Urban Warfare Isn't an Alibi | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

You know, urban warfare is often invoked as an alibi, dench terrain and embedded enemy, human shields and perfect intelligence. You guys, we're gonna talk about the article, but please go check it out. That link is in the description. Andy. What's up man, It's good to see you.

know I've written I'm not I'm not a prolific article writer, but I've had a number of articles published, and I would say just as far as direct feedback, this is this is solicited, more direct feedback than any other article that I have written, just in the you know, the first twenty four hours it was out. It was published in the Early Bird, which is kind of the circular

that goes out every day. It's not sent out by d O D, but it goes out throughout d O D. It's produced by I think it's the Military Times, and it's a compilation of top you know, defense use over the previous twenty four hour period. And it was on that this morning, and yeah, I didn't. You know, honestly, this is a topic, as you know, that I've been looking at researching for a while. It plays to my background. I'll talk about that in a little bit, and it's

part of the research for my book. I do want to say before I started talking about this that you know, the research, a lot of it came from personal interviews. Over fifty interviews conducted with members of the IDF, most of whom were involved in the targeting process. At some stage. A lot of them were commanders, some of them were intelligence officers, Target tears, and even even the ones who defended the methodology were open and honest about how it

is done. So I was able to get beneath the surface of you know, hey, we have these procedures, and look at how exactly they those procedures were implemented. So yeah, so you know, to to your point, the urban warfare is often treated as an alibi. You know, the dense terrain and embedded enemy human shields, just the uncertainty of war, imperfect intelligence, you know, all of those that kind of use to to justify harmed to civilians or to explain

civilian casualties. You know, they're just my article is well, no that by themselves, they are not. You know, all of those things are real, but they don't explain outcomes

by themselves. Because every modern military that has fought in cities in recent years faces uncertainty and civilian presence. And what distinguishes campaigns it isn't how commanders respond to that uncertainty. It is I mean it is it's how commanders respond to that uncertainty. It isn't the uncertainty itself it's you know, how do they prioritize risk, what levels of civilian harm, the civilian death are treated as as acceptable. And that's

the core argument of my article. And I you know, I begin I point out the scale of civilian and death in Gaza is exceptional in terms in total numbers, and I talk about the fact that you know, we're in the seventies of thousands, and that the Lancet British paper points out that indeed the actual numbers may be as high as forty percent higher than that when you factor in indirect deaths from starvation, from lack of medical care,

you know, polluted water, whatever it may be. And so you're probably talking about civilian death hole of over one hundred thousand, which is staggering. But then you know, you have to ask, so what percentage of of those tens of thousands are combatants? That's really the question. And you know, even when you look at just the demographics, the undisputed figures, right, two thirds of those figures are women and children. Now, Hamas, aside from using them as suicide bombers, Hamas doesn't use

women as fighters. And by children I mean sixteen or below generally, you know, too low to be to below the military age males. Right, So two thirds of women and children obviously not combatants. Now, that already puts Gas's death toll of civilians ratio civilians combatants on a different level than, for instance, and mos All, where combatants were around fifty. You know, people can challenge my numbers, you

can look these up. But between forty five and sixty percent of total deaths right, and Fallujah around the same. You'd have to go all the way back to Grosny right in the nineties, Grosney one and two, which Grosny is commonly regarded as the most the most civilian death intensive battle since the Secondorld War. You'd have to go back to that find comparable numbers, and even then they're not quite at the level. The ratios aren't quite the same Grosney it was about it was two thirds, it

was around seventy percent. But recently this is coming from the Israelis, uncovered by Investigator for Reporting, and again you can look this up. The Israelis themselves have have come up with figures that show that eighty three percent of those killed were civilians, which is an extraordinary, extraordinarily high toll. And When I say extraordinary, I'm not just shooting from the hip. I mean compared to h it's great. To other battles and one afare right?

