We've been in total agreement about this for some time, Ken. The system discourages any initiative or non-conformist thinking.
Printable View
27 March issue of U.S. News and World Report - Hard-Learned Lessons by Julian Barnes.
But a short excerpt, click on the link above for the whole story...Quote:
...After three years of roadside bombs, midnight raids, and sectarian strife, one can safely say that Iraq is not the kind of war for which the National Training Center and the U.S. Army spent decades preparing. In fact, Iraq is the kind of fight that, after Vietnam, the Army hoped to avoid. It is a messy war in an urban landscape against multiple insurgencies, a powder keg of ethnic tensions that the United States still does not completely understand.
It is a war that is forcing the Army to change. Today, combat veterans, military thinkers, and Army historians are beefing up the study of insurgencies. They are emphasizing tone, intelligence, and cultural understanding. They are training designated skeptics to question planned operations. And they are rethinking the way the Army trains and fights...
LESSON #1: Emphasize stability and security
LESSON #2: Study counter-insurgency
LESSON #3: Know the cultural terrain
LESSON #4: Gain trust and confidence
LESSON #5: Improve intelligence analysis
Interesting COIN discussion going on at the Army.ca (Canada) board - Counter-Insurgency as a 6 Paragraph Parable.
1 September Cato Institute policy analysis - The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency by Jeffrey Record.
Quote:
The U.S. defeat in Vietnam, embarrassing setbacks in Lebanon and Somalia, and continuing political and military difficulties in Afghanistan and especially Iraq underscore the limits of America's hard-won conventional military supremacy. That supremacy has not delivered decisive success against nonstate enemies practicing protracted irregular warfare; on the contrary, America's conventional supremacy and approach to war—especially its paramount reliance on firepower and technology—are often counterproductive.
The problem is rooted in American political and military culture. Americans are frustrated with limited wars, particularly counterinsurgent wars, which are highly political in nature. And Americans are averse to risking American lives when vital national interests are not at stake. Expecting that America's conventional military superiority can deliver quick, cheap, and decisive success, Americans are surprised and politically demoralized when confronted by Vietnam- and Iraq-like quagmires.
The Pentagon's aversion (the Marine Corps excepted) to counterinsurgency is deeply rooted in the American way of warfare. Since the early 1940s, the Army has trained, equipped, and organized for large-scale conventional operations against like adversaries, and it has traditionally employed conventional military operations even against irregular enemies.
Barring profound change in America's political and military culture, the United States runs a significant risk of failure when it enters small wars of choice, and great power intervention in small wars is almost always a matter of choice. Most such wars, moreover, do not engage core U.S. security interests other than placing the limits of American military power on embarrassing display. Indeed, the very act of intervention in small wars risks gratuitous damage to America's military reputation.
The United States should abstain from intervention in such wars, except in those rare cases when military intervention is essential to protecting or advancing U.S. national security...
Presentations from the 10 Oct 06 Panel at the AUSA annual meeting:
Best Practices in COIN
The Evolution of American COIN DoctrineQuote:
Successful COIN Practices
• Focus on the population, their needs, and their security
• Emphasis on intelligence
• Secure areas established, expanded
• Insurgents isolated from population (population control)
• Single authority (charismatic/dynamic leader)
• Effective, pervasive PSYOP campaigns
• Amnesty and rehabilitation for insurgents
• Police in lead; military supporting
• Police force expanded, diversified
• Conventional military forces reoriented for COIN
• Special Forces, advisers embedded with indigenous forces
• Insurgent sanctuaries denied
International Perspectives on COINQuote:
COIN Paradoxes
• The more you protect your force, the less secure you are
• The more force you use, the less effective you are
• The more successful you are, the less force you can use – and the more risk you must accept
• Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction
• The best weapons for COIN do not shoot
• The host nation doing something tolerably is sometimes better than us doing it well
• If a tactic works this week, it might not work next week. If it works in this province, it might not work in the next
• Tactical success guarantees nothing
• Most important decisions are not made by generals
The Lessons of Tal AfarQuote:
“Small Wars demand the highest type of leadership directed by intelligence, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. Small wars are conceived in uncertainty, are conducted with precarious responsibility and doubtful authority, under indeterminate orders lacking specific instructions.”
Quote:
Change the Environment that Allows Chaos to Exist
• Secure the population - Patrol Bases, R & S
– Perception of security has cascading effects
– Enables civil projects
• ISF Partnership
– Dig to the root problems to improve ISF
• Combined Command & Control
– Develop combined speed & agility
– Focus on developing ISF capabilities
• Restore government
• Relationships matter – Build Trust
– Mutual respect is a combat multiplier
– Be even-handed
• Take personal Ownership of your AO
– People Can Tell When You Care
Thanks Jed! Just added these presentations to the SWJ's Counterinsurgency Page.
Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency - David Kilcullen on the Small Wars Journal Blog.
