Political Mathematics, Part the 2nd
Fiat Veritas pereat vita
--Friedrich Nietzsche
Terror made me cruel
--Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Listen, are you breathing just a little
and calling it a life?
--Mary Oliver
_______________
October 17, 1967 and today are exactly the same day. The same mindset occupies the military and civilian leadership of our national defensive policy. Ranger uses the term "defensive" in the most sarcastic sense of the word.--Friedrich Nietzsche
Terror made me cruel
--Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Listen, are you breathing just a little
and calling it a life?
--Mary Oliver
_______________
(This was written as a follow on to an earlier piece on the Battle of Ong Thanh, Political Mathematics, and was not published. However, it remains relevant.)
Counterinsurgency has no real history of success in the annals of U.S. military history. It does not work, and it will not start any time soon. Victory in COIN can not be defined. What is the mission of an Infantry Battalion in a COIN environment? Is it simply to make contact and kill people? Or is there a big picture?
Engaging in combat operations that merely focus on gaining contact and killing people is a losing formula. This is not a military endeavor; this is the delivery of a butcher's bill. Killing people will never win an insurgency or be a successful COIN strategy.
Let us pretend that on 17 Oct 67 the 2/28/1 Division killed 100's of North Vietnamese and VietCong that day, rather than losing 61 KIA's. Then what? Killing is an irrelevant concept unless it is a conventional tactical war.
COIN, and by extension Wars of National Liberation, can not be won via battles of attrition. On 5 Jan 09 as 17 Oct 67, insurgents, terrorists and any unconventional or guerrilla fighters will not stand up and fight unless it is to their benefit to do so.
As example, Tet '68 was a dismal military failure that could not exploit success even if it were successful. However, it was a brilliant political and psychological victory. The NVA and VC had a better handle on COIN than did any functionary of the U.S. government, either in the Defense or the State Department.
Let's further pretend that the NVA/VC had killed every man in the 2/28th at Ong Thanh. Would that have ended the war or even hastened its end? No.
It leaves the fallow question: What is the purpose of fighting, killing and trying to impose U.S. will upon foreign nations? Anyone who's stirred up a hornet's nest knows legions will come to their newly roused defense, and even if you destroy the nest, there's a new one up before the season's out.
Religious undertones must also be considered. It is as though U.S. policymakers do not even consider the fact that the entire Middle East (like French Indochina) was dominated by France and England after the Ottoman Empire toppled. Do we forget that the inhabitants of these regions admired Hitler in WW II?
Does anyone actually believe that foreign, Anglo, non-Islamic armies are going to deliver calm and quiet to the region, be it with palletized bills or the butt end of a rifle? We are the problem, not the solution.
The U.S. can not kill everyone opposed to the occupation of their countries, nor can reservations or detainee colonies isolate the dead-enders. What is left?
Lose or leave.
Labels: battle of ong thanh, COIN is a losing strategy, phony war on terror, PWOT
posted by rangeragainstwar at 8:00 AM
14 Comments:
FDChief,
Your reply is a prelude to my next article about rationing words.
jim
the best moments i had in three tours of vietnam was my time in the secure hamlets program.
i felt like yul brenner in magnificent seven instead of an asshole. i got to know my locals, and came to love them deeply. fuck, i even got off on growing rice, making beer and some vicious other hootch (my ville's "jungle juice" was legendary stuff, much prized in saigon 'o' clubs).
sadly, it was a confrontation with the local "government" (by government i mean looting buttmunches) which ended my time in that program. the official determination was that i had been there too long, gone asiatic or troppo and didn't really fucking care who i shot at anymore. the space of years has made me see how uncannily accurate it was.
for a good viewpoint of a successful counterinsurgency one can look at the the campaigns of gaius marius and pompei magnus in spain two generations apart. they both applied a mixture of bribery, commerce, and pure ass thug force to their problems. both of the insurgencies were caused by rome sending rapacious upperclass droolers to govern the place.
pompei had the worst of it though, he was fighting sertorius who was a roman trained spanish legion officer from a program instituted by marius. given roman technology, roman organization, the spanish rebels under sertorius were threatening to march upon rome itself.
