Well, counterinsurgency at the end of the day takes a huge number of people on the ground and under a fairly regular risk of getting shot at. Does anyone seriously think that absent some existential threat to national security, the United States is willing or able to raise a big standing army that's willing to do that? At least the UN is smart enough to subcontract the work out to India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Do we really want to restructure our military so we can fight more wars like Iraq? The Iraq War was a strategic blunder - but it was also an ethical one.

Rumsfeld's military transformation wouldn't have been such a bad idea if it wasn't done under a President determined to invade and occupy a foreign nation on the advice of some neo-con nutjobs. On principle, I agree with the idea that if we have to fight wars, they should be quick and to the point. Do we really want to create a military that makes it easy for a President to engage in long-term nation building campaigns?

oh, please. grow up. when you decide to play the imperial game, invading, occupying countries, you can bet you are going to get shot at. deservedly.

as far as i am concerned, every boot on the ground in iraq is a war criminal. every boot in afghanistan is a war criminal. no less than the einzatsgruppen of ww2 fame.

if you really want to play the imperial game, then you are going to have to multiply the size of the standing us armed forces by a factor of 20x - 50x. and you are going to have to implement a draft. or hire lots of mercenaries.

the choice is, do you want to be imperial rome?

Fighting wars of insurgency should never be the business of the US armed forces. Arguing that we should consider the idea is just buying into the Bush bullshit that Iraq was a legitimate war and had a defensible rationale at the outset. It NEVER DID! It was a war based on bullshit that was sold to a vulnerable American public and Congress that was looking around for someone's ass to kick after 9/11 because defeating the ragtag Taliban wasn't enough to satisfy our surging lust for revenge. What needs to happen is that everyone including George Packer must admit they were terribly wrong about Iraq to begin with.

I think there's more to it than just shooting people, unless you know of some magical way of doing this that doesn't piss off all the friends and relatives of the person shot.

If we could figure out a way to marginalize the radicals -- to make them look foolish, old-fashioned, or counterproductive -- I think that would be more productive.

Given Bush's present standing in the world, the best way to do this might well be to call attention to how various leaders resemble Bush, instead of differences. For example, Hugo Chavez, he sure is fond of that military uniforms, isn't he (interpose with shots of Commander Codpiece). Now that Chavez has been elected a third time, Bush could make cracks about term limits, and how it gets a leader out before he can go too far with his cult of personality. Or Ahmenijad in Iran -- talk about how they've both found it helpful from time to time to throw some bones to their respective religious extremists, and how it always helps to invoke the other Axis of Evil.

I can't imagine Bush doing this, of course, but long term, you want to make the good guys look wise, and the bad guys look stupid.

the choice is, do you want to be imperial rome?

Small chance of that, given the gold-plated approach we take to military procurement. Increasing the size of the armed forces by an order of magnitude would bankrupt us pretty fast, even faster than what BushCo has managed so far.

The other (very good) argument against having a larger army is that if you have it, some asshat will want to use it. Since we've already demonstrated that we're willing to put an asshat into the oval office for two terms, there's no reason we should be trusted with an imperial occupation/scale force.

Our Army size was entirely adequate for crushing Saddam's forces in short order. It's probably adequate to doing the same to Iran's forces. It's not up to fully policing a big country once we've done that. Do we want a military that is?

Does it make any sense to speak of invading sovereign nations but not policing the decapitated state we just created? I suppose it does if our goal is sowing global chaos.

The big problem here is that Iraq was an unprovoked war. It is difficult to have a reasonable discussion about reasonable use of force when it is predicated on a patently unreasonable use of force. But the neocons are right: they created this reality while we merely described it.

Isn't it a little odd for glenn to be commenting about this now? He's been one of the biggest cocksuckers for militarism that I can tell.

If we could figure out a way to marginalize the radicals -- to make them look foolish, old-fashioned, or counterproductive -- I think that would be more productive.

This is all true - but is a difficult task. In your own country where you have all the advantages of intimately knowing the cultural terrain, Newt is still being Newt, Pat is still being Pat, Rush is still being Rush...

As for the rest of the world, stopping gratuitous invasions would be a start...

.

Kevin Drum >"...I confess that I'm not entirely sure (a) exactly what a "global counterinsurgency" would entail..."

John Robb`s blog is a good place to start learning about this stuff as is Pat Lang`s

"...the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion...but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington

RUMSFELD:

WAIT.

Do you realize Donald Rumsfeld conquered two countries, and occupied them with relative effectiveness given the circumstances, confronting far more motivated and less scrupulous individual combatants and paramilitary groups than even the kamikazis of Japan, with a casualty rate only 30% greater than US peace time military casualty rates and with absolute casualties per year LESS THAN the Carter Administration; and you Regressive-Democrats consider him a failure?

He is the best Secretary of Defense/War this nation ever had and you fail to understand it. That is why you Regressive-Democrats bring disaster and misery, particularly to the poor and vulnerable, domestically and internationally, whenever you have power.

The insurgency we have to defeat is you; the Regressive-Democrat insurgency that would overcome all that is good, virtuous, and civilized on this earth. AND WE WILL.

TOH

I lean toward believing that we should, because even though I'd like to see us fight many fewer wars than we do, it's inevitable that we're going to fight at least few. As long as that's the case, we better learn how to fight them successfully.

What we better learn how to do is get what we want without invading countries and killing people.

Modern war means that innocent civilians die, political communities are ripped apart and physical assets like hospitals, schools, power plants and water treatement facilities are destroyed.

We have to stop applying 17th century solutions to 21st century problems.

Instapundit is *this close* to realizing that attacking Iraq was not a good move in the war on terror, but rather a shining example of shoehorning the problem of terrorism into the framework of military action against foreign states.

Or perhaps more likely: he realized that some time ago, in spite of continuing to cheerlead for continued boneheadedness, and he's just feeling his way around for a way to admit it and save face. And not lose the "base" of his readership.

The problem in Iraq is almost always framed incorrectly: we'd have little problem destroying that country, like we did Dresden, Tokyo, etc., if indeed the war was thought to be necessary and justified.

"because even though I'd like to see us fight many fewer wars than we do"

Really? Your threshold (for the justification for the invasion and killing of thousands of innocent people) has been pretty low in the past. In 2002 and before, it was" well, Saddam's a bad guy, and I'd surely like something to be done about that Middle East, like overthrowing dominoes of democracy or something. Yeah, sure. If it doesn't work, no skin off our smarmy, schmucky pundits' noses. Where's my job in the MSM?"

Glenn is merely the latest rabid, plague-infested rat to desert the sinking ship that is the Occupation of Iraq.

Actually, I think we called this one back in July, 2004. See Say, has anyone noticed that Bush has decided to fight a dirty war against 1.5 billion Muslims?. Just sayin' ... 'Cause I'm a hippie who's still really dirty...

Some extracts:

Will the strategy of dirty war that Bush has chosen scale to the Islamic world?

That is, assuming for a moment that the Reaganite dirty wars in Latin America can be considered a success, can we expect a successful replay in the (so-called) war on terror in the Middle East? The answer is almost certainly No.

1. Latin and Central American were in our own hemisphere. The Middle East is not.

2. No other powers had vital interests in Latin America. Not so in the Middle East.

3. Latin American had no nukes. The Middle East does.

4. For the Latin American dirty war, the Constitution could be bent. For the Middle Eastern dirty war, it must be broken.

5. The Latin American dirty war could be hidden from the average American. Not so in the Middle East.

6. In Latin America, the risk of blowback was minimal. Not so in the Middle East.

Incidentally, as soon as you start looking at the GWOT or whatever the fuck we're calling it these days as a reasonably straight replay of the Contra operations in Latin American under Reagan, the centrality of torture and prison camps becomes obvious, as does the extra-Constitutional nature of the actions taken to prosecute the war by what we really do have to call the criminal Bush regime.

