Mark Twain on Counterinsurgency

Correction to above - that's chapter three, not two.

Some might find chapter two ("The Philippine Insurrection") of Major General Benjamin Delahauf Foulois' memoirs worth a few minutes of their time. That full chapter can be read online <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bqOQrBir9swC&printsec=frontcover#v=one…;. Quick excerpt:
<blockquote>The guerrilla phase of the insurrection was tying down about 70,000 American troops by this time. In the States, the re-election of McKinley in 1900 caused a deeper look into the Philippine problem. The result was that a number of State Department and War Department experts arrived to study the people and figure out what it would take to make them stop fighting Americans and start on the road to self-government. It was our job to carry out the program dreamed up by these experts, which included the setting up of schools for the children wherever American troops could do so.

"Sergeant Foulois," my top kick announced one day with a big grin, "you are now a schoolteacher. Congratulations!"

I thought the sergeant had been in the Philippines too long. To tell Foulois that he was a schoolteacher was like telling one of our Army mules that he was a company commander.

"Sergeant," I told him, "the joke's on you. I never finished school. I couldn't teach anybody how to write his name."

The sergeant's grin was suddenly lost in the storm that crossed his features. "That's exactly what you are going to teach, Foulois. Your job will be to teach every kid in Naga to write his name, and start from there. You're stupid, but you're a genius compared to those kids who have never heard of a school. Get going!"

I went.</blockquote>The school episode is just a fraction of the whole. Foulois & Co spent more than their fair share of time in the islands, condensed to one chapter it's a quick and insightful read, very applicable to this discussion.

I agree with Mike, Publius and Mister Clemens. Though I believe the issue is not semantic nor is it "what is COIN..." It is that our arrogance and overreach compounded by willful ignorance of other nations and cultures allied with failure to adapt and some bureaucratic missteps has simply made us lose the bubble...

The COIN bit is much overplayed. We do not do it well and we need not, should not, entertain it. There are other and better ways. Publius is right, we <i>are</i> Imperialists. Reluctant to be sure but the world still seems to need us to do that (while not liking us because they do...) and we need to do it for now. We do <u>not</u> have to do it as stupidly as we seem determined, for some reason, to do...

Since the 1950s over several Administrations and Congresses led by both political parties we totally emasculated both our foreign intelligence and our foreign affairs agencies. That resulted in the Armed Forces and DoD by default picking up roles and missions they should not have and delving into things better left alone. We have done ourselves no favors.

Thus far, we have done little lasting damage but only because our opponents have been even more incompetent. We should not -- cannot -- rely on being so lucky in the future. The repair of the Department of State and the foreign intelligence services should take precedence over any defense rehashing...

With the possible exception of an urgently needed reset, reorientation and return to primary mission of Special Forces and simply better, more thorough training in the basics for the rest of the force...

@Gulliver:

The only problem with your hairsplitting is that it's just that: hairsplitting. The reality is that our American version of COIN in Afghanistan--and in Iraq, for that matter--is nothing more than imperialism. Think not? Then find the friendly allied government that invited us into Afghanistan or Iraq. The governments in each of those nations are U.S. proxies. Our troops are not fighting for the people of those nations; they are fighting to prop up governments we established.

Face it. We're imperialists. And we were in the Philippines as well. Twain: "We have no more business in China than in any other country that is not ours....It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation."

Mark Twain could have and likely would have written those words today. This long-dead man understood the dangers of these foreign exercises. And I have to say that right along with Mr. Twain, I, too "wish I could see what we're getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation."

Vietnam actually would meet the COIN test because we at least were invited in by a friendly allied government. Small comfort to those of us who participated in that particular adventure. The ultimate and only noble COIN enterprise in which U.S. forces have participated remains that small unpleasantness from 1861 to 1865 on our own turf. That was COIN worth doing. That was COIN that had to be done.

If we find it necessary to our national security to throw our weight around and otherwise act in an imperialistic fashion in these foreign lands, then we should be honest enough to say so. But this whole COIN business really just smacks of putting lipstick on the proverbial pig.

As Mike said, Twain wrote some scathing critiques of the American intervention in the Philippines. One entitled "To a Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901) can be found here: http://bit.ly/aiNuAU.

Best,

Erich

Mike and Gulliver:

"We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas"

First, a disclaimer and apology - I didn't listen to the NPR audio. I did, however, enjoy the reference to Family Guy in a recent post of yours (apologies - sincere ones - if that besmirches the solemnity of that post).

This raises a couple of points. First, it alludes to the difficulty of Phase IV. I haven't read Linn, so I don't what the state of planning was (or wasn't) for the Spanish-American War/Philippines, but Twain's quote suggests that Phase IV is *intrinsically* and perhaps *inevitably* difficult. This runs counter to the narrative that has been seen with regard to OIF, which is essentially, "We screwed up Phase IV planning" (e.g., Fallows, "Blind into;" Ferguson, "No End") with the implication that had planning been proper or properly implemented, Phase IV would have been easier and more successful (to say the least) than it was.

The second point is somewhat similar, and regards a government that is "Filipino" in nature, rather than "In Our Image." What if the preexisting Filipino nation (or colony, I suppose), or the nascent one emerging, was the *most* Filipino nation that could arise, rather than what Twain apparently had in mind? I use that qualifier *most* because there may be no ideal-type Filipino (or Iraqi, or...) nation that could have taken form. Would we have looked at the Marcos regime is something to strive for, or (for another example the Diem regime (Moyar's "Triumph" notwithstanding)? Nation-states are social constructs (Andersen, "Imagined"), for one thing. Contingency plays a role, too - what seems a good form of government at one point may be a bad form of government at another point in the not too-distant future or past. In sum, perhaps there is no ideal-type point toward which Phase IV ought to go - and I imagine not having a definite form of government in mind would probably make planning difficult.

ADTS

Gulliver,

Good points. The quotation that I chose shares his thoughts on imperialism, but he actually wrote extensively on the tactics used by the US Army during the occupation of the Phillipines. If you fast forward to time 4:30 of the NPR audio, he addresses the commander's use of kill or capture in the mission statement prior to the Moro massacre near the island of Jolo. Regardless, I found the NPR audio interesting.

Mike

I am always bemused by those, like Clemens, who so well observe and appreciate the freedom, justice, and individual opportunity provided by the U.S. federal Constitutional system, yet fail miserably to see that it is precisely that system or a close analog that is required for "native peoples" to have even the slightest chance of peacefully governing themselves and advancing the best of their own individual and any cultural variation in their societies/nations. Anyone who thinks that fostering lesser evil or temporarily friendly tyrants (whether individuals or ideologies, like islam/sharia) to rule any polity will produce any real advancement in the freedom and peaceful coexistence of such polity is historically challenged, tragically myopic, and/or seriously deluded.