Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kuros]

Recommended by one of my friends who is over there . . .

All Counterinsurgency is Local

The problem is our strategy is wrong. More emphasis needs to be placed on embedding troops with the tribes for their protection.

[ddeubel]

Kuros,

The author "gets it" but still doesn't "get it" . It is like he is telling us that ice cream is sweet so spit it out!

Can't you see the utter stupidity of the fact that "the insurgency is local" and " we must win the locals"??? O! My God!

I think of Malakai Kalkar and her efforts. They were local. Brave and noble. But she is gone ...... what to make of this?

Can you win hearts and minds through "policing" and " bombing" however noble? NO! You win it by forming relationships, trusted relationships. And not through the "guise" of the enemy (however proper you see this, an American soldier or govt official is an American govt official .....the enemy/invader/killer).

Leave them alone or send over many young and friendly youth to make friends. The rest of the armor heavy and future "light" personnel, stay the fk away.

sorry to tell you this but that's the truth Ruth.

Peace comes from the heart not uniformed bravado and pay cheques.

DD

[ddeubel]

I'll leave my post to stand, but feel like erasing it.

I feel sometimes, like here, I'm talking to so many robotized and propaganda fed Molochs. So be it. They are just words.

DD

[Kuros]

[Gopher]

We cannot win those tribes' hearts and minds, Kuros. If we are going to draw the "Vietnam" analogy, as the authors do here, then we must face the fact that the South Vietnamese govt never succeeded in asserting itself as a viable nation-state with a loyal population.

If this truly represents our situation in Afghanistan, then perhaps we ought to find a suitable dictator and then leave -- with promises of air and missile attacks that would dwarf anything Hanoi ever saw should this govt permit and aid terrorists to plan and conduct ops against us ever again. Restate our military doctrine, our deterrence policy, to include "terrorist attacks" as something that triggers a massive retaliation (read: nuclear weapons) just as weapons of mass destruction do. Explain ourselves very clearly on this point and then withdraw.

If that is all that we can do, then let us get on with doing it. We cannot create nation-states, especially when our efforts do not resonate with the people on the ground.

I am getting to know an Egyptian woman in a seminar on the Middle East. She says that Egyptian media shows Egyptians a steady stream of highly-selective, negative imagery and sensational-like news stories on American foreign policy and also on the Palestinians' alleged plight. Every day; day in and day out. It perpetually cultivates and fuels their resentment and anger. It remains a part of their everyday life. That is just Egypt. What is going on with the tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan? What counterinsurgency strategy can reason with and persuade them to change their thinking, their hostility, their support for terrorists and terrorists' means? None, I say.

Very depressing sitauation.

[bucheon bum]

[mises]

It is worse than even BB says. Last time I was in Dubai I sat in my hotel room at watched very graphic music videos of American solders being shot in the head by snipers. I could not believe it. The music was celebratory and Euro-trash techno fused with that awful twangy junk Arabs listen to.

This in supposedly Western-friendly Dubai. Just another manufactured illusion.

Best to let them rot.

[The Hammer]

delete

[ddeubel]

[bucheon bum]

[Kuros]

*bump* Check out the OP's article.

[Insidejohnmalkovich]

Look at history and you will see insurgencies defeated many times in every kind of situation. It just requires ruthlessness most modern democracies would not accept. Russia defeated Chechnya, Britain defeated the Boers and countless other colonial rebellions in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, the French and other colonial powers all fought successful wars in the nineteenth century, the Americans crushed the Filipino rebellion at the end of the nineteenth century: but note that all the Western powers became more and more restrained and civilized in their warfare throughout the twentieth century, and thus less effective. Which implies that modern democracies should stay out of wars they will never will to win.

[daskalos]

[Jandar]

The surge is coming.