its utterly amazing that the US is still willing to put the lives of thousands of Iraqis on the line for a political victory. the courage it will take these voters to go to the polls rivals the courage shown in any revolutionary act preceding it. and we should be finding ways that we as Americans, who "prize" and "honour" our democratic rights and privileges can stand with the Iraqi men and women who will be political martyrs at the end of this month.

Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw last week that read, "We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them." I agree that "Fundamentally, I think our soldiers aren't equipped for the duty they're being asked to undertake." I wonder how many courses on "winning the hearts and minds of people" the soldiers have before they are sent off. Real change will likely entail a whole new vision and training for the military. Sad to think that situations above are many Iraqis first experience of Americans, and that our soldiers are under such stress with so little training that they resort to such tactics. I wonder how we can support and highlight the soldiers that are acting respectfully. How do we stand behind the ones that are acting noble, even in such stressful circumstances? They have military awards for bravery; maybe it is time we have them for acting with respect and compassion as well. How do we support and highlight good acts so that this will be more encouraged in the ranks?

Thanks for the link.

I think the language conveys the sense of threat experienced by the soldiers.

Plenty of bytes have been used to admonish administration for the lack of a methodology to 'win the peace'. One cannot be 'rounding up insurgents', raiding homes, and 'pegging hajis' during the night, then be expected to convey warmth and compassion during the day.

The next few days in Iraq do not promise to be much improved.

On the EDGE.ORG article that Niny graciously brought our attention to (see http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/400/ ), there's a piece by a guy named Philip Zambardo ( http://edge.org/q2005/q05_4.html#zimbardo ) that makes a reference to a great "fictional" work that might speak to "embedded reporting".

Because I was so inspired by Prof. Zambardo's guts, I checked out his website and downloaded a couple articles (they're free, so the poor will not have to go rummaging). The first one I've read is also very lucid on the topic of murkiness:

(PDF) http://www.zimbardo.com/downloads/2002%20Political%20Psychology%20of%20Terrorist%20Alarms.pdf

I think the Economist can at times be entertaining, but I find it's commentary is simply too predictable. So I generally stick to the (new) "news" and don't even look at the pictures on the "olds". Presently I don't read much of it at all.

Pierre, I know that many teachers of English consider writers who publish in the Economist to use the English language outstandingly well. What do you think about that statement when considering the style of language used in the article titled "When deadly force bumps into the hearts and minds"?

nmw

Peter Rees said:

I think the language conveys the sense of threat experienced by the soldiers.

If the police department in a hostile part of a major American city were using this kind of language, driving armoured vehicles against the traffic flow, threatening to waste anyone who got in their way and killing people whose intentions could not be immediately interpreted as innocent ( e.g. because they're Christians carrying a Christmas tree !! ) ...... would we then excuse those acts by suggesting that the police obviously feel threatened ?

"Soldiers are gunnin' us down...

How can you run when you know?"

("Ohio", I think Neil Young -- not sure though)

ps: admittedly, the students in Ohio may not have known about the trick with trees

Yup ! Buffalo Springfield - featuring Neil Young.

And (all those years ago) at Kent State the soldiers were on their home ground ? Were they still afraid ?

The reporter in the Economist article does say that the soldiers in Iraq aren't equipped for the duty they're being asked to undertake.

This statement is probably even true in the material sense. The military war ended when the Iraqi military disappeared. The police action then began.

Do you equip police with tanks and attack helicopters ?

Do you train police in the same way as you train assault troops ?

Would you deploy assault troops for policing duties in the USA - unless, of course, you wanted to risk an Ohio outcome ?

Tim, I don't disagree with your description of the problem but the enemy ( however defined ) do not have tanks or attack helicopters.

The US army in Iraq essentially faces not much more than British troops faced in Northern Ireland. The military hardware deployed in Ireland was essentially defensive because it was treated as a policing action aimed at containment and the winning of hearts and minds.

That's why I've tried to frame my postings by references to police rather army or marines. Somehow our understandings of Iraq have to move away from the aggressive language and actions of war.

It is not a head to head military war !

I think the point Pierre brought up was that the Economist published the word "motherfucker".

This is unamerican -- and many Americans think the Brits ought to act (even more) like allies.

%remove tongue from cheek%

I think the comparison with Vietnam is absolutely and completely appropriate. I was not in Vietnam and I am not in Iraq. If I was there I'm certain I'ld figure out an exit strategy -- yesterday.

I belong to a generation (much like Pierre) that didn't experience either first-hand. I find it very difficult to fathom that people would be willing to sacrifice teenagers to a useless exercise in futility.

I think I'ld rather be in jail than in that nightmarish circus. I think the best solution is simply to stop the nightmare right away.

Of course all of the soldiers that come home will come home severely traumatized for the rest of their lives. Only Bozo would believe otherwise.

nmw

Andrei Codresceau had an amusing piece on NPR the other night, about a simulated air attack on New Orleans produced by the military, presumably marines? Anyway, the idea behind the simulation of "urban warfare" was that New Orleans, of any other US city, most embodies the characteristics of "a city outside the United States." I found that amusing.