Please comment on the SWJ Blog as well as here - thanks!Quote:
Discussion of the new Iraq strategy, and General Petraeus’s recent Congressional testimony have raised the somewhat obvious point that the word “counterinsurgency” means very different things to different people. So it may be worth sketching in brief outline the two basic philosophical approaches to counterinsurgency that developed over the 20th century (a period which I have written about elsewhere as "Classical Counterinsurgency"). These two contrasting schools of thought about counterinsurgency might be labeled as “enemy-centric” and “population-centric”...
Dave Kilcullen said:
French General-d'Armee Andre Beaufre wrote in his book "An Introduction to Strategy" in 1965:Quote:
Both have merit, but the key is to first diagnose the environment, then design a tailor-made approach to counter the insurgency, and - most critically - have a system for generating continuous, real-time feedback from the environment that allows you to know what effect you are having, and adapt as needed.
"... strategic plan can now be worked out. We are dealing with a porblem of dialectics; for every action proposed, therefore, the possible enemy reactions must be calculated and provisions made to guard against them. His reaction may be international or national, psychological, political, economic or military. Each sucessive action planned, together with the counter to the corresponding enemy reaction, must be built up into a coherent whole, the object being to retain the ability to pursue the plan in spite of the resistance of the enemy. If the plan is good one, there should be no risk of set-backs. The result will be "risk-proof" strategy, the object of which will be to prserve our own liberty of action. Naturally strategy must have a clear picture of the whole chain of events leading up to the final decision - which, be it noted in passing, was not the case with us in France either in 1870 or in 1939 or in Indo-China or in Algeria. It must also be remembered that dialectic struggle between two opponents will be further complicated by the fact that it will be played out on an international stage. Pressure by allies or even neutrals may prove decisive (as at Suez). Germany has lost two wars as a result of failure to grasp this point; she brought England in against her by invasion of Belgium and the United States by the U-boat war. A correct appreciation of the influence of the the international situation upon our own liberty of action is therefore a vital element of strategy ..."
I am, admitedly, not familiar with General Beaufre's book. But from that snippet he seems to be of the determinist school - if there is enough planning every contingency can be anticipated and the correct formulae applied to guarantee success. Chet Richards' little book, _Certain to Win_ addresses this thinking quite well with regard to business but his comments also apply to warfare. I think it is a rather simplistic view of the world that assumes we can anticipate how irrational human beings will react to everything we do and be able to guarantee success. It ignores the obvious question of what happens when two opponents meet both using that kind of thinking - if both are believing in guaranteed victory because they both believe they have fulfilled the perfect planning paradigm..... It also assumes human commanders of opposing forces are rational enough that one can predict what their reactions will be to every scenario in the "plan" - but by and large, human beings often do not act rationally. In fact, a key to success is very likely acting in a way that appears irrational to your adversary and, as the Boyd crowd likes to say, getting inside the adversary's OODA cycle.
I agree that the deterministic approach limits the depth of understanding and degree of creativity applied. The feature that makes this so is the nonlinear characteristic of human behavior in large groups. The thinking of the Santa Fe Institute toward greater understanding of nonlinear systems theory, and it captures some reasons for the inherent unpredictability of behavior, and the attitudes and perceptions that shape decisions. I think that there is a necessary place for reductionist work in the process of assessing an environment, identifying what is to be done, planning that action, executing that action, and assessing its effect.
Back on point, I read in David Kilcullen's piece a call for developing an approach to counterinsurgency that is appropriate to the environment or situtation in which one is to operate. I agree with that, and see that colliding with a desire to master an approach or small set of discrete approaches in order to provide a general purpose counterinsurgency capability. I'm persuaded that it isn't that simple, but there are methods that guide one to an approach that facilitates learning throughout the effort and provides sufficient flexibility to capitalize on insight gleaned.
http://www.ftleavenworthlamp.com/art...news/news3.txt
A professor of Strategic Studies of the U.S. Naval War College has been selected to become the first holder of the Congressman Ike Skelton Distinguished Chair for Counterinsurgency at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Dr. Ahmed S. Hashim will teach and help develop curricula relevant to counterinsurgency operations, including ensuring that the most relevant counterinsurgency material is included in CGSC courses attended by mid-grade officers. He will also teach electives in the CGSC, and deliver lectures at the School of Command Preparation and the School of Advanced Military Studies. Additionally, he will serve on Master of Military Arts and Science committees and conduct regular faculty development seminars for key CGSC personnel and faculty.
Hashim will develop a counterinsurgency outreach program by actively surveying and participating in "high payoff" counterinsurgency efforts throughout the Joint, interagency, academic and civilian arenas in order to promote institutional change in the U.S. Army. He will also periodically update Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, on the chair's activities.
I'd say 5 1/2 years after the start of a "declared conflict" is about time to start thinking about addressing the problems of COIN at the institutional level.
120--
CGSC has at least a fairly good history of teaching COIN and other Small Wars euphemisms. In the 1970s, when the army decided to forget Vietnam and COIN, it reduced curriculum to a mere 1 hour. At that time LTC Don Vought realizing that terrorism was the new hot topic saved all the old stuff under that file so it was available as COIN came back into play in the 80s. Late 70s and 80 - 81 is the period when John Waghelstein was teaching at Leavenworth.
