Warrior Ethos

[CPT Foley]

All warfare is political. Read Clausewitz. Dead civilians are a political problem, not a moral one. There is only one kind of WAR and very few types of warfare.

A Paediatrician is only useful if he produces political effect. If he treats kids and everyone still hates you, his work is useless.

So a video on Youtube has greater political effect than 3,000 casualties in 24 hours? Seriously?

There is no new Paradigm. FACT. Nothing you are doing in COIN is new or hasn't been done by other armies. Regardless of the frequency you actually do it, Killing and Capturing, or gain advantage from it's threat, is still your primary function. It's what militaries do.

You do not need to respect the culture or protect noncombatants to win in COIN. Your actions should merely not needlessly create enemies, and you only need to protect those civilians relevant to the mission.

I'm not trying to be a hard ass here, but everything you are saying is symptomatic of the "new COIN" that seeks to portray it as something other than what it is. It is not armed social work, or summed up with silly expressions like "hearts and minds." It is a form of warfare.

It is armed social work, and that's the paradigm shift. Read Toffler. Warfare is different in the information age. To bemoan, that killing/capturing "is what militaries do" denies the changing nature of warfare - warfare in a 24 hour news cycle where seemingly minor acts of disrespect can be seen by hundreds of millions within hours. An insurgency is a competition between the insurgent and government for the support of the civilian population. Your narrow mission-oriented approach reminds me of a combined exercise rehearsal I was at for a simulation exercise. I was the most junior person in the room, which included two retired Generals. An LTC was reviewing some proposed message traffic about our helicopters scaring the sheik's sheep. He quipped, "I don't think we will be sticking around to help herd them up." The room exploded into laughter. I was incredulous. The LTC and everyone in the room, myself included, has been conditioned to put the mission first and make sure SP's are met. But from just finishing a tour with SF in Iraq, I was dumbfounded, and frankly disgusted, that our senior leadership didn't recognize that pacifying the sheik was exponentially more important to overall mission than meeting an SP. And that even if the helicopters did have something equally urgent awaiting them, pacifying the sheik was certainly worthy of consideration versus laughter. That's the new paradigm.