Endgame in Iraq

In Iraq, the past two months have shifted the continuum of popular opinion from skeptical-disaster to mild-stunning success. Some, but certainly not all of us who had been proponents of the war also believed that the administration's end game was basically* headed in the right direction. Coinciding with the demonstrations in Lebanon that have been grabbing the recent headlines, the project of defeating the insurgency in Iraq is gathering steam. I believe it is appropriate to now ask the question, "How is our endgame going in Iraq?"

After the invasion, Saddam Loyalists regrouped and began executing their guerrilla war. Their goal was to fight coalition forces through unconventional means--suicide bombers, IEDs (improvised explosive devices), bombing high profile "political" targets and shooting at U.S. troops disguised as civilians. Through these means, their hopes were twofold: (1) to get the Coalition to respond to their attacks in such a horrible way that the Iraqi people would unify with them in demanding an immediate exit, and (2) through a world-wide media generally hostile to American interests, the display of the savage results of war back home in order to influence its citizens to replace their "war hungry" leadership with ones more "peace minded."

Steven den Beste articulated the goals of those engaging in unconventional warfare back in July of 2004. I highly recommend that you read the entire thing as den Beste has been one of the best analysts on the subject, but I want to highlight the importance of the delicate balance of public opinion (Iraqi and American) in this war:

Terrorists make their attacks and then fade away into the population. They tailor their attacks to inspire the maximum horror and anger from the enemy's people, bringing irresistible pressure to bear on the enemy's leadership to do something, while depriving the enemy leadership of any obvious target to do something against. If the enemy leadership does nothing or does something token and useless, it will look weak to our people and make us look like winners, increasing support. It can decrease support from its own people.

But if the enemy leadership does respond strongly, we hope it will target our people (as distinct from our forces, which the enemy can't actually locate). That will anger our people, again increasing support for us. In many cases it will also help discredit the enemy leadership, making them look brutal rather than weak. (That depends enormously on who the enemy people are and how they view themselves.)

We also hope that our allies will become more committed, and their allies will become less so. We hope that the world's uncommitted may come to support us.

Which is why propaganda is an essential part of both doctrines. It is not enough to organize, to plan, and to carry out acts of war. It is vital to try to control perception of events. Both sides are fighting a dirty war, but it is vital that they be portrayed as dirtier than we are.

Guerrilla war and terrorist war, when fought according to classic doctrine, are long slow wars. These are marathons, not sprints.

But terrorists and guerrillas can be defeated, in the sense that they can be weakened and marginalized enough so that they have no hope of victory. Usually defeated guerillas and terrorists fade away slowly, caught in a downward spiral of decreasing support, decreasing resources, and decreasing ability to operate offensively.

With this in mind, Strategypage has been keeping up to date how the tactical situation in Iraq. The endgame in Iraq is becoming clear; perception has shifted as the terrorists are rapidly losing money, manpower and, most importantly, the support of the Iraqi majority. They may grab news headlines with a horrific bombing causing hundreds of civilian deaths, but it just results in the cementing of Iraqi perceptions that the insurgency is nothing but a band of anti-democratic, ruthless murders.

The March 15th entry identifies a shift in the insurgents' spending priorities:

In the past week, former Saddam bodyguard Marwan Taher Abdul Rashid and his cousin, Abdullah Maher Abdul Rashid (also the brother-in-law of Saddam's son, Qusai), were captured because a family tree was illuminated and shaken. Many members of the extended Saddam clan have been found involved in funding and leading the attacks on the government and coalition troops. Money has been used as a weapon, and the Baath Party/pro-Saddam groups spend over $100,000 for each coalition soldier they kill. Thus the policy against paying ransoms. It's literally blood money. This is especially true because indications are that the terrorists are running into cash flow problems. As the tide turns, many of the terrorist paymasters are shifting their spending to themselves and their families. With war crimes trials now under way, and more Iraqi police out there knocking on doors, paying for dead cops and American soldiers is becoming a dangerous proposition. Too dangerous for a man of means.

