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Just to be clear, COIN isn't going away. (Because IN isn't going away.)
According to the Correlates of War dataset, roughly 83% of the conflicts fought since the end of the Napoleonic Era have been civil wars or insurgencies. And while scholarship (.pdf) suggets more recent civil wars are less "irregular" than those fought during the Cold War, it's safe to assume irregular wars will continue to be phenomena military organizations will wrestle with. That's why David Ignatius largely gets it right in his recent op-ed on the "COIN bubble." As the United States draws down in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can cut some of those ground forces -- as my colleagues recently argued -- that you need for large-scale, resource-instensive counterinsurgency. (Because if you have to assume risk somewhere, it's easier to build new combat brigades on the fly than it is to research and design a new weapons system.) But it is a mistake to assume the U.S. military will never fight these wars again. We've done that before, with disastrous results. Ignatius:
There’s a consensus in the country that the big expeditionary ground wars of the past decade should end, and Panetta has his budget priorities right. But it would be wrong to repeat the mistake that followed the Vietnam War, when hard-learned counterinsurgency tactics were jettisoned in favor of conventional weapons for fighting quick “winnable” wars.
During the COIN years, the Army and Marines learned how to adapt and fight in the most difficult environments. What a waste if those skills, acquired at such cost, were discarded and lost.
Exactly.
Name the disaster? Iraq from
Name the disaster? Iraq from 2003 to 2006, nope no way, the idea that things turned out the way they did during those years because the American Army didnt get coin is nonsense. Vietnam? Nope stop reading Nagl and Krepinevich since both books are flat wrong. If you take Nagl's model for learning and adpatation in the archives you see that the army learned and adapted perfectly with Nagl's model, yet we still lost the war. Why is that so? Because even in wars when an army learns and adapts the war can still be lost.
Is this the best you can do? Trotting out the old, tired, and wrong coin learning and adapting shtick and then threaten future disaster in war if the Army doesnt continue to get and embrace? Gosh, you sound a lot like Ucko.
I never bought into the COIN
I never bought into the COIN doctrine. In the few places where counter-insurgencies have been successful, such as Malaya, the occupying country was the government, had complete control and access to the borders, had broad support from the population, regional support from neighbors and officers/diplomats who had the linguistic and cultural expertise to communicate to the local population.
Andrew, I'm trying to
Andrew, I'm trying to understand your logic. Over the past 200 years, there have been 443 intrastate and 338 interstate conflicts according to the Correlates of War dataset. You then go on to say that b/c 83% of these were either civil wars or insurgencies, we need COIN. By COIN, I'm assuming that you are referring to the intensive nation-building, population-centric model of the current FM 3-24. How exactly are you reaching this conclusion? Within this entire database that you cited, how many times did the US actually conduct COIN in this manner with successful results?
The answer is zero.
Whatever, man. You guys had
Whatever, man. You guys had your chance. COIN is a waste of money, time and personnel.
Stick with CT.
And what is up with Hillary's State Dept. getting into the politics of sexual preference in the int'l stage?
Just like COIN, it's a baaaaad idea. Stick with our interests, if we stand to benefit then fight for it, if NOT forchrissakes leave it be.
Great, keep the COIN tactics.
Great, keep the COIN tactics. Make sure the institutional knowledge is still retained somewhere. None of that will (or should) prevent a radical reduction in the size of the ground forces.
That aside, the relevance of that correlates of war dataset is questionable. 83% of the wars _in which the United States has been involved_ have not been insurgencies -- and many of the COIN efforts in which we have been involved have been entirely avoidable mistakes (cough, Vietnam, cough, Iraq). There is no reason to believe we could not avoid such mistakes in the future. One good way to avoid being involved in large-scale, resource-instensive counterinsurgency is not to have the resources for it! Hey, another good reason to cut back the Army...
What's with Leon saying: "we
What's with Leon saying: "we would have the smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in its history."?
Seems he knows what to say to keep his institutions. Is there a way to cut the budget and keep "what we've learned from the past decade"?
"the idea that things turned
"the idea that things turned out the way they did during those years because the American Army didnt get coin is nonsense"
Care to explain why Mosul, which was predicted to be the greatest powder-keg in Iraq prior to the war, was the most tranquil AO south of Kurdistan during 2003 and early 2004 and then degenerated into chaos in late 2004? Care to explain the turnaround in Ramadi in 2006? You might say that it was the Arab Awakening. If so, why was the 2006 Awakening effective whereas previous rebellions against AQI were not?
