Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 107

IGNORANT COUNTERINSURGENT
Afghan and Iraqi Security Force developmental period of 20092013; the principles it described remain in use.
6. Michael Reed, “Reflections on the ‘Realist Turn’ in Organization and Management Studies,” Journal of Management Studies, Vol.
42, Issue 8, December 2005, 1623.
7. Rancière, 18.
8. FM 3-07.1.
9. Eric B. Dent, “Complexity Science: A Worldview Shift,”
Emergence, 1, no. 4 (1999): 12. The author explores multiple mental
models and how people take them for reality while chasing after
details within them.
10. Rancière, 21.
11. Rancière, xix-xx, 4-7.
12. An na Simons, “The Military Advisor as Warrior-King, and
Other ‘Going Native’ Temptations,” in Anthropology and the United
States Military: Coming of Age in the Twenty-first Century, eds.
Pamela Frese and Margaret Harrell (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 115.
Simons explains the colonial origins of inequality in imperial versus
colonial (or post-colonial) military relationships as founded on a
paradox. If originally inferior to the parent land, how can locals later
be equals in an advisory relationship?
13. Rancière, xix.
14. Rancière, 5.
15. United States Army Training Command (TRADOC)
Pamphlet 525-8-2, The U.S. Army Learning Concept for 2015
(Fort Monroe, VA: TRADOC, 20 January 2011), 19, 21. To turn
this concept upside-down, could a group discover something
that the facilitator did not enable, nor could recognize?
16. Rancière, 4-5, 21. See FM 3-07.1, “As [foreign security
forces] master one skill, the advisor can move on to other skills
and initiate the process for the new skills;” and JP 3-22, “The
advisory team presents the instruction. Trainers/advisors …
Stress the execution of the task as a step-by-step process, when
possible. … Monitor the HN [host-nation] students’ progress
during practice and correct mistakes as they are observed;” and
TRADOC Pam 525-8-2, 22.
17. Rancière, 20 to 22.
18. TRADOC Pam 525-8-2, 22.
19. Rancière, 23.
20. Rancière, 14-15, “Joseph Jacotot applied himself to
varying the experiment … he began to teach two subjects at
which he was notably incompetent: painting and the piano.”
21. Chris Argyris, “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,”
Harvard Business Review (May-June 1991): 99-109.
22. Martin Kilduff and Ajay Mehra, “Postmodernism and
Organizational Research,” Academy of Management Review 22,
no. 2 (1997): 466.
23. FM 3-07.1, 2-1, “Local forces have advantages over
outsiders. They inherently understand the local culture and
behavior that outsiders simply lack. To tap into those advantages, advisors must resist blatant military solutions. To overcome
the temptation to do what they know and do best, whether
relevant to not to the situation, advisors must accept that they
are bound by unique situations [emphasis added].”
24. Salahuddin Osmani, Noorullah Sultani, Nasir Ahmed
Barez, and Jeremy Burnan, Afghan National Police Training
Handbook [Draft translated into English] (Kabul, Afghanistan:
NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan [NTM-A], 2011), 3. (Document in author’s possession.)
25. FM 3-24, A-7, “The natural tendency is to create forces
in a U.S. image. This is a mistake. Instead, local [host-nation]
MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2015

forces need to mirror the enemy’s capabilities and seek to
supplant the insurgent’s role … they should move, equip, and
organize like insurgents.”
26. FM 3-07.1, 2-3 to 2-4, “Objective evaluations ensure
promotion is by merit and not through influence or family ties.
… Appropriate compensation precludes a culture of corruption in the [foreign security forces].”
27. FM 3-24, 6-18, table 6-5, “Be subtle. In guiding
host-nation counterparts, explain the benefits of an action and
convince them to accept the idea as their own.”
28. Simons, 116. The author addresses the potential
rejection of advisor values from the host nation, when social
or inter-personal elements drive the acceptance of some
assistance, and the rejection of some others. Simons mentions
that tangible aid is usually readily accepted, while conceptual
changes may not be.
29. Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and
Strategic Studies Institute, The American Military Advisor: Dealing With Senior Foreign Officials in the Islamic World, by Michael
J. Metrinko, report for the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army
War College, August 2008, 2, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub869.pdf (accessed 15 January 2015).
30. Rancière, 21, “At each stage the abyss of ignorance is
dug again; the professor fills it in before digging another.”
31. Metrinko, 38.
32. Kilduff and Mehra, 468.
33. These observations are based on this author’s deployments to Afghanistan as battalion executive officer and security
force advisor team leader for an Afghan National Army battalion (2013), and a national-level and operational-level planner
for NATO Training Mission (Afghanistan) from 2011-2012.
34. Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, “Dilemmas in a General
Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 162.
35. Jeffrey Bordin, “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility: A Red Team Study of Mutual Perceptions of Afghan
National Security Force Personnel and U.S. Soldiers in Understanding and Mitigating the Phenomena of ANSF [Afghan
National Security Force]-Committed Fratricide-Murders,” U.S.
Army Central Command ‘Red Team’ Study, 12 May 2011, 1221, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB370/docs/
Document%2011.pdf (accessed 15 January 2015). Although in
June 2011 the Wall Street Journal reported that a coalition official spokesperson disputed the findings, they were later used in
the 12-01 Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) handbook,
Inside the Wire Threats—Afghanistan: Green on Blue, CALL,
February 2012, 20-22. See also, Dion Nissenbaum, “Report
Sees Danger in Local Allies,” Wall Street Journal, 17 June 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230349920457
6389763385348524.html (accessed 15 January 2015).
36. Bordin, 20-25.
37. Margo Paterson, Susan Wilcox, and Joy Higgs, “Exploring
Dimensions of Artistry in Reflective Practice,” Reflective Practice
7, no. 4 (November 2006): 455-468. The authors discuss the
reflective concept of judgment artistry that leads into how
professionals and clients might interact in a reflective learning
environment.
38. Simons, 126. “Instead, advisors always want to be
treated as at least slightly better than the natives—or, at the
very least, as a first among equals [emphasis added].” Simons
discusses the notion of going native and how misleading the
concept is in advisor applications.
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