Breaking News: Guerilla Tactics Work

I agree with Brian Beutler. David Brooks' discussion of insurgent tactics in Iraq ends up in a very strange place:

If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one now is — trouble that this presidential campaign hasn’t even dealt with.

But, look, the Iraqi insurgency is hardly the first group to demonstrate that it's possible to force foreign occupying armies to withdraw from territory where they're not wanted even if the occupying army is, in some sense, militarily superior. This has been a well-known feature of the world for decades, if not centuries. Indeed, it's worth pointing out that advocates of invading Iraq used to be perfectly aware that we wouldn't be able to use military force to trump public opinion. Remember that "greeted as liberators" business? Remember when the administration was denying there even was an insurgency? That's said that stuff for a reason. The contention was that we wouldn't need to fight a counterinsurgency campaign, not that we were prepared to fight and win one.

Comments

anyone who wants to discuss "defeat" in iraq needs to define "victory" first.

Posted by howard | May 18, 2007 1:58 PM

Dear Criterion Films: Please halt all future shipments of your three-disc special edition of The Battle of Algiers with special insurgency tips pop-up menu!

Posted by norbizness | May 18, 2007 2:28 PM

The logical conclusion to Brooks' comment is that insurgents (ie, people who resist being invaded) are always "bad guys", and people who invade are always "good guys".

Somehow, I'll bet he was singing a different tune back in the 1980's.

Posted by Jim W | May 18, 2007 2:42 PM

So another David Brooks column filled with shallow, ahistorical analysis. It's a great gig if you can get it.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 18, 2007 2:44 PM

If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one

Or maybe the next president will avoid this trouble by neglecting to invade some other country for no good reason.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 18, 2007 2:47 PM

You'd think a country that was founded on a guerilla insurgency against a superior British force would have a better grasp of the efficacy of guerilla warfare.

Posted by Nathan B | May 18, 2007 2:48 PM

Jim W,

I think it's fair to say that Al Queda bombers who deliberately target hospitals, funeral processions, etc., and murder dozens of civilian men, women, and children at a time are bad guys.

This also raises an interesting question, ignored by both Brooks and Yglesias: If an unpopular occupying force is doomed, is the same true of an unpopular irregular force? I can't imagine that Al Queda in Iraq is terribly popular with Iraqis, considering how many Iraqis have been killed and maimed by them, but Al Queda is still going strong despite that unpopularity.

I think the situation in Iraq now is more complex than the usual historical examples trotted out as analogues. I also think it's possible (and likely) that if we were to withdraw, Al Queda in Iraq would be sustained by Sunni Arab countries as a weapon to continue to destabilize Shiite-majority Iraq.

Posted by Fred | May 18, 2007 2:50 PM

Centuries? Try millenia...

Posted by Doctor Memory | May 18, 2007 2:50 PM

As far as AQ in Iraq goes, once their goals diverge from the Sunnis, they will be gone from Iraq too.

Posted by American Citizen | May 18, 2007 2:58 PM

The goal of war supporters is to try and construct a plausible scenario where al-Qaeda in Iraq becomes, post-withdrawal, something comparable to the North Vietnamese army. This is a steep challenge, but they're trying.

I don't envision much tolerance for al-Qaeda if events play out this way, personally.

Posted by Steve | May 18, 2007 3:17 PM

Re: "I think it's fair to say that Al Queda bombers who deliberately target hospitals, funeral processions, etc., and murder dozens of civilian men, women, and children at a time are bad guys."

I agree.

I also think its fair to say that people from one country who invade another country for no good reason, causing the deaths of over half a million civilians, are bad guys. Do you agree with that?

Badness is not a mutually exclusive trait.

Posted by Jim W | May 18, 2007 3:25 PM

Brooks writes with his usual bluster as if he’s discovered, by way of Robb’s book, some new fundamental truth about guerrilla warfare, not yet recognized by people smarter than him, that’s going to somehow change the world as we know it.

But the core idea he’s relying on is by now almost a platitude among the smart people (students of the history and tactics of guerrilla war), which is that guerrilla networks/movements adapt their tactics to suit the circumstances of place and time in their particular struggles. What’s new in the current wave is the adept and skillful use of new technologies to serve as tactics in support of their goals. Robb’s book (which I haven’t read) evidently documents and argues the case for this new development.

