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Keegan on Keane: Hanson on Keegan

John Keegan in UK’s Telegraph, quick and dirty Iraq A-to-Z after talking to Gen. John Keane. Followed by Douglas Hanson, taking apart Keegan. Keegan first:

… The United States, he said, had adopted the wrong strategy to deal with the disorders at the outset. It tried to solve the problem by conventional military methods, using force against force in an attempt to defeat the insurgency by killing those who were waging it, when what was needed was something more like police action, providing Iraqi cities with security, so that citizens could resume their normal lives … 

The wrong judgment was adopted because the American commanders believed they were confronting a Vietnam-style insurgency, when in fact the Sunni insurgents were trying to repossess the government of the country which they had traditionally dominated, by force. 

Superimposed on the insurgency was a terrorist campaign, largely mounted by foreign elements … Because US commanders confused the two forms of violence, they found it difficult to focus their efforts correctly. 

The terrorists undertook holy war or jihad operations against their Sunni fellow Iraqis, though the jihadists are also ready to attack Americans when the opportunity offers. The jihadists compounded the occupiers’ problems by sustaining civil disorder and undermining civilian expectations of law and order.

The pursuit of the strategy of pacification confronted American forces, however, with a dilemma. The more vigorous they were in suppressing the insurgency, the more they risked alienating ordinary Iraqis and enhancing support for the insurgency. Attacks on the Americans intensified as a result and any period of success in military operations led the leaders of the insurgency to believe that they might eventually win the war against the Americans and expel them from the country.

… if Iraq is ever to be stabilised, it remains essential to get on top of the destructive violence. That is the object of the surge, the reinforcement of the American presence with another 20,000 troops or five brigades of combat units. 

The question is how best the new troops can be used … Gen Keane holds strongly to the belief that the pacification of Baghdad is the key to the military problem, since it is by sustaining disorder in the capital that the insurgents keep alive their hopes of eventual success and the terrorists reap their largest harvest of fear and violence. 

… The success of the surge will be measured by the extent to which the new troops and their commanders end ethnic cleansing and sectarian killings there. In order to impose peace, it is essential to crush or disperse these sectarian militias: the Badr Corps, a Shia organisation, and the Mahdi Army of the Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr in eastern Baghdad. Appeals have been made to religious leaders to disband their militias but, as their power and influence depend on the militias, it is not surprising that such appeals have been ineffective. On the other hand, full-scale offensives to tackle the militias in their home areas can only cause more civilian death and suffering - thus exacerbating the security situation. 

The prospects for the US defence establishment are not heartening. While US forces do not face defeat, they are confronted with the unappetising possibility of their general war-fighting capability being eroded by years of anti-terrorist and counter-insurgency involvement at a time when the security situation of the United States world-wide is under increasing threat and the willingness of the American public to support a long drawn out and apparently profitless campaign is weakening. 

Iraq is not Vietnam … but the atmosphere is dispiriting. What started so well has become a depressing backstreet quarrel among a people who show no gratitude for being rescued from a brutal dictatorship. The surge may achieve a transformation but no one would bet on it. Let us hope that it does not result in the need for another surge in six months’ time. 

Now, we go to Douglas Hanson at The American Thinker:

When a distinguished historian gets basic facts wrong about adversaries in a global war, the rest of his analysis deserves closer scrutiny.  In an article today in the New York Sun, John Keegan, a leading military historian, attempts to re-cast the failure to defeat the enemy in Iraq with a new twist: we confused an “insurgency” with terrorism.

From Keegan’s point of view, it’s no good killing the so-called insurgents because it just made Iraqi citizens angrier at the Coalition for killing off - are you ready - Sunni Baathists of Saddam’s regime who oppressed them in the first place.

Discussion of the practice and theories of warfare certainly has its place, but rehashing deliberately vague and factually incorrect musings from the “who is really our enemy?” crowd serves only to divert attention from the miscues of those responsible for outcomes in war.

What is a particularly disturbing error is that he cites General John Keane talking about the subject of the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq during a speech in London, and refers to him as,

“The commander of American reinforcements to Iraq”

The last I heard, Gen. Keane had retired, and wasn’t commanding anything, except maybe a desk as a member of FedBid’s Board of Directors

Ouch.  Rest here. I tend to agree the first half of the Keegan article, at a minimum, tells us nothing useful at present. The Telegraph version doesn’t misidentify al-Sadr as a Sunni as Hanson says the New York Sun version does, and describes the nature of the current problem well enough though not terribly insightfully, and ends on a wishy-washy note.

Topics: Iraq, military

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:38 pm on Friday, March 2, 2007

3 Responses to “Keegan on Keane: Hanson on Keegan”

1. Bill's Bites Says:
   March 2nd, 2007 at 11:24 pm

   Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.03.02

   Just read ‘em. Maybe I’ll find time to do more with ‘em later. (And some things that are too short to excerpt and too good to not mention.) Please feel free to use this post for comments and trackbacks not

2. Old War Dogs Says:
   March 2nd, 2007 at 11:25 pm

   Bill’s Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.03.02

   Some Bill’s Bites posts, some things I excerpted and linked but I’m sending you to the original post. I may rearrange the order of the items within this post as I add new things that I think belong above the

3. saltydog Says:
   March 3rd, 2007 at 12:58 am

   The good general stated part of the problem fairly well. I might give more weight to what he says, however, had he pointed out the fundamental mistake of letting al-Sadr and his merry men go when we had him cornered like the rat he is. We not only allowed a villian a chance to cause us problems in the future (as he has done), but we showed a weakness in the overall conduct of the occupation. Al-Sadr’s minions aren’t the only ones to take advantage of that weakness. We set ourselves up for these problems when we encouraged murderers to join the government. I’m no expert and I understand this; I can’t imagine that actual experts don’t.

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