A mere pile of paper

This is a few days old, but John Robb offers an interesting take on the primacy that the American military is placing on the Awakening/Sons of Iraq groups that are providing security in many areas of Iraq:

This situation puts the US military in a difficult position, one that goes deeper than being caught on the horns of dilemma (as in: caught between supporting "former" insurgents or government forces). The improvised theory that led the US military to fund the insurgency (the "Awakening") has transformed the US Counter-Insurgency doctrine (COIN) -- a document was so carefully prepared and announced with such fanfare -- into a mere pile of paper. Why? Because we have abandoned the doctrine's binding assumption: that everything we do in counter-insurgency should increase the legitimacy of the host government. Essentially, the abandonment of our doctrine means that the US military is now completely adrift in Iraq without a counter-insurgency roadmap.

Is he going too far here? Perhaps, but it’s an interesting counterweight to those claiming early victory in Iraq due to the recent downturn in violence. It’s certainly true that the Shia-dominated national government in Baghdad is wary—to say the least—of the predominantly Sunni Awakening movement (Marc Lynch reports that an arrest warrant was recently issued for a pair of Awakening leaders in Anbar province). If the 80,000 Awakening members we’re currently paying to provide security in their own neighborhoods aren’t somehow folded into legitimate security outfits, which just isn't going to happen in the numbers the Sunnis want, this could get very ugly indeed.

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[David M]

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 03/03/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.
http://thunderrun.blogspot.com/2008/03/from-front-03032008.html