Monday, November 19, 2007

A real world "exercise" for counterinsurgency training

  David Gulula writes, "Who indeed has heard of field games involving the task of winning the support of the population when such a task, which, in any event, requires months of continuous efforts, has no clear built-in criteria to assess the results of the games?  And who is going to play the part of the population?" The answer to the first question is, or course, no, but I offer a answer to the second question, the disenfranchised minorities of the American ghettos.
  Although there is little danger of the violence of the ghettos becoming an actual insurgency, aspects offer similarities.  In New Jersey, not only has the state completly lost its monopoly on violence but it has accepted as fact that the gangs have a legitimate resort to violence by the authorities relunctance to prosecute.
  We have many detroyed cities between Annapolis and West Point, where there is little or no gentrification has in Manhattan.  There is Baltimore, Philadelphia, Camden, Trenton, Newark, parts of the outer boroughs, and Bridgeport to name a few.  As a nation we could both stop the de facto establishment of a permanate underclass while at the same time training our future ground combat leaders in those skills most needed in the future.  Although it's possible that we might someday face another conventional war, any country powerful enough to fight us conventionally, i.e. China or Russia, would have too much to loose economically.  Any country or force that challanges us will seek our weakness, which is clearly not conventional high technology based warfare. 

0 comments: