Always fighting the last war, or in this case, the last war once removed.

I'm not sure how anyone can think the army was fighting anything but a counter-insurgency from about month 2 onwards...

The school rebuildings, support for local politics, training...that's almost all counter-insurgency.

Bush has shown repeatedly that he won't hear what he doesn't want to hear, and that he'll fire anyone who tries to tell him what he doesn't want to hear. This character flaw surely also applies to counterinsurgency as a topic. Would you want to be the general who tells Rumsfeld or Bush that they don't understand the nature of the war?

"Would a focus on counterinsurgency ever have worked?"

Nope. The mouse in the bubble pulled the wrong lever.

Correct lever: State. If Bush had used State and built a consensus with normal allies to put diplomatic pressure on, it would have been a great success for a minute fraction of the cost.

What a bunch of clowns. It was a no-brainer.

McAristotle, do you think that the US Army, or the US for that matter, is well suited to carry out "nation building" in an Arab country?

McAristotle, do you think that the US Army, or the US for that matter, is well suited to carry out "nation building" in an Arab country?

Maybe they should do some practice in New Orleans first.

I would be more than surprised if all of this wasn't laid out in the pre-war planning that Rumsfeld threw into the waste basket in Spring '03.

Counterinsurgency was a verboten political word.

The president and the neocons are saying, "Give us all the resources, lives, and time and we'll produce utopia. Just don't get in our way until we're there." It isn't a world view. It's infantilism with guns.

The military knew, back when the figure of 500,000 troops was given to President Bush as being needed to adequately occupy Iraq. We didn't have them, but Bush wanted his war anyway and got it. It is not the fault of the military, but of our Codpiece-in-Chief who foolishly wanted a war for his own political advantage and his own vainglory.

It's not just Bush, it's Rumsfeld. Bush doesn't have the brains or the guts to fire him. I'd lay money that there were any number of people in he military who would have handled strategy very differently.

As we always say in the military. Leadership, baby, leadership. Who's to blame or credit? The leadership right up to the top.

Gotta adjust, improvise and overcome.

Haven't you heard? The insurgency is in its last throes. Victory is right around the corner.

There were strong incentives working against a focus on counterinsurgency tactics. First, in the military the conventional missions are more prized and rewarded. Fighting conventional wars it's their supposedly "real" job. Second, the whole military-industrial complex doesn't reward counterinsurgency because it doesn't sell as many toys. But third, and more important, because planning for an insurgency is a political decision as much as a military one; it's an admission that a significative part of the population actively opposes you and will have to be dealt with, militarily and politically. Because often this is seen as a failure, the first instinct is to see the enemy as bandits or "dead-enders" to be defeated by conventional methods. From the point of view of the occupying force, admitting that you are fighting an insurgency is admitting that you have failed in preventing the emergence of one, and they are usually reluctant to do it.

Would it, or anything, have made any difference, given the serial bunbles of the Bush administration's occupati plan? Even a better counterinsurgency strategy cannot work a miracle. The rule, only rule, of discussion of the Iraq mess, is to always get to the home truth: Bush/Cheney made this risky high-stakes mess all by themselves.

Bush wanted a cheap war and found people in the military who would promise one. Those people could promise a cheap war because they were too dim to think past collapsing the shakey dictatorship.

"bunbles"?

I meant bungles, or maybe bumbles

They should be reading:

Steel My Soldiers Hearts

-Col David H Hackworth.

A Bright Shining Lie

-Neil Sheehan

The Art of War

-Sun Tzu

If they were reading these texts, they would have the military, political and philosophical aspects nailed down.

But it seems like every time I point out that no one understands Fourth Generation War and that there are, literally, thousands of retired vets who conducted successful counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam, and have never been asked for their input on current training doctrine, it falls on deaf ears.

When an army meets with a problem it cannot solve on its own, it needs to look to the past and draw upon lessons learned because the institutional memory is severely lacking right now. They have to go out and find people with relevant experience so they can start inculcating people with the knowledge they need to stay alive. Unfortunately, the Army has too much equipment designed to fight on the continent of Europe and too many soldiers promised college money instead of an experience with a warrior ethos.

Do you know which war has produced the most experts? The American civil war. And yet, there is no lesson to be learned from any aspect of how that war was fought. Unless we start using horses and massed formations of men in long ranks against the insurgency, the thousands of civil war experts who populate the Army's institutions are good for exactly...what?

A review of the Hackworth book:

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts is retired Colonel David Hackworth's account of his tour of duty in Vietnam commanding the 4/39th, an infantry battalion operating south of Saigon in the Mekong River delta. Poorly led (the previous commander had based the battalion in the middle of a mine field), with frightfully high casualties (40 percent during the six months prior to Hackworth's arrival), and fighting in the most dangerous of terrain, the 4/39th was a dispirited and demoralized group when Hackworth assumed command in January, 1969. Upon arrival, Hackworth fired many of the senior officers and then put the 4/39th through "Combat 101," which made him so unpopular that at one point Hackworth was warned of a bounty some of his men had put out on him. Over the next five months, however, Hackworth would transform the 4/39 from "hopeless to hardcore," dramatically reverse the casualty rate, score some spectacular victories over the Viet Cong, and earn the undying respect of his troops. Here's a gung ho and earthy firsthand account of the Vietnam War that fans of We Were Soldiers Once... will appreciate. --Harry C. Edwards

What little ole jim said. Rumsfeld made it clear from the start that he had absolutely no interest in fighting the actual post-invasion war in Iraq. He was only interested in his high-tech transformation, which, whatever its merits, was almost entirely beside the point in Iraq. Bucking his views would only have shortened an officer's career - in this sense, the key battle for Iraq was fought and lost when Gen. Shinseki got slapped around for telling the truth.

Carlos: Yeah, you nailed it from a political point of view, which, in turn, complicates the military reaction. What a bitch to be a soldier.

If you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had, shouldn't you fight the war that you have, not the war that you wish you had?

