new COIN rules set out by McChrystal
ANDREW EXUM of CNAS posts a copy of General Stanley McChrystal's new counterinsurgency guidance for Afghanistan, which Spencer Ackerman jokes "would make McChrystal look like a dirty hippie if he didn't have four stars on either shoulder." The guidance is probably the least violence-oriented military document you're ever likely to see. It represents the latest in a sea change in strategic thinking that is underway with the rise of COIN (counterinsurgency) proponents to the top levels in the American military. The change is welcome. There is certainly no way to win a counterinsurgency war like Afghanistan without such a shift. The question remains whether it can be won even with the shift, and whether the game is worth the candle.
Losing lots of troops might even help you. Just look at northern Ireland. The Brits lost more soldiers than they managed to kill terrorists, and the day they killed the most people - bloody sunday - was the most counterproductive one during the entire conflict. Still, they ended up winning. Partly because people felt bad for them losing so many soldiers.
* After the debacle in Vietnam, instead of trying to understand COIN (USMC, as usual, had actually gotten a fair way when the war ended) the US armed forces felt so depressed by Vietnam they decided to forget all the hard earned lessons on COIN and instead concentrate on conventional warfare. It has taken them half a decade of active combat against guerilla forces to get a grip on it again. I do actually have pretty good hopes though, and if anyone can pull this off, it's a man with McChrystals background. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Well, your point certainly stands. Not killing people is rule 1 in COIN, watch McChrystals new restrictive rules on CAS.
I also agree that the Afghans won't feel sad for the Americans. Unlike in Northern Ireland, the cultural differences are too big for any real widespread solidarity. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
What Is Counterinsurgency? In his recent speeches, President Obama defines America's objectives in Afghanistan as: 1) suppressing the Taliban and national resistance forces to American occupation and the Karzai regime; 2) eliminating several score members of Al Qaeda; and 3) creating a stable pro-American government and economic infrastructure. David Galula, author of Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (RAND Corporation, 1964) and a recognized authority on the matter, stresses that counterinsurgency includes "building or rebuilding a political apparatus within the population." In this sense any counterinsurgency is, in reality, an insurgency. In Afghanistan, the Taliban ruled for several years until the U.S. and the CIA-backed Northern Alliance drove them out. Obama may define the Taliban as the insurgents, but the Taliban, who control many parts of Afghanistan, view the Americans as backing an insurgency against Taliban rule. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's military strategy for defeating the Taliban is to "protect the people from terror" through the tactic of "clear and hold." To "clear and hold" means to drive the Taliban out of their secure areas in the countryside, which Obama proposes to do through his "surge" of 30,000 troops, and then occupy those areas while systematically killing enough Taliban and nationalist forces (in urban areas as well), so that they no longer resist the occupation. The model for this "clear and hold/surge" strategy is Iraq. According to the conventional wisdom that dominates Official Washington, President George W. Bush's 2007 "surge" and the "clear and hold" strategy "won" the war in Iraq. The reality may have been much different - with a variety of factors including paying off Sunni tribes in 2006 and the grudging U.S. agreement in 2008 to withdraw from Iraq playing bigger roles in the drop in violence - but that is not what Washington's influential neoconservatives and their allies want people to believe. Read more...
In his recent speeches, President Obama defines America's objectives in Afghanistan as: 1) suppressing the Taliban and national resistance forces to American occupation and the Karzai regime; 2) eliminating several score members of Al Qaeda; and 3) creating a stable pro-American government and economic infrastructure.
David Galula, author of Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (RAND Corporation, 1964) and a recognized authority on the matter, stresses that counterinsurgency includes "building or rebuilding a political apparatus within the population."
In this sense any counterinsurgency is, in reality, an insurgency. In Afghanistan, the Taliban ruled for several years until the U.S. and the CIA-backed Northern Alliance drove them out.
Obama may define the Taliban as the insurgents, but the Taliban, who control many parts of Afghanistan, view the Americans as backing an insurgency against Taliban rule.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal's military strategy for defeating the Taliban is to "protect the people from terror" through the tactic of "clear and hold."
To "clear and hold" means to drive the Taliban out of their secure areas in the countryside, which Obama proposes to do through his "surge" of 30,000 troops, and then occupy those areas while systematically killing enough Taliban and nationalist forces (in urban areas as well), so that they no longer resist the occupation.
The model for this "clear and hold/surge" strategy is Iraq. According to the conventional wisdom that dominates Official Washington, President George W. Bush's 2007 "surge" and the "clear and hold" strategy "won" the war in Iraq.
