Comments on: Attrition in Iraq

By: Where's The Beef/

Where's The Beef/ — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 06:00:20 +0000

>> I’m struggling to think of any others that weren’t totally dependent on really, really morally disgusting tactics: concentration camps, reprisals, kidnappings, deliberate starvation etc… – What are your top criteria for selecting an example of the “good way” to counter a violent insurgency? Expressed in what must be done, rather than what must NOT be done. – Perhaps that’s a false dichotomy, so if you think there are degrees of goodness in countering such insurgencies, feel free to add a means by which you’d measure goodness. – And if that, too, may be an excessive limitation on examples, perhaps doing NOTHING is the “goodest” way? I may be mistaken but I do tend to think that is the detination to which some have been heading with their criticisms of the current Iraq campaign. IOW - not do it better, but don’t do anything over there. Discussion of attrition and the like might be distractions from that endpoint.

By: jet

jet — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 15:05:35 +0000

My last comment was rejected for “questionable content” whatever that is. So I’ll respond to the latest fo Rob’s. Uncle Kvetch will just have to be satisfied with “the US isn’t using B-52’s” and “using history as a baseline, he’ll lose”. Rob in your counter-arguement I missed the point where you refuted the brilliant strategy of the installation of a liberal democracy. All of the choices involved a large amount of suffering of those invovled. We can quible over which choice involved the most suffering. But only one choice invovled a bright shiny future. Me thinks you are rooting for the wrong choice. We all get to die some day, why not for a brighter future? Isn’t it our purpose to pave the way for those ahead? And since it was argueabley in the US’s interest to press the issue, it got pressed. I wonder if those who argued against the work in post-war Japan felt any shame over their efforts in their later years? I bet they argued that leaving Japan’s government alone would have been better in the long run as it had more social justice. Or some such excuse ;)

By: rob

rob — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 15:04:20 +0000

Sorry about the repeat posts: a message came up saying the first had failed, and it didn’t reappear when I refreshed.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:59:07 +0000

Sorry about the repeat posts: a message came up saying the first had failed, and it didn’t reappear when I refreshed.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:55:25 +0000

Sorry about the repeat posts: a message came up saying the first had failed, and it didn’t reappear when I refreshed.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:47:51 +0000

Jet claims the Phillipines in the fifties, and the British, about the same time, suppressed an insurgency in Malayasia by playing on ethnic tension between ethnic Chinese and ethnic Malays. There’s also umpteen examples of using reprisals, starvation and general extreme nastiness: the Germans in occupied Europe, in Greece after WWII, and all over Latin America all the bloody time, just for starters. But I assume you don’t think that’s acceptable, and also it requires being prepared to do that more or less indefinitely, which would rather undermine the claim that Iraqis are better off without Saddam (indeed, Saddam is probably quite a good example of these counter-insurgency tactics). Also, alright, ‘presumably shooting anything that moves’ is quibble-able with, but I think the rest of the description is fairly uncontentious.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:32:29 +0000

Jet claims that the Phillipines was a successful counter-insurgency war, but I know nothing about that, so you can ask him. I think the British managed to deal reasonably competently with an communist insurgency in Malayasia after WWII, but that was partly dependent on exploiting ethnic tensions between Malays and Chinese. And you might push a case for Northern Ireland, but I’m not really sure: in some ways, Northern Ireland was a peacekeeping mission, rather than a counter-insurgency mission. I’m struggling to think of any others that weren’t totally dependent on really, really morally disgusting tactics: concentration camps, reprisals, kidnappings, deliberate starvation etc…

By: Where's The Beef?

Where's The Beef? — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:13:52 +0000

I won’t quibble with what I think are some quibble-worthy assertions in your latest comment. so, assuming that Fallujah has been an example of how not to counter an insurgency in Iraq, have you an example of what would work or has worked in Iraq or elsewhere?

By: rob

rob — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 11:02:33 +0000

What went on in Falluja is to my mind a perfect example of how not to win the war. You beseige, including aerial attacks and shelling, a town, the majority of the population of which is undoubtedly civilian, and then let out women, children and the elderly, refusing to let men of fighting age leave the city or aid agencies in. You then intensify the bombardment, including bombing the city’s hospital, placing the lives of all fighting age men regardless of whether they were insurgents or not, at risk, and then push through the city, presumably shooting at anything that moves. So, let’s assess: you bombed a city of around three hundred thousand people, you trapped all fighting age men in the city, prevented food or medical supplies from reaching any one who hadn’t left, then bombed it more, including hitting the hospital, which I think is a voilation of the rules of war, and then invaded it, inevitably causing civilian casualties. That does not look like a successful anti-insurgent strategy to me. It looks like a really good way to piss people off, and make them more likely to support the insurgents. Let’s not forget, either, why Falluja was a ‘hotbed’ of ‘islamo-totalitarians’ in the first place: because American troops fired into an unarmed crowd, killing twenty odd of them. That doesn’t look like a successful anti-insurgent strategy either.

By: Where's The Beef?

