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The 2003 invasion of Iraq was not the first time in history that a western army won decisive military victories in the Middle East and then found itself bogged down in a tenacious guerilla war. As the military historian Archer Jones noted in his book, “The Art of War in the Western World”, the same fate befell Alexander the Great 2,500 years earlier. After winning decisive victories against the Persian army in two major battles, he found himself unable to defeat the tribes of northern Afghanistan:

(Alexander’s) opponents essentially followed a raiding strategy, attacking his outposts and, except for their strong points avoiding contact with large contingents of his army…they sought to avoid strong Macedonian forces, concentrating on overwhelming weak detachments and then withdrawing.
(Alexander) established and garrisoned a large number of fortified military posts throughout the settled part of the county…although the measures taken by the Macedonians strengthened the defense… they failed to prevent the guerillas raids. The invaders had too few soldiers to stop the raids in a large country in which the guerillas had political support among the population.

Alexander was the first of the great conqueror-generals of western history. But the classic description of how a war of occupation should be conducted – one that was read by every British schoolboy learning his Latin in the era of the British Empire and by every modern graduate of West Point — is Julius Caesar’s narrative of his conquest of Gaul. Caesar’s dispatches to the Roman senate about his campaigns in what is now France, Belgium and Germany provided a model that all subsequent generals sought to emulate.
Western Europe in Caesar’s time was a vast patchwork of small tribes, each controlling areas of one hundred or two hundred square miles, along with some 20 or 30 much larger cultural groups. Caesar, in contrast, had only a handful of legions under his command. But the Roman legion was a formidable fighting force that could routinely defeat Gallic armies two, three or four times its size. It was a highly trained and disciplined formation of about 5,000 men that could fight as a single cohesive unit, standing literally shoulder to shoulder, or it could quickly divide into smaller groups that could maneuver and battle independently. A Roman legion could march all day at a pace almost twice as fast as most of its opponents and then build a walled, fortified camp before the sun had set. Roman military technology was far in advance of Gallic techniques and included the ability to build river spanning bridges, catapult artillery, siege towers and vast encircling walls around resisting Gallic cities within a matter of days.
But with only four legions when he began, Caesar could not hope to control the vast region from the Italian Alps to the English Channel by sheer military force alone. The key to his strategy was a complex network of alliances with some Gallic tribes and the deliberate fomenting of conflict between others – a method the Romans called divide et impera — divide and rule.
As the leading military monograph on Caesar’s Gallic campaign notes:

(Caesar’s) task was made easier by the inability of the Gallic tribes to unite to form a combined resistance to the invaders. Indeed some tribes supported the Romans, and the Romans played one tribe off against another, exploiting the territorial ambitions of different Gallic tribes and even political divisions within tribes.

Caesar (who frequently referred to himself in the third person in his dispatches) described one such maneuver as follows:

He (Caesar) impressed upon Diviciacus the Aeduan the importance, alike for Rome and the general safety of Gaul, of preventing the junction of the various enemy contingents, in order to avoid the necessity of fighting such powerful forces at once. He explained that the best way of effecting this was for the Aedui to invade the land of the Bellovaci and start devastating it.

In fact, reading Caesar’s dispatches is almost like looking over the shoulder of a skilled chess player as he moves his pieces – legions, garrisons and allies – across a map of Western Europe, placing garrisons at strategic locations, rapidly moving troops to quell outbreaks of rebellion and negotiating a careful network of alliances and “treaties of friendship” with tribal leaders. Caesar’s readers in the Roman senate were engrossed by his descriptions of how he maintained control over such a vast territory with his relatively small force.

