The Col. Gentile collection and debate

[marct]

Sir,

my impression was that the paradoxes removed a fundamental of war—fighting--which I experienced in a way specific to the Iraq War.

As I noted in an earlier post, I think that you have fundamentally misunderstood the function of the paradoxes themselves while, at the same time, making a categorical logic error. Even leaving that aside, however, nowhere does FM 3-24 state that "fighting" should not be a part of counter-insurgency. Reduced to its simplest form, FM 3-24 argues that one should use the appropriate tool to achieve desired operational results. Given that the CoG of a COIN operation is the general populace where the desired strategic outcome is political legitimacy, "fighting" may well not be the most appropriate tool in all (or even most) situations.

The most important point that I believed I made in the article was how fighting insurgencies within a civil war like in Iraq are very hard on the combat soldier—in essence a discussion on the moral domain of war—and has not been commented on at all in this blog.

Did you mean "morale" in this? That would certainly be consistent with your statement in the article:

But most importantly, I was angry and bewildered because the paradoxes, through their clever contradictions, removed a fundamental aspect of counterinsurgency warfare that I had experienced throughout my year as a tactical battalion commander in Iraq: fighting. And by removing the fundamental reality of fighting from counterinsurgency warfare, the manual removes the problem of maintaining initiative, morale and offensive spirit among combat soldiers who will operate in a place such as Iraq.

I must admit, after reading that particular statement, I could only shake my head and think about Curtis LeMay. This has to be one of the best examples of reductio ad absurdam that I have ever seen, and one of the reasons why I am requiring my students to read your article. If you truly believed this, then I am surprised that you are not arguing Iraq delenda est.

If, on the other hand, it was not a mistyping and you actually meant "moral", I would ask you how fighting is more moral than winning?

Most of the postings in this blog that critique my article focus on my questioning of the paradoxes; why? Because it challenged the theoretical premises of a doctrine that so many have turned into an Orwellian nightmare that clouds creative thought and sadly produces dogmatic action.

Again, you miss the point. In your article you state that

However, the paradoxes are intended to frame the thinking of the reader for the entire manual. They are the theoretical framework that informs the entire manual. In this sense, they are crucial to the manual and for how our Army approaches and understands counterinsurgency operations.

First of all, the paradoxes are, as Patriot notes, "Sun Tzuisms" or koans. They are not intended to "frame the thinking of the reader" but, rather, to re-frame the perceptions of the reader allowing them to think outside of a conventional warfare set of perceptions.

Neither are the paradoxes "the theoretical framework that informs the entire manual". Less still are they an evil miasma that produces "an Orwellian nightmare that clouds creative thought and sadly produces dogmatic action". Rather, they are as Shek notes in his quotation "offered to stimulate thinking, not to limit it".

Obviously, they do not have that effect on everyone. This should not be a surprise to anyone who has taken an introduction to Psychology course or read history in any depth. How people react to thoughts that go against their existing preconceptions has been quite well documented, and that includes feelings of anger, revulsion and unthinking rejection.

For me though, the more important aspect of my article was why these types of war are so hard to fight from the perspective of the combat soldier. And in this sense I believe that my critique of the paradoxes is still valid.

Certainly your article has served to highlight the difficulty some officers appear to have with this type of conflict. While I still think that your critic is logically invalid, it may well be psychologically valid for a certain portion of US forces.