Hello energyplay, <<Most of the U.S. public won't flinch until U.S. death toll goes over 500 ... mitigated by progress getting closer to Baghdad, finding more WMDs, mass Iraqi surrenders, and getting more areas of Iraq out of Saddam's control.
I don't see this administration backing down until U.S. deaths are over 5,000, maybe 10,000>>
... besides my original response Message 18759749 <<the US is uniquely qualified to export soldiers>>
Progress to date: Baghdad is done, WMDs not found, mass surrenders in a manner of speaking, then not, and Iraq is out of Saddam's control, sort of.
Rumsfeld and the Non-Guerrilla War
Jun 27, 2003
stratfor.biz
Summary
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on June 27 continued to deny that the United States was facing an organized guerrilla war in Iraq, making a series of arguments that classed the actions as essentially non-military in nature --criminals and desperados, rather than troops. If Rumsfeld actually means what he is saying, which we find hard to believe, that means the United States is not planning a military response -- a counter-insurgency campaign -- against the attackers, since there is no insurgency to counter. If we are to take Rumsfeld at his word, the U.S. has no military strategy unfolding.
Analysis
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced June 27 that whatever was happening in Iraq did not rise to the level of guerrilla warfare. He claimed that a string of recent attacks against U.S. military personnel was not coordinated by any centralized command or person; instead, he described the guerrilla movement as consisting of small elements of 10-20 men, and said there were no large formations involved.
When asked whether the assailants were guerrillas, Rumsfeld replied, "I don't know that I would use that word." He said thousands of people had been turned out of prison, portraying the attackers as the "dead-ender" remnants of the Baathist regime and criminals. Rumsfeld also said all major cities had crime and, "you've got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month."
The definition of an early-stage guerrilla war is, of course, that it consists of very small units, widely dispersed, with very little central coordination. The more concentrated the force and the more centrally commanded, the easier it is to defeat. Successful guerrilla movements are inherently "disorganized" -- if by organization, one means a command structure that is vulnerable to attack. They certainly don't aggregate into large units and rarely need to coordinate attacks. It is the very lack of coordination that makes them unpredictable and difficult to defend against. They adopt a basic doctrine, such as attacking convoys, pipelines and electrical infrastructure. Then small units carry out these operations on their own initiative.
A guerrilla certainly can be regarded as a criminal, but the distinction between a guerrilla and a criminal is fairly easy to draw. The goal of a criminal is personal advantage -- usually money. Thus, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, working with narcotics traffickers and engaging in kidnappings, arguably can be called a criminal group. However, attacking and killing U.S. military personnel cannot be called a criminal activity, in the sense that there is no personal profit to compensate for the extremely high risk. These attacks are not about money, they are about politics.
Iraq was invaded by the United States, which is now the occupying power. Many in Iraq oppose this occupation: There are the remnants of the Baath regime, who are prepared to wage guerrilla war to drive the United States out over the long run; there also are foreign Islamists, who came to Iraq -- just as they have gone to Bosnia, Chechnya or Afghanistan -- to wage war against foreign forces occupying Muslim lands. There are also undoubtedly Iraqi patriots who do not want to see their country occupied by a foreign power, there are religious Iraqis who oppose the occupation, and so on. There are many people in Iraq who would oppose the U.S. occupation, and some are risking and giving their lives to defeat their enemy.
This certainly is not intended to romanticize the guerrillas, but simply to point out the obvious. First, this is clearly a guerrilla war. It is a sustained operation over a wide geographical space that is increasing, rather than decreasing, in intensity. It also is causing casualties and achieving some political aims. Second, the motivation is neither criminal nor psychological -- although as in all guerrilla wars, both may enter into the equation. The goals of the guerrillas are clearly political. Whether they succeed or not, they are hoping to expel the United States from Iraq. They certainly understand that that will take time, but they appear to be prepared to wait. Finally, as guerrillas, they are following the classical pattern of all guerrilla movements -- which is precisely the characteristic that Rumsfeld has chosen to use to discredit them.
Rumsfeld is an extremely intelligent man. Therefore, his insistence that this is not a guerrilla war should not simply be dismissed. There would appear to be two possible explanations for his statement.
The first is that Rumsfeld does not regard early-stage guerrilla war as a guerrilla war. In other words, he would regard Vietnam in 1964 as a guerrilla war, since it involved large-unit operations, but would not regard the Viet Cong's operations in 1961 and 1962 as a guerrilla war. We do not regard that as a defensible position, but it is a position.
The other explanation is that, if this is in fact a guerrilla war, there are two conclusions to be drawn. The first is that there was a serious intelligence failure concerning Iraqi war plans. If the plan was to disperse forces and move to small-unit guerrilla tactics -- and, given the rapidity of the evolution after the end of large-scale military operations, this has to be assumed -- U.S. officials did not know it. In many ways, that is a more serious intelligence failure than anything having to do with WMD. The second conclusion is that the U.S. military in Iraq does not have a clear strategy for coping with the guerrillas. If Rumsfeld can argue that they aren't guerrillas, but that these are criminal assailants or minor remnants of a fallen regime, then the lack of a strategy isn't a problem. You don't need a military strategy to cope with breakdowns in the social system -- they will go away on their own.
We do not think that we are engaged here in a thoughtful discussion of the stages of guerrilla warfare. Therefore, it seems to us that Rumsfeld is engaged in the second line of reasoning. Rumsfeld and U.S. intelligence did not expect to be facing a guerrilla war following the fall of Baghdad, and there are no coherent plans in place for fighting one. Therefore, there is no guerrilla war.
The most important question is not whether he convinces the public of this argument, but whether Rumsfeld is himself convinced. The former is a tactic in a public relations war that we would view as potentially unwise, but it certainly is not something leaders who are having problems haven't used effectively until they figured out what to do. However, if Rumsfeld actually believes what he is saying, that means that he really doesn't feel there is any urgent need to craft a military strategy against a nonexistent guerrilla war. It is ultimately a law enforcement issue, and not one for CENTCOM to plan out.
In other words, if Rumsfeld genuinely believes that there is no guerrilla war under way, we should not expect any U.S. military response; there is nothing to which to respond. In that case, since we very much believe that there is a guerrilla war under way, the Iraqi guerrillas have a massive advantage: There will not be a U.S. military campaign to suppress them. We strongly suspect that there will be multiple campaigns, because we doubt Rumsfeld believes for a moment that there is no guerrilla war in Iraq. We suspect that he is buying time while he works out Plan B. But we may be wrong. Rumsfeld may actually believe what he is saying. That would make for an interesting summer. |
