News Unfit To Print

[SWJED]

From Jules Crittenden on his Forward Movement blog - News Unfit To Print.

More than a week of intensive operations, up to 6,000 troops, often on foot, presenting themselves as targets everywhere, and only two Americans reported killed in the search area as of last night, out of two dozen Americans killed in Iraq in that time. That’s remarkable.

So much heat on al-Qaeda in the Triangle of Death they can’t get a jihadi video out. Hundreds questioned and/or arrested, several large weapons caches seized, a number of suspected insurgents killed in firefights. But mostly, it would appear, al-Qaeda gone to ground … after demanding that the searching stop.

So is anyone on the ground looking seriously at whether, absent as yet the safe return of the abducted soldiers, there is a payoff to this intensive search, something e that might be applied elsewhere...

In any case, I’d like to know if there is a dividend and perhaps some lessons about the pros and cons of rapidly launched, intensive sweeps to be learned at a time when there is a high demand for fast results. All-out, brigade-plus sweeps are draining but can they be effective? If the press won’t look at it, I hope the military does. What happens if this is tried in Diyala, for example, where Gen. Mixon was calling for more troops. Particularly if designed as hammer-and-anvil operations, or perhaps more more to the point beater-and-net, to catch them as they run...

[Mark O'Neill]

From Jules Crittenden on his Forward Movement blog - News Unfit To Print.

I am convinced that this guy has never heard of South Vietnam. If he did he would know how many similar successful sweeps and and 'hammer and anvil' operations contributed to that sterling COIN result.

[Tom Odom]

Mark,

Thanks for that. My sentiments exactly.

Tom

[sullygoarmy]

Never mind our creed to "Never leave a fallen comrade behind". Tough for a civilian to understand just how important that is to all those centurions out there right now.

[Merv Benson]

The operation to recover the missing troops is not like the "hammer and anvil" operations in Vietnam. It is more of a flooding of the zone and staying until something is uncovered. It has resulted in some intelligence and some arrest and it has had the effect of making it impossible for al Qaeda to move. If nothing else it demonstrates what can be done if we have enough troops to dominate an area.

We should also avoid overselling the "insurgency" in Vietnam. The insurgency there failed in the early sixties and was destroyed in the Tet offensive. It evolved into North Vietnamese large units maneuvering in a raiding strategy that was also not successful at defeating the South Vietnamese until the communist opted for combat persisting mechanized attacks in the mid 70's.

BTW, Crittenden's account as an embed in Operation Iraqi Freedom gives an excellent report of the operations of the unit he was with.

[SoiCowboy]

I think the payoff is temporary. Flood the area with troops, and the enemy goes to ground and waits for when the troops leave. The enemy advances, we retreat and all that.

[Mark O'Neill]

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We should also avoid overselling the "insurgency" in Vietnam. The insurgency there failed in the early sixties and was destroyed in the Tet offensive. It evolved into North Vietnamese large units maneuvering in a raiding strategy that was also not successful at defeating the South Vietnamese until the communist opted for combat persisting mechanized attacks in the mid 70's.

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Warning: Possible thread hijacking post.

That is an interesting, albeit erroneous, take on history.

Someone obviously forgot to tell the Vietcong operating against the 1st Australian Task Force in Phuoc Tuy Province that the insurgency was over after the Tet Offensive. The province was not really 'pacified' (such as it was) until the early '70s, and that was not for the want of trying. The casualty statistics for both sides speak for themselves. As for NVA action - the defeat of an NVA Regiment at the Battle of Long Tan a few years earlier would appear to have curbed their enthusiasm for 'conventional' operations in the Province. The records available here in Australia (particularly from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam [AATTV] which operated over the entire country) suggest that the insurgency remained equally as virulent in other provinces, long after Tet .

I would also note that there were quite a few years (including the period of American withdrawal) between Tet and the North's adoption of 'conventional' mech warfare to defeat the south. It is both glib and inaccurate to present Tet and the later defeat of the south as a natural, linear progression.

I suspect that part of the problem for US forces in Vietnam was the fiction that the insurgency was over post Tet, thus justifying the 'real' war that many US Commanders really were actually inclined and mentally equipped to fight.

My concluding point. Lets be very careful about generalisations. There are more than enough of them being generated about the current war by oped columnists, polemical writers and 'expert' reporters and bloggers. Ultimately they have the effect of providing intellectual obscuration rather than insight.