Iraq and Counterinsurgency, Part Three

The Way Forward
All but the most die-hard Kool-aid drinkers agree that after four years in Iraq, the situation does not look promising. The Bush Administration has made numerous missteps in the post-invasion period (many would argue that the invasion itself holds the seeds of the post-war failures) and the Iraqi population is not secure, oil and electricity production is at or below pre-war levels and in addition to an insurgency, the country is facing some level of civil war (or civil strife, if you prefer that term). What options does the U.S. have at this point?

Withdrawal
Some percentage of democrats (and others, both more liberal and also on the Libertarian side of the spectrum) see withdrawal from Iraq, in some form, as the most reasonable step to take. The most extreme would favor bugging out completely and letting the Iraqis sort matters out on their own--the argument being it was a war of choice, we've gotten rid of Hussein, the Iraqi government has not taken the steps necessary to unite the country and U.S. forces have no place being stuck between the warring factions. This option is attractive in the sense that it would mean no further loss of blood or treasure in a conflict that seems no closer to resolution now than it did in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. But it carries with it the dangers of making the unstable situation the status quo and of the Sunni-Shia conflict within Iraq spreading across the Middle East. Because of the West's reliance on oil from this region, there is the additional danger that U.S. economic interests could be seriously damaged. On its face, a straight withdrawal option appears dangerous.

Let me state the obvious--the straight withdrawal option is an extreme, minority position. There is a a host of options on the table in this vein, including the Iraq Study Group's proposal pushing more international engagement and bringing stakeholders such as Iran and Syria into the process. Another option is the one touted by Joe Biden, of creating a federal system for shared wealth and national defense and separate zones for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia's. I am merely pointing out the most extreme case for argument's sake. And these other options are untried and speculative--we really don't have a good idea whether any of these options would lead to a stabilized Middle East and Iraq or not, but they are good options to consider.

Massive Escalation
The accepted premise under counterinsurgency planning is that 20 troops are needed for every 1000 people in the affected country. For Baghdad, that means that over 120,000 troops and police would be needed for an effective counterinsurgency effort. For a countrywide counterinsurgency effort, over 500,000 troops would be needed (3-400,000 more than we currently have in Iraq). Even with the recent surge, estimates are that, including Iraqi Army and police, the presence in Baghdad is less than 85,000. In General Petraeus's testimony before Congress, it's true that he has been supportive of the idea of launching a serious counterinsurgency effort in Iraq, but he is also well aware of these figures. And the 20/1000 ratio is considered the minimum for successful efforts and assumes that the commanders are well-versed in counterinsurgency methods and that the troops are also well-trained. Even if we assume for argument's sake that all of the U.S. forces are now completely well-versed in such methods, that is also assuming that the Iraqi Army and Police are similarly well-trained. And even after these shaky assumptions are made, we find that the force presence in Iraq is well below the minimum needs for such an operation. So, the other extreme option is a massive escalation of the U.S. presence in Iraq to meet the minimum and truly attempt to turn the insurgency around.

Such an escalation is impossible for two reasons. The U.S. public, after four years of dismal performance by the Bush Administration, does not have the patience or inclination to support such a surge. Polls are running in favor of some form of withdrawal and the support for the President's Way Forward is tepid at best. The biggest reason is that our military is not capable of producing such an escalation. Such an escalation would involve fully 1/3 of all U.S. forces on active duty, including all four branches, support personnel and so-forth and the 500,000 figure does not include the numbers needed in support positions. Considering our other obligations, such an escalation is totally untenable. Could we bring in a true coalition to address the situation? Sadly, because of the current lack of respect and outright distrust of the U.S., even among our stalwart allies, I don't think such a strategy would work either. Having gone it alone for four years, the Bush Administration is not likely to make much headway in convincing other nations to join in what they view as a failed adventure in Iraq.

We are caught on the horns of a dilemma--on the one hand, withdrawal would probably be destabilizing to the region and could cause serious global repercussions. On the other hand, the degree of escalation necessary to implement a successful counterinsurgency strategy is beyond our means. So what are we to do?

