U.S. Army Makes Soldiers "Culturally Literate" About Islam

Can't maqke thisa shit up. This is part of COIN that's getting our soldiers killed in the name of "nation building" for a people who still live in the 7th century. Worse, we're pulling out in two years so the Taliban is just holding on til then. Meanwhile, our boys bleed and die for nothing.

COIN is a crime against ourselves.

FROM JUDICIALWATCH.ORG:


U.S. Army Makes Soldiers "Culturally Literate" About Islam

November 01, 2011

In this new era of political correctness, the U.S. Army has published a special handbook for soldiers that appears to justify Islamic jihad by describing it as the “communal military defense of Islam and Muslims when they are threatened or under attack.”

Because radical Muslim groups consider Islam to be perpetually under moral, spiritual, economic, political and military attack by the “secular west” they consider military jihad a “constant necessity” and use it as a “rallying cry to resist and attack all this is un-Islamic,” according to the new Army manual.

The handbook was created to help soldiers become “culturally literate” ambassadors with sensitivity and understanding of Islamic civilization. The goal is to help them understand how vital culture is in accomplishing military missions. Military personnel who have a distorted picture of a host culture make enemies for the United States. At least that’s what the publication (“Culture Cards: Afghanistan & Islamic Culture”) says. An organization of scientists dedicated to national and international security issues discovered the new Army tool and published it on its website a few days ago.

The manual has nearly three dozen informative chapters dedicated to subjects such as Muslim taboos, the five pillars if Islam, Jihad, the Quran and Muslim festivals. There are also sections on ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and social norms and mores. The lengthy introduction defines cultural competency—awareness and sensitivity of another group—and social norms and mores in Arab countries.

The portion on jihad is especially interesting because it’s described as a wide-ranging term that includes the everyday spiritual and moral struggle to live a life submitted to God, the attempt to spread Islam by education and example, and the communal military defense of Islam and Muslims when they are threatened or under attack. Today radical Muslim groups consider Islam to be perpetually under attack by the “secular West” – morally, spiritually, economically, politically and militarily, the Army handbook says. They thus consider military jihad as a constant necessity, and use jihad as a rallying cry to resist and attack all that is un-Islamic.

At the end of each section there is a question that’s supposed to stimulate “critical thinking.” At the end of the jihad section the question is: “How can the concept of jihad add legitimacy to the claims and aims of Al Qaeda and others? It would certainly be interesting to see how most enlisted men and women, or American civilians for that matter, would answer that particular question.

The new Army manual concludes by revealing all the things that make soldiers “culturally literate.” Among them are appreciating and accepting diverse beliefs, appearances and lifestyles, understanding the dangers of stereotyping and ethnocentrism and understanding Islamic and jihadist cultures.

How many limbs must be lost in Afghanistan?

COIN kills, and maims, and destroys young American lives. And, it does not work. The whole idea of "nation building" or winning the "hearts and minds" of backward, tribal, religious savages is beyond ludicrous. We are at war with what is basically a religion driven group of people who wish to throw the whole world back to the barbarism of the 7th century under Sharia.

There is no chance, ever, of convincing these people that Western values are worthwhile as long as they clew to Islam. A religion that declares that it's members are the best of humanity and that all others are the worst cannot co-exist with Western society.

FROM JEWISHWORLDREVIEW.COM:

Jewish World Review Sept. 23, 2011 / 24 Elul, 5771

How many limbs must be lost in Afghanistan?

By Diana West

Only the U.S. military could build a defensive wall of words -- "dismounted complex blast injury" (DCBI) -- around the bare fact that single, double, triple, even quadruple amputations are up sharply among U.S. forces on foot patrol in Afghanistan. So are associated pelvic, abdominal and genital injuries, according to a newly released report.

Even the antiseptic language of the report is excruciating, as when it calls for "further refinement" of "aggressive pain management at the POI (point of injury)," or highlights the need to train more military urologists in "phallic reconstruction surgery."

It isn't management but prevention that is called for.

These grievous injuries have increased because more U.S. forces are on foot patrol in Afghanistan. More Americans are on foot patrol in Afghanistan because counterinsurgency strategy puts them there. Every story I've seen on the new amputation report makes this connection. The Associated Press account is typical: "The counterinsurgency tactic that is sending U.S. soldiers out on foot patrols among the Afghan people, rather than riding in armored vehicles, has contributed to a dramatic increase in arm and leg amputations, genital injuries and the loss of multiple limbs following blast injuries."

But what exactly this counterinsurgency (COIN) tactic is designed to accomplish remains off the radar. The fact is, Uncle Sam is asking young Americans to risk limbs, urinary function and testicles to win something not only intangible but also fantastical. They walk the bomb-packed byways of Afghanistan to win -- to "earn" -- "the trust of the Afghan people." This is the mythological, see-no-Islam quest that drives U.S. COIN strategy.

Once we finally admit that the unicorn hunters are wrong, once we stop trying to remake Afghanistan in something akin to our own image, once we start preventing Islam from remaking the West into a Shariah-compliant zone (with counterterrorism strikes, not foot patrols, as needed), these shattering body blasts to young Americans on the other side of the world will cease.

Meanwhile, "the trust of the Afghan people" is the holy grail of the Washington establishment, and, even after retiring from the military, Gen. David Petraeus, now director of the CIA, remains chief myth-maker. "Earn the people's trust," Petraeus wrote in a signal "Counterinsurgency Guidance" issued Aug. 1, 2010. From his list of how-tos -- which range from dispense payola ("COIN-contracting"), to "help them develop checks and balances to prevent abuses" (good luck with that), to "drink lots of tea" -- one order stands out, particularly in light of this week's report on amputations resulting from foot patrols.

Petraeus wrote: "Walk. Stop by, don't drive by. Patrol on foot whenever possible and engage the population."

One year later, the Army is reckoning with the carnage and after-care requirements that are consequences of this key tactic of COIN strategy. It is high time for the rest of us to reckon with them, too. Is COIN working? Is the burden of suffering that the nation is placing on the military worth the return? Frankly, when it comes to winning "the trust of the Afghan people," is there any return?

These questions didn't come up in the new report, naturally. Which isn't to say the report was devoid of political consciousness. By way of background, the report defines "dismounted complex blast injury" as a new pattern of injury. The definition is: "An injury caused by an explosion occurring to a Service Member while dismounted in a combat theater that results in amputation of at least one lower extremity at the knee or above, with either amputation or severe injury to the opposite lower limb, combined with pelvic, abdominal or urogenital injury. This definition is not meant to define a subset of injuries for policy-making decisions."

Oh, yeah?

Idiotic politeness doctrine is killing soldiers

Diana West again exposes the failed concept of COIN and it's deadly harvest of American lives.

FROM JEWISHWORLDREVIEW.COM:

Idiotic politeness doctrine is killing soldiers

By Diana West

This week, the madness of the counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN), which drives the war in Afghanistan, reached new heights -- or depths -- as revealed by two news stories.

In Great Britain, a former Royal Marine told the Sun newspaper after the inquest into the 2010 death of Sgt. Peter Rayner that soldiers were prevented from opening fire at Taliban fighters in the act of laying IEDs (crude, handmade bombs), so as not to disturb the local population.

So as not to disturb?

In Iowa, a community mourns the death of National Guard soldier Terry L. Pasker, who, along with contractor Paul Protzenko, was killed last week in yet another attack by an Afghan army soldier. DesMoinesRegister.com reports: "The U.S. military considered the area so safe that soldiers didn't wear body armor, so as not to offend the friendly locals."

So as not to offend?

Fear of offending has long been a salient feature of our culture. It's become an expression of a self-deprecating, if not self-loathing, society where the "dead white males" who brought us "Hamlet," the Constitution and the light bulb have become embarrassments for non-Western religion, the very lack of which is deemed offensive.

Since 9/11, however, this psychosis has had a new application -- the ultimate point of my book "The Death of the Grown-Up" (St. Martin's Press, 2007). In today's war zone, fear of giving offense is fatal, as noted above. But it also applies as the foundational precept of "dhimmitude," the twisted state of non-Muslims in thrall to Islam, a condition long observed and documented by the visionary historian Bat Ye'or.

The fear of giving Muslims offense is the most profound acquiescence to Islamic cultural pressures because it is driven, at base, by a conviction that self-preservation as a non-Muslim is itself offensive in a Muslim society. The fact is, Muslim societies across time and continents have forced non-Muslims to pay a tax, the jizya, to remain non-Muslims and have inflicted all manner of humiliations, physical and mental, upon them as a matter of Islamic law, or Shariah, for doing so. Where Islamic law is not officially in effect, Bat Ye'or explains, the de facto state of dhimmitude may still arise and flourish in the habitual appeasement of Islamic sensibilities to forestall the occasional violent eruption or attempt -- the odd 9/11, 7/7 or thwarted Times Square bombing. The net effect of all this appeasement, this dhimmitude, is the creeping -- galloping -- incursions of Islamic law into non-Islamic institutions and societies.

In Afghanistan, the same triggers are in place. We have an infidel army walking on eggs to placate, cajole and bribe an Islamic society into supporting what are, any way you cut them, infidel values and interests against those of the indigenous Islamic jihadist groups. To this end, Western military authorities now specifically ordain that the Quran must be revered (or else violence might ensue). They, in effect, require that Islamic customs on polygamy, on the sexual abuse of children, be tolerated (or else violence might ensue). The Danish cartoons, the Rev. Terry Jones, freedom of speech must be denounced by the highest Western military officials (or else violence might ensue). These capitulations on bedrock Western traditions of speech, conscience and human rights could occur only under a debased leadership, military and civilian.

When the fear of giving offense to the local Islamic community (by shooting Taliban or wearing body armor) trumps self-preservation (by shooting Taliban or wearing body armor), we know the military's dhimmitude is complete.

What I am describing, of course, is the execution of COIN doctrine to win Afghan "trust," also known as "hearts and minds." As Brig. Gen. Steven Kwast put it in 2009: "Victory in this conflict is about winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and engendering their trust. When the Afghan people trust us and believe us when we tell them what we're going to do, we will win this overnight."

Tell it to the Easter Bunny. Meanwhile, our troops pay the price and our military is dhimmified. Taking off troops' body armor so as not to offend friendly Afghans?

Are they kidding?

Our Sharia-Compliant Afghan War

Mr. McCarthy points out the absurdity of fighting the Taliban on the one hand and allowing a Muslim soldier to claim conscientious objector status so he will not have to fight fellow Muslims. This is, in effect bowing to Sharia law which forbids one Muslim from fighting another except in very narrow cases. An analogy would be to allow a Christian conscientious objector status to avoid fighting other Christians.

This is the first step on a very slippery slope.

FROM NATIONALREVIEW.COM:

By Andrew C. McCarthy

June 25, 2011 4:00 A.M.

Our Sharia-Compliant Afghan War

Our policy in Afghanistan is part tragedy, part farce.

In a better time, when the burdens of war were shared by an engaged nation and not shouldered exclusively by military families making up less than 1 percent of the population, the high farce that is the Afghanistan mission would have been obvious before President Obama uttered one word on Wednesday night. All you’d need to know is the story that came to light the day before.

Turns out that the U.S. government has embraced a core tenet of sharia — that archaic corpus of Islamic law that Mitt Romney recently assured us would never gain traction in America. Patrick Poole reported at Pajamas Media on Tuesday that the secretary of the army has just granted “conscientious objector” status to Pfc. Nasser Abdo, a Muslim American soldier who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. Heeding the admonitions of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood operatives, the Pentagon accepts the claim that sharia forbids Muslims from assisting infidels in a war against Muslim forces in an Islamic land.

