This is the title of a recent BBC website column penned by a former US soldier, David Donovan. Donovan was an American infantry officer trained in counter-insurgency whose job was to provide assistance “when possible” and leadership “when necessary” to the government of South Vietnam. During one operation near the Cambodian border, he found himself asking, “What are you doing here? Is this ever going to mean anything?”

 

Generally, his main brief was to accomplish two goals: “improving security by improving the fighting skills of the local militia . . . (and) encouraging development by helping local officials initiate projects meant to improve community life.”

 

His problems? “The main enemies to security were the local guerillas. The main enemy to development was a corrupt bureaucracy.”

 

Now his concern is that, with the US and other troops having made their way into two 21^st century counter-insurgency wars. –

 

“our ineptness at the enterprise has been frustrating because the difficulties reported seemed so predictable . . . I know what it means to do war in the village, and I know from the outside looking in how large US units, simply because of their size and American nature, can perturb a local culture and make friends into enemies without really meaning to.

 

And counter-insurgency is not won by firepower alone. It is won by a government attracting the loyalty of its own people.

 

If Vietnam taught us anything, it is that we can help an ally do that, but we cannot do the job by ourselves. The host government has to be interested and active in winning that basic loyalty . . . It didn't help (in the years following 2003) that our counter-insurgency programmes seemed to lack focus. It was maddening. The US military had had decades of counter-insurgency experience in Asia, Latin America and even Europe. Where were the lessons-learned manuals? Had no-one read them? Was no-one paying attention?

 

And what does he make of recent counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?

 

Not much, I fear. Our military is now out of Iraq, but in that stew of government obliquity and secular animosities, no claims of success can be made until we know what kind of government survives in the long run. The possibilities there remain troubling.

 

In Afghanistan, the war continues - but that is a place of even lower promise. The Afghan government remains famously corrupt and appears either unwilling or unable to make changes.

 

Some allied officials have tried to dismiss corruption as a cultural matter and in that way deflect calls for action. That is a mistake. Ignoring corruption now only means the Afghan government will suffer for it later. Its people will remain disaffected while its enemy operates with two strong motivations - religious fervour and ethnic xenophobia.

The mullahs in the hills and valleys declaim against our presence today exactly as they did against British forces a century and a half ago.

 

I hope I am wrong, but I fear things will not turn out well.

 

It is hard to escape the adage that the main thing we learn from history is that we don't learn much from history

http://www.bbc.co.uk...gazine-19634728

Been there, seen that, done that and agree completely with Mr. Donovan.