Center for a New American Security

Flarl, Haha, very clever

Flarl,

Haha, very clever name disguise.

I have not read the report, but I'm curious about the criticism that the root cause was not proper application of COIN. Since I have not read the report I'll caveat my opinion, but it seems to me the basic criticism is that proper COIN practices weren't applied, which allowed a force to mass and attack the outpost.

There are several other instances in Afghanistan over the years were ACM forces were able to mass and attempt to overrun a coalition position. In those other cases, the ACM were decisively defeated. At Wanat, by contrast, they had some success. If COIN was the failure at Wanat, what does that say about these other engagements? Were they COIN failures too that were only saved because of superior US firepower and/or a better defensive position? Would this report have been written and would the unit's leadership be under criticism if the unit had crushed the attack and taken few or no casualties?

As a staff officer, I

As a staff officer, I watched both LTC Ostland and LTC Kolenda make many mistakes across a 15 month deployment. I also observed the same men achieve tremendous successes. Neither outcome was predestined or born out of different matter. Rather, both were the result of decisions; decisions informed by staff work, intelligence, experience, and most importantly, a mission.

COIN, in any of its manifestations is an iterative process. These men's units occupied perhaps the most difficult physical and human terrain facing the U.S. military today with 18,000 foot mountains populated by no less than 12 different languages or dialects and just and many ethnic and tribal groups, most found only in Kunar or Nuristan. When you are dealing with poorly studied and understood ethnic-linguistic groups (two Waigali interpreters total; zero Waigali American citizens) where your decisions are informed by limited information this iterative process becomes magnified and even more important to achieve even minor successes. COL Kolenda had his failures as does every commander in war, but what's critical is that we use those failures to learn, adjust tactics, tweak strategy and press forward with better informed decisions thus continuing the iterative process anew.

Wanat was a very difficult decision, largely born first of a mission and then by necessity and economy rather than choice. It ended poorly and cost lives, but this outcome was not predestined or the result of fundamentally wrong operational decision. Because of the lives lost, the events and legacy of Wanat will inform Afghanistan tactics and operational strategy for the foreseeable future, therefore it is essential that the right lessons are drawn. Those lessons are NOT of a failure of population centric COIN.

Nick

Perhaps a better point to

Perhaps a better point to make is that, perhaps, the unit commander was under direct orders to "do something COINish" at Wanat (not the real name of the village, I should add).

Rather than follow through with commonsensical defensive positions (or leaving the job to the incoming unit likely to man it), the unit instead was asked to carve into the dirt an outpost too close to the village, where it was difficult to hear the enemy preparations, and tasked under a highly restrictive ROE that wouldn't allow the troops to fire on several obvious gatherings of MAMs likely to attack.

Now, I'm not making that argument, but it's one that I think could be made, and the person who made it would be suggesting that the sitrep went to hell because they were trying too hard to follow a paradigmatic pursuit of population-centric COIN without the troops available to do so. We actually have BG Milley expressing similar fears on the record about the lack of troop numbers available for the valley.

This is what then-LTC Ostlund told historians:

"We targeted WANAT for over a year as a place where we could effectively progress along the Lines of Operation (LOOs) of Security, Governance, Economic Development and IO. Wanat would position a base that was in close proximity to a new district center, a new police station, a market, and a population center – and was accessible by air and ground LOC. We had $1.4 million in projects planned or ongoing in WANAT’s area."

Here's the Company XO:

"The reason we moved to Wanat was so we would be co-located with the district government so we could mentor them so they could police themselves up. We wanted to help them develop their government so they could do something other than just guard the district center and not really affect anything outside of their one-kilometer bubble."

If that ain't Galula-esque COIN, I don't know what is. The entire point of that COP in that town was to build security in a local area while supporting the elected Afghan government and lending it an aura of legitimacy. Rather than talk about the weapons he would bring to the village, the battalion commander yapped about the money that was going to be spent there and on Afghan construction crews.

From the report I read, I got the feeling that the establishment of the COP wasn't based on any real pursuit of troop protection (odd, for a defensive position seems to imply the necessity of same), but rather a willingness to appease Wanat's landholders and give them political cover against the Taliban who would oppose any US presence there.

Now, I haven't seen the latest iteration of the study, but not once did Cubbison specify the "ROE" ("Rules of Engagement") given to the troops, which is odd because it would've been drilled into the gun crews constantly.

Instead, this is what he wrote:

"First, beginning the night of July 11th-12th, the ITAS and LRAS sensors at Wanat began to acquire small groups of individuals moving across the mountain slopes around COP Kahler, and then vanishing into the many precipitous draws and ravines of the countryside. With one exception, they could not be positively identified (PID) as insurgents. However, the sudden appearance of numerous small groups of individuals should have been a matter of concern. "

It not only should have been a "matter of concern," but under a less restrictive ROE it might have meant some shredded insurgents. Moreover, if that unit had the right number of troops available to do a population-centric operation, they could have mounted patrols throughout the area that would have followed the mysterious gatherings of MAMs to PID them as insurgents.

Other aspects of the study I found bracingly sweeping and completely unsupported by the evidence actually gathered for the reader, including this:

"After fifteen months in Afghanistan, the American commanders had grown complacent. In their hubris, they forgot that a new position is most vulnerable in the early days of its formation. "

Was the author really suggesting that an experienced infantry commander didn't realize that his position was most vulnerable when it wasn't quite built? Really? Because there's zero evidence of this in any of the footnoted testimony within the history, and we know for a fact that the SULs there said the exact opposite. Sure, they thought they would be hit with SAF or indirect fire designed to harass them, but that doesn't mean that they didn't realize how vulnerable an unbuilt COP is.

A third grader would know that, just as any SPC might have suggested that platoon-sized COPs typically aren't afforded a Raven from the TF, and that the Raven wouldn't have been available for round-the-clock coverage even if it had been flown there. And even if the Raven could have done all that, the speculation that it would have better peered behind the hills to see something important also is merely speculation.

We know that the gun crews had observed numerous gaggles of MAMs moving toward their position in the days before the attack. Guess what the Raven would've seen? Yeah, same thing. If they couldn't act on what they saw with their own eyes, what makes the author think that a Raven tape would've changed that? Could the Raven have delivered MORE troops to do those contact patrols? If so, then sure, the Raven would've helped.

While I haven't read the study in some time, I don't recall even one Afghan source being consulted. This is unusual considering that the author then concludes that the ANA were improperly used. An Afghan construction firm had been let for the COP's construction, and numerous government agents obviously bepopulated the area but weren't consulted about their thoughts on the Wanat incident.

The other tension I can't help but find is between the study's perspective on simple infantry tactics and Ricks' less competent handling of them in his earlier expose. The best part of Cubbison's study was the minute-by-minute narrative of how the COP was being built and, later, defended bravely by the paratroopers.

That sort of understanding about how a platoon digs in and fights back is pretty much Infantry 101, but it was missing from Ricks' pieces published earlier.

Regardless, in the hands of a different historian, very different conclusions might have been drawn from the very same set of facts. That's something that makes history interesting. So I treat this one study as a good -- put likely imperfect -- version of what happened at Wanat, and why.

Andrew, I can count on one

Andrew,

I can count on one hand (one finger) the number of times I've posted to a blog in my life, but I feel compelled to do so today.

I am glad that you caution against overestimating me. If anybody's attempting to portray me as a 'saint' of counterinsurgency -or anything else, for that matter- I can help: I am not. The mistakes I have made as a combat leader are too many to count, and I remain acutely, painfully, and daily aware of each of them.

Likewise, any attempt to portray Bill Ostlund as my opposite is baseless. In fact, I know Bill well, respect him deeply as an officer and a leader, and count him among my friends.

I last set foot in Waygal in June 2007, but Bill and I remained in close contact throughout his tour of duty there, emailing weekly and speaking by phone monthly. There is no way to say I wouldn't have ended up in the same situation Bill found himself in during 2008.

