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William F. Owen
07-11-2009, 08:25 AM
Started this thread, because I think this (http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/4/how-to-win-in-afghanistan) is spot on the money.

I like it because I think it is essentially correct. I hate it because this guy is saying everything I, and quite few other SWJ folks, have been saying for a long time, but just says it better. Plus being a Brigadier, can't hurt.
(I don't defer to rank, but the authoritarian tendency within most hierarchies does.)

I don't expect the "COIN-oil" folks to agree, but war is war, and winning wars hasn't really changed in 3,000 years.

Tom Odom
07-11-2009, 09:52 AM
Started this thread, because I think this (http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/4/how-to-win-in-afghanistan) is spot on the money.

I like it because I think it is essentially correct. I hate it because this guy is saying everything I, and quite few other SWJ folks, have been saying for a long time, but just says it better. Plus being a Brigadier, can't hurt.
(I don't defer to rank, but the authoritarian tendency within most hierarchies does.)

I don't expect the "COIN-oil" folks to agree, but war is war, and winning wars hasn't really changed in 3,000 years.

You are right. I won't agree regardless of how many times you proclaim that war is war. Over simplifying is every bit as bad as over complicating.

The brigadier makes some good points and he make some doubtful ones. Most of the doubt comes with taking a point supposedly of the opposing view to its extreme and trying to paint it as middle of the road, as in
Hearts-and-minds is also a strategy of exhaustion but one in which the enemy’s will to resist is undermined by largesse.

Makes for a snappy read as in the 15 second sound bite to writing; does not reflect reality or COIN.

Tom

kingo1rtr
07-11-2009, 10:24 AM
I agree that there is much to support and admire in this essay - however I fundamentally believe that we must maintain the 'hearts and minds' concept at the core of what we do out there. It is in essence the centre of gravity in this struggle; it provides coherence across the spectrum of operations, from tactical to strategic, from Kabul to Kandahar to the villages and huts in Helmand; equally it provides a neccessary constraint in the battle against the insurgent. There is too much evidence about to suggest that our inability to constrain collateral damage, right at the lowest level in village and mudhut, when we take a route to remorselessly hunt down the enemy, would lead us to a position where we take 1 step forwards and 2 steps back. We must continue to get 'among the people' with all the attendant costs in men's lives and materiel. I firmly believe that the people there still want to be liberated from the threat of the Taliban; that does not preclude their ability to live and exist as a Pashtun people - the coalition offers the people a greater chance of achieving that than anything the Taliban can match. I agree that military victory is something that is not on the agenda, it need not be, its not about that. We must have the Afghan's 'hearts and minds' at the forefront of what we do if we are ever going see Afghanistan as a stable state that represents their culture and their way.

William F. Owen
07-11-2009, 10:54 AM
You are right. I won't agree regardless of how many times you proclaim that war is war. Over simplifying is every bit as bad as over complicating.
I concur that over simplifying something is not useful. I submit that usefully simplifying something is mostly necessary.

More to the point, my "proclamation" is aimed at attempting to illicit the views and perspectives of those who can accurately describe, what about the combating of irregular enemies makes the nature of war different?

Warfare does require different approaches. No one would contest that, but it is warfare none the less.


Makes for a snappy read as in the 15 second sound bite to writing; does not reflect reality or COIN.
I agree. The 15 second sound bites that jar with me are "heats and minds" "human terrain" "80% political, 20% military" "complex war-fighting" and "you need a network to fight a network."

davidbfpo
07-11-2009, 11:06 AM
A lengthy commentary on the Afghan situation and whether it is really that vital a battleground; the author Rory Stewart has been a soldier, diplomat and academic and has travelled extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq. Living in Kabul in 2005: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5797197/Afghanistan-a-war-we-cannot-win.html A slightly longer edition: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n13/stew01_.html

Worth reading through for its many pertinent comments and seems to fit here, even if killing is not the focus.

davidbfpo

Gian P Gentile
07-11-2009, 12:28 PM
"Hearts and Minds" has always been a name, a label, a code applied in these kinds of small wars to ostensibly describe what folks wanted other folks to think were actually happening on the ground, and afterwards, what they wanted others to think did happen.

The British in Malaya broke the back of the communist insurgency there not between 1952-1954 under the hearts and minds campaign of Templer, but with the use of brute military force combined with Briggs's resettlement program between 1949-1951. Once the insurgency's back was broken, Templer in charge was able to use persuasion of hearts and minds to further things along. This explanation is real and is truthful and has been put forward by a number of leading British scholars over the past few years, most recently in a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies that challenges the Malaya Coin Paradigm.

Moreover, one can see the same thing being done by such high priests of population centric Coin like Gallieni and Lyautey in Madagascar and Morocco respectively. Lyautey especially would use the language of "peaceful penetration," of progressive development to better people's lives in order to soothe domestic tensions in France over imperial action and internal issues with the French Army. But again, these hearts and minds techniques were ostensible; actually Lyautey crushed resistance in Morocco by the more time honored process used by the French Army in that region: the Razzia. Historian Doug Porch's excellent campaign study of Lyautey in Morocco shows this to be the case.

Wilf is right, war is war, it is not "armed social science," and real war, not happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language involves killing and death. And in actuality the historical models that we use to prop up this ostensible notion of "hearts and minds" were won through killing and destruction that broke the back of the resistance.

It is time to get a clear view of what we think we are trying to do in places like Astan.

Tom Odom
07-11-2009, 12:36 PM
"Hearts and Minds" has always been a name, a label, a code applied in these kinds of small wars to ostensibly describe what folks wanted other folks to think were actually happening on the ground, and afterwards, what they wanted others to think did happen.

Wilf is right, war is war, it is not "armed social science," and real war, not happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language involves killing and death. And in actuality the historical models that we use to prop up this ostensible notion of "hearts and minds" were won through killing and destruction that broke the back of the resistance.

It is time to get a clear view of what we think we are trying to do in places like Astan.

And neither are you, Gian. You both are offering reductionist viewpoints poised against a red herring reductionist view.

I agree that we need a clear view of Afghanistan. War is war is not a good start.

Tom

J Wolfsberger
07-11-2009, 01:16 PM
Wilf, Gian, are you two really advocating that we scrap any attempt to win the support of the populace and just engage in a “war is war” killing spree? In which case we tell the AF to unleash the B-1s and -2s to bomb A’stan until the rubble is bouncing in a depopulated wasteland.

I doubt that’s your position, but it reads that way.

From the article,


A hearts-and-minds approach is predicated on the proposition that we foreign, Western, culturally Christian, invaders can persuade a sizeable proportion of the Pashtun population to cut themselves off from their cultural roots; subject themselves to an equally foreign and incomprehensible form of government resting largely on the customs of the tribes of pre-Roman Germany; and abandon their cultural birthright of unrivalled hegemony over “Pashtunistan”. To do this we offer some new buildings, some cash and more reliable electricity—none of which have been important to them so far in their history.[8] Attendant on these “inducements” of course is the removal of their ability to generate cash by farming poppies and the destruction of cultural mores—the subjection of women and the application of traditional law for example—that define them as a cultural group.

Nice straw man. Not “hearts and minds” as I’ve ever understood the concept. It is, however, a reasonably accurate summary of “nation building.” Let’s make that distinction, and then we can all agree that “nation building” is, indeed, a load of crap.

We can also discuss what "hearts and minds" is, or should be, in the context of developing an effective strategy for ending the violence and turning the country over to its own people, with their own government rooted in their own cultural traditions and norms.

In that context, Wilf is dead on about killing the right people. Gian is dead on in his observation about "happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language." But I think that we'd better keep in mind that Wilf also pointed out that killing the wrong people is counterproductive, and that our goals in places like A'stan and Iraq should be:

1. Stop the violence.
2. Turn the country back over to its own people.
3. Leave.

I don't see that happening without, at least, the tacit support of the population. I don't see that minimal level of support emerging unless we address the concerns of the population, beginning with the safety of "me and mine," while we're engaged in killing the right people.

Entropy
07-11-2009, 02:02 PM
The title of is very familiar one: "How to Win in Afghanistan." What is "win?"

From the conclusion:


In Afghanistan a strategy focusing on the annihilation of Taliban power is the only way to achieve broad political progress. Until that is done, Afghan institutions; political, bureaucratic, police and military, will be denied the time and space they need to achieve a robust maturity. There will be a time when reconstruction and other aid will begin to produce dividends and that time will be marked by the establishment of security which, in Afghanistan, requires the removal of the insurgent and the extension of the coercive authority of the Afghan state into Pashtun areas. Until then NATO must be prepared to act as the proxy for the Afghan state in establishing control over the Pashtun population.

I think we need to consider the possibility that we are rearranging deck chairs and that no operational strategy (annihilation of the Taliban, pop-centric COIN or whatever) will achieve success given the various limitations on what we can do. While there are some compelling arguments in the piece, I don't see annihilation of the Taliban as practically achievable. For many of the same reasons, I don't think the pop-centric COIN can "win" at the end. There are several reasons, but the main problem is Pakistan. One can't annihilate the Taliban nor protect the population when the enemy has a safe haven - a safe haven that happens to be in a country that, for its own reasons, does not wish to see a strong, independent Afghan state. It's also a country where we cannot operate openly and the government has both limited ability and desire to establish the kind of control over both territory and resources necessary to dismantle the safe-haven.

The author makes several good points about "exhaustion" but the problem I see is that with a safe-haven, exhaustion works against an annihilation strategy as well.

IMO our problems with Afghanistan rest at the policy level where the objectives are murky and appear to change with the winds. The result is that those engaging in debates on operational strategy for Afghanistan often operate under differing sets of assumptions. Until things at the policy level become coherent I don't think these debates, nor the war itself, are going to go anywhere.

marct
07-11-2009, 02:22 PM
Hi Gian,

Looks like it's time for a point by point deconstruction :D!


Wilf is right, war is war, it is not "armed social science,"

"War is war" is a tautology of the form X = X. It is also a logical fallacy that confuses the sign with the signified in that
if killing is involved, and
war is killing, therefore
this is war
By that logic, I would argue that the US is engaged in an ongoing COIN campaign in LA - one, I would note, that they appear to be loosing ;).

Second point, war is armed social science if, by social science, we mean an empirically grounded, predictive model of how a society operates in certain situations. The very concept of State-on-State, conventional warfare governed by "Laws" or "Rules" (e.g. Geneva Conventions, etc.) is predicated on the existence of a particular model that is both a) comprehensible to all involved and b) contains win, lose and draw positions (i.e. recognized end states in a recognized social process).

Taking the two together, "war is war" and "war is not armed social science", leaves us with a Hobbesian model of a war of all against all. If this is the case, and I would not argue that it has been at some times, then what are the limits of "war" if any?


and real war, not happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language involves killing and death.

Hmmm, nice rhetorical point, Gian :D. Yes, "real war" involves killing and death but let me also point out that all life involves death and all societies have killing; it is a matter of degree as to how much killing is acceptable in a society before it is called "war".

I do, however, totally agree with you about the dangers of selling a "happy war". That is a rhetorical trick used by the same people who are never willing to take responsibility for their actions and, IMO, is of the same ethical standards as the war as video game.


And in actuality the historical models that we use to prop up this ostensible notion of "hearts and minds" were won through killing and destruction that broke the back of the resistance.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. It's not that I disagree with you on the use of killing and destruction, I don't. What I disagree with is whether or not it "broke the back of the resistance". I would suggest that what it did was to establish, beyond an immediate doubt, that certain forms of "resistance" were currently "unacceptable" (and bloody dangerous to their advocates!). This doesn't change the likelihood of "resistance", it merely shifts the form of it.


It is time to get a clear view of what we think we are trying to do in places like Astan.

Absolutely, and that has been a problem for a long time. It is also why war must be armed social science. Without an empirical model grounded in historical patterns, we are left with, as Max Forte would say, an "ideological septic tank" as the definer of "what will be". Maybe something along the lines of "Oh, let's just get rid of the nasty dictator and they will all become good republicans/democrats".....

William F. Owen
07-11-2009, 03:26 PM
Wilf, Gian, are you two really advocating that we scrap any attempt to win the support of the populace and just engage in a “war is war” killing spree?
No. That is no what, or I guess Gian is saying. To whit...


In that context, Wilf is dead on about killing the right people. Gian is dead on in his observation about "happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language." But I think that we'd better keep in mind that Wilf also pointed out that killing the wrong people is counterproductive, and that our goals in places like A'stan and Iraq should be:

1. Stop the violence.
2. Turn the country back over to its own people.
3. Leave.
That is why I am coming from.
Stopping the violence means stopping the violent people.
Build all the schools, hospitals and community centres, once you have a secure environment and THEY can maintain it.

William F. Owen
07-11-2009, 03:41 PM
"War is war" is a tautology of the form X = X. It is also a logical fallacy that confuses the sign with the signified in that [INDENT]if killing is involved, and
war is killing, therefore
this is war


.... but that is not what "War is War," has ever aimed to impart.
War is war is an aphorism that correctly observes that that war has an enduring and fundamental nature, that has not changed over time. Thucydides and Clausewitz wrote about it, and did so usefully and accurately.

As Clausewitz, Foch and many others have said, "beware the people who tell you that you can have war without killing."

If that is wrong, then please show me how?


That is also why war must be armed social science.
How can a social science be aimed primarily at breaking the will of the enemy?

Putting in place all the humanitarian and social programs aimed at the civilian population, probably is social science, but that it does not break the enemies will to endure, in the same way killing him does. No social science has ever been founded on telling someone "do what we tell you to improve your life or we will kill you."

marct
07-11-2009, 04:33 PM
Hi Wilf,


.... but that is not what "War is War," has ever aimed to impart.
War is war is an aphorism that correctly observes that that war has an enduring and fundamental nature, that has not changed over time. Thucydides and Clausewitz wrote about it, and did so usefully and accurately.

As an aphorism, I don't have a problem with it. Unfortunately, too many people interpret it not as an aphorism but as a fundamental (axiomatic) "Truth" in the logical sense. I do disagree that it has a fundamental "nature" (I'm not really that much into Platonic essentialism), but I certainly agree that it does have fundamental boundary conditions (although they vary in time, space and culture).


As Clausewitz, Foch and many others have said, "beware the people who tell you that you can have war without killing."

I agree, although I would have phrased it slightly differently. I can conceive of such a war being fought but, to the best of my knowledge, it never has been. As far as the aim of that warning, however, I totally agree - it is right up there with Pie in the Sky.


How can a social science be aimed primarily at breaking the will of the enemy?

Well, a "science" is a body of empirical regularities that has been abstracted into formulas of some type. Those regularities are what you termed its "nature". War is a social activity and it is aimed at social opponents (i.e. a society rather than an individual). Social science is the sub-branch of science that studies regularities in human societies and the individuals who compose them. How can you study war without studying social science?

Having said that, I never said that there was a specific social science aimed primarily at breaking the will of the enemy; although PSYOPs fits the bill as a sub-discipline of both psychology and communications. As a note, it is a major mistake to equate "social science" with "social work" - the two are by no means synonymous ;).


Putting in place all the humanitarian and social programs aimed at the civilian population, probably is social science, but that it does not break the enemies will to endure, in the same way killing him does.

Wilf, that's social work or development work - it's a sub-set of social science. You're also switching levels of analysis again. I agree, humanitarian and social programs may not break an enemies will. If you kill him by itself, however, you create new enemies unless you take a delenda Cartago est tactic which, at the moment, is improbable in the extreme.


No social science has ever been founded on telling someone "do what we tell you to improve your life or we will kill you."

Hmmm, try Russian psychology during the 1930's - 1950's or modern theories of governance :D.

Ken White
07-11-2009, 05:30 PM
Tom said:
"Hearts-and-minds is also a strategy of exhaustion but one in which the enemy’s will to resist is undermined by largesse. "

Makes for a snappy read as in the 15 second sound bite to writing; does not reflect reality or COIN. He's correct -- so is the statement he refutes. The COIN idea is more than largesse. However the COIN idea does rely on largesse to more than a small extent. The real truth is somewhere in between. That, however, is not the problem with COIN efforts, that problem is in application of COIN principle by a third party and not the government that has an insurgency issue. There are those who firmly believe in the need for such intervention and there are others that strongly doubt such interventions are or can be effective.

Those are two schools of thought. We are all exemplars of our inner selves. My suspicion is that if we could realistically categorize humans as pro-COIN or con-COIN, a heavy majority would be the latter and while an armed force can direct people to do things they do not agree with, the performance of people is enhanced when they believe in what they are doing and degraded if they do not believe. The basic problem is that the efficacy of COIN is in significant dispute; the rationale for its conduct is in dispute and the logic and / or morality of third party intervention is questioned by some.

This creates spotty performance which can exacerbate rather than solve the insurgency issue. That fact needs to be recognized.
I agree that we need a clear view of Afghanistan. War is war is not a good start.Maybe. War is war. That, as Wilf and Marc say, an aphorism and not an immutable fact -- but we need to recognize Afghanistan is a war; it is not a COIN operation. As was Iraq, it is more complex than that. In fact Afghanistan is far more complex and a far tougher nut than is Iraq. In any event, we are committed to a course in Afghanistan that entails the use of some COIN principles, no question.

kingo1RTR summarizes the current problem thusly:
We must have the Afghan's 'hearts and minds' at the forefront of what we do if we are ever going see Afghanistan as a stable state that represents their culture and their way.I suspect that is right at this point. We have started on a course and we have an obligation IMO to finish it reasonably successfully. He's correct that military victory is not on the agenda -- never was -- but an acceptable outcome can be obtained.

That is a problem with any COIN action, that's the best that can be hoped for in this era, an acceptable outcome.

The problem is that with an intervention, the slices of acceptability are smaller due to more players -- and the dominant player's "acceptable" may not coincide at all well with the goals and desires of the others -- particularly those who live in the nation that the dominant player can leave. Thus, that inclines the dominant player to go for a more warlike effort -- if his armed forces are involved -- than might the government with the insurgency.

Gian sums it up really well:
It is time to get a clear view of what we think we are trying to do in places like Astan.We are committed to an effort in Afghanistan. We should finish what we started.

Gian correctly addresses the broader issue for the future. What we should also do is determine whether this intervention stuff in other nations is advisable. We should then prepare to try to avoid such interventions OR be better prepared to perform them.

Either way, circumstances may dictate that we have no choice and must intervene -- but we need to insure that before we do, we sort out the roles and missions, understand the costs and that the armed forces are trained to perform the military functions and understand what those functions entail while the civil side of government is prepared and trained to undertake its responsibilities at the earliest opportunity.

Both J Wolfsberger and Entropy contribute very valid comments on the issue of Afghanistan. Points that should've been considered eight years ago -- and whose probable answers were known eight years ago...

marct:
...then what are the limits of "war" if any?Good question. I suspect the answer is that "You ain't seen nothin' yet." As my Mother used to say, it'll probably get worse before it gets better; a statement applicable both to Afghanistan and to war in general... :(

He then really wraps it up very neatly:
... It's not that I disagree with you on the use of killing and destruction, I don't. What I disagree with is whether or not it "broke the back of the resistance". I would suggest that what it did was to establish, beyond an immediate doubt, that certain forms of "resistance" were currently "unacceptable" (and bloody dangerous to their advocates!). This doesn't change the likelihood of "resistance", it merely shifts the form of it.And that is the problem with COIN... :wry:

It's an ill advised effort to solve problems that are better solved in other ways. If you commit Armed Forces to such an effort, you are placing an instrument of war in position to start and / or exacerbate a war and the probability is that it will not do that well. That can only end badly or, at best, with an acceptable outcome.

Acceptable to whom and for how long...

kingo1rtr
07-11-2009, 05:56 PM
Ken

Thats a very taut and accurate summary of the debate to date. I'll start reading these strings from the bottom in future!

jcustis
07-11-2009, 06:48 PM
My suspicion is that if we could realistically categorize humans as pro-COIN or con-COIN, a heavy majority would be the latter and while an armed force can direct people to do things they do not agree with, the performance of people is enhanced when they believe in what they are doing and degraded if they do not believe. The basic problem is that the efficacy of COIN is in significant dispute; the rationale for its conduct is in dispute and the logic and / or morality of third party intervention is questioned by some.

As usual, Ken is right on point with this view, and how prevalent it can be. Like my pops says, "Don't you go and take any chances with those people, shoot first and ask questions later."

And as I often feel the tingling on the back of my neck when sitting through ROE training/review with troops, Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six, is not only uttered often under their breath, I can sense it on the mind of a majority of them. That has extended to several officers and senior SNCOs, and when we fail to get those folks on board, we are failing miserably.

Edited to add: Wilf, if your view is indeed what you claim it is, after getting a stir from folks, then simply re-title this thread as: "More killing of the right folks first...then do good deeds."

Rank amateur
07-11-2009, 06:53 PM
what about the combating of irregular enemies makes the nature of war different?


Irregulars can control their loss rate by hiding in the population. Something the Luffwaffe - for exampe - couldn't do. Therefore, if you strategy is "kill more insurgents," your strategy is easily defeated.

Not sure why a Brigadier can't figure out that soldiers in Afghanistan can't kill insurgents who are hiding in Pakistan. I'm not that bright and it's obvious to me.

Uboat509
07-11-2009, 08:14 PM
From where I'm sitting, a lot of this debate seems to buried in semantics. The term "Hearts and Minds" is at the forefront of course. People who have worked in these environment naturally aren't going to like that term, at least if it meant literally. It's a really poorly chosen phrase. Of course we are never going to win the hearts and minds of any significant segment of the population. If I believed that that was really our goal, I would be skeptical too. But, as LTC Kilcullen has noted "hearts and Minds" isn't about making them like us, it's about convincing them that it is in their best interests to side with us, or at least not with our enemies.

Another problem seems to be the idea that COIN proponents are saying that we can achieve our acceptable outcome without killing. Well, of course that is ridiculous. Of course you will have to kill some bad guys to achieve the acceptable outcome. We will also have to teach the host nation how to kill bad guys. Saying otherwise would be naive. The thing is, I have never heard a COIN proponent say that we can achieve an acceptable out come with out killing. The ones that I have heard have only said that we cannot kill our way to victory and the killing the enemy should not be our main focus.

Now I am just an enlisted swine. I don't have any extra letters after my name nor have I attended any of the cool military schools that teach all about such things. I haven't read Clausewitz or Jomani or any other military philosopher/theorist. I have never been to any "Symposium" on COIN or anything else. I have only my own experiences and views to draw from but here is my take, for whatever it's worth, on the fight we face now, whether you choose to call it COIN or irregular war or "Overseas Contingency Operations," whatever the label Du jur is currently. Wilf and others maintain, that we should focus on killing the enemy first and then, once the insurgency has been defeated, start doing things to help the populace (the so-called hearts and minds stuff) in order, I presume, to reduce the likelihood that the insurgency will restart. My experience tells me that if we don't do both things simultaneously then we will never get to the point that we can transition to the other. It's pretty obvious what would happen if we just did the "hearts and minds" stuff without also killing bad guys, that's why I haven't heard anyone advocate that. On the other hand, if you just focus on killing bad guys and don't do the "hearts and minds" stuff, you will run out of national will to fight before they run out of bad guys. The insurgents do not have a standing army to be defeated. They have an ideology (actually a series of ideologies, there is more than one insurgency going on. But that doesn't change the central point). That ideology is what attracts people to support and/or fight for them. Now part of the attractiveness of that ideology is derived from the things that the host nation government does or fails to do (as Bob's World has pointed out) and part is derived from what we do or fail to do. If we do nothing but focus on killing the enemy then we are doing little reduce the attractiveness of the insurgent ideology. So, we keep killing bad guys and members of the populous keep joining and it ends up being a huge game of Whack-a-Mole that we (as in the American/Allied people) will ultimately lose our taste for and leave. If, on the other hand, we can push the host nation government to do its job, while we continue to do things that make the insurgent ideology less attractive (the infamous "hearts and minds" stuff) then our kinetic operations will have a better chance of creating the security we need to achieve our acceptable outcome.

Now some maintain that by focusing on the kinetic fight we are reducing the attractiveness of the insurgent ideology. After all, joining an insurgency which has a good chance of ending in your death is irrational, right? Unfortunately, in my experience, rationality is not necessarily an inborn trait in humans. If you only have one tool, the stick OR the carrot, you will end up missing large parts of the population and you may even have counter-productive results. Again, I have not heard many people advocating a "carrot only" approach, not anyone credible anyway. The "stick only" approach has many more supporters. They believe that by making it so dangerous to support the insurgency that they can break the will of the people to support the insurgency. Now, I am no historian by any means, but I can think of several historical examples where this type of thinking failed. In WWII the Germans executed whole towns of people in both fronts in order to crush the insurgency but were never able to do so. The Germans all but leveled London and the Allies did level several German and Japanese cities but neither succeeded in breaking the will of the other's populous. Even the commonly held belief that Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke the will of the Japanese people is, as I understand it, false. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not break the will of the Japanese people, rather it broke the will of a Japanese person, the Emperor. As I understand it, if he had ordered the Japanese to continue fighting to the last, they would have.

