Mission Impossible

 --The bloom's off the rose 

 His stop-loss odyssey 
went Kabul, morphine, 
   Ramstein, Stateside, 
and back—round-robin   
desert wrestling,
tag out, tag in 
--Welcome Home, Troops! 
 Amit Majmudar

 Cause I gonna make you see 
There's nobody else here 
No one like me
 I'm special, so special
--Brass in Pocket,
The Pretenders

One step forward and two steps back
 Nobody gets too far like that
 One step forward and two steps back 
This kind of dance can never last 
--One Step Forward, 
The Desert Rose Band    
___________________

Let us do a check-in on the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) at lucky year 13, as President Obama sends more advisers to Syria in what looks very much like JFK's adviser gambit in the early years of the Vietnam War, the poster child counterinsurgency (COIN) failure.

First, a review: After the initial conventional invasion stage, the PWOT© became a COIN war, for lack of a better term. General Petraeus and his post-Vietnam thesis guided our participation, as if this time, we would really nation-build and win hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds, as if Vietnam could be redeemed and made into something of worth. COIN theory redux would modernize Galula, make what they tried to bury count, make it relevant for a new day.

But then the New COIN started looking like its own danse macbre. We forgot that it wasn't a war, and we were fighting the very people we came to democratize. COIN  really isn't a very good way for the U.S. to win a war, or to help a people.

You cannot both fight people and nation build concurrently. Probably, we still do not realize that it is possible to nation build and to fight insurgents, but the process must occur consecutively. It is impossible to fight, kill and destroy while also attempting to build; the concepts are mutually exclusive.

The luster fell away from the erstwhile Golden Boy, General Petraeus, and his vaunted COIN theory has been folded and put back under the trundle bed, like an old Mission Impossible VHS tape. So where does that leave hearts and minds and nation building, as the United States trudges on in the quagmire that is the Not-Arab Spring?

The mask of nation-building has fallen away, as the U.S. realizes that was merely pretense for our frenzied occupation of places in which the U.S. had no legitimate reason to be. "Asymmetrical warfare" has also died a protracted death on the trash heap of a failed policy.

The U.S. is currently yoked to a slug-fest that makes less sense than did the tarted-up, new-and-improved COIN of once-wonder boy, Vietnam vet-manque, Mr. Petraeus.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Xin Loi

--Iraq, Arend Van Dam

  Where's my $50? I for one am checking out
of this motel right now!
I'm not going to be two-timed by you
-- you parlor sheik! 
--Everybody's Crazy (1933) 

Those who don't know history
are doomed to repeat it
--Edmund Burke 

Is he still on about Vietnam?
--a local history student trying to board
the latest bandwagon
_____________________

The United State's military is loathe to admit failure, therefore it never dissects them. Therefore, it repeats them.

Let's walk a few steps back, in order that we might move forward.

Our previous failed Counterinsurgency (COIN) war was fought in Vietnam, a classic war of anti-Colonial proportions fought by a superpower backing up the residuals of the colonialist heyday, under the flimsy and faulty aegis of the Domino Theory. It was really the Second IndoChina war (following the First fought with the French. Just as with Algeria later, the French learned that they were unwilling and unable to pay the cost of maintaining their colonial outpost in Vietnam. We would learn their lesson later.)

It was a conventional military battle between the North Vietnamese and the surrogate South Vietnamese forces propped up by the U.S. But it was also a counterinsurgency of the National Liberation Front. Both were fought in the battlespace of the Republic of Vietnam (with safe havens in Laos and Cambodia.) This divided project violated one of the main Principles of War: Unity of Command.

Both conventional and NLF forces enjoyed the advantage of facing a riven adversary; ultimately, they won. This should have taught us a lesson, but it somehow went missing, namely: the U.S. can fight and win a conventional war in places like RVN, Afghanistan and Iraq, but it can't win the counterinsurgency, too.

No Army can win at both concurrently, as evidenced by the Axis efforts in World War II. The Japanese and Germans could fight conventionally or unconventionally with probabilities of success, but they could not do both. COIN has never been a U.S. battle, but rather a battle between the host nation proxies. We cannot win because they are not fighting us; they are fighting for something beyond our control.

