This post by Chris Bertram made a point that’s central to a post I’ve been planning for some time, so I may as well jump in and complete it. Talking about US airstrikes in Iraq, he writes
The risk of the operation is transferred by deliberate and systematic policy from soldiers to bystanders. Such a policy runs contrary to traditional views about who should bear the risk of operations: we can’t insulate civilians completely but where there’s a choice soldiers both in virtue of the role they occupy and the fact (here) that they are volunteers should take on more exposure in order to protect civilians. It is hard to escape the thought that were co-nationals of the people dropping the bombs the ones in the bystander position, different methods would be used.
An obvious comparison is with the police force. If any of us were involved in a confrontation between police officers and armed criminals, we would expect the police to risk their lives to save us[1]. A police force that viewed protecting the safety of its own members as the primary priority would not be very effective. A police force that was prepared to pursue criminals with deadly force, and treat deaths among the general public as “collateral damage” would be worse than useless. But that is, in essence, what has been given to the Iraqi people.
This raises, I think, a fairly general point in relation to the kind of liberal/humanitarian interventionism exemplified by Bosnia and Kosovo, and (from the viewpoint of some of its backers, particularly on the left) in Iraq. Unless the intervening powers have the willingness and capacity to provide peacekeepers who will operate as a police force, with the associated attitude that protection of the civilian population is the top priority, then intervention is bound to produce bad outcomes.
The Iraq war failed this test for two reasons. The first, which has been aired at length, is that there weren’t enough troops to make this kind of occupation feasible. Gen Shinseki’s estimate of 400 000 troops, based on extrapolation from Bosnia/Kosovo looks pretty accurate now.
The second point is that the spurious WMD rationale for the war meant that the Coalition never treated the war as a humanitarian intervention[2]. Instead, they regarded themselves as the victors in a (pre-emptively) defensive war and Iraq as a defeated enemy state, which they could reconstruct (or not) as they wished. Resistance to the occupation, violent or otherwise, was inherently illegitimate. Hence, firing on demonstrators, banning newspapers and so on was OK. As US casualties have risen, this attitude has only hardened.
The continued presence of US troops, under current policies, is doing more harm than good.
fn1. A point that’s always worth thinking about before criticising the police, though it shouldn’t make them immune from criticism.
fn2. Of course, this theme was played along with many others. But all the Coalition leaders said before the war that overthrowing Saddam wasn’t a sufficient reason for war. Their subsequent actions have been consistent with this view.
John Quiggin 
It seems that US actions in Iraq are a byproduct of the extreme sensitivity the US has for deaths among its own soldiers. Being less concerned about your own casulties means paradoxically that you can stage a more ‘humane’ war here defined as one that involves less civilian deaths. You also have a better chance of winning because you are more specifically targeting the enemy.
Moreover the terrorist opposition in Iraq and elsewhere understand the stance of the US. Unlike the US they place little value on civilian or even their own lives and, by provoking local terrorist incidents, invite the types of military response from the US that leads local civilians to treat it as the enemy.
Isn’t this a variant on the so-called ‘judo strategy’ much discussed by game theorists. You use the weight or strength of your opponent (in this case their commitment to a heavy-handed military technology) against them.
I think that judo-type strategies underlie the rise of international terrorism and the predictable, though largely unsuccessful, responses to dealing with it.
Good points from JQ and HC.
The obvious “lesson” learned by the US military and defence planners in Vietnam was the intolerance for own casualties amongst the US populace. Hence, the Powell doctrine: application of overwhelming force that minimises the risk of own casualties while increasing the risk of collateral damage to civilians and their property. I’ll take issue with Prof. Q. on one issue, however, the police/military analogy is inappropriate insofar as the US population appears to be willing to risk FOREIGN civilian lives in order to protect US military lives. As pointed out by JQ and HC, this may be a crucial flaw for the USA in pursuing a role as global policeman. If you’re not brave enough to walk the beat, how are you going to keep the peace?
HC highlighted the logic and rationale for terrorist action: violence applied by the militarily weak against the soft targets of the militarily strong in the pursuit of a political objective. US military pointy-heads call this “asymmetric warfare”, i.e. the enemy won’t fight you on your terms, but on theirs.
Terrorists know they can expect a disproportionate response from the USA. Thus the US invasion of Iraq can be seen as a disastrously disproportionate response to the 9/11 strikes. OBL and cronies got what they wanted: the US grinding Muslim faces into the dirt. Could there be a more effective recruitment policy for Islamic terrorists?
There is some interesting Web material on the Web on asymmetric warfare (AW).
Wikipedia has a discussion with comments on war-by-proxy by Al-Qaida and the 2003 invasion of Iraq (which they see as a conventional war that has moved into an asymmetric warfare phase as the insurgency has developed).
A bibliography on AW is http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/asw/asw.htm.
A specific online discussion based a bit on Iraq is http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/B.20040602.NatofInsurge/B.20040602.NatofInsurge.pdf
Quote from the latter:
“Should counterinsurgent forces instead focus their principal efforts on destroying insurgent forces, as is typical of conventional warfare, and accord population security a lower priority, they will play into the insurgents’ hands. Insurgent casualties suffered under these circumstances will rarely prove decisive so long as the insurgents maintain access to the population, they can rarely be compelled to fight. Thus they can meter their casualties to keep them at tolerable levels, and replenish their losses by recruiting from the population. It is only when the insurgents become truly isolated from the population that the real attrition of their forces can take place”.
The first part of this quote amplifies John Q’s comments. The latter part seems a million miles from being met at present in Iraq.
“An obvious comparison is with the police force. If any of us were involved in a confrontation between police officers and armed criminals, we would expect the police to risk their lives to save us1. A police force that viewed protecting the safety of its own members as the primary priority would not be very effective. ”
Well, consider that recent case in the UK when the police would not turn up at the house of two women bleeding to death after a shooting for an hour because the shooter might still be around.
At least the UK government is therefore being consistent, even if in the wrong direction.
I might also note that some one third of the Met’s firearms authorised officers have handed in their certificates in protest at two other officers’ suspension for shooting an unarmed man, which would seem to speak to your second point.
I think it’s more than just a lack of the Shinseki-recommended level of troops that’s causing these casualties; as to a concept of the resistance as being illegitimate, I would seriously doubt that that means anything at all to US troops or officers up until at least the rank of Colonel. Soldiers have to operate differently in a guerrilla war, compared to how they would fight a conventional enemy- no artillery or mortar missions on civilian locations, minimum force wherever possible, no ‘fire and movement’ in areas where there might be civilians, no firing at all in some circumstances. Converting an army to this way of operating is difficult and takes time, training, and clear doctrine: and the US Army, for all its virtues, hasn’t prepared appropriately to fight a guerrilla war and isn’t doing so.