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U.S. Military Intervention in Central Africa: On Further Review, Still a Really Bad Idea
My friend MK over at the Ink Spots blog has posted a tough criticism of my argument that Kenneth Roth's idea for the United States to lead a U.S. military intervention into Central Africa to arrest Joseph Kony and destroy the Lord's Resistance Army is the worst idea on the internet. Since MK never really disagrees with my conclusion -- that getting U.S. troops involved in Central Africa to literally act as the world's policeman and carry out arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court is madness -- I get the sense this post of MK's was a chance for him to show off his knowledge of Africa and throw a brushback pitch to those of us who are not area experts but have the temerity to write on issues relating to the Dark Continent. (This is what Africa specialists call it, right? Right?)
Fair enough. I should have included a disclaimer in my 300-word post that I have never lived south of the Sahara Desert and am by no means an Africa expert. And as someone who has spent several years of my life studying the peoples, languages, history and geography of one area of the globe, I deeply appreciate area experts and what they can offer. I similarly appreciate any and all attempts to correct any gaps in my horticultural knowledge. (Forests are not jungles. Noted.)
But I am responding to MK's post for two reasons. The first is that I cannot believe my luck. I am regularly accused on the internets of being some kind of wild-eyed liberal interventionalist because I have favored counterinsurgency operations as well as slower, conditions-based withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think people just assume that I think these conflicts are fun and was in favor of the decisions that were made concerning our entry into each conflict. So whenever I get the chance to set the record straight and stress the fact that my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have made me more reluctant to engage in expeditionary military operations, I welcome the opportunity.
The second reason has to do with my semi-flippant reference to the disastrous 1993 debacle in Somalia. I stick by this analogy for reasons I'll discuss later.
First, though, let's talk about international interventions. There are four questions* we should ask when considering whether or not the United States should engage in an international intervention:
- Will an intervention make the situation better, or worse?
- If better, should the U.S. government participate in this intervention?
- If yes, should the U.S. government lead this intervention?
- If yes, what should the U.S. government do?
No surprise, but Roth skipped straight to Question 4, which is pretty typical not just for humanitarian advocates but also for U.S. military types, congressmen, talking heads, think tank researchers, etc. Questions 1 and 2 are really important, though. Question 2 gets at interests: does the United States have a vital interest at stake? (With "vital" meaning you're willing to use force?) Question 1, meanwhile, gets at a tricky question about how an intervention would change the dynamics of the conflict: On the one hand, it might immediately end the conflict. (Good!) On the other hand, it might also prolong the conflict due to unforeseen second-order effects of the intervention. (Bad!) Can we make a determination about what it would do prior to the intervention? And Question 3 is pretty important as well: are there other nations or militaries that might be better suited to intervene? Would it be more appropriate, in this case, to work by, with and through African nations?
Obviously, we can all disagree on interests. Kenneth Roth and I probably disagree on the question of whether or not the United States has a vital interest in Central Africa or, specifically, whether or not the United States has a vital interest in leading an expedition to arrest Joseph Kony.
That leads to operational concerns and my use of the Blackhawk Down analogy. I stick by the use of this analogy, even though I employed it pretty flippantly (and drew some grief from Laurenist as well). Here's why:
Once upon a time, in Prussia, some dude remarked that everything in war is very simple -- but the simplest thing is difficult. I understand that the LRA is not exactly Hizballah. But we should be very wary of those who claim military operations conducted against them would be some kind of cakewalk. Because one of the reasons the best military units constantly conduct rehearsals and plan for contingencies is not to prepare for when things go right but for when, even independent of enemy action, things go wrong.
Things will always go wrong. You may embark on an open-and-shut humanitarian intervention, as we did in Somalia, and get dragged into something different. Or you may be hitting a relatively easy target in the Bakaara Market one day when boom! A helicopter goes down and suddenly things get a lot more complicated. And it doesn't matter that you and your buddies manage over the next 18 hours to kill 1000+ Somali militiamen: when dead U.S. soldiers appear on CNN, the reason why U.S. troops are on the ground has to make sense to people back home. Going back to Central Africa, what happens when a helicopter drops out of the sky -- as helicopters tend to do -- and eight U.S. servicemen are killed? Was it worth it? Does the mission still make sense to the public?
