Create an Account
username: password:
 
  MemeStreams Logo

We Can't Win These Wars on Our Own

search

possibly noteworthy
Picture of possibly noteworthy
My Blog
My Profile
My Audience
My Sources
Send Me a Message

sponsored links

possibly noteworthy's topics
Arts
Business
Games
Health and Wellness
Home and Garden
Miscellaneous
  Humor
Current Events
  War on Terrorism
Recreation
Local Information
  Food
Science
Society
  International Relations
  Politics and Law
   Intellectual Property
  Military
Sports
Technology
  Military Technology
  High Tech Developments

support us

Get MemeStreams Stuff!


 
We Can't Win These Wars on Our Own
Topic: War on Terrorism 10:43 pm EDT, Mar  9, 2008

John A. Nagl, who wrote the book on counterinsurgency:

The hard lesson of this tragedy is clear: Foreign forces cannot win a counterinsurgency campaign on their own. In Anbar, I spent at least as much time training and equipping the country's nascent security forces as I did planning and executing raids against insurgents. This indirect approach is the key to winning the long war against al-Qaeda and changing the Middle East for the better.

Iraq has come a long way since the summer of 2004. Anbar is now one of the safest provinces in Iraq, scheduled to be handed over to Iraqi control this month. The Marines stationed there now struggle with boredom as much as with car bombs. The extraordinary success of the 2007 "surge" of troops to Iraq -- or, more precisely, sending additional forces to Iraq and using them in a classic counterinsurgency strategy that combined providing security for the population with reaching out to aggrieved parties -- will echo in the pages of military history. But it is far too early to take a victory lap, and a focus on Iraq that crowded out the other theaters in which the United States is fighting would be a strategic mistake of the first order.

We Can't Win These Wars on Our Own



 
 
Powered By Industrial Memetics
RSS2.0