COIN Is a Proven Failure

Just a few quick notes--the Iraqi ISF stood at 360K when we pulled out, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior had a far better intelligence system in place than we ever did have from 2003-2010, and we beat into them our version of "COIN" at most levels. And they had the logistics tail that we did as well.

I am confused as well by these comments referencing the Marshall Plan---we did not leave simply because we had beaten Germany in a major war-then NATO was built and we were the leading member and the Cold War kicked in--remember we were "nation building" in Iraq and had stated we were not staying. And remember we were told by Bush 2 we would be repaid for our costs and efforts from Iraqi oil---seen any oil money since then?

AND by the American civilian leadership sent into Iraq by Bush 2 literally turned the country over in the 2005 elections- we lost all ability after that to influence anything--seems we have forgotten that tidbit of info.

So actually these comments are all in all a tad confusing.

Miriam: I think your observations are spot on. Thank you for sharing your experience and observations.

Bill M.: You're rewriting history, ignoring much of what Miriam and others have said, and trying to have it both ways.

First, your insistence that "we turned tail and left after ONLY 10 years" - your words, not hers as you suggest - is inaccurate. OIF lasted slightly less than nine years before the White House spearheaded a precipitous withdrawal. We can draw our own conclusions about the wisdom or folly of that decision, but we must accept the same facts. Iraq was largely stable during the last two to three years of MNF-I's presence there; the President's military advisors recommended a residual force of around 20,000 personnel to continue support for and influence upon the Iraqi government/security forces; COIN doctrine/best practices recommend a slowly dwindling foreign presence; and there's good evidence that the Iraqis would have played ball on a SOFA. As such, your claim that "Ultimately our application of COIN failed, and not because we left" is not supported by the historical record. That record shows instead that the residual force advocates warned that Iraq could devolve back into sectarian violence, and that is what has happened.

Second, Miriam rightly acknowledges that COIN doctrine/best practices "takes time, energy, money and staying power" (consistent with FM 3-24 paragraph 1-124). However, the ISAF and MNF-I coalitions expected short, efficient, Gulf '91 style engagements enabled by such concepts as RMA/"Transformation" capabilities and technologies. They were unprepared and disinterested in long-term COIN engagements, and both coalitions immediately focused on finding "exit strategies" - The Onion was already lampooning the fixation on "exit strategies" less than two years into OIF. So, your observation about leaving a proverbial "plug in a hole to slow the leak" is inconsistent with your critique of COIN theory, because COIN theory advocates for leaving such a "plug", but that "plug" was not, in fact, left.

Third, as I've suggested earlier in this conversation, COIN doctrine/best practices were not applied in any coherent or unified manner in either OEF or OIF, particularly OEF. I've spoken previously about FM 3-24 (2006 edition) paragraphs 8-13 and 8-31, but there are plenty of other examples. You essentially acknowledge that COIN doctrines/best practices (to include leaving your proverbial "plug in a hole to slow the leak") weren't applied; and yet you still blame "a combination of both [incorrect application and failed doctrine]". Either the doctrines weren't applied, or they failed; the two options are mutually exclusive. Your statement that...

<BLOCKQUOTE>"Clearly if we got it right with our COIN principles, Iraq wouldn't have collapsed shortly after our withdrawal. Bottom line it failed."</BLOCKQUOTE>

... continues this obfuscation: our COIN principles advocated against the action that the White House decided to take, so again, your "bottom line" remains unsubstantiated by history. You say that "[a]nybody who suggests we should replicate what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan in the future based on our successes there should have their heads examined", and I would agree with that statement with the necessary caveat that anyone who suggests that what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan in any way resembled COIN doctrine/best practices should also have their head examined.

Fourth, both Miriam and (apparently) you rightly acknowledge that tactical/operational gains were not consolidated at the strategic/political level. Her observation that "COIN does have to be combined with policies to try and help/pressure/influence the actual foreign government to act like a responsible player" is more insightful than much of what I've read on this comment thread. Again, this goes back to the observation that COIN requires a long-term, albeit dwindling, commitment of time and resources. Security forces and competent governments, both required end states in COIN operations, take time to build - in my favorite example of Oman, the Sultanate <I>still</I> hosts a handful of foreign advisors nearly forty years later. To use an allegory, if one team builds a scaffold for the purpose of constructing a boat, and then another team builds a boat that's not seaworthy, you can't then blame the scaffolding team when the boat whose construction they facilitated sinks; the two lines of effort, though related, are ultimately independent of one another. In the case of OIF, I think the scaffolding team (the military) had a lot of good case studies and some good plans for building a good scaffold, but ultimately chose to merge those plans with their existing scaffolding experience to build a sort of hybrid scaffold that wasn't particularly well suited to boats. Meanwhile, the boat building team (civilian leaders) began building an overly ambitious boat that was too big for the scaffold in question, and on too tight a timeline. Eventually, that boat-building team was replaced by a different boat building team that didn't think building a boat was such a good idea in the first place, so they partially redesigned the boat without consulting the engineers, then put the boat in the water, downsized the scaffolding team, and moved on to building something else. I'm not sure the boat is fully submerged, but things aren't looking good.

