Why it's Bad to Live Under Foreign Military Occupation

I don't think ordinary people can read Sydney Freedberg's excellent cover story in the new National Journal but the teaser text explains the basic dilemma well:

Sometimes U.S. troops kill Iraqis in self-defense. Sometimes they kill them for other reasons. And sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

The crux of the matter is that soldiers in ambiguous situations understandably tend to err on the side of their own personal safety and that of their fellow soldiers. Likewise, officers faced with ambiguous situations tend to err on the side of giving the soldiers under their command the benefit of the doubt. And courts-martial, likewise, err on the side of taking a favorable view of American soldiers.

All of which is fine. Unless you happen to be an Iraqi. Which is precisely why people tend not to enjoy being under foreign military occupation.

The reality of the matter is that to succeed, our troops would need to behave the way police officers do. But they're not cops, they're soldiers. And there's a good reason that soldiers act the way soldiers do. There's no way that it would be politically feasible -- or even appropriate -- for the US military to start treating Iraqi lives as more important than American lives. But that would be the only way to actually pull off what they've been asked to pull off. It's an impossible situation, and not one we should be putting people in.

Comments

In post WWII war movies, American soldiers invariably treated civilian lives as more important than their own. The multi-ethnic platoon befriending Italian orphans and sacrificing their lives for the not always aware small villagers or nuns in the convent.

It probably wasn't an accurate picture of much American military behavior in WWII (Hiroshima anyone), but it definitely became part of the post-war mythology of American exceptionalism that is still hard to shake for some of us. Part of me still thinks foreign civilians should come first (especially when the goal is supposedly to win hearts and minds), but I can understand soldiers in the field making different judgments.

In reality, the U.S. is really not much different than most other occupying powers. Unfortunately, there are very serious people like David Ignatius who just discovered that occupiers are not very popular. What an insight after five years.

Posted by Ben Brackley | October 18, 2007 6:47 PM

It's an impossible situation, and not one we should be putting people in.

Impossible unless a greater evil makes the foreign occupier pale in comparison. I think that is what's happened recently.

It's sheer dumb luck that our hearts-and-minds opponents are even less enjoyable than we are. But that is the case, and you should admit it, Matt. A "most despicable" third party -- joining America and the Iraq Majority as the other two -- changes the calculus entirely.

You understand that, right?

Posted by JA | October 18, 2007 6:53 PM

Impossible unless a greater evil makes the foreign occupier pale in comparison. I think that is what's happened recently.

I don't understand. What exactly is the "greater evil" you're referring to?

Posted by James Gary | October 18, 2007 7:00 PM

"The crux of the matter is that soldiers in ambiguous situations understandably tend to err on the side of their own personal safety and that of their fellow soldiers. Likewise, officers faced with ambiguous situations tend to err on the side of giving the soldiers under their command the benefit of the doubt. And courts-martial, likewise, err on the side of taking a favorable view of American soldiers."

Shorter Yglesias, "If you murder civilans , we will let you off and a good thing too"

"All of which is fine. "

And if that argument had been used,say, 62 years ago ?

You guys have given up even pretending ,haven't you ?

Posted by kb | October 18, 2007 7:02 PM

Right. The War Nerd has been explaining this kind of thing for years. Of course, so far the only publications who will print him are The eXile and The American Conservative.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 18, 2007 7:20 PM

The big problem a soldier has is the inability to understand the language of the people he is occupying. That is why he could never be a cop and even analogizing a soldier to a cop in a foreign country seems silly.

Next, is to think that the people are grateful for being occupied. Why can't we put ourselves in the shoes of the Iraqis and think of what it would be like having foreign soldiers walking our streets protecting us?

As far as valuing lives, we would not be firing artillery shells or dropping bombs on Iraqi houses if we valued their lives anywhere near our own. We wipe out Iraqi families to protect our soldiers. Should we do this? If you ask a soldier the answer will be 'hell, yes.'

Posted by Llyonnoc | October 18, 2007 7:40 PM

What exactly is the "greater evil" you're referring to?

Well, for the Sunnis in Anbar, it's al-Qaeda in Iraq. For the other Sunnis, it's the Shiites and the Iraqi army. For the Shiites, it's the Sunnis. For the Kurds, it's mostly the Sunnis with a dash of Shiite. For the Turks, it's the Kurds and the Armenians. For the Saudis, it's the Shiites. For the Iranians, it's the Sunnis and the possibility we might un-mire ourselves enough to bomb them. For the Chinese, it's the Dalai Lama. For the Australians, it's Barack Obama. And for Manchester United, it's LiverPool FC. I hope that clarifies things.

Posted by Bo | October 18, 2007 7:50 PM

Saddam's killing spree, when he was earning his stripes, came far before the war to oust him. In fact, it came during a time when America supported him. (Bush family CIA assets regularly seem to get a rude shock. I'm not sure that that sentence needs the "CIA" qualifier.)

The numbers of dead, wounded, homeless, and exiled during Bush's fantasy camp of violent self-justifications far exceeds anything that Saddam dreamed up, but the bombing in Fallujah made that ranking iffy. Saddam's psychotic use of torture is horrifying to think of, but our casual indifference to the pain we dole out isn't far behind.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 18, 2007 7:53 PM

I am sick to death of hearing the fake opposition Dems in Congress moan about not having enough votes to end the war in Iraq. They give lip service to the myth that the only way to end the war is to write a bill saying "the war is now over" and send it to Bush for a prompt veto, then override the veto. They then throw up their hands, saying "Well, as you can see, we don't have the votes to override any veto, so there's no way to end the war. Sorry folks."

This is disingenious and vividly illustrates who the Dems are really serving: the establishment, not their constituents.

Here's how to end the war: No bill specifically ending the war is even necessary. Remember those supplemental funding bills the Cheney regime has to constantly ask for, to continue funding the Iraq war piecemeal instead of in yearly lump sums attached to the actual defense budget? That's the achilles' heel of their war effort. The next time Bush asks for another $80 billion or whatever to keep the Iraq bloodbath going, all the Democrats have to do to end the war is to say: NO. To say "We won't allocate one more penny for your illegal war". Last I checked the Dems have a wafer-thin majority in both houses. With no Dems voting for the next spending bill it won't be passed and thus it won't make it to Bush's desk for signing. Bush (and especially his puppetmaster Cheney) may have concentrated an inordinate amount of power in the hands of the executive branch, but even they can't send spending bills to their own desk. That necessarily has to come from Congress. If it never reaches his desk he can't sign it, and will have 2 choices: 1.pull the troops out while there is still enough money left in the pipeline so to speak to allow an orderly withdrawl (and anyone who has five or more brain cells knows that the money isn't going to run out the next day, that's a non-issue that the right wing tries to use as a scare tactic but it is ridiculously dumbed down and simply not true; they don't wait until they have $5 left before asking for another supplemental OK?); or 2.don't pull them out right away, and leave them to wither on the vine in Iraq until the money DOES completely run out and they have to withdraw from Iraq chaotically, burning their supplies and vehicles. Either way the war will end pretty soon if the Dems refuse to vote on supplementals. They don't have to write a bill saying they are cutting off funding; this is only a fig leaf so they can pretend to be doing something to end the war when all they are doing is purposely spinning their wheels. All they have to do is to NOT VOTE ON SUPPLEMENTALS. Pretty effing simple. The people NOW need to DEMAND in so many words that if the Democrats are a genuine opposition party that they will carry out the will of the people and NOT VOTE on supplementals. If they are a fake opposition party as I feel they are, and are acting not in the people's interest but playing for the same team as the Republicans, then continue with more of the same hand-wringing and impotent nonbinding resolutions that resolve nothing. Decision time Democrats. Which are you? Genuine? Or fake opposition? I think I already know the answer to that one but why don't you surprise me?

Posted by Lev | October 18, 2007 8:40 PM

I think the point is (like Thomas Barnett said) that American servicemen shouldn't be asked to be peacekeepers one minute and warmakers the next.

In post WWII war movies, American soldiers invariably treated civilian lives as more important than their own

In post WWII scenarios, there were no ambushes, no IEDs, no insurgency at all actually, so GIs didn't have to do both nation-building and fighting at the same time.

