What is it going to take to wake people up to the fact that Counter Insurgency is not total war. Some people here are convinced that the "Solution" to Iraq is to fight it like World War 2. That is stupid. Total War and Counter Insurgency are two completely different types of missions.
In Total war you fight to destroy or subdue the enemy's political culture. You have fixed geographic targets to take or destroy to eliminate the enemies ability to combat you.
You have no such targets in Counter Insurgency. Your enemy is not that organized. He is able to operate from hidden bases on limited, and covert, means of supply. You have to eliminate his political support. That means while defeating HIS political structure, you have to create your own counter political structure.
Trying to fight Counter Insurgency as Conventional War gets you the Russians in Afghanistan, the US in Vietnam, the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War or the Nazis in Eastern Europe. It doesn't work.
The US is winning the Iraqi war handily. The Terrorists and the Saddamites have not been able to move beyond state one of Guerrilla war. Basically Iraq is large scale gang violence. They can murder and wreck things, they cannot evolve. The problem is this American fetish for quick, easy answers. We want every thing done 5 mins ago. We continually fall of con men and charlatans that promise us easy, quick solutions to complex problems. There are not any easy answers in the War on Terrorists
Nothing that lasts long, or is worth doing, in life is either quick nor easy. Iraq is no different. Winning in Iraq requires patient, intellectual and emotional discipline and focus. All things sadly missing from Modern American Political discourse. The best evidence to prove this point is the Clinton years. They continually reached for the easy out, the quick, painless answer. The result? Almost everything that may have been a positive of the Clinton presidency has collapsed. Anything they tried to do has either fallen apart or is in the process of collapsing. The ONLY thing durable from the Clinton years are their errors. Somalia, Bosnia, Hati, Contempt for the Rule of Law, etc etc etc
What is it going to take to wake people up to the fact that Counter Insurgency is not total war. Some people here are convinced that the "Solution" to Iraq is to fight it like World War 2. That is stupid. Total War and Counter Insurgency are two completely different types of missions...........