Bonus: The gentleman in charge of this project is a friend of the one and only Boss Mongo.
23 January 2010
Upcoming Writing Contest
You may see operations slow down over the next few weeks here at Wings Over Iraq. I'll be putting together an article to submit to the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs regarding the Lebanon War of 2006.
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3 comments:
I don't know what aspect of the war in Lebanon you plan to cover, but The Times of London claims to have been the first news organ to have revealed that the IDF was firing white phosphorous in populated areas. By U.S. doctrine WP is to be used for making smokescreens, marking targets for air attack, or setting fire to supply dumps such as POL points. When our guys retook Fallujah in November 2004 they were also accused of indiscriminate WP use but I didn't follow that story up. (Hopefully the schoolhouse at Fort Sill will.)
On a related note, lately Gian Gentile has cited the Lebanon war as an example of what can happen when an army emphasizes COIN to the detriment of full-bore combined-arms operations. Good luck on your writing project.
You bring up an excellent point about Col. Gentile. I do see that there could be a danger in concentrating too much on counterinsurgency.
A wise man once said, "Always in motion, the future is" (okay, it was Yoda). Who knows what it may bring? While I find it likely that the US will most likely be involved in some manner of counterinsurgency, the "conventional" battlefield is not dead.
Since we are involved in counterinsurgencies, we certainly need to concentrate our training on that realm. However, if/when we withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to balance training between heavy, medium and light conflict. We need to be prepared for all options.
Shimon Naveah, an IDF general, touches upon this in an interview. In sum, he says that there is somewhat of a danger in transitioning from COIN to more conventional conflict, but he does not envision the US having the difficulties that the IDF did. The Taliban and AQI are far tougher than the Palestinians were.
uh, look: if the dude knows me, I just want to go on record and say that there is absolutely no truth in that story about me, the Filipino midget and the 400-lb Samoan transvestite. That was just an urban legend...
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