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
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?
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."
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.