Operational IEDs

Mr. Lind has some interesting bits.

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Unfortunately, it appears our Fourth Generation opponents have figured out a way to act operationally against us. I touched on this in an earlier column, but as I thought more about it, I decided that what is happening deserves fuller consideration. What our opponents are doing is brilliantly simple. By relying mostly on IEDs to attack us, they have created a situation where our troops have no one to shoot back at. That, in turn, ramps up the troops’ frustration level to the point where two things happen: our morale collapses and our troops take their frustration out on the local population. Both results have strategic significance, and at least the potential of being strategically decisive, the first because it affects American home front morale and the second because it drives the local population to identify with the insurgents instead of the government we are trying to support.

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The second operational effect, getting U.S. troops to take out their frustration on the local population, was illustrated in what an officer whose unit recently came back from Iraq said to me. "We were hit 3000 times and in only fifteen of those attacks did we have anyone to shoot back at," he told me. He quoted another officer in the battalion who had gone out on patrol many times as saying, "We are worse than the SS in the way we are treating these people," meaning Iraqi civilians. This is a classic result of "the war of the flea": as morale collapses, so does discipline, and poorly disciplined troops often treat local civilians badly.

Like the tank in Third Generation war, the IED is proving to be not merely a tactical but an operational weapon in the Fourth Generation. In Iraq, British troops are reacting by employing IEDs of their own to try to push local factions into fighting each other. That too, if it works, might play at the operational level.

Lew Rockwell

I know I *should* know this, but I've forgotten or never figured it out...

Be good to define an acronym if it's the heart of the article. I've been offline for a bit and I'm thinking Incendiary Electronic Devices or something like that, but no real clear picture of how they are being used.

These are the "roadside explosions" we hear about, often placed in abandoned cars but also buried underground, in a dead dog's body, a pile of rocks, or just about anywhere.

acronym you should FIRST spell it out completely as in Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that is proper.

As though the distinction between a custom made bomb and one made by the thousands was an important one. I think the term got going as a propaganda device to denigrate the importance and effectiveness of these arms several years ago, be we seem to have moved along since then, while still keeping the nomenclature.

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"roadside bomb", "car bomb", "radio controlled bomb", "pressure activated bomb", etc. Not that there is a thing wrong with your suggestions.