Ironically, in seeking to promote this idea as some big new thing Brooks is simply pushing the inverse of the Rumsfeld doctrine, which was that the US military should be reoriented to rely heavily on the magic power of new technologies to defeat enemies in this new context.

The essential weakness of both sides of this argument is the failure to grasp the key role of human intelligence and will, as well as broader forces of culture and history, in the conduct of guerrilla warfare.

Posted by Jim Dandy | May 18, 2007 3:29 PM

gosh, if only David Brooks could read the work of that truly great, insightful editorial writer Ben Domenich.

Ben would have told him all about Red Dawn.

in which a group of insurgents beats a brutal occupying power. While Republican chickenhawks everywhere cheer, clap and wank.

Posted by wolv | May 18, 2007 3:31 PM

Perhaps this is an urban legend, but IIRC, didn't Ho Chi Minh, et al, study American Revolutionary war tactics to run their insurgency?

It's amazing how much so-called patriotic, serious Americans forget, um, about how this country came to be independent, ain't it? It supposedly happened in 'Nam ... and it's certainly happening now.

Maybe we've just forgotten the Poles (i.e. Kosciusco (sp?) and Pulaski)?

Posted by DAS | May 18, 2007 3:39 PM

I agree with you, Jim W. Deposing a genocidal dictator and allowing Iraqis to elect their own government is morally equivalent to suicide bombing funeral processions.

Posted by Fred | May 18, 2007 3:39 PM

You'd think a country that was founded on a guerilla insurgency against a superior British force would have a better grasp of the efficacy of guerilla warfare.

Ha.

Posted by Eric Martin | May 18, 2007 3:49 PM

It's just 'stupid reasons why we can't withdraw', iteration N+1 (where N keeps getting larger.............).

Posted by Barry | May 18, 2007 3:53 PM

If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques.

I haven't read Brooks article, so his quote may be taken out of context.

However, the short answer to this sentence is that the bad guys have already been so impressed by the Iraqi insurgency that they are now studying and copying it anyway. See. e.g., how the Taliban now are adopting Iraqi insurgent tactics.

So Brooks' point is apparently moot.

Apparently Brooks has been influenced by John Robb. Goto Robb's blog GlobalGuerrillas
for his actual viewpoint.

In particular Robb expressly believes:

• That the bad guys are already actively learning from one another ( as I have stated )
  
• The window of opportunity for the United States safely to withdraw from Iraq passed a year or two ago. ( I forget Robb's precise postion. ) So we're toast anyway, according to Robb.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | May 18, 2007 3:54 PM

Fred:

During the run-up to the Iraq War, the same dishonest neocons who claimed that they knew Saddam had WMD also claimed he'd "genocidally" killed 300K Iraqis during his time in power.

Strangely enough, however, afterward none of those huge "mass graves" seem to have been found, any more than the WMD. Maybe Saddam hid them in the same place as the WMD. He was finally executed for killing a few dozen people in some village somewhere, which I do believe actually happened.

But let's assume he really did kill 300K people, just as those liars claim. He was in power for 30 years, which comes to 10K killings per year.

As of a year ago, reputable international organizations using "best practices" had estimated that we'd caused the deaths of around 650K innocent Iraqis in just three years, and given the accelerated recent violence, I'd expect the total is now around 1M or so.

So if Saddam was indeed "genocidal" what does that make your friends in the Bush Administration, given that their induced death-toll is around 20 times greater?

Posted by RKU | May 18, 2007 3:57 PM

First off, I find David Brooks association of "open source" with the Iraqi "insurgents" offensive and a blatent attempt to slur the open source movement. (Recently Microsoft has made a Machivellian move against that altruistic movement. perhaps you heard?)

Second, Che Guevara said that one shouldn't go the armed insurgency route when the ballot box and "politics" are still a viable option, which they are (or were for a while) in Iraq.

As students of the American Revolution will know, the U.S. would still be a part of the British Commonwealth if it were not for the financial support of the U.K.'s enemies at the time, France and Spain.

Likewise, the Syrians, Saudis, and Iranians are all funding their respective "sides."

In fact, the Saudis recently threatened to go all in on the Sunni's side, if U.S. troops leave. That's why Cheney recently visited Saudi Arabia.

Recent news is that the U.S. will have high level diplomatic contacts with Iran.

Also good to see that France's new foreign minister will be Bernard Koucher, leftist founder of Doctors without Borders and supporter of the Iraq intervention.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-France-New-Government.html?hp

Posted by Peter K. | May 18, 2007 4:05 PM

Fred:

As a wise man (Jim Henley) said in a non-MY thread recently, there is absolutely no reason to take seriously the opinions of anyone who, over five years later, still somehow manages to think "Al Qaeda" is spelled with a "U". Like you, for instance.

Posted by BruceR | May 18, 2007 4:19 PM

Iraq is our focus now. But the problem is and will continue to be the improvement in guerilla and/or terrorist techniques.

And it is going to change life for for every government on Earth - Chinese or Brazilian, French or Greek, Theocratic, Secular, Tyranny, whatever.

Those who smugly think 'it won't happen here' are, as Marx would say 'only at a station where the train arrives later'.

It isn't going away. The means to destroy covertly now exceed the powers to prevent by any acceptable means. Whether that can be corrected at all, and what is best to try, is unknown.

I think the shift is fundamental and few now alive will see much less of this new warfare.

Posted by K | May 18, 2007 4:34 PM

K,

I've got to disagree. There is little new under the sun, and guerilla warfare and terrorism have been around forever -- anti-czarist anarchists blowing themselves up in Russia in the late 19th century, the Huks in the Phillipines in the early 20th century, Tamil suicide bombers, Chinese or Vietnamese communists for decades in the twentieth century, the list is endless. In fact, there is probably significantly less guerilla warfare ongoing now than there was in the 1970s. Nor do I think there is appreciably more terrorism than there was then -- see e.g. Red Brigades, Bader Meinhoff Gang, IRA, Weather Underground, ETA, etc.

You're looking at the world, like Mr. Brooks, through very ahistorical glasses.

As long as nuclear weapons are kept out of the hands of terrorist, I don't think we are looking at very different levels of destruction than has been the historical norm for a long, long time.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 18, 2007 5:33 PM

Meh, latter day terrorists.

In the old days, we were the best.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 18, 2007 6:13 PM

If the Spanish insurgents defeat Napoleon then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques . . .

(except, evidently, the bad guys in the Bush adminstration 2 centuries later)

Posted by rea | May 18, 2007 10:23 PM

Bruce R.:

"As a wise man (Jim Henley) said in a non-MY thread recently, there is absolutely no reason to take seriously the opinions of anyone who, over five years later, still somehow manages to think "Al Qaeda" is spelled with a "U". Like you, for instance."

If you want to be picayune about it, it's actually spelled like this: القاعدة

RKU:

"Strangely enough, however, afterward none of those huge "mass graves" seem to have been found..."

Really?

Posted by Fred | May 19, 2007 3:29 AM

The mass graves so far found in Iraq have been mainly of those who were massacred in the 1991 uprisings (which btw include some of Saddam's supporters as well as his opponents.)

The hypothesized mass graves containing the bulk of the 300K alleged Kurdish genocide victims have yet to be found. In A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power claimed these bodies had been transported out of Kurdistan and buried on the border with Saudi Arabia. The article Fred links says that 'Mass grave sites in Iraq have been located as far north as Mosul and as far south as Basra', which seems to confirm that no such graves have been found on the Saudi border.

Posted by David Tomlin | May 19, 2007 5:54 AM

"If an unpopular occupying force is doomed, is the same true of an unpopular irregular force?"

Unpopular occupying forces are NOT "doomed". It is merely possible for a militarily inferior but popular insurgency to beat one, by stubornly fighting until the nation they're fighting gets tired of the whole thing, and goes away. Success with this strategy is by no means assured.

The thing is, al Quada (I'll spell it however I want, since we're using the wrong alphabet anyway, and the "approved" spelling seems to change monthly.) is not really an insurgency, they're as much an outside force in Iraq as we are. The reason we're having trouble beating them is that we haven't secured Iraq's borders in order to cut off their line of supply. I would assume the reason we haven't done that is that we don't want to officially admit that we're actually at war with some of Iraq's neighbors, too.

Finally, I would not be so sure that we're an "unpopular" occupying force. Sure, there are polls, but people shade their responses to polls even in relatively safe countries like the US. In countries where you can't really be sure the 'polster' isn't part of the insurgency, and won't come back that night to make an example of you, polls measure what answers the population think are safe to give, not actual opinion.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 19, 2007 7:56 AM

If I had been in the room with Brooks at the time, I would have asked what lessons the "bad guys" learned from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

I mean, WTF is up with failure to learn anything from THAT, when you're talking about Al Qaeda???

