Culmination Point

**Rank amateur** · 11-28-2007

Originally Posted by RTK

Be careful on interchanging decisive point and decision point. I don't know if you intentionally did that.

My bad. Mrs. RA was yelling at me to come watch Helio's dance.

I guess the questions was, were we forced to stop stability and support operations because of the insurgents? If so, does that mean that we reached a culmination point? If so, can we say that changing strategies at a culmination point can be very beneficial?

**RTK** · 11-28-2007

Originally Posted by Rank amateur

My bad. Mrs. RA was yelling at me to come watch Helio's dance.

I guess the questions was, were we forced to stop stability and support operations because of the insurgents? If so, does that mean that we reached a culmination point? If so, can we say that changing strategies at a culmination point can be very beneficial?

No, I think we've conducted SOSO concurrently to FID, IDAD, and COIN.

Again, I think certain phases or subphases have reached culminating points but not the overall operation.

**Ken White** · 11-29-2007

Originally Posted by Rank amateur

My bad. Mrs. RA was yelling at me to come watch Helio's dance.

I guess the questions was, were we forced to stop stability and support operations because of the insurgents? If so, does that mean that we reached a culmination point? If so, can we say that changing strategies at a culmination point can be very beneficial?

different things to different people. The Armed Forces, like any profession, have a jargon -- a lot of it doesn't translate well into civilian idiom. When you couple that with the Politicians ability to toss words around in a meaningless fashion, things can really get confused...

A lot of folks in uniform knew in May 2003 that a stability operation was likely to be required if we stayed. Originally, we (wrongly and shortsightedly) didn't plan on staying. By Jun '03 it was obvious we were going to be there a while. So we began. As RTK said;

"I think we've conducted SOSO concurrently to FID, IDAD, and COIN."

All along. The problem was that the Army had deliberately ignored all those methodologies for almost 30 years in an effort to not have to do those things because they are long term, tedious, dangerous, dirty and unpleasant -- plus they do bad things to highly honed big conventional war machines.

A second problem is that our federal government is way too big and is governed by laws written by a well meaning but not good thinking Congress, thus that government and its Armed Forces are big, bureaucratic and very cumbersome.

It took the Army 18 months to realize that they were going to have to get serious about the SOSO, FID, IDAD and COIN things instead of just jacking around with them, much as they hated the idea. It took another 18 months to get the system to gear up to start doing that and 18 more months for that shift to really become effective.

Thus, IMO, the answer to your question is that we were not forced to stop stability and support operations because of the insurgents, we've been doing them all along and it just took the big bureaucratic elephant over four years to shift gears and change direction. Again to RTK; we've been doing all those things all along, we just gradually shifted the emphasis, refined the tactical process and better trained the troops. The surge made little difference.

I don't think we've reached a culmination point -- and that's a bad word for Scales to be throwing around because it implies an end to something and we aren't near the end of anything. It's as bad as using 'victory' and 'win' in that those words imply something that is not what is likely to happen in any insurgency. Thus soldiers say one thing, the politicians another and the great American public gets confused because of jargon and jingoism.

We can say that changing strategies at a culmination point can be very beneficial in some situations but not necessarily in all. Since we aren't at a culmination point in Iraq and since we have not changed strategy, merely tactical procedures, that doesn't apply to Iraq.

**Tom Odom** · 11-29-2007

I don't think we've reached a culmination point -- and that's a bad word for Scales to be throwing around because it implies an end to something and we aren't near the end of anything. It's as bad as using 'victory' and 'win' in that those words imply something that is not what is likely to happen in any insurgency. Thus soldiers say one thing, the politicians another and the great American public gets confused because of jargon and jingoism.

Agreed. And as you have said on related subjects many times, I don't expect this tension/confusion to end anytime soon. Bob Scales use of terms in offering false clarity really blurred reality.

Best
Tom

**Ron Humphrey** · 11-29-2007

Originally Posted by Ken White

different things to different people. The Armed Forces, like any profession, have a jargon -- a lot of it doesn't translate well into civilian idiom. When you couple that with the Politicians ability to toss words around in a meaningless fashion, things can really get confused...

A lot of folks in uniform knew in May 2003 that a stability operation was likely to be required if we stayed. Originally, we (wrongly and shortsightedly) didn't plan on staying. By Jun '03 it was obvious we were going to be there a while. So we began. As RTK said; All along. The problem was that the Army had deliberately ignored all those methodologies for almost 30 years in an effort to not have to do those things because they are long term, tedious, dangerous, dirty and unpleasant -- plus they do bad things to highly honed big conventional war machines.

A second problem is that our federal government is way too big and is governed by laws written by a well meaning but not good thinking Congress, thus that government and its Armed Forces are big, bureaucratic and very cumbersome.

It took the Army 18 months to realize that they were going to have to get serious about the SOSO, FID, IDAD and COIN things instead of just jacking around with them, much as they hated the idea. It took another 18 months to get the system to gear up to start doing that and 18 more months for that shift to really become effective.

Thus, IMO, the answer to your question is that we were not forced to stop stability and support operations because of the insurgents, we've been doing them all along and it just took the big bureaucratic elephant over four years to shift gears and change direction. Again to RTK; we've been doing all those things all along, we just gradually shifted the emphasis, refined the tactical process and better trained the troops. The surge made little difference.

I don't think we've reached a culmination point -- and that's a bad word for Scales to be throwing around because it implies an end to something and we aren't near the end of anything. It's as bad as using 'victory' and 'win' in that those words imply something that is not what is likely to happen in any insurgency. Thus soldiers say one thing, the politicians another and the great American public gets confused because of jargon and jingoism.

We can say that changing strategies at a culmination point can be very beneficial in some situations but not necessarily in all. Since we aren't at a culmination point in Iraq and since we have not changed strategy, merely tactical procedures, that doesn't apply to Iraq.

So right

**Rank amateur** · 11-29-2007

You've convinced me. I looked up FM-23. It says COIN is a mixture of offensive and defensive operations, so I can see that we've been on the offensive the entire time.