That, in a nut shell, is my decidedly non-scholarly, and somewhat rambling take on the COIN vs. Kinetic debate.

SFC W

Ken White
07-11-2009, 08:51 PM
Irregulars can control their loss rate by hiding in the population. Something the Luffwaffe - for exampe - couldn't do. Therefore, if you strategy is "kill more insurgents," your strategy is easily defeated.Leaving the Luftwaffe out as an irrelevancy, the answer to your statement is that you have to weed them out with good intel; thus your strategy is not defeated; your job is simply made a lot harder harder and it will take longer. As we have seen...
Not sure why a Brigadier can't figure out that soldiers in Afghanistan can't kill insurgents who are hiding in Pakistan. I'm not that bright and it's obvious to me.You're bright, so's he. How Pakistan is addressed and discussed is more subject to sensitivities in Commonwealth nations in general and in their Armed Forces in particular. You can safely bet large sums of money that any Coalition service member of any rank concerned with Afghanistan is painfully aware of that border and the R&R centers on the other side of it. They are also frustrated that they know where the nodes on the other side are but can do nothing except wait helplessly until the R&R is over and the bad guys head north and enter Afghanistan.

Fuchs
07-11-2009, 09:18 PM
Irregulars can control their loss rate by hiding in the population. Something the Luffwaffe - for exampe - couldn't do. Therefore, if you strategy is "kill more insurgents," your strategy is easily defeated.

Not sure why a Brigadier can't figure out that soldiers in Afghanistan can't kill insurgents who are hiding in Pakistan. I'm not that bright and it's obvious to me.

The Luftwaffe was actually hiding very well. The aircraft were hidden close to the airfields, often in forests. Lots of CCD as well.

The Luftwaffe's problem was rather that its country (cities, industry) wasn't able to hide and got treatment as fair game by the Allies.

MikeF
07-11-2009, 09:20 PM
By that logic, I would argue that the US is engaged in an ongoing COIN campaign in LA - one, I would note, that they appear to be loosing ;).


Counterinsurgency is military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency (JP 1-02).

Using the definitions of COIN found in JP 1-02 and FM 3-24, COIN is an action that a government takes to quell internal rebellion or strife. Along those lines, the only COIN that the US can accomplish is within our internal borders. When we intervene in another countries internal affairs, the matter is inherently difficult as we must pick a side. IMO, this distinction is important, and our failure to address the issue only muddies the waters. In effect, when we intervene, we are picking a side. In Iraq, we back the Shia-heavy government over the Sunnis. In Afghanistan, we back the Karzai-heavy government over the Taliban. Both governments were put in place through elections, and we are hoping that these governments will eventually stabalize internal strife AND share our collective national security interests.

Uboat suggests that those who rebel against the host governments do so out of ideology.
They have an ideology (actually a series of ideologies, there is more than one insurgency going on. But that doesn't change the central point). That ideology is what attracts people to support and/or fight for them. . In some cases, particularly AQ, I believe he is correct. However, many other insurgents are simply fighting over an internal power struggle. In Iraq, the majority of Sunnis refused to vote during the last election, and they simply are not willing to accept a Shia government. Moreover, many Shia groups within the government view their newfound power as payback time for years of repression and neglect during Saddam's Baath party rule.

Along these lines, I concur with Tom's comments in other threads as far as the current state of Iraq goes. For a time, we defeated AQI and Shia extremist groups, we stabilized the country, we continue to help build the Iraqi Security Forces, and we attempting to afford the Iraqis the opportunity to elect a permanent government. But how did we get here? I would suggest that this is where Wilf, COL Gentile, and Ken's points come in.


1. Stop the violence.
2. Turn the country back over to its own people.
3. Leave.


Stopping the violence in Iraq was not simply population centric. Yes, in Baghdad, we secured the populace through urban reconstruction and secure neighborhoods, but in many other areas, we secured through blunt force trauma...i.e. killing bad guys.Rank amateur contends that
Irregulars can control their loss rate by hiding in the population. Something the Luffwaffe - for exampe - couldn't do. Therefore, if you strategy is "kill more insurgents," your strategy is easily defeated.I disagree. This statement assumes that one cannot seperate the insurgent from the populace.

So how do you find the enemy and kill him? Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Human Collection, and Targeting. As a company commander,
60-70% of ALL operations were devoted to intelligence collection. This allowed us to find the enemy. Next, we you find him, you attempt to persuade him to either join the government or settle his grievances on the political level. If he is willing, fine. If not, then you must attack and destroy him. At this point in the game, it is really that simple. Otherwise, the conflict is protracted and civilian casualties continue to soar.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, many General Purpose Forces (GPF) are transitioning to Security Force Assistance (SFA). In another time, these actions were known as Foreign Internal Defense (FID). In theory, Coalition Forces will mentor, train, and combat advise Security Forces. A conversation with several NCO's deploying on that mission disturbed me:

"So, when the Afghan Army refuses to do a mission, how will you react?"

"C'mon sir, you damn well know that we will do it ourselves."

I know this post has been long and covered the gambit of COIN theory to SFA to tactical operations, but I suppose it covers the difficult questions that we must attempt to answer:

What are we doing?
What should we be doing?
What can we accomplish?

There are no easy answers here, but I can attest that winning the hearts and minds is not one of them. Regardless, as long as the soldiers and marines are deployed, they will continue to fight the best that they can.

v/r

Mike

carl
07-11-2009, 11:34 PM
Leaving the Luftwaffe out as an irrelevancy, the answer to your statement is that you have to weed them out with good intel; thus your strategy is not defeated; your job is simply made a lot harder harder and it will take longer.

The best intel to weed out the bad guys comes from the people in the village or the neighborhood. They are not likely provide intel if they are pissed off at having been dissed by troops, had their fields ruined by a tank or having some of their relatives, friends and neighbors, near or distant, killed or maimed by an airstrike. Another disadvantage of the above listed events is their excitable teenage sons might go off and join a war band to get some revenge.

The advantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to highlight the disadvantages of making the locals mad at you.

It seems to me that part of what this discussion is all about is how you kill the ones who need to be done away with when the miscreants are near or among the people. Do you get them mostly with rifles and try to eschew air strikes, which I imagine can complicate things and will almost certainly result in more friendly casualties; or do you use the heavy weapons more, even thought that will most likely (given the recent history in Afghan, certainly) increase casualties amongst the locals?

slapout9
07-11-2009, 11:57 PM
After all, joining an insurgency which has a good chance of ending in your death is irrational, right? Unfortunately, in my experience, rationality is not necessarily an inborn trait in humans.
SFC W


IMO this is the real problem and it is the same for kids joining gangs in America or anyplace else for that matter. Don't have an answer but this is the problem:confused:

Fuchs
07-12-2009, 12:07 AM
IMO this is the real problem and it is the same for kids joining gangs in America or anyplace else for that matter. Don't have an answer but this is the problem:confused:

The answer lies in the perception/subjective estimation of the chance of success. That's (one of the reasons) why morale is so important.

Gang members underestimate the drawbacks and overestimate the advantages, especially their chance of becoming part of an elite group of (obviously few) really rich gangsters.
They do also have seemingly strange preferences, like an apparent overvaluation of things like prestige and reassurance.

They drop out once they become disillusioned and realize that selling pot means much more trouble, but not much more money than working at McDonald's in most cases.

Both gang members and combatants have a problem, though: They cannot easily drop out of their system. Desertion is associated with huge risk.
And as long as they're stuck in the system they depend on group loyalty, comradeship*. Many German WW2 veterans agreed that their primary motivation to fight was because they were responsible for their comrades who in turn were responsible for them. Soldiers fought/fight for their comrades*, and that motivation is very difficult to crack.

(*: Is this a correct translation at all? In German it's Kameradschaft and Kamerad(en), btu I'm not sure about the translation.)

Ken White
07-12-2009, 12:17 AM
The best intel to weed out the bad guys comes from the people in the village or the neighborhood...All true -- for some, for others, not so much. Every thing you say also applies to the opposition. said opposition is far more likely to antagonize the locals than are most western armies who take classes in how to be nice and usually don't steal the goats and chickens. So that aspect is about a wash. The issue then becomes who pays more...

Then, those western hunters also have several other means of intel gathering that do not rely on locals. Net advantage, the hunters.
The advantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to highlight the disadvantages of making the locals mad at you.True. So too do common sense and human decency let halfway decently trained troops behave properly with no COIN knowledge at all. What COIN also does is convince you that human decency and logic are possessed by your opponents. That is not always true. COIN will also 'convince' you that you can fix things that you really cannot...

Or that you have a way to fix things that either don't really need to be fixed or for which you should not be the one to attempt the fix.
It seems to me that part of what this discussion is all about is how you kill the ones who need to be done away with when the miscreants are near or among the people...There is no one size fits all, every war and every situation are different; one has to know and apply the principle of METT-TC. All day, every day.

COIN warfare is not the answer to any problem; it is a problem applied to correct another problem. Usually wrongly and usually too late -- almost invariably at great cost for little lasting change. The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved. *

What started this whole thread was Wilf's very accurate statement that war is war. May irritate some but you can't sugar coat it and make it less than it is -- trying to do so has put us in deep Yogurt four times in my lifetime; the first two were tied games; the second two have yet to be determined but all four indubitably cost this nation a great deal in many respects. The inane belief that you can fight war 'nicely' is stupid and dangerous; we have killed a good many people because of that idiocy. War is war -- and COIN doesn't make it nice. Quite the contrary. 'Fixing' failed states is super arrogant and prone to failure.

If you have to engage in a stability op, do you need to use 'COIN principles?' Certainly -- and you have to apply them as UBoat said while you're trying to tamp down the insurgents. But you need to get the max number of insurgents dead quickly in order to let the civil sector take over the aid effort that the military force began. If you do not do that, you are headed for a very long slog and a rocky effort.


Wilf posted this: LINK (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs4p8n9-N6Y). That caused Coldstreamer to post this: LINK (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=73577&postcount=9). Exactly.

If you did it right, you wouldn't have to do COIN. :D

Ken White
07-12-2009, 12:28 AM
The answer lies in the perception/subjective estimation of the chance of success. That's (one of the reasons) why morale is so important.Also why attacking that morale is important.
(*: Is this a correct translation at all? In German it's Kameradschaft and Kamerad(en), btu I'm not sure about the translation.)You got it right. The British and Australians would use 'Mate' (mateship), Americans would more likely say Buddy or buddies, maybe Friends (friendship). Canadians are eclectic -- all three... :D

That very critical factor also applies to other forces aside from organize armed services. In Afghanistan, there are always a number of Temporary Workers types, hired for a job. Some are local, some are Pakistanis that have made the hike, a few from elsewhere. Most are not ideologically wedded to the cause, it's just money. So they're likely easily deterred from returning if they make it out of that contract alive.

If and as they make more trips, the become semi-professionals or even pros and the either the ideological or the comradeship effect take hold. It can be worked upon.

IntelTrooper
07-12-2009, 12:39 AM
All true -- for some, for others, not so much. Every thing you say also applies to the opposition. said opposition is far more likely to antagonize the locals than are most western armies who take classes in how to be nice and usually don't steal the goats and chickens. So that aspect is about a wash. The issue then becomes who pays more...

Then, those western hunters also have several other means of intel gathering that do not rely on locals. Net advantage, the hunters.
As an especially insightful Marine LtCol and ETT mentor once said, "The Taliban get a lot more mileage out of threats than you do out of rice and blankets."

In my experience, the intel provided by concerned citizens was rarely of much use. And even then, we never charmed them into giving up their insurgent neighbors. I had a lot of lieutenants and squad leaders looking at me all puzzled because I refused to try to recruit sources when we were out having key leader engagements and such. We had more effective means of collection, and I didn't want the locals to associate my face with an American trying to pump them for information all the time, like some kind of armed Jehovah's Witness showing up every week to harass them.

When all the LLOs are in place and progressing, the masses who find that their best interest is to assist the counterinsurgents will find us. And then you get that pretty intelligence <--> operations loop thing. Until then, you have to be more creative.

carl
07-12-2009, 01:13 AM
Ken: I don't know how to insert parts of quotes so I will answer as best I can.

Mission of course is the first thing. What concerns me about "war is war" is that if killing becomes the prime requirement, that will lead to sort of an industrial view. If killing is the prime mission, then efficient killing is a good thing. If efficiency is defined as your losses vs. bad guys killed that leads to a lot of heavy weapons use which is bad for the locals. COIN theory as I understand it stresses that killing isn't the ONLY thing, and in some circumstances it is much less important. It tends to change the view of the mission which would change behavior.

That a defeated insurgency ultimately benefits the big power involved just confirms the wisdom of the big power.

Sometimes the opposition irritates the locals more than our guys. AQI really irritated the locals. But if AQI hadn't been there, would our guys have irritated the locals more than the nationalist insurgents? Did the VC in their hey day irritate the locals more than the ARVN? I don't think it is always a wash and our guys are more likely to trained not to step on toes if COIN has some influence.

As far as technical means go, we have that advantage in Afghan and I wonder how far it is getting us.

Having to apply COIN is the result of a mistake made before, granted. But those mistakes are going to be and have been made and we must use the best tool to deal with it.

Sometimes, as you said the enemy is as decent and logical as your side. If COIN teaches you that, that is good. It is always good when you realize the enemy can be as good, bad, smart or stupid as you.

I don't think COIN says that war is nice, quite the opposite. I read about decades long, frustrating operations where close combat by infantry is preferred over heavy weapons. That does not sound clean to me. That sounds grim and bloody.

Fixing failed states is as you said. In our two current cases though, as Powell said, we broke it so we bought it.

pjmunson
07-12-2009, 01:39 AM
Some of the very simplistic arguments made in this thread are a bit disturbing. I know (hope) that the people making them have much more nuanced positions lying behind their short posts, but the black-and-white, either-or way in which the argument is being laid out by some is intellectually lazy at a minimum.

A number of people have brought some of the nuance back in. I'll add my two cents.

What are the dangers? Applying means unsuited to the ends desired. Failing to recognize the nature of the war. "Kind-hearted people" thinking that a war could be won with little bloodshed. Thinking that an insurgency can be defeated quickly by technology and targeting. Thinking that military means alone can create lasting stability.

A purely hearts and minds strategy applied in the most simplistic and optimistic way could certainly fall into a number of these danger areas. But so too could a "war is war" approach. Many would argue that killing more people, better, faster, with more accurate targeting could lead to a neat and quick end to our problems. This is equally simplistic and dangerous. There are a number of crackpots, some who are in positions of responsibility and authority that they do not deserve, who subscribe to simplistic fantasies of the kinetic and non-kinetic kind. Fortunately, however, I believe that the vast majority of professionals have attained much more nuanced views in the past 8 years.

Security is an absolute requirement and security requires killing. At the same time, this kinetic campaign must not so alienate the populace to be secured that they would rather side with the insurgents anyway. Many of the tools to avoid alienating the population, from understanding their culture and language to precisely fixing the identity, aims, and factions of the insurgents and various other bad actors, come from the realm of social science. Social science can improve your kinetic targeting and therefore should not be poo-pooed out of hand.

Once security is initially attained, much if not all will be lost if you then abandon the populace to go seek out more killing as the insurgents will often come back to seek their revenge, again working against your ends.

Finally, even once you clear and hold, you have to build. This is cliche if taken at face value, building only playgrounds, pools, or schools. More broadly, you have to ensure that the populace begins to build the institutions, from security forces, to social services, to dispute resolution/justice systems, that will maintain stability. Not only does this promote long-term stability, but it also takes away a major aspect of many insurgents' attempts to create legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. They offer these services where the government cannot.

Neither a pure "hearts and minds" approach (which is a very poor choice of phrase as an earlier poster noted) nor a pure military kinetic approach will produce the desired results. Kill more better so we can leave is just as divorced from reality as win hearts and minds by building schools and women's centers. It takes kinetic, non-kinetic, arms, and social science to set the conditions for success. Kill the right people as efficiently as possible, which is a long and messy task, do so in a way that minimizes alienation of the populace (extremely challenging and often works against efficiency in task 1), and win loyalty to the host nation government by providing security and assistance while they build the institutions for long term stability. Reducing this to an either-or argument makes little sense.

Ken White
07-12-2009, 02:24 AM
What concerns me about "war is war" is that if killing becomes the prime requirement, that will lead to sort of an industrial view.You can never forget that war is war and it means killing -- there is no other way and no easy route. That does NOT mean you take an 'industrial' view.
If killing is the prime mission, then efficient killing is a good thing.Yes it is -- but not nearly as good as effective killing; i.e. the right versus not the wrong persons --and don't kill their goats and dogs.
If efficiency is defined as your losses vs. bad guys killed that leads to a lot of heavy weapons use which is bad for the locals.That would be a really stupid metric and I don't know anyone who'd advocate that (except Robert McNamara and he's dead).
COIN theory as I understand it stresses that killing isn't the ONLY thing, and in some circumstances it is much less important.All combat training emphasizes that and everybody gets the Law of War.
It tends to change the view of the mission which would change behavior.Thank you for making my point.

It does not change the view Joe and most NCO take toward the mission; it does not change the view of all Officers toward the mission -- it can change the view of people in the rear and at home and of the politicians. That's the danger.
That a defeated insurgency ultimately benefits the big power involved just confirms the wisdom of the big power.I don't understand that comment, if it's a response to my question:

"The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved."

Note the wording. My contention is that no major power obtained a net benefit (outcome versus all costs) from participating in a COIN action.
Did the VC in their hey day irritate the locals more than the ARVN? I don't think it is always a wash and our guys are more likely to trained not to step on toes if COIN has some influence.Yes to the VC being slightly more annoying most of the time to the population. With respect to stepping on toes that's dependent on many things and COIN training is absolutely no guarantee of proper performance. That whole bit is very much unit dependent.
Sometimes, as you said the enemy is as decent and logical as your side. If COIN teaches you that, that is good. It is always good when you realize the enemy can be as good, bad, smart or stupid as you.I don't recall saying that but it's true. I do know that much COIN oriented training is more likely to inculcate a belief that the opponent is deserving of better treatment and that can adversely affect a lot of folks and make them hesitant to act.
Fixing failed states is as you said. In our two current cases though, as Powell said, we broke it so we bought it.Powell said a lot of things he probably shouldn't have. Be that as it may, as I said, we are in Afghanistan, we do need to finish the job we started because we said we would -- we shouldn't have, but we did -- we will continue to apply some COIN principles but that does not change the fact that it's a war, not a COIN operation.

"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

William Tecumseh Sherman

Bob's World
07-12-2009, 02:37 AM
While I can't get on the "war is war" wagon (the resolution of conflict lies in the roots of the conflict, and not all roots are the same even if the plants that break the surface look the same. To carry that further, if our job is just to trim it down to bare dirt and not worry about what springs back up or when, then I guess "war is war." To me though that is a dangerously simplistic approach.

Will agree with Ken as to neither Iraq or Afghanistan being COIN for the US, and add that I think it dangerously blinds us to what we reallly need to do to finish up and go home when we look at it as "COIN."

My take (and this is my take alone, so place full blame on my shoulders and not any organization I may support) is that:

Afghanistan is "Post-UW FID" and Iraq is "Post-regime change FID." Only HN forces conduct COIN in my view, and to believe that we are doing that HN business is to risk dangerous degradation of the HN governments already shakey legitimacy, and also increase perceptions of US legitimacy that IMO placed us on the target list of groups like AQ in the first place.

Just one guy's perspective.

Rex Brynen
07-12-2009, 02:37 AM
Neither a pure "hearts and minds" approach (which is a very poor choice of phrase as an earlier poster noted) nor a pure military kinetic approach will produce the desired results. Kill more better so we can leave is just as divorced from reality as win hearts and minds by building schools and women's centers. It takes kinetic, non-kinetic, arms, and social science to set the conditions for success. Kill the right people as efficiently as possible, which is a long and messy task, do so in a way that minimizes alienation of the populace (extremely challenging and often works against efficiency in task 1), and win loyalty to the host nation government by providing security and assistance while they build the institutions for long term stability. Reducing this to an either-or argument makes little sense.

Well said!

There might have been some value in the initial starkness with which the debate was framed, whether to point to the weaknesses of a kinetic-only approach, stress the importance of social analysis and engagement, highlight the dangers of an institutional overemphasis on COIN, or raise legitimate warnings about COIN fetishism. That being said, in the blogosphere it now approaches point of mutual caricature (straw insurgents?)

Meanwhile, on the ground, it seems perfectly evident IMHO that both the kinetic and non-kinetic strands are important, at times working at cross purposes, but even more often mutually supporting when done right.

The key issue, it seems to me, is context. When do assertive kinetic activities pay major dividends in terms of weakening opponent capabilities and will, and when do they alienate locals to the point of fueling the insurgency? When does building school and well help to shift local attitudes, and when does it have negligible effect (either because gains can't be secured, or because the locals aren't swayed)? This is complicated stuff--it not only varies from insurgency to insurgency, but from town to town, valley to valley, and month to month. Likely, not even the locals can agree on what might be needed to stabilize the situation (ask ten random people in a shopping mall how to fix the health care system, and see what I mean).

In one of the other threads, Davidpfpo posted a link to a scathing newspaper article that, among other things, mentions building a park for women and children in Lashka Gar at a time when security was deteriorating--much to the annoyance of the locals. Understandable--it sounds a stupid project. But in a better security environment, it might have sent power signals to the population about the benefits of stabilization, and the hopes for their children might have for a better future. Again, the context matters.

How then do we know what works, why, when and how? To some extent this is an analytical issue. To some extent it is an intelligence collection challenge. To a large extent it is, in my view, addressed through leadership, training, preparation, empathy, and common sense within military, diplomatic, and aid agencies. Precisely because of the complexity and variation involved, I think there is only so much you are going to resolve by sharpening analytical (or doctrinal) tools.. I think a very great deal depends on who exactly is on the ground, and the individual qualities that they bring to process (and also help promote within their units).

In many ways, therefore, its a human resource management problem too. I'm struck how many times, when participants in successful stabilization missions are asked to explain that success, they highlight the key role not of a particular $1 million, or a new piece of kit, or a press release from a donor conference, but key individuals who, at critical times and critical places, knew how best to deal with complex political, military, and humanitarian-developmental issues.

Ken White
07-12-2009, 02:39 AM
Some of the very simplistic arguments made in this thread are a bit disturbing. I know (hope) that the people making them have much more nuanced positions lying behind their short posts, but the black-and-white, either-or way in which the argument is being laid out by some is intellectually lazy at a minimum.and will plead guilty to being intellectually (among other ways) lazy. It seems to me that you said pretty much the same thing Uboat509 said above. I agreed with him as well.

I'm not sure what's nuanced and what isn't and I'm also unsure anyone else has said anything that really contradicts either of you. No one that I recall has gone to a 'kill 'em all' position and no one has gone to a pure sweetness and light position. I just reviewed the entire thread to include re-reading Brigadier Kelly's comments and I have to ask:

Who has reduced it to an either or argument?

What, specifically is disturbing?

pjmunson
07-12-2009, 03:20 AM
was probably better said here:

And neither are you, Gian. You both are offering reductionist viewpoints poised against a red herring reductionist view.

I agree that we need a clear view of Afghanistan. War is war is not a good start.

Tom

The argument was framed in ways that seemingly reject a large body of thought and practice with some relatively smug comments that are equally simplistic and reductionist as that accused of the other camp:
""COIN-oil" folks"

Gian Gentile's post acknowledges that both killing and "hearts and minds" were used, but then states: "war is war, it is not "armed social science," and real war, not happy war sold through clever-speak of "hearts and minds" language involves killing and death. And in actuality the historical models that we use to prop up this ostensible notion of "hearts and minds" were won through killing and destruction that broke the back of the resistance." Again, his own post shows that it is not either-or, but he ends with a statement that makes it seem like "hearts and minds" is a crock. I'd agree that imagining that you can win a war through hearts and minds alone is insane, but who is really arguing that you can fight COIN by hearts and minds alone?

