A Reply to Michael Fumento’s
The Democrats’ Special Forces Fetish
Summary: Michael Fumento, self-described Dispeller of Modern Myths, tilts at the windmills of Democratic Party, scoffing at the goal of doubling the size of the Special Forces. Fumento cavils at the Democrats for failing to describe how such a doubling could be accomplished, though Donald Rumsfeld argued for the same. Fumento’s solution is a mere enlargement of the current Order of Battle: perpetuating the existing Pentagon bureaucratic bungling and inertia.
I am not in favor of this war: it is a recapitulation of Britain's wars in Iraq and Ireland. It will not work, for it is not our war. We are the insurgents. Still, someone has to write these rebuttals. Might as well be someone who served, and has a clue.
The goal of Special Forces in situ belli is force multiplication: let SOCOM multiply its effectiveness according to its own lights. To enumerate the issues, I use Mao Zedong’s Six Specific Problems, the Sun Tzu and FM3-24, the new counterinsurgency manual. The chief deficiency in the ranks of the US military is not Special Forces, but effective leadership. I argue General Petraeus ought to be given a chance, as Creighton Abrams was not, to amend the flaws of our current strategy and tactics.
Preface
I will not scoff at Fumento, lately fired from Scripps-Howard News Service, as he garners spare change writing for the Weekly Standard, denigrating Democrats, as he has denigrated scientists, geneticists, thoracic surgeons, cancer researchers, epidemiologists and every reporter working in Iraq today. Others have done a better job than I could do on that front.
I am not in favor of this war: it is a recapitulation of Britain's wars in Iraq and Ireland. It will not work. It is not our war. We are the insurgents.
As with every other branch of service, elite troops are sent forward, in concordance with Sun Tzu 6, On Maneuvering
Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.
If you set a fully equipped army in march in order to snatch an advantage, the chances are that you will be too late. On the other hand, to detach a flying column for the purpose involves the sacrifice of its baggage and stores.
Thus, if you order your men to roll up their buff-coats, and make forced marches without halting day or night, covering double the usual distance at a stretch, the stronger men will be in front, the jaded ones will fall behind, and on this plan only one-tenth of your army will reach its destination.
Setting Forth the Problem, and Devil's Advocacy
There is a place for that strong one tenth, and it is in the front. These are our Special Forces. Sun Tzu’s fraction is about right. Not everyone who applies for SF ought to make the grade, but there’s an argument for more Strong Ones and fewer Jaded Ones. Sun Tzu says the Strong Ones must sacrifice their stores to be "Firstest with the Mostest", to quote Nathan Bedford Forrest.
SF is not without its weaknesses: Firstest and Mostest are mutually incompatible goals. SF is not a universal panacea; its usefulness is limited to a surprisingly limited set of circumstances. There are a plethora of SF units and every branch of service has its own. Fumento does not mention other SF-type units, including the CIA’s operatives or Delta Force.
SF doesn’t play well with others. SF has a long and troubling history of failure to cooperate with regular line units, and have engendered no end of ill-will over time. Considerable tension developed in Afghanistan between 82 ABN and several SF A teams during Operation Mountain Sweep in August 2002. In short, SOCOM has the good sense never to send their troops into an area without a linguist. 82 ABN went in, kicking down doors and creating public relations nightmares. SF was right, 82 ABN was wrong. Yet I am grimly amused to see SF can interact better with Afghan villagers than American troops. This stupidity must stop, and I blame SOCOM for tolerating this air of smug superiority within its ranks. SOCOM should reach out to the line units and inculcate the soft skills they have been taught, at great expense to the taxpayer, to the troops who must follow them into theater. SOCOM calls itself a force multiplier, very well, physician heal thy self: consider line troops forces to be multiplied.
Is it reasonable to assert doubling the size of SF is impossible? Let us start with a few statements about the military, in an attempt to gauge this goal.
Let me present a bit of Devil’s Advocate, in favor of certain of Fumento’s assertions. Civilians do not fully understand the mission of SOCOM, nor do they understand why SOCOM is special. If the Democrats want to double the size of the Special Forces, it is a crude attempt on their part to express their wishes for a fundamental re-ordering of the Order of Battle. Donald Rumsfeld expressed many of the same wishes.
The military in its current configuration is wildly inappropriate to the mission of counter-insurgency we are now fighting and will probably be fighting for a generation. Since the time of Ronald Reagan’s feckless and ignominious withdrawal from Lebanon after the Beirut Barracks bombing, compounded by our ill-advised counterinsurgency strategy to date in Iraq, our enemies have poked holes in America’s flabby underbelly.
Over the last four decades, the military endured many ill-considered modifications, attempting to replace GI Joe with Buzz Lightyear. Donald Rumsfeld is especially guilty of this sin, and Rumsfeld’s preference for the SF model is equally well-known. Donald Rumsfeld remains an unpaid DOD consultant, his voice is still heard. It is not just the Democrats who want a larger role for SOCOM: while Don Rumsfeld is still lurking about, you may be sure he will be issuing his famous Blizzard Memos to all and sundry up and down the chain of command. SOCOM has no shortage of competent leadership, its mission has been expanded hugely but its numbers have not. Fumento has no quotes from existing SOCOM leadership in his screed.
This Democrat, (who has a whole lot more soldiering on his DD-214 than Fumento) is attempting in his own small way, from the Liberal side of the fence, to support General Petraeus, a leader who seems to have a clue. One fellow conservative of my acquaintance has a son in theater, we seldom agree on much, but both of us have soldiered, (he far longer than me, and as an officer to boot), and both of us are foursquare behind the promulgation of more effective leadership. If there is a weak link in the chain, it is in the command structure: all leadership is by example. It is a fool who sneers at what he does not understand, and a bigger fool who pretends to understand, (based on an E5 rank at discharge from a peacetime Army and a bit of hanging-out in Ramadi), the mandate of SOCOM within CENTCOM.
Our current SecDef, Bob Gates, has not been given a fair hearing yet, but he’s manifestly no soldier. Gates is a spook, and his limited time in the Strategic Air Command was a short hiatus from his CIA job. Robert Gates would go on to play the role of Sgt. Schultz (I know nothing... no-THING!) during the Iran-Contra affair. If his track record is any guide to these things, Robert Gates is a recapitulation of his wretched forebears, more glory than guts: more politics than pushups. I do not look for significant or efficacious reforms of the US military under this Iran-Contra weasel. Yet Robert Gates might be the man for the job, let us not count him out entirely: if he reforms the military’s intelligence model, integrating it more effectively into counter-insurgency warfare, he will have done the country a great service. The inertial momentum of the DOD establishment is enormous. A great logjam of deadwood has accumulated in the Pentagon: I wish both Gates and General Petraeus well, but I have little hope they can succeed.
Fumento would be far better served to rephrase the Democrats’ wish in more practical terms. We Democrats are not fools, and we now run the show. We will get our way, by and large, as Rumsfeld got his way while Republicans ran the show. The current disastrous implementation of counter-insurgency in Iraq must be recast using more practical and effective strategy and pursuit of meaningful goals. Whatever is true of the Democrats, it is the Republicans who have failed to make the needed reforms over the last four years of tactical insanity in Iraq.
Ar-Ramadi
Fumento himself, eulogizing the heroic death of Michael A Monsoor, Navy SEAL, uses this curious phrase "Anyone who harbors the notion that SEALs are as tough on the inside as they are on the outside is wrong." Herein is the crux of the problem: the SEAL in this situation is not at the front of Sun Tzu’s Race to Seize a Strategic Advantage. Michael Monsoor died in a firefight in the Mulaab district of Ramadi on September 29, 2006, throwing himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of three of his comrades. The USA has been in Ramadi since April of 2003, and is still fighting. Where is the race, Mr. Fumento? This so-called Strategic Advantage business is crucial, and the Special Forces are supremely well-qualified for that mission. Ramadi no longer qualifies. Why is Ramadi still a problem, Mr. Fumento? A great many units have been in and out of Ramadi, all of them face the same mission, and none of them have effectively subdued that town.
