I'd asked Col.
Gian Gentile if he cared to respond to Col.
McCuen's critique, and boy did he. Here it is:
I
appreciate Colonel (retired) McCuen's thoughtful and forceful reply to my
recent Parameters article. I also
respect and appreciate his longstanding, hard service to the nation as a combat
commander in Vietnam and his ongoing engagement with issues as a defense
intellectual, and his current involvement as a senior-level advisor in our
current conflicts.
Where
to begin with his critique?
Let's
start with the Sorley thesis about the Vietnam War. McCuen says that Sorley was "right;"
I disagree and believe Sorley's thesis is wrong. More importantly Sorley's methodology in the
use of sources is open to criticism. Go
to his book, "A Better War," and view the chapter toward the end of
the book that he labels as "Victory" which essentially argues that
the Abrams "pacification" approach had won the war for the US and the
South Vietnamese. Then go to the end of
the book and view the citations of evidence to this chapter and see how many of
them are Vietnamese sources: none. In a chapter that argues the United States
had won the war under Abrams-think about that for a minute, "won" the
war and its sweep as a breathtaking assertion--there are a paltry 8 endnote
citations, and none of them from the side of the Vietnamese enemy. Interestingly this is the very same problem
that plagues so many Iraq Surge triumph stories-the idea that the Surge was the
primary cause for "victory" in Iraq yet with little sources or
evidence from the side of the Iraqi people and more importantly the enemy. A close reading of the operational record of
the history of the Vietnam War along with the majority of secondary literature
confirms that there was much more continuity than discontinuity between Abrams
and Westmoreland. As far as McCuen's
statement that by 1972 "90" percent of the South Vietnamese
population had been pacified or returned to "our control" is simply
not true. Current scholarship by
historians such as Eric Bergerud, Richard Hunt, and Kyle Boylan, Andrew Birtle,
and Dale Andrade either flatly reject this assertion or question it
deeply. In my view we should always keep
in mind when thinking about the Vietnam War the profound conclusion by one of
the leading scholars on the history of the Vietnam War for the last 30 years,
George Herring. His conclusion still
holds that "the war could [not] have been 'won' in any meaningful sense at
a moral or material cost most American's deemed acceptable."
(Read on)
As to
Malaya, current historical scholarship argues rather convincingly based on
primary sources that the back of the Malayan insurgency was actually broken
under Briggs and not Templer. Of course
Sir Robert Thompson would confirm such a change in Malaya under Templer since
that was the essential argument in his book that he used as a primer for his
advisory role to the American Army in the 1960s. Thompson's book should be treated as a
primary text in memoir form and not as the oracle of how to do
counterinsurgency. Unfortunately McCuen
like so many others still treat people and texts like Thompson and Galula out
of context, and therefore they are ahistorical in their understanding of Malaya
and Vietnam.
Colonel
McCuen's paragraph on strategy actually supports the criticism that I make
toward the American Army in my Parameters piece, that we have no strategy
but simply a jumble of COIN tactical and operational methods. For McCuen there is ONLY ONE WAY to deal with
problems of instability in the world, and that is population-centric
counterinsurgency--or as he calls it "hybrid war." This is the same old wine albeit in new
skins. Do you see what I mean by a
strategy of tactics? With McCuen's logic anytime a problem of insurgency or
instability presents itself to us in the world our only choice--and mind you,
choice and alternatives are key components of strategy--is to do Thompson or
Galula in the troubled spots of the world requiring large numbers of American
combat troop presence to secure populations. In this way our path ahead is predetermined; there is no strategic
choice, only the better application of tactics and methods as given to us by
the experts of counterinsurgency (hybrid) war.
Based
on the logic of Colonel McCuen's argument if the President told the American
Army to deal with the pirates that emerge out of Mogadishu we would send in combat
brigades of hybrid warriors to manipulate the "human terrain" there
to our advantage. Since these
"hybrid wars," according to Colonel McCuen, can only be won by
winning over the population-or "human terrain-" then operational
logic demands such an approach.
Colonel
McCuen asks of me how I recommend "...that we do this and win these hybrid
and insurgent wars, such as we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and likely
to be fighting in the future?"
My answer to the Colonel: do strategy better. But at this point the two of us are talking
past each other. From my view he is in
the realm of operations and tactics, I am trying to view these problems from
the angle of strategy. Sometimes
strategy demands restraint instead of military adventures and the realization
that as much as we want to define populations as "terrain" and
subject to our manipulation and management they are not that way at all and
without an almost unlimited commitment in blood and treasure they are not to be
"changed" for the better at the barrel of an American gun. There are alternatives to McCuen's hybrid
wars of nation building and strategy demands that we consider them. If we did through cold logic our way ahead in
Afghanistan might be very different.
Tom again: I am in intellectual
trouble now because I find myself agreeing with both men's comments in this
blog. What am I missing?
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