If we fight counterinsurgency wars, Kilcullen has something to day. If we’re attacked by other countries or private groups like Al Qaeda, we have insurgency problems only when we try to take control of territory. If we limit ourselves to arrest or selective killing of a very few top Al Qaeda leaders, we wouldn’t face insurgencies. Packer was seduced by this interesting Australian and ignores values. Why should we attack any country? Canada has no right to attack countries in the middle East- right? Then, why do we have that right?
Israel got an insurgency problem when the country was created by Europeans. They bought land from the locals, like the early US government. The difference is that Palestinian and anti-Israeli Lebanese (the majority) get reinforcements and moral support from outside, whereas native Americans did not.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is a bombastic fool but we don’t need to attack him or dance to Israel’s tune. Iran, even if it eventually has 20 nukes, won’t attack Israel which has more than 100 and is clearly ready to fight. The problem is that Israel can’t completely exterminate all Arabs and sooner or later must come to terms with them.
It’s interesting to read about counterinsurgency tactics but we have no business in Iraq and even less business attacking any new countries, i.e Iran or North K. Switzerland has done very well without an imperialist foreign policy. Why can’t we be happy with our current holdings and work toward a Switzerland-style foreign policy? Brazil has become energy independent. Big Oil owns both US political parties, hence we are increasingly dependent on imported oil.

Right, we can never be safe unless we control every square foot of Mauretania. Ruritania too.

Hank Scorpio wrote:

"Well, counterinsurgency at the end of the day takes a huge number of people on the ground and under a fairly regular risk of getting shot at. Does anyone seriously think that absent some existential threat to national security, the United States is willing or able to raise a big standing army that's willing to do that? At least the UN is smart enough to subcontract the work out to India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh."

And yet the Romans were able to do it effectively with technology 2000 years previous to ours. It's that technology we can use to be that much more effective, i.e., that much more economically (less) brutal, than they were. But why don't we? Oh, that's "colonialism" you Regressive-Democrats will whine; that's "imperialism"; that's "oppression"; look how you complain about Guantanomo which is unappealing, of course, but it’s just inadvertently locking perhaps some non-combatants up – as warfare goes it’s the “hitting with one’s purse” of combat; and yet even that is too brutal for your sensibilities; you'd prefer we suffer defeat which is a nuclear or biological or chemical disaster in one or more of out nation's cities. You would prefer that; on principle, so called, I guess. Do you ever stop to realize that the principle is defending our children; defending some foreigners civil liberties AND THEIR LIVES is far removed from that.

Also, how can you worry about global warming and yet embrace relative pacifism our religiously fanatical martyrdom-obsessed enemies are about to get globe destroying weapons? Er, uh, nuclear holocaust is a bit more of a threat than balmy Northeastern winters or even rising sea levels. Nuclear devastation is the only global warming crisis iminent and par excellence for now and the way to avoid it is to prevent these religious qua nihilistic fanatics from getting even close to having such weapons, even if it means killing every last one of them. Iraq a mistake; if so, of the better safe than sorry variety.

If you want to march for world peace, march in Tehran, Pyongyang, and Jerusalem. This Administration and the USA overall is ALREADY THE GREATEST ADVOCATE AND AGENT FOR FOR WORLD PEACE ON THIS EARTH . . . AND OUR BRAVE MILITARY FIGHTING IN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN AND ELSEWHERE THE MOST NOBLE, AND BLESSED, IF YOU WILL, OF PEACEMAKERS.

Duh.

TOH

[I had trouble logging on so I saved this until now; want to participate in this; will review past posts.]

In Iraq, Kilcullen says, “We’ve arguably done O.K. on the ground in some places, but we’re totally losing the domestic information battle. In Afghanistan, it still could go either way.”

What information does he want to disseminate that isn't already freely available?

What's the cure? More government-sponsored radio, tv, press, and blogging?

We need a theological strategy to win over terrorist Muslims, just as we needed a political strategy to win over godless Communism.

Glenn Reynolds also linked to this:

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1570

When the military is reinvented as a police force, it will be a bigger threat to civil liberty than it already is.

Do we want a military that is?

A growing concern of mine, and a concern that needs to be addressed by folks smarter than me, is what a “never ending� GWOT would do to our concept of our military being comprised of citizen soldiers. Maybe I am being paranoid, but I am sensing a drift toward the establishment of a politicized, permanent warrior class.

As I type this, I am sitting next to a shelf that holds a folded flag that was presented to me at my Dad’s funeral. He was an Army grunt who saw service in N. Africa, Sicily, and on D-Day. I value what our soldiers do, but am worried about what some would let them become.

Better minds than mine comment on this in this informative thread at Intel-Dump . Please pay special attention to the comments. Most are made by current and former soldiers. It’s a very enlightening, and even chilling, commentary.

Global C, I would be especially interested in your and the Major’s reaction.

Yes, and this was simplified by John Kerry in the 2004 election to something like "we need to make terrorism a law enforcement problem instead of a military problem." Much mirth ensued from the people who were Wrong From The Very Start (TM).

All posts to earlier threads have vanished. Zero.

New posts don't appear.

What gives?

the Objective Historian:

But why don't we? Oh, that's "colonialism" you Regressive-Democrats will whine; that's "imperialism"; that's "oppression"

Right, it does look like colonialism, because insurgencies live among the general population and so it looks very like an anti-colonial revolt. Now in the case of Iraq that isn't really true, since the Sunni population is very uneasy about the Baathist and al Queda insurgency, but this is in general a real problem.

“We’ve arguably done O.K. on the ground in some places, but we’re totally losing the domestic information battle.

I think this is partly because Bush and the neocons think that almost everyone in the world is automatically pro-American, so we don't need to seriously listen to any objections they have to American foreign policy.

This goes back to the original neocon/Rumsfeld conception of this war, and why they were so obstinate in swatting down the Shinseki's that advocated more troops. The original plan was that the US military would do the cooking, and NATO would do the dishes -- the clean-up afterwards. For some reason GWB lost his train of thought on these matters after Mission Accomplished, turned down France's offer to share responsibility, snubbed the UN, etc. That's why I've said I would have been willing to vote against him and sacrifice my preferences for a generation if you folks had put up a decent candidate.

And yet the Romans were able to do it effectively with technology 2000 years previous to ours

TOH, you sound like a real dope. Of course insurgencies were less effective way back when. Armed with swords and spears, killing was primarily a large-group operation. A handful of dedicated insurgents armed with broad swords might be able to kill a hand full of Romans.

Armed with and endless supply of AKs, RPGs, and IEDs as well as a near endless pool of recruits in an urban setting, an Iraqi insurgency, which Rumsnamara didn’t even admit existed til last year, can be very hard to defeat no matter what the strategy.

I found a pdf that discusses counterinsurgency: calise.army.mil.usacsl/divisions/pksol/Static Document

When this business started, in aftermath of the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan, the jihadists had small resources and only a few bases of operation. Now we have turned them into a hydra-headed monster, mostly for reasons of short-term political gain.

Realistically, even if we were to leave tomorrow, taking our handy targets with us, how much harm could Al Qaeda and its ilk actually visit upon us? That is, beyond doing what they set out to do, with the eager help of BushCo: disrupting normal life, damaging our economy, and getting us to blandly hand off our civil liberties in exchange for the chimera of something called "security"?

Twilight Zone time at PA.

Glitch in the system I guess. All the comments had zeroed out. And now they're back from whatever alternate reality took over there for a bit.

Speaking of extreme idiocy, The increasingly shrill and silly TOH opined about Rumsnamara:

He is the best Secretary of Defense/War this nation ever had and you fail to understand it.

So enlighten me ol' not objective one, why did Bush just fire the best Secretary of Defense/War this nation ever had just at the time we need him most?

If we could figure out a way to marginalize the radicals -- to make them look foolish, old-fashioned, or counterproductive -- I think that would be more productive.

Well, we've had plenty of chances.

What is it that make people radicals? Maybe because we prop up autocracies that aren't good to/for their people.

So maybe we should ease up on the props. That means easing back from our relations with dictators like Saddam, or convincing them to give more liberties to their people. It isn't our place to impose a government, but to help people realize a government of their own.

To overthrow one autocrat (Saddam) while bribing another (Blair shut down investigation of large scale bribery to the Sauds this week) reeks. Actions like that fuel the global insurgency.