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One of the lesser-appreciated Dark Arts of modern politics is counter-scheduling: the anticipation of an opponent’s Big Event with a Bigger Event that sops up media attention. We witnessed a classic example yesterday, when the Obama campaign arranged a flag-waving rally as a backdrop to John Edwards’ endorsement just before Hillary Clinton appeared on all three major networks for interviews in the wake of her landslide win in West Virginia.
John Nichols at The Nation has a good summary of how this particular deal went down, which not only stole the media spotlight from HRC, but made her remarks sound less like a victory statement than an implicit admission of ultimate defeat.
I’m sure the Obama folks spent much of the day chuckling over this coup, but it’s not so clear that the Edwards endorsement will bring that many tangible benefits to the front-runner. He can’t “deliver” pledged delegates, and a lot of his early superdelegate support had already bled away to Obama (particularly in NC). And those who expect the endorsement to cause a rush of white-working-class voters in KY to Obama will probably be disappointed, given the very limited impact of earlier “key endorsements” in this contest.
But Edwards’ move, like that of a growing number of previously uncommitted superdelegates, does increase the perception that Obama is the putative nominee, and that does have value. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if Obama overperforms expectations in KY and OR next week by attracting voters who simply want to be with a winner. In this odd, momentum-less nomination contest, that would be something of a first.

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During his opening remarks at the recent Senate hearings on Iraq, John McCain described the situation as follows:

At the beginning of last year…full scale civil war seemed almost unavoidable… (But) since the middle of last year sectarian and ethnic violence, civilian deaths and deaths of coalition forces have all fallen dramatically. This improved security environment has led to a new opportunity, one in which average Iraqis can in the future approach a more normal political and economic life.
…Today it is possible to talk with real hope and optimism about the future of Iraq and the outcome of our efforts there…we’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.”

McCain’s optimism was somewhat dampened by the fighting in Basra and Sadr City that was occurring even as he spoke, but most of the discussion of Iraq during the Senate hearings indeed accepted the basic proposition that the generally falling level of violence during the preceding months did represent undeniable proof of “progress” or “success”. Up until the week before McCain’s testimony, most journalistic reports about Iraq quite optimistically described formerly empty streets now filled with pedestrians and markets and stores that had been closed and shuttered now open and filled with customers. On the surface, it certainly seemed plausible to assume that if the relative calm could be maintained, Iraq could steadily advance toward stability.
This corresponds with the average person’s conception of civil or urban warfare — that if the streets of an area can be made safe, the local population will rapidly come to support the authorities and reject the forces seeking to create violence. For this reason, the citizens of western nations almost always approve of temporary cease-fires to stop violence.
Many military historians and strategists, however, disagree most strongly with this view. There is, in fact, a very substantial body of opinion which holds that temporary cease fires in civil wars very often do not permanently reduce violence, but simply postpone the fighting and can even make it worse when it recurs.
One of the leading contemporary military theorists, Edward N. Luttwak, Senior Fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is a prominent advocate of this perspective. In his influential book, “Strategy – The Logic of War and Peace” he notes that many civil wars are “low intensity” conflicts that do not automatically escalate to major set-piece battles. Rather, they proceed for long periods of time with a low, constant level of violence punctuated with occasional flare-ups and clashes.
As he says:

…in civil wars the intensity of the fighting is often low, the scale small with violence localized within a wider environment that the fighting might affect only marginally if at all…civil wars can therefore last for decades. No intense, large scale war can last for many years, let alone decades and some have burned themselves out in weeks or even days.
…But if war is interrupted before its self-destruction is achieved, no peace need ensue at all. So it was in Europe’s past when wars were still fought intermittently during spring and summer campaigning seasons, each time coming to an end with the arrival of winter – only to resume afresh in the spring…

Luttwak then proceeds to argue his main point, using the Balkans as one example:

Since 1945 wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to follow their natural course. Instead they have typically been interrupted long before they could burn out the energies of war to establish the preconditions of peace…cease fires merely relieve war-induced exhaustion, favoring the reconstitution and rearming of the belligerents, thus intensifying and prolonging the fighting once the cease-fire comes to an end.
…Dozens of UN imposed cease-fires interrupted the fighting between Serbs and Croats in the Krajina borderlands, between the forces of the Serb-Montenegrin federation and the Croat army and among the Serbs, Croats and Muslims of Bosnia. Each time the belligerents exploited the pause to recruit, train and equip additional forces for further combat. Indeed it was under the protection of successive cease fires that both the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims were able to build up their own armed forces to confront the well-armed Serbs….the overall effect was to greatly prolong the war and widen the scope of its killings, atrocities, and destructions.”