Where's The Beef? — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:16:24 +0000

>> Grinding won’t win the Coalition this war. To claim that it will is to misunderstand what’s going on. – And I did not make that claim. Earlier someone had said that my description was too simple and yet above is an over-simplification of my comments. The topic of the original post is attrition and I have addressed that aspect of the war effort. There are other very important aspects, of course. I may be mistaken, but it seems this quibble about terms is irrelevant to the agreement that the fight is brutal and is being fought at high tempo (on the various fronts I’ve described). We all wish it was just a walk in the park. Even if not one US soldier was on Iraqi soil, it would not be a walk in the park for the Iraqis who are fighting the islamists who want to re-install totalitarian rule. And it would not be a walk in the park for the rest of the region, nor for the West, during such a struggle in Iraq. The fact is the fight does have good guys and bad guys. There may be multiple parties, but one side is definitely attacking the pro-democracy forces. Let’s not get too distracted by the standard terms of warefare that I’ve used. If someone wants to start a new thread on that topic, I’ll comment if I find I’ve something more to contribute. For instance, pacification is not just about subduing the enemy fighters by killing them, as someone suggested earlier. It is also about securing ground for the civilian population to conduct its political, economic, and social life. It is correct to examine what is being done by the Iraqis and Coalition apart from the direct military offensive and defensive measures. The tactics and overall strategy of the enemy is clearly aimed at tyranny, not peace and democracy. Our counter measures have to go beyond shooting back at snipers and mass bombers. The term, insurgents, is correct technically in an analysis of warfare. If you accept that, then, why the reluctance to be consistent with the terminology that applies to counter-insurgency? The enemy, as I’ve described them, are the islamist foreigners and the Baathist remnants, the islamo totalitarians. They are for installing totalitarian rule. In Syria, as in Saddam’s regime, the Baathists are willing to make concessions to the islamists on ideology but are just as committed to ruling Iraq with iron-fists. Perhaps for the Baathists more than the Islamists, the fight is primarily about self-preservation. That goes back to my point about attrition and the pressure to either retreat or to come to terms with the Iraqi authorities. Since the Baathists and the Islamists have made common cause against Iraq and Coalition, they are the enemy. Fallujah demonstrated the importance of calving-off other elements who have gravitated to, or have been corralled into, the enemy’s position of relative strength. So to return to the concept of pacification, the good guys have to counter with more than bullets and bombs. Sometimes that may mean pushing undesirable elements into the no-man’s land—or into the arms of the enemy. Eventually that’s for the Iraqi government to figure out and that may be the primariy reason that the assault on Fallujah was delayed. They’re campaigning for election while fighting a war, aferall. They can’t stop and do just one or the other. >> The US is going out of its way to find a compromise between US casulties and civilian casulties. The Iraqi and Coaliton forces routinely place themselves at greater risk by seeking to minimize civilian casualties. The evacuation of and subsequent action in Fallujah is a large recent example, but this goes on day-in and day-out. Meanwhile the tactics of the enemy are intended to exploit this humanitarian approach. While it may not be a scientific sampling, one could checkout the first person accounts of combatants to get an idea of the price in casualties that is being paid on account of military priorities that are very different than that of the enemy. Yes, I know, that’s more “bady guy, good guy” stuff.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 19:01:44 +0000

The US is going out of its way to find a compromise between US casulties and civilian casulties. Jet, just curious: do you have any evidence whatsoever for this statement, apart from the say-so of the Pentagon and “embedded” reporters?

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:55:26 +0000

The US is going out of its way to find a compromise between US casulties and civilian casulties. Jet, just curious: do you have any evidence whatsoever for this, apart from the say-so of the Pentagon?

By: jet

jet — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:13:14 +0000

I think we are still missing the point of this war. We should not be comparing this to Veitnam, rather we should be comparing this to the Phillipines. The previous decision to pull out of Faluja is a perfect example of why this is closer to the 1950’s counter-insurgent war than it is to the 1970’s counter-insurgent war. The US is not indescriminatly bombing large tracks of land and villages. The US is not allowing a large force of US backed thugs to terrorize the population. The US is going out of its way to find a compromise between US casulties and civilian casulties. And the US is making it clear at every oppurtunity that they are commited to a Democratic Iraq in the long term. And the way to win this war is not through attrition as you can’t win a counter-insurgent war through attrition. The only way to win is to make a majority of the population pick your side. And if you paid attention to the Kurdish and Shiites calls to strengthen security you’ll see that the US did a pretty good job of buildiing support for the Falujah invasion. The US is picking a pretty good middle-ground between fighting the insurgents and sparing/winning over the population (at least non-Sunni). Now if they could only make more progress with the economy, it would probably seal the deal ;)

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 14:22:38 +0000

relentless, pacification, brutal, high tempo – all these are the terms of a Verdun style approach, of grinding. What Rob said. I would only add that Where’s the Beef is writing about Iraq as if there were only two parties involved: us, and the “bad guys.” (At the risk of starting a whole ‘nother tangent, I would point out that “islamo totalitarians” is a highly misleading blanket term for the insurgents in Iraq.) Unfortunately, the fact that “high tempo operations” and “pacification” will inevitably produce still more death & misery for the civilian population caught in the crossfire is curiously left out of the equation.

By: rob

rob — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 12:21:40 +0000

Where’s the Beef, relentless, pacification, brutal, high tempo – all these are the terms of a Verdun style approach, of grinding. Grinding won’t win the Coalition this war. To claim that it will is to misunderstand what’s going on.