I'm sure there were plenty of military experts who had thought of counterinsurgency plans and who had warned that the insurgency would take place at the time we invaded. But as in the domestic sphere, anyone who disagreed with the Bush plan either did not get heard or was demoted or in some way removed from the decision-making process. And just as in domestic issues so many bright people have left the employ of this Administration, knowing their words and ideas have no effect, Bush was left with a military establishment that, having no real leadership, was not encouraged to view the situation in Iraq realistically.

"why did no one in the military foresee the insurgency? And once it started, why did they turn a blind eye to it? And now that they've finally figured out what they're up against, why are they still only haltingly — and far from unanimously — willing to change doctrine?"

Kevin, remember please: politics over policy! it's just how these guys work.

PR-your post above is sobering.

WTF? Weren't we talking about how dirty the Iraqi army was going to fight before we invaded? Didn't guerrilla warfare come up zillions of times before the invasion? I guess now were there and there isn't an Iraqi army, per se, I guess you'd call it a counterinsurgency, but it doesn't seem that much different from guerrilla warfare to me.

I'm just saying...

ELMO: well yes, but when politicos like Wolfe boy feel totally free slap around our top military suit, what does that tell you about the Bush Administration.

Rumsfeld specialized in humiliating generals who disagreed with him.

Wolfe and Rumsfeld felt so confident because they were so incredibly wrong about everything military their entire adult lives, all the way back to their Group B days.

US Army, or the US for that matter, is well suited to carry out "nation building" in an Arab country?

Posted by: No Preference on December 13, 2005 at 10:06 PM | PERMALINK

No, but do you have anyone better?

Gadzooks, what the hell are you all bitching about?? Hell, they did all the right things. Lets see...they failed to protect the arms dumps from looting...they sent Bremer in to fire all the regular army guys.....they put the unemployed regular army guyse's enemies in power....then they stacked a bunch of them five high naked in a corridor with dear little Lindy leering at 'em. Heck, seems to me they covered ALL the bases. Whataya mean they didn't plan for an insurgency???

Dear Kevin,

This has been by far one of the biggest mysteries of the Iraq war: why did no one in the military foresee the insurgency? And once it started, why did they turn a blind eye to it? And now that they've finally figured out what they're up against, why are they still only haltingly — and far from unanimously — willing to change doctrine?

Your questions are relatively decent, but naive, misinformed, and misleading.

The fact of the matter is that numerous military, intelligence, and strategic experts at a wide variety of institutions DID predict the insurgency, predicted how it would start, predicted how it would grow and why, and predicted that the levels of troop strength, the strategy and tactics employed by our troops would, far from quelling or impeding an insurgency, would actually foster more rapid growth of that insurgency.

Here are some links for your reading pleasure:

USA-Today rundown from 2004

Chris Albritton outlines a devastating critique, based on an Army War College analysis, of the War on Terror as a whole There are multiple links to PDFs in that link. Read those PDF files.

Crane and Terrill, Feb 2003 Predicting the "post-conflict scenarios" down to a tee. here is the PDF of their report

An earlier (Jan 2003) report by the same authors again dealing with post-conflict issues and likely problems. And again, here is the PDF of their report.

What is the message, the take home lesson?

That the Military DID, in FACT deal explicitly with this issue, but the pentagon lunatic brigade over-rode, ignored, or pohh-poohed this kind of analysis, to the point of FIRING people who brought it up.

It is NOT a question of the military or intel analysts, historians or strategists being wrong or stupid...it is a question of idiots, fantasists and criminally negligent political hacks ignoring their betters and putting this nation into a serious hole.

Once again, They/We told you/them so. The peaceniks told you/them that this war would be a disaster from a human rights, political, foreign policy, moral standpoint...and they were right.

The hard-headed strategists (including MANY hawkish types) told you/them that this war was going to be a disaster from a historical, strategic, tactical, and material standpoint...and they were right.

No, but do you have anyone better?

Oh, that's funny. Enter the quagmire with the army you have, not the army you want, hey?

The US Army War College produced a paper just prior to the invasion. Bascially they laid out the scenario that unfolded, but they saw it coming long before. Not a single person in the Bush administration ever read that paper obviously. Why listen to experts? Rememeber that little fuck Gimli 'Paul" Wolfowitzz telling congress that the joint cheifs estimate of needing hundreds of thousands of troops do get the job done was 'wildly off the mark'

THat's why this war will never be won. It is being run by people like wolfie who believe their own hype, and not for one second ever considered a Plan B.

And on a slightly snarky note, remember all the laughter and giggles and "Baghdad Bob" fan clubs that arose during the invasion?

Remember "Baghdad Bob" and his predictions?

Anyone laughing now?

He was telling the straight up truth, bald as can be...and boy howdy was he ever on target.

After combating the insurgency for nearly three years in Iraq, the Army is finally starting, slowly and fitfully, to incorporate these lessons into doctrine

**************************************

It's a failed policy, and they're trying to gussy it up as a failed doctrine.

Can this war be considered a giant case of "Rope-a-Dope"?

Just what I need, another book to read on Viet Nam. My stomach is already churning. Thanks, Kevin.

Ever since the Iraq campaign in April 2003, even before, it was obvious that military planning and good military doctrine were at odds. If a planner said the US would need 250,000 trips, then it was pooh-poohed...and they were edged out. If a field officer said we needed more body armor for the trips, they were pooh-poohed and told to make due. If the war was over and more soldiers were dying, the critics of the current tactics were pooh-poohed and told to torture some "ragheads".

Now, the questions that comes to mind, with the resulting mountain of pooh-pooh rising in the distance, was who, who one might well ask, was full of pooh-pooh from day one.

Came across the perfect quote for Bush and his administration:

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) American inventor, patented more than 1,000 inventions

That we haven't combatted the insurgency well enough is indisputable, but why is it, as Kevin Drum says, "almost certainly too late now" to fight it? Is there a cut-off at three years?

