The topic below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal, as well as the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.
Is there anything the American military can do at this point to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people? Personally, I, as well as many Americans and Iraqis don’t believe any reservoir of good will remains. As far as I’m concerned, this war of choice was immoral and ill conceived from the start and I don’t believe the current escalation in troops can accomplish any good.
However, I’ve never served in the military or been to Iraq. Jeremy Joseph has. He is currently a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and a student at Washington’s Georgetown University Law Center. While in Iraq he was part of the active duty force.
Joseph postulates in his article, Joseph postulates in his article, “Winning Hearts and Minds in Iraq Through Mediated Condolence Payments,” (subscription required) that establishing a reconciliation protocol following accidental deaths of non-combatants can help dilute an insurgency’s intensity. As a model, he cites the Dalkon Shield arbitrations and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund hearings.
The International Institute For Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR) published Joseph’s article in the May 2007 issue of Alternatives. A longer version of the article shared the 2006 CPR Institute student articles’ Award for Excellence. It’s also scheduled to be published during the summer by the Harvard Law School Program in Negotiation Journal.
As Joseph notes in his article, since 2004, whenever an Iraqi non-combatant civilian is inadvertently killed in the crossfire between the American military and hostile forces, a victim’s family may apply for a condolence payment – a sum up to $2,500 when his article was first published. Yet this approach is both condescending and insulting to the victim’s families.
How can a monetary token of sympathy assuage a mother’s grief, satisfy a wife who lost her family’s breadwinner or heal the pain of a child who lost their parent from a stray bullet? Indeed, this detached approach can’t help but fuel anti-American sentiment among the Iraqi population.
As Joseph writes,
“The current condolence payment program fails to achieve its potential because it misses the opportunity for dialogue between the aggrieved Iraqi family and the United States Military (USM). This failure does not reflect callous individual soldiers or Marines, but a policy failure of too few troops to implement any meaningful process and a doctrinal failure that undervalued the winning of hearts and minds.
Consider the situation of a family whose father and sole breadwinner is killed inadvertently by a stray bullet from an insurgent-USM firefight. That family has questions to ask the U.S. soldiers:
- Who killed our husband and father?
- What happened and why?
- What is the USM trying to accomplish in our town?
- Do the USM troops actually feel sorry for the loss they have caused us? Do they even know?
- How are we to support ourselves now that our bread-winning father is dead?”
Joseph argues that how the military responds to these individual families serves as a tipping point to Iraqi public opinion. He therefore asks if an Iraqi family who suffered a loss will continue to support U.S. troops or instead provide aid and comfort to insurgents “who look more like freedom fighters and heroes?”
Joseph further asks if the eldest children of families the American military inadvertently killed will “pick up weapons and join the insurgency in their fight – now this family’s fight – against the USM.”
My first reaction upon reading Joseph’s article was to wonder why these questions weren’t asked four years ago. I also can’t help but wonder if Joseph’s strategy of utilizing trained mediators to facilitate reconciliation between aggrieved Iraqi families and the U.S. military is too little too late.
There is also the reality that far more personnel would be required for this program to be implemented on a large enough scale to have any significant impact. Meanwhile, it appears increasingly likely a policy of withdrawal from Iraq will gain momentum with both parties in September. But even if Republicans join Democrats in pushing for a withdrawal timeline, a substantial American military presence in Iraq will likely remain at least until the early months of 2008.
Joseph believes that with the current surge, we have sufficient numbers to at least attempt a pilot condolences program in Baghdad. He makes a compelling case that doing so is both morally right and sensible.
Overall, I thought Joseph’s article was thoughtful and believe he is sincere. More troops on the ground from the beginning combined with this reconciliation approach might have helped four years ago. Perhaps it can still make a difference in Afghanistan where a growing sentiment exists to reconcile with the Taliban in order to avoid more deaths among the civilian population. It might also merit consideration for future military engagements.
