xiphias: (Default)
xiphias ([personal profile] xiphias) wrote2006-12-15 03:34 pm
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I heard that the US Military has finally released a "How To Fight An Insurgency" guide

They were talking about it. And I had to turn it off.

See, the manual says that you have to do things like "Not Piss People Off", "Not Kill Innocent People", and shit like that.

And that you have to be careful about this stuff, because it's paradoxical and non-intuitive.

The manual says everything that liberal bloggers have been saying about how this war should be fought. We have been right all along.

And it BAFFLES me that it's possible to NOT know these things. They're totally obvious. If you kill someone, then their family will be mad at you. That's not really THAT difficult a concept, is it? If people have jobs and a decent life and stuff, they'll be less likely to kill you. THIS is a paradoxical concept?

And I started to feel sick to my stomach as I began to really realize that this war has been fought by people who don't understand this.

And I began to feel guilty. For a number of reasons. One is that I'm an American, and I live in a representative democracy, and my representative democracy sent people who don't understand people to occupy a country. And that's my fault. Oh, maybe it's only 1/3,000,000th my fault, but if you figure that 100,000 people have died because of the war, as the Lancet figures, I'm still responsible for 1/30th of a death. Which is worth some guilt.

And another reason.

This shit is obvious to me. Apparently, I have a mindset that would have made this whole occupation less nasty and bloody and horrifying if people in charge of the occupation shared it.

And that means that I should be THERE.

I should have joined the military. I should have joined ROTC in college (although Brandeis didn't have one), and I should have become an officer, and I should have been in a position to help shape these policies so that we would have gone into the situation with this knowledge.

Or SOMETHING. I don't know. Maybe I was right not to join the military, maybe I wouldn't have been able to change things like that.

But. . . there has to be SOMETHING I could have done. How is it possible that ANYONE can't simply intuit almost all of the information that's in the new guide? I mean, the historical perspective is neat, and the classification of insurgency types is useful, but the "how to do it" section is all totally obvious.

[identity profile] metahacker.livejournal.com 2006-12-15 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I think you might be taking it a bit too literally. These manuals don't only contain information on obvious things like "if you kill someone, their family will be mad" -- though honestly there are some 18yos that could stand to have that information beaten into them. But the manuals, they contain official priorities. Priorities in war used to be something like "kill stuff; pacification and making friends is the problem of the second wave, the one that comes after occupation". As we keep fighting long engagements like this, the old lizard brain of the military is coming to understand that they *are* the second wave. Suddenly (as in, in the past decade or so), the USMil is realizing they need to train their soldiers for situations where there are not just Red (the enemey) and Blue (the allies), but Grey and Green and Purple and Grey Which Will Turn Red If You Kill A Purple and the like. The military changes slowly. The decision-makers, by the way it works, have 30+ years of experience of What Worked, and the system is geared toward conservatism. (They are working on this. It'll take another decade before they start implementing process change, because the process to change the process is itself slow.)

The other reality check I engage in is to realize that soldiers get about two hours of sleep per night, and are in a constant state of cortisol frenzy. Ever pulled two hour nights for a week in a row? Makes reiterating simple things like "don't shoot anyone you don't have to" seem like a good idea; the brain doesn't work as well. They're really *not* as stupid as everyone tries to make them out to be. Really. But damn, is it a hard job, and damn, is it easy to screw up, and *damn*. So having a manual that reinforces common sense is just, well, common sense.

I'm not saying don't say the things you're saying. Keep saying them, and loud, and maybe we won't be putting people in situations where, groggy and grumpy and in pain, they have to make the decision whether or not to shoot a six-year-old that is running to give them a suspicious-looking bundle. But there are a ton of mitigating circumstances for what the military does right now; and if you had joined up, you would be a voice shouting in the darkness...they don't take criticism from within very well, even from Generals.

[identity profile] vonbeck.livejournal.com 2006-12-16 09:13 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't think the people that are at issue here are not the poor grunts at the
sharp end of things. It is the the REMF's that are getting sleep and setting policies
that are putting our solders into the situations that cause these problems.