BlackFive

Boston Maggie is pointing out some folks who could use some assistance, and thankfully she does so in print. If she had simply shouted this out vocally, no one, 'cept some chowdah heads, would have been able to understand her.

My fav BMCS has found a particular problem in Khandahar. His unit has come across a group of wounded Marines who have slipped through the cracks so to speak. They come in straight from the field with the clothes on their back. In most cases, these Marines have suffered a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). They are in this location to see the doctors at the nearby facility, which is top-notch, before being shipped out to other facilities.

So, what's the problem? Well, for one thing, the Marines have none of their own gear. Except for seeing the docs, they are sitting around bored silly. So, my BMCS has rounded up some stuff for them (cumshaw, anyone?); a TV, a DVD player and an X-Box. But he needs more stuff.

Crush points out, while nodding sagely in agreement, a piece by COL Gian Gentile bemoaning the idea that an insurgency should be fought using a counterinsurgency strategy. I think it bears a look at COL Gentile and his deep and abiding distaste for COIN prior to taking him too seriously. There is plenty to debate about the best way to counter an insurgency, but if you are going to debate you need an open mind. That is lacking here as the rhetoric in COL Gentile's piece clearly shows. Emphases showing his spleen are mine.

The principles of population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) have become transcendent in the U.S. Army and other parts of the greater Defense Establishment. Concepts such as population security, nation building, and living among the people to win their hearts and minds were first injected into the Army with the publication of the vaunted Field Manual (FM) 3–24, Counterinsurgency, in December 2006. Unfortunately, the Army was so busy fighting two wars that the new doctrine was written and implemented and came to dominate how the Army thinks about war without a serious professional and public debate over its efficacy, practicality, and utility.

Actually I recall a whole lot of professional and public debate about COIN while things were gong South in Iraq and COL Gentile's voice was front and center vociferously opposing it. In the end, his view didn't prevail and he isn't too pleased about that.

The fundamental assumption behind population-centric counterinsurgency and the Army’s “new way of war” is that it has worked in history, was proven to work in Iraq during the surge, and will work in the future in places such as Afghanistan as long as its rules are followed, the experts are listened to, and better generals are put in charge.

Did I miss something, I thought that a switch to COIN was one of the major factors in our victory in Iraq. even the Anbar Awakening was conditioned upon our employing a strategy that was focused on safeguarding the populace and helping the Iraqis do just that.

Of course, leaders in war must be held accountable for their actions and what results from them. But to use as a measuring stick the COIN principles put forth in FM 3–24 with all of their underlying and unproven theories and assumptions about insurgencies and how to counter them is wrong, and the Army needs to think hard about where its collective “head is at” in this regard.

I get the feelng you think it might be "up its ass".

It is time for the Army to debate FM 3–24 critically, in a wide and open forum. The notion that it was debated sufficiently during the months leading up to its publication is a chimera. Unfortunately, the dialogue within defense circles about counterinsurgency and the Army’s new way of war is stale and reflects thinking that is well over 40 years old. In short, our Army has been steamrollered by a counterinsurgency doctrine that was developed by Western military officers to deal with insurgencies and national wars of independence from the mountains of northern Algeria in the 1950s to the swamps of Indochina in the 1960s. The simple truth is that we have bought into a doctrine for countering insurgencies that did not work in the past, as proven by history, and whose efficacy and utility remain highly problematic today. Yet prominent members of the Army and the defense expert community seem to be mired in this out-of-date doctrine.

I think that ignoring the recent success of this strategy in Iraq is telling.

For example, the widely read counterinsurgency expert Tom Ricks, in his blog The Best Defense, regurgitated some pithy catechisms from another COIN expert, the former Australian army officer David Kilcullen, on how to best measure effectiveness in COIN operations in Afghanistan. One of the measurements put forward by Kilcullen and then proffered by Ricks is the stock mantra that in any COIN operation, the greater the number of civilians killed, the greater the number of insurgents made, and therefore the less pacified the area. Sadly, Ricks and many other COIN zealots have accepted the matter as fact and have gone on to believe other such things as matters of faith.

Zealots eh, project much?