McAristotle,

No, but do you have anyone better?

What, like the Chinese Army? Pretty good at killing students, not so good at actually killing people who shoot back.

The fact of the matter is that numerous military, intelligence, and strategic experts at a wide variety of institutions DID predict the insurgency

Oh, for fuck's sake. I predicted the insurgency. My knowedge of middle-eastern affairs is that of a reasonably read lay-person.

Only a moron, Mr. Drum (and I'm not mentioning any names I'll just look at them and hum - hmm hmm hmmm), would not have anticipated this resistance. Americans need to discover a little-known discipline called history. They teach it in some of the European colleges, you might want to look into it.

That we haven't combatted the insurgency well enough is indisputable, but why is it, as Kevin Drum says, "almost certainly too late now" to fight it? Is there a cut-off at three years?

No, but there's a tipping point at which the trends start to turn against you and in favor of your opponent. And since we're running out of soldiers while they have no trouble adding to theirs we've hit that point.

One reason not to think about fighting a counterinsurgency war is that it may well confront one with the unhappy fact that the war is effectively unwinnable.

I'd expect the very first thing one would have to figure out in fighting an insurgency is just what the aspirations of that insurgency might be, so that one can somehow find another way of satisfying the underlying goals or needs of the insurgents short of ongoing battle.

But what if those goals are wholly inconsistent with the goals the occupation is intended to achieve? Then one must reckon with the real possibility that one is doomed to failure from the outset, that there is really nothing that will make the insurgents go away or palpably weaken.

I believe that this is indeed what we are dealing with in Iraq. The insurgents, Sunnis nearly all, wish most importantly to reacquire the power they have been deprived of. Yet that degree of power is completely incompatible with democracy, in which the the Sunnis must come to terms with being a minority, and necessarily of marginal power. Certainly their goals may be "unfair", to our own democratic way of thinking, but, given their long history of hegemony in Iraq, how can they resonably think that re-establishing themselves is beyond expectation or sensible desire?

It's hard not to conclude that this is the real dynamic taking place in the insurgency in Iraq. What can we possibly offer them to help us achieve our own goals for Iraq? Nothing, I believe.

If you're a military leader, expected to deliver on the promises of your Commander in Chief, how do you come to terms with this possibility? Only, I think, by hoping that this is NOT what's really going on in Iraq, and basically ignoring the whole counterinsurgency issue and strategy.

Lots of good points have been made by posters above. I have only add a couple of small points to add.

First, the pressure on the higher brass to give Rumsfeld (and therefore Cheney, and bush) what he wanted was unbelievably immense. Not only was Shinseki canned, but also let's not forget that in the weeks immediately before the ground operation, Tommy Franks was reported to be asking for more troops and a different plan. Within moments after that we were told that Franks was going to be investigated for improper use of government funds (flying his wife on military craft, I think). Immediately after that leaked, he gave Rumsfeld what he wanted. A two-day story; no more talk of that little matter, and Franks is the big hero with the brilliant battle plan. We're talking about threatening to cut him off without a pension, if I understand the nature of these (spurious) charges. Just think about trying to talk about this being a different war-- you might as well slit your wrists.

Second, my own (very brief and distant) experience with the Air Force running something taught me that their idea of planning is to set things in motion and then see how it all shakes out. Then they can make whatever adjustments they want to-- I put it at the time as "Start out with a half-assed plan and figure out what they need to do as they go along."

If this represents at all the way the other services do things, no wonder we're where we are. The theory that approach expresses is that war is unpredictable and therefore there's no sense planning beyond the initial operation. And the Pentagon has been telling a whole lot from the start about how unpredictable war is, haven't it?

So maybe not planning is built into the system. Which would help explain a lot.

red dan! great to see you back.

i am with the peacenik crowd on this misadventure. no immoral, unjustified, illegal war will EVER be successful -- especially if success is defined as a relatively quick, neat and thorough victory. Maybe if the criminal act is accompanied by a ruthlessness beyond what modern times would accept, maybe then you can at least get a clear-cut 'victory' for the invading force. Short of that, you either lose and get the hell out, cutting your losses and realizing the idiocy of your ways, or you hunker down for a decade-long seige that slaughters aimlessly and accomplishes nothing but misery and destruction.

One reason not to think about fighting a counterinsurgency war is that it may well confront one with the unhappy fact that the war is effectively unwinnable.

That's a great point--this war is unwinnable in that we are not willing to do what is necessary to win.

The first thing you would have to do is seal the borders. Then, you would need to attack what is fueling the insurgency--namely, the cash pouring in from sympathetic countries. Then you'd have to make amends with the people who are attacking us out of revenge. From there, commit 500,000 US troops and begin adding tens if not hundreds of thousands of troops from all over the world to begin the process of separating insurgents from civilians. At least one million Iraqi males out of the four million who are currently sitting on the fence must decide to join the military, accept military training, and begin defending their own country. Next, allow for a legitimate political process. If that means a three way partition of the country, accept it and move on. Finally, the Iraqis must reject becoming a client state of Iran, reject Sharia law and embrace the idea of becoming a secular modern Arab state.

After ten years of what I just outlined, call me. Then we'll see if Iraq has a chance.

Plainly the military did not expect to have to midwife a new Iraqi government, and was never given orders to prepare to do this over a multi-year period.

In retrospect, clearly, this was unwise. But a "dereliction of duty"? There is something to be said for the idea that the most likely threats to American security may be found just about anywhere other than Iraq. Having disposed of Saddam and ascertained that Iraq had no WMDs, senior military officers, not unnaturally, assumed their job was 95% done. We had not insisted on a favorable political outcome after the Gulf War; why would we do so now?

And incidentally, the reason counterinsurgency was necessary in Vietnam is that the United States was not, until the 11th hour, willing to act against the flow of mens and weapons into North Vietnam from China and Russia, or to strike at the enemy capital. Counterinsurgency was not just the alternative to the limited conventional war we could not win; it was also the alternative to the less limited conventional war we were desperately anxious not to fight. There is no very good analogy to be made between this situation and the one in Iraq today, another reason for our armchair strategists here to be a little less smug about "generals fighting the last war."