In 92 when I returned as a civilian prof, DJCO had a committee of 7 or so guys devoted to teaching and deveoping curriculum on MOOTW. They included Britishe Lt. Col. Mike Smith who had served in Oman. We also used to have regular lectures by Larry Cable and Amb Dave Passage who had been Charge in El Salvador in 1985.
Don Vought as a civilian sat on my editorial board for LP 14. COL Denny Frasche was CSI Director and he recruited guys to look at UW. LTC Jack Hixson was Research Committee Chief and he let me--with Roger Spiller's support--go forward with the Congo 64 project for LP 14.Quote:
At that time LTC Don Vought realizing that terrorism was the new hot topic saved all the old stuff under that file so it was available as COIN came back into play in the 80s.
Hopefully some of this will hang on when the inevitable refocus on big wars and bigger battalions takes place.
Tom
Amb. Dave Passage (now retired) along with LtGen Paul Van Riper are our two senior mentors / grey beards for the Joint Urban Warrior and Expeditionary Warrior programs. Amb. Passage has been a god-send to the programs...
He is a 30-plus year veteran of the foreign service and had extensive experience with both Latin America and guerrilla insurgencies. I recall he also spent several years as a youth in Colombia and much later as an analyst at the U.S. military assistance command in Vietnam.
I remember mostly reading about his days in Africa with insurgencies and his work as a negotiator during the US's diplomatic efforts in the 1980s securing the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Africa.
I'm just completing ILE via correspondence course (Pain!!!) and I am underwhelmed by most of the content. There are a few acorns, there, but most of it is just slop.
As I am supposed to become an ILE Instructor here in the next few months, I have suggested that our ILE BN name me as their own COIN chair, and include more relevant information (some of it shamelessly lifted from this web-site) relating to COIN and current ops.
I just need to get back with you on this. I spoke with the ILE schools director, and he says "We have enough of that stuff in the curriculum the way it is."
So, back to "checking the block" so Majors can do the minimum necessary to make LTC.
That is why the active guys have to go to the residency course now. The people I have met who did the ILE battalion job in the reserves were not always the most up to date. If you really want the PME, you go to the resident course.
Jimbo can back me up on this one. The core cirriculum has expanded in the amount of COIN instruction to each student at CGSC (can't comment on the correspondent course...I suspect its lacking). Although not nearly as much as I'd like, it was enough to teach the bare bone basics. During your elective periods, you can sign up for additional COIN/Terrorism classes, which I did. Took a great class on COIN, and two great classes on terrorism...really helped me in broadening my COIN/Terrorism knowledge base. Again, I actively sought out these courses to augment the basic COIN classes taught in the core cirriculum. Hopefully have an experienced guy as the COIN chair will bring out an increase the amount and quality of COIN instruction in CGSC and hopefully, that will spill over to the correspondance stuff as well.
On another note, John, we watched a Larry Cable lecture that he did when he used to come to CGSC...plus his book on Malaya was pretty good as well.
This is good news. Of all the Iraq books that I've read thus far, I think that Dr. Hashim's is far and away the best. Of course, this is somewhat an apples and oranges comparison since each book has its own focus, but the endnotes on his book are incredible.
As I understood it, for the Army the change for CGSC was to give priority to line officers to do the residency course. It was circa 2004 that I had a discussion with an Army O-3 about to be O-4 regarding this shift in the policy. Who knows whether this policy has been enforced given the manpower requirements of OIF/OEF. The Marine Corps has no such requirements -- my husband has been doing the Command and Staff correspondence course while in Fallujah. Also, the Marine Corps has had a reputation, at the War College level, of not necessarily sending people until _after_ they've had BN command. At least one person, whose opinion I trust and whose knowledge of the workings of the Corps is massive, has suggested this can be a problem.
One thing I'd be curious to know is what the stats are on reserve officer attendance at the War Colleges prior to 2001. It seems I run into a fair number of them attending the courses here at Newport, and I don't know whether that's a change (related to the operational requirements for AD officers) or the maintenance of the status quo.
Actually, the policy is for everyone in the AC to attend the active course. Because of the manpower requirements for the wars, there are a lot of empty seats at ILE and the War College. The Guard and Reserve have started sending more officers to these slots because the AC can't fill them. There were traditionally a few slots for RC personnel in both courses, but again, because of the war there are greater opportunities available.
Ok, I've been working on this one since my first tour as a single-by-deployment parent. It's a bit cheeky, but as the old saying goes, many a true word is said in jest. This is the unorthodox view I referenced in the Yingling thread.
Comments and additional "slides" are welcome. Normally I'm opposed to power-point, but in this case, the visuals work -- lot's of good, visceral imagery.
"Babies and Insurgents: Why Raising Children Is Like Fighting a Counter-Insurgency"
Consider:
- Cartoon of parent throttling baby in a circle with a slash through it to illustrate the point that you don't win by physically crushing the baby. Even though you can. And sometimes really, _really_ want to -- sort of. It's that brief moment of insanity, in which we are all mostly lucky for not acting on the idea.
- A Little Rascals picture of one of them kicking an adult. Several shots from Home Alone. Etc. These illustrate the point that they can hurt you to their hearts content. With glorious impugnity.
- A picture of other people smiling over the cute baby. A freedom fighter would kill for this kind of press. Highlights the point that the insurgent is often ahead in the PR campaign, whereas the side with the preponderance of power usually finds itself coming up short on this front. If Van Creveld is correct (On Future War), the obviously stronger side is _always_ going to have a PR problem.
- A visual of a parent holding a crying baby in her arms, Tuesday on the calendar, with one of those thought clouds coming out of her head with another visual of the same set-up, except the baby is happy -- on a calendar in this view it says Monday. What worked yesterday may not work today, and today's victories could be tomorrow's tragedies.
- I can't think of a visual for this one, but it's where you solve one problem and simultaneously create another in its place. If you're a parent, I'm sure you've done this. If you find a route that is not laced with IEDs, it's probably got a few corners with ambushes.
- A corollary to the above -- just walking right into a problem all on your own. Like when you offer something and then can't do it and now you've raised expectations. You just step into the s*&t [FN] all on your own.
- A picture of a parent, done up like a Secret Service agent, doing the throw him/herself in front of the proverbial bullet dive. Even though they drive you crazy, you'd die for your kids. This is the idea that, even when the locals seem to be working against you, you have to be willing to do anything to protect them, so that they don't become insurgents. You have to prove that you have their security and well-being as your priority.
- How to train for the mission: Photo of a Marine PFC/Army Private in full combat gear holding an infant -- if he can keep that thing happy and safe for a month on his own he'll have an idea of what will be needed of him on a deployment to a CI. Scarier, in many respects, than SERE school.
Enjoy.
===================
[FN] I believe that reference to expletives in military history is both necessary, and one of the great bits of fun about the subject -- come on, we talk about some tragic stuff, let us have our moments of levity. I've referred to one of my favorite quotes, from Chosin, where the Marine, after being asked -- by a female reporter, no less -- what the most difficult part of the campaign was, responds, in a morphine induced haze, trying to get 4 inches of [grocery store muzak] out of 6 inches of clothing to urinate. As irreverant as reference to that quote might be, I do find it instructive. Another of my theories is the 4/6ths Principle -- that is, on the battlefield, all you'll ever get is 4/6th of what you need. The art is in making up the deficit. Exemplified by the John Wayne quote, "That's not all I've got, that's what I've got," from Rio Bravo. John Wayne could get away with it because his actual ass was on the line. It's not for the SecDef to say -- it represents his [albeit possibly honest] failure to do his job. The operational commander gets to make this sort of gruff comment that he'll make do with whatever he's given. [Rio Bravo being one of my favorite movies, with a great musical interlude by Martin and Nelson -- here's a link, but don't click on it unless you want to hear the song, because it comes up on its own.]
http://solosong.net/dino/rifle/rifle.html
Sargent,
GREAT analogies that I think even our youngest trooper can relate to, especially if he/she is a parent! For your one bullet without a visual (solve on problem and create another in its place), I imagine taking a toy away from one of my kids, put it down and the other takes the same damn toy! Always a problem!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject. I think you've hit on a relevant, easy to use way of describing how to win/lose in COIN!
As well as a nearly endless supply of COIN warriors among the women who are raising children. Hell, I bet a bunch of them would volunteer to go to Iraq/Afghanistan just to be able to take a break from the kids.:)
The question is; would we have to pay them to go fight insurgents or would they pay us for the opportunity to do something more restful than raising children?:D
My wife uses a tactic known as "mommy's mad at the world, and it's time to be very, very good." There are certain nation-states that might need this tactic. :eek:
Ok, you both made me laugh out loud with your responses.
I forgot another slide, and I don't know quite how/where it fits in. But it's the idea that, caretaking and taking a lot of difficulties aside, the parents also have to be a force for discipline in a child's life. They can't just let the children rule the roost -- ultimately that is only to the child's detriment, as they learn later in life that they aren't the be all end all of everything and that some people don't take kindly to spoiled brats. Maybe it's the "law and order" piece -- that is, as beneficent as you must be in certain respects, you also can't be too indulgent, you have to establish laws that must be followed by all or there will be consequences. Maybe the visual for this is a three picture scenario, first one is the child being told no cookies, second one is the child with the hand in the cookie jar, and third one is the child sitting in a corner on a time out (or, if it's not too offensive, holding his bum because it's just been spanked).
