Jungle of Snakes (30 page)
Authors: James R. Arnold
Given the circumstances preceding the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—the United States had fought this same foe in 1990 and been
on armed watch against Saddam Hussein ever since; the 2000 U.S. Census reported almost 1.2 million citizens of Arab descent—this
negligence is astonishing.
Reform and the political Arena
The realization that victory over an insurgency must begin by providing people with physical security has gained wide acceptance.
As with every other aspect of counterinsurgency, the “security first and foremost” imperative is not as simple as it seems.
Perceptions of security differ. Year after year around 42,000 Americans die in vehicle accidents. The country’s nearly 200
million drivers shrug off the fact that for almost all of them it is by far the most dangerous activity they routinely perform.
In contrast, serial sniper attacks that killed ten people over a three-week period in October 2002 in the Washington, D.C.,
area so terrorized the region’s inhabitants that hundreds of thousands made substantial alterations in their life routines.
Iraqis experienced a drumbeat of terror orders of magnitude worse. They proved sensitive to and appreciative of improvements
in security. But they expect and will undoubtedly demand more. Weeks after a battle with insurgents had destroyed a market
in Baghdad’s Sadr City, an Iraqi merchant returned to deliver a truckload of potatoes. Free-flowing raw sewage ran through
the market. Clouds of flies swarmed around heaps of uncollected garbage. At home, frequent electricity outages left him sweltering
in 110-degree heat. While acknowledging the improvements in security, he observed, “This is no way to live.”
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The comments of French and British counterinsurgency specialists affirm the idea that there must be progress along multiple
paths that go beyond the mere provision of security. General Jacques Allard summarized lessons learned from the counterinsurgency
in Algeria: “Destruction will achieve nothing if we don’t go beyond it. If the population were left to itself, the rebel organization
would soon emerge again. After having destroyed, we must construct.”
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Robert Thompson observed, “Security by itself is not enough to make the peasant willing to choose to support the government.”
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Successful pacification may begin with security but thereafter the government must deliver services to the people in order
to prove itself worthy. The twin challenges of security and reform are the major challenges a counterinsurgency power confronts.
No matter how skillfully or massively applied, military might alone will not solve a conflict’s underlying political causes.
Yet these are the easier tasks compared to tackling the root causes of the insurgency. That effort requires redistributing
political and economic power. Fundamental, endemic problems exist that will require much time to fix and there is no certainty
that the imposed solutions will either work while the counterinsurgency power is present or endure after it leaves. These
facts should give pause to political and military leaders who advocate intervening to thwart an insurgency.
Commitment
Like some contemporary American planners in Iraq, the Philippine Commission under William Howard Taft believed that the institution
of good government would win the support of most Filipinos. Taft understood it would take time—he guessed fifty or a hundred
years—for the Filipinos to develop Anglo-Saxon political principles. The process had to start by educating the children. In
the meantime, since the United States could rely only on a very small nucleus of educated Filipinos, the Americans needed
to supervise closely all levels of government. He observed that, “lacking the American initiative, lacking the American knowledge
of how to carry on a government, any government there must be a complete failure.”
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The postwar Senate inquiry into the conduct of the Philippine War also considered prospects for the future. Many senators
were bothered by an apparent open-ended commitment of American soldiers and gold to the Philippines. During his testimony,
General MacArthur addressed this concern. He said that although the Filipinos had made great strides, they still held “rudimentary
republican ideas and aspirations.” With American tutelage they could continue on the path to progress. He then warned, “American
withdrawal from the islands, therefore, would, in my opinion, result in permanent failure of republicanism in the East, and
the devastation of the archipelago by internecine and fratricidal war, which would continue indefinitely until suppressed
by some external force.”
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Whether in 1898 or 2009 Americans are not a patient people when it comes to foreign entanglements. After helping guide the
United States to victory in World War II, George C. Marshall made reference to the protracted struggle that pitted Britain
and its American colonists against the French and observed that the American public would not tolerate another Seven Years’
War. Westmoreland’s chief intelligence officer in Vietnam agreed. He believed that foremost among America’s weaknesses in
waging war in Vietnam was a weakness inherent to democracies: the “incapacity to sustain a long, unfocused, inconclusive,
and bloody war far from home, for unidentified or ill-defined national objectives.”
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In conventional war there are many obvious metrics to measure progress, such as enemy territory captured or enemy soldiers
killed. Not so in a counterinsurgency, and this particularly wears on patience. Even professional military men often completely
fail to perceive actual trends. American generals in the Philippines twice claimed the war all but over only to have a fresh
outbreak of violence rock the public’s confidence. After a 1960 inspection tour in Algeria, a French general warned, “I want
to caution generals and commanders of sectors against exaggerated optimism, which leads them to pretend that pacification
has been achieved.” Claims that “peace has returned” were invariably only “superficially true.”
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The general pointed to continued enemy activity in an area where two very capable officers had skillfully conducted two operational
approaches that were polar opposites. The tough Indochina veteran Colonel Marcel Bigeard had “pacified” his zone by emphasizing
unfettered military and police action. In contrast, in a nearby zone another colonel had relied upon political and psychological
methods that emphasized building friendly relations with the local people and increasing the authority of native leaders.
Both approaches significantly tamped down violence. Both allowed the claim that pacification was achieved. Yet both seemed
to run up against a ceiling beyond which they could not ascend. Hidden somewhere beyond reach was an insurgent hard core capable
of acts of terror in order to deny, if not reverse, apparent progress.
