COUNTERINSURGENCY: The Army bestseller

Apparently I was the last to learn about the U.S. Army's new bestseller, "Counterinsurgency" (PDF). CNN says the publication is very popular, with the majority of downloads coming from North America. The book opens:

This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It has been 20 years since the U.S. Army published a manual devoted to counterinsurgency operations, and 25 since the Marine Corps published its last such manual. With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is thus essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations(COIN). Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also must be informed by contemporary experiences.

While much of the problems we're experiencing in post-war Iraq are unique to the regional culture, I believe the problems reveal a missing component of the modern U.S. military: We need a military division specially trained to handle post-war operations, including civillian policing, establishing law and order, and counterinsurgency.

Was anyone surprised that U.S. Marines and Army soldiers weren't good at maintaining law and order after Saddam's regime was toppled? Remember what Conan the Barbarian said when asked what is best in life? "To see your enemy driven before you, to crush them, and to hear the lamentation of the women." For me, this comes to mind when I think of U.S. forces conquering a country. Are these the right people to walk civilian neighborhoods, rounding up bad guys, and protecting the civil rights of ordinary people? Our soldiers are not monsters, but their training is heavy on destroying enemy armies, not rebuilding countries.

I think we should also consider whether or not it's our responsibility to do more than remove a brutal dictator. If you're like me, you agree it was right to remove Saddam Hussein by force, but was it our moral responsibility to rebuild the country after?

On a side note, I discovered an an interesting piece of writing called "The Casualty-Aversion Myth" while searching for "Counterinsurgency". Written by a professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College, the article tries to make the argument in its title, starting with the opening graph:

That is the nature of the American public's sensitivity to U.S. military casualties? How does casualty sensitivity affect the pursuit of American national security objectives?1 The first question is easy to answer: There is no intrinsic, uncritical casualty aversion among the American public that limits the use of U.S. armed forces. There is a wide range of policy objectives on behalf of which the public is prepared to accept American casualties as a cost of success. Squeamishness about even a few casualties for all but the most important national causes is a myth. Nonetheless, it is a myth that persists as widely accepted conventional wisdom.

I plan to read the entire article (at 8,600 words, it will take some time) because I've always subscribed to the "myth".

Here is a table used in the article. It's from a 1998 poll of Americans:

Highest number of American military deaths acceptable to...

Stabilize democratic government in Congo: 6,861

Prevent Iraq from obtaining WMD: 29,853

Defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion: 20,172

As soon as the Iraq casualty number surpassed one, CNN's Aaron Brown turned on the entire government. War reporting from CNN and NPR was accompanied by sad violin music. It was absurd.