Posted by Tractarian | October 18, 2007 8:49 PM

"I don't think ordinary people can read Sydney Freedberg's excellent cover story . . .

Jeez, I didn't realize the feudalization of America had come quite so far so fast . . . what next, sumptuary laws?

Posted by Dan S. | October 18, 2007 9:06 PM

"I don't think ordinary people can read Sydney Freedberg's excellent cover story"

"Ordinary people"?

In any case, it's not behind a subscriber pay-wall, and I can read it just fine, thankyewverymuch.

Otherwise, as usual, I agree with you, Matt.

Posted by Gary Farber | October 18, 2007 9:29 PM

Errr. Jim Henley made this exact point in almost the exact same language 5 months ago. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not worth repeating.

Posted by Joe Strummer | October 18, 2007 9:38 PM

I was able to raed the article.

Posted by Cryptic Ned | October 18, 2007 11:53 PM

People don't like foreign occupation, even if it's benevolent, and even if it replaced a home-grown tyrant.

It's foreign, you see.

Why wasn't this obvious before we started this war? (In a way, Rumsfeld was right. The thing to do was get in and out of Iraq quickly.)

Posted by Hal | October 19, 2007 12:18 AM

This post is non-sensical. That Iraqis may die as a result of military action has nothing to do with "foreign occupation". They would be dying regardless of whether the US was occupying.

Matthew quotes the following:

Sometimes U.S. troops kill Iraqis in self-defense. Sometimes they kill them for other reasons. And sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

But one may just as easily say:

Sometimes Iraqi troops kill Iraqis in self-defense. Sometimes they kill them for other reasons. And sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

And everything else Matthew says in the following paragraph would remain true.

Indeed, it is obvious that far MORE Iraqis would die if we ended the occupation by leaving immediately. Not that anyone on the left seems to care about that.

Posted by Al | October 19, 2007 12:38 AM

I envy your crystal ball, Al, but it's not obvious to me that things will be much worse if the U.S. leaves in 10 years or now. Now has the advantage of not wasting our soldiers lives, military capacity, money and the world's good will.

Posted by witless chum | October 19, 2007 1:28 AM

"Why it's Bad to Live Under Foreign Military Occupation"

I'd say that statement's validity depends on the answers to two questions: What's the alternative to that occupation, and who is doing the occupying? In the case of Iraq, the democratically elected Iraqi government believes that the presence of foreign troops for now beats the alternative.

Posted by Fred | October 19, 2007 2:29 AM

I don't know why Matt bothers to make posts about topics he clearly knows ZERO about, and then makes himself look like a fool when he writes some inane nonsense.

I don't know where to start with this one...

"The reality of the matter is that to succeed, our troops would need to behave the way police officers do."

What does this mean? It doesn't make any sense. An insurgency is not a group of "terrorists", despite the right wing spin machine. An insurgency cannot be fought with police methods - although certainly the police CAN contribute to the cause.

Matt does not understand the difference between a group of terrorists and an insurgency. While an insurgency may start out as merely a small group, it's dynamics are entirely different from "terrorists", or at least "foreign terrorists."

You can have "indigenous terrorists" and that would be hard to distinguish from an initial band of "insurgents". But over time, it would be clear which is which based on the response of the indigenous population.

For example, the right wing militias in the United States are essentially "indigenous terrorists" - because they have zero support of the population, even in "Red" states.

Now, if the US government became more repressive such that a significant percentage of the population would support the militias, they might "morph" into an "insurgency." But as it stands, they're merely "terrorists."

The same example is in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq are "terrorists" - and foreign terrorists (for the most part) at that. They are not Iraqi "insurgents".

The fact that both Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iraqi insurgents may use IEDs, or car bombs, or whatever, do not make them identical in nature.

The problem is that the counterinsurgents AND the police HAVE TO BE THE SAME PEOPLE AS THE INSURGENTS.

When they are not, you have one of two things: 1) an occupation; or 2) foreign terrorism.

The latter you can deal with using police methods - unless, like Chuck Norris's old movie, "Invasion: USA", you actually have an INVASION of "terrorists"...

