Andrew Exum | |
---|---|
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East | |
In office 2015–2016 | |
President | Barack Obama |
Preceded by | Matthew Spence (American lawyer) |
Succeeded by | Michael Patrick Mulroy |
Personal details | |
Nationality |
|
Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania (BA) King's College London (PhD) |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States of America |
Branch/service | United States Army Department of Defense |
Unit | 75th Ranger Regiment |
Battles/wars | |
Andrew Exum is an American scholar of the Middle East, a former U.S. Army officer. [1] He was a part of General Stanley McChrystal's review of the American strategy in Afghanistan. [2]
After graduating from The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee (1996) and the University of Pennsylvania (2000), where he was a columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian , a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, and a member of the Sphinx Senior Society. Exum, a U.S. Army officer, led a platoon of light infantry in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequently led a platoon of Army Rangers as a part of special operations task forces in Kuwait and Afghanistan with the rank of captain. He was commissioned as an officer through the University of Pennsylvania's Army ROTC program, which he initially joined as a means of financing his education there. He graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in classics and English literature. [3] He is a veteran of Operation Anaconda. He earned a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. In 2006–2007, Exum was a Soref fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He later studied towards a doctorate from the Department of War Studies, King's College London. [4]
Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy calls Exum, "one of the sharpest Middle East analysts around." [5]
While still on active duty, but "laid up with a non-combat knee injury," Exum wrote his first book, This Man's Army: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism. [6] [7]
On May 30, 2008, Exum revealed himself to be the founder of the blog Abu Muqawama (Arabic: أبوالمقاومة for "father or expert of the Resistance"). This blog, "dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies," was followed by many notable students and practitioners of counterinsurgency in the military, academia, and the media. It has also been referred to as Small Wars Journal's "rogue cousin" partially due to the large overlap in topics and participants and due to its ability to initiate a discussion about topics that are not yet appropriate for the more professional forum. At the time of the revelation, Exum also announced he was leaving the blog to pursue his research. [8] [9]
Exum became a Fellow of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). [1] He returned to the blog, now hosted at CNAS, [10] continuing to post under the pseudonym Abu Muqawama.[ citation needed ] He subsequently began posting under his own name.[ citation needed ]
He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy in the US Government from 2015 to 2016. [11] [12]
Exum has criticized several strategic elements of the War on Terror. In particular, he is critical of the U.S. government's reliance on private military corporations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as what he sees as the misuse of drones in eliminating terror targets.
Al-Qaeda is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate. Its membership is mostly composed of Arabs, but also includes people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the US and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. The organization is designated as a terrorist group by NATO, the UN Security Council, the European Union, and various countries around the world.
Anthony Charles Zinni is a retired United States Marine Corps general and a former Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM). From 2001 to 2003, he served as a special envoy for the United States to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. From 2017 to 2019, he served as a special envoy to help resolve the Qatar diplomatic crisis.
Ali Ahmad Jalali is an Afghan politician, diplomat, and academic. Jalali served as the Minister of Interior from January 2003 to September 2005. He has also been a distinguished professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA) at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. In August 2021, amid the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government, Jalali was rumored to become the leader of the Taliban-controlled interim Afghan government, which he has denied on Twitter as "fake news."
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004, causing shock and outrage and receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that most detainees were civilians with no links to armed groups.
Criticism of the war on terror addresses the morals, ethics, efficiency, economics, as well as other issues surrounding the war on terror. It also touches upon criticism against the phrase itself, which was branded as a misnomer. The notion of a "war" against "terrorism" has proven highly contentious, with critics charging that participating governments exploited it to pursue long-standing policy/military objectives, reduce civil liberties, and infringe upon human rights. It is argued by critics that the term war is not appropriate in this context, since there is no identifiable enemy and that it is unlikely international terrorism can be brought to an end by military means.
Walid Phares is a Lebanese-American politician, scholar, and conservative pundit.
Ian Fishback was a United States Army officer, who became known after he sent a letter to Senator John McCain of Arizona on September 16, 2005, in which Fishback stated his concerns about the continued abuse of prisoners held under the auspices of the Global War on Terror.
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Paul R. Pillar is an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving from 1977 to 2005. He is now a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. He was a visiting professor at Georgetown University from 2005 to 2012. He is a contributor to The National Interest.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is an author and the founder and chief executive officer of Valens Global. In addition to his role at Valens Global, Dr. Gartenstein-Ross is a Senior Advisor on Asymmetric Warfare at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. An internationally-recognized expert on political violence, his work primarily focuses on the development of strategic plans, execution of analytic projects, and instruction at the professional and academic levels. In 2011, Gartenstein-Ross wrote Bin Laden's Legacy: Why We're Still Losing the War on Terror.
John Albert Nagl is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He is a former president of the Center for a New American Security and former headmaster of The Haverford School. Nagl is an expert in counterinsurgency and has published two books on military strategy.
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global counterterrorist military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks of 2001, and is the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. Some researchers and political scientists have argued that it replaced the Cold War.
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a think tank in Washington, D.C. specializing in United States national security issues, including terrorism, irregular warfare, the future of the U.S. military, the emergence of Asia as a global power center, war games pitting the U.S. against the People's Republic of China, and the national security implications of natural resource consumption, among others.
Bruce O. Riedel is an American expert on U.S. security, South Asia, and counter-terrorism. He is currently a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He also serves as a senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group.
Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal was a popular military blog from November 2007 to June 2008, before it was shut down by the writer's military chain of command. The author of the online journal, who went by the pseudonym of LT G, wrote about the front-line experiences in the Iraq War as a United States Army soldier. A scout platoon leader, LT G often incorporated the trials and tribulations of his platoon in his writings, offering a brash and brutally honest perspective of modern warfare. Kaboom was shut down, and subsequently deleted, after LT G made a post detailing his turning down of a promotion in an effort to stay with his soldiers.
Stanley Allen McChrystal is a retired United States Army general best known for his command of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from 2003 to 2008 during which his organization was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. His final assignment was as Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, United States Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A). He previously served as Director, Joint Staff from August 2008 to June 2009. McChrystal received criticism for his alleged role in the cover-up of the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident. McChrystal was reportedly known for saying what other military leaders were thinking but were afraid to say; this was one of the reasons cited for his appointment to lead all forces in Afghanistan. He held the post from June 15, 2009, to June 23, 2010.
David William Barno is a retired lieutenant general of the United States Army. He was commander of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.
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John Noonan is an American conservative national security commentator and analyst. He was the national security policy advisor to Jeb Bush during his presidential campaign, and foreign policy advisor and speechwriter for Mitt Romney in 2012. He was a principal defense writer for The Weekly Standard and a policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Jim Gant is a former United States Army Special Forces officer. He served for over 50 months in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and was wounded seven times. He was awarded a Silver Star for his actions in the Iraq War in 2007, and wrote an influential monograph on Afghanistan titled One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan. Following his last deployment in 2010–12, he was relieved of command and forced to retire after violating military regulations and conducting an extramarital affair with reporter Ann Scott Tyson at his combat outpost in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. Gant has been credited with inspiring the creation of the Afghan Local Police and the strategy of Village Stability Operations in Afghanistan.