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Feb
17
That’s how the Rand Corporation is describing the large-scale intervention we’ve gotten ourselves into in their most recent study. This is from the Rand Corp., which, I am pretty sure, is supposed to skew conservative.
From the press release:
Recognizing that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be the last of their kind, a new RAND Corporation study issued today finds that U.S. capabilities to meet the threat of Islamist insurgencies are seriously deficient and out of balance.
The report finds that large-scale U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world is at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible. The United States should shift its priorities and funding to improve civil governance, build local security forces, and exploit information — capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Violent extremism in the Muslim world is the gravest national security threat the United States faces,” said David C. Gompert, the report’s lead author and a senior fellow at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Because this threat is likely to persist and could grow, it is important to understand the United States is currently not capable of adequately addressing the challenge.”
The findings are from a major review of strategies to combat insurgencies RAND initiated at the request of the Department of Defense.
What is so absolutely, positively, bottomlessly aggravating about these conclusions is that people could have and would have and were telling us this certainly before we entered Iraq and perhaps before we entered Afghanistan (I recall the former, I do not recall the latter). And if you don’t believe me, well, here’s the Rand again:
The authors cite data from some 90 conflicts since World War II that show the surest way to defeat insurgencies is to foster local governments that are seen by their citizens as representative, competent and honest. “Foreign forces cannot substitute for effective local governments, and they can even weaken their legitimacy,” said co-author John Gordon.
Historically, large-scale military intervention against insurgencies — e.g., France in Indochina and Algeria and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan — more often fails than succeeds.
The study finds that because it can take time for a local insurgency to acquire strength and turn jihadist, the chances of defusing an insurgency are better than 90 percent when caught early. But those chances drop to less than 50 percent if the insurgency has the chance to become a full-blown uprising. Thus, the United States needs the ability to interpret “indicators and warnings” so it can act in the early stages of the insurgency.
Sickening. What and who was President Bush and his advisors listening to when making their decisions to begin military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq? Feh. Don’t bother answering.
If this is the first time you are hearing this news, you aren’t alone – no one seems to have reported it. You know where I heard it, of all places?
Harry Shearer’s Le Show. Oh.My.God.We.Need.A.New.President.NOW.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:15 pm February 17th, 2008 in Foreign Affairs, Law, Military, Politics
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10 Responses to “U.S. military intervention, occupation in Muslim world: at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, on the whole, infeasible”
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Answer: PNAC. Why doesn’t everybody know that by now? And a President McCain will not rid us of these people.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
Susan – I have never heard of PNAC. Thanks for the heads-up. Going to research what it is now.
Nope – never heard of it before. What is the connection to Rand? (I just read the Wikipedia entry for PNAC).
The connection to Rand? None that I’m aware of. I was answering the question “Who was President Bush listening to?”
lol – ah – thank you. You probably guessed by now that that was an exasperated slapping my thighs after throwing my hands up in the air kind of question – but I’m glad there was an answer – I see what you mean now.
Yes, we know who these people are. And how many of them found prominent places in the Bush administration. And how many of them are now glomming onto McCain. They won’t go quietly.
Wouldn’t you (meaning, the generic “you” of all of us) love to be there at the God-willing changing of the guard in 2009? Although we do have to be careful about what we wish for…
These people will lead us on path of destruction, we will end with a weak nation exhausted financially. We are entering an era of diminishing resources and they want to gear up for the fight over those, that will gobble up resources and accelerate our inevitable demise.
I hate to say it but I kind of agree with what you describe – I would only counter by saying that I feel very strongly that more than enough people want to stop the skid and will try to do so with their votes in November.
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