It has long been noted, whether it was Europe in WW 1 or 2, China, Korea, Vietnam or later, if you don't watch out for what is going on in your rear areas, you are in for a world of hurt.

Physical security is part of it, in the sense of preventing enemy infiltrators from either gathering intelligence or conducting sabotage against your rear/support echelons, but it goes deeper.

Once you move into and through an area, while you may be able to leave local law enforcement and possibly even local civil government intact, you cannot simply wave on the way by, from then on. In HICO, major damage has likely been done to the national infrastructure, and few towns or villages are truly self-sufficient. As a single example, once the power grid has been successfully attritted, who turns on the lights? When? How? Where does the money come from? The technical expertise? The ironmongery and logistics to get said ironmongery in place?

The argument can be made that something like that is an unnecessary drain on combat optempo. Granted. What about afterwards? Let me try to counterpoint three examples. (Understanding that I'm currently at the day j.o.b., so my ref's are going to be limited.)

First: Germany, 1945.

At the end of WW2, Germany was a wreck. Few cities were even moderately intact, there was virtually no electricity, little running water, and sewage control was spotty, at best.

At least in the West, and granting the general lack of stay-behind activity, the Allies moved swiftly to not only identify Nazi officials for arrest - if only in a haphazard manner - but more importantly, to start restoring services to the population. It took several years, and required heavy investment, but it paid off with the locals, who realized that the Allies actually cared about what happened to them.

This both suppressed most potential resistance without firing a shot, and started West Germany down the road to national recovery and ultimate stability.

Counterpoint: Iraq, 2003.

I'm not going to try and argue the obviously bone-headed politics behind OIF TOE's, as I'm sure that has been done to death already. Instead, let's look at the situation.

For 12 years, 1991-2003, Iraq was variously invaded, shelled, bombed and blockaded. In the aftermath, everything looked fantastic - the dictator was on the run, his officers were being rounded up, and everyone could pat themselves on the back and say "Whew! Look's like we squeaked by, despite the problems we shouldn't have had."

And then? Nothing.

Combat operations were pretty much over. No one was doing any shooting in most of the country -- they were waiting to see what the Allies - and specifically, the US - was going to do: most areas were without power, clean water, effective sewage control, medical care or education.

What the Iraqi's saw - whether it was true or not - was US troops standing around as their museums and banks were looted; as people clearly injured by US weaponry were refused treatment and turned away from US field hospitals where the staff were sitting on their hands (there was a PBS documentary, "CASH", IIRC?). There was no plan for getting food distribution going for the locals, nor restoring electrical power, nor water, nor sewage -- Iraqi's quickly got the message: "Sure, we blew the cr** out of your country and tossed out the dictator-guy...What? You want us to do EVERYTHING for you?"

That does not engender joy-joy feelings.

Throwing c.250,000 soldiers out on the streets without making sure that they were disarmed was another brain-donor idea. Why weren't weapons policed up, or destroyed in place? Why did the Iraqi Army - NOT the Republican Guard - need to be disbanded? As much as the History Channel may desire it, Iraq is not Nazi Germany - there are vast gulfs in difference between the two, and disbanding the Wehrmacht was a workable solution because there were vast numbers of Allied troops left to guard them, and collect their weapons. Sure, the services eventually started to come back on -- but at a price, as it only started to happen on a formal scale when contracts were let to US civilian contractors, at premium prices.

Now, granted, I haven't been in a pickle-suit since 1990, but I don't recall any coupling of supply, motor-t and engineer battalions that could not have at least started these processes at a local level. It's not like you're building from scratch: for the Middle East, Iraq is one of the most cosmopolitan and educated states you could operate in.

It is my opinion that the lack of immediate action at the theatre command and national/allied levels to follow-on with beginning the rebuilding of Iraq as soon as the bullets mostly stopped flying led directly to the events of 2004 and beyond, as that lack of action and planning led directly to the discontent that encouraged both active attacks and active and passive support for such attacks on Coalition forces then and continuing.

Afghanistan is no different.

Granting that there is little in the way of news coming out, I don't see a lot of expenditure in infrastructure investment in the country. Most of it seems to be coming from NGOs - which is good - but it doesn't look good when "the most powerful country in the world" can't supply enough notebooks for a 50-student school.

The fact that a charity can do it is irrelevant - the US should be doing it.

"Warfare on the cheap" may be the realistic necessity, but it should never be the goal.