Flipping Birds at Counter
Insurgency, Flipping Bass Ackwards.
By Gordon S
Fowkes,
LTC USA
RET, KCTJ, M.Ed.
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| ST Bartholemew's Massacre of French Calvinits, 1572 |
Now
is the time for Bass Wholes on both sides of the Aisle to bay at the winds and
microphones of how “nation building is not a military job” or how “remotely
piloted vehicles” with pin point precision is a war crime, unlike carpet
bombing of Japan and Germany which were not.
Now is also the time when virgin pundits describe that which never
happened in Vietnam, or those whose scope of understanding of the nuances of
mortal combat are confused with Four Quarters or Nine Innings. War is not a
game, nor is it an election, nor a debate.
War Sucks, but somebody has to do it.
And it better be done right.
War
is not a continuation of politics by other means, it is politics with other
means just as an airstrike is no different from a traffic ticket aimed at reducing
the speed of the action. Whatever it takes to feed and protect the family is
what the fighting is all about, as is all the rest of survival of the adaptive,
fit or not.
And
if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That
sad tale is how the best equipped, best trained, best led, and best supported
military force of the US, was bested by a hollow point between the ears, by a
bloated bureaucracy bent on self-aggrandizement and career enhancement. The latter a sham foisted on those in field
grades with eyes on the stars whose chosen slots were shot down by those without branch or
insignia.
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| US MP and German Police on Traffic Duty during Occupation |
But
enough for the platitudes. We screwed
up, again as we had in the villages and towns of other ancient civilizations. We
assumed (ass out of you and me) that our fantasies of what was sacred and
absolute truth, were as imaginary as are those of our enemies are towards their
own.
Muslims have this nutty idea that
Islam is the central truth of the universe, despite that they aren’t even a (Circle
One, or more):
- American, Texan, Southern Californian, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, Chechen, and/or _________________.
The
fundamental motivation of the Rescuer is to convert the Victim and fight
villainy, insanity, and heresy. Nation
building is rescuing and converting the helpless and stupid to worship the
ground we walk on.
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| THE SHOGUN AND THE EMPEROR |
The
term counter insurgency became the fad by means obscure to me, as it anoints
the counter insurgent with a righteousness not bestowed upon the
insurgent. And, to make it even clearer,
what is an insurgent? The Taliban was
the effective government in place in Afghanistan when the US took sides with
the Northern Alliance and invaded. That
was a surge against the Taliban, but not an insurgency? The term has a
political definition not relevant to military operations.
Nevertheless,
the logical lines of operation (LLO) in the counter insurgency (COIN) as
originally spelled out in the Army/Marine Corps manual on Counter Insurgency
applies in fact to all of war for or against those whose contributions to
success or failure make a difference.
LLO
or LLE or whatever dissected the body politic into functions of a society
including governance. Or as it is done by ISIS in reverse to topple and repeat
on those toppled.
From
one of the manuals LLO are directed at:
- 1. Civil Security
- 2. Civil Control
- 3. Security Forces
- 4. Governance
- 5. Essential Services
- 6. Economy and Infrastructure
- 7. Advertising and Public Relations
As
one who is retired from the City of Houston (Building Inspections) and member
of many a society for the preservation of the good, and disruption of the bad,
this is a fairly standard list of logical lines of reelection, election or
selection to the higher and mighty. At
present, REMFCOM appears to have decided that local governance is not one of
interest to the infantry including those on boots who must travel the routes
through those local governances with unpronounceable names.
Just
as it is in local elections, the efforts of one side to enhance their version
of the LLO, must be destroyed, disrupted and/or discredited by actions against
the other’s LLO, and to enhance the other’s own. This is precisely what the Taliban and ISIS
are doing, and have been doing for decades, in one version or another.
There
are, therefore, four variants of LLO depending upon which side one is on:
- 1. Making your own,
- 2. Wrecking someone else’s,
- 3. Defending one’s own,
- 4. Wrecking the wreckers.
This
bears some resemblance to the Tactical Imperatives of combat.
Stability
Operations therefore have the same four modes. As such there is Stabilization
and Destabilization already under Special Operations Command, as it was under
the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. And therein, lie many a good example of what
not to do and what to do.
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| The Hanging of French Protestants during wars of religion |
The
Cold War was a religious war in all but name.
The present religious wars are like the political wars of the religion,
as the two differ only in name.
Bloody Awful ISIS is!
