Lounsbury: Cole II: an important comment

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April 13, 2004

Cole II: an important comment

Now, despite my issues with Cole getting overtaken in his analyses and rhetoric by anti-Americanism, he continues to provide valuable analysis, of which the following is most important:
The problem with this approach is that the Sadrists are a widespread social movement whose history goes back over a decade, and killing Muqtada will not end the movement. There are lots of potential successors to Muqtada. The chief characteristic of the Sadrists is their cheekiness. They were cheeky to Saddam, and they will be cheeky to Gen. Abizaid. They are desperately poor ghetto dwellers, they don't like The Man, and they think they have nothing to lose in taking Him on. If the US military thinks this is a military problem with a military solution, they are just clueless. Someone on a discussion list said that Iraq is not Vietnam because this time the generals are in charge, and they know what they are doing. The US officers in Iraq are bright, dedicated persons, but they don't know squat about Iraq (even Abizaid, a Lebanese Christian, is hardly an Iraq expert), and it also isn't at all clear that they are setting the agenda. Going after Muqtada, for instance, almost certainly was the idea of the civilian politicians in the CPA and the Department of Defense. Once the mission was defined, the military wants to carry it out militarily. If they go into Najaf, there will be hell to pay (see below). Emphasis added.
http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#108183514550199863

Now, to be fair, Cole is identifying, even in his more intemprate comments, some of the same issues I have seen - that is the definition of the policy problems and who is doing it, and their ignorance.

The issue, I think, at the core of this, is that the military solution is a non-solution, as in Algeria, etc. Certainly security has to obtain and certainly that will require the US military to kill people - bad or otherwise. However, the core question is the following: are the deaths, are the operations actually leading to a sustainable political route? If they are not - and when I say sustainable political route, I do not mean the transformative fantasies of the NeoCons, Islamophobes and the like, I mean something that will get Iraqis on board - then the violence is not only self-defeating, it is generating more of a problem day by day.

One of the worst issues here is that Americans do not seem to understand that by and large, their self-image is not shared by the Iraqis. One of the commentators in a prior post drew a comparision to the American Revolutionary War - I should quote it, actually. From pantom:
These hardy men of the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies, of deep religious convictions, were accustomed to the hardships and independence of a pioneer life, and in their mountain homes in the highlands and the backwaters they but seldom were concerned with affairs beyond their borders or interfered with by Crown or colony. When Ferguson approached their kingdom and threatened to invade their lands and lay waste their country with "fire and sword," and to "hang their leaders," he aroused their indignation and anger to such a degree that they determined to rid the country forever of this enemy, who menaced their independence and the safety of their homes and families. Had Cornwallis and his leaders known more about these mountain and backwater men, they would have carefully avoided all military and punitive measures which might tend to draw them from their mountain fastnesses to enroll amongst the enemies of the King.
The causes of the Revolution were but little known to many of these pioneers beyond the Blue Ridge. They were concerned in the establishment of their homes, breaking the soil of their new settlements, and wringing a livelihood from it; and with their rifles securing much of their sustenance. They sought the seclusion of the western waters; and in the valleys of the Holston, the Watauga, and the Nolichucky, found freedom in the exercise of their religion. Had the western covering force of Cornwallis's army, as it advanced into the Province of North Carolina, confined its activities, to the plains and lowlands east of the Blue Ridge, and had not Ferguson from Gilbert Town uttered his threat of fire and sword and the hangman's noose, these mountain men would probably have remained in their homes, and but few of them would have joined with those who were in rebellion against the King.

from http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/RevWar/KM-Cpns/AWC-KM1.htm

It is evocative, and again the "crush them" crowd presumes certian conditions obtain - that they are in the right, that they are perceived by the population to be in the right, and that one can "crush" the insurgency. Certainly one can at one level, but as recent reporting in The New York Times has noted, specialists do not think that this is anything more than a temporary thing - the insurgency will regenerate unless a legitmate (in Iraqi eyes) political and economic order responding to their desires is in place.

Of course, this presents some non-trivial difficulties given many desires are self-contradictory.

April 13, 2004

Cole II: an important comment

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