thing was, pompei's insurrection was not nationalistic. they didn't want to be free spaniards, they wanted to be full ass romans, or free spaniards on a roman model.
still, both of their campaigns are textbook examples of how to deal with insurgencies. as a hallmark of both campaigns they first set their own houses in order. the roman governments were overhauled and brought to reasonable levels of corruption. then, with local support for the rebels drying up due to those reforms it was a doable task to isolate and annihilate the remaining factions.
had the slave rebels under spartacus been able to link with the spanish rebels under sertorius rome would have had its hands more than full and might not have survived.
You're really pissed off at all the success in Iraq and (soon) Afghanistan, aren't you?
I'm an OIF vet and we should have completed the job when I was there the first time in '91.
The trouble with you lefties is that nothing is worth fighting for; not even for victory over the Islamofascists and their vision of a world Caliphate.
Iraq and Afghanistan are two good places to begin the counter-war against modern-day Ottoman wannabes.
Matter of fact, I'd have leveled a number of Middle Eastern countries on 12 September 2001. Now, that's a justified military response to terrorism; but I'm a former Soldier, not a dem/anti-war sychophant.
sfcmac
I hope you would have started by leveling Saudi Arabia first.
Our success in Iraq was turning it over to Iran. Good show!
sfc mac,
You confuse me, success ids determined by endgame and not propaganda bullshit.
Since I'm a lefty could you explain how levelling mideast countries would address the issue of terrorism. Please humor me since i'm so feebleminded as lefties are wont to be. It's a good thing that NCO's don't make command decisions if your viewpoint is representative of the NCO corps.
BTW- whens the last time there were free elections in Kuwait? YOU DID FREE THAT COUNTRY- RIGHT?
You failed to mention your MOS. I'm curious as to branch affiliation of such a one as you. Sweetpea.
jim
MB (and all),
this
local "government" (by government i mean looting buttmunches)
nearly cost me a new laptop from the drink snorting thru my nose!
Well said, friend. Well said!!
SP
PS - and one of the best descriptions of local government in pretty much any country in the mid east -- including the ones we "liberated" sfcmac!
To all commenters,
It occured to my simple mind that i should not use mathematical concepts since it's hard for some to count with their boots on.
So sorry.
jim
SFC MAC,
I must come back to you since my mind spins when i think of our successes in Irq and Afgh. If we are wildly successful then how does that make us any safer?Also have you bothered to look at the wild successes we've had here in the Homeland.? We're so successful that we're actually imploding.But i'm so happy that all is well in the rest of the US led free middle east world.
BTW- Turkey is not a caliphate.
jim
Jim: Why are you arguing with "sfcmac", clearly the battalion's CatIV NCOIC, when he has no clue that the Ottoman Empire and the original Islamic Caliphate were two completely different and ideologically distinct things? You expect this guy to understand the differences between Iraq and the 'Stan, between Shia and Sunni, between making war with a knife and making a profit with a military-industrial-imperial-complex?
"You point at the moon but the dog looks at your finger", remember?
MB: Your aim was off - the looting buttmunches appear to have survived and prospered, if my last look at K Street was any indication.
Nice summary of the Roman problems with the Iberian peninsula, tho. We might have thought hard about Jerry Bremer's band of clueless clusterfuckers if we'd remembered the problems that greedy senatorial proconsuls had caused the Republic and, later, the Empire as well - to the point where the later Empire stopped handing out procuratorships to the rapacious bastards.
FDChief,
Do O's argue with E's.?
I really feel a cosmic joke when replies like this surface. Like Harry Halder I hear the immortals laughing beyond control.Surely this is a spam just yanking my chain but i'm too stupid to resist the bait.
jim
FDChief, FYI, I believe SFC Mac is a woman. Too pro-war and arrogant for my liking.
FDChief,
Correction- i meant Harry Haller. Sorry. jim
i once was nearly arrested for indecent exposure, i had to explain that i was only trying to count to 21.
MB,
Naughty boy!
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