Yeah, Bush didn't do it. But he walks hand in hand with the Saudi princes, and has his poodle, Blair, kill the investigation.

(Tin foil notice - I don't believe that Bush had anything to do with squashing the investigation. But others might. By not publically objecting, Bush condones Blair's actions).

The font looks different.

When it comes to Iraq, George W. Bush the MBA President is managing the war like a failed business. For the analysis, see:
"Iraq and the 7 Habits of Highly Defective Presidents."

Okay, too wierd. I am going to assume that either the server or the website is undergoing an update to a new software version. I'm out for a while. This is just infuriating.

KeptSimple is half right.

What it means in terms of today's military is much much more in the way of Special Forces, and holding conventional military numbers flat.

And, Rummy was right to cut some high-dollar toys; Crusader artillary is no use against an insurgency.

To debate this clusterfuck as anything other than a war crime is to be debating it from a false premise.

after last week's currency conference in china, the global war on terror is over.

china won. the imperial united states has been defeated. the remaining question concerning this defeat which pushes the united states firmly, instantaneously into third world standing is whether the amerikan masterminds and their zionist handlers were priapically ignorant, or whether george walker bush was the actual manchurian candidate[and bar his handler] - the zenith of treason.

when the dollar falls to less than $50[it might go to less than $25] then the civilized countries will solve the problem of amerikan priapism, they will just buy the usa and run it like any other colony.

and that is the way it is going to be. the reptillians, the demtillians in the congress, however will find some way to convert themselves into gauleiters/commissars of the colonial regime.

a republic, if you can keep it. lost in november, 2000.

We like to treat this [i.e., the broad war on terror] as a military problem because (1) we're good at those;

I completley disagreee, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, so which one of these were you good at.

Keith G: Intel-Dump is the one site my husband frequents, although I don't think he posts, he just lurks.

You know what Keith? This is gonna be a post, and I have my own blog to feed. (No offense, Kevin). I'll just bring back the link.

Cool, girl

A lot has transpired since the announcement of "Mission Accomplished," and since our own president on 7/2/03 pronounced "bring 'em on."
Far, far, far fewer American soldiers had been killed at that time.

It's a crime.

Now we are in a total quagmire. And I think that very statement fired up an insurgency.

TGWOT

Somewhere along the line folks have forgotten that terrorism is a technique, not an idealogy per se.

How can a counterinsurgency on a global scale be remotely viable without a drastic curtailment of human rights?

Have we really begun to accept the reality of perpetuawar?

My country seems to have forgotten how to make friends, forgetting that a powerful way of disabling enemies is to learn how to forge friendships.

Our already bloated military clearly wants more
reasons to wage endless war.

Is the vision of America now to become a global
swat machine?

Peace is more than the absence of war.

Packer...Reynolds...

I really don’t care what they say in relation to the GWOT. Anyone with half a brain knew from day one that the whole idea of the GWOT was/is foolish.

global counterinsurgency

Another foolish notion. As a number of the commeters have noted, let’s just try responding to real threats, not imagined or trumped-up threats. We will be ok.

...even though I'd like to see us fight many fewer wars than we do, it's inevitable that we're going to fight at least few. As long as that's the case, we better learn how to fight them successfully.

We are having no problem fighting wars against the likes of Iraq, good grief. Put me, you, anyone in charge of our military, the outcome would be the same. Our military will defeat them easily, what with 1000 times the firepower, much better communications, complete control of the air, oh, gee, I gotta stop this is so boring.

Beyond military success, we need not only to work in concert with the international community, we need to regain a leadership position. Bush has been a huge setback, but we can recover. Stopping him cold right now will make recovery easier. I hope that happens.

OH: "Nuclear devastation is the only global warming crisis iminent"

No, it's a dire possibility. But that other thing is happening now.

We need a theological strategy to win over terrorist Muslims, just as we needed a political strategy to win over godless Communism.

Ah, yes, the Theological Strategy. Ann Coulter was an early advocate on this I believe.

Every American should watch the following 3 documentary episodes. (From the BBC).

This might be the most valuable and important program you'll ever see. If you have little patience, go to number 3.

The power of nightmares I

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1002626006461047517&q=the+power+of+nightmares

The power of nightmares II

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7930933565201168&q=the+power+of+nightmares

The power of nightmares III

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8732625326538179377&q=the+power+of+nightmares

Also if it's global counterinsurgency, where's the global insurgency? Is it to be found here in the streets of Tokyo? perhaps on the shores of Lake Malawi, on the steppes of Mongolia? Hmm, rural Transylvania? Mato Grosso? Iceland? the Golden Triangle?

Oh. I get it. I get it. Global as in "World" in "World Series." Disaffected Saudis = Global.

or perhaps

Gotta-Lotta-Oil. Boost-American-Leverage

(Terrorist Threat: Dangerous yes but eminently manageable. Good strategy: drain the swamp + strong police actions. Bad strategy: make more swamps + don't know what you're fighting. Perspective please)

The "global counterinsurgency" is the rest of the world rising up against the GOP. What's especially good, though, is that the GOP seems to be rising up against itself as well.

I agree that the notion of a "global counterinsurgency" is ridiculous. But not anymore ridiculous that what is commonly referred to as "the War on Terror."

Or the War on Poverty. Or the War on Drugs.

What are these wars exactly? They have several common features: (a) the actual target of the war is fluid and constantly changing, thus their interminable nature; (b) as such, it precludes the possiblity of defining the conditions of success, since the target is never stable; (c) these wars often produce the very results they seek to overcome -- Thus the war on terror forces us to appropriate terror (are we not the primary cause of terror in Iraq?); the war on poverty generates solutions that yeild yet even greater degrees of poverty (how has the poverty faired since Johnson declared war on it?; the war on drugs has unfolded alongside ever larger profits for the pharmacutical drug pushers, etc.

Finally, there is: (d) the only concrete results of these wars is that they bestow more power to federal bureaucracies, who use that power to slowly erode our civil liberties.

And perhaps that's all we need to know about the nature of these wars.

We need a theological strategy to win over terrorist Muslims,
Posted by: theAmericanist

why don't we try NOT illegally invading their countries on false pretenses, NOT forcing our strongmen on their populace, and NOT constantly whitewashing Israeli aggression?

see how that works before you try telling them your fairy tales?

Shockingly, I think I pretty much agree with Glenn Reynolds on something related to national security:

What's shocking about it? I'm sure I agree with not only Glenn Reynolds but Michelle Malkin, Jonah Goldberg, and various other wingnuts about something related to national security. The difference between me and Kevin is that I don't waste my life perusing their idioting ramblings on the off chance that we might find common ground (if so, who cares? would that redeem them? ).

Our Army size was entirely adequate for crushing Saddam's forces in short order.

Is that so? Well, who the fuck do you think is fighting us now, Glenn? A bunch of amateurs? I mean, my memory might not be so great, but I don't seem to recall the Iraqi armed forces ever surrendering to us, do you?

God, these guys have been reduced to grasping at anything they can claim as a "victory" in a war this catastrophic.

Sorry, buddy - there's a lot of victors in this war (among them Amedinejhad, Dick Cheney, etc.), but the American people and their armed forces are, sadly, not among them.

Certainly, "we need to make terrorism a law enforcement problem instead of a military problem." That's exactly right. But as long as state sponsors of terrorism exist, we cannot use law-enforcement solutions, because state sponsors of terrorism are sanctuaries beyond the reach of the law.

Therefore, we need to divide the world between those states that are on our side against terrorism, and those that are against us by sponsoring it. And then we must eliminate the sponsors, by whatever means seem best calculated to do so, in order to reduce terrorism to a problem that law enforcement is capable of handling.

Which, by overthrowing the terrorism-sponsoring regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, is exactly what Bush did. With messy consequences, yes. But nobody else has suggested a way to get countries out of the sponsorship of terrorism business. So what choice is there other than the messy Bush way?

I confess that I'm not entirely sure (a) exactly what a "global counterinsurgency" would entail, although a few of its features are fairly clear, and (b) whether we ought to create a branch of the military dedicated to occupation and peacekeeping (since it seems unlikely to me that our existing Army can do both that and fight conventional wars).

