Two items of note this Monday evening.
The first, an essay on resolve and will, “The Battlefield Between Our Ears,” from our colleagues at The Torch. Truer words have never been spoken. It applies to us, Americans, as well as to Canadians. There is no military force that can compel us to yield one single inch of ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Only we can do that, to ourselves.
The second is a Michael Yon post on a leadership lesson. It’s simply brilliant, both the tale and the telling. If you, like me, have ever suffered under a no-second-chances “leader,” you’ll understand how powerful this is. It’s a lesson that all young lieutenants and ensigns should be required to read. (Scroll down to the last passage, “The Ground Truth.”)
I disagree in that we are our own enemies merely in the realm of popular will. I feel that the Army has failed to truly adapt to unconventional warfare and still does, at best, a mediocre job at counterinsurgency.
One example is the continuing problem with IED/EFP’s. This has been a real pain in our asses since about week six of the war. The Army has continually addressed the threat in conventional ways… up-armored vehicles and EW systems (jammers).
An unconventional and flexible force would get in the insurgent’s decision cycle, rather than simply reacting to the insurgent. For example, place in sniper teams along known targeted routes and kill anyone along those routes out after curfew or seen emplacing objects by the side of the road. This would regain the momentum when it comes to combating IED’s, rather than simply reacting to what the insurgents do.
We also don’t decentralize control as much as we should. While we do not need an army of companies out there roaming around doing whatever they feel, I believe that far too much micromanagement flows from Washington, via Baghdad, and down into individual neighborhoods and districts. The way units deal with their AO’s should be left to the units that are there and higher command should be satisfied with regular SITREPs. During my time there, I far too often witnessed decisions being made on patrols that should have been made by the PL or the squad leader that was leading the patrol instead of them having to call back to the battalion TOC and get direction.
We have failed to effectively combat the insurgency in several areas. As we did in Vietnam, instead of taking an honest (and I mean TRULY honest) look at ourselves and how we operate, we choose to place all the blame on the shoulders of popular will at home. This is what we did in Vietnam with our “we won the battles but lost the war” lie to ourselves without honestly evaluating what we, the Army, screwed up.
I really hope that, following Iraq, we do an honest and brutal self-critique. I doubt that this will happen, as the Army is very reluctant to admit mistakes, failures, and shortcomings. If we follow “business as usual”, then we will continue to fail when it comes to fighting insurgents and “small wars”.
Having just read the second piece, this is another positive story I’ve heard about GEN Petraeus (and I’ve been hearing a few). He may be one of those rare exceptions to a general officer corps that seems self-absorbed and out-of-touch. That he had LTC Kilcullen assigned to his staff was one positive note. That he did what he did for LTC Johnson and then-SPC Jones is literally unheard of in the Army.
They say that, in wartime, all the real leaders rise to the top and the “peacetime” leaders leave. I’ve been waiting around for awhile… maybe this war is finally starting to have that effect as well.
I disagree in that we are our own enemies merely in the realm of popular will. I feel that the Army has failed to truly adapt to unconventional warfare and still does, at best, a mediocre job at counterinsurgency.
Joel, you may well be right, and the U.S. military could be doing a much better job at COIN ops.
The point of Sullivan’s paper is that it doesn’t really matter in the context of the coalition’s current objectives in Iraq. You won the “Brute Force” war in convincing fashion, and even now, with all the shortcomings you’ve pointed out, the insurgents aren’t defeating you militarily.
They can’t.
If the coalition eventually ends up losing in Iraq, it will be because you couldn’t convince enough Iraqis to buy into the idea of a free and democratic society on the terms you’ve been able to lay out for them, and the insurgents were able to convince your population that it was hopeless to even try.
My extrapolation from Sullivan’s conclusion – that the prime determinant of success between asymmetrical opponents depends upon the political objective – is that instead of backing away from relatively difficult coercive missions, we of the west simply need to get better at managing our expectations and firming our national wills.
We need to work on that because on every other level, we’ve got the other guys on the ropes: military, economic, governance, EVERYTHING. The only thing they have on us is their resolve.
But I don’t entirely agree that they can’t beat us militarily. Sure, on an open battlefield, in a tradition, conventional manner we’ll simply call for air support and obliterate them.
However, on the streets of Baghdad and the MSR’s throughout the country, many of our military encounters end up with an IED/EFP blast, a destroyed vehicle, and several Americans dead and/or wounded. And the insurgent is never even seen. I chalk that up as a tactical victory for the bad guys.
Yes, we can OFFER the people better than the insurgents can. However, we have consistently failed to provide security. And, without it, everything else is a moot point.
I don’t know if you can really separate and categorize things anymore. Security, military capability, economics, governance, resolve, it all blends in together and feeds off eachother. If one falls, all fall.