Gangs of Baghdad

In a March 24th story, reprinted here by Military.com, the Boston Globe reported that the US Army is considering dealing with the Iraqi insurgency using an entirely different paradigm: violent street gangs.

After two years of steady violence, a new Army War College analysis concludes that, instead of fighting a ragtag army, American troops in Iraq are dealing with an enemy that more closely resembles sophisticated, violent street gangs, similar to powerful Central American groups spawned more than a decade ago in Los Angeles.

Challenging the conventional approach of the U.S. military and its allies of relying on firepower to defeat guerrillas, the study argues that the current anti-insurgent strategy can't succeed without tough police work and social programs addressing the root causes of street conflict -- poverty, injustice, repression, lack of opportunity.

While there may be some efficacy in following a counter-street gang philosophy, that last paragraph demonstrates the danger of trying to find a one-to-one relationship between Iraqi insurgent/terrorist violence and a street gang in LA. A major goal of the terrorist insurgency is to prevent alleviation of the problems cited (poverty, injustice, repression...) while street gangs typically have no socio-political aims. And "tough police work" is really the province of the Iraqis themselves; certainly we should help them perform it, but it should remain an Iraqi responsibility.

This has the sound of a pet theory that an officer or group of officers at the War College fell in love with and are promoting as much through pride of authorship as empirically demonstrated utility. The army should go lightly with this conceptualization and restrict comparisons to tactics. There are too many opportunities for false analogy strategically.