The things that lead to big fights and bad days are many and complex. As a man who has had many bad days, I can assure you that I still search for the causes of each. I can also assure you that those days hang heavily around my neck, as they do any commander's. However, every time I have faced a bad day, that day has been carried by the skill and bravery and determination and decency of my soldiers.

Bill and I share that, too.

Thank you for the chance to comment. Now I will go back to listening silence.

Chris Cavoli

don't you guys have offices

don't you guys have offices you could go and argue in?

"You seem to accept without question that if a combat outfit is nice to the locals, if it buys them things, if it says nice things about them in reflection, then that indicates that the unit gets coin and therefore their actions will produce certain effects."

I accept without question that if a combat outfit tries to kill as few local civilians as possible it will do better than a combat outfit that is happy with 'acceptable civilian casualties'.

call me old fashioned.

Diablotakahe: Coin has

Diablotakahe:

Coin has become, IMO, the dogma of the Day. I believe that Coin Thinking up to a couple of years ago provided a very important intellectual service to the Army. To be sure it did so in the 80s and 90s albeit in a small way as an alternative to think about war, its history, its theory and practice. But now all of it has been inverted and Coin has become the dominant intellectual force in the Army; yet the problem as I see it is that many of its proponents will not accept this fact and still act as if they are the minority party which as a result produces a certain and troubling strain of true believerism which precludes considerations of alternative approaches to war, and more specifically small wars in places like Astan.

As to your comment on my point about in Coin even though an outfit can do all of the right things, be nice to people, speak highly of them, build them bridges, establish their governance still bad things can happen and contrary to coin theory the effect desired might not be the effect produced in that after doing all of those things they still can come to kill you. My statement in no way was an argument to be glib and carefree about the killing of civilians in war. I know what it is like and it is not pleasant. At the hands of my squadron 5 civilians were killed in EOF events. My soldiers did as they were trained, perceived a threat, followed procedures, then shot to kill. In that sense they did the best they could in very difficult and dangerous situations. But still the fact is that five civilians died. For me the hardest thing was always the loss of a soldier or a soldier seriously wounded; but right behind that was when we killed civilians through EOF. I took it very seriously, investigated all of them, and tried my best to figure out how to avoid them.

Having said all of that, the real point that I was making had to do with the highly problematic nature of population centric coin theory that says if a unit just gets better, if it learns and adapts, if it builds schools, establishes governance, if it builds local forces, if it educates children, then voila victory in coin is achieved. I am here to tell you the theory does not necessarily work like that in practice. It can, and it has been proven to do so historically for example by Magsaysay in the Huk rebellion. But its success has also been ostensible in other so called classic Coin campaigns like the British in Malaya and Layautey in Morocco. If nothing else it has yet to be proven that it was the primary cause for the lowering of violence in Iraq.

And my point about the Cubbison Study and Wanat is that to enshrine the theory of population coin as workable in practice anywhere as long as it is practiced correctly by good units, then to use that premise to judge and then condemn a fine battalion commander was just not right.

gentile

i appreciate your considered

i appreciate your considered response.

i suppose the thing i find most depressing is that there is a new dogma at all. i had hoped that the last couple of years had showed a new agnosticism, and that the military establishment's proximity to various breaking points had created, or recreated, a learning culture that was able to develop and apply new solutions to problems.

reading this it feels here we go again, get ready for the next war to have the last one's lessons misapplied.

however in terms of civilian deaths, its not the 5 that died at the hands of your men that i'm talking about. it was the mindset that for example had the USAF stomping around the better parts of Baghdad at the commencement of the war in pursuit of saddam. a score of civilians would be killed each time, thousands alienated and it was shrugged off. the mindset that had rumsfeld bragging about the brutality with which the war would be waged. the mindset that saw so many civilians die at checkpoints.

i could go on, but it seems a long time ago now.

a military paradigm which starts with the premise that civilians are there to be protected would seem to be, not only a more moral one, but also one more likely to lead to success in the current conflict.

in terms of wanat, what is missing from the discourse is any appreciation of the other side. what learnings, what changes in command, structure, tactics occurred over the same period on the other side? one wonders how much of the second US commander's lack of success can be attributed to the lessons learnt by the taliban over the course of the first commander's tenure.

reading analysis of US Army's failures is often like reading the papers the morning after an All Black defeat. sometimes the simple fact is that other team is better on the day, and our team was simply outplayed. mistakes that on an other day would go unpunished are exploited.

hurts most when its the french.

