AEI Announces New Report on Possible Insurgent Responses in Afghanistan

Hello!

The path through Afghanistan is unclear... and here is an interesting report from the American Enterprise Institute with fresh perspective... it covers five different scenarios for consideration:


Scenario 1: The president orders all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, including Special Operations Forces (SOF) and classified forces

Scenario 2: The president orders U.S. combat forces out of Afghanistan, including all trainers and forces supporting the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), but not including SOF and classified forces

Scenario 3: The president orders U.S. combat forces out of Afghanistan, but trainers, SOF, classified forces, and forces assisting the ANSF remain

Scenario 4: U.S. combat forces remain as currently deployed, with additional emphasis on expansion of the ANSF

Scenario 5: U.S. combat forces are augmented as proposed by General McChrystal and the expansion of the ANSF is accelerated

As the Obama administration considers its strategic approach and future resource levels in Afghanistan, AEI Resident Scholar Frederick W. Kagan and coauthor Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War have produced a follow-up report to their first study on Afghan force requirements. This second analysis, “Enemy Reactions to the US Strategy and Force Sizing Options,” considers how enemy groups and other stakeholders in Afghanistan and Pakistan would respond to several U.S. policy scenarios.

Thanks and have a great week!

Erik Plesset

Corporate Sustainability, Thought Leadership and Business

Hello friends:

I wanted to post this link to a very interesting study on Sustainability from MIT Sloan Management Review... and, SUSTAINABILITY is one of the popular buzzwords worth getting educated on for potential insight into the next wave of corporate change. It is "advanced" and not mainstream thought at this point in time. It has actually been gaining momentum, however, and certainly worth consideration.

Sustainability is garnering ever-greater public attention and debate. The subject ranks high on the legislative agendas of most governments; media coverage of the topic has proliferated; and sustainability issues are of increasing concern to humankind.

However, the business implications of sustainability merit greater scrutiny. Will sustainability change the competitive landscape and reshape the opportunities and threats that companies face? If so, how? How worried are executives and other stakeholders about the impact of sustainability efforts on the corporate bottom line? What, if anything, are companies doing now to capitalize on sustainability-driven changes? And what strategies are they pursuing to position themselves competitively for the future?

To begin answering those questions, the MIT Sloan Management Review and knowledge partner The Boston Consulting Group, with the sponsorship support from business analytics provider SAS, are collaborating on a project called the Sustainability Initiative. As part of the effort, we recently launched a global survey of more than 1,500 corporate executives and managers about their perspectives on the intersection of sustainability and business strategy. (We plan to make this an annual survey.) Prior to the survey, to form hypotheses and shape its questions, we conducted more than 30 in-depth interviews with a broad mix of thought leaders. Our interviewees included executives whose companies are at the cutting edge of sustainability (including General Electric, Unilever, Nike, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP) and experts from a range of disciplines such as energy science, civil engineering and management. The insights of these two groups yielded a fascinating glimpse of sustainability’s current position on the corporate agenda – and where the topic may be headed in the future.

This report presents high-level findings from those surveys and interviews and offers interpretation and analysis of the results, along with a diagnostic tool. We hope that it provides executives food for thought as they consider how they can take their sustainability efforts to the next level.

For more abou5t this work on sustainability, including exclusive in-depth interviews and additional features, pleee the online exploration at MIT Sloan Management Review’s Sustainability Initiative Web site, http://sloanreview.mit.edu/sustainability/.

To learn more, you can also visit the Global Sourcing Council where an international set of members are considering this topic as well...


Have a great day and hope you enjoy this cutting edge business topic...

Erik

Fear was no Excuse to Condone Torture

This is a surprisingly very controversial subject... and I find it incredible to observe how many people believe that torture somehow can control the accuracy of information received during interrogation. Further, it results in our warrior prisoners exposure to the same treatment. We, as Americans (I believe), must lead in all aspects of life, be honorable and make good choices if we are to regain the the world's reverence America has always worked hard to establish since our birth...

Fear was no Excuse to Condone Torture
From the Miami Hearld Friday 9/11/2009 Opinion Section

By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.

In the fear that followed 9/11, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to “take off the gloves.” As a former Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a Vice President of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas – and his scare tactics.

We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored military law on treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Mr. Cheney and others who orchestrated America’s disastrous trip to “the dark side” continue to assert – against all evidence -- that torture “worked” and that our country is better off for having gone there.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Mr. Cheney applauded the “enhanced interrogation techniques” -- what we used to call war crimes because they violated the Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. instigated and has followed for sixty years. Mr. Cheney insisted the abusive techniques were “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.” He claimed they were “directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States. It was good policy... It worked very, very well.”

