On Counterinsurgency
I’m frequently troubled by conservative blog posts and comments that reflect a belief that we just have to “get tough enough to win.” For example, think about prisoner abuses. To read much on the internet, one might think that the only people who have a problem with prisoner abuse are those who want to kowtow to Amnesty International, Al Jazeera, and the Arab Street, as well as woolly-headed moral relativists who want to hold American forces to impossible standards, while giving a free pass to terrorists. For example, this comment at Ace’s a couple weeks ago:
Kindness and all that are fine when times are good, but you win wars by thinking like a Visigoth.
I beg to differ.
There is, I believe, an “insurgency” in Iraq. Counter-insurgency (COIN) methods are not ineffable mysteries. While they require work, commitment, and application to the specific case, the techniques are generally known. US Army General Petraeus and US Marine General Mattis have written the book on COIN. Not exactly moonbats.
Here’s a very brief excerpt, a list of successful and unsuccessful practices.
Successful Practices
• Emphasize intelligence.
• Focus on the population, their needs, and security.
• Establish and expand secure areas.
• Isolate insurgents from the population (population control).
• Appoint a single authority, usually a dynamic, charismatic leader.
• Conduct effective, pervasive psychological operations.
• Provide amnesty and rehabilitation for insurgents.
• Place police in the lead with military support.
• Expand and diversify the police force.
• Train military forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations.
• Embed special operations forces and advisors with indigenous forces.
• Deny the insurgents sanctuary.Unsuccessful Practices
• Place priority on killing and capturing the enemy, not on engaging the population.
• Conduct battalion-sized operations as the norm.
• Concentrate military forces in large bases for protection.
• Focus special operations forces primarily on raiding.
• Place a low priority on assigning quality advisors to host-nation forces.
• Build and train host-nation security forces in the of the U.S. Army’s image.
• Ignore peacetime government processes, including legal procedures.
• Allow open borders, airspace, and coastlines.
I suppose it’s useful to think about which of these practices we have focused on, to-date in Iraq.
But I’m making a very different point here. And that is, we should care about things like prisoner abuse, NOT because we want to be (what some might call) pre-occupied with human rights, but because we want to win.
I’ll press this a little more. I am troubled by exchanges I’ve had, in comments and via email, with ostensibly reasonable people on this score. In response to messages like that in this post, I too frequently get, “Yes, that’s all well and good, but we just gotta kill them and break them, ruthlessly and efficiently.”
Counterinsurgency Guidelines
Military Hones Counterinsurgency Strategy
Security Ring for Baghdad
What Kevin Drum would like to hear Bush say
Krulak and Hoar on Torture