Things go wrong, folks. Things always go wrong. Which is why it is really important that we determine vital U.S. interests are at stake before intervening.
In the next few years, the United States will draw down in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On the right, the last neoconservatives will clamor for more U.S. military action against rebels in Yemen or Iran's nuclear program. Liberal interventionalists on the left, meanwhile, will argue for the employment of U.S. military force in humanitarian interventions from Burma to Uganda.
I may be the only person to have read Samantha Power's "Bystanders to Genocide" and come away thinking Richard Clarke was kind of a hero. Clarke was one of those who asked the tough questions of all the plans to commit U.S. military power on the ground in Rwanda, another landlocked area of Central Africa: How would we seize the airport? How would we resupply the troops? What is our endstate? How would we evacuate casualties?
I'm sorry, but these are the kind of questions responsible people have to ask. The fact that we often don't ask these questions depresses me.
*A varient of these four questions is in my notes from a conversation I had with Dave Kilcullen two years ago, so we can safely assume I stole these from him.
Update: The comments thread of this post is a good one, with some back and forth between Gian Gentile and Gulliver worth reading. But the real show is the comments thread at Ink Spots, where the five of them are locked in what can only be described as "intense disagreement" with one another.
Even after watching "Tears
Even after watching "Tears of the Sun"?
You get accused of being an
You get accused of being an interventionist because you advocated for a dramatic increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan and a withdrawal based on conditions that aren't likely to ever exist. The best way to not get labeled an interventionist is to do the opposite. So, I'll give you the advice you gave Dr. Bacevich regarding isolationism: Own your interventionism.
My thoughts exactly, Ex.
My thoughts exactly, Ex. Why can't China lead this "Tears of the Sun" op? Seems to me like they got more to lose. Let China build the roads, bridges, hospitals and set up their 5G telcomm networks (Huawei), since they've invested so much (and we've only airdropped sacks of grain and corn marked from the U.S. of A), China should lead the way in the Dark Continent.
Can you imagine our SOCOM
Can you imagine our SOCOM shooting 9 yr old child soldiers in the process of kidnapping Kony and his bunch? This only cause UBL to get mad at us even more. And we don't want that.
I loved "Tears of the Sun" as much as the next guy, but c'mon let's not make that movie justification to go into Africa!
Andrew: Nice post, and as
Andrew:
Nice post, and as you can quite imagine I agree with you on this one.
But since you mention Somalia and the "disastrous" US efforts there in the early 90s let me create a hypothetical and see what you think of it.
Let's say that the American Army in the 80s saw the light of the lessons of Vietnam given to us by David Petraeus in his doctoral dissertation, Andrew Krepinevich, and others, and paid a good deal of attention in organization, doctrine, and training to counterinsurgency across the board in the Army. So that by 1992 on the eve of the Somalia effort the American Army had produced FM 3-24 largely as it looks today, and had embraced the principles of population centric counterinsurgency as it does today.
Within this hypothetical, arguably, the Somali disaster as it actually played out might have been 20 times worse in that the solution to the problem with an army that embraced the principles of pop centric coin might have been to send in multiple brigades to win the trust of the local population in order to build up the institutions of the government of Somalia. Instead of a relatively short and bloody effort we had in Somalia it might have been a long term one with the Army still there.
gian
Matt, are you sure you're
Matt, are you sure you're not a Dark Matter expert? OR are you just using your super dooper common sense, you didn't $150,000 bucks for in some fancy Grad School that teach "expertise".
This is an excellent
This is an excellent post.
As you can see in the comments section of MK's post, this issue has split the Ink Spots crew asunder. (One might say it's put a crack in our editorial unity like the crack in the Liberty Bell.)
