A Second Hand Conjecture

News Brief, Truncated For Life Purposes Edition

Joshua Foust on Sep 14 2007 at 2:44 am | Filed under: Environment, Foreign affairs, Notes on the war

5 Responses to “News Brief, Truncated For Life Purposes Edition”

1. on 14 Sep 2007 at 12:15 pm 1Keith_Indy

   

   Speaking of dying, 2 of the 7 grunts who wrote that all the “progress” was at best stilted and uneven have been killed. Because of the progress, naturally.

   Right, because we don’t have vehicle accidents in this country. That was eliminated ages ago…

   As reported earlier, seven Soldiers were killed and 11 wounded on Sept. 10, when the vehicle they were traveling in was involved in a single vehicle accident in the north Baghdad suburb of Shula.

   The accident occurred as elements of the 1st Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, attached to 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, currently attached to the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, were returning from a successful raid in Shula where they had conducted a precision operation to capture extremists responsible for attacks on US and Iraqi Soldiers.

   The unit was returning to base after the raid when their vehicle apparently lost control and fell approximately 50 feet from a highway overpass. The vehicle had three personnel in the cab of the truck and 15 US personnel in the armored troop carrier on the back of the vehicle. Also in the vehicle were three Iraqi national detainees.

   The vehicle they were riding in was an LMTV armored cargo vehicle with an armored troop carrier on the back of it, commonly referred to as a “Hunter Box.” This vehicle is regularly used by 1-325 AIR to transport Soldiers, equipment, and detainees.
   Of the 11 US personnel wounded, two have been returned to duty with a third expected to return within a week. The rest of the wounded were evacuated to Landstuhl Army Medical Clinic in Germany.

2. on 14 Sep 2007 at 12:31 pm 2Keith_Indy

   

   Queen Sully wants to know why General Petraeus seems to have abandoned every single principle of counterinsurgency he spent two decades defining. I’m interested in the same, but I suppose someone will have a perfectly reasonable explanation, like expediency or career advancement, right?

   Or maybe a reading in context is what is needed… Right?

   The prescriptions America’s senior military have derived from Vietnam do, however, have their limitations. While they represent the distillation of considerable wisdom from America’s experience in Southeast Asia, they nonetheless give rise to certain paradoxes and should not be pushed beyond their limits.

   As will be explained, complete resolution of the paradoxes and dilemmas that reside in the lessons of Vietnam is not poassible. Nonetheless, understanding of the limitations of the lessons of Vietnam is necessary if they are to be employed with sound judgment.

   …

   Thus we should beware of literal application of lessons extracted from Vietnam, or any other past event, to present or future problems without due regard for the specific circumstances that surround those problems. Stud of Vietnam — and of other historical occurrences — should endeavor to gain perspective and understanding, rather than hard and fast lessons that might be applied to easily without proper reflection and sufficiently rigorous analysis. “Each historical situation is unique,” George Herring has warned, “and the use of analogy is at best misleading, at worst, dangerous.”

3. on 14 Sep 2007 at 12:41 pm 3Joshua Foust

   

   Kieth, I would agree with you in almost any other situation (and I really do dislike very deeply facile comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam), but in that quote Petraeus was speaking in a general sense.

   In light of such criteria, committing U.S. units to counterinsurgencies appears to be a very problematic proposition, difficult to conclude before domestic support erodes and costly enough to threaten the well-being of all America’s military forces (and hence the country’s national security), not just those involved in the actual counterinsurgency.

   That’s not speaking only of Vietnam, but of counterinsurgency in general. In other words, he was saying these sorts of messy, difficult wars should only be entered into in the direst of circumstances to defend vital interests. Back then, he felt long counterinsurgencies dangerously degraded the military, and thus our ability to defend ourselves from an actual attack; he does not appear to think so now. What changed?

4. on 14 Sep 2007 at 12:45 pm 4Keith_Indy

   

   I’m starting a complete post on this topic… but you’re wrong, and a full reading of Gen. Petraeus’ dissertation (all 328 pages) doesn’t support the conclusion people are trying to make.

5. on 14 Sep 2007 at 1:07 pm 5Keith_Indy

   

   Oh, and what has changed since then, 20 more years of experience and education, and the realization by many that COIN is the future. Which if they had listened a little closer to Petraeus in 1987, we’d have had the forces and doctrine to tackle it now.

   And let’s retain some perspective.

   Vietnam 1959 – 1975 (16 years) 58,209 dead
   Iraq War 2003 – 3800 dead currently

   From the forward of our current COIN manual.

   This manual takes a general approach to COIN. The Army and the Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, the Moros, or the Tupamaros; the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each vary considerably. Nonetheless, all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people, employ variations of standard themes, and adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan. This manual therefore addresses the common characteristics of insurgencies. It strives to provide those carrying out a counterinsurgency campaign a solid foundation on which to build in seeking to understand and address specific insurgencies.

   A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations, conducted along multiple lines of operation. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of both familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies, with the balance
   between them varying depending on the local situation. This is not easy. Leaders at all levels must adjust their approach constantly, ensuring that their elements are ready each day to be greeted with a handshake or a hand grenade, to take on missions only infrequently practiced until recent years at our combat training centers, to be nation builders as well as warriors, to help re-establish institutions and local security forces,
   to assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure and basic services, and to facilitate the establishment of local governance and the rule of law. The list of such tasks is a long one and involves extensive coordination and cooperation with a myriad of intergovernmental, indigenous, and international agencies. Indeed, the
   responsibilities of leaders in a counterinsurgency campaign are daunting – and the discussions in this manual endeavor to alert them to the challenges of such campaigns and to suggest general approaches for grappling with those challenges.

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