Insurgency Strategy for Fighting Superpowers

In a few weeks, there will be almost 200,000 battle-hardened, elite, American troops in Iraq-each and every one trained in counter-insurgency operations. They will be supported by almost 50,000 US Navy and Air Force personnel stationed in the Persian Gulf, and ready to bring 300-500 American combat aircraft into action at a moment’s notice. In addition to this overwhelming combat power, the Iraqi Security Forces can field between 350-450,000 people ranging in capability from desert border patrol forces to extremely experienced and battle-proven counter-insurgency special forces. Other Coalition forces in Iraq add to the 700,000 with yet tens of thousands more troops.

Facing this massive counter-insurgency force are an estimated 30-60,000 insurgents.  Besides being outnumbered 10:1 or 20:1, the insurgents are ill-equipped, ill-trained, their command and communication structure is intricate, but to describe it as fragmented and disconnected is a gross understatement.  They have no air support.  They have no naval support.  Their supplies are literally scrounged, dug up from small caches left as Saddam’s regime fled to Syria in 2003, and smuggled in from Iran and Syria.

The insurgency is compromised of 10-20 different groups who often fight each other more than they fight Iraqi, American, and Coalition forces.  Of the 10-20 different insurgent groups, there are four different support elements that are needed for the insurgency to survive:

1. Remnants of Saddam’s regime that fled to Syria in 2003
2. Al Queda
3. Iranian Pasadran, Revolutionary Guards, and proxy terrorist groups
4. Syrian Intelligence and their proxy terrorist groups

What military strategy can a force so outnumbered, outgunned, out-trained, and disorganized use to defeat the massive power of the combined and integrated Coalition, Iraqi, and American forces?

Do the insurgents plan to surround a force 20x their size, and then crush it?

Do the insurgents plan to cut off supplies and starve their enemy (us) into submission?

Do the insurgents plan to drive the US Marines into the sea?

Do the insurgents plan to kill off every single American, Iraqi, and Coalition soldier?

None of those plans are viable strategies for the insurgents.

They cannot win a military battle, they have not won a single military battle, and so we must ask, how do they plan to force American generals to give the order to leave Iraq?

Put simply, there is no military situation in which American and Coalition generals are not going to order a retreat unless they themselves are ordered by their superiors.  This is obvious to anyone and everyone including the insurgents, so clearly insurgent strategy is not aimed at a military victory, or at a military decision to leave.

If the presence of American and Coalition forces in Iraq is not decided in battle, and not decided by the battlefield commanders, but rather by their superiors, then what can the insurgents do to make the battlefield commanders’ superiors order a rout from Iraq?

The superiors (who decide the presence of anti-insurgency forces in Iraq) are civilian leaders.  They are politicians.  How does anyone get a politician to do something?

A politician can be bought, but the price they accept must be larger than the price in political capital that they spend, and so no political leader who has tied his horse to Iraq is going to be bought off by a price that a ragtag group of insurgents can afford.

A politician can be forced, but they can only be forced to take action if those who put the politician in power demand action to a degree where it is more costly in political capital to stay, than it is to order the retreat.

It is not the troops who will runaway from Iraq.

It is not the generals who will order a retreat from Iraq.

It is not even the politicians who give orders to the generals who order the retreat from Iraq.

WE will order our own defeat in Iraq.

Americans can either support the war, or support/accept defeat.  Whichever we want more, is what we will demand, and our subordinate politicians will acquiesce to the will of the people.  They are always far too happy to accommodate their voters, supporters, and financial donors, and they will bend whichever way the wind is blowing; whichever way we demand.

If the American people realize that defeat in Iraq is far more dangerous and devastating than the status quo, then perhaps the American people will chose to support success in Iraq.  However, if the American people are convinced that defeat is acceptable and inconsequential, or that the consequences of defeat are less than the status quo, then the removal of forces will be demanded by the people, of the politicians who will order the generals to order the troops to runaway-err, I mean…”redeploy.”

So it is that the insurgents aim to shift the support of the American people from support for success and victory to accepting defeat.  They do this not by attacking Americans, but by providing political capital to politicians, pundits, policy makers, and policy shapers.  By making it so that those people have more to gain by an American defeat than they do by an American victory, the insurgents manage to impose their will and compel others to drive the American and Coalition forces from Iraq.  It is an inescapable truth that opposition to the war cannot be paired with support for victory; wanting America to win in Iraq.

In the past, there was a third way, the desire for a different path toward success and victory in Iraq.  One could thus oppose the war on numerous levels, but instead of accepting defeat, those same opponents of the war could instead demand that the war be fought differently.  Lacking the promised “New Direction In Iraq” plan that the Democrats pandered for years, there is no longer a way to oppose the war and want America to win at the same time.  It’s either the Bush Plan, or the insurgent plan; either American victory, or demanding defeat per the insurgent’s only strategy.

The only strategy they can maintain is to target America’s weakest link, our hope and kindness.  We hope for easier solutions, and we seek kindness over suicide killings.  Show us a path to that peace, and we prefer it to war.  The insurgents are doing just that.  They are constantly promoting the idea (through videos, fax, press release, internet chats, websites, even their own TV stations), that if Americans just sued for peace and accepted defeat…all will be well.  Some politicians, pundits, policy makers, and policy shapers promote the same idea-often for their own different reasons and/or excuses, but why they do it is irrelevant to the fact that they do it; they parrot the enemy’s objective instead of America’s.

America MUST have a secure and stable Iraq before her forces can come home, or history demonstrates very clearly that chaos will ensue, we will be targeted for our national cowardice, and a third invasion will be necessary-and far more expensive in blood and treasure.

Insurgents MUST convince the American people to demand that American forces retreat from Iraq, and any effort to promote that idea over the needs and objective of the United States is in its effect support of the terrorists’ cause, objective, strategy, and implementation of that strategy.

This is the insurgent strategy that defeated the British Empire twice in Afghanistan.  It is the insurgent strategy that drove the civilized world from Lebanon in the 1980’s.  It is the insurgent strategy that defeated the Soviet Superpower in Afghanistan.  It is the insurgent strategy that the North Vietnamese used to end the American presence in Vietnam.  It is the insurgent strategy in Iraq.  It’s why terrorist propaganda videos and other PR efforts constantly speak to the American people, and not to the morale and resolve of the American forces.

American soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines do not lack resolve-certainly not when they outnumber the enemy 200:1 and have massive military advantages in every possible manner.

Politicians resolve changes with each poll of the American people.

It is the American people who lack resolve-who are deciding whether or not to succeed in Iraq or accept defeat.