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I'm sure the number of terrorist we have created is staggering.
50 this month. (must be in paradox 1)
A response to this thread will include the brain dead remark " I'd rather fight them over there than here".
4 years, can you imagine?
Why we have been failing in Iraq.
Paradox 1:
The more you protect your force, the less secure you are
Paradox 2:
The more force you use, the less effective you are
Paradox 3:
The more successful counterinsurgency is, the less force can be used
Paradox 4:
Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction
Paradox 5:
The best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot
Paradox 6:
Baghdad doing something tolerably better than US doing it well
Paradox 7:
If a tactic works this week, it will not work next week
Paradox 8:
Tactical success guarantees nothing
Paradox 9:
Most important decisions are not made by generals
Nine paradoxes of a lost war
By Michael Schwartz
Recently, the New York Times broke a story suggesting that the US Army and the marines were about to turn the conceptual tide of war in Iraq. The two services, reported correspondent Michael R Gordon, "were finishing work on a new counterinsurgency doctrine" that would, according to retired Lieutenant General Jack Keane, "change [the military's] entire culture as it transitions to irregular warfare".
Such strategic eureka moments have been fairly common since the Bush administration invaded Iraq in March 2003, and this one - news coverage of it died away in less than a week - will probably drop into the dustbin of history along with other times when the tactical or strategic tide of war was supposed to change. These would include the November 2004 assault on the city of Fallujah, various elections, the "standing up" of the Iraqi Army, and the trench that, it was briefly reported, the Iraqis were planning to dig around their vast capital, Baghdad.
But this plan had one ingenious section, derived from an article by four military experts published in the quasi-official Military Review and en led "The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency". The nine paradoxes the experts lay out are eye-catching, to say the least and so make vivid reading; but they are more than so many illating puzzles of counterinsurgency warfare. Each of them contains an implied criticism of American strategy in Iraq. Seen in this light, they become an instructive lesson from insiders in why the American presence in that country has been such a disaster and why this (or any other) new counterinsurgency strategy has little chance of ameliorating it.
Paradox 1:
The more you protect your force, the less secure you are
The military experts offer this explanation: "[The] counterinsurgent gains ultimate success by protecting the populace, not himself." It may seem like a bland comment, but don't be fooled. It conceals a devastating criticism of the cardinal principle of the American military in Iraq: that above all else they must minimize the risk to American troops by setting rules of engagement that essentially boil down to "shoot first, make excuses later".
Applications of this principle are found in the by-now familiar policies of annihilating any car that passes the restraint line at checkpoints (because it might be a car bomber); shooting at pedestrians who get in the path of any American convoy (because they might be trying to stop the vehicles to activate an ambush); and calling in artillery or air power against any house that might be an insurgent hiding place (because the insurgents might otherwise escape and/or snipe at an American patrol).
This "shoot first" policy has guaranteed that large numbers of civilians (including a remarkable number of children) have been killed, maimed or left homeless. For most of us, killing this many innocent people would be reason enough to abandon a policy, but from a military point of view it is not in itself sufficient. These tactics only become anathema when you can no longer ignore the way they have made it ever more difficult for the occupying army to "maintain contact" with the local population in order "to obtain the intelligence to drive operations and to reinforce the connections with the people who establish legitimacy".
Paradox 2:
The more force you use, the less effective you are
Times reporter Gordon summarizes the logic here nicely: "Substantial force increases the risk of collateral damage and mistakes, and increases the opportunity for insurgent propaganda."
Considering the levels of devastation achieved in the Sunni city of Fallujah (where 70% of structures were estimated to be damaged and close to 50% destroyed in the US assault of November 2004) and in other Sunni cities (where whole neighborhoods have been devastated), or even in Shi'ite Najaf (where entire neighborhoods and major parts of its old city were destroyed in 2004), the word "substantial" has to be considered a euphemism.
And the use of the word "propaganda" betrays the bias of the military authors, since many people would consider such levels of devastation a legitimate reason for joining groups that aim to expel the occupiers.
Here again, the striking logic of the American military is at work. These levels of destruction are not, in themselves, considered a problem - at least not until someone realizes that they are facilitating recruitment by the opposition.
Paradox 3:
The more successful counterinsurgency is, the less force can be used
Though not presented this way, this paradox is actually a direct criticism of the American military strategy in the months after the fall of the Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. In those early days, active resistance to the occupation was modest indeed, an average of only six violent engagements each day (compared to 90 three years later.)