Oops-- "hasn't it." Sorry.

Finally, the Iraqis must reject becoming a client state of Iran, reject Sharia law and embrace the idea of becoming a secular modern Arab state.

Why "must"?

This habit of second guessing the decisions about the war has a whiff of abnormality to it.

It's kind of like the guy who never got into the military because of flat feet who is always talking about WWII or the Korean War or the Vietnam War, whereas the real vets who had the bullets whizzing around their heads, never say a word about the real action they saw.

"Bring it on" is all you need to know.

Come on Kevin, many, many, many people, both here and at the Pentagram, and at DOD, and almost every Vietnam vet, saw the insurgency coming. at Baghdad+1 or before.

Why not mention it if you are the admin.? well thats easy.

There is no winning a counter insurgency. Its really really really hard to win one. And once you fuck it up. its fucked up. there will be no unbaking the iraq cake. We lost the Iraqis with Abu Gharib (if not before). And we just help enlist more and more "insurgents" every day.

since everyone except the bushcriminal hates rumsfeld, and since rumsfeld owns the iraq military operation, maybe the military wanted to fail so rumsfeld would get blamed for the failure.

grunts are fodder and dark skinned civilians annoying like cockroaches, so who cares if they get ground up in the great political and ideological battles raging in the minds of Washington inhabitants.

The problem isn't that a modern war of imperialist aggression isn't winnable, it's that no modern state is willing to do the things required to win it. Everyone knows Yanks are stunned, but the Brits figured this out in the late forties. God alone knows what their excuse is.

Pale Rider: "When an army meets with a problem it cannot solve on its own, it needs to look to the past and draw upon lessons learned because the institutional memory is severely lacking right now."

I am often impressed by the expertise you bring to these threads, thanks!

Corrobating anecdote: One of my first jobs was in the late 70s at Honeywell. I was the lowest peon in a corporate structure that was developing training for weapon systems. We were developing systems to fight the Russians in foggy conditions in Eastern Europe.

What surprised me then was that the military manuals that I read as part of my job talked about WW2 and the Cold War and then jumped right over Vietnam to the present day. It was as if Vietnam never happened.

It makes me wonder what will happen to the US military after having their noses rubbed in the mess that is Iraq. America needs a strong military.

I know what that whiff is: it's either compensating for something, or guilt. Either way, very unhealthy. Better to not support illegal wars no matter what propaganda the powers-that-be throw at you!

Another way of thinking about the insurgency in Iraq is that there's a great assymmetry in stakes and motivation between us and the insurgents.

The insurgents have every strong reason to fight and keep fighting nearly for the rest of their days; it's their country, and they are shaping how the rest of their lives, and the lives of their children, will be led.

We, the American people, have no such thing at stake. We have no compelling incentive to keep a presence in Iraq for a generation or more, and to continue to lose our soldiers for many many years. If we did, the calculus in the war would be utterly different, and the insurgency might indeed be defeated.

But the American people were never given a satisfying answer to the question of why we need to be in Iraq. Bush can say all he wants about establishing democracy in Iraq, but the American people have clear limits as to the amount of sacrifice they are willing to put into such an effort before there's a clear payoff.

What's become obvious to all but the ideologically impaired is that those limits have already been reached, and the payoff is absolutely nowhere in sight.

If Bush were a golden tongued orator, another Cicero, he couldn't convince the American people to keep up this fight. He is, in fact, something less.

Within moments after that we were told that Franks was going to be investigated for improper use of government funds (flying his wife on military craft, I think). Immediately after that leaked, he gave Rumsfeld what he wanted.

Yes, and a guy who never gets enough praise would be General McKiernan, the three star who led the ground assault and carried out the plan.

When a mysterious "thousand vehicle convoy" appeared just as the first sandstorm hit, McKiernan kept to the plan and stuck it out. Remember, he was seeing reports of what was happening to the combat support units (of Jessica Lynch infamy) and how his supply lines were tenuous.

The Marines fought extremely well in the opening phase of the war. But don't forget that the 3rd Infantry Divison had been training and wargaming a fight north of Kuwait for years. The fact that 3rd ID was locked tight and fought its way into Baghdad and rolled up onto their cloverleafs shocked the hell out of the Arab world.

And less than two months later (June 2003), the insurgents began hitting our troops...this was what calmed the region, the fact that someone was hitting back at the Americans.

To have a small American Army (really, barely an Army, just the equivalent of two small corps advancing parallel to each other) wipe an Arab army off the map and chase it out of existence was a lot to take. I would submit that that is when the wallets opened up and the money began to flow to the organizers of the insurgency.

This habit of second guessing the decisions about the war has a whiff of abnormality to it.

you are right; I am a Vet and I am not second guessing the decisions about the war.

I knew straight away it was fucked, and Rummy, Cheney, et al were incompentent beyond belief. And the whole thing would be a disaster, and their would be years of insurgency.

nope, no second guessing here. thats what experience will do for you!

There is something to be said for the idea that the most likely threats to American security may be found just about anywhere other than Iraq. Having disposed of Saddam and ascertained that Iraq had no WMDs, senior military officers, not unnaturally, assumed their job was 95% done. We had not insisted on a favorable political outcome after the Gulf War; why would we do so now?

Oh, for cryin' out loud. As just about everyone in the world but the most hard-core Bush revisioninsts realizes, your first sentence was true before we went blundering in. But by all means, keep trying to spin this as something we had to start an illegal, ill-conceived and ineptly conducted war to find out.

One of my first jobs was in the late 70s at Honeywell

Had they hired me in '96, I'd still be in Minnesota and wouldn't have joined the Army.

We need some more vets/ex-military to post. There is a guy named Yoshi who posts here once in a while who was an aviation guy in Kuwait--has a ton of great info that is much better than mine.