Finally, while acknowledging and respecting his military service, I also question the wisdom of quoting Secretary Hagel, who is not a strategist, nor a COIN/UW/IW expert, nor even a particularly well received Secretary of Defense. I don't recognize some of the statements you've attributed to him, but the idea that "no country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations" is absurd, as is the suggestion that "21st century realities are different than 20th century realities". Clausewitz would have had a field day with the first suggestion, and I don't know of any competent strategist who would agree with the latter.

COIN correctly applied works? I guess war correctly applied works also? Both comments are void of meaning. Throughout history, many people have fooled themselves into believing a particular doctrinal approach works because their use of that doctrine in their small area of operations for a fleeting period of time resulted in improved conditions. In Iraq and Afghanistan many military units pacified the areas they worked in, but ultimately it meant little, because the efforts were little more than a temporary plug in a hole to slow the leak. As you noted, when that plug was removed the insurgency returned in force. This would indicate that COIN neither defeated the insurgents, nor compelled them to reconcile with the government. In fact, what happened was little more than a surge in security temporarily displaced the insurgents. The insurgents simply waited for the right opportunity to strike. Ultimately our application of COIN failed, and not because we left. Failure to recognize this is failure to learn, and failure to learn means we're apt to repeat the same mistake in the future.

Clearly, the COIN doctrine was incorrectly applied, or the doctrine failed. I think it was a combination of both. You seem to believe that if the U.S. maintained combat troops there indefinitely we would have succeeded. If we need to maintain troops there indefinitely we already failed. Using your words, we turn tailed and left after ONLY 10 years of aggressive capacity building and combat operations. Darn, if we only knew it would take 10 more years and another trillion dollars I'm sure we would have stayed. Why not throw more good money after bad? The national debt really isn't that important. We certainly don't have strategic interests elsewhere in the world we need to protect, so why not stay? Apparently staying is now a strategy, the ends, ways, and means to bleed ourselves out, I mean to defeat the adversary.

You compared the staying strategy to our occupation in Germany. What an excellent comparison, why didn't we think about that before we pulled out of Iraq. Was Germany divided ethnically between Shia and Sunni? Did they have hostile neighbors fanning the flames of these ethnic divisions? Did they have a major non-state actor like al-Qaeda that leveraged the post war chaos in Germany to further disrupt U.S. efforts? You seem to arguing that it was our correct use of COIN that resulted in our success? Or was it simply the staying strategy there for decades that pacified the insurgency? Did I get that right, or would you prefer to use another parallel in history to make your point assuming you can one that indicates we should have stayed longer than we did?

Of course there was a lot of well deserved back slapping by many military units for their efforts in Iraq. The military generally gets tactics right after a relatively short period of time, so I have no doubt we had several tactical and operational successes using common sense and adapting to reality on the ground. Nonetheless, we still failed at the policy level, and staying another 10 years would not have changed that, because the political solution was the wrong solution. Clearly if we got it right with our COIN principles, Iraq wouldn't have collapsed shortly after our withdrawal. Bottom line it failed.

Anybody who suggests we should replicate what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan in the future based on our successes there should have their heads examined. They should also be required to take a basic economics course and then write a paper on how spending billions of dollars to continue pursuing a failed policy is in the national interest. If the paper can't convince their mother to commit the money and troops then it fails.

Secretary Hagel was right when he said that no country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. 21st century realities are different than 20st century realities, something we are having a hard time adapting too. Our COIN doctrine is based on 20th century realities. Hagel correctly added that bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.

I can't think of a time when staying longer worked, but if you can then please share? Nations don't stay longer because they can no longer afford to stay longer, the bottom line return on investment still matters.

Especially telling was Hagel's follow on comment, "In Vietnam, we kept feeding more men, material, and money into a corrupt Vietnamese government as our own leaders continued to deceive themselves and the American people."

Arguing COIN worked in Iraq is simply a continuation of that deception. If you're arguing COIN may work if we get the policy objectives right, then maybe, but a lot of other factors will still come into play.

A guy who used to post here named Entropy would have more info about the Reaper and Predator. However, crop-dusters typically fly lower and slower than your A-10 example for instance. The Predator more than the faster Reaper would have the slow part down but that class of medium altitude remotely piloted aircraft does not fly low except on take-off and landing. You would be asking them to do something that likely would lead to frequent ground contact and could disrupt their satellite data link. Crop-dusters also make tight low turns that I doubt a Predator could duplicate despite what you saw early in the movie "Interstellar."

Your post caused me to google "Pakistani ISI and/or drug connections" which brought up a Paul Thompson timeline based on newspaper articles that I don't want to link to since I'm not sure how cyber safe it is. It is very comprehensive but also has hints of 9/11 truthers. A brief film clip watched of him at a "news conference" confirmed that speculation in my mind. Nevertheless he raised several questions about 9/11 plotters KSM and Saeed Sheikh and their links to the ISI. I also did not realize that Daniel Pearl had been involved in investigating the ISI when he was kidnapped and killed.

After reading the Paul Thompson timeline based on news articles, I was puzzled by several questions. Why would Pakistan help us capture KSM if he had close links to the ISI? Why would the ISI head general of the time be in the U.S. at the time of the 9/11 attack (if true) if in fact he provided money to 9/11 plotters? Why would Musharaff subsequently fire him if the Pakistani government and ISI were on the same sheet of music? Why would the ISI cave in to U.S. and pressure the Taliban to drop opium yields from July 2000 until later in 2001 when they supposedly declined from 3656 tons to 185 tons primarily in Northern Alliance territory? By June 2002 they were back up to 4500 tons.

