SubscribePart of my 11 years in the United States Army was spent serving in a Psychological Operations unit. The primary job of such a unit is quite simple -- use basic principles of human psychology against our enemies in order to lower or eliminate their will to fight. In other words, to destroy their morale.This is how it's possible to win and still lose. Or lose and still win, as the case may be.
How do you destroy the enemy's morale and will to fight? It's simple, really.
First, you call into question their mission. Make them question why they are fighting. Make them question whether they are doing the right thing. Soldiers unsure of their mission question their orders and hesitate to act when quick action is most necessary. In combat, you're either quick or you're dead.
Second, call into question their leadership. Make them question their commander's skill and honesty. Make them question the motives of the political figures that made the decision to go to war. Soldiers unsure of their leadership may refuse to follow their orders or take direct action against their leadership. In combat, failure to immediately follow orders usually gets soldiers killed.
Third, make them homesick. Point out how miserable they are; remind them how long they have been away from home; how much their loved ones miss them; accentuate the bad and ignore the good; tell them there is no foreseeable end in site (no, you won't be home by Christmas). Homesick and depressed soldiers are not effective soldiers. Ineffective soldiers often become dead soldiers.
Fourth, make it all about them. Point out that the war is not in their personal best interest. "Hey, you can lose an eye (or worse), doing that." This last step, converting the soldier back into the psychological equivalent of a civilian, is the most deadly. Soldiers who start thinking only of themselves stop acting as members of a team. A soldier concerned only with his own safety stops watching his buddy’s back. Unit cohesiveness breaks down. Desertions and insubordination becomes rampant. Casualties mount higher.
Conversely, the same propaganda that can destroy enemy morale can boost the morale of friendly forces, and vice-versa.
The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool, fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.Forgive me while I don't champion the second amendment for these journalists, since many of them seem to have forgotten their ethics and abandoned their training in pursuit of Pulitzers and an ego driven agenda.
She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.
But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.
She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it.
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Failures
1. Operation Iraqi Freedom in general, and the Abu Ghraib incidents in particular, have substantially increased the circumstances favorable for terrorist recruitment in the Greater Middle East and all other areas in which Muslims are a cohesive minority. This is the gravest failure of Operation Iraqi Freedom: it has directly and indirectly weakened the national security posture of the United States and the safety of its citizens. As such, Operation Iraqi Freedomhas backfired in the larger context of the Global War on Terrorism as badly as Vietnam backfired within the framework of containment policy.
2. More than any other event or circumstance in the last 55 years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has weakened the U.S.-led global alliance structure (a substantially Truman-Marshall-Acheson construct which includes the United Nations, NATO, ANZUS, and various bilateral arrangements). While a looser global alignment following the end of the cold war was inevitable, Operation Iraqi Freedom has qualitatively transformed the relationship to one of mutual suspicion and occasional hostility. These circumstances make conduct of the Global War On Terror more difficult and require the US Government to expend more political and financial capital to continue it.
3. Approximately one-half of U.S. military ground combat power is tied down for an indeterminate period against an insurgency disposing mainly of stockpiled small arms, RPGs, improvised bombs, and only an occasional guided weapon. This circumstance weakens, both materially and psychologically, the U.S. military deterrent posture in the rest of the world, and exacerbates military overstretch (c).
4. Primary rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom--weapons of mass destruction--was demonstrated by events to be erroneous or a fabrication. US Government credibility in rationalizing future preemptive wars has been diminished.
5. Secondary rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom--purported links between the Baath regime and al Qaeda--was demonstrated by events to be false. US Government credibility has been damaged among foreign publics and U.S. opinion leaders (this may be less of a psy-op failure than it appears; the bulk of the U.S. electorate continues to believe Iraq was responsible for 9/11).
6. Tertiary rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom--nationbuilding Iraq into a stable pro-western democracy--is now in the process of being compromised by events into a less democratic but more politically expedient goal.
7. Additional rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom--facilitating a resolution of the Israel-Palestine dispute settlement--was demonstrated by events to be false. On the contrary, the situation is demonstrably worse. OIF proponents also asserted that the Greater Middle East would be stabilized by U.S. occupation of Iraq; the reverse is true.
8. Sub rosa rationale offered by US Government leaders to U.S. business elites and indirectly to American consumers--that Operation Iraqi Freedom would yield a bonus of cheap, abundant oil--was demonstrated by events to be false. Additionally, the occupation is not self-financing, as was asserted before the war. Instead, $121 billion has been committed to Iraq and another $25 billion has been proposed.
...The US Government serves the national interest better by using military force to deter wars, or by using it to assist in a broad alliance, than when it attempts unilaterally to fight a determined foe on his own territory. U.S. elites are consistently misled, more than six decades later, by the myth that the United States won World War II mostly single-handed. In reality, seven-eighths of all German ground combat time throughout the war was expended against the Soviet Union. China absorbed a similar proportion of Japanese ground combat power. What the United States accomplished was essentially the deployment of its gross national product in coalition with a broad alliance to expel Axis forces from third-party territory. When U.S. leadership has forgotten this model (as in Vietnam) the results are generally unfavorable. This problem is compounded by the emergence of Fourth Generation Warfare, a historical phase shift which has caught the technocratic, process-oriented, and historically illiterate U.S. elites unprepared.
