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Old 12-10-2006, 22:04   #16
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Thanks W-M, that is a great read. It's also our very own Catch-22. Too many mutually exclusive/contradictory elements for the controlling conventional mindset to deal with. Peregrino
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Old 12-10-2006, 23:00   #17
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Old 12-11-2006, 17:25   #18
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Great read. Funny how things change in war. From the story, correct me if I am wrong. He is a SF Major assigned alone on the Base. Are things spread that thin over there. Unless just for opsec he was just talking in the single person perspective. He is right in a lot of his views. Problem being is Iraq is a big place and there is not enough advisor's to put everywhere let alone advisers as committed as the Major. As long as big Army is there things will be dealt with collateral damage along side it. Like he says a guy can feed his family for a month just planting a few IED'S. What would you do if your family was starving and there was no work to be found. I am also tired of hearing about how we trained up the German Army and helped them get their Government back together so quick after WWII, why can't that be done in Iraq. I think the cultural difference between the Germans and Muslims speaks for itself on that one. As long as Terrorist are pumping money into the insurgency to pay people to kill americans it won't stop. I believe we are on the right track which is to train up the Iraq Army and Police to take over. Question is will it work. A guy I worked with in Colombia just left a big contract training up an Iraq Assault BN before the invasion of Falusha. They were motivated and had already carried out several successfully operations. They had a kick ass Iraqi SGM. Problem was the USA didn't pay them what they were promised. Before the attack on Falusha they hadn't received pay for two months. Two days before the attack more then half went AWOL, including the SGM. They said they would not participate unless they got paid. It wasn't because they were scared. They already proved they would fight. The pay problem was brought up several times but never resolved. Three months of Spec Op's training and missions all went to wast because Someone didn't get these guys paid. Most of the interpreter's left also because of the same problem. They didn't sneak out either. They turned in their tricked out AK'S and walked off the base right in front of everyone. The ones that stayed ended up taking part in the attack but on a much smaller scale because more then half left. The marines had to pick up the slack. I was amazed this could happen. Some of the contractors were giving their own money to them just to keep the really good ones around but that didn't last long. Events like this will be why we fail I am sure there were more like it.
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Old 02-02-2007, 16:47   #19
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Rather than start a new thread, let me tag onto this one about advisors.

You want to wrap your head around advisory ops, check this out.

Those deploying in that capacity should have this CSI study as read ahead.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/csi/OP%2019%20complete.pdf

There is another one covering a bit different period, and I want to read it before I put it up.

TR
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Old 02-05-2007, 14:51   #20
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Outstanding

The write-up was outstanding and should be mandatory reading for all forces. Thank you for the time and effort it took.

We must understand the people we are working with or against. If we do not understand then we end up being the ignorant peasants and treated as such. How long have we preached the philosophy of understand the people? We have practiced this thought through area studies and language training. But outside of the SO community it is unheard of and not a priority. Culture has crushed us on this blip of the radar screen; we cannot not win with pure brute force, we must will over the hearts and minds of the people and give them hope for the future.

Thank you.
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Old 02-05-2007, 18:05   #21
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"Win the hearts and minds of the people".......where have I heard that line before????????



Jim
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Old 04-09-2007, 14:30   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Reaper
Rather than start a new thread, let me tag onto this one about advisors.

You want to wrap your head around advisory ops, check this out.

Those deploying in that capacity should have this CSI study as read ahead.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/csi/OP%2019%20complete.pdf

There is another one covering a bit different period, and I want to read it before I put it up.

TR
Sir,

OP18 and 19 were two papers that LTC(ret) Odom clued me into as we began the Kilcullen summary. I wrote a companion piece where I cited both of these works using my experience as a CF advisor to a BDE in the north in 2005-6. I'll admit that we, on the conventional side of the house, are light years behind the SF community on the advisory work.

I was lucky in that two ODAs covered down on the same BDE and helped steer me onto the right path when I had questions or difficulties. I made my PLs and NCOs respect the Iraqi chain of command, as I told them their nationality didn't supercede military custom, courtesy, or decency. Some of my soldiers found this a hard hurdle to clear. I soon banned those soldiers from the IA OPS center and barracks as their pride and lack of integration was beginning to hurt our mission. We ate with the Iraqis, lived in the same quad of buildings on the IA base, and operated with them daily. I had one platoon that lived with an IA company 30KM from our main base. Fm 31-20-3 became my bible. I got some great mentorship from the AOB commander as well. It didn't hurt that I was working for COL H.R. McMaster, an extremely brilliant officer in his own right, either.

