Anthony J. Joes, political science professor and guerilla warfare scholar at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, says the best way for the U.S. military to counter the guerilla insurgency in Iraq is to send more Arabic speakers there as soon as possible. "They must do a better and faster job of recruiting and training more Arabic speakers immediately," he says. "Our men and women need to be able to distinguish friend from foe quickly," he says. "And having someone available who speaks the language and knows the culture means the difference between life and death."
Joes, director of Saint Joseph's University's international relations program, has studied and written extensively on unconventional military tactics, and has published eight books on guerilla warfare, including: America and Guerrilla Warfare (University of Kentucky, 2000); Guerilla Warfare: A Historical, Biographical and Bibliographical Sourcebook (Greenwood, 1996); and Modern Guerrilla Insurgency (Praeger, 1992).
A specific area of his research examines how armies can successfully leave a country following a military victory. "Understanding that there will not be an instant win in Iraq, that U.S. involvement there could last years, is another important step toward achieving a lasting peace there," he says. "We owe it to ourselves and to the Iraqi people." Perhaps the worst thing that could happen now, he argues, would be for pressure to mount to withdraw our troops too early. The U.S. would find itself sending troops there again to an even more hostile environment, he maintains, "because ending the 1991 Gulf War before Saddam Hussein was removed from power cost many Iraqis their lives in the years that followed and caused this [war] to happen in 2003."
"The U.S. military is the best-trained and equipped conventional fighting force on the planet," he observes, "and our troops can defeat any other conventional force." Engaging in a guerilla war "where you can't tell who the enemy is" is a different story. "But it can be done," he says.
In addition to the language barrier, he says, they key is to quickly re-learn valuable military lessons forgotten in recent decades. "Throughout the 20th century, U.S. forces defeated guerilla armies in Latin America and the Philippines and in Vietnam," he says. "After the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong were crushed as a fighting force. South Vietnam was eventually conquered by the conventional North Vietnamese Army."
Because of the pervasive misconception that the U.S. military was beaten by a guerilla army in Southeast Asia, the Saint Joseph's University professor says, "there's been a lot of forgetting--sometimes on purpose because of the trauma of Vietnam--of important lessons and victories won there and elsewhere over the years." Ours is not a society that is interested in history, he argues. "As a result, we often fail to learn from it."
Another problem, he notes, is what he sees as the U.S. military's over-reliance on technology, which proved useful in a conventional war earlier this year. "With all kinds of high-tech stuff available, there's this thinking that we don't need to get dirty on the ground now, win the hearts and minds of the population or actually engage the guerilla enemy," he points out. "Technology also enables many people in our country, which has perhaps the world's shortest attention span, to follow the progress of the war and to wonder—as they watch satellite TV or check their online news source throughout the day—why our troops haven't won yet."
More information on Professor Joes can be found at: http://www.sju.edu/~ajoes/
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