On the "take a bullet slide" I've got a scenario from OIF I'd like to put forward to illustrate and see what folks think about it. A fair bit of the grunt work of the insurgency is being done by regular Iraqi folk who aren't necessarily committed, but who need the money, and who don't want to get on the wrong side of the insurgents. You know, they emplace the IED or trigger it, eg. Or they're one of the prayers and sprayers who work in support of the A-Game guys. Now, let's say you catch the guy. What if, instead of putting them in jail, you offered them something better. You empathize with their situation, and you find out what they'd rather have. What did the guy do before? If he operated a little kabob cart, what if you offer a micro-loan or business grant to open a kabob shop? Maybe they won't all go for it, but some will, probably more than half. Once you get some going for it, I think you'd see a snowball effect. Or perhaps I'm just a bright-eyed optimist.
In the very beginning of the "insurgency" we had developed an agreement with the locals. Some Fedeyeen strongman had kidnapped some family members, and dropped off a mortar and some rounds. If the farmers didn't fire the mortars on the base, they'd get their relatives back... one piece at a time. So, we allowed the farmers to fire on the "base", as long as the mortar fire impacted in an area that was "safe", our patrols wouldn't kill them.
I don't know what we could've promised the farmers to make them "not shoot" the mortar; as it was, after about 6 months, both the Fedeyeen and "Big Army" caught on to our "agreement" and it was back to being enemies again.
I'm a little disturbed by the Iraqi Populace = Children piece, (White Man's Burden and all that) but I have to say, you found an unexpected and accurate parallel with your unconventional view on COIN.
BTW - Would it be okay to yell at the Iraqis something like "If you guys say one more word, I'm going to turn this war around and go straight back home. And we're never going back!";)
Interesting about the mortars... I don't really know how this all works in reality, it's more of a directional idea (a la Builder and Dewar's idea of "planning" from an article in Parameters back in the 90s).
I totally get your point about the "white man's burden" aspect. I suppose that piece works better when you are fighting an insurgency within your own country. But really, it just goes to the point that law and order are necessary in the process of ending an insurgency/establishing a secure setting. In Iraq, this part might have to be done by the locals.
"Are we there yet? Are we there yet?":)
What I love about this brilliant analogy is that it is something every human being on the planet can relate to as obvious common sense, because even if childless, we've all been children.
I desperately wish this idea wasn't so deeply enmeshed with the "white man's burden" notion of paternalism/maternalism, because the actual techniques are among the oldest behavior-development tools in the human arsenal.
Perhaps you can get beyond the paternalism/maternalism idea by relating this to group dynamics and social persuasion ... where success also requires repetition, restraint, simplicity of message, and an ability to relentlessly focus on the long-term goal in every day-to-day activity. Everything I need to know about COIN I learned in Kindergarten.
As I read through this, I keep being reminded of Fallujah in the spring of '04, when the four contractors were butchered. My unorthodox view of this is that one of the reasons the U.S. government hires the security contractors and pays them six-figure tax-free salaries is because they are risking their lives with the implicit understanding that, if their bodies were dragged through the streets, the news footage won't show dead American soldiers. In Fallujah, we collectively lost sight of this pragmatic reality and instead declared war on a city. It's as though we became guilty of shaken-baby syndrome.
While I find the analogy to child-rearing compelling, I think you may have focussed on the wrong age group in your analysis.
I believe that we are dealing with something more akin to teenagers rather than younger munchkins. I think an approach like that used by Kevin Kline with his son in the 2001 movie "Life as a House" might be worth investigating.
BTW "Rio Bravo" may be the Duke's best picture, IMHO. I'm particularly partial to the scene where Stumpy's (Walter Brennan's character) complaining about conflicting guidance from Marshall Chance.
The teenagers are more like dedicated AQ -- there's nothing you can do about them!
Seriously, part of the point of using the baby/small child as the object is to make clear the physical/strength disparities -- and how they don't matter. The initial point of comparison that occurred to me was that you are bigger and stronger than the baby, but killing the baby isn't victory, it is most definitely defeat. It is the similar situation to a Counterinsurgency -- you don't win by applying your overwhelming force -- in fact, that's often how you lose. That is, you can't lash out because they've made you insane.
On a separate note, regarding the paternalism piece, I do not mean to suggest that the Counterinsurgent side is the "parent" in the conflict. I mean only to suggest that many of the same ideas that govern parenting also governing the conduct of a counterinsurgency. I want to shake the notion that winning is fighting and killing insurgents and other similar activities.
With teenagers (I have experience on both ends here), it's really a test of how well you've done during the pre-teen rearing phase, with the caveat that there are too many variables for you to have had control over the outcome. Plenty of good adults had lousy parents, and vice versa.
The goal is to have given teenagers the behavior tools and experiences for them to have a greater chance of success as they respond to their hard-wired need to drive away from the group that nurtured them and find a new social group of their own. This remarkable evolutionary trait accomplishes two things -- physcially, it minimizes inter-breeding; and socially, it provides a mobility that allows each generation to take a critical look at the received wisdom and knowledge of the larger culture.
Or, as my wife would say, they go insane at age 14 and, sometime around 22, get over it.
