Understanding the enemy

Diane West:

"If I were a Muslim, I'd probably be a jihadist. The thing that drives these guys -- a sense of adventure, wanting to be part of the moment, wanting to be in the big movement of history that's happening now -- that's the same thing that drives me, you know?" No. I don't know. And I sorely wish I could tell him so -- "him" being David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, senior commander in Iraq.
With this bizarro depiction of jihadists-as-swashbucklers, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, an Australian Army officer "on loan" to the U.S. government, should probably have been sent back with: "And I suppose if you had been a German during a certain world war, you would have been a Nazi, eh? Who more than those Third Reich 'guys' wanted to be in 'the big movement of history'? Grr. Thanks, mate, but no thanks. Go play Abu Robin al-Hood down under."
Of course, Col. Kilcullen made his outrageous comment almost six months ago to the New Yorker's George Packer and is still on the job. But when a key counterinsurgency advisor in Iraq identifies with jihadists, it's not just a matter of surrealism -- hallucinations -- at the top. As they say at NASA when things are about to fall out of the sky: Houston, we've got a problem.
Why? Such remarks convey either non-comprehension or indifference to the evil nature of jihad. Or both. Such neutrality, if that's the word for it, also marks Col. Kilcullen's discussion of his big, formative idea: lessons drawn from what he refers to as "an Islamic insurgency in West Java and a Christian-separatist insurgency in East Timor." In the latter case, the language is jarring for what Serge Trifkovic has described this way: "In the motivation, patterns, and perceptions of the actors on the ground -- killers and victims alike -- East Timor was an Islamic jihad against Christian infidels" that left as many as 200,000 East Timorese dead.
In Col. Kilcullen's Islam-blind view of the world, such events become plain-vanilla conflicts without moral distinction, differentiated only by the advent of global media coverage -- a large obstacle, he maintains, to winning counterinsurgencies. Indeed, he compares Indonesia's role in East Timor (where Indonesia ultimately failed, he says, due to global media) with the U.S. role in Iraq. This is a weirdly shocking way to see the American struggle against varyingly jihadist factions -- particularly for someone advising the U.S. military.
It's hard to say what's worse: ignorance of jihad, for which there's no excuse at this advanced stage of war, or indifference to it, for which there's never an excuse. Both attitudes deeply imbue U.S. war policy. As Col. Kilcullen would (and has) put it, "the Islamic bit is secondary." Far more important to this Australian anthropologist are what he calls "social networks." Mr. Packer writes: "He noted that all fifteen Saudi [September 11] hijackers had trouble with their fathers." Oh, brother -- as if half the people in the world don't have trouble with their fathers (but don't hijack airplanes for Allah).
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I think it is safe to say that Diane West does not buy into the anthropologist's view of counterinsurgency warfare. This is what Kilcullen actually says about about the importance of religion an warfare:

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The theorists posit the existence of something called “religious insurgencies”, which are allegedly defined by their religious (read: Islamic) dimension. They argue that the passion religion arouses, its stringent dogma, and its capacity to de-humanize the “other” makes religious insurgents uniquely violent and fanatical. This allegedly immunizes such insurgencies against efforts to address legitimate grievances, “hearts and minds”, governance improvement, resource and population control, and minimum force — key techniques in the new doctrine. This, they argue, foredooms counterinsurgency to fail in current conflicts. For the serious version of this argument, read Frank Hoffman’s analysis here at SWJ; for the populist variant, read anything recent by Ralph Peters or Edward Luttwak. Most critics (not all—the sublime Hoffman is an exception) argue that counterinsurgency is too “soft” for religious insurgents, that unbridled brutality — “out-terrorizing the terrorists” (Luttwak), “the value of ferocity” (Peters) is more appropriate.

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But there are three problems with this argument. First, there is solid field evidence that modern counterinsurgency methods, properly updated for the new environment, actually are effective against current insurgencies. Second, insurgents in both Afghanistan and Iraq are not actually particularly religious — certainly, they are no more religious than the societies they are attacking. Indeed, there is an empirical problem with the whole notion of a “religious” insurgency, since almost all historical insurgencies have included a strong religious dimension, so that it is not clear that discrete “religious insurgencies” actually exist as observable phenomena. And third, doctrinal publications are not templates, but generic expositions of principle; not cookbooks, but frameworks. Practitioners must populate these frameworks with current, locally accurate, deeply understood insights into the societies where they operate. There is simply no substitute for what we might call “conflict ethnography”: a deep, situation-specific understanding of the human, social and cultural dimensions of a conflict, understood not by analogy with some other conflict, but in its own terms.

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You should read the whole thing. While it is clear that the insurgency is populated with Islamic religious bigots, it is also clear that many of the people in Iraq who are fighting with us do not buy into the bigotry. As this post makes clear God can switch sides:

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Imagine the surprise of the veteran Iraqi battalion last November when a young sheik, leader of a local tribe outside Ramadi, offered to point out the insurgents hiding in his hometown. "We have decided that by helping you," he said, "we are helping God."

For years, the tribes had supported the insurgents who claimed to be waging jihad. Now, citing the same religion, a tribe wanted to switch sides. Col. Mohammed, the battalion commander, accepted the offer. "The irhabi (terrorists) call themselves martyrs. They are liars," he said. "I lost a soldier and when I pulled off his armor, there was the blood of a martyr."

With Iraqi soldiers and Marines providing protection, the sheik and his tribesmen rolled through town, pointing at various men. The sweep netted 30 insurgents, including "Abu Muslim," who was wanted for the murder of a jundi (Iraqi soldier). "He was just standing there waving at us with all the others," one jundi said during the minor celebration at the detention facility.

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This comes from a story by Bing and Owen West about the transformation of the war in Anbar province when the Sheiks switched sides. Diane West needs to study Anbar, before she attacks Kilcullen. Ironically, Bing West also questions Kilcullen's theory about the religious aspects of the war. If you go to the link you can also see Kilcullen's response to West. I think that the facts on the ground will prove who is right, but right now, I think Kilcullen has an approach that appears to be making a big difference that is favorable to our side.