West Point Is Divided on a War Doctrine’s Fate

[underpants]

Source: NY Times

Now at another critical moment in American military history, the faculty here on the commanding bend in the Hudson River is deep in its own existential debate. Narrowly, the argument is whether the counterinsurgency strategy used in Iraq and Afghanistan — the troop-heavy, time-intensive, expensive doctrine of trying to win over the locals by building roads, schools and government — is dead.

Broadly, the question is what the United States gained after a decade in two wars.

“Not much,” Col. Gian P. Gentile, the director of West Point’s military history program and the commander of a combat battalion in Baghdad in 2006, said flatly in an interview last week. “Certainly not worth the effort. In my view.”

“Nobody should ever underestimate the costs and the risks involved with counterinsurgency, but neither should you take that off the table,” Colonel Meese said, also in an interview last week. Counterinsurgency, he said, “was broadly successful in being able to have the Iraqis govern themselves.”

Now, as American troops head home from Afghanistan, where the new strategy will be a narrow one of hunting insurgents, the arguments at West Point are playing out in war colleges, academic journals and books, and will be for decades. (The argument has barely begun over whether violence came down in Iraq in 2007 because of the American troop increase or the Anbar Awakening, when Sunni tribes turned against the insurgency.) To Col. Gregory A. Daddis, a West Point history professor, the debate is also about the role of the military as the war winds down. “We’re not really sure right now what the Army is for,” he said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/world/at-west-point-asking-if-a-war-doctrine-was-worth-it.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

[dotymed]

1. At least the military is questioning

what the corptocracy is ordering them to do. IMO, that is a good thing.

[bemildred]

2. “We’re not really sure right now what the Army is for” nt

[may3rd]

3. less boots on the ground

more remote monitoring.

Skynet

[bemildred]

4. That's true.

So much less fuss with remotes and robots. Very cool evil-dictator-from-the-future vibes too.
Edit:

[pasto76]

8. kind of a stupid thing to say

the army is for projecting the military strength of the US across the globe in a land based effort. How and when we are used is always going to change in this modern world. but that quote is a backhanded way to pigeonhole the role of the Army to one thing. the Petraeus COIN policy might not have been as great as lauded, but dont mistake that for fighting ability. In fact, the ability to sustain these wars for so long is testament to the fighting ability of our Army. Beaten, worn, and tired. Give us a stand up fight tomorrow against anyone, anywhere and watch us roll over them.

[bemildred]

13. That's sort of what I thought.

This guy is a professor at West Point and he doesn't know what an army is for?

I mean, I agree in a way too, they keep getting in these stupid wars, which does suggest some confustion about what the military is for, but the big-shots are the ones that are confused, like Petraeus, one looks for some self-examination from them and I don't see it.

Thank you for your service.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. I'd guess a couple of Colonels are close to retirement

...because a star is not in their future.

You can't just say what's on your mind, unless you're the Vice President.

[24601]

7. US Military Academy Professors are nominated (and Senate confirmed) for that

specific position as opposed to Associate Professors, Assistant Professors and Instructors who are on another assignment and will rotate after a tour at the Academy. Professors may remain on active duty until age 65 and when they retire are promoted to Brigadier General - with retired pay of a Colonel. (Permanent Associate Professors do not rotate but retire after 30 years commissioned service.)

A Professor today who was a Battalion Commander (Lieutenant Colonel) in 2006 is likely completing about 25 years service and would be approximately 47-48 years old and would have another 16-18 years service.

[Scuba]

6. Counterinsurgency is a failed policy, just like every other attempt to substitute...

... war for diplomacy. When it's just us and the Canadians left, and they're terrified of us, what will we do?


“I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.” ~~Abraham Lincoln

[dickthegrouch]

9. The problem is that it has to be less dangerous

Less dangerous to turn in the people still blowing things up, than it is to let them.

As long as there is fighting still occurring and the local possible friendlies are not seeing any real improvement in their daily lives, things will never get better. As long as the ill-disciplined people with the guns are more scary than the legitimate forces, there can't be any change.

At some point the locals have to say "enough" and start turning in the people they know are doing wrong. A civilized society can only exist when the majority of people are following and enforcing the rules.

IMHO many of the conflicts throughout the world are rooted in poverty and hopelessness and jealousy. They are bombarded with propaganda from the advertisers, see no possible way to acquire those treats and we're intolerant when they get frustrated?

I can never understand why we would paying foreigners to rebuild a country at vastly inflated rates (for danger pay, hotels, etc etc) when there is a huge local population who could be employed to do that work if they weren't terrified of seeming complicit. Or a population which is of a mindset which asks "What's the point of rebuilding something that will just get destroyed again by one of the revolutionaries, or the people doing the rebuilding will be deemed traitors to the cause and shot?".

IMHO the next two big things West Point and others need to work on is a realistic exit strategy (before the conflict is engaged) and a realistic clean-up strategy. It should not be possible to engage in any conflict without those pieces in place. We have enough data points to show what works and what doesn't from all the 20th century conflicts.


We are in the 21st century. We will not advance as a race until all are working for the common good. We are wasting our billions of tax dollars on the war machine which hasn't yet got the word that WWII was "The war to end all wars".

We need to be part of the solution.

[Ready4Change]

10. We need a Department of Post-War Peace.

We need some means of 'waging Peace' as fervently as we waged the preceding war.

[99th_Monkey]

11. I'm sure the Pentagons "private contractors' lobbyists won't have any trouble

sorting this all out for West Point, complete with talking points to
justify endless wars on terror so the war machine can just keep
on bleeding our nation white.

Am I cynical or a realist?

[24601]

12. Neither - just not very well versed about West Point. Here's a link to the Center for

Combating Terrorism, founded by an endowment from V. Viola, Class of 1977.