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| The US Military - A Tactical & Strategic Crisis - Andijan: Why We Must Look Beyond Double-Standards |
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Yet the US does not have the manpower or infantry depth to cope with one major asymmetric situation in Iraq and is struggling to defeat a minor one in Afghanistan. Americans are now being warned that they need to brace themselves for a new kind of war in Iraq that could last for decades, and require a new form of war-fighting that integrates civilian experts with the military. According to Colonel Thomas Hammes, senior Marine Corps analyst now based at the National Defence University, the campaigns now under way in Iraq and Afghanistan are so-called fourth generation wars: a modern form of insurgency which seeks to convince the enemy's political leaders that their strategic goals are either unreachable or too costly for the perceived benefit. Such fourth generation wars are based on the idea that superior political will can defeat greater economic and military power. 'These modern insurgencies are the only type of war that the United States has lost, in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia', argues Hammes in a paper for the Institute for National Strategic Studies where he is a senior fellow. The roots of fourth generation war can be found in history as well as in the general theory of conflict developed by Colonel John Boyd. In his "Patterns of Conflict" Boyd symbolized his findings in the OODA Loop. The core of the loop is the formula: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. But the secret to success in conflict is not a formula. It is to get within the mind and the decision cycle of the adversary and drive him to moral collapse in a whirl of confusion and uncertainty. In war, and conflict in general, Boyd demonstrated that the essence of competition is not brute strength, but time. Larger sides often lose because smarter, more agile forces take actions when their stronger opponents least expect them However, despite their best attempts, people like the late John Boyd and others remain a minority within the US establishment and the US military remains fixed to its doctrine of transformation and RMA.
Yet as Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine, Chechnya, Lebanon, and Vietnam have demonstrated overwhelming technological superiority is no longer sufficient in delivering the goal of victory. The US today boasts of its ability to launch weapons into space, to have state of the art missile shields, to launch unmanned drones yet it is unable to defend in Iraq the main highway from the Green zone to Baghdad airport. If the situation in the Middle East does implode in the foreseeable future, as many commentators believe it will, then the United States will be left militarily exposed once again due to its inability to deal with asymmetric opposition on multiple fronts.
Andijan: Why We Must Look Beyond Double-Standards
The brutal massacre in the city of Andijan by Uzbek security services in May did little to change US policy towards the Central Asian Republic. The US support for the "tulip" revolution in neighbouring Kyrgystan and its continued calls for democracy in the Middle East through Condaleeza Rice's recent tour lead to the now routine cries of double standards. But these serve only to state the obvious. The questioning needs to go to the heart of the philosophical assumptions that allow such duplicity.
On Thursday May 13 2005, the small city of Andijan to the far east of Uzbekistan witnessed a bloodbath that surpassed any previous record of brutality set by an Uzbek government notorious for torture, killing, and mass imprisonment. As thousands gathered in the Babur square to protest at the trial of twenty three businessmen accused of belonging to an outlawed Islamic organisation - the Akramiah - a little unknown entity authorities claim was founded by Akram Yuldashev, a local maths teacher and author, a convoy of armoured vehicles rolled into the square and opened fire indiscriminately on the crowd of protestors. In the ensuing chaos scores of assembled residents, men, women, children, and the elderly, were gunned-down by security forces spraying live ammunition across the square, even shamelessly targeting fleeing protestors. According to Human Rights Watch: "The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre." Even after those who were able to escape had fled, the killing did not end: the BBC reported that: "once the crowd had dispersed, eyewitnesses say the security forces went around finishing off the injured as they lay on the ground." As journalists and local residents ventured out to inspect the damage the day after the massacre, Galima Bukharbaeva, project director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in Uzbekistan, describes the agonising scenes that greeted them: "body parts, brains and other internal organs along with personal items and children's shoes were scattered within a radius of two to three kilometres of the square where the shooting began."
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