Iraq and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency or Sandra Day OConnor

Iraq and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency

Author: Thomas R Mockaitis

Mockaitis begins by providing a working definition of counterinsurgency that distinguishes it from conventional war while discussing the insurgents' uses of terror as a method to support their broader strategy of gaining control of a country. Insurgent movements, he notes, use terror far more selectively than do terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, which kills indiscriminately and is more than willing to produce mass casualties. Such methods stand in stark contrast to the American approach to armed conflict, which is more ideally suited to pragmatic culture leery of involvement in protracted foreign wars and demands immediate results. Within this context, Mocktaitis examines the conflict in Iraq, from post conflict troubles with Saddam in the early 1990s, to pre-invasion planning in 2003. He then moves into a discussion of the rise of insurgent movements and the challenges they posed in the aftermath of the fighting, tracing the ongoing efforts to shape a doctrine that allows US forces to successfully deal with the growing insurgency The U.S. military in Iraq faces the most complex counterinsurgency campaign in its history and perhaps the history of modern warfare. At the outset, it confronted as many as 22 different domestic insurgent and foreign terrorist groups in an environment made more difficult by thousands of criminals released by Saddam Hussein. Over the past three years, the conflict has evolved with growing ethnic violence complicating an already difficult security situation. Even the most optimistic assessments predict a continued deployment of significant U.S. forces for at least five years for the country to be stabilized. It remains to be seen whether public opinionwill support such a deployment. Mockaitis situates the Iraq War in its broad historical and cultural context. He argues that failure to prepare for counterinsurgency in the decades following the end of the Vietnam War left the U.S. military ill equipped to handle irregular warfare in the streets of Baghdad. Lack of preparation and inadequate troop strength led American forces to adopt a conventional approach to unconventional war. Over-reliance on firepower combined with cultural insensitivity to alienate many Iraqis. However, during the first frustrating year of occupation, U.S. forces revised their approach, relearning lessons from past counterinsurgency campaigns and adapting them to the new situation. By the end of 2004, they had developed an effective strategy and tactics but continued to be hampered by troop shortages, compounded by the unreliability of many Iraqi police and military units. The Army's new doctrine, embodied in FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, outlines the correct approach to winning Iraq. However, three years of desultory conflict amid ongoing revelations that the premises upon which the administration argued the need for invading Iraq may be false have eroded support for the war. The American armed forces may soon find themselves in the unfortunate situation of having found a formula for success at almost the same time the voters demand withdrawal.

Table of Contents:

Preface: Old Lessons for a New War

Abbreviations

Introduction 1

Ch. 1 The Nature of the Beast 6

Ch. 2 The American Way of War 26

Ch. 3 Iraq in Context 58

Ch. 4 From Shock and Awe to Clear and Hold 78

Ch. 5 The Lost Year 95

Ch. 6 Getting It Right 124

Conclusions: Prospects, Possibilities, and Lessons To Be Learned 145

Notes 157

Bibliography 173

Index 183

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Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice

Author: Joan Biskupic

Sandra Day O'Connor, America's first woman justice, was called the most powerful woman in America. She became the axis on which the Supreme Court turned, and it was often said that to gauge the direction of American law, one need look only to O'Connor's vote. Drawing on information gleaned from once-private papers, hundreds of interviews, and the insight gained from nearly two decades of covering the Supreme Court, author Joan Biskupic offers readers a fascinating portrait of a complex and multifaceted woman—lawyer, politician, legislator, and justice, as well as wife, mother, A-list society hostess, and competitive athlete. Biskupic provides an in-depth account of her transformation from tentative jurist to confident architect of American law.

The Washington Post - Kathleen M. Sullivan

Biskupic gives a fascinating account of O'Connor's political astuteness; she was appointed and reelected as an Arizona state senator, then rose to become majority leader of that body. Later, she became a judge on an Arizona trial court and an intermediate appeals court. Diligent, alert, energetic and adept at politicking, she was a master of the telephone call and the handwritten note, and she helped organize everything from Republican presidential campaigns in Arizona to her classmate Rehnquist's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

The New York Times - Emily Bazelon

…if Biskupic lacks intimate confidences for Sandra Day O'Connor, she has something else: perfect timing. Her book appears as O'Connor leaves the bench and while her legacy is unsettled. Biskupic jumps into that opening with a well-researched and (no doubt to O'Connor's chagrin) revealing account.