The weak, corrupt and venal governments which are the U.S. proxies can never defeat a popular insurgent force because the former lack legitimacy. When the tanks rolled down Tu Do Street past the whorehouses and bars, past the opium and heroin dealers, achieving their objective of the National Assembly and the National palace, this was a moment of truth.

Were those dens of iniquity the deciding factor of Vietnam's fate, or was it whatever animated those soldiers in the North Vietnamese tanks?


Next: A conclusion, of sorts.

Appearances Can be Misleading

--Objects in Mirrors

We are strong 

No one can tell us we're wrong 

Searching our hearts for so long 

Both of us knowing 

Love is a battlefield 

--Love is a Battlefield, 

Pat Benatar 

___________________

Riffing off of the Army's most recent field manual, "Tactics in Counterinsurgency" (2009), which lays out its "latest big shift in thinking", Business Insider recently ran graphics supposedly showing "America's Shifting Views on Modern Warfare" (and you thought American's don't care about much beyond Beyonce, Jay Z and Mrs. Kardashian.)

That counterinsurgency is considered as "warfare" is troubling enough. Can you "fight" for hearts and minds? Pat Benatar's ode to young love thinks so, but most adults know better.

The 10 June Insider piece states, "Al-Qaeda in Iraq proved so brutal that the Sunni traditional leaders who had supported or tolerated them effectively switched sides in the war, allowing the U.S. to deal a decisive blow to Iraq's Islamist insurgency."

Except -- the Sunnis did not switch sides. They simply played the United States for fools and let us and our Surge "appear" to be successful. They same Sunnis are now conquering Tikrit and Mosul, so the U.S.'s Big New Idea -- counterinsurgency -- did not prevail (just as it did not prevail in any of its past incarnations.) Success is gauged by the final outcome.

Another error is the statement, "In a democracy like the U.S., voters can decide whether a war effort is worth sustaining or not." Not so! When did American voters ever get to vote in any plebiscite to determine if we desired war or not? This applies to World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq?

A graphic of the 1950 Malaysian Insurgency (1950)  lays out the roles of the fighters, but in fact an insurgency can exist sans actual fighters if the active support is radical and militant. Insurgents do not need to be militants, guerrillas or unconventional soldiers -- an insurgency only needs willing participants and a very small core of specialized bombers and shooters, which are readily found, recruited and replaced in any CI environment.

Active and passive support is the only requisite.

In a scenario like Iraq or Afghanistan, the paradigm represented by the graphic is not realistic, yet it appears that the best analogy to today our Army intellectuals can offer is a counterinsurgency diagram from a 1950's British effort vs. Communist insurgents.

The cool, new Counterinsurgency manual also uses diagrams that look suspiciously like the Terrorism Counteraction (TC/A) manual 3-19 of the 1980's U.S. Army. The only difference is, 3-19 gave a cross-pyramidal view, and Figure 2-3 is an aerial view:

Today's Army of One (the Next Generation) wouldn't be cribbing our work, would it? (It's OK -- just don't call it "new".)

Of course, beyond these diagrams, the U.S. fails to address the concept of "legitimacy" as affects any CI effort. No country can impose its will upon another and call this counterinsurgency. The insurgents are indigenous, and we are the foreigners supporting corrupt, illegitimate leaders who do not govern. Nothing we say can tip this equation in our favor.

The U.S. government should stay out of other countries internal affairs. That is the first and last chapter of Ranger's CI manual.

Starry, Starry Night

--A simple game of chess

Our crusade was such madness 
that only a real idealist could have thought it up
--The Seventh Seal (1957)
___________________

Ranger will draw connections among three fights: Lang Vei (Vietnam, Feb. '68), Mogadishu - Black Hawk Down (Oct. '93) and the Battle of Kamdesh at Command Outpost Keating in Afghanistan (Oct. 2009).

The key devolution over 40+ years is that the U.S. is no longer fighting enemy armies but simple assemblies of enemy fighters variously described as militias, militants, insurgents, etc., and while U.S. forces are arrayed to fight battles, they instead get roughly handled by simple street thugs ... people for whom soldierly behavior does not apply.

So, why do we fight for hills, towns and terrains which are disposable and not of worth to anyone except those squatting on that particular grid square, and then pull up stakes and leave? Have the principles of war lost their relevance? This is the Day of the Jackal; you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Has Clausewitz had his day? If so, what will direct and constrain our present and future conflicts?

