Dead End

"Insurgents do not always win, but their defeats can rarely be attributed to counterinsurgency warfare, as we shall see. ... In other words, 'Integrating Civil and Military Activities' to improve local conditions need not gain public support. And even if it did, it does not automatically follow that such support would be decisive, or even important. ... But the authors then automatically assume that it is simply an intelligence problem to identify the insurgents among the population. This is another very questionable proposition, as we shall see, because in fact it is a political problem, which always has a political solution, however unpalatable that may be. ... The end result is that hyper-expensive helicopter hours are very often used to carry even low-value, non-urgent supplies, which is one of the reasons why the occupation costs so much even though very little ordinance is being expended. ... Perfectly ordinary regular armed forces, with no counterinsurgency doctrine or training whatever, have in the past regularly defeated insurgents, by using a number of well-proven methods. It is enough to consider these methods to see why the armed forces of the Unted States or of any other democratic country cannot possibly use them. The simple starting point is that insurgents are not the only ones who can intimidate or terrorize civilians. ... That is how the Ottoman Empire could control entire provinces with a few feared janissaries and a squadron or two of cavalry", Edward Luttwak (EL) at http://www.harpers.org/, February 2007.

I used the title of EL's article as my own. EL attacks David Petreaus (DP) recently released Counterinsurency Manual, FM-3-24. DP appalls me and I will do something I rarely do, make an ad hominem attack on him. Who is DP that he has contempt for American blood and treasure? Who is this cowardly, ingratiating fool? Is he a US Army general, or a Princeton Woodrow Wilson (WW) school PhD student? I have long thought the WW school and Harvard's Kennedy school worse than useless. Did the US Army pay for DP's WW schooling? If so why? Does DP know less military history than I? Or is he looking for an "A" from one of his old professors long after he's graduated? Do West Point and the US Army Command and General Staff College still teach military history? Does DP know who the Ottomans were?

As noted military historian and philosopher said of our Iraq war, "Only a more savage nation will survive". Who said that? Michael Savage radio talk show host.

I thank http://www.jewishatheist.blogspot.com/, 27 July post for leading me to this article.