Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil: Hearts and Minds, Fear and Love

An entry on Republic of T made me curious. Pondering an American air strike that resulted in significant collateral damage, he says:

Destroyed: three houses, two families, women and children. Al Quaeda figures killed in the attack: 0. Hearts and minds of Iraqis won: 0.

I first of all question his analysis of the Iraqi populace as a solid opinion block: my suspicion is that given the amount of factional striving in Iraq, as well as the rational knowledge that those who are harboring 'resistance' units aren't really 'civilian' in anything but a technical sense, members of some factions might even approve. After all, many of the factions have a penchant for blowing up Iraqis as well.

But even assuming that no one approved, I wonder at that 'hearts and minds' comment. After all, one doesn't merely win hearts and minds by getting a populace to love you. As Machiavellli famously put it:

And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

For some reason, this thought jarred in my memory: wasn't there something in The Prince about just this sort of situation? And I was pleased to find my memory hadn't failed me. It's right in the same chapter:

And for a new Prince, of all others, it is impossible to escape a name for cruelty, since new States are full of dangers. Wherefore Virgil, by the mouth of Dido, excuses the harshness of her reign on the plea that it was new, saying:�
�A fate unkind, and newness in my reign
Compel me thus to guard a wide domain.�

Nevertheless, the new Prince should not be too ready of belief, nor too easily set in motion; nor should he himself be the first to raise alarms; but should so temper prudence with kindliness that too great confidence in others shall not throw him off his guard, nor groundless distrust render him insupportable.

Guess my memory isn't as bad as I thought. Though it must be said, the rest of the passage lends little in the way of support for Bush's current policies.

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Giving The Devil His Due

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"Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred" CHAPTER XVII

Posted by: russell | June 21, 2004 5:09 AM

Umm... yes. That would be the chapter quoted above, would it not?

Posted by: A. Rickey | June 21, 2004 5:39 AM

I believe the way Machiavelli recommends going about doing this is appointing a minister who will be brutal and vicious in suppressing the populace, then letting the populace one day wake up to find the minister and the minister's head on opposite sides of a chopping block. I don't think George Tenet's resignation is going to do the job.

Posted by: Sarah | June 21, 2004 1:16 PM

Look, as an occupying power you don't drop munitions onto townhouses in residential areas. You telling me they waited till no-one was walking by? Or that they checked the houses next door were empty? If they thought there were Al Quaeda groups in there what was wrong with a joint operation between the Falujah Brigade and American Special Forces? The Falujah Brigade of course being loyal allies and not ex-insurgents refounding the Baath party on American money... Nope, this was a heavy handed piece of fuck wittery that probably killed at least a dozen innocents. Now for the key part about your quote. If this kind of thing made Al Quaeda / The Iraqi Resistance scared of the Americans we'd be into Machiavellian territory as terrified terrorists went to ground and waited for the knock on the door. But it doesn't, they know they've got a massive pool of discontent to operate within and that things like this feed it. What you've got is a population that you need to start co-operating but which feels like it gets bombed, shot, interrogated and tortured at random. Meanwhile the Kurds have started on ethnic cleansing / reclaiming their property in the north. Hell in a fucking handbasket.

Posted by: martin | June 23, 2004 12:18 PM

Martin: That would be a good argument for saying it won few minds, or even that it won some but lost more. It does not, however, reduce to zero. I'd agree that present policy doesn't lead to being feared or loved very well--but I'm not sure that's simply because of the tactics. The criticism of the Republic of T was mostly one that is good for a beginning law student: be careful what you can say, and if you can back it up. Did that bombing change no minds, or win no hearts? I'm certain that within a week after the attack, I could not know. I doubt almost anyone could.

Posted by: A. Rickey | June 23, 2004 12:38 PM

I'm going to postulate that the number of hearts and minds won was negative. I'm going to offer as evidence a shift from 80% to 20% in the number of Iraqi's having a positive view of the occupation over the past year or so and the hypothesis that actions like this have contributed to that fall. The man to read on all this is Mao, not Machiavelli since most military commentators have been implicitly or explicitly using his model of insurgent tactics to explain what's going on. I haven't read it myself, but the number of references I've come across is suggesting it's the way to go.

Posted by: Martin | June 24, 2004 3:54 AM

Hearts and Minds, Fear and Love

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Giving The Devil His Due

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