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.

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Repurposed Prose on the End of Times

The end-times are truly upon us!. Paul Kedrosky writes some Repurposed Prose on the End of Times

With respect to some of the more apocalyptic views out there, certainly anything is possible. That said, organizing my life around a return to barter and barbarism represents a financial variant of Pascal’s wager that I'm not currently willing to take -- in part because I can be financially and personally prudent without going all the way to hoarding gold, buying agricultural property, or stocking up on weaponry and canned goods.

Kedrosky had earlier quoted Niall Ferguson: "There Will Be Blood" in an interview with Heather Scoffield of Globe and Mail:

Heather Scoffield: Is a violent resolution to this crisis inevitable?

Niall Ferguson: “There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome…

…It's just that I don't see it producing anything comparable with 1914 or 1939. It's kind of hard to envisage a world war. Even when most pessimistic, I struggle to see how that would work, because the U.S., for all its difficulties in the financial world, is so overwhelmingly dominant in the military world.”

Meanwhile at Tomgram: Michael Klare, A Pandemic of Economic Violence.

As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade," the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals.

Humans facing huge population cull if global temperatures rise 4C in next 100 years.

Climate experts told New Scientist they were optimistic that humans would survive but would have to adapt.

Vast numbers would have to migrate away from the equator and towards the poles.

National borders would have to be knocked down and humans would become mostly vegetarian with most animals being eaten to extinction.

Fish numbers would drop dramatically as acid levels rose in oceans.

And of course, Jim Kunstler has stared into the abyss so long that the The Abyss Stares Back

The public perception of the ongoing fiasco in governance has moved from sheer, mute incomprehension to goggle-eyed panic as the scrims of unreality peel away revealing something like a national death-watch scene in history's intensive care unit. Is the USA in recession, depression, or collapse? People are at least beginning to ask. Nature's way of hinting that something truly creepy may be up is when both Paul Volcker and George Soros both declare on the same day that the economic landscape is looking darker than the Great Depression.

Kunstler concludes with

It's not too late for President Obama to start uttering these truths so that we can avoid a turn to fascism and get on with the real business of America's next phase of history -- living locally, working hard at things that matter, and preserving civilized culture. What a lot of us can see now staring out of the abyss is a new dark age. I don't think it's necessarily our destiny to end up that way, but these days we're not doing much to avoid it.

We have several converging crises over the next several decades:

1. Economic collapse
2. Climate change
3. Water
4. Oil
5. Food
6. Political instability

I did not include population in that list because the number of people that can be supported depends on the technology and economic system in place. These factors are geographical facts: oil and water exist in certain places and not others. Whereas water is a renewable resource, oil is not (at rates needed for current economic activity - we have burnt through 150 million years' worth of oil in 150 years).

And the comments are about the green conspiracy! Our whole fucking world is collapsing around us, and people want to carry on as normal. Ferguson, Kedrosky, and others believe that economic recovery is possible in a few years and things will be back to normal. The oil is still running out, the climate is still getting warmer, the distribution of fresh water is changing, farmland is disappearing in one place and appearing in others. People will have to move if they want to survive.

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Food Not Bombs Battles City Government - and Wins

Gonzalo Vizcardo reports that Food Not Bombs Battles City Government - and Wins (subscription required) aftre the West Palm Beach City Commission (Florida, USA) decided to repeal the ordinance that banned the giving of free food to homeless people in front of the Central Library on Wednesday nights (by a Christain group) and Saturday afternoons (by the Anarchists). A similar ordinance was struck down in another city after the judge ruled that it violated the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion.

In September 2007 the city commission of West Palm Beach, Florida passed an ordinance prohibiting the distribution of free food in Centennial Park in front of the public library. The ordinance directly targeted Food Not Bombs (FNB), which serves vegetarian meals every Saturday afternoon, and Art and Compassion, a religious group which also serves free food and preaches to the homeless every Wednesday night. The reason? Like other ordinances and laws targeting homeless advocates across the nation, business owners and affluent residents want the homeless out of sight, even if that means banning public feedings in public places. The city's motivation for the ordinance is evident from Mayor Lois Frankel's recent statement that the groups "decided it's their right to destroy West Palm Beach's downtown commerce."

