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I recently wrote about a contradiction
in our strategy in Afghanistan,
where we are simultaneously attempting to draw the rural population
away from the Taliban and eradicating opium poppy crops, which
drives farmers toward the Taliban. An article in the May 14 Cleveland
Plain Dealer, "U.S. shift in fighting insurgency stirs debate,"
points to a different kind of contradiction in Iraq, a contradiction
between the requirements of the strategic and tactical levels
of war.
The article, by reporters Solomon
Moore and Peter Spiegel, notes that in Anbar Province, the Marines
are adopting the "ink blot" approach to counter-insurgency,
which is the only tactic that has a chance of working:
In the region surrounding Al
Qaim, a northwestern Iraqi town near the Syrian border, Marines
are fanning out from their main base and moving into villages
The deployment follows a strategy
favored by a new generation of counterinsurgency experts: disperse,
mingle with the population and stay put. The idea is to break
out of an endless cycle that allows insurgents to move back into
the key areas as soon as U.S. forces move on.
The ink blot approach is a
tactic, not a strategy, and it has been recommended by anyone
who has studied insurgency, not just a "new generation"
of experts. But the U.S. military threw away every lesson from
Vietnam as soon as that war ended, so the old has become new
again.
However, the article goes on
to note that at the strategic level, what we are doing in Iraq
directly contradicts the requirements of the ink blot tactic.
But the shift comes as the
Pentagon appears to be moving the overall U.S. military effort
in the opposite direction across much of the country. Army units
are being concentrated in "super bases" that line the
spine of central Iraq, away from the urban centers where counterinsurgency
operations take place.
The two approaches underscore
an increasingly high-profile divergence some say contradiction
in how best to use U.S. forces in Iraq.
U.S. forces are being pulled
back into fortresses not because fortresses are effective against
insurgents, but because at the strategic level, the Bush administration
is desperate to reduce causalities and get the American people
thinking about something other than the war in Iraq. A short
piece in the May 16 Plain Dealer stated that
Presidential advisor Karl Rove
said Monday that the Iraq war is responsible for the "sour"
mood of American voters, but he predicted that the Republican
Party would do "just fine" in the congressional elections
in the fall.
Rove may be proven right, but
at the moment Republicans in Congress are in a state of near-panic
at the prospect of a political bloodbath in November, and Iraq
lies at the heart of their fears.
If such a bloodbath occurs
and Democrats take the House, much less the House and Senate,
even the gutless Dems will get the message, and we will get out
of Iraq in short order (which we should do anyway). Pulling our
troops back into fortresses is a half-step along that road. Unfortunately,
like most half-steps taken too late (and in this case in the
wrong direction in terms of fighting an insurgency), it will
fail. American casualties will not drop, because we still have
to run lots of convoys, and public dismay over the Iraq debacle
will continue to grow. Political processes by their nature attempt
to bridge contradictions with half measures, but in war, half
measures usually make things worse.
The history of war brims with
contradictions between the tactical and strategic levels, with
unhappy outcomes. Two classic examples are the French and German
war plans in 1914, Plan XVII and the Schlieffen Plan. Both required
fast-moving strategic offenses at a time when the defensive had
become tactically dominant. Both failed, with enormous causalities.
Had U.S. forces in Iraq adopted
the ink blot approach at the outset, we would still face insurgency
today, and we would still find ourselves unable to attain our
stated strategic objectives. Not even Merlin could turn Iraq
into a secular, liberal parliamentary democracy. But the situation
would probably not have been as bad as it is, we might have managed
a half-graceful exit from Iraq and strategic requirements might
not have demand we withdraw our troops into fortresses. As it
is, what the Marines are doing is right, but too late. The strategic
level trumps the tactical, and the pullback of U.S. troops into
"super bases" is just a prelude to a super skedaddle.
William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion,
is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the
Free Congress Foundation.
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