The former, you cannot. Matt is correct that in an occupation, you cannot use police methods. But that begs the question: why is it an occupation?

It also begs the question of what is the proper way to conduct a counterinsurgency. Again, the only proper way is to make use of people who are indistinguishable from the insurgents. After all, the insurgents are hard to defeat because they are indistinguishable from the civilian population. Thus, the same method must be used against them.

Sending a bunch of foreign troops in is simply worthless. They cannot interact effectively with the population, they stick out like a sore thumb thus allowing the insurgents to run rings around them, and they cannot even identify their enemies.

"But they're not cops, they're soldiers. And there's a good reason that soldiers act the way soldiers do."

Yeah - fucking pig witlessness. Lousy training. The usual primate inhumanity to one's "fellow man" that you get when you send people from one country with guns to somebody else's country, when said people don't give a shit about those "furriners" and "Ay-rabs" or "hajis" or "gooks" or...pick your racist term.

"There's no way that it would be politically feasible -- or even appropriate -- for the US military to start treating Iraqi lives as more important than American lives."

Here is where Matt just fucking loses it and goes off the deep end of ignorance.

News flash, Matt: After WWII, this is precisely what was mandated by the Geneva Conventions and international law. Civilians are to be protected at all times. Try these definitions from the Society of Professional Journalists on the Geneva Conventions:

civilian:

A civilian is any person who does not belong to any of the following categories: members of the armed forces, militias or volunteer corps, organized resistance movements, and residents of an occupied territory who spontaneously take up arms. If there is any doubt whether a person is civilian, then he or she is to be considered a civilian. (Protocol I, Art. 50, Sec. 1)

civilian population:

The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians. (Protocol I, Art. 50, Sec. 2)

The civilian population is protected under the Geneva Conventions and these protections are not affected by the presence of combatants in the population. (Protocol I, Art. 50, Sec. 3)

These protections include the right to be free from attacks, reprisals, acts meant to instill terror, and indiscriminate attacks. Civilian populations must not be used as civilian shields. (Protocol I, Art. 51)

civilian property

Combatants must distinguish between civilian and military property and attack only military property. (Protocol I, Art. 48)

collateral damage

Weapons, projectiles and methods of warfare that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering are prohibited. (Protocol I, Art. 35, Sec. 2)

indiscriminate attacks

Indiscriminate attacks are those which are not directed at a specific military objective or those which use a method of attack that cannot be directed at or limited to a specific military objective. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 4)

This includes area bombardment, where a number of clearly separated military objectives are treated as a single military objective, and where there is a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 5a)

This also includes attacks where the expected incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects is excessive to the military advantage anticipated. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 5b)

Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. (Protocol I, Art. 51, Sec. 4)

Combatants must distinguish between civilian and military objects and attack only military targets. (Protocol I, Art. 48)

If it becomes apparent that an objective in an attack is not a military one, or if that attack could cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects, then the attack must be called off. (Protocol I, Art. 57)

Try reading up on it some time, PUNDIT...before you make any more nonsensical statements.

"But that would be the only way to actually pull off what they've been asked to pull off. It's an impossible situation, and not one we should be putting people in."

Now this part you have correct.

What needs to be done is re-orient the entire war doctrine and training of the US military to enforce the Geneva Conventions, and at the same time, make the US military even more efficient at taking down actual military enemies of the US when such enemies are a direct threat to the continental United States and its possessions or its (as you have correctly suggested elsewhere, CLEARLY DEFINED) "national interests" - which in most cases would mean US citizens and property and assets owned or in the possession of US citizens or the US state.

Period.

That means: no nuclear weapons - except tactical ones that could be used against specific military targets, i.e., no city busters; no use of aircraft or artillery against targets in civilian areas; no running around countries that haven't attacked us; no running around a country that HAS attacked us beating down civilians doors because there MIGHT be an insurgent somewhere around; no setting up checkpoints and shooting any car that comes near them without stopping. And on and on...

The bottom line: the US military is a bunch of incompetent morons who can't be considered "warriors" or even halfway competent at actually dealing with military opponents whom they can't bomb out of existence from the air or with massive overkill techniques.