Posted by tubino | May 19, 2007 8:11 AM

The thing is, al Quada (I'll spell it however I want, since we're using the wrong alphabet anyway, and the "approved" spelling seems to change monthly.) is not really an insurgency, they're as much an outside force in Iraq as we are.

Nonsense. The entity that calls itself 'Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers' is mostly Iraqi.

Posted by David Tomlin | May 19, 2007 8:43 AM

The thing is, al Quada is not really an insurgency, they're as much an outside force in Iraq as we are

Really? So why aren't the Iraqis making life as hellish for the al-Qaeda "outsiders" as they are for US forces?

Finally, I would not be so sure that we're an "unpopular" occupying force

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2007/05/16/6424

Note how many attacks there are on US troops relative to attacks on civilians". Popular?

Posted by BP | May 19, 2007 10:22 AM

TinyL: You almost hit upon why the problem is worse. But you didn't.

A terrorist before 1000 A.D. was very limited. With a sword or bow he was unlikely to kill very many people w/o taking damage. Similarly an entire band had some advantage over local defenders using pitchforks, but the advantage was limited.

And no morality prevented any tactic to locate and eradicate a Terrorist movement. (I really hate the Terrorist term but Guerilla doesn't quite fit, and Rebel misses even more, Insurrgents seems local. But a noun is needed, that is the way language works.)

Today, the tried, true, and brutal methods of ending Terrorism cannot be used. Those included collective punishment even to the extreme of genocide and unlimited policing even to the point of no civil rights whatever.

So while we may like our government more it has lost some very well tested methods of eliminating Terror.

Governments certainly have gained some advantages also. Their technical abilities are magnificient. Any point on Earth can be blasted to rubble within minutes. If only they knew which points would solve their problems.

The improvements in government abilities are currently more than offset by what is available to Terrorists. They no longer lack fast reliable communications, and with proper discipline those communications are secure. A backpack of modern explosives allows one person to kill hundreds and optimally thousands. If suicide is not required remotes allow safe and reliable detonation at any time.

In todays world ethnicity is expected and common - at least in the West - so Terrorists need not attract attention until they strike.

Gas and biological terrorism hasn't done much so far. There is utterly no reason to believe that must continue. And as you mention, nukes, are bad news. There will be a successful use of them. We just don't know when or where or by who - not exactly trival policing problems.

As I said, I think Terrorism will become more of a problem because of technical advances. You don't. And we can only speculate.

There have been many Terrorist movements. Most failed. The fundamentals were against them. I don't see it that way now.

Finally "You're looking at the world, like Mr. Brooks, through very ahistorical glasses." was an unnecessary personal remark. Nothing I wrote indicated I take a limited view of history.

Posted by K | May 19, 2007 4:44 PM

K,

Sorry -- that was a little bit of a cheap shot. What I was trying to say is that, to date at least, there is nothing to suggest that terrorism or guerilla war is more prevalent or lethal than it has been over the last 100 to 150 years. We just tend to have more visceral reations to that which occurs in our own time - understandably.

9/11 was an exceptionally dramatic event in terms of the pictures, the target, the means, etc. But the notion that it "changed the world" uttered so frequently during the days and weeks afterward is I think historically suspect. Although the US has been spared significant terrorist activity in recent decades, violent unrest was certainly not unknown here. Consider for instance the fact that 3 American Presidents were murdered within a 35 year period between 1865 and 1900. What would have been made of that in the era of televison.

My point is that historically people have shown a pretty impressive ability to kill one another notwithstanding more primitive technologies.

Posted by Klein's tiny left nut | May 19, 2007 5:49 PM

Re: Gas and biological terrorism hasn't done much so far. There is utterly no reason to believe that must continue.

