Excellent piece of writing, not so much answering all the questions as raising a few and inspiring discussion, while at the same time calling into questions some liberal sacred cows.
It is certainly unfortunate that the Anbar Awakening is being used as a refutation of the surge. It is without question that the surge enabled the same methods and tactics used by Colonel MacFarland in Anbar to be put into effect on a larger scale.
Someone in this group quoted Galula recently in pointing out that a protracted conflict favors the counterinsurgent. This is likely true; but the local populace will not stand up to the insurgents (in this case, Al Qaeda,) without knowing that someone has their back. The reason that they didn’t object physically in the first place was fear and intimidation. Colonel MacFarland helped to provide that piece.
The Anbar Awakening wasn’t some random act of patriotic or tribalistic ferver on the part of the locals. It was the result of good, sound counterinsurgency strategy put into practice at a point where the locals had seen what the future with Al Qaeda in charge held.
The attempts to break down the war into neat compartments is an oversimplification based on an unwillingness to address the core issue. The core issue is not Bin Laden.
I would refer you to my post, “Where Is Osama?” http://billandbobsadventure.blogspot.com .
I submit that the center of gravity is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, but the people of the Islamic countries of the Middle East and Central Asia. Our tacit failure, seemingly agreed upon by both parties, is based upon our “…persistent unwillingness to make the sustained and patient effort needed to help the people of the Middle East overcome the crippling societal problems facing their governments and societies.”
Galula pointed out that the reason that insurgencies survive is because the insurgents, who he likened to fish, have a medium in which to swim; the people. Without the fluid environment of the people, the insurgents are easily separated and dealt with.
The failure, by and large, of Wahabbism to catch on in the Balkans is a case in point. Though the Wahabbists attempt to convince the Balkan Muslims to partake in the “Global Jihad,” the takers are few. The water is shallow. The fish remain small and struggle to make a living… they are fed from the outside; Saudi Arabia.
They do not share in the core issues which provide a base for the base (Al Qaeda translated means “the base.”)
We view removing the fish, and in many cases, the one brightly colored and influential fish, from the water as the task at hand. The problem with that strategy being the only strategy, the only question being argued, is that the fish has laid eggs, and the water is deep and fertile. My point is that the people have concerns and issues which the regional/global insurgents appeal to.
Galula pointed out that the counterinsurgent must see the central issues upon which the insurgency appeals to the people and coopt their message.
This, given the scale of the problem, is a huge issue; so huge as to disappear as a background in front of which the smaller issues of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden appear to be the only contrasts. It is so huge that our leadership cannot find it within themselves to even look at it as a key. We paint it with the brush of “Islamofascism.”
How mystical; how utterly incomprehensible and incapable of Western address.
This struggle was years in the making, and while one of the seminal events was the creation of Israel, and the reason that we are depicted as “The Great Satan” is our unwavering support for that tiny, feisty nation; that is not the only issue that keeps the water flowing and the fish reproducing.
An integrated strategy which attempts to address these issues has not even been considered. For one thing, it requires an unflinching honesty of which we appear to be incapable. It also requires us to see things from their point of view.
Am I advocating the abandonment of Israel? No. But I am advocating taking a look at our failure to effectively influence Israel in a positive way to be a good neighbor in a bad neighborhood. Israel is like a small but very muscular guy who grew up getting slapped around, winning every fight and having many thrust upon him. His first reaction to any provocation is to fight, and when he has taken a spoil, to keep it.
We need to admit to ourselves that sometimes the Arabs have a point when they claim Israel is a terrorist nation. I am not labeling Israel a terrorist nation, but I am saying that sometimes their reactions to provocation are excessive and cause too much collateral damage.
And, just when Israel seems to be acting so far above the baser reactions, they are successfully goaded by some heinous but limited act into spasmodic kinetic action, destroying their newly developing relationships.
Israel is a key plank in the Wahabbist/Jihadist platform. Israel would not have survived had it not been for our unwavering, if righteous, support. But we must admit to ourselves that we have turned a blind eye to Israeli missteps, gaffes and excesses while unfailingly denouncing Arab and Palestinian affronts.
But Israel is only one plank; one small but emotionally charged piece of the puzzle.
The points about the socioeconomic and political considerations of Muslims in the various nations of the Middle East and Central Asia are of much greater but much less emotional import. These people have issues; and their oppressors point the convenient finger at us, at Israel, and the rest of the west; much as Hitler pointed his finger at the Jews in Europe.
We are a convenient, seemingly evil nemesis against which to rail and rally support for the ultimate distraction; Jihad.
We are the scapegoat for all of their issues, much in the same way we here in the States demonize the oil companies into some kind of overarching, evil cabal that secretly runs everything and keeps us all in everlasting serfdom.
Yes, yes; it’s all THEIR fault.
The one issue that we cannot coopt is the religious issue. That requires moderate, progressive Islamic influences to have a consistent and unwavering voice in renouncing Jihad and advocating religious tolerance. We do not control these influences and never can. We must seek their attention to this issue and seek to enlist their willing assistance.
We do have prototypes of relatively tolerant Islamic societies. Qatar, for example.
The conversation about Iraq vs. Afghanistan and the pertinence of Bin Laden are, in this light, not strategic issues but tactical ones.
My central point is that our real task, which we refuse to even consider and have convinced ourselves is merely the backdrop of the sky, is to render Osama Bin Laden a moot point; to render him irrelevant. Osama is a symptom of a disease which will continue to afflict us until the central drivers are no longer a factor.
We are driven by the Pashtun principle of Badal… “vengeance.” Revenge is a terrible motive for any positive action. It is emotional and unreasoning and therefore flawed as a strategy.
We don’t even know if Osama is alive or dead, but it doesn’t matter; we are still engaged. If he were the real point, the real lynchpin, then it would matter if he were dead or alive, but it does not.
In the absence of a leader who will become a counterinsurgent on a global level and direct our various agencies to become more than localized tactical counterinsurgents, we will remain a tactically focused nation and our national debate will hinge upon who is perceived by a public uneducated in counterinsurgency to be the least ineffective or damaging tactical counterinsurgent.
Those of us who are not overwhelmed by our lust for Badal have a nagging, niggling small still voice inside which hints at a larger truth so large as to become the lanscape itself, too large a forest to contemplate for the trees; a sense of a truth without any real grasp of it.
We know that we, like in any human interaction; have a part in this.
And so the uneducated are asked to make a decision; they will choose based on what makes sense to their personal interpretation of a huge convoluted yet undefined issue and their personal selection of nemesis. For many that is “neoconservatism” or the great oil magnate cabal.
Hey, it makes just as much sense as making Osama Bin Laden the focus of all of our efforts.
