A shaman by any other name
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Originally Posted by
goesh
We have no shamans to counter our enemy’s spiritual leaders. So much thought and so many words are directed at the war of ideas and propaganda and ideology, all this mental stuff of Intel and counter Intel, innovation, creativity, adaptation but nothing of the spiritual. We essentially march to war without God yet we go to great lengths to acknowledge and respect and understand the spirituality of our opponents. We acknowledge their God but do not bring ours to the fight. In describing relationship levels per the direction of this thread, there is a vacuum that has not been filled and simply not factored in. There is a subtle spin component to COIN that minimizes the impact of spirituality as a driving force behind killing yet will seek to utilize it in an effort to complete other objectives.
Reference has been made again to the 350+ year Native American insurgency in our history and though it is gratifying to see said reference, principle lessons remain unlearned. Namely, the role of the Medicine Man/Shaman/Imam/Priest was mostly ignored back then and at best kept separate and distinguished from the roles of combat leaders and tacticians. What if I told you the only reason the Lakota and Cheyene whipped Custer was because the principal Spiritual leader of the Lakota insurgency, Sitting Bull, had a priori knowledge of the victory? He Sun Danced, sacrificed 100 pieces of flesh from his arms, went into a trance and ‘saw’ many soldiers falling into camp. These falling pony soldiers were all bleeding. The warriors didn’t need the leadership and tactical brilliance and experience of Crazy Horse and Gall to lead the charge. They were assured of victory before the first shot was fired. Lakota oral history informs us that Sitting Bull was heard to repeatedly yell “Brave hearts to the front” as the engagement unfolded. He wasn’t motivating and encouraging and bolstering courage, he was simply telling the men if you believe, go and kill your enemy. Myth and common perception suggest that every male able to fight did so, but that is not the case. Sitting Bull himself was not in combat during the Little Big Horn. He didn’t need to be though it was an option Medicine Men always had, and there were others in the insurgent camp that didn't engage too. This dynamic of ignored spirituality is not unique to our history. Guzman of the Tupac Amaru (Shining Path) was every much a Shaman as was Sitting Bull and it took a long time to catch him.
A spiritual leader may not need to appeal to matters religious. I submit that Hitler was as much a shamanic spiritual leader as Sitting Bull. What I think Goesh is on to is what the French spent a lot of time describing as the moral aspect of combat. It is also what we hear described as charismatic leadership and explains why names like Chesty Puller made it on to some folks Great Generals lists on this thread.
Different conceptions of levels of war
Rob:
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I'm starting to think there might be question or at least part of a question for Marc. - Maybe it gets to perceptions of time, space and scope by opponents. Maybe there be something in there about action/reaction/counter-action - is that specific to a particular culture, or is that more of a universal learning function?
I think it may be useful in trying to understand what your enemy is trying to do to you, but I'm not sure it prevents you from framing the depth of your own activities. I think it also could shed some light on applicability of other lenses/cognitive framing - like CoGs and Lines of Operation,etc. Another council member PM'd me about applicability and utility of doctrine, tenets and principals to COIN. My initial thoughts were that I believed in general they were broad enough to accommodate a great deal of conditions and that it depended on how they are interpreted by people.
Wm wrote:
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I wonder, from a pragmatic point of view, whether the inquiry is really worth the effort. If we are seeking to pre-empt or disrupt the bad guys' plans, why do we need anyhting more than an understanding of what they mean, temporally, by "long term," "mid term," and "short term"? In short, I am not clear on why Rob wants to do this mapping of military doctrinal teminology.
wm, I fully take your point that if our approach is working, then whether there is a difference is of no great consequence. Though I agree with Rob that understanding how they conceive their levels of war and the how and why the levels interconnect would be critical to disrupting sucessfullly their plans.
But what I was really thinking about is – and yes, I should have elaborated! :( - what if our approaches are not succeeding, or are not nearly as successful as is required to be successful against them? I am thinking here, say, of a success at ‘disrupting’ the enemy at what we perceive as the operational level ends up not having the impact that we think it should, because our disruption was on what the enemy perceives as the tactical level.
Behind this lies a number of thoughts. One is that that it appears that AQI (and other insurgent groups) through the ‘propaganda of the deed’ are in effect leveraging the tactical straight into a strategic effect (ie affecting how we think about what is going on, chances of success, etc and so on). It is almost as if they are skipping a level – though their IO campaign may be seen as their operational level. Allied to this was another issue that was at the back of my mind which is that,if we accept Ken White’s point that ‘the COIN battle is the operational level’, for al Qaeda as in UBL et al Iraq very likely is a tactical level fight (I am simplifying, of course, by leaving out the complexities created by the multitude of different insurgent groups in Iraq).
AQ/UBL claim that their aim is to create, or recreate, the caliphate. To me this means that their strategic level goal has to be to control the Islamic holy land (effectively Saudi Arabia – the strategic level COG?). If this analysis is accepted – and please do correct me if I am not – this in turn might suggest that, given where he and his core followers are located, that the operational level COG would be to control (or completely destabilize?) Pakistan because of the potential benefits (probably the nukes, maybe an army?) that would contribute to their way of thinking to achieving control of Saudi (or would Pakistan be a second strategic level COG?). And pretty much everything else – Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorist attacks in N. Africa, Europe, etc - essentially are tactical level actions. (Marc’s point about perceptions of time is likely relevant here, but best that I leave that aside lest I irredeemably dig myself into a very deep hole. :wry:)
I guess in part what I am getting at here is the possibility that if the coalition succeed in Iraq, that this would only be tactical set back from UBL et al’s point view, while a loss of Iraq and whatever the consequences of that could have adverse operational and strategic level consequences for us beyond Iraq per se.
Time to go watch the Three Lions take on the Israelites….it may be a case of maneuver warfare vs methodical battle/attrition.
TT