The article rejects hearts and minds as a pipe dream: "A hearts-and-minds approach is predicated on the proposition that we foreign, Western, culturally Christian, invaders can persuade a sizeable proportion of the Pashtun population to cut themselves off from their cultural roots; subject themselves to an equally foreign and incomprehensible form of government resting largely on the customs of the tribes of pre-Roman Germany; and abandon their cultural birthright of unrivalled hegemony over “Pashtunistan”. To do this we offer some new buildings, some cash and more reliable electricity—none of which have been important to them so far in their history." This is a strawman argument. The hearts and minds he describes is of course a failing proposition. Yet, securing the population by killing, then staying, and helping to rebuild, while working to show why it is good to have you around is a good "hearts and minds" campaign. You aren't going to get Pashtuns to be eager "little Americans" but you can show them why it is worth their while to have you around.

At the end, I guess I just don't understand who is advocating a purely hearts and minds approach that doesn't advocate killing the insurgents to secure the population as an integral and primary goal. Unless there are large bodies of military leaders and policymakers that think you can "win" without killing by "winning hearts and minds", it seems that Kelley's argument is framed against a straw man. And I'd also like to know what his vision of winning is since he labels his article as "How to Win in Afghanistan."

To me, it is disturbing that such a reductionist argument is still ongoing 8 years into this fight. I would think that people would be arguing more about details rather than whether "hearts-and-minds" snake oil salesmen or people properly focused on killing and war as war has been for 3000 years are right. You need both and need to properly integrate all of your means and that is where the discussion should be: integration and synergy of the different means and ways.

Ken White
07-12-2009, 04:51 AM
Gian Gentile's post acknowledges that both killing and "hearts and minds" were used, but then states: "war is war, it is not "armed social science,"...but who is really arguing that you can fight COIN by hearts and minds alone?No one here, really, not even Gian. He appears here from time to time and gets published in the Op-Ed pages of the NYT and other papers and has articles in the Armed Forces Journal among others. You will see occasional references to the 'Gentile-Nagl' due to the fact the Gian is Mr. Anti-COIN to the point of vehemence. Armor guy, had a Cav Squadron in I-rak , historian and now teaches that at West Point. His concern is that the Army overemphasizes 'the new COIN' (and as an active practitioner of the old COIN, it is new in many respects, not all improvements) to the detriment of it's primary mission which is war fighting. I tend to agree with him on all counts -- COIN elements are required; the Army should not go overboard as they are prone to do on the new COIN and so on. He's more vocal but then I'm shy and retiring.

That position is of course not shared with Dr. LTC Retired John Nagl, the author of "Eating Soup With A Knife." They've had some discussions back an forth here.

Neither Gian not I or any of the other 'war is war' folks who comment here deny there is a place for what is called COIN -- though it is really not that -- techniques. What we do say is that if you're committing Armed Forces to an effort there is or will be a war of some sort. War is war, unchanging but warfare is constantly mutating and shifting and COIN like TTP may be needed and the force must be able to apply them but don't lose sight of the larger effort -- preparation for the full spectrum of warfare.

Some say that COIN is the graduate level of warfare; I once contended that it is not -- it's like middle school with all the envy, cliques, in and out people and things, jealousies, backbiting and more. Stability operations can be psychologically demanding but they are not as challenging as major combat operations to any part of the force by several orders of magnitude. Gian agreed with that, John Nagl probably would not.

Wilf, BTW, is a consultant and author but he's also British -- when he was serving (during the Reign of George III...), they had a civil service that would fall in on any COIN effort and take care of the civil side leaving the Army to strictly military tasks -- as directed by said Civilians. Very different system. His 'war is war' mantra is 'cause he's a Clauswitz fan. That's all background. I knew all that and you didn't; it may or may not make any difference to your perceptions. Terribly long way of saying you can't tell the players without a program... :o
The article rejects hearts and minds as a pipe dream...Germany; and abandon their cultural birthright of unrivalled hegemony over “Pashtunistan”...You aren't going to get Pashtuns to be eager "little Americans" but you can show them why it is worth their while to have you around.Only if you can convince them you can keep the Talibs and all the other bad guys from visiting the villages in the night will they believe you are worthwhile -- and as soon as you do that, they'll want you gone. Afghans are not Arabs; they share some cultural similarities but they don't like the Ferenghee a bit better. I doubt that NATO et.al. will ever have enough troops to do that. So the 'COIN' approach cannot be fully implemented in Afghanistan and we'll have a hybrid op.
At the end, I guess I just don't understand who is advocating a purely hearts and minds approach that doesn't advocate killing the insurgents to secure the population as an integral and primary goal.No one to my knowledge; that's not the issue -- the issue is future strategy and force structure. Does the Army follow the Corps and go with some units tailored for stability ops? Does it adjust TOEs to provide units tailored for such ops. Brother Nagl is the President of CNAS and is presumed to have clout in high places; he and other think that's the way to go. Gian, me, others do not agree.
And I'd also like to know what his vision of winning is since he labels his article as "How to Win in Afghanistan." I thought he was pretty clear:
...................
""The approaches taken to countering insurgencies in Malaya, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and Iraq all contain some aspects that are transferable to Afghanistan but most are *. The counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is more intractable than any of these others.[* Believe a 'not' was omitted here / kw]

In Afghanistan a strategy focusing on the annihilation of Taliban power is the only way to achieve broad political progress...Until then NATO must be prepared to act as the proxy for the Afghan state in establishing control over the Pashtun population.

Without security there is nothing.""(all emphasis added /kw)
...................
My take on that is that he says more whittling down of the Taliban (and friends) or removal in some of way their ability to affect localities is required before the rebuilding can commence. My sensing from friends and all open sources is that is very much correct. Afghanistan is not an insurgency though there are aspects of one in place. It's a war with COIN like digressions.
To me, it is disturbing that such a reductionist argument is still ongoing 8 years into this fight.Me too. Though I'm not sure it's reductionist -- it is an effort to make sense out of a very chaotic situation that has been exacerbated over a period of eight years -- or, actually, over a period of eight or more one year or less tours with a number of people going in different directions and no unity of command.
I would think that people would be arguing more about details rather than whether "hearts-and-minds" snake oil salesmen or people properly focused on killing and war as war has been for 3000 years are right. You need both and need to properly integrate all of your means and that is where the discussion should be: integration and synergy of the different means and ways.True. That particular argument is not directed at Afghanistan other than peripherally. That argument is principally directed at FUTURE US Government policy, strategies and direction plus future (now in development) doctrine and force structure...

Afghanistan is on auto pilot with a coalescing mix of TTP -- no one's devoting much effort to it because what will happen there is pretty well locked in for the next three plus years.

It is simply being used as a How Not To Do It Training Aid by people on both sides of the very real doctrinal divide to point out their ideas for 2020. It's a big fight, it's real and has power players on both sides.

Sorry for the delay, two finger typist, sorry for the length, didn't want to leave much out; obviously discard all you think irrelevant. :cool:

William F. Owen
07-12-2009, 05:59 AM
Wilf, BTW, is a consultant and author but he's also British -- when he was serving (during the Reign of George III...), they had a civil service that would fall in on any COIN effort and take care of the civil side leaving the Army to strictly military tasks -- as directed by said Civilians. Very different system. His 'war is war' mantra is 'cause he's a Clauswitz fan. That's all background. I knew all that and you didn't; it may or may not make any difference to your perceptions. Terribly long way of saying you can't tell the players without a program... :o

"For those of you watching in black and white, Wilf is in the red-shorts" :D

Thanks, Ken. Yes, I am a product of my environment, and thanks to nuances of language, style and just plain good looks, I may not be as well understood, as I would hope. Let me clarify:


War is War. Read Clausewitz or Thucydides. Irregular Warfare against an insurgent, rebel, criminal, partisan or separatist relies on same basic dynamics of any war. In order to win, you have to break the enemies will to endure.
Breaking his will should be done by making him fear for his life or freedom.


The "how" of breaking the will (as opposed to why -cos it's a war!) has to done in a way that does not create popular support for the enemy, because popular support creates benefits for him. - the same way it does for some criminals.
You want to make the population as hostile (or neutral) as possible, primarily to enable the gathering of intelligence so as you can target the enemy. Try looking for Robin Hood in a village full of "Maid Marrions" (actually the biggest skank in Nottingham, but that's another story.)

The basis of a competition that says,
"If you support us (Govt.) we will make you safe, and better your life."
The insurgent says,
"Support us or we will kill you. They can never make you safe. We have friends living here, we know all about you, and we will remember who our friends and enemies were a 1,000 years from now."

What I dislike about "that competition" , is that it draws the population into the fight, when the purpose should be to exclude them!

If the population says, "we don't care about NATO, because they don't bother us. They only kill Talib," then I suggest that this is a basis on which to proceed. If NATO turn up once in a while and drop off food, do some medical care, and offer security advice, then the villagers have a chance to say "I know where the Talib are hiding."

.... of course the villagers may just hate you because of who you are, and support the Talib because they are family. Hearts and Minds will not help then anyway.

Gian, Ken and I are not the "Slay them all. God will see the souls of his own," brigade.

Spud
07-12-2009, 06:01 AM
My take (and this is my take alone, so place full blame on my shoulders and not any organization I may support) is that:

Afghanistan is "Post-UW FID" and Iraq is "Post-regime change FID." Only HN forces conduct COIN in my view, and to believe that we are doing that HN business is to risk dangerous degradation of the HN governments already shakey legitimacy, and also increase perceptions of US legitimacy that IMO placed us on the target list of groups like AQ in the first place.

Just one guy's perspective.

Thanks Sir ... that's exactly the argument I've been pushing around the college over the past few weeks -- the only time we can be doing COIN is if we're fighting an insurgency in Australia. (Must've got some notice because they just asked me to drop my preferred COIN elective in the final term and take on Complex Planning instead ;) ). I'm noticing an overwhelming desire by most to be the "COIN" guy but utilising what we've been doing over the past 18-months as the example of COIN campaigning. I've always said we're just (supposedly) helping the other guy do COIN.

I know its all semantics but it appears that semantics are everything in our line of work.

Ken White
07-12-2009, 06:24 AM
I know its all semantics but it appears that semantics are everything in our line of work.Mostly by those, who in the US Southern (Bogan like) vernacular, 'haven't never...' :wry:

in re: "Wilf is in the red-shorts" Yes, Marian did mention that... :D

Tom Odom
07-12-2009, 06:25 AM
He's correct -- so is the statement he refutes. The COIN idea is more than largesse. However the COIN idea does rely on largesse to more than a small extent. The real truth is somewhere in between. That, however, is not the problem with COIN efforts, that problem is in application of COIN principle by a third party and not the government that has an insurgency issue. There are those who firmly believe in the need for such intervention and there are others that strongly doubt such interventions are or can be effective.

Ken

I held that statement up as an example of putting a simple statement out and leaving it hanging as a 15 second sound bite.

The largesse the author refers to is targeted toward the population and shoring up their support for the government, not undermining the enemy's will to resist. Kill and capture is generally the best solution to the enemy.

If the problem is as you state it, then state the problem, not a simplistic war is war aphorism as Wilf calls it, tautolgy as he so often uses it.

Wilf,

When you actually go beyond the bumper sticker, you start to make sense as in:


What I dislike about "that competition" , is that it draws the population into the fight, when the purpose should be to exclude them!

If the population says, "we don't care about NATO, because they don't bother us. They only kill Talib," then I suggest that this is a basis on which to proceed. If NATO turn up once in a while and drop off food, do some medical care, and offer security advice, then the villagers have a chance to say "I know where the Talib are hiding."

Tom

Ken White
07-12-2009, 06:49 AM
I held that statement up as an example of putting a simple statement out and leaving it hanging as a 15 second sound bite.It was but what I shoulda said was that it is a cheap shot but there is also danger in a myth that says we can buy support -- as you know, they'll take what you give and ask for more but that frequently doesn't change who they support. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You have to try, no question but I think you also have to acknowledge that it sometimes isn't very successful and we sometimes buy / present the wrong things. The Hospital in Mosul comes to mind. It is not easy.
The largesse the author refers to is targeted toward the population and shoring up their support for the government, not undermining the enemy's will to resist. Kill and capture is generally the best solution to the enemy.Yep. Agreed. I'm sure you guys today do a better job than we did in Veet Nam -- a lot of Aid went to Chuck. Hard to tell who was who sometimes. Plus our 'Allies' sometimes cheated on us. Shameful behavior. :D.
If the problem is as you state it, then state the problem, not a simplistic war is war aphorism as Wilf calls it, tautolgy as he so often uses it.Stop with them ol big words, I ain't wrapped too taut. Nor very tightly either. ;)

On a more important note, you stay alert...

William F. Owen
07-12-2009, 08:46 AM
If the problem is as you state it, then state the problem, not a simplistic war is war aphorism as Wilf calls it, tautolgy as he so often uses it.

Wilf,

When you actually go beyond the bumper sticker, you start to make sense as in:


Well yes, I'm prone to the odd bumper sticker, but so are many. "The population is the terrain" and "You need a network to fight a network."
I guess we are not much different from Politicians.

While I appreciate the positive feedback, I am merely articulating what the last 140 years of irregular warfare has taught us.

While I reject the idea that there are "Principles of War," I do believe that all forms of warfare are predicated on certain enduring fundamentals, without which, a successful out come is nearly always impossible.

Here is an additional LINK (http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2009/03/winning-in-afghanistan)to the speech concerned. May be useful

kingo1rtr
07-12-2009, 09:37 AM
Leslie Gelb has a very good one-pager about Robert McNamara in this week's Time. It gives a sharp treatise on the difficulties of McNamara's approach. I highlight because the last paragraph is of contemporary relevance in linking Vietnam to Afghanistan:

"As long as we're there and willing to fight and die, we won't lose. But in the end, we can't win either unless we realize that it must be their war-a war for the South Vietnamese to fight for their freedom and a war for Afghans to fight for theirs. We can help, but it must be theirs."

Pertinent after the casualty toll this last week.

Full article at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1909627,00.html

kingo1rtr
07-12-2009, 10:12 AM
At some point, if one accepts the premise that victory against the Taliban is unachievable, negotiation must be an option. This article by James Fergusson, now over a year old (15 Jun 08) is of interest:

"The return of the British Army for the fourth time since the 1830s baffled the mullah, despite my protestations that the British wanted to help secure economic development.

'You British are clever people,' he said. 't makes no sense.... A clever man does not get bitten by a snake from the same hole twice.' 'Of course,' said the mullah, if we had come unarmed, 'you would have been our guests, just as you are our guest now. If your engineers and agriculture experts had come to us and explained what they were trying to do, we would have protected them with our lives'

...... it is time, surely, to start talking seriously to the Taliban. In any case, a negotiated settlement is the likeliest outcome of the struggle, as senior Army officers know full well. 'The ultimate legacy will be a government in Afghanistan, in X years' time, with Taliban representation,' said Brigadier Ed Butler, one of Carleton-Smith's predecessors in Helmand, who announced his resignation a week ago. Historically, there are very few insurgencies that have not ended in negotiation; and even President Karzai – who, let it be remembered, supported the Taliban in the regime's earliest days – is in favour of reconciliation with the movement's more biddable elements.

Negotiating with the Taliban is, of course, not something Western liberals would choose to do, but it is surely the lesser of two evils: a realpolitik solution rather than a totally impractical 'ethical' one. The Taliban will never be 'defeated' in the conventional sense. The alternative to dialogue is go on with the war, in which case many more young British soldiers will die, perhaps for nothing. Our strategy will have to change direction. The sooner it does so the better."

IMO ativities in Anbar in Iraq proved (not conclusively) that bringing some insurgents into the tent must be a part of the process whether concurrently or sequentially. Arguably the same could be said of Northern Ireland. Critical issue is if you can get dialogue at the same time as upping the kinetic tempo - certainly In Basra in 06/07 it did seem to speed participants to the table; especially if done in tandem with a stiffening of host nation security forces' resolve.

marct
07-12-2009, 01:05 PM
Hi Mike,


Using the definitions of COIN found in JP 1-02 and FM 3-24, COIN is an action that a government takes to quell internal rebellion or strife. Along those lines, the only COIN that the US can accomplish is within our internal borders. When we intervene in another countries internal affairs, the matter is inherently difficult as we must pick a side. IMO, this distinction is important, and our failure to address the issue only muddies the waters.

Yup. This is FID using COIN tactics. More on muddied waters in a minute...


In effect, when we intervene, we are picking a side. In Iraq, we back the Shia-heavy government over the Sunnis. In Afghanistan, we back the Karzai-heavy government over the Taliban. Both governments were put in place through elections, and we are hoping that these governments will eventually stabalize internal strife AND share our collective national security interests.

This is where I think semantics are crucial. In these instances, was it "picking" a side or "creating" a side? Both the Iraqi and Afghan governments were created by external force of arms and then "legitimated" through elections. I put "legitimated" in quotes, because the elections themselves did not allow the defeated governments to run (I doubt that SH would have won, but I'm not sure about the Taliban...), and the elections themselves were imposed.

Under one set of interpretations, it could be argued that what is being supported are a series of puppet regimes that were created by the US. Now, I'm not arguing for that particular interpretation (although I will mumble it ;)), but it does have some pretty serious implications. For example, the SOFA agreement with Iraq that led to the drawdown in troop commitments and the pulling out from the urban areas indicates, to me at least, that the GOI is being treated as if it were an independant, legitimate gov't. Good move.

Afghanistan, OTOH, is much more questionable. For example, the government of the Mayor of Kabul does not appear to have any control over the various foreign militaries, and many local, acting in his country (vide his repeated requests regarding the use of air strikes). Afghanistan is, IMO, the more interesting case, in part because the coalition is there acting under a UN mandate which includes rebuilding the government. It is less of an FID operation than a UN reconstruction operation (similar, at least in legal theory [yes, I'm waiting for JMM to jump in :wry:] to the occupation of Germany and Japan after WW II, but without offical surrenders). So, is it FID? COIN? "War"? What?

My suspicion is that the semantic confusion as to exactly what is going on is at the heart of many of the problems we are facing there.

pjmunson
07-12-2009, 01:13 PM
War is War. Read Clausewitz or Thucydides. Irregular Warfare against an insurgent, rebel, criminal, partisan or separatist relies on same basic dynamics of any war. In order to win, you have to break the enemies will to endure.
Breaking his will should be done by making him fear for his life or freedom.


I have read Clauzewitz and Thucydides and a few others. Clausewitz talks about absolute wars, limited wars, and wars among the people and acknowledges that the dynamic of war changes with its level of intensity and killing/destruction of the enemy or his will cannot always be fully achieved in limited wars. Many would argue that the crux of an asymmetric war (see Mack's "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars") is that they are fighting an unlimited war while we are fighting a limited one. In any case, as your ability to find, fix, and destroy the enemy is limited by internal and external restraints, the value of the political element rises. Even if we get much better at targeting insurgents, we won't be able to kill them completely out of business if we are making insurgents as quickly as we kill them due to ignoring the political element. I don't think this is an anti-Clausewitzian view. War is war in that the brutal nature of war and the elements that factor into it are unchanging. However, the way that war is used to attain one's political ends and the value of the various factors in that war change with the type of war being fought. I also like Delbruck's extension of Clausewitz's thoughts on limited versus absolute war being wars of exhaustion or annihilation. We cannot annihilate the Taliban in the same way that we could annihilate a conventional foe that came out to play.

William F. Owen
07-12-2009, 02:37 PM
Many would argue that the crux of an asymmetric war (see Mack's "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars") is that they are fighting an unlimited war while we are fighting a limited one. In any case, as your ability to find, fix, and destroy the enemy is limited by internal and external restraints, the value of the political element rises. Even if we get much better at targeting insurgents, we won't be able to kill them completely out of business if we are making insurgents as quickly as we kill them due to ignoring the political element.

...but the vast majority of small wars have been won this way. That is inflicting so much pain on the enemy that he has given up military means. That is the limit of military power.

Those who say "Ahh... but the bad guys won by negotiation." Wallah! As long as the military has forced him to seek a resolution by peaceful means, then that is good enough. Military did it's job.

If what all this is really saying is that the US/NATO is not prepared to resource a military campaign properly and does not have the political will to support it, then by all means seek some other, less effective, form of resolution. Essentially the enemy has already broken our political will to endure, by making us under resource the war.

Chris jM
07-12-2009, 04:32 PM
...but the vast majority of small wars have been won this way. That is inflicting so much pain on the enemy that he has given up military means. That is the limit of military power.

Those who say "Ahh... but the bad guys won by negotiation." Wallah! As long as the military has forced him to seek a resolution by peaceful means, then that is good enough. Military did it's job.


My perspective is (and I'll issue my standard disclaimer here - my experience is all in the trees so a view of the forest may be eluding me - hence my interest in SWJ and these forums) that the military serves a mission of greater scope than just the levying of military power. Like it or dislike it, mission creep is firmly entrenched in the NATO/ ABCA armies and we don't have to like it but we do have to work with it.

Military power is not just about 'inflicting so much pain on the enemy that he has given up military means', it is about either inflicting or threatening to inflict pain so that we convince, force or guide him into a course of action that is in-keeping with what we want.

In the current COIN environment the military is responsible for the sharp-end of persuasion, both in convincing the Afghan population that military opposition to us is too costly for them and futile, while simultaneously convincing them that 'our way' of security and governance brings greater benefit and prosperity than any alternative. Thus the 'limit' of military power cannot be neatly defined - we have to project power against the TB/ TB factions as you are saying, forcing him to either surrender or negotiative but simultaneously we have to present a viable alternative with the ANSF and development.

As to saying the military mission's success/ failure ends when the enemy accepts negotiation? Again, I'll put forward an alternative view. Having followed a number of your posts I'm well aware your a passionate Clausewitzian (and yes, I did just invent that term :) ) so I'll offer the view that with military endeavours being an extension of politics, political undertakings also require ongoing military activities. The military 'job' may be the continuation or threat of future violence to keep the enemy at the negotiating table or to increase the position of strength from which a settlement may be reached. It may also be maintaining sufficient forces and capabilities as deterrance to ensure the gains won.

Apologies if I am rambling - basically, I see the military mission as extending beyond merely forcing the enemy off the battlefield.

To put forward my own views, hopefully extending the topic in question and not taking away from it:

Yes, we do need 'killing' and violence in Afghanistan. Whether more or less I don't know.

What I do believe is that the military role should be related to security, incorporating both violence and the threat of violence to shape the population and eny in the AO in accordance with the friendly force mission. The military should be able to draw upon sufficient redevelopment resources to facilitate this mission through both the 'clear' and 'hold' phases of COIN to create security, providing the ability to bribe, persuade or convince the holders of power and the general population that our way indeed is a better way than the TB offer. Come the 'build' phase, however, civilian agencies must take the helm and become the driving force. Without doubt a military presence must remain in some sense but the main effort should change.

Simply put I think the military mission should be gaining consent amongst the population by the 'stick and carrot' application of military power, incorporating the ever-loved 'non-kinetic' effects to provide most of the 'carrot' that we can offer - reconstruction, prosperity, employment, etc. Nation building, reconstruction, capacity building - in my mind that is a civil/ state role that should be undertaken by civil players with the military in support.

And so ends my rant. The military job isn't in merely getting the enemy to the negotiating table, it's about getting him there while having shaped the environment so any negotiated success can be sustained. If that means the military has to engage in non-military tasks such as reconstruction then so be it - I just believe (and this was my contribution to the discussion) that the military should engage in the clear/ hold, and other actors should drive the build phase.

I trust I have grasped the essence and meaning of what you were saying William, and haven't debated away from the topic. I'm interested in this topic and accept my perspectives have been shaped more by personal preconceptions than by experience or wisdom, so I'm interested in your response.

Cheers! :)

Chris jM
07-12-2009, 04:44 PM
If what all this is really saying is that the US/NATO is not prepared to resource a military campaign properly and does not have the political will to support it, then by all means seek some other, less effective, form of resolution. Essentially the enemy has already broken our political will to endure, by making us under resource the war.

This I completely agree with. I haven't done any research on the forums or elsewhere, but the thought has stayed with me for the last few days about the presence of COIN operations within a larger conflict.

I've never heard of any opinions saying that the Wermacht's success in Europe (I'm thinking of Yugoslavia and the occupied Soviet territories in particular) as being threatened by insurgency, but rather the resistance movements serving solely to tie down fighting troops.

Was this due to size? Scale? Ramifications of tactical/operational failure (if the Wermacht did lose one of their insurgencies, did it threaten Nazi Germany's success?). Does it come down to the old tree-falling-in-a-forest adage, if no-one back home is paying any attention to your involvement against an insurgency, is it COIN or merely low-level war?

