Reader Joel forwarded me this article by C.J. Chivers in the NY Times. In short, a pit viper bit an Afghan boy on the face in Helmand province. The boy’s father brought him to the nearest Marine COP hoping the US could save his life. After fighting with higher headquarters, a helicopter picked up the boy and moved him to Kandahar, where it looks like he will survive.
Joel then asked this question: “To what extent does this actually, ‘win hearts and minds?’ Can anyone confirm whether or not the village this boy is from has become more accepting of US forces?”
Counter-insurgency is a war of inches and degrees. This individual incident won't win the war, the survival of this one boy will only change how his father feels about the US. Then again, maybe it won’t. It probably won't even affect his entire village. The bigger question is whether the policy of evacuating seriously wounded Afghans will eventually win over the population.
Because in the short term the effects of one single mission are hard to identify. I wrote about this when I described two Medical Civil Action Patrols (MEDCAP) my company conducted in Konar province. One succeeded wildly; the other failed miserably. Trying to figure out why was a next to impossible task. Again, victories in counter-insurgency show up over time, not single moments. It's like some sort of militaristic Chinese proverb: to fell the counter-insurgency tree, one must use many swings. By swings we mean MEDCAPs.
This isn't to say we have no way of knowing if we are winning. Our Human Intelligence Collection Teams can determine the “atmospherics” of local populations through polling. Most maneuver commanders tend not to employ them in this capacity, instead they try to target the bad guys. Modern polling can accomplish wonders. Determining if villages love us or hate us isn't as hard as we make it out to be.
Even though the Army screws up metrics all the time, there are ways of measuring progress. Having the level of violence plummet in Iraq showed progress. Having elections in Iraq showed progress. Training more Afghan police will show progress. Measuring success is possible--even seeing how many hearts and minds we have won--if we use the right metrics.
The core of Joel's question is whether we can win Afghan's hearts. Frankly, I don't see how this action couldn't help but convince one father, and possible mother, to support the US. Do drowning victims hate life guards? Do students hate organizations that gave them scholarships? Do cancer survivors hate their doctors?
The answer is no. Saving a boy's life will buy the US at least some goodwill. No one hates the person who saved their life, whereas denying the ability to save a life will almost certainly engender hatred. They see our money, wealth and health care, the natural reaction is to be upset if we don't share it. This goes for curing someone's club foot, or saving a little girl's eye sight. In the long term, building a sustainable Afghan medical capacity will bring us generations of good will; in the mean time, we should do what we can.
One MEDEDVAC won't win the war in Afghanistan, but thousands might. Some Afghans might still hate Americans despite billions in aid, but in the long term I believe they will come around.
(To read all of our “Lone Survivor” posts, please click here.)
Dilemma, Greek for "double proposition." In English, being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Reading Lone Survivor felt like slogging through the world's longest ethical dilemma.
As Luttrell tells it:
SEAL Team 10 inserted into the Sawtalo Spur in Konar Province on a reconnaissance mission to find a high value target. Due to lack of cover, three Afghan goat herders--two men and a fourteen year old boy--stumble upon their hide-sight. In other words, they were "soft compromised" (discovered by unarmed civilians).
Luttrell then lays out his SEAL team's three options, "1. Kill the goatherds quietly with knives, and throw them off the cliff. 2. Kill them right where they were, and cover up the bodies. 3. Turn them loose, and 'get the hell out of here.'" Really, there are only two options (hiding or not hiding bodies is really the same choice). SEAL Team 10 voted, and chose option three, "don't kill the Afghans." Almost the entirety of Luttrell's story sets up this ethical dilemma, a dilemma designed to show that Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan gets Soldiers killed.
I'm not surprised Luttrell only saw two options, human nature loves duality: prosecution or defense, Republicans or Democrats, pro-life or pro-choice, pro-guns or gun control, war hawk or dove, for or against with no middle ground. Marcus Luttrell describes his situation in dualist terms: kill or be killed. Military ethical dilemmas often fall into this trap: the ticking time bomb, children throwing rocks, or civilians acting as spotters are ethical dilemmas that are invariably presented with only two solutions.
If only this were the case, Luttrell presents us with a false dichotomy. Practically no military situation only has two solutions; most have multiple--if not dozens--of solutions. Critics of our ROE, like Luttrell in Lone Survivor, only present two options of which one option is always, "Follow ROE, and die" and the other is, "Disobey ROE, and live/win the war."