Some article claims 5.5 million kg is grown today which is 12.1 million lbs or 6050 tons despite spending $7.5 billion to reduced poppy production and conversion to heroin. SIGAR apparently did some study that said Afghanistan has 1.3 million heroin users now which is a ten-fold increase since 2005 when there were about 130,000.

I get that the Taliban is financed by taxes on poppies and now reverses its earlier anti-poppy stance to pit the poor Afghan poppy grower against ISAF which would be aggravated if we did more. But couldn't we have done more to eradicate the plant and introduce alternative crops if we really had wanted to and spent $7.5 billion effectively. I also understand why the earier ISI may have wanted to hurt the Soviet Union in the 80s since they then and now get 95% of their heroin from Afghanistan. The elicit trade also helped finance ISI military operations against the Soviets. But is the ISI really that radical to want to kill Westerners in general? Please tell me they don't control any nukes.

<blockquote>In terms of deaths, approx 30K people have become casualties of war in AF since 2001. That’s everyone – coalition, enemy and civilians. 30K dead is a year’s worth of death by heroin in the West. Triple that for the rest of the world and it’s not hard to see who is the meanest SOB in the valley.

Add the costs of the tens of millions of functioning junkies and their impact upon family, friends, neighbors, healthcare and law enforcement and the comparative feebleness of our tactical, operational and strategic effort is pathetic.</blockquote>

If you google "Russian heroin deaths annually" you get stats that are even more alarming. First a July 2014 RT article claims up to 100,000 heroin deaths a year. While that is doubtful, multiple other articles cite <strong>30,000 annual heroin deaths in Russia alone</strong> claiming it is one-third of the world total. Add to that the deaths and dysfunction from alcohol addiction and forget communism...it is drugs that keep the Russian economy from functioning more effectively.

If many neighbors of Russia, Russians themselves, and former Soviet satellites are Muslims, you could argue that given Chechnya and other problems past and future, the HWS that you cite is highly effective part of the Muslim conspirator's arsenal. But I highly doubt the ISI or Pakistan Sunnis are in such collusion. Instead, the good old profit motive appears more likely as evidenced by Bill M's citation about Dawood and the D-Company, and the fact that poppy production is by far the most lucrative crop for Afghan farmers.

<blockquote>Go down to the ER of any hospital in America and ask about what junkies are capable of doing.</blockquote>

My own ER doctor daughter would tell you that too many come there seeking legal drugs for concocted or minor pain to relieve other problems in their life. Sounds similar to the Russian problem and current U.S. state attempts at marijuana legalization. A recently watched CNN "Parts Unknown" illustrated that the disappearance of U.S. manufacturing jobs has led to a heroin resurgence and use of Oxycontin. So the problems you mention also could affect the U.S. if permitted to continue.

I liked your suggestions about crop-dusting A-10s. Although it certainly seems a high-cost solution that perhaps Afghan Air Force prop attack plane could perform instead. But rather than pay Afghan farmers for dead poppies and thus encouraging them to grow more, why not pay them to grow legal crops covering some of the difference between what they gain from legal vs poppy crops? The only problem is that it likely would lead to Afghan government theft of funds, or machinery/crops that you suggest using as payment. Add to that the unlikely capacity to get these logistically to the appropriate farmers.

Perhaps you use the A-10s and Afghan prop planes to kill the poppies spraying them at night but also <strong>fertilize the legal crops</strong> in the daytime to build support for the program. This would encourage legal farming by default without incurring issues of other incentives that are unlikely to work due to graft and inefficiency.

You have many more interesting comments here and it is indisputable that you know more than just about anybody about the 80's Taliban because you were one of the few who were there. You also were there apparently in 2001 when we first overthrew the Taliban. I have never been there and all I know is from reading extensively, studying videos, and maps both geographic and generated by think tanks such as CSIS.

If you are who I think you are you also were highly placed in one of those 3-letter organizations that should know a lot about the Taliban, but apparently has not always gotten it right. You can blast the U.S. military all you want but several three-letter organizations screwed the pooch too and the state department did little to help our troops in either Iraq or Afghanistan by assuming <strong>any</strong> government could represent all the people under prior colonial borders. How then do you square your understanding of the Pakistan Taliban with this article's version?

http://www.voanews.com/content/peshawar-school-attack-who-are-pakistani…

Is it possible that things change over time? I certainly have expertise on four Afghanistan battles that occurred between 2008-2010 and how the Afghan Taliban, HiG, and foreign fighters who participated fought those battles. However, I doubt they resemble the same Taliban organizations we see today if for no other reason than the extensive leadership turnover. Are the fighters you fought with back in the 80's and 2001 the same as the ones now? This article, written by a journalist for Voice of America, would seem to indicate a change in the Pakistan Taliban from your understanding of them based on the past. What parts of his assessment do you disagree with?

I read none of this article prior to my first response to you and have not done any extensive study of the Pakistan Taliban. But anyone who has followed current events over the past few years has discerned differences between the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban. The Taliban is not a "one size fits all" organization and TTP clearly is associated with the Pakistan Taliban that attacked the military school in Pakistan. It is illogical to believe even the ISI, let alone the government or Army of Pakistan ordered an attack on the children of Pakistani Soldiers in Peshawar.

MF,

The fruitcake fighting in Pakistan are a mixed bag of separatists, terrorists, anarchists, misogynists, pedophiles, maniacs, lunatics and anything else that motivates an asshole to unload a PKM GPMG into a crowded classroom of school children. They are not the Taliban.

The Taliban is the Taliban.

Nobody else is the Taliban, not TTP, not GiH, not ALQ, LeT, not Pathan separatists, not IMU, not the IS, not the Baluchis,Kashmiris or Jammus, not even the ISI. The Taliban are a Pak Army creation begun in the early eighties that was stood up to fight UW in Afghanistan. That is what they do. Haqqani is their closest bedfellow but there are significant differences btween the two. ISI facilitates Command Guidance from inside Pakistan.

They have always been heavily involved in the heroin industry but they are not the Costa Nostra. Obviously the lawlessness resulting from the UW goes hand in hand with the massive poppy cultivation but they do not fight in Pakistan.

Some folks believe they are a narco-army first and a UW tool of the Pak Army second. Certainly they are up to their necks in heroin and the elite are well-rewarded by the Costa Nostra. There are times when drug turf wars cause violence in Pakistan but I personally believe it is politics first and drug money second.

IMO the tendency for people such as yourself to group everyone who is the 'other' into the one size fits all is the main reason our 2 million strong, $600 billion a year military struggles to come to grips with our opponents. For nearly fifty years we have been told our massive defense budget was justified to ensure the US could fight two different armies in two separate locations simultaneously. From what I can ascertain we are currently struggling to fight two regiment sized forces of light infantry on two fronts simultaneously.

Only a balanced Pakistani COIN campaign can solve their insurgency problem. We need to focus on the UW problem in AF. Solve that and a Afghan COIN campaign then has a chance of end the AF insurgency.

I used to have sympathy for the Pak Army and their paranoia regards their neighbors but there has been too much senseless violence in AF for way too long. As far as I am concerned the Paks have made their bed and now they have to sleep in it.

RC

We should start from the premise that societies build themselves. Problems in societies are normally resolved internal to that society. In certain societies, we may have a national interest in shaping how a society resolves a problem. With those problems, how can we, as outsiders, enable actors within that society so that the evolution of the society achieves our policy goals? That is the key question in most of these conflicts. If asked and answered, we could achieve our goals at much lower costs.

However, we have a basic problem with control and the amount of uncertainty that outlook would involve.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/understanding-insurgency-the-condi…

Perhaps this helps. The first step to better COIN is to form a better understanding of insurgency itself. My cut at that task from a few years ago.

Bob

Paul: I think it's very easy to say "we just shouldn't do this sort of thing anymore". A recent piece at War on the Rocks <A HREF="http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/the-counterinsurgency-paradigm-shift/"… the pitfalls of such an attitude</A>. Rather, I believe America and its allies must address the issue at all three levels of war and warfare: the tactical, the operational/campaign, and the strategic.

On the tactical and operational levels, COIN must be treated in the same way that the DoD is currently treating the chimera of "cyber warfare": as a legitimate phenomenon on the spectrum of warfare which, while not the sole manifestation of warfare in the foreseeable future, is nonetheless an important capability that the DoD (and American allies) must equip, study, and train for. The Army's Regionally Aligned Forces concept is a good start, and has the secondary benefit of serving as a sort of "pre-emptive COIN", but it must be continued and expanded. I'm reminded of the lesson that the DoD took from Vietnam, humorously expressed by Dana Carvey as President Bush 41 on a <A HREF="http://snltranscripts.jt.org/90/90ibush.phtml">1990 episode of SNL</A>: "We learned well the simple lesson of Vietnam, and that is 'Stay out of Vietnam.'" The lesson America <I>should</I> have learned from Vietnam is that sometimes, a nation's strategic interests will <I>require them</I> to go to Vietnam, so preparation is key to achieving those stategic objectives with the least possible expenditure of blood and treasure. (That's a judgment on COIN generally, not Vietnam specifically.)

On the strategic level, the challenges are more difficult, but my impression is that the best underlying solution is to actually start teaching officers strategy. That training must begin early (probably as part of an officer's pre-commissioning course of instruction), and must be reinforced throughout an officer's career; instead, America teaches cadets and company grade officers varying levels of tactics, then trains field grade officers for campaigning. Lawrence Freedman <A HREF="http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/on-strategy-and-strategists">recently opined</A> - correctly, I believe - that, ultimately, the Commander-in-Chief is the source of a nation's strategy. As most heads of government do not come from strategic backgrounds, the C-in-C's senior military officers serve as their strategic advisors. At the risk of validating anything Tom Ricks says, I have been unimpressed with the performance and commentary of most of the recent crop of American officers, the major exceptions being Generals Mattis and Petraeus, and possibly Odierno. I believe I've provided examples elsewhere. If senior generals are meant to advise the "Strategist-in-Chief" in the interest of formulating sound strategic policy, then they must understand strategy.

All of that having been said, I suppose my take on your question is that we should not seek to do something "in its place"; rather, we must institute measures to do it better. I'm quite skeptical that Western/international strategic interests will not call for COIN, regime change, or the unsolicited establishment of international norms in the foreseeable future. America has already employed lacking measures at all three levels of war from ~1964 to 1973/'75, and again from 2001 to present; at this point, American can choose to learn from the mistaken attitude it took after 1973/'75, or it can repeat those mistakes as well. If I were a betting man...