Putting guys like LTC John Nagl in charge of training MiTT teams is a good step in the right direction. We on the conventional side still have a long way to go.
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Old 04-09-2007, 19:09   #23
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I want to say thank you for putting this out there for every one to see. I have not been to Iraq so I have no first hand knowledge of how things are going over there. I was involved in Operation Bright Star and I know how I reacted to the Egyptian soldiers and other soldiers from the Middle East.

I was probably the #1 Ulgly American. I did everything I could not to show them respect. I would not look at them I would go along with the group and laugh and make jokes while in their bazzar (sp?) knowing that they could hear us.

Up until I read this post I didn't think anything of it, now I am ashamed of the way I acted and wish I could go back and change things. I guess I was like every other person in America and thought that all of the Iraqis were out to get us and that there was no way of winning this war. But knowing that there was no way out for us now.

Now, I see the way to win and the way out. We need to be more diplomatic and have a better knowledge of the culture before we put boots on the ground. I know even more than ever want to get out and learn about the culture and the people. I pledge to myself and my country right here that when I get over there that I will make every attempt to learn more about the people that I am dealing with.
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Old 04-10-2007, 17:54   #24
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First, I think the author should be applauded for being so intellectually and emotionally honest with himself and his audience. Besides being an excellent piece from a practical sense, the author is so eloquent that it borders poetic in some places.

Second, please correct me if I'm wrong, guys. I'm not a trained UW guy, but I've been around a little bit and I've seen it go right and I've seen it go wrong. It seems to me (like the author implies) that so much of the craft is just basic human empathy. Its the handlers that try to "play" (bully, manipulate, trick, etc) people that fail, while the one's who treat people like people (even when things aren't going their way) have success.

Again, please educate me if I'm too far out of my expertise and talking out of my ass. I mean no disrespect to the UW profession, just trying to learn.

As for the Iraq case in particular, I'm going to stick my neck out there and disagree with TR. I don't think you could have overturned Saddam with a pure UW campaign. The RG was not the Taliban.

That said, there was definitely a happy medium to be had between a pure UW campaign and Rumsfeld's plan which was conceived as much to prove his technical/doctrinal theories as to achieve any proper war aim. For my money, the real crux of our screw up was the first month after the fall of Baghdad when we didn't quickly and smartly transition to a CA/UW campaign. As soon as the statue of Saddam fell, PSYOPS and ODAs should have been given the lead to spread out accross the country retaining/reconstituting Iraqi Army units. (I was only in elementary school, but isn't this basically what we did in Panama?)
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Old 04-11-2007, 05:21   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by x-factor
First, I think the author should be applauded for being so intellectually and emotionally honest with himself and his audience. Besides being an excellent piece from a practical sense, the author is so eloquent that it borders poetic in some places.

Second, please correct me if I'm wrong, guys. I'm not a trained UW guy, but I've been around a little bit and I've seen it go right and I've seen it go wrong. It seems to me (like the author implies) that so much of the craft is just basic human empathy. Its the handlers that try to "play" (bully, manipulate, trick, etc) people that fail, while the one's who treat people like people (even when things aren't going their way) have success.

Again, please educate me if I'm too far out of my expertise and talking out of my ass. I mean no disrespect to the UW profession, just trying to learn.

As for the Iraq case in particular, I'm going to stick my neck out there and disagree with TR. I don't think you could have overturned Saddam with a pure UW campaign. The RG was not the Taliban.

That said, there was definitely a happy medium to be had between a pure UW campaign and Rumsfeld's plan which was conceived as much to prove his technical/doctrinal theories as to achieve any proper war aim. For my money, the real crux of our screw up was the first month after the fall of Baghdad when we didn't quickly and smartly transition to a CA/UW campaign. As soon as the statue of Saddam fell, PSYOPS and ODAs should have been given the lead to spread out accross the country retaining/reconstituting Iraqi Army units. (I was only in elementary school, but isn't this basically what we did in Panama?)
Understand that UW is not a profession, is scalable and has many facets. Please read the following definition: Executed as defined you would find yourself in a situation where the citizens of the country have determined their future through their own actions. There is no vaccuum created as with the sudden removal of the political infrastructure. Instead there is a slow, diliberate replacement. Success is measured over time. We currently live in an impatient society whithout the willpower for the long-haul.

