Fighting foreign cultures - the Dark Lord knows how in Iraq

The following is an excerpt from Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship by Montgomery McFate Military Review (publication of the Combined Arms Center of the US Army) Mar-Apr 2005 (*.pdf file).  McFate is a Defence Policy Fellow at the Office of Naval Research.

Why has cultural knowledge suddenly become such an imperative [for the US military]? Primarily because traditional methods of warfighting have proven inadequate in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. technology, training, and doctrine designed to counter the Soviet threat are not designed for low-intensity counterinsurgency operations where civilians mingle freely with combatants in complex urban terrain. ["Low-intensity" in Armyspeak means a guerrilla-type war, as distinct from conventional war.]

The major combat operations that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime were relatively simple because they required the U.S. military to do what it does best—conduct maneuver warfare in flat terrain using overwhelming firepower with air support. However, since the end of the “hot” phase of the war, coalition forces have been fighting a complex war against an enemy they do not understand. The insurgents’ organizational structure is not military, but tribal.   Their tactics are not conventional, but asymmetrical.  Their weapons are not tanks and fighter planes, but improvised explosive devices (IEDs).  They do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, nor do they appear to have any informal rules of engagement.

Countering the insurgency in Iraq requires cultural and social knowledge of the adversary. Yet, none of the elements of U.S. national power—diplomatic, military, intelligence, or economic—explicitly take adversary culture into account in the formation or execution of policy. This cultural knowledge gap has a simple cause—the almost total absence of anthropology within the national-security establishment.

Once called “the handmaiden of colonialism,” anthropology has had a long, fruitful relationship with various elements of national power, which ended suddenly following the Vietnam War. The strange story of anthropology’s birth as a warfighting discipline, and its sudden plunge into the abyss ofpostmodernism, is intertwined with the U.S. failure in Vietnam. The curious and conspicuous lack of anthropology in the national-security arena since the Vietnam War has had grave consequences for countering the insurgency in Iraq, particularly because political policy and military operations based on partial and incomplete cultural knowledge are often worse than none at all. (my emphasis)

Rummy's not going to like it if he reads that.

At this point, any blogger critical of the war would be sorely tempted to insert a sarcastic comment along the lines of, "Why do people writing for an Army publication hate America?"  Or, "Why doesn't this Army publication support our troops?"

A lack of attention to anthropological/cultural issues may be conspicuous.  But I'm not sure why it would be considered curious.  The post-Vietnam strategic orientation of the military services was to go back to preparing to fight Soviet Army Central pouring through the Fulda Gap.  The idea was that in the future, we would just avoid fighting any more Vietnam War-type counterinsurgency operations.  (McFate explains that post-Vietnam War phenomenon later in the article.)

Until Bush and his "neoconservatives" came along with their grand ideas about the purging and liberating power of war and military force.  Now, freedom is on the march in Iraq.  And Dick Cheney says it's going well:  Larry King Live transcript: 05/30/05 broadcast; interview with Dick and Lynne Cheney.

D. CHENEY: We'll leave as soon as the task is over with. We haven't set a deadline or a date. It depends upon conditions. We have to achieve our objectives, complete the mission. And the two main requirements are, the Iraqis in a position to be able to govern themselves, and they're well on their way to doing that, and the other is able to defend themselves, and they're well on their way to doing that. They just announced that in the last day or two here, there've been stories about a major movement of some 40,000 Iraqi troops into Baghdad to focus specifically on the problem there.

KING: You expect it in your administration?

D. CHENEY: I do.

KING: To be removed. It's not going to be -- it's not going to be a 10-year event?

D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throws, if you will, of the insurgency. ["Last throes" is the more conventional spelling, but the transcript has it as "last throws."] We've had reporting in recent days, Larry, about Zarqawi, who's sort of the lead terrorist, outside terrorist, al Qaeda, head of al Qaeda for Iraq, may well have been seriously injured. We don't know. We can't confirm that. We've had reporting to that effect.

So I think we're making major progress. And, unfortunately, as I say, it does involve sending young Americans in harm's way. But America will be safer in the long run when Iraq and Afghanistan as well are no longer safe havens for terrorists or places where people can gather and plan and organize attacks against the United States.  (my emphasis)

And at this point, bloggers critical of the war would be tempted to comment, "Well, Dark Lord Cheney, Iraq wasn't a 'safe haven for terrorists' before you people invaded it."  Or, "Wait - if Afghanistan is still a 'safe haven for terrorists,' how come we've been declaring victory there since, oh, December 2001 or so?"

I really can't decide which is scarier: that Cheney and the rest of this crew are being entirely cynical when they say things like this; or that they may actually believe their own propaganda. 

But I'm not sure it makes for less of a disaster either way.

And, yes, the Dark Lord did tell Larry King he expected most US troops now in Iraq to leave during the current administration.  The Iraqi insurgency is in its last throes, according to the Dark Lord himself.  Or last throws.  I have to think it's worth a tiny bit in the grand scheme of things to flag statements like this, so that three years from now when the wingnut warlovers are denying anybody ever said any such thing, the "reality-based community" can at least do a quick reality check.  Not that the wingnuts will listen.