Senator McCain, West Point, the U.S. Army War College and the War in Iraq

      In his assessment of the War in Iraq Senator McCain says that we need to listen to the soldiers. I agree. The problem is that the counsel offered by American soldiers often contradicts the policies advocated by Senator McCain. Read the monographs published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and you learn that many soldiers think that McCain is not only wrong; he is dangerous.

      In a speech delivered on April 11, 2007 Senator McCain talked about the need to win the “war on terror”. However, as early as December of 2003, War College Professor Jeffry Record wrote about “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism”. He thought that defining our struggle as a war on terrorism made little sense: “You can kill terrorists, infiltrate their organizations, shut down their sources of cash, wipe out their training bases, and attack their state sponsors, but how do you attack a method?”

      By all means go after Al Qaeda but a war on terrorism is not only unwinnable, it is endless. After Iraq do you then move on to Sri Lanka, to Peru and to Colombia? What’s the strategy for defeating fighters from a good Christian nation –Colombia- when they behead opponents using chainsaws?

            Suggestion number one: Don’t classify the post 9/11 world as a war on terror. “The GWOT as it has so far been defined and conducted is strategically unfocused; promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate scarce U.S. military and other means over too many ends. It violates the fundamental strategic principles of discrimination and concentration”

       Suggestion number two:  In an October, 2005 War College paper, Terrill (head of the U.S. Army’s Military History Institute) and Crane made this point about a disengagement strategy from Iraq. “Deemphasize rhetoric”. If, as Senator McCain stresses, “Iraq is the main battleground in the war on terror”, you are making life much harder for the Iraqi government. Mainstream Muslims will view the war in Iraq “as part of a campaign that includes Israeli actions against Palestine and Russian attacks in Chechnya.” Terrill and Crane stress that “the United States does not need to burden the Iraqi government with the specter of collusion in what may be seen as anti-Muslim policies.”

       What is Senator McCain’s response? He dramatically ups the ante by proclaiming (again on April 11, 2007) that “the war on terror, the war for the future of the Middle East and the struggle for the soul of Islam, of which the war in Iraq constitutes a key element, are bound together. Progress in one requires progress in all.”

          It is heavenly rhetoric; rooted in ignorance and put in its place when you read a December 2005 Army War College essay entitled “One Hundred Osamas.” Professor Sherifa Zuhur writes that one probable result of our war in Iraq is 99 deadly clones of Bin Laden. This is so because, among other things, the cheek to speak about the essence of their religion moves Muslims to ask a powerful question: “Who designated the United States as the ultimate authority determining the future of the Middle East?” Muslims will decide their own destiny and it will be much easier to succeed if Americans finally grasp that Muslims share a “holistic view of life; everything is religion, everything is Islam; financial, social, intellectual, theological, military and political.”

        From a speaker who does not know the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni, it is all American audacity to search for the soul of Islam. So, button up your lips and replace rhetoric with knowledge: Political Islam is a misnomer and “if the United States continues to promote secularism, in one form or another as the antidote to extremist or revivalist Islam, it will not reach hearts and minds.”  

       Suggestion number three: “Avoid setting the bar too high, or being too specific, when proclaiming visions of postwar end states.” After a long examination of previous U.S. occupations (e.g., Cuba and Vietnam) Terrill and Crane correctly conclude that we have rarely done well. Moreover, they never stress two of our worst failures, in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti. We not only put Trujillo in power, the Marines trained him for the job. He was our monster and that is Terrill and Crane’s point. Be a pessimist and never promise, as Senator McCain does on his website, that we are going to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq and never leave until “a competent, trained, and capable security force is in place and operating effectively.”

     By my count, we have been training the security forces in Haiti since 1909. Things are not going well. And, as the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point notes in a report dated July 22, 2008, a final defeat of Al Qaeda is very unlikely. Withdraw or “win” but, either way, “if Jihadists believe Iraq remains a viable arena for Jihad, or they sense an opportunity to humiliate the US, they will travel to Iraq even after a withdrawal, much as earlier generations of fighters arrived in Afghanistan long after the Soviet Union withdrew.”  

    Suggestion Number Four: “The United States must distinguish between its campaign against Al Qaeda in Iraq and the larger and more difficult task of building a stable, peaceful Iraqi government capable of governing Iraq independently.”

      This is from the Combating Terrorism Center’s July 22, 2008 report and it is echoed by an earlier West Point analysis. That is, “the vast majority of militants in Iraq have nothing to do with Al Qaeda …those insurgents are a mix of Sunni nationalists, Ba’thists, Shi’a militants, and Islamist organizations. Mistaking any of these groups for Al-Qaeda is not simply wrong; it is dangerous.” (My emphasis)

     So, never “conflate” two separate threats, which is exactly what Senator McCain does. In his April 11, 2007 speech, he assures his listeners “that it is impossible to separate sectarian violence from the war against Al Qaeda.”  They are joined at the hip even if our best soldiers say it is not so.

   To summarize: No one can ever a war on terror. Deemphasize rhetoric. Lower the bar that defines success. Recognize that “the Iraqi War has increased Jihadi radicalization in the Muslim World."  The July 22^nd, 2008 report says that “we found that the rate of deadly attacks by Jihadis has increased sevenfold since the invasion.”

     And, above all, separate the “tactical” threat from Al Qaeda in Iraq from the strategic need to deal with an insurgency whose roots are as old as dirt. West Point estimates that it takes “approximately 14 years for a government to win against an insurgency; and the longer the war goes on, the more foreign fighters will gain experience there.”

   It is informed, important advice, from some of America’s best soldiers and their professors. Unfortunately, Senator McCain is not listening. And that makes him a very dangerous man.