News Flash One: The war in Afghanistan, an Islamic land, is a war waged by infidels (that would be us) against Muslim forces — the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, etc.

News Flash Two: The operating theory of the American counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is that the hearts and minds of the population of this tribal sharia society will side with us non-Muslims in a war against their fellow Muslims, most of whom are also their fellow Afghans.

Which is to say, our strategy is insane. (emphasis mine. ed.)

That does not mean our troops cannot kill a goodly number of jihadists. They have done that, and they will no doubt continue to do that as long as U.S. and allied forces remain in Afghanistan. Naturally, the number of terrorists we manage to get will dwindle as we draw down, while our diminishing numbers will make our own troops increasingly vulnerable to attack. But, sure, we can stick around forever, killing pockets of jihadists and overtaking their strongholds, however temporarily.

That, however, is not victory. It is an ever-worsening stalemate. Victory, under our chosen strategy, can never be achieved. That is why Obama, Gen. David Petreaeus, and COIN enthusiasts everywhere resist mention of the V-word.

“Victory” has been downgraded to “success,” but even success is not much discussed — and that is because, as conceived, success is a pipedream too. The idea is that we stay and hold the Taliban et al. at bay until we have finally trained enough Afghan soldiers and police officers to fight the Taliban for us. Because once we win over their hearts and minds, the theory goes, these Afghans will believe they are actually fighting the Taliban for themselves — fighting “their war,” not ours, as the heady plan was explained by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former theater commander and Kennedy School fellow who now teaches international relations at Yale. It’s all very cerebral, psychological, and sophisticated, the kind of war professors could love.

There’s just one problem with it. Okay, there’s a ton of problems, but let’s get to the big one: If we acknowledge that sharia is a valid reason not to send an American Muslim to fight against his fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, what on earth makes us think the Afghan Muslims are going to fight their fellow Afghan Muslims in furtherance of American national-security interests?

Article continues HERE.

Petraeus continues COIN nightmare

Same old, same old.  COIN kills US troops.  

FROM JEWISHWORLDREVIEW.COM:

Petraeus continues COIN nightmare

By Diana West

Anyone who believes that Gen. David H. Petraeus plans to overhaul the rules of engagement (ROEs) in Afghanistan due to the critical mass of ROE-caused casualties finally catching American's attention just wasn't listening to the general at his Senate confirmation hearing this week. But judging by both senatorial deference on the topic (Petraeus was confirmed 99-0) and a practically MIA media, that describes a lot of people.


Here's the first ROE question, submitted to the general prior to the hearing: "If confirmed, what general changes, if any, would you make to the current ROEs?" In response, Petraeus wrote: "One of my highest priorities, should I be confirmed as Commander of USFOR-A, will be to assess the effect of our ROE on the safety of our forces and the successful conduct of our mission."


"Assess," he said, not "change." But that was just the beginning. Yes, he declared there was a "moral imperative" to ensure that his "troopers" had the "enablers" (back-up firepower) they needed when they "got into a tough spot." More to the main point — that restrictive ROEs are in fact the lynchpin of the disastrous counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) that Petraeus, like Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, stands for — were Petraeus' unequivocal statements indicating that the ROE issue was "more about executing than redesign," that his overall policy review would "see if there are tweaks needed."


Tweaks?


Or, as he stated in response to one senator's question, "It's really about the implementation of the rules of engagement and the tactical directive, both of which I think are fundamentally sound."


Fundamentally sound?


"I don't see any reason to change them in significant ways," he continued. "Rather, what we do need to do is make sure that the intent behind those, the intent being to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life in the course of military operations to an absolute minimum — that's an imperative for any (counterinsurgency). We must achieve that. I have pledged to continue to do that, to continue the great work that General McChrystal did in that regard."


