Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

A global war on insurgency

Roxanna Tiron:

The anti-insurgency tactics the U.S. military is learning in Iraq could be applied globally, which would turn the war on terrorism into a “war on insurgency,” said Lt. Gen. William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and war fighting support.

“My position is that this is a global insurgency,” said Boykin during a forum on special operations and low intensity conflict.

In Iraq and other trouble spots, the United States has to come to grips with the nature of the enemy, he explained. “It is a web of networks that come together in a coalition of convenience. There are links to drug trafficking, money laundering and the like,” he said.

An insurgency is a political-military activity, in which the political aspects are much more important than the military aspects, explained a Defense Department official who did not want to be quoted by name. “Understanding the political, economic, financial, legal and cultural issues, is at the core of understanding what is going on,” the official said.

The resulting approach means that “we must run a global counter-insurgency if we accept what the war on terror actually is,” said James Roberts, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.

The strength and, in many ways, the unpredictability of the insurgency the United States encountered in Iraq, is prompting the Defense Department to accord “stability and security” operations the same priority as combat operations, said Jeffrey “Jeb” Nadaner, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. “You have to think about what you can do in terms of stability on the ground immediately,” and make sure that stability operations are part of the campaign plan from the onset, Nadaner said during a workshop at the conference.

Defeating the strategy of insurgency may be one of the most important results of the current war. Inurgency is the strategy of the weak who are unwilling to work through peaceful means for change. Fear of insurgency is also the one of the reasons liberal Democrats use to oppose the use of force. While they may have other motives, ever since the Vietnam war liberals have been motivated by this fear to oppose almost any use of force. If insurgency as a strategy can be defeated our foreign enemies will have to come to accept defeat and liberal Democrats will have to come up with another reason to oppose the use of force.