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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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Israel is fighting a partisan war, which cannot be won without high civilian causalities, in the first place because the militants live among the community but, more importantly, because reprisals against the civilian population are a requirement for winning a partisan war (Israel knows this, the US could never accept that).

Haven't read the rest of this post yet, but this part in particular is dead wrong. Reprisals might be effective in some circumstances, but are by no means required. A good example is the US pacification of Iraq. The following post is made from someone with first-hand experience in the matter:

I'm a OIF veteran myself, who spent two years in Iraq, one during the bloody Surge in 07-08, the other including being in the "last" US combat brigade to leave Iraq in 2010 (after that, they were only advise-assist brigades not meant to perform any combat duties). Besides my own military service (as an infantry NCO), I spent years afterwards reading every book, article, report, etc that I could find to better understand what actually happened during "my war."

You are dead wrong in your assessment.

When we handed Iraq over to the Iraqi govt, as part of the SOFA agreement, it was pacified and the typical Iraqi city was less violent than the typical American city. That was due to successful execution of COIN doctrine.

We broke the back of the Sunni Arab insurgency with the Al Sawah/Awakening Movement, which capitalized on growing hatred between the rank and file moderate insurgents and especially their tribal leadership and the hardcore Salafi insurgents, most notably Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq, who were already pissing off the locals with their extremist tactics.

Starting in 2006 in Anbar Province, the US partnered with Iraqi tribes against AQI, standing up militias to take control of the local areas, driving AQI out as the local former insurgents turned militia knew exactly who they were, where they lived, where their caches were located, where their safe houses were, who supported them, etc. The Awakening spread to the rest of the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq through 2007, by the second half of that year the daily number of Significant Actions (SIGACT), violent attacks against Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces, or civilians, had plummeted.

Halfway through my first deployment, all spent in the "Sunni Triangle," it went from me thinking it would be pure chance to spend 15 months without getting at least seriously wounded, to being shocked at how boring and quiet it had become. My second deployment, also in the Sunni Triangle, was absolutely boring. Zero action, no IEDs, no ambushes, no firefights, there was almost no fighting happening period.

The Shi'a insurgency, dominated by the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade (and other Iran proxy groups) was also broken in 2007-8. Partly by the US, especially punishing the Mahdi Army in their uprisings. But mainly it was Maliki and the Iraqi Army who did it, crushing the Basra uprising in 2008, which was only possible because the US trained them, assisted with the clearing operation, etc. That forced al-Sadr to come to terms and agree to both a cease fire and to disband.

The US didn't squash the Badr Bde, they were tied to the Iraqi govt, with so many of them moonlighting in Iraqi Security Forces, but when they knew the SOFA was going to kick after Bush signed that agreement, they recognized there was no point attacking US forces anymore so they stopped, also around 2008. With Baghdad largely ethnically cleansed of Sunnis by that point, they also laid off the death squads, especially after the US/British SOF dismantled the AQI terror cells that were deliberately targeting Shi'a civilians with mass casualty events to purposely start a secular civil war, JSOC's army of face-shooting Tier 1 assaulters and brainiac secret squirrels ended that threat through a campaign of intelligence directed raids that is still absolutely awesome to contemplate.

Iraq went to shit after we pulled out because the US wasn't there anymore. Maliki was left to do as they pleased, and he really wanted to terrorize the Sunni Arabs into compliance, which was a huge mistake. When GWB was POTUS, he spoke almost daily to Maliki on the phone offering guidance, coordinating, etc, and that kept him in check. After Obama became POTUS, he spoke to him once, and then washed his hands of Iraq after the pullout. When the US left and quit involvement in Iraq in 2011, done and no longer "answering the phone" that created an enormous power vacuum which Iran filled, who were also pressuring Maliki to crack down on the Sunni Arabs.

THAT is what caused the DAESH Uprising. The Sunni Arabs were even trying to address political issues non-violently, but Maliki cracked down on them with state-directed violence and mass arrests in 2012-2013, and that was what broke the camel's back and restarted the sectarian civil war. At that point, the largest, bloodiest, most well-funded insurgent group was Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq, who had recently been fighting in Syria for the past two years developing even more effectively violent means of terrorism and warfare, had renamed themselves Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria), and the rest is history.

