Waiting
from Military Officer, March 2008, p.96
Practical politics consist of ignoring facts
--Henry Adams
We must have strong minds,
ready to accept facts as they are
--Harry S. Truman
If you love something, set it free.
If it doesn't return, hunt it down and kill it
--60's military saying
And what it all comes down to
Is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving the peace sign
--I've Got One Hand in My Pocket,
Alanis Morrisette
______________
War is institutionalized insanity, and this photo and accompanying story depict the insanity of the
Fact: One lone insurgent stalled the Marine's advance for a full day.
Fact: The lone insurgent definitely had a pre-planned escape route and rear security, even if the Marines were unaware of it.
Fact: The insurgent escaped because the Marines broke contact to allow jets to do their job. Jets and bombs are not designed for killing lone gunmen and if they are, the world of infantry combat is turned on its head.
If a unit in contact does not pin down the insurgents they will always escape before the bombs are dropped. Just think what these Marines would have done is there were two insurgents.
Even if the hostile had a belt-fed machine gun or even a 50 calibre, this is not something that can tie down an entire unit. Since there was only one he could have been be dealt with tactically in a number of ways. So, why the reliance on air power that is not tactical in nature?
Bombing a building is not the measure of success -- killing the enemy is. This essay is not a support of killing insurgents, but an attempt to show the inappropriateness of this combat response.
We are either there to destroy a nation or to build a nation. You can't do both with the same mission sentence.
When defending it is essential to have interlocking, mutually-supportive fires. To do otherwise is militarily inconsequential. Fire and movement and attacks with combined arms will always overcome a single shooter.
This story says: the Marines were unwilling to press the assault. It's a hell of a way to run a war.
Labels: Marine fallujah attack, PWOT, wot
posted by rangeragainstwar at 5:00 PM
20 Comments:
New orders came out to the Marines from their political officers at the time that the "the surge is working!" meme was floated. The primary order was: "Do not lose men." If that meant falling back and calling in a jet plane to drop a 500 pound bomb on a building in order to avoid even the possibility of losing a man in an assault, so be it. The deal is, you don't want unpleasant facts like dead soldiers to disrupt the propaganda being floated via our brave propaganda ministries Pravda on the Hudson and Ivestia on the Potomac. The political needs are more important than the military needs, is the word that has come down from the political officers. And god forbid that you lose a soldier when you can call down an air strike instead, because then the political officers shall make sure that you stay in the catbox for another six months when the rest of your soldiers go home. The word has come down from the political officers: We must prove that "the surge is working" by reducing troop casualties, or else.
In other words, the ghost of Robert McNamara is hovering over this whole affair like a reeking stench of dead corpses. War waged to fulfill the requirements of political officers rather than waged to achieve some real strategic objectives that add up to a clearly definable victory is war that is ost before the first soldier enters combat. As was this war in Iraq, which was embarked upon for political purposes... and is continued for the same.
There are no achievable military objectives left in Iraq, only political ones. As such, I have no problem with our soldiers calling down air strikes rather than engaging in combat. If it's all political bullshit anyhow at this point, what's the difference? It's not as if it would have changed the outcome of anything if they had engaged this lone sniper and taken him out, after all. Iraq seems to have an endless supply of willing martyrs these days, and killing one or two more isn't going to make much difference.
- Badtux the History Penguin
(watching history repeat itself - again).
badtux makes some good points about how casualties can be modified by the degree to which the enemy is engaged..... more engagement: more casualties.... less engagement..... less casualties....... why not just let Pancho slip out the back fire escape?
and that surge sure is working..... i especially like that tried and true tactic of just putting the adversary on the payroll..... that's a much underrated tactic with respect to the "success"....
indirect fires are a wonderful thing...... might have a problem with collateral in the "winning the hearts and minds" department...... whacking at flies with sledgehammers etc.
makes for a snappy pop tune
ghost dansing (I'll abbreviate "G.D." from here on):
Re. the escape approach: I think the Brits used that to good effect in Basra. Sure cuts down on one's own casualties. This war has been a masterful application of PoMo tenets, i.e., things are what you say they are. Enemies? No, "employees"!
Brilliant use of Petula Clark's happy tune!
