah Police Department.