I’ve been thinking more about the challenges faced by Gen. Petraeus or any other commander who tries, in the 21st century, to organize a successful counterinsurgency campaign under the circumstances that:
- (1) this commander works within the military of a democratic country,
(2) the counterinsurgency in question is being waged in another country, (known in COIN parlance as the ‘Host Nation’), and
(3) the society within which the COIN campaign is being waged has a relatively advanced information/education infrastructure.
Waging a “successful”, military-based (i.e. coercive) counterinsurgency campaign under such circumstances is, I think, impossible.
For a foreign power to use forceful means to affect the political outcome within any given country/society causes a direct clash with the principles of democracy, of sovereignty, and of a respect for basic human rights. (This is even more clearly so when the forceful means in question include means that are directly and permissively lethal, as is spelled out at several points in Gen. Petraeus’s recently published COIN “manual”. See my analysis here.)
Democracy: It is a basic underpinning of the theory of democracy that differences can and must be solved through nonviolent means, including negotiation, bargaining, and the forging of agreement over decision rules. When a powerful foreign power intervenes within the polity of any given nation this sends a powerful message to natinals of that country through the demonstration effect. And it also– under all the theories of counterinsurgency since the dawn of time– results in the arming of one part of the host-nation citizenry against the other, making a mockery of any commitment to “democracy” within the host nation and sowing further grievances and demands for vengeance for, quite possibly, several generations to come.
Sovereignty: People in the human-rights movement in rich western countries often see “sovereignty”– especially the sovereignty of countries in the impoverished, formerly colonized world– as an impediment to the enjoyment of human rights. But the sovereign independence of nations is also an expression of the democracy among peoples; and indeed, there is no possibility for any society to enjoy democratic self-governance so long as vital, national-level decision-making is done or is constrained in any way by foreigners. And while human rights are, certainly, often abused by sovereign governments in many places around the world, there is literally no possibility at all for peoples who are ruled by foreigners to have any assurance that their rights will be respected. When a foreign power conducts and controls the conducting of a COIN campaign within a completely different nation, that is a complete violation of the principle of sovereign independence.
Human rights: Any COIN campaign will almost certainly, by definition, involve infringements on basic human freedoms including the freedoms of assembly, of movement, of political organizing, etc. That’s the case even when they’re conducted “within” nations, e.g. in recent times Northern Ireland, or Nepal. Very frequently the rights abuses involved will be considerably more serious… And this is probably much more likely to be the case where the people doing the COIN don’t identify culturally in any way at all with those against whom they are fighting.
… And thus, we see these dilemmas for a guy like Petraeus who tries to be very smart, very articulate, and very “sensitive”, and who tries to mount a successful COIN campaign on behalf of the US– a country whose people like to think of them- (our-)selves as committed to democracy and human rights. I explored some of those dilemmas a little further in that Jan. 10 blog post I linked to earlier…
I imagine sometimes Petraeus must really envy his counterparts in, say, Russia, who can organize almost whatever they want to in a place like Chechnya without having to worry too much about the effects that revelations from Chechnya will have on their standing back home.
Another thing, too. The Russian commanders in Chechnya don’t have to worry about very much news ever seeping out of Chechnya… Certainly, not as much as Petraeus has to worry about news getting out of Iraq, or the Israelis need to worry about news getting out of Lebanon (last summer), or out of Palestine, today. The development of means of recording like small videocams, small audio recorders, digital cameras, and laoptop computers, and the development of means of disseminating reports and recordings across large distances, mean that fighting a COIN battle in Iraq or Palestine today is a very different matter from, for example, what the British were able to do against the Mau Mau in the 1950s, or the French did against national-liberation “insurgents” in Algeria, or in Vietnam.
(Or, what the British did against the Palestinians in the 1930s, or against the Iraqis in the 1920s… Those campaigns both provide strong and worrying precedents that live on in the folk-memories of their peoples.)