It is time for FM 3–24 to be deconstructed and put back together in a similar way as the Army’s Active Defense Doctrine was between 1976 and 1982. That previous operational doctrine was thoroughly debated and discussed in open (not closed bureaucratic) forums, and the result of that debate was a better operational doctrine for the time commonly referred to as Airland Battle. In short, FM 3–24 today is the Active Defense Doctrine of 1976; it is incomplete, and the dysfunction of its underlying theory becomes clearer every day. The Army needs a better and more complete operational doctrine for counterinsurgency, one that is less ideological, less driven by think tanks and experts, less influenced by a few clever books and doctoral dissertations on COIN, and less shaped by an artificial history of counterinsurgency. When will the Army undertake a serious revision of this incomplete and misleading doctrine for counterinsurgency?

The fact that I am quite familiar with COL Gentile and his opinions regarding COIN would seem to argue against his feeling that there was no public debate about how to deal w/ insurgents. It seems more likely that since he lost those public debates he is now bitter. The Army needed a doctrine to deal with the active insurgencies we were facing and COL Gentile was definitely heard, he simply didn't prevail. We continue to evaluate the effectiveness of the particular tactics that make up this doctrine and empirical evidence from the battlefield is examined to facilitate that. it may seem counter-intuitive for an Army to have a sweetness & light side, but it remains a fact that you can't kill your way out of every problem.

Image of the day: 60 years ago - Korean Firefight

Afghanistan: Karzai reportedly meets with al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network to negotiate - Pakistan's army and intel chiefs also present

9 years in, U.S. finally tries to get a grip on warzone contractors

U.S. officials say Karai aides are derailing corruption cases

Obama faces calls to shake up Afghan diplomatic team

New Australian PM remains committed to Afghan mission - Australia deploys 1,550 troops in southern Afghanistan, including elite commandos, military training specialists and reconstruction units

Iran: Russia-Iran relations worsening - Russia votes for sanctions, freezes deal to send anti-aircraft missiles

CIA chief says it's unlikely Iran sanctions will prevent Iranian nuclear weapons - says Iran has enough uranium for two nukes (video)

Iran cancels plan to send ship to Gaza

Korea: U.S., N.Korea trade barbs on war anniversary

Wartime command transfer of allied forces from U.S. to S.Korea deferred until 2015

Legacy of unresolved Korean War plagues U.S. policy

U.S.: Congresswoman raises red flags on Hezbollah-cartel nexus on U.S. border

Judge releases Guantanamo detainee to Yemen despite ban

Anwar al-Awlaki declares war on U.S., is not on CIA's assassination list

Originally published at the Victory Institute

West Point professor Col. Gian P. Gentile writes that it is "time for the deconstruction" of the Army's Counterinsurgency manual. I agree.

Col. Gentile writes (emphasis mine):

Concepts such as population security, nationbuilding, and living among the people to win their hearts and minds were first injected into the Army with the publication of the vaunted Field Manual (FM) 3–24, Counterinsurgency, in December 2006. Unfortunately, the Army was so busy fighting two wars that the new doctrine was written and implemented and came to dominate how the Army thinks about war without a serious professional and public debate over its efficacy, practicality, and utility.

[...]

It is time for the Army to debate FM 3–24 critically, in a wide and open forum. The notion that it was debated sufficiently during the months leading up to its publication is a chimera. Unfortunately, the dialogue within defense circles about counterinsurgency and the Army’s new way of war is stale and reflects thinking that is well over 40 years old. In short, our Army has been steamrollered by a counterinsurgency doctrine that was developed by Western military officers to deal with insurgencies and national wars of independence from the mountains of northern Algeria in the 1950s to the swamps of Indochina in the 1960s. The simple truth is that we have bought into a doctrine for countering insurgencies that did not work in the past, as proven by history, and whose efficacy and utility remain highly problematic today. Yet prominent members of the Army and the defense expert community seem to be mired in this out-of-date doctrine.

Col. Gentile has more in "Freeing the Army from the Counterinsurgency Straightjacket."

Both the field and the institutional Army have gained much experience over these past 4 years in actually fighting two major COIN campaigns. Should we not consider that experience and integrate it into a revised doctrine for counterinsurgency? The German army in World War I went through major doctrinal introspection and then change after only 2 years of combat on the Western Front. It drew on a vast amount of combat experience (often from the lower ranks of the army), codified that experience into an operational doctrine, trained on it, and then put it into practice against the enemy.