It was not always so in Ramadi. Early in the war, Jay Garner walked around in Ramadi, without a helmet on, consorting with the local sheikhs and aid officials. Garner would say such things as "We’ll leave when you want us to leave. Do you want us to leave now?" The sheikhs would throw their hands in the air "La! La!" No, no, they cried, don’t leave now. In those days, they feared the retribution of the Shiites. Ramadi has gone from bad to worse, as such bloodless bureaucrats as Bremer progressively alienated the Sunni chieftains. Americans are still dying in Ramadi, Mr. Fumento. Had Ramadi been approached with SF strategy and soft-skills methodology, as in Afghanistan, or Laos, or Vietnam, things would be vastly different. Those sheikhs would now be our sincerest allies: they have everything to lose.
There is no Race for Strategic Advantage in Ramadi. Why is SF still there? Ramadi is an unadulterated failure, we lost the battle for hearts and minds in Ramadi. I am sure every US troop in Ramadi means well, and is fighting heroically, I would not cast aspersions on their efforts, but we do not control Ramadi. The Iraqi Army does not control Ramadi. Sun Tzu again:
Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.
A Restatement of SF's Mission and Mandate
The older mission of SF, long ago, before the current wicked misuse of this precious resource, was force multiplication, embedding SF into a given landscape, recruiting, training and leading missions designed to tie up enemy resources. In those days, linguistic skills were at a premium, much care and consideration were given to campaigns for the hearts and minds of the local people.
And in those days, Sun Tzu and Mao were taught thoroughly. Know thy enemy: any reforms of the military should be predicated on Clausewitz’s grim dictum, quoted in FM3-24:
The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish...the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.
Wherein a Solution is Set Forth
Let us dispense with both Fumento’s sneering and fatuous Democratic watering-down of the Special Forces. Both are simplistic, unguided by an overarching strategy in which Special Forces must play an integral part. Sun Tzu and Mao have guided every insurgency we have ever faced, and will face for the foreseeable future. If an expanded Special Forces model is inappropriate, Sun Tzu and Mao have not lost relevance. They guide our enemies. They should guide us as well.
In 1938, Mao Zedong wrote of guerilla war against Japan, saying:
Now let us see what policies or principles have to be adopted in guerrilla operations against Japan before we can attain the object of preserving ourselves and destroying the enemy. Since the guerrilla units in the War of Resistance (and in all other revolutionary wars) generally grow out of nothing and expand from a small to a large force, they must preserve themselves and, moreover, they must expand. Hence the question is, what policies or principles have to be adopted before we can attain the object of preserving and expanding ourselves and destroying the enemy?
Generally speaking, the main principles are as follows:
- The use of initiative, flexibility and planning in conducting offensives within the defensive, battles of quick decision within protracted war, and exterior-line operations within interior-line operations;
- Coordination with regular warfare;
- Establishment of base areas;
- The strategic defensive and the strategic offensive;
- The development of guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare; and
- The correct relationship of command.
These six items constitute the whole of the strategic program for guerrilla war against Japan and are the means necessary for the preservation and expansion of our forces, for the destruction and expulsion of the enemy, for co-ordination with regular warfare and the winning of final victory.
It remains to be seen how General Petraeus will reconfigure American posture within Iraq. We have some outline of his thought process in FM3-24, the new field manual for counterinsurgency, largely overseen by General Petraeus himself. I will attempt to respond to Mao’s Specific Problems with quotes from FM3-24.
Mao Specific Problem 1:
- The use of initiative, flexibility and planning in conducting offensives within the defensive, battles of quick decision within protracted war, and exterior-line operations within interior-line operations.
From FM2-34.
There are five overarching requirements for successful counterinsurgency (COIN) operations:
- U.S. and Host Nation (HN) military commanders and the HN government together must devise the plan for attacking the insurgents’ strategy and focusing the collective effort to bolster or restore government legitimacy.
- HN forces and other counterinsurgents must establish control of one or more areas from which to operate. HN forces must secure the people continuously within these areas.
- Operations should be initiated from the HN government’s areas of strength against areas under insurgent control. The host nation must retain or regain control of the major population centers to stabilize the situation, secure the government’s support base, and maintain the government’s legitimacy.
