Slashdot Mirror
Winning (and Losing) the First Wired War
Noah Shachtman writes "The Iraq war was launched on a theory: That, with the right networking gear, American armed forces could control a country with a fraction of the troops ordinarily needed. But that equipment never made it down to the front lines, David Axe (just back from his 6th trip to Iraq) and I note in this month's Popular Science. That's a problem, because the insurgents are using throwaway cellphones and anonymous e-mail accounts to stitch together a network of their own."
From a technological, and business standpoint if you think about it.
Essentially they are an ISP onto themselves, but then if the Iraqi's or Al Quaeda are the customers, using networks to cover a larger amount of ground with less troops is exactly the same as Verizon overselling their bandwidth. It's great because most of the time, terrorist cells only activate in short bursts, similar to grandma checking webmail... But if ever multiple cells decide to work all at the same time, I fear the marines may be in for a slashdotting!
I thought that signals intelligence gathering was one of the few types that the United States was really good at. I would be surprised if the NSA is not intercepting every single call on those disposable cell phones. The free e-mail accounts might take a bit more work to monitor, but surely the NSA could ask their buddies at AT&T and other backbone providers to intercept all of the emails coming out of Iraq and forward them on to the NSA for scanning into their Echelon system. If the insurgents are managing to elude our intelligence gathering efforts with disposable cell phones and hotmail then what does that say about our vaunted intelligence agencies? My tax dollars at work...or not as the case may be.
Not that America isn't a superb nation (ignoring the current administration), but I get a bad taste in my mouth about the idea of any nation having the capacity to control another *on the cheap* over the long term on a military basis.
Still, this can be seen as more of a failed experiment than a conclusive result. When the tools are available, and less humanity necissary for the military control of a population... well, tyranny can then become something greater than a Thomas Paine pamphlet can help fight anymore.
The automated undermining of freedoms is a scary concept.
Ryan Fenton
From the article: "...FBCB2 relies on a classified radio band to communicate. BFT, designed later ... uses more-open satellite transmissions; troops can share information at greater distances, but they can't get the kind of secrecy that FBCB2 provides. The Army is working on a bridge between the two systems so that they will be able to share some basic information, but for now they are mostly incompatible. Feldmayer won't be able to see where the tank is leading them, and he won't be able to use FBCB2's Instant Messenger-like tool to quickly relay commands. He won't have access to any of the communications links that increase what the Pentagon calls "situational awareness" and that ultimately power network-centric warfare. If the navigation systems were working, every vehicle could split up or speed ahead if an attack came, without getting lost. But today they will all have to follow the tank's taillights in a neat line, just as it was done in 1944."
No matter what the Pentagon eventually comes up with as far as "21st Century Warfare" goes, they're going to have to pull out a big tab from Congress' already lemon-squeezed budget to get everyone up to speed. And from then on, they're going to have to come up with some standards to keep everyone on the same page.
It shouldn't be too hard, as long as they don't start hiring people from Microsoft.
Stoned4Life
gen = new Random
It is (or at least, it was) winnable, but not the way the current administration is going. You're right, you have to win their hearts. This isn't done by setting up no power puppet governments and using them only as extra bodies for fighting. It requires making Iraq a better place to live.
Take some of those billions we're spending on bombs and spend it on infrastructure- build sewers, electical plants, roads, hospitals and schools. Send in the army medics to treat at the hospitals. Send peace corp workers to teach at the schools (if you can't find enough Iraqis). Put Iraqis in charge of these things- and let them make actual decisions. Give tax breaks to a few US companies to build factories there to provide jobs.
The first Iraqi president was an old CIA lackey. Horrible choice. Worst they could have made. The correct choice would be to find someone who has some respect from the 3 factions and dump the job on him. Bonus points if he's moderately anti-US- it makes it look more realistic. Let the IRaqi government actually control Iraq, just use the US army to maintain security at the infrastructure projects. Plan a slow phase out of troops.
Faced with something like this, an insurgency wouldn't get the support of the people they need to be anything but a lunatic fringe. They'd be completely ineffective. For a fraction of what we spent on bombs and guns, we would have ended up not only with fewer deaths but with a trading partner and possible ally in the middle east. And a democratic government that would actually work without propping up by the US army.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
they seem to be coming with excuse after excuse as to why the war wasn't "successful." And, if they had better means of communications, they'd be relaying bad intel anyway.
