Thoughts on the Profession of Arms, by General Peter van Uhm

Watched this in total when you posted it on Twitter. It is exceptional, and offers lessons regarding why stability operations encompass so much more than arguments over COIN’s effectiveness. Whatever you call it, however you do it, insurgencies and other conflicts must be resolved or genocide results. These days, that genocide can involve WMD.

The US Army and other coalition ground forces (such as the Netherland’s General’s forces, British, Australian, German, Japanese, and ROK partners) have been involved on the ground as partners in Vietnam throughout the 70s, Central America in the 80s, in the Middle East and Balkans throughout the 90s until today. Coalition ground forces have been in Europe since the 40s, and in Korea since the 50s precluding war there.

It therefore seems incredulous that AirSea advocates believe the need for stability operations and deterrence using ground forces will be less critical in our future.

As costly and distasteful as war and stability operations are, the uncertainty of not following through on the ground has too many problematic probabilities. Stability is not fostered by armed masses with different agendas and ethnicities seeking control through force of arms. I offer the following questions:

1) What would have happened if the U.S. immediately had pulled out of Iraq following President Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003:
* Would Saddam Hussein have been captured in Dec 2003?
* Would more incidents like the Fallujah 2004 hanging of contractors resulted since they would have been the only game in town securing the state department and USAID?
* What would have happened if then MG Dempsey’s armored division had not been “present” to get turned around to retake Shiite-militia areas in 2004?
* How would the elections of 2005 fared?
* How much worse would the genocide have been following the destruction of the mosque in 2006? Would al-Zarqawi be alive and leading al Qaeda if we had not gotten him in June 2006?
* Would the Anbar Awakening have continued without the 2007 surge and departure from FOBs to more local COPs?
* How would a green zone full of nothing but state department and civilians have responded to Sadr City rocket and mortar attacks in March 2008?
* Would Iraqi security forces have been trained if we had departed in 2003?

2) Apply similar questions to Afghanistan, if ground forces had departed in 2002? Even Texas and California have over 70,000 police officers to handle their 26-30+ million populations in peacetime. How would a similarly-sized and populated Afghanistan fared with only a few thousand special operators and airpower without cued targets over vast expanses? How did that 90s no-fly zone work out? How about those cruise missiles launched at Afghan terrorist training camps? Even Libya had rebel ground forces…will those rebels always be on our side?

The truth is nobody knows. However, it is likely things would be nowhere near as peaceful as we depart today…as they would have been if we departed in 2003? The Arab Spring may not have occurred without coalition examples of bringing democracratic attempts to Muslim friends.

You men and women that fought in Iraq then and in Afghanistan today, or in the Balkans in the 90s can take credit for more success than critics will ever attribute to you.

It’s unfortunate that the rewards of a greatful nation will be asking many Soldiers and Marines to find new jobs as hypothetical (but unlikely) war with our biggest trading partner becomes our nation’s new focus. What’s wrong with that picture?