ARTICLE: Why the U.S. Loses ‘Small Wars’, By Larry Kahaner, History News Network, 11-27-06Well written.
I especially like the USMC's Small Wars Center of Excellence's calling for simpler weapons and more complex soldiers.
But I think the author's only looking at the post-colonial backside in his summary judgment. Truth is, the West has done plenty well on small wars, so long as the goal is political/economic integration.
Wasn't the American West won by a simple weapon?
Or did that gun just do the killing and was the real victory found in the subsequent integration?
What have we integrated in Iraq? Not much. So what should we expect to win?
Not much.
Thanks to Michael Alatorre for sending this in.
[Editor's note: Mark's linking this article, too.]
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Comments (1)
The west was not won by a sigle weapon but in the words of recent Pentagon Jargon by a "system of systems." Concider the defeat of the Lakota ghost dancers at Wounded Knee. To be sure there were guns a plenty but there also was:
1. Hunger from the distruction of the food resources used by the Lakota
2. Climate, a very cold and harsh winter
3. Desease pandemics that had killed the vast majority of the Native Americans
4. Technical, political, ecomomic and social weakness in the Lakota as compated to the European settlers and the US government.
and so on and so on.
In almost every aspect other than the shared physical nature as both being humans the Lakota were overmatched by the Europeans and confronted by more than isolated gun fights but by a whole world of challenges and change.
The idea that we should employ more complex people and simpler weapons is false. If anything the Lakota were more complex than the Europeans and had simpler tools, to include their weapons. Yet they did not prevail as they wished.
We can't employ genocide as the only alternative to capitulation as the colonial armies did in the past, as was applied at Wounded Knee
We can not re-engineer people, the Soviets tried for 70 years to make more complex people and failed.
We can however give our soldiers better systems so they can go and do their one year tour and then go home and do something else.
We simply have to give them the right tools and perhaps use every part of the buffalo.
Posted by John Frum | November 29, 2006 1:13 PM