- Regaining control of insurgent areas requires the HN government to expand operations to secure and support the population. If the insurgents have established firm control of a region, their military apparatus there must be eliminated and their politico-administrative apparatus rooted out.
- Information operations (IO) must be aggressively employed to accomplish the following:
o Favorably influence perceptions of HN legitimacy and capabilities.
o Obtain local, regional, and international support for COIN operations.
o Publicize insurgent violence.
o Discredit insurgent propaganda and provide a more compelling alternative to the insurgent ideology and narrative.
Mao Specific Problem 2
Coordination with regular warfare
Petraeus’ response:
Military-Focused Insurgency
1-27. Users of military-focused approaches aim to create revolutionary possibilities or seize power primarily by applying military force. For example, the focoist approach, popularized by figures like Che Guevera, asserts that an insurrection itself can create the conditions needed to overthrow a government. Focoists believe that a small group of guerrillas operating in a rural environment where grievances exist can eventually gather enough support to achieve their aims. In contrast, some secessionist insurgencies have relied on major conventional forces to try to secure their independence. Military-focused insurgencies conducted by Islamic extremist groups or insurgents in Africa or Latin America have little or no political structure; they spread their control through movement of combat forces rather than political subversion.
The military approach of our insurgent enemies has given rise to disparate, quarreling militias. Fracture lines are now seen, the insurgency destroys itself from within. To survive, militias infiltrate the Iraqi Army and police forces, creating distrust in the population. One of Petraeus’ hardest missions will be a sorting-out of the Iraqi Army and constabulary: he will be obliged to create some sort of Zampolit, a political intelligence officer, to suss out infiltrators. The insurgent enemy must not be allowed to coordinate with regular warfare.
Mao Specific Problem 3
Establishment of base areas;
Petraeus’ response:
ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN A PRESENCE A-24.
The first rule of COIN operations is to establish the force’s presence in the AO. If Soldiers and Marines are not present when an incident happens, they usually cannot do much about it. The force cannot be everywhere at once. The more time Soldiers and Marines spend in the AO, the more likely they are where the action is. If the force is not large enough to establish a presence throughout the AO, then determine the most important places and focus on them. This requires living in the AO close to the populace. Raiding from remote, secure bases does not work. Movement on foot, sleeping in villages, and night patrolling all seem more dangerous than they are—and they are what ground forces are trained to do. Being on the ground establishes links with the local people. They begin to see Soldiers and Marines as real people they can trust and do business with, rather than as aliens who descended from armored boxes. Driving around in an armored convoy actually degrades situational awareness. It makes Soldiers and Marines targets and is ultimately more dangerous than moving on foot and remaining close to the populace.
When Creighton Abrams took over in Vietnam, he moved troops out of the comfy billets, out into the AO, and there they stayed. This strategy worked. The ordinary Iraqi despises the American soldiers and Marines: their chief complaint has always been a lack of security. Our presence in the AO, 24/7, will give our troops badly-needed credibility, and set in place a solid bullshit detection mechanism. The British in Northern Ireland became masters of this art form, and their tactics emulated throughout Iraq. We cannot deny the enemy base areas of operation by riding through town, pushing traffic off the road, peering out the top of a Stryker.
Mao Specific Problem 4
The strategic defensive and the strategic offensive
Petraeus’ response from FM2-34:
Insurgents have an additional advantage in shaping the information environment. Counterinsurgents seeking to preserve legitimacy must stick to the truth and make sure that words are backed up by deeds; insurgents, on the other hand, can make exorbitant promises and point out government shortcomings, many caused or aggravated by the insurgency. Ironically, as insurgents achieve more success and begin to control larger portions of the populace, many of these asymmetries diminish. That may produce new vulnerabilities that adaptive counterinsurgents can exploit.
Strategy, for an insurgent, is not a plan for victory, but a plan to outlast the invader. The insurgent enemy, by definition, must preach a vision of Freedom from the Hated Invader: his tactics are of no consequence if he cannot make converts to his vision. Iraq suffers from a vacuum of control: under such circumstances, civilians will rally around whoever promises Security. Much has been made of America’s lack of a plan for what followed Saddam Hussein, this is mostly nonsense. The insurgent has no plan, no money and few allies. Moktada Sadr’s much-feared Mehdi Army is now fracturing into smaller bands of condottieri.