Emphasis Mine

The Capitalists do want the outcasts from the system hanging around. They could induce compassion in the oppressed masses and have them ask questions like:

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."

Hélder Câmara

The Food Not Bombs Movement:

...is an international movement made up of autonomous all-volunteer collectives that was started in the early 1980s in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists protesting the Seabrook nuclear power plant. FNB operates under the idea that food is a right, not a privilege, and that the fact that there is so much hunger amid so much wealth is testament to our society's misallocation of resources and inequality. Currently, there are over 400 active chapters, half of which are outside of the United States. Groups collect food that would otherwise go to waste and serve vegetarian meals in public places.

Emphasis Mine

Unfortunately, in a Capitalist society, food is a commodity produced for profit. Only those with money can eat. The penniless starve because money is needed to realise profit.

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The New N Word: Nationalization

Barry Ritholtz wonders what all the fuss is about with The New N Word: Nationalization:

No matter. We now have a new N word today, and its Nationalization. Why the word is so fearful and loaded is beyond my comprehension. As Bloomberg’s David Reilly writes, “The nationalization debate is a smoke screen. We’ve already nationalized the big banks. Let’s just accept it and move on” — and I could not agree more.

Italics in Original

Unlike Paul Kedrosky who sees a Bank Nationalization and the Otto Problem in that people are stupid, Ritholtz sees no problem at all.

Maybe the red-baiting tirades from the likes of Miranda Devine are invisible to the intellegentisa. The propaganda is so pervasive and effective that no one needs to comment on it at all.

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If you don't like the rules, start your own church

Miranda Devine rails againsts the Socialist take-over of the Catholic Church, and says that If you don't like the rules, start your own church:

The Socialist Alliance posters outside St Mary's Catholic Church in Brisbane said it all. "Dump Intolerance, not Father Kennedy." "Who would Jesus sack?" The father in question is Peter Kennedy, the 70-year-old Catholic priest who is being forced out of the church he has turned into a green-leftist New Age drop-in centre.

Devine is worried about the Communist Fifth-Columnists:

"I take my authority from the people," Kennedy told reporters. Not God? No wonder the Socialist Alliance loves him. Socialism regards religion as a "spiritual oppressor", in the words of Lenin, who also said "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism".

It doesn't matter which dupes the left uses to destroy organised religion, or how they commandeer the social justice work of well-meaning church people, the aim is never to foster religious practice or nourish a love of God.

Emphasis Mine

This is rather revealing: no mention of love thy neighbour. Just practice and a focus on heavenly things. The last thing Capitalists want are people who are concerned about their neighbours here on Earth.

Devine's concern is discipline and orthodoxy:

While you can feel pity for Bathersby, the mess is his own making. Having tolerated Kennedy's antics for years, and having presided over the transformation of Brisbane into the most progressive and least disciplined archdiocese in the country, he can hardly be surprised by the result.

Emphasis Mine

Devine concludes by appealing to popularity (not of Fr.Kennedy but of Pope John Paul II):

Good luck to him. No one is forced to be a Catholic, and the church - as it has been for 2000 years - is thriving the world over, wherever it has remained true to its teachings. The thousands of young people who spontaneously went to Rome for the funeral of the very orthodox Pope John Paul II were not activists trying to dismantle the church. They are the future, not Kennedy's outdated mumbo jumbo socialism.

Emphasis Mine

Instead, the Catholic Church has the problem of youth leaving it for other churchs: She played Mary during World Youth Day. Now she's defected to Hillsong:

SHE was a poster girl for World Youth Day, when more than 400,000 pilgrims gathered in Sydney to celebrate their Catholic faith.

We come to the problem of legitimacy: is the institution legitimate by its existence, or do the members grant legitimacy to the institution?

