In early 2004, the Iraqi insurgency took a strange turn. Beginning in February, bombing attacks began to target the local Iraqi population more than the American and coalition forces. By March 2005, the Iraqi government counted over 6,000 dead and 16,000 wounded civilians from the insurgency. I remember thinking that this strategy could not have been purely military. The lifeblood of insurgency is solidarity with the local population against a technologically and militarily superior foreign occupier. From the Vietnam war for the US forces to the Afghan conflict for the then Soviet army, the ideological high ground was to convince the people that you were on their side against the invader. It was my brothers and I against my cousins, my cousins and I against the neighbors, and my neighbors and I against the ‘invaders’.

How could the insurgents win by killing their countrymen and even their co-religionists in large numbers? How was this a strategy to ‘win hearts and minds’?

The answer, of course, was that the insurgents were savvy about the American media and President George W. Bush’s political detractors. The appeal was not to the Iraqis to support and hide the insurgents out of affiliation.  The Iraq war was Bush’s war, and Bush was becoming discredited worldwide by a tsunami of opposition. If they could convince the American population that Iraq was mismanaged and ungovernable, the media and Bush’s American opposition would shame Bush into withdrawing. The blood calculus was to determine the number of Iraqi civilians they had to kill to give Bush’s domestic opposition the leverage to force a Bush withdrawal. The strategy appeared to be working in 2006.

Bush, however, withstood the withering domestic and international opposition and, in the January of 2007, unleashed the ‘surge’ led by Gen. David Petraeus. Even then, the opposition in the United States stiffened — one even going so far as to label American surge leader Gen. ‘Betrayus”. Four months after it began, another prominent American leader opposed to Bush called the surge a failure while American soldiers were in the field.

Of course, history tells us that the surge succeeded with great rapidity. The Iraqi population turned on their insurgent tormentors. The insurgents could hardly convince Iraqis fatigued from countless civilian bombings that they were now ‘nice insurgents’ who were on the people’s side (“You know how I killed your uncle in last week’s market bombing — let’s just forget that. I am on your side now”). That could not possibly work. They had traded the possibility of popular local support in hope that their co-Bush-haters on American soil would grant them their victory politically. Denied the ability to hide among  the civilian population, defeat was certain against a superior American military. While Bush’s domestic opposition stood stalwart, the insurgents’ Iraqi support fractured.

I recall worrying that Petraeus’ success might be misinterpreted and that future American leaders may be tempted to employ the ‘surge strategy’ in scenarios where the opposition fighters had not already committed ‘insurgency suicide’ by slaughtering their countrymen. In such a future conflict, a large American force could be easily labeled an occupying army that the local fighters were repelling ‘for the people’. Sure enough, President Obama’s 2009 ‘Afghan surge’ did not produce the same unequivocal success of the 2007 Iraqi campaign.

Fast forward to 2020

In 2020, we have another President in the United States opposed by a similar coalition of media and political opposition. A repeat of the ‘do violence to the community’ strategy appears to be in place to undercut the President’s domestic support. This time, the insurgent force is replaced by organized elements of Antifa, the BLM organization, and individuals caught up in the mob frenzy to attack law enforcement, burn businesses, destroy symbols, and usurp authority. The cities of Fallujah, Baghdad, Basra, and Ramadi are replaced by Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and New York. The 2020 narrative is that the President’s meanness, rough demeanor and racist impulses contribute to the violence, chaos and anarchy.  In short, the new insurgent force needs to make the country appear ungovernable so that the President’s media and political opposition can trundle him out of office.

As with the 2004 insurgency in Iraq, this strategy depends on a coordinated symbiosis between the purveyors of the violence and the media and opponents of the President. Symbiosis does not require collusion between the parties, although there may be. All symbiosis requires is that both parties in the symbiotic relationship are willing to use the motions of each other, and to measure their tactics in coordination.

Of course, as with the 2004 Iraqi insurgency, there is no guarantee of success in the 2020 version of the ‘ungovernability’ proposition in the United States. As in Iraq, the purveyors of anarchy run the risk of violence fatigue in the community. The margin of success is smaller because the strategy is being attempted in a society that is more accustomed to a sense of order and societal tranquility. Unlike the distant symbiosis between the Iraqi insurgents and their symbiont in the United State, the 2020 version features a far closer sense of affinity between the citizens directly harmed by the agents of violence and the broader society they seek to influence through the media and opponents of the President. As in Iraq, the citizens directly harmed by the violence may turn on its purveyors. If this happens, the broader society may very well turn on both the foot soldiers of the violence and their symbiotic partners.

The final resolution to the 2020 version of the ‘ungovernability strategy’ will take place in November where the broader society pronounces judgement at the ballot box.

Copyright. Francis Quek, July 28, 2020. Rights to disseminate with attribution freely granted to all.