Some interesting excerpts:
It can be said that when it comes to using U.S. military power, it should be an all or nothing affair. If a major commitment of ground troops is required, it should follow the Powell Doctrine. If a small-scale intervention is decided upon, it should attract as full a commitment of force and support proportionate to meet the objective without ground troops. The past decade has shown that opting for a middling, unclear, inconsistent approach does not work.
…
Fighting grinding counterinsurgency campaigns has apparently become acceptable to America. CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus wrote his doctoral thesis and the military manual on it. It’s the topic of thousands of professional journal articles, newspaper columns, and PowerPoint slideshows. However, we do not have to accept the idea of confronting an insurgency as an inevitability or necessity of modern warfare. In fact, America would do well to avoid having to apply COIN tactics at all by avoiding insurgencies altogether.
An awful lot of "should haves" here:
We should have followed the Powell Doctrine. The invasion should have been preceded by a build-up of troop levels sufficient to secure the whole of the country and should have proceeded at a pace expeditiously enough to block all escape routes and eliminate all resistance on a steady march toward the center. We should have blocked the escape across the Tora Bora Mountains or, failing that, pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan if necessary. We should have destroyed all Baathist or Fedayeen Saddam units we encountered, rather than bypassing some of them in a race to Baghdad.
There is a lot of discussion in recent articles about occupation and comparisons to Germany and Japan (and post-Armistice signing Korea).
Insurgencies are a case of catching the tiger by his tail. Once America invades a country on the ground and decides to accept the responsibility of rebuilding it or, rather, making it into something it never was, it will meet resistance. Not only local resistance, but regional as planting our flag also becomes a beacon for like-minded opponents to come and fight us. The argument that holds we have to stay, occupy, and rebuild a nation is that if we do not, we’ll be facing the same threat again down the road, not to mention moral obligations to fix what we’ve broken.
I think there are two lessons from Germany and Japan and that is we took a formal surrender and although we occupied and helped support the rebuilding of those countries we did not work to fundamentally alter their culture or try to radical rebuild them in something of our image. In those countries and in Korea they evolved over time on their own in prosperous democratic institutions (recall in Korea that the first non-military democratically elected President was not elected until 1993!) To add to the "should have" above perhaps in Afghanistan and Iraq we should have found a way to take a formal surrender from Afghans and Iraqis and then helped them to rebuild their countries rather than trying to take the lead in rebuilding it for them. I actually think that GEN Powell's "pottery barn" analogy was a contributor to the problems we faced (or caused) since 9-11 (as well our own hubris and the belief that we can fix anything and solve any problem)
American Military Decline? Not When Force Is Used Properly
by Chris Miller
Journal Article | November 7, 2012 - 4:25am
In recent years many have cited America’s military struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan as signs of decline. Political wrangling over the size, use, and budget of the U.S. military, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, the fault and effects of impending sequestration, and the Arab Spring and its follow-on effects have, among other issues, put wind in the sails of this theory. Others hold using military force for ‘wars of choice’ is no longer a viable option for America. However, to think that America can’t or shouldn’t project its power globally when necessary is a mistake. America’s military struggles in the post-9/11 era have stemmed from improper application of military force. Put simply, our recent counterinsurgency efforts haven’t been using it right. When used as it should be, using military force is still an effective choice.
A soldier’s job is to fight and win in combat and to prepare to do so. Nowhere in the job description is being an international aid worker mentioned. It is a testament to the commitment and adaptability of the U.S. military that they have been as successful as they have been at it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Providing public works, policing, community political relations, and social services is something that should be done by educated and experienced professionals in that area. The U.S. military is a hammer, not a scalpel. However, our troops have been asked to fill these sensitive roles on a steep learning curve over the last decade because of our own domestic politics have required it.
Our highest elected leaders are responsible for this. Americans don’t like to spend money on ‘foreign aid.’ Politicians, especially of the conservative variety, characterize this spending as wasteful and beat the drum against it as fiscally irresponsible. Foreign development assistance actually comprises less than one percent of the federal budget, but the returns received are much more cost effective, though hard to quantify. It costs much more to send one soldier to Afghanistan for a year than it does to build a school or new market building that will stand to be used for decades in places the sorely need them.
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