Let’s Scare the Hell Out of Iran

I don’t know how you feel about all this fear of Bush attacking Iran, but I’m getting tired of the media rhetoric. Anyone who has read a few of my posts would know that my opinion of Bush is pretty low (something like the worst President in over 300 years of our history), but all this made up fear is just getting to be too much.

Take David Ignatius’ article “Walking Into Iran's Trap” in the Oct 28 Washington Post. Ahmadenijad and his hard liners may very well be planning a trap by angering the U.S. to attack. But we haven’t attacked.

The Bush Administration has increased efforts to engage and expand the EU efforts to control Iran. It is not that the EU is an effective world player (they’re not), but that we should welcome any efforts by our government to rejoin our groups of mostly friendly nations.

More important is what the Bush Administration has done about Iran. First was declaring the Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist organization and second was to close the bank teller window to that Guard and several other Iranian groups that are probably the same Guard under cuter names. Since we believe that we are an honorable and moral nation, what could be more honorable or moral than to call the Revolutionary Guard what they really are and then to crimp their dollar support? This is the Guard that actively supports Hamas, Hezbollah, Shia killers in Iraq (probably Sunnis too), and supplies specialized weapons for killing our troops.

Just recently the Pentagon announced a new budget of beaucoup bucks to develop the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) and refit the B-2s to carry them. The Pentagon claims this weapon is for COIN support but anyone who is familiar with Bush smoke and mirrors knows this is not true. The bomb is a huge bunker buster with targets probably already selected in North Korea and Iraq (Syria, too?).

I worked on test and evaluation for Missile Defense the late 1980s. Called Star Wars then, I can vouch that the program was more sham than reality, but it did scare the USSR and contributed their collapse. I suspect it remains more sham than reality today, but It still scares Russia. Whether Missile Defense or the MOB are effective is not so important as how the target nations react.

I really like what this administration is doing to Iran. We call those in Iran what they really are, then we rattle our sabers a little, and then we buy some scary weapons whose aim is very clear. At this point there is little we can actually do about Iran, except scare them to the negotiating table.

One caveat. What if Igantius and the other fear writers are right? Does Bush really intend to attack Iran without open provocation? I hope not and I have to admit Bush’s track record is scary. Until then and if we don’t attack until our Army and Marines have recovered from Iraq/Afghanistan, scaring the hell out of Iran is kind of fun.

America is NOT at War

Should We Be?

With about 0.4% of Americans serving in the military and the other 99.6% mostly ignoring the progress of two wars, this nation is not at war. As Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli (senior military assistant to SecDef) put it in the Sep/Oct Military Review, “Learning From Our Modern Wars,”

“The U.S. as a Nation—and indeed most of the U.S. Govern­ment—has not gone to war since 9/11. Instead, the departments of Defense and State (as much as their modern capabilities allow) and the Central Intelli­gence Agency are at war while the American people and most of the other institutions of national power have largely gone about their normal business.”

Robert Kaplan in WSJ Opinion had something stronger to say (see also IntelDumps commentary on the article, “Robert Kaplan on heroes and service”):

"An army at war and a nation at the mall do not encounter each other except through the refractive medium of news and entertainment."

This post will explore the issues of supporting small wars of COIN (counterinsurgency) or nation building.

Why Do We Hate This War?

In one of my very early posts (say, June 07), I mentioned that I did not fully understand the public’s intense dislike of the Iraq War. Some blame it on casualty aversion (that’s PC-speak for deaths), but I don’t buy it. Americans ignore casualties, or any suffering, the further they are away from home and family. We certainly don’t get nationally upset at genocide in Darfur and we’ve even forgotten about the deaths in our own back yard with Katrina. I’ve mentioned before that our troops and their families endure further hardships, short of death, that are unimaginable to most civilians. I think that most civilians are vaguely aware of that truth but still don’t quite comprehend it.

Robert Kaplan explained the disconnect as:

Put simply, military service used to be viewed as a duty for all. Now, it is viewed as a choice for some. The act of joining the military has morphed into a heroic act, if only because so few Americans do it, and so few understand or appreciate the nature of this act, let alone the acts of extraordinary heroism which define the word for those in uniform.

This partially explains the problem but it also leads to some other problems with how civilians view the troops, as Kaplan also explains:

“The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq's complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it…

“As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: "Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I'm a warrior. It's my job to fight." Every journalist has a different network of military contacts. Mine come at me with the following theme: We want to be admired for our technical proficiency--for what we do, not for what we suffer. We are not victims. We are privileged.

"An army at war and a nation at the mall do not encounter each other except through the refractive medium of news and entertainment."

But to those service men or women reading this, I think the battalion commander who complained is asking for something unobtainable. I would ask him to pick any other profession, for which he has not been trained, and tell me if he respects those in that other profession because of a technical proficiency that he does not understand and probably has no interest. Do you respect us engineers because of our mathematical ingenuity:? Do I respect lawyers because of their knowledge of obscure law? If not, do you really expect civilians to understand your technical proficiency and respect you for it? It is possible that the service members’ expectations of civilians are as unreal as is the public’s expectations of our military.