From his personal discussions with battle survivor (Lt.) Paul Longgrear, the Battle of Lang Vei was the death of the United States Special Forces A-Camps, which were small and remote fighting camps with mission augmentation. The fall of Lang Vei showed that the US Army could not hold a camp if the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was determined to expend the operational assets to destroy their objective.

If the  NVA could do this at LV with USMC assets a 105 Howitzer distance away, then any SF fighting camp in VN was a potential death trap. The LV Battle was a knock-down fight between two determined armies; after LV and Tet '68, the outcome of the American war in Vietnam was sealed.

And yet, despite that death knell the U.S. continues 40 years on to emplace its soldiers in indefensible outposts which suffer the same dire fate.

Like LV, the Mogadishu battle [Black Hawk Down - "BHD'] was conducted by the finest Special Operations Forces (SOF) -- the 75th Ranger Battalion assets teamed up with SOF Delta operatives. The difference in the BHD scenario was that the enemy was an unorganized opponent lacking a detailed Table of Organization and Equipment (TO& E) and order of battle; in short, they functioned as militias lacking state apparatus. They probably lacked mission objectives beyond killing soldiers and controlling the countryside and cities by armed violence.

But BHD demonstrated that militias with platoon-level weapons (including RPG2 and 7's) could engage and kill prime US war fighting assets IF the militias were willing to take the casualties. It was estimated in BHD that the U.S. killed 1,000+ militia fighters, yet the U.S. mission was ultimately frustrated and abandoned. Somalia is still the same sewer 20 years on.

The book and the movie were an awe-inspiring view of a world-class infantry, but insurgents and militias world-wide re-learned that they can fight any army to standstill if willing to take the casualties. The lessons taken from the '79 Russo-Afghan war have been re-imagined in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2001 onward.

The Battle at Kamdesh in '09 for which SSG Clinton Romesha earned the Medal of Honor earlier this year occurred 20 miles away from a similar failure the previous year in the Battle of Wanat. While the U.S. soldiers supposedly killed 100 enemy militants, that is immaterial since the 4th Division no longer occupies any terrain in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan.

An old Counterinsurgency (COIN) metric goes, if we are killing 10:1 of ours, then we are being successful. It is doubtful the U.S. met that metric in LV and it assuredly did not in BHD. And in Kamdesh, with a kill ratio of 8:100 ... ? Did we win?

The New York Times reported the Americans following Kamdesh "declared the outpost closed and departed — so quickly that they did not carry out all of their stored ammunition. The outpost’s depot was promptly looted by the insurgents and bombed by American planes in an effort to destroy the lethal munitions left behind" ("Strategic Plans Spawn Bitter End for Lonely Outpost.")

COP Keating was not a win, and they left like Lee slinking out of Gettysburg in July 1863. The difference was that instead of withdrawing under an enemy army's pressure, they faced a rag-tag group of militia fighters who may have been simple bandits or warlord fighters. Though not a Waterloo or Liepzig, it was a total failure nonetheless.

If U.S. forces were to kill 100:1, they would still be losing in a Low-intensity conflict (LIC) or COIN environment.  We no longer talk of LIC, instead pretending that we fight battles, but LIC is the order of the day, and reality demands that understanding. However, that understanding would threaten to upend the profitable military complex as we know it.

Ranger's unit in RVN, Studies and Observations Group (SOG), is reported to have had a kill ratio of 150:1, but we still lost control of the Ho Chi Minh Trail since we never controlled the key terrain on the ground. An army can hold ground, but that is not equal to controlling the ground.

In the last 43 years, the U.S. Army has lost the ability to control the ground. It may have conquered Kabul and Baghdad, but it never controlled the ground, nor the hearts and minds of the locals. This is the fallow result of phony wars.

The latest wars prove the inability of the U.S. Army to destroy and force U.S. will on insurgencies and militia-inspired insurgencies. They are continuations of LV and BHD on another chessboard. What should we have learned?

Time is not on our side.