It's helpful to understand this social dynamic from a COIN point of view, because our soldiers are teenagers or recent teens who have broken away from their nurturing group and have found a new social group in which to belong. At this age -- 18 to 22 -- humans can be intensely passionate about believing in and defending their newly adopted group and its values. On the other hand, their potential insurgent adversaries are of the same age cohort and believe just as fervently and inflexibly in their chosen values.
My reason for suggesting the teen rather than the younger set is rooted in a view of the whole person. Parents of teens can apply overwhelming force in two different ways--they have the superior mental/rational card
(also known as "age and experience") which they can use to browbeat those teens. They also still have physical power over the teens quite often ("age and cunning will beat youth and brute strength every time")
On a separate, but related, note you seem to have been hoisted on your own pitard here.
While you say you want to shake the notion of winning via violence, your analogy seems largely to focus on just that aspect of the parent-child relationship. Your stated goal leads to another reason for my response focussed on teens: they, at least sometimes, are amenable to reason (while the babies and toddlers in your hypothetical slides are not). Parents just have to figure out what kinds of reasoning works with their teens. This is sort of like a clash between two cultures, which seems to characterize most COIN efforts that are not completely run from inside the affected country by its own forces. BTW, many teens are caught in the same conundrum: trying to figure out how to talk to their parents about their issue, they lack the common ground which causes their all-too-frequently-heard outcries of "Mom (or Dad), you just don't understand." Parents quite often do understand the issue; they just don't share the language (AKA cultural commonalities) to be able to express that understanding.
I don't disagree with your critique of the idea. But I would submit that we don't even have a good, commonly understood starting point. Consider the "teen" piece as advanced Counterinsurgency, whereas the "baby" piece is remedial. We have such a strong tradition of force=war=winning, and that needs to be broken down in order to begin the process of learning how to do COIN correctly. Alternatively, the "baby" piece might be how to deal with the part of counterinsurgency where there is still quite a bit of violence afoot, and the "teen" piece is how to navigate the point when you've gotten the insurgents to stop fighting (for the most part) and now you have to deal with them politically.
Does that lower my petard?
Hi Sargent,
Why not combine them and, at the same time, add in some "grand parent" figures as the local sheiks? After all, one of the serious problems with the baby issue is that "White Man's Burden" imagery and that could be corrected with having the local elders in a grandparent role - it also reinforces the idea that it is okay to ask for advice (aka babysitting) and you are a twit if you don't.
Marc
The baby treatment piece is not really remedial. Rather it is part of a graduated response depending on where one is in the insurgency. It goes with Baby insurgencies (I think they used to call them Phase I--those that are just starting and/or have very little popular support). Being too heavy handed with anti-insurgency tactics sways public opinion towards the insurgents. Humor the bad behavior, and we hope it goes away. If it doesn't (as with Baby Dumpling now not only blowing raspberries, but blowing raspberries with a mouth full of food every time s/he's fed), perhaps more coercive measures need to be applied. But, as the Wicked Witch of the West says in The Wizard of Oz ,"These thing have to be done delicately." Graduated responses go along with the various phases of insurgency--I think the current operations in SWA require a more teen-parent-like solution since this is no Phase I Insurrection (and probably never was).
BTW, I think categorizing insurgencies as Phase I, II, II, etc. is a mistake. Insurgencies occupy a continuum going from limited popular support to massive popular support.
Petards (my bad for previous uncaught misspelling) usually cannot be unhoisted, just as, more germane to the alleged origin of the phrase, "gas, once passed, cannot be recaptured."Quote:
Does that lower my pitard?
pe·tard
–noun 1. an explosive device formerly used in warfare to blow in a door or gate, form a breach in a wall, etc.
2. a kind of firecracker.
3. (initial capital letter) Also called Flying Dustbin. a British spigot mortar of World War II that fired a 40-pound (18 kg) finned bomb, designed to destroy pillboxes and other concrete obstacles.
—Idiom4. hoist by or with one's own petard, hurt, ruined, or destroyed by the very device or plot one had intended for another.
[Origin: 1590–1600; < MF, equiv. to pet(er) to break wind (deriv. of pet < L péditum a breaking wind, orig. neut. of ptp. of pédere to break wind) + -ard -ard]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source pe·tard (pĭ-tärd') Pronunciation Key
n.
A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall.
A loud firecracker.
[French pétard, from Old French, from peter, to break wind, from pet, a breaking of wind, from Latin pēditum, from neuter past participle of pēdere, to break wind; see pezd- in Indo-European roots.]
Word History: The French used pétard, "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. "To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pēditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart."
Yipes, tough crowd. No more word jokes from me.
First, I'd like to mention that I doubt very much that it's a good decision to become engaged in a COIN campaign outside of your own nation.
It's usually a hint that you have your troops where they don't belong, probably as unjustified invaders now occupying a foreign country.
A puppet regime asking for your presence and protection is no excuse to me, even not if it's 'democratic'. It lacks sovereignty as long as you're there with your troops.
Anyway, I have some - let's say out-of-the-box - ideas for COIN that try to address common problems in COIN.
A)
Raising indigenous security forces - competent, quick. And to have a credible exit timetable.
