Fighting our War(s)

Following the dismantling of Saddam’s army, the U.S.-led coalition began training and equipping a new army and police force while we began building a new government. Even under Saddam, Iraq was a fairly modern country with a mid-20th century infrastructure including a governmental infrastructure, a relatively educated population including women, and an oil-based economy that could provide resources for advancement.

Following the dismantling of Saddam’s army, the U.S.-led coalition began training and equipping a new army and police force while we began building a new government. Even under Saddam, Iraq was a fairly modern country with a mid-20th century infrastructure including a governmental infrastructure, a relatively educated population including women, and an oil-based economy that could provide resources for advancement.

Today, the “train and equip” model is operating in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Lebanon. How well does it work in countries that lack an educated population (Yemen and Afghanistan), lack financial resources (all of them), lack a strong central governing concept (Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan), lack direct Western input into their governing structure (Yemen, the PA, Lebanon and Pakistan), or lack even a shared belief that what we call “terrorists” are actually bad guys (all of them)?

The current counterinsurgency model provides millions of dollars in American military aid to the PA, Lebanon and Yemen along with American trainers, and billions of dollars to Pakistan and Afghanistan with our troops on the ground or in the air. We are training locals to kill the people we want killed-Taliban, al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. But each group we call terrorist may have a place in the framework of those countries and entities, in which case shooting them will just make them angry.

• A reasonable goal for Afghans would be to end the killing-not necessarily to build a modern state infrastructure or have clean government. Negotiating/paying off the indigenous Taliban makes sense.

• A reasonable goal for Yemen would be to get al Qaeda out of Yemen.

• Pakistan wants influence in Afghanistan, quiet at home and India at bay.

For all three, removing al Qaeda from their territory would be a plus, but one would have to assume the organization will move to some other un-governed or under-governed place such as Somalia or the Western Sahara, meaning the shift does the United States no good. We will have to kill them there or find new locals to train in counterinsurgency.

• The PA is building an army that will first kill Hamas on the West Bank with Israeli assistance) but it has no illusion of taking the fight to Hamas in Gaza. Is its goal the destruction of Israel?

• Lebanon wants quiet at home and to remain part of the “rejection front” against Israel. Hezbollah in the government and in collusion with the Lebanese Armed Forces provides that.

As an added difficulty, American and allied troops are told that NOT killing civilians is a primary goal-even at the cost of higher American casualties-in order not to “create more terrorists.” But if terrorists are created by American military activity, wouldn’t it make sense to go home? In the meantime, Reuters reports that U.S. and allied troops killed 76 percent more civilians in Pakistan in the first quarter of 2010 than the first quarter of 2009.

In 2001, President Bush said the West was at war with terrorists and the states that harbor and support them. Now we appear to have let the states off the hook-aligning ourselves with governments that may still harbor and support terrorists, but which we hope will turn and kill them given enough American money, arms, training and troop support.

We believe terrorists are in fact created NOT by American military operations, but through the longstanding and very deep network of Islamic schools, mosques and personal intervention funded by oil states including Iran and Saudi Arabia and aided by the internet and other media.

A 2003 Pentagon memo noted:

We lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The United States is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions.

• Do we need a new organization?

• How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?

• Is our current situation such that “the harder we work, the [farther behind] we get”?

• Does CIA need a new finding?

• What else should we be considering?

In 2010, we should be considering whether and how the “train and equip” model of counterinsurgency moves the United States and the West toward the goal of stability and security in poorly governed parts of the world where the distinction between the terrorists and the states that harbor and support them is less than clear.