Our favorite anti-COIN Colonel, Gian Gentile, and yet SWJ friend - go figure that one out, continues his personal crusade in this recent International Herald Tribune opinion piece - Mired in 'Surge' Dogma.
Here are some tidbits (regular SWJ and Abu Muqawama readers are well familiar with this drum beat):
The US Army and other parts of America's defense establishment have become transfixed by the promise of counterinsurgency...
The promise of counterinsurgency is to turn war into a program of social-scientific functions that will achieve victory...
The current US counterinsurgency program rests on the dubious assumption that the surge in Iraq was a successful feat of arms...
The recent uptick in bloodshed shows that the war is not over...
Yet influential American counterinsurgency experts have simply co-opted the counter-Maoist model. There is no originality - or at least a serious consideration for very different alternatives...
Many army officers and Department of Defense thinkers seem to be able to think only about how to apply the perceived counterinsurgency lessons from Iraq to Afghanistan...
Perhaps under the Obama administration, the army and the greater defense establishment will embrace creativity instead of dogma and at least consider other options. If not, our way ahead has already been decided for us...
Come on Gian, be part of the solution here - not the problem, and give General Petraeus and company credit where credit is due - no one - read - no one - is suggesting plopping down the Iraq model onto Afghanistan and even the most ardent counterinsurgency proponent freely admits we must maintain our military capabilities across a "full spectrum" of possible scenarios. I'd like you to at least acknowledge that we must maintain a reasonable capability to conduct COIN when all is said and done. I served through the post-Vietnam denial of all things "irregular" -- and look at where that got us.
Comments
And <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07troops.html?_r=1&hp">In New Strategy, US Will Defend Kabul Environs</a> at <i>The New York Times</i>.
This just in:
Sigh.
Check this Reuter's article; <a href=http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4B601U20081207> LINK</a>
I know you don't and do not think that anyone who gives it a lot of thought will err by trying an exact repetition. My concern is for the units that arrive in-country and due to habit and familiarity base what they do on the ground on what they did on their last tour -- which happened to be elsewhere.
It always annoys Gian when I mention the MACV Staffers who were arrivals from Europe and who attempted European solutions in the paddies. They were real, that happened and it is indicative of the fact that folks do what they're trained to do. Conversely, we didn't do Iraq well early on because no one had trained to do that sort of thing.
Guys who are fighting off the Alligators don't have time to think grand thoughts. They will adjust once in a new AO; it would be nice if their thinking could be reoriented BEFORE they go instead of slowly and the hard way after arrival in country...
As you say, that effort should be a<blockquote>"subset of a strategy that has a defined end-state in mind."</blockquote>
<i>However, while I read what is said, I also see what is happening. We need to be quite cautious in what we do in Afghanistan. The inadvertent human tendency to do what worked before confronted with a different situation is difficult to overcome and it appears to me that Gian is correct. We are about to apply, intentionally or not, an Iraqi template in a totally different situation. This, in my view is unwise.</i>
Ken,
Could not agree more about being quite cautious in what we do in Afghanistan. If I remember correctly there were many who doomed the Iraq "surge strategy" (incorrect in that the surge was a tactic of a new COIN strategy) because it was merely a rehash of earlier surges that were part of Operation Together Forward. What was missed then and I think missing now is that an increase in numbers should and must be a subset of a strategy that has a defined end-state in mind. Hard, yes, but then again no one ever said that war was easy.
Dave
An added thought -- forgive me, I'm old and slow...
<b>Gian</b> said in the referenced IHT article:<blockquote>"...But the surge and the counterinsurgency program that purportedly lowered the violence in Iraq has become the template for action in Afghanistan."</blockquote>To which <b>Dave</b> responded:<blockquote>"...- no one - read - no one - is suggesting plopping down the Iraq model onto Afghanistan..."</blockquote>
Have to side with Gian on that one. Dave is correct in that most are in fact saying that the two theaters are dissimilar and that most acknowledge different approaches will be required.
