William S. Lind on war
Sunday, November 28th, 2004 - 6:56am
I spotted this one at William Gibson's blog a while ago, and it's proven very interesting. Excerpt from the first entry:
Quote:
Beginning this Tuesday, January 28, 2003, I will offer an "On War" commentary each week until the Iraq business is over and done. I suspect that may be awhile.Who am I? At present, I am a center director at the Free Congress Foundation. But in 1976 I began the debate over maneuver warfare that became a central part of the military reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The U.S. Marine Corps finally adopted maneuver warfare as doctrine in the late `80s (I wrote most of their new tactics manual).
In 1989, I began the debate over Fourth Generation warfare"”war waged by non-state entities"”which is what paid us a visit on September 11, 2001. The article I co-authored then for the Marine Corps Gazette was formally cited last year by al Quaeda, who said, "This is our doctrine." My Maneuver Warfare Handbook, published in 1985, is now used by military academies all over the world, and I lecture internationally on military strategy, doctrine and tactics.
In this series, I propose to look at what is happening"”with Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan and other outposts of the new American imperium"”from the standpoint of military theory. Hopefully, that will enable us all to make sense out of the bits and pieces we get each day as "news." One of the most important things military theory offers to this end is a framework developed by Col. John Boyd, USAF, who was the greatest military theorist America ever produced. Col. Boyd said that war is fought at three levels: moral, mental and physical. The moral level is the most powerful, the physical level is the least powerful, and the mental level is in between. The American way of war, which is Second Generation warfare"”there will be more on the Four Generations of Modern War in future commentaries"”is physical: "putting steel on target," as our soldiers like to say...
Linku.
First entry at the bottom, most recent at the top. There's nearly 2 years worth of material there. Reading all of it willl take a fair chunk of your time, but it's well worth it if you're interested in understanding the military situation and challenges in Iraq.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
Well, he''s got a theory, and he''s hell-bent on beating every nail with his hammer. I need to read a lot more of his ideas before I figure out whether he''s tracking reliably or not. I find some of his recent articles contain good points, but I need to read more and probably start at the beginning, not the end.
Thanks for posting this, it''s more food for thought.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
Interesting blogs.
From what I''ve read so far I would comment with two of his concepts.
Firstly his description of ""Fourth Generation War"" in a historical context, with Second being conventional attrition and Third being Blitzkrieg as if some form of theoretical progress has been achieved.
Historically the good commander has known when to use all the different forms of static and manoeuver warfare to relatively the same effect.
The technology of communication and logistics just makes the ""Fourth Generation"" tactics more attainable on the lowest levels; and relative to a mobile enemy more effective for a large army.
I do think however he shows well that the Cold War doctrine of ""power projection"" and ""weapons platforms"" are becoming redudant against a porous advesary on the ground.
To know how to combat an insurgent people you need not look at how a conventional army deals with them in history. The answer to that is and has only ever been mass slaughter.
But instead it is wiser to look at how local potentes and governors of the colonial period used local politics and economic bartering with only a smattering of force to defeat insurgency and maintain progress.
The answer lies in understanding the people, giving them some of what they want with the one hand and holding a light leesh with the other.
A common cause and enemy needs to be instilled within the ordinary people, one other than the members of the coalition!
Currently however war of infomation (or trust) has been catastrophically lost and the only sources that are trusted by the people are either expressly hostile to the West or in the case of popular Arab TV, impliedly so.
Secondly I disagree with his bleakness on the military situation in Iraq. He seems rather wretched about the whole affair, which as always needs to be taken with a pinch of suspicion. It certainly hasn''t been the most salubrious of beginnings, but with elections and political solutions are on the horizon a new front may soon open up that is far more effective then continual occupation. Now that the useful fighting is done its time to switch from ""other means"" to ""politics"".
Let us hope that some degree of political competence manages to reassert itself where long term manoeuver and firepower has not.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
The progress, from what I''ve gathered, is largely organisational. A ''third generation'', Blitzkrieg army is decentralised, allowing commanders a lot of initiative. The result being that it can respond faster to unexpected development. While a second generation army is waiting for orders, the third generation one has already taken what it feels is appropriate action. The result when the two meet being that the second generation is hopelessly sluggish to respond and generally goes splat. A fourth generation force would simply be a highly decentralised non-state military force, e.g. the ubiquitous terrarist. Or something.