My .02

Unconventional Warfare (UW). These are operations that involve a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. UW is unique in that it is a Special Operation (SO) that can either be conducted as part of a geographic combatant commander's overall theater campaign, or as an independent, subordinate campaign. When conducted independently, the primary focus of UW is on political-military objectives and psychological objectives. UW includes military and paramilitary aspects of resistance movements. UW military activity represents the culmination of a successful effort to organize and mobilize the civil populace against a hostile government or occupying power. From the US perspective, the intent is to develop and sustain these supported resistance organizations and to synchronize their activities to further US national security objectives. SOF units do not create resistance movements. They advise, train, and assist indigenous resistance movements already in existence to conduct UW and when required,accompany them into combat. When UW operations support conventional military operations, the focus shifts to primarily military objectives; however the political and psychological implications remain. Operational and strategic staffs and commanders must guard against limiting UW to a specific set ofcircumstances or activities defined by either recent events or personal experience. The most prevalent mistake is the belief that UW is limited to guerrilla warfare or insurgency. UW includes, but is not limited to, the following activities:

Guerrilla Warfare. These are military and paramilitary operations conducted by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces in adversary-held or hostile territory. It is the military aspect of an insurgency or other armed resistance movement. Guerilla warfare techniques can undermine the legitimacy of the existing government or an occupying power as well as destroy, degrade, or divert military capabilities.


Subversion. These operations are designed to undermine the military, economic, psychological, or political strength or morale of a regime or nation. The clandestine nature of subversion dictates that the underground elements perform the bulk of the activity.


Sabotage. These are operations that involve an act or acts with intent to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of a country by willfully injuring or destroying, or attempting to injure or destroy, any national defense or war material, premises, or utilities, to include human and natural resources. Sabotage selectively disrupts, destroys, or neutralizes hostile capabilities with a minimum expenditure of manpower and materiel.


Intelligence Activities. These activities assess areas of interest ranging from political and military personalities to the military capabilities of friendly and adversary forces. SOF perform intelligence activities ranging from developing information critical to planning and conducting operations, to assessing the capabilities and intentions of indigenous and coalition forces.


Unconventional Assisted Recovery (UAR). These operations consist of UW forces establishing and operating unconventional assisted recovery mechanisms and unconventional assisted recovery teams. UAR operations are designed to seek out, contact, authenticate, and support military and other selected personnel as they move from an adversary-held, hostile, or sensitive area to areas under friendly control.
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Old 04-11-2007, 07:09   #26
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Thanks for posting the OP, it was amazing to me how little UW/FID/GW has changed from Lawrence's time, and IIRC what was taught in the quonsets at CMK back when I went through the course. A lot of it (to me, at least) is the implementation of "hiding in plain sight" with your HN/G group... language, culture, advice, rapport, acceptance...

Conventional forces are not trained in this, and I'm not sure if a 'short course' for them would be a good thing - a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially if there is no one wit hthe depth of knowledge to guide them.

Well, just my .02 on the consistency of UW (wow, that seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?).
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Old 04-11-2007, 07:39   #27
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Originally Posted by x SF med
TR-
Thanks for posting the OP, it was amazing to me how little UW/FID/GW has changed from Lawrence's time, and IIRC what was taught in the quonsets at CMK back when I went through the course. A lot of it (to me, at least) is the implementation of "hiding in plain sight" with your HN/G group... language, culture, advice, rapport, acceptance...

Conventional forces are not trained in this, and I'm not sure if a 'short course' for them would be a good thing - a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially if there is no one wit hthe depth of knowledge to guide them.

Well, just my .02 on the consistency of UW (wow, that seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?).
As a conventional guy I totally agree.

Conventional forces aren't trained on this and few have a good excuse on why. Particularly in terms of the operating environment conventional units find themselves into today, it's a tragedy that some simply don't make it a priority for training. Those are the units we read about in USA Today.

There are a lot of units collocated on the same post as a group. My Regimental Commander aked the 10SFG commander to give an 4 hour OPD. Our regimental S2 section learned from a lot of the group S2 people. IMHO that worked pretty good. Outside of that, we tried to integration ODAs into the MRE before deployment to at least give commanders at the troop and company level the experiece of what it meant to cohabitate the same AO with a team and how to compliment strengths (heavy armor protection (ACR) with cultural awareness and FID/IDAD experience (SF)). Good units are brining in outside cultural experts as well. More emphasis on language and cultural training is being placed in the training calandar.

A lot of units just look at the kinetic fight as the decisive point. The bottom line is that many conventional units need to ask themselves if they're truely prepared to operate within the given environment and win, not just on the tactical kinetic engagement level, but throughout all the lines of operation that don't include combat operations (Civil-military operations, training, equiping, and operating with indigenous forces, economic development, and Information Operations).

For what it's worth...
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Old 04-11-2007, 10:32   #28
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I have written a very long response to this and lost it twice, so bullet comments, for now.

IMHO, the center of gravity for COIN (and the GWOT) is the support of the populace.

Gs cannot conduct ops or survive without popular support of some kind, even if it is just regional or neighborhood. As Mao said, a G without the people's support is a fish out of the water. No to low support, lots of actionable intel, low G activity, controllable violence.

The Dems, MSM, and anti-war nuts have already lost this war with their cut and run efforts, successful, or not. Done deal, put it in the history books.

If I am an Iraqi sitting at home and I see the supporting government debating on the date for the cut and run, I am not helping anyone till the deal is over and I see how things sort out. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Step up and rat out the Gs to the government and you will pay. Best to say nothing. The US forces will largely be gone or going by the next inauguration. Be sure that if you supported the US, you are on the last plane out.

US has not had a good track record of taking care of people who helped us. Look at the Afghan local who took care of the last SEAL from the recon mission that went south. He should have been rewarded and given passports and tickets to the land of the big PX for him and his immediate family. Big PSYOP theme, like the "last season's winners" in "The Running Man". Instead we left him out to dry. Now a G theme - "Help the US and get screwed, then we saw your kids' heads off."

The US public lacks patience and political will for a COIN campaign with any media coverage. MSM provides a daily PSYOP assault on US populace with loss reports, bad news, failures, and a never ending parade of armchair generals passed over and who are "experts" at critiquing the ongoing operation. Better to hide the long war in a box and report back every five years. Easier for the politicians to oppose the war from the beginning, hope we lose, work towards that end, claim partial credit and point out mistakes if we win.

Conventional forces do not have the tools for this. Conventional Army in 2000 was still focused on Fulda Gap against the Soviets, repelling NK invasion, or DS all over again. Little if any thought on LIC, COIN, or post-conflict activity. Best to have conventional force learn Galen's "First, do no harm." Provide exploitation and QRF, help train government military and LE forces, assist with local security efforts (without making HN forces look weak or antagonizing populace).

Do not lose core MOS skills. Tankers still need to spend time making sure that they can shoot. Gun bunnies still need to remember how to shoot and scoot.

Even SF, with years of experience in FID, language training, area orientation, cultural awareness, etc., decided a long time ago that SF could not maintain proficiency in more than one or two of our then five core missions, so we specialized. FID/COIN is a tough one, and requires a lot of maturity, social skills, and experience, which you are not going to get in a two-week class. Large US presence now works against our goals and the Iraqi government. Shows foreign influence, delegitimizes, makes HN forces look incapable of providing internal security, a core mission.

The conventional war is over. Kinetic solutions are not the key to this war anymore, hearts and minds are. This is pretty much a lost cause due to strategic political decisions, except at the lowest level where "un-ugly Americans" and indig meet.

Best hope now, IMHO, is to try to lay a big smackdown on the most visible insurgent threats (why is al Sadr still alive?), buy the Iraqi (and Afghan) governments time to get their forces ready, to train and equip them to the best of our capabilities, to put at least a rudimentary PSYOP effort into place to win over the populace, to help people who help us, and to try and transition this back to a SOF campaign (not the ballistic solution DA SOF, the hearts and minds SOF). We need to be helping the Iraqi government, not doing their jobs for them.

How many of these were observed in the US war plan?

Imperatives
Understand the operational environment
Recognize political implications
Facilitate interagency activities
Engage the threat discriminately
Consider long-term effects
Ensure legitimacy and credibility of Special Operations
Anticipate and control psychological effects
Apply capabilities indirectly
Develop multiple options
Ensure long-term sustainment
Provide sufficient intelligence
Balance security and synchronization


Just my .02, YMMV.

TR
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Old 04-11-2007, 11:31   #29
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Looking forward to the LP version
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Old 04-11-2007, 15:01   #30
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Reaper

US has not had a good track record of taking care of people who helped us.
George Packer wrote an excellent but sad article speaking to this last month in the New Yorker.
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