Winning The Race War

PC has not killed race relations. The Drug War has. What does the Drug War do? It makes blacks insecure because Prohibition finances Black gangs. It makes every Black a suspect thus eroding respect for police. And all this is the result of how we fought the last insurgency in the Black community. That one was over Jim Crow and overt racism. Besides fighting the radicals back then we gave in to a lot of their demands. We ended Jim Crow and overt racism was at least nominally made illegal.

I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

The last war has led to this one. You might want to study how to win a guerrilla war. One of the ways is political. You reduce grievances. You give hope for a better future. You gentlemen (in the above video) are as stupid about what is going on as can be. There is history. There are books on the subject. There are Army manuals. And you know none of it. But I can give you a hint. End Prohibition you fools.

Well let us dig deeper into winning a guerilla war. Strategy Page lists some things that need to be done.

1. Travel Light.
2. Keep to the Bush and Boondocks.
3. Know Your Enemy.
4. Offer Generous Terms.
5. Offer a Viable Alternative Political Solution.
6. Protect the People.
7. Negotiate.

Since this current war is urban and not rural the first two points don’t have much application. But the others do. So let us start with point 3. Know Your Enemy.

Gathering intelligence has, for centuries, been recognized as the most effective way to get a handle on the depredations of irregular (guerilla) troops. Basically, this means collecting a lot of information (via bribes, paid informers, prisoners and vigorous scouting) and keeping it well organized. Identify the key people on the other side and go after them (with money, bullets or less savory tactics).

Intellegence gathering is very useful against an organized guerilla movement. Not so useful when the leaders are disconnected from the troops. Sure you could shut down political discourse. But in the US we have the First Amendment. And in fact, as we will see from other elements of winning, shutting down political discourse is the last thing that should be done.

Number 4 is Offer Generous Terms to the enemy. Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. Winning a guerilla wars in essence means surrendering to at least some of the demands of the guerillas without surrendering the monopoly on violence.

Never underestimate the usefulness of bribes. In particular, you want to make guerilla leaders offers they cannot refuse. And when you do get these guys to switch sides, don’t keep it a secret. The guerillas are fighting for economic reasons and you want as many of them as possible to know that you have a solution to their money problems. But money isn’t enough, there are also political needs.

But what if the grievance is not money or that is not a major component of the list of grievances?

Which brings us to #5. Offer a Viable Alternative Political Solution.

To defeat guerillas once and for all, you have to address the basic problems that caused people to take up arms in the first place. It’s preferable that American troops have enough authority to undertake needed political reforms, or enough clout (political, diplomatic and military) to get the local government to do it. Reforms usually involved fair taxation and administration of justice.

Yes. Of Course. If you know the political problem. With “administration of justice” we are getting closer to the problem. DWB – Driving While Black is a well known grievance. As are the well known disparities in sentencing and incarceration for drug crimes in the Black community.

And now to the crux of the matter. #6. Protect the People. Here is where we find the major support for the insurgents.

The easiest way to beat guerillas is to cut them off from the support of the population. The easiest way to do that is to convince the people that you can better offer them protection than the guerillas can. Most civilians don’t want to be part of any war. The guerillas are always a minority of the population and there is ample opportunity to win the loyalty and gratitude of those neutral civilians. If you don’t, the guerillas will.

Black neighborhoods are insecure. Gang violence is rampant. And it is not just kids attracted to gangs. Innocents are killed all the time. The government has done a masterful job in limiting the 1920s style gang warfare incited by Prohibition to Black neighborhoods. And those neighborhoods do not have the political clout or understanding to end the warfare. But we know how to end Black Market Warfare. At least we did in 1933. May I repeat?

And then we come to the last point in my list. #7. Negotiate.

In all pre-Vietnam insurgencies America was involved in, the negotiation angle was used early and often. Vietnam should have been no different, but the U.S. government saw this war as a quasi-religious crusade against communism, and no negotiation was allowed at the troop level.

Well we have a quasi religious War On Drugs and there is a segment of the population that considers negotiation or surrender impossible. At this point in time the “we refuse to negotiate or surrender” people amount to maybe 20% of the population (about 58% of the population already supports the legalization of cannabis). But that 20% is driving policy. For those people it is a moral crusade. But we do know how to end the depredations caused by a moral crusade. We learned how in the aftermath of Alcohol Prohibition.

Some of my earlier writing on the subject:

I Have Been Saying This For A While

And it looks like the political leaders of the country have taken my advice without notifying the moral crusaders. I have written about that at – It Continues.

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Should you care to read more about winning a guerilla war I have a reading list:

Keys to Successful Counterinsurgency Campaigns

Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency

How to Win a Counterinsurgency Campaign

wiki – Counter-insurgency

Winning Counterinsurgency War: The Israeli Experience

What are the best practices for counterinsurgency operations?

Creating Police and Law Enforcement Systems

Galula on Adapting to Insurgency Environments

Best Practices in Counterinsurgency

Winning Insurgent War

The Way to Win a Guerrilla War