Civilian Casualties, Religion, and COIN Operations

[Ken White]

That's what I understand to be the conventional wisdom.

It's a little more than that, it's pretty much a hard learned fact. It has also been written by some erstwhile insurgents and allied creatures.

You're right, of course. It is always of interest to me, however, to see data - even with all it's caveats and limitations - that addresses (whether findings support or refute) the suppositions that guide our policies.

They can be beneficial. Even if they point in the wrong direction and that is discovered through a bad experience, something is learned.

I know there is no cookie cutter approach to the strategy of kinetic force in COIN...it seems...that it might be useful to have some method to guide that dimension of decisionmaking. I'm not asking for one here, just wondering aloud about what the foundations or contours of such a method or decision framework might look like.

The Army has tried for many years with varying success to do that. The intent was to come up with a methodology or set of best practices that would allow future operations to be better planned and executed. I'm sure you've checked or have access to all the ARI and RAND etc. studies from the 1950-1980 period wherein that was attempted. The effort seemed to have dropped off by the time I retired in '95. Good luck.

[goesh]

".... other than why would you kill people you don't need to kill? " (W.F. Owen)

That pretty much sums it up in my opinion. I think discipline in the ranks is as good as it has ever been historically, maybe better in some respects because of our logistics. Morale can be boosted much faster than before and Officers and senior NCOs are better able to spot bad stress developing in the ranks. My uncle was in N. Africa WW2 and he told me when his outfit was close to civlians, they didn't get to eat much chocolate because they gave most of it to kids. This kind of conduct is not isolated and rare, its pretty much the norm and part of national character - ROE be damned, it has little to do with the number of civilans killed in these modern times of ours.