Whether 83% of the world's
Whether 83% of the world's war have been irregular is irrelevant. The US has not been involved in most of those wars. And when we did get involved, it generally didn't go well for the main reason we don't get involved in such fights: they are not an existential threat to the US. If it is not a threat to us, there is going to be little support, particularly over the long haul, for the tactics required conduct COIN.
COIN isn't going away, I'll agree with that, but it doesn't mean that it is a skill set that should dominate US military thinking. It is a skill set that other countries need to learn to deal with their insurgents. To that end, those of our forces who support other countries most directly, such as SF, need to be the ones focused on COIN. The rest of the military can return to focusing on keeping the US safe.
When the US did face an insurgency to its own existence, it prevailed. Both in the Civil War (when conventional warfare and tactics did just fine to quell the insurrection) and during the "Indian Wars," which could hardly be held up as a model for *good* COIN practices.
What's the quote? "Lies, damn lies, and statistics?" 83% adds nothing to this policy discussion.
Exum are you ever going to
Exum are you ever going to even briefly acknowledge that you were a huge pusher of COIN in Afghanistan, both on here and in more formal advisory roles? I love your work normally but you strike me as someone who is perhaps too pedantic to actually admit you were wrong on this. Sorry for the slam because I do respect you, but that's my read.
Or how about a blog laying out exactly why COIN didn't work? I'm guessing you'd lay it at the feet of the Karzai government, but what about the fact that Afghanistan has NEVER worked as a centrally administered state? Holla back, yung'un.
COIN never worked, and the
COIN never worked, and the Father of Lies cant admit that.
Counter-insurgency is basically anti-democratic, because it is counter the will of the people.
The reason it failed faster in A-stan was pointed out by Petraeus himself in the 2008 election season-- the Taliban are native, unlike Al-Q in Iraq. So attempts to deligimitize/eradicate them propagate along multiple social network connections.
The consanguinous networks are saturated.
The talibs are mostly deobandi sufi, the main school of al-Islam for Afghanistan. In the past he deobandis built madrassas for the express purpose of training young muslims to fight the British Raj.
So COIN (the Bush Doctrine cut down to village size) simply could never deliver.
The tragic flaw of Bush's epically stupid "Freedom Agenda" is that when muslims are DEMOCRATICALLY empowered to vote, they vote for more Islam, not less, and never for George Bush style missionary democracy.
And you can see that
And you can see that happening in Egypt today!
For fifty years the US foreign policy was "Searching for Ataturk"-- propping dictators like Mubarak and now the military junta of SCAF in hopes of getting another Turkey.
But Turkey isnt all that good of an ally any more, is it?
Every two years the AKP tries to vote shariah back into the constition and Erdogan is openly lobbying for Pali statehood.
Praps its just time to fold America's tents, Exum?
alright Gentile, "Name the
alright Gentile,
"Name the disaster? Iraq from 2003 to 2006, nope no way, the idea that things turned out the way they did during those years because the American Army didnt get coin is nonsense."
Explain the wisdom of allowing looting to run rampant in the immediate aftermath of the invasion with no plan to stop it. Explain the wisdom of 150,000 troops in the immediate aftermath when the experienced generals (specifically those that had fought in Vietnam) claimed (Correctly) it would take several hundred thousand. Explain the wisdom of disbanding the 400,000 man Iraqi Army which would have been able to add to the security force instead of directly opposing it. Explain the wisdom of debaathification which prevented just about every single intellectual from being able to serve the new government and contribute to its proper establishment. Explain the wisdom of taking over the palaces, building giant walls around them to cut the Americans off from the population, then ensuring that Americans had 24-hour power and air-conditioning in plain view of the Iraqis on the other side of the wall who were lucky if they got a few hours a day. Explain the wisdom of arresting hordes of military-age males in any neighborhood where there was violence, making no effort to establish who had actually done wrong, then piling all of these men into prisons with the actual insurgents who were then able to preach their ideology and recruit these now-disgruntled men. Explain the wisdom of keeping American forces on giant FOBs and traveling several miles to their AOs where they would patrol for a few hours a day, or worse indiscriminately kick doors in and tear apart peoples homes, before leaving behind no security forces to continue securing the area as they moved on to the next zone and similarly angered the local population.
All of these, in addition to countless other worst practices directly contributed to unrest throughout Iraq which led to violence levels that continued to escalate out of control through 2006.