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Dems interested in the outcome effect of voter turnout scenarios for key constituencies should check out Josh Kalven’s excellent summary of an interesting study by “Poblano” an anonomous statistician/analyst who blogs at FiveThirtyEight.com. Kalven’s Progress Illinois post describes Poblano’s study as “a sophisticated regression model that uses state-by-state polling data to assess possible general election outcomes in individual states.”
Poblano has an impressive track record. He predicted Obama would win NC by 17 points (He won by 14) and he nailed the Indiana primary as 51-49 for Clinton, outperfoming five major national polling firms, according to Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal. He comes up with some interesting findings for the nomination scenarios. On Obama vs. Clinton:

Poblano’s simulation engine has produced some fascinating results. According to his current data, the model predicts that Clinton would win four states against McCain that Obama is favored to lose (FL, AR, WV, OH). Meanwhile, Obama wins eight states where Clinton would likely fail (MI, WI, IA, CO, NM, NV, WA, OR).

Regarding the African American vote with Obama as nominee, Kalven writes of Poblano’s study:

With each 10 percent increase in black turnout nationwide, Obama gains an average of 13 electoral votes, while his chance of winning jumps by about eight points…Examining the full results, you can see a handful of states turn from red to purple – or from purple to blue – as African-American turnout increases…if 2008 turnout levels mirror those in 2004, McCain is predicted to win Ohio by 1.6 percent. But when you increase African-American voters by 20 percent, the state tips towards Obama, giving him a 0.3 percent margin of victory. Push that up to 30 and 40 percent and his edge increases to 1.2 and 2.1 percent, respectively.

Poblano finds similar results for PA, NC, VA, SC, FL and GA. Regarding the youth votes, he finds, according to Kalven:

Poblano found that increasing the youth vote by 25 percent would give Obama 16 additional electoral votes and boost his chance of beating McCain by nearly 7 percent (assuming that this group breaks 70-30 towards Obama):

And, for Hispanics:

Poblano’s baseline assumes a 60-40 split in Obama’s favor and each 25 percent increase in turnout boosts his chances of beating McCain by a little under 3 percentage points

Poblano finds a series of even more optimistic outcomes, when increased turnout of all three key Democratic constituencies combine in varying percentages. Says Poblano “…it’s a very robust scenario for him with a lot of Plan A’s, Plan B’s, and Plan C’s to win the election.”

The best comment I heard on television last night in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s victory speech in West Virginia was MSNBC’s Keith Olberman, who observed that the Obama and Clinton campaigns has embraced “different realities.”
In Obamaland, the nomination contest is basically over, since HRC would have to win absurdly impossible percentages of the available pledged and unpledged delegates to get a majority. The cumulative popular vote measurement (on which, of course, there is no consensus) is irrelevant even in the unlikely event that HRC catches up by June 3.
In Clintonland, all the superdelegates are still up for grabs, and both pledged delegate and popular vote totals have to include Florida and Michigan.
We’ll see a sharpening of this divergence next Tuesday night, when Obama will claim a majority of total pledged delegates, and quite possibly an overall majority, while Clinton will deny the math on grounds that Florida and Michigan must be factored in, while superdelegate announcements of support aren’t binding.
It’s now up to HRC–with or without a major push from superdelegates and/or from hungry unpaid vendors–to make these realities converge, if and when she chooses.
The one thing virtually all Democrats can agree on today is the significance of the special congressional election in Mississippi yesterday, where Democrat Travis Childers comfortably won a district that George W. Bush carried with 63% in 2004.
In their analysis of the Mississippi results for The Hill, Jackie Kucinich and Bob Cusack summed it up in a way that will make donkeys bray with joy:

The sky is falling on House Republicans and there is no sign of it letting up.
The GOP loss in Mississippi’s special election Tuesday is the strongest sign yet that the Republican Party is in shambles. And while some Republicans see a light at the end of the tunnel, that light more likely represents the Democratic train that is primed to mow down more Republicans in November.

