’Hunkering Down’ in Iraq:An Analysis

1. guerrilla, (from "little-war": irregular, insurgent — (a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment)

"The pivot of war is nothing but name and righteousness. Secure a good name for yourself and give the enemy a bad name; proclaim your righteousness and reveal the unrighteousness of the enemy. Then your army can set forth with great momentum" - Tou Bi Fu Tan, A Scholar’s Dilettante Remarks on War

"The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him."

Sun Tzu and many other strategists have appreciated a facet of warfare that escapes many. This is that a conflict is won or lost in the hearts and minds of the opposing Generals. If we substitute "President" or "Population" for "General", this observation is even more pertinent. It is worth understanding that physical military force is only one of the means by which a nation’s heart and mind can be influenced. War can also be conducted on moral, political and diplomatic levels. On the battlefield a Soldier’s sanity, integrity and will to fight can prove to be more effective targets to attack than his physical body. Demoralization has probably won far more campaigns than attrition.

If the iron is blunt, and one does not whet the edge, he must put forth more strength; but wisdom helps one to succeed. - Ecclesiastes 10:10

This *temporary* change in strategy has been forced on CENTCOM from the WH to calm down the situation leading up to November. However, a total lost cause, this will further worsen morale, troops don’t enjoy being reactive, defensive sitting ducks ... the experienced Counter-Insurgency (CI) officers and agency operatives will be bouncing off the walls going ballistic at the inevitable consequences, we just *lost*.

To win in CI ops you must meet the following minimum conditions:

1. Outnumber the insurgents with boots on the ground, i.e. Combat Infantryman (not AFVs, not airpower, not artillery) by a minimum ratio of 10:1

2. Have the overral committed, not neutral, support of the overwhelming majority of the populace.

3. Agrressively sieze and maintain the strategic and operational initiative in the political, economic and military spheres.

4. As a result of 3 (above) conduct aggressive, sustained detailed boots on the ground patrols that literally interwine into every aspect of daily life of the populace to deny the insurgents the opportunity to form-up, meet, train, equip, resupply, rest and ambush the ambush/bombing attempters.

5. Obtain/maintain an evolving complete picture of the insurgency through effective HumInt to destroy every single element of the isolated (from popular national support) insurgency structure, man by man, cell by cell, cache by cache.

6. Prevent, block, undermine all external political, economic and military support by whatever means necessary.

7. Create effective, committed, high morale/esprit de corp, natively led and officered, national indigenous military and paramilitary forces to remove the political millstone of the conduct of operations by the foriegn forces (non-indigenous)

So how do we stand ? :

1. We have 146,000 (us & uk) boots. therefore we could handle up to 14,600 insurgents. I estimate the total insurgents number up to 37,000 (full-time, part-time, casual and opportunistic) and steadily rising. Hence we’re 240,000 boots short, so far. South Vietnam had a cadre of 250,000 with 50,000 active at any one time.

2. Excluding the Kurds, polls indicate between 90-93% of Iraqi’s are opposed to the occupation. Not bad, we have the level of support that we should attribute to the insurgents :(.

3. By withdrawing to enclaves and cantonments, adopting a defensive/protective stance we surrender entirely the initiative.

4. Yeah, well, enough said. Any movement out of the current enclaves results in multiple hasty ambushes and attacks of opportunity by the insurgents. We hunker down, they’ll become emboldened, more deliberate and come for us. They will sense our weakness, our fear, our strategic impotence.

5. We don’t have a clue, shyte our Intel can’t even effectively manipulate the factions within our puppet appointed former IGC re the handover to the Interim Gov. On the ground we are deaf, blind and dumb. We are reliant on Iraqi Translators and informants who are in many cases working for the insurgency and playing a double game of dis and mis information, collecting detailed Intel on us and our Ops and inciting resistance by manipulating us into ill-advised Ops. We don’t have sufficient expertise re language/culture/religion.

6. We have insufficient political and economic influence to have an affect. What little we did have evaporated in the region with Abu Ghraib.

7. We try to train subserviant Iraqi forces to act as cannon-fodder as part of our concept of force ptrotection, and the Iraqi’s know it. The Iraqi’s will not fight other Iraqi’s on behalf without first meeting para 2 above. There is no shortage of examples re the ICDC and Iraqi police, i.e. Najaf only 100 classed loyal out of 4,000 police ?
The ICDC, Police and new improved Mukhabarat are heavily infiltrated by insurgents and will continue to be carefully and agressively targettted so by the insurgents.

It is documented that 25% of the Sth Vietnamese ARVN combat infantryman were embedded, dedictated communists, many of the senior ARVN General staff officers were embedded communists.

The Arabs are NOT ’ragheads’ or ’sand niggers’.The insurgency as a whole lacks no shortage of experienced, trained and veteran special forces, regular military, paramilitaries, Intelligence and mujahedeen to provide guidance, leadership and training from Iraq, the region and locales such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc. All they require is sufficient time, critical impetus, to create an effective covert umbrella body to loosely unite/organise the significant supply of willing insurgents. The issue of being cheated/decieved re 30th June may be a sufficient trigger...

Once they do, we’ll move into phase 2 and at that point we reach Vietnam ’65 equivalence, and for all intents and purposes the insurgents win ... only a matter of time once that occurs ...