Splitting the Dilemma
The classic response to a dilemma is to "split the horns of the dilemma" or to find a middle ground between the two extremes--basically to say that you really don't have a dilemma on your hands, there is a middle way that will work. And as I mentioned earlier, there are proposals on the table that seek other answers within this middle ground. Ostensibly, President Bush's New Way Forward is such an attempt. His policy is to bump up the numbers of troops involved and to implement a true counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. This is not a viable option for several reasons.

The numbers game--quite frankly, a slight increase of 21,000 troops does not even approach the numbers of troops necessary to successfully implement the strategy. As I mentioned before, at a minimum the ratio of troops to population must be at least 20/1000 and that is assuming proper training and understanding of the strategy and tactics needed from top to bottom. In terms of the troop strength needed for such a policy to work, the President's surge is negligible. It does not provide sufficient troops to mix with the Iraqis and provide security for the population and it does not provide the troops needed to secure Iraq's borders. The latter is essential, especially with support for the insurgents and warring factions coming in from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries.

Unity of Command--this essential component of counterinsurgency doctrine is not corrected in President Bush's plan. There is still a split between military and civilian command--even if Prime Minister Malaki is truly behind the surge (a doubtful proposition at best), his goals and constituency are different from that of the U.S. military. He's gotta dance with his partners and a crackdown on Shia militias runs counter to his political needs.

The True Nature of the Beast--what we are facing in Iraq is more than just an insurgency. Certainly there are those who are fighting against the government, trying to create chaos and trying to prevent a stable national government. But in addition to the insurgents, there is a low level civil war between the Sunni and Shia, a sectarian conflict that is different from a guerrilla effort against a relatively stable central government. Recently, the U.S. has seen success in its efforts to aid the Philippine government fight an insurgency in its country but this is more of a classic insurgency: stable central government against an insurgency of outriders. But what we are trying to do in Iraq is police the sectarian conflict at the same time that we stop the insurgency and this is a far more complex situation. Additionally, this insurgency is well-armed, both from Hussein's weapons caches and from outside of Iraq and they have had four years to learn and refine their tactics. Such a complex situation calls for, if anything, more troop strength than the 20/1000 ratio called for above and it also calls for U.S. troops to step between the warring parties. This is a recipe for further disaster.

Conclusions
I've tried to simplify matters in these last three posts, to try to get at the heart of our problems in Iraq without losing the integrity of the arguments. I hope that it is clear that based on my reasoning, we have made a mess of Iraq from day one of the occupation and that our Way Forward is little more than another attempt to achieve difficult goals on the cheap. We need clear thinking on Iraq and the talking points from either side of the aisle do not provide the facts that we need to address the problems in that country. There is much that I haven't discussed, including the negative effects of Abu Ghraib and the often heavy-handed tactics we have employed. But within the limitations of these posts I hope that it has become clear that we have not done the things that we needed to do in the past and our immediate future does not look much brighter.

Iraq and Counterinsurgency, Part Two

A Simplified Introduction to Counterinsurgency
(It's simplified because my study of the subject has been rather basic, not because I doubt the intelligence of anyone who might be reading this. )

For whatever reason, the Iraq war was based on plans for a conventional war with no proper planning for the aftermath--though there were fragmented efforts to plan for the post-war situation, they were not coordinated and the plans were not developed to a point where they could be implemented. Thus, on the heels of the rapid assault and taking of Baghdad, there was widespread looting, the borders were not controlled, large caches of weapons were not secured and, aside from certain urban areas, large sections of the country were not occupied or controlled. Because there was no countrywide strategy to secure the peace, individual commanders in different portions of the country wound up winging it. Some, like Gen. David Petraeus, were successful in keeping the momentum going by establishing security and developing good relations with the Iraqi people. Unfortunately, the majority of commanders on the ground did not have Petraeus's training in counterinsurgency and wound up either doing too little and leaving a power vacuum or acting too aggressively, alienating the population and fomenting the nascent insurgency.

The over-arching aim of a counter insurgent strategy is to defeat the insurgency, not to kill the insurgents--depending upon the way you do it, for every insurgent you kill you may be creating another two insurgents down the line. "In counterinsurgency, the battlespace isn't physical, it's psychological. The battle is for the people." (Fiasco, p. 250). Broken down to its most basic elements, the counterinsurgency force must first secure and gain control of the population and then win over their hearts and minds. Unless you win the support of the population by giving them a secure and stable place to live, eventually they are going to throw their support behind the insurgency if the insurgents are local and your force is foreign.

