Gwynne Dyer: 'A guerrilla war takes root'--Toronto Star...Excellent piece

[Gloria]

http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1061331013547

Gwynne Dyer: 'A guerrilla war takes root'
Iraqis opposed to U.S. are destroying structures and services on which the population depends

By Gwynne Dyer, Toronto Star

(snip)

To adapt Bill Clinton's famous phrase: It's a war, stupid.

In the first phase of the war, cluster bombs were the weapon of choice, and so the United States won. Now we have moved into the phase where the dominant weapon is the truck bomb and that levels the playing field. A classic guerrilla war is taking shape in Iraq and such wars are a contest not of technology, but will.



In this sort of struggle, guerrillas have several inbuilt advantages. They are at home, among friends and relatives, with all the local knowledge (starting with language) that the foreign troops lack. They can wrap themselves in the local flag (or increasingly, in the case of the non-Baathist resistance in Iraq, in the green banner of Islam), options that are simply unavailable to the occupying forces.

And there is something more: The occupiers have to build; the resistance only has to destroy.

There is a key concept of revolutionary guerrilla warfare that has, oddly, no standard translation in English: la politique du pire. Literally, it is the strategy of (making things) worse.

The idea is that the guerrillas, who lack the military strength to beat their opponents in open battle, should concentrate instead on destroying the structures and services on which the population depends.

If their attacks and sabotage make the lives of ordinary people awful, the people will not blame the guerrillas. They will blame the authorities whose duty it is to provide those structures and services — the occupation authorities, in this case.

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