[ohanian]

http://www.exile.ru/2006-November-03/th ... l_war.html

1. Most wars are asymmetrical / irregular.

2. In these wars, the guerrillas / irregulars / insurgents do NOT aim for military victory.

3. You can NOT defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. In fact, they want you to do that.

4. Hi-tech weaponry is mostly useless in these wars.

5. "Hearts and Minds," meaning propaganda and morale, are more important than military superiority.

6. Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.

[mekrob]

Hmm...thanks for that. A year or so ago I saw an article about the history of the IED in Iraq and its triggering. First, an insurgent would wait to see a convoy or troop plattoon come near and then phone it in, but eventually, the trigger men became easy targets. Then they moved into electronic waves detonation, but we'd use jammers. Then they relied upon electronic waves that would trigger detonation when near a jammer. I'd never read about how the US responded and then how the Iraqis responded.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o now the insurgents are using wires or even string to set off the IED. You can't get much lower-tech than a string. And that's why it works, because you can't jam a string either.

[nemo]

I read the War Nerd. Kind of a dick, but a funny one, and it's hard to argue with most of his logic.
War Nerd Archive
Good readin'! Personal favourites include:
"U Sank My Carrier!"
"The French"
"Shi'ite! Holy Shi'ite!"
"Iraq: Guerrilla Evolution"
"IEDs: The Lazy Man's Insurgency"
"Afghanistan: Let 'Em Eat Hams"

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'h')ttp://www.exile.ru/2006-November-03/the_doctrine_of_asymmetrical_war.html

1. Most wars are asymmetrical / irregular.

2. In these wars, the guerrillas / irregulars / insurgents do NOT aim for military victory.

3. You can NOT defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. In fact, they want you to do that.

4. Hi-tech weaponry is mostly useless in these wars.

5. "Hearts and Minds," meaning propaganda and morale, are more important than military superiority.

6. Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.

[MacG]

This personae of Gary Brecher is darn good. He has made more correct predictions than anyone else I know about. I tend to follow his writings rather religiously nowdays.

My personal guess is that he is either a top general like Paul van Riper or a shy archivist-looking analyst deep inside Langely Virginia, but with a secret life.

The portrait in the column is of a Norwegian hard-rock guy of small fame.

[nemo]

Yup. Gary Brecher seems non-existent. I just call him War Nerd and leave it at that.

[Zardoz]

I caught a repeat of "Suicide Bombers: Cult of Death" on the Discovery Times channel last night.

It really is a cult now. Their glorification of the martyrs is amazing. They have monuments, put up posters, have parades, have memorial celebrations for years afterwards, etc.

The show was disturbing enough, but the videos taken by Hamas and others, documenting the bombings, were stunning, to say the least. They demonstrated how impossible suicide bombers are to stop. There's no real defense against them. Asymmetrical warfare at its most effective.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'h')ttp://www.exile.ru/2006-November-03/the_doctrine_of_asymmetrical_war.html

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd that's why it works, because you can't jam a string either.

[PenultimateManStanding]

wow, I saw something of this War Nerd before but check out this: if this isn't getting right down to the nitty gritty I don't know what is:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')odfearing gangbangers, that's exactly what we ran into in Somalia, 1993. Half the population of Mogadishu turned on our guys who were trying to provide aid for the starving. They didn't want peace, democracy or any of that shit. They wanted their clan to win and the other clans to lose. And if stopping the aid convoys from getting food to those enemy clans was the only way to win, they were ready to make it happen, ready to die fighting our best troops backed by attack helicopters and APCs. We killed maybe a thousand of these "civilians" and lost 18 Rangers and Delta operators. And the Somalis made the anniversary of that fight a national holiday. It's worth giving a moment to let that sink in: these people fought to the death against overwhelmingly superior US forces, because they wanted their clan to win by starving rival clans to death.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Some more choice War Nerd. This one's a doozy 'bout DIME weapons and Genghis Khan:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t this point a small smelly Asian guy in a sweaty sheepskin coat at the back of the DoD research-and-development briefing stands up and asks with a shy smile, "Excuse me please, should one not also kill Arab (B) rather than leave him alive to avenge his friend's death? Should one not kill all the children of this beach picnicker rather than let them grow up dreaming of avenging their father?"

And the 6'5" Lt. Col. running the briefing starts to laugh at this amateur till his aide whispers, "Umm, sir, that's Genghis Khan. So we better treat it like a serious question!"