"We had not insisted on a favorable political outcome after the Gulf War; why would we do so now?"

Zathras, I hate to disagree because I am sympathetic about the position much of the brass was put in. But this war was *all about* a political outcome. At the start it was all about "decapitation," which is as political as it gets, and we'll all remember the house that was bombed to try to kill Saddam very early on.

At that time it seems the plan was to just graft a new head on all the old structures. It would look a lot like Chalabi's, probably. That was going to happen so quick that, heck, we didn't need to worry about anything stupid or obvious like a "surrender" (a political act anyway) or worry about securing stuff because, hey, well, we don't really know, but that's a political decision too.

But then somebody had other ideas about stuff like de-Baathification, and then the fun really began.

What's really criminal here is that this war was always a political war, fought for political aims, and no thought was apparently given to making the political aims happen. I mean by the people who actually made the decisions. And so the insurgency, like everything else that's happened there, was a surprise. To them.

To have a small American Army (really, barely an Army, just the equivalent of two small corps advancing parallel to each other) wipe an Arab army off the map and chase it out of existence was a lot to take. I would submit that that is when the wallets opened up and the money began to flow to the organizers of the insurgency.

I would submit that the insurgency was planned from the beginning. It is rather strange that a despotic government such as Saddam's would disperse munitions and ammunition throughout the country in such a decentralised way unless it was planning to use it later.

This was scorched earth/Napoleon's march on Moscow all over again. retreat and fight the battle on the ground of your choosing.

The US did it to the Soviets in Afghanistan - why wouldn't the baathists do it this time? God knows there was no way they could face the US army in a desert theatre without air cover - and in fact they learnt that lesson already from the first Gulf War.

I can't believe the Iraqi high command was entirely composed of morons - this was pretty much the only strategy open to them. And Rumsfeld and Bush fell for it hook, line and sinker..

this post gets near something that has bothered me a lot.

i keep wondering:

why the hell are our poor bastards driving poorly-armored humvees alongs road where they can be subject to the famous ied's (improvised explosive devices)?

didn't we learn in the french-and-indian wars in the 1770's that it is not a good idea to march shoulder to shoulder, rank on rank into the face of fire from people behind trees?

i got this from jr. high tennessee and american history.

so let me ask, most sincerely (i happen to have a personal stake in this):

will some reasonabley well-trained and analytical military person (and there are a lot of these in the american miilitary) tell me why we are taking the modern equivalent of the "marching shoulder to shoulder" tactic in iraq? can't we be guerillas, too? do we have to be so damned predictable?

why are our soldiers being sent on predictable patrols where they can be blow to bits.

were i an officer, i would be furious if my men were treated this way and i would do everything in my power to prevent that from happpenijng, as i am sure many officers do. but is it, in fact, happening?

military thinker and planners:

please comment here and tell me why.

or why not.

thanks

floop,

Well, that is a good point. I don't think it is in their best interests to end up like the young people of Iran, who aren't too pleased with their fundamentalist clerics running every aspect of their lives. Sharia law is applied in quite an evil and devious way against Iranians. Sharia law applied to Iraq--which has traditionally been secular and has given women rights--would make it more like Iran.

If the Shia in Iraq want to become a client state of Iran, let them do so. I think we're messing around in their politics too much, trying to influence the outcome. Ultimately, I see that there are a lot of Iranians who would prefer a secular form of government and I think the Iraqis would not be well served by Sharia law.

I do believe we never should have started the war, that we need to bring our troops home now and give a huge Mea Culpa. The thread was about winning the war and I was trying to put up some things that would be options. Options that I don't think are within our reach, actually. Please don't confuse me with the trolls tonight--I'm working hard not to cuss.

This has been by far one of the biggest mysteries of the Iraq war: why did no one in the military foresee the insurgency?

It is pretty damned obvious that it is not true that "no one in the military" foresaw the insurgency. Gen. Shinseki's estimate of troop requirements for occupation makes no sense unless it was premised on the assumption of a need for a robust counterinsurgency campaign.

For this perception, he was hurried out the door. This probably had the effect of keeping anyone else with the same realization quiet.

Contrary to current conventional wisdom, which suggests that it's OK to criticize the war but not criticize the troops — including the top brass — the fact is that the military leadership's longstanding refusal to take counterinsurgency seriously is little less than a dereliction of duty.

It certainly is OK to criticize the troops, including the top brass, when you have some substantive basis. However, you provide no reason to believe that the problem here is with the uniformed brass rather than the civilian leadership.

They've insisted on planning for the kind of war they'd like to fight instead of the kind of war they should have known they were likely to fight.

This is certainly true -- of Donald Rumsfeld, et al., and their preconceived theories of fighting quick wars with small military forces and increased reliance on outsourcing traditional military functions to civilian contractors.

But is it true of the "troops"? Once the leadership made it clear that their preconceptions about how to fight could not be challenged, there was no choice for anyone in the uniformed leadership -- at least while remaining in the service -- but to salute and try to salvage something workable from the disastrous fantasies of Rumsfeld & Co. until the civilian leadership was willing to accept the possibility of their own error.

This has been by far one of the biggest mysteries of the Iraq war: why did no one in the military foresee the insurgency?

Are you serious? The military didn’t NOT foresee the threat of an insurgency and it’s not a mystery why. It was part of the Bush war at all costs propaganda and intimidation machine—take out Saddam and count not the cost. The insurgency was the MOST LIKELY of all outcomes in Iraq and the Bush machine ignored it for the same reason they exaggerated the threat.

Truly Kevin, as a long time reader and admirer, this had to be one of your most boneheaded posts.

orionATL,

You have really hit on the problem--we can't hear from the officers who are rejecting shopworn tactics and are doing the right thing to keep their guys alive.

The problem is with their equipment and with where they are located. Moving them over the horizon--Rep Murtha's idea--originates from the thinking within the military that being mortared every night and sniped at wears down the troops.