The U.S. did not have a coherent counterinsurgency approach at the beginning and certainly not as the insurgency began to grow, become more organized and develop into a real threat. This happened because the Bush administration was unwilling to recognize it as an insurgency and therefore did not adapt their strategy and tactics. It also happened because the commanders on the ground were not trained in counterinsurgency, aside from the few exceptions such as Petraeus. Even more so, the "boots on the ground," the U.S. military personnel who were interacting with Iraqis on a daily basis, were not trained in counterinsurgency and so even if there had been the desire and plan from above to address the insurgency, those who would carry out the plans were not prepared to do so. This IS NOT the responsibility of the individual soldiers and marines--they were trained for a conventional war and that is how they fought the war. But neither the civilian leadership nor the military leadership were prepared for events on the ground and so the personnel on the ground were not prepared for it either.

According to the U.S. military, there are several hallmarks of successful counterinsurgency practice. There must be unity of command, focus on the needs and security of the population, amnesty and rehabilitation for insurgents and Special Forces advisers must be embedded with indigenous forces. On the other hand, an unsuccessful counterinsurgency will emphasize killing/capturing the enemy rather than engaging the population, military forces are concentrated in large bases for protection, adviser effort is a low priority and Special Forces are focused on raiding and borders remain open. (Taken from "Best Practices in Counterinsurgency" available at: http://www.usgcoin.org/docs1/MilitaryReview_2005-May-Jun.pdf )

How U.S. Efforts have Measured Up

Unfortunately, we haven't done so well in following these guidelines in Iraq. Unity of command is considered essential in any war and even more so in a counterinsurgency--command has been bifurcated at best from the start in Iraq. From the beginning, many decisions were made by the civilian administration (troop levels, etc.) rather than the military leadership. Once we got in country, some decisions were still being made by the civilians back home, some were made by civilian leadership in Iraq (Jay Garner, Paul Bremer (Coalition Provisional Authority or CPA), or the various incarnations of the Iraqi government) and there was no Iraqi strategy but rather individual tactics employed by various commanders on the ground. Thus, military decisions that should have been based on events in Iraq were influenced by political considerations in the U.S., ideological visions of what a new Iraq should look like in the eyes of the CPA, and sectarian interests of the Iraqi government. There was fragmentation of command rather than unity and as a result, there was no consistency in how the initial post-invasion period was approached across the country.

The U.S. should have focused their strategy and tactics on the needs and security of the population. However, because of the light force used for the lightning march to Baghdad, there were not enough troops to secure the rest of the country--the invading force passed through the country rather than securing it as they went. This allowed the insecurity and looting of the initial period of the war and lost critical support among Iraqis. Compounding this, when Bremer instituted his de-Baathificiation policy and dissolved the Iraqi military, he alienated the part of the population most able to run things and provide security and instead created a huge body of disgruntled and unemployed people who were primed to join the insurgency. Far from providing amnesty and rehab for insurgents and giving them hope if they bought into the new government, these policies only made matters worse. The de-Baath policies approved in Washington apparently only affected the top several layers of bureaucracy, rather than Bremer's approach and before Bremer took over, a plan was all but finalized to keep the Iraqi army intact for the most part with funds set aside for payroll. But Bremer implemented his own de-Baath and dissolution plans rather than following these more moderate policies. As time went by, the U.S. military concentrated their forces on large bases, keeping them separate from the Iraqi population and this caused further problems as the military presence raced from point to point in convoys and conducted isolated raids and sweeps after which they returned to their bases rather than exercising a calming effect by being integrated into the population. Concentrating the new government in the Green Zone, whether led by the U.S. early on or the Iraqis later, is the most egregious example of this.

The final point is the use of Special Forces in Iraq. Special Forces are the only military personnel who are trained to create and advise indigenous forces. Many of them are multi-lingual and, as seen in Afghanistan, one of their primary purposes is creating local forces capable of putting a local face on military efforts (there were other problems there which I will not address at this point). The U.S. outsourced the training of the Iraqi army (and later police) to private contractors for the most part, while some training was conducted by National Guard units. The contractors were more interested in playing a numbers game, of passing Iraqis through training quickly--they had no vested interest in quality training even if they had been capable of providing it. As a result, over the first couple of years as much as one half of the trained Iraqi soldiers would desert after being deployed. Members of our National Guard have no training in such efforts and so despite their good will and conscientious work, they were not equipped to do the task assigned them. Further, Special Forces operatives who were deployed to work with the civilian population were given an almost impossible task as the conventional efforts of the military units in their sectors would so antagonize the local population that building of relations became extremely difficult.