What would it look like, sir?

Imagine this:

Oil tankers, perhaps 75 to a hundred of them, arrive off the coast of our fair land. Because liberals cut the size of our Navy down to eleven small ships and a garbage scow, we have to way to repel them as they race towards our shoreline and beach themselves. The front of the oil tanker drops and hundreds of automobiles drive down a series of ramps, loaded with jihadis. They begin to mingle with traffic in the I-95 Corridor, arriving in our cities and driving thousands of insurgents into the heart of our cities.

Need I say more?

"Also if it's global counterinsurgency, where's the global insurgency? Is it to be found here in the streets of Tokyo? perhaps on the shores of Lake Malawi, on the steppes of Mongolia? Hmm, rural Transylvania? Mato Grosso? Iceland? the Golden Triangle?

Oh. I get it. I get it. Global as in "World" in "World Series." Disaffected Saudis = Global.

or perhaps

"So what choice is there other than the messy Bush way?"

Dunno.

Counterinsurgency talk just puts me in mind of imperialism and expansion of aggressive acts of hostility abroad. It is at the very least orwellian. I say no to an expansion of American aggression, if this is what counterinsurgency entails. More military countermeasures??
I feel the public's anti-war sentiment was clear in the mid-term election. The staggering costs of war continue to rise. It's not rational. It is reactionary. World War III?????

So what choice is there other than the messy Bush way?

If you see no alternative to aggression then that tells us a lot about you and the kind of world you're likely to create with your words & deeds.

There are boundless alternatives to violence, but it requires wisdom, patience and courage to see and practise them.

I think you're dead-on, Kevin. This is a global insurgency against a de facto global government. The western world has such a stranglehold over earth's resources that some factions are beginning to rise up against it.

The question is whether the western nations can, in union, be benevolent caretakers of the entire world. If not, this uprising will get bigger, and more violent, until the global insurgency turns into global revolution.

Okay Keith, you asked, and here is my answer.

Keith G:

Er, uh, your point, arrogantly stated works against you. If anything it should have been harder for the Romans to quell an insurgency, the insurgents being on a relative technological par with the Romans themselves.

For all their IED, AK-47s, we have technology that is 5 times more advanced; and we are defending ourselves. This should be easy; it may mean treating the domestic population MORE LIKE cattle than we do now - temporarily; but it is easy enough.

Also, please; the success of the Romans in their peak years had nothing to do with weapons but tactics. Tactics 2000 years of "occupation science" we should have learned from and improved upon by now.

Keith G; while calling me a "dope" you succeeded in helping me prove my point and proving yourself a buffoon. Thank you . . . sir.

TOH

I actually listened to George Packer interviewed on Air America Radio and his argument about a global counterinsurgency made a fair amount of sense. Although I still think the fiasco in Iraq has as much to do with eliminating the true threat of terrorism (al-Qaeda) as shit does to a tree.

In any case, I guess I am wondering why, if things are going so rosy in Iraq, that Bush allegedly just purchased a 99,000 acre ranch in Paraguay. I know that I might be violating Godwin’s Law just by bringing this up, but isn’t Paraguay where all the Nazi war criminals fled to? Just asking.

What a delight! The Objective Historian is here to make an ass out of himself (herself?) while I straighten out the liberals.

As a good conservative who is correct in everything he does, let me explain why ToH is really to be known as the Obfuscating Historian.

Er, uh, your point, arrogantly stated works against you. If anything it should have been harder for the Romans to quell an insurgency, the insurgents being on a relative technological par with the Romans themselves.

In point of fact, there is no correlation to an insurgency of ancient times and one of today. There are certain tactics that were acceptable then that are unacceptable now. You're talking about people who were lucky to have bronze and iron implements and a people who knew nothing of gunpowder; try to remember a bit of history before you attempt to stand up to these liberals. They are wily and can cite Wikipedia very quickly.

For all their IED, AK-47s, we have technology that is 5 times more advanced; and we are defending ourselves. This should be easy; it may mean treating the domestic population MORE LIKE cattle than we do now - temporarily; but it is easy enough.

A domestic population? Treated like cattle? No, the Vietnam experience has taught us that we should win their hearts and minds and work with the people as partners in order to deny the insurgency safe haven. This is the failure (and there haven't been many, to be honest with you) of the Department of Defense in Iraq--they should have done more to get the people to buy into what we were selling them. It's sales 101--sell the people the product they want for as much as they want to pay for it. Technology is meaningless in a fight with people who are not intimidated by it--"shock and awe" is actually a liberal construct and it failed miserably in Iraq, as it failed in Serbia, initially.

Also, please; the success of the Romans in their peak years had nothing to do with weapons but tactics. Tactics 2000 years of "occupation science" we should have learned from and improved upon by now.

Well, no, we know the tactic that works--convincing the people that the native insurgency is illegitimate and that we offer the best deal possible--and everything else is just distasteful, ranging from using goats to inform on goatherders to using a stretching machine to pull the arms and legs off someone. I highly doubt whether we would be successful using ancient tactics of terror against people to get them to stop supporting the use of terror as a tactic--that's me though, I tend to think and use common sense whereas the likes of you makes a grand pronouncement, slaps the rickety coffee table your mama has let you use for your war games and your little hobbies with beads, knives and miniature pictures of naked women, and wonders why the world ignores you.

Keith G; while calling me a "dope" you succeeded in helping me prove my point and proving yourself a buffoon. Thank you . . . sir.

Allow the slamming of the liberals to rest with me, a professional. Your amateur hour hysterics have achieved nothing in this forum. In point of fact, the liberals are probably ignoring you and I should ignore you as well; it's just that I found your comments dripping with incompetence and I certainly don't need any of that getting in my way this evening.

Actually, Coulter DID have a "theological strategy", to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity" -- it's just that this was tried, and failed: the Crusades.

What I've said about it was that either we are war with Islam, or we have to be able to say what is the Islam with which we are not at war.

I can do that: can you?

Coulter, et al, can't do it. Nads, being an anti-Semite, more or less disintegrates into bashing Israel, which has little to do with Iraq and less to do with al-Qaeda. Besides, making this about the incompetence of the Palestinians or the desperate patience of the Israelis in the face of unspeakable and endless provocation plays a mug's game.

The real problem is that our Arab "allies" in the GWOT are generally the least compatible with our ostensible principles of freedom, equality, popular rule, minority rights, etc.

Meanwhile, we have folks in the US who really do search for reasons to blame America first: why?

Wow, that was just plain weird.

Americanista:

Actually, Coulter DID have a "theological strategy", to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity" -- it's just that this was tried, and failed: the Crusades.

Actually, she was kidding. And the result of the Crusades was, the people of Europe got rid of a bunch of ne'er-do-well nobles and knights who were confusing several lines of succession in more than a few kingdoms for a few years and decided to learn more about this whole Islam thing.

What I've said about it was that either we are war with Islam, or we have to be able to say what is the Islam with which we are not at war.

That would be the Islam that was once at war with Islam itself but is no longer at war with Islam but is directing itself against the people who want to be at war with the Islam that has gone to war against being at war with Islam. Right?

I can do that: can you?

I just did. Oh! Rhetorical question. My bad.

Coulter, et al, can't do it. Nads, being an anti-Semite, more or less disintegrates into bashing Israel, which has little to do with Iraq and less to do with al-Qaeda. Besides, making this about the incompetence of the Palestinians or the desperate patience of the Israelis in the face of unspeakable and endless provocation plays a mug's game.

See here--we will not play a mug's game in my presence. I won't tolerate it.

The real problem is that our Arab "allies" in the GWOT are generally the least compatible with our ostensible principles of freedom, equality, popular rule, minority rights, etc.

All of those things are overrated. It's cash money on the barrelhead that runs the world, son, and anything else is a pipe dream.

Meanwhile, we have folks in the US who really do search for reasons to blame America first: why?

They're liberals, it's what they do.

See here, fellow--we don't need a master of the obvious around here--we need informed commentary and thoughtful analysis. While I give you these things, can you give us a little less of yourself?

