Just finished Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, about Creighton Abrams and the post-Tet Vietnam war. The change in emphasis from enemy to population you’re supposed to be protecting is what the author says was the difference between Westmoreland stomping around with 600,000 troops and making little headway, and Abrams drawing down yet dealing far more significant blows to the VC and NVA. It didn’t get much into the Phoenix Program or the other efforts to decapitate (literally, if necessary) the VC infrastructure, but it was included as part of the plan.

What I found interesting was the corollary between population security as Abrams’ goal in 1969 and population security being Petraeus’ spanking-new strategy for The Surge in 2006-7. Considering that population security is the goal of McChrystal’s COIN strategy, it could work if it were done smart enough and hard enough. McChrystal still has a Cambodia-analogue in Pakistan, and it’s really hard to kill off a guerilla force when they have an arbitrary line beyond which they can retreat and you cannot follow. The French couldn’t do it, the US couldn’t do it initially and the 30km incursion into Cambodia in 1970, while helpful and probably buying the RVN an extra year, was insufficient. Predator drones won’t eliminate the safe havens, either.

The question before the press is “Should the President fire McChrystal?” In other countries, the converse question is also a legitimate concern. It is a useful aphorism that “military coups occur when the military culture is more effective than the civilian culture”. I don’t think this is the time to worry about Stan McChrystal pulling a carbon-fiber knife on the President and declaring himself the New Maximum Leader, civilian control of the military will survive an effective combat leader being discharged by an ineffective governmental leader. But the civilian side needs to catch up, and fast.