It seems that Roth's idea is
It seems that Roth's idea is a bit different and better-conceived than Ex reads it (unsurprising, given that it was presented in a FP piece about the size of a twitter post): http://www.lawfareblog.com/2010/10/human-rights-watch-responds/
Roth appears to answer Yes to Q1 and Q2, and No to Q3 (incidentally, Q4 should read "Given Q1-Q3, what, if anything, should the US government do?"). He goes on to propose a limited US role in a multinational operation to augment local forces in achieving a definite objective, conducted in an environment generally unsympathetic to the target. Not a fan of HRW or humanitarian military adventures in Africa, but you can't even see the worst idea on the internet from here.
All due respect to COL
All due respect to COL Gentile, but the Somalia COIN hypothetical is completely absurd.
AirLand Battle was the fully developed, universally accepted doctrinal/conceptual framework for U.S. Army operations in the early 1990s, and yet we didn't try to engage Aidid with an armored division while keeping his reserve out of the fight with coordinated fires. (See what I did there?)
Why not? Probably because the development of flexible and multivariate operational reponses to different conflict environments DOES NOT mandate universal employment of one of those concepts against every possible threat. You know, just like we wouldn't try to COIN the North Koreans back across the DMZ with Advise and Assist Brigades.
Gian: That's a bit of an
Gian: That's a bit of an unfair point. FM 3-24 never pretended to be the blueprint for every type of intervention. The US/UN intervention in Somalia aimed at securing the delivery of humanitarian aid. Then it turned into a manhunt for Aideed and his lieutenants in an effort to make him accountable for the 18 Pakistani peacekeepers killed in June 1993. It was never meant to put into place, change, or maintain a regime—objectives that were pursued during a number of interventions (from colonial wars to Afghanistan), require larger, longer-term presence, and can make a good use of a number of tools contained in FM 3-24.
Now, off to join the fight on InkSpots.
GIAN, What the F@ck have you
GIAN,
What the F@ck have you been smokin', man!!!?
Look at that: Alma chimes in
Look at that: Alma chimes in as evidence that InkSpotters DO agree on some things!
Here's another question:
Here's another question: When SOF assets -- both the kind that go around hunting people and the kind that help foreign SOF hunt people -- are in extremely scarce supply because they are deployed in still-huge numbers to Iraq and still-increasing numbers to Afghanistan (seen all the numbers Petraeus has been spouting lately?), the wars we've already signed on to, who would we call on to go running around in the jungle/forest? I do not think CENTCOM would willingly part with just about any of the SOF assets that would be required for something like this, nor should they.
Just to be a grumbler: Why
Just to be a grumbler: Why does it have to be a dualistic decision between storming the beaches somalian style or nothing at all? The US has some of the best hunter-killer logistics in the universe we know, why cant you lease out some special assets to triangulate em for the locals to hunt down? Start out with a advisor team, and then just use sattelites and gps-chips to fck up their logistics?
The LRA are genuinely evil. It would be a good training exercise for the log-grunts and field ops. Its a manageable scenario AS LONG AS there are no US point-of-the-spear guys.
I didn't know you were a
I didn't know you were a Col. in SOCOM. GPS, drones, sat photos, shit niggy you've been playing Rainbow Six, huh?
Come on Gulliver, arguably
Come on Gulliver, arguably any hypothetical on the past which is technically a counterfactual is absurd because it didnt happen, but that is the whole point of counterfactuals; to pose them in order to view the past from a different hypothetical angle which can provide insights to what actually happened.
In the case of the counterfactual that i used the angle i am trying to construct is of course a view of the Army, Coin, and strategy today.
But so what Gulliver, shoot, the Coin crowd loves counterfactuals anyway. In fact if you are familiar with its literature, especially as it relates to the history of the Vietnam war it is one big monster of a counterfactual: that if the American Army had seen the light of population centric coin and practiced it early and correctly it could have won the war. This is essentially the argument made by Krepinevich, Nagl, and many others.
Too that same Coin crowd argues the same thing for Iraq, that if the American army had been better prepared with the methods of counterinsurgency and nation building it would have turned out much more differently than it did. Heck even Andrew has acknowledge this point to me.
gian
...and it all degenerates to
...and it all degenerates to turf wars...
I still dont understand why the engineer branch and the info-gathering part of the military, as well as the logistics dep., couldnt be used to do good if they are not too busy. Aceh was a victory post tsunami. Hiring out a log-section of the SF to help hunt down LRA sounds doable to me. They rape kids.
Seriously, maybe the military of the West should look to China and how they manage their military economy.
...so with all of those
...so with all of those counterfactuals floating around the Coin narrative (whether you Alma, Gulliver, or Colonel Ludlow realize it that they are actually key and essential pillars to it) why not apply one to Somalia in the way that I did to make a point about Counterinsurgency today and its influence on strategy and policy. If it works for the goose then why not the gander?
Didn't you guys ever see the original star trek episode with the alternative universe with Mr Spock sportn' a Gotee?
gian
I respect MK's opinions
I respect MK's opinions immensely (and am impatiently waiting for his opinion on the latest Kalyvas piece in the APSR - come on, already, man, or lady). However, I'd say Abu M's objection was well-raised. The strategy proposed by Roth is not a good one. However, the example posed by Abu M was not commensurate with Roth's proposal. Abu M pointed to a specific operation that just happened to be in Africa. Admittedly, he could have picked a special operation anywhere on the globe, and admittedly, from what I recall, Roth did specially request SOF assets. The point, though, is, that Abu M's basic point is Roth advocates a flawed strategy; the example Abu M used to illustrate this basic point is a flawed operation.
ADTS
GIAN, I know there's a
GIAN,
I know there's a referendum to legalize pot in CA, and I know you're from UC Berkeley. Don't you gotta lay off the Happy Wacky Tabacky, Col. Spock with goatee, you're one crazy som'beetch.
about those damn coin
about those damn coin narrative counterfactuals! Just the other day I heard some weird aussie dude talking about how Patton was really engaging in pop-centric coin while driving accross central france! What a load of crap!
Hey Gian, i know how you are
Hey Gian, i know how you are worried about the "coin narrative" taking over the world and all, but I think your fears a bit overblown. Back in the 80s we had a similar worry about robots that never panned out. Take a look at this:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/2340/saturday-night-live-old-glory
Thank you for this post and
Thank you for this post and for linking to Power's article, which I just spent the last hour reading instead of whatever else I was supposed to do.
And I get why you're saying Clarke is the hero -- he's willing to actually do a real assessment of the costs of intervention.
But Power's article is about how U.S. officials -- Clarke, especially, included -- didn't have a damn clue about the situation on the ground in Rwanda, and how their decisions to "protect U.S. interests" there led to such a dramatically failed policy. It wasn't a simple "should we invade or not invade?" question. There were a million shades of grey in-between, and the U.S. officials completely, miserably, failed to understand those shades of grey and act accordingly. They could have done a number of useful things that weren't U.S. troop invasions, but they didn't.
So please don't actually call Clarke a hero. Not when he says, "Our proposal was the most feasible, doable thing that could have been done in the short term," even though Samantha Power has spent 10,000+ words showing just how untrue that was, and just how catastrophic it was to believe that untruth.
I don't thin gian's smoking
I don't thin gian's smoking grass, I think he's smoking crack. The old man's lost it. And I'm in his class.
Gian's "counterfactuals"
Gian's "counterfactuals" reminds me of this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/1028/Time-traveler-caught-on-film....
***We can't say exactly what era this time traveler comes from. The first cell phone was demonstrated by Motorola in 1973, although it wasn't until the late 1990s that cellphones became small enough to conceal in the hand. We're not sure what kind of phone she's holding, although we can rule out the iPhone because her call doesn't appear to have been dropped during the six seconds in which she is being filmed.
So let's say that she hails from between 1995 and 2025 (after which point we can assume that all mobile devices will be implanted directly into our heads).***
I totally agree about the
I totally agree about the coin narrative counterfactuals! I mean imagine if the british had tried to use pop-centric coin in the Somme! How would that have turned out? lol at the coindistas trying to apply coin everwhere.
Zero is a number! Andrew
Zero is a number! Andrew you jumped the gate. The answer to ONE might be NO, but why would you even want to ask it if the answer is YES? Just because we can is not a good reason to go to the next level.
I am tired of pissing away our future just because we can spend money in some shit hole country. Time we start thinking about where the US wants to be ten years from now. We have a lot of people that will be retiring and they all will not have a government pension. Ever notice that when politicians talk about changing Social Security they never talk about changing government pensions? That is two different lines on the Federal budget. If we are not careful there are going to be two different catagories of retirees in the USof A. Those that have government pensions and those paying for the government pensions. Remember, all pensions state, private or otherwise are backed 100 % by the US tax payer. If the pension defaults, the Feds pick up the responsibility. There are a lot of pension systems that are very much underfunded.
Your little sand box in the Middle East is not the only thing happening in the US. Please start including it in your plans.
First, though, let's talk about international interventions. There are four questions* we should ask when considering whether or not the United States should engage in an international intervention:
0) Why should the US get involved. Is there support from the US people. Is there money in the US budget?
1) Will an intervention make the situation better, or worse?
2) If better, should the U.S. government participate in this intervention?
3) If yes, should the U.S. government lead this intervention?
4) If yes, what should the U.S. government do?
If the African
If the African Interventionists wish to gather real steam for their do-gooder plot, they should enlist WINEP and JINSA on their team. These 2 orgs could make it happen, and right quick.
I think another coin
I think another coin narrative could be Central America during the 80s, admittedly I wasn't of the age that I was interested in such things (seeing as I couldn't read yet) but wasn't there an interventionist push to send in more troops, meaning more than just some special operations guys, along with some air power, to fight against the Sandanistas and maybe even go into El Salvador? That scenario definitely could have been an instance where coin was applied to and a long term US military presence resulted.
Mohammed has become the most
Mohammed has become the most popular name for newborn boys in Britain.
It shot up from third the previous year, overtaking Jack, which had topped the list for the past 14 years but was relegated to third spot.
The second most popular boy’s name, Oliver, was given to 7,364 babies.
A total of 7,549 newborns were given 12 variations of the Islamic prophet Mohammed’s name last year, such as Muhammad and Mohammad.
In order of popularity, the variant spellings used during the year were: Muhammad, Mohammad, Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamed, Mohammod, Mahamed, Muhamad, Mahammed and Mohmmed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324194/Mohammed-popular-baby-bo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Clarridge
That guy was an independently wealthy ego maniac who ran "our" efforts in Central America.
I very much agree with your
I very much agree with your point that we must ask very hard questions before commiting to any kind of intervention, either mlitary or otherwise. I differ in that I feel receiving difficult answers to said questions does not necessarily mean that intervention is the wrong answer. In example, it is unlikely that a US led military intervention would have stopped the Rwandan genocide without significant cost in both American and Rwandan lives. The question that responsible people must then ask is a.) whether that cost would outweigh the benefit of having stopped the Rwandan genocide, and b.) what are other, better solutions to this emergent humanitarian crisis? (That second point was going to be in all caps, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Looks just terrible.)
What depresses me is when responsible people ask these questions, as you put it, but then simply walk away from the discussion after they conclude that a presented solution is deficient. If you think that mr. Roth's idea is terrible, what do you, mr. Exum, think would be a more efficient, effective way of dealing with the problems of the LRA and Joseph Kony? What is the point of running a popular blog if you aren't going to engage in critical discussion leading to new, better ideas? While it was makes for charming little bits of rhetoric, skewering someone who has just used their standing in the world to bring up a largely overlooked humanitarian crisis is quite a bit beneath the intellectual tenor of this blog (which I read avidly, I might add.)
(Post written while at work. Please forgive spelling errors, or if I didn't explain my point clearly enough.)
For an example of an
For an example of an alternative form of intervention see here:
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/15/hard-target.html
(And yes, I know the plans go awry in the article. The point is to present an alternative narrative to those currently being discussed.)
The following short
The following short paragraph is by Mr. Malinowski of HRW and comes from the lawfareblog. It cogently describes the area and the LRA.
"Kony operates across a large, isolated jungle area where military operations are difficult to undertake. But he is protected by no more than 200-400 fighters. His group enjoys no popular support; it cannot hide among the sparse local population or recruit new members, except by abduction. In fact, the people who live in the three countries where the LRA currently operates desperately want outside help and their governments would welcome it (which is one reason why Abu Maqawama’s reference to the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, in which U.S. forces pursued a warlord who was protected by his clansmen in a densely populated urban setting, was particularly ridiculous)."
