The Wheel Rolls Around.
There is a fair amount of talk of late about the Filipino-American War and its uncanny similarities between the current situation in Iraq. I first noticed this discussion over at Wild Wisconsin.
Then I noticed this article
Sorry, can not recall to give a hat tip to for the above article. However, there is a lot of sound advice in the article and the above paragraph is being followed. "Civic action and benevolent treatment alone were unable to win the Philippine campaign." In Iraq it seemed like our forces at first were trying to win hearts & minds strictly by kind action. This never works, while it may (or may not) be true that it is best to stress positive reinforcement it is also necessary to have a stick and to use that stick as well as carrots.
Another point brought up in this article and the one Lucas refers to is the exploitation of natural division amongst the populace. In the Filipines there are many different groups of people who while being the same in superficial ways can be quite different from each other. For instance the language that makes up the basis of the national language is in fact a regional language called Tagalog. Another big language group in the Filipines is Bisayan (which is Claudia's native tongue). Similar to Iraq, the main group in which the insurgency exists is amongst the Sunnis around Baghdad & Anbar.
Even among the Sunni there exists divisions that are exploitable. There are the plain old Sunnis, the Jihadi Sunnis and the Baathist Sunnis. The coalition is starting to ably separate the three factions as evidenced by major Sunni tribes in the West that are actively aiding the coalition. The Baathist Sunnis are separating too from the Jihadi Sunnis as well.
The insurgents in both cases realize they are not going to win the battle of guns.
The Filipino insurgents lacked a sympathetic (nigh almost treasonous) press (Or did it? I know not how the press worked back then, in fact many blame the press for starting the Spanish American War in the first place, so I doubt the press was sympathetic back then.). Even if the press was sympathetic communications was much more costly and slow. An episode like Abu Ghraib might not have made it to the attention of the nation because there were other things going on that were a higher priority to report on much more scarce broadcast resources.
Read these articles they are good. I have done other reading on the Filipino American War notably Brian Linn's The Philippine War and it may be a good idea for me to reread it in the current context of the Iraq War.
Update:
10/4/2005 11:57 am CDT. The Hat Tip for the first article goes to: Internet Haganah.
Allow me to submit to you that if you want to compare the Iraq conflict to any engagement, a better comparison would be the war in the Philippines. Yes, we were there for about 3 years. Yes there were many American lives lost (4,234), and much of the war was guerilla fashion and yet, may I also say that the guerilla insurgents were crushed and the Philippines became a better place.
Source: Wild Wisconsin - Iraq is like...Then I noticed this article
Civic action and benevolent treatment alone were unable to win the Philippine campaign. Armed only with good deeds, soldiers were unable to either protect Filipino supporters from retribution or deny support to the insurgents. It was only with the addition of the chastisement tools-fines, arrest, property destruction and confiscation, population concentration, deportation, and scorching sections of the countryside-that soldiers were able to separate guerillas from their support. The proper mix of tactics and techniques appropriate for each local situation was determined by officers in hundreds of garrisons throughout the archipelago.
Source: Lessons from a Successful Counterinsurgency: The Philippines, 1899-1902Sorry, can not recall to give a hat tip to for the above article. However, there is a lot of sound advice in the article and the above paragraph is being followed. "Civic action and benevolent treatment alone were unable to win the Philippine campaign." In Iraq it seemed like our forces at first were trying to win hearts & minds strictly by kind action. This never works, while it may (or may not) be true that it is best to stress positive reinforcement it is also necessary to have a stick and to use that stick as well as carrots.
Another point brought up in this article and the one Lucas refers to is the exploitation of natural division amongst the populace. In the Filipines there are many different groups of people who while being the same in superficial ways can be quite different from each other. For instance the language that makes up the basis of the national language is in fact a regional language called Tagalog. Another big language group in the Filipines is Bisayan (which is Claudia's native tongue). Similar to Iraq, the main group in which the insurgency exists is amongst the Sunnis around Baghdad & Anbar.
Even among the Sunni there exists divisions that are exploitable. There are the plain old Sunnis, the Jihadi Sunnis and the Baathist Sunnis. The coalition is starting to ably separate the three factions as evidenced by major Sunni tribes in the West that are actively aiding the coalition. The Baathist Sunnis are separating too from the Jihadi Sunnis as well.
The insurgents in both cases realize they are not going to win the battle of guns.
The classic guerrilla strategy is not to win, but to hold out and prevent the other side from winning. In the Philippines, insurrectos hoped "to protract the war until either the U.S. Army broke down . . . or the American public demanded a withdrawal."19 In the words of Brigadier General Samuel Sumner, theirs was a policy of "negative opposition."[20]
In Iraq, too, it is surely the feverish hope of insurgents that a steady stream of American casualties will fray American resolve, whether in the West Wing over the coming months or at the ballot box next year. Today, as in the Philippines a century ago, counterinsurgency is proving to be a bloodier affair than conventional combat. While 379 U.S. soldiers were killed in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War in 1898, more than 4,200 Americans died in the fight against the insurrectos. Yet these casualties--which dwarf American losses in Iraq--did not translate into political defeat for the McKinley administration. In fact, although guerrillas escalated their attacks on U.S. troops in the fall of 1900 in the hope of influencing the presidential election, the stratagem backfired on both sides of the Pacific. Not only did the rebel offensive provoke the U.S. Army to redouble its counterinsurgency efforts, but the American public rallied around the flag and returned McKinley to the White House with the largest electoral margin in nearly thirty years.
Source: Project for the New American Century - U.S. Counterinsurgency in Iraq: Lessons from the Philippine War by Tom Donnelly & Vance SerchukIn Iraq, too, it is surely the feverish hope of insurgents that a steady stream of American casualties will fray American resolve, whether in the West Wing over the coming months or at the ballot box next year. Today, as in the Philippines a century ago, counterinsurgency is proving to be a bloodier affair than conventional combat. While 379 U.S. soldiers were killed in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War in 1898, more than 4,200 Americans died in the fight against the insurrectos. Yet these casualties--which dwarf American losses in Iraq--did not translate into political defeat for the McKinley administration. In fact, although guerrillas escalated their attacks on U.S. troops in the fall of 1900 in the hope of influencing the presidential election, the stratagem backfired on both sides of the Pacific. Not only did the rebel offensive provoke the U.S. Army to redouble its counterinsurgency efforts, but the American public rallied around the flag and returned McKinley to the White House with the largest electoral margin in nearly thirty years.
The Filipino insurgents lacked a sympathetic (nigh almost treasonous) press (Or did it? I know not how the press worked back then, in fact many blame the press for starting the Spanish American War in the first place, so I doubt the press was sympathetic back then.). Even if the press was sympathetic communications was much more costly and slow. An episode like Abu Ghraib might not have made it to the attention of the nation because there were other things going on that were a higher priority to report on much more scarce broadcast resources.
Read these articles they are good. I have done other reading on the Filipino American War notably Brian Linn's The Philippine War and it may be a good idea for me to reread it in the current context of the Iraq War.
Update:
10/4/2005 11:57 am CDT. The Hat Tip for the first article goes to: Internet Haganah.
posted by Marcus Aurelius at 9:59 AM
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