[cross-posted @ milpub]

Warriors Without Borders

 

The sacrifice of brave men
does not justify the pursuit of an unjust cause 
--Our Kind of Traitor, John LeCarre 

You must go on. 
I can't go on.
I'll go on 
--The Unnameable, Samuel Beckett 

You say "Yes", I say "No". 
(I say "Yes", but I may mean "No").
You say "Stop", I say "Go, go, go".
(I can stay still it's time to go) 
--Hello Goodbye, The Beatles
_________________

The trait characterized by all terrorism is that the violence -- though symbolic -- is ultimately nihilistic, and nihilism does not build great civilizations or institutions. Terrorism does not assist the progress of man.

Fights like Wanat, Waygul and Kamden are symbolic of so many others, but for our purposes let us assume they are representative of the entire war, a microcosm of the gestalt. This is not a heartening thought.

If the U.S. Army in 2009 with the compliance of NATO allies and the Afghan Army are needed to (barely) hold isolated Command Outposts, why should we assume the Afghan government will continue to do so after the U.S. leaves the country? They are as unable to do this as they were at the war's outset. Instructive is the example of Vietnam, the United States first counterinsurgency (COIN) war, the war which informed the late great General David Petraus to compose Field Manual 3-24, everyman's guide to fighting the COIN way.

The drawdown of U.S. assets led to the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive, and ultimately the April '75 fall of Saigon. The NVA achieved this military objective despite having been strategically bombed for at least seven years. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were as nihilistic from the U.S. side as are the acts of today's terrorists.

The NVN had a realistic and understandable military goal; in contrast, the U.S. goal was simply to kill the NVA and Vietcong into submission, a goal not achieved. As in Vietnam, fighting remains our raison d'etre, yet we marvel at the senseless nature of terrorism. We refuse to see that our response to terrorism is as senseless as the precipitating event.

Bombing Hanoi did not defeat the NVN venture, and drones will not thwart the will to fight of our current adversaries. Drone strikes will not defend America. In fact, they are an extralegal approach to a criminal problem (terrorism).

It is surreal to realize that we have fought and do fight wars without military objectives, we have tried to build nations that do not want to be re-built and we do all of this with money that we do not have to squander. Even the direness of the sequester is inadequate to shake our resolve to press the fight in which we have nothing to gain. It is Hamburger Hill, in perpetuity.

A simple question: If Chinese and Vietnamese Communism were bad and worth fighting the Korean and Vietnam Wars, why are both nations now major trade partners of the U.S.?

Perhaps to look into the gaping maw of that zed is too much to bear, so we press on, like Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. They do not realize their project is D.O.A., for Godot is not coming (Gott es Tod), or perhaps they do, and substitute an eternal march and cogitation in place of actually achieving something, like meeting their goal.

Much like the characters in Waiting for Godot, we are not even sure what we are waiting for, or what that might look like. Like them, our project has a foregone nullity for a conclusion.

The day that Saigon fells did not impact one iota upon the freedoms and liberties of U.S. citizens. If the Vietnamese, Afghans and Iraqis cannot achieve a national consensus without nasty civil wars, so be it. Ditto Libya, Syria and the whole shooting match. Let them fight it out, without us, as we alone did in the creation of our nation -- through the time-honored bloody slog that is how men decide who's top dog.

--Jim and Lisa

COIN for Thought

--Obama's Countermeasures.
Rainer Hachfeld (Neues Deutschland)
 

My arms stay open all night, 
From sundown 'til the morning light. 
Hopin' you can find where you belong, 
I leave the lights on 
--My Arms Stay Open All Night, 
Tanya Tucker 

I'll give you jewelery and money, too 
That ain't all, that ain't all I'll do for you 
Oh, if you bring it to me 
--Bring it On Home To Me, 
Sam Cook

 Won't you come home, Bill Bailey, won't you come home
I've moaned the whole night long
I'll do the cookin', honey, I'll pay the rent
I know I done you wrong
--Bill Bailey, Hughie Cannon 

It's a fool's game, nothing but a fool's game 
Standing in the cold rain, feeling like a clown   
--It's A Heartache, Bonnie Tyler 
__________________

A passage from Thomas Keneally's book "Schindler's List" caught Ranger's attention recently for the analogy between the Nazi efforts in World War II and those of the United States in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©):

"Even among Sedlacek's own small cell, his Viennese anti-Nazi club, it was not imagined that the pursuit of the Jews had grown quite so systemic.  Not only was the story Schindler told him startling simply in moral terms: one was asked to believe that in the midst of a desperate battle, the National Socialists would devote thousands of men, the resources of precious railroads, an enormous cubic footage of cargo space, expensive techniques of engineering, a fatal margin of their research and development scientists, a substantial bureaucracy, whole arsenals of automatic weapons, whole magazines of ammunition, all to an extermination which had no military or economic meaning but merely a psychological one. ..."

