Apologies if this has been touched upon elsewhere – I did a quick search and nothing stuck out.
Assumption: Let’s for a moment ignore the motivations of the insurgent foot soldiers but assume that a) they are fairly well organised by a leadership and b) that leadership is reasonably well-informed of the overall situation in Iraq.
Both of these assumptions seem to be widely accepted by the media.
Conjecture: If this is the case, insurgent leaders must be aware that the US and its allies want to withdraw theirs troops as soon as possible but will only do so when the situation is stable. If they really wanted the troops out, wouldn’t they lay low until after their withdrawal?
They would be left with an apparent puppet government but surely that would be easier to topple when it had no physical international support, either through force or, novelty of novelties, throught polls.
Plus, once the coalition troops had left, the US or UN would be very reluctant to send them back again should trouble break out after what has been happening.
Theory: So why are insurgents fighting so vehemently? Could it be that their leaders see this as perhaps their best chance of having a pop at the “great Satan” directly and do not want it to end?
Supporting evidence: It seems that many, if not most, insurgents are non-Iraqi suggesting they are there to attack rather than defend.
At first glance, the kidnappings and calls for troop withdrawals would seem to contradict this theory but, since most of the perpetrators should know the US, Britain, Poland etc will not bow to kidnappers, it becomes a win-win situation: Either they get to taunt the enemy or, in cases such as that of the Italian hostages that were released, they get large sums of money. If any smaller countries do bow to the troop demands they also score a small psychological hit on the US.
Finally, if this were the case, it is not all negative for the US/allies. Having so many commited enemies all in one place at least gives them the chance to occasionally fight on their own terms: i.e. firefights using professionals rather than trying to track shady characters operating alone or in small groups throughout the world.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I way off base?
You’re way off base by lumping all insurgents under one label. There are Sunni, Shia and foreign fighters, all with different agendas. There is a very good analysis in the current Prospect magazine but it’s sub only and the site is down so I can’t produce quotes yet.
I understand that but why can’t the theory hold true for any number of groups?
I realise that the chance of reducing the violence to nothing is more or less zero, but I’m betting the US/allies will accept a level a lot higher than that as their “stable” point at which they deem it tme to withdraw.
Conjecture: If this is the case, coalition leaders must be aware that the great majority of insurgents are only fighting the very presence of the US and its allies. If they really wanted to stop the insurgence, why can’t they just withdraw and leave the insurgents with nothing to attack?
As for your OP, I think you are overlooking the most important driver of the insurgency. Human psychology. The occupation troops have bombed, shot, and otherwise killed and maimed and pissed off a large number of people. The people left who are able, are consumed by hate and the desire for revenge. Some of the insurgents are smart leaders, but this is what they work with.
In fact, I think the same motivation plays on the other side. The occupation thinks that the solution to any problem whatsoever is always to go out and “kick some ass” - shoot somebody, anybody. Remember when in Fallujah last April, the U.S. administration declared that “heads must roll”?
Because their different agendas affect what they want. Some want US troops out ASAP, some want to mire them in chaos to prevent elections. Only skimmed the article and it’s at home now.
And as a methodological point, reducing a complex situation to an assumed similarity of goals is begging the question. If after an analysis it makes sense to conflate, fine. You haven’t demonstrated that and you’ve made an explicit false assumption that foreign fighters are the majority.
This might be useful - I haven’t explored it in detail yet and know nothing of the site’s provenance.
I am not.
My intention in the OP was that the motivations of the foot soldiers - for want of a better term - were not relevant to this theory unless they (the fs) could not be controlled by their leaders, which is what I understand your last sentence above to mean.
If that is the case on the ground, then one of the assumptions is wrong and this theory is redundant.
First, to clarify: I’m not saying that the foot soldiers are not or cannot be controlled by their leaders.
OK, I maybe kindof see what you are trying to say. You explicitly excluded the motivation of the foot soldiers from your theory. Rather odd thing to do, a theory that excludes a very important factor will lead to strange predictions.
Trying to play along, what I thought of your assumptions was that they were overstating the case. The insurgency is very heterogenous. The degree of organisation and the informedness varies greatly across different actors. Plus, the goals vary greatly. Many actors will have a primary goal of attack or revenge, ahead of the goal of kicking the occupation out.
**If ** the foot soldiers are well led, as in fairly-well controlled, their individual motivations are irrelevent as they will obey orders. If they are not, then end of theory. Not odd.
I fully realise this is an extremely simplistic theory but I used it for ease of asking whether there is an element to the insurgency of trying to keep US troops in Iraq, and if so is it a overwhelming one.
I think your first paragraph is an oversimplification. Obeying orders is not an either/or proposition and not a one-dimensional issue. The foot soldiers make a choice of which insurgent leader they are going to obey, and then, up to a point, a choice of which orders they will follow. But I’m fine with dropping this line of arguing for this thread.
My opinion on the quoted part of your theory is actually… yes. Too lazy to cite, but I read quotes of some terrorist leaders, who thought it was great to have the troops of the Great Satan in Iraq. Much easier to attack, you know.
I bolded part of your quote to stress that is applies to a subset of the insurgent groups.
I am blurring the insurgent/terrorist distinction here. Some would probably say that groups whose primary aim is to attack the coalition, not to kick them out, are by definition not insurgents but terrorists. But then, you can play endless word games with classifying the violence in Iraq.
If they were well-informed of the situation as you say, then they would be aware that the likes of George Bush and Tony Blair say that they want to withdraw their troops as soon as possible. They would also be aware that the two gentlemen have previously said things that have turned out to be utterly untrue and that what they say is basically worth a rats arse.
Besides, I’m not even sure that they do say that. What happened to the plan for permanent US bases in Iraq? It’s not been mentioned much recently, but I assume it hasn’t been abandoned.
But the insurgents don’t belong to a regular army, and can’t be expected to behave as, say, an american soldier. Though I understand that in Fallujah at least, people have been “drafted” in the ranks of the insurgents, generally speaking, they would be volunnteers, having their own motivations and goals, picking themselves which group they want to belong to, and, though there’s most probably a strong pressure not to do so, could probably walk away and stop fighting, or join another group if they weren’t happy with their leadership.
So I assume these people can’t be “well led and fairly well controlled” in the same sense american soldiers are. Nor will they be as likely to “obey orders”.
Hence, their individual motivations are pretty important.
Damn hamsters ate my post. Well, let me try again.
The reason the insurgents wouldn’t just lay low and wait for the US to leave is because we’re really fighting a civil war by proxy. The ethnic groups cited by tagos are currently united by hatred of us, but actually have longstanding enmities against each other. If we were to leave, there would be a full-fledged civil war. It’s safe to say that that is already going on; look at all the Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence that’s being reported, and we can assume that there’s a lot more that we don’t hear about.
Probably the best parallel is with Yugoslavia: a country united only by a strongman, that disintegrated into ethnic factions once the strongman lost power.
I’d say it goes both ways. In fact, I think the suicide attacks show a devotion beyond, say, a typical American soldier’s.
I agree completely. Some of these insurgents are surely more politically-minded - fighting for power and control - but I’d bet that a sizeable number of them want blood any way they can get it. The question becomes, then, what portion is ruthlessly obedient and what portion is not.
The extension of this debate is this: Are the total number of this type of insurgent growing? If this is the case, and they are fighting to keep the US in Iraq, then we’re heading toward defeat.