Clearing the Final Hurdle

TWO RAND GENIUSES!!!!

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG482.pdf

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP258.pdf

How true indeed, Mike! You know, I first met American soldiers as a kid in the refugee camps post-WWII and always felt that though they never suffered through what we suffered they could make the booboo deep in your soul feel better than anyone in the world. I kind of still think that. For example, that horrid video of chopper pilot shooting Iraqi fish in a barrel had a shot of a GI running with a kid in his arms. That guy felt to me like a dad doin' what comes naturally. They train you Yanks to be bloody murderers, but your heart opens to the helpless like no one else's. I don't know exactly why; but I know what Afghans said: that Russians killed like a tiger-- on impulse-- but Americans should be judged by what they do AFTER they kill. Well, this greatly impacts on how people see you, leaving them with a choice: either you take them as they are or you pass them up for a cloudy tomorrow. No soldiers on earth would be considered for such a choice but Americans and so often the impression you guys make drive people to trust you. The point is that the American INDIVIDUAL is distinguished from the STUPID COMMAND because his soul shines through his flack-- oops-- armor jacket. And it's not just because you guys are ~5 years older than in Vietnam conscripts because I remember many Viets telling me then about the Marines-- IN I CORPS OF ALL PLACES!!-- that they really cared and that they really fought as CAP or whatever to protect the locals. In war civilians live by the here and now and no one is more reassuring NOW than Americans-- al least over my lifetime. But the issue is whether these people should follow local officers you invent and a "Gov in a box" you guys picked with your eyes shut. They trust your feelings but not your judgment. It was the opposite with the Russians. They knew the Russians made wise strategically long sighted decisions but that they had no feelings other that rattatatatatat. I remember a woman who said that she never felt that any of the Russians had a mother!

My point is that your selling point is what you had in WWII, Vietnam and even in Iraq/Afghanistan (except for the snipers" who like to shoot or the chopper guys who do too and forget that it isn't a rat scampering past the latrine hole). Living in many lands under stress I realize that non-linguistic communications are amazing, especially for illiterate people who go by mystical "sense of." The problem is that when you leave, the next guy starts with a neural heart. As much as I pis on McChrystal, I must say I admire his long term in place idea because-- IF you guys succeed-- it's only because regulations don't force you to keep your shirt buttoned to the top and a certain glow that's above language is sensed by many around you, especially the helpless; take it from a victim of circumstance when extremely helpless. Somewhere else I wrote about MAT/CAP guys and how they bonded with RUF/PUFs. I never met one who spoke Vietnamese, as opposed to CIA guys who always used to butcher such Asian languages of inference rather than explicitness. Yet people felt that if they get killed the American with them would too. This, VC told me, they never felt about Northerners. Same in Afghan setting. Maj. Gant's silly boyish "One Tribe at a Time" essay is the kind of advice that gets you driving off a cliff. Yet it is EXACTLY what makes you Americans so believable and endearing. You may be total inferiority complex ridden at home in a college setting, but over there you're all-heart heroes they helplessly bond to. Trouble is you don't realize it and don't realize that they feel it as proven by Gant's experience. It's not your manliness; it is your human manliness. The crossover point is when you prove that besides a lot of impressive toys strapped to your body or "call-in" you're also very reasonable. There's the rub though because you're between a rock and a hard place. You are representing a government half their relatives are fighting against because they know it is like shit in their beds. No matter what you do, you are that nice kid who-- too bad-- works to shove Karzai down their throats. I recall all those SF guys crying as ARVN was pushing around all the Montagnards they had gone native with and held off PAVN with for over a year. How do you explain to simple people who put their entire stock of chips on you that they can trust Karzai because you do?

In the end you've got to look, not like a counterINSURGENT, but like a counterREVOLUTIONARY offering them some revolution. There you're stuck because the people who run your whole war have their heads up their.....

Imagine if you built some NATO-run cities in the more secure Northwest that offer BOTH jobs and education to young people. You then tell locals: trust me, let your son and daughter go to "my" cities to work and be educated. Two weeks later the first remittance sent home comes in. That+ your beautiful caring American heart is all they need and they'll talk their Taliban cousins off the rocks and into the NATO cities. That's how insurgencies end...when you offer an alternative. I saw it in Vietnam as it went from 85% rural to 75% urban. All those people who survived were victims of our ordnance. But once in the cites, helped by CORDS, they became, per Radio Hanoi, "petites bourgeois" and developed urban lives. The guerrilla "fish" were left high and dry as the peasant "sea" went to town. After Hanois desperate Tet 1968 defeat, ARVN pushed back into the rural villages. Then, as a Viet project, Phoenix was quite a success.