Exchange the word "elimination" for "counterinsurgency effort" or "COIN", and Keneally's character could be describing the PWOT©, 2001-2012 and counting.  The entire War on Terror was and is devoid of military or economic meaning, yet we still embrace the concept as a valid one, still peddling the shtick that the U.S. is bringing our schizophrenically-viewed adversaries / allies on home to where they really want to be ... with us.

When the chimera of men in battle rattle winning hearts and minds supplants military and economic objectives, we are playing a fool's game.  Unrequited love is always a cruel thing.

NOTE: The youngest survivor on Oskar Schindler's list has died, Leon Leyson ("Little Leyson"). Mr. Schindler was able to save his parents from Nazi extermination, too, though not his siblings or any extended family (Youngest on Schindler's List.) The L.A. Times bio is worth a read.

Alav ha-shalom Mr. Leyson, and Mr. Schindler.

Dreams of Frustration, Pt. II

Wherever I go, there you are 
--Chanel No. 5 advert, Brad Pitt 

How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart
and let me live again
--How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? 
The Bee Gees

Joey, Baby,
Don't get Crazy,
Detours, Fences,
I get Defensive 
--Joey, Concrete Blonde 

Military men are dumb, stupid animals
 to be used as pawns for foreign policy 
--Henry Kissinger

__________________

So, what is the effect of understanding that one has been used in the name of honor for a dishonorable action?  It is surreal when one understands that there are layers above (and below) one's execution which alter its effect, both in the mind of the executioner and the perception of those affected or those observing.

As with current wars, the strategic assumptions of the Vietnam War were faulty and not reality-based.  Success would be elusive and achievements overstated.  What is required for "success" in such a situation is the True Believer, the person who fills in all the ragged edges with the fluff of hope and all the other non-metrics which fuel the continuation of a failed endeavor.  Smugly, we dismiss the co-dependents among us who are in denial of their doomed D.O.A. relationships, but when this same magical thinking is applied to affairs of state, strong men are all on board.

So what happens to a soldier sent to fight a losing battle?  Does he engage in a repetition-compulsion in the local Veterans of Foreign War (VFW) Post, re-living the successes, real or hoped-for in the battles of his youth, the camaraderie of a long-ago time?  Or does he strike out in fury at the betrayal of his innocence, railing to all who will hear him that things are not as they would seem?  Or, if and when he leaves that world, does he close that door and live successfully in a new milieu, untainted by his formative sad realizations?

Pragmatism calls for the latter; surely the military would be most pleased with a workforce that just blended back into the woodwork, and society can ill-afford the damage wrought by broken warriors, however, people are not pragmatic mechanisms.  They break along unforeseen fault lines, and can be pre-stressed in ways unknown to the finest therapist.  But even for the most prime, most fit subject, what does war do to him, even a "Good War"?

The doctrine of Counterinsurgency (COIN) sounds like it could be a tonic for the soldier, after all, he is after hearts and minds and building communities, yet now even the United States Military Academy is questioning the validity of COIN and its applicability to U.S. doctrine.  General David Petraeus said the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) was now a multi-generational long war, but how, when and why did that transition occur?

As with the denial of a co-dependent, stretching a failing endeavor out past one lifetime does not morph it into a successful plan.  As with the sunk cost fallacy, this policy and doctrinal mutation arises from a nation itself divorced from reality.

Playing hokey-pokey with a failure is not a way to stumble upon success.  For all the field manuals and reputations on the line, sometimes the correct move is a retrograde.  COIN is a loser.

By teaching us to hang in there for the duration of a Long War, one in which our mission is to win hearts and minds and essentially change the destructive (as we see it) behavior of the locals, the military makes co-dependents of us all.

And codependency is not the route to either clarity or good health.

