TNR: Lawrence Korb Against the Surge
Here's the first installment in TNR's debate. To surge or not to surge--that is the question.
I'm even more tenuously pro-surge (almost vanishingly so) than I used to be as more and more of my foreign policy beacons (e.g. Wes Clark) come out against. Still, I have questions about Korb's argument.
Consider the following paragraph:
"The first problem is that U.S. forces will be unable to protect the population, because our very presence is a magnet for violence. U.S. soldiers and Marines patrolling on foot or holed up in neighborhood outposts will be bombarded with attacks from anti-occupation insurgents. To protect themselves, U.S. forces will have to respond, relying on their massive firepower to fight off attacks, putting Iraqi civilians in the crossfire and only making the security situation worse."
Korb's argument (like most arguments) is a tad difficult to reconstruct, but here's a go at it:
(1) U.S. soldiers and Marines patrolling on foot or holed up in neighborhood outposts will be bombarded with attacks from anti-occupation insurgents.
Therefore:
(2) Our very presence is a magnet for violence. (from (1))
(3) To protect themselves, U.S. forces will have to respond, relying on their massive firepower to fight off attacks
Therefore:
(4) We will put Iraqi civilians in the crossfire (from (2) and (3)?)
[Therefore:?]
(5) We will be unable to protect the Iraqi population (from (4)? from (2)?)
Therefore:
(6) We (in a surge) will make matters worse (?? from (5)? from (4)?? from (4) and (5)?)
At any rate, the main idea is clear enough: our troops will provoke more violence, and dish out more violence and this will be worse for innocent Iraqis than the alternative (no surge? leaving entirely?).
Our troops do provoke violence, that's clear. It isn't, however, clear whether that's a net gain or a net loss for innocent Iraqis. Apparently we don't know whether, if we we withdrew, that violence would evaporate or, instead, simply be directed against innocent Iraqis. (My guess: some of each, and nobody knows in what proportion.)
Our troops do dish it out, too, and that kills innocent Iraqis, but, again, we don't know whether it kills more than it saves.
So, although we know that some violence is directed at our troops, and that some violence is caused by them, what we don't know is whether this makes matters worse for innocent Iraqis than they (i.e. things) would be otherwise.
I just don't see how Korb's argument can be valid. (Here I use 'valid' in the ordinary and traditional sense in which a non-deductive argument can be valid.) To get the conclusion he wants, he'd have to provide premises in which pre-surge and post-surge levels of violence were compared, and those he does not have.
Just pointing out all the ways in which our (increased) presence is bad can't show that we shouldn't be (er...increasingly?) present. To show that, we'd have to show that our presence is worse than our absence (or that our increased presence is worse than a decreased presence, or whatever.) But those seem to be the very comparisons we are ignorant about.
So it seems that bit of Korb's argument fails.
Here's the first installment in TNR's debate. To surge or not to surge--that is the question.
I'm even more tenuously pro-surge (almost vanishingly so) than I used to be as more and more of my foreign policy beacons (e.g. Wes Clark) come out against. Still, I have questions about Korb's argument.
Consider the following paragraph:
"The first problem is that U.S. forces will be unable to protect the population, because our very presence is a magnet for violence. U.S. soldiers and Marines patrolling on foot or holed up in neighborhood outposts will be bombarded with attacks from anti-occupation insurgents. To protect themselves, U.S. forces will have to respond, relying on their massive firepower to fight off attacks, putting Iraqi civilians in the crossfire and only making the security situation worse."
Korb's argument (like most arguments) is a tad difficult to reconstruct, but here's a go at it:
(1) U.S. soldiers and Marines patrolling on foot or holed up in neighborhood outposts will be bombarded with attacks from anti-occupation insurgents.
Therefore:
(2) Our very presence is a magnet for violence. (from (1))
(3) To protect themselves, U.S. forces will have to respond, relying on their massive firepower to fight off attacks
Therefore:
(4) We will put Iraqi civilians in the crossfire (from (2) and (3)?)