I think the answer to your last question can only be answered on a case by case basis. The Northern Alliance apparently was a good partner, and perhaps the only partner, we had to work with in 2001/2 when we invaded Afghanistan. However, it was apparent shortly afterwards that Karzai was an ineffectual leader for Afghanistan. Nonetheless, we continued to throw good money after bad in attempting to prop up his government. We did the same with Maliki in Iraq. I'm not a fan of our COIN doctrine, but to be fair we can't assess if our COIN doctrine would have worked because the policy decisions already determined the outcome. For a lot of reasons we unable/unwilling to back away from the bad policy decisions. Making the wrong policy decision is completely understandable due to our ignorance at the time. Not changing our mind after we learned we erred is a bit tougher to deal with. Not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but reportedly our senior leaders stated we couldn't win in Vietnam, but they didn't want to be the ones responsible for losing it, so kept throwing our best and finest at the problem they knew the military couldn't solve. Once we get in a situation like this, it is like running on a treadmill, and no matter how fast we run we're still in the same place. All the while people are dying, and billions of dollars are being spent. COIN die hards tend to believe that we just stay another 10 years we can make an ineffective government legitimate. They believe their doctrine is deterministic, or in other words they confuse tactics with strategy. In my view their arguments are helpful because they mislead decision makers. We don't need to do COIN better as much as we need to do policy better.

Going to your first question, opinions vary, but it appears there was no good reason to invade Iraq and lot of bad reasons. Some of this was only seeable in hindsight, but not all of it. Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S., not the Taliban, so making the focus of our war the Taliban just because they hosted al-Qaeda seems like a bit of a misstep to me. The Taliban certainly aren't likeable, and like most Americans I was glad to see the brutes removed from power, but our real adversary was al-Qaeda and our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq simply made their movement stronger for lots of reasons. Again, some foreseeable, others not.

The answer to your question is it depends on our objectives. Our objectives must feasible, and we must be willing to bear the costs to achieve them. When determine they're not feasible, or the cost is too high, then it is time to change the strategy, not keep clinging to it. The military should be self-critical of its performance, that is how we improve, but military operations don't happen in a void, they operate within a political context. In simple terms, that political context was f'd up.

Paul:

Considering RantCorp's thoughts below, and my response thereto, your questions here could not have come at a better time.

The long-term solution was/is thought to be:

a. To address what is believed to be the "root cause" of all outlying state and societal problems; these to include: insurgency, terrorism, genocide, civil war, poor response to natural disaster, etc., etc., etc.

b. This "root cause" -- of all these such problems (and others) -- is thought to be that these outlying states and societies are not organized, ordered and oriented more along modern western political, economic and social lines. Evidence? States and societies that ARE organized, order and oriented more along modern western political, economic and social lines; these such states and societies are -- conspicuously -- NOT plagued with the problems identified in my paragraph "a" above.

This is what made nation-building COIN so attractive (to wit: it addressed the "root causes") and why it, thus, became the modus operandi of our post-9/11 world.

(Using our assets to simply monitor such outlying states and societies -- and only then act against them, only on the margins if our interests were directly threatened or attacked -- this such approach is thought to be what got us 9/11, and a Saddam who was still a pain in the butt well after the 1st Gulf War.)

Thus, considering RantCorp's thoughts immediately below, and my response which followed thereafter, your questions could not be more timely.

Why?

Because, by addressing your questions above, I am able to:

a. Point directly to why nation-building COIN -- rather than some other approach -- became the order of the day. (To wit: it addressed the "root causes.") And

b. Point directly to why one must look:

1. More to the ideas, beliefs and motivations of the West in these matters.

2. And less to the status, ideas, beliefs and/or motivations of our opponents.

3. To determine why one approach or another (example: nation-building COIN) was adopted and implemented.

Bill--this might explain just why COIN was a failure. Taken from the Torture thread.

In an article in Strife (from KIngs War Studies) a former US Army colonel asks questions that maybe fit here better than the partisan politics in the USA:

Quote:
There are important questions about how the program may have affected the conduct of the wars, including:

1. To what extent did the perceptions and justifications of the program, to include the actual and perceived use of torture, affect our soldiers and their mission?

2. To what extent did senior leaders’ public justifications of the program affect broader policy and strategy options in the conduct of the wars?

3. To what extent did perceptions and justifications of the program promote an ends-justify-the-means mentality within the military in Afghanistan and Iraq?

4. To what extent did the perceptions and justifications foster a belief in the military that such practices were acceptable and could be used by them in combat?

5. To what extent did ‘false positives’ or erroneous reports, perhaps made out of fear of torture, lead to military actions that cost lives (civilian and military) and created unnecessary enemies?

6. To what extent did the actual and perceived use of torture compromise the military’s moral standing in the eyes of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq?

In what ways did that affect the mission and its prospects of success?

Link:http://strifeblog.org/2014/12/11/did...merican-lives/
__________________

RantCorp said:

"I would flag CvC’s first and foremost question pertaining to the nature of the war on which you wish to embark. IMO if we engage an individual as an insurgent - when in fact he is a UW fighter - our best efforts do not stand a snowflakes chance in hell of prevailing."

Herein, I suggest:

a. That we (the U.S./West) were, quite obviously, embarked upon wars to transform outlying states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines. And herein I suggest:

b. That the Jihadi Joes (JJ), UW fighters, et al, (regardless of their various motivations); these folks tended to get in our way.

Thus, in determining the reason why we adopted the approach that we did to achieve these state and societal transformations (not so much COIN as nation-building?), this, I suggest, has:

1. Much less to do with the nature of the enemy or the status of the individuals noted in my item "b" above,

2. And much more to do with the political objective of the United States/the West (item "a" above) and how it wished to achieve same (in these cases, via "nation-building" poorly disguised as COIN?).

My argument here stated another way:

In questions of this nature (those related to understanding the nature of the war that one wishes to embark upon):

a. It is better to look to the motivations of those who are knowingly and formally contemplating such wars (in our cases above, the motivations of the United States/the West).

b. And less to the motivations of those who, via these aggressors' actions, have (inadvertently or otherwise) found themselves to be involved in such wars.

RC---the reason I place greater emphasis on eastern Ukraine ie Russian UW is that it is a willing to use a nuclear tipped "total whole of government approach to UW" in support to political warfare.

And it can stop on a dime, change directions as it needs to and go in an entirely different direction as it has a strategic strategy with a clearly defined end state, and does not have to wait for civilian leaders to make up their minds.

That makes it far more dangerous than what is playing out under IS in Syria and Iraq.

By the way it appears as if the US is getting ready to redeploy back into Europe nuclear tipped cruise missiles and this time there is no peace movement sponsored by the Russians to stop it--as a response to the ongoing violation by the Russians of the INF and Conventional Forces Treaty---ie the disarmament of armored vehicles via OSCE.

RantCorp---would agree that your five points did in fact apply to say the 1920 folks---but a majority of Ansar al Sunnah and much of the Salafist side of Islamic Army in Iraq were into not the five points you mention as the individual Emirs tended to hold a religious sway over their individual cells.

There were others that made it into the system via JSOC and or selected BCT targeting where your five reasons for fighting were not their core reasons.

All I heard from well over 1000 detainees were the constant words, torture, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Americans beat/mishandle Iraqi's and on and on---the Abu Ghraib scandal and Gitmo hurt us badly and still does in Iraq.

What many Americans tend to not know---theses same accusations could be heard coming from the various Sunni tribal leaders and again many Americans tend to think insurgents are somehow not part and parcel of a general Sunni society which they are especially in Iraq where their tribal affiliations are still solid which we can see in their ongoing support to IS.

You almost had to cut through the "perception" chatter in order to get into a conversation and if they were treated with respect and you built a good rapport you would often hear the words---"did not know Americans could be friendly--not what we expected for treatment"---but not many in the TF 134 system displayed the ability to build rapport---remember 2005-2007 was marked by heavy fighting and IED usage-with the Shia side starting to kick in with their EFPs- countered by an equally heavy "let's pay back for 9/11 attitude".

We were in fact in a deep phase two guerrilla war and never really saw it and in a guerrilla environment COIN will never work.

Would even venture the comment that what sufficed as COIN --meaning whose ever definition was used was doomed to fail and did fail due to the Abu Ghraib scandal and everything around Gitmo.

In any UW environment the concept of "perception" plays a massive role among the population and you know as well just how rumors are part and parcel of UW especially in Iraq and in the ME in general.

Well worth the read.

"If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no [Islamic State] now. ... It made us all."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story …

Background to Camp Bucca---in mid 2006, I had to literally shake the national IC tree in order to get their attention meaning I had strong reporting on the ongoing AQI/IAI insurgent hands on training that was occurring within the Abu Ghraib prison camp and we had absolutely no collection requirements for their ongoing activities ---when I first started writing reports on their insurgent training activities I had to fight to get the reports into the system--after several hit Washington then suddenly everyone realized we had a "Insurgent University" in the middle of Abu Ghraib being supported by the US Army.

Then in typical Army fashion it was decided to simply ship anyone identified as part of the "Insurgent University" to Camp Bucca and there is where this article then picks up on the continuing insurgent education where we the US Army provided shelter, air conditioning, great health care, three great meals, soccer, and flat screen TVs towards the "university's" efforts.

And yet some still continue to "claim COIN was successful"?

The last portion of the article is telling and goes to the heart of why current US policy towards IS will not work.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in Jihad,” he said. “I do,” he continued, his voice trailing away. “But what options do I have? If I leave, I am dead.”

The arc of his involvement with what is now the world’s most menacing terrorist group mirrors many others who now hold senior positions in the group: first a battle against an invading army, then a score to be settled with an ancient sectarian foe, and now, a war that could be acting out an end of days prophecy.

In the world of the Bucca alumni, there is little room for revisionism, or reflection. Abu Ahmed seems to feel himself swept along by events that are now far bigger than him, or anyone else.

“There are others who are not ideologues,” he said, referring to senior Isis members close to Baghdadi. “People who started out in Bucca, like me. And then it got bigger than any of us. This can’t be stopped now. This is out of the control of any man. Not Baghdadi, or anyone else in his circle.”

I'd appreciate it if you'd comment on a couple of thoughts I had when reading your post. Contrary to Robert's suggestion from earlier, I'm actually curious for your thoughts.

