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Old 04-25-2009, 17:09   #1
Richard
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Counterinsurgency Lessons from Iraq

For you COIN afficinados.

Counterinsurgency Lessons from Iraq
Bing West, MR, Mar-Apr 2009

The military war in Iraq ended in 2008, although political conflict among Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds will continue for decades. At the same time, the war in Afghanistan has heated up, with more American troops committed to battle. This article, based on 15 extended trips I made to and interviews conducted with 2,000 Soldiers and Marines, reviews the causes of the turnaround in Iraq and their importance for doctrine development and for success in the war in Afghanistan.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/Military...430_art004.pdf

A former assistant secretary of defense and a combat Marine, Mr. West is the author of numerous military books and articles, including The Villager: A Combined action Platoon in Vietnam, and The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the End Game in Iraq. He is a correspondent for The Atlantic and is currently writing a book about the war in Afghanistan and the role of courage in society.

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Old 04-27-2009, 12:48   #2
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The basic gist of the article is correct...small military forces conducting aggressive military patrolling while paired with a sensible long term civil program (caveated with the proper amount of "control" over the host nation and the population) works.

That has been proven time and time again.

It is nice to see an author take a dissenting view that GEN Petraeus "won the war". After being here for going on five years, I can definitely say that whether or not the FM was written, the lessons were learned by the majority of units and were being employed...the FM simply codified them. Also, since it is only a "guide", there are still some units that just don't get it, and until we fire those commanders and staffs that don't get it, no amount of professional education is going to help them at this point.

-STS
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Old 06-28-2009, 23:27   #3
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According to Mr. West, the US military should not be the primary implement of foreign policy. During war this makes no sense to me because Soldiers are the most capable executors of established policy; they are politics manifested! The Civilian lacks this capacity on the ground during conditions of armed conflict.

When I deployed to Iraq as a member of a land-owning Artillery platoon operating as motorized infantry, my intent was to defeat, or at least disrupt, the (local) insurgency. Upon arrival I identified two methods we could use to achieve this. The first was to develop and provide local services, i.e. to help "build the nation." The second was to influence local political conditions using dollars, i.e. to "control" the population. In both cases the result was the same, the separation of the population from the insurgency, which facilitated disruption or defeat. I believe Bing mentioned both methods in the article but seemed much more enthusiastic about the latter, which leaves me confused. In my experience both building and controlling were effective.

While nation-building, not only did we hand out significant amounts of humanitarian aid and technical assistance, we did so in the most politically visible ways available to us. For example, when assigned an (ineffective) clearance mission, we planned to concurrently establish a humanitarian aid drop at a local school. Once cleared we induced wary, loitering children to identify the most influential local leaders and invite them to the school. No doubt the substantial USA and IA presence operating under my Platoon's authority was compelling to the local leaders, especially when tempered by their own excited children; we saturated the area with both military and political power. Additionally, we coordinated for one of the Iraqi Army BN leaders, who was riding around in a safe and secure HMMWV, to join us. This US-facilitated political engagement between the local people and the Iraqi Army resulted in a major IO success, the voluntary surrendering of several caches, and also increased trust and future cooperation. This brings me to the second method mentioned in the second paragraph.

Realizing that the clearance aspect of the Platoon's mission was ineffective, and without our preliminary nation-building effort, we could not have pressed forward in this new area using the second method of controlling the population. By tapping US economic power, many former insurgents were simultaneously demobilized and employed. Thus found and fixed but not destroyed, i.e. controlled, the Sons of Iraq facilitated freedom of movement. Exploiting this, the Battery was able to maneuver throughout the entire area at will without sustaining a thousand cuts while en route to disrupting, capturing, or killing the hard core enemy cadres. Since both methods worked, the lesson I learned from Iraq was that there is no reason to restrict our methods, especially in ways that reduce the Soldier's natural capacity as the most effective executor of political policy. Unless challenged by the thoughtful members of this forum, I intend to use both methods when applicable upon deployment to Afghanistan sometime in the near future.
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Old 04-11-2011, 15:30   #4
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E. Thomas McClanahan summarizes Bing West in this piece on Afghanistan. I thought the part highlighted in orange below was interesting.


road map for scaling back U.S. commitment in Afghanistan

By E. THOMAS McCLANAHAN
The Kansas City Star
More News

On the eve of World War II, our Navy was heavily invested in battleships and poorly prepared for the aircraft-carrier war that actually ensued. Our admirals saw future conflict through a mental frame that became obsolete at Pearl Harbor.