I think I may be over-thinking this and the WW2 example is far from intuitive. Still....

William F. Owen
07-12-2009, 04:49 PM
Military power is not just about 'inflicting so much pain on the enemy that he has given up military means', it is about either inflicting or threatening to inflict pain so that we convince, force or guide him into a course of action that is in-keeping with what we want.

I concur and this is within the bounds of what I am suggesting. We break his will to use military means. Generally, people will not believe in a level of pain, unless it is demonstrated. After that they can be suppressed or coerced into doing what you want.

William F. Owen
07-12-2009, 04:54 PM
I've never heard of any opinions saying that the Wermacht's success in Europe (I'm thinking of Yugoslavia and the occupied Soviet territories in particular) as being threatened by insurgency, but rather the resistance movements serving solely to tie down fighting troops.


I'd skip the Wermacht as a reference point except to show that irregular and regular warfare can exist in the same conflict and that there are irregular conflicts which are nothing to do with insurgencies.

Point being, no one should fix an understanding of irregular warfare based on Iraq and Afghanistan. There are many other conflicts, with critically different contexts.

George L. Singleton
07-12-2009, 06:03 PM
The British in Malaya broke the back of the communist insurgency there not between 1952-1954 under the hearts and minds campaign of Templer, but with the use of brute military force combined with Briggs's resettlement program between 1949-1951. Once the insurgency's back was broken, Templer in charge was able to use persuasion of hearts and minds to further things along. This explanation is real and is truthful and has been put forward by a number of leading British scholars over the past few years, most recently in a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies that challenges the Malaya Coin Paradigm.

I agree with logic you first beat and kill the enemy, then you deal in hearts and minds in a major way for the civil affairs follow up. But I do not agree you can expect to do both simultaneously, that just creates "scrambled eggs" which is what we have been doing and results in blowing up new schools, housing, roads, bridges, etc. when we have not first and foremost defeated the terrorists and established long term security control...which security needs to be provided more by national forces and less and less by NATO/allied forces.

My two cents and I think all histories of warfare at all levels support my "view."

pjmunson
07-12-2009, 06:25 PM
You have to do both at the same time. You can't defeat an insurgent force in a matter of months or even a year, so while you're chasing him around, you also have to be showing the populace that you/the government is going to make their life better. If, while you're chasing the insurgents around, people are living their life in ####, they aren't going to support you and they are going to be much more likely to buy into the insurgents' arguments.

And one of the biggest issues in winning their "hearts and minds", is to show them that once you come through and rid their town of the insurgent, you're not going to go off chasing him miles away, only to have the insurgents quietly return to slash the throats of those who come out in support of the government/COIN force.

Critically, the image of quickly thrown together schools with cheesy ribbon cutting ceremonies that then end up getting destroyed by a later wave of insurgency is not an example of doing both the right way, it is an example of doing both the wrong way. You kill the insurgent, you keep him away, and you focus on the sorts of stability things that really matter. Patrolling, building security forces, building trust in the security forces, getting people to open up because they believe you're not leaving tomorrow, and providing the basic services and infrastructure that people need to live until their government can begin providing the niceties.

Raw sewage in the streets or no power = insurgent support. No jobs or no income = guys planting IEDs to feed their families. No mechanism for justice = lawlessness = criminal income and assistance for the insurgency. All of these things if left untreated make your kinetic job more difficult.

So don't build the school if you have not done the kinetic things to drive the insurgents off in the first place, and still don't build it if you are not going to put forces in place to keep the populace safe. This comes into the resourcing problem mentioned earlier. You are chasing mercury if you do not have the forces to create persistent security.

Finally, while it would be nice if the military could focus on "purely military" things while others took care of the CA stuff, a reminder that the U.S. military has more bandsmen than the State Department has diplomats should tell us how the budget pie is, and will continue to be cut up. Until we are willing to give up some bandsmen (metaphorically speaking, and the we here is really Congress and the Executive branch budgeteers) then the military is going to have to be willing to do more than purely military tasks.

Ken White
07-12-2009, 06:27 PM
My two cents and I think all histories of warfare at all levels support my "view."Even without your two cents, my history of warfare totally corroborates your views. :wry:

Good Post.

The pat American solution of throwing money at a problem has led us astray in Foreign Policy and in the COIN arena. I have watched a tremendous amount of waste as our gifts and aid are misused for things not intended, unused due to being totally inappropriate, trashed as not understood or just destroyed because the bad guys could do so. Total security is not required before embarking on projects -- but you better be above 50% surety before you pass out more than food, health and comfort aid.

We also need to be really careful to whom we give even that... :eek:

Clear and cool couple of hundred miles south of you... :cool:

Ken White
07-12-2009, 07:09 PM
You have to do both at the same time... they aren't going to support you and they are going to be much more likely to buy into the insurgents' arguments.But -- as you say below, you have to do both in at least a semi-intelligent manner. Also, the populace isn't buying anything. They are being pulled in two directions and fear always trumps goodies.
And one of the biggest issues in winning their "hearts and minds", is to show them that once you come through and rid their town of the insurgent, you're not going to go off chasing him miles away, only to have the insurgents quietly return to slash the throats of those who come out in support of the government/COIN force.Partly correct. You'll win his grudging tolerance and polite responses. You aren't getting his heart or his mind and will get very little respect. And you're still a foreigner... :(
Raw sewage in the streets or no power = insurgent support. No jobs or no income = guys planting IEDs to feed their families. No mechanism for justice = lawlessness = criminal income and assistance for the insurgency. All of these things if left untreated make your kinetic job more difficult.True but the three things you named are all civil functions. Military knowledge and capability in all three efforts is in extremely short supply. I do not see that changing. Ergo you're looking at Contractors or civil service folks -- who need a modicum of security before they appear. If you start too soon (see Iraq) you'll have three to five times as much effort and expense due to destruction of your premature efforts (see Iraq).

All that can be fixed at a cost in time and effort if there is adequate security; if not, you're just sticking fingers in dikes.
So don't build the school if you have not done the kinetic things to drive the insurgents off in the first place, and still don't build it if you are not going to put forces in place to keep the populace safe. This comes into the resourcing problem mentioned earlier. You are chasing mercury if you do not have the forces to create persistent security.That repeats what you said above, I still agree.

The issue is how do you do that if you do not have enough troops?

The obvious if unlikely to happen answer is get more troops. An alternative is to pre-empt these things before they get to the cluster stuck damage control level. We may or may not do that. Bad processes replicate because we lazily let them. We didn't learn a thing in Viet Nam because everybody cued on the wrong lessons; what really needed to be done was known but was put in the 'too hard' box by some seriously flawed Flag Officers who allowed that to happen. We appear likely to repeat that error if in a different direction if some have their way.
Finally, while it would be nice if the military could focus on "purely military" things while others took care of the CA stuff, a reminder that the U.S. military has more bandsmen than the State Department has diplomats should tell us how the budget pie is, and will continue to be cut up. Until we are willing to give up some bandsmen (metaphorically speaking, and the we here is really Congress and the Executive branch budgeteers) then the military is going to have to be willing to do more than purely military tasks.Again true. Add to that the fact that such a realignment entails the breaking of Rice Bowls, will be resisted by Congress and many in DoD and it is possible that little change will occur. Yetl, there are some good moves afoot and some of them will appear in Afghanistan over the next few months, others will take longer. After all, we used to ride to work on Elephants, it took a while but we finally parked 'em... ;)

A past problem was that most reacted with "We can do this, we'll make it work somehow. We'll just do it right next time." I've heard that bit too many times. As one of my pet Generals said "We 'can-do' ourselves to death." His Aide, a bright young Major, was fond of occasionally asking "What flavor of kool-Aid is popular in DC today?"

Fortunately, this time more people are more connected and more questions are being asked, many are beginning to say the conventional wisdom didn't work; we gotta change things. That is a good thing. :cool:

kingo1rtr
07-12-2009, 09:00 PM
One of the early contentions in this thread was the premise that war is war. I wonder if we ought to be making security in Afghanistan, not war. Why?

Armies can make war in the classic sense - but what about making security? What role should we play in crisis management, building police, judiciary, prisons, a sense of security - not for ourselves in FOBs but for locals in village and mud hut. IMO these must be done in tandem with the kinetic action - no point in capturing Taliban if there is no system by which to arrest, try and imprison and vitally rehabilitate him - there isn't a day when the war ends and this process starts.

Yet security is deeply embedded in the 'minds' aspect of COIN - for both the local population [Reassure] and the insurgent [Deter to Prevent]. Death cannot be the only outcome of military intervention. Yet prisons, police and judiciary are the domain of the civilian component, key pillars of societal security. Making security must be a coherent and concurrent strategy alongside kinetic activity.

To illustrate this I've got an 'arty farty' quote from the play "A Man For All Seasons":

'William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!'

My point being if we kick every door down to get at the Taliban (and most of those doors belong to locals), and do get our man, what use is it if we turn round and there is nothing to hand him to, if we have failed to create the security, in doing so failing to win the 'minds' of the local, are we not ultimately failing, simply creating a tactical gain but underpinning operational failure and ultimately strategic stalemate?

Apologies again for brief amateur foray into high literature - I'm going to lie down now....

MikeF
07-12-2009, 09:03 PM
So, is it FID? COIN? "War"? What?

My suspicion is that the semantic confusion as to exactly what is going on is at the heart of many of the problems we are facing there.

Hi Marc,

I agree with many of your thoughts, and I suppose that on the strategic level (my weakness), our analysis is akin to trying to play historian to present day actions. No doubt, our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq will redefine modern warfare- call it hybrid, irregular or whatever. In some ways, we'll simply see how it plays out.

Paradoxically, I honestly believe that there is nothing new under the sun. War is war, and our continued efforts to redefine FID into SFA, COIN into IW, and differentiate between big and small wars, regular and irregular wars, only continues to muddy the waters; however, this distinction or semantics maybe a result of the continued evolution of our economies and modern nation-state system/governance. I suppose it is a chicken and an egg type debate.

I wish I had an answer. I do not.

Regardless, on the tactical level (my perceived expertise), the answer is simple. If and when you intervene, you must bring the "hate" to control the populace. These actions may require more than simple population centric "soft" approaches. In many areas, it requires killing the enemy. FM 3-24 refers to it as "stopping the bleeding" or an analogy to a gunshot victim in an emergency room.

After you have achieved control, then you can bring the "love" of nation-building. I would assert that this is more of a psychological action- a psychologist attempting to mend, adjust, or simply treat a victim of trauma after the incident.

Again, we'll see how it plays out. I'm cautious to accept that we can re-invent or redefine societies (particularly in a limited time frame). One of the greatest lessons that I've learned in studying small wars, emerging nations, failed and failing states, is the importance of time and patience- not a particular forte of the United States.

One needs only look at modern day Malaysia, Burma, Vietnam, Guatemala, and the Phillipines.

With that said, how does this intertwine with the observations/analysis of an anthropologist?

v/r

Mike

Ken White
07-12-2009, 09:45 PM
One of the early contentions in this thread was the premise that war is war. I wonder if we ought to be making security in Afghanistan, not war. Why?
. . .
My point being if we kick every door down to get at the Taliban (and most of those doors belong to locals), and do get our man, what use is it if we turn round and there is nothing to hand him to, if we have failed to create the security, in doing so failing to win the 'minds' of the local, are we not ultimately failing, simply creating a tactical gain but underpinning operational failure and ultimately strategic stalemate?You have just cited a superb and I think accurate rationale for why these types of operations are best avoided. That means identifying future problems early on, increasing the Corps Diplomatique locally, sending in a few SAS / SF and some Police Assisters on a low key basis and putting USAid or DFID to work BEFORE one needs to send the Army in. Thus hopefully to preclude having to do so.

Once you send in the Armies, the potential for escalation is significant, that for war almost assured. Armies break things. If they do that well (and they are worthless if they do not), they'll almost certainly do the foreign internal development thing poorly for a number of practical reasons.

Armies need to be trained to and able to do that mission, no question -- and the US was quite remiss in not being so prepared eight years ago and that has cost us -- but to expect more than a marginal performance and problem free execution from any decent Armies in such missions is deluded.

So you're spot on.

Now to get the Politicians aligned... :eek: :wry:

MikeF
07-13-2009, 04:13 AM
In my experience, the intel provided by concerned citizens was rarely of much use. And even then, we never charmed them into giving up their insurgent neighbors. I had a lot of lieutenants and squad leaders looking at me all puzzled because I refused to try to recruit sources when we were out having key leader engagements and such. We had more effective means of collection, and I didn't want the locals to associate my face with an American trying to pump them for information all the time, like some kind of armed Jehovah's Witness showing up every week to harass them.

Intel, I would suggest that you change tactics. If what you're doing isn't working, adjust. Charming or not, I would suggest (without knowing enough of the situation) that the phrase "when we were out having key leader engagements" is the key to your dilemma.

If you live amoungst the populace (IW, COIN, FID, etc...), employ appropriate measures, then the populace will come to you. In the current environment, we sometimes confuse metrics and words with truth. Moreover, I rarely considered if the citizens were concerned or not. It is simply another muddled term...

Remember, on the ground level, in the most simplest form, these conflicts have nothing to do with us. You should never have to sell your job. At times, you may have to force it on others, but you should never try to charm. If you have an AO, then the people should determine you to be the key leader, not vice-versa.

I never went door to door trying to sell anything. My clients came to me. And yes, I'm fully aware of our other means of collection, but living on a FOB or airfield hanger waiting for the silver bullet is not the answer.

v/r

Mike

William F. Owen
07-13-2009, 05:16 AM
Sorry to be reductionist again, but I can't help feeling that the argument is best described as follows,


Route A: Kill-capture/Focus on the enemy in order to win "hearts and minds"
Route B: Win hearts and minds in order to "defeat the insurgency."


Now I suspect the right path is 60% A with 40% B, but let's not quibble. That is going to be dependant on context. ...but the problem here is What is hearts and minds?

We keep referring to it like it is a specific definable set of actions. It is not. That is the problem. It's actually a huge raft of some quite good and some very bad ideas, that is waved around as if it is the solution to the problem. Clearly it is not, and never has been.

I am not against providing humanitarian aid. In fact I consider it essential. Restoring and maintaining electricity and sanitation is also something that needs to be done. Beyond that, I think context and specifics becomes extremely critical.

MikeF
07-13-2009, 05:28 AM
Sorry to be reductionist again, but I can't help feeling that the argument is best described as follows,


Route A: Kill-capture/Focus on the enemy in order to win "hearts and minds"
Route B: Win hearts and minds in order to "defeat the insurgency."


Now I suspect the right path is 60% A with 40% B, but let's not quibble. That is going to be dependant on context. ...but the problem here is What is hearts and minds?

We keep referring to it like it is a specific definable set of actions. It is not. That is the problem. It's actually a huge raft of some quite good and some very bad ideas, that is waved around as if it is the solution to the problem. Clearly it is not, and never has been.

I am not against providing humanitarian aid. In fact I consider it essential. Restoring and maintaining electricity and sanitation is also something that needs to be done. Beyond that, I think context and specifics becomes extremely critical.

Wilf, I'm working my way through this post as I continue to try to understand what the hell Templar was suggesting....

Considering at times that I cannot even control or win my own heart and mind, I would question...

Consider the US at this point...Has Obama won the hearts and minds of every US citizen? Nope. Did GW Bush, Clinton, or Bush Sr.? Nope. But, by and large, US citizens do not revolt in political grievances.

So, let's not quibble.

I wish that I had some an answers, but I don't.

At times, I just follow orders :D

I'll add one point...A classmate of mine from USMA that now has a best-selling book suggesting that if we would only support good governance in Afghanistan then we could have success....My response is, "Duh, if they had good governance, we would never have been there in the first place."

I wish it were that simple.

v/r

Mike

William F. Owen
07-13-2009, 05:32 AM
Consider the US at this point...Has Obama won the hearts and minds of every US citizen? Nope. Did GW Bush, Clinton, or Bush Sr.? Nope.


Well you just hit the nail on the head. The whole issue of attempting to "win popular support" reduces military activity to a political election campaign, where one side will kill you, if you vote for the wrong one, in their eyes.

Considering Politicians, cannot predict what gets them elected, why do we choose to go down that path?

MikeF
07-13-2009, 05:53 AM
Well you just hit the nail on the head. The whole issue of attempting to "win popular support" reduces military activity to a political election campaign, where one side will kill you, if you vote for the wrong one, in their eyes.

Considering Politicians, cannot predict what gets them elected, why do we choose to go down that path?

I wish I knew the answer...On the eve of my fifth deployment, I'm reading intently on others views and trying to consider COIN, FID, IW, SFA, and such so that I may prove to be a good advisor.

C'mon Wilf, if you haven't learned anything from American soldiers, you must have learned that we typically do the opposite of what our doctrine calls for.:D

As far as the strategic level/national foreign policy goes, I would suggest that it is part of our Prodestant Manifest Destiny Roots...

v/r

Mike

William F. Owen
07-13-2009, 07:37 AM
My Talmud "quote for the day" came up with,
"He that is gentle to the brutal will end up being brutal to the gentle."
I'm not religious but I am loathed to dismiss any advice from this source. ;)

goesh
07-13-2009, 03:57 PM
- let them grow beards and lighten the damn combat load for starters - you come passing through with a huge load of unknown goods on the back of a man and you get curiosity and apprehension at the same time, it pulls attention away from the man as a human - you wonder what is in the pack and not how many kids he has at home - they are used to armed men but not beardless ones - Im reminded of this Viking movie I saw one time, a young man comes down river to call for help, he appears out of the fog so he has to stand around on the shore for most of a day while it is decided if he is a human or a spirit - first contacts in the Amazon are like that too - they gotta check you out and cross cultural bonds have to be seen and felt, not talked about - the fact that they've set the Marines to drinking tea as well as doing combat duty mandates some fundamental changes at a very basic level

marct
07-13-2009, 03:59 PM
Hi Mike,


I agree with many of your thoughts, and I suppose that on the strategic level (my weakness), our analysis is akin to trying to play historian to present day actions.

That's a pretty good description :wry:. I think that part of it is the stance we take to looking at these conflicts. I'm one of those wacky people who thinks that 100 years is "short term", so I do tend to almost automatically look at the conflicts in a very long-range perspective compared with other people.


No doubt, our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq will redefine modern warfare- call it hybrid, irregular or whatever. In some ways, we'll simply see how it plays out.

LOLOL - only if they haven't read Roman history :D! This type of intervention was incredibly common during both the late Republic and well up into the 4th century. It's also not really "new" in modern warfare either - take a look at how the British operated in India in the 19th century for modern examples.


Paradoxically, I honestly believe that there is nothing new under the sun. War is war, and our continued efforts to redefine FID into SFA, COIN into IW, and differentiate between big and small wars, regular and irregular wars, only continues to muddy the waters; however, this distinction or semantics maybe a result of the continued evolution of our economies and modern nation-state system/governance. I suppose it is a chicken and an egg type debate.

I really dislike the "war is war" meme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme); I'm wary of it when it is expressed as an aphorism but, at least when it's done by someone like Wilf or Gian I know that they are using it that way.

Personally, I believe that semantics is crucial and I find the negative connotations associated with it to be one of the most dangerous memes around. Semantics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics) is the study of meaning and is closely associated with Semiotics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics) (the study of signs and symbols or how we communicate meaning). I truly get scared when I hear people saying that meaning doesn't matter :wry:!

Let me get back to the "war is war" meme as a meme and why I have problems with it.

First, it implies that there is some specific situation that can be characterized absolutely as "war". Personally, I think that is a mistake because "war", as in the concept of a "state of war" is, actually, an inter-social convention that changes from time and place to time and place. Thus, for example, while there are analogs between warfare in ancient Greece and modern day Afghanistan, they are only analogs, not equivalencies.

Second, the reification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29) of "war" as an absolute carries with it certain implications that are very specifically focused (usually of the "total war" variety, at least nowadays). Now, I don't worry about Wilf or Gian advocating for a "total war"; what I do worry about is the meme escaping from the military discourse and being picked up by populations that don't pay the price or have the understanding - in short, politicians and nut jobs who will advocate for a total war.

This, BTW, ties back into the foray into literary criticism that kingo1rtr just engaged in. Actions have consequences, and one of the potential consequences of the war is war meme is that it erodes our societies as a whole and individuals as individuals.


Again, we'll see how it plays out. I'm cautious to accept that we can re-invent or redefine societies (particularly in a limited time frame). One of the greatest lessons that I've learned in studying small wars, emerging nations, failed and failing states, is the importance of time and patience- not a particular forte of the United States.

LOL! It is quite possible to change cultures and societies; indeed, it's almost impossible for them not to change somewhat (some of us call this the fallacy of Pristine Cultures). Re-inventing and redefining is a much harder process, although it can be done. But, while it is possible, are you prepared to pay the cost of doing so?

One of the biggest problems with wanna-be social engineers is that they try and operate against both human nature and against local cultures instead of operating with them. I have a suspicion that part of this comes out of their (highly) limited epistemological frameworks which tend to be either Utopian or linear or both. This was certainly the case in both Iraq and Afghanistan when it comes to "state building" activities :cool:.

You know, Wilf really hits the nail on the head with this comment:


Sorry to be reductionist again, but I can't help feeling that the argument is best described as follows,


Route A: Kill-capture/Focus on the enemy in order to win "hearts and minds"
Route B: Win hearts and minds in order to "defeat the insurgency."


Now I suspect the right path is 60% A with 40% B, but let's not quibble. That is going to be dependant on context. ...but the problem here is What is hearts and minds?

We keep referring to it like it is a specific definable set of actions. It is not. That is the problem. It's actually a huge raft of some quite good and some very bad ideas, that is waved around as if it is the solution to the problem. Clearly it is not, and never has been.

Absolutely, bang-on, correct!!!!!

"Hearts and Minds" is as objectively meaningless as the term "war": both require a specific context and meaning is assigned contextually.

This is getting to something I'm working on right now which is the idea that "war" is a sub-set of the concept of "conflict" which, IMO, is where we should ground our terminological debates. "War" changes its form throught time and space, but conflict remains fairly constant. The key, here, is in how social groups resolve / contain / play out conflict.

Anyway, that's my ramblings for the nonce.....

Cheers,

Marc

Ken White
07-13-2009, 04:17 PM
- let them grow beards and lighten the damn combat load for starters.The problem with beards is that most westerners don't wear beards so when the Afghans see those with beards they know they're not Afghans by the way they walk so they call them 'Jews' on the basis that only Afghans and Jews are bearded; most westerners nowadays are not.

It's not a pejorative with them -- but it is an indicator that it's a superficial trick of little real value.

Bob's World
07-13-2009, 05:50 PM
Just one comment on "hearts and minds," as many seem to take very black and white/absolutist positions on these things that are rarely either one:

Winning the "hearts and minds" of the populace is every bit as valid, and very similar to "earning the respect of ones men."

Every leader understands that it is his goal to ultimately earn such a status among his men, but any leader who sets out upon a course of action designed solely to garner such respect will quickly be identifed as a fraud by those same men. Instead, the good leader goes about his duty in a professional competent manner, not doing anything to conciously dimenish his status in the eyes of his men.

Everyone understands this, yet for some reason aren't applying the same logic to "hearts and minds." Its how I look at it, so hopefully this helps. This is in the realm of the art of war, so there is no checklist or TTP for success; just understand that it is important and try to do the right thing.

Oh, and like respect, it is far easier to lose than gain.

IntelTrooper
07-13-2009, 07:01 PM
The problem with beards is that most westerners don't wear beards so when the Afghans see those with beards they know they're not Afghans by the way they walk so they call them 'Jews' on the basis that only Afghans and Jews are bearded; most westerners nowadays are not.

It's not a pejorative with them -- but it is an indicator that it's a superficial trick of little real value.
Uh oh... I'm about to disagree with Ken... check The Weather Channel for sub-terranean temperatures!

The beards, in my experience, do make a subtle difference but I don't think necessarily they should be proliferated across the board. I think anyone who is required to work closely with locals (ETT mentors, SF, PsyOps, CA, intel) should have the option to grow them, and possibly even maneuver commanders and others who will be in a lot of shuras and talking to elders. When I would accompany an American officer into a shura, or KLE, or out on patrols, people would tend to gravitate towards me and ignore the American trying to conduct the meeting (of course, that would usually change once free stuff started getting handed out).

As far as getting identified as Jews, that might be area-specific. I once had some children tell me I was an Afghan, even though I couldn't speak the language, and tell my clean-shaven interpreter that he was the American. I'm sure the vast, vast majority knew we were Americans but in my area, bearded Americans had a reputation of being smarter, more approachable, and able to get things done (probably thanks to SF more than anything else).