Yes there. Gas and biologicals do not make good terror weapons. In fact, they don't make good weapons period. Poison gas was ineffective in WWI, an has rarely been used since for that reason. Pou8nd for pound, dollar for dollar good old fashioned explosives are more deadly (and easier to aim too). Besides which, explosives have the added benefit (from a terrorist and sometimes a military POV) of leaving behind lots of damaged or destroyed real estate. The image of the Twin Towers collapsing is the sort of thing that excites terrorsist and givesthem an icon of victory as a gas attack would not. As for biologicals, there is nolt one single instance in all of history of their being used to any great effect. The smallpox that doomed the Aztecs was an accident, not deliberate. Japanese biological use in WWII in China accomplished very little (but did infect Japan's own soliders). The tale that the Balck Death began when the Tartars catapulted bodies of plague dead in the Crimean city of Caffa is unlikley to be true: plague does not sporead that way (Caffa was probably infected the usual way, by the arrival of rodents with infected fleas). Besides which, biologicals also leave behind no ruined real estate. No, the big danger reamins the possibility that terrorists will get hold of an atomic bomb, something that would give them both a very high body count and lots of broken windows.

Re: Although the US has been spared significant terrorist activity in recent decades, violent unrest was certainly not unknown here.

In the Reconstruction and again during the early 20th century, our KKK was probably one of the world's most deadly terrorist organizations-- one then supported by a disturbingly large fraction of our citizens.

Posted by JonF | May 19, 2007 7:20 PM

"Really? So why aren't the Iraqis making life as hellish for the al-Qaeda "outsiders" as they are for US forces?"

Uniforms. We wear 'em, they don't. So the populace doesn't know who's a member of al Quada. Kinda hard to make life hellish for somebody when you don't know who they are.

"Note how many attacks there are on US troops relative to attacks on civilians". Popular?"

Well, we're not popular with the insurgency. But most Iraqis aren't in the insurgency, are they?

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 19, 2007 8:48 PM

I think there may be an opportunity for an ambitious Democratic Presidential candidate in Matt's realization that "Guerilla Tactics Work": he could announce that he was phasing out multi-million dollar tanks, Bradleys, etc., and replacing hundreds of thousands of U.S. Army soldiers and Marines with, say, 50,000 combat-hardened troops broken up into semi-autonomous cells and armed with AK-47s, IEDs, RPGs, and Toyota pick-up trucks. The Dem candidate could propose plowing the hundreds of billions of dollars of annual savings from this change into progressive priorities like free college for everyone, midnight basketball, etc.

Posted by Fred | May 20, 2007 1:55 AM

So the populace doesn't know who's a member of al Quada.

They're supposed to be "outsiders", according to you. You know, foreigners. That's your whole theory. Al Qaeda in Iraq is supposed to consist almost exclusively of foreigners, according to you. Think the Iraqis can't spot a foreigner?

Were you born without reasoning skills, or did you have to work hard to acquire that disability?

Well, we're not popular with the insurgency.

Polls show 80% of the Iraqis want the US out, and attacks on US forces dwarf thse against civilians. Listen, if a woman kicks you in the nuts and says "Get away from me you freak" do you automatically think "Heh, she wants me?".

Posted by BP | May 20, 2007 2:43 AM

"They're supposed to be "outsiders", according to you. You know, foreigners."

Who, unlike our troops, are of the same general ethnic group, tend to speak the same language, and are actually TRYING to blend in. If America got invaded by uniformed soldiers from China, and terrorists from Canada, do you think the latter might have an easier time blending into the populace?

If a woman walks out of a feminist convention wearing an "All men are rapists!" T shirt, and kicks me in the balls saying "Get away from me, you freak!", I'm not going to assume that all women hate me.

You, on the other hand, are assuming that an insurgency which conducts a not insigificant number of attacks against the general population, and which is at war with the popularly elected government, is representative of the population. How stupid is THAT, BP?

Understand the limits of polling: It doesn't work where people have to worry that giving the wrong answer will get them killed. Too bad, but that's the way it is. That poll might be right, (I doubt it, or they'd have a different elected government.) but if it is, it's purely by coincidence.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | May 20, 2007 7:22 AM

My definition of "bad guy" is an aggressor who starts an unprovoked war on trumped-up charges. A severe and costly defeat for the U.S. government is about the best thing that could happen to the real America--i.e., the host organism that the parasites in Wall Street and the National Security State feed off of. Those filth need to be afraid to start wars in the future, and the people of the world need to know how to beat the filth the next time they start one.

Posted by Kevin Carson | May 21, 2007 2:14 AM

I would invite all of you to read Brave New War.

It isn't a political book but rather a book that provides readers with tools/frameworks to understand how warfare is changing and what its impact will be on the modern world. As such, it's a reality based analysis that I think all of the readers in this discussion board will find very useful.

Also, Matthew, I would be happy to send you a copy.

Posted by John Robb | May 21, 2007 7:12 AM