Comments
Gian,
I completely agree that insurgency is (and has always been) a matter of perception. Throughout history governments have rarely recognized or accepted as valid the perceptions of the populace that were most at work in moving the people to rebellion. From King George's dismissal of the list of complaints raised by the American colonies, to Marie Antionette's "let them ead cake," to the KSA's "you have no taxation, so you get no representation," attitudes. (See my post to WILF's current article for more on this)
What is critical is to be able to appreciate which perceptions are critical, to understand how the populace feels on those critical issues, and then for the US, to shape our efforts to be perceived as an advocate for helping to address those perceptions.
General Petreasu has been good for the Army and good for America. That so many have elevated their perceived reasons for his success to such heights is not the General's fault. I suspect if a conversation were held with him in trusted private he would admit to the temporal shortcomings of the approached attributed to him. Generals, like CEOs, are driven by the quarterly earnings statement far more than the long term health of the company. Sad that (on both counts)
Like you, I hope we can break away from this inertia prior to the next QDR. If America builds an IW force going into the coming drawdown, we will be as unprepared for the next big war as we were for WWI, II and Korea. Such mistakes will not be easy to overcome, and the consequences are very high indeed. Most of the little ones we can avoid or mitigate through smarter policy and strategy, not by corrupting our military in an effort to make our current obsolete perspectives work.
Bob
Bob:
Nice comparative points.
But it seems to me that it all turns on a word you use in your last sentence, "perspectives."
General Petraeus has been quoted as saying we are fighting a war of "perceptions." So in this form of post-modern war where there is no objective truth, just perceptions, and the constructions of them, the kind of contradiction you raise is easily burried in a constructed "perception" of confidence and light at the end of the tunnel.
Of course there is an objective truth somewhere out there, as complex and convoluted as it is, combat soldiers on the ground sense it, and certainly the Afghan people do as well. Yet "perceptions" constructed can shape, twist, cloud, and color that objective truth.
I sometimes wonder what the American Army will be like without David Petraeus. Will we lose our way? Will we find our way?
gian
Somebody is being less than honest. The General tells us that there are signs of progress and that insurgent attacks are down in May and June.
That does not square with these reports:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92909
"According to ICRC, displacement caused by military operations and localized fighting continues to affect communities in many parts of Afghanistan. Between January and April it assisted more than 51,000 IDPs, up 40 percent on the same period last year.
A separate study by UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Bank estimates that about 433,066 persons remain internally displaced in Afghanistan. Of those, 226,682 were displaced by conflict between June 2009 and April 2011."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93000
"KABUL, 17 June 2011 (IRIN) - More civilians were killed in Afghanistan in May than in any other month since 2007, raising fears of a further escalation during the summer with serious humanitarian implications, according to Georgette Gagnon, the human rights director of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
May saw 368 conflict-related civilian deaths and 593 civilian injuries, according to UNAMA.
Anti-government elements were responsible for 82 percent of all civilian deaths in May; 12 percent were attributed to pro-government forces; 6 percent were killed or injured in crossfire, it said.
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) killed 119 and injured 274 in May."
I don't know the truth, but I know that these two perspectives do not match up.
Bob