Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute on Turning Point" in the War in Iraq: But Which Way Is It Turning?"
As Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. general in Iraq, unleashed a more aggressive plan to pulverize the intensifying insurgency, he declared that the war was at a turning point and was breaking America’s way. The divergence of that statement from reality is much like a blind man with an assault rifle insisting that he has killed all the gophers under his lawn.
Sanchez and the administration he serves are blind both literally and figuratively. American intelligence is so limited in Iraq that U.S. forces aren’t even sure who they are fighting and how organized they are. Sun Tzu, one of history’s most respected authorities on war, going back to the 5th Century B.C., believed that accurate intelligence on the enemy was the key to victory in any war. By ratcheting up the level of violence without having good intelligence, the Bush administration is making a horrendous mistake and is playing into the hands of the insurgents. Frequently, in guerrilla war, the insurgents attempt to provoke the stronger party into an excessively violent overreaction, thus shifting all-important popular opinion in the conflict zone from the occupiers to the guerrillas. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong successfully pursued that strategy in the Vietnam War and the warlord Muhammad Aidid did so during the U.S. intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s. In the latter case, after an instance in which the U.S. military used excessive force, Somali public opinion rapidly turned from supporting the United States to supporting Aidid. Similarly, in Iraq, more aggressive U.S. tactics without good intelligence will likely lead to a surge in Iraqi civilian deaths and thus could rapidly exacerbate hostility in an Iraqi population already disgruntled with the American occupation
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This entry also posted at Stand Down.