The Link compares Top Down (Dropping Bombs from Above) nation building to force citizen compliance to Bottom Up Assembly to win citizen compliance through benefit that the government provides....other than the benefit of not being bombed from above.
Astounding conclusion as to how to win Hearts and Minds!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_hearts_and_minds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_and_Minds_%28Vietnam%29
Hearts and Minds will follow quote
The initial link cites the difference between Marines in I Corp and Army responsibility for area of operation. Its description of the difference is accurate in my judgment. General Lew Walt addressed newly arrived officers, I was one of those, and spoke of his strategy. Pacify one village at a time in an expanding circle. Pacify it with positive benefit offering of what the government could do for the people. Not what the people could be forced to do for the government by force.
Later I went back into Danang from my first ship. The Army had taken charge. It was a different feeling. There was no off base in town liberty in Danang while the Marines were there. The Army was free to spend off duty time in the city.
General Walt later either said or directly implied in more gentle self judgment terms that he had failed in his mission to pacify his area of responsibility. If you ever looked General Walt in the eye you would know that his self judgment was as strong and true as his leadership of the Marines in I Corps. He was responsible and accountable in the finest sense of honor. He was responsible for the application of the fisted glove as well as the rose in the fisted glove. In my judgment he administered both to the best of his ability in the circumstances which were extremely difficult.
I often think of potentially key people that I would put in charge of key positions to get the most vital jobs done.
General Lew Walt would absolutely be my first choice as our nations Chief of Police. I worked for the Admiral in charge of NSA Danang but we all worked for General Walt. I am not proud of what we did in the big picture from the top down but proud of what General Walt's leadership objective of building from the bottom up and execution of strategy and tactics that served that other approach to the problem of war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Action_Program
While my assignment was offloading cargo in the Danang harbor I managed to go out to a village on one of these Combined Action Programs with a dentist. He pulled old blackened teeth. There were so many in line he showed me how to do it. It must have hurt, no pain killer administered, but the toothless smiles after I pulled them told me the pain (if there was some or much) was worth it. I did something beneficial for the person.
I returned to Vietnam 30 years later. If we had done something beneficial from the bottom 30 years before would things have been any different. It seemed that the government was doing more that was beneficial to the citizens than it was dominating their compliance from the top down. That "something more" might have only been marginal but it was something more than the top down approach and to that extent it was working.
Maybe that is all it would have taken for return on investment of different motivators an lives.
Writing this about General Walt connected my thoughts to General Smedley Butler after reading the background of the Marine's Combined Action Program. While it may have had that official designation in Vietnam it was not a new strategy of war fighting for the Marines. General Butler is credited with applying it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
They fought the war with a rose in the fisted glove.
Where are such leaders today?
There are no roses carried by a Predator.
There are no heroes at the top like Generals Smedley and Butler where things go from the top down through applying winning strategies and tactics from the bottom up to win hearts and minds. There are no Generals or others in the military to speak out as I have addressed in a prior blog entry.
There are few heroes on the ground to speak through their actions of the better way to fight like Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr. I am sure that they are out there but like WO Thompson their heroics are not heralded because that is not the way the USA fights its wars by someone firing on our own troops to do the right thing. By someone coming forward to expose torture or the dirty secrets of how we really fight out wars and why. Where do we get such men..and women?
"In 1998, 30 years after the massacre, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier's Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy.[1] Thompson and Colburn also returned to Sơn Mỹ in 1998, where the massacre took place, to meet with survivors of the massacre. In 1999, Thompson and Colburn received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award."
Heroes that have the "Right Stuff" do the "Right Thing" at either from the top down or the bottom up. today are ostracized. Outcast.
Heroism of this nature is an equal opportunity virtue for those who do not question the price.
Some die in war.
Others make a killing.
https://mic.com/articles/90503/the-story-behind-the-iconic-tank-man-photo-that-changed-the-world#.cVFAgPdHE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
Trump is a hero to many. Why do we get such men....and women?
Crazy world.
From the link that kicked off this blog entry:
"Understanding whether heavily top-down counterinsurgency strategies are likely to achieve their desired objectives remains policy-relevant. The culture of the US Armed Forces has changed only slowly since Vietnam (Long 2016). Moreover, while targeting has improved significantly, insurgents have responded by embedding themselves more tightly amongst civilians, and it is widely accepted that heavy reliance on air power will lead to civilian casualties. Additionally, politicians continue to advocate a top-down approach. Speaking in Fort Dodge earlier this year, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said, “I would bomb the [expletive] out of them [ISIS]. I would just bomb those suckers … I would blow up every single inch”. According to the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, speaking in New York in 2015, “[i]t is time to begin a new phase and intensify our efforts [air strikes] to smash the would-be caliphate”. Lessons drawn from the Vietnam War underscore how intensively focusing on top-down strategies could pose challenges to achieving US objectives, particularly when insurgents are tightly embedded amongst civilians as they are in the Middle East."
.......Melissa Dell, Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and Pablo Querubin, Assistant Professor of Politics and Economics, NYU. Originally published at VoxEU.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/08/what-can-we-do-to-end-the-isolation-of-whistleblowers.html
"Can we as a society create a way to support whistleblowers better than we do? Surely that wouldn’t be hard! Instead of leaving whistleblowers to struggle in isolation, we should be giving them medals of honor for acting in the collective interest to stomp out as much phishing as they could. It’s very strange that we reward the accumulation of capital by any means necessary, and the quest for justice hardly at all."
Can we as a society create a way to support truth-tellers. Can we define truth and honesty and honor those that defend it, sacrifice for it and proclaim them heroes? Can those heroes be at the bottom of the top down breakdown as well as at the top or anywhere in between. Not everyone can grow up to be the President. Everyone can be a hero in terms of honesty and courage but that of course is a matter of what we define it to be. The World Wide Web amongst other things gives the opportunity for almost everyone at the bottom to stand in front of a tank.
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