The US forces in Iraq (and perhaps even more so in the more under-reported reaches of Afghanistan) may have tried to undertake some of the very abusive types of action that those earlier imperial commanders did… As their US predecessors also did in numerous wars from the wars against the Native Americans right here “at home”, on through several bloody “small wars” abroad, including in Vietnam and repeatedly, over and over again, in Central America…
But here’s the thing. At some point in history, such wars became politically unwinnable. The British may have “won” on the battlefield in Kenya; and indeed, they ground the Kikuyu insurgents in the north right into the dust as they did so… But still, they had to get out of the country and leave it to become independent. The same with the French in Algeria. As Clausewitz knew, and warned everyone so long ago, the point of military operations is not to win the battle, it’s to win the war. And at some point in the 1950s or so, at the political-strategic level all those “counter-insurgency” campaigns fought around the world by democratic powers were lost.
I was reading this little article, from the January-February 2006 Military Review, that Petraeus submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, in connection with his confirmation hearings there. It’s titled Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq. He sums up his findings there in the following lessons:
- Observations from Soldiering in Iraq:
1.“Do not try to do too much with your own hands.”
2. Act quickly, because every Army of liberation [Yes, that’s honestly what he calls the US army in Iraq! ~HC] has a half-life.
3. Money is ammunition.
4. Increasing the number of stakeholders is critical to success.
5. Analyze “costs and benefits” before each operation.
6. Intelligence is the key to success.
7. Everyone must do nation-building.
8. Help build institutions, not just units.
9. Cultural awareness is a force multiplier.
10. Success in a counterinsurgency requires more than just military operations.
11. Ultimate success depends on local leaders.
12. Remember the strategic corporals and strategic lieutenants.
13. There is no substitute for flexible, adaptable leaders.
14. A leader’s most important task is to set the right tone.
The whole article there doesn’t get much more profound than that. (In his explanation of #2, he writes, ” in a situation like Iraq, the liberating force must act quickly, because every Army of liberation has a half-life beyond which it turns into an Army of occupation. The length of this half-life is tied to the perceptions of the populace about the impact of the liberating force’s activities… ” I don’t think that at the hearing yesterday anyone asked him specifically if he didn’t think that had already happened… )
I’ve also been reading the answers Petraeus had prepared to questions that the Senate Armed Services Committee’s members had given him prior to yesterday’s hearing. There are some interesting things there– a singal that he’s not necessarily going to go straight against the sadrists in Sadr City, for example… and an admission that the Army is already “stretched and straining”…
But I am really, really disappointed that no-one on the committee had submitted any questions about the grave human-rights implications of the types of “Rules of Engagement” Petraeus was writing about in his manual.
It seems the august senators either don’t “get” the extreme political and moral relevance of that issue, or they prefer not to think about this issue, but instead seek to leave such thinking to the military’s “professionals”. Either way, it seems like a serious abdication of their duty.
I’ve been thinking more about the challenges faced by Gen. Petraeus or any other commander who tries, in the 21st century, to organize a successful counterinsurgency campaign
Helena, the fact that most US media, US journalist include you, made and locked themselves and their minds to believe for four years now them fighting insurgency in Iraq.
It’s just a falls thinking that’s escalating more and more, more dead between Iraqis and Americans.
I don’t know when you come to recognizes those you call them “insurgency” simply are Iraqis resistances to your occupation of their country they hate to see your troops in the their sky, on the ground on the roads, between the house and farms.
When you come back from your dreams and recognise those “insurgency” are
Iraqi resistance to your occupation, then your thinking will be in the right way, your administration should understand that you should take your troops out now better than later, the clock ticking for your invasion its come ugly and war crimes Helena.
Whatever anyone of you tried to find or discussed as a matter of strategy and planning its all falls things, I think Iraqi and Iraq got enough of your crimes in name of strategy and planning or ” organize a successful counterinsurgency campaign” which comes when US troops inter the country and left the doors and borders open for all criminals from around the world to get in, each one look for his opportunity in this man made chaos.