He does go into it in greater detail somewhere along the way.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
I can only see how these organisational ""generations"" affect a modern (i.e. Post Levee-en-Masse) conventional army.
The techniques of delagation of command has been around since Phillip II of Macedon and existed to some considerable sophistication in Roman and Mongol warfare.
Fourth generation tactics being an unravelled ""cell"" of 5-10 people is probably the oldest of all martial groups and are usually called ""bandits"" or ""gangs"".
I see no progress from a historical context.
If however he means the evolution of squad centric battle order because of communication and coordination technology then I''d certainly agree that there is a mini-revolution going on. Commanders can now manoeuver individuals with objective based precision, it''s as if every infantryman on the field is now a Napoleonic era skirmisher!
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
He''s mentioned repeatedly that that whole fourth generation lark is largely a regression to pre-nation state warfare, so I''d think he''d agree with you on all those points.
As for communication tech causing a revolution, there''s been a fair amount of derisive snorting at that.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
Personally I am quite flabbergasted at the entire Fallujah offensive. A full scale modern urban assault conducted with the minimum losses, lightning speed and brilliant containment manoeuver.
I''m sure it will go down as an example of a text book assault going superbly to plan.
It won''t however win any friends or the war, just like Mr Lind noted.
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
Compromises like using howitzers and 500 pound bombs to hit houses in civilian areas? The Red Cross reports there are fewer than 2000 families left in Fallujah right now. That means close to 250,000 people left before the fight, which as Juan Cole speculated recently could have led to the low reported civilian casualties there. But I''m curious...In what ways have we made winning the war harder by attempting to keep civilian casualties low? That''s been a goal for the US Army since after Viet Nam, and every conflict we''ve engaged in has had that as policy. This is nothing new for our forces, and it''s not hampering us, because it''s built into our doctrine, and anyway it does not prevent the use of force as required by tactical needs. That is, we don''t balk at using area weapons at need - we just try to avoid it.
We are not fighting a stand-up war here, with fixed battlefields and set-piece assaults on fortified positions. The goal is not to kill every insurgent, nor would that help, except as a recruiting tool for the insurgency. It''s not like there is a list of them, and after we get them, it''s over. We are trying to influence Iraq to become a liberal democracy, and we''re fighting an uphill battle for that goal.
In Iraq, this is seriously wrong. The majority of fighters in the insurgency, and in Fallujah, are Iraqis. Here''s a pretty conservative, grounded look at the numbers:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_insurgency.htm
Here''s another from a professor at the National Defense University in DC:
http://www.mafhoum.com/press7/211P4.htm
But it''s not a war of attrition. If it were, you''d be right. Instead, it''s a nationalist insurgency, or several of them - it''s hard to tell. What that means is, the insurgents are on the whole fighting for their country on their home ground. And that''s a recipe for continued problems. The actual terrorists add chaos to the mix, but they also work with the Islamists, with the goal of establishing an anti-US government.
Fallujah did not break the back of the resistance, nor will the operations in Babril (sp) Province do so. In the context of a guerilla war, taking and holding ground means nothing. After all, we took the whole country in 2003 - it''s since about July or August of that year that we''ve gradually been confined to our bases, and continuously attacked in them. It''s since last Fall, a year ago, that large portions of the country became ""no-go"" zones, into which we raid and then withdraw, on the whole. And even the cities like Samarra and Mosul where we regained or never lost control were taken over for days during the Fallujah assault, as a show of strength. Our sweeps have done little to hamper the insurrection. As our operations stepped up in frequency, our freedom of movement (and thus our ability to rebuild and negotiate with local leaders) has significantly declined. Sure, we captured a lot of weapons and explosives in Fallujah - perhaps as much as 1.5% of the total that is available in Iraq.
We are not in an unmitigated disaster, but Iraq is also not anywhere near ready for elections. 90 out of 540 polling locations are closed by danger at this time. The Sunnis are looking to boycott the elections - around half of the political parties have threatened to. Assassinations of political and religious leaders continue. In October, the Shi''ites were given a fatwa that proclaimed voting a religious duty on the level of prayer and regular charity. The January vote may well elect a supermajority of Shi''ites, and possibly within that a majority of those who favor religious government. This is a good thing for us?