Believe it or not, living in shitty conditions and getting shot at wears a person down, as does constantly being short of the right weapons, vehicles and enough troops to accomplish the mission. Worn out people make mistakes and get killed.

To summarize the thread, why don't we ever learn from our mistakes?

Kevin is a smart and honest guy, but he is almost always clueless when it comes to military matters.
I think it comes from the liberal anti-military perspective. He now claims that out of all the military, who have spent the last few years fighting for their lives in Iraq, "no one" foresaw the insuragency, derelection of duty by military leaders, refusal to take insurgency seriously, and now almost certainly too late for good anti-insurgency plan.

I don't know which is worse -- that Kevin knows virtually nothing about any of this or that he speaks so glibly demeaning the military people who are pouring their heart and soul into the fight and the effort to protect Kevin and the rest of us.

brian,

shh...the adults are talking.

The school rebuildings, support for local politics, training...that's almost all counter-insurgency.

ah yes, the local elections the marines were preparing for before the CPA cancelled them, I suppose.

"We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918."
- Captain Renault, "Casablanca"

PR: I know you're not being a troll, mate! I was only making the point (which I'm sure you know!) that we can't really put any conditions on what Iraqi society ends up like.

Regarding Iran - I've been interested in getting a job with my uni in Tehran for ages - I's love to live there for a while and see the inevitable reformation of Islam happen cup close.

Iran is the best hope for the liberalisation of Islam and the Middle East. Much of the political struggles in that country are exactly that: political. Whatever the immense faults of the Iranian system, by and large the struggles between reformers and hardliners have taken place within the political system.

Hell, the Iranian parliament has a Jewish member, elected by the small Jewish Iranian population...

Saudi Arabia is the viper in the Middle East - not Iran.

Also, because I'm not American, I don't probably view Iran in the same way Americans do - we don't have the same difficult shared history. We have heaps of Iranian students studying here - Australia does a lot of trade with the Iranian republic.

I don't know which is worse -- that Kevin knows virtually nothing about any of this or that he speaks so glibly demeaning the military people who are pouring their heart and soul into the fight and the effort to protect Kevin and the rest of us.

I better leave. I'm really starting to feel...inspired. But not before pointing something out to our delightful friend brian:

There isn't exactly a whole lot of 'anti-US soldier' sentiment in my posts. Those people pouring their heart and soul into protecting us? A small number of them are people I happen to have served with. I don't speak for them--I speak for myself, and myself only.

When I speak to you, and remember--I'm speaking for myself--I didn't spend seven years on active duty protecting your right to be a jackass in public because of anything to do with being a Republican or Democrat.

Kevin, you are finally starting to grok it!

floop,

You should go! What a great opportunity.

PR: sure, if I ever get a job there...

:)

From Maureen Dowd-

Jack Murtha: "The military tells me that when they were planning the invasion, the administration wouldn't let one of the primary three-star generals in the room."

Maybe he wanted to discuss a possible insurgency?

No matter. We are ruled by the Self-Refuter-in-Chief:

"Whether or not it needed to happen," the president told [Brian Williams], "I'm still convinced it needed to happen."

Savor that one, it's a gem.

There is something to be said for the idea that the most likely threats to American security may be found just about anywhere other than Iraq. Having disposed of Saddam and ascertained that Iraq had no WMDs, senior military officers, not unnaturally, assumed their job was 95% done. We had not insisted on a favorable political outcome after the Gulf War; why would we do so now?

There's actually an important truth in this, and a great irony.

The great irony is that nothing even remotely resembling WMDs was ever found in Iraq, despite the very reasonable expectation that we might at least find some chemical weapon stockpiles, which would have most certainly have been spun by the Bush WH as being a grave threat to us.

Can anybody doubt that if such weapons had been found, in any number, we would have been treated over the last several years to an ongoing litany of the supposedly massively lethal powers of those weapons to American citizens?

That, you see, was the REAL plan of the Bush administration, namely a purely political one: find the "WMD", however ineptly so described, and, by absurd, over-the-top rhetoric, turn them into great bug-eyed monsters that would kill legions of American citizens in their innocent sleep.

If those weapons had been found, the entire discussion and context of the Iraq war would have taken on a vastly different content, and likely to this day the American public would have been far more tolerant of the losses we are suffering than they are today.

And that is most probably why the Bush WH never bothered their pretty little heads with the possibility of fighting a counterinsurgency: it would be politically irrelevant, which means it simply would not exist as a problem in Bush World.

Sometimes I think God wanted to give Bush and the neocons their comeuppance, and sprung this no-"WMD" surprise on them. Indeed, it's as good an argument for God as I can muster up.

Sometimes I think God wanted to give Bush and the neocons their comeuppance, and sprung this no-"WMD" surprise on them. Indeed, it's as good an argument for God as I can muster up.

We have a cartoonist in Melbourne, Leunig, who is a national treasure. He had a cartoon of Bush standing at a podium, intoning "God Bless America".

Up above him in a cloud is God, looking thoughtful, who muses "Maybe it's time for a blessing in disguise?"

floop,

Oh, come on--everyone who posts here is practically unemployable.

Your pal Don P is calling himself MJ Memphis or something stupid like that now--we figured out where he worked and he totally freaked on us.

A guy at his company e-mailed me back and said he was somewhat harmless.

Somewhat.

PR: I am most certainly employed here at my company. I just don't work here.

Subtle difference.

Your pal Don P is calling himself MJ Memphis or something stupid like that now--we figured out where he worked and he totally freaked on us.

How did you manage that? Color me impressed.

Btw, Pale Rider, I've been critical of you in the past, but for the record, I think you have literary talent.

Your pen could take you far.

If we leave Iraq to widespread ethnic cleansing and ultimately partition doesn't that argue in some sense against earlier intervention in the Balkans? If there is (and I don't take it for granted that there is) going to be a bloody internal reshuffling of peoples in Iraq, and the ultimate disintegration of the country could we really have prevented that same process in the former Yugoslavia? At least in the case of Yugoslavia, it was the ethnic plurality the Serbs who were most invested in the idea of holding the country together. The religious majority Shiites don't seem overly preoccupied with idea of Iraq. They would apparently be happy taking their own private Idaho in the south.