Joseph agreed to a podcast interview with me and we discussed his experience with the Iraqi civilian population, the legalities behind his program and the potential strategic benefits. I also asked Joseph if private contractors such as Blackwater could be mandated to participate in a condolences payment program and whether liberal critics of the war like myself undermined the morale of our troops in Iraq.
His answers to those and other questions were compelling and thought provoking.
This interview can also be accessed at Itunes by searching for “Intrepid Liberal Journal.”
i feel like this fits into the ‘grasping at straws’ category.
Joseph wrote a thoughtful article. I asked him candid questions because I’m certainly not a supporter of the war. And I suspect Joseph doesn’t agree with how and why we went to war, although I can’t speak for him. He doesn’t claim this program can be an elixir or cureall. What’s done is done in Iraq. And from my vantage point, the sooner we exit the better.
But while we’re stil there, as a pilot program in Baghdad it makes to sense to try even if it only accomplishes something positive to a small degree.
We’re still in Afghanistan. Regardsless of what any of the presidential candidates say, our military will likely be deployed elsewhere again. Hopefully, we can have influence that it only happens for a legitimate purpose. If and when our military is deployed elsewhere, it’s important our military understands brute force isn’t enough and the sort of thinking Joseph is applying also needs to be incorporated in any defense doctrine. We can’t just be going around like a bull in a china shop all time with a callous disregard to collateral damage and not expect blowback.
We have our highest level counterinsurgency philosopher currently IN COMMAND of Iraq and I’m damn glad. But it is hopeless.
I’m not saying that there isn’t some price where the loss of your son or father can be shrugged off, I just don’t think it is within the budget of this or any other war.
It’s wankery, pure and simple. I’m glad he’s thinking about a better way to subjugate a foreign land, but he needs to go back to the books.
Mr. Joseph is not looking for better ways to subjugate a better land. He signed up with the marines in 1999 before George Bush took office and he did his duty. This man is not a neocon. He’s simply looking for a way to make the best of a bad situation.
I also must point out that your comment that he should “go back to books” lacks legitimacy.
Mr. Joseph has been to Iraq. You haven’t and neither have I. Unlike many of us bloggers he speaks from more than simply what he reads at his keyboard. I prefer to seek people out and engage them rather than simply rely upon “group think.” And I would also talk to others who have served who disagree with him entirely, agree with you and me entirely or have a completely different view of their own.
I’ve got no problem with you talking to him.
But understand what he is saying.
He’s saying that $2,500 is an insufficient amount of money to pay to the son of a man we have just killed, but that a higher sum along with a little conversation might dissuade the son from taking up arms against soldiers that are occupying his country.
There are two problems with this. The first is the idea that it is an insult to offer so low a sum but that a higher payment is not an insult. Okay, I guess a fair price would replace the income potential of the man that was killed. If he was an uneducated 40 year old day laborer that might mean 25 years of wages at, say $4,000 per annum. So, maybe $100,000 might do it, allowing for inflation and interest. A highly educated 35-year engineer in the oil industry? Okay. Maybe 30 years at $40,000. That’s $1,200,000.
That leads to the second problem. There are over 600,000 dead Iraqis. I don’t know how many of them were killed by coalition forces or how many might be considered innocent bystanders. But there is clearly a problem of resources for both the compensation aspect and for the human contact aspect. We could never carry out more than a pilot program and it cannot make up a major part of a counterinsurgency program for those reasons.
The lesson of Vietnam and Iraq is that you cannot occupy a foreign country that is in the midst of a civil war. Frankly, the lesson is that we can’t do counterinsurgency at all.
where Booman is coming from dude. But I also coincidentally read the award winning version of the marine’s article in ’06 and it’s solid work. You asked good questions and he gave strong answers.
Bottom line: we fucked up in Iraq because there weren’t enought thoughtful guys like Joseph making policy. He has a future. But it’s too late in Iraq and even good well meanings ideas are grasping at straws now. But I did like the interview.