Earning My Keep

I sort of feel like I should be hyping Atlantic content, but all the real articles are subscription-only, so what's the point? Brian Mockenhaupt talking about his article on military training in the latest issue is interesting, though less interesting than the actual article:

But at the same time the drill sergeants are going to explain that situations will arise when shooting is not the answer because it will turn against you down the road. It might be really hard, especially when you’re under fire, and you’ve been taking casualties, and you feel that a neighborhood might be against you. But to win in the end you need to exercise extreme prudence and restraint. For someone who has only been in the military for a short time, this can be a difficult lesson.

To my mind, probably the big thing that makes me skeptical about the idea that better manual and training regimes will make counterinsurgency viable is that this lesson is not only hard to teach, but needs to be taught almost perfectly. Say 95 percent of your soldiers take the training and act perfectly. Well, if you're got 100,000 soldiers in Iraq, that means 5,000 guys who are two quick to open fire. Over the course of six months or so, 5,000 heavily armed trigger-happy soldiers can kill and main a lot of people and destroy a ton of property. There's your alienated population right there. And yet, a 95 percent success rate is very high.

Comments

too not two; fix it and delete my comment

Posted by rob | May 6, 2007 12:11 PM

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Xinhua) -- About 10 percent of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq have reported mistreating civilians or damaging their property when it was not necessary, according to a Pentagon survey released Friday.
Xinhua

1% would be outrageous. America is an evil empire.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 6, 2007 12:23 PM

I sort of feel like I should be hyping Atlantic content, but all the real articles are subscription-only, so what's the point?

Umm, encouraging people to subscribe so The Atlantic can continue to pay your salary?

Posted by An Atlantic subscriber | May 6, 2007 12:30 PM

Counter-insurgency, in the main, is policing, and in policing, there exists a basic tradeoff between tactics and manpower.

The basic policing "tactic" is to monitor and be visible, 24/7. It is possible to smother any crime wave or insurgency under enough monitoring and visibility.

If you have enough troops, the troops can relax. If you don't have enough troops, then the troops have to employ more aggressive, destructive tactics, and the troops are much more dependent on dubious intelligence.

With enough troops to smother an insurgency, other anti-insurgency policies, the level of violence is immediately quelled and other anti-insurgency policies can be implemented. In Iraq, this would involve such fundamentals as reducing the 50+% unemployment rate, which leaves young men no employment opportunities outside of planting bombs (which, reportedly, pays quite well, thanks to Saudi support). Oh, yeah, and then there's the electricity and sewage infrastructure Halliburton and Bechtel didn't fix for $30 billion. And, did I mention the severe housing shortage? (Nothing like a housing shortage to give ethnic cleansing an extra fillip.)

Posted by Bruce Wilder | May 6, 2007 12:53 PM

Wouldn't the "order to fire" though have to be given by the commanding officer of each patrol/platoon? So, the number of troops requiring that level of moderation would be somewhat limited.

Posted by Fred | May 6, 2007 1:06 PM

I think expecting a group of people who were fond of writing "9/11 payback" messages onto Patriot missiles to behave maturely once they're in Baghdad is asking an awful lot.

Posted by Bill | May 6, 2007 1:14 PM

I sort of feel like I should be hyping Atlantic content, but all the real articles are subscription-only, so what's the point?

Matt, the point is that (1) you share the basic content of those "behind the wall" articles with us and (2) it may prod some of your readers to subscribe. Both the readers and the magazine would benefit.

Posted by buck | May 6, 2007 2:09 PM

Excellent post. Also, this was entirely predictable. Everyone knew that our military would wind up killing civilians -- Bush and Rumsfeld have been cavalier about that from the start. And everyone knew it would fuel an insurgency. The lesson is: don't occupy countries.

Sure, it worked in Germany and Japan after WW2, but that was because they were happy to be not occupied by the Soviets! Huge difference!

(I subscribed to Washington Monthly because of Kevin Drum. I let my subscribe to the Atlantic go because of Sully.)

Posted by chris | May 6, 2007 2:50 PM

And yet, a 95 percent success rate is very high.

Matthew is obviously pulling this completely out of his *ss. How would he know whether 95% is "very high"? I would think it very low. I mean, 95% on following orders? I'd say, 99.9999%. But, I have no idea what I'm talking about - like Matthew.

Posted by Al | May 6, 2007 3:03 PM

Former longtime Atlantic subscriber here.

The Atlantic has tried two models: (1) make everything available online (which they did up to about 5 years ago), and (2) hide all the print articles behind the firewall.

They want to avoid (1) because they want people to pay for their content (can't blame them), but (2) means they're sidelining themselves. I don't subscribe to The Atlantic because I don't know what The Atlantic has to offer anymore. So why would I subscribe to an unknown quantity, when there's no shortage of intelligent commentary available for free?

The thing is, there are other workable models. Both The American Prospect and The Washington Monthly make some of their print content available online. The American Prospect also has an online subscription, with the same content but at a lower rate than you'd pay for the dead-trees version. That's what I'd really like for almost any magazine I'm not going to read cover-to-cover.

Finally, I just don't want a physical subscription to any more magazines. All they do is pile up in my corner of the living room. If the only way I can gain access to The Atlantic's content is to subscribe to the dead-trees magazine, I'm not going to do it. Period. I'll pay ten or fifteen bucks a year for online access, but not a penny if it means the magazine starts showing up at my house.

Posted by RT | May 6, 2007 4:30 PM

It's a good thing we have kept up standards and don't let ex criminals and people with antisocial personality disorder join our armed services. These guys would be the 5% that aren't reached.

Whats that?

nevermind.

Posted by TomK | May 6, 2007 10:31 PM

Ah, the typos are back. I would have to have begun worrying that this new, big-media Matt was actually some sort of evil clone, had the typos not come back.

If one is going suggest edits to another's grammar and/or typing, why would one not take the time to be grammatically correct oneself? One could start by, say, capitalizing and punctuating said suggestions.

Posted by ajw_93 | May 7, 2007 1:57 PM

about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated. Washington Post

Thank goodness for American values.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 7, 2007 4:22 PM