Let's get our "colonialist generals" and COIN heroes straight, shall we?

I just came across this presentation (credit to SWJ on Facebook) -- which I take to be recent -- by Hero of the COINtras Doug Macgregor. There's plenty to criticize and some to agree with, but I just wanted to whinge about a relatively small factual mistake for right now.

This excerpt comes from slide 4:

There is nothing new in General McChrystal's strategy, it is merely a rehash of the failed oil spot (tache d'huile) strategy, first tried by French colonialist General Louis-Hubert-Gonsalve Lyautey in Algeria; then tried again under various guises by the US in Vietnam.

1. Tache d'huile, represent!

2. Lyautey was actually a Marshal of France after he was a general, and he held this title at his death. It seems appropriate to refer to him as "Marshal" if we're identifying him by his highest achieved rank.

3. "General" Lyautey was a lieutenant when he first went to Algeria, and a captain when he returned to France. The counterinsurgency achievements for which he is most well-known took place in Madagascar and Morocco, not Algeria (though securing the Algerian border was significant to his Moroccan success).

4. Lyautey was an understudy to Joseph Gallieni, posthumous Marshal of France and one-time governor of Madagascar.

5. While Lyautey may have first employed the term, Gallieni was the real originator of the tache d'huile approach to pacification.

6. "Tried again under various guises by the U.S. in Vietnam"? Here he's likely alluding to the Strategic Hamlets Program, which was pretty much done with by the time the U.S. committed significant resources to the fight and was admittedly a failure. But one of the other "guises" might be the Combined Action Program, which was one of the most effective American counterinsurgency efforts of the entire war.

7. Macgregor is right to say that there's not much new in the McChrystal report. So what? There's plenty in there to criticize besides unoriginality, so what difference does it make if an oil spots/ink blots approach has been tried at times in the past (and successfully, at that!)?

Ok, enough complaining about this PowerPoint. I'm not sure how I missed this in the past, but during the Gulf War, Macgregor was the operations officer for Cougar Squadron of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the parent unit of then-Captain H.R. McMaster's Eagle Troop, which beat the ass off an entire brigade of Iraqi Republican Guard Corps tanks at the Battle of 73 Easting. (Macgregor's author bio and Amazon page say that he "trained and led Cougar Squadron into battle," which is sort of confusing to me. He was the ops officer, right, not the squadron commander?) Anyway, to show what a good guy I am, I'm going to pimp Macgregor's latest book (which I have not read). I'm also going to link to Macgregor's hilariously hagiographic Wikipedia page, which shares some commonalities (er, verbatim rips) with his author-provided bio on at least one website to which he is a contributor.

While we're on the subject, ask Gunslinger about the time that his platoon pulled 73 Easting-Lite on an Iraqi tank battalion back in OIF I. I may have the details wrong, so I'm sure he can straighten you out.

Airstrikes down in Afganistan

According to a report in USA Today, the number of airstrikes conducted by coalition forces in Afghanistan has dropped by close to 50 percent since GEN McChrystal took command three months ago.

NATO fixed-wing aircraft dropped 1,211 bombs and other munitions during the past three months — the peak of the fighting season — compared with 2,366 during the same period last year, according to military statistics. The nearly 50% decline in airstrikes comes with an influx of more than 20,000 U.S. troops this year and an increase in insurgent attacks.

The shift is the result of McChrystal's new directives, said Air Force Col. Mark Waite, an official at the air operations center in southwest Asia. Ground troops are less inclined to call for bombing or strafing runs, though they often have an aircraft conduct a "show of force," a flyby to scare off insurgents, or use planes for surveillance, Waite said.

The decrease in air attacks may also be the result of having more ground troops, Waite said. Air attacks are often used when ground forces aren't available to secure an area or seize an objective.

So instead of repeating platitudes about how civilian casualties are the key metric for success in a counterinsurgency war, I'll just post a relevant quote that I recently came across in Kalyvas. It's from John Paul Vann, a U.S. adviser in Vietnam and prominent participant in the CORDS program (and the source of several other quotable COIN-ish witticisms):

This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle -- you know who you're killing.

Interestingly, during his active-duty Army time, Vann was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in coordinating the battle of Ap Bac from a spotter plane while serving as an ARVN adviser. He would later (posthumously) be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross -- the only civilian recipient in the Vietnam War.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't note that the hard-working USA Today reporter sought out two COINtras to challenge what COL Gentile calls "the dominant narrative":

By exercising so much restraint, the U.S. military may sacrifice a key firepower advantage on the battlefield and expose ground troops to more risk, some officers and analysts say.

"There is a tradeoff," said Col. Gian Gentile, a former battalion commander in Iraq who has publicly criticized counterinsurgency doctrine. "You reduce civilian casualties, but you potentially increase your own casualties."

Doug Macgregor, a retired Army colonel and military historian, says the emphasis on having conventional forces trying to win over the population is futile.

"You surrender whatever military advantage you have by compelling the U.S. conventional soldier or Marine to fight on terms that favor the enemy, not the American soldier or Marine," Macgregor said.

Gentile's comment is entirely accurate. Though I disagree with him on a great many other things, it is absolutely true to say that executing counterinsurgency tactics in an effective manner will erode some long-established strictures that privilege force protection over other mission concerns. Doug MacGregor, on the other hand, is just lost in the sauce. But then, are we surprised?