Fourth Generation Warfare

By John

Yes, it is true: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many other Western decisionmakers and political leaders have been influenced about Iraq. This has been done intentionally through a brand of conflict called "fourth generation" warfare.

The al-Qaeda led coalition recognized from the start they had no hope of defeating us on the conventional battlefield. All they had to do was to look at the results of the first Iraq war in 1991 or the short conventional war in Iraq in 2003.

The al Qaeda-led coalition had to ask itself this: how can we, a relatively weak conventional military force, outgunned and outmanned by a technologically superior giant, hope to win a military and political victory in Iraq? Their answer: by making it so costly in terms of bad news, too many dollars, and loss of life that their superior enemy, the United States, would decide the toll was too high and would leave.

Retired Marine Col. Tom Hammes best describes this in his book "The Sling and the Stone": "Fourth generation warfare uses all available networks -- political, economic, social and military -- to convince the enemies' political decisionmakers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit."

I've said it over and over. This is a tough truth that simply must be faced by any and all Americans who advocate a hasty retreat. This is their strategic calculus, this is how the bad guys work. I'm reminded of it every day, when I receive emails from some clown who writes in poor English "leave the Iraq!" An example:

an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by US patrol in eastern Baghdad at about
8am local time Thursday morning.
reported a puppet police source as saying that a bomb that had been planted
by a road in the Ur neighborhood of eastern Baghdad wnt off by a US patrol,
totally destroying a Humvee and killing three US troops. A fourth American
soldier was also wounded in the blast. Afterwards, US troops surrounded the
entire area and were still there at the time of reporting!

!!!!!!!
LEAVE THE IRAQ

LEAVE THE IRAQ !!!!

His advice would seem silly, if certain elected officials weren't actually considering it.

Hotel Tango: Greyhawk.

February 26, 2007 10:16 PM The Long War