Chuck Schumer Doesn't Get It

Many conservatives have reacted with outrage to the remarks by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).  Sen. Schumer asserts that the pacification of Anbar province has occurred despite the “surge” mounted by the US Armed Forces.  As Hugh Hewitt reports, to Schumer:

The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn’t that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here.

Well, that is certainly a good partisan Democratic way of looking at it.

But let us think of this more from the point of view of Mao ZeDong, generally considered to have written the book on guerrilla warfare.  In his view the whole point of a successful insurrection was for the fighters to “swim” in the sea of the countryside.  If they did that, and obtained the protection of the rural people, then they could never be defeated.

In the Maoist approach therefore, it doesn’t matter why the Sunnis tribes in Anbar decided to switch sides.  They might have switched because the US provided assistance to them.  They might have switched because they didn’t like life under the Al-Qaeda fighters.  They might have switched because they didn’t like the Al-Qaeda fighters taking their daughters as wives.  We don’t care.

The goal of the United States is to drive Al-Qaeda out of Iraq.  To do that it is necessary to drain the swamp so that there is no water to swim in.

But maybe Chuck Schumer doesn’t get that.  Maybe he’s never read any books on guerrilla war strategy.

No reason why he should.  That sort of thing isn’t going to get him elected to be United States Senator from the state of New York.

But President Bush does read books.  And so he’s probably a bit more educated on guerrilla war strategy than Chuck Schumer.