Why do you think people spend a dollar for colored, sugared water?
I think the real question is why do you think people spend 2 dollars for plain water?
Then factor in that they can get it with sugar and colour for half the price...
Nevermind with alcohol...
I think your characterization of the situation is rather short sighted and optimistic. The ultimate goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to dismantle secular institutions and set up an Islamic state. The main thing preventing this currently is US influence in the region. Iraq is only a piece of this.
The bad guys suffered significant military defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is obvious, and I think what you are alluding to. However I think we must realize that Bin Laden et al have no real expectation of winning militarily. This never was a military war for them. This is an economic war. I think the grand strategy for them is to keep the US engaged in a war which they are not financially able to maintain indefinitely, and I believe they are doing it. Iraq is costing hundreds of billions. The US dollar is weakening significantly. Foreign nations are starting to move away from the US dollar. Iran is setting up their own oil bourse.
The terrorists just want to keep the US engaged. They don't care where. The US has more resources available to them than anyone, but the manner in which they conduct war is orders of magnitude more expensive than the terrorists, and thus less sustainable.
I think Bin Laden was happy when the US invaded Iraq. This development shifted the financial costs of the war even further in his favor. Thus, while the US has achieved many military goals, his financial strategy is coming to fruition.
It's hard to group terrorists together and say they all want an Islamic state. I'm not sure Bin Laden's desired end state is another Iran.
However I think we must realize that Bin Laden et al have no real expectation of winning militarily. This never was a military war for them. This is an economic war. I think the grand strategy for them is to keep the US engaged in a war which they are not financially able to maintain indefinitely, and I believe they are doing it. Iraq is costing hundreds of billions. The US dollar is weakening significantly. Foreign nations are starting to move away from the US dollar. Iran is setting up their own oil bourse.
That's a good point. In that sense I think you could argue Bin Laden is making progress towards his strategic goal. But in the context of this thread, I don't think you could say insurgents in Iraq are winning. Also I think you have to ask yourself, does Bin Laden's finnancial plan solve? Will it bring the US to its knees? I think he underestimates our strength. His logistical and financial support to the insurgency is definitely a pain but one that I think we can overcome.
The terrorists just want to keep the US engaged. They don't care where. The US has more resources available to them than anyone, but the manner in which they conduct war is orders of magnitude more expensive than the terrorists, and thus less sustainable. I think Bin Laden was happy when the US invaded Iraq. This development shifted the financial costs of the war even further in his favor. Thus, while the US has achieved many military goals, his financial strategy is coming to fruition.
I agree with you here. Iraq was really the wrong war. But now that we are in it, leaving prematurely would give such a huge information operations campaign victory to the insurgents. Additionally I fear leaving Iraq in its weakened state would allow it to become a puppet for insurgents (eg. Taliban's relationship with Al Qaeda) and it will inevitably force us to return there if we don't finish the job this time.
It should be. The bottom line is that the internet and the information age are exposing US cluture to the rest of the world in a big way. It is difficult for even the US government to deal with the internet, but I think that many don't understand that for Islamic countries like Iran, Saudi, and Egypt - it is a complete and absolute culture shock. Countries like Iran and radical sects just didn't decide to lash out at us one day because we were jerks (even though the US gov hasn't been a saint). They lashed out at us because to them, their culture and belief systems are under seige by the western world. The unrestricted free flow of ideas and information is very very threatening to the power of the overloards in these cultures.
So the solution IMHO is to saturate these cultures with such an unyielding and unrelenting free flow of information, that those countering give up in exhaustion. In Iraq the information battle shouldn't be fought with the enemy, but by making sure people in Iraq have unrestricted and uninhibited information access. In addtion, contrary to popular belief, the copyright system contributes to terrorisim. A copyright media system rewards hype over substance, and creates an idea refuge for terrorists to exploit with campaigns of terror that get whipped up out of controll by media hype. By removing copyright controlls (which is the US way of controlling information), you also remove the hype that they exploit.