1) I think your point that "Jihadi Joe", as you call him, operates on a variety of conflicting and shifting motives is uncontestable. I also agree that many of those who swell the ranks of al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or ISIS/DAESH are unemployed, or mentally ill, or bored out of their skulls, or as Michael Totten noted in a recent column, <A HREF="http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/islamic-state-… plain ol' psychopaths</A>. (With respect to your entirely legitimate statement that "these are the very last sentiments a command would desire in the makeup of its foot-soldiers if it was hoping to inspire/execute/sustain a Islamic Revolution or Resistance", one might respond with former SecDef Rumsfeld's unpopular (albeit usually quoted out of context) statement that "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.") However, it also seems obvious that some, and particularly the leaders of these organizations - the bin Ladens, Zawahiris, Mullah Omars, 9/11 hijackers, and such - are true believers, often well educated, frequently affluent. As you seem to note, many who decide to join up do so from situations of weakness or vulnerability, and in at least some of those cases their radicalization involves indoctrination into Islam. Do you agree with these observations and, if so, how do they factor into your appraisal of the wider campaign?

2) Following from that acknowledgement of the sort of folks who comprise the rank and file recruits of the organizations in question, I would counter with the point that all COIN doctrine, even the fairly watered-down version seen in current DoD publications, acknowledges that an insurgent force (or UW fighters, if you prefer) will consist of true believers (sometimes dubbed "dead-enders") who will need to be either killed or incarcerated for the long term. However, in many campaigns (to include the more successful phases of Iraq, though less so in Afghanistan; certainly in my favorite example of Dhofar), COIN forces have seen success through both direct payments of insurgents to stop fighting, and through the creation of jobs and overall conditions that hinder recruitment of the sort of unemployed, destitute locals you described. Furthermore, guerrilla warfare doctrine as espoused by Mao, Giap, Zawahiri, and Guevara stresses the need to secure the support of the local populace, thus identifying popular support as <I>a</I> center of gravity (as opposed to <I>the sole</I> center of gravity, in case Bill M. is reading this) to be contested by the insurgent/UW fighter versus the COIN force. I worry that your appraisal above focuses solely on the fighters themselves, overlooking the potential "governed" whose support the insurgent/guerrilla will eventually need in order to succeed. Thoughts?

Again, I appreciated your insight, and would appreciate your further thoughts on the items above if you're able to respond.

Bill C.: As I've noted previously, I feel that your criticism of Cold War COIN doctrine as outlined in item e.1. above, exhibits a harshness not justified by the historical reality of either the Cold War or, perhaps, by recent events. Cold War COIN had its successes, and both successful and failed Cold War COIN doctrine provides relevant lessons which merit evaluation and, in some cases, adoption by post-9/11 COIN forces. Western Cold War COIN practitioners were not always the defenders of the status quo, nor are post-9/11 COIN practitioners always the destroyer of the status quo (at least, not on balance - the drive for regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq arose because the status quo maintained an unacceptable degree of strategic risk, though I don't believe that it's a foregone conclusion that the Taliban/al Qaeda team in Afghanistan or the various insurgent groups in Iraq were less revolutionary than ISAF or MNF-I). I dont think you're entirely off base, but I do think your appraisal is too extreme on that one point. Save for that (slightly) dissenting statement regarding e.1., I agree with your appraisal of the situation: the muddled Western attempt at "Quik-E-COIN" is, based upon the available evidence, a failure.

No one is claiming that "we had a COIN success in Iraq". If you'll actually read anyone else's comments, we're claiming that COIN wasn't actually <I>attempted</I> in Iraq in the first place.

I would really appreciate it if you'd actually read my comments, instead of looking at them with the singular intent of pulling them apart in order to justify yet another incoherent diatribe such as the one you've just posted.

I'm not arguing that guerrilla warfare or "swarm attacks" are anything new (nor are any of the folks you lambaste trying to do so). My citation of Ecclesiastes, if you'll actually read back, was in reference to the fact that the same tried and tested COIN tactics, techniques, and procedures that were successful in Gaul and Britannia around two thousand years ago were still effective in Dhofar in the 1970's; and, insofar as they were used at the tactical and operational levels before being subsumed by the Army's flawed COIN doctrine at the strategic level, they were successful in Afghanistan and Iraq, too. Conversely, the same flawed COIN TTPs that have been less than successful in Afghanistan and Iraq were unsuccessful in Algeria, Indochina, Tsarist Russia, Revolutionary War era America, and so on and so forth.

I don't see where you've posted any evidence of these theories you espouse; rather, your points about the release of some "IAI" leader only underscore my point that improvised doctrine, combined with tactical and operational mistakes, undermine any effort to consolidate tactical and operational gains into a strategic victory. Insofar as I can even understand the point that you seem to be trying to make, you don't seem to be saying anything new or groundbreaking. Releasing an "IAI" leader qualifies as a tactical mistake (presumably fueled by poor engagement with the Iraqi legal system?) that had strategic consequences. Also, I dismiss the notion that the ISI/AQI offensive in 2007 (do you have a link to any actual sources on that?) was "practice" for what's going on now. Most would agree that the bulk of ISIS/DAESH adherents aren't Iraqis who were biding their time until/since the American withdrawal, but new local and international recruits combined with "veterans" of the Syrian Civil War. If anything, that further undermines your claims that the current situation on the Iraqi-Syrian border represents a failure of American COIN efforts in Iraq, which were largely successful by the time of the precipitous 2011 withdrawal; rather, it's an indictment of the Assad/Khamenei/Putin school of attrition counterinsurgency (which, to bring it back to your area of interest, also hasn't worked in Chechnya, as we saw last week).

