As we get set for the latest round of presidential elections to kick off in the 20th, I thought it tastey food for thought to forward this post at the Small Wars Journal by Military.com contributor and well known author Bing West.
In his post, West turns the Obama “civilianized” Afghan strategy on its head, and says the key to success is killing more bad guys.
Red meat for the martial types…
It appears our strategy is nation-building, with fighting and dismantling of the Taliban a secondary consideration. Thus, the number of enemy killed will not be counted, let alone used as a metric. This non-kinetic theory of counterinsurgency has persuaded the liberal community in America to support or at least not to vociferously oppose the war. But we have to maintain a balance between messages that gain domestic support and messages that direct battlefield operations…
More senior-level attention must be paid to inflicting severe enemy losses in firefights and to arresting the Taliban, so that their morale and networks are broken. A recent directive forbids applying indirect fires against compounds where civilians might be hiding. That directive upholds human decency and may reduce enemy propaganda.
Interesting — and controversial. Removing the most militant of the insurgency from the battlefield worked in Iraq — though that took military negotiations with key tribal leaders to dry up support for the heart of the insurgency. But they were removed from the battlefield. Can’t guns and bullets do the same?
And West also calls for better and more technology to keep the bombs dropping, bristling at the restrictions being placed on direct and indirect fire support for troops in all but the most “broken arrow” of situations.
But indirect fires helicopter gunships and jets used to be called precision fires and gave the US its enormous advantage in combat. Now that such fires are restricted, what provides our advantage when the enemy sensibly fights from compounds? Dont expect Afghan soldiers to do it for us. We have equipped and trained the Afghans in our image. They are as heavy and slow-moving on the ground as we are, and rely upon our advisors to call in the firepower.
This is my third war. It has the highest level of military scholars. Those scholars who emphasized the concepts of non-kinetic counterinsurgency need also to design concepts that bring more lethality to the ground battlefield. Were pumping billions into UAVs. Surely we can find technologies and techniques for the grunt.
Like I said, food for thought. Also, be sure to check out his video below.
– Christian
We may need to switch to smaller and smaller bombs…or undo the chemical weapons convention, and bring back tear gas.
agree, smaller and smaller bombs…
It appears that even though General Curtis Le May is dead. He has been reincarnated in the form of someone named Bing West.
I think that it can be well argued that Bing’s brilliant theory of killing everything that moves, doesn’t work to well.
Was the USA forced to leave Viet Nam due to a lack of firepower, which resulted in an insufficient number of dead enemy soldiers and civilians?
The USA should get the hell out of Afghanistan while it still has something to get out with.
Sooner or later the USA will leave, it is only a matter of time, needlessly shed blood, and wasted treasure, before the USA says uncle.
The sooner the better for the USA, and Afghanistan.
The middleeast is a rat hole down which the USA keeps pounding blood.
The thing is we are not just fighting Afghan Taliban, we are fighting militant Muslim forces from all over that are coming to Afghan to fight Americans. Iranians, Chechens, Syrians, etc…
My only question is why do Taliban like miserable places like Afghanistan? Why couldn’t they have training camps in the Caribean or some other tropical paradise?
While I agree that air power is the the final answer and we need to be careful what we kill, I think Bing West’s point was that the ground pounder needs to be able to kill the bad guy. Air power tends to kill to many extra people, which only makes other people mad. So what is the solution? Small bombs are the first step, but it’s only going to make the problem a little smaller. We need to make it a lot smaller.
Quite low recoil the L-85 has, seems fun to shoot.
More rubble, less trouble.
I’m not an expert, but wasn’t that strategy tried in Vietnam. And didn’t the Soviets try that in the exact same strategy. How are we supposed to get a different outcome?
Ultimately artillery fire (and on a scale of building clearance, air ordnance is a form of artillery fire) has a fundamental limit if you’ve decided it’s unacceptable to use it where you’ve got known or suspected civillians trapped in the building the enemy is using.