They adhered to a military doctrine that was radically out of sync with the war they found themselves fighting.

Bing West, a former Marine infantryman and former Pentagon official, argues that in Afghanistan, our current doctrine of counterinsurgency is similarly out of sync.

As the title of his recent book bluntly states, we’re fighting “The Wrong War.”

West’s book, laced with first-hand experience with combat troops in Afghanistan, is generating a tremendous amount of interest. He argues that the “new” counterinsurgency doctrine that helped turn the tide in Iraq can’t work in Afghanistan.

The book’s subtitle promises to offer “the way out of Afghanistan,” but what West serves up is less an exit strategy than a way to carry on while our current force is drawn down over time.

What he suggests deserves serious consideration in Washington. The book is well timed: This week, Gen. David Petraeus, the top general in Afghanistan, will testify before Congress on the war’s progress.

West’s plan borrows from one of the few successful counterinsurgency tactics applied in Vietnam — the Combined Action Program. Under CAP, Marine infantry units were quartered in Vietnamese villages and Marines fought alongside the local villagers. West’s idea would assign task forces of U.S. advisers to larger Afghan units, an arrangement he’s already seen in action.

He writes of a Special Forces captain who advised an Afghan battalion at the battle of Marja last year. The initial group of 10 Special Forces sergeants was too small for the 400-man battalion, so a Marine platoon was added along with engineers and fire-control coordinators to call in artillery or air support.

This arrangement, West writes, “enabled the Afghan battalion to perform credibly on its own.”

West’s beef with existing counterinsurgency doctrine is that it discounts the importance of the military’s traditional mission: Seek out and destroy the enemy. It presumes that “stability operations” like building schools deserve to be on the same footing as combat operations.

Current doctrine, West argues, has “transformed our military into a giant Peace Corps” and is undermining the warrior ethos of our troops.

Under counterinsurgency theory, if the people are supported and protected they’ll turn against the Taliban. But in Afghanistan, the population has remained neutral and we’ve created a nation of dependents. “Both the Kabul government and the Pashtun tribes are accustomed to receiving something for nothing and giving nothing in return,” West writes.

Fortunately, in recent months there have been clear signs that the aggressiveness of our troops has been ramped up considerably. Thomas Donnelly, a defense policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, says the situation in Afghanistan has changed markedly since West began writing his book.

“This year and next, I think you’ll see a campaign much more oriented to defeating the enemy rather than winning hearts and minds,” Donnelly said.

In fact, a recent piece by West himself in National Review tells of a Marine unit that took over an outpost from British troops late last year. Immediately, the Marines adopted a more offensive posture.

They steadily pushed out their patrol perimeter and drove the Taliban back. Their immediate concern wasn’t winning the allegiance of the district’s poor farmers, but dominating the battlefield.

West’s book offers a plan for gradually scaling back our current large-scale involvement while shifting more of the burden to the Afghans, and he makes a good case that the nation-building “stability operations” have been a poor use of scarce resources.

Those who wonder when we’ll be out of Afghanistan completely shouldn’t hold their breath. The region will be a zone of contention for a long time.

But we can steadily reduce our involvement via West’s model, which seems a realistic middle ground between our current heavy commitment and the too-light, attack-from-a-distance approach once suggested by Vice President Joe Biden.

To reach E. Thomas McClanahan, call 816-234-4480 or send e-mail to mcclanahan@kcstar.com.

Posted on Sat, Mar. 12, 2011 10:15 PM



Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/12...#ixzz1JFgrakSs
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