Leave it to Iraqis they are better than your “organize a successful counterinsurgency campaign” leave them live their life for sack of millions of Iraq they got enough Helena and Nir, and other just leaves them alone…
U.S. military counterinsurgency guide
By
DAVID H. PETRAEUS
Lieutenant General, USA
Commander
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
JAMES N. MATTIS
Lieutenant General, USMC
Commanding General
Marine Corps Combat Development Command
But they very well in building 14 Military Bases in Iraq and many far in desert prisons hold almost 34000 Iraq as the Iraqi Justices minister said in Iraqi Parliament.
Speaking as a former graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and counter-insurgency training at Coronado Island, San Diego, I can only say that you can’t do a wrong thing (i.e., crusading colonialism) the right way — and all the language and counter-insurgency training in how to do this wrong thing “better” will never improve its chances of “success.” Not that our “surging” (or dribbling) troops in Iraq get even a fraction of the training that I got before failing for eighteen months to Vietnamize the Vietnamese. General David Petraeus does not understand the impossibility of his task or he would not agree to undertake it; nor do any of the Senators who “questioned” him without a one of them demanding to know what punishment he should expect to suffer for predictably failing to do the impossible as have so many other erstwhile proconsuls before him.
I apologize in advance for the rough language, but this just looks like more of the ticket-punching, f*ck-up-and-move-up bureaucratic careerism that nearly destroyed the U.S. Army in Vietnam — and appears destined to do the same in Iraq. Parkinson’s Law + the Peter Principle = Lunatic Leviathan: solipsistic, schizophrenic Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism, marketed to the moronic masses through Orwellian Managed Mystification.
And as for the credulous Senator You-Know-Her from New York: blaming the Iraqis for not doing a better job of reading General Petraeus’s book and helping us more with our conquering and plundering of them simply bespeaks a bovine boob too stupid to stipulate. No wonder a dyslexic dwarf chimpanzee like Deputy Dubya Bush found it so easy to make a monkey out of her. They must have both gone to Yale.
Helena, I agree with your general theme here, but not with this:
“I imagine sometimes [Petraeus] must really envy his counterparts in, say, Russia, who can organize whatever they want to in a place like Chechnya without having to worry too much about the effects that revelations from Chechnya will have on his standing back home.”
I totally don’t think so. Petraeus is a gung-ho, can-do, 100% American kinda guy. That would be great if we were actually trying to defend our nation from a grave external threat. The problem is, we are misusing him, and many others like him, in this neocolonial war gone bad. We all know he cannot possibly succeed, in any honorable sense. He probably knows it too.
“But I am really, really disappointed that no-one on the committee had submitted any questions about the grave human-rights implications of the types of “Rules of Engagement” Petraeus was writing about in his manual.”
Doesn’t this situation remind you of the press conference scene in “The Battle of Algiers,” where Colonel Matthieu says: “I’ll ask you a question myself: Should France stay in Algeria? If the answer is still yes, you’ll have to accept all the necessary consequences.”
There are some true gems in that COIN manual:
For example,
“A society is not easily created or destroyed, but it is possible to do so through war or genocide.” (p.51)
“A race is a human group that defines itself or is defined by other groups as different by virtue of innate physical characteristics…” (p.51)
I wonder if General Brainiac is the one who came up with these amazing insights.
I believe Petraeus is smart enough to know it won’t work, so why did he accept the mission knowing the inevitable outcome? A two-word answer: four-stars.
Look to the picture and this,why these Iraqis living in horror done by your troopes for years now… any one have mind in his head asked himself?
what’s your reactions if this happen to you or to your area or country?
Iraq: engagements in the center of Baghdad
“I can only say that you can’t do a wrong thing (i.e., crusading colonialism) the right way…”
Almost word for word what I have been saying from the beginning – no from before the beginning.
