How Can We Still Not Understand that Our Strategy in Iraq Cannot Work?
In Rowan Scarborough’s article, “Iraqi Forces Concern US Commander," in the October 16th Washington Times, he writes that General George Casey, commander of US troops in Iraq is concerned that Iraqi troops cannot take over the job of fighting insurgents fast enough.
The US strategy in Iraq appears to be to create an Iraqi military in our own conventional image with just a smattering of unconventional warfare instruction thrown in for good measure. Insurgency is not a war of tanks, helicopter gunships, and airplanes. The insurgents have none of these and by all accounts, they still have the initiative in this war.
The insurgents understand some key issues that we, and the Iraqis we are training, do not. First and most important, they understand that this is a political war of ideas and will—not a war of attrition and firepower as the US has been trying to wage it. That is like bringing a baseball bat to a golf game.
They believe in their jihadist cause and that the enemy of their people is the West and the US. For all sorts of reasons, ethnic, religious, and historic, they enjoy a significant amount of popular support as well. The Iraqi troops we are training are not so sure about the new Iraqi federal government, our western ideals of democracy, and they can see as well as anyone else that the US military is getting multiple bloody noses on a daily basis. Why would they be in a hurry to stand up and fight using a strategy that does not appear to work?
In his article, Scarborough points out that some military analysts believe the past three months of intense violence may be designed to influence the US midterm elections in favor of candidates who advocate withdrawal. Other military analysts add that it is in an attempt to weaken our will and erode US public support.
General Casey was quoted as saying, "I would also say that we continue to make progress with the Ministry of Interior and police forces….Now, the police have a bad reputation in Iraq, and from my view, that's undeserved. Broadly, it's undeserved."
These experts are quite correct, because the enemy understands that this is a political contest for the continued support of the Iraqi population and the continued erosion of popular support for the effort back in the US. Anything they can do to eat away at support for the government, create questions about the reliability of the police, demonstrate the incompetence of the Iraqi army, and impede the effectiveness of the greatest military on earth works greatly in their favor.
Does this sound familiar to anyone over the age of 40? We had the exact same issue in Vietnam where the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was hesitant to engage the enemy for the same reasons. We created a less than motivated military in our own image supporting a questionable government that faced a highly motivated and well-organized enemy that also enjoyed the backing of significant external sources.
And, like Vietnam, we will eventually pull our troops out of Iraq given the intensive pressure growing to do so already. Then we will watch on TV as the Iraqi government falls and the country collapses into a more violent civil war—unless we do something to change our strategy now.
We should not build a military and police force in our own image; rather, we should implement an unconventional strategy that builds faith in a workable Iraqi federal government. It should create a smaller, more reliable police force trained to deal with insurgents at the local level where they operate. All insurgencies are political, and all politics is local.
We must reengage the leadership of the various factions that are still open to it and work with them to establish local security while monitoring to ensure that other ethnicities and religious groups within those areas are also protected. We can only do this in a small section of Iraq at a time, but there is no other alternative that allows us to pacify an entire country. If we offer them the support and resources they need to be secure and prosper while standing ready to hold them accountable for any unwarranted hostility, we can stabilize Iraq one area at a time.
The US strategy in Iraq appears to be to create an Iraqi military in our own conventional image with just a smattering of unconventional warfare instruction thrown in for good measure. Insurgency is not a war of tanks, helicopter gunships, and airplanes. The insurgents have none of these and by all accounts, they still have the initiative in this war.
The insurgents understand some key issues that we, and the Iraqis we are training, do not. First and most important, they understand that this is a political war of ideas and will—not a war of attrition and firepower as the US has been trying to wage it. That is like bringing a baseball bat to a golf game.
They believe in their jihadist cause and that the enemy of their people is the West and the US. For all sorts of reasons, ethnic, religious, and historic, they enjoy a significant amount of popular support as well. The Iraqi troops we are training are not so sure about the new Iraqi federal government, our western ideals of democracy, and they can see as well as anyone else that the US military is getting multiple bloody noses on a daily basis. Why would they be in a hurry to stand up and fight using a strategy that does not appear to work?
In his article, Scarborough points out that some military analysts believe the past three months of intense violence may be designed to influence the US midterm elections in favor of candidates who advocate withdrawal. Other military analysts add that it is in an attempt to weaken our will and erode US public support.
General Casey was quoted as saying, "I would also say that we continue to make progress with the Ministry of Interior and police forces….Now, the police have a bad reputation in Iraq, and from my view, that's undeserved. Broadly, it's undeserved."
These experts are quite correct, because the enemy understands that this is a political contest for the continued support of the Iraqi population and the continued erosion of popular support for the effort back in the US. Anything they can do to eat away at support for the government, create questions about the reliability of the police, demonstrate the incompetence of the Iraqi army, and impede the effectiveness of the greatest military on earth works greatly in their favor.
Does this sound familiar to anyone over the age of 40? We had the exact same issue in Vietnam where the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was hesitant to engage the enemy for the same reasons. We created a less than motivated military in our own image supporting a questionable government that faced a highly motivated and well-organized enemy that also enjoyed the backing of significant external sources.
And, like Vietnam, we will eventually pull our troops out of Iraq given the intensive pressure growing to do so already. Then we will watch on TV as the Iraqi government falls and the country collapses into a more violent civil war—unless we do something to change our strategy now.
We should not build a military and police force in our own image; rather, we should implement an unconventional strategy that builds faith in a workable Iraqi federal government. It should create a smaller, more reliable police force trained to deal with insurgents at the local level where they operate. All insurgencies are political, and all politics is local.
We must reengage the leadership of the various factions that are still open to it and work with them to establish local security while monitoring to ensure that other ethnicities and religious groups within those areas are also protected. We can only do this in a small section of Iraq at a time, but there is no other alternative that allows us to pacify an entire country. If we offer them the support and resources they need to be secure and prosper while standing ready to hold them accountable for any unwarranted hostility, we can stabilize Iraq one area at a time.
2 Comments:
Good line: “All insurgencies are political, and all politics is local.”
The Vietnam parallels are all too prescient.
The solution on our end is political, as well. At the very least, we are going to need a legislative branch in direct opposition to this continued bull-headedness.
Point taken also in the Columbus Dispatch article on 10/20/06 entitled, "Baghdad Failure Sends U.S. Back To Drawing Board." With the recent escalation in violence on Baghdad streets, both local police and military cannot handle the job. The U.S. military must refocus their efforts on how to best deal with their current strategy or pull out.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home