Repeating these assertions doesn’t make them true. As more of the record emerges, we now see that the best intelligence – that led to the capture of Sadaam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—was produced by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.

The U.S. military has always known that torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth. And it did.

What American leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it did last week, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a naked, hooded detainee, and the former Vice President of the United States winks and nods, it matters.

The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now Mr. Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of lawlessness. Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation’s honor.

To argue that honorable conduct is only required against an honorable enemy degrades the Americans who must carry out the orders. As military professionals, we know that complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command travels through the ranks at warp speed.

On August 24, the United States took an important step toward moral clarity and the rule of law when a special task force recommended that in the future, the Army interrogation manual should be the single standard for all agencies of the U.S. government.

The unanimous decision represents an unusual consensus among the defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies. Members of the task force had access to every scrap of intelligence, yet they drew the opposite conclusion from Mr. Cheney’s. They concluded that far from making us safer, cruelty betrays American values and harms U.S. national security.

On this solemn day we all pause to remember those who lost their lives on 9/11. As our leaders work to prevent terrorists from again striking on our soil, they should remember the fundamental precept of counterinsurgency we’ve relearned in Afghanistan and Iraq: undermine the enemy’s legitimacy while building our own. These wars will not be won on the battlefield. They will be won in the hearts of young men who decide not to sign up to be fighters and young women who decline to be suicide bombers. If Americans torture and it comes to light – as it inevitably will – it embitters and alienates the very people we need most.

Our current Commander in Chief understands this. The Task Force recommendations take us a step closer to restoring the rule of law and the standards of human dignity that made us who we are as a nation. Repudiating torture and other cruelty helps keep us from being sent on fools’ errands by bad intelligence. And in the end, that makes us all safer.

IRAQ INDEX: Tracking Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq

This is really a data-packed report from the Brookings Institution about progress in Iraq. Tons of data points and very interesting...



The Iraq Index is a statistical compilation of economic, public opinion, and security data. This resource will provide updated information on various criteria, including crime, telephone and water service, troop fatalities, unemployment, Iraqi security forces, oil production, and coalition troop strength.

JOB: SR PROGRAM MGR - $B Construction Program

Hi folks... I have a really great search assignment I'm working on for a senior program manager for construction in Africa... position located here in CONUS with travel... here are details... please contact me if you think you are qualified and intersted...

My client, an international military construction engineering firm, is positioned to continue its growth in support of the changing readiness needs as a result of shifting US DOD and DOS priorities. The culture is US Military; the work is for all services, international in scope… great brand, great people… great opportunity.

Reports to: President
Compensation: Very competitive
Title: Senior Program Manager
Scope: Multi Year $ Billion Award Task Orders - Intl Construction and Services Contract
Owner: US Army Command
Loc: VA or FL

DESIRED CANDIDATE PROFILE

Senior Level Ret Construction Engineering Officer O-5 or higher

3 - 5 years of experience in managing large scale contract involving technical, management, logistics and labor activities at geographically distributed locations

Strong capability to identify, develop and manage project resources, including people, during the entire contract, and take charge of the entire recruitment process.

Strong ability to monitor and track project operations, with a track record necessary to see cost challenges before they arise and be put plans in place to provide the best services for the US Army Client.

Make technical decisions about all aspects of the project regarding contract formal and informal commitment commitments with the US Army Client.

Manage day-to-day contract operations of geographically distributed workforce including accurately tracking, validating and reporting US Gov’t summaries and other task order monitoring, validating and reporting Government Service summary and task order deliverables across all task orders.

Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering, Masters Degree prerferred in business and appropriate training in the Federal Acquisition Regulation and management of Government Contracts.

The 'Deteriorating' Situations in Iraq and Afghanistan

Hello... this is a nice article... talking about the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and how it will continue to be very challenging... we will be there for quite awhile and the "end-game" will continously change as the cheese moves around... how are we going to do it?

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August 24, 2009 0157 GMT

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE U.S. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, Adm. Michael Mullen, said in a CNN interview on Sunday that the situation in Afghanistan was “deteriorating.” He also expressed concerns over suicide bombing attacks last week against Iraq’s foreign and finance ministries that left some 100 dead and more than 1,000 wounded, saying that sectarian violence had the potential to undo the fragile post-Baathist political arrangement.

Mullen’s comments point to a potentially dangerous situation emerging in the theaters where the bulk of U.S. military forces are engaged. His comments run counter to U.S. expectations for both countries; Washington has hoped that improved security in Iraq would facilitate a drawdown of forces, which would then allow the United States to focus on Afghanistan — defined by the Obama administration as the main battleground in the jihadist war. Yet the situation in both .... (go to the link in first paragraph for complete article on host site)

Can You Afford To Hire... WSJ Article

Here is an interesting article By DIANA RANSOM (SmartMoney) that has some quick and easy ideas to think about while trying to figure out if you can hire additional staff.

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Many small businesses got lean over the last few months. They scrapped fruitless projects, renegotiated costly contracts, introduced more efficient policies and laid off workers. But after the latest employment report revealed that job losses moderated in July, some owners may be thinking about hiring. "Thanks to layoffs, there are some real talented people out there," says Ken Esch, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers' private company services practice in Chicago. "A lot of small-to-medium-sized businesses see this as an opportunity to trade up and make additional investments to help the business move forward."

And although many business owners are deferring their hiring plans -- aiming to squeeze more productivity out of their existing staffs -- aggressive companies attempting to position themselves for future success are bolstering their work forces now, Esch says.

The decision to add staff should be weighed seriously because overall economic activity is expected to continue to decline, albeit modestly, for next several months, says Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic forecasting and advisory firm in St. Louis.

Here's how to calculate whether or not you can afford to add workers:

Estimate future sales

Before thinking about hiring more workers, estimate your company's future sales. Sit down with customers and ask them how much they plan to buy from your company, says Chris Carey, a small-business pricing consultant in New York. The longer the time period you can project, the better, he says. "Most companies know month by month how much they'll need for the next 12 months." If you're counting on reeling in new customers or you have several promising projects on deck, estimate how much those activities will return.

Pinpoint jobs to add

Identify which jobs to fill based on your company's needs, says Gregg Landers, the director of growth management at the accounting firm CBIZ MHM in San Diego. This can be relatively easy. For example, if your firm recently experienced a surge in product orders, you may consider adding manufacturing personnel. However, if you're trying to drive demand, brining on more salespeople may be the way to go, Landers says.

Project added revenues

Estimate how much those workers will contribute to the company, Carey says. If they're helping build products or performing services, estimate how many products they can build or services they can perform in a given period. For an easier way to gauge their contribution, think in terms of units per hour, Carey says. If one worker can build five units per hour and you can sell a single unit for $40, that worker will add about $52,000 of revenue a year.

Add up expenses

Add up the costs associated with those new workers. Factor in their salaries, recruiting and training costs, as well as the cost of providing benefits, Esch says. In addition, estimate how much added employees impact your company's variable and direct costs, Carey says. If you need to purchase more manufacturing materials or computer equipment to accommodate added workers, factor in those costs as well, he says.

Figure your profits

Based on your firm's projected cash flow, determine whether your profit margins can support hiring more employees, Landers says. Let's say it costs $40,000 a year to employ that worker who can build five $40 units an hour. Because your company estimates that it's able to generate $52,000 in sales as a result of that person's work, you can dust off your help-wanted sign confidently.

On the other hand, if you're looking to add sales staff, the equation is a bit foggier, Esch says. In this case, estimate at what point your investment in these workers likely will return a profit. "Many businesses these days are going to want an immediate, one- to two-year payback on this investment," he says. So, if it costs you roughly $65,000 to add a salesperson, you should plan to be able to recoup your investment in a year or two, Esch says.

Get temp help

If your company's projected profit margins don't leave you enough wiggle room to hire more full-time workers, you'll have to find another way to meet demand, Landers says. He recommends looking into temporary workers or outsourcing certain tasks. This way, "you can avoid laying someone off if the work ends up disappearing in the next few months," he says. "But if you keep those temporary employees around for two to three months, working more than three days a week, you should seriously consider hiring full time." (For our story on outsourcing business tasks cheaply, click here.)

Write to Diana Ransom at dransom@smartmoney.com

Withdrawing from Iraq: Alternative Schedules, Associated Risks, and Mitigating Strategies

Things are continually changing in Iraq... and the plan shifts all the time... here is breif summary from Rand on the current status of change there...

Since 2007, security has improved dramatically in Iraq. The U.S. and Iraqi governments — and most Iraqis — want to see both the U.S. presence there reduced and the Iraqi government and security forces assuming a greater role in providing for public security. The challenge is to effect this drawdown while preserving security and stability in the country and in the region.

In response to tasking from the U.S. Congress, RAND researchers conducted an independent study to examine drawdown schedules, risks, and mitigating strategies. They identified logistical constraints on moving equipment out of the country, assessed trends in insurgent activity and the ability of Iraqi security forces to counter it, and examined the implications for the size of the residual U.S. force and for security in Iraq and the region. This report presents alternative drawdown schedules — one consistent with the Obama administration’s stated intentions and two others, one somewhat slower and another faster — that are responsive to these factors. It also recommends steps that the United States can take to alleviate anticipated constraints, overcome likely resistance, and reduce the potential risks associated with a drawdown.