Regardless of other conclusions in this post, we need to better educate the public in the risks and requirements (in time, money, and lives). One of the reasons the public remains against the Iraq War is that neither our civilian leaders or the media have attempted to inform the public. Lt. Gen. Chiarelli said,

“Perhaps the most important thing we need to do to prepare for a dangerous future is change the cultures of our national security organizations and increase our efforts to educate the U.S. public.”

Casualty aversion, lack understanding of small wars, and poor media coverage when taken together still did not explain America’s dislike for this war. Perhaps the explanation is simply that America does not like to be embarrassed or does like to lose faith in itself. Stephen Holmes in a The Nation Article, “Apocalypse Now?,” confirmed my guess when he said,

“But before we lay all the blame on newspapers and networks that may have deceived the American public, we need to consider the possibility that many Americans did not and do not want to be informed about the misdeeds of their own government abroad. A majority of the electorate supported Bush for some time after the pretexts for the Iraq War were exposed as mendacious and the appalling behavior of some American personnel at Abu Ghraib became well-known. Support waned only after the war turned into an undeniable and embarrassing fiasco, not because a large majority was appalled that the war had been launched on false pretenses or conducted by immoral and illegal means.”

There is a lot of meaning in that blunt statement. If true, it is critical to our national psyche. We can’t lay the blame on Congress or the media without also blaming ourselves. It should be painfully obvious to anyone, liberal or conservative, that too many in Congress are adjusting their positions to what they think their voters want to hear. Of itself, that’s not a bad approach, but when the public is wrong, Congress is also wrong, and the country is in trouble.

If 31% of America still supports Bush (depending on the latest polling), then I suppose that 31% who would disagree “that the war had been launched on false pretenses or conducted by immoral and illegal means.” If Holmes is correct, it doesn’t matter.

We have about 69% of the public that is against the war. Going to war on al Qaeda had public support in the months after 9/11, but a common cause of this level is not common. We typically elect our Presidents with 51 or 52% and that seems to be common across most Western democracies. We usually elect our leaders without clear mandates (although Bush claimed a mandate with 51%). Yet we continually face wars, and now must add small wars to the equation. We need leadership supported by more than 51% of the nation. But there is a danger in that. It could lead to a President who might go to war under false pretenses and conduct the war by immoral and illegal means. Our Constitution provides the solution and it is called a separate and distinct Congress, with the help of a separate and distinct Supreme Court.

Congress did not exercise its advise and consent role from 2000 to 2006; it was essentially a cheering section for a popular but wrong war. Since early 2006 Congress has begun to exercise that role but, sadly, it is mostly a byproduct of party warfare. That won’t change until the public changes. Congress’ approval rating is even lower than Bush’s, yet each of us must perceive our own Senators or Representative as good since we re-elect them time after time. If we want our leaders to be more statesman-like, then we voters must also start acting and voting more statesman-like. There must come a time when we really believe that our nation and way of life is worth saving. I leave this soap box with a quote from “Newsworthy Reconsidered,” by Victor Hanson at the National Review:

“… a society that does not fathom who keeps them safe in order that it might stare at Oprah and fixate on Brad and Angelina, eventually will be a society not kept safe either to so stare or fixate.”

Failure is a Choice

Virtually every text on COIN, small wars, or long wars state three requirements:

1. Military must organize and train for COIN operations.
2. Supported by civilian leaders (White House and Congress)
3. Supported the American public

I will add the media to this list since the media is the primary conduit of communications between the military, our leaders, and the public.

The first requirement is being met, the second is in doubt, and the third seems unlikely to ever happen.

I want to talk about the second and third elements, but first a brief summary of the first element.

The Military

The Marines have a long history of small wars experience so adding COIN operations has been relatively easy for them. The Army has made remarkable progress toward an effective COIN force over the past two or more years. In fact, for a very large organization, the U.S. Army’s change is stunning.

The Public

We, the U.S. and the West, have not had much success in winning at small wars, counterinsurgency operations, or nation building. Here are some favorite reasons for why insurgent win (from “The American Way of War,” CATO Institute):

· Insurgents have a greater interest in the outcome of the war and therefore bring to it a superior political will, a greater determination to fight and die; the insurgents wage total war, whereas the government or foreign occupying power fights what, for it, is necessarily a limited war.

· Others contend that superior strategy best explains insurgent victories—that is, protracted guerrilla warfare against a politically impatient and tactically inflexible conventional enemy.

· Still others …argue that democracies, as opposed to dictatorships, lack the political and moral stomach to prevail in long and bloody wars against irregular adversaries…

There is some truth to each of these points but the following may apply specifically to the U.S. (extracted from the above list):

· fights a necessarily a limited war.

· politically impatient.

· as a democracy, lack s the political and moral stomach to prevail in long and bloody wars.

