Three years ago, (then) Major General McChrystal and POTUS declared major combat operations in Iraq had ended. A major insurgency accompanied by Subversion and Guerrilla Warfare promptly followed that announcement.
Three weeks ago Lt General McChrystal declared Al Qaeda in Iraq was all but eliminated. Yesterday 10 significant civilian leaders were kidnapped and/or murdered, a police Chief is MIA, 28 Police recruits were assassinated, and 8 civilians were killed by a suicide bomber. All of this occurred in or close to Baghdad. We know these things because western reporters are Baghdad based. Surely, we would be naive to think that is all of the action. What we cannot see from our living rooms is the activity in the hinterlands.
The primary strategies and tactics of AQI are based in Subversion and Guerrilla Warfare. In a truly successful effort, the source of the Subversion should be invisible to the Subverted. That is accomplished by using local surrogates to conduct the combat operations.
The initial AQ combat Ops were lead by foreigners. While leading the fight, those same foreigners initiated the Guerrilla Warfare. We are told that using foreigners is no longer acceptable to Iraqis. We should know that much of the Guerrilla action is now being perpetrated by Iraqis.
Guerrilla Warfare includes recruiting, equipping, arming and training fighters recruited from local populations to conduct military operations against the established government. It seems the guerrillas, recruited from local populations, are now leading and conducting the Subversion and Guerrilla Warfare against their government. Obviously these Iraqi perps accept the tactic.
The key question is, have these local guerrillas become surrogates for and enabled AQ's Subversion strategy to become invisible to the subverted?
Our US Army Special Forces Operators, the world's foremost experts in COIN, first learned the skill-sets of Subversion and Guerrilla Warfare. They know that if foreign based AQ is now capable of remaining out of sight while conducting effective Subversion and Guerrilla Warfare by, with, and through local surrogates, it marks a state of increasing strength not weakness.
Today the conventional side of our Armed Forces is scrambling to learn Counter-Insurgency (COIN). Unfortunately, they never learned Insurgent and Guerrilla based Warfare. That significant shortfall shows up when we see and read their evaluations of the current weak status of our enemies followed by reports of strong and deadly Guerrilla Warfare Operations and Subversive activity.
Al Qaeda is not a single and united movement closely controlled by a typical pyramidal leadership structure. AQ resembles a franchise and is even more like a Starfish. Cut off a Starfish's leg and it grows back. When chopped into pieces, some species of Starfish can replicate themselves numerous times. AQ is a variant of flat leaderless organizations that are becoming world class powerhouses.
AQ provides training and ideological motivation to alienated Muslims from around the world. They then return to their own countries to start their own terror cells. At this point AQ becomes more like a powerful, flat, leaderless organization, not unlike Alcoholics Anonymous or the Internet. We could easily eliminate a few thousand AA meeting groups in the US, or a similar number of Internet servers in Japan, with no significant impact on the world-wide organizations. So it is with Al Qaeda in Iraq. And like the Starfish, AA, and the Internet, AQ has no head or central nervous system that can be severed to kill the entire organism.
And just as AA and the Internet would either replace the missing elements (cells) in the same locales or increase strength elsewhere, so is it possible for AQ and its other movements to regroup and recover. While we watch attempts to dismantle AQ in Iraq today, new cells are forming in Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, in numerous African countries, and, according to many reports, in Western Europe and the United States.
The most difficult part of our current dilemma for most Americans to understand is that, with our current strategy, this war will not end if we leave Iraq and it won't conclude if we stay.
The question we all need to ask is:
Is our inability to find a timely solution to this war based more on the worthiness and superiority of our opponents ideology, strategy and tactics; or more on our own leaders lack of a vision for victory?
If it is the former, we are truly in danger of losing our freedoms. If it is the latter, we can fix it fairly quickly.
A little self-analysis is appropriate here. Our military and civilian governments are saturated with tired old leaders with tired old ideas. Too many of them are more concerned with preserving their own legacy or maximizing their retirement stipend than preserving American ideals and winning the war. Fortunately, our American military and government institutions are also saturated with fine young leaders. We have sufficient, well-educated, highly motivated, and strong young leaders, but they are suppressed within our bureaucracies.
Americans love to stand with and support winners. We can re-motivate America, if we can show them a clear path to victory including the preservation and expansion of liberty.
I would fire every American leader who continually predicts this has to be a multi-generational, many decades-long conflict and war. That mentality is providing an excuse for failure yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And it feeds the "exhaustion of war" syndrome that led us to abandon Vietnam and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Likewise, the "exhaustion of war" syndrome is tiring many good and patriotic Americans today.
Yesterday, the Boston Red Sox became National Champions by winning one small victory at a time. All significant human success is built from many small victories. We must find leaders capable of envisioning victory at their level to lead us to successful conclusions of the tasks at hand. We must clean our ranks of leaders who insist that success and victory lie decades in the future.
World peace and freedom from oppression are still worthy goals. America needs new ideas and solutions on how to get there; and fresh, young, hard-charging leaders to be brought along and promoted quickly to provide the new solutions, the small wins, and to lead us in the pursuit of those goals.
Each of us is about to have an opportunity to participate in the "new" solution process. Protests seldom create more than noise. We can do better than that and begin to effect the real change we want by voting carefully and appropriately on November 6th.
Change is the basic element of progress. We must embrace change. If we do otherwise and continue to use all the same old leaders, we should continue to expect all the same old results.
Following the local elections, each of us must, for the next year, become a willing activist and participant in national politics and national defense. We can no longer tolerate fence-sitters and do-nothings.
Edward Hale said, "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something."
Ayn Rand asked, "What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion."
If we are not willing to take voluntary action to preserve our freedoms and the American way of life - who will?
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