[Therefore:?]
(5) We will be unable to protect the Iraqi population (from (4)? from (2)?)
Therefore:
(6) We (in a surge) will make matters worse (?? from (5)? from (4)?? from (4) and (5)?)
At any rate, the main idea is clear enough: our troops will provoke more violence, and dish out more violence and this will be worse for innocent Iraqis than the alternative (no surge? leaving entirely?).
Our troops do provoke violence, that's clear. It isn't, however, clear whether that's a net gain or a net loss for innocent Iraqis. Apparently we don't know whether, if we we withdrew, that violence would evaporate or, instead, simply be directed against innocent Iraqis. (My guess: some of each, and nobody knows in what proportion.)
Our troops do dish it out, too, and that kills innocent Iraqis, but, again, we don't know whether it kills more than it saves.
So, although we know that some violence is directed at our troops, and that some violence is caused by them, what we don't know is whether this makes matters worse for innocent Iraqis than they (i.e. things) would be otherwise.
I just don't see how Korb's argument can be valid. (Here I use 'valid' in the ordinary and traditional sense in which a non-deductive argument can be valid.) To get the conclusion he wants, he'd have to provide premises in which pre-surge and post-surge levels of violence were compared, and those he does not have.
Just pointing out all the ways in which our (increased) presence is bad can't show that we shouldn't be (er...increasingly?) present. To show that, we'd have to show that our presence is worse than our absence (or that our increased presence is worse than a decreased presence, or whatever.) But those seem to be the very comparisons we are ignorant about.
So it seems that bit of Korb's argument fails.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:54 PM
8 Comments:
I agree it's unclear, but I think there's a way of reading it that makes slightly more sense. Any military unit (whether patrolling or in-base) needs to engage in force protection. Any American unit in Iraq is likely to come under attack, and for a variety of reasons (probably most important among these being the fact that the insurgency/militia does not distinguish itself from the civilian population) the force-protection response to these attacks will kill civilians, further inflaming the situation &c. On this logic, the proper comparison is between the marginal increase in force-protection-related destabilization as against the marginal improvement in security that will follow the deployment of an additional unit (or 20,000 troops, or whatever). I'm not sure whether this is what he's saying, but this is how I read it.
[With that said, I agree that he doesn't appear to have engaged in the relevant balancing, and that the argument as such proves very little, since the rubber as always meets the road in the details. So it's still not persuasive]
The one thing we are all forgetting is that Iraq is not our property. Ergo, decisions regarding the welfare of that nation are not necessarily ours to make. True, we broke into their home and wrecked the place, but that doesn't imply that we ought to stick around until everything is cleaned up. The situation may be entirely our fault, and we may therefore be eager to clean up the mess we made, but judging from the amount of violent opposition our troops face daily, a significant number of Iraqis would prefer we just get the hell off of their property. That would imply that our help is simply unwanted. That is, if asked to leave then we ought to do just that, rather than ignoring our victim's wishes and working harder in the hope that they'll give up and stop trying to kick us out, even if we're absolutely certain things can only go downhill once we're gone.
The "surge" is symbolic. Either the decent Iraqis will get their asses in gear, or there aren't any, or least any with an ounce of courage.
Freedom, let alone peace, doesn't come easy, unless you decide life is a stockyard and the slaughterhouse is the inevitable price. Saddam's Iraq was such a place, and if the people's fatalism is sanguine with more of the same, 20,000 or 200,000 more American troops wouldn't make any damned difference.
Well. let us try to make order-of-magntude estimates for the positive & negative effects of the modest boost in troop levels.
Observation: The current force level (~135,000, IIRC) is far below that required to suppress the insurgency. The US Army Counterinsurgency manual calls out a ration of 1 occupying soldier per 20 civilians.
(US Army FM3-24 states "Most density recommendations
fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents" -- http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf
Para. 1-67, page 1-13)
Observation: The "surge" of ~20,000 more troops will not move the ratio of soldiers to civilians significantly closer to the required ratio.