that coming from the Israelis themselves. So when you know, my point is this, when civilian death reaches that scale and shows that level of demographic graphic consistency, something's going on, all right, Something's going on beyond terrain density or enemy tactics, because we had all of that shit and Mozar and flu Ja I was involved in both battles, and so that's you know, that that invites a closer analysis of how force was applied because they're in lies the answer

to why those figures are so high, and this is an argument about intent. Okay, I'm not I'm not going launching down the genocide route. It's an argument about process. Civilian deaths and war are not random accidents, that the predictable outcome of how targets are, how targets are defined, how intelligence uncertainty is handled, what what weapons are chosen, and how much risk commanders are willing to accept or for them for their own forces or to transfer. At

what point do they transfer that risk? What's the threshold for them transferring that risk onto this fullian population? And look, I've commanded as un D and this isn't me chest beating here, but I've commanded US forces in urban combat, including in Fallujah and mos All. I've you know, I've with the moral weight of approving strikes where civilians might be present, where you're balancing that against your obligation to support the forces in the fight themselves, knowing that delays

may result in more casualties for them. You know, I get it's those are not easy decisions, but I've had to make those decisions scores for be hundreds of times. And you know the other piece is that I know

as well as anyone that uncertainty never disappears and more. But in professional militaries it's supposed to tighten restraint, not loosen it. So when intelligence is ambiguous, when you don't have a good handle on civilian patterns of life, or when you lose custody of a target, and you know, I can get into that moment. What that means, The expectation is that strikes either slow down or they stop. You know, you pause precisely because the risk of killing

civilians increases. And you may ask, well, why do you care? Well, you care because you know, as I've said before, we fight. We fight with the values that we represent in Western militaries, right,

we don't adopt those at the enemy. But even if you don't give a shit, right, even if you don't give a shit about the civilian population, there are good pragmatic reasons not to slaughter them in mass, because you are you may be solving the immediate problem, but you're going to generate far greater problems for yourself down the line. And again I'm not shooting from the hippie. You can

look at studies. There's a very good one done by rand on insurgent regeneration in Afghanistan and Iraq and the link between that and civilian casualties, and there is definitely a strong link. In other words, you start killing civilians willy nilly, you're creating anger, resentment that simmers and feeds right into that insurgent narrative. I mean, that's not rocket

sciences that you can you can understand that. And in Gaza, I can only imagine where something like seventy five percent of families have lost people I mean close, you know, the families, close relatives. I can't imagine the level of resembling an anger that is simmering. And if you and I were in that position, we would want to get revenge, even though we're not vengeful people, be at least you're not. But in Gaza, I think that's.

in an area roughly the size of Philadelphia. So can you imagine one hundred thousand deaths and solicitious everywhere you turn right at any single building. So anyway, that that you know, for those of who accuse me of being a bleeding heart and who cares, and there are pragmatic reasons.

I personally care about the legal reasons, and I care about the ethical reasons because I represent I did represent the United States military, and I believe in the values that we that that we represent, right, but there are those who don't give a shit about those values. And I would say, well, there's good pragmatic reasons, and you're

gonna undermine your cause. It's a you're gonna tactical success will lead to strategic fail if you're simply slaughtering civilians anyway, So you know I talked about, Hey, when when the level of uncertainty goes up and you know you're not getting good intelligence, you're not getting good patterns of life, then then then you have to or you know, for us in the US, that means we show more restraint. That doesn't mean we see strikes altogether, we don't support

our forces. We find, you know, other ways of doing it. Perhaps you know, we late, we we have a greater alliance on direct fire, or we move more cautiously, and sometimes that means incurring greater risks your own troops. And that's just the nature of the game, that is, that's what we're in. I don't mean to say suggest, right, And you know I was in Fallujah and and I can tell you in absolute contrast to the way the IDF operated in Gaza. We went in and cleared every

single building. We weren't allowed to blow buildings away. We could under certain circumstances we were taking fire, but the level of authorization for that was relatively high as a customary battalion level. And yes, that was frustrating at times,