Perhaps one of the greatest weaknesses of our forces on the ground, one that must contribute exponentially to the tension experienced by out troops, is the lack of language training. Evidently there is a very great shortage of Arabic speakers, much some of the other tongues spoken in the region.

Pierre Omidyar said:

Well, let's hope we get that part right.

In an article from the Council on Foreign Relations James Dobbins offers his thoughts on the topic.

Iraq: Winning the Unwinnable War By James F. Dobbins, Foreign Affairs ( January/February 2005

Summary: By losing the trust of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration has already lost the war in Iraq. Moderate Iraqis can still win it, but only if they wean themselves from Washington and get support from elsewhere. To help them, the United States should pull out its troops as soon as it can without jeopardizing the elections, train Iraqis to beat the insurgency on their own, and rally Iran and European allies to the cause.

James Dobbins is Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at Rand. He was a U.S. Special Envoy in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

Is there any evidence the administration might be receptive to other approaches or will it remain committed to bullheadly sticking to a plan that is clearly not working?

Tim wrote;

I hope that when this is over, somehow lessons are learnt from this on how to cleanly get a tyrant out of power

With or without breaking international law? Vis military strategy, have you read Martin van Creveld? His latest work looks at this vis how Israel should deal with Palestine to ensure security.

Tim Clarke said:

Norbert Mayer-Wittmann said:

I think the best solution is simply to stop the nightmare right away.

Yes, the best solution is to simply stop the killing right away.

Any ideas of how to do that?

Yes: leave.

Being as this has become a thread to ramble on in almost every direction and far out to "where no man has gone before", I figure it's ok to ask whether it's more tyranical to torture people in prison cells or whether the death penalty is even worse. Any ideas?

Please: don't feel you need to respond to such "thought provoking" questions (they are intended to be rhetorical).

How do we get this thread back to the original focus?

Is there anybody out there? (or maybe we should just click "abort" or "ignore" or whatever?)

nmw

Will an attempt to refer back to 'policing' help ?

Seems relevant because my reference to policing above may have been misinterpreted. I used the term deliberately because it is actually a military decription. I was not claiming that there are no combatants.

The hostilities in Iraq may be bloody, difficult and terrifying but in military terms they are low scale in terms of the hardware used by the insurgents. Obviously that does not make the effects any less deadly. A pipe bomb kills the same as a smart bomb or a cruise missile.

Also, my reference to Northern Ireland was a reference to tactics - I was making no other comparisons. The British military are able to use those policing tactics now in Iraq because British troops are also trained and experienced in both battlefield and policing actions.

American troops are still treating Iraq as if it were a battlefield. This is not the fault of American troops on the ground.

They are being asked to do a job that they were probably not trained to do and they are also being ordered to employ tactics that will never defeat urban insurgency.

I have already said that the military war (the battlefield war) ended when the Iraqi army disappeared but the US military command still seem to prefer pitched battles against an enemy that can just simply melt away.

Flattening hundreds of homes in Fallujah may have killed some insurgents but it also created 200,000 refugees who are still waiting to return.

No hearts and minds won there.

One more quick point. The Ba'ath parties (despite their conduct) were not Nazi inspired. The Ba'ath movement grew out of pan-Arab nationalism. It was a secular movement and it also claimed to be socialist.

The secularism of the Ba'athists in Iraq was no doubt one of the factors that originally persuaded the USA to treat Saddam Hussein as an ally in the region.

Tim, I'm not diasgreeing with you. We are simply talking about the same thing but from two different historical starting points.

You are talking about ideological foundations and I was referring to the historical reality of the Ba'ath party in power.

The Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath party was not established until 1954 and by the time they were firmly entrenched in power the nature of Ba'athism had changed.

Example: Both in Syria and Iraq, economic and military necessity in the 1960s required an alliance with the Soviet Union, eroding the old Ba'athist anti-communism.

Michael Aflaq and his ideas were also rejected in practice as Iraq accomodated to geopolitical reality and as the Ba'ath Party mutated under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

Norbert wrote:

Being as this has become a thread to ramble on in almost every direction and far out to "where no man has gone before"

Yes, we are doodling in Pierre's "personal news" pages. What is interesting to me is that the economist is relating essentially very old news with a new sense of urgency. I recommend the film War Feels Like War. There are many others.

I remember from another source an account of one Marine Sergeant who became tremendously respected by his men for his ability to retreat from a potentially explosive, tense mob situation without a swearword or shot. He had a smattering of Arabic but an intuitive sense of how to read the people and when to give ground in the interest of a human win, which could pave the way for a tactical win down the road.

Lars, good example. This would be my approach: to create positive incentives for non-violent respectful approaches of our military. If the person you describe above is the person getting attention/awards etc. others will naturally gravitate to that position.

Pierre quotes the General above: "This is not about winning hearts and minds; we're not going to do that here in Iraq. It's about giving Iraqis the opportunity to govern themselves."

I would think that if the "security forces" have not won the hearts and minds of most people, then they will have little respect and thus make their job providing security very difficult -- if not impossible.