The Col. Gentile collection and debate

[Gian P Gentile]

Clearly I have struck a nerve in many of the readers of this blog. I will say up front that at least I reply to criticisms made of what I have to say when others of more fame and fortune than I and of rock star status clearly see themselves above the fray of this blog.

Admittedly this piece was written in evocative and impressionistic form. That is to say I wrote this piece from the premise of how the coin’s paradoxes appeared to me when I read it at the end of my combat tour in command of a combat battalion in west-baghdad in 2006.

I must have missed the class as Dr Tyrell states and I never really did get Foucault or Derrida because for the life of me I don’t get what he is telling me. I guess I just must be slow. No matter, I will restate my impression of the coin manual’s paradoxes when I was in combat in Iraq and based on reflection upon my return: my impression was that the paradoxes removed the essence of war which is fighting. You might disagree with what I have to say but I think the logic is pretty clear.

Reference Dr Metz’s implication that I am stuck in the old “cold war mindset” I suggest that he along with so many other experts are the ones stuck in a box. He like so many others are a part of the great narrative that has been constructed on US involvement in iraq. It goes something like the army didn’t’ take coin seriously before the war and because of that the army has screwed up iraq. But happily with the help of experts and some enlightened thinkers within the active army we have now finally figured out how to do it; aka the surge. I argue that this entire construct is flawed. That by and large the American army has done pretty well in Iraq—even prior to the surge--with the strategic and political cards it was dealt. My article in fact threatens the intellectual base of the new coin doctrine because it calls its basic theoretical premises into question. Counterinsurgency war is not “armed social science” as Kilkullen has called it. Instead at its basic level is violence and death; this was my impression after a year in Baghdad.

As for Jedburg’s mean statement that I was hunkered down in a fob I point him to a recent oped piece that I had published in Army Times on that subject. He could also ask any number of 4 star generals on down to the lowest private in my squadron if I “got it” and new how to do coin. And finally, he might try asking other commanders who lost soldiers what their priorities were. I know what I said at that Heritage panel did not fit in with what the coin experts believe actual coin ops should be like, but again my impression of counterinsurgency warfare is that fighting is its basic element and so killing and not being killed were my top priorities. So go ahead Jedburg and ask people who knew of me and I trust you will not get the profile back that you have created on me.

I will pose a counterfactual again that I posted last week on this blog: If the army had read books like Nagl’s before the war and trained and taken seriously coin operations would things be any different in iraq than they are now? If the army had focused predominantly on coin prior to 2003 would the march to Baghdad gone the same way?

In my mind FM3-24 has become the army’s primary operational doctrine, and to its detriment. It has pushed us into doing things that make no sense to me: like arming the enemy of the government that we support; like dogmatically using the tactics of combat outposts in areas where other methods might be better but we do this because a French officer had success with them in the mountains of Algeria in 1958.

I think the coin doctrine has merit and can work under certain conditions; like French Algeria in the late 50s or El Salvador in the 1980s. But Civil War iraq in 2007? What we need is fresh thinking on how to operate there but the seduction of FM 3-24 in our army has pushed us into dogmatism.

One last point. A good friend of mine who was closely involved with the rebuilding of the army and its intellectual base after Vietnam told me recently that prior to its 1986 publication FM 100-5 had at least 110 articles written about it in the years leading up to its publication that fundamentally questioned its theoretical premises. How many articles written in Military Review, Parameters, etc have fundamentally questioned our new coin doctrine? Only a few.

If you want to read a quality piece written by another combat battalion commander read LTC Ross Brown’s recent article in Military Review on his experience in Iraq in 2005. Or ask some of our infantry leaders currently serving in Anbar if they are using FM 3-24 as their operational guide or the older FM 90-8 on counter guerilla operations.

To repeat, war is not “armed social science,” though many of you may want it to be.