“and all the language and counter-insurgency training in how to do this wrong thing “better” will never improve its chances of “success.” ”
Yup! And add to that that no matter how “culturally clued in and sensitive” you may or may not be, the bottom line is that human beings know when they are being treated with respect, and when they are being treated like s***. If you treat them like s***, then it doesn’t matter one iota whether you know the niceties of their culture, and if you treat them with respect, then they will gladly overlook the fact that you do not know all the secret handshakes, and in fact will usually take delight in teaching them to you.
To all the people who think it would have made a difference had the American troops only understood Iraqi culture, I ask the following: In what culture is it considered appropriate for strangers to go visiting at 3 AM, and to announce their presence by breaking down the doors, rampaging through the house screaming at one’s hosts and damaging property as they go, barging into bedrooms and dragging their hosts out of bed, pointing rifles at their heads, barking orders, and terrorizing the children. In what culture is it considered a polite greeting to throw someone down onto the ground, and press their face into the dirt by stomping on the back of their neck with one’s boot? This is some of the behaviour that has been deemed “culturally insensitive” by brilliant American analysts. You know, I have lived in both Iraq and the United States, and have traveled all over the Arab world, and this is the first hint I ever had that resenting this kind of treatment is peculiar to Iraqi culture.
“I can only say that you can’t do a wrong thing (i.e., crusading colonialism) the right way…”
Almost word for word what I have been saying from the beginning – no from before the beginning.
“and all the language and counter-insurgency training in how to do this wrong thing “better” will never improve its chances of “success.” ”
Yup! And add to that that no matter how “culturally clued in and sensitive” you may or may not be, the bottom line is that human beings know when they are being treated with respect, and when they are being treated like s***. If you treat them like s***, then it doesn’t matter one iota whether you know the niceties of their culture, and if you treat them with respect, then they will gladly overlook the fact that you do not know all the secret handshakes, and in fact will usually take delight in teaching them to you.
To all the people who think it would have made a difference had the American troops only understood Iraqi culture, I ask the following: In what culture is it considered appropriate for strangers to go visiting at 3 AM, and to announce their presence by breaking down the doors, rampaging through the house screaming at one’s hosts and damaging property as they go, barging into bedrooms and dragging their hosts out of bed, pointing rifles at their heads, barking orders, and terrorizing the children. In what culture is it considered a polite greeting to throw someone down onto the ground, and press their face into the dirt by stomping on the back of their neck with one’s boot? This is some of the behaviour that has been deemed “culturally insensitive” by brilliant American analysts. You know, I have lived in both Iraq and the United States, and have traveled all over the Arab world, and this is the first hint I ever had that resenting this kind of treatment is peculiar to Iraqi culture.
The saddest iraq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bJCyqcQCfQ
(for Mr. Murray)
“General David Petraeus does not understand the impossibility of his task or he would not agree to undertake it . . . .”
I don’t know the man personally to be able to argue that you are wrong about “General Braniac,” or even that he is not just doing it for that fourth star, which he very prudently gets in advance no matter what happens.
Still, Dr. Gen. Petræus may be neither unaware nor cynical. He could even expect to fail without being either the one or the other, along the lines of a curious article in the current issue of Military Review that “Iraqslogger” noticed. “F.J. Bing West, a former Marine and former assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan” offers the following four-point plan:
First, senior military leaders in Iraq should convey a common set of expectations about aggressive mission behavior for the duration of this politically divisive war.
Second, we have to evaluate our military performance with candor, and not copy the politicians who refuse to acknowledge error—no one gets through life, war, or a football game without a lot of mistakes.
Third, the social contract between the Soldier and the American public needs to be restored. The new secretary of defense should go out of his way to reaffirm the virtue of valor and urge the press and to do the same.
Fourth, the competition for defense resources is going to be fierce. To lessen the budgetary cuts that follow after an unpopular war, a credible general officer must articulate a convincing strategy for land forces.
The whole article is extremely pentagonocentric. (Gore Vidal once parsed “Duty, Honour, Country” as a frank admission that the rest of us come third with them.)