There’s not much we can do about small wars being limited wars fnor can we avoid long wars. But politically impatient and lack of political and moral stomach may describe us and may be our downfall. Lt. Gen. Chiarelli says,

“Our current problems raise the legitimate ques­tion of whether the U.S., or any democracy, can successfully prosecute an extended war without a true national commitment. “

“The American Way of War” has a similar analysis and reaches the following conclusion:

“If this analysis is correct, the policy choice is obvious: avoidance of direct military involvement in foreign internal wars unless vital national security interests are at stake. Such wars are primarily political struggles and only secondarily military contests, and the very presence of foreign combat forces can provoke insurgent attack and undermine the legitimacy of the host government. Avoidance of such conflicts means abandonment of regime-change wars that saddle the United States with responsibility for establishing political stability and state building, tasks that have rarely commanded public or congressional enthusiasm.”

And

Barring profound change in America’s political and military culture, the United States runs a significant risk of failure when it enters small wars of choice, and great power intervention in small wars is almost always a matter of choice. Most such wars, moreover, do not engage core U.S. security interests other than placing the limits of American military power on embarrassing display. Indeed, the very act of intervention in small wars risks gratuitous damage to America’s military reputation. The United States should abstain from intervention in such wars, except in those rare cases when military intervention is essential to protecting or advancing U.S. national security.

There is the choice. I agree that we should avoid intervention in small wars, but I don’t think we can avoid them as much as the CATO Institute seems to imply. I disagree that most such wars do not engage core U.S. interests since the threat of WMD use by al Qaeda, or its brother crazies or its replacements, are a valid and continuing threat. I would even project that there will be many small wars in our future that we cannot avoid. So I think failure is a choice but not one we should be willing to make.

What Stirs the Hearts of Americans?

As far as war goes, not much stirs the hearts of Americans. We look for that singular event, such as a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 that demands revenge and victory. But most events that lead to wars, especially small wars, are small and they build to some level that leads to action.

World War II is much in the media today. Although we all know it was a time when all of America joined the fight and all suffered to some extent, we should also know that America’s entry into WWII was a inevitable long before Pearl Harbor, but both Congress and the public remained in denial until that day of attack. Here are the events over nine long and eventful years before Pearl Harbor.

• 1932 - Japan completed invasion of Manchuria
• 1935 – Italy invaded Ethiopia
• 1937 – Japan began war with China and sinks U.S. gunboat
• 1938 – Germany annexed Austria and invaded part of Czechoslovakia
• 1939 – Germany invaded all of Czechoslovakia, Italy invaded Albania, Germany invaded Poland, USSR invaded Poland and Finland
• 1940 – Germany invaded Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Italy declared war on France and invaded British Somaliland, Greece and Egypt. Japan occupied French Indochina. Hungary and Romania joined the Axis. Germany prepared for the invasion of Britain with all-out air warfare.
• 1941 – Bulgaria joined the Axis. Germany invades Yugoslavia and USSR.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Germany controlled all of continental Europe (except for Switzerland and Spain) and had invaded well into the USSR to within 50 miles from Moscow. The Mediterranean Sea had almost become an Axis lake and controlled many of America’s trade routes. Britain was alone against Germany and Italy with Japan threatening her Pacific possessions. Britain had been at war for 2 years and 2 months when Pearl Harbor was attacked, but the American public and Congress were not stirred to action until Pearl Harbor. America was not alone in its apathy. Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and others also choose to ignore the obvious until they too were attacked. Perhaps apathy, denial, or isolationism is simply a disease of democracies.

That the summation of small events might stir the American heart also seems remote. I saw a photo on one war blog that showed writing on the side of a refrigerator with a Marine in the background coming through the front door. The writing said, “America is not a war. The Marines are at war. America is at the mall.” The media is of little help. They can, at the least, be blamed for sensationalism and reporting to satisfy the corporate balance sheet. Kaplan reported the following statistic:

According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared with 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. (in reference to Medal of Honor recipient Army Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith)

A mental calculation tells me that each bad event got about 50 times the press as the one good event. Going back to Holmes’ article, we cannot just blame the press; we must consider our own attitudes that the media sells to.

Not much stirs the American heart to war. We need to change or we must face some realities about what kinds of wars we can fight and win.

America’s Way of War

America has a unique way of fighting our modern battles. Our way has been fantastically successful in the first Gulf War, the defeat of Iraq’s military, and even in Bosnia. We need this conventional capability, but it is also obvious that we also need to keep and improve our ability to conduct COIN wars. Many junior officers and some senior officers are saying that our Army is not stepping up to the plate on COIN and that there remains too many senior officers who remain entrenched in the successes of conventional warfare. That may be true but I hear a rising chorus of senior officers who are adopting COIN as a necessary component of our forces.

However, I am talking about civilian support. I believe the concepts of conventional warfare are imbedded in our national psyche, but the concepts of COIN operations are only dimly understood. Let’s look at how Americans view war.

The CATO Institute’s “The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency” observes:

“Antulio Echevarria, director of research at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, believes the United States “is geared to fight wars as if they were battles, and thus confuses the winning of campaigns . . . with the winning of wars.” He further contends that “the characteristics of the U.S. style of warfare—speed, jointness, knowledge, and precision—are better suited for strike operations than for translating such operations into strategic successes.”