So...If you don''t think we are in a bad way, tell me what''s positive about the situation? What''s improved since the invasion? How did taking Fallujah help suppress the insurgency? What''s been the result for Fallujah, and for Iraq? (If you think it''s too early to judge that last, that''s fine.) How is the current situation going to yield National Assembly elections in what, 63 days from now? If the elections are not representative, and thus cut out the Sunnis, what would your reaction be to a majority Shi''ite government, when many of those leaders have stated their intent to ask us to leave immediately?
If you think we are in a good way here, I''d hate to see what you consider a mess...Please, show me the win for the US here. I''d love to hear it.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
I can deal with this in points from my perspective.
Thats basic logic. When your town is being controlled by a criminal element and you see several thousand troops assault, enclose and encircle the city for months, only the most dim of individuals wouldn''t realize that an assault is coming. Why live in a community where terrorists and those who kidnap your neighbors for ransom operate? Why dwell in an area that gets bombed and is a staging point for mortar strikes which any logical commander would return fire on?
The United States could have assaulted the town and turned it in to a wasteland, despite the negative view some folks have of our abilites, we are perfectly capable of laying waste to a vast area with little or no concern for retribution. The assaults by insurgents in the grand scale, is bordering on insignificant, the fact that we choose restraint is how we control the loss of civilian life. When the city was a problem originally, we could have said : ""Who cares, turn it in to a crater as an example"" But we chose not to. Policy aside, we choose to be civil and humane in our assaults as best we can, we leave the gloves on. Juan Cole missed the point.
To be blunt in my presentation, thats a forgone conclusion. The insurgents are baathist, former army members, paid mercenaries, islamic extremists and outsiders being commanded by terrorists. This is not some grand uprising by the people, its a conglomeration of those who have no place in a democracy or those who hate us for being on arab soil becuase we are infidels etc. Choose your extremists, they are all represented.
Considering the fact that they blow up car bombs in open air markets where no americans are present to simple cause outrage and suffering makes me question the accuracy of reports on public support on a broad scale. Afterall, aren''t some of these insurgents composed of those who ruled the nation out of fear and torture. That doesn''t add up in more than a few respects.
The fact that over time, these groups would organize, work out tactics and cooperate was inevitable. The statement the article draws from as one of it''s basis is obviously outdated in that respect, secondly, the article admits in the first paragraph that ""The exact elements attacking the US-led coalition''s nation-building effort remain unclear""
Secondly, the goal frankly, is to kill every insurgent you can find and to make it clear that:
A. You can''t wear us down or scare us off.
B. Screwing with us puts you in a body bag.
This leads to my second point. They hate us for being there, for our goals to create a democracy which would break up the 11th century designed cleric system and regional control. Anything we do will generate a recruitment tool for one group or another. The goal is to make fighting us a pointless endeavor and that means a body count. Fallujah makes a point, mess with us and you die, there is no place you control that we cannot invade and suppress. in situations like these muscle and resolve is the best response at persuading those who might join that they have no chance of survival, it thins down the assault to radicals. If you falter in this, you can watch the number of recruits jump. Its a morale issue.
Yes, it is. Even Bin Laden and his chief lofficers said they would wear us down. The battle of attrition has changed from sapping resources and supplies. In that realm they would loose handily. They are playing a game of public opinion, Bin Laden''s ""Leave us alone and you will be safe"" was meant to influence that line of thinking. They think if they use car bombs on our troops and on their own people then they can wear the public down in to giving up in Iraq and in the United States.
I hardly see any distinction between the two. If you fight for freedom, then you want your people to live and prosper, when you fight to be in control and have little or no concern for the death of your own countrymen, thats a dictionary definition of a terrorist. Insurgent, despite being used by the media, lends a level of credibility these people do not deserve. I''ve seen nothing to suggest any lofty goals other than death for political gain. anything to the contrary on their part is lip service. Real freedom fighters vote in elections and start political movements that don''t involve bloodshed as a means to scare your brother.
Again, yes, it does. You deny them a facilities to store weapons, organize and establish communications hubs, bomb factories and recruitment and training facilities. By taking and holding cities, you deny them logistics and a means to organize more effective attacks freely. You break them up in to smaller, less dense bands. You wear them down by keeping them on the move. Resistance will happen as long as extremists are available, but breaking their backs while controlling their territory keeps them in check in several regards.