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On the November 27, 2007 Charlie Rose Show, John McCain said of Iraq:
“This is a classic counterinsurgency we are engaged in right now. This is not a new strategy. General Petraeus has updated it, but the fact is it’s a classic counterinsurgency.”
Political journalists and observers paid little attention to this particular remark, seeing it as a vague generalization. People familiar with military matters, on the other hand, knew McCain was referring to something very specific — military publication FM – 3-24 — “The US Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual”.
This publication, written by General Petraeus along with Lt. General James Amos and Lt. Colonel John Nagl, was widely described as revolutionary when it appeared in December 2006. It was rapidly downloaded over 1.5 million times from the internet and generated more commentary than any other modern military publication. Most frequently, it was cited as the basis for Petraeus’ new strategy behind the “surge”.
FM -3-24 is a statement of military doctrine. It presents a “common language and common understanding of how army forces conduct operations” and in two important respects it does indeed represent a radical departure from the past.
First, the Counterinsurgency Field Manual represents a very dramatic break with the “Powell Doctrine” that emerged out of the disillusionment with the war in Vietnam. The Powell Doctrine held among its directives that, for the use of regular Army and Marine forces (1) there must be a clearly defined mission, (2) that force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy and (3) that there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged.
The application of the “Powell Doctrine” was clearly evident in the conduct of the first Gulf War and commanded wide approval among U.S. military commanders at the time. From this perspective, anti-guerilla campaigns were perceived as a very distinct kind of military operation that could best be handled by Special Forces and other highly specialized and uniquely trained troops.
The new Counterinsurgency Field Manual, in very stark contrast, defines anti-guerrilla warfare as a central task for the regular Army and Marines. The bibliography of FM-3-24 specifically cites books dealing with the strategy of post-World War II anti-guerrilla campaigns in Malaya, Kenya, Algeria and Indochina as the principle models upon which the new strategy is based.
Along with this radical change in doctrine, the manual also takes a very strong position on a major military debate left over from the Vietnam War — a debate between the advocates of using virtually unrestricted firepower and military force – symbolized by terms like “carpet bombing” and “free-fire zones” and the advocates of an alternative approach identified with the slogans of “Winning Hearts and Minds” and “Vietnamization”.
FM -3-24 very aggressively and systematically champions the second approach. It defines counterinsurgency operations as nothing less than “armed social work” and bluntly asserts that such campaigns cannot win unless they succeed in protecting the civilian population and rebuilding the economy. More specifically it lists four major objectives (1) Security from intimidation, coercion, violence and crime; (2) Provision of basic economic needs, (3) Provision of essential services such as water, electricity, sanitation and medical care; (4) Sustainment of key social and cultural institutions

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It’s anybody’s guess at the moment whether Hillary Clinton still really sees a path to the Democratic nomination, or just wants to pick up anticipated wins in West Virginia and Kentucky to increase her convention and general election leverage and then fold her tent. If she does intend to push on until such time as she is mathematically eliminated, her biggest problem now isn’t so much the pledged delegate or popular vote totals, but the strong pressure mounting on superdelegates to wrap this thing up (perhaps, so goes the CW, next Wednesday, when Obama is expected to win in Oregon).
Her strongest argument with the supers right now would be that Obama isn’t electable. I say “would be,” because general election polls continue to show Obama running as well as or better than her against John McCain. The latest, a new ABC/Washington Post survey, shows Obama leading McCain 51-44, while HRC’s lead is 49-46 (it also has Obama with a 12-point national lead over HRC for the Democratic nomination).
Sure, the Clinton campaign can and will make a complicated argument that the battleground-state distribution of her vote in trials against McCain makes her the stronger candidate. But she needs more than that to sway the supers. Clear evidence that she is likely to win, and Obama is likely to lose, against John McCain remains the piece still missing from her case for the nomination.

