Op-Ed
Contributor
We Still Need the Big Guns
(see text
in portuguese)
By CHARLES J. DUNLAP
Jr.
Published: January 9, 2008
Washington
THE relative calm
that America’s armed forces have imposed on
Iraq is certainly grounds for cautious optimism.
But it also raises some obvious questions: how was
it achieved and what does it mean for future defense
planning?
Many analysts understandably
attribute the success to our troops’ following
the dictums of the Army’s lauded
new counterinsurgency manual. While
the manual is a vast improvement over its predecessors,
it would be a huge mistake to take it as proof —
as some in the press, academia and independent policy
organizations have — that victory over insurgents
is achievable by anything other than traditional
military force.
Unfortunately, starry-eyed
enthusiasts have misread the manual to say that
defeating an insurgency is all about winning hearts
and minds with teams of anthropologists, propagandists
and civil-affairs officers armed with democracy-in-a-box
kits and volleyball nets. They dismiss as passé
killing or capturing insurgents.(DEFESA@NET Note
- starry-eyed expression is for Gen Donn A Starry
former US Army TRADOC commander that shaped the
US Army doctrine in the 80´s. An indirect
dart at Gen Petraeus also TRADOC commander)
Actually, the reality
is quite different. The lesson of Iraq is that old-fashioned
force works. Add 30,000 of the world’s finest
infantry to the 135,000 battle-hardened troops already
there, as we have done, and the outnumbered insurgency
is in serious trouble. Detain thousands more Iraqis
as security threats, and the potential for violence
inevitably declines. Press reports indicate that
the number of Iraqis in prison doubled over the
last year, to 30,000 from 15,000; and while casualty
figures are sketchy, military officials told USA
Today last September that the number of insurgents
killed was already 25 percent higher in 2007 than
in all of 2006.
And while the new
counterinsurgency doctrine has an anti-technology
flavor that seems to discourage the use of air power
especially, savvy ground-force commanders in Iraq
got the right results last year by discounting those
admonitions. Few Americans are likely to be aware
that there was a fivefold increase in airstrikes
during 2007 as compared with the previous year,
which went hand in hand with the rest of the surge
strategy. Going high-tech once again proved to be
highly successful.
Regrettably, two
other uncomfortable developments also helped suppress
violence. First, the Iraqi population has largely
segregated itself into sectarian fiefs. Second,
supposedly “reformed” insurgents now
dominate Anbar Province. While these Sunni partisans
have for the moment sided with the United States,
can we assume they’ve bought into the idea
of a truly pluralistic and democratic Iraq?
Nonetheless, fans
of the counterinsurgency manual are using it as
a bludgeon against anyone who wants to plan to fight
the next war rather than the last one. Their line
of thinking holds that our next war will be a replay
of Iraq, and thus most of our armed forces should
be structured for counterinsurgency.
But this ignores
other potential threats. Should we simply wish away
China’s increasing muscle, or a resurgent
Russia’s plans for a fifth-generation
fighter that would surpass our top of the line jet,
the F-22 stealth fighter? Moreover, does
anyone really believe that creating corps of civil
affairs officers will deter North Korea or Iran?
Yes, there is always
the possibility that we may again find ourselves
battling an insurgency, and the manual has many
great ideas. Furthermore, the proposal for a 20,000-strong
adviser corps to help Iraqi local forces fight insurgents
ought to be green-lighted.
The problem emerges
when we consider pouring excessive resources into
preparing for only one kind of conflict. Doing so
would put us at real risk of losing the technological
superiority that has kept America’s vastly
more dangerous threats at bay. Consider, for example,
that our warplanes are on average more than 25 years
old.
The enormous cost
of the Iraq war, not to mention the loss of life
on both sides, would seem to counsel against the
idea of a similar operation elsewhere. Looking ahead,
America needs a military centered not on occupying
another country but on denying potential adversaries
the ability to attack our interests. This is not
a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an
unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes
machines for the bodies of young Americans.
Charles J. Dunlap
Jr. is an Air Force major general and the author
of “Shortchanging the Joint Fight?,”
an assessment of the Army’s counterinsurgency
manual
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