Some Hard Ground Truths

A couple of recent emails to the Geek suggested he revisit some of the basic realities regarding insurgency generally--and the latest form that kind of war has taken in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the Geek wishes these individuals had posted comments instead of ferreting out his email address, he is willing to oblige the requests.

With a bow, "Your wish is my command, effendi."

Anyway, the Geek is righteously torqued off by the blathering of politicians, journalists and even the "Wise Men" of the Iraq Study Group.

After only forty plus years of either participating in or studying insurgent wars, the Geek, while modestly admitting he has developed two hypotheses regarding insurgency (the insurgent continuum and the insurgent dynamic) which have been shown to have both normative and predictive power of a high order, does not think he knows the book on insurgency. As a historian he is professionally obliged to point out that every situation has unique features which make it different from all similar precursors.

However, there are commonalities to all insurgencies including the two in which the US is currently involved which are universal and diagnostic. Some of these are positive. Some are negative.

The most important positive characteristic is simply this: Insurgencies are a test of political will, pure and simple.

Get a grip on this! The side with the greater political will prevails. Period.

Nothing else matters. Tactics, weapons, casualties, time, are all irrelevant except as they strengthen or weaken the political will of the insurgent or the counterinsurgent. In the end, the side which can accept casualties and spend time will defeat the side which cannot spend time and except casualties. Period. End of message.

A second positive characteristic is this: Both the insurgent and the counterinsurgent fight on the same terrain. It's not physical terrain. The terrain that matters is the human terrain.

What does this mean?

Each side, the insurgent and the counterinsurgent, can be seen as multi-layered. Each has a hard core of support. Each side has an active mass support base willing and able to provide direct assistance to the hard core. Each side has a passive mass support base willing and able to provide a measure of support and sympathy--provided doing so does not entail much risk.

The total support base and hard core of each side, even when added together, constitutes a minority of the population over which and on which the war is being fought.

The goal of each side is two fold. Mobilize support from the uncommitted majority and prevent the opponent from doing the same. Second, undercut the other side's active and passive mass support base while maintaining the coherence and confidence of one's own.

No matter how the war is fought in terms of tactics and weapons, the goal remains the same: Undermine the opponent's political will while maintaining and enhancing that of one's own side.

Some people (including military officers of high rank) make the mistake of insisting that insurgency is synonomous with guerrilla war or terrorism.

That assumption is as wrong as throwing a piece of watermelon on the grill.

Our own War of Independence and War Between the States (particularly the latter) involved conventionally armed, trained and led troops using conventional tactics. Still, both were insurgencies, specifically defensive insurgencies, or as they are so often called, "wars of national liberation."

The offensive insurgencies (or as commonly called, "revolutionary wars) of the French, the Russians, and the Chinese also involved conventional forces employing conventional tactics for their ultimate success. Nonetheless, they were all insurgencies where final victory went to the side with the greater political will--and, almost by definition, the greater capacity to exhaust the political will of the opponent as well as gather support from the uncommitted majority.

A recognition and acceptance of these features, these hard ground truths, shows the important limitations on how a counterinsurgent can fight and hope, at the least, not to lose.

The Geek has to set this up. Bear with him, please.

Over the vast revolting history of warfare, humans have invented only four basic avenues to victory.

The first is the wetdream of all generals since Alexander the Great was a E-2 private. Called anihilation, the goal is the destruction of the enemy's forces in the field in one great battle, or more realistically, a quick succession of battles. In recent conventional wars, the dream came true in the Six Day War--and in the Invasion of Iraq.

While grabbing the gonads and making manly noises about the quick, decisive victory through anhilation, remember what happened afterwards in both cases. And--it never, repeat, never works in an insurgency.

The second avenue to victory has been widely employed. Called attrition, the focus is the progressive reduction of the enemy's forces in the field through bloody and prolonged fighting. Attrition is a perfectly respectable strategy. It is not, as some have alleged, "a substitute for strategy."

Attrition is most successful when combined with the third avenue to victory.

