How to Lose a Counter Insurgency
Posted by
Kevin
You start by involving the Air Force:
Away from the headlines and debate over the “surge” in U.S. ground troops, the Air Force has quietly built up its hardware inside Iraq, sharply stepped up bombing and laid a foundation for a sustained air campaign in support of American and Iraqi forces.
… “Night before last we had 14 strikes from B-1 bombers. Last night we had 18 strikes by B-1 bombers,” Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said approvingly of air support his 3rd Infantry Division received in a recent offensive south of Baghdad.
Statistics tell the story: Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first six months of 2007, a fivefold increase over the 86 used in the first half of 2006, and three times more than in the second half of 2006, according to Air Force data. In June, bombs dropped at a rate of more than five a day.
Bombs are not precision weapons, or, at least, not precise enough to avoid injuring or killing innocents. And injuring or killing innocents is the surest way to increase support for an insurgancy. If you are an Iraqi and one house in your block is a strong point for insurgents and the Americans drop bombs n that house, inevitably casuing damage and death to innocents, why aren’t you going to believe the insurgents when they tell you that the Americans don;t care about your life and have no intention of ever leaving you to rule yourself?
It is almost as if our government is working for the insurgents. We have an armed forces culture that is allergic to counter-insurgency, a weak, unintelligent President unable to understand why this is a bad thing or force a better way on the military and a Vice-President who thinks that there is no problem that cannot be solved by firepower. It is, in short, exactly the kind of enemy Bin Laden and the insurgents thought existed only in their wildest dreams.
