Seeker Blog

It may not have been obvious in 2003 but is completely obvious today. In brief:

• you cannot eliminate terrorists you can’t find

• you can’t find them unless the locals are willing to tell you where the terrorists are [and their bomb-making factories, etc.]

• the locals won’t tell you if the locals know the terrorists will kill them for cooperating

• therefore, you can’t find the terrorists unless the locals know you will protect them

Think about that the next time you hear soundbites from Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Reid, or Pelosi. Fred Kagan explains in more detail why the Petraeus strategy is working; why the “Clinton plan” is guaranteed to fail.

…The Sunni Arabs in Iraq lost their enthusiasm for al Qaeda very quickly after their initial embrace of the movement. By 2005, currents of resistance had begun to flow in Anbar, expanding in 2006. Al Qaeda responded to this rising resistance with unspeakable brutality–beheading young children, executing Sunni leaders and preventing their bodies from being buried within the time required by Muslim law, torturing resisters by gouging out their eyes, electrocuting them, crushing their heads in vices, and so on. This brutality naturally inflamed the desire to resist in the Sunni Arab community–but actual resistance in 2006 remained fitful and ineffective. There was no power in Anbar or anywhere that could protect the resisters against al Qaeda retribution, and so al Qaeda continued to maintain its position by force among a population that had initially welcomed it willingly.

The proof? In all of 2006, there were only 1,000 volunteers to join the Iraqi Security Forces in Anbar, despite rising resentment against al Qaeda. Voluntarism was kept down by al Qaeda attacks against ISF recruiting stations and targeted attacks on the families of volunteers. Although tribal leaders had begun to turn against the terrorists, American forces remained under siege in the provincial capital of Ramadi–they ultimately had to level all of the buildings around their headquarters to secure it from constant attack. An initial clearing operation conducted by Col. Sean MacFarland established forward positions in Ramadi with tremendous difficulty and at great cost, but the city was not cleared; attacks on American forces remained extremely high; and the terrorist safe-havens in the province were largely intact.

More: Kagan discusses these concepts in the Heritage Foundation podcast from the September 13 seminar “Reporting on the Report: Assessing Progress in Iraq“.

More: Charlie Quidnunc reviews Hillary Clinton’s talk show marathon and contrasts with a clip from Fred Kagan’s talk at Heritage in this podcast “Mission Descisions - Why don’t we just fight the Terrorists in Iraq?”. Notice how Clinton keeps repeating the contrary-to-fact that the Bush strategy is purely military. I would like to see an objective poll to assess how many voters really believe such rubbish.

For some in-depth analysis that is both informed and non-partisan, see Dave Kilcullen’s Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt. “Purely military strategy” indeed! See also Kilcullen’s “Understanding Current Operations in Iraq” in Small Wars Journal [and associated commentary here]

The only way to explain why Democratic campaigners don’t “get it” is naked partisanship [translation: the desire for power].

UPDATE: Max Boot is succinct on this

Readers of contentions interested in learning more about current military operations in Iraq than what they get from the headlines (which invariably focus on casualties, not on why or how they were incurred) would be well advised to read two Internet postings. The first is a report by Kimberly Kagan, an independent military historian and analyst, on the website of her think tank, the Institute for the Study of War. The second is a blog post written by David Kilcullen, a former officer in the Australian army with a Ph.D. in anthropology who has been serving as General David Petraeus’s chief counterinsurgency adviser. Kilcullen’s item is especially interesting because for the past few months he has had an insider’s perspective on the operations conducted and planned by U.S. forces in Iraq; in fact, he has been helping to shape the very operations that he explains here.

I have little to add except to note the cognitive dissonance I feel reading Kilcullen’s report alongside the news media accounts. The former conveys a sense of purpose and planning behind current operations, while the latter present the news from Iraq as a senseless parade of mayhem. The reality, of course, lies somewhere in between—there is only so much that even the most astute military commanders can control in the heat of battle, and much of what happens is outside their design. But it is important to realize that what we’re seeing in Iraq is not just random, meaningless violence. Both sides—coalition and Iraqi forces, as well as the Sunni and Shiite extremists—put a lot of thought into what they do. This is a war, even if a very decentralized one, and needs to be understood as such. Kilcullen’s post furthers that crucial understanding.