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A Peasant's Weapon, A Silly Article
By Lt Col P
Ran across this in today's WaPo-- "Weapon Of Mass Destruction," an article about the good (or not so good) old AK-47. (Apparently it's part of a new book on the subject.)
My first thought was, "Whatever the WaPo have to say about it, I'm not interested in reading," as it looked like the usual woe-is-us, too-many-cheap-guns polemic. But my curiosity got the better of me. As it turns out, I should have obeyed my first reaction. My hero Jeff Cooper was fond of saying that a rifle was the instrument of a free citizen, whereas the AK (a battle carbine) was a peasant’s weapon. Likewise, this article is for intellectual peasants, eager to grasp a deceptively simple argument in favor of a vacuous point.
Apart from some interesting background facts about its eponymous inventor, I'm not sure what the author tells us about the Kalashnikov that we don't already know. 1) There are a lot of AK-47s (and variants) out there; 2) It's inexpensive, rugged and reliable; 3) It has become the avatar of a large assortment of extremists, freaks, weirdos, yahoos and psychopaths. The author falls into two traps, the first being the fallacy of thinking that automatic fire trumps all, thus placing the AK in a position of unassailable supremacy. The second is that the bearers of this weapon are then endowed with near-invincibility against all comers.
It would be tedious to recount all of the minor idiocies in the article, but one of the more telling of them is this, illustrating the author’s first error: "It combined the best characteristics of a submachine gun (light weight and durability) and a machine gun (killing power)." The submachine gun is light, but it is not inherently durable, nor does a machine gun have a monopoly on killing power. Killing power is not some loon with a green headband spraying his AK down an alley; killing power is one Marine rifleman (or soldier) placing one round from his much-maligned M16A4 or M4 into the head of that gunman.
To illustrate his second error, he exhumes the corpse of Vietnam. The VC and NVA had the mighty AK, we had the M16; they won, we lost, so it had to have been the damn rifle. The author does rightly point out that the problem with the M16 was the ammunition, but seems to forget that the defeat in Vietnam was the result of a host of strategic, operational and tactical errors, the very least of which was the adoption of the M16.
The author does, however, go to some trouble to tell us how complicit the US is in pouring these vile instruments on the world market, fie on all of us. The CIA flooded Afghanistan and Pakistan with the things, converting placid pastoral societies into fiendish bastions of tribal violence. (Why, before we poured AKs into Afghanistan, didn’t you know that the people there were just like an Islamic version of the Amish??) And in Africa, where “The weapon became so much a part of daily life in some areas that it was dubbed the "African credit card" -- you could not leave home without it,” countless other remote peoples who had never known so much as a harsh word were also changed forever. “In Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia and elsewhere, AKs prolonged small conflicts that previously would have petered out.” Wrong again; the African has no problem scraping up any sort of weapon to carry out his small conflicts. When no AK is at hand, he’ll be happy to grab an assegai or a knobkerrie, or a nice hard rock.
And there we have the real thrust of the article: guns baaaad, America baaaad, CIA eeeeevil. Forget the Soviets, who actually produced all of the damn things. While the author points out that the Hungarians didn’t fare well against the AK-armed Soviets in 1956, he fails to mention that perhaps they’d have done better if THEY had had some of those weapons. Or any weapons, for that matter. Similarly, while decrying the fact that your basic AK is cheaper than a live chicken—how he comes to that conclusion I don’t know—he fails to mention that a cheap reliable AK is the Third World peasant’s best friend, since with it he stands a better chance against the “well-armed fighters [who] can dominate a country, terrorize citizens, grab the spoils.” We might do the poor Darfurians a big favor by dropping them a few conex boxes of AKs and ammo, rather than humanitarian rations and do-gooder hand-wringing. (When I was with the 24th MEU (SOC), operating in southern Somalia in 1993, the MEU commander had a standing order: when sweeping a village for weapons, if a household had an AK or some other functioning rifle, they were allowed to keep it, since otherwise they’d be easy prey for the khat-addled militias.)
Although I tend to agree with Jeff Cooper, there is much to be said for the AK as a fighting tool —it’s simple, reliable, effective, and cheap. Unfortunately, very little of substance is said in “Weapons of Mass Destruction."
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Comments
The Rwandan Hutus proved that the machete is a true WMD. Why, with his arm thrusting like a well oiled piston, a Hutu proved himself to be a killing machine. In a mere matter of days, the machete proved itself beyond the measure of convention weapons, including the vaunted AK-47. 800,000 Tutsis were hacked to death by a weapon more numerous than the vaunted AK-47. Those Cuban insurgents that accompanied Lt. Rowan most surely dispatched and decapitated the Spanish deserters with not AK-47s, but the ubiquitous machete.
The author must have purchased the History Channel's Tales Of The Gun for research.
Almost plagiarism.
I'm afraid that you've missed the point.