SEAL Team 10 didn't have only two options on that hill in Konar. Kill the goat herders, or let them live are only the first two. They could have tied the goat herders up. (In the book, Marcus Luttrell says that their team did not have anything to bind up the locals. But they had belts, shoe laces, the Afghan's own clothing, and rifle slings. It still stuns me that a SEAL team went out without even a tiny bit of 550 cord or zip ties.) They could have taken the goat herders prisoner, and released them at Asadabad. They could have made the goat herders walk with them, then released them when a helicopter was inbound. They could have released the kid, but kept the others until they were safely away.
In his eyes, Luttrell believed he only had two options. Since he voted for "be killed," he blames the rules of engagement for the deaths of his friends. In the memoir, he says: "Was I afraid of these guys? No. Was I afraid of their possible buddies in the Taliban? No. Was I afraid of the liberal media back in the U.S.A.? Yes," and then continues ranting about liberals and the rules of engagement.
There is no simple, cut-and-dried reason why three SEALs died in Konar Province that day. Leadership of his team, leadership of the SEALs, US policy in Afghanistan, technological failures, communication lapses, a failed Afghan government, lack of Apache gunship support, and countless other reasons--including enemy action--are why nineteen SEALs died heroically on that day. Rules of Engagement, or its misunderstanding may have contributed, but it wasn't the sole cause.
(Luttrell's story was used by Capt. Rick Rubel (Ret. USN) of the Military Officer's Association of America as a classic ethical dilemma. His write up basically summarizes Luttrell's story, but his thoughts show that morally releasing the Afghans was the ethical thing to do. I am huge fan of case studies, like the business ones from Harvard Business Review, but they are almost always left open ended, searching for creative solutions, not an either or proposition.)
Whenever I hear a critic claim that Rules of Engagement (ROE) gets our Soldiers killed, I always want to scream, "Well, what's your [expletive] alternative? (If you want to know who the ROE critics are, check out my post “Why Leaders Make the ROE.”) Since ROE opponents rarely provide specific alternatives to the ROE, I am going to take their anti-ROE position to its (il)logical extreme.
Our current rules of engagement specify, in broad terms, that our Soldiers and Marines must positively identify targets as exhibiting hostile intent. That intent could be firing a weapon, or preparing to fire a weapon (including an IED), but hostile intent must be present; our Soldiers always have the right to self-defense.
So what is the direct opposite of our current ROE, the other end of the spectrum? It would be that any Soldier or Marine could target anyone they want, regardless of identification or hostility (short of intentionally shooting their own men). This ROE would not hold Soldiers as legally responsible for anyone they kill regardless of the circumstances.
Just pause and imagine this scenario.
Soldiers could drop as many 2,000 pound bombs on as many villages as they want. A Soldier could line up villagers and shoot them one by one to get answers. During a fire fight, any person moving, fleeing or running is a viable target, any person regardless of age, intent, or hostility. There would be no consequnces for our Soldiers actions.
Obviously, the “Free Fire ROE” is impossible. No one could support it. At a minimum, there have to be some rules to prevent needless civilian casualties, genocide and torture. ROE opponents must acknowledge at least some form of ROE. So while you can criticize the specifics of our current ROE, you can’t condemn the concept wholesale.
(The other obvious problem with the “Free Fire ROE” is that it removes all ability of commanders to control the fire of their men. Commanders need to control the the fight; ROE allows that.)
Is there a way to take a pro-ROE position to its extreme? There is. If Soldiers couldn't ever shoot anyone, that would hamstring an Army into paralysis. It would, but that is why you don't take things to extremes, and you have a reasonable ROE that keeps Soldiers and civilians alive.
The problem isn't ROE, it is bad ROE.
The Army loves football. Two sides face off, taking ground and battling to a violent finish, what's not to like?
I also love football. And today I want to connect it to counter-insurgency.
Most people watch football by "following the ball," meaning they focus on the player holding the football. They ignore, for the most part, the other players on the field. The quarterback takes the ball from the center, then throws it to a receiver down field, and the viewer watches those players the whole time. The camera follows the ball; so does the average viewer.
Why is this? Because the action is the exciting part of the play; its the sexy part. I mean, the player with the ball is the only one who can score. He's also the one who is going to get hit.
