Clausewitz said that warfare is the continuation of policy by other means. “Politcs,” it is said, “is the art of the possible.” In a democracy, the strategic center of gravity – and thus, the fulcrum of national policy – is always public opinion. Taken together, these aphorisms explain why US and the Iraqi Army are busily rooting out Sadr’s Iranian-trained special groups from Sadr City, even if it raises the butcher’s bill, as Michael Yon reports:
April saw 49 U.S. casualties in Iraq, the highest total in seven months. Does this mean, as some insist, that the enormous progress we have made since the start of the military surge is being lost?
As one who has spent nearly two years with American soldiers and Marines and British Army troops in Iraq – having returned from my last trip a month ago – here’s my short answer: no.
We are taking more casualties now, just as we did in the first part of 2007, because we have taken up the next crucial challenge of this war: confronting the Shia militias.
In early 2007, under the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, we began to wage an effective counterinsurgency campaign against the reign of terror Al Qaeda in Iraq had established over much of the midsection of the country. That campaign, which moved many of our troops off of big centralized bases and out into small neighborhood outposts, carried real risks.
In every one of the first eight months of 2007, we lost more soldiers than we had the previous year. Only as the campaign bore fruit – in the form of Iraqi citizens working with American soldiers on a daily basis, helping uncover terrorist hideouts together – did the casualty numbers begin to improve.
LTGEN Ricardo Sanchez, who oversaw the descent of Iraq from post-phase III turmoil to sectarian bloodbath, recently released his memoirs entitled, “Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story.” In it, and over nearly 500 pages, he relates the Bush administration’s initial eagerness to quell rising lawlessness in Fallujah in the spring of 2004:
Crafted in Washington as a brass-knuckles response to the gruesome deaths of four Blackwater security guards killed the week before and strung up on a bridge, the battle had the full support of President Bush.
Sanchez, in a memoir to be released Tuesday, said Bush “launched into what I considered a kind of confused pep talk” about the battle for Fallujah and an upcoming campaign to kill or capture radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and cripple his militia.
“Kick ass!” Bush said. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!”
The Blackwater contractors will killed on 31 March 2004. On 4 April, two thousand Coalition forces led by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force encircled the city to pacify it, gradually tightening the noose. Five days later, with roughly a quarter of the city under US control, 21 Marines and hundred of Fallujans dead, L. Paul Bremer declared a unilateral cease fire.
Humanitarian concerns were certainly in play, but the unexpectedly stiff opposition, revolts in Sunni Ramadi and across the Shia south, and lurid images splayed across Arab TV screens by Al Jazeera made political Washington blanch. A full-scale assault on the city while clapping a stopper over Ramadi, rooting the JAM out of Najaf and securing the road to Baghdad International Airport was not a do-able do. Not with the combat power in place, and not with US elections looming.
Although Sanchez claims in his book that US forces did not retreat under fire, the perception in Iraq and elsewhere was that the Sunni “lions of the desert” had inflicted the kind of defeat that Saddam’s secular legions could not. The bill came due on that perception just days after the US elections in November 2004, when a much larger and more deliberate application of firepower rubbled the city and destroyed in detail the resistance forces that had gathered there, albeit at a greater cost.
Was the timing political? Yes, probably. But politcs is the art of the possible, and warfare is policy by other means.
With the Sunni west now not merely pacified but actively assisting in the hunt for Qaedist butchers and Baghdad violence sharply down as a consequence of the surge, the remaining major barrier to lasting peace – and the withdrawal of most US combat power – is the Hezbollah-style alternate government of Sadrists, their militias and the so-called “special groups,” trained by and aligned with Iran.
We are rooting out the Sadrists now because we must – the Iraqi government’s writ must extend over the whole of a federal Iraq, or else there is no government and chaos follows. And because we can – our own attention is riveted to the domestic political scrum, and both Congress and the people know that no change in strategy can be imposed upon this administration: Lame duck governments have little enough leverage, but what they do have is unassailable, and this one has nothing at all left to lose.
