trapped in the big war paradigm
TRANSCRIPT
Joseph N. Kiarie (MA International Studies-Security studies)[email protected]
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THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES:
Trapped in the Big War Paradigm: The American Dilemma in
Iraq
19th March 2008
Joseph N. Kiarie (MA International Studies-Security studies)[email protected]
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Introduction
The American conventional military superiority can only be
threatened at the extreme ends of a war spectrum; either on the
right end by a capable state possessing nuclear weapons, or, on the
extreme left by an insurgent using unconventional method to turn a
short sharp war into a lengthy and costly war of attrition. (Scales
2004) It is this left end of the spectrum that the insurgents in Iraq
chose to exploit; they chose to fight on their own terms and not the
U.S., operating within their own strategic culture and available
means. (Hoffman 2005)
The U.S., on the other hand, responded in the American way of
war; a military strategic culture that appears increasingly at odd
with the emerging strategic environment, a strategy that relays on
speed, manoeuvre, flexibility, and surprise to achieve an easy,
quick, clean victory with minimal casualties. Faced by such a
familiar yet daunting challenge, the Americans’ found themselves
increasingly on the counteroffensive and playing the “politically
impatient and tactically inflexible conventional enemy”. (Ivan
Arreguin-Toft 2005)
The essay argues that in their American way of war, the American
counterinsurgent forces aim is to destroy their opponent's military
capability to wage war. They argue that if they can destroy their
Joseph N. Kiarie (MA International Studies-Security studies)[email protected]
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opponent means of waging the war, their opponents will to continue
fighting is irrelevant. On the other hand, the Iraqi insurgents are
striving to destroy the Americans will to sustain the fight, their aim
being to destroy the counterinsurgent political capability. They
argue that if the Americans will to continue fighting is destroyed
then their military capability is irrelevant.
The kind of war that emerged in Iraq after the fall of Saadam
Hussein is a war that the Americans had tried to avoid for years - a
counterinsurgent war. For the counterinsurgents it is a war they
cannot afford to lose, while to the insurgents they must not be
defeated or be seen to be defeated. As I argue, the insurgents are
not losing the war, but the counterinsurgents forces are not winning
it either. If Henry Kissinger maxim, “insurgents win a war when
they don’t loose while the counterinsurgents loose when they don’t
win” is indeed true, then another Vietnam or Somalia debacle for
the US forces in Iraq is in the making. In all its facets, as I
contend, the Iraq war bares the hall marks of a counterinsurgency
faddism which has been naively captivated by the cult of insurgents
and the aura of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
Irregularity in Irregular wars
Counterinsurgency wars, as most scholars have argued falls within
the small wars category. As Sullivan observes, small wars can also
Joseph N. Kiarie (MA International Studies-Security studies)[email protected]
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be referred to as low-intensity conflict, guerrilla war, irregular war,
or savage wars of peace. He acknowledges that it is not the size or
intensity of the conflict that qualifies the term small wars, but their
asymmetrical nature and political objective. (Sullivan 2008) The
nature of actors; where a state is fighting against a non-state
contender and applying unorthodox means to fight also
characterizes small wars. According to Thomas Hammes, the Iraq
war can also be called a 4th Generation Warfare (4GW). 4GW are
wars where “insurgents use political, economic, social and military
means, to dissuade their opponents that their strategic goals are
either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit”.
(Hammes 2004, p 208)
However, Hoffman seems to disagree with these terminologies. To
him they are at best ambiguous and deceptive. Small wars, he
argues, are certainly not small in terms of scale, they can be as
protracted, destructive, savage and lethal as any big war can be,
and they are also wars where major powers are defeated. Referring
to these wars as irregular conflict is also inappropriate according to
Hoffman; he contends that these conflicts are certainly not irregular
in terms of frequency and that they are historically far more
common than state-on-state conventional wars. (Hoffman 2005,
p.916) Smith is also in agreement with Hoffman’s view; he asserts
that this kind of wars “constitutes the dominant pattern of warfare
Joseph N. Kiarie (MA International Studies-Security studies)[email protected]
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over the past fifty years”. (Smith 2003, p.30) These wars, Hoffman
further argues, “represents the norm” and it “is unconventional
warfare that is the convention”. (Hoffman 2005, p.916) The U.S.
