Some insurgencies are very successful
Posted on 01/30/2007 9:11:56 AM PST by CDB
Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and Iraq should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Bush administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public’s patience finally wears out.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
this op ed is a good read
They won the war in the American media.
That is the real lesson of Vietnam, and it is a lesson the American people have failed to learn: the press is the enemy.
the press is not the Ameerican people's friend - it is America's sworn enemy.
In the end, many of people died to fuel the cause of the communists. Will that happen in Iraq, or the middle east? The answer is unknown at this point, but the left loves communist, hell they love themselves, they leave lip smears on their mirrors at home, and in the workplace.
Insurgencies often just screw things up for everyone, forever evidently. Look at Colombia. A beautiful country with immense natural resources..150 years+ of insurgencies.
Yep. The democrats ran on nothing in Nov. The liberal press kept up a constant drumbeat of war 24/7. The press won the election for them.
Did you notice the news an hour after the democrats took the house and senate? You'd never even know there was a war. Roses were popping up around the world. Birds were singing. Children were laughing.
He who controls communication controls the word. Reality can be created.
He who controls the worlds most powerful military can put enough of a hurting on the insurgents to make them question whether they want to wait two more years for a political victory.
He who controls the worlds most powerful military can put enough of a hurting on the insurgents to make them question whether they want to wait two more years for a political victory.
It's a double war. Bush is fighting on two fronts.
God speed, Mr.President.
In theory, the headline is true. In actual practice, the leftists will (and do) work too hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, thereby belying the premise in the headline.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to America, 1969! Everything old is new again. The Democrats are successfully resurrecting their "glorious" yesteryear. IOW, they are back in their comfort zone, the past.
The op-ed is a good read, yes, but I'm afraid the gentleman paints entirely too rosey a picture.
The insurgencies which fail, which he claims are more numerous, are against entrenched (not just "stable") native power structures.
As far as my memory serves, the _only_ time a foreign power has been able to put down a local insurgency since WWII was the British during the Malayan Emergency. As the author points out, the key to achieving that was cutting off the rebels' supply lines. Also key (but unmentioned) was their success in cutting off and alienating local support for the guerrillas.
It's an open question whether it is feasible to cut off the Iraqi insurgents' supplies when they're sitting smack dab in the middle of the oldest smuggling route known to man in a neighborhood filled with our enemies. My gut feeling is it's dubious, at best.
On the more important (and unaddressed in this article) question of alienating the insurgents from local support, it does not look good. Every poll seems to indicate that a large number, in some cases a majority, of Iraqis believe attacks on the "occupiers" (that would be us) are entirely justified.
Amen to that.
you forget the phillipine insurgency shortly after wwII...good article about it in this month's Military History magazine
> you forget the phillipine insurgency shortly after
> wwII...good article about it in this month's Military
> History magazine
I'll look it up. Thanks for the tip.
> you forget the phillipine insurgency shortly after
> wwII...good article about it in this month's Military
> History magazine
I'm guessing the article was based in part on this book:
http://www.army.mil/cmh/books/coldwar/huk/huk-fm.htm
I point out this passage in the conclusion, which reinforces my earlier point:
"American advisors were prohibited from taking the field with their Filipino counterparts until the latter stages of the insurgency. This was perhaps one of our greatest contributions to the Philippines during this period. Without foreign troops to assist them, the Philippine military was forced to develop on its own, under its own leaders, and fight to protect its own land and people. Once the Army became convinced that they were fighting to protect their countrymen, and not as an occupation force trying to subdue an unruly foreign population, they began to receive the people's support. As already described, the alliance of the military with the villagers, and in turn the villagers reliance on the government, spelled the end for the Huk movement."
The key, besides cutting off rebel supplies, is removing their popular support. A foreign army can't do the heavy lifting for the locals. Either the locals win (at least apparently) on their own steam, or the effort is doomed.
Yes, that is the major similarity with Vietnam today -- the enemy within. My favorite article on this topic really hits home after this weekend's protests (excerpt):
An Open Letter to the "Anti-War" Demonstrators: Think Twice Before You Bring The War Home By David Horowitz September 27, 2001
I am a former antiwar activist who helped to organize the first campus demonstration against the war in Vietnam at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. I appeal to all those young people who participated in "antiwar" demonstrations on 150 college campuses this week, to think again and not to join an "antiwar" effort against America’s coming battle with international terrorism.
The hindsight of history has shown that our efforts in the 1960s to end the war in Vietnam had two practical effects. The first was to prolong the war itself. Every testimony by North Vietnamese generals in the postwar years has affirmed that they knew they could not defeat the United States on the battlefield, and that they counted on the division of our people at home to win the war for them.
The Vietcong forces we were fighting in South Vietnam were destroyed in 1968. In other words, most of the war and most of the casualties in the war occurred because the dictatorship of North Vietnam counted on the fact Americans would give up the battle rather than pay the price necessary to win it. This is what happened. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and tens of thousands of Americans, is on the hands of the antiwar activists who prolonged the struggle and gave victory to the Communists....