General Betrayus

--We think he looks like Alfafa, 
though "Spanky" would be a better nickname

Tell me how this ends?
--David Petraeus

The power of example is very important
to people under stress
--General Sir John Hackett
_________________

[We at RangerAgainstWar find the scuttlebutt surrounding the General Petraeus incident interesting and provocative on many levels, and so will examine its implications over the next week.]

Today: Officers, not Gentlemen

Once upon a time there was a military academy called West Point, which held as its highest imperative their Honor Code, a road map for behavior suiting an officer and a gentleman, a man who would reflect the highest moral values of a brave new nation.

Many years later, after the United States failed to win its first two military actions in as many decades (Korea and Vietnam), there came a graduate who would endeavor to restore shine to his nation's military by being a part of  grand plan -- the redefinition of warfare, late-20th century-style.  This cadet, David Petraeus, would write his thesis explaining the new way of war for the United States (the Counterinsurgency) and he would go on to pen the titular FM 3-24 -- COIN -- which promised a new and winning outcome to foreign wars by applying the moral values of America to win far-flung hearts and minds of people less moral than we.

In its moral high dudgeon, the United States tromped off to find its success in the woman-demeaning Middle East, hoping to teach them to not stone women for adultery, for instance.  The now-General Petraeus staked his claim on the success of his doctrine and sought to redeem his country's esteem, but all the Brasso at his disposal could not remove the tarnish he himself would re-apply.

True, he did not (literally) stone a woman, but his adulterous behavior is not consonant with the morals he and his fellows would purport to be exporting. He recognized this (as a CIA report threatened to go public), and correctly removed himself from public office.  It is unknown if the affair began while he was still ISAF Commander; if so Petraeus was derelict and guilty of battlefield cowardice by espousing one set of values with his words and defiling them by his actions. If so, he may be subject to military charges.  Knowing, however, there are different spanks for different ranks.

How can a hypocrite win anyone's heart or mind?  Is it a greater good to export adultery or to disapprove of its punishment?  Should not the man tasked with imposing our belief system upon a foreign land not at least implement the best of that heritage in his personal conduct? Is it any wonder the U.S. is seen as morally bankrupt hypocrites?  Maybe there is a corroding worm that lives within our vaunted freedoms.  Maybe man is destined everywhere to corrupt the good he would do.  How did an honor code become so fuzzy?

If we have no fixed moral compass, how can we expect FM 3-24 with its "panoply" of pretty words to export the thing we cannot manage ourselves?  Stoning a woman for adultery is one step beyond adultery only because we value each human life.  However, seen from a more traditional perspective, all transgressions that threaten to unseat the authority of one's culture and jurisprudence are equally offensive.  Our Ten Commandments are not listed in hierarchical order; killing and adultery are both theological crimes.

Further, on the nuts and bolts level, how was Gen. Petraeus's dalliance financed?  Did our tax dollars finance his "bad decision"?

Counterinsurgency and morality should be complimentary concepts. Why could a major COIN war not produce a Four Star 0-10 that could decisively affect the outcome of the effort? [Generals McKiernan and McChrystal were previously both relieved of duty.] Will it be the moral, tactical or strategic deficiencies which will prove the greatest detractor from U.S. COIN policy? Why is the U.S. Army incapable of producing 0-10's capable of theatre Army command?

General Petraeus has now reached the tail end of his teleological inquiry.

The Green Reaper

It is not our job to protect the people
from the consequences of their political choices
--Chief Justice John G. Roberts
_____________________

Recent press indicates that military snipers are changing warfare, the implication being that snipers are instrumental in ushering in some new day for warfare. But is the role of sniper really anything new?

Before discussing the alleged special role of snipers in Counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare, consider the role of snipers in conventional ground combat: Snipers create terror and kill people. Of course, Armies can accomplish the same things, so why do we have snipers? If we cannot kill the enemy with organic indirect fires, air support (to include aerial rocket artillery and artillery support), then we must kill them with our rifles.

When it comes down to a rifle duel, then we are fighting on the enemy's terms. The philosophy of snipers in COIN is based on the "create terror" aspect of sniping rifle fire. To this Ranger says we are not engaged in combat to create terror and fear but rather to kill the enemy; in COIN, we have lost that focus.

Our 7.62 machine guns firing from T & E - tripod should kill targets easily at 1,100 meters, so why do we need snipers? Are we just not carrying and using tripods?

