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2010-07-24 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by tu3031 2010-07-24 00:00|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 To be placed in charge and assume responsibility of a challenging counterinsurgency effort, then hobbled by a lack of boots on the ground and beset by Rules of Engagement (ROE) which emphasize containment and give battlefield advantage to the enemy, all by an administration unwilling to engage and resource strategic victory whilst at the same time watching young Americans and coalition forces KIA/WIA rise correspondingly will have a debilitating effect on the psyche and staff of any warrior. The only fault with the General I have is with his embedding of leftest journalists, and even that may have been something he was TOLD to do.

The 'neighborhood watch', catch and release police investigatory strategy which we are currently employing in Afghanistan will ultimately lead to the undoing of the entire effort. Much more is known about this virus than is being done about it, or discussed openly. There are and never have been "Strategic Hamlets" only an enemy that moves about freely, crossing international borders from safe haven to safe haven, filling vacumes and enjoying the succor of a sympathetic populous.

Fighting a war of attrition through surgical removal of insurgent leaders only to have them replaced by an endless line of successors is a fools method, and very costly exercise in futility. One could visit the barber shop each Saturday, but limiting the haircut to the clipping of only one or two hairs per visit will fail to produce much in the way of visible progress. Unless our strategy and plan of engagement changes soon we will face the same outcome as the Russian.

General McChrystal was not part of the problem, but if permitted, he could have been part of the solution. I hate to see him gone.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-24 07:39|| 2010-07-24 07:39|| Front Page Top

#2 From a prior American experience -

For insightful reading of events which have meaning today may I recommend, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891 by Robert M. Utley. The perspective of a small and overtaxed military establishment conducting operations in a demanding environment, physically and politically, while bringing civilization to the vastness of the west can be related to the contemporary operations on the world stage today. Of particular note would be chapters three: The Problem of Doctrine, four: The Army, Congress, and the People, and eighteen: Mexican Border Conflicts 1870-81.

Some excerpts:
Chapter 3: The Problem of Doctrine. Three special conditions set this mission apart from more orthodox military assignments. First, it pitted the army against an enemy who usually could not be clearly identified and differentiated from kinsmen not disposed at the moment to be enemies. Indians could change with bewildering rapidity from friend to foe to neutral, and rarely could one be confidently distinguished from another...Second, Indian service placed the army in opposition to a people that aroused conflicting emotions... And third, the Indians mission gave the army a foe unconventional both in the techniques and aims of warfare... He fought on his own terms and, except when cornered or when his family was endangered, declined to fight at all unless he enjoyed overwhelming odds...These special conditions of the Indian mission made the U.S. Army not so much a little army as a big police force...for a century the army tried to perform its unconventional mission with conventional organization and methods. The result was an Indian record that contained more failures than successes and a lack of preparedness for conventional war that became painfully evident in 1812, 1846, 1861, and 1898.

Chapter 4. The Army, Congress, and the People. Shermans frontier regulars endured not only the physical isolation of service at remote border posts; increasingly in the postwar years they found themselves isolated in attitudes, interests, and spirit from other institutions of government and society and, indeed from the American people themselves...Reconstruction plunged the army into tempestuous partisan politics. The frontier service removed it largely from physical proximity to population and, except for an occasional Indian conflict, from public awareness and interest. Besides public and congressional indifference and even hostility, the army found its Indian attitudes and policies condemned and opposed by the civilian officials concerned with Indian affairs and by the nations humanitarian community.

- somehow we succeeded. Sounds very familiar. Let's never forget the enemy is having problems as well. No one want's to spend the time iterating those problems and the impact upon their operations and goals. Reduce your problems, increase theirs. You don't have to 'defeat' the enemy as much as weaken them to the point that other players in the environment will overtake them.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-07-24 09:21|| 2010-07-24 09:21|| Front Page Top

#3 The only fault with the General I have is with his embedding of leftest journalists, and even that may have been something he was TOLD to do.

I don't think so, at least not being told to do so.

He and his staff's major fault was allowing the Rolling Stone reporter to get in close, thinking he was a 'friendly' like the CIA station chief did.

The only difference in McChrystal's case was it was only careers that got killed due to the lack of judgment.

Posted by Pappy 2010-07-24 13:42|| 2010-07-24 13:42|| Front Page Top

#4 he was a freelancer, but better vetting could've saved some careers. A word of cautionary skepticism: a journalist is NEVER your friend

Posted by Frank G 2010-07-24 16:06|| 2010-07-24 16:06|| Front Page Top

#5 WSJ: Casual Send-Off for an Army Maverick

Posted by 3dc 2010-07-24 22:50|| 2010-07-24 22:50|| Front Page Top

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