Afghanistan: Politics, Government Formation and Performance

Here is an interesting article regarding some of the challenges we and others are facing trying to make a case for western acceptance... A Civilian Surge...


Summary

The central governments limited writ and widespread official corruption are helping sustain a Taliban insurgency, and have fed pessimism about the Afghanistan stabilization effort. However, President Hamid Karzai has been able to confine ethnic disputes largely to political debate and competition by engaging in some non-democratic compromises with major faction leaders, combined with occasional moves to weaken them. This strategy has enabled Karzai to focus on trying, with only mixed success to date, to win over remaining members of his Pashtun community, some of which have begun to lean toward or tolerate Taliban insurgents. Karzai has faced substantial loss of public confidence, in large part due to widespread official corruption, but his opponents divided by ethnicity and personal ambition were unable to form a strong electoral coalition, and Karzai is considered a favorite for re-election on August 20, 2009. Winning Pashtun support for the Afghan government is predicated, at least in part, on the success of efforts over the past few years to build local governing structures. New provincial councils will be elected on August 20 as well, although their roles in local governance and their relationships to appointed governors, remains unclear and inconsistent across Afghanistan The trend toward promoting local governing bodies is to accelerate, according to the Obama Administrations review of U.S. strategy, the results of which were announced on March 27, 2009.

What NATO can learn from “the surge” in Iraq

This is a very interesting article / research paper about how lessons from Iraq are being incorporated into strategy for Afghanistan... happy reading!

What a difference 30,000 additional troops and a new strategy make. A few years ago, Afghanistan was commonly viewed as the model of a successful intervention while many politicians, military analysts, and pundits believed that the war in Iraq was being irretrievably lost. Yet today— although conditions still have a long way to go before normalcy has been achieved—the progress in Iraq following “the surge” directed by President Bush in January 2007 is widely recognized. All the indicators of violence: attacks against Iraqi infrastructure and government organizations; small arms, mortar and rocket attacks, and casualties among Iraqi civilians, Iraqi Security Forces, and Coalition Forces have sharply declined since July 2007. The situation has gone from being generally perceived as on the brink of disaster to being a success story (albeit belated and costly).

45 Lessons About Life... Simple Anecdotes

Regina Brett, 90 years old and journalist, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio:

"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me.. It is the most-requested column I've ever written." My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.

8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain .

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words -- In five years, will this matter?

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.

35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come.

Have a great week!

Beware of Increased Screening on Telephone Interviews

I found this interesting article regarding how companies are now putting much more emphasis on telephone interviews as compared to the past. The reason - a lot of candidates are out there that have basic skills for a particular job. Read about it from this Wall Street Journal article from June 2, 2009...

It's good to keep up on these kinds of business cultural changes as a result of the economy.

Have a nice weekend... Erik Plesset

The 2009 Arab Public Opinion Poll: A View from the Middle East

The 2009 Arab Public Opinion Poll: A View from the Middle East



Source: Brookings Institution


On May 19, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted the release of a new 2009 University of Maryland/Zogby International public opinion poll which reveals long-term trends and surprising revelations about perceptions of the United States and President Barack Obama in the Middle East. Shibley Telhami, Saban Center nonresident senior fellow and principal investigator of the poll, and the Anwar Sadat professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, presented his latest polling research and key findings. He was joined for a discussion of the poll results by James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute and Marc Lynch, associate professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University.

Iraqis don't jog or spin, but fitness clubs are in...

This is great news!

It's a common scene in America—and the latest craze in Baghdad. In a city of few diversions and long cut off from the outside world, the boom in health clubs represents another sign that Iraq is slowly emerging from decades of dictatorship and war...

Healthy outlook for Iraq!

Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority

Here is a great e-book on the CPA

Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority
Source: RAND Corporation

The American engagement in Iraq has been looked at from many perspectives — the flawed intelligence that provided the war’s rationale, the failed effort to secure an international mandate, the rapid success of the invasion, and the long ensuing counterinsurgency campaign. This book focuses on the activities of the Coalition Provisional Authority and its administrator, L. Paul Bremer, who governed Iraq from May 2003 to June of the following year. It is based on interviews with many of those responsible for setting and implementing occupation policy, on the memoirs of American and Iraqi officials who have since left office, on journalists’ accounts of the period, and on nearly 100,000 never-before-released CPA documents. The book recounts and evaluates the efforts of the United States and its coalition partners to restore public services, reform the judicial and penal systems, fight corruption, revitalize the economy, and create the basis for representative government. It also addresses the occupation’s most striking failure: the inability of the United States and its coalition partners to protect the Iraqi people from the criminals and extremists in their midst.

+ Summary (PDF; 300 KB)+ Full Document (PDF; 2.2 MB)