As for the Opium of the People, the real quote is:

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Emphasis Mine

The Capitalists, like Devine, would prefer us to keep our illusions, accept the discipline of our betters, and conform to the existing society. In other words, thinking for ourselves is dangerous.

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The Anti-Economy: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth

RogerK wants the The Anti-Economy: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth without being called a Communist.

... Personally I think that we need to develop a system of public or community investment, the purpose of which is to insure that economic outputs vital to the community continue to be produced as needed, rather than trying to increase the purchasing power of private investors. I see no reason why such a system of community investment must imply state factories in the Soviet sense or must imply the complete death of private enterprise.

Emphasis Mine

The highlighted phase is a very good definition of Communism. The community directs investment not individual capitalists.

RogerK's position is that...

... However, it is not my intention in this essay to try to prove that these optimistic assessments about the extendability of the economic status quo are false. I am simply going assume that a complete decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption is impossible, so that, sooner or later we must stop expanding our total economic output.

Emphasis Mine

In other words, RogerK is going to assume a constant economic efficiency. The quantity and quality of commodities produced is assumed to be directly related to the quantity of resources consumed. The labour component in commodity production is ignored.

Another problem with this assumption is that the current level of resource is probably unsubstainable. And, in order to reach a substainable economic system, the standard of living will have to drop.

RogerK then goes onto expound his economic theory:

Many people have claimed (I am one of them) that our current economic system requires constant growth for healthy functioning. This growth orientation of the economy is oftentimes blamed solely on our financial/monetary system. Granting unearned purchasing power to businesses and/or individuals in exchange for a larger amount of purchasing power in the future requires growth in the net production of use value. The excess purchasing power owed to the financier has to come from somewhere. Either purchasing power is taken away from someone else, or the net production of use value must increase. Since finance as means of robbery cannot be a politically stable institution, the desire for real growth in the production and sales of use value predominates.

Emphasis Mine

What RogerK is skirting around here is the issue of profit. I think he considers profit for the capitalist to be earned while profit for the financiers to be unearned. Whereas for Communists, all profit is unearned.

Here, the phrase, net production of use value, shows a confusion Use Value with Exchange Value. Profit is realised as the difference in exchange value of the inputs and outputs.

The second highlighted sentence comes close to the reason for the instability of the Capitalist system. All commodities must be purchased by a consumer for profit to be realised. In a fully developed Capitalist society, the only consumers are the proletariat. Thus, the total purchasing power of the local economy is the sum of the wages earned by the proletariat. But the wages of the proletariat are included in the cost of the commodities produced. Hence, the effect of profit is to reduce purchasing power unless the profit is invested (which is really the purchasing of machinery and raw materials).

This current economic crisis is a result of a higher rate of profit and a lower rate of investment. The economy will spiral down until purcahsing power is restored to the proletariat.

RogerK does not understand that credit increases the rate of turnover of capital by advancing to the producer a discounted exchange value for the commodities produced. Instead of the producer waiting for the commodities to be sold to the ultimate consumer because the profit is realised, the producer receives a lesser amount quicker and is, thus, able to begin the production cycle earlier thereby increasing the rate of economic activity. Unfortunately, the increasing rate of economic activity means that the crisis in consumption is reached sooner unless other avenues of consumption are opened up.

Later on, RogerK makes an interesting point:

By voluntary simplicity I do not mean that we all should live like 18'th century rural small holders. I mean that we need to reach a socially agreed upon conception of 'enough' in the realm of material wealth. Individuals need to reach economic maturity in the same way that their bodies reach physical maturity. If the individual desires increasing wealth without boundary then so will the larger economy. No matter how creative and productive an individual may be their income should not exceed the socially agreed up definition of sufficiency.

Emphasis Mine

RogerK comes to the point that humanity needs to survive as a society not as an accidental collection of individuals. This is a major departure from Capitalist philosophy in which the uncoordinated activities of selfish individuals somehow leads to a functioning society. This is really a major development in the consciousness of RogerK.

