"Just blame it on the Americans"

Don't shoot the messenger. "Now there's an alternative on the horizon that promises to be safer and cheaper by zapping [malaria, dengue feaver and West Nile] germs while sparing the mosquitoes," reports Scientific American. "The technology is hidden in an artificial flower designed to attract mosquitoes and treat them with pathogen-killing drugs that allow the insects to live and continue to perform important functions such as pollinating flowers and serving as food for animals and other insects." (Adult western malaria mosquito, Anopheles freeborni, Jack Kelly Clark photo)

"All you have to do is not screw up, and, even if you do, you just blame it on the Americans," Sgt. First Class Jacob Stockdill tells students at the Army's new Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy, reports the Wall Street Journal (subscription only). What works for the Democrats -- Bush's Fault™ -- works for other enemies of victory in the war on terror:

Six years into the Afghan war, the Army has decided its troops on the ground still don't understand well enough how to battle the Taliban insurgency. So since the spring, groups of 60 people have been attending intensive, five-day sessions in plywood classrooms in the corner of a U.S. base here, where they learn to think like a Taliban and counterpunch like a politician.

The academy's principal message: The war that began to oust a regime has evolved into a popularity contest where insurgents and counterinsurgents vie for public support and the right to rule. The implicit critique: Many U.S. and allied soldiers still arrive in the country well-trained to kill, but not to persuade.

All politics is local, and spin wins. The counterinsurgency school was set up at the recommendation of Lt. Col. John Nagl, co-author with General Petraeus of the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Dan Helmer's the point man:

In April, the Army gave a 26-year-old Rhodes scholar, Capt. Dan Helmer, six weeks to get the school up and running. Capt. Helmer tells his students, who rank as high as colonel, that the important battles here are 80% political and just 20% military. He exhorts them to go to great lengths to understand local politics, culture and history, to make sure actions they take on the battlefield help convince Afghans that the Kabul government will serve and protect them . . .

Capt. Helmer, a West Point graduate from Mantua, N.J., originally deployed to Afghanistan as a mentor for the Afghan National Police. At Oxford, he was author of a study on Israel's fight against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, where an army with overwhelming conventional superiority found itself mired against insurgents who had the vital support of the locals. Fast-talking, with deep-set eyes, a sunburned neck and a moustache that he grew out of respect for Afghanistan's hairiness-is-next-to-manliness culture, he says he thought from the start that Army training didn't prepare troops well for the intricacies of fighting the Afghan insurgency.

Hearts and minds are where it's at.

In Iraq, the U.S. has set up separate counterinsurgency academies for Iraqi and coalition students. In Afghanistan, Capt. Helmer insisted on putting troops from the 37-nation coalition into the classroom with their counterparts from the Afghan army, police and spy service. One of the school's central tenets is that foreign forces cannot win the war. Afghan security forces and government officials must take the lead in any activity, whether it's an attack on Taliban redoubts or reconstruction of a mosque, in order to increase popular support for President Hamid Karzai's government.

But nobody said it was going to be easy:

Academy instructors teach that counterinsurgents must "clear, hold and build" to insulate the public from insurgent tactics while demonstrating that the government has something better to offer . . . But as the academy students discovered, putting the theory into practice can feel like building a sand castle as the tide is coming in . . . Smaller missteps can undo months of counterinsurgency efforts . . .

As a goodwill gesture in September, coalition soldiers in Khost Province handed out soccer balls decorated with the flags of the world. One of them, the Saudi flag, bears a verse from the Koran. Rumors spread widely that the coalition was, in essence, encouraging Afghan children to put their holy book on the ground and kick it.

Goodwill and good intentions are no excuse. Teddy bears named Mohammed come to mind. Technology almost lost the war. Maybe it's time to call in the marines.

Update: Time to call in the crazies for Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

Comments

[goomp]

It is encouraging to see an understanding among some leaders that wining the support of the inhabitants of a country are essential to democratic rule vs dictatorship. However, they must also understand that they are not going to win over the facsist devotees, and they must be eliminated to the extent that those remaining choose surrender as their last best option.

[Gayle Miller]

Meanwhile that doddering old fool Jack Murtha actually let it slip: The surge is working!

Just call in the doggone Marines and let's get the job done!

[Teresa]

I know Blackfive has posted on this (although I can't find the link and it was quite a while back) and young son was even talking about this when he was home on leave. If you can win over the locals they will help you get rid of the terrorists. If you tick the locals off, then you have to fight the terrorists AND protect yourself from the locals.

Of course it's very difficult to make nice to people who insist on finding insult in every action - actively LOOK for insult. *sigh*

But the military is trying very hard to help the locals and win them over to a better life... and have been doing this for quite a long time. Like everything else, the plan will fail on contact and then must be modified to make it work - they are in the modification phase.

[Larry Conners]

This smells a lot like Vietnamization The winning of Hearts and Minds....Now that really worked out great...Where's Chesty Puller when you need him....