Therefore, it is unlikely (although not impossible) that the "surge" will transform the nature of what is happening in Baghdad.
That is, the added safety and stability Iraqis experience because of the additianal troops will scale no more than linearly with the troop levels. Similarly the dangers that civilians face because of the presence of our troops will scale roughly linearly with the troop levels.
So, the improvements in safety derived from the "surge" are of the same order of magnitude as the added dangers, and therefore, the "surge" will have, at best, a small net improvement, until troop levels begin to fall again. And even that is far from certain.
We see that the "surge" will not correct the underlying situation, but may give a marginal improvement as long as the "surge" is sustained. In addition, the surge will place more Iraqi civilians and American troops at risk of death or injury.
It is bad, bad, idea.
I think I am in agreement (of sorts) with TVD here. The question to be answered is a larger one other than the effects of the surge.
Are we leaving or not?
I say we are. When, who knows, but the ultimate situation on the ground in Iraq is going to be the same whether it is soon or a long time away. We simply don't have the forces to make a happy outcome. We just don't, the 21,500 figure is the most we can infuse at the moment. Not the proper amount, not the ideal amount, the MAXIMUM amount.
We will leave Iraq. That is, in my opinion a given. I feel that anyone who thinks what we do in the meantime will make a difference is fooling themselves...and knowingly or unknowingly killing more American soldiers. I will not speculate as to the number of Iraqis who will die, but in any event, it will be a lot. Whether we can reduce the number is perhaps a good question, but the main point remains that a lot of US soldiers will die, and we have no idea how many Iraqis will (but it will be a huge number whether things go "well" or "poorly").
The surge is simply (hopefully) the last gasp before we recognize the truth;Iraq is a mess, we need to leave. Oh, and by the way, we created this mess. So be it (no choice on that one), we have to get out. It is simply what will eventually happen.
How many lives are lost in the meantime is a question for the future, and will be noted by history. The number of lives lost will not change the fundamental reality...Iraq will be chaotic and deadly for the foreseeable future regardless of whether the US is there or not.
Jim--
Should we focus on:
A. The ratio of soldiers to all Iraqi civilians
or
B. The ratio of soldiers to Iraqi civilians in the violent areas (Bagdhad, Anbar, etc.)?
Maybe a stretch...
WS,
A fair question, particularly since the Brits are taking care of the south and the Kurds are in fairly good shape (as I understand it) in the north, reducing the number of Iraqis one needs to count.
However, Fred Kaplan, states (in Slate , dated 1/8/07)
Petraeus and his co-authors discussed this strategy at great length in the Army's counterinsurgency field manual. One point they made is that it requires a lot of manpower—at minimum, 20 combat troops for every 1,000 people in the area's population. Baghdad has about 6 million people; so clearing, holding, and building it will require about 120,000 combat troops.
Right now, the United States has about 70,000 combat troops in all of Iraq (another 60,000 or so are support troops or headquarters personnel). Even an extra 20,000 would leave the force well short of the minimum required—and that's with every soldier and Marine in Iraq moved to Baghdad. Iraqi security forces would have to make up the deficit.
So, if we concentrated all troops in Baghdad, then we are at 75% of the nominal required level. But there is no rational basis to expect that to happen, so we are really looking at perhaps 50% of the nominal required level. And, one could argue that, given the existing degree of violence and chaos, the nominal troop level is likely to be insufficient to restore order, i.e., a period of overwhelming force is required suppress the chaos, after which the 20 per 1000 ratio will maintain the order.
Therefore, we know that the surge is unlikely to make a substantive difference, but will put more people at risk of death or injury. Why do it?
*A Correction*
In the body of my first comment, I had stated that a ratio of 1 soldier per 20 civilians was required -- 5%. I then quote the field manual as calling for 20 - 25 soldiers per 1000 civilians, or 2.0 - 2.5%. Sorry for my error!
Good God...
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