I would argue that attention to (not just to the extent of coordinated planning) |R| from the very beginning can indeed contribute to increased security, or, perhaps more accurately, a reduced need for security based missions.
What if we had initially, instead of forcefully toppling Saddam's government, attempted to set up alternate infrastructure over which Saddam had no control. For example, built civilian hospitals where there were none nearby. Or distributed food among the poor.
In such a scenario, our combat troops would have to support the support troops, protecting the troops and the buildings, supplies, etc. from violence. Such would be a reversal of their traditional roles relative to one another.
By not eliminating the Iraqi military initially, it is also likely that our military would have been able to fight that military, defensively, in a more traditional manner instead of fighting insurgents, for which we were far less prepared to confront. By fighting that military only defensively, the Iraqi people would have been able to witness Saddam trying to stop humanitarian efforts, rather than American and coalition forces destroying infrastructure and killing civilians collaterally. Fighting the Iraqi military slowly and defensively would also weaken it so when Iraqis decided to rise against Saddam, their victory could come more easily, yet still come by their own hands, giving them a sense of ownership in the process. By not killing civilian husbands, brothers, fathers and sons, it is possible that the coalition would have not made as many enemies of the people, making it far more difficult for an insurgency to take place to begin with.
Would the insurgency have risen up as it did had our troops sought to help the Iraqi people prior to ever firing a shot? Could we have garnered real public support for our presence by taking obvious, visible humanitarian actions as our first steps? Could we have rendered Saddam's authoritative rule ineffective and inconsequential by showing the people an alternative? Could we have used goodwill to motivate the people to rise against Saddam themselves, in favor of democratic rule, easing the transition by minimizing or eliminating the detrimental effects of the ensuing power vacuum from his removal?
Democracies cannot be installed. They must be sought by the people. If we are going to send our troops on nation building missions, we must keep this fact in mind. It is ineffective to create enemies of many locals, knowing that their support will be needed later.
Without the support of the local population, the best an invading force can hope for is a stalemate. For victory, the hearts and minds of the locals must be won. On the other hand, In order for the defending forces to be victorious, often all that is needed is the withdraw of the invading troops.
Of course, we would have had to forego the claims of a WMD threat, but I seriously doubt that those with access to the intelligence actually believed such claims were more than propaganda to be used to convince US, British, et al, citizens, as well as the UN, that there was justification to invade.
* * * * *
From the testimony of Admiral Leighton W. Smith, Jr., USN (Ret.):
Question from Sen. Feingold: How do we make sure that we don't convey the message that when the United States acts, it acts first and foremost as a military as opposed to a more coordinated message, that I think is part of the issue. It's not just the reality of what we do, it's also the message of what is America that they receive?
Well that's a very hard question because I don't think a structure exists to support that kind of an effort except the military. But, the good side of that, sir, is that the Africans who are the beneficiaries of these activities, people who the victims of the tsunami, they see the American military in a different light. We're not a guys that runs around with a big stick and beats the living daylights out of folks, we are there and can and do help people. And that in and of itself is a pretty powerful thing.
Question from Sen. Feingold: What happens if that's the only impression they have of America?
That's where a very difficult problem comes in of understanding that situational awareness that I talked about in my statement, that [General Zinni] and I have talked about, where we do smart targeting. We go in areas where there are potential problems, and we try to employ these civilian force, if you will, before we are required to use the military. In my understanding we don't have that capacity or capability right now, and if we are going to develop and really take advantage of this concept of smart power, we are going to have to develop some sort of a civilian corps that can do exactly as you said.
From the testimony of General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.), responding to the same questions:
I remember when we landed in Somalia, and we began to provide the security network for the distribution of food, and actually we had our first meeting with General Aideed, and Aideed's advice, strangely enough, a strange source, said, "All these people see are armed gangs and militias. If you want to be different, show up with food. Show up with hope and promise."