...If I have one regret from my radical years, it is that this country was too tolerant towards the treason of its enemies within. If patriotic Americans had been more vigilant in the defense of their country, if they had called things by their right names, if they had confronted us with the seriousness of our attacks, they might have caught the attention of those of us who were wellmeaning but utterly misguided. And they might have stopped us in our tracks.
This appeal is for those of you who are out there today attacking your country, full of your own selfrighteousness, but who one day might also live to regret what you have done.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1249
Should be required reading. I have been to a few protests in my area and there are always more of them than us. I hope more of us will heed Horowitz's words and get involved.
Some insurgencies are very successful
The President has many powerful tools in the propaganda war, but unless he is willing to use them they are worthless. Too many times he has tried to move the discussion on to something else when he should have been countering the steady stream of defeatist propaganda meant to scuttle the war effort. According to these estimates, we need to remain in Iraq until 2011-2014 in order to win. The President should have made the effort to prepare the people for a long hard slog. Instead he seriously misjudged the public mood, now his job is considerably harder.
The majority of the fighting against British forces in the Revolution was by organized US Regular Armies fighting in the same style as their enemies...
And the critical battle that ended the fighting relied on the French Navy...
So it wasn't really your classic insurgent victory.
Here are two letters to the editor I sent on the subject last week. Have not seen them in any papers I sent to yet.
Supporting Iraqi’s committed to national leadership requires recognizing al Qaeda terrorists and Ba’athist remnants cannot win, but Coalition partners and Iraq can loose. Rival death squads attack only unarmed civilians. Al-Sadr’s militia crumples in military operations. Al-Muhajir, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, boasts 22,000 followers, but conducts only terrorist operations, and those within limited areas. Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap would reject such pathetic allies, when compared to the VC main force units, which ARVN forces still obliterated in the militarily ill-timed Tet offensive. Loss for Iraq and the Coalition occurs through inconsistent application of classic counter-insurgency measures.
The President describing future actions referred to accrediting people and tactics for that winning strategy. Providing security precedes hearts and minds initiatives, because without that priority people align themselves to whichever violent faction accepts them each day. Selected areas are saturated with Coalition forces, and Iraqi forces imbedded with Coalition advisors. Once neighborhoods are cleared of terrorists and insurgents, military units remain, political/sectarian influence is not tolerated, and police, civil units and sheiks assume authority as they demonstrate commitment to national objectives.
Prime Minister Maliki may now understand viable national government requires harsh emergency rules impartially, and transparently administered. Informal alliances with parties such al-Sadr applies to traditional authoritarian oriental rule, and not representative government.
People will choose national identity and representative government, if national institutions provide security and then contribute to economic well-being. Resolving this situation requires application of will, not extraordinary intellect.
Each day Iraqis in al Anbar province and Baghdad choose whether a militia, death squad, terrorist cell or national government can protect them. How ironic their life and death choices depend upon whether people safe at home, half a world away, abide mental distractions and discomforts.
However, a Newsweek poll indicates two thirds of those existing in this country seem too fragile to undergo such stresses. Supposedly the country is headed in the wrong direction when job growth covers over 95% of those wanting employment, inflation is controlled at 20 year lows, the stock market surmounts all time highs fueling 401k’s, home ownership reaches all time highs and oil prices keep falling. Somehow malaise overcomes people, while they absent-mindedly feed garbage disposals sufficient food to enrich Darfur. As people exercise their 911 divine right to summon public safety professionals, they regularly castigate Presidential efforts to bring a fraction of that security to Iraqi citizens.
Media images provide these people more action in a week, than a Marine sees in a deployment. People then legitimize decisions with brain stem reactions to visuals, without evaluation that 3,000 dead is less than half the Union army experienced in 15 minutes at Cold Harbor during the previous war for our country’s survival.
Zawahiri and bin Laden assert victory for Wahabbi/Salafi jihadism first demands conquering Iraq to establish Baghdad “The Capital of the Caliphate”, and to access infrastructure enabling sophisticated terrorist attacks against the U.S. Iraqi security through national government thwarts primary terrorist objectives.
The Mahdi army and others including al Qaeda is working against the new Govt. whnich has no style, yet
And the critical battle that ended the fighting relied on the French Navy... Iran will have to try harder after we are are gone.
So it wasn't really your classic insurgent victory.
We won't know the winner for another 5- 10 years in Iraq.
If we leave honorably with a Govt in place, the Muslims will have time to establish an Islamic country via assassination or by voting it in like they did in Iran.
Maliki is a member of the DAWA party whose purpose is to have an Islamic Government for Iraq.
When Sistani dies, Sadr will be the top Mullah in Iraq if it goes the way I expect it will. - tom
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.