Especially if you’re up against an enemy who will deliberately seek to create that situation once he realises it.
Better training, better body armour, personal comms and sighting systems like NVG will give you the edge but no matter how well equipped, there are few tactical situations more likely to result in deaths on the aggressor side than trying to breach and secure a building when they can’t use heavy ordnance.
Most of what he’s saying on a tactical level is fairly sensible, the comments that mattered (as I understood them) were:
1) A patrol that runs through somewhere once a week does not ‘control’ somewhere. Either be there on a near-permanent basis or don’t (that might mean reducing your op-area until the ANA can take over ‘behind’ you — I’ve heard arguments for and against the oil-spot strategy but at least in theory it’s sound)
2) You need to be able to press a retreating enemy continuously. As noted, if you’re carrying Interceptor body armour, an outer vest, a helmet, more random tools and gadgets than you know what to do with, and they have an AK-47 and a spare magazine, knows the terrain better than you, and has a motorbike stashed further up the hill, you will NOT be able to do this on foot. (This is certainly where the old soviet transport/gunships like the Hind had their big advantage, if you had enough of them to be meaningful)
3) If you can’t blow a building up, you’ve ultimately got to in and try and do old-fashioned building clearance against enemies with automatic weapons. Supporting equipment is important — SO19/SWAT issue things like flashbangs and heavyweight ‘assault entry’ body armour exist but issuing more, heavier equipment is in direct contravention of what you want to be doing in point #2 — in terms of ‘light’ pursuit and reaction forces.
Of course a ‘light’ force can potentially pin you in a building complex whilst a ‘heavy’ force is brought up — if the enemy has an unassailible stronghold, see that he stays there (in this case it’s unassailible politically rather than practically but the quote still applies)
That, however, requires you to have enough manpower to maintain a reserve force and the mobility to deploy them where they’re needed.
It’s not a simple matter of fighting “the enemy” or “the Taliban” as West would like. The situation in Afghanistan is complicated with tribal allegiances and drug-financed warlords as well as numerous external groups. And for a lot of Afghans — as in a lot of countries — as long as there are foreign invaders (Russian or American, whatever) there will be resistance.
The idea that you can win simply by killing more people is absurd. In fact, it’s also exactly what the Jihadists want: and they would like to see plenty more US bombs falling on innocent people too.
Iraq could only be (partly) pacified by bringing a lot of folk into the tent, including Sunni militias and Iranian-backed groups. Anyone who thinks this struggle can be won with firepower is living in their own fantasy.
Now as an 11b US Army I come to realize that boots on the ground are what we need. Armor support and artillery is what we need. For instance palidens and M1A’s or just A10/OV10’s would be just the right kick in the ass those bastards deserve up there. I am going up there soon so they better run and hide its not my first time in combat.
A friend of mine once told me that when we go to war with another country, we need to stop occupying and rebuilding the nation. We should just go in and literally bomb them back into the stone age,(no utilities or infastructure) and just leave. Not only will that nation not pose a threat for years if not decades, it will also serve as a warning to any neighboring nations that are thinking about making trouble for the US.
But that is just his opinion. I think that while we need to worry about civilian casualties, it should not come at the expense of our service mens safety.
I agree with Justin. War should not be something that is taken lightly. We should try avenues of peace. We should try to work things out time and again and from every angle.
But, when this does not work, when we have exhausted all avenues of peace, or when we are attacked without provokation, then we need to throw this “winning their hearts and minds” playbook out the window. It takes generations to change hearts and minds. Maybe war should be fought the old testament way,
“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” — 1 Samuel 15:3
Read “Three Cups of Tea” and you will get a better understanding of nation building.
Not since “The Ugly American” has a book been as spot on. And, Three Cups is a non-fiction page turner and a true inspiration.
As I have said before,Obama, you cannot wage a politically correct war. If our trrops can’t fight the enemy with all of the fire power they have, then bring them home. They are just targets that can’t shoot back in this liberal conflict. At least when Bush was in office you called the enemy what they are “Terriorists”. B.O., go back to Chicago and organize a community, leave the heavy work for those who know what they are doing.