…

“Frederick W. Kagan also believes that the primary culprit in delivering politically sterile victories is the Pentagon’s conception of war. The reason why “the United States [has] been so successful in recent wars [but has] encountered so much difficulty in securing its political aims after the shooting stopped,” he argues, “lies partly in a ‘vision of war’ that see[s] the enemy as a target set and believe[s] that when all or most targets have been hit, he will inevitably surrender and American goals will be achieved.” (emphasis is mine)

While the above condemns the military the perception also applies to civilians.

Compared to the complexity, frustration, and lack of sensational, set piece events in COIN operations, conventional warfare is easy to understand (but no less difficult to conduct). We look for battles that are clearly won or lost and we look for a series of battles as indicators of a successful or failed campaign. COIN operations rarely have such clearly defined events and even the status of a campaign may be unclear to member of Congress and the American public. The media’s emphasis on sensational events is not helpful.

The importance of these misperceptions should now be obvious if we remember the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The total collapse of the Iraqi military and government did not lead to a clear win for the U.S. The CATO report notes:

“…former presidential national security advisers Samuel Berger and Brent Scowcroft. “But that ‘transformation’ has had an unintended consequence. Rapid victory collapses the enemy but does not destroy it.” (emphasis is mine)

Regardless of what we eventually decide for our future war fighting capability, it seems clear to me that we need to educate the public on the COIN side of war. I think this is the responsibility of the White House, but this Administration has totally failed us in educating the public on today’s warfare. Had the Administration been honest about the Iraq War, especially when the new COIN training and operations were introduced in Iraq in 2006, I believe there would be more trust in this Administration and less opposition to the war in 2007.

If, in understanding COIN warfare, you get the idea that war and politics are being mingled, you are correct. Von Clausewitz (1780-1831) and his On War is once again popular in the Army/Marine reading list. Von Clausewitz professed that war and politics were related – “It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means.”

The CATO Institute article also noted:

“the American tendency to separate war and politics—to view military victory as an end in itself, ignoring war’s function as an instrument of policy.”

I believe that attitude became prominent during WWII when we, Britain, and the USSR declared that we would accept only the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers. Politics (other than dividing Europe between the West and the USSR) was removed from that war; only unconditional surrender during war could end hostilities. WWII was also our last war that had clearly defined goals; it was the last war that we clearly won; and it was the last war declared by Congress. Small wars do not usually have these benefits.

We play Gary Cooper in “High Noon.” We let the bad guys shoot first, but return fire with devastation and demand unconditional surrender. I admit that Bush believes in shooting first on suspicion, but that is not America. Again, the White House needs to educate the public that small wars are a part of America’s international politics and that both are sometimes required to protect America and our interests. Each war is not an end in itself, but a tool. The goal is to protect America.

Conclusions

We face the probability of small wars, COIN wars, or nation building wars and we need to keep and perfect our capability to fight those wars. At the same time we must prepare for conventional war. The probability of facing a conventional war is less than for the small wars, but the risks of failure is far greater. Russia and China will not always remain militarily weak. At the least, competition for the dwindling energy resources will pit us against those two nations and the emerging strength of others such as India, Brazil, and possibly even our current friends in Europe. Expecting large, conventional wars is depressing; not preparing to them is suicidal. It appears we need both war fighting capabilities.

Yet our Army and Marines are being stressed to the point that senior officers are voicing worries about our fulfilling our commitments in Afghanistan and elsewhere and the degradation of our overall defense posture. I am more concerned about the longer term impact on the Army and Marine forces. We hear that enlistment standards have been purposefully lowered plus aggressive goals for recruitment centers have caused them to bend the rules. That alone lowers the professionalism at a time when our military needs the best personnel. Captains and majors are the key players in COIN operations and both the Army and Marines have significant shortfalls that will grow as the ground forces expand as planned through 2013. We are losing battle-experienced junior officers at an alarming rate. Incentives will cause some to remain in near constant battle, but many will leave and not return. It can only get worse as the war goes on.

The CATO Institute states the problem well:

“The policy question is not whether the United States should continue to maintain its hard-won and indispensable conventional primacy but whether, given the evolving strategic environment, it should create ground (and supporting air) forces dedicated to performing operations other than war, including counterinsurgency, or simply abandon direct military intervention in foreign internal wars altogether unless there is a compelling national security interest at stake and intervention commands broad public support.”

Although we could probably rebuild our forces to the levels we had in the relatively peaceful 1990’s, the stresses of Iraq and Afghanistan would act against more volunteers without significant and new incentives. Eventually we will have to admit the costs of a larger military and the new equipment needed, plus the equipment lost and destroyed and not now budgeted for replacement. I believe it would be difficult to build to that level and even that level appears inadequate to fight both conventional and COIN wars.

Lt. Gen. Chiarelli states the problem succinctly:

“Many proposals have been presented for maintain­ing the quality of the force, but if none of those work, we may not know until it is too late. The executive branch, Congress, the armed forces, and indeed the American population need to look now at the type of military we want for the future and the price we are willing to pay to ensure our national security.”

We need to consider the draft. I’ve been against the draft because I do not think it is compatible with our high-tech conventional war, or the complexity COIN wars. However, I see no other alternative to meeting our overall defense needs without the draft. There are probably methods and organizational structures that would effectively combine a draftee force into a more professional volunteer core force but we need a national discussion to get there.

Here’s my list of highly unpopular topics (in order of unpopular to more unpopular:

• Any kind of war, especially wars without clear targets
• Paying for wars
• Wars that last longer than a few years
• The Draft

And yet this is a list of what I believe we can expect and what we need to do. The draft would also introduce, to the citizenry, men and women who have real experience with the military. An America at the mall and an America at war would begin to understand each other and make better choices. Some might even enter politics and help put a brake on new and unnecessary small wars.

But until then, I don’t see the American public initiating any part of my unpopular list. It would have to begin with Congress and Congress won’t do anything unless the public is mostly in favor. Although retired, my military and engineering training conditioned me to seek solutions. I can’t find one here. Talk about Catch-22.

Real Post in Draft

Sorry about the delay in my next post. I'm having some trouble beating my thoughts into some coherence. I want to write about the public support for small wars, whether it can ever happen, and whether it is even needed. I trashed my first attempt and am now working on a second draft.

I continue to review over 20 blogs or news sites and I ran across:

Afraid of the Dalai Lama? at the Washington Post. The article begins with a summary of China’s subjugation of Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s escape and then world fame. But then the article lists many of China’s problems that have nothing to do with the Dalai Lama and the article loses focus and becomes meaningless.

So even those who get paid to write sometimes have focus problems.

Sunni Insurgents Have Problems

This is a note of some hope in our Iraq War. Sunni jihadist insurgencies may be failing because of problems they created. The Counterterrorism Blog has a most interesting post that gives perspective to some of their problems. “Khawaarij and Jihad: Is Al-Qaida's Network in Iraq Doomed to the Fate of the GIA?” recounts some recent verbal exchanges between the Sunni insurgent groups. Even bin Laden’s master planner, al-Zawahiri, has bad mouthed Hamas. I recommend reading the whole article.

The article relates these exchanges to the collapse of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) in Algeria in the mid-1990s. That movement began, like our current insurgents in Iraq, with denunciations and killings of apostates and infidels. As newer, younger, and more radical commanders took over the movement their targets expanded to include anyone who disagreed with them. Not only did they lose their base support, but they also angered their own fighters and the movement broke into warring factions and eventually disintegrated.

In Iraq, we see the public rejecting al Qaeda in Anbar, Dyala, and other Sunni-dominated provinces. More recently we’ve heard verbal exchanges between Sunni insurgents in Iraq and between al Qaeda and Hamas. The article points to clashes between Iraqi groups based on the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi-jihadists, and between al Qaeda supported groups and the al Qaeda upper echelons. I think we can assume that Surge success caused some of that bickering, but the history of the GIA indicates that Sunni insurgencies may also fail on their own.

Basically, this is good news for the West but not unqualified good news. We don’t yet know where all this might lead. I see three possible outcomes for Iraq and small wars ahead:

• All Sunni insurgencies die out
• One local insurgency survives and dominates
• One international insurgency gains control of most/all local insurgencies

The first possibility is that all Sunni insurgencies will become so unpopular that they will begin dying out before they achieve much success. I doubt this will happen. The anger and conditions that give life to such movements will be around for years and I see various insurgencies growing in most Islamic countries. Any single insurgent group is certain to find some local acceptance and it may take some time before the local civilians become disenchanted with the insurgents. The al Qaeda-Taliban successes would probably have continued in Afghanistan had we not intervened.

A second possibility is that one insurgent group may dominate the insurgent marketplace and kill off other insurgents or drive them into hiding. There are several countries with budding or active insurgencies and this is certain to happen somewhere, especially in smaller countries or regions where the cause of insurgency is more uniform. If so, then that might lead us to something like Anbar Province where al Qaeda dominated as AQI. If those single insurgencies do learn from mistakes, then they might repeat the mistakes in Anbar and also die out. However, Sunni insurgencies have proven to be intelligent and we should expect them to revise their hardball tactics against the local populace. We should expect some insurgencies will find that successful line between terror and support.

A third possibility is that one, or a small few, international insurgent organizations such as al Qaeda will exert more central control over local insurgencies. This would have the advantage of a more unified front against apostates and infidels, better management of resources, and allow more controlled responses to civilian backlash. However, insurgencies (as clearly explained in FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency Field Manual) are weaker than the opposition through most of their development stages and they must remain secretive and hidden. This requires the very loose, cell-oriented organization wherein the chain of command is also very loose. There can be no firm control over local cells by the upper levels of command and this means that the movement remains somewhat fractured. Internal dissention is part of this kind of organization and this, in turn, can easily lead to the movement being fractured into separate movements.

I’m sure there are other possibilities, but I think the general trend is that Sunni insurgencies, especially the most prominent ones based on the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi mentality, will eventually be degraded by internal problems and may fall under their own weight. We can use this knowledge to our advantage, but this is just one more aspect of counterinsurgency operations that will test our national patience.

I’ve not addressed Shia insurgencies and none of the above may apply to those insurgencies in Iraq. The Shia are a minority within Islam and, although a large minority, are probably more focused on issues so there might fewer dissenting avenues among insurgents. Shia insurgencies may also be more focused because Iran, the only Islamic republic in the Middle East, is Shia and actively supports Shia movements throughout the Middle East (and probably Sunni movements too). It is seems certain that Iraqi Shias have a different agenda than Iran’s, but at this time we really have little idea of what Iran or Iraqi Shias want from the association.

A Death in the Family

Christopher Hitchens writes in Vanity Fair about the death of Lt. Mark Daily. Hitchens is a columnist and former trumpeter for the Iraq War as a moral war. Mark Daily was not interested in the war but, after readings Hitchens’ articles, changed his mind and joined the Army.

Regardless of your political leanings or opinion on this war, you need to read this article. Enough said – you need to read it.

Islam and the Middle East in a Nutshell

I lost interest in my promised series on Islam and the Middle East. Instead I will attempt to cover about 1400 years of history in one, long post. The following Is my own, highly-opinionated work and I will not reference experts so you’ll have to trust me on this.

Around 200 years after Christianity dominated much of Europe and had consolidated its own orthodoxy (hard to pinpoint but around 400 AD), an Arab merchant began getting visions from God, whom he called Allah in his native tongue. He began a long career as a prophet of the one God/Allah and, descending from Abraham, was the last prophet (and only official prophet per himself) in a line of prophets from Moses to Jesus and on to himself. He recorded his visions in a book called the Qur’an or Koran and founded a religion called Islam (to submit, or surrender, to God). But this man, Mohammed (Mohammad, Mohamet, etc), was also a military genius and a cunning diplomat. Not exactly a prince of peace.

Islam expanded rapidly by voluntary conversion and conquest, but mostly by conquest. It expanded to all of what we call the Middle East, eastward to India and even into China, westward into northern Africa, and northward into Spain, southern France, the Balkans, and parts of Russia. In 1683, Islam besieged, but did not take, Vienna. During this time when Europe was mostly in its Dark Ages, science, art, and literature blossomed under Islam.

The lands of Islam were sometimes invaded and factions within Islam came to power and then lost it to others. But Islam absorbed outsiders and remained steady within its realm. The head honcho was the caliph (a descriptive term meaning both follower and successor of Mohammed). He ruled only by following Allah’s law (per Mohammed’s Qur’an, of course) and could and was sometimes removed by assassination or other means if he was judged as not following Allah’s law and was not too careful of his personal security. The concept of a nation was not in Islam’s dictionary but there were definable countries and states and Islam ruled throughout. It became a shared moral code, consistent set of laws covering all aspects of individuals and states, and most of all it was an experience and set of values shared across all Islamic lands.

Writers like to compare Islam with Christianity but, beyond Abraham, there is very little to compare. The central figure in Christianity, Jesus, had a strong pacifist streak and he wasn’t interested in the affairs of state (render unto Caesar and all that). Our Bible was written/compiled after Jesus’ death, parts of it long after his death, and there is much inconsistency as different story tellers relate their own versions of events and opinions. Mohammed wrote all of the Qur’an and, though I find it a totally disorganized and boring text, its message is very consistent. Mohammed was a warrior who was interested in conquering and managing an empire and his Qur’an also thoroughly instructs in matters of war and statecraft. The Bible displays a distrust of governments on Earth but offers little help in what to do about them. It took over a millennium for Christianity to realize this distrust of governments and nearly all Western nations observe a separation of church and state. In Islam, the separation of church and state is unnatural and runs against the idea that Allah is in charge on Earth. We should keep this in mind when promoting our kind of freedom in Islamic lands.

There is one other comparison that I think is important. Whereas in Christian lands, the family and community is apparently declining as a societal force, in Islamic countries the family, tribe, and community are important forces – sometimes far more important than the state. A code of honor, I’ll call it the primitive honor code, is also a force in Islamic lands. The primitive honor code was never compatible with Christianity and finally died with dueling early in the 1900s, although it seems to be reappearing in modern gang cultures. The primitive honor code predates Islam but seems quite compatible with it. It is a zero-sum game where one can often gain or regain honor primarily by taking honor away from someone else. As our troops practice the new COIN operations, they are also becoming adept at using that primitive honor code to our advantage.

Life was good under Islam when it was dominant (or at least perceived to be good), but Islam had four inherent problems.

1. After Mohammed’s death there was an argument of succession. Some voted for a family member and this faction became the Shia. Some voted for trusted lieutenants and they became the Sunni. The schism has sometimes been bloody and it remain alive today.
2. Although science blossomed under Islam, it did not translate into technology or industry. I saw an interesting comparison of mills in, I think, about 1600 AD. England alone had more wind and water mills than in all of the Middle East (they were taxed so numbers are known). Whether this lack of technology or industry was caused by Islam or culture is debatable but the difference is certainly with us today and is a source of Middle East’s inability to compete in the modern world. Oil revenues only mask the problem when the price is high and lead to discontent when the price is low.
3. Perhaps like all great civilizations Islam eventually declined.
4. Because subjects of Islam considered Islam to be the only way of life, they ignored the rest of the world and didn’t even notice their own decline until the infidel knocked on the door.

