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Oct. 1, 2008 “Insurgents have limited aims such as separation, autonomy, or alteration of a particular policy.” Steven Metz, Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in the 21st Century While it is true that insurgents have set their sights on attaining autonomy, it would be a mistake to characterize that achievement as limited in scope and nature, as autonomy facilitates an environment where insurgents can project power. For example, insurgent based autonomy allows insurgent groups to act as proxy war subordinates to a given nation. In this scenario, a given nation can use insurgent groups in a provocative manner when deemed necessary while retaining deniability. “Insurgents try to postpone decisive action, avoid defeat, sustain themselves, expand their support, and hope that, over time, the power balance changes in their favor.” Steven Metz, Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in the 21st Century This is true, as insurgents are cognizant of the disdain that many people have for protracted wars that lead to costly war expenditures and significant war casualties/fatalities. However, using the current war in Iraq as a model, we have a paradigm shift where the insurgents are hoping for a swift end to hostilities due to the fact that America has made mistakes in the execution of the war that favors the insurgents should forces withdraw from Iraq in the near future (2011) as planned. These mistakes have included totally destroying the infrastructure of the Iraqi Army, failing to institute a divergent distribution strategy that would prevent the Shiite majority from obtaining a monopoly like influence over government operations, and the failure to disarm and decisively defeat armed insurgents that would threaten the new government of Iraq in its infancy stages. Because of these mistakes, America must now opt for a protracted conflict that will allow them to correct these deficiencies. “It is less an assessment of a preferred future that drives insurgents or insurgent supporters than an assessment of who will prevail -the insurgents or the regime.” Steven Metz, Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in the 21st Century This is often true, however, we now have a paradigm shift in Iraq where Shiite based insurgency shares the will, intentions and inclinations of the Shiite majority controlled government of Iraq . Both the insurgents and the regime are proxy war partners, therefore proving that the failure to eliminate the insurgents facilitated the existence of the proxy war relationship between the two. ------------ About the author: Terrance Jones is the author of American Warfare: Merging Dominant Stratagems and American Warfare 2: The Counter Terror Primer. Sergeant Jones (ARNG) can be reached at:tjonespubam@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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