Mr. Malinowski goes on to suggest that a small group of special forces, which he suggests France provide, be added to the Ugandan and Congolese troops chasing the LRA. The US would provide logistical and intel support. That is the idea. It is not of big commitment but it is what HRW believes is needed to provide the extra little edge to the UPDF and FARDC that will allow them to get Kony and company.
Is this an immediate vital national interest of the US? No it isn't. The LRA could go no murdering the people, cutting off lips and kidnapping sex slaves for the next ten years and we wouldn't be harmed.
Will an intervention make things better? Absolutely. The local people would not have to live in fear of real live "they cut you and you bleed" devils coming after them.
Should the US lead the intervention? If Mr. Malinowski's ideas are followed that would depend upon the arrangements made between France, the US and several local countries. Parts of it, yes. All of it, probably not.
What should the US do? Mr. Malinowski's idea is a good starting point, especially since Congress has said "go do something about those guys."
Yes, things could go wrong, some things almost certainly will. But the French know what they're about, the UPDF are very hardy guys and our log and intel people are very proficient. Things will go wrong but if the UPDF (especially) and FARDC are given that little edge, the LRA will be gone and innocent people will live instead of die.
Mr. Clarke was not a hero. It is the easiest thing to catalog reasons for doing nothing because it would be hard. Doing something is always harder than doing nothing. My opinion if we had done something and not very much, we could have saved hundreds of thousands. But we didn't try so we will never know. It was not a vital interest of ours, those hundreds of thousands died and I can still buy a big screen TV for not to much money. But they would have been grateful to have been saved.
One of the comments mentioned something about strategy. The strategy here is get on Kony's trail and stay on it until he gives up or is killed. Not real complicated. HRW's suggestion would make it more immediately practicable.
Gian: I agree with Gulliver, your counterfactual is silly. The reaction it elicits from me is "you guys were a bunch of idiots. the situation was x. it's your job to figure it was x and apply the solution to x. you screwed up." That has to do with dopey officers not with how you go about fighting a small war.
Carl--I was hoping you would
Carl--I was hoping you would pitch in. Nice job.
Guys...... If you have been
Guys......
If you have been there and done it, you know one thing.......
The Politicians are that ones the screw it up the most. Once it goes to the press, they get involved.
Not saying the military is bright, they got their own brand of boobs-in-action. All these little military seneros are for the birds cause you know that they will get wiped off the drawing board to make a politician look good for re-election.
BTW....was looking at the new TSA rules...new pat downs.
What if the person doing the pat down is GAY and enjoys it? TSA are government workers and the government is not going to deny a homosexual a good pat down. You'll have to wonder why the TSA employee keeps winking at you.
Here is a good vision for you people have a camera and access to YOUTUBE......
Pelosi and Box going through TSA security.....(yeah I know, Pelosi has her own private airline. She tells US citizens to spread them, she and Boxer have "worked too hard" to have to spread anymore).
Think Pelosi would spread for the TSA? How about some FULL BODY SCAN pics leaked out?
That would look good on youtube.....what do you think?
AM anounces winner of Haifa
AM anounces winner of Haifa Wehbe with Snoop Dogg rap competition
TSA and the Dead Yaga present....
the winner.........
"If you think that mr.
"If you think that mr. Roth's idea is terrible, what do you, mr. Exum, think would be a more efficient, effective way of dealing with the problems of the LRA and Joseph Kony.."
Ignore it. It's not an issue for the USA. Not.One.Little.Bit.
And if they were a Muslim Militia it wouldn't make the Radar.
Africa for the Africans!! (including the problems and any potential solutions).
Or Africa for the Chinese!! Who cares? Hell they won't make it worse. And they can still get things done.
The USG can't.
