COUNTERINSURGENCY IN THE EYES OF FORMER MARINE CAPTAIN

The most important article in today's The Washington Post is not the story on Karl Rove's resignation but the opinion piece by former Marine captain Nathaniel Fick. Fick wrote the best seller, "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer."

Fick writes on the paradoxical world of counterinsurgency warfare where winning is accomplished not by killing or bombing but by assisting the local population in returning to normalcy.

Writes Fick:

"The objective in fighting insurgents isn't to kill every enemy fighter -- you simply can't -- but to persuade the population to abandon the insurgents' cause. The laws of these campaigns seem topsy-turvy by conventional military standards: Money is more decisive than bullets; protecting our own forces undermines the U.S. mission; heavy firepower is counterproductive; and winning battles guarantees nothing."

Fick was in Kabul recently as a consultant to the U.S. Army in providing workshops on the goals of counterinsurgency to American, Afghan and NATO officers as well as Afghan policemen. Fick serves up four basic tenets of "winning" in Afghanistan or in Iraq:

"The first tenet is that the best weapons don't shoot. Counterinsurgents must excel at finding creative, nonmilitary solutions to military problems."

Second, "The more you protect your forces, the less safe you may be. To be effective, troops, diplomats and civilian aid workers need to get out among the people. But nearly every American I saw in Kabul was hidden behind high walls or racing through the streets in armored convoys."

Third, "[t]he third paradox . . . is that the more force you use, the less effective you may be. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are notoriously difficult to tally, but 300-500 noncombatants have probably been killed already this year, mostly in U.S. and coalition air strikes. Killing civilians, even in error, is not only a serious moral transgression but also a lethal strategic misstep. Wayward U.S. strikes have seriously undermined the very legitimacy of the Karzai government and made all too many Afghans resent coalition forces. If Afghans lose patience with the coalition presence, those forces will be run out of the country, in the footsteps of the British and the Soviets before them."

And lastly, "[t]he academy's final lesson is that tactical success in a vacuum guarantees nothing. Just as it did in Vietnam, the U.S. military could win every battle and still lose the war. That's largely because our primary enemies in Afghanistan still have a sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan . . . Chasing terrorists and the Taliban around Afghanistan leads to little lasting progress as long as they can slip across the border to rest and regroup. . . . The Durand Line, which separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, is a mapmaker's fantasy. Without political reform, economic development and military operations on both sides of the border, we can do little more than put a finger in the dike that's keeping radicalism and instability in Pakistan from spilling back into Afghanistan."

These are words of wisdom from someone who fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq. How come Bush has not heard these words? He still counts "progress" as so many insurgents killed. He still equates insurgency with terrorism instead of understanding the fear and rage of local populations when they are bombed or shot at.