But that was not a failure of US COIN doctrine, which was to seek local solutions to problems, to use whatever means we had (including bribery) to win locals over to our side, to emphasize non-violent means of problem-solving over violent (such as setting up new businesses to grow their economy, a role every US military combat arms unit commander was performing), to live among the people, to share their dangers, to learn to know them, etc.

I'm not sure this post proves what you want it to re: the utility/necessity of reprisals. As I read it, it claims that the insurgencies in Iraq were broken by:

(1) coopting moderate factions inside the (Sunni) insurgencies and relying on them to do the dirty work themselves (does anyone want to bet that those Sunni militias didn't target civilian supporters of the radical factions as well as combatants under arms?), or (2) allowing the (Shiite) insurgencies to more-or-less achieve their objectives, which included withdrawal of US troops and ethnic cleansing of enemy civilians from insurgent-controlled areas.

Neither of those are particularly happy outcomes, and neither would be acceptable in the Israeli/Palestinian context.

What do you think ‘acceptable’ means? I’m pretty sure that Israel will ethnically cleanse Gaza and get away with it in a way that west-of-hajnal populations couldn’t. Frankly I shed few tears for the plight of the poor Palestinians despite it being horrible what happens to them.

I apologize, I think I was not clear. What I meant was that the OIF comment @Ben___Garrison cited itself does not provide convincing examples of the proposition that a partisan war can be handled without reprisal against civilians, because the methods described both explicitly involved significant intracommunal violence up to and including actual ethnic cleansing.

Personally, I think physical relocation and/or separation can be, but isn't always, a solution to intracommunal violence. More important, to my mind, is that a situation be reached whereby all parties agree that one side has conclusively triumphed, the other has conclusively lost, and that further conflict is futile to change this result. That's the only way that both parties will settle down and start funneling resources into building their own prosperity rather than attempting to destroy/displace the other.

I’m pretty sure that Israel will ethnically cleanse Gaza and get away with it

Gaza is already ethnically spotless.

A good example is the US pacification of Iraq.

Iraq is a good example for why this is true, in fact. The US retreated from the first battle of Fallujah due to civilian casualties. If it had done what Israel is doing: ghettoize the population into a very small number of population centers, demolish the rest, and then deport the population into concentration camps with special treatment/scrutiny of military-aged males, then you would have actually seen a pacification of Iraq. But that is not a partisan war the US actually won, ditto for Afghanistan.

The US absolutely won the 'partisan' war in Iraq, it successfully put the Shiites in power and granted the Kurds a largely self-determined homeland and both factions remain in power in their respective parts of the country to this day. Whether that's in the strategic interests of the United States is an interesting debate, but the Sunnis no longer rule Iraq.

Fallujah 1 was a conventional urban battle, not an anti-partisan operation, so it's not really getting at what I posted above. And yes, the US did effectively pacify Iraq in the short-term without slaughtering huge masses of the population through reprisals. It certainly didn't get long-term pacification though as ISIS spread almost as soon as US troops left, but that's a separate issue. An issue that Israel is also likely to face unless it's willing to actually genocide the Palestinians

The only way to get long-term pacification is by a hearts-and-minds victory. One possibility is getting the locals to all think your government type is great which is what the US tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's almost certainly always doomed to failure. The other possibility is delegitimizing violence by snuffing out all hopes of victory, like what happened with Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Israel also won't be able to do this since Palestinians are gaining a long-term diplomatic edge by the current Israeli overreaction.

If they had dropped more napalm on Iraq, it would have ended like Vietnam. The Soviets killed 10% of Afghanistan's population and did worse than the US. France put two million Algerians in prison camps in the 50s. Turning Iraq into a giant prison wouldn't be sustainable. There are 44.5 million Iraqis. Maintaining a police state for a population that large would be absurdly expensive and have no point. There wouldn't be an actual endgame as the regime would get toppled as soon as the vast police presence was pulled back.

There wouldn't be an actual endgame as the regime would get toppled as soon as the vast police presence was pulled back.

There could be another endgame. Kill everyone. Every last one of them.