However, while I read what is said, I also see what is happening. We need to be quite cautious in what we do in Afghanistan. The inadvertent human tendency to do what worked before confronted with a different situation is difficult to overcome and it appears to me that Gian is correct. We are about to apply, intentionally or not, an Iraqi template in a totally different situation. This, in my view is unwise.
Gian, as you know, I'm pretty much on your side in this argument. I might espouse a slightly different rhetorical approach but we're in agreement on the issue.
We do differ on this aspect:<blockquote>"Dave, I disagree with your concluding point that puts forward the notion of big, bad army in the 80s and 90s after Vietnam didnt listen to the Coin experts about the lessons of coin and because of those things we were screwed up in Iraq..."</blockquote>Note I have truncated your statement. I do that because whether we were screwed up until the surge or sometime before is academic; what is fact is that we were initially screwed up and it was in large measure though not totally due to eschewing COIN for all practical purposes throughout the 80s and 90s. You further said:<blockquote>"...Sorry, Dave, as I have argued in many other places, history and the recent past in Iraq do not support that flawed narrative. Such a narrative is too self-serving, and it is too powerful in its Orwellian ability to steamroll the American Army down a continued path toward a coin-only future army."Without getting into the recent past in Iraq, your contention is that 'history' does not support the narrative that COIN was ignored for a couple of decades.</blockquote>
Having been in or working for the Army as a civilian during that entire period, having tried to tell more than one General Officer we were erring in our focus, particularly post 1991 -- and having been told I was not following the Army narrative, to "be a team player" or just to go sit quietly in the corner, your reading of History is either selective or flawed. The Army did not want to discuss in any detail COIN or stability operations during the period and the results of that speak for themselves. It was a bad error.
There is, as they say, a happy medium. Given future uncertainties we need to have a full spectrum force that can do COIN or MCO. that is an achievable and sensible goal. To lean too far toward either pole for the Army as a whole -- as opposed to elements which may be focussed -- would be a mistake.
Dear Dave:
At least you didnt start off with the quip "well, Gian, there you go again," as somebody else a while back did.
Even though I am in disagreement, often times stridently and fundamentally, with many of the SWC members, to include yourself, I do see this community as a group of friends and professionals and I appreciate you acknowledging that about me with the SWC. Heck, you can even ask my buddy Neil Smith who had a great visit to West Point a few weeks ago and Ray Kimball brought him down to the History Department to give a talk to the faculty; Neil was a huge hit with the Department and me too. His talk was articulate, informed, and cordial. Neil and I even sat down for a nice hour-long chat between the two of us after his talk. So I am not the "anti-coin" ogre which sometimes might be the caricature that folks take away about me.
More to the point here on Gentile as "anti-Coin. Dave, I disagree with your characterization of me being "anti-coin." I am not. And I certainly will acknowledge your statement that the Army and other parts of DoD need to have a counterinsurgency capability, along with stability, irregular, etc. In fact I can point to many, many of my published works, and spoken statements at conferences, panels, etc, where I express that important fact. The most recent example where I acknowledge the need to be able to do coin would be my point-counterpoint piece with John Nagl in David Gurneys JFQ. And not to make too much of this but I did personally do coin in combat in Iraq in 2006 as a Cavalry Squadron commander in West Baghdad. I understood Galula, and classic counterinsurgency theory and practice. I paid attention at the Coin Academy at Taji in December 2005 and did my best to apply the things that I learned there from Mark Ulrich during my year on the ground in 2006. Although not perfect, my outfit did "get it" and I think that others who were aware of our operations there would agree. I say this most emphatically not out of narcissism or self-congratulation, but because I worry sometimes that the labels and brands applied to me as being "anti-coin" might suggest I was the typical caricature of the "knuckle-dragger" who didnt get it. But we did.
