Can the Anbar model work in Afghanistan?

[Bill Moore]

Cavguy, I think you took GBNT73's comments too personally. I have a fair idea of what your background is, and you're definitely one of the heros in this fight, but the way I read GBNT73's post is as follows:

The COIN manual didn't utilize some concepts that SF captured in their doctrine in the 50's and 60's like the underground. For whatever reason that conceptual idea of insurgent struture was rejected by the developers of FM 3-24, and in my opinion seriously handicapped the FM.

It isn't that SF gets it and conventional forces don't. In all cases it depends on the man and the unit. We all have seen the good and bad in each, so there no need for a measuring contest, we would all probably be a little embarassed as the results were called out. However, there was a prevailing culture in the conventional army prior to OIF 3 that was reluctant to adapt to the reality of the situation we were involved in. I will call it COIN, but prefer CSIS"s phrase "Armed Nation Building".

The new FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5 Counterinsurgency, Dec 2006 is completely inadequate as COIN doctrine for the following reasons: 1) it was written by the conventional military for the conventional military which means it was written without experience.

I am not in complete agreement with this post. For one thing, the assumption that if it is written by conventional forces it must be inadequate is lame, yet I do agree the manual is inadequate. I also heard that the authors were not happy with it, but they wanted to get something out on the street ASAP due to high demand, then rely on input from the field to improve it. Sounds logical to me. I also heard the manual was submitted to SF and numerous academia experts for comment before being published, but SF's input, especially their input on the underground was rejected.

The gift of academia to the profession of war is that they have the time to research, dialog and come to a gradual – developing – understanding of the dynamics of relationships, social structures, psychological framing, and the effects of broad socio-economic processes upon populations.

I would ask GBNT73 who gets to determine which of the many conflicting academia reports we're going to follow? So many experts and so little agreement. I agree with this in general, and I think it is being done to a large extent already, but I don't think academia has the silver bullet either. They also tend to be more accurate with their historical assessments, than in their ability to predict the future.

TRADOC Pam 525-5-500 Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design. Understanding the nature of the unstructured problem – the structural and relational complexity of “people’s wars” – will be the very first step in understanding what the problems are and what the spectrum of solutions, and their implementation strategies, ought to be for each stakeholder according to each stakeholder. If we adopted this, we would drastically alter our first planning assumption (read that as first planning error): the assumption that the military force deployed to “solve” the problem has the requisite education to be able to diagnose the situation to gain true understanding of the problem and the requisite knowledge of the dynamics of the factors identified to be able to design a holistic, coherent family of implantation strategies utilizing the strengths of as many stakeholders as possible in concert to achieve the ever-changing attainable end state.

I agree with this in general, as the military tends to default to a route step MDMP and in pursuit of mean nothing end states, yet we neglect the hard intellectual work of campaign design that informs and enables operational level planners.

I think GBNT73 has made some excellent points, and even admire his bluntness, even though he is wrong in a couple of areas. He may disagree with me, I think most of the great thinking on COIN and unconventional warfare by SF leadership was done in the 1950's and 1960's, I have seen little new since then of value, but there should be volumes of evolved doctrine on COIN and UW. I think part of this paralysis in UW/COIN doctrine evolution was due to SF being pushed by Big Army to support conventional warfighting in the 1980s to maintain relevance with the way the Big Army saw the world (to maintain our meager funding line from Big Army before SOCOM came on line), thus the focus on Direct Action and Special Reconnaise instead of capitalizing on our unique unconventional warfare skills. Those of us who lived through that period remain a little bitter with senior decision makers who appeared to be short sighted, but that grude is appropriately directed at the upper echelons of the bureaucratic order, and not the existing one, so it is water under the bridge. It doesn't shape my opinion of conventional forces on point, many are doing great work for our nation.

[Cavguy]

Cavguy, I think you took GBNT73's comments too personally. I have a fair idea of what your background is, and you're definitely one of the heros in this fight, but the way I read GBNT73's post is as follows:

Bill,

Execuse the late night response - the attitude just pissed me off. I have more than my share of personal mistakes and bad calls, and have even written about one that got one of my guys killed. If he had stated it the way you stated it below - I wouldn't have had any issues. But there were enough generalized

The COIN manual didn't utilize some concepts that SF captured in their doctrine in the 50's and 60's like the underground. For whatever reason that conceptual idea of insurgent struture was rejected by the developers of FM 3-24, and in my opinion seriously handicapped the FM.

Agree. I think the major fault of FM 3-24 is that lack - the lack of a real chapter on insurgencies and how insurgencies work, organize, and mobilize.

It isn't that SF gets it and conventional forces don't.

Agree, but that wasn't what GBNT was saying rather ineloquently.

I am not in complete agreement with this post. For one thing, the assumption that if it is written by conventional forces it must be inadequate is lame, yet I do agree the manual is inadequate. I also heard that the authors were not happy with it, but they wanted to get something out on the street ASAP due to high demand, then rely on input from the field to improve it. Sounds logical to me. I also heard the manual was submitted to SF and numerous academia experts for comment before being published, but SF's input, especially their input on the underground was rejected.

Exactly. That is why we will be convening a FM 3-24 re-write conference this year - to address the shortcomings of what was a rapidly produced, "good enough" manual. FM 3-24 is the worst COIN doctrine except for all the other COIN doctrine we had.

I think GBNT73 has made some excellent points, and even admire his bluntness, even though he is wrong in a couple of areas. He may disagree with me, I think most of the great thinking on COIN and unconventional warfare by SF leadership was done in the 1950's and 1960's, I have seen little new since then of value, but there should be volumes of evolved doctrine on COIN and UW. I think part of this paralysis in UW/COIN doctrine evolution was due to SF being pushed by Big Army to support conventional warfighting in the 1980s to maintain relevance with the way the Big Army saw the world (to maintain our meager funding line from Big Army before SOCOM came on line), thus the focus on Direct Action and Special Reconnaissance instead of capitalizing on our unique unconventional warfare skills. Those of us who lived through that period remain a little bitter with senior decision makers who appeared to be short sighted, but that grude is appropriately directed at the upper echelons of the bureaucratic order, and not the existing one, so it is water under the bridge. It doesn't shape my opinion of conventional forces on point, many are doing great work for our nation.

My boss is a former SF/doctrine writer guy and told me the same thing - that most SF COIN thinking hasn't evolved since the 60's. I've also heard a lot of old hand SF types talk along the line you mention above - that after 9/11 SF was told to stay away from GPF COIN efforts. It kind of feeds into the question of why they stood up an ad hoc advisor training center at Ft. Riley instead of say - JFK @ Ft. Bragg - manned by GPF and advised by SF - since it is, like, you know, their expertise. I have been told they wanted no part of it. So it galls me whenever SF types complain about GPF performance of advisor/COIN when they willingly shoved off helping GPF develop one of their core competencies.

I don't mean to take this down a SOF/GPF integration rant. Lots, and I mean lots, of fault on both sides. But I do get defensive every time I get sneered at by someone SF for being a GPF'er and thus (implied) an amateur at this stuff. Yes, I took a generalized attack personally, and if it had been from you or someone else who had generated standing on this board I would have taken it differently than from someone with a postcount=1.

[selil]

I don't know. Anybody who thinks social movement theory and collective action have made huge advances in the last 30 years doesn't pay attention to the quality of the literature. Just because the Tillys came along and beat everybody up with resource mobilization literally shutting down all other social movement research (like break down theory) does not mean anything advanced.