Your claim that the American army understood COIN and did everything according to COIN best practices rings hollow because the experience of the 101st in Mosul directly contradicts this as the stability and the security gains there (due to COIN best practices executed under that division's leadership) were in stark contrast to the rest of Iraq where units like 4th ID did not use those same practices. 4th ID's then-division commander admitted as much himself. It's also contradicted by the stark contrast in violence-levels throughout Iraq from 2007 and beyond which trended in the exact opposite direction as 2003-2006.
"Is this the best you can do?"
My point about the "disaster"
My point about the "disaster" comment from Exum is to counter the hypothetical often unstated but usually there by coindinistas that if the American Army had prepared better for counterinsurgency operations prior to Iraq, then the war would not have turned out to be "disastorous" in the first three years from 2003 to 2006. It is that notion that I rail against as nonsense. I say nonsense because the histories that we have now (and my own research as well) shows that the American Army from 2003 to 2006 did in fact learn and adapt and adjust to the situation on the ground. The failure of Iraq (Afghanistan and Vietnam too) were ultimately failures at strategy. My argument has been (informed by Sun Tzu who said "strategy without tactics is the slow roade to victory" but "tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat") that the idea that wars being fought under failed strategies cannot be rescued by a savior coin general who arrives on the scene and supposedly transforms his army into a better performing coin force. This is not why the British won in Malaya, nor is it why the US almost won in Vietnam (the Sorley better war thesis) nor is it what actually happened in Iraq. In fact in all three of these wars (and including Afghanistan as well) there tends to be much more continuity than discontinuity between commanding generals and the operational frameworks of their armies. Wars are won and lost more so with strategy and reasonable policy than tactics.
Yet it is this fascination with improved tactics that has convinced folks that it was the army's failure at the tactics at coin during the first three years of the Iraq war that led to that so called disastorous period. Nope, this is not supported by current research or the operational record as it exists now.
Look all you
Look all you America-fuck-yeah bots.
COIN DIDNT WORK.
why didnt it work?
Because when muslims are DEMOCRATICALLY empowered to vote, they vote for moar Islam, not less, and never for Bush-style missionary democracy.
Look at Iraq
Look at Iraq today.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/12/07/383677/only-8000-us-troops-...
sowwy to be smug Andrew, but........tolejasotolejasotolejaso
"why the US almost won in
"why the US almost won in Vietnam"
sowwy to be so negative, but America LOST in Viet Nam.
And the doomsday clock is just moments away from Operation Frequent Wind Redux soon leaving from Kabul rooftops.
you conservitards dont get it, do you? social media and hacktivism have changed the world.
you COINdinistas are like like dinosaurs....you are extinct already but the little second brains in your hips haven't gotten the message yet.
Exum is WRONG, Gentile is
Exum is WRONG, Gentile is Correct.
I hope we are seriously reconsidering WHY we turned our backs on Mubarak so quickly as we did.
I really hope we start a long and quiet soul searching. We are doing the same thing in Syria, thus killing off Eastern Christianity in the process.
And now this:
NY Times December 6, 2011
U.S. to Aid Gay Rights Abroad, Obama and Clinton Say
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and HELENE COOPER
GENEVA — The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that the United States would use all the tools of American diplomacy, including the potent enticement of foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world.
FYI, Muslims HATE homosexuals. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of it on the down low in that region, but the moment you even contemplate Pride Parades you are hung out to dry--literally. So it's a waste of time, money and personnel, just like COIN.
HOW DO YOU EVEN BEGIN TO TALK
HOW DO YOU EVEN BEGIN TO TALK TO
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, ISI, THE TALIBAN, etc.
ABOUT GLEE TYPE PROPAGANDA AND
CONVINCING THEM ABOUT HOW COOL BEING GAY IS?
if bacha bazi and the soldier
if bacha bazi and the soldier number nine phenomena are popular in this region, who's to say gay rights won't gain traction like in russia and other countries around the world?
now africa, I can understand, no gay rights will ever be there as long as American evangelist groups and American Mormons are present.
but the rest of the world, I have hope for.
Counterinsurgency, that is
Counterinsurgency, that is Proper Counterinsurgency, IS strategy! That's exactly the point. We had a horribly failed strategy (almost everything I pointed out above were Strategic, not tactical, decisions). We were not prepared to fight a Counterinsurgency tactically, and you are correct that our armies attempted to adapt to it, but most importantly, our leaders failed to comprehend the nature of the conflict they faced and to develop an effective strategy to combat it.
