So close and yet so far

By BJ Bjornson

According to McClatchy, the Pentagon is rethinking the whole counterinsurgency doctrine that they have been playing with for the last decade. The article did get my hopes up with the way it began.

Nearly a decade after the United States began to focus its military training and equipment purchases almost exclusively on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military strategists are quietly shifting gears, saying that large-scale counterinsurgency efforts cost too much and last too long.

The domestic economic crisis and the Obama administration's commitment to withdraw from Iraq and begin drawing down in Afghanistan next year are factors in the change. The biggest spur, however, is a growing recognition that large-scale counterinsurgency battles have high casualty rates for troops and civilians, eat up equipment that must be replaced and rarely end in clear victory or defeat.

Well, no shit, and I�m happy to see that the military is apparently figuring that out. However, things get a lot less hopeful as the article continues.

Many Pentagon strategists think that future counterinsurgencies should involve fewer American ground troops and more military trainers, special forces and airstrikes. Instead of "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here," as former President George W. Bush once defined the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Pentagon thinks it must train local populations to fight local insurgents.

The military calls it "foreign internal defense," although some have a pithier name: counterinsurgency light.

The new kind of counterinsurgency is "for the indigenous people and a handful of Americans," said Joseph Collins, a professor at the National Defense University, a Pentagon-funded institution that trains officers and civilians.

The newer approach is on display in Yemen and Pakistan, countries in which the U.S. faces entrenched extremist organizations with ties to al Qaida.

In Yemen, where leaders have distanced themselves publicly from the United States, the U.S. has quietly dispatched military trainers to work with Yemeni government forces and has provided air support, largely for observation. In addition, the U.S. sent Yemen $70 million in military aid.

In Pakistan, the Obama administration has authorized a record number of unmanned airstrikes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and promised $7.5 billion in aid over five years. In addition, defense officials said roughly 100 special forces trainers were working with the Pakistani military.

Yeah, because the effort along the Afghan-Pakistan border has been such a huge success and unmanned airstrikes do so much to endear the local population to American goals in the region. Never mind the legitimacy issues created by having those nations� governments seen to be kowtowing to the wishes of a foreign power.

Basically, it appears that the Pentagon isn�t so much rethinking the idea of counterinsurgencies so much as they�re looking for a way to fight them by proxy so that it isn�t Americans getting killed. I�m not so sure that actually counts as progress.