Covert Ops

Covert Operations, a Better Way Fight Our Wars?
By Daniel G. Jennings
The continuing debacle in Iraq has exposed the limits of our military power at a terrible cost. It has also caused to me wonder: is there a better way for America to fight it’s wars? Perhaps through covert operations that is secret means.
Events in Iraq prove that traditional military forces are not suited to fight the kind of wars will fight in today’s world. We can easily invade enemy nations, occupy trouble spots and quickly dispatch enemy military forces but we are having a hard time dealing with guerrilla and terrorist forces.
Since we can’t simply ignore our enemies and hope the United Nations or nonexistent European allies can keep the peace as the left seems to believe or rather hope or retreat into splendid isolation as right wing war critics like Pat Buchanan wish. Nor do peacekeeping efforts of the kind the UN and European powers favor seem to work as disasters in places like Rwanda and Haiti prove. Sanctions as the cases of Saddam and Fidel Castro in prove are a moral, political and practical failure. We’ll have to find another way to deal with our enemies, a limited means that doesn’t involve massive military forces and deaths.
One excellent means available to us covert operations that is the fighting of secret or proxy wars. Limited military operations of the variety we saw in Afghanistan in late 2001 combined with covert operations. In Afghanistan most of the fighting to remove the Taliban was done by native forces, the soldiers of local warlords backed up by US aircraft and a few special forces. This enabled us to conquer Afghanistan in a few weeks with minimal casualties and little bad publicity or international hostility.
Unfortunately, the lesson of Afghanistan was quickly lost when it came time to deal with Iraq we reverted to a 20th Century land war. This produced a nice show for the news media and allowed the Pentagon to play with its expensive toys. Yet it had disastrous long term effects in Iraq, the presence of large numbers of American troops fueled the insurgency. Bureaucrats and politicians in Washington were in a position to try and implement grandiose plans to rebuild Iraq and the Middle East in our image. A massive bureaucracy incapable of implementing real change was created in Iraq almost overnight and the US was put in an impossible position. It had to take responsibility for Iraq’s problems but was criticized for trying to solve them.
This of course didn’t have to be, if the US wanted to get rid of Saddam there were plenty of forces in Iraq capable of doing the job. The majority of the population are Shiites who hated Saddam and wanted to get rid of him. The nation’s Kurds were also hostile to Saddam and willing to fight him. Iraq’s army was composed of Sunni Muslims, who were essentially mercenaries who could have easily been added to our payroll. Local tribal and religious leaders who are the real power in Iraq could have easily brought over to our side. We could have used our covert operations structure to win these people to our side, (or rather buy them) and dispatched a special forces team to kill or capture Saddam.
Yet, this wasn’t done instead we insisted on a massive invasion and we are seeing the predictable results. Part of the reason for the invasion is geography, Iraq like Vietnam is close to the sea so the Pentagon can land large numbers of troops and large amounts of equipment. Afghanistan is landlocked and surrounded by countries to the US so the Pentagon was forced to get creative. In other words we got it right or partially right in Afghanistan and almost completely wrong in Iraq.
Iraq is a perfect example of the new world we are living in, one of Fourth Generational Warfare or Postmodern Warfare. In simple terms: war fought by entities other than nations or traditional military forces guerrillas, terrorist groups, etc. As William Lind and other experts have pointed out this is the norm in modern warfare. The best way to deal with such a situation would be through covert warfare.
We have the ability to conduct covert warfare on this level, in fact we have a long and successful history of it. Imagine what we could do if we spent the kind of funds we’re wasting on Star Wars Defense (which won’t protect us from anything) and heavy weapons on covert warfare? We could develop a potent covert force capable of waging and winning our wars cheaply and quickly with minimal casualties and little bad publicity for a fraction of what we spend on our present war machine, we should ask our leaders why we don’t?
Hopefully, the mess in Iraq will show Americans that we have to adopt different means of fighting wars and dealing with the growing chaos in the developing world. Perhaps covert warfare of some sort, such a creative strategy is possible but my guess is we’ll adopt it after a lot of death and bad publicity in Iraq. It took the catastrophe of the Vietnam War to show Americans they could fight win the Cold War on the cheap through covert operations, diplomacy, alliances, proxies and economic aid, etc rather than massive military operations. The war on terror seems to be following a similar course. Hopefully, the cost of such a lesson won’t be too high.