Terrorist Trail: Backtracking the Foreign Fighter » (82 illustrations)

After 28 years of commissioned and noncommissioned infantry service, John Poole retired from the United States Marine Corps in April 1993. While on active duty, he studied small-unit tactics for nine years.

In the 13 years since retirement, John Poole has researched the small-unit tactics of other nations and written six other "tactics manual supplements."

As of September 2006, John Poole had conducted multiday training sessions (on how to conduct 4th-Generation Warfare at the small-unit level) for 38 Marine battalions, nine Marine schools, and seven special-operations units from all four U.S. service branches. He has been stationed twice each in South Vietnam and Okinawa. He has visited Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, North Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Tibet, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Russia, East Germany, West Germany, Morocco, Israel (to include the West Bank), Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, and Sudan.

Author comments
If there is a Chinese/Islamist coalition, then the U.S. has a bigger problem than is being publicly acknowledged. If that coalition is additionally using proxy-applied 4th-Generation warfare (that which occurs in martial, political, economic, and psychological arenas simultaneously), then the U.S. is very close to losing the first two rounds of an extra-low-intensity global conflict. It will continue to fare poorly unless it can somehow advance beyond its own favorite style of warfare—a "high-tech" variant of the 2d-Generation. The current conflict is one in which providing basic services to an afflicted people is more important thankilling the terrorists among them. The most difficult-to-furnish of those basic services is local security. Without it, the communists and Islamists will simply win all the elections. It cannot be generated by motorized patrol or well-directed bomb. It can only be provided by a few U.S. service personnel who live among the indigenous soldiers and police in each neighborhood or village. Instead of occupiers, they become viewed as foreign-aid workers in the law enforcement sector. At present, U.S. infantrymen receive no unconventional warfare training. Therefore, they lack the prerequisite "man tracking" and "escape and evasion" skills they would need to safely accomplish such a mission. This type of training costs nothing. Perhaps that's why "learning to operate the new equipment" has always taken precedence.

This book contains a paradoxical, yet fully feasible, blueprint for winning the "War on Terror." To fully appreciate it, one must temporarily shelve any military, political, economic, or religious preconceptions.

g2-forward.org

Poole provides the insight we need to win the war on terror.... [S]mall near-autonomous units of truly light infantry ... [must] play the role of police force rather than occupiers.