And we didn't "do nothing"
And we didn't "do nothing" to assist in the Rwandan crisis. We sent in a shitload of SF and we also provided critical and large scale aid afterward to the camps in Zaire, staging out of Uganda. The aid was clean water above all (cholera was killing 30,000 a day), food and medical aid. We were ramping up a Kurdistan style relief Op when the situation in Burundi started to degenerate into Civil War in no small part because of the significant US presence building in the Region.
So we changed our minds, quick and pulled right back out. Did make good Friends with Uganda though.
Sorry "Do nothing", we did
Sorry "Do nothing", we did do nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda. What you are talking about is aid to help alleviate a humanitarian crisis in what was then Zaire. The ironic thing about the aid is that it was provided to the people who perpetrated the genocide. They all bugged out of Rwanda because RPA defeated and chased them out.
Tom Odom's book "Journey Into Darkness" is very good on this subject.
Carl, Sorry can not save the
Carl,
Sorry can not save the world. Evil is evil, it is everywhere. My dance card is full.
Little busy on the homeland right now.
"we didn't "do nothing" to
"we didn't "do nothing" to assist in the Rwandan crisis" - I didn't say the Rwandan Genocide. Why should we do anything? To make people feel good and righteous? Do something about the ongoing crisis in DC, whether local or national. And the aid, in particular the water went to everyone in the camps. Who were driven there by the people who perpetuated the genocide.
In any case, what's the point anyway? Richard Clarke was right to ask basic questions. And letting the RPA win was the right answer all along.
Enough fools errands. Leave bad enough alone, it's not in our interest to meddle, and we'll probably make it worse.
For this sort of thing when
For this sort of thing when reality sets in. For instance nice hit piece in the CSM today on Col Tunnell.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/1028/Pentagon-had-red-flags-a...
"The senior military official who observed Tunnell’s brigade at the NTC offers a similar account. When an observer encouraged Tunnell to discuss the “nonlethal lines of efforts” that his brigade would be undertaking, including development, “Tunnell said, ‘I don’t have a single non-lethal soldier in my brigade,’ ” the senior military official says.."
I think time will show Tunnell to be right, and this development/PC crowd to be wrong - in any case that's not the military's function. We're supposed to win wars. By killing people.
[Senior Military Official - you want to name names? Start with yours.]
Elf
"Do Nothing": regarding
"Do Nothing": regarding your sentences
"And the aid, in particular the water went to everyone in the camps. Who were driven there by the people who perpetuated the genocide."
The people in the camps were the people who did the genocide. They were driven there by fear of what the RPA would do to them if they stayed in Rwanda. That was the irony of the thing, the refugees to whom we were providing aid were the killers.
Which = Do Nothing @Carl - I
Which = Do Nothing
@Carl - I don't know if there was an exhaustive canvass of the refugees in the Zaire Camps, but while many of them were guilty of genocide - the Defeated Hutu regime and their Army - many more were simply Hutu's driven into Zaire as human shields. The Tutu's (victims of the genocide) weren't in the Camps - true. However the Hutu's there were dying of cholera at the rate of 30K a day. US military units provided ROPU (water purification units) that dramatically cut the mortality rate by providing clean water. I was part of this effort, although I didn't make it as far as the camps before we turned around.
Doing nothing to interfere was the best option - because then the better led Army - the RPA - won it and stopped it.
In any case it's really not our business or our problem. And not worth the life or limb of one healthy American Grunt.
We disagree on the last fundamental point, so probably we should not keep it going. I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me.
BTW this was my same take on the Balkans, and frankly would be my same take just about anywhere off US soil.
They can settle their own business. It's a mistake to commit violence in the name of humanitarian ideals. That's like fornicating for chastity.
One last shot at the
One last shot at the counterfactual then i will pipe down (Tom Ricks must be lovn' the bashing I have been getting on this one for my recent posts on his blog). Anyway, to my points..
