zenpundit.com

Two items worthy of attention before I move on to other posts:

Adam Elkus and John Sullivan –  Strategy and insurgency: an evolution in thinking?

….As state-building is increasingly questioned, COIN is likely to return to its roots in small-scale foreign internal defense (FID) missions, the more narrow concept of “countering irregulars,” gathering intelligence for strikes, and “flying” police squads like the kind employed by British irregular warfare pioneer Orde Wingate in the 1930s. Since counterinsurgency is largely a military activity carried out by military forces, the principal emphasis in past COIN operations has been countering irregular forces with military force.  Even in the operations of police in a COIN role in countering criminal insurgency the ultimate goal is, as Clausewitz noted, forcing the adversary to accept the state’s political will. Confusion about COIN occurs because of the political role of COIN in American strategy, not necessarily the history of COIN doctrine itself. 

Well said.

I have to wonder if our national allergy to grappling honestly with the political dimensions military operations ( or for that matter, the political dimensions of any kind of governmental policy, foreign or domestic) will improve when the Boomers and their obsession with Vietnam and the Sixties pass from the scene with retirement and death? Will Gen X mirror the hard eyed pragmatism of Eisenhower and Truman’s generation when they start coming in to power positions in about ten years or will they follow the political correctness/culture wars myopia of the Boomers?

Dr. Robert J. Bunker – The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

Speaking of Vietnam….. 

….The crux of the problem is that democracies loathe being involved in insurgencies. They are nasty, brutish, and have a bad habit of being very drawn out. Afghanistan is now the longest U.S. ‘war’ on record if we can call it such. Both blood and treasure are often expended for no perceivable reason and, at times, no clear cut distinction exists between the good guys and the bad guys when loyalty can be bought and paid for in hard cash. Accountability can be non-existent and despotic and corrupt regimes gleefully siphon off U.S. aid to enrich themselves, their families, and their cronies. Hamid Karzai is in some ways a Ngo Dinh Diem or Nguyen Van Thieu redux. Memories of Vietnam are never far from the surface when insurgency becomes the topic of table discussion. In fact, Vietnam is an excellent touchstone with regard to the sheer brutality surrounding an insurgency. Richard Schultz published a 1978 work on terrorism, insurgency warfare, and the Viet Cong. Key statistical information on targeted killings, kidnappings, and the brutality of the conflict in Vietnam is as follows:

• Between 1958 and 1965, approximately 36,800 kidnappings and 9,700 assassinations occurred in South Vietnam
• …during 1957 (the year given most frequently for the serious expansion of the NLF insurgency) a total of 472 officials were assassinated. This figure doubled during 1958-1959 and during the early 1960’s. The NLF eliminated on the average of fifteen GVN officials a week
• In May 1961, Kennedy sent a “Special message to Congress” in which he attributed NLF success to “guerillas striking at night, assassins striking alone-assassins who have taken the lives of over 4000 civil officers in the last 12 months…by subversives and saboteurs and insurrectionists, who in some cases control whole areas inside of independent nations.”1

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