Yet the article opens with two PFC's shooting at targets: does a PFC have the maturity and solid technical knowledge to properly employ his rifle as a sniping tool? I served with and commanded many former snipers /while serving in U.S. Army Marksmanship units. Back in the 60's and 70's, Army snipers were experienced soldiers developed by long term service as professional shooters (Ranger graduated from Sniper School at Ft. Benning in 1973.)

Marine snipers are credited with spreading fear among the Taliban in southern Afghanistan in 2010, and by the end of their seven-month deployment in March 2011 one of the scout snipers observed, "They quit altogether".

Sadly, this rosy assessment is incorrect: The Taliban simply moved to other areas of operation, or ceased operating until the Marines moved on, and U.S. troops ALWAYS move on. Additionally, this function would be better performed by the Afghan National Army (ANA) assets. It is not our country and it does not matter if we scare them or kill them because we are going to leave the mess in our rear-view mirror.

"Their ability to deliver accurate shots minimizes collateral damage — a key factor in counterinsurgency . . ."

What does it matter if they kill with or without collateral damage? Are we so deluded as to think that killing in any form is the answer to Afghanistan's (or any areas) problems? Killing only perpetuates the cycle of violence.

U.S. commanders typically describe counterinsurgency as improving government and the economy and protecting the population. But killing hard-core elements of the insurgency helps persuade the population to join the winning side, military analysts say.

How does an Infantry unit improve any government or economy? Killing hardcore insurgents is not a guarantee of winning anyone's hearts or mind. After 10 years of war it seems no one is coming over to our side (not that we could define what that is.)


Tuesday: The Green Reaper II

A COIN is a COIN is a COIN

"Not much"
--Colonel Gian P. Gentile,
on what the U.S. has gained
after two wars in a decade

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy,
they jumped in the lake
I'm not that eager
to make a mistake
--Things Have Changed,
Bob Dylan
_________________

We would like to compare Counterinsurgency policy (COIN) to the conclusions drawn by the Nova program, "The Great Inca Rebellion". It explores Pizarro's experience with the Incas which also parallels Cortez's experience with the Aztecs, in that both are very similar to the military policy we now call COIN.

COIN did not start with FM 3-24, nor in Vietnam. The Spaniards used COIN practices to destroy both the Inca and the Aztec empires. (The same can be said for the U.S. Army and its destruction of the U.S. Indian tribes.)

The short version of Pizarro and Cortez is that they organized native armies to act as cannon fodder (lance fodder?) in their campaigns. The white European invaders used native allies to overpower their enemies. This template was used in future colonial efforts, and is still the formula of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in our current COIN operations. So after 467 years of solid history, how can anyone say that everything has changed?

Since the World Trade Center attacks we've been sold a bill of goods by the military industrial complex, with the full concurrence of the political apparatus: Everything changed, and Counterinsurgency (COIN) was the solution. However, some people are noticing that COIN has not been the spectacular solution it was touted to be; whatever appears to be won on the front end, is lost on the back.

Now, West Point is considering COIN may be dead in the water (West Point is Divided on a War Doctrine's Fate.) Even West Point catches up to Ranger. Asymmetrical warfare was the newest thing since sliced bread, and 3rd and 4th generation warfare theorists were a hot commodity. We are told all of the old rules are passe, and we swallow the new, whole.

Ranger has always called these theories garbage, but that is too kind as even garbage serves a purpose. These theories are obstructive and promote reactionary operational imperatives posing as newfangled thinking. In fact, the principles defining warfare -- the Rules of War, International Law, the Geneva Conventions, the Principles of War and the Hague Conventions -- have not changed; we are not Capt. Picard, and saying they have does not make it so.

Nothing has changed since at least the middle 16th century. The idea could also be applied to Alexander, Hannibal and various armies throughout history.

COIN is a CON

--Out of Vietnam, Rainer Hachfeld

Nothing is over until we decide it is!
Was it over when the Germans
bombed Pearl Harbor?
--Animal House (1978)

There's no there there
--Gertrude Stein
______________________

Counterinsurgency is a dupe's game; the players wrap themselves around the HOW's, but never the WHY's, and it is the latter realm in which COIN is lost before it's out of the gate.