Diablotakahe: Yes this is a

Diablotakahe:

Yes this is a simple but powerful point that you make of the moral weight of a military doctrine that has its first and most fundamental principle the protection of the civilian population. Although one could be somewhat cynical about that and acknowledge that even in Coin protection of the population is not an altruistic goal but a functional one as the doctrine goes to use the people to separate the insurgents from them. So in that sense if nothing else it is an amoral doctrine. Thus it can be seen as not primarily moral, but utilitarian.

But I digress.

Well one should not infer from your position though that prior to population centric coin in the US military it was perfectly acceptable to kill civilians in war since we did have the laws of war and other codes and policies that had as their premise the protection of civilians in war and a US Military who did their best to follow them, at least since the end of World War II (admittedly this line of argument could be challenged if one brought the issue of potential nuclear war into play, but let me continue). Nor should one assume, as some of Andrew's posts sometimes seem to suggest, that the protection of civilians in war--or a related notion of not killing them in war--has never been a timeless principle that armies, especially the American military have always followed. An excellent history book in this regard came out a few years ago called "Civilians in the Path of War (edited by my two friends and historians Mark Grimsley and Cliff Rogers) which its central theme was that the treatment of civilians in war whether good or bad has always been contingent, and never constant. For example in medieval warfare it was not uncommon for English armies in order to draw the French army out to fight would raze villages and to an extent terrorize the local populations. More currently one can find a fascinating transition in World War I with the US position on unrestricted submarine where you find Wilson making damning statements against the Germans that when they attacked ocean going shipping they often killed civilians on the ships and that the killing of civilians in this way in war was immoral. From here fast forward to World War II and spring and summer 1945 with the American bombing raids of Japanese cities where by then you had front page headlines in the NY Times stating as a matter of simple fact that hundreds of thousands of “japs” were killed in LeMay’s bombing raids. So the point to sum up, is that the protection of civilians in war, and the opposite of killing of them, has always been historically contingent upon many factors.

As I have argued before the problem that I have with Coin doctrine and the immutable rule of focusing on the population and protecting them is not a moral one that says we should be doing the opposite; no, no, of course civilians as a matter of law must be protected in any war that we fight. Instead my problem with it has to do with strategy and operational method. If the immutable rule in ANY Coin campaign is protection of the population then the operational and tactical methods are already pre-determined and demand the very same approach that we used in Iraq and now in Astan. This may be the right course but my point all along here is that it should not be the ONLY course of action. But in the American Army it has come to that and our consumption, and for some seduction, by the prospect of population centric coin theory has eclipsed our ability to do strategy and to consider options. And those options in Astan other than pop centric coin does not mean going Tamerlane on them; but it does mean considering more limited military measures to accomplish political objectives. But because of the dogmatic approach that we have now to coin, those other options are never even really considered.

And here is where history and our understanding of it comes into play. An entire zeitgeist has been built around coin; and one of its main pillars is a set of historical case studies that ostensibly support the idea that population centric coin—with its overriding principle of population protection—can work if practiced by learning and adapting outfits. Malaya of course is the classic example; but I say ostensibly because actually the back of the communist insurgency in Malaya was broken before Templer took over and put into place his program of hearts and minds persuasion; instead it was broken by the use of military force to kill insurgents combined with a substantial resettlement program (current historical scholarship shows this). That is what broke the insurgencies back, and not a better war of hearts and minds focusing on population protection. Te French in Morocco under Layautey is another classic example of a country ostensibly using hearts and minds but actually using brute force to crush an insurgency. What I am trying to get at here is a clear understanding of what does and does not happen in these kinds of wars, which was my essential point in this thread all along.