Bill C: I appreciate your thoughtful response. I'd like to offer a couple of points of clarification for your consideration. First, you say:

<BLOCKQUOTE>I appreciate that thedrosophil understands what the mission actually is. To wit: to transform outlying states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines and to, thereby, incorporate these outlying states and societies more into the global economy and international community. (These folks, in this way, to become less of a problem for/burden on -- and more of an asset to -- the global economy/international community -- or so the thinking goes.)</BLOCKQUOTE>

I think it's important to note that the missions will typically be different. For example, the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq were related, but unique; there were points of overlap and points of distinction. This is an extension of the clarification that not all "nails" require a "COIN" hammer, nor is the "combined arms maneuver" hammer appropriate to all "nails". In some cases, but obviously not all, it will be in the interest of America and her allies to effect regime change and to encourage international norms along Western (though I would prefer to call them "internationally recognized" economic, political, and social values. America and her allies face a variety of strategic challenges, which in turn require a variety of strategic remedies, in order to tie up into what will inevitably be a jumbled strategic knot in lieu of a nice, tidy strategic bow.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Example: In classic COIN, one might be happy to only replace a non-cooperating dictator with a cooperating dictator. Understanding here that going straight to democracy may be more than these particular people can reasonably understand and/or deal with. And, thus, be more likely to produce counterproductive rather than productive results. This same argument (don't try to do too much too soon) to often apply to the application of our equally alien and profane "modern" economic and social ideas and norms.</BLOCKQUOTE>

I also think that it's important to remember that democracy is not a "Western" or "American" value. The residents of Hong Kong have been demonstrating in favor of legitimate democracy for the last couple of months. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan host three of the most stable and dynamic democracies in the world. Many of the Arabs who took to the streets from 2010 to the present want democracy; in 2009, it was Persians. Democracy as we know it may have been nurtured by the Western world, but the idea that people would govern themselves directly or through representatives is not distinctly Western. At the same time, it's important to remember that true democracy goes beyond voting - for example, Iranians are afforded an opportunity to vote, but no one would call Iran a democracy. Democracy requires values that have traditionally been called "liberal", but not in the "left wing versus right wing" sense: respect for the rights of minorities, the rule of law, universal education, pluralism, and such. Allowing people to vote is easy; to carry the example forward, the reason why Oman is not a Western-style democracy today is that the Omanis of 1970 had no concept of any of these functions, hence the traditional COIN approach of quickly establishing security in order to slowly demilitarize in favor of a long-term development agenda.

<BLOCKQUOTE>What is to be rejected (because it has indeed failed ) is not COIN, per se, but COIN of the post-Cold War variety</BLOCKQUOTE>

I'd also be careful not to tie legitimate doctrines to a specific time period. To continue with the baby vs. bathwater analogy we seem to have settled on, I believe a great deal of good scholarship on COIN has been generated since 2002/'03. FM 3-24/MCWP 3.33-6 isn't worthless; if anything, it suffers from a sort of myopia. Dr. Nagl, Colonel Kilcullen, Generals Petraeus and Mattis, all have made valuable contributions. And, in point of fact, one of my other interests is the Roman campaigns in Gaul and Brittania, which feature many of the same concepts that have led to success in modern (or rather, much more recent) COIN campaigns. The citation from Ecclesiastes on the opening page of my MSc dissertation is apt: "There is nothing new under the sun."

Bill C.: I'm in your debt for pointing to an actual citation. I suspect that I spent at least an hour trying different Google searches to try to find it while working on my dissertation, without success. While I have come to take much of Kilcullen's vision of COIN with a grain of salt, I think that these points of Kilcullen's points are valuable; I'm tempted to pick a few bones, but perhaps I'll leave it for now, save for one thought (which is not necessarily a disagreement, so much as observations): I believe that the Cold War era figures he cited - Galula, Thompson, Mao, and others, though specifically excluding Guevara, whose treatise on guerrilla warfare amounts to a summary of Mao for the brain damaged - deserve their rightful place in the corpus of counterinsurgency scholarship. For example, I suspect that Galula's "ink spots" concept could have been used to great effect in Afghanistan had General McChrystal had the presence of mind to realize that, unlike the Algeria of the 1950's, Afghanistan's "center of gravity" is the rural periphery from whence he withdrew his distributed outposts, rather than the cities which he used the redistributed troops to protect. Another example is Thompson, who was the only theorist I know of who stressed the need for the sort of "clear political aim" that might have salvaged the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. As such, I feel that the best approach is to treat what you term "classic COIN" - from the Colonial Era - and what you term "classical COIN" - from the Cold War - as opportunities to deepen the proverbial toolbox, as opposed to contrary theories attempting to displace one another within it. As the Internet and my Kindle have drastically reduced the cost and footprint of my proverbial "bookshelf", and as I've found volumes at least as far back as Thucydides to be of value in understanding COIN and a variety of other problem sets, I'm reticent to bin anything without good cause. And in all honesty, I suspect that none of this conflicts with Kilcullen's point, or with your own thoughts that you've graciously shared over the last few days; rather, it provides a wider perspective on the topic to contrast with his rather specific observations about a subset of recent and ongoing campaigns.