ISIS Threat Is 'Extremely Worrying' Says Counter-Insurgency Expert

Max Boot is a neo-con propagandist. He advocated for invading Iraq, and more recently advocated for getting involved in Syria just so we can practice UW. Great advice all the way around wouldn't you say?

LTG Cleveland brings up an important ethical point that America frequently wrestles with, and that is what is our responsibility when we "break it?" I would offer that COIN and nation building are not the same thing. You can do COIN without nation building and vice versa (especially if there is no insurgency). We artificially conflate the two. There are other times when we need to both simultaneously, what concerns me is we that we assume it is a law that we must do both regardless of the circumstances. In Iraq we needed to build, but first we needed to defeat the insurgency. Most Americans are humanitarians, to include myself, but during combat operations you have to be sufficiently ruthless to compel the adversary to your will. Failure to do so, is allowing the fighting to drag on and on as thousands die, businesses falter, kids no longer go to school, social values are perverted, and society basically becomes militarized because we failed to suppress the insurgency due blind faith in our assumption that if we just gave them some economic assistance they would quit fighting. This could be perceived as criminal negligence on our part as an occupying power.

Furthermore, I'm not convinced we broke Iraq with our initial invasion, but we broke it with our 10 plus years of economic sanctions. If we break Iran with sanctions are we obligated to fix it? I spoke to several educated Iraqis in 2003, and they said the sanctions were devastating for the average Iraqi, not Saddam, and it changed their society over time. Maybe, just maybe, if we didn't apply cowardly sanctions our power transition in Iraq would have went much better. Most of our attacks were relatively surgical, so we sure as heck didn't devastate their economy with our initial combat operations. Just food for thought for future conflicts.

We can only speculate on the probable outcome of alternative strategies. We opened Pandora's box, and many people warned us of the probable outcome before hand, so this is not a hindsight is 20/20 thing to suggest we should have known better. If we going to commit to regime change, then we need to commit all the way. Currently due to our technological superiority, the military aspect of that is relatively easy. Setting conditions for a stable and secure environment is far from easy, and it involves more than throwing millions of dollars at economic development, that for the most part failed. As Bob points out repeatedly, what form of government will be accepted by the people? If we did something else politically (maybe divided the country) would have it been easier to stabilize?

LTG Cleveland is right, running out is morally bankrupt, but running the campaign like we did because we clung to the myths in our COIN doctrine was also morally bankrupt. We owe the future generation of soldiers and marines an honest assessment of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we can prepare them for the future. There will be future operations that are similar in the future, even if we desire to avoid them. Would you really want your sons to repeat the mistakes we made? Making mistakes is part of war, failing to learn from them is simply hubris on our part.

<blockquote>Now he arguing that we left troops in Germany and Japan long after the war, so we should have done the same in Iraq as though that is a proper analogy for comparative analysis. In the book "Thinking in Time" its authors encourage the use of historical analogies, but warn against clinging to them if you identify why your current situation is different.</blockquote>

I would make the same argument about not clinging to analogies that contrast military alternatives such as our efforts in the Philippines, El Salvador, and Columbia since all had existing governments, common religions and ethnicities (like Japan and Germany) except a minority of Muslims in the Philippines, and smaller affected areas except Columbia. All had large existing military and police forces.

However, I’ve also heard PM Netanyahu make the argument that Israel should be allowed to keep troops in the West Bank even if parts became independent because of the U.S. occupation of Japan and Germany. However, the largest discrepancy in U.S. diplomatic logic is our insistence that Israel should be divided into two states while such divisions into smaller states were never seriously considered for Iraq and Afghanistan despite religious and ethnic divides and our ability to redraw colonial boundaries while still fully in control.

<blockquote>In Iraq, the imposed political system was not sustainable. Unlike WWII, we didn't have the moral authority to crush the resistance, so that wasn't an option. We need to honestly reassess the real lessons of the war. Your proposal that we just needed to stay there for another generation is simply not feasible; therefore, it is not a viable approach.</blockquote>

And again you never heard back then any diplomatic option seriously considering autonomous Kurd and Sunni areas separate from majority Shiites which could have greatly reduced tensions and made our COIN efforts easier. We could have divided oil revenue, established separate military and police forces as the peshmerga did on their own, and held separate elections. In Afghanistan, a southern and eastern area of Afghanistan near Quetta and the Haqqanis could have become Pashtunistan with Kandahar as capitol, while the Hazaras had their own central state and other northern alliance ethnicities creating a new state to the northeast, north and west with Kabul as capitol. If necessary Kabul could have been divided as Berlin was with T barriers. Ethnic cleansing and Sunni fleeing pretty much consolidated Baghdad under Shiite control all on its own.

