Posted on 12/15/2006 10:58:39 PM PST by Triggerhippie
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military published a new counterinsurgency manual on Friday that draws on lessons from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and stresses that troops must be able to do more than just fight.
U.S. forces battling insurgencies must be ready every day "to be greeted with a hand grenade or a handshake, and to respond appropriately to each," the U.S. Army and Marine Corps said in a joint statement to launch the manual.
The document is the U.S. military's first new doctrine on fighting insurgencies in some 20 years, although an interim manual was published two years ago.
"This codifies a lot of what's happening in the field already," said Col. Steve Boylan, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which oversees military education institutions.
Military officials say they have drawn extensively on experience from Iraq and Afghanistan, where critics accused some U.S. units of being ignorant of local culture and traditions and of failing to gain the trust of local people.
But Boylan said the manual, which runs to some 240 pages, was not intended just for current conflicts. "This doctrine is for wherever in the world we may find ourselves," he said.
The manual lists some paradoxes in fighting an insurgency, stressing the importance of establishing good relations with local people and not alienating them by using excessive force.
"Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is," runs one of the paradoxes.
"Some of the best weapons for counterinsurgents do not shoot," says another.
"Counterinsurgents often achieve the most meaningful success in garnering public support and legitimacy for the HN (host nation) government with activities that do not involve killing insurgents," the text says, before adding that killing will also "often be necessary."
The manual can be seen on the Internet at: http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf
Hopefully this won't be seen by the terrorists as yet another sign of weakness...
I really should "get my 'learn' on" with regards to html...
Thanks for the link!
>a href="http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf"/a<
Just reverse the ">" and you're all set. Yes you need to include the "http://" and the quotation marks. The text after the address and before the >/a< is what appears as clickable text.
L
>a href="http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf"<>Clickable Link < >/a<
Try that.
L
Happy to be of service.
If you like I'll show you how to post pics another time.
Have a pleasant night.
L
Have fun.
L
The terrorists aren't concerned about our strength or weakness. They know we're stronger than them. They're not going to be impressed by an F-22A or an OICW. Their war isn't about winning tactical engagements and stringing them together to strategic victory; it's about picking up the occasional pyrrhic victory, dropping that into the media echo chamber, and listening to it reverberate through our halls of power.
The terrorists are concerned with our stupidity. Our failure to take common-sense measures due to political correctness, our inability to consider long-term effects, our bizarre fascination with propagandizing against ourselves, and our lack of rapport of foreign cultures. This manual will, I hope, help us cut through some of that. We can't counter our media with the military, but we can cut off the terrorists' state sponsors and offer the masses something better than a suicide belt ... then the terrorists will be left without a support base, impotently issuing challenges and calls. That's counterinsurgency, and it's a painstaking, mostly bottom-up task that few do well.
Absolutely true. Hence the need since the days of Gideon for small, elite bands of special forces.
The Announcements sidebar is for FR business.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611173/posts
Not this.
AM
bump for later
Why exactly is this being published for all to see (including terrorists)? What the *beep*?
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