All true, and most can be solved by killing those doing it.
If they wish to boycott, thats their problem and it needs to be made clear, boycotts only deny you your voice. To honor boycotts such as these is to give in to muscle, in some cases, sponsored by terrorists. The crackdowns now before the elections to break up and slow insurgent activity is the best you can do. To change the date now would be a signal that not only does pressure work, but maybe car bombings and attacks on polling places will postpone the next election, giving the terrorist strategy of a war of attrition more time to attempt its lost cause.
Already addressed.
Tough going, yes, but taking out the insurgents is the only way to break them down before elections. The sunnis need to get their collective butts in gear and I think with their fear of being under the thumb of their majority neighbors, we will see converts or positions soften as the elections draw near, their are always those willing to take your place in a democratic system, the boycotts and threats are an attempt to subvert that basic fact and we made it clear that isn''t going to be allowed.
"We do not come in peace, we come ahead of peace to secure it's arrival by force of arms"
http://earlyamerica.com/review/fall96/sons.html
Wrong again. Here''s the definition of Guerrilla war:
http://www.bartleby.com/65/gu/guerrill.html
The smart guerrilla leadership wanted no part of that and faded away into the countryside with all their goodies a few weeks ago while the stupider jihadis stayed to go meet their 69 virgins by fighting the infidels. Meanwhile, every time a civilian is killed, accidently or not, the guerrillas gain recruits from their pissed off cousins, brothers and friends. The organization reforms in a different friendly area and keeps going. The only way for us to stop them is to kill so many of them while losing so few of us that recruits stop coming in (difficult most of them believe that eating an American bullet will bring you eternal bliss in the afterlife) or by getting the Iraqi people on our side enough to alert us every time an act of terrorism is planned.
Here I agree with you, though perhaps not in the manner that you meant. The traditional kill ratio for winning a counter-insurgency is 20:1. I personally think that needs to be amended when fighting a Muslim state up to 40:1 to take the whole Jihad thing into account, but regardless, we need to kill enough of them to scare their recruits away while not losing enough of our soldiers to cause alarm at home. As a comparison, the last numbers that I read out of Fallujah were a 24:1 kill ratio while IIRC the ratio of VC to GI in Vietnam was 14:1. I personally think that we need to do better than this when we''ve uprooted hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in cities like Fallujah - how many of them will be pissed off at the ''American oppressors'' and be willing to die for Allah?
The point is that terrorism is a tactic in decentralized warfare against a superior conventional force. Declaring war on ''terrorists'' is like declaring war on Blitzkrieg, Oblique Order or Kamikaze attacks. Rule #1 in warfare is ''know your enemy'' - and as long as we continue to believe that what we are seeing in Iraq is mainly the work of nebulous ''terrorist organizations'' and not a nationalist uprisng, we will continue to see more ''terrorism''. A strong parallel can be drawn with Vietnam here - we thought that the VC were mere proxies of the evil communists in China and Russia and fighting them would be just like fighting the bogeyman of that time, the communists. We didn''t know our enemy - the Vietnamese hated the Chinese and the Russians as much as we did. They were fighting a civil war and we interfered. You should check out the documentery Fog of Warwhere McNamara goes in detail about our failure to understand the VC.
OK, I need to get back to work now, so I should stop ranting. I''m sure Robear will make a much more detailed and coherant reply than I did.
I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of sh*t. Anyone who pirates your game wasn't going to buy it anyway! -Warren Spector
You miss my point. During the entire war, we''ve avoided civilian casualties to a degree usual to our doctrine since the 80''s, not to an unusual extent. I''m saying that no, we are not hampering ourselves in our tactics any more than usual; your points support that. The original point was that we are somehow vulnerable to attacks because we are holding back. That misses a lot of what''s going on.
Remember, also, the military touted the low civilian casualty numbers as evidence that, even with 50,000 people or so in the city, they were being very careful. The fact that that number now tops out at 15,000 argues that this was indeed done with the usual caution, but not more than that.
I disagree. The elements come from tribal and religious militias organized on a community basis in all areas of the country. It''s not a grand uprising, no, but it is an insurgency based on nationalist principles, whether misguided or not (yes, people who want a dictatorship are still nationalists.) The point is that not only is a large portion of the population sheltering, feeding and supplying these guys, they have infiltrated government offices, especially the police, the Iraqi army, and contractors working for the Americans.
