Mike sounds more like a GWOT campaign assessment
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Originally Posted by
MikeF
Thanks MarcT. That's exactly the questions/comments that I was hoping for. I'm gonna work on a tentative syllabus and then post it on this thread as a working document for further discussion. I'll make sure that I send you and Dr. Fishel a PM.
As you review this, keep in mind that I'm not teaching college students. I'm talking to Company Grade officers and NCOs. Many of them will have multiple tours. So, I want to keep the reading light and no tests. I guess that's best called a seminar:D.
As I'm working on my syllabus, here's the required reading/case studies I'm considering....MTF...
- Zaganiyah- clearing denied rural areas
- Ramadi- Cavguy's ventures into the Sunni Awakening
- Mosul- Y'alls case study on SFA.
- Basilan, Phillipines- JSOTF-P initial entry and use of the McCormick Diamond Model
- Afghanistan- Jim Gant, "One tribe at a time"
- Colombia or El Salvador- need a good paper for this one.
Mike
Less the Latin America scenario, these are 5 campaigns in one war to protect the populace of the United States from terrorist attacks.
You can talk tactics: What was the situation, what worked, what didn't work, etc. That is intersting and helpful for those at Company level and below.
Or you can talk Operations, how each of these campagins contributed and fit into the larger campagins for their respective theaters. Good for the Field Grade level types
Or you can talk strategy. How did these campagins contribute or exacerbate the threat of terrorist attacks on America? etc.
As an aside, I realize you are coming from Monterey, home of the "McCormick Diamond," but I am pretty sure any serious application of the "diamond" to that operation is post facto. The operations there were shaped far more by the simple fact that we had no authorities to do anything other than the things we did. Which is a lesson in itself. "When conducting FID in support of another country's insurgency, are ones operations more effective when forced to subjugate themselves to the governance of that country and operate through their security forces and within the guidelines of their laws and rules; or when you invade, take out the existing government, and do whatever you damn well please."
Day Three: Fighting for Intelligence
Day Three: Fighting for Intelligence- The use of Reconnaissance and Surveillance to overcome our Information Disadvantage
Required Reading:
"Saving Zaganiyah" TBP,
FM 17-98-1 "The Scout Leaders Handbook,"
FM 7-8 "Infantry Platoon,"
The Ranger Handbook
Recommended Reading:
Once a Warrior King by David Donovan,
Hunter-Killer Squadron: Aero-Weapons, Aero-Scouts, Aero-Rifles by Matthew Brennan
The Man Who Never Was by Ewen Montagu
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Outline:
1. The value of the General Area Survey- listening to the current and former stakeholders in your AO.
2. Develop a Hypothesis of the Current Situation
3. Conduct Reconaissance to confirm/deny hypothesis.
3a. Covert Reconnaissance- sneaking in under the cover of darkness to take a look around
3b. Overt Reconnaissance- Route, Area, and Zone patrols to define the terrain.
3c. Conduct leadership engagements- Meet the People.
4. Conduct Surveillance to confirm/deny hypothesis
5. Define the environment- Final commander's decision on current situation
6. Develop the "Message"
6a. The use of Propaganda to shape the environment
6b. The use of Deception to prepare for initial entry
What a difference a day makes...
Wow.
I'm truly impressed by the breadth and depth of the responses you have received and your replies. I think you will do well with your presentation.
As a suggestion, have someone record the presentation. I guarantee you will learn from your audience and you will learn even more by reviewing the presentation. You may end up with a couple of articles out of your ideas and/or questions and comments.
I was an instructor at the JFK Center and an O/C at JRTC. A lot of the topics you and others have suggested we have tried to incorporate. I'm afraid that what a lot of us see as "common sense" will never become apparent to some of the folks who really need that information.
For what it's worth, I'm still learning from things I observed in Vietnam and subsequent locations. As a result I feel kind of bad about all the things we tried to teach but couldn't get across or didn't think about.
Please recover completely and quickly. You are the future of the Army.
Some things never change...
Just some quick notes for tonight then I'm off on a date with a sweet southern belle. Smalls wars can wait :D. Unfortunately, they are not going anywhere.
From Bob's World:
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Mike sounds more like a GWOT campaign assessment
I think I'm gonna start calling this post-colonial small wars.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MM_Smith
As a suggestion, have someone record the presentation. I guarantee you will learn from your audience and you will learn even more by reviewing the presentation. You may end up with a couple of articles out of your ideas and/or questions and comments.
Working on it. We found a scout that also does photography and videos.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MM_Smith
I was an instructor at the JFK Center and an O/C at JRTC. A lot of the topics you and others have suggested we have tried to incorporate. I'm afraid that what a lot of us see as "common sense" will never become apparent to some of the folks who really need that information.
For what it's worth, I'm still learning from things I observed in Vietnam and subsequent locations. As a result I feel kind of bad about all the things we tried to teach but couldn't get across or didn't think about.
MM, thank you for your service. The more I consider, common sense and METT-TC seem to be learned along the way directly correlated to one's age and experience. I look back at how much I've absorbed from combat, grad school, and SWJ from guys like Ken White, Goesh, BW, Wilf, Stan, Tom Odom and countless others. I want to minimize that gap.
So back to the real world. A 1SGT (former PLT SGT of mine) is crashing at my place while he's going through a divorce. Right now, while I"m working through my own ####, he's helping me. In his own words, "Sir, brother, you took care of us and now I'm gonna take care of you." That's the type of unit we had. Anyways, he's done four tours in Iraq and A'stan, and we've spent many nights with a bottle of Jack just talking things out. He told me that I've always had a way to know and explain things on a level that was comprehendable from a PFC to a 4-star.
I showed him the first three days of courses today. He loved it, but he laughed. "Mike, you gotta dumb that down for the E6's. Too many college words. Take your enemy situation and make it 'shape, hold, and clear.'"
So, I'm gonna relook the format and the questions (as per MarcT's suggestions on inversion) to make something accessible for everyone.
With that, here's some good tunes for the weekend that cover it all...
v/r
Mike
Sounds like Hitler's plan for taking over the world to me
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MikeF
Here's where I'm headed next week.
Day Four: The Biggest Tribe- Clearing the Village and taking Control
Day Five: Annihilation of the Opposition- Holding the Village
Day Six: Reconstruction at Gun-Point: Armed Nation-Building and the Build Phase
Day Seven: Transition- Conflict Resolution and moving to the Role of the Arbitrator
Day Eight: The Combat Advisor: FID. SFA, and the alternative, indirect approach- One Tribe at a Time
Day Nine: The Intangables: Three Cups of Tea, Winning Friends and Influencing People, and Peace Corps ####
Day Ten: Having a Life/Going Home before 2100- Resetting, Rebuilding, and Revamping our Army in a time of war: Working through injuries, grief, training the next breed, and new commanders.
This is NOT a recipe for effective foreign policy. If this is what you are having your military do, your foregin policy is hard broke.
Depends on how you define the enemy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bob's World
This is NOT a recipe for effective foreign policy. If this is what you are having your military do, your foregin policy is hard broke.
I was rereading Mao yesterday so I had his thoughts in my head when I wrote that :D. Yes, I need to relook at the tone. However, it's not that far off.
Annihilation of the Opposition- If you shut down the Enemy's training camps, political and military apparatus, and convince him to CHANGE behavior, you have won. Keep in mind, the enemy is an IDEA. I'm not talking about genocide or trying to take total control. The former is immoral and the latter is an illusion. One could argue that Greg Mortenson is attempting to annihilate al Qaeda through teaching the girls how to read.
Application of Violence- It is a necessary function. The level depends on the intensity of the insurgency, the threat level in one's particular AO, and the ROE from one's CoC.
Post-Colonial/Post-Cold small wars- this is not my foreign policy. I"m much more of an isolationist. The more that I study these type of wars, the more I remain convinced that one can only help someone that ASKS for help.
I agree with Commando Spirit that the SMART acronym has merit,
however, I will throw in a caution. The 'M' stands for measure and most educational treatises will point out that all activities should be or are measurable at some level. That's a true statement. The SMART process was used to design our current training system of Tasks, Conditions and Standards -- so we end up with the required measurement activity defining the methodology and even what gets taught by who and where! Not a good idea because while you can get pretty objective result reports, they are at the micro level. Teach or train at the micro level in order to grade at that level and the guys don't learn to do macro... :mad:
You can dumb things down to the micro level to get metrics and objective measurements (as we did, under some pressure) but I submit combat is an art that requires the amalgamation of a number of knowledges, skills and abilities -- put another way, combining all or parts of a number of tasks under some widely varying conditions to survive and win -- to achieve composite results and that measurement of those results at the macro level will usually, in training, be subjective. Do not get too heavily into metrics...
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The sign of a true scholar - in the Socratic tradition.;)
Oh and avoid the koolaid... :D
Learning to Eat Soup with a Hammer
Quote:
Originally Posted by
davidbfpo
MikeF,
I have two reservations about the teaching as you've described; it is centred around your American experience and outlook. History has a nasty habit of placing you - soldiers - in unexpected places, whilst there are common features in COIN, there are also differences.
