We both tried the whole range of techniques that he's talking about. It didn't work for the Russians in Afghanistan. And that is a wonderful buzzword and sounds very impressive, but it's not new. What he's talking about is counterinsurgency. troops in the neighborhoods day and night and for longer times than they were staying before. SIEGEL: Today in Iraq, a war of which you've been critical both of its conception and its execution, General Petraeus is enlisting traditional leaders, tribal sheikhs and local alliances. And of course we couldn't apply that in Vietnam because there was never any hint of any dissension within the Viet Minh organization. ![]() It wasn't so much that the Greek government or our people won as that the Communists lost. So the movement virtually committed suicide. And the Communists really killed each other off. I think the difference in Greece is that the Communists split. POLK: I don't think we like to believe that. If you apply those lessons - I gather they were applied in Vietnam - you would get totally different inferences about what can be achieved against an insurgency. SIEGEL: How much can one generalize, though? As you relate in writing about Greece during and after the Second World War, British forces who occupied that country with the most cynical imperialist motives, were received as liberators by the Greeks. In Ireland, as you mentioned, the Irish fought intermittently against the English from the 11th century on. And of course, many of them - we talk a lot today about staying the course, we stayed the course for 16 years in Vietnam. The lengths of some of the conflicts you describe in Algeria, with its roots deep in the 19th century in Ireland, which you say you could've been the longest war in history - we're really talking about long wars in history. ![]() In your book, you cited Donald Rumsfeld had spoken of fighting the long war. And that was what we devoted all the years of our involvement in Vietnam with. As I suggested, that amounted into something like 5 percent. Those two things amounted to something like 95 percent of the total capacity of the insurgency. And what we saw in Vietnam was that the Viet Cong virtually killed everyone in the South Vietnamese administration. ![]() The insurgents had to prove that they were the nationalists in their countries. The insurgents are very few, so they fall back on the tactic of the weak, which is terrorism. WILLIAM POLK: The first of these was political. Polk says he found that insurgent movements tend to develop in three stages. He started studying the subject when he was a U.S. How is it that the Army that has the power so often loses the war when its enemy is homegrown and practices guerrilla tactics and terrorism?Ī H: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla War from the American Revolution to Iraq." And there are chapters on insurgencies chronologically in between those two conflicts in Spain, Greece, Algeria, Vietnam and elsewhere. General Petraeus is up against the conundrum that William Polk addresses in his latest book. Last week, General David Petraeus, an author of the Army's revised text on counterinsurgency, testified on progress achieved through the surge and the application of his doctrines in Iraq. From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |