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U.S. and Israeli Anti-Terrorist Strategies

(Jerusalem Post) Gal Perl Finkel - In an article he wrote in 2014, retired U.S. general Daniel Bolger, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted (with uncommon integrity) that the U.S. "didn't understand our own forces, which are built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined counterinsurgencies. We're made for Desert Storm, not Vietnam." According to Bolger, the Surge strategy "in Iraq did not 'win' anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves." Retired colonel Douglas A. Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that in order "to terminate future conflicts on terms that favor the United States and avoid long, destructive wars of attrition, the U.S. armed forces must combine the concentration of massive firepower across service lines with the near-simultaneous attack of ground maneuver forces in time and space to achieve decisive effects against opposing forces." That statement sounded like it was taken from the IDF strategy published by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot in 2015. The writer is coordinator of the Military and Strategic Affairs program at the Institute for National Security Studies.
2017-03-22 00:00:00
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