In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain.
General David Petraeus
Wars are no longer fought on battlefields. They are fought in the battlespace of opinion.
The human terrain is the decisive terrain. It is a battle for control of your mind.
General Geoffrey Miller Goes to Guantanamo
Major General Geoffrey Miller was an artillery officer. He had training and doctrine about concentrated and overwhelming application of force, against small areas of decisive terrain. Think about the actual level of concentrated force, in a modern U.S. artillery barrage.
Think about the militarily lawful and proper ruthlessness, in a trained and disciplined artillery General.
General Miller was put in charge of Guantanamo. He applied the doctrine of overwhelming application of force, as featured in the artillery, to naked men held and chained in cages.
It was a planned and sustained assault on the enemy's mind. The military purpose was to break and destroy it.
Military operations can seek to disrupt the enemy, to defeat it, or to destroy it. Torture was about destruction. The force applied was overwhelming.
The strategy worked. Nearly all our tortured went crazy.
Miller's doctrines, about the overwhelming application of force, applied against naked men held in cages, were brought to Abu Ghraib too. You've seen what that military operation looks like.
Under recognized, I think, is that the planned and sustained military assault on the minds of the naked men at Abu Ghraib drove them crazy, too.
The Law of War
Artillery Generals may be ruthless and deadly in their application of military force against the enemy. This is the Law of War.
Once the enemy is captured, they stop being the enemy. They start being humans. They must be treated with a certain level of humanity. This is the Law of War.
Our continuous and systematic running afoul of the Law of War comes from our not respecting the distinction.
How a Soldier is Different than a Death Squad
Afghan authorities said Sunday that they killed more than 60 rebels in raids against Taliban militants and their drug-trafficking backers in a restive part of southern Afghanistan.
More than 16 tonnes of drugs -- mostly opium -- were also seized in Bahramcha district of Helmand province, centre of a Taliban-led insurgency and Afghanistan's biggest poppy-growing region, the interior ministry said.
"Sixty-three terrorists were killed," the ministry said in a statement, referring to Taliban-linked insurgents.
"The operation was successfully completed today (Sunday)," the statement said.
AFP (July 4, 2010)
Then he heard boots crunching on gravel and men’s voices outside his bedroom. "Their guns killed without a sound," he said. By dawn three of Taleb’s sons, two of his brothers, three nephews, a shepherd boy staying with them and a neighbour were dead.
All the victims were aged 12 to 18. Eight of them were enrolled in the local school. Most were shot at close range where they slept but one was dragged from the bed that he shared with his wife and killed with his nephews in a different room, Taleb said.
Times Online (February 25, 2010)
If you are 18, and your uncle is held at Bagram, and men with guns assault your home in the middle of the night, and drag you away from your screaming wife to shoot you at close range in the next room, that is a death squad, not soldiers. Even if the forces are United States Special Ops in joint operation with Afghan militias, and this year.
The lack of respect for the captured by death squads, is the same as the lack of respect for the captured by torturers. Torture and death squads so often travel together.
The Battle for Your Mind
Success has been only vaguely defined, and progress will be monitored through what the military calls "atmospherics reporting," including public opinion polls and levels of commerce in the streets. A senior military official said the central question, which the administration will pose and answer for itself, is: "Are we moving toward a solution in Kandahar that the people support?"
Washington Post (May 23, 2010)
This is the planned and sustained military assault on your mind. The battlespace of media and opinion.
The operations seem to be at the disruption level. The battlespace is being shaped. But the word decisive, when a General says it, should be scary, and a wakeup call.
In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain, General Petraeus says, and he partly means you. Your opinion is a part of his battlespace.
There has been a longstanding doctrine that the U.S. military cannot conduct military operations against the U.S. opinion.
Like rules against torture, like rules against death squads, the rule that your mind is out of bounds in military operation, that you are hors de combat, has entirely fallen.