Sunday, October 26, 2003

AN UNSOPHISTICATED ENEMY

It is being widely reported that an attack on the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad killed one American army officer and wounded 17 other people today. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in the hotel at the time of the attack but was not injured and not considered to be the specific target of the attack.

Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Army's 1st Armored Division, attempted to de-legitmize the attackers by ridiculing the home-made rocket launcher used in the attack.

Dempsey told Wolfowitz that the launcher was a "Rube Goldberg device" and that its crudeness indicated the weakness of the forces opposing the U.S. occupation, rather than their strength.
[...]
He dismissed the rocket launcher as a crude device akin to a garage science project "with a welder and a battery and a handful of pipes." Yet he acknowledged that it was dangerous and deadly. "It had the effect they intended, didn't it? But I don't see it as sophistication."

Clearly sophistication has little to do with it. Despite the fact that the U.S. has defeated the enemy on the field of battle preventing attacks like this by "unsophisticated" individuals or cells is proving very difficult. The "unsophisticated" nature of the enemy and its methods of attack is the very problem. Attacks like this show that as long as a very small number of these individuals remain at large and as long as they have access to "a welder and a battery and a handful of pipes" they will be able to continue to destabalzie the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The U.S is currently engaged in probably the most difficult military situation there is. They face a nearly unidentifiable enemy who expoits all the weaknesess of a major occupying force. The enemy attacks using crude methods, rarely ever showing himself. In relative terms the American losses are not terribly damaging. But the effects of attacks like these once reported in the media is far from negligeable. The administration is certainly committed to staying in Iraq, but will the American citizenry maintain the same committment?

Posted by Matthew @ 11:39 p.m.