Ken White
07-13-2009, 07:40 PM
Occasionally -- just to keep everyone else alert ;) *

I'm sure you're correct on the beards, my comment was aimed at the generic US (or western ) Troopie. On some SF/CA etc. guys, the rapport issue makes sense -- for most troops traveling about in HMMWVs or bigger trucks and rarely interfacing with Afghans, it makes far less sense to go with a beard. Still, I firmly believe that in the field uniformity and personal cleanliness are vastly overrated, so I agree -- leave it up to the individual.

* For metric lovers; the empirical mean is 27.2 purposeful misdirections and 49.8 actual errors per day. Those figure are, respectively, 74.23 % and 9.97% of the national averages (in 2007, the last year for which all figures are available).

IntelTrooper
07-13-2009, 08:30 PM
I'm sure you're correct on the beards, my comment was aimed at the generic US (or western ) Troopie. On some SF/CA etc. guys, the rapport issue makes sense -- for most troops traveling about in HMMWVs or bigger trucks and rarely interfacing with Afghans, it makes far less sense to go with a beard.
In that case, I was wrong about disagreeing with you. We were actually in agreement. That would be my mistake for the day. :p

Ken White
07-13-2009, 09:30 PM
In that case, I was wrong about disagreeing with you. We were actually in agreement. That would be my mistake for the day. :pI didn't state it all clearly in an effort to save pixels. :(

(Don't give a dummy who can't say what he means in 55,000 words a day any slack! Save pixels my @$7 -- laziness, truth be known!!! :D )

goesh
07-13-2009, 11:53 PM
I recall the fit some brass had when SFers were in jeans and sporting beards riding horses going after enemies - there is enough discipline in the ranks for it not to get out of hand

Ken White
07-14-2009, 12:11 AM
so many little things on which to focus and waste time and effort... :eek:

I can see it now; "Yes, Schwartschronz, you can wear a beard but where's your reflective belt and are those boots are on the CentCom approved list?" :rolleyes:

Umar Al-Mokhtār
07-14-2009, 01:19 AM
that 64.3% of all statistics are simply made up. :p

Ken White
07-14-2009, 01:53 AM
So I'm wrong again, I used two decimals instead of rounding it up and coulda sworn it was 64.24 (plus, I transposed two numbers, I really thought it was 63.4). Sigh. Two more errors for today. That's 27 and it's only 2100 here...:(

I probably ought to get some Blanton's and sip a bit... :cool:

Umar Al-Mokhtār
07-14-2009, 02:04 AM
shall set you free!

I'm on a bit of a Bacardi binge as of late, having just returned from R&R in PR. Which is why I am limiting myself to lurking, learning, and the occaisional snarky comment. :wry:

Returning to work has certainly impacted my enjoyment of breakfast Mojitos. :cool:

Ken White
07-14-2009, 02:29 AM
Not rum; that's one of them meta-fors... ;)

Factoid Department; the Ft. Buchanan class VI store for years kept the the highest annual sale total of all in the DoD Club system by a big percentage...

Ken White
07-14-2009, 02:35 AM
Sheesh. This is flipping criminal. Some heads should roll... :mad:

William F. Owen
07-14-2009, 04:06 AM
Winning the "hearts and minds" of the populace is every bit as valid, and very similar to "earning the respect of ones men."


I would suggest that it is not that simple. Earning the respect of your men, is something you must do. It's hard/impossible to live without it.

Templar never said "win hearts and minds". He said that success "lay in the hearts and minds." Heart and minds does not describe a definitive set of actions or effects. More over, winning hearts and minds is not, and can never be a military contribution to strategy. The military contribution can only be better security.

Protect their asses and their hearts and minds will follow?

Ron Humphrey
07-14-2009, 04:21 AM
I would suggest that it is not that simple. Earning the respect of your men, is something you must do. It's hard/impossible to live without it.

Templar never said "win hearts and minds". He said that success "lay in the hearts and minds." Heart and minds does not describe a definitive set of actions or effects. More over, winning hearts and minds is not, and can never be a military contribution to strategy. The military contribution can only be better security.

Protect their asses and their hearts and minds will follow?

Would the following be a closer approximation of what the "hearts and minds" thing really looks like

For politicians -How to win friends and influence people

For soldiers how to minimize enemies and gain support to kill the irreconcilable s

slapout9
07-14-2009, 04:30 AM
Sheesh. This is flipping criminal. Some heads should roll... :mad:

Part of that Clear..Hold and Build theory. Gotta carry a lot of stuff to do that:D

goesh
07-14-2009, 04:57 AM
- got to be doctored up to impress some hillbilly woman back home how tough her man is - he is 1 click out from base camp, a gunship is up and in the vacinity but he is in deep sh** for leaving the stove behind, no hot tea with the locals because Joe Grunt F'd up again and he'll get reamed because the load ain't blending in with that green shrub stuff either

Ken White
07-14-2009, 05:30 AM
Get to carry all the Batteries... :D

Roger on the Stove -- dunno how I missed that. :confused: :wry:

William F. Owen
07-14-2009, 05:53 AM
Would the following be a closer approximation of what the "hearts and minds" thing really looks like

For politicians -How to win friends and influence people

For soldiers how to minimize enemies and gain support to kill the irreconcilable s
That's not perfect, but it's close to good enough!

MikeF
07-15-2009, 02:13 AM
Just one comment on "hearts and minds," as many seem to take very black and white/absolutist positions on these things that are rarely either one:

Winning the "hearts and minds" of the populace is every bit as valid, and very similar to "earning the respect of ones men."

Every leader understands that it is his goal to ultimately earn such a status among his men, but any leader who sets out upon a course of action designed solely to garner such respect will quickly be identifed as a fraud by those same men. Instead, the good leader goes about his duty in a professional competent manner, not doing anything to conciously dimenish his status in the eyes of his men.

Everyone understands this, yet for some reason aren't applying the same logic to "hearts and minds." Its how I look at it, so hopefully this helps. This is in the realm of the art of war, so there is no checklist or TTP for success; just understand that it is important and try to do the right thing.

Oh, and like respect, it is far easier to lose than gain.

COL Jones, sir, can you provide one example of when American intervention won the hearts and minds of the local populace?

v/r

Mike

davidbfpo
07-15-2009, 11:17 AM
The intervention in 1983 is still remembered on the island and from several visits appreciated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada

davidbfpo

Bob's World
07-15-2009, 11:56 AM
COL Jones, sir, can you provide one example of when American intervention won the hearts and minds of the local populace?

v/r

Mike

...because doing it right just isn't good TV.

I haven't been to Columbia personally, but that may be one good example. I have been to the Southern Philippines, and that is one as well. Granted, there is always (and should be) a general concern by any populace of a foreign military presence in their country, and that always gets a lot of press; but out on the ground the people of the Philippines were not only grateful for the increased security and greater access to medical support, school infrastructure, etc that came with the Americans (though always with the Philippine gov't, both national and local out front); but more importantly in the changes in how the governmental forces began treating their own populace and conducting such operations as well. They treated the people with greater respect and found their jobs got easier and less dangerous as they did so. I guess they garnered their own hearts and minds as well.

As a 2LT clanking around the West German countryside vic the Chech and East German borders I always met extremely grateful locals (less so when one went into big cites further from the border). Again, we provided a service the populace desired (not being Soviet citizens), and did so in a manner that treated them with respect to their culture, laws, property and persons.

I guess a couple of themes are emerging: Enabled a service the populace actually needs; and do so in a respectful fashion.

Oh yeah, lest I forget. Desert Storm. Kuwaitis remain grateful for the return of their nation and the opportunity to avenge the losses they suffered in that invasion by Iraq.

If you start off bad (like Iraq) its damn hard to get it on track; or even if you start of good (like Afghanistan), but then shift to focusing on your own interests (hunting bad guys)over the interests and at the expense of the local populace, you can quickly get off track.

Mark O'Neill
07-15-2009, 01:45 PM
have missed what the key take-away of the article was ... that security is the name of the game that trumps all others ... killing, aid etc etc.

I have served with the author and have heard his views more than a few times . I can assure you that Justin Kelly is not at all into simplistic / reductionist positions such as those that have been characterised in the thread.

The final observation that I would make is with the respect to the journal that the article was published in. Quadrant might farily be regarded as Australia's journal of the conservative right. It would be bloddy amazing if they published any article advocating 'warm and fluffy' approaches to insurgency conflict (or anything else for that matter). I suspect that the average Quadrant reader might regard Dick Cheney as being a tad too liberal....

Regards,

Mark

slapout9
07-15-2009, 01:56 PM
couple of themes are emerging: Enabled a service the populace actually needs; and do so in a respectful fashion.


That is an interesting way to look at it and good one......and we should make a profit for doing it.


I agree about Columbia, although it is still a work in progress.

BW: your thoughts on Los Pepes' as a good or bad way to fight?

Danny
07-15-2009, 03:26 PM
Ken White said:

"I'm shy ..."

Put the bottle down and back away, Ken. You've had too much to drink (and in the middle of the day, no doubt).

:D

Ken White
07-15-2009, 04:44 PM
As for the bourbon, as a Kentuckian in Exile, I'm merely supporting home State industry, no other motive...

You'll be pleased to know that as an honorary Tar Heel (in all things except Basketball) I also try to get Barbecue from Wilson when anyone is passing through... ;)

William F. Owen
07-16-2009, 04:47 AM
...have missed what the key take-away of the article was ... that security is the name of the game that trumps all others ... killing, aid etc etc.
I don't think anyone has missed that. My opinion has always been that security is best served by the effective use of force, to break the enemies will. How that is best done is context specific.


I can assure you that Justin Kelly is not at all into simplistic / reductionist positions such as those that have been characterised in the thread.
I think the best we can hope for is that all commenting here, read and understood the article, and maybe watched all the videos. Justin Kelly was at UK Staff College with a friend of mine, who is pretty hard to impress, but was so by Kelly!

...but having read the article and watched the videos, I think he lays out the ground for some serious re-thinking of the "New COIN" stuff that has become all the rage in recent years.

Bob's World
07-16-2009, 12:14 PM
That is an interesting way to look at it and good one......and we should make a profit for doing it.


I agree about Columbia, although it is still a work in progress.

BW: your thoughts on Los Pepes' as a good or bad way to fight?

Slap, my knowledge of Los Pepes' is Wikipedia deep, so I really can't comment.

carl
07-18-2009, 09:12 PM
Regarding Ken's reply in post #30 to one of my posts; I never knew what it was like to be deconstructed, but now I do. I will try to pick up some of my pieces from the floor.

War is cruel, nightmarish thing. There is no one on this forum who would dispute that. None of the advocates of the approach that COIN is shorthand for have ever suggested that people are not going to die and horror won't exist. However, what concerns me about "war is war" is something that MarcT stated in a post: that this meme will be taken by people less sophisticated than the people who populate this forum and be used to justify the application of total war in a place where it shouldn't be used.

That was the point of the whole first paragraph to which you responded. Marc just stated it much better than I. Of course body count ratios are a stupid metric. I had hoped that was obvious within the context of the paragraph, but it wasn't so I didn't write it well enough.

You are right that I misread what you said and my reply was nonsense because of it. However, even if there were no insurgencies defeated that resulted in a net benefit to the big power involved 20 years post (I think there have been), that ignores what benefits may have accrued to the big power at the 5, 10 and 15 year point. Those may have been substantial.

I don't understand why COIN oriented training leads to the belief that an opponent is deserving of better treatment than any other opponent. If they are fighting you, you destroy them and if they have surrendered, you treat them decently as in any other conflict. Why would there be hesitation to act against the opponent? If there was, wouldn't that be a result of improper training and leadership?

In Afghan, we need to do what will work, be it called, war, COIN, FID, anti-partisan ops, pacification or whatever. Sometimes I think this fussing about what it is exactly gets in the way. In any event, people will suffer and die and souls will be broken.

I'll see your Sherman and raise you a Forrest: "War is fighting and fighting is killing."

Ken White
07-18-2009, 10:28 PM
However, what concerns me about "war is war" is something that MarcT stated in a post: that this meme will be taken by people less sophisticated than the people who populate this forum and be used to justify the application of total war in a place where it shouldn't be used.Fallacious argument IMO; that's alway's been true. It was before CvC or anyone else said or wrote it and will be true in the future of people who have not seen or heard it. People, amazingly enough, even advocate small wars where they shouldn't be used... :wry:
However, even if there were no insurgencies defeated that resulted in a net benefit to the big power involved 20 years post (I think there have been), that ignores what benefits may have accrued to the big power at the 5, 10 and 15 year point. Those may have been substantial.And they are? One years, five years to any limit; name a few.
I don't understand why COIN oriented training leads to the belief that an opponent is deserving of better treatment than any other opponent. If they are fighting you, you destroy them and if they have surrendered, you treat them decently as in any other conflict. Why would there be hesitation to act against the opponent? If there was, wouldn't that be a result of improper training and leadership?Yes, it would be the result of improper training that over emphasizes the 'hearts and mind' aspects of war in a COIN context. That is done by poor trainers to teach people not to be trigger happy. A better solution is to train fire control and fire discipline which we do not do at all well. We have a dangerous tendency to substitute bad and inappropriate but easy to do training in an attempt to compensate for poor training that is difficult or expensive. Even in the most benign 'COIN' (I am really beginning to dislike that term...) environment, loss of the combat edge is dangerous and excessive (note that word) concern for others can lead to such loss. As I'm afraid we'll see in Iraq before long. :mad:
Sometimes I think this fussing about what it is exactly gets in the way.It's not fussing, it's just disagreement about ways and means and over terms that don't lead people astray. You and others worry about "war is war." I don't I worry about "COIN tactics," you and other do not. No real right or wrong there, just differences of opinion. That should be okay. the same kinds of conversations take place in bars, schools, barracks and in the field all over the world...
In any event, people will suffer and die and souls will be broken...

I'll see your Sherman and raise you a Forrest: "War is fighting and fighting is killing."Which way are you going to go, With Forest or worrying about suffering? :D

Can't have it both ways. Don't want suffering and dieing, don't go to war. Go -- and that will happen. Go and do it half baked by being excessively nice (as opposed to being as decent as is sensible) and it will take far longer and extend the suffering and dieing to more people including civilians. :o

There is no nice way...

carl
07-19-2009, 10:38 PM
Ken:

the library will close in a little while so I will just name a few conflicts where assistance benefited the assistor.

Philippines-any time from 1945 on
El Salvador
Oman
Malaysia
Greece
Congo in the 60s
South Korea

As for the future, China has helped Sudan and Sri Lanka and we will see if China benefits.

A thought, to be researched, maybe include Algeria in the 90s? I doubt if we helped the Algerians but I would be surprised if the French did not.

Perhaps we should get back to basics on the terminology and go with Small Wars. That covers it all and allows for range of options.

Ken White
07-20-2009, 01:51 AM
of the question:

""The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved."

Note the wording. My contention is that no major power obtained a net benefit (outcome versus all costs) from participating in a COIN action."" (emphasis added / kw)


...so I will just name a few conflicts where assistance benefited the assistor.

Philippines-any time from 1945 on
El Salvador
Oman
Malaysia
Greece
Congo in the 60s
South KoreaYou can probably leave Korea off the list as the insurgency factor was so minor as to be non-existent. I look forward to your comparison of costs and benefits.
Perhaps we should get back to basics on the terminology and go with Small Wars. That covers it all and allows for range of options.Perhaps. My point is that if the participation is limited, there may be a net benefit (Philippines post 45, El Salvador, Greece [?], Oman). If it is a large commitment, it is not (Malaysia). I'll forego the Congo; went there briefly in the 60. We and the French intervened (Belgium is not a major power) but even though the effort was small, I'm not sure I've ever seen an ounce on net benefit... :wry:

Umar Al-Mokhtār
07-20-2009, 03:54 PM
Sir Gerald actually stated "The answer [to the uprising] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people." The later narrowing and paraphrasing of the quote to “winning” hearts and minds has taken on meaning no doubt quite unintended from Templer’s original utterance, particularly absent the preparatory phrase. Looking at the entire statement as it stands, coupled with its context, it seems to me that Templer meant that the Emergency would only be won when the populace (and in particular the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia) decided they would no longer support the MPLA and would support the Malaysian government and that a specific number of troops in the jungle would not necessarily make that happen. While one could say it rings true of most insurgencies, the supreme difficulty is in the COIN forces figuring out exactly what is required to affect that shift in loyalty.

I feel it is even more of a gross oversimplification of Templer’s thoughts on the topic by the addition of the term “winning,” as if COIN was a sporting event. I would posit a government does not really “win” hearts and minds but instead must continually work to adapt itself to maintain itself in the good graces of the people. Resulting to severe oversimplifications of complex issues often results in the missing of valuable points in the discussion.

COIN fans also sometimes gloss over the successful insurgencies, although one could posit even some of the successful ones couldn't stand the test of time: Nicaragua being a case in point. Much of this comes from our habit of taking the short view to make a point, rather than the long view.

History is funny like that. :D

carl
07-20-2009, 11:01 PM
Ken:

I feel like I am trying to hit a moving target. You said name 1 example of participation benefiting the big power. I named, as you agreed, at least 4. It was being "involved" and now it is "participating". I am getting confused.

I would also submit that a Malaysia 50 years on that is a relatively peaceful and stable state with a fairly good economy is of net benefit to Great Britain, though the word "net" will make for endless argument.

This quote

"Which way are you going to go, With Forest or worrying about suffering?

Can't have it both ways. Don't want suffering and dieing, don't go to war. Go -- and that will happen. Go and do it half baked by being excessively nice (as opposed to being as decent as is sensible) and it will take far longer and extend the suffering and dieing to more people including civilians."

is pretty close to being a fallacy of the false alternative. Within the context of this thread, none, none of those who have objected to the "war is war" meme have even hinted that violence and suffering isn't going to go hand in hand with the small war. Nobody. The quote above almost sounds like a "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" kind of thing. I absolutely know you do not advocate that. But the way it is presented it is almost a pacifism vs. mass murder kind of thing.

I don't believe anybody has advocated being "excessively nice" to a Talib group moving down a valley. Destroy them. Kilcullen, the high priest, has always said the incorrigible must be killed. What people have suggested is that maybe on occasion you should not drop a JDAM on the compound because you might kill a lot of the wrong people. That isn't being "excessively nice" to the Talibs, that is being decent to the civilians, which is sensible.

I think also we are going to the same place, by the same path even, but without seeing each other. All your parenthetical statements in this thread, when taken together, make a pretty good outline of how a small war should be fought.

George L. Singleton
07-21-2009, 12:09 AM
War is total, even "small wars."

If you know you have a high value target with others around, my view is the others around are either henchmen and women, and/or human shields.

I would hope we would not make the same stupid mistake that happened under Pres. Clinton and fail to shoot when the target is there!

IntelTrooper
07-21-2009, 12:10 AM
I don't believe anybody has advocated being "excessively nice" to a Talib group moving down a valley. Destroy them.
What if we just ignore them? Or better yet, frighten them away like so many mice using illum (ala 3-1 BCT)?

Sorry, that was rhetorical. Return to your regularly scheduled discussion. :)

Ken White
07-21-2009, 01:03 AM
I feel like I am trying to hit a moving target. You said name 1 example of participation benefiting the big power. I named, as you agreed, at least 4. It was being "involved" and now it is "participating". I am getting confused.Here's the first query: ""The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved. *
Last edited by Ken White; 1 Week Ago at 12:32 AM. Reason: Removed an extraneous 'not' and added 'to be a net' at the *""

Here's the second:""The COIN fans are fond of telling us of insurgencies defeated. Name me one that has 20 or more years later proven to be a net benefit the major power involved."

Note the wording. My contention is that no major power obtained a net benefit (outcome versus all costs) from participating in a COIN action.""

Involved was used twice, once in the initial question, once in the follow-on -- participating only once in my explanation of why the question was asked. Not in the question(s), no intent to move goal posts.

Your list essentially made the point I was trying to make, to wit: ""Perhaps. My point is that if the participation is limited, there may be a net benefit (Philippines post 45, El Salvador, Greece [?], Oman). If it is a large commitment, it is not (Malaysia)."" You can substitute 'involvement' for 'participation' there with no change in meaning or result.
I would also submit that a Malaysia 50 years on that is a relatively peaceful and stable state with a fairly good economy is of net benefit to Great Britain, though the word "net" will make for endless argument.Yes, it will -- plus it would be difficult to determine the total costs. That will always be true and the answer will most often lie in the mind of the beholder. My overall point was and is that such involvement is costly, rarely produces a measurable benefit in relation to costs and thus, simply, such involvement should be very carefully weighed.
...is pretty close to being a fallacy of the false alternative...But the way it is presented it is almost a pacifism vs. mass murder kind of thing.I obviously didn't see it a false alternative, merely trying to point out that your Forrest quote didn't so much trump my Sherman quote as it did your own desire for more 'COIN centric' effort as if -- you did not say this but I, perhaps wrongly, inferred it -- that would result in less mayhem; a nicer war, so to speak. Any idea of making war nice is, IMO, dangerous. Even thinking that the right techniques can make it a little better is fallacious all too often.
I don't believe anybody has advocated being "excessively nice" to a Talib group moving down a valley...That isn't being "excessively nice" to the Talibs, that is being decent to the civilians, which is sensible.True -- and my points have been that the 'COIN' thing is overblown on that score, that our failure to train adequately is not going to be rectified by applying training to fix that aspect of military behavior and that belief in 'COIN' efforts is a dangerous fallacy. Every Army needs to know how to do them; no country should seek them.
I think also we are going to the same place, by the same path even, but without seeing each other. All your parenthetical statements in this thread, when taken together, make a pretty good outline of how a small war should be fought.Probably true. What set me off was this:
The best intel to weed out the bad guys comes from the people in the village or the neighborhood. They are not likely provide intel if they are pissed off at having been dissed by troops, had their fields ruined by a tank or having some of their relatives, friends and neighbors, near or distant, killed or maimed by an airstrike. Another disadvantage of the above listed events is their excitable teenage sons might go off and join a war band to get some revenge.That statement of the obvious disregards two things; many nineteen year old Americans are poorly raised and tend to diss anyone they can and you can't believe the fun in trying to control that if you haven't done so. Still that's a leadership problem and it doesn't occur in good units; all units will never be good, by definition half are good and half are not.

The second factor is that killing relative friends and neighbors is a fact of war; again, good units try to avoid that.

In both cases, the good unit factor is true and 'COIN' training in large measures is no indicator of improvement. Thus, your paragraph that followed the above:
The advantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to highlight the disadvantages of making the locals mad at you.Shows the flaw that I was probably outsmarting myself by trying to get to in a roundabout way:

-- Excessively COIN centric thinking does far more harm than good. --

Aside from lulling national policymakers into believing they can ignore problem nations to concentrate on domestic priorities because the Army can fix it if it blows up, in the Armed Forces it covers other more significant training shortfalls and lulls people who should know better into thinking "this will all work out okay if we just do it right..."

Teaching COIN centric TTP will not make those bad to mediocre units better. Better training in the basics of the trade will make them a little better and improved selection of combat leaders versus 'whoever's turn it happens to be' will make them a lot better. COIN centric thinking only masks deeper problems and for that reason, it merits far more skepticism than it draws.The COIN lovers, civilian and military, believe that war can be made to accomplish social change -- it will but rarely in the way the arbiters of such change want or expect.

I can paraphrase you: The disadvantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to hide the advantages of not making the locals mad at you -- by staying out of their country. It almost never does work out right...

Because, ala Billy Sherman, Nathan B. and Ken White, you surely will hack off and kill a bunch of the locals -- no matter how nice you are.

Surferbeetle
07-21-2009, 04:11 AM
-- Excessively COIN centric thinking does far more harm than good. --

Aside from lulling national policymakers into believing they can ignore problem nations to concentrate on domestic priorities because the Army can fix it if it blows up, in the Armed Forces it covers other more significant training shortfalls and lulls people who should know better into thinking "this will all work out okay if we just do it right..."

Teaching COIN centric TTP will not make those bad to mediocre units better. Better training in the basics of the trade will make them a little better and improved selection of combat leaders versus 'whoever's turn it happens to be' will make them a lot better. COIN centric thinking only masks deeper problems and for that reason, it merits far more skepticism than it draws.The COIN lovers, civilian and military, believe that war can be made to accomplish social change -- it will but rarely in the way the arbiters of such change want or expect.

I can paraphrase you: The disadvantage of COINdinistada is that it tends to hide the advantages of not making the locals mad at you -- by staying out of their country. It almost never does work out right...

