Ralph Peters has a few things to say about the Fallujah assault. On this anniversary of the Marine Corps, it is fitting they will take the lead and clean house if allowed to finish the job they were kept from doing last spring.
In anticipation of news reports soon to be filed, not by the embedded reporters who have a sense of things but by pundits in NYC and DC, he offers his own preemptive strike:
Meanwhile, be prepared for media monkey business. No matter how well things go, we’ll hear self-righteous gasps over the inevitable U.S. casualties. The first time a rifle company consolidates a position long enough to bring up ammunition, we’ll hear that the attack has bogged down. If commanders on the ground decide to shift forces from one axis of advance to another, we’ll be told that our troops couldn’t make progress against “dug-in terrorists.”
Don’t believe a word of it when it comes. Those soldiers and Marines are professional. When they stop or change direction, it is with a fluid plan which takes advantage of opportunities.
A lifetime in peace negotiations has given me considerable exposure to insurgency movements. Experience elsewhere can never fully predict the future, but it often offers useful pointers. Here is what we know about those fighting in Fallujah and what patterns of the past suggest we can expect as the result:
1) The majority of those fighting the American forces see themselves as patriots and lovers of their homeland, fighting for the future of their sons and daughters. They are not career soldiers calculating gains against costs, rather they consider their deepest dignity and pride to be under attack. Foreigners, by all accounts, are a minority.
2) Their method is guerilla warfare, whose aim is never to engage and defeat a standing army. Rather the goal is to exhaust the enemy in a protracted war that cannot be won by conventional means. Guerillas seek just enough engagement with the enemy to attract heavy investment of soldiers and equipment. Then they fade, for a repeat in other times and locations.
3) Guerilla warfare succeeds not by defeating an enemy militarily but rather by turning the broad population against the enemy. Thus a constant goal of guerilla warriers is to goad the enemy into heavy-handed action that alienate local populations. “We spent a lot of time carefully selecting locations where we felt we could get the army to engage in major action that would really anger local people,” a veteran of years of a modern insurgency in Asia once told me. “We wanted a situation where people were really upset at the army, and then we would work hard to build trust with local people afterwards.”
If these patterns hold true in Fallujah, the outcome is likely to look like this:
1) Just enough insurgents will stay in Fallujah to attract serious damage by the attacking Americans. American troops will take the city, with heavy losses to civilians, to homes and public structures. The US perception will be, we won!
2) It will be discovered in coming weeks that most of the insurgents fled the city prior to or during battle and are continuing their struggle from multiple other locations.
3) Enormous attention will be given among civilians in Fallujah and other cities in Iraq to the damage caused by the Americans and the suffering imposed by them on the people of Fallujah. The stories told will be a mixture of significant truth with additional elements of exaggeration and fabrication mixed in. It will be impossible for the US to defend itself against these stories because there will be no denying the core truth of vast destruction and suffering.
4) Fighting will end in Fallujah for a number of months and gradually normal life will return. But six months or a year from now, after civilians have returned, guerilla attacks will be renewed in Fallujah and the cycle will begin again.
5) In the meantime, a new wave of recruits, incensed at the barbarity of the foreigners, will have joined the insurgents and the conflict throughout the country will continue to spiral upward.
With few exceptions, this has been the pattern so far and there is little reason to believe it will not be repeated. The frightening truth is that America is now trapped, having played repeatedly the role most desired for us by guerilla warriors, heavy-handed, weapon-toting foreigner with guns blazing. They could not succeed in demonizing us in the eyes of average Iraqis without our assistance and so far we have cooperated nicely.
The only way out is to remove all doubt that this is “our” invasion and that our own selfish purposes are what motivate us. We have to face the truth – we pretended to have global support but in fact had little all along, and we worsened that by insisting on controlling almost everything about the invasion. The price of getting out will be bearing the continued costs of economic and military support to stabilizing Iraq, while giving up American control over events and structures there: administrative, economic, political, and to some extent military.
The sooner we do so, the more likely it is that others in the world will step in and give meaningful assistance, and the longer we wait, the harder it will be to ever recover from the global perception that beneath our talk of liberation it is arrogance and rank self-interest that drive us. Relinquishing the ability to call the shots in Iraq may seem to some Americans a bitter price to pay, but the alternative, a decade of war and permanent alienation from most of the world, is far worse.
Ron Kraybill
kraybilr@emu.edu
11/12/2004
Comment by Ron Kraybill — November 15, 2004 @ 10:46 pm
I think you misjudge. This is not a popular insurgency. It will eventually fail for that reason. There is no pattern. You are seeing something that doesn’t exist. Those who escaped are being dealt with as I write. Once they are on the run, they lose their logistical support and ability to sit down and plan. If nothing else, that is a success.
Yes, we were selfish. We wanted to eliminate a threat to ourselves. We will continue to do what needs to be done–where it needs to be done. Strategically, Iraq is the ideal choice to settle in. It allowed us to remove our forces from Saudi Arabia. It puts us between Iran and Syria. It eliminated a funding source and training location.
If you have been involved in peace negotiations, I would guess you grasp how little those actually accomplish, and how quickly those deals fall apart. They are a tool for delay. Which is why we have had to return to Najaf and Fallujah. And lost more young Americans.
Comment by Bunker — November 16, 2004 @ 5:57 am