Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
I watched Restrepo yesterday.

This is a story of soldiers dropped into an impossible situation, over which they have little control, and throughout which they can all sense that what they do is not apt to produce the larger effect that led to them being placed into such a situation to begin with. The result is that "bubble", reducing each soldier's world to him, the few men around him, the faceless enemy that oppose them, and the daily contest to stay alive.

This is a powerful story, but it offers little insights on insurgency or how to best deal with the situation in Afghanistan.

The irony of a group of foreign soldiers dropping into a region so self-governing and disconnected from anything in Kabul in order to convince the populace there to support something so irrelevant to their daily lives being "sold" to them by a foreign army bringing them promises that cannot be comprehended, wrapped in death and violence that are all too real is huge.

This is a microcosm of the application of foreign military power to defeat a resistance that is supported by a revolution. We attempt this all over Afghanistan. The Korengal Valley of Restrepo is a microcosm of the Helmand River Valley. One can, as the company commander does, draw a very real sense of accomplishment from establishing a small outpost such as Restrepo and holding it through hard effort; or in Clearing the Sangin district of Helmand as Gen Petreaus did; both efforts being equally valorous and honorable, and both efforts being equally moot and inappropriate to problem at hand.

The producers of the movie Restrepo have little understanding of the nature of insurgency, that is to be expected, they are just telling a story of human drama. Sadly, those who craft our efforts in Afghanistan tend to seem equally unable to see past the human drama to the greater elements behind the same.
Very well put, not simply in terms of the film only showing the great struggle of a few men in what is a huge theatre. Also in terms of those who are crafting the strategy. I came across this in the book Dead Men Risen, everytime a brigade commander is told he is about to deploy he arrives upon some grand strategy for his tour. It is all about his deployment, even in the post FM:3.24/COIN buzzword world. I don't want to go as far as to say that they only care about climbing the greasy pole of promotion, but it's short sighted.

As for the original point of the thread. In The Battle For Algiers, as you have rightly said the commanders only care about the battle not the war. In terms of Restrepo, the men only care about getting home alive and so will do whatever they have to. If this means dropping massive amounts of HE on mountains then so be it. Even when civilians are killed, as much as it pains them, their response is still very matter of fact. No training soldiers to see the bigger picture is hard when all they can see/hear is amount of fire being rained down on them.