War, Energy, Logistics and their Lessons

The Embedded and the Drive-by

Part 1?

A Little History

Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated?- Thomas Paine,?The Crisis?no. 1; 1776.

Portrait of Thomas Paine painted by Laurent Dabos circa 1792.

Fast Forward?

Dave Granlund

As a result of the Vietnam War, some of us were educated in the difference between being embedded and driving-by-in war and economic development; the difference between involvement and commitment.?

We had been taught as a result of the Atlantic and Pacific Campaigns of WWII, that peace is not achieved through fire superiority alone, but was achieved by combined arms; the forward deployment of ground, air and naval forces supported by extraordinary amphibious logistics, fire support coordination and the uncommon valor and common virtue of the American grunt.?

Today, this education is lost on a civilian and military elite who were privileged to attend universities where they learned to “speak eloquently about things they only vaguely understand.”

Read Everything

James Mattis,?a retired U.S. Marine General and former Secretary of Defense; a superb example of leadership, taught my generation of U.S. Marine Officers to?read everything because it saves lives.?

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. - Thomas Paine?

Pandemic and Consolation?

These are the times that try men’s souls, - Thomas Paine declared.

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.?

Hitting Home

The stories of John Wayne and Hedy Lamar:

hit home on many levels, on the levels of myth and reality.

Once Upon a Time

On the superficial level of Washington, DC, we had a president who threatened Iran with hot war, China with trade war, but like John Wayne, whose real name was?Marion Robert Morrison, never served a day in the military, and is nevertheless associated with valor in American mythology. (The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers).?

Briefly, valor, service and sacrifice:?

MacMaster

Mattis

are distinguishable from a?superficial patriotism:

but the delusional cannot distinguish the golf course from the battlefield.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.?

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture - Paine?

Fast Forward - Again

Vietnam

Mattis

Vietnam taught us that winning is not defined by the body or shell count.

(Westmoreland) when our enemies are willing to endure 50% battlefield casualties for the sake of what they perceive as their Freedom.?

The only strategies that worked in Vietnam were Patrolling and the embedded CAP.

The CAP

The?Combined Action Program?was a United States Marine Corps operational initiative implemented in the Vietnam War and proved to be one of the most effective counterinsurgency tools developed during that conflict. The program was characterized by the placement of a thirteen-member Marine rifle squad, augmented by a U.S. Navy Corpsman and strengthened by a Vietnamese militia platoon of older youth and elderly men, in or adjacent to a rural Vietnamese hamlet. In most cases, the Popular Forces (PF) militia members (Nghia Quan) were residents of the hamlet who were either too young or too old to be drafted into the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) or the Regional Forces (Dia Phuong Quan). The entire unit of American Marines and Popular Forces militia members together was designated as a Combined Action Platoon (CAP).

The program was said to have originated as a solution to one Marine infantry battalion's problem of expanding its Tactical Area of Responsibility?(TAOR). The concept of combining a squad of Marines with local PFs and assigning them a village to protect proved to be a force multiplier.

While the exact implementation varied with the stage of the war and local command variations, the basic model was to combine a Marine squad with local forces to form a village defense platoon. It was effective in denying the enemy a sanctuary at the local village level. The pacification campaign seemed to work under the CAP concept, and the Marines fully embraced it. Objectively, there is no solid proof that the CAP concept was a resounding success; however, subjectively the evidence suggests otherwise.

"Counterinsurgency operations and, in particular, the establishment of a foreign internal defense lends itself for the greatest utility of employing a CAP-style organization. Recent operations in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia suggest a CAP-style organization could have accomplished the assigned mission."

My Comment:?But this is all too old school for today’s generation, a generation that neither reads nor learns from the lessons of the past, from the Lessons of War or Peace.

James W. Loewen?

The undercurrents and rich veins of racism, populism, nativism, isolationism and antisemitism are never far from the surface in the “land of the free” and are easily mined by the malevolent.?

Continued?

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