Mosques, Snipers and Rules of Engagement
BY Herschel Smith
17 years, 4 months ago
Michael Totten is in Baghdad, and while his (most recent) entire report is both interesting and highly worth reading, I want to focus in on the following words:
“They have a little bunker up there,
On August 2, 2007 at 5:37 am, KnightHawk said:
Herschel,
I read the same comment by gifted (and followed you comment back here) however when you say this:
“Lastly, even if “Gifted
On August 2, 2007 at 5:40 am, KnightHawk said:
Opps, should be “^There will be and should be exceptions…”
On August 2, 2007 at 11:21 am, Herschel Smith said:
That paragraph wasn’t meant to imply that preventing ISF from assaulting a Mosque was the position that “Gifted” would advocate. I don’t know what position he would advocate on that question.
I concur that it would be best to leave the Mosques to the ISF, but the problem is that there are plenty of ISF around, and Mosque problems still remain.
This really is a huge issue and we need a national conversation on the nature of counterinsurgency, why we would wage it, should we wage it, how we wage it, and whether we support such a thing as national policy.
Right now the only ones seriously discussing the issue are in the professional counterinsurgency community. The public, generally speaking, is absent from the discussion. This is a shame, because the public thinks that we are in a “war.”
The professional community would probably say something like “Gifted” would say. The solution they would profer would be something like “we want the population to remove the sniper domicile themselves due to our nonkinetic operations” (WHAM, winning hearts and minds). It is counterproductive to take out the snipers and yet create two or three more insurgents in his place because we have infuriated the locals by “desecrating” their place of worship (forget that the desecration began when the sniper was allowed in). Or so the thinking goes.
This sounds erudite, doesn’t it? Unintended consequences, and so forth. But I think the issue runs far deeper and is more complicated than that. Again, I recommend that you go back and watch the YouTube video I link up from a previous post where there is robust combat directed against a minaret by Marines in Fallujah. I simply cannot tell you how I know this to be true, but the soft “cordon and knock” approach to COIN was not followed in Anbar by the Marines. And if they took rounds from a Mosque, they sent M1A1 rounds back at the Mosque. Anbar is far better off than Baghdad today. This fact warrants some serious reflection.
I also don’t buy into the notion of an insurgent for an insurgent. For instance, if the sniper is an ex-special forces Iraqi who has killed twenty Marines and you take him out by combat action directed at a Mosque, does it really matter if you replace him with two more insurgents if they are inexperienced, untrained and likely to give up and go home after their rage diminishes? It is a pretty safe bet that guys shooting from Mosques are hard core.
As long as rounds are being sent down range by either Marines or insurgents, security is absent. Mothers don’t like to see gunfire while their children are trying to play and they are trying to find vegetables to eat for dinner. I suppose the best way of saying it comes from an article today, URL –>
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/permission_to_win_in_iraq.html
“So far as I can make out — I am not writing from Iraq, but I do make a splendid effort to follow the plot there — the Americans are finally doing what they should have been doing all along. They are taking the battle to the Islamist enemy, or rather, enemies, both Shia and Sunni. They are enlisting the help of tribal lords and other local allies against these enemies, de-emphasizing the grand “Marshall Plan” giveaways, and re-emphasizing small, visible, unbureaucratic improvements on that local scale. They have become less timid about inspections and searches, and thus have taken bigger risks of offending people, in the knowledge that providing better security is the only thing that will get them loved. They not only have more men now in theatre, but are using more proportionally up front and fewer in the rear. They are patrolling frontiers more pro-actively, and turning no blind eyes to suspicious incursions. By using different techniques in different districts, they are also breaking the enemy’s ability to camouflage.”
As for the professional counterinsurgency community? Well, some of they would claim that when we wage a COIN campaign we should simply understand the nature of it and be willing to take casualties and place ourselves in higher risk situations (thereby showing the population that we care) in order to WHAM. And in the mean time? Well, we suffer losses due to snipers, because we don’t want to offend the population by going into Mosques.
So there you have it in brief outline (I know that I simply the issues somewhat for public consumption). This is a conversation that needs to happen on a national scale before we ever attempt to wage a COIN campaign again. The difference between this one and any previous one is religion, and I don’t care how that strikes anyone. It is the truth.
In previous insurgencies we haven’t had insurgents using places of worship. We do now, and questions of population sensibilities come into play. We must make a collective decision on how to engage this issue. Else, we will leave the sniper domiciles untouched, and turn our UAVs away from 200 Taliban fighters at a funeral only to leave and kill U.S. troops another day because a funeral has religious connotations.
On August 25, 2007 at 2:26 pm, Minority Mandate said:
The question boils down to: what kind of war do we want to fight? Until Patreaus took over there seemed to be talk of pursuing a counterinsurgency-type war, but this ran counter to a strong desire for a conventional conflict. The American authorities and the American people urged an outcome that could be cleanly called ‘victory’. A word that is incongruous in a counterinsurgency conflict, except in an historical context.
If we are attempting pacification through military dominance, a more certain and feasible route given our overwhelming force, the mosque is obstacle, like any other, and the answer is obvious.
If we are trying to win hearts and minds, then the mosque issue needs to be addressed locally by counterinsurgency forces in conjunction with local residents. The answer may be much less clear, and palatable to troops in the field.
If we want to save American lives and bring the populace to heel by force of arms, then we are using way too little force.
Somebody needs to make a clear decision about how to proceed and stick with it. A decision that should have been made directly after our dynamic military victory. The elements of success for a counterinsurgency; a clear objective and civil support, are in the hands of the enemy. We are now fighting to show that the US can provide Iraq with security so we can win back civil support.