and it was terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I can tell you too as an advisor, where every time we went in we cleared buildings that had to be an American leading the way into you know, knocking down the door, going down, going through the fatal funnel, down that hallway in the dark, just waiting for someone with a PKAM to let rip. It was a terrifying, bloody experience. And when you were inside those buildings, and remember our mvgs and no especially in the Marine Corps then were pieces

of crap. And so you were at a disadvantage to your enemy. I don't mean to digress here, but absolutely you were at a disadvantage. Doesn't matter that you represented the most powerful military in the world with all the resources we have. When you went in that door and it was you leading the way with one guy you know, just stay staggered behind you, it was you too against whomever was in that house, and you were and because you were moving and you were you were silhouetted. You

were at a disadvantage. But we did that time and time again. Now, of course I would hope that now, if we had to do it, we'd do a lot more with unmanned systems. But but my point is this that no one can accuse me again of not understanding the problem. Oh yeah, I understand the problem, and I've been at at at the kind of the dog's body end of this, so anyway, but uh, in in Gaza, uncertainty functioned in the opposite direction. It created license rather

than restraint. That's you know, and in my article I show examples of this intelligence gaps were treated permissively.

an extraordinary, extraordinarily useful asset. And believe it or not, tanks actually help rather than indirect fire. Tanks help you cut down on colateral damage. Yes, I know that you know the velocity of the tank shell, but I'm but I'm talking about being able to pinpoint targets, to use thermals and all these other things to not not just shooting, but to establish where the thread is and to cover yourself as you cross danger areas. Anyway, remember what I'm saying,

and I use examples here in Gaza. The IDF define target defined targets very very broadly. And if you you know, as I have done, and examine this and looked at okay, why is this building being targeted? Well, we had a report from such and such that it was being used as a weapons storage place. How old is that? Report's three or four weeks? Okay, what exactly you know is being stored there? Well, you know, we think it's this

or that. It's very vague stuff. And of course things and people get moved around all the time in an urban environment.

I right. So you lock on to the target, whether it's a human or it's its infrastructure, and you hold on to that to determine that you're getting the right person if it's a person, and to ensure that there is you know that there aren't civilians wandering in and out of the target area the area you're going to head.

The Israelis don't do that as a practice at all, and you know you're familiar with just as an example, the only strike they really investigated was the time when seven do you remember when seven World Central Kitchen Aid workers were killed in a convoy well marked, coordinated through the IDF and and there's you know, horrific I've seen horrific video with that, where each vehicle was destroyed in succession, right and everyone inside killed. Well, they lost They didn't.

First of all, they didn't. They didn't track that convoy. And having been on the other other side of the coin, I think, as you know, being in Ukraine running humanitarian convoys under fire and coordinating with the Ukrainian military being tracked all the time by friendly force is very important. They didn't do that, and they didn't, you know, they they weren't tracking what they thought was her mass target. They lost custody and then they picked it up and

assumed it was the Weld Central kitchen convoy. But there's no verification and so they blew it away. Now got that case was investigated because the Australian government launched a I mean, it was terrible publicity for them. The Austrian government launched i mean an official complaint. But there are many other cases of that happening. That was kind of the norm. It was just that one that was the

one time they investigated it. And so you know, civilian presence was frequently just assumed away rather than actively assessed. And you can look at my articles for you know, backing evidence backing this up. And so the result isn't just incidental civilian but it's repeated death. Okay, it's not mistakes happen. You hear that, Well, you know this shit happens. Yeah, it does. Sadly, of course it does, even when you

take taking all the precautions in the world. But repeated civilian death at scale that reflects the pattern with how decidents were being made. It's not the difficulty in the environment. And you know, you've You've probably read John Spencer's article saying that the you know, the IDF shows unparalleled restraint. That's the term that he uses that no Other's kind.

for the IDF in the past. There's very probably, i would say very few people of my pier group within the military special operations community who are more closely involved with activities and efforts in support of Israel. So my credentials there are solid. I'm not jumping on the anti Israeli bandwagon here by any means, but I'm talking here. Remember about process. This is not an emotional argument, and so Spencer's arguments have been picked up by those defending

Israeli methodology as hey, look we've got this expert. Spencer calls himself an expert on his website. That's his choice. I personally avoid that term expert. I use the term student. I'm a student of modern war, an unwilling student at times, not an expert. And why does that matter? I think when you start calling yourself an expert, I think there's a danger that subconsciously you're going to cut yourself off

from ultimate points of view. Right anyway, So, you know, for instance, Spencer's article, and I do urge people to read it, he talks about he you know, he says that, hey, listen, the Israeli is used this process. It's just the same process as we use. But actually they're even more restrictive on how they exercise restraint.

he just took it as face value. So all these things, you know, precision guide ammunitions, targeting cells, warning procedures are often cited as evidence that everything that's done to protect civilians. But let's, you know, let's take some examples I've already talked about. I've already talked about the how intelligence was interpreted,

how the Israelis dealt with intelligence uncertainty. Right, they accepted a very high level of intelligence and then for us, what would be an unacceptable level of then intelligence uncertainty. They didn't follow through, they did double sauce it, they didn't employ a blinking eye approach, they didn't track civilian patterns of life. So a lot of what they they

said was assumed. Plus you've got the fact that in Gaza, the density of the population was magnified many times by evacuation orders and and many times civilians were evacuated or told to move, they weren't aided and doing so from one area into another, and that area was subsequently bombed.

this area, so get out of the way. They send it on text or wherever phone calls, and people don't get the messages because their cell phone network is fucked up.

discussion about roof knocking. So roof knocking is an idea of practice of firing a a smaller munition into the roof of a say a multi story apartment building, to warn the inhabitants that you're going to strike that building and to give them a chance to get out. Right.

While there's all kinds of problems with using an explosive munition to warn people that you're going to use explosive munitions, right, And I can tell you, having been under air attack and artillery bombardo myself, it's not intuitive, all right, or reliable like oh.

now you've got that security concern on your own soil. Right. However, I would argue that the problem was this, there were all kinds of problems with communicating with the local population, as we pointed out, but there was no there's no clear, reliable way to ensure an effort made to ensure that they were safe evacuation zones. And what I'm saying here is that you don't you didn't have to evacuate the matter of Gaza if you really didn't believe that was

a security concern. I mean, in Gaza, I know everyone keeps saying how densely populated it Is, but there were there are far less than they within that. Within the strip, all right, it's like a twenty something kilometer mile strip. There are areas, for instance, the beach area by the coast there and and areas between the major population centers that could have been evacuation zones, evacuation corridors could have

been set up and lit. And the Israelis are very advanced when it comes to biometrics and combining biometrics with AI facial recognition. They're always already using this technology in the West Bank to to screen civilians moving from one

way one place to another. And it's very effective. If anyone who's gone from Israel into onto the West Bank knows, you don't see a human being when you go through all these turnstiles, but you are being screened, your faces being identified by H and match against you know, known bad actors. So they've got this technology, they could have set it up to ensure that they were evacuation and

they had organizations, relief organizations within the strip. And I spoke to South African who worked for the UN there and who explained how they you know that the UN was willing to assist the Israelis and setting up evacuation plans and to do much of the planning for them. All they needed was certain things from the Israelis to include forbearance and places, you know, where they would set up and assist in directing civilians, but they made no

effort to do so. Instead just drop leaflets or sent text messages saying, hey, you've got by noon to move from here to there, and this area is going to be rubbled. And then there was poor coordination within the IDF right. So again you can this up as a result of investigations. Often Israelis were heard. I mean it was Raeli's gardens were herded into areas which were then struck. And that wasn't purposeful necessary. I mean, it wasn't purposeful,

but it was. It was just poor coordination within the Israeli military.

Decisions are made. It's a very hierarchical organization. It's very Middle Eastern organization in that respect. Information is not well shared between units, between organizations, and I think that resulted in a lot of these mistakes. And I call them mistakes because I'm not for a moment suggesting that these were purposeful, you know when this happened, but it's negligent.

And they happened because not enough again, you know, risk was pushed on the civilian population, which was an undercurrent of everything that I'm talking about, and I haven't even discussed, you know, the idef's attempts at population control during Operation Gideon's Chariots in twenty twenty five. But the goal is again to separate hamas from the local population and to move the population and into it's like a form of villageization. The British use the Malaya, we attempted, the United States

tended to use in Vietnam. You move the population into secure areas and you separate them from harmas. But you know that the concept wasn't bad, but the implementation was so so poorly done that it resulted, as you know, in widespread starvation. And whether you want to call it famine or not, that is what the UN ended up calling it. Certainly a number of I mean, the significant number of Gazans died of from lack of food, lack of water.

no proof of that. In fact, although the Israelis commonly and there's no doubt about it, they listen harmas used civilian infrastructure, I mean, Thesuslamic state use embedded themselves in civilian infrastructure and mozor. It's a common feature of urban war.

But the Middle East Institute, reputable DC based think tankd an investigation into Israeli claims of human shield arguments and came out of the fact that although that argument was frequently cited, there was actually no proof of it actually occurring, and in cases where they said, you know, Shifa hospital is being used for this or that, they could produce

no evidence. But regardless, you know, international law is very clear enemy violations don't erase the attacking forces obligations, and civilian presence is still supposed to be a constraint or not an excuse. It's it's like the comedian what's his name, Bill Barr. Yeah, like he says, you know, if you want to beat the shit out of your neighbor and he's holding a baby, you don't punch him through the baby, right. I mean, that was essentially the ideas argument that reference.

And when you factor in the number of civilians killed by the Islamic State, that ratio becomes even more dramatic that that that contrast.

of minimum number of casualties? As far as the intelligence argument, it's irrelevant. What I'm arguing is it doesn't matter. You know. The whole point is not what an outsider knows. It's what that commander knows for sure, and what he's assuming. And my point is that for us in the US military, the honest on you to verify that intelligence, all right, And so this is rather a convent opaque argument. And then Spencer says, well, they use precision guided munitions. They do.

But the point is a precision guided munition can cause just as many civilian casualties to fit if you know, if it hits a target that hasn't been assessed for civilian presence, right. Precision and delivery is not the same as precision and targeting. So a bomb can strike exactly where you intended to and still kill civilians in large numbers if the target itself was poorly defined or your intelligence was stale and you hadn't verified civilian presence orthough you know civilian pattern of life.

What that meant is someone has to bear risk in war, either soldiers accepted or civilians do all those of them they don't willingly accept it. Right In the US military, it's a much more balanced discussion. We can't routinely shift risk onto civilian forces. Sometimes we have to bear a portion of that risk if we're uncertain about civilian presence

and so, or there is a significant civilian presence and so we can't use the munitions that we require before an attack. We have to accept that it's going to be a little more dangerous to attack that objective. And making this sound quite simplistic, these are hard goals, but that's the bottom line. But we hear that from our commanders, and we had tactical directives all the time in Afghanistan outlining that as a policy. It is very clear that

that was institutionalized in the IDF. That is not the case. You have civilian leaders. You know, you've got the head of military intelligence, Halivi, saying, I mean it was leaked. You know, he didn't tend to say this publicly, but you know the fact is he was head of military intelligence and he said, hey, we're going to kill fifty Palestinians for every Israeli we lost some seven October and then says it doesn't matter if their children, that's just

the that's the way it's going to be. All Right, You've got that you've got Gallant talking about we're going to cut off that food, We're going to cut off the water. They're just animals. You've got the.

Central Kitchen strike, and that was after Australia objected. So Commander's no, you know, the messaging isn't Hey, you've got these procedures. There's a law of armed conflict, that is who gets fired when shit goes wrong? All right? And when that isn't happening, when you're hearing your own leaders going their animals they're responsible, Hey, fifty of them should die for everyone. Do you really think you're going to

exercise heroic restraint. I mean, you know, so I mean that that and and then you get this these investigative reports coming out about how AI was integrated into targeting. Well, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's if you're using it to support decisions. But if you're using it as a robber stamp, and and the and the human and the luke is simply going okay, okay, okay, then then

that becomes problematic. You have Lamont's investigative arm report that shows that, you know, for every hamass fighter, it's really idea of constructions were, hey, you know, you can kill twenty or twenty civilians Jesus Christ, you know, and that's just for lower level guys. I mean, that's a pretty significant threshold. We wouldn't have that, we wouldn't word things that way. And the point is you're going to tell people you can kill twenty civilians. Do you think they're

going to stop there? Oh hey it was fifty? Or is? I mean? So this is these are what I'm saying is that the institutional messaging was such that it really it it suggested restraint was a bad thing. Now, if you challenge all of those things, well, you know, these are far I'll go revert to Oakham's razor, the fact that these are far more plausible explanations for why one hundred thousand or seventy thousand, which of a number you

believe or people were killed. Then unparalleled restraint, which is what Spencer says.

been being conducted and this. When civilians are killed in large numbers, it fuels recruitment, it hardens opposition, It undermines your legitimacy, which is an important point, and it prolongs conflict. And so you know, tactical gains achieved through through civilian destruction almost always generate long term insecurity.

governing requirement of how force is applied. I mean, urban warfare's brutal civilian death. As they said, you can't ever eliminate it entirely, But how much death occurs and who bears the risk, that's a matter of choice. It's a matter of institutional choice, and in Gaza, the evidence suggests that those choices were pushed onto the civilians and with profound human and I would argue strategic strategic costs.

They don't. They the conventional infantry unit. It's we're not operating at night. I don't know why not. I think it may have come down to training. They had night vision goggles, but they just weren't operating at night. So they would clear an area, they would move back into

their mcnone at nights was the pattern. Now during the during the night, no that you know, Yes, her mass would have some freedom of movement, but the civilians would move back into the areas because they would hear the sounds of fighting gone, and so they would move back in the area. And then you get the look wide e F unit coming out and clearing that area again

assuming everything there is her maas. And look, I haven't talked about the fact that you know, I just talked about indirect fire, but there are a lot of problems with how the Israelis exercise fire control, fire discipline or lack thereof. In fact, they had free fire zones. You know, you've the significant amount of evidence to show that. My own interviews with people showed that areas where anything, you know,

they could shoot anything or anyone. And and and in a in an urban environment densely packed, you're going to get civilians wandering into those.

clearly they didn't have weapons consistently at scale. I a friend of mine who I interviewed for the book but by no means uh, left wing leading hard liberal, former South African Special Operations guy and another guy former Royal Marine Okay operating with the u N told me that, you know, part of their job was just to gather bodies in the morning every morning, because of course it was a health has it and you know they would they'll tell you elderly disabled and all their time, all

their time operating in Gaza, they never never came across a single body with a weapon. And you could say, well, you know the weapons were removed really, you know, consistently all the time from all those bodies come on. So anyway, I mean I'm getting off track here. A little bit in my article is not even based on that. But I'm saying again this gets back to an institutional culture. I mean, the Israeli shot three of their own hostages,

even after their hostages came out waving white flags. I mean, this is all in covered in the Israeli media, covering white flags accompanied by an Israeli officer. All right, they still shot them.

so stay tuned for that your sub stack. All those links are in the description or in the show notes if you're listening, so check them out. Andy.

So it's another way for us to get the information out to you, as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know.