As you can see from this brief summary, on these benchmarks of what counterinsurgency efforts should look like, the U.S. efforts in Iraq uniformly missed the mark. There are other things that should have been done and other things that were done poorly or done in a counterproductive manner, but rather than turn this posting into a book I will leave it at this point. The next installment of this series will look at "The New Way Forward" in Iraq as proposed by President Bush and whether or not this can be successful.

Iraq and Counterinsurgency, Part One

I've been thinking about this post for a few weeks now and hope that the time has allowed me to gather my thoughts and write something that addresses the Iraq situation in a constructive manner. Jingoism on both sides of the aisle in Congress and simplistic and reactionary debate in the media hasn't gotten to the heart of what we face in Iraq. There are two major problems as I see things:

1. The current situation in Iraq is destabilizing the region and could lead to further conflicts in the near future.
2. It may be too little too late for the U.S. to address the situation in Iraq.

In this first post, I will begin with a few thoughts on the first point--I may return and address this more fully in the near future.

Instability in the Middle East

Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq there was a stalemate between Iran and Iraq--despite many years of conflict, neither ever really got the upper hand on the other and they were coexisting (the Iran-Iraq War lasted from 1980-1988). The same can be said of the greater Middle East--though there were certainly tensions between Israel and her neighbors and the Israel-Palestine situation was far from peaceful, this did not appear to be at a point that would erupt in broader conflict. Likewise, the internal situation in Iraq was 'contained,' in the sense that Hussein could not strike his neighbors and his ability to act internally was also constrained by the U.S. policy of containment. According to some estimates, Pres. Clinton's cruise missile attacks in the nineties were far more effective than thought at the time and came close to crumbling Hussein's government. ("Desert Fox actually exceeded expectations," wrote Kenneth Pollack in The Threatening Storm..."Saddam panicked during the strikes. Fearing that his control was threatened, he ordered large-scale arrests and executions, which backfired and destabilized his regime for months afterward." Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks, p. 19)

Despite this relative stability, some policy-makers (particularly the neo-conservatives) thought that this stability was counter-productive and should be shaken up in order to advance American interests in the region. Post-9/11 and after the seemingly easy and successful operations in Afghanistan, these policy-makers turned their attention to the Middle East and Iraq. One of the goals of the neo-conservatives was to destabilize the region and to make it a more receptive ground for U.S. initiatives and for the pursuit of U.S. interests. If this is correct, they achieved the destabilization and in the process made the region actively anti-American rather than ambivalent towards the U.S. (This paragraph is largely speculative as I haven't had time to research it properly. I may return to it in the future. It is based on more reading from Fiasco--"I think--and this is just my opinion--that the neocons didn't really give a shit what happened in Iraq and the aftermath...Who cares? There's some bloodshed, and it's messy. Who cares? I mean, we've taken out Saddam. We've asserted our strength in the Middle East. We're changing the dynamic. We're now off the peace process as the centerpiece and we're not putting any pressure on Israel."--Fiasco, p. 87 quote from Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni.)

Regardless of whether or not policy-makers wanted to change the dynamic in the Middle East to upset the applecart, increase American influence in the region and make it less tenable for state-sponsors of terrorism, the region is less stable. There are reports of growing tensions between Sunni and Shia Moslems outside of Iraq's borders. The Sunni in Iraq are receiving support from Sunni-dominated nations (such as Saudi Arabia) and, as is more widely publicized, the Shia within Iraq are being supported by Iran. Removing the dynamic tension between Iran and Iraq has strengthened Iran's presence in the region and given President Ahmadinejad a platform for his extemist rhetoric. Additionally, the pressure on world oil markets has made Iran flush with cash and this has further increased its influence in the region and bankrolled its nuclear program.

