http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/weekinreview/06BOOT.html?ex=1 058485008&ei=1&en=2b7af0dd351dbe61
New York Times July 6, 2003
A Century of Small Wars Shows They Can Be Won
By MAX BOOT
A fter a series of smashing military victories, the president declared
the war over. Yet far from giving up, the forces resisting American
occupation switched to guerrilla tactics. Isolated sentries were
killed by assailants who pretended to be friendly civilians. Patrols
in the countryside ran into booby traps. One carefully staged ambush
wiped out half an infantry company. American forces responded with
harsh countermeasures that led to charges of brutality.
That may sound like a portrait of today's Iraq, but it actually
describes the Philippines a century ago. Having kicked out the Spanish
in 1898, the United States decided to keep the archipelago for itself.
Many Filipinos resisted American rule. President William McKinley
thought the struggle was over by early 1900, when the regular Filipino
armed forces were routed, but the resilient insurrectos proved him
wrong.
The United States eventually won, but it was a long, hard, bloody slog
that cost the lives of more than 4,200 American soldiers, 16,000
rebels and some 200,000 civilians. Even after the formal end of
hostilities on July 4, 1902, sporadic resistance dragged on for years.
There is no reason to think that the current struggle in Iraq will be
remotely as difficult. But the Philippine war is a useful reminder
that Americans have a long history of fighting guerrillas and usually
prevailing, though seldom quickly or easily.
Many lessons of those counterinsurgencies were set down in "The Small
Wars Manual," written by a group of Marine Corps officers in the
1930's. This book, which was reprinted in the 1980's, was intended to
draw on the experience of leathernecks who had battled "bandits" (as
the authors preferred to call all resistance movements) in Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and elsewhere during the early years of
the 20th century.
In contrast to major wars, the manual warns, "in small wars no defined
battle front exists and the theater of operations may be the whole
length and breadth of the land. . . . In warfare of this kind, members
of native forces will suddenly become innocent peasant workers when it
suits their fancy and convenience." Confronted with such elusive foes,
the manual counsels a two-pronged approach to "establish and maintain
law and order."
On the one hand, occupying forces must stay on the offensive against
rebel groups, hunting them down wherever they hide. "Delay in the use
of force . . . will always be interpreted as weakness," the authors
warn. On the other hand, the manual is keenly aware of the limits of
firepower in an ambiguous environment.
"Peace and industry cannot be restored permanently without appropriate
provisions for the economic welfare of the people," they write. They
also warn that the "hatred of the enemy" usually inculcated among
combat troops is entirely inappropriate during an occupation. Brutal
repression of the kind carried out by some American soldiers who used
a torture technique called the "water cure" to extract information
from Filipino suspects only creates more recruits for the rebels. "In
small wars, tolerance, sympathy and kindness should be the keynote to
our relationship with the mass of the population."
However skillful they are in the application of carrots and sticks,
the manual teaches, American troops cannot win a permanent victory by
themselves: "Native troops, supported by marines, are increasingly
employed as early as practicable in order that these native agencies
may assume their proper responsibility for restoring law and order in
their own country."
American troops followed this advice with a great deal of success in
combating insurgencies from the Philippines to, in more recent years,
countries like El Salvador. So did the British in postwar Malaya.
In Vietnam, by contrast, The Small Wars Manual was conspicuously
neglected. Gen. William Westmoreland tried a conventional big-unit
approach, with disastrous consequences. The relations of American
soldiers with civilians were not, for the most part, characterized by
"tolerance, sympathy and kindness." Nor did the Americans turn over
the fight to "native troops . . . as early as practicable."
Of course, the biggest problem in Indochina was outside the army's
control. The guerrillas operating in South Vietnam had a virtually
impregnable base in North Vietnam. That made it impossible to isolate
the battlefield, as the United States Navy had been able to do in the
islands of the Philippines.
In Iraq, American forces may also find it difficult to cut off the
insurgents they now face, since the country shares long borders with
Syria and Iran, both hostile to the United States. From Washington's
standpoint, the good news is that both countries should be much more
vulnerable to American pressure than North Vietnam was, because they
lack a superpower patron.
In many respects, the American campaign in Iraq has been straight out
of The Small Wars Manual. Security sweeps in Sunni areas of central
Iraq are combined with efforts to reopen schools and hospitals. This
is not bleeding-heart humanitarianism but, as the manual reminds us, a
vital step to winning hearts and minds.
Achieving that goal also requires that American troops avoid the sort
of excesses committed in the Philippines. Brig. Gen. Jacob Smith was
court-martialed for ordering his men to "kill and burn"`
indiscriminately a case as shocking in its day as the My Lai massacre
in Vietnam was.
While the behavior of American troops in Iraq has been for the most
part exemplary, one area where they have lagged is in using indigenous
security forces. In the early years of the 20th century, United States
occupiers generally set up constabularies trained and led by Americans
but made up of local enlisted men. Quasi-military organizations like
the the Philippine Scouts proved to be formidable instruments of
counterinsurgency because their soldiers knew the local culture and
language. This is especially important in fighting foes without
uniforms, where the chief challenge is simply to identify the enemy.
Small wars place a great premium on accurate intelligence.
As the Afghanistan experience shows, it will take a long time to set
up a new military in Iraq. Until then, the occupation authorities will
not be able to proceed to the last two sections of "The Small Wars
Manual": "Supervision of Elections" and "Withdrawal."
Max Boot is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of
"The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power."
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