RogerK stresses the point further in:

Mutual support is the other foundation stone of an economy which is not rushing to destroy the commons in the name of private material security. I have already pointed out that real physical savings consist of the built up infrastructure of society, including the knowledge and skill of its constituent citizens. Since mutual support is an objective physical reality, why don't we stop seeking a delusory financial 'independence' and implement a system of universal social security? We need to create a social environment in which people who put their shoulder to the wheel and help to create and maintain the economic infrastructure of society, even in a humble capacity, can have confidence that that infrastructure will be used to support them in their years of declining productivity.

Emphasis Mine

So, RogerK accepts that common ownership and economic cooperation are needed for a substainable economy. He later on counters the argument about the extreme individualism prevents such a society coming into being. He rather would not get into that argument. He hopes that people would see sense.

RogerK presents his own version of Socialism or Barbarism forecast to force people to see sense:

I have absolutely no doubt that, in the face of a productivity decline, real understanding of the nature of our situation and realistic proposals for alleviating the associated suffering will be hard to come by. However, if the unique and unvarying response to this situation, for all time to come, is a vain attempt to restore the 'normality' of exponential economic growth, then it is hard to see how the decline of industrial civilization can stop anywhere short of neolithic villages. I prefer to assume that the case is not so desperate and talk to other human beings about our common dilemma as if I thought that intelligent cooperation were possible.

Emphasis Mine

In summary, RogerK's economic and political theories are nascent. He can see some points clearly, but the distinction between use value and exchange value is impeding development there. The role of credit follows from understanding of the capitalist production cycle. He hopes that a capitalist society can change somehow into a socialist one without evening seeing the political forces that maintain the current society.

A good start, but a lot more work is needed.

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Global Counter-Insurgency

Anonymous posted two references to the shift in rhetoric about the long war.

Sen. John Kerry says Pakistan aid bill to be passed shortly , and that:

He opposed the use of term war on terror.

"What we are doing is conducting global counterinsurgency. And a counterinsurgency by definition needs to win hearts and minds of people it has to bring people on your side not push them away. So , I think we have to do a better job of implementing [o]ur strategy."

Once again, a member of the US government does question the US strategy at all. The only problem he sees is that the strategy has not been implemented correctly.

In Obama and the counter-insurgency era, Anthony Fenton concludes that

Since the Obama administration campaigned on the continuity of counter-insurgency and irregular war as key elements of US power projection under his administration, it is likely that these policies will attain a level of popular support not experienced by the Bush administration, and will see little critical scrutiny by the media. The challenge will be to shed light on and critically examine these policies as they manifest in any number of settings around the world in the days to come.

I think that Fenton forgets that the War on Terror was very popular in 2001 and 2002 both in the USA and here in Australia. I would say that the general population was thirsty for revenge over the attacks on 11 September 2001.

Pres. Bush could have called it the War on XYZZY and the people would have understood it to be a war on Islam. Such was the racism that underlay the response at the time.

The War on Terror has the effect of casting the US government as the good guys and the defenders of that is good and pure. It was a term for the time. Now that the war is dragging on and the timetable for the conquest of the Middle East is falling behind every day, a change in semantics is needed to maintain support.

It is interesting to note that both of these articles stress the continuity with the Bush administration. This is a way of saying that the strategy is correct and the US government is resolute in this matter. Only a few adjustments need to be made: "Smart Power" instead of "Hard Power" or "Soft Power".

But even the term, "Global Counter-Insurgency", is a mistake. The only thing that unites all of these resistence groups is the hatred of US military and economic incursions. The danger is that the US strategy make create the monster that it seeks to destroy.

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Global Counterinsurgency: Strategic Clarity for the Long War

Roper (2009:106) concludes that a change in the lexicon is an important weapon in the War on Terror:

The United States needs to refocus its efforts and resources to more effectively deal with the current global threat. Clear thinking supported by clear language will assist in this endeavor. American policy should focus more on denying support for those organizations with political goals inimical to US interests, rather than emphasizing the apprehension of individual terrorists. Removing the “war on terrorism” from the official lexicon and replacing it with more precise and descriptive terms such as “war on global hirabahist insurgency” or “global counterinsurgency” would be an important step in identifying the real nature of the enemy, the security challenges posed, and the array of techniques the enemy may employ. More importantly, the change in descriptor will help focus the intellectual framework required to develop a successful US strategy for dealing with this complex and lethal problem.