But it isn’t the whole story.
Regular viewers hardly ever watch the offensive linemen during a play. Even hardcore fans would struggle to name an offensive linemen. No one chooses linemen for their fantasy leagues. They're the unsung heroes of the gridiron, primarily because fans are too busy watching the ball. Every great run, and every great pass, has an offensive linemen creating the play. Watching the ball means you are missing the offensive lineman, the defense and the creation of the play.
Ok Michael, how does this relate to counter-insurgency?
The Army only watches the ball during counter-insurgencies. The ball in this case is the death of American Soldiers. The event that leads to that death, for example an IED, is only the end result of a long process. An IED ambush requires reconnaissance, logistics, intelligence, bomb-making, local support, information operations and finally, direct action. But both maneuver commanders and intelligence specialists primarily care about the final explosion, not the whole process. The IED explosion is like the touchdown, everything before that is the action away from the ball.
We spend hundreds of millions, if not billions, on countering IEDs at the point of impact. We notice explosions. We care about the so-called “kinetic” events. But those are like following the ball, not following the creation of the play.
Strategically, as a nation, we follow the ball--meaning the death of American Soldiers. That is really the only metric that the American public cares about. It is like tracking touchdowns, but no other statistic on the battlefield.
As a military, we get distracted by the sexy part of the insurgency--the IEDs--and we ignore the complex part of the insurgency--everything else. We have improved (read the Flynn report and the Petraeus counter-insurgency manual) but we have a long way to go.
Last Fall, Eric C ran across a passage in The Moon is Down that captured his thoughts so well, he just posted it straight up. The conclusions of The Ugly American (you can read Monday's review here) made me feel the exact same way.
In The Ugly American, Ambassador to Sarkhan Gilbert MacWhite lays out six conditions he demands of every foreign service officer traveling to the fictional country of Sarkhan. Change some of the words from Sarkhan to Afghanistan, and you have what I believe would be six fantastic ideas for counter-insurgents abroad:
1. I request that every American (and his dependents) sent to Sarkhan be required to be able to both read and speak Sarkhanese. I am satisfied that if the motivation is high enough, any person can learn enough of the language in twelve weeks so that he can get along. This should be required of both military and civilian personnel.
2. I request that no American employee be allowed to bring his dependents to Sarkhan unless he is willing to serve here for at least two years. If he does bring his family, it should be with the understanding they will not be given luxurious quarters, but will live in housing which is normal to the area; their housing should certainly not be more luxurious than they are able to afford in America. They should also subsist on foods available in local stores--which are wholesome and ample.
3. I request that the American commissary and PX be withdrawn from Sarkhan, and that no American supplies be sold except for toilet articles, baby food, canned milk, coffee, and tobacco.
4. I request that Americans not be allowed to bring their private automobiles to this country. All of our official transportation should be done in official automobiles. Private transportation should be taxi, pedicab, or bicycle.
5. I request that all Americans serving in Sarkhan, regardless of their classification, be required to read books by Mao Tse-tung, Lenin, Chou En-lai, Marx, Engels, and leading Asian Communists. This reading should be done before arrival. [Editorial note: This is an anachronistic holdover between capitalism and communism, but they totally apply to knowing your enemy.]
6. I request that in our current recruiting program we make all of these conditions clear to any prospective government employee, so that he comes here with no illusions. It has been my experience that superior people are attracted only by challenge. By setting our standards low and making our life soft, we have, quite automatically and unconsciously, assured ourselves of mediocre people.
And now my thoughts:
Now, obviously some of these would only work metaphorically, and some would work literally. The important point is that at the time of printing, in 1958, these ideas were radical. They still are today.
For example, virtually every Soldier spends an hour each day conducting physical fitness. Soldiers are tested twice a year in the Army Physical Fitness Test, and their results are put in evaluation reports, and rewarded with medals in some cases. Yet virtually no unit studies languages regularly, and testing for languages is voluntary, even with units about to deploy.
Points 2, 3, and 4 don't apply directly, (no Soldiers or Marines bring their dependents to Afghanistan or Iraq) but the principle does. We deploy in relative luxury. We have access to DVDs, air conditioning, and some Super-FOBs have Burger King. Compared to the immense poverty of the surrounding countryside of Afghanistan, this is just insulting. If Afghan Soldiers can get away without AC, our Soldiers should. We should live like Afghans, the way insurgents, and good counter-insurgents, do.
