On What Planet Does Salon.com Live?

Mark Benjamin, the Washington correspondent for Salon is quite evidently disturbed, bordering on distraught about the support given by Democratic presidential candidates generally for an increase in the size of US ground combat forces. Writing today he asks rhetorically if this means the army is preparing for more wars of the Iraq/Afghanistan type. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/27/bigger_army/index.html?source=newsletter

The Geek has an answer. It's short. Simple. The answer is. "Yes."

Benjamin references the new joint Army/Marine Corps Field Manual on counterinsurgency with, at least, faint alarm. Specifically bothering him is that the new manual acknowledges the fundamental reality which separates counterinsurgency from wars between organized forces using conventional tactics and equipment such as World War II, the Korean War, or the several wars between Israel and the Arab states.

"What's the difference?" You ask.

As the Geek has written before it is both simple and all important. Counterinsurgency, in common with all other stability oriented operations such as peacekeeping, has as its focus demobilizing actual or potential support from the insurgents and remobilizing it to the side countering the gunslingers.

In sharp contrast, conventional military operations focus on destroying the enemy's forces in the field as well as its material capacity to wage war.

To make it simpler. Conventional war has as its goal killing people and breaking things. Stability operations, including counterinsurgency, seek to kill less, break as little as possible, and win on the battlefield of the mind.

Correct counterinsurgency doctrine seeks a Sun Tzu victory. It seeks to convince. It seeks to demoralize the enemy--not kill him. Sure, killing is necessary. But, correct doctrine insists on killing only those who need killing and not anyone who happens to be in the impact zone.

The new doctrine is available commercially and should be read by anyone who wants to be informed on the type of war the US is most likely to be waging in the next several years. If read carefully, a person should not be alarmed but rather gratified.

The Geek has read it and is gratified by what he read.

Throughout the Nineties, the Geek along with others wrote, lectured, and hectored on two topics. The first was the necessity of a proper counterinsurgency doctrine since the needs of counterinsurgency were almost precisely opposite to the requirements for conventional war. The second point harped on was that the most likely type of war for the US in the upcoming decades was that generally called stability operations including peacekeeping and counterinsurgency.

To say the military resisted the message is to put it mildly. The task of convincing the services to accept that there were two antipodal types of war and that they would be tasked with fighting the kind they least enjoyed considering was not unlike selling the mullahocracy in Tehran on the necessity of becoming Southern Baptists.

Now, between the forces of argument over more than a decade and several years of floundering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ground forces can take legitimate satisfaction in finally having created a doctrine that is not a recipe for defeat. Thumbs up from the Geek.

Why is Mr Benjamin so disturbed? Intuitively the Geek would think that a man of the left would be pleased that the American military has chucked its addiction to shooting, moving, and communicating so as to find, fix, and destroy the enemy. He should be happy that the military sees a creative and effective alternative to killing its way to victory over a landscape of blasted ruins.

He's not. He's fretting instead. Fretting over the fact that the world is not a pleasant place filled with peace, love, unicorns, and other nice warm, soft fuzzies.

He's bothered because the army might be larger tomorrow than it is today.

The Geek replies, "It damn well better be larger--and smarter. Stability operations will continue as an urgent, necessary requirement for US capabilities. Democratic candidates as well as Republican seem to recognise this harsh reality."

Stability operations generally and counterinsurgency in particular, as the Geek has written before, are of necessity quite manpower heavy in their requirements. As the Geekmo has pointed out ad nauseum, if the US had placed enough boots on the ground initially in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the wars would have been quashed before they grew.

Mr Benjamin just doesn't get it. (Perhaps he should read the Geek's earlier posts on the subject. They ain't half-bad, if he does say so himself.)

Perhaps Mr Benjamin is worried that should the ground forces of the US gain sufficient manpower to actually implement the new doctrine successfully there will be rooms full of senior officers, all licking their lips with eager anticipation as they stare at maps with one eye and at CNN with the other eye seeking a country to "stabilize" or a regime to change.

Get a grip, Mr Benjamin.

As a (presumed) seasoned observer of Washington, Mr Benjamin ought to know that the military does not decide what country to invade or what regime to change. Only the civilians do that. The Commander Guy and his coterie. Not the military.

Having enough boots to put on the ground and possessing a less incompetent doctrine for placing the boots should provide future administrations of either party with a more effective mechanism not only for making our diplomacy more credible but for conducting stability operations at a lower cost in lives, treasure, and time.

What is so darn scary about that?

Perhaps Mr Benjamin would be more comfortable with an American military so berift of intellectual and manpower resources like that which after much huffing, puffing, planning and rehearsing brought the world the five star production, Debacle at Desert One. Maybe he is so gripless that he is happy with a Pentagon so devoid of ideas and capacities that we could respond to al-Qaeda outrages only by flinging megabuck Tomahawks at empty mud huts.

Now, that is scary.