Department of Defense has indeed embraced this fact. It
acknowledges that, “Irregular warfare has emerged as the dominant
form of warfare confronting the United States.” (U.S. Department of
Defense 2006, p.36) Statistically, Brian Reid argues that, “since
1945, of all the conflicts in the world, only 12% can be classified as
high-intensity wars”. (Reid 1998, p.28)
Smith further argues that “terms like guerrilla warfare’ and ‘low
intensity war’ are fundamentally flawed as analytical abstractions”
and that the usage of such terms in strategic studies literature
“undermines the attempt to comprehend the complexity of warfare
as a whole.” He further argues that these wars fall within the
Clausewitzian paradigm and not beyond it as suggested by Honig.
(Smith 2003, p. 37; p. 19) According to Honig, low intensity wars
are “the product of primordial urges that are entirely resistant to
‘conventional’ forms of military coercion”, an assertion Smith not
only rejects but also regards as intellectually flawed. He argues that,
“by seeking to reconstitute this false category of war under different
headings such as ‘new war’, ‘ethnic war’, or ‘complex emergencies’,
writers merely reveal their own limited grasp of the history of
warfare”. (Smith 2003, p. 19) To Smith “War is war, regardless of
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what tactics are used”. (Smith 2003, p. 37) For the sake of clarity,
and probably for lack of a better term of reference, the essay will
use interchangeably the terms counter/insurgent and small wars to
denote the Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
A Great Power in Small Wars
In his analysis of the American defeat in the Vietnam War, Andrew
Krepinevich poses a critical question, one that I use to address the
American counterinsurgent war in Iraq; the fundamental question in
Iraq today as it was in Vietnam more than thirty years ago is,
“How could the army of the most powerful nation on Earth, materially supported on scale unprecedented in history, equipped with the most sophisticated technology in an age when technology ha[s] assumed the role of a god of war, fail to emerge victorious against a numerically inferior force of lightly armed irregulars”? (Krepinevich 1986, p.4)
The essay is an attempt to answer Krepinevich question with
regards to the American counterinsurgent war in Iraq. It seeks to
find out why the US military forces have increasingly found it
difficult to wage the counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq. Given the
overwhelming U.S. military capability, many people and indeed the
U.S. military and political elites expected a decisive and convincing
victory in Iraq. But this was never to be. The question that emerges
is not only why the insurgent forces are not losing the war, but also
why the counterinsurgent forces are not winning? Cassidy quips
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that, “great powers do not win small wars because they are great
powers”. (Cassidy 2004, p. 41) The essay intends to shed some
light on Cassidy ironical but factual statement with a view of
understanding the difficulties facing the counterinsurgents in Iraq.
It is wealth, military technology and capability disparity between
developing and the developed nation-states that form the genesis of
insurgent wars. A superior military capability backed by a strong
economic position; exhibited by powerful nations makes it virtually
impossible to imagine a conventional war taking place. Instead, any
weaker nation-state will seek to avoid any form of direct
confrontation with a military powerful state like the U.S. Daniel
Marston rightly notes that, “developing world nation-states will not
have the wealth or capability to deal with the “first powers” on a
level playing field.” (Marston 2004) For situations that defy this
rule; where a less developed state fight a more developed state, the
war normally begins as an orthodox one, as was the case in Iraq,
but due to the apparent limitations of high-intensity conflict, the
latter result into low-intensity operations.
