Iraq: Lessons that can be learned?
Kenneth M. Pollack's op-ed in today's New York Times (free subscription req'd), Five Ways to Win Back Iraq, is one of the few practical pieces I've read recently about how to make counterinsurgency progress in Iraq. The five ways are:
1. Think safety first. Don't chase insurgents; protect Iraqis in daily life.
2. Provide enough manpower for the job. Get American troops patrolling on foot with Iraqis.
3. Let them learn. Learning takes time, as does building command and community relationships.
4. Get beyond Baghdad. Reconstruction will likely succeed from the bottom up.
5. Buy off the Sunni sheiks. It sounds un-American, but it's a time-honored tradition in Iraq.
What I like about these suggestions is that they provoke me to think. I think about our history in Vietnam and the British history in Ireland, and what those experiences can teach. I think about how to change the current cat and mouse game that seems to be in a time loop. I think about what it takes to actually learn from the past.
Pollack concludes that "No matter what one thinks of the invasion, it is clearly in our best interest, to say nothing of the Arab world's, that we succeed in Iraq. To do so, we will have to apply some lessons we learned from bitter history." I agree, but until our behaviors and approaches actually change, these will remain lessons that can be learned.
1. Think safety first. Don't chase insurgents; protect Iraqis in daily life.
2. Provide enough manpower for the job. Get American troops patrolling on foot with Iraqis.
3. Let them learn. Learning takes time, as does building command and community relationships.
4. Get beyond Baghdad. Reconstruction will likely succeed from the bottom up.
5. Buy off the Sunni sheiks. It sounds un-American, but it's a time-honored tradition in Iraq.
What I like about these suggestions is that they provoke me to think. I think about our history in Vietnam and the British history in Ireland, and what those experiences can teach. I think about how to change the current cat and mouse game that seems to be in a time loop. I think about what it takes to actually learn from the past.
Pollack concludes that "No matter what one thinks of the invasion, it is clearly in our best interest, to say nothing of the Arab world's, that we succeed in Iraq. To do so, we will have to apply some lessons we learned from bitter history." I agree, but until our behaviors and approaches actually change, these will remain lessons that can be learned.
Technorati Tags: Iraq
posted by Bill Anderson at
8:59 AM
1 Comments:
On point #5, "buy off the .. Sheiks", this is exactly one of the major points Michael Sheuer makes as "Anonymous", the author of "Imperial Hubris". We could have chosen another path in Afghanistan. Scheuer suggests that we could have "bought off the Mullah's" as an alternative to sending in the troops.
The only good thing about this suggestion, regarding Iraq, is that Osama's plan "Al Queda's Hard Drive", in The Atlantic, was to tie us down in Afghanistan. Presumably, this would be our choice, not his, if we buy off the sheiks in Iraq!
At the risk of vanishing in the Cartesian sense, "I think not!"
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