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

Enemy strategy borne of desperation

The Belmont Club:

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...The enemy has probably set out to prove, in the light of the recent one-sided combat, that they can still cause US casualties. The enemy strikes do not appear to be "complex" operations which rely on the combined and coordinated application of different types of attack. In the case of the attack on the diplomatic convoy, the enemy expended a VBIED, which is pretty much their ultimate weapon, against a vehicle which did not contain any targets of a high propaganda value to them, although they must have believed the middle vehicle, which was attacked, may have contained a diplomat probably because of its location in the convoy. The deaths of these Americans are a tragedy. However, there is nothing yet in the operational pattern which suggests that the enemy is able to strike at other than targets of opportunity: they are killing whoever they can. This is pretty much consistent with the strategy of causing a political, rather than an overtly military impact on US forces.

The Coalition is pursuing a different strategy. Apart from combat operations against enemy fighters, it is attempting to roll-up the command infrastructure of the opposing force by capturing their key leaders. A "capture" is among the most complex operations of war. It is the very opposite of killing whoever you can. It means seizing specific persons ensconced deep within their most secure areas without giving them the time to resist or kill themselves, equivalent to the enemy seizing a full colonel and his staff inside brigade headquarters. (Another demonstration of a complex operation was provided by the British Army, which recovered two undercover men from a house after they had been moved there from a Basra jail.)

"Head hunting" does not of itself destroy the enemy force: that is something that must be accomplished separately. What headhunting does is reduce enemy cohesion and capability. From the scanty data available one might guess that, despite his recent losses, the enemy retains enough awareness to understand where and at what he must strike back at. He knows he must attack Americans to avoid seeming impotent and to make his mark on the Media. To the extent he retains the awareness to respond strategically, his command infrastructure is clearly intact. However, the relatively unsophisticated method of attack when compared to his previous efforts, when he would combine IEDs with mortar fire, snipers and the opportunistic selection of targets suggests that he is operationally hurt. Hurt, but not yet fatally hurt.

The decapitation of "insurgent" movements has been a successful strategy historically. See Max Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace for several examples including the Phillipines insurrection as well as small wars in Haiti and Central America.