The March 13th entry just below it is the money shot. This displays the reality that the radical Islamists have effectively lost the "hearts and minds" campaign. This is translating to not just a loss of support, but a inability recruit enough jihadis to sustain their fight:

Al Qaeda is trying to deal with a public relations disaster. First, al Qaeda publicly announced, before the January 30th elections, that democracy was un-Islamic. When most Iraqis energetically turned out to vote, the damage to al Qaeda's prestige was considerable. Then there are the suicide bombs that miss their targets. Most of them kill Iraqi civilians, instead of Americans (the preferred target) or Iraqi police, troops or government officials (an acceptable substitute). This has gotten so bad that al Qaeda has tried to deny responsibility for some of the suicide bomb attacks that go spectacularly wrong. The most spectacular recent example was the February 28 attack that killed over 130 people, including children. It had all the signs of a typical al Qaeda bombing, but the explosion, as was often the case, caught a lot of civilians, in addition to police recruits that were the primary target. Al Qaeda attempts to deny responsibility, usually via web sites, are openly mocked by Iraqis.

This is making al Qaeda public enemy number one in Iraq, and making it harder to recruit Iraqis to help out, or foreigners to carry out most of the suicide attacks. Part of the al Qaeda problem is a decline in the quality of their personnel. Key technical and supervisory personnel have been killed or captured, and not replaced. Thus the quality of the bombs, and the preparations for the attacks, has declined, causing more deaths to civilians, and fewer to Iraqi police and foreign troops. Better training of Iraqi police and soldiers has improved the quality of defenses around police stations and army bases, which has made it harder for the attackers to reach their targets. These are all trends that have been building for over a year, and now are pretty obvious.

The Arab tendency to believe outrageous rumors, which worked against the coalition initially, is now being turned on al Qaeda and the Baath Party terrorists. The killing goes on, but the killers get less and less respect. Even al Jazeera, long a major booster of the terrorists, has noticed their problems. In similar situations in other Arab countries, particularly Egypt in the early 1990s, this led to terrorist groups having to flee the country. Without public support, or at least public indifference, terrorists cannot survive long.

Three month after the fall of Bagdad, the insurgency regrouped and began its war against the "occupiers". President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and General Abizaid were confronted with the decision to either increase troop levels in order to go all out in fighting the insurgency, or they would keep coalition troop levels static, while heavily investing in a highly trained, home grown Iraqi security force. Their risky bet was long-term in nature, and as the death toll rose in the short-term, many questioned the wisdom of their leadership. However, in looking back, the decision not to "Americanize" the fight against the insurgents led to a more rapid transition from the Americans to the Iraqi people. With the occurence of the January 30th elections, the Iraqi people not only exercised their God given right for the first time, they outright rejected Islamic Fascism. Concurrently, Iraqi security forces are now regularly engaging and defeating insurgents on the battlefield.

It's not over yet, but as a result of exceptional strategic thinking, fierce momentum has been building in the Coalition's favor--it is getting so strong that even Atlas and Hercules would have a hard time stopping it.

* As the coalition moved from Stage III--Full Scale Hostilities, to Stage IV--Nation (Re)Building, I didn't believe that any plan could possibly deliver a zero defects result. Firstly, war never exists with a zero defects tolerance and secondly, the Coalition was entering a situation that had didn't have any historical precedent. My biggest argument against the administration's actions at that time was its poor communication to the public about WHY we were still there and WHY we needed to remain until the Iraqi people could build a reasonably solid, free government. Ian articulated this frustration extremely well back in March of 2004. Recent events have been a vindication of the decision to go to war in Iraq not only because of the January 30th elections, but that George Bush has boldly been communicating the strategic necessity of democracy (the State of the Union). The belief that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," doesn't just apply to Americans and those of Western decent, but indeed to ALL Men.

UPDATE: Penraker comments.