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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Winning In Iraq: The Oil Spot Strategy |
| 2005-08-28 |
| Andrew Krepinevich is a careful, scholarly man. A graduate of West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel, his book, "The Army and Vietnam," is a classic on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare. Krepinevich has now published an essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "How to Win in Iraq," in which he proposes a strategy. The article is already a phenomenon among the people running this war, generating discussion in the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the American Embassy in Baghdad and the office of the vice president. Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your heavy-handed raids. Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement. Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement. Once you've secured a town or city, you throw in all the economic and political resources you have to make that place grow. The locals see the benefits of working with you. Your own troops and the folks back home watching on TV can see concrete signs of progress in these newly regenerated neighborhoods. You mix your troops in with indigenous security forces, and through intimate contact with the locals you begin to even out the intelligence advantage that otherwise goes to the insurgents. |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #4 Rather than focusing on killing insurgents, they should concentrate on providing security and opportunity to the Iraqi people, thereby denying insurgents the popular support they need. Wrong. It's not 'either/or', it's 'do both'. And it's working. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2005-08-28 08:54 |
| #3 This was known as the "enclave strategy" in Vietnam. Here is a good article. Of course, big chunks of Iraq already are enclaves. Unfortunately, they are all Shiite or Kurdish areas. To run with Krepinevich's analogy, will a Shiite oil spot spread into a Sunni zone or are they immiscible? I think also that Fallujah is a good example of what happens when you declare an area to be outside the enclave. I honestly think that you have to create safe areas and keep the bad guys rocking back on their heels. To fail to do the former would mean giving up the strategic intiative. To fail to do the latter would entail giving up the tactical initiative. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2005-08-28 01:05 |
| #2 Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement. All you need is a corps of telepaths to distinguish between civilians you're trying to protect and "insurgents". |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2005-08-28 01:00 |
| #1 This is the "carrot" side of the argument. The "stick" side are the less cooperative towns where you intentionally do not form a presence. The bad guyz, who are dispersed, concentrate to fill the vacuum, which doubly punishes the place. First in the dictatorship of the villains, then when the US and Iraqi forces come to root them out. It also simplifies our task immeasureably to have identifyable targets en masse, instead of individuals blending in with the crowd of civilians. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-08-28 00:13 |