Because, ala Billy Sherman, Nathan B. and Ken White, you surely will hack off and kill a bunch of the locals -- no matter how nice you are.

From tonight's Der Spiegel:



Afghanen und Bundeswehr starten Großoperation gegen Taliban (http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,637197,00.html)

Von Matthias Gebauer und Shoib Najafizada

Vor der Wahl hat Afghanistans Militär mit Hilfe der Bundeswehr eine Offensive gegen die Taliban gestartet. Bei der Mission setzen die deutschen Streitkräfte auch Panzer ein. Die Lage ist angespannt: Das Camp der Bundeswehr wurde mit Raketen beschossen, weitere Angriffe werden erwartet.

My translation...

Afghanis and the Bundeswehr begin large operation against the Taliban

By Matthias Gebauer and Shoib Najafizada

Before the election Afghanistan’s Military with help from the Bundeswehr have started an offensive against the Taliban. As part of the mission the German forces are also employing(placing) tanks. The situation is tense: The Bundeswehr camp has been rocketed and additional attacks are expected.

Ken White
07-21-2009, 04:17 AM
your quote of my comments and the Der Spiegel report. :confused:

However, since you posted them, I'm sure there is one. You keep forgetting I'm old and slow...

Surferbeetle
07-21-2009, 04:55 AM
...I'll buy the older bit...not so sure about the slow. :wry:

The other day in a similar thread we had covered the 'American' vs. 'European' approaches and I had noted that it appeared that adapting to the requirements of the battlefield in Afghanistan is causing a certain amount of convergence between the two approaches.

I see tonight's Der Spiegel article as another datapoint point which appears to be located along a similar trendline which I observed in Iraq...judiciously applied power is respected and leads to less problems in the longer run, although it's a pretty tough balance to get things right.

I'll temper this observation with the acknowledgment that I have only researched/thought about Afghanistan semi-seriously over the last year or so and never been there...if you went, did you enjoy Afghanistan? Iraq was 80/20 for me with the 20 being pretty seriously crappy...here's an additional late night observation (http://gia-vuc.com/loydsmemories1.htm) ca-bubbas were part of some a-teams back in the day, didn't know that...dad brought back a montagnard crossbow for me and stories about livers...he was a tech guy who didn't bump into very many a-teams though...

Ken White
07-21-2009, 06:19 AM
...Afghanistan is causing a certain amount of convergence between the two approaches.will always cause that -- even enemies converge to an extent. People and geography affect methods and TTP. I've also long been -- and still am -- worried that the bad guys will do something really stupid in Europe and get them aroused; they haven't always been this 'peace loving'...
judiciously applied power is respected and leads to less problems in the longer run, although it's a pretty tough balance to get things right.Agree. It is very tough to get right but tolerating attacks and probes in the ME or South Asia sends a dangerous message and encourages more tests so you do have to get it right and the quicker, the better...
if you went, did you enjoy Afghanistan?Only got a far as Herat from Iran and only stayed one day so basically I don't count the 'Stan among my places observed. While in Iran, I did get to Mashhad and Zahedan a few times each, lot of Afghans there; Zahedan was the capital of Baluchistan so there were also plenty of Baluch who are hill folks like the Afghans and have many of the same attributes. I liked both of them and the Kurds. Hillbilly togetherness, I suppose. :D
ca-bubbas were part of some a-teams back in the day, didn't know that...dad brought back a montagnard crossbow for me and stories about livers...he was a tech guy who didn't bump into very many a-teams though...Yeah, varied a bit but some teams had ASA, CA, Engineer Companies, Medical Dets -- little bit of everything on occasion. Our Airplane Infantry Bn in 66 had a couple of CA guys from Strom Thurman's 360th in Columbia. Brigade I was with in 68 had a crew from California.

The guys sipping the wine reminded me that the Rice wine wasn't too bad but the Cassava wine mixed with pig or goat blood was the world's greatest hangover producer... :(

carl
07-22-2009, 07:04 PM
Ken:

I think we've arrived at the same place, or at least I got to where you were; I'm late as usual.

I can well believe the difficulty of controlling the young 19 year old gentlemen. I spent a number of years chasing them around and having to listen to them explain to me why any reasonable person would have tried beat that guy senseless so why are you arresting me. It is kind of fun to say in real life "tell it to the judge."

Ken White
07-22-2009, 07:43 PM
I spent a number of years chasing them around and having to listen to them explain to me why any reasonable person would have tried beat that guy senseless so why are you arresting me. It is kind of fun to say in real life "tell it to the judge."Sons prematurely gray from doing that... :wry:

They do have some great stories though. :D

On the thread, different approaches to the same problem can cause confusion but as long as everyone's after the same result, it usually works out. That guy who wrote the song about tomatoh and tomahto knew what he was talking about.. ;)

Not to mention I frequently get wrapped around the axle and over complicate things. :(

Be careful over there...

UrsaMaior
08-16-2009, 04:48 PM
Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." — "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."

From here it looks like some people are suggesting Arnaud Amary's approach to insurgencies. Well I would sincerely like to believe that we have left the Middle Ages FAR behind us.

BTW it is uncorrectly quoted in unnumerous occasions that Alexander has also failed to conquer Astan. He did. That part which he needed to get to India. It was called Bactria and he did so by securing one of the strongest local tribe's support. Simply by marrying the famous Roxanne.

William F. Owen
08-16-2009, 05:54 PM
Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." — "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."

From here it looks like some people are suggesting Arnaud Amary's approach to insurgencies. Well I would sincerely like to believe that we have left the Middle Ages FAR behind us.

So who do you think is suggesting this approach?

UrsaMaior
08-17-2009, 06:37 AM
I can agree with your approach, but in my limited experience collateral damage, and friendly fire (to name but two euphemisms) occurs way too often to accept it as a general guideline.


So who do you think is suggesting this approach?

OTOH I respect you too much to answer the way you asked it.

William F. Owen
08-17-2009, 06:51 AM
I can agree with your approach, but in my limited experience collateral damage, and friendly fire (to name but two euphemisms) occurs way too often to accept it as a general guideline.


So you agree with the approach, but you have doubts about the skill of those employing it? Well fair enough, but then the problem is not the approach, but the training and education needed to apply it.

My great gripe with the "POP-Coin" pose, is that the constant implication is that targeting the enemy is somehow counter-productive or useless. That is simply not true.
Clumsy, ill-thought out, irresponsible actions are counter productive and useless.
The central sub-text of POP-Coin seems to be "we are too stupid to apply force well, so let's do something else."
Now if the sub-text is actually "We protect the population, by killing the enemy," then explicitly state it.

MikeF
08-17-2009, 06:59 AM
I can agree with your approach, but in my limited experience collateral damage, and friendly fire (to name but two euphemisms) occurs way too often to accept it as a general guideline.

OTOH I respect you too much to answer the way you asked it.

UrsaMaior,

Please don't provide a drive-by answer. I appreciated your initial post, and I was awaiting your response to Wilf's question. Wilf speaks from the realities of ground combat not the utopian dreams of academic theory. He never implied killing innocent civilians.

If you have a better,realistic solution other than Wilf's CvC argument, then please present it. Thus far, you have only presented an emotion (killing is bad); you have not presented an alternative.

v/r

Mike

UrsaMaior
08-17-2009, 07:24 AM
Being an academic-to-be I dont have combat experience. Being a non-native speaker I may phrase my thoughts inappropiately.

All I was trying to say is that we should not be carried away. After a couple of decades where violence was all bad and insurgents/terrorists were always right (at least some people wanted all of us to think so) we should not think that every single person who opposes our intentions is a legal target. We have to kill the right person (who does not want to cooperate and that's an imperative) BUT not someone or horribile dictu everyone who looks or thinks similar. Yes Singh quashed the Panjab insurgency mostly by killing the medium level cadres at a higher ratio than the "movement" could replace them causing it to collapse. But he also took great care to avoid accidents and punished those who used excessive force.

Just my 0,02 EUROS ;-)

One more thing. The focal issue of our conversation is who do we consider the enemy aka legal target. In my opinion, no pun intended you Wilf think that a much broader segment of the local population is a legal target than I do.

MikeF
08-17-2009, 07:37 AM
Being an academic-to-be I dont have combat experience. Being a non-native speaker I may phrase my thoughts inappropiately.

All I was trying to say is that we should not be carried away. After a couple of decades where violence was all bad and insurgents/terrorists were always right (at least some people wanted all of us to think so) we should not think that every single person who opposes our intentions is a legal target. We have to kill the right person (who does not want to cooperate and that's an imperative) BUT not someone or horribile dictu everyone who looks or thinks similar. Yes Singh quashed the Panjab insurgency mostly by killing the medium level cadres at a higher ratio than the "movement" could replace them causing it to collapse. But he also took great care to avoid accidents and punished those who used excessive force.

Just my 0,02 EUROS ;-)

One more thing. The focal issue of our conversation is who do we consider the enemy aka legal target. In my opinion, no pun intended you Wilf think that a much broader segment of the local population is a legal target than I do.

Unfortunately, that may only be doubling up in the current financial crisis. :D I appreciate the response, and I would only add that this thread is devoted to what a military force should do within a given area of responsibility.

I think that you will find the military guys on SWJ to be the most anti-war advocates, but when we must intervene, it must be done harshly.

v/r

Mike

William F. Owen
10-11-2009, 05:28 AM
I'd urge everyone to look at this Item here:
Operational Check Fire (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/305-buikema.pdf)

I find myself in broad agreement with most if not all the observations contained in the document.
Of particular note is:

Stop all development and capacity building activities. There is no measurable relationship between these activities and strategic or operational success in the region. These capacity-building actions are largely based on a western perspective of what some think the Afghani or Pakistani populations need, likely reinforced by local government leaders who may be well-meaning or see an opportunity for increased graft and corruption with every new project. After spending billions of dollars in the region, the security and stability situation is more tenuous today than even five years ago. There is simply no value-added or return on investment; these activities serve as a distraction from accomplishing other relevant operational goals.

Bill Moore
10-11-2009, 06:58 AM
WILF, you may be right, perhaps the capacity building is a major waste of dollars and manpower (but still profitable to some contractors). The reason we're building capacity is to ultimately deny space to Al Qaeda, yet there doesn't seem to be a broad concerted effort within the ANA or Afghan Police to effectively resist AQ (or the insurgents, assuming they're actually married by network). Worse yet, the Afghan Police reportedly are as corrupt as they ever were, which is one of the reasons the Taliban came to power in the first place.

Yet if our goal is to downsize our forces while denying space/safe haven to AQ in Afghanistan, then how do you do that without building a residual security capacity with the locals? My argument isn't that it isn't needed, but rather we did it poorly.

Shifting to development, it appears that effort has also failed to date because we're promising too much and delivering too little. I think development is helpful with our efforts to undermine AQ and deny space to them on a number of levels, but it must be modest (thus delivered rapidly) and tangible to the Afghan people. The Afghan people must believe that their life is getting better (that doesn't mean an annual paid vacation to Vegas, but simply improvements in their life). Right now our credibility is on the line because we promised the make believe Wolfowitz world. One glaring example of a point of failure is that the Afghan people are reportedly turning voluntarily to the underground Taliban sharia courts to resolve issues rather than going to the local police we invested in. Call me a critic, but something seems wrong with this picture (using Ralph Peters' words).

Can't disagree with the author's quote as it stands now, but was the approach wrong or the execution of the approach?


After spending billions of dollars in the region, the security and stability situation is more tenuous today than even five years ago.

More to the point:


There is no measurable relationship between these activities and strategic or operational success in the region.

If the above activities were done correctly (assuming that is possible in Afghanistan), I would disagree with the author, but to date he seems to be right.

However, I don't find his recommendations overly helpful. He is basically saying we should ignore Pakistan's sovreignty and go after AQ. While that would probably be effective to some degree, it ignores the risks to the region at large and that the consequences may be worse than allowing AQ to rent a few caves in the FATA. If we were going to this, IMO we should have done it within the first 6 months of the 9/11 attacks, but while we may be able to rewrite history in a way that pleases us, we can't undue it. So where do we go from here? Do you really think attacking into Pakistan without Pakistan's permission will advance our position?

William F. Owen
10-11-2009, 08:00 AM
The reason we're building capacity is to ultimately deny space to Al Qaeda, yet there doesn't seem to be a broad concerted effort within the ANA or Afghan Police to effectively resist AQ (or the insurgents, assuming they're actually married by network). Worse yet, the Afghan Police reportedly are as corrupt as they ever were, which is one of the reasons the Taliban came to power in the first place.
Building Schools, hospitals and digging wells does not defeat an insurgency. What is more, there is little to no evidence that it prevents one happening.

Do insurgencies build hospitals and dig wells - yes, sometimes, very rarely and almost always in areas they have captured. No one takes ground by building - or keeps it for that matter. I understand the "theory". I just see no evidence.


Yet if our goal is to downsize our forces while denying space/safe haven to One glaring example of a point of failure is that the Afghan people are reportedly turning voluntarily to the underground Taliban sharia courts to resolve issues rather than going to the local police we invested in. Call me a critic, but something seems wrong with this picture (using Ralph Peters' words).
So before anyone builds anything, a good police forces would seem to be called for - BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE!


So where do we go from here? Do you really think attacking into Pakistan without Pakistan's permission will advance our position?
...but is not defeating AQ the strategic imperative for the US?
If so, then who care about Pakistan? The current US logic is that if NATO and the US leaves, AQ will grow again and conduct another 911. - given that as a driver, why is Pakistan's sovereignty any issue? A'Stan's sovereignty never held anyone back?

Bill Moore
10-11-2009, 08:29 AM
we had other strategic interests, and for the most part those strategic interests still persist. Is a nation only allowed to have one strategic goal? By point is that Pakistan may represent more strategic interests than simply the Al Qaeda.


If so, then who care about Pakistan? The current US logic is that if NATO and the US leaves, AQ will grow again and conduct another 911. - given that as a driver, why is Pakistan's sovereignty any issue? A'Stan's sovereignty never held anyone back?

You're the one who reminded about context, and I think there are several contexts (political, economic, geographic, regional stability, etc.) that also weigh in on the decision calculus in this case. Last time I checked Afghanistan didn't have nukes, nor did the Taliban even pretend to be a friend of America after 9/11. No one more than I wants to march into the safe havens of Pakistan, but accept there may be reasons not to up to a point, but if Pakistan fails to address the issue then we may not have a choice.


Building Schools, hospitals and digging wells does not defeat an insurgency. What is more, there is little to no evidence that it prevents one happening.

Do insurgencies build hospitals and dig wells - yes, sometimes, very rarely and almost always in areas they have captured. No one takes ground by building - or keeps it for that matter. I understand the "theory". I just see no evidence.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:0JKivQ62BXMJ:usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/NovDec07/ClaessenEngNovDec07.pdf+S.W.E.T.+and+BLOOD+AND+Dep uy&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

You may remember the 1st Place winner in the 2007 DePuy Writing Contest:

S.W.E.T. and Blood: Essential Services in the Battle between Insurgents and Counterinsurgents - Major Erik A. Claessen, Belgian Armed Forces

Is there evidence? There are definitely correlations, and you need look no further than your pest to the north and study how Hezbollah has used these civil projects to great effect. I saw this methodology used to great effect in Southern Iraq by the Shi'a and in Northern Iraq by the Kurds.

The services provided by a number of Islamist NGOs throughout the Muslim world are critical to insurgencies in at least two ways. First they displace the government by providing essential services that the government should be providing, and second they serve as a platform to recruit and mobilize the people to support the insurgency.

This is a different type of war, it is much more political in nature, so while killing is still essential, it will not win the conflict alone. If we don't provide at least a modest increase in the population's welfare, we're going to feed the insurgent's propaganda machine.


So before anyone builds anything, a good police forces would seem to be called for - BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE!

Security forces in some form or fashion as appropriate. Assuming Afghanistan will never really be a State, then maybe we just win over the tribe and they agree to provide the security? Ultimately we're after Al Qaeda, not winning the humanitarian of the year award, but in some cases it isn't just pragmatic it is essential to give the people a little love.

William F. Owen
10-11-2009, 09:48 AM
Is there evidence? There are definitely correlations, and you need look no further than your pest to the north and study how Hezbollah has used these civil projects to great effect. I saw this methodology used to great effect in Southern Iraq by the Shi'a and in Northern Iraq by the Kurds.
Also the FARC in Colombia provide a wide range of social services. - However these are only in areas they control!
As concerns Hezbollah, if you want Hezbollah social services, then you have to be potentially prepared to let them use your house as an ATGM firing point.
Provision of social services does not trump military power. It only speaks to the policy, - not the instrument.


The services provided by a number of Islamist NGOs throughout the Muslim world are critical to insurgencies in at least two ways. First they displace the government by providing essential services that the government should be providing, and second they serve as a platform to recruit and mobilize the people to support the insurgency.
Again, they are the policy. They are not the means.


This is a different type of war, it is much more political in nature, so while killing is still essential, it will not win the conflict alone. If we don't provide at least a modest increase in the population's welfare, we're going to feed the insurgent's propaganda machine.
All war is political. It's why we fight wars. We do not fight wars to provide health care or dig wells. Those things are being presented as being instrumental to policy, and as such we have to be very sure that are reaping the rewards commensurate with the effort.

Additionally, if the Talibans/bad guys hospitals, schools and wells are instrumental to their policy, do you preserve them, once you control the area?

M-A Lagrange
10-11-2009, 11:59 AM
Quote:
The services provided by a number of Islamist NGOs throughout the Muslim world are critical to insurgencies in at least two ways. First they displace the government by providing essential services that the government should be providing, and second they serve as a platform to recruit and mobilize the people to support the insurgency.

Having been working for a Muslim NGO, I would not really agree with the statement.
First you have to separate Western and Middle East Muslim NGO. And after you have to separate between the progressist ones and the non-progressist ones.

They are tools but as said Wilf, if you say yes then you have to endure the consequences…
And basically, all NGO work is undermining state responsibility and providing services that should be given by the state. Not only Muslim once. Western NGO are just patching what governments are not capable to provide. But saying so, avoiding all NGO work would lead to disaster. But thinking NGO will give you more legitimacy is a false statement.


Additionally, if the Talibans/bad guys hospitals, schools and wells are instrumental to their policy, do you preserve them, once you control the area?
There you have a simple answer: it is illegal to destroy it. Back to Geneva Convention.

William F. Owen
10-11-2009, 02:18 PM
There you have a simple answer: it is illegal to destroy it. Back to Geneva Convention.
To destroy yes. To "discontinue" or "change the use" is not. You can legitimately close down any facility.
Why allow a functional instrument of enemy policy to continue to provide service?

Obviously good judgement is required. EG: Why close down a functioning medical centre?

slapout9
10-11-2009, 03:05 PM
To destroy yes. To "discontinue" or "change the use" is not. You can legitimately close down any facility.
Why allow a functional instrument of enemy policy to continue to provide service?

Obviously good judgement is required. EG: Why close down a functioning medical centre?

And that is the very essence of the original EBO theory as it relates to the original General Systems Theory:)

M-A Lagrange
10-11-2009, 06:06 PM
To destroy yes. To "discontinue" or "change the use" is not. You can legitimately close down any facility.
Why allow a functional instrument of enemy policy to continue to provide service?

Obviously good judgement is required. EG: Why close down a functioning
medical centre?

Ok, let leave GC aside. You do not destroy it. (closing is not that much allowed). But still by disrupting it you alienate most of the population around and then you’re back to the starting point.

But what if you supply it, make it better with lower cost, extend its functionalities?
If you run it, you also control a strong point of command/recrutement (from my short experience in Lebanon). Keeping working stuff that is profitable to the population and turn it to your interrest would be much better, is it?

Return of experience from Afghanistan has shown that closing manufactures hold by ennemy did turn the population against the coalition. Before, taliban or not taliban, population was only interrested into getting incomes. The immediat effect/perseption of coalition presence has been unemployment.
Whit civilians, what you have to play with are the benefits they can earn from your presence. They will follow the one who provides the better benefits.
I bought a lot of security like this.

( Cf Zun Tsu: treat well the prisonners, they will gain your ranks. For those who like literature.;) )

William F. Owen
10-11-2009, 06:34 PM
But what if you supply it, make it better with lower cost, extend its functionalities?
If you run it, you also control a strong point of command/recrutement (from my short experience in Lebanon). Keeping working stuff that is profitable to the population and turn it to your interrest would be much better, is it?


Concur, but on the provision that it furthers my aim and benefits my policy.

Surferbeetle
10-11-2009, 08:44 PM
Building Schools, hospitals and digging wells does not defeat an insurgency. What is more, there is little to no evidence that it prevents one happening.

Do insurgencies build hospitals and dig wells - yes, sometimes, very rarely and almost always in areas they have captured. No one takes ground by building - or keeps it for that matter. I understand the "theory". I just see no evidence.

So before anyone builds anything, a good police forces would seem to be called for - BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE!

Brother Wilf,

Our area of agreement: Police/security forces are necessary to hold ground.

Our area of disagreement: Development is required to hold ground.

My thesis is that Governments remain in power by providing acceptable Government Services to their populaces. Acceptable Government Services are defined as security, basic services, economic benefits, and political representation to either the majority or key demographic factions. Insurgencies must either provide more acceptable Government Services than the Government in power does or they will fail. Neither side has the luxury of only focusing upon security services.

A year in Iraq during 03-04 and an excess of four decades spent living in various countries run by ‘functioning’ (as opposed to failed) governments able to provide basic services, economic benefits, and political representation to either the majority or key demographic factions rounds out my practical experience for this particular data point.

So much for my experience…let us look at a historical data point of interest to you and I: Israel

My armchair observation is that before and during Israel’s War of Independence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel#The_War_of_Independence:_The_civ il_war_phase) an Israeli shadow government, consisting of the Va'ad Leumi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va%27ad_Leumi), the Haganah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah), and other elements taxed its people and provided Government Services which were more acceptable than those provided by the British.


The Political Department of the JNC was responsible for relations with the Arabs, ties with the Jewish Agency and negotiations with the British government. As the yishuv grew, the JNC adopted more functions, such as education, health care and welfare services, internal defense and security matters, and organized recruitment to the British forces during World War II. In the 1940s, departments for physical training, culture and press and information were added.

The report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry issued in 1946, stated:

"The Jews have developed, under the aegis of the Jewish Agency and the JNC, a strong and tightly-woven community. There thus exists a virtual Jewish nonterritorial State with its own executive and legislative organs..."[1]

When the State of Israel was established in 1948, this departmental structure served as a basis for the government ministries. On March 2, 1948, the JNC decided to form an interim government and on May 14, 1948, (the expiration day of the British Mandate), its members gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and ratified the proclamation declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The members of the JNC formed the provisional government of the nascent State of Israel.

I do acknowledge that there is always a gap between drafting a plan and executing one, nonetheless current US FID/COIN (or the noun de jour) doctrine (operational & tactical) acknowledges the historical record and explicitly recognizes that Governments remain in power by providing acceptable Government Services to their populaces. Current US doctrine also provides adequate descriptions for developing the necessary ends, ways, and means needed to accomplish the task.

Providing appropriate and adequate resourcing and staffing to accomplish this full spectrum mission are, in my opinion, the roach parts in the schwarma. As always my position is that those who wish to accomplish this particular mission must work with and in support of the populace and power structures on the ground in the country involved in order to accomplish the mission. Limiting resourcing and staffing to that required for a stereotypical CvC/Fulda Gap/All Kinetics All The Time approach fails to address full spectrum mission requirements, and does not address the lessons provided by the Va'ad Leumi, the Haganah, and others.

Best,

Steve

Bill Moore
10-11-2009, 09:17 PM
Posted by M-A Lagrange


Having been working for a Muslim NGO, I would not really agree with the statement.
First you have to separate Western and Middle East Muslim NGO. And after you have to separate between the progressist ones and the non-progressist ones.

M-A please note I used the term Islamist NGOs. While probably far from an ideal term, we in the west general use that term to refer to radicalized or violent extremist Muslims (or more simply, but less accurately terrorists). My point is that some NGOs have the specific purpose of enabling the violent extremists through various methods such as political organization, propaganda, fund raising, radicalization process, etc. I have no issue with Muslim NGOs that legitimately want to help their fellow Muslims.

posted by Surferbeetle,
current US FID/COIN (or the noun de jour) doctrine (operational & tactical) acknowledges the historical record and explicitly recognizes that Governments remain in power by providing acceptable Government Services to their populaces.

