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Richard Erlich: Are we ready for more casualties in Afghanistan?

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12:02 PM Friday, July 23, 2010

I’ve got a question for you, a kind of thought experiment.

How would you react to a large bumper sticker that read “SUPPORT OUR MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN (even if that means higher casualties)” — with a note that “‘Casualties’ means killed or missing in action, captured, wounded, or maimed”?

It’s going to tick off a lot of people, isn’t it?

Well, the American Coalition’s mission in Afghanistan is now very much counterinsurgency (“COIN”), and counterinsurgency means waging war carefully and dangerously for the wagers. It means what a lot of critics will see as “fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.”

Old civilians can think of counterinsurgency in terms of old-fashioned police work — in the ideal of Jack Webb’s “Joe Friday” on “Dragnet” — where cops were expected to return fire if a suspect shot at them, not shoot first.

Just multiply the fire power and make it that U.S. fighters will need to wait until things get really dangerous before calling in artillery or high-lethality air support.

No more “We had to destroy the village to save the village”; the COIN ideal is to live in the village, protect the village, and take risks alongside the villagers.

I’m not the heroic type myself and after, say, two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, I’d personally tend to direct a significant volume of automatic-weapon fire at any 14-year-old local I thought threatened me or my buddies. And I’d need very strong “command and control” to keep on mission and protecting Afghans, rather than blowing a number away.

Counterinsurgency requires strict discipline and a lot of courage.

A counterinsurgency mission also requires a lot of patience from the American people, and maybe our redefining our ideas of courage and manly behavior.

Movies nowadays, for one example, don’t celebrate Joe Friday types holding their fire and endangering themselves, rather than endanger a noncombatant.

Winning in Afghanistan means outmaneuvering and outlasting an insurgency and so truly does mean “winning hearts and minds.”

Guerillas are the fish swimming among the people, and they must be denied the people’s support. Ramping up the figure of speech, the guerillas and terrorists are the alligators who will try to rip out your genitals while you’re trying to drain the swamp.

If you support the Afghanistan mission, prepare — in the short and medium runs — for significant Coalition casualties.

If you don’t want a lot of Americans and our allies killed, wounded, captured or maimed, consider alternatives to COIN in Afghanistan: Perhaps counter-terrorism (a smaller operation), or with all deliberate speed — in the sense of the term before Brown v. Board of Education made it a sick joke — just getting the hell out. If you can’t stand the heat and humidity, you should get out of the swamp, and take your chances with the occasional rogue alligator following you home.

Dropping an image more appropriate to Vietnam than now: If you want to protect Americans, send our troops into combat only if we really, really need to. Indeed, to win as much as is winnable in Afghanistan, the best strategy may be helping the Afghans as much as we can through international agencies — from a distance.

Terrorists will be attacking Americans no matter what; we don’t have to make it convenient for them.

Richard D. Erlich is a professor emeritus in English at Miami University in Oxford. He is retired and lives in Ventura County, Calif.

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