REMEMBER, PETRAEUS SAID THEY WERE AN ASSET

Gen. PR Petraeus testified that the mercenaries helped provide the security that America couldn't, thus the Surge could work despite not having enough troops as PR's own counter-insurgency manual recommends. The recent Blackwater outrage indictes that they may in fact be counter-productive and ABC's The Blotter find a very recent report from Brookings that comes to that conclusion:

The United States' use of mercenary contractors like Blackwater in Iraq has led to unnecessary violence against civilians, inflamed Iraqi sentiment towards the United States and jeopardized military strategies to defeat the insurgency, a new report concludes .

Two years ago, Major General Joseph Taluto noted that the heavy-handed behavior of American troops may turn "good, honest" Iraqis against us and Peter W. Singer from Brookings concludes that the mercenaries we employ, who operate under fewer restrictions than our troops, have done just that.

You can find his report here and below are the highlights:

1. Allows policymakers to dodge key decisions that carry political costs, thus leading to operational choices that might not reflect public interest.
2. Enables a "bigger is better" approach to operations that runs contrary to the best lessons of U.S. military strategy.
3. Inflames popular opinion against, rather than for, the American mission through operational practices that ignore the fundamental lessons of counterinsurgency.
4. Participated in a series of abuses that have undermined efforts at winning "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people.
5. Weakened American efforts in the "war of ideas" both inside Iraq and beyond.
6. Reveals a double standard towards Iraqi civilian institutions that undermines efforts to build up these very same institutions, another key lesson of counterinsurgency.
7. Forced policymakers to jettison strategies designed to win the counterinsurgency on multiple occasions, before they even had a chance to succeed.

UPDATE:

And what do the wingnuts think of this? Here's one example from The Blotter:

What has hurt the war effort is the undermining of it from the start by the Democrats and the News Media. More liberal hypocrisy.

Posted by: John K. Sep 27, 2007 5:56:19 PM