[SteveMetz]

Reference Dr Metz’s implication that I am stuck in the old “cold war mindset” I suggest that he along with so many other experts are the ones stuck in a box. He like so many others are a part of the great narrative that has been constructed on US involvement in iraq. It goes something like the army didn’t’ take coin seriously before the war and because of that the army has screwed up iraq. But happily with the help of experts and some enlightened thinkers within the active army we have now finally figured out how to do it; aka the surge. I argue that this entire construct is flawed. That by and large the American army has done pretty well in Iraq—even prior to the surge--with the strategic and political cards it was dealt. My article in fact threatens the intellectual base of the new coin doctrine because it calls its basic theoretical premises into question. Counterinsurgency war is not “armed social science” as Kilkullen has called it. Instead at its basic level is violence and death; this was my impression after a year in Baghdad.

You misstate my point. Agree that the Army has done well in Iraq. The fact that the Army has done well and the chances of ultimate strategic success are still slim illustrates my point exactly: counterinsurgency is not a form of war to be won by the military. Treating it more like war will not alter this.

If we ultimately fail, it will not be because we did not kill enough insurgents. It is, in your phrase, "the strategic and political cards" I have a problem with, not with Army doctrine or performance. War may not be "armed social science" (a phrase, by the way, Dave did not invent--I heard Larry Cable use it at an SF branch conference in the mid 90s). But, by the same token, counterinsurgency is not war. But because we have this great military hammer, we treat all security problems as nails amenable to warfighting.

[Steve Blair]

To repeat, war is not “armed social science,” though many of you may want it to be.

Nor is war always the total "all or nothing" construct that many want it to be. And where exactly did Jedhburg accuse you of hunkering down in a fob?

In any case, I still think the main point of 3-24 is to get people to think about what they're doing. And the Army's track record in preserving any doctrine other than that of massive state-versus-state warfare is abysmal, going all the way back to before the Civil War. The Army as an institution has always enjoyed a certain level of dogmatism in its operational theory.

To pose an answer to your counterfactual, I would say that the situation in Iraq could certainly been different had more senior planners understood the implications of regime change and societal reconstruction...which is part of COIN. Would the march to Baghdad gone the same way? Quite possibly. Again, I present the example of the Marine Corps, which has managed to preserve both a focus on large-scale conflict and a fair stockpile of COIN lessons prior to 3-24's publication.

[Van]

In an ongoing discussion on this subject with an Air Force officer currently attending U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, I find myself coming to the conclusion that the Cold War model of a smooth continuum from low intensity to high intensity conflict is broken. The break occurs between Low and Mid intensity. The spectrum of conventional conflict, from the smallest fight to superpowers with nukes is a smooth continuum, but Small Wars operations fall in a discrete spectrum.

COIN falls in the Small Wars spectrum. It may be contemporaneous with a conventional fight, as Churchill tried to arrange for the Germans with the SOE and OSS units, and as the Germans arranged for themselves by invading the Balkans. It may be sequel to a conventional war, as for the Allied forces in Germany after WWII, and in Iraq today. It may be a prelude to a conventional war as in Indochina/Viet Nam and as envisioned in classical Latin American guerrilla theory. COIN may also occur in isolation from a conventional fight.

The bottom line is that COIN requires a different skill set than conventional war, and the U.S. military has to be ready for both. The British model as used Ireland and Bosnia is to train for the conventional war, retrain for COIN, and re-retrain after returning from COIN duty. The Canadians dual equip mechanized units with LAVs (wheeled) and tracked vehicles. I hope someone with better knowledge of Canadian doctrine can confirm or deny that they dual train also.

I don't know what would work best for the U.S. We seem to train for the current fight and continue until we've been burned by the other type of fight and throw everything the other direction until the wheel turns and we get burned again. U.S. officers (the ones I talk with at least) seem to like conventional conflict training better, and want to stay in their comfort zone, but they understand that you have to adapt, like it or not. The danger here is that we'll repeat the Air Force's mistake from the fifties and early sixties of thinking that one size of doctrine fits all (the early nuclear Air Force doctrine). (Actually, the Army wasn't much better with the Pentomic Divisions of that era.)

