Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

The Israel-Lebanon Conflict has created tons of good discussion on geopolitics and warfare. This little nugget by William S. Lind caught my eye and indicates why states have so much trouble attacking terrorism and guerrilla warfare:

But his alternative, at least for a rollback force, includes privatizing the fighting function. The problem with this is that as the state privatizes security functions, for foreign wars or here at home, it strikes at its own reason for being and thus accelerates its crisis of legitimacy, which lies at the heart of 4GW. Once security is privatized, why have a state at all?

Conveniently, private armies have a long history of overthrowing states. There is good reason why the rising state of the 17th century abolished private armies and forcefully asserted a monopoly on violence.

Eventually, the Iraqis will eject the Americans from their country. The fact is, they live there and we don’t, so victory will eventually be theirs. Until then, it’s just a stalemate. I think it’s ironic when the Americans make claims against the other side’s propaganda since there has never been a more media-aware American military intervention. I found the following passage revealing:

One key reason to take Fallujah hospital early was likely to control information: The facility was the main source of Iraqi death tolls during the first U.S. siege of Fallujah in April, and U.S. commanders accused doctors there of exaggerating numbers.

The U.S military said Monday that insurgents had been in control of Fallujah General Hospital — located on the west bank of the Euphrates — and were “forcing the doctors there to release propaganda and false information.”

The media has lauded the ‘capture’ of the Fallujah hospital as a win for the Iraqis fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the Americans, specifically this refers to Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion. The Americans use the brown-skins to put an “Iraqi face” on the assault on Fallujah. Who are the 36th Commando Battalion?

“The 36th was originally known as the ‘political battalion,'”
he said. That’s because it was formed from the militias of five major
political groups in Iraq: Iyad Alwai’s Iraq National Accord (INA), Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which backs Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and the two main Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). About 110 soldiers were originally culled from each group.

This group isn’t representative of Iraq. They are splinter groups who have an interest in gaining more power in Iraq. When you have 10,000 American soldiers and a few hundred Iraqi mercenaries leading the assault, it’s clear who’s in charge. More importantly, it’s clear that the Americans do not have the support of the Iraqi people on the ground.