Small Wars, No Small Debate
Herschel Smith, Captain’s Journal, weighs in with two posts concerning LTC Gian Gentile’s Armed Forces Journal article Eating Soup With a Spoon and ‘hard vs. soft’ COIN:
… I cannot possibly hope to recapitulate the breadth or depth of discussion in the thread at the Small Wars Council, but would hasten to point out several things concerning the discussion now that the subject has become a little more ripe and the argument is slowing. First, I agree wholeheartedly with Gentile’s rebuke of the notion that counterinsurgency is “armed social science.” Second, concerning Dr. Metz’s statement that “we treat counterinsurgency as a variant of war not because that is the most strategically effective approach, but because we have been unable to transcend Cold War thinking,” I respond that counterinsurgency has been a variant of war since at least the Roman empire (which faced a Jewish insurgency in Jerusalem), or even before. In recent history, all one needs for proof of principal is the Small Wars Manual, published in 1940, well before the cold war…
There is yet another discussion thread at the Small Wars Journal that convinces me that I must try one more time to explain the involvement that coalition forces should have with culture and religion in a counterinsurgency campaign. Much confusion swirls around this issue because, in part, people reflexively respond (a) by assuming that you are calling for a holy war, or (b) assuming that your mindset is one of a social scientist hunting for another lever to pull or button to push to cause certain reactions. The former category reacts to my modest proposal by denying that religion should have any role in how one man relates to another, with the later category honestly attempting to engage the issue, but as counterinsurgency professionals using ideas such as center of gravity and societal power structure. Neither camp really gets it yet. So let’s use two simple examples that might show how religion and cultural understanding might aid the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq. These examples are not meant to be sweeping or comprehensive, nor am I constructing doctrine in a short, simple little article. I am attempting to make this simple rather than complex…
Discussion on these issues can be found at the following SWJ and SWC links:
Will the Petraeus Strategy Be the Last? by Bing West
Armed Forces Journal by SWJ Editors
Eating Soup with a Spoon – Small Wars Council
Engaging the Mosque – Small Wars Council
IHT Op Ed: A Soldier in Iraq – Small Wars Council
