More killing. Less good deeds

[kingo1rtr]

Ken

Thats a very taut and accurate summary of the debate to date. I'll start reading these strings from the bottom in future!

[jcustis]

My suspicion is that if we could realistically categorize humans as pro-COIN or con-COIN, a heavy majority would be the latter and while an armed force can direct people to do things they do not agree with, the performance of people is enhanced when they believe in what they are doing and degraded if they do not believe. The basic problem is that the efficacy of COIN is in significant dispute; the rationale for its conduct is in dispute and the logic and / or morality of third party intervention is questioned by some.

As usual, Ken is right on point with this view, and how prevalent it can be. Like my pops says, "Don't you go and take any chances with those people, shoot first and ask questions later."

And as I often feel the tingling on the back of my neck when sitting through ROE training/review with troops, Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six, is not only uttered often under their breath, I can sense it on the mind of a majority of them. That has extended to several officers and senior SNCOs, and when we fail to get those folks on board, we are failing miserably.

Edited to add: Wilf, if your view is indeed what you claim it is, after getting a stir from folks, then simply re-title this thread as: "More killing of the right folks first...then do good deeds."

[Uboat509]

From where I'm sitting, a lot of this debate seems to buried in semantics. The term "Hearts and Minds" is at the forefront of course. People who have worked in these environment naturally aren't going to like that term, at least if it meant literally. It's a really poorly chosen phrase. Of course we are never going to win the hearts and minds of any significant segment of the population. If I believed that that was really our goal, I would be skeptical too. But, as LTC Kilcullen has noted "hearts and Minds" isn't about making them like us, it's about convincing them that it is in their best interests to side with us, or at least not with our enemies.

Another problem seems to be the idea that COIN proponents are saying that we can achieve our acceptable outcome without killing. Well, of course that is ridiculous. Of course you will have to kill some bad guys to achieve the acceptable outcome. We will also have to teach the host nation how to kill bad guys. Saying otherwise would be naive. The thing is, I have never heard a COIN proponent say that we can achieve an acceptable out come with out killing. The ones that I have heard have only said that we cannot kill our way to victory and the killing the enemy should not be our main focus.

Now I am just an enlisted swine. I don't have any extra letters after my name nor have I attended any of the cool military schools that teach all about such things. I haven't read Clausewitz or Jomani or any other military philosopher/theorist. I have never been to any "Symposium" on COIN or anything else. I have only my own experiences and views to draw from but here is my take, for whatever it's worth, on the fight we face now, whether you choose to call it COIN or irregular war or "Overseas Contingency Operations," whatever the label Du jur is currently. Wilf and others maintain, that we should focus on killing the enemy first and then, once the insurgency has been defeated, start doing things to help the populace (the so-called hearts and minds stuff) in order, I presume, to reduce the likelihood that the insurgency will restart. My experience tells me that if we don't do both things simultaneously then we will never get to the point that we can transition to the other. It's pretty obvious what would happen if we just did the "hearts and minds" stuff without also killing bad guys, that's why I haven't heard anyone advocate that. On the other hand, if you just focus on killing bad guys and don't do the "hearts and minds" stuff, you will run out of national will to fight before they run out of bad guys. The insurgents do not have a standing army to be defeated. They have an ideology (actually a series of ideologies, there is more than one insurgency going on. But that doesn't change the central point). That ideology is what attracts people to support and/or fight for them. Now part of the attractiveness of that ideology is derived from the things that the host nation government does or fails to do (as Bob's World has pointed out) and part is derived from what we do or fail to do. If we do nothing but focus on killing the enemy then we are doing little reduce the attractiveness of the insurgent ideology. So, we keep killing bad guys and members of the populous keep joining and it ends up being a huge game of Whack-a-Mole that we (as in the American/Allied people) will ultimately lose our taste for and leave. If, on the other hand, we can push the host nation government to do its job, while we continue to do things that make the insurgent ideology less attractive (the infamous "hearts and minds" stuff) then our kinetic operations will have a better chance of creating the security we need to achieve our acceptable outcome.

Now some maintain that by focusing on the kinetic fight we are reducing the attractiveness of the insurgent ideology. After all, joining an insurgency which has a good chance of ending in your death is irrational, right? Unfortunately, in my experience, rationality is not necessarily an inborn trait in humans. If you only have one tool, the stick OR the carrot, you will end up missing large parts of the population and you may even have counter-productive results. Again, I have not heard many people advocating a "carrot only" approach, not anyone credible anyway. The "stick only" approach has many more supporters. They believe that by making it so dangerous to support the insurgency that they can break the will of the people to support the insurgency. Now, I am no historian by any means, but I can think of several historical examples where this type of thinking failed. In WWII the Germans executed whole towns of people in both fronts in order to crush the insurgency but were never able to do so. The Germans all but leveled London and the Allies did level several German and Japanese cities but neither succeeded in breaking the will of the other's populous. Even the commonly held belief that Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke the will of the Japanese people is, as I understand it, false. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not break the will of the Japanese people, rather it broke the will of a Japanese person, the Emperor. As I understand it, if he had ordered the Japanese to continue fighting to the last, they would have.

That, in a nut shell, is my decidedly non-scholarly, and somewhat rambling take on the COIN vs. Kinetic debate.

SFC W

[slapout9]

After all, joining an insurgency which has a good chance of ending in your death is irrational, right? Unfortunately, in my experience, rationality is not necessarily an inborn trait in humans.
SFC W

IMO this is the real problem and it is the same for kids joining gangs in America or anyplace else for that matter. Don't have an answer but this is the problem

[Fuchs]

IMO this is the real problem and it is the same for kids joining gangs in America or anyplace else for that matter. Don't have an answer but this is the problem

The answer lies in the perception/subjective estimation of the chance of success. That's (one of the reasons) why morale is so important.

Gang members underestimate the drawbacks and overestimate the advantages, especially their chance of becoming part of an elite group of (obviously few) really rich gangsters.
They do also have seemingly strange preferences, like an apparent overvaluation of things like prestige and reassurance.

They drop out once they become disillusioned and realize that selling pot means much more trouble, but not much more money than working at McDonald's in most cases.

Both gang members and combatants have a problem, though: They cannot easily drop out of their system. Desertion is associated with huge risk.
And as long as they're stuck in the system they depend on group loyalty, comradeship*. Many German WW2 veterans agreed that their primary motivation to fight was because they were responsible for their comrades who in turn were responsible for them. Soldiers fought/fight for their comrades*, and that motivation is very difficult to crack.

(*: Is this a correct translation at all? In German it's Kameradschaft and Kamerad(en), btu I'm not sure about the translation.)

[Ken White]

The answer lies in the perception/subjective estimation of the chance of success. That's (one of the reasons) why morale is so important.

Also why attacking that morale is important.

(*: Is this a correct translation at all? In German it's Kameradschaft and Kamerad(en), btu I'm not sure about the translation.)

You got it right. The British and Australians would use 'Mate' (mateship), Americans would more likely say Buddy or buddies, maybe Friends (friendship). Canadians are eclectic -- all three...

That very critical factor also applies to other forces aside from organize armed services. In Afghanistan, there are always a number of Temporary Workers types, hired for a job. Some are local, some are Pakistanis that have made the hike, a few from elsewhere. Most are not ideologically wedded to the cause, it's just money. So they're likely easily deterred from returning if they make it out of that contract alive.

If and as they make more trips, the become semi-professionals or even pros and the either the ideological or the comradeship effect take hold. It can be worked upon.