Emphasis Mine

Roper's main points are that terrorism is a tactic, and that insurgency and terrorism may overlap but are not the same thing. "Understanding terrorism as an activity subsumed under a wide variety of activities employed by an insurgent movement provides the intellectual clarity required to identify the real enemy and formulate effective countermeasures. It is, therefore, inaccurate to semantically equate terrorism and insurgency." (Roper:2009,97)

Roper (2009:94-95) gives several definitions of terrorism but they all have the same assumption: violence by governments is legitimate while violence by non-government forces is not. Indeed, government terrorism is often described as an "... overreaction ... from target governments" (Roper:2009,p.97).

Roper (2009:98) contend that counter-insurgency strategies designed to suppress Communists is inappropiate for this new type of insurgency.

Classic counterinsurgency theory tends to assume a binary struggle between insurgent and counterinsurgent, yet insurgencies today may incorporate many diffuse, competing insurgent movements. In contrast to revolutionary war theory, these conflicts often lack a “united front.” Likewise, classic insurgency theory typically regards insurgency as between an internal nonstate actor and a single government. Today, however, there is real-time informal cooperation and cross-pollination between insurgents in many countries, often accomplished without a central controlling authority. The National Security Strategy of the United States describes terrorist networks as being more decentralized than traditional terrorist organizations; less dependent upon a central command structure; and more reliant upon inspiration from a common ideology. Although parallels—such as the need for contextually specific solutions—exist with the ideologically motivated Communist insurgencies of the mid- to late twentieth century, the franchise-like character of modern transnational insurgencies fueled by religious fanaticism is new.

Emphasis Mine

In this, Roper is wrong. A counter-example is the Irish resistance to the English occupation. The resistance was world-wide from support in the USA, Australia, Argentina, Canada, France, etc. A notable action against English tyranny took place at Vinegar Hill in 1804. A driving force of the international resistance was religion, and this has been going for 500 years.

Roper (2009:101-102) posits that the correct strategy is to:

The US strategic goal in the Long War is to preserve and promote the way of life of free and open societies based on the rule of law, defeat terrorist extremism, and create a global environment inhospitable to extremists. American strategy to achieve this goal is based on an international effort to deny terrorists resources. This strategy is comprised of three elements: protect the homeland; disrupt and attack terrorist networks; and counter ideological support for terrorism. Protecting the homeland is the defensive aspect of the strategy, but defense in and of itself is not enough. A successful strategy requires attacking the terrorists and their ability to operate, to include their leadership, funding, and communications. The most important component of the strategy is countering ideological support for terrorism—the “decisive effort.” It should be self-evident that countering ideological support for those who commit terrorist acts is as much a social, societal, and psychological issue as it is a physical one.

Emphasis Mine

The fundamental problem is that the American Government is a terrorist organisation itself. Everything it does is in furtherence of grabbing resources of the third world for its own benefit. Even its vaunted "Shock and Awe" campaign of 2003 was a classic case of terrorism - sheer brutality to achieve political acquiesence. It supports a terrorist government: Israel.

The gulf between the words of the US government and its actions are an abyss into which the US Army has cast itself. Every action by the US Military in Iraq and Afghanistan is terrorism against the local people. The US Military has become the biggest recruiter for the resistence. How can the US Army defeat itself?

Another underlying assumption of the article is that legimate governments are those who serve the interests of the USA. There is no self-determination in the US's view of the world. Everyone exists to serve the USA.

The very success of the USA economy means that the USA must be an empire that rules through terror. And this terror begets terror. In order to win the long war, the USA must destroy itself. Therein lies the danger for the rest of us.

References

Roper, Daniel S. (2009), "Global Counterinsurgency: Strategic Clarity for the Long War", Parameters, Autumn 2008, pp. 92-108 (Viewed 22 February 2009)

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