Overall, the demand for luxury is a loss of focus on the mission. Much has been made of General Stanley McChrystal’s spartan living habits in Afghanistan. I have a feeling this comes from an understanding that luxury like gourmet coffee, steak and shrimp dinners, basketball tournaments, and salsa night do not contribute to mission success.
Which rule would you like to see America implement for better COIN?
After President John F. Kennedy read the novel The Ugly American, inspiration struck, and he decided to have every senior State Department official, and every single American military officer, read the book.
Unfortunately, he never gave the order, because he didn't believe the officials and officers would actually read the book. (This story is one of legend, otherwise we would link to it.) Fortunately, The Ugly American, by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick, hasn't gone away.
It is as relevant today as it was when it was first printed, before the Vietnam war (which it predicted). The Ugly American captures the essence of unconventional warfare in fiction. Or, in On Violence terms, it describes political war; it should still be read by all American military officers.
The authors originally set out to write a series of non-fiction accounts of State Department officials in southeast Asia based off their personal experience in the region. As they developed their stories, they realized that only fiction could capture the zany reality they saw. So they created a southeast Asian nation, Sarkhan, and the diplomats, politicians, and military officers stationed there. The Ugly American is a series of interconnected short stories about Americans trying to influence Sarkhan while both communists and capitalists try to consolidate power.
This struggle is not a war between nation states, but the struggle of competing ideas. The book's struggle of ideas--capitalism versus communism-- mirrors today's battle between extreme Islam and Western democracy. Unlike state war, the political war in The Ugly American follows different rules.
As a Philippino diplomat describes it on page 109, “I know that you’re a diplomat and that warfare is not supposed to be your game; but you’ll discover soon enough out here that statesmanship, diplomacy, economics, and warfare just can’t be separated from one another.” The intersection of diplomacy, economics and warfare might as well be ripped from General Petraeus’ Field Manual on counter-insurgency.
And while the book as a whole capture the interconnectedness of warfare, the individual stories themselves shine. They tell the stories of ambassadors--good and bad, American, Russian and Asian-- military leaders, politicians, and most importantly “ugly Americans.” The best part of the novel is that the "ugly American" of the title is the most influential in Sarkhan.
His name is Homer Atkins. He provides only simple engineering insight, but does so in a way that the native Sarkhanese adopt the ideas wholeheartedly. Homer Atkins doesn’t care about living lavishly, he learns the local language, and he genuinely cares about the people of Sarkhan, not just the threats against America.
In another story, we hear about an Air Force Colonel named Hillendale, probably an intelligence officer, who manages to influence massive numbers of Sarkhanese without really trying. He sings songs, reads palms, and eats food with them. (He also knows the language, a point that occurs over and over. I wrote about it a few weeks ago and last summer.) Most importantly, he uses hardly any money while he influences people.
The lessons of Homer Atkins and Colonel Hillendale are just two of many. The most important lesson, and why all current and future military officers should read this novel, is because it persuasively describes political war. (Also, while I have been insanely positive in today's post, on Wednesday I will provide some of the downsides of this thoroughly enjoyable novel.)
And if he hasn't read The Ugly American, I would advise President Barack Obama to read it too. Hopefully he finishes the job President Kennedy started, making all military officers and State Department officials read this novel. (Although, I bet 90% of officers wouldn’t even if the president told them to.)
On the outskirts of Vicenza Italy, there is a beautiful hill overlooking the town called Mount Berico. At the top, there is a church, and of course a coffee shop. Most importantly, there is a breath taking view. Though it wasn't the best coffee, it was the best atmosphere in town.
Eric C and I used to relax by making the forty five minute journey to the top of the hill. Whenever we had visitors, we took them there, joining the throngs of Italian tourists who visited this important church andpilgrimage site.
There is also a set of stairs--nearly several dozen going up 700 meters--leading up to Mount Berico. These stairs are part of their religious tradition; the truly pious walk up in devotion, sometimes on their knees.
Unfortunately, a set of steep stairs is an inviting location to run.
Vicenza, Italy is also home to the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, and two of its six battalions. In the morning, the paratroopers of the 173rd would look for the tallest, farthest places to run, and Berico was the nearest hill.
