Anthropology (catch all)

[Tom Odom]

For the trigger puller, it's not that much different from traditional combat. You just complete the mission: take the hill. Someone at HQ worries about what's happening on all the surrounding hills and will tell you if you have a new mission. For the boots on the ground, COIN just means learning and deploying new tactics.

That simply is not true and therein lies the complexity of COIN. The Soldier on the ground is strategic in his effects. The mission is not take a hill; it maybe search a house. It may be escort a VIP to a meeting. It may be simply patrolling with a purpose. The greatest source of information in COIN is the small units and the tactical HUMINT teams out there on the ground. They--not the headquarters--know better than anyone what is happening on the ground.

Keeping those same Soldiers motovated in such a war is a leadership challenge; it is easy to allow the troops --and oneself--to slip into the "just another mission" mode. Then the troops get careless.

Best,

Tom

[tequila]

LTC Gian Gentile wrote about this dichotomy in AFJ, an article I looked up after reading his comments on SWJ's Blog.

Eating Soup With a Spoon - LTC Gian P. Gentile, Armed Forces Journal.

The natural instinct for a combat soldier when attacked is to protect himself and his buddies. Yet the paradox that "the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are" becomes counterintuitive to the soldier. It does not make sense because he experiences the essence of war fighting almost every day. So the paradox creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a combat soldier in Iraq because it essentially tells him to do something that is unnatural to him and his environment — to not fight.

A blog I read a month or so ago makes clear that many soldiers believe that concern for civilian casualties gets soldiers killed:

http://armyofdude.blogspot.com/2007/...ect-world.html

You might have heard about the six soldiers and one Russian reporter that died when their Stryker hit one such bomb. They were on their way to investigate the actual site before it blew. They knew it was there. Beforehand, an Apache helicopter identified several men digging a hole in the road, putting something large in the hole, and running away. The pilot asked for clearance to shoot a Hellfire missile at them. It was the best catch a pilot can hope for: killing Al Qaeda and taking out a bomb at the same time. Once again however, our rules and tactics became a bigger enemy than any terrorist could. They were denied permission to fire repeatedly because of the possibility of collateral damage. In the sagacious words of Hurley from the TV show Lost, we looked in the face of the enemy and said ‘whatever man!’

...

I don’t think I have to go into details about what came next. A whole squad, save the driver, was no more. They didn’t die for Iraqi liberty or American freedom. They died for trial and error. They died because an officer somewhere didn’t want to fill out paperwork because some dude’s car might have been damaged in a missile strike.

Also:

American soldiers are breaking their backs to be the good guys in this war, to represent our leaders and the public we serve. We’re trying to remove the shame of Abu Ghraib and soldiers who raped and murdered Iraqi girls. When clearing blocks, we cut locks and if necessary, kick doors off hinges to search for weapon caches. If the people are home, we give them a number to call so they can collect money for their damaged property. In WWII, troops cleared houses by throwing in grenades without checking to see if a family is huddled in the corner. A terrible thing could happen, but it’s a war after all. We now have paintball guns and non-lethal shotgun rounds. Do you think the enemy carries the same? Who is this really helping?

...

Minutes after the firefight, all of us noticed a black sedan making the same rounds through alleys and side streets. ...

This car was using textbook actions in a moving sniper platform. Immediately my team leader called up to my squad leader, who too became suspicious. We all wanted to take a shot, at least in the trunk of the car to scare the driver off, who was more than 300 meters away.

...

It came back down the chain: don’t take the shot. It became a political decision; what if we were wrong? That's a lot of paperwork. We all cursed whoever kicked it back ...

We watched the car leave, only to round the corner one more time and stop. He backs up, once again exposing his rear right window in a perfect line of sight to our rooftop.

Once again the request to open fire was denied.

The window comes down.

Children in the alleyway scatter in all directions.

A flash of light fills the open window.

PSSSSSHEW.

...

Kill or no kill, the sniper made it back to his family that night. He used against us our most honorable and foolhardy trait: our adherence to the rules. And we, the most powerful force the earth has known, have been effectively neutered ...