Utter heresy, but perhaps we should indulge the young firebrand Army, AF, and Marine Captains and Navy LTs. Find the smartest and most contrarian, and allow them a shot a writing the new model. It won't happen because of senior egos and rice bowls, but the younglings have some brilliant ideas and radical methods, and giving them looser reins could pay huge dividends.

[Ken White]

and I'm carnivorous. Not to mention you can eat it with a knife or a spoon, whichever's easier and works best (METT-T for MRE's?)...

Van has it right, I think.

Seems to me that LTCs Gentile and Kilcullen are having a techniques disagreement. That's good for everyone. I think FM 3-24 is basically okay, if a tad touchy-feely and I also agree with much of what LTC Gentile says. Thus there's some merit to both sides, IMO -- I suspect, as usual , the average commander will fall in between, most will do it right and ol' METT-T will be the determinant as it always is...

While LTC Gentile alludes to the paradoxes as potentially introducing a mindset it seems to me that he accords it more power than any other document I''ve seen the Army or the Marine Corps publish. I'm afraid our mindset is too deep for one pub to change.

I do disagree with him on one point -- in his comment above he says that the Army has done pretty well in Iraq with the strategic and political cards it was dealt. I agree broadly but would submit the errors in the first eighteen months due to the lack of doctrinal effort and training emphasis on occupation, nation building and counterinsurgency throughout the Army from 1975 until I retired in 1977 and continuing until I retired as a DAC in 1995 were responsible for many those errors. There were a number of people pointing out the likely future and they were diligently ignored. Sort of understandable in the 1975-1990 period; bad ju-ju post 1990, the proverbial handwriting was on the wall...

Which gets to my point (and Van's) -- we have got to be a full spectrum Army.

Along that line, there's another article in the AFJ, Culture Battle by Colonel Henry Foresman Jr. That I think speaks to both 3-24 proponents and believers in LTC Gentile's approach. The culture is the problem. He says several things that I think are pertinent:

"This is not to say we should have an Army or military that is not prepared to fight grand wars; rather, we need an Army and a military capable of fighting grand wars and conducting peacekeeping operations, providing military support to civil authority and executing stability and support operations."

He agrees with me; smart guy...

However, he also makes a very valid point that it seems to me that both 3-24 and LTC Gentile barely touch upon:

"As Iraq has shown, they can defeat us through information dominance — shaping the message the world sees, whether that message is true or not. They can defeat us by eroding the will of the nation to stay the course."

I believe that is a critical point and the last phrase is the reason. I don't care how good we are. Goesh pointed out that Mr. & Mrs. America are basically cool with body bags but they want results. My sensing is he's absolutely correct and if the perception of Mr. & Mrs America is that we aren't doing well; they'll pull th plug. Techniques then become irrelevant.

"The current Army leaders have matured in a culture where they were taught what to think, not how to think..."

My perception also. Good article and bears reading.

Like Steve, I take issue with some of LTC Gian's premises and essentially for the same reason. However, I do not agree that we haven't transcended the Cold war mindset -- I suggest, as does COL Foresman, we haven't transcended the WW II mindset. We are still structured essentially as we are in 1946. For those who say "Brigade Combat Teams," my response is RCT -- with which we fought most of WW II outside the North African Desert. Not to mention Korea then back to Brigades for Viet Nam. Lest I be misunderstood, Brigades are good, Divisions are bad (even if we did err in the structure ot the light infantry Battalions). Notice that we did not do away with the Division...

I think we did not to avoid the two star spaces loss; we may need them to mobilize -- just as we will need the 3K plus Colonels and 3K plus SGM/CSM even though those are the same numbers we had in 1960 with an Army almost twice the size of todays. Mobilization backup is what that's all about but 'mobilization' is (unfortunately and stupidly) a nasty word in Congress. Thus we dissemble to keep the ability to expand tremendously. Prudent; we should. I just think there are better ways to do that.