Inevitably, the town and the Soldiers came into conflict.
The local government eventually banned running downtown. Soldiers would run and call cadence, which had to end, because it woke up locals. Even after the cadences stopped, local Italian officials prohibited running downtown because soldiers conducted PT in the middle of the historical square (Soldiers were vomiting on the sidewalks or, again, waking up the locals.).
After banning downtown, the steps leading up to Monte Berico were banned. Again, the same reason: soldiers were vomiting on the steps. Italians described American Soldiers as a nuisance to civilians walking the steps. There were several other routes upBerico, so only the steps were banned.
Last summer, the entire hill was banned because of the continued disturbance and the alleged destruction of park land around downtown Vicenza . According to the local Italian papers, the response of the American soldier’s has been less than stellar. This caused bad press for American soldiers.
How does this relate to counter-insurgency? To the US Army, running at a pilgrimage site every morning for PT exercises was harmless. To the locals, it was anything but. The key is US Soldiers failed to realize how offensive their behavior was.
If US Soldiers can't get along with western Europeans in downtown Vicenza, Italy, how can we expect to do so in diverse cultures like Iraq and Afghanistan? The American Soldier (Officer, NCO and Enlisted) has great difficulty breaking from his own cultural viewpoints. As an Army we must face facts: many Soldiers lack empathy.
Not to toot my own horn, but when I first saw the behavior of soldiers on Mount Berico, and doing PT in general, I guessed that Italians would not be pleased with it. Sure enough, communicating this was difficult.
The only way to convince Soldiers not to run up those steps--to understand the error of their ways--was by a simple analogy. I asked, if French soldiers conducted PT runs around the graves of Normandy, and vomited on the sidewalks, how would you react? Probably beat the crap out of those Soldiers. An easy analogy, but almost the very definition of lacking empathy.
(I would provide some of the links to the original stories, but they are in Italian and most of our readership speaks English.)
Since General McChrystal originally posted his counter-insurgency guidance--and classified Rules of Engagement--pundits and bloggers in the right wing media have made quite a few accusations. Some have called Obama's new Rules of Engagement are an outrage. Some call them Rules of Endangerment. Some have said they put our Soldier's at risk. One blogger has even said that our Soldiers wonder who is the bigger enemy, the Taliban or Obama's Rules of Engagement? Hell, Marcus Lutrell wrote a whole book on 'em.
General McChrystal created a strict ROE for Afghanistan for a specific reason: to win. He modeled the new ROE on policies that have proven successful in Iraq and other counter-insurgencies.
And it is right he did so. Leaders must make the Rules of Engagement. While the Soldiers and NCOs on the ground makes the split second decisions about how to use ROE, leaders must establish the guidance.
This seems backwards to some people. Many Soldiers (and bloggers) think we should always trust the NCO on the ground. The thinking goes, "No politician in Washington, no General in the Pentagon, nor any staff officer at Bagram Air Field can make better decisions than the leaders on the ground." This is a false dilemma. Often, what Soldiers believe keeps them safe actually endangers the mission.
In war we have to do things that put our lives at risk. In a counter-insurgency, that means risking lives to save or limit civilian deaths. In World War II, storming the beaches of Normandy was excessively dangerous to our troops, but we had to do it. In counter-insurgency, a new ROE will make life more dangerous for Soldiers, but it will help us win.
But why do Leaders make the ROE?
COIN is a war of degrees. Traditionalists still expect Generals to move troops around on a big board the way Civil War generals did. Traditionalists still look for ways to attack the enemy, not protect the population. Traditionalists still want big operations. However, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not about big maneuver operations; they are the sum total of small patrols repeated consistently over time. Generals no longer tell units how to maneuver, they make small changes in tactics and strategy that are repeated over time.
The rules of engagement are one tool they can use to make those changes.
The FM 3-24, the new counter-insurgency manual, describes the paradoxes of defeating an insurgency. One of those paradoxes is that wildly engaging (and missing) the enemy makes the counter-insurgent look weak. Another is that killing the enemy frequently costs you support and makes the enemy stronger. These two ideas don’t make sense in regular war, but counter-insurgency is counter-intuitive.
Soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers new to counter-insurgency do not fully understand political war. ROE exists to force soldiers to follow good counter-insurgency theory, even though it seems counter-intuitive.
