The insurgents (or whatever you want to call them) have clearly stepped up their attacks in Iraq. So the question becomes, why now. They are confronted with the choice of either attacking, or laying low. If they make attacks, they expose themselves to counter attack and exposure, while if they lay low, they can go unnoticed but they may lose recruits and their own fighters. Now such thoughts may not enter into their calculations, they may be attacking more simply because the have more men, more material, and more hope. Or it could be they have decided that it is better to attack now rather than later.
I know the tactics have been dubbed asymmetrical warfare or 4th generation warfare, but there is nothing new under the sun and I’d call it classic weak versus strong or 0th generation warfare. The goal is to harass the enemy, kill him when and where possible, and hope he goes away because it isn’t worth his while anymore. Morale, or even better, the will to continue, is what is being fought over in this type of warfare. And in Iraq, we need to realize that it isn’t just the morale or will of the US that matters.
The United States will leave Iraq one day; the only question isn’t so much when but under what conditions. Our desire is to leave behind a functioning government complete with armed forces that will be able to defeat the insurgents. It would be nice if the insurgents were wiped out before we left, but not necessary. In that sense, US troops are fighting a holding action. The insurgents would like us to leave before that goal is achieved, and then to defeat the government we leave behind. So the insurgents have to do two things to win – demoralize the US, and demoralize a majority of the Iraqi’s themselves. Thus they are attacking not just US soldiers, but foreign groups (such as the UN and NGOs) that will help the fledgling Iraqi government, and the Iraqi forces (mostly police) we are constituting for the Iraqi government.
At this point, there are now more Iraqi’s under arms fighting with us than there are American troops in Iraq, and the number of Iraqi’s under arms grows daily. Soon there will be more Iraqi’s under arms for the government than there ever were US soldiers in Iraq. So the attacks against Iraqi police are important to the insurgents to keep that day from coming – not from killing that many police, but from killing enough that too few ordinary Iraqi’s become police, or soldiers, or guards. So the insurgents have to attack now before the Iraqi police and military overwhelm them.
