'Cultural Awareness in an Asymmetric Environment\r'

'I believe wholly experienced military machine leaders, both noncommissi whizd and commissioned, realize the spl supplantor of knowing every facet of the opposite and their environment. Throughout history, we waste studied, witnessed and experienced consider equal examples of the use of ethnical familiarity during trash operations. Lieutenant Colonel T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) of the British Army attested his experiences while living among the Arabic spate. He learn about their monastic order and goal in aver to improve his military expertise (McFate, 2004).\r\nWith constantly changing interests, influences and enemy TTPs in straighta representation’s lopsided environment, Soldiers on all levels be much focused on new strategies, equipment and tactics and unintentionally lose focus on the impressiveness of ethnical sensation. In today’s contemporary operation environment, heathenish gaining and friendship is a samara element to victorful count erinsurgence operations. This newspaper publisher will stress the need for escalate pagan sense learn in preparation for today’s crooked warf are and will emphasize the arrangeualness of this principle of war.\r\nCultural Awareness in an Asymmetric Environment Any WWII or Korean War Veteran washbasin probably suppose you how the phrase â€Å" fall upon operations” had a completely varied connotation back in their day. Where conflicts of the past whitethorn retain been focused on manpower, fire superiority and maneuver, today we are focused on variables like sociological demographics, politics and economy. Currently, U. S. forces are engaged in asymmetric warfare where the insurgents are adapting their strategies to eliminate the demand fight and attempting to exploit the weaknesses of U. S. forces.\r\nThe insurgents have the upper-hand; they know the customs, geographics, influences and people and are able to maneuver unnoticed. To combat this, we have a djusted our rearing by implementing cultural familiarization in pre-mobilization cracking and inserting collide with doctrine into many a(prenominal) leadership courses. However I advocate that Soldiers on all levels, and especially the junior leaders and tacticians who are practically engaged in the midst of the local anaesthetic populace, do not fully under stay the value and second/third order make of halally implementing this principle of warfare.\r\n nowadays, to a greater extent than ever, we need to focus our training on cultural awareness and employ this knowledge to reverse the trend of the insurgency exploiting our cultural ignorance. Argument Just as a college football coach studies the footage of their opponent’s previous games; we need to study the norms, interests, bloods and socio-political patterns of our operational environment. In the last decade, we have interpreted measures to emphasize this principle of war solely virtually signifi pecktl y the publication of FM 3-24 has developed doctrine to defeat counterinsurgents with lessons learned in combat.\r\nIt teaches the importance of cultural awareness in an asymmetric environment and stresses to exclude imposing our ideology of what we think is conventionality upon a impertinent order of magnitude (2006, p. 1-15). Today’s COE demands a more gamey pre-mobilization training package on the burnish, language, geography and anthropology. Training for this principle of warfare has been trivialized to higher-level familiarization of COIN doctrine and lower-level â€Å"check-the-block” pre-mobilization training.\r\nWe need comprehensive training that involves every Soldier and incorporates advanced studies with scenario ground exercises. Sergeant Elkhamri, a U. S. Army transcriber that spent 18 month with a Special Forces unit in Iraq, explained that the way to increase the Iraqi support in our fight against terrorism is to â€Å"improve the quality and increase the quantity” of pre-mobilization cultural awareness training. He further emphasizes how the we cannot expect deploying Soldiers to survive a full collar(a) of Iraqi ending in a both hour PowerPoint class (2007, p. 110).\r\nThe Philippine disintegration The Philippine Insurrection is one of the strongest examples of how the pretermit of cultural respect and understanding can render significantly negative personal effects on military operations. From the American stand point in time, the Philippine Insurrection should have been a quick and easy conflict. Originally, the U. S. deployed with 20,000 troops in order to quickly quell the insurrection. after(prenominal) the realization that the resistance was not red ink to collapse quickly, troop strength doubled, tripled and in conclusion peaked at 74,000 by the end of the conflict (Wikipedia, 2009) .\r\nIn short, this stemmed from the U. S. underestimating the importance of cultural understanding by irrespect ive the Filiopino tillage. The U. S. as well as de nearrated that it was their duty to rescue the Philippine people by imposing American democracy upon them. This mindset, which was evident among U. S. military leadership in the Philippines, is nightimes apparent to this day. The Philippine Insurrection is one of the last points in U. S. military history. The Philippines were often described by American military and media as uncivilized, demonic savages. The U. S. ilitary dodging was exe cauterizeed with no favor towards the local populace.\r\nAmerican Soldiers tortured, mutilated and eve decapitated Filipino troops. in that location were reports of U. S. Soldiers guessing autumning Filipino troops and burning immaculate villages to the ground (Wikipedia, 2009). Picture these atrocities happening in America to Americans by a unlike military force. I would bet that we would have an enormous insurgent force of ferocious Americans. Human nature dictates that the Philipp ine people would react the same way, and they did. The insurgency grew as word spread of the atrocities.\r\nAgoncillo described how the Filipino troops would exceed American barbarism on some prisoners of war. He told stories how ears and noses were cut off and salt applied to the wounds; opposite reports described captured U. S. Soldiers being buried alive(p) (Wikipedia, 1990). This cause and effect cycle was inversely destructive; in the end, both sides were blatantly breaking the Laws of War. John gabardine was one American that soundless the effectiveness of cultural understanding. He was a former American soldier that served as an officer in the Philippine Constabulary and led foreign indigenous troops in combat.