Iraq is beginning to unravel
The US army is learning the bitter lesson that in Iraq it is fighting a highly trained and motivated insurgency whose capacity to learn from its mistakes and innovate fresh counter measures is far more than that of the US military. The reason for this is simple: miliaries everywhere are slow to change and are weighed down by training and tradition, both of which favor the brash new forces of insurgents. The US military now admits that both in Iraq and Afghanistan they face a "smart, cunning and agile" enemy. At least in Vietnam the USA was facing a peasant fighter army that functioned on the basis of a three tiered command and control structure. In the case of Iraq and the "war on terror" the command and control strucutre is flat meaing that there is no well structured lines of control. Groups operate and pick targets with little co ordination and even then co ordination is only for tactical goals. The US military is finding out that the enemy it is fighting is capable of superb tactical innovations. The insurgents, for example videograph every major operation and the film is disected frame by frame in order to learn lessons for the future. There is no comprable excersice from the Allies point of view and so there is little of any sharing of exprience and inform,ation.
The Baghdad Security plan has come unstuck because instead of facing the Iraqi and US troops the insurgents have just melted away. The number of insurgent related incidents has not come down. In fact there is every reason to believe that Basra too is becoming too violent. The recent Security Conference at Baghdad did not discuss anything substantial and except for an exchange between the US and Iranain delegates there was hardly anything of importance.