Okay, how many of you military experts can tell me the proper way to fight an insurgency?
Any idea?
No?
I didn't think so.
General Petraeus wrote the book, so how's about
we defer to someone who's opinion has some
basis in experience, and knock off all the uninformed armchair policymaking, n'est pas?
Quote:
Everything depends on the situation, and it is vital that our leaders understand that reality and constantly assess and reassess the situation in their areas of operations
What we simply don't want anymore is to give people a checklist of what to do. We want them to think, not memorize. You know, a lot of this is about young officers. But we have to be clear with them, they have to know: You must be a warrior first, that is true, that's why we exist, we exist in many cases to kill or capture the bad guys. But on the other hand, we have to teach them: You're not going to kill your way out of an insurgency. No: you have to take out the elements that will never reconcile with the new government, with the system, but then try to win over the rest. And this part is not done with tanks and rifles.
SPIEGEL: Is that a view widely shared within the army?
Petraeus: Yes. You know, of course this is much less straightforward than the fight to Baghdad, but don't get me wrong. The fight to Bagdad was not easy. It was very, very hard, real people died and bled and we really blew things up, but -- we always knew how to do that, we have it refined to a very high level, we did combined operations that were really at the high end of our business. In fact, you could say that we practiced that stuff by and large for 25, 30 years while we were waiting for the big roll of Soviet tank armies at the Fulda gap or the northern German plain.
But this other stuff, what we used to call the "little stuff" -- the build-up of civil infrastructures, the fight against low-key separatist violence, the dealing with local leaders, it is very, very challenging because it's non-standard and it's definitely not what we have trained for. The demands are very different. When it comes to insurgency, there is no army on the other side, no battalions, the enemy won't expose himself, it's all about intelligence.
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Quote:
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Iraqi security force numbers and readiness have been moving steadily upward over the course of the last 15 months, Petraeus said. "The Iraqis are in this fight," he said. "They are fighting and dying for their country. And they are fighting increasingly well."
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Points:
1. The insurgency has gotten stronger in the last 6 months, by all accounts.
2. Leaders must constantly assess and reassess the "situation", and react to enemy tactics and activities.
3 20,000 troops is a significant number in ANYONE'S neighborhood, especially if they are American troops and the neighborhood is infested with al-quaeda's despicable minions, as is currently the case in the al-Anbar province.
4. If President Bush has done anything right, it is in letting the generals take care of the war, instead of micro-managing every detail like Johnson/McNamara were famous for doing at every opportunity, to the great misfortune of many of our servicemen, including my fellow sailors who were aboard the USS Liberty in 1973.
As you were.