The Price of Bad Tactics

William Lind lambasts the US military for The Price of Bad Tactics, and asks why the US keeps killing civilians with airstrikes?

The answer is, because American infantry tactics are bad. They amount to little more than bumping into the enemy and calling for fire. The easiest way to provide the overwhelming firepower our bad infantry tactics depend on is with airstrikes. So to win tactically, we have to lose strategically. At least from the Vietnam War onward, that equation has come to define the American way of war. It is the price of bad tactics.

Emphasis Mine

In the theory of Fourth generation warfare,

... William Lind, believes that the reason for the British being successful in that conflict [Northern Ireland] was that the British Army did not use heavy weapons in that period and that the British Government forces attempted to get to know the areas involved in the conflict. Also according to Lind the British did not engage in collective punishment and desired to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. In other words they won over the population by reducing the risk of damage to civilians and their property and by getting to know the local area.

Lind postulates three (3) reasons for the US military's reliance on bad tactics that alienate the occupied population:

There are three basic reasons why the U.S. military continues to employ bad infantry tactics when superior alternatives lie ready to hand. The first is the unfortunate combination of hubris and intellectual sloth which characterizes most of the American officer corps – and infantry officers in particular. ...

This ignorance is buttressed by hubris, false pride. The American military spends a great deal of time and effort telling itself how wonderful it is. ...

The second reason we persist with bad infantry tactics is bad training. Almost all American training is focused on procedures and techniques, taught by rote in canned, scripted exercises where the enemy is a tethered goat. ...

The third reason American tactics are bad is a bad personnel system. American infantry units are allowed to maintain personnel stability only for short periods, and sometimes not at all. They are always receiving new, largely untrained troops, who have to be taught "the basics," which is assumed to mean procedures and techniques. ...

Emphasis Mine

Lind just expounds a description of the three (3) main characteristics that contribute to the problem of bad tactics. He does not attempt to explain why this characteristics are important, nor how they arose in the first place. Without understanding their origins, Lind cannot offer a proscription other than that of "stop doing that, or you will go blind."

Could these characteristics be related to the dominant economic system of the USA? My contention is that they are. This follows from my thesis in Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1992 that military effectives follows the economic organisation of society. I map these characteristics onto the following traits of American Capitalism:

1. Politically reliable managerial class who are uncurious about other ways of organising the economy. Indeed, great efforts are expended in the unceasing propaganda of how great Capitalism is.
2. The proletarisation of work into easily reproducible tasks that can be performed without comprehension or even intellectual effort. Think of MacDonald's and how a complex art of cooking is reduced to mechanical actions.
3. Labour market flexibility is a great favourite of Capitalist theorists. Here workers are easily replaced when the situation needs it. Rapid turn-over of employees is encouraged and expected.

As the military personnel are drawn from the wider society, their expectations and experiences are shaped by the economic organisation of society. If the managers are seen as the fount of all knowledge and the giver of unreasonable orders, so will be the officer corps. If one is promoted by reciting the party line, so will the military officers. If the workers are expected to perform rote tasks without thinking, so will the enlisted personnel.

Since Lind is a Capitalist, he cannot see that Capitalism is the source of problems with the military.