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."

Comments

Not to be contrarian or anything

[bunions]

... but I don't really think that was the theory the Iraq war was launched on.

wired war

[Anonymous Coward]

Cellphones are wired now?

Jeez I must have an uber fancy one then...

On the terrorists ad hoc C3

[Aaron England]

Terrorists would love to have the kind of Command, Control and Communications (C3) that the US military enjoys. The reason they don't is because doing so would give them a large footprint and make it easy for us to round up senior leadership (by simply following the comms back). So they are forced to engage in decentralized command and control and an ad hoc communications network.

This again offers the advantage of making it hard to find senior leadership while it has the disadvantage of not allowing them to utilize their assets in a centralized manner which would be far more efficient and effective.

Re:On the terrorists ad hoc C3

[bunions]

I don't want to press the iraq-vietnam analogy very far at all, because I think they're dissimilar in many, many aspects.

I think our success can only be measured by our ability to give Iraq the ability to defend themselves and our ability to make Iraq free. To that end, Iraq has had free elections, we've incorporated the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites into the government and we training of their military is ongoing.

My impression of the popularly elected government is that it is immensely fragile and that, for the majority of Iraqis, is essentially switching one strong Saddam for many small ones. Oh, and also their power and water don't work and they're shelled every now and then. I don't imagine that the Iraqi government will survive long in the power vaccuum when the US leaves. I hope I'm wrong, and I very well could be. It's hard to judge what things are actually like there there's so much noise.

What progress can insurgents really say they have made since the start of the war?

That they've been an immensely destabilizing influence? Which is really their goal. They obviously can't fight the US toe-to-toe, hence the adoption of the Maoist tactics.

there's a clear solution

[yagu]

If you've been reading the recent slashdot articles, and seen the decisive actions governments are considering, it's only a matter of time before these terrorists are reined in. All they need to do is quickly enact legislation that, among other things:

• requires all throwaway cellphones to be registered with the government
• outlaw anonymous e-mail accounts
• (and, from recent article) require all terrorists to register and provide any and all encryption keys
• (and, also from recent article) prohibit terrorists from using and having access to any network tools.

Sheeesh, how simple can this be?

What do you mean by "control"

[killjoe]

You can't control a country with troops. There are three basic components to controlling masses of people. These are religion, Television/Media, and placation.

If you can get people converted to your brand of god it's easy to control them, the more people who believe in your god the more control you have. The vast majority of the worlds population believes in some god or another.

You need to be able to constant bombard the populace with your message and you need to be able to change this message subtly and continuously. In oder to do that you need television. The vast majority of the population view television every night after work. For the vast majority of people their entire waking hours are spend either at work or in front of the TV. As a bonus television makes your eyes focus on a very narrow depth of field which is surprising similar to a hypnotic state. Television is successful mostly because it puts people in a mildly hypnotic state during which they are prone to suggestions. Why do you think people spend a dollar for colored, sugared water?

Finally you need to fill their bellies to kill their ambition (apologies to Lao Tzu). You need to keep them fed and comfortable so that they don't take action against you. You will need to increase wealth till everybody can go to church and afford a TV.

Voila, you are now controlling a country and you don't need a 150,000 soldiers. The largest economy in the world, the richest country in the world with a population of over 300 million people and taking up vast almost unthinkable amount of space is controlled by a surprisingly few people. Much less then 100,000. Hell much less then 50,000.

Look at it another way. A very small cabal of neocons got their boy electected, got themselves into positions of power and took over a country and all it's natural resources with the full consent of the US population. These people (less then a 100 really) "controlled" the US population into waging a war for their beneift/profit/ideology/god.

War Stories

[Doc Ruby]

Stopping terrorists means the Terror War funds dry up. Instead, you can spy on domestic political "enemies". Just like in the Drug War, where less drugs means less war means less funding, and you can't keep your population under surveillence.

Both those wars are unwinnable, never expected to win, designed and prosecuted by the same people, and directed against the naive American public - with foreigners as expendible props from Central Casting.