Your problem is that you're trying to do the job of a cop. Someone assassinates some local who collaborates and you go after the perpetrator as if the kiling were done by an army throwing JDAMs at him-- one or two guys! But a local cop goes around and investigates. Finds the guys, arrests them, and tries them in open court. Sharia Courts is all the Taliban ever had to offer as a revolutionary alternative to warlords and they won in 1997. We come in, kiss the kids, shake hands with the elders and then introduce the warlord we're putting in charge...(#$%&*$$%!!!!!). And so that sweet heart of yours is doubly evil to the locals because not only, do they suddenly see it as NOT caring (shoving warlords down their throats) but they also trusted the feelings you caused them and that makes you VEEERRRRYYYY dangerous.

I know this doesn't sound like a lot of the Acronyms you guys memorize to impress each other with but I really believe that your heart is your best weapon-- maybe ESPECIALLY because since you don't realizes so it is 100% gold authentic, as I learned in the 1940s as a kid. But there's got to be a message there besides: "By the way let me introduce you to the warlord that's taking over when I go home."

In Paris we used to misdirect Americans on purpose. That was because they thought they knew everything and we kids felt we had to prove to them that they don't know everything-- at least not the way to Sacre Coeur! But if you act lost and tell them: look, I don't have the answers but I'm here putting my life on the line hoping I can do some good for you so I can go home and feel like I did something with probably the only highlight of my life, they'll know you mean it and will work with you however risky, no matter how short. THAT, I think, is what Maj. Gant did and even he may not have fully appreciated his gift of a golden American heart.

Soldiers kill and destroy things because they're enemy things trying to do it to them. The side most messed up loses. But in COIN it's always the guy that makes it worth it for civilians to share the INsecurity with him that wins. And it can be fast too!

I'd love to read what your experience makes you think of this. Thanks.

But you are there for a fixed while-- and they know it-- Mike and then you're gone home...safe. They are there forever and their rear is always naked (families exposed), as in 1993. They know very well what "budiness" is all qabout, that's the essence of their culture, except it's the guy below that tries it on the guy above. Can you assure them that we'll stay until they prove themselves to themselves?

I recall going on operations with ARVN. As the PAVN lines seemed to be embracing and our air cover got close and hot, ARVN units would get disordered and you always knew that the confusion was prolog for breaking and dispersing, each man for himself. Compare that to RUF/PUFs. They were meeting with lines of PAVN regulars; but as they broke their own lines it was as if each man knew where the other was going. After all, it all had been territory they spent their lives walking and the invaders from the North were unfamiliar with that which they invaded. MAT advisers were there to call in support and to keep it from confusing our "gooks" with Hanois as, from the air some claimed, they all looked alike. Here a balance between native of the soil and foreigners on the ground guiding those technical machines above spoke non-linguistically for they had come to understand each other. Vann's old saw about security never seemed to be the issue. Security, after all, was a luxury they had left behind uniting in a trust of commitment when they went after the Northerners who had mortared the village marketplace at 10AM when most crowded with peasants. The issue now was mutual reliance and familiarity with the "big eyes" of the MAT team. It's funny how those little bastards that were supposed to always cut and run had formed up and went off to chase those PAVN war masters in retaliation for their losses. No McChrystal "security" priority existed in that COIN for the realm, just irreversible commitment. The issue was the realm and the villagers were now all risking security preventively so even if they die their peasant families would know a little more confidence the next morning at 10AM when in the village market. Americans were shouting no orders. They supported the local chosen Vietnamese leaders and NEVER feared the fear one felt in a big unit of ARVN when it made contact. In the latter case the issue was leadership. ARVN officers only learned from the French arrogance and insolence toward those they were supposed to lead. But RUF/PUFs were different; against bad odds everything was at stake for the little that they dared call all theirs. The tables were turned on the war experts from the North as we were supporting the locals while the Northerners were trying to exterminate them to establish their rule.

One can only wonder if the Afghan Army will turn out to be like the ARVN we trained or the RUF/PUFs we supported. An American Little Napoleon who can only gesture in frustration without feeling himself a part of the families he's supposed to be protecting cannot impart his knowledge and leadership without the non-verbal bonds between the MAT guys and the RUF/PUFs I saw in action. As a migrant in many countries since childhood I learned that communication is often not verbal; it is gestural as in animals, signaling an understanding that comes with a bond developed through survival in a shared INsecurity, not security. That partnering was often there in Vietnam and could easily be identified in expression of good-bys by those departing from the "vil" to return home; that moment was more traumatic that two or three advisory tours, they often claimed.

It may be that today's soldiers are told how great they--after all they're all volunteers-- a bit too much... ..that impacting on their attitude toward Afghans... ..thinking that they're talent is wasted on these people who cant even speak English. This is clearly telegraphed, even when videoed by a correspondent and shown later to a TV audience back home. One might then assume that it was not missed by the Afghans at who projected. But these people know the land, terrain, vegetable and animal like family. The Taliban fighters surely may be blood relatives. Thus maybe the role of the American is not to impose tactics so as to meet some operational demands set from above, but rather: how can I help you to create security from insecurity for you and yours? Struggling to say that and struggling to understand the answer miraculously become effortless over time. It is then that one is partnering with Afghan in a common struggle against Insecurity. No made in USA security can ever replace that from what Ive seen. Do you, sir, agree?