Things we’ve learned from the Iraq War (II)
March 20th, 2008, 2:57 pm · Post a Comment · posted by fsherman
The second thing we’ve learned is that insurgents—or guerilla fighters, as they used to be called—are darn hard to stop.
History should have already taught us that: It took three years of bloody, brutal fighting to put down the resistance movement in the Philippines after we took the islands from Spain. And in Vietnam, the insurgents won, even though, as has often been said, our forces won every pitched battle. So how do we do better next time?
A large part of that is tactics and strategy, from what I’ve read, but there’s also a bigger question: Should we be preparing to fight more of these wars?
An article in Christian Science Monitor today, for instance, discusses a proposal to create a 20,000 person corps of “combat advisers” to train foreign troops in counterinsurgency, and by so doing, also win “hearts and minds” to our side.
The article discusses the merits, but several military officers interviewed argue this is making the classic military mistake of assuming the next war you fight will be just like the last one: What if we pour our resources into fighting counter-insurgencies and terrorist campaigns and we’re faced with a conventional war next time?
Then again, what if it is another counter-insurgency next time?
I’m reminded of the 2002 war games in which the “enemy” army defeated the superior US forces at first by using boobytraps, suicide attacks, hand-delivering all messages so there was nothing to eavesdrop on–after which the rules were readjusted, or so one of the officers involved says, to make sure the US won.
It’s true, we don’t know what war we’re going to face next. So how do we prepare?
