Operational Art

In Operational IEDs, William S. Lind makes the following point: Operational art is not a thing, but a linkage: the connection between the tactical and strategic levels of war. The area connecting the local and global is often murky. The whole is different than the sum of its parts. He goes on to say:

Unfortunately, it appears our Fourth Generation opponents have figured out a way to act operationally against us. I touched on this in an earlier column, but as I thought more about it, I decided that what is happening deserves fuller consideration. What our opponents are doing is brilliantly simple. By relying mostly on IEDs to attack us, they have created a situation where our troops have no one to shoot back at. That, in turn, ramps up the troops’ frustration level to the point where two things happen: our morale collapses and our troops take their frustration out on the local population. Both results have strategic significance, and at least the potential of being strategically decisive, the first because it affects American home front morale and the second because it drives the local population to identify with the insurgents instead of the government we are trying to support.

And

The second operational effect, getting U.S. troops to take out their frustration on the local population, was illustrated in what an officer whose unit recently came back from Iraq said to me. “We were hit 3000 times and in only fifteen of those attacks did we have anyone to shoot back at,” he told me. He quoted another officer in the battalion who had gone out on patrol many times as saying, “We are worse than the SS in the way we are treating these people,” meaning Iraqi civilians. This is a classic result of “the war of the flea:” as morale collapses, so does discipline, and poorly disciplined troops often treat local civilians badly.

It would appear that local populations can effectively fight state-based military occupations. I would also have to say that the same thing can sometimes be accomplished by peaceful means. The Palestinians would probably find peaceful means much more profitable as a means of eliciting sympathy from Europe. An official EU trade Embargo would devastate the Israeli economy. It's hard to have sympathy for suicide bombers and those who us them. However, it would seem that overwhelming response can effectively even overcome the natural distaste for suicide bombers. Pictures of Fallujah do no good for the US government on the world stage. Rather than a military response, which is grossly uneven, why not just use local bounty hunters? At least less bystanders will be killed in the cross fire.