Publishers Weekly

In the late 1980s, as the Supreme Court justices were discussing a case, Antonin Scalia ranted against affirmative action. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first and then still the only woman on the High Court, replied, "Why, Nino, how do you think I got my job?" This is one of the few revelatory moments in Biskupic's bio of the retiring O'Connor as sharp-tongued, humorous and utterly realistic. It's also, as Biskupic shows in a close study of O'Connor's jurisprudence, a bit misleading: for most of her career on the Court, the conservative O'Connor voted against affirmative action. With access to justices' once private papers, longtime court observer Biskupic, now with USA Today, sheds light on the internal workings on the Court, but not much on the internal workings of the very private O'Connor's mind and heart. Biskupic does show the justice gaining confidence and force on the Court, particularly after her fight against breast cancer in 1988. As O'Connor faces retirement, Biskupic clarifies her judicial legacy, sometimes seeing the glass as half full, sometimes as half empty: praising her lack of ideology but also noting a lack of vision in a justice who often "step[s] to the brink, and then back[s] away"-a mixed legacy that will be debated for years to come. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Veteran Supreme Court reporter Biskupic offers an insightful biography of perhaps the most influential associate justice in recent history. She cites O'Connor's frontierlike upbringing in Arizona and her ability to mingle with finesse in a male world as factors in her ascension to the de facto leadership of the Court's centrist plurality, which has swayed the majority opinion on a range of issues, including abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, and the death penalty. Biskupic underscores the nontraditional nature of O'Connor's credentials: her lack of high-level judicial experience and her brief career in the Arizona State Senate. But there were also her connections with the Republican Party and her inclination to avoid public positions on controversial topics. O'Connor was a consensus-builder and team player, but Biskupic nevertheless traces the theme of women's rights in her career-as when she exhorted President Nixon to name a woman to the Supreme Court. Once on the Court, she was frequently called on to write opinions involving sex discrimination and women's rights. On abortion, she carefully backtracked, allowing states more latitude than the approach taken by the liberals but rebuffing conservative efforts to gut abortion rights altogether. The O'Connor Court, Biskupic notes, thus moved the law-and society-in new directions. Highly recommended.-Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

"She was not raised to sit still," remarked a weary clerk of Sandra Day O'Connor. Indeed not, as this lively life of the just-retired Associate Justice relates. Supreme Court chronicler Biskupic writes, mostly admiringly but not unreservedly, of O'Connor, a tough but polite woman who grew up on an Arizona ranch headed by a never-pleased patriarch who, by most accounts, put the fear into everyone he met. Sandy Day was brilliant, a surprise to her classmates at Stanford Law School (including William Rehnquist, whom she briefly dated) and to hapless chauvinists in the Phoenix suburbs, to which she and her husband repaired in 1957. O'Connor served as a state legislator-a fellow senator, meaning to be complimentary, said of her, "this pretty little thing carries a disconcerting load of expertise"-and appeals-court judge before being shortlisted by Attorney General William French Smith to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1981. Though President Reagan had pledged to name a woman to the court, Biskupic writes, "O'Connor's credentials did not make her an obvious candidate." On closer examination, administration vetters found that she was politically well-connected and suitably conservative, though big-C rightists had fits when they discovered that O'Connor was generally pro-choice. No matter: she easily passed the audition, only to take a mostly independent course on the bench that put her at odds with doctrinaire types on the left and right alike. Biskupic does a solid job of charting O'Connor's evolution as a judge who, given her druthers, preferred to seek consensus and split the difference in a given dispute over the slash-and-burn approach of certain other jurists,notably bete noire Antonin Scalia. O'Connor shaped the law, Biskupic concludes, "with her Western pragmatism, her feel for the American center-and a shrewd but quiet negotiating skill."Fitting farewell to an influential jurist who may soon be very much missed.