No one with much sense really has a problem with population centric COIN
if one must do or assist in the doing of counterinsurgency efforts. Nor is there any question that any competent Army must be able to do that job; or that the US Army was woefully and unforgivably not prepared to do it in the last few years.
The real question is; should one seek situations wherein to apply population centric COIN TTP or should one merely know how to do that if necessary and reserve application for those occasions when all else has failed and it absolutely cannot be avoided...
What do Tom Ricks, those wise Generals and CNAS have to say on that score?
Not over yet. Has the Fat Lady sung...
Don't think so. Was it defeated or temporarily co-opted? What about the other, non-Sunni minor insurgencies that are also now semi dormant? Then there's the Kurdish problem. What about the dissident Sadrists?
I'll grant you that it apparently comes closer to being a 'successful' operation to date than any other. We have never publicly stated the real goals -- the WMD bit was so much fluff and Saddam was just a good target -- but I believe one of about a dozen goals was long term basing of adequate size and utility in the ME. We have other bases but all have shortfalls of one kind or another; thus far it looks as though that goal may not be achieved. I don't think that's an insurmountable problem but if it was a goal, it wasn't attained. There are some strategic goals that I think were achieved and some seemingly not. Getting the British to return to the Gulf didn't fly. Keeping French, German and Russian commercial interests out or at least subordinate to American commercial interests apparently didn't work. We temporarily stopped the switch of the oil trade into Euros but it now looks as though that could happen...
Thus we cannot truly answer the real question due to unknowns and in the end, to be successful, the benefit to the US has to outweigh the cost. I suspect it will take a decade or two to fully answer that...
My point to MichaelC and all COIN fans is that it is an extremely costly way to do business, is rarely as effective as we'd like and has not really produced any glaring success stories to be held up as examples. And Malaya is a terrible example. Comparing Malaya and Viet Nam as an academic exercise may be fun -- but it avoids reality...
I take exception to this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Michael C
Also, the most commonly cited counter-insurgency experts is David Galula and he published a long time ago.
Sniff. A long time ago. A LONG time ago. Hmmmph. I bought his book, first edition, in 1964 at the Smoke Bomb Hill bookstore as a 30-something Platoon Sergeant.
Long time ago indeed... :mad:
(Ken exits left to procure another refill mumbling something about "...young whippersnappers." :D: )
P.S.
On a serious note:
Most of what Galula wrote, as is true of Clausewitz and others, is poorly understood and very poorly applied. With good reason; times change and no two wars are alike. Galula in particular applies French practice and logic primarily to North Africans and to a lesser extent to Viet Namese. Those ideas are not universally applicable. Study them all but do so critically, try not to agree with them but to pick holes in their arguments. No one has all the answers...