Failures of counter-insurgency

On the night of May 2, 2011, six helicopters carrying 79 commandos raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people. It was the culmination of a ten-year manhunt that used the full resources of the United States of America. Never in history has the world been witness to any power even remotely comparable to the American military and intelligence machine, and never before had that apparatus been turned against one individual with such focus and ferocity. The stated objective of the raid—to kill or capture bin Laden—does not capture the full reality. In truth, the raid was about justice or revenge, take your pick, and the commandos were there as judge, jury, and executioner. In this, they were wildly successful. The target was killed at the expense of one crashed helicopter and no American casualties.
The mission was hailed in the United States and around much of the world as an exemplar of military daring, technology, and sheer will. Vice President Joe Biden—never one for understatement—called it the most audacious military plan in 500 years, though he advised President Obama against the raid. (By the way, he was wrong. The most audacious military plan in 500 years was the original incursion into Afghanistan after 9/11, in which a handful of special operations forces helped a ragtag army of insurgents to overthrow the Taliban government in a couple of months with almost no loss of life among the Americans.) Even many Muslims welcomed bin Laden’s demise, because his violent jihad had become a distraction from democratic progress in the Muslim world. Only in Pakistan was the reaction entirely negative, and that was due to the humiliation dealt to the country’s military because of the unilateral American action. The United States did not notify or coordinate the raid with Pakistan in any way—or at least any way that’s been public to date. And the Pakistanis appear to have been completely unable to react to the raid while it progressed at all. They seemed as completely oblivious as the Pakistani IT nerd, Sohaib Athar, who live-tweeted the raid that night.  In my view, though, his account was as accurate and insightful as any outside the Joint Special Operations Command headquarters, especially given his insights into his Pakistani countrymen. Osama bin Laden will not be mourned by many in the Islamic world, even those who resent or hate the United States for its actions in the War on Terror.
But, it is fair to ask, was the mission a success on a broader, strategic level? By this, I mean the real mission, that of fighting terror, ensuring stability and extending freedom in the world. Did America win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Has the War on Terror fundamentally changed the dynamic that led to the 9/11 attacks? In this sense, the blood and treasure expended has been a failure. Terror has been suppressed, to be sure, but Islamist extremism is alive and well. Iraq and Afghanistan are not shining beacons of democracy and individual freedom, though one may certainly argue they are better off than they were in 2001. North Africa has become a seething cauldron from Sudan and Libya to Nigeria and Mali. Iran, the Philippines, Syria, Yemen and North Korea all represent serious strategic challenges with no end in sight. One would hope that unbridled American power could produce more salutary results.
The next question is obvious: why not? Some would argue that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—particularly the latter—were ill-conceived and doomed to failure. Pacifists and isolationists oppose the overuse of the American war machine. My question, though, is different. I am not asking about the wisdom of the wars, which is an interesting question but not my point. Instead, I am asking why American power did not succeed regardless of the wisdom of the adventure. After all, Genghis Khan had the closest thing to the kind of dominant military machine of modern America and terrorized all of Europe and Asia. But what did the Mongols gain by sacking Kiev and Baghdad? Their thirteenth century wars did not make Mongolia rich or a great power for very long and I doubt if the Mongolians as a people were better off as a result of them, so it is fair to question the wisdom of their rampages. But they won the wars nonetheless, leaving those cities and dozens more in smoldering ruins. Wise or not, they won their wars without question. The United States is capable of winning wars. After World War II, military force gave way to nation-building and the Axis powers became allies of the United States. After the Cold War, Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics became free and the Soviet Union changed into Russia, an autocratic state but an essentially lesser rival. But it is unclear whether the war aims in Iraq and Afghanistan, whatever they actually were, have been achieved. Like Vietnam, messy conflicts have given way to ambiguous results.

More on this in later posts...

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