The third avenue, erosion, has as its goal the progressive reduction of the enemy's material capacity to wage war: his factories, fields, transportation networks.

In World War II the Allies combined attrition and erosion to cause the collapse of Nazi Germany. In the counterinsurgent field, the British used the combination to defeat the "Communist Terrorists" during the Malayan Emergency while the US used the same approach not only to defeat the Confederacy but to end the Indian "threat" on the Western frontier.

The final avenue to victory can go by the name of enervation. Here the goal is the progressive reduction of the enemy's political will to continue. In conventional war, the US victory over Imperial Japan came when one man--the Emperor--and a small number of supporters lost thier will following the second atomic bombing.

In insurgency, success almost inverably comes down the avenue of enervation. The Dutch and American Wars of Independence all ended with the counterinsurgent losing political will. The US was defeated in Southeast Asia when Congress not only enforced a withdrawal, but refused to provide critically needed logistic and air support during the North Vietnamese final offensive. The Geek could go on to the point of nausea.

Right now, in Iraq, but not yet in Afghanistan, the US is losing. Specifically, the US is losing its politcal will with "date certain" resolutions of the Vietnam sort popping up on Capitol Hill. The American public has lost its appetite for the war as is indicated by poll after poll. The MSM has declared the war lost one way or another time after time.

Get a grip on this! The American public is the critical human terrain!

Us, We the People, the great unwashed 300 million of us, is the human terrain that matters most. We are the strategic high ground. Our political will matters more in the battle between the several insurgent groups and the Iraqi government forces than does the uncommitted segment of the Iraqi population.

Why is this?

Because without our presence on the ground as well as our longer term logistics, intelligence and other support, the Iraqi government and people have no chance of working through the extraordary problems of creating a viable nation on the fly and under extereme stress.

We are necessary if the Iraqis are to have any chance of a better state of peace. We are necessary not in a background role. Not huddled in the bunkers of the Green Zone. Not as trainers and supplers. We are needed as fighters.

Fighters take losses.

So far our losses are in the acceptable range. Remember, between 1965 and 1970, we had more than fifty thousand men killed in Vietnam. So far our butcher's bill has (thankfully) been just over five percent of that.

Iraq (and to an increasing extent Afghanistan) are dirtier wars than Vietnam or other earlier insurgencies. The reason for this is the deliberate tactical and political decisions made by the insurgents.

In Iraq (with the Taliban following suit) civilian deaths are used as the primary weapon of enervation. By killing enough civilians (and the occasional Iraqi or American armed forces member) in spectactular enough way, the insurgents hope to undercut the political will of the Iraqi hard core and the American public. The insurgents hope as well to demobilize support from the government and its foreign supporters and remobilize it in support of the insurgency.

In Iraq (again with the Taliban following in the same path) the insurgents use tactics calculated to assure maximum collateral civilian casualties from the operations of counterinsurgent forces. The hope is that both the American public and the uncommitted mass at home will see the civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian homes as brutal acts by a ruthless enemy indifferent to the consequences of his actions and weapons.

Americans, particularly American politicians, journalists and academics have to get a firm grip on those two tactical realities forced on the war by the choices of the insurgents. Similarly we have to get a firm grip on the other unpleasant (for us) tactical choices of the insurgents such as the use of the infamous roadside mines which usually go by innocuous sets of letters: IEDs with EFPs.

Most of all, we must take a firm hold of the hard ground truth of insurgency. It is a test of political will. If we Americans had not had political will coming out the ying-yang, we wouldn't be here--at least as citizens of a unified, independent and sprawling nation.

The protest folksinger of the 1960s, Phil Ochs, once wrote the line, "We were born in a revolution and died in a wasted war." He was singing about Vietnam which was a wasted war.

Some would apply the line to the Iraq war. That would be unfair to both history and reality. This war is not a wasted one, not now, not that we're deep in the kimchee of it.

It will be a waste and we as a nation will "die" or more accurately be deeply wounded if, and only if, we lose our political will and with it the war.