William A. Galston’s and Pietro S. Nivola’s Sunday New York Times Magazine article, “Vote Like Thy Neighbor” notes an interesting demographic development that should have significant implications for GOTV campaigns and political advertising:

Our research concludes not only that the ideological differences between the political parties are growing but also that they have become embedded in American society itself…Most strikingly, political polarization has become akin to political segregation. You are less likely to live near someone whose politics differ from your own. It’s well known that fewer states are competitive in presidential races than in decades past. We find similar results at the county level. In 1976, only 27 percent of voters lived in landslide counties where one candidate prevailed by 20 points or more. By 2004, 48 percent of voters lived in such counties.

The authors discuss the reasons for the shift and note that “majorities tend to become supermajorities.” They add “When states become more homogeneous, presidential campaigns begin by conceding a large number of contests to the opposition, disheartening their supporters in those states and increasing the majority’s electoral advantage.”
Nivola and Galston are OK with the resulting “hard-hitting partisan competition,” but lament the ill-effects of growing “hyperpartisanship,” which they believe can do damage to “public trust and confidence in government.” In his blog at theAtlantic.com, Matthew Yglesias responds to their article, arguing that the more partisanship, the better and he sees “a merited decline in trust” in government, given recent government abuses of civil and human rights. “Why would we pine away for a shift that would make government less accountable but more trusted?,” asks Yglesias. A fair question. But distrust of government practices/policies can morph into generalized government-bashing of the sort that enabled the rise of reactionary ideologues like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich and empowered them to do their worst.
In any event, there is not much that can be done about halting the increasing geographic concentration of people with similar political attitudes, short of hoping that better-educated generations to come will lead to more progressive communities everywhere. Until then, Dems should take note of the trend and target their ads and GOTV efforts accordingly.

James Vega is a strategic marketing consultant whose clients include major nonprofit organizations and high-tech firms
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I. Understanding the “pro-military, but anti-Bush’s war” voters
Because of the number and variety of questions they ask on a single topic, the surveys produced by Democracy Corps provide Democrats with data of unique value. They make it possible to begin to visualize some of the larger political perspectives into which voters specific opinions are organized.
The recent D-Corps survey and analysis of opinion on National Security, for example, makes it possible to get a feel for the size of two broad groups — the firmly partisan anti-war Democratic “base” voters and the firmly partisan pro-Bush’s war, pro-military” Republican “base” voters.
On the one hand, about 27% of the respondents in the D-Corps survey agreed with every one of the following five statements
Firmly Partisan Anti-War Democrats
• The Democrats will do a better job “insuring a strong military”
• The Democrats, more than Republicans “respect the military”
• The surge was “a mistake”
• In Iraq, America should “reduce the number of troops”
• Bush’s policies have “undermined America’s security”
On the other hand, about 45% of the respondents agreed with all five of the following statements
Firmly Partisan Pro-Bush’s War, Pro-Military Republicans
• The Republicans will do a better job of “insuring a strong military”
• The Republicans, more than the Democrats, “Respect the military”
• The surge is helping to “win the war”
• America must “Stay the course”, “finish the job” and “achieve stability”
• Bush’s policies have “increased America’s security”
The most important fact that emerges from this comparison is the very substantial number of respondents – about 30% — who do not fall in either category. They agreed with some of the five statements but not others.
But what do these “inconsistent” voters actually think? Among the respondents to the D-Corps survey as a whole, the main distinction was between responses to the first two questions and the final three.
On the one hand, only about 27% of all respondents to the D-Corps survey thought the Democrats would be better at “insuring a strong military” or “respecting the military”. About 55% thought the Republicans would be better.
In contrast, about 54% of all respondents agreed that “the surge was a mistake”, that “we should reduce the number of troops” and that “Bush’s policies have reduced America’s security”. Only about 44% thought we should “stay the course”, that “the surge was working” and that Bush’s policies have “increased America’s security”
In short, while a majority of Americans think Republicans are more favorable to the military, many are also strongly opposed to Bush’s policies. It is this significant “pro-military, but anti-Bush’s war” group that is the critical swing vote on national security.

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Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, has a New York Times op-ed that merits a careful read by all Democratic candidates, especially Senator Obama. Kohut warns that “The personal and social resistance of older voters to the party’s likely nominee could well keep a Democrat out of the White House and reverse the nationwide Democratic trend,” and he provides polling evidence to make his case. Kohut cites an 8 point advantage (51-43) for McCain over Obama in favorability ratings by seniors in recent Pew Research Center polling, and notes,

…older voters — many of whom supported Democrats over the years — seem reluctant to support Mr. Obama. Hillary Clinton has carried the vote of people over 65 in 26 primary elections. And looking forward to the general election, the national polls now show John McCain running better against Mr. Obama among this older age group — as well as among middle-aged voters and younger voters.

The senior vote is becoming more important every election, because it is growing and because of seniors’ high turnout rates. The Kiplinger Retirement Report notes, for example, that “In the 2000 elections, people age 65 and older cast 25% of the votes although they made up only 12% of the U.S. population.”
In his Newsweek article “Generation Gap: Obama is trailing with older voters. Can he win them over?,” Jonathan Alter writes that “40 percent of the voters in Pennsylvania were over 60, which is not surprising considering that Pennsylvania trails only Florida as the oldest state in the union.”
Senator Obama is well-aware of his shortage of senior voters. Alter quotes Obama: “If you look at the numbers, our problem has less to do with white working-class voters [than] with older voters.” Alter agrees:

Obama did better among seniors in Pennsylvania, where he lost 59-41 percent, than in Ohio, where Hillary crushed him by 41 points in that age cohort. That 69-28 drubbing tells us almost everything we need to know about why Hillary won Ohio by 10 points on March 4.

Kohut points out that “significantly more older voters hold the highly conservative social opinions” on social issues like equal rights, iinterracial dating and immigration. He also provides April polling data showing McCain has an edge over Obama in the perceptions of RV’s 65 and older regarding characteristics such as: ‘patriotic’ (91-57); ‘tough’ (71-46); ‘honest (76-57); and ‘down to earth’ (68-51). However, Obama is more ‘inspiring’ to seniors by a margin of 53 to 39 percent.
Obama probably can’t make much headway with seniors who like McCain mostly because of his age/character/bio or conservative values. But Obama can make inroads into McCain-leaning senior voters who care about policy. Obama, like Clinton, has more agreeable policies for seniors regarding critical issues like Social Security, health care and Iraq. McCain will hit hard on tax cuts in appealing to seniors. But if Obama’s messaging on the aforementioned issues is sharp and well-targeted, he should be able to win a healthy portion of the senior vote. As Alter observes of McCain:

His problem is Social Security. McCain recently told The Wall Street Journal that he continues to support President Bush’s idea for private accounts. Whatever one thinks of that proposal on the merits, it’s a pitiful loser politically. Every place Bush visited in 2005 when he was stumping for his plan saw a decline in his popularity numbers when he left town…When Social Security gets discussed this fall, McCain had better duck. If anything, with the market down, privatization is even less popular now than in 2005. All the Democratic candidate has to say is, “If Senator McCain’s idea had been adopted, you would have lost a chunk of your retirement in the stock market.”

Alter is more optimistic about Dems’ chances with older voters, and believes “…Grandma and grandpa are likely to return home in November and vote Democratic, regardless of the nominee.” And given their unrivaled turnout rates, seniors — especially those who can be described as ‘high information’ voters — just may provide Obama’s margin of victory.