After the murder of a prominent Sunni sheikh in January of 2006, Sheikh Naser Abdul Karim al-Miklif of the huge al-Bu Fahad tribe in Anbar province, a price was placed on Zarqawi's head, and he is dead. While there is no love lost between the Sunnis and the Ameriki, the ordinary Iraqi is appalled by Al Qaeda's kidnappings and beheadings. The surviving Baathists are really no different than the warlords of the Balkans, gone into hiding: we know who they are, we can't get them, for the same reasons we can't grab Osama bin Ladin. The resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan are merely Pashtun tribesmen doing what they have always done, and do in Pakistan as well, re-establishing the grim Deobandi modus vivendi. In Iraq, where ethnic identity has long been suppressed, the vast majority of the violence is not civil war, but tribal factionalism reestablishing itself with dreary predictability, the natural state of mankind for thousands of years, and while its followers are nominally Islamic, they are a weed which only sprouts in the soil of a lawless state. The national boundaries of the Middle East were drawn up by Sykes and Picot, a pair of scheming liars who betrayed the Arabs, ensuring future internal discord for centuries. Africa, too, labors under onerous procrustean borders, the lasting legacy of colonialism. This is not civil war. This is the curse of tribalism writ large in our day.
To put the insurgency into a hammerlock, we must prevent the insurgency from creating a strategy. Deeds must match words. An insurgency without a strategy can be picked apart and destroyed piecemeal. The insurgency’s strategic defense is to outlast the invader. The Special Forces modus operandi has always been to identify factions and build coalitions: I propose to use Special Forces as our best intermediaries, acting as wartime ambassadors, if you will. S2 units in Iraq ought to take input from these SF "ambassadors". Let the enemy create the ill-will in the world at large, SF puts a premium on good relations with all and sundry. There is no reason why SF cannot integrate with the S2 of line units, doing the up-front introductions to the locals.
Mao Specific Problem 5
The development of guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare.
At first glance, it would seem guerrilla warfare is mobile warfare, but it is not. Consider the problem of successfully detonating an IED to kill an American. An ambush site must be identified. The explosive must be procured and transported to the ambush site. The local population must be bullied and cowed into accepting the IED’s placement and wiring. Lookouts must be set in position, communications established. After the detonation, all the guilty parties run off to a pre-arranged rendezvous point. This is not mobile warfare. Deploying and detonating an IED is a static operation, subject to interdiction at many levels, skills SF has perfected over time. The IED attack is really no different than the Claymore ambush of Vietnam, or the Vietcong’s ambushes of our convoys along Highway 1. The US military must come to terms with its failure to do adequate convoy protection: our lines are horribly overextended. Creighton Abrams solved this problem by putting troops in place rather than running the Shoot Me Please Parades of his predecessor Westmoreland.
From FM3-24
8-16. Planners must consider an operating base’s purpose when selecting its location. If planners anticipate extensive logistic throughput, they pay close attention to entry and exit points. Ideally, more than one entry and exit point should exist. (FM 5-104 discusses the construction of entry control points and facilities.) Where possible, at least one control point should not require convoys to travel though a populated area. In addition, at least one entry point requires a staging area for convoys and should be located to avoid having to transit the base to form up.
8-17. Due to the noncontiguous nature of COIN operations, logisticians develop weblike LOCs and main supply routes between operating bases and logistic bases. Weblike links between bases have two advantages. By dispersing logistic operations, weblike LOCs minimize intrusive effects of these operations on the populace. They also provide redundancy in distribution capabilities, making the system more robust and limiting the effects of any one LOC’s interdiction. In addition, more ground LOC routes provide more opportunities to observe the populace and gather information from them. Wherever possible in COIN operations, planners should identify multiple LOCs between bases.
Mao Specific Problem 6
The correct relationship of command.