You are absolutely correct that the British succeeded in Malaya and the Americans failed in Vietname because they had a good strategy in the former case and a poor strategy in the latter. America is currently losing in Afghanistan because from the beginning we set out with a poor strategy. Iraq was a disaster from 2003-2006 because of a failed strategy. I make no claim that we have since "won" Iraq; however I blame poor strategic planning, and terrible strategic leadership for the disaster that took place between 2003-2006. The subsequent drastic decline in violence had absolutely to do with a strategic re-focus, attempting to include Iraqis in the plans to secure their own countries that was then applied down to the tactical level. Unfortunately (because of Terrible strategic decisions early on in the conflict) by this point, we were saddled with a sovereign government that we no longer had direct control of, so we could not address the root causes of the insurgency and develop effective solutions to them. We could no longer win or lose the conflict, the best we could do was assist the Iraqi government and hope they would make the right decisions to end it effectively themselves. We were not in a position any longer to be able to win or lose the conflict as we did not have control over the institutions capable of doing that. We are now in the same position in Afghanistan. Neither of these situations means that COIN is wrong or that COIN should be abandoned. What it means is that our leadership needs to retain the lessons we've learned in these conflicts, and the next time we get embroiled in a similar situation, they need to develop a smarter, more effective, strategy from the beginning. Abandoning COIN and focusing on conventional warfare will do nothing but set us up for the same kind of failures we found ourselves in with Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which were all failures directly attributable to American ignorance.
Ex, I just saw "the Help" and
Ex,
I just saw "the Help" and I remembered you are from the deep South.
"You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important"
I think CNAS should seriously consider doing a study of black women's role in Hollywood and how most of their roles now are as fat, wise advisors to pretty young innocent White women.
Do you think too many women and gays in Hollywood watch Oprah and this is affecting their worldview and the way they see black women in our society?
PS, I agree with Col. Gentile, CNAS was wrong with their whole COIN "strategy", that's why I think you guys should get out of the Nat'l Security and Defense business and use all your mind power on such questions like the above, that's probably more CNAS's level.
"I never bought into the COIN
"I never bought into the COIN doctrine. In the few places where counter-insurgencies have been successful, such as Malaya, the occupying country was the government, had complete control and access to the borders, had broad support from the population, regional support from neighbors and officers/diplomats who had the linguistic and cultural expertise to communicate to the local population."
Junaid, you should read FM 3-24 with a close eye to what it actually says, because what you describe above IS the COIN doctrine you claim not to buy into. That we did not properly execute that doctrine in Iraq or Afghanistan is not evidence that it is bad doctrine.
"Wars are won and lost more
"Wars are won and lost more so with strategy and reasonable policy than tactics."
Allow me to start with a definition of strategy and tactics. Tactics are the methods employed to achieve one's immediate objective. Strategy is a chain of objectives whose successive achievement facilitates the achievement of the next objective leading to the final objective. That's debatable, but it sets the framework for how I will review the Iraq War.
In the early stages of the Iraq War, the short term objective was to kill or neutralize the existing insurgents which was supposed to sap the insurgency of any ability to continue. Because no other effects were considered, the method selected to do so, in a grossly simplified way, was to sweep up everyone they could find and find someone to rat out the insurgents. If the detainees did not yield anything useful right away, ramp up the pressure on them and before you know it, you have Abu Ghraib, the greatest recruiting tool for the insurgency.
Subsequent efforts modified the intermediate objective to decreasing local antipathy towards MNF. However, that effort set as the objective that would reduce local antipathy was reducing the visibility of MNF. The result was that the insurgents were free to roam at will and coerce the local population.
The final COIN effort stuck with the objective of moving local support to MNF, but set as an objective leading to that of reducing all civilian casualties, both MNF and insurgent caused. From the MNF side of this equation sprung the more judicious use of force among the population. One example of reducing insurgent-caused casualties is that when then MNC commander Odierno noticed that the car bombs in Iraq were coming from Diyala and Tamim provinces, he launched the "Belts campaign" to stop them. The significant point here is not the tactical decision to attack Diyala and Tamim, but the strategic decision to interdict the car bombs at their source.
One of the problems of the terminology of COIN/CT is that it does not capture what really sets conflicts like the Iraq War apart from WW II. The important factor is not that the Vermacht was a conventional army while AQI was an insurgency. What is important is that in Iraq, the actions of MNF influenced the allegiances of individuals to groups and of groups to causes in a strategically meaningful way which was not the case in WW II. COIN doctrine is essentially about affecting those allegiances in as advantageous manner as feasible. That is, it is not about selecting tactics that please the international human rights community, but of making strategic decisions about what would affect local allegiances.