My idea for this is to have recruits as 'shadows' of your own enlisted soldiers. For each soldiers there'll be an indigenous recruit who just passed a three-month basic training. He'll learn on the job.
The NCO's observe which shadows are promising enough for NCO jobs and take them as their shadows, recruits from basic training filling the gaps.
After about two years the first indigenous NCOs will be sent to an officer course and become shadows of lieutenants. Senior officers need to be produced somehow else. This would take about three to four years until line companies would have competent shadows. In the fourth year the shadows become the primary units and act independently, the occupying company only as backup. After four years, the occupying company leaves and the shadow company becomes fully operational.
The recruits should (if the country is divided by ethics and/or religion) be at most to one third of local origin, the rest being from different regions - to avoid some problems that are common in inhomogenous country's armies.
If anybody believes that four years isn't enough - compare it to the force buildup of the U.S. in 1941-1945. Three years is already enough if we refrain from over-ambitious requirements.
The language problem could be solved within a year - it's simple for evena dult people to learn about 2000 words of a foreign language in a year and communication by gesture helps a lot. The buddy relationship between soldier and shadow and direct responsibility for the competence of your shadow should encourage quick learning.
The shadow concept has in my opinion several advantages
- clear timeframe
- competence can be observed very well
- atrocities are less likely
- understanding of the civilian society is enhanced
- It's almost impossible that in such a relationship new forces supposedly loyal to the central government are in fact local militias not loyal to the government.
B)
Driving around. How to avoid IED's and other ambushes?
Think about it; what does the IED operator depend on the most? Identification. If he cannot tell which one of the 500 trucks per hour that pass his IED is an enemy, he becomes useless.
My idea is to use trucks acquired locally. A repair show repairs the dynamic components (without changing outer appearance or sound) and includes some more equipment. A driver in uniform but mostly looking like the local truck drivers steers the vehicle, sometimes but not always with another soldier looking the same next to him (let's say his shadow;-) ).
This truck leaves the base with a squad or half squad for patrol or whatever.
After leaving the base, the need to stop some times and set up ambushes to intercept possibly shadowing enemy forces.
If on patrol, they can easily live off these trucks for days before they return to the base, buying additional foot and drinking water from locals (surprisingly and therefore not poisoned).
If they run into a situation that requries reinforcements, they can wait till those reinforcements arrive and remain undetected.
In the famous "A Stryker approaches a compound unheard other than a tracked vehicle and the raid preserves the element of surprise." example, this truck would easily beat any million-$ vehicle. It could even have some armor plating to protect against rifle fire.
C)
Bases...
It's common practice to build a kind of defended fort in an occupied country and to tie up lots of troops with the services and defence of the camp.
At the same time, theorists claim that troops need to be in close contact with the local population and to cooperate, win hearts and minds and so on.
I have a different suggestion that eliminates a lot of the logistical footprint, alienation and other problems ... if it works.
My suggestion is to exploit the hospitality which is usually a very strong cultural element in rural areas - especially un less developed countries. Hospitality is often a matter of family honor.
My scenario is that when a company needs to be based in a small town the captain meets the town's elders together with his translator. He makes promises as well as asks whether they want his protection for the next four years. He wouldn't meddle with local politics but just care about the security situation and assist the local police in fighting common crime.
If they agree, he can ask for their hospitality and whether troops can sleep at night in the houses of the locals. The company could pay the community for this service.
This seems risky, of course. But think about it; hospitality forces the house owner to care for his guest. Any treason would ruin the family's honor in many regions. Treasoning a full company with a hundred dead would invariably lead to the utter destruction of the town, that needs to be clarified through informal channels.
The benefits of such an arrangement would be that community and company are closely tied together - it would be hard if not impossibly for non-local insurgent groups to turn this community into their base. The community would benefit commercially from the occupiers by the direct payment that finances communal personnel and investments and the purchasing power of the soldiers (food, drinks and other goods).
The single most serious problem that I see is the posibility that cultural incompatibility leads to conflits. This includes fraternisation with house owner's daughters. But a problem is just a challenge and without thinking and disciplined soldiers it would be hard to succeed in COIN anyway.
D)
First rule: You're at home when you do COIN. If you're U.S. American and patrol on a street, the children next to you are U.S.Americans of arab or whatever background. Treat them and all other local population as you would treat your own people. If you don't, you may be sent to prison just like you might if you did what you did at home.
You don't bump into the car in front of you with a Hummer to speed up your travel by forcing him to change the lane. You don't stop vehicles at checkpoints with machinegun fire. If you want to search a house, get your permission on paper first and ask first, wait and finally kick the door only if necessary.
You're at an unknown part of your own country and the different language shouldn't irritate you. Simple rule, should be understandable for everyone. Every soldier who's too dumb to learnt his rule quickly will do so in prison for violation of law or at least violation of a standing order.
The purpose is to discipline the soldiers and to minimize civilian unrest about the force. It's also a matter of justness.
==============
I'm waiting for constructive critique.