"Precision targeting", my ass. I've always wanted to put a bullet in the head of General Schwarzkof and then hang a sign around his dead neck saying, "Now THIS is precision targeting"...

The solution to "soldiers in ambiguous situations" is 1) don't put them in ambiguous situations; and 2) train them to deal with ambiguous situations, and 3) have a doctrine that can handle ambiguous situations.

None of which the US military has spent dime one or a second of time doing.

Which, I reiterate, makes the United States regularly guilty of war crimes as defined by the Geneva Conventions and international law.

The morons in the US military - civilian and military - need to be fired and sent to work in Burger King and replaced by people with some spiritual character, some imagination, and some martial discipline.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 19, 2007 2:52 AM

Are we supposed to bother responding to the trolls?

If you don't understand why you're more likely to get shot by troops who don't speak your language or understand anything about your country than by troops of your own country's army, you merit the title of f***ing idiot.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 19, 2007 2:53 AM

I always get the feeling that if we were invaded and occupied, the WATB's would join the occupiers.
By that I mean Republican'ts.

Posted by merlallen | October 19, 2007 3:20 AM

Personally, I have no doubt that they do it on purpose, in the "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" sort of way. Trying to bully the population into submission. Making the point that there will be a price to pay for supporting/not opposing the insurgency. I even seem to remember Rumsfeld saying something to that effect. The "nice guys in impossible circumstances" excuse is total bullshit and ridiculous and pathetic propaganda. In my opinion.

Posted by abb1 | October 19, 2007 3:35 AM

Boston Massacre anyone?

"But one may just as easily say:

Sometimes Iraqi troops kill Iraqis in self-defense. Sometimes they kill them for other reasons. And sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

And everything else Matthew says in the following paragraph would remain true.

Indeed, it is obvious that far MORE Iraqis would die if we ended the occupation by leaving immediately. Not that anyone on the left seems to care about that.

Posted by Al | October 19, 2007 12:38 AM"

By this logic, the British Empire should still be around.

Posted by Reality Man | October 19, 2007 4:37 AM

Sometimes Iraqi troops kill Iraqis in self-defense...

Al is correct here, and in fact, the same could be said about the Saddam's troops, or Waffen-SS, or NYC police department or Bonnie and Clyde or any other organized group of armed people.

Posted by abb1 | October 19, 2007 4:51 AM

Not to mention those who are "shot while trying to escape".

But sometimes troops kill people just for fun.

Boys will be boys, you know.

Posted by MFB | October 19, 2007 6:19 AM

I can't think of an American armed intervention in which some portion of US soldiers haven't lumped the entire occupied population in with the "enemy".

Major US combat forces landed in Vietnam in the spring of '65. By the spring of '67 there were plenty of American soldiers who considered every Vietnamese a potential VC, and whose philosophy when they went out on a mission had become to kill anyone they encountered and report it as part of the body count.

The fact that some US soldiers will slaughter innocent civilians -- sometimes deliberately -- needs to be factored in as part of the cost of a military intervention and occupation.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 19, 2007 7:13 AM

For the record, the piece is *now* offline: NJ uses a dynamic link, so their cover story is available to all for the week of that issue, and then it's moved behind the paywall.

Posted by Gary Farber | October 19, 2007 6:18 PM

"Indeed, it is obvious that far MORE Iraqis would die if we ended the occupation by leaving immediately. Not that anyone on the left seems to care about that." - AL

Since you seem to know so much about the future, how about answering some questions about the present and recent past:

how many civilians died

who killed them

how many internal refugees

how many external refugees

how many Iraqis left

how many lives are better off now than in 2002

how many lives are worse off now than in 2002

how many without electricity, jobs, education, health care, water, sewers

how many totally traumatized by all the violence since the 2003 US invasion and occupation

AFTER you answer those, you are allowed to predict the future, UNLESS you believed in the WMDs nonsense for even one second of your life - in which case, you should have 'I AM A TRUE IDIOT' tattooed on your forehead and shut up forever.

Posted by Susan | October 23, 2007 3:59 PM