COIN Doctrine Under Fire by LtG Karl Eikenberry,

[JJ_BPK]

The barry's REMF's are coming out of their HESCO compounds??

COIN Doctrine Under Fire
By Richard Sisk Tuesday, November 19th, 2013 3:13 pm
Posted in Land

The vaunted counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy promoted by retired Gen. David Petraeus that guided the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has come under renewed and caustic criticism from one of its reluctant practitioners, both as a general and diplomat.

“In short, COIN failed in Afghanistan,” said Karl Eikenberry, the retired Army lieutenant general and former chief of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan who was later U.S. Ambassador to Kabul.

Eikenberry dissected and dismissed the COIN doctrine as applied in Afghanistan in a recent article for Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan.”

Eikenberry also took on what has come to be known as the “COIN Bible” – the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, or FM 3–24, co-authored by then-Lt. Gen. David Petraeus and then-Lt. Gen. James Amos, now commandant of the Marine Corps.

The “clear, hold and build” strategy outlined in FM 3–24 called for individual soldiers and Marines with the qualities of a modern-day “Lawrence of Arabia,” versed in languages and attuned to the culture and politics of the host nation, Eikenberry said.

“The typical 21-year-old Marine is hard-pressed to win the heart and mind of his mother-in-law,” Eikenberry said. “Can he really be expected to do the same with an ethnocentric Pashtun tribal elder? Moreover, T. E. Lawrence specialized in inciting revolts, not in state building.”

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Is COIN a Marine core doctrine?

Me thinks this reads like a war of the budget giants??

[MtnGoat]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

The barry's REMF's are coming out of their HESCO compounds??



Is COIN a Marine core doctrine?

Me thinks this reads like a war of the budget giants??

No TRADOC took their FM and slapped our number and cover on it. Just like MARSOC was doing with most of our SF FMs.

What I think is funny is if you go back and look at older SF manuals and look at what COIN is, we called it Counter Guerrilla Warfare. Yet we removed this term from SF. Double edge sword?

Without mentioning Eikenberry, Petraeus recently launched a defense of COIN in a lengthy article for “Foreign Policy.” As he has previously, Petraeus argued that the COIN doctrine plus the troop surge in 2007 in Iraq averted civil war and gave the Baghdad government breathing room to build a new democratic state.

Does anyone know if any Thesis or case studies on weather the surge or the new COIN doctrine averted the Iraq civil war/sectarian violence?

Moreover, T. E. Lawrence specialized in inciting revolts, not in state building.

This one kills me, using CPT (LTC) T. E. Lawrence as an example of why he was so successful does work IMO, isn't a good example of cuurent US COIN Doctrine. Our CPTs don't live with the locals. We have very few that are living with locals. The very few Elements Leaders that are down at the local level can lead locals as Lawrence did. Most are horse collared in their actions.

The other big issue with current COIN doctrine or campaign, as within any governmental organization, Commands, leaders, organizations change. So with this, the campaign plans and strategies, ever end cycle. I get what GEN Eikenberry is saying with the nation building part.

[Snaquebite]

Just like MARSOC was doing with most of our SF FMs.

Same with all the lesson plans they got from SF.

[Richard]

It was "insurgency" during my time (1970-1993) - not all "insurgents" we encountered were "guerrillas", many were outright invaders.

We referred to it as CI (Counter Insurgency) or CRW (Counter-Revolutionary Warfare) or UGW (Urban Guerrilla Warfare), though - not COIN.

Richard

[scooter]

I can tell you from personal experience that the changes that GEN Petraeus implemented in Iraq in 2007/2008 saved the war there. Things were going poorly and the order of the day was "Turn it over to the Iraqis, now." The infusion of troops, switch to platoon sized outposts that patrolled on foot among the people, support for local defense militias, the willingness to cordon off entire neighborhoods and implement population control measures, finally conducting a deliberate clear and hold of insurgent strongholds of Basra and Sadr City, and a change to targeting methodology and a simultaneous tightening and loosening of parts of the ROE all made a difference.

The failures in Afghanistan have nothing to do with COIN, they are much deeper than that. The Marines came in and pacified Helmand, hands down. Then they started pulling out immediately. The "hold" in clear-hold-build has to be maintained. We didn't do that. We also never had enough troops to make a difference there. Add in foreign sponsorship, porous borders with safe havens, lack of a coherent strategy, muddled ROE, and the US's desire to make a central government in places that never had one all doomed us to failure.

COIN is very unpopular in large segments of the Army, and a lot of the senior leadership think we need to get back to driving tanks onto seized airfields so we can defend the Fulda Gap from the Chinese. Or something.....