But American military policy in the country was still based on overwhelming force. American commanders sought to deter a larger insurgency by ferociously repressing any signs of resistance. This strategy included house-to-house searches witnessed by embedded reporter Nir Rosen and described in his vivid book, In the Belly of the Green Bird.
These missions, repeated hundreds of times each day across Iraq, included home invasions of suspected insurgents, brutal treatment of their families and often their property, and the indefinite detention of men found in just about any house searched, even when US troops knew that their intelligence was unreliable.
Relatively peaceful demonstrations were forcibly suppressed, most agonizingly when, in late April 2003, American troops killed 13 demonstrators in Fallujah who were demanding that the US military vacate a school commandeered as a local headquarters. This incident became a cause celebre around which Fallujans organized themselves into a central role in the insurgency that soon was born.
The new counterinsurgency strategy acknowledges that the very idea of overwhelming demonstrations of force producing respectful obedience has backfired, producing instead an explosion of rebellion. And now that a significant majority of Iraqis are determined to expel the Americans, promises of more humane treatment next time will not get the genie of the insurgency back in the bottle.
Paradox 4:
Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction
This paradox is, in fact, a criticism of another cardinal principle of the occupation: the application of overwhelming force in order to teach insurgents (and prospective insurgents) that opposition of any sort will not be tolerated and, in any case, is hopeless.
A typical illustration of this principle in practice was a January US military report that went in part: "An unmanned US drone detected three men digging a hole in a road in the area. Insurgents regularly bury bombs along roads in the area to target US or Iraqi convoys. The three men were tracked to a building, which US forces then hit with precision-guided munitions." As it turned out, the attack killed 12 members of a family living in that house, severely damaged six neighboring houses, and consolidated local opposition to the American presence.
This example (multiplied many times over) makes it clear why, in so many instances over these past years, doing nothing might have been better: fewer enemies in the "hood". But the developers of the new military strategy have a more cold-blooded view of the issue, preferring to characterize the principle in this way: "If a careful analysis of the effects of a response reveals that more negatives than positives might result, soldiers should consider an alternative."
That is, while this incident might well be an example of a time when "doing nothing is the best reaction", the multiple civilian deaths that resulted could, under at least some cir stances, be outweighed by the "positives". Take, for a counter example, the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in an air strike that also caused multiple civilian deaths.
Paradox 5:
The best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot
The Times' Gordon offers the following translation of this paradox: "Often dollars and ballots have more impact than bombs and bullets." Given the $18 billion US reconstruction budget for Iraq and the three well-attended elections since January 2005, it might seem that, in this one area, Bush administration efforts actually anticipated the new counterinsurgency doctrine.
But in their original article the military strategists were actually far more precise in describing what they meant by this - and that precision makes it clear how far from effective American "reconstruction" was. Money and elections, they claim, are not enough: "Lasting victory will come from a vibrant economy, political participation and restored hope."
As it happened, the American officials responsible for Iraq policy were only willing to deliver that vibrant economy, along with political participation and restored hope, under quite precise and narrow conditions that suited the larger fantasies of the Bush administration.
Iraq's new government was to be an American ally, hostile to that axis-of-evil regional power Iran, and it was to embrace the "opening" of the Iraqi economy to American multinationals. Given Iraqi realities and this hopeless list of priorities or day-dreams, it is not surprising that the country's economy has sunk ever deeper into depression, that elected officials have neither the power nor the inclination to deliver on their campaign promises, and that the principle hopes of the majority of Iraqis are focused on the departure of American troops because of, as one pollster concluded, "the American failure to do basically anything for Iraqis".
Paradox 6:
Baghdad doing something tolerably better than US doing it well
Here is a paradoxical principle that the occupation has sought to apply fully. The presidential slogan, "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down", has been an expression of Bush administration determination to transfer the front-line struggle against the insurgents - the patrols, the convoys, the home invasions, any house-to-house fighting - to Iraqi units, even if their job performance proved even less than "tolerable" compared to the rigorous execution of American troops.
It is this effort that has also proved the administration's most consistent and glaring failure. In a country where 80% of the people want the Americans to leave, it is very difficult to find soldiers willing to fight against the insurgents who are seeking to expel them.
This was evident when the first group of American-trained soldiers and police deserted the field of battle during the fights for Fallujah, Najaf, Mosul and Tal Afar in 2004. This led eventually to the current American strategy of using Shi'ite soldiers against Sunni insurgents, and utilizing Kurds against both Shi'ite and Sunni rebels. (Sunnis, by and large, have refused to fight with the Americans.) This policy, in turn, has contributed substantially to the still-escalating sectarian violence within Iraq.
Even today, after the infusion of enormous amounts of money and years of effort, a substantial proportion of newly recruited soldiers desert or mutiny when faced with the prospect of fighting against anti-American insurgents.
According to Solomon Moore and Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times, in Anbar province, the scene of the heaviest fighting, "half the Iraqi soldiers are on leave at any given time, and many don't return to duty. In May, desertion rates in some Iraqi units reached 40%."
In September, fully three-quarters of the 4,000 Iraqi troops ordered to Baghdad to help in the American operation to reclaim the capital and suppress internecine violence there, refused deployment. American officials told the LA Times that such refusals were based on an unwillingness to fight outside their home regions and a reluctance to "be thrust into uncomfortable sectarian confrontations".
As the failed attempts to "stand up" Iraqi forces suggest, the goal of getting Iraqis to fight "tolerably" well depends on giving them a reason to fight that they actually support. As long as Iraqis are asked to fight on the side of occupation troops whose presence they despise, the US cannot expect the quality of their performance to be "tolerable" from the Bush administration point of view.
Paradox 7:
If a tactic works this week, it will not work next week
The clearest expression of this principle lies in the history of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the anti-occupation weapon of choice among Iraqi resistance fighters.
Throughout the war, the occupation military has conducted hundreds of armed patrols each week designed to capture suspected insurgents through house-to-house searches. The insurgency, in turn, has focused on deterring and derailing these patrols, using sniper attacks, rocket propelled grenades, and IEDs.
At first, sniper attacks were the favored weapon of the insurgents, but the typical American response - artillery and air attacks - proved effective enough to set them looking for other ways to respond. IEDs then gained in popularity, since they could be detonated from a relatively safe distance. When the Americans developed devices to detect the electronic detonators, the insurgents developed a variety of non-electronic trigger devices. When the Americans upgraded their armor to resist the typical IED, the insurgents developed "shaped" charges that could pierce American armor.
And so it goes in all aspects of the war. Each move by one side triggers a response by the other. The military experts developing the new strategy can point to this dilemma, but they cannot solve it. The underlying problem for the American military is that the resistance has already reached the sort of critical mass that ensures an endless back-and-forth tactical battle.
One solution not under consideration might work very well: abandoning the military patrols themselves. But such a tactic would also require abandoning counterinsurgency and ultimately leaving Iraq.
Paradox 8:
Tactical success guarantees nothing
This point is summarized by Gordon of the Times this way: "[M]ilitary actions by themselves cannot achieve success." But this is the smallest part of the paradox. It is true enough that the insurgency in Iraq hopes to win "politically" by waiting for the American people to force the US government to withdraw, or for the cost of the war to outweigh its potential benefits, or for world pressure to make the war diplomatically unviable.
But there is a much more encompassing element to this dictum: that guerrilla fighters do not expect to win any military battles with the occupation. In the military strategists' article, they quote an interchange between American Colonel Harry Summers and his North Vietnamese counterpart after the US had withdrawn from Vietnam. When Summers said, "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," his adversary replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
A tactical victory occurs when the enemy is killed or retreats, leaving the battlefield to the victor. In guerrilla war, therefore, the guerrillas never win since they always melt away and leave their adversary in charge.
But in Iraq, as in other successful guerrilla wars, the occupation army cannot remain indefinitely at the scene of its tactical victories - in each community, town or city that it conquers. It must move on to quell the rebellion elsewhere. And when it does, if the guerrillas have successfully melted away, they will reoccupy the community, town, or city, thus winning a strategic victory and ruling the local area until their next tactical defeat.
If they keep this up long enough and do it in enough places, they will eventually make the war too costly to pursue - and thus conceivably win the war without winning a battle.
Paradox 9:
Most important decisions are not made by generals
Because guerrilla war is decentralized, with local bands deciding where to place IEDs, when to use snipers, and which patrols or bases to attack, the struggle in different communities, provinces, or regions takes very different forms.
Many insurgents in Fallujah chose to stand and fight, while those in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, decided to evacuate the city with its civilian population when the American military approached in strength. In Shi'ite areas, members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army chose to join the local police and turn it to their purposes; but Sunni insurgents have tried, instead, to disarm the local police and then disband the force. In every city and town, the strategy of the resistance has been different.
The latest American military strategists are arguing that what they call the "mosaic nature of an insurgency" implies the necessity of giving autonomy to local American commanders to "adapt as quickly as the insurgents". But such decentralization cannot work if the local population supports the insurgent goal of expelling the occupiers.
Given autonomy under such cir stances, lower-level US military officers may decide that annihilating a home suspected of sheltering an insurgent is indeed counterproductive; such decisions, however, humane, would now come far too late to convince a local population that it should abandon its support of a campaign seen as essential to national independence.