Fnord. You are right and I can see how this thread frustrates you with the apparent bickering. But if you had read the complete Cubbison report (which has yet to be released) or even if you read Tom Ricks’s blog where he highlighted it extensively then threw his own unconditional weight behind it, you should see that a big part of it is the judgments of a failure to do Coin properly by the battalion commander and parts of his battalion’ s leadership. So the nature of the study demands these kinds of responses. If you go to Small Wars Blog I posted my original critique of the report (that Andrew excerpted portions of it on this thread) where I acknowledge the many valuable insights, lessons, and narrative accounts contained in Cubbison’s study. But my critique to him was that that excellent part of the study was marred by the pseudo-trial that he had going on within the report where he the author is almost acting like the judge and jury and the charge was failure to do population centric coin correctly. And in this trial he had the battalion commander in the docket. Fnord, this is a substantial part of the report and IMO it had to be addressed, and attacked stridently, as a matter of fairness, and, to me, as a matter of history, the use of evidence, and the making of reasonable arguments.

Thanks for listening

v/r
gian

Old Blue: Can you imagine

Old Blue:

Can you imagine counterinsurgency in any other way (and when I say any other way I mean a reasonable way and not the strawman accusations of doing Sherman's March to the Sea in Khost or Tamerlane in Helmand, but I am talking about more limited military options other than nation building that would be elevated to an equal operational level as the method of population centric counterisurgency) than the population centric method?

It is strategy that I am speaking about here and it is the dogma of coin that has eclipsed it.

Strategy, stategy, strategy!

Ok, you don’t like the word dogma, so be it. Call it then a mentality, a worldview, a zeitgeist, or better yet a New American Way of War. The Army is getting pretty good at population centric counterinsurgency, admittedly in contradiction to your view, and this fact has been stated by well known and highly placed analysts and scholars like Steven Biddle and Dave Kilcullen. Coin has reached a dominant point in the US Army that you have some of our leading thinkers implicitly acknowledging this fact. Go to the newly released issue of Military Review and read the excellent essay in it by General Wass de Czege on the history of SAMS. At the end he says it is time for army analysts and planners to start constructing future scenarios, wargames, etc that involve conventional battles since our Army has not done, or even thought about such things in seven plus years. Perhaps this broader view doesn’t fit your narrower but still very important view at the tactical level in certain places in Afghanistan and in parts of the Army that you view today. Two retired four star generals (both of whom have been significantly important for the army in the last two decades) said that they were worried about the transcendence of FM 3-24 and its broader effects on the US Army.

My impression (and it may be wrong which is why I say it is my impression) after being immersed in these issues for the last two years is that folks like you just don’t want to let the Coin bludgeon go, if you do, you lose your raison d’être; you like Exum and many other Coin experts can no longer be the fathers of the movement. I am here to tell you my friend; the movement has achieved its objectives. Zeitgeist is achieved.

I'm glad i kept the faith

I'm glad i kept the faith with this blog.

Old Blue, thank you very,

Old Blue, thank you very, very much for your comments. I found them very interesting. At the risk of spouting a tired cliche, I'll say your posts introduced some very fresh air to the discussion. Out of curiosity, are you an officer or enlisted?

My comment about fame was in

My comment about fame was in no way directed at you, Sir. I would have hoped that you would not have viewed me as being personally insulting or disrespectful in my conversations with you, but apparently I have failed to convey that intent (or lack of intent to be personal.) I regret that I have been unclear about this, Sir. My comment was in relation strictly to your expressed concern about my motivations in keeping the fire going in order to avoid a situation where I, "can no longer be the fathers of the movement ."