Creighton Abrams structured the Total Army to force the government to call up the RC to go to war. The tear down of that started in DS/DS because the then CofSA and then DCSOPS hated the idea and fought Congress demands to send ArNG Brigades to Kuwait. Post DS/DS, they continued to do that in various little ways, some effective and some not. What they did not do was prepare for the present (then or now...).

It's mostly about protecting the institution. To fight WW II.

We need to be able to do that but we could be a whole lot smarter in how we go about it and still be prepared to cope with the more likely threats in the next decade or so..

[Ski]

Great stuff here as always Ken.

and I'm carnivorous. Not to mention you can eat it with a knife or a spoon, whichever's easier and works best (METT-T for MRE's?)...

Van has it right, I think.

Seems to me that LTCs Gentile and Kilcullen are having a techniques disagreement. That's good for everyone. I think FM 3-24 is basically okay, if a tad touchy-feely and I also agree with much of what LTC Gentile says. Thus there's some merit to both sides, IMO -- I suspect, as usual , the average commander will fall in between, most will do it right and ol' METT-T will be the determinant as it always is...

While LTC Gentile alludes to the paradoxes as potentially introducing a mindset it seems to me that he accords it more power than any other document I''ve seen the Army or the Marine Corps publish. I'm afraid our mindset is too deep for one pub to change.

I do disagree with him on one point -- in his comment above he says that the Army has done pretty well in Iraq with the strategic and political cards it was dealt. I agree broadly but would submit the errors in the first eighteen months due to the lack of doctrinal effort and training emphasis on occupation, nation building and counterinsurgency throughout the Army from 1975 until I retired in 1977 and continuing until I retired as a DAC in 1995 were responsible for many those errors. There were a number of people pointing out the likely future and they were diligently ignored. Sort of understandable in the 1975-1990 period; bad ju-ju post 1990, the proverbial handwriting was on the wall...

Which gets to my point (and Van's) -- we have got to be a full spectrum Army.

Along that line, there's another article in the AFJ, Culture Battle by Colonel Henry Foresman Jr. That I think speaks to both 3-24 proponents and believers in LTC Gentile's approach. The culture is the problem. He says several things that I think are pertinent:



He agrees with me; smart guy...

However, he also makes a very valid point that it seems to me that both 3-24 and LTC Gentile barely touch upon:



I believe that is a critical point and the last phrase is the reason. I don't care how good we are. Goesh pointed out that Mr. & Mrs. America are basically cool with body bags but they want results. My sensing is he's absolutely correct and if the perception of Mr. & Mrs America is that we aren't doing well; they'll pull th plug. Techniques then become irrelevant.



My perception also. Good article and bears reading.

Like Steve, I take issue with some of LTC Gian's premises and essentially for the same reason. However, I do not agree that we haven't transcended the Cold war mindset -- I suggest, as does COL Foresman, we haven't transcended the WW II mindset. We are still structured essentially as we are in 1946. For those who say "Brigade Combat Teams," my response is RCT -- with which we fought most of WW II outside the North African Desert. Not to mention Korea then back to Brigades for Viet Nam. Lest I be misunderstood, Brigades are good, Divisions are bad (even if we did err in the structure ot the light infantry Battalions). Notice that we did not do away with the Division...

I think we did not to avoid the two star spaces loss; we may need them to mobilize -- just as we will need the 3K plus Colonels and 3K plus SGM/CSM even though those are the same numbers we had in 1960 with an Army almost twice the size of todays. Mobilization backup is what that's all about but 'mobilization' is (unfortunately and stupidly) a nasty word in Congress. Thus we dissemble to keep the ability to expand tremendously. Prudent; we should. I just think there are better ways to do that.

Creighton Abrams structured the Total Army to force the government to call up the RC to go to war. The tear down of that started in DS/DS because the then CofSA and then DCSOPS hated the idea and fought Congress demands to send ArNG Brigades to Kuwait. Post DS/DS, they continued to do that in various little ways, some effective and some not. What they did not do was prepare for the present (then or now...).

It's mostly about protecting the institution. To fight WW II.

We need to be able to do that but we could be a whole lot smarter in how we go about it and still be prepared to cope with the more likely threats in the next decade or so..

[Rank amateur]

A number of things LTC Gentile says are undoubtedly right and he has identified the problem.

by and large the American army has done pretty well in Iraq—even prior to the surge--with the strategic and political cards it was dealt.

It has pushed us into doing things that make no sense to me: like arming the enemy of the government that we support.

It does not take into account the reality of conditions on the ground in Baghdad, the fact that there is civil war occurring, and those 25,000 additional combat troops simply are not enough to solve militarily what is essentially a political problem.

I’m going to suggest that you guys are such experts on trees, and so wedded to your particular tree related theories, that you can’t see the forest. Only the amateurs, and detached professionals, can see the forest. There are no military solutions to Iraq’s political problems.

The people haven’t abandoned you. (Strangers still show up at funerals for KIA. People still donate to charities for the wounded. Everyone is appalled by the conditions at Walter Reed.) They haven't lost faith. They just know that asking you to sacrifice your life in pursuit of an impossible objective is stupid.

COIN - in Iraq - is a knife. LTC Gentile’s approach is a bigger knife; it feels better, but is no more effective.

We know the resources we can apply. We know the tactics we can use. What we need is an achievable objective.

The country is hungry for a politician who will identify a reasonable objective, and without bull####, tells us how long it will take to achieve, what price we need to pay and why it’s worth paying.

We’re not optimistic.

[Ken White]

I don't know anyone here or anyone in any of the services or retired therefrom -- and that's a large crowd of tree experts -- who ever thought there were any military solutions to Iraq's problems.

I think you're missing the point. I don't know anyone who believes the Nation has abandoned them -- I do know many who disagree with this statement:

"They just know that asking you to sacrifice your life in pursuit of an impossible objective is stupid."

simply because they know that the objective isn't stupid. They also know that many who have not been there think it is stupid and mostly, they're cool with that.

They don't see it as an impossible objective; the objective was to open a window and let the Iraqis make their own decisions. That window was opened and is being held open. It likely will continue to be held open regardless of who's elected next year and mostly, the largest regret is that too many here do not understand all that. Regardless, the tree experts will confound the amatuers and "detached professionals" (whatever they are...) and continue to do their job in spite of that lack of understanding. Like they always have.

The country may be hungry for a politician who will identify that objective and without BS tell them how long it will take, what price they need to pay and why it's worth paying. I suspect they will be disappointed in all those desires, particularly the 'without BS' part.

I could point out that the country has in one form or another been told everything I said two paragraphs above; the problem is that, for some, those things are inadequate or insufficient cause to be there. Nothing any politicians says or does will change that; those minds were mostly made up and they aren't going to be changed. You may or may not be aware there some in the Armed Forces who fall in that category as well. They'll mostly still go and do their thing because they believe that how well one does something that one does not want to do is a mark of value.

Pessimists are never optimistic, it's contrary to their nature.

[skiguy]

A number of things LTC Gentile says
The country is hungry for a politician who will identify a reasonable objective, and without bull####, tells us how long it will take to achieve, what price we need to pay and why it’s worth paying.

Well,only speaking for myself here, but there are some who will NEVER listen to or believe what any politician says and only listens to, believes, and learns from what the likes of Petreaus, Nagl, Gentile, et al have to say.They've made it clear what the cost is, and they've made it clear that it requires patience. And they've made it clear that there is undeniable progress.

We’re not optimistic.

Some of us are. If I had to just rely on what the president or the media says, I'd have lost hope by now. But after listening to Petreaus and Crocker, researching what has been done by others, and reading what the folks here have to say, I'm very optimistic. I understand progress isn't the number of Muslims killed or the number of major cities blown up, it's the number of would-be terrorists who aren't that way anymore and who don't want me killed. It's watching before my very eyes Islam turning into the religion of peace they claim to be.
To say I'm impressed with what I'm hearing and reading about what our guys (military and civilian) have done and are doing, is an understatement. Awe-inspriring would be a better word. I can't begin to tell you how much I want to be a part of this and how much motivation it's giving me to get through the required (and boring) math and science classes until I start taking the more interesting courses.

Don't underestimate us. There are many of us (not as many as I'd like, but enought to have a voice) inexperienced, commom, everyday, civilian shmucks who know perfectly well what's going on and what it all means and who go FAR beyond just putting yellow "support the troops" bumper stickers on our SUV's.

Ken

[Merv Benson]

I will not try to bridge the differences between LtC. Gentile an others. I think most of his metrics make sense despite a different emphasis in the COIN manual. In fact, I think the current operations are doing a better job of destroying the enemy than we were doing with fewer troops. By being in the neighborhoods we are accomplishing two important things. We are denying access to the enemy and we are getting more intelligence on enemy locations through tips. It also means we do not have to buy the same real estate over and over. It is difficult to say that the kinetic operations in the Diyala valley were not aimed at destroying the enemy and his infrastructure in his remaining sanctuary in Iraq.

I think the reports coming out of Anbar provide at least anecdotal evidence that our new allies are not enemies of the central government and are in fact being paid by that government. In other areas we are organizing citizen watches made up of former adversaries who provide their own arms. I suspect this is a transition phase meant to gage their dependability and loyalty.

The Sheiks seem to be the key political component in Iraq to controlling the country. Saddam learned this during his war with Iran and it appears to be holding true as we see groups rallying to our side in both the Sunni and Shia area when the Sheik says to do it.

In short the result of current operations demonstrate less violence against the population by sectarian factions and more effective kinetic operations against both al Qaeda and the Shia militia.

[Jedburgh]

.....As for Jedburg’s mean statement that I was hunkered down in a fob I point him to a recent oped piece that I had published in Army Times on that subject. He could also ask any number of 4 star generals on down to the lowest private in my squadron if I “got it” and new how to do coin. And finally, he might try asking other commanders who lost soldiers what their priorities were. I know what I said at that Heritage panel did not fit in with what the coin experts believe actual coin ops should be like, but again my impression of counterinsurgency warfare is that fighting is its basic element and so killing and not being killed were my top priorities. So go ahead Jedburg and ask people who knew of me and I trust you will not get the profile back that you have created on me....

I never stated that you "were hunkered down on a FOB". My "mean statement", as you put it, was that your comments were reflective of a stereotypical conventional Armor officer that can't stand anything other than HIC. Thus far, you have not posted anything to counter that perception, other than suggest I go around conducting character interviews. Sir, I do not question your character - I question your grasp of unconventional warfare.

....In my mind FM 3-24 has become the army’s primary operational doctrine, and to its detriment. It has pushed us into doing things that make no sense to me: like arming the enemy of the government that we support; like dogmatically using the tactics of combat outposts in areas where other methods might be better but we do this because a French officer had success with them in the mountains of Algeria in 1958.

I think you greatly overstate the influence of FM 3-24. It is an important doctrinal publication, but our Army has seen tremendous change and evolution in doctrinal pubs across the spectrum since 9-11, many of which are completely new and not doctrinal rewrites. However, I refer you back to RTK's post on the interrelationship of operational doctrine. Your constant diatribes against the manual are beginning to sound strident; if you could bring up substantive issues of precisely how it impacts training and other doctrine, that would go a long way towards making your case.

Offhand, I'd also like to say that arming the enemy of the government isn't something that was pushed by anything between the covers of FM 3-24. My view on the matter is stated here.

...If you want to read a quality piece written by another combat battalion commander read LTC Ross Brown’s recent article in Military Review on his experience in Iraq in 2005....

If you are referring to his Jan-Feb 07 piece, Commander's Assessment: South Baghdad, you are right, that is a good read. However, he specifically addresses the importance of the core subject which I have said that you either avoid, ignore or dismiss: linking killing with building, the kinetic with the non-kinetic. Other than a summary dismissal of armed social science, I would like to hear you elaborate on the fusion of those two aspects of unconventional warfare, as well as on conventional maneuver units' experience with interagency collaboration (or the lack thereof - as LTC Brown states at the end of his article) at the tactical level.