At the end of the day Mr. West seems to think that actually winning in neo-Iraq is immaterial, as long as “we” emerge with something credible and convincing for use in the next thrilling episode.
(West recommends Petræus by name, and so must have written before the appointment.)
If that is what Petræus thinks also, there can be no question of unawareness. As to cynicism, it would perhaps depend on exactly what he said to the Crawfordite chickenhawks, to what extent he led them to believe that he was aiming at what they would consider an acceptable outcome, with mental reservations about what he and Mr. West secretly have in mind.
But God knows best.
Re; Shirin – “In what culture is it considered appropriate . . . ”
Why in Israel, of course. The vector is long-term, single-nation unilateral foreign occupation, as opposed to liberation. The fruits are similarS
Over in Somalia, the Ethiopians are retreating to their border just a few weeks after chasing the Union of Islamic Courts from the capital. Whether this is will keep them out is another matter, but they won’t develop the occupier culture that dooms
Israel and America’s missions to crimnal failure – after they manage the destruction of the civil society they are responsible for.
You say that with modern technology the US couldn’t be brutal without news of the atrocities leaking out. If you believe the October 2006 paper in the Lancet by the Johns Hopkins people then the US forces have already killed roughly 200,000 people in Iraq. Their 95 percent confidence interval for the percentage killed by coalition forces is 26-37 percent. I don’t know that I believe this–if it’s true, then the US has in fact already killed a very large number of people with very little evidence of this to be found in the press. The press is probably missing a lot of the violence, but is it missing this much?
But I raise the point because whatever one thinks of the Lancet paper, there is very little reporting of US violence against civilians in the press. If you look at Iraq Body Count’s analysis, outside of the first two months and outside of what happened in Fallujah, US troops seem to kill an average of a few dozen civilians per month. One a day. I’ve been baffled by this since I became aware of it in 2005 or so–either the US has been fighting a very clean sort of counterinsurgency war by historical standards or else we’re just not hearing much about what goes on. I read discussions about the Iraq war online and in the dead tree press and virtually no one even seems to be aware that there is no consensus whatsoever on even the order of magnitude of the numbers of civilians killed by the US. It’s mind-boggling that there is so much discussion about surges and the alleged need to send more troops to cut down on violence and our total ignorance about something so important–the number of civilians our own forces kill–goes completely unmentioned.
“Waging a “successful”, military-based (i.e. coercive) counterinsurgency campaign under such circumstances is, I think, impossible.”
actually, it would have a chance of success if they tried bribery. but they won’t.
And, while it is correct that many, many, many of the people killed are overlooked, there is (on the internet) many stories and pictures of people killed…. although few of these are US-caused deaths. So they are hiding a great deal. But, every picture in the link to the “Saddest Song I Have Got” above (which made me cry)is one I have seen before – on the internet. A couple of months back, I decided to save pictures of Iraqi grief, because on the news sites they are here and gone. I am posting them at http://facesofgrief.blogspot.com
I have no trouble finding a picture of a US-caused death (usually of a child) and copying it and giving or sending it to my elected officials. I have done this dozens of time, along with the message WHY ARE WE KILLING THESE PEOPLE?
of course, I either get no answer or complete horseshit. A good number of the US Senators are not worthy of licking dog shit off of an Iraqi’s shoes… or mine either.
JHM:
Thank you for the well-enunciated commentary. I especially liked the references to Bing West, whom I consider something of a Marine Corps groupie more worried about backstage access to a bad act than any true accounting of disastrous military failure — like Fallujah, just to take one instance.
That aside, though, the common-sense appraisal of four failed years would conclude that if General Petraeus had in truth trained the Iraqi “security forces,” then we would (1) not call them “death squads,” (2) send even more of our own troops to fight our own trainees, or (3) need American military forces in Iraq at all now that our trainees can handle things without us. Again, the expressed need for additional — or even any — American troops in Iraq (after four years) testifies to the failure of all efforts to get Iraqis to suppress and plunder themselves in our interests instead of their own.