Barrack Obama in Austin

I went to hear the golden boy speak yesterday--a year before the first primaries in the 2008 election cycle and Barrack Obama gathered more than 15,000 to his Austin rally. I think the fact that he was able to draw that many people speaks volumes about where we are right now as a nation--people are hungry for something different. The few people that I spoke to, mainly regular people rather than volunteers or people sporting Obama-wear, seemed to be more interested in checking him out than in immediately throwing their support his way. However, this was not a representative sample as Obama had hundreds of volunteers working the event and there were others who were obvious supporters. I spoke to one guy who had driven in from Kilgore and was talking about starting an Obama Organization and taking out ads in local papers.

The big question I had going in was whether or not he would live up to the hype and the question I had leaving was whether or not anyone could have lived up to the hype surrounding Obama. I thought his speech was rather pedestrian--a lot of the usual red meat for anti-war folks, he talked some about universal health care, but his unifying theme (slight pun) seemed to be drawing Americans together rather than driving them apart. His presentation was good, but certainly not the oration I expected. He missed his beats on several obvious applause lines and flubbed a number of words along the way--that's to be expected in any stump speech but hardly the soaring rhetoric I was expecting. He seemed to be at his best when talking about the Civil Rights movement and his words actually did border on "stirring." But then as he headed to the finish line and was trying to inspire the audience to action, his big call to all of us to support him and help bring America together, there was no heat, no urgency, no passion. Maybe he was tired from the travel and events of the past couple of weeks since he announced, but if yesterday represented his best effort, his skills as an orator will not be enough to win the primaries.

The substance of his speech was very general, as one would expect from a stump speech. He called for getting our troops out of Iraq in an orderly manner but didn't say how he would achieve this. He called for universal health care as necessary for a country that outspends every other nation in health care and yet leaves 46 million uninsured; again, he didn't say how he would get this done. Much of his speech was devoted to the Vision Thing--contrasting the numerous times in our nation's history where most people thought the status quo couldn't be changed and yet small numbers of people began the movements that brought fundamental change--The Revolution, slavery, women's suffrage, Civil Rights and so-forth. If he can get enough people on board believing that he is an instrument of change, one of the people in history who can translate what "should be" into what is, he may be our next president.

Obama did have one really good riff in a part where he was ripping on VP Cheney. The gist of the section was that we can't trust Cheney's judgment on what's going to happen--wrong on the war, wrong on the insurgency, wrong on being greeted as liberators, etc. Essentially, he's been wrong on every prediction he's made, why should we trust him that the "surge" is going to do the job or that Iran is such a mortal threat and he's definitely wrong in saying that Tony Blair's move to get 1600 British troops out of Southern Iraq is a good sign. It was a gray and drizzly day and Obama brought it home with, "Cheney probably would have forecast it was going to be sunny today." It was funny at the time.

Did he win me over? He gave me enough to consider him and even to consider volunteering for him in some capacity, but mainly he gave me enough to do some research on his positions and find out what the substance is behind his policy goals. It's far to early for me to be picking who I'm going to support but it's not too early to begin the process of looking people over. Vilsack of Iowa is already dropping out of the race, who knows if Biden and Richardson will have the staying power to make it through the first few primaries?

http://www.barackobama.com/

Attack of the Mooninites

UP YOURS, BOSTON!! There really isn't much to say about this story--a cheap marketing gimmick, which involved placing cheap-ass LED displays throughout a number of US cities, turned into a terror-panic in Boston yesterday. The displays showed the outline of the green character on the left giving the finger to the police, the bomb squads and anyone else who paid any attention to them. More than anything else, the "devices" (variously called "suspicious packages" and "hoax devices" on the cable news drones) resembled a Lite Brite game from the '70's. Never having had a Lite Brite myself, I could only look at them with awe and wonder and envy. And now, despite the devices having been put up in Austin as well, I had to look on jealously as Boston went CODE RED--why couldn't our emergency response people over-react too! It's just not fair.

Here's a link to a blog that includes a YouTube video of the perpetrators, I mean, terrorists, I mean, marketers putting up the suspiciously silly devices:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/brainiac/2007/01/attack_of_the_m.html

Oh, and one more thing--as you can tell from the above picture, the characters in this cartoon have a tendency to flip people off. In fact, the Lite-Brite Marketing Bombs are all flipping off the viewer. Consistently, the networks fuzzed out the portion of the picture with the extended middle finger. For instance, I just pulled this from Fox's news site--note the fuzzed out portion of the photo where the middle finger would be: