By John Grant
An accomplished writer and photographer, John Grant is a past president of the Philadelphia chapter of Veterans for Peace. In 1966, at the age of 19, he served as a radio direction finder with the Army’s Fourth Division in Vietnam. John has been to Iraq twice, once with Global Exchange and once as a cameraman for a documentary film project. -Mark G.
Dear Mark Grimsley:
Your essay “Why the Civil Rights Movement Was an Insurgency” in the Spring 2010 issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History was quite troubling. You literally argue that Martin Luther King’s non-violent movement was an insurgency. I guess the question that hangs in my mind is: Why would you want to do that?
You write that controlling the “grand narrative” is a key component in the doctrine of counter-insurgency warfare. In this vein, what you seem to be doing is fiddling around with the grand narrative of the civil rights movement and shaping it into an updated and nuanced version of how J. Edgar Hoover and Bull Conner saw it. Then you slip in the current top counter-insurgency war chief, General Stanley McChrystal, and have him say the counter-insurgency effort must “wrest the information initiative” from the enemy to “win the important battle of perception.”
You describe Martin Luther King as orchestrating the circumstances so dogs and fire hoses could be set loose on his people. We almost feel sorry for poor Bull Connor because he was just not sophisticated enough to figure out how to shut down those insurgent negroes without making a negative and messy show for the media and setting back the cause of segregation.
You open a discussion of something called Fourth Generation Warfare — 4GW for insiders. 4GW, according to Colonel Thomas Hammes, “directly attacks the minds of decision maker’s to destroy the enemy’s political will.” This, you claim, “describes the dynamics of the civil rights insurgency.” In other words, the civil rights movement’s efforts to obtain civil and human rights was a case of Fourth Generation Warfare and people like King outsmarted segregationists and two reluctant Washington Presidents by “destroy(ing) the enemy’s political will.”
What you’re doing seems to me a form of semantic “blowback” of a term normally associated with violent military campaigns into the domestic realm.
I’m a Vietnam veteran in the antiwar movement today, and what you are suggesting by extension applies to people like me. I do not consider myself an “insurgent” in America, and I do not appreciate someone suggesting I might be. Today, antiwar demonstrators and marchers are confronted with much smarter cops than the likes of Bull Conner.
You laud Sheriff Laurie Pritchett for his sophisticated police practices. I guess over the past 25 years, I’ve seen way too many Laurie Pritchetts armed with things like obnoxious cattle pens and “free speech zones” to not see in your essay support for improved methods of suppression at the expense of first amendment expression. As you quote Pritchett, he was not opposed at all to segregation; so, if you support the forces of integration, the brilliance and success you laud him for has a quite insidious spin. It seems to me, especially in the case of Pritchett but also throughout the piece, you are less impressed with the struggle for justice than you are in effective suppression tactics.
You’re right when you say the word insurgency “has acquired pejorative overtones.” That speaks directly to my point: Everybody who reads your provocative argument is not as sophisticated and nuanced as you are and, in that sense, your essay gives comfort and ammunition to those inclined to demonize or see as an “enemy” people with legitimate reasons to redress their government.
You may be familiar with my favorite book on insurgencies, Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq by William Roe Polk. Among his chapters on insurgency wars, he includes our Revolutionary War; he notably does not include the civil rights movement. Maybe you were attempting in your essay to be provocative in the current political climate in which the new, improved Petraeus/McChrystal counter-insurgency doctrine is in the air. You may not have intended it as such, but I see your thesis as dangerous.
The classic usage of the word insurgency defined a movement involving organized violence intent on supplanting an oppressive government or colonial force. You have taken that standard usage and semantically stretched the term to include cases of citizens legally trying to influence their government to enforce its laws and to stop abusing them. There seems a very clear distinction here, so clear that I feel your thesis is not a healthy one for a polarized democratic society — especially when that society is fighting two bloody wars against demonized “insurgencies” and when the term you’re fiddling with is in the middle of the controversy over these wars.
I guess it comes down to whose ox is gored in this business of redressing one’s government for its runaway militarism. As I see it, to suggest that legal, first amendment redress of one’s government is a form of insurgency is playing with fire, fire that I can imagine being aimed at people like me. That tends to focus the mind. I’m not saying you, Mark Grimsley, are going to be out gunning for me, actually or metaphorically, but that many people in today’s crazy political climate are not as nuanced and learned as you. Your essay, thus, can serve as grease on the slippery slope to greater degrees of first amendment suppression and oppression.
John Grant
Philadelphia, PA
10 Comments
A tactical approach is a tactical approach. It is value neutral by itself. When you ambush the other side it is fighting smart. When they ambush you (maybe even with the same method) it becomes “cowardly.” The key is to be able to make two separate evaluations: 1. learn the useful lessons of how (in)effective the tactic is and 2. evaluate the ethical/moral dimension under a different heading.
John,
I’m not sold entirely on Mark’s thesis but I don’t believe it is dangerous either.
I contend that insurgencies are a strategy; they are not in and of themselves a bad thing. They are particularly useful by groups with constrained resources but high will, the marshalling of these result in actions that seek to reduce the will and/or resources of the opponent over time.
The ultimate aim of the organization that follows this strategy may or may not be negative. (Negative also having a nuanced and varied definition depending on the perspective of the viewer…)
I think you and Mark would actually agree if you stripped away any preconceptions of an insurgency being a negative as it is applied in today’s terms in Iraq or even Vietnam. As you say “involving organized violence intent on supplanting an oppressive government”, certainly you would agree that a government that denies civil rights to a specific race is oppressive.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
These days my posts attract more comments on Facebook (where they appear in syndication) than on the blog itself. For that reason I’ve decided to inaugurate a policy of reprinting them here. Although FB comments are public, it isn’t always clear how widely they were meant to meant to be shared, and from a strict constructionist perspective I’ve omitted names.
1. The commentators seemed to have corrected the misguided poster who is caught up in the word’s emotional content rather than its real meaning.
2. Mark Grimsley
But the emotional content of the word is precisely his point, and one I’ve regularly encountered ever since I first broached the idea that the civil rights movement was an insurgency. His response, which obviously I consider thoughtful enough that I encouraged him to make it a guest post, is the best criticism of my connection between the two terms that I have yet seen. And there’s a larger point implicit in the post that Ill develop when I eventually compose my response.
3. The problem is that the emotional content of the word can have real repurcussions. Rumsfeld banned it in DoD until 2004 so we couldn’t develop a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy if the SECDEF said we weren’t facing insurgents…
4. That’s really interesting, Mark. I’m eager to see where this ends up.
5. Good for you, Mark. My whole insurgency course is predicated on the premise that while not all social movements are insurgencies all insurgencies are social movements. They use exactly the same techniques whether resource mobilization or ‘framing’ and they tend to have the same sorts of aims too. I wonder if your interlocutor knows who Emily … See MoreWilding Davison is? There is not a million miles of distance between what motovated her act of martyrdom at the Epsom Derby in 1913 and Mohammed Siddique Khan et al’s work on the London Tube a hundred years later. His cause is vile and nihilistic, says I; her’s was not; but the actual motivation, the way that the act fits within an evolving narrative, and what was the intended message of the act, same, same and same. You should read Manuel Castells’ Communication Power. He redefines insurgency–pulls the violence out, basically. Whether ultimately you buy his argument there’s definitely food for thought.
6. Well, a lot of people who oppose “war” seem to be supportive of “revolution” or “popular resistance” or some such.
Mr. Grant criticizes Mark Grimsley for “fiddling around with the grand narrative of the civil rights movement and shaping it into an updated and nuanced version of how J. Edgar Hoover and Bull Conner saw it.” First off, fiddling around with grand narratives sounds to me like “doing history.” Secondly, considering how previously neglected parties looked at an issue is…well, again, it’s what historians do. Sometimes this means looking at things from the loser’s perspectives. Other times it means doing “history from below.”
In addition, Mr. Grant suggests that by making Bull Conner look intellectually outmatched, Mark Grimsley makes readers “almost feel sorry for poor Bull Conner” as he was being defeated. I don’t see how this follows. Speaking purely for myself, if evil, odious people are being defeated, I don’t feel sorry for them at all. None of us should have a hard time coming up with specific examples.
Finally, Mr. Grant says “I do not consider myself an ‘insurgent’ in America, and I do not appreciate someone suggesting I might be.” Given the admittedly pejorative connotation of the word “insurgent,” I am not unsympathetic to your point of view. That said, nobody/nothing gets exclusive control over his/her/its own image and narrative, neither Nazis nor saints. Were we to think otherwise, then the profession of history would be largely reduced to summarizing autobiographies and press releases.
Interesting comments that, of course, spin off a website and coursework in Military History where people are naturally going to look at things, one, in a Military light and, two, as “doing history,” as Mark Stout emphasizes. I love history and am “doing” some fiddling myself in the popular end of it — in the period from 1898 to 1914. Of course, everyone’s views are all fair game for being woven into somebody’s narrative, small or grand. So I was not suggesting Mark Grimsley had no business doing what he did. Politics is, indeed, a struggle for the grand narrative.
I guess what troubled me had to do with my past experience in Vietnam hunting “insurgent” radio operators in order to kill them and, now, two current shooting wars against “insurgents” under the Petraeus/McChrystal counter-insurgency doctrine. This doctrine seems to break down into a two-part strategy. One, use “human terrain teams” etc to learn about the target culture, control the grand narrative and provide fear, bribes and civil affairs development projects to win over the target population. The key buzz word separating the two strategic parts is “irreconcilables.” Those irreconcilable to bribery and do-gooder projects are, then, targeted for capture or assassination by special operations teams, which were General McChrystal’s specialty in Iraq, or by drones, which are morally reprehensible and, maybe even cowardly.
To me, that is the current intensely military context in which the term “insurgency” is mostly used. To attempt to, then, stretch that term to include internal political struggles here at home, to me, makes no sense unless one is interested in overlaying the trope of warfare over things like the domestic Civil Rights Movement. In my reading of the history, while it was not without its moments of violence, the Civil Rights Movement was definitely not warfare — except in the views of people like J. Edgar Hoover and Bull Conner, as I suggested.
Modern civilization has developed a dangerous penchant for considering history to be, in a deplorable twisting of Herodotus’ intent, “his story” – the historical viewpoint of only one person or group of people with whom we happen to agree, almost always because we have been taught that this viewpoint is the “correct” interpretation of historical events. This means of outlook is, of course, false, and the replication of it by our education industry is morally and ethically reprehensible. There are always multiple ways to interpret historical events and it behooves us to entertain and discuss as many of them as possible. Just as there were, and still are, those who viewed the American rebellion against King George as illegal (true) and wrong (subjective), there will be those who consider the American civil rights movement to be illegal (true – this is the definition of “civil disobedience”) and wrong (subjective). If we refuse to acknowledge that alternate viewpoints may have logical merit even if we disagree with their prescriptions, then we are not studying history, we are preaching a fanatical religion.
Modern western civilization has also developed the unfortunate false belief that “war” consists of killing people, or at least armed resistance. Nothing could be further from the truth. War is merely an extra-legal means of resolving conflicts between States – whether these states be acknowledged nations or not. Violent action is merely a tactical method.
The American civil rights movement, like the American rebellion and the Bhaathist / Al Qaeda cooperative guerrilla campaign in Iraq – was an insurgency. It was illegal, it was contrary to the publicly stated goals of the established civil government, and it involved a large and organized group of people (thus we cannot define it as merely “crime”). Whether each of these insurgencies was “wrong” depends on which side of the subjective COIN you are on.
