LESSONS FROM THE WAR ON TERROR

The War on Terror has entered its fifth year. The United States of America has taken nearly unilateral military action across the world, and has had limited success in achieving its goals. There are many lessons this war has taught us, and many of these are painful.

Technological superiority is no guarantee of success.

The United States has probably the most technologically advanced armed forces in the world. Yet, despite all the technology, they haven’t been able to bring the war on terror to a successful close. They have satellites that can read the menu off a table at a roadside café, but they’re unable to target insurgents in suspect areas. Despite all the technology in signal intelligence, they’re unable to detect messages passed around in Afghanistan, because they use horsemen to deliver the message by word of mouth! Roving assault teams keep in touch by satellite phone, but don’t stay in one place long enough to be interdicted. The enemy has found a way around the technology.

There is no one more determined than one who WANTS to die on the battlefield.

There have been fierce armies in the past, even some so stoic that they spat in Death’s eye as he advanced with his scythe. But never before has there been an army of people who consider death on the battlefield to be a ticket to pussy paradise and strive fiercely to that end. The Coalition forces consist of rational career soldiers, kids trying to get through college, and mercenaries. Career soldiers would baulk at anything remotely suicidal, the college program soldiers would go into shock the first time they heard real world gunfire and the mercenaries are in it for the money- the flags and ideals mean nothing to them. This ménage a trois is ineffective in dealing with an army of zealots whose only wish in life is to die on the battlefield- they’ll always outmatch the professionals on the Moxie meter.

You can’t run a successful search and destroy operation in a hostile population.

This is not a new lesson. It has been learnt in occupations all over the world. If even 30% of the local population is hostile, you can forget about being able to carry out a successful search and destroy operation. The population will conspire en masse against you.

You can’t guarantee the safety of dissidents in a hostile population.

People seen as coalition representatives or collaborators are singled out and killed. Even if you provide them with security guards and escort motorcades, they will be killed by the enemy, assisted by the hostile population.

Don’t bet on the Geneva Convention.

“Even wars have rules”???? Despite the rise in the use of mercenaries over the past 50 years, mercenaries don’t have POW rights under the hallowed Geneva convention. Have you seen the beheading of civilians of TV? Or the mutilation of Indian soldiers at the hands of Pakistani soldiers in the wake of the Kargil conflict?

More later.