CommonDreams: A Troop Surge Can't Win a Victory from a Bad Decision for War

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Published on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
A Troop Surge Can’t Win a Victory from a Bad Decision for War
by Carl Conetta

The impasse in Iraq is not due principally to a lack of resources, but rather to the mission and the strategy informing the war.

From the outset, the US goals in Iraq have been overly ambitious and intrusive. This is the heart of the problem there. No amount of troop presence will suffice to stabilize the nation in the way the Bush administration intends.

Success in counter-insurgency efforts does not principally hinge on troop numbers, nor, for that matter, does it hinge on the methods or techniques of counter-insurgency and population control – as the US Army and Marine Corps’ feverish search for an effective counter-insurgency doctrine might imply.

The play of insurgency and counter-insurgency involves a three-sided relationship between government forces, anti-government ones, and the citizenry. A key aspect is the relative “rootedness” and standing of the insurgent and counter-insurgent forces vis a vis the values, culture, and aspirations of the general populace.

In this contest, foreign occupiers suffer a distinct structural disadvantage – by virtue of being both “foreign” and “occupiers”. In this regard, the most disconcerting data from Iraq concerns popular attitudes toward US forces. The percentage of Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, desiring US withdrawal within a year or less has steadily increased as has the percentage who support attacks on US troops.

A foreign occupier’s presence is dependent, ultimately, on coercive power. Overcoming this disadvantage in the contest for “hearts and minds” depends on their being relatively modest in aims and discrete in methods – assuming that the mission permits it. Unfortunately, the American mission does not.

What the Bush administration has sought to do, at the point of a gun, is thoroughly reinvent Iraq – its public institutions, legal system, security structures, economy, and political order. This is a revolution as profound as any, but foreign in origin, design, and implementation. The desired end state is a friendly and pliable Iraq – wide-open to American influence, dependent on American power, and supportive of US interests and aims in the region.

It should not be surprising that our efforts – which have flooded the country with nearly 300,000 foreign handlers – have bred resentment and resistance, both active and passive. Nor should it be surprising that, when the experiment’s democratic trappings actually work, they work against us – bringing to power parties at odds with the American purpose. .....(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0110-20.htm