Steve, good post, and I even agree with the portion of your post that I copied above to a point, but I think it might be a little too simplistic and may explain why we haven't done well with our efforts related to providing essential services. First we don't identify what the "essential" services really are, because culturally we're terrible listeners. Second, there is something more to be a good government than providing good services. Case in point, the North Koreans are starving, yet according to multiple sources they remain loyal to their government. The government has effectively blamed the crisis (a crisis that has been in existence for many years) on the outside world, so they're able to stroke the flames of nationalism. We assume when we go to a place like Iraq or Afghanistan and build a medical clinic we made friends and are shocked when we return and hit an IED and everyone plays dumb. I don't think your statement is wrong, just incomplete, and once we figure out how to complete it we'll get a lot closer to accomplishing our objectives. Note, when I say we, the intent is to ensure that the government we want to help is getting the credit, so I guess that is point 3, they have to build it and we need to stay in the background as much as possible. We do that well in places like the Philippines, but what I saw in Iraq is every American Officer wanted his Kodak moment next to "his" project.

Another key to success is finding a way to deflate our enlarged western egos.

Bill Moore
10-11-2009, 09:24 PM
Posted by Slapout
And that is the very essence of the original EBO theory as it relates to the original General Systems Theory

Slap, I think EBO is still a Barbie doll anyway you try to redefine her. She looks good, but she has no substance. You can keep putting different dresses on her, push up bra's, bikinis, high heeled shoes, Victoria Secret's finest lingere, etc., but she is still just a doll made of plastic. That last dress you put on her, was an attempt at a 1990s flashback, but you mis-stepped and actually had her strut down the catwalk in a 1970's dress.

The EBO style, which emerged in the 90s had nothing to do with the sosphisticated point that M-A addressed, rather it was focused on technical sensors and putting steel on target, and predicting the effect of the outcome (see all, know all, shape all). EBO gradually evolved to assuming we could accurately guess second and third order effects of human/social behavior in reaction to our interagency activities. I think that line of thought developed about the same time that Meth became the drug of choice in our universities:D

Bill Moore
10-11-2009, 09:35 PM
Posted by WILF,


Also the FARC in Colombia provide a wide range of social services. - However these are only in areas they control!

Agree 100%, thus you must agree then that we have to develop HN capacity to secure the area, since we can only control so much?


All war is political. It's why we fight wars. We do not fight wars to provide health care or dig wells. Those things are being presented as being instrumental to policy, and as such we have to be very sure that are reaping the rewards commensurate with the effort.

Hopefully this makes sense, I agree all war is fought for political purposes, but not all wars are fought using politics as a primary effort at the "tactical" level. That is perhaps the difference between irregular and regular warfare. To say all war is political is like saying all war is war, it is true, but not useful. The character of each war/conflict is different, and it is important that we understand it, or we'll likely fail to address the real threat or solve the real problem.


Additionally, if the Talibans/bad guys hospitals, schools and wells are instrumental to their policy, do you preserve them, once you control the area?

M-A's comment captured my thoughts. Looking at schools specifically, the building isn't that important, but rather who appoints the instructors and monitors their curriculum that is critical.

slapout9
10-11-2009, 10:30 PM
Posted by Slapout

Slap, I think EBO is still a Barbie doll anyway you try to redefine her. She looks good, but she has no substance. You can keep putting different dresses on her, push up bra's, bikinis, high heeled shoes, Victoria Secret's finest lingere, etc., but she is still just a doll made of plastic. That last dress you put on her, was an attempt at a 1990s flashback, but you mis-stepped and actually had her strut down the catwalk in a 1970's dress.



coffee spill.......:D:D:D:D

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 01:30 AM
M-A's point: NGO's (and military), by building wells, schools, medical clinics, actually undermines the governments we intend to support/extend unless there is a downstreaming process for them to rapidly take it over and make it work.

The more I look at this, I think that Money as a Weapon of military stability is just an openly failed medium to long-term strategy. Quick hits and low hanging fruit (and the photo op).

When we occupy a country and remove the current government, we have to recognize the limits of our ability to put something new in place. Instead, US (and probably not the military), has to learn how to jump in to support and expand existing governmental systems, Period.

If Spanish NGOs, US AID Constratcors, and US civilian-employee-assignees pressured to serve, had commandeered the US reconstruction efforts Post-WWII, we would still be there threshing it out. The first Marshall Plan phase was, to a great extent punative and explicitly involved dismantling factories, services: one characterization was that the goal was to turn Germany into a pastoral agricultural land. It was not until we gave up on that, moved to the Germanification plans, that things began to work.

If we are genuinely trying to politically outcompete Taliban affinities through extension of essential services, and the values of an alternate lifestyle, when are we really going to start?

Clear, Hold and Build without a strong development and service extension program is just Clear, Clear, Re-Clear. Having said that, actual Afghan involvement would probably not result in so many schools, health clinics, and expensive NGO projects, but more on small scale, community-supported projects---things that would add a dollar (MA's point) to somebody's pocketbook), and gradually move them a step better than last year.

Strategic patience.

Steve

Steve

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 02:24 AM
John Prado, NSC Historian, has been reading the accounts of Mac Bundy, trying to assess the decision-framework in front of the President.

In his article posted on the History News Network, he underscores how,like Vietnam, military efforts at clearing, clearing, and re-clearing are not going to result in success without a strong civilian success process to hold and build. The path of decision-making that a president must follow after an escalation decision, it seems history is suggesting, becomes very narrow and fraught with risks.

http://www.hnn.us/articles/118034.html

"In Vietnam in 1967, to return to the Johnson analogy, for some months things seemed to go well enough, except for the lack of visible military or counterinsurgency progress. But the political side of the equation did not improve. Desperate for success, President Johnson launched a PR campaign designed to showcase the supposed gains in the war. Light could be seen at the end of the tunnel intoned the American ambassador to South Vietnam. Then came the Tet Offensive and America was visibly shaken. We need not engage the argument about the true outcome at Tet to make the point that the Vietnamese adversary could carry out their country-wide initiative because the measures possible for Johnson were not ones that actually affected the adversary’s capability. And such real progress as there was could not alter the final outcome of the war, except for adding to the toll in blood and treasure.

This too is characteristic of the Afghan war today. Reconstruction and civil affairs efforts will be unable to win the hearts and minds of Afghans disgusted at the dishonesty and profligacy of the Karzai government. A plan to mobilize massive friendly forces will founder in the crevasses of Afghan politics and the reluctance of the people to take up arms. An American or NATO buildup at any level will be incapable of actually winning the battle. The Taliban enemy, safely ensconced in bases across the border in Pakistan, chooses when it wants to fight. Widely touted plans to separate factions of Taliban by paying them off, depend on the entirely unsubstantiated thesis that there are enemy groups just waiting to be bought. In short the military strategy does not affect the fulcrum that might change the balance. The best U.S. force may be able to accomplish—like Vietnam—is likely to be prolonging stalemate. And the longer that persists—worse if deterioration becomes evident—the more restricted become the options for President Obama. This is the real Afghan problem."

Surferbeetle
10-12-2009, 02:44 AM
...without a good NCO around they tend to get into trouble. :wry:


Steve, good post, and I even agree with the portion of your post that I copied above to a point, but I think it might be a little too simplistic and may explain why we haven't done well with our efforts related to providing essential services. First we don't identify what the "essential" services really are, because culturally we're terrible listeners. Second, there is something more to be a good government than providing good services. Case in point, the North Koreans are starving, yet according to multiple sources they remain loyal to their government. The government has effectively blamed the crisis (a crisis that has been in existence for many years) on the outside world, so they're able to stroke the flames of nationalism. We assume when we go to a place like Iraq or Afghanistan and build a medical clinic we made friends and are shocked when we return and hit an IED and everyone plays dumb. I don't think your statement is wrong, just incomplete, and once we figure out how to complete it we'll get a lot closer to accomplishing our objectives. Note, when I say we, the intent is to ensure that the government we want to help is getting the credit, so I guess that is point 3, they have to build it and we need to stay in the background as much as possible. We do that well in places like the Philippines, but what I saw in Iraq is every American Officer wanted his Kodak moment next to "his" project.

Another key to success is finding a way to deflate our enlarged western egos.

Bill, assessing and describing complex things accurately can be a tough gig, and I certainly do not have a lock on things. North Korea is a bit of a black box to me, with a potentially ugly succession looming. How about a quick flyby of Kurdistan, a region which I have visited, and its experiences with Advising, Insurgency, and Governance?

Kurdistan appears to be a region in which development and conflict has coexisted for some time. As I understand things Kurdistan received a boost towards autonomy from the rest of Iraq in April of 1991 with UN SC Resolution 688 (http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1991/scres91.htm) and the resulting no fly zones. UN SC Resolution 986 (http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1995/scres95.htm) and UN SC Resolution1153 (http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/background/scrsindex.html) (effective 1996 and 1998) resulted in Kurdistan receiving a legal cut of Iraq’s oil revenues and helped to fund a fair amount of development efforts. Alongside this development effort the PUK, KDP, and other Kurdish organizations fought among themselves for control as well as with and against Iraqi, Iranian, and Turkish elements using a variety of warfare methods. The US was able to mediate a fairly functional reconciliation between thePUK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_Union_of_Kurdistan) and KDP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Democratic_Party_of_Iraq) with the Washington Agreement of September 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdish_Civil_War).

During my time in Iraq I noted that Kurdish construction and engineering companies regularly pushed out into the Mosul area. My trips to Kurdistan revealed a vibrant business community, good infrastructure, a capable security force, rule of law, and visible participation in daily life by both sexes. The Kurds appear to have a concerned diaspora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_diaspora), Turkey appeared to be a major of supplier of goods to the region, and it is my understanding the Iran is another major supplier of goods. Upon my return home I have been following the KRG as it navigates the rough diplomatic and security conditions hemming it on all sides. They are making some interesting moves. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/01/iraq.kurds.oil/index.html)

From a CA-centric standpoint Kurdistan might be seen as a model for the successes associated with spending more effort on advising a Government as opposed to ‘building’ one. Both efforts require skilled and experienced folks but only advising fully relies upon local folks for success. I had a very interesting conversation with a smart, capable, and conservative GO about this particular friction point which lies between mission failure, acceptable risk, and mission success. GO’s have a lot of responsibility to juggle and are understandably looking for the sure thing; yet I contrast this with my many experiences in which I have found that local civilians are very capable of accomplishing the development mission in the right circumstances with the right support. No easy answers tonight…

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 02:58 AM
Steve:

Still struggling my way through Gareth Stansfield's latest tome:

Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of Conflict and Compromise
by Liam Anderson, Gareth Stansfield (Aug 2009)

He was with us on the UN Disputed Boundaries Team (one of eighteen equivalent experts), so his book is a digest of much of the dispute team's as-yet-unpublished research, together with his huge insights into the history of the region.

Steve

PS- Unlike him (an Exeter College Prof), all the US PRTs and civilian experts have a one year non-disclosure agreement. Tick, tick, tick.

Surferbeetle
10-12-2009, 03:10 AM
Still struggling my way through Gareth Stansfield's latest tome:

Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of Conflict and Compromise
by Liam Anderson, Gareth Stansfield (Aug 2009)

He was with us on the UN Disputed Boundaries Team (one of eighteen equivalent experts), so his book is a digest of much of the dispute team's as-yet-unpublished research, together with his huge insights into the history of the region.

Steve

PS- Unlike him (an Exeter College Prof), all the US PRTs and civilian experts have a one year non-disclosure agreement. Tick, tick, tick.

Steve,

Greatly appreciate the reference. One of the ones that I am currently working on is John J. Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (http://books.google.com/books?id=9kg3geTnQ0wC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false).

Well if you publish I'll buy a copy if you sign it. :D

Here is another thinker...

Guns Germs and Steel_1 of 3 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4008293090480628280&hl=en)

Jun 7, 2007 - 54:34
Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question: “Why is it that...


Guns Germs and Steel_2 of 3 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6846344734969027300&hl=en)

Jun 7, 2007 - 54:33
On November 15th 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy city of Cajamarca, at the heart of the Inca Empire, in Peru. They are exhausted, outnumbered and terrified – ahead of t...

Guns Germs and Steel _3 of 3 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3449100874735282191&hl=en)

Jun 7, 2007 - 54:58
So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group of people – Europeans – endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of their rivals around the world. Guns, germs an...

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 03:26 AM
Have to dust off my Morgenthau for yours.

Review talked about the UN as a frail....

I found it interesting working with the UN on many levels, but not on outcomes. Actually, before I joined their team, I read Samantha Powers' book Chasing the Flame. She may have intended to glorify SRSG De Mello, but some parts of it truly shook me to the core, and not about the HQ Bombing in Baghdad.

But, the UN's ability, as with the disputed boundary team, has an unprecedented convening power to bring the likes of Gareth and Wilfred Buchta to a conflict zone to deeply study the problems, and visit all the parties (including the surrounding countries). Our team's members were meeting with he-who-shall-not-be-named in Iraq, plus every surrounding leader, and their folks could meet with Sistani and others first hand. The initial results, as with the unpublished KRG reports, and the election snafu in Afghanistan, are almost predictably watered down, but the secondary effect of bringing these deep experts to the scene does,in fact, do something immensely positive, if only after the fact (once they publish), and the re-set they can bring to an issue in later stages.

Still scratching my head a little though.

Steve

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 03:54 AM
Steve:

"Well if you publish I'll buy a copy if you sign it."

It's called "The Mapmaker's Tale." Using the frame story method of the Arabian Nights, it tells the story of the political/administrative boundary disputes and related population and government administration issues in and around Iraq and Afghanistan, and our inability to come grasp with and address them.

In prior days, maps were the big thing that nations and military intel fought over for their intrinsic value.

Now, at least on the civilian side, it is just a fight over turf, and contracts. We couldn't get the right map in the right hands until all the agencies finished bleeding it to death for its internal merits. And by then, it is too late for whatever the long-forgotten purpose was.

We've certainly come a long way on the path to Byzantine Empire.

Not the big picture of these places, but, perhaps an interesting lesson yet to be learned.

Still, a long way from draft to final publication.

Steve

William F. Owen
10-12-2009, 05:37 AM
Brother Wilf,

Our area of agreement: Police/security forces are necessary to hold ground.

Our area of disagreement: Development is required to hold ground.
Development cannot "hold ground." It may benefit the population and that may make them support your policy, but that does not make the ground secure. Guns create swing votes. What keeps the ground secure is the Police/Security Forces.


My armchair observation is that before and during Israel’s War of Independence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel#The_War_of_Independence:_The_civ il_war_phase) an Israeli shadow government, consisting of the Va'ad Leumi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va%27ad_Leumi), the Haganah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah), and other elements taxed its people and provided Government Services which were more acceptable than those provided by the British.
....but the policy being set forth was the State of Israel. The "idea" was "act like nation, become a nation." It was very context dependant. The French Resistance never set up any hospitals, nor did the Mau-Mau, the MRPLA, or many other insurgencies. You have to be the de-facto administration to mimic an administration.

Given a specific context, social services are Why you are fighting the war. They are not How you fight the war.

William F. Owen
10-12-2009, 05:46 AM
Agree 100%, thus you must agree then that we have to develop HN capacity to secure the area, since we can only control so much?
Yes you must increase HN security forces. Absolutely! Do you have to dig a well and build a school? What do the civilians want and can you protect for the next 10 years, 24/7? Context, context and context.


Hopefully this makes sense, I agree all war is fought for political purposes, but not all wars are fought using politics as a primary effort at the "tactical" level. That is perhaps the difference between irregular and regular warfare. To say all war is political is like saying all war is war, it is true, but not useful. The character of each war/conflict is different, and it is important that we understand it, or we'll likely fail to address the real threat or solve the real problem.
Well we will probably differ here as I believe in the unitary model of war. I think War is War is very useful, because it usefully simplifies and identifies those aspects that differentiate wars and conflict from each other. I dispute that you "fight using politics". I suggest precisely the opposite. You fight so that you can apply politics. If you can apply "policy" without fighting, then great.

Looking at schools specifically, the building isn't that important, but rather who appoints the instructors and monitors their curriculum that is critical.
Concur. - so do you need a building?

M-A Lagrange
10-12-2009, 05:57 AM
Hello everybody,

Well, I will not quote everybody (mainly Bill and Steve) as there are too many things to be address.

Basically what Steve and Bill are saying is basically the roots of the Master in crisis management I'll be defending at La Sorbonne in 1 month.

The question is how using NGOs (local and international) to provide security or at least support security efforts.

The solution that comes in first though is that you need to centralise money. By pooling all donors together,you reduce the number of donors actors. Basically you will remain with USAID, ECHO (European Union) and DFID. What has been done as an experiment is to rally all small donors like CIDA,SIDA, Belgium, Spain, JICA... Under 1 umbrella. (this dream did happen and has been 1 failure and 1 success, actually working with the failure and participating to a book on the success).

Once you have this you can actually coordinate for real the NGO work as you control money. You can orient NGO presence through funding to areas you want and in sectors you want. To do so you need to involve the UN. It is the only body NGO will feel confortable with to be commanded. There comes the first trap: the UN. They are so much not use to be accountable and in charge that they may #### up all the things (My actual location). For that you need a strong well controled Humanitarian Coordinator and a strong Head of OCHA. (Otherwise you end up with idiots doing what they what and weasting the money, believe me, they are just good at it).

The second action is to develop specific activities that will contribue to build population security. For that you need creative NGOs with a high acceptance of the ratio risk/benefits. Basically local NGOs: they are made by the people and have an obligation of success. While international NGO have a low acceptance of the ratio risk/benefits and then will be reluctant to work in dirty places or will go against new idears, just by definition.

The main idea is not to replace military/police work with NGO: this simply does not work. Security has to be taken by professionals and NGO workers are not (believe, I know what I'm talking about. Just reading military theories makes you an alien and a dangerous spy...). But where the military comes in place in that is through cooperation with NGO. Basically it is anot so much sophisticated PSYOP that youconduct to make believe NGO they are telling you what to do when actually you are monitoring what they do.
This also has been experimented with + and -. Mainly due to the way military are integrating them selve into NGO information sharing network. (the basic is to go to the NGO through their channel openly and aske for advice. Not that simple.)

Comments welcomed, the people I will present that next month cannot be tuffer that all of you.

For Bob: I did have you point on Islamic NGO. The thing is that it is much, much more complicate. Part from Islamic Relief International Saudi Arabia (not to mess with the UK based Islamic Relief World Wide or Islamic Relief Pakistan) the picture is far from being that simple. But I also agree with you.

For Wilf: what is the difference in what you propose and IDF strategy on Gaza?

William F. Owen
10-12-2009, 06:17 AM
For Wilf: what is the difference in what you propose and IDF strategy on Gaza?

Huh? Not sure I understand. Why have operations against Hamas any relevance to this at all?

But since you ask:

The aim of the Operation in Gaza was to set forth the Israeli Government's policy of a zero tolerance to armed action against the State of Israel. The basic message to Hamas - and Hezbollah - was that armed action will merely reap more armed action against you. It was to emphasise and demonstrate the failure of a "rocket policy." - and it was never meant to be the last Operation. - 99.9% reduction of rockets from Lebanon since 2006, and 95% reduction from Gaza since Cast Lead.
Sadly, this is most probably temporary and everyone knows there will be more Operations, until the populations of Gaza, The West Bank, and the Southern Lebanon, want to live in peace, in their own states, and recognise Israel's right to exist. Having said that, the West Bank is looking pretty good right now.

Now that may have all been cloaked in some very odd language, for obvious reasons, but hey! This is politics.

M-A Lagrange
10-12-2009, 07:01 AM
Huh? Not sure I understand. Why have operations against Hamas any relevance to this at all?

My mistake Wilf.
I was not talking about Castel Lead operation but the blocus and disruption of Gaza social services.
Especially (sorry I do not remember the year, I believe it was 2004), the one that targeted government offices and had for objective to destroy physically all material capacities. This did harm Hamas capacities but did also harm the legitimacy. Especially as Hamas was an elected body. (Not saying I support Hamas).
And that the link with the threat: we have to do what we preach. If we want rule of law: we have to follow law.
If we want to build trust: then we have to provide better services.
In war among the people or people centric COIN, the statement 10-2=20 does apply for civilians. The faillure of Iraq at its early stage came from there, nowhere else. Civilian will go for what is the most profitable for them and also will follow the rational: I take what I know and trust (even if it is hard dictatorship) rather try another flavour of a "too well known"/"unknow potential" failure.

William F. Owen
10-12-2009, 07:24 AM
My mistake Wilf.
I was not talking about Castel Lead operation but the blocus and disruption of Gaza social services.
Maybe surprisingly, I am pretty uncomfortable with preventing adequate food supplies into Gaza. I have issues with it, and those are political, not moral.

Especially (sorry I do not remember the year, I believe it was 2004), the one that targeted government offices and had for objective to destroy physically all material capacities. This did harm Hamas capacities but did also harm the legitimacy. Especially as Hamas was an elected body. (Not saying I support Hamas).
Hamas being elected is utterly irrelevant. Hitler got elected. - and regardless - Many bad folks get elected. Election is not a legitimisation of policy. You fight wars against policy. Hamas?Hezbollah wants to destroy Israel - so why not destroy them first? - Destroy them as an instrument = humiliate them, as to their strategic irrelevance.


Civilian will go for what is the most profitable for them and also will follow the rational: I take what I know and trust (even if it is hard dictatorship) rather try another flavour of a "too well known"/"unknow potential" failure.
In the case of Gaza (and Lebanon) it is convincing the "civilians" that only "voting for peace" , and recognising Israel, will allow them to prosper. Worked for Jordan. Worked for Egypt. Worked for Qatar.

M-A Lagrange
10-12-2009, 12:03 PM
First we don't identify what the "essential" services really are, because culturally we're terrible listeners. Second, there is something more to be a good government than providing good services.

First of all, we have to stop merging social services and governance. People appointed to social services are appointed for political reasons: yes. They have political agenda: yes. I face that every single day. The worst in that story is that it is the same with neutral bodies as the UN (or even worst) and the international NGOs. Even ICRC and MSF do have political agenda. (I know what I am talking about I did work with MSF).

So let’s not try to build ministries capacities and the rest. This is useless and a big waste of money, energy and good people. Ministries are crap… Let them be crap. Time will tell.
The war is divided into survive, rebuild, normality for civilians. That is the way it is. NOWHERE will you find freedom of speech, democracy and what so ever among post war population.
The survive part: it is the NGO as ICRC, MSF, CARE… that do take care of it. It is the usual open conflict humanitarian assistance.
The rebuild part is where we fail every time as we want to jump from year 0 to XXI century with in few months. Let’s stop fooling our selves we can do it just like that. State building is not a science, it is barely a new born art based on not so well mastered soft sciences.


M-A's point: NGO's (and military), by building wells, schools, medical clinics, actually undermines the governments we intend to support/extend unless there is a downstreaming process for them to rapidly take it over and make it work.

The main problem is coordination actually. That is the implementing/tactical challenge. But the other problem is a strategic/vision/policy one. Even through full spectrum stabilisation operation we have the tendency to over use Rostrow development theory and also to forget Rostrow development theory basic.

The overuse of Rostrow development theory is that we merge political development and economical development. To be clear, liberal economy and regulated trade does not necessary goes with full participative democracy.
I’m not a kindergarden dictator fan! My point is that we want countries as Afghanistan to do the economical and political Jump/taker off at the same time. As far as I know that did not work that way and never did. You first have economical take off leading to strong developed economy then you have democracy being put in place. Look Iran. That is exactly what the regime is facing: total disruption between population expectation due to a not so bad economy and the Mullahs in power.

Where we forget Rostrow is that if he is wrong in melting politics and economy (at least, the vision of linear development is also false), he is right on the take off point. Samir Amin Theory of centre and periphery (with Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi) is the base of oil drop practices.
They pointed out that first you need a centre that takes off and will tract peripheries. The main problem for the centre is to find a way to take off without passing through the mercantile phase which consists in accumulation of richness through pillage of neighbouring countries. What Rwanda did and is doing right now. In fact aid is a substitute for that phase. Basically, money is not a weapon, is a protective mean to reach a level of development without having to spoil another country to rebuild the one you just invaded.

The problem we do face in misplacing money and not coordinating its use is to give too much on governance and too little in development. Also, as we want to have a large cover of all needs, we tend to spend even less that little everywhere.
We should spend more on humanitarian/development with a strong coordination controlled through money/”donor like UN agencies role” rather trying to vaporise a little everywhere.

