Who We are Now: The United States and Counterinsurgency

In 2009, the US Army, motivated by the disastrous occupation of Iraq in 203, published its Field Manual in Tactics in Counterinsurgency. The problem, as the authors saw it, was that Army commanders did not know what do to once they had occupied a country using traditional military strategy and tactics. The manual describes how commanders should aid in the reconstruction of a society and a polity destroyed by the invasion.

The first basic assumption of the manual -- an idea ignored or abandoned by the doctrine of Rumsfeld's military in 2003 -- is that an American invasion will create animosity and opposition in at least some segment of the population of the conquered nation (referred to in the manual, somewhat euphemistically as the "Host Nation," or HN). As a result, soldiers will have to combat an insurgency for some time after the invasion is over. The second assumption of the manual is that soldiers are not automatically equipped or trained to work like that; they are trained to kill the enemy efficiently and comprehensively, not govern a chaotic situation.

The first two chapters serve as a remarkable textbook on practical human geography. They describe the physical and social manifestations of a people's values (and make careful distinctions between the values of a society and its interests -- concepts that deserve very further thoughts at all levels of government.)

I say it is "practical human geography" because this is a field manual; its purpose is to instruct soldiers on what to do, on a day-to-day basis, when they are an occupying force in a foreign place. The soldiers need to understand their Host Nation well enough not offend its inhabitants and thereby strengthen the Army's opponents.  They must provide security in its most basic form while also improving infrastructure and the faith in the rule of law.

These are enormously complicated and complex undertakings, and the book emphasizes the need for soldiers to adhere to legal and political restrictions in the conduct of open war. It teaches methods of detainment, search and seizure, interrogation, interaction with NGO's and government agencies. It urges restraint and observation while also describing the best way to establish effective kill zones for an ambush in an urban area.

In other words, the people of the United States, through its military, have become the guarantors of the rule of law in parts of the Middle East. If we did not know that already, we can see it in the rapid disintegration of Iraq once the Army left.

Now is the time to have a careful, reasoned debate about the consequences and implications of this fundamental fact. I wish we were capable of having it.