So the Col. clears his throat and says, "Well Mister Khan sir, that's a real good question and it all has to do with collateral damage, and, um, well, what would YOU do with Gaza?"

Genghis just smiles shyly again and winks, and suddenly everybody in the room sees the same vision: an empty beach, with the camera zooming back to show an empty Middle East, a gigantic Mongol hunting preserve, with only the hawks and other large birds of prey kept as decoration.

Could've happened, too, if the damn Knights of Old had had the sense to ally themselves to the Mongols against the Saracens. The Mongols offered that deal to the Crusading Knights in the mid-13th century. The Mongols were annoyed with the Muslims, and when the Mongols were annoyed, heads didn't just roll, they got hacked off and stacked up, in big piles the size of small hills.. . .

[PenultimateManStanding]

ohanian: what do you think will happen when things really start getting desperate? The Israeli enemies now are doing a new kind of war. Iran is thumbing it's nose at the West. Peakoil may set in and make these big conventional Western Armies very worried and nervous. I get the feeling that when the western populations get the wake up call, the economies start struggling and everybody is scared and angry that the rules will change. some of these tactics that are refered to by Gary Brecher as asymetrical war in his excellent pieces may not work on a riled modern army, fully equipped, with the gloves off. What do you think? To put it another with one of Brecher's analogies, he spoke of a bunch of Filippino gangbangers with switchblades slicing up an American High School football team in full pads. The High School team is conditioned to a sort of sublimated violence. It might not take them too long under the right conditions, to find an effective way to take out the switchblade guys once they realize what is happening.

[Kingcoal]

Great post ohanian. You forgot the WMDs, isn't that part of the asymmetrical concept? I'm doing a lot of I told you so's to people who told me how unpatriotic and wimpy I was two years ago when I was against attacking Iraq. My rational is the same today as it was two years ago, I haven't changed at all. That rational is that you win wars by picking your battles wisely and Iraq was a poorly chosen battle. Politicians tend to pick battles for short term political reasons and Iraq was like that. Hussein was isolated, few friends, no important friends and poorly prepared for war. It was an easy battle, but still poorly chosen because it involved nation building which works only in very few situations.

Unfortunately there is no easy solution to our problem. We will eventually "cut and run," just like Vietnam. Democracy doesn't work with Muslims; it's as simple as that.

[NEOPO]

Sounds like someone is skeered

Imagine a small nuke inside the greenzone........

Now someone please tell me why we always have this conversation assuming we want anything but to stay in Iraq........
Assuming we are there to spread democracy or other BS......

[PenultimateManStanding]

I've been going through the War Nerd's posts. They are very informative and behind the sardonic wit is a well schooled mind. Guy seems to know everything about war and how it is changing. Great article about how Hezbollah's tactics outsmarted the IDF and Mossad. impressive analysis of how warfare is constantly changing. Then I came to something I've been expecting to see because all the signs point to it: Peak Oil, Genghis Khan, Human History. So at the end of this article I read this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's hard to say who gains in the long run. Short term, sure, Hezbollah wins big. But in the long run, maybe what's happened is that the day when genocide replaces the farce called "CI Warfare" just got a lot closer.

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'o')hanian: what do you think will happen when things really start getting desperate? The Israeli enemies now are doing a new kind of war. Iran is thumbing it's nose at the West. Peakoil may set in and make these big conventional Western Armies very worried and nervous. I get the feeling that when the western populations get the wake up call, the economies start struggling and everybody is scared and angry that the rules will change. some of these tactics that are refered to by Gary Brecher as asymetrical war in his excellent pieces may not work on a riled modern army, fully equipped, with the gloves off. What do you think?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', '
')5) Have your grunts learn the local language. You can have the best gun in the world but if you do not know who your enemy is then who are you going to shoot? Offer extra pay depending on how fluent your grunts are in the local language. More fluency, more pay! Have a weekly quick language test. You can even hire the locals to administer the test (again pumping more money into the local economy).

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'd')oesn't sound like they are

[PenultimateManStanding]

an interview with Gary Brecher

Brecher says he's just a fat nerd who likes to read about war. He's obviously read a great deal about it. He has the best anti-Bush material I've ever read and the most informative and convincing thought about why the war in Iraq is not working. He also happens to admire Bush Sr. But the thing about it is he's very good at what he does. witty, erudite, sarcastic, scrappy and extremely entertaining. As for who he really is: I'd be surprised if he isn't who he says he is. Sounds like a guy who went to high school in So. Cal. to me alright.