RSS« On Martial Law, Allaouie and Iraq | Lovely and Rambling a bit about current MENA policy and Iraq »
July 16, 2004
Airstrikes and Insurgency
The uselessness of airstrikes as a counter insurgency method
I remain stunned that the American military seems so entirely incapable of learning a simple lesson – airstrikes against urban targets in the context of an occupation and counter-insurgency are counter productive. I am sure it makes sense in a very limited sense in the context of ‘force protection’ and minimizing direct American casualties, however this limited sense is rather like the corporate finance head who makes every effort to meet the quarterly ‘guidance’ from analysts, at the expense of the long term goals and health of the company.
First, the appearances are at once of callousness – air strikes against a house in an urban area, however precise, can never be without ‘collateral’ effects and the use of heavy bombs simply adds to the impression of disregard. Imagine ‘surgical’ strikes in one’s own neighborhood and one’s own reaction – regardless of the legitimacy or not of the strike, I would say anyone honest with themselves will admit their feelings would turn against the people behind the air strike.
Second, it adds to an appearance of fear. It says that the Americans are too fearful to engage, too fearful of casualties, and have to use their air power rather than close engagements. It is, and I think there is an element of truth here, an expression of weakness in strength.
Third, the imagery is losing imagery. A house turned into a crater – this past evening on al-Arabiyah we were treated to the imagery of children’s clothing mixed in the crater that was the remainder of a house struck by US warplanes in Fallujah. These are images that lose you allies, increase your enemies. In the case of an insurgency, this is the way you lose the war, not win it.
Fourth, without close up engagement – and the fairly numerous errors in Afghanistan also illustrate this – one does not really know if one’s ‘intelligence’ is in any way correct. This is a serious problem, given the clearly piss-poor human intelligence the United States has on the ground – I would wager stemming as much from their complete inability to properly filter what intelligence they are generating as from a lack of proper sources – that is not knowing language or culture or indeed very much about Iraq period, the Americans are piss-poor judges of the information they are generating. Hitting the wrong house, hitting a house because someone wants to get back at a neighbor and perhaps as an added bonus give the Americans yet a worse name – these are all scenarios not just likely but to be considered as the likely default. Foreigners as suckers.
It strikes me that much of this, this idiotic blindness that I would say seems to have characterized American interventions from Vietnam through Somalia, stems from the blindness of self-righteousness and too much self-regard.
This is not to accuse the United States of any particular evil – as most know I rather do take it for granted that the United States is a fairly good actor on the international stage, imperfect and self interested of course but that is life – but rather of a particular blindness arising from a true yet exaggerated sense of being right, and a related incomprehension of other points of view (and perhaps the need to address those points of view even if perceived to be wrong).
Having, I may add stumbled upon Dickey’s related comments, let me illustrate here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5431857/site/newsweek
Dickey writes:
"A key to the problem was the U.S. effort in March and April 2003 to kill individual Iraqi leaders with precision munitions. The smart bombs were guided by dumb people, as it turned out, who dropped them on the basis of execrable intelligence. ... .... Human Rights Watch has since blamed the stupid use of smart bombs, as blunt instruments of assassination, for killing many of the innocent civilians who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It appears they killed few or none of the targets they were supposed to hit.
One incident was worse than the others, however, because it turned the course of the long-term war against us. On April 11, two days after American Marines pulled down the statue of Saddam in the middle of Baghdad, the United States tried to kill Saddam's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, by dropping six J-Dam guided bombs on a large villa about 11 miles outside of the city of Ramadi.
They didn't get Barzan, if he was ever there, but they did kill Malik Al-Kharbit, a tribal leader who had worked with the Americans and Jordanians since the mid-1990s to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In addition to Malik, another 21 members of his family died under those bombs, including a dozen children.
War is war, with all its collateral implications. But some actions in war are more foolish and self defeating than others. Members of the Kharbit clan are considered the leading figures in an extended tribe called the Dulaym, who number as many as two million. Their strongholds are in Fallujah, Ramadi, Ka'em, Rutbah—places now well known to the U.S. public as "The Sunni Triangle," where so many Americans have gone to die since that precision strike on the wrong target in April 2003.
How do you fix a screw-up like the killing of Malik Kharbit and his family? The Americans never did figure that out. In fact, they've made things worse. A few weeks ago, after Malik's brother Mudher refused once again to cooperate with the United States and rein in the insurgents, eight members of his family were thrown into Abu Ghraib prison, including one brother who'd lost all his children in the April 2003 bombing.
"We are looking to the future," Mudher told me when I saw him in Jordan over the weekend. He doesn't trust Allawi. But he doesn't want to fight the central government forever. He'd like to work with it, have his tribe have a place in it. If Allawi can find a way to accommodate the Kharbit clan, then once again he may be moving his country from war toward peace. An amnesty for those who've killed Americans is one way to start.
Of course, when you think of all the blood and money we've spent here, all this could seem pretty demoralizing. But given the mess we've made of this place, it's surprising how reassuring it is to see the Iraqis reverting to their old ways."
Emphasis added.
Well, I believe this is illustrative of my point, as well as the general point of incomprehension of how to work within the context of reality.
Posted by The Lounsbury at July 16, 2004 12:06 AM
Filed Under:
Jan-Jul 2004
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.aqoul.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/1080
