Sake White

This is my recent response to a subject we had been discussing for awhile now. Here are the relevant links you should read in advance, before continuing on. There are also some lengthy comments at Kind’s blog where the discussion first started. I thought it would be beneficial and useful to put them together. In one spot.

Start here.

Grim’s post on the Virtues of Killing Children, especially potent.

My latest reply to kind is here. His words in bold.

Two things. One The British occupation of America was eating into heart and home, combined with unjust laws and lack of representation via equal respect, shown by King George and the Parliament. If you read the Dec of Ind, they listed many reasons, which told me that, they didn’t really want to rebel against Britain. A lot of Americans saw Britain as their own.

The British soldiers, created bad impressions because they weren’t there to protect Colonials, they weren’t out fighting Indians, but in fact they were there to enforce the dictates of Britain.

Loyalty amongst humans need to be a two way street. America cannot simply give Britain all of its loyalty, and Britain can give nothing back while expecting Ami to still be loyal. In Iraq, our soldiers are not eating up Iraqi rations or using their homes as barracks. We in fact provide food and medical service to those who have nothing, i.e. Baghdad slums. I have read, seen, visualized, and created many scenarios of occupations, but American occupation was by far the most effective, most compassionate, and most giving and loyal of all occupations, to the safety, interests, and lives of the occupied. In fact, it was almost too compassionate, in that looters were not shot and law and order thus disintegrated, which caused the opposite of security and compassion. The British expeditionary forces can be blamed for many things, lack of honor and lack of compassion, but the one thing they were was disciplined and a believer in harsh methods to maintain law and order.

England had many chances to treat the Ami frontiersman with some respect. People who go out into the boondocks and suffer 4 month long Atlantic voyages, are Not Pushovers. You don’t need to be obsequious to them, but you do need to consider them as an equal, and not treat them as tools to be used and discarded. The subject of a King owes the King certain loyalties and gifts, but the King owes his subject justice, law, consideration, and fairness of judgement.

Two way street here. Respect is after all, not earned by disrespect.

The one big difference that makes comparable tactical and strategic analysis difficult, is because America has already been ruling independently. That is why they have Colonial governments and houses of representatives. When out in the boondocks where nobody is going to give you a free ride, you learn to fend for yourself, to protect yourself, and to band together for the common good. Iraq doesn’t have this experience. Which only means that their ability to rule themselves, and to enact violence using self-rule as a justification, is much much weaker than the Amis had originally. Also, human shields were not used in the revolutionary war, so only guerrila war tactics can be discussed, not using women and children as shields. Because that didn’t happen. England did almost everything more or less, in the field of good counter-insurgency. They punished rebels, destroyed their homes, and created a very large decentive NOT to join the revolution. In fact, there were many Amis that were loyal to the crown, and thus acted as spies and infiltrators inside America itself. England also used that fractured political landscape and gathered Indian allies to themselves, to fight America, promising that the native americans will get “land” or some such. You get a thief to catch a thief. Do not mistake my intention, I do not espouse admiration for England’s tactics, because they went far beyond what was just or necessary. And they still failed, which gives you an impression of how important justice is in war. Not just percieved justice by the people, but actual objective justice.
Link
I like to explain insurgency in this manner. Here’s a link to a short six paragraphs that you might find interesting, on how insurgencies. But basically, there are two variables. Punishment and reward. A simple punishment could be as harsh as public execution to arrest, to being impressed on a british warship, to having soldiers in your home and forced to feed and garrison them without any means to redress wrongs and complaints. Rewards can be anything as small as candy and some bribe money, to millions of dollars, to power, to political support, to arms, to nuclear weapons provided by the US, to training your soldiers using America’s best and most lethal.

A justified revolution or reformation is based upon the concept that fighting is better than talking, because talking has lead to a situation where you recieve far more punishment than rewards. And if you feel that they are unjust, that there is no way to redress your grievances, then you fight. The fighting in Iraq is not a justified revolution. There are no “complaints”, in fact it is the terroists blowing up the oil and electricity infrastructure and killing women and children. If anyone has a justified “complaint”, it is the Iraqis against the terrorists. You’ve heard about US troops shooting Iraqis at checkpoints because the Iraqis paniced and tried to run through them by mistake and you’ve seen and heard about Abu Ghraib. However, you still have to run these events through the punishment/reward filter. Is it enough of a punishment to cause a person to fight for less punishment and greater rewards? What motivates a person, an Arab, an Iraqi, a Kurd to fight or kill?

Motivations differ. Because the rewards and punishments differ. For example. Al Qaeda fights because they like fighting and killing and maiming people. That’s a nice incentive reward right there. They also fight and kidnap folks for money. Greed is always a nice motivator when all else fails. Then what is causing Al Qaeda to stop fighting, what are their punishments in other words? Well, if they shoot at Americans, they can be shot back at and killed. But if they give up and surrender, then the Americans will only “detain” them. So they kill and torture captured Americans because they feel there is no punishment to their actions, motivating them to do anything else, because the terroists will always torture and the Americans will always treat prisoners humanely. When there are no incentives or punishments for or against an action, that person doing the action will keep on doing it.

This basic psychology was the key point I was making over at CDR Salamnder’s blog where the Six Paragraphs were posted. It is true of all insurgencies and revolutions and guerrila wars, because how people act and behave are the same.