The Iraq invasion against Saddam was a war, the subsequent campaign against insurgency is not. Maybe we need new definitions to describe it because it seems to me that without such we end up in confusions of valid means and objectives. For instance, if Lebanon and Israel were at war, bombing Beirut might be legitimate. In the absence of a declaration of war it is either a war crime or an act of terrorism.
I know it seems strange to be arguing semantics but it matters. The nature of the conflict determines the entire set of what can or cannot be achieved. Whether it is war between states, a conflict between occupation and resistance or that between a state and a militarised terrorist unit.
So here I think Colman's question is not comparing like for like. Invading a nation like Iraq requires low casualties because, whatever the newspaper propaganda, it is embarrassing to lose soldiers when you're shooting fish in a barrel. Yet a just war between equals such as WWII would still be supportable despite high casualties because of the very risk to the nature of the state itself.
However, once we talk about insurgency or terrorist groups we are at a different point in the political scale. To quote Max Hastings from the Guardian;-
The defeat of terrorism is best achieved through an unglamorous cocktail of politics, diplomacy, intelligence, bribery, police work and special forces operations. Above all, a successful campaign offers the society from which the terrorists are drawn a just political dispensation. Contrary to widespread belief, the British did not defeat the 1950s Malayan insurgency by brilliant soldiering, but by shrewd politicking, which included a promise to quit the country. Northern Ireland today may not be a satisfactory place, but it owes its relative tranquillity to politics and economics rather than to 30 years of counter-terrorist campaigning.
It ain't girly to negotiate, however unsatisfying that may be to macho politicians, because there must come a point where the powerful realise that such asymmetric struggle does not arise out of a vacuum, even if it is convenient to pretend otherwise. It is fuelled by grievance, real or imagined, that must, in some ways, be resolved fairly by agreement and not imposition. keep to the Fen Causeway
I think it's misleading to talk about war in this way. War, traditionally, means a series of set-piece battles between uniformed soldiers.
We cannot win in Iraq, Hersh said. "We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.' All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."
I ask for better definitions as it seems to me thatthe current ones allow the powerful to become deluded about their objectives and thus apply inappropriate responses, ie massacre of populations.
They need to understand when it is more effective to talk rather than shoot. Which, I guess also implies taking into account of cultural dispositions etc.
I still stand by the point that insurgencies and campaigns against terrorism are not the same as war and so cannot be compared. How those involved prefer to describe them is immaterial. keep to the Fen Causeway
It may be a war by current definitions, but as it is not against a nation state their conduct of it is strategically stupid, "disproportionate" and ulitmately self-defeating. keep to the Fen Causeway
I think Richard Lyon described it best down below - winning against guerillas is the business of empire.
It has been done in the past, so it could certainly be done again. But the requirement for success seems to be massive brutality that would make any modern regime, even Bush's, look angelic.
And yes, you need a standing army, and local volunteers/conscripts.
The idea that war is a series of pitched battles has only really been true in exceptional situations. The battles are the visible part of a more organic process which relies on diplomacy, economics, politics, and espionage - anything to gain an advantage.
Stopping an insurgency doesn't just require regime change, it requires culture change. You can only really do it by decapitation (sometimes literal) of the insurgency's leadership, followed up by repression of the followers.
Politically today this is unacceptable. So it's very likely impossible for any nominally accountable democracy to beat an insurgency by violence alone.
But is it a war? It's not in the traditional sense - not just because there are no pitched battles, but because wars traditionally end either when armies are destroyed or leaders are killed.
When you don't have an army to fight, and you don't have a single leader in command to take out, it's hard to know whether you've won or not.
I have got no good sources, but I remember numbers pointing towards only a third of the prewar population now lives in Chechnya. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I don't however that potential embarrassment is sufficient to justify military tactics that both guarantees failure at the strategic level and happens to kill many times more civilians than "necessary".
My point exactly. Bad definitions lead to bad strategies keep to the Fen Causeway
