Capture, Detain and COIN: merged thread

[Sargent]

"His most notable innovation has been to institute “COIN behind the wire” — that is a counterinsurgency program aimed at weaning detainees away from terrorism."

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bl...php/boot/10831

No offense to the good general, but I have doubts about the innovation of an idea that took 50 years to realize. Probably there were other examples prior to Korea, but the most poignant example of POW insurgency was in that war, when the North had trained operatives get captured so that they could continue the war in the camps. The gap between Koje Do and Abu Ghraib suggests we might need to speed up our response cycle. The real problem that situation created for the UN war and peace effort further argues that this ought to have been more important to strategists and practitioners than a fifth-year-of-the-war effort.

Regards,
Jill

[Ken White]

to our history; it's poorly taught, mostly and de-emphasized everywhere -- amazingly so in the Armed Forces. That and the ego that says "I don't need to know what someone else did because this situation is unique (almost never true) and I am unique (too often true -- and not in a good way)."

So, we get to continually reinvent wheels. In my lifetime we've invented round ones three times, triangular ones twice, Square five times (a US Army specialty) and polygons of various degrees about six times.

We also have 'up or out' and a personnel system that moves you to justify its own existence and those two things destroy any attempts at continuity. Add the pressure to do something stupendous in each rating season and you've got an invitation to trouble. The truly sad -- even agonizing -- thing is that virtually every error in Iraq either I or one of my equally old buds predicted and that includes the detainee bit...