American foriegn lanquage skills are notably crappy. Most of our farsi translators are of questionable use in counter insurgency.
According to a recent State Department IG report, Radio Sawa, our pop music and news station aimed at young Arab audiences, has very little influence since parents tell their kids not to listen to it- "because its broadcasts contained such poor Arabic grammar."
If insurgents are using untraceable cell phones to plan attacks, it would seem the simple answer is to have the cellular network stop accepting calls from disposable phones. Either the number is registered to someone, or you can't make a call with it. Then we can give that NSA terrorist phone call pattern matching program a real test!
The reason we are losing in Iraq is because we are trying to have a small number of troops fight a small number of insurgents. This doesn't work because the in that environment, the insurgents get to choose when to fight.
We are never going to be successful until we have enough troops and equipment in Iraq to control transportation and communication.
paintball
The general consensus in the media, popular culture, and commentary on places like slashdot seems to be that the conflict in Iraq is totally lost, but despite Bush's dumbassery, I'm still not convinced that's the case. There's an interesting article ("The Real Iraq") I was reading today by Amir Taheri, about how the realities he finds in Iraq are different from what the media portrays. He also discusses a number of signs which cause him to believe conditions in Iraq are getting progressively better (especially compared to what they were pre-war).
I'm still not entirely certain I agree, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. A quote:
Since my first encounter with Iraq almost 40 years ago, I have relied on several broad measures of social and economic health to assess the countrys condition. Through good times and bad, these signs have proved remarkably accurateas accurate, that is, as is possible in human affairs. For some time now, all have been pointing in an unequivocally positive direction.
The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraqin 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraqs creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.
Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television setsand we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.
Umm...Aaron:
"If their goal was to prevent free elections in Iraq, they have failed."
No Iraqi government is set up yet.
"If their goal was to defeat us through attrition and failed public support, they have failed."
Iraqi public support for US presence is less than half of what is was at the beginning of the war. See CNN January 15, 2006.
"If their goal was to create a lawless Iraq through instability and/or civil war, they have failed."
Nearly 1000 Iraqis a month are killed in Baghdad alone. Not to mention the unemployment, utilities, and health care still being far behind the Saddam era. Day to day life for most Iraqis is worse than before. We only hope they can have faith that things will turn out better.
Not to mention that nearly every recently retired commander that served in theater has spoken out publicly against the war's handling (including the 5 of the 7 highest ranking generals.)
From a special operations perspective, we have largely failed to win the hearts and minds, while the insurgency has done a nearly flawless job. We have failed (according the Red Cross and the Corps of Engineers own admission) to (re)build even a fraction of the hospitals and schools we had planned to. When you can't work, can't go to school, don't have power most of the time, potable water is still rationed, and violent crime is worse than ever it's easy to see why the average Iraqi is having doubts.
Think about it: if I gave you 5-7000 lightly armed, relatively lightly funded insurgents, many of whom have no standardized training and almost no access to high technology, could you hold out against a quarter of a million of the world's best trained and highly equipped fighting men and women who are tasked with removing a dictator that most hated to begin with? We have the muscle, money, and message. Yet they are more than keeping us busy.
Failure, indeed.
They wanted to bring the country into a civil war with the Golden Mosque bombings and related attacks, they have failed.
What news sources are you consuming? The amount of violence in Iraq certainly qualifies as low intensity civil war by any conventional measure. And the situation has been continuously deteriorating. Denying this will just set us up for a colossal failure. Even Alawi who has been the US most favorite Iraqi politician (not counting Chalabi) has said as much. Now even Basra is starting to come unglued. A trend that started last year when militias infiltrated the police force is now playing out. A development that was entirely predictable when the US failed to unarm and disband the Shia militias while dissolving the old Iraqi army (probably the worst blunder of the whole occupation saga - and there have been so many!).
The Basra security situation is very bad news.
Sorry my friend, but I will certainly take the former Iraqi PM's assement over yours. You may want to check out some broader spectrum of news sites to protect yourself from falling for spin.
You do realize that it's WalMart's logistical and networking infrastructure which has made as unstoppable and large as it is today, right?
Actually, I'd say it had more to do with Sam Walton's realization that there was a lot more business available in smaller towns than Sears and K-mart realized.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
News today:
r ticle548945.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/a
Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.
