Looking at military rhetoric through feminist lenses.

 Blog Post 2

The Department of Defense mission statement is quite succinct in "Our mission is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nations security." (DOD 2023). 

This mission statement explicitly only focuses on providing military forces and does not take in to account other nation-building tasks.  One might think that the Department of Defense will always delegate these roles to other government agencies such as the Department of State, but the Department of Defense has not always done so, the Office of Civil Operations and Rural Support (CORDS) (NARA 2023) in Vietnam was tasked with "the military, para-military, political, economic, and social process of establishing or re-establishing a local government that the people would support". Having a functioning local government could allow the local villagers to trust that the occupying government did actually mean to improve their lives and not simply kill the enemy no matter what the collateral damage. 

These hearts and minds programs would mean that multiple agencies would be involved from the Department of Defense to the Department of State to USAID. The later two agencies having a difficult time providing assistance to the local populace without adequate security. Addressing the local villagers social well being (e.g. making sure they have functioning wells and their fields are not filled with mines) may be just as useful in gaining cooperation moving forwards as simply eliminating military targets, and leaving the area. 

This new school of counterinsurgency had some notably proponents among the American military in  Afghanistan, sadly they results were similar to Vietnam. 

Below are a diagram of ways that social, political, economic cultural, and political conditions may affect counterinsurgency planning (from https://quartermaster.substack.com/p/the-quartermaster-monday-5-august). The bottom image is the Army University Press and is of a CORDS solider with a local village boy. 

  



Our story. U.S. Department of Defense. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.defense.gov/about/#:~:text=Our%20mission%20is%20to%20provide,and%20ensure%20our%20nation's%20security.

National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). The Office of Civil Operations and rural support (cords). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/civil-operations.html 

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