[marct]

Hi Folks,

I must have missed the class as Dr Tyrell states and I never really did get Foucault or Derrida because for the life of me I don’t get what he is telling me. I guess I just must be slow. No matter, I will restate my impression of the coin manual’s paradoxes when I was in combat in Iraq and based on reflection upon my return: my impression was that the paradoxes removed the essence of war which is fighting. You might disagree with what I have to say but I think the logic is pretty clear.
....
Counterinsurgency war is not “armed social science” as Kilkullen has called it. Instead at its basic level is violence and death; this was my impression after a year in Baghdad.

Well, not being a proponent of either Foucault or Derrida, I'm not sure what they have to do with this. However, yes, your logic was clear. Let me use exactly the same logical form that you used.

According to Clausewitz, war is an extension of politics
Politics is a social science,
Therefore war is an armed social science

Reference Dr Metz’s implication that I am stuck in the old “cold war mindset” I suggest that he along with so many other experts are the ones stuck in a box. He like so many others are a part of the great narrative that has been constructed on US involvement in iraq. It goes something like the army didn’t’ take coin seriously before the war and because of that the army has screwed up iraq. But happily with the help of experts and some enlightened thinkers within the active army we have now finally figured out how to do it; aka the surge.

That is certainly the extreme form of that particular narrative and I believe that it is a narrative that has gained strength, at least in pop culture, over the past 3-4 years.

I argue that this entire construct is flawed. That by and large the American army has done pretty well in Iraq—even prior to the surge--with the strategic and political cards it was dealt. My article in fact threatens the intellectual base of the new coin doctrine because it calls its basic theoretical premises into question.

Why do you think it "threatens the intellectual base of the new coin doctrine"? I certainly don't see any attacks on the underlying premises of the doctrine. Also, I would suggest, that FM 3-24 is not meant as a stand alone but, rather, a complement for other types (classes or categories) of warfare.

I will pose a counterfactual again that I posted last week on this blog: If the army had read books like Nagl’s before the war and trained and taken seriously coin operations would things be any different in iraq than they are now? If the army had focused predominantly on coin prior to 2003 would the march to Baghdad gone the same way?

To answer: possibly. However, let me toss out my own counterfactual: If the Army or, more specifically the planners of the war, had read anything about the Marshall Plan in Germany after WW II, or had bothered to read The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict, then the current COIN fight might have been unnecessary. The goal of a strike such as the march to Baghdad should not be to create more situations for killing, but that is the effect it has had since there was only a limited understanding of either previous Army doctrine (e.g. the occupation strategies of Japan and Germany) or a solid institutionalization of COIN principles.

Marc

[Adrian]

As for Jedburg’s mean statement that I was hunkered down in a fob I point him to a recent oped piece that I had published in Army Times on that subject. He could also ask any number of 4 star generals on down to the lowest private in my squadron if I “got it” and new how to do coin. And finally, he might try asking other commanders who lost soldiers what their priorities were. I know what I said at that Heritage panel did not fit in with what the coin experts believe actual coin ops should be like, but again my impression of counterinsurgency warfare is that fighting is its basic element and so killing and not being killed were my top priorities. So go ahead Jedburg and ask people who knew of me and I trust you will not get the profile back that you have created on me.

Jedburgh was not accusing of you of being hunkered down in a fob (I assume you're talking about this post) - he was quoting from my blog post after that Heritage event. For the record I was not accusing you either, merely observing that the mentality of "kill the enemy" first and foremost could conceivably push a commander to only expend his resources when he has the best chance of killing the enemy. That view would make sense if there was a defined amount of enemies, but in a COIN environment where you can create new enemies even when you kill people who deserve to be killed, it doesn't make sense to me - probably because I don't conceive of COIN as a war-fighting mission as much as you do.

That said, anyone who takes on conventional wisdom gets kudos. Also I hadn't made the connection between the frustration factor and the torture issue - good point. Although apparently everyone here disagrees with you, obviously someone needs to write articles like this to force us to reexamine our starting points.