Problem 4 became painfully obvious when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. Napoleon was soon driven out of Egypt by the Brits. Two things became clear to anyone in Islam. Westerners could invade Islam with impunity and only another Western power could dislodge the infidel invaders. Then Britain and France proceeded to conquer much of Islam from northern Africa in the west through India in the east. Only the Arabian Kingdom was left untouched as only a wasteland and not worthy of colonialism. Britain and France created countries where none had existed and even named some of them using names from Western history.

The final blow was the dissolution of the Ottoman Empireand removal of the last caliph in 1924, , after picking the wrong side in World War I, after picking the wrong side in World War I. Times were not good in Islam. Their internal problems were becoming painfully obvious and their subjugation by infidels seems permanent. Between the wars, Muslims continued their fascination with the wrong side with a growing interest in fascism. Fascism’s racial intolerance was not attractive and was mostly ignored. However, fascism also taught that power would come to those countries that gave up individual rights to create a more powerful state – something that resonated in Islam.

Those who entertained fascism soon found Britain’s heavy hand in World War II. Further, as WW II continued, the peoples of Islam watched the Western powers fight, conquer, and re-conquer, while they stood by powerless to affect their own fate or that of anyone. Britain and France dissolved their empires at the end of WW II and Muslims suddenly found themselves free of infidel governments, but not necessarily free of infidel influence. Some briefly experimented with Western ideas of democracy and individual freedom. Most failed when dictators, autocrats, or kings took control. And most were brutal leaders, but their main failure, in the eyes of their peoples, were that they were secular. They did not follow Allah’s law. And this brings us to apostasy.

An apostate is one who has accepted Islam and then rejects it. Within Christianity there is no longer much condemnation of apostates, or any non-believer for that matter. Although a few Christians may do the work of God (as they see it) and will speed heretics and non-believers on their trip to Hell, most are willing to allow God to make the travel arrangements. Not so within Islam where an apostate is the worst kind of human. While Islam is a conquering religion, it does not force people to become Muslim – it is their choice to accept the obvious benefits of Islam. But those who accept Islam and then reject it are to be put to death. No question. The Qur’an is firm in that. Although it seems the West is the prime target of radical Muslims, we are actually a secondary target. They have uniformly failed to remove their own “apostates” from power and have convinced themselves that Western support of such governments keeps them in power. The sad thing is that we’ve done just that in enough cases to give a measure of truth to the mostly false claim.

Islamic countries have lots of problems, especially in the greater Middle East (to include northern Africa, east to Pakistan, and north to the ex-USSR-istans). Most problems are now of their own making with bad governments, poverty, unemployment, little industry or international commerce. Some have pointed out that most of the terrorists who’ve struck in the U.S. and Europe are educated and therefore poverty is not a main factor. I don’t buy that. Poverty is rampant and those who danced in the streets after 9/11 included a lot of poor folks. Probably more to the point is that those terrorists were educated, middle-class men who had few employment opportunities.

But some of Islam’s problems are caused by Western actions. Of late, the U.S. has supported the Shah of Iran, even Saddam of Iraq, and backed Israel who occupies property recently owned and settled by long ago by Islamic peoples. The Ayatollah Khomeini coined the “Great Satan” to describe us. Note that this term evokes, for Muslims, the image of “who whispers into the hearts of humans.” We whisper into their hearts via TV and other communication techniques and we cause them to draw away from teachings of Islam with such dastardly concepts as equality for women, close dancing, and questionable sexual practices. Or at least that’s what the radical Muslims preach.

The average Muslim may hate secular rulers like Saddam Hussein but those same leaders are also loved when they stand up to the U.S. Saddam was wildly popular during the Gulf War and remained popular until his death. Accordingly, the U.S. was hated, but perhaps not more so than usual. Ahmadinejad of Iran is possibly even more popular throughout Islam.

It is worth noting that, after WW II, Muslims had a serious flirtation with the USSR even though their experience with the USSR and Russia was similar to that with the West. Islam conquered some of southern Russia and later lost it back to Russia and then the USSR. Yet, even while the USSR was invading Afghanistan it was rare to find any Muslim condemnation of the USSR outside of Afghanistan. In fact, while the U.S. was arming future Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, we were roundly hated by most of Islam. It’s hard to find a plausible reason for all this might be the simple fact that the USSR was not of the West.

We destroyed a lot of Iraq’s Army in the Gulf War (to free Kuwait), and we invaded Iraq later to destroy WMD/remove a bad dictator/bring freedom to the Iraqis/ or pick a year and pick your favorite reason from Bush’s changing list. Muslims think we warred on them twice to protect our oil sources and to just generally make things bad for Muslims. And this, too, is mostly untrue but contains just enough truth to make the lie believable.

Those who say that oil was not a factor in those wars, as well as most of our other Middle East actions, should look at the map of the Persian Gulf, the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz, and especially at the Shat-al-Arab that divides Iran from Iraq. Many years ago we deployed troops to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (near the Gulf by the way), and we’ve warred twice starting at the Shat-al-Arab through which much of the world’s oil passes.

