A mix of agree and disagree
Quote:
from Wilf
[1] My effort is to take the population out the competition as a whole. [2] They will support who ever wins. [3] Why ask them to be part of the fight?
1. Isolating the population may work if the facts allow it (as in Malaya, where a minority of a minority were isolated from the bush-based guerrillas). If the insurgents permeate the entire population (as in the case of Vietnam), your proposal is not practical.
2. Not necessarily so. They may submit; but if the factors that drove the insurgency to begin with continue to subsist, they will probably lead to future outbreaks.
3. Counter-insurgency is manpower intensive (if done right - e.g., Malaya). If the masses are mobilized, they can provide their own security (as well as their own political and economic development) - thereby allowing the pros to go on to neutralize other insurgents and to mobilize other masses.
Regards
Mike
Context, context and context
Fine with me.
1. Criminals are not in the same context as insurgents. However, taking criminals as an example, you (if you happen to be in criminal justice) want a great deal of co-operation from the people - as informants, witnesses and jurors who will convict.
Your initial assertion was "My effort is to take the population out [of ?] the competition as a whole"; which has now morphed to "You still go after them without forcing the population to take a side". Treating the population like a bunch of department store dummies is not a formula for success.
2. Is armed force really the only tool in your personal tool kit ? Maybe so; which is no personal sin if you (like Brig. "Trotsky" Davies) insist on being a pure soldier. But, it does end the conversation with those who believe that military affairs and political affairs have to be co-ordinated - and that insurgency is often a mixed military and political problem - as exemplified by Davies' end of conversation with Enver Hoxha: "...I am a soldier and not a politician.".
3. If you can mobilize the people for a local defense militia, you can also mobilize them in other areas where they also become part of the team.
Frankly, I can't understand why you insist on building such a strict firewall between military action and political action.
Regards
Mike
The harsh reality of numbers--is it worth it? No way!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Seabee
Here is a thought from the peanut gallery....
Did France "loose" or just come to the conclusion that in the modern world there is no place for Colonies. especially ones you have to fight for.
At what point do leaders sitting around the table say "we CAN keep going for another 50 years... but is it worth it?"
Best
Chris
Chris, that is the fundamental question our leaders need to ask. Let's not forget that just a Algeria was heating up, France was reading the ledger on Indochina. 90,000 DEAD between 1946 and 1954. After dorking around in Algeria, CdG finally had the guts to say "enough!" That's what we need today -- a leader who has the guts to stand up and say "enough!" That individual will not be from the the military. It is going to have to come from the political left, because the right makes too much hay by kissing the military's butt. Obama is not the man for the task ... he had the chance, and acted liked a politician.
BTW, check out this link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/wo...19bigeard.html
to get us back to the torture piece. I'm just so happy that we Americans have taken the fundamental values that we hold most dear and sacred and taken a great big old sh!t on them so we can have a stalemate (at best -- mark my words, we will "lose" in both AFG and Iraq) in our neo-colonies from which we don't even extract the resources (like there is anything to get from AFG -- at least they have or had oil in Iraq).
What a sad and pathetic state of affairs.
Admiration can meet reality
From the UK perspective:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...l-Bigeard.html
A reminder what torture means:
Quote:
Le Monde published an interview with Louisette Ighilahriz, an Algerian grandmother who told how, as a 20-year old FLN fighter, she had been taken prisoner by French paratroopers who had subjected her to three months of interrogation, during which she had been repeatedly raped and tortured and eventually left to die in a pool of excrement and blood. What made her interview persuasive was that she seemed to be moved less by hatred of her torturers than by gratitude to the French military doctor who had rescued her and whom she now wished to thank in person. At the same time, she had no qualms about naming the officers who presided over her ordeal, notably Generals Jacques Massu and Marcel Bigeard.
Her charges provoked an uproar and stimulated vigorous debate. But while General Massu admitted the credibility of Louisette Ighilahriz's testimony and regretted the behaviour of French forces during the conflict, Bigeard dismissed her claims as a "tissue of lies" and accused those who had stirred up the issue of being communists or intellectuals of the sort whose "treason" had given comfort to the FLN during the war.