And you wonder why I think you're a moron!

Hey Keith G - did you see my link for you upthread?

Not exactly the quote I had in mind but it will suffice on this topic of Imperialist/Colonialist America and the global insurgency it has been fomenting for a very long time...

From Mencius (~320 BC)

Now that the King of Yian is a cruel dictator
He has long slaved and wronged his people
If you start over-running the country
The people of Yian would certainly
Welcome your army with full splendour
And treat and respect you as their liberator.

On the other hand, if Your Majesty
Decides to kill the people indiscriminately
Slaughter their parents and elders
Imprison their sons and brothers
Destroy their houses and temples
Ransack and rob their valuables
Then they would curse you for your plunders.

In fact, all your neighbour states
Are afraid of your strength and prowess
But if you begin to oppress the people
With ill-treatment and harshness
Naturally the rulers of the various states
Would unite to crush your starkness.

Your Majesty should immediately declare
The release of all the prisoners of war
Stop your soldiers from raid and pillage
Invite the headmen of all the villages
To elect a new king to take charge
Meantime, withdraw your army straight away.
-----------

A short one, also Mencius...

"How can the kingdom be settled?"

Mencius replied, "It will be settled by being united under one sway."

"Who can so unite it?"

Mencius replied, "He who takes no pleasure in killing men can so unite it."

America and the West would do well to understand the principles of humane government codified by Confucius and Mencius over 2000 years ago. I wonder if America will last anywhere near as long as China has. I daresay if China can keep from falling into the same trap that ancient Egypt fell into with the Greeks and Romans, China might well continue to be the longest continuously existing civilization on the planet for a very long time to come.

Conservatives always get hysterical over any admission that America might have strayed from the high-road as "Liberals always just want to blame America first!"

No, we don't. It pains us deeply, as we have feelings, something your lot knows predcious little about.

But accepting responsibility is what grown-ups do, even when we would rather ignore the elephant in the room.

Well, some in uniform manage to prosper whatever the current fighting strategy flavour of the month happens to be:

Tucson military recruiters ran cocaine
Some kept visiting schools for 3 years after FBI caught them on tape
By Carol Ann Alaimo
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.17.2006

A Midtown strip mall that should have housed the best of the best served as Corruption Central in Tucson.
Two military recruiting stations sit side-by-side there, one run by the Army, the other by the Marines. Between them, a total of seven recruiters were on the take, secretly accepting bribes to transport cocaine, even as most spent their days visiting local high schools.
They had help from several more recruiters at an Army National Guard office, where one recruiter was said to be selling cocaine from the trunk of his recruiting vehicle.
Together, these dozen or so recruiters formed the nucleus of one of the FBI's biggest public corruption cases, the sting known as Operation Lively Green, which unfolded in Southern Arizona from 2002-2004 and was made public last year.
Many of the drug-running recruiters remained on the job, with continued access to local schools, for months — and often, years — after FBI agents secretly filmed them counting cash next to stacks of cocaine bricks, the Arizona Daily Star found in a months-long probe of court records and military employment data.
Some were still recruiting three years after they first were caught on camera running drugs in uniform. Most have pleaded guilty and are to be sentenced in March. Some honorably retired from the military.
There is no suggestion in court records that the recruiters were providing drugs to students.
What they did between FBI drug runs isn't known because they weren't under constant surveillance, the FBI said. For example, in the middle of the cocaine sting, one of the recruiters was arrested by another law-enforcement agency in an unrelated drug case, accused of transporting nearly 200 pounds of marijuana on Interstate 19, court records show.
Military recruiting officials say the corruption was not widespread. They also say they kept these recruiters on the job because they either didn't know they were under investigation, or were told by the FBI to leave the suspects alone so as not to jeopardize the sting's outcome.
...

http://www.rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.azstarnet.com%2Fallheadlines%2F160717

"Lively Green", hmm? Not exactly "Operation Forward Together", but, what the hell.

GC, I sure did. I paid a visit. As always, you done good.

The Conservative Deflator >"...I know that I might be violating Godwin’s Law just by bringing this up, but isn’t Paraguay where all the Nazi war criminals fled to?..."

Some of them yes, others went to other South American countries & some went to the lands of Arabia.

Gotta spread it around ya know.

"A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic." - Aldous Huxley

even when we would rather ignore the elephant in the room.

Hell no! I'd rather shoot the sum bitch.

Keith G >"...I'd rather shoot the sum bitch."

Dibs on the ivory !

Better watch out for when its bowels let go though

“History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.� - Edward Gibbon

*blushing* Thanks Keith. I saw your comment. Thanks. I hope that post genterates some discussion.

Oh yeah. This one needs a killin.

But just so no one on the other side misreads our banter and tries to use it as a club over my head later (rdw) - I meant that to imply that personally I favor a "when we mess up, we fess up" approach, even when we would rather not because it might be embarassing to out side, it might cost a seat, or we might have to admit we made a grevious error.

I just want Pols held to the same standards I have to/choose to live by.

May I say that the Objective Historian's comments at 3:10 is a perfect example of the armchair neocon's video game view of the world. We've "only" lost 3000 men so Rumsfeld must be a genius for conquering two countries. It surely doesn't matter to such neanderthals that while the Afghanistan war may have been legitimate, the Iraq war has accomplished nothing strategically or defensively, in fact was a completely useless war, and has resulted in the deaths of perhaps half a million Iraqi people so far, and displaced another 2 million. These people are for the most part innocent people. To the video-game neocon boy, these deaths are meaningless. Their loss for no good reason is also meaningless. Video-game neocon boy, you are no Objective Historian--you are a monstrous piece of excrement with no morals. Why don't you go out back and shoot yourself in the head.

Meanwhile, we have folks in the US who really do search for reasons to blame America first: why?
Posted by: theAmericanist

please ... you're getting histrionic. like a beaten stepchild looking for love, you're blind to the dark side of america's foreign policy. try and mature your outlook beyond juvenile rah-rah-ing.

Thomas Barnett has been tooting the peacekeeping force for a while and laid out the idea in "Pentagon's New Map"

Bob C >"...the Iraq war has accomplished nothing strategically or defensively, in fact was a completely useless war..."

Only if you value truth, justice, honor etc.

In fact, as I have pointed out before & will continue to do so, the "Iraq War" has accomplished something. Something that it was supposed to do.

What is that you ask ?

It has enabled the grinding down of the capabilities of the military of these United States so as to allow other actors to come to the fore w/o activities otherwise required to do so. Something that couldn`t have been accomplished otherwise w/o large loss of life and waste of resources.

Just what is it I am pointing out and will continue to point out ?

The others that are advantaged by the "Iraq War", as some are aware of & many more will become aware of in the near future, is this group irrespective of you wanting to admit it or not.

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill" - Sun Tzu

Shorter Norman:

"Why do you keep doing the things I've made up about you?"

"A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic." - Aldous Huxley

He's wrong about the "all powerful" part, and plenty of decentralization is still permitted. The USA in WWII and the Civil War serves as examples. Central authroity was strenghtened, but it was not all-powerful.

right without might is soon conquered by might without right. Without military power, democracy can not survive.

When I read Norman Roger's comments, I always visualize an immense plate of ham.

kenji: When this business started, in aftermath of the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan, the jihadists had small resources and only a few bases of operation. Now we have turned them into a hydra-headed monster, mostly for reasons of short-term political gain.

I think that they turned themselves into the hydra-headed monster. The are repeatedly talking about reconquering al Andalus and re-establishing the rule of the caliphates in all the areas that the caliphates were able to rule, including eastern Europe, southern Ukraine, and most of India.

I always envision the Big Lebowski. Not the Dude, the old dude.

He's like a bad actor reading from a really crappy script. Real people don't talk that way.

If you read him as an over-the-top parody written by someone with a Swift-fetish, it's really quite funny.

I guess that makes some sense, his ego is of comical proportions.

china won. the imperial united states has been defeated. the remaining question concerning this defeat which pushes the united states firmly, instantaneously into third world standing is whether the amerikan masterminds and their zionist handlers were priapically ignorant, or whether george walker bush was the actual manchurian candidate[and bar his handler] - the zenith of treason.
...
when the dollar falls to less than $50[it might go to less than $25] then the civilized countries will solve the problem of amerikan priapism, they will just buy the usa and run it like any other colony.