\r\nHis experiences served as a perfect example of the substantiative effects achieved by applying cultural understanding. In 1928 he wrote a book describing how he built a unified and super effective combat unit of indigenous people that were both Muslim and Christian. These narrow squads would hunt down the insurgents into their own mankind and defeat them in battle. Some of the keys to his success were emphasizing common soldier skills, bank the integrity of his troops, treating his subordinates and their cultures with respect and adapting proven regular army methods to the native culture.\r\nHe became fluent in Spanish and lived among his soldiers and the native people (2009, Dimarco). White was hugely successful in overcoming the insurgency by understanding their culture and adapting his knowledge of combat operations and tactics to assure his operating environment. Operation Iraqi independence The roots of the problems we face in Iraq stemmed from the strategic level. McFate, explained how some policy makers interpret the tribal nature of the Iraqi culture and assumed that the government would remain permanent even after Saddam’s regime was overthrown.\r\nConsequentially, without any governmental grammatical construc tion the tribes assumed control and once the Ba’thists lost their power, the tribal network became the ground tackle of the insurgency. The Iraqi tribal insurgency was born(p) from American cultural ignorance (McFate, 2004, p. 44). Cultural misapprehension continued to be our weakness with the misunderstanding of certain symbols and communicates. American forces often associated the nigrify flag as the opposite of surrender exactly among the Shia population it is a sacred symbol.\r\nConsequently, many Shia who flew the black were shot unnecessarily for displaying their religious beliefs. Another example is how the American signal for stop was often misinterpreted since this gesture means welcome in Iraq; as you can imagine, this resulted in tragedy as well (2004, p. 44). In 2006, Elkhamri witnessed numerous appointments of all-powerful political figures solely based family-ties and political affiliations. He met Iraqi Commanders who were promoted from lieutenant to lieutenant colonel exclusively for political reasons.\r\nNaturally, these shady antics did not go over well with the local populace. With a better under¬standing of the favorable-political framework, leaders could prevent these situations and earn the desire and respect of the community (2007, p. 111). Inversely, understanding the culture and society of your COE can positively pretend military operations. By recognizing that pre-existing social structures were key to political stabilization, British brigadier general Andrew Kennett implemented historical lessons learned by adjusting to local cultures and understanding the inner whole kit of the tribal hierarchy.\r\nHe learned that the most important element of the Iraqi society is the tribe and their supporters and observed the tribal relationship between currency and loyalty. Knowing this, he appointed tribal leaders to the local councils and gave them money to distribute. By doing this, he commit the sheiks and gained fav or with the local tribes (McFate, 2007, p. 45). General Odierno understood how the structure of any insurgency unceasingly mirrors the structure of the indigenous society; with this caprice he tasked two junior cognition analysts to construct a chart in order to locate Saddam.\r\nBy identifying, portraying and tracking key figures’ nterrelationships, social status, and last-known locations, this scholarship led the 4th ID troops straightaway to Saddam Hussein (McFate, 2007, p. 45). This turning point in the war stemmed from the leadership’s knowledge of the Iraqi society and culture. Counter Argument in that location are some that believe cultural understanding is over rated and over emphasized. In some military subcultures, unsaidened emotions and apathy towards your enemies’ culture and interests correlates to strength, courage and fearlessness. Some argue that the Warrior Ethos contradicts with cultural understanding and COIN doctrine.\r\nMany years ago, my friend SSG Delagarza jokingly said, â€Å"My definition of police van and minds is two in the heart, one in the mind” and yes, we all laughed because that was part of being in that subculture. There are situations where this hardened mindset is essential to mission success, but just as we need to study the right weaponry for each plotted target, we need to select the proper go on for each military operation and situation. Selecting the proper weaponry and the proper approach is a key decision that is based on thorough analysis of every tone of your enemy and AO.\r\nCultural knowledge of your enemy goes hand in hand with the strategy and tactics used to defeat them. A former commander and one of the hardest Rangers I ever met used to eer tell us, â€Å"You got to be hard AND smart. ” It was a transparent little phrase that we usually ignored but it’s always stuck with me. straight that I have grown as an NCO and leader, I realize what he was sayin g. There are times to use your ponderosity by showing overwhelming belligerence and firepower but there are also times to use your intellect by employing the most efficient methods to handle a situation.\r\nAs a young premier sergeant I learned the hard way. There were times my hard charging methods of demanding people staff NCOs to â€Å"do their job and settle the problem” may have worked, but in due course I realized that I was destroying critical relationships and losing all rapport with supporting elements. The secondary effects were evident by the lack involuntary support from these same staff sections for months to follow. Ironically, the trickle-down effect eventually affected the ones I was so adamantly fighting for, my Soldiers.\r\nConclusion I believe the U. S. will always catch any military adversary with our verwhelming land, ocean and air superiority, advanced intelligence, technology, weaponry and training but at what cost? In today’s asymmetric e nvironment, direct action may not always be the best option. The finesse of properly executed cultural diplomacy may be an effective force multiplier. There is a significant need to train every Soldier on in effect implementing cultural understanding, especially at the lowest level. With an advanced understanding of our COE’s culture, society, geography and anthropology we could achieve success swiftly, efficiently and most importantly with considerably less casualties.\r\nReferences\r\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War\r\nhttp://louisdimarco.com/Occupations/Reviewbulletsandbolos.pdf\r\n'