The Redhunter

No doubt much went wrong at first. In retrospect, it almost seems obvious that this should have been the case. When one thinks back on most American wars, from the Revolution to the Civil War (from the North's perspective) to World War II, they all follow the same pattern; initial mishaps if not diasasters, incorrect assuptions, American rethinking, and finally we get our act together and utterly defeat our enemy.

The Strategy of Public Works

We had to change our strategy:

The U.S. strategy became to use every instrument of power at our disposal (military, political, economic, etc.) to drive a wedge between the Sunni fence-sitters and the irredeemable elements of the insurgency — the criminals, the various Islamists, and the FREs. Attempts would be made to engage the Sunnis, while the other forces would be captured or killed. The strategy involved four main lines of operation — security, governance, basic services, and the economy — all of which complemented each other and had the goal of creating a legitimate Iraqi government that could look after its own security

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It was a blending of carrot and stick. There are two ways to try to keep someone from taking $200 to attack Americans: “You can raise the cost to someone of planting an IED [an Improvised Explosive Device] by making it more likely you will kill him, but also by providing alternatives that make him less likely to want to take the risk in the first place,” says an administration official. Or as an officer in Iraq puts it, “You can’t kill or capture everybody.”

That’s why infrastructure projects and other economic-development measures are so important. Our troops became the equivalent to FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, employing Iraqis in thousands of public works projects.

The most important thing we did was to move from "occupation" to "liberation". No matter how we saw it, many Iraqis saw us as an occupation force. Many around the world shared this view, no matter what the reality. The result was that we faced a propaganda nightmare of lies and misinformation. But whatever the truth, people act on their perceptions.

Thus we had to disband the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and hand real power over to an Iraqi government. Elections had to be held as soon as possible no matter the danger. The Pentagon, to it's credit, had wanted to do this all along. It had been held back mainly by State.

It was handing power to Allawi, then, that was the turning point. It allowed Iraqis to fight for something that was their own. The elections consolidated and confirmed this transfer.

Training New Iraqi Forces

In addition, we needed to put more effort into training Iraqi police and military forces.

The police needed more military-style preparation. “We had built it on a Western, police-force-in-a-democracy model,” says a top officer in Iraq. The training now emphasizes survival skills, force protection, IED-detection, and the use of AK-47s. More emphasis has been placed on the training of units. “Individual police are important, but they can’t stand up to insurgents,” says the officer, who invokes as a model the special carabinieri units that took down the mafia in Sicily.

The End of Sanctuaries

During the Vietnam War the enemy had many sanctuaries; Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam itself. We had allowed Fallujah to become such a sanctuary in Iraq. This had to change.

We learned that you can't fight a war on a "start and stop" basis. If you're going to go in, you have to finish the job. Start-and-stop simply gives the enemy confidence that you don't have the will to win.

This time, Iraqi forces did much better. We used them to take down sensitive targets, such as Mosques and hospitals.

Our forces performed brilliantly

The performance of the U.S. forces was spectacular. Marines got shot and kept on fighting. When the battle ended, there was a rash of reports of previously ignored wounds. “Headquarters asked, ‘Why are you reporting 35 wounded so late?’” says Natonski. “We were reporting them so late because these kids didn’t report it when they were wounded. The Corpsmen bandaged themselves up and stayed in the fight. The Marines at Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir, and Vietnam set the bar pretty high, and they lived up to the standard.”

All of the indicators, Lowry says, are now moving in our direction:

If the infrastructure and economy leave much to be desired, they have improved over the immediate post-invasion conditions. Iraqi security forces are better. More intelligence is available, both from tips and because Iraqi forces — more attuned to local conditions — are in the fight. Sanctuaries for insurgents have been denied in Iraq’s cities and a little progress has even been made with regard to Syria. (“The resources aren’t flowing as freely from Syria anymore,” an administration official explains. “The people who lead the insurgency are not as comfortable. They are not sleeping in the same places at night.”) Finally, the political process is on track, even if stumbling blocks remain, and it’s not clear whether the balance of Sunni fence-sitters will participate in it

All of this is encouraging, especially if you have realistic expectations.

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The latest from StrategyPage (April 25 post)

The terrorists have been losing popular support, as well as angering Iraqis to the point where many Iraqis are no longer afraid to resist the gangs that control many villages and neighborhoods by fear. The terrorists are usually Sunni Arabs who either supported Saddam, or are violently opposed to the idea of the Shia majority running the country. Most Sunni Arabs don't really care who runs the place, as long as it is done with less violence and corruption than Saddam used.

The suspects arrested in the downing of the Bulgarian helicoper a few days ago were turned in by fellow Iraqis, a trend that has been increasing as of late. It may not be that people have allegiance to the new government so much as they are just fed up with violence that is increasingly directed against them.

Thus the terrorists are caught in a quandary; if they attack American or coalition forces they are slaughtered, if they attack Iraqis they lose the support of the population. Revolutionary leaders from Mao to Castro depended on popular support for their success. Some, like the Viet Cong, were able to at least terrorize a politically apathetic population into acquiesence.

Faced with this difficult choice, they are attacking the target of least resistance; unarmed civilians. Unfortunately for them, these attacks are not

...encouraging Iraqis to support the terrorists, or reduce popular support for the government. The Americans are no longer blamed for the bombings, although it's still popular to blame the attacks on Islamic "foreigners."

Good enough for me.

You may be under the impression that the war in Iraq is all a case of U.S. forces sitting around waiting for a bomb to go off (punctuated by the occasional Iraqi raid), rest assured that while

Attacks are still staged, but often they are situations where it amounts to the attackers being ambushed. Such is the case in western Iraq, where American troops set up small bases in areas known to be full of anti-government forces. Soon, the local terrorists will stage attacks, which inevitably fail, with heavy terrorist casualties. The terrorists never seem to catch on to how many disadvantages they have. The Americans have extensive intelligence resources (especially electronic eavesdropping), night vision equipment and disciplined troops manning camp defenses.