After Iraq, Choose A Different Strategy

By Cernig

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings picks up on the essay by Lt. Col Yingling I wrote about last night and makes some great points. I'm especially taken by Jim's neat explanation of one of Yingling's errors.

The simple fact is that nobody can make the US into their vassal via insurgency warfare. The US can lose in Iraq. (The US has, indeed, already done so.) It can lose in Afghanistan. It can suffer attacks and casualties from acts of terror at home. But no insurgency can establish suzerainty over the United States.

This I think is the issue that Yingling and the rest of the Army’s “counterinsurgency insurgents” avoid. Insurgency can’t pose an existential threat to the country. Is there a single instance of insurgency warfare conquering foreign territory? Even if you consider South Vietnam and North Vietnam to have really been separate countries, it was, as certain hawks never tire of pointing out, Hanoi’s regular Army that conquered the South. The FLN could kick France out of Algeria, but it could never rule France. Hezbollah drove Israel out of Lebanon in the 1990s using guerrilla warfare. It couldn’t use the same tactics to drive Israel out of Galilee. Insurgencies can prevent foreign or local governments from consolidating control over the insurgents’ “own” territory. Guerrilla movements that get big enough have been able to take power in their own countries.

...By and large, a country like the United States only needs to commit to an ongoing posture of counterinsurgency if it is also committed to serial military domination of foreign populations. In fact, the United States is currently so committed, on a bipartisan basis. But that’s an unwise and immoral posture that will lead to national ruin in the medium to long term. The Iraq defeat offers one of those rare moments for real national reappraisal, an openness to genuine reform. Rather than work at getting better at executing an unwise and immoral grand strategy, let’s choose a different one.

Read the whole thing. Jim also has some sense about Yingling's ideas for Congressional oversight.