Why is our military still carrying on as if there isn't anything wrong? If counterinsurgency is as great as its proponents portray, it should be able to withstand the debate that Gentile calls for. Either way, our nation must do whatever it takes to win. We have the best troops and equipment in the world. We just need a strategy that will work, and after four years, it seems obvious to this author that counterinsurgency does not.

Stan the Man got the boot, but what about the civilian incompetents he was talking about? Petraeus deserves partners who aren't damaged goods from the Obama team's attempted diplomatic coup against Karzai.

On June 27, 2005, a four-man Navy SEAL sniper watch team set out to conduct a mission in some of the harshest terrain on earth – about 10,000 feet above sea level in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. Their mission was to locate and gather intelligence on a certain high-ranking Taliban official with known ties to Osama bin-Laden. Once they had eyes on the target, a larger force would then attack, capturing or killing the target. According to their intelligence, the SEALs would be operating amongst as many as 200 enemy fighters.

In the fighting that followed, 11 Navy SEALs and eight Army Task Force 160 aircrew died in the battle. Operation Redwing was the highest loss of life for the Naval Special Warfare Command since the D-Day invasion of Normandy in World War II.

One man survived. Unto the Breach recalls his incredible story.

The team was inserted at night by helicopter into the heavily-forested and mountainous terrain east of Asadabad, a village in the Afghanistan province of Kunar. Intelligence reported that a large group of armed men slipped through a pass in the mountains from Pakistan. The size of the force suggested that there was a valuable target in the area. This area was considered a “hornet’s nest,” a Taliban stronghold that Coalition Forces rarely ventured into. The inhabitants were goat herders and wood cutters, and the Taliban rewarded them for shooting U.S. forces or reporting on their locations.

The clouds were low and heavy rains poured down on the team. They had set up and began observing the area, but could not manage a clear line of sight on the target area. They moved in closer, taking a position about one mile from the village.

Read about the mission here, and buy Marcus Luttrell's book - I guarantee it will be one of the best you will ever read. Just don't make the mistake of loaning it out as I did - you won't get it back. (fortunately it wasn't signed).

The NY Times publishes a lot of really dumb stuff, and a good percentage comes from Bob Herbert. Today he shows us that the best part of being a columnist for this dying rag is cluelessness is a feature not a bug. He could hardly know less about our war in Afghanistan and yet there he is showing everyone that just doesn't matter.

President Obama can be applauded for his decisiveness in dispatching the chronically insubordinate Stanley McChrystal

Well no Bob. McChrystal was not insubordinate ever, let alone chronically. He had one particularly dumb aide who repeated all kinds of private conversations to a lying, unethical reporter.

We hear a lot about counterinsurgency, the latest hot cocktail-hour topic among the BlackBerry-thumbing crowd.

Like you Bob?

But there is no evidence at all that counterinsurgency will work in Afghanistan. It’s not working now.

Dude we just started and the troops to do this have been arriving slowly for the past several months. Of course there is no evidence that it will work, we have never done it there. What an idiotic non-argument.

The American public gave up on the war long ago, and it is not at all clear that President Obama’s heart is really in it.

Well I can at least agree with you on that one, Obama talked all kinds of smack about Afghanistan to cover for his weakness and calls to cut and run from Iraq. But I don't think he ever really meant it. But now Bob jumps in and gifts us with his serious military wisdom.

Those who are so fascinated with counterinsurgency, from its chief advocate, Gen. David Petraeus, all the way down to the cocktail-hour kibitzers inside the Beltway, seem to have lost sight of a fundamental aspect of warfare: You don’t go to war half-stepping. You go to war to crush the enemy. You do this ferociously and as quickly as possible. If you don’t want to do it, if you have qualms about it, or don’t know how to do it, don’t go to war.

Good Lord, you need to STFU! "You don't go to war half-stepping"? Seriously? I'm pretty sure counterinsurgency is what won the day in Iraq and given a fair chance it's really the only shot we have at the same in Afghanistan. I wonder what Bob and the rest of the idiot left would say if we switched to a scorched earth, rubble doesn't make trouble strategy? I kinda think it would be howling and crying.

The men who stormed the beaches at Normandy weren’t trying to win the hearts and minds of anyone.

C'mon man stop, you couldn't sound much dumber. I gotta quit, this is just like beating a chained dog.

AW1 Tim has some news about a new Navy boat.

The keel for a US Guided Missile Destroyer named for Navy Seal Micheal Murphy was laid at Bath Iron Works on June 18th.  USS Micheal Murphy will be the 62nd ship of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. She is named for Medal of Honor recipient Michael P. Murphy. Her contract was awarded on 13 September 2002 to the Bath Iron Works and VADM John Morgan, the first commanding officer of Arleigh Burke, made the first cut of steel. Micheal’s mother, Maureen Murphy, is the ship’s sponsor. She helped to weld his name onto the keel.

Elise Cooper for BLACKFIVE

Nelson DeMille once again shows why he is America’s prolific political thriller author with his latest book, The Lion, a sequel to his best selling novel, The Lion’s Game.  The reader will have a hard time deciphering fact from fiction since the plots in both books are based on reality blended with believable terrorism scenarios. 

The Lion’s Game tells the story of a Libyan terrorist, Asad Khalil, who seeks revenge for the 1986 Libyan bombings ordered by President Reagan. Khalil enters America on a mission to kill each of the bomber pilots as well as President Reagan.  Fast-forward 18 months (although the sequel was actually written ten years later.) Khalil has come back to America to finish off his enemies.  DeMille commented that when writing a sequel “you have to structure something that moves forward at the same time as looking back. It’s very challenging. Also, when you write about current events you are not quite sure if the events are going to overtake the book.”

The protagonists in the books are John Corey (a special agent of the Anti-Terrorism Task Force) and his partner/wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield. In the sequel John is just as sarcastic but his comments are more tempered. Kate influences him to THINK the outrageous comments but not to say them out loud anymore.  What makes the book interesting is the culture clash he created between NYPD Corey and FBI Mayfield. DeMille noted that, “I created a clash of cultures between the agencies with two people who are married to each other. They must make real choices, career compromises. They are heroic because they have other considerations and still make the right choices. I wanted to point out the FBI is like the army mentality; they have to follow orders.”

The Lion according to DeMille “is a cautionary tale, a wake-up call. The War on Terror is still going on and I wanted John Corey to have closure. These novels are exploring the issues more than the mainstream media.”  It is obvious throughout the book that he wants Americans to realize that the War on Terror is still on going.  In the book, Corey comments that, “this lack of official involvement in private flights (no paperwork or pilot statements about flight plans) had amazed Khalil the first time he was here three years ago.  Even more amazing, he thought, was that a year and a half after the martyrdom of his fellow Jihadists on September 11th, it was still possible to fly around the country in private aircraft and leave little or no evidence of the journey, or of the passenger on board.”

Both books are riveting, suspenseful, and a fast read.  Make sure you have the time to read them because you won’t want to put them down. Blending a realistic and gripping plot with vivid and believable characters that use sardonic humor DeMille has once again hit a home run.

Shocked, shocked I say. The dirty, nasty, patchouli-smelling, hippie freelancer for Rolling Stone violated the off the record rules to report any dirt he found. 

"Many of the sessions were off-the-record and intended to give [reporter Michael Hastings] a sense" of how McChrystal's team operated, according to a senior military official. The command's own review of events, the official said, gleaned "no evidence to suggest" that any of the "salacious political quotes" in the article were made during a series of on-the-record and background interviews Hastings conducted with McChrystal and others.

The official, one of many subject to a Pentagon advisory not to discuss the situation without authorization, spoke on condition of anonymity. He said he was motivated by what he described as untrue claims made by Rolling Stone.

Two others with direct knowledge of the command's dealings with Hastings offered similar accounts.

Well no sh*t, but I thought McChrystal was just an idiot for allowing this guy access at all? Well it seems it may have not been Stan the Man's idea at all, but forced on him by higher up the food chain. What an atrocious goat screw this is and regardless of the fact that Petraeus is now riding in to serve as a scapegoat if things go to Hell save the day, we have been hamstrung by a desire to deal with press who lie like rugs.

The really fun part is that every quote his drunk-ass aides gave up is actually true, they just embarrassed the Obama. And since he couldn't afford politically to look weak yet again, he decided it was kick ass time. Sad, just sad, because this never had a damn thing to do with competence or the ROE or anything other than the lameness of our civilian leaders of the war being aired in public.