1. The Counterinsurgency narrative that came into full bloom in 2006 was premised on a wide body of literature from the 90s, 80s, 70s, and in the years right after 9/11 that argued the American Army after Vietnam had concentrated too much on conventional warfare and had "turned its back" on counterinsurgency. This point was recently made in an editorial in Defense News and in an Oped in Foreign Affairs by Rand Director Jim Dobbins. Embedded in this argument is the notion that the Army SHOULD have paid much more attention to counterinsurgency, stability operations, nation building, etc in the 1980s and 1990s but instead, and to its detriment, chose to focus only on fighting the commie hordes in the Fulda Gap. As a result, s this argument goes, Iraq turned out badly from 2003-2006 because the American Army in the 80s and 90s didn’t prepare for Coin. There is wide body of literature to support my description here.
2. So my counterfactual about FM 3-24 and population centric counterinsurgency being around in dominant form prior to Somalia is actually what the purveyors described in the above paragraph were implicitly calling for. My counterfactual, in a sense, is giving the Coindinistas what they argue SHOULD have happened if the Army had had its act together. So in this sense, based on the voluminous literature produced by the Coindinistas, this counterfactual is actually quite reasonable because it is placed within a genre of historical texts and within a historical context.
3. I did graduate from Cal Berkeley but I am not smoking dope, I am just a history geek with my nose in the primary and secondary sources doing my best to pursue as historian Peter Novick called it that "noble dream" of obective truth.
(sorry Andrew for taking this thread off point)
gian
It's interesting that Exum
It's interesting that Exum himself--after making an ill-considered expedition into foriegn territory, oblivious to local knowledge and certain of his own preconceived conclusions, and after being surrounded by more agile adversaries--is unable or unwilling to withdraw from the conflict without declaring that he won all of the 'battles'. He still clings to the original 'Black Hawk Down' assertion even after it's been torn apart by the other think tank wonks, and even in the places where he admits he doesn't know the difference between Joseph Kony and Joseph Cotton he still wants to argue that he's right. After all, he has read *a book*.
The Abu Muqawamas of Africa are treating Exum like how he treats the ignorant pundits who open their mouths about the Middle East, and now he's crying foul. Just admit the mistake and pull out. You're not yet equipped to discuss Africa.
You are so right dude! Just
You are so right dude! Just imagine if Napoleon had tried to use pop-centric coin to conquer Europe! That's what those coin idiots want us to do!
Actually "Yes Gian" the
Actually "Yes Gian" the Coindinistas in their breadth of literature when it deals with Napoleon in Spain also apply the counterfactual that Napoleon could have been succussful there if he had anticipated Galula and figured out much earlier the tenets of population centric counterinsurgency.
Even David Kilcullen in his new book "Counterinsurgency" plays with a counterfactual when he suggests that the Germans might have had greater success in Russia in World War II if they had followed the path of a few of their enlightened officers who believed it was better to be nice to the Russians rather than to crush them.
gian
Gian: I'll tell you what I
Gian:
I'll tell you what I as a citizen of the US, expect from the professional officer corps. I expect them to notice when, to overstate things to make the point, to know when a rifle is needed vs a tank. And I expect that knowledge to be maintained in the corporate memory even if the rifle isn't needed for a decade or two or three. I don't really care what the narratives are or what the conventional wisdom is or whether it is FID or IW or COIN or whatever, I expect them to have a general idea of what works in generally similar situations. Part of that is knowledge of history.
Now, some of things that have worked in small wars in the past have seem to be common, for example-you stay in the ville or the hood overnight. People tend to take you seriously if you are there walking around in the dark and not take you so seriously if you just show up in the morning. Why do we seem to have to re-learn that every damn time?
Another thing that works is you don't piss off the populace if you can avoid it. That is basic as breathing in a small war so why isn't figured at the start? Where is that historical memory? The military is supposed to remember that stuff.
The following statement is nonsense.
"Even David Kilcullen in his new book "Counterinsurgency" plays with a counterfactual when he suggests that the Germans might have had greater success in Russia in World War II if they had followed the path of a few of their enlightened officers who believed it was better to be nice to the Russians rather than to crush them."
You are engaging in sharp practice by equating savage German treatment of civilians living in occupied areas with being nice to the Red Army. You know what Kilcullen's point was. It was one that has been made since the end of the War, the Germans pissed off the populace and made their task much harder than it had to be. That has nothing at all to do with willingness to fight the Red Army but everything to do with making that fight harder. You are trying to muddy the waters.
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