American forces should be more aggressive in Iraq

Rory Walkinshaw

Iraq is a complicated but winnable conflict. It's high time that Americans wake up and realize this.

The problem is that most Americans, including well-educated college students, assume that because America's strategy in Iraq is centered around counter-insurgency (like in Vietnam, a conflict that still haunts the country to this day), it will end in a pyrrhic victory at best. For many Americans, the term "insurgency" conjures up images of long, bloody, drawn-out conflicts, where American troops are regularly attacked by elusive guerrilla forces.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Counter-insurgency campaigns, like the one we face in Iraq, are not only winnable, but winnable by a wide margin. History proves this. During and after the period in which the United States was phasing itself out of Vietnam, a similar war was being waged in Southern Africa.

In the Republic of Rhodesia, government forces faced a well-trained, well-equipped enemy. Unlike Vietnam, however, the Rhodesian Security Forces, led by Gen. Peter Walls, demolished insurgent forces for over a decade. Despite being faced with limited manpower and an international arms embargo, the Rhodesians waged a skillful campaign, combining "search-and-destroy" tactics with cross-border raids.

The Rhodesians had the right ideas about how to fight a counter-insurgency conflict like the one the U.S. faces in Iraq. The Rhodesians were ruthlessly aggressive, seeking out the enemy wherever he hid. During external operations into Mozambique, guerrilla training camps were frequently annihilated, with almost all of their inhabitants killed or captured. The security forces used heliborne assaults to destroy enemy formations as soon as they were discovered.

If a tiny nation like Rhodesia, faced with an extremely limited amount of manpower and inferior military equipment, could accomplish this kind of feat, why can't the U.S. duplicate it in Iraq? Last time I heard, we had smashed Saddam's army, smashed the insurgents at Fallujah, held complete control of all key areas in the country and were suffering far fewer casualties than our forces did in Vietnam.

We just need to be more aggressive. For example, the Madhi Army, led by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, still exists as a private army (and a threat to stability) in what is supposed to be a nation struggling to assert its sovereignty.

Accordingly, the coalition's next major initiative should be a massive "search-and-destroy" mission aimed at dismantling the Mahdi Army and arresting al-Sadr. If successful, such an operation would show both the insurgents and the American public that the U.S. and the Iraqis aren't fighting in vain.