In what might be seen as a response to last year's popular Army Field Manual 3-24 on Counterinsurgency (pdf), the U.S. Air Force has issued a new publication on "Irregular Warfare" (pdf).
"Irregular warfare (IW) is defined as a violent struggle among state and nonstate actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities to seek asymmetric approaches in order to erode an adversary's power, influence, and will."
Though less rigorous and less original than the Army manual, the new document still contains points of interest.
It notes, for example, that counterinsurgency is not the sum total of U.S. military objectives. To the contrary, sometimes the U.S. will side with insurgents: "Various US government organizations are postured to recruit, organize, train, and advise indigenous guerrilla or partisan forces," the document observes.
"In some UW [unconventional warfare] operations, the use of US military aircraft may be inappropriate, tactically or politically. In those cases, training, advising, and assisting the aviation forces of insurgent groups, resistance organizations, or third-country nationals may be the only viable option."
See "Irregular Warfare," Air Force Doctrine Document 2-3, 1 August 2007.
that they will commission and train others to do their dirty work?
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"Money" has no value - people do.
It is obvious that the US would encourage and equip insurgents in countries, which "need some regime change" like Iran and Venezuela just to name two on top of this administration's long priority list.
But it probably goes much further than that. It is well known that the Al Qaeda insurgents in Gaza tend to be Mossad men dressed up for the occasion and we remember clearly the British soldiers in Basra who were clad in Arab garb, driving around in a bomb laden car shooting at civilians, and that it was so important for the British occupation forces to free them from the Iraqi prison that they broke in by force.
The occupation strategy in Iraq is to Balkanize the country by cutting it up according to ethnic and religious lines, which has been difficult considering that Iraq has a recent history of secular government.
Therefore, there was a need for proper opposition to the occupation forces, which met very little initial resistance (they were relatively close to being greeted with flowers!). In that perspective the invasion would have been a complete failure had there not been resistance and it would not be logically possible to remain in the country to do the real job of Balkanizing it.
For those who are interested there is information on the web indicating where the sophisticated insurgent weaponry originates from, suffice it to say that it is not Iran.
The Next War Draws Nearer