Rabia is a moron as
Rabia is a moron as always.
COIN has worked MANY TIMES -- in fact more times than it has failed.
"The will of the people" is irrelevant, because the people can be coerced into submission if you're not using dumbass PC-COIN methods. Just ask Saddam Hussein, who managed to suppress the exact same folks who have been giving us trouble without using any of the technology we've used.
How in the world is our State
How in the world is our State Dept. supports for gay rights Pop-Centric COIN?
Are we really winning Hearts and Minds in the Mid-East and Third World by pushing for this gay rights agenda?
This is not cool.
With this gay rights support
With this gay rights support touted by our State Dept.
Is our end game to put a Gay Pride Parade in every city or town in the ME or 3rd world?
Because I have been to many gay pride parades across the nation, and it's nothing but dildo swinging and thong wearing muscular men and older men with asian boy toys walking about. Definitely not a parade you take your 5 yr old son to.
I'd like to see Hillary and Barry Bammy walk a nasty, sweaty Pride parade and hear them tout gay rights support on the Rachel Maddow show that evening.
GG: "Why is that so? Because
GG: "Why is that so? Because even in wars when an army learns and adapts the war can still be lost."
Hasn't Exum frequently said the same thing? "We can do everything right in this war and still lose."
COIN isn't a magic wand. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Rabi'a al-Adiwyya makes a good point (but makes it poorly by lathering on the invective) when he points out that Iraq's a very different place than Afghanistan. AQ ain't the Pashtuns.
Could COIN have worked in Vietnam? Doubtful: not without a government that could inspire the people and compel their loyalty. Could conventional war have worked? Not without the invasion and occupation of North Vietnam, which wasn't happening.
We should have just skipped Nam and gone straight to joint naval maneuvers with them in the South China Sea.
1. COIN in Vietnam? That
1. COIN in Vietnam? That mission went under the bus when Abrams took over from Westmoreland.
2. The special ops people that had run the COIN missions went over to the operational side for the last few years.
3. Remember strategic hamlet? Neither does anyone else.
4. COIN works. At its best, is antithetic to the US practice of pouring resources on a problem.
5. The real reason it doesn't work well for us, though, is the fact that it takes time to implement.
6. Time is the one resource our strategic planners always find to be in short supply.
V/R JWest
Can't believe our State
Can't believe our State Department is supporting the gay movement abroad, don't we have better much practical agendas to promote?
There was no strategic
There was no strategic refocus in Iraq in 2007; that is the myth propogated by the Surge triumph narrative. To be sure there was some tactical readjustment but there was strategic continuity with what came before. If you look at Casey's strategic planning guidance in early Janauary 2007 for example it reads very much like what people like Fred Kagan et al were saying when promoting the Surge. In fact all along American strategy since summer 2003 has been to employ armed nation building as an operational method in Iraq to achieve policy aims. To be sure one can find differences at the tactical level in terms of how units operated, but the overall framework remained the same.
So too in Vietnam since the operational framework that strategy employed remained search and destroy, even after Abrams took over.
The flaw in both wars was for strategy to think that such an operational framework could achieve policy aims without staying there forever, which is what it would have taken to "win" in Vietnam. This is the same story for Afghanistan today, which is why finally people like Exum have come to figure out that such an operational framework of coin is "unsustainable." But I ask him just like i did on SWJ, why couldnt they figure that out three years ago and saved us much blood and treasure in what followed.
Exum, think you missed
Exum, think you missed something in your post, like a time span. I agree with you if the time span is infinite. Infinite is what you have left us with and you will get an infinite response.
Really, I live a little closer to Charlieford in the idea that COIN was the right answer for Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Problem is some wars should not be fought. America as a nation needs to do a better job at picking the war that we want to get into and how we fight it.
If there is one take away from ALL the recent conflicts, the last two sentences are supreme.
I hope that someone is really really really careful getting a human protection agenda in Syria (or any where else) at any level of conflict other than talking and economic sanctions.
There is a huge opportunity to change the cover page of FM 3-24 adding a disclaimer stating the level of involvement COIN requires. It is not about the military. If the nation is not up to that level of involvement, or the motives of a conflict are not right, then COIN is not the right answer. Put FM 3-24 in a glass box labeled, " do not break unless you can get the nation to agree to this strategy and the level of spending for at least ten years". The core of the problem is America's leadership sunsets before a COIN conflict is resolved. That makes COIN just about impossible as a good strategy unless the motives are absolutely pure and directly in America's core national interests.