Mr. Grant’s actions as a member of “Veterans for Peace” are, presumably legal. If illegality is a prerequisite for insurgency, then we cannot say that he is an insurgent. We must, however, agree on the definition of “insurgency” in the context in which we are using the term. Mr. Grant’s argument, which largely consist of stating that the word “insurgency” makes him feel like a bad boy who wets the bed, is the equivalent of childishly putting his hands over his hears and saying “nya nya I can’t hear you”. Mr. Grant’s argument that others should not use the word “insurgency” because others “are not as sophisticated and nuanced as you are” is simply vile – Mr. Grant is saying that we should allow our thoughts and speech to be ruled by bigots and fools. Then again, it is statistically probable that most fifth columnists do not know that they are being duped.
Mr. Grant appears to enjoy perpetuating the reference to “irreconcilables”, by which he means organized groups of people who prefer to use murder to advance their political goals. In a comment, Mr. Grant voices the incredibly vile belief that targeted capture and, in the event capture is not an option, legally-sanctioned execution of these murderers, is to his belief “morally reprehensible and, maybe even cowardly.” One has to wonder which alternative Mr. Grant would like to have us support: a political process influenced by murder and violent intimidation, or indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations in order to kill the few “insurgents” among them? What’s your poison of preference Mr. Grant?
Dear Dirty Rotten Varmint:
Here’s some comment addressing your comments and questions of me:
“… those who consider the American civil rights movement to be illegal (true – this is the definition of “civil disobedience”) and wrong (subjective). If we refuse to acknowledge that alternate viewpoints may have logical merit even if we disagree with their prescriptions, then we are not studying history, we are preaching a fanatical religion.”
I don’t think I said that Mark’s views were not arguable; the point that I emphasized was why would someone want to stretch the word that way. It’s no less valid than me writing an article for a magazine on why the 2000 election of George Bush was a coup. Though there was no violent take-over, there is, nevertheless, good evidence to support such a view and such a stretching of the word “coup.” No mainstream magazine would, of course, run such an article, since it obviously is based on an agenda of not liking George Bush and his right wing policies. I submit the same process is at work, here. The difference is the magazine Mark submitted his article to leans a bit to the right and seems fine with the notion of stretching and overlaying the current buzz term “insurgency” onto the Civil Right Movement.
“Modern western civilization has also developed the unfortunate false belief that “war” consists of killing people, or at least armed resistance. Nothing could be further from the truth. War is merely an extra-legal means of resolving conflicts between States – whether these states be acknowledged nations or not. Violent action is merely a tactical method.”
The primary definition in my dictionary for “war” is “A state or period of armed hostile conflict between states or nations.” The secondary definitions drop the “armed” aspect and define the established metaphoric usage of the term: the War On Poverty, the War On Drugs, etc. Metaphoric extensions of a word are perfectly OK. I submit that is what Mark was doing. Again, I wonder why? The usage for War On Poverty etc is to mobilize the population as in wartime. What is the motivation for Mark’s metaphoric usage?
“The American civil rights movement, like the American rebellion and the Bhaathist / Al Qaeda cooperative guerrilla campaign in Iraq – was an insurgency.”
Again, metaphorically, maybe. In fact, no way. The Civil Rights Movement was a case of a minority of citizens demanding their Constitutional rights and demanding they be treated equally under the laws, be they federal, state of local.
“We must, however, agree on the definition of “insurgency” in the context in which we are using the term.”
No, we must not if it is being used in a politically loaded fashion — as I would stretch the term “coup” to fit George Bush’s election in 2000. My dictionary defines “insurgency as “…a state of revolt against a government that is less than a revolution.” or “Rising in active revolt.” Revolt seems to be the key word — with an insurgency operating at a lesser intensity. Violent rhetoric from people like Eldridge Cleaver aside, the main thrust of the Civil Rights Movement was not a “revolt.” It was as I suggested above, the case of a minority of citizens demanding their Constitutional rights and demanding they be treated equally under the laws, be they federal, state of local. As such, the Civil Rights Movement was NOT illegal. In fact, quite the opposite. Just because the white hooded town fathers and the police chief in East Jesus, Alabama, saw the demands of angry blacks as “illegal” it doesn’t mean they WERE illegal as far as the Nation went — and in the end it was a National Constitutional Issue, not a States Rights issue.
“Mr. Grant is saying that we should allow our thoughts and speech to be ruled by bigots and fools. Then again, it is statistically probable that most fifth columnists do not know that they are being duped.”
You are half right. My argument was indeed about empowering and giving ammunition to “bigots and fools” in power, which a study of American history shows occurs not infrequently. As for the second part, if I read it correctly, I am no more a “duped … fifth columnist” than you are a duped fifth columnist for some monster I might call up for the sake of argument. I’m a red-blooded American.
“Mr. Grant appears to enjoy perpetuating the reference to “irreconcilables”, by which he means organized groups of people who prefer to use murder to advance their political goals.”
You’re putting words in my mouth. I meant the word “irreconcilable” exactly as the new counter-insurgency intellectuals use it: Those not reconciled to do as we wish based on bribery, good deeds and other blandishments. In this context, WE are the ones doing the killing. The fact they may be trying to kill us simply underlines they are “irreconcilables.” Obviously, if you invade someone’s country and occupy their lands, even if you feel righteous doing it, some of them are going to try to kill you. Then, you have to kill them. That is what “war” is. “Peace” is when everyone gets sick and tired of the killing and figures out how to stop it.
“In a comment, Mr. Grant voices the incredibly vile belief that targeted capture and, in the event capture is not an option, legally-sanctioned execution of these murderers, is to his belief “morally reprehensible and, maybe even cowardly.” One has to wonder which alternative Mr. Grant would like to have us support: a political process influenced by murder and violent intimidation, or indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations in order to kill the few “insurgents” among them? What’s your poison of preference Mr. Grant?”
Again, you are putting your words in my mouth and your dilemmas in my head. One, I would not have invaded in the first place. Two, I advocate a ratcheting down of the Afghan conflict — not an escalation, which is occurring. The problem with your line is you are slamming me based on a failed history of war in Afghanistan that many people like me opposed from the get-go. We have too often followed our worst instincts of revenge and played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands, glorifying and boosting al Qaeda into a world-wide player worthy of our opposition. You can’t criticize me for this line of analysis; all you can do is disagree with it, which I’m certain you will, which of course is your right. I would not deign to tell you how to think.
Sincerely,
John Grant
I forgot to clear up Dirty Rotten Varmint’s characterizing as “vile” my remark about drones being “morally reprehensible and maybe even cowardly.” I understand this is a hot button. But it’s an important moral issue. It’s, of course, why Bill Maher was fired by ABC. My point is, sitting in an air conditioned office with a Diet Pepsi on the console next you as you blast people (some who are always innocent) half a world away then driving home to kiss the kids is not very noble combat. That was my point. The fact the tactic is associated with killing “insurgents” was my reason for brining it up.
The lack of nobility involved in the use of drones is a red herring, IMHO.
Combat isn’t noble at the tactical level whether it involves blowing people up by remote control, blowing limbs off at close range, burying them in trenches with bulldozers, or any of a thousand other ways that people get killed in combat.
The only things that makes this nasty business acceptable are its efficacy and purpose.
Call the drone operators cowards if you like. As a taxpayer and a citizen–that is to say as someone whom the US military protects–I don’t care if the military is filled with cowards or not. What I care is that they get the job done when the civilian leadership tells them to.
Mr Stout, you make your point very clear, which I honor. You are fine with remote, mechanized killing as long as you are convinced it is to “protect” you here at home. My argument is we very much need to question the doctrinal line you cite that what is going on in Afghanistan/Pakistan with drones is actually protecting us here. I question whether the whole policy is really protecting us in any kind of long-term manner. What I think it does is, perceptually, make us FEEL better at the moment. I think it’s a matter of militarists doing what militarists do best, make war and to escalate war. You know the old saw: If you are a hammer all problems look like nails.