Scales, with regard to America vis-à-vis less developed states,
argues that those nations capable of practicing the western way of
war competently will not fight the U.S. but those inept in the
practice will. (Scales 2004) Due to the overwhelming conventional
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military preeminence of the U.S. coupled by nuclear deterrence
between great powers, insurgency wars between the U.S. and less
militarily able states surges in strategic significance and threatens
to dominate U.S. future wars. It was only a matter of time before
what the Americans had thought would be a quick victory with
minimal casualties in Iraq turned into a tragic protracted war of
attrition. As the Americans sought the elusive military victory, the
insurgents aimed at the progressive attrition of their opponents'
political capability to wage war. The Americans basking in the warm
and well deserved glow of the Afghanistan victory in 2003 were not
ready to embrace the “real business of regulars, the stinking gray
shadow world of ‘savage wars of peace’ ” as Rudyard Kipling called
them. (Quoted in Bolger 1991, pp. 31-32)
The reason why the insurgent forces in Iraq are not losing the war
or simply why the counterinsurgent forces are not winning the war,
as the essay argues, is as a result of the American strategic military
culture or the American way of war. I argue that the
Counterinsurgent forces are waging a military war while the
insurgents are waging a political war. The insurgent forces are also
fighting for a strategic objective; independence and survival, while
their opponents are fighting for limited ends.
Joseph N. Kiarie (MA International Studies-Security studies)[email protected]
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In trying to understand the American way of war, the essay looks at
previous counter/insurgent wars that the U.S. forces have
unsuccessfully fought. There appear to be a consistent pattern in
this mode of defeats. Despite the increasing numbers of
unconventional wars, the U.S. military forces appear trapped in the
big war paradigm; their fighting culture appears increasingly at odd
with the dominant emerging strategic environment. It is in the
shadows of American conduct of previous small wars that the essay
attempts to analyse the Iraq war.
A number of factors that explain ‘why U.S. military is finding it
difficult to counter the insurgency that developed in Iraq after the
toppling of Saddam Hussein’ are discussed. They include religion,
cultural understanding, technological diffusion, communications
technology and diffusion of actors. Above these underlying factors,
an overarching theme that seems to explain the overall
phenomenon emerges. This is the American over-reliance on the
military arm, and her single ‘lens’ that looks at all conflict from only
a military perspective. There is also a strong resistance of the
American defence establishment to the very notion of engaging in
such conflicts, and the unsuitability her military force in fighting
such wars. As part of their military culture, the American armed
forces have declined to take small wars seriously. The Iraq war, it
can be argued, underpins the limits of conventional military power
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in unconventional settings, and not just for the Americans but also
for other conventional military powers.
The American Way of War
Scales assertion that the U.S. will continue to own the world seas
and skies (Scales 2004) is probably not an exaggeration, but what
is certain, especially after U.S. invasion of Iraq, is that the U.S. can
no longer claim superiority or dominance on foreign land. Indeed,
the type of war that the U.S. military found themselves in after the
fall of Saadam Hussein regime was a war that they had tried to
avoid for years—a counterinsurgency war.The unilateral decision to
wage war against Iraq in March 2003 was a grand but myopic
strategy; Krepinevich argues that the Americans did not seem to
have thought beyond the fall of Sadaam regime; the
counterinsurgent forces went to war with a grand but not
operational strategy. (Krepinevich 1986) The Americans apparently
forgot Sun Tzu’s cardinal principle of war, ‘Know the enemy and
know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril’. (Tzu
Sun quoted in (Griffith 1971, p.84)
According to Colin Gray there is a deep inconsistent between the
kinds of war the U.S. military force prepares to fight and the kinds
of war they actually fight. He argues that the “U.S. military force
posture appears increasingly at odds with the emerging strategic
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environment”. (Gray 2005, pp.5-6) Frank Hoffman also argues that
the U.S. military force “relevance to the nature of today’s
geopolitical disorder is questionable”. (Hoffman 2005, p.922) So
what is the problem with the all powerful US military force
especially when it comes to waging small wars?