There is a lot of merit in thinking like that. However, a decline in the value of the dollar also makes American exports more competitive; by making imported oil more expensive, it enhances the value of domestic sources of energy to American investors. Chinese banks have enormous debts as well, perhaps exceeding their assets, and there is considerable flight of cash from China to the U.S. and other non-Chinese banks.

The U.S. may face the classic dilemma of being forced to confront two geographically separated foes in the near future: a resurgent Chinese empire, and a resurgent (but still non-centralized) Islamic empire.

I emphasize that this *might* come about. On the whole, I think that the U.S. is less threatened than the E.U.; not only do they have less of their own energy resources, but the Islamist threat (if it exists) seems greater there.

Good points Kevin.

Wouldn't this rebuilding force be best if it had a component that constantly predicted postwar scenarios for nearly every country and policing countries as opposed to defeating armies?

This new branch might not even be just military but include Diplomats, a judicial system, police, political mediators, military and police trainers, utility planning specialists, infrastructure specialty teams, etc. and have them all ready to be compatible to work with one another?
I think Kevin is totally correct, the current task is not one that our military was designed for but a new dept or branch certainly could be constructed to do this process though I doubt many Democrats would go for it as they'd argue that it would make us more prepared for war and thus more willing to go to war. Interesting things to push for though.

I posted before reading all of the comments above and I was right. Many, who are certainly Democrats, oppose the idea of being prepared for such a thing because it will "cause" us to go to war.

but the usa has nothing to export other than stupidity and ignorance.

and that is what the chinese, and others, will cease buying.

but more to the point, george walker bush has revealed to all the world that the usa is a paper tiger. all of those states that we have f*cked over for the last century are slobbering to do to us what we did to them.

and, much to some surprise, the usa has nothing left. we are a deflated state. the modern amerikan corporation, a citizen of the world, has moved its assets overseas[to china?]. hydrocarbons? we have none.

the united states has become a remittance man of nations.

all know this other than the citizens of the usa...a more gullible bunch of fools has never been known in the world's history.

the shortest-lived empire that i know of. 1945 - 2000.

the 55 year empire.

citoyens, do you like it up your ass? learning mandarin?

i recommend that you get comfortable with being punked. and learning how to kowtow.

what a contrast of opinion in here. some people are sticking to the topic and making solid arguments both ways and then there are some total moonbats. it's a shame they have to pollute so many websites.

I think that they turned themselves into the hydra-headed monster. The are repeatedly talking about reconquering al Andalus and re-establishing the rule of the caliphates in all the areas that the caliphates were able to rule, including eastern Europe, southern Ukraine, and most of India.

I'm repeatedly talking about having sex with Rachel Weisz some day. Frankly, I think my chances are better than theirs...

Many, who are certainly Democrats, oppose the idea of being prepared for such a thing because it will "cause" us to go to war.

Well, you gotta admit that we do have a hell of a predilection for going to war.

mark, you are one of the moonbats. see the mirror?

I think that they turned themselves into the hydra-headed monster. The are repeatedly talking about reconquering al Andalus and re-establishing the rule of the caliphates in all the areas that the caliphates were able to rule, including eastern Europe, southern Ukraine, and most of India.

And the South will rise again!

Global Citizen >"And the South will rise again!"

They do seem to have a worry about their manhood, maybe it is justified.

"War is the easy part" - Anthony Zinni

what a contrast of opinion in here. some people are sticking to the topic and making solid arguments both ways and then there are some total moonbats. it's a shame they have to pollute so many websites.
Posted by: mark

it must especially stick in wingnut craw that the moonbats have been repeatedly right for the past 5 years.

uh, is that not why we need allies, so that forces are big enough for occupation duties? No, we do not need a bigger force and i hope we have learned our lesson and do not fight more "wars of choice" alone.

Hmm. Doesn't seem to be working. Maybe I should work 'caliphate' into the incantation somehow...

Matthew, what defines a hydra-head is that it grows a new noggin wheen you cut one off. Therefore it requires an actor attacking it to fulfill its destiny. Sure, jihadists want all that stuff you referred to. But do they have any real way of achieving those goals without help from jackals like Big-time Cheney and little-bitty Bush?

Forget about those theories of global counterinsurgency, when the largest group of active duty soldiers since Viet Nam are calling for withdrawal from Iraq, we better listen.

There are also rumors of a mutiny being planned inside the Green Zone. Would Bush still add more troops to Iraq, when the ones there are in full mutiny?? Just asking.

Kevin:

I concur that John Robb's Global Guerrillas blog is a great read on the idea of a global counterinsurgency. It feels not liberal or conservative, just this one guy with his big idea. Here's a post that basically summarizes his whole worldview and here's a good one about the role of cities. This is a perspective you'd have a hard time finding elsewhere.

I believe it was Ambrose Bierce who observed that the purpose of a standing army is to devour the resources which might otherwise tempt a neighbor to invade.

"Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind. Nicholas Chamfort

LOL -- Lord, folks project here.

Is there ANYBODY who thinks we have to whitewash American history to be patriotic?

Or that if we know our real history, we WON'T be patriots -- which, as Nads evidently believes, would be a good thing?

Get a grip.

Somebody posted that knocking off the Taliban "may" have been justified. Why in the name of all things godly would you question it, much less call American soldiers "einsatzgruppen", as some clown did up top? The Taliban hosted al Qaeda's staging and training areas for an attack on America that killed 3,000 of us. WTF do you think a legit cause of war LOOKS like?

There are a zillion things that Bush has done wrong, but that ain't one of 'em. It was, shall we say, problematic, but knocking off Saddam wasn't necessarily a bad idea, either. (Those two are as solid a set of insights as any. Repeat as necessary.)

Not to resort to actually talking about Kevin's post, but "global counterinsurgency" makes precisely the same mistake as "global war on terror". Terror is an emotion, and terrorism is a tactic: they're not an opponent to defeat.

"Counter-insurgency" is a word that soldiers made up when the Brits and Americans starting to make officers out of folks who had gone to college to study something other than engineering and artillery. In the olden days, insurgents were called rebels (or brigands), unless and until they won.

Changing the jargon doesn't change the challenge: we need a theological strategy to deal with terrorist tactics by Muslims, the way we needed a political strategy to defeat Communism.

But remember -- we didn't IMPOSE freedom on Poland, or the Czech Republic, much less China or Russia.

There's a lesson there. Anybody else see what it is?

Freedom in China and Russia?

Huh? The freedom which flows from serfdom to corrupt and authoritarian plutocrats, themselves little but brigands, perhaps?

[snip]

"Beijing also has focused state funds on cities, leaving less public money for rural areas. As a result, according to one report, roughly three-quarters of rural Chinese have seen their income dwindle since 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization.

Unable to survive on agriculture, peasants are undertaking one of history’s largest mass migrations, making America’s 1930s Dust Bowl exodus look like a family vacation. According to several studies, some 300 million Chinese will migrate to cities within the next 20 years. China’s cities are already home to some 140 million migrant workers, who are either unemployed or employed in construction, mining, and other largely unregulated industries. In turn, these migrants are forming a massive urban underclass, with no social welfare net, job security, legal rights, or unions.

China’s own official news agency revealed in 2004 that some 4,000 corrupt officials had fled the country, carrying with them some $50 billion in state money.

One recent study by accounting firm Ernst & Young estimated that China’s banks, riddled with self-dealing and graft, have nearly $1 trillion in nonperforming loans, an astronomical figure."
[snip]

Fragile China
by Joshua Kurlantzick
http://www.democracyjournal.org

A "global counterinsurgency" requires the following: a lot of money; a lot of time; an intimate grasp of the political, cultural, economic and ethnic relationships in regions around the world; the ability to work with goverments whose goals are not always congruent to those of the United States; discrete applications of military force; a committment to military training and aid to many countries, combined with a much lower US footprint around the world. The Bush administration has demonstrated that it is unable to do any of this.