Don''t confuse internecine struggles with anti-Americanism. Just because we are there does not completely unite every group against us. There are factions that take advantage to kill enemies, or frighten opponents; criminals trying to disrupt rivals; attacks on the Iraqi infrastructure to pressure the government. And then we are attacked too.
Right. But that speaks more to the fact that the large number of groups and goals make it hard to determine who is in command, and what they want. Bear in mind that many of these groups are Shi''ite, the very people who suffered under Hussein. Surely you can''t argue that they want that dictatorship back? So now you have several groups that can be identified as participating, each with differing goals overall, but united in wanting us out: Sunni secularists (Ba''athists or otherwise); Sunni religious fundamentalists (Wahhabis); Shi''ite Secularists; Shi''ite religious fundamentalists (Mahdi Army, etc.); Communists (yes, they exist there); tribal groups; Kurdish Nationalists (currently allied loosely with us); criminals; and yes, some outside Jihadists and terrorists. So what is interesting is the answer to the question ""How can they possibly all agree on wanting us out, and why are there not insurgents fighting for us?"".
This goal however has nothing to do with setting up a friendly liberal democracy in Iraq. In fact, it''s a recipe for elections that will put in a regime that throws us out as fast as they can. That''s my problem with this. The classic approach to a guerilla war is a ""hearts and minds"" campaign, not grinding attacks on cities and towns. When you have to fight that way as an occupier, it means you have already lost control of an area and you are wiping the slate clean to start over. That process is not good for the hearts and minds campaigns, and if you do it enough in enough areas, you''ll never win any supporters anywhere. Fallujah is the classic guerilla war dilemma - if you don''t hit them, they have a base to work from; if you do, the people who live in the now-ruined city have been lost to you for years. If you want to see the logical conclusion of a Fallujah strategy, just Google ""Grozny"" and take a look at the Russian anti-insurgency results. The Russians have pursued the strategy you describe in Chechnya; how well has it worked?
Bin Laden is not our enemy in Iraq. Zarqawi is local to the region, and he''s associated himself after the insurgency began, not before, as an example of terrorist politics. Killing insurgents in Iraq does not affect the War on Terror (how do you fight a tactic, anyway?). It''s not Al Quaeda primarily attacking us in Iraq, it''s nationalists. You could try to kill every outside fighter, as a far-fetched strategy. But ask yourself if you can kill every patriotic Iraqi.
No ""lofty goals"" other than political gain? Name me a war that is not fought for political gain. And our ancestors, as freedom fighters, removed themselves from British political processes, and ran out or killed hundreds of thousands of Loyalists from the colonies in the space of several years. Loyalists were massacred in places like the Carolinas and New England; their businesses were shut down; they were literally run out of towns at fear of their lives by mobs and groups designed to harrass them and instill fear.
I don''t use the term ""freedom fighter"" here for a very good reason. Nationalists want not necessarily freedom for their country, but rather self-determination. Nationalism can simply be a revolt against an occupier. I don''t say these are good guys and we should leave them alone; I''m asking how killing fighters helps when their motivation is nationalist or religious, and our goals are to show ourselves as holding the moral high ground and creating a new country. The tactics contradict the strategy.
Then why does Mao say ""When the enemy attacks, we retreat?"" A guerilla force is already organized in small cells with many supply sources and caches, a distributed command network, and the ability to relocate quickly. When they are left alone long enough, yes, they will form strongpoints and create no-go areas; Columbia has seen this, as has Peru and Iraq. But these organizations are designed to stand up to the very tactics you recommend; it may suppress them a bit, but they can pop up in other areas, as indeed happened and is happening right now in Iraq. No occupier can be everywhere at once, and where we are not, they are. The sweeps will affect them temporarily, but it''s a disruption, not a destruction.
Finding them without pissing off the civilians is the problem.