At the end of the day, military counterinsurgency is a holding operation, designed not to gain a specific, war-winning objective
(since by definition there is no such objective) but rather to gain time to institute the reforms necessary to undermine the
insurgents. Algerian-born correspondent Michael Clark had considerable firsthand experience witnessing the French struggle
in Algeria. Clark cogently observed, “It has been said that even if the F.L.N. suffers grievous reverses, terrorist agitation
can never be stamped out. I do not agree. In any conflict of this sort, uncertainty as to the final outcome gives the terrorist
the margin of complicity he needs for protection. But if it becomes manifest that defeat, not victory, awaits the masters
whom the terrorists serves, that protective margin will vanish; the terrorist, isolated, can then be destroyed.”
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A MODERN ANALYST, Colonel John Nagl, describes victory in this manner: “The way you win a counterinsurgency campaign is that
you don’t—you help the host nation defeat the insurgency.”
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If that is so, then American leaders have to assess accurately the host nation’s capacities before intervening.
This was not done in Vietnam. Instead of asking if anything could be done, American political leaders made the fundamental
mistake of asking what should be done. In the future the decision to offer assistance against an insurgency should follow
a careful examination of whether the United States has the leverage to move the host nation in the direction the United States
thinks it should move. It may well be that America’s nominal ally, the host nation that actually has to win the fight, finds
necessary reforms unacceptable because its leaders know they will lose power if they accept reform.
Opposition to foreigners is a powerful recruiting tool for almost all insurgencies. This fact must also be addressed by today’s
strategists who argue that victory in the “Long War” currently requires or will require the presence of American forces in
Afghanistan and Iraq, through the arc of instability, and even in Central and South America. The ability of Americans to defeat
an insurgency and the costs associated with this effort have to be weighed against the fact that the American presence provides
some of the fuel that feeds the insurgency.
The lessons of history and the case studies in this book do not necessarily refute the belief that an insurgency cannot be
defeated by an outside, foreign force. A strategic doctrine can be built that provides a path to victory. Some, perhaps much,
of what is propounded in the U.S. military’s current counterinsurgency doctrine presents useful signposts for that path.
What is absolutely certain is that any victory achieved by American warriors and their allies will require a long-term commitment
of blood and treasure. Given this fact, certain conclusions follow. An American president in his role as commander in chief
must decide if an insurgency truly poses a mortal threat to the nation. This should be the litmus test for American involvement
against foreign insurgencies. Then the commander in chief has to convince the American people that his assessment is correct.
Having done this, he—and almost certainly his successors—must continue over the ensuing painful years to make the case why
the war is necessary. Otherwise public support for keeping American troops in harm’s way will dissolve. Otherwise a president
is trifling with the blood of America’s warriors as well as the lives of foreign civilians who inevitably will become part
of the collateral damage of war.
On this subject the historical record is perfectly clear: a successful counterinsurgency requires a long-term commitment.
How long is unknowable. It is the dreaded open-ended commitment that politicians fear to make, but it is the only way.
Words written in the year 44 B.C. by the great Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero provide an enduring guide
for the way forward: “An army abroad is of little use unless there is wise counsel at home.”
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Jungle of Snakes
emerged from a protracted series of discussions among myself, Peter Ginna of Bloomsbury Press, and my agent, Jeff Gerecke.
Peter wanted to know about relevant military history that would inform a reader about America’s ongoing counterinsurgency
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. My research produced a very broad list of possible topics. Then Jeff acted as invaluable
referee, employing his keen knowledge of history to help weigh and assess. The three-person process of refining and distillation
yielded this book. My first set of thanks goes out to Peter and Jeff for their efforts and ultimate confidence.
After a book’s concept is defined, the writer embarks on a period of research; this is always a mixture of thrilling discovery
and face-reddening frustration. In spite of technological advances that allow access to information in ways that seemed unimaginable
just two or three books ago, at the end of the day any author’s research still depends upon the contributions of dedicated
librarians and archivists. I am profoundly appreciative of the help received at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
Virginia; and at the Virginia Military Institute, Washington and Lee University, and Rockbridge Regional Library, all in my
hometown of Lexington, Virginia.
The U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, now located in a fine new building, remains a fabulous resource.
Their collection of letters and diaries provided insight into the minds of a generation of American warriors who confronted
challenges more than 100 years ago that would be utterly familiar to today’s soldiers and marines.
I had the privilege to discover the exceedingly helpful resources provided by the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.
The marine archivists and historians, particularly Danny Crawford and Fred Allison, could not have been more helpful as they
shared their printed and oral history files. The marine library provided open-handed access to many arcane tomes devoted to
counterinsurgency. It was particularly poignant that while I was at Quantico, young marines just back from Iraq were also
present. Heading home to the mountains that evening, I drove through the Chancellorsville and Wilderness battlefields and
experienced another somber reminder of the consequences of committing the nation’s military to war.
After research coalesces into some semblance of a coherent manuscript, editors sharpen their pens and set to work. I was fortunate
to benefit from outstanding editors. As she has done for more than thirty years, my soul mate and wife, Roberta, again provided
professional editing. Her encouragement, combined with a sometimes stern reminder, “Try using English, please,” will probably
be remembered to my grave. The book also benefitted enormously from Peter Ginna’s insightful editorial critiques. Mike O’Connor
and Sue Warga skillfully oversaw the always difficult task of copyediting. Meanwhile, from production headquarters, Pete Beatty
cheerfully kept the project moving ahead.
Again, thank you all.
James R. Arnold
Lexington, Virginia, 2009