[snip]
The petition described: a nightmare of 12-hour to 18-hour work days with no day of rest, earning meager wages that may be withheld or unpaid altogether.

The factories are often sweltering, dusty, and damp. Workers are widely exposed to chemical toxins and hazardous machines, and suffer sickness, disfiguration, and death at the highest rates in world history. They live in cramped concrete-block dormitories, up to 20 to a room, with each worker's space limited to a bed in a two-tiered bunk -- comparable in space, discomfort, and privacy to prison cells in the United States. Ten to 20 million workers in China are children. No one knows the precise number, because statistics of that kind are state secrets, and anyone disseminating such data is subject to criminal punishment. The severe exploitation of China's factory workers and the contraction of the American middle class are two sides of a coin.

[snip]

Business as Usual
Top administration officials went to China for yet another round of big talk and no action regarding Chinese labor abuses and trade violations.

By Robert Kuttner/The American Prospect
12.18.06

I don't know what area of history TOH is conversant with, but it is cerainly not Roman history.

Rome's empire expanded (and was maintained for centuries) through the use of allies, proxies, subject rulers, and native auxiliaries. Populations were coopted with the tangible benefits that Roman civilization offered.

When areas rebelled, successful Roman leaders sought to divide the population, and recruit auxiliaries that could fight the rebels on their own terms, backed by Roman legions.

Where TOH is most ignorant is when he/she attempt to draw military analogies between Rome and wars against insuregents and that of the United States. Rome had the following technological advantages: armor, short swords, portable artillery, "disposable" missiles (Roman spears were constructed so that the spearhead would break off after impact, which meant that they could not be thrown back at the Romans).

More importantly, the Romans had highly trained soldiers, an extremely flexible tactical doctrine, a superb engineering arm, and a highly organized logistal train. The insurgents that the Romans fought had none of this.

Rome had its share of failures in fighting rebellions, but in most cases these were due to failures in leadership.

No army is capable of policing a large or even mid-sized country in this day of age. doing so would require a level of brutality that would likely cause a regional conflict. We'd have every Persian, Muslim and southeast asian in the world chomping at the bit to enter the war, and if their countries refused they'd go themselves anyway.

It should be noted that Iran won't give us any more of a straight up fight than Iraq did. They aren't going to arrange themselves in tank formations for us to bomb from the sky. If you think that you're an idiot and you've watched too many WW2 movies.

They're going to build bunkers, sow weapons all across the country, and then they'll melt away and start guerrilla fighting, because that's what works. This rah rahism is totally devoid of reality. Our military is severely degraded, and it was never even half as powerful as we used to pretend it was anyway.

A global counterinsurgency sounds simply like an armed struggle against American hegemony. Since no straight military could possibly stand against ours, little disconnected-except-by-common-opposition groups fighting us around the globe is about what any hegemony should expect.

I think we should definitely develop some capability, in a coordinated effort with our allies, say NATO. Or perhaps we should work on a new alliance structure for just this purpose.

A division seems about the right size. This is not enough to have occupied Iraq. But it is enough to give a very good start, train officers, develop tactics, gain experience. We should likely never think about sending them somewhere except as part of a multi-national force.

The way we refuse to see our part in the Muslim hatred of “Western� values and culture reminds me of that thing Jesus said about not seeing a splinter in another person’s eye when you have a 2X4 in your own. Turn the situation around and see if Americans wouldn’t be jihading away if we had to face what they do.

Let’s say the Muslims are the all-powerful force in the world and not the Christian West. We would have huge Muslim military bases in Mexico and Canada. They would be invading and attempting to pacify Cuba right now and their vast spy network would be trying to overthrow the governments of major American states and install sympathetic state legislatures, which they had done several times in the past. Daily, hints would come from the Muslim countries that the U.S. might be next to be invaded if we didn’t tow the Muslim line. Muslim TV, books, music, movies would incessantly beam Muslim values to every corner of the land. Muslim missionaries would be crisscrossing the country offering good jobs, cool consumer stuff and membership in the hipper modern world to our kids if they converted to Islam.

Every bullet we fire, every life we spend in combatting this “global countergency� is wasted unless we first get out of the Muslims’ faces.

Thanks, WOmbat, for the succinct rebuttal of TOH's truly weird version of Roman history.

TCD: I have been watching the revolt in the ranks and written about it over the last couple of months. Here is one link. And here is another. In an all-volunteer force, this is unprecendented.

Watching the Military Channel last night-- Arkansas National Guard, in unprotected camp, Iraq 2006, saying-- it's hard to win hearts/ minds of Iraqis, and you saw them offering chocolate & gatorade, said they give it so kids remember them and later don't turn into suicide bombers.
The Guard was assigned to watch over Iraqi youth re-building an area destroyed by Americans-- kids working with their hands & primitive tools, paid $5.00 a day--an Iraqi government work program. A soldier said he would never do the work for that pitiful wage, seemed bewildered at his assignment to watch them.
Showing abandoned munitions strewn everywhere--obtained/used against them, they all questioned that nothing has been done to eliminate this continual danger to our forces..Guardsmen gathering/piling up random mortars, later exploding the piles, saying in amazement to the camera--look at this, this is what is killing us Americans over here!! 6 members of their brigade recently killed, they showed how mortar & shrapnel entered trailers as they slept. They took the viewer into abandoned shacks full of munition parts, showing they had been carried off--that this has been happening all over Iraq.
A Guard leader gave directives to the men, saying, longer will we not wear body armor,even in this 120 degree heat, saying maybe citizens would tire of killing Americans with IEDs, and, if not, the Guard would say forget it --and just kill everyone over there, and be done with it. Totally frustrated.
So sad watching them trying to fill up sandbags to protect themselves in these makeshift homes--as if sandbags could protect them, tacking metal onto their vehicles, as if that could protect them.
The irony was unbearable. Heartbreaking to watch, the documentary showed parents, wives, children back home,weary,worried, attending support groups, crying,doing hard work on family farms, long waits for soldiers to make intermittent phone calls to concerned mothers.
A father said, hey--these kids weren't trained for war as national guardsmen, they were trained to build things or tear things up, to be ready for hurricanes/national disasters, not this.

A Guardsman, in video sent home, tells his sister stay in school, don't get stuck over here, it's awful, he says.
The documentary bears watching for insight into what they really are dealing with in Iraq.
Not propaganda--heartbreaking realism.

Norm - Oil tankers, perhaps 75 to a hundred of them, arrive off the coast of our fair land. Because liberals cut the size of our Navy down to eleven small ships and a garbage scow, we have to way to repel them as they race towards our shoreline and beach themselves. The front of the oil tanker drops and hundreds of automobiles drive down a series of ramps, loaded with jihadis. They begin to mingle with traffic in the I-95 Corridor, arriving in our cities and driving thousands of insurgents into the heart of our cities.

Psychiatric discharges are harder to get than that Norm, but every barracks does need a comedian.

Psychiatric discharges are harder to get than that Norm, but every barracks does need a comedian.

I hope you live inland from the sea, because when you liberals gut our military and leave us defenseless, these jihadis are coming to cut the heads off everyone who has stood up to them. I would apply for collaborator status and look for a job on the Appeasement Committee with Dennis Kucinich and Molly Ivins.

Were I you, CIP.

(I should hasten to add that little qualifier to my previous comment).

And, yes, people really do talk the way that I talk--I'm talking now and I am a person.

Liberals = morons with keyboards.

Global Citizen:

You don't read much about the horrible morale in the military or about the near-mutiny in the ranks of active duty soldiers in Iraq, do you? Why do you suppose that is? I thought this was a democratic republic. How do we get this news into the mainstream media? I think the average American would be horrified to learn this. Thoughts? Kevin?

TCD

If the US is going to act like a global imperialist aggressor, invading and occupying one country after another to seize control of their oil, then of course there is going to be a "global insurgency" against that, and the US will have to wage a "global counterinsurgency" to suppress and oppress the indigenous populations of the countries that we invade and occupy.

It is sad but not surprising that Kevin supports this plan.

