Ten trillion dollars short and thirty years late

Steven Aftergood's Blog: Secrecy News, reports that the U.S. Army has finally updated its counterinsurgency doctrine, thirty years after the last one was written up, post-Vietnam, and three years after Iraq was invaded.

http://fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/07/

Do you recall the Wienberger Doctrine? The one Colin Powell was supposed to endorse? Don't ever go to war without overwhelming force, retain clear objectives, have a precise in-and-out timeline and collect multi-lateral international support? You know, all those things we barged into Iraq without the slightest trace of? That was the gist of the U.S. Army doctrine written thirty years ago. Fat lot of good it did us, then and now. I wonder how much more good this new one will do us. Perhaps in later applications in Boston, Chicago and Seattle?

Well, I guess this new doctrine should be called: "By the way, don't squash too many civilian bugs while you're at it..."

It was written by General David Petraeus who commanded the 101st Airmobile Division and Colonel Conrad Crane of the Military History Institute. They should be praised for the moral courage it must have taken them to promote such a doctrine despite the mental inertia of the rest of the U.S. Military and especially its neo-con, chicken hawk, torture-is-worthwhile minders. So should Marine Colonel T.X. Hanes, for inspiring this effort with his book, The Sling and the Stone. Must get a copy of that book to read…

Steven quotes this draft manual as follows:

"Traditionally, armies have had to unlearn much of their doctrine and (re)learn the principles of COIN while waging COIN campaigns."
Counterinsurgency "presents a complex and often unfamiliar set of missions and considerations for a military commander."
Among the "paradoxes of counterinsurgency" are the fact that "the more you protect your force, the less secure you are"; "the more force [is] used, the less effective it is"; and "sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction."

I only found out about this development by reading the July 13, 2006 version of http://www.lemonde.fr/, the website for Le Monde, the French equivalent of the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor combined. Le Monde ran a nice long article about the Secrecy News piece, with more quotes from the final draft Field Manual. I’m sure I couldn't find more than two column inch squibs concerning this topic among all those newspapers combined, and AP, and Reuters and UPI—but then again, I’m a hopeless optimist when it comes to American journalism. Forget TV.

Anywhoo… The reason I bring this up is because I whipped up my very own version of counterinsurgency doctrine (being the “Army of One” that I am) at least eight months ago, at

http://peaceworld.freeservers.com/300WORLDMILITIA.htm

You are welcome to go take a look at it. My version is not only unclassified and in final, but free to the general public. Plus its A LOT shorter.

Once (if ever)

"Counterinsurgency," U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24 (Final Draft), June 2006 (241 pages, 2.4 MB PDF file)

comes out in its declassified final version, you will be amazed how similar our conclusions turned out to be. Is that a good thing? Search me...