When we went out to the regions and began to stretch our security blanket, it was led by Ambassador Bob Oakley. With him was Phil Johnson, the president of CARE that was running the humanitarian mission. We brought NGO's with us. So, when they saw the American soldier or the American Marine, they saw something different, not just his weapons, and not just the security, but mixed in with him was the humanitarian need, was the connection to the leadership that wanted to work with their tribal leaders, their clan leaders.
I negotiated with the Acehnese in Banda Aceh and also in Mindanao with the Moral Islamic Liberation Front in an attempt at conflict resolution. In Mindanao, for example, Pacific Command's there training Philippine forces on counter-terrorism actions. USAID's there with remarkable programs of Arms to Farms, you turn in your weapons; we give you the equipment, the farming, the tools, the training on farming practices they've never used before. It's highly successful. The recidivism rate is very low. You see also our government involved in trying to mediate it, working with President Arroyo and her government, the US Institute of Peace funded by this body, but a non-governmental organization.
The thing that struck me is none of this was coordinated, unfortunately, and that's, I think, one of the issues here, but the fact that we have pieces out there that, if we weave them together, then the military and its provision of security and interaction is also viewed in the larger frame of these other efforts that are going on, and that would separate us from others.
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I found a fascinating article on the War on Terror's Philippine front in the February 2007 issue of Outdoor Magazine, titled This Is the War on Terror. Wish You Were Here!.
Welcome to the tropical Philippine island of Jolo, where life is like a Corona ad—coconut trees, white-sand beaches, bathtub-warm seas. Except those guys in the water are U.S. Green Berets, and those kids on dirt bikes are jihadists known for kidnapping Western tourists. Even stranger? On this front, at least, America seems to be winning.
Some excerpts:
Even before the fall of the Taliban at the end of 2001, the lawless jungles of the southern Philippines had emerged as the biggest terrorist base outside Central Asia. The ultimate goal was to prevent another Afghanistan—to deny that sanctuary to fleeing Al Qaeda operatives and regional groups like Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya, the outfit later believed to be responsible for the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings and those of the J.W. Marriott Hotel and the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2003 and 2004.
By 2006, after four straight years of operations, the joint troops had sustained an estimated 100 Filipino and 11 American dead. And they'd contained Abu Sayyaf predominantly to a single island, its historical stronghold of Jolo. Geographically isolated, blanketed by jungle, and run by an obscenely corrupt government, Jolo (pronounced HO-lo) is a terrorist sanctuary par excellence. Its half-million inhabitants are—like many Abu Sayyaf—members of the Tausug tribe: desperately poor, Muslim in a country of Roman Catholics, and linguistically separated from the rest of the Philippines. But ever since a charismatic Filipino brigadier general named Juancho Sabban took command in April 2005, the joint forces were actually succeeding in winning over the Islamic people of Jolo. Using a classic "hearts and minds" strategy of about 85 percent civil-affairs projects and 15 percent combat operations, they'd turned this 345-square-mile island into the one theater in the war on terrorism where the momentum seemed to be moving in America's direction. (emphasis mine -jcd11235)
"We think there is a model here that's worth showcasing," Major General David Fridovich, the Hawaii-based U.S. Special Operations commander in the Pacific, told reporters last spring. "There's another way of doing business."
…
When it was first formed, in 1990 by Abdurajak Janjalani, a Filipino mujahedeen veteran who'd fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, Abu Sayyaf (Arabic for "Father of the Sword") was dedicated to fighting for a strict Islamic state in the southern Philippines. It was reportedly funded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa and trained by such veteran Al Qaeda leaders as Ramzi Yousef, the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
…
In November 2001, President Bush announced that the U.S. would send troops and aid to the Philippines, opening what the media came to call the "second front" in his war on terrorism. By spring 2002, Exercise Balikatan was in full force, with 660 U.S. Marines, Green Berets, and Navy SEALs—acting in an advisory role, as the Philippine constitution forbids foreign combat operations on its soil—joining the CIA and FBI personnel already in the southern islands.
…
A stronghold of Abu Sayyaf, Tanum had once been home to Ramzi Yousef, and, as recently as five months earlier, a 40-man marine detachment stationed here was harassed nearly every evening by snipers. Now Tanum's leadership, many onetime collaborators themselves, had volunteered to lead the task force into the heart of Abu Sayyaf's regional base camp.