Sir, I can think of no other doctrine that was less rigid and requires more ingenuity and imagination in its effective application than COIN. There are hundreds of potential permutations, any or all of which may be successful, in any situation. There are also hundreds of permutations that will not lead to success and many of them start with "we can kill more of the enemy if..."

I think I have a better understanding of your use of the word "zeitgeist," and while I understand your concerns, personally it is gratifying. Successful operation in a COIN environment requires a certain mindset which has not traditionally been a component of the warrior mindset insofar as there has never been, in my career, any command emphasis on ensuring that this mindset exists in a warrior. The Army is a large and at time unwieldy organization, no matter now much agility we try to build in. It isn't until any change has taken on its own zeitgeist that the change actually occurs. We are change resistant. So with a certain momentum building towards not only being "behind the power curve" if you're not knowledgable in COIN and actually basing OER/NCOER bullet points on real effectiveness in COIN operations, I would have to say that I am encouraged.

I do not share your fear that we cannot quickly transition to kinetic operations. In its practice, COIN does not mean entirely non-kinetic. I do see your point about certain perishable skills, such as artillery or armor crewman skills, and I feel that it would be nice if there were a way not to use armored crewmen in stability operations where their primary skillset is largely unused. Perhaps that is something that the Army should look at. Or, we can do what we have traditionally done with formations that have gone to the back burner... send them to the Guard.

I feel a disturbance in the force... it's as if a million tankers all cried out in terror at once...

Thank you for the engagement, Sir.

***a military paradigm which

***a military paradigm which starts with the premise that civilians are there to be protected would seem to be, not only a more moral one, but also one more likely to lead to success in the current conflict. ***

That would be quite a paradigm, if it actually was the one pursued, not when pacification campaigns are successful anyway.

For all his assurances to the contrary, this is Exum's most difficult conundrum to explain away, because the more one reads of the successful campaigns, the more one is convinced just how coercive they have been to the "population" being wooed or beaten, carrot or stick, at any given time.

The bluster on close air support strikes and civilian casualties is an instructive one. Beyond the propaganda of the COPs and the JSSs and all the "Surge" of metaphors used to describe ongoing operations from 2006-2008, civilian mortalities due to CAS actually quadrupled in 2007 and still remained double the count of 2006 the following year.

Despite the concerns about mass illegal detentions, torture, indiscriminate murders, the mass exodus of externally and internally displaced refugees and collective punishment of target populations, what exactly did the Iraqi Security Forces and their allied militias do from 2006 through 2008 to break the will of, first, the Sunni Arab people's will to fight, and, then, that of the Mahdist Shiite Arab's will? I can assure you that it wasn't redistributive economic policies, good governance or even a spreading ink blot of bonhommie.

Deep in his heart, Exum senses this. He knows that a social phenomenon as vast and complex as a series of ongoing civil wars in the heart of the Middle East, surrounding by meddlesome neighbors and topped off with an neo-imperialist (for the best reasons) occupation by western powers can't be explained away by solely what the US did, even if what the US did focused on some nebulous goodly notion of "population."

The problem is that Exum is a noble man, a caring man, and an upright sort. He would rather not contemplate what was done to the "populations" of Iraq, because the US would not willingly wish to do such things. And yet those things were done. The causes are many, our "lessons" fairly ambiguous, are overarching credo gained to do more of these sorts of adventures a bit tarnished.

There are two narratives about the war. One, which is being sold by think tanks and connected journos and MNF-I staffers with reputations to be preserved, is currently dominant, albeit only in the U.S.

Quite a different narrative has taken shape, mostly in the Kurdish, Fars and Arabic language media, about U.S. accomplishments, objectives and failures in Iraq. When their versions of events are translated and considered in the quiet spaces of an historian's future, we shall gain more knowledge, and more knowledge still in two decades when key documents and briefings and PowerPoint slides are declassified, and even more once Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi elites take the stage to grant us their soliloquies.

Why should OEF be any different? We have several versions of what transpired at a small Vehicle Patrol Base on the cusp of a tiny town in an angry valley. Ultimately, how important is this event? What does it signal to us that one of the intellectual architects of America's COIN doctrine in Iraq has his reputation sullied as an officer who just doesn't "get it?"