See Also
Anthony Cordesman: What is To Be Done PDF HTML
It may not be as apparent in the US as it is in the Arab world, but several weeks of travel in the region indicate that the course of the fighting in Fallujah and Najaf are perceived in much of Iraq and the Arab world as a serious US defeat. This is not simply a matter of shattering an aura of US military invincibility; it is a growing shift in political attitudes and in the prospects for political change in Iraq.
It is also all too clear that any idea the US is engaging in ''post-conflict operations'' is little more than a farce. The shock of Saddam's fall produced a brief period of near paralysis in the Iraqi opposition to the US and the Coalition. By August 2003, however, a state of low intensity conflict clearly existed in Iraq, and the level of this conflict has escalated ever since January of 2004.
In fact, this follows a pattern that makes the very term ''post-conflict operations'' a stupid and intellectually dishonest oxymoron. As we have seen in Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Cambodia, and many other cases, asymmetric wars do not really end. Nation building must take place on an armed basis without security and in the face of adaptive and innovative threats. The reality is that this is a far more difficult aspect of ''transformation'' than defeating organized military resistance, and one for which the US is not yet prepared. Senior US officials have been in a continuing state of denial about the depth of support for this conflict. They have misused public opinion polls like the Zogby and ABC polls and they have ignored the fact that the ABC poll conducted in February found that roughly two thirds of Sunnis and one third of Shi-ites opposed the US and British invasion and found it to be humiliating to Iraq.
Senior US officials have ignored the fact that roughly one-third of Sunnis and two-thirds of Shi-ites support violence against the Coalition and want the Coalition forces to leave Iraq immediately. They talk about a small minority of Iraqis because only a small minority have so far been actively violent--a reality in virtually every insurgent campaign and one that in no way is a measure of support for violence.
A year into the ''war after the war,'' far too many US officials are still in a state of denial as to the political realities in the Middle East. They do not see just how much the perceived US tilt towards Israel and Sharon alienates Iraqis and Arabs in general. They do not admit the near total failure of US information operations, and the fact that Iraqis watch hostile Arab satellite TV stations and rely on papers filled with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
They talk about ''success''in aid programs measured in terms of contracts signed, fiscal obligations, and gross measures of performance like megawatts; not about actual progress on the ground the kind that can really win hearts and minds. They cannot understand that US calls for ''liberty,'' ''democracy,'' and ''reform'' have become coupled to images of US interference in Arab regimes, the broad resentment of careless negative US references to Islam and Arab culture, and conspiracy theories about control of Iraqi oil, ''neoimperialism,'' and serving ''Zionist'' interests.
The fact these perceptions are not fair is as irrelevant as US tactical military victories that are often political defeats. The present mix of armed nation building and low intensity conflict takes place in a region shaped by such perceptions. This is why the photographic evidence of US mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is so devastating. For many in the region, it validates every criticism of the US, and vastly strengthens the hand of Islamic extremists, Sunni insurgents, Shi-ite insurgents, and hostile media and intellectuals in both the Arab world and Europe.
The time has come to face this reality. There was never a time when neoconservative fantasies about the Middle East were anything but dangerous illusions. Those fantasies have killed and wounded thousands of American and Coalition allies, and now threaten the US with a serious strategic defeat. It may not be possible to avoid some form of defeat, but the US must make every effort to do so, and this means junking the neoconservatism within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President's office, and the NSC and coming firmly to grips with reality.
Iraqis' doubts of U.S. deepen--New poll says majority wants Americans gone
Sadoun Dulame read the results of his latest poll again and again. He added up percentages, highlighted sections and scribbled notes in the margins.
No matter how he crunched the numbers, however, he found himself in the uncomfortable position this week of having to tell occupation authorities that the report they commissioned paints the bleakest picture yet of the U.S.-led coalition's reputation in Iraq. For the first time, according to Dulame's poll, a majority of Iraqis said they'd feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately.
A year ago, just 17 percent of Iraqis wanted the troops gone, according to Dulame's respected research center in Baghdad. Now, the disturbing new results mirror what most Iraqis and many international observers have said for months: Give it up. Go home. This just isn't working...
Dulame's grim poll doesn't even take in the prisoner scandal's effects. It was conducted in mid-April in seven Iraqi cities. A total of 1,600 people were interviewed, and the margin of error is 3 percentage points. The findings, which must go first to coalition authorities, have not yet been made public.
According to Dulame, director of the independent Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, prisoner abuse and other coalition missteps now are fueling a dangerous blend of Islamism and tribalism. For example, while American officials insist that only fringe elements support the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a majority of Iraqis crossed ethnic and sectarian lines to name him the second most-respected man in Iraq, according to the coalition-funded poll.
"I don't know why the (Coalition Provisional Authority) continues in these misguided decisions," Dulame said last week. "But if they pack and leave, it's a disgrace for us as Iraqis and for them as Americans. Their reputation will be destroyed in the world, and we will be delivered to the fanatics."
Occupation made world less safe, pro-war institute says
The US and British occupation of Iraq has accelerated recruitment to the ranks of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and made the world a less safe place, according to a leading London-based think-tank.
The assessment, by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), states that the occupation has become "a potent global recruitment pretext" for al-Qa'ida, which now has more than 18,000 militants ready to strike Western targets.
It claims that although half of al-Qa'ida's 30 senior leaders and up to 2,000 rank-and-file members have been killed or captured, a rump leadership is still intact and over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large, with recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq. About 1,000 al-Qa'ida supporters are believed to be active in Iraq.
From Billmon
posted by y2karl at 11:54 AM on May 29, 2004