Given such a diplomatic alternative we never would have needed to stay a generation or even a decade because the underlying problem would have been largely solved. When you see Sunnis now establishing an extremist Sunni Caliphate by force, it is a direct reflection of Sunni unhappiness with governance by Shiites in Iraq and Alawites and associates in Syria. If we had separated the different Iraqi parties under separate governance when we had the chance ISIS probably would not exist. We still have opportunities for separate areas of Syria (and Iraq if Abadi cannot consolidate power) starting with the Kurds given greater military and diplomatic efforts to pressure Assad and Abadi to accept smaller territories for their people. I would argue that with a separate Sunni state, an internal Sunni Awakening would eventually toss out ISIS leadership.

<blockquote>They are losing that grip even with Iran's help, which indicates there are powerful players on both sides supporting the fight. It really has little to do with local politics, it is regional politics that extend well beyond the borders of Iraq, so the attempt to win and hearts and minds locally and pretend we were fighting in Malaya was a fool's errand.</blockquote>

It is regional with external players getting involved to protect interests of respective Sunnis and Shiites. If they had separate states in Syria and Iraq, external influence would be limited to those areas with less incentive to fight one another.

<blockquote>We were being played by all sides, and we playing all sides against each other.</blockquote> LTG McMaster in one of the AUSA forums mentioned that the police force of Kandahar had been infiltrated by Taliban insurgents and the interior ministry by Iranian influences. However, if an independent Pashtunistan had existed for Pashtuns desiring greater Sharia law, it would not have been a problem having Pakistan sanctuary influence inside Afghanistan provided a serious defense of Kabul and the northeast continued for more moderate Pashtuns and other ethnicities. Can anyone provide a convincing argument why areas of Iraq and Syria should not be a Sunni and Kurdish state? I realize the Turk have an issue with the Kurds but they also hate Assad and want to protect the Sunnis. Provide the Sunnis a true Sunni state and the moderates will solve the extremist problem. If not we “break it” to restore moderate influence providing aid to the moderates.

I use that term "break it" because LTG Cleveland mentioned in the same AUSA forum that some say regarding places like Afghanistan and Iraq that we should “break this thing and let <strong>them</strong> (my emphasis) rebuild it and if they don’t do it right we will come back and break it again.” He also mentioned that constitutes moral bankruptcy. He and Max Boot mentioned the analogy of a dog chasing a car and what will happen if the dog actually catches it. All mentioned that despite all the talk of COIN not working, there must be some means of restoring stability or else we are exhibiting moral bankruptcy and violating Colin Powell’s tenet of if you “break it you bought it.”

<blockquote>Winning an insurgency is not based on doing the same ole dumb crap for another 10 years and hoping it will work if we just keep at it (sort of the same myth that John attacked in his book, but now he is embracing it), it is based on a holistic strategy with "realistic" ends. Furthermore, and most importantly, if the imposed political solution is unsustainable, then there is nothing the military can do to achieve a sustainable victory other than thoroughly crush the resistance. </blockquote>

Max Boot in the AUSA forum was no “diplomat” yet he mentioned that through his historical studies and related book that there is no alternative to nation-building and good governance, but is he right? Are LTGs Cleveland and McMaster, John Nagl, and Max Boot strange bedfellows in long term COIN and nation-building? I don’t think so given how little the new AOC talks about Stability Operations and COIN, yet "Wide Area Security" is an applicable AOC term and "Consolidating Gains" likewise applies. Several mentioned what happens when the dog catches the car? Do we continue to just break it and leave like Libya and our current air efforts in Syria? A female Catholic NGO worker and Notre Dame Economics professor of all people in the same AUSA forum told the group about meeting a popular figure in the course of her NGO work in Lebanon who turned out to be a key Hezbollah leader helping local people so apparently <strong>somebody</strong> is making COIN work over the long term.

With all this talk about 3-D printing and border security, what would happen if we created means of cranking out hard plastic fencing to separate parties in cities and rural areas. We did it with T barriers but those are heavy and we primarily need barriers to canalize vehicles keeping them on main roads and protecting/restricting like people in their like neighborhoods and towns. If a mobile factory and wheeled trailer or flatrack means existed to build such fencing with lighter liquid or solid plastic brought to the 3-D printer by vehicles and aircraft, the National Guard could construct and monitor U.S. border fencing and in doing so become the experts for doing the same during Stability Operations. Fencing thousands of miles in the U.S. and monitoring fencing with sensors in the fence and on poles would be good practice. Such barriers worked for the Israelis and ourselves in Iraq in admittedly smaller areas. But many conflict urban areas and rural roadways (at least for a few canalizing miles) with checkpoints could be of similar benefit with size comparable to the Gaza Strip and in some cases as large as the West Bank.

With security established via fencing and National Guard forces who deploy less often than active duty units, Stability Operations could continue for longer terms. Perhaps Stability Operations would be expedited given the civil skills of reserve component Soldiers/Marines in areas such as medicine and policing. Aid more easily could be provided by NGOs and our own military without the external influences trying to destroy infrastructure as fast as we build it. And let's hope that most future areas we try to rebuild won't be as poor, ungoverned, or bombed-out and distant from sea supply as Afghanistan and Iraq. COIN and nation-building need not be dirty words provided we set the conditions for their effectiveness by providing homegrown governance in newly created states of like peoples and religions.