To summarize: if General Petraeus or any other of America’s pathetic military “leadership” had “succeeded” in Iraq, then American Senators wouldn’t now have to send this apple-polishing ticket-puncher back to the scene of his last failure with a ridiculously paltry reinforcement contingent. The Fig Leaf Contingent now becomes the Buy Time Brigade. Vietnam Redux Deja Vu All Over Again One Last Time — honest. America truly doesn’t have a small enough military if it has any room at all for generals who blame the folks back home for “encouraging” an “enemy” who — after four years of successfully fighting our generals — seems to have no morale or training problems that it can’t handle adequately without our “help.” If only our Petraeus-trained “friends” could say the same.
(For Michael Murry)
Thanks for the thanks, but . . . .
We have DLIWC and blaming bad things on Yale in common, but when it comes to “General Braniac,” I’m not so sure. You make it sound like I was claiming he had worked wonders training native auxiliaries. I wouldn’t know more about that than I read in the public prints. According to them, though, Petraeus didn’t have anything to do with the “death squads,” which work out of the secret state police (“Ministry of Interior”), rather than the Greenzonian Ministry of Defense.
More generally, you seem to be blaming the man for not having given the militant Republicans a successful occupation policy single-handed. But who could have done that? If Clausewitz or Rommel or Douglas MacArthur had had to work for the Crawfordites, nobody would have heard of them ever after. Napoleon would have just swept the clowns out of the way and done things right, but I don’t suppose we want any of THAT around here. The present Administration is a sort of torture test of chickenhawk control of the military: if the colonels and generals can put up with being bossed around by these geniuses, probably America is safe from Bonapartism forever. (That’s a more cheerful view of your apple-polishing ticket-punchers, but it’s basically the same thing. Isn’t it?)
Mr. West’s article is fascinating along those lines, because it scarcely pretends to worry about Republican Party interests, let alone Uncle Sam’s, it only relentlessly asks “But is it good for the Officers Club?” West’s focus is very tight, he’s not out for Ike’s military-industrial-academic complex, but strictly for the Officers Club. He has no clue about politics, he even madly fancies that Secretary Gates can somehow grab the bully pulpit away from Dubya and inspire a revival of the martial ethos in the Homeland.
On the other hand, West does see that “losing” would not necessarily be bad for the Officers Club. A recent spurt of reading about the France of Maréchal Pétain probably accounts for my noticing this point. As in the Vichy case, the Officers Club would have to make sure everbody understands afterwards that it was all the politicians’ fault, and nothing to do with themselves, that no successful occupation policy was arrived at in time to salvage neo-Iraq. But then, that’s really the case this time around, n’est-ce pas_?
“although few of these are US-caused deaths”
Which is my point. It’s impossible to tell from the press or any other source of information how many civilians the US is killing directly. Iraq Body Count counted just under 10,000 caused by the US in the first two years, but when you look at their data the overwhelming majority of those deaths were either in the first two months or in the spring and fall 2004 assaults on Fallujah. Outside of that, in the average month the coalition is reported to kill a few dozen or so–that was also true in the third year, according to a press releace that Iraq Body Count put out in early 2006, when they said they could attribute 370 civilian deaths to the coalition in the third year of the war.
Which suggests to me that we really don’t have any good idea how many our forces might be killing and yet, for some reason, I never see this discussed anywhere except at websites where people argue about the Lancet paper. One doesn’t have to necessarily believe the Lancet figures to find this a disgraceful situation. Of course, that applies to the whole war.
“On the other hand, West does see that “losing” would not necessarily be bad for the Officers Club.”
I think you’ve put your finger on it, JHM. The military industrial complex requires an ever-present imaginary threat of total war and possible annihilation, combined with a permanent state of actual, low-intensity warfare. Winning is obviously not part of this program.