Quote:
Originally Posted by greenberetTFS
Dozer,TR
Serious question.....If this strategy isn't right,what should we be doing there?
Big Teddy  |
Showing the civilian populace that it is in their best interest to support us and our policies (us being US and the Afghan government) rather than the Taliban and AQ.
Making our HN leadership look good.
Using Afghan forces when interacting with the populace.
Taking time to drink chai with the local leadership, repeatedly over several months, and work with them on projects to make them look good. Then you start asking them for things, quietly.
Help your friends.
Saying please and thank you when appropriate.
Not busting into every store to find caches, unless every store has one.
Paying when you break something.
The tool for surgery is a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
You look for networks, and attack key personnel only if you cannot co-opt them.
You close the borders.
Not firing in the vicinity of women, children, and non-combatants with area effect weapons.
Keep the rock and roll with everything you have, to include air strikes, when you are in a defensive location, or out in the boonies.
If you have to hit someone, you swoop in under cover of darkness, hit the house you are after, the specific room you need to, with a minimum of fanfare, and grab the guy and get out without his family even knowing you are there.
Consider that we are about the third or fourth occupiers in the last 100 years, and those before us all failed.
Think about it like this. A potentially hostile force has invaded the U.S. under the guise of providing military assistance. A bunch of them drive from the next state to descend on your neighborhood looking for the resistance and their support. They bust into your store, and trash it. They break down the door to your house, and rough you up in front of your wife and kids before groping them and slapping them around. They do not speak your language, and use collaborators as translators. Their U.S. lackeys ransack your house, and take your personal possessions for their own. Then they leave, having seized your cash, crops, gun collection, son, and a few of the prominent citizens from your neighborhood, like your mayor, the teachers, the veterans, etc. They kill a couple of dozen of your neighbors, friends, and family, only a few who were actual Taliban supporters. Does this make you more likely to support the government that they have helped establish? Doesn't matter if the above actually happened as described, or not. Perceptions are everything. did you ever see "Red Dawn"?
That is the point we seem to have lost, unfortunately, especially the Marines.
That is the difference between a quiet, professional special operations force, who do this for years at the time, and guys who just claim the name for a few months.
This isn't just a poster:
SOF 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
TR