If leaders choose COIN then the future should be presented to Americans. The most important aspect of COIN and the first to be overlooked is the commitment from the nation as a whole. It is the lack of a nation's commitment and endurance that ends a COIN conflict. A way to get America's attention to a conflict is to share the pain, select the combatants by lottery. If you do that, you will quickly find out how committed the nation is to your cause.
Do you think Americans would have sign on for these conflicts if they knew up front it would take ten years and $4 trillion dollars? That is a hard sell. You will never hear it out of a politician's mouth. Politicians will dodge the draft.
The level of commitment, changing leadership styles, and the impact on the conflict is what JWest is speaking of. COIN requires consistency.
I do not see a core American national interest in today's Afghanistan. America has gone from chasing AQ in Afghanistan to an all out regional conflict. This administration has turned COIN into foreign aid and spreading the wealth, both are Party agendas not core American interests that all Americans agree with.
BTW....Really do not think it is up to the US State Department to tell the world how they should think or live. Some one is collecting votes for a campaign at my expense and way to ideological to be an effective American leader. Foreign policy goals should be broad and generic, not focused to a non-mainstream population subset that is playing with a limiting biological concept. You have a failed future if you can not renew the population.
"Could COIN have worked in
"Could COIN have worked in Vietnam? Doubtful:"
Um, it DID work, no doubt about it.
"The flaw in both wars was for strategy to think that such an operational framework could achieve policy aims without staying there forever, which is what it would have taken to "win" in Vietnam."
Yeah, hate to think we'd "stay there forever" like we did in Korea.
Oh and by the way, once again, we DID win the COIN fight in Vietnam.
1. Finally, some commentary
1. Finally, some commentary on the time element.
2. Took John Glubb ten years to establish an intelligence network in Mesopotamia that provided sufficient information to allow a policy to be formulated. [Other than shoot the bloody wogs on sight.]
3. Ten years gets you in the door, when you're playing in the big leagues.
4. Sort of agree on the surge. Was touted as a three-pronged effort: implementation of FM 3-24, operating fusion cells and standing up the Sons of Iraq.
5. Got myself disliked by insisting that the Sons of Iraq business was the main stroke: that we bought the SOB's off.
6. A reasonable tactic, if you think about it -and one that played to our strengths.
7. Have cudgeled my brain, trying to think of an equivalent application for Afghanistan. Who the .... do you buy off in that Godforsaken dump?
8. We're pissing plenty of money away there, but to little or no effect.
9. Gives me a warm familiar feeling.
V/R JWest
You didn't address the core
You didn't address the core of my argument.
But since you latched onto my comment about Casey:
"If you look at Casey's strategic planning guidance in early Janauary 2007 for example it reads very much like what people like Fred Kagan et al were saying when promoting the Surge."
It's false to claim that Casey and Petraeus persued the same strategy, regardless of what he said in his planning guidance. Casey's aim was to get out of Iraq as soon as possible by pulling American forces back onto the FOBs and forcing the ISF to take the lead in the fight prematurely. His aim was Not to quell the insurgency, or effectively reduce the violence (or if it was, then it was a poorly executed strategy, so it wasn't a strategic re-focus but instead a focus on actually executing the strategy) but rather to hand off that task to his Iraqi counterparts as soon as he could. This was evidenced by his choosing to ignore the rising violence levels that spiraled out of control all the way up to the end of 2006.
Petraeus took the opposite route. He flooded Baghdad and its support belts with troops focused on stamping out violence to allow the Iraqi government and ISF a chance to breathe and open the door for them to potentially develop to the point where they could effectively manage the fight themselves (unfortunately, they didn't). He also co-opted Iraqis to take a stake in providing for their own security. To claim that these two moves were simply "tactics" is disingenuous.
Casey's strategy was GTFO ASAP. Petraeus' strategy was to manage the insurgency's violence and give the Iraqi government a chance to take the necessary steps to defeat the insurgency. The latter was Not a continuation of the former.
"BTW....Really do not think
"BTW....Really do not think it is up to the US State Department to tell the world how they should think or live. Some one is collecting votes for a campaign at my expense and way to ideological to be an effective American leader. Foreign policy goals should be broad and generic, not focused to a non-mainstream population subset that is playing with a limiting biological concept. You have a failed future if you can not renew the population."