Sorry, G.D.--previous comment mine!
badtux, i clearly stated that i do not support the war or killing Iraqi gunman. i merely try to point out the insanity that you so clearly summarize. indeed all of iraq is not worth a pimple on a good American soldiers ass. jim
ghost. the infy bn has direct fire bunker killing weapons at troop level- indirect fire is unneeded.of course let Pancho get away as we'll need his pic in the next photo op showing off purple thumbs after the next election. after all this shooter may be the next person on the ballot -so why kill him-like you say just pay him off.hell if they paid me enuf i'd quit writing against the war and go to the Czech Republic and drink beer. jim
this is all so stupid. it's not insane, on the pragmatic levels that tux pointed out, it's making perfect sense. why not take your combat troops and order them to not sustain casualties. in authoritarian world, it makes perfect sense. right before the third all out assault at dong ap bai our master cheif (who was so hard you could strike a blue diamond match on his eyelids) gave a little pep talk and reminded us that
you filthy squids are not, i say again not, allowed to die without direct orders from HQ. since HQ was mortared an hour ago those orders will not be forthcoming. therefore i want you to dig in, fight hard and don't take uneccessary risks. anyone of you decides to shirk duty and die on me will find me kicking down the gates of hell to drag him back. i need every swingin' dick right here doing his job.
thing was, we appreciated the irony of that statement.
it's all about the visuals, and always has been.
i have zero to small problems with folks who are trying not to be the proverbial last man to die for a mistake.
let the flyboys go after snipers. they're going to claim success and victory anyway.
Ranger, I can assure you that I clearly understood what you are saying. I was merely translating it into penguinese for those who do not understand rangerese :-).
- Badtux the Translator Penguin
badtux- your translation is not Rangerese since there was no grunting :). jim
MB,
I don't want anybody including Iraqis to die for or in this goatscrew. Why not use a main round from a tank to do the same job cheaper and more effectively and just as safely as aerial bombing?
To call this foto combat photography is tragic comedy, befitting this war.
From Lisa: MB, your retelling of the directives from your master chief is quite moving. Hard as he was, this was said in love, I presume.
Not to gloss over the boneheaded romance with tacair that has characterized the Mess-o-potamia, the substitution of fire for movement has been a trademark of U.S. warfighting since the mid-1900s at least. I still remember reading something Bill Mauldin wrote about how one of the big differences between GIs and the German landser was that an American platoon leader would typically call for fire on a German infantry patrol. He described his imagined Germans "coming from a land where shells are costly, lives are cheap and logic governs action wonder why the hell we didn't send an infantry patrol instead."
Also, in my personal experience most company grade officers 1) don't read terrain well enough to maneuver well and 2) don't take time to employ their organic fire support elements like ATMs and mortars. So a single gunman can hold up a unit for some time until they get indirect fire or tac air because of the "send a bullet not a man" way we tend to think...
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FDChief, your analysis is solid, even Infantry Officers often misunderstand the difference between cover and concealment. If i encountered a single isolated shooter i would immediately wonder and evaluate it as a possible ruse to expose elements to explosive attack.Terrain in a city is truly a meatgrinder for infantry elements.That will never change even with fastmovers on station. jim
one of the things that also gets overlooked, in the chaos and absolute world of shit outlook in a street fight, is that question of
why is that lone gunner, there, now?
ranger accurately pointed out one plausible scenario. they are really, and truly endless. without knowing the circumstance of the action it's impossible to even know which ones are the most likely accurate.
in hue we often met with snipers or machine gunners firing from concealment to:
cover a larger body's retreat to another position.
fix our position while other units set up for rpg and mortar fire.
opportunistic harrasing fire.
one enraged kid with a rifle trying to get some back.
each situation is different every time. every response is dictated by the situation, which is often, all by itself, incredibly fluid.
the biggest axiom of all is often the first one forgotten.
it's been true since joshua.
street fights suck out loud.
MB, re. your cmts on Hue, all are well taken and those thoughts preferably go thru a leaders mind -rather than a bullet.Hue was a conventional battle straight up and the same can't be said for Bagdad or Kabul.
It's strange that the Army i was in really taught us to avoid combat in urban terrain or MOUT as it was called.We trained for it but avoided it as possible.If we were defensive it'd be our 1st choice to fight a larger or armored force- it'd be a battle of attrition similar to the Caen corridor or Stalingrad in WW2.So here we are in 08 doing what we always taught not to do. My feeble brain gets seriously disjointed trying to analyze it. jim
"one of the things that also gets overlooked, in the chaos and absolute world of shit outlook in a street fight, is that question of why is that lone gunner, there, now?"
And we can analyze this in the comfort of our desk chairs without having to deal with the fear, anger, frustration, confusion and exhaustion the platoon in contact has messing up its OODA loops.
As MB points out, the hard nut in any tactical problem is the "what if..." factor. What if this guy has another sniper covering him? What if he's been smart enough to mine or booby-trap the covered routes around his position? What does he represent; just an angry guy wanting to take some GIs with him to Allah, or the bait for an X-shaped ambush that is itself just the bait for an attack on the reaction force?
I'll second the idea that MOUT just bites. IT's like an electric fan in that no matter how you look at it it either sucks or blows...
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