Francis Fukuyama believes that Americans entered the 21st century
believing the success of their technology enabled them to wage only
cheap and clean wars in the future, but the Iraq war shattered this
illusion. (Fukuyama 2006, p. 36) According to Hendrickson and
Tucker, the Americans were “obsessed with stupendous deeds of
fire and movement rather than the political function that war must
serve”, to bring peace. (Hendrickson and Tucker 2005, p. 27) The
consequence of this strategy was a rapid victory collapse of
Saadam’s regime and his forces but not its total destruction.
The American counterinsurgent problem in Iraq, according to Jeffrey
Records, “is deeply rooted in the American way of warfare”. Records
see this as a result of the “American political and military culture . . .
since the early 1940s”, (Record 2006, p.1) or what Cassidy refers to
as the American “strategic military culture”. (Cassidy 2000, p.41)
According to military historian David Lonsdale, the America’s
strategic culture stresses “technological fixes to strategic problems”
and “the increasing removal of humans from the sharp end of war”.
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(Lonsdale 2004, p.9) For this reason, the U.S. forces dismal
performance in Iraq and other counterinsurgent wars should
probably not come as a surprise. To borrow Henry Kissinger words,
the Americans are fighting a military war while their opponents are
fighting a political one; the counterinsurgent forces seek physical
attrition while the insurgents aim for latter psychological exhaustion.
(Kissinger 1969, p. 214) The Americans claim to be fighting a
legitimate war in Iraq, but they are definitely fighting a wrong war.
The unsuccessful execution of the Iraq war by the
counterinsurgents can therefore be blamed on Americans “over-
reliance on the military arm, and a single ‘lens’ that looks at conflict
from only a military perspective”. As Hoffman contends such a
strategy “is not conducive to successful prosecution of Small Wars”.
(Hoffman 2005, p.918) It is this institutional culture of the US
military, which poses the most substantial constraint on America’s
ability to conduct small wars. It is biased towards its own autonomy,
its apolitical nature, and its tendency towards absolutism in the use
of force.
The Big-War Paradigm
As the insurgent forces wage a survival war, the counterinsurgents
appear deeply trapped in a big-war paradigm; a war only fit for a
major power fighting to protect her national and international
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interest vis-à-vis other major powers. The U.S. forces inability to
fight the counterinsurgent war in Iraq, as a result of the inherent
design of its own strategic military culture, is one dominated by the
American victories in big wars. Such victories include victory over
the Germans and Japanese during World War II, the 1st Persian Gulf
War in Iraq and the quick and dramatic victory in Afghanistan in
2003. These victories are no doubt as a result of her superior
firepower, superior manpower, and superior technology. But it is
this very superiority that the Americans probably thought would
underpin a formula for victory in Iraq. This grand delusion as
Jenkins observes, made the Americans to wilfully “underestimate
their enemies and over-estimate their own battlefield prowess”.
Previous American victories in grand wars as he notes were “so
absolute, so brilliantly American, that the notion of losing a war was
unthinkable”. Like her previous experiences in Cuba (1961),
Vietnam (1975), Lebanon (1983) and Somalia (1993), the Iraq war
(2003) has been anything but brilliant but truly American.
Despite the Americans military superiority and her long experience
during the low-intensity conflict’ (LIC) in Central America, where her
forces spent the majority of the first half of the twentieth century
suppressing insurrections (in the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama and Colombia), the
American forces are showing none of this experience in Iraq, at the
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same time certain shortcomings continue to appear with depressing
regularity. (Spiller 2005)
The Iraq counterinsurgent war, as has such previous wars,
underscores the “U.S. limited utility of its conventional military
superiority”. (Record 2006, p. 2) Having failed to learn the lesson
in Cuba, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia, the U.S. Army continues
to prepare and even fight the wrong war in Iraq. According to
Hoffman, these repeated defeats are nothing new and are
“consistent with the institutional amnesia of the American military”
and political entity. (Hoffman 2005, p.922)
Counterinsurgency in Iraq
Contrary to the popular belief, the U.S. was not “confronted by new
and unfamiliar threats . . . that required adapting and learning of
new means” with the end of the cold war. (Cassidy 2000, p. 41)
Americans have fought not just big wars but also several small wars
in her history of warfare. Sarkesian refers to these latter wars as
“America’s forgotten wars, the United States’ own significant Small
Wars heritage”. He argues that this heritage is one that “began
before the American Revolution”, and one that marks “the first 150
years of U.S. foreign policy”. (Sarkesian 1984, p. 915) Reid is of the
same opinion and argues that guerrilla, or insurgent or low-intensity
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war has been with the world and indeed the U.S. as long as
conventional or high-intensity warfare has existed. (Reid 1998,
p.28) But it is Metz and Millen argument that appears to best
capture its genesis; the duo argue that “insurgency has existed as
long as the powerful have frustrated the weak to the point of
violence”, and that it is “simply a strategy of desperation in which
those with no other options turn to”. (Metz and Millen 2004)
According to the author of The Sling and the Stone, Thomas
Hammes , the only kind of war America has lost is a small war
against an unconventional force.( Hammes 2004 ) The limitation to
America’s ability to wage successful small wars, as Eliot Cohen
observes, is traceable to a number of factors. Given the protracted
nature of the war, patience is a prerequisite, but as he notes
“patience is not a virtue of American national culture”. He also
blames public opinion in a democracy, a meddling Congress, and
the ever intrusive media. Though these factors explain why great
powers lose small wars, they do not adequately address the
counterinsurgent challenges in Iraq. Other factors exist that
particularly favor the insurgents’ measures while underscoring the
counterinsurgents strategic efforts in Iraq.
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Contrary to the widely held notion, insurgencies in Iraq do have an
effective strategy. They strive to avoid a direct engagement, as
power balance is not in their favor, and aim to undermine their
adversary by weakening their counterinsurgencies measures while
strengthening their own. Other factors that continue to undermine
the counterinsurgent efforts of winning the Iraq peace, while
enhancing the insurgents’ efforts include diffusion of actors,
communications technology, technological diffusion, religion and
cultural understanding.
Diffusion of Actors
The number of actors involved in Iraq increases the complexity of
the war. They include the UN and myriad regional relief agencies,
coalition partners, private security forces or semi-military
organizations, a raft of commercial insurgents, the Iraq Insurgents,
the U.S. counterinsurgents, domestic population on each side, the
media and the international community. The success of any one
side relay heavily on all these several intricate factors. It is the side
that is able to not only balance these factors to their favor, but also
to command the greatest psychological initiative and project a
winning and strong image, that will determine the duration and the
final outcome of the war. Or simply put the side that will be able to
create and sustain the impression that no matter how long it takes
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they will ultimately persevere, is the side that is more likely to win
the war. (Metz and Millen 2004)
The U.S. dilemma in Iraq is also compounded by the fact that the
coalition force is not fighting against one insurgency group, the
insurgency in Iraq is multidimensional. The coalition forces are up
against the Sunni, and also the Shiite forces. The complexity of the
war lies in the fact that the counterinsurgency has to contend with
two radically and different methods of operation that calls for
different responses.
Religion
There is no doubt that the Iraq war has some underlying religious
connotation. Apart from the Sunni-Shiite wrangles, there are deep
rooted anti-western feelings by the predominant Muslim population
in the country. The religious undertones are no doubt contributing
to the war, most suicide bombings underpins this notion. Religious-
based conflicts are among the most protracted wars, with any form
of political compromise or negotiations for a peaceful settlement
being hard if not always impossible to attain. This can probably be
explained by Hoffman assertion that “Religion lowers inhibitions and
reduces moral barriers to violence . . .” (Hoffman 2005, pp. 926-7)
Most of the suicide bombers and the fighting insurgents believe that
they are answering and serving a higher moral authority. To them,
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fighting is a higher calling, warranting the greatest sacrifice and
sanctifying the violence.
Cultural Understanding
Culturally insensitive techniques on the part of American military
forces have provoked resentment and anger from most Iraqi
people. The consequence has been the alienation of the
counterinsurgent forces and the embracing of the insurgents’
nationalist doctrine. The nationalist angle provides a powerful
unifying and mobilizing momentum for the insurgent cause.
Nationalism as an ideology highlights the perceived difference
between the ‘invaders’ and the ‘liberators’. It is upon this ideological
platform that the Iraqi insurgencies are able to obtain their
resources such as manpower, funding, supplies, sanctuary and
intelligence. (Metz and Millen 2004) What Americans need is
cultural intelligence, for a ‘good strategy presumes good
anthropology and good sociology’ as suggested by Bernard Brodie.
(Brodie 1973, p.332)
Communications Technology
The unbridled universal growth in global communication technology
has radically changed the way non-state actors acquire and
disseminate strategic intelligence, how they recruit, and rehearse
and how they even fight. A local conflict, such as the Iraq war, soon
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acquires a global dimension through the flow of information such as
the internet. Through this power of technology, the insurgents have
been able to extend their potential support, acquire financial,
material and personal support for their cause. (Weimann 2005)
Technological Diffusion
Technological diffusion has greatly facilitated the acquisition of
weapons of mass destruction to potential sub-state actors who
otherwise would not have them. The proliferation of such weapons
has transformed the Iraq war into a deadly and protracted conflict.
Intelligence and available Weaponry
The disbandment of the Iraqi military not only left hundreds of
thousands of well trained men with no means of support, ready for
recruitment by the insurgents, but also left a huge supply of arms
and ammunitions scattered about the country unguarded. Metz and
Millen suggests that this weaponry is probably enough to last for
several years. (Metz and Millen 2004) The insurgents also have a
better access to intelligence information about the coalition forces
tactical and operation efforts. With a ‘home advantage’ against the
coalition forces, the insurgents have a better network and probably
a higher number of informers and sources. The insurgents have also
managed to infiltrate the Iraqi security forces and other Iraqis
working for the Coalition.
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Conclusion
The protracted counterinsurgents war in Iraq is showing no signs of
abating. If other such wars that have occurred in the past, or are
still occurring to date, are anything to go by, then the Iraq war is
far from over. Where stakes are high, as in Iraq, counter/insurgents
wars appears to have an endless lifespan of their own. Low-
Intensity conflicts have been going on for over 60 years in South
Asia and in the Middle East, leaving the participants apparently
dreadlock and more divided than ever before. India and Pakistan
struggle over border region of Kashmir is still ongoing, while the
second Intifada in Israel is anywhere but near a comprehensive
peace-deal. The longevity of these wars is as a result of the high
stakes in place, given the American strategic oil interest in Iraq, the
war in Iraq has probably just begun Iraq.
The counterinsurgent forces appear trapped in a direct strategy,
their main aim being, to destroy or capture the adversary’s physical
capacity to fight, and to render their will to fight irrelevant.
(Arreguı´n-Toft 2005, p. 34,) the insurgents, on the other hand are
using Indirect strategies to destroy their opponent’s will to continue
fighting, through unconventional means such as systematic
targeting of non-combatants, Kidnapping, suicide and car bombing
of military and civilian targets among other endless unorthodox
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means. The insurgents have avoided a direct engagement with
counterinsurgent forces undermining the latter’s power advantage,
and ensuring the war drags on at their own pace.
The Insurgents are not losing the war but the Americans are
definitely not winning it either. The insurgents continue to
undermine the U.S. led efforts of rebuilding Iraq. They pose the
challenge to the occupiers by making the country ungovernable by
creating and fuelling chaos, conflict, and fear. They are also
provoking the U.S. into using excessive force aimed at alienating
the U.S. from the global and domestic support they have. The
insurgents are also increasing the number of the occupying force
casualties, eroding both the will of the forces to fight and that of
their population to support the war, fuelling more anger and
resentment towards the coalition. Though the insurgents’ main goal
- to outlast the Americans theoretically unlimited resources,
capabilities and the will to fight - appear farfetched, it is
nevertheless not an unimaginable reality. (Vlasak 2007)
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