I see that the self-obsessed, self-indulgent boor Norman Rogers has taken over yet another thread with his profoundly unfunny narcissisistic parody troll act.

Norman--I think it will be hard for you to be dismissive about my post on the Arkansas Guardsmen. P.S. Denny Kucinich made lots of sense as he announced his candidacy this week, and Molly Ivins always had the best take on the Bushites, as a Texas resident...

TCD: I have to, once more, shout at the top of my lungs - What liberal media are these asshats blathering about all the time?

Seminal Analist:

I see that the self-obsessed, self-indulgent boor Norman Rogers has taken over yet another thread with his profoundly unfunny narcissisistic parody troll act.

Kisses to you, too! Can we hear more about this "global warming" thingamajig?

If Norman could get a Section 8 before, then, by Rumdumb, he can surely re-enlist and get one again.

But, at least he stays away from PETA.

Perhaps not directly to the point, but I did read the entire George Packer essay in the New Yorker and found it seriously depressing. Packer needs to go back and reread The Quiet American at least twice, for a reminder in how the road to hell is paved with ignorant if good intentions.

Do we want a military that is?

NO!

Fighting wars of insurgency should never be the business of the US armed forces.

As long as fighting wars of any kind is the business of the US armed forces, and we live in an evironment where we may be opposed by mass extremist movements rather than only elite regimes, we need a military that can fight insurgencies—as an "insurgency", at least so far as it creates a different style of warfare, is simply a an armed movement motivated by ideas other than loyalty to a particular, existing regime.

you want to make the good guys look wise, and the bad guys look stupid.

It is the stoopid American voters who make bad people winners and good people losers. It is the American voter who is responsible for the machismo of US foreign policy that makes our nation the bad guy to the rest of the world.

One of the major issues, also emphasized by the Iraq study group, is our almost complete lack of diplomacy!! We are viewed as doing Israel's work in the Iraq and as being called upon to do the Saudis work with Iran.

On the positive side perhaps we could use the global counterinsurgency to provide overseas jobs for our unemployed? (irony alert!!)

You could argue that the reason why there is a USA now existing at all is that the British army in 1777 - 1783 failed to develop a counterinsurgency capability sufficient to defeat the irregulars it confronted at that time in the rebellious colonies . The Army of Congress was a rabble of insurgent guerrillas terrorising the loyalist population and rebelling against the legitimate rulers of the English speaking peoples of North America. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al. were insurgent leaders allied in an axis of evil to the cheese eating French plotting the overthrow of the rule of law, justice and sound governance brought to North America by the British, while the likes of Tom Paine (English), John Paul Jones and Alexander Hamilton (both Scottish)were traitorous bleeding heart liberals who betrayed their own country. The British government of the time feared a domino effect that would result in all the continent coming under the influence of the perfidious colonials. The failure to suppress the insurgency did in fact result ultimately in much of the continent falling; only Canada remained free. So the lesson of history seems clear: if the Hegemon on the Potomac and its World Empire ruled is to survive, it must vastly enlarge its land based fighting forces and train them in the techniques of counterinsurgency, while at the same time drowning the voices of the America-hating liberal chattering class.

I can come up with many reasons and ways our victims can justifiably retaliate against us, our leaders and soldiers. I have to stifle my fingers from writing them. We deserve to have our militancy confronted and defeated. It would be much better for everyone if the US abandoned its ambitions to steal other peoples' natural resources and instead become their friends and make economic transactions in which everyone receives a benefit.

Those who extol the virtues of free enterprise maintain that economic transactions benefit all of the parties of the exchange. US militancy turns that theory into shit.

You could argue that the reason why there is a USA now existing at all is that the British army in 1777 - 1783 failed to develop a counterinsurgency capability sufficient to defeat the irregulars it confronted at that time in the rebellious colonies .

OTOH, one could debate the extent to which a regional separatist movement under the banner of a coalition of existing local governments is even really an "insurgency" in the sense it is used to distinguish between the traditional style of warfare between regimes and some different kind of warfare.

I'm not really sure distant historical analogies are all that much use, here.

Global counterinsurgency?

Last time I looked, the Saudis, Bush, Reid, Al Queda, and AmericanHawk have teemed up to kill Nevadans.

It is not counterinsurgency, it is an American war of survival against our own government.

Plus, what about the fact of squandering America's future, dissipating yet more assets. How can we afford all this? The administration already covertly borrowed zillions from China, and usurped funds from OUR national treasury, for their unpopular agendas. We are losing ground. What about our nation's priorities that do NOT relate to war? This is what they wanted--all war, all the time.

Kevin,
FYI - CFR has a thorough report on changing the military for this very thing you discussed.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9544/crs_report.html

Thought you might want to take a look.

Soon, it will be the US against the world. A global counterinsurgency strategy is another way of saying that.

I hope you live inland from the sea, because when you liberals gut our military and leave us defenseless, these jihadis are coming to cut the heads off everyone who has stood up to them. I would apply for collaborator status and look for a job on the Appeasement Committee with Dennis Kucinich and Molly Ivins.

What was the ratio of Democrats to Republicans Iraq Vets running for Congress? 8-1? You don't find a lot of GOP yuppies in the military.

Almost every outside consultant evaluating the military agrees that Bush is crushing the military.

cmdicely: I'm not really sure distant historical analogies are all that much use, here.

I agree.

There is a widespread but loose affilition of Islamists in England, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Morocco, Nigeria, Algeria, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt (but here mostly suppressed), Chechnya, Lebanon, PA areas, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Southern Thailand, NW Malaysia, parts of Indonesia, SW Philippines -- and even in the U.S. and Venezuela. I omitted Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis provide a lot of the financing of the madrassas where a very insurgent variety of Islam is taught in a very rote and superficial manner.

I think of it as being like a fungus: light threads, mostly invisible, with an irruption here and there.

I had a gloomy thought about France. If present trends continue, we shall live long enough to witness a France in which (a) a majority are dependent, either through pensions or welfare and (b) a majority of the men of military age are disaffected Muslims. We'll have plenty of opportunity to observe whether present trends continue.

If you see no alternative to aggression then that tells us a lot about you and the kind of world you're likely to create with your words & deeds.

There are boundless alternatives to violence, but it requires wisdom, patience and courage to see and practise them.

Mr. obscure? Take that moral judgment you just made of me. Note that the leaders of those countries, based on the last fifty years' data, are at least as prone to solving problems with violence as I am. Name a non-violent strategy that would make me, in their position, choose a solution other than violence. Please note that neither I nor they give a damn about your moral judgment of our character when formulating your strategy.

Note that the leaders of those countries, based on the last fifty years' data, are at least as prone to solving problems with violence as I am.

Do you have any cites to support this fact-free assertion?

Name a non-violent strategy that would make me, in their position, choose a solution other than violence.

Any non-violent strategy, by virtue of not threatening you with physical harm, would significantly decrease your incentive to resort to escalating conflict--should it arise--to the point of violence.

Take that moral judgment you just made of me. ... Please note that neither I nor they give a damn about your moral judgment of our character when formulating your strategy.

I have three questions for you, Einstein. 1) Do you know what a moral judgement is? 2) Can you point to a moral judgement that I made of you? 3) If you don't give a damn, why did you mention it?

I forgot something: Speaking of judgements, wasn't "lunatic" an unkind thing to call yourself?

Kevin, you can be niave at times. And I'm really surprised that your readers haven't given you more grief for the Instapundit quote. Setting aside the question whether there is any legitimate reason to ever quote Instapundit - he just isn't a reasonable part of the conversation - this quote from him was particularly egregious. It was clear from the start, and is even more clear now, that, for the warhawks' project to succeed, even on their own terms, would require a massive increase in the size of the army, and, yes, a draft. Yet (with a few exceptions) there were and are (almost) no calls for this. Certainly there were none from Instapundit. Even if one were to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was stupid enough not to realize this at the time, he surely realizes it now. Yet he can make the quoted post with a stright face, at the same time without reducing his bellicosity at all w/r/t Iraq and Iran. It's shameful, and it's a sad commentary that someone like that is quoted favorably by one of the most popular blogs of the center left.