The boycott is a tool to deny legitimacy to the elections, and force Allawi''s hand. If the Sunnis did not vote, and 20% of the country went unrepresented, what would we do? We can''t leave Allawi''s government in place and dissolve the new parliament, that''s de facto dictatorship. But then can we just allow the Shi''ites to put a Sharia government in place and tell us to leave? The threats of boycott relate more to a possible civil war after the election than to a passive ""we''ll stay home"" position. But then, to include the Sunnis, we''d need to guarantee them some kind of minimum representation or make other concessions - at which point we piss off the Shi''ites and the Kurds. Remember, the Shi''ites most definitely will not boycott elections, and they will oppose delays as well. Heck, they''d vote today if they could.
The Sunnis have their butts in gear; they are the backbone of the hardcore insurgents in the West and South of Baghdad. And they are not surrounded by Shi''ites; Iran is Shi''ite, but Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Gulf States are not, I don''t think. If any group wants to put Hussein''s forces back in power, it''s the secularist Sunnis.
I think you miss entirely the political maneuvering going on in Iraq between the various factions. The goal of the insurgency is to get us out and destroy Allawi''s government and it''s follow-on, unless that turns into a radical Shi''ite or Sunni government on it''s on. The goal is *not* to somehow ""deny freedom"", that''s a projection of our values onto Iraq. In that sense, I think we are fighting the wrong war here. We''d have done better buying off Fallujah and letting the elections go forward. We are acting like the insurgents simply want to prevent the vote, so we are clearing the decks for election day; in reality, that''s just one small consideration.
What I see is that we are not preparing for the long-term in Iraq. I believe we are simply trying for elections that can be described as fair, and then we are going to get our forces out in a big way. Otherwise, we''d postpone elections and make it clear that we are not going away until things are calm (this is in fact the strategy you seem to be proposing with your attrition comments.)
There are no insurgents fighting for us in Iraq, that I know of. Our support in polls has been steadily dropping, showing that we are not winning hearts and minds. Most aid organizations have left. Instead of settling in for the long run with, say, 500,000 troops and a major campaign to safeguard aid workers, employ the unemployed and rebuild infrastructure, we give every sign of wanting to hold elections and then throw the decision on how long we stay into the hands of the new government. We are preparing to abandon the last pretense for the war, that of a free, safe, democratic Iraq, and throw it to the winds with the notion that ""They held elections, and they want us out."" It''s pretty disturbing. Both of our attacks on Fallujah show that we are not geared to the long term, but rather to the elections, and getting them done as soon as possible.
We have given up on rebuilding, and we are now fighting a rear-guard action.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
This is what I feel is a reasonable summary of what''s going on, and it has an insightful look at why liberals and conservatives view these events differently. I agree that force can be useful, but I think in the case of Fallujah it''s mis-applied.
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/fallujah-report-and.html
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
Wow good link.
No matter what people say on this board about Juan Cole, that explanation about the divide is EXACTLY what happens in thes board every day.
I don't think I've ever said this sentence before, but man would I love to hump that butterfly.-- KrazyTaco
One phone call and you're melting like butter over my kettle pop. -- Edwin to Mex
2005 GWJFFL2 Champion
I''d have to say that this is the best post I''ve read to date in the politics forum... and I''m not talking the link which I''ll read later. Excellent and rational summaries from all. I find my liberal colleagues having as many valid points above as my conservative comrades.
I think Robear''s summary hits too close to truth. The main point is that we do seem to be fighting a rear guard action, and focusing on the Jan elections...and if one of the factions doesn''t buy into them (which I''m sure the loser/minority will not), then the country stays in civil war.
The hearts and minds is not being won...and therein lies the problem...and I don''t know how we should be doing it...but I do know we should be focusing more on infrastructure to help out the Iraqi''s...
Great posts/comments above all!
Unless you're running out of mana overhealing is the most worthless stat in the game. Underhealing is effectively known as "wiping".
so sayeth the Bear...
I''m right with you there. I don''t suggest solutions beyond the standard ""hearts and minds"", because I can''t think of them. What I''m upset about is that we put ourselves into this deliberately, with a set of goals and justifications that changed mightily, and now I''m not seeing a coherent, long-term strategy, or long-term goals, or even a sense that yes, we are in a war. It''s like we are not engaged any more, we are turning our faces away from everyone but our soldiers. Our national will is not united as regards Iraq, and that is not a good sign if we are really in it for the long run.
I believe we are learning the difference between what we can do with military power, and what needs to be done by other means. There''s a good article in this month''s Marine Gazette which I''ve partly read, in which the author (a Marine officer) argues that the basis for winning hearts and minds is gaining trust. My question is simply this - if we are trying to gain trust, how does Fallujah and the ""hunt them down"" approach help? If we are trying to gain a military victory, how do the tactics and operations in that help gain trust?
We can''t have it both ways, and we''ve chosen to re-engage militarily, so by default we have postponed or at worst dropped the attempts to gain trust, and gone back to fear as a motivator. That''s not the solution for the long term.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
Robear...I don''t think we are using fear as the motivator. You have but to look at the Saddam (and most mid-east regimes) as to how that works, and we are not doing that. I do think we are trying to gain trust by defeating/crushing the insurgency, and thus creating a safe environment, that would in theory breed trust.
But, I agree that the trust issue does not seem coherent, at least how we are going about it. If it was me, I''d hit the two pronged approach of overwhelming offense vs the insurgents in targets like Fallujah, and pumping in MASSIVE infrastructure $$ to help jobs/trust of average Iraqis (an employed Iraqi is in theory not a terrorist ready to blow himself up...in theory). But we seem to have become muddled that we don''t know which way is up...so I cannot argue that we are embedded in a quagmire, and the once clear goals are abstract now, with no true sense of how to get from point A to point D, since we don''t know where points B and C are!?!?
I do honestly believe, and that was born out by some of the pro-Bush Canadians that I read about with Bush''s visit to Ottawa this week, many in the mid-East support what has happened, and Bush''s efforts...I''m just not sure we have the plan to increase their trust and gain others trust to get the job done...and get out of there.
I guess the short of it is I agree with your post with the exception that I think the military strategy is aimed at providing security in Iraq, which would equal one leg of the trust triad...
Unless you're running out of mana overhealing is the most worthless stat in the game. Underhealing is effectively known as "wiping".
so sayeth the Bear...
I was contrasting Anti-Matter''s suggested approach with the ""hearts and minds"" approach, and that was a reasonable way to sum it up. After all, if your goal is to kill or intimidate all the insurgents, then you are using fear (of death) as a motivator.
Gaining trust by crushing an insurgency is somewhat paradoxical, if most of the population feels that the insurgency is nationalist or somehow on their side. As an example, would the British have regained the trust of the American rebels by crushing Washington''s forces? If the insurgency was hated by the Iraqis, then yes, I''d agree. But in that case, we''d see some of these militias siding with us - as we did in the first few months post-war, where we used them to guard pipelines and such. You''ll notice that''s not been part of the picture for over a year.
So I think that crushing the insurgency is in part what''s leading to the *decline* of trust in Iraq, as borne out by recent polls. It''s also worth noting (Juan Cole again) that Fallujah is a very important center for Wahhabis - like the Saudi Royal Family, which now has a reason to keep funding anti-American forces covertly. Hmm.
I agree. The problem is that we have lost so much trust that I don''t think it can be regained in any reasonable timeframe of occupation. We failed at this at the start, allowing most government buildings to be looted, firing the civil service, turning the military loose, and stuff like that, then as attacks increased, we did not protect the infrastructure and aid projects well enough. Now it''s a shambles. Did you know the oil-for-food program food handouts are still operating? That is, a large percentage of Iraqis still, today, depend on government food handouts to survive. That''s one of the reasons the distro centers are used for voting. I''d like to think that if this occupation was anything like successful, the economy would have moved past this point. But it has not.
I would add the warning ""...unless that security is seen as propping up an American occupation, rather than as securing to rebuild and hand over the country."" I believe that''s how it''s seen, and certainly that''s how the Shi''ite leaders are selling it. They are telling Iraqis to vote, and vote in numbers - as a means of getting the US out as quickly as possible. That''s not good for our goals in the region.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
Well, on all three points...I can''t make any case but to say you are correct from my viewpoint.
I still pray we find some moderate success and some form of democracy is born in Iraq. What gives me hope is what has happened in the Ukraine...all we can hope is to plant the seeds of democracy, and that 10-20 years down the road, those seeds will blossom - but the mid east is no Ukraine...so I don''t know...sigh
Unless you're running out of mana overhealing is the most worthless stat in the game. Underhealing is effectively known as "wiping".
so sayeth the Bear...
I''m kind of hoping we are all wrong on this.
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.