I wwould like to ask a question to the military experts on the forum:
I just douwnloaded from globalsecurity.com the US Army manual on counterinsurgency. I transferred the text into a word document and it took 44 pages. The manual about "the infantry platoon" occupies a word doc of mine of couple of hundred pages.
The counterinsurgency manual says that more doctrine is being produced and that further manuals will follow. How is it possible that the TRADOC, which I believe was created right after the Vietnam war did not elaborate a counterinsurgency doctrine in all this years
Also and more worrying, in the counternsurgency manual there is a statement that I was really surprised to read:

"Undestanding and working within the social fabric of a local area is initially the most influential factor in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. Unfortunately, this is often the factor most neglected by the US forces"

Guys, I was speachless when I read that in an official TRADOC publication. What is this supposed to mean ? With all the "civil affairs" support units down to the brigade level (if I remember well) the US ARMY is not prepared to "work with the social fabric of a local area" ?

Any of the experts of the Forum can explain that to me ?

greetings to all

Vanguard,

Vietnam was considered a side show by the US Army and shunned from collective memory.  The following statements can summarize the reasons why the institutional memories of Vietnam were expunged.  Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, etc.  It was the politicians that made us lose.  It was the press.  Etc.  Time to get back to war fighting and the real war with the Soviets at the Fulda gap. 

 

Next, think about the civil affairs unit.  Let's say that each company has a 4-5 person team (I don't know the specifics and so will only speak of my experience).  So, when patrolling, my company has 100+ guys out interacting with the locals while the civil affairs team only provides a handful of people interacting.   So, if you have a unit that leaves "civil affairs" solely to the civil affairs teams, and because of the aforementioned attitude of leaving "civil affairs" only to the civil affairs teams, then I hope you could see the extreme example of where greater than 95% of your interactions with the local populace could potentially alienate them. 

 

Now, even the majority of your soldiers interact in a superb manner with the local population, all it takes is for some bored soldiers to be jacka$$es and do something to alienate a portion of the populate in a proportion much greater than your bad apple population within the unit.  For example, look at the impact of Abu Ghraib (we could argue at how high culpability should run, but I hope that there is no argument that the jacka$$ factor was high with what they did).  So, I think that the manual is getting at the fact that you need to make sure that there is command focus on interactions with the local populace, and not just assume that civil affairs will do it and you can just concentrate on sending bullets downrange whenever it's required.