The G-man asks some very important questions over at his place.
Read it here, but first read the
primer over at Small Wars Journal.
Galrahn asks these questions....
How many different ways are we fooling ourselves? Is counterinsurgency
doctrine as fragile as an applied military doctrine as that article
suggests? How is it possible counterinsurgency is considered a practical
military approach for theater campaign warfighting if as an applied
military doctrine in a real war, it can be undone so easily?
The answer is simple.
Counter Insurgency as the US military practices it was designed to squash an internal uprising against a DEMOCRATICALLY elected government by COMMUNIST forces.
It was/is not designed to battle one side or the other in a CIVIL WAR between two factions.
Specifically it was not designed to battle a civil war based on RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY!
Think about the various commanders that have been in charge of the war effort in Afghanistan. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal.
...
What do they have in common?
They're both of the Special Ops Mafia.
They both believed that Raids against "high value targets" would win the war and that having conventional forces in country to support SOCOM and to rebuild that nation would have the one two punch of destroying opposition to the government and wining the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
It shows a lack of understanding of the enemy we are fighting, the nature of the country in which we were fighting and over confidence in Special Operations.
It is my contention that we have seen the poorest example of Generalship in the history of our country.
The blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of President's Bush and Obama.
Rummy led the charge by firing General Shinseki because he actually told the truth to Congress and then promptly putting in place those that either believed his way of thinking or lacked the fortitude to vocally oppose him.
Obama did the same by putting the entire military on notice by selecting an aviator for Commandant. By doing this he told the services that he did not respect established ways of doing business and would only put those that "he could work with in power."
If you remember the goat fuck that was the selection of the Commandant then you know this to be true.
Long story short.
The Generals lost this war because they lacked the courage to give real assessments of what was and wasn't possible when we went in.
Think about this.
1. We invaded Afghanistan with a skeleton force.
2. Before our objectives were achieved we switched to Iraq and that became the main effort.
3. We invaded Iraq with a force that was WAAAAAAAY too small.
4. Civilian meddling continued to limit attempts to get a handle on the situation (Rummy was a stubborn bastard...probably the worst SecDef in this nations history...yet Bush continued to support him).
5. Civilian meddling allowed huge stock piles of weapons to fall into the hands of insurgents causing untold casualties because of this failure of leadership.
6. Obama takes office and instead of decreasing the number of forces and plotting a way out of Afghanistan, does the exact opposite. He increases the forces there prolonging the war by years.
I could go on but the results are clear.
Historic failure at the White House through two administrations, historic failure at the Pentagon and across all the services...and historic failure by the American people to properly assess what our leaders were telling us.
