I read the article posted by Armando, The Mystery of the Insurgency by James Bennet in the NYT 15.05.05. . .
I thought Armando's comments very much on the mark, but also thought a strategic theory perspective would be of interest. Take it as given that Bennet and Steven Metz are not Clausewitzians, are not of the Clausewitz school of strategic theory. . . Metz "buried" Clausewitz in his famous paper of 1995 . . . so there's no love lost between his group and mine. . . He's a "political scientist", sees society and the way it forms politically in normative forms - we don't . . . Rather we see war as a social interaction, the most complex of all social interactions.
First paragraph. Very positivist, or rather "Reaganist" positivist. . . "lessons of history". . . give me a break.
As to "winning hearts and minds", they don't have to, they're Iraqis remember, they don't have to win over their own people to win, they only have to see that we lose. . . Clausewitz would say that their fighting forces should have the consistency of a cloud, massing where the opportunity presented itself and then once again dissapating. Strategic defense, playing for time by way of a tactical offense. . . hit and run, stall and retreat. Never stand up to regular troops, that's how you lose insurgencies. Form your guerrilla units of former regular troops mixed with civlians, add the will to fight, a hardy people used to privation. Yes the Iraqis have all the prerequisites for a fine guerrilla force.
Are they expected to form political institutions? Which we would then target with our massive firepower? Not likely. "No intention of amassing territory to govern now"? Are they to form Panzer divisions in which to engage us? Is that Bennet's political science model?
As to the innocent Iraqi dead of today? The winner will be able to judge who was guilty. If the resistance is victorious they will undoubtedly "prove" that the occupation was behind most of the outrages, in a incompetent attempt at pseudo-operations to discredit the heroic Iraqi patriots or maybe just Chalabi or Allawi were "out of control" . . . not that those types of things haven't happend before.
Expectedly Bennet goes to the moral argument in the third paragraph and continues that through the piece. "Nihilistic insurgency"? Is that not an "appropriate response" considering that from their perspective we are demanding the destruction of the traditional Iraqi political identity? It's replacement with the acceptable American-"democratic" model? War is the continuation of political purpose by military/violent means. Is that not our stated war aim in Iraq?
From Bennet's perspective, the fact that many innocent Iraqis are dying is no longer any affair of the US government, they have simply become just one of various players competing for the loyalty of the Iraqi people, ya know kinda like the "market". . . Maybe that works for him, but I doubt that it would for many others. We know the history of this war, how the military instrument of the American state has been abused.
Still, given the right mindset, what could be easier to understand than Bennet's moral argument?
Funny, if it were not so serious.
From a Clausewitzian perspective the view of this war is much different. The most effective defense is the most passive, that is where a country at war defends inself within the interior of its own country, allowing the attacker to destroy himself due to his own extertions. This is what is referred to as a "negative purpose", which means the only purpose of the defender is to deny the attacker his goals, play the spoiler. The defender only goes to a positive purpose when he goes on the strategic offensive, which in a guerrilla war is not possible until one reverts to "mobile warfare" (Mao's term). If one were to look for a historical analogy it would not be Vietnam or any other 20th Century insurgency for that matter. . . they were quite different affairs - consider the distinction between a "guerrilla" and a "partisan".
Iraq has been essentially a sovereign state for generations, but with the fall of Saddam and the start of a popular uprising the nation replaces the state as the political community at war according to Clausewitz. So how does one define the Iraqi "nation"? Is it the Iraqi nation that is at war or the Arab "nation"? What about the Kurdish "nation"? You can see how confusing this gets, which is why Saddam was not overthrown in 1991. . .
Looking at history one would imo have to go back to the beginning of the modern era to Napoleon and what he was attempting to do in Spain in 1808. . . the Spanish resistance resembles the Iraqi of today in many ways. . . especially the religious, criminal and free-booter elements. Napoleon lost more troops in Spain than he did in Russia. . . consider that.