As I have said before,Obama, you cannot wage a politically correct war. If our trrops can’t fight the enemy with all of the fire power they have, then bring them home. They are just targets that can’t shoot back in this liberal conflict. At least when Bush was in office you called the enemy what they are “Terriorists”. B.O., go back to Chicago and organize a community, leave the heavy work for those who know what they are doing.
While progressives may be amenable McChrystal’s new approach to the conflict, it was him not the Administration that put the restrictions in place.
You have to realize that part of the Afghan war is political. Other countries have boots on the ground, and we require the assistance of Afghanistan’s neighbors to try to choke off the flow of weapons and troops across the borders. You don’t keep allies by flattening villages and allowing the Taliban to show dead women and children on CNN again.
Open warfare on civilian centers also does nothing but increase the number of insurgents that you face. You kill a mother and you essentially force her 8 sons to join the Taliban (or some other militant group).
At least Obama is sending troops there. Under Bush Afghanistan was an afterthought to the Iraq conflict.
Cannon, what do you propose? Nuking Saudi Arabia? If we didn’t piss off enough people we’ll sure to do so by occupying Saudi Arabia, or openly meddling in their affairs.
Perhaps if the al-Sauds all died in a mysterious accident…
Pakistan is to blame for ninety percent of this , nearly all the fighters are foreign and backed by the rogue paki intelligence officers .
As for Saudi Arabia ‚more than anyone else they were responsible for 9/11 .
God speed to the UK and US troops
The Taliban protected Bin Laden, who attacked our non-military friends and families. They should face the same risks.
Yeah, right now our aircraft scare them, because they know we could still shoot. Once you remove the bullets from the gun, nobody will be scared anymore.
The point Bing West is trying to make is that the US is losing in Afghanistan because the Taliban are just ordinary afghans.
It’s always the same story, losing to the people genocide is proposed as the solution.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the most bombed country in history was a US ally at the time, all (as the pentagon papers show) to preserve some US prestige in a failing war.
Bing has been running the same hollow story of defeat his entire career.
Why not use tear gas? Smoke ‘em out and put them down. The Marines used it in Hue, and damn it worked. They will continue to use civvies as shields, so better find a way around it. How about SDB’s? Can you imagine how many of them a B1-B can carry? Even an A-10 or F-16. Thats a lotta bombs. Secondly, the comments about the Saudi’s are correct. If there is to be a stable A-stan, those “safe havens” in PAK need to be very UNSAFE. If not, we are p-ssing in the wind.
My Uncle was at Hue and he told me that at first, because of the “historic” nature of Hue, they would not allow the Marines to use air support, artillery or mortars.
It wasn’t until a lot of good men died that they changed their mind. This fighting wars with our hands tied behind our backs to “appease” foreign nations, many who secretly support terrorism, and at the expense of Americans lives, is just nuts.
Unleash the hounds, let them do what needs to be done. Then when it is over, don’t crucify the spec ops troops, cia, and blackwater guys that do the things no one else can or will do.
In all of history, no one has “killed” their way out of war of patriotism or terrorism. It won’t happen in Afghanistan either. Check out 2000 years of history because it tells you how to stop terrorism. The first step is to realize that the terrorists are ALWAYS right in one way or another. In Afghanistan, it’s because the “government” is utterly corrupt and the Taliban are the better of the two available options. Stop the corruption and you’ll stop both the Taliban and terrorism. You probably don’t like this, but it’s true. Widespread terrorism only exists because the motivation for it is honest and the opposition isn’t. That’s why we lost in Vietnam, why the Brits, Germans, Spanish, French, etc. lost their empires, etc.
Ask yourself, if you were an Afghan, for instance, would you support a foreign led government that will starve you to death, has crooked judges and police, etc. or a Right-Wing nut case that has a solid and consistent, but harsh, system that allows you to live, work, and socialize in a consistent and safe manner?