You think he has the write stuff?

Ouch.

Pale Rider--I have been subjected to your tripe on this site for a couple of years now, and I have decided that you are the biggest horse's ass I have personally encountered on the internet. You are unfailingly misinformed, self-absorbed, hostile to any dissent, condescending without evidence of qualification, dully predictable, and just plain asinine. You are like a juke box that only plays one lousy song over and over again. Give it a rest, or get some new material, because you are a fucking bore.

If we leave Iraq to widespread ethnic cleansing and ultimately partition doesn't that argue in some sense against earlier intervention in the Balkans?

No. If our intervention that caused the chaos in Iraq left us no realistic way to prevent widespread ethnic cleansing and, possibly, partition, that says nothing about our intervention to stop ethnic cleansing (and, incidentally, in some cases to enforce partition) in the Balkans. Two different scenarios, with different reasonably expected outcomes from US action.

If there is (and I don't take it for granted that there is) going to be a bloody internal reshuffling of peoples in Iraq, and the ultimate disintegration of the country could we really have prevented that same process in the former Yugoslavia?

Um, we didn't try to prevent the dissolution of Yugoslavia, we did try to control ethnic strife. And since we largely did do that, its pretty hard to say that anything in Iraq would retroactively change the truth of the results in Yugoslavia.

At least in the case of Yugoslavia, it was the ethnic plurality the Serbs who were most invested in the idea of holding the country together.

You say that like its a good thing.

The religious majority Shiites don't seem overly preoccupied with idea of Iraq. They would apparently be happy taking their own private Idaho in the south.

Based on what, exactly?

Kevin - This has been by far one of the biggest mysteries of the Iraq war: why did no one in the military foresee the insurgency? And once it started, why did they turn a blind eye to it? And now that they've finally figured out what they're up against, why are they still only haltingly — and far from unanimously — willing to change doctrine?

I'm sure this has already been said, but here are five good answers: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith.

If we leave Iraq to widespread ethnic cleansing and ultimately partition doesn't that argue in some sense against earlier intervention in the Balkans?

How many US troops were killed in the Balkans? How much fanatical anti-Americanism, worldwide, did our intervention there stir up? How many allied countries contributed in strength to the peacekeeping effort?

We should make a good faith effort to prevent Iraq from falling apart. But we should recognize that our chances of success there are much lower than they were in Bosnia, in large measure because of the monumental stupidity of our intervention so far.

Pffff. Everyone - even the liberals - in 2003 knew that Saddam had planned an insurgency all along.

British intelligence had learned that Iraq attempted to acquire quantities of IED tactics from Africa.

Pale-freankin'-rider is brillaint in this thread. I am in awe, and I have been educated.

If that's not obvious, you need to examine your meds.

Why don't they want to fight an insurgency?

Procurement fraud.

It's harder to steal when you're managing a transaction to buy 300,000 rifles that actually have to work, or 300,000 bullet proof vests.

But when you've got a black-ops fund for high-tech gizmos that will never actually be used (and therefore never actually tested), like nuclear bunker busters, dude, that's 100% profit!

Republicans want a high-tech video-game war so they can steal.

Perhaps just a minor point, but why do Kevin, Lawrence Kaplan, or David Ignatius assume that General Abizaid and other senior officers in Iraq were reading Lewis Sorley's A Better War for the first time?

General Abizaid is registered Republican?

The counterinsurgency would have been directed at whoever was in power after So Damn Insane. So until a viable structure was formed there was no gaming senerio that would lead to a success. I will define success, as a steady increasing flow of oil, a country not a threat to other nation's, and not likely to be controled by a hostile country that could disrupt global commerce, by trading oil in a currency other than USD.

With that as a determination of success, we can now look for a method that will achieve these goals. First we must get by these elections, second the American forces need to retreat to a minimal pressence inside Iraq with an ability to respond in the areas at risk of instability. This will require base lease's of lets say 10 years. Which can not be entered into until there is a legitamate government. This will also require each natrual autonomous region to have a strong role in local administration of commerce, and order. This will require a focus on making sure the ability to conduct oil operations can be done in a manner that creates a positive cash flow after security cost's are factored in, before it is a success.

Those are the objectives that need to be accomplished before we can withdrawl from Iraq. This will not be easy. It may be a pipe dream of a bunch of Neo-con chicken hawks who have never seen war from the prospective of one bullet at a time. At this point it does not matter. What matter's is if these goals are to be achieved they need to put on the table. Sometimes the cards an't worth a dime if you don't lay them down. It is time to lay our cards on the table, in a public manner so that the Iraqi people know what we need to declare victory and leave.

I think that the simplest way to understand the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the 78-day American air blitz against Serbia is to realize that Bill Clinton was careful to do and say everything that would please the Germans, while generally ignoring the French. The U.S.A. basically implemented German policy in the Balkans.

Sure, sure, as soon as I'm done laughing, William H. Depperman...

Do you do parties?

It's a little late in the thread for this, but I guess I should clear something up. When I said that "no one in the military" foresaw the insurgency, that was sloppy wording. What I meant was "no one in the military leadership." As several people have pointed out, there are people in the military who are counterinsurgency experts and have been trying to recommend counterinsurgency techniques almost from the beginning. For the most part, though, they have been ignored until very recently.

No, but do you have anyone better?

The Iraqi army? DeBathification had to be the worst idea in the history of stupid ideas. Worse than cloning dinosaurs.

I would submit that the insurgency was planned from the beginning. It is rather strange that a despotic government such as Saddam's would disperse munitions and ammunition throughout the country in such a decentralised way unless it was planning to use it later.
Posted by: floopmeister on December 13, 2005 at 11:10 PM | PERMALINK

Except for the fact that much of the munitions dispersal was accomplished by the failure of Rummy to secure Iraqi arms depots (eg. Al Qa Qaa, etc.)