But this does not change the fact that this cannot come without security. I am not a big fan of security first but security is both a pre requirement and a limit. But security, a political tool, just as development, needs to be use wisely with high moral references so we avoid doing stupid things that will impact the development/humanitarian efforts. (Having high humanitarian moral standards does not forbid you to be political, far from it).

And concerning elections, probably starting by the central state is not the solution. May be we should go for local elections first, building proximity democracy before nation wild democracy. It is easier to teach the game to small scale communities about issues they feel concern about rather than looking to large scale stuff that no one cares about and is by definition corrupted or unlegitimate in the first times.

Surferbeetle
10-12-2009, 12:49 PM
...and I appreciate the references.


First of all, we have to stop merging social services and governance.


The war is divided into survive, rebuild, normality for civilians.


The main problem is coordination actually. That is the implementing/tactical challenge. But the other problem is a strategic/vision/policy one. Even through full spectrum stabilisation operation we have the tendency to over use Rostow development theory (http://teacherweb.ftl.pinecrest.edu/snyderd/APHG/Unit%207/PDFs/7%20-%20Rostow.pdf) and also to forget Rostrow development theory basic.


Where we forget Rostow (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579939/industrialization.html) is that if he is wrong in melting politics and economy (at least, the vision of linear development is also false), he is right on the take off point. Samir Amin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Amin) Theory of centre and periphery (with Immanuel Wallerstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Wallerstein), Giovanni Arrighi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Arrighi)) is the base of oil drop practices.
They pointed out that first you need a centre that takes off and will tract peripheries. The main problem for the centre is to find a way to take off without passing through the mercantile phase which consists in accumulation of richness through pillage of neighbouring countries. What Rwanda did and is doing right now. In fact aid is a substitute for that phase. Basically, money is not a weapon, is a protective mean to reach a level of development without having to spoil another country to rebuild the one you just invaded.


But this does not change the fact that this cannot come without security. I am not a big fan of security first but security is both a pre requirement and a limit. But security, a political tool, just as development, needs to be use wisely with high moral references so we avoid doing stupid things that will impact the development/humanitarian efforts. (Having high humanitarian moral standards does not forbid you to be political, far from it).

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 06:32 PM
This article (Afghanistan: A White Elephant Called the Ring Road), rolls up a lot of issues about security, roads, and advertised good deeds.

http://www.indepthnews.net/news/news.php?key1=2009-10-05%2003:29:19&key2=1

In it, Matt Nasuti, PRT City Management Adviser, argues that the Ring Road is a mess: Poorly conceived, poorly built, and unsecurable. A boon to the Taliban. Too expensive and unnecessary to Afghans at this point in their development.

Moreover, what we learned about the Appalachian Road building projects- a road goes two ways. Built to spur Appalachian internal development, instead, they were the highway for disinvestment: goods flooding in from outside, people flooding out... unintended consequences.

Here, according to the article, the road has been a boon to the Taliban (graft, security fees, free movement of insurgents, fixing our forces to defend it, etc..., and threatens to inundate the local economies with influx of cheap foreign goods.

Sure would be good to think these things through---ahead of time.

I always shudder when I see Loius Berger attached to the planning and implementation of anything.

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 06:39 PM
New SSI release:

GUIDE TO REBUILDING PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES
IN STABILITY OPERATIONS:
A ROLE FOR THE MILITARY

Best work I have seen to date on the subject.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/summary.cfm?q=945

Most pubs on this subject, including one released this week by the Institute for Peace, are full of slogans and inter-agency politics.

The SSI Guide is a practical, how-to-guide that burrows deeply and effectively in the restoration of public services for military/post-conflict purposes. Great work.

It's not about good deeds, but about making things work again in close cooperation with local national, provincial and municipal staff and systems.


Steve

Steve

slapout9
10-12-2009, 07:05 PM
This article (Afghanistan: A White Elephant Called the Ring Road), rolls up a lot of issues about security, roads, and advertised good deeds.

http://www.indepthnews.net/news/news.php?key1=2009-10-05%2003:29:19&key2=1

In it, Matt Nasuti, PRT City Management Adviser, argues that the Ring Road is a mess: Poorly conceived, poorly built, and unsecurable. A boon to the Taliban. Too expensive and unnecessary to Afghans at this point in their development.

Moreover, what we learned about the Appalachian Road building projects- a road goes two ways. Built to spur Appalachian internal development, instead, they were the highway for disinvestment: goods flooding in from outside, people flooding out... unintended consequences.

Here, according to the article, the road has been a boon to the Taliban (graft, security fees, free movement of insurgents, fixing our forces to defend it, etc..., and threatens to inundate the local economies with influx of cheap foreign goods.

Sure would be good to think these things through---ahead of time.

I always shudder when I see Loius Berger attached to the planning and implementation of anything.


STP, we talked about that on another thread and that is why I said linking the System togather should be one of the LAST things you do with an unstable system.

MattC86
10-12-2009, 08:02 PM
I followed and thought about this thread a lot this summer, and I kept coming back to a fundamental problem with "hearts and minds" - not the pejorative use of the term, but what Uboat earlier described as convincing the population (1) our victory - and thus them helping us - is in their best interests, and (2) we are going to win. This sentiment, first articulated as I heard it by David Kilcullen, is underwritten essentially by rational man theory. People choose from different sets of choices on the basis of what will maximize their utility (serve their interests). Straightforward enough, and it underpins most of classical microeconomics.

Now, as far as sociologists or anthropologists are concerned, I have no idea what the current state of theory is in that realm, but a lot of economics has moved beyond rational man theory, or at least moved into explaining why it fails. Behavioral economics, one of the more recent developments in economics, is in large part devoted to explaining the disparity (albeit still mathematically) between the choices actors make and the choices they SHOULD make. I'm sure MarcT could better explain heuristics and anomalies but these disparities pervade every level of human decision-making, whether it is a person spending his money wisely or the Joint Chiefs assessing U.S. strategy. Obviously, not all choices made by actors are going to actually maximize their utility.

Moreover, our calculations of preferred outcome, especially when viewing this across cultures, are often wrong. Heuristics - experienced based learning - really plays into this. At a micro level, one can see plenty of instances of people refusing the prescribed treatments for the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome, in terms of winning hearts and minds, whether for religious reasons, pashtunwali, or something even less tangible.

Even if we correctly gauge the outcome the people will support, we may make the wrong choice on how to get there. Many commentators have suggested that it was not the staunch commitment of the Bush administration to continuing the mission in Iraq that drove Sunni reversal; but the 2006 elections and the realization that the U.S. may not long stay in Iraq, and that if that withdrawal occurred, the Sunnis were going to be crushed by the Shiite blocs. This unintentional hint of a pending change swayed the perception of interest and optimal outcome.

Of course, "hearts and minds" and rational man theory doesn't have to hold true for everyone, but the implication is that it does have to apply to a majority to work. And I've heard more than a couple economists chuckle about COIN theory banking on what is an in-part discarded model of how people act. . .

Matt

Ken White
10-12-2009, 08:57 PM
Of course, "hearts and minds" and rational man theory doesn't have to hold true for everyone, but the implication is that it does have to apply to a majority to work. And I've heard more than a couple economists chuckle about COIN theory banking on what is an in-part discarded model of how people act. . .A model that never really passed the common sense test at that...

All of us constantly make choices that are not 'in our interest.' Just look at federal elections... :D

Serious comment. Both parts.

Steve the Planner
10-12-2009, 09:51 PM
The purpose of a well-devised planning process is to identify and consider the major consequences (including unintentional ones).

When we end up being the great decider with little input, our decisions, not surprisingly, tend to miss the mark, or spawn significant unconsidered unintended consequences. That's how you get all the waste.

Actually, at MND-North in 2008, the Div Eng (and the whole div staff) had, in effect, stood up the last Diyala govt, and brought with them a lot of built-in knowledge from multiple tours. This cut down on a lot of waste, and led them to ask the right questions, including of local folks.

But it often put them in conflict with the brigade battlespace owner who was trying to build, build, build.

The new SSI guide really gets to the point of how to do it by using the early Basrah example where the military did, in fact, do a pretty good job.

Some really good lessons to learn.

Steve

Bill Moore
10-13-2009, 12:05 AM
Steve as you know, the Kurdish issue is very complicated. Just today on the national news, one of our general officers said the Kurds remain the primary destablizing factor within Iraq.

My counterpoint to yours is that perhaps our focus on the Kurds is coming back to bite us in the tail?

We worked with the Kurds during the initial invasion, but like many other cases where we employed unconventional warfare it has come back to haunt us later (Afghanistan being another example)

Posted by Surferbeetle,

Kurdistan appears to be a region in which development and conflict has coexisted for some time.

I disagree, please show the dates that development started and "serious" conflict stopped. We provided security against Saddam's forces since the no fly zone was established (might as well call it a separate economic zone), and the internal conflict was manageable since the late 90's. The development in Kurdistan was no miracle on our part, security came first, then the people reached out and accepted help from outside donors (very simplistic view, but as opposed to the folks on the other side of the Green Line who suffered for many years under punishing economic sanctions, fought us when we arrived, and gradually evolved into fighting one another. You can't compare Kurdistan to Mosul or Baghdad for example).


During my time in Iraq I noted that Kurdish construction and engineering companies regularly pushed out into the Mosul area. My trips to Kurdistan revealed a vibrant business community, good infrastructure, a capable security force, rule of law, and visible participation in daily life by both sexes.

That would be great if it was for the greater good of the Iraqi people, but let's face facts, anytime the Kurds pushed out beyond the green line it was not to the benefit of the Arabs, Turkoman, or Shi'a on the other side. They were displaced, forced out of jobs, etc., as the Kurds established their own overt or shadow government backed by the power of the Peshmerga. Americans who can't see past the nose on their face supported this, because the world is black and white to some of our officers. Kurds good guys, everyone else bad guys. That attitude is coming back to bite us.


The Kurds appear to have a concerned diaspora, Turkey appeared to be a major of supplier of goods to the region, and it is my understanding the Iran is another major supplier of goods.

This is part of the problem, not the solution. Turkey, and other countries to a lesser extent, are very concerned about Kurdish ambitions, since their vision for Kurdistan extends well beyond the borders of Iraq.


From a CA-centric standpoint Kurdistan might be seen as a model for the successes associated with spending more effort on advising a Government as opposed to ‘building’ one.

The Kurds are savvy, and they know their economic development is a powerful tool to expand their influence in the region, but the Arabs would tell you that we allowed the Kurds to get too strong thereby creating a dangerous imbalance in the region, so maybe there are other lessons to take from our experiences in Kurdistan?

Steve the Planner
10-13-2009, 01:04 AM
Bill:

Sounds like you got the same briefing I did before being seconded to the UN DIBS Team.

The numbers and history, as explained by Gareth Stansfield, are not any clearer for Kurdish hegemony in Kirkuk, etc..., than for Turkmen, and others. But there are important stories of sadness and oppression on many sides. It's complicated.

History shows that every 20 years or so, the Kurds build up pressure toward a serious offensive---always working toward autonomy.

As Bill says, it is not driven by an interest in other minorities.

Iraq's recent history is painted in the colors of the Kurdish autonomy movement---and not just re: Sadaam. Strategic patience, that great skill the US lacks, is always in play in these areas.

Also, as Bill notes, Turkey and Iran, especially, have significant interests in Kurdish plans and activities.

Steve

Surferbeetle
10-13-2009, 03:46 AM
Steve as you know, the Kurdish issue is very complicated. Just today on the national news, one of our general officers said the Kurds remain the primary destablizing factor within Iraq.

Bill, you are correct with respect to its complexity. Where I worked, the area was inhabited by Arabs (Sunni & Shia), Kurds (Sunni & Shia), Assyrian Christians, Chaledian Christians, Yazidi’s, (there was talk of Jews as well), and Turkish businessmen and women continually circled the battlefield. Arabization and intermarriage further complicated things and I have not even touched upon the official, grey, and black economies.


My counterpoint to yours is that perhaps our focus on the Kurds is coming back to bite us in the tail?

I would say that it’s too early to say. The Kurdistan region is deeply interlinked with Arabs, Turks, Iranians and others. Simultaneously the impact of energy politics is having an increasing role upon their fate. I have read recently that the Kurds will receive 17% of all oil sale proceeds piped to Turkey from the Kurdistan region while Baghdad will receive the rest. Turkey as you know is working very diligently to become a cultural (EU Accession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union)), water (GAP- Southeastern Anatolia Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeastern_Anatolia_Project)), and energy (Nabucco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline), Southstream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Stream), BTC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku%E2%80%93Tbilisi%E2%80%93Ceyhan_pipeline), IGAT-9 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Gas_Trunkline), among others) nexus. Turkey’s combined actions with respect to it’s large southern Kurdish population, the PKK, and Abdullah Öcalan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan) (his receiving a life sentence was very interesting) might be seen as one, but not the only, barometer of Kurdistan's fate.


I disagree, please show the dates that development started and "serious" conflict stopped.

The PBS show Frontline has posted a chronology of the Kurds (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/kurds/cron.html) and it details some of the Kurdish Factionalism and other conflicts which I alluded to in my previous post.


We provided security against Saddam's forces since the no fly zone was established (might as well call it a separate economic zone), and the internal conflict was manageable since the late 90's. The development in Kurdistan was no miracle on our part, security came first, then the people reached out and accepted help from outside donors (very simplistic view, but as opposed to the folks on the other side of the Green Line who suffered for many years under punishing economic sanctions, fought us when we arrived, and gradually evolved into fighting one another. You can't compare Kurdistan to Mosul or Baghdad for example).

During my Army days in Italy some of my friends who served in Operation Provide Comfort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Provide_Comfort) brought back some interesting stories regarding the simultaneous interplay of security and humanitarian assistance. GEN Zinni’s book Battle Ready (written with Tom Clancy) provides a deeper view of things.

As a result of working with the electrical engineers I found on both sides of the Green Line, during OIF1 (summer and onwards), I was able to regularly compare and contrast electrical grids and associated infrastructure (keep in mind that my background is civil not electrical). As described to me, the UNDP (http://www.iq.undp.org/index.aspx?data=gH9u_2f2JmNRlL06sCaYRMiQ7M92bfAEjG zo3z2iyKdciia4fwV3xx9dy3aSyUQ_2bJX)’s longterm electrical engineering work was (partially?, fully?) funded as a result of the UN resolutions I previously cited. The contrast on each side of the Green Line, as you note, was a stark one.

From the UN Information Service: Report Shows "Meaningful" Impact of UN Projects in Iraq (http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2009/unisinf325.html)


David Shearer, United Nations Resident Coordinator for Iraq, said: "I am very pleased and reassured by these results. They show that the Iraqi people have benefited from our efforts and donor funds have been well invested, despite a very dangerous operating environment for our staff." More than 85 UN and NGO workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

The Stocktaking Review was initiated by several international donors and carried out by the Norwegian aid effectiveness firm Scanteam. It assessed a selection of UN projects funded through the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq (IRFFI), the largest Multi-Donor Trust Fund the UN operates. The IRFFI has channelled $1.3 billion from 25 contributing nations into UN agency Iraq-wide projects since 2004. It closes to new contributions on 30 June 2009. The European Commission, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and Spain are its largest donors.


That would be great if it was for the greater good of the Iraqi people, but let's face facts, anytime the Kurds pushed out beyond the green line it was not to the benefit of the Arabs, Turkoman, or Shi'a on the other side. They were displaced, forced out of jobs, etc., as the Kurds established their own overt or shadow government backed by the power of the Peshmerga. Americans who can't see past the nose on their face supported this, because the world is black and white to some of our officers. Kurds good guys, everyone else bad guys. That attitude is coming back to bite us.

Before we went in many of us, and I suspect that includes you as well, were aware that the Kurds are no choirboys. Walking the ground confirmed my views, but then we are no choirboys either. I found it very interesting that despite their strong Marxist and Socialist backgrounds/histories they are accomplished Capitalists.


The Kurds are savvy, and they know their economic development is a powerful tool to expand their influence in the region, but the Arabs would tell you that we allowed the Kurds to get too strong thereby creating a dangerous imbalance in the region, so maybe there are other lessons to take from our experiences in Kurdistan?

Negotiation and Deal Making School was in session every day, taught by Kurds (Sunni & Shia), Arabs (Sunni & Shia), Assyrian Christians, Chaledian Christians, Yazidi’s, and Turkish businessmen and women who continually circled the battlefield while I was there. I was not, and am not, so arrogant as to think that I have the language or cultural skills to exit the proverbial bazaar with my life much less with my life, the clothes on my back, and all of my money...this of course puts a damper upon even entering the bazaar. Like you however, I find it to be a very interesting place, I follow it in the news, and I am continually trying to learn more...

Surferbeetle
10-13-2009, 05:57 AM
Bill, IMHO and experience oil spot theory allows for development, not just humanitarian assistance, during a conflict. Here are a couple of clear open source examples of development undertaken during conflict conditions ala the three block war concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War).

Backgrounder #31. The Fight for Mosul (http://www.understandingwar.org/files/reports/The%20Fight%20for%20Mosul.pdf) by Eric Hamilton.

Here is a link regarding the ENRP program in the Kurdistan region from a UNDP Energy and Environment webpage (http://www.undp.org/energyandenvironment/sustainabledifference/PDFs/ArabStates/Iraq.pdf)


UNDP’s largest undertaking in the country, the Electricity Network Rehabilitation Programme (ENRP) received some $850 million since 1997 under the Oil-for-Food Programme. Through ENRP, UNDP rebuilt and maintained power service in the governorates of Erbil, Dahuk, and Sulaymaniyah, serving 3.6 million people, making that region the only part of the country that had reliable power service throughout the war and up to the present.After the war in 2003, UNDP enlarged the programme to respond to additional needs across the country. Specific initiatives include: emergency assistance for the electricity sector; rehabilitation of the national dispatch centre; rehabilitation of Iraqi power plants; preparatory work for capacity building and distribution planning.

Steve the Planner
10-13-2009, 06:42 AM
Beetle:

I'm good with the Kurd representations. People forget that the historical map of Kurdistan really begins with the road to Kermanshah (Iran), and that a lot of the anti-Kurd actions against the Kurds by Sadaam were because of Iranian relations. Like Afghanistan, it is a big complex world once you get up into any of those hills.

Go back to Sassanian Empire times and Baghdad to Jalalabad were all one big happy empire (sort of).

I was always very interested in the Yazedis, and some of the micro-sects, some so small and isolated in their villages that they could literally not communicate with the next town. The Jews were, in fact a big presence in the major towns of Basrah, Baghdad and Kirkuk. Most left in 1950 for Isreal, but still have reparations claims swirling around.

But the ref to Mosul. There were two Mosuls in my world: the one before Sunnis/AQI were pushed out of Baghdad, and the one after. Mosul is the shock absorber for Baghdad stability (such as it is), and is hard to understand the scope of damage in 2008.

Steve

M-A Lagrange
10-13-2009, 01:30 PM
I disagree, please show the dates that development started and "serious" conflict stopped. We provided security against Saddam's forces since the no fly zone was established (might as well call it a separate economic zone), and the internal conflict was manageable since the late 90's. The development in Kurdistan was no miracle on our part, security came first, then the people reached out and accepted help from outside donors (very simplistic view, but as opposed to the folks on the other side of the Green Line who suffered for many years under punishing economic sanctions, fought us when we arrived, and gradually evolved into fighting one another. You can't compare Kurdistan to Mosul or Baghdad for example).

First: security comes first! It is just the simple truth. No security: no development.
Also, in the same country, you will have two different phase for development/humanitarian actions: Continum and contigum.
Continum phase: in some areas, for many reasons, most of the time not under our control, the situation evolves in the good sens. From disaster you go to humanitarian, recovery then development. And you do not know why but it goes fine.
Contigum: it is the fact that if in place A things goes in the good sens, in place B, in the very same country, things either stay the same (disaster/humanitarian or cannot go further than recovery). This has been experienced by every one every where. It is just that some places are centre and others are peripheries.
But do not mistake the fact that centres can be: trackting economical centres and will generate development. OR can be centres of violence: trackting the place from disaster to fubar.
Then peripheries will:
- in a econimical center:
either follow at lower speed the economical development OR either separate and insecurity will increase. (the choice is not ours). In both cases, security will remain the first issue as you need to protect the center.
- in a violence center:
periphery can either follow and become insecure OR separate and become more secure. In both cases security comes first. But in the second issue, it is quite important to contain the effects of violence centre and support recovery/development. The aim is to turn the periphery into an economic centre.
I know, easy to say, much complexe to implement. I face the problem daily.

The main problem is that much efforts are actually focussed on violence centers or peripheries in the attempt to lower insecurity through social/economical projects. This works (sometimes) but the over focus on security is harming the whole effort.
While in economical centres and periphery, actors tend to hurry to shift to evelopment and creat a gap that may creat insecurity.
This mainly comes from the fact that non military actors are driven by the ratio: moral benefits/physical risk.
And also, the process of contigum may forward and backward.

In clear: when it starts to go fine, we are too quick to pull out humanitarian NGO and not capable to replace them. The appreciation of recovery success in not this 6 month project worked fine let's go to development. It takes more time. And you can even duplicate the continum/contigum paradox/evaluation scale into economic centres and peripheries to have contigums of development and recovery. It is just a question of scale (country, state, county, village/town).

And no need to go back too much in the past. One of the Rostow critics is that even people with a stone age technology do have internal sociological, culturaland technological evolution. What we observe now (2009) in some remote islands is not how humanity use to be at stone adge.

Steve the Planner
10-15-2009, 04:32 AM
Let's see. Kill more? Less Good deeds? Are there other significant alternatives?

How about rock solid common sense (or is that "balls"?).

Some of the KRG story is gradually trickling out in a manner that is beginning to rise above battlefield reporting to a more considered level---if not quite history.

A Middle East Report article provides a broad description of some of the goings on on the KRG fault line last year, including the standoffs at Mosul Dam, Bashiqa and Khanaqin. Below is part of the Khanaqin section:

“This is disputed area,” said Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the KRG’s president, Masoud Barzani, remembering the events. “I am from Khanaqin. I have seen the Iraqi army killing Kurds as a child. I have seen the Iraqi army destroying everything. The Iraqi army, the old one, was an army against our people. And you send an army that speaks the same slogans?”

According to Gen. Mun‘im Hashim Fahd, the commander of the army unit that ringed Khanaqin that day, he had no orders to uproot the peshmerga. His mission, rather, was to chase insurgents along the shores of Lake Hamrin to the west. There had been deadly bombings attributed to the insurgency in Diyala over the summer. “I had clear orders from the Ministry of Defense not to go into Khanaqin city,” said the bullet-headed general. “I asked, ‘Can I visit the mayor?’ They said, ‘No, it will only cause problems.’”

Instead of talking, both sides hunkered down. Politicians in the KRG’s seat of Erbil sounded the alarm of “ethnic cleansing” and vowed open war to prevent it. The Kurds mobilized the rocket-launching trucks and tanks they had looted from Saddam’s army. Baghdad began to route its own heaviest artillery toward Khanaqin, and Iraq waited, a cannonball away from civil war on another front.

Caught in the middle was Gen. Mark Hertling, then leader of the US forces in the north. As the governments in Baghdad and Erbil hurled threats at each other, the American issued a rather novel threat of his own: If the Kurds and the Iraqi army did not stand down, the US would do nothing. “If there were indicators that there would be a clash between pesh and Iraqi army, I would pull back all my advisers. I would tell all my other forces to return to their [bases]. I wasn’t going to take sides on this, and [they] would be responsible for any bloodshed,” Hertling said he told all concerned. Hertling credited cool-headed commanders on the ground for averting physical clashes. Eventually, a deal was struck allowing Kurdish police to remain in control of Khanaqin, with the peshmerga withdrawing north of the city, where they still sit, glowering southward, just like in the old days."

http://www.merip.org/mero/mero100109.html

When I served in 3ID in Germany in the 70's, there was an on-going tussle over whether the Rocky the Marne Bulldog statue's balls were or were not offensive---should they be displayed as anatomically correct, or stored away as an anachronism?

Another guy in 64th Armor then was 2LT Mark Hertling. Based on the above story, he either carried Rocky's balls with him or, as MG Hertling, MND-N Commander, brought the Iron of 1AD to bear. Sometimes, it takes a lot of courage, as he did last year during the Khanaqin showdown to aggressively "do nothing" when it can avoid what otherwise would have been the beginning of Tom Rick's "Unraveling." Instead, as the report shows, a begrudging "way forward" is emerging that is neither based on killing nor good deeds.

This from now-up-for-LTG Hertling, who was one of the big time "action figures," and decisive leaders in Northern Iraq during 2007/2008.

Add serious diplomacy to the military toolkit.