[Gian P Gentile]

Dear Adrian:

thanks for clarifying that point. I, like most of the participants on this blog, have lots of things going on during the day and i came to it in the afternoon and tried to answer as many points as i could rather quickly.

thanks again for the clarification and for your comments.

[wm]

I must have missed the class as Dr Tyrell states and I never really did get Foucault or Derrida because for the life of me I don’t get what he is telling me. I guess I just must be slow. No matter, I will restate my impression of the coin manual’s paradoxes when I was in combat in Iraq and based on reflection upon my return: my impression was that the paradoxes removed the essence of war which is fighting. You might disagree with what I have to say but I think the logic is pretty clear.

Conspicuous by its absence is any real logic (in the sense of reasoned argumentation) in this response. (Yearling USMA PY201 students would probably fail for an effort like this.) Also conspicuous by its absence is any attempt at rebuttal of my allegation of a category mistake in the article's subsumption of COIN under war. Category mistakes, btw, have been central issues in mainstream Western analytic Philosophy ever since Gilbert Ryle (a good old Oxford Don at Christ Church) coined the term in his 1949 Concept of Mind. Therefore, being confused by Foucault and Derrida (Continental philosophers of the "touchy-feely" sort) is not a good excuse, IMO. Actually the absence of any meaningful reclama or rebuttal discussion on this issue is fully understandable. It seems to indicate a blind spot in the author's conceptual schematism. For more on this topic, one might read the essay by Donald Davidson (another mainstream Anglo-American analytic philosopher of language so the Derrida dodge again won't work) "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," a response to WVO Quine's (Harvard logician) seminal essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Since LTC Gentile is at USMA, perhaps a trip to the second or third floors of Lincoln Hall for some remedial training in logic and critical thinking might be in order. As a minimum, I would suggest a close reading of Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought by David Hackett Fischer.

I argue that this entire construct is flawed. That by and large the American army has done pretty well in Iraq—even prior to the surge--with the strategic and political cards it was dealt.

Metrics are always tied to presumptions. If we accept the presumption that the Army's mission in Iraq has been to amass a body count, then I cannot disagree with the quoted claim. However, I tend to think that just accurately placing rounds on target is too narrow a view of the mission. Back in the days of SASO as an Army mission, racking up corpes was not a good metric for the success of that mission. And it still is not a good metric for SASO's replacement.

My article in fact threatens the intellectual base of the new coin doctrine because it calls its basic theoretical premises into question. Counterinsurgency war is not “armed social science” as Kilkullen has called it. Instead at its basic level is violence and death; this was my impression after a year in Baghdad.

This is a very telling statement about the author's preconceptions. What was witnessed was violence and death and the witness has choosen to describe this as "counterinsurgency war." However, what Kilcullen addresses is probably more like what Immanuel Kant calls a regulative ideal--not the state of thiings as they are but instead the future state of things that one is trying to attain. The article is a threat because it is reactionary, not because it is visionary. It seeks to turn back the hands of time, not move forward into a brave new world. I suspect that had people in the 18th Century taken the approach described in this rebuttal, then the world would still condone slavery and have many nations ruled under the pretense of the divine right of kings.

I will pose a counterfactual again that I posted last week on this blog: If the army had read books like Nagl’s before the war and trained and taken seriously coin operations would things be any different in iraq than they are now? If the army had focused predominantly on coin prior to 2003 would the march to Baghdad gone the same way?

This is a question that is misframed. It really does not matter how much training in COIN had been given prior to the start of OIF. What does matter is that the mission was assigned based on a misreading of the reality on the ground in Iraq. Apparently, senior leadership above the Service departments (and perhaps within them as well) did not forese the need for a COIN force after the regime change was effected. Instead, they seemed to believe that the swap out would be more like what happens between November and January after a Presidential election in the US.

To repeat, war is not “armed social science,” though many of you may want it to be.

War may not be "armed social science," but COIN is not necessarily war simpliciter. I submit that COIN is sui generis.