We Didn't Kill Enough Iraqis?

[SteveMetz]

If I understand Maj Gen Dunlap's argument here, we could have prevented the Iraq insurgency if we'd only allowed the Air Force to kill more Iraqis during the conventional campaign.

Can another 'Iraq' be prevented?

What has not been analyzed much is the way major combat operations (MCO) were conducted and the effect of this on the subsequent insurgency. Thinking about a potential insurgency is vitally important....

Unfortunately, during MCO for Iraq, airpower was not permitted to completely crush insurgent potentialities. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, then Central Command commander Army General Tommy Franks elected to cut the air attacks short in favor of an early start to ground operations, reportedly out of concern (later proven to be unfounded) that the Iraqis were destroying their oil fields...

There is, perhaps, a counterinsurgency lesson here that runs completely counter to the philosophy, “the less force the better,” that pervades FM 3-24. Some societies are only prepared for radical change after they consider themselves truly defeated. William R. Weir offers in Turning Points in Military History (2005), his conclusion that “f the enemy population does not accept defeat, you can’t win until you kill every last person in that enemy population.”

To reiterate, no one is suggesting that innocent civilians should be made the object of attack. Rather, it is merely to say that Operation Iraqi Freedom’s too-rapid transition from the air assault, which the coalition was conducting effectively and with impunity, to the ground campaign that stretched hastily established lines of communication to the point of vulnerability, permitted enemy forces to secure some success. That success, however meager, may have had a more seriously negative impact on the ultimate outcome than was apparent at the time...


Oh my!

[Steve Blair]

Curtis LeMay lives on.....

[Steve Blair]

From later in the same piece:

Norman Friedman alludes to this in a fascinating essay published in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings in 2004. [8] In it Friedman discusses the air assault on Germany during World War II that psychologically crushed the population, and points out that the Nazi resistance movement “smoldered for some years” but died out because the bombing forced Germans to consider themselves “defeated and occupied.”

Friedman concedes that bombing did “not change necessarily the hearts and minds” of the German people “but it did help preclude any post-surrender violence like what is now being seen in Iraq .” He rhetorically asks the question whether modern war has gotten “too precise.” The suggestion is that the insurgency took root, paradoxically, because “the kind of dramatic military victory achieved in 2003 was counterproductive precisely because it was so clean.”

And I suppose the ground invasion and occupation of Berlin by the Soviets had nothing to do with it? Or the presence of occupying troops for many years after 1945? Bombing does not force a population to consider itself "occupied": being OCCUPIED does that.

I'll second Steve's oh my.....

[Rex Brynen]

Norman Friedman alludes to this in a fascinating essay published in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings in 2004. [8] In it Friedman discusses the air assault on Germany during World War II that psychologically crushed the population, and points out that the Nazi resistance movement “smoldered for some years” but died out because the bombing forced Germans to consider themselves “defeated and occupied.”

Ahh, the good ol' days of firebombing Dresden... (etc)

[Jedburgh]

Oh my!

....but Steve, he cites a bit of your writing to support his argument:

....Consider the observation of Profs. Steven Metz and Raymond Millen, in their monograph Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21 st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, that during the past century most insurgencies failed.[4] Why did they fail? Because, Metz and Millen argue, the “majority were crushed before they developed a critical mass of skill and support".

Of course, it is a selective quote - a phrase out of a sentence out of context.....

[SteveMetz]

....but Steve, he cites a bit of your writing to support his argument:

Of course, it is a selective quote - a phrase out of a sentence out of context.....

The citation is how I found the essay. I self-Google often (even though I've been told that will cause hair to grown on my palms).

The reference is Air Force IO--since, unlike the Air Force, the Army actually encourages contrarian thinking from within in, he uses such contrarian thinking to try and delegitimize the Army position (which, as so astutely phrased above, holds that occupation actually entails occupation, not servicing a target and then playing the back nine).

[walrus]

airpower was not permitted to completely crush insurgent potentialities

Since everything and everyone is an "Insurgent potentiality", I guess carpet bombing Tehran is now on the agenda? "Insurgent potentiality" is a meaningless term.

[Tom Odom]

Everytime I start to think I am too hard on this guy and his line of thinking, he writes something even more atrocious and absurd.

I wonder if he really has ever even had a whiff of what mega-death looks, smells, and tastes after the cloying stink gets in your throat and your own vomit is an improvement in taste.

Truly disheartening

Tom

[Rex Brynen]

Everytime I start to think I am too hard on this guy and his line of thinking, he writes something even more atrocious and absurd.

You're over-reacting, Tom. Dunlap isn't, after all, a war-planner--he's Deputy Judge Advocate General. You know, one of the guys responsible for insuring the USAF abides by all those pesky IHL and laws of armed conflict restrictions...

(Maybe I missed the Geneva Convention on "Making People Internalize the Power and Ferociousness of their Conquerors"... was it in one of the optional protocols?)

[Cavguy]

Everytime I start to think I am too hard on this guy and his line of thinking, he writes something even more atrocious and absurd.

I wonder if he really has ever even had a whiff of what mega-death looks, smells, and tastes after the cloying stink gets in your throat and your own vomit is an improvement in taste.

Truly disheartening

Tom

You know, I actually met MG Dunlap a few weeks ago at a seminar - even bought me a beer. Believe it or not, he's more moderate in person than his writings suggest. It's almost Ralph Peters like - the writing is red meat for discussion.

More disturbingly, there was an AF advocate (academic) who gave a speech that makes MG Dunlap look like a regular hearts and minds fanatic. Thesis was along the lines of "we're not letting the Iraqis drop enough bombs, the Army/USMC completely inept, the surge has failed, and this war would be over if we used more airpower". I told him afterwards his speech was not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. Unfortunately, he also occupies a position near some high level influencers in the AF.

<sigh>