The argument that I have been making about Coin has more to do with where the Army is at now and where it heads in the future. If our current focus on Coin today means that we transform the American Army into a light infantry based constabulary force to police the worlds unstable areas and in the process "change entire societies" then, well, OK in that much broader context you can say that I am anti-coin. In the years ahead with dwindling budgets the American Army will have to make some real hard choices about how our force will look in the future. And that future is uncertain; and there may be some hard fighting at the higher level of the conflict spectrum ahead of us facing Frank Hoffmans superb characterization of future threats as the "hybrid enemy." So my point has been that we need to have an expeditionary Army that has strategic, operational, and tactical mobility, has firepower, has protection, and can fight in a sustained and dispersed and distributed fashion. I am still drawn to Macgreggors concept for the future force in this regard. And that future force certainly must know how, when told to do so, to occupy, to do stability and coin operations. But I worry that our current hyper-focus on Coin and the assumption even by SecDef that the American military, specifically the Army in this case, will always be able to fight at the higher end of the conflict spectrum because that is what we have always been good at is dangerous, to say the least. If we are not careful that assumption will be operationalized in future force structure and training and we will end up with a constabulary force that can only police the empire. History shows what happens when a military establishment and its nation cant figure these things out. The British between the two world wars generally opted for an imperial police force, and look what that got them in summer 1940.
Moreover, I am not as you say, "anti-Surge," either. Perhaps a better term would be "anti-inaccurate-understanding-of-the-effects of the Surge." Of course I acknowledge the blood and guts spilled and the incredibly hard work and commitment of the Surge team under General Petraeus. What I have tried to get at is a clearer picture of the reasons for the lowering of violence in Iraq over the past two years and to make the simple, but crucially important point, that it was the other conditions that wrapped around the Surge that allowed folks to give the impression that it was the Surge doing most of the condition-changing work. I tried to demonstrate this point in a SWJ post last month in response to LTC(P) Kuehl about the sequencing of actions with regard to the Surge and the lowering of violence in Ameriyah in Spring and summer of 2007. To me, an accurate and less-triumphant telling of the Surge story is crucial if we want to get at a reasonable approach for Astan today and how we move into the future.
And I disagree with your point that "no one is suggesting plopping down the Iraq model on Afghanistan." I think that when viewed deeper than the superficial differences between the Iraq and Astan Surges that is EXACTLY what we have. If you read carefully and critically many of the things written by the leading experts down to the more junior officers we very much are replicating the Surge in Astan. When I say deeper I mean an appreciation for how the American Army has come to view counterinsurgency operations in terms of principles and rules. My point in the IHT piece was to show how these principles, like security of the people, etc, have become immutable rules that must be followed, and in so following them it demands a very prescriptive tactical and operational set of methods: lots of American combat boots on the ground, dispersed out into the population to win their hearts and minds, and from there build a new nation. If we can only view problems of instability and insurgency throughout the world in this narrow way, then in fact we have become mired in dogma which was again the bigger and crucial point of my piece.
Dave, I disagree with your concluding point that puts forward the notion of big, bad army in the 80s and 90s after Vietnam didnt listen to the Coin experts about the lessons of coin and because of those things we were screwed up in Iraq until rescued by the Surge. Sorry, Dave, as I have argued in many other places, history and the recent past in Iraq do not support that flawed narrative. Such a narrative is too self-serving, and it is too powerful in its Orwellian ability to steamroll the American Army down a continued path toward a coin-only future army.
Lastly, I do not accept your statement that what I write is a "personal crusade" since it implies that I am the lone-wolf out there not getting things when everybody else in the free world does. This may seem to be the case to you within your own personal world of the SWJ blog, but I think, humbly, that there is a greater appreciation out there for the arguments I have been making. I find it interesting that whenever I criticize the Surge narrative or coin dominance in the Army some folks like to say I "personalize" things but when you and others criticize what I write and say it is then from the perspective of righteousness and truth.
I dare say Dave that you may want to re-read Eric Hoffers classic "The True Believer" because at least through your written words and statements that is what seemingly you and a select group of other coin experts have become.
Thanks for a feisty wake-up call this Saturday morning.