Blog Roundup of All Things Iraq for the week of 13 May…

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often….

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often….

First, the stylistic: Where is the capitalization of proper nouns in the Canadian piece? Marines refers specifically to members of the United States Marine Corps, rather than a generic reference to land forces specializing in operation from the sea, and therefore Marines should be capitalized.

And now, the strategic: I do not think there is much future in seeking friendship with the Taliban. While developing good relationships between NATO forces and the Afghan population is beneficial, it is very important to remember that it is the Taliban, and their draconian interpretation of Islam, that provided a haven to al Qaeda. Islamism is no more suitable for Western tolerance than fascism or communism are. Islamism is the engine that produces riots in response to cartoons. It is what drives men to murder thousands in hijackings. It is what supposedly justifies the use of mentally-disabled persons as human ammunition. But not only is Islamism repugnant for what it does, it is irreconcilable in its doctrine. Islamists do not seek lasting peace with the West. It is a violation of their core beliefs to accept any such thing. The Islamists consider enmity against non-believers to be required by their faith. They consider non-believers to include not only non-Muslims, but also those Muslims who do not share their particularly aggressive beliefs. If anything, they reserve their greatest hatred for this latter group, accusing them of apostasy.

The West is at war with a culture that prefers death to peace. The Islamist enemy inspires and directs attacks committed by people for whom an act of terror is not a means to an ends so much as it is an ends of its own. They will not stop their attacks when faced with evidence that their victims are nice people. They don’t care if their victims are nice people. It is completely irrelevant to them. They see their duty as suppressing, and eventually erasing, all competing belief systems. In their eyes, if Western societies do something kind, such as by providing humanitarian assistance, then they do it as temptation. To the Islamist, Satan, that most popular title for all that is American, is first and foremost a whispering, taunting, sweet-talking master of temptation, seeking to lure believers from their faith. It is through this lens that the enemy sees us.

Obviously, the enemy finds himself a minority, even in the remote wilds of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Were this not so, there would be a hell of a lot more stuff blowing up. Efforts to “win the hearts and minds” may then yield substantive results among those who do not truly subscribe to the belief system of AQ and the Taliban, but I don’t think it will achieve much with regard to the die-hard enemy.

I think Pakistani efforts to “negotiate” with the Islamists are similarly doomed to failure.

There is not room enough in this world for both Western republics and Islamist fanaticism. Somebody’s gotta go.

Counter-insurgency is not a thing as much as it is an intentional strategy furthers our goals by specifically targeting the strategy of our enemies. Not enough troops, not enough armor, not enough this and that will never be enough unless our strategy specifically confronts the enemy’s. It’ll be interesting to see how the Marines handle this going forward, but this is good news after a period of time in Afghanistan that hasn’t been so great for us.

However, the potentially bad news is that while the Marines may employ proper strategy, we could potentially see these gains reversed if NATO doesn’t get their act together. It could look like Iraq circa 2005, where the Marines weren’t able to employ the non-kinetic part of the strategy effectively, because it takes time, resources and commitment from the top to sustain what has been won through blood, sweat and tears.

Petraeus, hurry over there and fix it!

Oh wait, I didn’t translate that into british:

Bollocks! This blog is pants. Daft American prats, at least we Brits won the Revolu … oh sod off!

One important point missed in both of the comments above is that first of all, the British experience in Basra was not good, while the U.S. experience in Anbar, while difficult, was successful. This is important not because there is no history of COIN experience by other countries in other eras of history and other parts of the world, but precisely because that is so.

The British experience in Northern Ireland was, if we face the truth, COIN among their own people. Same language, same basic culture (Protestants and Catholics worship the same God even if different in worship form), same technology, same family structures, etc.

For Soldiers and Marines to be dropped into Iraq (Middle East, different language, tribal culture, sectarianism prone to killing rather than simply arguing, and a recent history of brutality and torture under one of the worst dictators in world history) is quite literally like being dropped onto another planet.

COIN must be adaptable, adjusted, maleable, etc. The public also must be behind the campaign, or it won’t succeed. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. needs NATO only to the extent that we aren’t willing to expand the force size and properly fund the war. NATO is functioning as surrogate U.S. forces.

As to the experience in SE Asia, I know senior level field grade officers (Colonel) who agree with me that the COIN campaign was robust and successful, and the final victory for the North was conventional. Let’s just agree to disagree on that one.

I have plenty of posts on the issue of talks with the Sunnis in Anbar being done from a position of strength (i.e., more than 2 years of hard core kinetic operations that exhausted the enemy) versus the British experience in Basra being a diminution of security from the beginning due to strategy. This post was not written in a vacuum. This points to the summary of all of the above, which is that the track record you speak of is only partially relevant. The transnational insurgency we face today is of a different paradigm (tribal, at least partially, partially religious and partially not, standoff weapons such as IEDs due to historical era, borderless due to ease of transit, dealing with populations that have been tortured and brutalized, populations that have had to deal with globalization, and so on and on).

The final point I will make is that while you point to the tone of my post, and share your disagreement with my views, you should realize (by studying the links and links contained in prior links) that this is a continuation of debates happening at the highest levels of the Pentagon as we speak. Gates wants to divorce U.S. troops from the NATO efforts and is looking for a way to do this without offending our NATO partners. So - there are the facts for you.