In the recent article that abruptly ended Stanley McChrystal’s career, various controversies came to light. Apart from issues of military insubordination, the article also did much to remind the public that the counterinsurgency policy in place might very well be ineffective. Repeated accounts demonstrated that the men on the ground, despite their respect for the general, do not believe in a strategy that puts military personnel in danger. They feel like they are losing militarily to the Taliban, and that the concessions they have made to save Afghan lives have done little to boost their image amongst locals.
Since December, Obama has been talking about putting an end to the momentum the Taliban has in the country. This continues to be the objective according to which the US measures its success. Although, as the war becomes costlier—in terms of lives, time and resources—doubts regarding the ability of the counterinsurgency strategy (COIN) to do anything about the Taliban’s momentum has done nothing but grow.
Given the enormous doubt that weighs on the shoulders of the US’s counterinsurgency efforts, its worth understanding why even McChrystal’s former soldiers question their beloved boss. The answer is pretty straightforward. The US’s counterinsurgency strategy oddly resembles a peacekeeping mission, except it’s a peacekeeping mission that the US calls a war. American soldiers were not trained to keep peace, they were trained to fight in conventional wars (despite the US’s lengthy experience with insurgencies). They were trained to kill.
The entire process that brought these individuals from small towns in the US to the valleys of Afghanistan is premised on incorporating these men and women in to an institution that understands its value based on its capacity to implement violence. Yet, in Afghanistan they are ordered to avoid “lethal force.”
To understand the doubt these soldiers feel about the war in Afghanistan, one must understand the details of the counterinsurgency strategy and the extent to which their training contradicts the expectations of these tactics. One of the most important components of the counterinsurgency, as a member of the War College noted, is that it must be thought of not as a military activity but as a “strategic communication campaign supported by a military component.”
In other words, the war for the hearts and minds of Afghans implies the support of civilians on the ground, but its not really a war in the conventional sense of the term. War in this context means creating a narrative that makes the Taliban out to be the bad guys and the US out to be the good guys.
It does not mean killing, even though that is what soldiers are trained to do, and it especially means avoiding killing innocent people. This is because when innocents die, the entire concept behind the communication campaign is lost, and insurgents can instead frame these deaths as yet another example of a foreign power trying to impose its proscribed authority on Afghanistan. For a country whose history is replete with invasions and foreign rulers, the communications campaign the US is trying to sell by putting 140,000 soldiers (between US and NATO) on the ground with very big guns, is one not easily bought, even if they don’t kill innocents. Yet, as the US’s “Counterinsurgency Field Manual” states best in its questionable wisdom, more force is less effective and ultimate success “is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force.”
This philosophy, however, does not sit well with military culture. The modern military as an institution changed greatly in the 17th century. Napoleon’s professionalization of the military meant that its purpose as a violent enforcer of power was combined with its ability to incorporate the individual as a cog into its war machine. The ability of the military as an institution to subjugate individuality has been dependent on its reliance on incessant drills, the concept of respect for authority, and ultimately the controlled use of aggression. As Major RWJ Wenek wrote in 1984: “The defining role of any military force is the management of violence by violence, so that individual aggressiveness is, or should be, a fundamental characteristic of occupational fitness in combat units.”
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that McChrystal’s soldiers questioned his counterinsurgency strategy directly. To ask a solider to “patrol only in areas where [they] are reasonably certain they will not have themselves with lethal force,” after putting them through training that defines their worth by their willingness to put themselves in harms way and their ability to defend themselves in those situations, is counterintuitive, and they know it.
That the US military has even remotely been able to follow those orders of restraint is surprising when reviewing a similar situation the US’s more internationally-beloved neighbor underwent in the 90s. Unlike the US, Canada’s foreign policy is known less for invading and more for peacekeeping. But even this foreign policy identity did little to subdue the military culture of its soldiers. Their peacekeeping mission in Somalia—comprised entirely of military personnel—was dramatically discredited after it was reveled that two innocent Somali civilians were shot and one tortured to death by members of the country’s elite airborne regiment. There were even Abu Ghraib-like trophy photos to document the atrocity of their actions.
Although this comparison is not to suggest that military culture by default creates torturers, it is meant to illustrate that soldiers are trained to be aggressive. Putting them in a situation that is dangerous and forbidding them from using force is completely contrary to the training they have received, and no one should really be surprised by the fact that they don’t support the current COIN strategy. Like a good soldier, they weren’t trained to think that way.
Rather, soldiers are indoctrinated to see themselves as part of a larger unit. Ask any soldier to describe their platoon, and the language they use will immediately emote the type of bond you only find in families. They call each other brothers and sisters, and the reason they are willing to die in a war has often less to do with the political definition of victory and more to do with the military’s definition of a soldier—including their ability to protect their “brethren.”
Now that the counterinsurgency strategy is receiving so much attention, it is not only an opportune moment to evaluate what can constitute a victory in an unconventional war. It is also the moment to evaluate whether the current military culture is compatible with the missions these soldiers are being sent on. If they are not, then how can we expect soldiers to execute this strategy with any kind of success?
Paula Mejia – Editor, The Majalla
