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| Iraq |
| How to Win in Iraq—and How to Lose |
| 2007-07-18 |
| This is a long read -- but a good history lesson, and gives more depth to the Peterus Plan -- and of course, as we all know, the military wins, and the Loud Left leads countries down the path of defeat. To the student of counterinsurgency warfare, the war in Iraq has reached a critical but dismally familiar stage. Most wars are lost, not won. To most Americans, the nearest example of a failed war is Vietnam. As in Iraq today, we came up against a guerrilla-type insurrectionary force led by ideological extremists; in the end, we were forced to withdraw and surrender the country of South Vietnam to the aggressors. But an even more striking parallel to our present situation exists in the French experience in Algeria almost exactly 50 years ago. There, French troops and a beleaguered local government faced an insurgency mounted by Muslim extremists who had managed to gain the upper hand. In response, the leadership of the French army had to figure out, almost from scratch, how to fight unconventional wars of this kind—with results that have influenced the thinking of counterinsurgency experts ever since. The armed insurrection against French rule in Algeria began in November 1954. The insurgent force, the National Liberation Front (FLN), was a direct prototype of today’s al Qaeda and the insurgent forces in Iraq. Its leaders were motivated less by nationalism than by virulent anti-Western (and, not incidentally, anti-Jewish) ideologies. Their goal was not military victory, which they knew was impossible in the face of French conventional force. Instead, they set out to provoke reprisals against Muslims by Algeria’s whites in order to trigger an all-out civil war. To this end they employed terror bombings, torture, and the savage murder of Muslim moderates and Algeria’s professional class. “One corpse in a suit,” an FLN leader was quoted as saying, “is worth twenty in uniform.” All the while, the main audience they were trying to reach and influence was not in Algeria; it was in France itself. As the American counterinsurgency expert Bruce Hoffman has written, the Algerian rebels “were counting on the fatigue and disenchantment of the French to help turn the tide if the war lasted long enough.” It was a brilliant plan. Like American troops in Iraq today, French troops in Algeria found themselves reacting to one crisis after another, while a succession of commanders, strategies, and resources was rotated into the effort in piecemeal fashion. Even with 140,000 soldiers on the ground, in a country with less than half the population of Iraq in 2007, the French government found itself helpless to reverse the course of events. The rapidly deteriorating situation prompted Algeria’s white population to turn against its government. By late 1956, when terror bombings in the capital city of Algiers killed 49 people and maimed many more, the overstressed, overstretched French police and army were ready to throw in the towel. But on August 1, 1956, a French lieutenant colonel of Tunisian descent named David Galula had taken command of the mountainous and rebel-infested Aissa Mimoun area of Kabylia. To the FLN’s unconventional mode of warfare, Galula responded with unconventional methods of his own. These proved so successful so quickly that they were soon adopted by French commanders in other parts of Algeria. As early as January 1957, French General Jacques Massu and intelligence chief Roger Trinquier were ready to apply some of Galula’s techniques to the urban environment of the capital, Algiers. After weeks of hard fighting, Massu and his paratroopers broke the back of the insurgency in the city, installing a block-by-block intelligence network that kept the FLN on the run and encouraged moderate Muslims to step forward. Indeed, the 1957 battle for Algiers marked a crucial turning point in the fight against the FLN. By 1959, Galula’s principles had been extended across Algeria. Some 600 “specialized administrative sections” were set up, each headed by army officers to oversee civil as well as military affairs. The new structure finally allowed the French army to use effectively its superior numbers (including 150,000 loyal native troops, more than a third of the total) and conventional military hardware. Helping to put the guerrillas on the defensive were such tactics as the division of troops into “static” and “mobile” units to deal with terrorist outbreaks; the use of helicopters for counterinsurgency operations; and construction of a 200-mile, eight-foot-high electric fence (the so-called Morice Line), which shut down the FLN’s sources of support from neighboring Tunisia. By January 1960, the war that many had considered lost three years earlier was virtually won. Click to read the entire article -- it's nothing you don't already know, and maybe, it depresses me even more, after the night of the Defeatathron. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #4 Here is my latest letter that I am mailing to fence sitters in Congress, Blue Dog Dems and Rhinos. I know you can do better, SO PLEASE send the message... The USA is in a jam and we need to pull together. The current crop of Congressional democrats wouldn't have had the stamina to make it across the Atlantic Ocean in the 1600-1700s. The republicans haven't been much better... *Today* Global al-Qaeda and it's Baathist and ME siblings, Hezbollah, Hamass, the Saddam Fedayeen etc. are attacking us and our interests in Iraq and around the World. These Muslim extremist groups are religious fanatics and it would be National Suicide for America to run away from them ANYWHERE. Our sworn enemies who attacked us on 9/11 AND BEFORE, are in a MEAT GRINDER of OUR CHOOSING in Iraq, which is killing them in record numbers, AND providing our Intel folks with golden information on their networks. Al Qaeda and all Muslim Terrorists would LOVE nothing better than for America to retreat and ditch the mission in Iraq. Retreat will GIVE the most vicious types of Global Terrorists, a perfect recruiting tool! If we Retreat it will be our Defeat! Sincerely yours, |
| Posted by: RD 2007-07-18 23:22 |
| #3 David Galula's book Pacification of Algeria can be downloaded by going to Wikipedia and plugging his name into the search function and then clicking on Pacification of Algeria which will take you to the Rand Corporation website. It is downloadable as a pdf document. The war is won or lost at home. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress. —Mark Twain |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-07-18 18:43 |
| #2 People would do well to read the phone book instead of watching CNN. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-07-18 17:50 |
| #1 Ecellent read. People would do well to read this article instead of watcing CNN. |
| Posted by: Army Life 2007-07-18 17:31 |