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The Insurgent View vs. US Military View
All,
Attached is a slide I use during my presentations that usually engenders quite a bit of discussion (which Is why I use it - to stir the pot).
This is why (in my view) we have hard times with COIN/SO/etc. Failure to understand the nature of the beast.
Like all slides there is a heavy dose of generalization. Obviously Ahmed the RPG gunner in AQI isn't necessarily consumed with the political strategy, but his leaders are.
A simple application of this slide is the ongoing debate over the Predator strikes in AfPak and ongoing collateral damage issues. There are many more examples.
Again, slide is meant to provoke discussion, pro and con. So discuss! :cool:
Niel
Two thoughts, slightly related
1. I wonder just how much thinking our opponents do on any level. Those who rise to the top ranks of the current crop of insurgents seem to me to be consummate politicians. They excel at fund-raising, deal-making, patronage, and intimidation - the same skill set you find in Congress or mafioso. Like many successful politicians, they do not seem to have much strategic sense, and their operational skills seem aimed at achieving personal rather than 'organizational' goals. Look how long it took the bad guys in Afghanistan to attack one of the coalition's true vulnerabilities: its supply lines. Moreover, they don't seem to recognize that both their tactics and operational styles are typically self-defeating; terrorism, especially, rarely works and most often creates the very conditions that will lead to its defeat (or abandonment as a tactic). Finally, they don't have the C2 to either implement or sustain a coherent strategy or operational style. In Afghanistan, we often spent long hours trying to impose a pattern on events to figure out what the bad guys were trying to do; I came to the conclusion that they weren't entirely sure either.
2. Some of the reason for the inversion pictured may be structural. I believe that the ratio of leaders/thinkers/decision-makers to foot soldiers in your typical insurgency is much higher than in conventional forces. This may not seem the case due to the hordes of staff officers and subordinate commanders in western armies, but they are not really setting policy or operating independently. Guys in caves with twenty hard-cores and a hundred stringers or part-timers are making their own tactical, operational, and sometimes strategic decisions in a way our battalion/brigade/regional commanders are not.
Marc's right, that is a great slide and I also agree with American Pride;
Quote:
"...because the militant/insurgent/terrorist is, in essence, a political-soldier (whereas in contrast the American soldier is just that, a soldier)."
I agree with his entire comment but that senetence is key. It's true and we should never, ever forget that -- as we sometimes try to do...
It is also unlikely to change. His comments concerning conventional versus COIN thinking are correct with respect to most but not all US Forces and I suspect that will always be true; we are probably not as a collective psychologically willing to adapt to the political and public face / relations efforts needed for us to essentially fight the Insurgent on his own terms.
I believe that efforts to attempt such adaptation for most of the force will actually be very counterproductive. One should also remember that not all fights against non-state actors or seeming insurgents are actually counterinsurgencies...
The Slide itself illustrates a conundrum that is not at likely to be addressed in the near term. I do not say rectified because I do not think that the dichotomy is really a problem or that we need to adapt our action to mirror the Insurgent model. We absolutely need to be aware of the difference and to develop counters for it but aside from Special Forces (not SOF in their entirety) no significant 'adaptation' is required of most units. What's required is simply acknowledgment of the difference and the development of strategic and operational flexibility to counter that. What we lack at this time is that flexibility and that is difficult to develop in a large bureaucracy. Difficult is not impossible.
Best way to fight a fire is with a suppressive agent, a different compound or process that deprives the fire of the oxygen it requires. Another fire, a backfire will sometimes allow a temporary gain but it will rarely extinguish the original fire.
Of course, good firebreaks and fire prevention are vastly superior to and easier than fire fighting.