By The Book

Here's a passage from the Army's field manual on counterinsurgency:

Of the preceding characteristics, knowledge of objectives, motivations, and means of generating popular support/tolerance will often be the most important intelligence requirements and the most difficult to ascertain. In particular, generating popular support/tolerance often has the greatest impact on the insurgency’s long-term effectiveness. This is usually the center of gravity of an insurgency.

Center of gravity, it should be said, has a technical meaning in military circles derived from Clausewitz. The enemy's center of gravity is the thing you need to change to win the war. If the support of the population is an insurgency's center of gravity, then they key metric by which you want to measure a counterinsurgent's success is the counterinsurgent's impact on the attitude of the local population.

Here's Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack trying to clarify exactly what they did on their July trip to Iraq: "Although we were able to meet with several dozen Iraqi civilians—from people on the streets to local shaykhs—because we were nearly always in the presence of American military personnel, we felt we had little ability to gauge the mood of the Iraqi people."

Comments

So why didn't they correct all the talking heads recently? They are just covering their ass because they've been exposed. They probably knew the truth, but the truth would get them in trouble with all their pals in DC, and they still want to be invited to all the cocktail parties.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | August 24, 2007 9:28 AM

Speaking of the center of gravity, I think it bears restating again and again that Iraq is simply the wrong stinkin' country. I mean, at least in Vietnam, they actually had Commies when we got there. We went into Iraq chasing after a mirage.

No, the "center of gravity" for the War on Terror is clearly here:

www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

Not Iraq, not Iran, but rather the same people this administration insists on selling billions of dollars in arms to. If you really want to attack Bush's credibility as a "War President", you've got to focus on that.

Posted by Bill in Chicago | August 24, 2007 9:35 AM

Bill in Chicago - I mean, at least in Vietnam, they actually had Commies when we got there. We went into Iraq chasing after a mirage.

Lord, it must hurt to have to smear your good Communist friends as "commies" to better advance the Lefty metanarrative of the "mirage" of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Even as Ayman al-Zawahiri commissioned them and declared them the "Central Front" against Zionist Crusaders and heretic Muslims.

Even with ample intelligence that Islamoids of the Al Qaeda splinter group of radical Islam have been stripped out of Europe, N Africa, and KSA to fight in Iraq. That they, AQ in Mesopotamia, have killed some 800 US soldiers, ~45 Western civilians, and up to 30,000 Iraqi cops, soldiers, and civilians.

The Lefty diversion of course is the nursery school-level belief that all good and bad things are always the doing of individuals in the toddlers lives.

When people never grow up, they believe that it wasn't Communism that butchered 80 million, but one guy, Joe Stalin - whom the Left denounced once Kruschev said it was OK to stop American Lefty silence and blame 'Ol Joe for everything.. Similarly, all "terror" comes from 4-5 guys now hiding out in Waziristan or Iran, including the Moby Dick of all global radical Islamist Terrorists, the CEO of some 300 million Islamists - Binnie Himself.

Lefties will never let the facts get in the way of blind Party line Slogans, ever.

Osama is the one who attacked us, not AQ in the UK, AQ in Indonesia, not AQ in Spain, not AQ in Iraq!!!

Yeah, keep it up, and sound as dumb as Barack Obama did when he said he would leave Iraq to AQ forces and bomb an ally w/o permission to better get, or if the ol' "surgical" missile attack fails - at least invade and play hide-n-seek for 4-5 Islamoid bigshots surrounded by 30 million spporters.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 24, 2007 10:55 AM

Anyone who's ever read the ugly American will immediately recognize this pattern. Things haven't changed since Vietnam in the 50's...the military will always show the good face of a conflict, and contact with locals will be limited/non-existant in these controlled visits.

Posted by graeme | August 24, 2007 11:03 AM

Chris: you might want to sit down. The rest of us are tired of hearing your ass talking.

Posted by mpowell | August 24, 2007 2:54 PM

Ford probably gets paid to do this. The Israeli Lobby actually has bozos paid to go around to Web sites and bitch and moan. I believe some of the neocon groups do this, too.

Take your pick which nitwit group he belongs to.

Of course, he could just be a regular, old-fashioned, started-on-Usenet-and-graduated-to-the-Web troll...

"Even with ample intelligence that Islamoids of the Al Qaeda splinter group of radical Islam have been stripped out of Europe..."

Right, and London isn't counted as Europe, so the Muslim attacks in England don't count, right? And the sources for your stats are who? Debkafile?

Right, thought so.

And what was the stupid point anyway? That "we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them...uh, where, in Afghanistan where they actually were until we spread them all over..."?

Besides which, the original poster's point was that there was NO Al Qaeda in Iraq before we attacked Iraq. Therefore the fact that there are Al Qaeda there - AND everywhere else - NOW blows your whole point out of the water. Especially since the US hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of actually DEFEATING Al Qaeda in Iraq - or anywhere else - using military tactics. Only the Sunni and Shia Iraqis could do that - and probably will once the US withdraws. But, oh, wait, according to you, the Sunni and Shia Iraqis are all part and parcel of the same Al Qaeda!

But don't let that stop your sphincter from clenching out more nonsense.

Christ, what a nitwit...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 25, 2007 7:05 PM