The reality may have been much different - with a variety of factors including paying off Sunni tribes in 2006 and the grudging U.S. agreement in 2008 to withdraw from Iraq playing bigger roles in the drop in violence - but that is not what Washington's influential neoconservatives and their allies want people to believe. Read more...
Peace in the North was bought in hard cash: they addressed most of the underlying inequities and pumped in crap loads of money to raise standards of living for the people that would have been inclined to support the terrorists. Peace came when the terrorists needed to save face because their power base was eroding.
Are you really proposing that people in the North felt sorry for the Brits? Or did you mean people outside the North?
It's much harder to hate people who lose lots of soldiers without getting to kill a lot of people back, versus one who kills hordes of terrorists (and civilians) while losing no soldiers of his own.
COIN is often not about cumulative losses or costs, but about patience. And the people who have the most patience are the locals. The Brits had that patience because they had plenty of locals on their side. The losses and costs were never threatening from any real perspective: the Brits lost 50 times as many people during just the first day of the battle of Somme in 1916. Patience conquers. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
1969 Northern Ireland riots - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The rioting petered out by Sunday, 17 August. Eight people had been killed and 750 injured, of whom 133 (72 Catholics and 61 Protestants) were treated for gunshot wounds. In addition a total of 1,505 Catholic families and 315 Protestant ones were expelled from their homes, either through burning or intimidation. A further 275 commercial premises were badly damaged or destroyed, of which 83% were Catholic. The riots represented the most sustained violence that Northern Ireland had seen since the early 1920s. Protestants and unionists believed the violence showed the true face of the Civil Rights movement - as a front for the IRA and armed insurrection. Catholics, on the other hand, saw the riots, particularly in Belfast, as an assault on their community, in which the forces of the state had appeared as anything but neutral. The disturbances, taken together with the Battle of the Bogside, are often cited as the beginning of the Troubles. Violence escalated sharply in Northern Ireland after these events, with the formation of new paramilitary groups on either side, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army in December of that year. On the loyalist side, the Ulster Volunteer Force (formed in 1966) were galvanised by the August riots and in 1971, another paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association was founded out of a coalition of loyalist militants who had been active since August 1969. The largest of these was the Shankill Defence Association, led by John McKeague, which had been responsible for what organisation there was of loyalist violence in the riots of August 1969. In addition, thousands of British Army troops were deployed into Northern Ireland. While the troops were initially seen as a neutral force, they rapidly got dragged into the street violence and by 1971 were devoting most of their attention to combatting republican paramilitaries.
The rioting petered out by Sunday, 17 August. Eight people had been killed and 750 injured, of whom 133 (72 Catholics and 61 Protestants) were treated for gunshot wounds. In addition a total of 1,505 Catholic families and 315 Protestant ones were expelled from their homes, either through burning or intimidation. A further 275 commercial premises were badly damaged or destroyed, of which 83% were Catholic.
The riots represented the most sustained violence that Northern Ireland had seen since the early 1920s. Protestants and unionists believed the violence showed the true face of the Civil Rights movement - as a front for the IRA and armed insurrection. Catholics, on the other hand, saw the riots, particularly in Belfast, as an assault on their community, in which the forces of the state had appeared as anything but neutral. The disturbances, taken together with the Battle of the Bogside, are often cited as the beginning of the Troubles. Violence escalated sharply in Northern Ireland after these events, with the formation of new paramilitary groups on either side, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army in December of that year. On the loyalist side, the Ulster Volunteer Force (formed in 1966) were galvanised by the August riots and in 1971, another paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association was founded out of a coalition of loyalist militants who had been active since August 1969. The largest of these was the Shankill Defence Association, led by John McKeague, which had been responsible for what organisation there was of loyalist violence in the riots of August 1969. In addition, thousands of British Army troops were deployed into Northern Ireland. While the troops were initially seen as a neutral force, they rapidly got dragged into the street violence and by 1971 were devoting most of their attention to combatting republican paramilitaries.
Provisional IRA got power-sharing in Northern Ireland, release of their prisoners and reform of the police. Arguably they could have negotiated that much earlier, but then again if the brittish goal was simply to keep northern Ireland, they could have avoided the whole trouble by instituting the same reforms much earlier. If it had be done much much earlier in the whole of Ireland, maybe Ireland would today be part of Great Britain.
But then again, then the brittish upper class would not have had the opportunity to plunder Ireland. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
