The Americans Still Don't Get It

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The Americans Still Don't Get It

By John Damien

04/17/07 "ICH " --- - The surge of stupidity in Baghdad continues with predictable results. Lots of casualties, a displacement of violence to the outskirts of the capital, no improvement in the security situation. If anything, the situation has deteriorated even more quickly in the last month than before. The signal event was last week's Green Zone bombing. If there was any lingering doubt, that bombing clarified the situation; the US controls nothing in Iraq.

The surge isn't going to work because it was wrong to begin with. The first rule for an occupier fighting an insurgency is that you can't win by killing insurgents. Killing insurgents is easy and makes it feel like you are doing something, but its a trap. Since the occupiers can't tell the difference between the insurgents and their neighbors, there is a lot of collateral damage. That collateral damage breeds opposition, polarization and more insurgents. That's why the first rule for resiting an occupation is to provoke the occupier. The ignorance of American soldiers, especially their total lack of ability to communicate in Arabic, makes this task easier.

The way to defeat insurgents is not by killing them but by starving them. They cannot exist without arms, resources, community support and safe hiding places. Starve them of these and they wither. Of course addressing these types of factors tends to build a more efficient and relevant central government. Most people will choose a competent government they don't like over the chaos of a guerilla war no matter how much they agree with the guerillas. But occupiers rarely want to build a competent local government. They want puppets who take orders. The evident illegitimacy of such regimes helps fuel the resentment of the otherwise non-ideological population.

In Iraq, the illegitimacy of the central government is magnified by the obvious fact that various Shia political parties and their militias have taken over whole ministries. For a Sunni in Anbar Province to view the central government as anything but a mortal danger would be irrational. The central government is run by people on the other side of the civil war. They use the cover of government and the support of the US to kill Sunnis. The government can't control the militias because the government is the militias.

This crystal clear central fact is the one thing the US military, political and media have collectively, almost pathologically, denied. Its not just George Bush who lives in a bubble. The rest of America does too. Opposition to the war in America is based on its obvious failure. “Nice try, but it didn't work. Let's get out.” But it wasn't a nice try. It could never have worked. The war didn't fail because of George Bush's incompetence. It failed because it was criminal and stupid to begin with. It failed because the US did not learn anything from its defeat in Vietnam. Or its defeat in Lebanon. Or its defeat in Somalia. In each case, the US was defeated by smarter, more capable and more motivated enemies who attacked the lumbering giant in political weak spots.

And so, the surge will fail. The surge is part of the problem, not part of the solution. There is no way to “win” militarily. This is a political struggle and it will have a political solution. Militarizing the struggle only makes things worse. As long as the US resists this truth, the Iraq catastrophe will continue. As long as this otherwise great country continues to make the same, sad mistakes, innocent people will continue to die and Americans will wonder why they are hated.

John Damien lives in Toronto and can be reached at john.damien@rogers.com

cheney doesn't get it. mccain doesn't get it.

I think most Americans get it.