The truth is, we’re not fighting counter-insurgency warfare. We’re the insurgents. We’re attempting to set in place a form of government inimical to the warlords emerging in the vacuum created after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Which segments of Iraqi and Afghan society support our efforts? Are we not just another militia among other militias? We pay our soldiery and we pay the Iraqi and Afghan armies. We supply them, we advise them, we use them as force multipliers, but ultimately, these are not our wars. If our mission was to Annoy Every Iraqi, we have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.
Again, quoting Mao Zedong:
There is also a unity of spirit that should exist between troops and local inhabitants. The Eighth Route Army put into practice a code known as 'Three Rules and the Eight Remarks', which we list here:
Rules:
All actions are subject to command.
Do not steal from the people.
Be neither selfish nor unjust.
Remarks:
Replace the door when you leave the house.
Roll up the bedding on which you have slept.
Be courteous.
Be honest in your transactions.
Return what you borrow.
Replace what you break.
Do not bathe in the presence of women.
Do not without authority search those you arrest.
The Red Army adhered to this code for ten years and the Eighth Route Army and other units have since adopted it.
Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy's rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish that inhabit it. How may it be said that these two cannot exist together? It is only undisciplined troops who make the people their enemies and who, like the fish out of its native element cannot live.
We further our mission of destroying the enemy by propagandizing his troops, by treating his captured soldiers with consideration, and by caring for those of his wounded who fall into our hands. If we fail in these respects, we strengthen the solidarity of our enemy.
From FM3-24
7-8. Another part of analyzing a COIN mission involves assuming responsibility for everyone in the AO. This means that leaders feel the pulse of the local populace, understand their motivations, and care about what they want and need. Genuine compassion and empathy for the populace provide an effective weapon against insurgents.
7-9. Senior leaders exercise a leadership role throughout their AO. Leaders directly influence those in the chain of command while indirectly leading everyone else within their AO. Elements engaged in COIN efforts often look to the military for leadership. Therefore, military actions and words must be beyond reproach. The greatest challenge for leaders may be in setting an example for the local populace. Effective senior and junior leaders embrace this role and understand its significance. It involves more than just killing insurgents; it includes the responsibility to serve as a moral compass that extends beyond the COIN force and into the community. It is that moral compass that distinguishes Soldiers and Marines from the insurgents.
7-10. Senior commanders must maintain the "moral high ground" in all their units’ deeds and words. Information operations complement and reinforce actions, and actions reinforce the operational narrative. All COIN force activity is wrapped in a blanket of truth. Maintaining credibility requires commanders to immediately investigate all allegations of immoral or unethical behavior and provide a prudent degree of transparency.
7-11. Army and Marine Corps leaders emphasize that on the battlefield the principles of honor and morality are inextricably linked. Leaders do not allow subordinates to fall victim to the enormous pressures associated with prolonged combat against elusive, unethical, and indiscriminate foes. The environment that fosters insurgency is characterized by violence, immorality, distrust, and deceit; nonetheless, Army and Marine Corps leaders continue to demand and embrace honor, courage, and commitment to the highest standards. They know when to inspire and embolden their Soldiers and Marines and when to enforce restraint and discipline. Effective leaders at all levels get out and around their units, and out among the populace. Such leaders get a true sense of the complex situation in their AO by seeing what subordinates are actually doing, exchanging information with military and interagency leaders, and—most importantly— listening.
Conclusion: Fumento believes SOCOM cannot substitute for well-armed, well-supplied and well-disciplined troops. Fumento is a fool: money cannot fill in the gaps. Only a fundamental re-evaluation and retrofit of the dumbasses in the Pentagon will change this situation. Lincoln understood this, and replaced his generals until he found a winner. Nowhere in Fumento’s article does he mention this failure of leadership. SOCOM should have an expanded role in this mess: it should apply lessons learned from small-unit operations to line units, operating as the force-multipliers set forth in their mandate.
Putting aside the evils of this prescriptive war, we have an obligation to fix the mess we have created in Iraq. It will begin with a forthright admission of Bush's stupidity in alienating the Iraq people, and a complete cleaning-house over at the Pentagon. We will inherit this war: let us begin with regaining the trust of the Iraqi people, applying ourselves to the task of undoing the massive harm we have done to our reputation in the world at large. SF has its part to play, clearing the way for our exit from Iraq.