There's your headline: Petraeus Pledges to Continue McChrystal's "Great Work." COINdinistas rule.
READ IT ALL:

It Is Not The Same

A perceptive look at how and why we are currently handling COIN (counterinsurgency warfare) and what we need to do to match the current threat.

FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:

It Is Not The Same

May 14, 2008: Counterinsurgency so much attention since the 1960's and the creation of the U.S. Army Special Warfare Center. This renewed interest has sparked fierce debate over the kind of war we are fighting: terrorism, irregular warfare or an asymmetrical war. When we label a war a counterinsurgency (COIN), by definition, it means that we are fully aware of the type of insurgency we are fighting; do we really? With all the labels what kind of Insurgency are we fighting?

My studies of conventional war began with a healthy dose of Clausewitz, Jomini, Patton, Guderian, Rommel and a host of other famous practitioners. After having served my time in conventional units I volunteered for recon and counterinsurgency and I was taught the "classics"; T.E. Lawrence, C.E. Callwell, David Galula, and, Frank Kitson. As I progressed I became familiar with, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Bernard Fall and Nguyen Giap.

The US Army released its new counterinsurgency manual in Dec 2007. It is heavily steeped in the theories of classical COIN, which places a heavy emphasis on maximizing the legitimacy of the Host Government. Yet as a trainer and practitioner of COIN attempting to implement the newest doctrine, something is amiss from the classical approach from what is happening on the ground.

Classical COIN is based on lessons learned between the 1940's and the 1970's. Most of these insurgencies were based on either Nationalism or Anti-Colonialism or both. As a result, the strategies and lessons learned focused on how an already established, legitimate, yet, weak government could re-assert itself and maintain the status quo.

The COIN we are experiencing in Afghanistan is not Nationalistic or Anti-Colonial. Insurgents today are operating in failed states or states bordering between weak and failed. In classical COIN the insurgent takes the initiative and initiates the campaign (Some examples include: Algeria, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Columbia, Rhodesia). Over the last couple of years Coalition forces or weak governments have initiated the campaign and the insurgent is now in a position to be strategically reactive (think Pakistan and Afghanistan).

Today the paradox of modern COIN can be explained as: Classical insurgencies usually were started to disrupt the status quo and to overthrow existing governments. The insurgents had a strategy and a political agenda that was Nationalistic in its nature. Modern insurgents are now attempting to preserve the status quo where a weak government or foreign invaders represent revolutionary change. Today's insurgent does not always seek to gain control of the State (Think Kurds, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area and the North West Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

The modern insurgent does not always want to secede from the State but rather control portions of it; they could care less if the State collapses, as long as they are in control of certain areas. Modern insurgents, unlike the Nationalists of yore, really have not stipulated how and what would replace the existing structure, or government, or, articulated a "National" Strategy. Even bin Laden's alleged strategy is more akin to the structure of the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, a strategy that espouses a loose ideology but no real substance or plan on how to implement it, except thru individual acts of desperation – Suicide Bombers.

Consequently COIN becomes very dynamic and very complex, especially when the insurgent you're fighting only cares about curing God's favor through countless individual acts with the hope of eventually gaining paradise and ultimate victory.

So what do we expect of our soldiers now? Each soldier is now a ""Strategic Corporal" and requires greater patience and skill sets in a number of non-traditional military subjects. The Insurgent is fighting a "resistance" type of war and seeks to wear down the effort by constantly attacking soft targets. He thinks that we will just leave if he can continue this tactic. Our countermeasures include fighting the enemy strategy and not his ideology. Patrolling and raiding are still critical, but, this tactic has required adjustment and we are finding that more snipers, more observation posts and more surveillance must be increasingly incorporated into the intelligence plan in order to pre-empt the suicide bombers intentions.

Lastly, at risk of sounding cliché, Intelligence is critical to operations, but, intelligence preparation of the battlefield is also being modified to account for the complex dynamics of modern insurgencies -- Terry Tucker