The 'teen' analogy in COIN: Not a bad analogy; rebelling at everything for rebellion's sake, irrational, driven by hormones rather than conscious thought and reason, seeking affirmation and validation from their peers and the world at large, willing to use destructive methods to satisfy short-sighted desires, seeking causes greater than themselves and thereby falling in on self-serving and manipulitive leaders. And insurgents are pretty difficult people too.
One key piece that reinforces the analogy; shaped by the media. Teens (at least American teens) and insurgents are victims of the mass media. They see self-destructive behavior rewarded with media attention and approval, and they just have to get some of that for themselves. Granted, different media have different motivations. American media are about the profit margin first, last, and always, and sometimes allow personal issues to intrude. Middle Eastern gov't managed media are about stability of the gov't that manages them, so creating issues outside their own borders to draw attention from corruption inside their borders is the order of the day. The end effect is the same - less than mature viewers learn dangerous and destructive lessons from the talking heads. I would wager that the average American 14 yr old and the average insurgent foot soldier (not leader) have similar levels of emotional development. A scary thought.
Re: "White Man's Burden" - there's a big stigma on that phrase, but when you're dealing with populations that won't acknowledge cause and effect, or instantly ascribe "Will of God" as the only cause to all effects, it's hard not to slip toward that role. How do you get a population to accept responsibility for their actions without taking something of a patriariachal or matriarical role?
The idea of the "Q-Truck" , like the old British WWI "Q-Ship" anti-Uboat and 'commerce raider', has merit. As a scout/recon platform, clandestine insertion and extraction vehicle, surveillance vehicle or convoy pointman or sweeper it could work well.
As an idea for large convoys, it is most likely impractical since the point of origion and the size of the convoy would be give aways.
Furhter the locals would be the deciding factor, over time they would probably notice and pass info to the insugents.
-T
The gun trucks in Vietnam served as Q-Trucks at first, as did the M-113s armed with Vulcan mini-guns, at least in terms of unexpected escorts. In both cases they were quite successful (at least initially) at breaking convoy ambushes.
There were also examples of normal mech units leaving stay-behind patrols (LRRPs or regular grunts), in which case the M-113 was really doing the same task you're talking about.
So there is some history to the technique, although I'm not sure if local vehicles have been used before. Could be a very good spin on an old tactic.
I think also, that LE uses local or clandestine vehicles for surveillance purposes all the time, it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to add this capability to the kit bag of troops in Iraq-Afghanistan for direct action and patrolling.
This is similar to what was done with both SF A-Teams in the Montagnard regions of SVN and the USMC CAP practices in I Corps. It was very successful (at least in the early days) with SF, and CAP also appears to have been successful (although there are arguments that it only worked in more peaceful areas or those more disposed to the SVN government to begin with).
Well, I meant the truck idea more for camouflage and less as ambush vs. ambushers as the old WW1 Q-Ship.
I believe it's plain silly to drive around as patrol on predictable routes in easily identified vehicles. It's even more silly to buy expensive armored vehicles that need a lot of gas due to their weight and transport only a few soldiers in them because they still can be crushed by simply larger mines.
In a country with hundred thousands of trucks it should be possible to merge with lots of them and simply drive to where you need to drive by looking unconspicious.
Identification would be much more difficult and likely not timely for IED operation even if every IED operator had and knew photos of every such trucks from the area. Either the effort to keep current info on those trucks is not merited by their small quantity or there are too many to be recognized...
Keep in mind that "undercover" vehicles are only good as long as they remain uncompromised. It doesn't matter how well they blend in once the indig recognize those specific vehicles are being used by our troops - that means the threat knows and they are now targeted.
During my time with the Gang Task Force in CA, the local LE (city & county) there had a difficult time comprehending what "compromise" meant. They would conduct surveillance on a subject and then meet up afterwards in the rear parking lot of a shopping mall just a few blocks away - both uniformed and plainclothes LE standing around the vehicles in full view of passing traffic.
At best it meant that those vehicles and officers were now compromised and would no longer be of use in future surveillance in that area. In reality, because of lack of resources (both men and vehicles), it meant that each future surveillance op using any element of that group would have to be planned with the understanding that it may be compromised from the beginning.
In sum, the use of undercover vehicles requires effective mission planning, to include counter-surveillance planning, when used - otherwise they are only effective for a brief period before they become targets like every other vehicle with overt U.S. markings (and those tinted-window SUVs).
Well, I've seen many trucks in not really industrialized countries looking very "custom" due to decorations, not really fitting spare parts, dirt, different colour spare parts and so on. It should be possible to change the outer appearance by exchanging part and so on. It's a matter of life or death and certainly justifies the effort if it works.
Anyway - an IED operator needs some distance to the IED to be safe from the explosion and safe from the pursuit. That means he'll have some distance between himself and the IED, therefore also difficulties to identify a truck that looks just like some ten thousand other trucks around in time.
That's so much more demanding than identifying a standard brownish 'camouflaged' HMMWV or Stryker or HEMMT as a target ...