There may have been a time, back when the invasion began, that the US could have adopted a strategy that would have made it welcome - for a time, anyway - in Iraq. Such a strategy, as the military theorists flatly state, would have had to deliver a "vibrant economy, political participation and restored hope".
Instead, the occupation delivered economic stagnation or degradation, a powerless government and the promise of endless violence. Given this reality, no new military strategy - however humane, canny or well designed - could reverse the occupation's terminal unpopularity. Only a US departure might do that.
Paradoxically, the policies these military strategists are now trying to reform have ensured that, however much most Iraqis may want such a departure, it would be, at best, bittersweet. The legacy of sectarian violence and the near-irreversible destruction wrought by the American presence make it unlikely that they would have the time or inclination to take much satisfaction in the end of the American occupation.
Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology and faculty director of the undergraduate college of global studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is [email protected].
(Copyright 2006 Michael Schwartz)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ18Ak01.html
Last edited by RandomGuy; 10-17-2006 at 01:33 PM. Reason: readability
I'm sure the number of terrorist we have created is staggering.
50 this month. (must be in paradox 1)
A response to this thread will include the brain dead remark " I'd rather fight them over there than here".
4 years, can you imagine?
Yes, I can.
Not that I can defend our invasion of Iraq; but there is almost no doubt in my mind that if it wasn't there, there would be someplace else as the "center for terror recrutiment". Wherever that was, we would be, and we would be in a hot, shooting, body bag filling, war.
They hate us, there are alot of them, we are going to fight them for the foreseeable future. I don't understand why people believed that this would be a short excercise after 9/11.
We certainly could have played our cards better, and not have earned the distrust of so much of the world. But radical Muslims fighting, blowing themselves and our soldiers up? That was GOING to happen - and is happening.
They don't like us. They don't like our laws. They don't like our religions. They think killing us gets them into paradise. This problem is going to be with us through this, and at least the next, presidency; no matter who wins.
Like is to tame a word. The word "hate" should be sub uted where
you used the word "like".
The whole problem we have in the United States is that, like many on
this board, many people want Bush to go down in flames, even if it
means the United States goes down with him and consider him the
enemy and not the terrorist.
It does feel at times that there are people rooting for the US to lose ground, and, dare I say it, lives, in Iraq, so that they can be proven right, and the president discredited. Again, it FEELS like that at times, but I couldn't point to a specific instance.
Same thing with economic news.
"excercise after 9/11. "
Maybe Mission Accomplished after 2 months in Iraq was lie that raised sheeple's hopes?
To say "if not Iraq, then someplace else" is to minimize the disaster that Iraq is as if it doesn't matter.
USA was already "someplace else" aka Afghanistan if all the US wanted was foreign killing field for terrorist and US military to kill each other.
Losing Iraq, which is what the Repugs are doing now, is unacceptable as was invading Iraq was unneccessary in the first place.
I don't think folks realize how close Bush was to wiping out the most dangerous elements of radical Islam before the invasion of Iraq. We even had Iran cooperating with us for pete's sake. We manufactured a "center for terror recrutiment" where there was none and very little chance of there being one anywhere else.
I don't think we really need to be somewhere fighting. That is, I think, a false assumption.
The best weapons in the "war" on terror don't shoot.
I don't want Bush to go down in flames, quite the opposite. I wish his presidency was a spectacular success.
The problem is that his policies have failed spectacularly and his going down in flames is taking the rest of us with him.
The whole problem we have in the United States is that, like many on this board, many people support Bush even as he steers us into an iceburg. Even if it means we all go down with the ship and these people consider the people who are saying "look out for that giant iceburg" to be the problem, rather than the fact that the captain is dead set on not changing course.
Weapons are instruments of fear;
All creatures hate them.
Therefore, followers of the Way never use them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.
Weapons are instruments of fear;
They are not a wise man's tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart,
and victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.
I understand we've set aside 20 million to rejoice.
"FEELS like"? Sounds a little like:
Truthiness is a satirical term coined by Stephen Colbert in reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts.
The idea of paradoxes don't mix well with the black-or-white, withus-or-agin'us, binary thinking that has characterized this Administration so far.
I mean "The more you protect your force, the less secure you are" or "The more force you use, the less effective you are"? That'll make their heads explode.
"That'll make their heads explode"
not these ers, for whom already up is down, black is white, and terrorism means tax cuts
Great article, too bad Republicans aren't good with paradoxes.
