Beware counterinsurgency

We have pursued the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency was developed during the Vietnam War, where it was called Vietnamization, and it failed.

Counterinsurgency depends on winning hearts and minds, defeating insurgents and handing over governance to somebody.

When widely spread autonomous cities comprise insurgencies, they are hard to defeat unless they are individually conquered and held. The United States never controlled Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were vastly under-sourced and never embraced by our people.

We were happy to let an invisible minority suffer the rigors of battle. We also quietly and unsuccessfully deployed parallel armies of mercenaries. Our Revolutionary War was successful because the British made similar mistakes. These were compounded because our foreign insurgents were from cultures vastly different from ours, and they remain unknown to us.

Google “Counterinsurgency Diagram Afghanistan” to see the incredible complexity of this strategy. It calls for the successful integration of numerous military and civil organizations that may or may not exist. It wouldn’t even work in the U.S. where national, state and local governments are paralyzed.

Meanwhile, Congress is AWOL and the American public is non compos mentis. We are flailing at shadows in darkness.

David Webb

Spokane