Our convoy halted long enough to pick up ten local guides. The oldest, a fifty-something man wearing a 1963 Vermont Lacrosse Lions T-shirt and carrying a 12-inch blade, climbed into the jeep next to me. Sinewy as a suspension cable, he introduced himself in remarkably good English as the chief of the village of Tanum. His constituents, he said, had petitioned him to ask the marines for a water system after seeing the benefits accruing to other villages cooperating with Sabban's men.
"But why is the Abu Sayyaf letting us do this?" I asked.
"I send one person up there other day to go find Abu Sayyaf," he said. "Tell them the military is helping us with water project. I ask, 'Please no problem?' Then I receive message from them. It said, 'We will go away from your municipal.' "
"But why do they go away?"
"What can they do?"
"Attack us? Destroy the water system?"
"No," he said, with a sly grin. "They know if they destroy water project, the people will hate them."
…
There were signs of Abu Sayyaf everywhere: a camouflaged observation post, empty packs of Astro cigarettes and Cloud Nine candy bars (both Abu Sayyaf favorites), a flip-flop, and fresh footprints. "Shit, they were just here," a Green Beret whispered, as he fingered newly cut banana leaves on the observation post.
We had liberated the cistern. There it was, built into a sheer hillside: two cast-iron spigots sticking out of a cement box a little bigger than a VW bus. The guides rushed over. One said something to a marine. He shrugged. Another laughed. A Green Beret guesstimated flow rates, while another eyeballed the gradient of the slope and two more filmed the scene for the intel guys back at the Beach Resort. Despite any historical, religious, or cultural differences, it was pretty clear that the Green Berets, Filipino marines, and Tausug villagers all agreed that this was one damn good water source.
An odd war here, I thought. The allies just ran a major military operation deep into enemy-held jungle and without a shot took a lousy piece of concrete that anywhere else wouldn't even garner graffiti. It wasn't exactly like storming the Normandy beaches, but then again that was the whole point. It wasn't just that the Green Berets and marines were winning the civilians' loyalty; it was that they were forcing the enemy to collaborate in its own defeat. (emphasis mine -jcd11235)
Winning the "hearts and minds" of a civilian populace is an age-old strategy: Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu preached it in the fifth century b.c.; Mao mastered it; the U.S. tried it in Vietnam and is once again returning to it in Iraq and Afghanistan. But for an occupying force, as the Americans and Filipinos arguably are on Jolo, this strategy is especially tricky.
…
Filipino General Juancho Sabban first employed his version of hearts-and-minds against Islamic separatists on Palawan in 1983 and honed it fighting Abu Sayyaf on the island of Basilan in the late 1990s and again in 2002 as part of a similar U.S.-Philippine initiative. The day he took over on Jolo, he ordered his men into a hut for a PowerPoint presentation. The first slide quoted Sun Tzu: "The acme of skill of the true warrior is to be victorious without fighting."
…
One of the Green Berets summed up the efforts: "They were small projects in resources but ones with a big impact on the people's lives. That's the key to this counterinsurgency—not for us to keep going to them with solutions but to somehow get these people to come to the marines for help."
…
"As a young lieutenant," Sabban told me, "I discovered you get better intelligence when you are with the people. And when I was a rebel and on the run in 1990, the authorities can't catch me if I have supporters. Who else will get the best intelligence but the civilians themselves? If they don't want to tell on the enemy, even if area is size of basketball court, you will not find the enemy."
Sabban pursued graduate studies at the Naval War College, in Rhode Island, so he's thought about this a lot. "People know you are more powerful than them," he said. "You don't have to rub it in, but when you go down to their level, adopt their ways, they will take you in. The more you hurt them, the more they fight back. Even if they are inferior, they will find a way to get you."
I believe that, in order to maximize the probability of success, efforts to implement |R| need to be made from the very beginning of operations. It is those efforts that often have the best chance of winning support from the local population. Without such support, any security is temporary at best. Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!