It's almost as if it was on purpose. In fact, I can see more purposeful intent in Rummy's actions than Saddam's. While it makes sense that Saddam would try to invest some military capacity for post-invasion survivability, I don't see much in the way of signs. I mean, if he did it, that effort's pretty much indistinguishable from what we're seeing; explainable by looting of unguarded weapons depots, and smuggled-in IED technology from Iran or Al Qaeda. I would think that if Saddam had been saving up a package for future use, it would have consisted of some heavier equipment, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft stuff to harass coalition helicopters or combat air patrols, or to frustrate close air support. But we're not seeing ANY of that in any element of the insurgency today.

Speaking broadly, there are three constituencies with differing opinions about Iraq:

1. Based on Military Times polls, active service personnel support the Iraq war and Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.

2. Iraqi sentiment and a great deal of other information can be gauged from the statistics collected in the Iraq Index at the Brookings Institution website. According to a poll from October 11, 2005, Iraqi citizens feel their country is moving in the right direction rather than the wrong direction by a 47%-to-37% margin. Their reasons for optimism include: petroleum supplies reaching 88% of pre-war levels and electricity at 94% of pre-war levels; per capita GDP 30% higher than in 2002; twice as many cars as before the war; and 5.5 times as many phones. They are also holding an election right now where the result won't be 100.0% for the incumbent.

3. The American public appears to be far more pessimistic about Iraq than the first two groups, even though the first two groups are the ones who are bearing most of the costs of the war. This pessimism does not appear to be based as much on direct information from Iraq as on analogies with Vietnam.

I believe that Joe Lieberman is right. There is much reason for hope, and the war is not already a lost cause.

Oh, and one more point. The civilian leadership is obviously more to blame than anyone for what's happened in Iraq. They were clueless about what they were getting into and refused to believe that the war would be anything besides a glorious liberation.

However, I've made this point so many times that I didn't feel like I had to make it yet again. My focus on the military just happened to be the focus of this post.

BTW, I'm not sure Shinseki looks all that great on this score either. It's true that he wanted more troops, but that was primarily for peacekeeping, I think, not to fight a counterinsurgency. I'm not aware of an increased focus on counterinsurgency during his tenure, though if anyone knows more about this I'd be interested to hear it.

Whenever I read one of these analyses from Kevin, I'm reminded of comedy routines about people with extremely short term memories. It's as if he's forgotten the last time he wrote about our chances for "victory" in Iraq. Just once, I'd like to see him say that the moment we went in, we lost. That we don't deserve victory. That you can't turn mass murder into justice.

But he won't say those things. Is it because he's afraid Al or tbrosz or Cheney--or Bush himself--will call him a TRAITOR!!? Nah, I don't think so. It's because, with a political agenda not really that far removed from any of them, he would think himself a traitor. Meanwhile, like the others, he betrays humanity with his hopes that those who wield their killing weapons and their selfish brutality will somehow be able to come out of this with a win.

jayarbee - in your opinion, did we come out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a "win"?

trying to recommend counterinsurgency techniques almost from the beginning. For the most part, though, they have been ignored until very recently.

Posted by: Kevin Drum on December 14, 2005 at 1:14 AM | PERMALINK

Unsupported fact. What do you define as counterinsurgency tactics? I suspect I can show examples of the action taking place.

------------------

The Iraqi army? DeBathification had to be the worst idea in the history of stupid ideas. Worse than cloning dinosaurs.

Posted by: osama_been_forgotten on December 14, 2005 at 1:15 AM | PERMALINK

No one knows what would be happening if you used the Iraqi army. The people lobbying for their disbanding were local Shiite's and Kurds, the clear majority of the population. Perhaps you'd be fighting less Sunni's and more Shiite's ....and Shiite's outnumber Sunni's by far.

A huge problem with fighting the insurgency and successfully installing a democratic government is that Iraq is not a homogenous state. The Allies didn't give a shit about Shiites, Sunnis, Turks, or Arabs when they split The Ottoman Empire into colonies after World War I.

We destroyed Germany and Japan in World War II and installed democratic governments. Both countries rapidly became extremely successful and are behind only the US as top 3 economies in the world.

Kevin,

The point of putting in hundreds of thousands of troops at the onset, ostensibly in the name of "peacekeeping," is to prevent the birth and growth of anything like a large-scale, popular, effective insurgency in the first place.

Prevent looting, prevent score-settling, prevent ethnic squabbles over land/water/holy areas, and tamp down on unrest and secure the rebuilding BEFORE an insurgency can develop.

That way, when someone organizes an insurgent group or cell, that group or cell is easy to identify, and more importantly, isolated from any potential support bases (assuming that most people would rather NOT have a guerrilla war in their neighborhood as long as the water, electricity, and public infrastructure is functioning).

The key to winning any insurgency is preventing its development in the first place, and the key to preventing its development is serious attention to "hearts and minds" - serious attention to hearts and minds entails serious attention to stomachs, wallets, roads, toilets, air conditioners, and so on.

Once the insurgency is up and running, once to public services are shot to shit and can't get running due to security problems, once the occupiers and their chosen local leaders cannot deliver basic necessities, then the insurgency holds all the cards and has more appeal to a larger number of people. Those people then start working with, for, and in the insurgency. Those people get whacked, arrested, or whatever, and ... they all have extended families...and then those families join.

And then you get to where we are now.

That's why Shinseki was right on the money, in fact a bit under even at that.

Again, the only way to "win an insurgent war" is to prevent it from starting in the first place.

"No. If our intervention that caused the chaos in Iraq left us no realistic way to prevent widespread ethnic cleansing and, possibly, partition, that says nothing about our intervention to stop ethnic cleansing (and, incidentally, in some cases to enforce partition) in the Balkans. Two different scenarios, with different reasonably expected