Because Afghanistan is just as complex and difficult to understand as Iraq's many civil wars conspired to be, I tend to take a longer view. One man, even a mind as fine as that of the battalion commander at Wanat, can't stand as an indictment for all the miscues, the misreadings the poor grasp on the protean reality of snake-wet Afghanistan in revolt.

The masquerade that some noble officers, firebrand journos and COIN gurus trot out to suggest otherwise shouldn't deceive you. Turn away. It's all a tawdry parade, designed only to trick you through loud music, glinting brass and pretty piping on their uniforms.

Let them walk by. Follow the historians who shall tred in their wake. What will Wanat be to these august men and women? Perhaps a great defining event, a firefight so deafening that it echoes through the ages the pops and skitterings of meaning. Or, perhaps, it's just the loud arrogance of those who must scream something, or be considered insubstantial.

Let them scream. They can't cry so loudly as those who died at Wanat, can they?

***Or, we can do what we

***Or, we can do what we have traditionally done with formations that have gone to the back burner... send them to the Guard. ***

Yeah, when you want the job done right, you give it to the Guard because they always get the best equipment, most time training and whatnot.

It's not as if high-intensity ground combat is easy, not when compared to the "graduate school of warfare," eh?

Currently, we're tasking the vast majority of Guard units with FOB security, convoy protection, etc. This is the same force we apparently want to entrust to HIC?

Obviously, one could make a better argument for employing the Guard on COIN adventures.

In regard to whether COIN is

In regard to whether COIN is dogma or zeitgeist, I think that "religion" is a better descriptor. It is a religion among the think-tank crowd and media "analysts." Old Blue's complaints about the lack of knowledge that most have of COIN sounds very similar to complaints that many pastor's make about their flock not opening their Bibles or properly understanding the lessons of the text. I agree that it is not dogma because it is not widely accepted, practiced or understood, as Old Blue rightly points out. It is more of a buzzword for most of the Army. But among those who have influence outside of the military (or among its upper crust) it is near dogma and certainly is regarded with a zeal that is as much due to faith as to reason.

One of the "lessons" that Ricks shares in his blog series was the observation that if you're not doing COIN full-court press then you are not doing COIN. If that is not an expression of faith - of living by faith rather than by sight - then I do not know what is.

If Wanat is illustrative

If Wanat is illustrative then it's odd that "Ostlund's take on his battalion's year in Afghanistan" includes a single reference to it, in the caption to a photograph. (I searched; I found only 1. If there are others in the body then that's my error.)

No Fnord, I think religion

No Fnord, I think religion is an apt word to apply to criticism of the Coin experts. In order to accept the theory that links cause and effect that underpins population centric counterinsurgency it does require faith, so to speak, that it is there. For example in the book The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa one has to accept the theory that links cause to effect for the book to work. This is not the case with the book that Jisr was parroted from, ED Swinton's Defense of Duffer's Drift. In the latter book, for example, shots are fired and enemy or friendly are either killed or wounded, or if locals are to be kept from assisting Boer commandos, they are locked up where they can not speak to them or provide physical assistance. In short one does not need a theory to link cause to effect. But in Jisr, one does. For example the authors tell us that the LT finally started to “get it” once he becomes culturally aware, starts eating goat's head with the sheik, and is nice to the sheik's daughter by having his medic patch her injuries up. After these things combined with others, the local population starts to come to the American side, tells them where the insurgents are at, and success follows. But how do we know that the causes actually produced those effects. Perhaps there were other things involved that did. The point here is that in order for population centric coin to work, one has to have faith that what you say will happen will because of the things that you did. One has to have faith that that theory is there and it works; hence population centric coin for its zealots has become a religion requiring a leap of faith for it to work not only in theory but more importantly in practice.

P.S,: To sum it up:

P.S,: To sum it up: Structured kindness works. But we have to be operative. Not stupid.: