Counterinsurgency will require expenditures that damage our economy at a time when the U.S. can least afford it. As I’ve written elsewhere, executing a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan will require massive amounts of troops: anywhere from 204,600 to 654,767 troops, depending on how badly we want to fudge the numbers. This is problematic on several [...]
Archive for March 24, 2009
Drop Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Part 3: Massive COIN Deployments Will Damage Our Economy
Posted: March 24, 2009 in Uncategorized19
Drop Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Part 2: Effect of Counterinsurgency Deployment on Troops Undermines Counterinsurgency Premises
Posted: March 24, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, COIN, counterinsurgency, Iraq, psychology
In my previous post in this series, I explained that the basic assumption of counterinsurgency is that combat troops can live with a local population, protect them, and obtain a measure of communal respect such that the population will form relationships with our troops versus our opponents. To do this, the doctrine requires that our [...]
Drop Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Part 1
Posted: March 24, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, Christianity, counterinsurgency, FCNL, Jesus, Marines Corps, Rethink Afghanistan, Sojourners, U.S. Army, United for Peace and Justice, Wallis
I’ve written quite a bit about the challenges inherent in counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. In this series of posts, I want to go further argue that the U.S. should abandon the paradigm of counterinsurgency altogether with regard to its dealings with Afghanistan. I oppose this paradigm on several levels, including a moral/religious level and a strategic [...]