U.S. COIN efforts always violate the concepts of legitimacy and sovereignty, making it a fail. So why do we fight COIN? Let's take the largest pre-PWOT (©) example, Vietnam.

We fought in the Republic of Vietnam as a bulwark against the Domino Theory of Communism. If so, the Vietnamese had no relevance save as proxy, which always struck Ranger as a chickenshit concept -- why hide behind proxies?

The Vietnamese people, both North and South, largely lived in abject poverty and neither side cared; the people were stuck in a conflict not of their making. One could say the U.S. still exploits the cheap labor pool of Southeast Asia today.

During the Second Indochina War neither side had legitimacy, but the North Vietnamese had the better claim than did the South. The U.S. efforts were seen as an extension of French colonialism, correctly or not. How could COIN policy have changed this perception?

The U.S. would have had to have emulated the Communist's prime agenda of the elimination of the hegemony of the South's corrupt absentee land owners and Francophile Catholic ruling class. Why did the U.S. ignore this overriding impulse?

There was simply no way for the U.S. to go from that reality to a democratic, capitalist nation. That postulated goal could not be carved with either the tools or the stone at hand, and this fact remains true in today's COIN policy. You can't get there from here; you've got to go somewhere else, first.

None of the entities we call countries possess the prerequisites for a democratic society, first and foremost being an educated middle class entity. We have installed Karzai, he of the silk cape and yak hat, but under that cape is a fine western suit, and that is not the uniform of his people.

We can chew our cud, but we don't seem able to digest it.

365 Bottles of Beer, Part the Second

--A license to do something

--I help people with problems
--Problem solver?
--More of a problem eliminator
--License to Kill (1989)

How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart
and let me live again
--How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,
The Bee Gees

We are here to help the Vietnamese,
because inside every gook
there is an American trying to get out
--Full Metal Jacket (1987)

And the day came when the risk to remain
tight in a bud was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom
--Anais Nin
________________________

[continuation of 1.10.11 post . . .]

Following the normal administration shuffle betwixt and between and after more in-country training, Ranger found himself once again at Square One, stepping off yet another airplane on my way to unit assignment and yet more in-country combat training.

If training alone could win wars, the U.S. Army could've planted a flag in my asshole and declared victory, much as we actually did before we turned tail. That declared victory could have saved many good men on both sides who were still extremely combative and killing the hell out of each other.

After graduating from Studies and Observations Group (SOG) in-country training, I was assigned as an assistant to an assistant, which meant I was an afterthought waiting to blossom into an actuality. Whether I was an adviser or a troop is still something I cannot figure out; after all, this was UW/GW and the rules are different there.

My counterpart was a Vietnamese Special Forces Captain, Phu, with whom I had a warm and beer-drenched experience since we did not know that drinking tea was actually the solution to all our problems. Instead, we took the less kind, less gentle route of Ba Mui Ba Bier 33, since that is what real men in real COIN environments did back then. We drank beer and I dealt with Vietnamese officers daily, but I never once spoke to a VN enlisted man nor broke bread in their fly-ridden mess hall. Round eyes ate in air conditioning.

I helped provide food, training and all the other goodies, but never learned one thing about their lives, their dreams or their fears. That was not my concern, and my indifference was echoed by most of the other officers assigned to my unit. We simply did not care, which is kind of odd considering SF mouthed all the platitudes about living with the indigenous, winning hearts and minds (H & M), and the whole crock.

Under my direct supervision were Engineers, Armor support, ammo storage and the motor pool, but I never spoke to anyone but the direct supervisor of the section in question. This is how the U.S. Army runs, but is it sufficient to win H & M? In 40 years, has anything really changed, what with Pepsi and Pizza Hut vendors providing grub?

Extreme sadness overtakes me when I consider these futile realities and the memories of many good men intrude upon my brain. Why did we execute this imbecile task back then, and why do we do so today? Do we think that drinking tea will bridge a cultural chasm? Why do we perpetuate these follies on the weakest of pretenses with the frailest hope of success?

Sad is the overarching feeling that saturates memories of the days of my young manhood. It is sad that we waste good young soldiers in logic-defying situations, and the sadness is undiluted after 40 years. There are those who point out the reduced number of casualties in today's wars, but how do you quantify a casualty of the spirit?

And that's all I have to say about that.