Subs ute the name Clinton for Bush, and you have the years 1993-2001, a key time in the al Qaeda standup in this country when the GOP congress was doing important things like investigating blowjobs and extra-marital affairs. That knife cuts both ways, Neocon.The whole problem we have in the United States is that, like many on
this board, many people want Bush to go down in flames, even if it
means the United States goes down with him and consider him the
enemy and not the terrorist.
I was appalled at the amount of energy and money that the GOP spent on that whole thing.
If the GOP had spent half the energy pursuing al Qaeda as they did pursuing Clinton...
I was appalled at the amount of energy and money that the GOP spent on that whole thing.
If the GOP had spent half the energy pursuing al Qaeda as they did pursuing Clinton...
I was scrolling down, getting caught up on the thread, gonna respond to your "don't shoot" post above...then you do this.
I didn't think you wanted to shoot them?
My apologies. I still have not quite gotten over how much money was wasted on that for crass poltical gain. Back to topic then.
It is a hallmark of insurgency/asymetric warfare that the more you kill, the more you motivate and validate your opponents.
Referential materials:
US Army counterinsurgency manual (big pdf)
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-07-22.pdf
Sun Tzu's art of war: (html)
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html
The first one was quite illuminating, and shows the lessons we learned from Vietnam and later.
The second one still holds a lot of wisdom when it comes to warfare.
Both of them, if you read them point out quite clearly how to really win in Iraq, as well as in the broader sense, the entire "war" on terror.
(from above article)
"Lasting victory will come from a vibrant economy, political participation and restored hope."
As it happened, the American officials responsible for Iraq policy were only willing to deliver that vibrant economy, along with political participation and restored hope, under quite precise and narrow conditions that suited the larger fantasies of the Bush administration.
Iraq's new government was to be an American ally, hostile to that axis-of-evil regional power Iran, and it was to embrace the "opening" of the Iraqi economy to American multinationals. Given Iraqi realities and this hopeless list of priorities or day-dreams, it is not surprising that the country's economy has sunk ever deeper into depression, that elected officials have neither the power nor the inclination to deliver on their campaign promises, and that the principle hopes of the majority of Iraqis are focused on the departure of American troops because of, as one pollster concluded, "the American failure to do basically anything for Iraqis
Taking that into account, I was struck by how truly clueless this administration has been in Iraq.
Cases in point:
#1 Iraqi health care.
Original guy was an actual doctor with experience in running health care in war zones like Somalia and Kosovo.
He was replaced with (surprise!) a political hack who, instead of trying to increase access to health care, spent more time on trying out ideas on drug purchase plans than actually delivering health care. The political hack used Iraq as an experiment on how to set up a system of drug purchase and delivery and completely failed in delivering things like basic sanitation and simple care for wounded.
The biggest health threat in Iraq is/was emergency trauma for battle casualties, followed by lack-of-sanitation diseases , and this guy was more concerned with how cancer drugs and the like would be distributed. It reminded me nothing so much of the horse-show judge put in charge of FEMA or the country lawyer nominated to the Supreme Court.
Second case:
Industrial privitization.
To meet ideological ends, the neocons decided to privatize all the factories in Iraq.
To do this they gave the job to three Americans with some business experience. After the first few months of deteriorating conditions in terms of things breaking and not getting fixed, and slowing productivity, these three guys decided that they needed some help, and brought in the main German guys responsible for assimilating the East German factories into the private enterprise system.
The Germans came in and met with the Americans, and started telling them what needed to happen. The conversation went something like this:
Germans: "It is very good to meet you, but you should have brought your staff with you. Regardless, let's get started, you need to get your staff to do X, Y, and Z, and then..."End result:
Americans: "But we don't have any staff, it is just us three..."
Germans (flabbergasted): "We thought you were the leaders of the program, not the whole program. It took 6,000 administrators, engineers, technicians, accountants and others to get all the east german factories up to speed."
Americans: "Sorry, it is just us"
Germans: "You have wasted our time. The job you have been given is impossible given the resources given. We can't do anything to help you, sorry"
The factories eventually deteriorated so far because of lack of spare parts and raw materials that Iraqis stopped showing up, futher adding to the unemployment fueling the insurgency.
The list goes on.
The weapons we needto "win" in Iraq and elsewhere don't shoot, they build. You can't win "hearts and minds" if people can't find jobs, clean drinking water, or first aid when hurt.
Correct.
But, of course terror has nothing to do with Irak.
Oil has to do with Irak.
Wrong.
Iraq was a cheap ploy for a boost in the next elections. Oil had little to do with it.
Bump. Cause it is relavant again.
And because I was right.
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