Mon 18 Dec 2006
It’s been a long time since I last shared my thoughts on this here humble weblog. And I know what you’ve all been thinking: what does the venerable Worse Than Hitler weblog think about Iraq? Well fret no longer, because that’s the topic of the day!
There has been much ballyhoo about the troop levels in Iraq. Two of the most common trains of thought are either “we should increase troop levels to increase stability” or “we should decrease troop levels as they are a destabilizing force”. Both of these positions ignore the reality of the effect that the presence of US troops have in the region.
The enemy that the US faces right now is one that uses “terrorist” tactics. That is to say they use suicide bombs, hit-n-run, attacking civilians and anyplace vulnerable no matter how incidental they are to the actual target. These are the tactics of an enemy who has very little strength or real power, it is a misnomer to conflate this type of activity with a full out civil war.
It seems to me that the reason these people are acting out of a position of weakness is because of the presence of the US troops. A traditional civil war could not happen right now as it would be crushed in infancy by the obviously more powerful US forces. So instead they lay back and snipe at each other and retreat into the darkness, creating martyrs to repay the actions in kind on another day.
Increasing the troop levels does nothing to address this fundamental nature of the existing conflict. Throwing more people at the existing problem just means that the murderers on either side will resort to killing more and more incidental targets. They really don’t seem to care, hitting mosques and bus stops and red crescent agencies. It would be impossible to actually affect serious change with more troops unless they install the same sort of authoritarian police state that they are nominally trying to replace in Iraq.
So it seems to me that the existing troops are probably preventing a massively destructive full out civil war, but that they are unable to realistically curb the sort of violence that occurs on a daily basis in Iraq. Would a short but devastating conflict be any better than the long protracted period of smaller scale random violence the current strategy is provoking?
I’m glad I don’t have to actually be the one to decide how to fix this, and can just smugly sit back and say “I told you so” to the morons who thought going into Iraq was a good idea to start with. Though, it’s not really all that much comfort.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:07am
Traditionally, those tactics were referred to as “guerrilla” warfare. However, “terrorism” makes for much better propaganda.
I think a quick civil war would be better in the long run than a neverending guerrilla war, however, you’d likely end up with at least 2, possibly 3 theocracies. The best option is to tell Turkey to go fuck itself, and set up three autonomous countries, with American troops in each of them. Especially Kurdistan, as Turkey is pretty likely to be peeved when it’s Kurdish region decides to go play with Iraq’s Kurdish region.
Dangling EU membership at Turkey might help things, but the EU doesn’t have any more reason than you do not to just sit back and say “I told you so”.
And that’s without going into Iranian influence…
December 18th, 2006 at 3:57pm
ShadowNode: unfortunately the simple answers are too simple to work now. The short answer to your suggested partition is that Baghdad is a diverse city which is too valuable for either side to peaceably give up. If they are to divide the country, a civil war is probably required to establish boundaries each side would suspect.
Also, I distinguish guerrilla warfare from “terrorist” tactics by the latter’s use of suicide and completely indiscriminate murdering. If they were solely targeting military targets I think it would be perfectly fair to label them as guerrillas, but they aren’t. Not even close.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:39am
I agree that “civil war” is an unreasonable description, and I got three quarters of a way through a rant on the question before giving up. I would describe it as a breakdown of civil order, instead.
That said: nobody knows how to win a war against insurgents who engage in these kinds of tactics. As far as I can tell, it’s never been done; the most anyone has managed is to hold the tide for a decade or three. Once in a rare while someone gets lucky and the insurgents get exhausted, but it’s not common.
Iraq is fucked, and it’s too late to repair it. At this point i’m just hoping the whole western world isn’t fucked as well.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:40am
Tix, ISTM that the ‘terrorist’ vs. ‘guerrilla’ debate is a debate solely about whether or not the tactics are considered legitimate — ‘terrorist’ implies a moral disapproval not found in ‘guerrilla’.
But the debate is utterly meaningless in terms of helping discover what can be done about the situation … and may actually be harmful, if our moral outrage makes it harder to see a clear picture.