Shek

Sir,
A few thoughts:

1. The oil spot strategy is different than a strategic hamlet program, or New Villages as Sir Templer called them in Malaya. For the benefit of others in the thread, since I'm sure you could school circles around me on the subject, strategic hamlets are used to provide security for the rural population, to prevent infiltration by insurgents into this population to win their hearts and minds, and to implement food controls to starve the insurgents of supplies. I'm sure you could add more reasons from your experience in Mizoram. The rubber and tin boom help to save the New Village effort in Malaya, providing the funds to allow for infrastructure that prevented them from just being squalid villages that would have just served as incubators for potential insurgents. In the end, the New Village effort in Malaya was marginally successful.

In Vietnam, the corruption of the SVN government under Diem and the decision to build hamlets that were near key terrain (meaning that their location served military objectives, not political objectives such as locating providing good farm land for the displaced villagers) meant that the Strategic Hamlet program was an utter failure. COL Krepinevich's book The Army and Vietnam goes into great detail about these failures.

The insurgency in Iraq isn't a rural, agrarian based insurgency. So, strategic hamlets, or whatever you call them, are not a viable strategy.

2. Oil spot. The premise here is that you secure an area and build the security forces there. Once the indigenous security forces can handle the required tasks, you expand the secure area and use your military forces to secure the new ground until indigenous security forces are trained and can handle the new area. So, it is just like an oil spot that originally starts small, but eventually spreads until it is much larger, the strategy that Krepinevich calls for is to stop the interdiction operations (e.g. in Anbar, etc.) and whack-a-mole type operations and instead concentrate and truly pacificying specific areas until moving on.

3. Reality. We following a hybrid strategy, with some whack-a-mole and oil spot. Until recently, we really didn't have enough ISF to have a stay behind presence in many areas. However, given the fact that you can't just leave some territory as the Wild West due to "modern" inventions like the car bomb and press, which when combined, create their own momentum and power, the oil spot by itself isn't viable IMO. For example, if we were to have concentrated solely on Baghdad last year and not seized Fallujah in November, then you would have left a terrorist sanctuary, where they had training camps, car bomb factories, etc. IMO, it's much better to dedicate some (not all or even a majority, probably) operations to interdicting the insurgents/terrorists infrastructure to degrade their operation.

If you look at current operations, you now see "clear and hold" being the modus operandi. For example, Tal Afar and the string of small towns along the Euphrates near the Syrian border have all been seized and invested within the past three months, with efforts to build an ISF infrastructure there to prevent future terrorist rat lines and safe havens. So, this "clear and hold" is basically the oil spot under a different name.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Ballguy

I doubt our troops are well trained enough to handle modern warfare with an equivalent nation. I mean, how many weeks do they train in basic training? Correct me if I am wrong, But is it not something like 12?

__________________
The Ball Mall, LLC: Your Central Ohio Source for Used and Recovered Golf Balls.

Shek

Wrong. The United States is the pre-eminent military in the world. Some of our allies have some very good troops, but they don't have them on the same scale as we do. This is not an attempt to boast or brag, just to state that when you invest the amount of capital that the US has into an all volunteer force for decades, you will end up with a very solid product that is advanced beyond what others have to offer.

Also, basic training is just that - basic training that focuses on providing soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airman the basic skills so that they can hit the ground running when they reach their units, which is where the real training begins.

So, start your eductation here

Ballguy

In urban combat in Iraq, the kill ratio is much lower than what it should be. Is it not?

Officer of Engineers

Name me an equivlent nation.

__________________
Chimo

Shek

I haven't seen many figures on this, and those that do exist are speculative in nature since we don't track enemy body counts in an official manner. However, of the few stories that I have seen where individual units did keep their own unofficial tally, it was quite lopsided, nearing a three digit ratio in favor of American forces.

In the bigger picture, body count ratios are not important strategically, except as it matters within the context of how strategically short-sighted many Americans are about US casualties.

Shek

Here's one "box score" for you:

http://www.strykernews.com/archives/...cumentary.html

4 September 2004 - 5-20 IN killed 102 insurgents, insurgents killed 0 Americans

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/m...s_worth?page=3

Here's a company who in 11 months in Iraq had killed nearly 100 insurgents and 1 donkey while the battalion, which has four companies, suffered eight killed in their full 12 month tour.

http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Transcripts/050913a.htm

Here's an assault on Tall Afar four month ago where the 3rd ACR killed 118 insurgents while suffering a single KIA.

These are three examples - extrapolate as you wish.

FYI, US hostile deaths in Iraq just surpassed 1700.

Ballguy

It was on the history channel.

Shek

And the point is

Ballguy

Preemption of any "where did you find this"

Shek

But you provided zero stats, only an assertion. I'll agree that the History Channel is a reputable source, but I've seen a handful of mistakes on it as well. If you can talk some stats, I can provide some feedback. Until then, here's another anecdotal piece of evidence that contradicts the assertion that you are backing.

What you may be thinking of is the fact that we didn't resource enough troops to fight a counterinsurgency, with the tradition metric being a 10:1 ratio of friendly security forces to insurgents. Is this the stat you heard?

Ballguy

I think the HC meant in house to house combat, without the aid of air support and tanks, the like. I also found support for the narrow kill margin in the mte agazine of the American Legion, whatever it is called.

Cite all the battles you want. One suicide bomber killing a dozen troops does help narrow the ratio.

Officer of Engineers

How many suicide bombers do you need to kill that one dozen? What we've been seeing thus far is that most suicide missions do not succeed and very few of the successes results in that kind of carnage and most of those are against civilians.

Shek

The proficiency of the US Army in urban battle drill is light years beyond what it used to be. So, if that's what your vague recollection is, then the HC is flat out wrong.

Now, back to my original point in the discussion. The US Army doesn't maintain official body counts. It poisoned the command atmosphere in Vietnam, made a sham of integrity, and grew out of a failed attrition strategy.

We are fighting a counterinsurgency in Iraq, so the more important indicators are political progress, economic progress, and the training of the Iraqi security forces. We will continue to slay insugents by the bushel when they surface long enough to get whacked, but that is only killing the symptom. The key will be fixing the underlying problems that are fueling the insurgency.

Shek

I can only think of two examples of individual suicide bombers killing American soldiers - a pregnant female killing two Rangers during the initial ground war and the Ansar al-Islam suicide bomber at the FOB Marez mess tent right before Christmas last year, which killed 13 American soldiers, I believe. There may be a handful of others, but their individual suicide bombers don't attack Americans or other coalition members for a reason - they die without gaining effects. As far as suicide car bombers, the number of Americans killed could be as high as 114, although this statistic captures both static, roadside car bombs as well as suicide, piloted car bombs. So, your suicide bombers account for around 4-7% of the just over 1700 American servicemen killed in battle, and based on the number of suicide bombers that die trying to kill Americans, we maintain probably 1:3-5 ratio in our favor vs. suicide bombers. I guess you are technically correct that it does improve the statistic in favor of the insurgents from the 1:50-100 ratio when facing us in a hasty defense or the 1:30 ratio when they defend from a position prepared for six months. However, given the small percentage of casualties that the jihadi suicide squad accounts for, it doesn't affect the overall ratio too much.

You might want to do some more research before you just start spouting off assertions you can't even properly remember. I've provided around 5-6 empirical examples so far, and you've provided zero, so until you bring some facts to the table, we'll consider your assertion disproved.

To help you along in your research, here's a free Christmas gift:

http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf