By Steve Hynd
ABC has a story from Afghanistan right now about a female Major on a PRT team who, after the local malevillagers cancelled a meeting about a new girl's school, went ahead and had a secret meeting about a secret school with the women of the village anyway.
The entire story, by embaed Karen Russo, is presented through a lens of women's rights and children's education = good. And that's fair enough. But there's no mention whatsoever of the long-term consequences of the Major's decision to go behind the menfolks' backs. This is an area that the U.S. military is trying to wrest from Taliban control, and the menfolk are the ones with the guns. What's going to be their reaction when they discover that their American would-be-friends have deceived them and undermined their wishes in this way?
The fallout of this subterfuge is almost certain to be a counter-insurgency fail, and an officer in a PRT team, who are meant to be the switched-on experts, should surely have taken all this into account when deciding on a course of action. I'm left wondering whether it's just the case that the major got over-zealous and over-optimistic or whether she had a "check-list" of things to do and worried that her promotion review prospects would suffer if she didn't check all the boxes no matter what. Either way, it is just another example of how the U.S. military seems to be incapable of getting real about COIN, uanble to turn words in manuals into actions on a systemic basis.
Here's another example, this time from Iraq - and from the opposite extreme.
COIN is supposed to be something that comes from a disciplined, senstive and educated military-- not a depressed group of guys looking for someone to shoot and in the process making their utter lack of respect for the locals manifestly evident.
I'm not at all sure that "counter insurgency" is anything more than a happy phrase to toss at the American people. For all these decades, the US military has clearly not planned and trained to fight an insurgency. Now they've got the nifty field manual but that's still just one book against an institutional tidal wave.
ReplyDeleteVideos like this one are legion, and were we watching a conscription army i'd find it understandable. But our military is supposed to be professional. It's had eight years to get on the ball, so i'm unclear why it isn't mandating language training. That seems like the biggest, easiest step we could take towards successful counter insurgency operations.
As for the major and her school, it seems quintessentially American (see: dumb, ugly). Yes it's "right", but what does she think will happen to those women and the girls because of her actions?
As one who served in a "conscription army" I can assure you that the all volunteer professional army is no further along. I was drafted in 1965 and the only discernible difference between those who were drafted and those who enlisted was a different prefix on our dogtags. Draftees were tagged "US" and those who enlisted "RA" (Regular Army). Aside from that, the only difference was our two years of active duty versus three for the poor guys who enlisted.
ReplyDeleteA return to the military draft would have an immediate impact on what passes for foreign policy these days. If more families had skin in the game politicians would be more circumspect about decisions with bloody consequences, particularly with "missions" as opaque as those of Iraq and Afghanistan.
America's only real counter-insurgency is the Peace Corps and some NGO's. I hold Gen. Petraeus in high regard, but referring to warriors in uniform as counter-insurgency personnel is using an oxymoron.