[lbo-talk] The oil-spot strategy - David Brooks on how to win thewar in Iraq

[Carl Remick]

>From: "Leigh Meyers" <leighcmeyers at gmail.com>
>
>Strategic Hamlets. That's the answer, turn
>the country into one big strategic hamlet.
>
>Pitiful.
>
>David Brooks: A strategy for winning in Iraq
>The New York Times
>
>... Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight 
>is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy 
>missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters 
>waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because 
>the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped 
>you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your 
>heavy-handed raids.
>
>Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more 
>important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can 
>establish good security. ...

Couldn't this also be termed the Boer War concentration-camp strategy but 
with a smiley face?  Consider Timothy Garton Ash's recent column:

"Iraq is America's Boer war. Remember that after the British had declared 
the end of major combat operations in the summer of 1900, the Boers launched 
a campaign of guerrilla warfare that kept British troops on the run for 
another two years. The British won only by a ruthlessness of which, I'm glad 
to say, the democratic, squeamish and still basically anti-colonialist 
United States appears incapable. In the end, the British had 450,000 British 
and colonial troops there (compared with some 150,000 US troops in Iraq), 
and herded roughly a quarter of the Boer population into concentration 
camps, where many died."

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1555819,00.html>

Carl