Agreed. I look at all the "I's" that I typed in the last post, and it disturbs me, but in that time period, working in tribal village areas, I represented my company.
As a cadet studying economics, Major John Nagl was the wicked smart Rhodes Scholar working on important stuff that I looked up to. Maybe he got part of his studies wrong.
v/r
Mike
Post-colonial Pseudo-Occupation
So, that's the first third of the class- if you're going to use a hammer, here's the appropriate way to use it. I'm trying to decide if I should just use the case study of Zaganiyah or extend it out and include others. We'll see.
Ultimately, that answer can best be described as a post-colonial pseudo-occupation. We've used the American regular army to take back areas that the host-nation couldn't govern (Bob's World is upset). We crushed the enemy (Wilf is happy). Now, we're stuck being in charge. It sucks. As displaced families start coming back into the village or neighborhood, we have to determine land rights and property ownership. Teachers are coming to us asking for funds, books, pens, and paper to start school. Doctors are asking for Class VIII materials to reopen the clinics. Mohammed and Ahmed come to try to settle a dispute over some cow that got run over by a car. Sheik Septar, who used to roll with al Qaeda, is now an American "friend," and he's now coming by everyday to ask for compensation for the house we destroyed that was used to make VBIEDs. Everyone wants something.
So, what do you do now? You're stuck governing, and you realize that dismantling the insurgency was the easy part. Higher command is very happy with your efforts because the metrics look good. Attacks have gone down from 12 a day to one every five days. That looks good on a powerpoint slide while drinking Green Beans I guess. Generals fly in to observe your success. Reporters come by to hang out with the real "Spartans" living out in patrol bases. Command wants you to move on to clear the next village. They want you to make storyboards capturing TTPs and "lessons learned" to send across the force.
Back in the real world, back in the village, the insurgency has just moved back into a Phase One/Zero. They've gone underground, and they are carefully planning a counter-attack. The underlying tensions between the tribes and families and sects that allowed the initial problems are still simmering. As some of the Shias come back, fights break out and ten people are killed.
So what do you do now? That's the second part of this course. You've moved from the role of the counter-insurgent to the arbitrator. Here's what we did...
1. Delegation/Decentralization. No man is an island. A commander can't do this part on his own unless he is a natural dictator. My platoon leaders became the village elders. My platoon sergeants took different jobs: 1st platoon became the Police Chief. 2nd platoon remained focused on recon operations at night to keep the roads safe. 3rd platoon became the City Manager/Planner working schools and medical stuff. My mortar platoon sergeant became the Mayor of Zaganiyah. Every night we'd have a huddle and talk things out.
2. Partnering with the Iraqi Army. The first IA unit was part of the problem. They were commiting war crimes against the Sunnis. So, we placed the commander in jail and sent that unit down to Baqubah. Major Aziz and his boys showed up. Three weeks into it, Major Aziz and I realized that we fought against each other in Nassiriyah on the first night of the war. He was an infantry commander defending Talil Airfield. I was a tank platoon leader. After we found this common ground, we became best friends. Within 120 days, his unit to over full responsibility for Zaganiyah. We moved into an advisor role. Major Aziz just walked in one day and said, "Mike, this is my country. This is my fight. You're boys stay here, and I'm taking charge."
3. Conflict Resolution. Sheik Aziz showed up one day. He was a Baghdad lawyer working under the Ayatollah Sistani's movement out of Najaf. We drank some tea and smoked some cigarettes. We discussed the issues in my village, and he smiled. "Mike, it's not your village. These are Iraqi problems and only Iraqis can solve them." He started a movement of reconciliation and rebuilding. He began leading a series of negotiations to help the people
So, that's a portion of the second part. The final part is the most important. It describes my journey since I last left Iraq trying to understand it all and look for better ways to do business and other tools besides the hammer. For this part, I had to study under men that worked in the Phillipines, El Salvador, and Colombia, a woman who tried to establish governance in Afghanistan for the UN in the late 1990s. I had to work on a gang problem in Salinas. I read about this guy that builds girl schools, some dude who is the banker for the poor, and a quiet professional that works one village at a time. More to Follow...
Mike
In keeping with Steve Blair's suggestion
about the Indian wars, I'd recommend Fred Chiaventone's novel about the Fetterman "massacre" - A Moon of Bitter Cold.
Cheers
JohnT