And what is wrong with protecting our national interests, even protecting our oil sources? Even the dysfunctional UN recognizes a nation’s right to protect its vital interests. But wouldn’t it be nice if the average American was more concerned over the death of a soldier and the dollar cost of war than about the cost of a tank full of gas? Why are we more interested in those parts of the Middle East that have oil than those who do not?

Hatred of the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Canada now has a life of its own. We’ve become a tool of authoritarian governments and jihadist caliph wannabes. Authoritarian regimes, even our bosom buddies, either allow or promote hatred of the U.S. to hide their own failures. As to the second part of caliph wannabees, some recent history is in order. The current rash of jihadist organizations (and there are many more than just al Qaeda) are outgrowths of a very severe form of Islamic theory and practice that developed in Saudia Arabia (our most bosomy buddy) in the 1700s. Wahabism became the ruling version of Sunni Islam in that country and they were able to export this puritanical religion after taking the Holy Cities (Mecca and Medina) in 1924 and especially after oil brought power and bucks to the ruling class.

Elsewhere, some of the more radical malcontents adopted this puritanical version of Islam, especially in Egypt where a man named Sayyid Qutb wrote about his visit the U.S. and about our sinful morals as displayed by male and female teens partying together, even in our very churches, and even dancing together and touching. We were pretty bad back in the 1950s and Sayyid recorded all of it and then helped found the Muslim Brotherhood before being executed in Eqypt. The Muslim Brotherhood was the role model for most Islamic terrorists groups.

I think we must also guard against apologists for Islam who reside in the U.S. and Europe. I allow that many Islamic charities operate honestly in Western countries, but I am troubled by the many dual connections with the Muslim Brotherhood and related terrorist organizations. I will leave the history part of this post with a note on term “jihad.” Jihad means "striving in the way of God." It has two aspects. The greater jihad is the individual struggle to become a better person in the eyes of Allah and to promote justice and help the less fortunate. The lesser jihad is holy war and, in theory, should only be undertaken in defense of Islam. Further, modern apologists would have us believe the greater jihad of personal struggle is the most accepted and used aspect of jihad. Yet several scholars of Islam point out that throughout history jihad is most often used in its lesser jihad, war sense. That such war should be defensive is recognized when we hear bin Laden claim that his war against infidels is in defense of Islam. This is also the source of reputed role as Crusaders. The Crusades were around 800 years ago and they were complete failures. Further, the Crusades had nearly no impact on Islam and they were not even reported in Islamic history until very recently. It’s use is totally modern and is used to evoke the image of Islam defending itself against infidels. It falls in the same usage category as the Great Satan.

Still, most of the peoples of Islam have been attracted to the U.S., and most of those who hate us do not necessarily want to see us defeated. Once upon a time, we were a beacon of wealth and individual freedom and the two were inextricably linked. We are still the beacon of wealth, but our dedication to individual freedom is faltering. We offer no human rights to those we capture, we’ve begun spying on America at large, and we have allowed our government to increase its power over us while claiming Republican principles and erecting shields of secrecy. We’ve also lost respect by bullying our few friends in Europe and the UN. We’ve lost respect, critically injured our national honor by mismanaging a war in Iraq and by forgetting that there is still a war in Afghanistan that once had something to do with al Qaeda.

Now here’s my punchline summary:

• Most of the peoples of Islam don’t like us, but it has less to do with our actions and more to do with our inheriting the titles of “Leader of the West” and “The Most Powerful and Wealthy Nation.” We can’t change our titles and we can’t expect to change the minds of most Muslims in my lifetime.
• Nearly all the terrorists that we need to worry about are Muslims. Many Muslims do not like our use of the term, “Islamic terrorists,” but that I is what those terrorists call themselves and Islamic terrorist are the ones we need to stop.
• We will be fighting more “small” wars against Islamic radical terrorists and insurgents and we need to increase our military strength accordingly and soon.
• We will be dealing with peoples who value the primitive honor code. We need to respect the code in our dealings with them, but we must also recognize that we need to protect our own honor. Therefore, I suggest that we strive to finish our efforts in Iraq with honor as long as such an end is possible. Lost honor makes our troops more vulnerable and damages our standing as an effective negotiator.
• But few Muslims are terrorists or even radical jihadists. We should try to work with that majority. Whether they like us or we like them is a secondary issue. We do need to work together to improve the lot of most Muslims, and we need to find means to coexist on this planet.
• We should recognize that the Qur’an does promote conquering in the name of Islam, and we should never be misled into believing that jihad has only a peaceful interpretation. But we also need to understand that most Muslims have more important priorities than conquering the world.
• And finally, we should recognize that Muslims are united in Islam. Islam is a greater glue that unifies all Muslims. It is greater than country or nationality and it unifies Muslims when threatened from outside. Muslims have tried Western forms of democracy and individual freedoms and usually failed, and they blame those institutions for their own failure. Nation building in the Middle East inevitably involves Islam as a necessary component of government. We should expect that as their reasonable desire.

I apologize for leaving out important detail. Each time I read my draft, I added more detail I considered important until I decided I had to stop and publish.