A Formula For Failure...

News&Views
The Armchair Curmudgeon
March 26, 2007




Formula Approaches Don’t Win Wars

We are into our fifth year now and seem no closer to our objectives than we were when we set out
to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and dispose of their wicked dictator Saddam Hussein.
At the time, it was our intent to root out terrorism wherever it could find a foothold, a noble but unrealistic goal
Considering how we approached the challenge.
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But after five years, the question remains what have we accomplished.

Let’s look at the terrain. Despite our efforts, it is clear that the Tailiban have reformed and preparing for their spring offensive. Considering what’s happened throughout Europe, and most recently, in England, the forces of Al Qaeda are alive and well and raining down destruction on the West wherever they can.

Why did we fail to wipe out the terrorists?

Good questions seem to beg additional questions…

Might it be that we that we are treating Al Qaeda like any common enemy? Might it be that we are using conventional military solutions that demand a variegated response that employs all the tools accessible to a nation like the US, from diplomacy to influence peddling, to counter-terrorist tactics that work? Might it be that we didn’t listen to Sun Tsu’s advice?
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As of now, it seems that we have largely applied conventional solutions. We have not bothered to look under the tent; nor do we understand what makes our enemy tick. This is apparent listening to the discussions that reverberate around Washington these days.

As Sun Tsu, the Chinese general suggested in the Sixth Century, you cannot win in this kind of warfare unless you understand your opponent.

We have not made that kind of effort; nor are we set up to establish the framework for an antiterrorist movement that will get results. Our approaches, to date, to the challenge terrorism has been prosaic and predictable and as a result, the fores of Al Qaeda have stayed ahead of us every step of the way. To win against an unorthodox opponent, you have to be willing to apply unorthodox solutions.

Americans have not seemed to have learned that lesson.

In the Washington Post, today, Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the U>S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, seemed to offer one of the best explanations for our failing policies.

. Hoffman pointed out that China’s Sun Tsu, the great general, said that “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles…”

According to Hoffman, in five years, we have not made progress in learning that lesson. We fail to look upon the challenge as systemic and requiring a radical restructuring of the way we do things.

We have relied on only one tool in our bag of tricks and it has failed us mightily: armed might, a tactic we have used since the days of fighting the Chinese in Korea or the Viet Cong in Vietnam although we did learn to interrogate the enemy and use what we learned eventually to formulate strategy—something we have not taken advantage of in our continuing opposition to terrorism.

According to Professor Hoffman, while our current policies continue to emphasize attrition and decapitation, those strategies have “rarely worked against terrorist or insurgent forces.”

Hoffman goes on to say, “that successfully countering terrorism and insurgency cannot be an exclusively military endeavor. It requires parallel political, social, economic and ideological activities. All of these need to be integrated in a systematic approach that is operationally dynamic--able to quickly identify changes in our enemies’ tactics, targeting and recruitment patterns and to respond effectively to them.”

All told, says Hoffman, “the key to success will be to combine the most utilitarian aspects of our formidable military forces with smart, sophisticated political and psychological efforts to know our enemy much better than we do today….”

Professor Hoffman is of the opinion that America can win; however, in order to do so, we need to
deal with the primary question of identifying who our enemy is, how they think and operate and what makes them tick. Implicit in what Hoffman says that we cannot expect success until we establish the machinery and methods to answer and deal with those questions.

That kind of incisive thinking is hard to argue against. While it’s doubtful that this approach will be adopted or influence the status quo in Iraq, the formula could change the overall course of our tactics in defeating terrorism over the long term.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon