Agreed J Wolfsberger,Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger
The world's not going to get any better by just sitting back and crying over it. And sometimes, such as in Afghanistan, you actually must use military force to stop the threat, or at least to push it back from home.
First off, we cannot act weak or give the impression of weakness; and we must be consistent in both our objectives and "demands", and in the vigour with which we pursue them. So much of life in those parts of the world is a winners-take-all, losers-lose-all reality. I would like to say that we should really turn on the political pressure (quietly, and behind closed doors), and especially where possible with particular resort to financial pressures (since money is one of the things that talks just about anywhere, and especially in places like the ME, where point of wielding political power is to make or keep, money). Even a few months of hard financial pressure may at times allow for some real political progress, if one is ready to act upon opportunities so afforded, while they are still open.
But this is a risky and even dangerous approach at times, and it may not only fail, but indeed backfire and turn an ally into and enemy, or at least into an ally of an enemy. If we are not necessarily liked by other regimes, we need at least to appear to be the least threatening in comparison to their other threats. But, if we insist upon fundamental reforms to their societies because of the threats to us that their own politicies create, we are in quite a bind. In the case of the Taleban, it was no problem when not only did they provide Al-Qaida with safe haven and bases, but indeed protected them despite Al-Qaida's attacks on us; we were obliged to overthrow the regime then in order to deal with the terrorists.
But in the case of Saudi Arabia, despite its being the very source of Al-Qaida and much of its funding and personnel, the Saudi rulers were not supporting them in their terrorist attacks upon us, even if many donors came from the ruling classes and many recruits came form the middle classes. And in response to our diplomatic pressures, the Saudis have subsequently engaged in measures to deal with Al-Qaidi. We are not therefore justified in overthrowing the Saudi Government. But we must insist upon the Saudis doing their best to root out Al-Qaida and the conditions that spawned it; to a limited extent we have been and may continue to be successful in that regard. Furthermore, recognizing the threat to its own survival, the Saudi government is encouraging more and more of its disaffected and unemployed middle class men to work blue collar and menial jobs. A hard sell to be sure, but the Saudis are cutting back on the number of foreign workers let in to perform said jobs.
As to military force, where, as in Afghanistan, we were obliged to use to deal with an enemy that was actively attacking us, we have to use the maximum force avaiable to us, not the minimum, again, as we did in Afghanistan. We can see the results of that now, when we relied upon local troops to help close the ring around Tora Bora. For the cost of a handful more infantry battalions on the ground, we might have bagged the AQ leadership then and there; whatever insurgency that may or may not have followed in time anyway would not have been as much of a concern, or a threat as it is now.
Unfortunately, the invasion of Iraq has largely eliminated most of our military options in such regards. Admittedly, I consider the invasion of Iraq to have been unjustifed in the first place; that said, what's done is done and the war must be won, in so far as "winning" is possible in COIN. At present we possess neither the available military power, nor even perhaps the political will, to intervene militarily where we may need to, whether now or in the future. Furthermore, with such a substantial proportion of the Army and Marines equipped, oriented, and fighting COIN wars, they may not be in very good shape to engage in major interventions or conventional wars. Yes, we need to be able to wage COIN, and wage it successfully. But it should be just one mission, and certainly not the main mission, that our force structure and our training needs to be directed towards.
The Marines are pretty much well adapted for either intervention or for COIN missions; the Army rather less so. Armoured and Mechanized Infantry Formations are better suited to major intervention operations and of course conventional warfare, and they really should concentrate on that, especially III Corps. I Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps should concentrate more upon intervention operations and COIN, with perhaps somewhat less emphasis on major conventional wars - this is what the Marines more or less do themselves. With 2/3rds of the Army and most of the Marine Corps optimized for intervention and COIN missions, taking down regimes like the Taleban or the ZANU-PF (if that becomes clearly necessary) or in places like Darfur, Rwanda or the Congo, etc. III Corps would be largely reserved for the big wars or major operations.
Where the principal consideration is humanitarian, such as in much of Africa, we should be getting a grip on other countries (especially former colonial powers, but others as well) to accompany us and share the responsibility. Where the principle interest is a real and direct threat to national security, we have to be able to handle that ourselves and not wait for someone else's support or approval. However, until the Iraq mission begins to wind down in earnest, the forces available for either type of action are pretty minimal.
Apologies for the long post; I was trying to put things into context.
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