Gosh, can you say intellectualized homophobe? The US State Department's support for gay rights and homosexual way of life is a civil rights issue, not a biological one. Back the gays because it is the American thing to do, not for some Darwin precept. Gosh, how obtuse people can be.
"a non-mainstream population
"a non-mainstream population subset that is playing with a limiting biological concept. You have a failed future if you can not renew the population."
We adopt the kids you heteros leave behind! Is that "limiting" enough for you?! My partner and I have adopted and opened our home to foster children, how's that for "renew"ing the population?! I voted for Barack Obama and will vote for him again, not because he's "ideological", but because he has brains, something the otherside has failed to exhibit.
No we didnt win the coin
No we didnt win the coin fight in Vietnam. Suggest you stop reading Sorley's work and HES reports and consider thae fact the the VC still controlled large segments of the countryside upon us departure in late 72. Have a look at Andy Birtle of CMH recent work on the subject. Another good scholarly source is David Elliott's two volume work on the Mekong Delta. The VC were not defeated and American coin did not work. An older but still highly relevant and useful study is Trullinger's "A Village at War" which shows that in Thua Thien Province in 1974 the VC were still around and in force.
when is Andrew going to pipe up and address some of the questions/challenges brought up to him on his blog?
GG right on Vietnam, Visitor
GG right on Vietnam, Visitor wrong.
COIN isn't working when it requires YOU to do it forever.
Our troops in Korea are there to deter--attack SK and you'll kill Americans, and we'll be back in the war sooner than you can say "Inchon." No comparison with Vietnam.
Watched "Restrepo" last night--first time showing it to a class of history students. A hell of a movie: you turn on the lights when it's over, and it's quite a sight to see their faces. It's like their souls have been touched--bruised even.
No, Americans would not support these wars if they knew what they were going to involve.
Oh, and a big thanks to our WWII vets on this day. 70 years ago today my dad was in a movie theater on a date, and the movie stopped, the manager came out to announce the attack, and the next day he joined the navy. He wanted to be sure to get hot meals and a shower. Got a kamikaze, too, but hey, two out of three ain't bad.
Yes, we did win the COIN
Yes, we did win the COIN fight in Vietnam. By 1972, 90% of the South Vietnamese population lived in areas that were secure, and less than 1% of the population lived under full Communist control.
Oh, good grief. I really
Oh, good grief. I really miss the golden age of the internet--about 1994 to 1999 or so--before everyone piled on and revealed the unwelcome truth that half of our population is psychotic . . . And all but a small sliver are rude.
1. Didn't win the COIN
1. Didn't win the COIN fight.
2. In II Corps, 70-71, the VC were still collecting taxes -and the farmers were hiding their harvests from the government.
3. The officers were pocketing most of the salary paid to SVN soldiers and morale reflected that fact.
4. Sound like someplace else you've heard about?
5. Operations in that area consisted of patrolling off of firebases, either in response to rocket and mortar attacks or because of intelligence regarding local bad guys -usually false or flawed, of course.
6. Every once in a while, someone would dream up an 'operation.' Only problem: the bad guy's intell was far better than ours.
7. The locals displayed a healthy fear of our patrols -for several very practical reasons.
8. This amounted to a military occupation, with little effort given to winning hearts and minds.
9. In our favor, the basic moral behavior and decent conduct of a majority of our soldiers created a reservoir of good will -at least in SVN. Forty years later, we are remembered more or less fondly. Contrast that with the memory of the Japanese occupiers from 65 years ago.
V/R JWest
JWest. Question. The
JWest. Question.
The Japanese really left a legacy in the WW2 period that can still be felt today. I launched a S. Korean in the mid 90's with just the mention of the Japanese. The Korean went straight to a soap box and it took me a while to get him off the subject. It made me realize the deep negative feelings the Japanese left in Korea.
Just met a refugee from Vietnam at a 2011 Christmas party of all places. Person left Vietnam in '75 and now is part of upper management at a local bank. Have spoken to several other Vietnamese that came to America from the '60's conflict. All are currently successful Americans. Have seen that level of integration with folks that left Cuba in the 60's under similar circumstances. The one thing that separates the Cubans and the Vietnamese is that the Cubans want to kill Castro. The ones I have spoken to would happily drop the hammer themselves. The Cubans are a very passionate people. I have never seen that level of nationalism in the S. Vietnamese I have met that are currently in the US. The passion felt by Cubans, I have seen in friends that originated in Laos. The common denominator with the S.Vietnamese is they share a drive for personal/business success (not to the the level of the Japanese), but their concept of survival is to live another day. I just do not see the passion to fight, what I see is a need to flank a conflict. The S. Vietnamese do like their culture, I walked into a friend's American home and thought I walked straight into Vietnam over twenty years post conflict.
