Gian, your point that the doctrine needs to be
debated as was the active defense between 76 and 82 is spot on. That is a critique I can easily sign on to.:D
Biddle says, "The predominantly Shiite Maliki government has consistently resisted U.S. pressure to compromise with its Sunni rivals. And in spite of more than three years of trying , the United States has not yet produced an Iraqi security force that can consistently defend the interests of all Iraqis." (p. 349) DeBaathification law, oil revenue sharing in the budget, return of the Sunnis to the government, 15 of 18 benchmarks being achieved at an adequate rate, operations in Basra and Sadr city. All of this is not taken into account by Biddle - probably written befor it became apparent. Of couse there is room for debate on the interpretation but the stark view Biddle presents is dated and does not take account of new info.
My critique of Kalyvas is not that he correctly discusses the population centric approach/theory that is the heart of the FM and a number of its antecedants including Galula and Thompson but rather that he interprets them as enemy centric. "These earlier works conceptualized insurgencies as revolutionary movements based on mass mobilization ... and devised methods of response that integrated specific military and political strategies - with heavy emphasis on the former.... On the military front, the goal is to identify and eliminate key local insurgents while establishing effective population control...." (p. 351) The first sentence misinterprets Thompson by overemphasizing actions specifically directed against subversion vice legitimacy, clear and strong political aims, and unity of effort. The second sentence overemphasizes the FM's focus on "force" applied to the enemy rather than its pop centric focus.
Got to run an errand - more later. Your critque states correctly the FM's prime emphasis, Kalyvas' doesn't.
Cheers
JohnT
I have to agree with Marc, R. A.
You said:
Quote:
...According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.
Doctrine is a only a guide. It is designed for an ideal situation, too rigid adherence will get you killed. Situations are rarely ideal; that is particularly true in the ME. You can go quite wrong by clearing and holding terrain (or positions in all senses of that word) that you don't need to hold or that will invite more problems than said holding solves. Getting tied down holding things is, contrary to some theorists ideas, an invitation to inflexibility and stasis. It is sometimes necessary, usually not.
Like any other operational or tactical effort, "clearing and holding" is a time / place / population sensitive matter and, as I've frequently said before, any idea of 'controlling' a population should be discarded -- it is just not going to happen lacking G. Khan like efforts -- and we're are not going to do that. Nor should we.
Iraqis are going to do what they are going to do, they'll do it on their timetable and not ours and a lot of people need to accept that as reality -- possibly including some in high places and some with enhanced reputations from wandering about in the Blogosphere and reading goat entrails.
Westerners have tried to manipulate the ME for over a thousand years -- with virtually no success unless they used brutality and then the ME just waited them out. That isn't going to change. Kipling said it well with these two:
"Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."
"Now it is not good for the Christian's health To hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And it weareth the Christian down. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased-- And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who tried to hustle the East."
To my other question; "Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?" You replied
Quote:
Since we stayed to promote democracy and avoid civil war, I think most people would consider a civil war or the end of democracy a strategic failure.
Most might do so if they only read the media and listened to politicians, both categories of which are relatively clueless. Even some self appointed experts who have become Bloggers fascinate me with their take on things. In any event, your answer raises another question; Is that why we stayed or is that why we said we stayed?
My guess is that it's the latter. While a democracy would be nice as would lack of a civil war, my belief is that the former was and is never much more than a mild hope and the latter is likely inevitable to some degree at some time and probably sooner rather than later. I'd also submit that, other than to be nice guys, both those issues are really of small importance to the US; thus I don't believe that a lack of democracy or a major sectarian schism up to civil war level will adversely affect the US strategically -- though there would be obvious PR problems.
Quote:
I've admitted before that I have no idea what our objective in Iraq is.
Nor do I in totality but I'm pretty well convinced that a lot of self appointed knowledgeable people (other than self appointed me, of course ;) ) are either not as clued as they'd like to think or are not paying attention to reality -- or to the very significant differences between ME and western thinking processes and perceptions.
To attempt to judge the politics in Iraq by what is seen or said (particularly in English -- but even in published or transcribed Arabic) is to be deluded; it's what goes on behind the scenes and under the table that will make determinations and those things will only leak out slowly -- or be revealed when the Iraqis (and others -- including us) want to reveal them.
Marc gets it, as he says:
Quote:
"...If you are serious about building Iraq as a self-determining nation state, then live with the consequences of that choice, one of which will be the power brokers there manipulating the snot out of you. State building has consequences, and one of those consequences is a reduction in US power to tell "the natives" what to do - it's called "sovereignty".
I could be wrong but I believe that statement is not only quite accurate; I believe that it was absorbed early on and up-front by the decision makers, plural, in DC -- regardless of all the political theater and rhetoric. We made an early decision to let Iraq be sovereign; it is and we've known that for five years. They'll do what they want and we'll play along and nudge where we can. That's cool (even if Congress is too dense to understand that).
1 Attachment(s)
Commentary on the Review Symposium
I've attached an extensive commentary on the Review Symposium that I have sent to Perspectives on Politics. Most of the ideas in it I tested earlier in this forum. Thanks to Marc T for his suggestions.
Cheers
JohnT