Apply with Judgement

Posted on 14 July 2010 by SJPONeill

It took a while but a couple of weeks ago I was finally able to take down all the dust clothes that we had put up around the library to protect the books from dust and mess during the renovations. It’d been a couple of months since I’d actually laid eyes on the books in the library, concealed as they were behind layers of old sheets, and it struck me that there were a large number (albeit a small proportion) of books that I hadn’t actually ready yet. For some time prior to that point, I had been doing a lot of nostalgic recreational reading…Ice Station Zebra, Cyborg (the original Steve Austin story), various lite-works from Steven Coonts, Dale Brown, etc and I decided to commit to clearing some of the backlog of unread books – after all, there not much point having books if you aren’t going to read them at least once…so Wing Leader was the first that caught my eye as an ‘unread’…

Like many of the books in our library, I have no idea where I acquired this from…as much as possible I try to log all new acquisitions into our Book Collector database and record where each acquisition came from – the Collector software is actually quite good and we used it to track all our books, DVDs and my paper model collection: check it out @ http://www.collectorz.com. Anyway, this is the second printing of Wing Leader from September 1956 and seems to have spent an earlier part of its existence, from 18 October 1962 until 21 June 1963, in the Wairoa College Library. Where it was in the 47 years before appearing in our library is anyone’s guess.

It is what I call a ‘ripping good yarn’ starting with Johnson being turned away in various attempts to join the RAF until war broke out and there was a desperate need to build up the RAF to face the oncoming Nazi juggernaut. On only his second flight in a Spitfire, Johnson fudged his landing and drove the main gear up through the top of the wings – hardly an auspicious start for the pilot who ended WW2 as a Group-Captain and the RAF’s highest scoring fighter pilot with 38 confirmed kills. Wing Leader follows Johnson through the war through squadron and wing command and the dark days of the Battle of Britain through D Day and the advance across Europe. It ends with a celebratory air show in Denmark soon after VE Day.

One of the principles that emerged from our work in doctrine management over the last couple of years is that doctrine is something that can never be a set of hard and fast rules that applied dogmatically; to be effective doctrine must be applied with judgement. While, perhaps and only perhaps, in more simpler forms of warfare there might be a place for the soldier or commander who blindly follows without thinking, in the contemporary environment, facing complexity, irregularity and uncertainty, there is no place for a non-thinker: we must ALL think and apply our judgement. Wing Leader had what I thought were a couple of great examples of this.

…throughout this day and on all subsequent operations in the Falaise gap the Luftwaffe failed to provide any degree of assistance to their sorely pressed ground forces. faced with the threat of losing their forward airfields to our advance, they were busily occupied in withdrawing to suitable bases in the Paris area, so our fighter-bombers enjoyed complete air supremacy over the battle area. Quick to exploit such a great tactical advantage, Broadhurst issued instructions that until such time as the Luftwaffe reappeared to contest our domination of the Normandy sky all his aircraft would operate in pairs. This was a wise decision, for it meant that pairs of Spitfires and Typhoons could return to the fray immediately they were turned around on the ground. Detailed briefings were not necessary since all pilots knew the area and the position of our own ground troops. Valuable time was saved and it was possible to put the maximum number of missions into the air.

This was a dramatic deviation from extant doctrine which held that, while pairs of aircraft might be able to penetrate enemy airspace and attack opportunity targets along their way, if a lone pair of fighters ran into a group of enemy fighters it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that both pilots and aircraft would be lost. The cold hard lesson learned from the early days of sweeps over France was that there was quite definitely safety is numbers i.e. sweeps of at least squadron and more commonly wing strength that could hold their own against Luftwaffe defenders.

Since WW1, the commonly-held wisdom was to watch for the Hun in the sun with the corollary that higher altitude was always a great, almost necessary advantage over an aerial adversary. Thus is was with some concern that Johnson…

…watched Jamie when he drafted an operation order for the wing to sweep the Rouen area at 12,000 feet.
“12,000 feet seems a little low, Jamie,” I commented. “The boys are certain to get bounced at that height.”
“That’s right,” briefly answered the New Zealander.
“Then why don’t you put them higher?” I suggested.
“Because, dear boy, Ray Harries prefers to be below the Huns. In fact, his tactics depend on the Huns starting the attack.”
I expressed profound disbelief, for I had always been a firm believer in the old axiom that the leader who has the height advantage controls the battle…Ray and I walked to our Spitfires. before we climbed into our cockpits, I said:
“I always though the chap with the height held all the cards, Ray.”
“Yes, he does,” replied the wing leader. “But 12,000 feet is our best fighting height. Somehow we’re got to pull down the Hun to our level. once he’s down, our Spits are so much better that we can break into him, out-turn him and soon get on top of him…”

Johnson explains that…

The Luftwaffe had modified some of their Focke-Wulf 190s so that they had a very good performance at low-level…Our answer to this was the Griffon-engined Spitfire 12…At low and medium altitudes the Spitfire 12 was faster than its contemporary, the 109, and could cope with the low-flying 190s…

Wing Leader cites other examples including that of two Lancaster heavy bombers peeling out of formation after the post-D Day daylight bombing of Caen to strafe Germany ground transports along the roads…

Majestically, it ploughs along over the straight road with rear and front guns blazing away. Enemy drivers and crews abandon their vehicles and dive for the shelter of the hedgerows…There is a considerable amount of light flak, but the pilot obviously scorns this small stuff, since he is accustomed to a nightly barrage of heavy flak over the industrial cities of Germany…

It’s all about avoiding dogma – continuing always to think and too learn…to quote Dr Michael Evans from the Contemporary Warfare course last week “Who Learns, Wins”

Aaaah….yep

Posted on 9 July 2010 by SJPONeill

A picture's worth a 1000 words

There is a great commentary at Small War Journal regarding the manner in which GEN McCrystal was brought down…

Meanwhile, back in LooneyToonville, Michael Yawn continues his sterling work for the Taliban and continues his campaign against RADM Greg Smith, the head PAO for ISAF…

Who needs enemies with friends like Yawn?

RADM Smith’s real crime, of course, was that he supported Yawn’s disembedment after he began his smear campaign against senior ISAF staff…

Contemporary Warfare

I’ve spent the last day or so typing out all my notes from the Contemporary Warfare sessions – who might have thought that some much great material could come from only two days?

Joining the dots

Posted on 7 July 2010 by SJPONeill

I’m sitting in on the two day Contemporary Wafare module at Command and Staff College that is being conducted by Dr Michael Evans from the Australian Defence College. Although it is only a two day module (compressed down from 4-5 days to fit the study programme) it is a great learning experience both through Michael’s experience and the interaction with members on the staff course; I have almost a whole notebook full of notes (= a few nights typing them all up before I forget which scribble means what!) and some great insights to expand and write on…There was some very good material yesterday afternoon that has helped join some of the dots in our own work here and we’ve just finished working through some of the ethical dilemmas of the contemporary environment…

Winning the information battle

Posted on 5 July 2010 by SJPONeill

…or, at least, not losing it by default…

Now that I’m working again, the calls on my time have multiplied geometrically and this little corner of cyberspace has been somewhat quieter than during my seven month exile at the Raurimu Centre for Contemporary Studies aka home. I have a two hour drive to and from base each week and, during those periods on the road, have introspected on the unfortunate sequence of events that led to the demise of GEN Stanley McCrystal and his departure from the COMISAF appointment.

My first thought is that Michael Yawn had no more to do with what happened to GEN McCrystal that he did with the removal from ISAF of Canada’s most senior in-theatre officer..whether Michael Yawn had yapped on or not, the fate of both these officers would have been the same i.e. contrary to popular misinformation, Michael Yon did nothing to influence these events, other than perhaps besmirching them in his own personal smear campaign which says more about him that it doers either Daniel Menard or Stanley McCrystal. In 2005, I was fortunate to spend some time with the now Chief of the Canadian Defence Force, General Walter Natynczyk, and nothing about that officer struck me as the sort of guy who would or could casually overlook a negligent discharge by a senior Canadian officer and even less so, when it occurred in his presence.

I feel sad for GEN McCrystal, brought down by an angry Icelandic volcano (which is how they all came to be in a bus together with an embedded reporter from Rolling Stone) magazine and a fickle and irresponsible reporter who, in my ever so humble opinion, abused the position that he was placed in by Eyjafjallajokull, reporting out of context the frustrations of staff facing the unenviable task of winning a conflict that is unlikely to be winnable. I agree fully with Mike Innes’ comments @ Current Intelligence…

I spent the better part of yesterday trying to wrap my head around Michael Hastings’ profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his team of advisors. My initial thoughts on the subject at CNN hint at but don’t fully get to what I wanted to say on the matter… which places me in good company, since the chatter on this issue has been blazing across the wire/blog/twitter sphere since the piece was “leaked” on Monday.

My main point was about social distance – which is actually an issue that binds together pretty much everyone who reads, researches, writes, or does anything at all in relation to Afghanistan (or anywhere, really). It’s what soldiers have to contend with, sitting behind the fortified walls of armed camps, all the while trying to gain a more intimate understanding of local culture. It’s what people sent to a strange place have to contend with, absent the time and access needed for familiarization, much less to develop any profound “knowledge” of their environment. And it’s what war correspondents and other journalists have to contend with when reporting from zones so catastrophically different from their otherwise peaceful, functioning worlds.

Powers of observation, an eye for detail, and a nimble pen can go a long way toward telling a good, accurate, and full story, and toward overcoming some of that distance (or at least recognizing it for what it is). Sometimes, maybe, the gap is just too profound, too wide and too deep, to accurately convey a larger meaning – not factoids and datapoints, but meaning.

Anyway, don’t take my word for it. I think of all the bits and pieces I read yesterday and this morning – and there was a lot of good analysis out there – is this Danger Room piece and Peter Feaver’s clear and focusedbreakdown at Foreign Policy of Hastings’ story elements.

What’s really disappointing, too, is that Hastings and Rolling Stone might have missed out on a real opportunity to craft some truly fine and literary journalism. In an interview on National Public Radio yesterday, Hastings gave some background that would have added a great deal of context and nuance to the story, had they been included. The Paris interlude, for example – which is really where all the juiciest bits of the story come from – came about because of the Icelandic volcano eruption, which disrupted air travel worldwide, and stranded ISAF’s Command Group, like thousands of other travelers. To my mind, that would have been both a unique element of narrative color and detail, and an obvious and immediate source of frustration for men running a war, but trapped outside of it and unable to return to it.

I hear now that the Pentagon is staking steps to require all interviews with senior commanders to be pre-approved from the five-sided building…is this what we are coming to in our fear of the fourth estate…we can entrust senior staff with the live of the nation’s young men and women, empower them to sortie into harm’s way, place the instruments of global destruction in their hands but won’t trust them to say the right thing to a reporter without a thumbs-up from a carpeted office thousands of miles and possibly eons of reality away…Rolling Stone‘s The Runaway General and Michael Yawn’s lipping off about things he know nothing about e.g. senior command, strategy, responsibility, etc are excellent examples of the damage than can be done by irresponsible reporters and editorial staffs, just like 911, the Bali bombings, Lockerbie etc are similar example of the damage than can be done by terrorist organisations BUT we didn’t run away and hide then…we went out and learned a new way of warfare…and that’s what we need to do now in the information war…

The first battle must be internal to shed our fear of the censure and embarrassment that may come from perceptions of dirty washing being aired in public…this thinking is tantamount to grandma concealing her bloomers in a pillow case when she hangs out the washing…surely we’re past this stage and realise that we do more damage to ourselves and our causes by playing a manic game of Whac-A-Mole trying to suppress any and all reports that may not be the purest distillation of happy happy joy joy juice…nowhere have I seen it summed up so well as this commenter on Michael Yon’s Facebook page (of course, I can’t find the exact quote anymore) to the effect that the USMC mindset is that “...if we don’t want it exposed out in the open, then we probably shouldn’t be doing it…” And that attitude is the place we need to strive towards, to stopping fearing the media and hiding from them, of being able to stand up say “…we screwed up…AND…here’s what we’re (really) doing about it...” or, sometimes, simply “…this is a risky business and sometime crap simple happens…”

If we can’t get our heads around this now, this key battle we are consistently losing int he minds of our people and those of our adversaries, what are we going to do one day when anyone can publish what they think, their own views, opinions and images…what are we going to do then…? Uh-oh….youtube…facebook, bebo…that intreenet thingamebobby… time to climb into the information fight, people….

Generation Kill

Posted on 21 June 2010 by SJPONeill

Generation Kill started to screen down here tonight…at the end of Episode One, I had two first impressions…

First up, it blows The Pacific away – totally. Like many viewers, I lost interest in The Pacific before it was halfway through…the characters were wooden and difficult to identify with and all the pretentious hype months prior lead to expectations it just could attain. Conversely, after 58 minutes of Generation Kill, the characters are people, easy to identify with…if there is to be a classic to follow in the vein of Band of Brothers, it may be Generation Kill.

Second, even though the events covered in Generation Kill were ‘only’ seven years ago, the first episode reminds me of a younger, more innocent time…before the blood and the brutality we take for granted in our contemporary environment…

Everybody fights!!

Posted on 21 June 2010 by SJPONeill

Source http://www.mod.uk

If there was one single takeaway from last week’s conference it was this…”Everybody fights…!!” It was hammered home by the US and Canadian representatives who attended and validates that concept that everyone deployed into an operational AO in high-end theatres like Iraq and Afghanistan must first and foremost be a warfighter…

Anyone who goes out the gate must have the same skills as those who habitually tread out in the bad lands and if there has been one single lesson for both these nations in the last six or seven years it has been that EVERYONE has the same probability of getting caught in a contact, activating an IED of some size, or getting in some other form of strife…

So EVERYBODY receives, extracts and delivers detailed and comprehensive orders; EVERYBODY conducts and participates in rehearsals; EVERYBODY is conversant with Immediate Actions and force SOPs; and, where possible, EVERYBODY has a secondary skill to bring to the party so that there are no single points of failure when it all goes noisy…

Those who may expect to spend a large proportion of their time within the wire might also wish to have a bit of a rethink as once all those containers are stacked, blankets counted and bolts tightened, they represent a large proportion of combat power that can be employed in local security, route clearance, population engagement, etc, etc, etc….

COIN is not and never will be a checklist…EVERYBODY needs to think and keep thinking to stay alive and achieve the mission…there is no room for rubber stamping compliance or templated solutions for their own sake – every situation is subtly different from the one before and must be considered in its own context…a key implication from this is that domestic training, outside the force generation or predeployment training environments, MUST provide opportunities for leaders at all level (including EVERY soldier – it’s called self-leadership) to confront complexity and uncertainty in every day they are on the job – and that this must be supported by a firm foundation of a well-embedded organisational ethos and culture…

Kudos to Dean @ Shiloh again for the top job he did in collating and distributing his detailed notes from the COIN Symposium at Ft Leavenworth – Dean, just so you know, we’re reading your stuff down here as well and it was interesting to see notes based upon your observations being distributed at the conference…unfortunately, significant portions of the conference material were classified so I’m unable to share to quite the same degree as Dean however a week away from home gave me a great opportunity to navel-gaze free of distractions and to also interact offline with a number of old and new colleagues and this is content that I’ll be developing over the next week or so…

It’s been bucketing down here for most of the weekend since I got home but I have been making the most of breaks in the weather to do outside jobs at the Lodge and Chalet in preparation for the ski season which starts here in a couple of weeks. In the wetter parts of the days, I have had a full range of inside jobs as part of that prep and this has eaten into PC time quite a bit…tomorrow, I am off to Ohakea again and, assuming that the Army has finally completed all the exit admin, I should be a member of the RNZAF by lunch time…

Offline for a week or so

Posted on 13 June 2010 by SJPONeill

Am off to a workshop on hybrid warfare next week – as I never really got round to following up on, let alone investing in, portable computing, I expect I’ll be offline til I get home on Friday night…everyone work and play well together while I’m away…

Getting it right

Posted on 3 June 2010 by SJPONeill

Japanese tank Type 2 Ka-Mi 1:25 by mrafalsk

Just snippets today…

A couple of interesting comments (edit: made by visitors to his page – I just omitted the names for privacy reasons) on one of Michael Yon’s Facebook threads…

I’ve been in the army since Regan was president. i lived through the drawdown and saw how within several years the Army culture changed dramatically. zero defects was the norm… PC culture was jammed down our throats by new “sensitivity” initiatives. anyone that dared cross a PC line was slammed and pushed aside. when i attended the Strategy program at CGSC, we were fed a steady diet of liberal internationalist philosophy by Barnett, Nye, Fukuyama , and surprisingly the failed Sec of State Kissinger. these aren’t the people that are going to solve our strategic problems. in fact, they are the problem. we need to return to the classics of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, etc.

Personally I despise Sun Tzu, or certainly the popular pulp interpretations of his philosophies…I always mentally deduct marks when I see Sun Tzu quotes in papers and books I am reviewing…it’s, like, couldn’t you apply yourself enough to find a supporting quote with some substance behind it? But that’s just me…I do however support a return to study based upon the classic thinkers, especially as a foundation upon which to consider more contemporary works…

The government of South Vietnam was inept and corrupt … so it was illegitimate as far as the population was concerned. The South Vietnamese gov’t never won the support of its people and could not stand on its own without massive U.S. financial and military support. So the end was inevitable. I don’t know how much effect we can have on Karzai and his clown posse, but without an effective government in Afghanistan the fight is already lost.

The positive and negative parallels with the war in Vietnam continue to grow…on the positive side we see the incredible dedication and professionalism of individuals at the sharp end, regardless of the direction and reasons for the conflict; and we see the opportunity to get it write through the writings of people like Jim Gant, Josh Wineera and Steve Tatham, all of whom have identified key aspects that might make this war winnable – although chance is becoming slim indeed as the US prepares to meet its 2011 drawdown target…On the negative side we see war in an environment we do not understand; the top-down political meddling in the campaign plan; and the bolstering of a government that only serves to reinforce the opposition…

The Enemy Within

As I type this morning, the news is covering a taxi driver’s murderous rampage in Whitehaven in the UK…already here, commentators are noting the difficulties faced by UK Police due to their unarmed posture and linking this to our own unarmed police force. The anti-gun lobby hasn’t arced up yet but it must be winding up already…the simple fact is that the UK already has very strict gun control laws ans still something like this occurs…

More guns, less guns is not the core issue…if someone wants to go out like this, they will find a way, guns or no guns…and while I support the arming of Police (why not? everyone else is armed), that is a response whereas I think that we need to be looking at how to interdict this threat before it ever gets played out…

On the run…

Right that it for now…have to dash as I have a big day ahead maximising the sun while it has been out…we have had a lot of rain over the last few days and everything is drenched. Fortunately we live in top of a hill and have escaped the floods that hit Whakatane and Oamaru this week…

I have made considerable progress this week is identifying potential options that might finally get us (affordable) broadband access at home – I do so miss being able to listen in on the monthly Virtual Brown Bag sessions at the CAC COIN Center – either through the miracles of satellite or mobile technologies…

I also am steeling myself for the inevitable jabbing and stabbing medical assessments as part of transferring across to the Air Force…so long as there’s no pysch assessments, I should be OK…!!

My two COIN-related priorities remain completing my review of the Mandelbrot book and offering my two cents to the incredible amount of great insights that Dean @ Shiloh brought back from the COIN Symposium at Ft Leavenworth last month…

Edit: This Just In…

Hawkeye UAV in action

This came in just as I hit the Publish button…it’s some of the imagery captured during Hawkeye UAV sorties in the South Island last week that shows off the Hawkeye capability – like Transformers, ‘more than meets the eye’…it is way more than just a little UAV with a camera…the true value to the client is the real time geo-referencing and overlay of imagery over 3D terrain models and subsequent analysis using the Hawkeye suite of tools…all this happens in the field in real or close to real time…very cool…

Michael Yawn predicts…

Posted on 30 May 2010 by SJPONeill

Carmen and Bill the Bedford Go South 068

…that the sun will come up in the morning…where would we be without him…?

Yon is crowing on his Facebook page that…

This fight was expensive for me in many ways, but I got him.

Getting this man fired was worth the fight and the costs.

This will save American, Canadian, and Afghan lives.

…in regard to the news a couple of hours ago that BGEN Daniel Menard…

…has been relieved of duty and ordered home immediately, accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a female soldier…the news came only days after Menard faced a court martial in Canada, where he pled guilty to accidentally firing his weapon at the Kandahar airbase in March. The incident occurred as Menard walked with Canada’s chief of the defence staff, General Walter Natynczyk, on his way to a helicopter.

Unusually, the Canadian National Defence spokesperson omitted to credit Yon with BGEN Menard’s removal and this may be an indication that the Canadians think that they can police themselves without Yon’s guidance or assistance. Unfortunately for BGEN Menard, he was not found (nor even charged with incompetence in an operational theatre) so it is likely that Yon will continue his vindictive vendatta. Yon has yet to substantiate his allegations of incompetence against any of the senior commanders he accused following the bombing at the Tarnak bridge just outside Kandahar airfield but continues to play (one assumes that it is an act) dumb regarding the reasons for his disembedment from US forces in Afghanistan…those silly old generals, they should like being publicly accused of incompetence and conspiracy…after all, Michael Yon thrives on such comments – oh, no, that’s only when he is dishing them out…

Personally I think Menard should have been like most of his troops and kept it in his trousers but that’s no call for the likes of Yon to conduct a personal vendetta against him or anyone else – you notice that Menard’s partner in crime is being targeted by Yon? Maybe this is just (yet) another instance of the 19 year old private masquerading as a 45 year old adult playing petty score settling games – possibly due to some perceived wrong during his four whole years in the US Army in the mid-80s…

And now, having de-Yon-ed myself it’s back to real work…I’m just about done on my review of Benoit Mandelbrot’s The (mis)Behaviour of Markets and should be posting it early next week…

Seven Days in May

Posted on 29 May 2010 by SJPONeill

I’ve been on a recreational reading blitz over the last month or so…mainly to daily purge the professional reading I have been reviewing…sort of getting a literary life, I guess…

I started with old favourites from Steven Coonts (The Intruders, America), Clive Cussler (Raise the Titanic, Night Probe) and Dale Brown (Wings of Fire and Fatal Terrain). I overnighted at Carmen’s flat in Otorohanga a couple of weekends ago and, having forgotten to bring a book with me, grabbed Michael Connelly’s Echo Park for my pre-lights out read. This was followed by my two wins from Get Frank, Jonathan Kellerman’s Deception and Stephen Leather’s Nightfall.

Two nights ago, I felt the need to reread another favourite and grabbed Larry Bond’s Cauldron but while walking down the hallway, found I had picked out his Days of Wrath instead which was not really what I was in the mood for. As I was replacing it on the shelf in the study, I noticed Fletcher Knebel’s Seven Days in May beside it. I’d only ever read this as a teenager in the Reader’s Digest Condensed version and so opted to read it next.

What a great read!! Published in 1962, before Cuba, Dallas and Vietnam, it is set in the early 70s after a Cold War conflict that leaves Iran divided into Communist North and democratic South – logical for the time considering the Koreas, Vietnam and Germanys. A nuclear disarmament treat has been signed with the Soviet Union but elements of the US military have littler faith in either the Treaty or the President that signed it…to find out what happens you need to read the book (recommended) or see the movie (on my to-do list but it has Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster so I have high expectations).

In addition to being a damn fine read, delivering a gripping storyline without needing the prop of a high body count as perhaps a contemporary equivalent would, Seven Days in May has a couple of lines that I felt are relevant to our contemporary environment…

Cleaning up the “sad debris of surrender”, as Todd called it, took time

The sad debris of surrender – a good phrase…someone said to me earlier this week that the US is not good at nation-building and I had to bite back quite sharply…this is one of those myths that has appeared since the end of the OIF warfighting phase in 2003, a result of moral high-horsing from the UN and sniping from the UK when post-war Iraq didn’t snap nicely into a nice shining example of Middle Eastern democracy (now there’s an oxymoron for you)…my response included three names…Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and George C. Marshall…three generals who, between them, rebuilt Europe and Japan from the ashes of WW2. If there was any failure of nation-building in post-war Iraq, it was down to three factors:

The failure of the UN to get over itself and not step to the plate to take the lead in rebuilding Iraq. Regardless of the nature of the disaster that struck Iraq in 2003, the sad human debris of its surrender was left to suffer and endure after the UN’s half-hearted attempt at a presence in Iraq. The few casualties suffered by the UN in Iraq are but a drop in the bucket compared to the casualties suffered by the people of Iraq and those nations that did step forward…

The decision by the US to allow the bulk of development and reconstruction work to be let to US-based mega-corps that only had an eye out for the quick big bucks instead of perhaps applying a fraction of those billions to developing those construction capabilities in Iraq itself, thus contributing to the development and stability of the Iraqi economy. This was a point made by COL Dransfield in his presentation at Massey yesterday on his recent experience in Afghanistan: he admitted some confusion as to how these contracts could cost so much when the daily rate for labour is about US$5 and all the raw materials like sand and gravel are there for the taking. He was surprised to learn that his PRT was one of the few forces in-theatre that purchased a lot of its support e.g. fresh food, minor mechanical repairs, etc from local resources.

The UK perception that it was on top of both conventional state versus state conflict AND low-level conflict and that it had nothing to learn from the US. The corollarative effect of this was that it also contributed little back into the Iraqi nation-building process at either the national level (after all, the UK was the other primary collaborator in the WMD ‘justification for the war in Iraq) or within it’s own AO which ultimately had to be ‘pacified’ by a US force as the UK was packing its bags to go home, it’s job not done…

At the Australian Army COIN Seminar in 2008, the comment was made that no one ordered Dwight Eisenhower to conduct reconstruction and nation-building tasks as he advanced across France and into Germany – they didn’t have to because it was such a logical and common sense method of pacificying the region. Similarly, Douglas MacArthur was expected to inflict draconian Versaille-like measures against the Japanese after Japan surrendered in August 1945 and many would have believed that he had a major axe to grind with Japan over the way it had treated his beloved Philippines. No doubt he did but, again, this senior US general determined that this would be counter-productive in the bigger picture. As a result, Germany and Japan sixty years on are still two economic powerhouses and one has to wonder what the Army of that day got right in training its senior officers.

Or possibly, as I’m not sure that the US has too much wrong with how it develops its generals today, what was so different sixty years ago that the governments and civil staff trusted those officers to just get on and do the job…?

“…the trouble is that democracy works only when a good majority of citizens are willing to give thoughts and time and effort to their government…”

And that remains the single biggest issue with the current campaign in Afghanistan: at the tribal and provincial levels the majority of citizens may be willing to contribute to government and leadership, there is simply no interest in a strong central government regardless of its composition or ethical philosophies. No matter how much you flog a dead horse it still isn’t going to get up and haul the cart any further…The McCrystal ‘Cursed Earth’ plan essentially abandons the centre of Afghanistan to whoever wants and only maintain a Maginot-like ring around the outer edges of the country – which might be useful if Afghanistan faced any credible conventional external threat. But it doesn’t, and ISAF’s failure to adopt a provincial/tribal based campaign along the lines of that proposed by Jim Gant that might, over time, allow the ink blots of success to spread and merge only means that more lives and money will be wasted in ineffective and pointless kinetic operations.

MacArthur in particular achieved his success in reconstructing Japan not, by through kinetics or arbitrarily inflicting Western culture on the Japanese but by working within their own culture, evolving an his approach for that situation and no relying on templates from previous successes…what it it so hard to learn…?