Ho Chi Minh inspired nationalism in the North either by threat or inspiration. What was it that American's brought out of the South?
Judging from the Vietnamese I have met in the US, the US inspired capitalism and the S.Vietnamese really did not seem to care where they did it. The American way of life trumped S.Vietnamese nationalism (not their culture), they were not on killing ground America gave them an exit.
America never inspired the South to need their county more than their culture.
How does DoS's gay rights
How does DoS's gay rights agenda related to PC-Coin?
I am still trying to figure
I am still trying to figure out what gay rights has to to with the US DoS. It is not a mainstream cause, it is a party agenda.
Personally, I think the State
Personally, I think the State Dept. has bigger problems with the Arab Spring, the coming water waters in South Asia, Mexico, Russia and China, that pushing for gay rights just seems a waste of time and effort. Sexual preference is not a big deal, but since "Glee" became popular everyone now things the world should be like "Glee".
US DoS, its about 2012 votes.
US DoS, its about 2012 votes. That is were it knits back into PC-Coin at a distant vector to this discussion. It sounds good to the base.
PC-Coin is going to be packed up in a box for the next thirty years or more. Its use will be to sell books and make Generals think if it as a career limiter.
1. That question is about
1. That question is about six levels above my pay grade. Not sure I understand it.
2. Thought at the time that the Diem Regime was considered something we could prop up to act as a bulwark against Soviet inspired insurgent activities by the NVN government.
3. Not sure the Sovs needed to do much inspiring. Don't think SVN provided much of a bulwark, either.
4. I have friends who tell me some of the SVN units they worked with were good. Never saw such, myself.
5. For the most part, think we tried to deal as if those folks were local versions of ourselves.
6. Don't know what there was to bring out in the people I dealt with. Peasants are peasants. They tried to keep their heads down and stay clear of everybody's clutches. Damn few young men around except for cripples and retards.
7. Does all of this sound like stuff our soldiers are seeing in Afghanistan?
8. Know a damn sight more about VN now than I did then, but fail to see a distinctive Vietnamese national character.
That's for subject matter experts. At the time I thought they were mean little bastards. Now I think they are smart, hard working little bastards and generally enjoy their company.
Visitor on December 7,
Visitor on December 7, 2011
COIN has never worked AFAIK.
link or GTFO.
Saddam went down to superior converntional military force.
COIN, aka the Bush Doctrine cut down for villages, failed EPICALLY in Iraq.
In case you havent noticed, Iraq just planted a boot in America's ass.
Our "armed social workers" aka missionaries with guns have become the most hated invader/occupiers in the ME.
30k talibs are asswhupping 350k joint merican, NATO and Karzai forces, and as soon as O folds our tents the Taliban are gunna roll into Kabul and dip Karzais head in tar and mount it on a pike.
In Pak the Pakistani PEOPLE are bpmbing NATO oil tankers and burning American flags in the streets of Islamabad.
In Egypt and Yemen the American "Searching for Ataturk" model has also FAILED. Nour and MB are gunna run Egypt and the Israelis are gunna pay for our propping Mubarak for 30 years.
Game ovah Exum, game ovah. COIN is a FAIL strat.
Because when muslims are DEMOCRATICALLY empowered to vote they vote for more Islam and not less....and NEVER for Bush-style missionary democracy.
Which reminds me....did you know the constitution of Saud IS the Quran? That means missionaries and bibles cannot enter the Kingdom.
Beeg problem for Willard-- he cant go to Riyadh and hold hands with Prince Bandar like Bush did.
What chu gunna do now?
I'll sum it for you Exum. In
I'll sum it for you Exum.
In the battle for hearts and minds America just got its big fat white judeoxian ass handed to it.
when he points out that
when he points out that Iraq's a very different place than Afghanistan. AQ ain't the Pashtuns.
im a gurrl, dumbass. Rabi'a al-Adiwyya was the first shayykah and a sufi saint.
and i didnt make that point. Petraeus did. Petraeus understood very well that trusted social networks << consanguineaous networks.
And Exum knows it too.
He is just blowing smoke up your asses.
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