Gian, Yet Again, Energizes the Anti-Surge Story-Line
Our favorite anti-COIN Colonel, Gian Gentile, and yet SWJ friend – go figure that one out, continues his personal crusade in this recent International Herald Tribune opinion piece – Mired in ‘Surge’ Dogma.
Here are some tidbits (regular SWJ and Abu Muqawama readers are well familiar with this drum beat):
The US Army and other parts of America’s defense establishment have become transfixed by the promise of counterinsurgency…
The promise of counterinsurgency is to turn war into a program of social-scientific functions that will achieve victory…
The current US counterinsurgency program rests on the dubious assumption that the surge in Iraq was a successful feat of arms…
The recent uptick in bloodshed shows that the war is not over…
Yet influential American counterinsurgency experts have simply co-opted the counter-Maoist model. There is no originality – or at least a serious consideration for very different alternatives…
Many army officers and Department of Defense thinkers seem to be able to think only about how to apply the perceived counterinsurgency lessons from Iraq to Afghanistan…
Perhaps under the Obama administration, the army and the greater defense establishment will embrace creativity instead of dogma and at least consider other options. If not, our way ahead has already been decided for us…
Come on Gian, be part of the solution here – not the problem, and give General Petraeus and company credit where credit is due – no one – read – no one – is suggesting plopping down the Iraq model onto Afghanistan and even the most ardent counterinsurgency proponent freely admits we must maintain our military capabilities across a “full spectrum” of possible scenarios. I’d like you to at least acknowledge that we must maintain a reasonable capability to conduct COIN when all is said and done. I served through the post-Vietnam denial of all things “irregular” — and look at where that got us.