This is almost certainly a warm-up for a push for a ban on self-loading rifles in Maryland. Propaganda preparation of the political battlefield.
Those peasants with the AK47 beat the U.S. Army after they beat the French army. The AK47 was the right weapon at the right time for many wars.
The M-16 has gone through many modifications and variations, and now may be a decent weapon, but at what cost??
Considering the Washington Post, I thought the article about the AK47 was almost respectable.
There was an interview of the article's author, Larry Kahaner, the other day on NPR. I am inclined to view his remarks more charitably. Among other things, he did say that he didn't have a problem at all with private citizens in America owning firearms, even including, ostensibly, the AK47, which he spoke of with respect untinged with the kind of disgust activists who hate weapons find impossible to suppress.
He did, however, object strongly to the indiscriminate sale of weapons worldwide for purely mercenary motives. I should think that those of us in service who must face the bitter fruits of mercenary commerce would all share in such an objection.
In the end, I was motivated to purchase his book on Amazon, which contained a favorable review by Max Boot (the author of "Savage Wars of Peace" and "War Made New" -- both great works, by the way), whose endorsement makes it difficult to completely dismiss Kahaner as a raving hippy who doesn't know what he is talking about.
- Norman Lee
What makes it easy, however, to dismiss him as a raving hippy who doesn't know what he's talking about is that, well, his writing reveals that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He glosses over serious points in favor of little assertions here and there that are easily disproved.
@JimPv Where did you ever get the idea that "peasants with the AK47 beat the US Army..."
Vietnam, I suppose Turingo.
Although that wasn't really a military victory as much as it was a political one.
Tell me what the difference is, John. War is merely an extension of politics conducted by other means...
oh don't even bring that Clausowitz up in my house Joel!
Don't tell me it's not true. We lost Vietnam. And we were facing peasants armed with AK-47's.
I don't debate the quality of the weapon. Sure, the M-16 (on a nice clean firing range) is a superior weapon. Can't knock the FAL or the G3 either (my dad carried a G3 in Vietnam... swore his life by it). But, the AK does what it's supposed to do. It's simple, cheap, and reliable. It can be made in mass quantities and given away without that much cost incurred by "the motherland". Hence its effectiveness.
I also never cared for the "we won the battles but lost the war" argument either. We lost. Plain and simple. Debating that prevents us, as an organization, from truly learning the hard lessons of that war and trying to find solutions to this one. The Army seemed to learn one lesson about counterinsurgencies from Vietnam... don't get involved in them. Not a very good lesson to learn, as we're finding out the hard way now.
I hope, twenty years from now, you won't have a bunch of people saying, "we lost the war in Iraq... but we won the battles." I'd have to kick them in the nuts... hard.
LTC P,
Yes, Sir, I agree that his WaPo article wasn't the greatest. But it could have been a lot worse, hopefully his book is better (I haven't received it yet), and the whole point of the article and interview, I think, was to get people (especially the sort of people who listen to NPR) to read the book.
What can I say, I am an optimist!
- Norman Lee.
I think he overly simplifies the arguements, and comparing the AK47 20 years after its introduction versus the brand new M16 is unfair. As others have pointed out, the AK is admirable for its intended users, uneducated untrained poorly supplied peasants.
But as a revolutionary weapon, it leaves a lot to be desired. Its just a step up from the M1. Easy to produce, easy to maintain, easy to use, reliable firearm. That it has more ammo and autofire is not a huge leap (noteable, but not huge). That its culturally huge is certainly undeniable. But large scale distribution of reliable firearms has been as issue since interchangeable parts. The AK was just the next step.
The weapon that should get the nod is the AK's second-cousinm the RPG. For the first time, affordable idiot proof anti-armor (granted, light anti-armor) capability that can flood a battlefield. The RPG did for heavy weapons what the author claims the AK did for rifles; let the poor soldier at least compete (at a disadvantage to be sure) with the great power's mechanical advantage. So let's hear a little love for the RPG, and may that particular Russian engineer burn in hell (first for making such a devilish weapon, second for ripping of the Germans, just like Kalishnakov did).
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Pfft, the FAL is more popular if you go by groups that actually bought their rifles, as opposed to those the Soviets would just hand guns out to. 93 governments bought the FAL, which is more than those that actually bought the AK-47.
That's the only reason the AK ever reached such lofty "heights". The Sov's would just give the damn thing to anybody who claimed to be fightin' the West. It's not that it's a good rifle, it's that it's cheap and idiot proof.
However, when people had a choice, they most often went with the Belgian FAL, the German G3, or the US M16. Anyway, the AK is old crap when compared to it's technological descendant, the SIG 550 series. It's basically an AK, but with all the things about the AK that suck corrected (poor accuracy, bad ergonomics, crappy iron sights, accessory mounting, etc.) and the only good thing about the AK kept (reliable gas system).
As a civilian who can have almost anything I want, I sold my Romanian AK. Used the funds to buy stuff for my M4 (which I still own).