As a sidenote I think the argument that lack of refugees is a sign of things getting better in Iraq is pretty stupid...
I could have replied to almost anyone's post.. but yours was convenient. Their cell phone service is wayyy different than say America's. I bought a cell phone and was talking to my buddy in less than a minute, literally. Once you have a phone that can take those wtfchips, you can use most of the networks there. If you went too far south, you had to switch to one of those kuwaiti wtfchips. I had to buy cards to deposit money onto my wtfchip.. that was the worst part. I'd ask some hodgi for a $10 card and he'd say "mista, for you twenty dollas." Bah, i'm an American! i'm not use to the whole "talking the guy down thing". I'm sure he probably got some counterfitted cards for a buck and made 15X that from me. As far as "insurgents" using cell phones and the NSA/CIA listening in on them.. what's the point? it's not like they'd tell me about it. I'm the guy on the ground with a gun. My group worked on tips from locals. Most of em are criminals in some way.. so neighbors are quick to tell the IPs. Not to mention gossip. Mygod does Iraqi gossip travel fast. My group was pretty much "it" for many many miles. There wasn't any three letter agency giving us tips. I'd bet Bagdad gets monitored quite a bit, but whether the lefthand tells the righthand what's going on is a totally different issue.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
It's a little more like this:
...
Rumsfeld: We're invading Iraq to take their oil...I mean, destroy their WMDs!
Shinseki: Okay, that'll take several hundred thousand men.
Rumsfeld: Nonsense! It'll take six Special Forces guys armed with bananas!
Shinseki: No, it'll take several hundred thousand men.
Rumsfeld: Who's the expert here soldier? You with your decades of hands-on military experience or me with my |337 Risk skillz?
Shinseki:
Rumsfeld: Okay, just to make you feel better, we'll send Rambo as backup.
Shinseki: [shakes head in disbelief] Sir, Rambo is a fictional character.
Rumsfeld: YOU'RE A FICTIONAL CHARACTER!
Shinseki: Calm down, sir. After we beat the Iraqi Army, "Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers...would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this." Again, that's several hundred thousand pairs of boots on the ground!
Rumsfeld: Boots...why didn't you say so in the first place! Here's the plan: six heavily banana-laden Special Forces guys (backed by Rambo with a big, pointy knife) will fly in with cargo blimps and pummel Iraq with hundreds of thousands of brand new boots until they surrender their oil.
Shinski: There's so much wrong with that I don't even know where to begin.
Rumsfeld: Maybe you're right. Forget new boots, just get the boots from the Marines after they complete basic training. Nice and stinky--that'll show the Iranians!
Shinseki: You mean Iraqis.
Rumsfeld: Well, for now at least.
Shinseki: Exactly how many countries is this administration planning on invading? We don't have enough troops! Iraq alone will require several hundred thousand men!
Shinseki: What is your fascination with "several hundred thousand men?" Are you gay? I'll bet that's it. You just told me you're gay, so under "Don't ask, don't tell" you told, so you're fired!
Shinseki: [resists urge to strangle jabbering senile old fool]Sir, I don't know what world you live on, but it isn't the same one as the rest of us. Reality isn't subjective. Iraq will require several hundred thousand troops.
Rumsfeld: [pouts]Haven't you heard? We're all postmodernists in this administration. Reality is what we say it is, so if I say six soldiers armed with bananas (supported by Rambo and a big pointy knife) can successfully secure Iraq's vast oil wealth by dropping several hundred thousand pairs of stinky boots from cargo blimps, then by God that's what will happen or my name isn't Queen Elizabeth the Great!
Quote taken from wikipedia from exchange between Senator Levin and General Shinseki before the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
We have about 150,000 troops in-theatre. According to the CIA factbook (link here: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ iz.html there are 26.7 million Iraqis. According to the math, we have one soldier for every 179 Iraqis, many of whom are still armed. This is a recipe for disaster.
The quote "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy." has been variously attributed to Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke, Colin Powell, Murphy Military Laws, and Heinz Guderian (there may be others). D. Rumsfeld and his boys would do well to remember that, since they seem to be incapable of altering either their battle plans or their rhetoric.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster