22 Jan 2010, Posted by admin in Thoughts,Vincent, 1 Comment. Tagged Thoughts, war
What is it good for?
Photography By Vincent Barre
In the immortal words of Jackie Chan ‘What is it good for?’
War like so many forces in our society, is an unavoidable constant. Much like the wind, the rain, and January bus fare increases. As the old saying goes…’What your generation needs laddy, is a good war’. Well we wouldn’t want a generation of drunken louts running amok now would we?
For my university dissertation I took a look at how we currently engage in counter-terrorism and specifically how to improve the situation on the ground in urban conflict areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq. After 14,000 words, a few sleepless nights and one too many Pro Plus pills the solutions were as difficult to stomach as the problem.
Things used to be so much easier, you’d draw a line in the sand and the guy with the biggest stick, knife, gun, or nuke would probably win the war. Problem is, when your fighting in the equivalent of Brick Lane Market, the good guys dress the same as the bad and your intelligence channels are as patchy as the electricity supply.
As a convoy of humvees plough down what used to be Camden High Street it is easy to tell who the Army is but where is the enemy? The enemy is dustbins, piles of rubbish, boxes, and parked cars. IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) have shown themselves in this war to be a low-cost and deadly effective means of targeting troops in urban areas. As the American Up-Armoured Humvee programme illustrates, money is no longer the panacea to the cancer. To better protect their troops abroad the US Military initiated a costly and slow programme in retrofitting several thousand humvees with a blast plate under the chassis to better deflect bomb blasts away from its occupants. Its like taking a cake to your own birthday party but not bringing the candles as you don’t want to look sad. Rather than ploughing countless millions of dollars into a programme that at best would only ever provide a limited fix rather than addressing the problem outright the military shot itself in the foot.
Problems as complex as this necessitate clarity, honesty and perseverance in solution driven thinking. It would have been far easier to alter driving patterns, convoy deployments and dare I say it, actually integrate with the local population. Ditch the clandestine relics of symmetrical warfare when we were geared up to fight the Russians, Chinese or any other large, slow military force. Our challenges are civilians populations housed in urban environments, utilising improvised weaponry made from cell phones and aging C4. At the end of my dissertation, I reached one inescapable truth to winning this modern war and the others that will follow. Co-operation. Co-operation is the only clear way to win support both publicly and politically, solidify intelligence channels on the ground, and get the job done with the minimum amount of casualties. As hard as it is to do we need to ditch our traditional nation state military mentality and improve upon our exploited weaknesses: slowness to react, poor quality intelligence, and ineffective high-tech gadgets and gizmos.
Smart bombs are of no use when your enemy hides in shadows.