Timing is everything: We fight in Sadr City now because we must, and because we can. It was politically impossible before now to implement the national policy of a free, federal and democratic Iraq, secure within its own borders and no threat to its neighbors. But if it says something uncomfortable about our national mood and commitment that we must time our military actions to the domestic political cycle, it also says something uncomfortable about our attention spans that we can.
Still, politcs is the art of the possible. Warfare is policy by other means.
To give this some perspective, meaning what it is to lose 49 troops in one month:
The British Expeditionary Force lost approximately 58,000 in 10 hours on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Somme. Over 19,000 were killed or died of wounds, meaning 32 people per minute killed. That war (and the Somme) would grind on for a further two years, eventually claiming in excess of a million men on both sides.
What I’m driving at here is that every life we lose now is precious, something to be pondered and analyzed in the court of public opinion. Yet, the scope of the conflict Europe was locked in less than a century ago borders on the fantastic. I’m glad that the American public gets queasy at the idea of good men and women coming home in flag-draped aluminum boxes. But I’d rather have them (meaning the non-military public) think about the potential costs (ranging from what we see now to the Somme) before committing themselves to the course of action suggested by Clausewitz.
Before, not after, that commitment.
Also, Louis XIV had “Ultima Ratio Regum” pressed into the sides of cannon made during his reign in France.
Translated from Latin, this means “the Last Argument of Kings”.
Given the Iraqi oil reserves and the amount Clausewitz’ is invoked these days I’m suprised another trademark of 19th century German War thought isn’t talked about more often.
Indemnity
Clausewitz had very little to say (only five pages) regarding guerilla (or insurgency) warfare. Even then he treated it as solely an extension of the struggle between states. In our current circumstances in combating non-state supported terrorism and insurgency, Clausewitz ‘s brilliance is mostly irrelevant.
It is also a big mistake to base the relative progress of a counterinsurgency on body counts, either friendly or enemy, as one would a sporting event score. While killing the enemy and taking enemy territory are fundamental with Clausewitz, and success or failure may be judged in those terms, body counts are not nearly as important in COIN warfare. Nor are they indicative of progress.
Oftentimes killing more of the enemy can be counterproductive, as was the case in Fallujah. Just ask General Westmoreland about his keeping score with body counts in Vietnam.
Fliter, its because people forget what Clausewitz wrote, that this text is never done, nor will it be the end all be all of military thought. Really only the first chapter of the first book could be considered complete when he died.
So his brilliance is relevant, being one of the first to proclaim “don’t get stuck on stupid.”
Drew: Clausewitz supposed that the thought process would have already been done when the war was started. The trinity would have already be set to go to war with rational expectations of the costs. This is where the modern society falters where the price for somethings is declared too high.
I’d also recommend “Masters of War” by the late Michael Handel. A great examination of Clausewitz, Tzu, Jomini, and Machievelli (who also wrote an “Art of War”… quite boring unless you like detail on 16th century Italian formations), that compares and contrasts the logical processes, or lack thereof in each writer’s text.
I don’t know Clausewitz, but I do know Yon. Yon has taught me a lot about COIN, and COIN is certainly war, policy, and politics on the street level.
I’ve just finished Michael Yon’s book,
“Moment of Truth in Iraq.” I’ve read all his essays on his website and expected the book would be a rehash. Not so. He manages to knit together a picture of what we did wrong and how we got back on track. As a result of reading this book, I feel like I understand COIN as I never did before.
There are officers and non-coms doing incredible things over there. Going from kinetic combat ops to Barnett’s Sys-Admin ops in the same day; sometimes twice a day.
The flexibility, ingenuity, and conduct of our troops is winning hearts and minds. It ain’t over and is, as they say, still fragile, but the ability of our military to adjust and “get er dun” is awesome.
This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Iraq and COIN.